Journal

A conversation about journaling comes round on the Camino forums every so often – what do you use, how do you do it, and so forth. Rather than ramble there on scattered threads, I thought it might be better to ramble here, where at least my ramblings have the virtue of being together in one place.

To be brief: I journaled on the Camino. And I’ll do it again.

When I blogged from the Camino, I generally took the text from my journal, having tidied up the language and edited my thoughts for electronic publication.

But a year after our first Camino, I also posted my journal entries verbatim. I wanted to walk back through the unvarnished, unedited thoughts and feelings of those days.

On the Camino, I wrote every day, sometimes several times a day. Always at night, trying to summarize where we walked, where we stopped, who we met, what we saw. But also during the quiet moments at second breakfast over a café con leche.

It’s important to record your insights, your spiritual musings, the state of your mind. But no less important are the ordinary things: food, weather, aches and pains. Your evolving Camino family.

Don’t feel the need to be profound. Don’t self-edit. Just let it pour out of you higgeldy-piggeldy. Give yourself permission to blither. You can set it in order later, if you wish.

Don’t be afraid to record minutiae – or even silly thoughts – but try to write down the big ideas and big experiences too.

And do it as soon as you can. Sharp details fade in the memory quicker than you think. Write them down.

I also stuffed my journal with papers I picked up at various places – holy cards, maps, notes, even a restaurant napkin (from the Drunken Duck in Logroño).

For me, these are important memory aids (as well as souvenirs), which can evoke the time and place and add immeasurably to my journal entries. You can overdo this, obviously. I probably did.

Eventually, I had to use a rubber band to keep my journal closed!

So – what kind of journal should you bring?

That’s a question whose answer is going to be different for every pilgrim. Some are going to want lines, grids, dots, and so on. I prefer blank pages.

And then there’s size – pocket? Standard novel size? Digest? Letter? I took a pocket Moleskine for brief notes (because I always carry a pocket Moleskine), but my journal itself was 6″ x 8″, which I feel is a good size. It’s not so big that it won’t fit in the pack, but it’s not so small that you can’t put in a lot of text per page (not to mention a lot of extra stuff!)

Now a normal notebook of that size might be a little too heavy to carry. Paper can be surprisingly heavy!

However, the book I took is made in Nepal from lokta paper, which is very strong and very light. As an added bonus, I really enjoy writing on it – the texture of the paper is a delight, and it takes ink well without running or blotting.

You can purchase these books at Barnes and Noble for about $11. The last time I visited my local store, they had stacks of them.

I purchased two of these for our upcoming Camino.

On our last Camino, I started running out of room in the book at about León, so I had to buy a new book locally. It was very nice, but way too heavy. I found that I wrote much less frequently and much shorter entries.

The lesson is that the paper and the book really do make a difference. So find something you enjoy writing in, and write write write!

(Originally posted to Pilgrims on the Way.)