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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
Beer and Fishing with Dave Flynn
Talking about one of the oldest IPA'a in the Pacific Northwest from the legendary Terminal Gravity Brewery, living in a van down by the river, and spending your last dollar on a Winston fly rod. This episode dips into the joys and struggles of living and recreating in rural communities. I'll bet you a pint you learn something.
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.
Speaker 2:Mr Dave Flynn. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. Yeah, yes, thank you for having me. This is incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm stoked that you're here. I'm stoked that you're here. I'm trying to think back to the first time I met you and I feel like it was pretty close to this time of year. It might've been Christmas break in college, so it might've been closer to like January 1st. Somewhere in there it was colder than hell down on the Grand Ronde.
Speaker 2:Right, and you were home for college. Yeah, and you were coming down to fish.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, you were looking at boosting up a little guide operation down there, correct, and you?
Speaker 2:seemed like the perfect person to take it on, but you had some other things going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's weird how that happens, isn't it? The other things?
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, what brought you to the Grand Ronde. The Grand Ronde I grew up in LeGrand. When I was about 21 years old A friend of mine, mike Keffer, got me into fly fishing and I really had no ties to LeGrand family-wise. My dad lived there when I was in high school. He moved on my junior year so I stayed and finished high school. I was just stuck there for a while and learned to fish. He took me to the Wenaha River.
Speaker 2:We left Friday after work, hiked down that night, and when I say fished, I fished the upper grand ron and a couple lakes around the grand. So hadn't actually caught any real fish yet, yeah, and got to the winaha and started landing big bull trout over 20 inches and uh, never made it to troy at that point. But I got to the winaha and I knew that I had to, you know, spend more time there. So consecutive weekends through that summer, uh, would go down, hike down, fish the Wenaha, come back up. And then it was rolling into October and I knew the steelhead were coming into Troy but I'd never been yet. So October 31st 1995, I went to Troy and stayed down there for the night, fished a couple days and just fell in love with it Was working at a dead-end job in a trailer factory in La Grande, which is what you did if you didn't go to college.
Speaker 2:Either that or you pulled green chain at the mill, and I was lucky enough to spend almost five years at the trailer factory and knew that if I didn't get out of there then I would probably never get out. Was that Nash Trailers? It was Terry Trailers, but Nash was the CEO. Gotcha, they got rid of him.
Speaker 2:He started his own thing, and so it was just chaos for a few years he basically came in and took all the good talent that we had and had a great operation out of the gate. So but me as a 20 year old kid, there was a lot of opportunities in lead positions and things in this company that had just been gutted. So I got a few opportunities to kind of do everything in the plant and was just bored and wanted to get out.
Speaker 1:Before we get back into fly fishing, what are some lessons you learned during those times that you're using now at Terminal Gravity?
Speaker 2:Production number one. Yeah, yeah, you know, uh, in the trailer factor we got paid on production. You know you got your your base rate but at the end of the week if you did really well and when nash was there we did really well we'd get like 50 to 60 percent of our paycheck again. And you know I was making great money out of high school. And then once he left, you know I never saw another bonus. But it's about keeping the factory moving, uh, at terminal gravity. It's scanning line. You know that thing. Just once you start it it needs to run until you're done. And downtime is loss of beer time, just everything. And what is terminal?
Speaker 2:gravity uh, terminal gravity brewing is the local brewery and enterprise that has been there since 1996. Uh, opened by a couple bootstrapping guys that you know brought it up as a microbrewery in the mid 90s which was for oregon. It wasn't full of microbreweries yet, you know there was a handful in Portland, a handful in Bend and that was about it. So it made an early start. Their IPA, I think, won IPA of the Year Award in 96 or 97, maybe, and you know, still going today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty incredible. Today, you know we, I mean you can't go to a city and, you know, swing a cat without hitting a new IPA. You know, yeah, but at that time that wasn't a normal thing at all. You know those big IPAs that the Pacific Northwest became known for, that started here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it did, and it's uh carried on and uh, there's been hundreds and hundreds of brewery scents and uh, I think this is the first year that uh, more breweries closed than actually opened in Oregon. Really, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what's happening why?
Speaker 2:is that occurring? I think people are drinking less beer. Number one, A lot of different options between cider and seltzer and, you know, less fat options. A lot of people are just drinking less. Saturation in the market with breweries is huge. It's not an extremely profitable business at all.
Speaker 1:What are some of the biggest struggles?
Speaker 2:Being, you know, this far away from your marketplace. I mean Portland historically has been our biggest marketplace. So just getting your beer there, getting all of our packaged goods brought here to make cans of beer from Portland, so just you know, being further away from the hubs make it tough. You know our brewery hasn't grown in 10, 15 years probably. You know we're just kind of Grown in 10, 15 years probably you know it's kind of Grown in what way? Grown in barrels of production per year.
Speaker 1:So like your capacity, yeah, like 2008 was the most beer we ever made.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and funny, 2020 was the second most beer we ever made.
Speaker 1:So recession, depression, 2020 was wild and there's so many growing pains that are left over in industry from that and, whether it's beer or guns or ammunition or whatever, there's a lot of spending that was going on in certain sectors and in other sectors there was no spending at all. So you had businesses that exploded, businesses that fell. I was definitely part of a business that fell during that time because they shut down guiding very, very hard and they shut down boat, boat launches, boat ramps Couldn't do it. They actually reopened strip clubs in Oregon before they before they allowed guiding again.
Speaker 1:So funny to me and you know I I pivoted into other things and it's all good. But yeah, I also saw a lot of businesses who made a bunch of money have the expectation that they were going to continue making that amount of money, and if you've ever worked in an industry like agriculture, you know that whenever prices are good, bad times are coming next. You know that whenever prices are good, bad times are coming next. So it was really interesting to me that so many businesses got caught off guard because by the time 2022 rolled around, they're like a whole crap. We had all this spend planned and now nobody's buying like they were in 2020.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. For us, we have a very limited inside seating capacity. So Natalie Millard that was running the place at the time decided she wanted to buy a bunch of wall tents and stick them up. And you know, I've been in an outfitter before and I'm just like, yeah, you're kind of crazy and I don't know. And uh, our best winter ever. It was awesome. I love the wall tent so much. They were great.
Speaker 1:Uh, a little propane heater in the corner. You were there with your own people. I mean drinking beer and eating food in a wall tent. That's some of the best parts of hunting.
Speaker 2:It is, and it's interesting to see at a restaurant level to be able to see. When we first started out we put a bunch up but we didn't have all of our own yet, so we had borrowed one from Dub Darneel, you know outfitter in Joseph Creek, and there's two bloody handprints on the ceiling of it. I'm just like, yeah, this is Wall, this is yeah.
Speaker 1:Willow County. Welcome to Willow County. You know this is also I don't know. I think we're an interesting food culture here, like a fairly unique food culture even, you know, outside of beer and stuff like that. We've got some some good restaurants here and we've got a lot of people that care a huge amount not only about how that food gets plated and served but where the ingredients are sourced. And you know there's some nice places here, but there's not a single restaurant in Wallowa County that I wouldn't feel comfortable walking into if I had a substantial amount of either blood or cow shit on me and it would be okay, part of the deal. No, nobody would look twice, unless they were from out of town.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I love that for us. Yeah, just uh, no corked, you know. Boots on the floors please.
Speaker 1:Yeah, does anybody still?
Speaker 2:wear corked logging boots. No fishing, though. Oh yeah, they're not corked, but spiked yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you remember ever coming over and seeing like the little store in the 90s? Yeah, yeah. So all the loggers wore corked boots, right With spikes all over them, and it was perfectly acceptable to go into this convenience storeers were corked boots right with spikes all over them, and it was perfectly acceptable to go into this convenience store with your corked boots. And it had a wood floor that had been perforated by you know a hundred years of loggers going in there to get coffee in the morning. And that floor was so cool because it was just so spiked up, that is cool.
Speaker 2:I don't remember that specifically, but that is, that is cool, yeah uh, yeah, the corked wading boots, man, that's, that's another one.
Speaker 1:The metal they put in those things just is the destroyer of worlds. It is. It kills everything.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, uh, and I run rafts a lot, so I mean I try to just stick with felt. Yeah, but We've got slippery rivers. Yes, very much, and you know it doesn't take one person going down in October, november and the day's over. Yeah, you know. Yeah totally, and you're four or five miles away from the takeout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like it's a borderline survival situation at that point. Yes, it's. Not only is it slick, but it's cold. But whether it's ice or just the consistency shape of our rocks, that little bit of slime that gets on them at certain times of year, these are slipperier rivers than a lot of places I've fished. Yeah, yeah, Slip strips and falls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had two clients in October go down this year and luckily it was, you know, 90 degrees, yeah yeah, and just dripped down and got dry. But that happens, you know, this time of year and it's no fun.
Speaker 1:How do you maintain your mental health while guiding steelhead fishermen? Whew, because I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pretty easy it. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty easy going.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think that, uh, I'm probably too easy going, right? Uh, I remember, I remember you know guiding with you several times and you know us sharing clients back and forth, and you know us sharing clients back and forth and you know, you just telling this guy, you're just like every time you got a man, you got a man and you would tell him all day, and I think you were just frustrated and, uh, I just told him a few times and he just didn't do it, and so I just let him roll for the day.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like I can fix what I can fix, but there's sometimes there's just some things with certain people that you, just you can't and if I took that on myself as a responsibility to fix, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't do it. Yeah, the way I guided 10 years ago, 15 years ago, was so different from how I guide now and it's something that I've. I talk about a lot and I'll continue to, because it was the single biggest lesson I learned in guiding In my early days. I was trying to give people the trip that I wanted if I was a client, you know, and that would, that would mean at that time, like doing my very best to fish that water well, to have the maximum opportunity, to catch the most the biggest fish, to improve constantly, things like that. And that's me.
Speaker 1:So I was imposing what I would like on my clients and some of these guys don't care about that, like they just want to hang out and fish, and some of them don't want to fish at all, they just want to sit in the boat or read a book, or they're just looking forward to hitting camp that night and pulling the cork out of a bottle of wine and watching the river go past them. And I think that that's lovely and that's wonderful and I want to help people achieve their version of success. But I made some mistakes at that time where I was just frustrated because people weren't trying to improve. And that's on them, it's their trip, that's okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's accepting that a little bit. Uh, you and I did a a wounded warriors trip years ago and I remember there was a late addition to the trip and the guy just didn't want to fish and he was in your boat and I just remember your frustration. You're just like, yeah, there's such great opportunity right here in front of you. You just gotta, you know, take that rod and listen to me. And uh, for whatever reason, just wasn't his thing. Yeah and uh, it's. I just don't think those are things that you can fix. Sometimes, you know, it's just like every other aspect of the trip was perfect for this person and just like, uh, yeah, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's okay. In that case I I remember specifically thinking that he had some fears that was holding him back and that I felt like he wanted to fish but just had a variety of fears and I was trying to figure out a mechanism for helping him get over that. But yeah, there's also there's different folks that that I think your profession really informs the way you approach fly fishing. Doctors are some of the very hardest people to teach anything to and there's such authorities in their day to day their. Their word is like gold. You know you can't teach a doctor to mend. It's impossible.
Speaker 1:And mending is is editing, it's admitting that your initial approach was wrong and that you've got to do something now to make it a little bit better, and you're probably going to have to continue to do that during this drift. You're going to have to do something now to make it a little bit better, and you're probably going to have to continue to do that during this drift. You're going to have to do it again, the next cast, and if you don't do it, the initial problem is going to get worse. And that's probably not something that they experience very much in their day-to-day in the medical field. You know they're going to fire that first shot based off of all the information that they have and all of their experience, and you know they're going to come back after a time and see if that needs to be corrected. But it's not this constant thing. It's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two of my favorite clients and my longest clients are these two doctors and it's father my longest clients are these two doctors and its father's son the son recently retired orthopedic surgeon from Seattle, and the dad long-term retired but was the orthopedic surgeon for the Seattle Seahawks in the 80s Okay, and went to the Pro Bowl twice. Wow, if you didn't know, yeah, you get the surgeons, get to go too.
Speaker 1:They deserve it Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, it's my favorite thing. I'm really more of a mediator between these two rather than you know they won't let me touch their flies or their line. Yeah, I don't offer any extraction. The son is just like you need to get dad down further in that hole and get him casting out a little more upstream. And you know, and it's amazing watching these two, they just it's a battle, yeah, two, you know that just fight. And the old man, they each pack a spay rod and a nymph rod and, you know, do the appropriate thing. So yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1:That is fun. One trip that I had that was just absolutely hysterical to me, that I ended up just kind of assuming the position of the oarsman and not doing much else. I had these twin brothers who were like in their early eighties and I'm convinced that whenever you get guys together who are the same age, they all act like 16 year olds. And these guys definitely did act like 16 year olds and they had that like brotherly competitiveness. But they were also twins, identical twins, and they wanted to catch each other's fish all day long, which meant casting to the same exact spot and hooks, hook, stuff, as it turns out, including other hooks. So it was a tangle for the entire stretch of the willow river because these guys were just constantly trying to catch each other's fish and it was hilarious and I just kept thinking about, like their mother, and the frustrations this is what a fishing trip is like knuckleheads, but it was so funny I just laughed the entire time and uh, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:You just get some really wonderful experiences like stepping into the role of guide in these family groups, sometimes in these close friend groups.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's pretty important, uh, especially not to ruin a trip for other clients that are around, you know, I mean, yeah, families are tough. So a story that I want to hear uh, you and I both got this call years ago. Um, there's a raft trip in hell's canyon. Mike baird hits his head and they don't have enough guides to move the party, so they have to basically overnight right there until they get an extra guide jet boated up so that they can move. Yeah, and you get the call and you're going in and, uh, I always thought about just like you're kind of the hero, right, like the whole party can't move, these people are stranded until they get another guy that can move. Tell me about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:So I definitely did think that it was also the 4th of July. I hadn't gotten to celebrate a 4th of July in many, many years and I was excited about being home for it. But these guys are jammed up down there. I'm going to do the right thing and go and I thought, yeah, you know they're going to be, they're going to be pumped, pumped to see me. I'm, you know, sacrificing something here. I'm going to get to go help these guys finish out the trip. They were below all the major whitewater at that point, so it was just going to be easy street for a couple of days on the on kind of a milder section of hell's canyon, and when I caught up with them they were floating, they were on the river.
Speaker 1:They'd figured it out, they didn't need me at all oh, really, yeah, they didn't need me even a little bit. So I went from like thinking that I was doing a good thing and like being the hero to like. Oh, I could have been at home like eating hamburgers. What?
Speaker 2:do they like roll a vote and put some people on the gear vote or what? I think that they just had.
Speaker 1:they had enough folks like they'd figured it out, okay, and I was a little bit butthurt about it, honestly. And Jordan Manley, when we got to camp that night, he's like, hey, man, like what's the deal? And I sort of explained my, my perspective to him and he said, you know, we we figured out how to, how to do this without you, but we also wanted you here because everybody was a little bit stressed out because the trip leader just gotten hurt. We went through all this big whitewater and we, we just like you and we wanted you to be here and thought that you'd want to be here too.
Speaker 1:And, uh, that totally dissolved, like any feelings that I'd had about about myself and uh, it made me realize how important that guide community is, especially on those expedition trips, and and how much everybody's there to support each other. Yeah, and from that point forward, I just had a wonderful time and and I so appreciated Jordan for you know, having that really honest conversation with me and in a way that was was uh, just acceptable and that I could, that I could take it in and feel it. Jordan's awesome about that stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's good, yeah, but uh, no, that was a, that was a super wild whitewater year. I think every, every guide ended up flipping that year um, except for me and paul, maybe. Wow, yeah, yeah, brutal, brutal whitewater year. What was that? 2016, 2017?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right in there.
Speaker 1:And then I got motorized after that and said I'm done with the rubber, I'm going to go upstream in a jet boat.
Speaker 2:You know there's always been that. You know the jet boat versus rafting. You know debacle, which you know. We're really all partners in keeping the river system open and good. But I love that you get in a bind on a raft and a jet boat comes and helps you. You know we had Enterprise Senior Trip two years ago. Yeah, we are. We do the lower section down to Pittsburgh and then jet back up and we had to take. We had to go through the rapids twice because there's only one jet boat operator that could go through the big stuff. We're sitting there waiting for some boats come through Wild Sheep. One of them flips over the first one, the second one flips over and there's three more boats in this party. These are rafts, these are rafts and they just eddy out. You know they don't even follow their crew. And uh, this jet boat operated from the idaho side.
Speaker 2:He just is like hey man um, you know, load those people up on my tail, got the people rath's completely flipped over and he just pushes it with the front of his jet boat to get it over, you know, to the bank. Yeah, get those two people off, go and do the same thing with the next one and, uh, it's just it, I'll tell you. I mean, you go through Wildship upside down, you know, granted, it's not that far away, yeah, and these guys were not going to flip those boats over, so it's pretty cool for everybody to work together down there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hells is interesting and I think this year in Hells is going to be a brand new type of year and I'll explain why. But up until this point there's no road access, there are only a handful of airstrips. There's only a handful of places that you can even get a helicopter in, no cell service. Satellite phones are sketchy at best. Inreaches take forever and they're a relatively new technology. Not forever, but you might be 15 minutes between communication, because it's the steepest and deepest canyon in North America, so it's hard to get a satellite signal out.
Speaker 1:Have understood for as long as people have been in that canyon that if anybody has a problem you have an obligation to help them in any way that you can, and I've helped people down there, I've gotten help down there, and there's never an expectation of like oh now you owe me something or whatever. It's just, you just do it. There's a huge tide because of the dam right and you never really know how much water they're going to be letting out or holding back. And just a couple of years ago I tied my boat up. I'd gone and checked it three or four times throughout the night, which is my normal procedure when I'm down there. When I'm down there because I'm terrified of you.
Speaker 2:Know, I don't know some kind of creature chewing through my rope and my boat floating away.
Speaker 1:You know I've usually got it tied up at a couple of points and I'm also checking to make sure that it's still in the water and that they haven't shut the dam off too much. Well, between four o'clock and six o'clock in the morning they shut it down and when I woke up the boat was completely dry. So I've got 23 feet of jet boats sitting on the rocks right.
Speaker 1:It's like, oh boy, this is, this is not great, but they're going to let water out again. They always do. Well, the whole day goes by they don't let water out. Whole night goes by, they don't let water out. The next morning boat's still dry, they're not letting water out. I was like huh, and I've got a couple buddies with me there, like we've got a schedule.
Speaker 1:We you know, you know we've got to get out at some point and, uh, the number of boats that stopped to see if we're okay, if they needed to pull us off the rocks or whatever, was every single boat. Yeah, every single boat that came up or down the river, came over and was like you guys good and like, yeah, we're good. And on the last day the water came up a little bit and we were able to get it shoved off and everything was dandy. Yeah, I love that. The reason I think it's going to be different this year is because now we have satellite text on iPhones. Yep, you can text pictures through satellite on iPhone. Now we have mobile Starlink, which is increasingly common.
Speaker 2:So for the first year ever, people are going to be able to go to Hell's Canyon and stream Netflix. I've never even thought of it that way.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm thinking of rescue help communication, but uh, yeah, no kidding um, yeah one of these, one of these last vestiges of of freedom from connectivity in north america is no longer that way. Yeah, it's interesting. That is interesting. So the good old days just became that, you know? Yes, it's changing right now, like this is the year that it's happening.
Speaker 2:Which you know it's bound to happen, I guess. Um, I feel thankful that we were able to see the other side. You know, before it all happened, I, in the winter of 1996, I had the opportunity to go to the idaho side of the snake river, in get a creek out of, like Joseph Plains White Bird area and winter some cows down there. Oh, you did. And best winter of my life, you know, it was so exciting.
Speaker 2:You know, I lived down on about a mile off the Snake, up Getty Creek, right across from Beamers' Lodge, right across from, uh, beemers' Lodge, yeah, and um so this farmer, he had, you know, his summer place up top and his canyon place in the bottom, and you know they're about three miles apart, but you know the road takes, you know, an hour and 15 minutes to get up out of it's, it's brutal.
Speaker 2:Um so in one of his pastures he built these big rock jacks and with a big pole on top, you know, just super tall one, and he ran him a phone line down to the canyon and um so, every once in a while the cows would, you know, rubber rock jack down and you'd have to go, you know, fix it.
Speaker 2:But I had a phone down there. I got my mail by the jet boat once a week and I could call Beamers and say, hey, I need a case of beer and some dog food, and they would throw it on, deliver it. And I'd write them a check at the thing so they would front the money. Throw it on, deliver it. I'd write them a check at the thing so they would front the money. And you know it's like wow. You know, I got to experience a thing in time that you know maybe it'll still exist forever. You know the mail service down there, but having them go shopping for you too and bringing you what you needed, yeah, it was such a cool experience, and mail is still delivered by jet boat down there.
Speaker 1:US mail Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all the way to Sheep Creek, right? I believe so, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of the Idaho side got to remain private land. They didn't take that side with eminent domain, but Oregon caved man.
Speaker 2:They caved all the way to the state line. Yeah, it's really sad knowing the families affected by that. You know, like before I actually knew these families, I'm like, oh yeah, well, it should be, you know, a preserved area. It's really cool and everybody should get to experience it. And when you think about how they just took it, yeah. And they had no choice and just changed lifestyles. And I understand now, especially being down there, and I understand how those families feel a little bit.
Speaker 1:You know a lot about rangeland and range science. What do you think the impact has been and what do you see it going forward for the removal of livestock from the canyon and now a significant reduction of the wild ungulate populations? I just was doing some research on this yesterday. So the management objective for elk in in the Snake River unit is 4,000. We're we're under 2,000 now and calf recruitment has been in the single digits. The bighorns are getting sick like um. You know the. The wildlife's not not doing great down there. What, what do you see like how? How has it changed since livestock was was removed from the canyon and and how's that going to affect the canyon moving?
Speaker 2:forward. I think the increase for fire danger with not utilizing those canyons is huge. We're devastated by fire every year now, on one side of the county or the other we're hit by it, and I mean that fire is the thing that's really changing the landscape. I just think that there's better ways. I think there are responsible people that can utilize public ground really well and I think, you know, with um, the new technologies that you know that these ranchers are experimenting with are really cool. I mean being able to, uh, you know, uh, put collars on cattle and turn them out, and draw your lines from a computer of where they can and can't go.
Speaker 2:I mean and electric fencing basically uh, electric fencing, but the satellite, there it's, but your cows are wearing it, yeah, so you're not, you know, building electric fence anymore, they're just setting up these parameters with these towers that reflect. You know, know that it's the dog technology right, adapted to livestock, and I think it's great. I think it shows a lot of promise for being able to, you know, use ground appropriately and you can show on satellite mapping on where these animals are and aren't and you can prove that it was, you know, the elk in the riparian zone versus your cattle. I mean, it's, it's a different tool now that we we've never had and uh, yeah, it's pretty interesting it. I think that with some of this, there might be more opportunities in the future to uh, some of this, there might be more opportunities in the future to uh, yeah, to do it.
Speaker 1:I mean probably not in this county, but it'll take a little while. Yep, it'll take a little while, but as a national recreation area it is designated multi-use and there's no reason why they can't be allowing grazing on those allotments. Yeah, but no matter what the Forest Service does, they get sued and it makes it hard.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's why you know, out in Troy, in the North End, you know we're on the Umatilla and so they. I feel like they have better practices out there and are a little more open just because they're out of the threat of of being sued for anything they do. Yeah, you know, I mean, I, uh, I'm on the natural resource conservation council and I can see how the forest service just gets hamstrung into doing nothing. Yeah, you know, um they, they can't really win either way. Yeah, um, yeah, um they, they can't really win either way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, yeah, it's tough, it is a tough situation, it's a super tough situation and a lot of people want to throw stones, but it it kind of is like that If they do something in any one direction, they're probably going to get sued. If they do nothing nothing eventually they get sued for not doing anything yeah, and you know you, just you whoop on somebody like that and the risk aversion that comes up, uh, just really prevents, prevents progress. It's tough, tough, tough. So what is what does nrac do?
Speaker 2:uh, natural resource conservation council um your dad obviously served. Uh, they have some players from the nature conservancy odf um oregon department forestry oregon department of forestry.
Speaker 2:Um will our resources? Uh, you know, every, every player in the natural resource game has a seat at the table. Basically, there's a few people like myself that are just citizens and businesses that are there, but it's, you know, a monthly check in of what everybody's doing. And I think the most important thing about it is you know a monthly check-in of what everybody's doing. And I think the most important thing about it is all of these people sitting around the table kind of sharing their plan, which I feel for years had been a shortfall in all these agencies working together in with the community and I don't know. I just think that there's. I think it's just good having a policy. I mean, I watch your dad, you know, just straight call the Forest Service guy out Like I want to know about this, and you know. And then they, you know, give what they know. But sometimes you have to be asked and this is a forum to be able to try to get the information out to the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a difficult balance between committee collaboration, stakeholders and then people who are acting in an authoritarian capacity without any type of collaboration or oversight. Have you ever heard that a camel is a horse by committee? Have you ever heard that? No, but I love it. Yeah, so like that's how the camel got built. You just had too many people like trying to, you know, add their pieces to it and then you get this conglomeration of things that looks like it's made out of spare parts. Yeah, yeah, adapted. Yeah Well, yeah, somewhat.
Speaker 1:I just read that they're looking at these major major solar projects in the Sahara. Speaking of camels, yeah, one of the things that I find interesting about tinkering with that zone and a lot of people don't know this, this is a fun fact is the origin of every single hurricane comes from one single point in Africa, and it is dust from the Sahara that hits the Atlantic Ocean at Timbuktu. And if you look at maps of hurricanes, every single one of them comes from this one specific point in Africa, from that dust, which is what the water is able to form around and, you know, become a cloud and then travels across the Atlantic, goes up into, you know, the Gulf of America or wherever and decides you know which piece of land it's going to stomp on piece of land it's gonna stomp on.
Speaker 1:But I I have concerns about tinkering with a place like that, that is, is the generator of all these monster hurricanes. Yeah, yeah, uh. Have you ever read the book skeletons of the sahara? No, oh, that's a. That's a great one. It's a lot about camels, but it's about some sailors who get shipwrecked there and get captured and taken as slaves and they have to survive on amounts of fluid that you would think would kill absolutely anybody, and a lot of what they were allowed to drink as slaves was camel urine. Um, wow, really, yeah, and uh, it, it. It is one of the the most incredible stories of survival I've ever heard. There's been several, several books written about it, but I think skeletons of the Sahara is is one of the best, and it's a good one on audible too. If you're that kind of guy, which I am yeah, do you read much?
Speaker 2:Nope, I'm a bit dyslexic. I mean, I can read, I can make it out, but, man, I cannot sit and finish a book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you like to listen to them?
Speaker 2:I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I prefer that much, but I just, you know I don't find the time to do it. I would do it. I used to road trip back and forth to Portland a lot. I would listen to books, but you know I don't do it a lot.
Speaker 1:I vaguely remember you at one point spending almost all of your money on a fly rod. Yeah, tell me about that portion of your life that was my first.
Speaker 2:So I moved here in May of 96 to Troy and I had everything that I owned in a 1973 Volkswagen van, like faded Kermit, the Frog color, but it was a Westfalia, so it was the pop top, had the oven and all that. Bougie, yeah, bougie, yeah, bougie, till you roll into Troy in 1996. And they are like what, son, tell us about Troy a little bit. Oh, all right, yeah, so Troy in that day. It was kind of cool because the big, mega ranches they're not mega ranches, but the 10,000 acre ranches weren't all put together yet. There were families. You had 14 kids in the school at that point. There still is a school in Troy. There's now currently two and I believe it's one family, two students, yeah, so it's one fell swoop away from, you know, not having a school. Yeah, but yeah, there's 14 kids, there's quite a few people. The town is kind of hopping, you know. A lot of people are floating the Grand Ronde, a lot of people are pulling out at Troy, a lot of people are stopping and getting burgers and it was just kind of interesting. It was a lot more people around for the summertime.
Speaker 2:Mark Hemstreet, who owns the Shiloh Inns, at that point in time he had this family of workers, about 30 people, uh, called the amigos, and they would. They managed all of his timber on the ranch. They maintained all of his buildings. They came and took care of all the grounds in troy. And, uh, every saturday you know I know there's a lot of things about Markem Street people are not like stoked about but every Saturday night he would pay full bill for all these families to come down to Troy and eat what they want, drink what they want and go home. And he left the workers at the restaurant which I was working at, the restaurant, 20% tip Right and like these are big nights, these guys are drinking pitchers of beer and having tequila and there was music and it was kind of a fun scene the first summer there.
Speaker 2:And pretty soon the amigos disbanded. You know, he stopped hiring workers and he leased the place out and yeah, so trade has kind of changed. A lot of ranch consolidation. So where you had families on 160 or 240 acres, now one person would come in and they would buy it all and so the families are gone. You know, you still have all the old housing up there but nobody's living there. So you on grouse flat north of troy you had, you know, 25 houses up there that had no population. You just have a few ranchers hanging on up there and uh, you know, the consolidation of all these lands kind of kind of killed the, the community vibe for the area a little bit. Yeah, um and uh yeah, there's not a whole lot to do down there for for work. So I get it. The logging's dried up, the logging used to. There were mills in Troy, three on the north side, two on the other side. There were mills everywhere and there were population centers back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you moved there in 1996 in your van.
Speaker 2:Oh, in my van and I roll in in your van. Oh, in my van, I roll in. I have a Bucks bag pontoon, one man pontoon, but on the top of it too. And, lucky enough, this fellow that I had met, rick George, had a house down there. He had a house and a cabin, they had drug across the river from the mill site and he said, hey, if you, you know, got this place, if you can live behind it in your van for a while.
Speaker 2:And I'm, you know, 30 feet away from the Wenaha River. There's no other houses nearby or neighbors, and it was just, it was pretty epic, and I fished more that summer than you know I've ever fished in my life and it really cemented it that I want to be there and tell me about the fly rod. The fly rod, here we go. I'm working at the restaurant, I'm making tip money, I'm a server. All of a sudden I'm working at the restaurant, I'm making tip money, I'm a server, all of a sudden, and I have no Amazon or any of that back then. There's nowhere to spend it, there's no internet yet for us, bob Lamb's Joseph Fly Shop in Joseph, oregon. And yeah, I spent a thousand bucks on a Winston rod and an Abel reel Still have it all right. I mean, you know, at the time I'm just like wow, that's a lot of money. But you know, advertised out, you know it's a good investment, yeah, great rod, yeah, but honestly I fish a lot of cheap rods now, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I break so many and I, the cheap rods, have gotten so much better.
Speaker 2:They are so good.
Speaker 1:A cheap rod in the 90s was going to be some kind of fiberglass debacle that you know flexed all the way past the cork and they were so slow, that you could eat a sandwich while you're waiting on your back cast.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, they're. They weren't great. The cheap rods today are very high performance, but they're still nothing quite like a high-end rod either. For people who know if, if you fish very much, as soon as you pick one up you're like, oh my gosh, like it feels like a living thing that's connected to you, yeah, yeah, and whether that's, you know, sage or winston or yeah, whoever else. Uh, there's some really wonderful fly rods out there loop. You know. I've got some loop rods that I really love, but as far as just the feeling of of a great rod that you just, I don't know, there's some kind of electricity that happens as soon as it's in your hand and that fly line starts to load up.
Speaker 1:For me, there's still just nothing quite like a Winston. Yeah, yeah, they're pretty special.
Speaker 2:They really are. Yeah, that was my first Winston and my last actually. I've never, uh, yeah, haven't started having kids and just my priorities changed.
Speaker 1:That'll change the game a little bit. Yep, yeah. So at what point are you going to feel like you're an old timer?
Speaker 2:Well, I was thinking about that because in May I will have been here 29 years and they told me when I got to Willow County that you had to be here 30 years before you were local.
Speaker 1:Before you were local.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so I figure I'm getting my non-native local license next year. Nice Congratulations, yeah, which feels good. It's hard. It takes a lot to make that happen. Nice Congratulations, yeah, which feels good. It's hard, it's a. It takes a lot to make that happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I haven't spent 30 years here. I'm 38 years old. You know this has been my, my home, my whole life. But I've spent so much time living in other places, whether that was, you know, a foreign exchange or college, or the military, et cetera. You know I'm not over the 30-year mark yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you might be more local than me.
Speaker 1:I don't know about that.
Speaker 2:The roots run deep, you know. But no, I remember first seeing this area. I came and stayed with my dad in like sixth grade and he lived in La Grande and we went up to Wallowa Lake and there was go-karts and mini golf and this whole world I've never seen before and I was just like, oh, this place is cool, like I want to live here someday. This is great. Yeah, and you know, never was able to do it through the teenage years, but I knew I was coming back here Like there's just something very special.
Speaker 1:What's your 2025 meet rodeo plan? Oh God, All right. You thought you had it this year.
Speaker 2:I thought you had it it's oh, man, man, I can't believe you brought that up. Yeah, so the meat rodeo. This is our uh second or third year, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:something like that, yeah, so and yeah, uh, terminal gravity has lost twice the range rider. One side a won the first time, side side a won the first time range rider. So every time I go to the range rider, one side a won the first time, side side a won the first time range rider. So every time I go to the range rider I look at this buckle, you know, staring at me on the wall and I just I, you know, was trying to bring our a game and um, and then why?
Speaker 2:we dominated every, every piece of it, except for the burger cooking which we were last. I'm not even sure that it was. I think it was totally raw. And yeah, I think it's that classless thing of celebrating too early. Not that I was celebrating, but I had a right, I had a beer, feel good, like I think this, you know.
Speaker 1:one more step but uh, your son won the burger eating competition in the most masculine way possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he, uh, he's been practicing all year. Right, he's the ringer, like bring it on, what do you guys have? Yeah, no, his mother was disgusted, but yeah, the kid's a winner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you guys dominated trivia. You won the cocktail competition. Yeah, yeah, everybody was like already visually wearing that belt buckle in your minds, everybody was already visually wearing that belt.
Speaker 2:Buckle in your minds. It's what's so cool. And these newcomers, the Winding Waters crew, who I you know, hats off, love them all they showed up late.
Speaker 1:I tried to bring it up on a technicality.
Speaker 2:I'm like, hey, you were like 10 minutes late to even start the competition, but they did it. They had a great burger and mac and cheese and they were a fun new competitor to the Meat Rodeo. The thing that you guys have done with that is really cool. I love it. It's uniquely for me just seeing the other restaurants that are using the products and you know and really also, yeah, supporting those guys, because it's uh, being in direct sales and having people that support your product is huge man absolutely it's really big, rather than being out there trying to find new customers every week and trying to.
Speaker 2:You know, that's just not a sustainable method. Well, all these jobs are.
Speaker 1:they're impossible to do on your own, whether that is you know, creating beer in Northeast Oregon that you know is is unique, using only handful of ingredients and then trying to distribute that from a place that's difficult to distribute from, when you have competition from so many other places that have it logistically easier to raising cattle in a place with a brutal winter climate, lots of predators again, more, more logistics issues. We need each other to be successful and I think it's awesome and it's hard, but we're doing it. We're making it Skin of our teeth year to year.
Speaker 2:you know, right, yeah, and that's yeah. That's what it's about for us. Just hang on now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, you're you're here for the ride, and that that's really what february is all about. I want to ask you one other one other thing here do do the people of wallowa county have a responsibility to show up to places like Terminal, gravity Range Rider in the wintertime and help you guys stay alive during during tough times when we don't have, you know, oodles of tourists coming through.
Speaker 2:You know I can't. It's hard because financially there's a lot of people you just can't, and I mean me for one. I'm not. I'm not going out to dinner, you know, very often at all and uh, so, uh, you know the the financial struggle is real, so I don't. I think there's, um, if you can, it's great, because this is the months those businesses really need your. You know, in the summertime, when there's a lot of people around, um, it's great, but this is where we need our locals. Yeah, but it's also on these restaurants to do some cool things and get people out. You know, uh, we do trivia twice a month and it's our best night of the month every two weeks. It's really cool and it's fun, but you can't do that. Every night it's packed and Range Riders are doing some really cool things to get people out. Um, range riders doing some really cool things to get people out. Um, yeah, it's, you know it's on the restaurants a little bit to get, you know, make people want to come out this time of year.
Speaker 1:I think it's it. I, from my perspective, it is on the community too, and and this is our time to engage with the restaurants, because in the summertime it can be tough there there's lots and lots of tourists, there's lots and lots of tourists, there's lots, lots of people there it feels like like it's not really my home right now, like if I show up to terminal gravity in this in the summertime, july, like I, I don't really fit in here. Yeah, but if I go there in february, if I go there in march, I do, and you know I, I know everybody that works there, if I haven't been there in three years, the waitress is still going to know which glass is mine. That's in it, you know, in a cupboard behind the bar, and that's a pretty special thing. It's a pretty special thing.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty special thing, so I do think that it is a responsibility of the community to help keep these restaurants of locals get overlooked and it gets you know, does a local really want to go to a chaos of you know, 25 kids in the Creek?
Speaker 1:And uh, I love watching kids fall in that Creek One of my favorite things. Just watch them take absolute diggers in that Creek and start crying. Love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've. I've often thought about uh just, you know, when you sit down, we're no longer liable for anything. Your kid happens to your kid. No, but it's a wonderful setting, you know, it's a beautiful setting in the summertime for families. But yeah, we get busy and then we get slow. You know it's hard to constantly working on different things, to try to improve on those things. But you know, and then in the wintertime it's hard to keep two or three people on full time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know so.
Speaker 2:Okay, if somebody is going to come down to Terminal Gravity and they're going to order one beer and one food item that will make a lasting impression today. What's it going to be Got to go with the Six Ranch Burger? Well, hang on, I mean you got to go with the Six Ranch Burger, but we also offer bison from Stangles. Yeah, which is a. Those are our two protein options for red meat. Both good choices, both good choices and amazing, like every time you know. So I classic six-inch burger with, you know, pepper jack. I will say our sides have always been a little rough. You can have tortilla chips with salsa or kettle chips I generally do the kettle chips and beer.
Speaker 2:If you've never tried our beer, I think the ESG across the line is our easiest, most likable beer in the county. Not popular in Portland at all. Like we sell very little ESG in Portland but we sell twice as much ESG than any other beer we have on tap. Interesting, so it is very much the locals' beer. What's Portland's deal? Just not into Goldens, you know Love their IPAs and Golden's just a. I mean, think of another Golden that is big. There's just not a sector that's big, but it's a good beer. It has rye in it, which is a little different, but I enjoy it. I think it's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to be pretty close to my go-to down there as well, esg, yeah. Yeah, I'm also going to get steak bites. The steak bites are good Steak bites. They hit hard. Um, and I'm going blue cheese on the burger.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, it's nice A lot of people do. Yeah, my son loves it, I just, I'm a can't do it.
Speaker 1:It's a divisive cheese.
Speaker 2:It is yeah, and I love all other cheeses but blue cheese in that manner, you know because that, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1:But uh, yeah, that's gonna be my moves, because I think it the our beef is already dry aged to an extent, um, and it helps bring that out a little bit, so I like that yeah, yeah that's my move, all right?
Speaker 2:well, thanks, dave yeah, thanks for having me thanks, thanks for coming up. Look forward to uh, look forward to meet rodeo this year, seeing what team tg brings I'm already working out, leave me leaving it up working on my mental game, uh, so, uh, yeah, we uh, beware, there's a lot of bitterness. Here could be your year. Yes, it's on. Yeah, 2025 is my year. By the way, yeah calling it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah, the funniest thing, man, because the whiting waters crew, they're, they're the, they're the whitewater rafting guides and, um, you know, they signed up the day before. They showed up late and they were close on every category and then they won the burger competition, ended up winning the whole thing and side a. You know, those guys take this thing very, very seriously, especially the burger portion, and, uh, afterwards they were a little bit brokenhearted, you know, and they went and jumped in the river and came back and one of these guys, uh, comes over and he's got like a sleeveless t-shirt from some metal band and, you know, long, dark hair I believe I was there, yeah, yeah and he lights up a cigarette and he goes.
Speaker 2:Man, those freaking river hippies came out of nowhere can't trust him, man can't trust him love it thanks again, jax bye everybody.
Speaker 1:Thank you to everyone who has taken the time out of their busy lives to write a review for the show and share it with their friends. I'm extremely proud of how intelligent, engaged and adventurous this audience is. Original music for the six ranch podcast is written and performed by justin hay. Art for the six ranch podcast was created by john chatelain and digitized by cilia harlander. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.