The last entry from my paper journal written during my trip to Boston.
2/15 Flight Home
We were much farther from New York this time, but I could still pick it out off in the distance. That’s amazing. I need to travel more. It’s hard with small children. I come from a family not real bent on traveling. When we went somewhere, it was to visit someone — not just for the sake of going there. I like going places, seeing them first hand. Touching history.
It’s funny. I had my camera out ready to take pictures of the ground, but E- was right. The glare from the window renders the sites on the ground impossible to see. Yet I saw it with my eyes. My eyes can go, it would seem, where a camera cannot. I went to Boston. I saw it with my own eyes. Not pictures from a book or film. I was there. I touched a headstone carved for a two-year-old child who died in the 1600s. I watched my students wage a second Battle of Bunker Hill with snowballs. I sat in a pew in one of the oldest churches in America. I sat in complete and perfect silence on the frozen surface of Walden Pond. I became Emerson’s transparent eyeball and took in the city of Boston.
If you're like me, I was just so humbled and awed by Boston. There's such a beautiful mix of new and old. I can touch history and walk among the names I've only read about in books. I can't wait to go to Boston/Salem again this Halloween, Mark and I have decided that it's a tradition for us. 🙂