I am thinking of doing a lot more outdoor activities this year.  Hiking, camping, rock climbing are just a few of the things on my summer to-do list.  As I think about packing for these expeditions I am thinking about keeping records and journaling along the way.  I was doing a little research along these lines this week and I found this fantastic company.

From their Home Page:

Nomad Writing Journals are a product of our passion for outdoor activities and the desire to remember, in great detail, each and every adventure. These detailed writing journals grew out of our passion for traveling and outdoor activities such as hiking, climbing, bird watching, fly fishing, paddle sports and live music. Keeping detailed entries in your Nomad Journals will serve as a diary of special moments you can share with family and friends over the years. We provide you with cues to record every detail of your trips and activities as a diary would, while still providing plenty of space to record your observations. Just click a tab to see specific Nomad Writing Journals.

Man I am psyched about this place. In addition to just blank journals they have journals that are tailor made for just about any outdoor activity, complete with prompts to keep you writing about anything from kayaking to outdoor music festivals.

I’ve ordered a blank journal already to shove into my backpack as a collection book during my summer adventures.  The measurements they give are for a book that is a bit smaller than half a sheet of standard 8.5×11 paper (fold a sheet in half and see if the size suits you). The journals come in either nylon or leather covers that can be refilled with new books.  The covers can even be personalized with your name or logo.  they sell these as promotional or corporate gifts but I imagine it would be just as easy to put your own, personal stamp on one.

They even sell waterproof versions of the book refills!

Do you adventure with you journal?  If so I wanna know what sorts of equipment you use.  What sort of Journal?  Do you have an indestructible pen?  Is there a technique you use to store your whole kit?  Leave a comment and share your tools and experiences.

Dan Eldon’s Journals

Several years ago I was browsing through a bookstore and came across something really special.  At first I didn’t really know what I was looking at.  It was a collection of photographs and doodles and maps and all sorts of ephemera randomly crammed into the book.
I was hooked and bought the book.  It was later, when the excitement cooled a bit and I took the time to actually read the introduction and the back of the book that I found what I was looking at was actually a collection of the journals of a remarkable guy.

Dan Eldon was born in London in 1970 but soon moved with his family to Nairobi, Kenya.  He started taking photos for a local newspaper at a very young age, and developed a wonderful sense of adventure.  He also, early on, began to collect both his photographs and his adventures in a series of notebooks.

These notebooks are not the standard diary entries and list of sites you might expect.  They are a collection of layer upon layer of photos, paintings, ticket stubs, doodles, cut outs, hand outs, smears, feathers, coins, invitations and all sorts of important bits and pieces from his life and travels.

Dan took his notebooks with him everywhere along with a bin full of art supplies so that he could use any downtime (when did he have downtime?) at all to update and re-work page after page of his notebooks.

Looking through his books you feel like an archeologist. You dig down through strata of entries and ephemera that seem to be in no chronological order at all.  You can piece together his experiences by finding clues throughout the books.

I really can’t do them justice in this post.  Fortunately you can get a look at them online.

Daneldon.org
Wikipedia