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Jan. 5th, 2012 11:27 pmIt's been three months since we got home from The Big Trip. In some ways it feels like we never left, and sometimes it feels like we just got back.
And I constantly remember bits and pieces of the trip, just little things, like places we stopped for breaks, or things we saw, the homes and campgrounds we stayed in.
But I'll never be able to remember every moment of four months, and it drives me crazy. Just the other day I was looking through Shawn's pictures and jogged my memory of a few things.
Music has a strong way of taking me back...I didn't use those little speakers much, but I did use them. Never mind how many times I've listened to the XTC album "Skylarking" before or since, certain songs still remind me of one particular rainy day while riding through the Canadian prairie, and stopping at an elementary school's playground to eat our lunch at their picnic tables--we did that plenty of times, since all the schools were on break. I remember eating bread and margarine, which I ate a lot on that leg of the trip. My one LCD Soundsystem album reminds me of the day we rode out of the Okanogan valley in Eastern Washington and I saw all those prairie dogs, as well as the time I listened to it on the train on the way home and noticed all the funny things the guy says during one song.
I want to hold on to every tiny shred of memory, even though some of them tend to blur together. Was my memory of eating near a pond and a municipal swimming pool in Saskatchewan or Alberta? The time I almost biked right into a truck and scared the shit out of Shawn, what part of Eastern Washington was that? How many days were between Missoula and getting into Glacier National Park? Where was that post office where she wouldn't let us use the washroom? Where were all those places I pulled off the road to eat a few maple cookies?
Or then there were the books I read. Howard's End reminds me of Twisp. Sometimes a Great Notion reminds me of Glacier.
But I know that no matter how hard I try to grasp everything, things will start slipping, slowly, out of my memories. And it's hard not to be sad about it.
And I constantly remember bits and pieces of the trip, just little things, like places we stopped for breaks, or things we saw, the homes and campgrounds we stayed in.
But I'll never be able to remember every moment of four months, and it drives me crazy. Just the other day I was looking through Shawn's pictures and jogged my memory of a few things.
Music has a strong way of taking me back...I didn't use those little speakers much, but I did use them. Never mind how many times I've listened to the XTC album "Skylarking" before or since, certain songs still remind me of one particular rainy day while riding through the Canadian prairie, and stopping at an elementary school's playground to eat our lunch at their picnic tables--we did that plenty of times, since all the schools were on break. I remember eating bread and margarine, which I ate a lot on that leg of the trip. My one LCD Soundsystem album reminds me of the day we rode out of the Okanogan valley in Eastern Washington and I saw all those prairie dogs, as well as the time I listened to it on the train on the way home and noticed all the funny things the guy says during one song.
I want to hold on to every tiny shred of memory, even though some of them tend to blur together. Was my memory of eating near a pond and a municipal swimming pool in Saskatchewan or Alberta? The time I almost biked right into a truck and scared the shit out of Shawn, what part of Eastern Washington was that? How many days were between Missoula and getting into Glacier National Park? Where was that post office where she wouldn't let us use the washroom? Where were all those places I pulled off the road to eat a few maple cookies?
Or then there were the books I read. Howard's End reminds me of Twisp. Sometimes a Great Notion reminds me of Glacier.
But I know that no matter how hard I try to grasp everything, things will start slipping, slowly, out of my memories. And it's hard not to be sad about it.
