Quiet Reed Fly Fishing - In Memorium

Orvis flies, a sample

A fellow I worked with in Corvallis would occasionally brought in a fly rod he was building. I always admired his work, and after reading Casting a Spell by George Black (a couple of years after moving to the East Coast), have a great appreciation for the talent it takes to make one, and the heritage skill followed. Don Chen and I could also talk baseball - he was raised in New York City's Chinatown, and cynically would comment about his latest disappointments with the Mets. The last time Don and I talked was when I visited my old unit two years ago during an official visit of USDA locations in the Pacific Northwest. We chatted briefly, and he mentioned that he had been dealing with cancer - a development that had occurred during the seven years since I moved onto my new assignment in Maryland. It may have been during that short visit that Don gave me a fly that he had tied - a simple gift. A couple of weeks ago I was doing my weekly scan of the obituaries in the Corvallis Gazette Times - a kind of morbid ritual that my father has been doing for decades with the print copy of the home town paper where I was raised, and now me via the Internet for back home in Oregon. It is with some regularity I see the name of an acquaintance made during the 17 years I lived in Corvallis. This time, Don's name appeared in the list from a week earlier - the cancer caught up with him. I will remember Don's small side business Quiet Reed Fly Fishing, and smile when I look at the small token of bent wire and thread-tied fly, and think about the split strips of bamboo glued together and whipping through the air over a still pool of water along a running river.