The Two Lane Highway

Life, it is like a two lane highway.  One lane takes us forward while the opposite lane takes us back pass areas we have already traveled. Our thoughts determine our direction of travel. We say we live in the present but we tend to focus on the future of what we are going to do next. With every second we live it quickly turns into the past. Whatever we are doing at this very moment is becoming our past in the form of a memory. How strong the memory will be is  determined by the importances of the event we are experiencing.
I was driving down an old familiar road one day and had a vivid memory of an event from long ago in my past. I clearly remember the scene of a car upside down in the middle of the road with an older couple inside. I was riding with my Father and it was dark when we came upon the accident. He helped them both out of the car while I looked on. I have traveled this road many times since but have only thought about that night a few times. I began to wonder about that day and where we were going and even if my brother and sister were with us. I realized I had no memory of day itself other than the event.  It started me thinking about our lives and how many days of it can we really recall. Probably not many. We remember in fragments and events but not whole days lived. It started me thinking if I could recall in their entirety (not just events) the best ten days of my life. I will share with you my list of best days as I remembered them. I challenge you to start thinking of the ten best days of your life and try to write them down in detail. I think you will be surprised you can only remember events and not many actual days of your life you have lived. I have found that with the forty plus years I have been photographing that I live within my images I create. In my darkroom days I would spend countless hours working on  one negative making an expressive print that represented the emotional connection I had to the location when I first made the exposure. I discovered that through my images I could recall with vivid detail much of the day when I made the photograph. This is my two lane highway. I can look forward to new images and events in my life as well go back in time just by viewing an image made in the past and recalling much of what I was doing at the time.