One day, during the beginning of the Pandemic, I opened up the chest where I keep all of my printed photographs. Many of the old ones are in albums, some are still in the envelopes from the developer and some are loose. There isn't a lot of organization to them. Since I was unable to travel, I had a lot of time. I started looking through them.
I found that the photos I enjoyed the most were my travel photos. Many of those brought back a lot of memories. And the ones I enjoyed the most were the ones with people I had met along the way. The hundreds of photos of buildings and landmarks were generally forgettable. But sometimes, even those reminded me of a story.
I wanted to do something with all of these photos, but there were too many to deal with. That's when I challenged myself to start picking just one photo from every country. In some cases, I picked three or four and later decided which would be "the one." Then I moved on to my digital photos. Those were much easy to review since they were largely organized by year and the location.
From there, I scanned the prints and copied the digital photos into a folder on my computer and began this project. I changed some of the photos three or four times which also meant re-writing the story that went along with the photo.
There were two countries that I did not include. I made a quick stop in Tanzania, but I never got off the plane and I didn't take any photos. There was nothing to tell. The other country I did not write about was the United States. I've lived here for my entire life. I didn't "visit" the United States, I lived here. It didn't seem to fit with the rest of the project.
But I did find one additional photo I wanted to share. I took this photo with my very first camera; a Black & White Polaroid. I don't know the year this photo was taken, sometime in the late 1960s, but it is one of the only photos I have of my entire family. All eight of the people in this photo have been huge influences of my life and it seemed like a fitting way to end.
Clockwise from Center: Maria (sister), Becky (sister) Betty Hunsicker (grandmother), Neville Hunsicker (grandfather), Shirley (mother), John Macfarlan (grandfather), Margaret Macfarlan (grandmother) Phil Hunsicker (father)Thank you for following along and I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures as much as I enjoyed writing about them.
I hope to resume traveling
soon.
I'm going to close with a quote from my friend Roberto Pazos. We’ve been to 32 countries together and he always closes his TV show by saying “I'll see you at the Airport."
I hope to "...see you at the Airport" soon.
Do you have a favorite post? A comment about the series? If so, please let me know in the comment box below.
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