by Garrison Frost

As anyone who is lucky enough to find it will tell you, Notes from the Road is the rare kind of website that transports you. An elegant combination of writing, drawing and photography, it's more than a travelogue, more than an adventure story, more than a graphic design experiment. Perhaps the only safe thing you can say about it is that it is addictive. Once you venture into the subpages and become transfixed by the fog in Neah Bay or the shadows in the streets of Tangier, you will find it amazingly hard to get back to whatever it is you are supposed to be doing.

Knowing little more than that the website had its origins in Manhattan Beach, I dropped the man behind the site an email. I found Erik Gauger to be generous in talking about his online creation and his travels.

Garrison Frost: On the site, you say that Notes from the Road started off as a way to entertain friends and let them know about your travels. You've obviously expanded quite a bit from that concept. How did that happen? Or better, why did that happen?

Erik Gauger: Your first question in a South Bay question, because at the time I was living in Manhattan Beach. I was sick for half a year and missed a semester of college.

After college, I tried to start my own business, which failed. Because of those things, I was "behind" my friends out of college and couldn't afford to go to dinner with them. At some point, I realized that it was cheaper for me to travel to places like Anza Borrego or Joshua Tree than it was for me to spend the weekend with the Manhattan Beach crowd. At the time, I was living at 1128 Highview, a big blue apartment building with lots of great people. At this point, 1999, I had purchased the large format camera system (there is a story to that as well) and started traveling with the intention of taking original photographs.

But the website idea was really just an expression to friends; maybe to those Manhattan Beach friend's whose outings I missed. I put the site together in a few days, I think in December 1999. It launched on the 1st of 2000, and I submitted the site to Yahoo. It became a Site of the Week that week, and because I had one of those hit counters, I realized that about 10 people were visiting the site a minute. It's not that the site was that good. But it was original content, and the web was hungry for it. I realized I had an instant audience, and I could ignore it or keep going at it. Since I couldn't think of any way of monetizing the site without jeopardizing its editorial mission, I decided, why don't I just ride on this audience, and build something kind of neat. At the time, I strongly believed in actively doing everything not to live an ordinary life – and the idea, which today sounds a bit ironic, of maintaining a travelogue, is that it would force me to maintain that lifestyle.

In many ways, I'm still at it, still traveling and my nose is filled with books and research and a bunch of side projects. Notes from the Road doesn't serve much of a legitimate purpose, but it's something that gives me a reason to keep a slightly unconventional life. There are times (a great example is the Guana Cay articles) that Notes from the Road becomes emails and paperwork and long hours in the office. Every time that happens, I have to think back to 1999, when it was about avoiding expensive dinners and getting out in the fresh air.

Once you start digging around the site, you quickly realize that there is a lot there. Do you have any story, or location, that you felt adapted to this style of presentation particularly well? I'm also interested in know what your personal favorite section is, if it's not the same one.

I get some flack for having a tough navigation setup on my site. I do try to listen to those critiques, but, well, when I was a kid, I had a marine aquarium. It was about 55 gallons, so pretty sizeable. But instead of having a lot of colorful fish swimming around, I tried to make the aquarium filled with live rock and caves and holes. The idea was that I wanted my friends to be able to sit there and stare at the aquarium and wait for something to pop out of the rock. It was as if you could come to my aquarium to explore. I was fortunate to be able to snorkel and dive at an early age, and I wanted to be able to share that experience with my land-locked Minnesota friends ... the website is kind of the same way. If you look around, you will find new things. That's the idea of travel as exploration anyway. If I was selling travel guide information and providing a service, I wouldn't make the site labyrinthine.

The 11 regions in my site are all connected; they are regions in my travel zone loosely based on geological and cultural boundaries. A great example is the Great Basin, because the Great Basin describes three different things: a hydrological region, a botanical region and a cultural region (ie the historical wandering lands for the Great Basin Indians). If you take my 11 regions together, they'll cover most of Canada, the United States, Mexico and Central America, even though, for example, I haven't even traveled to Canada for the site yet.

My favorite region would have to be the West Indies and the Isthmus combined. Together, this huge, vast region that is neither really North America or South America is truly a kind of Wild West for Modern America. So many countries, so many ethnicities, so much biodiversity, so much war. The tourism industry in these countries often serve as a kind of modern Robber Baron industry, and people are exploited. But these people speak all sorts of languages, and they live in one of the richest, most colorful regions of the world.

Americans don't think of the Caribbean Basin as exotic; and the ideal travel experience for the more adventurous types is to take off to Africa or Southeast Asia. I'll get there someday, but I doubt I'll ever be as fascinated by anywhere as Central America and the Caribbean. These places are perfect for travel dialogues because they are in our own backyard; their drama is intertwined with our own.

A good travel story comes only, only, only when I meet interesting people. I'm a pretty shy fellow, so it's not easy for me to meet people on the road. And when literally nobody interesting shows up, whether I'm in Iowa or Panama, the story will fail. Maybe my Lake Minnetonka story works the best, because it's a story only I can tell. It's about my family and my strange career path all summed up in a day of fishing.

The region shouldn't matter, because everywhere is interesting. The most interesting places are probably KMarts and Strip Malls in Middle America. Or the weird marsh behind them, with the dead body floating, and that strange migrant bird. Some day I want to write about Madagascar and Timbuktu and Tokyo, but until then, I'll be thrilled by the prospect of Kansas City.

I've noticed that on the homepage you give follow-up information about some of the local environmental causes associated with some of the places you've highlighted. Did you always do that? Do you see the site as a way to not only illustrate some of these exotic locales, but to also bring some needed attention to these causes?

There is actually only one environmental article. Travel writing has an obligation to be real, to report the truth, and not to bend to the industry that often pays its bills – the tourism industry. Come on, travel writing should be fun. It should be about bars and beaches and spitting camels.

But travel writers so often turn their heads to the real drama that is happening. Travel writers kind of have a beat, just like the metro reporter or the guy who covers Wall Street. But the travel writer's beat may be the wineries or the beach resorts. What happens when something really bad happens to your travel writing beat? What if there is a series of murders in the wine region you write about? Do you just not review reds for a while?

Well, I wrote about Guana Cay, a tiny little cay in the Bahamas in 2003 for Notes from the Road. The story was more or less about my engagement to my wife, but under the backdrop of the island's strange environmental history, which I witnessed as a teen since I lived in the Bahamas during summers in my youth.

In 2004, if Guana Cay is one of my "beats," something really, really bad happened to Guana Cay. Somebody from the island wrote me in 2005 and asked me to cover it. I have now written 400 pages of material on the subject and spend 2 hours a day researching and communicating with dozens of conservation groups, who help out in various ways. In the process, I've talked with Karen Bjorndal, Jean-Michel Cousteau, the Vice President of the Sierra Club, the United Nations, and all these great conservation and scuba diving heroes. I've interviewed with the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal about the subject; now the travel industry is looking into it, finally.

I update this story every few days, and there is even a blog on Notes from the Road about it. The articles cover a California golf course developer who wants to build a golf megadevelopment on two-fifths of the island.

Notes from the Road has had a big impact on the Bahamas because of these articles, and the Guana Cay locals, who have recently won a series of court cases against the developer, realize that this case is the most important issue in the Bahamas; the country is entranced by it, and the Discovery Land Company is going nuts, because billions of dollars are on the line for them. But they and the Bahamian government have done a lot of shady things to get an environmentally unsound golf course and marina built adjacent to a magnificent coral reef. That shadiness, and the conservation science behind why that course can't be built, is my beat. It is the absolute apex of what an amateur travel writer can and should write about. Someday, the Guana Cay story will be a part of marine conservation history.

This site looks really good. While you're certainly not the first person to use text and photos, your site nonetheless has a unique style. I'm curious how long it takes you to get an article up on your site, the technical difficulties involved and what aesthetic you're trying to reach as you put it together. When do you know when you're done documenting a certain trip?

Ideally, a Notes from the Road article is supposed to be a breeze, a second-thought, an improvised piece that I sketch out while I travel. During travel, a lot can happen to you, and it makes the story easy to write. I'm a fan of improvised music; taking risks. I try to apply that to this process.

But that's not always the case. A good example is the one-year series of articles that I am working on now. The idea is that I am going to reverse engineer the way the Native Americans of Oregon lived by learning some of their hunting, gathering and foraging techniques. My brother and I found some stone tools, and we were wondering how we could paint a picture of who used them, and when, and why, and what for. But there is not a lot of literature on Oregon Native Americans.

So let this serve as an example as to what goes into a Notes from the Road piece. Oregon has several diverse terrains; I need to photograph each section for this piece over the course of a year. This is the most time consuming part of an article, although for me the most enjoyable. I study maps, I plan out the photograph, I sometimes even scout the location. With large format, you have only a few shots, since it is an expensive film type. Right now, I am studying to shoot the Central Oregon coast, because I am going to begin the series talking about the coastal Indians. Last night over dinner, we looked at the topo maps of the region and marked up possible shoots. It is important for me that the photographs accomplish a distinct mood, an unusual subject and also contain a lot of detail. There aren't a lot of photographs of this part of the country; but I noticed there are a lot of rivers moving through the coastal dunes. Also, what if there pine stands, or late blooming coastal flowers, or shore grasses? What if I perch the camera above one of these dune rivers in predawn, where the sun will be coming through these coastal pines? This process is like the jazz musician practicing a riff. When I am hiking with the camera, it really comes down to the light, lots of luck, and patience.

In two weeks, my wife and I will go down there and camp out on the coastal dunes. In the day, we'll actually attempt to forage some of the ingredients on our list. In the evenings and mornings, I'll shoot the shots that I roughly imagine now.

Meanwhile, I've formed a "team" of "experts" on Native American hunting and foraging techniques. Basically, a fly-fishing Oregonian who knows some native folklore and is willing to teach me a bit, an Oregon hunter and ocean fisherman, and a group that teaches people sustainable farming techniques. These people know how to dig up roots and harvest native Oregon plants. Since my brother volunteered for them last year by cutting down blackberries, they are thankfully willing to help with this project. Each of my experts have links to more experts; it's a project that requires me to lean on the shoulders of people who have lived here for a lot longer than I.

All this time, I'll keep a journal. I am very much a city person, with few outdoors skills; so to me, this premise is in itself funny: we'll be putting ourselves into situations that are beyond our grasp. We've already attempted to collect clams on the coast – complete failures. So the process really does consume my life – but, it's fun and is a first-hand education. Our first foraging success will probably be the coastal huckleberries, which aren't very good at hiding from us.

I also enjoy designing the site. I always look for new fonts and new ways to keep my design minimalist and clean. The web in 1999 was horribly ugly, and imagining my site as clean and to the point was easy to do. As monitor sizes have increased, I've attempted to rescan my old photographs and let them bleed off the screen. Since my Photoshop skills are a bit better, I think it's improved the site, because people get a taste of the large format. I love design; I pay attention to great design, and colors. The key is that the best design is functional; it serves the content.

Your website is named The Aesthetic, Garrison. You know what I'm talking about!

Is there anything else you might want to add that I haven't talked about? Does it make sense to tell people how many hits you get? Are there any sites out there you like? Plus, I'm not sure if you still live in the South Bay -- do you? If not, or if you do, what about the area did you like or dislike?

We recently moved to Portland. My wife misses the South Bay everyday, and we still talk about moving back.

I lived in different places in Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, and once in Redondo it was in the Golden Hills area, which is basically Hermosa Beach. Notes from the Road was conceived and is entirely a product of a South Bay perspective.

The South Bay is almost like an oasis in LA. It's an oasis of relatively normal people. What I mean by normal is not supposed to lay judgment on the quirkier or more diverse parts of LA. It's normal because it's a beach city, and so it draws people who value something that people in LA normally don't: sky, fresh air, quaint culture, small neighborhoods, outdoor sports. The beach tends to attract immigrants – if you grow up in LA and you stay there, you place less of an emphasis on the beach and are less likely to want to spend the premium on such a place as the South Bay.

On the other hand, people who grow up in the South Bay who stay there tend to like its beachy qualities; and like their parents before them, may be surfers or skaters or part of the rowing club – and so they complement the immigrants by keeping the South Bay traditions. Sure, there are the stereotypes too; maybe you and I can talk about that off the record over your "You know you're a South Bay local when ..."

Behind the joint formerly known as Chillers, at King's Harbor, is a small boat launch. I spent a lot of my Saturday and Sunday mornings kayaking off there. I kayaked to Palos Verdes if I had the time. It was an alternative to running; but it was a reminder that even in a big city like LA, I can escape. There are so many birds and dolphins and fish out there. If you paddle as much as I did, you'll see things few others see. Getting out on the water is one of the best parts of the South Bay; especially since Palos Verdes is right there, with all its bays rocks and kelp beds. Paddling attracted some interesting people, and they enjoyed the company of other paddlers. Most of them were anglers. I spent a year trying to teach myself saltwater flyfishing. I brought a rod with me almost every outing. Never had a license, never caught a thing. Never attempted to ask these fishermen questions about their techniques. I just went out and hacked my way through it.

In Torrance, there is an amazing Korean tofu soup restaurant, whose name is so Korean that I just call it "Tofu soup." I order the beef ribs there. It's a hole-in-the-wall but it's cheap and very unique. The South Bay hasn't found its way with restaurants yet, and the best places tend to be anomalies. The XO Wine Bistro is probably our favorite restaurant in Manhattan Beach. A great breakfast is a bagel from Noah's, a coffee from next door and carry it all down to the beach.

Speaking of the beach; there is whole world there. Before we left, we tried to learn the natural history of all the things that wash up on the shore. If you look hard enough, you can find some very cool shells and dead sea creatures. And the beach is a good way to start learning your shorebirds. There are also parrots at the beach, which few people know about. Look up at the palm trees in Hermosa's Pier area – it's full of established colonies of Central American parakeets and parrots.

I enjoyed walking or running through the neighborhoods in the South Bay, and taking note of people's gardens. Everything grows in the South Bay. I used to rip off pieces of people's succulents and plant them in pots – you can grow a whole garden by taking a leaf here and there. I had about 130 potted succulents. When I moved to Portland, it took 3 days to pack them. They survived the winter indoors, but we brought them outside too early. A frost killed almost all of them in a single morning, my 12 years of South Bay memories wilted. Those 130 empty pots are a reminder that you can't export the South Bay's unreal climate.

Notes from the Road's unique site visitor statistics varies incredibly; I think the highest I've seen was 20,000 visitors in a day.

(August 30, 2006)

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