How Waterproof are Rite in the Rain Notebooks?

Like many people, I love writing outdoors. It’s uniquely inspiring. My favorite genre to write is poetry, and I firmly believe that the poems I write out in nature are different from the ones I write in the comfort of my home. Not only are they different, writing “outdoor poems” while indoors is impossible.

So I need to be able to bring my notebooks on hikes and backpacking trips, but any time you bring your notebook outside, there’s the risk of it being destroyed by rain. A wet notebook is a death sentence. Worst case scenario, it could destroy literal years of work. For me, Rite in the Rain's all-weather stapled notebooks are more than a cool piece of gear: they represent peace of mind.

Testing Conditions

I took these notebooks to task on an overnight trip to Blue Mussel Cabin near my home in Juneau. When most folks think Alaska they imagine snowy tundras, but in fact Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest. We can have some harsh winter conditions, sure, but mostly it’s a windy, rainy place. Our trip to Blue Mussel was expected to be a wet one, but we were lucky to have the sky clear a bit for our hike out.

How Do They Feel?

To be frank, I expected not to enjoy writing in these notebooks as much as regular ones. The sensory feeling of pen on paper is a specific one, and to me it’s quite enjoyable. I thought the waterproof paper might feel strange and unpleasant to the touch, which realistically could have made me averse to using these notebooks. I was also worried that the waterproofing would make pens liable to skip over the page or interfere with the writing itself in some way.

To test this out, I started by writing a poem in the dry, cozy, Blue Mussel Cabin:

The candles
popping off,
the sea lions
snorting and flapping
their water wings.

An adolescent eagle
let me get close,
but I let her be,
tired as we all are,

taking in the surf,
breathing in the green.

Thankfully, there were no negative sensory feelings or ink-to-paper mishaps to be had. To me, the feeling of Rite in the Rain’s All-Weather Pocket Pens on their weatherproof paper was the same, familiar feeling that I love.

What About the Pens?

The notebooks come with guidelines regarding which type of pens work when. If you’re writing with a regular ballpoint pen, you’ll be able to write like normal when it’s not actively raining. For my money, their All-Weather Pens also just happen to be the perfect ultralight pen. Besides being able to work wet, dry, or straight-up submerged, they’re small, lightweight, and the cap snaps perfectly onto the body–very satisfying. I would have loved to have these pens on my thru-hikes regardless of whether or not I had their waterproof notebooks.

Rite-ing in the Rain

After arriving at our cabin, I put the namesake of these Rite in the Rain notebooks to the test. I went and sat at a picnic table in what was, admittedly, only a light drizzle. As a couple drops graced the page, I wrote out another poem:

Marmot shedding a winter coat,
browning in the tail,
nibbling on what looks like clover,
could it be lovage?

Wow sorry!
My first whale as I wrote this!
Spouted and dove as I
raised my arms and cheered.

I had meant to say:
I have been here long enough now
to see the spiky, violent Devil’s Club
sprout her green leafy crown.

How her healing ointment is unexpected,
how the woodpecker flutters,
comes and goes,
how easily loving.

So far, so good! I can imagine hoards of adventurers all over the globe, in their rain gear under a tree, writing in similar half-cover. I thought of myself on the Washington section of the PCT back in 2019, how wet and miserable some of those days were, and how I would have liked to journal out some of the angst!

How Waterproof is it Really?

Super waterproof. When I thought about testing these Rite in the Rain notebooks out, I mostly thought they would be a good trail notebook because a few drops of rain wouldn’t soak through all of the pages and blur the ink together. I expected that I’d just have to be less careful with them, but would still likely have to be considerate and ensure they’re not fully submerged or anything. After seeing how effective they were in light rain, I decided to put that theory to the test:

In fact, while the shape of the paper warped a little bit, the pages remained dry to the touch as the water beaded on them. My writing was unharmed. The more I tested these notebooks, the more my trust in them was rewarded. I hiked back out with my notebooks and my precious poems in the mesh of my pack, subjecting them to even more rain.

What About the Test… of Time?

Weeks later, my writing is still on the page just as I left them. The pages are not as perfectly flat as they once were, but they’re close. Call that the sign of a well-used notebook. My trail notebooks of the past tend to be warped or dirty in the same or worse ways, and I had those wrapped in plastic the whole trail.

After testing them out, I can comfortably say that I trust these notebooks. They live up to what I was promised, and I don’t feel the need to have a ziploc bag devoted specifically to my notebook on future hikes. I’m glad to go out into nature ready to write and glad to do it with peace of mind.

 Matthew Kok (they/them) is a writer based out of the unceded territories of the Áak’w Kwáan on Lingít Aaní, or Juneau, Alaska. They write poetry and nonfiction and can be found on Instagram @matt.kok.

Rite in the Rain Notebooks & Pens

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