Show me a serious fly tyer and I will show you a complex and compulsive individual attempting to recover from the excesses of life. Energy which we once put into efforts destructive to ourselves is now devoted to fly dressing. Some of us - like myself - are recovering alcoholics, others are recovering drug addicts. Perfectionists and workaholics abound among us. A few have a history of mental problems or suffer from periods of deep, black depression. Like single malt scotch, tying exhibition quality flies is addictive; it is our drug of choice.

I have found partial answers for myself. The book, Jonah's Dream (1964),. By Sven Berlin, should be required reading for all who fish - especially those of us who are consumed by some aspect of our sport; for example salmon fly dressing.

During World War II, Sven Berllin witnessed the insanity and daily horror of the European battlefield. After the war he fished and wrote about his fishing in an effort to quench the fire in his head and to cease the raging of his troubled mind - to revover from a form of insanity.

Author Berlin begins:

"Jonah is my name. I am a solitary person not given to seeking much human company in this life. If anyone appears by the lake or on the bank of a rive wherein I may be fishing, like the heron I am in retreat. There are a few friends with whom I would angle - not chosen because I am considered rare company, but chosen because they too seem to understand that fishing is a kind of meditation. Only those who pretend but fail to understand this; those who have shown a perversity of nature or distention of themselves, like the model aircraft that fly incessantly round their owners' heads for their own amusement and satisfaction, but not understanding the stillness of the mind and the quest of fish, have I carefully eliminated as unsuitable; for like any adventure on the brink of the unknown wherein a dream may be caught, the true fisherman is on a search for wisdom - and of that nothing can be spoken. What he does not catch - therein hides the meaning of his long vigil and the purpose of his understanding."

He could just as well have been writing about one of us as about himself.

Fanatical fly tyers are solitary individuals. We work in seclusion, seeking few friendships; often our friends have similar interests. I suggest that you and I tie flies in an attempt to escape the realities of everyday life. Each of us is on a search for wisdom in so much as we are looking for clever and sensible ways to ply our skill and thus improve our creations. We spend too many hours looking for ways to achieve perfection but - at least in our own minds - we never do. All of us meditate, or more specifically, ponder how we might reach perfection. We all dream of achieving perfection. Such fantasies sustain us during our long and frequent hours at the tying bench. With time and patience, most of us improve; a few approach perfection. Those who cannot tolerate the prolonged heat of the tempering fire of time leave our ranks.

Reason in fly dressing, I believe, belongs only to those whose purpose is to compete with one another.

A couple of pages into Jonah's Dream we read:

"A young fisherman has the making of a man of vision who might learn to tie his own fly, fisht his fish and then release it into the great stream of live for another migration. Until the time comes when the catching of fish is not the purpose of fishing. When asked why he used no bait the Chinese sage said: 'The idea is not to catch fish!' He became so in harmony with natural laws that he could hold the greatest fish on the slenderest silken thread. So also will the hunter put away his gun and the soldier his flame-thrower, for in the end the spectacle of life is more beautiful and more deeply rewarding to the spirit of man than the carnival of death.

Those who fish are forever on the shores of the great lake into which all rivers must run and there are no longer any frontiers. For them the seasons change, the coot claps his cymbal the bittern booms on his invisible euphonium, the kingfisher crackles on his electric journey across the lake and the salmon goes on his fanatical migration to the clean gravel of the mountain streams and falls back after his mighty orgasm, a sick creature seeking the comfort of the sea...

Fishing therefore is not only a matter of meditation, of peaceful moments in which the reflected images are as real as those above the water, through which fish move and thought is seen upon the fin turning, nuzzling the mud, searching with its golden eye for a pearl. It is also a dream of prehistory. We touch fintips with the coelacanth, who may well have emerged from the sea to negotiate with the problems on land..."

Once again, Sven Berlin could just as well have been writing about one of us.

The catching of a salmon or a steelhead is not the purpose of our flies. For us our flies are more beautiful and more deeply rewarding to the spirit than the mere act of catching a fish. We, their creators, are forever on the shores of that Great Lake into which all rivers must run. Fly dressing is not only a matter of meditation and peaceful moments; it is also a dream where we touch hands with all who have participated, or will participate, in the weaving of the rich tapestry of history and tradition, which clothes our addiction.

Purpose in fly dressing belongs only to those whose reason is to compete with one another so that their pathetic egos are bulging.

Toward the end of Jonah's Dream we find:

"The human hand is the most beautiful, the most functional, the most strong and yet delicate instrument ever created by God or man. It can carve jade, instilling into it the rhythms of the universe, build a bridge, can draw an insect like Hokusai, play a violin like Menuhin, conduct like Toscanini. It can kill with the sword and gun yet cast a fly delicately on still water; with great tenderness it can make love yet twist a head in chancery. The hand can write and feel, it is the perfect servant of the brain and spirit; the hand can pray and lay supine...

An overtone from Bach, or the scent of a late rose dying in the bowl, both of which things I experience at this moment as I write, are each in their way eternal. The bronze grasshopper on my desk, the Chinese incense urn cast three thousand years before Christ was born, the little chalcedony bird and the jade fish are all also of this order. they tune the spirit to a state in which it may well stand the momentary shock of illumination that comes from the contemplation of their beauty and of the harmony for which the soul searches throughout life. The snail on the burnt leaf makes its slow journey through the universe; the leaf of which each of us has eaten."

Every full dressed salmon fly from the human hand is each, in its own way, eternal. Contemplating its timeless beauty tunes the spirit. Creating such beautiful works of art helps to quench the fires in our heads, to stem the raging of our tormented minds; it makes the troubled seas calm and we are at peace again.