Above and opposite: The joy of discovery and the imagination; and the rigorous pursuit of knowledge.
they danced through each other, and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.” “Poets,” Maclean says, “talk about ‘spots of time,’ but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot in time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone.” Maclean recalls that his father was sure about certain matters of the universe: “To him, all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easily.” To be a great fly-fisherman Maclean thought, required learning the mechanics of a fourcount rhythm of the line and wrist as the base rhythm of the cast, but superimposed upon it was the piston two-count of the arm and the long overriding four-count of the completed figure eight of a reverse loop, with all of it having to be in harmony with the fish, the time of day, and the river. Maclean’s story is a search for meaning. It is a story, ultimately, about beauty—the recognition and the appreciation of beauty—and beauty, I would argue, is found in meaning. If our school-wide theme this year is “rigorous pursuit,” then the very next question should be “What is it that I am rigorously pursuing?” This may or may not be easy for us as
adults to answer; it is certainly not always easy for our sons. If we only see what’s right in front of us, the challenges of the moment, our immediate goals, without paying attention to the bigger picture, the bigger questions, our sons can easily lose sight of what’s really important in life. In many ways Twain went too far in Old Times. He lost the romance of the river and its inherent beauty because of his singular focus on learning it so thoroughly for