Something through a different pair of eyes

My Carpool Entourage

"I have one rule in the car," I announce to my carpooling entourage, "if you see something that you want to take a picture of, tell me to stop!"

I'm pretty sure that was not the rule they were expecting.  After all, how many drivers grant their passengers even marginal backseat driving privileges?  But we were in Nova Scotia, driving along the Cabot Trail, one of the most notoriously beautiful places in Canada - and I was a photophile (my new made up word of the day) - so there really was every good reason to stop as often as possible to take pictures!    Not to mention that my entourage consisted of three men crammed together in the back seat of a compact car and another woman in the passenger seat beside me, so stopping as often as possible to allow the men to stretch their legs was our version of an act of mercy.  At  one point we stopped at a gas station before we entered the national park and the attendant's eyes almost bugged out of his face.  "Where.....How did you manage to fit all of you in that tiny car?!"  Ah, it was a bit snug, but it sure is a great way to get to know each other.  Especially when you frequently unintentionally lengthen the trip by getting "temporarily misplaced" ("We are never lost, only temporarily misplaced." ~ my female passenger that day)

Speaking of temporary misplacement, have I ever mentioned how amazing the internet is?  At one point on my eastern Canada trip an older woman looked at me and all the other people around her holding our phones and electronic devices, doing who knows what mysterious voodoo on them, and declared in a loud scoffing voice "I don't know where all you young people would be without those gadgets."  I simply looked back at her and said, very sincerely, "Neither do I."  My phone with its 5GB of wireless data and its Google maps app are the only things that kept me on my whole trip from getting hopelessly lost.  People I met on my trip would always go overboard in trying to explain directions and it felt so gratifying when I could simply pat my coat pocket and say "It's okay, I got a phone and Google maps, I'm good."  I was a cool navigational badass!

Travelling with strangers in the car can really open your eyes to re-examining experiences through a new pair of eyes.  A couple from Toronto was in the car with us and they got so excited when they saw fog on the road!  "Seriously... fog?" I thought to myself as they were oooing and aaahing over it.  Fog was a fact of life in the mountains of BC, and almost an everyday occurrence in the winter months.  But these two people were seriously excited to be driving through condensed water vapors.  They were also thrilled to be driving up a twisty-turny mountain road in the middle of a mostly-coniferous forest and seeing little tiny waterfalls dripping on the side of the road from mountain run-off water, which is again another everyday experience for us BC-folk.  "I am soooo glad you are driving!"  They exclaimed, as I obviously had experience handling hazards that they would never encounter on their big-city streets.

This is why a photo-stop house rule for the car makes sense. On that trip through the mountains of Cape Breton Island, I found myself taking pleasure in other people's simple enjoyment for things that I would typically take for granted.  I am sure that if I had been travelling alone I would have given very little thought to them, but because I was with these people I took notice of and appreciated something even as basic as fog. Things that I would have normally have passed by without thinking about were suddenly worth time and attention and maybe even a polaroid moment.  The everyday experience became something precious and worthy of celebration.

One of those roadside polaroid moments for me.