Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 204: It Should Be Difficult to Get Lost Forever

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Ep. 204: It Should Be Difficult to Get Lost Forever · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening Hunt podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: where you stand with on X. All right, we have
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a special guest today, Roman dial Um, who has a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: new book out with a gigantic I have the the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: what do you call these advanced readers copies? They call
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: them arcs in the business um giant quote from John Krakauer.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: A brave and marvelous book, a page turner that will
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: rip your heart out. The books called The Adventurer's Son
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: by Roll and dial and it tells the story. You
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: just give me the one sentence. It tells a story
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: about looking for my son who went missing in Costa Rica.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: That's a good job. Yeah, a heartbreaking story about raising
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: an outdoor son and then losing him in the jungle
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and trying him. Uh. Also called you before we start recording.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: You mentioned Um that you're not a hunter, but your
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: hunt and you're not a Yeah, you're not a climber,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: but you climb. No no, no, no no. So I'm
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: not a hunter, but I do hunt, and I love
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to hunt, you know. And uh, but what makes you
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: not a hunter? I don't know if you even realize that.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: But we were talking about this earlier. You've hunted Moosa
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: my brother Danny. Yeah, you live in Alaska. I live
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: in Alaska. Yeah. And we got a bull and a
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: cow the same day. And and your brother Dan and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: my friend Chris Flowers, who's a friend of his. Two
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: they cleaned the bull and I cleaned the cow, and so, um,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: but I I hunt for a year. I really like.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I like to eat year. I try to. I didn't
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: hunt this year fish, I know. You know I only
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: dip net. Yeah. I'm not really a fisherman, um, but
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I do dip net. I'm kind of like a you know,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: very efficient fisherman. Yeah, I sam and dip net. You know.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: It's I'd like to do that. Um, I don't. I
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: don't have the patients for hooking line. You know. It's
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: just I can't fly fishing. I love the idea of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: fly fishing. I think it's marvelous. I think it's one
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of the most beautiful activities. You know, an outdoor person
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: could do, but I can't do it. It's just you
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: have to stay in one place and I can't do that.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: What strikes she is beautiful about it, all the flailing around. No,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I think the idea of it, that the beauty is
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that you have to be an ecologist. You have to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: be like a practicing apple apply to collegist. You've got
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: to think about what the fish is going to eat.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And it's actually people go down to the to the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: fly shop and they feel like what should I come on? Well,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: that's why I'm not efficient. I like the idea of it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do it. But as far as
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: like not being a hunter, just because I don't, uh,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't shoot my gun very often, you know,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I I probably I didn't even know what was called
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: processing until a few years ago. What do you think
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: it was called butchering um? And I like to clean animals.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I think that's you know, like I don't really like
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: to kill them. I mean, I've killed a lot of moose,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I've killed a lot of caribou, I've killed a bear,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: links I killed a lot of animals, but I don't
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not a great shot, you know, and I don't
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: like to go shoot my gun. I gotta. I got
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of guns, but I don't really like them.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: But I really like to clean them, you know, like
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I like to. I feel like if I I feel
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: like I do a good job, I take them apart
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: real efficiently. They're super clean, and a moose is a
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: big animal to take apart. I'd love to get a buffalo.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: That's my kind of dream. I've I've spent enough money
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: putting in for the lottery of the buffalo in Alaska
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: to just go buy you know, somebody's buffalo over but
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: spreads it out nicely for you. Yeah, well, I feel
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: like you should. I feel it's be able to cli.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, if I would like to think that with
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: with your approach, I would in my in my hope
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: you would be like, yeah, I'm a hunter, Well I hunt,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you know, And I I would like let me finish
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: off the thought about I'm a climber but I don't climb. Well,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I want to get into that, so yeah, we'll leave
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: hunting behind and get into that. Yeah, And I think
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted you to talk about when you quit climbing,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: when I quit climbing. Sure, Yeah, if that if that's
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: a good way of explaining it. Yeah, why why quit climbing? Yeah,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's like a chapter in my book, right, And
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you're an alpinist. An alpinist yep, I was an alpinist. Yeah.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: An alpinist is like a climber, you know. I think
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of climbers generally, most people think of climbers are sort
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: of like rock climbers. There's ice climbers and rock climbers.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: But an alpinist to somebody who just rock climbs and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: ice climbs so that they have the skills and the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: technique to go to the big mountains and climb the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: big mountains that have rock and ice and their remote
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: and they're in the wilderness and they have weather, and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it's just like it's kind of like you're living on
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: the mountain trying to get up it. Yeah. As a
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: not climber, I've often fantasized that, uh, if I wasn't
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: into what I was into, if I didn't hunting fish
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and stuff, that I would I would want to pursue that.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: But they get whittled away, they do. It's dangers, you
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: wind up, but you get to be forty and all
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: your friends are dead. Yeah, well, you know, I feel
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: lucky to have made it as far as I didn't.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I quit when I was about twenty five and had
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of friends die. I had a lot of
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: friends die. Yeah, I um, and they still die. I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: mean like today, you know, more good climbers die than
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: bad climbers. You know, like, if you're a bad climber,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: you kind of realized right away that this is maybe
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: not for you. It's dangerous, maybe you get out of it.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: But if you're a good climber, you just keep climbing
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: harder and harder things and going to wilder and wilder
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: places until, you know, until you get killed. Because the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: mountains don't care how good you are. Yeah, you know,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: you well, you know we've established that. You know, my
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: brother and Hunter with him, his old roommate Jared. You
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: might have known. He died on K two. He wentn't
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: attempted K too, got knocked in the head, wought up
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: in a hospital in Pakistan, came home, recovered the next season,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: went back and died and he kind of like knew
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: what was gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah, Well there's two guys,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Kyle Dempster and his partner. They climbed a mountain in
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Pakistan and they didn't make it to the top. They
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: were repelling down and like an anchor pulled or something
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: like that. They filled several hundred feet, broke a leg,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: came back the next year and disappeared on the same mountain,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: both of them. Yeah, and they were like the two best.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: There's an award called the Pola or like you know,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the Golden ice Axe, and this kid, Kyle Dempster, he'd
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: won it twice as the best climber in the world basically,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: and then you know, he died. So, yeah, the mountains
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: don't care how good you are. Is that what got
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: you to Alaska climbing mountains? Well? No, you know, when
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, I went to Alaska because I
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: had um some uncles who lived up there and they
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: worked in a coal mining kind of It wasn't really
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a town. It was sort of like a camp in
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the Alaska Range. Yeah, that's a crazy story in your
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: book about just getting sent up to hang out with
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: your uncles and they weren't that interested and really washed
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and after you well, yeah, it was busy working. Yeah,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and it was a great time. And that's how I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: kind of fell in love with Alaska. I was nine,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and I had back in those days, you know, we
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: didn't really have There was no there were no computers obviously,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: and this place didn't even have like telephones or TV.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: And so I got a taxidermy correspondence course that you
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: used to be able to get this tax d correspondence
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: course and probably put off some beautiful work. I managed.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I mounted a raven, I put some caribou antlers that
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: were involved together, and um, so I got the whole course.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Was you're supposed to get it over a year. I said, hey,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to Alaska. Send it all to me right now.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So I had the whole course and I took it
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: up there, and I had a bunch of glass eyes
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and excelsior and wire and and that's what I kind
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: of did nine years old. You know it was it
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: was awesome. You got to go a little ferl work exactly.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It ruined me for life. Yeah, you know, I could
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: do whatever I wanted. I had a motorcycle and uh,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and my uncle had this dog. It was named Moose
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and it was half wolf, and he would I would
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: go out all day with Moose and and then they
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: gave me a motorcycle, but I couldn't really, it was
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: too big for me. You know how you see kids
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: on bicycles that are too big and you know they
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: can hardly get up on him. Well with a motorcycle,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and you have to jump up and kick started. You know,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: if you don't get it going, it falls down. And
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the lever I don't remember. I forget which
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: side was which, but the maybe the clutch or the
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: break lever, one of them were was broke off. Because
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I've fallen down somebody, there's no going back from that.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: You get that taste of freedom at nine years old
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and being like, oh I'm capable of doing all these things.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah, And so I you know, I went
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: back to, uh the lower forty eight East Coast. I
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: was in Virginia, and as soon as I graduated from
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: high school, you know, there's only one place I wanted
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: to go, and it was back to Alaska. But um
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: so anyway, I've been. I've been living in Alaska for
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: about forty years now. I like it. You know, your brother,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: do you think your brother will ever leave? He talks
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: about it. He says he's getting sick of wet brush.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: His wife's doesn't want to leave. He kind of wants
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: he wants to hang out somewhere to his dry grass
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: instead of wet brush. So he's kind of wanting to,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: uh come back down here, but no, he's he's just
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: up there his gripe about it, um two grapes, wet brush,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and everything is like everything is such a production. M
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Like anytime you go to hunt, it's like his boats
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and journeys, and you don't just like go out messing
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: around for a couple of hours, Like everything is a production.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I don't know. I went
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: fat biking yesterday. Um, well you know I traveled yesterday.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: The day before yesterday, one of my former gratitudents came
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: by and it was like ten below twelve below where
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: we went biking. It was probably like fifteen or twenty below,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and that was like right out my door. And I
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: live right in town. I live in town, like in midtown.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: He hunts time again local and fishes. But I think
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: it like I think hes talking about kind of the more,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you know, like you don't go and have a like
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: your tree stand out in your backyard and you go
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: out there and sit for white tails every night. Well
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: probably not. Yeah, but I've hunted moves within view of
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: my house, like I've killed a moose and I can
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: see when my house is. Yeah, but you know, um,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying. But I never lived in
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the other way, like I moved to Alaska when I
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: was sixteen, and so I don't really I never lived
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I never hunted deer. I've shot one deer.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I don't really like dear meet that much. I probably
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: shouldn't say that, but you know, you know, when you're
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: talking about riding that motorcycle, it's too big for you.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: My friend dear Drew, it was just telling me about
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: they had horses when they were little, and she said
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: they were so small that they would put grain down. Yeah,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: so the horse had leaned down and get the grain
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: and they jump and straddle it behind the ears and
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: to jerk its head up and they'd slide down into
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: position and ride off. Oh that's cool, that's really cool.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Good way to mount. So get into the being an
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: alpinist and then kind of like when you got scared
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: you had your boy at that point in time, or
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: did you not know I wasn't too married married, yeah,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: but I was with the same woman I am now
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: she remember you had like kind of a like a
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: a sort of an epiphany. Sure, well, you know I
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: would climb these mountains, you know, like and I would
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: ski into some really distant mountains, like one time when
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I was twenty one, the year I graduated from college. Uh,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: like over spring break, the sky and I Steve will
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: we skied sixty miles in and climb out Debra, which
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: is a beautiful mountain. You can see it from Fairbanks,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: and Fairbanks is in the middle of the state, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: it's cold and dry all winter, and you can just
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: see these mountains on the skyline. They're beautiful and it's cold,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: so they get they look real close because the cold
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: air magnifies the mountains. And in the winter you can't
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: do anything but look at the mountains and the sun
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: just kind of rolls along the top. It's freaking beautiful.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: And Mount Debra is the prettiest one. And we skied
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: in sixty miles, climbed the west face, a big steep face.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Um you had to like scratch out a pad to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: sleep on the way up, like a little ledge and
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: climbed it and came down and Um, and then we
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: were gonna go climb Mount Hey is the highest in
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: the range. But we chickened out repelling over this pass
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and skied out. We ran out of food. I had
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: to break into some guys cash his food, his cash.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: You like a little cabin on stilts next to his cabin,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: looking for food, and I found dry dog food. Ate
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the dry dog food, you know, because I was so hungry.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Um skied out and I was like, I'm not gonna
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: climb anymore. This is ridiculous, you know, And I it
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: was miserable, you know, hungry, You know, like where you
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: hungry where you eat half rations for a couple of days,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: and then you go to like quarter rations and then
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you're eight rations, and then you eat your last apricots,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: splitting it with your partner, and then you look where
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: you dropped some gorp in the snow three weeks ago,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and you're pawing through the snow looking for the gorp,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: and instead of sitting on your pack and eating a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: chocolate bar, you sit on your pack and then you
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: fall asleep because you don't have anything else to do,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: and you're hungry, and I thought, you know, this climate
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: is nuts and I want to quit. But I it
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: was like being an alcoholic. I think, you know, like
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: an alcoholic says, I'm not drinking anymore, but the next
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: weekend they drink anyway, and uh, and I would go
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: back and climb some more. And I've really I've been
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: with this girl. You know. I met her when she
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: was eighteen. I was nineteen, and I, you know, I
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: wanted to get married and have a family. But it
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't until this one particular climb where I realized, you
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: know what climbing was just kind of more or less
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: about luck. You know, it wasn't really about how good
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you were. And and I tell the story, and that's
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that's an interesting perspective, just the luck factor. I had
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: a couple of things I noted in the book. One
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that just like how tense things get with climbing partners,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: where you mentioned um getting into getting into a fist fight. Yeah,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: well yeah, you know he um picking up and continuing right. Well,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: we didn't. We didn't really we we didn't get in
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: a We we had verbal fights, you know, on climbs,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: but we never had a fist fight on the climb.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: We had the fist fight you know back in town. Yeah,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I never had a fist fight it, I mean, that
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: would be a bummer. Maybe it was the girlfriend, you know,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: he said, the one of the guys in his climbing circle.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, you know, we could tell he was
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: never going to be very good because he always had
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a girlfriend. Yeah, that's for sure. You know I didn't.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't really, you know, but this this this particular
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: climb when a cornice broke and uh and Chuck Comstock,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the guy that I had gotten into a fight within town,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: and he had just untied from the rope like we were.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: We'd climbed this really, you know, steep face took several
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: days to get up camped on top. It was in
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: marches like thirty below. And then we were feeling so
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: full of ourselves we decided to go down this ridge
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: that I don't even climbed once. And the people who
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: went up it didn't want to go back down, and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: we were like, oh, we can go down it. So
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: we went down and had all these cornices, you know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: going both ways, and explain explained people are what a
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: cornice is, because this is really there's another thing I
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about when you're in your climbing
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: discussion was what I had no idea that this happens.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: What you do in one of those breaks a cornice
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: when it breaks, well, you know, well how you and
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: your partner working tandem to not die. But first, some
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: people water cornice. Cornice, Well, you know, if if you
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: don't live in a snow area, a cornice kind of
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: looks like a frozen wave of snow, but instead of
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: like the ocean and and wind pushing the ocean into
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a wave, the wind pushes the snow over the crest
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of a mountain ridgeline, and then it builds like a
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: frozen wave up on top, and and the wind keeps
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: piling up more and more snow until um, you know,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: it's kind of flat on top, and you are walking
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: on this ridge. You might not really know where you're overhanging,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you know, the top of this cornice. And then um,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: in certain places in the world, and in the Alaska
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Range in particular, you'll get um moist air blowing from
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the ocean side and it condenses on the mountain like
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the ice that used to build up in people's refrigerators.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: If you have an old freezer, for example, with a
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: bad gasket and got a bunch of meat in there.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a bad gasket, you get
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: that rhiny ice around the edge, and that rhyme ice
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: can build into this huge bulge, like a overhanging bulge,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: you know, like it can be you know, twenty or
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: thirty ft of overhang, this big rime bulge. And then
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: on top of that, the wind is usually blows from
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the ocean side and it will blow snow that makes
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: this frozen wave on the other side. So you kind
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: of have a sort of like a double cornice where
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: you got an overhanging wave on one side and then
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: this big bulging rhyme on the other. So it's kind
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of an unstable feature. And you know, in rock climbing
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: they have cams and petons and stuff you can stick
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: in a crack, and in ice climbing they got screws
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: you can screw into the waterfall. But on this ridge climbing,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't really protect it. So the only
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: thing you can do is if the thing breaks, you
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: gotta go off the other side. So the rope kind
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: of goes over both sides of the mountain. Jump off
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the side. Yeah, you gotta jump and then the rope
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: cuts into the cornice. Yeah it stops. Yeah, it would
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: be hard, yeah, exactly. And it's uh, it's kind of
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a mythical thing, like nobody ever thinks you're ever gonna
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: have to do it, and very few people have actually
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: done it as far as I know, and so on
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: this particular. But like when it does happen, like what
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: a leap of faith? Man, Yeah, what a leap of faith.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: And then you kind of have to hope you're going
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: off the right side, you know. But this it was
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: pretty obvious. He had broken the cornice side, the soft
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: you know, windside, and I went off on the rhemy side,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and uh, and then you know, fell a long ways.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I thought I was going to die or at least
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: get broken, and um, because I tumbled because it's like
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a big cart wheel, because he went straight down when
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: he broke the cornice. He could he falls straight down
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: and he's out ahead of me, and I jumped off
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and then I had to pendel him down, you know,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: over a bunch of space. And if you hadn't done that,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: we probably both would have gone off the same side
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and tumbled down and got broken up. Yeah it would,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: he just would have yanked me off. So but yeah,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: it did. And I was like, yeah, this is it. Um,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: you know, we skied out, and you know, I actually
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: right after that, I thought, you know, I might come
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: back and climb that mountain. But I skied back to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: town and uh and went and I was telling the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: stories about this climb, and I was like, you know,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: this is nuts. I think I'm just gonna get married.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So I got married like just like that was March
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and I was married in June and then and then
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: so that was like the end of my climbing. And um,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: not a big wedding, right if I remember right, you know,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know. They were twenty or thirty people. Was
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: in a big field, you know, outside of Fairbanks. It
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: wasn't huge, no, not at all. And my my parents
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: were there. Her her parents didn't come, you know, because
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: they didn't think of a wedding should be outside. They
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: should thought it should be in a church, you know,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: but so decided not to come. With all that'll fix you. Yeah,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: but she you know, Peggy's the youngest of ten kids
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and and uh and her parents, you know, maybe they
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: didn't have a lot left for her by the end. Yeah,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. They were tapped out. I think so.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: So when you quit like kind of like that biggest
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: form of adventure, but when you had your kid, you
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: really focused heavily on I would say that an extreme version,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: a pretty extreme version of of a association with nature
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: an adventure. Sure. I mean I I did, guy did
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: crazy stuff. Well, I mean I still like being outside.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I mean you can't. If you live in Alaska you
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: don't like being outside, You're not really gonna like live
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: in there much because that's that's what Alaska has a
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: lot of. And um. And I had found that I
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: liked going to the mountains, Like I didn't like just
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: climbing the mountains, but I like like skiing into the
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: mountains or um. On another trip, we we climbed the
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: mountain and then we rafted out and um. And one
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: time I had gone into the mountains with this guy,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Karl Tobin and another guy and we didn't get up
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the peak. We got avalanched off and I was aunty
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: because I wanted to do something. I said, Hey, let's
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: just ski out to the highway. It was like fifty
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: five miles and I'm like, no, we don't want to ski,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: We're gonna stay here. So I skied out by myself,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and the year before i'd skied out from a different
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: mountain in a parallel out, and I thought, wow, I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: wonder which way is faster. You know, this was like
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty um three, so it was a long time ago,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, I know how to find out.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: It's like fifty sixty miles. We should have a ski
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: race and see what is the fastest way. In fact,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: let's just have a wilderness ski race across the Alaska
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Range from highway to highway, like a hundred fifty miles.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And you know, there hadn't been any I mean, they're
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: they're ultra running wasn't a thing yet, especially and no
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: ultra skiing. And so that I was like twenty twenty
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: years old maybe, and uh I met a guy at
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a like on campus at the university, and he had
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: a fire and he had an idea for like a
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: foot race across the Kenai Pencil and the Kenai pensils
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: like that when you look at a map of Alaska
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and you know anchorages right down there in the southern
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: part and the Kenai pencils that little kind of like
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: that moose bell that hangs down from Alaska and uh.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And he was going to have a race from Hope
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: to Homer across the Keenai pencil and he called it
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: a foot race. And the rules were really simple. Everything
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: you needed you had to carry with you and you
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: including all your food, and you couldn't use any roads,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and you couldn't use any pack animals, and you couldn't
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: use any motorized vehicles, and you couldn't get any help
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: from anybody along the way. And he envisioned a swimming
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the rivers. And I saw this idea. I was like, wow,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that's the same idea that I have. But you know, um,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I want to do a ski race you guys? Well kid,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: because he was in his thirties, Well kid, and he
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was a mountain guide. Well kid, why did you come
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: down and do do my race and then we'll do yours.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So I went down there, and um, and there was
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: an old man there and he says, hey, kid, where's
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: your tent? I said, I didn't bring a tent. I'm
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: not taking a tent. I'm going light. And he says, well,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: where are you gonna sleep? Tonight, and I said, I'm
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: just gonna sleep out here in my baby sacs. Well,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: come on into my tents. So I slept in his
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: tent and I looked at him. He was like my
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: age now, actually is younger than I am now. And
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I thought, this guy is not going to finish this.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: He shouldn't even be here, you know. And then I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: saw some other guy and he looked kind of clumsy. Well,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the clumsy guy caught up with me the first day
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: after I had gone like forty miles all the only
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: trail we all did. We hiked the trail, the whole
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: forty miles trail. The first day's like a hundred fifty
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: mile race. You had to carry all your food and
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: everything with you. And I was I had skis with
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: me because I was going to ski across the harding
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: ice field, because I didn't want to have to swim
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: all these rivers, because that's how we're going to cross
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the river. You're gonna go up higher and ski where
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: it's frozen. Yeah, And but because I didn't want to
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: swim river, Swimming glacial rivers seems stupid to me. And
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: so um, we got to the first glacial river and
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: usually you wait for the you know, the morning, because
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the sun melts the snow on the glacial rivers and
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: then in the morning the waters down, and it seemed
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: like a smarter time to swim it. And we're waiting. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: it's been cold on it. So we're waiting around and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: everybody catches us, Me and this guy man's or we're
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: out in the front. And then that old man, I'm
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: like what he caught up to us and he pulls
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: out of his pack like these Viking horn hat, you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: like some soft goofy hat, and he puts it on.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: He goes, you know, what are you guys doing here?
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: You young guys should have been to uh halfway to
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Homer by now. And we're like, yeah, well we got
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: stuck by the river. He goes, yeah, you young guys.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You don't know. Then and eat too much and then
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and then he reaches into his pack and he pulls
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: out this little inflatable raft kind of like the pack
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: raft you used when you went, you know, on your
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: buffalo hunt in Alaska, but this was like a kmart
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: vinyl raft and he pulls it. I says, you guys
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: can't swim these glacial rivers. You know, they're too swift
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and cold and dangerous. He says, uh, you know, old
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And he blew up his raft. Yeah exactly, and he
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: paddled across and he almost won the race and without
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: running a step. You know. But anyway, when I saw
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: that pack raft um, I thought, yeah, that's why, that's
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: what I want one of those. And and just crossing
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like a hundred fifty miles of Alaskan wilderness. It took
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: me a week, you know, which is like nowadays we do.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Not me, I'm kind of too old for that, but
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: you know that nowadays people do like a hundred fifty
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: miles across Alaskan wilderness in like three days or less.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: And but to have that kind of freedom, to be
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: able to go through trackless wilderness like with rivers and
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: glaciers and bogs and dealing with bears and boulders some
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: bad brush, it was an incredible sense of freedom. I
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: don't understand how when you guys are doing these races.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I understand Danny is the first one to talk about this,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: but you guys use the mountain bikes, but there's no
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: but totally off trail. You're riding on gravel bars. I
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: have done, asker or what No, Yeah, sometimes I have done.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I did one of those races with a mountain bike,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: um with my son, because I didn't want him to
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: hurt his feet, because when you want when you go
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: fifty miles in a day, it hurts your feet, you know.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And uh, I didn't really want him. He was sixteen.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: He wanted to do one of these races, and I said, well,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: let's just use our mountain bikes and uh. And so
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: when you take a mountain bike, you know, you have
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to go to the right place. Like I wouldn't do
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: it on the Keyni because it's too brushy. But the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Talquita Mountains are real nice and there's a bunch of
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a TV trails for like fifty miles. So we rode
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and then the a TV trails ended, and then what
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you do is you kind of push your bike up
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a hill and then you coast down the tundra. So
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: it's you can you know, you can really milk the tune.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: You don't just ride the steepest way down. You kind
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: of go at a real gentle angle to milk it,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: you know. And so you can hike up the trail,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: hike up the hill pushing your bike like you know,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: a mile an hour, which is the usual hike and speed.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: But then when you go down you're going like three
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: or four miles an hour, which is much faster. And
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: then there's game trails. If you get good at following
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: game trails, you know, Moose trails aren't so good, but
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Cariboo trails are good. Bear trails are pretty good. As
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Danny was telling me too, is you said a lot
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of times you're not down in the valley floor, you're
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: not down in the rocks. He talked about like trying
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to like going going on sign going up the sides
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: a little bit looking for good trails. Oh yeah, like
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: that's I love following trails, and I you know, I
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: got into the mountain bike and thing like I we
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I got into the mountain bike and think for about
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: ten years because the hiking was kind of easy. Anybody
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: can hike anywhere just you can hike in a straight
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: line if you wanted to, but with a bike you can't.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: You get punished if you go in a bad place.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: You know, you're just pushing your bike or carrying it.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And you're thinking why did I bring it? And so
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: so you're always looking for good You have to be
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: like you have to know how to read the landscape
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and how to find good traveling conditions and find gravel bars,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: like I used to say, gravel bars, game trails, and glaciers.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Those were the best writing. And if you go late
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: in the season, the glaciers, especially nowadays, all the snow
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: is kind of melted off and you can right on
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the bare ice. So yeah, I went from Canada to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Lake Clark with a mountain bike in nineteen It was
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: eight hundred miles or so. And there were these three
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: hikers and they started ahead of us, and it was
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: sort of like a race to see who would be
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the first people to traverse the Alaska Range, which goes
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: kind of from Canada over to Lake Clark, which is
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to the west of Anchorage. And they left, you know,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: six weeks ahead of us, and they started a hundred
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: miles shorter route than we did. We started right at
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the Canadian border and they started over by Toke and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: uh they were when we left the Canadian border on
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: the fourth of July. They were in Mountain Dnally National
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Park at condition to having a party for the fourth
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: of July, and we caught him. We caught him at
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Rainy Pass. Uh, not really passed near Rainy Pass where
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the you know the I didarad goes over the Alaska
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Range called Roan Roadhouse. Actually we didn't catch them there.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: They left us a note because we had a food
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: cash there and uh. And there were three of us
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: on our mountain bikes and a really good mountain bike
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: riding right after that. Because they're all these buffalo trails.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: There's another buffalo herd on the cuscal Quim on the
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: South Fork or the customer Quim and the hertman and buffalo.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: They don't like brush, they don't like logs, and so
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: whenever there was a log they would walk around the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: logs or there were all these buffed out single tracks
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: that we were riding, you know, in the wilderness. It
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: was like spectacular. And then we we had pack raphs,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: so whenever we were going down river, if the river
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: got big enough, we would just put our pack rafts
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: on our put our mountain bikes on our pack rafts
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and then float down. And we caught these hikers and
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: then we traveled with them and we were all going
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: to finish together, but we had a bike problem with
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: a break or something, and they hiked off into the
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: fog and then we never saw him again, and we
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: ended up getting to the end faster than they did.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So anyway, that was you know, I was into mountain
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: bikes for a while, but using them as sort of
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a wilderness travel tool because walking is kind of it's not,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: it's just it's easy. I like walking, and I do that.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I'm an old man now, so I do a lot
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: more walking. I don't do those bike trips anymore. But
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: they were really sad. Almost sixty. Yeah, i'll be sixty
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, I'm feeling it. Really. You look fine? Yeah,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: he's all great. Yeah, well I can't walk fifty miles
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: in a day anymore. No one can. Nobody should let
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: me put it there like people don't huh. Yeah they're
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the smart. But yeah, you only compare yourself to yourself, right, Yeah,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: if your measure was just the average person, it would
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: be pretty dizzy. How old are you? Uh huh? Well
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: do you need to use reading glasses yet? Uh huh?
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Do you forget like where your keys are and stuff
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like that? Well, that's coming me and Anthony, here were
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: out ice fishing yarday, and we were trying to we're
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: trying a little we're trying to put some like seven
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: X tip it um through, you know, the size eight. Dude,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: we're cursing up storm ACX. Neither of us had our
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: See Steve, you have your old man glasses. I forgot
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: mine too. Oh yeah, like holding it up to the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: light and messing with it and yeah, look I have
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: to carry him around like all that same time. But
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: you know what, I like those clicker little dealies. But um,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: when you got a hat on, they start to be
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: painting the gas, yeah, or a hood. Yeah, lots of
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: things good for sitting around. That's about all I do
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: right now, but a lot of sitting. Yeah it's winter time,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: and yeah I'm a professor, so I don't have a
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: I gotta teach my classes and write my papers and
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. But summertimes coming and I'll get out again,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: like I'm really. The brook Strange is my sort of
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: favorite mountain range right now. I love the Brooks Range.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Have you been to the Bookstrange the many times? Lets
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: just say many times? But yeah, what do you have
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: you hunted up there? Then? What do you like sheep
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: or caribou caribou? Huh? Where'd you go? Handful of places
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: so out. I spent some time with some anthropologists um
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: up in the npr A. Yeah, like the Utcock area.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I would talk ut yeah, and then hunted over um
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: hunted caribou a little bit south of there. Oh yeah,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: that was in your book those archaeologists, right, yeah, and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: then um south of hunt a handful. Hunted a handful
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: of those rivers that are on the north slope, on
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the north slope east of the pipeline, like the Hula
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Hula or the ja Go or the Chillic or the Canning,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: none of those, but the stuff that flows into the
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: sag Sag okay, Yeah, yeah, I've hunted ca yep, the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Sagram talk yeah, like you. It's a pretty the Attican Gorge.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: It's a nice way to get my son. And I
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: did a caribou packgraph cariboo hunt. We paddled through that
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Attic and gorge and then hunted cariboo along the sag
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: And because you can get five miles from the road
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: really easy that way. Uh. Talk about your son a
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: little bit, having him and kind of what you you know,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: you know, tell everybody about sort of like the philosophy
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: had exactly you did stuff, I say, nearly you did
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: stuff with your boy that that would strike a lot
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: of people's maybe even irresponsible. Probably. Yeah. Well, you know, um,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: my dad didn't do as much with me as I
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: wish that he had done. You know, my parents divorced
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: when I was pretty young, and and my dad hadn't
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: his his parents had divorced, and so he didn't really
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: know how to be a dad. And maybe I didn't either,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: you know, But I did know that I wanted to
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: have a better relationship with my son, you know, and
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do stuff with him, like from the beginning,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you know, and I wanted him to enjoy what we
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: were doing, and so and so, you know, from a
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: young age, like I would take him out, you know,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: on nature walks, or we'd go to the ocean. He
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: liked to tide pool like everybody does, you know, especially
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: when I was in grad school and the coast of California.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: There's all kinds of cool things and it's just a
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: fascinating place. And then when I worked on my pH d,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I did this canopy project in Puerto Rico in the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Caribbean and h his his name he back then was Cody,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you know, his name was Cody Roman dial and Um.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: And he and I went to scope out where I
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: would stay before my daughter and wife came out to
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Puerto Rico to join up with us. So, you know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: we wandered around the rain force. He was three years old,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: you know, and it was fun. He liked it, you know.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And I tried to be real. I want, I didn't
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: want to like freak him out. I didn't want to
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: like make him carry a pack or be uncomfortable, because
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I wanted him to want to go out, you know
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: what I mean. I wanted him to be a partner.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I wanted. I mean I wanted. I wanted him to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: be a partner. Now. I wanted him to be like
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: at the point where he would carry my stuff instead
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of me carrying his stuff, you know what I mean.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a pretty long game. I was
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: playing a long game. Yeah, I mean, I think I
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: know you your father probably took you out right, and
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I I love going out with my son, and I
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: tried I didn't want to spoil it, you know what
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I mean. I want, I was playing the long game.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I ever wanted to spoil it. And when he was six,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to take him on a wilderness
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: trip in Alaska and um because we just moved back
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: up there. I got a job as a professor up there,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: and and I wanted to go a place where there
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it was sort of safe, like no big glacial rivers,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: you know. I didn't want to have to take a
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: pack raft and deal with carrying that kind of stuff.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: And I didn't want it there'd be any grizzly bears,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you know. And so I found this island and the
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: allusions called Umnak, and it had a geyser base, and
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I thought he might want to see these is it
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: like a little miniature yellow Stone. I thought that'd be
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: a cool place to go. So I, I don't know,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: somehow I wrangled a way to get out to this
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the third Alusian island, like Unimac is the first one,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and then Unalaska where Dutch harbors, and then there's Umnak.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: And Umnak had like the secret military base in World
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: War two on one end, and it has a an
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: old alley village on the other end and the reindeer
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: wild cattle yep, it has reindeer and wild cattle and
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: it's you know, there's no reindeer. Yeah, they introduced him there,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and they're kind of weird colors. Stuff. That's become like
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a popular thing as far as it strikes me to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: me when people from the Lower forty eight want to
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: go up and hunt cariboo in Alaska but they wind
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: up hunting like introduced reindeer on one of the Aleutian islands. Well, um, people,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: but it's like it was like you could go hunt
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: cariboo where cariboo live. Yeah, well, you know, I've never
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: shot a reindeer. Um. I think a lot of those
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Western Arctic cariboo though, like the ones up around the
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: uticac in An n p r A, I think a
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: lot of those have reindeer blood in them. Yeah. I
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: mean like geneticist like people like tax on Um has
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: just regarded all of one one species. Yeah, but I
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: mean yeah, but they're they're a different animals and they
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: look different and act different everything. So anyway, I took
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: my son out there, and he was six, and we
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: walked across this island like sixty miles, and I carried
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: everything and sometimes I carried him and and it was
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: like a life changing thing for both of us and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: I the six years old and sixty miles. How many
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: days like a week? I think it was like seven
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: days and then we got stuck out there for another week.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: But when we landed at this you know, one side
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: at this secret military base wasn't secret but from World
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: War two is secret. And there was a family living
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: there who were trying to make money off the cattle
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: that were kind of feral on the island, and um,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll never forget. The father was like, well,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: what's your name? I said, Oh, I'm Roman dial and
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: he goes, he bends over, he goes, well, what's your name,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: little fella, And my son goes, I'm Roman two. And
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: he'd never said, you know, his name was Roman. And
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: I was like blown away. I mean like, I don't know,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: it's kind of maybe embarrassing, but I think, you know,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: as a his father's you kind of do want your
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: son to, you know, do the stuff you want to
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: do is to have him call himself because that was
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: his middle name, and ever after that he was Roman.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: It was like a little validation of dad. It kind
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: of is, yeah, you know, do you have kids, No,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: you should. Steve's wife would agree. Yes, it is not
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: for due to lack of trying on my wife's part,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: not that she's trying to have kids. Was like Steve
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: clar I got a whole pile of them. Man, yeah,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: well good three young kids. Oh really? Yeah? I love
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: I love being a dad. It was awesome. And I
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: have to two young kids too, And that's why I think,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: you know, we could all relate to what you're saying.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: You know, you want them to have a good time,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: you want them to do. What's the things you do.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I found really interesting about
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: your book is how you incorporated your kids into your
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: work a little bit. You talked about that being in
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the canopy, right, so you're you're scientists, you're doing research,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: and kids love to do that. So as they grew older,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: they're helping you with that. And I found that really interesting.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: And do you think that helped foster their love of
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the outdoors and nature? Well, I hope so. But you know,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: they they know my my daughter, um, I pushed her
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: too hard because if you have like two kids and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: they're say, like, my kids are two years or three
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: years apart, and you're kind of this is your first
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't get a lot of chances with kids,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And so when you got
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: like a four year old and you want to take
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: them on a hike, you know, you're like, oh, I'm
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: going to four year old pace, but the two year
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: old who's there is just like struggling to keep up.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And then they end up hating that. Like you have
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: that issue with my kids, same thing. I've seen it
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: like in multiple like they grow up and then the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: older ones like this outdoor stud and then the younger
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: ones like you know, stay at home or right four
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: wheel ers something like that, and and I've watched it
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: now and that's that's the answer I've come up with.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: It's like my hypothesis is that we tend we think
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: we're being real easy on our kids, and we're being
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: easy on the older one, but then the younger one
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: is like, uh, you know, I don't know, but you're
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the youngest of your three brothers, of you three, right,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: and you turned out okay, I guess yeah, but raising
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: them it's hard. I have to we have spread that
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: significant ability, you know, when I think in a decade
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: it probably won't be but right now, I mean it's
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: a huge difference between a nine year old and a
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: four year old. Oh yeah, you can't. It's hard to
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: take them both on the same trip, I know, And
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: that causes attention. That caused a lot of tension to
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: my wife because she's like, why is I'm like, she
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: goes like the older one, but when he was four,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: he would go do that like because it was only
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: one and keeping one kid drying warm is different than
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: keeping three kids drying warm. So it's like, I don't know,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what to do. Yeah, I don't.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I need to hire someone to
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: come along, because it's hard to keep three people warm
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: and dry. So the ones, the one at nine when
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: he was whatever he had, he had had more experiences.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: We're all checking muskrat traps this morning, um, and you
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: know I grabbed him because he's like up and gets
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: his clothes on by himself, and you know when I
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: had to like wake up and get his clothes on.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: So it's got lazy. I've been trying to leave home
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: my twelve year old and take out my eight year
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: old daughter once in a while. That goes over real
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: well down right, and that's difficult. He gets annoyed, but
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I say, look, I've done plenty things just you and I.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: You know, hann and I. You know, this is just
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: for her, but it's I don't know what the easy answers,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: but I I had to do that to avoid that problem. Oh,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: they look gut shot when you bring that up. Well,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you're doing that, because I remember when I
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: came back from that, I'm not trip. My daughter's like, Dad,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: when when are you? When? When are you and me
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: gonna do a six day trip? You know? She wanted
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: to do one and I was like, oh, it's coming.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: And I never did one until she was kind of
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: grown up, and then it was too late, you know.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: And I look back and I think, oh, I wish
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I had done that, because you know, she's not really
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: an outdoorsy person, although I asked her once. I said well,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: what is it mean to be outdoorsy for a girl?
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: And she goes, oh, it means you can go to
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the bathroom outside. Yeah, that's a measure like how comfortable
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: you are being outside? I propose your friend of mine
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and Tracy the other day, said there's a good little
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: spot to go pee, and she said, I'll just wait,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: there you are. Yeah, I guess not outdoorsy. She's pretty
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: out of that. Yeah, but yeah, she viewed it like,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: you know, would rather hold it than p outside. Well,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, would imagine every time you had to pee,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you had to pull your pants down, especially if it's
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: like windy and snowy. And yeah, yeah, I think that's
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: why they have skirts. They should get they should have
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: really good outdoor skirts. So that you just guess, yeah,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: were you were? You? I'm gathering you weren't surprised when
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: your kids started doing Um, when your son, who will
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: call Roman Roman? Yeah you call him Roman, of course, yeah,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I I he wouldn't let me call him Cody, like
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't let me call him Cody. And um. Yeah,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: So anyway, he got to late teens, early twenties, Yeah,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: started doing crazy as trips by himself. You know, I
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he I'll tell you what happened
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: is he Um, he went away to college, and he
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: met a girl in college, and she was from Chicago,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: and and he brought her to Alaska and he took
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: her out on a bunch of trips. And that's when
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I knew he was sort of serious about her because
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: you know, he'd grown up thinking that trips were about family,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: you know, like other kids the school it would be like, oh,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: come on, let's go, but he would go with them,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: but they didn't really know enough. You know. He's like
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: he used to going out with like me and my friends,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and and we were we'd go really light and we
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: could get along with nothing. And then he'd go with
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: these kids who were kind of clumsy and had too
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: much stuff, and he, you know, he didn't really seem right.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: He wanted to go with with me and Peggy and
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: our family and or my friends. And so when he
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: came to Alaska, you know, one summer with his girlfriend,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and he took her like sea kayaking and backpacking and rafting.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: That's when I knew he was serious about her, because
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: like he was taking her on these trips and taking
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: care of her and and uh, and he you know,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: he wasn't really a risk taker, you know, like I,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I hadn't and I don't really have anymore.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: All my testosterones kind of drained away and so I
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: don't I don't really need the adrenaline rush that I
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: used paying a really nice getting old. Yeah, well this
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Feller used to be a lot more sort of adrenaline
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: um chasing, and but my son wasn't. He was kind
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: of like my wife. He he was more risk averse,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: you know, my wife, it was sort of That's why
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I loved her, and I feel like she's a good
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: balance for me. Is because she doesn't need to like
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: scare her I mean, she likes to scare herself, but
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: she doesn't have to scare herself at the level that
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I do. And I mean everybody likes to scare themself.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: That's why amusement park rides are fun, you know, as
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: long as you're not going to get hurt. Getting scared
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: as fun and um and so, but he was more
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: thoughtful about getting hurt. He didn't really want to get
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: hurt and uh. And so the trips that he would do,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: we're not quite as crazy as the trips that I
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: had done, you know. And uh. But he would go
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: out and he was exploring things. And by the time
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: he was in his late teens in his twenties, he
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: was doing things on his own and really enjoying it.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: And uh. And when he headed to Central America, you know,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that was a really big varience in the sense that
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: you know, he was traveling through foreign countries on his
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: own for like six months. I'd never done anything like that,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: you know, and especially not in my twenties, um and
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: speaking Spanish and doing some pretty I think, you know,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: amazing wilderness trips in Central America. Yeah, but that was
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: like a different kind of the difference with the approach
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: he was taken on this trip which we're talking about
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the like this is the trip that ended up being
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: his last trip. Well, no, like before like because he
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: went he went to Mexico. I went down there and
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: sawm and who went back rafting, and then this is
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: all one continuous, one continuous thing he was on from
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: country to country, country to country. Within that like a
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: lot of people do that. I mean a lot of
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: people will go and do you know we used to
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: do a little bit of that stuff, like go down
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: and kind of do like the tracking around, riding buses. Sure,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Disney villagis. But what he The weird part about it
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: that I thought it was just unusual is he was
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: putting in jungle tracks sometimes like kind of off trail
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and like little trans sax and like doing like jungle trips,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: heading off by himself into kind of like the same
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: way if you were up in Alaska you want to
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: go do a trip. It has never occurred to me
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: that you'd go and do a trip to the jungle, right,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: go to a foreign country, find a remote area, and
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: then just go wander around and there. Right. Yeah. No,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I I was actually, you know, as a father, I
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: was really torn, you know, like I was proud of
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: him for doing that, you know what I mean, like
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: I kind of raised him with that, not with that.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I wanted him to do that kind of thing. But
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: then when he was doing it, I was like, oh
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: my god, you know what I mean, Like I don't know.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I guess if you were in the military and uh,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: and then your son joined the military, you'd be both
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: proud and terrified at the same time. And so I
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: was like I was really proud of what he was doing,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: but I was terrified, you know, like I was, Oh
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: my god, I can't believe he's doing that. I you know,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I've never done anything like that, and I
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: couldn't do anything like that, and he's doing it, and uh,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you know, at one point he said he was going
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: to go to this ruin, you know, in this deep
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: wilderness in Guatemala, and he told me how he was
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: going to go in the back way and it was
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: going to be like, you know, this long wilderness walk
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and and I wrote him an email because he kept
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: in touch with me, he said, here's what I'm gonna
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: do and uh. And then usually he go do it
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: and he'd say, hey, i'm back. I'll tell you about it,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple of days, and he'd write a big,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: long story about it. And so he wrote me and
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: said here's what I'm gonna do, Dad, And I wrote
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: him back. I said, no, don't do that. You know,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: that's don't do it. That's too dangerous. I don't want
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: you to do that. You know, there's I've made all,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I went through all the reasons not to.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: But I didn't send that email. I wrote it, but
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't send it to him. And then I wrote
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: another one. I tried to like tone it down, and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I wrote another one and I couldn't send him there
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: all like don't do it. And I was telling him,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: like all the things people had said to me over
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: the years, like taking a mountain bike across the Alaska Range,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: what kind of id it? Or you you know, Oh
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: you're gonna walk across the wrangel Saint Elias in October. No,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: you're not. You know what I mean. I kind of
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: have spent forty years listening to people say that. But
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: a difference, not to discredit the feats you did, but
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the difference there is you could rattle off because of
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: your familiarity with the state, you could rattle off the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: reasons why not. And when you get into being like
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: someone who's from the north and they go down and
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: there in this area, um, you wouldn't be able to
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: make a you wouldn't really have what it takes to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: make a comprehensive list of the potential problems. Well, he
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: he kind of he'd been to the tropics a lot,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: you know, like when he was three years old, he
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: spent you know, almost you know, seven months in Puerto
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Rico and then then we traveled the world, and he'd
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: been to Costa Rica twice, you know when he was
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: taking you know, he went down there on a tropical
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: ecology class. I taught there, and he went down there
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: with me when I did a research project. There's spent
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of time in Borneo. I spent a lot
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: of time He and I spent two months like in
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: a junk in Borneo at a research station, and he'd
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: already been there like three times, so he knew the rainforest,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you know. He like I remember, like he studied ants,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: like he knew which ants were dangerous and which ones weren't.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: So when one time he went to Australia, he goes, Dad,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: look at this ant. It jumps and he had it
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: on a stick, you know, and he was showing it
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: to me, and I was like, oh, here, so let
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: me see that aunt. You know, like you can put
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: an ant on your finger, and I put it on
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: my fingers. As soon as I put on my finger, poom,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: it stung me like a hammer had hit me, you know.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: And I was like ah and he was like, yeah, Dad,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I knew that was like a bad aunt, you know.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And uh So he was really well aware of what
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: was dangerous and what was not because he'd been he'd
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: grown up in the tropics, and he that's part of
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the reason he was risk averse, because a lot of
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the things that are really cool in the tropics, like
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: colorful things especially, can be nasty. So based off of that,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: did you whittle your email down eventually to like, just
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: don't do it because I don't like it in your head.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I whittled the email down to, hey, watch
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: out for ferti lances and bushmasters and you know, be careful.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: And I sent I sent it away, and I didn't
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: tell him not to do it. I couldn't, you know,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: how could I? You know, it was his trip and
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: he came back and it was like, you know, an
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: amazing experience from he wrote me like the six thousand
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: word you know, story about it and m and I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: was super proud of him. I sent it to all
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: my friends, you know, like wow, look what he did.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: And um. And then he did some even more like
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: amazing trips you know that were amazing in different ways.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Like he he went down this river in Honduras through
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: what he called like the cocaine hub of Central America,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: because like what happened is, you know, the Americans disrupted
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the typical cocaine trafficking route from Colombia. So the Colombians
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: changed it up and they sent it across sort of
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the southern Caribbean to this part of Honduras, like the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Mosquito coast, and then they ran it across Honduras up
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: these rivers and then into guatemal and then it went
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: overland into Mexico. And so the river is where it all.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: All the cocaine trade goes through, so um or transport,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: and he went down that river with this Canadian and
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: I had no idea that that stuff was going on.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: You know, he didn't tell me about that. He just said, Oh,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going through this biosphere reserve and it's a big
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: wilderness area. But because it's a wilderness area, it's also
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: a good place for you know outlaws too. So anyway,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: he had like all these really you know, wild and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: crazy experiences that he told me about afterwards. Usually you know,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: he'd said, I'm gonna go do this, Like he said, Hey,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go down the Patuca River through the Mosquetilla
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: and and then he sent this email about what it
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: was like when he came back. So when he went
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: missing in Costa Rica, I went down there up. Hold
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: that thought from me because the trip that he went
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: missing on, Um were there red flags in your mind
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: about that trip? Well, I didn't really know he was
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: heading on that. Like what happened there is um it
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: was in the summer, and in the summer you know,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm kind of busy doing stuff, and he was
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: communicating with us and and he and I he'd asked
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: me about like maps, Hey, Dad, do you have any
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: secret sources for good topo maps? Because I think he
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I kind of knew maybe he'd mentioned it
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: or we talked about but I I sort of thought
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: he wanted it to cross the Darian Gap, you know,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: in the highway, which is sort of you know, like
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I think we all want to do it, but none
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: of us really should do it. And um, and I had,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I think I would have told him, don't
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: do it. But I was sort of I don't want
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: to say I was pleased that he was thinking about it,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: but I don't know, you know, like you kind of
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: rooting him on in a way. I guess I kind
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: of was. And I, you know, I I sent him
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: some map ideas, you know, even though it wasn't specifically
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: about the Darian and uh. And so anyway, we we
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: were talking back and forth about maps, and I came
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: back from a pack rafting trip in the Tachita Mountains,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, there was an email there it was like,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the best map yet. So I just thought
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: it was about maps, and I took off because Peggy,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: my wife, was like, hey, you've been gone. You know.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: We had to go dipping out some salmon. This is
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the time when all the salminar and let's go. So
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: we went down to the Kenye and UM had some
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: house projects. When I got back and we hadn't heard
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: We didn't hear from him, you know, and I kept
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: expecting to hear from him, but I hadn't really read
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the email, you know, like I really I still feel
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: guilty about that, and I didn't really read it through
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: when I should have. And when we got back, and
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: you know, we were in Lows shopping for something to
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: work on the house, and Peggy got nauseated. We were
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: talking like, hey, haven't why I haven't heard from Rom
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and she got nause and we went home and I
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: read this email and it was like, you know, holy
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: can I say on him? Holy ship? I read the
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: email and he you know, he was supposed to have
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: been back like ten days before, you know, and I
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: just felt awful that I hadn't looked and I felt
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: even worse, like he's he's missing. I haven't heard from
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: We should have heard from me he was only going
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: to be in there for like five days. A five
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: day trip would was definitely abnormal for sure. Yeah, I
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: mean he he would that would never. It would be
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: way out of the ordinary. You know. He usually like
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: when he came back from that crossing in Guatemala, you know,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: he says, hey, I just got out. I'll tell you
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: more later, just to let us know, because you guys
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: had a little bit of a protocol just from your
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: experiences too, about sort of the importance of your outdate. Yeah,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: he grew up with that. You know, he grew up
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: with like being we would always responsible. You know, I
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: didn't want to freak my wife. I had a wife
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: and kid at home. I had to make sure that
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: I came back when I said I was gonna come back,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: or if I didn't, they knew I would be back,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: and then we would. You know. He grew up with that,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and he was a responsible kid about that. So he
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: always let us know. So when you know he had
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't hear, I rushed down, you know, like I
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: left the next day and uh. And so that's kind
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: of like the third part of that book is about
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: looking for him down there, and and it was frustrating
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: to get down there and have all these people. He
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: brought a friend down. Yeah, well I needed somebody, you know,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and so I brought um tiber Zone down who speaks
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: fluent Spanish and I you know, he's the kind of
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: guy that you know, one time I I was going
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: to the him Alaya to look for these ice worms
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: in the him Alaya and that my collaborator, another scientists
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: couldn't go. And so my my collaborators, it was Thursday
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: and we're supposed to leave on Sunday. And he's like, hey,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I can't go. And I'm like, hey, Ty, can you
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: go to China next week? And He's like sure when
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: you know and uh. And so Ty was the kind
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: of guy he could drop everything. Like at one point,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Ty went to every continent every year, you know, and
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: and every continent. He went to every continent he was
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: paid to go, you know, like he was a guide,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: or he was um doing logistics in that Arctica, or
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: he was doing medicine in Africa. You know, he was
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: that kind of guy. And he he his his mom
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: is is Vietnamese and his dad is Italian, and so
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: he looks like he's from anywhere, you know, and he's
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: got a big smile. He's real gregarious, and you know,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: he's super strong, but he's kind of you know, I
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: don't know. He just looked like you would like him.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: You know, if he was here, we would all like
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: him immediately. So I needed him with me because I'm
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: not the kind of guy people usually like right away
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: wherever for that matter, I don't know, but he is,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and so I needed him to come. And he we
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: went down there, and he has jungle experience, and we've
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: done a lot of stuff together. And your initial impulse
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: was to go where you now understood that he went. Yeah,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: and just like like physically look for him, like look
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: around to find him a long route. Well, yeah, well
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: he told me where he was going. He sent a map,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: you know. He said, I'm gonna go up this river
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go out this river. It's gonna take
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: five days. He was very specific, and and I took
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: that as I mean, I would send somebody that, and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I have, you know, for forty years, I've sent people
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing, because hey, look, if I don't
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: show up, come get me. If I'm not here by
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: this day, come get me. You know, you know, officials
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: down there though, we're no. They just thought he was
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: some kid who was you know, ran off. Yeah, like
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: the backpackers we were talking about earlier, who traveled through
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: Central America and you know, hang out at the hostel
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: and smoked cigarettes and talk about how they'd like to
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: do stuff, but they don't do anything, you know, And
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: so they just thought he was you know, hanging out
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: with a drug dealer and uh or his just ignoring
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: his parents. You know, none of that added up. So
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: it was very frustrating to me, who had had spent
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: this life. So I wrote this because you're just another
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: You're just another parent who thinks their kids an angel, exactly,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: and you just clearly can't see that he whatever, ran
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: off of the girl. That's it. It's exactly. Yeah. And
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I it was really painful, I mean to like sort
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: of first of all, to have my son missing, you know,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and it's like I've spent you know, more than half
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: my life and his whole life doing stuff with him,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And I like just playing cards,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: you know, or chess or watching TV, you know what
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, but kind of the stuff that really bonds us.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's part of what like hunt,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: seeing or being outdoors really bonds us in a really
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: very deeply human way, and especially with your kids, you know,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: or your wife and your friends and so um. It
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: was just like it was a real insult to this
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: injury of loss to lose my son and then have
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: people tell me like I didn't know him or this
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: is what he was doing, and and so the book
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: is a lot about that, you know what I mean
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: for sure, it's it's like that's like one of the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: aching parts about it. You know, you spent a lot
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: of time on this. I don't want I don't we
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: don't need to spend a ton of time on it
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: right now, but like I want to get to how
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: you actually searched, but try to explain to people like
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: the false lead that emerges, you mean, the potala, which
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: which takes months, like for months, it tooks year, it
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: took years. Take at that point where people are like,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: this is what happened, and and you're like that that's
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: not what happened. But it was like, why can't this
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: guy see that this is what happened, But explain this guy, well,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: he's sort of he was like the pariah of the
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Ossa Peninsula. So the Osa Peninsula is like this elbow
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: that sticks out in southern Coasta Rica on the Pacific
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: side near the border with Panama. And it's a pretty
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a pretty rural and area. Very
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: wild too. There's the biggest national park. I think it's
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the biggest national park in Coasta Rica. Corcovado National Park
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: is there. Like it's wild enough where there's like like
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: illegal gold miners. Yeah, it's totally wild setting up camps
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: that no one knows about. Yeah. Well, you know, it's
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: wild enough to have jaguars and bush masters and herpie eagles,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and all the monkeys that people like living
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: out there that no one knows about. Right and then
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: and then it's so big and and it used it's
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: got gold miners who like hang out in the park
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: and they hide out and the rangers go in and
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: and and then the west coast of the park. Um,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: you know, used to be able to hike around there,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: and the west coast was a great place to hike.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: But I think there's a lot of cocaine boats that
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: come up and bring drugs from Panama now and they've
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: they've shut all the hiking down on the west coast
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: along the beach basically north of sir Aino, which is
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the most touristic part. And it's it's really a remote
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: You can't drive into the park. You have to hike
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: into it. And now they don't let you hike there
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: without having a guide, and they only let you hike
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: on certain trails. And the rangers go in there and
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: they chase the miners out, and they change chase the
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: poachers out and um. And then there's this out just
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: outside the park. There's a big mining community. But it's
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: all it's all like hike in mine, like I don't know,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: backcountry mining, Like it's hand back Yeah, I got all.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: They hike in and their sluice boxes they are like
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: three ft long, and there their shovels or metal shovels,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: but they've whittled some piece of hardwood down to stick
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: into the shovel. When it handles break, they just make
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: a new one. And they live in these plastic you know, tarps,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: and they're they're running water is through plastic pipes that
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: they use to kind of drain areas to mind for
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: it's all by hand, you know. And uh so anyway, Um,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: there's this one mining trail that goes from one mining
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: community all the way to the coast, and everybody thought
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: that they'd seen my son with this guy pot Laura
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: and his name Potalora's. It was like his nickname for
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: parrot foot, because he had like a deformity of his foot,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: and nobody liked him, and he nobody liked him, and
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: he was the pariah of those you know, and anything
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: that bad that happened, they blamed it on him. Even
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: his own family didn't like him. And so he was
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: with this gringo who apparently looked like my son, and
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: everybody was sure that my son had been with him.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: And uh, and he didn't do a whole hell of
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: a lot to dispel the notion that he had been
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: with your son. Oh no, he encouraged it. Yeah, he
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: fed it. He came up, he spun all these stories.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: I don't want to tell too much because my publisher
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: will want somebody to buy the book. And if I
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: tell you the whole story, nobody will want to read it.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: But um, but is not true. If I tell the story,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: nobody will want to read it. I don't think that
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: that's true. Maybe the page one yeah, well, the Podalora story,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: it just it never went away, you know, like right
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: up to the end, it never went away. And uh
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: and I just I just couldn't see Roman like walking
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: with this guy, you know, like it would be I
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: think I used the phrase in the book, it would
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: be like this guy because I talked, I interview people,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: you know, I followed the Potalora troil, you know, I
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: I talked to the people. I mean, I hiked into
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: the jungle. I spent like weeks in the jungle, you
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. I hiked all around like I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: you know, illegally eventually legally. Yeah, that's everything I wanted
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: to bring up that you wanted to go in. And Okay,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: so the book gets into spends a lot of time
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: on all the what everyone else is telling you must
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: have happened. Yeah, and you needing to be the like
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: naive rube who insists that you're right while everyone else
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: is behind your back, probably saying like this guy has
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: no idea. Probably, yeah for sure. But I mean, like
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: I knew my son, you know, and I can't get
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: his bank records. I couldn't get it took us two
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: years to get his bank records. But I you know,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I knew my son, and I've been in the jungle
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: enough to know that I could look, and I wanted
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: people to help me, and so the only people I
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: could really get to help me because the officials did
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: everything they could to keep me out. Yeah that's what
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: That's what I was gonna ask you about his. They
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: literally forbid you, threatened me, threatened to arrest me to
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: go forbid you, Um, you cannot go look for your son. Yeah,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: that's pretty much what they said. Yeah, you know, And
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: I went down there to look for his months long, Yeah,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: for yeah, months, And I went down there specifically to
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: look for him, Like I have to go out on
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: illegal minor trails sometimes with illegal miners to try to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: find your way in there to look around. Right, Why,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I they knew it much better than I did, So
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I I got miners and poachers to help me out,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: you know, because nobody else that the officials wouldn't and
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: under Yeah you're under threat of arrest. Yeah, I mean
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: that one. I remember one time I had like this
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: kind of bushy beard and I shaved it off because
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: I knew they were looking for me, and I hid
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: in the car, you know, I mean, um, because I
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: I needed to find him, you know, and I was
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: gonna do whatever it took. So I must be so frustrating.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: It's so many levels to be kept out from that. Yeah,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I was like trying to I felt like it was
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: like some kind of football game where they're trying to
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: tackle me, but I'm trying to get to the end
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: zone there, you know, and I the officials were trying
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: to keep me from going that direction. Um, but the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: locals were really helpful, you know, like the people who
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: lived there, and they're very family oriented and they understood,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: you know, what I was trying to do. And uh,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: and my friends you know, came down and helped me.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: But then they'd come down and I realized how dangerous,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: dangerous it was to have people who didn't have any
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: experience in the jungle and have them with me, you know,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: because there's snakes. And I mean it sounds cliche to say, oh,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: there's snakes, but there really are snakes, you know, like yeah,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: there it's full on, you know, like you should you
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: get hit and you're gonna like you got an hour,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be dead basically. Yeah, And you know you're
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: a couple of hours in and you're they're not gonna
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: get a helicopter in there. And there's like three snakes
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: you kind of have to really watch out for. There's
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: you know, the palm vipers that hang kind of like
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: right at eye level and you don't see them, you know.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: And this kid came down. I really like this kid, Todd.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: He came down to help, and he almost walked into one.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: He did, he walked literally and he almost got hit.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Um tivers oone. He stepped over a log and there
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: was a palm viper coiled up on the log. He
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: didn't see it. I saw it when I walked up
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: to the log, and I was like, holy cow, I
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: can't bring my friends down here. This is too dangerous.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: You know. Then there's fairtal answers. Those are the ones
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: that are definitely poisonous. And I never saw a bush master,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: but they're the really bad ones. And you know, it's
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: just it was dangerous, you know. And I I could
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: see why they didn't want me in there, but um,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and they didn't know me, you know, like I had
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: to get you know, the Lieutenant governor of Alaska tore like,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: who does know me? To write a letter and say no,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: you Roman, Diald knows what he's doing. You know, he's
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: been around, you know, you can you can trust his judgment. Um.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: But you know, they wanted to protect me. They didn't
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: want me to get into trouble. And I could see
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: their side, but but the other side of me, there
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: there's no stopping me. You know, I was going to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: do whatever it took, and I you know, I had
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: to sell my soldier reality TV eventually, you know, I
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: didn't know it was reality TV, but it turned into
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: reality TV. Yeah. I'll ask about that in a second.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: But another thing I wanted to touch on is you, Um,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: initially you felt like there was like a race against
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: the clocks. Yeah. No, I pictured him. He was like
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I could see him in the tent and it was
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: all soggy and wet and cold because the rainforest is
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: actually cold, especially here you're in the mountains, and when
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: it rains, you know, the rains coming from thirty thousand
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: feet up, so it's cold, comes down and chills you.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: And I could see him like in this tent. He
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: was broken and hey dad, where are you? I'm out
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: of food. That's what went through my head. And so
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: I was trying to find him, and people were trying
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: to keep me out. You know it was it was terrible. Yeah,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: it was terrible. Do you I don't think forgiving if
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: you bring this up in your book, but some of
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: the local response to you, did you ever get a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: sense that it was just like another view of American exceptionalism,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: where you have this place where, no doubt many many
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: people go missing because of drug trafficking, because of you know,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: human migration, because of whatever reason. But then everyone needs
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: to drop everything and get everyone on board because an
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: American is missing. No. I never felt that, and I
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: never asked for that, you know what I mean. Like
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't ask for the helicopter. I didn't ask for
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: the whole army of Red Cross people. I would have
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: done it myself. I would have preferred if they would
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: just like, let me do this. Like here's the way
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: I sort of feel is um and this is maybe
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a little too libertarian for most people. But to be
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: part of society, we've had to give up everything. Okay,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Like society is great, but we don't get to take
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: care of ourselves. You get a doctor to take care
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: of you, there's no justice. We don't take care of
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: our own justice. We have a justice system that takes
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: care of that. We don't get rid of. If if
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: somebody is breaking into your house, you can't do anything
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: about that. You've got to call the police. You don't
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: do anything for ourselves. It's all we get to do
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: is put food in our mouths. Now maybe you know,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: and maybe we can reproduce the letter whom I defend myself. Yeah,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: and so the authorities. That's it, That's what it comes
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: down to. So to be part of society, we've given
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: up all these things that when we were like primitive humans,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: we did ourselves. You know, like we don't even like
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: build your house anymore. You have somebody else build your house.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: You know. We don't really get to do much. And
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: so this seems really important to me, is to take
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: care of my family member, you know, But we don't
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: get to do that. No, we have specialized teams who
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: are going to do that, but they're never going to
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: be as invested in it as as as we are.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Uh follow a rail right, a wounded animal trail. I
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: don't want anybody else out there messing with the evidence,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: and I want to be the one collecting it and
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: processing it. And again nobody's more invested in the person
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: that sent the bullet or the arrow. Right, were you
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: feeling any of that? Like, if I involve a lot
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: of people, then I'm gonna miss critical information and I
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: may be the best person to decipher that. Absolutely, that's
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: that's I think that's a really good analogy. That's kind
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: of how I felt. But I know, I maybe I
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: was just too emotional about it, you know what I mean,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: And I should have just got out of the way,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: but there was no way I was going to. Yeah,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: and it was a there's an enormous amount of variables
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: where um, you can't you're not able to rule out
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: foul play. So you're trying to get into the jungle. Look,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: but you're also looking at everyone you walk by, and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: everyone's backpack. You're curious about what are their shoes, and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: you know what gear your son had, and you're trying
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: to see, like, am I going to see someone come
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: by with a pair of Solomon shoes on? Oh? And
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: then the long guy was on the oath of the
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: more you heard about these stories, you know, like the
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: Austrians who lived in this little town and sold gold,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: and how they had been killed. They disappeared, but there
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: was blood on their walls and and somebody was driving
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: their car around and using their A t M card
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: and but they never found a body until years later
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: when bones washed out. And then there was the Canadian
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: woman who was shot in the head and they didn't
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: have any idea who did that. And then there was
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: another woman, an American who was smothered in her bed,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: you know, in an iPod or iPad were stolen, and
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: so you heard about these things along you were there,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: and then you'd hear about this guy Patalora who some
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: people would say, oh, yeah, he's a murderer, he's killed people,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: he killed your son and blah blah blah, and and
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: there I mean it is, it's kind of a lawless place.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: And uh and if there's nobody and there's nobody, and yeah,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: they don't they don't they like you could, no matter
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: what happens, exists with out of body, there's no murder. Yeah,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: like those Austrians. They everybody knew who did it because
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: he was driving their car around and spending their A
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: t M money and they knew that he had done it.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: But until they found this body two years later, the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: bones that had washed out of this river bank. Um,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: then they realized, okay, yep, you're the one. There's a body. Yeah,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: so you even go arrange and meet with the guy
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: who's claiming to have been one of the last people
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: to see your son alive. Right. Well, I was eager
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: to meet the guy who his name was Jenkins. And
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: I was eager to meet him because when early on
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: in the search, um, when they'd kicked me out of
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: the search because I was emotionally unstable as what they said, Um,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: were you looking back now? No, I was, and I
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: was very calm, you know. It was the guy who
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: was in charge of the search was emotionally unstable from
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: my perspective, and he just didn't He just didn't, you know, Um,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: maybe like you know, I this friend, this mutual friend
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I have with your brother named Chris. You know. He
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: he'll complain that I have a Type A personality whatever
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: that is exactly. But I said that you do, yeah,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and I guess I guess what that means. Maybe he
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't know I have a Type A is what he says.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: So when we get together with another pilot, he is
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: a pilot. So when Type A is get together, there's
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: not enough oxygen in the room to breathe, you know.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of these guys who are in
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: charge of things are type A, like a pilot, and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: so the guy in charge of the search was type
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and there I was, you know, like, no, we've got
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: to do what my son said. And he's like, hey,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm in charge here, and he pushed me out,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: and I was very calm because I've been in some
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: sketchy situations, you know, I've been in I don't know,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to brag here or anything. I'm just
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: trying to say that I know that when things are bad,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: you've got to be calm, you know what I mean.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: And you've been on searches. I've been on searches, yea.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: I found people. That's why I thought I could find
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: my son, because I've I found people before, like in storms.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: And so I was there and this guy kicked me out,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: and then um ty was I was able to I
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: was able to talk his way and they walked down
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: this trail and they got to this village and this
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: guy said, oh, hey, I met I met somebody in
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: the jungle and he said his name was Roman. And
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: that's when I knew that they really this guy had
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: really seen him, because everybody else called my son Cody
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: because that's the name that was on the flyers. So
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: the name on the on the flyers was Cody Roman
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Dial and in Costa Rica, um his middle name, you know,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: it would be like a second last name, So everybody
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: had like down there in Costa Rica, the first name
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: is your given name, and then the last name is
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: your father's family name, and your second your middle name
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: is your mother's middle name. And so everybody called my
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: son Cody. Nobody called him Roman unless you've met him.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: He would say, yeah, I'm Roman. And he also kept
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: secret certain pieces of gear that you knew he had,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: and other stuff like that. Oh yeah, I mean little
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: things that you knew no one else news and you
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: can try to sort out the bs from the reality
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: exactly exactly. So when I met this guy Jenkins, who
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: said he'd met Rome, and I, you know, like I
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: quizzed him, and this guy's a minor, he's an illegal miner. Yeah,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and he had great risk to himself, you know, and
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: I kind of figured, yeah, if he's risking his himself
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: to ton of tell this, then I know he's he's
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: telling the truth. I mean, that's how we like, if
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: you expose yourself or put yourself at risk, you know,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: like if you handicap yourself, that's a way of sending
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: an honest message. Like there's this idea about animals with
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: big horns, like like I don't know if you've ever
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: seen a moose, like a big moose go through thick
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: alders and they get hung up. It's a lot of work,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: you know. There's horns way a lot, and they're like
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: and and there's this idea that a moose or any
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: other big animal that's got big horns. It's a message
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: that they send out like I'm such a badass that
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: I can walk around with this huge handicap, you know
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like an honest message, like I
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: am a badass, and here's how I'm going to show you.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna handicap myself. So for this minor come
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: forward at great risk to himself, you know, it was
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: he was sending an honest message because he was handicapping himself.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: He could he could be arrested for being where he was,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: and yet he came forward to say, yeah, I met
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: this guy named Roman who said he was a biologist
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: from Alaska, and I was like, where was that? And uh,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't ask the authorities. Hey, let's go up there tomorrow.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I went up there with
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: the illegal minor and we snuck up there and I
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: went up there. I got another poacher to go up
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: there too, and we went up there and he showed
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: us the spot. And I kept going back to that
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: area and um, and then eventually even to the point
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: where you guys are repelling into areas, well, yeah, I did.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: I we did a traverse across this big high plateau
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: and um, and we left the plateau. We left the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: little trails like there's these trails are They're about like
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: game trails. They really are there, game trails that people
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: also will kind of maintain a nick with their machete
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: and stuff. And and we left those little trails and
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: we dropped off the plateau and it was really slippery,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: and I could see it was steep and slippery, and
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: I could see, you know in Hollywood movies where like
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: when somebody falls down and they slide for like five
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: minutes and they end up in a creek, and that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: always seems so corny and stupid like that would never happen.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Then I realized, oh, this is where that could happen,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: the sea, And so I was thinking that could have
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: happened to him, and he could have slid into like
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: where he had been seen he just climbed up out
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: of this canyon and and people thought he had climbing gear,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: you know, to have made it out of there. Um,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: but he didn't. And that little canyon, I imagine maybe
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: he could have slipped trying to get back in it somehow.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: And so the only way in was to repel down
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: waterfalls to get into it. And I thought maybe he'd
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: slipped in there. So we went down and did some
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: canyonarian there was. He wasn't there, obviously, but I went
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: in there looking and uh, because I thought, you know,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: he had been in this area. He I thought he
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: had to be close by, So I just kept looking.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: It seems like a perfect crew to kind of know
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: where where the arm is in that terrain, like poachers
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: and illegal miners, as far as like everybody knows an
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: area and where like, oh yeah, that would be a
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: good spot for something bad to happen. This would be
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: a good spot to stay out of that stuff, you know, right,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And to be with those guys, I'd much rather be
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: with them than with these you know, Red Cross volunteers
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: who were all coming from the big city and they
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: were you know, kind of like fleshy and pale, and
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I had too much gear and had never
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: been in country like that. Whereas the miners and the
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: and the poachers, you know, they've got to be super
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: careful because it's like they're not gonna be able to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: get a rescue from the Park Service as something happens
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: to them. So the whole point with them is to
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: be where no one knows where you are. Yeah, and
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: they are skinny and tough, and you know, they're out
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: in the on all the time. They know what to
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: avoid and what you can use. And yeah, I mean
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: they were like the perfect guys to be you know.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: But I it didn't matter to me who I was with.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: I just needed to get in there, and whoever was
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: going to go with me, that's who I was going
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: to take. Explain you met You made a remark about
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: sold yourself to reality TV. Yeah, well, you know, um,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: give it whatever version of that you're comfortable with. What
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: did it? Well, you know, um, what I I when
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: I I mentioned those that race where Dick Griffith pulled
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: a pack raft out and told me that old age
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: and treachery beats youth and skill every time. And that
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: was when I was twenty one, and then by the
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: time I was in my thirties, those um that Eco
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: Challenge race, which was a big television race that Mark Burnett,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: you know, who kind of put reality TV on the map.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: So he started the Eco Challenge and I did a
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: bunch of those races, and I could see like every
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: time I did one of those races, um, not every time,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: but most of the time, I was on a team
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: that they watched, you know what I mean, Like they
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: followed with the camera and so then i'd see the
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: television show. I'm like, I wasn't there. That's not the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: race I was in, right, you know what I was like?
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: This is so I was real a little really apprehensive
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: about television. I've done from the science side. I've done
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: some sort of documentaries you know, about tree climbing and stuff,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: and and I didn't really like TV, you know, because
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: it never seemed to be Now, I'm sure your TV
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: show is not like this, but I never saw like
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: what I did on that show. You know, it just
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: they rearranged things and they cut it up and it
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: looks like reality, but it's really not. I I much
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: prefer writing or radio. I don't know why. So I
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: was apprehensive. I didn't want to deal with TVM. But
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: somebody got through to Peggy and and uh and what
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: they said is, hey, you know, I I lost my
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: father and I think it was Honduras or El Salvador,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: and he was killed, he was murdered, and I spent
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: ten years trying to bring his murderer to justice. And
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: I wasn't able to do it till I brought a
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: camera down there, and the local people just opened right
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: up to me. Once I had a camera. They thought
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: everything they said was being sent by satellite and being transmitted.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: It was like a truth serum. This is the way
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: to find your son. So these are producers reaching out.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: They look for stories like this, yep, and that they
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: think are going to make dramatic TV. And they find
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: people and reach out and do that right. And I mean,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: I had lots of you know, producers, but this one
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: was different. And they got to Peggy. I don't want
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: to say they got to her but they convinced her,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, that sounds good. And then
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: they offered up this like it sounded really good to me.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: They said, um, hey, here's what we'll do. We'll get
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: a cayraminal investigator, which I had no experience doing that.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: And then by that point, you know, this is like
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: a year later, the foul play seemed just as likely
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: as anything else. But I also wanted to keep looking
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: in the jungle. And they got this p J. You know,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: a pair of jumper, one of those Air Force guys
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: that know they can do everything. You know, they're scrawny
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: little guys. They can jump out of airplanes and swim
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: and you know, they swim underwater if they pass out.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: That's how you know you can be a PJ too.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: You swim underwater to you pass. Professional rescuer, they're professional rescue. Yeah.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: They can shoot guns, they can save lives, they can
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: do it all. And I have a bunch of friends.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: They did the Wilderness Classic race and they would win,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: and super cool guys. And I met this guy Ken.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: He'd done a race I put on, an Armed Forces
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: Eco Challenge race that I put on, and he had
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: been on the winning team like two years in a row,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: and so um, I was like, wow, yeah, he'd be great.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: He and I can go in the jungle and look
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: and this you know, retired d E a agent. He
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: can do the criminal investigations. He'd spent twenty five years
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: in Latin America. You know. He was like ten feet
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: tall and bald, with like you know, an a R
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: fifteen tattoo down his arm or something like that. I
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: don't really remember, but its people open right up. That's yeah,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: you know, and it seemed like the team, you know,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: and uh, and I had done enough with television to
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: know that they were really for Nagio. Well you know,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: they were an independent producer and they were trying different
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: show different channels, and they ended up selling the show
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: or you know, getting financing from Natural. They sold the proposal,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: and they had a couple of different I don't watch TV,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: so I don't really know all of them. But it's
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: hilarious that that, you know, like the reputation that National
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: Geographic has was sort of like the truth, you know,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: and like the but then the TV is they don't
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: know Richard Murdoch is the one who owns it now,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's not national. It's not the
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: national geographic that Rupert, thank you. It's not the nation
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: geographic that your parents grew up with, you know what
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: I mean. It's not that they would be happy with
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: you if they knew you hunted either. Probably not those guys.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Those guys are horrible. Well I so, I I you know,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: I was I. I asked these guys on the telephone,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: you know, like, Hey, is this reality TV? Or is
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: this the doct coumentary? And and and by the way,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: you know, what's what's the death difference between to you guys,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: you know, not to these producers. I asked, what's the
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: difference to you guys between reality TV and a documentary?
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: And there's just long pause on this conference call, and
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: then I, you know, looking back, I'm kind of like, oh,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: they this was reality all along, you know, And they said, oh, well,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: reality TV is is when it's really overproduced. And um so, anyway,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: that became like my code word. Whenever I thought they
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: were doing something to kind of manipulate me or Peggy
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: for their show, I'd say, hey, this feels a little overproduced,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: and I would put a stop to it if I could.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: But we went down there, and I thought that the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: television would be able to get permits to get into
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: the park because I had been my big bugaboo, my
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: big stumbling block was trying to was to get permits
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: where I could go into the park to look around.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: I mean I ultimately did even in the first six
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: weeks while I was down there. I was able to
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: do it thanks to you know, me Treadwell and these
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: other guys who new people in Costa Rica and and um.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: But my experience with television shows is they were really
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: good at getting permits. They had whole divisions who would
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: get permits in parks and things. So I thought, oh,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: this sounds great. We'll have you know, the x d
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: E A guy do criminal investigation on the outside, and
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: me and Ken will go on the inside and I
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: can pick up where I left off, keep searching legally
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and everywhere I want. But it turned out they couldn't
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: get permits to go in. So everything became about, you know,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: the criminal investigation, and the only thing the criminal investigation
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: could come up with was this Potdalora story. And Potdalora
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: spun it even crazier, you know, and you know, with
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: more murderers and like cutting up my son and feeding
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: him to the sharks and stuff like he's schizophrenic. He
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: he was, Yeah, so anyway, it's just you know, and
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: they bought that hook line and saying oh yeah, I
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: mean the TV people they made little re enactments. Oh
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: it was horrible. And then this guy Carson, who was
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: this x d E A guy he was mad at
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: me and offended that I didn't embrace his ideas. I'm like,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I remember when I first met him, and
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: they fired up the cameras and you know, Carson's like,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: tell me everything you can't You didn't say I can't
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: tell me everything you know about your son. I'm like, wow,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: you know, how can I tell you everything I know
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: about my son? Like in five minutes on the television camera.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: And so I just told him the same story I've
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: been telling for a year, you know, like I knew
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: my son. I raised him in the wilderness. He uh
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: had been on a six month trip through south through
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Central America. He'd done some really radical, crazy things already.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: He has a lot of experience and uh, and I
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: laid it all out and then it was like he
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: didn't even hear me, you know, and then anything I
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: ever told him. He just dismissed it, and it is
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: everything was about his hypothesis, you know. And I'm a scientist,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: and it's just it's hard for me to throw away
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: data or to discount things, you know, like I don't.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to do that. I can't. It doesn't
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: work for me to like throw away data to make
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: something fit what I want to believe. And that's all
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: this guy did, and just story. Everything had to fit
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: the story. Oh it was painful. And then he was
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: like offended that I wasn't like thankful to him for this.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't like watching reenactment of your son
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: being dismembered by a machete. Well, I don't know. You can.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: You could probably tell it to me just as well
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: as I could say, and it's it's not exactly something
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: you want to see, you know. And I just but
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: you were told to avoid it. Yeah, he said, don't
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: watch it, you know. I mean, but I was in
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: a hotel and it was advertised, you know, like what
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: was the show called Missing Dial M Missing Dial? Yeah,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know that, you know what. Yeah, I'm glad
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: you just said that, because that's a stupid question when
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: I asked you what it was like, Yeah, I mean
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: anybody should be like yeah, I just it's just it was, Ah,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know so anyway, Um, you know, maybe I
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: was too hard on the TV, Like my agent seems
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: to think I was too hard on the television people
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: and in the book, yeah, in the book, and other
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: people think I wasn't hard enough. I tried to be
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: honest about how I felt. All I did was tell
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: all I do in the book how I felt. You know.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I used to be friends with the writer Chris off It,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: and uh, he wrote a book that was very critical
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: of his family, and someone pointed out to him, uh,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: you know how he didn't really do a good job
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: telling their side of the story. And he said, we'll
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: have them write their own fucking book. Well, they made it,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. They already made their own show.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: They made their own show. He had like, this is
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: your turn. Now that's how I feel exactly. That's like
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: like they got plenty of you know, people like I
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: shouldn't give them an audience. I mean, they got all
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: the audience they want. And I was grateful for the help,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: and I was grateful for what they did, and I
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: mean they convinced me, and I was ready to believe
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: him because I could. I gave up, you know. And
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: plus you don't hire a consultant to argue with him, right,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. It was kind of a wild ride,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: you know. Like I I read it because I knew
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I was coming here, so I had to read it again,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: you know. Um, I mean I've read it a lot
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: of times. I can I can read it pretty quick,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: and and when I read it sometimes I can't believe
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: all that stuff happened, you know what I mean. It's
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: sort of like it was a really unexpected turn. I
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: was not anticipating. You know. I'm respecting your Um, I'm
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: respecting your desire to not just divulge everything because I
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: get it, you know, Um, I think people will buy
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: your boat. I want people to buy your boat. But
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to do this in a in a in
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: a way that doesn't have any spoilers. Um. How when
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I read it, I I to be honest with you.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: In the end, I didn't. I don't feel that you're naive.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: You've being naive, But in the end, I wasn't. I'm
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: not entirely convinced about the certain I'm not entirely convinced
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: what happened to him. Yeah, well I know how convinced
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: are you? So you know, it kind of kind of
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: goes different ways, you know, Like I'm I don't think
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: i'd ever you know, that's a really good question. I'm
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: I I'm sure sure that he died either from a
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: snake bite or a fallen tree, you know, because there
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: wasn't any evidence that he was you know, like no,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: nothing was stolen, nothing, there's no you know, he wasn't.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: There's no marks on the bones, you know what I mean.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: And it was just I've seen his bones. I saw
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: his bones, So I just I can't see him being murdered,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: you know, like it didn't there there's a chance, you know,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: like aliens could have abducted him, killed him. I mean
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: there's that chance, but I'm really the odds of that
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: are so so super small, like having been there and
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: where it happened, and who would who would have done it?
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: I just I can't, like, um, you know, I've been
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: around law enforcement enough now, like you know, and it
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: sort of sounds cliche, but what would be the motive?
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: You know, And it's just that nobody would have any
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: motive for doing it. Um, you know, the miners wouldn't
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: have any motive for doing it. So I'm pretty you know, like, yeah,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: at least that he died a natural death, you know,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: and that would be natural death. I know that he
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: was killed by a tree or a snake bite occupation.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, I guess you're not a man.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Not a man, right, Yeah, that's all I am with. Yeah,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: I think it's maybe it's maybe it's natural to die
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: from somebody else, but I would kind of That's kind
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: of the dividing line for me. Is an actual death
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: is where you die by like accident or nature, you
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like, I guess accidents kind of
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: fall into nature like an act of God. You know,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: an earthquake or even a car wreck could be considered
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: unless somebody's drunk and they hit you and then somebody
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: killed you. But if you know, if somebody's looking in
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: their glove box and you t bone them and I
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: don't know, um so um. Outside of the conclusion in
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: the book, you just spam how how long trying to
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: find find an answer? It was like two years, you mean,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: and then that's all you thought about for two years. Well,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I did, I did do some other stuff,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: you know, but yeah, it was always on my mind. Yeah,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: I mean it was very It was definitely a relief
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: to to kind of get I mean, I'd still be looking,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like I don't know when
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: I would have stopped, to know when I would have stopped.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Did you have some loss in in your relief though? Also,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: or you're like, oh, what what the hell do I
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: do with my life now? M hm? Well, I definitely
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: had a loss. Um, you know, I do I feel
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: you know, it sounds not a corny but I do
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: I feel broken, you know. Um, I put a lot.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was my son, you know. I mean
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: if any of you guys lost your kids, you probably
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: feel similarly, you know. I mean it's especially if you
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: love your son and put stuff and or your daughter,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: you know, or your wife. But I'm really fortunate, you know.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: I have my wife and my daughter and my friends,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, I've got work and and it was
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: worth it to write the book. I didn't write the
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: book to make any money. I didn't write the book.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't write the book for money, you know. I
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: wrote the book because I needed to tell the story.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: I wrote the book for me, and I wrote the
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: book for my my family and my friends, so they
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: knew what happened, you know. And I wondered about that
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: because I used to field that anytime someone wrote a
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: book about something damaging, that them having written a book
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: about it was evidence that they were no longer damaged,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: because it's hard to write books. Huh. Well, you know
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like you have to step outside
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: of it and look at it. And so I was
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: curious before meeting you. I was curious if you were
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: um like, to what degree you were a mess, to
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: what degree you were damaged by it or came out different,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: and how you came into it, you mean, ended writing
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: the book. Yeah, my dad lost you know, beforefore I
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: was born. My father lost his son, right, and you
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: would you could hang out with him. I imagine there's
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: people that knew him for ten years and didn't know
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: that that happened. Uh huh. Well, I got stuck, right
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: because I ran down there to look from my son.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: I wrote an email. I called people in CoA streak.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: I said, my son's missing, my son's missing. I gotta
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: find him you gotta find him, Help me find him,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: you know. And I ran down there and I looked,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: and then people are like, hey, you know, I had
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: to tell the story over and over and over, you know,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: and and then it just through a natural progression. It was,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm still looking for him, and I he's
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: probably dead, but and people wanted to hear the story.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: And then there was the TV show, so I got
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: used to telling the story, you know, like from the beginning.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: It's just it's like, you know, something like a stink
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: in a room. You know, in your house, you've got
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: a stink, you don't notice it anymore because you've lived
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: with it, you know, Or a pain that you have
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: to live with you don't hardly notice it. Or a sound,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So having to tell the
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: story was a natural thing. And when I was down there,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: you know, like I'm an older guy, so my memories
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: kind of shaky, so I had to write everything down.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: And I ran down there with the notebook that had,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: you know, like the sketches for the remodel I was
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: doing in my house and the shopping list to go
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: dip netting. And then I ran down there with that
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: notebook and then it was phone numbers the people to
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: talk to and notes of what people said, and and
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: then that notebook was filled up. And then it was
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: stories and I was recording what people you know, that
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: what they described, I was transcribing as they told me stories.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: And and then that was sort of I had to
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: process what I was thinking, like what happened? Who? Who? How?
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: What could have happened? And how did I feel? And
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: and then it just you know, turned into three or
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: four journals and I was like, wow, this is this
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: is kind of a book. People would I want to
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: straighten this out so people really know what happened here,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: especially after the TV show, You know, did you make
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: any effort um two or was there any effort needed
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: to make you know, some of these officials that weren't
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: issuing permits or folks trying to really tell you like
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing that they knew the
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: conclusion once. Once you found it, you would be like, hey,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: not every white dude missing a kid is crazy. Here's
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: a good example. Like I was saying, well, like I
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: was saying, well, here is he Well, here's what happened
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: is um you know, it became big news because everybody
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: had already heard about it, and in Costa Rico, when
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: they found the body, you know, it was still news.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: So it was kind of clear to everybody what had
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: actually happened, in the sense that it didn't really match
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: up with with the TV show. People were freaked out
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: by the TV show, at least in that area, you know,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: because of the way they portrayed the people who lived. Yeah,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: there's like a handful of murderers walking around him among
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: you right, Yeah, with machetes, people up feed them to
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: sharks and they're just like hanging out now in town exactly.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: And they were freaked out. And I feel like that's
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: part of the reason that, you know, my son's remains
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: were found, is because this village was freaked out and
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: they sent you know this, really this is really a
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: miner in there to really look and I because and
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: he did, he found him. So um So anyway, I'm
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like I feel, I don't know, I don't
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I didn't write the book to tell like, oh,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: I told you so you know what I mean. I
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: didn't do it for that. I just I don't know.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: I I there's a lot of I mean, I wept
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: a lot as I wrote that book. You know, there's
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of harden there. I could never write another
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: book like that, you know. I mean, I mean, I
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: don't think. I hope I never have to write a
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: book like I would never do that, I can. I
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: think I can only write one book like that, you know.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: And and what what is the books out now? No,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: it'll be out in February, like, um, February is the
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: release date. So in the in the process of writing
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: the book, you I mean, you obviously were very close
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: with your son. I knew a lot about him. But
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: did you learn you did some research, you found out
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: some things people he meant, did you learn more about
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: him or things you didn't know? Oh? For sure? Yeah,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: I mean because you got into his emails. Well I
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: got into his emails. Yeah, And I mean his friends
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: gave me some of the stuff like from his you know,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: high school days and things like that and college days.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: And I did I learned a lot more about him,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: you know, things maybe that as a parent you really
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: don't want to know. Um, but you kind of suspect
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: and uh. And he's a normal kid, you know, and
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: uh and I think too um to like take his
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: emails and turn them into that second section. So there's
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: three parts to the book. There's sort of raising him,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: and then there's his trip, and then there's looking for
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: him and on his trip through Mexico and Central America. Um,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: you know, to really pick apart his emails and then
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: rewrite them, you know what I mean? That was. I
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, you know, and I kind of, um,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: you know, i'd read them before as emails, but I
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: didn't really. I don't know when when something when you
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: take something and it goes through your eyes and into
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: your head and comes out your fingers, you process it
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: a lot more thoroughly. And I wish I'd had a
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: chance to tell him, you know. Yeah, I I just
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: realized we're saying the book a lot. The name of
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: the book, The Adventurer's Son by Roman dial Um available. Well,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know when we're gonna release this, but we'll
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: make it. Go get the book and uh yeah, thank you,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: thank you, I think they will, and thank you for
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: writing it. I mean, you know, you hear the there's
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: we just even laugh about it where you guys hear
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: books described as like brave. I said, know, what the
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: hell does that mean? But um, it's a brave book,
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: and that aks like retelling of things that are extraordinarily painful. Ah,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: And to to to go in and excruciating detail and
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: to get to a part of a book where someone's
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: calling up a trail and you see that they have
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: a plastic sack with your boy's bones. Um, it's the
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: heart wrenching The Adventures Son by Roman Dial and uh, Roman,
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on the show. Thanks
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: for having me. It's a pleasure to meet you. Appreciate it.