First post

I just read several posts from John Maclean's web page johnmacleanbooks.com and I was overcome with his ability to write commanding prose, and the legacy under which he writes. I am inspired by his simplicity, and when I read John tonight, I felt like I was reading a writer with his own style, but aware of his father's influence.

The experiences he had with his father Norman remind me of fishing with my father on the Upper Deschutes in Central Oregon. We were bait fishermen, and I never caught anything legendary, but I awoke with my dad each camping trip near 5 AM, with fog still on the river, and cast and reeled in until breakfast around 10, or until my brother Mike's reel, or mine, were birdsnests of eight pound monofilament. I would stand next to my dad with the same line, swivel, split shot, even the same end of the worm, and he would catch amazing browns and rainbows, and I would get snagged. We did this for years, until Mike was too involved in baseball tournaments, and I was a teen too involved in drugs, girls, and rebelling against my family.

When I returned to Salem, Oregon from college at the University of Oregon in 1992 Dave McNeese sold me a used 8 foot 5 weight fiberglass Fenwick fly rod, and a new Cortland Crown for $50, and told me it was his old personal rod, and it had caught thousands of trout; when I moved to Missoula, Montana in 1993, I never put it down.

And though the details in between then and now will undoubtedly emerge, I know am three weeks from 40, and a couple years worth of writing away from completing my PhD in American Studies at Montana State University-Bozeman. My children live in world class fishing towns: 14 year old Kerby in Ennis; Cole, Shae, and 15 month old Bianca in Bozeman. I also teach developmental composition to incoming freshmen. It is a life I dreamed of, but never imagined would unfold.