“…reading fertilizes the writing, and this is a constant process. Reading is the aquifer that drips, spongelike, into my fiction.” — Larry McMurtry, “Books”

“How do you come up with your topics from week to week?” A friend asked me this question recently as we stood beside the grill, bourbon in hand, keeping watch over a few sizzling steaks.

The obvious answer for a column about the outdoors would be just that — things that I do in the outdoors— and, most often, that’s the case. My activities in the woods and on, or in, the water serve as the subject matter for a great deal of my writing.

Family and friends, I explained, also factor heavily into my weekly column, one that I’ve always sought to make about much more than solely the outdoors. Yet somehow, I’ve always managed, often to the amazement of my wife and in-home editor, to bring these stories full circle and tie them back to the natural world.

Sometimes, I explained, my inspiration comes from the words of others. The McMurtry quote felt very apropos as “reading is the aquifer that drips” into my writing as well. It is also one of my favorite pastimes and greatest pleasures.

Can you lose yourself in a book? I certainly can, and in a world of technological overstimulation, I’m beyond grateful for that fact and the fact that my wife and children find the same magic within those printed pages.

Books and stories still have the power to transport me to other places. Of late, those “other places” have been the trout waters of the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, and I’ve traveled there via the words of Harry Middleton.

I discovered Middleton several years ago through the recommendation of a good friend, and although I immediately added “The Earth is Enough” and several other of his books to my Goodreads reading list, I had yet to start them.

Fortunately, reading serendipitously served as my inspiration once again. I had been contemplating a backcountry brook trout fly fishing trip in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park for several weeks when I came across an article in Garden & Gun Magazine about Middleton’s work.

In his essay “Deep Creek Communion,” writer Erik Reece discusses Middleton’s classic book “On the Spine of Time” as the backdrop to a fishing trip with his cousin in the waters of Deep Creek near Bryson City, NC.

Reece brings Middleton’s work to life while walking and fishing in “the footsteps of greatness,” and his personal recounting of fishing and hiking in the Carolina Smokies mingled with Middleton’s prose was more than enough to seal the deal for me on booking our backcountry brookie trip.

Reading the article also convinced me to get my hands on Middleton’s books, and as I sat reading “On the Spine of Time” last night, I was kicking myself for not having done so sooner.

I’ve read many books over the years that have moved me–Les Misérables is one that comes to mind—but few have left me with the feeling that I get when reading Middleton. The concept of the kindred spirit comes close to describing it.

His words come as close to capturing the essence of fly fishing in the mountains as any that I have ever read:

“The only cure for a man in love with mountains is mountains; the analgesic for an addiction to mountain trout streams is the sound and feel of them—the low howling of water cascading over smooth stones; the sudden chill of a stream’s mist against the skin; the knot in the gut and the adrenaline that spills into the blood on seeing a rising trout; that possibility of wildness that never dulls or wears thin, no matter the press of time, the passage of years.”

Middleton got it. After reading those words, I sat for a moment in awe. I felt a deep longing to be standing in the cold mist of those mountain waters, and the realization that, Lord willing, I would do just that later this month left me smiling.

Until then, my internal clock will be counting down the hours, and I’ll get my Smoky Mountain trout fix from the words of one of the best and one that, sadly, we lost much too soon. Middleton died from a suspected heart attack at 43.

Was it actually a broken heart? I wonder. Reece points out that the writer battled depression after losing his columnist job at Southern Living and spent the rest of his days working on a garbage truck in Birmingham.

It seems that some wounds never heal.

From my reading, it also seems clear that, for Middleton, fly fishing was a balm for his troubled spirit. I must say that I can think of few better. In his words:

“While I am often a man who feels beleaguered, even confined by commitments, I make room for such things and keep those dear to me close at hand. Here is one: to relish the time I have along mountain trout streams and to embrace such moments as completely as though I had walked into a thick wall of heavy mountain fog.”

Until next time, here’s to the beauty of the written word, to the power of nature to comfort and heal, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.