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Life, Lived Better – Outdoors

A River Runs Through It is a semi-autobiographical account of Maclean’s relationship with his brother Paul and their upbringing in an early 20th century Montana family in which “there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” Pete Dexter, in a 1981 profile of Maclean in Esquire magazine, described the novella:

It is a story about Maclean and his brother, Paul, who was beaten to death with a gun butt in 1938. It is about not understanding what you love, about not being able to help. It is the truest story I ever read; it might be the best written. And to this day it won’t leave me alone. I thought for a while it was the writing that kept bringing it around. That’s the way it comes back to me: I hear the sound of the words, then I see them happen. I spent four hours one afternoon picking out three paragraphs to drop into a column I was writing about the book, and in the end they didn’t translate, because except for the first sentence—’In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing’—there isn’t anything in it that doesn’t depend on what comes before it for its meaning.

As he describes his brother’s alcoholism and gambling addiction, Maclean also explores how both afflictions have always followed the history of his family, even back to their earliest origins among Scottish Gaelic-speaking Presbyterians on the Isle of Mull.

The story is noted for using detailed descriptions of fishing and the Montana landscape to engage with a number of profound metaphysical questions. In a review for the Chicago Tribune, critic Alfred Kazin stated: “There are passages here of physical rapture in the presence of unsullied primitive America that are as beautiful as anything in Thoreau and Hemingway”.

My take…

I listened to the audio book on my way to the Eastern Sierras to do, what else, fly-fish and just “be” in the mountains this past October.

As described above, it is a beautifully written book and one that truly resonates with my conception of interpersonal connections.  Why we gravitate towards some people and not others, why some are larger than life, the bonds, the unanswerable questions of why they do the things they do, and hopefully, of acceptance.  Not acceptance through understanding, but acceptance of not understanding.  Not being able to put a quantitative and factual reason of why things happen and certain people are who they are.  We can’t control that.  We can’t understand that.  In the end, we have to accept.  To move on. That is the key.

All eloquently threaded in the picturesque landscape of Montana’s mountains, rivers, valleys, and towns.

I decided to read/listen to this because of the recent passing of Robert Redford and his take on the book through the film of the same name. I watched this film some 30 years ago and had a few of these same passing notions at my naive and young age.

Reading the book now at 49, bolsters those feelings and thoughts that can only come with age and the passing of experiences and time.

On a scale of 1-10, I’d give it 10.