Memories That Can’t Be Caught on Camera

As I read Potts’ December 27 daily meditation last year (just a few days ago), it gratified my distain for the current culture trend to take photos of everything and everyone in them.

Rolf Potts writes in his book, The Vagabond’s Way, December 27, on page 377, “Make peace with the quiet banalities of domestic familiarity and let memories of past journeys blend with a dream of future ones.”

I’d rather muse over memories of past travels and allow them to blend with the anticipation of future journeys. Today, I recall trips where I could not have expected experiences to offer such magical memories, and I could not have captured the experience in a picture.

I often say, “I can’t remember to take pictures when I travel.” I also believe that photos cannot capture all the senses of significant memories: taste, touch, hearing, sight, smell (as exemplified in the photo above). Let me share some examples where the camera doesn’t do justice to the experience.

MEXICO
The thoughtfulness of a couple who invited my friends and me to their house after having just met us. The tete-de-tete conversations that were held and laughter peeling in their house. Their generosity to share their lives within the Mexican community as US expatriates, having lived in Mexico for over thirty years.

US GRAND CANYON
The quiet of the Grand Canyon could not be captured on a wide-angle shot. My husband Lynn and I marched around the rim with busloads of other tourists. When a young boy said to his dad, “Come one, come on, Dad, we’re wasting time,” they moved on to the next point of interest along with the others.
Lynn and I stayed behind and found we had the Grand Canyon to ourselves. We absorbed the silence, we felt the wind on our skins, we sensed the yawning quiet inside our bones. It mocked the young boy’s words. Lynn and I found ourselves in between busloads and trekked around from one peaceful point to another to another.

AUSTRALIA
In Australia, the lorikeet is as ordinary as sparrows are in the States, but far more colorful. That you can capture in a picture. What cannot be portrayed is the bustle of hundreds of them roosting along commercial streets. Their squawks and squeaks are raucous—think ten times the noise of a tree full of sparrows roosting at dusk.

SOUTHERN FRANCE
In the south of France, I insisted we find a field of lavender. Yes, the countless rows of flowering lavender can be caught in a camera shot. I knew to expect the fragrance. That was what I wanted to smell. But I could not have expected the vibration coming from the field. It was alive with bees pollinating. The sound, sensation, the movement of hundreds of thousands of bees doing their daily chores became one of my favorite travel memories.

MEXICO
I discovered a fun-loving city bus full of Mexicans celebrating Carnival. They greeted me, the only gringo, with an ice-cold dripping beer from a cooler on public transit. They included me in their fun, beer drinking, playfulness, music, and dance. Sad to leave them, I deboarded and couldn’t wait to share my joy from the experience with Lynn.

AT HOME
I cannot expect home to offer me that level of grand sensations and joy; I can, however, stay alert to the small, unexpected things to find on my daily walks with my dog, Murphy.
I can, on the other hand, also begin to anticipate my next travels. One to Mexico, another to Cuba. What to look for, what could I learn, how to stay alert for the unexpected? These are the questions for future missives with you.

SHARE YOUR TRAVEL EXPERIENCES THAT CANNOT BE CAUGHT ON CAMERA
What is one travel memory that could NOT have been caught on your phone’s camera? Share them with me and others here for the fun of it.

MY TWO BOOKS ON THE TRANSFORMATIVE NATURE OF TRAVEL
I believe that travel opens us to create or discover transformative experiences when in different cultures, settings, and with different people. That is the story behind both my novel, Song of Herself, and my own coming-of-age, travel memoir, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away.