Give Us Dirty Hands and a Pure Heart
“Oh gosh, they’re all squashed together and dying.”
“Yeah, I think it’s because they ran out of dirt to eat so they started eating their own poop.”
In a mix of revulsion and fascination, my sister and I tried to untangle pieces of sun-baked worm for our hooks. As I threaded one limp annelid onto my line (seriously—fish are disgusting. Who would eat this nonsense!?) I happened to glance at my mucked-up hands, calloused and cut from handling gills and hooks, the nails pervasively embedded with worm goop. Other than the tiny size, (which still fit softball youth gloves size 11), I recognized these hands. They were the hands of my dad.
How many times had I seen the same grubby fingers? Stained with power bait and salmon egg, always fixing something. He never fished himself, though I have no doubt he would have liked to. No, he was untangling Jihae’s snarled reel here, whipping my rod free from where I caught a tree, biting some lead weights for Sam’s line, since we kids consistently lost the pliers.
Four kids keep a man busy, but my dad was always patient. He knew the best deep holes, the most clever techniques for catching a trout’s attention without scaring it, the subtle difference of coloring between brookies and browns. He knew how to teach his children to be patient, and we trusted his judgment implicitly.
I’m sure my sisters and I made a strange impression this week. Three semi-Asian girlies in colorful shorts, wiping even more colorful streaks of green and pink garlic power-bait on their legs. The fishermen in their waders certainly guffawed at our barefoot endeavors among the marsh; the cowboys smirked in town as we cleaned our hard-won dinner in the Vons parking lot. “You just don’t see girls here,” one told us politely.
Well, these men didn’t know my dad. Back in the old ISP days, there would be “Father/Son” camping trips, while the mothers stayed home for tea with the girls. Not us. The Snyders always did everything together, and my dad unapologetically brought his daughters too. He taught us how to coax a fire. He helped us learn the forms of clouds, as lovely as their names. He showed us not just how to clean a fish, but always the avid scientist, demonstrated how each part functioned to keep the miraculous lithe body afloat and agile.
Last night, as I tilted my eyes at the sky so long that my neck ached, I remembered how my dad would get us up in the middle of the night to identify the constellations. Four cranky little kids, rubbing their eyes and wrapped in sleeping bags, would join him beneath the stars. This rite should have been exciting, but I was afraid of the bears and mountain lions lurking behind every shadow. Even into my teens, I’d cling to his hand, and I couldn’t wait to dive into the covers where everything would be safe.
But why did I not see the gasping beauty of the stars until now? So bright in these Sierra mountains, unmarred or choked by city smog or fluorescent glow. The sky was alive, where meteors collided in dramatic slow motion, where planets smiled blue and yellow and red, where you could grab whole handfuls of the glittering heavens. I wish I had the words, but I will always grasp at them, just out of reach of my fingers, much like these multitudes of twinkles. My dad saw the aching loveliness, and wanted all his kids—including his girlies—to see it too.
Oh God, how I’d give anything to have him see it with me now! He’d burst out into Psalm 103, as always, his go-to verse when things were just too big, too marvelous, for his own words. “Bless the Lord oh my soul, all that is within me, bless His holy name!” Now, looking up at the great canopy above, I would chime in with the next chapter too: “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, O Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty, Covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, Stretching out heaven like a tent curtain.” My dad not only taught us how to be strong in body and mind, excited by creation around us, but exemplified how one must immediately turn to extol the Creator. I’m crying right now, because I miss him so, so much. I know he’s in a place more dazzlingly lovely, but it’s hard not seeing him here, you know?
Sniffling, I wipe another stain onto my leg (There’s already mud and worm and powerbait there, so what’s another smudge?) and lean back for another cast. Just one more cast, we always begged him, and he always gave it to us, which we would then let linger in the same spot for at least half an hour to get the maximum time.
You might think us girls crazy for being such diehard fisherwomen. But as I look around me, at the golden meadows and the shaking aspens glowing in the sun, at the blue mountains rising behind me and the swirling pools before me, I don’t care one little bit. I have stood here all day, and I will continue standing, relishing in the glory of this old spot, recalling my dad right behind, guiding my line where it needed to go. For me, fishing is a style of life, of retreating from the world’s tired chaos. However, it’s also a way to hold my dad’s hand once again, to remember that I have his hands now, stained and hardworking and patient. And that’s definitely worth a bit of worm-gut.
“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions of hope.” -John Buchan (Scottish poet, governor, and fisherman)
