Fly Fishing

Posted on June 5, 2020November 12, 2020 by Ephemera

Fly Fishing

Post and the Painting by Rod Crossman

A few years back I was asked by Fly Rod and Reel magazine to create some paintings to go along with a story by Jeff Day titled Hemingway’s Meadow. Jeff’s writing pushed me head long into the current of my own fly fishing memories.

The story won the annual Robert Traver fiction award. A competition sponsored by the John Voelker Foundation. Robert Traver was John Voelker’s penname and he was one of my long time fly fishing heroes. I’d read most of his books, Trout Madness, Trout Magic were two of my favorites. All most all of them featured places in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. An eight hour drive from where I live.

For many years my fishing buddy Jim and I, made an annual Spring pilgrimage to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan… mostly because it was one of the last places where truly wild trout existed. But also because of fisherman authors like John Voelker and Earnest Hemingway. The Nick Adams stories by Hemingway and its descriptions of the Big Two Hearted river haunted me.

In the late spring of 1982 we finally fished the Two Hearted river for the first time. it was a disappointment for producing fish. So we tried some other streams. Eventually our trout search landed us on the East Branch of the Fox, just outside of Seney, Michigan. We found out about it from a local who said it held big brook trout, or in his words, “specs worth fishing for.”

We spent three days camping and fishing along it. We trekked a canoe up the stream for miles to a place where it split apart into side channels and meanders. The locals called it the “Spreads.” Fast moving ribbons of tannic stained water wandering through swamps infested with mosquitoes.

We caught big brook trout there. At the time we had no idea that we were actually fishing in the same stream Hemingway fished and wrote about under the title The Big Two Hearted. It wasn’t until years later when I read more of the history behind the Nick Adams story, I discovered Hemingway changed the name of the stream from the Fox to the Big Two Hearted for poetic and the practical reasons.: )

Reasons Why ?

Posted on June 5, 2020June 5, 2020 by Ephemera

On a sleepless night spent surfing youtube videos, I ran across some obscure indie/documentary film called High Wild and Free. How could I miss with a title like that? I clicked the ok button on the remote. The doc had been filmed in 1950’s and was a travelogue / autobiography of this filmmakers outdoor experience in the mountains of British Columbia . I stuck with it for a while and even enjoyed watching scenes of he and his friends flyfishing a remote mountain stream.

The style of the film was narration over silent footage, kind of 1950’s Gadabout Gaddis the Flying Fisherman ( you can still find these episodes from the 1950’s and 60’s on youtube) meets the Red Green Show. Gadabout was my favorite Saturday TV show as a kid. Eventually after a few scenes of him and his friends fishing he got around to asking a question I had asked myself many times over the years.

He said …” I’ve been asked many times why I fish?” Answering his own question with narration over a clip of a him unceremoniously pulling a steelhead out of the river on to the bank. He proudly said “ I fish for one reason, to please myself.”

I’m still thinking about this answer…

New Work

Posted on June 4, 2020June 4, 2020 by Ephemera

Early Start watercolor 15″ x 22″ available

Time Machines

Posted on May 30, 2020June 5, 2020 by Ephemera

Time Macines

Model numbers 1813 and 1964, 2006

Time Machine Design

In 1813, my paternal Great Great Grandfather, Abishai Crossman, was born in the Adirondack Mountain Region of Upstate New York. He was a farmer and wood worker. He lived and worked his entire life near water… Lake Champlain, the Erie Canal and the Thornapple River in Barry County, Michigan.

In 1964, I was twelve years old, it was also the year my father died. My father loved rivers, lakes and cars. That year, we’d been trying to build a soapbox derby car together. I didn’t get it finished before he died. I never finished it afterwards either.

The shape of that derby car looked very much like these time machines. Even in its unfinished state it was beautiful.

By the following year, I gave up on the idea of racing in the derby and I tried to repurpose the coaster car into submarine. I almost drown, when I launched it into the lake we lived near.

In 1990 my mother lost her eyesight to a rare disease. She always loved making things and was an expert seamstress. One of those things she took up after going blind was basket weaving. Building these time machines using basketry techniques combined with Inuit skin on frame design was a way for me to honor her creativity and spirit. She flew away on her the ultimate time travel journey in 2006.

Almost all the wood in the machines came from around the house where I lived for 34 years. Some of it was pruned, some was salvaged, some was from trees that had died.

Time machines are chameleon like and can look like something they are not. You have also probably heard one rumbling across the landscape from time to time. They sound almost identical to the distant rumble and whistle of a freight train.