A River Runs Through It

Norman Maclean

I hope there are others also who don't mind trees.

My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things--trout as well as eternal salvation--come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.

Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.

One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only a floating ash.

The storm came on a wild horse and rode over us.

Actually, I was feeling lordly with love and several times broke into laughter that I can't explain otherwise, but he could have thought I was trying to be brace about having made a mess of my life.

Woman, I asked, can't I love you without liking him?
She just stood looking at me, so I went on talking and saying more than I had intended. I said things she already knew, but possibly one thing she wanted to hear again. Jessie, I said, you know I don't know any card tricks. I don't like him. I never will. But I love you. Don't keep testing me, though, by giving me no choices. Jessie, don't let him...I stopped from going on because I knew I should have found a shorter way to say what I had already said.
Don't let him what? She asked. What were you going to say?
I can't remember what I was going to say, I replied, except that I feel I have lost touch with you.

He tried to tell me. He spoke in the abstract, but he had spent his life fitting abstractions to listeners so that listeners would have no trouble fitting his abstractions to the particulars of their lives.
You are too young to help anybody and I am too old, he said. By help I don't mean a courtesy like serving chokecherry jelly or giving money.
Help, he said, is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.
So it is, he said, using an old homiletic transition, that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, Sorry we are just out of that part.
I told him, You make it too tough. Help doesn't have to be anything that big.

All there is to thinking, he said, is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible.

Then he told me, In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that's right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.

He almost reached the door then turned back for reassurance. Are you sure that the bones in his hand were broken? he asked. I repeated, Nearly all the bones in his hand were broken. In which hand? he asked. In his right hand, I answered.

Like many Scottish ministers before him, he had to derive what comfort he could from the faith that his son had died fighting.

You like to tell true stories, don't you? he asked, and I answered, Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.
Then he asked, After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it?
Only then will you understand what happened and why.
It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

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. One 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.

In his preface to A River Runs Through It, Maclean said his story was a story full of trees. This is true. There are quite a few trees in A River Runs Through It. There are more bushes and brush, and even more fish. But I think what he meant was that his story was full of people who are trees. Norman and Paul and their father, Jessie and her brother, the mother, Old Rawhide and Paul's Cherokee girlfriend, these people are not so much characters as they are trees. Rooted deep in the land, they reach with many branches waving in the wind for things they see and hear. To go places and see what may be seen or visited, but the roots...
Maclean's tree people are towering. Old trees with long histories--the rings are what make them, not the height of their highest branches nor the width of their trunks. And the rings are like the words that run under water. The rings are like the Word that was there in the beginning. The rings are the words written by Maclean on his pages. The rings are these words.
The problems of A River Runs Through It startled me. I was expecting a story about fishing with problems no greater than a lack of fish or inner turmoil (about the same level of gravity). But all the trees in A River Runs Through It are on fire. They are burning down in terrible heat, they are scorched, they are turning to ash, solid ash, before eyes (yours, mine, Maclean's). How could this surprise me? Trees grow tall to catch the wind and be broken, or taller still so they may attract lightning and be twisted. Trees grow to fall. We live to die.
This isn't meant to be morbid. All life is climbing a cliff to jump off. The higher you climb while you are alive, the better the jump is going to be. Death is no end; it's the most exciting thing you'll do with your life--provided you climb high while you're here.
The waters we all will dive into are the waters that haunt us.