How would you like to sit at this desk and do some writing in a notebook?

That desk is on Hancock Hill, in Alpine, Texas. It’s been there for 40 years. At first, the guy whose idea it was to put the desk there just stashed a notebook in the drawer so he could record his running times. Sometimes he’d add some other thoughts. Then other people who came across the desk started leaving their own notes:

The first notebook ran out of blank pages. Then a second one and a third. “Whenever they’d get filled up, we’d take them away and put a new one in there,” Kitchen says. “It really surprised me, the things that were written—pretty moving stuff. This was all before the internet. We weren’t socially connected like we are now. But people were making a connection to nature and to each other in those notebooks. It became something pretty special.”

Sul Ross’s Archives of the Big Bend is now the keeper of the journals, which are still picked up and replaced periodically. Most of the writers are anonymous, though the notebooks’ content is remarkably consistent: lots of “BFFs forever” statements, inside jokes, prosaic advice, mentions of drunkenness, rough drawings. Over time, the “We were here” category of comments has become more common than longer, more thoughtful entries. Still, people really spill their guts.

Read more: The Desk on Hancock Hill