when i grow up

I now know what I want to do with my life.
It's taken me the better part of 41 years to realize it, and with a simple click of a mouse while looking for an old influence, I found the road map.
In the spring of 1989, I drove up Route 86 just outside of Lake Placid, N.Y, and parked my Subaru on the side of the road where there was a clear, but adventurous, path down past and between a few boulders so colossal that only God Himself could have rolled them into place on the fabled Au Sable River. If I slipped, I not only would have lost the first fly fishing rod I ever owned (an old fiberglass Fenwick), I would have lost my life.
At the time, it didn't seem to matter much. I was in my early twenties and recently divorced. I was flunking several courses in college, and because of the tumultuous one-year relationship that technically ended with a priest from her church annulling it — as if it never happened — I had to forgo an internship at Adirondack Life magazine, which, at the time, epitomized the my goal in life: to write about life in a natural place.
And that morning, as the sun strained to eclipse the tall peaks and the river was separated from air only through a thick silt of gray fog, I slipped into the river as gently as a great blue heron stalking his prey.
In my ten dollar Kmart rubber boots and a green felt Orvis hat that I couldn't have been more proud of, I waded close to the bank, but just far enough to avoid getting my fly line hung up in the trees above.
These are trophy waters, meaning no trout under a foot long could be kept. That didn't matter to me because the last thing I would expect to happen to a novice such as me would be that I would catch any fish in the raging spring trophy waters of the most prolific trout stream east of the Mississippi, but even if I did happen to graze dumb luck, the ideal conservationist that I was wouldn't have allowed me to keep the fish, legal or not.
But God decided to begin my love affair with the river where another such relationship dried up. At the end of my line, a pretty little rainbow, a foot long, give or take an inch.
I didn't know how to land him. Born into a family of bait-casters, I reeled the fish in. Somehow, the barbless hook held and into my hand was the spectacular fish.
I removed the hook with little damage, held him in the water to keep his gills pumping, smiled and let him go.
That was the first and last trout I'd catch on the mighty Au Sable. It was dumb luck, I know, but all the same, it was one of the greatest fishing memories in the North Country.
I, fingers frozen, toes numb, spirit resilient, was victorious, maybe even invincible.
After a few hours more of swatting at the water, I climbed the boulders back out of the river in which I was just baptized a fly fisherman, and headed back to the little four-wheel drive Subaru.
I slipped out of the waders, got dry, hit the engine and turned on the heat. I flipped a Gordon Lightfoot tape into the cassette deck. I was genuinely happy.
And hungry.
I decided I'd take the long way back to my apartment near the college campus. The route would take me to Lake Placid, the site of the 1980 Winter Olympics — the one known for the Miracle on Ice. I might stop for a beer, then head north toward Saranac before hanging a right on Route 3 back to Plattsburgh. It was a long trip, but I love adventure, and if adventure means driving through mean, snowy terrain, so be it.
Just outside Placid, Route 86 winds along the edges of Whiteface Mountain. It splits some of the tall peaks of the Adirondacks, and is flanked by gorge on one side and the most breathtaking stands of white birch I've ever seen.
This is what the road to Heaven looks like, I'm convinced.
But up on the left with a clear view of the Au Sable, a kitschy little roadside fly shop stood, inviting passers-by to stop in. On the side of the building, someone had made a humorous mural of a woman in a short, pink skirt and cowboy hat fishing, but the fly hook had caught the back of her skirt, and, well, you can imagine the rest.
As I strode through the door still high from the trophy fish I caught, a man sat in a flannel shirt hunkered over a table where a number of flies and hackle lay.
By nature, I'm an introvert. I'm not the guy who strikes up witty conversations or brags about the fish he's caught. I'll talk, and I'll talk about the fish even, but I'm pretty low key as far as being the initiator of a conversation.
Fran Betters is, however, and it wouldn't have taken a clairvoyant to know that I was fresh from the Au Sable. Hell, the only folks who probably wandered in were fresh from the river. Or they were looking for a bathroom.
He asked if I did any good, and I told him I got one and threw it back. He nodded. I didn't tell him it was my first time in the river, but I should have. From the stories I've heard, Fran is a very paternal sort of fellow. One who takes time to give advice and feed your addiction. He's got a whole fly shop, complete with custom rods, namesake flies and a shelf of books that he authored himself to prove it.
I left the shop with a handful of Au Sable Wulff flies that are his patent and a book, "Fly Fishing in the Adirondacks." He autographed it for me, and today, it sits on a shelf with all the other fishing books I own, but his is pretty special, and not simply because he signed it.
The book sparked sort of a revolution in me, one that was culminating in that day or at least fixing to erupt. It was an independence I could experience only in nature, and one that was personified greatly standing in a river with a fly rod. For if bait casting is checkers, then fly fishing was chess. It was a game, one that moved very slowly, that took a great deal of thought — and not just when you're waist-deep in technical waters; but when you're driving around listening to Gordon Lightfoot on your way to or from the river, near the river, or anywhere that reminds you that this invisible shadow we call our souls is, indeed, a fisherman.
My father was this man. And that apple, which had rolled some three-hundred miles from that tree, was too.
So on April 30, 2008, not quite a month before a spring jaunt back into the Adirondacks to visit family, my father-in-law and I will venture out into the still-cold streams, rivers and lakes to maybe or maybe not catch a fish. It's a ritual at least once a year that I fish when we visit the in-laws. There are a lot of good bodies of water up that way, after all.
But it's been awhile, and I thought I'd check in with some local fly shops to see what patterns I either need to buy or tie, depending on the extra time I may or may not have in the next week or so.
So I searched for Fran's shop online. Now, I haven't been to his store since the late 'eighties, and not that he was old when I met him, but years that go by have a cruel way of erasing people and places if you lose track of them. Living in South Carolina for the past nine years, it was safe to say that I'd lost track of Mr. Betters.
But there he was, online, a picture of him flanked by the typical buttons of an online shopping page. Flies, custom rods, books, tips, charts and such. But there was a note that sort of troubled me. After 44 years, Fran was getting out of the Adirondack Sport Shop. I was troubled because I probably wouldn't have the chance to drive up and see him, not that he'd remember me. My son, who is nearing one year old, wouldn't remember it if I brought him. I probably couldn't buy one of Frans custom poles or one of his own hand-tied flies, which, no joke, are collectors' items.
Then I noticed that Fran was selling the place. The whole thing: the shop, the restaurant, the lodge, the apartments. Now, all I remember was the tacky fly shop — nothing more. But it seems in that time lost, Fran had relocated just up the road and had acquired the other outposts.
I could do this, I thought to myself. In fact, it would be perfect. I could run the shop, learn to tie the flies and build the rods (Fran, himself, offered to do just that in the ad) and in the winter, I could write. My father-in-law could help tie flies. Other family members could help run the place. My bride could continue her free-lance writing career. My son could grow up on the banks of a fantastic river. Maybe he'd take over the shop one day. I could cook. I could have money pouring in from the lodge and apartments. I can't lose.
Of course, there's the capital investment part... My 401(k) and savings account probably isn't enough to do the trick.
But in my heart, I know I could do this.
Now, if I could only get an investor...