Where I work there’s this long, man-made lake that surrounds the campus. Some days, when the urge strikes me for a bit of exercise, I enjoy a brisk walk around the lake after lunch.

The other day I encountered this little fellow standing in the water, patiently waiting for dinner to come within reach of his long bill. (No doubt he was practicing his crane technique. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Get it? Crane technique? Er, sorry.)

Understandably, he became a mite nervous as I approached, kinda watching me over his shoulders while still keepin’ an eye out for food. He gronked at me a few times, perhaps attempting to let me know in his eloquent way that this was his hunting spot. (Or maybe he just had a bit of indigestion?)

After a few minutes of standing his ground (or, in this case, water), he decided discretion was the better part of valor and noisily flapped off to a new spot a little farther down the shore. I could almost hear the huff as he grumbled to himself about “that rude interloper”.

Y’know, as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by bodies of water, large and small. When I was a kid, my parents had this rustic cabin on a little spring-fed lake up in East Texas. We’d visit as often as we could, and without fail, the first thing I’d do on arrival (after makin’ sure I had my trusty compass and pocket knife – after all, it was a good, er, 50 feet away) was head for the lake.

I’m tellin’ ya, I could spend hours just gazing into those mysterious waters, imagining all kinds of hidden treasure, monstrous creatures, or lost civilizations down there. Quite often, curious fish would nose up near the shore to check out the newcomer, as if to say, ‘Sup, Dude?

Yep, it was great to have the freedom to figuratively stop the world and get off, y’know? I can still recall the soothing sounds of the breeze as it gently rustled about a billion colorful leaves in the trees above. The smell of the water and plants filled my lungs with its uplifting… well, freshness, for lack of a better term. Sunlight twinkled cheerfully from wind-blown ripples, giving everything an almost magical sparkle, like twinklings of light in the very air itself.

Most of all, I remember that delicious feeling of utter… peace. Yep; all was well.

Alas, that was then. These days, I don’t get to spend much time gazing across the waters, although I do appreciate the almost daily glimpse outside. I don’t imagine anything much is hidden under the surface, either, except a few turtles. I guess I’ve gotten a little too busy for that these days.

A shame, that.

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Memory Walk, CC by Robert Hruzek

Notes from my Brazil Travel Journal:

Having been privileged (or cursed, depending upon how you choose to look at it) enough to travel so much, flying domestically has become rather humdrum to me. Usually I simply pass the time with a good book.

For some reason, though, this time I struck up a conversation with the nice lady in the seat next to me. It turned out she was on her way to Madrid, Spain, to meet her husband, who is working somewhere in Africa.

Before too long, we found ourselves sharing stories about the different places we’d been, and it struck me anew how literally everyone has a story to tell, don’t they? The thing is, some folks have the remarkable ability to be able to recall ‘em at the drop of a hat. Others (like little ol’ me) need some kind of “tweak” to drag them out into the open.

As for me, it usually takes an image, a word, or even a factoid in someone else’s story to open up that dusty file cabinet in the ol’ memory banks and pop out a file folder I’d completely forgotten about.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our brains had a sort of Google application to find specific memories? Wow, how would that work, anyway? After all, with an entire lifetime of memories, it would take even the fastest computer chip to search that many bytes of information.

Anyway, in the meantime I’ll just have to rely on the only sure method – using one memory to find another. Alas.

What about you? Do you find it easy to recall stories from your own past? Or are you like me – you need a crowbar to pry ‘em out? What technique would you suggest to improve that ability? I’d love to know!

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