“God is in the details.”

I had a wonderful comment on this post from Sharry Miller about how she kept “…feeling like I need to have epic solo adventures in order to have anything worth writing about. It’s good to know that my adventures can be small, group and even routine and still be worthy of my writing time.”

Which reminds me of that other quote… “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.”

It all adds up to the same thing. Details are what matter; a finger tracing a tear on someone’s cheek, onions sizzling in butter, the aroma of freshly ground coffee, walking barefoot on a hot beach, bread coming out the oven, snuggling under the weight of a heavy quilt on a winter day, the smell of a campfire, the softness of a baby’s cheek, drying seaweed on a hot summer day…

When we think about the best bits of our lives, it is always singular moments. If we’re lucky they might even be strung together to add up to several minutes or hours, but they will inevitably be detailed and focused.

When I think about my best travel experiences, what I remember are those times when something opened up in my expectation of the world, something shifted, a perspective slanted in a new direction, a thought came that had never been considered and my world suddenly included something bigger and more possible; all of it because of one noticed detail.

Travel has expanded my notion of the world. Writing helps me remember.