Years and years ago, I was packing for a weekend fishing trip on Oregon's Deschutes River, and my daughter started rummaging around in my duffle bag.
She was only 5 years old at the time -- she's 19 now -- and I asked her what she was looking for.
"Nothing, dad," she said as she pulled out my vest.
"So, what are you doing?" I said.
Courtney opened one damp little fist and showed me a safety pin with several beads threaded on the thin steel. A little bit of fly-tying thread was wrapped and twisted onto the bend of the pin.
"This is for you dad," she said. "It is for good luck -- and for you to be safe."
I picked up my little girl -- and held her while the lump in my throat slowly melted.
I thanked Courtney -- and really didn't want to go fishing at that moment. But I left the next day -- after dropping her off at her mom's house. We lived in Corvallis, Oregon in those days, and I thought about Courtney's present during the long drive to my favorite river.
Once I was on the river, I put the safety pin in the back pocket of my vest -- where I keep my license, first-aid kit, pocket knife and extra leaders. From time to time, I stopped fishing, pulled off my vest and looked at that little gift.
Love isn't linked to material things, but some things become powerful symbols of love. I recalled reading about humans in tribes all over the world often carry meaningful things -- talismans -- in little pouches hung around their necks.
I have never been a person who needed or wanted lots of stuff, but that little safety pin still lives in my vest. And Courtney has, from time to time, given me other little gifts. A year or two later, I took Courtney along on a one-night float on the Warm Springs to Trout Creek drift on the Deschutes. I didn't expect to fish much, but it was a wonderful trip of bobbing down the river, setting up camp, eating chili dogs, watching for shooting stars and searching for fairies in the bankside grass.
Late in the afternoon, I was fishing to rising fish in the slow water just a few steps from our tent near Frog Springs, and Courtney was sitting cross-legged in the angler's path along the river.
The setting sun glinted on her hair -- and grubby face -- as she sat motionless. Then I noticed the swarm of blue butterflies flitting around her. I wished for a camera, but that golden, golden moment is still alive in my mind -- and will be for the rest of my days.
I quietly waded out of the river and sat nearby.
"The butterflies are drinking water from the mud," Courtney said. "We learned that at Diedra's this week."
Diedra, a wonderful, caring woman, was Courtney's preschool teacher.
We sat and talked about butterflies and why water sometimes runs right out the ground and makes sticky mud on the trail. We poked around under riverbed rocks and looked at stonefly, mayfly and caddisfly nymphs.
"It is beautiful here, dad" Courtney said. And then she smiled at me.
That night, I found a quarter-sized basalt pebble on my pillow. The rock is glass-smooth, gray and looks like a tiny Frisbee. That rock also has lived in my vest for years.
Truth is, I'm sitting right now in my home office, and I'm surrounded by Courtney's art, found objects and even the very first flies she tied. A braided bit of yarn hangs off my fly-tying vise, and a marabou streamer tied with hot pink and orange feathers -- it looks like a tropical Popsicle -- hangs off my desk lamp.
I now have other little talismans from Courtney's active mind and busy fingers -- tiny clay figures, sticks and more pebbles -- in two vests and the chest pack I use while flyfishing Puget Sound beaches. I'm surprised that I don't clank when I walk around in my fishing gear.
For my last birthday, Courtney created an elaborate comic book, and one of the pages was dedicated to our many fishing and surfing trips over the years.
I started thinking about all this the other night, as I was walking up the beach after surfing the last hours of the day at Westhaven State Park in Westport, Washington. The surf was glassy and about four feet high -- just how Courtney loves it -- and I wished we could have shared the water that evening.
But Courtney has her own life at university now, and I'm so proud of her.
As I walked out of the water, the backwash from a dying wave rolled down the beach -- and exposed a perfect, egg-shaped, pure white agate. Courtney has adored agates for years, and the setting sun made this one glow against the gray, wet sand.
I imagined her happy gasp at spotting such a small treasure.
I picked up the rock and slipped it into the sleeve of my wetsuit. I'm going to give it to Courtney in a week or so. It's for luck -- and paying back some of the love she has infused into tiny, natural things she slipped into my fishing vest or onto my pillow over these many, wonderful years.
