Advice for travel writers, part four: “O Grunge Queen, Why Won’t You Tidy Up?”

A few months back, we talked about the importance of bringing a high-quality leak-proof pen with smear-proof, water-resistant ink and a good journal with thick, absorbent paper for travel writers. In fact, you might even consider bringing a pencil instead of a pen because pencil lead won’t run, and you can even write in pouring rain. Well, here’s my latest piece of advice: make sure to store all your travel notes in a very safe place, even if you won’t be using them for a long while. I learned this lesson the hard way when I stored two notebooks containing Pacific Crest Trail notes about Oregon and Washington. Absentmindedly, I decided to store them in a leaky shed out in Santa Cruz during the El Nino storm year — and the water dripped all over them!!! Now, dozens of pages of trail notes about Oregon and Washington are covered with horrible, absolutely unreadable smears. On certain pages, only a few words survive, and now I have no idea what they mean. For example, one page has only one readable line of text, which says: “O Grunge Queen, Why Won’t You Tidy Up?” Now I have no idea what I meant by this. Who is this mysterious ‘grunge queen’ I was talking about? Where did this grunge-queen incident happen? Anyhow, don’t make this silly mistake. Store those journals somewhere dry and safe. You never know when you’ll need to use them for reference– now or 15 years from now.

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