The Muse and an Angel Named Trixie

(kinda close)

August 17, 2025, revamped 9/18/2025,  9/30/2025, 10/01/2025

 

Deadlines matter. If it were not for deadlines, Outdoor Idaho would still be in its 10th season.

I always wrote three versions of each script, if only to take out the excessive adjectives, preachy tone and bone-headed analysis of complicated issues. Without deadlines, the rewrites would likely keep coming. Besides, someone unwilling to rewrite shouldn't call himself a writer.

 

But I always kept each version, in case my re-writes were wringing out the emotion that the stories deserved.

My friend Fred Choate would say, when asked when he knew to put the paintbrush down, "two days ago."

 

Words have power. They have impact. They can teach. They can also haunt and trip you up. Sometimes it’s best to use fewer of them. At Idaho Public Television, shows produced in 1985 can still be airing 40 years later, across the entire state.

That's one of the reasons I came to believe that shows without words -- what we called "nat sound" segments -- are the gold standard. Just get out of the way. Lead with the video, the natural sounds, the music. And rely upon the brilliance of the editor to fill in the gaps, to provide that connection to the heart which has given the show some solace to Idahoans.

Editors like Pat Metzler, Sauni Symonds, Jay Krajic. Always they made the final product better than I could have imagined. As a friend told me one day, in an unguarded moment, I turn the sound off when watching Outdoor Idaho. Surprisingly, we're still friends. 

 

When 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 later on social media. That’s an added burden for a locally produced program, especially when the topics we covered evolved over time, like wilderness and public lands, wolves and endangered species, water quality and quantity, and changes in climate patterns.

 

I preferred to handle controversial public policy issues myself. There was always a tight-rope element to those kinds of programs, and I enjoyed the challenge. Since I would be the one taking the heat if something blew up, it was important to me that I be intimately involved in their production. 

 

Everyone we interviewed for our shows received the same admonition:  you may not like the direction the show takes, but at least you will like your part in it. We had contacted them because they offered an important perspective.

In return, we would take out the awkward pauses and the umms and the ahhs, making sure the background looked appealing, and that the lighting brought out their best features. Sometimes we would even ask them the same questions several times in slightly different ways, if we thought they could say it better We usually used the  comment they gave us when they were more relaxed. 

 

 For those reluctant to put themselves out there, we had the clincher. They would never age.  We only had to mention Lawrence Welk, and they knew what we meant. The biggest complaint we heard after the program aired is that we didn't use enough of them. "You interviewed me for 20 minutes and only used 30 seconds?" they would say,  incredulously. They didn't buy our argument that we were gathering background information or planning to use more of them on our website or social media. Besides, a person can convey a lot of emotion and information in a well-ordered 30 seconds!

 

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. A colleague, Marcia Franklin, produced a show in 2000 called "Idaho Tribes and the Environment." When I happened to catch a re-airing of it in 2025, it seemed as fresh and relevant as the day it first aired.

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Over the years, I've 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 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 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.”

 

This 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. He also issued this admonition to would-be writers: "Nobody but fools ever thought it was an easy trade."  

John Steinbeck had the same advice: “The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."  

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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.                             

                                                    

Luckily for me, I have found writing scripts 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 better. His response: no one cared what you 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. As Mark Twain supposedly commented, 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.” I'm comfortable telling people that this book is based on a true story.

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Sometimes the rewriting would follow me into the audio booth where I went to voice the narration for a program. Again, 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 must 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 tripped over when pronouncing them: simple words like nuclear, milk, jewelry, and rural. 

The single most frequent comment I've heard when I meet someone for the first time is about my voice. I've always thought my voice had an unfortunate nasal quality to it. They always tell me it's distinctive and fits the show perfectly. A woman offered me what I'm sure she thought was high praise. "When my twins won't go to sleep, I put in a DVD of Outdoor Idaho, and your voice puts them right to sleep."

I know I'll never be able to rob a bank, except with cue cards. But "Give me all your Money" on a piece of paper just seems so silly/not in the tradition of Jesse James or ...

 

I am rewriting this chapter in the lobby of the Clarion Motel, along the Snake River in Idaho Falls. The lobby is full of Japanese heading to Yellowstone National Park. They are eating, with their suitcases next to them, talking excitedly, no doubt about the buffalo and the adventures awaiting them.

Or perhaps they are commenting to each other about the strange American in the corner, with his laptop, madly typing away, with his expression alternating between joy and perplexion.

It's 6:30 a.m. and the TV is set to Fox News. But perhaps surprisingly to others, I'm really oblivious. I don't mind the noise. I just know I have to be ready for these moments. Usually, they come for me 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 just know that the surprise, the freedom, the joy just pours over me. The mind is a drunken monkey, but the Muse can silence the noise. And then it's time for a cup of coffee.

 

Often I visit coffee shops. I know the hours of each coffee shop, or more precisely, when they close in the afternoon. Very few stay open til 6 p.m. Can't say I blame them, because often I'm the only one in there, stealing their electricity so my computer won't die on me. I long ago finished the chocolate muffin and the strawberry smoothie I bought so I wouldn't feel guilty.

 

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 I'm driving up 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. Losing the thread comes easier these days. In a pinch I've even used a cell phone with dictation to text, when I'm far away from a notepad.

 

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, that I do have a sense of place.

 

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 parents 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.

Sometimes it's the young hunter who becomes the most ardent of conservationists.

 

Also, there's a good chance that the white Styrofoam container of worms stuffed in a teenager's backpack leads one day to an elk hair caddis, a wooly bugger, or a parachute Adams. And then to catch and release fishing. Who knows, maybe even to a strong conviction to take down the dams that will allow Salmon to return to their place of origin, in the streams and rivers of Idaho.

It's that connection to the land that matters. Not making that connection can lead to a mental and emotional flailing, which can last a lifetime. 

 

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 some of these places from those who might wish to despoil them is to build a following for those places.

 

A small army willing to fight for a special place can be a winning hand, as it was in the White Cloud Mountains in the late 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 a 1997 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 considerable magic, honed in the hallowed halls of Congress, to get official Wilderness status for the White Clouds through the House of Representatives. 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 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, and on rare occasions, even months, seldom 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 broadcast deadline does. It focuses the mind and 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. In fact, I used to sit off to the side in my chair in grade school, so that my guardian angel could sit next to me. I admit, it’s an antiquated concept in the 21st century, but why toss out such a comforting and humorous notion later in life. Hence the name Trixie. No one can take that too seriously, and that's fine with me.

 

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, the questionable trails we traveled, the many mountains we climbed, the thousands of miles we put on our old vehicles .

 

 

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 make me feel special that there is someone or something watching over me.

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