Home Waters by John Maclean

This morning a scampering cat woke me up around 4:00am just like many other days these past few weeks. Callie is the feral cat my wife adopted...and still feral wild after almost two years of living with us. Yes, she is part of the family now, but something in her three years of living outdoors has caused her to keep her distance from us. She's a scaredy cat. Sylvia and I do think she wants to be touched and loved, but her survival instincts keep her from engaging that way. She has claimed the guest room as her own and can move through the house so stealthily, we often don't notice her moving about. This morning she hopped up on the end table to watch me read...for a moment, I thought she would join me on the couch. Nope, it didn't happen.

When I'm up during these early morning hours, I usually do one of two things...read a book, or write a short essay on fly fishing. These last two mornings I have been reading the book, Home Waters. It's a memoir of a family living in Montana starting in the late 1800's and moving to present day. The story is told by John Maclean, the son of author Norman Maclean who wrote A River Runs Through It. John's style of writing and the stories he shares pulls me into those Montana mountains, making me want to travel there and see the ground this family walked on. And also, fish the trout streams they called home waters.

The author shared the true stories about the fictional characters in the movie A River Runs Through It, including the author's findings, from his investigations into his uncle Paul's murder. This is a wonderful story of four generations bound together by the family's cabin in Montana and their love affair with fly fishing and the Blackfoot River.

As I'm reading through the chapters, I can't help but think about my own family and the wonderful life Sylvia and I have been blessed with. In a sad way though, the book is a reminder of how fast each generation of a family moves through their time on this beautiful earth...it makes me want to savor each day all that more. On the brighter side, this book has most certainly motivated me to get into the outdoors and fish as much as possible this year. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to fly fishing some fabulous trout steams this year.

Home Waters is such a great read, I'm going to bump it into my top five books to read. I just need to figure out which book I remove from the list??? NOTE: read A River Runs Through It or view the movie before reading this book...trust me, it will make reading Home Waters all the more enjoyable.