The Journals of Whispering Pines

This one really hit me, emotionally. And as you read this, I hope you understand why. 

I gathered all the past guest room journals on my dining room table the other day.

Honestly, I don't think I had ever counted them and realized there was still one in each room, so after a short sprint around the B&B, now, a total of 17 of them....wow.  

They're mismatched. Different sizes, different colors, different ages. Some clearly represent their room theme, and some are pretty worn around the edges.

And they are filled with nearly 21 years of my time at Whispering Pines.

Not my version of it.  But my guests, maybe yours - through their eyes and in their words.

I became the innkeeper at Whispering Pines on August 28, 2005. The earliest journal entries I've found start in the spring of 2006, so these books have been quietly collecting stories for almost as long as I've been here.

I don't remember having some grand plan for them. They were simply journals in the guest rooms — a place to write something about your stay if you wanted to.

And over the years, people did.

There are honeymoons and anniversaries, birthdays and sisters' weekends. Road trips, family gatherings and first stays at a bed and breakfast. People have written about breakfast and the gardens, Nebraska City discoveries and conversations around the table. They've left messages for me, recommendations for the next guest and little pieces of their lives.

Some are a few sentences.

Some are pages.

There are drawings from kids and notes from people who came back years later looking for something they remembered writing the first time.

And as I started flipping through them, I realized these journals have been keeping a history of Whispering Pines that I never could have written myself.

Recently, three sisters returned to Whispering Pines after having stayed here about ten years earlier.

We went looking to see if we could find their first visit.

We did.

“Oh my gosh, I wrote a whole page!”

There it was — an entry from August 2016.

One of the things Linda had written about was a place for “weary travelers who need a quiet place to rest, talk, laugh…”

Rest. Talk. Laugh.

Those words stopped me.

Years ago — probably six or so years into my innkeeping adventure — I was on vacation in Hawaii with a friend when we found a sign that read:

Sit Long ~ Talk Much ~ Laugh Often

We both agreed it was pretty much the perfect sign for the B&B, so home to Nebraska it came. It's been sitting in my dining room ever since.

Then I find Linda's words, written in 2016.

And now, all these years later, I've started calling what happens here Whispering Pines Time (WPT).

Maybe I've been trying to put a name to the same thing all along.

Finding that old entry meant something even more to the sisters. One of the sisters who had been part of that earlier visit had since passed away.

So, ten years later, they sat together and read those words again.

They wrote another entry during this visit.

Two visits, ten years apart, captured a few pages from each other in an old journal in a guest room.

No one could have known when the first words were written that someday they'd matter quite so much.

Sometimes I think innkeeping must look like doing the same thing day after day.

And yes, there are certainly things I've done a few thousand times in 21 years. I've made a lot of breakfasts. I've made a lot of beds.

But the days aren't the same because the guests aren't the same.

Everyone who comes through the door brings a story with them.

That's one of the things I've always loved about travel. We leave home and come back with more than we left with — new places, new people, new experiences and stories we carry with us.

There's a reason they're traveling. A reason they're in Nebraska City. A reason they chose Whispering Pines.

And for 21 years, some of those stories have been left behind in these journals.

Maybe they're celebrating 50 years together. Maybe they're taking their first trip without the kids. Maybe they're driving across the country and Nebraska happens to be tonight's stop. Maybe they're gathering with sisters or old friends. Maybe they're coming back because something about this place became part of their own story years ago. 

I've seen that happen more than once.

Six years ago, a grandmother brought two of her granddaughters to Whispering Pines for a pasta class. This spring, she came back — this time with their younger sisters and cousins.

And somewhere in one of those journals was a note the first girls had left behind.

So, of course, we went looking for it.

We found it. Soon everyone was gathered around Grandma while she read what their sisters had written six years earlier.

That's what changes every day.

And that's what these journals have quietly been capturing.

While I had all 17 of them gathered together for the anniversary, guests staying here asked me one of those questions I get every so often:

How did you end up doing this?

So I sat down and told them some of my story — Arizona to Austin, back to my Nebraska roots and somehow, 21 years ago, becoming the innkeeper at Whispering Pines.

I told them about the journals too.

And then, before they left, they added their own story to one.

They wrote about their anniversary, exploring Nebraska City, hearing my story, making memories and enjoying a little “Whispering Pines magic.”

I had been sitting there looking backward through 21 years of journals.

And right in the middle of it, someone wrote the next page.

That may be what has struck me most about seeing all these journals together.

I've lived every one of these 21 years at Whispering Pines and could go on and on and on about the stories and these journals, but I'll stop and sit with this.

I remember the breakfasts and weddings, the gardens and projects, the things that went wonderfully and probably a few I'd rather forget. I remember thousands of people coming through the door.

But I only know those years from my side of the inn.

The journals hold the other side.

Looking through these pages, I also find myself thinking about just how many people I've had the privilege of meeting along the way.

People have come and gone through these doors for 21 years, each bringing a little piece of their lives with them. For a night or a weekend, I get to welcome them, feed them, hear some of their stories and hopefully give them a place where they can simply settle in and be.

And then they move on.

What an incredible blessing it has been to be the person who gets to be here to meet them.

They hold what you were doing here.

The trip you'd been planning. The person you were traveling with. What you were celebrating. What made you laugh. What you ate for breakfast. Where you went that day. The conversation you stayed at the table a little longer to finish.

And sometimes, years later, what you came back to find.

I've spent 21 years trying to create a place where people can slow down for a while.

Somewhere along the way, I started calling that Whispering Pines Time.

But I'm beginning to think I didn't invent it.

Maybe, after all these years of listening to guests describe what they found here, It finally just got a name.

Twenty-one years later, some of the best record of Whispering Pines isn't mine at all.

It's yours.

If you've left a little piece of your story in one of these journals over the years, thank you. I hope you'll come back someday, find your words and add a few more.

And if you haven't written a page here yet, well...there are still journals in the guest rooms and plenty of blank pages waiting.

Perhaps one of them will be yours.

Sit long. Talk much. Laugh often.