I’ve always been disgusted by earthworms. The slightest thought of their fleshy, segmented bodies and erratic writhing brought bile to my throat. One can imagine my surprise as I found myself handling them as bait with my bare hands.

Perhaps it was the mountain air, replete with the smell of nature and a freshness so unusual for China’s atmosphere. It moved and it carried: willow branches billowed in its wake and the wild symphony of frogs’ mating calls and ducks’ crude quacks reverberated with its flow. Perhaps it was the morbid manner with which I handled the worms as I tugged one out of the soil and pinched it in half with my fingernails. As it thrashed about in my palm, I watched mustard-like lymphatic fluid ooze out of its gaping wound before impaling it with a hook. It let out a sickening squelch. Perhaps the last month in China had hardened me and enhanced my tolerance for the disgusting. Or, perhaps, I was too bored to give a damn.

With the bait strung, I clasped the line between my thumb and index finger and slowly tugged downward. I felt the tension build up before letting go, and with a graceful swish, it arced into the middle of the mountain creek. A gentle plop accompanied the resulting ripple, and the hook sank through the surface right between the two big rocks in the water. People told me I was a natural; I told them I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be at the apartment with the laptop and the Wi-Fi, staying up late at night to Google-chat my friends—my lucky friends who didn’t have to spend their summers in China. I didn’t want to be fishing.

But here I was, sitting against a large marble slab that jutted out of the creek’s bank and holding a thin, indigo fishing pole in my right hand. There was no reel. It was just me and the fish, connected by a pole, a line, a hook, and a disgusting earthworm. Humans and fish probably have different opinions, but we apparently agreed that the earthworm was repulsive because nothing was biting. I could only sit there, counting the alternating orange and green stripes on the float. It bobbed a few inches above the water’s surface, and its white underside remained submerged, invisible to my eyes. When you saw it, you knew you had a fish.

There were 15 stripes: eight orange and seven green. I knew there were 15 stripes (eight orange and seven green) because I had to have counted those stripes at least a hundred times as I sat there. At one point, I started to wonder: Why orange and green? Was there a reason why the float was painted these two colors? Sitting in a place so alive with nature and so silent with the absence of man tends to make the only human there ask questions, so my mind kept going: Why did I care whether there was a reason they used these two colors? Why did I ask myself these questions? Were these the questions I ought to be asking? If not, what should I be asking? Why was I even there? Why wasn’t I back at home? Why does it matter where I am? Does it matter where I am? Does it even matter whether I am something at all? What’s with all these questions? Why were there eight orange stripes and seven green? Why a white underside?

The white underside! It was no longer submerged; there was a fish on the line! Excited, I jerked the pole upward with a sharp tug and the fight was on. My grip tightened until the palms of my hands whitened, and I felt the vibrations—the waves of strength that poured through our connection as the fish struggled to be free in the depths below. The feeling was unlike anything I had ever felt, and even though I was shaking from exhilaration at the same time, I knew this torrent of energy was unmistakably the result of his valiant struggle for emancipation. Here was a fish, a mere tiny fraction of my mass, swimming against my muscles with his. I didn’t have a reel, but he didn’t have a stone slab to push against. He also had a hook—and worse, a worm—in his mouth. I pushed the sympathy out of my mind and continued to tug, feeling the vibrations becoming less frequent, less rhythmic, and more intense. The fish was losing energy. As I guided him toward the bank, first right then left, I lived through my hands. My ears lost the sound of the running streams and quacking ducks. My nose lost the smell of fresh mountain air. My eyes lost the sight of orange and green stripes. My brain lost the stream of questions. Sensations defined me; all my nerves funneled into my tactile sense. I felt everything. It was a feeling so foreign that it was like feeling nothing at all, and it went on for a few more long seconds before the fish surfaced with a splash of surrender. My senses returned to normal, and my tongue gained the taste of victory.

I looked down at the fish. It was a beautiful grass carp, glimmering a golden tan in the morning sun. As he wriggled on the rock beneath my feet, he looked up at me with a never-blinking eye, gasping for air with rhythmic alterations of open and closed lips. It was as if he was trying to tell me the answers to my questions. I knew it was impossible—my questions didn’t have answers. But I also knew now that the answers did not matter.

I released him back into the water and watched the spot where his body turned invisible under the surface, trying to imagine what our moment together had been like for him. I couldn’t. Alas, fish and humans have different opinions, and I sat back down and reached for my rod. With a smile and a squelch, I hooked another worm, cast the bait between the two rocks, and started counting orange and green all over again.