How I long to tell something new, something original, something of my own. But the words won’t come.
Every phrase I hastily scribble down turns into a familiar cliché. It’s so tempting to start with the obvious truths: the importance of preparation, the need to check the weather forecast, plot a route, mark gas stations on the map, find a place to stay. And then, inevitably, you slip into the professional rut—choosing camera angles, scouting locations, storyboarding. All of that matters. All of that is right. But it is not the beginning of the story.
Only after you’ve left a dozen pages scribbled and discarded behind you do you remember what you probably should have started with.
Anticipation.
That poignant feeling when you’re still standing at the threshold, and the road is already calling. When your backpack is packed, the maps are studied, but the most important thing is still ahead—and exists only as an image, as a scent, as a presentiment. It’s the wait for the first sunrise over a ridge you’ve never seen. It’s the future shots that are yet to happen—somewhere out there, in the frosty air above the Baikal ice, or in the golden mist of a Ural morning. It’s a lightness almost forgotten in the daily rush—a sudden, sharp liberation from everything that keeps you tethered to the ground.
It is in this state that the best journeys are born. Not at the moment you press the shutter. Not when you look at the finished frame. But earlier—when you close your eyes and already see what does not yet exist.
And you know…
Perhaps this is the most important thing of all. No less important than the journey itself. And maybe—far more so.
Because our expectations are, in fact, our dreams. Alive, almost tangible. And there is nothing in the world that can compare to them in power and pure beauty.
Keep scrolling. This is what’s left behind.