Keeping visual fieldnotes complements the notes I keep in written form. Drawing encourages me to slow down, observe carefully, make marks on the page in different ways, and think about how I represent the world. Drawing also becomes part of how I experience the world, what I remember, and how I think about the history of a place. In short, it pushes me to new understandings. While I’ve always sketched as part of fieldwork, I started keeping more abundant visual notes when I started going on study trips with students. Writing in a notebook is treated as something very private but the act of drawing and the drawings themselves invite conversations. Now I travel with paints, rollerball pens, and sturdy notebooks almost everywhere I go including the world around me at home. The following are just a few pages of the many notebooks that inhabit my bookshelves.