Shmo’s 2023 Writing Review

On Franconia Ridge, about 20 miles into my 31-mile, 17-hour jaunt around the Pemi Loop in the White Mountains of NH. 10,000′ of climbing that day. Uff Da. August 2023.

It’s fitting that I’m posting my annual writing review three months into the following year and three years since the last one. Since I’m allegedly “goal-oriented,” I created some goals for 2022, which will have to suffice for this 2023 review.

2022 Writing Goals:

1. Finish draft of memoir.
2. Write curiosity essay and “reader” essay.
3. Support and promote writing by others.
4. Read at least 2 books a month

I managed to finish a draft of my memoir. Finally accomplished item #1. I sent it off to the Veterans Writing Award contest that’s administered by Syracuse University in New York. I worked pretty hard on it the previous 3 years and submitted it to them in March of 2023. After I did that, I had what I’d call a writing hangover. I had never written a whole book-length project before. It kind of drained me. I turned my attention to the outdoors and stepped away from the keyboard. At the end of the post, I’ll talk about my big year on the trails. After I scratched my trailrunning/hiking itch, I followed up with the writing contest people and learned that my manuscript “did not advance.” That’s a nice way to put it. At the end of 2023, I sent my manuscript to a professional editor for them to chew on. I got it back before Christmas 2023 with their inputs. I have more work to do on it, which I’m doing now. Daunting to have to keep working on something you thought was done. In some ways this book reminds me of an ultramarathon:You just have to keep moving forward. Stubbornness is an important ingredient in writing and running.

I never got around to #2. I barely remember what I meant by those two essays, but I do indeed remember. I’ll get to them eventually. But the short term ideas that are not WHOLE FRIGGING BOOKS, will have to wait until I’m done with my memoir. I only published two magazine articles last year, largely because I was preoccupied with my book or with my post-submission hangover recovery.

Regarding #3, I enjoy promoting and supporting writing by others. I don’t engage as fully as some people, but I like to share writing by people I know. And even by people I don’t know, especially if the writing resonates with me somehow. I’m hardly a reliable curator, but I do read a lot and pretty intentionally. So, when I find something I enjoyed, I like to tell people about it. Liking and sharing posts on the internet and making book reviews is kind of the coin of the realm for writers. You can genuinely help writers by doing that (hint hint). I try not to be transactional about it. (e.g. I wrote a review for them, they better write one for me) In some ways, when I try to articulate why a book meant something to me, I think it makes me a better thinker, which should, in turn, make me a better writer. It’s a lot like being an instructor pilot. Teaching other people to fly or explaining how to fly to someone else invariably makes the instructor a better pilot.

I didn’t accomplish #4. But I am pretty much at my limit with two books a month and struggle to meet that goal. I do have a day job, after all. But I am just astounded at how well-read other authors and writers are. It’s essentially a time-management question. I love reading. Can’t be a writer without reading. One thing that helps me is that I’ve finally learned how to read two books at one time. I used to only be able to read one book after another. Lately, I find that if I split my reading into Research and Pleasure, I make more progress. I’m filling my head with reading about conservation and public land topics lately, with an eye to a next book. So, I take the Research reading and try to make it something I do after supper for a while, with a pencil in hand, writing notes in the margins and underlining passages. Treating it like homework. Then, I read whatever I want the rest of the time. This usually means a few pages before I throw the book on my bedside table before I pass out. So, I’ve started to take books on the road with me at work. I usually try to travel light, so a book doesn’t meet that goal. But this new habit of bringing a book for fun on the road helps keep me from scrolling on my phone. Worth the extra weight. Maybe this year I’ll hit two books a month.

So, here we go for 2024.

2024 Writing Goals:

1. Find an agent/publisher for memoir.
2. Support and promote writing by others.
3. Read at least 2 books a month
4. Rapidly turn short-term ideas into articles/essays.

This is the year to put the memoir into the end zone. I’ll keep doing #2 and #3. I’ve come up with a new thing on Instagram called “Shmo and Tell” where I do a short video review of a book that I like. Not every book that I read, but ones that I want to share something about. I’ve been having a little fun with it. #4 is new. I get plenty of ideas all the time. When I’m not working on my memoir, I can have a little “treat” and hammer out whatever other story ideas are on my mind. I need to be less worried about where they’re going to end up and more worried about getting my words out of my head. My friend Felicia Schneiderhan is a writer and she said this to me once: “Write whatever you want. Nobody reads anything anyway.” Maybe a little glib, but I find it motivational. Write whatever you damn well please.

Another reason I added #4 is because of the loss of Shawn Perich in 2023. He died too young. He had a lot more writing about the outdoors in him that needed to come out. I’m barely a fisherman, but the steelhead are starting to run in north shore streams pretty soon, and it makes me think of Shawn. And then I feel the gap where he used to be. I wrote a tribute to him here, along with a lot of other people. He was a huge part of my growth as an outdoor writer. I miss him.

Shawn Perich. (Photo Credit: Steve Kuchera)

Books I read:

I reviewed several of these books. You can check out the links below.

The Lands Nobody Wanted

The Time War Takes

Grandma’s Marathon

The Soldier’s Truth

Duluth

Meander North

North to the Pole

Another Nice Thing:

My book of poetry Kekekabic, earned an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards for Poetry! That was way cool. You can get a copy at the top right of the front page of this post.

Writing Hangover Cure:

Like I said, I “finished” my book in March 2023 and felt wrung out. So, I ran a trail ultramarathon in May (Superior Spring Trail Race 50k), Grandma’s Marathon (my 15th time), climbed a Fourteener in July in Colorado with Luke and TJ (Mt. Elbert, Colorado high point), and ran my first 50-miler in 13 hours at the end of July (the Voyageur). All of that was to get ready for what I called Shmo’s Big Stupid. I went around the Pemi Loop, 31 miles, 10000′ of climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It took me 16 hours and 45 minutes. Started in the dark. Finished in the dark. Broke a trekking pole two hours into it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And like writing a book, the main things were sticking to the plan and being stubborn. And also like writing a book, by the end, I was hallucinating voices in the creek bottoms and from the rushing Pemigewasset River. If I ever get my book published, because of finishing the Pemi Loop, I’ll know just how good it feels to be done.

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Memory Loop

What’s your earliest memory? I’ll share mine and, in so doing, you will get to experience the terrifying rollercoaster that I experience between my ears every single day.

The earliest thing I can remember is being told to stand up at the front of a train for a picture. When I grabbed onto a piece of the train with my bare hand, I remember thinking, “Goddamn, that thing is cold.” Probably not in those exact words.

About ten years ago, my mom digitized a bunch of family photos of my sister and me. One of those photos is the exact moment of me on that train. Another photo shows me sitting by one of the drive wheels. Based on the chronological order of all the photos my mom shared, I’d guess I was probably 2 or 3 years old. I was surprised to see that the photo aligned with my memory.

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Fast forward to a week ago. I was reading a book written in the 1970’s about land policy suggestions for eastern national forests, as one does. I stumbled onto a picture in the book that showed a man standing in the snow in front of a train. The man is Sherman Adams, a former governor of the state of New Hampshire. He was also White House Chief of Staff under Eisenhower. He started a ski area called Loon Mountain. The train behind him in the picture was a static display at the base of Loon Mountain. The train looked familiar to me.

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Now, to use a train metaphor, my brain veers onto a siding for a second. Hang on. My dad bought a 1958 Willys Jeep from one of his University of Maine fraternity brothers. He still has it. The brother’s uncle used to go fishing with Sherman Adams in that Jeep. In the 1980’s, when my sister and I went to high school in Plymouth, New Hampshire, my dad was the US Forest Service District Ranger for the Pemigewasset Ranger District of the White Mountain National Forest. My dad had some oversight of Loon Mountain since it was on forest service land in his district. Because of that, he had a lot of chances to see Sherm Adams. My dad recently told me that every time Adams would see him, he’d ask my dad to sell the Jeep to him. My dad would say no. But anyway, here’s my dad teaching Sam how to drive that Jeep in a Chandler Brothers gravel pit in Maine. Sam can say he drove a jeep that Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff used to ride.

Back to the train. It looked familiar, so I compared it to the one in the photo with me. It looked the same. My parents confirmed they took a picture of me at the foot of Loon Mountain. I dug around the internet to see what I could find about the train. It’s a Baldwin 2-4-2T Locomotive #5, built in Philly in 1906. The 2-4-2 means the wheel arrangement, with the 4 drive wheels in the middle. It was bought new by the J.E. Henry Lumber Company and drove around in the East Branch and Lincoln Railroad system from 1906 to 1946. Then it ran in the rail yard as a switcher until 1969. I found a photo on eBay of the train newly arrived at its static display, right around the time I climbed up front for a picture. It was probably a “new” thing to my folks as we were out on a Sunday drive in 1969 or so.

I poked around to see where the train might’ve been on the East Branch and Lincoln Railroad. “East Branch” being the East Branch of the Pemigewasset River. In August of this year, I hiked a 31-mile circuit around this area called the Pemi Loop (short for Pemigewasset). The Lincoln Woods Trail was where I started in the dark and finished my loop in the dark 17 hours later. The trail right by the river is clearly a railroad bed with ties still embedded in the dirt. The map shows the EB & L Railroad was all over the Pemi, including places that are now designated wilderness areas. So, it’s very likely that old Locomotive #5 was working railroad that I ran up a century later. (As yet another aside, my dad just told me that Sherman Adams worked in those logging camps as a young man. So, Sherm, Loco #5, and I all rooted around in the same places.) The green line on the map shows where I went up to the right and came back down on the left. The modern trailhead is the “you are here” arrow.

ADHD is a hell of a thing combined with the internet, so I kept digging. It turns out that Clark’s Trading Post just down the road got Locomotive #5 from Loon in 1999 and got it running again as part of their railroad museum. In 2006, they spruced it up even more to celebrate the 100th birthday of the train. After that, I lost the thread about how long it kept running, but it appears to be sitting as a static display again at Clark’s Trading Post. I think these pictures are roughly from 1999, 2006, and the present. Cool to see the train with a head of steam after it sat for 30 years at Loon Mountain so kids like me could have pictures. I even found a video on YouTube of the train running along some track from about 2010.

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Remember, I only dug into this train about a week ago. Months after I was in New Hampshire climbing 10000′ over 31 miles during a 17 hour hike. I went down the rabbit hole and found out where the train is. I was initially excited because I thought the train was still running. I thought it would be cool that both the train and I had run up the East Branch of the Pemi…and were still running. But the train is static. Even worse, now that I know where the train is, I realize I missed an opportunity. For my hike in August, we stayed exactly one mile away from that train. I could’ve gone and taken a picture reenacting the photo from 54 years ago. Maybe another time. But when the hell will that be?

All because I went back to the state of my birth to hike the Pemi Loop in one day. I got the book, with the photo of Sherm with the train, because I decided to do that hike. This is all just a way for me to remind myself that curiosity is a good thing. And that sometimes, the threads that you follow to their end only announce themselves as whispers. I barely discovered some of these things. If I paid a little less attention or was a little less curious, I wouldn’t have found all these connections. I wouldn’t have my earliest memory with a train looping back five decades later when I ran in that same train’s tracks.

All the connections, all the memories, looping back around on themselves, overlapping each other. Run loops in one place long enough, and you start to realize that the land, the people, and the memories are all connected, separated only by time. The memories loop them all together. Maybe we could all use a little more awareness that we’re all in this together as the time loops back around, over and over.

First Lap of the Sun

Short Version

We put solar panels on our house in September, 2021. I just did some math on their first trip around our local star. In the 12 months after installation, we spent $84 dollars on electricity, and that was just from fees. We generated more electricity than we used. During the previous, non-solar year, it cost $1000 for a year of electricity. During this first 12 months, we generated 5.4 MWh (megawatt-hours) of solar energy while using 4.9 MWh. We are in a grid-tied system, so we sold the electricity we generated back to Minnesota Power for the same price that we paid for it. Each month, the extra power we generated was credited to us and then we used those credits as it got darker in the winter. 

The website that displays our solar panel performance says that, since installation, we’ve generated a total of 11.7 MWh of electricity. This is supposedly the same as 8.3 tons of CO2 or 140 trees or enough to charge over a million phones. And we’re not even at two full years yet. 

I quickly learned there’s nothing quite as fun as sitting with a cup of coffee and watching the meter run backwards when the panels are cooking. 

Longer Version

A few years ago, I wrote a magazine article about how the Salmela family down the street installed solar panels on their house. While writing that, I learned two things. First, that there was a federal tax credit for buying solar panels that was due to “sunset” (see what I did there?) in a few years. Stepping down from a 30% credit down to zero over several years. The second thing I learned was that there was a website to calculate your Duluth rooftop’s potential for generating solar energy. We had just moved into our current house in 2018. Using that calculator, I saw that our unobstructed, south-facing roof was pretty ideal for generating power. All this was rattling around in my head. Then some money shook loose in 2021 and we pulled the trigger. I’d like to say the 7kW system we installed was an intelligent choice that corresponded to exactly a year of usage. But we really installed that 19 panel system of that size because it was what we had available to spend. Obviously, there’s a lot of upfront cost and it’s daunting.

So, pretty late in the game in 2021, we joined the Duluth and Arrowhead Solar Coop. This outfit pools its resources and puts out a request for bids from local solar installers. In theory this increases your leverage and you get a better deal due to being part of a large purchase. Better than you could do by yourself. Because we got into that year’s cycle really late, we were too late to get into the rebates that were available that year through Minnesota Power. Wolf Track Energy won the installation bids that year and they installed our system in September, 2021. The whole process with them went really well. They communicate really well and, miracle of miracles, they did what they said they would do and showed up when they said they would. The city had to inspect their work and found a couple small things that needed to be fixed. Wolf Track Energy immediately fixed them. (I mean, I got a Wolf Track baseball cap and coffee cup; I must like them a lot.) Minnesota Power also came to install a meter that allowed the solar power to get metered in and calculated. 

Things That Surprised Me

Snow collecting on the panels wasn’t as bad a problem as I thought. My roof has a shallow pitch where the panels are. The application that shows how much electricity the panels are making showed panels as “broken” after it snowed. In reality, they were just the panels that were snow covered. Since we have a cold roof and the panels are raised from that cold roof, the snow collected, but didn’t really adhere. After a snow event, the wind would eventually clean them off without my intervention. Which is good, since the roof is not that easy to get up to. And besides, in the winter, we’re barely creating solar energy, so the snow wasn’t really preventing a whole lot when it was on the panels. I mostly went with avoiding the roof because I’m lazy but also because…

It’s impossible to see our panels from anywhere standing on the ground around our house. So it made it hard to assess what was happening up there. 

We made more electricity than we used. My original estimates were that we’d cover about 10 months of electricity with the panels. It was a surprise to see that we had a surplus. But it makes more sense when two things are considered. First, the solar year was just 3 of us in the house, and only two of us for about 3 months of that. We used 4.9 MWh. The previous non-solar year was pandemic time with all four of us in the house for the whole year and we used 7.8 MWh. With a full house of people, generating 5.4 MWh of solar would’ve only covered about 8 months. So, my solar is great this year, as empty-nesters, but probably wouldn’t carry all the freight with a full-house. 

The time for the panels to “pay for themselves” is longer than we originally thought. Payback wasn’t necessarily my goal, but after looking at the savings ($916 saved vs. the previous year of non-solar) our costs would take over 16 years to pay for themselves. When we first installed our system, the estimate was around 12 years. 

The Inflation Reduction Act boosted the Federal Tax Credit for solar panels back up to 30%. So, if you were inclined to get some solar panels, now’s as good a time as it has been with regard to getting some reimbursement.

I learned that electricity price per kWh has gone up dramatically recently. My sample non-solar year was about $0.068/kWh. The solar year was $0.103/kWh. I don’t know why the costs increased. Even though I used 38% less electricity in the solar year, if we didn’t have panels, the annual price still would’ve been close to $1000. 

While digging around I learned that Minnesota is making big strides as a state with renewable energy. 29% of Minnesota’s in-state electricity is generated by renewable resources. I was also surprised to learn that the two nuclear power plants in Minnesota generate a lot of our electricity. I had forgotten they even existed. 

  Things I Still Don’t Understand

I filled out my 2021 taxes correctly to get a 26% tax credit for the $20k I spent on panels. The IRS said I did it wrong. I got them to agree with me that I did it right. But now they say, they don’t believe me and I have to send them receipts. Which I did. So I wait for a $5000+ refund from the IRS over a year after I filed. Government, amirite?

My system plateaus in real-time at 5.5kW. I have a 7kW system. I once read a reasonable explanation for why my 7kW system tops out at 5.5kW on a sunny day, but I haven’t been able to find it again. 

My system plateaus at 5.5kW on a sunny day when it’s a 7.7kW system. Who knew?

I heard a rumor that I can’t get more credit for electricity than I use in a 12-month period. But I did. (Don’t tell anybody.) I’ve never been able to find that in writing. I don’t really want to ask anybody, since I apparently got away with it once. My folks in Maine signed paperwork for their solar system that makes that explicit; they won’t be able to make more than they use in a year. But me? I guess I’m a solar outlaw. 

The Upshot

This whole solar panel experience has an unexpected outcome. I tend toward the pessimistic and cynical. But at a certain point, adopting the “everybody is stupid and everything sucks” attitude all the time is a copout. This solar panel purchase has changed my attitude. Just because I can’t do everything, doesn’t mean I have to do nothing.

I mean, I’ve been burning dinosaurs for a living since 1989. I burned tens of thousands of pounds of gas just today. It’s going to be impossible for me to “catch up.” But that’s still not a reason to do nothing. I just bought an electric lawnmower to use some of my solar surplus. It’s lighter and quieter. I’m thinking about a heat pump instead of a natural gas boiler. I joined Protect Our Winters. This attitude change has even bled over into other things. I came up with my Big Stupid charity run for two non-profits because I figured I could do something instead of nothing. 

I mean, I’m still a grouch. But I’d rather be a grouch that goes down swinging instead of one who just sits on a barstool and complains.