The other night, my friend Mike was talking about his ice climbing expeditions. Although this holds no appeal for me, I’m always intrigued by the weirdoes who find it fun. Perhaps not surprisingly, he misinterpreted my interest and assumed I was fishing for an invitation. I hastened to put him right, but in the process casually mentioned that I had in the past, done a bit of climbing. Maybe I was hoping he would be impressed as yet another hidden depth to my character was revealed. Our eyes would meet across the table; we would nod a salute of mutual respect and our friendship would be forever cemented as brothers of the rope. Real men, hard men; men who’d been tested and knew what life was about.
Instead to my distress, he demanded details and before long had ferreted out the truth that my résumé as a climber was somewhat limited and, let’s be honest, rather wimpy. Even trying to tell of the time I solo climbed Ben Nevis, Scotland’s highest peak didn’t do much to resurrect my status.
Soaring to the dizzy height of 4,000 feet above sea level, Nevis doesn’t inspire awe among too many mountaineers. Sitting at my desk in Denver for example, I’m 1,250 feet higher than its summit, while in my Lay-Z-Boy at home, I’m 3,500 feet higher still. K2 it’s not, but despite racking up many miles hiking the hills of the English Lake District, it was at the time the highest peak I’d attempted.
"Don’t follow the trail." advised my sister as I spread out my camping gear on the floor of her Glasgow flat. "Drive round the back of the Ben and go straight up the side. It’s much faster and the view is better." Bowing to her experience in these matters, I camped at the base and after a quick drive into town for a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea, steered my little car back along the winding road to the start of the climb. The sun was out, life was good and when I saw two climbers thumbing a ride, it was only natural that I should pull over and offer a lift.
Laden with ropes, helmets, slings and pro it was obvious this pair were the real deal. The wild beards, broken teeth, hairy arses and body odor simply hammered home the point. They weren’t tackling the Ben but instead, some obscure granite tower the name of which meant nothing to me. Despite it being a mere 200 feet or so, they were anticipating taking the entire day just to summit and return. Not as experienced as I’d assumed, obviously.
With a note of smugness I explained that not only did I plan to summit the Ben (did I mention it’s Scotland’s highest mountain) but was doing it the hard way and still planned to be down in time for a couple of pints and a nap before dinner. Curiously, they were less than impressed.
"Where’s your gear?"
"I’m wearing it."
"Do you have a rope?"
"No"
"Do you have a helmet?"
"No"
"Are those the boots you’re planning to wear?"
"Uhm, yes."
(Uncomfortable pause)
"Maybe you’d better do something easier"
"Maybe you’d better walk the rest of the way!"
In the face of such unassailable logic, they changed the subject and before long I was waving them a cheery goodbye as they unloaded their gear at the base of a soaring monolith. On then to my own climb. My good mood lasted right up until I hopped out of the car and cricked back my neck to stare up an endless slope of bigger-than-me sized boulders. Not even the mountain goats were reckless enough to try and pick their way across this terrain but somewhere here was the route my sister had cheerfully told me to follow.
Ah well, I’d come this far so for almost three hours I scrambled, slid, scraped and heaved myself over first one boulder then another. On and on as the sun rose higher and the sweat dripped into my eyes. My fashionable jeans gripped and tugged at my legs and my T shirt stuck to me like a bad smell. But it wasn’t so much the physical effort, as the fear. The fear that any one of these rocks could topple, roll or shift and trap a random part of my body, pinning me to the mountain for the rest of my life. Every time I crawled over another boulder I could feel it wobble beneath me, just itching for the tiny bit more momentum it needed to begin a downward trajectory that would crush me in an instant. It was around this time the often-heard-but-routinely-ignored safety instructions for mountaineering came back to me. Never climb alone; always let someone know where you are; take proper equipment, blah de, blah, blah, blah.
Finally, aching and trembling, I hauled myself over the final rock and saw my goal. The Summit of Ben Nevis (I said it was Scotland’s highest peak, right?). I’d made it. Boulder field or not, I’d taken on this mythical mountain and won out. 4,000 feet of aching sweat and toil rewarded. I was at the top.
Me and about 500 other people. Old people, overweight people, people barely old enough to walk. The entire tourist population of the British Isles was milling around in a bovine manner, eating sandwiches, taking photos, admiring the view. All completely unaware of the Herculean task I’d just achieved. Looking down I could see hundreds more inching their way up the trail towards me.
I sat and put my head between my knees, sucking air for a while before concluding I wasn’t up to facing that boulder field again for the climb down. To hell with it, the mountain had won. I’d take the damn tourist trail. So I did. And such was the press of humanity; it took me almost four hours to get to the base. A good five miles from where I’d left my car. And nobody stopped to give me a ride back.
Since that day, I have done some real rock-climbing, you understand. I even have several dollars worth of gear out in the shed...somewhere. Uncomfortable shoes, a harness which hates me as much as I hate it, a helmet with bona fide scratches, and lots of karabiners. Some of those are currently doing service on the dog tie-outs and one as a key chain, but the point is; I do have them. And they’ve seen combat.
But even though I know all the lingo, have read many of the books and have summitted Ben Nevis the hard way; I still can’t pass myself off as a climber.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Life without the Internet
There was a time when I had hobbies. Among other things, I used to draw quite a lot; play chess and once I was a keen photographer. I was a prolific reader too. Lately however, I don’t see to have the time for such pursuits. I rarely even watch television these days, although it has to be said, that’s no great loss.
I work fairly long hours and have a ridiculously heavy commute, even in good weather. That means I have to get up at a time when 20 years ago I was just going to bed. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could stay up late but usually, I’m falling asleep before I’ve finished dinner. I have two dogs that get cranky if they aren’t properly exercised and a drum sergeant who gets just as grumpy when I don’t practice so it’s a challenge fitting all this in between getting home and going to bed.
That said, over the last decade or so I have, like many other people, become completely and hopelessly addicted to the Internet. And there’s more than just porn out there. (It’s true, go look!) Reading the news, checking the weather, looking up historical facts in a book I’m reading, browsing other people’s blogs, following the British football results; it’s all there at my fingertips and I’ve become totally dependent on it. In a fire, the computer would be one of the first things I’d grab. In fact, if the dogs spread coffee grounds around the kitchen floor once more, it may well be the first thing I’d grab.
This meant I experienced a deep sense of despair a few nights ago when I sat down for a spot of surfing, opened Mozilla and encountered the blue screen of death. You know the one. Royal blue with white lettering stating something innocuous like
"Ha, ha, ha – your life is over! Signed B. Gates"
It’s happened a few times before. Usually when I have five or six web browsers open at the same time and I’m reading one web site while the other five are still downloading. (That’s not called 'impatience' anymore; it’s now 'multi-tasking'.) So as usual, I closed everything and rebooted.
Nothing.
I shut the computer down and left it for fifteen minutes.
Still nothing.
I tried Internet Explorer. Nope. Then Netscape. This was successful, but probably only because I still have a primitive version loaded, which is useless for all but the most basic web sites. The rest of the computer seemed to be working fine, but I couldn’t for the life of me access the Internet. I ran Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter, Anti-Spyware and Virus Scan. Zippo.
Finally, I went to bed after deciding that if I simply didn’t think about it, everything would be fine in the morning. It wasn’t. So, with a heavy heart, I unplugged all the cables from the back (and goodness, aren’t there a lot?), carted the thing out to Dear Wife’s car, and instructed her to place it in the tender care of the teenaged boys at the local computer fixing store.
"No problem." they told her. "Leave it with us and we’ll give you a call in four or five days." After six days, I called them. "Yep" they said. "It’s causing us a bit of a headache."
"Oh?" I replied, trying to keep my voice from cracking.
"Yeah, we’re pretty sure there’s some Spyware on there which is preventing your browsers from opening. Problem is; we’ve run every piece of anti-Spyware software we own and still can’t find it. We’ve each had a go at it and it’s got us all stymied."
"So, what happens now?" I asked.
"Oh, we’ll get it" he replied with the confidence found only in the young. "We just need to figure it out."
After two more days, they admitted defeat. "Here’s the situation." They said "We can open Internet Explorer now, and the latest version of Netscape, but we just can’t get Mozilla to work. We’ve deleted everything and reloaded it. As far as we can see, your computer is completely clean, and we just don’t know what’s causing the problem."
"So what do we do?" I bleated.
"Well, if you’re agreeable, we’d like to upgrade your version of Windows. That might fix it, but worst case scenario, you’ll have an upgraded version of Windows. If it doesn’t work, we’ll download Firefox for you, which is kind of like Mozilla."
He then quoted me a sum higher than my first mortgage payment before adding brightly "And we’ll give you a newer version of Microsoft Office, on the house." I didn’t see that I had a whole lot of choice so I gave the go ahead. "Two or three more days" he told me.
Two or three more days without the Internet. Two or three more days of using my monitored-by-corporate-office work computer for my surfing needs. Two or three more days! That’s a lifetime.
On Day 4 Dear Wife called to see if it was ready. The owner of the store told her.
"Yes, I’m glad you called. There’s been a bit of a hold up because the employee who was working on your computer quit without notice this week."
"Ohhhkaaaaaaaaaay, so what’s the situation now?"
"Well, I was hoping you could you tell me what it was he was going to do."
Dear Wife is more polite than I am in situations like this so in the cosmic scheme of things it was probably best that she was on the call, not me. Nonetheless, when three more days had come and gone with no word from them, I concluded that as man of the house, I would make the call to enquire about the status.
"Yep, it’s done." Came the response. "It’s ready for you to pick up."
My relief at the thought of being connected to the outside world once more comfortably outweighed my irritation over their lack of consideration in picking up the phone to tell us this so I cheerfully arranged to pick it up later that day.
All right, Internet – here I come!
Except I still can’t get on. It turns out the Windows upgrade wiped out our Internet Provider’s software.
Of course, there is an upside. I dug out my sketch pad the other day. And I’ve played several games of chess, and spent some quality time with my camera. And I’m working my way through a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time.
I’m still not prepared to watch television though. I’m not that desperate.
I work fairly long hours and have a ridiculously heavy commute, even in good weather. That means I have to get up at a time when 20 years ago I was just going to bed. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could stay up late but usually, I’m falling asleep before I’ve finished dinner. I have two dogs that get cranky if they aren’t properly exercised and a drum sergeant who gets just as grumpy when I don’t practice so it’s a challenge fitting all this in between getting home and going to bed.
That said, over the last decade or so I have, like many other people, become completely and hopelessly addicted to the Internet. And there’s more than just porn out there. (It’s true, go look!) Reading the news, checking the weather, looking up historical facts in a book I’m reading, browsing other people’s blogs, following the British football results; it’s all there at my fingertips and I’ve become totally dependent on it. In a fire, the computer would be one of the first things I’d grab. In fact, if the dogs spread coffee grounds around the kitchen floor once more, it may well be the first thing I’d grab.
This meant I experienced a deep sense of despair a few nights ago when I sat down for a spot of surfing, opened Mozilla and encountered the blue screen of death. You know the one. Royal blue with white lettering stating something innocuous like
"Ha, ha, ha – your life is over! Signed B. Gates"
It’s happened a few times before. Usually when I have five or six web browsers open at the same time and I’m reading one web site while the other five are still downloading. (That’s not called 'impatience' anymore; it’s now 'multi-tasking'.) So as usual, I closed everything and rebooted.
Nothing.
I shut the computer down and left it for fifteen minutes.
Still nothing.
I tried Internet Explorer. Nope. Then Netscape. This was successful, but probably only because I still have a primitive version loaded, which is useless for all but the most basic web sites. The rest of the computer seemed to be working fine, but I couldn’t for the life of me access the Internet. I ran Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter, Anti-Spyware and Virus Scan. Zippo.
Finally, I went to bed after deciding that if I simply didn’t think about it, everything would be fine in the morning. It wasn’t. So, with a heavy heart, I unplugged all the cables from the back (and goodness, aren’t there a lot?), carted the thing out to Dear Wife’s car, and instructed her to place it in the tender care of the teenaged boys at the local computer fixing store.
"No problem." they told her. "Leave it with us and we’ll give you a call in four or five days." After six days, I called them. "Yep" they said. "It’s causing us a bit of a headache."
"Oh?" I replied, trying to keep my voice from cracking.
"Yeah, we’re pretty sure there’s some Spyware on there which is preventing your browsers from opening. Problem is; we’ve run every piece of anti-Spyware software we own and still can’t find it. We’ve each had a go at it and it’s got us all stymied."
"So, what happens now?" I asked.
"Oh, we’ll get it" he replied with the confidence found only in the young. "We just need to figure it out."
After two more days, they admitted defeat. "Here’s the situation." They said "We can open Internet Explorer now, and the latest version of Netscape, but we just can’t get Mozilla to work. We’ve deleted everything and reloaded it. As far as we can see, your computer is completely clean, and we just don’t know what’s causing the problem."
"So what do we do?" I bleated.
"Well, if you’re agreeable, we’d like to upgrade your version of Windows. That might fix it, but worst case scenario, you’ll have an upgraded version of Windows. If it doesn’t work, we’ll download Firefox for you, which is kind of like Mozilla."
He then quoted me a sum higher than my first mortgage payment before adding brightly "And we’ll give you a newer version of Microsoft Office, on the house." I didn’t see that I had a whole lot of choice so I gave the go ahead. "Two or three more days" he told me.
Two or three more days without the Internet. Two or three more days of using my monitored-by-corporate-office work computer for my surfing needs. Two or three more days! That’s a lifetime.
On Day 4 Dear Wife called to see if it was ready. The owner of the store told her.
"Yes, I’m glad you called. There’s been a bit of a hold up because the employee who was working on your computer quit without notice this week."
"Ohhhkaaaaaaaaaay, so what’s the situation now?"
"Well, I was hoping you could you tell me what it was he was going to do."
Dear Wife is more polite than I am in situations like this so in the cosmic scheme of things it was probably best that she was on the call, not me. Nonetheless, when three more days had come and gone with no word from them, I concluded that as man of the house, I would make the call to enquire about the status.
"Yep, it’s done." Came the response. "It’s ready for you to pick up."
My relief at the thought of being connected to the outside world once more comfortably outweighed my irritation over their lack of consideration in picking up the phone to tell us this so I cheerfully arranged to pick it up later that day.
All right, Internet – here I come!
Except I still can’t get on. It turns out the Windows upgrade wiped out our Internet Provider’s software.
Of course, there is an upside. I dug out my sketch pad the other day. And I’ve played several games of chess, and spent some quality time with my camera. And I’m working my way through a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time.
I’m still not prepared to watch television though. I’m not that desperate.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
A Slight Hitch
"I don’t think anyone’s going to pick us up" groused Dave.
Irritatingly cynical he may have been, but it was hard to deny, it was looking as though he might be right. I wasn’t prepared to concede that point just yet however. We had after all, only been attempting to hitchhike for about two hours, and he’d been grumbling since the start.
We were making our way home after completing a long distance hike. We’d taken the bus part of the way but were now completely broke and still 80 miles from home. No big deal, I’d hitched that distance and more without a problem in multiple countries and was pretty experienced in the game. But I had to confess to a nagging worry that my previous efforts had always been flying solo. It’s a general rule of thumb (there’s a joke in there somewhere) that if you must hitch with a partner, it should preferably be female, blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. Dave was none of those. He was on the other hand, becoming increasingly pessimistic about my ability to procure a ride.
I was following all the rules; standing by a straight stretch of road where the drivers would have long enough to check me out, decide I didn’t look like an axe murderer and pull over on the wide shoulder I’d thoughtfully selected, and yet not so straight a stretch that they’d already be up to full speed and disinclined to stop again. I had my thumb clearly raised in the accepted style and was making eye contact with each driver as they sailed by, attempting to communicate by telepathy how interesting, clean and safe I was and how much their lives would be improved if they would only invite me into their cars. Oh and my friend Dave too. And our oversized backpacks.
Nada.
Hitchhiking isn’t a game for people in a hurry, or for those who need to live by a schedule. Yes, there have been times when I’ve been escorted to my destination by a succession of fast cars with barely a moment's wait between them. On one occasion I made it from my front door to the center of Edinburgh, some 150 miles away, in a whisker over 2 hours after being picked up by the first car to come along, driven by a company executive who by coincidence was following the exact same route as me. Other times I’ve had multiple lifts separated by no more than a few minutes. In Australia I once traveled 350 miles in 7 rides with no time to eat the sandwich I’d packed for lunch.
But more commonly a hitchhiking trip will require some hanging around. Sometimes for a long time. I was once stuck on a back road in an industrial area of Scotland and after four hours fruitless thumbing was just on the verge of walking to the next town and checking the train schedule when a delivery van came to the rescue by transporting me the 25 miles to a real highway. Another time, cold and hungry I waited for just over three hours on a desolate Yorkshire moor before being driven straight home by a lady who reminded me of my Mum.
But the thing is, you never know how it’s going to be. Sometimes you can wait all morning to get started, before receiving half a dozen rides in quick succession. Other times the whole day can be plain sailing while very occasionally you just get flat out stuck. Some hitchhikers turn down the offer of short rides, preferring to hold out for the longer run which might be along shortly. To me that’s a little like walking past a five-dollar bill in the hopes you might find a twenty further on. Also, if somebody has been decent enough to stop and offer a ride, then I’m not going to be churlish enough to spurn them. It’s true, there are times when you may be standing at a promising spot, and a short ride runs the risk of stranding you somewhere less appealing, but generally I’m willing to take what I’m offered.
The only downside to short rides is that you get weary of repeating the same conversational openers multiple times in quick succession. "What’s your name?", "Where are you from?" "What do you do for a living?" and so on. I once met a Canadian who swore the next question was always "Would you like a blow job?" but that never happened to me. Generally most drivers were just looking for a little conversation to break up the monotony of their own journey.
So to keep them entertained I sometimes got a little creative in my answers and rather than just repeating the truth over and over, would start to make things up. In my time I’ve been a trainee vet, a professional gambler, a chess master, and an Olympic marathoner among other things. Of course, there’s always the risk I’d run into someone who knew more about my chosen subject than I did, but in all my fibbing, I was only caught out once after claiming to be studying for the priesthood before learning my driver was the brother of a priest. Ironically, the only reason that popped into my head was because the previous driver had been a born-again Christian who tried to convert me.
But here Dave and I were, getting increasingly hungry and nowhere nearer home. Two hours turned into three and then to four and it was obvious that today wasn’t to be our day. We tried new locations, took turns, changed our clothes to look as appealing as possible but despite the abundance of traffic, nobody was stopping. Eventually, like the worrywart he is, Dave sloped off to find a payphone and called his parents. Oh the shame. I’d never failed so completely before.
A couple of hours later, up they rolled to find us sitting disconsolately on the grassy verge. They teased us mercilessly most of the way home, before handing us a newspaper. As I said, we’d been on a long distance hike and had been totally out of touch with the media for almost two weeks. Which meant we were the only two people in the country who didn’t know that there was an escaped murderer on the loose in the area with a manhunt extending over three counties.
I looked at the paper, and immediately felt a whole lot better about my hitchhiking performance. There, in two-inch high black type screamed that morning’s headline:
Now if only somebody had told us beforehand.
Irritatingly cynical he may have been, but it was hard to deny, it was looking as though he might be right. I wasn’t prepared to concede that point just yet however. We had after all, only been attempting to hitchhike for about two hours, and he’d been grumbling since the start.
We were making our way home after completing a long distance hike. We’d taken the bus part of the way but were now completely broke and still 80 miles from home. No big deal, I’d hitched that distance and more without a problem in multiple countries and was pretty experienced in the game. But I had to confess to a nagging worry that my previous efforts had always been flying solo. It’s a general rule of thumb (there’s a joke in there somewhere) that if you must hitch with a partner, it should preferably be female, blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. Dave was none of those. He was on the other hand, becoming increasingly pessimistic about my ability to procure a ride.
I was following all the rules; standing by a straight stretch of road where the drivers would have long enough to check me out, decide I didn’t look like an axe murderer and pull over on the wide shoulder I’d thoughtfully selected, and yet not so straight a stretch that they’d already be up to full speed and disinclined to stop again. I had my thumb clearly raised in the accepted style and was making eye contact with each driver as they sailed by, attempting to communicate by telepathy how interesting, clean and safe I was and how much their lives would be improved if they would only invite me into their cars. Oh and my friend Dave too. And our oversized backpacks.
Nada.
Hitchhiking isn’t a game for people in a hurry, or for those who need to live by a schedule. Yes, there have been times when I’ve been escorted to my destination by a succession of fast cars with barely a moment's wait between them. On one occasion I made it from my front door to the center of Edinburgh, some 150 miles away, in a whisker over 2 hours after being picked up by the first car to come along, driven by a company executive who by coincidence was following the exact same route as me. Other times I’ve had multiple lifts separated by no more than a few minutes. In Australia I once traveled 350 miles in 7 rides with no time to eat the sandwich I’d packed for lunch.
But more commonly a hitchhiking trip will require some hanging around. Sometimes for a long time. I was once stuck on a back road in an industrial area of Scotland and after four hours fruitless thumbing was just on the verge of walking to the next town and checking the train schedule when a delivery van came to the rescue by transporting me the 25 miles to a real highway. Another time, cold and hungry I waited for just over three hours on a desolate Yorkshire moor before being driven straight home by a lady who reminded me of my Mum.
But the thing is, you never know how it’s going to be. Sometimes you can wait all morning to get started, before receiving half a dozen rides in quick succession. Other times the whole day can be plain sailing while very occasionally you just get flat out stuck. Some hitchhikers turn down the offer of short rides, preferring to hold out for the longer run which might be along shortly. To me that’s a little like walking past a five-dollar bill in the hopes you might find a twenty further on. Also, if somebody has been decent enough to stop and offer a ride, then I’m not going to be churlish enough to spurn them. It’s true, there are times when you may be standing at a promising spot, and a short ride runs the risk of stranding you somewhere less appealing, but generally I’m willing to take what I’m offered.
The only downside to short rides is that you get weary of repeating the same conversational openers multiple times in quick succession. "What’s your name?", "Where are you from?" "What do you do for a living?" and so on. I once met a Canadian who swore the next question was always "Would you like a blow job?" but that never happened to me. Generally most drivers were just looking for a little conversation to break up the monotony of their own journey.
So to keep them entertained I sometimes got a little creative in my answers and rather than just repeating the truth over and over, would start to make things up. In my time I’ve been a trainee vet, a professional gambler, a chess master, and an Olympic marathoner among other things. Of course, there’s always the risk I’d run into someone who knew more about my chosen subject than I did, but in all my fibbing, I was only caught out once after claiming to be studying for the priesthood before learning my driver was the brother of a priest. Ironically, the only reason that popped into my head was because the previous driver had been a born-again Christian who tried to convert me.
But here Dave and I were, getting increasingly hungry and nowhere nearer home. Two hours turned into three and then to four and it was obvious that today wasn’t to be our day. We tried new locations, took turns, changed our clothes to look as appealing as possible but despite the abundance of traffic, nobody was stopping. Eventually, like the worrywart he is, Dave sloped off to find a payphone and called his parents. Oh the shame. I’d never failed so completely before.
A couple of hours later, up they rolled to find us sitting disconsolately on the grassy verge. They teased us mercilessly most of the way home, before handing us a newspaper. As I said, we’d been on a long distance hike and had been totally out of touch with the media for almost two weeks. Which meant we were the only two people in the country who didn’t know that there was an escaped murderer on the loose in the area with a manhunt extending over three counties.
I looked at the paper, and immediately felt a whole lot better about my hitchhiking performance. There, in two-inch high black type screamed that morning’s headline:
DO NOT PICK UP HITCHIKERS!
Now if only somebody had told us beforehand.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
In Black and White
There it is, right there in black and white. Spelled rite and everything. My name, I mean. Right at the top of the article. Which tells the world that I’m a published writer.
There’s a magazine called Mountain Gazette which comes out of Frisco, just a couple of mountain passes over from my house. It’s a freebie and can be found at a number of locations around the Rocky Mountains although they apparently have subscribers all around the world. I first discovered it a year or so ago and immediately fell in love with the writing I found within.
Pretty much anything goes although mostly, it’s related in some way to mountain life. And it doesn’t even have to be the Rocky Mountains although the bulk of the articles do tend to be submitted by writers from the western US. Some of the greats have been published between its pages; Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Abbey and now, me.
A little while ago, on one of the most miserable evenings of my life, I hit and killed a deer while driving home. Up until then I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never hit anything other than insects and once, a long time ago, a suicidal rabbit who defied all my attempts to get round him. There have been a few inanimate objects I’m afraid; a trash can, the occasional fender-in-the-parking-lot and the wall of my parents’ driveway more than once while I was mastering the art of reversing round corners. But so far I’ve always managed to avoid hitting wildlife so killing the deer affected me profoundly.
Writing about it for The Gunsmoke Files was an act of self-indulgent catharsis in that I wanted to explore my own feelings and put down on paper the emotions tormenting me at the time. For once, I wasn’t writing my Blog for the entertainment of others, but purely for myself. I don’t think it took more than about twenty minutes to compose and other than correcting the typos and grammatical errors, no editing was required. Would that I could write that way more often. From feedback I’ve received, it sounds as though plenty of others found it as emotional to read as I did to write. Several people told me it made them cry, some shared their own deer vs. auto stories and more than a few suggested I investigate having my work published.
Problem is, not only have I never had my writing printed before; I’ve never even submitted anything and wasn’t entirely sure how to get started. I’ve read enough to know that magazine editors are frustrated by the number of submissions they receive which are totally inappropriate for their periodicals so dropping it in the mail to Teen Beat probably wasn’t going to cut it. Mountain Gazette however, seemed to be a perfect fit. I perused the masthead and discovered the helpful advice that all submissions must be delivered electronically, directly to the editor.
Sounded easy enough, so after adding my name, address, a brief summary and word count, along with my favorite color and shoe size just for good measure, I took a deep breath and hit the 'Send' button. Naturally, I spotted another grammatical error moments later (here’s a tip kids; write this down: "Get someone else to proof your work") but what the heck, it was away now. All I needed to do was await confirmation of publication and the subsequent Pulitzer Prize.
So I waited. And waited. And waited.
Again, being a rookie, I wasn’t sure of the protocol in such a situation. Should I e-mail them again and ask "Did you get it?" Re-send the article with a chirpy "Hey, I wasn’t sure if this went to the right address!" Or just sit on my hands like the seasoned veteran I’m not.
Tick, tick, tick.
But let’s suppose they’re not going to use it. It’s unlikely they’d contact the author of every rejected piece to say "Sorry, you lose." So at what point would it be acceptable to try submitting the article to another publication? Should I call the office? Drop by with doughnuts? I’m sure the modus operandi varies at every magazine, so what are the rules of the game for this one. It’s a stressful life being an unpublished writer, let me tell you.
Finally one day I received a very nice e-mail from a lady with a high-powered sounding title apologizing for the slow response but she’d been on vacation you see and was just catching up. Well there you go; what were you worried about? She also explained that it would take a while for her to get through all her correspondence but I’d probably hear something in the next 4-6 weeks. 4-6 weeks! Why, I’ll be...like...4-6 weeks older by then! Still, at least I knew for sure they’d got the darn thing so that was one less thing to worry about.
So, after making a note in my diary showing when week 6 was up, I went about my business, and stopped checking my e-mail two hundred times a day. Which meant I was caught a little off guard a couple of weeks later when I returned from a short business trip and found a frantic note from my friend telling me that they were almost at their print deadline and still hadn’t received my 'author bio'. Where was it?
In order to show that I’m an author in high demand, and not one to jump to the whims of any menial staffer, I waited oh, a good 10 or 15 seconds before responding with the information she needed. Well, actually I sent her way more than she needed so she replied with a suggestion for an edited version, which other than getting my Nationality wrong, seemed to cover all the bases. Then all I had to do was resist the urge to write back saying “So when’s it gonna be in? Huh, huh, huh? When’s it gonna be in?”
This month’s magazine was devoted specifically to articles on climbing so I resigned myself to having to wait yet another 4 weeks and who knows what might happen in that time. Perhaps they’d think “Oh yes, that’s the pillock who didn’t send us his author bio. Let’s call the printers and have them take that piece back out.” (Hey, it could happen). Which meant that my heart nearly beat through my rib cage when I opened the June edition and saw on page 9, my name.
Right at the top of the article. In black and white.
There’s a magazine called Mountain Gazette which comes out of Frisco, just a couple of mountain passes over from my house. It’s a freebie and can be found at a number of locations around the Rocky Mountains although they apparently have subscribers all around the world. I first discovered it a year or so ago and immediately fell in love with the writing I found within.
Pretty much anything goes although mostly, it’s related in some way to mountain life. And it doesn’t even have to be the Rocky Mountains although the bulk of the articles do tend to be submitted by writers from the western US. Some of the greats have been published between its pages; Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Abbey and now, me.
A little while ago, on one of the most miserable evenings of my life, I hit and killed a deer while driving home. Up until then I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never hit anything other than insects and once, a long time ago, a suicidal rabbit who defied all my attempts to get round him. There have been a few inanimate objects I’m afraid; a trash can, the occasional fender-in-the-parking-lot and the wall of my parents’ driveway more than once while I was mastering the art of reversing round corners. But so far I’ve always managed to avoid hitting wildlife so killing the deer affected me profoundly.
Writing about it for The Gunsmoke Files was an act of self-indulgent catharsis in that I wanted to explore my own feelings and put down on paper the emotions tormenting me at the time. For once, I wasn’t writing my Blog for the entertainment of others, but purely for myself. I don’t think it took more than about twenty minutes to compose and other than correcting the typos and grammatical errors, no editing was required. Would that I could write that way more often. From feedback I’ve received, it sounds as though plenty of others found it as emotional to read as I did to write. Several people told me it made them cry, some shared their own deer vs. auto stories and more than a few suggested I investigate having my work published.
Problem is, not only have I never had my writing printed before; I’ve never even submitted anything and wasn’t entirely sure how to get started. I’ve read enough to know that magazine editors are frustrated by the number of submissions they receive which are totally inappropriate for their periodicals so dropping it in the mail to Teen Beat probably wasn’t going to cut it. Mountain Gazette however, seemed to be a perfect fit. I perused the masthead and discovered the helpful advice that all submissions must be delivered electronically, directly to the editor.
Sounded easy enough, so after adding my name, address, a brief summary and word count, along with my favorite color and shoe size just for good measure, I took a deep breath and hit the 'Send' button. Naturally, I spotted another grammatical error moments later (here’s a tip kids; write this down: "Get someone else to proof your work") but what the heck, it was away now. All I needed to do was await confirmation of publication and the subsequent Pulitzer Prize.
So I waited. And waited. And waited.
Again, being a rookie, I wasn’t sure of the protocol in such a situation. Should I e-mail them again and ask "Did you get it?" Re-send the article with a chirpy "Hey, I wasn’t sure if this went to the right address!" Or just sit on my hands like the seasoned veteran I’m not.
Tick, tick, tick.
But let’s suppose they’re not going to use it. It’s unlikely they’d contact the author of every rejected piece to say "Sorry, you lose." So at what point would it be acceptable to try submitting the article to another publication? Should I call the office? Drop by with doughnuts? I’m sure the modus operandi varies at every magazine, so what are the rules of the game for this one. It’s a stressful life being an unpublished writer, let me tell you.
Finally one day I received a very nice e-mail from a lady with a high-powered sounding title apologizing for the slow response but she’d been on vacation you see and was just catching up. Well there you go; what were you worried about? She also explained that it would take a while for her to get through all her correspondence but I’d probably hear something in the next 4-6 weeks. 4-6 weeks! Why, I’ll be...like...4-6 weeks older by then! Still, at least I knew for sure they’d got the darn thing so that was one less thing to worry about.
So, after making a note in my diary showing when week 6 was up, I went about my business, and stopped checking my e-mail two hundred times a day. Which meant I was caught a little off guard a couple of weeks later when I returned from a short business trip and found a frantic note from my friend telling me that they were almost at their print deadline and still hadn’t received my 'author bio'. Where was it?
In order to show that I’m an author in high demand, and not one to jump to the whims of any menial staffer, I waited oh, a good 10 or 15 seconds before responding with the information she needed. Well, actually I sent her way more than she needed so she replied with a suggestion for an edited version, which other than getting my Nationality wrong, seemed to cover all the bases. Then all I had to do was resist the urge to write back saying “So when’s it gonna be in? Huh, huh, huh? When’s it gonna be in?”
This month’s magazine was devoted specifically to articles on climbing so I resigned myself to having to wait yet another 4 weeks and who knows what might happen in that time. Perhaps they’d think “Oh yes, that’s the pillock who didn’t send us his author bio. Let’s call the printers and have them take that piece back out.” (Hey, it could happen). Which meant that my heart nearly beat through my rib cage when I opened the June edition and saw on page 9, my name.
Right at the top of the article. In black and white.
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