When I started this blog five years ago, my desire for fly fishing far outweighed my ability to catch trout on a fly rod. Anyone who fished with me knew this, and some who fish with me today still agree with those sentiments.

This early spring in the southern Appalachians found me back in East Tennessee, where those Smokey Mtn Trout Lessons began. I dare not add up the money spent on gear and fly tying materials since that first trip. If only I had known sooner the simple truth that 90% of the trout can be caught with a 3wt rod, 6x tippet, a size 16 parachute adams, and a bead-head hare’s ear nymph.

Somewhere among all those days chasing blue lines on a map, wading rhododendron and barren streams, untangling overhead limbs, and changing flies like a 2025 trade war…I learned how to occasionally put trout in the net. Proof that even a fool can figure anything out if he puts in enough hours. Felt good to be back in Tennessee and to close that loop.

But the greatest way any of us can improve at anything in life is not brute-force; It is having a great mentor. I was blessed to meet my friend John at a Trout Unlimited meeting in Elkins, West Virginia. A guide and an Orvis Pro, as well as a great friend – one couldn’t ask for a better mentor. John and I have spent many good days on the water together fishing his favorite streams, and then this spring we were able to spend three days together fishing my local water – another circle completed.

But not everything is rosy in our Southern Appalachians. The devastation brought on by Hurricane Helene is unimaginable. Entire mountainsides have their timber mowed down like a spilt box of pixie sticks. Bridges are gone. Roads are gone. The little town of Damascus, VA – the epicenter of trout streams, the Appalachian Trail, and the Virginia Creeper bike trail, was nearly washed away. Everything that drew people to this little town is either gone or forever altered.

In a world where natural disasters wax worse with every passing year, where the government is gutting the agancies that these people need to help them rebuild, where communities are left to themselves to figure out how to rebuild, and the cost of rebuilding has never been higher…. how do these communities ever get back to normal? How does this land – the streams, the mountain sides, the timber…get back to what it was anytime in the next one hundred years? How do our Natural Forest campgrounds and trails reopen safely for families when the people who do that work no longer have jobs?

Answer: the people. The lives of the people in these mountain communities are enter-twined with the land. The land and streams are their economic livelihoods, and likewise they are the caretakers of these beautiful places. It will be by these people and the Conservation groups they belong to that the land can be restored. It will be only by them that this too will come full circle and once again be the place we remember.