On the Water // A series on lessons, humility, and the river as teacher

The River You Grew Up On

The river you grew up on isn’t always the first one you fished. I’d chased plenty of water before I ever got to Valley Creek. But Valley Creek is the one that shaped me.

It flows through Valley Forge National Historical Park, in Pennsylvania, and it was the first true wild trout stream I ever fished. That was what made it different. Before I had a license, my mom would drive me there and sit on the bank with a book while I poked around the water for hours. She wasn’t an angler. She just understood that I needed to be there.

Valley Creek is a hard place to learn, which is exactly why it taught me so much. The trout are wild and they are finicky. Nothing about them is easy. You don’t catch fish there by showing up with the right attitude. You catch them by watching what they’re eating, matching it, and getting the fly in front of them without spooking them off the drift. It taught me presentation. It taught me patience. It taught me to slow down and pay attention before I ever made a cast.

There was history in it too, and I loved that as much as the fishing. Part of the creek runs in the shadow of Washington’s headquarters, and you can’t fish that ground without feeling the weight of what happened on it.

Farther up, near where Knox was quartered, there’s an old covered bridge over the creek. Some of my best memories are of fishing near it, the water sliding under the timber, the whole thing quiet in the early light. Every trip meant driving through the entire national park to reach the water, so every trip was a history lesson whether I wanted one or not. I wanted one. I still do.

Once I had my license, I started going before sunrise. I grew up hunting, and the best part of those early drives wasn’t the fishing yet to come. It was the whitetails. Massive bucks moving through the park in the dark, easier to see in the headlights than they ever were once the sun came up. I’d roll through slow, counting them, then go string up a rod.

I haven’t fished it in more than twenty years. I left for college, moved away from that part of the world, and never made it back. The creek is still there, still running through all that history, still full of wild trout that don’t give themselves up easily. I’m the one who left.

But I’m going back. Soon, with my kids. I want them to stand in that water and feel how hard it is, and how good it feels when it finally comes together. I want them to drive through the park and see where all of it happened. I want to show them the water that shaped me, and see what it does with them.

That’s the thing about the river you grew up on. It isn’t always the first one you fished. It’s the one that taught you how to see. And if you’re lucky, you get to take someone back and watch them learn to see it too.

~ John

Knox Covered Bridge, Valley Forge National Historical Park. NPS Photo/G. Purifoy.