"You like to tell true stories, don't you? he (my father) asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true."

Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it?

"Only then will yo understand what happened and why.

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."

Now nearly all those I loved and did not undersand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.  Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the big blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 104

As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them.  It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.  But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water.  And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.

The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river.  he says he is "reading the water," and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing.  Then one of his biggest problems is to guess where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke.  And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke.

For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It, pg. 63-64