Vanishing history: 'A River Runs Through It'
ORGIN STORY: Ogden Newspapers should fess up
One of my favorite movies is A River Runs Through It. One of my favorite scenes in this movie with 100 great scenes is when the narrator, the older brother is taking a writing lesson from his father, a Presbyterian preacher who home schooled his two boys in the years before and after World War I.
“The art of writing lay in thrift,” the narrator explains, speaking of his father’s beliefs about it.
He sits behind his desk when the boy hands him the assignment and waits. His father marks up his paper, hands it back to him.
“Half as long,” he tells his son.
The boy looks confounded. Later, he returns to his father’s study and hands him the new, shortened version. His father marks up the page and turns to his son.
“Again. Half as long,” he tells the boy, handing him the paper.
The boy returns. He gives his father the final version and waits for a response.
“Good— now throw it away.”
I’m not sure what author Norman Maclean was intending to mean. I first saw the movie and became aware of the semi-autobiographical novel in 1992. It’s about writing, being a writer, or becoming a writer. It’s definitely a story about time and the meaning of life, growing up and coming of age during the early 20th century living in the West in areas with the most amazing fishing in the world.
Watch it here:
Being in tune with life is like being a good fly fisherman, finding that groove.
For me, the scene between father and son was taken as a lesson to not be attached to anything. Even, God forbid, my own writing, my own work. I’ve needed that lesson this month, since learning that the owners of the Sandusky Register accidentally deleted two decades of news coverage from the YouTube archives.
They deleted the Register’s Youtube channel.
I cannot un-know this. I have to force myself to let it go. It makes me physically sick to think about how much is gone, how many faces, how many voices, how many stories and how many life-changing events are just vanished.
“Now, throw it away.”
Learning lessons
In the final scene, the narrator is now an old man. He fishes alone in the river he and his father and brother fished in for many years when he was young, perfecting the art of fly fishing and trying to live. He reflects:
“Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.
“Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fisherman in western Montana, where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
“I am haunted by waters.”
—A River Runs Through It