And the Mountain Lions will Provide the Entertainment

 Entry 3

Law school

I embarked on this 'Esso Esquire' voyage so that I might get my writing legs seaworthy again after a long hiatus living in the land far far away from literature (i.e. DJ'ing, law school). So I put together a couple poems, added introductions, slapped on some pictures, and posted my first two blogs. But over the two weeks that followed I wrote next to nothing. Okay, save for text messages, Facebook chats, and a few nerdy emails to my brother about our respective fantasy hockey league teams, I wrote absolutely nothing. My voyage had stalled. Did my ship's engine die? Did the wind stop blowing from the northwest passage? Did I run into an iceberg off the coast of Greenland? Had the ocean run out of water? Why no writing? For one, I didn't feel like it. For another, I had nothing to write about.

The first reason is legitimate. But the second is just moldy fruit from ye olde forbidden tree of excuses. And so I'm writing now. Did I find something deep and meaningful to discuss? If so, what am I writing about? And what is the point? If indeed there is a point, will I ever get to it? And will the point be worthwhile? All legitimate questions, all of which I've heard before, but it is my entry and I will not be held hostage by an imaginary reader asking pesky questions. And since when did something have to be about anything? Seinfeld lasted nine seasons and enjoyed critical and popular acclaim based precisely on the self-aware smirking premise that nothing could be something, or even that nothing could be everything.

Yes, it's possible to do an entire episode in a parking garage.

Several summers ago I began writing a novel largely and loosely based on my experiences over many summers spent working on my uncle's ranch in Montana. I had written three chapters and gotten the project out of the door and on the road. The trip's purpose and character had been established: an adventure novel about a boy/young man's summer of self-discovery on a cattle ranch high in the mountains of big sky country. But many questions remained. What would be the main adventure of the story? How much of my own experiences would I use and how much would I make up?

I did not want to write a purely personal memoir of one of my summers or a summary of all the times I spent out West; I wanted the story to have intrigue and action within the friendly timeline of one summer. A fictional story enhanced by the non-fiction of my countless experiences working on the ranch. You see, I had no stirring adventures, battles, intense chase scenes, or gripping conflicts between good and evil during my summers driving cattle, mending fences, stacking hay, driving tractors, and killing weeds. I needed to make things up and be the creator, the progenitor, the auctor I discussed in Entry 1, and at the same time seamlessly combine the real experiences with made-up dream land characters and twists, as discussed in Entry 2.

I should be herding the cattle,
not scattering them....

Ball so hard

Workin' in Big Sky Country

Me: I choose to enter the arena!
May I do so for its own sake?
And may I be my own critic?
Teddy: Shut up and enter...
but don't enter and shut up.

Writing things you already experienced is one thing, but tossing in fake things into the mix is quite another. Shouldn't it be easy making things up? No it's not easy. But yes, making up imaginary readers posing questions clearly is no problem for me. Take the critic and the critic's subject. The critic reacts to the experience of a movie, music, or a performance, while the producer of the movie, the musician, or the actor actually creates or performs where once there was no movie, no song, no performance. The maker and the doer must believe in and commit to his or her work, while the critic too easily "points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better." This is not to say the critic cannot add instructive value. Nor is it true that a critic cannot be or is not a part of the creative process. The critic can create a whole work of his (or her) own in parody, satire, or homage. The point is, one should never be among "those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat" but instead should enter "the arena" for a worthy cause and make, create, perform, write. And when you can produce anything, you should want to produce something of quality, something lasting, something meaningful... something great (read: The Great American Novel). What excuses could you have? You can choose any subject, any plot, any character, any setting, any line, any sentence, and any word. And so it is with a creative writer. The universe of non-fiction writing is finite, the universe for fictional infinite and the choices endless.

There are TV shows for everything

Some ideas are better left unexplored.

My Montana summer could include cowboy and Indian fights, a shootout between rivals, bear attacks, wild fires across the ranch, discovered dinosaur bones, or crazy eccentric mountain men. Or my summer could have crossed the next threshold of reality into the realm of werewolves from the woods, ghosts haunting the night, supernatural spirits taking hold of animals, or even long lost dinosaurs roaming the mountains of the west. See where I'm going with this? Exactly, me neither. After getting my project out of the driveway and onto the road I didn't know where to take it.

Enter the mountain lions.

A mountain lion entering

Chapter two currently features a pounding rainstorm which caused one horse to disappear into a wooded mountainside during wrangling. It ends with the lost horse galloping out of the woods into the field after the fictional version of me hears piercing cries of a mountain lion and sees a shadowy figure on a horse in the distance. The shadowy figure and the piercing cries foreshadow their prominent role in the plot's adventure. The shadowy figure serves as the mysterious mountain man whose true identity is slowly revealed culminating... Wait... I can't tell you the whole plot!

Satisfied that those two characters would add enough adventure and force to the storyline, I knew that I would have to research and learn a few things about mountain lions in order to write about them (although I'm really tempted to turn the lion into a sabre tooth tiger, an undiscovered living relic from the ice age. Extinct animals are legit).

Mostly wondering whether or not mountain lions actually made screeching noises, I began my research. I soon learned that mountain lions often kill for the sake of killing, and that in places with wolves (like Montana) mountain lions kill more frequently because wolves will steal their spoils. With the deer and elk population on the rise out West, the mountain lion population in turn is increasing. One brilliant researcher listed the pros and cons of such an increase: "The short-term benefit is that with more lions around, perhaps more people will have the pleasure of seeing them. The long term problems are: ...attacks on humans. (emphasis added, but not needed)" That's right folks, if more mountain lions are around, you get the amazing benefit of seeing more and more mountain lions in person. But... and here's where it gets interesting... the long-term problem is that you will be attacked. And killed. And maybe just for the fun of it. And wolves might fight over your remains after you've been brutally attacked. BUT you would have had the pleasure of seeing one up close and personal.

Researcher: "Nice to see you Mr. Mountain Lion."
Mountain Lion: "Rawrrrr."
Researcher: "What a beautiful day it is!"
Mountain Lion: "A beautiful day to eat you."

After a swift pounce that short-term benefit quickly turns into a rather serious long-term problem.

Using predatory cats for entertainment purposes

The researcher went on to describe in somewhat macabre detail numerous mountain lion attacks on humans, while pointing out that one family sued a state park because they let mountain lions roam around and that another family complained to the school board because of the school's perceived failure to take into account the threat of wildlife coming onto school grounds. As utterly horrible the tragedy of an attack would be (cue debate regarding violence and entertainment), can you imagine chewing out the ranger or the school teacher for failing to prevent an attack? "Who let wildlife into the state park??? Ranger Bob, you know better than to let wild animals in! Don't let in any mountain lions unless they promise to behave!" And "Ms. Teacher, why didn't you know a mountain lion was coming yesterday? Don't you know all visitors must check in with the Principle's office??" And so my research naturally became what to do in the event you come across a mountain lion. Should you: A) take a picture and enjoy seeing one up close; B) freeze and play dead; or C) run as if your life depended on it, because it does? Can't you see the Hiking Weekly article headline? 8 Things to Do If You See a Mountain Lion -our answers might surprise you!  The advice of the science researchers amounted to the conclusion that neither A, B, or C really made any difference. Thanks for the help!

Jokes and short-term benefits of hanging out with mountain lions aside, I concluded that in real life mountain lions were more entertained by humans than humans entertained by mountain lions. Much much more. The thought of powerful limber creatures stalking their prey from slowly waving tall grass paints a troubling scene if you are the hunted. You wouldn't even have time to enjoy "the pleasure of seeing [a real mountain lion]" if you were preoccupied fending off one of these giant angry cats. Luckily for my story and potential readers, the mountain lion would only exist on the page, a danger only to the story's loosely fictional characters. For that reason, mountain lions could provide some adventure and entertainment, just enough of a thrill for the reader to keep turning pages, and enough of a challenge to the protagonist to make him a worthy combatant in Roosevelt's esteemed arena. In the meantime, perhaps their presence added some color to a blog entry desperately lacking a topic, even if I never found out whether or not mountain lions actually screech. Hmm... what if I wrote a book about a mountain lion's coming of age/self-discovery? Now that is a novel idea.

It's a big world out there!

Once there were two cats named Doc and Wyatt...