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How the River Helped Me Become Myself with Rian Garn | 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
• 0:11
  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
• 0:29
  continually influenced by time outside come along as together
• 0:34
  we go wildly making. Fun of them by comparing them to
• 0:37
  boomers. Yeah, yeah.
• 0:39
  Which they which they ironically, just unironically
• 0:42
  just owned it. Which the?
• 0:43
  Millennials are the doomers. OK, Hi, Hello.
• 0:50
  Welcome to today's episode of Go Wildly.
• 0:53
  Today we are floating on the river with my friend Ryan Garn.
• 0:57
  Ryan is a professional river guide and operations manager
• 1:02
  with decades of experience on some of the most iconic rivers
• 1:06
  in the West. Area Manager.
• 1:07
  And area manager Opera. Darn AI area manager, my
• 1:14
  goodness, thank you for correcting me.
• 1:18
  She grew up hiking and backpacking in southern Arizona
• 1:21
  and was introduced to river travel at the ripe young age of
• 1:25
  14, an experience that set the course for her life.
• 1:29
  And after years of private and commercial trips, including
• 1:33
  multiple Grand Canyon journeys, she made her way here to
• 1:36
  Southern Oregon, where guiding on the Wild and scenic Rogue
• 1:39
  River became a turning point. Today, Ryan splits Four Seasons
• 1:43
  between Southern Oregon and Idaho, managing the Loxaw River
• 1:47
  operations and guiding on the Rogue, the Middle Fork of the
• 1:50
  Salmon and other classic rivers with Roe adventures.
• 1:55
  Today we're going to float from Baker Park to Schroeder Park in
• 1:58
  Grants Pass and hear all about Ryan's life and how the river
• 2:03
  and Southern Oregon became home. I'm excited.
• 2:07
  Hey, really quick, what's? Today, today is January 26th and
• 2:13
  we are going boating. They're going boating.
• 2:15
  What's the weather doing today? Oh, it's like a beautiful,
• 2:19
  partly cloudy, mildly freezing day.
• 2:25
  Violently. Kind of.
• 2:27
  It's maybe in the low 40s right now.
• 2:30
  Yeah, it feels like. That it's the first day without
• 2:33
  freezing fog in weeks and we are just so, so lucky and fortunate
• 2:37
  enough to have this clear, lovely day to be out on the
• 2:40
  water with pretty much nobody else.
• 2:42
  The only other people that we've seen have been the Grants Pass
• 2:45
  fire search and rescue, running drills on the river to save us
• 2:50
  all season long, and otherwise we are likely to be the only
• 2:54
  boat floating today. Let's.
• 2:56
  Do. It let's hit it, send it.
• 3:00
  OK. I'm going to push this off short
• 3:02
  a little bit and then I'll get on and then I'll let you guys
• 3:10
  get on. Cool.
• 3:12
  So I don't have to crawl, crawl over you or get my foot wetter
• 3:18
  than it is. And you can get in.
• 3:20
  Thank you. You're welcome, guest.
• 3:22
  Our guest. I'm in.
• 3:24
  I will have you sit either on this side or on the front
• 3:26
  wherever you're most comfortable.
• 3:28
  And I might sit on the front front bow of the boat if that's
• 3:31
  cool. Yeah, I, I definitely.
• 3:34
  I like this perspective. We'll just Heather will.
• 3:38
  If you're cool. Arrange for.
• 3:39
  If you want me to switch, I can do that.
• 3:44
  Do the shift. Give us a little more more
• 3:47
  bounce. I'm very used to shifting
• 3:50
  weight. It's cool.
• 3:52
  Don't want to lose Heather. I mean, yeah, you can both sit
• 3:58
  out there. Yeah.
• 3:59
  Yeah, you can both sit there. Yeah.
• 4:01
  Let's let's make sure that you don't whack this bad boy.
• 4:05
  You can. Do the hat.
• 4:07
  We usually do the hat bill. Hold on everybody.
• 4:15
  Hat bill is a nice safe. There we go.
• 4:17
  Yeah, the brim. It just sometimes collects a lot
• 4:19
  of wind noise. Yeah.
• 4:21
  I feel like your mic is too far from your mouth.
• 4:24
  But dude, this was how it was last time.
• 4:25
  OK, but. There we go.
• 4:29
  Yeah. Feel like it's not on there all
• 4:30
  the way. I feel I was thinking, you know,
• 4:35
  when I was when you had me writing that yesterday, I was
• 4:38
  thinking about like how much I love living in a city with a
• 4:41
  river. It's it's yeah, it's a very
• 4:46
  important. So I grew up three hours from
• 4:49
  the nearest river running water. We had one.
• 4:52
  We have one that runs through my hometown, like right by my
• 4:54
  parents house but it's dry. It's just a riverbed, yeah.
• 4:58
  It's yeah, yeah, it, I mean it. Literally nothing to write home
• 5:03
  about. Yeah, it had water up until the
• 5:05
  50s, still has water in some places.
• 5:09
  That's not exactly from healthy sources, but, you know, do.
• 5:13
  You want me to put that here and then it's hands free and it can
• 5:16
  just be tripoded? Well, I want to be able to get
• 5:20
  you too. I'll peek over sometimes, no,
• 5:23
  OK. No, this is great.
• 5:24
  OK. Are you nervous as it's going to
• 5:26
  go? In the drink, no.
• 5:28
  No, OK. Don't.
• 5:29
  Don't be OK. No, I'm, I'm chilling.
• 5:31
  You're happy. I'm so happy.
• 5:32
  Great. OK, then.
• 5:33
  I'm happy when Heather's happy. I'm happy.
• 5:35
  That's good. I'm happy regardless.
• 5:37
  But I'm definitely so happy when Heather's happy.
• 5:40
  And I'm especially happy when you're happy.
• 5:42
  It's just a vicious cycle. That's very good team.
• 5:44
  Hey, you wildly wonder. Thank you so very much for
• 5:48
  listening to the podcasts. It means the world to us.
• 5:51
  Okay, I have a little mission. Pause the podcast right here.
• 5:55
  Make sure that you're subscribed to this guy, okay?
• 5:58
  It's gonna be a fun time over here.
• 6:00
  And if you so wish, we would love a five star review or
• 6:03
  whatever your hearts inclined to do.
• 6:06
  Also, leaving us a review truly helps the algorithm and we
• 6:10
  appreciate you doing that. Thank you so very much.
• 6:12
  Also, little tidbit over on Instagram, we're having so much
• 6:15
  fun over there. Lots of behind the scene
• 6:17
  footage, some PO VS just some fun unhinged content.
• 6:21
  If you love the pod, that's where we go wildly for sure.
• 6:25
  So don't forget to follow us over there.
• 6:27
  OK, back to the show. Team empathy is a very good
• 6:30
  thing. Yeah, we look out for each
• 6:31
  other. Yeah, I try to build that with
• 6:34
  our crews as much as. Possible it's.
• 6:38
  Important. It's super important.
• 6:40
  It is. Yeah.
• 6:42
  It's, you know, every spring we do a long training trip and we
• 6:46
  spent a while talking about like, you know, guide
• 6:49
  professionalism and things, but that's like a topic we, we spend
• 6:52
  a good day on. It's just like, like, like
• 6:55
  managing your personalities and being there for each other.
• 6:58
  And it's definitely like I can always tell when people it's
• 7:02
  their first staff trip when like because they're not as active,
• 7:06
  but you can tell the ones that are returning like how like we
• 7:09
  all kind of chip into it because because it's, it's a constant
• 7:12
  battle out there. Lots of communication needed.
• 7:16
  Yeah, and we're always struggling with it.
• 7:18
  Yeah, like more and more. What do you want?
• 7:22
  What do you want? Yeah.
• 7:24
  Tell me your needs. I can't read your mind.
• 7:28
  Say what you need mean. I just, it reminded me of the
• 7:30
  notebook where she's like, what do you want, you know?
• 7:34
  Yeah. Yeah, it it's a battle and it,
• 7:40
  you know, like also getting them to do that for the, you know,
• 7:44
  also getting the guests to communicate is a whole
• 7:46
  different, all different art. But yeah, yeah.
• 7:50
  Yeah. So, OK, So you grew up in
• 7:52
  Arizona. Yeah.
• 7:53
  Three hours from a flowing body of water.
• 7:57
  Yeah. What did like outdoor life look
• 8:00
  like for you as a youth? How did you how did you first
• 8:03
  engage with being outside? I moved.
• 8:06
  Well, I remember, so before we lived in Arizona, we lived in
• 8:09
  Virginia Beach. And I do remember going on a lot
• 8:11
  of bike rides with and hikes with my dad through, I think
• 8:15
  it's called Springfield State Park out there there.
• 8:18
  But yeah, just a big mossy swamp.
• 8:20
  But I have, I have very early memories of doing that with my
• 8:23
  dad. And that was like, yeah, I, I
• 8:27
  always felt at peace when I was outside.
• 8:30
  I remember my first camping trip so vividly and remember loving
• 8:34
  it so much. I think I was, I was like 5 or
• 8:36
  6, which isn't, you know, I mean, out here people are doing
• 8:41
  that with their kids like at a very young age.
• 8:43
  But for me, it was like, yeah, it was a fairly gradual step.
• 8:47
  When we I moved to Arizona, that was the first time I ever saw
• 8:50
  mountains. And I remember just being so
• 8:53
  fascinated by them. And I went to school on the road
• 8:56
  to Madeira Canyon, which is a pretty renowned birding
• 9:01
  destination. And so we, that's part of what's
• 9:04
  called the Madeira Sky Islands, That's the Santa Rita Range.
• 9:07
  There's also the Santa Catalinas, the Rincon's Paleros,
• 9:10
  the Chiracawas and Douglas Mountains.
• 9:14
  There's so many, so many. And Wachukas, there's so many
• 9:17
  others. But yeah, it was that that was
• 9:21
  kind of my introduction was hiking in those spaces.
• 9:24
  And I, I think I was, I was probably 9 when I first summited
• 9:29
  Mount Wrightston, which is the big peak, the kind of near the
• 9:32
  town and that I grew up, which is called Green Valley, which is
• 9:36
  a little, little old retirement community down there in Tucson.
• 9:40
  It's like 50,000 people, but 5000 people were under the age
• 9:43
  of 55. Whoa.
• 9:45
  It's changed a lot since since I grew up in like the desert that
• 9:49
  I used to like ride my mountain bike in and play in is now all
• 9:51
  like, do you still mountain bike?
• 9:53
  No, no, get that hobby up a long time.
• 9:56
  Come longer. You.
• 9:58
  Know why did your parents choose that?
• 10:00
  Choose a retirement town with Sophia.
• 10:03
  My my grandparents lived there and they want, they were afraid
• 10:06
  of living, you know, I think you know the thing, the fears.
• 10:09
  They were afraid of living. Afraid of living in a big.
• 10:11
  City OK. Yeah, because we moved out there
• 10:14
  because my my dad took a job as an engineer for Raytheon.
• 10:17
  And so it was like his first time he he had real money in his
• 10:21
  life. And I think they were kind of
• 10:22
  like adapting to that, that like white mid, like suburban life,
• 10:27
  you know, and it's kind of funny because they, they definitely
• 10:30
  went through a phase in the 90s where they were like very
• 10:32
  religious and very much, you know, kind of following that
• 10:36
  life. But yeah, my, my dad was always,
• 10:39
  and my, my mom as well, to a lesser extent.
• 10:41
  They were always very outdoorsy people.
• 10:43
  My dad had learned to raft and kayak in the South and also did
• 10:48
  a fair bit in Colorado as well. Yeah, he was.
• 10:51
  He was a kayaker, like I think in the late 70s, early early
• 10:54
  80s. It's one of many hobbies he kind
• 10:57
  of gave up after he had kids and a career, but that.
• 11:01
  Never went back to it. Well, he did OK.
• 11:05
  Yeah. So when I was 10, my dad, my
• 11:10
  dad, I was in fifth grade and my dad told me that he had gotten
• 11:13
  we were going to do our first real overnight backpacking trip.
• 11:16
  And I was very excited. And it was the Bright Angel
• 11:20
  Trail down into the Grand Canyon.
• 11:22
  So we, no, we went down South Kaibab and up Bright Angel.
• 11:26
  And we did that over rodeo weekend, which is a holiday in
• 11:30
  southern Arizona observed. So kids get Thursday and Friday
• 11:34
  off and usually the last last Thursday and Friday of February.
• 11:38
  So you don't get Presidents Day and there's one other day they
• 11:41
  skip, but. But you get rodeo Holiday, yeah.
• 11:43
  We get that. And I never once, I never did
• 11:45
  anything with the rodeo, but I, I did do, I did do a lot of
• 11:51
  hikes over that weekend, including a few down the Grand
• 11:53
  Canyon. And that first one was so fun.
• 11:57
  And I, I, I, I was carrying, I, I think I posted some pictures
• 12:02
  of it on my Instagram recently because when I was visiting, I
• 12:05
  was scanning a bunch of old like, you know, film camera like
• 12:09
  film prints that I had. But yeah, there was I, I was
• 12:14
  walking with my mom's old external frame pack and it was
• 12:16
  like bigger than me. And I remember it hurt my
• 12:20
  shoulders a lot, but I handled it really well.
• 12:22
  And I definitely had way more energy than my dad did because,
• 12:25
  you know, when you're 10, you're a lot lower to the ground and
• 12:28
  you just aren't affected by things like downhill and, you
• 12:32
  know, doing that mad shuffle. But.
• 12:34
  And perspective of how long you've been out there and how
• 12:37
  far you have to go. Right?
• 12:39
  Yeah. I just kind of took very
• 12:40
  naturally to the trail and yeah, I was and yeah, my dad was sort
• 12:47
  of able to keep up with me. But yeah, I that was kind of
• 12:51
  like the, the first real hobby I had, you know, because I I had
• 12:54
  done that was like that I was really passionate about, I guess
• 12:58
  because I had done a lot of sports and other activities.
• 13:02
  But, you know, being what we now know is autistic and a little
• 13:07
  like, you know, a little different from a lot of the
• 13:09
  other kids that I were in my same age group.
• 13:12
  It was kind of I did very well in those like solitary pursuits
• 13:16
  and I didn't feel the pressure of, you know, competition.
• 13:20
  I always hated competitive sports.
• 13:22
  It's never my thing. Hated being in a race, hated
• 13:26
  anything like that. I really resented it.
• 13:28
  I I just, I loved being outside. I loved being at peace.
• 13:32
  I loved the wide. I loved being able, especially
• 13:35
  as I got older and I learned how to read topography.
• 13:38
  I loved being able to let go to the various Grand Canyon
• 13:40
  lookouts and see if imagine if I could find like ways through
• 13:44
  down and like, see if I could find where the brakes and the
• 13:46
  red wall were and things like that.
• 13:48
  Like, yeah, it was. Yeah.
• 13:51
  And so, yeah, my early teen to late teen years were just all,
• 13:58
  all backpacking. I mean, I was active in Scouts,
• 14:01
  but Scouts wasn't exactly a very healthy environment for the most
• 14:04
  part. But, you know, I, I, but the
• 14:07
  trips I did with my dad every year, especially the Grand
• 14:10
  Canyon ones, were amazing. And the really special ones.
• 14:13
  And I think by the time I was 17, I'd done most of the major
• 14:16
  Grand Canyon trails. Wow.
• 14:18
  Yeah. I wonder how many people can say
• 14:22
  that. Not not many.
• 14:23
  Not many. Yeah.
• 14:25
  Real quick, will you put your mic on your, like, lapel?
• 14:29
  Yeah, versus there? Sorry, I'm a mic freak.
• 14:32
  Making sure the mic's good. It's a good thing to have,
• 14:34
  right? For good for podcast, you gotta
• 14:36
  have That's better. I was scared it was gonna rub
• 14:38
  and be like you. Know I don't want any for.
• 14:41
  Sorry to sorry to break us, break us up guys.
• 14:45
  Yeah, so at 14, but that was when I, my scout troop, we'd
• 14:51
  we'd been, we'd had a real, we had a scout master that was
• 14:53
  really obsessed with canoeing. He was, he started off this like
• 14:58
  thing that my dad got pulled into.
• 15:00
  And I swear every dad in the early 2000s was like into this
• 15:03
  shit. It was like building a cedar
• 15:04
  strip canoe. Did your, did your dad do that?
• 15:07
  Yes. Yeah, the thing those of you
• 15:11
  that weren't around, like, yeah, all of our dads just started
• 15:14
  building fucking canoes. Like, I don't know.
• 15:17
  I don't know what he did with the mold for his, but yeah, he
• 15:21
  finished his eventually. Like when I was like almost done
• 15:24
  with high school, like it was still hanging up in their in
• 15:27
  their front porch. Like wow.
• 15:31
  Yeah, but. Mine didn't so.
• 15:33
  This is viral without social media.
• 15:35
  I don't this shit did. I don't know.
• 15:37
  Was it? REI Pictures on REI's marketing
• 15:40
  word of. Mouth is powerful, I really.
• 15:42
  Did people? Talked to each other face to
• 15:44
  face more. And it was like a lot of the
• 15:46
  other dads that my dad was involved with, like were into
• 15:49
  that. And yeah, it was the start of
• 15:51
  the scout, scout crew. I was also involved in this,
• 15:54
  this youth group that's in the Freemasons called the the de
• 15:58
  Malay. And that was a lot of the other
• 15:59
  dads and that we're into it as well.
• 16:02
  Yeah, yeah. This canoe obsession was like
• 16:05
  going strong. And my, anyways, my Scout troop,
• 16:08
  we had, we had borrowed our, we had borrowed our, our council
• 16:12
  Scout aluminum granum canoes, which are made for like lakes.
• 16:16
  We've taken them on a bunch of lake trips, but we were obsessed
• 16:19
  with trying to do a river trip. So there in eastern Arizona,
• 16:23
  there is the HeLa Box riparian conservation or it's the
• 16:27
  riparian national conservation area.
• 16:29
  There's not a, there's a couple of other places that had that
• 16:31
  designation, but it's kind of a kind of a unique one.
• 16:34
  I've never really looked into the specifics.
• 16:36
  I don't know how it compares to like say wild, wild and scenic
• 16:39
  or like a Wilder. I think it's like designed to
• 16:41
  protect a waterway, but it's a de facto wilderness area.
• 16:46
  It's near Safford, Arizona. You put in in a place called the
• 16:50
  old Safford Bridge a lot about 7 miles in the San Francisco River
• 16:56
  flows in, which more than doubled the flow.
• 17:01
  But yeah, we ended up doing this 23 mile overnight trip and I
• 17:08
  loved it. And my dad could tell that I
• 17:10
  really loved it because like the kid I was working with, I, I, I,
• 17:14
  I could, I could read the water just fine.
• 17:17
  I was like having fun. Like I had my J stroke down.
• 17:22
  Yeah, I I really enjoyed it. And it was, we had so much fun
• 17:26
  that trip. We floated.
• 17:29
  There was a black bear sitting in a Cottonwood tree that we
• 17:33
  floated under. Wow.
• 17:35
  Yeah, I. Remember Special Yeah.
• 17:39
  Our crazy, awful scout master was had his hand on his pistol
• 17:44
  that it wasn't supposed to have like the whole time, like he was
• 17:47
  gonna shoot it, but. Whatever.
• 17:49
  Shoot a little bear out of a tree, whatever.
• 17:51
  Yeah, thankfully that didn't happen.
• 17:53
  I didn't live in the universe where that occurred.
• 17:58
  But one way to traumatize a bunch of kids I.
• 18:00
  Know right like. Shoot a baby bear in a tree.
• 18:03
  Yeah, it's not a good man, but yeah, that that trip was my
• 18:09
  first river trip and I really loved it.
• 18:11
  And I started badgering my dad all the time about river trips.
• 18:15
  And I didn't know this at the time, but my dad was really
• 18:19
  struggling with backpacking because he had.
• 18:22
  Physically. Yeah, he had some old knee
• 18:24
  entries from when he was young and stupid and playing football
• 18:28
  in college that were really catching up to him.
• 18:32
  And he had a knee surgery that hadn't gone well.
• 18:35
  And he just, I, he was being, he was being a man about it, you
• 18:39
  know, being very invisible and like strong.
• 18:40
  But he was like, he later admitted to me he was like
• 18:42
  struggling so hard with like uphill, downhill and carrying
• 18:46
  weight. And so around that time he
• 18:49
  started, you know, he's also building the, building the boat.
• 18:51
  He's just starts making plans. And it's like, well, what if we,
• 18:54
  what if we start doing some river trips?
• 18:56
  And what if we win a river trip around this time?
• 18:59
  So I was finishing up high school, starting college, the
• 19:03
  Grand Canyon switched from a wait list system to a, to a
• 19:08
  permit or to a lottery permit system because it used to be you
• 19:13
  were on like I think it was like a 20 year wait list or something
• 19:17
  like that to get a private permit.
• 19:19
  But then we switched over to like a weighted lottery And
• 19:21
  well, it was like, I think it was he wanted on a cancellation,
• 19:24
  but we won. It was, it was going to be like
• 19:26
  almost two years out, but it was like like, because I think the
• 19:29
  trip was for 2007 was it was a December 2007 launch.
• 19:34
  OK. But we knew we had that.
• 19:38
  So we started making plans as I was finishing high school and we
• 19:42
  did yeah, my dad did some serious training and like along
• 19:47
  the with like a he went to like a rowing clinic on the Rio Chama
• 19:52
  and the Rio Grande and I did a little bit of that.
• 19:56
  But we, my dad was the one who was focusing on rowing and he
• 20:00
  had rowed before, but you know, I'd been away from it for a
• 20:03
  really long time. And yeah, he, we, we did Desso
• 20:11
  Grey, which is, you know, one of the classic Utah rivers and so
• 20:16
  beautiful in scenic. And we did that one with my dad
• 20:19
  and my grandpa. And that was, that was really
• 20:22
  fun. And then we went back and did it
• 20:24
  with my sisters like another year later.
• 20:28
  And yeah, and eventually we, we went and did our December Grand
• 20:32
  Canyon trip and that was fun. It had a lot of mayhem.
• 20:38
  It was like my first Grand Canyon trip wasn't it wasn't my
• 20:40
  first, it wasn't my first overnight trip at that point.
• 20:44
  But we, we had some, we had a lot of mishaps.
• 20:49
  Yeah. My grandpa had to be evaced on
• 20:51
  Day 2 because he had a really bad swim at the top of the
• 20:54
  roaring 20s. Indian Dick rabid gets a lot of
• 20:57
  people. Of them Dicks, they've been
• 21:00
  getting everyone. Yeah.
• 21:06
  Damn, that's. Funny, we had your.
• 21:08
  Grandpa getting evacuated, that's scary.
• 21:11
  We had a guy on the trip and I will not say his name out of
• 21:15
  respect to him, but it kind of so he he kind of like my dad was
• 21:21
  the permit holder, but he was like, oh, I've done the Canyon
• 21:25
  many times and like I can, I can figure everything out.
• 21:27
  He'd never done a winter trip before in his life.
• 21:31
  That's a whole other ball game. Whole another ball game and.
• 21:34
  Your feet cold. Yeah, a little bit.
• 21:36
  That's OK. You want I've got to do it.
• 21:38
  I've got some waterproof socks. If you oh, it's fine, I can
• 21:41
  handle this. I'm I've got fleece on.
• 21:43
  But yeah, I think. The toesies are a little.
• 21:46
  Yeah, little brisk I'm. I got blankets, I got socks I
• 21:50
  got. I am so dedicated to my, to my,
• 21:53
  to wearing my Bedrocks and I really, I'm really stoked about
• 21:56
  about them. I've had to do a lot of shoe
• 21:58
  shopping last year because I'm at the point where I've been on
• 22:02
  hormone replacement therapy for three years now.
• 22:04
  OK. And a fun fact about that is
• 22:06
  your feet shrink. Really.
• 22:09
  Really weird, yeah. But yeah, I've gone from having
• 22:12
  a testosterone heavy body to an estrogen heavy body.
• 22:16
  What are what are you? What are you?
• 22:17
  Turn around, turn around, turn around.
• 22:19
  What is that? Is that an aspirin?
• 22:21
  It's that's like a young bald eagle.
• 22:24
  Yeah, that's a young body. Gorgeous.
• 22:27
  Juvenile bald eagle. It came down so low, claws out,
• 22:33
  like I thought it was going to land in the water.
• 22:35
  That was awesome. That is a hollyitis
• 22:38
  leucocephalus. I know the scientific name of
• 22:41
  the bald eagle cuz I it's on one of my animals.
• 22:44
  I love it. I need to get it tattooed.
• 22:48
  I'm thinking about getting a tattoo of AI think I had to do a
• 22:52
  bird tattoo at some point. And the one I've been really
• 22:54
  settling on is a great blue Heron.
• 22:56
  I just, yeah, they're like the weird ones in the water and I
• 22:59
  really, I really relate to them. Yeah, they're good.
• 23:03
  The shop on H Street is something weird.
• 23:06
  They have a tattoo shop in there also and in their book they have
• 23:10
  a gorgeous piece of great blue Heron art available for tattoo
• 23:16
  that I I highly recommend. Color me very interested.
• 23:20
  I might need to do that. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:22
  I just did a massive cover up on my thigh of like an earlier
• 23:25
  mistake in my 20s, and it's a majestic Unicorn.
• 23:30
  I love it. It's my spirit.
• 23:31
  Animal, but you had to cover it up.
• 23:34
  Or no, no, I cover. It up with Unicorn.
• 23:37
  Yeah, yeah, the old. We'll talk about the old
• 23:39
  monstrosity that was there, but. Yeah, but so your feet have
• 23:43
  shrunk progressively over the last three years?
• 23:46
  They have. Yes, like how many shoe sizes?
• 23:49
  I was a men's 14, women's 16, and now I am down to a men's 12
• 23:55
  1/2. And I don't know what the US
• 23:57
  lady's size of that is. I'm still honestly large.
• 23:59
  I'm still like Peggy heel feet, but you know, like it's it's
• 24:04
  been a little it's it's a fun excuse to go and spend money.
• 24:07
  I. Guess, yeah, Yeah.
• 24:08
  But then what do you? What do you do with the old
• 24:09
  shoes? Well, well, you know, I was
• 24:12
  always I the Astros that I had were I barely would fit into
• 24:16
  them with like all my big like winter gear.
• 24:19
  And now I fit in like comfortably and squeeze in.
• 24:22
  So that's that's good. Yeah.
• 24:24
  Yeah. As for the rest, well, yeah, I
• 24:28
  don't know what I'm gonna do about my docs.
• 24:30
  I have these really cool, like teal ones that I, I kind of
• 24:33
  really like. And yeah, they're kind of
• 24:35
  comically digged now. Feel like clown feet but.
• 24:38
  You could consign them at something weird.
• 24:40
  I could, yeah. I'm a.
• 24:42
  Little I'm I'm blasting something weird all day.
• 24:46
  Today. Because.
• 24:47
  We didn't go in there the other day.
• 24:48
  Asia and I went in the the next day.
• 24:50
  I'll check it out. Yeah.
• 24:52
  Great little shop, Great little shop.
• 24:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a fun little fact, yeah.
• 24:57
  Where we let's backtrack to where we left off.
• 24:59
  So it was so originally it was like how you know, tell us
• 25:04
  you're. Growing the first Grand Canyon
• 25:05
  trip and. Then we're in the 1st.
• 25:06
  Grandpa got evacuated, yeah. And it was.
• 25:09
  It was. And the day.
• 25:10
  After another and he wasn't a friend.
• 25:13
  Know it all. The know it all creep of a guy
• 25:17
  who like made a bunch of creepy comments to me about like all
• 25:20
  these other river trips to do were great.
• 25:21
  There's naked girls and like, and you know, just like, and
• 25:25
  even then it like, you know, like 18 year old me, it was
• 25:28
  like, but you know, many years later, you know, so there's all
• 25:32
  these Grand Canyon groups and like, who are like people
• 25:36
  seeking boaters. And I saw this guy making a post
• 25:39
  on there and would you believe that?
• 25:42
  Like he made a post and a bunch of girls came in immediately and
• 25:46
  are like, I wouldn't have this guy on a trip at all.
• 25:49
  He's a mega creep. And like and the only and I I, I
• 25:53
  I got a lot of laugh reacts because the only I was like,
• 25:57
  yeah, he's he's got a great pancake mix.
• 25:58
  I will say I did a trip with him and he's got a great pancake
• 26:01
  mix. And that's about it.
• 26:05
  Good. Reputation.
• 26:07
  Yeah, no, he was kind of an idiot, but yeah.
• 26:12
  And also a creep, yeah. And you never have to do a trip
• 26:15
  with. Him again, I know, I know.
• 26:17
  I've never had to do a trip with him again.
• 26:19
  I'm I'm I. It was important lessons learned
• 26:22
  on your first, you know, Yeah, your first trip.
• 26:26
  Yeah. Everybody, everybody's got to
• 26:27
  have a bad trip. Yeah, you got you got to have at
• 26:29
  least one. Yep, there's there's pretty much
• 26:32
  always one asshole on a Grand Canyon trip.
• 26:35
  If you get on a Grand Canyon trip and nobody's an asshole, it
• 26:39
  might be you or you really lucked out.
• 26:43
  You know, I've like, I'm at the point now where I've done 8
• 26:45
  Grand Canyon trips and three of those have been as a, as have
• 26:50
  been as a permit holder that I've been able to put together
• 26:52
  the crew. Amazing.
• 26:53
  With each one, it's gotten increasingly better.
• 26:55
  The last one was so perfect. And I've been hesitant to like
• 26:58
  play the lottery ever since then because I'm like, I don't know
• 27:02
  if I want. The last trip was a was a she's
• 27:04
  days gays trip, which is a perfect format and I think more
• 27:09
  people should try and follow that.
• 27:12
  But yeah, there were. Yeah, it was.
• 27:14
  What is that? It was the girls, the gays in
• 27:18
  the days. She's I would love that.
• 27:20
  OK, I don't know why I thought it was something else.
• 27:23
  Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, I knew I had something to
• 27:25
  do. Like some sort of yeah.
• 27:26
  I bring my boyfriend, no. No, Yeah.
• 27:28
  Is he straight? No.
• 27:30
  No. Sorry.
• 27:32
  No, I like that I'm. Down.
• 27:36
  Yeah, it's definitely. If you haven't tried it, it's
• 27:39
  definitely the way to do a trip. And I keep saying I'm going to
• 27:43
  organize more of those at some point, and I get requested, but
• 27:47
  to do that all the time by yeah. So now I don't know.
• 27:50
  I need to be more active and getting more more queer and
• 27:53
  trans folk out. If you have if you have any
• 27:57
  entrepreneurial spirit and want to like that would be a great
• 28:02
  premise for a whole rafting and or outdoor sports in my
• 28:07
  organization I've heard. From a couple of years ago when
• 28:11
  I was like struggling as a guide, a wonderful man named
• 28:14
  Greg McFadden, who's the owner of Canyons in Idaho, which is a
• 28:19
  company that runs the Middle Fork in the main salmon.
• 28:23
  He actually the IT was another outfitter gave him my number and
• 28:27
  he just called, called me and gave me some wonderful career
• 28:30
  advice. But that was something we did
• 28:31
  talk about. And he said that he loves doing
• 28:33
  the he, he does do all LGBTQIA trips and he says he wishes it
• 28:39
  was a more profitable adventure, but he's he's hoping it will.
• 28:43
  Yeah. So.
• 28:43
  Yeah, you got to just commit into it.
• 28:46
  More publicity, more exposure. I know.
• 28:49
  It's it's hard pink dollars can come and go at times yeah, like
• 28:54
  I, I, I think I, I'm optimistic about that in at some point
• 28:58
  we'll we will be able to see that format be maybe on the more
• 29:02
  commercial side of things, but. Because the outdoors are for
• 29:06
  everybody they're for. Everyone.
• 29:08
  They absolutely are. The outdoors don't discriminate
• 29:11
  and everybody has everybody can have access and be welcome, and
• 29:17
  the more the more exposure the. Threat is of that.
• 29:21
  Like the more it'll it'll feel accessible.
• 29:25
  Exactly. It's right there, just gotta go.
• 29:28
  Yeah. Get out there.
• 29:31
  Yeah, exactly right. Gotta get out.
• 29:34
  So anyways, I guess to briefly track back onto my origin story,
• 29:39
  that was the first of many Grand Canyon trips I did.
• 29:42
  You know, my 20s were kind of a really tumultuous time, still
• 29:46
  kind of finding a lot of things out about myself, but also kind
• 29:51
  of having a deep sense of having something wrong and broken, you
• 29:54
  know, like what's kind of the theme?
• 29:55
  And I like in college, I like try I, this is like kind of like
• 30:00
  a classic trans fem trope. But like, I tried to compensate
• 30:03
  so hard by being like so Uber macho.
• 30:06
  Like I played rugby in college. I was like really strong and
• 30:10
  like, I like kind of had a lot of very aggro.
• 30:17
  It's what the, the Gen. Z kids call young, young,
• 30:19
  aggressive male energy, yeah, energy.
• 30:21
  Like I really kind of like I, I really kind of had that flowing
• 30:26
  through me a lot. But I would still do river
• 30:28
  trips. River trips were like my, it was
• 30:30
  like the thing I would always do with my dad, my sister and, you
• 30:34
  know, whoever else we could. And eventually, I would just
• 30:36
  start going on a lot of private Grand Canyon trips with
• 30:40
  strangers and people that I had, you know, done trips previously.
• 30:44
  And my dad couldn't go, and he asked me if I wanted to try it.
• 30:47
  And yeah. And it was in 2016 that I did a
• 30:52
  trip with a bunch of people who grew up on a little communal
• 30:56
  farm together out in Applegate. And it was a really.
• 31:01
  Yeah, One of them brought a Ferren boat.
• 31:05
  Yeah. There.
• 31:06
  Was it was a Yeah, a. Floppy 18 footer with a triple
• 31:11
  frame. Absolutely.
• 31:13
  And yeah, yeah. It was like, it was the first
• 31:16
  Grand Canyon trip I had done where my dad wasn't around.
• 31:19
  And like, was also like, I don't know, like the first time I'd
• 31:23
  ever, like, showed up and like, yeah, man, they had dogs music
• 31:26
  playing and, and doobies lit, you know, And like, I was like
• 31:31
  my people. Finally felt at home.
• 31:33
  Yeah, and I ended up becoming really close friends with one of
• 31:38
  the women that was on that trip, Green.
• 31:40
  She she and I stayed really close friends ever since then.
• 31:44
  But she kind of put the idea and was like, oh, babe, come out to
• 31:47
  come out to Oregon. You'll love it out here.
• 31:50
  You'd you should, you should try and come and see the rogue.
• 31:52
  And they're like, yeah, Ryan, come do the rogue sometime.
• 31:54
  So that was that was like when that idea was first planted in
• 31:57
  my brain. This episode is brought to you
• 32:01
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• 32:45
  You were like 20. Oh, I was like in my late 20s by
• 32:49
  this point. I was born in 88, so yeah.
• 32:53
  I'm an 80s baby too. Yeah, I'm, I'm older than I
• 32:58
  look. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed
• 33:01
  that so. Hormone therapy does wonders,
• 33:03
  I'll tell you. But yeah, I, I, I like, and, you
• 33:10
  know, I did a few more trips with like, a few of those folks
• 33:13
  the next year on, like, the Dolores in Colorado.
• 33:16
  And, you know, I the, I, the idea was planted in my head,
• 33:21
  like, OK, I got to get out to Oregon and do the Rogue.
• 33:25
  And, you know, I'd had like a lot of tumultuous ups and downs
• 33:28
  in my life and work and like, I was working in a lot of
• 33:32
  restaurants and just going nowhere, wasn't using anything
• 33:35
  I'd done in gone to college for or what did you go to college
• 33:38
  for sociology you. Know great all-encompassing
• 33:42
  major. Very all-encompassing major,
• 33:44
  right? We'll get back to that in a
• 33:47
  moment. Like, but yeah, my life was not
• 33:52
  going anywhere. And I'd had failed relationships
• 33:55
  and I was just very, very depressed and not in a healthy
• 33:58
  state. And I don't want to think about
• 33:59
  where I would be or wouldn't be if I had stayed.
• 34:02
  But I just knew I needed to leave.
• 34:04
  And like, I was like, I'm almost thirty.
• 34:06
  I have to go and try seasonal work.
• 34:08
  This is something I've always wanted to do.
• 34:09
  So I just began applying to jobs everywhere.
• 34:12
  I had been given an offer and had tentatively accepted one at
• 34:18
  a restaurant in Denali National Park and was kind of planning
• 34:23
  for that. My mom had some health problems
• 34:25
  around that time and I was like really worried about being up in
• 34:29
  Alaska for a summer in case and we just didn't know what was
• 34:33
  going on at the time. So I, I started looking for
• 34:37
  things locally and, you know, I remember what Brie had told me
• 34:40
  about like check out the look up, look up the Rogue.
• 34:42
  So I pulled the Craigslist for Southern Oregon and I just the
• 34:47
  first thing I see is 1 for Paradise Lodge on the wild and
• 34:51
  scenic part of the Rogue River. And I was like, OK, and I'm this
• 34:55
  sounds cool, sent them my resume.
• 34:57
  And like, it was like 5 days later, I had done an interview
• 35:00
  and I'd accepted an offer. And like, like, maybe like not
• 35:03
  even 4 weeks later, I was like for the first time in my life,
• 35:07
  piling up all my stuff for the summer up into my truck and
• 35:10
  heading to Oregon. And I stopped in Gold Hill and I
• 35:16
  walked out and stepped in the Rogue for the first time in the
• 35:19
  boat ramp there. I swear it.
• 35:21
  Like they like said, I had this thought that was just welcome
• 35:25
  home. I don't know.
• 35:27
  That was the thought and I just, they felt.
• 35:29
  And there was the feeling that entered my mind and didn't
• 35:32
  understand it at all. But yeah, the next day I headed
• 35:37
  to a place called Foster Bar and I met a jet, a jet boat was
• 35:41
  there. And it took me up to paradise,
• 35:43
  and I'd spend that summer there. And that ended up really
• 35:47
  changing my life. That was like just a such a
• 35:50
  pivotal moment. Paradise, you know, lodge life
• 35:53
  is it's it's tough. You're like, up at like 5:30
• 35:57
  every morning. You know, you, you've done that.
• 35:59
  Yeah. Like in paradise, you're waking
• 36:01
  up in the darkness because the generator doesn't get turned on
• 36:04
  until 7:00 AM. And the sun hits the whole
• 36:09
  property pretty late. It does.
• 36:11
  Well, and at Paradise, you guys don't really get a day off, do
• 36:13
  you like. There's, there are, there are
• 36:15
  two days of the week at Paradise.
• 36:17
  There's Tuesday and not Tuesday. And on Tuesday a jet boat comes
• 36:21
  and someone gets to go home and your mail gets brought up and
• 36:23
  usually the person gets to go home is not you.
• 36:25
  So yeah, but other than that, it's kind of like it's fun, but
• 36:31
  it is like Groundhog Day for. Sure, dude.
• 36:33
  Ohh. God, it's so, yeah.
• 36:37
  Yeah, and it was very fun. But like, there's definitely
• 36:41
  like moments where you know, your sanity begins to erode a
• 36:46
  little bit and the tiniest little things just set you off.
• 36:51
  But you. Would call it getting marialized
• 36:53
  down in that sounds sounds right the marial maidens and get
• 36:56
  marialized. Loved being a marial maiden.
• 36:59
  That was fun. It's only I only did it very
• 37:02
  briefly, but this is also we're very close to where I live.
• 37:05
  I longboard along this trail a lot.
• 37:07
  It's one of my go to and my go to things here.
• 37:10
  Nice. I love the sports park.
• 37:12
  Yeah. You guys, you're having too much
• 37:14
  fun. Chill out Canadians, I love
• 37:18
  them. Technically, they're not
• 37:20
  Canadian. They are Canada geese, named for
• 37:23
  John Canada. Yes, we.
• 37:26
  Learned something new every day. Actually.
• 37:27
  I feel like I've heard that and then forgot.
• 37:29
  Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm getting better with bird lore, but yeah.
• 37:33
  That's my, that's like my only bird fact, so.
• 37:37
  Sorry darling. You know, No, no, you.
• 37:39
  I just want to you know. Yeah.
• 37:42
  Well, no, because I'm going to put it back on.
• 37:44
  Let's see, back on track. So Paradise was fun.
• 37:48
  While I was there, I made contact with this curious group
• 37:52
  of people called the guides. And the guides, they took a
• 37:59
  liking to me because they always take a liking to the lodge
• 38:01
  staff. They're like, hey, have you
• 38:03
  heard that, that new one at Paradise Ryan, they can row a
• 38:07
  boat. And I would ask them about
• 38:09
  whitewater all the time and talk about my various river trips,
• 38:13
  which is such a silly thing, but I was so infatuated with it.
• 38:16
  And they were so stoked. And they were like, you can
• 38:19
  carry our coolers and like, you could tell you've had some.
• 38:22
  And I would tell them like stories, like about my first
• 38:24
  trip and like other fun things. And they were like.
• 38:27
  Because usually guide hands don't have actual rafting
• 38:31
  experience. Correct.
• 38:33
  Like it's, it is. They're like, yeah.
• 38:34
  What are you doing working here? Why don't you come work for us?
• 38:37
  So I'm like, what we're like, could I be a guide?
• 38:40
  And they're like, absolutely, you can carry, you can carry a
• 38:44
  cooler, you can tell a good story.
• 38:46
  You're wonderful with our guests.
• 38:48
  We got a job you'll be great at like.
• 38:51
  And that idea stuck in my mind. And, you know, I left at the in
• 38:56
  September to go run the Grand Canyon.
• 38:59
  And that was a wonderful trip again.
• 39:01
  And I think that was like my 5th or 6th one at that point.
• 39:06
  And yeah, I, I, I decided the next year because like, I went
• 39:12
  back and was like staying with my parents and working at my old
• 39:16
  job. And I was immediately like, God
• 39:18
  damn, I, I went back in Oregon. I hate this, I can't stand this,
• 39:22
  but get me back out there. So the next I, I applied for a
• 39:28
  bunch of companies and I eventually heard back from
• 39:31
  Morrison's Rogue Wilderness Adventures.
• 39:34
  And yeah, their manager Brent hired me and yeah, and he was
• 39:39
  like, hey, you've never been a guide before, but I think you've
• 39:43
  got what it takes. And I did a lot of day trips on
• 39:46
  the Rogue that season, but I also did a lot of what they call
• 39:49
  downriver trips like through the Wild and Scenic section.
• 39:51
  And I, I, yeah, as soon as it was kind of funny because I
• 39:55
  think like a lot of my peers, you know, like most people who
• 39:58
  work as like multi day guides get.
• 40:01
  Up here. Are pretty experienced and
• 40:03
  they're and they definitely they don't like like like my peers
• 40:09
  were like questioning my qualifications for valid
• 40:12
  reasons. I would too today like.
• 40:16
  Did you work with Larry? No.
• 40:18
  But you heard about Larry. I've heard about this Larry.
• 40:21
  He's. Amazing.
• 40:22
  Yeah. I miss him, said dear friend of
• 40:25
  mine. He has, he has his.
• 40:27
  He has like legend. Yeah, arsons.
• 40:30
  He's like a legend. Yeah, I've definitely heard
• 40:32
  heard of a guy named Larry there.
• 40:33
  They've I've heard of so many like, yeah, it was, but yeah,
• 40:40
  the they saw me row and, you know, so I struggled with a lot
• 40:44
  of the other skills to like I eventually I didn't have like I
• 40:49
  didn't do like a guide school the way a lot of people normally
• 40:52
  do. I had these two guides assigned
• 40:56
  to me that I assigned to work under 1 was Bama, who's this big
• 41:02
  tall man of legend. Oh my God.
• 41:04
  Your face. The face every, every, every
• 41:06
  lady makes. It's all right, Yeah.
• 41:10
  Nothing ever happened, Yeah. Nothing definitely did happen.
• 41:14
  With you. Check out.
• 41:19
  I was a Mariel maiden. I love that.
• 41:22
  Man, I just admired from afar. No, he's turned into a wonderful
• 41:26
  man, but I remember his first year.
• 41:30
  I've heard legends, yeah, he's told me legends.
• 41:32
  He. Was a bit shy and.
• 41:33
  Yeah, I got, I got to work with him a lot towards the end of his
• 41:36
  time as a guide. And he was very influential on
• 41:39
  me. And.
• 41:41
  Yeah, and he had definitely like done a lot of growing up in that
• 41:44
  time, you know, And yeah, and and, you know, he was a little
• 41:48
  bit of a harsh instructor, but he he, he broke me and helped
• 41:52
  rebuild me as a lot of guys do. But then I was taking on it.
• 41:56
  Put in the wings of this wonderful woman in Gabby who
• 41:59
  she's still a very active kayaker and she teaches out in
• 42:02
  Arcada now. But yeah, Gabby was another
• 42:07
  person that really kind of taught me the finer skills of
• 42:11
  being a guide, especially like those softer skills, like, you
• 42:13
  know, because there's so many things when you're a private
• 42:16
  boater you just don't pick up on.
• 42:17
  And it's hard to make people who are private voters into guides.
• 42:21
  Yeah, I, I struggled a lot with that my first season, but Gabby
• 42:25
  did a wonderful job of helping close that gap.
• 42:28
  And then the next year, I, you know, 2020, we didn't know if we
• 42:32
  were going to have a season, but I, as soon as I got the word
• 42:34
  that I can move into guide camp, I, I did and I was like all
• 42:39
  about it. And yeah, and I, I ended up
• 42:42
  working for Morrison's for three years.
• 42:44
  And, you know, I, I be, I was one of their gear boaters.
• 42:47
  I think I did like, and that's three years.
• 42:49
  I like at the peak of the season I would be doing like 2 trips a
• 42:52
  week down the wild section. So either a two 2-3 days or a
• 42:57
  three and a four day trip a week.
• 43:00
  And just turning and burning, yeah.
• 43:01
  Absolutely. And it was like really good for
• 43:04
  my like, like I think when I worked for them, I got like
• 43:08
  somewhere like around 50 something lapsed down the Wild
• 43:11
  and Scenic section. Damn.
• 43:14
  Yeah, like if we include all the private trips, like I'm, I'm
• 43:18
  just shy of 80 now, I think like.
• 43:22
  Wow. Yeah, but.
• 43:23
  It's a good amount. Yeah, it was, it was really,
• 43:26
  Yeah. The bulk of those were for sure
• 43:28
  during, during that season. I think like in 2021, I worked
• 43:33
  not including Morrison's and a couple of other trips that I
• 43:37
  guess guided for. I think I worked.
• 43:40
  I think I worked 23 trips that season down there.
• 43:45
  And it didn't burn you out. No, no, I was all about it.
• 43:49
  I was so gung ho the winter of 20/20/2020 to 20/21.
• 43:56
  I, I decided to stay out here and not go home.
• 43:59
  And it's like give it a try. And I was definitely doing that
• 44:03
  Southern Oregon pot farm life for a hot minute and did that
• 44:08
  for well. That's what you do when
• 44:09
  boating's done, Yeah, go trim some lean.
• 44:11
  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a good life.
• 44:14
  Yeah. Like, yeah, trimmed and
• 44:17
  harvested and trimmed weed for a while.
• 44:19
  And that was that was cool. Yeah.
• 44:22
  You know, at the start of what was going to be my 4th year, I
• 44:25
  ended up not going back to Morrison's.
• 44:27
  And I just kind of needed a healthier workspace.
• 44:29
  That was just a little, you know.
• 44:31
  Different. You always need a new.
• 44:33
  Yeah. And around that.
• 44:34
  So it's really important to know that around this time I started
• 44:38
  doing a lot of self growth and evaluation and platform life.
• 44:44
  It also introduced me to a lot of eccentric circumstances where
• 44:47
  I was able to break out of a lot of molds that was in, you know,
• 44:50
  when I was working as a guide. That was the first time I was
• 44:54
  able to paint my nails. And like that they're fading
• 44:57
  right now. But yeah, like, that was that
• 45:00
  was like a very big, like, moment of euphoria.
• 45:02
  What I now realize is euphoria. Where I was encouraged,
• 45:06
  embraced. I could, I could wear a Tutu and
• 45:10
  I would be fine, you know, Yeah, the that was kind of important.
• 45:15
  And also when I was like gear boating for them, you know, I
• 45:19
  had a lot of time alone where I was just going and floating
• 45:24
  downriver and having these wide open spaces.
• 45:26
  And I had a lot of time in my own head to think about things.
• 45:31
  And I started becoming, it wasn't like a very conscious
• 45:34
  thing. It just kind of happened
• 45:36
  naturally because I could do it. I started presenting myself in a
• 45:39
  more feminine manner and that was really healthy and happy to
• 45:44
  like, you know, I was, that was like really fun.
• 45:47
  And I felt like something was happening there.
• 45:50
  And that last winter I had been doing a lot of soul searching
• 45:55
  and I realized that I did want to transition and that that was
• 45:59
  that was a scary, that's a scary thing.
• 46:01
  Like that's a really, it's like the most significant decision
• 46:05
  you will ever make in your life if you go down that route and
• 46:07
  you realize that is what you need to do.
• 46:10
  But yeah, I realized I'd had a lot of pretty significant
• 46:14
  dysphoria. And there was 1 moment that
• 46:16
  between 2020 and 2020 or at the end of the 2021 season where I
• 46:20
  was going to a Halloween party and I ended up putting on this
• 46:23
  like skirt had my, my lady, I was working for do my makeup up
• 46:27
  and I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time and I
• 46:31
  didn't hate my body. And that was I like and I was I
• 46:35
  was like that like that, like that was like a bullet to the
• 46:37
  head. Like it was really like I I like
• 46:41
  had to like process and like had like a minor panic attack over
• 46:44
  it you. Know like seeing yourself for
• 46:47
  who you really are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:52
  And it was a scary thing to process for sure.
• 46:58
  And there was a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety.
• 47:00
  But I think because I'd had I'd had the cocky ego of a third
• 47:06
  year guide, you know, that gave me the incentive I needed to
• 47:11
  push myself forward on that journey.
• 47:14
  Because like, I look at it like now and I think back on a lot of
• 47:18
  things, like I don't know how I had the courage to do that, but
• 47:21
  I think that was it. Like, yeah, like the river, the,
• 47:24
  the, the ego of a third year guide, which is something I
• 47:27
  understand a lot differently now than I did at the moment.
• 47:31
  Yeah, that that pushed me to that point.
• 47:33
  So when I went back for my 4th year and then ended up taking a
• 47:36
  different path, I ended up, I end up working at a company
• 47:39
  called Row Adventures, which definitely has a very different
• 47:42
  culture than Morrison's, you know, not better or worse, but
• 47:45
  just just different. The way the guides present
• 47:49
  themselves are different. The the clique of people, I
• 47:51
  guess is like very different. It's like going from, you know,
• 47:55
  the jocks to like the mathletes and the kind of the drama club,
• 48:00
  so to speak. And that I remember when I
• 48:05
  showed up for their Rogue River training because I was, I was
• 48:08
  hired primarily. I knew I was going to be working
• 48:10
  mostly in Idaho at that point, but I was given a couple of
• 48:13
  trips on the road and I showed up for their training and their
• 48:16
  manager, Tom already knew me and introduced me, but he introduced
• 48:19
  me to the rest of his staff. And I knew I knew some, I knew
• 48:21
  one of the guides, but all of them are new faces.
• 48:24
  And there was this like meeting where we, we were just
• 48:28
  introducing ourselves and our pronouns.
• 48:31
  And that was the first time I ever like said, like, I'm Ryan,
• 48:35
  my pronouns are she, her. And yeah, it was like a real
• 48:41
  shocker. I didn't know that my couple of
• 48:43
  my old colleagues were because it's in the same building as
• 48:45
  the, as the Morrison. I know a couple of my old
• 48:48
  colleagues were sitting on the other side of the wall too.
• 48:50
  And they knew I had kind of left under some weird circumstances
• 48:54
  and wasn't really, like, happy with the way things have been
• 48:57
  going there. And they they were, they heard
• 48:59
  that too. And yeah, it's a, it's a real
• 49:02
  like, shocker moment. And Tom didn't know that about
• 49:05
  me either at that point. Was saying pronouns part of
• 49:09
  their normal protocol already? They they didn't add that in
• 49:12
  because no of a request store that.
• 49:15
  Was, well, it was something that we were doing.
• 49:17
  Yeah, you know, we don't. I would say that over time it's
• 49:19
  like it was something we were trying to do consciously every
• 49:23
  trip at this point. It's something that we do when
• 49:25
  we feel it's appropriate. So we're very, we try to be just
• 49:28
  very dialed in. We can tell if we can sense
• 49:31
  right away that we have someone who's gender non conforming.
• 49:33
  Like if I'm on a trip, absolutely we we do that.
• 49:38
  And yeah, and I've, I've kind of helped the other guides as I've
• 49:41
  become more comfortable because like now we're, I'm going on,
• 49:44
  I've been with them for four years now.
• 49:47
  Yeah, I just finished up my 7th season as a river guide.
• 49:51
  Yeah. But yeah, I, yeah, I think we're
• 49:56
  we're we're pretty, we're pretty open about that.
• 49:59
  And we, you know, we do get a fair number.
• 50:02
  It's not like a, it's not like a huge number, but we get a couple
• 50:05
  of trans and non binary individuals on our trip.
• 50:09
  Enough that it matters to have that as part of the the business
• 50:12
  practices. It is.
• 50:14
  And I, I've definitely brought more awareness of queer culture
• 50:19
  to Roe and I've brought in a few queer folks too.
• 50:22
  Something we do on our staff trip and the last two seasons.
• 50:26
  I, I will take credit for this is I, I, I issue a call on the
• 50:33
  morning when we're going to go do a bunch.
• 50:35
  It's usually held on the Salmon River near Riggins.
• 50:38
  And the day that we're going to be going through the Reagan
• 50:39
  section that has all the white water.
• 50:42
  I kind of I invite people if they consider themselves LGBTQIA
• 50:48
  to come and meet up with me and we're going to all get on a boat
• 50:51
  together. We jokingly and, and what I say
• 50:55
  is like, you know, like there's no like requirements to be on
• 50:59
  this boat other than that you want to be on it.
• 51:02
  And what I joke is like, are you gay enough to be on gay boat?
• 51:05
  I don't know. Are you gay enough?
• 51:07
  That's a that's a question for you.
• 51:09
  But you know what's really amazing about it is that it's
• 51:13
  created this space where so many people who we maybe weren't very
• 51:17
  outward about their bisexuality, for example, and other and just
• 51:22
  in other and people who just weren't very open about
• 51:25
  themselves felt a lot more comfortable in the last last
• 51:29
  year we took up 1 1/2 boats. Wow.
• 51:32
  Including an 8 Fourth Ward paddle boat.
• 51:34
  Amazing, yeah. So yeah, we always get, we
• 51:37
  always do that. I always bring a bunch of
• 51:39
  rainbow flags and we fly them up and we go through the town of
• 51:43
  Riggins, which it's a very empowering thing when you're
• 51:46
  going through Idaho. Yeah, yeah.
• 51:48
  How does Riggins respond? Do they respond?
• 51:50
  No, they they don't. That's OK, Yeah.
• 51:54
  Well, better than. Yeah, better than no responses
• 51:58
  I. Mean we get, we get honks on the
• 51:59
  road and like, and like and like, like, you know, 'cause
• 52:02
  it's a kind of a busy highway that goes through that, that
• 52:04
  corridor and yeah, and I, and I do get, I do, I do get a lot, a
• 52:09
  lot more unexpected enthusiasm. I yeah.
• 52:13
  So since joining Roe, I've kind of moved away from being AI,
• 52:19
  still work a couple of trips this season on the Rogue, but
• 52:23
  I've become primarily more of an Idaho guide.
• 52:25
  You know, my first year I was doing a lot of trips on both the
• 52:28
  lower Salmon, the Deschutes. The next year was almost
• 52:33
  exclusively Hells Canyon and a few lower salmon.
• 52:36
  And I, my second year with them, I started running the Loxaw in
• 52:40
  the spring and I really fell in love with that river.
• 52:43
  That is that was that was another river that like spoke to
• 52:47
  my soul right away, just like the Rogue.
• 52:49
  And I don't know what it, I don't know what, what it was
• 52:52
  saying to me something like like the first time I stepped in.
• 52:55
  But I was just like, Oh, yeah. Oh, it didn't say welcome home.
• 52:58
  The rogue did, the rogue did. The loxaw is there.
• 53:01
  The loxaw just kind of roared, but it's like.
• 53:05
  Going to get your face. I got you.
• 53:08
  She's, she's a very special beast of a river that only runs,
• 53:12
  you know, from April to June every year because like, once
• 53:15
  she drops out and it's gone for the rest of the year.
• 53:17
  Have you ever been? Out No.
• 53:19
  Yeah, it's it is ferocious big water and it's very fast moving
• 53:24
  and it's like it's a 20 mile day trip nonstop slamming wave after
• 53:28
  wave, big water at high flow. It's basically one continuous
• 53:34
  like current. And yeah.
• 53:36
  No breaks. Yeah, no breaks, full on like
• 53:39
  yeah, you. Gotta get a.
• 53:40
  Big yeah and it's it's big, big water, big hydraulics, big
• 53:45
  pushy, but it's like, you know, if you and flips do happen
• 53:48
  there, they do most of the Rapids are relatively safe.
• 53:51
  The main thing that we worry about is, you know, like it's
• 53:53
  freezing cold water. So we have, we have people in a
• 53:56
  lot of new, like we have a massive base layer of neoprene
• 54:00
  and then fleece. And then we have an outer splash
• 54:02
  splash gear layer we put on. And yeah, we, we, we give people
• 54:06
  a lot of gear for that river. Howdy y'all, it's Heather.
• 54:10
  This episode of the Go Wildly podcast is also supported by Roe
• 54:15
  Adventures. Imagine spending days floating
• 54:17
  through remote wildernesses, hiking side canyons, eating
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• 54:28
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• 54:51
  Cool. All right, we're back on.
• 54:54
  We go back, we're live. So we were talking earlier about
• 54:57
  this. I love being a river Princess.
• 55:00
  It is like such a rare gift. Yeah, this is this is great.
• 55:04
  This is this is the life good on the staff trip.
• 55:07
  I make it a conscious effort. I make a very conscious effort
• 55:10
  to not get behind the oars as much as possible because I'm,
• 55:15
  I'm, I'm a senior guide at this point.
• 55:17
  Like, and I'm, and now I'm, I've been the lock saw manager for
• 55:21
  the last two seasons and I'm going into my third year of it
• 55:24
  this year. But yeah, I, yeah, I, I just, I
• 55:29
  just, I just encourage that like, yeah, we get all these new
• 55:32
  people who are, you know, a lot of them have never touched oars
• 55:34
  before. And I'm just like, yeah, go for
• 55:36
  it. You're doing great.
• 55:37
  You're doing great. Let me, let me know if you need
• 55:40
  me. I'll listen to the water and if
• 55:42
  I send something coming, I'll peak and then goodbye.
• 55:46
  Yeah. You got any questions for me?
• 55:48
  How you doing? Yeah, Yeah.
• 55:49
  Tell me about yourself. Yeah.
• 55:51
  I've done enough talking. It's time for you to practice.
• 55:53
  Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm, yeah, it's a, that's
• 55:57
  a really fun point to be at. And I, I always love seeing the
• 56:02
  new faces last year and this year I've also been kind of
• 56:05
  helping out. It's kind of like a, not, not
• 56:09
  really a part time, more of like a contingency kind of pay
• 56:11
  manner. But I, I, I kind of help out,
• 56:13
  help the company out with recruiting.
• 56:15
  And that's, it's been really fun to kind of see guides that I
• 56:20
  talked to come and work for the company and grow and, you know,
• 56:25
  like, and, and you know, some of them, some of them, some of them
• 56:28
  come cuz some of them go, you know, but yeah, it's, I'm, I'm
• 56:33
  definitely at like a very different end now.
• 56:36
  I'm like, I'm just now beginning.
• 56:38
  Like I, I, I'm not, I'm definitely not even like an
• 56:41
  intermediate guy. Like I'm, I'm like a very
• 56:43
  beginner veteran at this point. And, and that's really a really
• 56:47
  cool perspective to be at. And I love, I work really well
• 56:54
  with the group because like, you know, I'm 37 now and I'm
• 57:01
  definitely on the older. End as far as Bay.
• 57:03
  Yeah, I know. I'm one of the older older
• 57:05
  ladies in the guide crew, which I mean granted I got nothing on
• 57:08
  we have. I'm going to be 37 this year and
• 57:10
  I'm going to have a birthday. I'm going.
• 57:12
  Sorry. I want to put this why I said
• 57:13
  Old Bay. It's.
• 57:14
  Because I'm going to the coast, It's my birthday's on the 4th of
• 57:17
  July. So we're going to the coast and
• 57:19
  I'm going to do a seafood and it's gonna be called Old Bay.
• 57:23
  Oh. Perfect.
• 57:24
  Love it. Oh my God, that's that's the
• 57:26
  best birthday. Theme.
• 57:27
  So yeah, so my 37 is Old Bay, so that's why it's like you're Old
• 57:31
  Bay. I know, yeah.
• 57:32
  You're in the Old Bay. Old Bay is great and it's a good
• 57:35
  point to be at. Yeah.
• 57:37
  And I work really well with the Gen.
• 57:38
  Z guides that we have. I I love them so much.
• 57:42
  They've kept me alive and fresh and informed.
• 57:46
  I feel more Gen. Z than I do millennial.
• 57:48
  Yeah, You know, I, I, I feel like, I feel like it was like
• 57:51
  they have a perspective on life that's kind of more in line
• 57:54
  where I did, where I was like a very real contrarian growing up.
• 57:57
  But it seems like I have more in common with the me too.
• 58:00
  I feel that too. So spiritually I'm more with
• 58:03
  them. Physically, definitely not.
• 58:06
  And yeah. And they also like, I love, I
• 58:08
  love it when they ride me and they hold me accountable when I
• 58:11
  have, when I have shortcomings. I I love seeing young people
• 58:15
  hold older ones account accountable.
• 58:17
  That is something that's I that's a phenomenon that I very
• 58:21
  much treasure and I think makes the world a better place.
• 58:23
  And it's something that millennials were kind of
• 58:25
  restricted from doing. And Oh yeah.
• 58:28
  Yeah, we're very much like, yeah, you respect your elders
• 58:31
  and what your elders say goes and.
• 58:33
  Yeah, that's. Real to a point, and also.
• 58:36
  I love it when the youth correct me.
• 58:38
  I love it when I get called out on things.
• 58:40
  It's it's great. Like, it's awesome.
• 58:43
  I don't always react as well as I should, but I try to be humble
• 58:46
  about it. And yeah, yeah.
• 58:49
  Let's see. And I, I in the meantime, I keep
• 58:52
  coming back here to this amazing place every winter.
• 58:56
  I've been living with the same. My roommate is someone that my
• 59:01
  sister and I worked with at Mariel.
• 59:05
  That's so sweet. Yeah.
• 59:07
  Is that Kelsey? Kelsey.
• 59:10
  Yeah. So, you know, Rachel Biska, Love
• 59:13
  Rachel. Rachel was.
• 59:15
  I mean, she's still a really dear friend of mine, but we were
• 59:18
  besties for a very long time. And I feel like when you brought
• 59:22
  up, when you brought up your name, I was like, wait, that
• 59:26
  sounds so familiar. And I think that's probably
• 59:28
  Rachel is talking about you. Yeah, and Kelsey.
• 59:31
  I love Rachel and Kelsey and Chrissy and yeah, I.
• 59:35
  And they hang out a lot with Alex or Alex was hanging out,
• 59:37
  yeah. Yeah, Alex was living with us
• 59:39
  for a little while last last spring.
• 59:44
  Yeah, yeah. I love all all those ladies so
• 59:47
  much. Yeah, I I briefly, I briefly
• 59:49
  went back to the lodge girl life my after my first season at row
• 59:52
  and I got to be a Mariel maiden for like fishing season.
• 59:55
  They needed, they needed the interim like they needed that
• 59:58
  like nobody wanted to be there long term because it's hard,
• 1:00:01
  right? It's a hard life.
• 1:00:02
  So they just needed. Like if I could have a
• 1:00:04
  guaranteed spot there where I could go back every fall, I'd do
• 1:00:07
  that every year. Dude, I bet you could.
• 1:00:10
  River through the summer and then lodge in the fall.
• 1:00:12
  Lodge life in the fall. Absolutely.
• 1:00:14
  Yeah. Because I.
• 1:00:14
  Actually did it too. Yeah, you get a season like that
• 1:00:17
  too. Yeah.
• 1:00:18
  And yeah, we had very similar shenanigans and memories of life
• 1:00:22
  at Mariel, which is just such a fun spot.
• 1:00:25
  I hope whoever, whoever owns that property next, like
• 1:00:30
  embraces that. I know it's such a it's such an
• 1:00:32
  amazing place. I.
• 1:00:34
  Have the latitude and longitude coordinates of Mariel tattooed
• 1:00:36
  on me. That's amazing Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  That's a that's a good place yeah.
• 1:00:40
  That yeah, that is I I love driving out to Mariel is one of
• 1:00:44
  my favorite things yeah. So my.
• 1:00:46
  I need to go out there folks. We should do a camping trip.
• 1:00:49
  If you have time, yes. Love that.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah, let's do it. Absolutely.
• 1:00:52
  This is how trips happen, kids. You just talk, you just say.
• 1:00:56
  Let's do it so you want it. And yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:01:00
  And we have to invite Rachel. And so my, my, my sister came
• 1:01:06
  out and I think you were, yeah, the trip that we were, you were
• 1:01:09
  partially on where we were kind of on the water together for the
• 1:01:12
  first time. That was in 2020.
• 1:01:14
  That was Leia's first trip down the road.
• 1:01:17
  Leia came out the next year. And because like, she called me
• 1:01:20
  that winter and had just been dumped by her boyfriend and was
• 1:01:24
  like, really? Upset.
• 1:01:25
  And like, she was like she was, she was really heartbroken at
• 1:01:28
  the time because he instigated it, but it ended up being
• 1:01:31
  perfect for her because I was just like, girl, come on out.
• 1:01:34
  And like, that was around the time I was like getting ready to
• 1:01:36
  publicly transition. And she kind of suspected what
• 1:01:38
  was up. But she was the first person
• 1:01:40
  that I really told. And she kind of ended up
• 1:01:42
  becoming my bulldog and kind of breaking it to the rest of the
• 1:01:44
  family and making it very easy for me.
• 1:01:46
  Were you guys really close growing up or?
• 1:01:48
  Growing up, no, but as adults, yes, we like once like, you
• 1:01:53
  know, once they she and her twin, Lauren and that Lauren
• 1:01:57
  considers themselves non binary. And I'm, I'm very close to them
• 1:02:00
  too, but Lauren Lawrence not at all outdoorsy.
• 1:02:03
  Leia very outdoorsy, took immediately to lifeout here that
• 1:02:09
  that summer because she went and worked at Mariel.
• 1:02:11
  And yeah, she was all about it. And she decided she wanted to be
• 1:02:16
  a guide the next year. But, you know, what's really
• 1:02:18
  cool about her is she's like, she's that kind of like, I'm
• 1:02:22
  going to follow my sister's footstep, but I'm going to do it
• 1:02:24
  completely differently than her. And yeah.
• 1:02:28
  And so it was. She ended up going to a guide
• 1:02:31
  school out on the Arkansas River in Colorado.
• 1:02:34
  And ended up, and she's still working out there.
• 1:02:38
  She would come out here and live with me and live with Kelsey for
• 1:02:42
  a while in the in the offseason, her for like while she's been
• 1:02:47
  doing that. But she decided to stay in
• 1:02:48
  Colorado this winter. But yeah, she's working at
• 1:02:51
  Monarch Mountain this winter and grooming dogs and guiding in the
• 1:02:56
  summer out there on the arc. Yeah.
• 1:02:58
  So yeah, now my parents have two guides for kids, and my dad's
• 1:03:02
  really stoked about that. I got to take my dad drafting
• 1:03:06
  for the first time in ages because he had had some heart
• 1:03:09
  problems and was a little worried about, you know, his
• 1:03:12
  health for a while. But he came down the Middle Fork
• 1:03:14
  with me this summer and it was like one of the most special,
• 1:03:17
  like, trips I've ever done in my life.
• 1:03:20
  And he's, my dad's really awesome and he's very much
• 1:03:24
  accepted that he's just naturally always been a girl.
• 1:03:26
  Dad fully embraced that. And it was like we actually had
• 1:03:33
  a, it was an interesting trip because we had, I haven't had
• 1:03:36
  too many folks on trips that are guests that are Uber religious
• 1:03:41
  and very uncomfortable around me.
• 1:03:42
  It's happened like a couple of times in my career but did
• 1:03:46
  happen this summer with one guest in particular.
• 1:03:50
  And this guest kid was awesome and she loved me and had no
• 1:03:54
  problems gendering me correctly, but he was very uncomfortable
• 1:03:57
  and actually went to our trip leader and all that, but he
• 1:04:00
  didn't realize my dad was my dad.
• 1:04:02
  And then just one more like just kept talking about his daughter.
• 1:04:06
  And then he came over and just hugged me and like 1 morning and
• 1:04:08
  it was like, really? And then I gave on the end of
• 1:04:11
  the trip, we like row. We always do toasts and I gave
• 1:04:15
  AI gave a very long cheers in particular to I was doing the
• 1:04:19
  toast that night. And I gave a cheers to all the
• 1:04:21
  adventure dads that were out there and reminding everyone
• 1:04:24
  that, you know, having an adventure dad is a really
• 1:04:27
  special, special privilege in life.
• 1:04:29
  And you don't realize how special it is when you're going
• 1:04:33
  through it. And so I was just like, you
• 1:04:34
  know, and I was, there was a lot of other dads on the trip,
• 1:04:37
  obviously, and a lot of kids. So and I was just kind of like
• 1:04:41
  that old person. I was like, make sure you love
• 1:04:43
  your adventure dads. Say yes to every crazy idea they
• 1:04:45
  have and make sure you hug them and thank them at the end of
• 1:04:49
  this trip and do it every time and say yes every, every trip
• 1:04:53
  that you can do with them. Because sadly it does become
• 1:04:56
  harder and rarer and rarer as you know, as the time it goes
• 1:05:00
  by. I don't think my dad's going to
• 1:05:02
  be doing too many more like big multi days.
• 1:05:04
  I think he'll do a couple of like trips on the road, but he's
• 1:05:06
  like, he's definitely at the point where he's physically, I,
• 1:05:09
  I think done doing long camping trips and that's, that was,
• 1:05:13
  that's, that's been hard to accept.
• 1:05:15
  But it's also like something I'm I'm so happy, yeah, so happy.
• 1:05:18
  I've gotten to do as many trips with him as I can.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same way too about my
• 1:05:25
  my my adventure dad, and I know you do.
• 1:05:28
  Too. Yeah, same wishes.
• 1:05:30
  I mean, he is still here. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:05:33
  In spirit and in in all forms except physical.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah, yeah, so. And I know, yeah.
• 1:05:39
  And I know after my dad passes, he'll still be stoked for me.
• 1:05:44
  It doesn't. That doesn't.
• 1:05:45
  End. I know that, I know.
• 1:05:46
  Yeah, I know that. Like I've gotten to the end of
• 1:05:49
  maybe him doing a lot of physical trips, but he's still,
• 1:05:52
  he's he still loves it when I call him and tell him about it.
• 1:05:55
  I've the last few winters I've been learning how to ski and
• 1:05:58
  that's been an exciting thing. And I love calling home and
• 1:06:01
  telling my parents about that because that was a hobby my mom
• 1:06:03
  was really good at. My dad was OK at it, but they
• 1:06:06
  never really, they, they had middle class money, but they
• 1:06:11
  didn't have money to send us to the resorts in Arizona because
• 1:06:15
  they were, they had such limited season.
• 1:06:17
  So they never really got to pass that on to their kids.
• 1:06:20
  But like, yeah, my, my sister learned how to snowboard and
• 1:06:23
  I've been learning how to ski. I've been learning a lot slower
• 1:06:26
  than she has. But yeah, that's been a.
• 1:06:29
  Good things take time. Yeah, that's been an exciting
• 1:06:32
  side passion and really the last last last this winter and last
• 1:06:37
  winter is I've I've gotten really passionate about that.
• 1:06:40
  That's awesome and I love that. We're getting kind of close to
• 1:06:46
  our end. So it's really seems like
• 1:06:50
  basically your whole life has been oriented around life
• 1:06:54
  changing outdoor experiences and pivotal moments.
• 1:06:57
  But is there one additional one or call back to one that really
• 1:07:03
  stands out as like the one that change the trajectory of your
• 1:07:09
  life or that you keep coming back to as that was the time
• 1:07:13
  when it all when it all shifted? I got to say a couple of the
• 1:07:21
  Grand Canyon trips that I've done have stood out.
• 1:07:24
  The one that I did in 2016, I think, which was my first one
• 1:07:29
  without my dad. That was, that was one where
• 1:07:33
  things really, really started to stand out because that was the
• 1:07:38
  first time I had to face all those rabbits alone.
• 1:07:40
  I didn't have the old man sitting over my shoulder until
• 1:07:44
  he and you know, he's great, great, but he's not the best
• 1:07:47
  backseat driver. It's very critical.
• 1:07:49
  I, that was the first time I had to put the oars in the water and
• 1:07:52
  I had to just send it. And, and I think that gave me so
• 1:07:57
  much confidence. And that was like the kick start
• 1:08:00
  for what became a lot of amazing life trajectories that brought
• 1:08:04
  me out here and brought me to this amazing place and this
• 1:08:09
  wonderful river here. I still love the rogue.
• 1:08:13
  I still feel like this is like the river that I have the best
• 1:08:17
  relationship with and she's OK with me being on loan to Idaho,
• 1:08:22
  but I know eventually I'm just going to have to come home as a
• 1:08:24
  guide to this place because this is the place where you're.
• 1:08:27
  I know, I feel like I hear that a lot from like transplant
• 1:08:31
  guides about the rogue in particular.
• 1:08:33
  There's something about it. Mother Rogue.
• 1:08:36
  Yeah, it's. It's.
• 1:08:37
  Special. That Canyon is so incredibly
• 1:08:41
  beautiful like and it also has so many amenities.
• 1:08:46
  It has the lodges, it has the best shuttle drive ever.
• 1:08:49
  Like guides who have only worked on the road.
• 1:08:51
  You have no idea how fucking. Spoiled you.
• 1:08:53
  Basically, the whole thing is paved.
• 1:08:54
  Yeah, yeah, it's paved. It's a beautiful mountain Rd.
• 1:08:58
  You can ride in the back of the gear cage if you want.
• 1:09:00
  It's beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:09:02
  There's no stress. Yeah, two hours and you're back
• 1:09:05
  to base. Dude, I have to do so my Middle
• 1:09:08
  Fork schedule when I'm out there, when we're dead heading,
• 1:09:10
  we have to go in a day early. It's a six day trip.
• 1:09:12
  I have to go in. So seven days right there.
• 1:09:14
  You launch every eight days, plus a day of driving.
• 1:09:16
  So I get to sleep in a bed once every eight days and and then
• 1:09:20
  the next day I immediately have to go back out and camp at
• 1:09:23
  Boundary Creek. It's you're just always on the
• 1:09:29
  river. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:30
  Like I didn't understand. I think it was one of Will
• 1:09:32
  Volpert's. I think this is either his dad
• 1:09:35
  or his uncle wrote this in one of those books.
• 1:09:36
  But if you sign up to be a guide in Idaho, you're signing up to
• 1:09:40
  have your your ass in the seat of a boat or the seat of a truck
• 1:09:42
  the whole summer. And that's pretty much it.
• 1:09:45
  Yep. In my case, I get to be in a bus
• 1:09:47
  for like the first two months and that's really fun.
• 1:09:49
  And I I love being bus queen. I have filmed things for the
• 1:09:54
  locksaw before. If anyone checks out the 3100
• 1:09:58
  episode 6 I believe or episode 7 it's the locksaw in Saint Joe
• 1:10:02
  Rivers and I'm one of the guides featured in that.
• 1:10:07
  Check it out. That's where you look familiar
• 1:10:10
  from. Maybe I've seen it I.
• 1:10:13
  Do I get I get recognized now? It was like for a while, I liked
• 1:10:16
  being in Idaho for a while because like I was kind of I was
• 1:10:18
  kind of stand out here on the road and it's a small community.
• 1:10:20
  Everybody knows me still happens every time I work trips down
• 1:10:23
  here in Idaho. It's great for a while because I
• 1:10:25
  could be anonymous and people now I like, oh, you're the guide
• 1:10:28
  from the 3100 dude. You're on the Loxaw.
• 1:10:31
  Like, like I get, I get that all the time out there now that
• 1:10:36
  that's bad. Yeah, that's.
• 1:10:39
  Good to know that people are watching it.
• 1:10:41
  Yeah. And it's not the visit Idaho or
• 1:10:43
  travel, okay, that's what you're saying.
• 1:10:45
  To visit Idaho series and they did one about almost every major
• 1:10:49
  like Idaho river like they did one of the cell way one on the
• 1:10:52
  Middle Fork. Bruno yeah.
• 1:10:56
  It's it's it's if you're curious about like going down the river,
• 1:11:00
  the rabbit hole of rivers in Idaho specifically, it's a great
• 1:11:03
  series. And it's it's mostly you know,
• 1:11:05
  it's centered around commercial trips.
• 1:11:06
  But all those rivers are amazing.
• 1:11:08
  I've done most of them privately, have done middle fork
• 1:11:11
  privately, maybe one of these days.
• 1:11:12
  I have. It's great, very good.
• 1:11:14
  Yeah. Yeah, I'm.
• 1:11:15
  I'm jealous. It seems like it's fun.
• 1:11:16
  I'm all. Maybe we need a trip too.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah, always working, but yeah. But you've.
• 1:11:20
  Yeah, you've done it commercially, just not
• 1:11:22
  privately, right. I know the river.
• 1:11:24
  Yeah. You're familiar.
• 1:11:25
  Yeah. I'm.
• 1:11:25
  Very familiar with it, yeah. OK, If I get a permit pulled,
• 1:11:29
  give you a ring Ding, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'd, I'm, I'm at the
• 1:11:33
  point. Will you take time off out of
• 1:11:34
  guiding to do that? Yeah, I think I, I think I have
• 1:11:37
  enough seniority at this point that I can, I can if I, if I, if
• 1:11:41
  I pull, if I was on a private middle fork or sell way trip, I
• 1:11:44
  think they'd, they wouldn't be happy, but they'd, they'd
• 1:11:47
  tolerate. It it's good for you, you
• 1:11:49
  deserve it. Yeah, yeah, I, I do a lot of
• 1:11:52
  things for for them so. Then get over as a manager.
• 1:11:56
  Yeah, you deserve some time off. And yeah, river season is river
• 1:12:00
  season. And if you're only ever working
• 1:12:02
  during river season, you miss out on private trips.
• 1:12:05
  So you got AI? Took a week off this last year
• 1:12:09
  and I went and went and stayed in the Bay with a guy that I've
• 1:12:13
  kind of had a little bit of an on and off thing, but he's got
• 1:12:16
  me really into skateboarding and longboarding and I've also,
• 1:12:19
  independently of him, got back into inline skating.
• 1:12:23
  So those are. Kind of my side hustles and fun
• 1:12:27
  things that are not. Mine, we were saying we need a
• 1:12:30
  roller skating rink here. We really do.
• 1:12:32
  Yeah. Yeah, we used to have one, but.
• 1:12:33
  Ice skating rink in Medford. It's cool, but like, yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:37
  we really do need a good skating rink.
• 1:12:38
  I wheels are very dangerous. They're so dangerous, but I love
• 1:12:43
  them. I always wear a ton of, I call
• 1:12:45
  it my, my obnoxious gay power armor because it's like, it's
• 1:12:49
  like teal rainbow themed padding.
• 1:12:53
  I'm very shameless about always wearing padding and everybody,
• 1:12:56
  everybody always looks at me crazy even though I'm on there.
• 1:12:59
  But I don't know I'm going. I'm a big I use I.
• 1:13:02
  Use I use these muscles and these bones for things and like
• 1:13:04
  I'm, I'm old. I can't afford an injury like
• 1:13:06
  that. Yeah, it's worth it to protect
• 1:13:08
  your body so that you can keep doing those fun things.
• 1:13:10
  Exactly. It's like, not cool.
• 1:13:12
  I rock a helmet all the. Time, Yeah, Summer.
• 1:13:16
  And yeah, I'm a big proponent of personality protectors.
• 1:13:20
  You should. Everyone should wear them when
• 1:13:22
  they're doing dangerous things. Yeah, we're big with that.
• 1:13:26
  Having the bike shop. I don't know if Emily clued you
• 1:13:29
  in, but my husband and I own bike Craft.
• 1:13:31
  I haven't been to bike craft. You should come in.
• 1:13:33
  I know we should talk bikes sometime.
• 1:13:35
  We should talk bikes. I'd love it back into bikes.
• 1:13:37
  OK, OK, we are big helmet advocates.
• 1:13:39
  Like when we see people wearing without helmets, huh?
• 1:13:43
  There's a disc golf frisbee in the water that we displayed.
• 1:13:47
  And whenever we see people riding without helmets, we're
• 1:13:49
  like, what are you doing? What are you doing?
• 1:13:52
  Anyway? We have we have a joyride.
• 1:13:54
  Our joyrides are gonna start back up every second Saturday.
• 1:13:58
  We start out at the bike shop and ride up to the weekend beer
• 1:14:00
  company and just as chill. It's like family friendly.
• 1:14:04
  It's, you know, it's like just go and have a good time and
• 1:14:06
  usually me and my bestie are riding tandem on a little E bike
• 1:14:10
  and it's just so fun, adorable. So you're welcome to come.
• 1:14:13
  I I have, you know, a side hustle that Roe has dipped
• 1:14:16
  itself into is E bike tours. Yeah, I've, I always wonder, is
• 1:14:21
  this the summer where I'm going to get trained to be an E bike
• 1:14:23
  guide? Maybe.
• 1:14:24
  Cuz like, it seems like it's pretty fun.
• 1:14:26
  You get to stay at a hotel every, every night and you go to
• 1:14:29
  a restaurant every dinner for, for dinner every every day.
• 1:14:33
  And you, yeah, you get, you get a space age van cuz like, turns
• 1:14:37
  out like, you know, rafting company clientele.
• 1:14:40
  We're OK with putting them in like rough.
• 1:14:42
  Old buses and things. Like that.
• 1:14:44
  Yeah. But yeah, Bike, bike people who
• 1:14:46
  do pay for bike tours, they, they, they expect the best and
• 1:14:50
  the newest and the greatest. So we've had to adapt.
• 1:14:53
  You can get trained here and then go back to the season
• 1:14:56
  already with the skill like. That I know, right?
• 1:14:59
  We have. We had to work on an E bike.
• 1:15:02
  Yeah, we have E bikes. Like if you wanted to come like
• 1:15:05
  in and try an E bike. We have E bikes for rent.
• 1:15:08
  Oh, I might do that. You should be fun.
• 1:15:10
  Yeah. I'll give you a free rental.
• 1:15:14
  Thank you. Hook it up.
• 1:15:15
  Yeah. Just drop the name, go wildly.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah, all you got to be like, so I'm friends with Heather and she
• 1:15:20
  said I can borrow an E bike for the day, OK.
• 1:15:23
  And then my husband will be like, OK, we'll sign this piece
• 1:15:25
  of paper so we don't get sued. I'm really good at that.
• 1:15:29
  I do that all the time. OK, cool, good.
• 1:15:31
  Yeah, you know. That line, Yep, yeah, you know,
• 1:15:33
  you know, drill. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:35
  Awesome. Thank you so much, Ryan for
• 1:15:37
  saying yes to coming out and spending some time on the water
• 1:15:40
  with us, being our boat Princess for the afternoon and sharing
• 1:15:45
  part of your story and allowing us to become part of your story.
• 1:15:49
  Before we fully wrap up, we have some quick hit questions that we
• 1:15:52
  like to do. So top of mind, advice or
• 1:15:56
  insight for your younger self. Don't be afraid, girl.
• 1:16:04
  Awesome. Yes, she hears you now.
• 1:16:07
  She does. And your favorite or most used
• 1:16:10
  piece of outdoor gear equipment? Probably this fun loving fleece
• 1:16:16
  wear skirt that I'm rocking. Like, I have so many of these,
• 1:16:20
  and I've never met Kelly O'Keefe, but we work in similar
• 1:16:25
  circles, and apparently she and Angie went to college together.
• 1:16:28
  So yeah, Kelly, thank you. Awesome.
• 1:16:31
  Big part of my river river staple.
• 1:16:33
  And great pattern, too, that, you know, find police with
• 1:16:37
  unicorns on it, Yeah. I'm I love anything with a
• 1:16:40
  Unicorn on it. I'm such a sucker for it.
• 1:16:43
  Heard heard. I will keep my eye out for more
• 1:16:46
  Unicorn things too, and advice or insight for getting outdoors
• 1:16:51
  in Southern Oregon. We have so many great things,
• 1:16:56
  you know, the, I think the best way to do, like a lot of these
• 1:16:59
  are social activities that should be done with friends.
• 1:17:02
  I'm not a big fan of doing a lot of outdoor activities solo just
• 1:17:05
  because of the inherent risk. And you know, like that's how
• 1:17:08
  you avoid getting rides with our those one lovely boys we were
• 1:17:12
  looking at back there at put in, you know, the search.
• 1:17:14
  And rescue. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:17:17
  So your best bet to getting into things is if you hear somebody
• 1:17:21
  does something cool, ask ask that person, how can I learn?
• 1:17:24
  Because that not only makes them better because it forces them to
• 1:17:28
  teach a hobby to you, but it gives you.
• 1:17:30
  Yeah, that's and. It's flattering to like, be
• 1:17:33
  like. You want to learn my hobby?
• 1:17:35
  Awesome. Come along.
• 1:17:36
  Yeah, yeah. It, it just, that's how things
• 1:17:39
  grow and they drive organically. I'm a big fan.
• 1:17:42
  I I get asked all the time, how do I get into rafting?
• 1:17:44
  And it's hard being like only a seasonal resident here now
• 1:17:48
  because I have so much time out in Idaho.
• 1:17:50
  But, you know, like, yeah, I try to try to always get people on
• 1:17:54
  the water whenever I can, whenever I have friends that are
• 1:17:56
  new and haven't seen the wild section of the road.
• 1:18:00
  Yeah. Awesome.
• 1:18:01
  So ask, ask somebody that you that you, yeah, see you doing
• 1:18:06
  what you want to do. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:07
  A way to make a new friend or build a friend.
• 1:18:10
  Build a bigger friendship with somebody that you already know.
• 1:18:12
  Yeah. Or, you know, step into like a
• 1:18:15
  new life that you never saw yourself going in.
• 1:18:19
  Yeah, Yeah. The potential is endless, and
• 1:18:23
  when your body expires from this plane of existence and your soul
• 1:18:27
  moves on, how do you want to be remembered?
• 1:18:32
  Really bold bitch who took fun lines and was really fun to be
• 1:18:35
  around. Hell yeah, I think you're doing
• 1:18:39
  real good at that. I'm.
• 1:18:40
  Working on that one. I try to live up to it as best I
• 1:18:42
  can every day. And if people want to learn more
• 1:18:47
  about you, hang out with you, get on the river with you.
• 1:18:49
  Where can you be found if you want to be found if?
• 1:18:52
  I am on Instagram Queen Ryan loves you underscores between
• 1:18:56
  each each each word and Ryan is with an I I am not not one of
• 1:19:00
  those Ryan with AY. I'm not a regular Ryan.
• 1:19:02
  I'm a sparkly Ryan. I'm a sparkly Ryan.
• 1:19:05
  I love that. My first road trip was the
• 1:19:09
  turret leader's name was Ryan. And but I was covered in body
• 1:19:13
  glitter and was a last minute pickup.
• 1:19:15
  And they picked me up with the guests because I showed up as a
• 1:19:18
  total last minute replacement for the trip.
• 1:19:20
  So like, I jumped in and he's like, everybody, this is Ryan.
• 1:19:22
  She's also a Ryan, but she spells her name with an I and
• 1:19:26
  she's like, and the guests are like and she sparkles like,
• 1:19:29
  yeah, so. Yes.
• 1:19:31
  Yeah. Is that your river name?
• 1:19:32
  Do you have a river name? I've I've had many over the
• 1:19:36
  years, but yeah, sparkly Ryan. Sparkly, Ryan.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah, yeah. Sparkly Ryan, the guests on that
• 1:19:43
  note, they wrote a thank you note to us and they addressed it
• 1:19:46
  as to all the guides, but they included to regular Ryan and
• 1:19:50
  Sparkly Ryan. Amazing.
• 1:19:51
  Yeah. One of the little whimsy things
• 1:19:53
  that I do in my life is I have all of my packages delivered to
• 1:19:57
  in the company line. My company line is beautiful
• 1:20:00
  Sparkle Queen. Oh my God, so all my packages
• 1:20:03
  come to my house for beautiful. Sparkle.
• 1:20:05
  I know when I saw a package at her at her house, I was like, I
• 1:20:08
  need to do that. Like I need to put my fun shit
• 1:20:12
  under my name. Like what have I been?
• 1:20:13
  Doing When I lived in talent, I lived on a cul-de-sac and I had
• 1:20:17
  it delivered to baddest bitch on the block.
• 1:20:19
  Oh, that's great. And then when I moved here, it
• 1:20:21
  became beautiful Sparkle Queen. Oh.
• 1:20:23
  That's wonderful. In fact, I did live in talent
• 1:20:25
  for a little while. Myself, it's a great town it
• 1:20:28
  really. Is a cute place.
• 1:20:29
  Like, I don't know if I could afford to do that again in my
• 1:20:34
  offseason, but yeah, I I enjoyed my six months of talent.
• 1:20:38
  That was it was very, very, very fitting place.
• 1:20:41
  It's a special town. Yeah.
• 1:20:42
  Good place in my heart. All right.
• 1:20:44
  Well, I think that's a wrap. Sorry.
• 1:20:47
  Thank you so much, Heather. Thank you so much, Emily.
• 1:20:49
  Love being. Thank you.
• 1:20:51
  Thank you, Ryan. It's really a pleasure to get to
• 1:20:54
  host you and have you here and hopefully we'll do it again
• 1:20:59
  without cameras. And just have fun and just have
• 1:21:02
  fun. More fun.
• 1:21:03
  I mean, we had lots of. Fun.
• 1:21:04
  The real fun is off camera. Yeah, yes, always.
• 1:21:06
  The cameras go off and the fun, the real fun, begins.
• 1:21:10
  Yeah, awesome. You want to say bye to them?
• 1:21:13
  Bye. Find us on YouTube, Spotify, all
• 1:21:16
  the all the places. Share with a friend and leave a
• 1:21:19
  comment and a thumbs up. And yeah, we appreciate you.
• 1:21:23
  Take care of wildly wonders. Thank you, love you, love you.
• 1:21:28
  Today's episode is brought to you by Roe Adventures.
• 1:21:32
  And honestly, if hearing Ryan's story has you sitting there like
• 1:21:35
  Dang, maybe I should run away and become a river person.
• 1:21:39
  Great news for you my friend. Roe Adventures has been helping
• 1:21:42
  people experience that kind of magic for decades.
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  We're talking multi day river trips deep in some of the most
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  Big water, Riverside camps, campfire dinners, 0 cell
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  service, Oh y'all. The kind of trips that somehow
• 1:22:02
  turn into the stories that you tell for the rest of your life.
• 1:22:06
  We want that. We're craving that.
• 1:22:07
  And because you're listening right now, right here, the Go
• 1:22:10
  Wildly podcast, you can get $100 off your multi day trip with Row
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  all one word when you book. If you've been waiting for a
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  sign to go sleep by the river, paddle through a Canyon and get
• 1:22:28
  a little wildly outside, baby, this is it.
• 1:22:31
  Go wildly with row adventures. That's a wrap on this episode of
• 1:22:37
  Go Wildly from the Bottom of Our Backpacks.
• 1:22:40
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• 1:22:47
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• 1:22:54
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