The Giant

Photo: Dave Merwin

My grandfather always said that the ravine on his property was cut out of the granite during the last ice age. Despite that, I knew the land was shaped by giants and that some were still here.

As you stood on the cliff edge, you could see the rock knife, two stories tall, that separated the river from the cavern. As you followed the river into the mouth of the ravine, you could see the stone dam that had been built to power the mill that used to stand on top of the falls. The masonry work has lasted two hundred years through floods that threatened homes and took lives.

In the spring, the entire ravine would fill with the rush of water that flowed down from the drainage that fed Comstock Brook. As a kid, I hiked the trails and fished the old mill ponds for brown trout, bass, sunfish, and rainbows. However, this mill pond, below this dam, was special because it was my grandfather's. He owned the land from the bridge on Lover's Lane to the lower meadow and the slice of oaks and maples that separated local soccer fields from his land.

The cavern on the left of the knife was filled with sand and old logs. The logs had been stranded there after the high spring waters. The logs were filled with bullets from kids shooting cans in years past. I pretended that they were from the British armies that had marched through Connecticut during the Revolutionary War, burning and ransacking as they went.

The mill pond itself was deepest where the rush of water came in and gradually tapered at the tail of the pool. There is no beach per se, just granite boulders the size of a man strewn on the downstream side of the pool. Across the pool was a giant old willow whose weeping branches caressed the water as a lover might caress the loved one's hair. I lost more flies in that willow than anywhere else in the valley.

In the spring, the water from the entire drainage would thunder down into this one waterfall. You could hear it from the kitchen of my grandfather's home on the edge of the ravine. This section of the brook flowed just before the confluence with the Norwalk River. Everything drained here. My father would climb up to the knife's edge and hurl himself into the floodwater, flying through the pool and ejecting out the other side at what seemed an impossible speed. When he caught his feet, he would stand, covered in river foam, and smile. "It's warm!" he'd yell.

In the summer, the water would slacken, and the pools directly below the falls would become fishable. You could fish the mill pond anytime. It was full of trout, stocked by local boys who knew our family or fish that found themselves deposited there by the spring water.

You got to the upper pools by climbing up one side of the knife and down the other. But the descent on the riverside was more of a slide/shimmy as you made your way down to the bottom. The granite made a decisive "V" here. Once you reached the bottom, you could hop across the moss-covered rock and make your way up the other side of the "V" into the upper pools.

Now the rocks were smooth. They were worn from thousands of years of rushing water. Everything at the bottom was a graceful blend—a dance of two primal elements: water, and earth. The upper pools were deep teacups of rock that had filled with smaller stone and usually had an occasional trout or two. Sometimes my father or grandfather would sit in the pour-over, blocking the water for a few minutes so we could see what was in the teacup.

This was the most exotic place I knew as a kid. It was far from anything that troubled me and seemed impervious to the world around me. These granite walls were my fortress. I was safe here.

The two uppermost pools were as wide as a house, with a small rock ridge separating them. They were three feet higher than the rest, and the wall of the dam here was always wet with spray and moss. This place was a darker, cooler world. The sound of the falls, now a summer stream, hid anything else. It created a dome of sound into which nothing could penetrate. In the upper pool on the right, there were two trout. They always hid under the same two rocks—one on each end of the pool. If I was stealthy, I could climb up to the upper pools and cast to them before they spooked. They would always take a black leech pattern, but I had to be sneaky enough to pull it off.

I was 10 years old when I first dropped that same leech pattern into the small teacup below me. The pool was about 8 feet in diameter. The small spillover at my feet landed in the pool three feet below. By August, the pour-over was dry here, and the water would come in from its sister pool on the main current. In the center of this teacup was a massive boulder. The boulder looked as if it had been carved from the rock that made the pool itself. It looked whimsical, not real—a perfectly round granite boulder in a perfectly shaped teacup pool.

From above, I slid my leech pattern down along the walls of the pool. I wasn't really fishing. I was completely present in that space and had no agenda. Half aware of what I was doing, but mostly just being. It was doing a thing that seemed like a good thing to do. I did not expect any of the events that were about to unfold.

As the fly slid down the wall of the pool, it came close to the bottom of the boulder and over a tiny ledge to the bottom. Instantly, a giant's head flashed out from under the rock and grabbed my fly. I more jumped than set the hook, and I felt the head of a massive animal shake one time before my fly was snapped off.

There is something primal about the way a truly large fish tries to spit out your fly. You feel each fold of its body as it bends first one way then the other. Boom. Boom. Boom. It was not the manic shakes of a small fish. Time slowed down and I could see the fish in my mind. He was taking deliberate swings at me through my fly. He was pissed and he was letting me know. This was the first time I had wrestled a giant and I was actually scared.

When my fly snapped off, I slid backward and landed with a splash in the water behind me. I was stunned. Had that really just happened? How could something so massive live in that small space? Were there tunnels under there? How big was the giant?

For years to come, I would try to catch the giant. I hooked him a couple of times after that, but I never caught him. I could never raise him above the sides of the boulder, but I pulled him out far enough to see he was the biggest Brown Trout I had ever hooked. He would always snap my fly off. Once, I saw him take my fly and then promptly spit it back out. It happened faster than I could react and set the hook. He was tormenting me.

Eventually, I stopped fishing for him. I would bring him worms instead. I was no longer concerned with catching him. I just wanted to see him. So I would drop worms down into the pool and watch them slide along the rock until they would pass over the lip and suddenly disappear as the giant sucked them in.

Three years after I first hooked the giant, a massive spring flood came through. I had never seen anything like it. The whole ravine flooded with rushing water, and the place where I stood to drop worms to the giant was covered in eight feet of water. The granite walls held, and the water passed. I never saw the giant again after that.

Years later, my grandfather sold the land and moved to New Hampshire. He and my grandmother bought forty acres with an ancient saltbox home that they spent years loving on. The day that the new family moved into my grandfather’s old place, I felt so betrayed. I went to the house that no longer belonged to my grandparents and knocked on the door. I explained who I was and that I lived across the street. The new owners kindly agreed to let me fish the pools below the dam.

I tried to wrestle with the giant a few times again after that. I would wait till the summer water levels, climb up over the knife ridge and drop a fly into that pool, watching it slide down the rock wall. Nothing ever happened.

Late at night, when I can’t sleep, I wrestle with giants. I fight fights that I cannot win. Usually, they are moments that have broken my heart. My divorce, an argument with one of my kids. How long will the dishwasher last? These giants tear at my heart and jolt me awake in the early hours when I am vulnerable.

That’s when I bring out the giants from deep oceans and beautiful rivers. The memories of those fish help occupy my mind with something beautiful. An east coast river covered in leaves in the fall. An ocean current with jumping bass as the sun sets. The McKenzie River in Oregon on a hot summer evening and that 18” native Redside Trout that took my fly with a vengeance. These memories comfort me as I try to navigate my own battles. The violent connection to wild things holds the giants of my mind at bay. It keeps me sane.