Write fine
Published 1:00 pm Saturday, August 9, 2003
Chris Nilsen doesn’t have to tell anyone about his school trip to the San Juan Islands last spring.
He’s not giving any slide shows and he doesn’t need to rehash the same story over and over for everyone who asks. All he needs to do is to hand out a Web site address and literally wait for the feedback. What anyone interested in his story — “The Boats that Kept Us Afloat” — will find it starts like this:
“The San Juans are huge. The islands themselves are not very large, but the area of water is immense. I have calculated it to be about 800 square nautical miles and about 1,000 square miles. In our week of travel we covered only a small portion of this vast expanse. No, we didn’t use water wings, but sleek sailboats and a powerful tugboat. We are the Langley Middle School Adventure Education Program 2003, and this is our, and the boat’s, story.”
Nilsen, a recent Langley Middle School graduate, is one of dozens of travelers who have be relating their stories of nature and environmental travel through the Journey Corps of Storytellers. The Journey Corps is a section of the Internet Web site One World Journeys at which travelers from anywhere can post photographs and short stories from the places they’ve been.
One World creator Russell Sparkman, who runs the site from Clinton, said the Journey Corps adds a new dimension to his site. First put on the Internet three years ago to carry One World expeditions — story and photo essays resembling what someone might find in National Geographic — the site was a magnet for the stories of other travelers almost immediately.
“They had stories of their own to share,” Sparkman said.
The Journey Corps function was added to the Web site a year ago and since then has been, as Sparkman calls it, a “sleeping project.” It started as an idea to provide a photography submissions area on the site. The writing component was added as Sparkman and other people working for his company, FusionSpark Media, found that even photographers had stories to tell in words.
Submissions that vary widely in terms of subject matter have dribbled in slowly over the past 12 months. From a story about overfishing on Macedonia’s Ohrid Lake by Elina Iosifova to an instructional piece on kayaking by Langley Middle School teacher Charlie Snelling, the site’s Picturing Our World, Exploring Our World and Learning Our World story areas give space for tales that might not otherwise get beyond a dinner table discussion.
Middle school writer Nilsen, along with classmates who also wrote essays for the Journey Corps, had more motivation to write than most, since doing so was a class requirement. Doing the writing and getting it on the Web site by the end of school was an effort, but was grateful that his teacher, Jay Freundlich, required him and his classmates to put their stories online.
“It was a really cool experience,” he said.
Sparkman said he hopes everyone who logs on to www.oneworldjourneys.com feels the same way and considers participating with stories of their own. In addition, he encourages readers to get involved with the stories online by answering questions that appear at the end of every essay, and passing links to the site onto friends.
This should not be a problem, since many of the submitted stories are as compelling — though shorter — than those done by Sparkman and his crew of professional writers and photographers for the site’s expeditions. For example, a photo essay on Brazil illustrated and narrated by photographer Geoffrey Hiller reveals how South America’s largest nation has changed over the decades:
“When I lived in Rio de Janeiro 25 years ago, I didn’t think twice about roaming the city with three cameras swung over my neck and shoulders. This time I wasn’t in Brazil for more than 10 minutes before people on the street began to warn me in hushed Portuguese, “Put your camera away or you will be ripped off!”
Ultimately, the site is oriented toward teaching travellers how to share their stories, whether they are about a backpacking trip or solving an environmental crisis. Stories appear on the site as written by their authors: There is no editing. The only scrutiny they receive comes when Sparkman sifts through submissions to make certain they fit the site’s environmental/outdoor exploration theme.
“I want this to guide and coach people in their own sharing,” he said.
Sparkman said he plans to encourage future Adventure Education classes to submit their stories to his Web site. He also said he hopes to spend more time later this year e-mailing Journey Corps stories to friends and acquaintances to get more people logging on to read about the world around them.
