When you consider that stress is known to exacerbate every illness from the flu to schizophrenia, this does not seem so far off; that the gentle art of fishing is not only a pastime, but a tonic. In the seventeenth century, when the average life expectancy of a man was forty, the father of modern angling and author of the Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, lived to be ninety years old. I flew from Ulan Bator to Seoul, Korea, and was now alone, in transit, examining my passion for fishing within the context of my life. I walked slowly by the duty-free shops in the Seoul airport, their neatly stacked wares, the flight attendants in pristine uniforms. I sat in the transit lounge across from a beautiful young woman who was reading a Russian crime novel. She looked up and saw me staring at her. “Hello, I am Katya,” she said, “in English my name is Kate.” “I am James,” I said. “You want a smoke? I was going to the smoking lounge.” “Sure,” I said. “And where were you?” she said as we walked.
