Book Review: Chasing the Dark

I first read one of Joseph Jackson’s stories in Fly Fisherman Magazine a few years ago. It was one of the most impressive travel stories I’d read in recent years, and I didn’t recognize his name, so I looked him up. It turns out he’s a native Wyomingite who now lives in Alaska, and he loves fly fishing and bird hunting. I’m a native Utahn who now lives in Wyoming and I love fly fishing, and am coming around to bird hunting. Exchanging emails with Joe felt an awful lot like talking to a mirror version of myself.

That feeling played out stronger when we met in person this summer. I was passing through Anchorage on my way to fish for salmon, and Joe had time for lunch. We talked fishing, writing, life, and Joe got me a copy of his newest book, Chasing the Dark. It releases on October 8 from Epicenter Press.

It’s a collection of stories about Joe’s love affair with fly fishing and bird hunting during the hours most of us should be asleep. Whether he’s chasing steelhead for a monotonous week in southeast Alaska, or driving across the Alaskan wilderness for a shot at ptarmigan in the Copper River Valley, Joe’s adventures occur frequently in the fading light, or even the pitch-black. He’s fond of fishing for burbot, which is best done at night, when those slimy critters are most active. And being the first one on a remote rainbow trout fishery a few hours north of Anchorage means getting up at 3am for a long drive, dodging moose Alaska State Troopers along the way.

The stories are unique in that Joe doesn’t try to be someone he’s not. All too often, new fishing writers try to imitate Gierach or McGuane, or attempt to marry the styles of Haig-Brown and Whitman. That writing is flowery without purpose, seeks meaning in the infinitesimal, and extracts grandiose philosophy where it doesn’t exist. It’s no wonder publishers shy away so quickly from narrative and memoir-driven writing by fly anglers.

Joe largely avoids that trap. He offers his views and opinions, as you’d expect, but he does it in his own way. After having lunch with him, it’s clear his writing is true to who he is, not who he thinks he is, which is another pit into which so many aspiring fishing writers fall.

While Joe’s adventures might seem exotic on their surface—they take place in Alaska, after all—he’s a school teacher in Anchorage who happens to live in the Last Frontier. I’d be surprised to find any angler who can’t relate to these stories. Above all, Joe’s writing is fun. He doesn’t let philosophy get in the way of the fish, or the stories themselves.

Take, for instance, this excerpt from the titular essay:

“I think one of the things about anadromous fish that so fascinates us is that they lead such big lives. Take a second to imagine it: a puny little steelhead fry wiggling around somewhere out there, no bigger than your little finger. In just a year or two they’ll swim out into the open ocean the same way a college kid finally says goodbye to Mom and Dad. They’ll head off into the world and if they return it means they’ve made it and that they’ve achieved everything and exactly what they were meant to. This is something humans rarely do, so, naturally, we envy the hell out of it.”

That short, but poignant, paragraph is sandwiched between a description of catching a steelhead, and the conditions that are most conducive to catching those elusive fish. Most of the book flows that way, with observations peppered throughout, but not overwhelmingly so. I don’t always agree with them, but I don’t agree with every thread Gierach pulls out of his trips, either. What makes Joe’s writing not just readable, but enjoyable, is his love and passion for the fish, which means you know he’ll never wander off too far in search of meaning, because there’s a fishing story to get back to telling.

The best fishing guides are the ones who don’t set out to do it because they think they’ll get to fish every day. They’re the ones who understand it’s a job, and a tough one at that, and that it’s quirks beat the pants off a 9-5. The same thing is true of fishing writers. The ones I enjoy the most aren’t those setting out to upend the angling world with stuffy prose and some newfound insight about how river rocks are actually a gateway to a postmodern enlightenment that somehow ignores the trappings of fly fishing’s inherent materialism. They’re the writers who love to fish, and more importantly, love to tell stories.

Joe Jackson is one of those writers, and you’d do yourself a favor to read Chasing the Dark. It’s absolutely one of the best new fishing books I’ve read in years.