The Book That Led to the River

A new conversation with Michael Garrigan follows the connection between reading, writing and fishing.

Michael Garrigan’s introduction to fly fishing began with a book. Reading David James Duncan’s The River Why made him want to take part in the life it described. Literature gave him a direction before he had much experience with a rod.

In an October 8 episode of Fish Untamed, the teacher, writer and angler talks with Katie Kusold about that beginning, his years on trail crews and the places where he gradually learned to fish. Gary Snyder’s writing also helped shape his wish to work outdoors.

The conversation moves between Pennsylvania and the western United States, connecting fishing with extended periods spent living and working outside. Its interest lies in the route between creative work and lived experience. A story prompts an action; time in a landscape creates the conditions for more stories.

For anyone whose working life involves making things, that exchange is familiar. What we read can influence where we go and what we notice. The experiences that follow may eventually change the work we make.

Garrigan’s own writing gives that relationship a second direction. His books include the poetry collections River, Amen and Robbing the Pillars, and he has been an artist in residence in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. His work has appeared in literary publications as well as fishing magazines. The river moves between those settings with him.

On his website, he proposes that every watershed should have a poet laureate. It is an appealing way to think about how a place is represented. A river has measurements, boundaries and management plans. It also has a language formed by the people who spend time around it: names, descriptions and the details they choose to remember.

Giving that language attention makes room for a different relationship with water. The question becomes what a person notices over time, and how carefully they can communicate it to someone else. The work of looking closely belongs to the angler and the writer alike.

That is what makes Garrigan a useful voice beyond the sport. His route into fishing began in another person’s imagination. His own work now offers readers another way of approaching the landscape.

This week’s episode offers a particularly direct example: a writer describing how other writers helped him find the river. Listen to the full podcast here