Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. The name of the day says it all.

Each year, I try to send a special word of grace that expresses gratitude for the kindness of God as I have experienced it. I am sharing a true November story this time. It happened just before Thanksgiving when I was twelve. It is a story about two boys, a big fish and a bittersweet moment of time and place from which I still receive blessing. I hope you are blessed in reading it some time over this holiday week.

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I never discovered the source of Soquel (pronounced so-kel) Creek. In my imagination, a spring bubbled up beneath the roots of a giant redwood high in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Persons who have visited the source say it lies in the Santa Cruz Mountains sixteen miles from the Monterey Bay.

The farthest I ever followed the creek was the base of a flat-topped mountain called “Sugar-Loaf.” Two branches of the creek flow out of the woods upstream from there forming a “V,” the arms of which lie beneath steep slopes cloaked in multi-hued forest greens–tall redwoods reaching up from the wet, dark creek-bottom, then oaks and bay laurels on the slopes massing up to the ridges where firs and pines form the skyline.

These are real woods. Hansel and Gretel couldn’t have found their way home through them with gingerbread and a map. The slopes are steep, the ground is covered with deep, slippery leaf-mold. Thickets of shiny-leafed poison oak make passage nearly impossible.

Soquel Creek was a big part of my life. To a boy a creek is as good as a library. The pools and rapids bring frogs and polliwogs into reach and far-away ships and places into imagination. Depth and flow, refraction and velocity, flood and drought, decay and renewal–all are lessons taught in the creek-bottom. You can find snake grass there that you can pull apart joint by joint and put together again like Lego blocks.

There is also sin in that Eden. Nettles sting, poison oak itches, and rocks bruise your feet right through your sneakers. Mothers scold when pant legs are wet from reckless rock to rock jumps.

The light along the creek more than makes up for any discomfort. Golden shafts, softly swirling with flecks of dust, slant into the canyons near mid-day, illuminating rocks, sandbars, frogs and fish to view. On the ridges above, coastal fog clings to the redwood tops, crowning them with luminous, misty halos. Little rainbows grace the spraying cascades above the pools.

By my seventh-grade year, my attention had turned from exploring to fishing. My friends and I talked incessantly about the steelhead that spawned in the creek. We really lacked the equipment and skills required to catch the wily steelhead trout that grew and spawned there but we liked to think we could do it.

The fact that there were fish in the creek brought some wildness to our relatively tame part of central California. We learned how to catch rainbow trout by finding a little riffle at the top of the pool. Our bait was a fat night crawler stuck on a number 14 or 16 Eagle Claw hook. A flick of a cast dropped the bait into the pool and we would slowly reel it in through the whitewater. It didn’t take us long to hook a string of 10-inch rainbows.

But the steelhead were the stuff of our dreams. These are large, feisty fish up to thirty-six inches long They spawned in the creek from November to February after the fall rains. The rising water allowed them to cross the sand bar from the Monterey Bay into the mouth of Soquel Creek at Capitola.

My Dad told me that “steelhead are rainbow trout that go to sea.” He said the fish were able to swim thousands of miles, but somehow would return to the exact stream where they were born. My friends and I marveled at the mystery of how the fish know how to do that.

Catching a steelhead became our obsession. We didn’t know how to do this, but we were blissful in our ignorance and we were inventive.

One Sabbath day, after church, my friend Buddy Reitmeyer and I, crossed the road and went under the Main Street Bridge where the stream spread out over some sandy shallows. We spotted a large steelhead battling upstream with its back out of the water.

People dressed up to go to church in those days much more than they do now. Buddy and I were both attired in white shirts, ties, dress leather shoes and sport coats. Buddy waded out to the fish which frantically tried to evade him. He plunged his wool-clad arms into the muddy water and grabbed the fish.

Eleven-year-old hands were no match for twelve pounds or so of slick, writhing muscle. When Buddy lifted the fish out of the water about waist high, it shot back in with enough splash to cover us both with khaki-colored froth and mud.

That was as close as we got to a steelhead until early one Sunday morning, the next November.

I stayed over at Buddy’s house on Saturday night. We watched the late movie on TV. Then we slept in our clothes on the living room floor. We slipped out at dawn through the garage with our fishing poles and tackle boxes.

It was foggy–a low, thick, wet blanket muffling the sound of our foot-falls along the empty streets. We crossed to the creek on a path beside Bargetto’s Winery.

Behind the winery, the creek was contained in a long, quiet pool beneath steep banks. The pool was created when a huge redwood log washed down from the mountains during a flood and wedged, end to end, between the banks, where other logs piled up behind it. The water from later floods hit the immovable log and, with no place else to go, scooped out a deep hole. The length and depth of the pool testified to both the size of the redwood and the power of the water.

Stepping out on the log, Buddy I both inhaled out loud. Beneath our feet, on the downstream side of the deadfall, were more steelhead than we had ever seen–one, two, three, four, eight, nine, eleven, fourteen, fifteen–fifteen big fish lying on the bottom with only occasional, stabilizing flicks of their tails to show their life.

My first thought was, “We are never going to catch one of these fish.” It was beyond hoping. This was the biggest thing that we had yet encountered in our fishing lives.

Buddy was transfixed. He stared into the water. I looked too, but I was no gambler. The trout downstream were more of a sure thing. “I’m going down to the next pool to catch rainbows.”

“I’m going to stay here,” Buddy said.

When I left him, he was kneeling on the log beside his tackle box. I didn’t know if he was changing hooks or praying.

The trout were hungry. I caught a pan-sized rainbow almost every other cast. In a few minutes, eight of them were hanging on the willow twig I was using as a stringer. There was only silence from Buddy upstream.

It was a monochrome morning. Gray sky tinted the cold gray-green water. Leafless willows formed gray palisades along both banks. My breath formed little gray clouds.

The murmur of the passing water and the flipping splashes of the trout fighting my hook were the only sounds.

Buddy’s wail tore the fabric of the whole tapestry. “I caught one.” He yelled the words fast like a musical triplet. He hollered it again.

I scrambled up on a stump to look upstream. Buddy was standing on the redwood log in a spread-leg stance. His rod was a black bow against the sky over his head. His reel paying-out line fast sounded like a zipper.

I grabbed my pole, tackle box and string of trout and ran up on the bank. My hands were full and I was off-balance. I tripped and fell off the bank into the water. It was ice-cold and the rocks were hard where I hit bottom.

When I stood up, I was confused. Buddy was yelling and running back and forth on the log like a dog on a short leash. My string of trout and tackle box were floating away in a kind of race.

I grabbed the tackle box and pole, but thought better of plunging in after the trout. My PF Flyer high-tops sloshed and squished when I walked out on the log beside Buddy.

He glanced my way and laughed. Then his teeth set and he strained. The fish was deep and out of sight. The line was whizzing out again. Buddy let the fish run to the end of the pool where it jumped up in a thrashing spray.

Buddy began to carefully reel in the line. The fish had no place to go, turned back and went under. The rod lost its bow. Quickly, Buddy reeled in the slack. Soon the rod was bent again as Buddy fought the fish’s attempt to hide under the log.

There was a moment when boy, fish and rod reached a state of delicate inertia. The taut line ran straight down beside the side of the log. There was a silver flash as the fish turned. The reel buzzed again as the steelhead raced down the pool.

The other big fish held their positions in fleet formation. They lay deep and quietly facing upstream waiting for the rains to raise the water level so they could move on up to spawn.

These fish had survived far worse than Buddy. Orcas, seals, sea lions, sharks, and salmon trawlers menaced them out at sea. Long ago, grizzly bear roamed along this very stream, eating their fill of the ancestors of these fish. A twelve-year-old kid with light tackle was of little consequence to the steelhead. Their created will to spawn would not be denied. The plight of one of their companions did not deter them.

After another run and return, the fish gave up. It surfaced and rolled belly-up beside the log.

Buddy trembled visibly as he knelt on the log and put down his rod. We had no net. We really never though we’d need one. Buddy reached down and grabbed the line with both hands to pull his catch up on the log.

Fishermen debate whether the thrill is in hooking the fish or landing it. Buddy had to settle for the former because he was only using six-pound test line and the fish weighed many more pounds than that. The line snapped. The fish slipped back into the water and disappeared.

Buddy stood up. He looked down at nothing. Then he picked up his rod and threw it javelin-style onto the far bank and broke into tears. The boy had come to a man’s moment and found out he was still a boy.

My thrill was definitely in the landing, not the hooking. I dove in to look for the fish. The water was colder than I remembered. It was dark under the log and full of branches and snags. It occurred to me that I could be hung-up in there. I kicked back up and broke surface facing a tearful Buddy.

After I clambered back on the log, we gathered our stuff and trudged back to Buddy’s house. I caught a cold and got to stay home from school on Monday. In future years, I fished a few times, then quit. I possessed no patience for it. I craved quick successes and more productive pursuits.

Buddy’s dad took a job in Europe and the family moved to the Netherlands. I never saw him again. Like the fish, he slipped away and disappeared.

I think of that day across the years. It is pressed deep in my memory–the morning, the fog, the stream, the redwood log, the steelhead, the friend–all elemental and defining things. I think back to it all and wish Buddy had landed his fish.

Why ache for a fish that wasn’t caught and remember a friend I never saw again with such fondness? Why do I smile at the memory?

I’ve suffered losses since then– much larger losses of loved and prized things, painful losses of people. I suppose we all long for times when the possibilities seemed wide-open, the stakes were lower, and the lessons were just beginning.

The steelhead have the instinct to head upstream for home, and so do we in a way. Solomon observed that the Creator placed a sense of eternity in the human mind, a homing signal leading us toward heaven (Ecc 3:11).

Many things menace us on our way and threaten to stop us. The rains may fail to come on time and we are delayed. Companions go missing. It’s hard, but somehow we’ve made it thus far.

This is what I know–the instinct is stronger than the obstacles. It’s grace that’s led us safe this far and grace will lead us home. Let’s be thankful.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.