Four years and 59 stories
I recently read Crossing the Gates of the Arctic by Dave Metz. The book details the author’s several-month trip on foot across northern Alaska. He faced cold, wetness and hunger. But the guy is an experienced all-weather camper and long-distance hiker so none of the hardships came as a surprise. I left a review of the book online and ended it this way: “The trip the author describes went off pretty much as planned, which makes for great travel and is a testament to the guy's intelligence and preparedness. However, it makes for a less than exciting book for us vicarious adventure junkies.”
I feel the same about my own travel writing: If I take a trip where everything goes off without a hitch, I wonder if I can squeeze an interesting article from it. I measure how exciting a trip I had by how many travel articles I get from it. My husband and I were in Texas for five days in 2009, and I wrote six stories from our experiences! That was a fun-filled vacation! On the other hand, we’ve been to more than 70 national parks/monuments/historic places, yet this is only my 59th travel story for the Chronicle, and less than half of those are about national park units.
Always our vacations are enjoyable. However, only sometimes are they exciting and worthy of writing about.
My favorite national park is Canyonlands in Utah. We visited in 2004. It was Mark’s favorite too until the next day when we drove into Arches. Later that week we crossed the state to Bryce Canyon National Park, and Mark changed his favorite again. But it doesn’t stop there: Mr. Wishy-washy could not resist the immense, unfathomable beauty of our final national park of that vacation and to this day calls the Grand Canyon his favorite.
We experienced more than 20 national parks on that 19-day adventure, and, despite the fact that many of the parks are our favorites and offered so much, I think I wrote only three articles: about Hubble Trading Post, Petrified Forest and a mule ride into the Grand Canyon. It was a great trip, full of beautiful things we’d never seen before, but besides scenery, not much out of the ordinary happened.
When vacations go perfectly as planned, there’s little to write about to keep readers’ interest. On trips, I physically push myself and test the line of safety because—as I mentioned in my review of the book—I’m a low-level-adventure junkie. And because I want to do something worth writing about.
If I weren’t writing this column, would I have jumped into the New River from a West Virginia rock three stories tall—which resulted in a huge bruise on the back of my thigh? Would I have gone on the jumpy kids’ ride at the festival in Atlanta—even though I’m frightened of falling? Would I have gone hiking in the spring rain in the rain forests of Washington state—when I knew the trails had not been maintained? And this is all within the past year!
In my 30s and younger I have no doubt that I would have attempted these stunts without provocation. Now that I’m in my 40s, it’s easy to bow out using age as an excuse. But, readers, I thank you for providing me the inspiration to keep challenging myself—in hopes that my experience will be worthy of words.
This month marks my four-year anniversary of writing this column. You can look forward to at least another 11 months—if I don’t crash and burn within the year.
I feel the same about my own travel writing: If I take a trip where everything goes off without a hitch, I wonder if I can squeeze an interesting article from it. I measure how exciting a trip I had by how many travel articles I get from it. My husband and I were in Texas for five days in 2009, and I wrote six stories from our experiences! That was a fun-filled vacation! On the other hand, we’ve been to more than 70 national parks/monuments/historic places, yet this is only my 59th travel story for the Chronicle, and less than half of those are about national park units.
Always our vacations are enjoyable. However, only sometimes are they exciting and worthy of writing about.
My favorite national park is Canyonlands in Utah. We visited in 2004. It was Mark’s favorite too until the next day when we drove into Arches. Later that week we crossed the state to Bryce Canyon National Park, and Mark changed his favorite again. But it doesn’t stop there: Mr. Wishy-washy could not resist the immense, unfathomable beauty of our final national park of that vacation and to this day calls the Grand Canyon his favorite.
We experienced more than 20 national parks on that 19-day adventure, and, despite the fact that many of the parks are our favorites and offered so much, I think I wrote only three articles: about Hubble Trading Post, Petrified Forest and a mule ride into the Grand Canyon. It was a great trip, full of beautiful things we’d never seen before, but besides scenery, not much out of the ordinary happened.
When vacations go perfectly as planned, there’s little to write about to keep readers’ interest. On trips, I physically push myself and test the line of safety because—as I mentioned in my review of the book—I’m a low-level-adventure junkie. And because I want to do something worth writing about.
If I weren’t writing this column, would I have jumped into the New River from a West Virginia rock three stories tall—which resulted in a huge bruise on the back of my thigh? Would I have gone on the jumpy kids’ ride at the festival in Atlanta—even though I’m frightened of falling? Would I have gone hiking in the spring rain in the rain forests of Washington state—when I knew the trails had not been maintained? And this is all within the past year!
In my 30s and younger I have no doubt that I would have attempted these stunts without provocation. Now that I’m in my 40s, it’s easy to bow out using age as an excuse. But, readers, I thank you for providing me the inspiration to keep challenging myself—in hopes that my experience will be worthy of words.
This month marks my four-year anniversary of writing this column. You can look forward to at least another 11 months—if I don’t crash and burn within the year.
posted by Elizabeth Evans Fryer | 1:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home