My summer vacation: part I

The first in a series of three on how-to capture your best Leelanau moments in words.

By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor

What I did on my summer vacation: the age old cliché, the assignment for school children that both children and teachers dread, in part because it’s so often boring—both for reader and writer. Why is that? Or why is it that when we look at the hundreds of iPhone photos we took of the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb, we never get the rush of flying down the sand. What happened to that feeling of bubbling laughter when Uncle Jack fell through the inner tube into the Crystal River? We think, for example, we can keep the Leelanau County wine tasting alive with pictures alone, but even though pictures recall the image and some association, they don’t recall the narrative, the story of the moment. That’s the limitation of pictures, glorious as they are. So we need words too. We tell the story of the picture, sometimes ad nauseum, to our neighbors back home, but even that, over time, loses its power. That is, until the senses get involved.

Back to that summer vacation assignment. What if a teacher found a few of those back-to-school essays that really captured the Dune Climb in I’m-too-scared-to-climb-this-giantous-slippery-sandhill words. What if the language was so strong that the teacher felt the child’s nervousness just reading it, and wanted, really wanted that child to make it to the top even though the child admits in the essay that she is afraid of heights. Would you want to read on? Would you keep a copy of that particular essay? Would you share it?

Then would you wonder how the world got that real without pictures, but simply by reading the story? Readers know the answer. The truth is that with writing, MORE parts of our brains become engaged, both for the writer as she recalls and for readers while reading a story. Because more of our brains are involved in supplying, not just image, but all the other senses that go with an experience, the story of the dune climb becomes more real in our minds. It’s the only way we come close to reading each other’s minds.

But how does this dune-climbing story do that? Children and grown-ups have been trying to capture that climb since the climb began. The child who wrote her dune-climb moment made it a story, a story with a question in it: can I climb this scary hill? The young writer used sensory language, language associated with not just visual imagery, but sound and smell and taste and even the feel of things, texture and tactility. It’s such a simple thing but it makes writing come off the page.

For example, when we say The surface of North Bar Lake was calm, we understand that sentence but we don’t feel it the way we feel this next sentence: “North Bar Lake was frost still and shone like a porcelain plate glazed with sunset.” OK, maybe a bit flowery but you get the idea. That sentence includes many senses in it: not just color but temperature and tactility and even an inference of taste in the glaze. Each sense “sparks” part of the brain. So when we write in sensory language we recall better, remember more fully. The story comes more completely to the surface.

Thus the point of this article. Some people would like to give more than attached iPhone shots to their friends and family. How best to capture and keep those memories? How best to bring them back? It takes time to write, but when I read my students’ journals, written in sensory language, I feel the moment, place and the story. Well-shaped language gives form to the fragmentation of our images. Language lets imagination into the equation.

So I’m inviting you, dear reader, to capture some of your moments in words as well as pictures. Try to write one really good moment in language that does not use the clichés of abstraction, but taste and sound, touch and smell. Maybe start with just one paragraph, one hilarious moment—but don’t say it was hilarious, just show it, step by step in sensory words, like when Uncle Jack slid through the old inner tube as though in slow motion down, slipping further, dragging butt until he hit that deep part when nothing kept him in place anymore, and he looked like some trapped spider with his arms and legs and head barely over the rim, and he’s such a skinny guy that when Aunt Clara tried to hand him a beer, he reached up to grab it, but his body sort of folded up like a jack knife, and he slipped down into the inside of the tube, and there was a second when his feet and hands were the only thing we could see. And Aunt Clara, who was kind of mad at Uncle Jack, was just trying to save the beer when she slipped on a rock and sat down hard in the shallows in her new white shorts. And when Uncle Jack came up sputtering, both of them said words to each other we’d never heard them say before because by then, they’d dropped the beer.

So choose your moment and write it in sensory words, your summer vacation, and send that to your friends back home. Share a moment in time with the person who couldn’t make the drive up north, the person who had to stay back in Detroit. Write simple clear descriptions of your single moment using, as much as possible, fresh sensory language; that is, language that appeals to the senses. If it helps, write it like a letter, just one story to one person. Keep it small, one incident. If that works, tomorrow, try another one. These moments can be like the surface of the North Bar Lake, quiet and descriptive, or they can be big, like your first dune climb. Just feel your brain light up as you write, reread, and share. It’s a great way to keep your summer vacation tacked into memory.

In Part II of this series, we’ll explore “tips to keep the summer action going”. And in Part III, we’ll examine “how to make the memory mean something”.

Anne-Marie Oomen is writer from Empire. Her fifth book, Love Sex and 4-H will be published in spring, 2015 by Wayne State University Press. Visit her website at Anne-MarieOomen.com.