Last week, while traveling in Southwest Florida, I did my daily writing in my travel journal. I started keeping a travel journal in 2006, not long after reading about “special purpose journalingâ€, specifically Ronald Reagan’s journal, kept from the first day to the last day of his presidency. My travel journal has been with me as I hiked through Mammoth Cave, drove the southern coast of Ireland, and traversed such places as Niagara Falls, The Smokies, Carolina Beach NC (hats off to Britt’s Donuts), Northern California (including City Lights Bookstore and the Pacific Coast Highway), Geneva Switzerland (sadly, on business), and all over my home-sweet-home, the Mid-West.
It has taken me some time to figure out how to travel journal. The tendency is to retrospectively, at the end of each day, record my itinerary. While this is useful – I know what we did on the third day of our cabin rental in Rockbridge, Ohio in April 2012 – my reflections while driving past cotton fields in Georgia are really what I’m after. Those times when the journal is open and I’m writing in real time are when the best I have to offer is captured. I don’t have it mastered. The content in my journal is about 50/50. Hindrances to the better journaling are flying (one’s sense of having traveled is muddled, somehow false) and being behind the wheel (kills the real time thing). It is also a challenge when returning to a place I’ve already been once or twice before. But it is practice in looking deeper.
If you don’t do so already, you should keep a travel journal. Your thoughts when you are away are different and potentially innovative. The inputs you receive while you are out of the house will bring you insights you would not otherwise have had and you’ll find that capturing these will add another dimension to your (writing) life.
What a great idea! I think I may start doing this. One thing that I’ve done several times, while traveling by plane in particular, is while waiting in the airport I’ll choose one person and write a character sketch. The first few times I did this, I wrote only a physical description. But I’ve found that it’s much more fun to invent some sort of backstory around the person you see – Why is she traveling? Why is that parent so impatient with the child who is so excited about getting on the plane? Why is the businessman looking so smug? Did he just make a big deal? Get a free upgrade? What is the airline worker at the gate really thinking? It’s a great exercise that one can do even if you only have five or 10 minutes. :-).