A Steelheader’s Way
Not trying to be on a Lani kick this week, but I met with the man in Novato yesterday before he left for a book signing in Oregon. The rain was pelting and the roads seemed more like rivers on the drive through the valley. We ate lunch at a small Chinese restaurant where the broad-shouldered fisherman managed to fit perfectly, despite dwarfing his chair and wearing sunglasses indoor on a cloudy day.
As seems to always be the case with Lani, fishing conversation quickly turned to larger themes, ideas, concepts. We talked about the Lost Coast about Bill Schaadt, about his time on the Skeena Rivers. We were loud and for the few customers who caught animated pieces of our conversation on “mankind”, “the lost connection” and “an inner desire to return”, I’m sure we seemed a bit off the trail.
Lani passed along a copy of his new book, “A Steelheader’s Way” and told me to take a look at chapter 11. In the same style of his previous work, “River of Dreams” Lani managed to find the mystical connection between the beautiful and the deformed. Traveling with the currents of his British Columbia Rivers, Lani reflects on man’s connections to nature and time through experiences that most of us pass along with little more revelation than whatever ego-stoking thoughts fill our heads. In what he has called “his own path” Lani has come full circle with an honest reflection that to the mainstream probably teeters on the obsessed, if not at least the bizarre. Yet to roaming anglers seeking their own paths, Lani provides a reliable road map through the most unfamiliar and rewarding of territories.
