Treasure chest

My old room as a kid gets the best sun in the house. It faces East and especially in the winter it is full of delicious winter rays brightening the walls and warming the air. Nowadays the whole room is something like my own treasure chest littered with paintings, boxs of books, my old bike, postcards, prayer flags, clothes, and all sorts of other things picked up and stored away from my travels.

This shot though comes from a real "treasure" chest hewed from white pine come all the way from the sea, brought over maybe by a trading vessel or slave ship from England hundreds of years ago and found long ago by my parents at a yard sale near the Saluda courthouse in the tidewater. It holds my own treasures these days, beautiful mememtos of memory and nostalgia, art and culture I've picked up from all over the world. Bright painted paper maiche reef fish from the streets of Havana Cuba, ornate knit Peruvian shawls from the Urubamba valley in the Andes, a Japanese scroll a friend gave me from an ancient flea market in Tokyo, a handsome pair of mule deer antlers I discovered in a sandy gulch in the sage sea of Wyoming, a gorgeous Mixtec rug I bartered long and hard for in Oaxaca Mexico, and a mask come all the way from Ghana I traded for in the markets of Cape Town.

My very own treasure chest!