Florida is the answer.
Before the map had even unfolded in my mind, one question was already louder than the rest: “Where to begin?”
So many ways to go about this journey; feels like my mind has already ridden half its miles before I even took off.
Let’s see, where have I been in the U.S. already?
Simple: New York, twice and Hawaii, twice.
OK, I won’t start with the first because it’s more like a terminus. Ending the 50-state tour on Times Square (cliché? sure… still, very cool).
And actually, the second might be the ideal ending point. I loved Hawaii and its residents so much that I would feel great to finish on such a highlight.
Deal. Hawaii, it is.
Wait, shit.
I was looking for a starting point, not the other way around.
Welcome to my mind.
No wonder I love to roam.
Let’s keep it simple for once.
Go to Mae’s.
Start there.
Florida.
From there, serpentine my way up the map, vaguely following a horizontal line. Close the loop with Alaska and Hawaii; I like the contrast.
May 2025 —Leaving Brussels with a light heart and a head full of images.
Not the images I set out to make (those were the old days) but the ones that will find me along the way: roads stretching ahead, landscapes sliding by.
Pale colors. Soft grayscales.
I can’t wait to load my cameras.
Seeing Mae again feels like things coming full circle.
A year has passed since our tour in Chile, where a year earlier, we met en route to Antarctica.
Mae’s a truly original character; the kind you meet only in Florida, if you know what I mean.
Respected researcher in cancer economics, once a biologist; easy-going; bearer of the biggest, most beautiful tattoos I’ve ever seen.
Colorful and soft-spoken. Human of a kind and a kind human. A fantastic fellow traveler.
In fact, it only took that first Florida tour to know we should do this together.
We both have projects, reasons, ways —each our own.
Maybe, later, they’ll merge. For now, it’s enough that our paths do.
We drive out of the airport.
The air is thick with salt and light. Florida heat, straight to the lungs.
Mae’s at the wheel, her tattoos catching the sun like stained glass.
Florida isn’t the prologue; it’s the first page written in warmth and light.
The sun, the trees, Mae’s laughter —all blurred into the same haze.
The feeling that everything had already started.
Note to self: It always feels like the beginning, until you look back and realize it already was.
En route to…
