Latest / The Articulate Fly / S8, Ep 80: A Season in Patagonia: Steve Ramirez on Writing, Radical Empathy and Hope in Action

Transcript

S8, Ep 80: A Season in Patagonia: Steve Ramirez on Writing, Radical Empathy and Hope in Action · The Articulate Fly

0:04
Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.
0:08
On this episode, my friend and author Steve Ramirez returns to the podcast.
0:12
The occasion is the release of his fifth book, A Season in Patagonia.
0:16
But before we get there, we unpack why Steve writes and what drives him as a writer.
0:20
I promise you you'll learn something about Steve that you didn't know before.
0:24
I think you're really going to enjoy this one.
0:26
But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.
0:29
If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcast app of your choice.
0:36
In the age of AI, it's more important than ever, and it really helps us out.
0:40
And a shout out to our sponsor, TroutRoutes.
0:43
It's a fact none of us get to fish as much as we want.
0:46
Almost overnight, planning a fishing trip went from a gazetteer and word of mouth to the entire Internet.
0:52
There have never been more resources available for fishing, but it's a challenge trying to wade through the digital noise to find the most current and relevant information.
0:59
Spend less time surfing the Internet and more time on the water with trout routes.
1:03
With over 350,000 access points mapped across 50,000 trout streams and much more, Trout Routes has all the data you need to help you make the most of your time on the water.
1:12
Where I fish in southern Appalachia, figuring out how to get off of the water can be as important as finding it in the first place.
1:18
With trout routes, I can mark the best spots to get out of the water so I don't find myself in a valley I can't climb out of.
1:23
As the sun goes down, up your game and download the app today.
1:27
Use code ArtFly20 ArtFly20 all one word for 20% off of your TroutRoutes Pro membership at maps.troutroutes.com now, on to our interview.
1:40
Well, Steve, welcome back to the Articulate Fly.
1:44
Well.
1:44
Thank you.
1:44
It's so great to be here.
1:46
Yeah, it's kind of funny, you know, I, you know, the occasion is always a new book, but we always talk about something a little bit different.
1:52
And you know, I thought before we got to your new book, and I think I told you, I even told you today something you didn't know, which is that the Kindle version dropped today.
2:00
But I thought it would be interest for us, interesting for us to kind of step back and talk a little bit about why you write.
2:06
And as I was preparing for the interview, I kind of broke the world down into kind of Two things I see around you, and there's the practice of seeing and the practice of doing.
2:15
And I was kind of curious.
2:17
Does that how that framing feels for you?
2:20
Well, if I understand how you're asking this, you say the practice of seeing.
2:28
I try to be very aware.
2:30
I try to be awake and aware.
2:32
And to me, there's layers of that.
2:34
There's noticing and perceiving and then learning and then changing.
2:39
Am I following along the right lines of what you're thinking?
2:41
Yeah, I am.
2:42
And then I think there's a layer, too, of kind of empathy.
2:45
Right, but not.
2:46
In the.
2:47
Yeah, but not in the way of like, oh, I feel bad for you, but like trying to see things through other people's perspectives and eyes.
2:53
And that's why I put perceiving in that list of things.
2:55
I just went off of noticing, first of all, paying attention to everything, whether it be in nature and human nature, paying attention, noticing.
3:05
And then the perceiving.
3:06
And the way to put that is.
3:08
I'll call it radical empathy.
3:11
Not sympathy, not, I feel sorry for you, but I'm understanding you.
3:15
So I think, you know that one of my little taglines I use in some of my little letters I put on social media is, Namaste, y'.
3:22
All.
3:22
And you know, that kind of means, I see your light, I see you.
3:28
So noticing.
3:29
And then radical empathy, putting myself in the shoes of not just that person, but even that fish, even that deer, even that tree.
3:39
And then learning.
3:42
And most people don't know this, but I have a master's degree in adult education and learning, and I have a doctoral work in the same thing.
3:50
And learning doesn't really exist unless it's changed you in some way.
3:54
So when I write, I'm hoping that my writing is going to change people in some meaningful and positive way.
4:02
And then the next thing you mentioned was the practice of doing.
4:06
You know me from our past conversations, and I describe myself as a very spiritual but not religious person.
4:14
But there's a saying from religious tradition that faith without action is dead.
4:22
And so I think once I've noticed, I perceive through radical empathy, I've learned, and that learning has changed my perspective, then my next job is to do something about it.
4:34
And in several of my books or essays, I've said things like, hope for me is an action verb.
4:41
People say, oh, I hope this happens.
4:43
And I'm never like that.
4:45
If I say, I hope for this, it means I'm working towards it.
4:51
Is that making sense?
4:53
Yeah, it does.
4:53
I mean, it's kind of Interesting, because a lot of it resonates with kind of how I've raised my boys.
5:00
Right?
5:00
Like, we don't talk about doing things.
5:02
We do things.
5:03
And if we're not willing to do things, then we shouldn't talk about things.
5:06
Right?
5:08
You do the things you can do.
5:09
I'm just speaking for myself in order to have any peace of mind, especially in, I'll call it these times.
5:15
I'm sure any times people are saying these times to have peace in mind, I have to tell myself, I can fix this.
5:23
I can't touch that.
5:24
There's nothing I can do about it.
5:28
But doing.
5:29
I want to do something about it.
5:30
I'm not going to sit around.
5:32
Recently, a friend of mine who is a wonderful, wonderful writer I've admired for many years before we became friends, Richard Louv, who wrote Last Child in the woods, he and I were talking, and I offhandedly said, you'll never,
5:45
ever hear me complain.
5:46
I've never complained in my life.
5:48
And I believe that's true.
5:50
And I said, now I share.
5:52
And he smiled and he said, what's the difference between sharing something you're struggling with and complaining?
5:59
Well, complaining is sympathy.
6:02
Feel bad for me, and I don't feel that way at all.
6:04
Life has challenges.
6:05
That's just the way it is.
6:07
It's our job to take on those challenges and learn from them.
6:12
But sharing to me, and I do that in my writing, where I share about ptsd, I share about battling various things.
6:20
And it's not because I think I'm important, because I think we all have a similar story.
6:26
And through sharing, through story, we help each other.
6:32
So I'm hoping that when I share something, it's a struggle and how I'm overcoming it, that what I'm really doing is saying, you can too.
6:41
You know, you're not alone here.
6:46
So that's my little foray on that.
6:50
Yeah.
6:51
No, absolutely.
6:52
And when I think about.
6:53
I think about seeing, you know, I'm always reminded of this Upton Sinclair quote.
6:58
It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
7:03
And, you know, you're a little bit older than I am, and I suspect you kind of weren't born with your current perspective.
7:09
And I was kind of curious, kind of your journey, how you got to where you are today.
7:17
Okay, before I go there, I want to ask you that quote, and you and I have talked in the past and that you've mentioned that quote, it has importance for you.
7:28
Tell me what it means to you, please.
7:31
Yeah.
7:31
I would say it was kind of a way to help me kind of unwind some frustration I had in kind of trying to persuade people and kind of helped me understand that I needed to kind of pivot and
7:46
that it wasn't, you know, you couldn't move ideas and people just with kind of pure, raw logic.
7:53
Right.
7:54
Oh,.
7:54
No.
7:54
Right.
7:55
Because it wasn't about having the right answer.
7:58
As a matter of fact, having the right answer might be the easiest and least significant part of the change process.
8:04
Yeah.
8:05
As a educator, again, people don't know this about me.
8:09
A lot of people don't.
8:09
That I was a college professor for years as well.
8:12
But I used to teach my students that just from my perspective, no one learns anything they don't want to learn.
8:19
I mean, you have to want to learn.
8:21
You have to be open to it in the first place.
8:24
So if I answer your.
8:25
If I understand your question, you're saying, where did it come from?
8:31
And if I understand your question, I would say I've always been curious.
8:37
Curiosity and my connection to nature has been the root of all my learning.
8:42
So even as a little kid, curiosity has been there.
8:45
And also, I may be getting a little off, off target here, but the life I've led has caused me to see some of the very worst of humanity and of the world.
9:00
So I believe that I feel an urgency for us to do something about it.
9:04
Going back to our last question.
9:07
I don't want to sit around and complain about this.
9:09
I want to do something about it.
9:12
So was I born with this perspective?
9:15
I've always been weird.
9:17
So I was going to tell you that.
9:19
I mean, I'm just being honest.
9:21
When I was in, I think, third grade or something, the nuns in Catholic school had me teaching ornithology.
9:28
So I've always been weird.
9:31
So I've always been learning.
9:34
I've always been reading, and I've always been questioning.
9:39
And those same nuns that thought that was great that I knew so much about birds at that time, and from their perspective, anyway, also I drove them crazy with me asking questions about theology.
9:50
And I'd say, well, Sister, well, why is this?
9:52
And they'd say, just sit down there and be quiet.
9:57
So I've always been weird.
10:00
I think that we need to question constantly our own perspectives.
10:08
And I used to tell my students, I believe we should all question our peers.
10:14
Our professors, our preachers, our politicians, our parents, our paradigms.
10:22
See what I did there?
10:24
I would stick that in their head, question everything.
10:27
Because if whatever you believe to be true cannot take the Questioning.
10:31
It's not very strong in the first place.
10:34
Don't be afraid of being wrong.
10:37
Yeah.
10:38
Do you mind elaborating a little bit more?
10:40
Because I know, you know, when we've got other questions deeper in the interview, but I think a lot of your readers kind of don't know, as I would kind of say, you know, kind of how close to the
10:48
metal you were kind of in some of the things you did in your kind of pre writing life that, you know, there's.
10:54
I think you and I have talked about it before, and I talk about it sort of like being bitten by a vampire.
10:58
Like you can't unsee it.
11:00
Right,.
11:00
Right.
11:00
And it's with you forever.
11:01
And, you know, not everybody needs to kind of walk that close to the edge, but a lot of people do.
11:08
And it changes you in profoundly different ways.
11:12
And it can change you for the good and it can change you for the bad, Right?
11:16
Yes.
11:16
And that's a choice.
11:18
At least I think it's a choice.
11:20
Other people may disagree with me on that, and that's fine, too.
11:23
But I think you're talking about my, My.
11:26
My past.
11:27
And again, here I'm not complaining.
11:29
I'm sharing.
11:31
And I try to be open about this because I think writers and people that speak publicly need to be brave.
11:37
And so I am a thriver through child abuse.
11:43
I am a thriver through a life of 35 years, either as a US Marine or working in the criminal justice system, to use a very vague term there, working in counterterrorism, working in undercover operations for 35 years.
11:58
I was armed with one to three weapons every day of my life.
12:02
Some days I wear ballistic vests, and some days I was just walking into something with nothing more than a hidden weapon and a wire on me.
12:14
And then I would go home and try to be a normal human being with my family.
12:19
I should mention, while making left turn after left turn after left turn and looking in my rearview mirror to make sure I wasn't being followed.
12:25
House.
12:26
That was a life I had for 35 years and dealing with really a lot of violent, terrible parts of humanity.
12:38
So.
12:39
And that can change you from child abuse all the way up in any way that you end up choosing to be changed, it can make you bitter and frightened, or it can make you brave.
12:52
And I chose that.
12:54
I wanted to use the damage and the wounds.
12:57
So in the Marine Corps, you know, sometimes people in the civilian world, they get a scar and they want to hide it, put some sort of concealer on their scar.
13:06
But in the Marine Corps.
13:07
If you got a scar, you show it.
13:09
You say, oh, look what happened here.
13:11
So.
13:11
And you showed the gash on your arm.
13:14
That's how I try to live.
13:15
I hope I'm not getting too far off base here, but I showed you the gashes and say, but, yeah, but I survived this and thrived through it.
13:24
I think those things are important.
13:27
They can put you in a box and you can hide.
13:31
Anybody who's read the first book, Casting Forward, knows that I openly speak of my lifelong, I guess we'll call it battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or pts.
13:45
It doesn't ever leave you.
13:47
At least it never left me.
13:50
And for this conversation, I would have told you how tired I am today, because I didn't sleep much last night, and that's why.
13:56
So, yeah, I still wake up in combat and I still go through all of that.
14:03
And I could whine about it, or I could just say, you know what?
14:06
This is a unique chance for me to help other people.
14:10
And so I don't know if I'm answering your question.
14:14
No, I mean, not only are you answering it, I think it flows really well because I think part of that informs your sense of community.
14:20
Right?
14:21
It does.
14:22
And so, you know, this choice that you make about how you react to things that have happened to you.
14:30
I think one of the things that I've observed in our friendship and talking to you on multiple occasions is it's opened you up in a way that I wouldn't say is, like, singularly unique, but is certainly different.
14:42
And I was wondering if you could kind of maybe expound on that a little bit for us.
14:47
I think so.
14:50
I think the older I get, too, this has become more and more important to me.
14:53
And sometimes when I have thought of moving back to Europe, where I lived for a while when I was in the Marines, it's not because I don't love the United States, my country, my home.
15:05
It's because I wish we had more community.
15:09
It's because I wish we had more walkable places.
15:11
I wish we knew each other better.
15:13
I wish we helped each other more.
15:16
And I know there's places like that, but overall, I think we've gotten more and more distant.
15:21
And I'll go back for a second into my Marine Corps experience.
15:25
One of the things I did love in the Corps was that the ethos of my time anyway, and I'm pretty old core, is it's not about you.
15:34
It's about us.
15:36
You know, you are taking care of your entire unit, your platoon, your detachment, or whatever it is your unit was.
15:45
And during my time in the Marine Corps, I was often in detachments.
15:50
But you watch each other's back.
15:52
You watch that for everybody.
15:53
That was important to everybody around you.
15:56
You watched out for your community, and it wasn't about you.
15:59
It wasn't about your ego.
16:01
It was about, what good can I do while I'm here?
16:04
When I got out, I really missed that because I kind of saw a world where everybody was in for themselves.
16:11
It just didn't feel as good, I really think.
16:15
So that's the first part of it, the human part of it.
16:17
But the second part is nature.
16:20
And people are going to keep seeing me say that even as a little kid, you know, abused kid, I would run out the door into the woods all day long.
16:28
And in nature, I learned about the importance of how we're all connected.
16:33
And once you break that community apart, then everything starts to fall apart.
16:36
We're seeing that now.
16:37
We're seeing that in our climate.
16:39
We're seeing that in mass extinctions.
16:42
We're seeing that in the way we're falling apart as a species.
16:50
So I think community is really important, and I think something I really want to.
16:54
So when I'm traveling right now internationally, and when I travel around the country, that's one of the things I write about a lot, how much we all have in common.
17:03
So I hope I'm not rambling too much.
17:05
But between the human experiences I've had and, you know, this, and I have to make sure that I remind myself that your listeners don't.
17:13
I have stood in the middle of the rainforest of West Africa with the drums playing in the middle of an African village with thatched huts.
17:23
I have spent time in the Amazon jungle with the Kayapo warriors.
17:29
I have tracked kudu with bushmen in Namibia.
17:34
And the reason I'm saying all these things is everywhere I was, community was what kept them together.
17:42
And.
17:43
And then I go home and no one knows anyone.
17:49
Yeah.
17:49
You know, it's an interesting thing and one of the.
17:51
Kind of the common themes in all those examples.
17:53
I mean, we've got lots of reasons why I think we are moving away from community, but I would say, you know, all those places you mentioned, there was an absence of technology.
18:03
Right,.
18:04
Right.
18:05
And.
18:06
But here's what I would say.
18:08
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think we need to adapt.
18:11
We need to remember that technology is our tool.
18:14
We're not its tool.
18:15
One of the problems, I think right now, I see I'm not being anti AI.
18:20
I Think AI certainly has its purposes, like in medical research or engineering research, less so.
18:26
Eating up tons of water and energy so that people can make their faces into puppies.
18:32
You know what I mean?
18:33
I do know what you mean.
18:34
Yeah,.
18:34
Yeah, yeah.
18:36
And what's really interesting is when I see people writing about the evils of AI, using AI to make the meme so.
18:43
But what I'm really getting at there is you and I became friends because of technology.
18:50
Some of the best people I have ever met in my life, I have met on social media.
18:54
It depends on how we want to use it.
18:56
We can abuse each other or we can help each other.
19:00
And that's how I feel like when we're dealing with nature.
19:03
I mean, you can throw a beer can in the water, you can pick one up.
19:06
It's interesting you say that, because I speak pretty frequently on technology stuff and AI stuff, and I always say, it's a shovel, and it's up to me.
19:15
I can hit you on the head or I can dig a hole.
19:17
Exactly.
19:18
And we can't blame the thing.
19:20
It's us.
19:21
And another theme that when we talk about the seeing part, and it shows up, particularly in this current book, is an emphasis on borrowing versus owning.
19:35
And that is a very different perspective than, you know, I would say most of us have kind of in, let's just say, quote, the developed world.
19:44
And I wanted to kind of, you know, see if you can maybe talk to us a little bit about kind of how that kind of crept into your worldview and why it's so important to you.
19:52
Sure.
19:54
I think when I wrote Casting Homeward, the final one of the four books, Quadrilogy Casting Quadrilogy, that's when I put in the work from the book Braiding Sweetgrass.
20:09
And I'm trying to remember Robin's last name, but Kimmerer.
20:13
And also, I've spent a lot of time studying indigenous people, whether it be in Africa, South America or North America, and looking at the way they perceive the world because it resonated more with me, that little kid running
20:30
around in the woods.
20:33
I never thought, well, this is my woods.
20:34
I own this woods.
20:36
I never saw a forest or a river as.
20:39
And I'm going to use these words on purpose for people able to pick up why as undeveloped land.
20:47
A forest is not undeveloped land to me.
20:51
So from a Western perspective, we have this idea of owning property, owning things, when the truth is, I'm getting back to the violent life I've lived.
21:03
None of us keep anything.
21:06
We're here, we're gone.
21:08
And I guess I don't want to get too deep here, but I've seen the light leave enough eyes, and I know that you're here, you're gone, and once you're gone, you're gone.
21:18
It's not that important anymore.
21:20
You're not important anymore.
21:22
And.
21:22
But we get this idea of owning, of trying to have some permanence.
21:26
We even want to make sure that we're permanent.
21:28
We're going to live on forever.
21:31
And in a Western view, I think the healthiest thing is say we're borrowing this land, we're borrowing this ocean, we're borrowing this community for the future.
21:43
I'm starting to wonder now, does anybody care about their children, their grandchildren?
21:47
Does anybody care about somebody else's grandchildren?
21:50
Because we seem to be eating everything up, not wondering if anybody's going to have anything left to eat.
21:56
So that's the Western point of view.
21:57
But I would even say I've gone further now in my philosophy.
22:02
I don't even think I'm borrowing.
22:05
I think I am a temporary steward.
22:09
I'm a member of the community of the earth, of nature.
22:16
So when I'm standing in a river casting a fly, one of the things I love about fly fishing is if you're really, to me, I say a complete angler.
22:24
It's not a matter of how great your cast is or how great your presentation is.
22:29
That's all important for catching fish, probably especially presentation.
22:36
But with that said, it's understanding what's going on under the water.
22:40
It's.
22:41
It's paying attention.
22:42
It's that, like we were talking about in the beginning, it's noticing, perceiving, learning, changing the way you do things because you're part of that whole thing.
22:51
So to me, it's much more fascinating to be a fly angler that gets the whole thing that knows here in Texas that if the blue bonnets are blooming, that means the white bass are running.
23:04
Isn't that much more interesting than just checking a chart?
23:08
So to me, yeah, we don't own this land, and we are certainly destroying it.
23:14
And if we just treat it like we're borrowing it for future generations, and not just of just humans, but we need the whole thing.
23:22
I mean, there's E.O.
23:25
Wilson, the great biologist, entomologist, basically wrote.
23:29
I'm going to paraphrase him, he basically said that if humans died off tomorrow, the earth would sigh in relief.
23:37
If insects die, we all die.
23:40
And that's true.
23:41
And I have pollinator gardens all over my property.
23:44
And What I've noticed through the years is I have almost no pollinators in them anymore.
23:51
Getting what I'm saying?
23:52
Oh, I do.
23:53
Like when you say that, it makes me think about, like.
23:55
You don't see fireflies anymore.
23:57
No.
23:57
And that's us too.
23:59
Between.
24:00
So what can we do?
24:02
So here's what I've done in my little piece of property just over time, I'm doing.
24:06
My little piece of property is a tiny postage stamp of property in Texas hill country.
24:10
And in that postage stamp, I've made sure that every tree, every shrub, every wildflower, every grass is native.
24:18
I've planted them myself.
24:19
I have trees here that are 40ft tall that I planted as saplings.
24:25
I make sure that there's shelter for all the little birds and lizards and things on my little piece of property.
24:31
And I see more species of birds on my back garden property than I do when I go through state parks on a hike for four or five miles.
24:42
There's things we can do, whether it be as anglers, as hunters, as human beings, there's things we can do.
24:51
My friend who spent some time with the doctor of the Dalai Lama, she was in Tibet, she was struggling with something and he said to her, while they were on a mountain in Tibet, he said to her, well,
25:03
you can always feed the birds.
25:05
I use that all the time now.
25:06
I mean, when I'm frustrated I can't make a difference in the world, I say, well, I can feed the birds, I can do that.
25:12
So you talk about fireflies.
25:14
What I've done is made sure there's a circle around each one of those trees where I do not remove the, the fallen leaves, I pile them around the tree.
25:22
And then other parts of the yard I've removed the leaves.
25:25
But around each tree those leaves are there because the fireflies need those.
25:30
And so the moths and some butterflies.
25:33
So there's things we can do.
25:35
Yeah.
25:35
Which is an interesting thing.
25:36
You're setting me up perfectly for all my follow up questions, which I appreciate.
25:39
Oh, really?
25:41
I had no idea.
25:42
You feel guilty because you're rambling, but I think we're on the path together.
25:46
And so, you know, we talk about like, there's the practice of seeing.
25:50
And I think a lot of people see, but very, very few people do.
25:55
Right.
25:56
And so, you know, in your life journey, you made a very deliberate choice to write with a very particular focus.
26:06
Right.
26:07
And you know, how did that come to be?
26:09
Just like your childhood, you know, your perspective back to the Sinclair quote.
26:13
Right.
26:14
You weren't hatched that way it evolved in you.
26:16
And so, you know, how did you shift?
26:18
You see all this stuff, it obviously bothers you.
26:22
You feel like you need to act.
26:23
Talk to us a little bit about that process.
26:26
Well, the first thing I'll say about writing is that writing is how I breathe.
26:31
I think right now, if I didn't have my writing, I don't know what I'd do.
26:35
I don't know if I could go on.
26:37
So it's really that important to me.
26:39
It's how I communicate.
26:41
I've trained military and police and others and had 6, 700 people in a room.
26:48
And people think, well, he must be an extrovert up on that stage.
26:51
But the truth is I'm an introvert and I'm making eye contact with individual people.
26:55
Of that 600, I prefer, like we're doing now, a one on one conversation, or maybe four people at the most.
27:03
If you were to get me into a party, which I can't imagine how you would do that, I'll be in the corner with one or two people I actually like to be around.
27:12
And I'm saying that because as a writer, you can put yourself out there.
27:18
You can put yourself out there quite a bit.
27:19
You can try to be brave.
27:21
You mentioned about many see.
27:23
I think many see, but they don't actually see in capital letters.
27:31
And here's what I mean.
27:33
You know how all of us have done this.
27:35
You go somewhere that you've gone to many, many times.
27:38
Maybe it's a workplace or a school, and you get there and you don't remember making any decisions on the way there.
27:46
You don't remember the cars that were around you, the stoplights you stopped at.
27:49
You don't remember.
27:50
You're so used to doing it, it was just all automatic.
27:54
You know what I mean?
27:55
Yeah, I do.
27:57
You saw those things and they registered enough for you to get there safely, but you weren't seeing.
28:03
So when I go for a walk in nature, for example, and I try to do it on the highway too, open your eyes and actually pay attention.
28:10
See all the cars around you, See everything that's happening around you.
28:14
See the signs, I think, and then interpret them.
28:18
So if we're thinking about this as fly anglers, most people are, I should say most people.
28:23
Many people I know are so focused on how many fish can I catch and how big are they, which I don't care a bit by the way.
28:29
And you know that about me.
28:30
I, I don't, I don't care.
28:32
It's nice to catch big Fish.
28:33
But if I.
28:34
I've had great times fishing where I got skunked, but I want to see it.
28:41
And what I mean by big C.
28:43
I'm gonna go back to my writing for a second here, if you don't mind.
28:46
I hope I'm giving what you.
28:47
You and your listeners will.
28:50
Will find interesting, which is I want to write so that that reader feels.
28:57
They were in Alaska with me.
28:59
They were in the Amazon with me.
29:01
They're going across the desert in Namibia with me.
29:04
You know, they're in the West African jungle with me.
29:08
And how I want them to see it, by the time they're done reading that story, I want them to have seen this so well that they feel like they've been there.
29:20
And here's the next part, and they actually care about the place and its people.
29:26
That's big seeing.
29:28
Again, empathy.
29:31
Yeah.
29:31
And it's interesting because I'm probably a little bit cynical in the sense that I think a lot of people don't want to capital SC because then they have to capital D do.
29:41
Exactly.
29:42
And that's why when you ask the question, many C, fewer do.
29:45
Why is that?
29:46
I think it's because it's so easy to live in denial and to live in the fog.
29:51
I remember having brain fog with COVID and it was really a bit spooky for me to realized that I really couldn't focus.
30:00
Most people, I think, live in a fog, whether we know it or not.
30:04
And I've been in the fog myself.
30:07
I try not to, because we want to live brave.
30:10
And if you live brave, you have to see.
30:13
And once you see, you care.
30:16
It's the difference between saying, yeah, I know people die under a bridge and then watching someone die under a bridge.
30:23
And of course, as a.
30:24
As a peace officer, Texas master peace officer, I've seen a lot of people die.
30:31
And it's way different than watching it on television.
30:33
It's way different than a movie.
30:35
It's way different when you're just walking by and whistling because you don't want to look over.
30:42
So whether it be me looking at the Amazon and seeing miles and miles and miles of destroyed jungle.
30:49
And by miles, I mean flying for an hour over what was Amazon jungle and there's nothing there but burning flat.
30:57
That is way different than reading about it in a book.
30:59
Yeah.
31:01
How about a little bit like, I think maybe in some ways, maybe there are things that you did, whether it was the marines or in law enforcement, that you kind of.
31:08
In some ways, maybe didn't know what you were getting yourself into.
31:10
Right.
31:11
And you started to see things that you didn't know you were going to see.
31:15
Right.
31:15
And, you know, we're talking about that like you see it, you can't unsee it.
31:19
But I think, you know, not everybody needs to do that.
31:23
You know, I think a lot more people than we think about in some way.
31:27
Kind of the way I always talk about is they're.
31:29
They're living close to the metal and you don't even know it.
31:31
But I think you can capital SC and capital D do without having to go that far.
31:39
Right.
31:40
No, it's up to people like me that were that far that to share what we can in a way that's constructive.
31:47
But I like your term close to the metal.
31:51
That sounds about right.
31:54
And the thing is, when you live close to the metal, by the way, you do what people call masking.
32:01
You go home and you're a daddy and play with your kid on the floor.
32:04
And you meet friends and you smile and you don't tell them that you were pulling a dead body out of the bushes a few hours earlier, going through their pockets to find out who the dead guy was.
32:17
And you protect your family from what you've been going through.
32:22
And that may be a little bit further than you wanted me to go.
32:25
But I think these things have informed me in how I'm living urgently.
32:32
I just wrote a piece to a friend.
32:34
It was actually a response to her beautiful post that she did on Facebook about going slow in nature.
32:43
And I wrote that the older I get, especially I'm back to being a kid where I'm going slow in nature.
32:49
I used to drive my dad nuts because we were scuba divers together when I was a teenager, and all he wanted to do was get 20ft off the deck of the coral reef and go as fast as he
32:59
could to see how many fish he could shoot for dinner.
33:04
They were plentiful back then.
33:06
And all I want to do was go slow and look among the coral at all the fish and the wildlife.
33:15
I'm still like that.
33:17
And I think that I'm getting off on a tangent.
33:23
I know, but basically I'm trying to say that I think that's been something that more and more has been inculcated into me that now I do two things.
33:33
I go slow and live life as fully as I can.
33:37
But I feel great urgency to achieve anything positive I can do while I'm still here.
33:47
I don't mean to be morbid.
33:49
No, no, no.
33:50
I mean.
33:50
And I would.
33:51
I mean, I'm 65 going to be 66 soon enough.
33:54
And my dad used to say, I can do the math.
33:56
I've got the life expectancy of a springer spaniel now.
33:59
And I laugh about that, but it makes you urgent.
34:03
People say, how do you write two books a year?
34:05
Well, I live urgently.
34:07
I work hard at it.
34:09
Yeah.
34:11
But I mean, I think it segues right into kind of this purpose with a cost.
34:15
And I think there are things that I know about you that most of your readers don't know because we talk.
34:21
But you've made, when you made this decision that the best way that you could speak for the things that are important to you is to write.
34:32
You made very, very deliberate life choices and changes to put yourself in that position in what I would call a costly way, right?
34:41
Oh, yeah.
34:41
I had to give up the corner office, the steady income, the benefits, and people looking at you like you were normal.
34:53
Well, I think the looking at you like you're normal is overrated.
34:57
But, I mean, I' talk to you and you're like, well, I went and sold some of my firearms collection because I needed to fund this trip to go have material to write for the book.
35:05
I mean, those are the things that I'm kind of talking about where this just doesn't happen.
35:09
Some abstraction where you're drinking lattes every day on your laptop, right?
35:13
Oh, no, no, no.
35:16
I have been doing what I need.
35:18
I see each one of these books as a mission.
35:21
And so I'm doing.
35:22
It's not like I have money.
35:23
I'm a retired public servant with a tiny, tiny pension.
35:28
Not enough to live off of.
35:30
So, yeah, I've sold my firearms.
35:33
When I stopped, I thought, well, I'm not hunting anymore, and I sold my firearms to help pay for travel so I could write the book.
35:40
And I'm still doing things like that.
35:42
I'm still getting rid of things and doing without stuff because, again, you're making deliberate choices and making changes in lifestyle.
35:51
I've been on a.
35:52
A kick for the last couple of years, and it's amazing how hard it is to do.
35:55
I've been minimalizing.
35:57
I've been.
35:57
I've given away four or five pickup truckloads of my books.
36:02
I've given away parts of, you know, furniture and things like clothing.
36:07
And my goal is to have pretty much empty closets in an empty.
36:13
An empty garage.
36:14
And I'm real close.
36:16
It's taken me years because I don't want to just throw it out.
36:20
Yeah.
36:20
So.
36:21
And I actually have put a sign in front of my house.
36:23
It works.
36:24
I've put things out there of value, but I don't need them.
36:28
And the sign says free stuff.
36:31
Take the stuff, leave the sign.
36:33
It works.
36:33
People come by and pick it up and I just.
36:38
I'm simplifying life.
36:40
But.
36:41
And when I can, I give it away to a good cause.
36:44
So that's when people say, well, how do you travel all over the world?
36:48
Well, there's two ways I can do that.
36:50
One is I sacrifice.
36:52
But the other way is, and I need to mention this, I couldn't do this without the kindness of good people that say, well, come over here.
37:01
You know, just get yourself here.
37:04
People that believe in what I'm trying to do.
37:06
And I have a long list of wonderful, wonderful human beings.
37:11
You're included there.
37:13
Absolutely.
37:15
That are, you know, that's part of the journey.
37:20
And I think part of that is when you find your people.
37:23
Right.
37:24
So if we all believe that we're weird and, you know, we're kind of like these tuning forks walking around on the earth and we find other tuning forks like us.
37:30
Right.
37:31
You have to find your tribe.
37:31
Right.
37:32
And part of it is, you know, when you start to realize that time is short, you know, at a certain point, kind of in like maybe midlife to late middle.
37:41
Middle life, you kind of realize that one of the best things you can do is to help other people run faster Right.
37:48
In their direction about what they really care about.
37:50
So you try to find those people and you try to help them a little bit, Right?
37:54
Yeah.
37:54
And that's why I love teaching too, by the way.
37:55
But here's the thing is when I say I'm weird, I have always thought I wasn't going to live long.
38:02
I was a sickly kid with lots of medical problems.
38:05
That's why I have medical trauma, you know, Abused kid.
38:09
Not saying that.
38:10
Poor me.
38:11
I'm saying it's just something that I had to learn to fight through.
38:15
I've been through, you know, this about me.
38:19
I say it in very general terms.
38:20
I have been so close to death so many times that I keep saying to myself, okay, I'm going to die stupid.
38:27
I'm going to slip on a banana peel or choke on a bean.
38:31
It's going to be something really dumb because I should not have been alive this long.
38:36
But the benefit to.
38:40
I remember being in the core and something happened, doesn't matter what it was.
38:43
And the person next to me said, well, that was really brave.
38:45
I said, no, it wasn't.
38:46
I gave myself up for dead a Long time ago.
38:48
And I'd laugh it off.
38:50
I think when you live with that kind of urgency and you think, I mean, you know this.
38:54
I.
38:55
I walk around every day with an aneurysm in my chest and a birth defect in my heart and advancing asthma and all this sort of stuff.
39:03
I laugh about it because I say to myself, what I said to my cardiologist is, I said, I'm not afraid of being dead, Doc.
39:09
I was dead for billions of years.
39:10
Didn't bother me a bit.
39:11
I just got things to do.
39:13
So, you know, I just type faster.
39:17
So I think there's a benefit to this, to knowing that in the Buddhist point of view, everything's impermanent.
39:26
And I think it's a gift, actually.
39:28
If you don't mull over it and get sad about it and you just say, yeah, I've only got so much time here, then it's a gift because you live more deliberately.
39:41
And I think I always have.
39:45
That's why I said I'm weird.
39:46
Well, I know I'm weird and I'm convinced of that, more so every day.
39:51
But I would say, you know, it's a gift, but it's also emotionally expensive, right?
39:55
Oh, yes.
39:56
So when you.
39:57
And, you know, I know, you know, you don't think this way either.
40:00
And I'll just preface all this by saying, like, we're not saying that there's any personal value to us of, like, being capital scers and capital D doers.
40:07
It's just a worldview that we kind of have and we think other people have.
40:11
But, you know, if you decide that you're going to see stuff or if you've been in a situation where, like, you've been close to the metal and you just see stuff you can't unsee, you know, it changes you
40:21
and you go on this path, but it's a very emotionally expensive place.
40:25
And you and I have talked before about, you know, who heals the healers.
40:29
Right?
40:29
Yeah.
40:30
And how do you maintain the emotional energy to stay focused on the path.
40:38
Yeah, It's a great topic and subject.
40:41
One of the things I think I wrote it in one of my books is sometimes you can feel like you're a river and everybody drinks from it, but there's no springs filling it back up.
40:55
And all of us.
40:57
One of my little things I started writing to remind myself is self care is not selfish.
41:03
All of us need the springs.
41:04
We need something.
41:07
I think for me, if I didn't have the doing to do so, you know, doing and making Trying to make a difference in the world is not all altruistic.
41:16
It's also good for you, you know, for the doer.
41:19
If I didn't have that, I don't know why I'd want to be around what's the purpose.
41:25
So that's just the way I think to me.
41:27
But you're right, it's emotionally draining.
41:30
It's also emotionally draining.
41:34
I want to put this.
41:37
It's emotionally draining to prophesize or to really be waving your arms and saying we need to pay attention to this, knowing that a lot of it's going to fall on deaf ears because it's just too painful to pay
41:52
attention to it.
41:55
So that's why when I write, I'm trying to make sure that every story has, I don't want to say a happy ending, but a hopeful beginning at the end.
42:05
Does that make sense?
42:07
It does.
42:07
Right?
42:08
A.
42:08
Hopeful beginning at the end.
42:09
Which also makes it more expensive, right?
42:12
Oh, yes.
42:13
Emotionally, this is an expensive journey.
42:16
Far more than anything you sell off to make a trip.
42:19
It's an expensive journey.
42:20
And I'll be honest to say there's times when you think, why am I doing this?
42:25
And you know, why don't I just go fishing?
42:29
Yeah.
42:30
Or the metaphor.
42:31
Why don't I just go sell insurance?
42:32
Right.
42:32
You know,.
42:34
I guess I don't think I could manage.
42:36
But it's good for some people.
42:37
Yeah.
42:38
But it's an interesting thing too.
42:39
Right.
42:39
Because that self care and learning to say no is so difficult in our, in their kind of our current.
42:45
Well, not, I mean, historically long worldview.
42:48
Right.
42:48
Where it's all about more, more, more.
42:51
And it's very hard to wrap your head around actually doing less, to do more and to go farther.
42:56
Right, right.
42:59
And counter intuitively, I'm going to go back to like when I.
43:03
People who see me writing all about love and kindness, because that's what I really believe in would not know that I was, you know, a combative weapons instructor.
43:12
And we always would teach slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
43:17
And that's really true in everything in life, I think slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
43:28
We have to pause.
43:29
We have to pause and make.
43:31
I try to respond and not react.
43:34
And I think those are very different things.
43:37
And I think this is just opinion.
43:40
And who am I?
43:41
Like I said, somebody else asked me for advice today.
43:43
I said, well, I'm too busy messing up my own life.
43:45
Why would you ask me?
43:47
So it's not like I have any great wisdom, but I do think that we're getting to be such a reactive, especially with social media and the Internet.
43:55
And people can easily be manipulated and their heartstrings be pulled any way someone else wants to pull them.
44:03
We assume, well, that must be true because I saw it on the Internet and suddenly we're all angry at each other.
44:09
Instead of reacting, I respond, stephen Covey.
44:14
Well, actually, it wasn't Stephen Covey.
44:17
It was Viktor Frankl that wrote, in between stimulus and response is a moment in time in which I can choose.
44:25
I'm paraphrasing, but it's pretty close from his book, Man's Search for Meaning.
44:31
So that's what I try to do.
44:36
I'm no saint.
44:39
I keep trying to remind myself, respond, don't react, pay attention.
44:45
Yeah, it's that whole choice thing, right?
44:47
I know I've shared this expression with you before about it's a choice whether you want rage in the morning with your cornflakes.
44:52
Right.
44:52
That's a great one.
44:53
Yeah.
44:54
And I don't want rage.
44:55
Rage doesn't get me anywhere.
44:56
Yeah.
44:57
And so it's an interesting thing, too, right, because it's hard at some level to make the jump between seeing and doing.
45:05
But in the current environment, I think even people that have a proclivity to be doers are getting discouraged.
45:11
And we've kind of touched on this a little bit, kind of throughout our talk so far.
45:14
But, you know, what suggestions do you have for people about how to, you know, maintain faith in their agency and to kind of stay engaged and keep driving forward?
45:28
I'm going to take from the title of a book called Struggle.
45:30
Well, life is a struggle.
45:35
And that's not bad news.
45:37
That's not bad news.
45:39
I think for me, I'm only speaking for myself in this current environment, and we can all fill those blanks the way we want to.
45:50
If someone wants to ask me what I think of it, I'll tell them.
45:52
But in this current environment, we have to take our own agency.
45:58
We have to, because otherwise you're a victim.
46:02
So I never liked it when people said, I'm a survivor.
46:05
I'm a.
46:05
I'm a.
46:06
So you heard me recently say, I'm a thriver.
46:09
I am not a child abuse survivor.
46:12
I'm a child abuse thriver.
46:13
I am not a PTSD survivor.
46:16
I am a PTSD thriver.
46:19
And I'm not a environmental collapse survivor or victim.
46:28
I will never be a victim.
46:30
I think when we stop thinking we have any agency, we have no power to do anything, then we are definitely victims for the rest of our Life and victims only get eaten.
46:40
There's no other choice to that.
46:42
It's always the zebra.
46:43
I spend a lot of time in Africa.
46:44
It's always a zebra that gives up, that gets eaten.
46:48
So I run hard.
46:50
And I don't know if I'm doing a good job of answering your question, but I think if you don't have agency, you don't choose to have agency and say, what can I do?
47:01
Then basically what you're saying is I can't do anything.
47:05
I'm a victim.
47:07
I'm sure you know about the concept of internalizer and externalizer, but I'll speak of it for your listeners.
47:15
What I mean, this is simplistic that people can say there's two kinds of people, internalizers and externalizer.
47:21
An externalizer is woe is me.
47:23
I can't do it because they've made it too hard for me.
47:25
I can't do it because I don't have enough money.
47:27
I can't do it because, you know, whatever happens to me.
47:30
And then an internalizer says, okay, well this is the challenge.
47:33
What can I do about it?
47:35
What can I do?
47:36
What can't I do?
47:37
I mean, I'm never going to be, I'm five foot six, I'm never going to be an NBA star, so I can live with that and move on.
47:43
And instead I became a bull rider.
47:46
Because being 5 foot 6 is pretty good when you're on top of a bull.
47:52
So yeah, I think if I'm understanding your question right in these times, and here's what I mean, I think we're at the most dangerous time in human history right now for many reasons.
48:06
For the possibility of technology getting way out of our control, of biotechnology getting out of our control, for the possibility of nuclear issues.
48:17
But get away from those possibilities, from the certainty that unless we change direction.
48:23
And I'm basing this on years and years of me studying the actual science and then traveling the world to see it.
48:31
If we did not change our behavior as a species, we are killing the earth and us with it.
48:37
And it's happening faster than even the scientists believed it would.
48:41
I have walked through the Andes of Peru where just 20, 30 years ago there was snow capped mountains and glaciers and they are all gone, all of them.
48:55
And people say, well, what do I care?
48:57
I'm not in Peru.
48:59
Why you need to care?
49:01
Because we're all connected.
49:03
Everything's connected.
49:04
Talk about community.
49:06
So I think we have to have agency.
49:08
Otherwise you're saying to yourself, I'm a victim.
49:11
There's nothing I can do.
49:12
And then I say, go sit in the corner and have your pity party.
49:17
I have nothing to do with you because I don't hang out with victims.
49:22
So.
49:25
Do you know what I'm saying?
49:27
No, I do.
49:28
It's kind of interesting.
49:29
It makes me think about.
49:30
I always tell my boys, find a way or make a way.
49:33
Sure.
49:33
I mean, I remember the.
49:35
I'm going back to Marine Corps.
49:37
I was trained by Vietnam Marines, you know, and they would say, you know, if your arm blows off, you fight with one arm, and if you lose both arms, you kick them.
49:46
And if you lose both arms and both legs, you roll yourself next to the trail they're going to walk along so you can bite them in the fricking ankles.
49:54
And that's extreme or Chesty Puller.
49:58
At Chosin Reservoir, battles, saying, we have Chinese to the north, south, east and west, the poor bastards.
50:03
Everywhere we shoot, there's the enemy.
50:06
It's perspective.
50:07
Pardon my French there.
50:08
I guess you could bleep me if you want.
50:09
No, it's all good.
50:10
That was history.
50:11
That's history is what he said.
50:14
And I love that sort of thing.
50:16
So when I look at the challenges we have now, I say the same thing I did as a jarhead, bring it on.
50:24
Let's do something about it.
50:26
And I can only do a little bit.
50:29
So I do things like have the honor of talking with you and your listeners.
50:35
I do things like write my books or my column for fly fishermen.
50:39
I speak publicly, I learn, I grow, I change, I find out all the things I'm wrong about and then I adjust.
50:50
So I think that's what we can always feed the birds.
50:53
I want people to think that you can always do something, and the second you do something, you're not a victim anymore.
51:01
Yeah.
51:01
And then there's an interesting thing too, right, where, you know, they're the seasons of life and we're kind of moving into the fall.
51:06
And, you know, I'm middle aged.
51:08
You're a little bit older than me, but you're kind of.
51:10
We'll just say late middle aged.
51:12
But I think, you know, to your point, like I think you said you're.
51:15
When your dad did the math and realized he had the life expectancy of a spaniel.
51:20
Yeah.
51:21
You know, it informs a sense of what you want to do and what you want to leave behind.
51:29
And not in a materialistic way.
51:30
I always think about, I'm only here a limited amount of time and what do I need to leave with my boys,.
51:37
Right.
51:39
So talk to me a little bit because we've touched on this when we've spoken on the phone as friends.
51:45
How does that give you a sense of urgency and how does it inform your doing.
51:52
A quote?
51:52
I think Richard Bach, I think, is the one that probably said it.
51:55
I may be wrong about that.
51:56
So if the concept's the same is that no one truly dies until the ripples of their efforts have dissipated.
52:05
And I want to set some ripples forward, and there's all kinds of people that do that.
52:10
Some people set ripples of destruction and pain and suffering, and I hope to help set some ripples of healing and kindness and humble searching for understanding.
52:28
I once wrote the things that I really believed in and that I try to live up to, and humility is one of the ones that I definitely believe is important.
52:37
And someone wrote back to me, well, you just listed all your.
52:40
I think listing all your great traits is not very humble.
52:43
And I said, I didn't list my traits.
52:46
I list my values.
52:47
Those are different.
52:49
Values are something we try to live up to.
52:52
We fail, we get up, we try again.
52:55
So.
52:56
And that takes humility to keep falling in the water and get back up.
53:01
So I think, and I don't know that I'm answering your question properly, but I really believe that I want to leave ripples.
53:11
Some people would call a legacy, whether it's writing or the way I've touched people's lives, I want it to be a healing experience.
53:20
I want them to feel empowered.
53:22
And in my writing, I really want them to care about the places I travel to.
53:27
We save what we love, and we only love what we know.
53:33
And that's true for rainforests and coral reefs and people, because it's so easy to.
53:40
You talked about my experiences.
53:43
I had a fellow warrior who he served way after me, and he was in Iraq, and he said what I'd always thought.
53:52
He says, nothing will get you against war like being involved in it.
53:56
And I think war in itself is an atrocity, no matter how noble we say the.
54:03
The purpose is behind it.
54:06
So I've dealt with violence for 35 years of my life, and I've seen so much destruction.
54:13
And I think if we're going to define ourselves as a species from here on forward, we want to do something different that we're doing.
54:18
We should be defining what we save, not what we destroy.
54:23
So it may sound like I'm on a soapbox, but I'm not trying to be.
54:26
I'm trying to say, you asked me about legacy.
54:29
That's my message, is we can do better.
54:33
And again, in Marine Corps fashion, I'm saying, and watch me try to do my best.
54:40
Leadership by example.
54:41
I'm going to try.
54:42
I'll fail.
54:43
I will definitely fail, but I will keep trying.
54:49
So, yeah, I think I just poured my heart out to your listeners right there.
54:53
Yeah,.
54:54
I didn't hold anything back.
54:55
Yeah.
54:55
I mean, I think the doing thing is so critically important.
54:58
Right.
54:59
Just because, I mean, there's just nothing.
55:03
You know, it's almost like I think about a shark.
55:05
Right.
55:05
If it stops moving, it dies.
55:07
Right.
55:08
And that's perfect analogy.
55:09
That's how I feel.
55:11
If I stop doing, if I stop growing, I stop learning.
55:15
So I mentioned I'm 65 years old.
55:17
I'm going to turn 66 in Patagonia this coming February.
55:24
But when I say that, I'm just amazed because I feel young.
55:27
I work out every day and I work out for at least an hour every day, and I feel young.
55:36
And the reason I say that is I feel mentally young because I have things to do.
55:42
And I can understand when people just sit in a chair and stare off into space and wait for death.
55:47
So what's, what is the point?
55:50
We all have something to give.
55:52
And yes, doing is a price to it, but I think the bigger price is being the shark that stops.
55:59
You know, then you're dead.
56:02
Yeah.
56:03
And I think, you know, we've.
56:04
I think we've hit all the heavy stuff, Right.
56:08
This is pretty heavy.
56:08
People think wasn't this efficient thing,.
56:12
But.
56:13
And I, and I think I, when I sent you the email with kind of the framework for what I wanted to talk about with you, I was like, you know, we should probably just do something like this once
56:20
every two months.
56:21
We can get these kind of ideas out in the world.
56:22
We don't need to wait for a book.
56:23
But you do have a book.
56:25
And as I mentioned at the top of the interview, it just got released on Kindle today.
56:29
We're recording October 6th and the title, and it's going to be available, I think, in hard copy in a month, give or take.
56:36
Right.
56:37
November 3rd.
56:38
Yeah.
56:38
And it's a Season in Patagonia.
56:40
Yeah.
56:41
It's going to be officially released November 3rd.
56:43
You can pre order it now, which I hope people will pre order and get it in their hands, because now I'm biased, obviously.
56:54
I'll just come right out and say that every one of my books is my literary child.
56:59
And if you had five children.
57:01
I actually have six now because there's another book after casting, after a Season in Patagonia but if you have six books and there were six children and someone said, which is your favorite child?
57:10
You would say, well, I love all of them different.
57:13
But I think this particular one is so needed right now.
57:18
And it's the hardest book I ever wrote out of six.
57:23
So do you want to know why?
57:25
Sure.
57:26
Absolutely.
57:26
That's why we're here, right?
57:28
I want your readers to know why this is the hardest book.
57:31
Because I never want to write a book that's a downer.
57:35
I always want.
57:36
That's why I created this concept of saying, I want a happy beginning at the end.
57:44
At the end of the book, I want people left with action, hope.
57:49
But the truth is, over the last number of years, I've had to fight hard to have hope.
57:57
And it's hard to write an optimistic book.
58:01
When you're flying over rainforests, it's gone.
58:04
When you're seeing glaciers that are gone, when you're seeing people that are treating each other like dirt, all the things that you've served the country for 35 years to do away with are now thriving.
58:21
So the challenge for me was, how do I find hope when I'm feeling hopeless myself?
58:26
And here's the joy of it.
58:28
By the time they've read this book, they will feel hopeful again and they will feel like they need to take action.
58:36
And when you take action, it's like my medical things, and we all have them.
58:41
So when I first find out I get a certain diagnosis about my heart or my lungs or whatever, it hits you like a punch in the gut, like, okay, one more thing.
58:49
But the next thing I do is, okay, what can I do about this?
58:52
Okay, I changed my exercise routine, I changed my diet.
58:54
I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.
58:55
Once you start doing something about it, you feel better.
58:59
So Season of Patagonia.
59:01
Do you wanna get into what the concept was?
59:02
100%.
59:04
Okay.
59:05
All my books.
59:07
This is going to sound weird, but I told you I'm weird.
59:10
It's not like I map a book out out of some sort of structural calculation.
59:17
I have an inspiration, as if it's coming from the universe, and it tells me what I'm going to write.
59:23
And in this particular one, so the first four books, I'm basically going through the United States.
59:30
Not North America, but the United States, from Alaska, all the way across, all the way down, and all the way over out to the Caribbean.
59:37
And I'm just really doing it there.
59:39
This one, I wanted to do something different.
59:42
So I start the book with me Sitting at the cliffs of Portugal, right next to this ruins of the school where they train the sailors to go find the New World.
59:54
And that place is called the End of the World in Spanish and in Portuguese and in Latin.
1:00:00
So I start the book at the End of the World.
1:00:03
And then I follow the Conquistadors path all the way through Mexico, through the Sea of Cortez and down through the Yucatan, through the Central American rainforest, through the Amazon jungle, through the Peruvian cloud forest, all the way down
1:00:20
into northern Argentina, chasing Golden Dorado.
1:00:23
And then all the way from northern Patagonia to the very southern tip of Patagonia.
1:00:27
And just south of this tip of Patagonia is another lighthouse and another pinnacle.
1:00:32
And that also is named the End of the World.
1:00:35
But what you'll see at that title is A Season in Patagonia: An Angler and Naturalist's Journey to a New World, not the end of the world.
1:00:46
And my point is, once you've traveled with me, once you've been in the rainforest, in the jungle with me, with the Kayapos, once you've been on this whole journey with me, and I'm following what happened when the Conquistadors
1:00:57
got here, how perspectives of how we treat each other in the world impacted our outcomes.
1:01:06
And I'm doing this while fishing, by the way, of course, for all kinds of incredible fishing, everything you could imagine.
1:01:14
By the time you get to the end of this, you realize there's a lot of hope, but we gotta care enough to do something about it.
1:01:21
And the other thing I'm showing in this book is that we have a whole lot in common.
1:01:26
Because everywhere I went, from the jungle to the Yucatan to the Sea of Cortez, I mean, I met wonderful people who are my friends to this day.
1:01:38
And I think the message nowadays is they're not us, so they're no good.
1:01:43
And that's not true, they are us.
1:01:47
I've fished with people from all over the world.
1:01:50
And you know what?
1:01:51
We're all anglers, you know, we're all bird watchers.
1:01:57
We all love racing down a river through the rapids.
1:02:01
So once we get past all the garbage, we realize we're all just people.
1:02:05
So I think recently a friend of mine who is the director of the movie Mending the Line, Josh Caldwell.
1:02:16
And I think he's a brilliant director, I am biased.
1:02:19
So he said to me, I see you as the Tony Bourdain, Anthony Bourdain of the fly fishing world.
1:02:25
And I kind of laughed at that because he's not the first person to Say that I want people, when they read my books, to get the whole thing, the culture, the music, the food, the laughter, the struggles.
1:02:36
It's not just fishing stories.
1:02:39
There's a lot of fishing, but it's not just fishing stories.
1:02:44
And anybody that hasn't read my stuff, you'll know that I make fun of no one except myself.
1:02:48
And I've got lots and lots of reasons to make fun of myself.
1:02:54
Yeah.
1:02:55
Do you have maybe a particularly memorable moment kind of during the travel as you were kind of putting the book together?
1:03:02
Oh, my gosh, that is so hard.
1:03:06
How do you pick one?
1:03:09
Can I pick two?
1:03:10
I'll give you two because I'm feeling generous this evening.
1:03:13
Oh, I really appreciate that, too.
1:03:15
I've heard you're a giving person, so, yeah, I could give quite a few, but I'll give two.
1:03:21
One is going to be in the Brazilian Amazon, in the Xingu watershed on the IririIrisRiver.Cruisingfouror five miles down river through the jungle with Kayapo warrior guides and my friend Rodrigo Salas, my brother.
1:03:40
And just the experience of being fully and completely alive in this jungle where the howler monkeys wake you in the morning and then sing you to sleep at night.
1:03:55
It's just.
1:03:56
It gets you out of the shopping mall.
1:03:58
Let me tell you, my friend.
1:03:59
And I love those places.
1:04:01
That was, you know, just being.
1:04:04
And I, I actually, I do this all the time.
1:04:06
I know anglers think I'm nuts, but I will take a day off of angling and say, I'm not going to fish today.
1:04:11
I want to go hike through the jungle or I want to.
1:04:14
I want to hike through the jungle to that ruin over there.
1:04:17
And that's what I did.
1:04:18
I went hiking through the jungle looking for jaguar sign and looking for monkeys and things like that.
1:04:25
I would tell also anglers and travelers.
1:04:27
Be a traveler, don't be a tourist.
1:04:29
A tourist is looking from the outside in and trying to find things that remind them of home.
1:04:35
And a traveler just immerses themselves.
1:04:39
So that's one thing I'll say is the Amazon jungle.
1:04:41
And the next one I will say is definitely Patagonia.
1:04:46
Northern Patagonia, gorgeous monkey puzzle trees, parrots in the air, incredible water.
1:04:52
But southern Patagonia, and I'm thinking of Jurassic Lake with my, my friends down there at the Oceano Alba.
1:05:05
And we're fishing Jurassic Lake and we're going through the canyon for the river that feeds the lake.
1:05:09
And it was a grueling, grueling, gorgeous trek through this canyon.
1:05:15
I will never, ever forget that.
1:05:16
Springtime in Patagonia.
1:05:18
Wildflowers everywhere, guanacos running through the hills and pumas trying to eat them.
1:05:24
So, yeah, that kind of adventure, that's what it's really all about.
1:05:27
It's not just all the fish you catch.
1:05:30
Yeah.
1:05:30
Very, very neat.
1:05:31
Yeah.
1:05:31
It's like the fishing is the bicycle for the story, Right?
1:05:34
Sure.
1:05:34
Absolutely.
1:05:35
I mean, I can.
1:05:35
I can catch fish here.
1:05:37
I don't have to travel for 5,000 miles to catch fish.
1:05:40
Yeah.
1:05:40
Kind of curious, too, right?
1:05:42
So I guess this is your fifth official book, right?
1:05:45
Right.
1:05:45
There's actually six, but the sixth one's not until next September.
1:05:48
Yeah.
1:05:48
So.
1:05:49
And you'll be back and we'll talk about some deep philosophical stuff before that one, too.
1:05:52
But kind of curious if.
1:05:54
Kind of how you've kind of seen your writing evolve over the forecasting books and then, you know, your current work.
1:06:01
Like anything that you kind of see in the way you've changed as a writer in terms of technique, how you see things, your process.
1:06:08
Kind of curious about any of that stuff.
1:06:11
I guess I'll take it the shallow end first, which is process.
1:06:15
And what I mean by that is now I really understand the process of writing a book and publishing and all the things that come with it.
1:06:24
So by the time my copy editor and production editor receives my manuscript, they pretty much have very little to do.
1:06:33
I know how everything runs, so that's the nuts and bolts of it.
1:06:37
It's like knowing how to cast a certain way and how to tie certain knots.
1:06:41
And so one thing that's changed is the more I write these books, the better I get at how to put them together and how to make it so that the publisher themselves has very little to do.
1:06:51
I think I did that with the first one, too, and all the way through, but it just gets easier and easier as I go.
1:06:57
The next thing is going deeper.
1:07:01
I don't know that my writing technique changes, because I'm not mechanical.
1:07:08
I write the way I write because that's how I write.
1:07:10
But I can say that the readers will never know.
1:07:14
It's like a really good cook.
1:07:15
You're never going to know how much they put into that meal.
1:07:18
I pay attention to every line of every paragraph.
1:07:23
I read it again and again and again.
1:07:25
I think one of the tests of whether you've written something good is can you read it many, many, many times and you're not totally sick of your own words.
1:07:32
So.
1:07:33
And it's weird because I could pick up a book from years ago and open up a chapter and Read it and think, wow, did I write that?
1:07:40
Because I didn't even remember doing it.
1:07:43
So, yeah, I think what's happening is my.
1:07:47
Here's another interesting thing.
1:07:48
I'll say Casting Forward was a very inward looking book.
1:07:52
Me in the Texas Hill Country.
1:07:54
Me or my, Me and my daughter in the Texas Hill Country.
1:07:56
A very inward looking book.
1:07:57
And then it goes outward like ripples from a pond all the way to capstone homeward, which is then circling back.
1:08:04
In this next series, I'm going way far out across the globe.
1:08:09
First of all, across South America.
1:08:10
But the one I'm working on now actually is all across the globe from pole to pole.
1:08:16
And that'll be the last one I plan to do like that because I want to go back in tight again.
1:08:20
So I think what's interesting is to see I've expanded and now I want to go back home.
1:08:28
I want to go back to the, to the core of where I was starting with my writing, if that makes any sense at all to anybody.
1:08:39
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right?
1:08:40
I mean, you're going to have this.
1:08:41
You've got a wider aperture that you want to bring back to your more local, familiar subjects.
1:08:48
Well, and the thing is, what that should show is how did the being currently known as Steve Ramirez change since he wrote Casting Forward.
1:08:58
Because when you go back to, okay, here's me not trying to travel the entire world, just being present.
1:09:09
What's different?
1:09:10
And I won't know until I write that, but I can tell you, you talked about things you can't unsee.
1:09:19
I've lost all my, what would I like to call these?
1:09:25
All my comforting little fallacies that I thought were true throughout life.
1:09:32
All the little things that I thought were definitely true.
1:09:35
And so now one of my sayings is the only thing that's laughable, the most laughable thing to me is human certainty.
1:09:41
Because so many of the things I believed in, I've turned out were not true.
1:09:46
So it's going to be interesting to see.
1:09:48
I, I want to stick around long enough to write all these books and see where it goes.
1:09:54
And I hope people read them because I always say this, writers need readers.
1:09:58
And I write for my reader, I don't write for me.
1:10:01
And you talked about, how do you get recharged.
1:10:06
Well, it really helps me when readers reach out to me and say, I love that, or that really helped me.
1:10:11
I had two military guys, special operators, come to see me at a book signing and tell me that they carry my book in their backpack when they're in theater to help them keep centered.
1:10:22
And I couldn't have had a more wonderful feeling from that that I might have helped somebody.
1:10:28
Yeah, yeah.
1:10:29
It's interesting, right?
1:10:30
I mean, it's, you know, you get those people, they reach out to you, whether it's, you know, social media or in person, and they're like, hey, what you did was meaningful for me.
1:10:37
Right.
1:10:38
That's why I do.
1:10:39
So it's really wonderful.
1:10:40
Yeah.
1:10:40
Or even if they say to me, I don't kill snakes anymore because of you.
1:10:43
Yeah.
1:10:44
Or I'm nicer to the fish.
1:10:46
Yeah.
1:10:47
So, you know, so we know that you can download the book as of today on Amazon via Kindle.
1:10:54
I know pre orders are available on Amazon as well.
1:10:56
Where else can folks find.
1:10:58
You can.
1:10:58
Pre order in any major book seller or you can go to my website, which is just steveramirezauthor.com and click on Buy the Books and it'll give you all the different bookseller links so you can pick the one you
1:11:12
like, including independent booksellers.
1:11:15
And if anybody wants signed copies, I do them just about exclusively through BobWhiteStudios.com so you can pre order signed copies through BobWhiteStudios.com.
1:11:30
Yeah, and we're a little early in the game, but do you have any in person promotional events you want to share with our listeners?
1:11:37
Well, I don't have the dates right in front of me, but I'm going to be a keynote speaker at the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in Minnesota and Minneapolis in March.
1:11:50
And then all the other ones are going to be here locally in the San Antonio, Texas Hill country region.
1:11:54
So they can just go to my webpage again and for any big ones, they'll be up there and I'll be able to post that.
1:12:04
I'm going to be at this location, but the big one coming up is going to be the Great Waters Expo.
1:12:09
Got it.
1:12:10
And you kind of mentioned your sixth book.
1:12:12
What can you share with us on that front?
1:12:14
The sixth book is called the Seasonable Angler and it's basically an expansion of my six years of writing the Seasonable Angler column, which was originally written by the great Nick Lyons, a man who I have respected and learned
1:12:33
from and revered for a long time.
1:12:35
And I'm.
1:12:36
I'm kind of amazed that this book, I put this together with the support of people like Ross Purnell at Fly Fisherman magazine and Nick Lyons himself, who did.
1:12:48
Nick did the forward for this book.
1:12:51
It's called The Seasonable Angler.
1:12:52
And he basically wrote in the forward that, you know, he's passing the torch to me and then I'll pass the torch to someone else.
1:12:59
So it's really a beautiful, heartwarming experience to go through that.
1:13:03
And it's going to be it's 30 essays and anybody who doesn't know my writing, I will take you on a fishing adventure.
1:13:11
But in the end, there's a message.
1:13:13
All of them have some purpose or message in them.
1:13:16
So 30 essays and they will have the original art of two great artists, Rob Begnino and Alan Hassell.
1:13:29
So it's going to be a beautiful book.
1:13:31
But right now it's a season in Patagonia.
1:13:34
And by the way, it's not a season in Patagonia as in the fishing season.
1:13:38
It's really a season of a man's life traveling to Patagonia.
1:13:43
And so, you know, for you mentioned this.
1:13:45
So if folks, you know, you've got your books which they can find anywhere that sells books, right.
1:13:51
I'm a big, big advocate.
1:13:53
Like I'm not anti Amazon, but if you have a good independent bookseller, go buy it.
1:13:56
There's because I love books.
1:13:58
I know you love books.
1:14:00
But then also they can find you.
1:14:02
You've got the column in Fly Fishermen.
1:14:05
And are you kind of regularly micro blogging on social media still?
1:14:08
I'm just kind of trying to give everybody every writing channel that you have so they can follow you wherever they want to.
1:14:14
Well, for those who are usually the younger people are not on Facebook.
1:14:20
But I am on Facebook as steveramirezauthor, and I'm on Instagram as steveramirezauthor.
1:14:26
So I do mini writings on those.
1:14:29
And then occasionally I'm posting things on my blog.
1:14:35
I say occasionally.
1:14:36
I'm not great at putting stuff up on the blog all the time on the website steveramirezauthor.com, but I do put things up, major events and things like that I put up so they'll be able to track that or
1:14:49
big adventures I'm going on.
1:14:52
Got it.
1:14:52
And so, you know, anything else I've left out tonight you want to share with our listeners?
1:14:57
No, I just, I hope people keep reading.
1:15:01
It always makes me sad when I'm at a book signing event and someone walks up to me and says, well, I'm really not much of a reader.
1:15:06
I think, why are you at a bookstore?
1:15:08
So, yeah, keep reading and keep, keep learning and keep growing.
1:15:14
That's the only thing that keeps us alive.
1:15:16
And I just want to say that I really, really appreciate the chance to be here and I really appreciate everyone who reads my books or my column.
1:15:25
Yeah, absolutely.
1:15:26
And I would say too, if folks want to follow you, you've kind of mentioned your kind of various social media outposts.
1:15:32
You want to recap those for folks so they can follow your adventures with the Quill and on the water.
1:15:38
Sure.
1:15:39
steveramirezauthor, is for both Facebook and Instagram.
1:15:45
As you know, Instagram I can write less and Facebook sometimes I'm writing pretty long essays about my travels around the world, but I write on both of them.
1:15:56
Perfect.
1:15:56
And I will drop links to those links to all the books and all the good stuff in the show notes.
1:16:01
Thank you so much.
1:16:02
Oh, absolutely.
1:16:03
Well, Steve, I really, really appreciate you making the time for me.
1:16:06
It's my joy, really.
1:16:07
My pleasure.
1:16:08
Take care.
1:16:09
Thank you.
1:16:10
Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
1:16:15
Don't forget to check out the links to all this episode's sponsors in the show notes.
1:16:19
Tight lines, everybody.