Why Traveling With a Journal is the Ultimate Souvenir

Wherever you go, a notebook is not only a lens into the world around you — it’s also a time machine to past versions of yourself.

By Kim Cross
Illustration by Olivia Waller

On page 12 of a yellowing, leather-­bound notebook, a pen-and-ink drawing takes me back 21 years. Suddenly I’m lying inside a Paris hammam, a public steam bath inside a mosque, naked for the very first time in public and trying to memorize the lovely geometry of the patterned tile so that I could replicate it later on the page. Looking at the sketch now, I can still feel the steam on my skin. Any souvenirs I might have bought on that trip are long gone and forgotten. But my notebook endures.

My notebook has taken on many roles — a sketchbook filled with tone poems on landscapes, word portraits of memorable characters, and snippets of dialogue overheard on a train. It’s a scrapbook stuffed with museum ticket stubs, local beer labels, and national park stamps. It’s an address book, a planner, a book of days.

It’s been a vehicle for connecting with locals, even across language barriers. Thrusting my notebook and a question at a friendly stranger — “Gare du Nord?” — I’ll pantomime drawing a map. The cartographic gift he scrawls is more charming and interactive than a GPS app could ever be. (And when a seatmate on the plane gets too chatty, my journal can also become a protective shield.)

In an era when everyone seems to be staring at their phones, my notebook forces me to look up and take in my surroundings at handwriting speed. While there’s no denying the usefulness of smartphones and digital cameras, they’re often a barrier between us and the world, making it too easy to snap absentmindedly without being present in the very moment we’re trying to capture. A notebook, on the other hand, is a conduit, and every page is a commitment to the little snapshots I decide to sketch — in words, and sometimes drawings. Even if you don’t draw, you can hand your notebook and a handful of coins to a street artist and ask for a 60-second portrait. Years later, you’ll study that forever-gram and marvel at your younger self.

Scrolling through the thousands of digital photos I’ve taken over the years, I’m struck by how many no longer make sense to me. But my notebooks are time machines. They carry me back not only to where I went, but what I thought and felt there. If a picture is worth a thousand words, my notebook is worth a thousand pictures.

Traveling with a journal has taught me how to see, listen, and pay attention to the world and all of its crisp, ephemeral details.

About the author: Kim Cross is the author of the New York Times best-seller What Stands in a Storm. She has written for Outside, Nieman Storyboard, Bicycling, Bike, ESPNw, Garden & Gun, Southwest, The Drake, and more. You’ll find her on a mountain-bike trail, a fly-fishing stream, or at kimhcross.com.