I’m coming and going at the same time. In a few days I’ll leave for a long-planned trip to Paris and Barcelona with my dear friend and writing pal Dian and I’m madly making lists, practice packing (I vow only a carry-on this time; only two pair of shoes), and tackling to-dos that must be done before I leave the country. Nightly, I’m rereading old journals, recently rescued from my storage unit, of a seven-month-long journey I took 25 years ago. Living in the past, anticipating the future, and doing my best to stay in the present. Impossible.
For this journey, I purchased three sweet, small blank journals. I figured tripping around with one small one in my bag is much better for my back than the larger ones I’ve used in the past. When I fill one, I’ll just start on the next. Because what I know about me is that when I travel, I write often and a lot in my journals. I’m a daily journal keeper in any case, but on a day-to-day basis try to keep my rambling to three pages and not too much blah blah blah. But a travel journal is so much more than day-to-day, and never blah-blah-blah.
A couple of other journals I discovered in those bins were from journeys taken even longer ago than the 25-year-old trip. In 1977 I spent several weeks in Bali, gathering material for an organization I worked for at the time. A year later I was in Bolivia for the same organization, and that time the journey included a ten-day, very primitive, river trip. What I’ve discovered in re-reading these old journals, is the more thorough I am with details and impressions, the more alive the journals are. When I write about my homesickness or my worries about money or mosquito bites, they become blah blah blah.
“Write the Journey” is a workshop and talk I’ve given in various shapes and formats over the years. In it, I talk about what goes in a travel journal. Here are some of the questions I ask myself and the participants. These questions are good for a daily journal keeper, too:
What interested you? Where were you engaged?
Who did you meet or interact with that held some juice?
What amazed or astonished you?
What made you curious? What did you wonder about?
What made you laugh? What made you sad?
In what way did you feel connected to a larger world and in what way did you feel separate?
And here’s the list of what I suggest should/could be included in a travel journal:
• sketches of people and places
• cultural impressions
• emotional moments
• spiritual moments
• times you were afraid
• times you were comfortable or uncomfortable
• dialogues with people and dialogues overheard
• people you’d like to meet or know better
• daily routines
• sensory details
• names of places
• meals you ate and meals you wish you hadn’t eaten.
There’s much more of course: Questions, explorations, serendipitous moments, and always more sensory and concrete details. Our travel journals not only reflect the people and places along our path; they also mirror our own inner journey. Maps to who we are and who we want to be.
I’ll be posting throughout the journey, both here on my blog and on my Facebook page. I may even tweet a few notes. And maybe we’ll meet in some faraway place and be surprised by the coincidence. Or maybe you’re already there. Either of those would be lovely.
Best of luck on your current journey Judy! Happy writing and walking and exploring the world. You inspire me with your writing to attempt a daily journal. I did it for years and years but stopped somehow. I love the questions. I could paste those inside my little journal and answer them daily. You’ve inspired me. Thanks and bon voyage!
Great suggestions, Judy. They will help me next time my wife and I go voyaging. Next year, after I retire, we’re planning a trip around the midwest, hunting for diners. Your note about meals eaten made me flash back to a restaurant we ate at often in Roscrea, Ireland, back in 2008. I remembered the pizza (yep, in Ireland), and they offered me choices of additional toppings of either mayo or vinegar. Tried both, preferred the vinegar.
Hi Tom, Thanks for your post. Your trip around the midwest, diner-hopping, sounds delightful. I love road trips. My last to the midwest was quite a few years ago, to a fishing camp at Lake of the Ozarks, research for a novel. Maybe your diner-hopping will be same for you. As for pizza with mayo(???) or vinegar, I think I might have chosen more cheese. safe journeys.
You certainly don’t need my advice, Judy, world traveler that you are! I do want to tell you about a little restaurant Mike and I discovered in Paris last year called Verjus. Wine bar downstairs with white tablecloth restaurant upstairs both with delicious, innovative menus—the chicken from the wine bar especially! Mike got the tip from the Paris by Mouth website. I’ll be vicariously by your side!
Thanks for the tip, Linda. If we get a chance to go there, and it sounds like we should, we’ll think of you and Mike.
Here’s hoping you and Dian have a wonderful and exciting time, dear Judy! I’ll miss ya and look forward to when you get back.
xb
Thanks, Bonnie. We’ve been talking about this journey and sojourn in Paris for at least a decade; Barcelona got added onto the itinerary in the last few months, but I’m so excited to go back there, too. We plan on getting lots of writing done. And spending lovely time as flaneurs. (I love that word).
You go girl! Make sure you don’t fall for those cheapo dollar store journals — I bought some and use them for work now since they curl at the edges, weaken everywhere, and won’t last til the end of September if I wrote on them.
Have a splendid time, Judy. You work hard for these excursions. We have to get you over here to give a workshop soon.
No cheapo journals for me. Remember I’m the woman who keeps bins of her old journals in storage units where she paid a large fee for years to store them. I’m not sure all of them are worth keeping (see July-August 1988), but these travel journals sure are. Thanks, Linda.