It was the narrator of a novel by a popular French author who was making fun of me — I had decided to feel targeted.
In his tirade, he attacked those people who, summer after summer, return to the same places, to eat better in the same restaurants, visit the same places and always take the same photos.
That was us. Yes, without a doubt: he was making fun of my family. For a few years, we had been spending our vacation weeks in the same places: Sandbanks, Old Orchard and then Oka. Variations in Lac-Saint-Jean, Charlevoix or Bas-Saint-Laurent, when work allowed for an extra week of vacation.
We find ourselves on familiar ground. Sometimes, it’s people we meet again. Other times, it’s objects that welcome us back, like this old red truck that winks at us, under its hangar that proudly displays its Texaco sign.
There is also this path, through the dunes, which always welcomes us in such a spectacular way: I note subtle differences in the movement of the sandbanks, the width of the beaches, the fragile rooting of the shrubs; changes that a passer-by would be unable to detect.
Many French people undertake their first trip to Quebec (or even to Canada) hoping to do the whole thing: two days here, one day there. It’s no laughing matter: Quebecers often make their first trip to Europe in the same way.
In both cases, we are just passing through.
We pass by like a light gust of wind, imperceptible, which struggles to rustle the leaves of the trees. And so, places can ignore us. What do we remember from such visits? What do we remember from a brief passage through such cities or such other places, five, ten or twenty years later?
Returning to visit a place you love means going from being a stranger to being a visitor.
Returning there several times, until you stop taking pictures, creates real memories and takes the measure of time.
To keep returning to that same place again and again, to give as much as one receives, is almost to belong there.