Tom Bachmann

Fishing for Beauty Tom Bachmann

In this memoir and manifesto, Tom Bachmann fell in love as a child with the landscape of salt marsh, bay, and ocean on eastern Long Island. He was running the outboard alone when he was seven, and fishing soon after. For him, life on the sea was a series of adventures, and he describes childhood exploration along the coast, bluefish fishing in the "Race", striped bass fishing at night, and then the thrills and disappointments of offshore fishing for tuna and white marlin. The fishing and sea landscape brought meaning to his life, which had seemed pointless when growing up in suburbia. Slowly, the atavistic satisfaction of the successful hunter was replaced by a knowledge that what is seen is what is remembered, that the overwhelming beauty is an unexpected and revealing gift. Some answers to questions of ultimate purpose, about a creator and death in a world defined by science become clearer under the influence of the aesthetics of the wide-open sea and shore. What starts as a life of adventure turns into a life of appreciation and caring for the sea animals and plants, and a new understanding of why we are here.