My Storied Waters journey has only been four weeks so far, not ten years. Still, like Homer's Odysseus, I have seen some fantastic places, matched wits with great piscine beasts, and encountered fabulous people in exotic locations. As I began exploring the Adirondacks, the Homer in question was not the ancient poet, however, but the artist from a later era: Winslow Homer, who began visiting the Keene Valley near the Ausable River in 1870. He typically visited the North Woods

My grandfather was a fly-fisherman. Born in 1875, Grampa Van Wie died in 1960 when I was three years old, so I don’t remember him at all. My father wasn’t much of a fisherman. He enjoyed boating, water-skiing and downhill skiing, but the fishing thing skipped a generation, I guess. Dad set me up with a spinning rod when I was a kid, but most of what I've learned, especially fly-fishing, was on my own. Fortunately, Grampa was also a talented amateur photographer. As such, he l