(FORTUNE Small Business) – FLY-FISHING

First off, this sport isn't about reaching any sort of climax. Yes, you are supposed to catch fish, but focusing on those fleeting moments--if they happen at all--detracts from the sum total experience. And what an experience it is! Fly-fishing, I've decided, is really the centerpiece of a great American male walkabout. The other pieces include: total deep-woods immersion; endless obsessing over gadgetry and gear; the pursuit of poker; the pursuit of booze; and, most of all, a wholesale blanking out of one's life. You don't think out there. You just want to be.

"Out there," I should tell you, is a private fishing camp along the pristine, thickly forested Maine-Canada border. The camp is truly one of those "can't get theya from heya" places, accessible by motor launch across what's called a pond but which is really a good-sized lake. The motif is rustic. Like pre-World War I rustic. No phones (mobiles don't work either) and no electricity. No radios. A half-dozen cabins sleeping four or six men in bunks. Gas-lit.

There are ten of us on the trip, mostly businessmen. After an arduous escape from civilization, we arrive exactly at cocktail hour. (Ahhh!) Soon enough we amble over to dinner, served by a pair of waitresses who graciously put up with our bottomless pit of puns. After supping, I go for a quick evening fish right out in front of the cabins with Frank King, founder and former CEO of Concero, a tech firm based in Austin, Texas. I row, Frank fishes. "Why do you fish, Frank?" I ask in the magnificent gloaming, as if it weren't obvious. He comes back pretty quickly: "You watch golf on TV and you say to yourself, 'I'm never going to be able to do that.' That's not the case with fishing." Then, as the color leaves the sky, he continues: "There's also the mystery of what lies under the water," he says. "The unknown."

The next morning, over a de rigueur breakfast of blueberry pancakes, assignments are made. Our group of ten gets paired into five teams, each with a Maine Guide. These crack woodsmen--characters one and all--are members of an elite fraternity, like the Texas Rangers, I suppose, or the French Foreign Legion. Their job is to help you hunt and fish the state of Maine. The skill level of our group ranges from less than zero (moi) to, in a couple of cases, guys that the guides grudgingly admit aren't bad. That means these men are so expert they don't work anymore and pretty much fish full-time.

Did I catch fish? Let's forget that for a minute and talk about clothing. If you plan to go fly-fishing, you'll need the basics: any kind of outdoor shoes. Socks! Long pants (wear shorts and your legs become a bug restaurant). A T-shirt under a long-sleeve shirt (from Orvis, the Nike of the fly-fishing world, if you are stylish, but muted in any case so as not to scare the fish) and a fleece over that. A hat. Polarized sunglasses. A nylon backpack or bag. Bug spray (preferably Deet, which if applied in large doses is said to render you sterile). And a full set of rain gear. If you don't bring all that stuff, you will at some time--or more likely the whole time--be uncomfortable.

Then there's the gear. You can spend as much money as you want on gear, but a decent reel these days from Orvis or L.L. Bean starts at $200. High-end rods, made by a company called Sage, go for $350. Line will run around $90. Then there are all sorts of other hard-core accouterments like clips and magnifying spectacles--"which really function as expensive jewelry, since the guides do all the work," Glenn Hutchins, a tech investor at Silver Lake Partners, points out. As for flies, they, too, are worthy of a lengthy dissertation. Purists try to "match the hatch," meaning they put flies on or in the water that match the bugs the fish are currently eating. On this trip we use the doodle bug, looked down on by cognoscenti because it doesn't imitate any bug, though it does work. We also use flies that mimic the caddis and mayfly and sport names like the muddler, the hornberg, and the mickey finn. For nighttime fishing we employ the green drake and the hex mayfly (otherwise known as the hexagina lambata). Of course, there is extended conversation about all this.

Did I catch anything? Before getting into that, realize that the whole point of the exercise is to confer as many advantages to the fish as possible. The easiest way to catch fish is with live bait. Which to a fly-fisherman would be as sacrilegious as, say, wearing a Walkman. Trolling with a lure? Anathema. Casting with a lure? Frowned upon. Here it's strictly flies and barbless hooks. As for prey, we're looking for brook trout. Beautifully speckled, six-inch to 14-inch fish--every single one of them smarter than I am.

We drive out to various isolated ponds with our guides and set out in Rangely boats that are about 15 feet in length, one fisherman in the bow, one in the stern, the guide in the middle rowing. How hard is fly-fishing? I'd put it somewhere between learning how to ride a bike (as a grownup!) and windsurfing. Which means your first morning (or your first five years) may be very frustrating. You have to truck with a peculiar motion where you wave the rod over your head back and forth--just like in A River Runs Through It--from ten o'clock to two o'clock. "I always say 11 o'clock and one o'clock," says guide Mark Hinkley. "Everyone overdoes it."

Lunch comes, the group convenes on a remote point, and the guides light cooking fires. Our group is graced by one Alan Sussna, a.k.a. "Suss," a.k.a. the Sausage King of Chicago. (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, remember?) Al is CEO of Atlantic Premium Brands (ticker: ABR), and every year he ships into camp massive varietals of bacon--plain, pepper, and cajun--and sausages. They serve as appetizers. Then come steak, chicken, and roasted onions washed down with lemonade. We also cook a fish for good measure (though we are 95% catch-and-release). "Didn't bring no salad," a guide reports with a grin. Just get in the way, we all agree. Flasks with bourbon and single malt are passed, which go nicely avec peanut butter cookies. We pitch a few horseshoes and then we're back, slightly bleary, in the boats.

You can chat in the boat--and some do, nonstop--or remain silent. Either way, you must concentrate on your fly, which is tough if you haven't had a strike all day. There is no pattern to fish biting. Sometimes you watch your partner haul 'em in hand over fist. Other times there is absolutely nothing. For hours. But there are loons and deer and beavers. And that's where the deep blanking out comes in. I engage in much of this and find it incredibly refreshing.

Around 5:30, we head home for cocktails and dinner. Then comes another significant piece of the trip: poker, which, pun intended, is not my strong suit. The stakes are low, i.e., everyone starts with $25, but it's hardly comforting knowing I'm up against the likes of Paul Barth, a CEO who sports a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT. Fortunately, Barth has enjoyed the cocktails as much as I have, and he plays about as well as I do. (Somehow after two nights we both end up slightly in the black.) We collapse in our bunks 'round midnight. Back up at seven, repeat the process. Trust me, you could get a pretty good rhythm going up here. And I do.

Did I catch anything? "You come for the experience," says Hinkley. "I can't guarantee you'll catch fish. But you will have a total experience." As he completes the thought, a wind whips across the lake and a loon lets loose with its haunting cry. That's another thing you learn up here: The guide is always right. After three days (and one shower!), just as I'm getting a good feel for casting and seriously considering dropping out of life, I have to go back. And so I return home, mellowed out, and with a new appreciation of process. Oh, and by the way, I caught two fish. They were probably just being nice to me.

YOGA BOOT CAMP

'Imagine that your nipples are Krazy-Glued to your thighs," my yoga instructor explains, meandering through rows of bent bodies. It's troubling imagery but meant to be inspiring. My hands are pinned below my feet, head down, nose just inches from my knees. I try not to think about Krazy Glue anywhere near my nipples.

Deep forward bends were only a small part of the challenge I faced on an eight-day yoga boot-camp trip to Mexico. There were also 6 A.M. wake-up calls, a two-day fruit fast, daily meditation, and serious mosquitoes. I signed up right before graduating from business school because the celebrating was killing me. I wasn't getting enough sleep, exercise was sporadic at best, and my regular diet had come to include pizza at three in the morning, even on weeknights. I'd been to some power yoga classes at a Cambridge, Mass., studio run by Baron Baptiste, the yoga equivalent of Jack Welch. In addition to regular classes, Baptiste organizes weeklong retreats at locations around the world. As I read on his Website, "Attending a Baptiste boot camp is an opportunity to transform your life.... Our program is a highly dynamic combination of Power Vinyasa Yoga, meditation for truthful living, cleansing diet, hiking, swimming, and having tons of fun in beautiful and potent locations." Those potent locations included Montana, Costa Rica, and India, but Mexico was next on the schedule. I decided to make it a graduation present to myself and imagined emerging with the body of Madonna and the spiritual enlightenment of Buddha.

Maya Tulum, our retreat resort, is 90 minutes south of Cancun. The accommodations consist of simple thatched-roof palapas, or huts, scattered along sandy pathways near the beach. I paid extra for a "super deluxe" room, which means that my roommate and I have our own bathroom. The people who opted for standard lodging share common baths and showers in a separate hut. My bed is suspended on a platform that hangs from the ceiling and is draped with mosquito netting, and whole conch shells are embedded in the walls. The bathroom is rustic but clean. We shower in slightly brown water, and we have to throw our used toilet paper into a trash can instead of the usual receptacle, which conjures images of toilet paper floating off into the Gulf of Mexico. I am looking for inner peace, but to be honest I miss the power flush.

A few hours after checking in, we begin our first yoga session. I glance around to assess how well I'll hold up. Fortunately, the experience levels--and motivations for coming--vary widely. My roommate had recently quit a struggling dot-com and wanted to lose a little weight, gain strength, and reassess her life. A software executive I'd met at the airport hadn't had a vacation in a year and wanted time for introspection and exercise. A few smokers express their hope to kick the habit. One man admits he's looking for a wife. I check him out but think better of changing my original goal. This is a spiritual journey, not a week at Hedonism.

Each day begins with a wake-up knock on the palapa door at 6 A.M., a quick breakfast, a long walk on the beach, and then lots and lots of yoga. We practice for five hours a day, three hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. I'm in pretty good shape, but three hours is a long time to spend doing anything. I have trouble sitting through a three-hour movie. In the afternoons we sometimes sit in the "frog" position (crouching on your forearms and knees, legs spread, head resting by someone else's foot) for 20 minutes. I often look around the room during frog because I can endure only five minutes, but I'm proud of my roommate for holding out longer. I also can't help noticing that boot camp's most eligible bachelor usually skips the afternoon sessions. When people start groaning, Baron assures us that the point of failure is merely an opportunity for breakthrough. I hear someone mumble, "Yeah, right."

Yoga is often perceived to be a quiet form of exercise, emphasizing flexibility, balance, and sometimes strength. All that is true, but power yoga is supersized and turbocharged. It is cardio, abs, muscle work, and inner peace all rolled into one. Baptiste, the son of two pioneers in the American yoga scene, has been practicing his entire life and developed power yoga by synthesizing his experience in other traditional practices. He has trained Elisabeth Shue, Helen Hunt, and the Philadelphia Eagles, and recently signed a multimillion-dollar deal to write two books on power yoga for Simon & Schuster. At boot camp he sports surf shorts, a T-shirt, and a bandanna, and he enters the sessions like the lead singer in a band, his adoring fans ready to rock their bodies and their spirits.

Unfortunately the vigorous exercise regimen isn't supplemented by a lot of carbo-loading or protein feasts. Early in the week we eat tropical fruit, homemade ginger and banana bread, salads, soup, vegetables, and fish. In the middle of the week we eat nothing but fruit during a 48-hour fruit fast that has been feared by many. Rumors of contraband float throughout the camp, and my roommate admits that she smuggled in trail mix and some pretzels as backup. We hear about previous boot campers who sneaked out for burritos and Snickers bars and later paid the price with hefty gastrointestinal discomfort. Although the fast wasn't something I'd repeat on my own, it is survivable, and when it ends on Thursday afternoon, we celebrate with hearty muffins. My roommate and I had been excited about the state of our flattening bellies, but we devour two each. I see one of the smokers light up after a muffin. People frolic in the ocean. It's like a Roman orgy.

On the last evening we gather in the yoga room for our nightly session of reflection. After eight days, I try to think of a time when my system had been so clean. My conclusion: not since sleeping in a crib. My roommate has resisted her trail mix, and her shorts are now baggy. The software exec I'd met at the airport admits to a potentially life-changing experience. The guy looking for a wife says he has a few options in mind.

But while self-declared transformations like those sound impressive, I'm not fully convinced they'll last. The next day, waiting at the airport for my flight, I watch two fellow boot campers order beer, coffee, eggs with cheese, and hash browns. I pretend not to be jealous and sip from a bottle of water, telling myself to stay strong. But already doubts are forming. It's easy to live cleanly in such a controlled, beautiful setting, but sticking with it is a lot tougher. The only solution? Another boot camp. Maybe I'll go to Costa Rica next time.