"Kim" and the Kennebec: Middle Kennebec River, Anson, ME

"Kim," Rudyard Kipling's beautiful story of North West India in the late 19th century, is about a wily street urchin of Lahore. The orphan of English parents, he lives by his wits as a native. The tale begins when Kim meets a bewildered elderly Lama from the North. Kim, seeing the holy man's utter innocence, undertakes to protect him from the unscrupulous city. In the end Kim becomes the Lama's disciple, and embarks with him on a great journey.

The Lama has come, far from his mountain fastness, to look for a river.

He tells Kim that once, his Lord, in a test of strength, was presented with a bow no man could draw. With it he launched an arrow far beyond all seeing, and where it struck the earth an unending river sprang up. To wash in that water was to become free of the endless cycle of death and rebirth, and to be free of all sin.

Over all India the two roam, only to find that the River of the Arrow is a humble stream, and it had been before them all along.

The day I finished Kim, I was working in Maine. I set out for the Kennebec, and I went straight for the glory hole: East Outlet, where the river emerges from the dam at Moosehead Lake, a hundred mostly small-road miles from my hotel. There the Kennebec is untroubled by the endless chain of dams which mar the rest of the river. It was big, it was beautiful, but it was also tricky wading where I fished it, and like the Lama I fell in. I didn't find enlightenment, but I managed several small salmon and one respectable rainbow, all on nymphs, in a full day's effort. It was a sunny, windy, bluebird day, the kind of lovely day fishermen hate. Between the wind and the wading I couldn't get in position to cover the likely looking water. I got home late, wet, and tired.

A few days later, after some close map study, I returned to the Kennebec much nearer home. Here, a half-dozen dams downstream, the water was stained but clear, and a bit warmer. Water for browns instead of brookies and salmon, less glamorous and more like the beat-up rivers running through so many New England mill towns.

As always happens when I stand on the bank of a strange river of any size, I couldn't figure out where to start. There was all kinds of water in front of me, 150 or 200 feet wide, and I wanted it all. I lost some valuable time before I began to notice details of the many currents, the little pools behind rocks, the glides just after them, here a plunge pool in the middle of the river, there a localized riffle next to a deep patch. The old fly fishing saw has it right: you break a big river down into little rivers, from your feet to the far bank. Watch it for a while, and it begins to organize itself in your mind. Then you can fall to work.

So I did. It was overcast, still, and spitting rain, and not a one of the river's famous caddis was showing. No fish rose. So I ran a beadhead nymph through the obvious places, varying my weight and indicator position, and after a while I began picking up little browns of eight inches or so. Then, after concentrating so long on the current I'd been working, I noticed the smooth, slightly slower water at its edges. Right at my feet, actually. From there I picked up a succession of completely satisfactory fourteen inch browns, full of fight.

I had found my river, but not enlightenment, until I finally saw the river within the river…..right in front of me all the time.

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