Photo Memories

Lately Google has been sending me “photo memories.” Six years ago, four, three, highlights from 2021, etc. The best of April. And, usually, it’s a picture of my tent (or an old tent before my current one) set up somewhere remote: a hillside in the Scottish highlands, next to the GAP, Greater Allegheny Passage trail outside of Pittsburgh, a flashback to my Lewis & Clark trip, or my ride from Amsterdam to Norway. All these photo memories seem a million years ago.

It is the selection, the zeroing in on the epic, that moment either early morning or at night setting up camp, alone, just me the tent and grassland or trees. It’s as if Google is teasing me—remember! See you are not gone, you are here!

For some I’m sure, as soon my photo stream will only contain one kind of photo, pics of family, the baby, the grandkids, friends eating on the back deck. I dream of it reflecting other lives—not enticing me to come away, to go live with the fairies in a netherland, between everyday reality and the ghosts of yesterday.