It is a long weekend in the U.S. The one that traditionally starts the summer. For many it is a weekend for getting into the car and driving, sometimes down expressways, sometimes down smaller, winding roads.
As a child one of the things that fascinated me about driving vacations was how once one returned to familiar places, those places seemed different, as if they had been transformed. Apparently part of any feeling of familiarity or strangeness that one experiences in the moment is actually something that has lingered. That still fascinates me.
I have that same experience when observing “now” after researching the past. Returning to the present after poring over places at times when they had no names except for the names of the creeks that flowed through them is a return without familiarity. Returning from a world of canals and towpaths or watermills and grindstones is a return without familiarity. The past lingers and, for a little while, the present seems so strange.