Halloween Characters from "A River Runs through It"

Where, Exactly, Does John William Want to Hit His Elk to Kill It?

field dressing guide

"Try to Set the World on Fire"

As most of you know, each student in our class is required to start a fire without matches. I very much hope you will each also follow Francisco's lead and watch the film Quest for Fire. Regardless, I'll soon be assigning each group a particular method to use based on the successful experiences of others who have tried these experiments. Of course, some methods work much better than others. By the end of the semester, however, I may require each student to demonstrate his or her ability to start a fire without matches using one or more of the methods listed on The Art of Manliness Website.

Halloween Friday in Ethics and Ecology

Please come to class this Friday dressed as a character from one of the stories in A River Runs through It and Other Stories. Costumes will be judged on the basis of originality and critical thinking in the category of participation. Students without a costume will receive a grade of zero.

Please also note that we are meeting in the classroom, not in the field, although I hope we can meet outside as well, time permitting. If you see and view this message before Friday, please spread the word to your group!

Announcement: Winter Elk Kill Field Trip

Those of you who plan to participate in the winter elk kill field trip for extra credit will need to arrange a time to meet either before or after class next week. We have enough pledges to make the trip a reality. In fact, we already have a total of $600.00 from two contributors safely in the bank. (If for some reason you can no longer keep your pledge, please say so immediately!)

To receive full credit, participants must document their roles in this group experiment. We are in the process of currently making arrangements with the Coeur d'Alene Elk Company to buy an animal that I expect the participants to properly kill, field dress, help transport, butcher, and freeze in packages.

To move foreward, we now need (1) a volunteer marksman or markswoman (2) and at least two skinners to take charge of field dressing at the farm: no experience required. I'm currently searching the internet for videos suitable for classroom use. So far, I have located only one unsuitable two-part video, which I rate X for language: Field Dressing an Elk Part 1 Featuring Slamfire69 and Whyglock and Field Dressing an Elk Part 2 Featuring Slamfire69 and Whyglock. These are both relatively short, informative, and reliable (but full of cursing) and demonstrate two novice hunters doing a reasonably good job of caring for their kill in the field.

To learn a little more about elk, click on the photo above.

Best Fly: Wooly Bugger Assignment

A trout fly can be a thing of beauty. Unlike a painting or a sculpture or most forms of art, however, we usually create trout flies to use precisely so that a trout can destroy them and sometimes so that we can eat and destroy the trout. Here above is an underutilized trout fly called a Red Wooly Bugger. Study it carefully (as you were earlier assigned to do before you tied a fly yourself). Pay attention to proportion. Notice, for instance, that the hackle on the fly descends in size from "large" to "small" from the eye of the hook to the tail of the fly. Notice that the tail of the fly is about equal to the length of the hook. Notice, too, that the tier factored in these details before she tied the fly. Compare this fly with the Wooly Bugger you tied and then tie another one and another one until you have created something Reverend Maclean would call "beautiful."

For a definition of "beauty" please read the following essay "Beautifying the World through Art" by Gary Witherspoon.

Using what you know about beauty and art, vote for the top four flies the students in our class tied for this ongoing assignment. Vote for your own fly, if you believe your fly is among the best. You get four votes.

You can safely bet that Witherspoon's essay along with fly tying and fly fishing and "A River Runs through It"will all figure into our final exam.

Here below are some questions for reflection and study:

1. What are the names of the flies Paul and Norman use in "A River Runs through It"?

• Who tied the flies Norman and Paul use?
• Who tied the flies the Rev Maclean uses?

2. How does the narrator in the story classify these flies?

3. What does the selection of their flies tell us about the characters of Norman and Paul?

4. What is the difference between a "dry fly" and a "wet fly"? Which kind of fly is the Wooly Bugger, a wet fly or a dry fly?

5. What kind of natural trout food might a Wooly Bugger look like to a trout, depending, of course, on the size and color of the fly and the particular stream and the size of the trout?

6. How might you "fish the fly" differently and tie the fly differently to imitate a particular food?

• How might changing the color of the fly change the trout's perception? Can trout even "see" color? Can all human beings?
• How might imparting movement to the fly while fishing it change the trout's perception of the fly as potential food?
• Does size really matter? Does color? Do materials?
• Why might a trout refuse to "take" a Wooly Bugger?
• Do trout feed generally or selectively?
• Do humans feed generally or selectively?
• What, specifically, do trout eat that other fish do not eat?
• Where in the stream would you first fish a Wooly Bugger and why?

7. What ethical questions does fly tying raise that are unique to fly fishing as opposed to mere "sport" fishing with, say, worms or salmon eggs?

8. How does subsistence fishing differ from fly fishing, if at all?

9. How does fly fishing differ from sport fishing with bait or metal, if at all?

10. How does "sport" fishing differ from commercial fishing, if at all?

I Hate Poetry Month Assignments

As we move from mid-semester toward our final weeks, we'll be examining a few poems, including this one by Mary Oliver entitled "The Summer Day." (To view the poem, click on the link.)

Here below are some questions to think about after you have read the poem a couple of times and perhaps printed the poem out:

1. What connections might this poem have to the study of ecology?
2. Does the poem raise any ethical questions? If so, what are they? If not, why not?
3. What events, stories, ideas, and things do we commonly associate with swans, black bears, and grasshoppers? What might each animal symbolize?
4. If you were forced, on pain of death, to find connections between this poem and the literature of the Bible, to which parts of the Bible would you point and why?
5. How would you describe the subject of the poem?
6. How would you describe the tone of the poem?
7. Someone (Billy Collins?) has written above the poem, "Today's poem holds that the act of attention is a form of prayer." Do you agree? If not, why not? If so, why (and where is your evidence)?
8. Can you make any connection between the abrupt subject shift from the subject of the grasshopper in line 10 to the subject of prayer in line 11?
9. What, if anything, does being "blessed" have to do with being "idle"?
10. What do we generally mean by the word "attention"?
11. Why do you suppose the phrase "pay attention" has been used so often that it has now become a cliche? How do we literally "pay attention"? What do we pay? How do we pay?
12. How do you suppose the mavens and pundits of popular American culture would answer Oliver's question in line 16: "What else should I have done?" What has she done and why?
    
13. What, in fact, do you plan to do "with your one wild and precious life"?
14. Is "wild" the right word to describe your life? If not, why not? If so, why?
15. In Oliver's view of the world as you imagine it, could writing be a form of prayer?
16. What other activities do you imagine that Oliver might consider "prayer"?

After you've thought about these questions, post your answers them on your blog. Be sure to restate the question before you answer it.