There are days when I’m not convinced our society can tell the difference between a blessing and a curse. That said, I do think it’s much easier for fly fishers to make that particular distinction — if only because we’re tied, however tenuously, to the real world; to nature.
We’re all tempted, of course, to shut our eyes and surrender to the momentum of American culture; to focus on the number of fish we just caught, or the size of that last big brown trout, or the shiny baubles of our sport — the rods and the reels and the flies. It’s the path of least resistance, and it requires far less effort on our part. At the end of the day, though, our embrace of the long rod offers possibilities beyond mere inertia. Fly fishing is a direct conduit to the natural world; to those brief interludes of clarity and purpose that sparkle here and there amidst the insistent gloom of modernity.
Nature protects us and transforms us. Our time on the water is a shield against a culture grown numb and increasingly brittle. And beauty remains a balm for the soul.
One of the blessings — and it is truly a blessing — of running a small fly fishing school is that I get to work with several stellar professional photographers. Which means that I’m afforded an opportunity to see fly fishing, and nature in the raw, though their lenses as well as my own.
It becomes an obligation, then, to share their best images from our time together. Tim Romano and Jeremy Roberts are two of the very best, and their photos from their time at the School of Trout speak for themselves. My only hope is that you’ll enjoy them as much as I do.
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