I was walking my dog along the water canal that runs behind my condominium complex when I noticed up ahead what seemed to be a dead horse lying in the middle of the path. My dog wasn’t alerted by this, so I figured my eyes must be deceiving me, plus I wasn’t wearing my glasses. As we slowly approached, my dog still uninterested, I could tell that my first impression that it was a horse was indeed wrong, but I still couldn’t make our what exactly was laying in the middle of the narrow path. I stopped, my dog now taking an interest in the dark brown figure laying directly in front of us. I let my dog off his leash to see if what his Akita instincts would do about this thing in our path. He just sat there, so I slowly approached, inch by inch, my dogs hackles raised. Probably due to my state of mind, curiously scared. I finally reached the object of intrigue, Ah…a duffel bag. Fully packed, bulging at the seams.
I looked to see if anyone was around, and there was no one insight. I often find ransacked items along the canal; left by druggies or homeless people, but this duffel bag appears untouched and heavy. My dog moved on ahead, not interested at all in what could be inside this mysterious bag. I knelt down to see if there was a name or address written on it somewhere, I had a difficult time doing this due to it’s heaviness. I finally found a tag ‘Singapore Boutique Hotel‘ sewn near the pull string opening. I loosened up the pull string that held the opening closed tight. As I did, it’s contents burst out. Books, travel books, loose paper with travel notes written all over them and travel journal books. Where the heck did this come from? And why was it just left in the middle of this water canal path?
It took awhile to search through all of the contents of this once thought dead horse, but as I now know to be a duffel bag full of what used to be the contents in someones bookshelf of someones home. A someone who adored reading about travel and writing about travel. Someone I would’ve like to have known, but no name or address was to be found anywhere amongst all this writing, all this someones labor of love. I re-pack the the duffel bag. Tighten the pull string and caught up with my dog waiting patiently for me to continue the walk. We both looked back at the duffel bag, my dog looked back up at me. I shrugged. We turned back around and continued our daily walk.