Anniversary
My organizational skills lately have been not-so-good. Projects pile up: the new AirPort blinks amber accusingly at me, the BITWRATHPLOOB glowers from a shelf in the kitchen, demanding to be boxed up, and now I find that I have let an important anniversary pass with no word.
This week marks exactly four years since I drove Magda over the mountains and into the Black Sea drainage to see one of my favorite places on earth before putting her on an airplane back to Poland. We had known each other for all of twelve days, and yet already it felt somehow, you know, serious.
Turns out it was.
Every summer we return to Lake Bohinj at least once, and it’s often on our itinerary of places to show off when we have visitors. Last Saturday we traded the hairpins and highlands of the road route for the much faster railway tunnels of the Avtovlak in order to take Magda’s parents and brother to see this corner of Triglav National Park.
This place has a lot to recommend it, and while it’s hard for us to untangle the tangible from the sentimental, we do know that we love it. Our annual pilgrimages to the lake and its mountains always feel at least as meaningful as our actual wedding anniversary, which falls late in the autumn. Maybe it’s because our wedding was a simple civil affair, or maybe it’s because on our first trip to Bohinj we were already pretty sure that we’d be back there together.
Other anniversaries:
What may or may not have been our first date
What a beautiful place. I can see how it’d be easy to fall in love there.
Comment by Erik R. — Friday 3 August 07 @ 15.05 MDT+2.00
stunning. it looks a lot like gros morne national park on the western coast of Newfoundland.
Comment by kyran — Friday 3 August 07 @ 20.21 MDT+2.00
What a beautiful place. I can see how it’d be easy to hide a body there.
A place with options is always a place to re-visit.
Congrats for Anniversary #4 aren’t due until mid-November, right?
Comment by DarkoV — Friday 3 August 07 @ 20.35 MDT+2.00
Kiss her for me.
Not like that, you perv! Make it sisterly.
Comment by Elsa — Saturday 4 August 07 @ 01.35 MDT+2.00
The Bohinj area has a special meaning for me, too–the site of my first introduction to Slovenia (up in the mountains above the lake, specifically, planina na Uskovnici, where I spent a week in 1985 as a volunteer in an international work camp), and where I fell in love with my first husband (father of my daughter, now deceased and resting in the cemetery up the road from where I live). I’m not as conscientious as you about marking the anniversary–in principle I try to make a pilgrimage there every year sometime during the last week of July, but in practice it happens about once every four or five years. (I get to Bohinj more frequently than that–usually by means of the avtovlak–but not in late July).
So are you guys sticking around these parts a while longer? We still have the camera, let us know if/when you want it back.
Comment by Jean — Saturday 4 August 07 @ 14.17 MDT+2.00
From the pictures you’ve posted of yourself and of Adam, a composite mental image of the two of you is being formed in my head. This picture of Adam from the posted collage is striking in the posture Adam has opted for.
I know you may explain it as a normal pose to take when one is slowly engaging in the act of swimming in cold water. But I see this photo as evidence that body posture is an inherited thing. He looks exactly like you in that “I’d prefer to flap my wings and fly but I’ll settle for a slow shuffle for now” pose you’ve struck (or been caught striking) in pics of yourself.
Am I anywhere close?
Comment by DarkoV — Wednesday 8 August 07 @ 15.00 MDT+2.00
Interesting comment, Darko. I don’t know which pictures of me you’re talking about, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to learn that such things are inherited, even down to the smallest gestures. The trouble is, those who have the hardest time seeing it tend to be the people concerned.
For example, I can clearly see in this picture here how much Alek resembles his maternal grandmother, but no one else from that side of the family could see it, and I was shouted down and wrestled to the ground before I could convince them.
Jean: our medium-to-long-term plans remain uncertain, but we’re not going anywhere immediately.
Comment by sgazzetti — Wednesday 8 August 07 @ 15.18 MDT+2.00
Just a quick “many happy returns” to what sounds like a lovely beginning.
It’s incredible what can happen in four years.
Comment by juliloquy — Thursday 9 August 07 @ 22.09 MDT+2.00
We’ll be back, someday, to see Bohinj and Triglav. We miss you guys. A lot.
Comment by gaoo — Thursday 16 August 07 @ 03.58 MDT+2.00