I give thanks for more grateful escape from the versions of reality for which I am not, this time for a bucket list journey. Silk Road? Orient Express? Route 66 with an Airstream on tow? Well, no... but you have to cut your bucket according to the cash it can carry and how well you can lug it along...so another scenic railway ride. I've ridden a few at home and abroad and this was up with the best this country has to offer, the best value certainly in terms of variety of landscape. This mum's not been to the Iceland she'd love to but gives great thanks for the vast snow fringed emptinesses she's seen on this trip, that remind her of pictures of it she's seen while leaving pictures of itself imprinted in her memory... the sudden 'oh!' of tumbling water by the tracks or sky reflected in its shallow meanderings through the scrub, the slow beat of buzzards and stone stillness of herons, bright bracken and tundra coloured deer, river becoming loch becoming sea...rock strewn shores and snowdrop drifted banks...
It was a long journey there and we didn't linger at the pause at the end of the line, just took a breath of air before sitting on the other side of the friendly staffed train to appreciate the other point of viewing, so I give thanks for other pleasures squeezed into the day. I give thanks for a mostly vegan cafe for Jan to choose and treat me to a late lunch, and for her understanding that sometimes I don't want to talk, just look at things and reflect...
I give thanks for a foresight of maybe a poem in the making...or maybe some other fictionalised version of my versions of realities. I give thanks for a snooze and a novel that's taken me to a house and a hospital in North Devon and a ferry port and bridge to a large Hebridean island all in a bath time's passing!
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