Travel Writing—D.M.K.Ruby
The closet in my home office has several large plastic storage boxes stuffed with travel journals that I started keeping at age 8. I spent a lovely ten days in the Yukon with a brief dip into Alaska with my elderly parents this summer and as we’ve travelled together many times, like well trained magpies, they also collect things they think I might want to put into my journal. It might be the sticker they picked up at the tourist information centre or a receipt that has the logo of the restaurant we went to for breakfast. The random bits of paper and sometimes other things make them such a delight to read, years after a trip.
One of my favourites is the one I kept when I was a student in Nova Scotia one autumn and decided to press the gorgeous red maple leaves between sheets of wax paper and glue them into the journal. For someone who grew up in the mountains of Alberta, Cape Breton in the fall was a revelation and I finally understood why we have a maple leaf on our flag and not a lodgepole pine. Even thirty years later, they’ve held up and bring a rush of positive memories every time I open my trip journal to those pages.
Over the years, I have become more particular about the type of journal I use, for example, it must have blank pages. They have to be the right size for the trip. Sometimes I deliberately take a small one to start and look for another one along the way. I usually end up with at least two and as many as five notebooks depending on the length of the trip. I have used a variety of pens and pencils, but my current favourites are a Blacking pencil and retractable roller ball with fast drying ink that I picked up one day at work and subsequently found out were a generic brand at Staples.
Maybe one of these days, I will edit one of my journals, maybe the one I kept when I went to Japan the first time (such beautiful paper and packaging!) or my trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg with my Welsh friend Claire, her mum, my parents and a friend’s mum who had always wanted to see Russia. It was an epic multigenerational adventure, and it was during a sliver of time when travel to Russia was not as fraught as it has become in recent years. I did have a fantasy of being a travel writer when I was much younger, but I’ve been sidetracked by mystery and romance but maybe I’ll drift back to travel again someday.
Health care professionals have been accused of having a gallows sense of humour and I mentioned to MGS that someone will have the onerous task of chucking all my crap into a dumpster when I die. Her daughter, also a writer, overheard and turned to me in outrage and said, I will look after them, you can give them to me! I was so moved that anyone would care to read what I’ve laboured over for years.
I hope you’re all having a wonderful summer and looking forward to your comments!