Environmental Stewardship and a Good Piece of Pie

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

**Mumble Creek Brookie**
*That Stream that Shall Not be Named, Pennsylvania, May 2021*

A few weeks ago here on Cutterlight I published a tribute to a recently passed friend and mentor, Bill Kodrich. Concurrently, I sent the article to the fly-fishing zine Hatch Magazine hoping to get Bill a bit more ink and appreciation. The editor asked for a longer piece, which I was happy to supply. The article went live on Hatch this morning. I wrote the piece as not only a tribute to Bill, but as a reminder of two things to consider as we move through life: That mentorship matters; and that when we join with others and put our shoulders to the wheel, big change is possible. Here’s the link: Environmental Stewardship and a Good Piece of Pie

I hope your day is going well.

A Little Can Go a Long Way: A Testament to Mentorship

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

**Paradise Sunrise** – Salmon water on the Chignik River

It wasn’t so long ago that I was at the stage in life where a number of iconic figures in the art and entertainment world had begun to pass out of this life. I am far from being a celebrity hound, but as I scanned the news headlines each morning, it was always a sad and somewhat mildly shocking thing to see that an actor, singer or other icon I’d long admired had been admitted to a hospital for the kinds of illnesses that portend the end, or that indeed the end had come. The mild shock in such moments stems no doubt from the reminder that in fact we are all, all of us, “in the queue.”

More recently, feathered in among these iconic entertainment artists, the mentor-friends of my boyhood have been departing. The deaths that have hit closest have been among the men with whom I had the honor of hunting and fishing, men who I studied closely and learned from. The lessons included the proper handling of firearms, where to look in a pool for trout, various forms of woodcraft and the like, of course, but more importantly my association with these men provided vital guideposts along my own path toward – and into – adulthood.

I doubt that there was anyone who had a greater influence on my young life than did Bill Kodrich. The winter when I was 12, he taught me to tie flies, the very first of which was a white-winged Coachman… I can still remember my clumsy fingers fumbling to tie in matched sections of Mallard wing. That spring at the small pond on his property, Bill let me borrow one of his fly rods as he showed me how to cast a fly line. Later, he brought me into the fold of Trout Unlimited, an organization in which my wife and I are proud to be life-time members. (Bill, who was a biology professor at Clarion State College/University, served as Pennsylvania’s TU President and in 1991 received TU’s Distinguished Service Award.

As important as those early lessons were, it has been Bill’s example that has had the greater impact. Were one to glance at my various tools, fly boxes, cookware and so forth, one might notice every drill bit accounted for and in its proper place, flies arranged in tidy rows, cookware stored thoughtfully, clean and cared for. “This is the way Bill would do it,” I’ve said to Barbra or thought to myself countless times – and will continue to do so, a fly rod wiped clean and returned to its proper place on wall pegs after a day’s fishing bringing back fond memories of Clarion and of hunting and fishing with Bill and studying his example. In fact, I find that as I pass by vegetable gardens here and there, compared with the impeccably well-ordered rows Bill attended to, all are somewhat wanting. And it’s seldom that I have a really good piece of pie and he doesn’t come to mind. “We’ve got to fuel up if we’re going to be spending the day…” hunting or fishing.

The testament of Bill’s life – of the lives of all of these mentors from my youth – is that even a little attention cast to a young person can have an impact that lasts a lifetime. It is a legacy grander and more meaningful than the largest mansion, a pile of money to the sky, or fame in any measure.

JD, Cordova, Alaska

Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Trout Unlimited

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Daughter Maia works a pool in the canyon country of Oregon’s Deschutes River.

This past summer, we fell in love with the film Away We Go in which Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph) and Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) find themselves in the enviable, daunting and sometimes scary position of realizing that, although they are not wealthy, they can live virtually anywhere they choose to. Their story unfolds as a touching, insightful comedy as they criss-cross North America searching for just the right place.

Verona: I can do my job from anywhere. And all you need’s a phone, right?

Burt: Well, we don’t want to go back to Chicago, do we?

Verona: No, we did Chicago.

Burt: I used to picture myself in Alaska. God, I love that landscape.

Verona: Alaska?

Burt: Yeah.

Verona: You’ve never mentioned Alaska.

Burt: Wow, they pay people to live in Alaska.

Burt’s line about people being paid to live in this great state gets laughs from audiences, although for different reasons depending on who the audience is. While it’s not true that people are paid to live here, there is something called the Permanent Fund. Without getting into the complexities, Alaska’s Permanent Fund is a constitutional provision established in 1976 that, essentially, taps oil revenues allowing the state government to pay an annual check to every Alaskan resident once they’ve lived here one fiscal year. The amount of the check varies from year to year. The current five-year average is $1,341. This year’s payout was lower, but still appreciable at $878.

That’s where Trout Unlimited comes in.

Barbra and I feel a deep commitment to helping to conserve, protect and restore America’s cold water resources. This commitment flows naturally from our love of salmon and trout and the beautiful and often pristine environs they inhabit and depend upon. Protecting our cold water resources, though, is about more than protecting fish. Trout Unlimited has worked in concert with others to bring down dams that are no longer useful – thus restoring countless miles of free flowing rivers and streams. They work with vineyard owners and other farmers to help ensure water-wise land use. And all across the landscape, TU has, for decades, been instrumental in ensuring that mining, timbering and other resource extraction be carried out with sensible respect for its impact on rivers, streams and estuaries when sensible respect is possible, and that extractive industries be turned away when they can’t conduct their business without destroying watersheds.

At present, TU is in the midst of several critical battles. One of them involves a multi-national mining proposal that threatens the world’s greatest salmon estuary, Bristol Bay. The proposed Pebble Mine could wipe out runs that number into the millions of salmon, as well as fishing jobs and subsistence fishing that generations upon generations of Alaskans (and salmon consumers throughout the world) have depended on. TU is also on the vanguard in fighting against irresponsible extraction of natural gas locked underground in Marcellus Shale. The extraction requires fracking, and it is posing a major risk to the streams and rivers I cut my teeth on as a young angler in Western Pennsylvania.

Again, this isn’t just about trout and salmon. We humans, too, drink the water, grow our farms and forests with it, admire its beauty, and are responsible for passing down a legacy of clean water to future generations.

And so, presented with money that is essentially a gift from our adopted state, the choice on how to spend it was easy. This year, Barbra and I will become lifetime members of Trout Unlimited.

After vetting dozens of organizations, we came to feel that in TU, our contributions will support the causes closest to our hearts. Not just for us, but for generations to come.

To read more about TU’s efforts, click on the following links:

Trout Unlimited’s Home Page

Marcellus Shale Project

Bristol Bay