Travel logs capture those special moments that make a trip memorable. Sometimes those isolated magical moments transcend the vacation. Unfortunately, the human memory being what it is, those precious memories are often lost if not recorded. But those who keep a travel log capture those moments for all time.
Over the centuries many venerable travelers have kept a journal of their travels. From the adventures of Marco Polo to the diaries of pioneer wives heading west, travel logs provide a window to a specific time and place in our world. They chronicle not just the places, people and activities of a time, but the thoughts and feelings of the people who lived then.
Travel logs come in many flavors. My uncle kept a movie journal of his travels with my aunt. After he retired, they travelled all over the world. He shot rolls and rolls of Super 8 film, then spent hours splicing them together into silent travelogues, complete with placards announcing each new site. Watching them is like travelling back in time. My uncle captured many historic moments and places, some of which no longer exist, like the giant Afghan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban. He and my aunt were on the first tour into China when it reopened to Westerners during the Nixon presidency. The changes in the world my uncle chronicled in his films are startling.
My cousin keeps a highly personal travel log. A writer and an artist, she takes an unlined journal with her on travels. She fills the pages with sketches of local scenes and people, interspersed with paragraphs of her thoughts and perceptions. Sometimes she's fanciful, creating a short story about people she sees or meets. Sometimes she is inspired to write poetry. Her journals are a very personal remembrance of her travels -- what she felt, what she thought, who she met.
A modern gal, my twenty-something niece captures memories of her trips with her digital camera. Since her junior high school band trip she has filled dozens of scrapbooks with snaps of her travels. She enjoys pasting in the pictures and using colorful markers to add captions and blurbs to describe special moments and crazy things that happened with her friends.
Perhaps the best reason to keep a travel log is to help you remember those magical, sometimes comical, sometimes poignant moments that occur during a trip that are, unfortunately, too often forgotten. Re-reading old travel logs brings back a rush of memories and with them the sense of wonder you first experienced.
