Now, at my cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula near Lake Superior, I'm speculating on the world problem of what recipe I'll use to cook a grouse and two woodcock for dinner. I've been thinking that it's unlikely I'll be able to afford fifty days in next year's season. I quit writing for Hollywood six years ago but now I'm thinking that one more project could give me another 50 days without a bad conscience. Maybe 75. Why not? It's so good for what ails you. There's the easy camaraderie of fishing with a friend rather than the inevitably contentious atmosphere of working with men on the job. The obvious origin of fishing was in getting food, and maybe the love of this process has become genetic since Pleistocene man dropped a boulder off a cliff onto a river pool full of trout. I'm not going to figure the odds against catching a 10-pound brown but you'll hear about it if I succeed, and I want to do it where I already am rather than catching a plane for New Zealand or Argentina. Maybe life is a succession of trading one obsession for another. I noticed this fall with a waning interest in bird hunting that I was working my dog Rose more often along creeks and rivers so that I could look down long steep banks as if I were an osprey and watch what was happening in the water below.

Jim Harrison