anyway, the occupation of guiding was considered a vocation. Vocari, I remembered from an old poem. To be called.
FORETOLD BY WING-WHISTLE, A TIGHT FLOCK OF greenshanks spilled over the boat and disappeared up the bight, vagrants in the islands. We motored east in the gradually falling light into the backcountry in search of calmer poling conditions, but also so that Meko, already on a busman’s holiday of sorts, could scout a flat he hadn’t fished in weeks. The spot, he told me, was frequented by a few very large specimens, and he was hoping to get the governor on a double-digit bonefish the following day. He couldn’t show it to me, of course; he would have to drop me off on the south side of the island after the poling lesson.
“You can fish your way back as the tide comes in,” he said, cutting the motor. “About a mile to the lodge from where I’ll leave you. Just keep moving toward the sun and you’ll be there long before dark. David’s planning to meet you after supper.” I understood his instructions not only as a test, but also as a small gesture of trust. I was a freshwater guide from somewhere up north, but could I walk a straight line without getting lost, find a bonefish without someone holding my hand? Meko reckoned I could. “When I come to Montana someday, you can show me a spot.”
Once up on the skiff’s poling platform, I crouched, closer to kneeling than standing, certain I would topple, the foot of the push-pole reaching to the sand and grinding against a staghead. Vertiginous or not, I felt as if I were looking at the flats for the first time: I saw into the small tidal lagoon ensconced in waist-high mangroves, and noted not only the seafloor’s subtle gains in elevation, but the turtle grass, slack as a grounded kite, unbent by tide; I noted what was stationary, a small midden of conchs at the periphery, as opposed to moving, a fringed filefish named by an ichthyologist, I guessed, who hoped his mouth would experience in the saying of its name the same richness his eyes beheld.
“We’re drifting too close, man,” Meko said from the bow. He wasn’t holding a rod, perhaps indicating his level of confidence in my poling abilities. “Back us off from the trees.”
Weighing nearly a ton all told, the boat—with motor, gas, coolers, and humans—leaned back against my pose. I muscled against the angle of the pole and we slid away from the bank.
“Now try to hold us here,” he said. “Put the pole on the other side. But swing it around behind you or you’ll knock your guest in the water. Yep, like that.”
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