This is his office.
Few have worked harder — or fought longer odds — to arrive at a place of employment as spectacular as this.
And when he talks about the remarkable, against-all-odds journey that has carried him here, Moore — sporting sunglasses, a reddish-brown beard, and a ball cap that has his name stitched across it — widens his smile.
“Throughout my sobriety, I started to find that being sober was really difficult for me,’' he is telling me as we sit on his blue-and-white Arctic Cat Bearcat 2000 snowmobile.
“I found a great deal of peace in the wilderness, hunting and fishing,’' he added. “And I started to notice that early in sobriety, I thought about drinking from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to bed. Except when I was fishing.’'
Fishing. The sport he learned as a kid when he drifted off to sleep with visions of the fictional frontier woodsman Grizzly Adams dancing in his head has — without a word of hyperbole — rescued him.
“It played a huge part,’' he said. “Just to give me some peace.
“A lot of why I drank was because of the uncomfortable feeling either with who I was or not knowing who I was. It always made me uncomfortable. So that played a huge part in being able to say, ‘OK, there’s a way to stay sober and a place I can go to find some peace.’ If just being sober isn’t enough.’’
Today, sober for 28 years, he is fully a man at peace. A grandfather twice over. And a very busy guy.
No more hangovers and bad decisions. No more empty bank accounts and lost weekends.
Moore, who operates Tim Moore Outdoors, a fishing guide service based in Barrington, has watched as his business has grown by 50 percent. A day on the ice with him costs $400. The man knows how to fish.
And his customers know it.
“Yeah, I caught a lake trout, a cusk, some perch, and a big salmon, too,’' Spencer Kotas of Nebraska told me the other morning after spending six hours on the lake with Moore. “Once you get a fish on there, you warm right up even though it’s cold out. It’s the adrenaline.’'
Tim Moore, 48, knows all about adrenaline.
And he knows about human nature, too. He’s taken a life course in it. Observing human nature up close and personal from his seat just above a small hole in ice that measures up to 40 inches thick.
For example:
“I had this guy and I literally couldn’t get a word in edgewise,’' he recalled. “There was no conversation. Just me listening to him all day long. He was older. Retired. He was mid- to upper-60s. And he just drove me nuts, talking all day.’'
The guy’s stories were endless. Moore was tempted to tell the man to take a breath. And take a break.
“I brought him back to his vehicle at the end of the day and we were saying our goodbyes and he said, ‘You know, I really needed this.’ He said, ‘My wife was recently diagnosed with a rare disease that has caused her to go deaf and I have no one to talk to.’
“I almost burst into tears. That was three or four years ago. He comes every year ice fishing. I’m so glad I didn’t say anything. He needed that.’'
And then there was the little 5-year-old who accompanied his father to a fishing class Moore was teaching at the Kittery Trading Post.
“They ended up booking a trip and he’s one of the coolest 5-year-old kids I’ve ever met in my entire life,’' Moore told me. “He’s so funny and smart. He tells knock-knock jokes all day long. He isn’t afraid to give it to me if I make a mistake driving my boat. He said, ‘I don’t think you know how to drive very well, Captain Tim.’ He’s demoted me to first mate on my own boat.’'
He also drew a colorful picture for Captain Tim.
“It said, ‘I love you, Tim. Love, Owen.’ And it was a picture of a rabbit fishing, which was kind of strange but super cute. They came in the fall fishing for crappies in my boat. And when they arrived, I said, ‘Did you have to wake him up to get out of the car? And the dad said, ‘Wake him up? He got up at 4:30 and started drawing you a picture.’ ’'
Stories like those are pure gold in this age of the pandemic, which, strangely, has been a boon to business propelled by fresh air and wide open spaces.
“My business has blown up this year,’' Moore said. “I’ve done a record number of trips. It was people who were staying here because of COVID. Maybe they have a summer house and they decided to stay late in the year.
“People would tell me: ‘We’re not eating out. I don’t stop for coffee on my way home from work because I work from home now. And I’m not spending money on this and I’m not spending money on that. We haven’t taken any vacations and I’m watching my bank account go up. But I’m also going stir crazy.’ ’'
So they find their way to this spectacular lake. And they step into Tim Moore’s office. Tim Moore’s classroom, where the most important lesson is blissful serenity.
“You have to be able to read people. And figure out a way to meet them on their level.’'
Tim Moore knows how to do that.
He knows how to fish, too.
Just ask customers like Kotas and Mandi Simants of Maxwell, Neb., who went out ice fishing with Moore the other morning at 7 a.m. Four hours later, they walked off the ice wearing broad smiles.
“I was a little nervous about it being cold,’' added Mandi Simants. “But he had a little pop-up and a heater if we needed it. It wasn’t too bad. Really. It’s gorgeous. There are mountains literally all around.’'
Nature’s splendor. It’s Tim Moore’s office.
And, it turns out, his savior.
Thomas Farragher is a Globe columnist. He can reached at thomas.farragher@globe.com.
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He knows how to catch fish — and the serenity to be found on the ice of a snow-frosted mountain lake - The Boston Globe
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