Secret Vistas: A River Runs Through It (Three)

Tales From the MoJo Road – By Glynn Wilson –

COULTERVILLE, Calif. – “I am haunted by waters,” author Norman Maclean wrote in the conclusion to his memoir A River Runs Through It.

It is a line that will be familiar to anyone who watched the movie produced by Robert Redford about hard drinking, gambling and fly-fishing on the Big Blackfoot River in Montana.

“Poets talk about ‘spots of time,’” Maclean wrote. “My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”

Maclean was a great American writer, not just a regional writer, whose brother you will recall (played by Brad Pitt in the movie) died while writing for a newspaper in Missoula, Montana. He was beat to death over gambling debts he ran up while drunk.

“All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible,” Maclean said, writing near the end of his life.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.”

Read the full column in the New American Journal.