January | 2013 | Lisa Stowe – The Story River Blog

A friend of mine is a songwriter and in a band. We’ve talked a lot about the craft of writing, comparing lyrics to novels. He was a bit startled at the similarities; the inner demand of a story that won’t leave you alone until you release it to paper. Or, in his case, to music. He hadn’t thought about how the story doesn’t care if you share it in a poem, an essay, a novel, or a small piece of bluegrass.

There is an old abandoned hotel from the 1800s that is supposedly haunted by a young woman whose husband was killed in a mine explosion. When she learned of his death, the story says she hung herself. People swear they have heard her, have seen doors open and shut, and so forth. But this isn’t about the hotel or a scary ghost.

My friend was a bit haunted by this story. He wrote a song about the young woman, and what haunted him was not her death (real or apocryphal) but the need to release the song. When I say ‘release’ I don’t mean ‘publish’. He felt an overwhelming urge to sing the song in the old hotel. He wanted her to hear the lyrics.

We talked a lot about the reasons why we feel the urge to capture lives and emotions and all the myriad details that float around and coalesce into stories. We talked about how some things resonate so strongly that you just know there’s a reason you have to create that piece and bring it to life.

Yet this hotel was falling in, sagging with years of standing alone in mountain weather. It wasn’t exactly a safe place to enter. My friend also didn’t think it was a place this young woman’s spirit should be. He wanted to sing her to release, to tell her it was okay to move on, that there were better places out there. So he braved the creaky old building, braved his nervousness, and braved that spirit of the past. He went into the building with his mandolin and sang to a young woman who may never have existed, but who needed to hear a story.

Today he told me that he wasn’t sure he could do it alone. He obviously was able to, but he said that he thought about all the local people he knew and decided if he couldn’t make it, I was the one person he felt he could call, who would go into the building with him.

Not because I believe in ghosts, but because I believe in stories and understand the need to share them.

I think that’s one of the best compliments I’ve received in a very long time.

It doesn’t matter how we tell our stories, whether to an audience, a publisher, a multitude of readers, or a solitary ghost. Or even just to ourselves. What matters is that we listen when something inside urges us to speak. Or sing. Or write. Or paint. You never know who is nearby that needs to hear.

Please bear with me because some of you know bits of this story and experienced it first hand.

After my Irish Wolfhound/dog soul mate, Strider, died of bone cancer, my son talked me into letting him adopt a puppy. He had to do a lot of talking. On top of all the emotional aspects, this pup was barely seven weeks old and a mix of pit bull, lab, spitz, and I’m sure a bit of ketchup brand thrown in.

The animal shelter insisted on spaying her before we could take her home. It didn’t matter that I promised we’d do it and I can understand as I’m sure they’ve heard that line before. But I was concerned about hormonal imbalance, the higher risk of cancer she would be exposed to, etc. She was spayed at seven weeks anyway, and we brought her home.

I told her she was weird looking (she still is). I told her she would never be loved as much as Strider (maybe she is). I told her she had beady eyes (she does, but okay, they’re cute beady eyes) and I told her she was useless (she’s a great guard dog and has protected my son more than once). I’ll admit it here; she’s wormed her way into my affections, probably by using some nefarious dog spell.

One way she accomplished this was by getting stuck on a huge boulder on the granite face of an area rock climbers habituate. It was dark, cold, and pouring rain, and since her exact location wasn’t known, it was determined to be too dangerous to find her.

Picture this. Me, sitting on a wet log along side a steep, narrow, hiking trail. Moss covered trees hang over me, a friend’s dog is shivering, soaked and plastered against my side. It’s almost dark. Every so often my friend’s dog would bark. And there would come back this faint, echoing answer from this dog I didn’t want and told myself I didn’t even like. We called off the search knowing she was out there alone except for bears and cougars and coyotes…

The next morning as soon as it was light lots of people showed up to help. Some had climbing gear, some hiked, and she was found still sitting on the boulder waiting. They said she was smart to know we were coming for her. I said she was too stupid to self-rescue and Strider would have known what to do.

Okay, so a few years have passed. This weekend I was scratching her tummy (she has a way of forcing a person to do her will) and found a lump under one of her tiny, undeveloped nipples. It’s about the size of the ball of my thumb. It doesn’t seem to hurt her when it’s touched, but it clearly doesn’t belong there.

The part of me that swears I don’t like her is saying wait a week or so and see what happens. But somehow, over the years, that part of me seems to be shrinking. Now there’s a bigger part shouting to rush her to the vet even though it’s at night and there would be emergency fees.

I really need to figure out how she works these mind control tricks.