Trips away can fade into the background chaos of the mind almost as soon as they have happened. This can feel like a rather tragic loss – especially if you have had an amazing time. Finding a way of memorializing your trip can help you look back in years to come, triggering memories and emotions long dormant. Here are 5 ways you can document your trip.
Diarizing
Keeping a diary is one of the most time-honored memorialization traditions in existence. Diary keeping can help you reflect upon your journey – helping to turn intangible emotions into recorded physical marks. If you are not keen on writing in a diary every night, try keeping a sketchbook and making a quick drawing of one thing before you go to bed. Anything that can jog your memory for years to come will be invaluable. Some travel diaries have become travel writing classics. Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Travels With A Donkey In The Cevennes’, for instance, is a beautiful diarized journey.
Crystal Ornaments
If you have photographs from your holiday and want to make them into more permeant ornaments, consider commissioning a crystal photo. Crystal ornament companies use a process called sub surface laser etching to recreate photographs inside clear substances like glass or plastic. The result of this process is a 3D image made up of thousands of tiny fractures within the chosen material.
Painting
Sitting down with some paints and a brush can help you capture a memory. You are not just painting what you see – but how you feel. Art inherently reflects emotional as well as physical landscapes.
Musical Composition
Much like painting, musical composition is a great way of capturing some of the less tangible aspects of a trip. You don’t have to have great musical skill to hum a tune or write a melody that encapsulates the places you have been. Try recording environmental sounds on your mobile phone in order to capture the unique audible qualities of your holiday destination. It could be the sound of local birds, the calling of market vendors or even the wind rushing through a valley. Every location has a unique audible signature! Check out the Cities and Memory project for some tips on capturing the essence of a place in sound.
Scent Capture
Scent is an immensely powerful sense. A scent can unlock emotions and memories like nothing else – perhaps because it is more directly connected to the parts of the brain that process memory than other senses. Recent research has proven that scent directly correlates to memory and emotion recollection.
With this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that scents can remind us instantly of a trip. Try and capture a plant with a distinctive scent from your holiday in an airtight bag. When you get home, you can either dry the plant or mix it into a tincture to capture the smell of your holiday forever. Be aware that transporting food items and protected plant species across borders is often prohibited so you will need to ensure what you are doing is legal.
To read more on topics like this, check out the Travel category
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