achieved must not carry us away; we have to be sensitive to where our sons find meaning. Trout was the essence of the river for Maclean—a connection with something beyond time; for Twain it was the river itself and his mastery of it for a specific purpose. For the little boy on the banks of the Clarence, it was coming to terms with some kind of balance between the dream and the reality. Gutting and filleting that mullet at 2 a.m. on that cool, damp morning was not fun. It did not feel like the romantic stories my father had told. It felt harsh and more like drudgery, but as a boy can see later on, it leads to a more pleasant part, the victory part of going after “the big one.” You can’t have one without the other. As we learn all through life, you can never really have one without the other. As parents and teachers we are further down the river and we can help our children see and learn to appreciate all life has to offer. Toward the end of his story, Maclean says, “A river has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.” To figure that out we have to study it thoroughly and listen to it carefully, but we must never lose sight of taking the time to dream about it too. The river, of course, is a metaphor for learning and life— our quest for knowledge and our search for meaning—with the rigorous pursuit of a balance between the two being the essential goal. For it’s in our quest for knowledge that we gain an understanding of our world and it’s in our search for meaning that we find our passions and ultimately our joys. Whether your river is wide and slow, or fast moving and narrow; whether it meanders though great plains, or cuts though steep mountain gorges, or flows in another country altogether, our school-wide theme this year insists that Saint David’s is not only focused on mastery of the river like Twain; but also, like Maclean, on plumbing its depths for deeper meaning.? M David O’Halloran is Headmaster of Saint David’s School.
Notes
1. Argyosomus hololepidotus is a fish of many names. What Australia Aboriginals call “the greatest one,” the mulloway is a metallic silver/bronze sheen fish and one of Australia’s largest and greatest scale fish. They have a distinctive smell and some ‘old salts’ like my dad claim to be able to ‘smell’ or even hear schools of mulloway from the beach or riverbank. Mulloway are equipped with elaborate swim bladders that emit a ‘croaking’ noise. They also contain enlarged otoliths or ‘ear bones’ that are often collected for jewelry items, hence the colloquial name jewel fish. 2. Mark Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi (and a Literary Nightmare) (Toronto: Belford Brothers Publishers, 1876). 3. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, 25th Anniversary ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976).
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