Yellowstone, Snowmobiles, and Good Friends!

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"This is what I like about photographs.
They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect."
Jodi Picoult

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by Skip Cohen

Over nine years ago, I wrote my first Sunday Morning Reflections post. It was meant to be just what it was: my opportunity to share something more personal, outside my normal topics of business and marketing. Well, almost a decade and 400 posts later, with help from my readers and Sheila, I've stayed true to my original concept.

This morning, as so many Sundays in the past, I sat down at the computer and had no idea what to write about, but my good buddy Bob Thompson came through. He's in West Yellowstone and was going to have breakfast at one of our favorite hangouts from our snowmobile trips back in the 90s. He sent me a text: "Sad news. I'm having dinner at the Three Bears in West Yellowstone, and the waitress informed me that she is 22 years old and has lived here all her life...and she has never known there was a cafe on the main drag called the Silver Spur."

For ten years, starting in the early 90's, there was a group of photographers who went into Yellowstone for three days every winter. Orchestrated by another good buddy, Duncan MacNab from Bozeman, even without the album, I remember every detail of each trip. The Silver Spur was one of our favorite spots to load up on all the artery-clogging food we never ate at home!

But my post this morning isn't so much about a topic that would be better served as a Throwback Thursday post, but about the fun of memories and the need to look forward as much as appreciate the view in the rearview mirror.

Last week I got a Facebook blast from a good buddy, Bert Behnke. He's putting together a winter trip to Yellowstone for 2027. Just his one post catapulted me back to all those trips with Duncan. I walked around the rest of the day with the biggest "Alfred E. Neuman" smile on my face. Like the stats of your favorite sports figure, each trip had its signature moments - the ones that were locked into our memories.

I know you can't live in the past, but that doesn't mean those moments in your memory archives don't deserve a certain level of immortality. Photographs bring back memories... memories ignite backstories... and "remembering when" is an energizer for going forward and creating new memories. The best part of all is that it's the industry so many of us have spent most of our lives working in!

I've promised numerous times to stop using Jodi Picoult's quote in blog posts, but in all honesty, until I find one better, it's perfect for moments like today. Whether on your computer, in albums, shoeboxes, or kitchen drawers, no quote captures the power of all those photographs we cherish.

Wishing everybody a day ahead to capture new memories and the backstories that go with them. Cherish every click of the shutter, but don't let the images slip into a "black hole" never to be shared. Today's grab shots are tomorrow's backstories - and they deserve recognition, especially the moments that made your heart sing! Go for those eleven-second therapeutic hugs with the people who mean the most to you; they're probably a big character in so many of your backstories.

Happy Sunday...or Monday on the other side of the world.

And to Bob Thompson - how was the chicken-fried steak, and did you add biscuits and gravy? And to Bert, thanks for sparking the memories - while we all know the expression, "You can never go back," that's not true - because you are. The trip is going to be amazing.

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