I remember the first time I held a fly rod. I was probably 8 or 9—maybe even younger. We were camping at Henry's Lake, right near Yellowstone. We were meeting my grandpa there. Dad had a camper on the back of his '79 Ford pickup. We were parked in one of the flattest parts of the country I'd ever seen. We were literally camping in what looked like a field, but the surroundings were beautiful.

I don't exactly recall how the subject came up, but I wanted to try to cast a fly rod. Dad grabbed his fly rod, pieced it together, and proceeded to show me how to make that fly fly! If my memory serves me right, I struggled a little at first but quickly found my rhythm. I was a competitive child and quickly began attempting to see how far I could get that line to go. I don't know how long I practiced; it felt like hours, and in my mind, it lasted until sunset. Whether my time perspective is off or not, that is a core memory that has never gone away.

Twenty-five years later, I had a recall of that memory when I happened to see a post about fly fishing. I made a Facebook post about the fact that I wanted to learn to fly fish because it is such a beautiful sport.

Three years after that, I started dating a man who had grown up fly fishing. All it took was one day out on his drift boat and I was hooked for life (to both fly fishing and the man).