This Time of Year

About this time last year I was prepping for my trip to Switzerland/Germany/Rhine River Bike Ride—

This year, my bus trip to Traverse City and biking around Sleeping Bear Dunes.

I’ve always maintained a nature shelf. My daughter now has one for both her children. I change things out as the seasons change. I can see from the mementos on the shelf and various ephemera bike trips I’ve made through the years.

In 2016 I made a fall trip from John of Groats in the northernmost of the UK down to Land’s End in Cornwall. In 2014 I made a trip over to Sweden to visit friends, which included a hapless backpacking jaunt and biking around Gotland—an island off the mainland. I love looking at my postcards and small finds.

The word souvenir comes from the French meaning a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event. to remember, come

First recorded in 1775 as meaning “a remembrance or memory,” the noun souvenir stems from the French souvenir “to remember, come to mind.” A few years later, it took on the sense of “a token” of an event or experience.

This is how memory works. We pick up what we are attracted to and carry it along—even if it ends up peripheral to the main event. It’s the little things that seem to collect on the bottom of our shoes. I’ll hold on my hand the hedgehog I found at a gift shop on another small island off the island of Gotland that I accidentally visited on that 2014 trip to Sweden. While holding the hedgehog I’ll remember the candlelit church where a choir sang vespers—my last stop of the evening on Fårö. I used my bike light to get back to the hostel.

What is it that you hold dear? What memories do you carry? What does the autumn season stir up in you?