River of Life

We wade fished an Ozark river last Friday evening. My youngest son, who is sixteen years old was my fishing partner. The river has a moderate flow but is really pretty tame overall, and this will be important to the theme of this story. Of course any river has its hidden perils and one should exercise a degree of caution when entering their domain. Naturally, one should have some basic skills for their environment, perhaps the most important being a good swimmer.

The fishing was quite slow as the river was running pretty strong for this particular stretch and was heavily silted. We worked our way down stream, leap frogging one another as we tried one hole after another. While my son is an excellent swimmer and fisherman, his experience level in reading rivers is not great. It occurred to me to bark orders to him about where to cross, to take each step slowly and test ahead for holes over his head, and not to get in so deep that the current would sweep him off his feet. Instead, I chose to keep my mouth shut and let him figure it out for himself.

Indeed, on two occasions, he found himself swimming instead of wading. Both occurrences were in places where he was in no real danger, but both times it alarmed him a tiny bit. One of the times he lost his footing when he just kept going deeper and deeper and finally the current was just too much. The other time he stepped directly into a hole way over his head. Both of these missteps I thought later were good analogies to the way we learn to live our lives.

We learn more through experiences than through direct instruction. Our parents hopefully equip us with some basic skills, like swimming, and then we have to figure the rest out. If someone always warns us to avoid mistakes, we miss a great deal of what life has to teach. As parents, it is not advisable to throw our kids into a raging torrent, even with the skills we have taught. It is okay, and even beneficial, to step back and watch our kids make their missteps in tamer waters. If we have given them basic skills, they will swim their way from trouble and in the process learn to avoid the source of their missteps. They also will probably grow in their confidence to be the masters of their own lives.

Though we came home empty handed so far as fish were concerned, I believe that the catch of the day was even more nourishing.