"Sun"

The sun sets in the Caribbean...

I fondly remember a story from my childhood of an image my mother took well before I was born. She was into photography in those days and had a Pentax film camera that she used to document college, marriage, and building a family. She took a photograph of my Dad walking my young brother down the road we grew up on. The sun was setting in the background between the trees and casted beams of light down onto my father as he held his first born's hand. I only saw the image a few times, but I distinctly remember it and the story behind it. My mom entered it into a local photography contest. In its entry, it simply had a one word description, "Son". That story was on my mind during my first night back in the Caribbean on a chain of islands I hadn't seen in over a decade. I was watching my brother play with his son in the pool as the sun began to set on the horizon. As I framed the shot, the image my mother took a long time ago came back into my memory as I realized I was recreating it for my brother and his son. I was glad to capture the precious moment for Matt and preserve a memory for Isaac, who will most likely not remember it. Maybe one day, he'll capture his own version of my Mom's image and add it to the family line...

"Son"

Returning to a special place from our past...

The Old Man

Old man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you...

The old man made the walk every evening I was there. I never saw where he came from and I never found out if he was a local, or like me, a tourist. His walk passed directly by my van on his way down to the beach and into the water. We usually exchanged pleasant nods, no doubt due to the language barrier, which was for me a subtle recognition from one fly angler to another. Nothing more needed to be said on either end. He represented his era with a fiberglass rod, Pfleuger Medalist, neoprene waders, an old-fashioned vest, and a hat that had seen plenty of sun and rain in its lifetime. The gear was simplistic, well worn, and honed to the specific task at hand. From his perspective, he found me tinkering with my spey rods, changing out shooting heads, tying flies, or gearing up the single hander for a striper session. The exorbitant nature of my equipment, and its volume, stood in complete contrast to the old timer's approach. I usually felt a slight sensation of embarrassment as I overthought and complicated the most simplistic of fly fishing pursuits...the swung fly.