For a lot of people, scheduling conflicts occur with their church. They may have a baseball game at 10:00, and church at 10:00 also. They have to make a decision on which one to go to. For the Maclean family, it was always fly-fishing. Transcendentalism is asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition. The Maclean family lived in western Montana and was Presbyterian fly fishers. Fly-fishing was their whole life, along with being religious. But fly-fishing is what brought this family together. From Paul being drunk, to Neil from California, nature has an impact on this family. In the novella A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean, transcendentalism is shown through Maclean's connection with nature through fly-fishing, the individualism and self-reliance of Paul and Norman, and their religion.

Fishing requires a pond, stream, lake or ocean. When...