What if your trips had an instant replay button?

Posted by Bill on Saturday, October 31, 2009   |   No Comments

Well, they do. Sort of. Through your memories and souvenirs you have the means of remembering travel experiences, of reliving them, even if only fleetingly, over and over.

So when I handle the smooth white stone I picked up on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, I am once again looking out from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Or when I heft the sharp-edged rock I found at the base of Mt. Edith Cavell, I remember the kind of day it was when I first saw it in Alberta, Canada.

Probably the best, least expensive and most meaningful souvenirs are photographs. Flip open a photo album, and there you are in _________. Fill in the blank from your own experience.

Photos are great because they not only provide context for you, but they offer a way to remember and relive how you enjoyed the experience with friends or family members. They put you back in favored spots faster than anything else.So we probably all have our photos, right?

Years ago, I used to have slides. Then I moved to color prints and now, of course, the digital camera is almost standard equipment among casual travel photographers. Talk about instant gratification. Click and look. Someone’s eyes closed? Just delete and retake. What could make collecting photo souvenirs easier or more efficient?

But many of us, me included, want to collect more than photos on our travels. I’ve already mentioned the stones I’ve accumulated from various trips. For a while, we were into saving match books (or boxes) from restaurants we had visited.These are colorful, unique and great conversation starters.

But somewhere along the line, our love of Christmas and travel converged. The result was the perfect (for us) souvenir – Christmas ornaments. Ornaments have infinite variety, are colorful and practical (in the sense you actually get to use them each year). Often handmade, they sometimes have local, ethnic or cultural ties.

For more than 30 years, my wife and I have collected Christmas ornaments as souvenirs of our various trips – official vacations or spur-of-the-moment getaways. The result? Boxes and boxes of ornaments – treasures grown so numerous that we have had to resort to the painful task of tagging some as First Choice.

Others, second-class citizens in name only, usually find their way onto our groaning tree. My wife and I both taught school, 11 years for me and 16 for her. So it’s only the very old and sometimes very crude offerings from dimly remembered students that now sometimes spend the holidays in their storage boxes.

The best thing about ornaments as souvenirs is the magic they induce every year. Each year our tree trimming triggers recollections of this ornament or that. Each new one gives rise to three or four more until the evening is one big memory fest. I’m convinced: The Christmas ornament is the perfect souvenir.

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