The Muse and an Angel Named Trixie

(pretty close)

 

Deadlines matter. Real deadlines – like a broadcast air date -- really matter, especially if you want to keep your job. In the television world, there are responsibilities to consider with a deadline, like on-air promotions, newspaper ads, personal interviews, a viewer guide article, TIVO program guide deadlines, streaming uploads. It can feel like a train in a tunnel bearing down on you.

 

I’ve often thought that Outdoor Idaho would still be in its 10th season without constant deadlines.

 

Words also matter. And one of the things that you discover when working for Idaho Public Television is that what you wrote in 1989 can still be airing almost 40 years later, all across the state. Words have power. They have impact. They can teach. They can also haunt you and trip you up. Sometimes it’s best to just use fewer of them. All hail to the words.

 

Writing scripts for a TV show is, in some ways, easier than writing a book or a magazine article, especially when you learn to just get out of the way. The video and music and natural sounds will likely carry you through the ordeal. It also helps to have a talented crew in your corner.

 

As Outdoor Idaho began exploring complicated issues – and we took on every major environmental issue facing the Intermountain West – we realized our shows would likely air for decades, both on Thursday and Sunday evenings and on social media. That’s an added burden for a locally produced program, especially when covering topics like Wilderness and public lands, wolves and endangered species, water quality and quantity, and the change in climate patterns in a conservative state.

 

I preferred to handle controversial public policy issues myself. There was always a tight-rope element to these kinds of topics, and I appreciated the challenge they provided. Since I -- and IdahoPTV -- would be the ones taking the heat if something blew up, it was important to me that I be the lead producer and writer of the public affairs shows.

 

Everyone we interviewed for these shows received the same admonition. We had contacted them because they offered an important perspective. We appreciated their willingness to trust us. In return, we would make them look good, by taking out the awkward pauses and the umms and the ahhs, making sure the lighting and the background looked appealing, sometimes even asking them to respond twice to a question if you were sure they could say it better.

 

We told them they would feel good about their part in the show, even if they didn’t like the direction the show ultimately took, or how much time they were given in the show.  And to seal the deal, we told them that once they were in an Outdoor Idaho show, they would never age. We only had to mention Lawrence Welk, and they knew what we meant.

 

The attention to fairness and to details was one of the reasons the programs have held up so well and are still relevant more than 20 years later. It's one of the reasons we never heard anyone accuse us of misrepresenting their point of view. 

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Years ago, I gathered tips from famous authors, thinking it might help me down the road if I ever wrote a book. The strangest piece of advice was from writer Kurt Vonnegut. "First rule: Do not us semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

 

I studiously went through my words for this book and removed all the semi-colons, even when I thought they worked just fine. Later I learned that someone had gone back to Vonnegut’s first novel and found semi-colons. Maybe another piece of advice from a famous writer is worth mentioning here: “Ignore all rules and create your own.”

 

There is advice I’ve found useful over the years for script writing: “Never use a long word where a short one will do”... “Make people believe in your story first and foremost”... “If it sounds like writing, re-write it”... "You can fix anything but a blank page”... “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Thank you, George Orwell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elmore Leonard, Nora Roberts, and Leonardo Da Vinci. 

 

And then there’s Ernest Hemingway’s pointed advice: "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." I wonder how many people thought twice about writing something after digesting that bit of wisdom.

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Many writers have had to trick themselves into writing. My method was to tell as many people as possible that I was finally getting around to writing a memoir, where Outdoor Idaho would feature prominently. In other words, I painted myself into a corner so I was forced to at least consider writing that book.                            

                                                    

Luckily for me, I have found writing scripts eventually enjoyable, once something is on paper.  I found writing this memoir to be cathartic. Surprisingly, It has also helped with my memory. At least, I tell myself that. When friend and novelist Cort Conley encouraged me to write a book – “there’ll be nothing else like it out there” – my response to him was that I couldn’t remember what I had for breakfast, and it wasn't getting any easier.

 

I have since learned that no one cares what I had for breakfast. I’ve also discovered that once you commit yourself to a project, things you had forgotten start bubbling up to the forefront of your consciousness. I’m now finding myself more and more convinced about things that probably never happened.

Which brings me to something the English author E.M. Forster wrote: “The historian records, but the novelist creates.”

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One thing I do religiously is Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite. With Outdoor Idaho scripts, I stopped after the fourth rewrite, usually because of tight deadlines, but I aways kept a copy of my original script, if only to laugh. Invariably, the fourth rewrite was superior to the first. Someone unwilling to rewrite isn’t worthy of wearing the mantle of Writer.

 

Sometimes the rewriting would follow me into the audio booth where I went to voice the narration for a program. It's that pressure of a deadline. You're seconds away from voicing a script, and something pops into your head, and you know it's better than what you had walking into the audio booth. You absolutely have to rewrite the paragraph.

Or sometimes I would make the cardinal mistake of not reading my words out loud first. It's easy to forget about the cadence, the phrasing that might work on paper but simply doesn't sound good. It's that delicate balance between writing for the page and writing for the ear. And then there are some words that I trip over when pronouncing them. These I try to avoid when possible, simple words like nuclear, milk, jewelry, and rural. 

 

I’m intrigued by the writers who find the process a grind. The solution is simple: only write about things you truly enjoy. When I was writing scripts for “Outdoor Idaho,” I found great comfort in getting up at four in the morning, fixing myself a cup of tea, putting my feet on the coffee table in front of the couch and opening my laptop.

I seldom knew what I would write, except in broad terms. Even today, I never know what I’m going to write. Sometimes the surprise, the freedom, the joy just pours over me, and I know I’m in the presence of the Muse. The mind is a drunken monkey, but the Muse can silence the noise. And then it's time for a cup of coffee.

 

Following a regular schedule is something most serious writers suggest. I seem to be my most productive and happy between 4 and 8 a.m. when I convince myself that things are coming together. The trick is to get as much down on paper then as possible, before reality intrudes.

 

Of course, sometimes nothing happens, and I accept that. The Muse visits you; it doesn’t live with you. And sometimes it visits when it’s entirely inappropriate, like when you’re driving on Highway 21, between Boise and my cabin outside Idaho City. I keep a notebook nearby for such occasions and pull off to the side of the road or stop chopping wood to write just enough so that I won’t lose the thread. A cell phone with dictation to text works in a pinch.

 

For decades my self-built log cabin outside Idaho City has served me well, and it still does. The cabin as Muse: it can certainly feel that way on days when the wood stove is flooding the living room with its penetrating warmth and the large ponderosa pines are swaying softly, creating a dappled sunlight effect. Watching through the bay window the antics of wild turkeys as they search for seed from the bird feeder, and glimpsing a doe darting across the dirt road – these help to provide that feeling of certainty, that I am where I need to be.

 

They don’t teach it in school. Maybe they should. Certainly, parents should talk to their children about the importance of finding one’s special place in the world. It may be the most important thing we impart to them.

Even more important than talking to your children is to enjoy the outdoors with them. Learning to fish and to hunt -- say what you will about the killing of animals, but these activities are gateways into the outdoors for many young people.

It's surprising what you observe in Nature when you take your gun for a walk in the woods. And chances are that styrofoam container of worms will lead one day to an elk hair caddis, a wooly bugger, and a parachute Adams.

It's that connection to the land that matters. Not making that connection can lead to a mental flailing which can last a lifetime. Being a wanderer comes with a tinge of deep sadness, which is not the same as being a world traveler.

 

My colleagues and I have thought of Idaho as the keeper of special places. I know I wrote scripts in the hope that others would feel the same way. It was always a debate when Outdoor Idaho would highlight one of those special places. But I've become convinced over the years that a great way to protect places from those who might wish to despoil them is to build a following for those places.

 

An army willing to fight for a special place can be a winning hand, as it was in the White Cloud Mountains in the 1960's, when the American Smelting and Refining Company planned to turn impressive Castle Peak into an open pit mine, in their search for molybdenum.

 

That army of environmental fighters eventually won the day when Cecil Andrus became Governor in 1970. "Cece" told us in an interview that he figured it was his environmental stance in the White Cloud Mountains that gave him the narrow victory over his pro-mining Republican opponent Don Samuelson. Forty-five years later, in 2015, Idaho's Republican Congressman Mike Simpson worked his magic to get official Wilderness status for the White Clouds through the House. There was even a unanimous vote in the Senate, thanks to Senator Jim Risch. 

Those were the days, my friends, those were the days.

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I spend a lot of time in Boise these days. I still wake up early, but I often use coffee shops as places to write. I try not to visit the same coffee shop two days in a row, and I try not to stay for more than two hours. The proprietor already wonders what I’m doing when I arrive with a computer bag over one shoulder. Everyone else in the coffee shop is using a cellphone. I can’t imagine writing anything substantive on a cellphone. They can, however, take great photos.

                                                                      

I was aways grateful when my colleagues wanted to produce and write something for Outdoor Idaho. I told them it’s essential that they only tackle what truly excites them. The reason was simple. From beginning to end, the process of producing, writing, shooting, and editing an Outdoor Idaho episode can stretch on for weeks or months, and on rare occasions, even years.

 

That’s why I suggested that my colleagues think of themselves as Shepherds, guiding their story through the brambles of changing schedules and staff and other obstacles that might come up. Every station producer, director and videographer not specifically assigned to work on Outdoor Idaho was encouraged to produce one show per year. Most of them jumped at the chance to spread their wings, win some awards, and expand their resumes. 

         

The most valuable tool to assist a Shepherd is a deadline. I’m reminded of the old saying: There's nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind. That's what a real broadcast deadline does. It provides an inevitability to things. It helps with writer's block, too.                                               

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The Muse is a funny, almost heretical notion.  So is my guardian angel Trixie (Gabriel was already spoken for). The concept of an angel who guards and guides and keeps one safe is something I was attracted to as a child. I admit, it’s an antiquated concept in the 21st century, but why toss out such a comforting and humorous notion later in life.

 

The Muse helps with those early morning and late afternoon writing assignments. My guardian angel works to keep me out of danger. I’m surprised and relieved that in 40 years, no one was seriously injured while working on Outdoor Idaho. The opportunities certainly presented themselves, given all the Class IV rivers we rafted. 

 

Another particular danger involved rocks crashing down in the White Cloud Mountains and in the South Fork Boise River canyon.  In both instances the rocks veered at the last moment, sparing the lives of Jay Krajic in the first instance and Pat Metzler in the second. The many treks to the upper reaches of the Lost River Range were always just a misstep away from certain death for Jay, Terry "the Mule" Lee, and other crew members who followed them up the nine 12,000 foot peaks.

 

Descending 450 feet into a limestone cave for the show "Under Idaho" kept Sauni Symonds and Pat Metzler wet and often crawling. That was a show that definitely required experts, if only to open the sealed metal gate guarding Papoose Cave in the Seven Devils Range. The Forest Service held the key. And then the descending with ropes through waterfalls several hundred feet into the dark unknown. It's definitely not for everyone. Or Jeff Tucker and Peter Morrill's self-contained 85 mile hike across the Frank Church River of No Return. What could possibly go wrong high above the Middle Fork of the Salmon River!

 

Even something as seemingly simple as a 12 mile hike into my favorite lake, Ship Island Lake, requires special caution on parts of the narrow trail. The first time I hiked it was with Kay Johnson, his wife Anne, and friends. We were leading llamas, who were unfazed by the rock wall on the right and the steep drop on the left. On my latest trip, for our show “The Frank," things seemed much more precarious. I remember taking my time. I kept thinking, one false move and it's over.

 

Locking keys in the car in the Owyhee desert; requiring assistance from the Idaho County sheriff when the sun melted the ice, thus making the dirt road impassable; nearly capsizing a raft in the Selway River because I was too cheap to hire a river outfitter – these are not necessarily life-threatening, They’re just the price of doing business in a backcountry setting, where we always went the extra mile to get the images that made the show worth watching.

Luckily, the Outdoor Idaho staff has been exceptionally careful and diligent over the span of four decades. How else to explain so few mishaps to body and equipment?

 

Even if the Muse and Trixie are merely reflections of parts of my own psyche, it’s comforting to feel surrounded and connected to something bigger, more profound and insightful than myself. They help provide a focus and determination to get the job done. 

Nevertheless, I still look both ways before crossing the street.