I love Twitter. I’m not on it all the time, but sometimes it’s amazing the cool things you read and discover there. This came from YosemiteSteve, the talented creator of the Yosemite Nature Notes films who apparently has a Grizzly bear project kicking around his mind. I’m hopeful that we’ll all get to benefit from that eventually, but for now, I was just interested in the story of what might have been the last grizzly killed in Yosemite, back in 1887. Steve posted a link to the original hand-written letter from RJ Wellman to Joseph Grinnel, and the rough transcription that I made of it is below.

A few things that caught my attention:
- Although Wellman has a great deal of respect and admiration for the grizzly, his thoughts about wolves and cats aren’t nearly so generous.
- Two guys milled a tree, packed the lumber on a mule and built a scaffold 10 feet off the ground in one day, and I wonder what kind of tools they were using.
- Wolves and wolverines!
- The letter written on April 20, 1918, was finally received June 19. I wonder if they thought a two-month transit time was fast or frustrating.

Notes on the transcript:
I tried to preserve the spellings where I could make out the letters, and things I couldn’t figure out are noted with [brackets]. I could probably have figured out more, but was more interested in the spirit of the story, which I think comes through clearly regardless.
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Yesterday I did something that I rarely make the time to do – I went to one of the Evening Programs put on by either NPS or DNC Interpretation. After a long day at work, it can be hard to motivate for anything other than a relaxing evening at home. However, this program was being given by film-maker, Steve Bumgardner, on the making of Yosemite Nature Notes which I love. Plus Tom planned to spend the evening at a YWPHI meeting, so I thought I’d check it out.

I’m glad I did. I’ve seen most of the Yosemite Nature Notes videos before, especially the most recent ones, but even I saw some new stuff, like the the previews of episodes to come, and enjoyed listening to Steve’s take on the park, on filming in the park, and sharing Yosemite’s magic with people. I suppose it isn’t that surprising that a guy who makes his living telling stories on film, can put together a fun series of stories in person too.

We got to watch three of the finished YNNs, starting with the most recent video on Horsetail Falls, the Glaciers Episode, and then the Big Trees Episode which narrowly won out over the very popular Frazil Ice video as the parting shot. Plus, a couple of shorter pieces – some ‘making of’ shots, and a timelapse of Yosemite’s crowded spots which drew out-loud giggles from the crowd in many places.

During the making of sequences, Steve talks on camera about how difficult it is for people to get to remote corners of the park, like Mt. McClure and Mt Lyell where the glaciers still live, and the pleasure of being able to share some part of that experience with people via camera. I hadn’t thought of these films in quite that way before, but it’s true. I’ve been asked if there’s enough to do in Yosemite for 3 days, and these films are the start to a visual answer to that question. If I think about all the things that make Yosemite special, the ideas for film topics goes on and on. I’m looking forward to the upcoming Moonbow episode, and whatever comes of the backcountry ski/backcountry hut footage. What about the High Sierra Camps? Big Time? Climbers and Big Wall climbing? Each person who has spent time in Yosemite has this running list of things in their mind of what makes this place so special. There are rafters, and hikers, and painters, and people that hang a hammock out by the river and spend all day with a good book. What kinds of things do they think are amazing? What else belongs on that list?

According to some of the things I’ve read, one of the most enjoyable parts of NaNoWriMo is the sense of community and the pleasure of sharing the experience with other WriMos in the area. Perhaps I’m missing out. I know I haven’t talked much about NaNoWriMo this year – not on the blog and not to many people IRL either. Still, it was an interesting experience for me, and I’m proud to say that I’ve managed another 50K words of utter rubbish in under 31 days. No, you will never see any of it.

If I’m feeling honest I would admit that I had a much more detailed plan this year, and that the result of that was a marginally better story than last year’s story. That makes sense. At least this year when I hit 50K words, I still felt like the story was going somewhere. It’s not done yet, the story, I mean, but there are so many other things to do in the world, I’m not sure if I want to finish it, or just declare victory and move on.

I had a harder time finishing this year than last year, that’s for sure. I had thought that planning a relaxing trip to Hawaii would give me plenty of time to type away, but instead, it was harder to make the decision to write rather than explore, and by week three, I was at a huge deficit. More than anything else, this year taught me that I will probably never write a publishable book. When I think of the time investment that author friends have put into a single work – I get the itch to go snorkeling, surfing, hiking, skiing, just about anything. This exercise certainly gives you some appreciation for the sweat and determination that goes into creating books.

Speaking of books, I’m dying to tell you about a book that hasn’t come out yet, but which I’m really looking forward to. Now that I’m done with the WriMo stuff, it will soon have a post all its own, but in the meantime, check out author, Greg Crouch’s blog about China’s Wings, the pilots who flew over (through, really) the Himalaya during WWII. Tom and I got to hear a preview of some of these stories over dinner one day years ago at Hans’ Basecamp, and given the teasers in the blog, I can’t wait to get my hands on the published result!

I had the good fortune, a few months ago, of running into Lynne Joiner, an Emmy-award winning journalist and author who was visiting Yosemite and had the kernel of an idea to write a story about the people living and working in Yosemite after stumbling across one or two employees with an interesting history. She told me about her idea, and I told her I thought it was a wonderful subject. She’d just finished writing a book, Honorable Survivor, and planned to spend the next months traveling and promoting it, but thought she might return to the idea in November. Well, it’s November, and she’s just finished another quick trip to Yosemite during which she stopped in and met with me briefly, rekindling my own excitement for the idea.

There are so many interesting people living in Yosemite, from all backgrounds and walks of life, who are assembled in Yosemite because of what Yosemite is, and because of the love of the place. I’ve already started contacting a few of the people I know who have interesting stories, and I hope the project will continue to grow. There are the legendary people in the park, of course, the Julia Parker types. But Lynne admitted that she was as interested (maybe even more interested) in the stories of the housekeeping staff than in the stories of the executive teams. NPS is conducting an oral history project, that I know far too little about, but is probably an amazing source of stories about people. NPS is interested in how the perception of Yosemite has changed over time, and have been interviewing people with a long history of the park for their “I Remember Yosemite” project, which is also fascinating, but this book could also be a different beast, something more inspirational that sets your mind to wandering through possibilities. What happens when where you are becomes more important than what you do to earn money? Maybe it would be start to expand the conversation Po Bronson started in his book, “What Should I Do With My Life?” beyond merely what one should do in terms of a career, as Tom suggested all those years ago. Who knows?

There is so much potential there. It’s set my mind spinning – who else should be in Lynne’s book?

Of course, it isn’t a book yet. It’s not even almost a book – she still has to pitch the whole idea to her agent, so who knows if anything will come of it. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed, and hope for at least a few teaser articles about some of the people who make this place such an interesting community.

Lately, the weather keeps conspiring to precipitate on weekends only. Tioga keeps closing, and then re-opening in the sunny 60-70 degree weather during the middle of the week while I’m working. Fortunately, this weekend, the rain/snow forecast was a bit late in coming, and even though we slept in until almost noon, the road stayed open just long enough for Tom and I to hop in the trusty Subaru and take a peek.

I don’t know how many leaves this most recent storm will knock to the ground, but the autumn colors were magnificent on our drive, and we stopped, oohed and aahed, and snapped pictures. There are elderberries growing alongside the road, blue and tasty next to the reds and yellows of dogwoods and big-leaf maples. Western foliage season isn’t like its eastern counterpart. There are so many conifers here that the colors are just patches of flame against the cool greens of the firs, cedars, and pines. Not the same, but still beautiful.

When we got to Tuolumne, the skies were a dramatic blend of storm clouds and blue sky, and we walked the slabs to the top of Lembert Dome for a view. There were several other cars in the Lembert Dome parking area, but once we left the parking lot, we didn’t see anyone else. At the summit, we were treated to a few minutes of snow before it cleared up again. By the time we were halfway back down the slabs, the sun was warm on our backs again.

On the drive, we listened to the audiobook version of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I was so impressed with Dave Eggers’ talk on Ted.com, that I was really looking forward to this story. We’re a little less than three full chapters into it at this point, and I’m afraid to turn it back on. It’s not that it isn’t good writing. It’s powerful writing. And the craziness of losing two parents to cancer inside of a year and having to raise your younger brother… hearing about it makes me a little crazy too. So, I took a break from that by reading City of Thieves by David Benioff. You wouldn’t think that a WWII story about the craziness of war in and around Leningrad would be much of an emotional break from craziness, but there it is. The introductory chapter is absolutely brilliant, and I had no idea until afterward that this is also the writer that is responsible for screenplays for Troy, X-men Origins: Wolverine, and The Kite Runner. A look at his highly acclaimed first novel, The 25th Hour is in order.

I finished!

During the month of November, I and more than 32,000 other people around the world each completed 50,000 words of fiction. This was just over 19% of the people who signed up. Collectively, according to the NaNoWriMo stats, the word count of everyone who participated and uploaded their writings to the NaNo web site is 2,427,190,537. That’s a lot of words.

It literally took me years to decide to take the NaNo challenge. Tom and I picked up the No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty a long time ago during one of our random book store wanderings. It’s a fun book, and it suggests all kinds of fun indulgences you can expect to treat yourself to during your novel writing month – like a handy stack of snacks next to your writing spot (for energy), getting your spouse to do the dishes, etc. It also promises strange and crazy things like, if you write enough, your characters will start to do unexpected things. I wanted to know how that worked.

Only a few days before November, I was thrutching through a list of possible ideas for a novel, with no particularly appealing prospects, when Tom suggested that I write about a society that doesn’t sleep. He’d started a short story along those lines some time ago, although he had little more than a character and a set up.

I took that idea and over the course of a month developed it into a dreadful, going nowhere story with flat characters who I ultimately didn’t like that much. It’s not that the idea didn’t have potential, (I still think it does) but hey, I haven’t written any fiction in years, if I ever have, and it sucked. That’s OK, and I learned a lot.

I learned that a 50K word novel isn’t really that long, and I shouldn’t have been afraid of running out of story before I hit my goal. I learned that it’s easy for me to make things difficult for my characters. I enjoy it. I learned that I have a nasty habit of qualifying my speech/writing – as in “I learned that I might have a tendency to qualify my speech/writing a little” – which is great for word count, but makes for crappy writing. And I also learned that they weren’t kidding. My characters really did start to do some unexpected things. It works like this: you have this idea for what you think your character is going to do in the next scene, but by the time you get around to writing it, you realize that he/she would actually respond in a completely different way. So, then off you go, shooting down some previously unplanned avenue. It was wonderful.

For the most part, I held off on the snacks, but I did reap the benefits of having my spouse take over many of the household chores… I mean the ones that he usually does anyway. I’m generally terrible at domestic chores. Have I mentioned before that I’m crazy lucky that I married Tom?

So, now that I’m done, I’ve decided to simply close the door on that particular story. No, you can’t read it. I still like the idea, and maybe certain elements will find their way into other NaNo projects in the future, but this particular effort falls into the burn-it-now category. I’m not committing to doing this again next year in any way, but I also wouldn’t say for certain that I would wait a whole year before starting up some other little story. As experiments and projects go, this one was sheer fun.

With Halloween coming up, with the ever-looming prospect of kids with too much candy on their hands, I thought I’d share a brilliant idea that a co-worker told me about. When she was growing up, she and her brother were allowed to eat as much candy as they wanted Halloween night, but then, all the left-overs went to into giant pumpkin shaped bowls to be left for the Pumpkin Prince.

In the morning, the candy would be gone – taken by the Pumpkin Prince – and, magically, in its place would be some amazing, and much-desired present. The kids thought this was fantastic – new basketball shoes, toys, whatever – and felt like gloating when the other kids had only their paltry daily ration of Halloween candy in their lunches. And the advantages to the parents? After the one-night candy-fest, the kids were happily back to eating healthy food. And then, of course, there is the Pumpkin Prince, who makes out like a bandit with all the kids’ candy, which can then be generously re-distributed at events or throughout the year.

Happy Halloween!

One of the odd consequences of living in Yosemite, and also of being part of the marketing department, is that my face seems to keep showing up in funny places. I get a chuckle out of it, usually. Part of me is certainly flattered at the attention, but it’s also hard not to be self-critical.

As part of a photoshoot I participated in while I was working at the Mountaineering School, my picture was taken while I was hiking – or pretending to hike, rather – out on Old Big Oak Flat Road with El Capitan in the background. That image, for a short time, graced the cover of the activity brochure, and is now on the front of several Pepsi vending machines. My Pepsi machines, my friends tell me, are in the Village Garage, at Housekeeping Camp and maybe some other locations. Unfortunately, I’ve never really liked that picture of myself, and it’s a little disconcerting to run into such a big image of myself. I’m glad that the two machines in front of our offices have pictures of other people.

While at YMS, I also had a chance to go snowshoeing with Tom Stienstra, an outdoor columnist for the SF Chronicle, TV personality and guidebook author. Between that and his continued close relationship with Kenny, who now works only 15 feet from me, he recently decided to publish a story about me in the Chronicle. It is a story about the accident I was in nearly 3 years ago, and my subsequent recovery. It was interesting to work with an experienced journalist and storyteller, and to see the process that he went through in terms of preparing for an interview and then writing a story. Unfortunately, the online article generated a bunch of pretty negative comments, which I thought were either petty, immature, uninformed or a combination of the three, but they still left a bad taste in my mouth.

Some nice things have happened as a consequence of that story too. One was that another writer, Bill Katovsky, who is working on a book entitled Return to Fitness, contacted me about putting a short sidebar about me in his upcoming book. Again, I had the opportunity to witness the writing process of a professional author. The methods and styles of the two men are very different, but each time I was amazed to see the sometimes subtle, sometimes sweeping influence on the story I would have told, making it more dramatic and/or fleshing out details.

Another thing that surprised me was that someone who had recently been in an accident and had injuries similar to mine contacted me to find out about my experience with recovery. I was happy to report to him that so many of my issues have gotten better over the years. But most interestingly, to me, was the number of old friends who got back in touch with me after reading the article. Reconnecting with them gets me thinking about other phases of my life, and the cool people I’ve met.

I’ve gotten back in touch with some friends over the last year, since my sister-in-law, nieces and nephew convinced Tom and I to get Facebook accounts. Facebook is kind of a strange service. On Facebook, I am friends with old High School classmates that I hadn’t been that close to, even then, and co-workers that I rarely interact with in real life. And when it comes to HS friends, the day-to-day updates don’t seem to come close to filling in 20 years of radio silence. Still, I love it. I love getting little messages about what people are doing – just random news and noise from their days.

And then there are the actual conversations! I just got back in touch with my orchestra teacher from high school and she reminded me that at one point I was upset that my dad wouldn’t let me get a job. “School is your job”. I don’t remember that at all. School is an awesome job. Getting to hang out and learn things all day – I wish I’d been more appreciative when I was younger. I wonder what else I’ve forgotten.

I wonder if some day I’ll stumble back across this post and think back. Oh yeah, remember those silly Pepsi machines with my picture on them? Those were the grand old days in Yosemite.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle boils down to a book about a boy and his dogs. Edgar is born mute, to a family of passionate dog breeders, dedicated to breeding the perfect companions – selecting dogs for certain elusive qualities that make them soulmates – or something else that is just beyond defining. Trouble starts when Edgar’s uncle, Claude, returns to town. Edgar’s father, Gar, dies mysteriously, and then Claude starts to manuver into his place, capturing his mother’s (Trudy) affections. Edgar is forced to run away into the Chequamagon with 3 of his dogs – learning to survive in the woods on his own.

It’s a good read, not the kind of book that I can’t put down at night, but it moved along quickly and easily for a volume or its size. I finished the book tonight, was surprised by the ending, and am still trying to make sense of it. It will be a good book to discuss at our book club, whenever we get around to officially reading that one.

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I’ve been thinking about storytelling lately – to the point that I’m ready to commit to writing a NaNoWriMo novel in November (although who knows how committed I’ll be by the time November actually rolls around). So, I was especially interested when a conversation with an accomplished film-maker turned to story archetypes.
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