Speaker 1: All right, everybody, I know you're sitting home wineing and
Speaker 1: crying about how you missed getting tickets for Meat Eater
Speaker 1: off there and like you're just despondent, catatonic. What are
Speaker 1: the kind of words you guys even know what catatonic means?
Speaker 1: Super not happy because you missed me and every it's
Speaker 1: so but it has but perk up, come out of
Speaker 1: that catatonic stupor because there's still two venues left. Everything's
Speaker 1: sold out, but we got still still two venues left.
Speaker 1: April fifteen and April sixteen. Neighboring dates me cal Yanni,
Speaker 1: Meat Eater off the Air, Holy Smokes, MASA Arts Center,
Speaker 1: and Mace Arizona. Few Phoenix Market people or people who
Speaker 1: can get there in City National Grove, Anaheim, California, like
Speaker 1: the l A. You people, come on out, man, hurry
Speaker 1: up and get them. Everything else is gone, but get
Speaker 1: those see you me eat your podcast you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: folk bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't
Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on X Hunt, creators of the
Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play Store, nor where
Speaker 1: you stand with on X you're starting, Johnnie, you're starting
Speaker 1: the whole podcast. Yeah, because if you're gonna say the
Speaker 1: first thing, there's something I think you should say. Oh,
Speaker 1: but then going on welcome everybody, No, no, no, you
Speaker 1: should say, um, so Alex Messenger, you got attacked by
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear, and then going to whatever you're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about, all right, because that's titillating, very that's titillating,
Speaker 1: and people want to hear all about that. Have you
Speaker 1: always been fond of that word? Did you feel like
Speaker 1: just recently it's like re entered your vocabulary, titting what
Speaker 1: I like about? But no, it only recently. I've always
Speaker 1: been fond of it. I've just been trying to use
Speaker 1: it more. Um, there's a Tom Robbins character named Marks Marvelous,
Speaker 1: and uh, he always liked that name because people loathe
Speaker 1: the marks Karl Marx and real men never use the
Speaker 1: word marvelous, and so it was sort of an attack
Speaker 1: on language and stereotypes about language. So I feel like, um,
Speaker 1: the word titilating is unexpected. It is that like if
Speaker 1: I said red or awesome or bitching, people don't care
Speaker 1: about that red story no one's gonna listen a titilating story.
Speaker 1: You'll fill over there. He looks half asleep, can't be
Speaker 1: he's fired right up now. Yeah, you hear that word
Speaker 1: and they turn the volume now so they know it's
Speaker 1: a titilating story about white water and a bear attack.
Speaker 1: That's right, be bite. But how do we get to
Speaker 1: that well once? I mean, just now, I want to
Speaker 1: do in. I want to do him justice as an author.
Speaker 1: Alex Messenger, author of the twenty ninth Day Surviving a
Speaker 1: Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra. But first, Yanni on
Speaker 1: Walleye Alex now lives in Duluth, correct, that's right. And
Speaker 1: I was telling him that we were just recently on fishing.
Speaker 1: Walleye on the lax Yes, if I caught some, Walley
Speaker 1: said yes. But I was more just as interested in
Speaker 1: catching while I I was interested in asking everybody why
Speaker 1: the obsession with Wally? Why do you think it is?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think people appreciate the flavor and
Speaker 1: uh that it's a beautiful fish and it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to filet. That's a great way. That's a great thing
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, that's yeah, that's a good way to
Speaker 1: sell a fish monk fish or no, it's not like
Speaker 1: a shovel nose sturgeon. All the people I've asked this
Speaker 1: question to you the first person, I think that that
Speaker 1: has added that point that it's easy to filet. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna add that to everything I talk about now. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at a northern it's like, No, I always
Speaker 1: talk about things that are hard to clean. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: no one ever praises, no one ever celebrates things that
Speaker 1: are easy to clean. I mean that's utilitarian. It's especially
Speaker 1: a lot of them. You got to be a writer.
Speaker 1: You're not that old though, Oh you are? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got a baby face. No, I just did some rough math.
Speaker 1: Read your book. I did some rough math, and I
Speaker 1: had you pegged at twenty seven. Yeah, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: oh five seventeen, Okay, later ways the way, Oh you're
Speaker 1: good on Wally. Um, So you're from duluthep uh born
Speaker 1: and raised U born and raised in the Twin Cities suburbs.
Speaker 1: My wife's from Duluth. So that's what brought me there.
Speaker 1: So I was living up in Eally, Minnesota before um
Speaker 1: moving down to Duluth. Oh man, my old man loved
Speaker 1: Eli because before my time, my man was they would
Speaker 1: do big, long canoe trips. And I still have this,
Speaker 1: I still have I think I want to get framed.
Speaker 1: I have like his Duluth pack. Yeah, yeah, that says
Speaker 1: some canoe country outfitters on it stenciled on there, like
Speaker 1: the big leave. I had it rebuilt recently. I want
Speaker 1: to get it put in a glass frame it so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hang ou on my wall or just keep
Speaker 1: using it. I moved to Duluth for an afternoon one
Speaker 1: time when I um moved. Well here here's the deal man.
Speaker 1: What was weird about it is when I got out
Speaker 1: of graduate school, I intended to take all the things
Speaker 1: I learned about UM, Like I started writing like in
Speaker 1: the West, right, and there's this very intense sort of
Speaker 1: sense of place in the West, and and I wanted
Speaker 1: to take that way of looking at the world and
Speaker 1: apply it to the Great Lakes. And so soon as
Speaker 1: I finished graduate, squad left because I was gonna go
Speaker 1: write a book about the Great Lakes. Um and my
Speaker 1: dad had just died, So I took his truck and
Speaker 1: I started doing all my research. And uh, I had
Speaker 1: a girlfriend at the time, and we're gonna move to.
Speaker 1: I was like, I thought, like, what better place to
Speaker 1: write about? The Great Lakes and Duluth like you kind
Speaker 1: of just nudged right out in it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some great stories up there. So I thought, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll just rand a place for six months here and
Speaker 1: then I'll move and to the kind of the other
Speaker 1: end of the lakes and live there. And I remember
Speaker 1: we were sitting in a bar, um looking at We're
Speaker 1: sitting in a bar looking at apartments and cottages for
Speaker 1: rent and whatnot. And my girlfriend got an email that
Speaker 1: she had uh gotten accepted into this writing fellowship awesome
Speaker 1: that she had to go to. And so that's just
Speaker 1: Aliso and everything kind of like went an upheaval and
Speaker 1: then wasn't long later I changed my mind. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: moved back out west, Yeah, but almost moved there. That's
Speaker 1: crazy and amazing how life just kind of switches. I
Speaker 1: knew these um we'll go down to this, we'll go
Speaker 1: down to your story in a minute. But it's cold
Speaker 1: as ship, right because I knew these girls. I knew
Speaker 1: these girls I met down in Key West that were
Speaker 1: telling me that they were students at um D and
Speaker 1: they were telling me one time they realized that they
Speaker 1: went a month without going outside. Yeah, because you can
Speaker 1: take tunnels everywhere. Yeah, that campus is just like super
Speaker 1: connected and really easy to get lost in because of
Speaker 1: you know, these buildings weren't originally made for it, so
Speaker 1: they're all just like kind of bolted together. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't need to go outside. You can spend a
Speaker 1: month in your bedroom slippers only from class and the
Speaker 1: cafeteria and stuff like that. Yep, exactly taking walks for exercise. Uh,
Speaker 1: what do you do, Like, what's your main thing you
Speaker 1: do for a living? Your writer? Uh So my day
Speaker 1: job is marketing for a hospital in town there called St. Luke's.
Speaker 1: So um. I started that about a year ago. Before that,
Speaker 1: I was doing marketing for an outdoor company called Frost
Speaker 1: River who makes traditional canoe packs kind of like the
Speaker 1: one You're dead had um. And uh yeah, so I've
Speaker 1: been to a marketing for a long time and the
Speaker 1: writing and photograph fe sidework, which is really vocationally exciting
Speaker 1: for me. You got a a scar on your legs
Speaker 1: more the bear guy I do. Yeah, drop your drawers
Speaker 1: and show us. It's kind of a compromising old it's
Speaker 1: it's in like a bad spot right. Oh, it's real high. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right right at the hip joint. So uh, it's
Speaker 1: like dropped drop trout and then lift up the boxers
Speaker 1: and then you can see it. So I don't show
Speaker 1: it plant company. No, you don't just walk around and
Speaker 1: walk into bars and and be what happened? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get kicked out that way. Tell tell people about them.
Speaker 1: You're on a six hundred mile long canoe trip. It's right,
Speaker 1: lay that out. Yeah, So like what is the trip?
Speaker 1: The trip seventeen okay, yeah, let's see seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: Seventeen years old and you embark with some other kids
Speaker 1: on a six hundred mile long paddle. Yep. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the it's the pinnacle trip for the camp that
Speaker 1: we were going through. Um what yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: explained this camp? Yeah? So Camp Mino gin Um it's
Speaker 1: a wilderness trip based camp. It's started in I think
Speaker 1: um up in northern Minnesota, north of Grand Moray. It's
Speaker 1: like literally a few miles south of the Canadian border,
Speaker 1: right next to the boundary waters. UM. So they set
Speaker 1: up with the mission of um taking kids out for
Speaker 1: transformational experiences in a wilderness setting. But not bad kids. No, no,
Speaker 1: not like not like those um more yeah, oriented towards
Speaker 1: kids who have gotten in trouble or have chemical issues
Speaker 1: and things like that. You know, this is this is
Speaker 1: um kids that just want to have an adventure um
Speaker 1: and see the wild places. So like a regular summer camp,
Speaker 1: but just bumped up just a little higher notch of adventure.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. You know, it's it's not like a residential
Speaker 1: camp where you're getting up, you're eating in the cafeteria.
Speaker 1: You're going and do an archery and catching frogs and
Speaker 1: uh doing arts and crafts and stuff, which isn't to
Speaker 1: knock that at all. That's a really fun experience, but
Speaker 1: this is just different from that. UM. So you get
Speaker 1: to camp and you get packed out and there you know,
Speaker 1: they kind of act like an outfitter in that sense. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought one of the most interesting things about the
Speaker 1: camp was that you don't take a car to base
Speaker 1: camp or two headquarters. Yeah. Yeah. So it's this amazing
Speaker 1: spot um like literally right on the edge of the
Speaker 1: boundary waters. You have to go across the lake to
Speaker 1: get to it, and there's like an old ATV trail
Speaker 1: that you can take around the lake to get there.
Speaker 1: But um, camp itself is just kind of out there,
Speaker 1: so you feel like you're I mean, you really are
Speaker 1: in the wilderness even when you're at base camp. Is
Speaker 1: it mostly is it like like blue collar kids are
Speaker 1: mostly wealthy kids. Uh, it's it's a mixture, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's super intentional to um. There's like scholarship programs
Speaker 1: for if you can't afford the fees and scholarship. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I actually was recipient of a partial scholarship for
Speaker 1: this longer trip. You can also be like a work
Speaker 1: camper where you're at camp as like a residential camper
Speaker 1: and you're helping out around camp with like chores and whatever,
Speaker 1: and you know, having a lot of friends, a lot
Speaker 1: of fun with friends and kids rage and UM, that's
Speaker 1: a really cool experience too. Um. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a wide range of folks that go there.
Speaker 1: But sessions start with like really short kind of intro um.
Speaker 1: I think they even have a shorter session now that's
Speaker 1: like five days or something. Um, but at the time,
Speaker 1: the shortest session was eight days. And my parents were like,
Speaker 1: we're going on this trip, and like, okay, I would
Speaker 1: go into the boundary waters uh for a long time
Speaker 1: with my family. But my parents were had heard great
Speaker 1: things and they kind of sent me on that first
Speaker 1: trip to you just go up and do a trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. Yeah. So it's now like you spend
Speaker 1: your summer there, No, no go and do a canoe trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the going to a canoe trip. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: like backpacking trips, um climbing trips, things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's just amazing experiences and you know, you're with
Speaker 1: your contemporaries and you're also with guides who are you know,
Speaker 1: really well versed in what you're doing. And we're not
Speaker 1: old not old, No, I mean they're you know, um
Speaker 1: they're adults. Uh, but they're not like middle aged. Were
Speaker 1: your parents adventures they were? Yeah? Maybe still, well they're
Speaker 1: getting they're they're both retired, so the adventure, the type
Speaker 1: of adventure has changed a little bit. But um, they're
Speaker 1: both in anthropology. Um. So my dad was a professor
Speaker 1: of anthropology at Hammond University. Um the whole time I
Speaker 1: was growing up. My mom um was an adjunct professor
Speaker 1: and worked in administration and stuff. And they both worked
Speaker 1: together and they teach study abroad trips um every January,
Speaker 1: so we'd go in two of these ancient sites and Mexico. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was climbing up temples in Mexico when I
Speaker 1: was three with them for at before that, they did
Speaker 1: field work like in um Guatemal, I think, and other
Speaker 1: Central American companies or countries where they're setting up with
Speaker 1: hammocks in the jungle and you gotta check your boots
Speaker 1: for spiders and your archaeological pits for snakes and stuff,
Speaker 1: and breaking up machete fights between the workers and whatever.
Speaker 1: So they definitely, uh brought a sense of adventure to
Speaker 1: bring it up myself and my sister. So you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like totally out of the blue that they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, you should go on this trip, but
Speaker 1: you know, a hugely important decision for them to to
Speaker 1: send me there because um, you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: we've gone camping before, but going camping with this like
Speaker 1: organized group and and seeing how you can move and
Speaker 1: do all this stuff really efficiently, um was just kind
Speaker 1: of a paradigm shift for me because up in the
Speaker 1: boundary waters, you measure how far you have to carry
Speaker 1: your gear between lakes um in rods which is like
Speaker 1: seventeen and a half feet. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's like, oh, how long is that party? Oh
Speaker 1: it's five rods, that's super short, or it's three rods,
Speaker 1: which is a mile. Um and with my family it
Speaker 1: was like a hundred and fifty rods. That's like impossible.
Speaker 1: Did you learn how to think in rods? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know. When I started hanging out in Southeast Alaska,
Speaker 1: we have a fish act there. Everybody does everything in
Speaker 1: fathoms and nice first all conversations, I would need to
Speaker 1: like be running math, right, but after whatever, I know, years, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta do with the opposite. Now, let's see how
Speaker 1: many fathom? Yeah? Like I think like I think in
Speaker 1: fathoms only when I'm up there. When I'm up there,
Speaker 1: I think in fathoms. And someone says like feet, I
Speaker 1: gotta go like hold I'm at and go the other
Speaker 1: direction because I just conceptualize, right, I've learned to conceptualize
Speaker 1: in fathoms. Tell me again, how many feet fathom? Six
Speaker 1: ft six? I wonder if that's where they're saying, like,
Speaker 1: you can't fathom something that comes from? Uh you know,
Speaker 1: do you know where where the measurement the rod comes from.
Speaker 1: Oh I should know it's uh, this is I don't
Speaker 1: believe this is where it came from. But it's the
Speaker 1: length of an old Minnesota guide canoe. You know, Mark Twain.
Speaker 1: I think it's related to surveying though originally say you
Speaker 1: know the author, Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, you know his
Speaker 1: pen name, like Mark Twain is his pen name. His
Speaker 1: given name is Samuel Clemens. Mark Twain is that they
Speaker 1: would and the old steamboats that have a dude up
Speaker 1: front with a rope that had knots tied in an
Speaker 1: increments there's six ft increments. Ny, that's a good little
Speaker 1: project for you to work on right now. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've done this one before time. And the riverboat captain's
Speaker 1: got dude up front with a weight on a rope
Speaker 1: with knots, and he and the dudes yelling out what
Speaker 1: not depth? And Mark Twain second second, not is safe passage?
Speaker 1: Good water? So when you're a riverboat, calf you like
Speaker 1: that dude up front, were going, Mark Twain, Mark Twain,
Speaker 1: that means good ship and sing? Yeah. So you portage
Speaker 1: and rods, yeah, see portage and rods and and uh
Speaker 1: my perception of what was like achievable was totally different
Speaker 1: once I went on that first trip with camp and uh,
Speaker 1: I just I was hooked right after that. What's a
Speaker 1: long ass portage in your mind? Don't give it to
Speaker 1: me in rods, fathoms, uh, miles yards, whatever the hell
Speaker 1: you want to do? Yeah, well, uh, I mean when
Speaker 1: you get a standard but long ass portage, a standard
Speaker 1: but long. I'm a fan. I enjoy portaging, which is uh,
Speaker 1: you know some some people can't understand that. But um,
Speaker 1: between like one and two miles is like, this is good, Okay,
Speaker 1: I enjoy that. You know, you get into the mode
Speaker 1: and um you get to the end and you're just
Speaker 1: super stoked to be ready to put your boat down
Speaker 1: because I want to bump into this six hundred mile journey.
Speaker 1: So you did a number of trips over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the pinnacle. Yep. The hell week sure
Speaker 1: is the how long I take you guys to go
Speaker 1: six hundred miles? Or how long should it take to
Speaker 1: go six This is a forty two day session, um
Speaker 1: so uh A couple of days less than that was
Speaker 1: was you know, end to end kind of what the
Speaker 1: goal was? Yeah, and like and The reason we're bringing
Speaker 1: up porridges because this trip is it's it's you got
Speaker 1: just on a river for six hundred miles, right, You're
Speaker 1: bumping from system to system. So you like get on
Speaker 1: a lake, the lake flows into your river. You go
Speaker 1: to another lake, that lake that lakes frozen, you drag.
Speaker 1: You should across the ice. Then you like drag. Then
Speaker 1: you portage over into some whole other river system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then move through that network, right, and it's and
Speaker 1: then you always need to go round rapids and everything. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So our route was amazing. I mean we started out
Speaker 1: in the Northwest Territories UM on the Dublant River and
Speaker 1: made our way into nunavit Um and then eventually got
Speaker 1: off the Dublant and d of did this um not
Speaker 1: exactly height of land, but this sort of traverse into
Speaker 1: another river system, the coon Walk Um, and made our
Speaker 1: way down that and then ended up on the Kazan.
Speaker 1: And so it was a really unique route. UM that
Speaker 1: was a combination of rivers that Camp and other people
Speaker 1: had done, but we we hadn't seen another trip that
Speaker 1: had actually taken this route in this traverse, so we're
Speaker 1: kind of felt like we were breaking trail and you guys,
Speaker 1: you guys kind of architected your own journey. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the the Six of Us, which
Speaker 1: includes the guide, you know, confabd about you know what
Speaker 1: we wanted to have the trip b and and discussed
Speaker 1: a couple of different options and um, this one. You know,
Speaker 1: in addition to having that traverse and these different river
Speaker 1: systems which were very different in terms of the field. Um,
Speaker 1: it also went from the tiger forest, which is like
Speaker 1: scrub trees. Um. So the largest biome in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the tiger Yeah. And it's just amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like everything is in miniature, but they're
Speaker 1: still trees and everything. Um, and they're black spruce, poplar,
Speaker 1: yep and shrubs. And when you're like when you roll
Speaker 1: in like Siberia and Russia, Yeah, and then Canada, I
Speaker 1: think it's Yeah, I've read multiple times the largest biome
Speaker 1: on the planet, like the largest like habitat type. Yeah
Speaker 1: that exists. Yeah, and it's it's like the threshold between
Speaker 1: I don't know what's south of that as far as
Speaker 1: biomas go, but it's kind of the next step north
Speaker 1: is the tundra. So it's like right on the edge. UM,
Speaker 1: tell people about um sort of your perception of what
Speaker 1: it would be like to like travel across into the
Speaker 1: tree line. You know, when you look at old maps,
Speaker 1: you'll see on old maps they use, you'll see this
Speaker 1: line here and there it'll say the limit of wooded country.
Speaker 1: Oh nice and old maps. But talk about like what,
Speaker 1: like what that transition looked like. So do your expectation
Speaker 1: of what that would be like and what it was like? Like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I in my mind, you know, we're discussing this
Speaker 1: um looking over maps and everything, and we didn't have
Speaker 1: that description. It was kind of like the green zone
Speaker 1: turned into the whatever, you know, white zone. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that was right across the middle of Dublant Lake, which
Speaker 1: is the largest lake in ninevet Um. And I just
Speaker 1: imagine kind of pushing off from shore on Dublant and
Speaker 1: paddling across the lake, which in my mind was we
Speaker 1: couldn't see either shore. You know, you never do that.
Speaker 1: You never paddle in the middle of the lake where
Speaker 1: you can't see shore. It's really big. Yeah, isn't it
Speaker 1: intimidating to get out? Like why don't like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: do that? You wouldn't go in the middle of the
Speaker 1: lake because if a storm came up or whatever. You've
Speaker 1: been in a pretty bad situation. But that big, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could probably see a sliver of it.
Speaker 1: But in my mind's eye, I was like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be paddling, we won't see shore, it's gonna be foggy,
Speaker 1: We're gonna push off. There's gonna be trees. We'll get
Speaker 1: to the other side, completely understand. Yeah, So in my
Speaker 1: mind's eye, that's what it was gonna be, is like
Speaker 1: you know, a switch flipping, like trees, no trees, And
Speaker 1: in reality, it was just kind of like all the
Speaker 1: trees just kept getting smaller and smaller and fewer and
Speaker 1: farther between until you kind of don't even realize you're
Speaker 1: in this place that just doesn't have any trees, and
Speaker 1: the shrubs are like hidden in little hollows and stuff.
Speaker 1: There's just like very very little vegetation that grows of
Speaker 1: any height at all. We've experienced that on the Dalton Highway.
Speaker 1: You've crossed that a number of the tree line a
Speaker 1: number of times, and it's like a gradual petering out
Speaker 1: like just like just like you described it, just everything
Speaker 1: just sort of slows down and then there's no trees
Speaker 1: and I think one point we're like, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: there's no trees and sign right next to like the
Speaker 1: last black spruce, and they it was like there's a
Speaker 1: really yeah, I mean the last Braxts boots you can
Speaker 1: see from that spot. There's a really good book about
Speaker 1: um the Natural History of Alaska. And you know when
Speaker 1: you see like when you're going across the tree line
Speaker 1: the limited wooded country and then you see like some
Speaker 1: tree that's like the from whatever your perspective is at
Speaker 1: a given time, it looks like the last one. It's
Speaker 1: tempting to imagine it as like a pioneer, Yeah, whose
Speaker 1: seed like blue up there? Yeah, But in this book
Speaker 1: it explains that what you're typically looking at our remnants, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the last one. It's the last one left, not
Speaker 1: the first. It's not the first one there, you're looking
Speaker 1: at the last one left, and that you're still seeing
Speaker 1: the effects of the end of the ice age right
Speaker 1: of that of that line moving. Yeah, it's wild, and
Speaker 1: I mean the remnants of the ice age up there
Speaker 1: just so tangible in a way that's totally different from
Speaker 1: any other place I've been down here, like you know,
Speaker 1: you see stuff and you have to like think about, oh,
Speaker 1: like that boulder was dropped by the last ice age.
Speaker 1: But up there there's these things called um eskers, which
Speaker 1: are remnants of old glacial rivers, so that all the
Speaker 1: sediment would be, you know, in in the ice at
Speaker 1: the bottom of this glacial river, and then when the
Speaker 1: uh glaciers recede, that sediment drops down and it's the
Speaker 1: river bottom. But now it's a ridge that makes a
Speaker 1: raised sidewalk, often flat, often flat, awesome to portage on, great,
Speaker 1: great traveling, hard to portage up, hard to get on top,
Speaker 1: but then smooth. So how many people you got with us?
Speaker 1: How many people you get with you on the trip?
Speaker 1: There were six of us, two three canoes, three canoes,
Speaker 1: and you got one like, uh, like I don't know
Speaker 1: a guide counselor yep, howlds that guy? So he was
Speaker 1: in his mid twenties because in the pictures he looks
Speaker 1: young and we all look you yeah you do, but
Speaker 1: it looks like it. He looked like there's a guy.
Speaker 1: So he's in his mid twenties. Yeah, yeah, lots of experience. Um,
Speaker 1: he was pretty experienced. Wo yeah, yeah, he yep. We
Speaker 1: all the of Um we at the end of each
Speaker 1: trip with camp, we get a little we tie a
Speaker 1: little bracelet for each other. Um that's kind of too
Speaker 1: commemorate the trip. And um, you're theoretically gonna wear it,
Speaker 1: you know, uh as long as you can kind of
Speaker 1: a reminder of everything you learned. And his forearm was
Speaker 1: just like covered in it. I noticed that one of
Speaker 1: the pictures. I was wondering if he had an injury.
Speaker 1: I saw it. No, those are each one of those
Speaker 1: is a trip that he went on or guided. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So and at one point in time, this being like
Speaker 1: the Pinnacle Trip. Yeah, at one point time. This is
Speaker 1: what's kind of ironic is they used to run the
Speaker 1: Pinnacle trip, yeah, to the East, but quit doing it
Speaker 1: because of fears of polar bears. Right so, but no
Speaker 1: one ever got hit by a polar bear. Right. No,
Speaker 1: there were some some near misses that you know, they
Speaker 1: paid attention to, and we're like, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: polar bears are uh, well, for one thing, polar bears
Speaker 1: will stock humans. Um. And that's a level of creepy
Speaker 1: that is, you know, if you're going for for a
Speaker 1: canoe adventure and stuff. You know, it's kind of something
Speaker 1: you want to not have as part of your trip.
Speaker 1: I'll be worrying about a polar bear that's like following
Speaker 1: you from camp to camp and stuff like that. No, uh,
Speaker 1: I never have, and I would like to you. And
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, a taskm exposure to him, talks
Speaker 1: about just the creepiness of them following you around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I mean, it just be hard to sleep.
Speaker 1: And so they moved it over into grizzly country. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: And what are your as you're on this long trip? Yeah,
Speaker 1: reminder me how many days forty two days? When you're
Speaker 1: on this long trip, what are your conversations and what
Speaker 1: are your what is your awareness about that? Like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's grizzlies, you know what I mean, because I think that,
Speaker 1: like like I found life. It's like, um, I feel
Speaker 1: like you have all the things that you think are
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, you know, you're like aware of like
Speaker 1: these are the problems. Yeah, but then the problems are
Speaker 1: always something else, right oftentimes, Yeah, like you get blindsided
Speaker 1: by the actual things right right, Like you think, like
Speaker 1: you gotta clean your garage and that's a real problem.
Speaker 1: But then like your kid is lyme disease and you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know, it wasn't on my radar like
Speaker 1: you always. But here you are like presumably you're like,
Speaker 1: oh and there's like grizzlies and that's a problem, a
Speaker 1: thing of concern. Yeah, something to be aware of. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean we were aware of it before
Speaker 1: we left UM camp in Northern Minnesota. You know, we did, uh,
Speaker 1: we did training at camp on what you're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: you know, sitting around talking about we had bear spray
Speaker 1: pepper spray walking through you know, how to use that
Speaker 1: using the practice cans. Uh not at that point with
Speaker 1: the inactive ingredients. No, No, Um, we did. We were
Speaker 1: you know, using the cans and kind of going through
Speaker 1: the motions and everything. Um. But everything about the plunger
Speaker 1: press so um. But that training look like what was
Speaker 1: the training, Like here's the thing and here's how to
Speaker 1: use it. Yeah. And then I mean it wasn't like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. You know, we spent some time on it,
Speaker 1: um to the point where when we were done, I
Speaker 1: felt very comfortable with how to use it. Um. But
Speaker 1: you still just left in du tent. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: should have carried it. Yeah yeah, um yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to have it on you in order to be able
Speaker 1: to use it. So so you guys like took it seriously,
Speaker 1: but not that seriously. So yeah, right, we we had it.
Speaker 1: We we did that training, we did other training as
Speaker 1: far as like here's what you do in general. Um,
Speaker 1: you know when you see it and then, um, we've
Speaker 1: been told that it was really really weird to even
Speaker 1: see one up there and you can see forever. You know,
Speaker 1: they no trees, you're up on high points a lot,
Speaker 1: and you can see just everywhere. Um, So we kind
Speaker 1: of went into it with like they're there, but they're
Speaker 1: not like prevalent. Yeah, and they're a way different critter
Speaker 1: than the coastal ones. Oh yeah, just wait, like just
Speaker 1: like yeah, you just go forever and there's one way
Speaker 1: off in the distance off towns are scared shitless of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'm just going there. They're not acclimated into all
Speaker 1: the people. They see it and they're like that's whatever
Speaker 1: that is is not good. Yeah, exactly, there's a more
Speaker 1: kind of just a little more um, a little kind
Speaker 1: more wigged out all the time, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: just kind of a cage or sort of yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're you know, they don't have like salmon streams
Speaker 1: where they're just picking dinner out and whatever. They're they're
Speaker 1: pretty nomadic. They have a pretty wide range, which I
Speaker 1: understand is more wide than like a coastal grizzly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: extremely low population densities right where one of these things
Speaker 1: might have one of these bears up in these areas,
Speaker 1: he might have a hundred square mile home range. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or bigger maybe. I mean, I have to I have
Speaker 1: to look at the biology of it, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty wide range that they go. Um. But in addition
Speaker 1: to the bear spray and just kind of like the
Speaker 1: other protocols, we had um bear poppers, which are these
Speaker 1: noisemaking devices that you shoot with a like a bolt
Speaker 1: action little pen and then it fires off this thing
Speaker 1: and it goes just goes boom and it's just a
Speaker 1: noise deterrent. Did you experiment with those? No, that was
Speaker 1: that was like, here's how you use it, but you
Speaker 1: guys shouldn't use this, Like that's that's more something that
Speaker 1: the guy should use. If that comes up. You don't
Speaker 1: know what they want to ask about me, And as
Speaker 1: I asked about it now, the films like yes, the
Speaker 1: girls group we mispronounced, we mispronounced, the French names we
Speaker 1: say fombs known mispronounced. I can't reading, like the violent
Speaker 1: films yeah, or the French like so yeah, Um, you
Speaker 1: guys got your trip. There's a guy's trip, boys trip,
Speaker 1: and there's a girl's trip, and they're kind of parallel
Speaker 1: on parallel river systems. The reason I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: you about this, when I was a boy, if you
Speaker 1: were out like on a long canoe journey and you
Speaker 1: were occasionally coming across an encampment of girls, oh boy,
Speaker 1: I feel that there would be like you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to pull them apart. For you guys avoid each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: specifically exactly exactly are you guys ranted? You guys rated
Speaker 1: each other. You were out of all kinds of you
Speaker 1: guys would like rain all your food reserves like you
Speaker 1: you guys are starving, well not starving. It was bad.
Speaker 1: We were we were being aware that we needed to
Speaker 1: be careful with how much food we had, and they
Speaker 1: had certain reserves. There was like there was a there
Speaker 1: was an exchange, like they had like plenty of some
Speaker 1: stuff that you were out of you guys have they
Speaker 1: didn't have the right fishing equipment. You guys are slaying
Speaker 1: Lake trout like it's nobody's business exactly. You like eating lakers.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, you're talking about how good they are,
Speaker 1: like a spokesman for the Lake Trout. Lake trout is
Speaker 1: my favorite. The pictures in the book. You got a
Speaker 1: couple like one of those things as a tanker. That's
Speaker 1: my like, the biggest fish in my life. It's probably
Speaker 1: gonna be the biggest Lake Troy to ever catch. Someday.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a graphite out of it. Incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean they're they're absolutely amazing eating. Um. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to return to the how do
Speaker 1: you say it again? The farms. But one of the
Speaker 1: coolest things, because I like to fish, one the cool
Speaker 1: things is when you're in that big gass lake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the ice is breaking up and you're kind of
Speaker 1: like dragging over the ice and trying to find leads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you talk about the lakers are all up thinning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the weirdest scene. It's crazy. I mean it's takes
Speaker 1: spoons though, Yeah, they took spoons. Um, I mean they
Speaker 1: just loved spoons and they were really easy to catch,
Speaker 1: so we just tossed one out and be like, are
Speaker 1: we we'd ask you know, hey, you guys want fish
Speaker 1: for dinner and toss went out and like you as
Speaker 1: many fish as you want? Yeah? Yeah, and you guys
Speaker 1: flamm and do what with them? Yeah? We'd filatm we'd um.
Speaker 1: I mean they're basically steaks them in the big one
Speaker 1: that you caught, right, Yeah, this fish is as long
Speaker 1: as your leg in that photograph. I'm not even holding
Speaker 1: it for it. It's so heavy. I'm just like and
Speaker 1: then I mean, did you guys eat that in one meal? Yeah?
Speaker 1: They're growing kids, we're grown kids. We're burning a lot
Speaker 1: of calories. Yeah, six people and you're low on pasta
Speaker 1: were a low impastas, are like, all right, a couple
Speaker 1: more fish meals? Um. So yeah, we pretty much just
Speaker 1: fried up. Though you don't much that, but you run
Speaker 1: into the farms out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you gotta kind of steer clear of them,
Speaker 1: probably because the camp, the boss man, the counselor makes
Speaker 1: you guys steering her, the guide makes you steer clear
Speaker 1: of them. No, I mean we're just like you gusn't
Speaker 1: joined forces the party, right, We didn't want to impose
Speaker 1: on their trip, you know. I mean when you're when
Speaker 1: you're on a long trip like this, the group dynamic
Speaker 1: are well, I mean they're for one thing, they're crucial, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing is you know, it's it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's being made. Oh, it's almost being made in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: Like you don't have a bunch of different input points.
Speaker 1: You're not checking your Facebook, you're not interacting with a
Speaker 1: bunch of different people, Like, it's just your group that's
Speaker 1: out in the woods. And what you're making is something
Speaker 1: that's super special. And you know that was special for
Speaker 1: our group and special for their group, and we didn't
Speaker 1: want to, uh you know, have them have a different
Speaker 1: trip because of us or whatever. So you know, part
Speaker 1: of its mutual respect and uh yeah, so I was, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I always want to act like when I
Speaker 1: tell this anecdote, I always want to act like I
Speaker 1: heard it, but I actually heard it from someone that
Speaker 1: heard it. But a friend of mine went to remember
Speaker 1: who else was I went to see a lecture by
Speaker 1: a guy that does these extraordinarily long canoe trips like
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, um, And he was talking about
Speaker 1: you know when you spend a weekend, you spend a
Speaker 1: weekend out of the woods, and you feel time slowing
Speaker 1: down and you feel your mind clearing, your thoughts are focusing, right,
Speaker 1: You're you're developing a sense of peace right at a
Speaker 1: rapid rate. He said, that still happens. It's still happening
Speaker 1: at that rate after thirty days. Yeah, that clarification line
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't stop. Wow, I believe that, And I can
Speaker 1: see why you might get like in that zone. It
Speaker 1: might get that you didn't want, you didn't need outside,
Speaker 1: like you had your six guys, right, and you just
Speaker 1: didn't need the noise of other individuals, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of what's amazing about going on a trip
Speaker 1: like this. And you know, to your point, you don't
Speaker 1: need to be out for thirty days for that effect
Speaker 1: to start taking place. You know, you go into the
Speaker 1: boundary waters or whatever wild place you like to visit,
Speaker 1: and it starts to happen quickly, Like getting away from
Speaker 1: all that technology and everything and just being connected with
Speaker 1: nature and everything. It has a profound effect on on
Speaker 1: your psyche and and your body and your mind. And
Speaker 1: it's just it's one of the reasons that that I
Speaker 1: go out, and I think it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: a lot of people go out. It's just that personal
Speaker 1: transformation and centering that happens when you guys during the
Speaker 1: whole trip. Um, it seems like you're kind of traveling
Speaker 1: through two kinds of water. One is just like one
Speaker 1: is just you're slogging right against the wind across lakes
Speaker 1: and it's just probably incredibly monotonous, right, And the other
Speaker 1: the other is that, um, you're often in situations that
Speaker 1: it feel like, like extremely threatening from white water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and canyons feel that way. We're we're working within our
Speaker 1: with when their skill set and everything. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean when you're in it, Yeah, and then portaging around
Speaker 1: stuff all the time. Which of those two things do
Speaker 1: you prefer? Did you like just the just the going
Speaker 1: or did you like that that that stress of the
Speaker 1: white water. I really like both. I think both combined
Speaker 1: is is really awesome. Tentilating. That's great. Uh, talk about
Speaker 1: the implications of having a spray skirt or not a
Speaker 1: spray skirt, which I thought was pretty interesting. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: spray skirt is basically like a poncho that latches onto
Speaker 1: your boat um and then comes up to your person
Speaker 1: um and keeps water from coming over the sides or
Speaker 1: going over the top of the boat and getting into
Speaker 1: the boat um slash water. And in a two person canoe,
Speaker 1: it's is it connected or how does that work? There's
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways it can be set up.
Speaker 1: There might be just a bow skirt just for the front,
Speaker 1: or there might be like a full one where you know,
Speaker 1: both the bow and the stern person are like cinched
Speaker 1: in and there's uh all snaps all around the gunnals
Speaker 1: um the boat and that's like full protection. So UM,
Speaker 1: we didn't have them on ours just because it's kind
Speaker 1: of it was uh the mental hope that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: paddle as big a water if we didn't have that UM,
Speaker 1: And then uh policy switched not that long after to
Speaker 1: include them just because they are, UM they're helpful in
Speaker 1: making sure that that you're as safe as you can
Speaker 1: be out there and don't end up getting a bunch
Speaker 1: of water, because if you end up getting some water
Speaker 1: in your boat, it starts to affect how it handles
Speaker 1: pretty significantly. So UM. But because we didn't have them.
Speaker 1: We were, we were paddling super conservatively. But it's sort
Speaker 1: of a calculated decision you made. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: have had them. Yeah, but it invites, it could invite,
Speaker 1: you know, the decision to be like we got the skirts,
Speaker 1: let's do it. You know. Um, but I think if
Speaker 1: I went again, I would have the skirts and can't
Speaker 1: use the skirts now. Like I said, just because it's
Speaker 1: a it just raises your level of safety a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, you're still paddling conservatively and you don't want
Speaker 1: to go into crazy stuff. Um, but it just it
Speaker 1: makes it so that smaller things don't become bigger things.
Speaker 1: There's this pioneering um mountain hunter. He's dead now, but
Speaker 1: his name is Duncan Gil Chris, and he would do
Speaker 1: a lot of things that no one had done. And
Speaker 1: he had a similar approach to crampons when he was
Speaker 1: hunting mountain goats brought him. Okay, but you do not
Speaker 1: put them on to get somewhere. Oh sure, you only
Speaker 1: put them on to get out of somewhere. Right. That
Speaker 1: was his like view on it, right, Like it invites
Speaker 1: a level like it invites that like next we can
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, that next level of stuff, and you
Speaker 1: just had to make a rule for yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't touch these to get somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like setting up bumpers, you know, so that
Speaker 1: you can't cheat in your mind. Yeah, explain to me
Speaker 1: some of the river hazards, recyclers, strainers. You do pretty
Speaker 1: good job of walk through all these things. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different We call him all features
Speaker 1: basically in the rivers. Yeah, um so recyclers basically tumbling water. Um.
Speaker 1: I think some people call him haystacks. Um. Not positive
Speaker 1: on that. We want to fact check that. Okay, throw
Speaker 1: pillow into this pillow. So I get confused about so
Speaker 1: I look at it all as like, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess I kind of understand what it is, but I
Speaker 1: don't have the vocabulary that you have for it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a really good resource for that is um uh Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm blanking on his name. He's like the pioneer of
Speaker 1: popular canoeing. Uh. He has a great book about it.
Speaker 1: But up in the boundary waters? Is he from that
Speaker 1: country you're thinking of it? No, it's not stew. It's
Speaker 1: like a big coffee table book with um all kinds
Speaker 1: of instructional information. Fine, I want I'll buy this book
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. Um, maybe when you
Speaker 1: guys a computer can check it out. Yeah. Oh and
Speaker 1: he's got he painted and he did a bunch of documentaries.
Speaker 1: But he's like the godfather of modern canoeing. And I'll
Speaker 1: probably pop up. But the number two hit will be, uh,
Speaker 1: the number two hit will probably this gentleman. Okay, gone
Speaker 1: explain some features for me. Yeah. So on the river,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different ways that the water interacts with, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the rocks and and the shoreline and different
Speaker 1: stuff that's in there. So um, there you're typically aiming
Speaker 1: for downstream vs, which literally form a V that points
Speaker 1: downstream and that's kind of like the safest way down um.
Speaker 1: And then behind the rocks or are they things, usually
Speaker 1: there's an eddie where the current is kind of swirling
Speaker 1: around and it's kind of going upstream. It's calmer water. Usually, Um,
Speaker 1: there are these kind of insidious ones called pillows, and
Speaker 1: no one want to see one. But I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I don't understand the hydraulics of it. So basically, the
Speaker 1: water uh is pushing up and over something and that's
Speaker 1: something you know, it's a rock or a log or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's it's pushing over it smoothly. So when you're
Speaker 1: looking at it from upstream, all you see is this
Speaker 1: kind of like infinity pool edge. And when you're tubing,
Speaker 1: it's a tailbone ruiner. Yeah exactly. Yeah, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: hung up on it or whatever, depending on the current. Um.
Speaker 1: But like behind them there can be a like a
Speaker 1: waterfall pretty much. Um. So they're almost impossible to see
Speaker 1: from upstream, and and uh, you gotta watch out for
Speaker 1: him because they'll just come up and you're like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: we gotta do something. Um. Then there's recyclers where the
Speaker 1: water and that's what that's what we called him sleepers. Sleepers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on, you call the pillow sleeper Okay, yeah, are
Speaker 1: you still talking the river and bed pillow and sleeper
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, yeah, what the hell is with them?
Speaker 1: It's sort of like very peaceful, oculous. You know, it's
Speaker 1: called a blanket. It's recycling. It's good for them because
Speaker 1: it does it has that look from above it's hard
Speaker 1: to pick out. You can sleeper like that. Yeah. Gosh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we used to confuse creeper and sleeper okay, not with
Speaker 1: water with alcohol, Oh to feel like, man, I drink
Speaker 1: some real creeper, which is what which meant that you'd
Speaker 1: enjoy it quickly. Yeah, and all of a sudden craft
Speaker 1: up on didn't know one hits you. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: like Long Island iced teas were creepers, yeah, or you
Speaker 1: could call them sleepers. Looks fine. How bad could it be?
Speaker 1: A beach bucketful? Yeah? Yeah. And one of the other
Speaker 1: features that's really dangerous is a strainer, which is basically
Speaker 1: typically a um like a branch or a tree where
Speaker 1: it's just straining the water and that creates a lot
Speaker 1: of hydraulic pressure on the upstream side that can trap
Speaker 1: stuff um including like people or gear, boets and stuff.
Speaker 1: And oh they're bad too, man. Yeah. I had to
Speaker 1: run in with one of those this year with my
Speaker 1: wife and her friends. We put our canoe in. I
Speaker 1: was like, there's a chance we're all going in the
Speaker 1: river because it's just high. But it's like people don't
Speaker 1: want to when you're coming up on a bad sweeper.
Speaker 1: It's people don't want to accept the pain of leaning
Speaker 1: forward and letting it do whatever it's gonna do to
Speaker 1: your back right, like to jump over it, you mean,
Speaker 1: or no, like there's a big limb out, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna go on. You have to accept that, like
Speaker 1: this is not gonna be fun. But I will lean
Speaker 1: over and my back will take all the branch, you know,
Speaker 1: the scraping right, But that's what you have to do.
Speaker 1: And I was like, whatever we do when we hit
Speaker 1: this thing. We're coming up and like we're hitting it,
Speaker 1: it's like, don't lean, don't lean, just take it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they lean you're saying, don't lean back or to
Speaker 1: the side into the side, yeah, like just absorb the blow,
Speaker 1: you know, like when you go like a loose one,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. Yeah. And if the branches are going
Speaker 1: down into the water, then this is a whole different story.
Speaker 1: You gotta go around it because it can pull stuff
Speaker 1: down or like if you get hung up on it,
Speaker 1: the way that the currents going can make your boat
Speaker 1: want to spin around or you know, flips sideways because
Speaker 1: it's pulling at the at the bottom of the boat.
Speaker 1: One of the most lethal features, uh, probably the the
Speaker 1: ones you get hung up on. The hung up on
Speaker 1: not well like a strainer, like you know, if you
Speaker 1: get if you broadside a rock or something. Then it
Speaker 1: can just trap your boat and fold the boat around it,
Speaker 1: and then you've got you're having to scramble out of it,
Speaker 1: you know, take care of yourself and your gears, all
Speaker 1: of garage sailing, and your boat might be pretty significantly
Speaker 1: damaged or or just stuck and require some uh some
Speaker 1: rescue techniques or recovery techniques to get it pulled off
Speaker 1: of that rock. Did you guys carry equipment for jack
Speaker 1: and your boats off rocks. Yeah, we carried a set
Speaker 1: of ropes and carabineers to set up. I think it
Speaker 1: was a three to one, like a standard Z drag
Speaker 1: is what we call it, um so, but yeah, because
Speaker 1: they could just to avoid that when you when you
Speaker 1: maage all the hydraulics, like if you imagine a boat
Speaker 1: against the rock and then add some you know, some
Speaker 1: massive water that's moving whatever in nine miles our pressing
Speaker 1: against that thing, right, it's an enormous amount of force,
Speaker 1: it's huge holding it in place. Yeah. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: canoes wrapped around the rock like a tin can. So
Speaker 1: even if you get that Z drag set up, you
Speaker 1: know you're doing the three to one. You're hauling on
Speaker 1: it and the rope stretching because of the water, and
Speaker 1: then you've got people in the middle doing sheer force
Speaker 1: moving the ropebole back and forth. They can be a
Speaker 1: real struggle to get a boat recover. Theyving in canoes.
Speaker 1: These were um Royal Royal X. Yeah, rest in peace,
Speaker 1: Royal X. It is done now done. Got cars in
Speaker 1: Jennick or something. Uh. It was kind of like Coda chrome.
Speaker 1: There was one spot that made it I think is
Speaker 1: what I understand. Really Royal X canoes are no more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a couple of different materials. So they've made
Speaker 1: some super tough um like composite, kind of like kevlar.
Speaker 1: I think I have Old townc what's that would probably
Speaker 1: Royal X. This is like a plastic compound. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's plastic. It's kind of got this weird foam stuff
Speaker 1: in the middle. But once you get it pulled off
Speaker 1: of a rock, you set it out in the sun
Speaker 1: or next to a fire and the heat just let
Speaker 1: it to pop back to shaping. Really keep get back
Speaker 1: on the water. You might have to do a little
Speaker 1: patching or you know, hammer the gunles and did you
Speaker 1: guys carry gear with you to fix canoes. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't remember what the kit was like, but we had
Speaker 1: repair kits for everything, stoves, canoe. Uh. People, I was
Speaker 1: surprised to see that you guys would run just those
Speaker 1: regular woven like standard woven seats. You didn't do like
Speaker 1: crazy creek set up with back support and stuff. You
Speaker 1: just gotta learn to live with it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you're posture right and go. Yeah, I I really don't
Speaker 1: like a backrest in a canoe. So is that like,
Speaker 1: is that not pro pros don't like a backrest. I
Speaker 1: would probably say that. I mean, you know, it's if
Speaker 1: you're if you're we need to do with the backrest,
Speaker 1: you're like, uh, I'm like, I'd never do that, you know,
Speaker 1: with the exception of like if you're hanging out for
Speaker 1: a long time, if you're if you're just sitting and fishing,
Speaker 1: I mean by all means, but if you're paddling big
Speaker 1: water stuff where it's um the boats getting tossed around
Speaker 1: and stuff, Uh, that backrest is making you kind of
Speaker 1: an extension of the boat in a bad way. Like
Speaker 1: you need to have enough fluid in your person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're just sit there with the stiff
Speaker 1: back and and stuff ends up tossing you around. Then
Speaker 1: gravity is pushing you over. You guys paddled most that
Speaker 1: stuff not sitting in those seats, but that, yeah, lowers
Speaker 1: your center of gravity. You can move the canoe with
Speaker 1: your knees, like you know, if the bus, but if
Speaker 1: the boat's getting pushed to the left, you can push
Speaker 1: to the right and get it straightened back out. And
Speaker 1: you and you know a wide array of strokes that
Speaker 1: maybe I know them and don't know that they have names,
Speaker 1: but what are some of the you break down quite
Speaker 1: a few strokes. Yeah, So, I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways to move a canoe, but the basic
Speaker 1: ones are forward paddle, backroud paddle, which are exactly what
Speaker 1: you think. Um. And then when you're in the stern,
Speaker 1: when you're in the back and you're you're doing the steering, Um,
Speaker 1: there's the J stroke and C stroke. UM. And the
Speaker 1: J stroke basically corrects, uh, the turn that naturally happens
Speaker 1: when you're paddling the boat from the back. You're on
Speaker 1: the right and you're just paddling, it's gonna generally push
Speaker 1: you to the left. And the J sid Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you when you're doing J stroke. Do you throw the
Speaker 1: J on every stroke or the only correct like every other?
Speaker 1: I typically correct every other, but it's totally a nuanced
Speaker 1: thing depending on the weather and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's any current or whatever. So you get into
Speaker 1: the mode where you're not even thinking about it. You're
Speaker 1: just like throwing a J in every once in a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's like a there's like I like it,
Speaker 1: but there's like an inefficiency in it. Like you're definitely
Speaker 1: like throwing drag. You're throwing the least amount of drag
Speaker 1: that you can by with staying on the same side.
Speaker 1: You know, A J stroke is is just like a
Speaker 1: little a little hit at the end of the at
Speaker 1: the end of the forward stroke. It's not like a
Speaker 1: rudder where you're like boom and both just slowing down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people who are familiar with this, imagine that you're you're
Speaker 1: paddling along you're paidly just how you imagine you're paddling.
Speaker 1: Where you're paddle is hitting the water perpendicular to in line,
Speaker 1: the blade is hitting the water perpendicular to the canoe,
Speaker 1: and it's just following the canoe along. At the end,
Speaker 1: you put a little hook on it where you shoot
Speaker 1: the paddle, you like, turn the paddle and shoot it
Speaker 1: slightly outward because the stroke is nudging it left, and
Speaker 1: that little hook on the end just pops the bow back.
Speaker 1: Can you explain why? Because it's it's I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand now why right, But I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: of people. It's like when I was learning into paddle
Speaker 1: a canoe, I'd be like, there's a guy, a person
Speaker 1: in front paddling the same kind of paddle that I'm paddling,
Speaker 1: and I'm in the back paddling. Why and they're on
Speaker 1: the opposite side. Why still is my stroke more powerful
Speaker 1: and pushing the canoe to the left if you're paddling
Speaker 1: on the right. Uh, that's a good physics question. Then
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can answer the exact physics
Speaker 1: of it. Um. But yeah, typically the person in the
Speaker 1: front is is the motor. Do you think of them
Speaker 1: as the motor they're pulling the boat along? Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then in the back, Um, for one, the stern seat
Speaker 1: is usually a lot closer to the end of the boat.
Speaker 1: So in terms of leverage, you know, um, if you
Speaker 1: were to pull the front of the boat or the
Speaker 1: back of the boat left or right, it's gonna move
Speaker 1: it significantly, Whereas if you're sitting in the middle and
Speaker 1: you're trying to turn it, it takes a lot more
Speaker 1: force to to turn that um. So you know, if
Speaker 1: the boat is a lever, you're further away from the
Speaker 1: fulcrum was right on the bow and he was stroking,
Speaker 1: it might turn the boat a lot more, I suppose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like if you're in the bow and you need
Speaker 1: to move the boat a lot, you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: reach forward, forward and out to try to um make
Speaker 1: that happen. So that's something you do in white water.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, ship, here comes a rock and you
Speaker 1: know you're in the bow and you just you're it's
Speaker 1: super physical. You know, you're on your knees, which also
Speaker 1: allows you to move your paddle position a lot more
Speaker 1: than if you're locked on your seat. So yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just further from the fulkrum in the stern. And then
Speaker 1: the other main stroke is the C stroke, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of the opposite um. You're you're pulling the water
Speaker 1: back and then you can do a little hook towards
Speaker 1: the canoe at the end and that just kind of
Speaker 1: makes that that automatic movement of the boat in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction that much more profound. It's interesting that for
Speaker 1: a right hand or both of those letters are backwards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good point. Speaking of pros. Is the person you're
Speaker 1: speaking of before, Bill Mason? Yes, Bill Mason, and the
Speaker 1: canoe is Bible is path of the paddle? Yes, ye,
Speaker 1: thank you. That's the voice of rain Fart Steam podcast
Speaker 1: producer Cringe. You haven't said anything yet today The Right
Speaker 1: Way Karin starred. Um had a starring role in our
Speaker 1: Christmas Ashal. That was so fun. How many miles have
Speaker 1: you paddled your whole life? I've never done the math
Speaker 1: thousands probably, Yeah, most of that in the boundary waters
Speaker 1: in quite a co and your books called the twenty
Speaker 1: ninth Day? Yeah, what happens on the twenty ninth day?
Speaker 1: We had breakfast? You know, it's a day off. You're
Speaker 1: taking a day off. You're you're like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're like, four fifths done or three fifths done
Speaker 1: day of a forty two day. Yeah. Yeah, we're most
Speaker 1: of the way horrible at math. I can't I can't
Speaker 1: simple math. We're most of the way. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably our third layover day of the trip. We
Speaker 1: took our first lay over day twenty days and so
Speaker 1: we're paddling for three weeks before. So you're just kind
Speaker 1: of watching your schedule and seeing how you're making along. Yeah,
Speaker 1: making just take a break, yeah, yeah, just you know
Speaker 1: how we feeling. Are we just totally bushed? Um? Are
Speaker 1: we on track? Do we need to make up time? So? Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys, take a little break, take a little break,
Speaker 1: have some breakfast. Yeah. Lay over day I like to say,
Speaker 1: is is just one meal after the other. You know,
Speaker 1: you're just like, oh, let's have breakfast because right, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, it's kind of like hiker stomach where you're
Speaker 1: just like burning so many calories. You're like I could
Speaker 1: eat NonStop and just still be hungry. So are you
Speaker 1: getting like you're losing weight? But like you're losing weight,
Speaker 1: but but your muscles gotta be doing weird things. But
Speaker 1: your legs are shrinking? Yeah? Yeah, I mean we're not
Speaker 1: moving too much with our legs. So and and you
Speaker 1: gotta move a long distance in the flats to get anywhere.
Speaker 1: Uh and so it's a yeah, you're just getting lean. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know your your upper body with a paddling
Speaker 1: trip just gets really efficient and you know your back
Speaker 1: muscles are are doing awesome because you're just doing thousands
Speaker 1: of paddle strokes every day. So you know those days
Speaker 1: arrests are are super important, um in kind of recharging.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, So this one, we were camped on
Speaker 1: Princess Mary Lake, which is this enormous lake. Um, I
Speaker 1: can't remember how far across it was, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty miles across from shore to shore. And we're camped
Speaker 1: on this island in the middle of it. And um,
Speaker 1: we're a couple of hundred yards up from shore. Um,
Speaker 1: camped on a flat that's below this super steep ridge
Speaker 1: behind our campsite. And uh, we have breakfast, we have lunch,
Speaker 1: and after lunch, the rest of the guys decided to
Speaker 1: go up to the top of this ridge behind our site.
Speaker 1: Um it's the highest point around on the island. And
Speaker 1: that's just like a rocky ridge, right yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: got like crowberry or what's up there. Uh, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of empty. There's like because like the per the creature,
Speaker 1: the wines that being up there is up there for
Speaker 1: a reason. Is it grazing at berries. I didn't see
Speaker 1: any berries. I don't know exactly what it was doing
Speaker 1: up there, if it was just kind of roaming looking
Speaker 1: for berries, you know. But yeah, it's it's um even
Speaker 1: more stark landscape than the camp site that we had,
Speaker 1: which he says, like a lot of like bear Rock
Speaker 1: up there. Yeah, bear Rock. It's kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: the summit and you're but it's a big gass island
Speaker 1: right in a fresh water lake. How big is the island?
Speaker 1: I think it's five miles And what is the bear
Speaker 1: doing out there? I don't know. That's a that's one
Speaker 1: of the mysteries. And there's like muskox the island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a freshwater lake. It's so weird. Yeah, well I imagine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when it's iced over a lot of the years,
Speaker 1: so it's easy for things to get back and forth.
Speaker 1: But I imagine they are getting the shore too. He
Speaker 1: doesn't give a ship he'll slim, but the most muscox
Speaker 1: will slim too. But right, yeah, I wasn't think about yeah,
Speaker 1: just they crossing on the ice, but thinking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when these are little like bears, I get being
Speaker 1: afraid of you guys are a little afraid of Muskox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like real afraid of muskok there. You gotta respect them.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's they are ornery and powerful animals. They
Speaker 1: can fight off a grizzly attack. They've got this helmet
Speaker 1: of horns and uh it's just like this bone plate
Speaker 1: at the top of their head and then the horns
Speaker 1: curl around and these kind of Viking style uh helmets,
Speaker 1: and um, they'll mess you up and they'll charge it random.
Speaker 1: What does it take to set them off? I was
Speaker 1: just gonna ask you. I mean, if you're getting too
Speaker 1: close for comfort pretty much, you know, if you get
Speaker 1: if you get too close to them, they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: get out of my business. Sure, but then you'd probably
Speaker 1: want to I mean you just keep your distance. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but then they show up in your camp. Yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's not up to you or they just kind of
Speaker 1: like come out of come out of nowhere, which is
Speaker 1: what happened for us, and hollering and pan clanging. They're
Speaker 1: just gonna come a graze and your camp I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean that was the only time that that they
Speaker 1: were like just didn't care about us. They just kept coming.
Speaker 1: Was later later that day on that lay over day. Um.
Speaker 1: But otherwise they like they would take note of us
Speaker 1: and like stare us down and say, hey, go about
Speaker 1: your business, go the other way, or they look at
Speaker 1: us and turn away on their own. But um, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a lot of thinking that's going on necessarily.
Speaker 1: They're just kind of really slow plotting and and grazing,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're just straight out of the ice age.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've changed very buffalo like. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, and I think you should probably
Speaker 1: treat them like you treat buffalo. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't go up and feed him when you're in
Speaker 1: the parks because kids on top of them plenty of
Speaker 1: videos on what happens when you do that. So so
Speaker 1: you guys have the layover day, You're eating a whole
Speaker 1: shipload of food. Yep, yep. Everybody's like, let's go up
Speaker 1: to the top of the ridge yep. And you say,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a nap. Yeah, I'm tired and I'm
Speaker 1: a little tuckered. I'm gonna take a nap. You guys
Speaker 1: do your thing. I'm gonna hang out here. So I
Speaker 1: retreat to the tent and curl up in my sleeping
Speaker 1: bag and they go up to the top of the
Speaker 1: ridge and how far off? So many yards up as
Speaker 1: the ridge it's about a hundred feet of like steep
Speaker 1: climb pretty much elevation game. Yeah, yeah, well roughly like
Speaker 1: how many yards? How many yards? So it's a hundred
Speaker 1: feet is steep, so it's not it doesn't take that long,
Speaker 1: like how long has hate to climb up there? About
Speaker 1: ten minutes because you got to kind of scramble back
Speaker 1: and forth. So yeah, yeah, and I mean it's probably
Speaker 1: like forty five degree slope um and steeper in places,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you gotta like trick your way up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of chausy, you know, there's like scree
Speaker 1: and some grass m So you know, I've heard that term,
Speaker 1: but I don't use that term. Do you know what
Speaker 1: it means? You know that it means broken up unsafe rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like crumbling the term right, yeah, like screw would
Speaker 1: be a bigger you don't want to climb. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I think you know, who introduced me to
Speaker 1: that word is dirt myth that could that Yeah, big
Speaker 1: climber buddy of ours, so nice. Yeah, but he uses
Speaker 1: like just you know, like just like that, he'll talk about,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about picking our way up through something. He
Speaker 1: would say, he'll say that word, I belire, what's that?
Speaker 1: Because just as all it's not good, there's no integrity. Yeah, rotten.
Speaker 1: Let me start calling certain people chausey there you go? Um, okay,
Speaker 1: so you climb on up there. You know they all
Speaker 1: climb on up there. Yep, you go, sleeping, yep, snoozing?
Speaker 1: You sleep how long? I didn't know how long? And
Speaker 1: recently I was talking to Mike, one of the other
Speaker 1: guys on the trip. Your friends, all these dude, still
Speaker 1: I don't get to talk with all of them, just
Speaker 1: because you know, life takes you different places. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I keep in touch with with most of them. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, good good guys. You gotta screw your trip.
Speaker 1: I didn't try to. Yeah, it changed, it changed significantly
Speaker 1: at that point. Um. But yeah, they all went up there,
Speaker 1: and uh and Mike said, yeah, three hours, they're up
Speaker 1: there three hours. So I was napping for three hours.
Speaker 1: What are they doing? Taking pictures, taking pictures, hanging out
Speaker 1: reading books? And he didn't notice it. Grizzly, No, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what's crazy. That's That's one of the things that's
Speaker 1: totally crazy. When I was reading the book, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get Five guys are up there mosing around
Speaker 1: and no one takes note of on an island, Right,
Speaker 1: that's one of the that's not it's five miles long though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's one of the things that's super just weird, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, five guys, they're all kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they're not all focused on one thing. It's not like
Speaker 1: they're up there filet and fish and paying no attention
Speaker 1: to what's around him. That's when the fems join. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. They the farm said, you know, we said
Speaker 1: by to them that morning. They stopped by and um
Speaker 1: and uh went on their way and we said see you.
Speaker 1: We're you're not going to see you for the rest
Speaker 1: of the trip because you're gonna be a full day
Speaker 1: ahead of us. So um. But the guys were up
Speaker 1: on the top of this ridge for three hours. It's
Speaker 1: the highest point around. There's no trees anywhere that you
Speaker 1: can see. You can probably see thirty fifty miles in
Speaker 1: every direction. It's like a dome of rock. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you see down to the water's edge, No, trees
Speaker 1: to not not in the direction towards camp, not in
Speaker 1: the direction towards where we were camped, but you can
Speaker 1: see like that, you can see towards away from us.
Speaker 1: You could see towards where the bear would have been
Speaker 1: coming from. What I mean, Stuff Stuff vanishes, man, It's
Speaker 1: sounded some little crevice or behind a boulder or whatever.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of debris up there. In terms
Speaker 1: of I don't want to make too much at that
Speaker 1: point of it, but just interesting because you wake up
Speaker 1: and grab your camp just to make a point of it.
Speaker 1: It's like we've walked him around the mountains for ten
Speaker 1: days at a time looking for him, and that I
Speaker 1: can't find them, so right, So I mean you know that,
Speaker 1: but you know that kind of underlines the point of
Speaker 1: like why didn't we expect to see one up there?
Speaker 1: Because people were there a few minutes before I showed
Speaker 1: up there. Because you wake up from your nap and
Speaker 1: you grab a little pelican case. The pelican case plays
Speaker 1: into this. You have a pelican case, your camera gear yea,
Speaker 1: and go up and catch them on the way down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I wake up and I'm like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: gotta get up to this ridge. I overslept because apparently
Speaker 1: you gotta you know, I had I had someone to
Speaker 1: meet and I didn't know it. It. Got up, grabbed
Speaker 1: my pelican case which had my camera in its sense
Speaker 1: of like having like slept too long and now your
Speaker 1: schedules messed up. Yeah, the sense of urgency like I
Speaker 1: need to get up there. And Mike was saying that
Speaker 1: he kind of had the same thing about coming down, right,
Speaker 1: we should leave, which is weird. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: sixth cents or something, but yeah, so I get my stuff,
Speaker 1: I um start climbing up the ridge. Dan our guide
Speaker 1: is the he's the last one coming down. I met
Speaker 1: him halfway and talked about what was up there, and
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, there's in a knook shook and um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just gorgeous, like explaining to take a look.
Speaker 1: A nook shook is a stack of rocks um left
Speaker 1: by um in this case you know Inuit or native
Speaker 1: people's um. It's used as like a place marker or
Speaker 1: a navigational aid, or to commemorate something. UM. Some of
Speaker 1: them are used like four hunting um, so they would
Speaker 1: set up almost like a funnel, kind of imagined like
Speaker 1: a fish, yeah, drive line or a fish trap in
Speaker 1: in rows um to a narrower points they'd like drive
Speaker 1: caribou herds towards. That is my understanding. I've seen some
Speaker 1: of those, and you guys are countering a lot of
Speaker 1: like old mysterious rock structures all over to your trip,
Speaker 1: which was amazing, um and a constant reminder that we
Speaker 1: weren't the first people there by any means. Um. So,
Speaker 1: this was just a soul m a soul knook shook
Speaker 1: that was up there, so um, we weren't sure exactly
Speaker 1: what it was, but it was, you know, the highest
Speaker 1: point around somebody. It was just kind of marking that
Speaker 1: as a special spot. Um. So I talked with Dan
Speaker 1: and then continued up the ridge, made my way to
Speaker 1: the top where it flattened out to these rolling rocky
Speaker 1: granite domes with the gravel and whatever, and just was
Speaker 1: walking up, um, away from camp, towards that a knook shook,
Speaker 1: and uh, walking up one side of one of those domes,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know it, but a six pound barren
Speaker 1: ground grizzly bear was walking up the other side of
Speaker 1: that dome and we were walking straight towards each other,
Speaker 1: and you first register its presence. How I see this
Speaker 1: flash of brown fur at the edge at the lip
Speaker 1: and it's in my peripheral vision and my head snaps
Speaker 1: up and I'm just like, there's something here, and I
Speaker 1: think it's a musk oxen. Oh ship, this is a
Speaker 1: musk oxen. And this is thirty feet away from me.
Speaker 1: So it's just way too close to be to any
Speaker 1: animal that you've got to be careful of. And as
Speaker 1: soon as it kept walking, because it hadn't noticed me
Speaker 1: yet because I was above its sightline, um, but as
Speaker 1: soon as it came a little further, it noticed me too.
Speaker 1: And that's when I realized that it wasn't a musk oxen,
Speaker 1: but it was a bear. And it was just like
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. Oh shit, why do you why do
Speaker 1: you feel that you know how much the bear weight? Um?
Speaker 1: I made that estimate based on looking at bears uh
Speaker 1: in captivity Since then, Yeah, so I into looking at
Speaker 1: things with known waits. Yeah, so part of my um
Speaker 1: uh self prescribed UM getting over that. This whole situation
Speaker 1: was like to confront that fear and UM for me,
Speaker 1: that was going and you know, seeing grizzly bears in person, UM,
Speaker 1: so that was a challenge. But uh, seeing those bears
Speaker 1: in in Zoos, I was like, Okay, well that looks
Speaker 1: a lot like my bear. So it's totally totally in
Speaker 1: estment based on that. And when it sees you, it
Speaker 1: doesn't immediately be like I'm gonna mall that, dude. No,
Speaker 1: the bearon I really had the same reaction, which was
Speaker 1: what the hell am I looking at? And so we
Speaker 1: both just stopped and like kind of stepped back and
Speaker 1: and appraised the situation for a moment. And during that time,
Speaker 1: I flashed back to that training that we had at
Speaker 1: min O gin I. I told myself not to run,
Speaker 1: because that's the one thing that you really can't do,
Speaker 1: is run. And I pictured the bear mace, which we've
Speaker 1: discussed was in the tent. Unfortunately it wasn't my person,
Speaker 1: which means it's totally useless. But I imagine taking it
Speaker 1: out of its holster, taking off the safety cap, aiming
Speaker 1: it and firing it, And would have would have been
Speaker 1: able to do that if I'd had it with me.
Speaker 1: You feel pretty confident and still staring at you, yep,
Speaker 1: I mean it would filled his eyeballs. Yeah, time was
Speaker 1: moving fast, but uh, you know it was like, you
Speaker 1: think you would have fired it immediately or would you
Speaker 1: have waited for the first charge. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I would have mm hmmm. I would have waited for
Speaker 1: it to run away before firing it. Run away, hopefully
Speaker 1: run towards you. You mean no run well sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: let me correct myself. I would have been ready to
Speaker 1: fire and then decided whether to fire based on if
Speaker 1: it ran away or ran towards me. What are you
Speaker 1: supposed to do? Are you supposed to kind of do
Speaker 1: the first aggressive like worn off if there's enough distance?
Speaker 1: Are you because I wouldn't a bear staring at you
Speaker 1: your hands up, look big, don't run hey hey, like
Speaker 1: but not to be trifled with, and you spray oh well, well,
Speaker 1: and then you know window if I felt like if
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, as this guy he didn't have
Speaker 1: his bears, having had bear spray att, I would probably
Speaker 1: hit it right away, right, I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: because you got several seconds, I would blast. I would
Speaker 1: just shoot a blast. I'd like to think I would
Speaker 1: like they got you know, I remember Joe Rogan, we're
Speaker 1: talking one time, and he said, everybody has a plan
Speaker 1: to get punched in the face right. That changes the
Speaker 1: game a bit. So the guys are always on top
Speaker 1: about what I would do. Yeah, yeah, well yead you
Speaker 1: had to wear with all the smack one with a
Speaker 1: track and pull. Yeah, it was charging him. I heard that.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear the details. God, I think I would
Speaker 1: have a heart attack before you have thirty ft check
Speaker 1: and I don't get here's the bear. You guys are
Speaker 1: both like, holy ship, that's scary, and you start doing
Speaker 1: every yelling, not not exactly at first. So our training
Speaker 1: basically is grizzly bears, get small, make yourself non threatening, um,
Speaker 1: black bears, make yourself threatening, like assert your dominance. Is
Speaker 1: the training that we've had UM for our area. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like that differs a little bit from what
Speaker 1: you've been told, not mean what I'm like, we've effectively
Speaker 1: run off, Like we effectively run off a lot of
Speaker 1: bears that were in that kind of like curious coming
Speaker 1: towards you. Sure by, hey bear, Hey bear, arms up.
Speaker 1: If there's multiple people, get hold together, just look like
Speaker 1: you're not coming at it. But I'm here. What you're
Speaker 1: like not a caribou calf? Yeah? Interesting, But you know again,
Speaker 1: i's got planned to get punched in the face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and every situation is different, you know, every bear is
Speaker 1: going to react a little bit differently to various stimuli.
Speaker 1: So sure, yeah, Like I there's nothing worse than a
Speaker 1: than what I do quarterback bear blowhard. So please do
Speaker 1: not think I'm laying now. No, no, I'm not. And
Speaker 1: what you did is what you did and you're sitting
Speaker 1: here right now. Yeah. So so part of our training,
Speaker 1: like I said, with grizzlies is basically like to convey
Speaker 1: that you're not a threat, and that is backing way slowly,
Speaker 1: avoiding eye contact, talking to the bear kind of to
Speaker 1: your point, making it, making it understand that you're not.
Speaker 1: It's usual. Uh, I think it's going to run into
Speaker 1: and so in my brain, I've got all these different
Speaker 1: steps kind of running through my mind, um on what
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to do, and again just really wanting to run.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be anywhere near it, but I
Speaker 1: can't do that, So I just start back in away slowly,
Speaker 1: arms kind of down at my side. Hey bear, wool bear,
Speaker 1: it's okay, bear, And my voice is shaking, and the
Speaker 1: bear is he's thinking about it. He's thinking about it.
Speaker 1: He's looking at me. It doesn't take very long at all, um,
Speaker 1: and he goes into like a stationary bluff charge. So
Speaker 1: he launches on his front positively and grunts at me.
Speaker 1: He's making a lot of noise, right, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh I listened to your episode with Amber. It sounds
Speaker 1: like she had a kind of similar uh way that
Speaker 1: the bear was acting before it decided to charge. Ah,
Speaker 1: And so grunted at me backing up slowly, and it
Speaker 1: basically faded from stationary bluff charges just launching onto its
Speaker 1: front pause to like coming towards me and then stopping
Speaker 1: like six ft and then ten feet, and I just
Speaker 1: keep backing up the bears moving six ft moving ten
Speaker 1: ft yeah, and half yeah bluff charges yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm reading it and goring out because
Speaker 1: it at first, you know, even with those bluff charges,
Speaker 1: it was still it still felt like it was deciding
Speaker 1: exactly what it was gonna do, right, yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: so I keep backing up slowly, you know, just mind
Speaker 1: over matter, telling myself, don't run, don't run, don't run,
Speaker 1: And it fades from those uh stationary and short bluff
Speaker 1: charges to a full speed charge and it comes at me.
Speaker 1: Bears can run, you know, mid thirty mile range, and
Speaker 1: I'd increased our thirty ft distance by five ft and uh,
Speaker 1: keep backing up, keep more than he's getting closer. So
Speaker 1: I mean his charges the brain of closer closer, closer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is happening really fast and closer. He
Speaker 1: got you before you realize he was gonna get you.
Speaker 1: Uh probably like within twenty ft about fifteen, Yeah, where
Speaker 1: he's like like, I feel like I can see his
Speaker 1: decision shift to Okay, now I'm gonna Now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: come at this thing. And you know I faded from
Speaker 1: haybar Boebert, you know at this point yelling obscenities and
Speaker 1: help and and very likely like if the landscape, like
Speaker 1: quite likely the first person he's never had any kind
Speaker 1: of close encounter with, right, Yeah, he's trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what he's supposed to do. And like I don't
Speaker 1: know how old this bear was or people have asked,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a male or female, and I
Speaker 1: have no idea. There were no cubs. It was just
Speaker 1: the bear. Um, but yeah, it's just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what it's supposed to do. And you know, at
Speaker 1: that distance fight or flight is pretty I mean it's
Speaker 1: kind of what color is really close bond? Uh lighter tan,
Speaker 1: like a little bit darker than blonde. Yeah, yeah, not
Speaker 1: like shaggy, but like, um, I don't know how long
Speaker 1: it would be, but kind of middle middle length, I'd
Speaker 1: say blowing in the wind, kind of a hair, a
Speaker 1: little bit like the tips be blown in the wind.
Speaker 1: You have little peaks, peaks, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: hanging off. It's kind of sticking out, kind of spiky.
Speaker 1: So at some point at fift you see something in
Speaker 1: his head shift. Yeah, and then he's coming at me
Speaker 1: full speed and you pelt him. Well that that didn't
Speaker 1: happen yet. I was just like, oh, ship, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be this is gonna end poorly. And as it
Speaker 1: gets within that range, like I can feel the ground
Speaker 1: shaking under my feet from its pause because that gallops
Speaker 1: just like butom, and it's it's growling at me, and um,
Speaker 1: do the like do the noise? Like how loud it's
Speaker 1: doing the noise? I don't think I can. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do a noise. Do you tell me if it's louder Plotter, Well,
Speaker 1: I was louder than that louder that. Ye, did I
Speaker 1: have the right sound? Uh more? Projecting that sounds like
Speaker 1: a dude, it's hard. I remember the noise. You remember it?
Speaker 1: Remember the noise. Oh it was like grunting, guttural roar.
Speaker 1: That was like, yeah, I mean like in pulses. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just like NonStop, you know, it was like kind
Speaker 1: of sounds good. Yeah, that was good. It came to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that sounded like a series comedies gallop and the
Speaker 1: grounds are shaken. Yeah. Yeah. And when he's uh and
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm dead now, I'm dead now. And at
Speaker 1: this point my conscious decisions are kind of done and
Speaker 1: my brain is doing everything on its own. And when
Speaker 1: it was five or ten feet for me, I had
Speaker 1: that Pelican case with you know, a Nike on DSLR
Speaker 1: with a couple of lenses and whatever else I needed
Speaker 1: to run the run the camera for the whole trip.
Speaker 1: So it's like fifteen pounds and it's the only time
Speaker 1: I'll throw my camera camera. I typically don't throw it,
Speaker 1: uh And I was a really bad throw at the time,
Speaker 1: so I you know, I couldn't hit the broadside of
Speaker 1: a barn, but I did throw my camera practice, not
Speaker 1: with the same projectile. I'm a lot better thrown now though.
Speaker 1: Um but I wound back and threw it underhand, like
Speaker 1: I said, just you know, on instinct, and uh, it
Speaker 1: flies towards this galloping bear and it hit it square
Speaker 1: in the nose and with enough force to turn its
Speaker 1: head all the way to the side. So it pushes
Speaker 1: this bear's head to the side. It grunts like, oh,
Speaker 1: like I just punched it. Yeah, and the pelican case
Speaker 1: goes flying over its shoulder, tumbling off behind it. The
Speaker 1: bear's momentum keeps going at the same pace. Um, but
Speaker 1: it can't. I'm sure he didn't like that. But he
Speaker 1: couldn't see me for a couple of steps and like
Speaker 1: five to ten ft. I mean that's turned his head.
Speaker 1: I mean he didn't want to turn his head. The
Speaker 1: video that dude punching that kangaroo, Oh my god, it's
Speaker 1: my favorite, my kid's favorite video. Yeah, he turns his
Speaker 1: head on a kangaroo like slow moll like a person
Speaker 1: getting punched. Oh yeah, had a plan until it got
Speaker 1: punched in the face. Yeah, his plan was the bluff
Speaker 1: charge of Yeah, I didn't feel like that, which I've
Speaker 1: heard is how it feels. But yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if he could have stopped at that distance. No,
Speaker 1: his run just kept coming, his gallop kept going. But
Speaker 1: he couldn't see where I was, and he couldn't like
Speaker 1: you know, roundhouse me at that point because he didn't
Speaker 1: know what to hit. But I jumped out of the
Speaker 1: way again on instinct and dodged at like bullfighting style
Speaker 1: as this bears running past me and he just misses you.
Speaker 1: He just misses me. Yeah, I mean I just jumped
Speaker 1: out of the way right at the last second, like
Speaker 1: his momentum carried him past me. And then you know,
Speaker 1: his head swung around by this point, and he's flailing
Speaker 1: trying to get at me, and as soon as he
Speaker 1: passes me, he stops and change changes direction so fast,
Speaker 1: like faster than I would have ever imagined that an
Speaker 1: animal like that could move. They're incredibly powerful. Uh turns
Speaker 1: around and comes at me again, and I do the
Speaker 1: same move. Rather than throwing the camera case, it's mouths open. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is trying to grab your well, it
Speaker 1: was like half open like at the ready, right, and
Speaker 1: then as it would come at me, it would use
Speaker 1: its paws and use its jaws to try to get me.
Speaker 1: So it came at me again and I jumped out
Speaker 1: of the way and it missed me again. Clean miss
Speaker 1: I don't know if that one was clean. That's uh
Speaker 1: uh no teeth. Some claus start to hit me at that,
Speaker 1: you know, because these passes. But that's what let's what
Speaker 1: like blew me away and reading and the description is
Speaker 1: like it's like a very lengthy, like detailed description of Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that you could that you dodged it a
Speaker 1: couple of times it was crazy and it had to
Speaker 1: actually turn around and come back at you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it only kind of makes it worse. I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it, I was like, how long
Speaker 1: am I gonna be able to do this? Well? Right,
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, I'm not even deciding to
Speaker 1: do this, but as my brains thinking through it, it's like,
Speaker 1: holy sho it, I just dodged it. Not like it
Speaker 1: very acting at this point, you're not making conrect decisions. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing chacos, I've got sandals on, which are like
Speaker 1: really nice for being nimble, but you know, my feet
Speaker 1: are all exposed and everything is not prepared for this.
Speaker 1: Did the thought of playing dead and like curling up
Speaker 1: into a ball and protecting vitals like to back the
Speaker 1: neck and your your cord. Did that ever come through
Speaker 1: your head? Um it, it didn't. I mean that is
Speaker 1: part of what you're supposed to do, like if it
Speaker 1: makes contact with you, you know, play dead, protect your
Speaker 1: like lay on your on your stomach and put your
Speaker 1: legs out and put your fingers in your lace behind
Speaker 1: your neck to protect your spine and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Um which maybe it's you know, you have a plan
Speaker 1: until you get punched in the face sort of a scenario.
Speaker 1: But um it, it felt like if I did that
Speaker 1: then it was just gonna do some real damage. Which
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I don't know, but you do get
Speaker 1: punched in the face. I do get punched in the face.
Speaker 1: So I dodge it a couple more times where I
Speaker 1: was able to quote successfully dodge it, meaning that it
Speaker 1: didn't bite me. Like you don't know, maybe you're getting
Speaker 1: like scratched. Oh I I know at this point that
Speaker 1: I'm getting scratched. You know, I feel he's hit me
Speaker 1: with his claws down my arm, down my back. I
Speaker 1: can feel it, and it feels like I'm just getting
Speaker 1: laid open like as soon as it hits me, but
Speaker 1: you know, your adrenaline's wine and at the red redline,
Speaker 1: and you're just moving super fast, and bears moving faster,
Speaker 1: and every time we got closer and closer, every time
Speaker 1: I dodged it. And so the next time it its
Speaker 1: head is now close enough where I can just like
Speaker 1: turn and bite my leg, and it goes to bite
Speaker 1: my leg and again super fast and just like we're
Speaker 1: all spinning around each other, and I pull my leg
Speaker 1: out of the way at the last second, and then
Speaker 1: jaws snapshot right next to my leg, and at that
Speaker 1: same moment, it reaches up with its paw and swipes
Speaker 1: me across the face and just smacks it just bam.
Speaker 1: Yeah you're saying it was like as hard as you
Speaker 1: could just ever imagine being hit. Yeah, with the flat pad.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. I saw the pad when it was a
Speaker 1: couple inches from my face, and it it is like
Speaker 1: millisecond where my brain is like oh no, And it
Speaker 1: was I compare it to like a board wrapped in
Speaker 1: leather that's just on a hydraulic arm. It's just swinging
Speaker 1: and when it hits my head, it just doesn't react
Speaker 1: at all. It's like swatting a bug out of the
Speaker 1: out of the out of the air and huge amount
Speaker 1: of power. My head whips to the side and I
Speaker 1: went flying to the side. And that's when I that's
Speaker 1: when I truly realized, like there was nothing physically that
Speaker 1: I could do to fight this bear. It's just so
Speaker 1: much Yeah, yeah, no fisticuffs And ah did that take
Speaker 1: you off your feet when he hits you in the face? Yeah? Clean,
Speaker 1: clean off my feet, like threw me to the side.
Speaker 1: I'm midair, and then that same paw caught me like
Speaker 1: around the hip and and threw me down to the
Speaker 1: ground on my tailbone. And then again like in that
Speaker 1: same motion. I'm down on the ground and its head
Speaker 1: is is now right at my right at my thigh.
Speaker 1: And people are like, so the adrenaline rush take care
Speaker 1: of the pain, And it didn't it. Uh. I felt
Speaker 1: its teeth going both sides of my leg. So he
Speaker 1: does open mouth all the way around your leg, top
Speaker 1: of my thigh. And this is where like this part
Speaker 1: of the stories where the playing dead thing gets really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't play dead, no, but here he is
Speaker 1: he's like clearly coming to get you. Yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: a lot of energy into getting you. Yeah, he's hit you,
Speaker 1: scratched you, grabs your leg. Yeah. I've been screaming the
Speaker 1: you know, the last couple of passes, yelling known help,
Speaker 1: and and all of a sudden you blackout. Yeah, vasovagel response.
Speaker 1: It bites me. It's just like a switch and I'm
Speaker 1: out and it's just black. How time do you think
Speaker 1: goes by when you black out? I don't think it
Speaker 1: was long. But I was just so sure I was
Speaker 1: about to die. And it's just like this really surreal
Speaker 1: sensation to have the switch that saved me. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what That's what it gets interesting, man, because so
Speaker 1: but let me let me focus on the bite a minute. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um was the when he beat you and he's kind
Speaker 1: of like biting you at the seam of your leg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right where the leg joins the hip, the pelvis right
Speaker 1: below that, yeah, like right in that whole junction. Scroll
Speaker 1: you're for moral artery, Yeah, the growing you could call
Speaker 1: it the groin. Yeah, yeah, um, are do you think
Speaker 1: like that's a fatal bite? Aren't you that clear? I
Speaker 1: mean to me, it was like this is the end.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like you know, oh, I've got all this,
Speaker 1: all this really crucial material there that that can be
Speaker 1: the end. It was just like, I am about to
Speaker 1: die because this will not be the only injury. This
Speaker 1: bear is gonna do much more to me. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna dodge it once I'm laying on the
Speaker 1: ground and he pass out and it pass out. And
Speaker 1: I played that incredibly effectively. In Michigan, we call that
Speaker 1: playing possum. Yeah, yep, exactly. But you know what, you
Speaker 1: know it's aptly named because I didn't know this until
Speaker 1: I was talking to our colleague Sam longern Um. Playing
Speaker 1: possum is not intentional. Yeah, they're not like I'll play possum.
Speaker 1: They like just get overwhelmed. And yeah, going to a state,
Speaker 1: like it's not like it's not voluntary, he goes into
Speaker 1: a state. Yeah, so very similar. Yeah, they become overcommon
Speaker 1: is going to a state. Yeah, isn't like that when
Speaker 1: when animals are attacked by a predator and then go
Speaker 1: limp And it's not that you're necessarily Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: evolutionary defense mechanism. So how long did think you passed
Speaker 1: out for? Do you have any estimation? My estimation is
Speaker 1: not long at all. My total time away from camp
Speaker 1: was really short. Oh that's a good way. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: maybe not minutes. Yeah, right, it could have been less
Speaker 1: than minutes. In minutes. And what position do you wake
Speaker 1: up in? Uh? Fetal position? Face down, like degrees from
Speaker 1: how fetal position? Face down like some kind of yoga thing,
Speaker 1: or like you're on your side but your face is
Speaker 1: turned like child's post. Child, I want you to get
Speaker 1: down and show. I mean like in my mind, and
Speaker 1: I was a little disoriented when I came to, but
Speaker 1: it was just like, hey, he's down, he's rising from
Speaker 1: his seat, he's getting child's post. Everybody, Okay, he's on
Speaker 1: his knees. He's Oh really that's how you won't go
Speaker 1: that's child's post. But in the air. Again, that's a
Speaker 1: strange position to wake up in. Yeah, like that's gonna wait,
Speaker 1: that's like an awake But I would I thought you
Speaker 1: meant that you somehow we're like fetal position, Like you're
Speaker 1: sleeping on your side in the fetal position, but your
Speaker 1: face was cocked down into the tundra. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I as as I can tell. It was that like
Speaker 1: curled in a ball, face down, knees and knees and
Speaker 1: elbows and face down to the ground and you open
Speaker 1: your eyes and what do you see? Uh, the world's
Speaker 1: kind of spinning, And then I see the horizon and
Speaker 1: then I see that the bear is still there, but
Speaker 1: it's running away at a trot, and it's checking me
Speaker 1: out as it goes. And at this point, I agree
Speaker 1: inconscious at the point when he had you like he
Speaker 1: had you dead to right, yep, let the feast begin. Well,
Speaker 1: And that's the that's the key difference between like a
Speaker 1: predaceous encounter and a defensive encounter. So that's what gives
Speaker 1: such credence to like the playing dead things. That's some
Speaker 1: bitch goes through all that and really, you know, like
Speaker 1: someone tells you something and you like don't believe. Then
Speaker 1: later you're like, oh no, he really didn't. Like he
Speaker 1: was like, I'm sorry, I found you threatening. Um had
Speaker 1: you stop being threatening? And I left? I mean, like,
Speaker 1: my yep, you seem threatening. Yeah, that's all this was exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, And that and that kind of a lines
Speaker 1: up with how it acted throughout the encounter too. It's like,
Speaker 1: what am I dealing with this? What do I do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And also went quiet limp. But he's like, yeah, all right, drop,
Speaker 1: my chuck is done. I gotta go. I gotta put
Speaker 1: some ice on my snout from that Pelican case and
Speaker 1: as so, and you like you don't know, I mean
Speaker 1: he could come back and get you. Oh yeah. I
Speaker 1: was absolutely terrified that was about to happen. So I
Speaker 1: played dead consciously at that point, totally averted my eyes
Speaker 1: so I could just see him, wait for him to
Speaker 1: go completely. Like I said, he's just watching me the
Speaker 1: whole time. And are you feeling, um, what's your understanding
Speaker 1: of your injuries at this point, You're like so out
Speaker 1: of it. Uh my feeling my my feeling slash understanding
Speaker 1: is I don't care? Because I was you felt very alive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was so sure I was about to die. And
Speaker 1: then it was like getting a second chance, like euphoria.
Speaker 1: It was. Yeah. I was just totally totally fork, like
Speaker 1: so excited that I was seeing things again. And then
Speaker 1: when I saw that bear again, it was like back
Speaker 1: to dread. Oh ship, it's still here, Like, what's it
Speaker 1: gonna do now? So I just was you know, my
Speaker 1: mission at that point was do everything that I could
Speaker 1: to make it not think that I was back in
Speaker 1: the fight and I think that its job really was
Speaker 1: done and that it was able to leave. Um, but
Speaker 1: I was absolutely terrified. This is like, you know what,
Speaker 1: it needs a little bit more tossing around or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to go back and shake that thing and eat it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know sometimes happens. What's weird too about it
Speaker 1: and about bears in general, is um, it's eating all man.
Speaker 1: You have to assume it's killed neaton, muskox calves, it's
Speaker 1: scavenge muskox carcasses, kills the neats, caribou calves, scavenges carcasses, eats, marmots,
Speaker 1: whatever the hell it gets hands on, right, And here
Speaker 1: it's got like a hundred fifty pounds. It was still
Speaker 1: warm protein that hasn't showered in months. Yeah, Like like
Speaker 1: what is their comprehension of Like two days later would
Speaker 1: they have gone back up there and eight you you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like, what is this comprehension of? Like what's food?
Speaker 1: Not food? It's like I killed this big thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's made out of meat, But I will continue my
Speaker 1: wanderings to look for a little ground squirrels and lemmings
Speaker 1: and patches of berries whatever else comes around. Like that's
Speaker 1: not food right, Well, I mean that's the that's what's
Speaker 1: so like bizarre. But what is in their head? Well,
Speaker 1: and that's that's like why are you not food? That's
Speaker 1: the difference right between a healthy bear and a and
Speaker 1: a bear that's not getting in a food or that's sickly.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it looked good like this bear did
Speaker 1: not look scrawny. You know, it's well built. Um, you
Speaker 1: just didn't smell right, Yeah, I'm not. I'm not what
Speaker 1: it normally perceives as food. I don't you know, look
Speaker 1: like that. It's just it's so curious, like what makes it? Uh,
Speaker 1: what that decision process is? Like I have a feeling
Speaker 1: it relates a lot to you know, what happened before
Speaker 1: this situation. You know, is it is it is everything
Speaker 1: going well, you know for this bear or is it
Speaker 1: in dire straits? Is it going to use this opportunity
Speaker 1: to have a meal or is it just going to
Speaker 1: get away because you know, it wasn't looking for a
Speaker 1: meal or Yeah, like the something about the scenario was
Speaker 1: alarming enough to it and unusual enough that it just
Speaker 1: wasn't in a like eating mood. It was in a
Speaker 1: save myself, protect myself and get out of here, like
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is, right, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. Yeah, here's my window of opportunity to
Speaker 1: get away, right, Yeah, he's as scared as you are. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So it turns and goes and it disappears over the
Speaker 1: ridge and I can't remember. I feel like thought to
Speaker 1: grab your camera. Yeah, for some reason, I was I
Speaker 1: have I had things I brought up with me. I
Speaker 1: gotta bring my things back that you talk. You thought
Speaker 1: to go get your camera. Very practical in that situation,
Speaker 1: as Yeah. Then I haul asked, and I'm just checking
Speaker 1: my six the whole time, trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: it's not coming back. And then you realize your feet
Speaker 1: are bleeding. My feet are bleeding. I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: until I was don't coming down the ridge to camp.
Speaker 1: But I knew that my leg was screwed up because
Speaker 1: it uh, it hurt quite a bit, and I checked
Speaker 1: it and thought it was covered in blood. It was
Speaker 1: just covering bear saliva. Turned tail and started going back
Speaker 1: to camp because I was like, I need to get
Speaker 1: back there before my adrenaline rush wears off, because I
Speaker 1: knew it was significantly injured I just didn't know what
Speaker 1: those injuries were. And you know, if I had a
Speaker 1: clock ticking or whatever, um, and he's gonna come back
Speaker 1: and kill you, right, Yeah. I definitely felt like I
Speaker 1: had that thing to worry about. So I needed to
Speaker 1: get back to the guys, back to the bear poppers,
Speaker 1: back to the bear spray and everything that all the
Speaker 1: support that I had back there. So describe the wound like,
Speaker 1: you get down and they strip you. Yeah, they kind
Speaker 1: of run up to meet you. You're screaming like holy hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And and so they all are starting to
Speaker 1: get you know, all the stuff, and and they come
Speaker 1: up to get me and and help carry me down
Speaker 1: the last little bit because by the time I got
Speaker 1: to the bottom, I couldn't move my leg anymore and
Speaker 1: I had scraped and bruises all over. Um. But the
Speaker 1: main wound was right at the top of my leg.
Speaker 1: They're one of the canines went into full depth of
Speaker 1: the tooth and a puncture wound right at the that
Speaker 1: joint between my leg and my hip girdle quarter inch
Speaker 1: from my femoral artery. Um that you if you hit that,
Speaker 1: you'd have been that's it. Yeah, I probably would have
Speaker 1: been no, you can't. As as you explained the book,
Speaker 1: you smell the complication, but there's no like immediate source
Speaker 1: of help, right, serious help. Yeah. And I mean even
Speaker 1: if there had been an immediate source of help me,
Speaker 1: it's like hours. Yeah. And and a fhemoral bleed is
Speaker 1: minutes three ish minutes, you know, good a good illustration.
Speaker 1: That's black Hawk down when he you know, they're trying
Speaker 1: to put some hemust out on the on the femoral
Speaker 1: bleed from that, it's just like spurting and you bleed
Speaker 1: out really fast. Um. So that would have been really bad.
Speaker 1: Right next to that puncture when that same canine had
Speaker 1: pushed in to the full depth but hadn't. Um, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a puncture when it's just a really bad compression
Speaker 1: when with some surface injuries. Um, that compressed all the
Speaker 1: tissue and did some serious damage to the muscle. Um,
Speaker 1: but wasn't like bleeding. And I had several more of
Speaker 1: those wrapping around my thigh from the other teeth, so
Speaker 1: the whole my whole leg had been in its mouth,
Speaker 1: but it was really um. Just the main puncture was
Speaker 1: the source of bleeding, which was super lucky because we
Speaker 1: were able to control it pretty well. Like I don't say, like,
Speaker 1: what hap did the tips of your toes? Do you
Speaker 1: have not have any idea? I don't Like I said,
Speaker 1: I was wearing sandals and the tips of my left
Speaker 1: big toe and the and the Jason to's are just
Speaker 1: like sliced clean off like evulsions. Um, that's my buddy.
Speaker 1: Ronnie hates sandals. He's gonna love this because he lovesn't
Speaker 1: like him because what if there's a volcano or you
Speaker 1: get attacked by her grizzily. Oh no, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be like, this is gonna back him off. You want
Speaker 1: to be nimble in that situation. We we often have
Speaker 1: a debate about whether sandals are okay or not because
Speaker 1: how you're gonna defend your family. And we got a
Speaker 1: great email from a guy who wanted being in a
Speaker 1: micro burst which like felt like two trees on his
Speaker 1: property and all his creating damage his house. And he
Speaker 1: was out in his sandals when it happened, and he
Speaker 1: did everything is he should do, And only later after
Speaker 1: this whole thing played out, someone's like, where's your shoes?
Speaker 1: And he realized he'd done it all barefoot. His take
Speaker 1: is doesn't matter when it really matters, it doesn't matter. Yep,
Speaker 1: exactly like he had no idea. Yeah did he done
Speaker 1: all this like crazy shit barefoot? Yeah, never occurred to him.
Speaker 1: You don't think when it matters. You know what you
Speaker 1: got on your feet, You're gonna do what you need to.
Speaker 1: It could play in those if you did receive some
Speaker 1: injuries from having sandals on, like Alex did, and then
Speaker 1: you had to continue on and you weren't at your
Speaker 1: house and in a town, Yeah, it could play into
Speaker 1: the I'm guessing, especially if you're on a rocky hillside.
Speaker 1: Rocks can be sharp, yeah, and you're getting tossed around
Speaker 1: and you're jumping and left and right, you very easily
Speaker 1: could have I mean, it wouldn't be hard right now
Speaker 1: to go outside, take your shoes off and kick a
Speaker 1: rock and probably and probably you know, replicate the same.
Speaker 1: That's not what I think happened. What's your theory. I
Speaker 1: think that when you were passed out, he very delicately
Speaker 1: took his teeth and just nipped off the end of
Speaker 1: some of your toes and then he tasted badly and
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, yuck, feet, I'm gonna run out of here.
Speaker 1: You should have looked around next to your pelican case.
Speaker 1: Your toe tips are probably there. Yeah, now, a raven
Speaker 1: probably ate him at this point, at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the hill, they strip you down. Are you now, um?
Speaker 1: How how with it are you at this point? I'm
Speaker 1: super with it? Are you like? I will live? Well?
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna live, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask I mean ask Dan because he knows
Speaker 1: better than me, and I think that's you know, a
Speaker 1: quote in the in the book, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna live, Like, okay, good. I was pretty sure,
Speaker 1: but I just need to check because you know, you
Speaker 1: still got to be shaken. Oh yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: I'm uh just terrified and coming down off of a
Speaker 1: you know, crazy adrenaline rush, um and coming off of that,
Speaker 1: you know, I almost pass out again and um. But
Speaker 1: you know, one of the important things when you're um
Speaker 1: assessing someone who's just had something crazy happened that you
Speaker 1: know they're not positive what will happen is making sure
Speaker 1: that they don't have hidden injuries somewhere or distracting injury
Speaker 1: that's making you miss what the important thing is. So
Speaker 1: he did a good job of doing that full assessment
Speaker 1: and making sure that these are the thing these are
Speaker 1: the things that are going on right now. So did
Speaker 1: during the attack, did you lose your sense of time?
Speaker 1: Or does it seem like things played in the way
Speaker 1: they should have played? So like, when you review it,
Speaker 1: does it seem like it took too long or went
Speaker 1: too fast or does it feel normal to you? It
Speaker 1: feels normal, with the exception of the um laps in
Speaker 1: consciousness like that, there's just no actual sense of time.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like when you go to sleep. You know,
Speaker 1: he might wake up and feel like you slept for
Speaker 1: a minute and you've actually been asleep for a super
Speaker 1: long time. So I had no actual sense for that,
Speaker 1: but the rest of it plays in real time. What
Speaker 1: was different was, um, my senses and my thought process.
Speaker 1: We're just going so fast, Like I didn't have to
Speaker 1: wait for my brain to think through things. Um it
Speaker 1: was either helping me just make conscious decisions so quickly,
Speaker 1: or making decisions for me based on you know whatever.
Speaker 1: That was best. After we had a run in with
Speaker 1: a bear, it wasn't anything like yours. Hurt UM inspired
Speaker 1: me to read a little bit about uh, how time
Speaker 1: passes during like near death experience moments right um extremely
Speaker 1: high stressed moments. And there's these different responses, which is um,
Speaker 1: you can become fixated on a detail and miss a
Speaker 1: lot tunnel vision, or you can become aware of general
Speaker 1: pandemonium and not have details. Uh, the lapses and how
Speaker 1: time works is later like like your your sense that
Speaker 1: it went fast or I saw my life flash before
Speaker 1: my eyes. Some people think it's something that gets laid
Speaker 1: over in memory and that you probably didn't experience it
Speaker 1: that way, but you can't. When you go to remember it,
Speaker 1: everything compresses or not because of all the things that
Speaker 1: you missed when you were fixated on a detail or
Speaker 1: living like a detail list environment. Meaning when if you
Speaker 1: fall off the roof and land on the ground and
Speaker 1: you recollect what the fall was like, that's probably not
Speaker 1: what the fall was like. Yeah, it gets confused and
Speaker 1: you try to explain the event right because the event
Speaker 1: didn't play out like it took away your your sense
Speaker 1: of self awareness, like your your your mental system went
Speaker 1: out the window. The whole way you calibrate your experiences
Speaker 1: and understand the passage of time, like you were in
Speaker 1: in a situation that made no sense to you and
Speaker 1: so all the things you normally do to sort of
Speaker 1: like keep your equilibrium so to speak, in life, are
Speaker 1: are shed, you know. Saying that when they're training, like
Speaker 1: like people that are training like first responders and things.
Speaker 1: Is if you image you come into a horrible there's
Speaker 1: been an explosion, and you come into the explosion and
Speaker 1: there's a severed arm um, but there's still catastrophe laying
Speaker 1: out around you. Getting people to be like, there's a
Speaker 1: severed arm but I will still be aware of the
Speaker 1: fact that there's a building that's going to fall right,
Speaker 1: or there's a person that that arm came from, yeah,
Speaker 1: and not that you come in and you only see that,
Speaker 1: or that you come in and you're just overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: the immensity of all the things that make no sense
Speaker 1: to you and you see nothing right like, and I
Speaker 1: think that, like, what kind of person you are there?
Speaker 1: I became interested in that because I feel like the
Speaker 1: different people in our group when we had an experience
Speaker 1: like this, different people in our group revealed to be
Speaker 1: different versions. I'm the shitty version. I was detailed, just
Speaker 1: a detail, one detail, one detail, one like one crystalline
Speaker 1: detail is what I have in my head. And I
Speaker 1: can't fill the experience, and because all I have in
Speaker 1: my head is one thing that was probably right. It
Speaker 1: was probably like flash, but in my mind that drag
Speaker 1: down for an eternity, right, And so I look back
Speaker 1: and I can't make sense of the time. I can't
Speaker 1: understand how people's experiences. I just have this like thing.
Speaker 1: It's so annoying. And there were major things going on
Speaker 1: around me that I was completely unaware of. But in
Speaker 1: a sense, everybody had that too. Everybody had emergial body
Speaker 1: recollects what anybody else did. In those two seconds, he
Speaker 1: became everybody became singular and focused. Together, you are one,
Speaker 1: single and focused. Everybody knew their own experience, but all
Speaker 1: the people had a chronology, had at least a personal chronology.
Speaker 1: I don't even have a personal chronology. To me, it
Speaker 1: was a thing. It was an image, and the image started,
Speaker 1: the image edit and it was over. Other people are like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what you were doing, but I
Speaker 1: don't know what I was doing. But I lost it all.
Speaker 1: It's like reading about your thing, like you you have
Speaker 1: whatever you did, you developed, maybe in recollection like a
Speaker 1: pretty like this happened, that happened, this happened, this happened,
Speaker 1: and deliver it a pretty plausible way. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was I mean, there's so much of it that's just
Speaker 1: incredibly vivid in my memory. Um. And then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it that I had to dig super deep
Speaker 1: for the recall. Um. And that was one of the
Speaker 1: real challenges in writing it was was going back to
Speaker 1: that spot in my mind and just pulling those memories
Speaker 1: out of the deep storage that some of them were
Speaker 1: hidden in. UM. That's what I was going to ask
Speaker 1: about because the way that you right, it's so detailed,
Speaker 1: I mean, the you know, from being in the moment
Speaker 1: with the memory too. And I was going to ask,
Speaker 1: I know that you kept a journal on this, but
Speaker 1: you know, is recall different from and we can't really
Speaker 1: know from from the exact moment that you're experiencing, you know,
Speaker 1: how the wind feels against your skin in or the
Speaker 1: smell of something that you recall, and then and then
Speaker 1: articulating kind of the play by play in such great detail,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And that's I mean, that was um,
Speaker 1: one of the I mean, that's always the challenge with
Speaker 1: writing memoir especially, and that journal was incredibly valuable for me.
Speaker 1: I journaled, you know, throughout the trip, so I had
Speaker 1: a very accurate log of every single meal we ate
Speaker 1: and there and then you also had people there too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was valuable. I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: want to, like, uh, I got a couple more questions
Speaker 1: for you, sure, But first I want to just explain
Speaker 1: one thing. How many miles at this point? How many
Speaker 1: miles are you from the nearest piece of aircraft? Um,
Speaker 1: we're we have like over a hundred miles of paddling left.
Speaker 1: And then it's like I think it was it was
Speaker 1: like sixty five ish miles from the nearest aircraft, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't an aircraft available there. So it's like when
Speaker 1: like hundreds of miles to a helicopter. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: wherever the nearest one from that would have been at
Speaker 1: that point, I suppose, which hundreds, maybe thousands, I don't know.
Speaker 1: One of the other settlements down Hudson Bay, which I
Speaker 1: don't even know which one the next one is might
Speaker 1: have had an aircraft. Yeah. The reason I bring this
Speaker 1: up is I don't wanna Um, We've covered a lot
Speaker 1: of ground. Yeah, I just want to know, like I
Speaker 1: want to leave the chronology to be that here you
Speaker 1: are right, you've been mauled? Yeah, what next and the
Speaker 1: things that play out? Yeah after this yeah, um, we'll leave, okay,
Speaker 1: But what I want to know as my last question,
Speaker 1: how do you perceive grizzly bears? Now? Does it really
Speaker 1: bother you the idea that someone would hunt to grizzly
Speaker 1: bear because of this happening, like hunted this specific grizzly bear?
Speaker 1: Do you do? Can you find that you like would
Speaker 1: be like generally I'm on easy with people hunting because
Speaker 1: it's a contentious thing. Did it make you be like
Speaker 1: I respect him so much? Or do you feel that
Speaker 1: they're they're an animals on as there's healthy populations. Do
Speaker 1: you think of it as being like a mythic creature? Now?
Speaker 1: Is it like like what's your forget that part of it,
Speaker 1: forget like whether people show harum or not. I guess
Speaker 1: let's start with this, like how do you view not
Speaker 1: that bear? But how do you view bareness? Now? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it sacred? I have a tremendous respect for bears.
Speaker 1: Um sacred? I mean I would probably put my bear
Speaker 1: on that spectrum. Um. You know, I for me personally,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think I could hunter bear myself.
Speaker 1: And you said you didn't want them to kill that bear, right,
Speaker 1: That's a real common thing I found with people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not not they because a lot of people get mauled
Speaker 1: by bear. Didn't kill it. But in the moment, yeah,
Speaker 1: but later, I mean in the moment I would have
Speaker 1: defended myself. There's like a sense of forgive. There's a
Speaker 1: sense of forgiveness that seems to set in with people
Speaker 1: about a particular animal. Yeah, I mean you know bear,
Speaker 1: the mauld Amber that we had. Yeah, that bear is
Speaker 1: dead now, Yeah, I think I I listened to that.
Speaker 1: I happened to listen to that episode where you guys
Speaker 1: discussed that and then she didn't want it to be killed. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I mean once that's the that's the real challenge
Speaker 1: with bears is um, you know, once they start having
Speaker 1: these human encounters like it can it can just have
Speaker 1: such a detrimental effect on those bears. Um, And it
Speaker 1: can lead to you know, more and more problems and
Speaker 1: and eventually the bear having to be destroyed, which is
Speaker 1: you know, too bad. But this one just vanished into
Speaker 1: the landscape. Mine just vanished. We went out and looked,
Speaker 1: and they looked for it, and they were gonna see
Speaker 1: how it responded to people, basically determine if it was
Speaker 1: going to be a problem bear and then take you know,
Speaker 1: I like the strategy for that. Well, what we do, person,
Speaker 1: go up to it, Bob here and we'll see how it.
Speaker 1: Eric from Bob goes up. You know, Bob's quick with
Speaker 1: a shotgun. Bob was quick with the with a firearm.
Speaker 1: But like, I think back on on that explanation and like, really,
Speaker 1: is that actually what you guys do? Maybe it's like
Speaker 1: a very odd way to uh do that, but you know,
Speaker 1: at the same time, so yeah, they didn't have to
Speaker 1: do that, so I didn't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: So I like to think that it's still out there
Speaker 1: and you know, doing its thing. It could have done
Speaker 1: a lot more to me, I mean, you know too
Speaker 1: earlier points that it could have decided that I was
Speaker 1: a meal, or it could have you know, bitten chunks
Speaker 1: out of me, or or maimed me for life, or
Speaker 1: or killed me straight up. Um, but it didn't. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly appreciative of it for that, and Ultimately, it
Speaker 1: was just a bear being a bear and doing bear
Speaker 1: things in its own habitat, so it didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: M hm, So I appreciate it. You got any follow ups? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I mean you touched on a little bit. But tell
Speaker 1: me how, Like, how do you think it affected everybody
Speaker 1: else on the trip? I mean Dan's like a major player,
Speaker 1: right because he's sort of he really has to take
Speaker 1: over at this point as the trip leader. But like
Speaker 1: your four bodies that are your aged, like, are they
Speaker 1: like holy sh it? Now, Okay, I can't sleep because
Speaker 1: we know there's a bear right near us and there
Speaker 1: could be more of these down the you know, waterway
Speaker 1: that we might come up on some more like, how
Speaker 1: did they change their experience for the remainder of the trip? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's um, it dramatically changes the trip, right,
Speaker 1: I mean the focus is different, the sense of vulnerability
Speaker 1: is totally different, and the and the responsibilities are are
Speaker 1: pretty different too. So I mean all of those guys
Speaker 1: had a lot of extra pressure on them to deal
Speaker 1: with that, um and they handled it well. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they rose the occasion and and helped helped us get
Speaker 1: to where we needed to get. And um, della it
Speaker 1: a lot, but I'm very cognizant of the fact that
Speaker 1: from that point on it was just a very different trip, um.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that they were seeing things differently at
Speaker 1: that point, um, because it's pretty and I would imagine
Speaker 1: at the time that even though they rose the occasion,
Speaker 1: maybe they did or did not like seize the moment
Speaker 1: and just say this is how it is. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to do that sometimes, especially as a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old. But I'm guessing now looking back on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they're happy you got bit by a bear,
Speaker 1: but right, like that's the kind of experience that like
Speaker 1: really can build a person. Yeah, I mean it's incredibly transformative,
Speaker 1: you know, for me and for those guys. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, just just being a support person, uh, to
Speaker 1: a situation like that is, um, it sticks with you forever.
Speaker 1: I Mean, it's kind of like with search and rescue whatever.
Speaker 1: You're not the person that's um, you're not the victim, um,
Speaker 1: but you're they're making a difference in this situation that's
Speaker 1: just like incredibly unique and and very elemental, and that's
Speaker 1: very transformative. Right, I got nor question Are you glad
Speaker 1: you got attack by the bear? I don't know if
Speaker 1: i'd say I was glad I got attack by You're
Speaker 1: now glad you got attack by a bear? Forget the book? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like we're trying to remove the book. But
Speaker 1: remove the book. I mean I would it. I'd be
Speaker 1: a different person if I hadn't been. Um. So in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, I feel like it was um
Speaker 1: grounding and helped me to kind of, um, appreciate everything
Speaker 1: in life just that much more. Um. It's hard to say, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I enjoy getting mulled by bear, but um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we're a product of our experiences, right. You know,
Speaker 1: would I go back into that trip again? Absolutely? Um,
Speaker 1: Would I take precautions to change how that situation would
Speaker 1: have gone? Yes? So, UM, But I'm it's an experience
Speaker 1: that has been incredibly important to me and directional in
Speaker 1: my life. UM. So it's hard to think about that
Speaker 1: not being there. What you got. Um, I'm curious about
Speaker 1: the trauma of it all, um, and that there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot there. So we can make this short and
Speaker 1: wrap it up, but I'm curious about that and if um,
Speaker 1: you've kind of been if you define yourself as and
Speaker 1: are kind of defined by others as like the bear
Speaker 1: attack guy, right, like and if that has colored everything
Speaker 1: else afterwards, even though that was a singular and unique experience,
Speaker 1: right and it's super short experience. UM. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that trauma took a little while to kind of um
Speaker 1: categorize in my brain and kind of put put where
Speaker 1: it needed to go. UM. While I was still out
Speaker 1: in the woods, you know, it was just like bears everywhere,
Speaker 1: not literally, but I was perceiving them everywhere. UM. And then,
Speaker 1: you know I talked earlier about one of my steps
Speaker 1: was to kind of get myself back into situations that
Speaker 1: would um help me overcome barriers that I was now experiencing.
Speaker 1: You know, going to zoos and actually seeing live grizzly
Speaker 1: bears was one of them. Um. Getting back out into
Speaker 1: the woods uh in a in a way that I
Speaker 1: had enough support around me that I could do that
Speaker 1: and go through that evolution of of fear to kind
Speaker 1: of having control of the situation everything. My family and
Speaker 1: friends were really important for that, UM. And that took
Speaker 1: several years of kind of easing back into it, and
Speaker 1: I looked like Rambo for the first couple of years
Speaker 1: going back to the boundary waters. It's like, why didn't
Speaker 1: need to tactical vest and the machete, so the club,
Speaker 1: I didn't carry club, but yet I had yeah right, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a spiked maze. Yeah. So you know, you can
Speaker 1: troll what you can and and I never wanted it
Speaker 1: to define me in the sense of like I can't
Speaker 1: go do these things anymore. So I was very intentional
Speaker 1: about going back out there and doing those things. Getting
Speaker 1: back in the race man, Yeah, exactly, get back up
Speaker 1: on the horse and um, you know, being comfortable with
Speaker 1: the fact that I might be uneasy or my experience
Speaker 1: might be different at this point, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: managing my risks appropriately and then getting back out there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, when I I was seventeen, I went. I
Speaker 1: started my senior year of high school three weeks after
Speaker 1: I was attacked. Yeah, because you're writ you're seing your
Speaker 1: paper about Oh yeah I was in this summer. What
Speaker 1: am I going to do? Yeah exactly, So that Phil,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds crazy and intense and I can't
Speaker 1: even comprehend it. Yeah, thanks a lot. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. How you enjoin your cameras pill it's
Speaker 1: a learning experience. I think it's going well though. I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna at this work nice. Yeah, what we're
Speaker 1: talking about there is Phil. Go ahead. I just gon
Speaker 1: had some more you know, bearing and canoe questions, But
Speaker 1: go ahead. Phil's filming where I don't know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: like start releasing highlight videos and whatnot. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a test run. You may or may not see
Speaker 1: some of this, but you will see things in the
Speaker 1: near future. That is the plan. It's let's fill the
Speaker 1: podcast engineer. We're gonna have to really like gussie ourselves
Speaker 1: up and pick our nose planning. I'm gonna change everything
Speaker 1: you start. You know, Larry King always said that so
Speaker 1: long as suspenders, suspenders, leaning forward, your elbows on the
Speaker 1: table some bis at different hours like that, Uh you didn't.
Speaker 1: You're close to finishing meeting and finish you're like what
Speaker 1: forty some miles right from where the rest of the
Speaker 1: crew ended up taking out at the point where I
Speaker 1: got Evack, well, when I got Evec yeah, closer like
Speaker 1: but I was trying to leave those details as like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do his whole damn book. Well,
Speaker 1: I skipped ahead right to the very very end. So
Speaker 1: you got to eve act, pursue your line of questioning,
Speaker 1: sustained whatever you say. You had to Uh, you had
Speaker 1: to bring a guy, a guy with you when you
Speaker 1: when you pulled out. UM. I know for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, like when you're on a big trip like
Speaker 1: that you set out to do as a as a
Speaker 1: beginning and end and if you don't finish, it's like
Speaker 1: naws at you. Yeah, so as a nawn at you,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna have to go back and go
Speaker 1: do the whole six hundred miles again and finish her up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: summit fever, right, Yeah, Um, I want to go back.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to do the same
Speaker 1: trip exactly. Um, but there is kind of that sense
Speaker 1: of like, oh, you didn't quite finish the trip that
Speaker 1: you had set out to do, but you did the
Speaker 1: trip that that you were dealt um. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of part of the whole vibe of like coming to
Speaker 1: terms with um with this and really with any long
Speaker 1: expedition like that. You get back and it's like you
Speaker 1: have to recondition yourself to the world. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: hard transition. So yeah, somebody I'll go back. Good. Last question,
Speaker 1: I promised, that's some all the questions you want. Man
Speaker 1: twice and I forget the chronology, but twice, you guys
Speaker 1: lose a canoe? Correct, not on this trip, once on
Speaker 1: this trip, he wants on this trip. Yeah, like lost lost,
Speaker 1: But I thought you guys got it back one time. Well,
Speaker 1: so one time it's like slip it barely slid away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that the one you're referring to, right, But then
Speaker 1: another time you is actually lose a canoe and it's gone, gone, gone,
Speaker 1: like it's not coming back. You guys only have two
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah, I'm just wondering, like what sort
Speaker 1: of like what's the protocol for beaching, tathering, putting. How
Speaker 1: does the canoe that you're so dependent upon get taken away? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you did it. You were you were crippled up.
Speaker 1: You did a shitty job, yank get up on the beach, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and and that that environment is that you
Speaker 1: just you just pull it up on the beach with
Speaker 1: crippled or not, and you tip it upside down and
Speaker 1: that's it for the night. So our our protocol was
Speaker 1: to like pull it up out of the water and
Speaker 1: then weigh it down so that the wind didn't take it. Um.
Speaker 1: And what happened in our situation was we had like
Speaker 1: this century storm um that came up. I actually pulled
Speaker 1: up footage of it like a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: from two thousand five, and it looks like a hurricane
Speaker 1: going across northern Canada, um. And it ended up the
Speaker 1: water level rose a lot and it ended up taking
Speaker 1: it away. UM. So basically the protocol for securing your
Speaker 1: canoes is just that secure your canoes. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: next time, I'd probably drive a stake in the ground
Speaker 1: or something um, or just like bring them so far
Speaker 1: up from sure it's like we're sitting, you know, we
Speaker 1: got bigger things to deal with if the waters rise
Speaker 1: to this point. Um. But uh yeah, so that was
Speaker 1: that was hard. You guys were doing everything right. It
Speaker 1: was just such a circuit extreme circumstance. Yeah. I could
Speaker 1: not have foreseen it. Compounding factors, yeah, right, compounding factors.
Speaker 1: And and not to mention it was like super cold
Speaker 1: and stormy the night before, and so we're all just
Speaker 1: struggling and you know, dealing with the aftermath of a
Speaker 1: bear attack. And yeah, so that was that was painful,
Speaker 1: pretty incredible for a group of seventeen year old kids,
Speaker 1: so very learning experience. And give you guys a lot
Speaker 1: of props man for not hanging out with those girls
Speaker 1: longer too. I gotta I don't think I could have
Speaker 1: stuck to you that we're pretty much seventeen year old Yanni. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys were very mature, you know, Okay, Alex Messenger
Speaker 1: the title of the book, The twenty nine Day Surviving
Speaker 1: a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra. Alex, uh, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you making the trip out. Yeah, thanks for telling
Speaker 1: us your tail. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.
Speaker 1: Take care everybody,