Then and Now

Then

Now

Suz and I had a big fight.  We were raised fishing the same rivers like the Molalla and Clackamas, and ocean reefs, so I guess it was only natural sooner or later she demanded to know my secret fishing spots. “Look,” I said, “I bought you a diamond ring.  Isn’t that enough?  I’m not giving you my secret fishing holes that took a lifetime to find.  That kind of intimacy and trust takes years.  If it’s okay with you, I’d like to keep them between me and God.”  She said it wasn’t okay. 

“Let me get this straight,” she said.  “You trust me enough to marry me, but not enough to show me your secret fishing spots?”

“How it is,” I said.

She responded by purposely knocking off one of my big spring chinooks with the net (She swears it was an accident. Yeah right.).  Of course, we broke up over it. It was a nice fish that by all rights should have been in the box.

Now we are back together, and using her mermaid magic, she has my secret spots.  Or thinks she does.  I didn’t tell her I learned from a Joseph Campbell video how Navajo US Army scout and storyteller Jeff King left out an essential piece of the story until the initiate was ready.