The End: Learning how to write that...

In about 24 hours I'm going to be on the plane going to Seattle. Then I'm going to spend six weeks learning as much as I can about writing stories from people who can actually do it.

I did not make a photograph of the fox
in Yellowstone. I just watched it.
I made this photo in Japan. It isn't a photo
of a fox. It is a photo of a story about a
fox. Not the same thing.

On Wednesday, I was in Yellowstone where I saw a red fox cross a bridge lined with human people. I'm not sure what the people were looking at, but their attention was in the distance, outside, over there. None of them seemed to notice the fox, which is just as well; human attention is about the last thing a fox needs and sometimes the last thing a fox gets. 


The bridge is high and narrow and long. The river at the bottom of the gorge is rushing with spring run-off and impossible to swim. So the fox crossed the bridge as quickly as it could, and, when it got to the other side, it just kept going. 


Because I'm a human being, when I remember that fox, it becomes a story about a fox.


Because I am a human being, I think about how the moments of bridge crossing had a beginning, a middle, and an ending. I think about how it is like a story in that way, but I also think about how the fox ran up the hill once it reached the other side and how the life of the fox wasn't over.