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Episode 469: John O’Connor on the Meaning of Bigfoot
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"I don't feel envy. I don't think. Maybe in some deeper and maybe even more troubling psychological level. I do feel competition with with people, competition over resources, trying to claim certain ideas, stake a claim to certain ideas before other people can, especially when you're working with the subject that's in the public sphere. You don't have any personal, any real wider claim to something than somebody else. It can be nerve wracking," says John O'Connor, author of The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster (Source Books).
John returns to talk about his first book, tackling the mythology of Bigfoot and the psyche of those who believe. He talks about writing with humor, making himself the butt of most jokes, and trafficking in a subculture that many — including John — are skeptical of.
Find more about him at johnmoconnor.com and follow him on Instagram @centerforhighenergymetaphysics.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Book Launch and Community Support
00:00:01
Speaker
All right. Hey, CNFers, the front runner, the life of Steve Prefontaine is officially out by the great people at Mariner Books. Shout out to Jay Michaels and Eugene for being such a champion of the book so far.
00:00:12
Speaker
And shout out to the newest bookstore in Eugene, Hodgepodge Books, which is an independent bookstore and a tap room, beer and books. Get the fuck out of here. If you read it, you know the
Importance of Ratings and Reviews
00:00:23
Speaker
drill.
00:00:23
Speaker
Need ratings and reviews. I won't read them because I don't want to be driven insane. That's understandable. But that's the world we live in. Ratings and reviews. Goes for the podcast as well. Those have gone a little slow.
00:00:35
Speaker
Gone very dry of late. Your call to action to support the book. Me and ye olde CNF pod.
Upcoming Events and Author Engagements
00:00:43
Speaker
Next event, Thursday, May 29th, 7 p.m. at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing.
00:00:48
Speaker
In conversation with Ruby McConnell under the shadow of Nike World Headquarters. Should be a good one. Not quite to the point of like stripping off clothing.
00:01:10
Speaker
Oh, that
Podcast Focus and Guest Introduction
00:01:11
Speaker
riff. Hey, CNEvers, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, that show where I speak to primarily writers about the art and craft of telling true stories to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. And yes, unlike other podcasters, I speak with an inflection. I'm Brendan O'Meara. What a dick.
00:01:26
Speaker
John O'Connor returns to the podcast to talk about the secret history of Bigfoot. Field notes on a North American monster. It's published by Sourcebooks. The paperback is out any day now.
00:01:39
Speaker
And John and I spoke back in January, so we're getting right to it. Then he let me know the paperback would be out in May, and I'm like, sweet, let's table this bitch, and I'll package it then.
00:01:51
Speaker
You can find him at johnmoconnor.com to learn more about him and his curriculum vitae. And follow him on the gram. and Get a load of this. He is at Center for High Energy Metaphysics.
00:02:06
Speaker
I don't know the meaning of it, It doesn't matter. John's first appearance on the show was to talk about his true story essay, Everything Gets Worse. It doesn't, it always, always does.
00:02:19
Speaker
Which has one of my all-time favorite passages about despair. It was like, spoke to my, to my core, to my heart.
Audience Engagement and Support
00:02:29
Speaker
That was in November of 2019 when we last spoke for the podcast.
00:02:34
Speaker
This book is his first, and who doesn't like a deep dive into mythology, belief, fantasy, and the like? Show notes of this episode and more are, they're big, man. They they are big and bad at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey.
00:02:48
Speaker
Since sunsetting the pod stack, I moved all that goodness over to the show notes. My favorite quotes from the episode, a mo ah a link to a mostly accurate transcript that you can download for free, the text of the parting shot, and links to the backlog of 400, 300, 200, and episodes ago And there on the website, you can also sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. Gotta do that.
00:03:14
Speaker
It's the big thing. Permission assets. Been doing it for forever. And people who dig it, really dig it. Just like this podcast. First of the month. No spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:03:24
Speaker
And you can also consider Patreon if you think all this effort is worth a few bucks. Patreon.com slash cnfpod. All right, John O'Connor's work has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, Men's Journal, and the Boston Globe. Oh, the Globe. It's my childhood newspaper.
00:03:44
Speaker
The Believer, Oxford American, and true story. He's a really funny writer, dry wit, self-deprecating. You can imagine why I connect with his work so much. I'd say he's the perfect person, but he hates IPAs, so I know we can no longer be friends, and he's never welcome back on the podcast.
00:04:02
Speaker
JK JK JK parting shot on the front runner being out in the world and how I almost threw up from nerves seriously but for now here's John O'Connor cue the montage.
Community and Networking in Writing
00:04:21
Speaker
Tell it to me like you're watching a movie. One tiny lowercase lol will fucking sail me through. Editing is about helping the writer think. This is gonna have to interest somebody somewhere other than me
00:04:45
Speaker
community is such a ah big part of, uh, and being a literary censorship, if you will, it's such a big part of what we do. And, um, it's easy to kind of hole up in our own offices and to do our own things and kind of wall ourselves off. But it really is important to kind of cultivate those relationships and everything. So how, and how important is having, you know, just ah a community and a, and a network around you to make you feel less lonely and hopefully less shitty too.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, it's, it's funny, like, ah as and I feel this definitely less so here than I did and in New York, right? know, I lived for most of my adult life. And everyone you bump into in New York is either a writer or a photographer, and sometimes both, you know, so it's a little lonelier here. I'm in Cambridge, just on the road from Harvard. So that's a lot of of academics and you know and also a lot of pharmaceutical people. I may meet to a lot of like physicists and um chemists and scientists you know and people with whom I
00:05:46
Speaker
I don't have much of comment, but um so there's decidedly few writers, but makes it nice to run into people like like Darcy. And I know a few other folks here, too, who um who are in the same kind of line of work as I am and trying to balance, you know, as you say, that kind of home isolation, which is also, to be totally honest, part of the part of the allure is the, you know, yeah um you in the separation. But, yeah, you do definitely need a point of connection. And. um So yeah, I've been fortunate enough to to meet a few folks like that here. But it's not nearly so overwhelming as it is in a place like Brooklyn, you know.
00:06:19
Speaker
So yeah, so it's nice in that respect. But ah there's like a, it's a good balance. And I think it ah it it comes with ah being in this game for for a while, and there are always those moments of you know comparison and jealousy, and having a good like community around you kind of gives you a sense of, like it kind of gets you out of your own head, and you start thinking of you know celebrating people's work versus ah versus always feeling somewhat envious. And i imagine just having those connections around you is like,
00:06:48
Speaker
you know, if those feelings crop up with you, it probably and probably helps us wash some of those feelings. Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel envy, I don't think, but well, I mean, maybe in some kind of deeper and maybe even more troubling, so you know, psychological level I do, but I, but not noticeably. I like, I, I just, I feel like, um but I do feel competition, I think with, with people just competition over resources, you know, in a way and just, you know, trying to claim certain ideas, but stake a claim to certain ideas before other people can, you know, and um especially when you're working with the subject that's sort of in the,
00:07:24
Speaker
in the public sphere, you know, you don't have any personal, any, uh, any real wider claim to something than somebody else. It's can be nerve wracking. You know, um, you, you think you've got the idea of the century, the next, next blockbuster idea that, but you just got to get out there in time. And, um, so that, that I definitely, I definitely feel, but yeah, it's, um, but I also, I work in a relatively,
00:07:49
Speaker
rare, rare kind of niches, you know, like they're like the Bigfoot, for instance, there weren't really, there wasn't a lot of competition. and And with that, I sort of felt like I had, I mean, not that I had all the time in the world, but that there weren't a lot of people writing books about Bigfoot, probably for good reason. But I, you know, there were essentially two that had been written, like, ah I mean, two books of journalism from, you know, outsider looking in,
00:08:14
Speaker
perspectives, one by ah both great books, one by Bob Pyle and another by a Canadian journalist named John Zada. And um but both kind of focused on specifically on this Pacific Northwest. And Pyle's is based um in a wilderness area called the Gifford pinch Pinchot, I think, National Forest, I think, or or it might be a wilderness area.
00:08:34
Speaker
um And I think it's folded within the Mount St. Helens a National Forest. It's like ah almost like an island within that. And then Zada's book is based in British Columbia. so And there hadn't really been any journalists looking at the sort of Bigfoot phenomena um in a wider sense of the you know in the whole country. that you know there There have been um scholarly and academic takes, but no no journalists who really went and hung out with Bigfooters around the country. and so and And that's what I wanted to do. And I i didn't see anyone doing that. so I felt like I was kind of safe in that respect from being usurped, having my idea kind of taken in that sense.
Bigfoot: Regional Beliefs and Mythology
00:09:15
Speaker
What did spending time with different subsets of Bigfooters illuminate for you? Well, you know, it's a good question. It's, you know, there's certain parts of the country, I think, where the idea of Bigfoot doesn't seem so ridiculous. You know, like, to state the obvious, like the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, and And um in Washington specifically and up into the kind of coastal range of the of British Columbia and up until Alaska, you mean, there's such an immense wilderness there that the very idea of it, once you go there, seems totally plausible. you' like Oh, OK, well, at least I can see how once upon a time this struck people as perfectly reasonable. That's some seven or eight hundred pound mammal lived here. um
00:09:59
Speaker
and but But what's more kind of more popular, kind of a more kind of sinuous vein in Bigfooting these days is that it's sort of everywhere. It's in the you know Tampa suburbs. It's in the outside of you know Columbus, Ohio. It's in people's backyards outside in Dallas Metroplex.
00:10:17
Speaker
you know So it's that phenomena that struck me as as different. um and and that's And that's where I encountered a little bit change of kind of gestalt generally and in Bigfoot and Bigfooters is when you get ah when he when When he's everywhere, you know you sort of expect him to appear everywhere. I think the I found a little bit maybe more wish fulfillment and among Bigfooters in those not-so-far-flung places like like that I hung out with you know into in Dallas, and ah or I guess I was just um east of Dallas, and in a national forest in Kentucky, and in upstate New York, and in parts of Maine, and and so on.
00:11:03
Speaker
and But also just it's also partly the luck of the draw, like who you happen to fall in with, what Bigfooters you you decided you want you want to hang out with. And I was fortunate enough to meet some pretty sane and and lucid ones.
00:11:19
Speaker
And i made a specific decision early on to not really go the woo, kind of the crazier route. And I got a few and invitations to go. do some kind of loopy stuff with Bigfooters in Georgia and elsewhere that, ah you know, the which we can get into later if you want to, with the kind of folks who associate Bigfoot with with with all sorts of kind of paranormal and supernatural phenomena.
00:11:43
Speaker
And, um, But I didn't, that seemed like kind of low hanging fruit to me and I didn't really, I sort of made a decision early on to not do that kind of strategically because it just seemed like a big, big, big can of worms that I wasn't prepared to deal with.
00:11:58
Speaker
um So mostly I hung out with very, very very you know, like pretty sane and sober and lucid people. And and that that's... And that's what I that's what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I wound up hanging out with some um very cool people, some of whom are are still my friends, or i'm at least I'm still friendly with many of them. And it was a little mind blowing. I mean, it was a great experience. It was totally bewildering and and at times kind of um disconcerting, but it was also ah by and large a great, great experience.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think people tend to associate naturally Bigfoot with the Pacific Northwest and the deep, dark, evergreen rainforests that are out in this and neck of the woods.
00:12:38
Speaker
I was really taken how how ah the the pan Bigfoot-averse of it all, like being it Kentucky and Texas and Massachusetts and upstate New York and The South, it just it it spreads in its own in its own way. And I wanted you to maybe just kind of talk about or like how did the the Bigfoot myth just change by region or how was it unique to each region?
00:13:04
Speaker
you know you know like I don't know if it like in Florida there's like the swamp ape. I don't know if you know about that. And there's Florida that's supposedly a four-toed Bigfoot as opposed to a regular five-toed Bigfoot. and But but that's there are little variations like that. You know you hear people um distinguish the species. The color of the fur changes, and the slope of the shoulders is slightly different, and so on, and or the ligatures in the and the knees seem kind of a portion differently, you know and so on and so forth. But by and large, we're talking about the same creature. That's what's interesting about it. It's almost totally uniform, um and with a few you know regional distinctions, but but it's by and large the same creature.
00:13:43
Speaker
beast that people are describing, um which is a six to nine foot seven, you know somewhere in the range of seven to 800 pound bipedal ape, basically. not Now people have a sort of wide ranges of of belief you know and or or or kind of ah ways of articulating like what the meaning of Bigfoot and um what you know how it kind of manifests in their lives. but But we're basically talking about the same animal, which I thought was was kind of interesting and and um that there wasn't more regional variants.
00:14:18
Speaker
But generally, yeah, people have, you know, when people talk about Bigfoot and when you're having conversations with Bigfoot is mostly what people are referring to as Harry from Harry and the Hendersons, you know, more or less, or the, you know, the famous profile that's on Bigfoot.
00:14:33
Speaker
You know, every Bigfoot micro brew or, you know, you know, um coffee place out in in, you know, Oregon or specific Northwest. It's so that that iconic profile is kind kind of mostly what people think of.
00:14:48
Speaker
well a part A part of the book that I especially love too is this, ah the exploration and the dive you took on the ivory-billed woodpecker and the and that ah this this bird that is thought to be extinct, it may be, it may not be. And I don't know just ah how did that tie in to ah to the story you were telling?
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah. So I um i wanted, if someone else asked me that when I did that chapter. It's like, where'd you come up with this idea? And I think I think i got it from Peter Matheson, who writes about it in um his, I think his very first book, Wilderness in America. gee It's kind of ah almost like ah catalog of extinct animals or animals that species that are going extinct in the United States. And and he you know he doesn't mention Bigfoot in that that book, although, as I say in my book, Matheson later became a Bigfoot.
00:15:39
Speaker
bigfooter So I think i I made that connection. But i also knew when I was writing the book that I wanted a break from all the Bigfoot stuff. You know, I just, I just felt like readers would want to break.
00:15:50
Speaker
Cause I basically do four expeditions and hang out with all these Bigfoots and it started to feel, ah just sensed that it would be repetitive. And so I wanted to let people kind of come up for air a little bit, like midway through the book.
00:16:01
Speaker
And, um and also I knew I wanted like a real, life a sort of biological corollary to Bigfoot to sort of investigate how actual scientists and and and ornithologists kind of vet the existence or non-existence of a once real species.
00:16:19
Speaker
A lot of Bigfooters are claimed to essentially be doing the same thing. And ah so I wanted to see how how that was done, how they talked about it, how it was kind of vetted among orthologists and scientists and you know and like wild wildlife biologists, basically. so And it was a good example.
00:16:38
Speaker
ah excuse to kind of extend the rage of my search a little bit and go further South, which I didn't really spend, you know originally I had planned to go to Florida and that kind of fell apart. And then, um, and then this came up at a really opportune time. Cause I, um, I, uh, I wanted to do, do it. I wanted to investigate the ivory bill, but I also had a very good friend of mine lives just as it turned out an hour away from the cash river, uh, wilderness area. And, um, so I, um,
00:17:07
Speaker
I was able to kind of kill two birds with one stone there. And i just I just really wanted to have ah but basically a narrative break from all the Bigfoot stuff. ah Earlier in our conversation, you talked about the wish fulfillment of seeing
Scientific Challenges and Narrative Balance
00:17:20
Speaker
Bigfoot. And there was a lot of that happening in the ivory built section, too, where pileated woodpecker looks very similar to the ivory built. And so you see that streak by And because you're searching for the thing you desperately want to see, it's any movement you see, any silhouette you see might be confirming what you're hoping to find, I think. And think that's kind of what you get at, too.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah, and you have very serious people like, you know, David Allen Sibley in the book who I spoke to and um ah Tim Harrington, who is also a very serious orthologist, worked for the Cornell lab for many years.
00:17:55
Speaker
um And ah yeah, and I just wanted to have that kind of comparison. ah contrast and compare sort of thing, let just see how how this is, how it's done. And the and and and the imperfections and in in real science and, um field you know, field work, it's just, it's a hard thing to do. um Science is really difficult. and a lot of Bigfooters talk a big game about about science and and and sort of, you know, want to behave scientifically and want to apply um science to what they're doing, but but it all kind of falls apart on them in the end, and for a good reason, because science is is really hard.
00:18:31
Speaker
Even like, you know, it just is real fieldwork for scientists um for scientists I don't use the word real there to belittle Bigfooters, but um but you know you know for falsifiable and verifiable species that once existed, even determining that is um is just fraught with all kinds of they very thorny problems. And anyway, I just wanted to have ah wanted to have that as a kind of bulk work against, I mean, both as a narrative break, but a bulk work against any criticisms to the book that I wasn't giving Bigfooters their kind of, wasn't due to
00:19:08
Speaker
due diligence at giving them their credit for what they do do. So, yeah. And there's, um, know, the moment where, you know, you, you paddle into the, know, into the swamps and you can easily get probably lost in there. There's snakes everywhere. There's all sorts of things. And then there's other times where you're like kind of deep in the woods and, uh, it can be disorienting, especially in these Pacific Northwest woods. Like you get a, maybe 50 yards away from a main road. It can,
00:19:35
Speaker
it you can get turned around and get lost pretty quick. And I just imagine just like for you, especially like the true story I say, where it's just like you kind of harken back to these, you know, and this ah almost like the the futility of the modern life and sitting behind a desk. But here you were confronted with being out in the wilderness. And how ah just what was that experience of being being out there and confronted with um just how or just how humbling nature can be to be out in those elements and to surrender to it, really?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah. And that's like, I think, as I argue in the book, that's ah a big, big part of the allure, a big part of the appeal of Bigfooting is to kind of be humbled in that way and just remember what it's like to be in in real wilderness. And yeah, I was humbled a number of times, you know, and I i i used to do, I don't really do this anymore, but since I had kids, I i ah ah don't do this much. I did this a lot for the book, but I hadn't done it.
00:20:32
Speaker
since really pre-pandemic, but I used to try to do one big, if not two kind of backcountry camping. Sometimes there was a skiing trip thrown in there too, but like at least one of those a year, um either solo or with a friend. and And, you know, and part of getting lost is like just part of the package with that stuff.
Wilderness and Rewilding
00:20:51
Speaker
And it can be um both really exhilarating and totally terrifying. And it doesn't, it doesn't take much, you know, like I was in the the very end of the book, I write about the Chama Canyon wilderness,
00:21:02
Speaker
area in New Mexico where I went. I went right before the pandemic in like 2019, like literally days before the lockdown. And I stepped off the trail there. It was still kind of, it was spring or I guess it would have been mid-February or late February. And, um you know, it's part of the Continental Divide Trail cuts through there. And I was on trail as far as I could tell. There was a little bit of snowfall.
00:21:26
Speaker
And, um, but there, there was signage and, and, and like tree blazes every hundred yards or so. But I, at one point I stepped off the trail to do something to take a leak or something. And I, And I went back and I got turned around. I couldn't find the trail. and And I have to tell you, man, I was the most terrified and ever. I mean, I was just like, it was comical looking back. I mean, just like thrashing through the trees and, you know, tree branches slapping me in the face and almost like, you know, yelping and fear and like, just like but not quite to the point of like stripping off clothing, you know, from exposure, but, but close. And, and, and all told I was probably lost for like,
00:22:05
Speaker
don't know, less than 10 minutes or something. And once I got my bearings, I realized, of course, that I could just, if I just walked down downhill, like I would, I would eventually hit the river that I'd sort of followed this river, followed the trail, but along the river on the way up. And that kind of, again, follow the trail, know, kind of a switchback sort of thing up this little mountain. And once I gained my, some composure and kind of gathered my senses, I've realized that was fine. I eventually did find the trail again, but man, it, you know, I didn't have cell service.
00:22:36
Speaker
It was at a time of the year where there were no other hikers. And, um, you realize right away how isolated you are and also how little it takes, how ill-equipped we are to most of us are to deal with that. i mean, we've just lost our ability to navigate for ourselves and we've lost our confidence in our ability to navigate and and We've just become, you know, for better or worse, very very enfeebled by technology. And without that at hand, we're just completely, I mean, literally and metaphorically, just completely lost and helpless.
00:23:08
Speaker
And, you know, and if you spend any time in kind of the bad country and in this country, unless you know how to read a map and a compass, which I do not, it would have been helpful um if I did, but I don't. And, uh,
00:23:20
Speaker
you're you'll you'll inevitably kind of just find yourself in those kinds of situations, I think. And it's and and part of the claim I'm making in the book is is that kind of, you know, reconnection or what folks call real what rewilding is part of allure big footing is, you know, it's a lot of,
00:23:39
Speaker
A lot of guys with gadgets backcountry, you know, with with some backcountry chutzpah, you know, if I'm saying that right, and um and just um and a lot of hope that um there's more out there, you know, that there's something to be discovered out there.
00:23:56
Speaker
um and And that something might be, you know, something, it might be Bigfoot, it might be something more kind of innocuous it might or or or actually maybe maybe more kind of foundationally important. It might be themselves. It might be the sense sense of connectivity and reconnection with with wildness and the very idea of what it means to have wild places in this country, which are very, very quickly disappearing.
00:24:22
Speaker
um It's really actually difficult, i discovered, to to find yourself in a place without that kind of connectivity, but but it can happen. You've got to walk to it. You've got to get out of your car and walk, you know but um ah which make people don't really love doing these days, but Yeah, you wrote at one point that, anyway, maybe we're drawn to Bigfoot stories because they represent our hope that not every square inch of this continent has been slash burned and subdivided into a homogenous glop of cordoned off ah or cordoned off by the rich to indulge their exclusive pathologies.
00:24:57
Speaker
And that that kind of gets to the point of the the the rewilding feel. And yeah the you know this if this belief in Bigfoot is something that gets you know people together and gets them outside and away from that capitalized, um commoditized version of nature, ah you know that's nourishing in a lot of ways, even if Bigfoot may be, in fact, a myth.
Belief Systems and Cultural Myths
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally, yeah. You know, I did a story a few years ago about Arches National Park. a You were speaking earlier about 50-year anniversaries, and it was the, think, roundabout, or maybe just exactly the 50th anniversary of um of Desert Solitude by Ed Abbey, who um you I'm sure you know Edward Abbey, but he it was ah and he would have hated this term, but ah nature writer, a writer from kind of ah mid to kind of mid-century to, I think he died in the
00:25:54
Speaker
90s i'm ashamed i don't know offhand but um but his kind of uh first and and i think best book is desert solitaire he was a ranger and in arches national park it was actually just a monument back then before it became national park in the late 50s and so i uh wrote a kind of one of these which the times new york times kind of specializes in these big anniversary um stories so i did a travel story about at Abbey and Arches and how it kind of transformed since his day, since it became a national park. And, and, you know, Arches, like a lot of those Western national parks, especially in Utah, like Zion and, and, um, uh, Bryce Canyon and Canyonlands are, were at the time and and definitely still are undergoing a a huge, uh, tenants, uh, crush.
00:26:40
Speaker
Um, I mean, it's insane. It's like, since, uh abby's day it's like a 7 000 increase or something like that like now the park like regularly closes because they can't they just can't um sustain the amount of foot traffic and car traffic and um but i but i learned that so something i hung out ah with a ranger while i was there for a couple of days a guy who was kind of an Fanta at Abbey. He showed me around a little bit, showed me the site of Abbey's old trailer and um and a couple other locations where Abbey liked to hang out and go on his little desert jaunts.
00:27:16
Speaker
ah But he told me that the average time ah ah attendance for visitors to Arches is something like two hours, which means that that's just long enough to basically drive from the entrance to the turnaround at the Devil's Garden, I think it's called, and then drive back means that people are are just experiencing it mostly through their car window.
Nature, Social Media, and Humor in Writing
00:27:37
Speaker
Maybe to step out and get us a selfie of a couple of the, you know, a very photographable kind of sandstone buttes and so on. but um But people don't, you know, but rarely do people actually step off trail there. and
00:27:52
Speaker
And I was talking to this ranger, you know, he was kind of bewildered by it. I was like, because we were driving along and I was like, look at all these, there's all these little trails and little like washes or arroyos and I was like could you just if you wanted to just pull over here and just walk through one of these arroyos and like see where you end up turn around follow it back and he was like oh yeah yeah yeah you could you could and I was like well do people ever do that he said no no no almost never and to me that's like kind of just so sad it's like I mean it's like that's like part of to me the person that's ah that's the totally the allure of it now it's not for everybody I realize it's some people want to do the whole tour bus thing that's fine but
00:28:32
Speaker
But the that just struck me as so sad and and kind of depressing and like just a very, yeah, I don't know, just a kind of sad comment commentary on where we are and where our relationship to nature and to the natural world is. And um that sense of connectivity has just been lost. And I feel like people have not only lost the connectivity, but they've lost the interest in it.
00:28:56
Speaker
They like to photograph more than they like the experience sometimes, it seems. and and you know and I don't sound very condescending and asshole-ish, but i but i and I would include include myself in that assessment sometimes. and Sometimes you're just not up for it, but oh yeah but that's um that seems just seems to be part of the kind of landscape now is that we don't actually experience the landscape. We just look at it.
00:29:18
Speaker
Well, yeah, there's a bucket list-y ah aspect, especially going into say, national parks. Like, I have a water bottle that has, like, I put stickers on it when I go to a national park, and it's like, all I have to do is maybe get ah get ah get the Tetons in my sight line, I get to put that sticker on there. But i don't I don't necessarily have to, though I would, you know, really immerse myself in in the nature of it. Yeah.
00:29:44
Speaker
And then there's another element of it with with ah talk about pathologies that if, if you don't document it on social media, like did it ever happen? It's like the, the, the tree falling down in the woods. Like it, did it happen if you don't post it on Instagram and and and people have really lost touch with that element of it. Like not certain things should just be ethereal and experienced on a, on a human basis. It doesn't have to be documented to then flex to a bunch of people and, uh,
00:30:13
Speaker
in that regard. Yeah. And I do the same thing. I mean, i you know, I have my favorite hat as a sawtooth mountain guides hat, who these guys who I used years ago for a story I did in Idaho. And, but I'm not, you know, it's, it sort of advertises something that I'm not, which is a mountain guide, you know, but ah it's almost like my own kind of walking Instagram post on my head that I, you know, that I kind of am proud of that I did it and that I,
00:30:39
Speaker
maybe even want people to ask me about or something, you know, like, so ah anyway, um'm it's not like I'm immune to it at all, but it it is something, it is one of these um threads that courses through the book and that just came up again and again.
00:30:54
Speaker
And of course you write the book through a very subtle comedic lens throughout the throughout the whole whole thing. And I think that is it just partially your taste, but I imagine that it was also a choice you were you were trying to make to make it ah to make it funny as well as informative. So just what was the you know the calculus that is you were thinking to tell this story through and you know at times ironic point of view?
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, i you know, I definitely, like the tone was a big, big, big part of this book. I didn't want, you know, I mean, i as a writer, I have a hard time taking myself seriously for very long, you know, but I didn't, and I have sort of have a hard time with writing that takes itself seriously.
00:31:39
Speaker
seriously for too long and so i I definitely just a part of my you know the punchline I think is part of part of what appeals to me but but I had to you know be careful with this subject to not make it seem like I was poking fun or talking down to them at all you know I want when I'm making fun of anybody it's me for the most part um yeah so and that the punchlines are mostly i think if not entirely at my expense and but I but yeah tone was a big big concern at first and I lost sleep over it. And my wife could tell you, I was like, I just did not want to come across as like this guy from Cambridge parachuting in to behind the big footing lines to, you know, cast my, my kind of disparaging eye all around it, people, know, and, um, and wag my finger or whatever. Like I, I just, um,
00:32:26
Speaker
I didn't want to do that. I, you know, i wanted to, you know, i wanted to be, I had to be critical of things that I've found were, um, were sort of wanting, you know, ideas that were wanting, but I, but I also wanted it to be fair to my, fair to my subjects.
00:32:41
Speaker
Um, and, and, uh, fairly truth and fair to my subjects, I guess. And, um, So I don't know if you saw, I was just thinking about this because I just saw on Friday, yacht this is going to sound very strange, but bear with me, the Yacht Rock documentary on HBO. Have you seen that?
00:32:57
Speaker
I have heard of it, ah i but I have not seen it. Okay. It's got our mutual friend, um Amanda Petrish in very Yeah. she' is a which i think you on way back in two thousand eighteen or two thousand and nineteen or something um she like talking heads and But it's one of these subjects that's like, let's just say is vulnerable to critique.
00:33:20
Speaker
You know, it's like, it's a musical genre that's not generally held in high esteem. um And, and, and, but the talking heads like Amanda and Questlove and various people, they they're honest about its vulnerabilities, but they also clearly genuinely like it and like what it represents. And, um and there's, it's an incredibly,
00:33:43
Speaker
good natured documentary that takes seriously like the genre shortcomings, but also celebrates the good parts about it. and um And that in a way, I think I might, maybe might be the first person to draw a connection between Yacht Rock and Bigfoot, but that that is exactly the kind of tone that struck me that I was after where I wanted to celebrate what I thought was good about Bigfoot and the idea of Bigfoot.
00:34:06
Speaker
um And, um but also have my of critical, you know, lens on at other times where I i thought some of those kind of self-defeating and demonstrably bad ideas about big footing, I had to be honest about also.
00:34:20
Speaker
And talking about, you know, we respecting the people you're following, ah you know, you you wrote about um yeah the the Janet Malcomy way of, ah you know, exploitation and voyeurism.
00:34:33
Speaker
um Definitely something I wrestled with even just in doing the biography writing that ah that I've done and and it's um It is this idea of, you know ah to what extent are we exploiting people and you know ah honoring them, but also being critical, but being fair.
00:34:51
Speaker
you know just Over the course of your reporting, just to to what extent were you you know constantly wrestling with that ah journalist in the murder ethic? Yeah, a lot.
00:35:02
Speaker
I think a lot. You know, it's it's a little it's more pronounced, I think, than it maybe is with Janet, Malcolm or someone like Tom Wolf, because mostly who the people are skewing are like society people with like stature and standing. Not not always, you know, but um but or or let's just say.
00:35:19
Speaker
in Janet Malcolm's case, sometimes people who really have it coming. um But with me, my subjects were not like that at all. They were the opposite. They were people who, you know, types of people who tend to be totally invisible, ignored by the media, like, you know, know ignored by the culture at large. And ah I had to be super aware of that. And I wanted to be sympathetic to them, maybe more so than I i might be if I were interviewing some politician or something like that. you know, I just, I didn't want to come in and like, again, cut like wag my finger and tell, and you know, have the sense that I sort of knew something that they didn't and that, you know, that I was, they're wrong. There's just no way that they could have seen what they said they saw. Like, but both in and an interpersonal level, you can't behave that way, obviously, but also as a writer, I don't think you can behave that way. You you can't, you A, you don't want to project or telegraph to readers what your own beliefs are, um or at least not very often. And you also cannot,
00:36:17
Speaker
behave towards your subjects in a disparaging or condescending way. And in that I, um hopefully I didn't do, I think, um I don't think I did. oh and i haven't heard otherwise, but, ah but, but also I, you know i I didn't want to pander to them and to the beliefs.
00:36:34
Speaker
um So there was this kind of funny sweet spot of ambiguity. If I, if I, if I'm making sense here, yeah between like being honest about my being, you know fair to the truth, as I said, and know also fair,
00:36:47
Speaker
to their to their beliefs, you know, just walking that kind this kind of tightrope walk sometimes. but um But I thought that was really important. Yeah, you you hold on to your skepticism while ah respecting their their belief in it without without condescending or insulting them. It's it's like, you know, yeah at one point you write about their intoxicating power of belief, a power that's in all of us. and And you say like Bigfoot may or may not be real, I thought, but either way, there's something profoundly true about the feelings it evinced.
00:37:21
Speaker
And so in a way, even though maybe, maybe you don't believe, but the fact that they do, I think you found, you know charming and, and, uh, and respect and you respect that.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, i come down really hard on, or at least I, I take a few swings at kind of unverifiable, unfalsifiable beliefs, but like religious belief, you know, I just, I have this whole chat part of the chapter where i kind of I try to place Bigfoot within kind of kind of almost new ageism and and have some hard words for for that kind of thinking. But, you know, there are obviously great uses for religion and for religious beliefs, too. You know, they're just thinking about Martin Luther King a lot yesterday. And it's hard to imagine the civil rights movement without the black church.
00:38:08
Speaker
You know, you don't have to listen long to beliefs. speeches or to listen to listen to gospel music and that to hear that sort of, you know, that siren song of black dignity and black redemption, you know, and so there's there's a lot of great uses to believe.
00:38:25
Speaker
and And there are some good ones with Bigfoot. Also, again, I might be the first to link gospel and the civil rights movement to bigfoot but there um but or at least draw commonalities but there but there are also great pieces to to to bigfoot and the belief and i and i i understand and sympathize with the desire to believe in and something like that it says it would say a lot about american ecology you know about the robustness of our forests but i but i don't i did not see anything to validate
00:38:59
Speaker
that belief and you know in a year of big footing. And as you're approaching the the writing of it, ah did you ever experience that that panic that comes in when you don't necessarily think you can or you lack the confidence to find the through line?
Writing Challenges and Anxiety
00:39:16
Speaker
I know that's something I experienced. And I wonder for you, like if you just like, oh, my God, is there enough new that i can that I can talk about? How am I going to pull this off and and connect all this together? To what extent may maybe ah did you or not experience that?
00:39:33
Speaker
You know, it's funny, with this book, I i didn't so much, be partly because I'm finding a real point of connection with you, actually, with um in respect to my new book that I just turned in, which maybe we could talk about a a little bit if you want. i don't want to get too up-track, but it's a similar kind of, not a straight-up biography, but a kind of portrait of a mid-century American figure.
00:39:52
Speaker
um But with this book, I really reported it, wrote it and reported it exactly. um how it appears. I mean, I had, so I really, i had like basically 11 months from start to finish.
00:40:04
Speaker
So I would go out and you know, travel somewhere report, come back, write the chapter, travel somewhere, you know, again fly somewhere, come back, write the chapter. And, um, and, and hence that the, the, what was the original title, which was field notes on the North American Sasquatch. And really wrote, conceived it and wrote it like field notes sort of thing, which I thought kind of would leave me, uh, let me off the hook a little bit from that through line that you're talking about. Not entirely, but I thought a little bit, um, and cause, so I did have anxiety about it in the very beginning, but I thought my concept would kind of,
00:40:39
Speaker
would erase that somewhat, although it turned out they changed the title. The subtitle still carries a little bit or or more than a little of the echo of the original title. But I thought that that that framework kind of, you know, would, you know, relieve me from having to have like a thesis or something, for lack of a better word.
00:40:59
Speaker
Oh, for sure. rights Yeah. but But my current project, which i don't want to say too much about, but it's about a guy, um Terrence McKenna, of kind of forgotten or it's largely forgotten psychedelic guru from the sixties and seventies hung out Timothy Leary and Ellen Ginsburg and all these people.
00:41:15
Speaker
Um, yeah, he's a big name around here in Eugene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet. Yeah. And, um, he's that, that I'm definitely struggling with struggle a lot with. I'm still, I'm still waiting any momentarily to receive edits from my editor. And I suspect that's something that's going to come up because I, um,
00:41:36
Speaker
I struggled with that to remind myself or just, you know, every month or so to remember at the, or as I, you know, started finishing a chapter, like Oh God, does this connect? How does this wait minute? I can contradicting myself. Now, how did I, but does this connect to the beginning? Like, how is it? What, what is the, what's the, you know, connective tissue here? Am I losing kind of sight of, of that? And so, yeah, I had a, there's it's still going on a lot of anxiety and hand-wraining over that.
00:42:05
Speaker
yeah you A moment ago you you said how you you lost sleep over just the the tone of the writing, and it sounds similarly like you know this ah new biography might be eliciting a different kind of 2 a.m. m voice, and it's something I greatly experienced over the last two years.
00:42:24
Speaker
um But when that 2 a.m. voice is speaking to you, how do you quell it? Yeah. You know, it's funny, especially when the that 2AM voice, it's regarding someone who's dead and who's not here to defend themselves, you know, just much more powerful than if if I think if they're a living person and um and they have, you know, as Terrence says, in them and I'm sure Prefontaine does too, people who, you know, survivors, people who remember him and who have a stake in his kind of legacy, a stake both a literal and kind of figurative stake in his legacy. And so with that, with that I just, you know, ah it's funny when I'm away from it,
00:43:00
Speaker
I is a lot, it's panic time when I wake up at the middle of night and, and I'm like, Oh my God, I just completely screwed the pooch on that, you know, on this, that, the other. And, but then once I get up and I actually start working on it, I, my fears aren't usually allayed, you know, then I can kind of, I can start, start feeling a little bit better about the actual execution of it, you know?
00:43:22
Speaker
And, um, yeah no, no book book is gonna, I think, No writing is going to quell those thoughts all altogether there will always be problems. And it's just, I think, a matter for me at least of what problems i can I can live with in the end.
00:43:36
Speaker
but yeah i Well, I think we are what you say, like when you kind of get back to the work of it, you know because you can really start – your brain will just start tying itself in knots up with various and myriad uncertainties.
00:43:51
Speaker
And as you're starting to uncover more certainty in the story, just through sheer heft of reporting and in the research, you're like, okay, the, you know, the Polaroid picture starting to come into focus a bit more.
00:44:03
Speaker
And then it's like, okay, the anxiety will some, to some degree starts to, uh, lessen a bit, but it's, it's not and until you start formulating the picture and building the marble of, of the work, uh, from, from really from scratch, uh,
00:44:19
Speaker
it's ah There is quite a bit of anxiety and panic because you're like, wow, I have this thing in my head, but how am I going to manifest this thing into something that feels that that makes sense and has pulse and is fresh and new?
00:44:33
Speaker
All these things just start bombarding you. um But it seems like you quiet that voice as best you can and and lean into the work. And then the more you do that with rigor, it starts to coalesce. And it's like, okay maybe I can sleep till 3 a.m. this time.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. or yeah Yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, it's funny. It's like, um I think with big big the subject kind of, like I can't just, you know, be I don't mean to like be sort of disparaging my own work or anything, but i I think I thought because of the subject that like people wouldn't be, not that people wouldn't be that interested in it, I guess, but I thought like the subject just, yeah, it created a lot of kind of open space for me to it just,
00:45:17
Speaker
experiment and kind of say what I wanted and not really have to worry too much about that stuff. Cause you get very easily quickly tips into this realm of fantastical and magical and, and, you know, paranormal. And, you know, so I, you know, I just felt like that in and of itself gave me a lot of freedom to not say things.
00:45:43
Speaker
Um, Yeah, just not worry so much, I guess. But but not now i'm like I feel like I'm reaping a little bit of much more of the brunt of that with this book because it's just, you know, there are people, a lot of people out there who are really going to care about what I have to say. Oh, for sure. At some point, you just have to have, speaking of belief, you just have to have faith in the work, I think.
00:46:08
Speaker
Well, yeah, and you know belief is really at the the core of you your Bigfoot book. In one part part a little bit later, you know it's struck me as you know just me personally, you do you have this just little meditation on capitalism. You know you write capitalism, winner-take-all, casino-style capitalism, toxic for everyone except the rich, ah you know more like a racket for redistributing upward than an engine of general prosperity. and ah and know You c site cite some of the researchers who coined that.
00:46:38
Speaker
But it got me thinking about, you know, myth and belief. And my gosh, like prosperity in the American dream is its own kind of Bigfoot myth. And we kind of it kind of keeps us clawing at hope that maybe individually, like will like win the lottery or something, you know, if we just work harder.
00:46:57
Speaker
Uh, and, and that, that might manifest itself, but in a way it's, it's every bit as real as Bigfoot to the, that upward mobility that I think a lot of us in that American dream, it's like, that did it exist at all? I don't know.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That, and that's a quote, what you quoted was a quote from that deaths of despair book about the opioid epidemic. And, um, I'm kind of trying to triangulate there between that and kind of white despair and white belief and,
00:47:25
Speaker
um kind of white working class belief and big bigfoot is this vector of again i'm kind of generalizing here but ah but but you know white working class conservative men and they're talking about those princeton economists whose names escape me wrote that book death of despair talking about ah white working class men um without a college degree who have really suffered considerably over the last several decades um and you know are more so and arguably more so than anyone else have seen that American dream disappear.
00:47:58
Speaker
And so there's a funny confluence here there's ah that a lot of people are surprised about and and um and some are irritated by um me bringing kind of Trump into the picture. um and ah And I've got a lot of well, I mean, that not the review the reviewers in and of themselves haven't mentioned it, but like these aggregate Sort of opinion places like Amazon or Goodreads, people have complained about the book is too, quote unquote, political, um you know, and somebody on, I think it was like Goodreads counted.
00:48:31
Speaker
Um, and said that I meant, I mentioned Trump something like 28 times. I haven't, I haven't fact checked this, and but, um, but that surprised me because I was, I thought it would have been like seven times or something, you know, like, uh, but I also like, it just, I don't like, if you're writing about so something like I have, like I'm writing about.
00:48:50
Speaker
what you know with all due respect to my subjects, who I don't think are stupid, but I'm writing about something that in my estimation a mass cultural delusion. yeah like um Trump is going to come up, and he did come up a lot, both in my own kind of reporting among Bigfooters on expeditions and at conferences and conventions and so on, but ah but also it just just you know came up while ah writing. like I just couldn't couldn't ignore at a sort of age of magical thinking that he represented, especially that an initial election back then. He was still president when I was writing and and when I began writing at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020. And um yeah, and also I just like, you know, up i don't know why
00:49:37
Speaker
say what you will about like people on the political left, like that we're at least able to kind of make fun of ourselves. Like we can make fun of Biden and Harris and but whether it's like the onion or, you know, the today show and Jon Stewart, it's like, we'll go to satire and poking fun at it. We're kind of equal opportunity.
00:49:54
Speaker
um Shit talkers. But, um but for some reason, people who tend to be Trumpist, I know again, I'm generalizing don't accept that when, especially, and it's weird of somebody who is just,
00:50:07
Speaker
crying out for mockery and for satire, you know, like virtually every utterance. um And people just don't have a sense of humor about it. And when you say, when you, you know, say stuff about Trump, they just cannot let it pass.
00:50:22
Speaker
um But, but anyway, and that's, but that goes back to your, I think your original point, which is this kind of convergence um of, you know, of Bigfoot and belief and and magical thinking and also kind of white working class ideologies, um which all strangely converge in this in this book in a couple of ways.
Reflections on Belief and Book Journey
00:50:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, it's it's a it's a trip and i and i really i i really quite enjoyed it and fully ah ah hope people get it get it in their hands because it's just it is a great meditation on and know belief and wilderness and fantasy And all all sorts of all all sorts of like just ah wonderful intersections and and field notes, as you said.
00:51:08
Speaker
um so it was just a yeah really fun and entertaining and informative read and meditation. So, yeah, it's ah yeah it was awesome. Oh, thanks for saying that, man. I really appreciate it.
00:51:19
Speaker
Nice. well Well, John, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation. And it can just be anything you're excited about that you want to share with the listeners. So I'll just extend that to you as we wrap up.
00:51:30
Speaker
Yeah, sure. i got I'm going to cheat here and do two real quick ones, if you don't mind. And the um the first is kind of yeah a shout out to somebody who I'm friendly with. i don't really I've actually never really met in person, but we have friends in common. It was really fantastic writer named David Ramsey, who ah your listeners probably won't know unless they're subscribed.
00:51:49
Speaker
subscribers who are or regular readers of the Oxford American magazine. But David has a sub stack called Tropical Depression, excuse me, Tropical Depression. And he writes a lot about um music and and um and art and culture. And he's just an extraordinarily gifted writer. But one of these writers who, for whatever reason, is um doesn't he doesn't have a book. He hasn't been able to kind of crack the Da Vinci code of publishing. and um And so I think he sails under the radar of a lot of lot of readers and know but he's just a brilliant guy has is the an ear to some kind of strange oracle he's from arkansas he's i would see him in a kind of um a long kind of um venerable tradition of almost southern gothic writers he's just um an amazing guy amazing writer and even my wife the other day we were talking about little richard came up the musician and and davy wrote a
00:52:43
Speaker
piece about little Richard, like a decade ago, or something my wife was like, God, you remember that piece that David, David Ramsey wrote about it? Just fucking amazing. And it's true. It really was. It's memorable, that memorable that 10 years on. And, um, so I can't recommend him enough. And the other, the book, a book I just finished last night comes to mind is Ian Frazier's, uh, just magisterial biography, we kind of a travel book of the Bronx called paradise Bronx. And, um, it's a big book, like a doorstop of a book, but it's just, um, He's an another writer who, on the surface, it doesn't seem to be a whole lot remarkable that's happening, but cumulatively, it just has this really incredibly moving um and like just um and just bracing effect. And I don't know how he does it, and um but what he ever whatever he's doing is just really magical.
00:53:33
Speaker
um To hear Frazier, who is I think you would admit is like maybe one of the whitest guys to ever live, but to hear him write about the history of hip-hop and like Kool Herc and like Grandmaster Flash and all that, and you know, emerging during the, you know, the battle days of the Bronx's burning and stuff. It's just ah an amazing history.
00:53:52
Speaker
And it really, it really moved me a lot and just made me realize what what great writing could do and great reporting. and So anyway, sorry sorry to give you two there, but those are my two.
00:54:04
Speaker
I love it. Oh, that's great. Well, well, John, thank you. Thank you so much for you know coming back on the show after a few year hiatus to talk about Bigfoot and a dip our toe into what you're working on next and and everything. So just thanks for the time. but Thanks for the work. And and yeah, this is this is great. Thank you so much for carving out the time for us.
00:54:22
Speaker
Oh, thank you, Brandon, man. I really appreciate it.
00:54:31
Speaker
All right. Thanks to John for coming back on the show to talk all things Bigfoot. That was a good jam. Thank you, CNF and listener, for making it this far. Got a big old, big old parting shot here. This is going to settle in.
00:54:46
Speaker
Maybe get a fresh sink of dishes. Because I think by the time you're done listening to this parting shot, you will have cleaned your kitchen.
00:54:57
Speaker
mean, it's not that long, but you you get it. So yes, the front runner is out and I have feelings, as you might imagine. I won't bury the lead about the barfing. Okay, so on Wednesday, May 21st at about 3 p.m., three hours before my but big book launch event, you know, big in quotes, whatever. It's the big, it's the launch event with Run Hub, the community run, and then the cold fire hang, cold fire brewing.
00:55:24
Speaker
I get this email from a key source, ah Nita Prefontaine, who is steve's Steve Prefontaine's older half-sister by about 10 years.
00:55:35
Speaker
I get an email from Nita's daughter. And once once you guys get a hold of the book and you read the first chapter, you'll realize there's some sensitive material.
00:55:47
Speaker
And a lot that's some of the most revelatory material in the entire book, really, right in those first 10 pages. So her daughter wrote, she goes, hi there. I'm inquiring for Nita Prefontaine about your book.
00:56:00
Speaker
Her son just got a book he purchased. She would like to speak with you regarding some errors she feels very strongly about. Will you please call as soon as possible? We understand you have a book signing tonight.
00:56:12
Speaker
Sincerely. Yeah.
00:56:15
Speaker
Immediately, my stomach balled up into a Gordian knot. And i had and if I had food in my stomach, I would have thrown up. Like, what could be wrong? Like, you know, we handle this opening chapter with delicate delicacy and and skill and sensitivity and trying to lay things out that lay the facts out there, but also not sensationalize and not over index on it, but to just kind of lay it out there and set set the tone early in that particular chapter.
00:56:45
Speaker
And, ah you know, with Nita, I'm like, did she not realize she was on the record while we were speaking? Was she going to dispute some of the material that I dug up through some court records of her parents' divorce from 1946? You know, I immediately pulled up our transcript to to make sure I was like in any for whatever she might bring up. I'm like, OK, let me see if I can back up what I wrote.
00:57:09
Speaker
And I pulled up the court record PDF as well. You know all of which details some really gnarly shit. You know, she and her brother endured. So I call her. Doesn't pick up.
00:57:20
Speaker
Voicemail.
00:57:23
Speaker
and I wait another hour. I've got my head in my hands at my desk. My stomach is imploding. If there are major errors in one chapter, gosh, the first chapter. you know most Most people will actually read this chapter. It's the opening chapter. you know most i For a significant amount of readers, maybe they won't make it through the end of the book like a lot of people don't make it to the end of a podcast or don't make it to the end of fill in the blank.
00:57:50
Speaker
But most people will read that first chapter. And it's not like if there's anything significantly wrong, I can just issue a correction in tomorrow's paper, apologize, and move on. So as I'm really in my head, stomach further imploding, I email a friend, email my editor.
00:58:11
Speaker
Everyone's pretty on edge. Like, this is the day after publication. this when you're supposed to be the most excited. i am jazzed, and I'm like, fuck, I got this ah got this event now, and I've got this hanging over my head. Like, I'm...
00:58:23
Speaker
What could it be? And so I just think, all right, just call her back. Say you understand that you have some concerns. I'm here to listen. Any errors that were made were not malicious.
00:58:36
Speaker
And I tell myself, don't get defensive. Just hear her out. Call her up again. She picks up. And her voice is bright and sunny, just as I remembered it.
00:58:47
Speaker
was like, okay, this is a good way to start. And I i said, I'm here to listen. i What did you notice? And by now, i my stomach is gone. it is i I am stomachless.
00:58:59
Speaker
Well, she said, you called me Nita Fleming. I'm not Nita Fleming. I'm Nita Prefontaine. And then suddenly my stomach starts to come back. I said, okay, I and i understand. like In 1975, in the prologue, in the story that I cited as part of Prefontaine's funeral, that was your married name at that time.
00:59:23
Speaker
Now, I could have and maybe should have made a parenthetical or a footnote that says that you know you go by Nita Prefontaine the current day. and And she understood there. She was like, okay. That was the first one.
00:59:36
Speaker
Next, she asked, and what do you mean by corporal punishment? And I was like, oh. like, okay, well, all right, my my understanding that when parents beat their children, it's corporal punishment.
00:59:47
Speaker
She's like, okay, that's that's what I thought. of is like I think that was a little dramatic. I would have used a different word. I was like, okay, if you know fair enough, fair enough. And my stomach is starting to come back more. And then she's like, all right, like and one more thing. like In the audio book, he pronounced my name Netta, Nita. It's Nita.
01:00:06
Speaker
you know it's nia I was like, oh, okay. you know I didn't read the audio book. I didn't hear a draft of it. You know what I mean? um But maybe I can ask my editor if we can find a way to retract your pronunciation.
01:00:22
Speaker
And you know then she said how much she's enjoying the book so far, how the early part really made her cry, how true it was, how happy she was that I included this abuse that was so traumatic and foundational to Nita and Steve's upbringing.
01:00:35
Speaker
you know We spoke and laughed a little, and we planned to meet up so I can give her a signed book in the not-too-distant future. So that was who that was Wednesday, the day after pub day, and to be met with that
01:00:51
Speaker
questioning of accuracy and an email that was just worded in a way that felt like earnest and heavy, but like heavy with concern and, you know, led and went led and down by disappointment. it It turned me inside out.
01:01:07
Speaker
And Netta said she'd call if you had any more errors. She's fine. So I was like, okay, fair fair enough. But the day itself, yeah it was pretty slow. I made an appearance on the radio, Fox Sports Radio, with Danny and Justin, and they were great, engaged, really fun. you know we did It was probably a 15-minute segment, and the couple interviews I've done, um they're going to be on my website.
01:01:27
Speaker
and ah That way you can listen to me blather on without a script in front of me like I am right now. the The words i just that are tumbling out of my mouth right now, these are not on my script. Anyway, Danny asked me if I was nervous when we were off mic at the very end.
01:01:42
Speaker
and I was like, ah, shit, i guess I sounded nervous. And said, well, yeah, I'm just getting started with all of this. And live interviews aren't my strong suit. And, you you know, especially when you're on the radio and you're tight for time.
01:01:55
Speaker
yeah It's not the podcast sphere. We can get as long-winded as we want, and if it's way too long-winded, we can always cut it back and edit. But when you're in the moment, you've got to really pre-edit yourself, and hopefully you're hitting the right beats with your messaging, answering their question, giving them enough, being entertaining and engaging and charismatic ah in a tighter soundbite that gives the audience what they want and also teases the material in the book so people will go buy it.
01:02:25
Speaker
There wasn't this rush of media. you know it was pretty quiet, you know borderline morose. you know It weirdly felt like the end of something, not the beginning, which if and when you guys write and publish a book, you experience this weird sense that it's no longer your little secret. you know Even though you tease and you share little things here and there and you talk about it, you know, I talked about it nonstop for three years basically.
01:02:51
Speaker
yeah and Maybe it's akin to seeing your kid off to college. you know I'm not a parent. not goingnna be but You nurtured and shaped this thing for years, and then somewhat and so unceremoniously, you have to trust it to walk through the world on its own, to be met with judgment, to stand on its own two feet.
01:03:10
Speaker
it represents itself, but just as much reflects and represents its caretakers. You know, the writer and the editor and the other villagers who helped raise this a bit of ink and paper.
01:03:24
Speaker
The feeling is But ultimately, it is of proudness. And what makes my eyes really burn up, ah even when I was writing this script, and not so much now, I kind of got it out of my system.
01:03:38
Speaker
But I was writing it yeah, I was like really tearing up. Because one of my you know, some of my really dearest friends, know, they reached out they said how proud they were of me and how much they've always believed in me, even when I so rarely believed in myself.
01:03:54
Speaker
And how they wish success for me, even when I so rarely think I deserve it for myself. So those messages and texts or posts to Instagram stories made parting with the front runner far less sad and a chance to celebrate how fucking hard we worked on this thing.
01:04:11
Speaker
And we should be proud of it. And it is a definitive text. In 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, this is still the book. This is going to be the book that people pull off the shelf to read. And that's what my editor at editor hopes for this book. That's his vision for this book.
01:04:26
Speaker
So the event with Run Hub and Cold Fire, it drew about 25, maybe 30 people. It was a little low. I thought it might be more than that because we did put a bit of juice behind it.
01:04:38
Speaker
I did read a passage um at the behest of Jeremy of J. Michael's books. ah He asked me if I was reading. i was He's selling the books, and if he thinks me reading a passage would help, you know I acquiesced. It was a tight little scene.
01:04:53
Speaker
I could read it in less than 10 minutes. I signed a bunch of books, stamped a bunch with my custom stop pre stamp with red ink, answer questions from Lily of RunHub, who's actually a journalist and leaving RunHub to join Lookout Eugene, which is a kind of a new newspaper, online newspaper in town.
01:05:14
Speaker
Really cool. Nice to run into another journalist. I had no idea she was a reporter. The audience asked some great questions, and I was so busy talking from the moment I was setting up all my gear and through the event and then breaking it down that I didn't even get a chance to have my favorite beer, the Cumulus Hazy IPA from Cold Fire. Love it.
01:05:33
Speaker
It's almost like orange juice, but it's like if orange juice was beer. It's pretty great. ah Anyway, maybe another time. I'm sure there's going to be more drama going forward, and I'm sure I'm going to lose my stomach again, I'm going to have to find a way to put it back into my gut.
01:05:49
Speaker
But for now, stay wild, see in efforts, and if you can't do, interview. See ya.