Why you should still send postcards

At a time once I can (and have) FaceTimed my mother from a volcano in Hawaii, I’m nonetheless a author of postcards. Anytime I cease someplace notable, I’m certain to ship one to my mother, my dad, my nieces and nephews, a handful of pals and till she died in 2019, my grandmother. I began doing this in 2017 once I spent the summer season going to the 18 states I hadn’t been to but. The behavior caught, for 2 causes.

A visitor’s guide to America’s 63 national parks

First, for me: It forces me to take a break from no matter I’m doing on the typically weeks-long highway journeys I take. The act of selecting out postcards, sitting down to put in writing a message, handle them and affix a stamp, is usually sufficient to remind me to not rush from one spot to the subsequent. And whereas I don’t typically bear in mind what I wrote, I can nonetheless see among the writing areas: a bar in Hilo, Hawaii, a desk at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café in Walt Disney World,picnic tables on the Indiana Dunes Nationwide Park and Bandelier Nationwide Monument. There’s additionally the ice cream store whose identify I can’t recall, in a city I don’t bear in mind, although I can nonetheless really feel the tender fur of the proprietor’s cattle canine, partly as a result of a number of weeks later, I adopted a cattle canine of my very own from a shelter in Idaho.

Second, it’s a simple option to make somebody’s day, as a result of whereas that precise picture may need been printed on 1000’s of postcards and ship to 1000’s of individuals, those I’m sending are coming from one particular person solely: me. As a substitute of an Instagram or Fb submit, a bodily postcard is private. The notice may be dashed off, a pithy “hideous, clearly!” on one from Lake Placid depicting Whiteface Mountain at peak foliage, or honest, even just a little unhappy, like about lacking New Jersey’s blueberry season regardless of being at a pool in Las Vegas.

I’m writing travel journals again. This is how you can make one, too.

I had time to consider what I needed to say on these postcards from Isle Royale, one thing that might seize each the frustration of what number of occasions I’d tried to get there and the elation of that journey being virtually full; I settled on a brief and pithy: “I made it!”

Per week later, my good friend Katherine despatched me an image of the postcard after it arrived at her house. “I discover them intimate and one of many kindest acts,” she advised me. “Who takes time to put in writing? Purchase stamps?” Not less than for me, it’s the identical one that nonetheless drives a stick-shift automotive: each experiences are extra tactile than their digital counterparts, and make the act of touring a extra hands-on journey.