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| Van Log '94. |
Van Log: We brought along an audio cassette tape
recorder for logging any comments or observations which we felt were worth
remembering. The recorder, along with the collection of nine or ten audio tapes that were produced, was known as the
"Van Log."
At the end of the line, after the van crew went their separate
ways, the various cassettes floated around all over the country until
eventually all but one ended up in the same place (Anchorage, Alaska) where I
entertained myself transcribing the log from audio to text during a long dull
winter. The missing cassette turned up years later in Todd's collection (the
label had fallen off, making it unidentifiable by sight). Todd mailed it to me
in Los Angeles where I transcribed it & added the material to the existing
narrative.
Van Log 1994 is a collective narrative,
like Wikipedia. Instead of identifying individual speakers when I transcribed
the audio tapes, I just blended everybody's statements into one running
commentary. The same paragraph may incorporate statements made by any or all
four of us, or it may include comments from a fifth or sixth person who
happened to be around the tape recorder at the time. Van Log '94 is perfectly coherent without identifying each individual speaker. Although I occasionally placed conversational dialog in quotation marks to indicate a conversation is taking place
between two (or more) people.
We were all unseasoned travelers at the time and
what might come across as naive, irresponsible, or stupid in these logs was actually
just careless youthful exuberance and (possibly misdirected) lust for life in
all of us.
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