This chapter was always a question mark, the strangest of the bunch.  I think it’s fine now. I no longer think it’s too whacky. I see beautiful images that haven’t been used yet... a cabin shot, maybe interior... maybe the wheel shredded on the truck... maybe a shot from behind of someone on a keyboard... a danger shot of some kind (Jay and Terry, that’s where you come in: the scariest shot that hasn’t already been used in The Mule Speaks or the Headwaters text where the talk is about postholes and danger.)

 

The Muse and Trixie

I suspect every writer secretly wishes for a muse, a mysterious source of inspiration that makes the next sentence actually worth writing and reading. Homer called upon a muse before beginning The Iliad and The Odyssey. Three thousand years later we’re still talking about those poems, still making movies about them. Some people even read them. My muse didn’t turn out to be a mythical Greek figure in billowing white linen. Mine was Idaho.

Idaho offers up inspiration freely and often, in a summer lightning storm’s white-hot crack, a rutting bull elk’s bugle, an eastern Idaho autumn’s fiery scarlet. My muse is in the electric pull of a rainbow trout on the upper St. Joe, and in the dizzying view of mountains and valleys from the summit of an Idaho 12er. If you’ve ever watched the last blaze of orange spill across the immense Owyhee Desert at sunset, you know the temptation to pull off the road, shut off the engine, and simply stare. Idaho can feel lush and forbidding, intimate and immense, all in the same moment. The variety of vistas boggles the mind and warms the heart.

Inspiration is important, but just showing up matters more. Perseverance often makes up for genius. I persist long after it makes sense. A muse seems to reward and favor the ones who arrive eager to listen and learn, to write and write again. Often inspiration comes in the form of a deadline. To a writer, deadlines matter. If it weren't for deadlines, Outdoor Idaho would likely be in its 10th season. The 18^th century English writer Samuel Johnson could just as easily be speaking of deadlines when he commented “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." A broadcast deadline also focuses the mind and lends an inevitability to things. It helps with writer's block, too.

Sometimes tricks and rituals can help. I usually wrote three versions of each script, if only to remove the preachy tone, overblown adjectives, and bone-headed analysis of complicated issues. Someone unwilling to rewrite shouldn't call himself a writer. I always kept my first version, in case my rewrites drained emotion the stories deserved. I asked my artist friend Fred Choate when he knew to put down the paint brush, and he said, “two days ago.”

The right words have power and impact. They can teach and they can also trip you up and haunt you. Some Outdoor Idaho programs produced in the 1980s still air today. So be careful what you write. Rewriting eventually taught me something unexpected. My job wasn’t always to write more. Sometimes it was to say less. Some of my favorite Outdoor Idaho programs hardly needed a narrator at all. They led with beautiful video or let the interviews lead the way. We’d use the quiet pans, the sound of wind in the trees, or the flutelike notes of a western meadowlark and play with the silence, the pauses, the music.

I learned to trust my videographer to capture images that bring us to tears and to trust the editor will make it all flow seamlessly. We had some of the best in the west: Pat Metzler, Sauni Symonds, Jay Krajic, all retired now. They made the final product better than I imagined it could be. As a friend told me one day, in an unguarded moment, “I turn the sound off when watching Outdoor Idaho, so I don't have to hear you. It’s enough to just watch.” We’re still friends. 

Over the years, I've gathered writing tips from famous authors, thinking it might help me down the road if I ever wrote something more than a TV script. The strangest piece of advice was from writer Kurt Vonnegut. "First rule: Do not use 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 the semi-colons, even when I thought they worked just fine. Later I heard that someone had gone back to Vonnegut’s early work and found semi-colons. I put some of mine back in.

Here’s some advice from George Orwell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elmore Leonard, Nora Roberts, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Stephen King that I actually found useful.  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. I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. 

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 have thought twice about writing a book after digesting that bit of wisdom. He also admonished would-be writers that "Nobody but fools ever thought writing was an easy trade." John Steinbeck had the same advice: “The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."  

I tricked myself into writing by telling as many people as possible that I was finally getting around to writing a memoir where Outdoor Idaho would feature prominently. When they wondered why I took so long, I often tell them that I was waiting for certain people to die. Painting oneself into a corner can sometimes work. 

Luckily for me, I found writing scripts enjoyable. I found writing this memoir to be cathartic. It has also helped with my memory. At least, I tell myself that. Mark Twain supposedly commented, “I’m now finding myself more and more convinced about things that probably never happened.” I understand the problem, so I’m comfortable telling people this book is “based on a true story.”

The most frequent comment I hear when I meet someone for the first time is not about my muse. It’s about my voice. I've always thought my voice had an unfortunate nasal quality to it. Yet so many people have told me that my voice works, that it's distinctive and fits the show well. I just know I’ll never be able to rob a bank unless I pass them notes.

Eventually, every writer discovers certain places where words come easier. It's 6:30 a.m. and I am rewriting this chapter in the lobby of the Clarion Motel, along the Snake River in Idaho Falls. The TV is blaring Fox News. The lobby is full of Japanese tourists heading to Yellowstone National Park, with their suitcases next to them, talking excitedly, no doubt about the buffalo they hope to encounter or the cowboy hat they’ll buy. Perhaps they are commenting to each other about the strange American in the corner with his laptop, madly typing away, with an expression alternating between joy and perplexion. My muse can silence the outside noise. I just know I have to be ready for these moments When they come at four in the morning. I grab a cup of coffee and let the thoughts roll.

The mind is a drunken monkey, and sometimes a change of venue helps stimulate creativity. Baristas know me at certain coffee shops. I know the hours of each coffee shop, or more precisely, when they close in the afternoon. Very few stay open past 4 p.m. Can't say I blame them, because often I'm the only one in there at that hour, stealing their electricity so my computer won't die on me.

Sometimes nothing happens. I accept that. The Muse visits you, it doesn’t live with you. As Stephen King cleverly put it, “make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.” When inspiration strikes on the go, I’ve started using the record feature on my cell phone.

My favorite creative place became my cabin on days when the wood stove floods the living room with penetrating warmth and the large ponderosa pines sway softly, dappling sunlight through the bay windows. I watch the antics of wild turkeys as they search for seed below the bird feeder, glimpse a doe darting across the front yard. I feel certain I am where I need to be.

As a child, I was attracted to the concept of an angel to “ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide.” I used to sit off to the side in my chair in grade school, so that my guardian angel could sit next to me. It had nothing to do with me hiding my transistor radio as the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series. Having a guardian angel may seem an antiquated notion in the 21^st century, but why toss out such a comforting and practical belief?

I call my angel Trixie. That way some of my friends can’t take me too seriously. Besides, the name Gabriel was already taken.

If the Muse helped create Outdoor Idaho, Trixie kept us alive so we could create more programs. I’m surprised and relieved that after four decades, no one suffered life-threatening injuries working on Outdoor Idaho. The opportunities presented themselves on a regular basis, given all the Class IV rapids we crashed through, the questionable trails we hiked with pack animals, the slippery logs we scrambled over to get past swollen streams, the boulders that missed our heads on dozens of climbing expeditions. We even had to get help from the Idaho County sheriff when the ice-hard dirt road melted and left our rig stranded in mud somewhere on the Lewis & Clark Trail. Ah, the irony.

Trixie must have been traveling with us when a tandem axle and tires on a semi-truck broke loose and crashed across the interstate corridor traveling 70 miles an hour and headed straight for our Outdoor Idaho rig. At the last moment, the errant wheels hit the road just in front of us, then bounced over our car, missing us by mere feet. After several seconds of quiet shock and bewilderment, Pat Metzler, the driver, calmly said, “I guess we’re not going to die today.”

It doesn’t concern me much whether Muse and Trixie exist beyond my imagination or represent parts of myself no psychologist has yet explained. I only know what they’ve done.

One taught me to slow down, pay attention to the world, and trust that every river, mountain, mining town, wilderness trail, and interesting character holds a story worth telling. The other quietly encouraged me to keep moving through the uncertainty, to launch the raft, climb the ridge, meet the deadline, rewrite the script, drive 100 miles down another backcountry road. With thanks to those who took those journeys with me, and occasionally without me: Sauni, Pat, John, Jay, Peter, Royce, Lauren, Terry, Aaron, Manny, Marcia, Joan, Ricardo, Jim, Melissa, Chuck, Tim, Rick, Alberto, Andy, Roger, Greg, Hank, Kris and a dozen more who traveled those roads with me!

Perhaps Muse and Trixie were never separate companions. Perhaps inspiration and faith always travel together. They’ve stayed beside me and my colleagues through four decades of deadlines, triumphs, misses, coffee shops, lonely motel lobbies, rivers and mountains, and one Idaho City log cabin, where the words still occasionally arrive before daylight. If some are imaginary, they’ve been remarkably dependable.

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