There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / . . . To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / . . . It is not now as it hath been of yore;
George Bowling was a middle-aged insurance man living in a British suburban development of cramped dwellings surrounded by other identical developments. It was 1936 and not only did the boredom of his job and the monotony of his home life depress him; the news of the day signaled another World War. And so it’s no surprise that he became nostalgic for the days of his boyhood when he lived in a town still remote from the city (like the Sonoma of 60 years ago). Suddenly on a day off he remembered that almost rural town with its horse trough, the sweet shop on the corner, Lady Rampling’s carriage passing by, its God in his heaven and Queen Victoria at Windsor. How he wished he could go back to those days unencumbered by the worries of the relentless “progress” the 20th century!
He especially remembered how much he loved to fish in the abundant pools of the neighboring countryside. He remembered following his brother and friends on a June morning. The buttercups were up to my knees. There was a breath of wind just stirring the tops of the elms. The older boys, not getting a nibble, sent him off to the shallower side of the pond. The next moment his [float] gave a sharp bob and almost went under . . . I yelled to the others . . . I gave a terrific haul and the fish – a great huge silvery fish – came flying up through the air . . . his scales glistened all the colors of the rainbow. Thereafter from the age of 8 to 15 George savored the wares displayed in fishing shops, learned how to make hooks, learned about the many insect baits available.
Then much later an old caretaker told him of a hidden pond others didn’t know about. George made his solitary way to the place where he says I saw something that almost made me jump out of my skin. It was an enormous fish . . . almost the length of my arm. It glided across the pool, deep under water, and then became a shadow and disappeared into the darker water on the other side. I felt as if a sword had gone through me. It was the biggest fish I’d ever seen . . . I stood there without breathing, and in a moment another huge thick shape glided through the water, and then another and then two more . . . The pool was full of them. In a long forgotten pond fish can grow to monstrous sizes. The brutes that I was watching might be a hundred years old. And not a soul in the world knew about them except me. His tackle was hardly adequate to catch those colossal bream or carp – so he went off to return better equipped. He’d buy what he needed and come back for them. But as it happened I never went back . . . something turned up to prevent me, but if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. It’s the way things happen.
Amid all the hustle and bustle of our modern, crowded world and even amid the shallower ponds of our religious tradition deeper ponds exist – like the Gospels of Matthew and John, the letter of Paul to the Galatians, the story of Jonah, of Noah, the call of the boy David out of his sleep. And then there are books like this one written by George Orwell called Coming Up For Air and the poetry of Wordsworth, of Hopkins, plays like The Death of a Salesman . . . each a deep pond where revelations that can change your life glide beneath the surface – if only you would lure them. But no, we soon learn to skim the surface of life to survive in this modern world. And so how likely it is that you and I must eventually conclude with middle-aged George: Here I’ll make a confession or rather two. The first is that when I look back through my life I can’t honestly say anything I’ve ever done has given me quite such a kick as fishing . . . And the other confession is that after I was sixteen I never fished again.