Tag Archives: Me

Stepping out from behind the camera

(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

One consequence of being the photographer for my travel blog is that I don’t appear in many of the pictures. However, the pandemic has led me to discover some stashes of photographs taken by others. Today’s blog features photos (and a video!) taken by my friend during a 2013 ski trip to Val Gardena, Italy.

Happy to be here!!

What strikes me most about these pictures is how happy I/we look. It is such a privilege to spend time in the beautiful Dolomite mountains of northern Italy. I see no worries in anybody’s face! (And while I feel some nostalgia for those recently-retired orange ski boots, I don’t miss that heavily-stickered white helmet.)

Group shots are always a challenge!

On trips like this, there is so much to discover. New mountains, new pistes, new food, new culture…even, in the case of Val Gardena, a language (Ladin). It may sound corny, but I hear the voice of Louis Armstrong as I type this: “…and I think to myself, what a wonderful world…”

My best photobomb ever. Sorry, Richard!

This trip (which also included a brief visit to Verona, Italy, as well as some skiing in Stuben, Austria) was my last European trip before I started this blog in early 2014. As I mentioned in an earlier post about Val Gardena, it really can be liberating to just live in the moment and not worry about capturing every aspect for publication.

Sometimes you just have to stop and look!

Having people in the photos can also emphasize our insignificance. Time and time again, we stopped to look up in wonder at the hugeness of nature. The Alps don’t really care about the tiny structures and the artificial borders created by people!

We never get tired of skiing in Italy

Seeing myself in locations all over the Sella Ronda series of interconnected resorts reminds me of just how much movement is involved in an intense ski week. And I’m also reminded of how much I love to move! In a pandemic, it’s really hard to maintain that level of activity.

Hard at work on a future blog?

I’m not sure what prompted Richard to record the following video. Maybe it was just a beautiful sunny day? I remembered a “skiing in a blizzard” video that he gave me right after the trip (I loved that one, and you can see it here on YouTube), but I had completely forgotten about the one that appears below. Although they’re very short, they immediately bring me back to when they were created 8 years ago.

Sunny cruising on the lower slopes at Val Gardena

Every year since 2013, I have thought about returning to Val Gardena. Each time, my ski posse and I decided to try a new resort. But when I look at all the pictures (these are just a sample of the hundreds that exist), I still think it would be really nice to return. The world is too big to see and experience everything. Why not return to an acknowledged “happy place”? It’s going to be really hard to resist the pull of Val Gardena once international travel is possible again!