The Transformation of the Logbook

Another post on Weblogs As Place for the Ecotone Wiki...

In June 1997 Numenius and I moved into a 1930s cabin in the hills above Santa Barbara. Neither of us had ever lived anywhere like it and we decided to keep a journal, a logbook, of the house, not unlike a ship’s log (this is when we both started reading Patrick O’Brian which might have had something to do with it). We were left with copious instructions about watering the 40 fruit trees (an inventive mixture of graywater from the outdoor and indoor showers and bucketing plus drip irrigation), so this made some practical as well as romantic sense. It was also the dawn of the biggest El Nio for 100 years, and looking back on the logbook we kept for that time (the year stretched into two), the drawings we made of the passiflora and the Channel Islands we could see from bed, the accounts of the arrival of the hooded orioles to nest in the banana tree, not to mention the account of the landslide that closed Highway 154 for weeks, it was the chronicle of an incredible time. Yet it also made us aware that all time is incredible, even when it’s spent in somewhere less inherently interesting than the Trout Club.

This logbook was emphatically not our journal-which we each still kept, individually, not for public or even each other’s consumption-and while there are some cryptic references (the hooded orioles we named Horace and Sally, for instance, might need some explaining to outside readers), it was a sort of halfway house between journal and weblog. We made entries on alternate days, logging rainfall (plenty in that year of floods) and the activities of the copious local rodents.

We continued with our logbook after we moved to Davis, and we continue it still—it’s hard to shake the habit. The logbook is always a black bound unlined sketchbook (we’re now on our fourth), still recounts the activities, birds, and other notable events of the day as they pertain to the HOUSE.

The weblog has extended this place somewhat, but I feel they are related. While anyone is able and welcome to read our logbooks, nobody ever does, because they are physically bound, literally and figuratively, in our living room. Feathers of Hope extends the space that this shared activity has created and also the scope of our joint writing. The weblog is a place where I can write something-this, for instance-and know that at least fifteen, and probably many more, people than that will read it. One of them lives in Davis; another in Sweden; another few in England; another in Australia. Many are in North America.

I write this with a cast on my left leg, on a laptop (which is conveniently on my lap), looking out the back window to oleander bushes which despite the increasing heat are still miraculously blooming. The space makes it seem as though these fifteen (or more) people are in the room with me. The weblog seems to be an extension of my living room. It is always in need of some tidying, but hey, everyone’s welcome anytime. The kettle’s on the stove. I’d get it for you if I could get up…