Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 76: Casting Homeward: Steve Ramirez Shares River Wisdom and New Adventures

Transcript

S6, Ep 76: Casting Homeward: Steve Ramirez Shares River Wisdom and New Adventures · The Articulate Fly

0:03
Intro: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.
0:07
Intro: On this episode, friend and author Steve Ramirez returns to the podcast.
0:12
Intro: We have a great conversation about lessons from the river, and Steve updates
0:16
Intro: us on his latest book, Casting Homeward. I think you're really going to enjoy it.
0:20
Intro: But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.
0:24
Intro: If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave
0:29
Intro: us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.
0:33
Intro: And I hope everyone had a safe and relaxing 4th of July with family and friends.
0:38
Intro: I want to thank all of our listeners for their patience as we took last week
0:42
Intro: off to attend the Outdoor Writers Association of America's Field Fest in Johnson City, Tennessee.
0:48
Intro: It was great to spend time with colleagues and get more content for the show.
0:52
Intro: And we will be in Orlando later this week for ICAST if you will be too hit us
0:57
Intro: up on social media if you want to connect it's always great to meet listeners on the road,
1:02
Intro: and we recently released an interview only show The Long Haul with the Articulate
1:07
Intro: Fly so if you prefer to listen to the Articulate Fly without the fishing reports,
1:11
Intro: just search The Long Haul in your favorite podcatcher now on to the interview.
1:18
Marvin: Well Steve welcome back to the Articulate Fly lie.
1:21
Steve: It is truly my pleasure. You know that. And thank you for inviting me.
1:26
Marvin: Oh, gosh, I love our conversations. You know, folks, it's kind of funny.
1:29
Marvin: We were talking before we started recording, and it's been almost two years
1:33
Marvin: since Steve was on the last time.
1:35
Marvin: And there's been a little bit of water under the bridge.
1:39
Marvin: I know you've several more books in the casting series, and I know you've got
1:43
Marvin: the last of that series is going to get released in September.
1:47
Steve: Yes, September 3rd.
1:50
Marvin: And so I'm trying to remember if it was two years ago you had two of the books
1:54
Marvin: in this series out is that right or was it just one.
1:58
Steve: I think it two were out and the third coming out last time we spoke.
2:03
Steve: So Casting Onward, which since we've spoke,
2:06
Steve: has been the last number of months, number one on Amazon, which is a beautiful
2:12
Steve: thing, and was highlighted in the movie Mending the Line, which is why it had a second life.
2:21
Steve: And then Casting Onward was the second book. I think those two were out when
2:25
Steve: we spoke last. Casting Seaward was coming out.
2:28
Steve: And it's now been out for two years. And since I seem to be running it about
2:33
Steve: one book every two years, casting Homeward, which is the final in the casting
2:39
Steve: series with Lions Press, that comes out September 3rd.
2:42
Steve: And it's on pre-order right now for people that want to pre-order. And I'm really excited.
2:47
Marvin: Yeah, it's super neat too. And I know, you know, because we've talked a little
2:50
Marvin: bit, that you're sort of meditating on what the next project will be because
2:54
Marvin: you are in perpetual motion a little bit like I am.
2:58
Steve: Yes and i i basically know
3:01
Steve: the next project it's not something i'm
3:05
Steve: going to go public with yet except to say that i'm excited about
3:08
Steve: it it's challenging and it's the kind
3:11
Steve: of thing uh you and i've talked before my writing is
3:14
Steve: is a lot about destination both in
3:18
Steve: reality and philosophically and um
3:22
Steve: so yeah it's an expansion on even though it's it's the start of something completely
3:26
Steve: new from the casting series it's a great expansion um in a wonderful i think
3:32
Steve: it's going to be a great adventure for everyone and they get to do it with me
3:37
Steve: without um you know the mosquitoes and,
3:40
Steve: and the bears yeah and.
3:43
Marvin: And while they wait they can always read your column in fly fisherman magazine.
3:49
Steve: And that's true. And thank you for bringing that up. I'm actually quite open
3:55
Steve: about the fact that I feel very fortunate and love it that I'm a small part
4:00
Steve: of the Fly Fisherman Magazine family.
4:04
Steve: I do love it.
4:05
Marvin: Yeah, it's a neat magazine. And I think Ross has done a really good job of kind
4:09
Marvin: of bringing that magazine into the 21st century.
4:12
Steve: See that's i'm gonna say stuff and i'm up front ross is my friend and and i'm
4:17
Steve: and uh so i have to say that right up front but he's my friend because of who
4:21
Steve: i see him and how i see him and i think he's worked really hard to make that
4:27
Steve: such a rounded experience everything from how to,
4:32
Steve: to where to to why to um you know why we do it and then what's our responsibility
4:38
Steve: which is the the part I love the most,
4:40
Steve: you know, I think he's really getting us all to sync or helping us bringing
4:45
Steve: people together to help all of us think together about how we can protect what
4:50
Steve: we love, you know, and love what we protect.
4:53
Steve: So yeah, I'm definitely, I don't mean to go on too much, but I think he's done
4:57
Steve: a great job and I'm really very happy to be part of it.
5:01
Marvin: Yeah, it's very neat. And, you know, we've talked multiple times since the last
5:04
Marvin: interview and, you know, one of the things I always enjoy about our conversations
5:07
Marvin: and I enjoy this, This, you know, not all of my interviews are like this,
5:11
Marvin: but I love what I call the journey interview.
5:13
Marvin: And, you know, we've been kind of kicking around. I mean, gosh,
5:16
Marvin: we've probably been talking about this for six months.
5:20
Marvin: You know, kind of what did we want to talk about when we got together again?
5:23
Marvin: And, you know, I don't generally do interviews where it's like the book's out.
5:26
Marvin: Let's talk about the book. But we thought it would be kind of interesting to
5:29
Marvin: just talk about lessons from the river.
5:34
Marvin: And, you know, I mean, I think we've got a handful of kind of topics.
5:37
Marvin: But, you know, I'll kind of open it up because, I mean, one of the things,
5:40
Marvin: you know, everyone that knows me, everyone will get ready to laugh.
5:44
Marvin: I'll say I'm moderately wound tightly.
5:48
Steve: I laugh too.
5:50
Marvin: And so, you know, one of the things I think that's really one of the things
5:56
Marvin: I've kind of taken away from kind of my life, you know, on the water is that
6:01
Marvin: you can only take what the river is willing to give you.
6:06
Steve: Right. Just like life. No matter how much we think we have control, we don't.
6:11
Steve: We only have control over our decisions. So you can cast over here,
6:14
Steve: cast over there, stand here, stand there, and it's pretty much like.
6:18
Steve: It doesn't mean you know it's coming around the bend.
6:21
Marvin: Yeah. And you know, we can control how we react to those situations as well.
6:26
Steve: Right. That's exactly, that's a lot of times I'll write to myself and to others.
6:32
Steve: I'll say I can do nothing about what happens in life or what happens in fishing.
6:37
Steve: They're really the same. I mean, it's been said before, but you can really connect
6:42
Steve: anything you want to, to fly fishing in nature and you can learn anything if you pay attention.
6:47
Steve: Attention so um but it's it's
6:50
Steve: true i can choose i can see what's happening
6:53
Steve: and then i can make a choice choice of my
6:55
Steve: response rather than simply react out
6:59
Steve: of emotion i can respond out of something bigger than that so i do think it
7:04
Steve: all connects whether you're deciding i'm going to toss a dry fly right now and
7:08
Steve: i'm going to do it here in this way or i'm gonna i'm going to do something that
7:12
Steve: i'm not a big fan of but i've done it a lot of it which is nymphing and um,
7:18
Steve: but in life we do the same thing.
7:19
Steve: You know, we can take a moment and decide this is what I'm going to do.
7:24
Steve: Some of the best things are scary.
7:27
Marvin: Yeah, and it's interesting too, right? Because, you know, kind of with my kind
7:30
Marvin: of lawyer banker background, you know, if you apply enough force and resources,
7:34
Marvin: you should get what you want.
7:36
Marvin: And, you know, one of the things is you just, you know, some days you go fish
7:40
Marvin: and it's like, this is all we can get today.
7:43
Steve: Right and it's okay and the victory is can you go fishing catch nothing and have a great time,
7:51
Steve: and my answer is always yes but i know uh you know i remember a friend who golfed,
7:59
Steve: i don't even remember his name now it was so long ago and i asked him
8:02
Steve: why he loved golf he said it's so relaxing and i
8:05
Steve: was a big runner back then and uh because
8:08
Steve: i could be and i was running the trail through the golf course
8:11
Steve: and i heard some guys cursing through cursing and
8:14
Steve: and i saw this golf club come flying
8:17
Steve: past my head it was him um you know fly fishing and golfing is is like an island
8:25
Steve: if you you don't bring it with you you're not going to find it so he didn't
8:28
Steve: bring peace with them he wasn't going to find it um but you but yes if you bring
8:33
Steve: peace to the that river you seek it You're going to find it.
8:37
Steve: And I learned so much by paying attention as an angler about life and about myself.
8:47
Steve: So, yeah, the reflection in the water is more than just you. Yeah.
8:52
Marvin: It's interesting, too, because, you know, I'm fortunate enough to get to spend
8:55
Marvin: time with people because, you know, I always say I'll be proper since it's you
9:00
Marvin: and say, you know, fly fishing is something that heals me.
9:03
Marvin: And so if I can, you know, bring that to other people, I'm always happy to do that.
9:07
Marvin: And one of the things I try to tell people because beginners so often get so
9:11
Marvin: frustrated and it's like there's so many tiny victories from a day on the water.
9:17
Steve: Yes and if you really want to be brave and this
9:20
Steve: is you know everything is subjective so this is
9:23
Steve: my subjective view if people read my work you'll
9:26
Steve: find that i'm constantly throwing myself into positions i've never
9:29
Steve: been in before and doing things i've never tried before so
9:32
Steve: i'm always a beginner and you've
9:35
Steve: got to learn how to forgive yourself when things don't go right that's
9:38
Steve: how how you learn so um i constantly
9:42
Steve: i'm trying something new and it's
9:45
Steve: really cool so i'm 63 years old
9:48
Steve: but i don't feel it i feel like a kid
9:51
Steve: because i'm always trying something new and if it doesn't work out big deal
9:55
Steve: i mean your kid you fall in the mud you get back up uh when you're adult you
10:00
Steve: fall in the mud and you you think your day's ruined so i'm definitely a 63 year
10:06
Steve: old kid And I like it. I like it.
10:10
Marvin: Yeah, it's interesting too, right? Because there's, you know,
10:14
Marvin: when you face that kind of adversity and newness and, you know,
10:18
Marvin: you don't always triumph, however we want to define triumphing.
10:22
Marvin: But, you know, what I think it does is it expands your capacity to do more crazy stuff, right? Yeah.
10:29
Steve: Yeah and i think it it's all practice so
10:32
Steve: if you um i think the failure there's
10:35
Steve: the failure is possible but to me failure is
10:39
Steve: if you've failed to complete something you're trying to do or trying to learn
10:44
Steve: and then you didn't learn anything from it then you failed but if you if you
10:47
Steve: made a mistake and then you learn from it you pick up and you go again then
10:50
Steve: you're good you're golden so i love it To me, fly fishing,
10:56
Steve: lessons from the river are always coming.
11:00
Steve: They're always there. And I think we brought this up because I was sharing with
11:04
Steve: you earlier that no matter what I write in that, there's going to be lessons
11:07
Steve: from the river embedded into that book.
11:10
Steve: There have been in the past, but there's going to be more.
11:13
Steve: And that is because, again, my subjective opinion, the world is really hurting right now.
11:21
Steve: And to me, we humans are the proximate cause of that hurt, including to ourselves.
11:28
Steve: And so if we ask ourselves, what can we do to make things better?
11:31
Steve: The first thing we got to do is make ourselves better.
11:35
Steve: Fly fishing the river and paying attention in nature helps me become a better
11:39
Steve: person. Does that make sense?
11:42
Marvin: No, it does. And, you know, while you were saying that, I was kind of thinking
11:46
Marvin: about something, you know, a lot of what I do. I, you know, and I've talked
11:49
Marvin: to you a lot about my boys and they're at that age where, you know, I'm coaching, right?
11:54
Marvin: But I, but I'm also sort of, you know, try to, you know, be a helpful soul in the world.
11:59
Marvin: And it's kind of interesting because, you know, to your point,
12:02
Marvin: there's so much rancor, right?
12:06
Marvin: And to me, it's a choice, right? You know, whether you want to get up in the
12:09
Marvin: morning and have a little bit of outrage on your cornflakes or not.
12:15
Steve: Not for me.
12:16
Marvin: Right. Right. And so, you know, it's funny. And so like, I, I really push my
12:20
Marvin: boys and I'll, you know, uh, you know, push other people in my circle.
12:25
Marvin: I just kind of suggest that maybe they should start by being the change they want to see in the world.
12:30
Steve: Right and that's where it starts i mean that's what we can
12:33
Steve: do i had a deep conversation with a friend yesterday who
12:37
Steve: spent 30 40 years of her life working for
12:39
Steve: peace in the world and we we talked about
12:43
Steve: the struggles and and i i have
12:46
Steve: another friend that spent time with the dalai lama and spent time
12:48
Steve: with the doctor of the dalai lama and one day she was
12:51
Steve: complaining she was actually talking to the doctor of the
12:54
Steve: dalai lama about struggles she was having in
12:57
Steve: in dealing with the world and he just
13:00
Steve: leaned over and said you can always feed the birds he
13:03
Steve: said what she says you can feed the birds all we
13:06
Steve: can do is what we can do you know so sometimes what i do is those small thing
13:12
Steve: and on the river those are some of those small things you know i was with uh
13:16
Steve: years ago in a road casting onward i was on a river high up in the mountains
13:21
Steve: of colorado with kirk dieter from from Trout Unlimited, also a dear friend.
13:26
Steve: And Kirk and I were fishing together and this young man with his girlfriend
13:29
Steve: came down and basically they parked by our car because they saw that we were
13:34
Steve: there, so they figured it might
13:35
Steve: be a good fishing spot and he just jumped right where we were gonna go.
13:38
Steve: And went and fished right in the water we were gonna go to. And I watched how
13:42
Steve: Kirk handled that, which was beautiful. He says he probably has no idea what he's doing.
13:47
Steve: So Kirk offered to teach him how to be more successful fishing.
13:53
Steve: Gave him some great tips, and then handed him some flies that he could use.
13:57
Steve: And then was able to teach him in that process etiquette.
14:03
Steve: You know, where other people might have yelled at this young man who it turned
14:08
Steve: out just came out of the military after serving in Afghanistan.
14:11
Steve: He just didn't know what he was doing.
14:12
Steve: So, yeah, I don't want any cornflake. I don't want any rage in my cornflake.
14:17
Steve: You know, I carried a weapon for 35 years. I don't need any more.
14:22
Marvin: Yeah. It's interesting too, Steve, because, you know, I'm always fascinated,
14:27
Marvin: you know, talking to creatives.
14:30
Marvin: And, you know, I'm fortunate to be able to interview a lot of authors and other
14:33
Marvin: creators, you know, on the podcast.
14:36
Marvin: And, you know, kind of one of the things too, kind of another thing I think
14:39
Marvin: about when I think about lessons from the river is how it helps us create that
14:45
Marvin: serendipitous space, right, to solve problems and to be creative.
14:51
Steve: Right.
14:53
Steve: It does. It does. And why don't you tell me a little bit more of how you see
14:58
Steve: that? Now I'm interviewing.
15:00
Marvin: Oh, fair enough. I'll indulge you. It's fine.
15:06
Marvin: So, you know, it's an interesting thing, right?
15:09
Marvin: So if you go back and if I say that I'm moderately, tightly wound,
15:12
Marvin: right? So you think that, you know, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, it works.
15:17
Marvin: And, you know, I don't know when I sort of connected this dot late,
15:21
Marvin: no doubt, but that, you know, you just don't schedule at nine o'clock on Friday
15:28
Marvin: morning, I'm going to find the cure for cancer.
15:30
Marvin: Right. It just doesn't, it doesn't work like that. Right. And,
15:34
Marvin: and so, you know, for me, I try to kind of order the world in what I call strategic and tactical.
15:41
Marvin: Okay. And, you know, strategic is kind of a narrow word, really,
15:45
Marvin: because it's all it's any I would say it's any kind of created and creative endeavor.
15:50
Marvin: And I think that, you know, not relentlessly applying force and resources.
15:56
Marvin: Sometimes you just have to learn how to do that and that it's OK and that it's
16:00
Marvin: not a waste of time. Right.
16:04
Steve: OK. And. You know, I've learned so much from all the different things that I've done in Marine Corps.
16:10
Steve: Of course when you start talking about strategy and tactics then i go
16:13
Steve: there in my head i go to your strategy as a
16:15
Steve: plan and tactics are the way you execute that plan but um
16:19
Steve: they're also a great lesson in that life happens to us as we plan and i think
16:25
Steve: the number one thing we're going to have for the 21st century that's going to
16:28
Steve: decide which of us are going to survive as part of our species is our ability to deal with the,
16:36
Steve: we do not know what's coming next.
16:41
Steve: So we're going to have to be able to deal with that.
16:46
Steve: And yeah, I think we do have to hold space.
16:49
Steve: When we're fly fishing, we're on a river, we're in nature and anything,
16:51
Steve: whether you're a fisher, hunter, or a wildlife photographer,
16:55
Steve: there is serendipity involved in that process.
16:58
Steve: Process and that has to be a lot of times what happens for
17:01
Steve: me is the best things happen when i simply wait or i
17:05
Steve: i just i'm open to them happening i'm paying
17:07
Steve: attention and you keep hearing me saying paying attention paying attention because
17:10
Steve: that's that's what it is and when i find myself being blocked even as a writer
17:15
Steve: i'm thinking okay what am i going to do here you know the terror of the blank
17:18
Steve: page uh the first thing i'm going to do is make some coffee and relax and just
17:23
Steve: let it be there's this there's,
17:28
Steve: we creating force and also i spent years in martial arts as well and i learned
17:33
Steve: studying aikido that uh force is not always the answer a lot of times it's redirecting force,
17:40
Steve: so um yeah you can't force it yep you just can't you just got to go with the
17:46
Steve: flow and that's such a cliche but um see what there is so many ways that i look
17:54
Steve: at what we do standing in a river,
17:57
Steve: I'm much more of a river guy than a lake guy, by the way, because I like movement.
18:01
Steve: I love fishing in the surf and reading the surf.
18:07
Steve: It makes you pay attention. It makes you focus and learn and adapt and improvise and overcome.
18:14
Steve: And so to me, fly fishing, obviously, is just something that grabs all of that.
18:20
Steve: And we've talked before about it being healing. it's certainly a conduit for
18:25
Steve: creativity if we're open but if if what our focus is is how many fish we can
18:30
Steve: catch and how big they are then we're very limited especially as i i see our rivers are are,
18:37
Steve: largely suffering with every passing year um i think there's a whole lot more
18:44
Steve: to it than that i think what you call fly fishing the bicycle yes yeah i like
18:49
Steve: that a lot so um yeah i'll hope I didn't go on too much there.
18:54
Marvin: No, not at all. And I would say I'll also have to acknowledge,
18:57
Marvin: Steve, that that's a little bit building on a metaphor that Steve Jobs had at
19:02
Marvin: Apple, where he said that computers, I think, were bicycles for the brain.
19:07
Steve: Okay. Well, and again, it is much more convoluted. So your listeners are going
19:14
Steve: to hear how deep we get here.
19:17
Steve: Because I mentioned before, everything's like an island, which if you don't
19:22
Steve: have it with you, if you don't bring it there, it's not there.
19:25
Steve: And what we bring to the river, what we bring to our life, we can either have
19:30
Steve: rage or we can... I've had people that were saying, well, I'm just so angry
19:33
Steve: about that, and I'll listen to them, and I'll say, okay, well,
19:35
Steve: you have a right to be that way if that's what you want.
19:38
Steve: And they'd say, what do you mean, if that's what you want? I said,
19:40
Steve: well, you could choose not to be angry.
19:42
Steve: I mean, again, I'm going to get kind of zen here, but I think it was the Dalai
19:47
Steve: Lama that said, you will not be punished for your anger. Your anger is your punishment.
19:53
Steve: So, the last person to flip me off in traffic, I think I blew a kiss.
20:00
Steve: Which freaked him out a bit.
20:02
Marvin: Yeah yeah yeah some people could say that was passive-aggressive but but uh maybe.
20:10
Steve: But i i just i just laughed like wouldn't you so angry about you're such a rush
20:15
Steve: and we're all going to the same place so um.
20:19
Marvin: Yeah it it's it's an interesting thing about uh you know while while we're kind
20:24
Marvin: of in this little zen place you know it's like it's funny because i'll I'll
20:27
Marvin: like tell my boys sometimes I was like, you know, so if you're twice as angry,
20:31
Marvin: how, what does that help you change?
20:34
Marvin: Right. In the metaphor I use with them to help them understand that as I said,
20:38
Marvin: so once you see the tiger, if you're twice as scared, do you run any faster?
20:43
Steve: Perfect. Perfect.
20:45
Marvin: Right.
20:46
Steve: And we'll serve you to run.
20:48
Marvin: Yeah.
20:48
Steve: So, um, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, we get, we get to be human and, and we all are.
20:53
Steve: And so here again, I use the river metaphor and it goes part of my,
20:57
Steve: you know, imperfect text and Buddha persona that I've taken on myself.
21:04
Steve: And I get these things that grab a hold of me in that negative way.
21:07
Steve: I look at them like I'm analyzing something in a glass box and I say,
21:12
Steve: okay, I'm feeling anxiety or anger or stress or whatever it happens to be. Why is that?
21:16
Steve: And then I think it through and I think, you know, what do you want to do about
21:18
Steve: it? And then when I figured that out, I stick that in the river and let it float
21:21
Steve: around the corner and let it go.
21:23
Steve: That sounds cliche, but it works
21:25
Steve: for me because I can only do what I can do. So we go back to fishing.
21:31
Steve: You can go and have a fantastic time no matter what happens.
21:34
Steve: Or you can choose to be pissed off because it didn't come out the way you planned.
21:39
Steve: And, you know, the fish don't have a script. And their job is to survive and
21:46
Steve: procreate and pass on their genetics just like us.
21:50
Steve: Their job is not to get caught by you. Yes. So, uh, I'm, I'm never upset if
21:56
Steve: I don't catch the fish, that's my fault.
21:59
Steve: And when I do catch them, it's wonderful. And then I treat them nicely,
22:02
Steve: you know, unless we're going to eat them.
22:05
Marvin: It's interesting too, you know, because talking about bringing things to the
22:08
Marvin: island always, you know, makes me think about how important it is to bring curiosity
22:12
Marvin: to the island and what a safe place fly fishing is to be curious.
22:16
Steve: Oh, I love that. I love that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And we're losing that, I think.
22:21
Steve: And again, I'm just being, you know, I'm saying what I think doesn't mean I'm right.
22:27
Steve: But to me, one of the problems with the answer at your fingertips is we're losing
22:32
Steve: our creativity, and we're also becoming way too easy to simply accept.
22:37
Steve: If you don't have – I talked about being a 63-year-old kid.
22:41
Steve: Well, I'm forever flipping rocks over. When I was a little kid,
22:44
Steve: I was always flipping rocks over to see what lived under there.
22:47
Steve: I know, oh, a salamander. Oh, under the water, I have some rocks.
22:51
Steve: Okay, there's some mayfly.
22:54
Steve: I'm still doing that. and it
22:57
Steve: keep that curiosity what's going on here today and what
23:00
Steve: does it mean and what can i what can i learn from this it also puts us into
23:07
Steve: a really good sense of our place in the world and you and i have talked about
23:11
Steve: this um you know we're we're a blip a nice blip or blip.
23:19
Marvin: Yeah it's an interesting thing it's really kind of a great kind of segue kind
23:24
Marvin: of into the kind of the next thing i was going to talk about which is how it
23:27
Marvin: helps us get out of that egocentric worldview,
23:31
Marvin: right and you know um you know you can get a lot of perspective like you can
23:37
Marvin: get perspective if you're in yellowstone and you get lost or you see a bear
23:41
Marvin: right yes yes like that's one kind of perspective but i also too to your point
23:48
Marvin: i think you know when you look at um,
23:52
Marvin: You know, when you're observant and you see, you know, what's going on,
23:57
Marvin: but you also see, you know, entire life cycles that are much shorter than yours, right?
24:02
Marvin: How does that inform how you should live your life, right? Sure.
24:05
Marvin: You know, I think I've told you before, I have a favorite rock that's three-fourths
24:09
Marvin: of the way through a way trip that I take relatively frequently where I sit
24:14
Marvin: and eat the sandwich and watch the kingfishers.
24:17
Steve: I love that.
24:18
Marvin: And, you know, I, I know, I know about how long I have, you know,
24:22
Marvin: on some days I can sit on the rock and you can smell the deer,
24:26
Marvin: but you can't see the deer.
24:28
Steve: Oh yeah. I love that. I love that. That is, that is what it's all about.
24:32
Marvin: Yeah. And so, you know, it's an interesting thing. And I think,
24:34
Marvin: you know, that, you know, helping with context, um, also might,
24:41
Marvin: you know, help us maybe find something other than rage for the cornflakes in the morning.
24:47
Steve: Sure. And there's times when I think, I don't want to say rage, but maybe outrage.
24:52
Steve: I don't know. There's times when it's okay to say this is wrong.
24:57
Steve: And that's another thing I love that fly fishing can do for us.
25:00
Steve: It connects us not just to a fish, but the fish to the river,
25:03
Steve: the river to the mayflies, the riparian habitat, the need we have trees to cool the water.
25:11
Steve: And it goes on and goes on and why we need rain. And once you've done all that
25:16
Steve: connection, you understand how small you are, but also that you're part of this
25:19
Steve: huge thing that is so beautiful.
25:24
Steve: And once we have that, it's okay for us to feel a certain degree of this is
25:31
Steve: wrong when we notice that people are throwing their beer cans in the river.
25:36
Steve: Or um that they're randomly killing fish and throwing them up on the on the
25:41
Steve: shore to die or you know we could go on and on about that but then how do we deal with that,
25:48
Steve: and so what i love too is a lot of
25:50
Steve: fly fishing organizations and i'm not a big
25:53
Steve: organization guy even though i am a life member of trial
25:56
Steve: unlimited uh are doing great work
25:59
Steve: at cleaning up rivers of of teaching people to respect nature
26:04
Steve: and each other and that
26:07
Steve: to me is what we need to pass on you know that that
26:10
Steve: respect that empathy so empathy for the
26:13
Steve: fish and i have killed and eaten fish so it's
26:16
Steve: not like i'm you know saying this is you
26:19
Steve: get where i'm coming from i do we have we
26:22
Steve: have empathy for the fish so i have asthma and heart disease
26:25
Steve: and i write about that in this fourth book coming out and with my asthma which
26:30
Steve: is beginning progressively worse i remember what it's like not to be able to
26:34
Steve: breathe so when i pull take a fish i try to keep it in the water and i always
26:39
Steve: know if i have to bring that for some reason that one eye is looking towards the water,
26:44
Steve: wanting to get back and the other eye is looking right at me and i've got it
26:47
Steve: life in my hand literally that kind of empathy um is something i see us losing in the world.
26:57
Steve: And this is coming not this is coming from a former u.s marine that you know
27:02
Steve: i'm saying i'm it's not um i'm not a big mush but i am uh every true warrior
27:09
Steve: i've ever known has nothing to prove,
27:11
Steve: um and i've served with a lot of them and they
27:14
Steve: had nothing to prove there was no big ego they knew that they were small and
27:19
Steve: i don't mean to be too graphic here but i've seen a lot of death they had seen
27:22
Steve: a lot of death and all you have to do is notice what it's like to see a human
27:26
Steve: being turn into a sack of potatoes and you realize okay i'm not that important
27:30
Steve: except for what good i can do here,
27:33
Steve: So I think fly fishing, being in nature, it is part of what we need both in
27:40
Steve: the healing of our world and ourselves and in the teaching to remind us.
27:46
Steve: And I hope you don't mind. I went a little crazy there in sharing,
27:51
Steve: but I'm passionate about it.
27:54
Marvin: Yeah, it deeply concerns me in a slightly different way.
27:58
Marvin: And so I see – and part of this great thing about being on a river where your
28:08
Marvin: phone doesn't work, which I think is glorious,
28:10
Marvin: is finding that connection and being truly connected to the resource.
28:16
Marvin: And I think, you know, as I watch the challenges that, say, for example,
28:24
Marvin: some of our not-for-profits are facing, I mean, people are not engaged.
28:29
Marvin: Engaged, and this isn't in a judgmental way, but if you look at the data,
28:34
Marvin: you know, if people fly fish one to three days a year, and that's half the people
28:38
Marvin: that fly fish in a year, it deeply concerns me.
28:42
Marvin: It's actually something I've made a mental note to sit down and talk to Chris
28:45
Marvin: Wood the next time I'm with him, because I think that, you know,
28:49
Marvin: if you fast forward 15 years,
28:51
Marvin: we're going to start to really see how difficult it's going to be to care about
28:57
Marvin: these things that i know you care deeply about.
28:59
Steve: Right um.
29:02
Marvin: Because we're literally breeding that attachment out of our humanity.
29:07
Steve: Yes i'm so
29:10
Steve: glad you brought that up and i i'm um the
29:13
Steve: fourth book the one that's coming out and this is actually this is not a
29:16
Steve: book plug i'm there's a real reason i'm telling you this i
29:19
Steve: am very honored that uh a gentleman
29:22
Steve: has become a friend richard louve who wrote last
29:25
Steve: child in the woods and i don't know if you're aware of that book but
29:29
Steve: it's a it's a book that i wish at least every parent would
29:32
Steve: would read um every school board
29:35
Steve: should be mandatory reading um but
29:38
Steve: anyhow last child in the woods and and i'm very pleased that richard louve has
29:43
Steve: done the forward for this fourth book and um pleased and honored but he's really
29:51
Steve: that's What his focus has been is our connection to what we're doing with our children.
29:58
Steve: We don't save what we don't love, and we don't love what we don't know.
30:04
Steve: And as a former warrior, and I don't say that, you know, flippantly like somebody
30:11
Steve: just has a sticker on their pickup truck.
30:13
Steve: I've actually been out there and done hard stuff.
30:16
Steve: As a former warrior, you know that how you train people to kill other people
30:23
Steve: is to take the humanity away from the target.
30:27
Steve: And we're taking the reason to care away from nature.
30:33
Steve: We're treating it as a thing to be used up and spit out.
30:37
Steve: And there's too many of us. There's 8 billion of us and growing.
30:43
Steve: And it's going to take care of itself if we don't. Because I was fishing for this book, actually.
30:52
Steve: I was fishing the Big Hole River, which has lost, I don't remember the actual
30:55
Steve: number, but something like 40% of its trout gone.
31:00
Steve: And we're seeing this impact. But here's where I see the hope.
31:05
Steve: I think us anglers, I think us people who are part of the outdoor community,
31:11
Steve: anglers, ethical hunters, people who are into gardening, all these sort of groups,
31:16
Steve: we're the ones that can drive this forward and say no more.
31:20
Steve: We're the ones that can say, I'd love to see what Richard Louv has written about,
31:25
Steve: that every child is exposed to nature as part of their teaching,
31:29
Steve: as part of their learning and growing.
31:31
Steve: I mean, everything attaches to it. And if they had that, first of all,
31:35
Steve: I think it's going to make their life richer.
31:38
Steve: And in this book, I actually have a little thing I say where I wish that every
31:43
Steve: child in Gaza and Israel had to go fishing together as a mandatory part of their education.
31:49
Steve: Now, that may seem very Pollyanna, and I'm not silly. I know what the real problems are there.
31:55
Steve: I was dealing with Islamic jihad up close and personal when I was in my 20s.
32:01
Steve: But I do know that I saw how people separate themselves from each other and from nature.
32:10
Steve: And as long as you treat all of this as just something to be used,
32:15
Steve: then you're not going to care until it's too late.
32:20
Steve: I don't know if you saw the thing where howler monkeys are falling out of the
32:24
Steve: trees in Yucatan dead from the heat.
32:28
Marvin: No, I haven't.
32:30
Steve: Yeah. I mean, that's just one of many things I can bring up right now.
32:34
Steve: And I want people to pay attention because I don't know about all the anglers
32:38
Steve: in the world, but I can tell you I would not be interested in going into an
32:43
Steve: ocean or down a river where I knew everything was dead.
32:47
Steve: I'm just not interested i wouldn't be interested in
32:50
Steve: knowing that it's all been done in a stainless steel
32:53
Steve: tank and dumped in there for me to catch like it was a kiddie pool and that's
32:58
Steve: the direction i'm afraid we're going to go if we don't pull together and say
33:02
Steve: we love this and we want to keep it alive so yeah i'm i'm passionate about it
33:08
Steve: there's no doubt about it and and i don't hey Hey,
33:12
Steve: like I said, I'm a 63-year-old kid. I don't care if people make fun of me.
33:17
Marvin: Yeah, but I think there's even a broader issue there, Steve,
33:19
Marvin: is I think it's not consumptive just as it relates to the outdoors.
33:24
Marvin: It's consumptive for everything, right?
33:27
Steve: I agree. We've been sold that bill of goods.
33:31
Marvin: And so everything now is a packaged experience.
33:34
Marvin: And so, you know, you look at, I mean, it was interesting. I was actually eating
33:37
Marvin: a sandwich in one of the local grocery stores, and I like going there because
33:43
Marvin: I talk to the people that work there, right, which is a rare thing.
33:46
Marvin: It actually shocks them, almost scares some of them.
33:49
Steve: And you know I do the same thing, by the way. You know that about me. Yeah.
33:53
Marvin: And so about living in community and all of these things that we've lost where,
33:58
Marvin: you know, if you door dash – and I'm not hating on this, and I want to talk
34:02
Marvin: about tech too because I think it's a really important adjacent issue.
34:05
Marvin: You, I just think we should be mindful because there's such tremendous value
34:10
Marvin: at eating dinner at the kitchen table.
34:12
Marvin: There's tremendous value in baking cookies with your grandmother and going and
34:17
Marvin: cutting down a Christmas tree.
34:19
Marvin: And I'm not saying like these are pinnacle experiences, but where everything
34:22
Marvin: is just an exchange, we become disconnected.
34:28
Steve: Right. I so deeply agree.
34:32
Steve: And people may say, well, what does this have to do with fishing?
34:34
Steve: It has everything to do with fishing because fishing is like,
34:37
Steve: you know, we talk about lessons from the river.
34:40
Steve: Standing in a river, everything we ever wanted to know about life, we can learn.
34:44
Steve: And it really is, everything is connected and that includes us.
34:48
Steve: We're mostly made of, I've written this before, we're made of stardust and water. That's it.
34:53
Steve: That can contemplate itself briefly. So yeah, I mentioned to you that I do the same thing.
34:59
Steve: I read people's name tags. I call them by first name.
35:02
Steve: There's sometimes the only good I can do in the world is to be kind to somebody
35:06
Steve: in the grocery store. And something happened.
35:08
Steve: So I was just telling my wife that one of the clerks from the grocery store
35:12
Steve: here went off to the military in his boot camp right now, just sent me a letter from boot camp.
35:18
Steve: And we've only talked when she was checking me out, you know,
35:21
Steve: when I'm getting groceries and she's working at the cash register.
35:24
Steve: And she just sent me a letter from boot camp.
35:28
Steve: We need community.
35:32
Steve: We need to treat people differently.
35:36
Steve: You know i that we see them and i think we also need to see each other um and we need to see uh,
35:43
Steve: again you're i'm getting into my sort of thing but right now
35:46
Steve: one part of the things i'm writing in a lot into this fourth book is that all
35:51
Steve: living things are living beings that doesn't mean i didn't shoot a kudu in africa
35:57
Steve: i did um so um but i was aware of its aliveness do you get what i mean No.
36:06
Marvin: No, I do. And I mean, it's, you know, I knew what I did.
36:09
Steve: Yeah.
36:09
Marvin: And it's, I mean, you knew it, you were in, but you appreciated it, right?
36:13
Steve: Yes. And all of that meat was donated to the local Herero tribe and the money
36:18
Steve: I paid went to wildlife protection in Namibia.
36:22
Steve: And I knew what the practice was of what I was doing, the campfire project to,
36:26
Steve: to help, help people have some monetary dog in the hunt of keeping wildlife alive in Africa.
36:35
Steve: Oddly enough, by allowing some people to come kill them.
36:38
Marvin: Yeah. And it kind of comes a little bit back full circle because it's another
36:42
Marvin: thing that I kind of fixate on when I talk to my boys. Like I talk about being
36:45
Marvin: the change that you want to see.
36:47
Marvin: And then what you find is people are outraged by lack of community,
36:51
Marvin: but then when you ask them what they do, they don't do anything.
36:55
Marvin: And I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, I'm saying that in an observational way, right?
37:00
Marvin: And I find it incredibly powerful to watch that and say, well,
37:04
Marvin: you know, if it bothers you so much, you know, what are you going to do?
37:07
Marvin: What one thing can you do today, right?
37:10
Steve: Right.
37:10
Marvin: To make it better. Right. And, you know, and not to go, you know,
37:15
Marvin: watch whatever news you want to watch. It's completely your business. I don't care.
37:21
Marvin: You know, it's just how does that add to your journey? And it kind of gets us
37:24
Marvin: to this technology point.
37:26
Marvin: And I preface all of this by saying I love technology, right?
37:30
Marvin: You know, when I was 10 years old, 11 years old, we had one TRS-80 in my middle school.
37:38
Marvin: We didn't have a hard drive. I don't even think they had hard drives.
37:41
Marvin: They didn't pay for floppy disks in the TRS-80, so we would sit at lunch and
37:45
Marvin: write computer code. So I love tech, right?
37:49
Steve: Yeah, I had an abacus.
37:51
Marvin: Well, I would think you're a
37:53
Marvin: slide rule guy. I would give you a little bit more credit than an abacus.
37:57
Marvin: But I've been asked to give a talk on generative AI with creatives at the Outdoor
38:02
Marvin: Writers Association meeting in July.
38:04
Marvin: And I think this is a fundamental issue of what it means to be human.
38:12
Marvin: And, you know, I generally think about these things as their shovels and their tools.
38:17
Marvin: And some of that's generational because I'm – That's what I was going to say.
38:20
Marvin: Yeah. I'm a Gen Xer, but I always tell people, like, the shovel is not inherently bad.
38:26
Marvin: But if I hit you on the head, I did something bad with the shovel.
38:30
Marvin: And I think we need to be incredibly reflective.
38:35
Marvin: And this flows back into these lessons from the water because you start to appreciate
38:39
Marvin: your humanity while you're there, right?
38:43
Steve: Sure.
38:43
Marvin: And so do you need, like, AI can be very, very useful. But, like,
38:48
Marvin: what is it that you want to allow it to do for you?
38:53
Steve: Well, yeah.
38:55
Steve: I can't speak much to AI right this moment, but I can say this,
38:59
Steve: that first of all, I see it the same way you do as a tool.
39:01
Steve: I see everything from a firearm to a fork to a shovel as a tool.
39:06
Steve: And what happens to it is an extension of the choices made by the person operating it.
39:11
Steve: And with that said, and that's true even if you're standing on the river with someone.
39:18
Steve: By the way, one of the greatest things I'd love to do is teach someone and watch
39:22
Steve: them experience catching their first fish.
39:25
Steve: Um there's a scene in the movie mending the
39:29
Steve: line that was actually i'm grateful to say
39:32
Steve: taken from me where the main character ike
39:35
Steve: he teaches the young man how to
39:38
Steve: be grateful to the fish because you know this about me already because we've
39:42
Steve: been friends for a while that uh i say thank you to fish when i release it and
39:46
Steve: the character says thank you and he teaches the other young marine that and
39:50
Steve: that marine then comes up with his own thing and says peace um i think the teaching part,
39:57
Steve: so getting back to the technology and technology you and i have become friends
40:03
Steve: and i've met some of the best friends of my life through technology i met some
40:09
Steve: of the best people of my life i use technology for me to write my books and
40:14
Steve: my stories and my essays which i hope help people.
40:19
Steve: It's a tool and it can be used for really beautiful things or really ugly things.
40:26
Marvin: And I think you can say that again in an observational way where it's not that
40:31
Marvin: what you write is the Catholic sense of what's right,
40:34
Marvin: not to get the double entendre with right, but it's a posture in the world of
40:40
Marvin: generosity and being deliberately generous that I think is so powerful.
40:49
Steve: Powerful yeah i wish that our so it used to be when i was a very young person
40:56
Steve: in my life that i fell into the idea of do what's right do what's right but
41:00
Steve: then i learned i grew up and i learned that a lot of people doing horrible things
41:05
Steve: think they're doing the right thing,
41:07
Steve: um as i said no one in any foxhole fighting in any war on either side ever thought
41:13
Steve: to themselves i I wish I wasn't the bad guy.
41:16
Steve: They always think they're doing the right thing. To me, it's more about us having values that are.
41:21
Steve: So when you mentioned about where people get their news or which way they vote,
41:25
Steve: I don't get into any of that. I don't have to.
41:27
Steve: I don't have to knock anybody down because I can raise them up.
41:30
Steve: I can simply say, is this person I'm choosing to spend time with kind?
41:36
Steve: Are they brave? You know, are they willing to learn? Are they open-minded or
41:42
Steve: are they fixed in their ideology?
41:44
Steve: As long as I can answer all those questions, then the rest of it takes care of itself.
41:49
Steve: And I think we see that too when we're looking at getting back to rivers.
41:52
Steve: If we're going to save our rivers, if we're going to save the fish,
41:56
Steve: if we're going to save the trees, and they're going fast, we had better break
41:59
Steve: that out of our fixed ideas of consumption.
42:03
Steve: You know, Edward Abbey said, unlimited growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.
42:13
Steve: Sorry, did I wander again?
42:40
Marvin: Right? Right. That I think that. And one of the greatest gifts we can share
42:42
Marvin: with other people is sharing our time with them and sitting with them in the darkness.
42:48
Steve: Yes.
42:50
Steve: Yes.
42:53
Steve: Absolutely. And in taking and accepting, here again, we'll go back to the lessons from the river.
43:01
Steve: You can't say, I'm going to go to the river and it's going to be this way today.
43:06
Steve: You go to the river and you have to adapt to how it is. Is it running fast? Is it running low?
43:12
Steve: Is it clear? Is it, you know, is it got a lot of silt in it?
43:16
Steve: What's going on? And it's the same with humans.
43:19
Steve: So I've fished with some wonderful people in my books. And part of what I'm
43:22
Steve: writing about is that relationship.
43:25
Steve: And there's some people that I, frankly, I love every single person I've fished with.
43:30
Steve: But I know I'm going to have a whole different experience depending on who it
43:33
Steve: is, and I'll leave names out of this. But I know if I go with one person,
43:36
Steve: it's going to be a hard-driving angling experience because that's where they're at.
43:41
Steve: They want to get to the river as fast as they can, get on the river,
43:44
Steve: in fact, and they're focused on catching fish, catching fish.
43:46
Steve: And I'm, well, another person, we're going to sit on the tailgate for a half
43:49
Steve: hour and talk before we even start.
43:52
Steve: I have my own preference of how I do that, but I can do it both ways.
43:56
Steve: And I'm just, I accept them where they're at, just like the river.
43:59
Steve: You know, if you want to drive, sure, I'll catch up with you.
44:02
Steve: We'll get to the river, we'll fish.
44:04
Steve: But slowly, they'll notice me sitting on a rock just watching the river go by
44:09
Steve: and see how weird I am that I don't have to be fishing all the time.
44:16
Steve: I can have that sandwich on that favorite rock like you and watch the kingfishers
44:21
Steve: and be really, really happy.
44:23
Steve: I think we teach each other things, not through judgment, but through just doing and being together.
44:32
Steve: Does that make sense, as I always say?
44:34
Marvin: No, it does. I mean, it really comes back to this idea of being in community, right? Yes.
44:42
Marvin: And, you know, I think humans are unfortunately incredibly adept at differentiating.
44:52
Marvin: And I think, you know, if you get to focus on all of these things that we have
44:55
Marvin: in common, so to, you know, for example, in fishing, we share this love of fly fishing, right? Right.
45:00
Marvin: You may be a warrior fly fisherman. You may be a poet fly fisherman.
45:05
Marvin: But the question is, you know, where does the common ground from that,
45:09
Marvin: your experience on the water and sharing that with other people,
45:13
Marvin: you know, how does that inform?
45:15
Marvin: Because I think all of these things, right, if you kind of come out of this,
45:18
Marvin: they're practices if you see them.
45:20
Marvin: You know, they're not only about fly fishing. It's why I say fly fishing is
45:24
Marvin: a bicycle. there are modalities and habits that you can bring back to your regular
45:28
Marvin: life that make your life better.
45:31
Steve: Absolutely. Absolutely. More than anything I know, actually. But absolutely.
45:37
Steve: If that's what you're open to. And I think this is just, again, subjective.
45:44
Steve: If we address our fly fishing, if we address our interaction with nature,
45:50
Steve: then our interaction with each other through that lens, our lives get better and it ripples out.
45:56
Steve: And that is also i'm going to bring it back to the
45:59
Steve: books in a second my books are written on purpose in a certain
46:01
Steve: way they're as you know that
46:04
Steve: they're they're full of fishing stories and adventures but that's
46:07
Steve: not what they're really about the first one casting forward is in here to texas
46:12
Steve: hill country where i'm from and then it goes across america going after native
46:16
Steve: fish through all the freshwater waters and then casting seaward that was casting
46:20
Steve: onward casting seaward is our oceans from Alaska all the way around and out
46:24
Steve: to the Caribbean and back.
46:25
Steve: And this last one, casting homeward, I'm traveling backwards in time from the
46:30
Steve: furthest reaches of Alaska all the way to New York City.
46:34
Steve: And by backwards in time, what I mean is I'm going backwards from the movement
46:38
Steve: of Euro-Americans as they spread across this country and interacted in often
46:45
Steve: not great ways with indigenous Americans.
46:49
Steve: Americans. And the next one I'll be doing without getting any details is going
46:53
Steve: to be looking at it very internationally.
46:56
Steve: Once we get outside the borders, once we get outside our hemisphere,
46:59
Steve: there's so much we find out we have in common.
47:03
Steve: So I could spend some time with my hard driving fishing friends and I realized,
47:06
Steve: oh, okay, I see what it is.
47:08
Steve: Where you live, you have to get to the river in a hurry because there's so many
47:12
Steve: anglers here. You're not going to get a spot.
47:15
Steve: I have to, you know, have some empathy and find out where they're at.
47:19
Steve: And I also have to remember that maybe when I was younger, maybe when I was
47:23
Steve: their age, I had to have been more hard-dragging.
47:26
Steve: Um, I'm at that place now where, you know, Bob White and I were up in Alaska
47:30
Steve: and on our last day, we decided to fish for a half day and then go into the
47:34
Steve: lodge together while everybody else was fishing.
47:36
Steve: And Bob painted while I wrote the book, you know, that was really cool for me,
47:41
Steve: but a lot of guys would never do that. I'm not going to waste a half day of fishing.
47:45
Steve: Um, but we both will be each other and said, we've caught all the fish we need
47:48
Steve: to in our life. Let's go, let's go paint and write.
47:52
Steve: So we're just in different places.
47:55
Marvin: Yeah, it's interesting, too. I mean, it's not just fly fishing.
47:58
Marvin: I mean, a lot of stuff in nature, you know, if you can leave a little bit of the technology behind.
48:05
Marvin: I mean, I literally started going to Montana because my BlackBerry didn't work there, right?
48:10
Steve: That was a long time ago, if you're saying BlackBerry.
48:12
Marvin: Yeah, and also, too, you know, it was kind of an exotic place.
48:15
Marvin: It's less exotic than it used to be. And so, you know, it was kind of like telling
48:19
Marvin: people at work that you were going to the moon. People were like,
48:22
Marvin: gosh, we can't get him. He's in Montana.
48:25
Marvin: Um, but it's this, it's, it's, it's fun. It's funny, but true.
48:29
Marvin: I mean, you know, and so, uh, I love it.
48:32
Steve: I, I, I used to have these high speed jobs where I made real money and they
48:36
Steve: would say to me, well, how do we get you?
48:37
Steve: And I say, you don't, they would always say that to me. How do, how do we reach you?
48:42
Steve: I said, you don't, I'm going to be on an Island or I'm going to be in the mountains.
48:46
Marvin: Yeah. It's, it's an interesting thing too, right? Where they don't want to pay
48:50
Marvin: you like you're irreplaceable, but then when you want to leave for a week, God forbid.
48:55
Marvin: You have to be tethered with an umbilical cord.
48:58
Steve: It's a uniquely American thing too, I'd have to say, as having lived different
49:03
Steve: parts of the world. Only in America have I seen where we are,
49:07
Steve: taught that our job is to do our job and you know when the economy is going
49:13
Steve: down the message everybody gets is spend more money spend more money bring the
49:17
Steve: economy up spend buy more stuff,
49:20
Steve: and then when you don't have enough room for that stuff you can always rent
49:23
Steve: space to hold your stuff that you don't use so uh this is getting off of fly
49:29
Steve: fishing but i'm trying to get well a little bit i'm trying to make sure that
49:32
Steve: my fly fishing quiver of rods and reels is exactly just what I need and nothing else.
49:36
Steve: And I'm donating the rest of the ones I have to good causes like Project Healing Waters.
49:43
Steve: And I am getting in my home down to the minimalist stuff of just what I need,
49:48
Steve: just the pots and pans and dishes and things that I need and want and the rest
49:53
Steve: of it. I am giving way to be repurposed.
49:56
Steve: It's so freeing.
49:57
Marvin: And you've already done that with your library, right?
50:01
Steve: Oh, yes. I gave away to the local library here
50:04
Steve: in my little town in texas uh four pickup
50:07
Steve: truck loads of books um and
50:11
Steve: they have what they didn't keep for
50:14
Steve: the library they sell it and make money for the library and
50:17
Steve: um yep so i've given away almost all of my books i have a very small collection
50:24
Steve: of books that i will not let go of and i read them again and again so uh when
50:29
Steve: i told bob white this he said to me i'm kind of interested in seeing which ones you kept yeah i.
50:36
Marvin: Would say a related question you know i think people are going to want to know
50:39
Marvin: you know what fly rods does the texan buddha think are critical to keep what do you have.
50:45
Steve: Well for me it's
50:48
Steve: weight um rather than getting into now i
50:51
Steve: have to say that almost it just so happens that so if
50:54
Steve: i talk to another one of my friends he's he's gonna say oh
50:56
Steve: i only use hardy and miller and tony use sage and all
50:59
Steve: that but i i most of my stuff is orbit surface um and um but when i talk about
51:06
Steve: the rods that i hold on to first of all i love glass but i also have graphite
51:11
Steve: and i have one beautiful bamboo rod that was made for me uh by jerry gustage and,
51:19
Steve: at sweet crop sweet grass rods so
51:22
Steve: um but at any rate uh for
51:25
Steve: me i like having in my quiver i
51:28
Steve: like having a three and a four because i love using light rods
51:31
Steve: in in high mountain streams or you
51:34
Steve: know and for smaller fish i i always am
51:37
Steve: going to have a five an eight uh and a ten so to me that covers things i have
51:43
Steve: a five eight and ten then and then i usually have multiple spools so like on
51:48
Steve: my eight weight i'm gonna have i have one it's a tropical floating line i'm
51:52
Steve: gonna have one that's It's an intermediate syncing line.
51:54
Steve: They have one that's really good for sheriff and going in deep. And that's what I do.
52:01
Steve: It's what do I want to achieve? It's not about how many things can I have. It's what tool...
52:08
Steve: Is going to get me where i need to be and to
52:11
Steve: do the to have the experience that i need that i
52:14
Steve: want to have so people have asked me well how how do you travel
52:17
Steve: all these places it's not because i have money it's
52:20
Steve: because i redirect what little i have so um to in order to do casting onward
52:26
Steve: i had to sell a lot of my firearms from my hunting life almost all of them actually
52:32
Steve: to help pay for airfare and things like that and we put our priorities where
52:36
Steve: we want them And for me, it's not about things, it's about experiences.
52:40
Steve: So yes, to me, if I have a three, a five, an eight, and a 10,
52:46
Steve: I'm pretty much covered for everything I want to do.
52:50
Marvin: Yeah, it's interesting. It's a, you know, this theme again of being deliberate, right?
52:55
Marvin: And, you know, I'm sort of the same way. And it's kind of funny,
53:00
Marvin: because I mean, I remember looking up at one point, and I was like,
53:03
Marvin: gosh, you know, I'm making all this money to spend all this money to make all
53:06
Marvin: this money to do something that doesn't fulfill me.
53:10
Marvin: And so you kind of jettison that and you know
53:13
Marvin: part of it too is i always tell people like i'm a generation x kid
53:15
Marvin: i grew up in the 70s like we're going to be fine right you
53:20
Marvin: know just a completely different thing where like you don't eat out every meal
53:23
Marvin: um you know you know you actually repair stuff which is kind of a mind-blowing
53:29
Marvin: thing to people uh right but you know it's an i don't know and i say this again
53:33
Marvin: it's just an observation it's just where i am in my journey I don't care what
53:37
Marvin: other people do. I'm not judging them.
53:39
Marvin: This works for me, right? Like I will always trade more rustic accommodations
53:45
Marvin: for more days on the water.
53:49
Steve: Yeah, I wish I could say that's true for me. I actually confessed up in this
53:56
Steve: fourth book that there was a time when I was a true wild man.
54:00
Steve: There was a time when I was quite happy that I could go out into the wilderness
54:04
Steve: and I did this all the time. Sometimes I did crazy things where I was making
54:08
Steve: a lean-to, because I chopped my own wood and built a lean-to and tie it together.
54:14
Steve: And I actually remember doing this in South Florida where I would cover it in
54:17
Steve: palm fronds, and that would be my shelter and sleep on the ground.
54:22
Steve: And those days are gone.
54:25
Steve: And I have to admit that while I will do those things, I have definitely really
54:30
Steve: enjoyed stepping out of a float plane and having someone hand me a glass of wine.
54:36
Steve: So judge me if you will. Like I said, things are a little more creaky than they used to be.
54:44
Steve: And I'm out there all day long and I'm fishing and I'm climbing and I'm doing all that stuff.
54:48
Steve: But it is sure cool to have a nice shower and glass of water today. So I'll fess up.
54:54
Marvin: Yeah, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the fishing, I think I can approve.
54:57
Steve: Sure, that's it. I'm not saying I'm skipping the fishing. I'm saying that,
55:01
Steve: you know, given the chance between the lean-to now, and when I was young,
55:06
Steve: that seemed all really cool.
55:08
Steve: But now I've got that kind of been there, done that. Yeah, I had the bears walk in on me.
55:12
Steve: Woke up once with the snake in my sleeping bag with me.
55:18
Steve: I've done it. I don't need to keep doing it. I have nothing to prove.
55:24
Steve: So, yeah, I'll put mosquito net on my head. That's okay. okay,
55:27
Steve: I was with my buddy Bob one time. We're on the St. Croix River.
55:31
Steve: He handed me this mosquito suit to put on while I was going to stay with the
55:35
Steve: boat while him and Lisa went to set up the vehicles.
55:39
Steve: And I said, oh, I won't need that. He just put it on.
55:42
Steve: Oh, my gosh. I was completely covered within seconds in mosquitoes.
55:48
Steve: I have no problem putting on the mosquito suits, what I'm telling you.
55:53
Marvin: Duly noted. And, you know, as we before we get back to kind of upcoming travel
55:57
Marvin: and book details and things like that, Steve, is there anything else that you
56:02
Marvin: can think of we should talk about in terms of lessons from the river?
56:08
Steve: Well, I guess the number one thing I'm going to share is that what keeps me
56:13
Steve: going is that I never stop learning.
56:15
Steve: And that's what's really cool about Lessons from the River, because we're always
56:19
Steve: changing. I hope we are. If we stop changing, we stop growing.
56:23
Steve: That's why I'm really against the idea of a fixed ideology of any kind,
56:27
Steve: because it means you're not growing anymore.
56:29
Steve: And I have a lot of younger friends, and I thought about, well, why is that?
56:35
Steve: And I thought, too many people my age have given up learning.
56:38
Steve: They're not learning anymore. They're not growing.
56:41
Steve: So I know that I don't know much of anything.
56:45
Steve: And I've changed my mind a lot because I've learned new information.
56:49
Steve: I think lessons of the river are eternal.
56:51
Steve: They keep coming. And as long as I keep saying we pay attention and we ask ourselves
56:56
Steve: honestly, how did I handle that?
56:59
Steve: And forgive yourself when you don't handle it well. So I think that's the thing.
57:05
Steve: We can never stop learning just by stepping out there and paying attention.
57:10
Steve: And life for me, because you know my brain works weird, I think in poetry and metaphor.
57:17
Steve: So I'm constantly learning.
57:20
Steve: And when I make a mistake, I laugh about it. Usually write it into the book
57:24
Steve: how I screw it up and move on.
57:29
Steve: Nothing and no one has any power over us unless we give it to them.
57:33
Steve: And so i'm not afraid to make mistakes i want to learn yeah.
57:39
Marvin: It's interesting you know it makes me think too steve like one of the things
57:41
Marvin: that attracts me to fly fishing is it's not consistently solvable right.
57:46
Steve: No and.
57:47
Marvin: That's one of the allures because i think if you know i quote figured it out
57:51
Marvin: it would have bored me ages ago and i.
57:55
Steve: Would have maybe.
57:56
Marvin: Become a golfer god forbid.
57:58
Steve: Been in that yeah i i would still take you as you as you came but i just we
58:04
Steve: wouldn't have as much to talk about because uh i grew up around golf courses
58:08
Steve: part of my life and i was constantly being chased off of them because you know
58:13
Steve: what i was doing that golf thing i was fishing in ponds,
58:15
Steve: uh illegally it was chasing me out of their ponds uh yeah so anyway i love our
58:23
Steve: conversation that I really appreciate that you've shared this time with me.
58:27
Marvin: Oh, it's been tremendous fun. And I know you've got some speaking engagements.
58:32
Marvin: I know you said just locally, but you've got some travel coming up too.
58:36
Steve: I do um i have some great travel coming up i'll be spending some time down in patagonia,
58:42
Steve: uh in various parts of patagonia if it all comes together i'll be in both northern
58:47
Steve: and southern patagonia and argentina and then various areas around argentina
58:52
Steve: and piranha river going after golden dorado and a few other undisclosed places
58:58
Steve: and i'll be spending some time I'm in Peche, Mexico soon,
59:02
Steve: going after tarpon.
59:05
Steve: But you know what I'm really going after, of course, is lessons from the river and the ocean.
59:08
Steve: So, yes, I've got some good travel coming up.
59:11
Steve: I'm also going to be going out to Portugal.
59:15
Steve: And all these things are going to connect into me sharing with those people
59:21
Steve: who I so deeply appreciate that read my work.
59:26
Steve: That I'll be sharing these stories with them and the lessons that I learned
59:29
Steve: along the way. That's what I do.
59:31
Steve: I learn new things and I say, here, this is for you. Take it.
59:37
Steve: You're never going to learn a fancy way to cast from me or a special new knot,
59:41
Steve: but you're going to learn a whole lot of ways to attach better things to your
59:44
Steve: life and let go of others.
59:45
Marvin: Yeah. And I will drop a link. I know that Amazon and I imagine other,
59:50
Marvin: like Barnes & Nobles and others, There's had the presale links up for your last
59:56
Marvin: in the casting series, which I guess you told me was going to come out officially
59:59
Marvin: on Labor Day weekend. Is that right?
1:00:01
Steve: It's September 3rd. It's on preorder now. I'm grateful to say that it's been
1:00:07
Steve: doing well in preorder right now.
1:00:10
Steve: And the reason I care about that, by the way, is you know I don't do this because
1:00:13
Steve: you don't become a writer for money.
1:00:18
Steve: So it's because I want people to read these stories. I want people to get something out of it.
1:00:22
Steve: It makes me so happy to get letters from people saying, I just love this book
1:00:26
Steve: or I love this essay in Fly Fisherman. It really helped me.
1:00:29
Steve: So, yeah, it comes out the third. It is available on all major booksellers like Amazon.
1:00:36
Steve: It's probably one of the easiest ones, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Indie Books.
1:00:41
Steve: But I also want to share that if they want a signed copy, the way to get signed
1:00:46
Steve: copies is through my friend BobWhiteStudio.com.
1:00:50
Steve: Um, he is taking pre-orders for signed copies and that's the only place I do
1:00:55
Steve: currently sell signed copies through.
1:00:57
Marvin: I got it. And do you have any, do you have any promotion in the schedule?
1:01:01
Marvin: Uh, or is it a little early yet?
1:01:04
Steve: Oh, right now, the only things I've got coming up are pretty local here,
1:01:07
Steve: so I don't know how much it'd matter to your listeners rather than me traveling
1:01:13
Steve: around the country because if I do, it's because I'm traveling for other reasons
1:01:17
Steve: and I'm able to do those things.
1:01:19
Steve: But they can always look on my website, stevebromeroesauthor.com,
1:01:24
Steve: and whenever I have something like I'm traveling to Arizona or Colorado or wherever
1:01:28
Steve: and I'm going to be at a local bookstore or something, I always post it up there. Yeah.
1:01:32
Marvin: And I will drop all that stuff in the show notes. And I also know that you are
1:01:36
Marvin: active-ish on Instagram and I'm probably more active on Facebook, right?
1:01:41
Steve: Right. Both. Instagram is Steve Ramirez, author.
1:01:45
Steve: And same thing with Facebook, Steve Ramirez, author. And you're welcome to connect
1:01:49
Steve: with me on that, as long as you're a real person and a nice person.
1:01:55
Steve: Um and uh so and i i write on both of them and keep people connected with me
1:02:02
Steve: but also the reason you mentioned facebook is because that's where i actually
1:02:05
Steve: write some little mini essays that people seem to like and i just put them put them up there yeah.
1:02:11
Marvin: And uh when you were talking about why um book sales were important to you that's
1:02:16
Marvin: the topic for our next conversation we'll uh We'll spend an hour or so talking
1:02:20
Marvin: about the intersection of commerce and art. Beautiful.
1:02:25
Marvin: Well, Steve, I super appreciate you carving a little bit of time this evening
1:02:29
Marvin: out and spending it with me.
1:02:31
Steve: My pleasure. Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you. I look forward to it, and I really enjoyed it.
1:02:36
Marvin: Take care.
1:02:38
Intro: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
1:02:41
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1:02:45
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