I talked some friends into letting me be a guest podcaster for their new OutLandIsh series. I’ve listened to podcasts and they sometimes sound like journalism, a sport that I like. I will say that if you had told me when I was in college that radio journalism was going to be the thing, I would have made a snorting noise or maybe even actually snorted. We all had a crush on Edward R. Murrow, but really, radio?

But it is a thing, and my OutLandIsh friends were killing it. And they were gracious enough to let me give it a whirl. Liz gave me a walkie talkie-looking contraption and in May I scampered down to New Mexico to check out the part of the Continental Divide Trail that wasn’t under 6 feet of snow. I got some great interviews, and I was pretty excited to be branching out into a new medium.

Then the pain and suffering began. The process to get the audio recording from my walkie-talkie into the sound editing program required uploading the audio to “The Creative Cloud.” I now think of the Creative Cloud as more of a Creative Mirage, whereby you think you uploaded your audio but when you try to show it to someone else, they put their hand on your head like you have a fever. The Creative Cloud is Satan.

What the Creative Cloud looks like while it is digesting your podcast.

My friend Rachel had clearly lost a bet in a drinking game and was assigned to be my editor. I called her on a Sunday morning, waking her with a salute of “This F—ing Sucks!” She tried to soothe me. “This work is really demoralizing. I can tell you that your experience is normal, at least as far as I can tell.” I was not soothed.

After several seances, calling on the mercy of the spirit world, the Creative Cloud and Satan finally belched up my podcast. I think I’ll stick to good ol’ pen and paper, thank you very much, but you’re welcome to listen to the devil’s work if you like.

https://www.yourforestsyourfuture.org/listen.php