There are some places that don't quite feel real. For me, and for many, the French Alps are one of these places. It is somewhere that makes me empathise with the Romantics. The vast skies and dramatic changes of weather, the surrounding mountains that look more like a painted background than real life. Like many impressive landscapes, it simultaneously wakes you up and feels like a dream.
This is where my friend and I spent the last week. It was a pre-planned trip but it came at the perfect time, I needed an escape from my everyday life, and it was nice to have a reason why I couldn't be reached. I sentenced my phone to 'phone jail' (throwing it on the bed and shutting the door) whenever I could and took all my pictures on my new favourite thing, my cherry red digital camera. <3
If you grew up around the same time I did, compact, colourful, digital cameras probably spark some nostalgia. I remember taking my old one out to trips at the zoo and round to friends' birthday parties. I used to arrange my Lego figures amongst the flowers in the garden and take pictures that seemed profound at age 11. A week of passing back and fourth a digital camera, in-between fits of laughter, with my best friend felt very healing now aged 23. A real "simpler time" vibe.
If you're a helpless nostalgist like me, I really recommend picking up a bang-average digital camera, especially if you're wanting to loosen the smartphone chokehold. It makes for a really fun, interactive ongoing activity on a night out, day trip or holiday, and the pictures (usually) come out pretty cool. It doesn't have to be anything expensive, honestly the cheaper the better when it comes to getting that disposable style shot. There are loads of second hand options online if you're looking for a discontinued model, and a decent range of modern ones to pick from too. Mine is the Kodak Pixpro FZ45 and if you can't tell, I absolutely I love it.
With the phone jail cell locked I was unable to distract my hamster wheel brain, and a change of scenery is always especially thought provoking for me. I started to notice how much I was or wasn't noticing everything, getting annoyed at myself for not being present enough, for wasting my surroundings. Of course, thinking about being more present doesn't make you more present, it only takes you deeper into your own head. Fun stuff, for sure.
In the moment's I managed to ground myself down, I would look around and say to my friend "I could just live here. I could just never leave and stay here for as long as I wanted and never come back". I always feel a weird, scrappy kind of envy when I visit somewhere unlike my everyday. I look at the bartender working in the local, the owner of the boulangerie, and I ache for their everyday. I try to figure out ways that I can feasibly move to their town, their city, their country and somehow steal their lives. Or at least the lives I've imagined for them.
And why not move away? We could all abandon our old lives, move to the mountains and make humble livings that can't reasonably support our lifestyles. We could leave the people we love and hope to love new ones. We could tackle visas, language barriers and miscommunications, fail to find our favourite biscuits at the supermarché and get foreign phone contracts. People do it all the time. But if you are not one of those people, that does not mean you're missing out on some higher version of your life. Make peace with packing your bags and finding your way home. Trust that there will be beautiful things waiting for you when you arrive.
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