BY STEVE BALLARD
I thought I might never see it again…
The mist rising. The river flowing. That first birdcall breaking the silence.
For a long time, it was just a memory.
Something I clung to in the dark, whilst the machines beeped and the walls pressed in.
I would close my eyes and picture it— the stillness, the waiting, the weight of the world easing as the water rolled over the old weir.I used to wait. I don’t anymore.
I rush.
I wake before the first light cracks the horizon, pull on my boots before the kettle’s even boiled.
My hands work fast, setting up, clumsily threading line through eyes and baiting hooks. I don’t moves lowly anymore. I don’t sit back and let the day unfold at its own pace.
I push into it. I take all I can from it because I know what it’s like to lose time Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That was what I had. It had spread— bones, spine, places it had no right to be. The odds? The doctors had numbers and percentages for that. Some days, they felt like numbers I could live with. Other days, they didn’t.
During my treatment, chemotherapy took everything from me.
Strength, energy, hair. The light went out of my eyes. My body stopped feeling like my own.
I thought cancer might kill me. But even after I got through it, after
the scans came back clear, I still wasn’t free from its shadows.
Unfortunately, the mind doesn’t heal as fast as the body. I carried the fear with me long after the worst had passed. I carried the exhaustion, the anger, the gnawing feeling that I might not get to see my life unfold as I had dreamt. That I might not have enough time. It weighed me down.
Wore me thin.
I wasn’t the same.
There was no going back to who I was before. The fight had changed me, left something jagged and restless where certainty used to be. I had turned bitter, maybe. Sad, definitely.
Not in a way that ruins me. But it lingers.
They told me I was in remission. They told me I was lucky. But I don’t feel lucky.
I feel like a man who borrowed time he shouldn’t have.
Like someone who’s been given extra days but doesn’t know how many.
So I don’t waste them. I don’t wait.
I fish, but I no longer sit there, staring at the water for hours, waiting for something to happen. I cast fast, I move spots, I chase the fish. I need action.
I need to feel alive.
I drink my coffee too strong and too hot. I burn my tongue. I don’t care. I wolf down food without really tasting it. I care about that. I tell myself to slow down, to savour it.
But I don’t.
Because in the back of my mind, I’m always hearing that clock.
The one that nearly stopped ticking.
During treatment, because of anxiety, my heart would pound so fast the alarms would go off.
The nurses would come running. “You need to calm down,” they’d say.
I couldn’t.
So I escaped the only way I knew how. I closed my eyes and pictured a crisp winter’s morning, the river running cold and clear. My float drunkenly trotting down a tree-lined chalkstream as I waited for it to disappear. It would disappear, and I’d strike, feeling the first few seconds of a fishhooked- thud-thud-thud.
It was the only thing that worked. But now?
Now that I’m back, standing here, holding a rod with real water before me instead of an imagined one?
It’s different.
I still love it. Still need it. But I don’t sit still anymore. I don’t let the world pass by at its own pace.
I chase it. I hunt it down.
I need to see everything, hear everything, feel everything.
The moody dusk settling over the fields, the last birds flickering across the sky. The mist curling across the surface of the water at dawn, soft and silent. The starlit night sky, vast and endless, each tiny pinprick of light a reminder of just how brief our time here is.
I take it all in, but I don’t linger. I move on to the next thing, the next moment.
I hear the blackbird or robin singing on a spring morning, and I don’t just listen, I soak it in, like I might never hear it again. Because maybe I won’t.
A fish rolls downstream. My old self might have watched, appreciated it, let it be. But now? Now I move
down and cast.
I can’t help it.
It’s not just fishing. It’s everything.
I drive too fast. I say ‘yes’ to too much. I start books and don’t finish them because I’ve already moved on to the next one. I tell myself to slow down, to breathe, to take it in properly.
But in the back of my mind, I always hear it.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I hear my dad’s voice in my head, same as I always do when life makes me stop and think. “This ain’t no
rehearsal”. He was right.
I used to believe I had all the time in the world. That I could take my time, let life unfold as it wanted.
I don’t believe that anymore.
And so I rush. I take it all in, but I don’t stop moving.
One day, I know I will.
One day, I won’t be here anymore. My chair will sit empty, my rods hung on a stranger’s garage wall.
The water will keep moving. The birds will still call in the trees, the fish will still rise in the shallows.
Someone else will sit in this spot, watching the morning mist lift and the water roll over the old weir.
The float disappears. I wait. The line tightens.
Then it slides away, then that feeling I remember- thud-thud-thud.
I lift the rod. The fish runs. I let it. When it slows, I bring it back, careful, steady. It surfaces once, flashing silver, then gives in. I reach down, cradling it in wet hands.
It is beautiful. Not because of its size, not because of its markings, but because it exists.
Because I exist.
I slip it back and watch it disappear.
And I sit there a little longer, breathing, listening, knowing that none of this will last.
But for now, it does.
And that is enough.
What about today? Today, I am here.
And while I am, and have air in my lungs, I will fish.
Not for the specimens I might catch. Nor for ego or pride. But because I can.
Because I’m still here to do it.
Because I know what it’s like to nearly ose it all.
And I don’t plan on wasting a second.
Piscator 