“In another life”…
“I was a fly fisherman.”
Alan Feia--Local Chama, New Mexico, Artist & Angler
Our little community of Chama, New Mexico recently lost a resident, artist, and angler. On a Friday morning in June, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and strangers arrived at his home for an estate sale. A gravel drive led the way to a cluttered artist’s studio. Shelves stacked with glass art, books, paintings, and housewares filled every bit of the room. On a plastic folding table near the door, hurriedly laid out, was Alan's fly fishing gear. An assortment of rods in rod tubes, reels in their cases, and fly boxes full of flies were piled up to be sorted through. His fly fisherman’s vest with an expired paper game and fish fishing license still in the pocket, lay on top of the fly fishing miscellany.
I only knew Alan in a vulnerable way. Coughing, often choking, a discomfort ever present as a result of throat cancer and the subsequent radiation treatment that severely impaired his ability to simply swallow or to ever eat normally. Alan had been my patient at the dental office and at the time, he had recently lost his wife and fellow artist suddenly and unexpectedly; I saw that pain as well. I hadn’t known him on happy days spent on the river casting brushy dry flies carefully selected from his classic Richard Wheatley fly box— that box is now nestled neatly into my pack, or on cloudless days reeling in a spotted rainbow trout on the tiny Ross Colorado reel that I also carried home with me that day.
Alan left his native California and a career in law-enforcement for a home and studio tucked into an oak-brush hillside west of the Village of Chama to create joy filled art. He was best known in the community for his prolific and cheerful glasswork created in the studio that he called La Luz (the light).
I don’t know when or why he arrived here—of all places. He would drop by the dental office between appointments to share books that he had written about his time growing up and one of love stories dedicated to his departed wife. Years later, he would comment on photos of fish on my social media page while posting many of his sweet dog and some chipmunks that he felt compelled to feed outside of his art studio door on his own page. Alan hadn't fly fished for years, I assume since the cancer, and I got the feeling that his glass art filled that void, but following my fly fishing journey in photos and videos brought back those river longings that so many of us anglers identify with.
Objects left from a creative life filtered out of the studio and made their way to cars and trucks to be dispersed into new homes to make new memories. I gathered a couple of the fly fishing rods, two reels and the Wheatley fly box with its contents of dry flies housed under delicate, spring-hinged, glass windows and paid for my selections.
Determined to give the fishing gear a meaningful life, since that day in June, I have taken Alan’s Sage VPS 4-weight fly rod to the river frequently. Although well over 20 years old, the cork grip is like new, I have grown fond of how it casts, and the aesthetics of the rod reflect beautifully in the afternoon sunlight.
Like just about everything that he owned, Alan was unique. While at the time it seemed sad to watch Alan’s books and collectables walk away from his studio that day, I have made it my goal to think of Alan when I take his fly rod with me to the river, hoping that at least a small piece of his fly fishing dreams will live on.
"To him, all good things--trout as well as eternal salvation- come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy."
Norman Maclean
from A River Runs Through it.
xo-Kelley
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