A little taste of THE MOLECULES!

“Son, you just had a bite, didn’t you see your float go down? You need to be quicker off the mark than that! Don’t worry, there’ll be another one, there’s always one that gets away!”

Turning, I saw that it was the shaman of the river, decked out in his uniform of black oilskin, his long fly rod over his shoulder. I could see the tail of a huge trout sticking out of his bag, bigger than any fish I had ever seen in person. He must have seen my amazed stare, and took the fish out to show me his spoils.

“Yep. Not bad at all. I got this one early, the sun was still coming up, we had a little mist, and the surface of the water was like glass, you could see the trout pass over the stones in the shallower parts. I waded out towards that bay above Crozier’s falls, and naturals weren’t doing anything for me, so I switched to attractors. Made all the difference. Look at this little beauty, that lime green really did the trick. It barely had time to land on the mirror before this one snapped it up. And she’s a beauty too, don’t you think?”

“Wow! That is a real beauty, how big is that? Three pounds?!”

“Not bad. Actually, she’s three and three quarters, closer to four. Big enough for the wife and I tonight, and no mistake!”

“Can I hold it, just so I can get an idea of what three and three quarters feels like, for future reference? So if I catch something at three it will feel lighter and I will know, and something heavier, I will be sure is four or more.”

“Haha. A scientific approach? Empirical testing of the fish weight, interesting!”

Out of the mouths of babes, as they say in the trade, even if the “babe” in this case was no babe. So he had realized that he was in the presence of a scientist; just one who happened to also be a fisherman. I held the large fish in my two hands, throwing it gently up a bit, off the hands, to feel its full weight in them. It was quite heavy, silvery, a mix of colours, the light making a rainbow in the silvery side, along with a distinct smell of fish, or fish scales. What a magnificent creature! 

For a millisecond I felt sorry for it, imagining that it had been swimming freely in the cool waters of the river, with its friends and family, and then suddenly, an almighty hand had wrenched it from their world, cruelly yanking it up into ours. Now it was destined to appear in entirely different form on the dinner table, later tonight. But we were fishermen; this was our job, so we couldn’t dwell too much on the reality of what we do. It was about fish, and our pursuit of them and their ability to elude us, that mattered. And anyway, when Mum served us boiled fish fillets in a creamy white sauce, with bright green parsley in it, this was also a fish that someone had caught. Probably much more unfairly, I thought. It was obtained by casting an enormous net into the rivers, covering it from one bank all the way to the other, snagging every fish in that part of the river in its jaws. This was not fishing, this was entrapment. We were sportsmen; we gave the fish a fighting chance. They got to look at that feathery thing, or shiny thing, or artificially suspended worm, and decide whether it should be eaten or not. When they got away, like the one that had just left my float, they learned from their experience and were more wary next time. So we had to be smarter, and evolve even better bait and lures, to win the game. It was fair.

“What are you thinking about son?” said the shaman, as he slid the fish back into the lined pouch in his fishing bag."

“Well, I was wondering how a creature like that could have come from a few atoms splashing around in a muddy pool. A big fat silvery shiny thing, with gills to breathe under water, scales to prevent the water from entering its body, a tail as an engine, and eyes that always stayed open to be ready for anything. How can atoms make this happen?”

“Haha! So he knows about atoms, does he?!”

“Yes! I learned it in chemistry. Atoms. They have a dense nucleus, with protons and neutrons, surrounded by orbits of electrons. Reminds me of the Earth, our nucleus, with the planets flying around us. Atoms started everything. Yet we can’t see them, they are too small for the human eye.”

“I see! Well, let me leave you with a thought, before I go up the hill, home. Maybe you should be thinking of it more in terms of molecules, they are what made all of this possible. You have heard of them, right?”

Molly-cules. A nice word, I thought. Yes I had heard of them, but I was still figuring out whether it meant like two atoms together, or whether big complex combinations of atoms could be thought of as molecules? I didn’t want to appear stupid by saying something nonsensical.

“Yes. I am still examining the idea of molecules, but I do know about covalent bonds and ionic bonds that join atoms together into molecules, and that often, different properties result”

“Very good. Well, think about it some more, and next time, we will have a chat about the molecules. They are really the guilty party; they got us here, all the way from a few of them bubbling in an organic soup, to fishing on a river today. Now there’s a story no one would believe if you came up with it! Alright off I go, keep a closer eye on that float now. Best of luck, and remember, keep the faith!”

A very interesting character indeed, I said to myself. He seemed to know science!  As well as clearly being a professional fisherman, and the proof was in his bag. That proof was on my hands now too, which had a wonderful stinky odour on them. What a smell! I wondered what chemical or chemicals were responsible for it, and was the smell meant to disgust humans, so as to put us off fishing? I would test the smell on my mother later, and get a reaction. 

The man waved down at me from the bridge, and I waved back. Hmm, “keep the faith”, again. Maybe he really might mean the fishing faith and the science faith. I always liked to give unique characters equally unique names, and so, based on observation, and experience, his was clear. He would now be referred to, in my head at least, as The Keeper of the Faith......

Excerpted from THE MOLECULES by Kevin Mc, soon to be available on the Kindle reader at www.amazon.com