Immerse yourself with Kwintesencja
Take fifteen minutes, and be transported.


CFSers: It's still cold here in Portland, and we're in a record-breaking January dry spell. Sure, the sunny days have been great for the seasonal depression, but I've got a steelhead appointment tomorrow, and the water's running way too low.
1️⃣ One main thing: Maupin updates
Thanks to everyone who's gotten in touch about the Maupin Meetup. We've got enough member interest to fill out the campsites I reserved in Maupin City Park!
But that doesn't mean you can't come along! There are more sites available, last I checked, in City Park, and other accommodations across the town, and up and down the Deschutes.
Like I said before, thanks for embarking on this experiment. If all else fails, we'll still get to fish together. If you'd like more info, or to get on the waitlist for City Park spots, get in touch.
Quintessential fly-fishing

A few nights ago, flipping through YouTube, I was transported. Via the algorithm, which apparently giveth at least once, for all the taketh away it's done in handing me crap.
The swinging cognate of a title, and a lovely still frame of a mayfly hatching, and the name of a film festival I'd never heard of combined to earn my click. And I'm grateful I did, because I discovered the filmmaker Hubert Sempoch.
With Kwintesencja—which I'm just gonna claim in ignorance is Polish for "quintessence" because it fits perfectly—Sempoch has translated his audience to what is clearly his river, a gentle, meandering spring creek filled with animal life, and hungry trout.
Here's a poor AI translation of Sempoch's introduction to the film from the festival's site, where all the films are described:
In my film I wanted to show what fly fishing means to me. Wonderful nature, wild rivers, wild fish. Waiting for a beautiful spring, looking out for the first trout gatherings and the incredible sounds of nature. The time of the Mayfly and dry fly fishing is the quintessence of fly fishing for me. A time when you need to have a lot of patience and humility, and all the conditions are dictated by nature. I invite you to the spring wild river…
The style is Dick Proenneke meets Tarkovsky, avoiding all the camera-hogging common with self-filmed work in favor of letting nature do the talking, with hard-earned shots of birds and rising fish.
To me, this is what fly-fishing is all about.
I have tiny technical quibbles, but I'll save them; exuberance, even the quiet kind, erases a need for mastery.
Furthermore, fly-fishing filmmaking has become formulaic and stale. Big narratives of dysfunctional guides finding redemption in bigger-budget locations. But little of the slowness and stillness you'd find in an actual fishing trip.
With Kwinstesencja I felt transported to a river I've never fished, in a country I've never visited. But it's one I know from the cuckoo and thrush and owl and the patient moment waiting for a brown trout to break the surface for my inelegant imitation of perfection.
I don't know much about the Wild Fish Film Festival, but now I want to. I want to be on the lookout for others from the celebration, to see if they are as high quality as this one. It looks like the group behind the festival just went for it, and made it happen. I want folks who program similar film festivals in the U.S. (not naming names) to hear the call for more meditative and transportive filmmaking in fly-fishing.
This is a low-urge environment, but I urge you to watch this one. Let it nourish you. Just don't watch it on your phone, or your laptop. Find a way to watch it on a TV-size screen, with the lights dimmed. Be transported.
Thinking in watersheds
You've grounded yourself in the Big Here quiz, then dug in to Thinking in watersheds. What's next in the Environment pillar?
Why, nothing more than How to read a river.

Understanding the different features and topography you'll find in different types of rivers, and how to decode the different areas, will help you better approach angling opportunities.
I wish we could have a Kwintesencja-style portrait for new places, but we have to do the reading—or, really, watching—on our own.
Check out the whole How to read a river lesson from the Environment learning pillar.

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