throwback to reality
Posting about my travels is relatively easy, it's fun, it's vacation, exploration, learning, seeing and doing new things, being with family, meeting new people. It's about looking through my lens and freezing a moment in time with my shutter, and then sharing it with anyone who's interested enough to see it. Traveling takes you from the ordinary, from routine and places you into the unfamiliar. Travel has always been for me a fulfilling education and an opportunity to gain perspective, to learn who I am in relation to the larger picture.
My mom first introduced me to travel and exploration when I was barely 4 years old. My mom bought a VW camper bus, loaded us up and off we went to travel West and see the US of A. I still have the photos from that trip. We stayed on an indian reservation in Arizona, I bathed in a tin bucket near the rim of the Grand Canyon, we skied Arapahoe Basin, it was a grand adventure, my young mom and me! And I believe that is most likely when the adventurous spirit became a part of who I am today. Why I have such a curiosity about seeing the world.
Before and after that trip in the VW bus, my mom and I lived in Woodstock, Vermont. And I spent a large majority of my young life with my grandparents (Zaza and Pop) on their property outside of town. I walked much of the property every Fall with my grandfather posting the land to keep unknown hunters off of their property. I swam in their pond endlessly searching for polly wogs and salamanders. I drew with my grandmother, we read books, we laid in the sun. My grandmother had traveled the world and her home was filled with articles collected in her travels, it was an adventure to hear her stories of where an object came from. My childhood memories are most present at my grandparents home. And at a young age I remember saying to them, some day I would like to live here. I remember the conversation vividly, and I remember their response. Over the years the conversation would resurface and my sentiments remained the same, I would like to live here someday.
When I was in 4th grade, my uncle Jon died in a hang gliding accident, he was only 24 years old. Losing uncle Jon punctuated all of our lives. My grandparents created a legal cemetery at the top of their land to place Jon, to keep him near, to continue to share the land with him. Fast forward to today, and Jon is joined at the top of the hill with my grandfather Pop, my great grandfather, my great grandmother, my mom, and now my grandmother Zaza. And the reality of "living here someday" is now here.
When you are young, your dreams and visions seem so real, so possible and yet so distant. Those conversations about me living at Zaza and Pops were real and believable and felt so far in the distance. That while I imagined living there, I didn't imagine what it would feel like the day I had to decide if I really was going to live there. Zaza passed away last September, and now I am faced with the decision of my grandparents home and property. Do I take it over, or do I let it fade away and become part of another family? If decisions were only made from the heart this would be easy. Decisions of this magnitude require more than heart, they require reality and heart and the decision has to feel right in my soul. I need to go take a walk, a long walk around the land and up to the hill to know my answer, to make this decision. Stay tuned...
the images are:
me, my mom and I
zaza and I, my mom, uncle Jon and I
my mom, me with a ball in my sweater!
me posing with one of zaza's sculptures