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diggIn Hemingway's Meadow
Jeff Day
Rod Crossman
The river, as Hemingway said, was still there. It was there in 1919, swirling against the log pilings of the railroad bridge in Seney, Michigan, while he fished it, feeding grasshoppers downstream with his fly rod and silk line. It was there in 1925, when he sat in a Paris cafe, writing "Big Two-Hearted River," the story of how Nick Adams found peace by fishing the river of his youth.
And it is still there in the summer of my fiftieth year as I unpack my rod and set up camp at the site where Hemingway camped, where Nick "came down a hillside, covered with stumps into a meadow. The river made no sound. It was too fast, and smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before he mounted to a piece of high ground to make camp, Nick looked down the river at the trout rising. It was a good place to camp."
And it is still there in the summer of my fiftieth year as I unpack my rod and set up camp at the site where Hemingway camped, where Nick "came down a hillside, covered with stumps into a meadow. The river made no sound. It was too fast, and smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before he mounted to a piece of high ground to make camp, Nick looked down the river at the trout rising. It was a good place to camp."
