Technicolor

It's odd how vivid the contours of the world become sometimes. Not just the theoretical contours of a topo map that become real and physical underfoot, though that's true as well. I mean the parts of a trip, of a day, that weren’t part of your mental sketches of that experience but that happen in technicolor and stay with you for weeks or months or years afterward: the conversation about electrical engineering and invasive fish species you had with someone after when you asked to share a picnic table, the pungent Danish gingerbread shared between strangers on the trail, or the kind donation of a nearly full fuel canister from someone you’ve only just met (after you found that the local store was sold out).

Is it just the contrast with the quotidian, with interactions so familiar that they blur into a background? Or is there something about being in a place you love and doing a thing that makes you feel spectacularly alive that unexpectedly makes everything else, even things on the periphery, more vivid as well?