This post is a favorite to write, since it shares something
that has taken literally years to create.
Let me get right to it - below is a time-lapse video that Mu and I made
through our travels. Every day we were abroad,
we took a number to count the days, from 1 on up. We came in just short of a full year and you
can watch the video here -One day at a time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVS34RRv_kI
This idea came from my beloved cousin, Deborah Moore, who saw our pictures from the John Muir trail back in August of 2012. During those 11 days of hiking, I had Muriel hold up her hands counting each day because the landscape is so similar (and spectacular) on the trail. Muriel effectively marked each different day so that looking back at the photos we could tell where exactly they came from. Debs took this simple idea and proposed doing it for our international stints.
Instantly, we loved the suggestion and decided to try and pull it off. Keeping the days as we traveled was tricky but also very fun. Mu became quite the expert at crafting numbers out of sticks and rocks, such as # 77 overtop Lake Malawi and countless others. I loved the challenge of finding a number in a city we were exploring, such as # 26 in Athens. Our favorite numbers were the ones that included people we met along the road, either old friends/family or new ones. - #143 with my parents in Madagascar is a great example. The wonder we feel about our travels over the last 2 years has been exponentially increased and strengthened for sharing it with so many loved ones.
It was not always easy, sometimes we would forget and have to make it up. A few images got lost when our iPad crashed prior to me backing up the pictures on it . Sometimes we had to take the picture from inside the overland truck or on an airplane. Not all days of sustained travel can be on a mountain or safari and those images now remind me of the work that travel can be and the many, many hours we spent inside buses, trucks, taxis, planes and cars.
Then, the making of the time-lapse was its own kind of adventure - one via a keyboard and laptop. It was not always easy for me to figure out all the successive steps, but working on something that I felt so passionate about made figuring out solutions so much easier. Working across 5 programs and platforms in the process got me more acquainted with how to leverage the power of a Mac.
Lastly, I want to touch on an unexpected benefit of making this project. Life generally and travel specifically can easily run together. Days get lost in your mind and they don’t really come back. This endeavor meant that each day we took a moment to think about what day we were on, to compose the shot and take the picture. These actions and the continuity they created the day before and the day to come had a powerful impact on how we processed and savored the adventure.
We know well how special these last 2 years have been, and this video will forever recall this bountiful time in our lives. When I showed a draft of this video to a buddy last week, he noted that each time you watch it different images make an impression. Once he pointed that out, I completely agreed. One time through I felt drawn to a pic from Chiang Mai and then next one from Indo. I love the variance.
Another welcome impact from the making this movie together is increased awareness. I can look at each image for a millisecond and know instantly where it comes from, what we were doing when we took it and a bunch of other personal metadata. I have never had such awareness and recall for another trip or period in my life and part of that surely flows from our project. This mindfulness and abundance of memories are characteristics I hope to bring to our next phase in life. Just as denser networks tend to perform better, I posit that denser memories correlate to peak experiences. Memories are the glue that hold together our lives and the more memories the stronger the bond.
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