Reacquainting with the road

Thirty plus hours each way, two weeks on the ground, fish market on bicycles, Kashmiris brothers selling shawls, one successful assignment, fifteen minutes with one of the rarest cats on earth and close with a TV talk show – it’s been a very long time since my life looked like that. I’ll admit, it took me no time to be mainlining it again. I'm a travel junkie. It was a fix long in coming. It was good to get reacquainted with the road.

Still just settling back into Portland so this is short – many more details and images to come over the following weeks – I missed something this past decade that I had become very skilled in hiding away. This unexpected, hastily planned trip to India, for friend Shyamal’s wedding, and a collection of wanderings before and after the wedding vividly shined a light on the magic that only travel is. It threw me back into photography, filming and writing and thinking about the three in a way I couldn’t have imagined, and in reality could not have eased into as I had planned. A bit over a month ago a bought all new gear, forced my brain, eyes and fingers to reacquaint themselves in this dance of creativity that seemed so intimate not so many years ago. But the reality is the "reacquaintance" could only take place on the road, where I have always been most at home.

I’ve only walked in the door and am hungry return to the road; wash a load of clothes, review 1,500 odd images, a couple hours of film, sort through my field notes and then get back out there. I’m completely set to again live at tiger speed. What I am completely convinced of is I never ever again want to live at Blackberry speed. While passing through SFO airport earlier on the return, I happily stood far right on the moving sidewalk and let everyone stream by – most staring at some digital device. I don’t want it, don’t need it.

When I began this journey over a quarter century ago I did so with the hunger to have each day be a clear punctuation mark in a long time line of living fully, for the past decade days have merged and gotten lost in seamless monotony. The road reminded me everyday had a value, a memory retained, experience worth living. This is the most alive I have been in years.

Now, off to plow through a sea of bits and bytes that now assemble my perception of the world via the 7D’s shutter button.

Photo (c) J. Loren