Return to the land of the giants

They only look small
Just outside Buffalo, NY
November 2013
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It had been four years since I drove my family through an impossibly dark night in upstate New York, four years since my GPS device decided to take us on a detour through an old regional highway that may have delayed our arrival home that night, but it also gave our kids an experience to remember.

I wrote about that night here - What we would have missed. Feel free to give it a read first.

Fast forward to last month. I was on a plane, winging my way back home from the same place - New York - we had been in 2009. Only this time it was a business trip, I was alone, it was clearly very bright outside, and I was looking down from above.

As we approached Buffalo, NY on our descent into Toronto's Pearson International Airport just across Lake Ontario, I caught a glimpse of the wind generators, sprinkles of stark white against the carpet of green. It quickly occurred to me that this was the place we had driven through, only now it looked, well, different. No less spectacular, but nevertheless different.

I closed my eyes and remembered what it felt like to see these giants of the sky emerge out of the darkness. I remember the feeling of quiet excitement in the car as we drove on the twisty, hilly highway through this valley of the wind where no one else was awake. They seemed so small today, but mesmerizingly beautiful all the same.

I guess you can indeed revisit moments from your past. You can't replicate them down to the last detail, but simply being able to feel them once again is more than enough.

Your turn: Ever go back to a specific place years later? Better? Worse? Do tell...