Outdoor Traditions

The Joys of Journaling

Article and photo by SALLIE LEWIS

Growing up, I spent countless weekends on the Texas gulf coast. My family’s house, located on the Fulton Beach Road in Rockport, was the backdrop of many of my fondest childhood memories.

In 1993, my Dad started a journal to chronicle our years together there. To this day, the weather-worn leather jackets safeguard priceless pages scrawled with the stories of our lives.

Every time I return to our house in Rockport, I like to sit down with these journals and reflect on old memories. With just one glance at my Dad’s distinctive penmanship, I can relive our adventures fighting redfish in the bay or trapping blue crabs off the pier by our home. With the turn of the page, I can taste the sea on my tongue as we peeled fresh-boiled shrimp and shucked oysters under the light of the winter moon.

Over the years, my Dad wrote his journals not out of chore or necessity. Instead, he wrote them to capture life's adventure and fleeting beauty. Today, these volumes are heirlooms to be treasured and passed down, and they are the first thing we grab whenever the threat of a hurricane looms.

Last winter, after moving to Fredericksburg for a year-long reset, I followed in my father’s footsteps. Wanting to remember every detail of my Hill Country stint, I started a journal and began recording my daily observations.

It has been well over a year now since I started writing. Often, I like to go back and re-read my entries, delighting once again at the things I saw, like the double rainbow that arced over my home last summer or the wild turkey whose pale head burned blue under the bright morning sun. Flipping through the pages, I can watch the harvest moon rise in late September and remember with vivid clarity the fat, fragrant onions I pulled from the garden last spring. Scattered amongst these spiritual snapshots are simple, daily reflections, like Saturday mornings spent cooking brisket with loved ones or watching deer come to feed from the rocker on my porch.

No matter how mundane, journaling helps keeps our eyes open. For me, the practice became a forced pause, an exercise of sitting still, reflecting and being grateful for the life that pulsed around me.

Often, it is easy to forget the minutiae of everyday. By putting pen to paper, I was able to memorialize the mini moments of wonder that made this last year one of the best of my life thus far.