by Peggy DePersia, guest blogger

Music has a way of connecting me with time and place. The first time I heard the music of David Gray, I was waiting for dinner in a small Italian owned restaurant in the town of Donegal in northwestern Ireland. Go figure.

I was so struck by the unfamiliar music and lyrics to the song ‘White Ladder’ that I asked our waitress: “Who is this singer?”……my introduction to David Gray.

I can’t recall that trip to Ireland without recalling that introduction.

For me, it is the the beauty of travel: the many ‘introductions’. Be it people, art, food, language, landscape, rituals, sounds, smells, customs, architecture, music or history, there remain so many things to which we can be introduced and they continue to change over time.

It has been one of the losses we have felt keenly in the past year, a year in which we’ve been navigating a unique “lockdown”, a time when we’ve put travel on hold in ways we’d not considered in our lifetime. It is this reality that brought the lyrics of another David Gray song to mind in a powerful way following my receipt of the vaccine against Covid, the vaccine that would help us “open up” and “get back to normal”, whatever normal was to look like.

“AllI know is I’m back in the world again. It’s the only way to be,

The only way to be, the only way to be.”

As I dreamily anticipate the many places I still yearn to visit and experience, I revisit some of my favorites through photos and memories of scenes both ‘long ago’ and ‘far away’ though ‘far away’ does not seem as far as it once did.

And, with a little sense of silly fun, one could be joined by travel buddies that have a knack for showing up almost anywhere……Berlin, Vienna, Heidelberg, Paris….anywhere!

Peggy and her camera toting husband, Jerry, enjoy travel near and far.
They team up to capture the wondrous moments; lately, closer to home.