Finally time to search family archives

A great positive about retirement is finally having time to review and to wonder about old, very old, photographs from ancient family photo albums.  This photo, for example, is of my grandfather, Sam Kittrell Rushing Sr (1885-1953), taken in 1910 somewhere on the famous Valdez to Fairbanks Government Trail. Grandfather, I called him "papoo," was a member of a U.S. Geographical mapping expedition that surveyed the trail in 1910. Apparently, a colleague took this photo as they made their way through the Alaska wilderness, along the famous trail used by gold seekers in the late 19th early 20th centuries, on their way to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Papoo was 25. His future wife, my grandmother, was a music student at the Galloway Female College in Searcy, Arkansas. World War I was only a storm cloud forming over Europe. The Great Depression wasn't even a blip on the future, and Hitler was a starving but angry wanna-be artist in Vienna!  And here I am, Papoo's grandson, 106 years later, finding the old photo...  and finding myself filled with wonder, filled with unanswerable questions,  and amazed at the passage of time!  106 years!