Arriving at Second Creek, we were not surprised to find the water low and clear. It was so clear, though, you could have read the stock reports from the Wall Street Journal in 4 feet of water without squinting.
There was something familiar about this, and it occurred to me that I might be observing a trend in how fishing writers gauge water clarity. In spare moments over the last couple days, I've been reading Michael Checchio's Being, Nothingness, and Fly Fishing (which is not nearly as pretentious as the title might lead one to believe). In an account of his first visit to Wyoming's Bechler river, Checcio observes to a companion that "[y]ou could read the New York Times in this water" (93).
For all I know, subaquatic legibility may be a well-established trope for describing the transparency of rivers. But it is one thats new to me. The eternal cliche for describing trout waters is "gin clear," though slightly tannic streams might be said to have "the color of scotch whiskey," or "a light scotch-and-soda tint." People also say rivers are treacly, smoky, or cloudy, which also happen to be adjectives applied to scotch whiskeys. Others (perhaps fishermen forced to go on the wagon, or writing under a cloud of hangover guilt), descibe waters as tea-colored, or glassy. Either way, we're still in the realm of beverages. Rivers running muddy will be compared to coffee-and-cream or chocolate milk. All these are handy and widely understood analogies, but I wonder if they don't also reflect fishermens' desires to commune more deeply with--to drink in--the habitat of their quarry? Or, to put it in more down to earth terms, to make the wilds seem a little more homely?
The legibility descriptions seem a bit more artificial, though they also suggest a nature-culture interface. And there is more congruence between rivers and newsprint than first appears. Fishing is very much a matter of information processing. Despite the fact that papermills negatively impact many streams, paper is a reconstitution of trees and water, along with other ingredients. (Could this be a reason why so many fly fishers compulsively read and write about their sport?) At any rate, I think there is room to develop this notion of rivers as reading lenses.
Articles in the Times or stock listings in the WSJ use very small type, and so rivers allowing you to read those would be streams of above average clarity (Bombay Saphire Gin clear, in the old parlance). Still, newspapers present stark black and white contrasts; to do justice to rivers of extraordinary clarity, you might have to invoke a murkier script: "That river was so clear you could have read the Dead Sea Scrolls in it." A combination of old and new tropes would also convey exceptional perspicacity: "the still, sunlit pool was so clear I could have read the health warning on a gin bottle at its bottom."
Suitable instruments for gauging murkier rivers would include USA Today or pizza coupons. One could say that a river flooded with spring snowmelt or the runoff from a summer cloudburst was "so muddy you couldn't have read the funny pages in it if you'd shined a freakin' spotlight on 'em." The possibilities for irony (and environmental education) are rich: "Once the paper company had clearcut the banks of my favorite river, it ran so cloudy I was forced to take my reading elsewhere."
*sigh* ...Obviously, I've had a long week.
Tags: Fishing;Literacy
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