"A lone boat, an old man in straw cape and hat, fishing alone in the river snow."
Liu Zongyuan wrote those lines about the solitude in his own heart. I can't write poetry, but the moment I put on this straw cape, I understand the flavor: the whole world reduced to one man, one rod, one stretch of water. Whether the fish come is their business; whether you wait is yours.
I've fished this ravine mouth for forty years. What I fish for isn't fish. It's the waiting.
Forty years of it, and while nothing else improved, my water-reading did. I know the day before the water rises — the color shifts, clear to clouded, clouded to murky; the ants move uphill; the fish come up to breathe. In other years this skill only helped the village dodge floods. This year it's different.
This year the rain is wrong. Proper rain comes off the sea — you smell the salt before the drops. This year's clouds are born inside the mountain itself, and they smell rank, like something up there breathing. It's the plague. So after each day's fishing I have one more chore: I tell Dawan at the tea shed tomorrow's water, and she tells everyone heading in — the day before the rain, stay out of the ravine.
People say: old man, a whole day for two little minnows — what's the point?
I say: the point is those two. I don't take more. The things in the water have homes and mouths too. Fish it empty, and who keeps me company next year?
Fish don't talk, so the fisherman learns to listen. Before you go into the hills, sit at my spot a while and listen to the water. If it's running murky —
Go another day. The ravine isn't running anywhere, the fish aren't running anywhere, and you've only got the one life.