Our trip to Germany and Denmark was only a week, and we hadn’t put the usual careful planning in. I grabbed a notebook and stuffed it into the carry-on for the plane ride. I slept on the overnight flight. Well, I tried to sleep as best I could. I didn’t write in the notebook.

When I stepped off the plane in the floaty weary traveler fog, I immediately noticed things. Interesting things that I wanted to remember, that I wanted to tell other people about and examine more fully when I had a moment.

That’s what I love about travelling! That’s why I am doing this. So many remarkable things I didn’t have a chance to even remark about with the people right next to me. There were so many things atttacting my attention I couldn’t even notice them in the moment.

As soon as we got in the hotel,we collapsed in exhaustion. When I woke up I scrambled for the notebook I brought without thinking and poured the notes of what had happened. Just the fact, quick before I forget.

Time was moving fast, and everyone woke up to go see the sights. I didn’t have a chance to finish my writing down the bare facts of the trip.

I saw so many more things that I had to capture as soon as I had a moment with the notebook. It was a race, to write it all down before I forgot it.

This is a forgotten feeling brought to me again. Like a favorite food I hadn’t eaten for years, the compulsion to notice and savor in writing the adventures in encounter.

Why Why had I stopped doing this delicious thing?

Both the travel and the noticing.

Going through chemo and cancer treatment sucked. I chose a focus to walled me off from the sensations in my body.

For example, my mouth would have no saliva (this still happens) and that has consequences for swallowing and speaking. The skin inside my nose would be parched far, far far up the sinus cavity causing stiletto-sharp boogers to stab me day and night. This has stopped, thank heaven.

The unexplored territory of cancer treatment did offer experience to notice. I did not want to go there, carefully cultivating a tunnel vision.

On this trip, I awakened that hunger and curiosity. I am safe and ready to explore.