Streams of Consciousness: Hip-deep Dispatches from the River of Life - Tapa dura

Every once in a great while, a new writer comes along who brings to outdoor literature a freshness and electricity that rivals not only the best of the genre, but those writers who transcend the genre?from Ernest Hemingway to Jim Harrison. Jeff Hull is such a writer. In Streams of Consciousness, he regales readers with humility and hilarity, taking us from the robust trout streams of Montana to the salty shores of New England to the spring creeks of Chile s Patagonia and beyond. He is writing about fly fishing?and everything but fly fishing. In Montana he fishes fabled trout streams in twilight, the magical time, when the day is running down and while his brother s time is literally running out. In Belize, Hull, obsessed with permit, attempts to catch a grand slam: tarpon, permit, and bonefish all in one day. In a muddy Ohio creek, as a tube-sock wearing teen, Hull and his friends catch bass and navigate the murky waters of love, respect, and hormones. In a small pond on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital in Kansas, he fishes, pulling bluegill out of the water along with an essential part of his identity.
Streams of Consciousness is not just fine writing about sport and filled with wonderful characters and spectacular fishing adventures, though it is that, too. These gemlike encounters shimmer with insight. Like bolts of lightning, they illuminate all that surrounds them. You don t need to have ever picked up a fly rod for these pieces to speak to you; you need only to have an appreciation for literature that works its way deeper into your consciousness long after you ve closed the covers of the book.