Just like fishing, Tony Taylor's Fishing The River of Time requires some patience

PART geology lesson, part personal history, the writer of this book has not quite decided what it is he is trying to catch on his fishing line.

Fishing The River of Time

PART geology lesson, part personal history, the writer of this book has not quite decided what it is he is trying to catch on his fishing line.

Early on in Fishing The River Of Time the author quotes Thoreau, an American poet with a penchant for anything natural and someone who would today be considered an environmentalist: "Many men go fishing all of their lives not knowing that it is not fish they are after.''

And so it is with Taylor's book, a montage of memories that has been threaded together and packaged up as a philosophy book about nature and life.

At the age of 80, Taylor is taking his eight-year-old grandson on a boys' own adventure, hoping to give him something to remember of the great outdoors and impart his wisdom. But the reader has to wait for chapter nine before young Ned enters the picture.

In the meantime, the author revisits an area on the Cowichan River on Victoria Island, Canada, that he had previously explored in 1968. It's an opportunity to wax lyrical about the state of the natural world and all that he has learned over the years, using the analogy of fishing to illustrate what nature has to teach us.

Filled with anecdotes and pieces of information about the geographical lie of the land, this book does need a bit of patience, because it is the appearance of Ned that livens up the story; another person, and a child at that, giving the story a liveliness, a reason for being other than the author's need to reminisce.

Although focused on the task of catching a fish, Taylor and his grandson enjoy so much more. And that is really what this book is about, making a connection, with nature, other people and with yourself.

VERDICT: A pretty good catch

Fishing The River Of Time
Tony Taylor
The Text Publishing Company, $29.95