thinking of the time I asked my nephew what his favorite animal was and he said he didnt know so I started listing different animals that he knows and he kept saying "no" to all of them until I got to horse. However, his exact words were "horses!! :D but he is dead :(" . I asked him who died and he kept telling me a horse is dead. Now, my nephew has hard time pronouncing words that begin with the letter "s" so I asked him if he meant that he saw a horse that was sad. And that made him look at me dead in the eye and say "no, he is dead 😐"
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One more ask, lol.
Something just occurred to me that really drives home just how unsolvable this whole thing was. Grian found Mumbo on pure accident, which just drives home the fact that Grian is not in control. This is something you made clear through the narrative and in the authors notes.
It had to be an accident. Because I'm think back to when Grian and Scar were analyzing the initial search. They both saw fault with the fact that they focused the search on Cloud Lake without even considering Pinnacles, and the fact that Mumbo was given a permit for a Cloud Lake, a closed trail, in the first place.
But Mumbo was SO FAR off trail in such a tricky, hidden spot that, EVEN IF the initial search would have led them to Pinnacles, EVEN IF they would have found the bag and the bike, EVEN IF Mumbo had been given a permit for Pinnacles instead of Cloud Lake from the very start... it might not have mattered. It might have already been too late. They STILL might not have been able to find him alive, or even at all, before the area was evacuated for the fire.
Just... there really was no rhyme or reason. No hidden cause. No fault. Just...
There's this Irish folk song I'm low-key obsessed with in which the countryside is described as "where nature is seen both majestic and savage."
Mumbo died due to the majestic, savage nature of... well. Nature.
And there's nothing anyone could have done.
(I hope it's clear that I'm using the word "savage" as an adjective describing a fierce, violent force of nature and not... other contexts 😬)
Yes, exactly! Actually putting this under a cut it got long lol
Not going to lie I did Worry a few times throughout writing this about having a plot that was so heavily dependent on accidents. Like, is it undermining character agency to have significant things just happen? Do my characters drive the plot or is it just happening to them? The other hikers finding Mumbo's bike in chapter 3/4 was an accident. Most of the events of chapter 11 were an accident.
But genuinely from a real-life perspective...that's how things just happen. This story is kind of a non-mystery mystery. It's a mystery in the sense that we don't know where Mumbo is or what happened. But it's not a mystery in the sense that is some conspiracy to be unraveled, a killer to be arrested, etc. I talked about this in another ask a few weeks ago about how I mystery write, but this fic had a lot of unique barriers to it. Firstly, from a purely practical plot perspective, Grian has like nothing to work with. He has no access to any SAR tools. He doesn't have access to documents (at first lmao) or any other type of hard copy research. He cannot go out and interview people or do anything else a mystery protagonist would typically do to find "clues" because he's alone in a fire lookout. That's it. That's the setting. There is a guy who is alone in the wilderness who wants to find someone.....out of hundreds of square miles of nothing. With no real tools except his own two feet, a map, and a new friend who can only give voiceover help.
So.....there's already a hard limit on what he can reasonably do without the narrative helping him out a little. And I think I did my best harnessing everything he could do on his own. Now, Grian also THINKS he can solve it all himself. He sees no issue with this set-up. As the author though I'm forced to consider HOW he plans to do all this though lol. So again from a reasonable perspective, he ain't working with much. He himself would not have considered Pinnacles if the bike didn't get found. He might have pieced together that Mumbo took a different trail, but he would've had no way to figure out which one. Meanwhile, I just focused on building the plot of his personal journey. I also just focused on the parallels between how Mumbo got to the place he was and how Grian ended up there too.
Also speaking of the initial search at Cloud Lake, I want to highlight a case I listened to on the Out Alive podcast from Backpacker Magazine. It's the episode "Finding Life on the Edge of Death" about Andrew Devers who was missing for 9 days on the Pratt River Trail in Oregon in 2021 (and survived.) First of all, excellent episode. Also, I did not listen to this until after I had worked out the plot, but it really strengthened my conviction in the storyline I had laid out. And I did end up referencing something from this episode in chapter 10. Specificaly, Andrew went hiking alone on a trail that recently had a landslide. Because the environment was so drastically changed, when he turned around to hike back he couldn't find his way at all. And I was like, yeah. That's why Mumbo's search continued to stay in the same area even though the trail was closed. Because this happens. They thought he lost the original trail in the landslide, just like this guy did. They thought that the trail being closed actually increased his chances of being lost there because it increased his chances of losing his way. They just didn't realize he actually turned around and went somewhere else. No conspiracy. Just a misguided assumption on the situation.
Also it really is horrifying how difficult it is to find people in the wilderness. So many people who go missing are found months or even years later on accident. I'm also reminded of the tragic case of Geraldine Largay, who died after going missing on the Appalachian trail. She survived 26 days. Search teams got within a 100 yards of her location, but they didn't find her body until two years later. She was only two miles off-trail, and only 30 mins walk from a road. She got turned around after simply stepping off trail to use the restroom. It hurts my heart so much. More recently last November, in my own beloved Big Bend National Park, Christy Perry went missing on the Lost Mine Trail for 8 days and was later found alive. She was so lost but only 1/4 a mile off-trail. I've been on that trail many times. I've....um.....been off-trail on that trial many times....Anyway, I was keeping an eye on updates constantly hoping she'd be found because it looked so bad for her, but she was fortuantely okay.
Anyway I guess my point is that people really do get hopelessly lost all the time while being close to trails, and being close to trail doesn't mean someone will be found quickly or at all. And in Mumbo's case...he wasn't anywhere where people thought he might be. Grian's mission was a needle in a haystack. If I were truly being realistic, he wouldn't have found him at all, but that's where I'm using narrative power.
So yeah. Accidents. Sometimes you're just not in control. Sometimes bad things happen. Nature majestic and savage indeed....
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