West with the Rise is James Barilla's account of an epic, solitary fishing trip that begins in New England and ends in northern California. WIth little more to keep him company than a graphite rod, a secondhand pickup truck bought for the occasion, and a pair of Nikes he cannot seem to keep dry (they're literally decomposing before his eyes), the author journeys from the spring creeks of the East to big Sky country and its storied trout streams, along a path that parallels his trajectory from the Massachusetts of his childhood to his adult home in the American West.
His days on the water are shaped by meditations on family--specifically, the family he and his wife are planning. More than a preoccupation, the topic is to some extent the inspiration for the trip itself. The couple's years-long quest to have a child has brouhgt them to a variety of fertility specialists and the options they offer, including in vitro fertilization. The author takes up and deliberates on these sensitive matters with the same intelligent and low-key attention to detail with which he describes the water's clarity and the coolness of a newfound fishing ground. The question on his mind is not only one of successful treatment but also of why he should desire a child to begin with and of what he would have to offer as a father.
It is to fly-fishing that Barilla turns for answers. No one would mistake the modern world he travels through for that of the river-going Huck Finn: Barilla drives past strip malls, falls asleep to Dirty Harry playing on his motel-room television, and reads in a trout magazine of a familiar stream now degraded by urban sprawl. But then, as one fishing shop proprietor observes, "No place is what it was." And along his way, the author encounters many settings of uncommon beauty, from Yellow Breeches Creek in Pennsylvania to the Grand Deschutes River in Oregon, each with a singular fishing experience to offer.
For Barilla this journey is a chance to reflect not only on his life as both man and angler but also on his alternately frustrating and rewarding relationship with the outdors, which never ceases to surprise him with its capacity to instruct.
