The real reason we take fishing trips

A smoky sunset captured the attention of long-time Bow Narrows angler Kim Gross

Call it serendipity. No sooner did I write the blog about throwing away my smart phone (see Forecast) then I picked up a book about how digital technology is taking over our brains and causing more traffic accidents and fatalities than drunk driving. The book is called A Deadly Wandering, by Matt Richtel. Then this month's issue of National Geographic has a big story on how parks -- nature, trees, lakes and rivers, mountains and forests -- lower the stress hormones our bodies create from living in modern society, especially from being "wired" continuously to digital social networks via computers and smart phones.
The blog posting before this one mentions our stillborn Facebook page. I created it a few years back when technology experts tried to convince me that a blog like this is akin to eight-track music -- so yesterday. Facebook is where it is at, they said. Or Twitter. Or Instagram. Or whatever the current digital trend is. But let's consider Facebook. When people "like" our Facebook page, it will be linked again and again, ad infinitum, until millions of people are potentially seeing it. Almost none of them, however, has any interest in Bow Narrows Camp, the Boreal Forest, fishing, hunting, the outdoors or anything else that I write about.
Holy crap! I didn't want that. I just wanted to communicate to those people who, like me, actually track mud into the house on a daily basis, would rather have mosquito bites than gigabytes, have dried blood permanently etched into the handles of our hunting knives and have fishing lures with the paint worn off them.  I'm talking thousands, maybe even just hundreds, but they are the real deal. They aren't "linking" to me because they too just wrote something about fishing except they were referring to "fishing" for a compliment or maybe misspelling "phishing."
Our camp, Brenda and I, our guests, Red Lake, the Boreal Forest, the lakes, the creeks, the fish and wildlife, even the sky are already connected, really connected. The blog just keeps us in touch, like two owls hooting a half mile apart on a dark night. That's all I want from it. I think that's all anybody wants.
Digital technology grew and is still growing at such a fast pace that scientists haven't kept up with its effect on our brains. They are starting to do that now and the news isn't good. Basically, the "information age" could also be called the "mind-control age." We are being taken over by texts, tweets, updates and notifications. It is a utopia for marketers who track our internet history, our location, our likes and dislikes and then bombard us with advertising under the guise that it is helping us stay informed.
And with so much information coming at us in a continuous stream, we aren't able to focus, concentrate, pay attention to any one thing. We all have hyperactivity, attention-deficit disorder.
Our nerves are strung like violins, ready to snap.
Then we take a fishing trip to camp. We may have spent the winter researching the Internet, pouring through the most popular web sites and chat rooms, even going back through this blog. But no sooner do we start fishing than, like Kim Gross did in the photo above, we get lost in the beauty of a smoky sunset. We notice details, like he did in the photo below, of sundogs, a rare occurrence in the summer sky.
In other words, we wind down. Our minds reset. We start thinking our own thoughts. We are able to pay attention to things that matter, like our environment, the world around us, our family and friends.
And we catch fish. But it isn't the fish that we treasure. It is the act of fishing.
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Kim saw the sundog to the right of the sun, something unusual in the summer sky