THE UNDERTOW: LONELINESS

THE U DERTOW LONELINESS N

by James P. Spica Jr.

The horizon line is terrifying.

At this hour, two colors meet there: black and steel gray. What if I were out there—swept out, overboard, stranded, left to die. The physical strength I’d need to tread water would be easy to muster compared with the mental strength I’d need to stave off despair.

Such thoughts absorb me when I’m fishing alone.

Anxiety has plagued me all of my life. Loneliness leaves one alone with one’s thoughts, so the chemically imbalanced mind begins to feed on itself. Fishing is a distraction, an escape, indeed a means of relaxation—except that the lonely angler is an emulsion of oil and water, in which the therapeutic nature of solitude competes with the emptiness of land, water, and soul. Sometimes there’s more oil, sometimes there’s more water.

Fishing leads me to a variety of quiet places, which is great until solitude turns to loneliness—turns from a pleasant high into a well of paranoia. All the way to the beach I’m praying to and pleading with a higher power to figuratively wipe the sand clean of other anglers; after a few hours of solitude I begin to imagine waves literally wiping me from the beach without a trace. It’s a curious, gradual inversion.

I really only have myself to blame: The truth is that I prefer to fish alone. Even when I’m with another angler, I always suggest we go our separate ways and meet up after an hour or more. I just like to be alone with my own thoughts, I guess—even though I never know when those thoughts are going to devolve from peaceful reflection to irrational

anxiety. I rarely tell other anglers about this (except you who are reading this piece, of course).

There’s a price to pay for being alone with one’s thoughts. Some are unquestionably malign—like a fear of sharks where no sharks could be. Some are formless and shapeless, others are specific and morbid. The darkness seems nearer, civilization farther away.

One moment I’m completely absorbed in casting crab flies to marsh redfish from a kayak; the next moment my old friend Anxiety taps me on the shoulder. Despite the peaceful bustle that surrounds me—the bustle of life in a bayou where man and wildlife share a stage—the darkness arrives. I fear being stranded in pluff mud. Or falling from my craft. Or being swept out into open water and bobbing helplessly miles offshore. I’ve never come even marginally close to such eventualities. I have a phone and a GPS and a variety of safety gear in my waterproof pack. Reality doesn’t stop the daymares.

But if emotion weren’t a part of fishing, what would be the point? Being alone—and feeling the visceral implications of being alone—allows us to come to terms with who we are, not who we wish to be. Not all anglers share the same anxieties, but every one of us is alone with those thoughts that creep in between casts. Spending the day on the water alone with only your thoughts for company is a certain reminder that fishing lays us bare in one way or another. Now, excuse me while I gather a rod and a box of blurple flies and fish under the stars.