The Flyfish Journal • The Flyfish Journal 14.4 • BANKING FIRSTS

Kamaya is a 400-pound western lowland gorilla and has been the patriarch of his family since the group was initially discovered in 2014. Thanks to a slow process of habituation and careful exposure to trackers and scientists, it’s possible to visit him and his family in Loango National Park, Gabon, through the Loango Gorilla Project. Programs like this expand our understanding of the lives, habitats and environmental challenges of these gorillas, as well as protect them from poachers. Photo: Dylan Rose

When I first saw Dylan Rose’s photographs from his trip to Gabon that eventually found their way into this issue, I experienced the faintest tingle of discovery. The viewing experience was visceral—Rose’s toe-to-toe with sofa-sized tarpon juxtaposed with close-ups of a silverback gorilla felt profound in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on until I spoke with him later and heard, clearly, reverence in his voice.

“An elephant’s trunk makes sense,” Rose told me (and later wrote), “when you see it pushing branches out of the way as it moves through the jungle.” When was the last time you saw something which you thought you knew your whole life, as if for the first time?

It turns out adventure and discovery are really just tools for contextualizing the world, for making the abstract concrete. Until I feel the pull of a giant trevally—until I really feel what’s at stake in that situation—it can be no more real to me than a moonwalk. The right words, images or film can get us close, but as many flyfishers know, close is simply not good enough at times. And no matter how many elephants, gorillas or jaguars I see at the zoo, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion the interaction isn’t close to what Rose experienced in West Africa.

This isn’t a bad thing—not everyone has the desire, ability or means to visit the stomping grounds of 400-pound silverback gorillas. The point is to find our own firsts, wherever we can find them, to get dirty, to invite the uncomfortable, to open oneself to the possibility—to the certainty—that reality is within our grasp. And, somehow, always just beyond it, waiting for us to confirm its existence around the next bend in the river or trail.

Or the next bend in the coastline, as was the case with Rob Lyon on his first solo kayak around British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in the early ’90s, a three-month sojourn he has repeated several times in the years since. Reading about that first trip now, nearly 30 years later, it’s clear that he’s never gotten over the perspective shift that resulted from it. So much the better—if we do it right, we’ll never want to get over it. A life well-lived offers not only ever-changing vistas, but the chance to return to those firsts we collect like crumbs on a trail, to relive those moments of discovery.

Hopefully you’ve got some bends in the coastline, river or trail in your immediate future, a chance to chase the tingle of discovery, to experience the “endless dopamine drip,” as Rose put it. In the meantime, at the very least, you’ve got the pages in your hands right now. All you have to do is turn to the next one.

The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 14.4

BANKING FIRSTS

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The Flyfish Journal 13.4