THE THINGS YOU NEVER KNOW....

Back in a previous entry, I had written about identity, and about how we can never really know ourselves fully, because part of who we are is how we are viewed through someone else's eyes, most of which is kept a mystery to us.

Sometimes, our land and legacy is part of who we are. Sometimes, the way people think of us is linked to the part of the world we inhabit, and our place in it. For some, this may mean the place we knew that person in. Sometimes, it is the place they were from, or the place they ended up. It may be where their life began, or where their life played out, or where it ended that becomes an association with the person we know.For some, their place in the world is part of what defines them.

There is a special person in our lives who has a place like this, a place that holds more identity clues than anyone else's place, a place that has become a living entity, almost human like, but more magical. This place shifts shapes over time, some things change place and appearance, but other parts of it remain the same, year after year. Kind of like people themselves, this parcel of land evolves, but the basic nature of it does not change.

We visited this place, meaning to visit the person who inhabits it. The land owner was not home, but the place itself also has sentimental attachment to it, memories of times past. A visit to this friend usually involves a walk around the property, to see both the things that have changed and those that have stayed constant. We visited both, and made our appreciations, and took photos for evidence....

And also got busted, by a neighbor who was taking their job of watching the property very seriously. Ted's response was both humorous and embarrasing, which is typical.

If you stop by here and recognize where we were....speak up...let us know you "popped in" for a visit. Then you might see how we did, as well....meant to send you a postcard of the top pic, too classic....

Then, we continued on our journey, stopping in the place on the left, which is a part of the world we had driven by hundreds of times, but never really got out to explore. This time, we were searching for a geocache, an ammo can out in the Northern California ranges. Our whole family spread out as the sun faded, looking behind rocks born of lava and wind, to find something, a something that was irrelevant in the end, when it was the experience and the exploration that really mattered....the time together, the reason to stop, the reason to check out the land and examine things more closely, like the measure of a family and the human heart, and our place together in this great big world....