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,...