Virginia Tobacco

I have lived in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In each of these places the better sort of people seemed to have a preference for things that could not be acquired locally and had to be ordered by catalogÑusually from England. It was as if they were colonists or exiles who were desperate for the products of their homeland. I once knew a smoker who would not smoke any but a kind of cigarette made in France and sometimes he seemed quite anxious as he waited for the mails to cross the ocean. That is a hard habit to sustain, but he carried himself with great seriousness as if life were harder than I could imagine. Other than this one man, nearly everywhere I have lived the smokers, particularly the pipe smokers, preferred English tobacco. It was as if they bore testimony to a source of great pride to say, "My tobacco arrived from England today." Once, though, for a while I lived overseas in several of the old British colonies of Asia. In those places the better sort of people preferred "Virginia tobacco." The cigarette packs and tobacco cans were prominently labeled "Virginia Tobacco." It always seems the grass is greener somewhere else and that you really can't get what you need around here.

Here in Tennessee where I fish, it seems that most of the better flyfishermen prefer to fish in Montana. Somehow it seems the fish out there are bigger and wilder and better, the mountains taller and more rugged, the rivers clear and pure. And I suppose that one day I will go out there to fish, but for now I am content with this small stream in Tennessee. I don't mind that no one famous has ever heard of it or fished it. I know that it doesn't have 20,000 fish per mile and that it has to be stocked each year, and I know that many of my angling friends feel that stocking is a great shortcoming and express to me their longing for those distant places. Still, I do not feel that I have not truly angled because I have not caught a 23" fish in Yellowstone. Today I saw the sun rise in Tennessee over hills and fields that I love. I saw geese high above the mountain, saw ducks clustered at the head of Dry Creek. On my way into the river, a corn man going down river in his boat said, "Hey, buddy! How's it going?" and wished me luck as I did him. For twenty seconds we made the simple anglers' fellowship and greeted the morning. A little while after dawn I caught two 9" fish, played them just a little and released them quickly.

A little further upstream I stopped to study a 20" rivulet coming into the river from Bill Driver's field. I watched the sand and pebbles and silt sort themselves and make miniature pools and riffles. Then I followed the tracks of a deer so fresh that I stopped and looked about for that sand gray form in the shadows of the cane. The heron announced me to all our audience of wind and water, trees and twigs, squirrels and birds, sky and sun. And when the wind blew hard I looked at the trees on the ridge. Above the ridge the sky was so blue it made me dizzy while I stared at it. At the Steps where the little stream comes in just below the Smith Riffle, the fresh water fell like a wind-blown curtain down the tier of rocks. I studied roots and and twigs and turned over rocks to look for wigglers. And sometimes I would cast a fly across the water, once or twice, but only because I thought the river expected it of me. So the morning passed in entire solitude. I never noticed the passing of the time, nor did I think even once of Montana.