Upping My Travel Writing Game

Guyana Highlands of South America

"Tom, why don't you plan out a route to California?" My wife Sandy asked me this question after lunch last week--when we had been planning a camping trip that same morning to an Iowa state park a half hour's drive away. That required a shift in mental gears, I can tell you--not a bad shift but certainly a significant change of perspective!

By happenstance, my step-daughter had recently given me the new issue of National Geographic magazine, the April issue, and I was reading the article "Up the Mountain, to a World Apart," about a "venture into a remote part of Guyana with no roads and no guarantee of getting out" to a region of "sheer-sided, flat-topped mountains known locally as tepui." A scientific expedition would climb these unpopulated, untrammeled environmental time capsules to learn more about the process of evolution.

Reading the article was an eye-opener for me, a reminder of just how powerful and immediate travel writing can be. The opening paragraphs place the reader right next to conservation biologist Bruce Means. 

"Grasping a sapling in one hand for balance, Bruce took a shaky step forward. His legs quivered as they sank into the boggy leaf litter, and he cursed his 79-year-old body. At the beginning of this expedition, Bruce had told me that he planned to start slowly but would grow stronger each day as he acclimated to life in the bush."

Later in the article, writer Mark Synnott places us deeper in the bush, describing the conditions that the explorers were facing. 

"For days we'd been trudging across a swampy floodplain through ankle-deep mud that almost sucked our boots right off our feet. It rained incessantly, and even when the sun poked through the low clouds, it never penetrated the dense canopy overhead. Down in the steamy understory, mosquitoes and biting flies reigned, and our sweat-soaked clothes, slick with mud and ripped by thorns, stuck to our rashy skin. Every day we crossed countless tea-colored rivers and creeks via precarious log bridges. The slow-moving water, which was also our drinking source, was stained from decaying vegetation--something that no amount of purifying could remove."

Ah, what lovely, descriptive prose! The writer follows the most basic and important descriptive writing axiom: show, don't tell. He uses "sense words," words which connect the reader's experience to the description, not ideas but physical sensory input. Look at the touch words: grasping, shaky, and quivered, to name a few. The sentence that begins with "Down in the steamy understory" is rich with sense words: "steamy understory" with touch and vision; "mosquitoes and biting flies reigned" evokes sight, sound, and touch; "sweat-soaked clothes" evokes, of course, smell. Taste? With every breath filtered by steamy jungle air, with sweat on the lips and mud everywhere, how could one not be tasting the jungle? The sentences weave together our life experiences and imagination to place us in that jungle--all while we sit comfortably in our chair at home, perhaps a cup of tea (with sugar and milk) beside us. Travel writing at its best!

Canary-yellow writing pads and Ticonderoga #2 pencils, and I'm ready to begin the planning!

Now as I sit at the kitchen table planning my route, my old habit of planning with tablets and pencil to make my lists prevails: a list for food, a list for last-minute preparations, lists for our children as they keep an eye on the house for the month we'll be gone. We're packing for our five-nights out, knowing that we'll have food stores available at our destination. We'll be driveway-mooching at Sandy's parents, hooking up to 120v electric power to run our 12v refrigerator and lights.

The pencil scratches its way across the page, either adding an item or crossing one out. I'm glad I had the wheel-bearings packed last month at a local RV dealership. I've listened to the pounding of my little air compressor as I've topped of the trailer's tire pressure, and I've leaned on the torque wrench as I've checked that the wheel lugnuts are tight. I'll be de-winterizing the trailer next week. I was on my hands and knees yesterday, scrubbing the interior and removing my gear from this winter's 1-3 night local camping outings. 

 

I've spent the time in front of the computer screen, studying Google Maps and locating possible campgrounds and RV parks for overnight stays on our trip. Since Sandy will need a strong phone signal for her online work, I've called the overnight sites to inquire about connectivity. Of course, I'm not naive enough to think all the information I receive will completely match our needs, but it's a beginning. After that, it's just take it one day at a time. Our longest mileage planned is a little over four hundred miles, with most days ranging between 250 miles and 325. We hope to leave early enough so that Sandy will have some time to work in the late afternoons if necessary. 

I may very well be writing by hand in my daybook as we journey, skipping the computer and just taking notes and writing down impressions, details that I can include when I finally do post about our journey on my travel blog, Green Goddess Glamping. A few notes, a few photos, pleasant conversation with Sandy while on the road. Audiobooks have been strongly recommended for us while traveling, but Sandy and I are looking forward to just looking out the window and chatting. I've traveled before by myself on a trip off to the Carolinas, chronicled on my traveling blog under the label Green Goddess Expeditions. 

I've researched and written before about writing and travelogues, so long ago, in fact, that the original blogs I read for inspiration and direction are now defunct, the links no longer active. Mine are still available, though, the most recent being "Travelogues and Tiny Trailer Travel." I'm excited to travel with my wife Sandy. The last time we traveled the Iowa-California route was from west to east when we drove a much loved yet worn 1975 Ford F-150 from my parents' home in California back to Iowa, a gift from my parents to my son. That was quite an adventure, considering the worn steering linkage and the lack of heater or windshield defroster. I remember how the engine would cut out and stall at stoplights on the continental divide because the old carburetor wasn't fuel injection, and the high-altitude air was too thin for the carburetor adjustments. I just feathered the accelerator, though, and once on the road we were okay, especially when we dropped out of the mountains. We made it, finding peace of mind on the trip by deciding that if the old orange "Pumpkin Wagon" broke down, we'd just have it towed to the nearest gas station, hand the owner registration title to someone willing to take it, and then take a bus home. 

On an early winter overnighter with our Airstream Basecamp

This trip should be more pleasant with our 2021 Airstream Basecamp and our 2018 Nissan Pathfinder (with only just under 18,000 miles on it). I'm looking forward to sharing our time together. Sandy even wants to learn how to drive while pulling the trailer, and I'm sure there are some not-so-busy stretches of highway on the trip that will provide her with some low-stress experience. Travelogue writing is a skill that I'm continually developing, and I plan to focus this trip on sharing those travel moments the best I can, those moments of flicking the turn signal and then pulling off the interstate freeway, heading for the night's campsite, having rolled down that long, lonesome highway, a song in my heart and my wife by my side. 

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Travelogues and Tiny Trailer Travel

Howell Station Campground, Lake Red Rock, Iowa

Funnily enough, it is four years ago that I wrote a blog article entitled "All Writing Is Travelogue"--and I mean exactly four years ago. The article was published on September 16, 2015, and today, September 16, 2019, I was thinking about travelogue writing and referenced this article. Auspicious or quirky or just random, but I'll go with the flow.

In a week I'll be heading out with my tiny travel trailer on what my wife and I call "scouting missions," where I head out solo to find new campgrounds for us to visit together. When we camp together, my wife needs good cellphone receptivity so that she can use the phone's hotspot to set up her online mobile office for her business. My scouting missions are the search for beautiful camp spots that include a strong phone signal.

I'm planning in a week to leave for a couple of weeks, touring northeast Iowa and specifically scouting out state parks that will fit our family's recreation and business needs. In my earlier article about travelogue, I begin with the following premise: "When writers put down words, they take readers on a journey. In this sense, all writing falls into the 'travelogue' genre, the chronicle of a journey, first the writer's journey of discovery and then the reader's." Four years later, I have no problems with that premise, although I might add that the journeys writers and readers take can have a focus. "How-to" articles have an intellectual and practical focus. Biographical and geographical articles can have a social focus. All writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, has to provide emotional connection to the individual. Writing in some way has to be transformative.

In my "All Writing Is Travelogue" article, I reference a travel blog, The Travel Writing Life, written by a woman, Laurie Gough. It's ironic that her blog is now shut down or "parked" and no longer accessible. I remember, though, Gough's descriptive passages of her travels, and thank her for her inspiration. I hope she is doing well. One article from her blog delineated points for good travelogue writing.

Travel Writing Tips

1. Focus on interesting, different, and special qualities. "Usually this will be a combination of the place and the people."
2. Concrete details: "not 'fruit' but 'rotting pomegranates.'"
3. "Stay true to who you are." Let the readers find out as you go along.
4. Open your senses to the small things: oil-burning lamps, newly cut timber, cricket chirps . . .
5. Characterization: "How human beings are acting on this planet never fails to enliven a story."
6. Find the good, even in the lousy.
7. Backstory: history, facts, past events.
8. "Read your work aloud to yourself."
9. Tone/mood:"Take in as much of a place as you can."

I need to take these tips to heart, and thank you again, Laurie Gough. I spent a little less than a week at the campground in the photo above, and wrote the article "Howell Station Tiny Trailer Basecamp" for my travel trailer blog, Green Goddess Glamping. I think the writing tips listed above are good to remember and to consciously apply.

A beautiful meadow setting at Howell Station

In my Howell Station article, I believe I provided backstory about the lake and Pella, Iowa. I think I missed the "tone/mood" a bit because it was, at least for me, an interesting experience to be camping below Lake Red Rock Dam. The campground is a beautiful meadow with soft morning and evening light, deciduous trees, walnuts, oak, and maple, providing shade during the afternoon. I could have captured that mood better.

Des Moines River at Howell Station Campground

The Des Moines River flows past the campground, adding its liquid background growl to the setting. However, there was always a quiet background awareness of all that water above me, behind the dam. Lake Red Rock is Iowa's largest lake, with over 15,000 acres of water. Maybe it's just me, but if I put my attention on it, I could kind of feel that mass of water lurking over me. Luckily, the five nights at the campground provided a chance for me to get used to the three-dimensionality of the landscape.

I believe I could have spent more effort adding more sense detail and description for both my basecamp experience and for my bike day rides. I added some, but more conscious application of this aspect of writing should always be part of my revising process. I included some bits about me--"staying true to me"--such as when I got lost. I could have added more characterization since I had some good interactions with a variety of people. 

I enjoyed my bike ride to Pella, although I found this fellow not much of a conversationalist. 

I'm looking forward to my tour of state parks. Northeast Iowa is an area missed by glaciers, so the terrain is different than my local area. Also, some of the parks will be on the mighty Mississippi River and should provide some spectacular panoramas. We'll see how the trip and the writing goes, but it should be a bit cooler and more pleasant--the weather, that is. Below are links for the state parks I plan to visit. I will be flexible, but I plan to spend two nights at each park. If a park is really spectacular, I will spend longer; if underwhelming, I can just do an overnighter. I feel no compulsion to have a plan and to stick to it point for point. 

• Palisades-Kepler State Park
• Backbone State Park
• Pikes Peak State Park
• Maquoketa Caves State Park
• Wildcat Den State Park
• Geode State Park

Rivers, lakes, hills, caves, and the amenities of the state parks. I should have some good times. Most of the campgrounds will have modern facilities, but Wildcat Den is a primitive site, so I will have my first experience of camping off the grid with the Green Goddess--my "hard-sided tent." I have a week's work now to get my garden tucked away for the winter and to prepare for my trip. Traveling solo, I should have many opportunities to focus on the details of travelogue writing. I'm writing this now at dawn from my home, and the fields are covered with fog, dyed pale shades of pink and gray by the rising sun. It's a beautiful world, and I'm looking forward to chronicling my adventure.

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Have Feet Will Travel

This is a beautiful fall. I am reveling in the brilliant colors of the leaves, and even the muted colors of the rain-filled sky and frost-bleached grasses. And the smells of this season, so rich with memories of the vibrant summer that are transmuted to earthy leaf mulch and wind-driven rain! My greatest joy is not just that the season has arrived; rather, it is that for some reason I am more aware this year of autumn's beauty, more linked to the natural rhythms of the season.

Perhaps it is because I have bought a tiny trailer and am outside more this season, hiking and cooking, sitting by the campfire. My wife and I made the choice to change our environment, to buy the trailer so that we could have a "mobile office" where we could work yet be more outside. Now it is fall, and I am outside more, having packed my outdoor clothes--and glad to have done so! Even the cold knife of the wind is--what is the word?--bracing! The world is alive, and to move out into the natural world is to be reminded of those cosmic rhythms of life. It is easy to forget or ignore these natural rhythms when in a highly controlled environment.

While my wife works her business, I write, and lots of my writing has been about our travel--the earth and sky and waters. I have to report that I think I'm getting better at it, but travel writing isn't as easy as it appears to be at first glance. As a fiction writer, I can say that traveloging is first and last driven by setting, by description of the natural world and the human world one experiences.

I recently posted a travel blog entitled "Fall Leaves and Camping, Please," where my wife and I spent five nights camping. "It's late October, just past the harvest moon, fifty-five degrees, and the trees are in full reds and yellows, the sky blues and grays, and the fire is a quiet companion as I sit and write at my camp at Jefferson County Park, a campground just four miles from my house."

In about a week I will be posting another piece at Green Goddess Glamping, entitled "Two Fall Nights on the Des Moines River," where I write about sharing my camp with rain showers and chainsaw instructors. The campground was carpeted with fall leaves. The river flowed just beyond the door to my tiny trailer. I took long walks along a nature trail and gravel roads. "I walked a mile down Hawk Drive along the Des Moines River, beautiful country with trees with brilliant foliage and stark white trunks mixed with evergreens, framed top and bottom by the cloudy sky and flowing river." I met fifteen young adults, all brandishing chainsaws.

It was a journey worth taking, both for the outer and inner joys of the experience. Just as a cold fall rain is cleansing, so too can the experience of being in a cold fall rain be cleansing. And can there be anything more evocative than young adults happily felling invasive trees so that native species can re-establish themselves. Ah, the smell of sawdust in the early morning air!

I'm leaving tomorrow for Indian Lake for some cold weather camping. I want to learn how to be comfortable when the temperatures are in the 30's to the teens range. I believe it will involve warm clothing and a warm camper. I want to get outside, to enjoy the straightforward intelligence of nature, to live simply, and as I write this, I think I need to find my copy of Thoreau's Walden for reading. Simplify, simplify, simplify!

And I'll keep writing, because while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is only a partial truth. Beauty is everywhere, but only inside the beholder if our eyes behold it. I'm going to experience the bracing cold of the fall wind. There's a chance of snow flurries. That should wake me up and keep me moving.

(Note: a great way to not miss my updates on writing or my traveloging is to sign up for email notifications for either (or both) blogs. Check the blog sidebars for the sign-up gadget.)

August 8-9, Pullman, Washington, Family Visit

Note: downhill = dwarf legs

August 8

I've been doing a good job of reading twenty pages of my manuscript each day. I've also posted a link to the current version of the front cover of The Stone Dragon to a LinkedIn discussion group that has given me some good feedback.

This day started off with lunch with my son and his girlfriend. Then we went shopping and blew some money. It was really fun seeing the happiness on the faces of those two young adults.

Shoes, clothes, various scented lotions, and a "longboard" skateboard. (Video below.)

That evening my brother-in-law and I worked on their bicycles and got them up and running so that both bikes shifted well and also stopped well. Two essential features! This was great fun, working with my brother-in-law on a worthy project.

August 9

Want to hear a real laugh? I took the same bike ride this morning that I went on the other day and documented in yesterday's blog post: Old Moscow Road. And that photo of the dead tree in the field? Well, this morning I decided I didn't need my camera, since I'd already photographed the area. And this morning there was a big hawk perched on a branch of that tree--and I didn't have my camera for that perfect shot!

Real smart, Tom.

Today my son, girlfriend, and I went to Subway for lunch. His girlfriend and I rode our bikes, and my son rode his new longboard skateboard.

Copyright 2011 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

August 7: Pullman, Washington, Family Visit

Photos from two journeys today: one in the AM by bicycle, and the other by car to the mountains.

Today was a day of exploration. In the morning at about 8:00 AM I left to take photos of the farms up the road from my family's house. I didn't travel much more than a couple of miles but was gone for an hour because I stopped so many times to have fun with my camera.

In the afternoon we headed east by car to the beginning of the Bitterroot Mountains to the Elk River falls. It fulfilled my dream of getting out into nature on this trip and enjoying the sites and smells of the mountains.

Old Moscow Road: wheat field country

Typical view: farm buildings surrounded by wheat, lentil, or garbanzo fields

The silence was wonderful: sunshine and sky

This round barn was the jewel in this beautiful necklace of trees and field

Elk River Falls

We hiked all three falls, from lower to upper. The upper falls had access to the water.

The lower falls. So nice to hear a waterfall again.

The middle falls. Still far away but a wonderful hike through shaded forest.

Upper falls: down to the water at last!

Happy me.

I was very happy for my family to take me on this excursion. I felt that I had been given a chance to feel deeply the beauties of the area.

 

 Copyright 2011 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

August 6: Pullman, Washington, Family Visit

August 6

Temperature at 50 degrees this morning--cool, sunny, dry.

Went to the Moscow, Idaho, farmers' market located right next to the university's campus. This is a big open-air market with incredibly fresh and vibrant veggies. Didn't think to bring my camera, so no photos . . .

Brunch with my son, his girlfriend, her parents, and my son's aunt, uncle, and cousins this morning at a local restaurant.

Helping clean out the storage garage. Evidently, my niece is having a party tonight--20 or so theatre friends. Her dad is moving the big speakers outside. I've come in after doing the preliminary moving with her mom. I have another 10 pages of my manuscript to read.

Met my quota of manuscript pages. Napped. Decided I needed some exercise so took a 25 minute bike ride. The road was edged with wheat fields turning golden and by garbanzo fields still green. I saw a couple of wonderful possibilities for photos and hope to take another early morning bike ride tomorrow.

Now it's time for shower and TM program at 3 PM. After 5 o'clock, everyone will hit the place, and I've been told they've got the outside sound system working now.

Went out into the countryside with family to plink with rifles. I hadn't shot a firearm in about 40 years. I just used a .22 and shot a couple of clips at a target--and hit the target! At the end, I fired a .303 Enfield three times. That kicked. Glad I had great earphones.

My son was surprised I could shoot. I told him that just because I choose not to do something doesn't mean that I can't. It's a change to be doing things I haven't done for many years--kind of like time travel.  Pretty country; the setting sun on the fields and hills was rich and subtle.

I'm looking forward to back to bicycle time tomorrow.

10:10 PM. Yes, the sound system is working. It's two hours later by my physiology's time for Iowa. Lights off for me. Luckily, I fall asleep easily.

Copyright 2011 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved

August 4-5: Pullman, Washington, Family Visit

August 4

Arrived in Spokane, very easy flights with United--Cedar Rapids, IA, to Denver, CO, and then on to Spokane. Saw a moose off the highway on the way from the airport to Pullman (about an hour and a half drive). Dinner was noodles Alfredo with stir-fried veggies. The night was cool, in the 50's, so I slept well, windows open and lots of fresh air.

August 5

This morning I'll edit my novel and then go on a bike ride. Pullman has a paved trail system for bicyclists that goes through town. I'll be able to ride the trail from where I'm staying to my son's apartment. That will be fun--maybe a couple of miles or a little more.

Rode a bike 6-8 miles on Pullman's bike trails. Got lost 4x downtown when the path crossed streets. Noticed that the bike seat is much narrower than my recumbent's seat (lawnchair model).

The city has a community garden area, and the paved trails provide not only the opportunity for exercise but also a safe means of bicycling in town. The streets are busy with cars, and many roads are narrow because of the hills and the houses built close to the streets.

Came home and took a nap. Must still be getting used to the two-hour time change.

More editing on the novel.

I hope someone will take a photo of Bennie and me. Bennie is a sweet dog about the size of a Shetland pony. I'm sharing the house with him, so I'm glad this canine Godzilla is friendly!

Evening: After dinner, I unveiled the photo album I had brought from Iowa--photos of my son growing up. His girlfriend got to see him as an infant, at school, in sports. There were also photos of his aunts and uncles and cousins, so everyone had a good time and some good laughs. There was even the obligatory baby photo of after a bath. When my son squawked, I told him he should thank me that I chose the one of him on his stomach!

Copyright 2011 by Thomas L. Kepler, all rights reserved