Writing update, travel, etc.

Whew. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted a substantiative update to this page.

I left Missoula in January to house shop in the Pacific Northwest, camp, photo journal, and wrap up a writing deadline. While Montana will always be my #1, The long winters have started to wear on me. However, the summers are impossible to beat.

I checked out the Oregon coast, Portland, and several other areas. In the process I lost my whisper-quiet photography drone, which was capable of filming at 4k resolution with a 3-way gimbal head. The drone went berserk
fifteen yards from me and crashed into a remote salmon stream. I searched for the drone for two days in the wilderness ravine, but no luck. BUT, luckily DJI stands by their products, and they shipped me a new drone for free. So that’s cool.

On the writing front, my debut novel THE PULLER has a new publishing home. I’m hoping to announce specifics any day now. In addition, I’m 1/3rd of the way finished with what I consider to be a novel on the level of THE PULLER called, LOST PLANES, LOST RIVER. It falls into the category of “upmarket thriller” and I’m excited about the project. I really wanted to come at the page hard and not filter myself. I wanted it to be art, not product in the way TH PULLER is experimental. It’s turning out well.

And on the house shopping front, things are getting interesting. In March of 2019, I left Missoula with my adventure cat Wrigley to attend a couple business meetings in LA. After the meetings, Wrigley and I ended up visiting various national parks and forests. And sadly, he died on December 27th, 2019. This had a profound impact on me…the kind of tectonic shift to where it felt like I’d become someone else. Less brighter, less smiles. Despite a myriad of distractions.

I honestly haven’t been able to stay between four walls for longer than a week. I feel compelled to move at all times, whether that constitutes gym, hiking, photography, different hotels, etc. This feeling, this change, doesn’t seem to be fading, but rather intensifying as time passes. So I’ve been rolling with it. The freedom is intoxicating. We’ll see how much longer it lasts.

The only thing I’ve ever learned in all this, is that nothing lasts forever. Not drones, not careers, not friends, nor beloved cats that liked Redwood National Park. But we try to make it last, don’t we?

Best,
– Michael

A remote section of the Oregon coast where my drone disappeared.

A place to call home.

Back when I first moved to Missoula, my dad asked me what kind of place I was looking for. I told him I wanted to be able to walk to the gym, and to groceries. He asked me why I wouldn’t want a cabin. I said there was no need, that the Lolo National Forest was the real backyard. It’s been an honor and privilege to live in the Lolo for as long as I have.

The 2.2 million acre Lolo National Forest.

Of gullibility and conspiracies. Thoughts on avoiding fringe groups.

Hey everyone, hope your weekend is going well.

So, there’s a lot going on in the world. I try to keep this page mostly light (unlike my novels haha), but I feel that as a leader in the writing community, photography community, and on social media in general, it’s my obligation to use my voice in times like these. In the end, all we have is our time and our voice. I’d much rather post an elk photo but not every day is elk day, right?

I want to touch on gullibility, conspiracies, making decisions based on emotion (which I’m sometimes guilty of), and shrinking circles.

If a person finds their circle shrinking, and that they’re “running out of apps to post on”, perhaps it’s time for that person to take a deep breath and to reassess the world around them from a logical, calm standpoint. Maybe, just maybe the reason this person’s world is shrinking is because they’ve fallen for emotion-based ideas, such as unproven conspiracies or unproven doomsday theories. When a person goes “all in” on unproven, unsubstantiated conspiracies, they’re making a decision based on their emotions, not with logic. 

And if a person makes a series of emotion-based decisions, they can sometimes find themselves in a bad spot. Like the recent riot at the U.S. capitol. It’s a snowball effect of bad decisions. And at this point it’s always a good idea to talk less, and read more from a variety of credible sources. To observe. To participate still, but to tilt towards observation amongst that participation.

Are you buying into ideas that you haven’t vetted, or just going along with what family and friends tell you? Are you able to tell the difference between a disguised, manipulative threat and something benign?

A year or so ago, I witnessed someone in my circle (very close, actually) fall for manipulation and threats from their isolated and conspiracy-prone family. This was a very unpopular circle, a fringe circle, prone to wild emotions and unproven conspiracies. For years this person showed me the threatening texts from her family, basically telling her to get her mind right or she’d be left behind by the family and a very angry god, but that they only were saying these things “because we love you”. I couldn’t believe what I was reading at the time. Their texts were so far-flung, that I simply never envisioned this person I knew falling for the manipulative bait.

One week, after this person was ganged up on by members of the fringe sect on a trip, this person changed.  She was literally followed back to her work by them from another city, and coerced into handing in her two week notice. From there she lived for years in her grandma’s basement, being “taught” by this fringe group. During that time, a light flicked off in her eyes, and she started speaking like a robot, of things that were obviously “placed” there through repetition and group pressure by the fringe sect. Threats of being “left behind” from close family members and “love bombing” by strangers ( a common cult tactic) were used on her. I did what I could to pull her out of this fringe group, in fact, Wrigley and I tried to for several months.

But I failed.

Every time this person tried to use her own personality and her own mind again, she was reeled in with “concerned” coffee meetings by  members of this fringe group. This is similar to what we’re seeing by some of the capitol rioters. There’s absolutely a group pressure element in all of this.

In all this pressure, a very unique and promising career had been flushed down the tubes as this person found their circle shrinking. And shrinking, until they were surrounded by nobody except the few people who believed exactly like they did…in fear-based, wild conspiracies, slowly but surely reduced to only a handful of fringe apps in the basement of the internet. A tiny, isolated echo chamber of delusions.

There was nothing I could do.

This personal experience seems to correlate with the recent growth in people who buy into conspiracy theories and cult-like groups without thinking…without vetting. It’s all too easy to just “go with the flow” of the people you’re told to trust. Of people you know the best. But of course, this can often be detrimental,  as we saw last week at the U.S. capitol. And I see the same eyes in those rioters as I saw in my once close friend after the fringe group persuaded her: the eyes of the lost. Eyes with no light.

I long time ago, I fished with my grandma up in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. We’d sit at the end of the pier, holding bamboo poles, watching our bobbers as bald eagles flew overhead.

The sunfish and bluegills had small mouths and rarely swallowed the hook, they were nibblers. The perch, however, always swallowed the bait with abandon. I disliked it. The perch often wouldn’t make it, and twitched or floated to the surface after I released them. The perch took the bait without thinking.

Eventually, I stopped bobber fishing.

So I have to ask. Are you the sunfish or the perch?

Best,

 – Michael

2020. The year that should’ve killed me. Several times.

2019 ended in the worst possible way. My furry soul mate Wrigley passed away on December 27th. I forced myself go on a date for New Years, and I was nothing more than a zombie in shock, stumbling around slack-jawed. I felt bad for my date.

From there I slept for a month in Missoula, then stayed at a lodge in Yellowstone for a week. As I packed up and left the lodge, something powerful compelled me to drive to Chicago and see good friends, including Wrigley’s cat pal, Ruffy, whom I’d rescued with my friend Sarah.

I spent a month in Chicago with those very good friends and Ruffy. From there I drove back to Missoula, Montana to prepare for a move to LA. My agent had rented a house in the Hollywood Hills. We had numerous meetings, networking events, and dinners planned with very creative folks. The plan was to move to LA for my career. A week after I arrived, the mayor shut down LA (for obvious reasons). All my dinners were cancelled and my meetings morphed into Zooms.

So, my agent left LA to head back to New York and I had the house to myself. I woke up one morning and couldn’t move. Literally. My lungs felt weird. I had a fever. My chest was tight and I could hardly walk up two steps.

Then I received a phone call that Ruffy died of cancer two weeks after I left Chicago. Was that why I felt the strong pull to speed out there from Yellowstone National Park?

So, I isolated myself for thirty days. The lung symptoms stayed the longest, and I embarked on a vigorous walking program and low-inflammatory diet to return my lung function to normal.

I found myself back in Missoula shortly after that. One night, while out running errands, I had shotgun pulled on me in the parking lot of a gas station.

Fun.

I literally thought I  was going to be shot as this dude pulled out a military style shotgun. He was shaking, threatening, and angry because I’d asked him to respect the new six foot social distancing guidelines.

The incident made the news as the first social distancing dispute. But I did my best to suppress it as the nation was worried and anxious. I did not want to feed the flames.

Somehow, I’d survived Covid and a shotgun. But 2020 wasn’t done with me yet.

I decided to head to Grand Teton National Park to film grizzly 399 and her quad cubs, and to camp and film nature far away from people. I had one of the most productive and awe inspiring days of my life. And also met a cool girl. We arranged a date in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for that evening. Eight miles north of town, I bull elk ran out in front of my car. Next thing I knew, the car window shattered, smoke pouring everywhere.

When I limped out of the car, the elk was gone. And a few days later, my beloved Subaru Crosstrek deemed a total loss by the insurance company.

When I  hit the elk, the back leg almost went through the windshield, but the hood crumpled just in time to block the hoof. Right where I had Wrigley’s collar wrapped around the rearview mirror.

I was sore for thirty days.

How I survived this crash, I have no idea.

The insurance company cut me a check so I bought a new car up in Whitefish, Montana. After these consecutive near death encounters, I thought it might be a good idea to see family, In this case my dad, who lives in Colorado. I remember chatting with him and his wife in their kitchen, me wearing a mask. Strange times.

I spent a month in that beautiful state, visiting with my dad, friends, and the girl whom I had the date with in Jackson Hole.

From there I spent ten days filming grizzly bears in a remote corner of Yellowstone, away from people, at this point doing whatever I could to center myself from recent experiences. I went on hikes, jotted down notes in my phone, reflected on the state of things. I was high on all the national forests I’d been visiting, my mind filled with grizzlies, forests, sunsets. But I was also frazzled.

I spent the summer and fall in Missoula, Montana working on The Puller screenplay and a new novel. And walking. A lot of walking. It was a beautiful summer and fall, weirdly smoke-free for western Montana.

So what will being in 2021 feel like?

Honestly, it makes me wonder how the hell I survived 2020. Covid. Shotguns. Car wrecks.

Damn.

But I can feel the winds of change blowing. It’s probably time for me to find a new patch of ground to kick around on. Time to spend more time with my head in my laptop, doing the things that got me here. Maybe Oregon. Or Northern California. We’ll see.

What have I learned in all this? What’s the takeaway? What is the core lesson?

Not much. I’m just a man.

Best,

– Michael