It
was pitch black and the voice of an old man – who was completely invisible
except the orange glow of his cigar – had instructed me to the only rising fish
that I had heard all night. I waded within 10 feet of the fish which is
possible at night, but not considered proper technique by some, including the
old man.
To
make a short story longer, the fish rose, I waited about 15 seconds, then I
dropped my fly just upstream of the sound and let it drift down. A few seconds
later I heard a small splash about where my fly probably was. I set the hook
gently. The fight was not an epic battle. It was more like a brief test of
wills. He made a few short runs and broke the surface a few times, but he mostly
sat and sulked, too proud to surrender. Typical for a good-sized brown trout.
After a minute or two he relented, and I scooped him into my net. A
deeply-colored, sixteen inch, wild brown trout. Not a huge fish, but large
enough that he should have known better.
I
turned toward the dock to tell my elderly guide that the fish was a flawless
sixteen inches, but he was gone. No cigar glow, no congratulations, no “how big
is he?” Nothing. Silence. He seemed to have simply vanished into the darkness.
What
kind of fisherman would leave without seeing how the encounter turned out?
Would the Southern guy catch the fish? If so, how big was it? Maybe he knew how
big the fish was because he had caught and released it many times over the past
few years. Maybe he was disgusted that I wasn’t fishing as a gentleman should
and left because he couldn’t bear to listen. Maybe he had to be somewhere
before sunrise.
I
waded across the river and onto the dock and shouted for him: “Woo, thanks!
Sixteen inches!” No answer. Just the sound of water flowing against sand, grass,
and fallen trees. No sound of footsteps on the path, no car driving away down
the dirt road. I walked a little farther to the grassy meadow where Durant’s
Castle used to stand and shouted again. Nothing… except darkness, a billion
stars, and the sound of a cool breeze rustling the tops of the pines.
The
old dock from which the glow and the voice had emanated is the riverside access
for the old house – Durant’s Castle, a French chateau with fifty-six rooms and
seven fireplaces – where Mr. W. C. Durant, the chairman of General Motors, had
lived briefly in 1930. In February, 1931
the mansion burned down, and although he continued to come to the AuSable to
fish, Durant never rebuilt, and his riverside property eventually passed into
the hands of the State of Michigan which now maintains it as a fly fishing
only, primitive area.
The
AuSable River is the center point of this local community. It is loved and
tended and respected. The fact that the fishermen and canoeists who are drawn
to it provide jobs and income to this rural area probably helps, but there’s
clearly more to the community-river relationship than just dollars and cents.
The local folks love this river the way you’d love your mother, not your bank
account.
One
sad-but-true fact about many other rivers – including many of our East
Tennessee rivers – is that they are used but not loved. The amount of trash,
old tires, junked cars, plastic WalMart bags, beer cans, and bags of garbage on
our local rivers is just plain embarrassing to those of us who care about such
things. While those rivers are places where people dump their trash, the
AuSable is a river where people dump their ashes… of loved ones. While fishing
the AuSable we’ll occasionally encounter a guy sitting reverently on the riverbank,
paying his respects to the final resting place of his father, whose ashes had
been scattered on the waters of his beloved river. This happens more often than you’d think.
A
few miles from Durant’s Castle there’s a stretch of the AuSable called “the
Holy Water.” While people don’t come here to bathe and be miraculously healed,
this name does show the depth of respect the locals hold for this river. If a
community can have a soul, this river is it.
I
don’t think much about ghosts, and I’m not sure I believe in them. However, I
do believe in the supernatural which does open up a world of possibilities, one
of which might be an occasional visit by the ghost of a man who once lived by
this river and fished its waters. Rather than being punishment for a profligate
life, spending a few years as a disembodied spirit wandering the banks of the
AuSable might actually be a reward for good behavior. It’s certainly closer to
Heaven than Hell.
The
river by the site of Durant’s Castle is a pleasant spot, and if I were a ghost,
I’d spend some time there, too. And if the mood struck, I might even point out
a rising fish to a passing fisherman so he’d have a story to tell his buddies
when they all reunited at the old wooden dock after a night on my river.
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