Keeping a travelogue

I read Randy Keck’s article “Your Travel Legacy — Leaving a Trail to Follow” in his June 2014 “Far Horizons” column.

I have always kept travel logs, what I call TripNotes, ever since I began traveling internationally some 30 years ago. At first, I wrote each day’s activities into a small notebook before bed each night. Then, when email became more ubiquitous, I made notes each day but composed directly onto the computer in Internet cafés as I could find them.

This was an adventure, what with the, at times, chancy Internet connections in some foreign locales. Often, there were other people wanting to use the computer, and my TripNotes could take me up to 45 minutes to finish, so the stress level was high for all concerned.

When small laptops came along, I finally could compose in my room at the end of each day, then upload to the Internet later. This was much better!

With my 2013 trip to Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, however, I had to go back to writing in a little notebook, since we were in some pretty remote places with no Internet availability. In Tibet, the computers had all sorts of blocks on the Internet put on by the Chinese by way of censoring, and I never knew when the connection would simply fail or get shut down.

As for content, back when I first started, there was one particular secretary in our office, Linda, to whom I directed my accounts. She was so interested in the trips and appreciated reading about them in great detail, so, upon my return to work, hers was the first desk I would stop at to deliver the notebook.

Because of her interest, as I made notes I would try to imagine myself telling Linda what I was seeing — the colors, etc. — plus the smells, sounds and activities. Whether I was in a dugout canoe on the Rio Negro in Ecuador, in a bustling marketplace in Mérida, Venezuela, or on a high and windy hill overlooking Machu Picchu, I always tried to “show” it to Linda.

She said that when she read the notes, she felt like she was actually there, so it worked. As a result of Linda’s being there, my TripNotes improved in their delivery.

As Linda shared the notes around the office and others got to travel with me vicariously, more and more folks wanted to read them. When I retired, coincidentally at the time emails got easier to accomplish, many people asked to be put on my list, so now there are nearly 100 people who enjoy the trips I take with my husband.

I would disagree with Randy Keck on two things, however. Making only a digital record bothers me in that pretty soon that format will be obsolete and the information unrecoverable. Think if all my TripNotes had been on floppies! Always create a hard copy, real printed pages, in addition to the digital copy.

The other point on which I disagree is the watering down of content to accommodate those with short attention spans. What? No way would I do that!

If people want to read about the trip, they will read it. And if they lose interest partway through, well, that’s their loss and it doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. Not everyone is always interested in everything.

So, as Bugs Bunny says, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!”

FLORENCE DRAKE

Readfield, ME