While there are countless fly fishing books, only a handful are truly important.
Some novels are important because they capture the whole of fly fishing so well, in turn captivating audiences generation after generation. Books that explore technique can be important if they perfectly articulate an aspect of angling or pioneer a new paradigm. Such volumes hold preferred positions in personal libraries and among the collective catalog of fly fishers.
Healing Waters, the 2023 work of Beau Beasley, is important because it illustrates the power of fly fishing and the tremendous potential for good possessed by fly fishers.
Beasley’s Healing Waters tells dozens of stories throughout the course of the book. Each story revolves around someone or something that has been impacted by, and had an impact upon, Project Healing Waters. Project Healing Waters was founded in 2005 to serve wounded service members at Walter Reed Medical Center who recently returned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then it has expanded to over 200 programs across the country, drawing in any and all veterans in recovery from injuries seen or unseen.
As a retired firefighter, someone who has been around Project Healing Waters, and an experienced writer, Beasley is uniquely qualified to share the personal accounts of servicemen and women. Hearing numerous heart-wrenching accounts took resolve and a lot more work than traditional outdoor writing. But the result is poignant, authentic, and powerful. Indeed, some of the stories are hard to read. But they are real, and need to be known.
Each chapter is devoted to a story. Most feature Project Healing Waters participants. Volunteers make up another significant chunk, with events or other peripheral aspects rounding out the book. Some chapters are upbeat. The vast majority delve deep into diverse kinds of pain and loss that are unfathomable for most people. The common link across each is how fly fishing and a group of fly fishers helped.
Fly tyers, rod builders, and guides come alongside those enduring paralysis, amputation, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It happens from local bluegill ponds to the wilds of Alaska. It uses the rhythm of a cast. It uses the cathartic value of being in creation. It uses fly fishing, but it depends upon people investing in other people. Those featured in the book don’t ever thank trout, mountains, or graphite rods: they are indebted to the selfless, patient, and compassionate volunteers. These same volunteers turn right around to express their sincere gratitude to the high cost of freedom, paid for by the very veterans they help on the water.
Fly fishers ought to know the power of this pursuit and the potential for good they, as participants, possess. This is why Healing Waters is an important book. While certainly not a pleasure read, it communicates something vital about humanity, it’s frailty, it’s resilience, and how something as simple as fishing can tether all of those facets together. With that in mind, the book is a joy to work through. A joy that elicits tears, smiles, and some serious contemplation – but joy nonetheless.
But at the end of the day, isn’t that what important books ought to do?
Purchase a copy of Healing Waters direct from the author, Beau Beasley, on his website.
Learn more about Project Healing Waters here.