The author's short stories tell of a lifetime of fishing adventures, from the time he was a teenager floating the Cowpasture River to age 83 when he caught a 10-pound rainbow trout. But this small book is more deeply about how he used fishing as a "positive" addiction to calm his cyclothymia-a mild version of bipolar disorder. Fishing enabled him to have a generally happy and productive life despite this mild handicap. He used fishing, and especially fly fishing, to help him navigate the tough times in his life.
Full Circle tells stories of not only catching fish, but of harrowing experiences in some of the wildest and most beautiful waters in the United States---of being treed by a mother grizzly with cubs in Yellowstone to nearly falling to his death in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Among his other stories is one about his fifth-great grandmother who after being captured by the Shawnees in 1755, escaped and made her way back through the wilderness to her home in Virginia.
Van Lear was the Robert Adger Bowen Professor of Forestry at Clemson University when he retired in 2005. He is also a life member of Trout Unlimited and received their Distinguished Service Award in 2010 for his nearly 20 years of leading projects for the Chattooga River Chapter to restore trout habitat and helping to bring back the southern Appalachian brook trout to the mountains of South Carolina. He has published two books since his retirement, Memories Made and Lessons Learned during a Lifetime of Angling, and Turning Points in the Life of a Fisherman.