Conventional wisdom about writing is conventionally wrong.
Just when I thought there was no worse music video on the planet, here comes this blessed gem.
This has it all: Home-made superhero costumes. Bad dancing. Random violin duets that take over the entire video.
Every writer gets the notion — from college, from movies, from the Series of Tubes — that they should be in a critique group.
This notion is seven separate types of wrong.
It’s time for critique groups to go the way of the rotary phone — to make way for something better, faster and stronger.
Peoples of the interwebs: critique groups are obsolete
A critique group is useful for certain things:
(a) university professors who want students to break into groups and leave him alone for the next 45 minutes,
(b) writers who really, really like to read their work aloud,
(c) literary snobs who like to say silly pretentious things about the work of others, and
(d) happy writers who like to socialize with fellow writers and talk smack about the craft while drinking bourbon.
Sidenote: Yes, your particular critique group is wonderful, and you couldn’t live without it. No worries. I’m not driving to your house with the Anti-Critique Group Secret Police to disband it or anything. Also, your critique group’s amazing bylaws and secret handshakes mitigate all the typical disadvantages of plain old boring critique groups that are not nearly as awesome.
Reason No. 1: Critique groups take far too much time
During college, sure, you’ve got time to sit in a group, read chapters aloud and debate what Susie really meant by having the protagonist drink a bottle of ketchup in Chapter 2.
Once you graduate from college, get a job, get married, buy a house and have little pookies, THERE IS NO TIME for this type of nonsense. Do I have three hours to drive to somebody’s house, listen to chapters read aloud, then talk about what I remember of those words and drive home? No. I have ten flipping minutes to write silly blog posts.
People who write for monies, full time, do not gather around a table to read their text aloud while fellow writers and editors listen carefully and ponder the words. It does not happen.
Reason No. 2: Editing as a group is dangerous and slow
Anything written by a committee will stink up the joint, right? Writing is a solitary act.
Editing is, too. You write a thing, then you give it to an editor.
Typically, there are different levels of editing: at a newspaper, you ship your text to the city editor, who gives it the first whack and focuses on the big picture. Later, the draft goes to the copy desk for a different type of editing, more of a polish and proofing.
Also, editing is best done on a keyboard, or with a red pen. Not out loud in a social group, where peer pressure and weird dynamics can screw up a draft in two seconds flat.
Reason No. 3: Critique groups can’t handle most things we write today
Short stories and novels. That’s what critique groups are really built to handle.
And they do a bad job on novels. Why? Because reading a novel in tiny chunks every week will (a) take forever and (b) turn the focus onto pretty words rather than structure and story. You need to see the entire airplane before you can say, with authority, whether it’ll fly or not. Peeking at tiny pieces of it all year doesn’t work.
Traditional critique groups are bullocks when it comes to editing blog posts, speeches, opeds, screenplays, newspaper stories, magazine features, obituaries and haikus. That’s right, haikus. YOU CAN’T HANDLE THEM.
Reason No. 4: Because I say so
That’s it.
I could put some bullets beneath here, if you want to make it official. Here you go:
Let’s invent something new
Now, there is a place for some kind of thing that’s LIKE a critique group, except better, faster and stronger.
Everybody needs an editor. And the more important a thing is, the more you should hire a professional editor who actually does this stuff for a living. But for a whole bunch of things that we write — including silly blog posts — hiring a pro would be a waste of money and time.
So let’s invent a new Writing Monster that’s better, faster and stronger.
Better
The Writing Monster should be flexible, able to handle the editing of any kind of writing, whether it’s a little blog post, a speech, a short story or a screenplay.
It should also expose people to new ideas and new ways of looking at writing, and inspire us to rip the pages out of stupid pretentious books.
And it should expose us to different types of writers and editors, not just fellow writers who have the same exact skills and writerly prejudices.
Faster
The Writer Monster Thing should use this thing we call the Series of Tubes and travel at the speed of light rather than the Speed of Steve’s Subaru as you carpool to Jane’s house for the critique group and hope that she didn’t make that bean salad again.
Stronger
The Writing Monster should be strong and resilient, living in the cloud and forging connections with writers and editors anywhere, like the Borg’s hive mind collective.
BTW: Resistance is futile.
The Writing Monster will NOT die because Steve moved to Idaho or Jane discovered that she hates Tyler’s novel and, to be honest, his stinking guts.
Also, the Writing Monster will focus more on short, important things like concepts, pitches and structure. Things that take up less than a page. (Kristen the Lamb is onto something with her Concept Critique Group idea.)
The alternative is spending every week for the next year dissecting Steve’s 125,000-word epic about vampire elves with lightsabers riding dinosaurs and Jane’s memoir about growing up on a potato farm in Idaho.
Around here , we don’t just watch caped crusaders and masked Avengers on the Imax while munching the Largest Bowls of Popcorn Known to Man.
Up in Metropolis, which other peoples call “Seattle,” we have our own local super heroes, including Phoenix Jones, who changes into costume by going through a SECRET DOOR at a comic book store.
Does it get any geekier, or cooler, than that? The answer is NO.
And now we have a local super-villain, Rex Velvet, challenging Jones.
Rex Velvet, you get bonus points for the mustache symbolism.
I find this rather sweet, as my Hound of the Baskervilles looks a bit like this dog, and he sleeps with his buddy, Joy the White Cat of Major Mayhem.
The best part is when this dog walks over to sniff the cat, trying to figure out how the cat CAN BE TWO PLACES AT ONCE.
True movie fans actually HATE getting to the theater late, despite the fact that there are 20 minutes of trailers, because true movie fans loooove trailers.
Sidenote 1: Nobody who hearts the movies calls them “previews.”
Sidenote 2: Yes, there used to be these places with giant screens and popcorn that costs $8. This was before people watched movies on Netflix, their iPhone or some secret pirate channel on the Series of Tubes.
I just saw SAFE on opening day with Jason Statham, who ate $7.50 worth of my $8 popcorn, but did I complain? No. Jason the Statham is a lot like Reacher (while Tom Cruise is NOTHING like Reacher) in that he’s not that handsome of a man, and not a one-note tough guy, but men want to be him and women want to be with him. Jason the Statham just has charm in a non-smarmy way. Anyway, every flipping trailer for SAFE was for flicks from Lionsgate, and they all featured Bruce Willis, Jason Statham or Bruce Willis AND Jason Statham (EXPENDABLES 2).
HOWEVER: We are gathered together to talk about a bunch of other trailers.
The Good
Here’s the original trailer for THE AVENGERS, which opens this Friday, May 4. Marvel, you know where to mail the check.
What say you?
I’ll go see it. IRON MAN was great, though IRON MAN 2 buried the bad guy, Mickey the Rourke, under seven separate layers of sidekicks and nonsense, including Sam Jackson wearing an eyepatch for some reason. Also: How can anybody take you seriously as a bad guy or a leading man when your first name is Mickey, as in Mouse?
CAPTAIN AMERICA was a shocking amount fun. I expected it to suck. Even THOR was entertaining, though every time I saw the rainbow bridge thing, I expected to see My Little Ponies to show up.
The Bad
AVENGERS ON A BUDGET is so purposefully bad that it’s well-done.
I salute you, random people who created this little film.
The Ugly
TOTAL RECALL (2012)
Now, the original TOTAL RECALL was good, campy fun that didn’t take itself too seriously.
TOTAL RECALL (1990)
This remake is (a) far too serious, (b) looks like a bad cross between MINORITY REPORT and THE FIFTH ELEMENT and (c) doesn’t even go to Mars.
Let’s think about that. They don’t go to Mars at all. Arnold would be hacked off.
Sometimes, a book / music video / B-movie about swamp monsters can be so Bad, and so low-budget, that it circles back to Good.
This is not one of those times.
Watch this music video, and think about it. Then let’s talk, because this video raises all kinds of Serious Philosophical Questions.
Question No. 1: Is this woman a one-hit wonder, or are there more gems out there, waiting to be discovered?
Lisa Gail has a website and some kind of album, or at least seven songs you can listen to and buy with REAL MONIES, if your monies are able to travel over the Series of Tubes.
Question No. 2: Is it possible to watch this entire thing, start to finish?
Though it was a challenge, and I cannot recommend it if you have heart problems, I did it.
Question No. 3: Sound on or sound off?
Sound on.
Question No. 4: Has any mortal listened to Lisa Gail’s other songs, to determine they, also, have a 2nd degree black belt in awesomesauce?
I, personally, as in me, have not subjected my ears to her other snippets of song-like substances. If you do so, please give us the word in the comment section. That would be a public service.
Question No. 5: How in God’s green earth did she get all those men in cowboy boots?
This is the biggie, for me, right up there with “What existed before the Big Bang?” and “How can we truly know wrong from right without reading 4,923 pages of nonsense from Immanuel Kant about the categorical imperative?” and “If Snooki actually reproduces, will that cause the galaxy to implode?”
Sure, I could see any random singer being able to lasso her boyfriend / husband / son / neighbor kid into putting on Wranglers, cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat. However, these men are not all related to her, or married to her. It would be a stretch to call them professionals, but they aren’t a random group of people she was cooking grits for one morning.
There are three possibilities: (1) Lisa Gail is famous and successful down in Texas, and these men are volunteer fans, just like 30 Seconds to Mars has rabid fans who guest star in videos and such, (2) Lisa Gail spent a bunch of her own monies to hire the cutest local “models” and “dancers” she could possibly find or (3) these were the manliest men in the feed store on Sunday afternoon and she somehow has blackmail photos on all of them.
Question No. 6: Does she have the self-awareness to understand the irony of her lyrics?
There’s nothing wrong with being a singer, actor, author, director, politician, professor or TV anchor who isn’t some kind of supermodel. I actually prefer people with some character, and talent, rather than pure eye candy, because the eye candy types expect to skate by with no talent at all, and that gets boring real quick.
HOWEVER: If you are a singer making music videos, it’s one thing to be young and hot while you sing this sort of thing. It’s another thing to be older and hot and sing this sort of thing. You can even be uglier than a three-horned toad lizard, as in Lyle Lovett, but if you’ve got talent and charm, hey, it’ll work for you. You can have a long career and perhaps even get hitched to Julia flipping Roberts, at least for a weekend or three.
This is a polite way of saying, “Honey, if I was your man — and I definitely would not be, not if you were a billionaire who didn’t mind if I had six supermodel mistresses on the side — it’d be hard for me to look at YOU for three seconds.”
Also, the real Three Second Rule that every person knows is this: “Anything you drop on the floor for less than three seconds is still sanitary and kosher and fine.” After three seconds, you slip it to the dog. Except I would not slip this video to my dog, as the Hound of the Baskervilles has better taste.
Zombie movies are inherently good.
Movies with subtitles are typically depressing and bad, and only watchable when you’re in college and think that French existentialism is amazing, that you should wear a black beret and smoke Gallouise Blondes the rest of your life, which will be spent in a cafe in Paris, sipping coffee and eating pan au chocolat as you discuss politics and philosophy with other intellectuals, never mind the fact that YOU DON’T SPEAK FRENCH.
There are two exceptions to the Law of Subtitles.
The first is DEAD SNOW, a Norwegian movie that isn’t just about zombies (yes!) but Nazi zombies (double yes!).
The second exception is JUAN OF THE DEAD, a Cuban zombie movie that isn’t afraid to pile on the craziness.
A true story, a great comic and a good man.
(Warning: he says a bad word, and he’ll make you weep.)
For more about Anthony Griffith: http://anthonygriffith.com/
Acting career: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0341436/
###
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that won some award (PNWA 2013). Represented by Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
If you like music — and who doesn’t? — you have to love music videos.
Last time, I took apart ELECTRIC AVENUE, one of the first music vids ever, and interesting stuff. Click here with your mousity mouse to read that post, watch the video and see the lyrics get all deconstructed.
You’d think there’d be a market for music videos, some kind of channel on the Glowing Tube where you played music vids — which the artists produce and hand to you, for free, just to get the publicity — while you charge GEICO and Miller Lite many, many dollars to run ads in between Lady Gaga freakouts and AC/DC classics.
I mean, the Glowing Tube only has 45,982 cable channels right now. There’s a market for this stuff, right? The last thing we need is more reality shows.
HOWEVER: let’s get on with dissecting ICE, ICE BABY by Vanilla Ice.
Here’s the video. Watch it.
He can dance, can’t he?
Now, let’s find our red pen and interpret the lyrics.
ICE, ICE BABY
Yo, VIP, let’s kick it!
(Hello, my listeners of high status. Should we start?)
Ice ice baby, ice ice baby
(The first part of my nickname is relevant, sweet-hearted stranger. My real name is not necessary information, although repetition may boost both my name recognition and my record sales.)
All right stop, collaborate and listen
(Halt whatever you’re doing and do your job, which is paying attention to me.)
Ice is back with my brand new invention
(I don’t want you to think that I’m a one-hit wonder. Think this song is good? I have many, many other creative rhymes and melodies that spring forth from my brain all the time.)
Something grabs a hold of me tightly
(When I get inspired by an idea, it consumes me.)
Then I flow that a harpoon daily and nightly
(After an idea for lyrics come to me, I practice 25 hours a day, just like Ahab and the whale or whatever.)
Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know
(Will I ever cease to be a creative and successful rapper, with loads of cash and girlfriends, and instead retire from the spotlight to Florida, where I remodel McMansions in hopes of turning a quick profit? That hypothetical situation is too ridiculous to even consider.)
Turn off the lights and I’ll glow
(I’m such a star, I create my own light)
To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
(My singing and rhymes are so out of the ordinary, you should compare me to the barbarians who sacked Rome)
Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle
(I can bring excitement to a stage while beating up other men who don’t have my talents, although this may be a metaphor, or a simile, or some other literary term that I can’t be bothered to pinpoint)
Dance, bum rush the speaker that booms
(My fans should gyrate with excitement and gather around the large black boxes that amplify my rhymes and backup band)
I’m killin’ your brain like a poisonous mushroom
(Though my songs are not literally poisonous, they do possess powerful addictive and paralyzing properties)
Deadly, when I play a dope melody, anything less that the best is a felony
(Like I said, potentially fatal poisonous mushrooms that should send me to prison)
Love it or leave it, you better gain way
(It’s advisable to retreat from my path, because I am so talented, tough and unstoppable)
You better hit bull’s eye, the kid don’t play
(If you try to stop me, it should be a fatal blow or shot, because my tolerance for non-fatal blows and bullets is quite low)
Chorus:
If there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it
(Nothing is beyond my grasp)
Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it
(This is a recurrent portion of my song that I stole from rock stars in the 1970s, and I want you to pay attention to how I’ve incorporated it into my rhymes)
Ice ice baby Vanilla
Ice ice baby Vanilla
Ice ice baby Vanilla
Ice ice baby Vanilla
Now that the party is jumping, with the bass kicked in, the Vegas are pumpin’
(The lowest registers of my song motivate people to dance)
Quick to the point, to the point no faking
(My lyrics go straight to the heart of the matter, as there’s no point in misdirection)
I’m cooking MC’s like a pound of bacon
(I beat competing lyricists so quickly and thoroughly, it’s as if they are healthy measure of pork bellies, fried on a skillet)
Burning them if they’re not quick and nimble
(Other rappers lose to me unless they possess exceptional speed and wits)
I go crazy when I hear a cymbal, and a hi hat with a souped up tempo
(The metal instruments of percussionists motivate me to dance and rhyme)
I’m on a roll and it’s time to go solo
(Though I don’t apparently have a band, my success is such that I should sing on my own)
Rollin in my 5.0, with my ragtop down so my hair can blow
(When I drive, I remove the top to my vehicle so the air currents can touch my blond locks)
The girlies on standby, waving just to say hi
(Women who see me try to get my attention because they would like to bear my children)
Did you stop? No, I just drove by, kept on pursuing to the next stop
(However, I don’t stop my vehicle, because such things are not unusual for me)
I busted a left and I’m heading to the next block
(So I will seek better opportunities in a different part of the city)
That block was dead, yo so I continued to A1A Beachfront Ave
(A square section of the city was not entertaining, so I went to where the ocean meets the land)
Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis, rock man lovers driving Lamborghini
(The women near the ocean were more attractive and wore fewer clothes, while successful men drove expensive Italian vehicles)
Jealous ’cause I’m out getting mine, Shay with a gauge and Vanilla with a Nine
(Other men of jealous of my prowess with women, so when I travel, my friend carries a shotgun and I bring a nine-millimeter pistol)
Ready for the chumps on the wall, the chumps are acting ill because they’re so full of eight balls
(Young males leaning against structures are dangerous, as they are intoxicated by a mixture of cocaine and heroin)
Gunshots ranged out like a bell, I grabbed my nine, all I heard were shells
(When young males used their weapons, I fired mine and listened to the casings hit the asphalt)
Fallin’ on the concrete real fast, jumped in my car, slammed on the gas
(Many bullets were expended, so I re-entered my vehicle and put my foot on the accelerator rather roughly)
Bumper to bumper the avenue’s packed, I’m tryin’ to get away before the jackers jack
(Though traffic was impossibly bad, I attempted to escape car hijackers before they could get to me and my expensive vehicle)
Police on the scene, you know what I mean, they passed me up, confronted all the dope fiends
(The authorities ignored me and instead confronted the young, intoxicated hooligans)
(Chorus)
Take heed, ’cause I’m a lyrical poet, Miami’s on the scene just in case you didn’t know it
(Pay attention to my rhymes and remember that the city of Miami, Florida is also a worthy center for musicians)
My town, that created all the bass sound, Enough to shake and kick holes in the ground
(Miami is well-known for music with low tones of such power that they make the ground and create cavities in the earth)
‘Cause my style’s like a chemical spill, Feasible rhymes that you can vision and feel
(The way I sing is as powerful as a toxic leak, and my words make you see and feel the things that I speak of)
Conducted and formed, this is a hell of a concept, We make it hype and you want to step with this
(Also, you will want to happily gyrate to the rhythm)
Shay plays on the fade, slice it like a ninja, Cut like a razor blade so fast, other DJ’s say, “damn”
(My partner also assists by appropriating pieces of music from other artists, and this causes intense jealousy)
If my rhyme was a drug, I’d sell it by the gram, Keep my composure when it’s time to get loose
(My songs are as addictive as the illegal narcotics sold on the street using a basic unit of weight from the metric system)
Magnetized by the mic while I kick my juice
(You will be hypnotized by the words amplified by an electric device that I sing into while performing a synchronized dance that will later be appropriated by the Back Street Boys)
(Chorus)
Yo man, let’s get out of here
(Friend, we should depart and end this song)
Word to your mother
(Please tell your maternal parent that I send my greetings and wish her well)
Ice ice baby
Too cold
Ice ice baby
Too cold too cold
Ice ice baby
Too cold
Ice ice baby
Too cold too cold
If you are a writer, you know all about the inverted pyramid. It’s one of the first blueprints we get taught: put the most important stuff on top and the least important on the bottom, like an upside-down pyramid.
As a reformed journalist, was I familiar with the inverted pyramid? Nah. I only wrote 5,931 bazillion stories using the damn thing. We were practically married.
Every day, millions of reporters use it to write stories for Papers of News and programs on the radios and the Glowing Tube, so if there was ever a sacred cow in writing and journalism, that cow would be named Inverted Pyramid, and the milk from its udders would contain perfect chocolate-flavored milk decorated with specks of gold.
HOWEVER: I want you to know something. Come a little closer so I can whisper it in your ear: “The inverted pyramid MUST DIE.”
As a blueprint, it’s inherently flawed and bores readers. If you wrote novels, screenplays and TV shows using the inverted pyramid, they’d all fail, because all the good stuff would be in the beginning. The middle would be boring and the end would put the entire audience in a coma.
The inverted pyramid is useful for short news bulletins, and there were technical reasons why journalists use it. You want to get the maximum amount of information to the reader in a minimum amount of time, and if a story runs long, you can lop off the end without consequence. These days, however, the inverted pyramid is simply a flashing neon sign that says, “Reader, you can stop reading any time, because it only gets more boring from here on.”
Look at your local Sunday newspaper. I read The Seattle Times here, and they tend to do these big investigative stories that start on page one, jump to page 5, then jump to pages 7, 8, 9 and 12. I mean, these stories never end. Are they important? Sure. Can I finish them? No. Because they’re written using the inverted pyramid, and even a reformed journalist who loves papers — if you cut me, I still bleed newsprint — can’t get through that ocean of words.
However: a 10,000-word newspaper story is nothing compared to a 100,000-word novel, and I have no problem reading novels. Love ’em.
It’s the structure, the blueprint. The inverted pyramid sucks.
Here, I’ll give you proof.
Years ago, as a cub reporter right out of college, I’d write at least 10 to 20 stories a week. Let’s say 500 a year. And I’d win journalism awards every year. But hey, if I wrote 500 stories, some of those better be good and a few of them better be brilliant, right?
A few years ago, I freelanced a newspaper story, not simply because I still love papers, but because this story happened to a friend of mine.
One story instead of 500. And that story won some journalism award. I went one for one instead of five for 500 or whatever. Hmm.
I wrote this story about 7 years ago. Looking back at this piece, I’m a much better writer today. Parts seem quite clunky. But this piece didn’t win an award because each sentence was poetry. It got an award because I abandoned the inverted pyramid entirely and wrote this piece as narrative non-fiction, which is a fancy way of saying “storytelling.”
If I’d written it using the stupid inverted pyramid, I’d give away the ending in the damn headline, and the last line of the piece — instead of being something you remember — would be something like “The dog was yellow.”
Read this sucker. Look at the structure, the setups and payoffs, instead of the words. And tell me if you think it would be one-tenth as compelling written using the inverted pyramid. Then make a vow to never, never use that obsolete blueprint ever again.
Special to The Vidette
by Guy Bergstrom
MONTESANO – From the top of Colonel Bob Mountain– nearly 4,500 feet high – Adam Pratt and family friend Amy Smith could see the Pacific Ocean to the west, Mount Rainier to the southeast and everything in between.
The one thing they couldn’t see was Lucas, Adam’s golden retriever.
“Luke had been up Colonel Bob four or five times before,” said Adam, a carpentry instructor at Grays Harbor College who lives in Montesano with his wife, Sara.
“He was just there beside me a second ago, and he always stays right next to me on the trail,” Adam said. “So I figured that maybe he went back down toward a stream that we crossed 30 minutes down the mountain.”
Adam and Amy called for Lucas; they whistled and clapped.
“I expected his happy face and wagging tail to come running back, as he always does,” Adam said.
They went back down the trail to the stream and thought maybe Lucas would head back to the car, at the trailhead.
Adam put his sweaty T-shirt and a bowl of water where they’d parked, hoping the familiar smells and fresh water would serve as a homing beacon for Lucas.
The beacon failed; Lucas never showed up.
The search
To prepare for a search of the wilderness, Adam drove back to Montesano for clothes, food and camping gear.
He dropped off Amy, jumped in his wife’s Subaru – which she’d already packed with supplies – and they raced the setting sun back to the trailhead at Pete’s Creek, about 20 miles into the wilderness.
“I strapped on my headlamp and went up the trail by myself about a mile and a half,” he said. “It’s not wise to hike alone in the dark, especially in black bear and cougar country. I was drained and emotional, making bad decisions.”
He returned to the car. He couldn’t eat. He and Sara tried to sleep, but they lay awake most of the night in the Subaru, thinking the worst.
Where was Lucas? Was he wandering the forests? Injured and unable to move? Or a late-night snack for a mountain lion?
To the top again
Just before daybreak, Adam strapped on his backpack, kissed Sara goodbye and headed back up the mountain again.
He decided to reach the top of the Colonel and search. If he didn’t find Lucas, he’d continue down the trail on the other side of the mountain toward Lake Quinault.
Maybe the dog had headed toward the small town near the lake. Since it was Labor Day weekend, there’d be more people and activity.
Sara drove to Lake Quinault and started putting up lost dog posters. She asked people she met if they’d seen a yellow dog. She alerted the park ranger station, in case they’d heard any reports of a lost dog with a collar. No one had seen Lucas.
The cave
Adam clapped, whistled and called for Lucas as he reached the top of the mountain.
Near the top, he heard faint howling.
“I reached the lookout area and looked down,” Adam said. “About seventy-five feet below the summit, there he was, on this tiny ledge a hundred-twenty feet above the next flat spot.”
Lucas looked scared, but he didn’t seem hurt. But how could Adam reach him?
At the summit, Adam’s cell phone had some reception, so he called Sara and left the message that Lucas was alive, but stuck on a cliff.
He pushed through brush and trees on the steep sides of Colonel Bob, traveling through a twenty-foot cave he had to crouch and crawl through. Then he side-shuffled through open-topped crevice and popped out the other side of the mountain.
To reach the ledge, Adam climbed 60 feet up by hanging onto huckleberry roots and scrub brush.
After being alone on the cliff, Lucas was thrilled to see Adam, wagging his tail and licking his face. He checked Lucas for injuries and was amazed to find the dog didn’t have any broken bones from the fall.
Then the thrill of the reunion hit the Cold Wall of Reality.
“I hate heights,” Adam said, “and it was then and there I realized how stupid I had been. My emotions had got the best of me and now I was sitting on a six-foot by three-foot ledge with my buddy, wondering how we were getting of this mountain.”
No help
Adam offered Lucas a dog bone, but he wasn’t interested in eating. After letting Lucas lap some water out of his hands, he knew he had to go before they both were stuck up there another night.
“Without opposable thumbs, he wasn’t able to follow me off the ledge,” Adam said. “I King-Konged it down the cliff, using the shrubs and roots as handholds, like a monkey.”
After making it through the cave again and back to the summit, Adam went down the mountain yet again, his muscles shaking, his mind spinning. He heard voices coming up the trail but had to stop to rest and eat some trail bars.
At the same time, Sara was at the Forest Service headquarters, asking for help. They told her rescue teams were looking for a group of four lost teens, plus another couple of hikers about 150 miles away.
Stranded dogs? Not a priority.
Lost hope
Sara sobbed; they’d worked so hard to find Lucas, and now he’d starve or freeze to death on a cliff.
She left a voice mail with the only person she could think of back in Montesano: Leo Nixon, a 71-year-old retired dentist and they’d met at Friday wine tastings at Savory Faire, a man who shared their love of hiking local mountains.
Adam headed back down the trail toward the voices. He met a father and daughter hiking up Colonel Bob with their chocolate lab. He asked if they had any rope or a cell phone, since his battery was now dead.
“They helped calm me down,” said Adam, “and they actually landed some of their lunch on Luke’s ledge. To them, I must have seemed like a crazy person. It’s good they didn’t have a rope. I wasn’t qualified to use it to climb. Even if I had training, I was in no condition to do it.”
A daring plan
Heading down the trail, Adam saw another couple heading up the hill, and then a face he knew: Leo, who hadn’t gotten Sara’s message.
“He just happened to take that hike, that day,” Adam said.
Leo climbed to the summit to take a look. He said he had all the necessary climbing gear at home in Montesano and that they could rescue Lucas themselves.
They wouldn’t try it from the top of Colonel Bob, but from below, where Adam had reached the ledge in his earlier, impulsive attempt without equipment or backup.
Since it would soon be dark, they needed to wait until Saturday morning, meaning Lucas would spend his second night alone on the freezing ledge.
On the drive back to Montesano, Leo tried to calm the fears of Adam and Sara, to assure them that it wouldn’t rain, that Lucas wouldn’t try to jump, that no bears or cougars roamed the area.
“Lies, but comforting lies,” Adam said.
Leo stopped at Savory Faire, where Adam and Sara would have been that Friday night for wine tasting if they weren’t spending their time climbing and re-climbing the mountain.
Leo walked inside and casually asked the restaurant owner, Randi Bachtel, if he could borrow his climbing equipment. He refused offers of help, saying he’d called two friends of his who were mountaineers.
Randi, a veteran of Vietnam and local high school teacher, said Leo knew what he was doing. If he had to choose anybody to do a rescue, it’d be Leo, 71 years old or not.
The Silver Panther Rescue Team
At 4:30 Saturday morning, Adam and Sara arrived at Leo’s house, where two of his mountain-climbing friends joined them: Mike Riley of Olympia and Rich Irwin of Raymond.
This would be the third climb up to the summit in 36 hours for Adam, who was exhausted and questioning himself. Could he do it again?
On the way to the mountain, they picked up Amy and her husband, Nate, who’d agreed to make the climb with what they’d nicknamed “The Silver Panthers Rescue Team.”
Adam and Sara couldn’t stop thinking about whether Lucas had survived the night, about the cold, the bears, the cougars.
Driving through the rain and the dark, a dark shape – a cougar – leapt in front of the Subaru and Adam jammed both feet on the brakes.
“It was the first time that any of us had ever seen a mountain lion,” Adam said. “Truly an amazing creature. Truly terrible timing. We said nothing to each other, but we all entertained the same thoughts.”
The cougar spun around and sprinted the opposite direction.
They kept driving.
All seven climbed the trail to Colonel Bob’s summit while it was still dark. The Silver Panthers didn’t lose one step to the younger hikers.
As they reached the top, the sun showed up.
Leo led the way as they bushwhacked through the brush and trees on the side of the mountain. On a semi-flat spot, they gathered their gear and prepared for the rescue attempt.
Leo, Mike, Rich and Adam put on climbing harnesses and helmets.
They walked a narrow ledge to the start of the route Leo had picked out.
And then they started climbing.
Do or die
There’s no half-way in mountain climbing. You make it safely or fail spectacularly.
Rich and Leo set a bottom anchor in the cliff to belay Mike as he climbed toward Lucas.
Mike set a second anchor at twenty feet up, then another at forty feet before making the final climb to the tiny ledge and Lucas.
After taking a minute to calm the dog, Mike set up a rope to top-belay Adam up sixty feet to the ledge.
“I have very little climbing experience,” Adam said, “but I had the best chance to calm down Lucas and bring him down.”
Adam made it up. They attached a harness to Lucas, then hooked that harness to Adam, who pulled the dog tight against his chest.
They would make it down – the slow way or a much speedier one – together.
Home
“I stepped off the cliff,” Adam said, “and the guys lowered us down. Then Mike rappelled down and we all made our way to flat ground and safety.”
After giving Lucas some water and food, the seven-member team celebrated and decompressed. They still had four miles to hike out, downhill, but Adam barely felt it.
“We couldn’t feel anything,” he said, “but relief.”
Leo, Rich and Mike peeled away to climb a nearby peak.
Lucas rode home with his friends. And his family.
Epilogue
Sunday afternoon: Lucas is sprinting around the playground at Crait Field, playing with a three-year-old boy who can’t stop laughing. Lucas leaps off the retaining walls as if he’s weightless and happily picks up his leash to get Adam to play tug-of-war with him.
Adam and Sara talk about their ordeal being unreal, a waking nightmare with a fairy tale ending.
“Retired dentist extracts canine from Colonel Bob,” Adam jokes.
Behind the kidding around, there’s a deep sense of gratitude and community. The couple moved here from Michigan and have only lived in Montesano since last November, so they’re amazed and grateful at how people stepped forward to offer their help.
“We couldn’t have possibly rescued him without the help of our friends,” Adam said, “and the kindness of strangers.”
But there’s also an undercurrent of resolve. Of loyalty.
“We couldn’t just leave our little buddy,” said Adam, “on a mountain cliff to die.”
The Red Pen of Doom 