Sparking Memories

As I get older (and hope­fully wiser), I appre­ci­ate the power of pic­tures and sto­ry­telling to engrave mem­o­ries in my brain. Shar­ing high­lights of a trip with friends and fam­ily is one pow­er­ful way to rein­force the mem­o­ries…

Deer Har­bor view

Iconic pic­tures — the ones you show over and over — spark mem­o­ries. Unique fla­vors or aro­mas are also pow­er­ful mem­ory trig­gers.

There are the beau­ti­ful snap­shots…

Boat with green­ery grow­ing inside

…and the quirky ones, the ones that cap­ture some idio­syn­cratic aspect of a place.

Like gar­den fea­tures, local land­scape design, fences or build­ing styles.

Or funny signs you encounter in out-of-the-way places, like a pub­lic walk­ing path on Orcas Island, well past the Deer Har­bor marina.

No park­ing sign on pub­lic path

Wear­ing an out­fit or using some­thing (like hand­made pot­tery) that you bought while trav­el­ing.

Read­ing a mag­a­zine arti­cle, a blog post, or a story set in that city or locale.

Some­times mem­o­ries are trig­gered by savor­ing rec­ol­lec­tions of a spe­cial meal, like a birth­day or anniver­sary din­ner.

Per­haps you try recipes from a cook­book pro­duced by a celebrity chef who made her mark in a restau­rant you expe­ri­enced (or wanted to visit.)

Some­times you over­hear peo­ple on an air­plane or the sub­way, talk­ing about places you’ve vis­ited. You may jump into their con­ver­sa­tion, and share some rec­om­men­da­tions.

Or you see spe­cialty items in local stores that come from places you love to visit. Like that spe­cial Parisian per­fume.

And you can’t help but grum­ble about how much less they cost there than here! Even after the con­ver­sion from euros to dol­lars.

Some­times you watch a roman­tic movie or a travel doc­u­men­tary on TV, and say to your sig­nif­i­cant other, “Remem­ber when we…?”

And some­times it’s as sim­ple as see­ing the pack­ing list from an ear­lier trip, if you come from a fam­ily of list mak­ers, as I do…

The many joys of travel…