Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts (eBook)

Ehor Boyanowsky is a criminal psychologist and professor at Simon Fraser University. An avid fisherman who has written extensively on fishing and conservation issues in Rod and Reel and other magazines, he lives in Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia.

PrologueThe Westminster Abbey service for Ted Hughes reawakens a decade's worth of memoriesChapter OneHughes had read my letter, in fact had read my poems, not only read them but claimed to like them. And it appears he wants to fish together. Against all odds there is a lovely gentleness about him. Odds are he is a nice guy, the literary scuttlebutt notwithstanding.Chapter Two: Tales Of Dean River SteelheadWe decide to have Ted record the week's adventures in the Totem Camp Logbook: a task the newest member of the group is usually asked to undertake. As it turns out it affords us an opportunity not only to read his prose, but to observe how he eventually turns it into a long narrative poem. One that he entitles The Bear, his second composition by that name.Chapter Three: The Thompson River And The ArtistA wistful look enters Ted's eyes and he wonders out loud whether this was the place he dreamed about with his brother Gerald when they were boys: a land of cowboys and Indians and giant salmon. They made a pledge to emigrate but Gerald went to Australia, Ted got no farther than Devon.Chapter Four: The Halcyon DaysThe world feels, looks and smells very fecund and healthy today: a portent we hope. Our need to wet a line, notwithstanding, we pause to drink in the richness of the scene. "Being here adds years to one's life", Ted says softly, "remind me of that if I ever get too caught up in the morass of my overcommitted life sentence."Chapter 5: A House DividedGhost tales, bawdy verse, and a love story balance a time of betrayal and environmental danger.Chapter Six: Hebrides And DevonMeeting the poet on his home turf. Alongside river fishing in Scotland and England, Hughes opens the door on his Devon home, and his writing shack: "You must find a similar place away from the phone and family and friends. Otherwise, the tendrils reach out and drag you away. And suddenly you are old and no project is important anymore."Chapter Seven: The BC Summer of 1993Black-tie dinners notwithstanding, it's a simple meal of crabs pulled from the Pacific, boiled in a beachside kettle, and served with wine and a priceless view that sticks. "We are reliving a 10,000-year ceremony tonight," Ted says. It reminds you that the world is worth fighting for.Chapter Eight: Russia, Devon And The DeanThe final trip to the Dean finds the poet in a reflective state of mind. "If I were deprived of fishing, of that kind of live, intimate, interactive existence - it would be as though I had some great, vital part of me amputated. It gives you some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self."