October 02, 2009

Walk down memory lane

Walk down memory lane

I'm blogging from a old mountain inn, where I'm staying with my parents. It's the inn where my father worked as a musician back in the early 1950s. The mountains are incredibly beautiful in the fall: the conifers are a dark green backdrop to the bright orange, yellow, and red foliage of the hardwoods. Today we walked through the campgrounds where we camped almost every weekend back in the 1960s, when I was a kid. My father has been telling stories about his life here as young man, working at the summer resort in the days when the mountains were a playground for wealthy visitors from the city. My mother and I have been talking about camping here with Picnic Family over forty years ago. Today our stroll down memory lane was interrupted by a sudden downpour of cold rain, but we retreated to the inn where we were served hot food in a cozy dining room.

The two figures in the photo are my parents, of course.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

ARe they wearing winter coats? Was it that cold?

richard said...

Wow -- your dad was Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn?

Unknown said...

Oh, the colors! It's pretty here, too, but raining today, not as vivid.

BrightenedBoy said...

How can I possibly list all of the things that are right with this post? The beautiful foliage; the deep personal history of the location, steeped in childhood memories for you and courtship memories for them; the fact that they're so obviously in love; and how touching it is that you, in your forties, still do things like this with them; all make this lovely.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Gorgeous foliage and wonderful romantic memories!!! I love your posts, they always cheer me up! :-D

jo(e) said...

Richard: Really, that's not far from the truth. Except he didn't sing much. He played trumpet and accordion.

jo(e) said...

BB: I so love your comments!

Songbird: It rained right after I took this photo.

Arwen said...

I usually read your blog from my feed, which aggregates all the pictures together; sometimes I will just leave a tab on your blog and come to look during the day.

You live a life of astonishing aesthetic beauty and diversity. I saw this today and the water lily, fog, dappled wall are all still there. What a series of lush riches these photos are, and I was surprised by the colours of autumn.

So I actually clicked through to tell you. Thanks.

jo(e) said...

Thanks, Arwen! I am very lucky to have this life.

jo(e) said...

I think I missed replying to the very first comment on this thread. Yes, we were all wearing winter coats. My parents both had winter hats on as well. It was pretty cold already in the mountains.

Unknown said...

beyond lovely.

Kyla said...

What a gorgeous photo. I'm so jealous of people who have a proper autumn.

Danny Bradfield said...

Stunningly beautiful. I'm heading up to our Southern California mountains for a few days at the end of this week, and don't know if I'm inspired by your photo to take photos myself, or somewhat disillusioned due to the fact that it will be nearly impossible to find anything so beautiful as this.

Silver Creek Mom said...

You know what strikes me about this photo Jo(e)? is that your parents may be in the distance but one can see and feel the love between them. we all can only hope to have a life like that.
Hugs :)

Vanity's Fare said...

Ah, got my fix. I read your blog to get the moment you just delivered -- cold downpour and hot food in a cozy dining room. My favorite is when you write about northeastern summers, but I like the colder times too!!