Cheers from the past: A visit to Qingdao

In “The End of History Illusion,” Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson measured the “personalities, values, and preferences” of nearly 20,000 people from the ages of 18 to 68. All “believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future.” Try as I might, I suspect that I likewise would’ve fallen neatly into this sample.

Ten years ago, I had never been to Mongolia or Aruba and couldn’t have imagined my current relationship to these two places. In fact, I spent most of my time editing math books and pitching travel articles! This post was originally sold to Rezoom, a relatively short-lived site designed for aging baby boomers . . . 

Cheers from Qingdao

Because we were never properly introduced, I called him “The Screamer.” Nobody else paid any attention to the guy, who stood facing the Yellow Sea, bellowing a full-throated challenge to the dawn. With his mouth closed, he would have been just another member of the early-morning crowd—the women in one-piece tank suits and bathing caps, the men in nylon briefs—most of them over 50 years old and exhibiting no concern with either the chilly October temperatures or the American obsession with body image. They fished, swam, jogged, played volleyball, practiced gymnastic routines. While he screamed. I’m sure there was a reason for all the shouting, but I couldn’t muster enough Mandarin to ask.

I hadn’t learned much beyond the basics before this trip, just the traveler’s bare minimum of nihao (hello), xiexie (thank you), and yingwen maidan (English menu). That’s probably insufficient for a visit to some of China’s so-called “second-tier” cities, but it seemed to work in Qingdao, the cheerful home of what might be China’s most widely recognized foreign export: Tsingtao Beer. Despite the current difference in spelling, the name of the city and the brand are the same. Literally translated, Qingdao signifies “green island,” although it also sounds suspiciously like a word meaning “to pour.” Fortunately for vacationers, both definitions apply.

 

Although Shanghai and Beijing capture most of China’s first-time visitors, a smaller city like Qingdao can provide a less overwhelming introduction to the mainland. Its history mirrors that of the other former concessions in China: colonized by Europeans (in this case, Germans), invaded by Japanese (twice), liberated first by Nationalists, then by Communists, and most recently, by Capitalists. There are no tourist destinations on the order of Tiananmen Square or the Bund, but the city does have a lively pedestrian market, a regional cuisine based on fresh seafood, a fine old temple that’s been converted into a museum of folk customs—and much better air. Our well-traveled, sometimes finicky family of four, including a 9-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy, was never bored.

The most-quoted description of Qingdao goes something like this: “red roofs, green trees, blue sea, azure sky.” Not your typical jingle for an industrial city of 7 million, but stroll along Lu Xun Park’s seaside paths or hike to the top of Signal Hill and you will immediately recognize the aptness of this expression. 

There are still crowds, of course, but the density during our visit rarely surged past an entertaining level. I like watching people enjoy themselves—especially in China, where the faces are astonishingly varied and various: newlyweds posing for a photographer, formally attired in flawless white (except for the tennis shoes); grandmothers and grandsons, trousers rolled to the knee, netting crabs in tidepools; decorous old men airing their caged birds in a neighborhood square. As for the Screamer, who knows? Maybe he was really a cheerleader, practicing for 2008, when Qingdao hosted the sailing events for China’s first Olympic Games.

We stayed at the Huiquan Dynasty Hotel, for its strategic location—across the street from the No. 1 Beach. (From west to east, the city’s beaches are designated 6, 1, 2, and 3, in that order. The relatively quiet No. 2 became our family favorite.) We started each day with breakfast in the revolving restaurant on the 25th floor, then returned in the evening for foot massages, a few games of shuffleboard, or a bucket of balls at the indoor driving range.

Hotel restaurants in China can occasionally surprise you with good value and high quality. The Japanese restaurant at the Huiquan Dynasty served reasonably tasty sashimi, udon, and yakitori. Its Chinese counterpart, however, provided the sort of memories that will be forever accompanied by a rueful chuckle. The waitstaff alternated between staring and inattention. The dish we can’t forget was called “Laoshan vegetable,” after the famous nearby mountain. Intrigued by its spongy, almost fungal, texture, I made several inquiries regarding its source and preparation. All were in vain.

We enjoyed a much more satisfying feed at Chun He Lou (Spring Peace House), 146 Zhongshan Road. Although a plaque declared this “A Designated Unit for Foreign Tourists,” we noticed only one other obvious foreigner in the crowded, second-floor dining rooms. The house specialties included crispy chicken, crab with ginger and scallions, three-flavored dumplings, and chrysanthemum leaves with garlic.

West of Lu Xun Park, open-air seafood restaurants lined the road to the Navy Museum and Xiaoqingdao (Little Green Island). The day’s offerings were displayed curbside in rows of aerated tubs. You made your selections from this living, splashing menu, then chose the style of cooking. The best meal of the trip featured tender clams seasoned with small red chilies, scallops steamed in the shell, hairy crabs trussed with palm fibers, and several tall bottles of cold Tsingtao beer. All of that, plus a fine view of Huiquan Bay.

The Tsingtao Beer Museum traces the history of malt beverages from the ancient Sumerians forward to the contemporary Clydesdales. Between encounters with traditional fermentation vats and the “mystic yeast,” you could also pick up a few tips on beer appreciation, such as “serious swirling might easily be thought pretentious.” The 50 yuan admission fee included a souvenir glass, a taste of unfiltered brew, and a pitcher of draft. As the saying goes, “History is centuries old, but Tsingtao Beer will be fresh forever.”

What We Don't Know About Bonefish

After five years on Aruba, I sometimes feel like I know each bonefish by name. This is not true, of course, as I only name the ones that follow the fly head down, for several seconds, before unkindly refusing it. Nevertheless, I feel like I know a significant proportion of our resident fish, and am rather fond of one or two.

But yesterday something happened that made me realize that I don't know them at all.

Based on past experience, I would've said that conditions were not good for bonefishing. A northeast swell had churned up the water near shore. Standing at the edge of a sea-grass flat in thigh-deep water, the occasional wave would smack me in the chest. And there was so much sand and loose seaweed suspended in the water column that I couldn't see my feet.

I hooked a couple of houndfish by stripping a deep-eyed anchovy imitation quickly through the shallows, then paused for a moment to scan the surface, the line dangling from the rod tip.

That's when the bonefish struck, angling up through the murk to take the fly. It quickly made off with all the line in the stripping basket, then pulled off a few yards of backing for good measure.

I don't know how it could see the fly in all that mess, or how—if it could make out its target—it didn't also see me. Nevertheless, it happened: bonefish on the fly, taken with the same sort of inattention that has yielded only a precious few individuals of other, less-discerning species. (Think farm-pond bluegill or hatchery rainbow.)

  

Later in the fight, a pelican (you can see it in the upper left-hand corner of the frame) dove on the bonefish with the intention of swallowing it. We had a rather intimate conversation, that pelican and I, about appropriately sized prey, and then I bade farewell to both bird and bone . . .

Duet for Cornet and Kayaker

One of my favorite things about the tropical ocean is its capacity to surprise. On Sunday afternoon, with the island's tourist engines in full roar, I joined the kiteboarders north of the Ritz-Carlton for an hour on the kayak.

Because of the twenty-knot breeze, I stuck relatively close to shore, chasing the roving schools of jacks with a small anchovy imitation. I was watching a far-off pelican dive on a school of bait when a blue-spotted cornetfish took the fly.

Cornetfish are a miracle of nature, closely related to seahorses and sea dragons. We often see them while snorkeling, as they sometimes hunt along the same flats and reefs where I watch for bones. (In the Red Sea, cornetfish have been known to devour the invasive lionfish. It's unknown whether our local species does the same, but we can hope.)

Calling this fish "blue-spotted" is a serious understatement, as their vivid hues are unlike anything in humanity's own drab palette. This individual came to hand without too much fuss, though it remained shy of the camera, like a wary backyard cat.

When Your Time Comes

While dragging the kayak up the sand on Sunday, I met a man who has been coming to Aruba since the mid-1970s. In those days, he used to fish in the October tournaments sponsored by the local yacht clubs. He participated every year until 1995, when one of his best friends had a heart attack on the boat and died. We agreed that there are worse ways to go; even so, he didn't have to explain why he now fishes from the beach.

In the twenty years since then, the man has caught only two fish. He sees them swim by—jacks, bonefish, snook—and he casts for them, but whether he catches them or not is unimportant to the experience.

As it turns out, he landed the second fish just last week: a snook that topped thirty pounds on the scale his wife uses to weigh their luggage. A young couple pointed the fish out to him as it cruised along the beach. "Is that the kind you're trying to catch?" they asked.

The fight took him a few hundred yards north, then south again, scattering bathers and drawing a small crowd. (Aruba being a friendly place, I actually heard about the fish on the day it was landed.) Somehow, he and the snook managed to avoid all the arms, legs, buoys, and other obstacles that might have intervened. When the leader finally snapped, the fish was too tired to swim away. "It was my time," the man said, gratefully.

Which reminds me that my own time is coming. Soon I'll be back in Mongolia for a tenth season on the river. You can spot me at the oars in this short video by filmmaker Juliaan Braatvedt, who visited us in Mongolia last season, or read about our work in this article by writer and photographer Rasmus Ovesen. (In that story, I am "the guide.")

And though it's hard for me to say if this is a sign of success or a signal of depravity, Mongolia River Outfitters was recently mentioned on TheRichest.com (number 4 on their list of "can't miss" flyfishing destinations).

While I'm gone, look for "Why I'll Hunt, Again" in the November issue of Gray's Sporting Journal, or visit Total Carp's website for the story of an unusual hatch in Tokyo.

On Flydreamers, you'll find an homage to the underappreciated lenok, and on Wattpad, a short story set in the Florida Keys that originally appeared in the fall 1994 issue of Onion River Review.

Here's to autumn . . .

In Good Company: 2014 New Rivers Press Books

Am very proud (and not a little relieved) to report that the New Rivers Press Electronic Book Series did not perish under my influence. In fact, the number of titles has now tripled.

This year’s winners include Click, a novel by Rebecca Cook, and Up the Hill, a collection of stories by James Calvin Schaap. The opening of Click propels you into the story at astonishingly lyrical speed, with great lines like “a face just to the left of lovely.” Schaap’s stories, by contrast, proceed with the measured grace of a voice from beyond the veil. As one narrator notes, “we're fluid up here.”

 

May Bones

On Aruba, April showers don't bring May flowers, because it rarely rains. (Not in April, May, June, or July, for that matter.) But this year, May brought bonefish to the inshore reefs, where I found them busting schools of glass minnows against the rocks.

 

The fish hunted in packs, their dorsal fins creasing the surface. And when they began feeding in earnest, some leaped clear of the water in pursuit, just like tuna or mackerel. I caught several by stripping a small minnow imitation very fast, and several more by twitching it like a crippled baitfish.

The bones were beautiful specimens, sleek and strong, with prominent bars of darker green on their backs.

 

Fighting in relatively deep water, each fish treated me to a series of short, fast runs, surging between boulders and changing direction at whim. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway)—I am looking forward to summer.

What to Read When You're Absolutely Buried

Sometimes you feel like two vast and trunkless legs of stone standing in the desert, even if you actually make your home on a tropical island. In that state of mind, the thought of opening a full-length novel can seem like an invitation to despair.

Rather than submit to such hopelessness, I've been reading short books. On the nightstand for the past few months: The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, John Steinbeck's The Red Pony, and The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide.

The Invention of Morel was first published in 1940, with a prologue by Jorge Luis Borges. Though Borges called it "perfect," I think that description misses part of the book's great charm. It's science fiction in the same sense that Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" is science fiction, and has inspired adaptations for screen or stage by many notables, from Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet to Richard Colton and Jared Green.

One of my favorite passages occurs as the fugitive-narrator contemplates the possibility of an afterlife: "this island," he thinks, "may be the purgatory or the heaven . . . (the possibility of several heavens has already been suggested; if only one existed, and if everyone went there and found a happy marriage and literary meetings on Wednesdays, many of us would have stopped dying)."

The 2003 edition from New York Review Books includes the original illustrations by Borges' sister Norah.

The four so-called chapters in The Red Pony were written from 1933 to 1937 but did not surface in print together until 1945. Understanding this fact up front might help you to negotiate the expectations created by the title story. I was unaware of the book's publishing history and read it with a combination of awe and wonder: in awe of its power, and wondering how in the world it would end. In a line like "Jody liked the things he had to do as long as they weren't routine things," Steinbeck reveals great sympathy for human frailty but offers scant comfort.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide first appeared in 2001, although readers of English had to wait for New Directions to publish a translation in 2014. The book's rise to bestsellerdom has been attributed to a review by NPR's Juan Vidal, which might be true. On the surface, it's the story of a copy editor and his wife, living in the suburbs of Tokyo, hunting for a new apartment, making friends with a neighbor's cat. Perhaps I found it so affecting because all of those details once applied to me, personally, but the more likely source of its success are sentences like these: "They were the color of topaz, and several iridescent violet streaks ran down their backs. If you poured boiling water over them, the purple streaks turned to bronze." Or: "I'd read in a book that the male of the species is solitary and tends to stake out a fairly extensive territory, and prefers being near water."

Angling for an Addiction

You can read my story on the addictive nature of taimen fishing in the newest issue of Fishing Fanatics, available for iPad, iPhone, and Android.

Aruba's Bonefish Nursery?

Schools of juvenile bonefish are again cruising Aruba's beaches—in some places so abundant that they show up in the cast nets thrown for sardines and other baits. While this individual was released unharmed, it's a sad fact that many are destroyed as bycatch, in the same way that adult bones are often killed in set nets.

 

Last week my father caught a dozen in one evening. Each was returned to the water, and all were surprisingly powerful for their size: a tantalizing hint of the fun they could provide if allowed to reach adulthood.

This periodic abundance reminds me again of how lucky we are in Aruba, of how significant our island's nursery areas are for the life of the surrounding seas, and of how much more productive they could be with even the minimum of resource management.

A small marine protected area—stretching from the new Ritz-Carlton to Arashi Beach, for example—could provide an invaluable sanctuary for young fish that would later repopulate the island's flats and reefs. Area regulations would ban netting, spearfishing, wastewater discharge, and the anchoring of boats. Diving (on approved moorings), snorkeling, and catch-and-release fishing would be encouraged, and displaced commercial fishermen fairly compensated.

The proposed park would include some of the island's most popular tourist sites, including the wreck of the Antilla, visited last year by the Catlin Seaview Survey, part of an ambitious project to create a baseline record of the world's coral reefs. In their expedition report, project scientists were amazed at "the plentiful juvenile fish that roamed" the island's waters, "an indicator that these reefs are ecologically important." And, like others, they expressed concern that "the reefs of Aruba aren’t currently protected, especially because we have clear evidence of the great potential."

Since 2010, the Aruba Marine Park Foundation has been working to build public and government support for a protected area, so far with limited success. You can add your voice to the chorus by visiting their Facebook page and donating to the Save the Reef program.

Days Gone By

My favorite new book, Richard Wilbur's Anterooms, was a gift from my niece, who works at the Yankee Book Shop in Woodstock, Vermont. In the title poem, this stanza nicely captures the feeling I have right now:

Still, it strains belief
How an instant can dilate,
Or long years be brief.

Camping on Mongolia's Delger River, August 2013

Another 36 Hours in Aruba

Elaine Glusac's story in the November 10 New York Times was well-informed and entertaining, but not everyone's circumstances allow for a stay at the Ritz. This is what we did last weekend.

FRIDAY

3 p.m.

Still at work. Luckily, most Aruban commutes are short. (It's a small island.)

6 p.m.

Take the dog for a sunset swim at Eagle Beach. Park in the paved lot and walk north or south until you find the right combination of sand and solitude.

7:30 p.m.

Yes, you could go out to any number of tasty restaurants in the hotel district, including Amazonia, Papiamento, and Le Petit Café. Or you could do take-out from local favorites like El Chalan (Peruvian), Sultan (Lebanese), or Baby Back Grill. But sometimes it's just as relaxing to have dinner at home. Mix a martini with the duty-free gin you purchased in the baggage claim area at the airport. Then combine whatever the refrigerator has to offer in a stir-fry. Today's options: chicken, shallots, garlic, kale, endive, cilantro. Wash it down with a Spanish or Chilean red, which are reasonably priced here (unlike the French and Californian wines).

SATURDAY

8 a.m.

Beach cleanup with students and faculty of the International School of Aruba, sponsored by AHATA, the Aruba Hotel & Tourism Association. We worked on a stretch of Grapefields Beach, on the east coast, just north of Boca Grandi, one of the island's best kitesurfing spots.

12 noon

Cold beverage on Costa Riba's last weekend (they lost their lease). But Kamini's cooking will still be available for take-out.

1 p.m.

Lunch at home with a selection of fresh bread, cheese, and salad from Super Food, an immense market with a selection that will remind you of Amsterdam.

5 p.m.

Take your fly rod for a stroll along the uninhabited north shore. Watch for diving pelicans and hope the fish gods smile on your efforts. This horse-eye jack took a blue-and-white Clouser.

7 p.m.

Sashimi dinner, with Venezuelan avocado, Aruban cucumbers, and South Korea's Yangban Seasoned Laver.

SUNDAY

8 a.m.

After breakfast, put the kayaks in north of the Ritz-Carlton and paddle along the lee shore. If you reach Boca Catalina before the tour boats, snorkel among schools of juvenile grunts, sergeant majors, and blue chromis. If not, take a leisurely swim south, towing the kayaks behind you, and watch for sea turtles, reef squid, and schools of bar jacks.

12 noon

Sashimi again, even better this time, as the fish has become more tender after overnighting in the refrigerator.

1 p.m.

Another clean-up operation, this one sponsored by FlyFishingAruba and focused on the mangrove shoreline south of the airport. We're very fortunate that so many islanders feel strongly about protecting the environment, but there's still plenty of work to be done. The roots of some mangroves were completely shrouded by layers of discarded plastic. (I've written elsewhere about other conservation-related efforts on Aruba, including invasive boa control.)

5 p.m.

On the way home, wave goodbye to King Willem and Queen Maxima, on their way back to the airport after a week on the island.
 

7 p.m.

And finally, another dinner at home, this time using the roasted cubanelle peppers that we neglected on Saturday, when the fish gods smiled. What's not to like about chile rellenos and fresh papaya salsa?

South Florida Takes Notice of A Novel

Well, maybe notice is too optimistic a word, but the book did receive a little press while I was working in Mongolia. Pompano Today, a regional magazine (you can find the complete file here), published this interview:

And earlier in the summer, the Key West Citizen ran this bit:

Another Season, Another Taimen Video

The 2013 season began with rain and ended with snow. The snow lasted only a day or so, but the rain continued for weeks, creating a flood of water downstream that, by the time it hit the Russian Far East, was visible from space.  This year's notable anglers included Tasmania's Paul Anderson, Patagonia's Marcel Sijnesal, Tom Lewin of South Africa's Frontier Fly Fishing, Chris Andersen, Technical Service Manager at Sage, and Derek Hutton, WorldCast Anglers' Guide of the Year. I'll post a more detailed report soon, but in the meantime here's a video of Jaime Castillo of Mongolia River Outfitters and Chile's Estancia de los Rios releasing a fish that was exactly four feet long . . .

An Anthology of Bourbon Poetry

Way back when road trips, ice fishing, and an early morning drink were functional parts of my vocabulary, I also tried to write poems. These attempts were mostly unsuccessful, but one outlier has found its way into an anthology titled Small Batch, just out from Kentucky's Two of Cups Press.

My favorite poem in the book (so far) is "Day One" by Mitchell Douglas. It begins like this:

Day one,

I sip the shoulders
off a bottle of oak--
. . .

Where You'll Find Me

Look for "When You Must Go" in the May/June 2013 issue of Gray's Sporting Journal, and "A Different Sort of Ghost" in March/April, both available for the iPad.

"When You Must Go" is mostly set in Montana, but the first draft was written in Shanghai. "A Different Sort of Ghost" takes place in the Maldives, after the tsunami, and first found paper in Vermont.

On PhoneFiction,  you can locate "An Angel in the Juvenile Phase" and "Homesick." The stories on this site can be read on any device, even a phone (hence the name), and no apps are required. The catalog is organized by time commitment alone.

I wrote "Angel" while living in Missoula but thinking about the Keys, and "Homesick" while living in Missoula and remembering Los Angeles.

If there's a theme here, I'm blind to it. Maybe I just need a little distance . . .

A First Novel after Fifty . . .

I've spent the past few decades proving that I'm no prodigy, with some success. My first short story did not appear in print until I was thirty-one, and that first article in the New York Times did not arrive until I reached forty.

John McPhee, by contrast, published at least fifteen books before age fifty. Very good books, written at what he considers a painstakingly slow pace.

Such comparisons are silly, of course, but if you read a lot, and spend many hours in bookstores, it's hard not to wonder at one's own insufficiencies.

Now that I've been lucky enough to pass fifty—and see my first novel available on Amazon—I discover that no less an authority than the BBC has declared that "fifty is the perfect age to write a novel."

It's a questionable pronouncement, based on this lone statistic: "the average age of writers who topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955–2004 was 50.5 years." Which means, by my calculations, that the actual writing must have occurred when the author's average age was quite a bit less than fifty.

But the reason I bring all this up boils down to one word: hope. Anyone who knows me well will attest to the fact that I am easily distracted. This is not to say that I don't work very hard, only that my mind is quick to focus on the next item of interest, which is equally likely to be a poem or a paragraph, a bird or a fish.

So if I can do it, you can too . . .


 

Remembering Boston

A dozen dawns after the Boston Marathon bombings, we woke in a hotel in the city’s waterfront district. Although we attended college in the Boston area and lived in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood for several years in the late 1980s, we are tourists now. After pulling on my running gear, I left the lobby and headed east along the pier, intending to make a leisurely circuit of Pleasure Bay.

But five minutes later I had spun west, toward the sunlit glass of the Prudential Building. I crossed the Fort Point Channel into Chinatown, navigating the old streets by memory, skirting the Common and the Public Garden until I could turn down Boylston Street. It was not yet seven but the streets held plenty of people on their way to work, some of them clutching lidded coffee cups, their collars buttoned against the wind. 

While I ran I wondered about the beautiful and the ordinary. The beautiful because the weather was brisk and fine, with magnolia and cherry blossoms framing the old brownstones. The ordinary because nothing felt ordinary about what had once seemed so familiar: the ruddy faces of spring, the tulip beds lining the gray cobblestones, the regular pivot of my legs below the knee.

I also wondered if my desire to see the bombing site had something ghoulish in it, if I was drawn to the place by the same instinct that attracts rubberneckers to house fires and car crashes.

As I passed a fast-food outlet near Copley Square, a man sitting on the curb shouted at me. The only word I caught was “five.” Thinking he was trying to cadge enough cash for breakfast, I turned up my empty palms and went on. He shouted again after I’d passed and this time I heard him quite clearly. “Fuck you,” he said.

Because this was Boston, I turned and ran back to him. “What?” I asked. He told me that he’d only been trying to encourage me, that he’d been urging me to go for it, to “go for five.” This was a new phrase in my lexicon but we parted amicably. As we shook hands, it was impossible to ignore the fact that we both wore ragged, fingerless gloves.

Due perhaps to this distraction, I came upon Marathon Sports without warning. The plate-glass window had evidently been replaced, the sidewalk cleaned. With an odd shock, I remembered that the shoes on my feet had been purchased at this very store, precisely two years earlier, a trivial detail that seemed to gather weight through sheer insignificance.

I kept running another block to the Forum restaurant, which was still boarded up, then crossed the street and reversed direction. There were other runners out, too, some jogging, a few moving at race pace, and two unusually tall men carrying on a conversation in German as they loped past the TV trucks and camera crews.

  

This time I noticed the memorial in Copley Square: the jumbled rows of cut flowers and stuffed animals and scrawled remembrances, the sneakers and ball caps and T-shirts, the peace signs and flags and statuary. What were all these charms and trinkets, I asked myself, if not messages of defiance and tokens of respect? And then I knew why I had come.

Judging a Cover by Its Book

This just received from Ryan Christiansen at New Rivers Press: the cover art for my novel, sized for e-book sales at the unusual (to my eye) proportions of 1562 X 2500 pixels.

Seeing what was once a daydream made digitally concrete made me wonder how I should describe, in casual conversation, what the book is really about. When I was writing it, I used to say it was about a woman's search for sperm. That summary still holds, more or less, although it's not immediately apparent from this image.

Of course, many of us don't use the cover to choose what we read. The two books on the top of my pile at the moment are Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star and A. St. J. MacDonald's Circumventing the Mahseer and Other Sporting Fish in India and Burma.

Originally published in 1977, The Hour of the Star was translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Moser in 2011. The book is very short and very fine. Some of the sentences are so odd that they defy memorization. Others, like this one, have a sort of fractured indelibility:

Because she needed to find herself and suffering a little is a way of finding.

MacDonald's book was first published in 1948 and contains many of the worst notions of empire-builders and so-called sportsmen, with no distinction made between catching and killing and little sense of either limit or proportion. Page 81 includes this advice:

There is no better way of meeting the local people than to talk to them in their own homes about sport and their crops. Play the gramophone to them, dress their sores, give the children a few sweets, and keep both ears open for local ideas. The primitive people, such as one usually meets on a fishing trip, are largely dependent on their wits for fish and flesh, and have experience handed down to them for generations. Exploit and adapt their suggestions and ideas, and with your own knowledge you can very soon arrive at a killing method.

Until today, I had never really wondered how readers discovered such books (other than by lucky chance), or how they might find mine. Another reason to be grateful for publishers . . .

More Dramatic than Humans?

Ten years ago, my family explored the Florida Keys by houseboat (you can read the story here). Our nominal plan was to search for the roseate spoonbill, a bird that Robert Porter Allen, author of The Flamebirds, considered “more dramatic, more compelling, more worthy of anecdote” than humans. 

On the other hand, John James Audubon wrote that this “beautiful and singular bird” was “poor eating” and “tough to kill.” 



In North America, spoonbill populations have revived over the past decade. However, they remain rare visitors in Aruba—which makes me all the more grateful for this sighting.

Conserving Taimen (and the River)

During the second-to-last week of the 2012 season, we met World Wildlife Fund program managers from Britain, China, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United States. They had been camping out in somewhat less than our anglers’ accustomed style and seemed cheered to see the dining tent with wood stove, tablecloths, and wine glasses.

But what started out as an information-sharing event ended on a more celebratory note. In wildlife circles, the working partnership among Nomadic Journeys, Mongolia River Outfitters, WWF, and six local governments has become a conservation success story. Through an innovative public awareness campaign—using a little bit of everything, from bumper stickers to text messages—an environmental ethic that might have taken decades to germinate has flowered in just four years.

It’s no stretch to say that, in earlier times, taimen survived in far northern Mongolia because few people cared enough to kill them. That changed in the late 1990s, when tourists and anglers began to arrive from other countries; since the mining boom, angler numbers have further swelled with weekend warriors from Mongolia’s newly prosperous capital.

When Rare’s Pride campaign began in 2008, slightly more than a third of survey respondents in the district “strongly agreed” that taimen should always be released. By this year, that figure was more than 95 percent. Not all of these folks like to fish, of course, but those numbers are growing as well.  In 2009, members of local angling clubs caught and released 68 taimen; that number had nearly quadrupled by 2011.

Conservation efforts continue with the work of a few dedicated staff, a core of volunteers, and the support of individual and corporate donors, including a generous grant from Patagonia’s World Trout Initiative.

Just before spawning season—when large fish are particularly vulnerable—the local WWF office held anti-poaching trainings for police officers, park rangers, and angling club members. In these sessions—and in all other campaign materials—taimen are not portrayed as treasures to be hoarded. Long-lived and slow-growing, these fish are more like our honored companions (or perhaps we are theirs).

While it is true that taimen are astounding and beautiful creatures on their own, they cannot exist without a healthy river. If we were ever to lose them, it would only underscore the more painful fact that the river also had been lost.

(For more info and photos, see "Conserving Taimen," posted on July 27, 2012.)