Nana and the Elephant. A Story and an Instant Podcast.

 

I decided to test out some of Google’s newer AI tools—specifically, NotebookLM. I was curious about their podcast generation feature, and figured: why not throw something personal into the machine and see what comes out?

So I uploaded a story—one I’d written about a conversation I once had with my grandmother, Nana.  A quiet memory, dusted off and given a slight narrative shine.

I fed it into NotebookLM, clicked the “generate podcast” button, and waited. It took about 15 minutes.

Below is the story.

And then—what the AI did with it.

She Moves

This piece began as a dream, or a half-song, back in 2009. A character emerged and never quite left. I didn’t know what to do with her until now. So here she is—in her own rhythm, her own night, driving into something new.

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She Moves

She wakes at three a.m.

Blinks to clear her head.

No sound.

The house is still.

Dark.

Silent, decisive footsteps—

in seconds she’s at the door.

Grabs her keys.

Her bag.

Doesn’t bother with the bed.

She hesitates

on the back porch.

Shaking, but sure.

She must.

She has to go.

Lets the door shut

like a closing chapter

then slips into her car.

And the road ahead

is an unknown life.

When there’s nothing left to do,

and no one left to blame—

hard times get harder

when you have to change.

When all you’ve got is the sound of blue,

you play a whole new game.

‘Cause no one ever

stays the same.

She drives.

Thinks back on the years

she just made do—

Empty men.

Empty jobs.

Bottles that went nowhere.

That first time in the mirror—

the ache in her aging face.

She broke down,

right then,

and knew:

This can’t be it.

She moves, she moves.

She knows what she’s gotta do.

Pomp and circumstance—

graduate to a whole new school.

Learn to win

with a brand new set of rules.

Use your heart.

Make it work.

Make all new friends.

Push down the fear.

Believe in the end.

‘Cause staying ‘round here?

It amounts to nothing

in the end.

I’m a Student Again, Part 2B: The Dream That Waited

 Yosemite Mountaineering School wasn’t just a program. It was a cathedral tucked in the wilderness—stone fireplaces, wood floors, big beams that looked like they’d been lifted straight from the forest and blessed with permanence. The building itself breathed purpose.

The director was the kind of man who felt like he’d walked out of a sepia-toned movie about taming the American frontier. Rugged, but kind. A storyteller, a teacher, the kind of calm you want tethered to your rope when you’re dangling off a granite cliff with adrenaline trying to crawl up your throat.

He knew when to speak and when to simply be there—anchored, grounded, present. He was, in that moment of my life, a figure of quiet strength I hadn’t known I was looking for.

I wanted to be like him.

Not in the surface-level hero worship way, but something deeper: I wanted that life. The clarity of it. The rhythm. The deep inhale of mountain air and the way people listened when he spoke.

I wanted to become an outdoor guide.

That was the dream. The next step was supposed to be figuring out how.

But then… life.

After the course ended, I hitched out of the park to Lee Vining, where I sat on a bench for six hours waiting for the next bus home. It was one of those liminal days—caught between two versions of myself. The dreamer on the edge of something new, and the kid who still had to go home and deal with a girlfriend, a job search, a college decision, a mother, a sister, a handful of friends all tethering me back to my familiar life.

And just like that, the dream… slipped.

It didn’t crash. It didn’t burn. It just quietly got tucked into a drawer marked “Maybe Someday.”

So now, all these years later, when the move to Quincy started to take shape, I reached back into that drawer and pulled the dream out again.

Enrolling in the Outdoor Recreation Leadership program at Feather River College wasn’t just about learning something new. It was about returning to something old—something I’d left behind on a granite wall under the watchful eye of a man who taught me how to breathe when breathing felt impossible.

And maybe—just maybe—I’ll learn to become that calm presence for someone else, someday.

I'm a Student Again, Part 2: The Backstory

This All Started with a One-Way Ticket to the Wild

It was mid-July, 1974. I was 18, freshly released from Glendale High School with a diploma and a vague sense that something big was supposed to happen next.

So I decided to make it happen.

To celebrate my graduation, I talked my mother into something wildly out of character: dropping me off—alone, with nothing but a backpack—at the downtown Los Angeles Greyhound bus terminal.

If she had known what that terminal was actually like—a combination of a one-act play about urban decay staged in fluorescent lighting and just a shithole—she never would have gone along with it. But she didn’t know. She drove away before I could tell her.

I bought a one-way ticket to Yosemite National Park. That’s where I was going. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I needed to go north, into the trees, into the wild. Away from whatever wasn’t working.

The bus ride took eight hours. I grabbed the only available seat, next to a striking woman who looked to be in her 30s. She nodded politely, said nothing.

There was something unmistakably sad about her—beautiful, but folded in on herself. It took a while, but we eventually found our bridge: Spanish. She was from Paris, but like many Europeans, she spoke a little. I had two years of high school Spanish rattling around in my brain. It was enough.

She had recently suffered a tragedy. Her husband had died in a car accident. No children, just grief and silence and a small bag packed for escape. She didn’t know much about Yosemite—only that it was beautiful. A place people go when they need to forget, or remember.

She didn’t know the campgrounds would be full. I wasn’t worried. I had a tent and no plans beyond the next morning. When we arrived, I tried to help her find a bed for the night, but every place was booked solid.

So I did the only thing that made sense.

I invited her to sleep in my tent.

She said yes.

I gave her my only sleeping pad and unzipped my bag to cover us both. The ground was hard. The air was cool. And somehow, we both slept.

In the morning, she ran off in search of accommodation and—miraculously—found one. She came back just as I was packing up my things. She gave me a long hug. A kiss on the cheek. Her eyes said thank you in a language that didn’t need translation.

And then she was gone.

I walked out to the highway and stuck out my thumb, headed for Tuolumne Meadows. I was about to spend a month sleeping in a tent while enrolled in Yosemite Mountaineering School.

I don’t remember her name. I wish I’d asked for her address.

I hope she’s well.