Sharing the Wealth

One quality that feeds my faith in our humanity is how we are disposed to share good things that fall our way. Be it a spiritual insight, a falling in love or  an artistic expression, we rarely hoard it and keep it to ourselves. Buddha could have lived in a cave enjoying blissful samadhi but instead chose to teach. Two lovers could have locked the doors to their connubial bliss, but instead, hold a wedding and invite the friends and family to witness. And though not all succeed, every artist hopes to display in a gallery or museum, every writer to publish, every scientist to lecture, every musician, dancer or actor to perform. It is in the sharing that the happiness that comes our way is fully completed.

 

In this spirit, the traveler enjoying new sights, new sounds, new tastes, new ideas, new sense of release from their business-as-usual habitual life, wants to share it with those back home. How to capture a bit of the joys that fly? At the highest level, some might sketch a scene, write a poem, compose a song, keep a journal. But the usual impulse is to send a few postcards or in the old days (ie, my early adulthood), take pictures to be put in a book or slides to be shown at a slide-show gathering at your house, complete with all the travel stories. At the most mundane, the postcards simply said “Having a great time—wish you were here,” the photos taken were often “Here we are in front of the _______. And here we are at the _______” and the stories might have been about how hard it was to find a decent hamburger and a Coke.  But still the impulse to share was a good one, even as the dinner guests were eying the clock.

 

My strategy is both to write daily in my journal and take photos without me in them, try to give a sense of what I’m noticing as I’m passing through a place, from the quirky sign to the street scene to the scenic overview. So here are a few shots to give a little feeling of our first two days of our Yorkshire Dale walking tour. The first day of walking in 75 degree mostly sunny weather and the second in REAL English weather—60 degrees and rainy.

Enjoy and Happy June!