By Holly Frost
As it happens, we went places. And we’re doing things. And no one preloaded a post for today, but I assure you Sarah is fine and I am fine, and alas, we are not traveling together.
What inspirations have you gotten from travel? What travels have you undertaken because of stories?
(Title brought to you by an elderly airplane and a very nice, not too terribly turbulent, rainstorm.)
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “And so, the dragon labored into the storm”
The Merchant stories started after a trip to the Hanseatic League cities, some of the Colplatschki stories developed over a half dozen trips to Vienna and the surrounding area, and several other things. Seeing different places, hearing different stories, they all kickstart the story motor. Two sets of short stories arose from a 2015 trip to the off-the-beaten-track bits of Austria.
Everything can be story fodder, if your mind works in strange ways.
Most of my travel stories are non-fiction–because they’re weird enough. I’ve chronicled my many travels cross-country by train under the Life section on my website, but my favorite travel story is A Gringo’s Christmas.
I can’t help it if your reaction is like that of a colleague of mine who once interrupted me with, “Stop! He always does this! He starts telling a story so deadpan and normal, and then the flying monkeys start coming out of his butt!”
While not strictly about writing, or at least writing fiction, last year my wife and I visited Switerland, with a large impetus coming from the fact that her seven-greats grandfather was a minister in the cathedral in Bern (Bernische Munster, there should be an umlaut over the ‘u’), who got disciplined and eventually headed over to the New World for heresy. The heresy was doing such terrible things as preaching in the language of the commoners and visting them in their home.
It is vaguely writing connected, as my wife is slowly putting together her painstakingly and meticulously researched family history into a coherent story. The intersting half will be almost entirly her father’s side. She describes her mother’s side as “farmer, farmer, oh look another farmer” going back to the turn of the 17th centruy. At least her dad’s side had a heretic and also a notable counterfeiter!
Life is composed of various rhythms, some slow, some fast.
It was a dreary, cold, and rainy day. The kind of fall day where you could smell the damp and the molding leaves. The kind that happened every year with the turning of the seasons.
As far as trips were concerned, it was just a hundred miles from the camp we spent summer in, back to home. Average speed was only about 35, so you could plan on a boring 3 hours sitting in the car. At least the heater worked. The wet hum of the tires on the pavement and the water steadily splashing on the wheel wells were just white noise as Dad silently drove. The windshield wipers flipping back and forth were mesmerizing, and I soon fell into a hypnotic daze. Thump, thump, thump, thump. Unceasing. Unchanging. The miles rolled by and before I realized it, we were pulling into the driveway. Another trip gone by. Another summer over.
My father is fond of telling the story of the time when the border police between two countries in pre-Schengen Europe stopped him, found dad had mislaid mom’s passport or something, and dad got let off with a vigorous scolding about his responsibilities towards his wife and child because he and mom were ridiculously cute, fresh-faced young Americans, and myself, although a fairly homely infant, completed the domestic picture. I just used a version of this story to introduce the prissy consular clerk who’s the sleuth in the mystery i am writing.
Coming back from a long road trip to … I forget where, exactly – but we wanted to avoid going through Austin, where the traffic is frelled every day, all day, every day of the week. Hopped on a toll road, decided to get off it when we thought we were near to San Marcos, and zig-zagged through a charming, small rural hamlet – just a place there several country roads crossed, which had accumulated about forty small early 20th century houses, scattered under a grove of towering trees. I looked out between two of the houses, and there was a small stock pond, perfectly edged by reeds … and a cow, luxuriating in the water.
It was such a cute little village. I’m using it under another name and adding some buildings from two other such hampets, for the current work in progress.
Few are the modern people that live in the weather. Most have cars, homes, businesses. They stay under roofs over 90% of the time, unless the weather is pretty.
Myself, it was seven miles a day on average. Seven miles in rain, snow, double triples (triple digit heat and humidity), the works. Nine pounds of drill, bitts, and batteries. Nine pounds of tools. Fifty foot of wire. Pound of fittings. Plus optical tools, terminal, and battery backup.
Uphill, downhill, up and down the poles on occasion. Crawling through the mud. Creeping through superstructure. Walking the lines. Testing, testing, testing. When it rained, I got wet. When it snowed, I got cold. When it was double triples, I broiled in my own juices.
Occasional breaks to get in the truck to drive to the next site. Paperwork daily. Then back on the LPCs. Making the steps. Hauling tools and gear. Always testing. Few opportunities to appreciate nature, for all I lived in it. Slept in it on my feet on occasion.
Every day was practice in patience. Burn out all your energy early, and it would be a long, long day. Pacing was important. Not too quick, not too slow. Manageable for eighteen to twenty hours a shift.
What I saw and heard and felt was only a memory for after. The little cheeps of a family of hawks high up on the ridgetop. A curious bear cub following my wire trail. The little old book lady that would chatter on about her books while I fixed her old, outdated systems. Cold food eaten in a hurry. Fumbling my way back in the dark when all my lights died. Finding hidden spaces in the old factory that was remodeled a dozen times over while running new line. Noting the infidelity of clerks working at Berkshire Hathaway that one time, all unknowing I was still working after hours.
Nature and manmade creation. Back and forth, through one to the other. Always on the outside, even when inside. Songbirds perching on my hard hat, just part of the scenery. Kids and animals crawling over me when working with the public like a human jungle gym.
A journey through time almost like a dream. Perpetually sleep deprived, always hungry and never time to eat, never stopping. Almost meditative, though I’d not recommend it.
I tend to put my characters on foot or on trains, because horses are a problem.