The Adventure of Weekend Fishing Trips

  

     A lot of my friends look at fishing as a useless waste of time.When we discuss the hobby, those who don't see the value in it often reference some time that they had been forced by some close relative to spend a morning or even a weekend away from television, their computer, and other modern comforts of home. They talk about how cold or icky the air was around the water, how difficult it was to prepare the necessary equipment, how easy it was to tangle and lose the aforementioned equipment, and generally how their lives would have been much easier had they not gone because they didn't catch anything anyways.

     When I took several pictures of this weekends end-of-good-weather fishing trip, I tried to show how the pass time that many consider dull or old fashioned, even the parts of it that are commonly perceived as negative, are really the makings of adventure.

     Nature is so much bigger than the apartments or even the towns that we frequent every day. As a result the experiences that happen out in space can seem to make you part of something much larger, even universal, than simply the goings on of a defined living space, work space or classroom.

     Sometimes you do get wet, muddy, or shiver endlessly while you're outdoors, but that accident becomes a part of the adversity that helps you appreciate the experience. As a society we have characterized the justification for quiet outdoor recreation as a ol' fuddy-duddy father telling his skeptical son that the miserable time that they are spending together is meant "to build character". The pessimism is already assumed. Fewer and fewer seem to side with the father, although the attributes he is trying to instill in his child are traits that are commonly cited as having gone missing from the makeup of recent generations.

       The trophies that fishing grants aren't actually fish themselves. The fish, "the-one-that-got-away" stories, the pictures, and the other memories that each individual trip provide are simply representations of what the real reward of an outing is: adventure.