I am walking across sand and gravel bars beside a shallow sandy pool left behind when the river level dropped. In the clear water of the pool I see a fish, like a trout only lighter-colored overall with small pink and red spots. I think it might be a Brown Trout but I am not sure. Needing to cross the pool, I consider taking off my hiking boots but don't bother to do so and just wade across, getting my feet wet.

Reaching the bank of the river I start fishing, using a nymph-style fly which looks like a bare hook with a little brown yarn wrapped around it. I would rather be fishing with either a dry or at least a wet fly so I try pulling the nymph across the surface like a wet fly but no trout respond so I go back to letting it sink then lifting it up through the water. A small trout follows it but does not strike. Meanwhile a larger trout is surfacing up near the head of the pool but I can't cast that far.

I hook a scaly brown fish with prickly fins and pull it into shore. It is about 8 inches long and it lies in the water between two rocks along with a similar but larger fish. As I unhook the fish I realize that I could easily catch the larger fish but I don't want to. I wake up considering the pain that the fish probably feel when I hook them.

This is another dream which looks back at the role of perfectionism/idealism in my relationships before I was married. The Brown Trout and wading through the pool in my hiking boots establish the timeframe. I associate the trout, the river and fly fishing with a nymph all with fishing trips in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison during the year or two after college. The image of crossing the pool recalls a recent conversation with David about hiking up a river with his friends. Both associations indicate that the dream is about my life during the several years between college and marriage. For about a year during that time I traveled, kayaked and briefly lived with Jenny Goldberg. On one of our kayak trips together we fished for and caught Rockfish along the coast of Vancouver Island. The brown prickly fish in the dream represent my best effort to recall what they looked like, and as a symbol, represent my relationship with Jenny.

I don't remember exactly why Jenny and I broke up. Although we got along together very easily, we didn't talk much about feelings. Somewhere recently I came across a letter or journal entry in which I wrote that the problem was that she wanted more of my attention that I wanted to give her. I doubt that was the whole story but I do remember that I always thought of that relationship as one of convenience. She was available and she was good company and we both liked our sex. It sounds as though she wanted more intimacy, more commitment. I didn't, because she wasn't quite right. As the dream puts it, she was a Rockfish but I was fishing for trout.

Fishing was something that I loved to do; when I was fishing it was I alone who chose how and where to fish. As such, in the dream fishing represents my agency, my authority and my ability to pursue what and whom I wanted. In the dream though, my fishing fails to get me the fish that I desired. It was after that summer I spent kayaking with Jenny and after that fall when we separated that I became seriously distressed about my apparent inability to achieve my ideals for my life - to find a life-partner, to decide what I wanted to do, to embark on a career, to live up to my potential, to become an adult. I believed that I was failing and I hated myself for it. As a result of that distress that I turned back to Christianity during the following year, hoping to become someone worthy of the acceptance and love that I withheld from myself. Christianity offered perfection, the ability to achieve the highest of ideals. Christianity offered trout. Christianity entailed giving up my authority over my life and turning that authority over to others. Christianity meant giving up fishing. So I did; to catch the ultimate trout, I gave up fishing.

Ironically, giving up fishing - relinquishing my agency - brought me neither the goodness nor the girlfriend which I sought. Or maybe it did in the end, who can say?