Nick Adams Timeline and Summary

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• Nick gets off the train at Seney. It’s different from the last time he was there. Very different.
• Looks like Nick’s headed for the river. He sees some trout holding themselves at the bottom and feels a tight sensation.
• Happily, Nick starts to hike, but his pack is really heavy. We learn that he’s trying to leave things like thinking behind him.
• Nick rests and watches a blackened grasshopper crawl up his sock. He realizes that the grasshoppers are all black because they’ve been living in the burnt country.
• After miles of hiking Nick takes a well-earned nap in the shade. When he wakes up, it’s almost sunset.
• Nick makes for the river and chooses a place to set up camp. He pitches his tent and hangs up his gear with precision, feeling good about doing so.
• Nick cooks dinner and makes some coffee according to the method of someone named Hopkins. As it turns out, Hopkins was a wealthy friend of his, but he never saw Hopkins again.
• Nick goes to bed in the tent, but not before killing a mosquito.
• The next morning Nick catches grasshoppers in a bottle as bait for the day’s fishing.
• He makes some pancakes and packs some sandwiches for lunch, straps on all of his fishing gear, and makes a bee-line for the river.
• The first trout Nick catches he puts back, remarking about how he prefers to fish alone. The second one is too big, and Nick loses him.
• Shaken, Nick climbs out onto the bank to smoke a cigarette.
• The next trout is a keeper, and Nick puts him in a bag.
• There is an overhanging elm tree that Nick doesn’t trust. He doesn’t want his line to get caught in it.
• Nick catches another trout hiding in a hollow log.
• Two trout are plenty. Nick pulls himself onto the log and looks ahead to the dark, dense swamp. He thinks about how tragic the fishing would be in that swamp and decides not to fish there this time around.
• Nick guts and cleans the two fish he has, thinking that there will be plenty of days ahead to fish in the swamp.