Tuesday, August 30, 2016

It is hard to throw memories away



The Treasury at Jordan's Petra ruins (A UNESCO photo)

I had occasion twice this week to think about a place my wife and I visited some 31 years ago.

And that was the Nabatean enclave of Petra located in the country of Jordan in the Middle East.

The first time we were at an electronics store looking for an item. The store always runs these beautiful pictures of scenic and historic places in the world on their large TVs, and one of them happened to be Petra.

The second occasion was back at our new home when I was cleaning out some old travel material.

We’re trying to eliminate items because we have downsized.

And its hard to get rid of items linked to good memories. I still had a folder full of material on our trip that took us to Jordan, Israel and Egypt.

We traveled to the Holy Land in 1985.It was the coldest weather in the Southeast in years with temperatures in our part of the woods staying below freezing for a week or so. But we missed most of that because of the trip.

It was Mississippi to Atlanta to catch the KLM airline which stopped in Amsterdam where we changed planes and then it was on to Amman, Jordan to begin our just-after-Christmas excursion.

We arrived in Jordan late in the afternoon as the sun was going down.  Before leaving the airport we heard the call to prayer that is traditional in that area of the world.

Visiting a foreign country is great. The sights, the sounds, the traditions. Some lap it up. Others are so absorbed in their own world, they can’t appreciate people from other areas.

I tried to absorb as much as possible. 

With just one full day in the Hashemite Kingdom, Petra was our main goal, although we experienced what we would consider a roadside market, some historical sites and then the horse ride into the wonder of wonders.

As I worked my way through my collection of information on the Middle East, I can remember my wife and I talking about the possibility of returning.

That never happened. And probably won’t.

But I remember those towering walls, the hewn out Treasury and the souvenir stand.

I guess I will keep those memories and my collection of papers just a little bit longer,


Next post: Sept. 6, 2016

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