IAN YOUNG
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older and they hummed a mystery.”
IAN YOUNG grew up in Rock Hill, South Carolina, just south of Charlotte, North Carolina. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in secondary education from the University of South Carolina, and is currently teaching high school history in his hometown. The son of a school teacher and a South Carolina Department of Natural Resource law enforcement officer, Ian spent his summers and vacations on public lands where he developed a love of rivers and streams, particularly the small freestone streams of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ian spends weekends fishing for wild native brook trout in Pisgah National Forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He has been involved in conservation work with Pisgah TU, U.S. Forest Service, and National Park Service, and looks to help build a relationship between Native Fish Coalition and these organizations. One of Ian’s goals is to catch each fish species/subspecies in Dr. Robert Behnke’s Trout and Salmon of North America. Ian can be reached at info@nativefishcoalition.org
