By Michael Altizer “Behold, will I send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish.”— Jeremiah 16:16 I’ll be a young man someday, but first I must grow old. I must work and wander, and then spend huge portions of my life on things that in the end really won’t amount to a …...

The Falls Hole is the defining run in this stream that had defined our lives for so many years, and Dad had learned its every nuance in decades now long passed. — Painting by the Author By Michael Altizer SNOW AND RAIN tracked nearly horizontal, and tiny shards of ice bit into our faces when …...

By Michael Altizer Decades became years, years became days, days became hours, and it seemed I had been born only yesterday. Peering north, the creek appeared to narrow to little more than a trickle before vanishing altogether up where the lush green grass glinted backlit in that dappled patch of glittering morning light—as though God...

“WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING, ANYTHING MEANS EVERYTHING, AND ANYTHING IS APPRECIATED.” SO READ THE SENTENCE on the hand-scrawled scrap of cardboard the man at the end of the exit ramp was holding. It was a sentence that could have been crafted only by someone who understood all too well the base realities of life on …...

IN MY MIND, it shall always be remembered as “The Valley Where Our Footsteps Cannot Be Numbered,” as I recall those long lost days when it was just my little Brittany and me—and especially that one unforgettable Thanksgiving morning when Betsy and I hunted from the bottom of the hollow, all the way up past …...

ORION RISES in the east, Polaris to the north; Jupiter’s high in the southern sky As we go sally forth. THE ONLY THING more soothing than the delicate multi-hued display of colors emanating from the dogwoods and daffodils and redbud trees quivering around me was the sound of the rain pattering gently on the outside …...

SOMETIMES I GO to the river to pray. But sometimes the prayers simply grow of their own accord, spawned by care and question and need that the fishing and the river calm and soothe and then set free, allowing them to rise up from the dark depths of worry and the world in which I …...

“They flowed around me barely three feet off the water, and for a few mystical moments I found I was actually in the middle of their formation.” A WELL-MEANING FRIEND once asked about the most perfect meal I ever had, and I thought for a moment and then responded, “Anything my Mom ever cooked.” That’s about …...

We thought we were going there simply to fish. Little did we know what enlightenment awaited. ___________________ WE HAD BEEN hearing talk of the place for months. It was located somewhere in the Sandhills of central North Carolina and was reputed to be one of the most well managed and alluring destinations in the world …...

“They flowed around me barely three feet off the water, and for a few mystical moments I found I was actually in the middle of their formation.” SOMETIMES I go to the river to pray, and sometimes the prayers simply grow of their own accord, spawned by care and question and need that the fishing …...