OPEN WATER FELT BUT NEVER TOUCHED WYOMING CARP UTOPIA The English language sometimes has shortcom-ings. Specifically, it lacks vocabulary that conveys the strong emotions that emerge when modern humans interact with nature. Germans have come close with “Waldeinsamkeit . ” Translated literally, it means “forest loneliness.” It describes the feeling humans experience when solitude and nature col-lide, the sense of awe and connectedness we feel with natural surroundings. The Japanese take that feeling one step further with the concept of “Yūgen.” Here, English fails even more to encapsulate its meaning, but the word itself suggests that no language can accurately con-vey such feelings. Based on 12th-century Chinese Zen philosophy and embraced in the 14th century by Zeami Motokiyo, a creator of Japanese Noh theater, Yūgen describes the subtle profundity of an existen-tial experience during moments in time that cannot be described using words. It is solely an emotion, felt in displays of nature that range from mundane to extraordinary. This emotion may be the purest of all—felt but never touched, heard but never spoken, witnessed but never understood. I’ve come to understand this feeling as the reason I flyfish, these moments in time. Sometimes they are expected. A sunset through palm trees on a deso-late road in northern Argentina. The feeling of wet riverside bedrock during a Hoh River drizzle, how its porcelain-smooth surface felt like how I imagine it would feel to run my hand across a whale’s back. They are also unexpected, like getting lost in my thoughts on a secluded High Plains carp lake, find-ing meaning in the meaningless. To watch c louds of may f l ies d r if t ing in t he breeze. To wander lonely sagebrush after a fresh summer rain. To stand upon the shore and gaze at the delicate flight of damselflies reflected on shal-low waters. To contemplate the lives of prairie dogs busy beneath the ground. To watch subtle copper shadows following my fly. • RIGHT • “Nick Basaraba hoists a one-in-a-million albino mirror carp caught out of a muddy bay. We noticed a glowing white orb swimming with a large pod of carp and had no idea what it was. The four of us spent nearly an hour trying to sneak up on it without blowing up the spot to get a fly in front of it. Basaraba got the lucky shot and once it was in the net, all we could do was scream into the Wyoming wind.” Photo: Katie Knick 108 THE FLYFISH JOURNAL
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.4: Page 106
