Here’s another installment in our series “The Journal Speaks Back” – Menomonie resident John Wilkerson invites you to join him in his love for journaling.
Travel opens your mind to new experiences. Those moments flicker between the planned road trip with scheduled stops and unexpected spiritual surprises. Along an interstate in Tennessee, is a plain gas station. Nothing about it suggests anything more than 12 pumps dispensing fuel to those in need.
The store is modern in the sense that plate-glass windows and bright colors beckon travelers to enter and linger among its shelves. Aisles of candy, chips and coffee welcome those who step inside in search of a clean restroom. It is a simple, common place that meets a need, nothing more.
I encountered this oasis while driving through the South during the holidays. I had spent time in Mississippi and Florida and was now crossing the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains, bound for home.
At first, I paid no attention to the rock cliff that embraced the station. I am familiar with places like this. Excavators and loaders had ripped into the side of a hill, leaving a sheer rock face. Water dribbled from the upper edge of the 40-foot wall. Years of white scale streaked from base to top.
The raw cut into the mountain drew me closer. Millennia of sedimentary rock told a story of inland seas and unknown creatures.
Bits of color, reds, blues and greens poked from the stone in haphazard places. Totems and messages left by earlier travelers.
I had found a shrine. Messages to lovers and soldiers were written on rocks and tucked into ledges along the cliff. A single marble rested in a crevice; its shiny glass danced against dark shale. The stone it sat on was not native to the cliff. Someone had carried it there, leaving it without a message.
My mind built a story about who the marble represented and what family member had traveled to this place to memorialize them.
Farther along the cliff, a collection of toy trucks perched in the morning light. These mementos sat high on the rock face, too high for a child to place. The careful positioning suggested an adult.
A few steps more and another stone’s inscription read, “We love and miss you.”
These shrines are common across cultures and histories. I have seen them in many places as I have traveled the world: stacked stones in Scotland, ribbons tied to branches in Canada and paper currency tacked to a bar in New Zealand. Older still are cliff paintings from thousands of years before we, as a culture, could understand the written word.
Think of how your words become a travel journal. They don’t need to describe your trip to the grocery store or shuttling children to sports, though those stories carry their own humor and honest appeal. They do need to be raw. They are your testament to where your soul traveled and what it experienced.
Today’s Prompt
Find a place, either new or familiar, and write about it. As you do, step deep into your head, then step back out and notice how your words evolve. This is how your author’s voice learns to grow.
John Wilkerson works most days writing and fiddling with his computer. His new, old, home in Menomonie is constantly subjected to DIY mayhem. His background includes ghost writing, newspaper reporting, and a long stretch in marketing and advertising. John may be contacted at: [email protected]
