Chapter 11.
Summer Weeks After, Writing the Book
To Keep Our Vow, A Book
On Thursday June 19, still at the campsite, I took out the brand new spiral notebook which had made the trip down and back untouched and made my first journal entry since the previous Sunday, before the hike began.
"This spiral has been to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, July 16-18, but it served only as a backpack back brace until now."
The old journal being full, I had taken the new notebook with me to record the thoughts of the moment.
"Viannah and I decided to write a book."
I proceeded to outline the chapter titles and appendices. I started to get excited, this might have market potential, I could make money; we could yet afford to put Viannah through college! As work on the book proceeded, these aspirations faded. The goal was a written record of our adventure that would be meaningful within our family. At this we have succeeded but at creating a work of popular appeal, something worth reading by the general public for information or entertainment, we have not succeeded, nor did we attempt to. The popular work would require significant deletions and rework of this text, not something that I can to commit to for now.
With the first outline done, I proceeded to set out a schedule. I wanted to finish fairly soon and, if that were possible, was willing to put other projects on hold for the duration. I grouped the chapters into a logical order, first I would recount the day at the bottom, then the hike out, then the hike in, then the day before starting, then the time in the park afterward, then the week before and the trip out, then the weeks after and the writing of the book.
Viann and Viannah would make up scrapbooks and collect the various memorabilia. By doing three chapters a week, I would be finished with a full first draft by early August, then we'd get back to regular life and decide what to do from there.
(As typically happens, real life priorities interceded and the first draft of this chapter was not reached until September 6.)
After this, I would backtrack and talk about the end of the work up preparations, the reasoning behind the trip and project, and finally the lessons learned.
I intended to supply Viannah with proof chapters to which she would make significant contributions of her own, but my narrative was not up to par with Star Wars books and then school with its many assignments and other tasks and finally I gave up and completed and proofed the whole work on my own.
As it has turned out, in July of the following year, 1998, the draft was completed, checked for consistency then checked again for form, usage and spelling, then passed along in printed form to Viann for proofing, then to Viannah for recounting, then to Katherine as an introduction for her own Big Event. The computer files and the printed copy as annotated stood for many years as the near-final product.
Parts of the year long drafting process had their analogues to the hike itself. Life going on as it does, the project would sit unattended for weeks or even a few months at a time while I had a nagging guilt about needing to work on it some more. In the winter, I took the outline and put completion dates on each of the sections. This had a rough draft completion date toward the end of February. The actual date ended up being in June 1998.
Churchill was right about writing books, by the time you're done, you're ready to cast it off as far as you possibly can! Still, some unexpected discoveries have resulted. Between writing, reading, re-reading and having Viann read the text and comment, I have learned some things about myself, for instance, that I am much more of a chronic under-estimator than I had thought, that I am much too self conscious and, as Viannah says, “You worry too much, dad.” We saw a backpacker on Pacific Coast Highway yesterday and Viann said, "See, what do you think of him?"
"I think he is backpacking down the coast."
"See...."
And, though this will not be a mass-market book, I have learned some lessons of book writing that will serve well if I do ever attempt something for wider consumption.
The
First Week
Viannah was taken back to the foot doctor and pronounced healed and ready to carry on fully on the Friday after our return. Viann was still threatening to make her eat better, particularly since she was a practicing vegetarian.
Also in the first week back, we all had to return to work. We had a college girl, Erica, come stay with the three kids during the work day. Dealing with all this, meeting the new payroll, and going to a church BBQ in the evenings made it hard to carve out time to work on The Book and, after an estimated eight hours effort, only one chapter, the one from the day at the bottom, was drafted. It was bad enough to have to write so much in first person. I made the wrong decision about tense during the first proofing and corrected much of it the wrong way, then gave up and saved it in messed-up form for the significant overhaul nearly a year later. At least all the thoughts were down before I moved on and forgot what had happened.
I didn't get back to my journal until the following Sunday and then I talked mostly about my ambivalent feelings concerning the amateur radio annual event, Field Day, which occurred that weekend.
I was already beginning to slightly miss walking. There were many places where Viannah and I had walked together or where I had walked on my own during training that I now had no excuse to visit. Days when I could spare an hour to get to work, I would walk, sometimes down the street, sometimes along various horse trails. I enjoyed these times of exercise and solitude. I could think constructively, untangle knotty problems from work or from home in those hours, and I felt better. There had been times when I didn't think I had time for such a workout, but the priority of preparation for the trip had been overriding and I'd done it anyway. Now, not only was there no longer any such overriding reason for these pleasurable strolls, but I had little physical motivation. I drove to work every day during the first week back, quite a rarity as it was ordinarily very important to me to either ride the bike or walk whenever it was in any way possible.
Much of this was the standard post-vacation let down and considering the emotion as well as the physical exertion of the event, let down was apt to be more pronounced than usual this year. Still, the rush to write the book was helpful in reducing or hiding these feelings of loss and completion somewhat.
More
Weeks
By July 1, I had the second chapter (the walk out) ready for review. It was becoming clear that three chapters per week would be out of the question for someone who had a regular job and a host of other responsibilities. My optimistic estimates were impossible as always. The whole year, aside from the trip itself, had been something of a downer so far; I had been reading in Les Miserables since December 2 and was only now nearly finished.
On July 4, we finished off the double-stuff Oreo cookies that had made so many miles at the bottom of a backpack. Most of the cookies were broken up; much of the chocolate part was powdered and coated the exposed white. The whole bag was filled with black morsels that were tasty, a surprise, judging from their appearance.
Also on July 4, Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars successfully and sent back the first pictures from that planet in 21 years. This was a great moment for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I worked. John kept looking for me to be on TV though my job had nothing to do with the Pathfinder. After watching the TV for a time, I went to work and got in line with all of the press celebrities to buy souvenirs, including a couple of the grossly under-produced Mattel Mars-Rover toy sets.
After trying to coordinate it for months, we finally managed to get Katherine enrolled in art classes every Saturday afternoon beginning in August. On Sunday the third, we faced a week we had been dreading. Tuesday, Katherine would go in to have her tonsils taken out. Worried about the procedure and recovery, Viann and I looked at each other and decided to take her fishing that evening.
We drove up to the place Viannah and I had discovered by walking up to Mt. Luckens and down the other side, where drainage ended in a collecting basin full of water in upper Tujunga. People were there fishing but no one was catching anything. John wanted to help. After flying his balsa airplane into the water and having it recovered, he made his own pole out of a stick and somebody's hook and line that were tangled in a bush. We all fished with Katherine's rod and reel and John's improvisation, but nobody caught anything in either party.
On Tuesday we were all up at five and I presented Katherine at the hospital at six thirty. It was freezing inside and even colder in the operating room. The preparations were fun for Katherine, but in due time she was rolled off to surgery and we wouldn't see her again for about an hour. She returned really hurting, sore, tired, and sick. Outside it was to be the hottest day of the year with the high over 110 F. Viann and I took turns watching Katherine sleep and helping her recover until three, when we brought her home to Erica, the other kids, and two struggling window unit air-conditioners. Within two weeks she was well.
Then my project at work ran out of money. It was necessary to initiate a painful process of asking for more.
And my struggles with God in the book of Luke resumed and continued. My question, "why doesn't God talk" deteriorated to "What use is God anyway?" I kept trying to merge my life of experience and my life of faith. The merger was not going well. The Mir Space Station was falling apart faster than NASA and the Russians could make up elaborate plans and work on it. Then Princess Diana was killed and Mother Theresa died in a week's time. The world was shocked and saddened.
Life as we knew it went forward, nonetheless.
Early
September
The beginning of school was a great relief; it meant the end of over $200 a week for sitters and the end of undisciplined schedules and activities for the kids. It also meant the beginning of carpool and extra-curricular activities season.
Next Summer
The Book project reached completion stages in June 1998. Unhappy with the child care experiences of the past two summers (the situations, not necessarily the people); Viann took a 90-day leave of absence starting on the first day that the kids were out of school. Viannah was now going from 7th to 8th grade, Katherine from 5th to 6th and John from 2nd (which he dearly missed) to 3rd. Having Viann at home was immensely helpful. She and Viannah worked on the Grand Canyon scrapbook, finally. When the Grand Canyon box was pulled out and inventoried, several items that had been missing for all or part of a year were found. This included mail that had accidentally or mistakenly been put in it and newspaper clippings of the Kasparov versus Deep Blue chess match which I had intended to go over with Viannah over a year before while the match was being held. We also finally found our camping lantern stand in that box!
In
August 2002, after many other life events, the final editorial read
through of
the book was completed and I released the slightly revised, corrected
and
clarified final version to Viannah for posting on my website and
printing for
her grandmother back in Texas. At that
point she was about to be a Senior in High School.