There were two worst things about my adventure from Dublin to the Wicklow Mountains, and then my hitchhiking from the town of Aughrim to the hamlet of Avoca and to the Avoca River to fly-fish for trout in the old world.
I was a student in my early twenties on my first adventure in another country.
I hitchhiked to Avoca proper wearing my Chuck Taylor Converses and cut-off cargo pants (for wading wet in the river) and a Grunge-era T-shirt and flannel. The backpack I was using in those days was a North Vietnamese Army canvas pack that my old man had brought back from the war.
I did not look like a welcome customer when I went into the old grey-stone Avoca Hotel and through the lobby and turned left into the empty bar.
At the bar I had the cheapest lunch – a sandwich, which was not enough, and two pints of Guinness, which were not enough – and it felt bad because the bar man was obviously not happy to serve me. He unnerved me. I bought a local fishing permit from him for five punt. I tipped him just enough and went out.
The other worst thing was being alone among strange country in a strange country. On the grey stone-arched bridge over the river I looked over and down and read the river and read the bridgeheads, and, waiting, finally snuck down the bank along the abutment and was in the cool darkness of a trout stream under a bridge and the canopy of strange trees. I stood on the dry shoal under one arch and the stream flowed under the other arch.
This is the time when you wished someone were with you. To share in your happiness and strength and courage. To share when you untied the canvas NVA pack and pulled out the equipment – the five-piece seven-and-a-half foot Eagle Claw pack rod and then the South Bend reel of my grandfather or great-uncle or great-grandfather. Then lining the line and tying on a small black ant, you talked to yourself, or the cigarette was your only friend.
And then you cast upstream, up under the bridge in the shade of dark water. And you caught “a little silver trout” (Yeats). You looked up at the bridge, then the canopy of unfamiliar dark green leaves and the cloudy sky beyond, and you felt proud to be alone and thankful to be unseen.
There were no worst things than being patronized by an Irish barmen and being alone on a strange stream with only your own thoughts. But there were myriad best things.
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