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Freak For Fish with Marshall Wolf | Go Wildly Podcast · Go Wildly Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to season 2 of Go Wildly podcast.
• 0:03
  We are Emily and Heather, 2 childhood friends who carry a
• 0:07
  mic into wild places like rivers, trails, and forests with
• 0:11
  wild people to host raw, honest conversations about adventure,
• 0:15
  healing, identity, and the transformative power of nature.
• 0:19
  In this season, we're centering the voices of people who call
• 0:22
  Southern Oregon home. Outdoor enthusiasts and outdoor
• 0:26
  professionals whose lives have been shaped, changed, or are
• 0:29
  continually influenced by time outside come along as together
• 0:33
  we go wildly. Hey, just a quick note before we
• 0:37
  head in. Our mics are not perfectly
• 0:39
  placed and balanced for this episode, so you're going to hear
• 0:42
  me, Emily, way louder than Heather and our guest.
• 0:45
  Fortunately, our guest does do most of the talking, so just
• 0:48
  keep your hand near your volume button to adjust for me.
• 0:51
  We'll be better next time. Thank you.
• 0:54
  OK. Hello we need a we need a
• 0:57
  picture. Picture.
• 1:01
  From on the phone do. You want to do on the phone?
• 1:03
  Yeah, do right now. Let's do it at the end.
• 1:06
  OK. If you.
• 1:07
  Yeah. We're going to remember to do it
• 1:08
  at the end, OK, Because I think we have.
• 1:10
  Once we like get to know each other, then we have bigger
• 1:12
  smiles. Yeah, that's true that.
• 1:14
  Is very true. I like that.
• 1:15
  Yeah, it's a real. Smile.
• 1:16
  Yeah, versus like forced high. We just met and now we're
• 1:19
  hugging. Sweet.
• 1:23
  So we'll remember, we'll remember to Hey Siri, set an
• 1:28
  alarm for 11:30 to take a picture.
• 1:33
  Booyah. Love Syria?
• 1:36
  OK, Hello. Hi.
• 1:39
  Welcome to Go Wildly. Today on Go Wildly, we are fired
• 1:43
  up to be joined by Marshall Wolf.
• 1:46
  Marshall grew up running wild through woods and streams, and
• 1:50
  he's basically never stopped. He's lived the modern Vagabond
• 1:53
  life, never staying in one city for more than four years.
• 1:56
  But the Rogue Valley keeps pulling him back.
• 2:00
  He's moved here 3 separate times for fish ecology jobs, and at
• 2:04
  this point, it's safe to say that the river and the dirt have
• 2:07
  won by trade. He's a stream ecologist with a
• 2:10
  PhD in aquatic ecology from Utah State.
• 2:14
  But off paper, he's a trail builder, community Stoker, and
• 2:18
  core member of the Rogue Valley Mountain Bike Association,
• 2:21
  helping dig, shape and connect both trails and people across
• 2:25
  the valley. Snowboarding was his first love,
• 2:27
  and right now he's fully back in it, working as a snowboard
• 2:30
  instructor and terrain park crew member at Mount Ashland while
• 2:34
  taking a year long sabbatical from science.
• 2:37
  Marshall lives at the intersection of dirt, data and
• 2:41
  deep community, and we are very excited to talk with him about
• 2:44
  what keeps drawing him back to the valley and why building
• 2:47
  trails might be just as important as studying streams.
• 2:51
  Heather knows Marshall because. Well, we met at the Dollar
• 2:55
  Mountain grand opening, and I feel like we just clicked.
• 2:57
  Yeah, like you just have a great personality and so do I.
• 3:01
  So I could just. Work no, it was just like, I
• 3:05
  feel like you instantly like, I don't know, we just instantly,
• 3:08
  instantly quit clicked and yeah felt really connected your, you
• 3:13
  know, bike path in life and yeah and just more mountain bikers on
• 3:18
  the pod is why I offered. I was like, I want to be on the
• 3:21
  pod and yeah Oh yeah. So that's it.
• 3:27
  And we love when we reach out to people and people immediately
• 3:29
  say yes, it takes no convincing. And it's just like, 6 Sounds
• 3:33
  good. Yeah.
• 3:35
  Totally rad. Yeah.
• 3:36
  And we are here today in Lithia Park.
• 3:39
  We thought that it was going to be pouring rain, and so we
• 3:43
  wanted to find somewhere where we could be outside but also
• 3:45
  undercover. And now the sun is shining and
• 3:49
  it's going to be just a really lovely Southern Oregon day.
• 3:52
  So we're going to wander up the trails through Lithia Park until
• 3:56
  we find somewhere nice and quiet to sit and hang out and.
• 4:01
  Do what we do. Best exactly.
• 4:03
  Yeah, I wish we could have went up into the snow.
• 4:06
  Yeah, it would have been cool. It just.
• 4:07
  Another time, another. Time.
• 4:08
  Yeah, we'll do it another time. Obviously people are going to
• 4:11
  ask for a follow up in a Part 2, so we'll do Part 2 in the snow.
• 4:14
  Yeah, we'll. Do Part 2 in the snow.
• 4:16
  I I do want to do it like a, you know, trek through the snow of
• 4:19
  some sort. But it's hard when we have,
• 4:22
  Yeah, it's too risky. Today.
• 4:24
  It's just too hard when we have a limited amount of time.
• 4:27
  Yeah, we try to like, this is an adventure podcast, but it's also
• 4:31
  like practical. Practical.
• 4:33
  Yeah, yeah. So it's a little hard, but I'm.
• 4:35
  Yeah, and for lots of people, Lithia Park is an adventure.
• 4:39
  Yeah. Who knows what we're going to
• 4:41
  find in this mystical. Yeah, I've been.
• 4:44
  Here a few times and so. So it's an adventure for you.
• 4:48
  You gotta. Find something new then.
• 4:49
  Yeah, just. A few times I think we had a
• 4:51
  bike demo up the way here, yeah. The like the quarry, Yeah, yeah.
• 4:55
  Yeah, cool. Where?
• 4:56
  You. Were put up above.
• 4:58
  Us the Norco demo when they. Were I think I came to the Norco
• 5:01
  demo. OK, that was a pretty.
• 5:02
  Cool one. That's cool.
• 5:03
  Yeah, Yeah. It was a few years.
• 5:04
  Ago. I own it.
• 5:05
  Norco. I love Norco.
• 5:06
  Yeah. Norco's.
• 5:07
  Great, we carried. Norco at the shop for.
• 5:09
  A long. Time, yeah And then well now
• 5:12
  Norco went from like private distribute distribution to they
• 5:17
  I think they're with Q, you know, PPS for suppliers.
• 5:21
  So we we have to run off of like how all that works.
• 5:24
  Yeah, you know. All that intricacy, but I'm not
• 5:27
  too paid into that because I've never actually worked at a bike
• 5:29
  shop. But I I know who QPB is and I
• 5:33
  have enough bike shops and the employees slash owners slash.
• 5:39
  Proprietors. Yeah, that's where most the bike
• 5:41
  shop like supplies come. From yeah, it's.
• 5:45
  A. Nice, got a girl.
• 5:52
  Yeah, and the. Was it someone's grocery list?
• 5:55
  No, it's somebody's name and address.
• 5:57
  Oh. It's a sign.
• 6:04
  Also the Norco ref that was for like repping the brand in this
• 6:09
  region. The name's Brad.
• 6:13
  Super cool dude. Sweet, super rad, like really
• 6:17
  enjoy him. There's you know, when we bought
• 6:19
  the bike shop it was like, what's it called?
• 6:24
  Like getting to know all the like reps and like.
• 6:26
  Mystery and stuff. And quickly we found like, some
• 6:30
  people are really dope and then some people are like, most
• 6:33
  people are really dope like these days, but like some people
• 6:35
  are like. Are less dope?
• 6:37
  Less, yeah. The rash is definitely one of
• 6:40
  them. So Norco was doing a good thing.
• 6:42
  I don't know if he's sold for him anymore, but just a little.
• 6:47
  Insider stuff. Yeah, what are you doing right
• 6:49
  now for RV, MB, A and stuff? Yeah.
• 6:52
  So my official position is the membership coordinator or
• 6:57
  director. But I mean, the way I interpret
• 6:59
  that is just like all things sort of that would be exciting
• 7:04
  to members and, you know, putting on events that members
• 7:07
  can come to, providing services, goods, WAG, et cetera, that
• 7:13
  members would be interested in. Yeah, Yeah, pretty good.
• 7:18
  I think I've done it 2, maybe 2 1/2 years now.
• 7:22
  So is it a volunteer role? Yeah.
• 7:25
  Correct. Yeah, none of us are paid at RV
• 7:27
  MBA, something we'd be interested in progressing
• 7:31
  towards at some point. I think it's just pretty useful
• 7:34
  as a trail organization to at least have one paid employee
• 7:38
  trying to like, grow and maintain energy there.
• 7:41
  And the Siskiyou Mountain Club has done.
• 7:43
  Great, totally like. Their progression and I think
• 7:46
  they get paid like they get paid.
• 7:48
  Yeah. Which is cool like you.
• 7:50
  Want yeah and then they have all their summer intern sort of
• 7:54
  positions for trail workers. However they raise that exactly.
• 7:58
  But yeah, it's been pretty good. I mean, it's been cool to be
• 8:02
  involved. I I've done a fair amount of
• 8:05
  organizations before, but never a bike line.
• 8:08
  And so that was something I was excited to like, get involved
• 8:10
  with. Actually, when I moved here, it
• 8:11
  was like sort of, I don't know, on my goals or something I was
• 8:16
  interested in. And then it just sort of worked
• 8:17
  out that they needed people and I need someone who's already on
• 8:21
  the board and people need to come check it out.
• 8:24
  And yeah, it's good. I also felt like we needed a
• 8:27
  little younger energy. Yeah.
• 8:31
  Like sort of like I was saying earlier before we started
• 8:33
  recording, there's like a lost generation of people in Ashland
• 8:38
  where there's not a lot of people between like 25 and 40
• 8:41
  and need to bring in some of that stuff that might be that
• 8:46
  might be missing occasionally. I'm 32.
• 8:51
  Yeah, 32 what? About your next 20s?
• 8:54
  No, I wish. Why Yeah, healing faster in the
• 9:06
  20s, yeah, but if you didn't know all the things that you
• 9:10
  know now for. Sure.
• 9:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm still the best version of
• 9:14
  myself I've ever been, I just don't.
• 9:15
  Feel that frequently. When you're sending it super
• 9:21
  hard, yeah. Occasionally when you make poor
• 9:23
  decisions, it can be fun to. Problematic.
• 9:25
  Yeah, especially. In the sport of.
• 9:28
  Extreme. Yeah, I've.
• 9:30
  Been grateful enough not to like I don't.
• 9:33
  I'm pretty reserved when I'm biking.
• 9:35
  Like my I know my limit and therefore I'm I'm just out there
• 9:40
  to blow, not necessarily out there to like hella jump big and
• 9:44
  RIP. For sure.
• 9:46
  But yeah, and I've sort of, you know, progressed a little bit
• 9:50
  more in that direction. One of the other things I was
• 9:52
  pretty into the last couple years and didn't do as much last
• 9:55
  year was racing just to like go to new places and force myself
• 9:58
  to like do big bike trips and drive 8 hours to go somewhere
• 10:02
  new. So not super serious.
• 10:04
  I was just in like sport or expert category, but just doing
• 10:07
  a bunch of races and trying to go to like California and
• 10:10
  Washington to go ride places that I probably wouldn't have
• 10:13
  fully committed to driving to if I didn't spend the money and
• 10:16
  sign up for the race. So that was like a cool
• 10:19
  experience. Yeah.
• 10:21
  And then you meet a bunch of people just who live in
• 10:23
  different areas and from different places.
• 10:26
  Somewhere to stay. Yeah.
• 10:28
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 10:29
  Yeah. Just see what I think it's
• 10:32
  pretty informative, especially from like you're thinking more
• 10:35
  like organizational background, just to see what other people
• 10:38
  are building and how they're building trails and what their
• 10:40
  access is like. And yeah, they're getting that
• 10:44
  basis of like, oh, what can you do?
• 10:46
  What their process was, how they navigated like government
• 10:49
  structures or community engagement funding.
• 10:55
  Totally, yeah. And there's some really cool
• 10:56
  stuff. Like a good example I think is
• 10:59
  down in Arcada, there's like a Redwood Coast mountain bike
• 11:02
  organization and they have an agreement with a forestry
• 11:06
  company and they built and maintained trails on this
• 11:09
  forestry company's plant. It's really.
• 11:11
  Cool. Really.
• 11:12
  Unique approach and you know something where like oh if you
• 11:16
  could implement that. Your.
• 11:19
  Ability to build trails and then the kind of trails that you can
• 11:22
  build really expand because you know, it's forestry land
• 11:24
  there's. No expectation.
• 11:25
  That that trail will exist forever.
• 11:27
  It's not like the Forest Service where they want you to build a
• 11:30
  trail or even. Dom, they want you to.
• 11:33
  Build a trail it will. Exist.
• 11:34
  Forever. It's.
• 11:36
  Never going to meander. It's never going to change but
• 11:39
  like. And then there's a nice
• 11:41
  partnership between government and community and gives access
• 11:46
  probably to those employees and that work also are for Fire
• 11:51
  Protection or Land Management and access otherwise.
• 11:57
  Yeah. And I'm not exactly sure how
• 11:58
  that agreement works. I'm sure there might be some
• 12:01
  small monetary kickbacks from the club, but it's yeah.
• 12:05
  It's a. Pretty cool one.
• 12:06
  Yeah. Good.
• 12:09
  Good to see what other people are doing and how they're
• 12:10
  thinking about these sort of things.
• 12:13
  I love that. Well, tell us about about like
• 12:17
  who you are, where you came from and how you first got interested
• 12:23
  in the outdoors. What was your like early
• 12:25
  exposure to all these things that you do and are now?
• 12:30
  Yeah, so important information is that my dad is in the Army,
• 12:35
  so I sort of always moving. I mean, when I was a kid, it was
• 12:39
  probably like every two years of marriage, 2 1/2 years maybe Even
• 12:43
  so pretty frequently. And I feel like I was always
• 12:48
  sort of connected to the outdoors.
• 12:50
  Like all my, like, I think back to what my earliest memories
• 12:53
  are. They're all sort of like dealing
• 12:55
  with the outdoors and whether that's like, oh, the day they
• 12:57
  took my training wheels off or like hanging out.
• 13:00
  In the screen. Or like.
• 13:01
  Yeah, just like hiking through some random woods with with my
• 13:04
  friends. Are your parents outdoorsy?
• 13:08
  Yeah, for sure. They always enjoyed hiking and
• 13:11
  skiing and that sort of thing. I wouldn't say that they're like
• 13:14
  hardcore outdoorsy. They weren't like big campers or
• 13:16
  backpackers or anything like that, but definitely, you know,
• 13:20
  as they grew up, they were doing stuff like that with their
• 13:24
  families. And were you in growing up in
• 13:27
  more like rural environments, or were you in a city and sneaking
• 13:32
  out to? Sort of finding those nice
• 13:35
  pockets. I would say it was more like
• 13:37
  city or suburban. I lived on a lot of military
• 13:40
  bases, and those tend to actually have really good
• 13:43
  outdoor areas because the, you know, the development is so
• 13:47
  controlled or structured, I guess you might say, you know,
• 13:50
  it's all controlled by a single entity.
• 13:53
  So there's these really nice pockets of outdoor space that
• 13:57
  are always, like, super close to your house.
• 14:00
  So I think that was helpful. And yeah, I always loved, like,
• 14:04
  streams and rivers. That was always like a big
• 14:06
  calling to me as a kid, just going down to the river and
• 14:10
  playing around. What was your like river that
• 14:14
  you had your first like river exposure?
• 14:17
  To so honestly a great question. I like.
• 14:20
  We only ask great questions. You know, because I was like
• 14:25
  pretty young and it was probably less of a rigor and it was like
• 14:28
  a stream or a brook or you like, you know, whatever you want to
• 14:32
  use a small, small waterway, name it.
• 14:36
  Whatever your favorite small waterway name it.
• 14:39
  Wait, is it Creek or Creek? Creek.
• 14:42
  I wouldn't say Creek, but you know, if you're out in the
• 14:45
  country, you definitely say Creek to make sure you are, to
• 14:49
  make sure you're in the good out.
• 14:54
  On the brook or a brook? Yeah.
• 14:56
  How do you, yeah, how do you differentiate between a Creek,
• 14:58
  stream, brook? So I think a brook is just like
• 15:00
  a northeastern turn. Like you never see brook unless
• 15:03
  it's like in the northeast. Like I don't think I've ever
• 15:07
  seen like looked at a topo map and seen a named brook in the
• 15:10
  West. Coast, OK, OK.
• 15:11
  Yeah, that's mine. On a topo, it's over there,
• 15:14
  yeah. Yeah, you would see it over
• 15:16
  there or like run. Run is another East Coast one.
• 15:18
  They'll be like Bull Run or Cat Run or whatever, and that's like
• 15:22
  bigger than a brook, OK. It's like I think usually bigger
• 15:25
  than a stream even. So there's size and region
• 15:30
  dependent. Region thing.
• 15:33
  Yeah, this is always stream or Creek.
• 15:36
  Stream or Creek? Yeah, and a stream would be
• 15:39
  smaller than a Creek. Vaguely, but I.
• 15:43
  Don't think that's well. Defined in the literature.
• 15:45
  OK, OK. That's fair.
• 15:47
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:49
  Yeah. But yeah, I mean generally.
• 15:52
  Yeah, these are these are the the hard pressing questions that
• 15:56
  we find ourselves wondering late at night.
• 15:58
  Now do you? Fish.
• 16:00
  Yeah. So I used to fish a decent
• 16:02
  amount and then I started doing a lot of fish work and was
• 16:08
  touching fish all the time. So the prospect of like fishing
• 16:12
  to not eat was not as exciting for me anymore.
• 16:16
  So. Yeah, I would say last like 5 or
• 16:19
  6 years, kind of like as I was doing a lot more fish work,
• 16:22
  going to grad school, after grad school, yadda, yadda.
• 16:25
  I haven't done that much fishing, but yeah, there's an
• 16:29
  opportunity to catch something and keep it.
• 16:31
  Like I'm into that. I'm just less excited to go
• 16:35
  catch a fish, to catch a fish because I was like catching a
• 16:38
  lot of fish already. Measuring.
• 16:42
  Assessing. What the heck?
• 16:46
  That's our our. Official mascot is Heather's
• 16:49
  fish flops. Anyway.
• 16:52
  Let's just. Run back to.
• 16:54
  Like growing up and stuff, you were in Brooklyn North.
• 16:56
  It was just. Totally traveling.
• 16:58
  Around a bunch and she kind of. Kicked you off.
• 17:01
  There and hand him to out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:04
  So I mean, I've kind of lived all over.
• 17:07
  Like, I was born in Washington state, actually, but I've lived
• 17:12
  all over the US As a kid, I lived in Korea for four years in
• 17:17
  two different places, Seoul and Bruson, and then I lived in
• 17:20
  Japan on Okinawa. For two.
• 17:23
  And a half years. So yeah, had pretty good
• 17:26
  exposure to like a bunch of different areas and cultures and
• 17:30
  geographies. Which is really cool.
• 17:33
  Yeah, I. Quite enjoy moving and
• 17:36
  travelling I think because. Of that comfortable.
• 17:40
  Doing you I. Guess would be another way to.
• 17:42
  Create that. Yeah, Hi.
• 17:46
  And then, you know, as an adult, I've sort of always been moving
• 17:50
  about, I would say undergrad in Colorado, grad school in Utah
• 17:56
  do. We want to sit up here.
• 17:59
  Oregon and look. Nice and quiet and yeah, flat.
• 18:06
  So you also moved around quite a bit for universities?
• 18:08
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, to.
• 18:11
  Hear when people are like doing a rod study within there, it's
• 18:15
  not like, oh, I hunkered down at Southern Oregon University and
• 18:19
  just got it done. No, you were.
• 18:21
  We could even sit on the rocks, sit on the logs.
• 18:24
  I love it. I'm into that.
• 18:27
  I'm into it too. We don't have to set up chairs
• 18:29
  if we don't want to looks. Like there's already a.
• 18:32
  Drum circle. Yeah.
• 18:33
  Fire. Fire circle.
• 18:49
  Yeah, I've never actually been updated.
• 18:52
  I could draw it probably. So there's the like old roads
• 18:55
  that you could call it tiny way or something travel.
• 19:01
  It's probably. Just.
• 19:04
  Yeah, I remember when it. Came up, I feel like I.
• 19:09
  Came up here biking randomly when I first got into the sport
• 19:17
  and I was like, wait, everybody says you can just like ride up
• 19:21
  Lithia Park and get into the trail system.
• 19:24
  Like I feel like I caught one of these and I'm like, wait, where
• 19:27
  do I, where's the, where do I go?
• 19:29
  And I just ended up like riding around Lithia Park because I
• 19:32
  couldn't like find the road to get up to the, you know, the
• 19:35
  gravel Rd. up. So I couldn't come down it just
• 19:38
  I didn't have a map or anything. We were just winging it, raw
• 19:40
  dogging, just trying to see. Where you can take yourself,
• 19:44
  yeah. It is funny.
• 19:45
  You going to be on his left. You going to sit on his sit to
• 19:51
  his left or on on that one or on that one?
• 19:55
  Yeah, I. Like that and I'll just
• 19:56
  rearrange this hold please. Tell me one more.
• 20:05
  This one, this one, it's so nice because you feel clipping so I
• 20:07
  don't pinch my fingers, which is exactly what happens.
• 20:12
  I love this little nature setup we've found.
• 20:19
  That's exactly the right word. It is very cute.
• 20:23
  It's very Ashland. This feels very, very
• 20:27
  appropriate. This feels Ashland core.
• 20:29
  Yeah, good. Happy.
• 20:34
  Stoked. Stoked.
• 20:36
  Heck yes. OK.
• 20:37
  Yeah, I got that. That looks wonderful.
• 20:40
  And they just look beautiful and cute.
• 20:42
  Real close. Together.
• 20:43
  So fun. Yeah, filling that frame up.
• 20:48
  Yeah, I'm like, look at the camera as much as feels
• 20:50
  comfortable to you, but also like we're the homies shooting
• 20:53
  the shit. So yeah, talk to us too.
• 20:56
  Doesn't. Have to be, yeah.
• 20:56
  Yeah, yeah. How long have you had long hair?
• 21:02
  A long time, pretty much always, yeah, I've done it a couple
• 21:06
  times. But yeah, even as like a little
• 21:10
  kid, I just remember being like, I want to have long hair.
• 21:12
  So when I was probably like 12, I started growing my hair.
• 21:14
  And then, yeah, I've obviously cut it many times since then.
• 21:19
  But yeah, it's sort of fun every time.
• 21:23
  Every time I cut my hair I find that it's actually more work to
• 21:27
  have short hair and have it like look decent because A you have
• 21:32
  to cut your hair all the time and part of the reason I have
• 21:34
  long hair is I hate haircuts. And then B, like it's just more
• 21:39
  difficult to get it back into a normal looking shape after you
• 21:43
  like sleep on your head at night or whatever.
• 21:45
  Relatable. I just, I just cut my hair from
• 21:49
  like here to here like a week ago and well, it feels very
• 21:55
  normal. So it's like, Oh yeah, this is
• 21:57
  what I've needed. I'm also like, I don't know
• 21:59
  what's, I still don't know what to do with it.
• 22:02
  Like thanks. Thanks.
• 22:04
  I always admire people with hair because I have two strands.
• 22:07
  Yeah, very thin hair, very fine. I feel like we have comparably
• 22:11
  thick hair. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:12
  My hair is like always very like, yeah, what is that called?
• 22:18
  Volume S Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, when I lived in
• 22:21
  Okinawa, Okinawa's like a subtropical island because it's
• 22:24
  not quite in the tropics, but there's like coral and shit.
• 22:28
  Like it's pretty crazy. It's extremely humid.
• 22:31
  I had like an Afro psyched, so much humidity in my hair.
• 22:37
  With long hair too. Just.
• 22:40
  I was when I was like I was in middle school, so I was probably
• 22:43
  like 13, something like that with the with my little Afro.
• 22:47
  Yeah, where do your parents reside now?
• 22:50
  They live in Virginia, so yeah. Still in military?
• 22:54
  Sort of, yeah. My dad pulled a classic.
• 22:56
  Like he retired from the Army and now he works for the Army as
• 22:59
  a civilian. But yeah, I went to high school
• 23:02
  outside of DC in Springfield, VA, Fairfax County, which was
• 23:07
  pretty cool. But they still live there, which
• 23:09
  is mind blowing for me because they moved there in 2008 so it's
• 23:14
  been like almost. Yeah, almost 20 years.
• 23:17
  It's pretty wild because my whole life, like prior to that,
• 23:20
  yeah, I mean, I could do the average, but it's probably like
• 23:23
  2 years that we lived in any given place on.
• 23:26
  Average. And then they've lived there for
• 23:28
  a really long time for a variety of reasons.
• 23:30
  But yeah, yeah, it's cool. I I actually really enjoyed DC.
• 23:35
  It's a really cool city, has really good public transit.
• 23:37
  So even where I live, like pretty far out of the city, if
• 23:40
  you measured, you know, as the crow flies, you could get some
• 23:43
  public transit and get to the city.
• 23:44
  And there's tons of free stuff to do, which is really cool.
• 23:49
  Yeah, that's cool. Just good.
• 23:50
  Big, old metropolitan. Lots of things.
• 23:53
  Yeah. New activity.
• 23:54
  And it's also weird because it's quite big but it's quite short,
• 23:57
  like none of the buildings are tall.
• 23:59
  You're not allowed to build tall buildings in DC.
• 24:01
  So like everything's under like 8 stories or something.
• 24:05
  Yeah. That makes it feel dude, but
• 24:08
  that makes it feel a lot like more.
• 24:10
  Out Redwood Towers. Yeah, so we get.
• 24:15
  Four, we get 4 stories in Grants Pass.
• 24:18
  That's. All that's all, she wrote.
• 24:21
  Can't really talk there's. Only yeah, they.
• 24:23
  Built it over 100. Years real so.
• 24:25
  Well, same with Medford too. I mean their Medford doesn't
• 24:27
  really have super tall yeah either.
• 24:29
  I mean, we were more sprawl versus tall.
• 24:32
  Yeah, not unlimited. It's my urban planning
• 24:35
  background. Yeah, it's awesome.
• 24:40
  That's a cool. Like I've always dreamt of,
• 24:42
  like, traveling as, like a kid. Yeah.
• 24:45
  And I want to bring that to my kids.
• 24:47
  But we're in a really funky season of life right now.
• 24:50
  But I admire that. I feel like it will give my son
• 24:53
  Cruz a lot of, like, perspective on life.
• 24:55
  And so he's not such. A Duke.
• 24:57
  Yeah, 'cause. He's a little turd.
• 24:58
  He's like 10, yeah. Yeah, that'll happen at me 10
• 25:01
  year. Old, yeah, yeah, most.
• 25:03
  If you're not kind of a Dick or a turd when you're 10, you're
• 25:06
  maybe kind of fucking up. Yeah.
• 25:08
  'Cause you're not expressing yourself.
• 25:10
  You're just on a crazy different life path.
• 25:12
  Yeah, definitely not one I took. That's.
• 25:14
  For sure. Yeah.
• 25:15
  So you let's go back to kind of your childhood and how getting
• 25:22
  into the outdoors was what's happening for you.
• 25:25
  Totally, yeah. And I think so.
• 25:27
  I think it kind of moves back to the moving thing is like I have
• 25:30
  a younger brother. He's like 3 years younger than
• 25:33
  me, but four years younger than me in school.
• 25:35
  So we were like buddies, but like we weren't like super close
• 25:39
  because we were pretty far apart, you know,
• 25:41
  developmentally, especially as children.
• 25:43
  So I feel like the outside for me was just like I always had.
• 25:46
  I always had a friend if I moved somewhere different, which was
• 25:49
  just like go outside and mess around and on the.
• 25:52
  Outdoors being the friend, yeah, yeah.
• 25:54
  And then on military? And get away from him a little
• 25:56
  bit. Not necessarily to get away from
• 25:58
  him, but just because like I was, you know, like a kid with a
• 26:01
  lot of energy and like wanted to go do shit.
• 26:03
  Right, Right. And being on a military base,
• 26:06
  there's always a bunch of other kids.
• 26:08
  And so it was like the the friend was always a found
• 26:11
  friend. You know, first you could go
• 26:13
  outside and go into nature, but then like pretty much instantly
• 26:16
  you'd find someone else and be able to meet them and like build
• 26:19
  a relationship with someone. You probably live like 4 doors
• 26:21
  away from you and, and also had just moved there more than
• 26:25
  likely. So, yeah, I think that was part
• 26:29
  of the the draw, but also it was just like really fun to be
• 26:33
  outside. I've always loved exploring and
• 26:37
  just like going into an area unknown.
• 26:39
  So I think that the outdoors in nature really like tripped that
• 26:43
  urge for me of like, oh, every day could be different.
• 26:46
  There's no, there are some trails, but there's no set path
• 26:49
  that you have to take just like wander through the woods and go
• 26:53
  find a stream. And then, you know, as I got
• 26:55
  older and got more excited on things like biking or like
• 27:00
  skiing, snowboarding, that kind of thing, it was just like sort
• 27:02
  of all tied in where like you could get adrenaline from it
• 27:06
  too. You could get some from some
• 27:09
  hype, some built in hype from just like going fast or doing
• 27:12
  jumps or yeah. The high that you.
• 27:15
  Get are high, you put the high in high.
• 27:22
  So. Were you seeking out those like
• 27:24
  snowboarding and those kind of adrenaline sports or were your
• 27:27
  parents introducing them to you or like how did even awareness
• 27:32
  or opportunity or exposure come for those?
• 27:35
  So my parents are skiers, but I wouldn't say that they're
• 27:38
  necessarily like adrenaline skiers.
• 27:40
  They're like pretty classic skiers, Like they really enjoy
• 27:43
  skiing, but they would never be the one who'd be like, we're
• 27:46
  going to the terrain park. So I think it was just like
• 27:50
  being a 90s kid and like being exposed to like extreme sports
• 27:55
  culture or whatever you want to say on TV.
• 27:57
  X Games. X Games for sure.
• 28:00
  And like that whole thing. Like I remember before I ever
• 28:03
  snowboarded, I was like, snowboarding is the coolest
• 28:05
  thing ever. Just from like.
• 28:07
  The media, video game, or. Video games, yeah, like S S
• 28:12
  Tricky. And yeah, I remember playing
• 28:14
  like Sean Palmer's Pro snowboarding as like a little
• 28:17
  kid and just be like, this is the coolest thing ever.
• 28:19
  Well, a lot of times I feel like skateboarding is like a gateway
• 28:22
  to the snow or skateboarding is the gateway to snowboarding
• 28:26
  totally. Because like once you're exposed
• 28:28
  to that sort of culture, you're like, Oh well, it's winter.
• 28:30
  No, yeah, that's kind of how I started when I was snowboarding,
• 28:35
  Yeah, as a kid or whatever. But.
• 28:36
  Yeah, for me, I've I've tried skateboarding and I should do
• 28:40
  more of it, but I'm a pretty shitty skateboarder.
• 28:42
  It was like surfing and snowboarding where my like kind
• 28:45
  of tandem. Yeah, I.
• 28:46
  Like or surfing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:49
  Thing first learned like surfing when I was in Okinawa, so I was
• 28:52
  like 12 or 13 and that was really cool and yeah, loved.
• 28:57
  Well, it sounds like your parents.
• 28:58
  Were really encouraging though of those things like, yeah, you
• 29:01
  found something you're interested in and like let's
• 29:03
  let's facilitate that for you. My parents were really, yeah,
• 29:06
  they were happy for me to do literally anything that I was
• 29:09
  excited on or expose me to things that I was maybe less
• 29:11
  excited on. Because they're bugging the hair
• 29:14
  I. Thought you, yeah.
• 29:17
  Thanks. So yeah, that was that was
• 29:18
  really cool. I mean, they they were great for
• 29:20
  that and they held me back one time and this goes back to my
• 29:24
  brother. Like we were pretty competitive,
• 29:26
  but it was very unfair competition because I was much
• 29:29
  older. So like they, they wanted a
• 29:32
  sport that he could play. So he started playing hockey and
• 29:35
  they wouldn't let me play hockey for like two or three years.
• 29:40
  So it was his sport. But no, eventually I started
• 29:42
  playing hockey and that was like kind of my main sport for a long
• 29:45
  time in terms of like team sports.
• 29:47
  I played like football and, and some soccer and stuff like that
• 29:51
  and like that too. But hockey was definitely the
• 29:52
  one I was like, actually into. Yeah, football got too serious.
• 29:57
  Like they were like right after freshman football, they were
• 30:00
  like, cool, we're going to go to the gym.
• 30:02
  And I was like, the gym, I don't do that.
• 30:04
  Like that's not me, am I? Going to go train off time,
• 30:08
  yeah? That's not me.
• 30:09
  So I quit. I.
• 30:12
  Don't want to go inside to exercise?
• 30:15
  Outdoor Exerciser I. Still struggle at the gym.
• 30:18
  I'm old enough that I need to go to the gym.
• 30:21
  I think to like keep some good health things going, but.
• 30:26
  Build muscle mass. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:28
  But I just, I don't know what it is about the gym environment,
• 30:31
  but I have just never liked the the feeling of going to the gym.
• 30:35
  We need more outdoor gym like in every other country I've ever
• 30:39
  been to. And maybe you saw this also,
• 30:41
  though I think it's more modern, more recent.
• 30:44
  There are parks with outdoor workout equipment that use body
• 30:48
  weight and there, you know, there's no like plates and bars,
• 30:51
  but they're, and they're usually full of people working out,
• 30:55
  doing exercise, doing chest presses and rows and outside.
• 31:01
  Totally, Yeah, military bases actually have a lot of those
• 31:04
  because they're so focused on like fitness and you have to
• 31:06
  pass your fitness test or whatever.
• 31:08
  So there's definitely those, like, body weight, outdoor adult
• 31:12
  jungle gym, Yeah. Things.
• 31:14
  Yeah, all over the place on military bases.
• 31:16
  Families into the adult jungle. Yeah, like why stop playing?
• 31:20
  Like that's how, that's how our bodies start to breakdown and we
• 31:24
  lose potential, we lose possibilities and potential.
• 31:26
  It's because we think that play is only for children on a
• 31:30
  playground, but we just scale the playground to adult size and
• 31:36
  keep keep those skills going, keep playing, I think.
• 31:39
  There's a movement coming. Around yeah, movement, yeah,
• 31:46
  yeah, yeah. We're all, we are all definitely
• 31:48
  trying to reclaim our youth and childhood and realizing like,
• 31:53
  wow, why did we cut ourselves off?
• 31:54
  Maybe it's just the 30s that are like we're kind of in between.
• 31:57
  We're not quite young, we're not quite old.
• 31:59
  It's like this middle ground and that's just what it is.
• 32:01
  Like we're just entering the space where that's a thing.
• 32:04
  But I think it's definitely our generation being like, because I
• 32:08
  think people in their 30s a generation or two ago, they
• 32:13
  maybe didn't have, they weren't cut off from play.
• 32:16
  Like we were like, my parents were still being river guides
• 32:21
  and playing and active and doing all of that.
• 32:24
  But then there was a break in that where it was like, no, you
• 32:27
  got to get serious and go to work and go to an office and
• 32:30
  raise kids. Yeah.
• 32:32
  And we're like, well, actually, no.
• 32:34
  Like we want to be able to keep playing with our kids.
• 32:36
  So or those of you who have kids, like want to keep being
• 32:40
  able to play with them. So have to stay active and.
• 32:43
  Yeah, I'm coming back. Into that right now, yeah,
• 32:45
  totally. Yeah.
• 32:46
  It's you got to, yeah. Got to stay fit to keep up.
• 32:49
  With the kids. And also just like I, you know,
• 32:55
  roller skating looks fun. Yeah.
• 32:56
  You know, it's like, yeah, I just want to do something.
• 32:59
  Totally I. Want to do?
• 33:00
  Yeah, when I put my roller blades on it, like over the
• 33:03
  summer, my roommate's car, well, my car, she was driving my car
• 33:06
  broke down like 2 miles from her house.
• 33:09
  And I was like, well, don't have another way to get to you, I'm
• 33:13
  going to rollerblade to you. And it was you put out a bike.
• 33:18
  Yeah. I'm more comfortable with the
• 33:20
  rollerblades but it. Dropped your bike off at the
• 33:22
  bike shop? Trying.
• 33:25
  To say this yeah, I. Was like, but I put the
• 33:27
  rollerblades on and it felt like riding a bike.
• 33:30
  Like it all just came back to me even though I hadn't done it in
• 33:33
  20 years. But it was like I can fucking do
• 33:35
  this. My body remembers how to do this
• 33:38
  and I rollerbladed 2 miles uphill.
• 33:42
  That's fucking awesome. I'm.
• 33:45
  So bad at the 4x4 roller blades. I'm much better at roller
• 33:48
  skates, but roller blades have always.
• 33:52
  Not a fruit booter. Just a second away from
• 33:54
  disaster, it always feels like. I want to try and skate like
• 34:00
  roller skating that seems like, you know, it's kind of coming
• 34:04
  back in the style and stuff like that.
• 34:05
  So I grew up. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:08
  Well, we were sitting in the parking lot waiting and an older
• 34:11
  gentleman rollerbladed by with with sticks.
• 34:14
  With like walking sticks. Yeah, I was.
• 34:17
  Like that's sick. OK, so.
• 34:22
  Back to you, Marshall. Oh no.
• 34:23
  That was great. I'm I'm all in.
• 34:27
  So why Ashlyn? Like, yeah.
• 34:29
  How'd you end up in Southern Oregon?
• 34:30
  OK, so Southern Oregon. I was always super interested in
• 34:35
  the state of Oregon. Were you here at all in
• 34:38
  childhood? Or like, how did how did Oregon
• 34:41
  come across your radar? Cool.
• 34:43
  It had a bunch of stuff that I was excited on.
• 34:46
  It's big for snowboarding because of Mount Hood.
• 34:49
  It's got lots of big trees, it's got mountains, it's got the
• 34:52
  ocean. I was just stoked on Oregon.
• 34:54
  I actually applied to go to the University of Oregon when I was
• 34:58
  an undergrad and that didn't work out for whatever reason.
• 35:03
  And so when I was finishing up undergrad, I was like, oh, it
• 35:06
  would be cool to move to Oregon because I'm looking for a job
• 35:11
  and I don't really have I can go anywhere.
• 35:13
  I'm a. Free.
• 35:14
  Bird, I can go anywhere. So I applied to a couple jobs in
• 35:17
  Oregon, and I actually got a job surveying for marbled Merlette,
• 35:25
  which was a really interesting summer.
• 35:28
  Yeah. So marbled merlette is like an
• 35:31
  endangered seabird that nests in old growth forests in trees that
• 35:38
  have like, really big limbs. They're like a ghetto bird that
• 35:42
  doesn't build a nest. And say ghetto Bird.
• 35:45
  Yeah, yeah. They're like, you know, they're
• 35:47
  like, they're a bird who's like evolutionarily hasn't produce
• 35:53
  the ability to build its own nest, so.
• 35:56
  Just steals nest from other birds or just like they just
• 35:59
  post some? Spot that's like this will hold
• 36:02
  an egg, they lay it. So what they're the dependent on
• 36:07
  then is like old growth trees that have those like really big,
• 36:10
  you know, like primary branches that come off they hold an egg.
• 36:15
  And so they're protected from like a forestry standpoint, like
• 36:21
  those forests are protected. And if you're going to log those
• 36:24
  forests, you have to survey for them.
• 36:27
  It's mandated because they're an endangered species list.
• 36:29
  So I work for a company where we were surveying like BLM lands, a
• 36:33
  little bit of private timberland for Merlet's, which just
• 36:36
  involves showing up stupid early.
• 36:38
  Like a lot of times I'd start work it was 45 minutes before
• 36:42
  sunrise, but it's in the summer so I'd start work at like 3:40
• 36:45
  in the morning or something. Morning person.
• 36:47
  No opposite. Morning job.
• 36:50
  Opposite most. To be.
• 36:52
  Yeah, yeah, that job taught me to drink lots of coffee.
• 36:56
  So yeah, my MO, because I'm not a morning person, is I would
• 37:00
  just sleep in my car right next to where I had to survey so I
• 37:03
  could wake up at the absolute like latest moment possible and
• 37:07
  still make it to my survey spot on time.
• 37:10
  So at the beginning of being a dirtbag.
• 37:12
  Yeah. I mean, I had already been, you
• 37:15
  know, introduced to the waves before that, especially like for
• 37:19
  trips and stuff like that. But yeah, yeah, kind of fully
• 37:21
  embraced it in that moment for sure.
• 37:23
  Yeah. The company I worked for like
• 37:24
  rented me a house and I think I slept in it like 12 times.
• 37:28
  Wow, was it a fun job serving like being out there?
• 37:31
  How does that work? Like you just like.
• 37:33
  You see the right tree and you look to see if there's a bird in
• 37:36
  it and. I'm trying to think of the exact
• 37:39
  phrase of they use for that type of survey.
• 37:43
  Essentially, there's a, there's a point that they generate and
• 37:46
  you survey from that point. And a lot of it is auditory
• 37:50
  because they make a really distinct call when they're
• 37:52
  returning to their tree. Because a lot of times you're in
• 37:55
  a forest that's like way more enclosed than this.
• 37:58
  And like seeing the bird would be quite difficult.
• 38:00
  There's actually a really good spot if you go to Redwood
• 38:03
  National Park, there's like that Newton Bead, Drury Highway or
• 38:07
  whatever that cuts through it, and there's big Meadows and
• 38:10
  there's a bunch of roulettes that nest there.
• 38:13
  So if you stand in those meadows at the right time of year, you
• 38:15
  can see them. But that's like one of the
• 38:17
  special spots. Like most of the time when
• 38:19
  you're surveying you can't really see them.
• 38:21
  Yeah. Where specifically were you?
• 38:22
  Like was it all over the place in?
• 38:25
  Yeah. So I was, I was near Coquille
• 38:30
  and like sort of that zone around there was doing a bunch
• 38:34
  of surveys and I did that for, it was like 3 months, I think 3
• 38:38
  months job, which was pretty neat.
• 38:39
  Yeah. And I got to go up to the North
• 38:41
  Coast a little bit and do some surveys out there.
• 38:43
  And yeah, it was a good experience, but it's a temporary
• 38:47
  job, right? So I took a job actually after
• 38:50
  that with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Gold Beach,
• 38:54
  where we were. Yeah, that was a crazy job.
• 38:57
  We were catching returning fall Chinook like 7 miles up the
• 39:02
  Rogue River from Gold Beach using a giant sane net.
• 39:07
  So it's like a 300 foot long net that we'd pull upstream against
• 39:11
  the current and then loop back around and then pull it back to
• 39:15
  the gravel bar, the cobble bar essentially.
• 39:18
  With our boat, we do like 10 of those per day and they use that
• 39:22
  to estimate the returning run of false Schnuck.
• 39:25
  And see how many are in the net. Exactly.
• 39:27
  The whole Rogue River I. Was always curious about that,
• 39:30
  yeah. Were you tagging them at all or
• 39:32
  just counting? Occasionally tag them.
• 39:34
  So if they were a hatchery fish and you know it's a hatchery
• 39:37
  fish because there's the last fin on the back of a of a salmon
• 39:43
  or salmonid is the adipose fin. And hatchery fish, they cut the
• 39:47
  adipose fin off. So if there's a hatchery fish,
• 39:49
  we tag it because theoretically that's going to return to the
• 39:53
  hatchery and then they could know like how many days it took
• 39:55
  them to get up there or whatever.
• 39:57
  But the main goal for this project was just estimating and
• 40:02
  enumerating returning fall Chinook and then half pounders
• 40:06
  which are. Juvenile steelhead.
• 40:09
  The Rogue River has this unique life history where juvenile
• 40:12
  steelhead will actually emigrate out of the river into the
• 40:15
  estuary, hang out there for a couple months and then come back
• 40:19
  into the river, which is really unique.
• 40:21
  It only happens in like 3 different rivers.
• 40:23
  One's the rug, one's the Klamath, and then the other is
• 40:25
  like on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.
• 40:29
  Wow. Anyway, so that was like the
• 40:31
  point of that project is to like get numbers for half pounders
• 40:34
  and falshinek. Yeah.
• 40:35
  And we catch a bunch of other things.
• 40:36
  Like we catch one of the coolest things and I have some photos is
• 40:39
  like a juvenile green sturgeon. So like cool this big, just so
• 40:44
  freaking sharp little dinosaurs, like the craziest colors ever.
• 40:49
  What else? Some non-native fish we'd catch
• 40:53
  and occasionally try and feed to an osprey.
• 40:55
  There's an osprey that like has built a nest right above where
• 40:58
  this operation happens, so we'd always try and give them.
• 41:01
  Did you get to name? Them I didn't name them.
• 41:03
  I maybe had a name. I name everything.
• 41:05
  Yeah. I just call all Ospreys Ozzies,
• 41:08
  yeah, you know. Yeah.
• 41:11
  Ozzie Yeah. And then what else?
• 41:15
  Every now and then we catch a sea lion, which was kind of
• 41:17
  scary in. In the net, yeah.
• 41:19
  Not, no, not the sickest. They like swim upstream to try
• 41:22
  and catch the fish and they they certainly knew about the
• 41:24
  operation too, so they were definitely like.
• 41:26
  Yeah, they saw where the fish were accumulating at all.
• 41:30
  Or. No, not typically.
• 41:31
  Or would you get injured? Yeah, I mean, that was the scary
• 41:34
  part. Yeah.
• 41:35
  They're kind of fired up when when they get lots of shore on
• 41:38
  the net. Yeah, what the fuck?
• 41:41
  They are not the chillest animals.
• 41:44
  Not the chillest, Yeah. And then adult steelhead.
• 41:47
  That was like the other big one that we catch.
• 41:49
  So. Yeah, so I did that.
• 41:53
  And at that time I was like being a ski bum in the winter.
• 41:57
  So I'd work at Snowmass in Colorado in the winter.
• 42:00
  So I did that right before that summer and then the next summer.
• 42:03
  I've always loved snorkeling like one of my like so like
• 42:08
  nature's so cool memories is when we were living in Korea
• 42:11
  when I was a kid, we went to Australia with my parents and
• 42:15
  got to go snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef and was just
• 42:18
  like, this is freaking insane. What the hell is this?
• 42:20
  So I've always loved snorkeling, so I applied for this job to be
• 42:24
  a stream surveyor, which is where you go to these random
• 42:28
  spots and random streams and hike up the stream.
• 42:32
  You enumerate the habitat. So you're like counting up all
• 42:34
  the pieces of wood and measuring the pools and like calculating
• 42:37
  the volume of water in the pools and all that.
• 42:39
  But then you're also snorkeling through and counting all the
• 42:40
  fish. Rad.
• 42:43
  Yeah, exactly. So I applied to this job, which
• 42:47
  has positions all over Oregon, and they were like, where do you
• 42:49
  want to go? And I was like, I don't really
• 42:51
  know. Like I don't have any.
• 42:54
  I don't have any particular. Reactions.
• 42:57
  So I was like, I knew that summer that I had been here
• 43:00
  working the Merle job and catching the adult fish.
• 43:02
  I had come to the Rogue Valley once or twice and then like, oh,
• 43:06
  this is pretty cool. So I was like, I'll work down
• 43:08
  here or put me somewhere random and they ended up putting me
• 43:12
  here. So it was like, oh sweet, this
• 43:15
  place is awesome. Really got to integrate more,
• 43:19
  you know, living here all summer and going to ton of different
• 43:21
  streams. That's the coolest part about
• 43:23
  that job is you just go to these places you would never, ever,
• 43:26
  ever go to because they're just like, here's a dot on the map,
• 43:29
  like good luck, Go get their survey for one kilometer.
• 43:33
  Yeah, the kind of exploring I'd love to do.
• 43:35
  I'm just like, I wanna get to that spot and I gotta like do
• 43:37
  all this crazy like to get there.
• 43:40
  Yeah, such a cool job. And yeah.
• 43:43
  And then just had a great summer.
• 43:44
  See. Lots of waterfalls that are just
• 43:46
  in the middle of nowhere and you're like, this is the most
• 43:49
  gorgeous thing ever and nobody will ever.
• 43:52
  No trail here. Yeah.
• 43:53
  Sure. Yeah.
• 43:53
  It's like, not on the map. Not yeah.
• 43:56
  You would never know if you had not just gone to it and showed
• 44:00
  up and. Take.
• 44:02
  Take us to one sometime off. Camera No.
• 44:05
  Honestly that was like part of my thought process with the like
• 44:08
  I know a lot of like weird cool streams.
• 44:10
  Yeah, go to this group. Is that part of like when you're
• 44:13
  trying to like maybe pick up women or people?
• 44:17
  I don't know if you're sure today, so sorry, but picking up
• 44:21
  a person I don't because. That's OK.
• 44:24
  That's OK. Very. 20.
• 44:27
  Person. But what you're asking is, is
• 44:28
  that somewhere you would take somebody on like a first date?
• 44:31
  Yeah, it's like. Hey, I know there's a really
• 44:33
  cool spot. Yeah, and.
• 44:34
  Hopefully they trust you enough to not think that you're going
• 44:37
  to take them in the woods and leave them there like.
• 44:40
  Yeah, so I have an awesome girlfriend, Caitlin.
• 44:43
  We've been together since I was working at Snowmass, so it's
• 44:46
  like 2017 or 16. A long time.
• 44:50
  She knows because I've taken her to many streams.
• 44:52
  I've forced her to work for me for no pay and some streams.
• 44:56
  She's. All about the streams.
• 44:57
  Cool. Hell yeah.
• 44:59
  Well acquainted with the hey we're going to a random stream
• 45:02
  today vibe. Yeah, good for her.
• 45:06
  Yeah. Yeah, we went to, there's this
• 45:08
  really cool. It's the Middle Fork of the
• 45:10
  Rogue River, and it was when I was working the same job.
• 45:13
  We went up there to the wilderness area and there's a
• 45:17
  sweet trail I. Like Union Creek.
• 45:19
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a little bit on the map.
• 45:22
  It would be South of Union Creek.
• 45:23
  There's like Red Blanket Creek and then there's the Middle Fork
• 45:27
  of the road. So we hiked up dot and had a
• 45:30
  survey to do up there and it's this crazy old growth forest,
• 45:34
  but it's been burned. So there's all these like
• 45:36
  massive 100 foot like standing snags.
• 45:40
  And she was out there with me and my survey partner at the
• 45:43
  time, and it was like only minorly windy, but this huge
• 45:47
  freaking snag fell over and like, Oh my God, we would have
• 45:51
  so died if we were like. Wow.
• 45:54
  This is the classic. Like, that's pretty scary.
• 45:57
  That's why they're called widow makers.
• 45:59
  Yep, a man locally recently just had a branch fall on him and
• 46:04
  he's in a coma and like. Totally.
• 46:06
  Terrible. Yeah, I heard about that.
• 46:08
  We're pretty safe here. I think we're pretty safe here.
• 46:10
  So what do they do with the survey information?
• 46:13
  OK, so the project I was working for was called AQI, which is
• 46:18
  aquatic inventories. And the project was formed
• 46:23
  because coho salmon were declining throughout Oregon, but
• 46:29
  particularly in Southern Oregon and Northern California.
• 46:32
  There's a distinct genetic population.
• 46:36
  So they were interested in understanding where coho or
• 46:40
  rearing, what their habitat trend is over time.
• 46:44
  And then as we go in and try and improve their habitat, what the
• 46:50
  responses to that with the population level responses to
• 46:52
  that coho are good species for that because they're on a very
• 46:57
  consistent 3 year life cycle. And so like you can pretty well
• 47:01
  know that the big years should, they should match across time on
• 47:06
  that three-year interval because when you have a big returner
• 47:09
  year, they produce a lot of eggs into the gravel.
• 47:12
  So if you're surviving, you should also have a lot of
• 47:14
  juveniles at that time. So yeah, that was the main sort
• 47:18
  of focus for that project, but we were collecting data on
• 47:21
  everything that was there. So we're also collecting data on
• 47:24
  juvenile Chinook and steelhead. And that data is pretty
• 47:28
  important here in the Rogue River because there's no one
• 47:32
  else essentially going out there to collect it.
• 47:34
  The Rogue River basin, that is and steelhead are sort of like
• 47:39
  what the. Well, we swap a battery.
• 47:42
  Here's a quick shout out to the crew who makes our dirt days
• 47:44
  possible, the Rogue Valley Mountain Bike Association.
• 47:48
  If you've ridden a trail anywhere around Southern Oregon
• 47:51
  and thought, Dang, this is good, chances are they had a hand in
• 47:55
  it. They're out there digging,
• 47:57
  advocating and protecting access so we can keep riding wild.
• 48:02
  If you love the trails, don't just ride them, support them.
• 48:05
  Head to rvmba.org and get involved.
• 48:09
  That's RV mba.org because great trails don't build themselves.
• 48:18
  And now back to the show when we.
• 48:20
  Started this project. We flipped that over.
• 48:23
  Here. Yeah, we're back.
• 48:25
  We're back. But it was too bulky.
• 48:29
  It's like, yeah. This is easiest.
• 48:30
  We were like trying to walk around with a DSLR camera on a
• 48:34
  tripod and get our like wide angle lens and just like arms
• 48:39
  were falling. And then we tried to set up
• 48:41
  multiple cameras with multiple angles.
• 48:43
  We were like, this is going to be a pain in the ass for
• 48:45
  editing. Well, we have him here because
• 48:47
  that will be our commercial break.
• 48:48
  Should we promote the trail the. RV MB A commercial for.
• 48:55
  It'll be like hit up yeah, hit up Marshall for yeah, no, we
• 48:58
  have not talked about trails or nothing.
• 49:00
  Well, we can, we can. We can get there soon.
• 49:03
  We should get there soon. OK, Yeah.
• 49:07
  Steelhead, yeah. So the Rogue Rivers Steelhead is
• 49:10
  sort of what the Rogue River is who well known for, especially
• 49:14
  from like a fishing and guiding perspective is like lots of
• 49:18
  steelheads. You can catch them at multiple
• 49:21
  life stages. So like I was saying before,
• 49:23
  there's the half pounder life stage where they're like usually
• 49:26
  under a foot in length. It's like catching trout and
• 49:29
  still had our trout, but it's like catching trout.
• 49:32
  And then there's also the full grown adults.
• 49:33
  That's like the sick picture with the big fish.
• 49:37
  It's one of the few places that you can actually retain wild
• 49:40
  steelhead still on the West Coast because most of the
• 49:43
  steelhead populations have been in decline or fully listed on
• 49:47
  the Endangered Species Act as either threatened or endangered,
• 49:51
  which is somewhat controversial depending on who you talk to.
• 49:56
  Their listing or the. Fact that you can still retain
• 49:59
  adult wild steelhead in the Rogue River basin Yeah, so I
• 50:06
  forget exactly where I was going with all of that, but that's
• 50:09
  the. I had asked.
• 50:11
  I had asked what they do with the survey information.
• 50:14
  Yeah. So steelhead are important.
• 50:17
  That's where I was going because we have both summer and winter
• 50:20
  steelhead in the Rogue River, which is not, not all basins
• 50:24
  have that. And summer steelhead are pretty
• 50:26
  interesting. And there's actually a lot of
• 50:28
  them around Grants Pass that spawn in these intermittent
• 50:31
  creeks that like only flow in the winter.
• 50:34
  And so they go up into the creeks, they spawn, they hatch,
• 50:39
  and then essentially as soon as they lose their egg SAC and they
• 50:42
  become like fingerling, you know, fry, they will emigrate
• 50:48
  out of the Creek that they were born in, usually back to the
• 50:51
  main river, but sometimes to a different Creek for a different
• 50:53
  stream, which is uncommon. Typically you think of salmon as
• 50:58
  rearing in salmon and steelhead as rearing in the stream where
• 51:01
  they were born, like rearing relatively close to where they
• 51:05
  were produced, where they spawned at.
• 51:08
  So that summer life history is like pretty cool, pretty unique.
• 51:13
  And yeah, it really utilizes like the unique nature of the
• 51:18
  Rogue Valley, where we have this sort of Savannah transition zone
• 51:23
  where we have, you know, lots of crease that flow in the winter
• 51:25
  but just have no water in the summer.
• 51:27
  So it's like a cool evolutionary or ecological adaptation to that
• 51:32
  hydrograph, where they're utilizing habitat that would not
• 51:36
  be available if they didn't emigrate.
• 51:39
  How intelligent, yeah. Fish are fucking brilliant.
• 51:42
  Yeah, fish are cool. Hi, fish are pretty.
• 51:45
  Cool. We think that they're some
• 51:48
  people think that they're just like dumb creatures, but they
• 51:51
  are ancient and brilliant and really big indicators of what is
• 51:57
  happening in an ecosystem. Totally.
• 52:00
  Yeah, they're the classic. Like what is that?
• 52:02
  Like they aggregate, aggregate everything below them.
• 52:06
  So like you know if the insects are doing poorly because of XYZ
• 52:11
  like you'll see it in the fish or.
• 52:13
  Like. If you poured a bunch of
• 52:14
  pollution into the stream, you'll see it in the fish.
• 52:18
  If you logged all the forests and there's no more forests,
• 52:20
  you'll see it in the fish. Yeah.
• 52:23
  Or Vista versa if you do a bunch of restoration work.
• 52:26
  You'll see it in the fish. See it in the fish.
• 52:27
  Yeah. That's cool.
• 52:29
  Yeah. So very interesting.
• 52:31
  Yeah. So that was that was the first
• 52:34
  time I moved here. I moved here a second time to
• 52:36
  essentially do the same thing the next year because it was so
• 52:39
  great. I worked a job at UC Berkeley
• 52:41
  that was cool and paid a decent amount of money, but didn't
• 52:45
  really love the job like living in Berkeley.
• 52:47
  And so I was in the process of applying to grad school.
• 52:50
  I had gotten into grad school, so I was like, I don't even have
• 52:53
  to care about what my job is. I just need to make money and
• 52:55
  have fun. I'm going to move back to
• 52:57
  Southern Oregon. So I took that same job the next
• 52:59
  year, did the same thing. The first year I lived in
• 53:02
  talent, Second year I lived in Ashland.
• 53:06
  That was awesome. Had a great summer then.
• 53:10
  So I was like 27? No, I was 2018.
• 53:13
  Then I went to grad school, lived in Logan, UT for 4 1/2
• 53:18
  years. It's quite good.
• 53:21
  Had a really cool project. I was mainly working in grad
• 53:24
  school with stream restoration, so I was really interested in
• 53:30
  from doing this survey job of like how Beavers influence
• 53:34
  stream ecosystems. That was like something that I
• 53:36
  got onto my mind and was really like in terms of research really
• 53:41
  exciting and popular and people wanted to put money into that.
• 53:45
  And then the other thing that was interesting along that same
• 53:48
  line was Beaver Dam analogs or mimicking Beaver.
• 53:52
  And so I kind of built my own project where I was trying to
• 53:56
  understand if there was a difference in natural Beaver
• 54:00
  complexes to Beaver Dam analog complexes and if there was a
• 54:04
  difference in terms of like how they were functioning, like what
• 54:07
  the what the difference was. So I had a couple different
• 54:11
  projects that were like, you know, chapters or whatever in my
• 54:14
  dissertation that we're looking at that from a few different
• 54:16
  angles. I was looking at it from like an
• 54:18
  amphibian perspective. We looked at it from more of a
• 54:24
  sort of holistic ecology perspective where we actually
• 54:27
  did an experiment and like measured before and after at
• 54:30
  control sites, impact sites where we were building these
• 54:34
  Beaver Dam analogs. And then also at a natural
• 54:36
  Beaver complex in the same location that was like all
• 54:39
  around Park City in Utah. And then I had one other chapter
• 54:43
  where we were looking at how bull trap migrated through
• 54:47
  Beaver dams and like what the what the sort of flow of their
• 54:52
  migration and what dams they could get over and whether they
• 54:56
  were being impeded by Beaver dams at all out of stream in
• 55:01
  Montana. Bull trout are unique that
• 55:04
  they're a char species, which means like a brown trout or a
• 55:08
  brook trout, they migrate in the fall, which can be the lowest
• 55:13
  time in terms of like water in the stream.
• 55:15
  So there's been a lot of concern from those like recreational
• 55:20
  fishers and some fisheries managers that, oh, like bullchat
• 55:24
  are going to get stuck behind below Beaver dams and they won't
• 55:27
  be able to migrate up to the good spawning habitat.
• 55:31
  Yeah, typically, I mean, there's there's a sort of an there's an
• 55:36
  obsession in a lot of ways with fish ecology that I think is
• 55:40
  just a poor understanding of fish, that fish should be able
• 55:43
  to move wherever they want at any time, which just isn't
• 55:46
  realistic. Like Ashland Creek's a great
• 55:48
  example example. There is natural barriers in
• 55:51
  Ashland Creek in the summer. There's just not enough water.
• 55:53
  And so it's like. You want it, but it doesn't mean
• 55:56
  you should go in there and move the rocks around and channelize
• 56:00
  it. Dynamite it so that fish can
• 56:01
  move everywhere at all times. Like that's not a realistic
• 56:04
  expectation. I mean, what we found in that
• 56:06
  project was that by and large bull trout were getting past
• 56:11
  Beaver dams of varying sizes. And there was actually, we had a
• 56:14
  data set from an experimental like removal of Beaver dams.
• 56:17
  It's really, really interesting where even after you removed the
• 56:20
  Beaver dams, the fish were still spawning in areas that were
• 56:24
  below Beaver dams after they were like dynamited out, which
• 56:28
  to me is indicating that like, sure, they might be blocked
• 56:32
  occasionally, but below Beaver dams is actually just really
• 56:34
  good at spawning habitat because you have sordid gravel, you have
• 56:37
  well oxygenated water, and then you have like an area that's
• 56:41
  clear of detritus or like other sort of inhibitors to building a
• 56:48
  red, to building a fish nest because of that, like pouring
• 56:51
  over water that's like just cutting and churning all that
• 56:54
  crap out. So yeah, that was the rundown on
• 57:00
  my. Wow.
• 57:01
  How are you? Damn, that's.
• 57:05
  Really. Interesting.
• 57:06
  Yeah, yeah, I'm like locked in, like I feel like I'm in a great
• 57:10
  lecture of like they. Love me some fit.
• 57:13
  Yeah. I don't know.
• 57:14
  I grew up. My dad's a Fisher, you know
• 57:16
  he's, he's a. Fisherman.
• 57:17
  He's. Typed on it and yeah, he's typed
• 57:18
  on it and like hunting conservation of the land and
• 57:21
  stuff like that. So it's really cool to get that.
• 57:22
  Like, I can't wait. I want to be like, you need to
• 57:25
  listen to this episode, dad. Like, it's really interesting,
• 57:28
  really cool. Are you involved with the Beaver
• 57:31
  project here at all, or with Vesper Meadow or any of those
• 57:34
  groups? A little bit.
• 57:35
  So I'll jump into the third time that I moved here.
• 57:38
  I moved here to work for Oregon Fish and Wildlife again, this
• 57:42
  time as a permanent employee who was like, essentially my job was
• 57:48
  to supervise and organize the efforts to collect data on
• 57:53
  several different projects about various salmonids throughout
• 57:59
  their life histories in the Rogue watershed.
• 58:01
  So that included like what's? Salmon.
• 58:04
  Salmon, but salmon still had trout like any like their Yeah,
• 58:07
  mountain whitefish, just like their What would the word for
• 58:11
  that be their family the the above genus OK, above species
• 58:15
  above genus the family. Like a ceramicist.
• 58:21
  I'll never say ceramicist, she's all we were talking about.
• 58:25
  Sorry. You talk about ceramics my
• 58:29
  background and caught my very limited college.
• 58:32
  I was going to school to be ceramic major, art major, and
• 58:38
  she's all, yeah, a ceramicist. And I'm like, you're either a
• 58:40
  sculptor or a Potter or like a clay artist is not ceramic.
• 58:43
  So like if you do. Both, like if you just do all
• 58:45
  sorts of things with ceramics like.
• 58:48
  I give it to Emily because she makes up wonderful names for
• 58:50
  everything. Thank you, that one's kind of
• 58:52
  cool to find the new. Language, yeah.
• 58:56
  Like ceramicist is the family of those who do ceramics, whether
• 58:59
  they're Potters or whatever like.
• 59:03
  Yeah, we can't have stagnant language.
• 59:05
  We can't be inventing new words. Yeah, yeah, you.
• 59:08
  Can't let kids just invent stupid.
• 59:10
  Words. Exactly.
• 59:11
  Yeah, for sure. Skippity toilet or whatever the
• 59:16
  fuck. So that's like real.
• 59:17
  Young people, Yeah, you haven't. I'm a 10.
• 59:20
  Year old like yeah. All.
• 59:22
  The time ceramicist actually has like, intellectual Yeah, some.
• 59:28
  Sort of actual meaning that could be applied.
• 59:30
  Yeah, it's ceramics artist, ceramicist.
• 59:34
  Ceramicist. Anyway, so back to the
• 59:37
  salmonids. The.
• 59:39
  Salmonids. Salmonis.
• 59:42
  Right. OK.
• 59:43
  One of my favorite is if you really want to talk with someone
• 59:47
  when they're when they're looking at like an A snake or a
• 59:53
  or like a toad or something, say, wow, that's a really nice
• 59:56
  reptile. Reptile.
• 59:59
  You would say that reptile. Reptile baby.
• 1:00:05
  Log into PetSmart. Hey, I'm just looking for some
• 1:00:07
  reptiles. Gary Reptiles.
• 1:00:09
  Hey, where are you? From I'm going to do.
• 1:00:14
  That though, yeah. Mispronunciation.
• 1:00:16
  Yeah, conventional. Or on.
• 1:00:18
  Creek or Creek? Yeah.
• 1:00:19
  Is it a reptile or a reptil? Reptil's always I.
• 1:00:23
  Think I might call my bum hole from now on a reptil reptil
• 1:00:28
  reptil you might. That reptile.
• 1:00:31
  I'm going to tell my son he's going to be like, what the fuck?
• 1:00:33
  He's. Like.
• 1:00:33
  What? He won't say that part, but.
• 1:00:36
  What he will in his head very well.
• 1:00:38
  He's he's a dirty kid, yeah. I think after his mother.
• 1:00:41
  You are as a 10 year old. Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  Oh, yeah. We moved back to Southern
• 1:00:47
  Oregon. Oh yeah, I was doing, I was
• 1:00:48
  doing sort of organizing field crews, collecting data, managing
• 1:00:54
  data, analyzing data. Because I had the Beaver
• 1:00:58
  experience. I was interfacing with Vesper
• 1:01:00
  Meadow on a couple different fronts.
• 1:01:02
  Great. Strip club name, Yeah.
• 1:01:04
  Beaver Experience. I mean, you'll be happy to know
• 1:01:07
  that the state of Oregon was like, you really need to
• 1:01:11
  register your vehicle in Oregon. You need to have an Oregon
• 1:01:14
  license plate because you're a state employee.
• 1:01:17
  And I was like, all right, cool. I was like, well, you know, I
• 1:01:19
  need to get the salmon plate because like, I'm a salmon boy.
• 1:01:22
  It's a great license plate. And I was like, well, I kind of
• 1:01:24
  want to get a custom plate. Like, why not?
• 1:01:26
  Like I'm already going to pay for the salmon plate.
• 1:01:28
  So I was like, you know, I did a Beaver project.
• 1:01:30
  It would be pretty funny if I got the license plate like
• 1:01:33
  Beaver boy or something like that.
• 1:01:34
  So I like you can't pre-order it.
• 1:01:36
  You just have to go into the DMV and they're like, what plate do
• 1:01:39
  you want? I was like Beaver boy and
• 1:01:40
  they're like taken. I was like, how about with an
• 1:01:42
  eye? They're like taken.
• 1:01:43
  I was like, Oh yeah. OSU, they are the Beaver.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah, it's. Probably a little too obvious.
• 1:01:48
  And I was like, what about with the number one at the end taken?
• 1:01:51
  I was like, all right, cool, what else could we do?
• 1:01:53
  And it just hit me naturally in the DMV.
• 1:01:57
  So I have the license plate. Beaver Slap.
• 1:01:59
  Hell yeah. I now call my car the Beaver
• 1:02:01
  Slapper. The Beaver.
• 1:02:05
  Slap. Ah, yes.
• 1:02:06
  With the coho plate, it's wonderful.
• 1:02:09
  It's wonderful. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:12
  Subaru is the Beaver slap. Oh yeah, that's.
• 1:02:16
  Also, since Subarus are pretty notoriously like lesbian
• 1:02:19
  vehicles, yeah. Do people do women see you
• 1:02:23
  driving with your long hair flowing out the window?
• 1:02:26
  Beaver Slap license plate. Probably I got to pay more
• 1:02:30
  attention. They don't need to get like a
• 1:02:32
  camera set up so I can record other people's reaction.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah. Yeah, that would be hours of
• 1:02:37
  entertainment, I'm sure. I'm sure I'm sure there's some
• 1:02:42
  good reactions. What?
• 1:02:46
  I'm going to we're going to video when we go.
• 1:02:47
  Yeah, you got to get a shot of the Beaver slap.
• 1:02:49
  Yeah. So yeah, the state made me get
• 1:02:53
  the license plate. Yeah.
• 1:02:55
  So interfacing with Vesper Meadow a bit when I was working
• 1:02:59
  for the state, I was doing some stream flow modern monitoring
• 1:03:04
  with them. So there is a, there's a water
• 1:03:08
  right allocation that the state owns that's like an in stream
• 1:03:12
  water right for Lagawa Creek that leaves Vesper Meadow, goes
• 1:03:19
  down under the highway there and then goes all the way down to
• 1:03:25
  the South Fork of Little Butte right there, which is like where
• 1:03:27
  that church camp is. And the the soda spring, like
• 1:03:31
  swimming hole is, if you've ever been out there, cool.
• 1:03:34
  We're going to. Be interviewing Janine up at
• 1:03:36
  best for Meadow in like a month or so, so we'll have to.
• 1:03:39
  Yeah, I love it at All Comes together.
• 1:03:42
  Yeah, yeah. So it's a really cool project
• 1:03:43
  and yeah, I've interfaced with them a little bit.
• 1:03:46
  I, you know, try and go to their talks and and all that when they
• 1:03:48
  go. I haven't been doing a ton since
• 1:03:51
  I left working for the state of Oregon, but it's definitely
• 1:03:55
  something on my radar and something I've been trying to
• 1:03:57
  interface with more. Actually I just my girlfriend
• 1:04:01
  and I were going to their latest like art and science talk that
• 1:04:06
  they had a talent maker city like 2 weeks ago and as I pulled
• 1:04:10
  into the parking lot my radiator exploded and I lost the Beaver
• 1:04:15
  slapper lost all my I lost all my fluids in the talent club.
• 1:04:20
  Talent Club drained the fluids. Out.
• 1:04:23
  Usually that's where you fill up all fluids.
• 1:04:25
  But no, the parking lot, we were just losing.
• 1:04:28
  Oh no, that's. The word for that coolant
• 1:04:30
  everywhere. So Long story short is I had to
• 1:04:32
  get my tart, my car towed and I didn't actually spend a lot of
• 1:04:35
  time in that. That's for Meadow Talk.
• 1:04:37
  Damn with. The tow truck and stuff.
• 1:04:39
  That sucks. Yeah, that's a.
• 1:04:40
  Cool project and I'm excited what they're doing.
• 1:04:43
  They released some Beaver up there, which is always hype
• 1:04:45
  because you know one thing about Beaver Dam analogs is to
• 1:04:50
  maintain a Beaver complex. It takes a shit load of work.
• 1:04:53
  And to do that long term in a really large area like what
• 1:04:59
  Vesper Meadow is, is I would say not not going to be.
• 1:05:05
  I wish there's something this other.
• 1:05:07
  There's yeah, there's just two. Lovely older women dancing down
• 1:05:12
  the trail wearing purple. One of them has a.
• 1:05:15
  You're. Beanie tip beanie too.
• 1:05:17
  We love a rezi tip beanie around here.
• 1:05:18
  A rezi tip beanie is like when you have a reservoir tip, like
• 1:05:22
  way high up. Kind of like a condom of your
• 1:05:24
  head. Snowboarder.
• 1:05:26
  Thing. Snowboarder sounds a.
• 1:05:27
  Good Rezi tip OK, yeah, yeah, OK yeah, I.
• 1:05:31
  Only know the I only I haven't been.
• 1:05:35
  With those dance moves, obviously.
• 1:05:37
  I haven't been snowboarding like 10 years, but I my background is
• 1:05:40
  snowboarding for sure, like high school and since I was like 8,
• 1:05:45
  like really hardcore and that we always like when I was the only
• 1:05:49
  snowboarder term that I like still used to the state is
• 1:05:52
  ghetto gown. So whenever my son has like a
• 1:05:54
  really long shirt, I'm like, you got that ghetto gown on the
• 1:05:58
  duty, you know, is that. So that's amazing.
• 1:06:01
  So this connects back into a different podcast, but when I
• 1:06:05
  was talking about four hour long podcast, the last one I listened
• 1:06:08
  to was this Icelandic dude, his name's Haldor Helgeson, huge in
• 1:06:12
  the snowboard industry. He was coming up when ghetto
• 1:06:16
  gowns were a big, big thing. Huge things, triple XTS, quad
• 1:06:20
  XTS, whatever. He's in Iceland, but they don't
• 1:06:22
  sell quad XTS. So he literally would go and he
• 1:06:26
  would buy the most masculine night dress he could find.
• 1:06:33
  Got. It or modify it into adult.
• 1:06:36
  Love. Amazing you can make anything
• 1:06:39
  work. Make anything work.
• 1:06:42
  That's true. Ghetto gown.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah. Truly, truly ghetto gown.
• 1:06:46
  I've always loved that term whenever I don't know, Yeah.
• 1:06:49
  So we got ghetto birds, we got ghetto gowns.
• 1:06:51
  And so obviously you have a rich, plentiful background in
• 1:06:57
  ecology and stream restoration, stream surveying.
• 1:07:01
  Why have you taken a break from that to be a snowboard
• 1:07:05
  instructor? Yeah.
• 1:07:07
  Can work in the bike community. Yeah, totally.
• 1:07:11
  Yeah, what, what kind of initiated this shift for you?
• 1:07:15
  Because clearly you're passionate and very
• 1:07:18
  knowledgeable and well versed and can talk about it for a long
• 1:07:23
  time. Twofold, I guess.
• 1:07:25
  I'll start with bikes and then we'll talk about why I'm on a
• 1:07:27
  sabbatical. So the first time that I moved
• 1:07:32
  to Southern Oregon, I was like really into biking and
• 1:07:36
  especially would bike all summer.
• 1:07:38
  And I was like, oh, the biking, you're sick.
• 1:07:39
  So I was just really stoked on biking, you know, in this zone
• 1:07:43
  in particular in the plethora of trails.
• 1:07:45
  I moved back, lived in Ashland, was like, whoa, like, you know,
• 1:07:48
  biking from your house every day.
• 1:07:49
  That's super cool. Moved here the third time and I
• 1:07:52
  was like, well, sort of like was finishing up my PhD university
• 1:07:59
  and was like, oh, I'll have some more time.
• 1:08:01
  Like it would be cool to get involved with the club and, you
• 1:08:04
  know, help sort of like shape what's going on.
• 1:08:07
  And I've always, you know, liked being involved in that way.
• 1:08:12
  So I was sort of searching for that and like, you know, met
• 1:08:14
  some people, got introduced to some people who were on the
• 1:08:16
  board and then they were like, hey, we need new board members.
• 1:08:19
  And I was like, oh, cool. Like I'll join.
• 1:08:22
  So I actually joined the board, yeah, like two, 2 1/2 years ago,
• 1:08:27
  and I've been on it for that amount of time.
• 1:08:31
  I stopped working for ODFW after a year because I had a PhD and I
• 1:08:34
  was essentially like kind of overqualified for the job that I
• 1:08:37
  was doing and was looking for more money.
• 1:08:38
  And there was no guarantee that like that was going to come in a
• 1:08:43
  relatively fast time frame at ODFW.
• 1:08:46
  So I took a postdoc, which is like, typically there are term
• 1:08:50
  positions where you are researching a very specific
• 1:08:53
  topic or project and they're usually like grant funded and
• 1:08:57
  they're usually like a year or two years.
• 1:08:58
  Mine was 2 years. I was working for the Columbia
• 1:09:00
  River Intertribal Fish Commission, analyzing a bunch of
• 1:09:03
  data related to a restoration project on the upper Grand Ronde
• 1:09:08
  River in like northeastern Oregon, 9 hours away.
• 1:09:12
  And that finish up. And I was kind of like, well,
• 1:09:15
  hey, it's not a great time to be looking for a job for what I do.
• 1:09:20
  And B, I'm not really looking to move at this very 2nd.
• 1:09:25
  And so like finding a job in Southern Oregon in, in specific
• 1:09:29
  would be a little bit more difficult.
• 1:09:31
  And C, I've sort of been like dreaming of traveling for like a
• 1:09:35
  couple months or like a year for a long time.
• 1:09:37
  So it just like felt like the right moment where I had
• 1:09:40
  accomplished some things and I still had some things that I'm
• 1:09:42
  like working on in terms of trying to publish some of my
• 1:09:45
  results. So I'm still like have some
• 1:09:47
  science that I can do, but it's just good opportunity to be
• 1:09:50
  like, no, I'm not going to work like air quotes real job.
• 1:09:53
  I'm going to go work at the ski area again and then I can go
• 1:09:57
  travel to Europe all summer and like have a sweet time and not
• 1:10:00
  have to like quit a real job. So you like not have to be like.
• 1:10:05
  Put in your two weeks notice or your two months notice.
• 1:10:08
  And so it's just train your replacement.
• 1:10:10
  Yeah, it was. It was a good fit.
• 1:10:11
  It was a good moment. You know, it hasn't worked out
• 1:10:13
  super well from a financial perspective for me because this
• 1:10:15
  year has been closed for like months.
• 1:10:17
  Yeah, but no, we've got some snow now, so.
• 1:10:21
  Yeah, Did we get a good pack going now?
• 1:10:24
  Yeah. I mean, we have more snow than
• 1:10:25
  we have had, but it's still not like, it's still far from like.
• 1:10:29
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:10:30
  I mean, it's good enough that they opened up Ariel.
• 1:10:31
  The whole mountain was open except for the bull, which is.
• 1:10:36
  That's good positive. Yeah, positive trends.
• 1:10:38
  That was scary, yeah. Yeah, so that's how I sort of
• 1:10:42
  ended up back into being a ski bomb again.
• 1:10:45
  I'm calling it my last hurrah. I don't know if it's the last
• 1:10:47
  one, who knows. Hopefully not.
• 1:10:48
  Maybe. I'll come back.
• 1:10:49
  Yeah. I'm not really sure if.
• 1:10:52
  Like I mean, Arden's was 60 and still working up there so.
• 1:10:56
  Yeah, I'm never sure if you'll ever actually be able to retire.
• 1:10:59
  So my thought is I'll just retire iteratively for like a
• 1:11:02
  year at a time throughout life. Take a picture.
• 1:11:05
  Oh, I'll snooze it. We'll do it.
• 1:11:09
  We're good. Carry on.
• 1:11:10
  Carry on. Yeah.
• 1:11:12
  Cool. Yeah, that's got me in this
• 1:11:14
  position where I'm you think you're going.
• 1:11:15
  To come back to Ashland, you're going to move on to other kind
• 1:11:17
  of. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure.
• 1:11:20
  I mean, Caitlin, my girlfriend and I were looking at
• 1:11:23
  potentially buying a house, but then my job was ending.
• 1:11:25
  So that was like, oh, this is dumb.
• 1:11:27
  Didn't end up pulling the trigger on that.
• 1:11:29
  And then, yeah, I'm sort of in a flux state where it's like, oh,
• 1:11:32
  I could go somewhere new and change things up or could stay
• 1:11:35
  here for another year. I don't know.
• 1:11:37
  We're still interpreting that. I think that's part of my, like,
• 1:11:39
  sabbatical and like, going to travel and like, go explore for
• 1:11:42
  a bit is just like get some new influences and new ideas and new
• 1:11:48
  experiences, like flowing through me to like, figure out
• 1:11:51
  like, yeah, do I want to like, try and do something else here
• 1:11:55
  or do I want to like, go somewhere else?
• 1:11:57
  And yeah, let's keep my Vagabond and nature flowing.
• 1:12:02
  Yeah, expand like the life. I mean, you've clearly have a
• 1:12:05
  lot of life experience through your educational movement, but
• 1:12:09
  expand beyond that a little bit. Do things that just are fun and
• 1:12:13
  interesting and aren't aren't oriented for a project or an
• 1:12:17
  assignment or a degree. Yep.
• 1:12:21
  Yeah, that's exciting. Yeah.
• 1:12:22
  So that's where I'm at now and yeah, it's been pretty good.
• 1:12:25
  I mean, the, the mountain bike stuff has been really cool.
• 1:12:27
  Like I feel, I feel like we have a pretty awesome trail network
• 1:12:33
  in terms of looking at the whole valley Valley.
• 1:12:35
  There's so many different kinds of trails and so many different
• 1:12:37
  kinds of riding. And there's some really, really
• 1:12:40
  cool groups or like nodes of people throughout the valley who
• 1:12:44
  are doing their own thing. So, you know, something I was
• 1:12:47
  really excited about and something that I think what
• 1:12:51
  still could be improved on is just interconnectivity between
• 1:12:55
  those nodes and like forming a better, I don't know, like
• 1:12:59
  organization or structure and lattice that like interfaces
• 1:13:02
  between some of those different places because they are like
• 1:13:05
  relatively far apart. Like, you know, Grants Pass to
• 1:13:07
  Ashland isn't that close that like that many people are going
• 1:13:10
  to do it on a fairly regular basis.
• 1:13:13
  So there kind of needs to be some sort of something tying
• 1:13:18
  that together. That's I think the re reviving
• 1:13:23
  of the SOTA, yeah, the I think that was.
• 1:13:27
  Larry, Southern Oregon Trail Alliance.
• 1:13:29
  Yes, yes, that was Larry Sussman, episode 10.
• 1:13:33
  Yeah, something like that. But that was his, I think one of
• 1:13:38
  his goals, yeah, with, you know, reviving the trail stuff.
• 1:13:41
  And he really wants to try. Like, have you met Larry?
• 1:13:45
  I haven't, no. He's great.
• 1:13:47
  I need to meet like a lot of that crew.
• 1:13:49
  I've been meaning to go to like a soda thing or like interface
• 1:13:52
  with them, but it just hasn't quite worked out for whatever
• 1:13:55
  reason. But.
• 1:13:56
  Again, that's because it's like 45 minutes.
• 1:13:58
  Like it'd be different if it was like, yeah, that's what I I
• 1:14:01
  don't know. But it's still all.
• 1:14:03
  The Rogue Valley and Southern Oregon like hard.
• 1:14:06
  To I know I feel that just in the bike bike shop community too
• 1:14:11
  and stuff, there's some limitations that have like
• 1:14:13
  happened and like with that, like yes, we can interconnect,
• 1:14:16
  but it's just like it's hard to get to somebody and get to some
• 1:14:20
  place that really has to be like planned out, which is a barrier
• 1:14:23
  to entry and things. But I think Larry's doing a
• 1:14:27
  really good job of trying to like harness.
• 1:14:30
  You know, I feel like there could be, don't quote me on
• 1:14:34
  this, but some individuals that tend to block things and kind of
• 1:14:40
  block it for the whole. Always, it's always
• 1:14:41
  obstructionists. Yes.
• 1:14:43
  And I'm just like if you just were open and collaborative and
• 1:14:50
  put your ego to rest. Certainly.
• 1:14:53
  And everything would kind of blend and mesh a little bit
• 1:14:55
  more. Yeah, there's a few individuals
• 1:14:57
  that I can. Yeah.
• 1:14:58
  And that's something I've seen, you know, being part of, of
• 1:15:01
  RVNBA is there's definitely dot and there's also like, because
• 1:15:05
  it's a small community and like it doesn't feel like there's
• 1:15:09
  that much throughput in terms of new people moving here, that
• 1:15:13
  there's a lot of people who are like, why would I need a
• 1:15:16
  community event? I already have all my friends.
• 1:15:18
  And it's like, well, bro, because you could meet new
• 1:15:22
  people. Like what do you mean?
• 1:15:23
  Like there's a lot of this like sort of like, I don't know, like
• 1:15:27
  old guard or whatever the right word is.
• 1:15:28
  That's like, I already have friends in Ragbeth.
• 1:15:30
  Why would we need a community event to meet new people?
• 1:15:32
  It's like. So they need friends to ride
• 1:15:35
  with. Also, your new best friend could
• 1:15:38
  be waiting just around the others out of this tree, and if
• 1:15:40
  you don't have a community event to meet them, you might never
• 1:15:43
  freaking meet them. I mean, we met some of our
• 1:15:47
  deepest like that's one goal of the bike shop too, is to like,
• 1:15:50
  we're not just like we've tried to call ourselves a community
• 1:15:53
  bike shop. You know, we host the group ride
• 1:15:55
  every Thursday, rain or shine, hot or cold.
• 1:15:57
  Sean is out there hosting the damn group ride and it's like.
• 1:16:01
  Good for him dude. That's his tried and true red
• 1:16:04
  butter like you can join a group ride and that's pretty
• 1:16:07
  inclusive. Like we we don't necessarily he
• 1:16:11
  it's beginner friendly, but not too, too beginner, not first
• 1:16:13
  time on a bike beginner, but like beginner.
• 1:16:16
  But he's always inviting people out anyway, trying to be the
• 1:16:19
  community like, let's get this like it's a hub, it's a you meet
• 1:16:24
  new people. And we have, we have done a
• 1:16:27
  really good job, but I think it could be so much broader.
• 1:16:30
  Totally. And I think I'm also like a
• 1:16:32
  component catalyst to that, sort of.
• 1:16:34
  And then I had to take my own sabbatical from things just
• 1:16:37
  because I had a baby. Yeah, and that happens, but I'm.
• 1:16:40
  Getting back to it anyway, it's just community.
• 1:16:44
  Why? Why are people so shut down
• 1:16:47
  about like expansion of? Yeah, it's a great question and
• 1:16:51
  I don't exactly know the full answer, but yeah, it's something
• 1:16:55
  that I'm stoked on. And like, yeah, like the opening
• 1:16:59
  for Dollar Mountain was so safe because that was like so many
• 1:17:02
  people showed up and people came from all over the place.
• 1:17:04
  And it's like that sort of like really chill, just like almost
• 1:17:09
  festival like atmosphere where you just meet a bunch of people
• 1:17:12
  and get to interface with new people.
• 1:17:15
  And just like, yeah, really good opportunity.
• 1:17:16
  And there's people who came from like, Coos Bay to come to that.
• 1:17:20
  It was like there's. People who came from everywhere,
• 1:17:23
  the trails. Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  What do you think? Yeah, I like them.
• 1:17:24
  They're. I mean, it's sweet because it's
• 1:17:27
  a it's a blank canvas and you can build whatever you want and
• 1:17:32
  there's like so much variety from the pumps and jumps at the
• 1:17:36
  very beginning, you know, where the parking lot is, whatever
• 1:17:39
  touching the, the the warm up loop is super sick to have
• 1:17:42
  something like that to the really hard stuff.
• 1:17:45
  It's like there's a little bit of everything.
• 1:17:47
  I think some of the climbing trails are pretty difficult and
• 1:17:50
  like maybe could be and graded even gentler, but like that
• 1:17:56
  would be my only critique. Like other than that, I feel
• 1:17:59
  like from like once you turn around and start going downhill,
• 1:18:02
  like everything's pretty freaking fun.
• 1:18:04
  Everything's pretty well built. On that note, I feel like we
• 1:18:07
  would, I feel like I want to get like a community survey about
• 1:18:10
  dollar and how that like beginning truck cuz Sean doesn't
• 1:18:13
  want to host the group ride there because it's too steep in
• 1:18:16
  the beginning and it's hard to, there's a barrier to entry when
• 1:18:19
  it's that steep because not everybody's on an E bike.
• 1:18:21
  Some people are, some people aren't very inclusive of that.
• 1:18:24
  But like, that's hard. Yeah, and the easiest, well, the
• 1:18:28
  easiest one is from, not the City side, which like from the,
• 1:18:33
  it's from. What's that?
• 1:18:35
  What's that weird Rd. name called?
• 1:18:36
  It goes up into the area where they're about to build a new
• 1:18:39
  house. Haglen.
• 1:18:41
  Haglen, yeah, yeah, The easiest one is from Haglen, which is
• 1:18:44
  like. But it's still really it's.
• 1:18:45
  Still difficult. It's still not.
• 1:18:47
  A green. Yeah, it's so hard A.
• 1:18:49
  Green climb, yeah, but if you go from the City side, if you go
• 1:18:53
  from the old Dollar Mountain Trail, that thing is freaking
• 1:18:55
  brutal. So bad.
• 1:18:58
  It's like elevator status. So yeah, you might as well just
• 1:19:01
  hike your bike for like a couple, a couple of portions.
• 1:19:04
  Of that, yeah, I want to. Do some I want to gently because
• 1:19:07
  they're again are people that are very like it's the best
• 1:19:10
  thing ever and it's like, well, you're also on an E bike and
• 1:19:14
  you're not thinking about somebody that you know is not.
• 1:19:17
  And you're not on an E bike. Yeah, that just wants to enjoy.
• 1:19:20
  Yeah. Anyway, that's neither here nor
• 1:19:21
  there. We can do a little bit, yeah.
• 1:19:23
  We're getting close to the end of our time, so we want to ask
• 1:19:26
  our like core question, which sounds like you probably have
• 1:19:30
  hundreds and hundreds of dozens, but what is 1 memory that you
• 1:19:35
  have that is a core memory pivotal experience that changed
• 1:19:39
  the trajectory of your life, change the way that you look at
• 1:19:43
  the world that happened outside what?
• 1:19:46
  Happened outside. Yeah, You like that?
• 1:19:48
  You like that, that phrasing. Thank you.
• 1:19:51
  Yeah, which? What do I choose?
• 1:19:54
  Lots of options. It's harder than I expected.
• 1:20:05
  It is hard when like your whole life revolves around.
• 1:20:08
  It's like the outdoors. Cumulative, That's my thing.
• 1:20:11
  It's like I have just like one big like time period in my life,
• 1:20:14
  a bunch of little stories within it, but like it's this whole.
• 1:20:18
  OK. So I feel like for me the like
• 1:20:20
  maybe pivotal or like changing point was I lived like I lived
• 1:20:25
  in Illinois and I lived like, I don't know, maybe like a mile
• 1:20:29
  from my school or something. Not that far.
• 1:20:31
  I was in like third grade. So we would bike to school and
• 1:20:36
  the bike route went way faster than the car route because you
• 1:20:40
  could like avoid the roads. And the reason you could avoid
• 1:20:43
  the roads is it went on an old railroad grade where they had
• 1:20:46
  like converted it into a path. And so like every day I could
• 1:20:50
  bike through the woods on my way to school.
• 1:20:52
  And I was just like our woodland hangout spot, like, you know,
• 1:20:55
  like 5 minutes from our house where we could just like, go and
• 1:20:59
  tramp through the woods or we could like build jumps for our
• 1:21:01
  bikes. Or we could just like, you know,
• 1:21:03
  have the greatest time ever without, like, taking any effort
• 1:21:07
  to get there. It was just like the daily
• 1:21:09
  commute, but like, the best kind of commute where you're just
• 1:21:11
  like, in the woods for 20 minutes or 15 minutes or however
• 1:21:14
  long it took to traverse that little section to school.
• 1:21:17
  So I feel like that was pretty pivotal, you know, like from a
• 1:21:20
  young age, like getting me stoked on being outside and
• 1:21:24
  biking and cruising. Through the.
• 1:21:27
  Woods, Yeah. And having like, like, having
• 1:21:30
  independence within the woods at a young age is like, really.
• 1:21:32
  Like. Oh my God, I'm here alone.
• 1:21:34
  Yeah, yeah. I could do whatever.
• 1:21:37
  And seeing that conversion of something relatively industrial
• 1:21:41
  to something like environmentally accessible.
• 1:21:44
  Like I love the rails to trails movement, converting old rail
• 1:21:49
  lines into biking and walking trails.
• 1:21:53
  Yeah, I forget. That that's.
• 1:21:54
  The thing? Yeah, sick.
• 1:21:57
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:21:58
  It's been really awesome to chat with you and get to know you and
• 1:22:02
  and learn so much. I feel so like my brain is
• 1:22:07
  cooking on fish and Beavers and streams and it's.
• 1:22:12
  I mean, I could eat and then because I'm cooking, getting
• 1:22:16
  cooked. But once I eat, then I'll be
• 1:22:18
  like, we could totally come back to this.
• 1:22:23
  Emma, what is your best advice for somebody looking to access
• 1:22:27
  more out outdoor space and maybe extreme sports or fisheries or
• 1:22:31
  whatever? Like what's your best, yeah,
• 1:22:34
  advice for your younger self getting in?
• 1:22:36
  Maybe even that's a little bit of a different question, but.
• 1:22:38
  No, for sure. So for me, the way that I've
• 1:22:42
  always sort of insured, I always ensure that I can get like
• 1:22:47
  adequate outdoor access as I always try to instructure my
• 1:22:51
  life in a way that I don't need to drive a car every day.
• 1:22:55
  And so I always try and either live close enough to work that I
• 1:22:58
  could like fight to work or, you know, just like live somewhere
• 1:23:02
  where I can just walk around from my house.
• 1:23:04
  And then then you can just always access outdoors.
• 1:23:08
  And it's not like this big hurdle of like, oh, and then I
• 1:23:11
  have to like get all my shit together and like drive here and
• 1:23:13
  there. It's just like.
• 1:23:14
  Yeah. So you position your life in a
• 1:23:16
  way that makes it like I could just walk out my door and get
• 1:23:19
  places and do things. Be in nature.
• 1:23:21
  Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't.
• 1:23:22
  Have to be like the craziest nature ever.
• 1:23:24
  It can just be like the random City Park, but it still gets you
• 1:23:27
  that like, oh, I can go look at the birds.
• 1:23:30
  They're like, oh, I can go smell the flowers.
• 1:23:32
  Oh. Yeah.
• 1:23:33
  Exactly. Gets you, gets you to have that
• 1:23:35
  access outdoors almost every day versus being like, oh, I can
• 1:23:40
  always go to the outdoors, but it's got to be a Saturday.
• 1:23:44
  Right. I feel like that also, that
• 1:23:45
  advice plays so well into that. We chose this location, the City
• 1:23:49
  Park in Ashland, where that is surrounded by houses and people
• 1:23:53
  can just literally walk out their door and be in the park.
• 1:23:56
  Yeah, that's cool. Love that.
• 1:23:59
  Another one, Another quick random fast question is how
• 1:24:05
  would you like to be remembered when you go?
• 1:24:09
  Wow, you. Leave this plane of existence.
• 1:24:14
  As the best shit talker in the whole world.
• 1:24:17
  OK, I. Love.
• 1:24:21
  That not deep, not with no perspective, just love talking
• 1:24:27
  shit. Can you dish it and take it?
• 1:24:29
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:24:30
  Yeah, yeah. That's important.
• 1:24:32
  Yeah, I'm fairly, fairly receptive to shit talking.
• 1:24:37
  I love people to talk shit to me.
• 1:24:38
  Hell yeah. And I feel like.
• 1:24:40
  Don't turn into a Karen. You're just like, yeah, tell me
• 1:24:42
  more than they spit it back. Give it to me.
• 1:24:45
  Yeah, I love a good hackle, yes. Amazing.
• 1:24:48
  I love that kind of stuff. Yeah.
• 1:24:50
  I don't know. I always feel like you have to,
• 1:24:51
  you know, an important part of friendship is me is like for me
• 1:24:54
  is like being able to talk to you through each other.
• 1:24:56
  Cuz like if you can't be like true and open and honest like.
• 1:25:00
  In comic, what is it? Goofy.
• 1:25:02
  Goofy. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:04
  Another one is that I kind of skipped this one, but do you
• 1:25:06
  have a piece of gear that you always kind of like make sure
• 1:25:09
  you have with you when you're accessing the outdoors or maybe
• 1:25:12
  a bigger adventure that you are like, I've got to have my
• 1:25:15
  whatevers? Yeah, I mean, I do like cameras
• 1:25:18
  and like doing camera stuff, so it's a good tool.
• 1:25:20
  I won't say I always bring a camera, but if it's like gonna
• 1:25:23
  be really exciting and like I think it's gonna be worth making
• 1:25:29
  a an engraved memory, then I would use a camera, whether
• 1:25:33
  that's a full on camera or a phone camera or a GoPro or
• 1:25:38
  something like that. OK.
• 1:25:40
  And then how can others find you if they wanna link up with you,
• 1:25:44
  if you want to be found, or do you have a social media presence
• 1:25:47
  or anything like that? Pretty easily findable.
• 1:25:51
  Marshall Wolf is a Googleable name, but yeah, my Instagram.
• 1:25:56
  I'm a doctor. Because I'm a doctor, I've been
• 1:25:59
  meaning to make a web page for ages, but I just kind of been
• 1:26:02
  lazy and haven't done it. It's a lot of.
• 1:26:04
  Work. Yeah, we'll get there
• 1:26:06
  eventually. I can't say what my potential
• 1:26:10
  domain will be in fear of someone stealing.
• 1:26:13
  It. Yeah, buy it now.
• 1:26:15
  Buy it now after a row. I know I have you in my phone as
• 1:26:18
  Marshmallow. Marshmallow didn't.
• 1:26:20
  We establish that like right when I met you, I was like
• 1:26:22
  Marshmallow or you said Marshall.
• 1:26:24
  I thought you maybe said Marshmallow or something like
• 1:26:26
  that. And I was like, I'm going to use
• 1:26:27
  that. I can't remember exactly but
• 1:26:29
  it's in my phone. As yeah, I mean, there's only
• 1:26:31
  really two like nicknames or whatever that I've ever had.
• 1:26:36
  Marshall's like pretty easy name.
• 1:26:37
  So I feel like you don't really get nicknames.
• 1:26:39
  Marsh. Yeah, Marsh, that's like.
• 1:26:42
  Marshmallow. My parents would call me.
• 1:26:45
  Yeah, Marshmallow Partial Marshall.
• 1:26:48
  Don't. Know what that meant?
• 1:26:51
  Doesn't mean anything but. You're you're, you've got a few
• 1:26:54
  things going on and you are indifferent to them.
• 1:26:57
  Partially partially aligned with everything.
• 1:27:00
  Yeah, but yeah. I'm on Instagram and Facebook
• 1:27:04
  and all that. And how could they learn more
• 1:27:08
  about RV MB A? Yeah, RV mba.org is our website.
• 1:27:14
  Yeah, you can sign up to become a member.
• 1:27:15
  You can see our events. Is it free to be a member?
• 1:27:19
  Yeah, yeah, I am a one of the social media moderators.
• 1:27:25
  Yes, I do told. Me.
• 1:27:27
  That yeah, yeah, yeah, totally no.
• 1:27:29
  And that's like, that's part of the reason I bought a camera was
• 1:27:31
  like to do more of that stuff and just like more hyped on that
• 1:27:35
  kind of stuff so more. Content you always need more
• 1:27:38
  for, like if you're trying to run something.
• 1:27:40
  Totally trying to get people stoked and get people
• 1:27:41
  interested. So yeah, you can.
• 1:27:44
  Becoming a member is not free, but you can sign up to get the
• 1:27:47
  newsletters and all that kind of stuff for free.
• 1:27:50
  I think the minimum contribution for a member is like $5 a month.
• 1:27:54
  It's super cheap. And if you are into the
• 1:27:58
  outdoors, which you probably are, and you buy any gear, it's
• 1:28:02
  super worth it because you get expert voice discounts.
• 1:28:06
  So expert voice is like this pro deal website that you can buy
• 1:28:09
  like literally anything from like Oakley sunglasses to like
• 1:28:13
  fishing rods to snowboards to camping chairs to freaking dude.
• 1:28:18
  You could probably buy a truck camper on there.
• 1:28:19
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 1:28:21
  It's really cool actually. So like I think if you're like
• 1:28:27
  just trying to dot your shot, your eyes there and make sure
• 1:28:31
  that you're getting your money's worth, like you easily get your
• 1:28:34
  money's worth for $5 a month just on that alone and.
• 1:28:38
  And $5 a month goes a long way for totally, Yeah.
• 1:28:41
  Small trail, yeah. Most of our money comes from
• 1:28:43
  that membership model. We do a little bit of
• 1:28:47
  sponsorship and like trying to get companies and whatever to
• 1:28:51
  help us out with various, you know, directed specific
• 1:28:54
  projects. But yeah, most of our operating
• 1:28:56
  funds comes. Do you have an upcoming event?
• 1:28:59
  Yeah. So I'm trying to remember the
• 1:29:01
  exact date, which I'm going to fail to do for sure.
• 1:29:06
  But in the spring we did it last year and we're going to do it
• 1:29:09
  again this year. We have a spring membership
• 1:29:12
  party in conjunction with the Ashland Bike Fest, which is like
• 1:29:17
  Evo and the Ashland Climate Cooperative and a couple other
• 1:29:22
  organizations where we have a sort of weekend long like bike
• 1:29:26
  themed festival event. Last year there were film
• 1:29:32
  previews, there were bike races for adults, bike races for kids.
• 1:29:36
  We had like an alley cat like scavenger hunt thing going on.
• 1:29:39
  Block parties, cool. Our member party, like sort of
• 1:29:42
  all sorts of I'm. Going off right now.
• 1:29:44
  Yeah, so many things. And we're chatting with somebody
• 1:29:47
  from Devo next week, so we'll get some more deets.
• 1:29:50
  Yeah, they'll probably know more.
• 1:29:53
  I'm struggling to remember the date.
• 1:29:55
  It's probably because I think I'm going to go to Europe before
• 1:29:59
  then, so I might not. I should be there anyway.
• 1:30:01
  Cool. OK, Amazing.
• 1:30:04
  Cool. We'll have to talk more about
• 1:30:05
  that another time. Cool.
• 1:30:08
  Yeah. Thank you, Marshall.
• 1:30:09
  Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to the
• 1:30:11
  splendid conversation today in the Lithia Park.
• 1:30:15
  Like share, subscribe, comment I'll tell all your.
• 1:30:19
  Friends, you know all the things.
• 1:30:20
  Come come mountain biking in Ashland.
• 1:30:24
  Go snowboarding. Yep.
• 1:30:26
  Get outside, baby. Yeah, for a private.
• 1:30:27
  Lesson. And go wildly.
• 1:30:30
  I'm Emily. And this is Heather.
• 1:30:32
  And together we're go wildly. Well done.
• 1:30:38
  Well done. We work.
• 1:30:40
  On that, yeah. Thank you, my back is I like to
• 1:30:45
  do a little good. Into.
• 1:30:50
  That don't do. It.
• 1:30:52
  Yeah, that's OK. You can.
• 1:30:55
  To an upward. Stretch.
• 1:30:58
  Release from that. That's a wrap on this episode of
• 1:31:09
  Go Wildly from the Bottom of Our Backpacks.
• 1:31:12
  Thank you for listening. We know you enjoyed the show, so
• 1:31:15
  tap, follow, tell a friend or two and leave a quick review if
• 1:31:18
  you can. It makes a real difference.
• 1:31:20
  Your support allows Go Wildly to reach new listeners and bring
• 1:31:24
  more outdoor stories to the mic. Until next time, go wildly and
• 1:31:29
  go outside. OK, quick little quick little
• 1:31:32
  addendum to the end. Beaver slap.
• 1:31:38
  Slap it, Heather. I just, I mean, that's what it.
• 1:31:46
  Says.