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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
Nomadic living with Michael Ridge
Michael Ridge, a true nomadic adventurer, shares his incredible journey of embracing nature and how a life of constant movement shaped him. From a challenging childhood to discovering native food systems like the wild carrot in northern Idaho, Michael's stories reveal a transformative perspective on life and the environment.
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these are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm james nash and this is the six ranch podcast. For those of you out there that are truck guys like me. I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, dect. If you don't know DECT?
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Speaker 2:Right now, I'm sitting in a yurt on the transitional zone where mountains decide to either become prairie or canyons, with Mr Michael Ridge in a yurt. There's a little wind and rainstorm going on. Michael and I have been friends for a few months now, but I've been aware of you and following your journey for years, and my first question to you, sir, is how are people meant to live?
Speaker 1:How are people meant to live? You know, I don't really think I could be audacious enough to say that all people should live one way, that all people should live one way, because I know that, in my understanding of the world which is the point of my journey and living nomadic on horseback, spending all my time in the wilderness is getting to know the world around me. That's the point of it, and and you know as well as I do that everywhere you go is unique, very, very unique, so that, so that's my understanding of culture. Culture is rooted in the land, and we know that, because everything from the soil to the rocks, to the birds, to the mammals, to the people, to their languages, to their skin colors, it's all unique depending on where you are.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, yeah, and it's all unique depending on where you are, yeah, and it's also unique in time. Right Today is going to be different from tomorrow. Exactly, that's the whole. Like no man stands in the same river twice. Yeah, where do you feel like your story begins?
Speaker 1:I remember being me since I was a child, you know so. So I feel like the same individual I was when I was just a tyke. And then what happened? Personally, I didn't have a very good upbringing, I didn't have a very good childhood. I didn't have a very good upbringing, I didn't have a very good childhood. A lot of inconsistency and a lot of moving around and um, who was taking care of me. That that changed a lot also, and so I think, uh, that geared me up pretty well, you know to, to go to over 14 schools and 12 years of schooling, you know it kind of pushed me to be a charismatic individual, to make friends easy or not. You know. It could go the other way, yeah, you know. You could ask my brother why he decided to do drugs and he could say because our mom decided to do drugs, and you could ask me the same question and I would tell you the same answer.
Speaker 2:It's just yeah, when, when did sort of I feel like we might be entering a new chapter, but when do you feel like generally this chapter of your life started?
Speaker 1:I was in northern idaho. I was in northern idaho when I had met somebody that had introduced me to the wild carrot, which is similar to the one here. It's different, though it's a different one over there and and that, and that was the change of my life, where I, where I learned that there was food systems native in the landscape, some something in in, that was a click for me we ate some together this spring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're tasty they are yeah good for you.
Speaker 1:Don't tell anyone. I think it's like that. Yeah, it's like that. It's like what people need. People need that health, rich minerals and nutrients. But it needs to be, it needs to be brought in a way of reverence and that introduction in person. It's nothing more magical and powerful than that. The flavor on your tongue, and then that with the context of the land that you're in. Yeah, because that's actually one of my favorite things to do for people that have grown up in a place. Their whole life is to introduce them to these things underneath their feet. It changes their perspective. You know, yeah, and how powerful is that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very powerful. Yeah, yeah, okay. So you ate a wild carrot in Northern Idaho and you thought I wonder what other flavors are out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that was where I was introduced to the notion and an individual, to the notion of an individual that is no longer with us and this country knows that person, or did know that person, pretty well, phoenicia Medrano, who was quite a controversial character, I learned. I learned a lot from somebody that made it a habit of stirring the pot everywhere they went.
Speaker 2:No doubt, and is that a good thing?
Speaker 1:It. It wasn't good or bad. It wasn't good or bad. It was to bring awareness and honestly, you know it's just how things move and change and adjust. Things get stirred up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So what are some things that you learned from him? I?
Speaker 1:learned a lot from Finn. I learned a lot from from Finn it comes back to, comes back to those basics of of what I have learned. What I was introduced to was how to feed myself, clothe myself, shelter myself through all the seasons and then navigate this world on horses in a modern day yeah, tell me about your horses my horses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a special gift. And you know, I wouldn't have my horses that I have today without without, uh, finn. So pea shooter the mule, she's 17, she's the oldest critter. She actually came from west kilgore, okay, in 2013 I'm a big fan of pea shooter.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah we're friends.
Speaker 1:She was five at that time and that was the year that I first started, uh, living on horses. So pea shooter was was my first critter. She became mine. The rules were if I brought a pack saddle in the camp then, then I got the mule, yeah, and she's been mine ever since. Yeah, yeah. And what an amazing critter to introduce me to such a rugged, high stakes consequence kind of life. She taught me really well, me specifically as an individual working with animals where, where, uh, death is an option everywhere you go. And she, she taught me, she taught me, um, no rough, no clumsy rough no clumsy.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, mules are good about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, they have a lot of self-preservation as long as, as long as you're diligent and and gentle, we're good yeah, and, and it took me a while to figure that out, but she's been solid.
Speaker 1:And and taka and senda high actually came from just over the mountains here, over the blue mountains, from the umatilla reservation. They came from kanani ridge. In the 2014 roundup, which which had I had already completed one year of traveling around the wallowa mountains on horses and and so that 2014 winter my horses were rounded up as foals and there was a woman out here in pondosa in union county here, who opened up her home to a bunch of us kids that were that were learning from finn and and showed us how to gentle horses as they. They were babies. Yeah, my horses, when they were rounded up, were wiener foals at three months old, so they weren't expected to live. They weren't. They had mange and several types of worms. They were in poor conditions, yeah, and so taken away from their moms at three months old kind of a big deal. So I replaced mom for them and they needed gentle right away.
Speaker 1:So the first. So for the first month, month and a half, it was intensive training as much as you could with foals, right, which is about an hour every other hour. Okay, they could only handle so much as babies. That's still a lot. It's still a lot and but you could work with them four or five times a day in these winter, winter days. But. But it was important to get them through that initial gentling process, to be able to walk up to them, catch them and then lead them around. Because they had mange, they had one. It was an emergency situation. They needed cleaned up right away, yeah, and they needed touched everywhere.
Speaker 1:So so about two months in, my mares out there were fully groundwork trained, they could lunge, they could do everything at just four months old, four or five months old. And then they grew up traveling with me alongside my previous string of horses through narrow trails in these canyons and alpine country to alongside semi-trucks on the highway. So my mares grew up in a traveling lifestyle. They have not known another life. It's really kind of interesting. So they were born wild, but also kind of imprinted at the same time, and then just lived this really unique life. I could only I daydream about their perception of the world. In what ways do you feel like it's different from yours?
Speaker 2:I could only I daydream about their perception of the world you know In what ways do you feel like it's different from yours?
Speaker 1:I. You know, I never really thought about that, but it's probably. It's probably similar, and the kinship that I have with my horses is something that I think we all deserve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like that about dogs. Yeah, you've got a good dog too.
Speaker 1:I do. She, she's a. I feel like she looks out for me more than I'm aware of you know, like she she's. She's here for me intentionally for a purpose. Yeah, she sees me through a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, dogs are good about that. If you're ever and it's kind of, it's not just like, oh, I'm having a hard time right now, so my dog comes over and hangs out with me, you're having a good time, your dog's going to come over and hang out with you too. So, no matter what's going on, a good dog's going to make it better. Yeah, I like that about dogs, but these are two animals whose domestication meant everything to Native Americans. I would say Dogs and horses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's interesting. You know that's an interesting thought, because I was thinking about that too. And and uh, you know I have a a really good book up here, uh, written by Forrest Carter, who used to write speeches for the president. You know, uh, eisenhower, back in the day and this book up here is about Geronimo. It's called watch for me on the mountain and uh, there, there's several excerpts in there, cause they they worked with horses too, but uh, you know they weren't trained or anything yeah so they could.
Speaker 1:They could just hop on horses and with a loop around their neck and rump, and there was a level of communication and understanding that that I think, uh, is not quite there, for you know, we tap into it, we experience it sometimes, but but I think, when it comes to the indigenous people, there was a level of understanding of our world that was never quite fully understood well.
Speaker 2:It doesn't transfer into language that can be described with.
Speaker 2:You know words or numbers, so that makes it hard it does it makes it hard to move it to the next generation, or to the next generation of a different people with a different background. Yeah, yeah, um, I wonder about horses being native to north america. There's been some interesting genetic studies that have been done between some of the Appaloosas and then some of the horses in Mongolia. We know that horses and camels originated in North America and a lot of the thinking is that they went the opposite direction over the Bering Land Bridge. But I wonder if there weren't always horses here, if, if some horses remained and were here before the spanish brought them back yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's where that's where a lot of indigenous stories can can help bridge the gap in understanding, because, because for a lot of cultures out here that you, you know, I've heard different things, you know it's all unverifiable, based on our account, so so. But you know, I've heard that the curly. The curly is that woolly horse. That's some old genetics right there of an American horse. Yeah, and uh, you know, I, I don't want to, I don't want to claim to know things that I just don't know, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, it's hard to know anything, right? But it's fun to guess at it sometimes. Yeah, I think horses have always been here. Yeah, I do. Yeah, it makes sense to me, mm-hmm. You know, it makes more sense than that they all left and then, you know, made it across Asia and to Europe and then only made it back to North America by boat. That makes less sense to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stories. There's a lot of stories that run a common subtle narrative, and to me the subtle narrative, just like the land bridge, to me these kinds of things are necessary to justify historic genocide of a people eliminating a people. There's a lot of these stories that are subtly justified. There has to be a narrative that justifies this to me. And so, like I said, I don't claim to know anything I think a lot of this kind of stuff, like like arguing whether the earth is round or flat, or or these kinds of things, throw the mind into a place of confusion and mystery. Personally, this place, this three-dimensional realm, I think, is for definition and discernment. This place was designed for definition and discernment, so so. So giving somebody the question of whether the earth is round or flat, like we're like right here, irrelevant. Irrelevant because because our definition and discernment is right here at ground level, yeah and so. So to me it's a psychological trick to to make that relevant to your daily Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I, I can see where you're, where you're going with that that there's only so much. We only have so much space to learn. And, like what you're talking about, with your horses when they're, when they're young, you could work with them for an hour every other hour and that was kind of their capacity. We are subject to the reality. Yeah, Right now we have access to news from all over the world, to information that doesn't pertain to our media or even near future, and that can clog up our capacity to learn about things like am I stepping on a plant that I could be eating instead of stepping on, you know? So, as as your world gets, gets smaller, you can focus more on the stuff that's right in front of you and you can learn more about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's the age old struggle of you know, the more advanced the world around us becomes, the less advanced or capable and knowledgeable we are individually. I think that balance there could be a better balance there.
Speaker 2:So in those early years when you're starting to become nomadic and live nomadically, did you start out wintering outside? You did. Was that first winter hard?
Speaker 1:It was in a teepee with out of wood stove, it was an open fire ring and it was hard. It was really challenging. Everything was new for me, coming from the city, and I equate it to like learning how to play guitar, which you know nobody wants to hear, nobody wants, you don't even want to hear it, and it's like that. But it's chopping wood, it's working with horses, it's enduring weather, it's, it's so many things that will really just make you or break you even something like trying to figure out how to keep water wet in the winter time is really hard yeah, you know, and uh, I'm at a place where these things are second nature.
Speaker 2:Second nature, yeah yeah, we had an elk camp in october where it got down to single digits and I had some friends from hawaii who were out hunting with me and they wanted to. We had the option of of staying inside, but they wanted an, an actual elk hunt. You know, they wanted to stay in tents and and cook outside and kind of do the whole thing, which I thought was great. And coming out of a hundred degree climate, which they were very, very used to, and then stepping into that is a big step. Um, that's the shift. And for me, just keeping water from freezing so that I could, you know, have water to be able to cook and clean with and make coffee in the morning, it's a big challenge and even though I've done a lot of that in my life, uh, the first night that it happened I forgot. I came outside and everything was frozen. I was like, oh, such an idiot you know I've been, I've been living inside too much.
Speaker 1:And these conditions you know and and I feel that right now, subtly as the weather and conditions you know just change, yeah, the years, like if we're mid-december right now. Technically it's still fall yeah right, we're three days away from solstice, yeah, but it feels like october, november out there it does today.
Speaker 2:We'll see. You know, and and I I talked about how we're in this, this transitional piece of terrain weather forecasts don't do it here. You know you can take the most advanced weather forecasting that there is and it's good for about six hours in this area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this transition zone too, and I just have to say, like, what a special place to to hang the hat and for the winter, the right here camp is perched between that convergence of the blue mountains and the Wallowa mountains. Ancient stories told right there, but also this was, was the route from the Grand Ronde Valley to the Wallowa Valley. We are on the old stagecoach path. Yeah, and and so. But even beyond, but even beyond that, right here, within the, within the Prairie, right here, are stone bowls and wild foods of all kinds, and so the layers of the landscape are peeled back all the way to the origins here. Yeah, I just love it.
Speaker 2:And would that stagecoach road have been built on top of a trevally road?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, you know it's like, especially in this country, where it's where it's dramatic deep canyons and and there's not a lot of options for how you get from one place to another. The roads here have always been the roads, yeah, it's always been the paths, yeah, and I love that. I, you know, just knowing that is, uh, it's an honor to to walk those paths to see those sites, yeah those paths to see those sites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've hunted in places where I'll find like a really old straight wall cartridge that might have been there, you know, since the 1800s, early 1900s, and then I'll find a 30 out six cartridge. And then I'll drop down into the past a little bit. I'll find an arrowhead and I'll find what I think was an old rock blind. It's like yeah, critters have been moving through here as long as this has been shaped like this. Yeah, yeah, for thousands and thousands of years. This has been a good spot if you wanted to get some meat.
Speaker 1:Being able to stop and admire and acknowledge and contribute to the story of the land. That is like the epitome of the word honor to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So movement being nomadic, moving around. How important is that? For me it's everything really so this is a different kind of year for you.
Speaker 1:It is. It is. It's been good for me though 2024, and we know this.
Speaker 1:you know I started out traveling normal heading out of here and you came and pulled us out of the national recreation area because my meal got hurt and and I did not travel after that, I stayed. I stayed in this place. Yeah, I was up here on this Prairie when it was 105 degrees and, uh, I think it was necessary for me. Uh, a break in the pattern, because you know 11 years of of this life that I've been living where, where it is six months of winter, you pack all this up, cash it and then travel across the country and you end up where you end up and do it all over again. I'd come into some patterns that were in my way, I think, to my health. I was heavily addicted to tobacco, to tobacco. I don't, I don't smoke anymore. It's interesting you break the pattern, you start breaking some patterns. You look different.
Speaker 2:I feel so much better. You look younger by years than you did this spring.
Speaker 1:There's a heavy reality that I'm facing. I have some self-defeating tendencies where I dampen my own spirit, my own light, like that and uh. So so I do think this break in my travels kind of, kind of was not it's like a drawback on the bow. That's what I feel like it was. You know, I needed to reshape some things because because, honestly, as I reflect on it now, I just been squandering what most, so many people consider the pinnacle of freedom. I hear it all the time living the dream, you know, and and uh, and so I want to. I want to embody that. I really do. I want to. I want to come at this with a fresh mind and health, healthy body and and really, uh, not hold my back, self back so much. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to hear and I'm sure everybody else does too more about these, these nomadic travels and the moving around. And you know what are some, what are some stories, what are some experiences you've had with, with animals and places and, um, you know what have been the dangers and the fears and the victories.
Speaker 1:Automatically, you know, uh, I think somebody like you would really enjoy it, because, because they're really the only thing that's consistent is you, your modalities, the way you know how to do things. But the point of the point of having all that skill and obviously the gear is what facilitates your comfort when you have the knowledge and you have the gear and you're moving and you're in it. That's where the real, that's where the real stuff starts to happen, because now you are in a place where you're comfortable in this world that is constantly shifting and moving and transitioning, and the point of that, in wherever you happen to be, is to participate with whatever is happening around you. In that is this process. It's a natural process of healing, you know, and I referred to it earlier.
Speaker 1:I said I said the things that are essential to your development are the things that are essential to your existence, are essential to your development. And so, with the understanding of the foods, medicines and materials native within the landscape, and you're there, participating with these things in a mutually beneficial way, because everything has a timing and a season, mutually beneficial way, because everything has a timing and a season and when you're moving through in the season of seasons, the right timing and the right season. You're moving through these seasons, you are mutually beneficial to these things that you're participating with, and that is like the magic of life. There's a way to move through the land and you have everything that you need and you're being a ripple effect of beauty and abundance that's mutually beneficial to these things and so that that's essentially like what I was taught and what I'm perfecting and what I'm getting good at, which is being a ripple effect of abundance and beauty, reminiscent of that original harmony and resonance of the earth, and then everyone you meet and come into contact to becomes aware of that. You become this spreading healing because, uh, everywhere is unique, everywhere special, and uh, to me.
Speaker 1:To me, that's like what I'm doing, that's that's what it's all about so much because it's like over here I got a. I got a grocery bag full of dog bane seed which I got from a spot Somebody had turned me on to that Jim Riggs had originally was harvesting from. If you know Jim Riggs, he's like one of the reasons bucks brain tanning is is a common knowledge these days. He's one of the main reasons. And um, did he write?
Speaker 2:the book that had the little piece of uh of buckskin stapled to it. I'm not sure, I'm not sure I got a book like that when I was a kid and it was more of a pamphlet, it was a very self-published kind of deal.
Speaker 1:I like that idea.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I remember getting this book as a kid on brain tanning and it had this little postage stamp-sized square of buckskin that was stapled inside the cover and I thought that that was so brilliant and so electrifying. To open a book about doing a thing right like taking, taking the skin and brains of an animal and then creating a last, a lasting, wearable product, a textile that can't be imitated by anything that could be constructed, and then you get to feel it right there, yeah, right inside the cover, and how cool is that. Like I don't know if I've ever experienced anything like that in any other kind of book.
Speaker 1:That's a that's a really great idea, but you know the the, the dog Bane. You could see it right there. I got those bundles of dog Bane came from the railroad tracks over there and it was a spot that jim riggs had turned some people that are still living onto today. I'm I'm new to this area. Somebody told me about that spot and I go to it and that story lives on and I make a video about it and it does pretty good. It got it got. It got hundreds and hundreds of almost a million views across all these different platforms and in that you have people commenting about how long they've been looking for this plant, and one woman said that she paid $9 for a single pot of seeds. I have a grocery bag full right over there, yeah, and in my travels, and that is the value of these things.
Speaker 2:I mean, they are tremendously valuable, but it's uh but you're not talking about a monetary value and no no, no, I'm planting it yeah, yeah there's some.
Speaker 1:There's some that the equity isn't really quite there right when it comes to things that are things that are native, essential to the ecosystem, and their value. Their value is more than just monetary.
Speaker 2:It's also value in, in maintaining the health of the land that we're in, and my basic understanding of dogbane is that you can use it to make very strong, very thin cordage. Yeah, you can basically make. Turn it in a fishing line. Um, what else can you do with it?
Speaker 1:it's everything fiber you can make fibers from, in fact. In fact, uh, you know there's a chemical compound in here that in dogbane that is, uh has to do with your heart. Like it can, it can stop and start a heart. There's a cardiac. I forget the specific, specific compound in it, but but it's medicine just for you to wear. There's a and, like the, I don't want to, I don't want to just pull stuff out of my but but there's a. There's a PDF on dogbane where, where they've done studies that you know it's good for people that are diabetic diabetic to to wear it on your skin and there's some medicinal properties for sure. I have a little basket that I that I wove right up up there and you can oh yeah grab that if you want to.
Speaker 2:Um, so that looks like it might even be watertight or close to it no, no, these are raw fibers.
Speaker 1:So okay, but but dogbane, uh, is antimicrobial and antifungal. So back in the day, um, like burlap sacks were made like burlap sacks, and so these wild roots out here were stored in dogbane sacks and then you could bury them or, um, put them in places that are dry and cool and basically pull out fresh vegetables all winter long.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, gotcha. So would that have been a good place to store something like a camas root?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and the bags will keep things from molding. You just make sure there's no plant materials, and then the materials that you're using are likewise, just like buckskin smoking. Buckskin repels bugs. It repels rodents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, buckskin's pretty awesome A lot of work, so you're wearing buckskin pants.
Speaker 1:Talk to me a little bit about how long it takes you to make something like that, projects like like the other day. I spent literally every waking second on this, on this porcupine hairbrush just putting beads on it. But if I, if I wanted to, if I wanted to, I can tan two hides and and make a pair of pants in five days okay that's. That's a lot of work. It's all. It's all I would be doing. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, talk me through the process a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, after after you tan the hides. After you tan the hides, it's pretty, pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Well, we we've got a, let's say we're starting with a hide that just got pulled off of the deer.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're going to take that thing right to a fleshing beam and there's many styles doing this, but I do wet scrape. So you know it's just an angled beam, a log that you're pushing up against and pinching that skin and pushing that off with a draw knife and you get all that meat and fat off. And then you flip it around and you get all that hair off. There's a layer of skin underneath the hair. There's a grain layer. Got to get all that off. I tan in my, in my shelter. So once that's done, I I hydrated in water, get all the loose hairs off of it and scrape it again. Make sure I was really thorough with all that. Then you put it in the tanning solution, you know, and and then and the tanning solution is going to be brain or the tanning solution is any emulsified fat.
Speaker 1:So oftentimes I'm getting hides from hunters where they field, dressed it and brought it to. They didn't save the head or anything. So you can use soy lecithin, and that's a great one for like summertime because it doesn't attract bugs or anything. Okay, you can use ivory bar soap, you can use some lotions, but any emulsified fat is what initiates that chemical process of converting glues and collagen into the supple buckskin that we know. Okay, so you soak it in. A tanning solution.
Speaker 2:In the tanning solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and basically you're hanging it near a heat source. As it's drying, there's tension setting up in that hide and you're breaking that tension. So once your skin is hydrated in a tanning solution, you're hanging it up to dry and before it dries hard, you pull it and stretch it to prevent it from drying hard it and stretch it to prevent it from drying hard, and if, once all the moisture is left to hide and it's still got some stiffness, you put it back in the tanning solution. Just repeat that process until it's done.
Speaker 2:so the way that I'm tanning hides is pretty quick and then, once you've you've gone through those cycles of putting it in the tanning solution, letting it dry, stretching it, pulling on it, breaking it so that those fibers don't sort of glue themselves together, again You're going to smoke it at some point.
Speaker 1:That's right. Once it's fully buckskin, buttery soft, then you smoke it and that sets that softness in the hide and it also, you know, so it cures the skin but it also adds some color.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And different woods give you different. So it cures, it cures the skin, but it also adds some color. Yeah, and different woods give you different colors, give you different smells. Do you have a preferred wood? I like Doug fir.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Cause it gives you that.
Speaker 2:That's our tree man, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just that. Uh, it's what you think of when you think buckskin. Yeah, it gives you that color.
Speaker 2:Yeah, doug fir is you think of when you think buckskin? Yeah, gives you that color. Yeah, dug fur is. It's just awesome. I mean, that's what our two by fours are made out of. That's, you know, one of our best firewoods and that's important.
Speaker 1:You want to use punk. You want to use punk wood? Okay, because when it's smoking, you don't want it to light, catch on fire you just want it to billow smoke, which so every step of the process requires skill, requires a learning process, a learning curve and then developed skill. Yeah, so I can go out there and I can flesh a hide and have the hair and skin off of it in an hour.
Speaker 2:And how long will a set of buckskin pants last you?
Speaker 1:Three years for me wearing them every day. Yeah, yeah, this is their second year. The knees are getting really the leather is their second year. The knees are getting really. The leather is really thin on the knees obvious, yeah, and uh, it gets to the point where you're just constantly making repairs and repairs and repairs. Yeah, people, I mean it's high fashion now, I guess, but well, I mean it mostly always has been torn uporn up worn clothing yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, buckskin has always been high fashion. There's this briefest period of time, if we're talking about human history, where it sort of hasn't been, and now it's coming back, which is so funny.
Speaker 1:There's a gap in people's understanding of the value of it. Like you know, people think that leather first of all. You know, traditionally smoked tan buckskin versus chemical tan leather not the same. And even right now, amongst people that do know how to tan and sell deer skins, they're undervaluing it. Everything else in the world is skyrocket right now, but people are still selling buckskin for the same price as 20 years ago. Yeah, I complain to primitive skills people that do that, because you're the one devaluing this. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if so, you know they're worth at least three grand. What have you?
Speaker 2:done for threads. For threads Buckskin yeah, so you're using buckskin to actually make the thread as well. That's right, yeah interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can, I have some bundles up there, stuff in the yurt, but yeah, uh, for you know which is which? It doesn't rot. You know it gets thin, that's what it does. It gets thin in spots where it stresses, that's what. So, buckskin, is this living material? It's still alive and everywhere it gets where it gets thin.
Speaker 2:So it's just the nature of everything yeah, doesn't get too hot, doesn't get too cold. It's pretty great, those natural fibers, man Well pretty tough to beat.
Speaker 1:It's also antimicrobial, it's antibacterial and when you have a fresh smoked hand and if you're using brains also, there's pheromones in brains and for a lot of the years it was when I ran out of dehydrated brains. I had a friend that made a huge batch of dehydrated brains which they said they would never do again because it's gross yeah, it's really hard to dehydrate anything that has a lipid in it yes, what an interesting thing.
Speaker 1:and it smells like fish flakes, smells like fish food and, uh, once I ran out of dehydrated brains, I pretty much stopped using brains. Yeah, because I don't got a freezer or anything. I could dry them and just use egg yolks.
Speaker 2:I've heard egg yolks. What's a time where you've been out in the wild and have been afraid.
Speaker 1:And have been afraid. It's always when I'm riding on trails in steep country. Yeah, that's the most afraid I am All the time. Gravity problem. Just you know you have these critters and you would have had to have done everything proper, tight and right, and you know it's at that point where you're. More, everything that you've done is tested and the circumstances and the situation and environment is is a guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, so that's where. That's where I'm most terrified. That's where you're riding and the only thing holding you on the saddle is your butt. Suction cup to it, yeah, cause it's puckered.
Speaker 2:Right? Uh, you know people think that I'm just joking most of the time when I'm critical of llamas. But the reality is when I was growing up and packing horses and mules, I saw some trail disasters from llamas. And what folks don't understand is that a lot of horses and mules have a very phobic response to llamas. They're more fearful of them than they are of bears, of cougars, of bees, of almost anything else. And if you encounter somebody who's packing a llama on a steep section of trail like that, it could very easily lead to serious injury or death of one of those horses or mules.
Speaker 1:The option is always there. For sure, my horses have met just about every critter under the sun. I actually have video of an alpaca humping Taka. Poor Taka she was just trying to take a nap. But she's got that personality where she kind of indoctrinates everything into her. She's that kind of person. It seems like she's picking on them, but she's actually establishing some relationships. Yeah, she does that.
Speaker 2:When I walked up here to the fence they were starting to walk over. And they really started to walk over when they saw that we weren't paying attention to them anymore. And then, when I walked over there and was looking at them, they stopped all three of them their ears come up and then they all looked off to the side at the same time, at nothing. And I know that they were wanting to see if I was going to look at what they were pretending to look at too, and I just kind of waited them out. And then they knew that there was going to be an apple as part of the deal. Here they come. They're sweet animals they are. Have any of them taken a fall? Uh?
Speaker 1:send a high. The very first uh year I started packing and writing them. They were three years old, they had just turned three. It was in Washington, in the sawtooth wilderness, you know, um, the trail to get to stahikin, yep, steep trail. It's a steep trail. And oh, my horses they were. I wasn't riding anybody, I was just leading them, you know, and I had them half packed their first year, first season packing. They had actually just came along loose that whole season. And then, and then it was a late summer, early fall, I decided we were going into the sawtooth and and so I half packed my girls for the first time. And so I have packed my girls for the first time, and and, uh, they kept breaking my breakaways. I just kept breaking my breakaways.
Speaker 2:What's a breakaway for folks who don't understand.
Speaker 1:When you're packing horses, you need a breakaway, and on on my riding saddle, I have a breakaway, which is consists of a rope that goes from centering to centering across the backside of my cantle, and on that rope is paracord. Some people use baling twine, some people think paracord is too strong. It's not, but I use paracord and that is what your horses are tied to. So I'm hands-free. I'm not holding a horse as I'm leading my horses through, and each horse is strung together on a breakaway, which is a rope that goes from centering to centering, and on that rope are these little loops that you tie on and that's called a breakaway. So if a horse falls off the cliff, they break away. They're the only one that goes down cliff, they break away, they're the only one that goes down. And and when I was packing my girls for the first time in the wilderness, they kept breaking my breakaways and I made the mistake of hard tying and, uh, pea shooter, I also. I also, you know, was using some equipment that I don't use anymore. I had made adjustments. I it was my very first year, by myself actually, you know um, we, we got through a spot where pea shooter, her packs were too low and there was a rock prevent, there was a huge boulder just preventing her from easily just passing through this, this narrow section of trail, where it was also like a 15 foot drop off the side, and, uh, pea shooter, couldn't go, couldn't go. And there was, my string was jammed up and and then, uh, she started pulling back and I was leading Cinder High and and that pull back just threw Cinder High right off the cliff. Yeah, she was hard tied. So, yeah, yeah, she, she fell 15 feet off a cliff and landed on her back and and rolled and I was lucky, nothing fell out of my packs, that's good. And and, uh, you know, that was really traumatizing for me to watch my, my horse, who had just come of age, to to fall off a cliff.
Speaker 1:Um, I was with some other people, they had heard me, me, they were ahead, they, I was, I was just in that section by myself. But they came back and and, uh, by time they were there, I had my horses tied up and I had her fetched up and I was coming back up the trail and, uh, they helped me through that section and we made camp the next spot that we could, on a steep mountainside, with some good fescue. I was just staring at my horse in awe because she was completely okay. She was fine. I was really lucky. My pack saddle was fine, she wasn't limping, she wasn't sore, she wasn't swollen. I stared at her for the rest of the day. I'm just staring at her going what the heck man, what the heck. So glad that she was okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause it doesn't take much for it to go differently.
Speaker 1:No, no, you know, unfortunate because cause a 15 foot drop onto some, onto some, you know, fluffed up soil at a slight incline. I was pretty lucky, pretty fortunate, but there was. There was a lesson in there for me that that nobody else knew about. It was just my lesson in my own head of what I know to do and ignoring what I know to do, which would be to stop, stop, get out some paracord, dig in it doesn't matter, do whatever it takes to pull out some spare paracord and and make a breakaway instead of this hard tie where now the horses have leverage against each other.
Speaker 2:I've done the same exact thing under really similar situation where I was leading, leading some mules, one of whom just wasn't feeling that that day, and he would just stop um, cause he felt like it and pull back and break the breakaway, and I was using valentine, so it didn't take much, just pop and you know, the next time you turn around you've got two mules behind you and two mules that are, you know, 300 yards behind you, Two of them not that far, but because packers mostly ride backwards, you know. But you know I was just getting frustrated and all day long I'm dealing with this and I'm running out of baling twine and I was like you know what, like you're gonna get tied hard and fast.
Speaker 1:It becomes a game for them yeah and uh yeah and we.
Speaker 2:We did have a little bit of a wreck later on that day because we're we're tied up and I just had to kind of wait until all the lines got tight and we're wrapped around every tree that we could wrap around like okay, you guys done and then it's like, okay, which one of these things do I need to cut to like make it all, like come loose, and it's like I think I'll cut this one boing, and then everybody kind of scrambles around to their feet.
Speaker 2:It's like, all right, we done? Are we done playing games? Can we go back to work? Um boy, oh, oh boy. But it can get bad. And that's definitely a situation, and there's a metaphor there too. Right, you know that this is a safety precaution, you know that this is the right thing to do, but with enough frustration you can get eroded down and you can make the wrong choice.
Speaker 1:I found that nature is such a hard ass that the moment you decide to make a decision against your, against what you know is wrong, is the moment that you know it's like the moment you relinquish your ability to function.
Speaker 1:So I don't do drugs you know, you know it's like so I don't go out into the wilderness and do mushrooms or anything Cause, cause. I've learned the moment you relinquish to your ability to function is the moment you got to function. Yeah, and and and. There's something in the fabric of reality. It's just like this is a law of the universe that you can't, you don't get to. You know, you don't get to pretend you haven't learned this lesson yeah, murphy's law it's, it's just like that yeah keeps you tight yeah um what's a cool experience that you've had with wild animals.
Speaker 1:Man, man, that's a, that's a tough one. I have to think about this. Um, I had, I've had, probably the most amazing experience uh with, with, uh, communicating with birds. Yeah, experience uh with, with, uh, communicating with birds. Yeah, yeah, a bird taught me how to, how to do this. I say a bird taught me how. But a bird got my tongue moving and I stumbled onto a sound that I could make and it was through mimicking a bird, where I was just mimicking it sounds and it seemed to start out with me, real simple, like doo-doo, and I would go doo-doo and it would go doo-doo, doo-doo and eventually, like it, got my tongue going. Coolest experience I've ever had with an animal was was just mimicking a bird and then, and then from that I can, I can do this interesting whistle that I've heard nobody else do ever.
Speaker 2:That's fun. It's fun, that's a fun skill, yeah, and I know you've had uh, you've had all kinds of predators around as well, which a lot of people have a phobic response to. So you know, when I was in Australia which we talked about a little bit before we started recording, of course I was worried about snakes and spiders and the stuff that Americans think of when they think about Australia. Those guys don't think about them at all, it's just not a part of their day. A lot of them are very afraid to come to the us because of bears, right yeah and uh, that's not something that affects our day very much at all.
Speaker 2:Um, if you're in grizzly bear country, that can be a little bit different story and should be. But, um, as far as black bears go, and most, most of the time with grizzlies not not a huge deal. So, um, I think you know you've probably had wolves and lions and bears around and been relatively comfortable in those situations. Do you recall any of those times?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to to remind ourselves that it's a whole community out here that's already established, just like when I'm riding into walawa country. It's a, it's, there's an established community with with, everything's been figured out, there's a structure, there's an order, there's a way. You know. You know what I mean. It's nature's like that, and so maybe I think we get a little bit more sensitive to the, to our environment, where it's a community and and you know, because when you go in to make a camp, they know where you are. You know everybody's giving you go in to make a camp, uh, they know where you are. You know everybody's giving you away, especially the squirrels and the birds. They tell on you first thing straight away, and then, um, obviously, if you have a dog, um, you're hard pressed to see anything aside from something that's not afraid of dogs.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and then if you're staying there any amount of time, you become this hotspot. Everything knows you're there for sure. And if you're exploring everywhere, you're going to the bathroom, you're letting the community be aware. There's different ways to do that. You know. Like, if I'm traveling in bear country, it's nice to have a bell on my saddle for lions, for bears, mostly, so they know you're coming. Yeah, so you don't scare them. Yeah, because that's that's the biggest thing is is scaring them.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to the community of the animal world, there are all types of personalities and bear are one of the more expressive. Like there there can be a sweet bear, there can be an ornery bear, and when we're strangers to the community, then then we, we kind of have to have our wits about us and and stay within protocol and and. But once you get familiar to an area, you might know all the bears in the area and your protocol then adjusts in this more so. So you know it gets as it gets as deep or shallow as you want it to be. Yeah, but it's familiarity which is the point of my journey. It's become familiar with the world that we're living in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Participated in it a little bit more, through direct participation instead of passive observation, is some real healing, some real powerful healing? Yeah, because then you're moving in this way that is sensitive to the area that you're in, and and what I've taught is to move in that way, which is mutually beneficial to it.
Speaker 2:It's pretty special when you can get into that, that familiarity level where you don't just look out and go, oh, there's a bear. And you look at it and go, oh, there's that bear and these are the tendencies of that bear. And I've gotten that more so with elk than anything else, right, and I know over 100 elk by sight and I know a little bit about their lives, I know kind of where they are at different times of year, I know some things about their behavior, their tendencies, uh you notice when one's missing.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, probably?
Speaker 2:um, there's, there's certainly been those times. They're not on, they're not on tracks. Right, if I'm in a spot and I think, well, this bull has been here on this day two years in a row, he should be here today. He might be someplace else, but there they also can do things that are incredibly consistent. So, for example, I found a left and a left um shed antler from a bull, so um, his, his left side, from two different years and they were within about 10 feet of each other. It's like wow, that's pretty crazy. He was here on the same exact spot during the time where he needed to drop that left antler two years in a row under different weather conditions. Like that's wild, yeah, what's even crazier is my buddy, who was out there at the same time, was a couple miles away, canyon miles, and he found the right in the right from that same bull, also within a few feet of each other. That's crazy, very consistent.
Speaker 2:There's probably a sense of relief when they throw those things off oh, I think it's euphoric and and and it wouldn't, I wouldn't doubt if if they associate that euphoria with with the place that it happened yeah, and it's like well, this is where I was, you know, during this photo period, when there was this amount of daylight last year and nothing ate me. So I'm going to try that again. You know, I got enough to eat and uh, just keep, keep doing the same thing. And that's how some animals survive for longer than other animals, is they find the patterns that keep them the safest, the longest yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And if they have the good uh, good mothers too, then then exactly the, then they know that the canyons right over here safe right up here on top of the prairie.
Speaker 2:It's not safe yeah, yeah, that's one of my concerns with mule deer right now is we have a lot fewer does who are having fawns in some of their traditional habitat.
Speaker 2:So that's how they learn to live in a place, and we found that in Wyoming with color data is you would have a doe and then there'd be a buck over here that was her son and there'd be another doe over here that was her son and there'd be another doe over here that was her daughter and there'd be a fawn right here and they'd all be on the same hillside.
Speaker 2:But they might have a couple hundred mile migration throughout the year, but in the springtime they're all coming back to that same place where they'd been born and were utilizing that landscape. Now, if that doe and both of her female offspring and that buck all get killed whether it's by hunters or predators or winter or disease, any number of things well, now there's nobody else who is going to grow up there and learn this habitat and have that imprinted as part of their migration cycle. So then you can have habitat that no longer has the animals in it and eventually, um, if there's a healthy enough population, they'll restock that area, but if there isn't a healthy enough population, they'll keep defaulting to the places where they're safe, and that might be all private agricultural land down in the valleys or town.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you have adverse possession. Whether or not people want to ignore, people want to pretend that that doesn't exist, but yeah, but. But you'll hear people be like these are my elk Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And and that's an interesting thing too, right Is like, when you start thinking of of things in terms terms of ownership, like that, what do you actually own? Do you own the responsibility to take care of them? Do you own the right to kill them if you feel like it? Like what is it? And I trend much more so to the responsibility side, right.
Speaker 1:That's right. It's a responsibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a responsibility to take care of this habitat. The habitat will take care of the animal and then when I need meat, I can go hunt that animal and there's another one that's going to fill in behind it and that's something that's sustainable and healthy and feels good to me. Now, that's going to feel bad to somebody else, and that's okay, I get that. Somebody else, and that's okay, I get that. But I think that that the way we approach land ownership as far as, like the sixth ranch and my family, it's like what we really own is responsibility to take care of this place and that's what you know. We're in the sixth generation of doing in one spot and we want to continue doing that for as long as we can yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean that's really what my journey is all about, but it's, but it's really extreme. It's super extreme. The most permanent thing that I do is plant habitat yeah right, the plants that I focus on which is the foundation of our ecosystems and and uh.
Speaker 1:So when I, when I focus on that, you know that's the these native, they're called perennials, which is another word for permanent. Yeah, and my camp here is impermanent, and when you stay in one spot, it's a great example. We're right next to where my teepee sat last winter and that teepee, that patch of ground, that-foot circle that I kept warm all winter long, died. It killed the ground, all the roots, everything dead.
Speaker 2:Well, you can find teepee rings in the canyons that are, you know, hundreds of years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you know, when I leave I just put the habitat back and I'm in a place where there is virtually no habitat right here. It's mostly smooth brome up here, which is, you know, grasshoppers like it, praying mantis like it, but it allows. But that spot where I was now is a spot where there's a blank spot where I put in the prairie habitat and so when I leave, when I leave and I I made a video about that like in places like this, obviously I don't have heavy equipment or anything, but I do have seed bundles of a whole ecosystem, the prairie ecosystem, from the prairies remnants all around us, and so everywhere the rodents have disturbed or made a dirt patch in the prairie. That's where I put that seed and go throughout the entire prairie. Now it's put in. Yeah, now it's put in in these spots where there's no. So just kind of seeding in, seeding in some healing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to talk about shelters a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You've been living in a teepee in the wintertime. When I came and picked you up this spring, you just had a canvas lean-to. Is the canvas lean-to? Is that kind of been your standard for spring and summertime travel?
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I have two canvas tarps and because I have two pack horses, I have two tarps. Each tarp covers my load and one tarp is a ground tarp, one's an overhead tarp. If I had three horses, I would have three tarps.
Speaker 2:Yep. So the teepee and the yurt are both structures that you can weather a storm, you can spend the winter in. They've both been used by nomadic horse cultures from the past. Kind of give me the pros and cons of each the yurt seems really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I honestly think that people should learn to spend the winter in a teepee. First, because you have to humble yourself in almost every kind of way. Yeah, there's, there's no way you can keep the weather out, even to get in. You have to humble yourself physically to get into it. The year you do too, but it but there's a, the tp. The tp is is much closer to your, to your humanness, and uh and and the yurt it's still camping. You know, there this is, you're subject to the weather conditions. There's no eliminating the conditions that you're in. Yep, you know, even around the door I have moisture coming in. So I have a couple sheets that I routinely sop up the water that I cannot prevent from coming in and then hang it up to dry.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I have to make sure nothing's moldy. This felt I've had to roll up from touching the ground.
Speaker 2:Right, because it's going to wick up moisture from the ground. So it doesn't wick up ground.
Speaker 1:I'd rather put a t-shirt or something cotton that I can wick the moisture out and then dry that so I could prevent mold. Know, it's circumstantial. I, I, I decided, based on no suggestion from anybody, to buy a used billboard and set this year up on top of it, cause we're on the bare ground. Tp is on the bare ground too. Uh, usually it's dirt exposed. There's no dirt exposed inside of here and you know that that's uh, that's, that's different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's different well, this is pretty comfortable living it is yeah, and I know that you're you're cautious with comfort, um, but I'm I'm glad to see you embracing a little bit of it this winter. Yeah, uh, when you, when you do pack up for the summertime, you've talked about how a lot of your food, a lot of your medicine, a lot of the things that you need, are out there already, like that stuff that you don't necessarily have to bring with you. You've got the horse that you're riding. You've got one pack horse and you've got one pack mule. What are you bringing with you?
Speaker 1:so I pretty much designate p shooter to tools and equipment. She, she, uh carries everything that we need to maintain gear, tool and equipment. And then, and what kind of tools and equipment is that? I'm actually developing a comprehensive gear list for people that do want to know, because I do have some specific things that probably others don't, and then recommendations.
Speaker 2:But uh, we can wait on that. But just in general generalities, I think people would be interested to know what you're bringing with you.
Speaker 1:Totally yeah. So I, I carry my own shoeing equipment. That's heavy, pretty heavy, so I carry everything I need to maintain their feet, including spare shoes that I weld borium on so I can keep the same set of shoes for them all season long, which means that I do not let shoes, I don't let them throw shoes. I'm always listening for a loose little clink, clink, clink.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm always listening for that.
Speaker 1:Fortunately I haven't lost a shoe or bent a nail in a long time. Yeah, good, but uh, but you know I carry solar and and uh lithium and uh mics and repair kits for everything that needs a repair kit, sewing kit, and oh you know. And then the other horse is dedicated to food, food. One whole horse is the kitchen.
Speaker 2:What? Uh, what's a food that you'll pull out and you're just stoked about. It's like oh, it's this night, this is what we're having tonight. I'll tell you mine first. Okay, I'll tell you mine first.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:When I'm in the back country. The food that just makes me excited every time is Idahoan mashed potatoes.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:The little instant mashed potatoes. As far as like an instant food. I think the ingredients are like potatoes and salt.
Speaker 1:Like there's not a lot of trash in them. I'm so over dry storage food.
Speaker 2:I hope to never eat an MRE again.
Speaker 1:Meals refused in Ethiopia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm done with those things. Circumstances are pretty dire, so I get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean like you brought the best gift I could ever ask for Fresh meat.
Speaker 2:Fresh meat, yeah, a little ever ask for is fresh meat, fresh meat yeah, a little bit of elk, a little bit of salmon, that's what I go without the most you know because because.
Speaker 1:I don't break the rules or anything.
Speaker 2:That one package of burger is from um, from an elk I killed in 2022. It's still very good. It's double wrapped in paper, um, but I, I screwed up when I was making it and I just did a coarse grind twice, um instead of a course, and then a fine grind, um. So it's a little bit chewy, a little bit tough to eat, but I was thinking that, uh, that would be a treat for morning, um, if, if, she was so inclined to eat a little bit of elk, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's spoiled a little bit of elk, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's spoiled. Well, she's a good girl, all right. So what? What's your food? What's gonna get you stoked?
Speaker 1:something that you're bringing with you something that I'm bringing with me. Yeah, probably, probably, it's probably gonna be a dessert. It's probably gonna be a dessert because because I'll carry these, uh, dry package desserts and they got the cheesecake and it's kind of and uh, so I yeah, I don't know, I have these weird little weird routines, but I have these, I, I, I have a plastic container that keeps rodents out, right, and it can fit two cheesecake crust and and mixture in, and I carry powdered milk.
Speaker 2:I'm so over dry stuff. Yeah, I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:But on my birthday? On my birthday, you know, seven huckleberries are coming on and I just make myself a cheesecake with wild berries. Yeah, For my birthday around that time.
Speaker 2:That's like what I'm looking forward to the most, so do you need to find a little snow bank somewhere?
Speaker 1:Snow bank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in order to cool off the cheesecake, or how do you make it?
Speaker 1:No, no, it just you whip it until it's thick and then you let it set. You could let it set. Sometimes you feel like eating cheesecake soup, Not going to wait on it.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't really think about all these concessions that I've been making as I live out there in that kind of way. I've gotten really spoiled the last few years too, because people are coming to visit me from all over in vehicles, so so got access to fresh food and I don't have to make special trips to town to pick up dog food or fly spray or stuff like that. I you know what social media and short form content has changed things forever, I think Changed things for me. Yeah, forever, exclusively in a good way, exclusively in a good way. No, I mean, there's nothing bad so far. Tiresome, yeah, annoying, irritating things can be. You know you can have somebody that's brilliant and somebody that's low iq arguing with each other in your comment section. Yeah, I mean it just it's. It's just weird.
Speaker 2:It just it can get real weird yeah, people take it off the tracks and turn it into something else and, yeah, that can be frustrating to be a bystander from. I feel like I have to be a parent sometimes and stuff and be like, hey, you guys be nice to each other.
Speaker 1:It's good to reflect on Like that's. If that's not the environment that I want to nurture in my, in what I'm creating, then it gives me a lot to reflect on. Yeah, cause, cause then. But then you have, then you have people that are strategically trying to instigate rage and arguments. You know, and and that's where that's where I'm I'm getting burnt out is the more that, uh, human psychology is leveraged to the point where, you know, it's like manufacturing music nowadays instead of just raw talent, and the same thing with content creation. Like I can, I can be as unique and interesting and brilliant of a human, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when somebody's leveraging ai to put out more videos than you could conceive.
Speaker 2:You know it's just what a weird world we're living in right now it is weird, yeah, but also that's just, that's just a facet of it and, uh, currently we're, we're still in control, like you can just turn it off.
Speaker 1:Just look outside yeah, yeah, yeah, I do, I do yeah yeah um, what is?
Speaker 2:uh. So 2014 is kind of when you got started. If you could go back and talk to yourself then, what's a piece of advice that you would give to yourself?
Speaker 1:focus on, focus on some of the little things. Focus on some of the little things, like just just maintaining over the years I I've noticed that I'll pull out a box that I I just haven't seen in years you know and and to spend time with.
Speaker 1:Spend time with everything Like tend to I have, have. I have things that I cherish, that are really old, that I've had. Like I have my canvas tarp that I first ever bought, you know, and it's it's like 13 years old. It's no good anymore, but, uh, tending to all those little things, like it could still be good if I cared for it, if I made some repairs, if I if I uh waterproofed it or waxed it a little bit more. And a lot of those things get away from you, and especially when they become sentimental and and uh, that's like. Personally, I like uh upgrading tools, gear and equipment, but I also like the art of maintaining them and keeping them and hanging onto those stories until they're relics. And I suppose, if I, yeah, I just find myself neglecting a lot of stuff, putting things in little niche places and then forgetting about them. I pulled out. I pulled out a box of stuff that had mold like growing all over it and just freaking out.
Speaker 1:Freaking out about it, you know, gave me so much work to do so much now I have to focus on even finer details of these things than I, than I did previously, and it kind of puts things in a place where you just want to discard them, just get rid of it.
Speaker 2:How, uh, how, can people support you and and follow along in your journey?
Speaker 1:I think I think I'm only on social media where, where people can have access to to me and the things that I'm sharing and putting out there. Instagram TikTok may or may not be here. Youtube I hope to focus a little bit more on YouTube, but Facebook and Instagram will be the main places, for sure. What are those channels? Called my name? Michael Ridge, Michael Kennedy Ridge, and I'm a TikToker first. Tiktok is what got me into creating content. Short form content is what gave me an audience and a platform.
Speaker 1:Cross posting to these other platforms just shot my accounts up like crazy and, uh, I think I want to. I think I want to try and get some people together. It's it's a tough thing to do for for people to hang in the, in the style of life and the ruggedness and also get some work done. But but I think I would like to try and assemble, you know, a crew somewhat to to take some of, to take some of that away from me. So so we can, so we can implement some cool stuff, do some cool stuff. Yeah, so I would love to. I would love to be more integrative with the local communities that I'm coming into, do events like I. There's a lot of opportunity that I feel like you know, and in making better health choices. I'm feeling that I'm feeling like I'm going to step up into this more role of a public figure in that regard, because really some incredible opportunities.
Speaker 2:Cool. So if people want to be involved in, or or an observer of, those opportunities and best thing they can do is follow you on social and for now, that's what I got, yeah yeah, that's, that's what I have set up cool. I love it. Thank you so much for your hospitality, for the conversation and, yeah, I've got a. I've got some work ahead of me out today and I'm gonna go help a friend try and get an elk tomorrow where at uh, it'll be south of pendleton nice yeah nice, I wonder.
Speaker 1:I wonder how it is down there toward ukiah uh.
Speaker 2:North of there a bit. Okay, yeah, so there's an area where the elk have gotten into some sort of winter wheat country and some places that it's not good for them, not really good for anybody, so that's where we're going to be hunting.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, let's see if you can encourage them elsewhere too.
Speaker 2:at the same time, I think at this point it's more about population reduction in that area. They've really habituated to that area and it's a tough situation and it's a struggle that's been going on for many years there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And with some of the diseases that are about to get here and the ones that we already have within our elk population, these hyper-concentrated places, I think our best mechanism right now is population reduction and so do you have any more insight on that?
Speaker 1:Do you have? I want to ask you, do what do you think should be done?
Speaker 2:that may not be I would like to see improved habitat. National forest and wilderness. I agree there. Yeah, elk are gonna, and deer and everything else, birds, bugs, all of it um, they're going to go wherever the habitat is the most conducive for their survival and thriving and reproduction, and our national forest and wilderness could be in a lot better shape than they're currently in for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. But I think that that's the most important thing, and one of the really tricky things is that the wildlife agency is the state who doesn't control much land or habitat, and then the one that controls the habitat doesn't seem to be terribly interested in habitat improvement for the sake of wildlife meant for the sake of wildlife um, so we need to get them together and yeah and uh, and apply enough pressure and concern from from ourselves as as citizens, and and uh, we need to make this happen that's.
Speaker 1:that's an interesting distinction, you know, like, because because these, obviously, these different agencies were, were put in place to to be the orchestra of of things and and there's a little bit dissonance there at dissonance that we can't really afford. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's uh. You know, imagine like trying to to cook a meal in a kitchen but you're not allowed to access the refrigerator because somebody else is in charge of that yeah that's tricky.
Speaker 1:You're gonna have a hard time, um, and then the people that might be a better metaphor than what my wants to admit. Yeah. And then the folks who are pretty sure I've been in a household like that yeah, the folks who are in charge of the fridge.
Speaker 2:You know they they want to eat too, but they're not allowed to use the stove. So we're we're at a bit of an impasse. Uh, just need to get them working together and then we can make a cheesecake.
Speaker 1:So, wow, that that is some good insight, that that thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, brother. Well, I appreciate you a lot. Um, I know that you'll reach out if you need help. I'm only about an hour away, so, yeah, good to see all the critters and you doing well this year I'm going to take off and I'm going to go around the Wallowas.
Speaker 1:We're going to cross at Oxbow, we're going to climb into Idaho and we're going to head east and so I think it's going to be a big snow year. I do too, shaping up that way, so I think it's going to be a big snow year.
Speaker 2:I do too. I uh, yeah, Shaping up that way.
Speaker 1:Yep, so I look forward to traveling into through Keating.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have you explored there much? No, not at all, not at all. But yeah, look forward to hearing about it anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks a lot, man Got it. Bye everybody. The six ranch podcast is brought to you by Nick's handmade boots, a family owned company in Spokane, washington.
Speaker 2:For many of my listeners, you've waited and prepared all year for this. Whether your pursuit is with a rifle or a bow, early or late season, big game or birds, another hunting season is finally upon us. Nick's Boots and the Six Ranch want to wish you luck as you head out into the field. This season, I'm wearing the Nick's Boots Game Breakers beginning with the archery elk season. Having worn this boot throughout the summer around the Six Ranch, I continue to be impressed with how quiet the boot is. The rough out leather, leather laces and 365 stitch down construction create a simple boot that is supportive, durable, comfortable and, most importantly, quieter than most synthetic hunting boots.
Speaker 2:For 60 years, nix has been building work boots for wildland firefighters, tradespeople, hunters and ranchers, as well as heritage styles for anyone who values quality footwear made in America. Visit nixbootscom today to find your next pair of high-quality American-made work boots. Add a pair of boots and a work belt to your cart and use the code 6RANCH that's the number 6 and the word RANCH to receive the belt for free. I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who's sent emails, who's sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting.
Speaker 2:I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Celia Harlander Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.