Ten Miles Carried and Left in the Amazon

It’s isn’t often that we get to spend an intimate moment with one of our kids. I got to do it with both my kids and it imprinted an indelible memory in my brain. Mind you, one was painful as hell and the other rift with poisonous snakes, lethal frogs and creepy crawlers who liked to go caving in parts of your body they shouldn’t be in. But that’s another story.

The first crash and carry story had to do with my wonderful daughter, Melanie, and the grand plans we had for running the 2014 Twin Cities Marathon together. I ‘d already done two other marathons. The first in 1982, when I was a much younger man, proved a very nice PB (personal best) for me. The second was more laborious but ultimately successful in that I finished pretty strong for a middle-aged jogger. The third would be my last. I was getting up on age and three seemed like a nice round number in which to end my distance running career.

This last twenty-six miler turned out to be an adventure neither one of us had planned for or anticipated. Melanie and I began training in early summer and were up to 22 miles for our last weekend when I came down (literally falling to the ground) with a stress fracture.

That injury meant six weeks of recovery. So, by the time the marathon came along we had only built our weekend mileage back up to sixteen miles. Undeterred, I was determined to run the race and hope for the best.

We started out slow and easy and kept a reasonable pace for all of sixteen miles. Then everything fell apart. Back pain began to creep up and crippled my spine. My legs turned to rubber and I experienced some of the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life. It felt as if all my systems, internal and external, were going south and taking me mentally with them. It seemed the end of the road for me.

Common sense dictated that I drop out at that point. There seemed little reason to continue when I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Melanie was kind, sympathetic but realistic. “Dad, I think you should drop out.” She said. “But if you want to continue, I’ll stay with you.”

That was all I needed to hear. Dreading another summer of hard training and trying again in 2015 was enough to convince me, even as brain dead as I was in that moment, that another summer of pounding the pavement would be worse than the pain I was experiencing at the moment.

So, we started out slowly together, walking one block, jogging another. We kept up that stumbling, staggering pace for another ten miles and finally came in at a little under six hours. Melanie had carried me home and I will be forever grateful for that. I’m done with marathons now. I finished the last one in 2014 and while my timing wasn’t the best, I finished the thing and am damn proud of my accomplishment.

Melanie gave up any PB for herself but has since gone on to run numerous other marathons, triathlons, the Afton trail race, Pikes Peak, Cactus to Clouds hike and running the Grand Canyon rim to rim. Her running portfolio hasn’t suffered from her patience and kindness shown to her old Dad as he mentally fought those last ten very painful miles beside her.

Brian, on the other hand, took me into the heart of the Amazon rain forest and left me there. Boy, am I grateful for that experience! 

Send a sixteen-year-old down to South America on his own (actually part of a school field trip), leave him there alone for two weeks and you’ve got a total stranger on your hands.

Two weeks with a wealthy family in Quito, Ecuador, was enough to turn my son Brian into a Jack London, Jack Kerouac and Tom Clancy wannabee wrapped up behind the disguise of a high school sophomore, varsity wrestler, chess captain, honor student and overall macho man.

Quito, formally known as San Francisco de Quito, is the capital city of Ecuador. At an elevation of 9,350, it is the highest capital city in the world. It’s a strange mixture of new buildings and old. New wealth mingling with extreme poverty. All of this surrounded by the magnificent Andes Mountains.

Once our group left Quito, transportation was quickly reduced to using the local long-range bus system. Built for stamina and very rough roads, these transportation dinosaurs could do the distance. But creature comforts were left back at the station. The buses were built for the locals, which meant that if you were over five feet tall, your head would bounce up against the roof every time the bus hit a pothole or rut in the road. It happened a lot!

Traveling down to the Amazon rain basin from mountainous Quito entailed harrowing bus rides on dirt roads that simultaneously hugged mountainous cliffs on one side of the road and sheer drop-offs on the other. Not for the faint of heart or those with altitude problems.

River crossings were always interesting, especially since this was the rainy season. If the bus driver wasn’t sure about the depth of the river crossing, we’d hop a pickup truck along with the locals and try to cross that way. We were like the preverbal canary in the mineshaft. If we made it across, the bus should be able to make it too.

River transportation in that part of the Amazon consists of mainly dugout canoes. Enormous tree trunks were hollowed out and a motor placed in back. Since it was the wet season, our pilot was always on the lookout for washed out tree trunks floating in the river. A collision with one of those battering rams could have easily turned our dugout over on its side and put bodies into the water.

The other word of caution was for us to watch out for snakes hanging from low-lying tree branches or snakes in the water. And, of course, the proverbial crocodiles, which loved to shadow our dugout canoe hoping to find a hand or two dragging alongside in the water.

Brian and I agreed that the most memorable experience of the entire trip was our vision quest in a pouring rainstorm. Each of us, student and adult alike, was marched into the jungle and then left alone (totally separated from one another) for a period of an hour or longer with only the sounds and smells and humidity of the jungle to assault your senses. It just so happened that our incubation period occurred during a very heavy rainstorm. I mean sheets of rain and visibility of about ten feet, if that, for hours on end.

The idea was to experience the Amazon rain forest in its entirety without the distractions of other people and outside influences. There was no way any one of us could have found our way out of there. We had to trust that our guide would come back and find us and lead us back to camp. It was awesome. Brian and I both thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Hard to explain if you haven’t been there but it was a very thought-provoking experience. A true vision quest.

Our trip to the Amazon was more than just a high school field trip. Instead, it became a journey of self-discovery for both Brian and myself. For Brian, it was his first taste of other cultures, which only wetted his appetite for greater adventures ahead and inspired him to travel around the world while still in college. For myself, it was a continuation of my desire to explore options and opportunities that might expand my own creative horizon.

So, while some other fathers might regale their buddies with father-son bonding stories of camping trips or baseball games, I came to admire and grow very proud of my son in the dangerous backwaters and jungles of the Amazon River basin. As for my daughter, my asphalt angel, well, she carried me home too…. just in a different wonderful way.

What a lucky dad am I.

Doesn't Need a Man in Her Life

‘Need’ is the operative word here. I’m talking about the kind of woman who makes some men very uncomfortable. The last thing you’d dare call her is the ‘little woman,’ ‘wife of’ or ‘other half.’ She is herself; totally herself without apology. Most men get it; some poor souls don’t.

As a novelist, playwright and screen writer, it’s my job to create, imagine and paint colorful picture-stories of women that readers want to read about. They should be real, provocative, mysterious, and honest to the real thing.

For example, I’ve tried to do this with my ‘Debris’ trilogy. There’s Natalie, a semi-butch lesbian, Juliet, who turns out to be bi-sexual, Millie, an aging Hollywood star, Miranda, a victim of incest and a host of other (I believe) real world women. Yet, as often as I try to paint an honest portrayal of a real woman, I find myself falling back into my most comfortable, familiar refrain.

It’s like in Greek mythology where sirens, half-bird, half-woman creatures, lure sailors to their death with their enchanting, irresistible songs. Their beautiful, yet deceptive, melodies play in my head as well and cause me, along with those mariners, to lose our minds and sail the ships into the rocky shores of the Sirens' island, causing us to drown.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I find myself almost always gravitating toward a singular profile for my female protagonist. What can I say; I’m prejudice in the best kind of way. Through my writings, I’ve made no secret of my admiration of and attraction to independent, strong-willed women who are confident enough in themselves and their own abilities that they don’t need a man for any kind of affirmation.

I have absolutely no idea where my fascination with strong women came from? My mother was a strong-willed woman but never in a demonstrative way; German Catholics seldom are. It wasn’t the other woman in my life; aunts, nuns, female classmates, someone in the church pew ahead of me.

In my younger years, the women I’d been involved with all fit that criteria in one manner or another. Until the day, one came along who wore that crown like it was custom-tailored for her. Fifty-three years later, it still fits despite two personalities that couldn’t be more different in so many ways.

One of the Seven Wonders of the World is how an ISTJ (off the charts) married and learned to live with an ENFJ (off the charts) for fifty-three blissful years. An introvert and an Alpha Female navigating the ups and downs of communal living with all the baggage of kids, mortgages, careers, etc.

My own experience living with an Alpha Female means that most of the time she gets her way, mainly because I don’t care!  So, it’s eighty percent of the time (she’d argue it should be 125%) that her way dictates our lifestyle. Surprisingly (or not), this unplanned arrangement fits our opposite personalities and causes no problem. Seriously! It’s the other twenty percent that gets interesting.

The other ten percent where we can’t agree means that nothing gets done until some kind of compromise is reached. That stalemate can last days or months. Some have never been resolved and we’ve managed to survive as a happy couple. The final ten percent is the most important ingredient to our marriage success.

Without any preplanning, real discussion, or analysis before we got married, Sharon and I have (most fortunately) found ourselves in complete agreement on several core issues paramount to our lives. This includes little interest in material goods, current status symbols and any other cha-chas that announce ‘we have arrived.’ Neither one of us is afraid of hard work, monetary sacrifices, and common-sense dictates in raising our children.

Of all those things, large and small, that are important to both of us, education is at the top of that list. As mentioned in a past blog ‘Origins of Birth,’ education is the gift that keeps giving for us, our children and grandchildren. I hope it continues to be the standard of excellence of all of us long into our future.

As far a living with an alpha female goes, a lot of folks don’t understand that someone like that has to see her partner as equal not less. So, while she doesn’t need a man in her life, Sharon isn’t one to let a good thing go…not after fifty-three years. Lucky me.

Pastures Gone Barren

It was an experiment born out of a crisis, enriched by isolation and then crippled by life’s return to normal. As the cliché goes, all good things must end sometime. It’s just too bad it had to be this because I think we all needed it back then and still do today.

At the height of the COVID-19 crisis, I was stumbling around trying to figure out how to stay connected with past friends and acquaintances. Turns out that at about the same time, there were rumblings among the mental health community about a relatively new phenomena called: male loneliness. Google said it best:

The "male loneliness crisis" refers to the increasing number of men, particularly young men in the U.S., who report feeling profoundly lonely and isolated, often due to a lack of close friends and deep social connections. This crisis has serious health consequences, including increased risks for heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression, and premature death. The problem is linked to rigid societal expectations of masculinity that discourage vulnerability and help-seeking behavior, a decline in the number of men with close friends, and the lasting impacts of social media and pandemic lockdowns.

My idea was simple enough. There was a pandemic and people couldn’t gather together. Even as a certified in good standing introvert, I missed those unplanned, casual encounters with friends that always brought me some great writing ideas, insight into their lives, and the feeling that we were all sharing something between us. It was safe, secure, and honest.

Sharon and I were in Palm Springs that Spring. Fear of contact with others prevented us from flying home so we rented a mini-truck (SUV) and began our trek back home. It was during that long journey across miles of nothingness that I thought about reconnecting with friends back home. Truth be told, I’m not a group-kind of person. I’m much more comfortable with a one-on-one situation. I find those conversations deeper and more enriching rather than group chats.

So, my idea was a pretty simple one. We would meet outdoors where distance was assured. It could be park shelters, coffee shop patios, lake front property and/or my own porch. Anyplace convenient for the other party. The goal was just as simple. A chance to connect or reconnect with friends, on a one-on-one basis, safely distanced apart and share our lives. Simple in concept, hard in reality.

At first everyone was all in.  Almost ten folks, male and female, who seemed to embrace the idea and were willing to give it a shot. The conversations flourished in the absence of communal gatherings and friends apart. It was safe, convenient, different and richly rewarding for most of us. Older adults just being themselves. Sharing and caring and openness seemed to be the order of the day. At least that’s what I thought. But just as quickly as the idea was accepted, its duration began to grow tired and slow down after a couple of years.

Calm placid waters in the early morning stillness weren’t enough to hold some people’s interest and attention. Life began to creep back into their lives. Even as I felt our intimate conversations grow and evolve, some of my salon compatriots began to show their cracks as their respective lives began to regain some kind of normalcy. Nothing ever remains as it is. So, too it was with my coffee and chat encounters.

Like ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream,’ it was there and then it wasn’t. The reasons were many and varied and each carried with them a glance into lives returned, lives changed and lives moving on. Dementia, cancer, elder care, work (didn’t have to) and work (had to) were just some of the variables that began to scratch away at this good idea. I don’t blame anyone for dropping out. Life just got in the way.

Fortunately, a few old stalwarts remain; still willing to challenge the early morning chill and quiet of dawn for a chance to connect, reconnect and solidify their bond with fellow life travelers. I intend to ride this pony for as long as I can and my friends are willing. There’s still nothing like the early morning stillness to open up one’s mind to a kaleidoscope of possible topics and verbal banters to exchange.

Origin of Birth

My roots come from the fertile farm fields of Sterns County, Minnesota. They go back for generations when my ancestors, unnamed and long since forgotten, arrived from Germany in the early 1800s. It was a strict German Catholic culture with time-honored rules and regimentation that hadn’t changed for centuries. It was what my mother, grandparents and their grandparents understood and accepted without question.

To be very clear, I’m not talking about the class of white Americans covered so thoroughly in Nancy Isenberg’s new book ‘White Trash.’ My roots were poor white working class; an agrarian society that lived for and off the land. Skilled artisans in the arts of land cultivation, animal husbandry, soil management, raising livestock, veterinary basics, dairy and meat processing and so much more. Only the hard-working survived.

Growing up in the one church town of Saint Marin, my mother, as the youngest of eight, had her chores and responsibilities chosen for her. Education was seldom a part of that equation. That meant stenography school for her three sisters and cleaning out the chicken coop for my mother. So, although Hildegarde’s education ended in the sixth grade, her lineage was about to experience profound changes; even if she didn’t know it at the time.

My mother’s early years were documented in a hand-written sixteen-page, rambling oration of her youth, early years on the farm and frequent travels to the Twin Cities for work. She had often lamented to my sister and I that she stopped going to school after sixth grade because someone had to stay home and care for her aging parents.

I have no idea what kind of education my father had although I doubt it went past the eighth grade if even that far. His ancestry, lineage and time spent on earth have long since been shrouded in mystery. There were rumors that he was an itinerant musician and laborer but that has never been confirmed. His name was never mentioned in our home when I was growing up and he’s remained an enigma all of my life.

Sharon’s parents were in pretty much the same situation in terms of their education. Sharon’s father went as far as the eighth grade and her mother had two years of high school. Pretty normal for that generation at the time. For that social-economic agrarian class of people, education wasn’t as important as hard work and feeding the family. It truly was another time and place.

Fast forward another generation and things were very different for Sharon and I. Because of a lucky break in eighth-grade, I was able to attend Cretin High School and then St. Thomas College; on my own dime. In both my family and Sharon’s family, it was understood that our parents had neither the means nor the inclination to fund any advanced education beyond high school.

Sharon’s lucky break came when a nun at St. Felix High School in Wabasha, Minnesota told her she should attend college, more specifically, St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul. That was a radical departure from the pathway most of her classmates intended to follow. In small town Wabasha, it put her in league with the banker’s daughter and the lawyer’s son. You know; those folks in town.

I have a BA in Journalism and Sharon has one in Education along with some credits towards her master’s degree. Our kids have done even better.

The rule for our kids in high school was that they couldn’t work during the school year and had to have either classes, camp or jobs during the summer months. It taught them both a lot of good lessons in life. Brian went on to graduate from the University of Notre Dame and has a master’s degree in business/computer technology from the University of Colorado. Melanie excelled in Speech and Debate in high school, winning a number of awards on a local, regional and national level. She went on to the College of Saint Benedict and was awarded a full scholarship to attend law school. Their spouses also have advanced degrees.

Not surprisingly, this fourth generation is doing even better. There is an unspoken understanding among our grandchildren, prompted more by example than lecture, that education is more important than ever before. They’ve seen through their daily lives what hard work and a solid base of knowledge can do for a person’s career. It hasn’t escaped their little pea brains that much is expected of each of them.

Maya, the eldest, is a sophomore at the University of Colorado at Greeley. She’s a psychology major and understands the next steps will most likely include a master’s degree and perhaps a PhD.

The other four grandchildren are all in high school now. The Colorado twins as well as Brennan and Charlotte in Minnesota are actively engaged in extra-curricular activities. Three of the four are in NHS (National Honor Society) and are taking AP (advanced placement-college) courses. The youngest, Charlotte, just entered high school as a straight-A student all through grade school.

So, from a rural agrarian society to post-collegiate studies in four generations has become our mantra. Each generation propelled by an accumulation of knowledge that proved critical to their success in the real world. Fortunately, for Sharon and I, education was the key to our own success and that of our children. We believe it will be the foundation upon which our grand-children will grow as well-informed and involved citizens of the world.

Learning to be a Writer

“Have Gun – Will Travel.”

Paladin was the first to grab hold of my fertile imagination and inspire me to go out West and face those bandits just like he did. Every Saturday night, in stark black and white, the old man dressed in black faced down his opponents and always won the gunfight. If I couldn’t be him, I could at least tell his story. Or so I thought.

It didn’t work out quite that way.

Writing long hand on that yellow legal pad wasn’t the same as my trusty LC Smith typewriter that came years later. So, after toiling for weeks, I ended up with a great story (or so I thought in my 7^th grade imagination) but no idea what to do with it. Paladin ended up with a stack of other disjointed attempts at storytelling and was forgotten by the challenges of 8^th grade math.

After Paladin grew stale and went nowhere, I turned to the jungle and tales of Tarzan. He then morphed into Conan, the Barbarian. Unfortunately, none of these super heroes (before there were real super heroes) ever came to fruition. They all withered away on the vine called distraction, lack of patience and total ignorance of this thing called the craft of writing.

After youthful efforts at cartoon drawings, poetry scribbles, comic book rough cuts and very short stories, there came a long period of nothingness. Then, after entering the real world of work, I ever so slowly began adding writing projects to my side hustles. Most of them were educational television scripts. They proved useful fodder for conversation when I met my future bride who was an education major in college. Gradually more writing projects became a standard part of my own video production business.

Fast forward many years and I found myself giving workshops on ‘How to Become a Writer.’ After years of stumbling around the world of writing, I was finally getting a grasp on the task ahead if I wanted to cross the Styx and add the handle of ‘writer’ to my mantle of achievements.

Statistically, something like eighty-one percent of the population would like to write a novel. In reality, only six percent ever finish the task. There are many and varied reasons why so many people fail. I try to emphasize in my class that it’s really just a series of simple steps to climb that Everest called writing.

First and foremost, remember that writing is a craft, an art form, a learned skill, and a discipline. Like anything else worth pursuing, it takes time and effort. There are no shortcuts or magic pills to take. You need three things to become a writer:

            Desire…you won’t know if you have it unless you try.

            Perseverance…you won’t know if you have it unless you try.

            Talent…you won’t know if you have it unless you try.

Believe it or not, writing is one of the easiest things to learn to do no matter if it is a novel, a play, a screenplay or anything else. You just need a process / a routine / steps-to-take to do it. Too often, beginning writers focus on the end result and are intimidated by the thought of completing a novel, an essay, a blog or even a short story. As the old Chinese proverb goes, a long journey begins with one small step.

Where can you get your ideas if you have no idea what to write about? The caveat here should be: what is your passion? what drives you? what topic would make you want to get up each morning and write? Remember, you are not writing for anyone else but yourself.

The source of ideas is endless: newspaper and magazine articles, books, movies, television, conversations, people you know, your past experiences, other people’s experiences, things you have witnessed, etc.

So then, how do you organize your ideas?

First step, find a place to write and only write. It will become your magic place and will set a mindset for you. If you can set up a time schedule, a routine, that’s great. But just having a place (only for writing) will help adjust your mind to the task of writing.

When I began writing a long time ago, I had an office in the basement of my home. At the time, I was working fulltime for public television, running my own business, managing two apartment buildings and trying to be an involved father. That office was where I conducted my business. But right around the corner in the laundry room was a countertop and that was my writing area and I only wrote there…nothing else.

Everyone has their own body clock. Only YOU know when the best time for YOU is to write. This has to be the best time for you (and not someone else). My most creative time is early in the morning or at least by 9:00am after my quiet time and breakfast. When I was still working fulltime it was whenever I could find the time.

Organizing your ideas is the next step.  Begin by just putting ideas, phrases, dialogue, facts, etc. on paper or the computer screen. Two things will happen:

1.      First, you will have captured your thoughts and ideas. Do whatever research is necessary.

2.      Secondly, they will organize themselves.

Then build a Treatment / Outline. Once you have enough information then begin to organize it with a beginning, middle and end or by chapters, or chronologically, sequential order.

Take that treatment to final written form.

1. Once you have an outline you are ready to begin.

2. Begin by filling in each scene with your notes already written.

3. Once that’s done, let it cool off. Walk away for a period of time then go back to it.

4.  ALL writing takes place in rewriting, not the initial first pass at writing.

Surrounding the art of writing are universal standards and truisms:

It’s all about story-telling

The essence of good drama is conflict

Focus on the story itself and character development verses sets, casts, scenes

Don’t preach (be very careful with your message or you’ll turn off your audience.

So far, over a period of roughly eighteen years, I have written: 14 novels, 2 novellas, 18 plays, 8 movie scripts, 2 children’s books (each in four languages), a comic strip, a book of poetry, 700 blogs and 9 original songs (for one of my plays.) Now comes the hard part. How do I get my product out into the ‘real world?’

Writing is step one, sharing it with the world is step two. Yet, even if I am not able to produce more plays (eighteen so far) or expand my reach of novel readers, I still have to soul-soothing satisfaction of knowing that while Paladin got away, I’ve corralled a whole lot of other stories and they’re pretty darn good, if I say so myself.

Good luck on your journey of becoming ‘a writer.’