a deeper picture 

A Deeper Picture

By Hunter Redfield

February 21, 2019

To them, it's a picture of a kid wearing a rain jacket with a fly rod perfectly balanced on his back, holding a net with a yellow fish a few inches above the water and smiling...but it's more than that. 

They don't see the two nights prior laying on the couch on google maps trying to find places to hit the next morning or the struggle of waking up in the morning and having to change plans you made at midnight.

They see a yellow fish. They don't see all the fish caught the day before. 

They don't see the super intense games of ping pong or all the coke cans on the floor. They don't know about the text at midnight from my mom to be quiet because ping pong was getting too intense, the four episodes of Friends that soon followed, or a mother waking up two hours early to drop her son and a friend off at a stream before work.

They don’t see all the flies we lost in that pine tree that sheltered a second yellow fish or how even though we weren’t well suited for fishing in the rain, Jacob really pulled off that blue poncho. 

They don’t experience the constant thumping on our heads as the rain plummeted to earth's surface. 

They don’t feel the dozens of times our hearts stopped when one of the yellow ones moved out of their feeding lane to look at and soon reject our flies. 

They saw the picture of when she finally didn’t reject them, and we scrambled through the water trying to net her without spooking any other fish. 

They don’t see me set my rod on a stump afterwards just trying to get my friend a fish or the dozens of times he almost did have one. 

They don’t see us standing in that pull-off in the worst rain of the day, staring at the ground, all the water running across it, trying to depart as quickly as possible. Or the guy who pulled in and laughed at us before throwing it in reverse and offering us a ride out of what seemed like hell. 

They don’t hear all the comments in the truck about how we smelled like wet dogs and have no clue about the contest we won on Instagram. 

They saw a  picture of a kid wearing a rain jacket with a fly rod perfectly balanced on his back, holding a net with a yellow fish a few inches above the water and smiling. 

They don't understand the constant grind we put in to get that fish or what standing in the pouring down rain feels like. 

By just looking at that picture they entered themselves into an entire new realm of amazing without even knowing it. 

They don’t get to experience everything that led up to and followed that yellow fish, they just liked the picture and kept on scrolling. 

They don’t know what they missed out on.