week of 5/21/03
 
 
 


The Naturalist's Corner
SMN
I recently saw a photo of smiling women fly-fishing and read a small blurb about a non-profit called Casting for Recovery. Casting for Recovery, a national organization created in the mid-90s, hosts therapeutic fly-fishing retreats for cancer survivors and patients. According to its website, “The retreats offer a forum for women with similar experiences to bond with each other, learn a new skill and gain a respite from their everyday concerns.”

The website also states, “The physical experience of fly-fishing, standing in a gently flowing river provides a healing connection to the natural environment.”

Now, I can see the healing connection of a flowing river and the peace and serenity gained from spending time out of doors. I highly recommend it.

But when the connection to that environment is the painful, life-or-death struggle at the other end of a fly rod, of a creature that, an instant before, was simply going about its everyday concerns, the connection gets tenuous.

And when I look at this particular case — the idea that it’s great therapy to have people who have recently or who are presently experiencing pain, fear and suffering, inflicting pain, fear and suffering on unsuspecting creatures — there is, in fact, a glaring disconnect.

I know that homo sapiens and fishing evolved together. I know that fishing is big business and that industries and agencies that depend on those fishing dollars will do all they can to tout the “virtues” of fishing and try to insure that those dollars don’t dwindle. I know that those of us who have made the conscious decision to lay down rod and gun in the attempt to enlarge our circle of compassion are in the minority at this point in time, and the majority doesn’t see our rationale.

But I am still amazed at this particular irony. If anyone should be able to empathize with life or death struggle, the fear of the unknown, the desire to cling to life and the arbitrariness of being stricken down from seemingly nowhere and for no reason, it should be cancer patients.

You feel OK; you’ve just gotten that promotion; you’re packing your bags for a well-deserved vacation and the diagnosis comes — cancer. It’s a jolt; maybe like a hook setting in your jaw. There’s pain, there’s fear and then there’s struggle.

I am not trying to trivialize cancer. And I’m not trying to elevate fish to the status of human beings. I’m trying to point out that fear, pain and suffering are universal and that often we have a choice about the degree of our involvement. Of course, when we are the victim, we don’t necessarily have that choice. But when we are the ones inflicting or inducing fear, pain and/or suffering, we do have that choice.

Those who advocate fishing will try and tell you that fish don’t feel pain. And whatever side of that issue you come down on, you can find research that will document your position. Most of those who posit that fish don’t feel pain will tell you, however, that hooking and playing or landing a fish causes “stress.” And that too much stress can be fatal. I don’t know if that’s the same kind of stress cancer cells cause. I’ll leave that up to those who wish to discuss semantics.

And I wouldn’t think twice about a fisherman or woman diagnosed with cancer wanting to get back to his or her hobby. But I doubt that someone who had never fished and was suddenly faced with cancer would, out of the blue, think, “Wow, I sure would like to learn how to fly-fish.”

And for an organization funded, in part, and supported, in part, by groups who have a vested interest in promoting the fishing industry to seek out cancer patients with the idea that catching and/or killing fish will certainly make them feel better is, to me, macabre.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at don@smokymountainnews)