Nor do the stories tell us that the classic scenes are not only carefully edited when they are presented to us, they are often filmed on private property where the per diem cost for angling is sky high. In the West as elsewhere solitude has its price. No, we are not told or shown these things. The myth of the West, like most myths, controls our thinking by presenting very carefully manipulated symbols to us. Myths and symbols hold up an ideal, usually an impossible, standard to measure everyday life by.
Myths are always bigger than life, better than life.
Fly fishing is filled with this kind of mythic, symbolic thinking. But mostly they fish alone because fly fishing is for reflection, contemplation, getting away from the busy world. Most of all, fly fishing is about forgetting. Here virtually every one of the symbols of the western myth is played out in powerful emotional resonance. The beautiful back and forth arcing of the rod, the metronome of mythic time, beating the eternal pulse of the West, measuring out his last hours as the river runs past him.