Travelling in Time
I just came back from the past. Okay. Not really, but as close as anyone ever could. I spent a few days in Colonial Williamsburg. I go there quite often and I am always wondering when will the magic fade. It hasn’t yet. As soon as I set foot in the cobbled sidewalks of that reconstructed historical town, I am immediately transported to another time. A simpler, yet complex time in history when America was still a baby country, trying out its legs and learning to walk on its own.
This is a place where the past mingles with the present and where it is clear to anyone paying attention how things change and yet stay the same throughout time. Sitting on a bench a colonial couple–obviously gentry by the clothes and the richly decorated parasol the lady is carrying–converses with a modern couple in jeans. A colonial woman walks down the street with a twenty-first century mug of coffee in her hand. A couple of tourists cross paths with a group of militia men heading to a drill.
I have a dream of one day sitting under my favorite tree in Williamsburg, a giant with branches that reach into the ground as if trying to hold on to reality, and write.Hard to explain that yearning to my husband, who is not a writer and does not feel the magic of that place like I do. So I don’t explain and I don’t ask. But one day I will sit under those old branches and write while shadows of the past come into focus only to fade away around me.
As I walked down King St, for the last time this visit, I snap a shot of the young man scribbling away by the Post Office and the soldier playing the penny whistle. I stare with wanderlust at one of the many taverns in town and the little shops peppering the street.
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My time in this time capsule is over this time, but I will be back. I wonder if they would hire me as a cast member and allow me to live onsite… Until next time, Williamsburg, I bid you farewell.
