I write to remember. Not to boast about places I’ve been, not to lecture about things I’ve seen; but to help me remember. Blogging, like keeping photo albums, helps me remember when it was we went where.
This past December, driving on the Hawaiian Island of Maui, we “discovered” the lovely Iao Valley. We remarked that we had missed it on previous visits to the island. But a few weeks after returning home, while paging through albums of old photographs taken at a time before digital photography was at everyone’s finger tips, when rolls of film were actually placed inside cameras, I found a picture of the iconic “Iao Needle” that I had taken in 2001 which is almost identical to the picture taken with my phone in December.
It was a RE-discovery of what I had seen 18 years before but had failed to remember.
Like year-end holiday letters to friends and family, photo albums — whether hard copy or electronic — as well as diaries — the old fashion kind or modern-day blogs — provide a memory boost. And at the end of the day, it’s memories that matter much more than anything material.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 