Japanophilia

During my residency in pediatrics, I inhabited three very different worlds. One of them was at the university, where I breathed rarefied air, talked endlessly about uncommon metabolic and genetic diseases, some of whose names I had learned only before breakfast that very day.

The second world was at the private children’s hospital in St. Paul, where I was introduced to a whole new array of pathologic processes that were much more common and more likely by far to be those that I was going to encounter when I left the training programs. The air was more … normal … there. Discussions were practical and the topics of discussion were the child right in front of us, rather than children in general.

The third world was at Hennepin County Hospital, in Minneapolis. Take everything you might see at #2, and add the heavy weight of poverty. More diagnoses of failure to thrive, less support for families. One of the staff members at HCH was Dr. Bob ten Bensel, a very bright guy who somehow had got himself involved in a newly developing area of pediatrics that few of us residents really believed was important , much less wanted to pursue as a career – child abuse – physical and sexual.

Bob eventually authored one of the early textbooks on the subject, and by the time it was published all of us trainees had become believers. The change this knowledge made in our views of what it meant to be human was enormous. To truly confront the commonplace horror of severely pathologic child/parent relationships made you a different person from that moment forward.

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A couple of days ago I went down to the Uncompahgre River and caught two small trout. It was a lovely day and there were few other fishermen around as competition. Add the two trout up and you might have enough fish for a single canapé, but I released them so not to worry.

To add to the method’s simplicity, you need use very few flies, with some of its practitioners using a single fly in all situations. I have therefore left the world of matching the hatch and all its intricacies. But how easy it is to carry the gear I need! The twelve-foot carbon fiber rod telescopes to 24 inches long which stores in a sturdy metal tube, and a handful of flies rounds out my kit. The equipment is perfectly suited to fishing the many smaller streams which are scattered about the San Juan mountains, and can easily be tossed into the back of my car on trips.

Like any recent convert I am enthusiastic about my new “religion”so should we meet you would do yourself a favor to not ask me about it at all, or be prepared to be buried under an avalanche of verbiage.

(If you have any interest in the method, there is a wealth of information and instruction on YouTube, a true embarrassment of riches)

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