The Chronicles of Bamboo Bill

Wondering Through Spiritualism

                                                                    “The Beginning Days”

These are the experiences of a wonderer, a truth seeker if you may, walking through a labyrinth of spiritualism. They maybe illusions perhaps mere tricks of the imagination or a glimpse into another reality. I share these experiences with you and until now have never been made public.

It was a spring day many flowers were in bloom. Buds were poking out on every bush and tree. Bird song adrift on the warm breeze. The date is circa 1958 and the place a small farm on the east coast of the United States. As I walk on the uneven ground, struggling to maintain my balance against gravity which was attempting to topple me? I was walking along the upslope of a small ditch that ran along a fence line. I was fast into a peanut butter sandwich which tasted great. My senses were alive and I had a heady feeling and stumbled and squeezed the peanut butter sandwich tightly in my little hands. Jelly oozed out from under the two slices of bread.  It felt sticky and I wiped it on my little red coveralls.

There were lots of small sparrows in the bushes which I was slowly approaching. They were in group conversations and speaking in foreign tongues and singing songs with no titles. Then all of the sudden two birds flew down in front of me and were in a whirlwind with each other. Small grey fuzzy feathers mixed with the grass and the imedate atmosphere drifting away with the warm breeze. Then they flew off together far across the yard to another tree or bush disappearing from my sight.

It was then that I felt a feeling, a memory being etched in my little growing brain perhaps more of a ripple in a great pond of consciousness. I remembered these same birds landing on the ground before me it was as if it had happened before. I was left in an undesirable state of mind. I dropped my peanut butter sandwich. My little bird dog came gingerly over and ate it.

I walked slowly over to a tree stump and sat on it. This experience was beyond my ability to understand it let alone communicate it to another. So I kept it tight, close to my heart. I never talked about it to my parents, Sunday school teachers or my little friends. Not unlike the arrow heads that I would find later in my childhood. While alone, I would touch the arrow heads, feeling their contours and sharp edges and again feelings before time would flood over my total being. These sensations were fleeting and much to short in duration to cling deeply to them. Déjà Vu came into my life and as a result I would become be interested in glimpses into other realities.

A Lover I Will Never Have

Some thirty odd years ago I happened upon her. She was there naked to the world. Simply, beautiful beyond what a young mans mind could get around. I remember when I first saw her. I pulled off the road, bending over so I could see her body peering out my passenger window; I held my breath and felt my heart miss a beat or two.

She looked up at me and whispered these words, “ young man, take me, dance your long rod along my body, let that long line come across me and touch me ever so gently”. I knew that I couldn’t have her at least not in the way she desired. My rod was a spinning rod, just a common rod, a weapon to be used to kill trout without a once of poetry in it. This lady wanted the long rod, a fly rod made of supple bamboo and a fly consisting of feather and fur. She wanted and required a lover with romance, an understanding of poetry and sensitive foreplay.

I put the car in gear and continued down the valley road, all the while keeping a watchful eye on her. Her oxbows and nice long runs of gentle rapids were achingly stimulating for this young man who was so full of romance and longed for this lady. The back drop of horses in her green meadows coupled with an elk herd staking out their piece of paradise was for ever etched in my brain.

Once I decided to take the plunge and actually pick up the long rod, I often traveled down along her as I traveled to the fabled waters of the South Plate to spend the day fly fishing. Each time I drove along her I would mentally fish her waters.

I now live less than a mile from the upper edge of her and every few days when I drive down Foxton way to fish the North Fork of The South Platte or Chessman Canyon that common anglers such as I are allowed to fish, I pass by this beautiful lady.

It is simply enough I get to see her often and continue my fantasia of how I would fish her with my little bamboo rod in my hand. I can only hope that some day the hand of fate will allow me to fish her. Life is stranger than fiction and who knows this old man in a young mans body may have his dream come true.

Note: This story is about “The Swan Herford Ranch” owned by a group of Lawyers and was once one of President Eisenhower’s favorite places to fish.

Zen and The Bamboo Rod

There are long silences that seep into ones life while fly fishing, especially when you fish alone. Even if you fish now and then with another angler, he will go off by himself and you go your own way. Solitude is the one gift you can offer him and he to you. Sometimes an idea comes to the surface of ones consciousness and then just as often it simply dissolves into the white noise of life. However, when I’m fishing my mind is calmed by the simple rhythms found on a trout stream. The myriad of sounds that the creek produces coupled with bird song floating in the gentle breeze that is dancing in the tops of the Pine trees is the perfect back ground for a well worked idea or two.  So the other day,  I found a shady spot under a nice Pine tree and dug out of my canvas rucksack a waffle sandwich. I had caught a couple small brown trout and was feeling pretty good inside. As I took a bite from the waffle sandwich I eyed my Bamboo Fly rod which was leaning against the tree I was sitting under. For a brief series of moments I though I heard the little rod whisper something to me. I could not make out the words and liken the experience to the one where I sometimes hear the voices of people talking while fishing a small creek. Of course it is just the babbling sound of the water running over the black stones on the bottom of the creek but it does sound like people talking all at once at a great distance away.

A fellow bamboo rod maker who I was fishing with asked me the other day, “what type of person fishes Bamboo Rods?” I did not have an answer right at that moment so he told me to think about it and write a essay on the question?” So, I spent some time mediating upon the question. It was the type of question that reminded me of the Zen koan, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” I have spent some time poking around Buddhism for over 30 years or more and was even married once in a Buddhist temple.  I understand that the Zen Koan is a question that is designed to exhaust the human intellect and free the monks mind from purely intellectual application thus allowing the monk to be more extemporaneous. Enough said in this realm. Let me get to the bone of the question.

Every teacher deserves a good student and every good student deserves a good teacher. Often the teacher is someone or something that creeps into ones life though some small crack that opened in the Universe. The teacher may not be around the student for a long period of time or he may be there for years. The Bamboo Rod offers a slower casting rhythm to the angler and thus allows the caster to feel the complete casting action of the rod over a longer period of time. There is more time involved in the casting stroke and the angler naturally learns to listen to the rod and therefore becomes steeped in the focus of the cast. As time goes along he learns to cast without casting. It is as the rod does the work and the angler is along for the ride. I liken it to the Zen archer that releases the arrow from the bow without ego and effort. The arrow finds the target and the target finds the arrow. A state of No Mind is reached.

Now there are many people that find bamboo. Some of them are collectors, there are the status seekers who often as not cannot cast very well and never well be able to cast. However they can find others like them and therefore can brag about their Bamboo Rods for hours on end. Then there is the angler often in his 50s or older who has conquered  his dragons and won most of his battles thus  Bamboo creeps into his life, quietly but with an intensity that the angler and his bamboo rod will complete the rest of his earthly journey together.

We Were Gods

I was fly fishing with a Kenpo student of mine the other day and we both acknowledged on the way to the stream that the world we knew was no longer here. As I fished the remainder of the day a myriad of thoughts surfaced in my mind. Memories of when I ran my KENPO STUDIO came forth and the sounds of bags being hit, students sliding across the floor practicing Kenpo Forms, plus visual images of my students practicing self defense techniques on each other began to fill up my creel. The catching was slow and I decided to sit down on a log near the stream and have a bite to eat. Stream side lunches and naps are treasured activities for this old Kenpo teacher and fly fisherman alike.

It has been over 35 years since I obtained my Black Belt in Kenpo. I am fortunate to have traveled down the Kenpo path for all these years. At 59 years of age, I still train in the Kenpo arts and try to apply the philosophical aspects of the Art referred to as Kosho Shorei daily as well. My daily routine which is always in a state of flux is one that allows for a 1 hour walk, a 40-60 min Kenpo practice session and in the evening Fly Fishing the local streams. All this put a side, while I ate my ham and cheese sandwich

and washed it down with cold mountain stream water, I remembered a telephone conversation I had with the late Tom Connors Jr. in the mid 80s. We were talking

about Kenpo. Tom said, “Mr. Hensel there was a time when we were Gods”. I have never forgot his statement and over the last 30 years I have stopped by it from time to time to ponder it’s deeper meanings. I remember when a horse stance was taught and students were required to develop it. There was a time when respect in the Dojo was expected from the students and was not uncommon, like the rising of the sun each day. I remembered the joy of learning another new self defense technique and another move in a Form with each lesson. Those were exciting times. Instructors taught the principles of each technique and there was actually controlled physical contact in the private lesson between the instructor and student. How else could a student learn how to properly execute a block or make a self defense technique work. Those were the days when group classes were sweat houses, but no one complained. If by accident someone got a broken noise, there were no law suits. Control of energy, both physical and emotional were tasked of the student. Rank in Kenpo came about slowly and I remember the only reason you wanted another belt was so you could learn the new self defense techniques and Forms for the next belt. The requirements had deep pockets and the Kenpo student had to learn any where from 40- 30 self defense techniques for each Belt level. I never personally saw a Black belt on any student under 18 years of age.

So now that my world is gone. What is left of the Kenpo world that I once enjoyed?” One of the late Masters visited a school in the Denver area a few years ago and he called me to say, “the horse stance is gone and no detail in the Forms existed. The power lines of force had been weakened do to poor body mechanics coupled with weak basics and fundamentals.” He said , “Bill why don’t you give the owner a call and see if you could help them get back on the right track.”

I never made that call and figured that the current generation of Kenpo teachers

trying to keep their schools afloat in a dieing economy coupled with a student base that believes they are “entitled” would not welcome advice from an aging Sifu, who even in his prime (cira mid 1980s) was referred to by his competition as a “good Martial Artist but who was too traditional.”

I was left with one question after I finished my stream side lunch. Does the student find Kenpo or does Kenpo find the student? All I truly know is that my time has come and gone, it is truly a Brave New World.

Dreams Of A Rodmaker

Dreams Of A Rod Maker

by

Bamboo Bill

It was a cool Colorado summer   night and the stars were especially clear.  They looked like you could reach right up there and grab one right out   of the cosmic stellar dust.  The North Fork was carrying with it a myriad of musical notes that were drifting over to the rustic rod making shack that I was working in.

I had spent most of the entire day planing strips for a bamboo fly rod.  This work had somehow lasted into the wee hours of the night.  My fingers were starting to develop the too common pain that is felt as the result of hand planing bamboo.  The tendons in my left forearm were letting me know they were there also.  Too many years of   holding onto rattan sticks not to mention the result of actually being hit during full contact stick fighting matches.  It is during these times I think of the rodeo cowboys who live with pain in their joints and realize there is some common ground here as well.

After planing the last strip which was based on a taper that the late Master Rod maker Everett Garrison had developed in his sharp engineering mind decades ago, I leaned against my work bench.  Sipping on the remainder of my coffee that had long gone cold and admiring the work that had been done and thinking to myself “the time spent planning this rod had not been wasted” admittedly a strange thought.  When thoughts about my mortality creep up on me,  I will sometimes   wonder if my rod making will have any value to the human race.  After all more than a few people   actually fish with the cane rods I have made for them and they all enjoy them a lot.

For me, handcrafting bamboo rods is more of a labor of love than a pecuniary endeavor.  In fact there are those that think I have wasted my life, college educated with a once successful chain of   Kenpo karate studios having nothing to show for my life now but a frugal life style in the mountains.  However, I have always felt a sense of honor to be treading down the path that so many rod makers before me have taken.  In fact as time moves along down the strip of each piece of bamboo,  I can see myself being transformed slowly into a more relaxed, peaceful and happier person.

These thoughts laid gently in the canyons of my consciousness as I turned off the light that was hanging over the work bench.  I walked slowly under the sheet of stars that now hugged the mountain ridges surrounding my small house.   Upon slowly easing into bed and upon listening to the music from the North Fork I had thoughts of fishing tomorrow and soon a relaxing feeling washed over my body and I drifted off to sleep.

Somewhere in the night while asleep I began to dream.  In the dream I was deeply focused and planing a piece of bamboo.  Out of the corner of my eye I witnessed an apparition appear in the shadows slightly off the work bench.  Moon light was seeping into the room via the south window.  It was a full moon that night.  I turned my head toward the apparition and with closer inspection I could see it was a lady in a white flowing gown and she had long sun colored hair.  I put down the little block plan and asked, “Who are you and what do you want”.  To my disbelief she responded not with words but more along the lines of mental telepathy.  Her comment echoed softly throughout my brain, “he is coming, he is coming”.  I responded through the use of speech, “Who is coming?”  With a soft smile she said, “Ed is coming and well be here very soon, just continue your work on the rod….he likes to watch.”   I did as the ghost instructed me to do and began planning the bamboo strip.  I wondered who was coming who was this guy Ed.  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks and my legs trembled slightly not to mention there was a slight tremor throughout my right arm.  About the time I had had put two and two together there was a small blue spark, like a miniature light bolt that ran up the edge of the metal  planning form toward the plan I held in my right hand.  It startled me and I released the plan and it thumped onto the table top.  I took a step back from the work bench.  I figured a little space between me and this lightening stuff would be wise.  Then the thin little sliver of blue light jumped to the piece of bamboo that was lying in the grove of the planning form and then traveled slowly up the bamboo and then jumped off to the little block plan forming a glowing plasma cloud  enveloping the plan.

The apparition spoke to me once again and said,” please continue your planning, he has come from another deminson and his time is limited.” So, I grasped the plan slowly in my hand while the fingers in my left hand pressed the bamboo holding it stationary in the planning form.  As I began to plan down the strip of bamboo the little lightening bolt traveled down the planning form across the bamboo up on the plan and along my arm across my chest into the other arm and down onto the planning form.  I felt a warm sensation throughout my entire upper body.  As I planed the bamboo…longer curls than usual came off the bamboo strip and rolled in slow motion out of the plan coming to rest on the work bench before me.  I had the feeling I was becoming one with the process at hand.  Even my eyes had become clearer and I was seeing details that I had never seen before.

Then all of the sudden the lady ghost disappeared and a translucent figure appeared beside me and I recognized it to be the form of the Master himself “Edmund Everett Garrison.  He had a gentle smile on his face and with telepathic thought asked me, “can I hold onto the block plan”.  I simply nodded my head and said, “I would be honored Mr. Garrison.”  He positioned himself over the planning form and went to work.  There was a gentle glow that preceded his plan as he moved it down the bamboo. He then simply ran his fingers along it and said, “It is now perfect, thank you”.  His image faded away and in its place the lady apparition reappeared.  She thanked me and acknowledged that I had many questions and that she would answer as many as she could but her time was limited also.  I asked her, “Who are you”?  She said, “I’m your guardian angle and I have helped you many times throughout your life time.” She went on to explain that spirits of those who have died, who at one time possessed extreme passions such as the one Mr. Garrison demonstrated for handcrafting bamboo fly rods were often allowed to massage themselves against other artists and craftsman who were still on the earthly plane.  The result of this type of contact with the spirit world sometimes was the necessary catalyst for an artist to develop his art to a higher level thus approaching perfection.  She defined this as  “the intuitive level of understanding”.  These Masters developed their craft from the source of “pure love” and that contact with the lower level artist actually helped elevate humanities evolution along the spiral of consciousness.

She smiled and said, “Your passions are worthy and your time is not wasted.” She then disappeared and I woke up.  As I laid there in bed, moonlight and darkness, I felt a sense of understanding and realized that perhaps my  little bamboo fly rods are tools that some of us use to gain another step of the ladder of consciousness.