Ray Rasmussen
Layers of Memory
So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I’m snuggled into the back seat of our Ford sedan with Kip, our border collie. Dad and a friend are chatting up front as we drive to our cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. My book, The Biggest Bear, is open to the passage where a boy my age goes hunting for a bearskin. It’s my first fishing trip and I’m hoping to catch a fish and, just as good, see a bear.
As we slowly drive through the main street of Manteca, Dad says, “Mmmm. Look at that!” I pop up, look out the window and see . . . people on the sidewalk, big trees lining the street, lots of cars . . . nothing very exciting.
Twenty years later, sitting outside at the High Level Diner in Edmonton, a university pal says, “Hey, caaaatch that!” I pick her out from the passersby in an instant . . . after all, it’s a warm spring day in the era of mini-skirts and tank-tops. I flash back to that long-ago ride . . . and memory’s light clicks on.
Today, many years later, I’m visiting Dad, who’s lying unconscious in a palliative care room. Among the family photos on the table next to him, there’s one in which he and I are sitting side-by-side, cooling our feet in Ranchera Creek as we clean our day’s catch.
He was a quintessential outdoors man who rarely spoke about anything but fishing and sports. What was he like inside, I often wondered. Perhaps the answer is as simple as “just like most men of his era.”
swish of a fly line –
trout barely visible
in the shadows
About the Author
Ray Rasmussen has served as an editor for a variety of haibun journals. His haibun, haiga and haiku have been published in numerous journals and in several anthologies. He lives with his partner Nancy in a cottage on a mixed hardwood Ontario forest acreage. Together they enjoy writing, fabric arts, photography, bicycling, canoeing, and hiking.