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How Water Shapes a Life with Frances Oyung | Go Wildly Podcast · Go Wildly Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to Season 2 of Go Wildly podcast.
• 0:04
  We are Emily and Heather, 2 childhood friends who carry a
• 0:07
  mic into wild places like rivers, trails, and forests with
• 0:12
  wild people to host raw, honest conversations about adventure,
• 0:16
  healing, identity, and the transformative power of nature.
• 0:20
  In this season, we're centering the voices of people who call
• 0:23
  Southern Oregon home. Outdoor enthusiasts and outdoor
• 0:26
  professionals whose lives have been shaped, changed, or are
• 0:30
  continually influenced by time outside.
• 0:32
  Come along as together we go wildly.
• 0:37
  Hey, you wildly wonder. Thank you so very much for
• 0:41
  listening to the podcast. It means the world to us.
• 0:45
  OK, I have a little mission. Pause the podcast right here.
• 0:48
  Make. Sure that you're subscribed to
• 0:50
  this guy, OK. It's going to be a fun time over
• 0:52
  here. And if you so wish, we would
• 0:55
  love a five star review. Or whatever your heart's
• 0:58
  inclined to do. Also, leaving us a review truly
• 1:01
  helps the algorithm and we appreciate you doing that.
• 1:04
  Thank you so very much. Also, little tidbit over on
• 1:07
  Instagram, we're having so much fun over there.
• 1:09
  Lots of behind the scene footage, some PO VS just some
• 1:13
  fun unhinged content. If you love the pod, that's
• 1:16
  where we go. Wildly for sure.
• 1:18
  So don't forget to follow us over there.
• 1:20
  OK, back to the show. Cameras She'll be on phone
• 1:25
  camera for some social media and blog camera for for the pod.
• 1:31
  Itself. Well if you want to trade off
• 1:32
  I'll I can row too so. Perfect, cool and.
• 1:36
  What's what day is it the 9th? Today is February, March 9th.
• 1:40
  Where are we? It's.
• 1:42
  March 9th. March 9th and we're floating
• 1:45
  the. Robe with.
• 1:49
  Francis, I do have to say one thing.
• 1:52
  Francis is my favorite. I think I might mention this to
• 1:54
  you. Maybe when we chatted that one
• 1:56
  time, maybe I didn't. Francis is my favorite name of
• 2:00
  all. Time.
• 2:01
  It's funny because I've always had not not really liked it.
• 2:05
  It feels like an old, it's like kind of like Mildredy, but
• 2:10
  that's good to hear. Yeah, no, it's my favorite.
• 2:12
  I. Sometimes think of changing my
• 2:15
  name. What would you change it to?
• 2:18
  I was thinking of a bird named like Vireo or something, but
• 2:21
  then I'd have to be in some hippie place to get for that to
• 2:23
  work and I have to leave here. Everyone here knows me.
• 2:27
  Right. Yeah, Yeah.
• 2:28
  Well. Let me tell you, I had a
• 2:29
  epiphany dream one time and I had a daughter and her name was
• 2:33
  Francis Sound. Sounds like you know the Puget
• 2:36
  Sound and I don't know. So it's always stuck with me.
• 2:41
  But I had boys there. You go there are.
• 2:43
  Francis Friends, boys. Yeah, yeah, I guess I could.
• 2:46
  But you know they're. Named now that.
• 2:48
  Pressure. That was a hard sale.
• 2:49
  And you're done with making kids.
• 2:51
  We knew a lot. I know a lot.
• 2:52
  In fact, the district fishbio is Francis.
• 2:55
  He goes by Frank. I know.
• 2:56
  I've known a lot of Francis's with an I, Francis Ford Coppola.
• 3:00
  He doesn't go by Frank, probably, but yeah, Francis.
• 3:03
  Maybe he does at home. I.
• 3:05
  Love it. Clean your dishes.
• 3:06
  Clean up your dishes you son of a bitch.
• 3:09
  And yeah, if you want to push us off while I introduce you, OK.
• 3:13
  Sounds good. We're, I'm assuming we're, we're
• 3:16
  recording and we've been recording for a moment.
• 3:18
  Perfectly have. Hi there.
• 3:22
  Welcome to the Go Wildly podcast.
• 3:24
  We're back. We're back on the river today.
• 3:27
  On Go Wildly we are joined and very honoured to be joined by
• 3:32
  Francis. Oh young, is that how you
• 3:34
  pronounce it? Oh, young.
• 3:35
  Oh, young. Oh, you're so young.
• 3:38
  Yeah. Perfect.
• 3:38
  There's no. Oi, it's if you think of it's a
• 3:42
  Chinese name and if you think of Young, then just put an O in
• 3:45
  front of it. Oh, Young.
• 3:46
  That's how my that's how my family pronounced it.
• 3:52
  Are you Chinese? Perfect.
• 3:53
  My father's parents were immigrants from China.
• 3:58
  One of them was an illegal immigrant and he was born in the
• 4:03
  United States in Grass Valley, CA.
• 4:05
  I know that place well. Yeah, yeah, beautiful Nevada
• 4:09
  County. It is beautiful spot.
• 4:11
  Yeah. Off the beaten path I feel like
• 4:13
  in California too, like. Well, for probably getting that
• 4:16
  for for being within a few hours of the Bay Area, Yeah, right.
• 4:19
  Yeah, OK. And so Francis's story begins in
• 4:23
  the mountains. Her parents met as volunteer ski
• 4:27
  patrollers downstream or in the Tahoe Basin in the early 1960s,
• 4:33
  and from the start, her life revolved around snow, rivers,
• 4:38
  and wild places. Even after her family moved to
• 4:42
  Oakland, CA, skiing, camping, and hiking in the Sierra
• 4:46
  remained core to her identity. As a teenager, Francis
• 4:50
  discovered whitewater boating on the Stanislaus River, and when
• 4:53
  the new Maloney's Dam flooded that Canyon in the late 1970s,
• 4:57
  it sparked A lifelong commitment to river conservation.
• 5:01
  We spoke with Bill Cross. Recently.
• 5:04
  So, and you probably know my parents were also involved in
• 5:08
  the Save the Stanislaus campaign, so lots of great
• 5:12
  connections there. Then she went on to study
• 5:15
  environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, focusing on Natural
• 5:19
  History and environmental education, and built a career
• 5:22
  rooted in protecting water, fish habitat and public lands.
• 5:27
  After a wide range of seasonal outdoor jobs including raft
• 5:30
  guiding, teaching field courses, working in state parks, and even
• 5:34
  serving as an owl hooter for the Medford BLM, Francis settled in
• 5:39
  the Rogue Valley in 1992. She spent decades working in
• 5:43
  public agencies and nonprofits across Southwest Oregon and is
• 5:47
  now retiring from her role as Rogue River Keeper Program
• 5:51
  Manager with the Klamath Siskew Wildland Center.
• 5:55
  Francis brings a lifetime of advocacy, river miles and deep
• 6:00
  rooted care for wild places and we are so excited to talk with
• 6:04
  her about the moments that shaped her and what it means to
• 6:07
  protect the places you love. Nicely done, Emily.
• 6:12
  I mean, our guests provide the content and then and then we
• 6:16
  rework it to go wildly vibes. Yeah, yes, amazing.
• 6:23
  We're on our first first little riffle.
• 6:24
  Yeah, it's my first day on the water this calendar year.
• 6:29
  Happy New Water Year and it is March 9th and we are floating
• 6:37
  today on the beautiful Rogue River from Tuval State Park to
• 6:43
  Fishers Ferry. We're going to go past some
• 6:46
  really historic isn't the right word, but significant locations
• 6:54
  and sites. We just launched downstream of
• 6:57
  the big Medford Water Commission intake for the drinking water
• 7:02
  system in the summertime. So this is a lot of people.
• 7:05
  You know, one of the things I work on a lot is water.
• 7:08
  And so many people don't even know where their drinking water
• 7:13
  comes from, where their wastewater goes.
• 7:15
  You know, I talk to people in the Bear Creek Valley who think,
• 7:18
  ohh, yeah, I drink out of Bear Creek.
• 7:21
  No, no, don't do that. I mean, if you're in Ashland,
• 7:25
  you drink out of a tributary to Bear Creek, right?
• 7:28
  But yeah, no ones no ones drinking out of Bear Creek,
• 7:31
  though at once there was a lot of their people were and people
• 7:34
  were putting wastewater into Bear Creek, which there's a
• 7:37
  whole history to why we haven't remember that.
• 7:39
  Yeah, that was in well and it was in the even talent well.
• 7:44
  And then Eagle Point had a their sewage system went into Little
• 7:50
  Butte Creek. OK, so, but one of the big so at
• 7:54
  one point I worked for Rogue Valley Sewer, which is a special
• 7:58
  district that does a lot of the sewage conveyance.
• 8:02
  And the reason that district was originated in the 60s was
• 8:06
  because there was so many little cities dumping raw sewage or
• 8:11
  barely treated sewage into waterways that the public
• 8:15
  health, the doctors in the area were really concerned there was
• 8:17
  going to be a huge public health outbreak resulting from all the,
• 8:23
  these little towns, you know, Phoenix Talent, Eagle Point,
• 8:26
  Jacksonville are trying to deal with their sewage.
• 8:29
  And so that's why they set up this big regional plant, which
• 8:33
  is we're actually going to go past it.
• 8:35
  And so pretty everyone except in Jackson County, all the all the
• 8:41
  cities except Ashland has their own sewage treatment plant and
• 8:45
  their their wastewater right now goes in to Ashland Creek right
• 8:52
  before it enters Bear Creek. You'd think that we would.
• 8:56
  Learn from from cities of the past, like in England and in
• 9:02
  France that were dumping bodies and sewage and.
• 9:07
  Hand place to throw things. Right into their waterways and
• 9:10
  then having cholera outbreaks and.
• 9:13
  Hey I need to let me answer this really quick.
• 9:17
  Go, go. Make it quick.
• 9:19
  Hello. It's me, Heather.
• 9:29
  Oh, hi. Hey.
• 9:30
  I got to call you back. I'm so sorry.
• 9:31
  I can't talk right now. Thank you so much.
• 9:33
  I got to go. OK, Bye.
• 9:35
  Well done. Who was it?
• 9:39
  Well, I thought, so I am waiting on a really important phone
• 9:42
  call. Like literally hours, days
• 9:44
  matter for an appraisal on a house and that is big.
• 9:46
  So I thought it was my appraisal.
• 9:48
  It's not. Well, it's my the guy that at
• 9:50
  Southern Oregon Subaru when I was like, Dang, OK, I'm gonna
• 9:54
  go. I can't.
• 9:55
  Talk about. Not who I thought you were.
• 9:57
  I'm so sorry. I just I I do have that one
• 10:00
  call, but they should be emailing me and not calling it
• 10:03
  anyway. But thank you guys.
• 10:05
  Thank you go wildly listeners. It's real time unscripted work
• 10:10
  anyway. We all have real lives.
• 10:12
  Yes, thank you. And we I was thinking the same
• 10:14
  thing to myself but more like you think we would find a better
• 10:17
  solution to our waste by now, right?
• 10:20
  Like, well, and I mean, the good news is for most wastewater
• 10:25
  treatment plant in the United States, thanks to the technology
• 10:30
  and the Clean Water Act, there is a higher degree of treatment.
• 10:34
  There's requirements to, yeah, take that sewage and, you know,
• 10:42
  put it, put it to treat it to a higher level.
• 10:44
  So though there are issues, challenges with still
• 10:49
  temperature, nutrients and things like that.
• 10:51
  And in fact, this regional plant was sued by several years ago by
• 11:02
  an outfit NW environmental advocates that is resulting in
• 11:06
  their requirement to do a lot of upgrades to comply with Clean
• 11:12
  Water Act regulations. And I think for the most part,
• 11:19
  so this is, this is this is where the regional wastewater
• 11:24
  plant discharges. So what you see there is there's
• 11:28
  a big pipe coming down. So you have, you know, probably
• 11:33
  over 100,000, you know, 150,000 people and their households
• 11:39
  going to a regional treatment plant.
• 11:41
  It goes through some processes, which I encourage anyone to go
• 11:44
  check that out. It's there's a lot of science
• 11:46
  and biology and it's kind of like a yogurt maker.
• 11:49
  They use bacteria. They use bacteria to eat up the
• 11:52
  stuff. Yeah.
• 11:53
  And then they discharge it here. So what you're seeing is after
• 11:57
  their process comes out of a pipe and they put it into the
• 12:01
  Rogue River, which granted is better than putting it into a
• 12:04
  smaller body of water. Dilution is the solution.
• 12:08
  Well, to a degree, yeah, it does.
• 12:10
  We, we we will not deny that dilutions dilutes.
• 12:16
  But do they treat it? Do they treat it well enough
• 12:19
  that it it goes in and doesn't affect things?
• 12:22
  So that is the question and that's what they were sued
• 12:24
  about. So what happened is the rogue
• 12:27
  fly fishers and some other folks got together and and suing,
• 12:32
  suing on the basis of environmental laws is expensive,
• 12:36
  though it's still allowed currently under the Clean Water
• 12:38
  Act. But what what the discharge was
• 12:44
  doing at that time that they proved by quantifying like the
• 12:49
  the Moss growth it affects, it affects the Moss growth and the
• 12:54
  organ, the macro invertebrate Organism.
• 12:57
  So they, they contracted a scientist to collect data and
• 13:03
  showed that down from this discharge point, there are
• 13:09
  alterations to the natural system.
• 13:12
  And that is not what is supposed to happen.
• 13:14
  So, but because the way our legal system and politics and
• 13:18
  funding it's taken like, I don't know, 15 years now they're the
• 13:22
  city of Medford who can, who runs the plant.
• 13:25
  But they because everyone, all the other jurisdictions put into
• 13:29
  it, they, you know, we all contribute through our fees, but
• 13:35
  they will be upgrading it. But what you see a lot of the
• 13:39
  times people call me as Rogue Riverkeeper program manager, say
• 13:42
  I see bubbles and, and bubbles can mean a lot of things.
• 13:46
  And just by looking at bubbles, I can't tell you that it's
• 13:50
  pollution, but I could tell you right there, there are a lot of
• 13:52
  bubbles that came out of the wastewater treatment plant.
• 13:54
  Are those indicative of, of pollution?
• 13:58
  I can't tell by looking at it. It would have to be right.
• 14:01
  So, but certainly you can suspect, but certainly that is
• 14:06
  the discharge outfall point of the wastewater treatment plant.
• 14:09
  It is not drinking, it is not treated to drinking water
• 14:12
  standards, right. But is it, you know, how you
• 14:17
  know, how harmful is it? You know, I'm, I'm not going to
• 14:20
  judge, but they, there was data collected that said it had a
• 14:24
  negative impact and that was the basis of the suit that that the
• 14:27
  City of Medford lost on Clean Water Act.
• 14:31
  So there is a lot of treatment. Facility brings in residential
• 14:34
  and commercial. Water anyone?
• 14:36
  Anyone in Jackson County who is hooked up to a municipal sewage
• 14:43
  treatment plant. Not meaning not a septic except
• 14:46
  for the city of Ashland goes here.
• 14:48
  Wow, Jacksonville, all these people who are kind of quasi
• 14:52
  rural, but they're not on the septic, they're going here.
• 14:55
  And so the city of Medford runs the facility.
• 14:59
  Rogue Valley Sewer for the most part runs the pipes, which is,
• 15:02
  you know, just getting. That's a big system.
• 15:06
  It is a big system and Gold Hill actually just will be joining
• 15:09
  because they so we are up stream of Gold Hill.
• 15:14
  Some people don't always know where we are in geography.
• 15:17
  So they they will have to pump their wastewater up here.
• 15:21
  OK, but they had their own sewage treatment plant for many
• 15:25
  years that the that the tiny city Gold Hill ran itself.
• 15:29
  And that's hard. I mean, you've been on a City
• 15:32
  Council of a small city, you know, to have the funds, the
• 15:35
  expertise, the staff, the laugh, you know, the.
• 15:38
  The tax. Knowledge the tax base to run
• 15:41
  that effectively. So for many years the city Gold
• 15:44
  Hill ran it very poorly. They then contracted to Rogue
• 15:47
  Valley sewer who were sewer profession you know wastewater
• 15:49
  management professionals. They ran it and their assessment
• 15:53
  after running it a few years, it's like you're going to need
• 15:55
  to either totally upgrade this facility or hook into the
• 15:59
  regional plant. And so that happened, You know,
• 16:03
  the city, the Gold Hill people had to agree to do that.
• 16:05
  Like we will pay what we need to.
• 16:08
  We will become a part of the special district.
• 16:10
  But they, they did because they, they weighed, they weighed it.
• 16:12
  You know, you could of course, what are we going to do here?
• 16:14
  We going to just have a crappy wastewater plant or we going to
• 16:18
  join the one that you know, with the rest of them.
• 16:20
  And you know, it's, it's basic economics and that when you
• 16:23
  start pooling the resources, you can get better stuff.
• 16:27
  So. And wastewater sewer treatment
• 16:29
  that includes anything that's coming through the drain from a
• 16:33
  home toilet, sink, dishwasher, washing machine.
• 16:37
  Yes, but. Not the things that come off of
• 16:40
  the landscape. So a lot of times when people
• 16:44
  are walking on pavement on a street, you see a a sewer in a
• 16:49
  drain and it's called a sewer drain and you see it in a
• 16:51
  parking lot in in some places like big old cities like
• 16:57
  Portland, a lot of those will or used to go right to the same
• 17:03
  system that the toilets were flushing going to.
• 17:05
  Those are called combined sewer systems.
• 17:07
  We actually we're so modern here.
• 17:10
  We actually have our separate, which is good because when you
• 17:13
  have a big rain event, it just that's why in Portland they had
• 17:17
  huge called combined sewer overflows.
• 17:21
  They would blow it into the Willamette way you're overrun
• 17:24
  and even the city of Grants Pass.
• 17:26
  So one of my issues is that the city of Grants Pass, they are
• 17:31
  very challenged by different aspects of their infrastructure.
• 17:35
  When they get a big rain event every once in a while, it's like
• 17:39
  we can handle it. It's gone into the river
• 17:42
  untreated. Yeah.
• 17:43
  And yeah, Hallelujah. It's usually when there's a big
• 17:47
  flow. So there's dilution.
• 17:49
  But it's just, I think everyone will agree, including the public
• 17:53
  works department at Grace Pass, they do not really want to be
• 17:56
  putting raw sewage into the river.
• 17:57
  Yeah. So.
• 17:59
  And that's a that's that's to me, something that I talked to
• 18:03
  them, I talked to the public about, you know, like these guys
• 18:07
  we just met at the boat ramp. He's like, I wish they would
• 18:09
  change the river path to do here.
• 18:11
  Like, OK, they'll that'll cost money and that'll be some
• 18:16
  decisions and some policy and politics.
• 18:19
  And so while, you know, everyone wants to drink clean water, it's
• 18:24
  like, OK, well, that doesn't come for free, you know, and
• 18:27
  there's impacts that are happening.
• 18:29
  So anyways, you can tell that I'm really into this this topic.
• 18:36
  Well, how did that become a thing?
• 18:38
  How did you become so passionate about water and clean water?
• 18:41
  So I when you have the, the where did we, you know, where
• 18:46
  did I meet the outdoors? You said in my intro, I've been
• 18:50
  in the outdoors all my life. My parents went backpacking for
• 18:54
  their honeymoon right in like 1963 kind of people.
• 19:00
  And so, so that that was that's just always been the case and.
• 19:05
  They took you along. For all the not on the
• 19:07
  honeymoon, but yeah, but no. In some.
• 19:10
  Sense Yeah, I did. My first backpacking trip was
• 19:13
  with them when I was, I think 14.
• 19:15
  They waited, you know, 14. My brother was 12.
• 19:18
  We could carry our own stuff. Yeah, but so I moved here in 92
• 19:25
  to be A and I had been a transient outdoor seasonal
• 19:31
  worker kind of dirtbag for a while, a couple years.
• 19:34
  And I moved here to work as a hooter.
• 19:37
  Yeah, tell us what that is. Real quick.
• 19:38
  Not the not maybe what you're thinking hooter.
• 19:41
  So that's the that was the vernacular back in the days of
• 19:47
  the Northwest Forest Plan and the listing of the northern
• 19:52
  spotted owl on the endangered species list.
• 19:55
  There came these requirements to in our forest there was.
• 20:01
  An animal that was threatened by logging and the destruction of
• 20:05
  habitat, that was its main issue then.
• 20:08
  And so then there came requirements to survey for them.
• 20:11
  So folks, the federal land agencies, BLM forester is here.
• 20:18
  And even some of the private timber folks did a lot of
• 20:22
  surveying for spotted owls. And one of the amazing things
• 20:26
  about spotted owls is they are actually incredibly easy to
• 20:31
  survey for you. You call out and you call out
• 20:34
  into the woods for them and they'll say I'm over here, I'm
• 20:37
  over here. Yeah, me and my mate, we're over
• 20:40
  here. They want to be found.
• 20:42
  No, they're just like, who are you?
• 20:44
  Yeah, we're here. Why are you calling us?
• 20:47
  So what? Heather answering the phone.
• 20:49
  Yes, it's Heather. I can't talk.
• 20:51
  Right now, but right here, so they So what Hooters, the
• 20:55
  surveyors would do is we would go out and actually hoot like a
• 20:59
  spotted owl in these, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a, you
• 21:05
  know, a designated area that was assumed or through, you know,
• 21:10
  visual. That's probably, you know,
• 21:12
  either historically there's a birds or looks like habitat.
• 21:16
  So that's why we're called Hooters, because we actually
• 21:18
  hooted. Can you hoot?
• 21:19
  For us. I I can't.
• 21:21
  Wait, just wait a moment. I got to get the iPhone ready.
• 21:26
  Well, so nowadays, nowadays they actually have Hooters use a
• 21:33
  mechanical recording device because that is more uniform.
• 21:37
  But back in our day, which was the early 90s, we had to learn
• 21:41
  to hoot. And because, and I would always
• 21:46
  liken it to teaching people it's you start with a monkey call
• 21:49
  like, and if you could do a monkey call like, it's basically
• 21:56
  you do it in a pattern. Woo.
• 22:01
  It's a short, short, short, long.
• 22:06
  And, and there's also all these variations of agitated female.
• 22:12
  And you know, you know, they get really agitated, like why are
• 22:19
  you calling me? So basically it's all just stuff
• 22:25
  like that. And if if a person listen, you
• 22:28
  know, we would listen to audio recordings and then you know
• 22:31
  the. That's basically.
• 22:39
  That's so cool. It is.
• 22:41
  I'm going to practice that because I I will have you know,
• 22:44
  I won an animal sounds contest when I was nine years old for my
• 22:48
  monkey sound very you're. Just a step away.
• 22:51
  You're a step away. I like a good Turkey and I get
• 22:56
  them going. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:58
  There you go. We're not so different from from
• 23:02
  the birds and the. Bees.
• 23:04
  No and if you talk about my history, then that was actually
• 23:08
  my entry was birds. So I did, when I was in like 3rd
• 23:14
  or 4th grade, I did like the science fair, like backyard bird
• 23:19
  survey at my bird feeder and, you know, reports on animals to
• 23:24
  do a bird, you know, and then in like 7th grade, I was home
• 23:30
  schooled and with a lot of other birders.
• 23:34
  So we did a lot of birders. It was a bunch of yeah, that
• 23:38
  some of the compatriots in the in the home school were, were
• 23:44
  handsome teenage boys who were all birders and they were also
• 23:48
  skateboarders. So they're like they had this
• 23:50
  amazing combo of like, you know, very cool the early
• 23:55
  skateboarding days and then reading Peterson bird guide and
• 23:59
  discussing clutch sizes, habitat.
• 24:02
  Skateboarders, Skateboarders. That kind of goes on the topic
• 24:05
  we were chatting about on the way over.
• 24:07
  It's like so people, every single person, 7 billion on the
• 24:11
  planet, you know, plus every individual, you can't put
• 24:15
  anybody in a box. Everybody has their own
• 24:17
  individual box, like their interests and their hobbies.
• 24:20
  That's good beliefs and values and all the thing and I love it.
• 24:24
  It's so cool. There are so many boxes we're
• 24:27
  we're waffles, all these compartments made-up of one
• 24:33
  delicious thing and all these different things that we can be
• 24:37
  with our. Syrup in Yeah.
• 24:40
  Some good Maple syrup. Yum, that's so fascinating.
• 24:43
  Wow. So yeah, so birds, how I started
• 24:45
  and then yeah, that's and birds, you know how a lot of people are
• 24:49
  interested in, you know, that's why there's stores like Birds
• 24:52
  Unlimited can like how do you stay in business selling bird
• 24:55
  seed? Good people like birds.
• 24:57
  They like to bring birds in and. Birds are like a gateway drug to
• 25:00
  the outdoors, yeah. They're everywhere.
• 25:03
  There's there's a funny book, like there's a kind of just like
• 25:07
  dumb birds, but it's like, yeah, there's suckers are everywhere.
• 25:10
  You can't get away from them and next thing you know, you know,
• 25:13
  you're figuring out, oh, that's that one.
• 25:15
  They got weird names like bushed it, Bushed it.
• 25:19
  A boobie? Yeah.
• 25:21
  And they're, they're in cities, they're, they're everywhere,
• 25:23
  wild land, they're, they can be that, that dose of nature.
• 25:31
  And they're very informative of what is happening
• 25:33
  environmentally. Very Yep, Yep, Yep.
• 25:38
  And that's, and that's, you know, when you talk about, I
• 25:42
  know that your podcast is a lot about engaging people in the
• 25:46
  outdoors. And that is one of the things I
• 25:48
  feel is critically important. Why I got, you know, I chose a
• 25:53
  degree in environmental studies because even though, yeah,
• 25:56
  politics and, you know, you know, social things, yeah,
• 25:59
  that'd be good. But we all, in a bipartisan,
• 26:05
  human way, have a connection to the natural world, even if it's
• 26:10
  out on the golf course, right There's.
• 26:14
  Birds out there. And there's something about
• 26:18
  being outdoors that I believe for every human has a certain
• 26:25
  appeal. Yeah, they don't want to be out
• 26:28
  there in the rain and maybe they don't want to get dirty, but
• 26:31
  there's a certain like, this is a beautiful day, you know,
• 26:36
  that's the gateway. It's a beautiful day, you know,
• 26:38
  Yeah. I could just be in a closet
• 26:40
  staring at my screen. Let's get outside.
• 26:44
  So yes, Yeah. So.
• 26:45
  So getting people out is important.
• 26:48
  So when getting into water, part of water for me, I wanted to
• 26:53
  live here. So a lot of you talk about is
• 26:56
  Southern Oregon. It is hard to find a job here.
• 27:00
  Like my dream job was to be a naturalist, right?
• 27:02
  To get people outside and talk about birds and plants.
• 27:06
  You can't find a job here naturalist.
• 27:08
  I mean, maybe if you're working for the Park Service at Crater
• 27:11
  Lake and it would be seasonal or something like that.
• 27:13
  So one of the things it was kind of an industry first there, the
• 27:17
  hooter industry. There was a lot of people
• 27:18
  employed surveying for spotted owls.
• 27:20
  And after that, what happened? A lot of employment based on
• 27:25
  protecting salmon. So when Governor Kitzhaber was
• 27:29
  the first time he was governor, he developed the Oregon Plan for
• 27:32
  Salmon and Watersheds, which legislated, you know, pots of
• 27:36
  money would to go to a new agency called the Oregon
• 27:39
  Watershed Enhancement Board, which still exists, and the
• 27:44
  creation of these things called watershed councils, which were
• 27:47
  legislated, designated. And so there was just a lot of
• 27:52
  employment on on water, watersheds, fish.
• 27:59
  And so my first job in water was coordinating a volunteer water
• 28:05
  quality monitoring program for the Little Butte and the Upper
• 28:10
  Rogue Watershed councils. And I was a contractor.
• 28:13
  I was still kind of a dirtbag. And then I was piercing together
• 28:16
  kind of seasonal work, like I worked at an outdoor shop in
• 28:19
  Ashland. And then I hoot in the summer
• 28:22
  kind of thing. And then I started getting this
• 28:24
  other contract to do basically volunteer monitoring with a
• 28:27
  little science thrown in. Yeah.
• 28:31
  And so then it, I started working for watershed councils
• 28:35
  and, and I work for the Medford Water Commission.
• 28:39
  They have, they have a huge watershed, right that this
• 28:42
  drinking water that most of the drinking water people drink in
• 28:47
  Medford water Commission system, which is again, everybody except
• 28:52
  Ashland pretty who's on municipal water.
• 28:54
  It comes from a huge spring system, big deep springs.
• 28:57
  So that's a, that's a cool place to work.
• 29:02
  And then I, yeah, I worked for the Watersheet Council.
• 29:03
  And so that's kind of how I got into water because it was, you
• 29:07
  know, I might have, you know, there's jobs, there was jobs for
• 29:11
  the federal agencies, but a lot of those, you know, they were
• 29:18
  very timber related. I didn't necessarily want to
• 29:20
  work on facilitating that process and otherwise I didn't
• 29:26
  have a special life. I couldn't, I couldn't work as a
• 29:27
  hydrologist. I couldn't work.
• 29:29
  I wasn't specialized enough to work as a botanist.
• 29:32
  I did some contracts for the feds to do bird like I did bird
• 29:36
  surveys and things like that. But yeah, employment is a big
• 29:40
  driver and that's. Has it gotten better?
• 29:43
  I don't know. So like, I just because I'm
• 29:46
  retiring, I flew my own job, right?
• 29:48
  And we're actually hiring this week.
• 29:50
  And I was shocked at how many highly qualified people of
• 29:54
  various kinds with various backgrounds, you know, one of
• 29:59
  them you even interviewed on the pod.
• 30:02
  And yeah, I and I thought, oh, man, these people are so
• 30:10
  skilled, educated backgrounds of various kinds that it was very
• 30:16
  hard to choose. But because my job is a mix of a
• 30:21
  lot of things, it's like it doesn't really help to be full
• 30:25
  on science or hydrology because there's so much like, just, you
• 30:28
  know, volunteer management and campaign policy like
• 30:32
  relationship building. Yeah.
• 30:34
  And so events. Events.
• 30:36
  Yeah. And networking.
• 30:37
  And like, a lot of what I do is just because I've lived here for
• 30:40
  30 something years, I'd like. Yeah.
• 30:42
  That guy, know that guy, know how to call this person.
• 30:45
  Yeah. Our kids went to high school
• 30:46
  together. I know that person for sure.
• 30:49
  So small, you know? Yeah, which is one of the great
• 30:54
  things about Southern Oregon and you totally being and I mean,
• 30:57
  you didn't y'all didn't leave. Yeah.
• 30:58
  And there's a reason and there's a lot of reasons people come
• 31:01
  here and stay. And it's it is an amazing.
• 31:04
  You know, people ask me when I retire.
• 31:06
  So you're going to go somewhere. It's like, why would I leave
• 31:08
  this place? This is one of the greatest
• 31:11
  place is certainly in the United States to be, in my view, for
• 31:14
  what I like to do. And also because I know people,
• 31:17
  right? I mean, yeah, the community for
• 31:20
  for me having been here so long and I'm sociable.
• 31:23
  And I remember, Oh yeah, I've met you before.
• 31:27
  Is just amazing. Community.
• 31:29
  Yeah, and I'm not going to replicate that anywhere at this
• 31:32
  point in my life. Hard, yeah, community is hard to
• 31:34
  build. It's hard, but it has it's
• 31:36
  different. Like some of it's easy.
• 31:38
  You can get tied in pretty quickly to a group, but then but
• 31:41
  to make the deeper connection, right is like to really have a
• 31:44
  solid like bond with your community in a sense that it's
• 31:50
  that's a little bit that's takes years, right?
• 31:52
  It's a it's a time thing. Yeah, and I definitely, it
• 31:55
  definitely took me years and, you know, I spent a period of
• 31:57
  time, you know, raising kids too.
• 31:59
  So I have that connection to people.
• 32:01
  But anytime people are doing activity together, whether it's
• 32:05
  like kid things or outdoor things and the the, the boating
• 32:09
  water community here is very tight.
• 32:12
  You can just meet like the guys we met at the boat launch.
• 32:14
  You meet those people. They are friendly, they want to
• 32:17
  talk, they want to engage in the thing they love.
• 32:20
  And that's, you know, that's And I also like to ski.
• 32:24
  And so skiers are the same way. Yeah.
• 32:27
  You probably find that in the bike community, too.
• 32:29
  It's like so. You you.
• 32:32
  That's one reason. Another aspect of the pod.
• 32:34
  It's like people of the you know that enjoy the outdoor hobbies
• 32:37
  and stuff. They flock together, too.
• 32:39
  And yeah, and that's a beautiful thing.
• 32:43
  And to be able to have a spot like a hub where like, oh, OK.
• 32:46
  Like, I know I can go. I know I can find a bike
• 32:49
  community here because there is one.
• 32:51
  I know I can find a river community here.
• 32:52
  There is one. Yeah, in fact, I had a lot of
• 32:55
  people connected to Rogue Valley Mountain Bike applying for my
• 32:58
  job. Which where a lot of, you know,
• 33:02
  there's a lot of very applicable crossover.
• 33:04
  But in terms of like the nuts and bolts of what do you know
• 33:07
  about water? I'm not sure that was
• 33:09
  demonstrated to me by Dick Labette in terms of networking
• 33:13
  or community or various things. Nonprofit experience.
• 33:17
  Yeah, that was good. But yeah, I think it's still, I
• 33:20
  think it's still hard. There's a lot of people out
• 33:21
  there and I and I knew a lot of the people who are applying for
• 33:25
  my job and, you know, some of that's got to be hard.
• 33:28
  Some. You know, you're like, oh, I
• 33:29
  love you. But I have to say, no, I know
• 33:32
  this. Some of them, I'm like, Oh no,
• 33:34
  you're applying. I'm going to have to reject you
• 33:36
  because I know you so well and you're fantastic, but not for
• 33:39
  this job. And I mean, I'd like to just
• 33:41
  like, say to those people and you hope.
• 33:43
  They're just applying for the practice.
• 33:45
  Keep their job skills. I know.
• 33:47
  Some people because they even would say it.
• 33:50
  They reach out, Yeah. Say yeah, yeah, I think this is
• 33:53
  the job. I'm like, oh gosh, I know
• 33:55
  they're in. I know it looks glamorous, guys.
• 33:58
  I know I've made it seem so glamorous.
• 34:00
  I don't know, but it's hard work.
• 34:02
  You gotta. Because it's very niche, you
• 34:05
  know, it's and so and so when I see people with really amazing
• 34:09
  expertise and like different niches, I'm like, God, I love
• 34:13
  the niche you're in. I don't know if you can come
• 34:16
  into this niche and especially when all these other people who
• 34:19
  have the niche already or you know or you're competing against
• 34:22
  them. And are they applying in those
• 34:24
  circumstances? Like are they applying because
• 34:26
  there isn't something more nichelized Exactly right.
• 34:31
  Nice. New word?
• 34:32
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:34
  Like some, like some people I say, oh, you're in that niche
• 34:37
  and there is really, you are so good at that and there is no
• 34:40
  employment here for your highly skilled, highly capable way of,
• 34:45
  of doing what you do or it's very limited.
• 34:49
  You know, there's only like 10 jobs and some of you know
• 34:52
  they're all failed by people they don't.
• 34:53
  Hear they may have acquired those skills here so there was a
• 34:58
  niche for them but they're they're they've.
• 35:01
  Experienced out of it yeah right.
• 35:03
  So they came as a as a newbie in some of these fields.
• 35:06
  And then they, they developed and yeah, so yeah, it, it, it,
• 35:12
  it, it was really did not make me think that our region was any
• 35:18
  better for employment. And, and, but partly it's
• 35:21
  because our region is so amazing that it attracts a high number
• 35:25
  of people, you know, that like, I want to live here, let's see
• 35:28
  if I can work here. And it's like, Oh yeah, that's
• 35:30
  the hard part, finding a. Good, you know, Yeah.
• 35:33
  You made some sacrifices. Yeah, you're willing to work a
• 35:35
  restaurant job on the offseason? Become a real estate agent.
• 35:39
  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:41
  But that's one of the reasons why I chose because I was like,
• 35:43
  wow, how, what can I do that clicks all my boxes and.
• 35:47
  I. Can still do my passion projects
• 35:49
  over here. Right, and like I know someone
• 35:52
  who has is becoming a nurse for that reason.
• 35:55
  You know, she has a a spouse who is employed her and I'm I'm
• 36:00
  reading through between the lines here of this person.
• 36:03
  The employment for that for the other member of the couple not
• 36:07
  as didn't pan out as well. And so it looks like I've heard
• 36:10
  this person's it's going to become a nurse.
• 36:11
  Yep. That'll that'll work.
• 36:12
  That'll work. You get your kids through high
• 36:14
  school and figure out what next. I mean, I don't know, It's it's
• 36:19
  hard. It's all a trade off.
• 36:20
  And I know a lot of people who have left, right, left the
• 36:23
  region, like, yeah, I tried for five years to find employment
• 36:27
  here and I'm just going to have to leave.
• 36:29
  And I when I periods of time I have looked like Portland,
• 36:33
  Sacramento, even when my kids are still in school, it's like,
• 36:36
  yeah, I could get back here on the weekends.
• 36:40
  And I was like, I don't want to do that.
• 36:42
  I don't want to commute to Sacramento from here.
• 36:45
  But that's. What I'm going to have to.
• 36:47
  Do I might have to if I want to work in my field?
• 36:50
  Quick pause. This is just snuck up on us that
• 36:54
  blog home. Yeah, so right there.
• 36:57
  Damn. Yeah, and this one's a pretty
• 36:59
  new one. Really.
• 37:01
  Wow. You had to be as close as you
• 37:03
  could. No offense, it's beautiful, but.
• 37:06
  They are right on the edge there.
• 37:10
  That's they'll get a good view of the high water.
• 37:12
  Yes, they will, right at the bottom of their window.
• 37:15
  I always, I used to, I did some beach surveying at one point,
• 37:21
  and it's like the reason there's a Cliff behind your house or the
• 37:25
  reason there's a Cliff right here in front of this house is
• 37:27
  because the water made it. Yeah.
• 37:30
  Oh yeah, and. It's the other side is flat and
• 37:34
  looks flat for a while. So and the water will go over
• 37:37
  there and spread out, but but they have a, they have a huge
• 37:41
  and then they've put in a huge amount of RIP rap here.
• 37:43
  We've got like 5 great blue herons.
• 37:46
  Oh yeah, and they're. Golden nests.
• 37:48
  They've got little twigs in their beaks.
• 37:50
  They are. There's a lot.
• 37:52
  Of there's a oh man, there's more than 5.
• 37:54
  This is great blue Heron nesting area it looks.
• 37:57
  Like, yeah, Rookery they call it.
• 37:58
  Wow. What is it called?
• 38:00
  Rookery. Wow.
• 38:02
  So 12345678910 we hold this. Hold that to try to get that.
• 38:09
  There's so many. Oh my gosh, I wish this is.
• 38:15
  Epic. Look at those great blue herons.
• 38:18
  And they, you know, they, they feed mostly near water and they
• 38:24
  what those trees, those trees are part of the riparian forest,
• 38:27
  right? They're the remnant of the
• 38:29
  riparian forest because there used to be a lot more of that
• 38:34
  where if you look over here, friendly guy, they basically
• 38:39
  have taken out their riparian forest here.
• 38:41
  They got a lot of turf going down to the edge of the water.
• 38:43
  And so they have very little protective buffer between the
• 38:47
  force of the water and that that turf is not going to hold the
• 38:51
  ground there. They'll learn over time.
• 38:54
  And, and, and it's unfortunate because then then they'll make
• 38:57
  an insurance claim and increases everybody's insurance, which,
• 39:02
  which when we talk about policy and politics, it's like, This is
• 39:05
  why land use policy is so important.
• 39:09
  And it's something that's so boring to most people.
• 39:11
  Like, well, I don't care. Let people build where they want
• 39:14
  to build. And so there are some like
• 39:16
  planning, planning commissions in our region that'll say, well,
• 39:20
  we allow for a variance. Just let them if they come and
• 39:22
  ask to build in this other place, let's just let them.
• 39:26
  And no, there's there's a reason, there's a rule and the
• 39:29
  rule is protective, not just for the for the resource like the
• 39:34
  water or the riparian floodplain, but for the property
• 39:38
  owner, right, right. So if a property owner like
• 39:41
  there's an apartment building on a Creek in Medford, they let
• 39:44
  them build. They let them get a variance.
• 39:47
  They built it closer to the Creek within the first like year
• 39:51
  or two. A high water event is like
• 39:53
  swooping out their little plantings and fences because
• 39:58
  they shouldn't have been so close.
• 40:00
  That's why the. They were trying to protect them
• 40:02
  too. Right.
• 40:03
  And so the Planning Commission let them build on this Creek,
• 40:06
  knowing that it's a fish bearing stream, that the Creek isn't
• 40:10
  always the same size, don't you know?
• 40:13
  And because it's mostly made-up of people who are pro
• 40:17
  development and pro tax base, like OK, yeah, you can put
• 40:21
  another unit in, but at what cost to the property owner and
• 40:25
  the resource? Yeah, I agree with that.
• 40:27
  I always think it's funny that that right there is allowed, but
• 40:31
  we're not allowed to build Earth ships here.
• 40:33
  Right. To get into that, yeah.
• 40:36
  I'm like what the hell? We can't have a fully
• 40:38
  functioning. So this so this is so one of the
• 40:44
  partners that I work with is the freshwater Trust and they have a
• 40:47
  particular model they work on related to thermal credits for
• 40:51
  getting shade in on the river to because the wastewater plants
• 40:58
  have to try and keep keep things cooler.
• 41:01
  Well, this is a freshwater trust project that is now getting
• 41:05
  washed away, part because of change, just the the river
• 41:10
  changes. But as we get down, we're going
• 41:12
  to get down to that area where the gravel pit is under threat.
• 41:18
  So historically, rivers over the eons have moved back and forth
• 41:21
  depositing gravel. Gravel is a resource.
• 41:24
  You can see the gravel there. Look at that beautiful gravel in
• 41:27
  Kabul. Yeah, right.
• 41:28
  I want that on my. Yard.
• 41:29
  Yeah. Let's mine it, use it as Rd.
• 41:32
  beds, use it for construction. We'll crush it, you know, So in
• 41:36
  in this part, especially where Bear Creek dumps out, we have a
• 41:39
  lot of gravel mining, gravel and sand mining.
• 41:43
  And they just saw a visible knife river and stuff.
• 41:46
  Well, there's a lot of old pits. And so over the years in the 97
• 41:53
  flood, the big event, which is what that guy at the boat ramp
• 41:56
  was talking about, one gravel pit was captured in the 97
• 42:02
  flood. And what that did is that as we
• 42:05
  go around the bend here, it's completely changed the channel.
• 42:11
  And that means that when the river has captured the gravel
• 42:14
  pit, it's now part of the river channel again.
• 42:17
  It's no longer separate. Yeah.
• 42:19
  It's not a separate isolated little pit.
• 42:22
  It's a it's a part of the river and right here to look for
• 42:32
  agate. The river is starting, it's
• 42:36
  cutting in. It's it's moving the river left,
• 42:39
  right. And the problem here is there is
• 42:45
  a, there's an aggregate pit on the left that is now very close
• 42:51
  to becoming part of the river. And what also is the problem
• 42:54
  there is because our native fish require this aggregate to make
• 42:59
  spawning beds. If the, if the aggregate isn't
• 43:02
  there, the right size cobble in the right places, they it
• 43:06
  doesn't matter how beautiful the water is, they can't spawn.
• 43:09
  That's one of the things I I talk about like for Ashland
• 43:12
  Creek through Lithia Park, they have their drinking water
• 43:14
  reservoir there, which will never go away.
• 43:16
  But they have steelhead coming up Ashland Creek, which is cold
• 43:21
  and clean. But because and you can see it
• 43:24
  when you take a walk in Lithia Park, it's just like the Creek
• 43:27
  is just a boulder field, right? There is like hardly any
• 43:31
  spawning there and. But they're trying.
• 43:34
  They're trying in these tiny little holes, and that's so
• 43:39
  because these fish have such a complicated life cycle, Take
• 43:42
  away that one little bit of having the right size rock in
• 43:45
  the right place, they functionally cannot reproduce.
• 43:49
  So what? Are you resolvable in Lithia
• 43:51
  Creek? Like can they put?
• 43:53
  More they can dump so these little see these little mounds
• 43:56
  of angular rock. So these barbs were put here
• 44:03
  after the 97 flood and this was a very expensive project,
• 44:07
  required engineers, hydrologic studies, lots of money, the
• 44:11
  department Dogami and the Watersh enhancement Board.
• 44:17
  Dogami is like Department of Geologic Aggregate Mineral
• 44:23
  Industries. It's like the Mining rock agency
• 44:27
  regulator. So they got together and they
• 44:30
  put these spurs to try and slow the velocity down because
• 44:34
  there's an aggregate pit on the other side of there and they did
• 44:37
  not want that captured. And it seems to work here
• 44:42
  because the it's not cutting in right.
• 44:47
  But as we get around here, the river used to take a bend to the
• 44:52
  right to the north to this where that guy was talking about
• 44:56
  Salmon Rock. They had this hole.
• 44:58
  The fishermen love this hole at Salmon Rock.
• 45:00
  Everyone still talking about Salmon Rock.
• 45:02
  Salmon Rock is not anywhere near the river now.
• 45:05
  Wow. So the river is and hasn't been
• 45:07
  for since 97. Yeah.
• 45:10
  And so you got these old guys who still reminisce how great
• 45:13
  the fishing was at Salmon Rock. And that's why he says, I wish
• 45:18
  they'd put the river back there. But I mean, that's a.
• 45:22
  Flow. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:24
  People. Didn't move the river away from
• 45:26
  there. Exactly.
• 45:27
  This is not just a. Huge.
• 45:29
  It's not just a huge. Yeah, not just a matter of
• 45:31
  switch, turning the switch so. That's nature.
• 45:35
  You wanna? You want?
• 45:37
  Yeah. We'll get, we'll get mother.
• 45:38
  Nature about it. We're about to get into the pit
• 45:41
  capture area, so the pit that got captured was to the left and
• 45:45
  that's why it dewatered Salmon Rock to the right to the north.
• 45:51
  But we got beautiful views of the table rocks here too.
• 45:55
  Oh my gosh, it's gorgeous. I have not seen this side of it
• 45:59
  because I've never floated this section.
• 46:01
  Same word. Yeah.
• 46:02
  Thank you Francis for suggesting this section of river because
• 46:05
  this is the first time either of Heather and I have.
• 46:09
  I'm looking forward to doing a little like paddle board, so
• 46:11
  this is with my. This is a chill path.
• 46:13
  There is one little class too rapid though.
• 46:18
  OK, at the old gold ray dam site.
• 46:20
  OK, you'll see it though. You can also take out ripe at
• 46:24
  gold Ray right before the rapid though.
• 46:25
  So perfect. Yeah.
• 46:27
  I'm always looking for new little runs because like why
• 46:30
  not? I love opening this up.
• 46:32
  I recently, not recently, it's been a couple of years now, but
• 46:34
  I floated the apple. Howdy friends, quick little
• 46:39
  pause on the adventure. First of all, we just want to
• 46:41
  say thank you. Truly.
• 46:43
  The fact that you're out there listening to this weird little
• 46:45
  outdoor podcast we started means more to us than you probably
• 46:49
  realize. We're just two little feral
• 46:51
  childhood besties that had an idea, grab some microphones and
• 46:55
  decided to record conversations in the wild.
• 46:58
  And somehow you showed up for it.
• 47:00
  Thank you. So if this podcast has ever made
• 47:02
  you laugh, taught you something, or kept you company on a drive,
• 47:06
  a hike, or a day at the river, we I have one small favor to ask
• 47:09
  you. Give the show a follow, tap the
• 47:11
  stars and leave a review if you can.
• 47:14
  And also, here's a little fun exercise.
• 47:16
  Think of the first person who popped in your head while
• 47:19
  listening to this episode, because let's be honest,
• 47:21
  everyone on podcasts, remind somebody of somebody or somebody
• 47:25
  you know that'll enjoy this podcast.
• 47:27
  Send this episode to them. That's honestly the best way
• 47:30
  this little wildly podcast grows.
• 47:33
  All right, thanks for being here with us.
• 47:35
  Now let's go wildly together. It's well, it's nice to also
• 47:41
  hear about these things because a lot of people we interview
• 47:43
  too, it's not like they oops, sorry, it's not like they chose
• 47:47
  a field to where that captures all that knowledge and expands
• 47:50
  their knowledge. Sometimes it's just, it's kind
• 47:55
  of just like Casey bots, you know?
• 47:57
  Have you met him? He's in Ashland, there for the
• 47:59
  devo, the kids, mountain biking stuff, you know, yeah, he works
• 48:02
  in it and he's really. But it's not like this like
• 48:07
  education based, you know, chitchat activity.
• 48:10
  It's it's we chatted more about just like bikes in general.
• 48:13
  It's not this education like we're getting an edge.
• 48:15
  I'm I'm learning so much. You know what I was?
• 48:18
  What was I saying right before we?
• 48:19
  Cut. So I couple years ago I floated
• 48:22
  the Applegate like paddle board in it just from fish hatchery to
• 48:26
  the bridge there. What is it?
• 48:29
  The you? Know the 90?
• 48:30
  One 99199 and Emily has it and I was like Oh my gosh.
• 48:34
  I've never floated the Applegate.
• 48:36
  I was felt like I. Was in a couple weeks, so good.
• 48:38
  Good. Yeah.
• 48:39
  I felt like I was in a whole different state.
• 48:41
  Yeah. And I was like, oh, I've been
• 48:42
  floating this section of the Rogue for so long that like, my
• 48:45
  palate is being becoming expanded.
• 48:48
  And I'm like finding I'm becoming more in love with this
• 48:52
  region because I'm finding new things.
• 48:53
  There are so many niches and that's one of the great things.
• 48:56
  Like, you know, one of the things when I worked for when I
• 49:01
  did owl and biological field work, I was up a lot of these
• 49:05
  weird creeks. And there are some mates like
• 49:08
  West Fork, Evans Creek, beautiful, you know, these and
• 49:13
  just all the, you know, the different forks and the
• 49:15
  tributaries in in some ways they're more approachable.
• 49:20
  Like it, it, it this is so big and massive, right?
• 49:24
  You know and. Barrier to entry.
• 49:26
  Yeah, it's a barrier to entry. It's imposing.
• 49:28
  And and that's and I and you said at one point on the pod,
• 49:33
  and I've heard this too, There's a lot of people who grew up
• 49:36
  here, live here, do not engage at all with the river and
• 49:40
  because it it is intimidating. And if you don't have a boat,
• 49:44
  it's really what do you do? You just come to the edge and
• 49:48
  don't get into the current because.
• 49:50
  You never know. Yeah, there's a lot of fear
• 49:52
  around it right too. Which is which is healthy.
• 49:55
  There is a good healthy fear, but also.
• 49:58
  Sometimes some people don't have enough.
• 49:59
  That's why we have a crowd. It's like, why do you go in
• 50:02
  after your dog? Don't do that.
• 50:04
  I know that story. And that was really, there are
• 50:08
  many reasons why we started this podcast and many intentions
• 50:12
  behind it. One of them being that we've
• 50:15
  grown up here all our lives and there's so much to this area
• 50:18
  that we've never seen that we don't know about and people we
• 50:23
  want to learn. We want to learn about it
• 50:25
  ourselves. We want to be exposed to places
• 50:29
  we've never seen in our own backyard and come to know our
• 50:34
  home even more. And.
• 50:36
  And the people that, like I said, like the niches of
• 50:40
  everybody that enjoys outdoors, everybody does it.
• 50:42
  Everybody recreates in a little bit of a different way.
• 50:45
  Some of it's the same, some of it's a little different.
• 50:47
  Secret spots, secret, secret quote with quotations or
• 50:51
  favorite or favorite. Yeah.
• 50:53
  And it's like, tell me more. I want to hear more about it,
• 50:56
  you know, like. Yeah, but who?
• 50:58
  What, when, where, Why? Yeah, which channel should I
• 51:02
  take here? Right.
• 51:03
  So, yeah, it's I usually tend that away, but I, you know, it's
• 51:11
  everything's changing. I think it'll all get you there.
• 51:14
  So this all goes downstream there's.
• 51:16
  So we see some more of these barbs that were constructed, but
• 51:19
  then the over here is where the gravel pit was, right?
• 51:24
  So so if you go this away. So it's the rivers digging,
• 51:28
  river left and that's what's kind of going to consume this
• 51:31
  gravel. Right.
• 51:32
  And that's what. And so Salmon Rock was over over
• 51:35
  there and the river used to go over there kind of at the foot
• 51:39
  of Table Rock. And now it's just kind of like I
• 51:44
  was saying, it's like, wow, what's going on here?
• 51:47
  Because it was this big gravel pit got sucked in.
• 51:50
  And now you'd have all these multiple channels, which I think
• 51:53
  at this level either of these would work.
• 51:56
  And with an IK, you can go over there.
• 51:58
  Yeah. You can.
• 52:00
  Explore, but yeah, and and. And so as the the river is
• 52:10
  cutting in and taking more of that mineral or or material, I
• 52:16
  would say is and then that's just harmful to the spawning of
• 52:23
  the salmon well or what? Is I like to tell people that
• 52:27
  erosion in and of itself is a natural process and not bad or
• 52:30
  evil or or detrimental, but whereas.
• 52:34
  You're living somewhere where that your home's going to go
• 52:38
  clashing into the river. Exactly where and when erosion
• 52:41
  is happening, what's being moved like now you see this over here
• 52:46
  like that, those those are very. That's like topsoil right there,
• 52:51
  right? Yeah, that's so that was
• 52:54
  deposited in a very low energy environment over some years as
• 53:00
  opposed to where you see these big cobbles, right?
• 53:02
  You get it takes more river energy to move a bigger rock.
• 53:06
  So, and those cobbles are what make salmon spawn, you know,
• 53:13
  count cobbles and gravel is what makes salmon spawning.
• 53:16
  So if you didn't have any erosion like it in Ashland
• 53:19
  Creek, we really don't have erosion between the the
• 53:23
  reservoir And then the, the Parks Department says, well, we
• 53:26
  don't want to have erosion that's going to take our trail
• 53:29
  out, right. So then they have.
• 53:30
  That's why they have so little, so little gravel.
• 53:34
  So here we are at Rogue Discovery Park.
• 53:36
  Wait, hold on a minute. Hold the phone.
• 53:40
  You can pull into the Yeti if you want I think so this is a
• 53:45
  this. Looks so much bigger on their
• 53:47
  promo videos. Well, I had to call them out.
• 53:52
  They've got a. Party guys, I'm sorry.
• 53:54
  I mean, there's no feature. There's no feature in the water
• 53:58
  right now to change the perspective.
• 53:59
  This maybe turns into a little bit of a swimming hole it seems.
• 54:03
  And then so they also have a big gravel pit over here full of
• 54:08
  water that they use for recreation.
• 54:10
  They have like a floating dock on it and things like that.
• 54:13
  So, you know, yes, these people have a website you can find all
• 54:16
  about what they do here, but it's coincidentally also so that
• 54:22
  that bank that you saw that was getting eroded, I, I believe
• 54:27
  that is the bank that is being cut away, that is about to get
• 54:32
  into a giant aggregate pit. What do they need to do to help?
• 54:38
  Well, it's going to cost a lot of money.
• 54:40
  So they, they need to, they need to move the river.
• 54:47
  So they basically need to ruin. That's private property.
• 54:49
  So this is private property, but this person has been notified
• 54:54
  and is working with agencies. ODFW paid for a study about this
• 54:59
  particular thing. Because when that pit gets
• 55:03
  captured, it's going to swallow a lot, you know, decades worth
• 55:07
  of gravel. So because it's a, it's almost
• 55:11
  like a probably a 60 foot pit. It's and it's acres, it's acres.
• 55:15
  Wow, big. So what happens is the river's
• 55:18
  like, oh, OK, I'm just going to dump my aggregate, my gravel in
• 55:22
  here. And it will be much, it'll be
• 55:25
  deprived, the downstream will be deprived of gravel.
• 55:29
  So from the fish perspective, that is a problem.
• 55:31
  It'll also be potentially just a catastrophic just river water
• 55:36
  quality issue. So like the downstream drinking
• 55:39
  water providers, Gold Hill in the city of Rogue River, like we
• 55:43
  don't want that to happen. That's going to screw us up, you
• 55:46
  know, because they're sucking water to drink out of there.
• 55:49
  But you see these barbs like this is what they use.
• 55:52
  These constructed barbs is what they use to slow the velocity on
• 55:57
  that other bank, right? So are they going to be able to
• 56:00
  do that there in time to prevent another pit capture?
• 56:07
  It's a multi. It's something that Rogue
• 56:09
  Riverkeeper is interested and wants to see happen.
• 56:12
  It's also like a multi $1,000,000 multi agency thing.
• 56:17
  This is like, it's not something like a nonprofit goes out and
• 56:20
  does even 1 nonprofit or even a couple nonprofits.
• 56:24
  It's going to take several state agencies.
• 56:26
  It's going to take a lot of, you know, this would be for the
• 56:29
  public good because you know, and then again, you get to the,
• 56:33
  you know, do you want to, what does your culture, your, your,
• 56:36
  your, your society, your community?
• 56:38
  What are you willing to pay for? Are you willing to pay for the
• 56:42
  design, engineering, construction of these these
• 56:46
  types of structures to keep that?
• 56:50
  Yeah. So Salmon Rock was was right
• 56:52
  over there. But the river, the river doesn't
• 56:55
  go. The river changed its mind.
• 56:57
  And when so much of particularly Southern Oregon's like money
• 57:05
  comes from recreation and tourism, right?
• 57:09
  How? Does that.
• 57:11
  So that face. Challenge.
• 57:13
  Issue that's huge, that's huge. And and no one you know our, our
• 57:18
  state is very unique in that we do not have a sales tax, right.
• 57:22
  We're one of the few. So we have to make state
• 57:25
  government has to function in all these other ways, including
• 57:28
  fees and other taxes. And there's even a, but there's
• 57:34
  also a state law, it's called Measure 5, I think that put a
• 57:38
  cap on a certain amount of like property taxes could be taken.
• 57:42
  So, and just in the legislature last week, we passed the
• 57:46
  legislature passed the, the wildlife bill, which took a tiny
• 57:50
  bit of the transient lodging tax to basically fund ODFW as an
• 57:56
  agency, you know, because there's not enough hunters and
• 58:00
  anglers to pay license fees to keep that agency going.
• 58:04
  When we really do, we want to, we want to support and conserve
• 58:09
  non game, you know, and not target fee.
• 58:13
  And that is an important part of Oregon and what people come here
• 58:19
  to recreate for. And it it also supports the
• 58:22
  traditional 100 anglers too. And also some of that money will
• 58:26
  go to wolf compensation when you have wolves on the landscape and
• 58:32
  they and they pray and you know, we don't want them praying on
• 58:35
  livestock, but they do. There's a program of
• 58:38
  compensation for for ranchers. So some of that transient
• 58:42
  lodging tax will go to that. So, you know, if we want, you
• 58:46
  know, this is a this is a conversation in my view that
• 58:49
  everyone in the state, you know, voters have to have, you know
• 58:52
  what, what do we feel is important?
• 58:54
  You know, is should the should the tourism industry bear the
• 58:58
  financial weight of doing some of these things or is it
• 59:03
  something that has an overall, you know, societal environmental
• 59:07
  benefit? Like, you know, here we're
• 59:08
  talking also about, you know, drinking water because there is
• 59:12
  the city of Gold Hill, the city of Grant, city of Rogue River
• 59:16
  and the city of Grants Pass, their drinking water is all from
• 59:19
  this river. They, they don't have
• 59:20
  alternative sources like Big Butte Springs.
• 59:24
  So, so whenever I am as Rogue River keeper doing work,
• 59:28
  especially down in the Grants Pass area, I say, yo, you, you
• 59:31
  got to care about what happens in Bear Creek and upstream
• 59:33
  because you are drinking, you are drinking out of this river.
• 59:37
  And so if there's bad stuff happening upstream, you don't
• 59:40
  want that as a part of your drinking water.
• 59:42
  So, you know, you, you want the whole, if you're lower in the
• 59:46
  watershed, you definitely, I would think, want to support the
• 59:52
  regulations that protect water quality and to people to take
• 59:57
  action and those regulations to be enforced.
• 1:00:00
  So I. Feel like it's just a lack of
• 1:00:02
  edge, a lack of like marketed education around the subjects.
• 1:00:06
  Yeah, and, and it's, it's really boring.
• 1:00:08
  Like when I worked at Rogue Valley Sewer, I would talk about
• 1:00:11
  that a lot because I was in to feel I worked in the storm water
• 1:00:14
  division and I was out talking out in out in towns a lot.
• 1:00:19
  And people would say things like, Oh, I want to see what my
• 1:00:21
  tax dollars are doing. I'm wearing my safety vest like,
• 1:00:24
  oh, these are these are taxes. These are fees.
• 1:00:26
  Are you, do you live here in talent Phoenix?
• 1:00:28
  Oh, you pay a sewer fee and part of that in a storm water fee.
• 1:00:32
  And that goes to my employment, my agency to protect water
• 1:00:38
  quality. You have a place to flush your
• 1:00:41
  toilet that is going to be secure.
• 1:00:43
  That waste will be securely transported and treated.
• 1:00:46
  The storm water off this town will be safely conveyed and
• 1:00:51
  hopefully will not convey pollutants to the nearby Creek.
• 1:00:55
  So, so people like I don't, I don't pay for that.
• 1:00:59
  Like really, you don't want to pay for clean water?
• 1:01:02
  You want to tell you what it means.
• 1:01:04
  When you don't pay. Yeah, yeah, you want to poop in
• 1:01:07
  a bucket and deal with it yourself, and that's going to
• 1:01:09
  be. Illegal.
• 1:01:09
  Yeah. Deal with it yourself.
• 1:01:11
  You're probably going to then go dump it in a waterway.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah. What do you do?
• 1:01:15
  Have no other resource for it and we're going to still be in
• 1:01:19
  this problem. So, well, I think, I think
• 1:01:22
  totally. It's like, I mean, just today
• 1:01:24
  was so informative of how that this whole thing works, this
• 1:01:28
  whole thing, this whole thing being.
• 1:01:30
  The river, this whole river thing.
• 1:01:31
  This whole river thing, but how it's all connected and it is all
• 1:01:34
  connected and it's like, I wonder if more people got like
• 1:01:37
  the one-on-one knowledge that like the education behind what's
• 1:01:41
  happening with the river, but in a marketed sense, right?
• 1:01:44
  Because like. Well, we, and we've tried that
• 1:01:46
  like, so when I worked at Rogue Valley Sewer, we, there's
• 1:01:48
  something called, you know, 1 water day and, and I, and I and
• 1:01:53
  I did in my job there that my, my supervisor let, we did a
• 1:01:58
  whole day where we had tours of the wastewater plant that should
• 1:02:03
  be required drinking water plants in, in Grants Pass and up
• 1:02:06
  here. So we did that together, but
• 1:02:09
  then it was hard, hard to get the other agencies to back that
• 1:02:13
  because like when I worked at Rogue Valley Sewer and my, my,
• 1:02:19
  the district manager will recognize that he's, he's an
• 1:02:22
  engineer. He's a trained engineer.
• 1:02:24
  He's not a trained communicator or educator, right.
• 1:02:29
  And yes, he wants one of his sayings was people don't care
• 1:02:32
  about their sewer system until it screws up.
• 1:02:35
  Yep. But I would always say to him,
• 1:02:38
  you want when the good stuff is happening, when you're doing
• 1:02:41
  good stuff for them, you want the public, you want your paying
• 1:02:44
  customers, your clients, your, your, the, the taxpayers, the
• 1:02:48
  the voters to know what you're doing is beneficial for them and
• 1:02:52
  the community and the environment.
• 1:02:54
  And so when when Rogue Valley sewer went to the city of Gold
• 1:02:59
  Hill residents as voters and said, do you want to be a part
• 1:03:02
  of the special district and get your sewage pumped to the
• 1:03:04
  regional plant? You know, I as Rogue River
• 1:03:07
  keeper, you know, I put out some messaging on that.
• 1:03:11
  You know, it's not like I'm going to influence all the Gold
• 1:03:13
  Hill voters. But you know, I did want a
• 1:03:15
  message if anything, just to everyone else like this is a
• 1:03:19
  something that everyone needs to understand as you can't just say
• 1:03:25
  I don't want to pay for that. Well, you have to think about
• 1:03:28
  where's that money going? Do you want it?
• 1:03:31
  Do you want to pay a little bit more, you know, a few bucks more
• 1:03:34
  a month to get a system where your sewage is pumped to be
• 1:03:38
  dealt with in a environmentally safe manner and in secure
• 1:03:44
  manner. You know, if if anyone's ever
• 1:03:47
  had like a month ago or so, Washington DC had the hugest
• 1:03:54
  sewer brake ever in the US into the Potomac and you know, made
• 1:04:00
  national news. But you know, if you don't fall
• 1:04:02
  or follow sewage news like I do, you might not have paid
• 1:04:05
  attention. But that was basically a, a
• 1:04:09
  failure of infrastructure and it had, you know, a fit.
• 1:04:13
  And one of the things I will say that there's a lot of entities
• 1:04:15
  here who do good things on infrastructure like Rogue Valley
• 1:04:18
  Sewer is very good at maintaining their
• 1:04:21
  infrastructure. So they are very good.
• 1:04:25
  They use their fees well to maintain like what do they do?
• 1:04:29
  They run pipes. They run pipes well.
• 1:04:31
  They maintain the pipes. Well, you know, what happened in
• 1:04:35
  DC was a function partly of a failure of infrastructure and
• 1:04:41
  that's also in the Grants Pass issue, not necessarily a
• 1:04:45
  maintenance issue, but a capacity issue.
• 1:04:47
  It's like are this are the residents and voters and
• 1:04:50
  taxpayers in Grants Pass, you know who are on the different
• 1:04:53
  like the city budget committee or I don't know how their city
• 1:04:56
  government works, but like. I don't know if we have a city
• 1:04:59
  budget committee, but. There's some, there's some,
• 1:05:02
  there's some committees, you know, made-up of citizens and
• 1:05:04
  then there's a City Council, you know.
• 1:05:06
  A bunch of committees. And then?
• 1:05:09
  I've recently have gotten and she was the flak.
• 1:05:12
  I've recently gotten some flak about Damn Pop.
• 1:05:15
  Track it's going to cost you much or kids are there.
• 1:05:20
  Yelling, Oh we you want to get into?
• 1:05:22
  It no, no. I know, of course.
• 1:05:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
• 1:05:27
  Offline conversation. Yeah, I'll just say this, trying
• 1:05:30
  to make the best decision for where a pump track goes and
• 1:05:35
  everybody wants instant gratification and they're not
• 1:05:39
  looking at long term satisfaction.
• 1:05:42
  And they get one news headline and news being, you know, social
• 1:05:47
  media and latch on to it and make that their whole campaign
• 1:05:52
  without actually looking deeper into the function and.
• 1:05:57
  Well, that goes back to the whole topic of you know what?
• 1:06:01
  You know how? How are people messaging?
• 1:06:03
  How are people? Should be.
• 1:06:04
  People getting information. Yeah, it should be.
• 1:06:06
  I feel like the education around certain things should be
• 1:06:09
  mandated, like jury duty, Like sorry, you're going to be using
• 1:06:13
  your a toilet in city limits. You are required to go to a, you
• 1:06:17
  know, 2 hour course and learn more about it.
• 1:06:20
  Right. Right.
• 1:06:21
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 1:06:23
  I mean because you're. You're floating people, you got
• 1:06:25
  to go do a quick one line online course.
• 1:06:29
  I don't know why not. I don't know, maybe that will
• 1:06:30
  like a driver's license you don't get to drive without.
• 1:06:33
  Taking, taking a test and knowing the information and
• 1:06:38
  more, all of these other things are things we use every single
• 1:06:41
  day that we take for granted. That improper use has major
• 1:06:45
  repercussions and we only learn about it if we have some
• 1:06:51
  personal vested interest or passion or curiosity and then
• 1:06:56
  become hyper informed and expert and look at other people you
• 1:07:02
  know in general. Just like, why do they not know
• 1:07:05
  this? This, the information is out
• 1:07:07
  there. It's readily available.
• 1:07:10
  It's it's interesting to me. And so why aren't people paying
• 1:07:14
  attention to this? Well, there's so much to pay
• 1:07:16
  attention to, for one. And yeah, we don't go to school
• 1:07:20
  on how to function in society. I wish we don't learn how to
• 1:07:24
  balance their checking account right I.
• 1:07:27
  Know it's so true we learned a lot of like.
• 1:07:29
  Fundamentals. In class, but like not these
• 1:07:31
  issues we there should be more about right in high school and
• 1:07:35
  middle school. And there is, you know, there is
• 1:07:37
  a whole group of people out here doing that.
• 1:07:41
  But you know, society generally and especially our region
• 1:07:45
  doesn't want to fund that. Like I, yeah, it's hard to find
• 1:07:51
  funding like and in the you know, the city governments and
• 1:07:54
  the agencies, it's like we don't, we don't want to they
• 1:07:57
  don't want to fund education, even though I tell them it's
• 1:08:00
  like it it benefits the agency to have an educated they're.
• 1:08:05
  All stealing the kids, kids. Customers.
• 1:08:08
  And and it's. That.
• 1:08:10
  So that is a. There's like a pond.
• 1:08:15
  Yeah, there's a big pond back there, which I think was was a
• 1:08:19
  gravel pit at once. But for some reason it's just
• 1:08:22
  got this little outlet and it, it wasn't like captured by the
• 1:08:25
  whole river. But we're coming around the bend
• 1:08:28
  to the mouth of Bear Creek, too. Wow.
• 1:08:32
  So Bear Creek is in the road basin, the most urbanized
• 1:08:39
  tributary of the Rogue. And so I worked for several
• 1:08:43
  years for what was then the Bear Creek Watershed Council.
• 1:08:46
  And so and and I live in Medford and it's it again is one of
• 1:08:51
  those resources where it's a streams go Bear Creek and its
• 1:08:56
  tribs go in so through so many towns and it's right there for
• 1:09:00
  people. And there's a lot of people who
• 1:09:02
  don't engage with it. I'm really into getting kids and
• 1:09:07
  adults. You don't have to go to a
• 1:09:10
  National Park. You can walk in in.
• 1:09:12
  In most of our region, you can go and find a Creek.
• 1:09:16
  You can find public lands very easily and it doesn't even have
• 1:09:21
  to be a trail or anything fancy. You know, there's a lot.
• 1:09:27
  There's a lot there. And that's why when when I work
• 1:09:30
  on water quality like Rogue Riverkeeper, we do sampling in
• 1:09:34
  the summer for bacteria and water contact safety and and
• 1:09:37
  talent. The city of talent has Wagner
• 1:09:39
  Creek running through it and there are upstream sources
• 1:09:42
  adding bacteria. They sometimes exceed and one
• 1:09:46
  person at a recent meeting said, well, why do we care about
• 1:09:49
  talent? It's not like they have
• 1:09:50
  recreation sites there like Lithia Park.
• 1:09:53
  I said, well, it, it goes through the town, it goes
• 1:09:57
  through and you'll know there's all those little parks that like
• 1:10:00
  you can, you can have a three-year old walking in the
• 1:10:02
  Creek and dogs, dogs. It's, it's a point of access to
• 1:10:08
  the natural world. And Little Butte Creek in Eagle
• 1:10:11
  Point is the same. There are a lot of there are
• 1:10:14
  little Bitte Creek goes right through the town of Eagle Point.
• 1:10:16
  There's several parks that go right to the Creek, right?
• 1:10:19
  And you know if there's low water, it is a very child
• 1:10:22
  friendly other than the high bacteria.
• 1:10:27
  And that's exactly why it's important, especially in talent
• 1:10:30
  and Eagle Point is because they don't have Lithia Park and so
• 1:10:34
  and that is where. That's where they're going to
• 1:10:36
  the. Residents are recreate.
• 1:10:37
  And and and and one of the things I always like to push is
• 1:10:41
  like recreate with a natural world where you are.
• 1:10:44
  Yeah, absolutely. When my kids were, they attended
• 1:10:49
  Phoenix Elementary and I had the opportunity, I would do
• 1:10:52
  lunchtime gardening and I there was just a little, there was a
• 1:10:56
  little old garden, but and it wasn't much of A garden, but
• 1:10:59
  kids saw dirt and plants and bugs and, you know, Roly polys
• 1:11:04
  and earthworms and kids love that.
• 1:11:08
  And there was kids there. I'd be like, they'd point to a
• 1:11:11
  Tulip and say, what's that called?
• 1:11:13
  And like, I can't remember like when I didn't know what a Tulip
• 1:11:17
  was. Right.
• 1:11:18
  I've always known, right? And so there's flower.
• 1:11:20
  I Remember Remember. And so there were kids who had
• 1:11:22
  so little engagement with the natural world, like that wasn't
• 1:11:26
  even something. And like, oh, that's a Tulip.
• 1:11:30
  It comes from a bulb and they only bloom in the spring and
• 1:11:33
  blah blah blah. Maybe they eat fruits and
• 1:11:35
  vegetables, but it comes to them wrapped in plastic.
• 1:11:38
  So, you know, finding, getting people to engage with the
• 1:11:41
  natural world and it's a gateway thing where they are, you know,
• 1:11:45
  you don't have to take, you don't have to have expensive
• 1:11:48
  gear, you don't have to have special skills, you don't have
• 1:11:51
  to go a long way. And that's one of the great
• 1:11:54
  things about our region is that, you know, right.
• 1:11:57
  And especially, you know, and there is so much fear and lack
• 1:12:02
  of understanding. Like you on one of the pods,
• 1:12:04
  you're talking about fear of wild animals.
• 1:12:06
  It's like that That is like the least.
• 1:12:08
  Yeah, you know, But I and now and now there's also all these
• 1:12:11
  other fears of strangers. Like I my kids went to a school.
• 1:12:15
  They had a classmate who wasn't allowed to leave her front
• 1:12:19
  porch. And one time she came to my
• 1:12:22
  house and the kids were going to go in the backyard.
• 1:12:25
  I said, oh, it's a little. It's been raining.
• 1:12:28
  Why don't you visiting child, why don't you put on these boots
• 1:12:32
  so you don't get too muddy? And she's like mud.
• 1:12:34
  Like, what's mud like? Yeah, mud.
• 1:12:39
  It was like a totally foreign idea, that mud.
• 1:12:43
  What is that? And what is it going to do to
• 1:12:45
  me? And I'm OK.
• 1:12:46
  I'll put those boots on. Yeah.
• 1:12:49
  And so to me, you know, my kids, they were digging mud holes and,
• 1:12:52
  you know, in the backyard and climbing the shrubberies.
• 1:12:55
  And, you know, I raised my kids, of course, differently, but I
• 1:13:00
  would see these other kids who had like, so little experience
• 1:13:05
  with a Tulip or mud or a honey bee.
• 1:13:09
  And that's like, we got to, you know, we got to.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah. It's like, yeah, and, and and I
• 1:13:14
  mean, I love it that people do all these great things around
• 1:13:17
  here. But yeah, you don't need $1000
• 1:13:18
  bicycle. You know, yeah.
• 1:13:20
  Sorry, but I mean, that's fun, but you got to start them.
• 1:13:25
  They got to start. Before they go outside.
• 1:13:26
  Yeah, just go outside. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:13:29
  So here's the mouth of Bear Creek and you know, Bear Creek
• 1:13:34
  is a there are Chinook, there are Coho, there are steelhead
• 1:13:38
  that go up Bear Creek to spawn. And so in one of the one of my
• 1:13:43
  favorite things to do with Rogue River Keeper is in the fall
• 1:13:48
  spawning season, like to take people to Pine St. right near
• 1:13:53
  the Pilot gas station and stand there between the gas, the Pilot
• 1:13:58
  truck stop and the Interstate and look at like there are
• 1:14:02
  Chinook spawning salmon. What a juxtaposition.
• 1:14:05
  And one, one of the people I brought is now mayor of Central
• 1:14:08
  Point. I brought her that a few years
• 1:14:10
  ago. And she's like, oh, my goodness.
• 1:14:12
  I can't. I mean, I've lived here.
• 1:14:14
  I'm on. She was on the City Council at
• 1:14:15
  the time. Now she's mayor.
• 1:14:17
  I'm like, I can't believe I'm seeing that.
• 1:14:18
  I'm like, yeah. I mean, that's why I want to
• 1:14:20
  bring you you here especially, you know, that's these things
• 1:14:24
  exist and they are right here. These are not these are not
• 1:14:27
  exotic. This guy landing.
• 1:14:29
  Yeah, it's not far off. No, it's happening right next to
• 1:14:35
  us. Yep.
• 1:14:39
  Some fishermen in the wild. Oh yeah, we're lurking.
• 1:14:50
  Sorry guys. So right now we're also so the,
• 1:14:56
  the guy at the boat ramp was talking about getting access.
• 1:15:00
  This is private land here at the mouth of Bear Creek.
• 1:15:03
  I'm going to come here as part of Rogue Riverkeeper.
• 1:15:05
  There's a Bear Creek Stewardship Day.
• 1:15:07
  We're going to do trash clean up here.
• 1:15:09
  But you can see bear. So this right where we're at
• 1:15:12
  used to be a part of the impoundment of of the, the dam,
• 1:15:16
  the Gold Ray Dam. So when the dam was removed
• 1:15:22
  several years ago, it completely of course altered how the flow
• 1:15:25
  work. So when you see this big
• 1:15:28
  erosional area here, which used to be there used to be a huge
• 1:15:33
  row of cottonwoods down to the edge of this reservoir, right?
• 1:15:38
  They once it became not a lake, but a moving body water, a
• 1:15:44
  river, it took it took out all the IT was again a situation
• 1:15:49
  where the river used to be, the edge of the river used to be
• 1:15:52
  over here and there was like 50 feet of cottonwoods.
• 1:15:57
  But yeah, so this property owner was not Yeah, it was, it was
• 1:16:02
  rough. It was.
• 1:16:03
  I bet they're upset. They were upset, they were upset
• 1:16:06
  there. He had they had constructed a
• 1:16:08
  boat ramp down here and everything.
• 1:16:12
  And as you can see, there's a lot of rigs up here because a
• 1:16:15
  lot of people take out here from from fishing.
• 1:16:19
  And the property owner is OK with that.
• 1:16:21
  I mean, yeah, they give permission.
• 1:16:23
  I mean, people the this, this access point, if you see people
• 1:16:26
  in here, they've it's a lot big. They've been given permission to
• 1:16:29
  get in. OK.
• 1:16:31
  And but yeah, that's how. Hey, real quick.
• 1:16:35
  Yeah. Creek or Creek?
• 1:16:37
  I say Creek, OK, I'm. Just curious, I've been asking
• 1:16:42
  our River fish river water people about that.
• 1:16:46
  Yeah. Like what do you call?
• 1:16:47
  It but I say it fast, so it could be quick too.
• 1:16:50
  Kevin's quick, yeah. Anyway, so yeah, when this this
• 1:16:57
  is another huge historic, monumental thing that happened
• 1:17:00
  on the rogue was the removal of of of gold ray, which yeah, it
• 1:17:06
  was amazing. Wonderful.
• 1:17:09
  And that happened like early 2000s.
• 1:17:14
  And along with the the other dam right so.
• 1:17:18
  Savage Rapids and then there was also the Gold Hill Diversion Dam
• 1:17:22
  which was a small smaller dam but still was a problem for fish
• 1:17:26
  passage and it it altered the hydrology and trapped any time
• 1:17:30
  you had a dam it was trapping, spawning, gravel and aggregate
• 1:17:35
  and. Now you can recreate, I mean, so
• 1:17:38
  things happen like this and blah blah blah, but you can recreate
• 1:17:42
  that spawning. Gravel, correct, you can but
• 1:17:46
  like when we're talking the volume of material here, like
• 1:17:50
  maybe in Ashland Creek, you could you could dump a bunch of
• 1:17:53
  truckloads of it would help it would help you throw some some
• 1:17:57
  in. But here, you know, the system
• 1:18:00
  and the organisms have evolved together and so the the volume
• 1:18:04
  of material here and because it engages with that moving water
• 1:18:08
  like it has to be in the right spot for.
• 1:18:13
  OK, Q Dramatic. Cut here.
• 1:18:16
  This episode is brought to you by Dead Camera Batteries.
• 1:18:20
  May we always have a few more in our backpacks.
• 1:18:23
  Enjoy. Down downstream there's that
• 1:18:26
  little Gold Ray estates or whatever it's called.
• 1:18:30
  I don't know. I'm just going to go ahead and
• 1:18:32
  hit record and call it. Call it we'll just.
• 1:18:35
  Play it by ear. We're almost.
• 1:18:36
  We're not much farther. Well I don't know where we left
• 1:18:39
  off because our memory card needed to be switched.
• 1:18:42
  Y'all we filled those bad. Boys up that's.
• 1:18:46
  Good stuff. So, but we were talking about if
• 1:18:52
  we can potentially can there be gravel put in to help the, you
• 1:18:58
  know, just help, it's just spawning.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah, it's still unnatural and you have to be it has to be
• 1:19:03
  really hyper specific, right. And then and then you get into
• 1:19:06
  are we going to, you know, prop up, prop up natural systems?
• 1:19:10
  How is it is it is everything we do a matter of just delaying
• 1:19:14
  extinction? You know, we discussed that, you
• 1:19:18
  know, at KS Wild. There's one of the topics is
• 1:19:22
  barred owls and the impact on spotteds, you know, is if if
• 1:19:26
  barred owls which got themselves here on their own, you know, the
• 1:19:29
  Fish and Wildlife Services is now trying to shoot them and,
• 1:19:33
  you know, lethally control them in places you know, is this just
• 1:19:38
  a matter of but it's. Not just a natural process.
• 1:19:41
  I mean, just like the river, we didn't, right?
• 1:19:43
  Humans didn't bring them over here.
• 1:19:45
  They did it themselves. But did they travel because
• 1:19:48
  humans encroached on their habitat?
• 1:19:50
  They did. So we were a part of it and like
• 1:19:53
  how? And then, you know, we have to
• 1:19:55
  decide how, how much are we going to what's this and.
• 1:19:59
  Sorry, this is that a mountain? What is that?
• 1:20:01
  That's like part of Table Rock almost.
• 1:20:04
  Right, that's like another little Butte thing.
• 1:20:06
  It's. Another little Butte thing, but
• 1:20:07
  it's, I don't think is it rock. It's, it is there's a little
• 1:20:11
  basaltic cap. I don't know.
• 1:20:13
  I can't tell if I'm still seeing Table Rock or if it's separate.
• 1:20:17
  I think it's. Separate.
• 1:20:19
  I mean, I think it's a separate Table Rock, yeah, but.
• 1:20:23
  And then there's another another bit of basalt there.
• 1:20:26
  Gosh, I would have loved to have been like, and I don't know.
• 1:20:33
  Like geology? An early.
• 1:20:34
  Human and very early human. But like, not even I was
• 1:20:37
  thinking a very early human, but not even that.
• 1:20:39
  I mean, gosh, I just wish I could have observed the creation
• 1:20:44
  of the earth, of the Earth truly.
• 1:20:48
  Like I'm just like, I wonder what was going on here.
• 1:20:51
  That's the thing. So you can, you know.
• 1:20:53
  I guess AI can recreate. It well or you can look at the
• 1:20:56
  clues like you can see like on these beds over here you see the
• 1:21:00
  top layer is very fine particles.
• 1:21:03
  So that was a very slow moving environment that deposited over
• 1:21:07
  how many thousands of years that thick, thick layer.
• 1:21:10
  And that's why we're such a good agricultural area.
• 1:21:13
  We've had this slow deposition of this great topsoil, but then
• 1:21:17
  right underneath it, you have like a cobble layer.
• 1:21:19
  So that was a fast environment. Yeah.
• 1:21:24
  And so this, this we would have been a in, in the reservoir
• 1:21:28
  here, right? Yeah.
• 1:21:29
  And so a lot of this bank eroded after the dam was gone.
• 1:21:38
  And the water level. Yeah, the water level.
• 1:21:40
  So then you had you had a a powerful force carrying material
• 1:21:46
  and it was moving horizontally too.
• 1:21:50
  But a lot of this over here is owned by the county.
• 1:21:54
  And that was that was actually the big, the big kind of
• 1:21:59
  decision to remove Gold Ray Dam was that the county, the county
• 1:22:04
  had been gifted. It's like the IT had been used
• 1:22:07
  at one point for power generation until like the 70s,
• 1:22:12
  you know, and then it was defunct.
• 1:22:13
  And then the power Pacific power, whoever said, hey county,
• 1:22:17
  you want this dam with a lake? They're like, oh.
• 1:22:21
  Sure, we'll take that. And then?
• 1:22:23
  Power company is like. Yeah, we got rid of that thing
• 1:22:26
  that's useless to us. Then it'd be.
• 1:22:28
  Financial liability, right? And then, you know, when there
• 1:22:31
  was floods, they had to deal with taking out the giant trees
• 1:22:35
  that would get clogged up. They had to make sure the dam.
• 1:22:37
  Resources. The dam didn't blow, you know,
• 1:22:39
  you wouldn't want to flood the downstream people.
• 1:22:41
  And then there was fish passage issues.
• 1:22:42
  So then it's like the county, I mean, it was only because the
• 1:22:46
  county's like, yeah, we're sick of dealing with this thing.
• 1:22:48
  Yeah, we know you guys like the fish bass there, but.
• 1:22:52
  And that's that's really but. Now you can fish salmon and
• 1:22:56
  Chuck and coho. Yeah.
• 1:22:57
  So yeah, that's wonderful. Do you have a like a story that
• 1:23:01
  really like, you know, your most pivot a little moment and
• 1:23:04
  outdoors that kind of changed the trajectory?
• 1:23:06
  Do you you recall 1 you know. I, I just having always been at,
• 1:23:11
  in the enjoying the outdoors, it just was always important to me.
• 1:23:16
  But I, I will say I was, I knew that you talked about that, but
• 1:23:22
  for me actually, what was pivotal was going from the
• 1:23:25
  dirtbag lifestyle to the rooted. And I had been working
• 1:23:29
  seasonally like 4 different jobs every year and my, oh, that's
• 1:23:35
  those look like yellow legs. I wish some of the bird experts
• 1:23:39
  were here. Those look like greater yellow
• 1:23:41
  legs. They.
• 1:23:41
  Look like they got yellow legs. We're in the, we're in the,
• 1:23:44
  we're in the shore birds, you know, migration period.
• 1:23:48
  So this is not our usual, is not our usual birds.
• 1:23:52
  They don't live here in the summer, those guys.
• 1:23:55
  I'm not, I'm not a good enough expert, but I bet you somebody
• 1:23:58
  is. I can name some of them, but
• 1:24:00
  anyways. I'd love to get a birder on,
• 1:24:02
  yeah. Yeah, OK, I can give you some
• 1:24:04
  names. Yeah.
• 1:24:05
  Great. I love birds.
• 1:24:06
  The as I age and I'm enjoying the outdoors in a different way,
• 1:24:11
  in a more like educational way, in a more like expansive way,
• 1:24:14
  right, not just like task at hand, hobby, enjoyment at hand.
• 1:24:19
  I am enjoying birds. I got to see two watching them
• 1:24:23
  copulate yesterday. Cute.
• 1:24:25
  It was really awesome. I mean, obviously. 3 turkeys do
• 1:24:29
  that the other day. We heard, we heard them calling
• 1:24:33
  and I watched one land in a tree and all the crows flew away.
• 1:24:38
  And I watched it land on its mate and it's like Oh my God, Oh
• 1:24:44
  my God. And and then maybe 10 seconds
• 1:24:47
  later it got off and flew away. Wow, it was.
• 1:24:50
  So cool. There are so many good things to
• 1:24:52
  see and I always, you know, I like to say people don't have to
• 1:24:56
  be like officially a birder or a boater or a, you know, a
• 1:25:03
  Mountaineer, a hike, you know, just.
• 1:25:06
  Take the terminology out of it, because sometimes that's.
• 1:25:09
  That's. Intimidating.
• 1:25:10
  That's what puts you in a box. Yep, boxes.
• 1:25:12
  We don't like them. Yeah, like I, I, I do a lot of
• 1:25:15
  birds, but I don't like, I don't have fancy binoculars because
• 1:25:19
  sometimes I lose them and I'm not a Lister, but binoculars
• 1:25:24
  really even even. Moderately.
• 1:25:26
  Yeah, it's fun. Moderately good one.
• 1:25:28
  That's a gear item I've been looking to add to my collection.
• 1:25:32
  Yeah, a little. Just even not they don't have to
• 1:25:34
  be fancy. Yeah, but just a little
• 1:25:35
  something, a little something to hold on my purse.
• 1:25:38
  Yeah, I have. I have some some small ones
• 1:25:41
  because I used to also just bushwhack with them for work.
• 1:25:45
  And so I wanted something small, lightweight, not expensive in
• 1:25:48
  case I screwed them up. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:25:53
  So about that rooted life. So what about it?
• 1:25:56
  So my last, my last, my last course for the National Outdoor
• 1:26:04
  Leadership School was in November, the Olympic Peninsula.
• 1:26:10
  Yeah, that's the first thing you think about.
• 1:26:12
  And I was with a Co instructors, one other Co instructor who I
• 1:26:18
  did not jive with. I had some not jive with that
• 1:26:21
  guy. So I was stuck with him for a
• 1:26:23
  few weeks and it was so wet and miserable.
• 1:26:28
  We had a student who got trench foot inversion.
• 1:26:31
  Yeah. Like people like, what's that?
• 1:26:33
  It's like gross. It's when someone's foot is wet
• 1:26:35
  for days on end and they don't do, they don't follow our
• 1:26:38
  instructions and take care of their feet and socks and.
• 1:26:40
  And it was them like, yeah, you know, I think it's, I don't know
• 1:26:44
  if I want to keep doing this, like constant move.
• 1:26:48
  I was living out of my truck basically which it's fine for a
• 1:26:51
  while and I'm going. To move your mic real quick over
• 1:26:55
  here so because you're coming up on.
• 1:26:58
  Rapids. Rapids get you a little bit
• 1:27:00
  better. Anyways, so that was that was
• 1:27:02
  the trend course. Like, you know, I don't know if
• 1:27:05
  I want to necessarily keep doing that.
• 1:27:07
  So I I came, I had AI had a boyfriend who had moved here and
• 1:27:12
  then I ended up getting that job hooting for the BLM.
• 1:27:15
  I'm like, yeah, I like it here. So and I didn't think I'd be
• 1:27:18
  here that long. I even even even 1520 years ago
• 1:27:23
  I thought oh maybe move. But Nah at this point it's too
• 1:27:26
  good. Look at all these guys fishing.
• 1:27:31
  Great day for fishing, wonder if it's a good day for catching
• 1:27:35
  they're. Probably like we're on video.
• 1:27:42
  My gosh. He.
• 1:27:46
  He wants he wants me to come close to him.
• 1:27:48
  I don't know what he's pointing for some reason, I don't know
• 1:27:51
  why. Tell me where the channel is.
• 1:27:59
  Hi. How's it going?
• 1:28:10
  I guess he was saying you can stay in the current.
• 1:28:12
  Yeah, yeah, I'll take that. So we're getting down to the
• 1:28:19
  Gold Ray Dam site. So when there was a dam, this
• 1:28:24
  was under 2530 feet of water. Hey, let's chat about let's talk
• 1:28:32
  more about the Olympic Peninsula with just the foot situation
• 1:28:36
  that it. Was really well, it was just it
• 1:28:38
  was not very like your response Olympic Peninsula November, who
• 1:28:43
  goes backpacking there November. Yeah, that would be a rough
• 1:28:47
  trip. Yeah, It's like they just
• 1:28:49
  needed, it was a semester course.
• 1:28:50
  They needed to go somewhere kind of near Seattle.
• 1:28:53
  It's like that's just, that's just a sucky kind of it's like
• 1:28:57
  it's wet. You just everything is wrapped
• 1:29:00
  in flat. You open it up.
• 1:29:01
  If it's not raining it's like saturated fog and everything is
• 1:29:05
  just damp all the time, which is why the student got trench foot
• 1:29:10
  and it's like. Take care of that.
• 1:29:13
  You have to constantly make like you hike all day with your wet
• 1:29:17
  socks on your shoulders to dry them off with your body heat.
• 1:29:19
  When you go to sleep, you switch off socks.
• 1:29:22
  You put your socks on your body and dry them off during your
• 1:29:25
  sleepy. I mean, you're just constantly
• 1:29:27
  changing your socks, drying your socks with body heat and.
• 1:29:32
  Which is also kind of moist in a way, like completely dry.
• 1:29:36
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so anyways is.
• 1:29:39
  This the two level 2. Yeah, this is it.
• 1:29:42
  This is where on a stand up paddle board with your 10 year
• 1:29:45
  old you might think. But you can do that you.
• 1:29:47
  Can take out right at that rock band right there.
• 1:29:49
  OK, yeehaw. I mean, it's you.
• 1:29:59
  You could just sit up, sit. You could just sit on the on the
• 1:30:02
  Sup and, you know, paddle yourself through.
• 1:30:03
  It's a Clear Channel. Yeah, so.
• 1:30:06
  We just went through that. That's that's where we did,
• 1:30:08
  that's where that's where the dam was.
• 1:30:10
  I should have got that on video like, but I got it on the big
• 1:30:13
  video, yeah. That's fun.
• 1:30:17
  Yeah. A little drop I.
• 1:30:19
  Think I got it on. There's only a there's basically
• 1:30:20
  you can't even see anything left.
• 1:30:22
  There's this little shack was a part of the powerhouse
• 1:30:26
  infrastructure. There's a, there's like a couple
• 1:30:28
  little things left, but this is Jackson County, so it's public
• 1:30:32
  access here. I've hiked here and then ended
• 1:30:36
  up with a horrendous case of poison oak.
• 1:30:39
  Yeah, there's. Poison.
• 1:30:40
  Yeah. No.
• 1:30:40
  Wonder this is just pictures that I showed on on Casey Bots's
• 1:30:44
  interview are from the poison oak that I got from this
• 1:30:47
  location. Ding.
• 1:30:49
  Ding. Yep.
• 1:30:51
  Ding. Yeah, that.
• 1:30:52
  So that is why I have. Not I'm trying to like Orient
• 1:30:55
  myself to like this area so I've never been so this.
• 1:30:58
  Road here, there's a train track there and then there's a road.
• 1:31:00
  You can drive this road all the way to Nugget and Powerhouse and
• 1:31:05
  come up at River Rd., you know the in Gold Hill, you know the
• 1:31:09
  wooden bridge there? Yeah, you, that's where you come
• 1:31:12
  out and it's not paved, but yeah.
• 1:31:18
  And then on there's also, there's also those boat ramps
• 1:31:22
  before, you know, you don't have to run Nugget or Powerhouse too.
• 1:31:25
  There's those BLM boat ramps down there.
• 1:31:28
  Does that little rapid get a little bit more spicy in the
• 1:31:30
  summer or is it pretty much that?
• 1:31:33
  It's pretty much just a little WAVY thing.
• 1:31:35
  I mean, yeah, there's a couple rocks you don't want to
• 1:31:37
  necessarily hit, but there's always a pretty clear path
• 1:31:40
  through there. Just curious because I usually
• 1:31:42
  put my 10 year old in a tube with a bottom like one of those
• 1:31:47
  so tar. We have a so tar tube that has a
• 1:31:49
  bottom mesh bottom and stuff and I just I put him on like strap
• 1:31:55
  him with a rope with a tube and. Then I got tie him into the.
• 1:31:58
  Tie him. Yeah, I was losing my thought.
• 1:32:01
  My words. Words are hard.
• 1:32:03
  I don't know, you could try it first with a an IK or just sit
• 1:32:06
  on top of the it's a but yeah, it's a.
• 1:32:10
  What's that little cave? That's where I would hide out if
• 1:32:13
  I was. Homeless, trained, trained in,
• 1:32:17
  but there's actually great, this is granite here down here, which
• 1:32:20
  is a very funny little pocket of granite, which it makes it kind
• 1:32:24
  of a fun place there. In the summer there's a lot of
• 1:32:27
  people come hang out here and go swimming and stuff because it's
• 1:32:31
  fun to hang out on these rocks. I'm always looking for new good
• 1:32:35
  spots, yeah. It's there's not, you know, a
• 1:32:38
  lot of the places, you know, there's not a lot of good
• 1:32:40
  swimming holes because there's always so much current.
• 1:32:42
  But yeah. Or people fishing.
• 1:32:44
  Yeah, yeah. But it's a nice.
• 1:32:49
  It's easy. OK, Are we still in the Puget
• 1:32:50
  Sound? No, no, that was, that was the,
• 1:32:53
  that was the. It was just really memorable.
• 1:32:55
  Yeah. It was like made me decide,
• 1:32:58
  yeah, I don't. I don't want to keep doing this,
• 1:33:01
  but I don't. Want to keep doing the nomadic
• 1:33:02
  type of yeah? The nomadic, I mean there it was
• 1:33:05
  amazing. You know, I did amazing things.
• 1:33:07
  I all those things you read in my bio, I had amazing
• 1:33:11
  experiences, you know, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, amazing
• 1:33:14
  places in California, the chant, you know, Santa Cruz Island and
• 1:33:17
  the Channel Islands. Have you ever been hobby in a
• 1:33:20
  life threatening situation where you have.
• 1:33:23
  I've tried to avoid those, well of course, but like like.
• 1:33:26
  Injury or. I've never I've never had a
• 1:33:29
  significant injury. That's good.
• 1:33:32
  I'm one of these people, like I like to back country ski tour,
• 1:33:37
  but I and but I don't carry an avalanche transceiver and people
• 1:33:42
  are like, oh, you don't do that. I'm like, I just don't go those
• 1:33:44
  places. Like if you're staying safe.
• 1:33:46
  Yeah. Like if I have to use really
• 1:33:48
  crazy swift water rescue skills, I shouldn't be there.
• 1:33:53
  I don't want to be there. I mean, I appreciated Nicole
• 1:33:57
  teaching that, but it's like if I have to use that kind of skill
• 1:34:00
  or like if I have to use my avalanche transceiver, man, I
• 1:34:04
  shouldn't have been there and it's not worth it to me to have
• 1:34:08
  the experience. Kids and.
• 1:34:12
  Yeah, well, even before I just went one fun.
• 1:34:14
  Yeah, I enjoy. You know, I used to rock climb
• 1:34:18
  and I don't call myself a climber, but I I like to be up,
• 1:34:21
  I like to be out. I don't climb hard stuff.
• 1:34:24
  I hated being like shoot, shoot, shoot.
• 1:34:27
  Like I don't want to be. I don't want to have that kind
• 1:34:29
  of fear. I don't find that pleasant.
• 1:34:31
  You don't recreate for the adrenaline, no.
• 1:34:33
  Not. But I did enjoy like being up
• 1:34:36
  and being at the eye level of Hawks and seeing like I used to
• 1:34:40
  climb in Tualmy Meadows and go to the top of Cathedral Peak.
• 1:34:46
  I mean, those are just incredible places.
• 1:34:48
  And the climb is not hard, but to be up there and then moving
• 1:34:52
  on beautiful granite, it's just it's just special.
• 1:34:56
  Yeah, special, but it doesn't have to be.
• 1:34:58
  Like you don't have to be like nail biting.
• 1:35:01
  Situation. To enjoy the outdoors.
• 1:35:03
  Whatever. I mean, there's I forgot, I
• 1:35:04
  don't even remember the lingo for the year, but people, some
• 1:35:08
  people go over. Oh yeah, I was.
• 1:35:09
  So I'm like, OK, whatever, Pitted.
• 1:35:13
  Exactly. I guess I'd be surfing, but.
• 1:35:15
  Yeah, it's like I, I don't, I don't need to do that.
• 1:35:18
  Just enjoying, yeah. Strolling.
• 1:35:21
  Yeah. Experiencing leisure outside.
• 1:35:25
  Hello, hello. Those are some nice.
• 1:35:26
  Places Yeah, this is the like Gold Ray Meadows estate or.
• 1:35:32
  Something, yeah. Estates something, yeah.
• 1:35:34
  OK, OK. When I went hiking at that spot,
• 1:35:39
  it was still when I was cleaning houses and I was like, oh, I
• 1:35:42
  should drop business cards off for all of these people because.
• 1:35:46
  Yeah. Not a bad idea.
• 1:35:48
  They can afford a cleaner. That's a big clean, though you
• 1:35:51
  might need a couple hands. Yeah, that would be if I was.
• 1:35:55
  The older people. True, not much.
• 1:35:57
  Just wipe down some surfaces, do the florist.
• 1:36:03
  Yeah, I love. I love this polished rock over
• 1:36:05
  here. Yeah.
• 1:36:07
  Great place to lizard out. Yeah, good lizard rock.
• 1:36:11
  Great place to bleed out what you see, not to talk.
• 1:36:16
  To what out? Like this is a good like it's
• 1:36:19
  just like. Somebody bad.
• 1:36:20
  That's that's what happens when you get your femoral artery cut.
• 1:36:24
  No, I there's like a trend of a video where people are just like
• 1:36:28
  built filming themselves laying on a rock, you know, like next
• 1:36:31
  to the river or whatever. And they're like, this would be
• 1:36:33
  a great bleed out spot. Oh, OK.
• 1:36:36
  And you're like interesting. It's funny.
• 1:36:38
  I've laughed. That's good.
• 1:36:39
  Lots of lots of laughs on that. We're laughing about it now.
• 1:36:44
  I don't know, just way to take it.
• 1:36:45
  Morbid. Yeah.
• 1:36:47
  Great, but yeah, I've had I've had a lot of great experiences,
• 1:36:51
  but no, I've not I mean, I've been out when there's lightning
• 1:36:55
  that's probably, you know, I, I definitely I yeah.
• 1:36:59
  And even sometimes when it's like I've even been where like
• 1:37:03
  it's blue sky and then the lightning strikes not too far
• 1:37:07
  I'm. Anyways.
• 1:37:09
  Like in the Grand Canyon. I don't even like to be outside
• 1:37:11
  when we're having a light on. OK, Saguaro National Park.
• 1:37:14
  I'm like the thunderstorm left and then it was blue sky and
• 1:37:18
  then all of a sudden bam, I'm like, oh.
• 1:37:20
  Whoa, yeah, No thanks. I'm not into it.
• 1:37:23
  I don't know. Otherwise I try and avoid and
• 1:37:25
  I've had, you know, a little bit of epicy.
• 1:37:28
  I used to, you know, leading groups when I've been, yeah, I'd
• 1:37:32
  like snowed and rained and we were kind of in this kind of low
• 1:37:35
  area and like, I'm running around at 3:00 in the morning
• 1:37:38
  trying to make howl and what he does.
• 1:37:40
  And he retired a couple of years ago.
• 1:37:42
  But he's a hardcore bird guy, very involved.
• 1:37:44
  He's been the conservation chair for Rogue Valley Audubon for
• 1:37:49
  ages and ages, super engaged in conservation work.
• 1:37:54
  But yeah, he he, he is. He's the one.
• 1:37:58
  Yeah, he's important and he now in at retirement he gets to
• 1:38:02
  travel all over and he gets hired by really high falutin
• 1:38:06
  naturalist outings to go to exotic places and that's be a.
• 1:38:11
  Burger. That sounds great.
• 1:38:13
  Well, we are pulling up to our take out, so we'll ask our wrap
• 1:38:16
  up questions and then close things out.
• 1:38:19
  So we want to know what is a favorite piece of outdoor gear
• 1:38:23
  or equipment that you tend to always have with you?
• 1:38:28
  Yeah, functional footwear. Oh, that's a good one for.
• 1:38:32
  Whatever the out, whatever the activity is.
• 1:38:36
  Amazing. And a piece of advice for your
• 1:38:39
  younger self. Like things will change, things
• 1:38:49
  will change. I like that one.
• 1:38:53
  OK, Be prepared. Things will change.
• 1:38:57
  Stop what you expect either, Yeah.
• 1:38:59
  And when your body expires and your soul waves this plane of
• 1:39:03
  existence, how do you want to be remembered?
• 1:39:07
  Kind of kind of the Hippocratic Oath did no harm.
• 1:39:10
  You know, as a parent, I hope my my kids find that being my child
• 1:39:15
  was more more good than problematic.
• 1:39:18
  And, you know, it's, it's hard to be a parent, man.
• 1:39:22
  Yes, it is. Even people like I was an old
• 1:39:25
  mom and it's like, hell yeah, this is.
• 1:39:26
  I can't imagine being a drug addict and trying to do this for
• 1:39:30
  real. I quit, yeah.
• 1:39:32
  Totally. Sometimes you're so helpless,
• 1:39:35
  yeah. Help.
• 1:39:35
  Yeah. I mean, why?
• 1:39:36
  Are you still screaming at me? Yeah.
• 1:39:39
  Yes, yes, that. What do you want?
• 1:39:43
  And where can people find you if you want to be found, especially
• 1:39:47
  since you're retiring and. I'm not on socials.
• 1:39:51
  I've I've made a choice not to be on socials much I don't know
• 1:39:56
  for for now it's a rogue riverkeeper.org and then.
• 1:40:01
  Into the wilderness in the wild, yeah.
• 1:40:04
  I'll be, Yeah, I, yeah. I, I feel a little guilty about
• 1:40:08
  leaving this job, which is very important, but there's a lot of
• 1:40:11
  other great people who can do it.
• 1:40:13
  And as my partner says, the graveyard is filled with
• 1:40:17
  indispensable people. Oh my goodness.
• 1:40:21
  Wow, that's a good crazy quote. I love it.
• 1:40:24
  Also I have another little quick question that we have asked
• 1:40:27
  before, but what is your if, if, how does, how does somebody get
• 1:40:32
  involved with the work that you're doing here in Southern
• 1:40:34
  Oregon? You know, just start showing up
• 1:40:37
  to things. There's a lot of one of the
• 1:40:38
  things. And so I started working in
• 1:40:40
  water because that's where the work was, but that's still where
• 1:40:42
  the activities are. And there's all these different
• 1:40:45
  niche aspects of it, you know, whether it's on the ground
• 1:40:49
  restoration work or what Rogue Riverkeeper does is we are very
• 1:40:53
  involved in advocacy. Like, I don't spend a lot of
• 1:40:55
  time planting riparian trees, but if we don't enforce and
• 1:41:02
  advocate for regulations and planning and rules to protect
• 1:41:05
  those, they're gone. You know, you can, you can.
• 1:41:08
  I've seen lots of riparian projects that then get mowed
• 1:41:10
  down 5 or 10 years later because the city doesn't actually have a
• 1:41:16
  policy to really maintain that shade.
• 1:41:20
  So one of the things. Is there also maybe not enough
• 1:41:22
  voices? Not enough voices that show up
• 1:41:25
  at City Council that says, yeah, we actually do want you to, to
• 1:41:31
  have a plan to do this. We, we don't want our entire
• 1:41:34
  park system to be sports fields, right?
• 1:41:37
  You know, we want some natural areas and So what?
• 1:41:41
  About like, volunteer work too. Yeah, like we do not enough
• 1:41:44
  people showing up. Yeah, a lot of times people say
• 1:41:47
  they want to do stuff, but like a lot of our volunteer work is
• 1:41:50
  not that glamorous. Like it's picking up trash.
• 1:41:52
  Like, I get it, it's not that fun, but but that's part of
• 1:41:57
  that's part of the stewardship and part of the engagement.
• 1:42:01
  And you know, even all the other social things that have to do
• 1:42:05
  with environmental building, community building,
• 1:42:08
  environmental advocacy, like people a lot of times will say,
• 1:42:12
  why is there trash in Bear Creek?
• 1:42:13
  It's the it's the unhoused, it's a homeless people.
• 1:42:16
  Well, you know, we can engage also in how do we build a
• 1:42:20
  community where people become housed, right?
• 1:42:22
  And that is actually an environmental issue as well as a
• 1:42:25
  social issue. And so I try so there are way
• 1:42:30
  any my feeling, it's like you were talking about the grid.
• 1:42:34
  Everyone has interest. Anyone who has an interest,
• 1:42:37
  there is a place that someone can insert themselves and be a
• 1:42:40
  part of a community in a community in some way.
• 1:42:44
  And yes, they probably won't get paid to do it, but speaking up
• 1:42:48
  and, you know, finding out the other people who do these
• 1:42:52
  things, that was the other thing about people who applied for my
• 1:42:56
  job. Some of them did did great
• 1:42:58
  things, but they didn't necessarily do the pieces that
• 1:43:01
  would help. They weren't showing up in the
• 1:43:05
  areas that would be a part of benefiting this job, right?
• 1:43:09
  They're showing up in other areas, you know, other
• 1:43:11
  nonprofits or something, which is good.
• 1:43:13
  But, you know, and we, we need that.
• 1:43:15
  We need people to be engaged, engaged not.
• 1:43:18
  And I I heard, I heard, I heard Gabe Howe like, yeah, the, the
• 1:43:23
  screens, that's a problem, you know, get get out of the
• 1:43:25
  screens. And see that all of these issues
• 1:43:28
  do overlap. Oh yeah.
• 1:43:30
  There is one issue 1 Dilemma isn't isolated to one
• 1:43:36
  environment or one group of people.
• 1:43:39
  It affects all of us. We're all sharing this tangle
• 1:43:41
  together, inter tangled. It's interdisciplinary.
• 1:43:44
  That's that was that was the the university program I went to and
• 1:43:49
  that was one of the biggest things.
• 1:43:51
  You know, when I got a degree in environmental studies, we
• 1:43:54
  learned so many different things that and how it all relates.
• 1:43:58
  So yeah. It's people and planet all
• 1:44:02
  together. We are one of the beings living
• 1:44:05
  here. And we're all making decisions
• 1:44:07
  and doing different actions and. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.
• 1:44:11
  No, no. All right.
• 1:44:14
  Well, thank you, Francis. Thank you.
• 1:44:16
  Thank you so much. All right.
• 1:44:18
  I appreciate. You've let me gab.
• 1:44:21
  Love that. We love a good gab.
• 1:44:22
  We do gab an honor and a pleasure.
• 1:44:26
  Honor and pleasure. Thank you so much for
• 1:44:28
  everything. If you're listening to this,
• 1:44:30
  give us a review. Go on there and give us some
• 1:44:34
  stars. Give us a comment, share it with
• 1:44:36
  your friends, watch us on YouTube.
• 1:44:38
  Do all the things, please. OK, have a nice day.
• 1:44:42
  Thank you. That's a wrap on this episode of
• 1:44:46
  Go Wildly from the bottom of our backpacks.
• 1:44:48
  Thank you for listening. We know you enjoyed the show, so
• 1:44:51
  tap, follow, tell a friend or two, and leave a quick review if
• 1:44:55
  you can. It makes a real difference.
• 1:44:57
  Your support allows Go Wildly to reach new listeners and bring
• 1:45:00
  more outdoor stories to the mic. Until next time, go Wildly and
• 1:45:05
  go outside.