I was digging around in a few boxes in the garage tonight when I came across a thin hard-covered little book I hadn’t seen in a while.  The little book was a journal from the summer of 1994.  A travel notebook.

Decorating the front cover of the notebook is an old map with hand-drawn images of islands, an artist’s conception of the world sometime in the 16th century, when the world was sort of known, but in a vague sort of way.  On the map, names of locations are written in Latin or Spanish in various sizes, and in reality the map is of Western Europe, but it is exotic, featuring pen-scratched images of ships and coastlines and Poseidon with his trident riding on spray.  I love old maps because they remind me of the adventure found in exploration, and the risks that come with adventure.  I bought this book in late May of ’94, and it has been a treasured possession in my library because it is the little book I used to journal the biggest adventure in my life (which probably deserves more than a journal post here).

In early June, 1994, I had just finished seminary studies at Golden Gate in Mill Valley, California, and one of my best friends from middle school and high school agreed to come meet me in San Fran, from which we set out to wander around in Europe for several months.  He met me, we caught a flight from San Francisco England bound on June 4, 1994, and our adventure began. And the little notebook received excellent attention- for a month.

Looking back through the journal, I see I took copious notes about the trip which started on the night before we left. In my enthusiasm, I detailed my thoughts ad feelings about the coming trip.  After we had left the U.S. and arrived in England, I made another long, exhilarated entry detailing the flight and our experiences on day one of the trip. On day 2, we took a ferry across the channel from England to France, and a long entry was made that evening.  And so I went, enthusiasm-driven each evening, making entries about what we saw, where we went, who we met, what we ate, how we travelled, day after day.

Enjoying reading about the journey, at about two-thirds of the way into the trip, I turned a page in the journal… and there was nothing there.  My notes had ended.  I had given up recording my impressions of the last arc of the adventure which, as I think back over the last two weeks, were full of amazing experiences and impressions.  That leg of the trip took me to some of the locations I most desired to visit- the Cotswolds and Oxford in England, and Trinity University in Dublin, Ireland- and brought me some of the most potent memories I collected during the entire sojourn.  And somehow, I failed to write many of those memories down.

Sadly, I think I know a pretty good reason why I quit journaling.

About two-thirds of the way through our trip, my old friend Glenn and I realized we were on each others’ nerves.  And he had some places he wanted to go see that I wasn’t really into, and I had other interests calling me. We hadn’t seen each other for an extended period in probably 7 or 8 years, let alone spent days together like this trip had us do.  I had planned in my itinerary to head off to Berlin at some point in the trip, and Glenn had wanted to go to Switzerland to see the mountains.  We were in Vienna on the night we decided to separate. I can’t remember now who broached the topic of moving on separately, but the decision was made, and the following morning, I was on a train in Czechoslovakia, headed towards Prague.  Without knowing anything but English, alone on a train headed into a post-Communist country, I was a bit intimidated and, well, at moments, afraid.

I think just trying to keep my wits about me, trying to make wise decisions while depending on myself to survive- trying to understand where I was going and what I would see and where I would stay  and what I would eat, and where I could relax- I spent a lot of time and energy working on surviving.  My social skills were not the best, being an introvert in foreign countries, getting by as I could.  I was, in short, pre-occupied with trying to take care of myself.

I had wanted to go to Berlin to see Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s family home and some other historical Bonhoeffer sites there, as I also wanted to visit a concentration camp or two to verify to myself the reality of the Holocaust. I was grateful upon arrival in Berlin to be welcomed by a native host family who, not knowing me, were friends of a family in my California church at the time, and who warmly took me in.  After a few days with them and wandering around in Berlin, I was ready (and more than happy) to head west again, back towards England, towards English speakers, and towards the home of C.S. Lewis.

I need to try and finish the journal, I think, as best as I can. We all go through journeys in our life that deserve to be written down in totality, for posterity’s sake.  Yes, the memories we made in these adventures were full of fresh and novel sights and smells and sounds, and those experiences were phenomenal to take in. But as much as we were experiencing new things in these once-in-a-lifetime journeys, these sojourns have the more important distinction that, as we have let ourselves go out into the unknown, absorbing new sites and sounds and people and places, these once-in-a-lifetime journeys change us forever.

I need to finish filling in the last days of this journal sometime soon.