I’m getting ready to travel again, and I can’t help but feel that familiar mix of excitement and anticipation! It seems like ages since our last trip, but really, it has only been a year. Like many travelers, I record moments and memories as they happen, knowing I’m likely to forget some of the countless places and things I’ve seen. My writing and photographs become proof—not just of where I’ve been, but of who I was in those moments. Even if memory softens around the edges, I’ll have something to look back on. A reminder that I experienced a new place in this world and came back different.

Travel has a way of changing how I see things. Days unfold differently when I’m somewhere unfamiliar. I notice details that might escape me at home: the light, the land, the language, and how a place can transform me without warning. Life feels intensified, as if I’m living in bold rather than regular font.

And then I return.

Coming home is often the most surreal part of a journey. While my horizons have expanded in ways that are hard to describe, the lives of those around me have continued as usual. My family and friends listen to my stories and try to share my enthusiasm, but there’s a quiet inner fulfillment that resists translation. Only I stood in those places; only I experienced those moments that have now become a part of me.

A Traveler’s Journal

So many sights I’ve yet to see!
With any luck, it will be me
who crosses the ocean again and again,
a camera in one hand, the other, a pen,
to capture moments as they pass,
lest they dissolve like shadows cast.
When my thoughts grow faint or slow,
I’ll turn the pages and off I will go,
through paths once walked and places known,
in ink and light, they live; I own.

Photo credit: My husband – my travel and everything partner!