I’m sitting here with a journal in my lap and a pen in my hand (a fountain pen with green ink, no less). I’m writing the old fashioned way.
Trudy says this journal has become our camping journal, since that’s pretty much the only time I write this way, anymore. Such are the downsides of the Internet age.
But I have heard that the state parks are getting wifi. [It’s true.] That could well be the end of a long tradition of paper and pen journaling.
You know … come to think of it, last night as Trudy and I were returning from a sunset walk on the Frio River, we passed a campsite where I saw a guy sitting at a picnic table with a laptop. It was open and glowing dimly in the fading light. He sat there huddled over the keyboard staring at the screen as his wife kept herself busy arranging things on the table. And I rolled my eyes to myself in sympathy for her.
But you know upon reflection, I wonder if he was doing with his keyboard what I am doing now with fingers that have grown so unaccustomed to real writing that they ache after but half a page. Was he musing on the squirrels in the trees or the wisps of smoke curling into the woods? Was he writing about the warmth of a campfire or about bacon and eggs in an iron skillet? Was he capturing his moments lighting a fire or crawling under a pile of blankets?
Was he, is it possible, doing it with wifi?