Latest / Go Wildly Podcast / Ep. 8 | The Wild TRUTH About Public Lands: They're Being Threatened- But Not By Who You Think

Transcript

Ep. 8 | The Wild TRUTH About Public Lands: They're Being Threatened- But Not By Who You Think · Go Wildly Podcast

• 0:00
  And I think that's something really special about public
• 0:02
  lands is that this is literally the last common ground in this
• 0:07
  country. People continue going to visit
• 0:10
  their public lands, keep going with their families and friends
• 0:14
  and experiencing these places. A person at the front desk who
• 0:17
  is very knowledgeable who said, yeah, you can go wherever you
• 0:19
  want, kid. Like, I'm not sure why you're
• 0:21
  skipping school and you're here. That's kind of weird.
• 0:23
  But you know, yeah, you can go to the National Awards.
• 0:26
  It's the iPad parents. It's the iPad parents because
• 0:30
  the way we get introductions to the outdoors is through other
• 0:33
  people. It's through family members,
• 0:35
  it's through friends, or it's through those institutions.
• 0:37
  And that was a moment that clicked where it was like, we
• 0:42
  don't need to wait for anybody. We don't need to wait for
• 0:45
  anyone. We have to do this.
• 0:47
  I just started taking logs and rocks and branches and whatever
• 0:53
  it is I could and I just started throwing it off the trail.
• 0:56
  We came to understand that if we didn't do something, know what
• 0:58
  he was, there was no, you know, we reached out to so many
• 1:01
  entities and people and agencies and you know, anyone who would
• 1:06
  pick up the phone, like who who cares about these trails going
• 1:10
  back to this high school? He was like, I've got to impress
• 1:12
  this girl. Like I've got to, I've got to
• 1:15
  get her down to the check go. And if I don't, she's just going
• 1:17
  to be pissed. How it feels?
• 1:20
  Do you want to start us off? Sure.
• 1:22
  OK. All right, Welcome in.
• 1:24
  Welcome to today's episode of the Go Wildly podcast.
• 1:27
  We are here at the Middle Fork Trail along the Middle Fork of
• 1:31
  the Applegate River in we're technically in Northern
• 1:34
  California now. This is part of the Red Buttes
• 1:39
  and Klamath Siski Wilderness. We're in the Rogue River Siski
• 1:43
  National Forest, a few miles outside of the Red Buttes
• 1:48
  Wilderness area. OK.
• 1:51
  And it is a beautiful day. It's a little overcast, a little
• 1:54
  chilly. It's like 6065° or so.
• 1:58
  Great day to be outside hiking around in the woods.
• 2:02
  And we're joined here today with Gabriel Howe, the executive
• 2:06
  director of the Siskiyou Mountain Club, a nonprofit based
• 2:09
  in. You're in Talent now.
• 2:11
  You just opened office in Talent, formerly Ashland, and
• 2:16
  they do trail maintenance and stewardship on wilderness
• 2:20
  trails, Front Wilderness and Backcountry wilderness trails in
• 2:24
  Southern Oregon and Northern California.
• 2:27
  I do. I want to add that you might
• 2:29
  hear some background noise. We are along the Middle Fork of
• 2:33
  the Applegate, Little Apple or not Little Applegate.
• 2:35
  This is just Middle Fork of the Applegate River up above
• 2:39
  Applegate Lake here, and so you're going to hear a little
• 2:41
  bit of river action behind us. Hopefully that doesn't deter you
• 2:46
  from listening this awesome pod because it's going to be a good
• 2:49
  one. It already has been.
• 2:51
  You should get on our YouTube and check out the companion film
• 2:54
  to this episode. We actually film walking up this
• 2:57
  trail, but we're like maybe a mile and a half, 2 miles in.
• 3:02
  We had a wonderful chit chat conversation.
• 3:06
  Lots of education around just trails in general.
• 3:09
  We really encourage you to check out that video.
• 3:13
  Me too. Yeah, and so now we've got Gabe
• 3:16
  here with us to tell us about who he is, what the Siski
• 3:19
  Mountain Club is, what kind of work it does, how he came to
• 3:22
  found it, and what the outdoors means to him.
• 3:27
  So take us away, Gabe. Tell us a little bit about
• 3:30
  yourself. Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 3:32
  So I'm the executive director at Siski Mountain Club.
• 3:36
  We're a a nonprofit based in Southern Oregon that serves the
• 3:42
  national forests of Southwest Oregon, northwest California by
• 3:47
  helping manage about 400 miles of trails throughout the forest
• 3:52
  of the Rogue River, Siskiyou, the six rivers, the Klamath, and
• 3:58
  we also serve other other forests too.
• 3:59
  That's kind of our our home base.
• 4:02
  And essentially what we do is we work with volunteers, we have
• 4:07
  staff and we have a big seasonal program where we go out to
• 4:13
  places like this and we open up these trails and then we try to
• 4:17
  share them with the community. So we've been doing that for
• 4:20
  about 15 years now and I just really love what I do and I'm
• 4:25
  happy to be out here today and not in the office.
• 4:28
  So thanks. For having me, this is a great
• 4:30
  office to get to do your work in your true office.
• 4:34
  I yeah, I wish that was, I wish that was the accurate, but it's
• 4:39
  it's not. You know, I think my job in the
• 4:42
  nonprofit world, we have these titles kind of like you would in
• 4:45
  the corporate world, like the executive director, right?
• 4:48
  And I am the executive director. My job is to operate this
• 4:51
  organization day by day. But I think for most people, as
• 4:54
  far as running a small nonprofit, it's really similar
• 4:57
  to running a small business in that, you know, you wear a lot
• 5:01
  of hats, you got lots of moving parts, you've got, you know, all
• 5:07
  those problems to solve big and small.
• 5:10
  And so I don't think that what we do is outside the reach or
• 5:16
  the scope of someone who's, you know, running a restaurant or a
• 5:21
  small manufacturing business or something like that, so.
• 5:24
  Or a bike shop. Or or a bike shop.
• 5:26
  Yeah, no, absolutely. So that's kind of the way I
• 5:29
  think about it. What got how did Siski Mountain
• 5:32
  Club start? How where did you come from
• 5:34
  before that? And.
• 5:37
  If, if you could, I want to hear a little bit, if you don't mind,
• 5:40
  maybe some like were you raised in the outdoors and that kind
• 5:44
  of, you know, sprouted this love and then you in that direction.
• 5:49
  Well I'll, I'll start from the beginning.
• 5:51
  I, I grew up in Sheridan, OR on a little hobby farm.
• 5:54
  It was 5 acres. My mom was a nurse, my, my dad
• 5:59
  did drafting, was in the lumber industry.
• 6:04
  And from a very early age, I started skirting the farm and
• 6:08
  walking across the neighbor's property into some woods.
• 6:12
  And, you know, 6-7 years old. And those are my earliest
• 6:19
  experience in what I thought at the time were public lands.
• 6:24
  You know, there were a place I could go and I could be by
• 6:27
  myself and my older sister wasn't bugging me and my parents
• 6:31
  weren't bugging me to do chores. And they kind of would forget
• 6:34
  about me, I think, you know, for a day.
• 6:35
  And I just explore it. I'd explore the, the ditches
• 6:38
  running through the, the farms and, and leading to this forest
• 6:42
  and this, this small Creek that was running through.
• 6:45
  And so very early on, these places became a, a important
• 6:51
  part of my life where I felt a sense of freedom that I, I, I
• 6:56
  never really found anywhere else and, and still haven't.
• 7:00
  And you needed that at 6-7 years old already.
• 7:03
  Yeah, my sister. I'm very.
• 7:04
  Yes. Yes, my sister, who I'm very
• 7:06
  close with now, I mean, I had to get away from her.
• 7:08
  She was horrible, you know, And so that's kind of how I remember
• 7:12
  it. And but I so I kept that habit
• 7:16
  and by the time I was in high school, I'd learned that
• 7:20
  National Forest. By then I'd moved to Boring, OR
• 7:24
  and my backyard was the Mount Hood National Forest, which I
• 7:26
  learned was a great place to go and cause mischief.
• 7:29
  Not a very boring place, despite its name.
• 7:32
  Yes, and and that's when in by my late teens, I really started
• 7:38
  to get into backpacking and I started to pull out the map and
• 7:43
  find places in the Mount Hood National Forest where I could
• 7:47
  take a girlfriend and all right, let's go overnight.
• 7:50
  And it was, you know, just wonderful, great experiences.
• 7:55
  And I grew up rafting the wild and scenic section of the Rogue.
• 7:58
  That's where the Southern Oregon connection comes.
• 8:01
  Were your parents rafters? Yeah, my dad, my dad started
• 8:04
  taking me at a young age on kind of a guy's trip.
• 8:07
  But by the time I was in my teens, the whole family was
• 8:10
  coming and I was rowing boats and, and, you know, so, and my
• 8:13
  grandparents lived in Ashland. So I, I knew the area.
• 8:18
  And then in 2005, I was 21 years old.
• 8:22
  My wife and I were living together, but we weren't married
• 8:24
  yet. A caretaker position at the
• 8:27
  Rogue River Ranch opened up and we pursued it and and they
• 8:32
  sorry. What year was that?
• 8:33
  2005 Oh cool. We were still in high school.
• 8:37
  Yeah, we were. But that's awesome.
• 8:39
  I wasn't far out of high school, and foolishly they hired us, and
• 8:46
  I wasn't that great of a caretaker.
• 8:48
  But I learned that wilderness and I learned how to navigate.
• 8:52
  And I learned about the Siskiyou Mountains and the ecology and
• 8:56
  the history. And I embarked on a sense of
• 8:59
  discovery that I hadn't quite tapped into exploring the Mount
• 9:02
  Hood or the Three Sisters or the places that were more developed
• 9:06
  where I had become really accustomed to.
• 9:08
  And it was that year that the Hood got set.
• 9:12
  I was still living in Portland with my wife.
• 9:14
  We weren't married yet. We married in 2009.
• 9:18
  But and then the next summer we started exploring beyond what we
• 9:22
  knew and South of there into the Chetko River drainage going,
• 9:27
  hey, we want to get into this Chetko River, well, South of
• 9:30
  Powers, South of, you know, between the Illinois Valley and
• 9:35
  the coast. Cool the calmiosis wilderness.
• 9:38
  I just to intersect, Yeah, I spent four years working down at
• 9:41
  Merriam. Oh, did you?
• 9:42
  Yeah, OK. No.
• 9:44
  That was. What years?
• 9:46
  I was 2014 so 10 years later but.
• 9:50
  But you still ordered. My Pat and Laurie and my really
• 9:55
  good friend now Amber Burns. Amber and Shawna Burns.
• 9:58
  They're twins. They might.
• 10:00
  Have been they? Might have been working down
• 10:02
  there. We we did know Amber and Shawna
• 10:05
  because Jill had a side gig. She'd go over there in the
• 10:09
  mornings and and help him changeover rooms.
• 10:13
  Cool. And so, yeah, Shawna and Amber,
• 10:14
  That's that's crazy. Yeah.
• 10:17
  Wow. Yeah.
• 10:18
  And I, I feel like anybody who I'm totally projecting because
• 10:22
  it's something that at least Heather and I share that young
• 10:25
  people who spent time in the wild and scenic Rogue River, a
• 10:28
  like kind of dream job is to become the caretaker at the
• 10:32
  Rogue River ranch of like someday.
• 10:35
  I'd love to do that. It seems so magical.
• 10:38
  And also the reality is probably that it's it's pretty rough.
• 10:42
  It's it's it's a great, it's a great gig for the right people.
• 10:45
  Yeah. But, you know, we started
• 10:49
  exploring that wilderness, really wanting to get to the
• 10:53
  Chetko River, the upper Chetko River, because of we could see
• 10:56
  how it was enveloped by wilderness.
• 10:58
  And we've been to the mouth in Brookings and it's like we got
• 11:00
  to get up there. But the trails were in such bad
• 11:02
  shape. They were in horrible shape from
• 11:05
  damage following the Biscuit Fire and decades of deferments.
• 11:12
  And we essentially decided that we came to understand that if we
• 11:22
  didn't do something, know what he was.
• 11:24
  There was no, you know, we reached out to so many entities
• 11:27
  and people and agencies and, you know, anyone who would pick up
• 11:31
  the phones, like who, who cares about these trails?
• 11:36
  And you and and Jill, your wife were sharing that passion and
• 11:39
  and investigation. Absolutely, yeah.
• 11:42
  You know, and, and the and, and the short answer was that there
• 11:45
  was just no plan. And I think it's important to
• 11:47
  illustrate the trail conditions we were running into because
• 11:51
  it's not. Most people are used to some bad
• 11:54
  trail conditions where maybe you have 10 logs down in a mile or
• 11:58
  15 or 20 or 50 or 100, and you're like, man, this trail
• 12:01
  needs maintenance so bad. We were encountering conditions
• 12:04
  from after the Biscuit Fire where there were thousands of
• 12:08
  trails down in a single mile, and you had to crawl over or,
• 12:12
  you know, crawl underneath and climb over.
• 12:15
  And, you know, they were impenetrable sections of log
• 12:20
  jams, you know, dead trees that had accumulated into stacks that
• 12:24
  you couldn't get through. Wow.
• 12:26
  Wow. And so we started just to kind
• 12:30
  of think about it and, and, and, and figure out what would it
• 12:33
  really take to do this? And we knew that it was
• 12:35
  wilderness and you couldn't use chainsaws.
• 12:37
  And we'd gotten that far. And actually it kind of leads
• 12:41
  into kind of one of my, my stories here was that in May of
• 12:45
  2000, 9, because we've got hit, we got engaged in the fall 2008.
• 12:54
  In the next spring, we finally made it down to the Chetco
• 13:01
  River, crawling through those trail conditions.
• 13:04
  And I'd been kind of going back and forth and I'd gotten really
• 13:07
  close. And I said, Jill, we can get
• 13:09
  down there now. And we got down there and it was
• 13:11
  amazing. And, you know, it's one of those
• 13:14
  those those couples experiences that really shaped our our
• 13:19
  future in a way, but on the way back.
• 13:23
  Here we go, here we go. It's a battery break.
• 13:26
  Yep, it died. We are swapping that out right
• 13:28
  now. But while we're out here
• 13:30
  changing up the batteries, let me shout out the folks who are
• 13:33
  changing trails. Literally.
• 13:35
  The Siskiyou Mountain Club is a badass non profit based here in
• 13:39
  Southern Oregon. Yes, over in Ashland.
• 13:41
  And they are the reasons why a lot of these Backcountry trails
• 13:44
  are even possible. They restore and maintain the
• 13:47
  kind of remote, overgrown wilderness that makes your
• 13:49
  thighs burn and your heart sing big.
• 13:52
  The Calamiopsis Wild rogue They're out there clearing the
• 13:55
  brush saw in the trees, re rooting, erosion, all of the
• 13:58
  things that most of us don't think about when we're just
• 14:01
  trying to get a good view. Give them a follow and a donate
• 14:03
  if you're feeling grateful for the.
• 14:05
  Trails that you love that's. Sisqmountainclub.org.
• 14:08
  All right, batteries back. Let's ride, let's hike.
• 14:11
  Happy trails. Test it.
• 14:14
  That's right. Like OK, if we.
• 14:17
  Talk at this. OK, OK.
• 14:21
  We're back on after our battery break.
• 14:24
  Can you flip the oh camera screen, the SI so we can make
• 14:27
  sure we're beautiful? Does that look semi the same?
• 14:32
  I think so, yeah. Yeah, it's fine if it's not, but
• 14:40
  that's the magic of this podcast.
• 14:42
  Yes, in the wild for the wild, Yeah, OK.
• 14:47
  OK, so. Where were we?
• 14:50
  Where you just. We had got to the Chet Go, Yeah,
• 14:53
  and we were walking out. Oh, that's a little not the
• 14:55
  same. Hold on.
• 14:59
  I sit down and I'm like, wait a minute.
• 15:05
  I was so captivated by Gabe's story I really didn't look at
• 15:08
  the camera until I heard the battery die.
• 15:25
  Did you just go to high school together?
• 15:27
  Yeah, and middle school. OK, Yeah, we met the summer
• 15:29
  before 6th grade at a babysitter's first aid course.
• 15:33
  Oh cool. And we kind of kind of went
• 15:37
  separate ways for a long time. And then last summer I was like,
• 15:41
  hey, we should do something. Oh cool, we should do something
• 15:45
  creative together I always feel. Like though we, you know, I kept
• 15:49
  Facebook makes it so easy to kind of keep up with what people
• 15:52
  are doing. Yeah.
• 15:53
  We just didn't have a whole lot of communication.
• 15:55
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:58
  Well, that's cool. Yeah, it's always fun
• 16:00
  reconnecting to the. People, well, we were just
• 16:02
  saying since we spent so much time together in our really
• 16:05
  younger formational years, it's almost like a sisterly bond.
• 16:09
  It's like I went to her bar mitzvah, like we were close.
• 16:14
  And but now we're like reconnecting and as adults with
• 16:18
  wow, grown up lives. Yeah, I've reconnected with some
• 16:20
  childhood friends too in the last couple years, and it's
• 16:22
  amazing how they know you still know each other.
• 16:25
  Yeah. In this weird way, yeah.
• 16:29
  Like the purest, truest form of yourself, they.
• 16:31
  Really. They really know you?
• 16:33
  Yes, they tell you stories that you wish that they.
• 16:36
  Didn't remember. Completely.
• 16:38
  Yeah, I. Don't remember that.
• 16:39
  Like wow, I didn't. I didn't know we were that
• 16:40
  close. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:44
  Well, you know, we were hiking out of the Chetco River
• 16:46
  together. We were on the the Emily Cabin
• 16:49
  Trail, which was an old road prism kind of like this was back
• 16:52
  here, but it was full of trees. It wasn't those conditions I
• 16:56
  described where it was thousands and thousands within a mile, but
• 17:00
  it was just I was sick and tired of walking over the same logs
• 17:05
  because I'd ingressed and egressed several times at that
• 17:08
  point. I was kind of scouting out the
• 17:09
  way going back to this high school years, like I've got to
• 17:12
  impress this girl. Like I've got to, I've got to
• 17:15
  get her down to the check go. And if I don't, she's just going
• 17:17
  to be pissed. Yeah, she's already engaged to
• 17:19
  you. You've got to show her what
• 17:21
  she's signing up for. Exactly.
• 17:22
  So I, I had kind of served that role on the way out.
• 17:25
  I was just sick of it. And I remember being kind of
• 17:28
  cranky and I just started taking logs and rocks and branches and
• 17:37
  whatever it is I could. And I just started throwing it
• 17:39
  off the trail and, and, and she joined me and we took our
• 17:43
  backpacks off. And we did that for, you know,
• 17:46
  all of less than an hour, maybe 1/2 hour to 45 minutes.
• 17:51
  And we looked back at a trail section that it had looked
• 17:55
  really bad. But then we could see our
• 17:57
  backpacks and where we'd come from.
• 18:00
  And just the two of us had only put in 1/2 hour or so of work
• 18:03
  and we kind of went. With no tools.
• 18:05
  With no tools. Yeah, just, you know, and I was
• 18:07
  like, OK, let's, let's see more about this.
• 18:12
  And that was a moment that clicked where it was like, we
• 18:17
  don't need to wait for anybody. We don't need to wait for
• 18:20
  anyone. We have to do this.
• 18:23
  And it was, you know, thereafter it was, it was, it was kind of
• 18:28
  this epiphany in a way where I was like, we need to stop
• 18:32
  waiting. For somebody to give you
• 18:35
  permission or direction just. Yeah, let's just do this.
• 18:39
  Yeah. The best things come out of
• 18:41
  those. The best things come out of just
• 18:44
  putting it out and then like it. Just the path forms.
• 18:48
  Yeah. No, you said it perfectly.
• 18:51
  And it was thereafter that we started to kind of get a little
• 18:54
  bit more formal in that it was like, all right, let's go get
• 18:56
  training so that we can do this right and use the tools.
• 19:01
  Let's start to learn about, you know, wilderness stewardship.
• 19:04
  And let's start to look at other organizations that have been
• 19:07
  successful at doing this and how they figured it out.
• 19:11
  And it was really that experience that led us to chart
• 19:16
  out a way across the Calmieopsis Wilderness.
• 19:20
  And without seeing the whole thing was that we got to open
• 19:24
  this up. And that was a route that goes
• 19:27
  from Babyfoot Lake to Vulcan Lake via the Chetco Canyon.
• 19:33
  Horribly short sighted and hubris of us to think that we
• 19:35
  could do it in the time frame that we thought we could.
• 19:38
  But that's when that's when we set a goal and we never let it
• 19:41
  go. And really led to, you know, the
• 19:44
  next summer in 2010, we knew where we were going and we we
• 19:50
  started galvanizing volunteers and we started talking with the
• 19:54
  Forest Service and buying tools. We were, I was working at
• 19:57
  shopping cart and Ashlyn, she was working at Starbucks.
• 20:00
  We were taking our savings back then housing was actually still
• 20:03
  pretty affordable. So we actually had a little bit
• 20:05
  of leftover money and. Momentum started to build.
• 20:08
  It started to build and and we started bringing groups out for
• 20:11
  week long trips the following summer and those were just
• 20:15
  awesome. This symbolism right now of the
• 20:17
  sun kind of coming out and hitting you as your your
• 20:22
  adventure breaks through the the.
• 20:25
  Dam of logs. And wow, glorious.
• 20:29
  That's gorgeous. Yeah.
• 20:32
  Yeah. So I always recall that
• 20:34
  experience of hucking the logs off the trail of Jill as being
• 20:38
  really formational and probably wouldn't be here today without
• 20:44
  it. And so.
• 20:47
  And all those early memories in our youth in the wilderness
• 20:51
  together, I mean, you know. Yeah.
• 20:55
  Bonded you as a couple and created your your individual and
• 21:00
  your shared future. Yeah.
• 21:02
  Does Jill still work for the system?
• 21:05
  She helps out a little bit. She she works in the restaurant
• 21:08
  industry kind of as her main gig, but she does still help out
• 21:12
  with like donor and member relations and kind of fills in
• 21:16
  the gaps when there's transitions and things like
• 21:18
  that. So.
• 21:20
  That's really, really cool. Yeah.
• 21:22
  That's rad. Wow.
• 21:25
  Have you had any being out in these like super, you know,
• 21:29
  dense backwoods, not trekked in areas for long?
• 21:34
  Did you have any experiences with, you know, mountain lions,
• 21:39
  bears, any Bigfoot sightings? No, no Bigfoot sightings.
• 21:45
  I've seen 22 mountain lions in my life.
• 21:52
  I've seen, you know, I don't know how many bears totally,
• 21:55
  but. It's been down at the ranch.
• 21:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The habituated bears on the
• 22:01
  Rogue River are are, you know, part of our lives.
• 22:04
  And but you know, all the wildlife seedings, sightings
• 22:08
  have been very what you'd expect them all.
• 22:12
  I think that keeps a lot of people, if we ever get listeners
• 22:15
  that are like, gosh, I really want to experience more of the
• 22:19
  Backcountry or even I would consider this a Lightning.
• 22:23
  This isn't Cathedral Hills. You got to drive.
• 22:25
  It's deep. Nobody is on it.
• 22:26
  You know, it's a little bit medium country.
• 22:29
  Sure, sure. And that's the number one.
• 22:32
  I think people are so scared of animals.
• 22:35
  Yeah, they're so and they don't understand that that's so low.
• 22:39
  And the animals are going to be just as scared of them if they
• 22:43
  approach each other on a trail. Animal isn't expecting to run
• 22:46
  into a person out here either, right?
• 22:48
  Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm afraid of poison oak ticks.
• 22:54
  Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes.
• 22:56
  I'm scared of all the little things.
• 22:58
  I'm scared of all the little things that, you know, crawl
• 23:01
  into your sleeping bag and things like that.
• 23:03
  They can leave a lasting. Oh my gosh, no, they're.
• 23:05
  So can poison oak, Yeah. Yes.
• 23:08
  So, yeah. But I'm glad that you guys are
• 23:10
  addressing that because there are, you know, we've lost a lot
• 23:14
  of these institutions that used to be really active in just
• 23:16
  getting everyday people who don't have exposure to their
• 23:19
  families or their work to public lands.
• 23:22
  And so I think that that has that energies built over the
• 23:25
  years because the Boy Scouts aren't as strong and the Girl
• 23:27
  Scouts aren't as strong and all those institutions.
• 23:30
  Oh, you guys, the battery died. So we're gonna swap those out
• 23:33
  because even in the wild, we come prepared with fresh
• 23:36
  batteries and other really cool stuff.
• 23:39
  While we're locking that fresh energy in, go ahead and hop on
• 23:42
  over to our Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube.
• 23:45
  That's where the trail or the river really gets twisty.
• 23:47
  The behind the scenes, real time chaos, unfiltered detours.
• 23:52
  The pod is the story, but the socials, that's the wild ride.
• 23:57
  Meet us over there. And a beanie.
• 23:59
  This has been a wonderful spring so far.
• 24:02
  It's just been so mild and we've gotten good rain and.
• 24:06
  All right. We had a not a battery
• 24:09
  situation. We had ASD card full Switcher up
• 24:13
  so. We're just filming so much,
• 24:16
  we're filling so many, so many gigabytes.
• 24:19
  Anyway, I was just, we were just on the whole, you know, that
• 24:25
  what prevents some people from coming out and outdoors is, you
• 24:29
  know, being scared of the the wilderness and the predators and
• 24:33
  stuff. And then when the camera was
• 24:36
  off, we kind of got into a little bit of a rant about, I
• 24:40
  said, hey, I think that's a lot of times what the people that
• 24:44
  grow up in cities and people that are so rooted in the city
• 24:48
  life and culture and the hustle culture and corporate.
• 24:51
  And they don't get out enough into the medium country
• 24:55
  Backcountry to really ground them per SE.
• 24:59
  But then you said it's happening even in, yeah, the small
• 25:03
  communities. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think
• 25:05
  almost especially in the small communities because, you know,
• 25:09
  lots of the communities where we serve, they're, they're
• 25:13
  depressed. The institute, the schools are
• 25:15
  having a really hard time. Any of those extracurricular
• 25:18
  institutions like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or, you know, there
• 25:22
  used to be more clubs in these high schools and things like
• 25:24
  that, those avenues aren't active anymore.
• 25:30
  And then someone, either of you said, one of you said it.
• 25:34
  Well, it's the iPad kids. It's the iPad parents.
• 25:38
  Yeah, it's the iPad parents. Because the way we get
• 25:42
  introductions to the outdoors is through other people.
• 25:45
  It's through family members, it's through friends or it's
• 25:47
  through those institutions. And so if we don't start
• 25:51
  bringing kids back out into public lands, we're going to
• 25:56
  have even a further generational gap than we have right now.
• 26:01
  You know, and I and I interact with families routinely who are
• 26:08
  in a situation where grandpa went out and hunted the sun,
• 26:12
  didn't fish or hunt or whatever their pursuit was on public
• 26:17
  lands. And now the grandpa is trying to
• 26:22
  get the grandson out to close in that generational gap.
• 26:26
  And so it's so hard. And what's going to happen
• 26:29
  otherwise is that you have you have fear where people become
• 26:33
  fear of what they don't know. You know, they become afraid of
• 26:36
  what they don't know. And you have another institution
• 26:40
  called the Internet that is willing to capitalize on
• 26:45
  people's attention and send them to places, but has no interest
• 26:48
  in providing them the education. So these apps that cost money,
• 26:52
  that send people out is not a substitute for a good Boy Scout
• 26:56
  leader who takes a troop of kids out and says this is how you
• 26:59
  take care of this place. Because those apps and that
• 27:01
  institution on your phone, they, they don't care.
• 27:05
  There's no accountability. There's no they don't.
• 27:07
  They're not here to steward the place and to take care of the
• 27:10
  place. They're there to make money.
• 27:14
  And so if we hand that access over to those institutions, I
• 27:18
  think it's, you know, it's a horrible idea and and we have to
• 27:21
  do something to get ahead of it. Have you thought about any, you
• 27:24
  know, entrepreneurial thoughts? I don't know if you're like
• 27:27
  this. I'm very much like, how do I
• 27:30
  how? Of course, with my own children,
• 27:32
  I try to bridge that gap. But unfortunately, my son, you
• 27:35
  know, it's like we're busy and it's busy wholesale culture and
• 27:38
  we're doing our things. I try my best, but do you see
• 27:43
  any or have any ideas to bridge that gap yourself just.
• 27:48
  Well. Any tips?
• 27:50
  Yes, I mean, well, as far As for the viewers, for them to do it,
• 27:56
  I think that where I've really come to is this place where
• 28:00
  we're really good at opening up trails.
• 28:02
  We're really good at it. Like no one can do it as good as
• 28:04
  we can. We have the institutional
• 28:06
  knowledge, we have the tools, we have the infrastructure, the
• 28:09
  relationships. We've been doing it for 15
• 28:11
  years. We know how to do that really
• 28:13
  well. But what we aren't doing very
• 28:15
  well is bringing that community out to the places.
• 28:19
  And so as Siski Mountain Vino is the executive director of this
• 28:23
  organization, I've put more priority on certainly at least
• 28:28
  exploring the idea of partnerships with other not
• 28:32
  starting from scratch because I don't want to start anything
• 28:34
  from. Scratch and there's.
• 28:35
  You already did that. I already did that.
• 28:37
  I don't want to do that. I want to go to the YMCA and be
• 28:39
  like, we want to take your kids out or I want to go to a church
• 28:42
  and be like, let's let's go out, right?
• 28:44
  Yeah, absolutely. And so that's, I think a missing
• 28:47
  piece of our, our model right now is, is getting kids out.
• 28:52
  Right now. We work with people who are 18
• 28:53
  and over. And if youth volunteer wants to
• 28:56
  come with their parent, then great.
• 28:58
  We want those people here. But we don't do anything to
• 29:00
  really target those folks. Yeah, I get that's such a good
• 29:07
  idea too. Just to, you know, bring people
• 29:10
  out. I, when you were talking about
• 29:12
  that, I was like, how can we, we wanted to make this podcast into
• 29:17
  some sort of a community base as well, right?
• 29:19
  Like center around group hikes or maybe like a guided hike type
• 29:23
  of situation. And even with my own personal
• 29:25
  brand that I've been building for the last few years, it's I'm
• 29:28
  essentially a guide to Southern Oregon.
• 29:31
  I do restaurant stuff. So I'm, you know, doing more
• 29:34
  like tourist centered stuff, but I'm trying to crack more into
• 29:39
  being more of a guide of, you know, trying to get people out,
• 29:44
  trying to really like come out with us, come out and do this.
• 29:47
  You know, I love what the what we were chatting on the way up
• 29:50
  with the there's a Southern Oregon women's outdoor kind of
• 29:54
  community that somebody started and I don't know then, but I was
• 29:59
  like, I love that. I love that they're going to
• 30:00
  host the summer camp. Obviously it's not children and
• 30:03
  right, it's kind of starts the children really need it, but.
• 30:07
  Since we know that adults are checked out also really, I mean,
• 30:14
  obviously we solve more problems by centering on the youth and
• 30:19
  and making sure that we prevent problems later on.
• 30:22
  But we can intervene anybody at any time and say, hey, you're
• 30:26
  missing out on this experiential thing in your life, let's get
• 30:32
  out there and do it. Yeah, and what I was saying is
• 30:33
  just like you saying that reinforces the my thought of
• 30:39
  like, I need to do that. I need to figure out a way to
• 30:43
  host a, you know, more guided outdoor.
• 30:46
  I have people reaching out to me all the time, what trails, what
• 30:48
  camping sites. I mean, I literally do.
• 30:51
  And you saying that it just affirms that I need to do it.
• 30:55
  I need to. Oh, there's a.
• 30:55
  Market. For it.
• 30:56
  There's the appetite for it, no? And I, earlier in my career, I
• 31:01
  was really ignorant to this idea, actually, because you know
• 31:06
  how I grew up. When I was 16, I started going
• 31:10
  to the Mount Hood National Forest and learning from a
• 31:15
  person at the front desk who is very knowledgeable, who said,
• 31:18
  yeah, you can go wherever you want, kid.
• 31:20
  Like, I'm not sure why you're skipping school and you're here.
• 31:22
  That's kind of weird. But you know, yeah, you can go
• 31:24
  to the National. Forest.
• 31:25
  And I grew up with this, with this knowledge that I was given
• 31:29
  by somebody else that, hey, public lands, take out the map.
• 31:32
  You see those green areas, you can go there.
• 31:35
  And you know, yeah, you need to do a little homework to make
• 31:37
  sure, you know, you're prepared and you've planned ahead and
• 31:40
  that sort of thing. But you can go.
• 31:43
  I used to kind of operate under the assumption that everyone had
• 31:46
  had that experience. Me too.
• 31:48
  It's bullshit because people don't have that experience.
• 31:50
  And if you don't know and you grew up without that public
• 31:53
  lands exposure or without those influences, then you kind of go,
• 31:56
  well, I mean, can I just come up to Applegate and park a car in
• 31:59
  camp? I.
• 32:01
  Don't know. I don't know.
• 32:03
  Yeah, I get that. When I get a question, somebody
• 32:05
  will DM me. And sometimes and I'm not
• 32:08
  thinking judge mentally about it, but I'm like, wow, this is
• 32:11
  such a easy fundamental. I'm like, you're asking for help
• 32:14
  on something that's so easy for you to figure out.
• 32:16
  But then I'm like, but they don't know Heather.
• 32:19
  You know, it's like just give it, you know, give them the
• 32:21
  knowledge. Be as you know, throw out as
• 32:24
  much as you can. What are you looking for?
• 32:26
  You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 32:28
  And people don't know people. The littlest thing.
• 32:32
  Schroeder Park to go camp that's just in town.
• 32:35
  It's like people don't know. We take our our knowledge that
• 32:39
  we've developed over the years for granted and assume that
• 32:42
  other people even that live in our area.
• 32:45
  I mean, I growing up in Grants Pass on the Rogue River, I meet
• 32:48
  so many people who also grew up in Grants Pass and have never
• 32:52
  been on the Rogue River. And to me, that is insane
• 32:56
  because that's all that my summers were spent doing was
• 32:59
  rafting on the Rogue River, and that there's somebody who lived
• 33:03
  a mile away from me and has never, never touched the river.
• 33:07
  It's wild. But we come from different
• 33:10
  backgrounds. We come from different
• 33:11
  influences. We have our parents have
• 33:14
  different motivations and different schedules.
• 33:16
  And as long as we can get people introduced at some point, any
• 33:22
  intervention time is a good time to get outside.
• 33:25
  So, and I know we only have a few minutes, so I want to talk
• 33:29
  about this an idea that you're kind of leading me to, which is
• 33:32
  this idea that we're living in a very divided country right now.
• 33:38
  People are going, I can't believe that there's people who
• 33:41
  vote like this or I can't believe there's people who vote
• 33:43
  like that. And I think that it's really,
• 33:45
  you know, we're speaking to something that's really
• 33:47
  universal and that you, once you've kind of start to think
• 33:50
  about that person's background and their experience and how
• 33:54
  they got there, it's pretty easy to realize, well, I'm not
• 33:58
  actually that special. If I would have gone through
• 34:00
  that same process, maybe I'd be feeling like that too.
• 34:04
  And I think that's something really special about public
• 34:07
  lands is that this is literally the last common ground in this
• 34:12
  country and that it is a bipartisan source of pride and
• 34:18
  actually nationalism of people love their national parks no
• 34:22
  matter how they vote, whether they know they love their
• 34:25
  national forests or not. They might not know the name,
• 34:27
  but there's certainly places they go and they go there,
• 34:29
  international forests. I love this place.
• 34:31
  I hunt here, I fish here, I hike here.
• 34:34
  And so it actually presents this opportunity for groups like
• 34:38
  Siskiy Mountain Club and what you guys are doing too, to bring
• 34:41
  people together. And in an environment where, you
• 34:46
  know, we're just sitting here and able to have this experience
• 34:52
  and it doesn't matter who you voted for last November, we're
• 34:56
  able to have a conversation. And I think that's really
• 34:59
  powerful right now. And so I just hope that, you
• 35:02
  know, people continue going to visit their public lands, keep
• 35:05
  going with their families and friends and experiencing these
• 35:09
  places and doing what you do there and supporting in whatever
• 35:13
  way you can, whether it's packing out trash that you found
• 35:16
  on the way or it's supporting groups or it's volunteering or
• 35:21
  whatever it is. It's paying your camp post fee
• 35:24
  for your campground, not skirting those.
• 35:26
  Fees and, and you know, getting out there and being active in
• 35:31
  these places because also bipartisan is this pressure to
• 35:40
  reconsider how these places are managed.
• 35:43
  And right now they are managed for.
• 35:46
  We can come visit here and it's free to us.
• 35:48
  And it's just a wonderful thing that's pretty unique to America.
• 35:52
  You go to Europe, you don't get this, you're gonna pay.
• 35:54
  It's private, all this sort of stuff.
• 35:57
  And so, man, I just hope this is American tradition that stays
• 36:00
  alive through this tumultuous era that we're in right now.
• 36:04
  This is this is true patriotism is saying this is our land, this
• 36:09
  is my land, this is your land. And we want to conserve this and
• 36:13
  protect this for future generations and for all living
• 36:17
  things to be able to thrive and live happy, joyful, fulfilling
• 36:22
  lives on this planet that we live on one.
• 36:24
  Of our, I feel like our one of our podcast kind of goals too.
• 36:28
  We've had so many conversations, we ask people not to get too
• 36:33
  political on one sided situation and we almost talk about it on a
• 36:38
  daily basis. It's like, that's what I love
• 36:40
  about this growing this podcast community.
• 36:44
  Whatever it turns into, we're in the infancy stage.
• 36:48
  Is that the common ground part of it?
• 36:51
  Everybody can share that love for the outdoors and it doesn't
• 36:54
  matter, you know? Everybody wants clean air and
• 36:58
  clean water and beautiful places to go, even if they don't know
• 37:02
  that yet. I mean, even the kids who
• 37:05
  haven't been exposed to the outdoors physically, they're
• 37:07
  probably seeing, they're getting exposed through their iPads and
• 37:10
  their TV. And it may be sensationalized
• 37:14
  and like they're showing a lot of predators and that's not
• 37:18
  really reality, but they're connecting with an outdoor
• 37:23
  image, an outdoor world in some way because it's what something,
• 37:28
  it's where we live. It's what ties us all together.
• 37:30
  And we do all share that this is our home.
• 37:34
  Yeah, and this is giving me such a gnarly download to really, as
• 37:39
  our situation grows here, to try our best to make it an in person
• 37:44
  and community, like bringing more people out.
• 37:47
  Yeah. Mm, hmm.
• 37:48
  I'm really getting a strong download now of that.
• 37:50
  It's like this could be a funnel vessel to broaden up everybody.
• 37:55
  What's a download? I don't want it is to download a
• 38:00
  file from my e-mail. Well, I'm getting a downloaded
• 38:04
  file from the universe. OK, OK, OK.
• 38:06
  I hear you. OK, from source, I'm having this
• 38:09
  thought. It's an idea.
• 38:10
  It's an idea. Yeah.
• 38:11
  Just like a lightful moment. Yeah.
• 38:12
  Tiffany, whatever you want to call it, I call it a download.
• 38:14
  So I think it's hilarious. That's one of the reason.
• 38:17
  Why? It's not a great question
• 38:18
  because she says it a lot. Somebody was bound to ask to
• 38:21
  download. Anyway, I tried, you know.
• 38:24
  We're we're uploading by sharing these visions and ideas and the
• 38:30
  universe is saying yes, but yeah.
• 38:34
  But truly like we have discussed that we don't want to talk about
• 38:38
  politics. We don't want to get into
• 38:40
  politics. There's enough of those.
• 38:41
  But also like we. But we have to acknowledge that
• 38:45
  our access to these lands is guided by a policy.
• 38:49
  And so politics is unavoidable in some facet because everything
• 38:54
  that we can do, even that we can have a podcast that we upload
• 38:57
  onto the Internet, there's a policy that guides that, Yeah.
• 39:00
  And so. Being all policies don't need to
• 39:03
  be fearful. No.
• 39:04
  You know, it's just. They don't all need to be
• 39:06
  divisive. Like we want policy that brings
• 39:10
  people together and connects people with land, Yeah.
• 39:13
  Yeah. And I think it's really
• 39:15
  important. I mean, something historical in
• 39:18
  the conservation movement was kind of this connection between
• 39:22
  that urban, I'll just say liberal kind of crowd who has a
• 39:29
  conceptual image of conservation.
• 39:31
  They connect with the hook and bullet crowd, which is your
• 39:33
  rural crowd that hunts and fishes.
• 39:36
  And those two groups need each other to be successful for good
• 39:42
  public lands. And so I really hope that
• 39:45
  they're they're talking right now because that that solution
• 39:49
  works. Yeah, you know the Ying and the
• 39:52
  Yang baby. Like you can't have the light
• 39:54
  without the dark. Like that's what makes up the
• 39:56
  day. You can't have food without
• 39:59
  farming and hunting, ultimately. Yeah, all of it, yeah.
• 40:03
  You can't have houses without lumber.
• 40:06
  Yeah, it's all of it. You know, they all the great
• 40:09
  compromise that I'm always, I'm always telling Emily, I'm like,
• 40:11
  there's always that compromise. There's always a deal to be
• 40:14
  made. There's always some sort of give
• 40:16
  and take that happens when people come together to make a
• 40:19
  decision business wise, you know, policy wise, whatever.
• 40:23
  I'm just, I have a strong thought of like, yeah, this is,
• 40:30
  you know. This is the way forward.
• 40:31
  This is how we wilderness reconnect people.
• 40:35
  The connecting gum. The conduit of our future.
• 40:41
  The leaves. Yeah, great.
• 40:43
  Anyway, so we're going to wrap up our session with Gabe here.
• 40:48
  We want to know. Our final question that we ask
• 40:50
  folks is when your body expires and your soul moves on, how do
• 40:57
  you want to be remembered? Oh, I just as good person.
• 41:07
  I don't. I don't need anything.
• 41:08
  There's no wrong. Answer no.
• 41:10
  Just an average Joe with a couple of kids and a normal
• 41:14
  family and who did well and did the best I could.
• 41:20
  That's great. Yeah, wonderful.
• 41:21
  Love that. Well, where can people?
• 41:23
  Sorry, go on. Well, you guys said the gear, I
• 41:26
  had to say hey. Yeah, you traveled pretty light
• 41:29
  today, but yeah, what's the gear that you would always have with
• 41:33
  you? I'm I'm always wearing Darn
• 41:35
  Tough socks, and today I'm wearing Darn Tough socks with
• 41:39
  the Appalachian Trail Conservancy logo on them.
• 41:43
  Can we? I'll bring camera close up.
• 41:46
  But what I really like about these Appalachian Trail
• 41:49
  Conservancy socks is that I've big fat calves.
• 41:52
  So don't get those. But you know, what I like about
• 41:56
  these is we retail them at siskiymountainclub.org and at
• 42:00
  our talent location. And this is a partnership
• 42:03
  between Darn Tough and Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
• 42:06
  So when we buy these from Darn Tough, they give some money to
• 42:09
  Appalachian Trail Conservancy and then people buy them from
• 42:12
  us. Some of that money goes back
• 42:14
  into our operation. So I'm always wearing Darn Tough
• 42:17
  socks and stand by that product wholeheartedly.
• 42:20
  So when they buy from you, they're essentially funding 2
• 42:23
  Trail Stewarts. If they buy the Appalachian
• 42:25
  Trail Conservancy style on our website then yes they are and
• 42:29
  that's why I buy that style. I like it.
• 42:31
  That's what one of our goals is to.
• 42:34
  We're going to start eventually a Patreon type of situation and
• 42:38
  we would like to give back through that Patreon of we
• 42:44
  haven't decided exactly what the avenue will be for that, but we
• 42:48
  definitely we want to do that. Cool.
• 42:52
  So we'll be talking to you about that.
• 42:54
  Sure. And as I dig into your content,
• 42:57
  we'll start sharing out stuff to our community that's appropriate
• 43:00
  for that. One last thing, how can people
• 43:03
  find you and Siski Mountain club and all?
• 43:06
  That so we have a visitor center at one O 6 Talent Ave. in
• 43:09
  Talent, OR we're open Tuesdays, Wednesday, Thursdays from 1:00
• 43:14
  to 6:00. But if you stop by and we're
• 43:17
  there outside of those hours, we're there to to serve the
• 43:20
  community, then go to siskimountainclub.org.
• 43:23
  We have a calendar up. We have ways to join there and
• 43:26
  get engaged. We've got Facebook, we've got
• 43:29
  Instagram and you can always call us.
• 43:31
  We return our phone phone calls. The number is 458257 0657.
• 43:41
  I'll double check. Double check.
• 43:42
  Yeah, we'll. Put it.
• 43:43
  We'll put it in text across that part, yeah.
• 43:46
  And you can e-mail us at info at Siski Mountain Club.
• 43:50
  That's all spelled out all on work.org.
• 43:51
  Amazing. Beautiful.
• 43:53
  Thank you so much, Gabe. Yeah.
• 43:54
  That was fun. Yeah.
• 43:55
  Thank you for joining us. We're gonna pack her up, hike
• 43:58
  her out. Great to great to know you, to
• 44:02
  have known you for over a decade, to actually sit down and
• 44:07
  wait. Deep squat, Emily.
• 44:10
  It's a little. I don't know if we can.
• 44:13
  There we go, Emily. Got the deep?
• 44:14
  We've been ending all our sessions with the.
• 44:19
  Reddit film edited and produced by Heather White and Emily
• 44:23
  Berlant. The Go Wildly music is Rainmaker
• 44:25
  by Jared Masters. Special thanks to Gabriel Howe.
• 44:28
  Recorded on location on the Middle Fork Trail of the
• 44:31
  Applegate River. Thanks for listening.
• 44:32
  Please follow, like, subscribe, and of course, share.
• 44:35
  New episodes drop every Friday. Remember to rate and review.
• 44:39
  Find us at Go Wildly podcast everywhere.