In Defense of Orwell’s Toad

In April 1946, as Europe was recovering from the second war-to-end-all-wars, George Orwell published “SomeThoughts on the Common Toad.” Though an avowedly political piece, Orwell’s essay is neither a discourse on a vanquished Ubermensch or a treatise on future oppressors (at least, not on the surface). Instead it offers—and here I claim joyous use of the present tense—a defense of the human urge to find solace in the natural world and its unrelenting beauty. Faced with an urban landscape scarred by Hitler’s campaign of bombs—more than a million homes were damaged or destroyed in London alone—Orwell chooses to focus on the “vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site.” 

Less than a month later, the recently widowed Orwell would leave London for the Scottish island of Jura, where he would write 1984, the novel that evokes the battles of our current spring like no other. The book is about much more than Newspeak and doublethink, of course, but how can one not feel terrified at the prescience of sentences like these: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” And not simply terrified, but saddened too, a sadness approaching despair. 

Yes, we have given ourselves an unhealthy dose of Brexit and Trump and Wilders and Le Pen. But in some simultaneously parallel universe, the world has returned a veritable feast of migrations and blossomings, everything from ducks to daffodils. Now it is our responsibility to choose among them, to honor some and embrace others. As Orwell writes, “I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and—to return to my first instance—toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable.

 

Not likely, you understand, he wouldn’t go as far as that. But we must nourish hope where we find it, as strange as that may seem. At some moment between 1946 and 1948, during repeated bouts with tuberculosis, Orwell had this thought: “In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result being that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked upon as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favored groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.” (The architects of President Trump’s 2017 budget blueprint appear to have taken these words as gospel.)

Sounds crazy, yes. Crazy and plausible. Which is much preferable to crazy and hateful, or crazy and demonstrably false. Both of which have been in depressingly abundant supply.

And by crazy and plausible, I don’t just mean Orwell’s reference to “deliberate policy.” I mean the notion of looking to dystopia for hope. Before inventing Winston Smith, Orwell created another hopeless nostalgist, George Bowling, the anti-hero of Coming Up for Air. This George admits, as a first confession, “that when I look back through my life I can’t honestly say that anything I’ve ever done has given me quite such a kick as fishing. Everything else has been a bit of a flop in comparison . . . . And the other confession is that after I was sixteen I never fished again.” Which was not true of Orwell himself; he fished and caught lobsters while in Jura and—so sure was he of his imminent recovery—his favorite fishing rods were leaning against the wall of the hospital room where he died at the untimely age of forty-six.

George Bowling explains his deprivation like this: “Because that’s how things happen. Because in this life we lead . . . in this particular age and this particular country—we don’t do the things we want to do.” But we don’t live in Bowling’s age (the late 1930s), Orwell’s prophecies are not yet a done deal, and neither is the previously unimaginable convergence of Russian plutocracy and American idiocracy.

Orwell would have disliked the idea of himself as oracle; he rather preferred the role of “pamphleteer.” In other words, he wished to move his readers to action, even if that activity was no more revolutionary than enjoying a strong cup of tea or another pint at the pub. Such things, after all, are what remind us of our truly common heritage, the bonds we share as creatures who live and yearn and die. If we want to raise the odds of that “peaceful and decent future” ever more slightly, then all of us in this particular age and this particular country need to do those particular things that we want to do. Now—before everything is, as George would say, “cemented over.”

I don’t advocate the sharing of inconsequential pleasures as a source of distraction from the news cycle or a respite from active resistance; I do it to prime the well. The small is not the enemy of the good. Without raindrops, there would be no river; without yeast, there would be no beer.

So enjoy a walk in a chestnut wood. Listen to the trilling song of a common blackbird. Plant a few nasturtiums in your window box. Me? I’m going fishing.

Another 36 Hours in Lisbon, Revisited

Thanks to the vagaries of budget airline itineraries and the American holiday schedule, we’ve found ourselves arriving in Lisbon again and again and again. Roundtrip from Tangier, one-way via Casablanca, on a forced layover from Rome—you name it.

If you are indeed lucky enough to have a night or more in the city, make your way up the hill from the Martim Moniz station to Santa Maria Maior, where Marília Silveira of Chez’L Lisboa Mouraria will greet you with a welcoming glass of port. Once a psychologist, Marília turned to innkeeping as a more direct way of “making people happy.”

After dropping your bags in the attic room, descend to No. 1, Avenida Almirante Reis, where you are likely to encounter a line of not unhappy people outside the venerable Cervejaria Ramiro. Join the eager crowd, who will be talking animatedly, shifting their weight hungrily from foot to foot, doing their best to balance that ticklish combination of patience and expectation.

Judging by the name alone, you might guess that this place is a family beer hall, but that represents only a small portion of its DNA. On the night we first ate there—Thanksgiving 2015—we sat at a large table with strangers from as near as the next Metro stop and as far as Taiwan.

Although you could order beef, what you really want is shellfish: oysters, shrimp, cockles, and so on—they’re all fresh here and prepared in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the individual flavors. If you’re feeling flush, splurge on a plate of carabineiros, an unusually large scarlet prawn that tastes richly of lobster.

The next morning, set your sights on the sixteenth-century tower of Belém, about five miles south and west from your room chez Lisboa.

The pleasant two-hour walk along Lisbon’s waterfront will provide both grand views of the River Tagus and sufficient appetite for an expansive breakfast at Pastéis de Belém. (Hint: Get there early to avoid the sometimes insanely long lines of tourbus passengers.) Though the throngs rightly gather for a taste of the iconic custard tarts, it’s worth experimenting with the bakery’s savory options as well. Both pair well with coffee and Moscatel de Setúbal, a fortified wine with the winning flavor of sunlight and raisins.

But what if you have only a three- or four-hour layover? In the afternoon or early evening, ride the Metro to Cais do Sodré, then find your way to the chefs’ counters at the Mercado da Ribeiro, where some of Lisbon’s best culinary talents serve fine-dining plates at takeaway prices.

To give yourself time to eat, you’ll want to make your choices quickly. We particularly recommend Marlene Vieira for her tempura green beans and duck-and-asparagus risotto, but you really can’t go wrong.

And if your brief layover is in the morning? Then you should forget about eating at the Mercado, because most of the restaurants won’t open until noon.

But you might still want to make the trek to Cais do Sodré, about forty minutes from the airport.

Your reward? Repeated iterations of painter António Dacosta’s “I’m Late,” an homage to Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit. (Perhaps because I’m no longer a commuter, I find myself increasingly appreciative of subway art.)

A few steps away, you’ll find a wide range of cafés—some adjacent to the Mercado, others by the river—where you can fortify yourself against the next flight . . .

Note: My earlier post on Lisbon appears here.

The Forecast for Taimen

One of the best things about taimen, the world’s largest and most idiosyncratic salmonid, is that they are related to trout. This is a bit like saying that one of the best things about tigers is their kinship with tabby cats, but the connection is undeniable.

When you see one coming full length for the fly—the green jaws, the broad shoulders, the red tail—the conflict between what you think you know about trout and what you are about to learn provides an excruciating tension.

As you might guess, taimen prefer wild rivers and wild country. One of the rivers where I work, in the valley where Genghis Khan was born, is as undomesticated as they come. By long-term agreement with local, provincial, and national governments, there are no hatcheries, no hotels, no dams, no mines, no commercial logging, and no motorized boats along its banks.

In September 2013, when Sage Flyfishing’s technical service manager visited the river, the weather was far from tame. A series of cold fronts had frog-marched across northern Mongolia, and the leaves on the currant bushes gleamed damp and red. Although the once-in-a-generation flooding had mercifully subsided, the water was still high. In fact, a resupply vehicle from the capital Ulaanbaatar had become bogged down many miles from our first camp, while attempting to ford what is usually a shallow tributary.

On the atypically muddy steppe, upland buzzards, saker falcons, and marsh harriers hunted the mice that had fled their soggy burrows. And yet, after the second day of our trip, I wrote this in my journal: “An ordinary day of fishing. Meaning fun—with lots of action.”

Our log for the day shows that eight anglers hooked twenty-seven taimen, landing eleven. (This count does not include missed strikes, which happen more often than many anglers like to admit.) Of the sixteen individuals that escaped a photograph, one extremely large fish fought downstream for at least five bends of the river before the hook pulled. Another taimen, not nearly as large, was landed after the rod exploded into three pieces on the hookset. (Yes—it was a Sage.) We also were graced with a trio of Amur trout—an endemic species with thick, coppery flanks—and a solitary Amur pike.

In the dining ger that night, Handaa, our camp manager, presided over appetizers, dinner, and dessert. Between courses, she instructed us in the ritual style of toasting, in which each invocation is punctuated with a dip of your ring finger in the vodka: one for the sky, one for the earth, one for the winds, and one for yourself.

Later, some of us sipped red wine, while others (who should not remain nameless) indulged in extravagant concoctions like apple-tinis and lemon drops. Out of the din of conversation, I heard this twosome wisely dubbed “a hangover sandwich.”

A few guests at the table had been friends for many years, while some had just met. But the world of international flyfishing is small enough for coincidences to become routine. Because the guy from Sage has worked in Chile, he and two of our Chilean guides had several acquaintances in common. And because his father had been an industry rep, it was no surprise that one of our other guests, a former New England flyshop owner who has come to the river nearly every year since 2004, recognized the family resemblance.

We have a minimum of four guides on every trip and, in the service of fun, each guide tries to fish with every angler at least once during the week. On the day that I rowed for the Sage guy, he cast a 400-plus-grain sinking head and a huge epoxy fly that, together, cut through the wind like a ballpeen hammer and crashed the water like a depth charge. That rig drew strikes from two healthy taimen and we managed to coax both into the net. His fishing partner began with a floating line then changed to an ordinary sinking tip and went without a strike. By the end of the day, the wind was strong enough to drive the boat back upstream and the current lines were filled with willow leaves.

That unpredictability is part of what makes taimen fishing addictive. Like humans, they can be close-mouthed and sulky one minute, then irrationally exuberant the next. No matter what the weather conditions.

And though weather can sometimes feel like it’s happening specifically to us, cruelly and personally, it can also remind us of our collective smallness in the larger and more mysterious world. What does it mean when, on a morning so warm that you sit as far as possible from the woodstove, someone else says that he can feel snow coming?

Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, that season’s unusual weather will be a net positive. The surge of water tumbled many willows and poplars from the banks. More wood in the water means more nursery habitat. And more nursery habit could eventually mean more trout and more taimen.

To put it in geek terms, the flood was an outlier: a stray point in an expansive data set. As the planet warms, the resulting effects on individual drainages can vary considerably; given our current failure to foresee the bigger picture, I plan to devote myself to further close observation. The river is ancient and ever-changing. All I can say after ten seasons in Mongolia is this: it never gets old.

On the final afternoon of the trip, six days and many dozens of miles downstream, a harrier stooped on a mouse pattern just as the leader unrolled on the forward cast. The bird stuttered above the river, attempting to snatch the fly from the air. The angler exclaimed with surprise and I shouted with delight. Neither of us really wanted to hook a harrier, but we needn’t have worried—the bird made one last, half-hearted stab as the mouse hit the water, then wished itself back into the sky.

Pretty in Print

Two recent publications that can’t be read online: the first in Gray’s Sporting Journal’s fortieth anniversary issue, the next in Songs of Ourselves, from Blue Heron Book Works.

If you can’t get to a newsstand, here’s what the opening spread of the Gray’s story looks like on an iPad.

 

The painting is by Alberto Rey and—in case you were hoping to add it to your collection—is already owned by the University of Virginia.

The story itself is set in Mexico and Montana. Although it’s absolutely fiction, the narrative roughly chronicles the puzzlement I feel both when stalking bonefish on the flats and trying to understand the so-called new economy. (Remember Touch America?)

My contribution to Songs of Ourselves, on the other hand, feels like a big departure from my usual work. Subtitled America’s Interior Landscape, the book wants to identify an idea that I’ve been searching for from Morocco to Mongolia: “the thing that makes us American.” As I was telling my sister today, my bit—which I called “The Journal of Infectious Diseases”—is “basically a memoir in the form of a collage.”

According to the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the most common reason for travel among tourists who contract cholera is—you guessed it—a visit with the relatives.

The River in Books, Books on the River

Following on the spate of media coverage inspired by the 2013 Nobody’s River Project, the Amur basin and its headwaters have now found their way to National Public Radio, which reviewed Dominic Zeigler’s Black Dragon River this past weekend.

This isn’t the first book to chronicle a long journey down the Amur. I’ve read at least two others—one was published in 1860, the other in 2005.

NPR’s review was a bit garbled on the topic of fish: “The river’s waters swarm with life. The Amur is home to a hundred-twenty fish specimens, ‘a primal soup, thick with wanton life and death. Myriad fish gorge on the tapioca pears of fish eggs caught up and down by the current.’”

My guess is that they meant species, not specimens, and pearls, not pears. But who knows about “caught up and down”?

For more on Amur fish and fishing, I recommend two books available free online: Fishes of Mongolia, underwritten by the World Bank, and Amur Fish: Wealth and Crisis, published by the World Wildlife Fund.

More Things We Can Learn from the Bottle

While preparing lunch one day on the river, I couldn’t help but notice the desire of these moths for our bottle of wine. (An imported Argentinian red but, then again, all wines in Mongolia are imported.)

 

Turns out that a technique called wine-roping is well known among moth enthusiasts. If any of you are reading this, would you kindly confirm that these specimens are Red Underwings?

The View from Tangier

Since moving to Morocco last month, we have spent many hours contemplating the view from our third-floor perch. White storks often fly above the clay-tiled roofs, sometimes landing on nearby television antennas, where they exhibit a remarkable sense of balance in the fickle winds.

Like some fortunate humans, they are migrants, able to cross between Europe and Africa at will.

According to James Edward Budgett-Meakin, author of Land of the Moors: A Comprehensive Description (1901), “As a slayer of serpents the stork is held sacred, and if he fails to return any year to his accustomed haunt, some evil is feared.”

In The Land of an African Sultan: Travels in Morocco (1889), Walter B. Harris wrote this about storks:  “They are men, say the Moors, who have come from islands far away to the west, to see Morocco. Like all the world, they know there is no other land to compare to it, and so they even abandon their outward form of men to come and see it.”

Why I Haven't Quit My Day Job

Whenever I’m away from my desk, it seems that the world is determined to show me strange and beautiful things. An albino sea turtle, for one, gleaming like white gold beneath the blue water. And a brown booby, who nabbed a flying fish off a wave-crest as I watched from the kayak.

When a juvenile frigate bird tried to steal the booby’s fish away, I paddled over to offer support. The frigate fled, and then the booby enjoyed its meal, as well as (apparently) my company, eventually settling on this buoy to pose and preen.

A few days later, doubting my vision of the gilded turtle in the middle of copyediting a book about J. Alden Weir, the American Impressionist, I took the time for a quick search online (our family calls it, “consulting the oracle”). As it turns out, albino turtles, while uncommon, are not unheard of, although it’s more likely that the one I saw was leucistic. That’s one of my favorite things about the Web: what you might, in some less enlightened age, have been tempted to call hallucination can now be labeled as probable sighting.

Another of the fun things about the Web is that it brings nonstop news of success: the glad tidings of friends and acquaintances, as well as the exploits of impossibly lucky or talented humans who you will never meet.

On the other hand, if you are one of the untold millions striving to find a voice (and a paycheck), the continuous awareness of other folks’ book deals and movie options might leave you feeling like a chronic underachiever. At those moments, it can help to remember that the mere attempt to create carries its own rewards (sometimes long deferred, sometimes completely unfathomable).

Though it’s scant consolation, I try to remind myself that each rejection letter means that I now have one more reader than I did a minute ago. Not a satisfied reader, but hey, you can’t please everybody. The important thing—for my own sense of being a person among other people—is to keep plugging away. I don’t insist on becoming Meb Keflezighi every time I set out on a morning run, so why feel unhappy about not being Jim Harrison whenever I sit down at the keyboard?

The fact is that only a rare few get paid to play. The rest of us, as Gillian Welch sings, “do it anyway.”  Here are links for a handful of stories that found publication this spring, none of them in print, and none for pay . . .

• a few thoughts on aspirational flyfishing photography at Tail magazine

• tips for making the most of a trip to Mongolia at On the Fly magazine

• an update on our conservation work in Orvis News

• humor for proofreaders or mathematicians (your choice) at the Science Creative Quarterly

• and a brief meditation on zen and the art of nonrefundable airfares at We Said Go Travel.

Another 36 Hours in Lisbon

At first, Seth Sherwood’s recent guide to Portugal’s capital city left me feeling as if I’d missed out on something. After all, our family had enjoyed several days and nights there in December—without experiencing many of the author’s designated highlights. In fact, we only managed two: the riverside running path that passes through the grand Praça do Comércio, and the gallery at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga that contains Bosch’s mind-altering Temptations of Saint Anthony.

Upon further reflection, however, I wouldn’t have missed any of the treasures that we bumbled into during our walks around the city. Here’s an abbreviated version of our visit.

Friday / 4:00 p.m.

To get a good view of everything Lisbon has to offer, begin your visit at Miradouro da Nossa Senhora do Monte. A miradouro is the Portuguese version of a scenic viewpoint, and Lisbon’s hills provide several great ones.

Friday / 8:00 p.m.

Our home base was a third-story walkup in the Alfama District, the oldest part of the city. There are many interesting-looking places to eat between the castle and the river, but after strolling up and down a few cobblestoned streets, we chose Bistrô Gato Pardo, at Rua de São Vicente 10. It’s an intimate and comfortable space, and each plate manages that rare achievement of disarming simplicity: beautiful to contemplate, wonderful to taste. We felt perfectly content to linger through a long dinner, two bottles of wine, dessert and coffee. Ask Mario and Werner to tell a few stories about the Sardine Festival (when the restaurant closes in the interests of self-preservation).

Saturday / 12:00 noon

After a morning run or walk, make your way to Portugalia’s cervejaria, a brewery turned beer hall at Rua São Caetano 4. Although the menu offers a number of the usual suspects, we recommend the house specialty: Bacalhau Bras (the half portion was enough for two of us). Its robust flavor of salt cod, potatoes, and olives is accompanied equally well by a glass of Bohemia or Imperial Branca.

Saturday / 2:00 p.m.

Confronted with a daunting list of worthwhile museums, we chose the one that seemed most emblematic of Lisbon itself: the tile museum. The Museu Nacional do Azulejo, Rua da Madre de Deus 4, is housed in a former convent whose sixteenth-century buildings provide a suitably meandering home for a wide-ranging collection. Although some taxi drivers may insist that the word azulejo comes from the Portuguese for “blue,” it more likely derives from the Arabic al zuleycha, which means “small polished stone.”

Saturday / 8:00 p.m.

Mini Bar Teatro, Rua António Maria Cardoso 58, is one of chef José Avillez’s five restaurants in Lisbon. We found the place on Friday, when it was already fully booked for dinner, and literally begged for a reservation for the following night. The food is inventive and showy, with foie gras masquerading as a Ferrero Rocher and a brilliant green sphere that transforms itself into a caiparinha in your mouth. The theater theme also extends to the traditionally liquid cocktails, which have names like Godot and Hairspray. After a few of these we laughed so hard that one of our party fell from a chair.

Sunday / 10:00 a.m.

By now you’ve probably tried at least a few of Lisbon’s many distinctive pastries, including the egg tarts known as pastéis de nata or, if you go directly to the source, pastéis de Belém. One of the city’s better versions is served at Versailles, an atmospheric café at Avenida Republica 15A. Although you’ll see locals happily standing and eating at the long counter, it’s worth waiting for a seat under the elegantly high ceiling.

Sunday / 1:00 p.m.

If you can’t leave Lisbon without at least a few souvenirs, then stop at A Arte da Terra, Rua Augusto Rosa 40. The shop is housed in the former stables of the city’s cathedral, just downhill from the Roman ruins, and the cobbled floor beneath your feet has been trod by both humans and horses for what has no doubt been donkeys of years. Individual displays of fine handicrafts are arranged in the stone mangers, and the retro tins of Portuguese sardines seem even more appealing when viewed beneath a centuries-old vault of brick.

The State of the Fishery

From the perspective of someone who has been obsessed with fish-catching since childhood, the week’s news was mixed. There were stories about efforts to reduce dynamite fishing, on the unintended consequences to fish populations of attempts to combat malaria, and on the use of satellites to identify seafood pirates.

The view from the kayak, however, was truly amazing. On Saturday morning, it looked like this (for comparison’s sake, that’s a size-12 Simms sandal on the right):

In Florida, these fish are called dolphin; on our home island of Aruba, dorado; but they are better known on menus by their Hawaiian name: mahi-mahi. 

Back in the mid-1980s—when I worked as the mate on a charter boat and moonlighted as a tropical-fish collector and commercial fisherman—we often caught dozens of dolphinfish a day, sometimes hundreds. I was certainly grateful for them at the time, with the precise level of that gratitude varying by the rate we received at the local fish house: usually between $0.79 and $1.39 per pound.

Even considering the greater worth of those Reagan-era dollars, such prices seem criminally low for a commodity as valuable as fresh fish. Which is why the good fortune I experienced Saturday occupies an entirely different range of the spectrum.

Though I release most of what I catch here on Aruba, I resolved to kill this dorado and honor its death. With wasabi and soy sauce, lime juice and cilantro, panko crumbs and curry paste.

When you only have one fish to clean, you have the luxury of using it all—much like dressing your own ducks or butchering your own deer. After skinning and fileting this fish, I saved the roe, the collar, and the head.

I enjoyed the roe pan-fried for breakfast, with stewed tomatoes from Sarah’s container garden, avocado, and toast. The collar was cooked in the Japanese izakaya style, with grated ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, and mirin. And the head, of course, became Singapore fish-head curry.

Most North Americans will never get to savor these dishes because they won’t be able to find the appropriate parts of the fish in the market. But what if the trend toward artisanal food spread to seafood providers, in the same way that craft beer and real bread can now be found from Vermont to Montana?

Even if the movement never makes it out of Brooklyn or Palo Alto, a few more fish-obsessed types might find it easier to both make a living and show respect for the creatures they pursue. And that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing . . .

Happy Is the Man

For some odd reason, it’s often easier to be grateful in the first week of January than in the third week. Today I’m grateful that the Web is like the Yellowstone in summer flood, roiling with debris, reaching high into the willows to reclaim the previous year’s (or decade’s) parched husks.

I wrote “Happy Is the Man” in 2004, while we were living in the Paradise Valley, and modeled the title character after an angler I met on Western New York’s Oak Orchard Creek. You can read the story on Big Sky Journal’s site, with photos by Ken Takata and Barry and Cathy Beck.

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."