Of life lessons and a drag-free drift
Alaska fyfisher's memoir helps Trout Unlimited while sharing a life of humor, heart
It’s Black Friday and have I got a rush sale for you! Get ‘em while they’re rare or wait until spring.
Why are you learning about it now? Because when it launched four months ago it was a busy fishing time and I thought this book would be just the thing for Oklahoma readers during the holidays. No one guessed the first run would be nearly sold out already!
Thankfully, unlike the usual fishin’-was-good-yesterday advice I offer, this one is a keeper at any time. Plus, as it’s written by a life member, 50 percent of the book’s profits are going to Trout Unlimited.
The insider’s view of “An Alaska Flyfisher’s Odyssey,” by Dan Hoffman (31 new or used available on Amazon as of this morning) is that this is a book is about finding a life well-lived as much as it is about fly fishing or Alaska.
Subtitled, “Seeking a Life of Drag-Free Drift in the Land of the Midnight Sun,” the memoir borrows from fly-fishing imagery to fold life’s loves, challenges, and foibles into clear-water currents and our own attempts to cast about for the best results.
While passages within the book will indeed connect with fly-fishers and Alaskans with the feeling of seeing an old friend, most of us have some passion beyond work and family that guides us through daily life and makes us better for our families, better in our chosen career. But Hoffman does a fine job of explaining fishing terms in a way that non-fishers will understand, and that helps make this a book for anyone.
Full disclosure here, I’m not saying nice about this book because they gave a two-page spread to one of my photos or because Dan called about this time last year to ask if I would write the forward. Our connection is that when was editor of the Fairbanks newspaper, Dan was chief at the Fairbanks Police Department and we frequented the same fly shop.
Upon that note, it occurs to me that I should note for my closest friends that, no, I’m not writing nice things because the former chief of police holds some secret hidden records over my head.
On the contrary, agreeing to write a forward for a book for an old friend can be a dicey business, you know. I think I was rather brave to agree.
I mean, what if it was really bad?
On the contrary, I was instantly taken in.
The first four chapters of the book are devoted to the seasons and, fittingly, start with winter.
“Nice approach, Dan,” I thought. “Everyone wants to know what it’s like to live in Alaska through winter.”
But the writing grabbed me. The old police chief pulled me back to those 23 winters I spent in the Far North and he managed deft descriptions of things folks from Outside (that’s what we called folks from the Lower 48 in Alaska) struggle to grasp; like the sounds of a cold morning, snowmachines and overflow, and the beauty of waning daylight and dawn at 10:30 a.m. looks like.
Knowing those feeling, I laughed out loud at the following:
“I’m a fisherman. Scratch that; I’m a fly fisherman, and predominantly a stream flyfisher at that. And while Alaska has truly provided the stuff of my fly-casting dreams, particularly in the pursuit of trout, grayling, and salmon, the absence of flowing waters for several months each year has proved that nature can indeed be more than just harsh mistress; she can be a truly indifferent and cold-hearted bitch.”
It was a good hook-set. I was in and enjoyed the easy 160-page journey.
Plenty of humor keeps the prose flowing and the book casts from practical life lessons to what is heartfelt, and from what is whimsical to what is most necessary in life, with natural swings.
Fair warning that I felt a catch in my throat as he wrote about fishing with his father and I imagine a lot of that will go around with this book. But I’m not going to be a spoiler on how that comes about.
Whether it was intended added value or not, Hoffman’s tales of the life of an angler who cut his teeth on Colorado brookies as a kid and guided anglers on Alaska’s Katmai Peninsula as college student gives anglers a glimpse of a time and a kind of upbringing along America’s streams that in a short few decades has all but disappeared.
Ah, the good old days.
Hoffman said he is currently in discussion with the fine folks at Far Country Press and Sweetgrass Books and that a new run will come sometime in the spring. Trout Unlimited also has given the book its blessing and the cover will feature an official logo now, instead of the one he created.
If you don’t land one this holiday, the fresh run will be worth the wait. I’ll revisit the topic to let everyone know when it’s available (new) again, but for now, get ‘em while they’re hot!
Click here to find it on Amazon or find it at sweetgrassbooks.com.