Things Versus Experiences,

. . . And Memories.

© GE McKerrihan

Standing outside this morning, looking out over the high desert, south of Santa Fe, the awareness of just how much my life had changed while I was away, settled to a deeper level.

My current tasks at hand included taking care of some loose ends. One of these was moving the last remnants of my old life, into longer term storage. Thinking about these remaining pieces, I could easily picture the dozen boxes and their contents.

And I played with this idea. What if I never saw or touched any of those things again? After all, they were only keepsakes, collected over the six plus decades of this life.

I laugh to myself as I consider the individual items, at what I chose to hold onto. Over half of the boxes are filled with pictures. Photographs of all kinds. Yes, there are portraits of my great grand parents, my children, and all the family in between.

There are two boxes of film negatives. My own negatives, made over thirty years. Half of them are large format sheet film, from all those wonderful times under the dark cloth. The magic of the image on the ground glass, upside down and backwards.