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By\u00a0David Van Lear<\/b> David Van Lear, professor emeritus of forestry, never thought he would fish again. But with the help of a couple of former students, he found his way back to a river of his childhood.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> Thomas Wolfe, the famous author of the early 20th century, titled one of his novels You Can\u2019t Go Home Again,<\/i> meaning, in simple terms, that everything will have changed so much over time that home won\u2019t be the same if you return. Although I had never thought too much about that axiom, I guess I believed it to be true. However, I found out that it may not always hold true. I learned that maybe you can go home again. I initially declined because I was concerned that my wife, Carolyn, who was in health care at Clemson Downs, would worry too much about me. But then our caregiver of seven years, a wonderful woman named Diane, told me in no uncertain terms that I was going on this fishing trip. She would take care of Carolyn and our little dog, Dolly. She said I had worked too hard over the past year to improve my physical condition not to go. She thought I could withstand the rigors of walking and wading the rocky shoreline of a small Virginia river for six to seven hours. This may sound like a rather easy task for a young man, but I wasn\u2019t so sure for me \u2014 I was almost 80. Over the past year, I worked hard to improve my physical health so I could fish again, but I had a lot to overcome. The year I retired from Clemson at age 65, I was diagnosed with diabetes. When I turned 70, my health took another nosedive. First, I had kidney cancer, which required the removal of my left kidney. Then I had brain surgery to correct a condition called hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, which was causing me to stumble and fall after walking short distances. Soon, I was stumbling again \u2014 this time because of pain in my back. Surgery provided short-term relief, and further testing revealed a slipped disc. The experience of fishing again where I had fished 60 years ago with old friends has rejuvenated me physically and mentally, making me think I could go on to 90.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> The Calfpasture is a small river that is almost like a creek when the water is low. Virginia had been in a severe drought that summer, and the river was low and clear, making the fish wary and difficult to catch \u2014 at least for me, but not so much for Rick, Jud and Cole, Rick\u2019s son. I started fishing with my fly rod, but my casting was so rusty and my vision so poor that often I couldn\u2019t detect strikes. I did manage to catch a few fish on my fly rod but soon saw the wisdom of Cole\u2019s suggestion that I might catch more fish if I switched to one of their spinning outfits. David Van Lear<\/b> is a professor emeritus of forestry of Clemson University.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
\n<\/span><\/b>Photography by Cole Myers<\/b>\u00a0&\u00a0<\/span>Jane Myers<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nIn September 2019, two of my former graduate students, Rick Myers \u201979,\u00a0M \u201982, Ph.D. \u201996 and Jud Alden \u201979,\u00a0M \u201991, invited me to come to Virginia and fish in the Calfpasture River over the Columbus Day weekend.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nBut my urge to fish was strong. Fishing had been in my blood from my earliest years growing up in Clifton Forge, a small mountain town in western Virginia where, during my teenage years, I became an avid angler. The primary river I fished was a beautiful cool-water stream, the Cowpasture River in Alleghany County, where my quarries were smallmouth bass, rock bass and bluegills. Occasionally, my uncle Earl would take me to the Calfpasture River, a nearby stream similar to the Cowpasture but smaller. I considered both streams to be my home waters growing up.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nDamn. I was getting a little depressed. Would I ever be able to fish again?
\nAfter studying the spinal tests, the surgeon who did my brain surgery recommended against further surgery and instead sent me to a pain management doctor, who injected steroids into my spine. Within days, my pain was gone. I began to exercise five days a week and, as I gained core strength, walked farther and more frequently without pain.
\nMy good fortune didn\u2019t last very long. About two years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Thankfully, this cancer hasn\u2019t been a big problem so far, and I am still able to go on weekend hikes with my hiking group at the Downs. And my little 14-year-old Shih Tzu Dolly takes me on about five short walks each day.
\nBut it had been almost 10 years since I had seriously wet a line. Would the fire I had for fishing still burn in my veins? And if I went back to the Calfpasture, would the land still be as I remembered it? It had been about 60 years since I had been back, and just about everything in my world had dramatically changed during that time. It was hard to imagine the Calfpasture had not changed too. I would soon find out.
\nRick\u2019s home was in Mechanicsville, about 20 miles from Richmond and 300 miles from Clemson. Jud, who lives just outside Atlanta, picked me up on the Saturday morning of Columbus Day weekend and drove me to Virginia. We spent the night at Rick\u2019s house, got up early on Sunday and drove the three hours to the Calfpasture.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nThankfully, Cole took me under his wing, and I began to catch fish at a faster rate. Although my numbers were not impressive \u2014 neither was the size of the fish I caught \u2014 I did manage to catch a \u201cCalfpasture Grand Slam,\u201d as my companions called it: four species, including smallmouth bass, rock bass or redeye, redbreast sunfish and fallfish. The fallfish is actually a minnow that grows up to 20 inches in Virginia and is a hard fighter.
\nThe real fishermen, Rick, Jud and Cole, far out-fished this old man. But I enjoyed the companionship and the beautiful environment immensely. I was fishing with two of my favorite former students from 30 years ago, who still thought enough of me to invite me to go fishing with them. Rick earned his Ph.D. and Jud his master\u2019s degree under my direction.
\nWhat more could I have asked for? The weather was gorgeous, the land hardly changed from how I remembered it. Wildlife was abundant \u2014 two bald eagles, a coyote, many songbirds and lots of deer \u2014 and the river had plenty of fish. Here, along the Calfpasture, man and nature were in complete harmony. It was just as I remembered it when I was a teenager.
\nYes, I guess I did go home again, if only for a short time. The experience of fishing again where I had fished 60 years ago with old friends has rejuvenated me physically and mentally, making me think I could go on to 90 \u2014 at least.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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Professor emeritus David Van Lear never thought he would fish again. But with the help of a couple of former students, he found his way back to a river of his childhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":22265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2800],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-22257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-summer-2020-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/06\/Home_Intro.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22257"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}