Day 2 of decompression from my vacation. I am still thinking
about travel and so am going to continue this week (maybe) in drawing
about it.
During our vacations it is a tradition that about half way in we will turn
to each other and ask ‘what is your favorite part, so far?’. We will tell what
event was the best in our minds, and also what part was the least fun or
interesting. This year the whale watching was pretty much the #1 favorite
of the first half.
What is funny is that the first 2 1/2 hours of the whale watching trip was easily
the worst time of the trip up to that point. It was cold, it was very foggy (no
horizon in sight) and it was boring. The people around me were purple lipped
from the cold, red faced from the wind, eyes watering from the wind, and bored.
It wasn’t until we had pretty much given up hope and realized we were have to
return to the Provincetown without seeing a whale that 2 whales appeared. Then
the mood changed. Then the sun broke through just a bit. Then the whales came close.
Then the whales breached (jumped) out of the water. Sometimes completely. Then
they did it again, very close to the boat. They put on a show like the captain and the
naturalist and the crew hadn’t even ever seen. The lady next to us had been on
20 whale watching tours and had never seen one jump, much less the dozen or so we
saw. She was wooping it up like she was at a tight baseball game in the 9th inning!
The whale watching fiasco of a mere 45 minutes earlier was just a great lead in to the
big climactic story of the breaching whales in the glorious setting sun.
What we remember is greater than what we saw. It is the story, the arch of the event,
the people, the feeling, the mood and the mood swings, that we add into the event to
make it what it is in our mind. I love that about travel.
“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli – 1804 – 1881, British Prime Minister (twice) under Queen Victoria