They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm certain I could devote that many, but that's me, as you have no doubt already noticed. But these days, a picture is worth...
- a thousand memories
- a thousand hours of comfort
- a thousand days of not being able to go there myself.
I've put the last few years' worth in this latest laptop, then put them into my wallpaper with a one minute turnover. Every time the screen is not otherwise full, there is something there, randomly selected, a surprise of memories, a feast for the soul.
Some of those are the people from the extended family who were last seen well over a year ago, at the minimum. Since people are what I shoot the fewest pictures of, so many more are my view of the world around me and the travels I've been lucky enough to take through it. Today's opening shot and this last year's events have reminded me of what Rocky Mountain National Park looked like from the top of Trail Ridge, a place I'm not sure I can ever return to since I couldn't make it up there our last visit. I hope the pacemaker will have made the difference and I can return. It won't be the same, but each time it never is. I've shot elk, pika, and marmots up there, various tundra flowers, decreasing ice remnants. Other times, lower elevations, there have been deer, elk, young owl triplets, foxes, beaver, greenback cutthroat trout, eagles, coyotes, foxes, many existing now only in memory or on inaccessible mediums. One single photo can bring all that back - when I give it time.
Some show the close ups I love, all the varieties of daffodils I once planted in the yard in Shafer before various forces winnowed varieties down to a sturdy few, frost patterns on the car windows at sunrise, monarch caterpillars eating the milkweed and butterfly bush, spiders hanging out in wait for their unwary meal, ants crawling all over peony buds. I can compare blossoms from cherries, apples, cranberries, the violets that carpet the lawn before dandelion takeovers, koi and goldfish fry in the pond, frogs poking their noses up next to waterlily blossoms and reflections from both. Many of those photos show details not visible to the naked eye, like the fuzz on a leaf, the sparkle of a petal, or even the tiny bug waiting patiently for a dinner.
There are all the landscapes that caught my eye when it was safe to stop to take a shot, some in places where I never thought anything would ever appeal, yet here is that one lone fall-yellow tree poking out of the tiniest fold in the earth, with just a bit of a fence in the foreground because somewhere in the tens of thousands of acres on the other side might be a few cattle. Not there today, just a "might be". In another, dead tree remains poke out of flooded areas behind a dam, ghosts of what life was like before fishing took claim to the land. Clouds appear in all kinds of tints and shapes, wisps foretelling storms to come, dark bands of rain falling from their bottoms, rainbows glowing after. Ice breaks up along shorelines while Canada geese huddle, waiting to start nesting because they always arrive early. Later shots show goslings and cygnets on parade behind their parents.
If I switch over to a much older laptop, with thousands of photos which have no easy and quick way to be transferred to the newer technology, there are memories of Alaska, almost a substitute for vanished hopes of seeing it again, knowing it too will never be the same, that we who visited will never be the same, and prompting me to try to simply be grateful I live in a time when it was possible to go and see and experience as well as to record and review. Memories are fleeting most times without a nudge.
In those quiet times, when the TV is off, when others sleep, when no book currently demands my attention, and especially when I'm just turning on or off my computer, I have this treasure trove of memories, and all the feelings which travel with them.
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