Tim Mathis's Blog, page 10
June 1, 2019
Scott McGuire's Tribute to his father
In Memory of Michael McGuire There are facts about Michael McGuire that mark the passage of his time on this earth. He was born in Portland, OR on April 24th, 1946. He was a veteran of the Vietnam War, married, had two children, divorced and remarried. He was in finance and banking by trade, and served on housing authorities as part of his community engagement. He was a 30 year resident of Santa Barbara.
Beyond fact and figures was the real Mikey. He thought deeply (and mostly privately) on a vast array of subject matters. From afar he might seem stoic and studious, and yet when he’d engage in a topic with others he’d reveal a connected, thoughtful man. He’d smile easily at his own stories and enjoyed a diverse spectrum of friends that helped him expand how he saw the world. He believed in others. He’d know your name, look you in the eye when he shook your hand or gave you a bear hug. He never stammered, except when his heart would fill with emotion and his eyes would reveal his vulnerabilities.
He was the kind of man, father, husband, mentor that was resilient beyond belief, but not hard or calloused. He’d cuddle his cat with affection, give you the shirt of his back and perhaps hold you somewhat close to the same elevated standards he held for himself. He saw patterns in numbers and could site a lot and draw a home in his mind, then convert that vision to reality in his spare time. He loved to cast a fly.
There are so many stories, the ones we know intimately, the ones we half recall and the ones we’ve yet to hear. To that end, there will be a celebration of his life on January 19th, 2019, 1pm at the Santa Barbara Mission, Junipero Serra Hall. Brings your Mikey stories, see old friends and new. And most importantly, share in the love that he felt for so many and that so many felt for him. Because the most important part of his tale is that he was loved deeply. And he will be missed tremendously.
He is survived by the mother of his children, Marcia McGuire, daughter Kelli McGuire, son Scott McGuire, his six grandchildren and his beloved wife, Donna Christine McGuire.
A eulogy for my father by Scott McGuire I was thinking last night about things that reminded me of my father. Not the general things, like sudoko books and how we shared the love of the numbers game. Or math problems in your head, as we would do on road trips (and now I see my son doing the same). But very specific, only tied to him items. For example, he embraced strangers, engaged everyone regardless of social status and was always willing to put ”another cup of water” in the soup when opening his door to others. There was always room at the table.
On Helping Others
I doubt I will ever look at graph paper and not think about my dad and house design. He did this his entire life, for places he would build, dream of or simply see if they were possible on paper as they were in his head. One of my most profound memories here was when I was perhaps 6 or 7 and had been drawing a van to live in well before #vanlife was a thing. He taught about scale and space and what was enough.He taught us that there is a reality side of your dreams and to get there takes work, process and planning. Do the work, achieve your dreams
One day at his table, I remember watching him iterate over and over on a relatively simple design. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was trying to design the most efficient house from construction standpoint that he could come up with and still have it feel special and like a loving home. He had a passion for community housing and it was something that would be part of his life for decades.
He taught us to take your passions and use them to help others.
On Humility
I was I barely of remembering age, at the house he grew up in in Oregon. We were there to help my grandparents move and he and my grandfather took me for a walk along the “crick” as grandpa would call it, crossing a stream on a driftwood branch, my dad lot his balance and fell in. A few choice words later, he, grandpa and I had a good laugh. It stuck with me. And apparently him as well. Several decades later, we were driving to Washington to see my grandfather. We’d stopped for mass at Jesuit High School whet he attended in his you (another story there) and then went for hike in the old neighborhood. We found that same creek, talked about that old fall and both jumped in to the creek for no apparent reason. Splash!
He remembered details, looked you in the eye, knew your name, knew the value of memories and stories. He could be playful, but you had to be patient. It would be on his time.
On Teaching Others
Back to Jesuit High. We’d been telling jokes on that road trip, most not to be repeated here. But one, about an old women praying for salvation from a flood had us giggling. Imagine our surprise when at the service, the father starts telling the same joke, as a metaphor for faith and seeing it everywhere around you. We got a lot of sideways glances laughing as we were in the back of the church. That was until the punch line came from the pulpit. Then everyone understood we knew the joke.
Not everyone knows what you know, and understanding their point of discovery from your own would be a model he would use to teach others in his life. He loved to mentor and this role was perhaps his proudest accomplishment.
On Being Observant
We were always around boats. But it was on sailboats that I learned something truly special about my father. In the dead of night, the twang of the rigging would change. A tone, a certain way they would strike and he’d bolt from his bunk. It wasn’t just that the wind had shifted, but that he could be asleep and still observe his world. He was always taking in and processing and using that information to better himself or protect those he cared about.
This wasn’t something that came and went. He was ever present in his diligence, his studiousness, his protection of those he loved.
On Seeking Knowledge
So many memories involve construction sites. I remember our house in Parker, CO and working on the basement. We’d been hanging drywall and the cabinets in the shop. I was amazed that he knew how to do all theses things that were not part of his trade and I asked how he learned. He told be he’d started by being curious, then by trying, failing, improving, asking others, failing and trying again until it became reliable knowledge.
He showed us the value of hard work, or learning and being imminently curious about the world.
Finally, Forgiveness
We didn’t speak for a year. There had been a fight, choice words, a disconnect. I’d later learn that he’d held his diagnosis from my sister and I for several months, knowing that our mother was in the midst of chemo and not wanting to overwhelm us. When I’d see him again for the first time after the diagnosis and we’d started talking, it was his last birthday. We’d gone for a walk along the river near the house in Idaho. We’d fallen back in to our patten of banter when there was an obvious and palpable break. I tried to bring up the past year, gutted that I’d lost the time, time I now saw was more finite than imagined. He wouldn’t let me go there. He interrupted, hugged me and said “we are here, right now, let’s enjoy this”He showed us how to put aside grievances, accept or offer an apology in a meaningful way, and move on. That there is no time like now to let go.
He used to say “Perfection is adequate” and as a child, I thought this some unachievable goal. But I learned as I grew, and knew him in a different way, that this was how he saw life. To be complete, to be perfect, was adequate. The true magic was in the journey there, to that adequate destination.
We each have those moments, those reminders of his life and ours. These are the reminders of shared life and love and friendship.
We were fortunate to be part of his journey and he along for ours. And in the pain of saying goodbye, let’s remember gratitude for what we had and the joy, learnings and love he brought to us.
Beyond fact and figures was the real Mikey. He thought deeply (and mostly privately) on a vast array of subject matters. From afar he might seem stoic and studious, and yet when he’d engage in a topic with others he’d reveal a connected, thoughtful man. He’d smile easily at his own stories and enjoyed a diverse spectrum of friends that helped him expand how he saw the world. He believed in others. He’d know your name, look you in the eye when he shook your hand or gave you a bear hug. He never stammered, except when his heart would fill with emotion and his eyes would reveal his vulnerabilities.
He was the kind of man, father, husband, mentor that was resilient beyond belief, but not hard or calloused. He’d cuddle his cat with affection, give you the shirt of his back and perhaps hold you somewhat close to the same elevated standards he held for himself. He saw patterns in numbers and could site a lot and draw a home in his mind, then convert that vision to reality in his spare time. He loved to cast a fly.
There are so many stories, the ones we know intimately, the ones we half recall and the ones we’ve yet to hear. To that end, there will be a celebration of his life on January 19th, 2019, 1pm at the Santa Barbara Mission, Junipero Serra Hall. Brings your Mikey stories, see old friends and new. And most importantly, share in the love that he felt for so many and that so many felt for him. Because the most important part of his tale is that he was loved deeply. And he will be missed tremendously.
He is survived by the mother of his children, Marcia McGuire, daughter Kelli McGuire, son Scott McGuire, his six grandchildren and his beloved wife, Donna Christine McGuire.
A eulogy for my father by Scott McGuire I was thinking last night about things that reminded me of my father. Not the general things, like sudoko books and how we shared the love of the numbers game. Or math problems in your head, as we would do on road trips (and now I see my son doing the same). But very specific, only tied to him items. For example, he embraced strangers, engaged everyone regardless of social status and was always willing to put ”another cup of water” in the soup when opening his door to others. There was always room at the table.
On Helping Others
I doubt I will ever look at graph paper and not think about my dad and house design. He did this his entire life, for places he would build, dream of or simply see if they were possible on paper as they were in his head. One of my most profound memories here was when I was perhaps 6 or 7 and had been drawing a van to live in well before #vanlife was a thing. He taught about scale and space and what was enough.He taught us that there is a reality side of your dreams and to get there takes work, process and planning. Do the work, achieve your dreams
One day at his table, I remember watching him iterate over and over on a relatively simple design. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was trying to design the most efficient house from construction standpoint that he could come up with and still have it feel special and like a loving home. He had a passion for community housing and it was something that would be part of his life for decades.
He taught us to take your passions and use them to help others.
On Humility
I was I barely of remembering age, at the house he grew up in in Oregon. We were there to help my grandparents move and he and my grandfather took me for a walk along the “crick” as grandpa would call it, crossing a stream on a driftwood branch, my dad lot his balance and fell in. A few choice words later, he, grandpa and I had a good laugh. It stuck with me. And apparently him as well. Several decades later, we were driving to Washington to see my grandfather. We’d stopped for mass at Jesuit High School whet he attended in his you (another story there) and then went for hike in the old neighborhood. We found that same creek, talked about that old fall and both jumped in to the creek for no apparent reason. Splash!
He remembered details, looked you in the eye, knew your name, knew the value of memories and stories. He could be playful, but you had to be patient. It would be on his time.
On Teaching Others
Back to Jesuit High. We’d been telling jokes on that road trip, most not to be repeated here. But one, about an old women praying for salvation from a flood had us giggling. Imagine our surprise when at the service, the father starts telling the same joke, as a metaphor for faith and seeing it everywhere around you. We got a lot of sideways glances laughing as we were in the back of the church. That was until the punch line came from the pulpit. Then everyone understood we knew the joke.
Not everyone knows what you know, and understanding their point of discovery from your own would be a model he would use to teach others in his life. He loved to mentor and this role was perhaps his proudest accomplishment.
On Being Observant
We were always around boats. But it was on sailboats that I learned something truly special about my father. In the dead of night, the twang of the rigging would change. A tone, a certain way they would strike and he’d bolt from his bunk. It wasn’t just that the wind had shifted, but that he could be asleep and still observe his world. He was always taking in and processing and using that information to better himself or protect those he cared about.
This wasn’t something that came and went. He was ever present in his diligence, his studiousness, his protection of those he loved.
On Seeking Knowledge
So many memories involve construction sites. I remember our house in Parker, CO and working on the basement. We’d been hanging drywall and the cabinets in the shop. I was amazed that he knew how to do all theses things that were not part of his trade and I asked how he learned. He told be he’d started by being curious, then by trying, failing, improving, asking others, failing and trying again until it became reliable knowledge.
He showed us the value of hard work, or learning and being imminently curious about the world.
Finally, Forgiveness
We didn’t speak for a year. There had been a fight, choice words, a disconnect. I’d later learn that he’d held his diagnosis from my sister and I for several months, knowing that our mother was in the midst of chemo and not wanting to overwhelm us. When I’d see him again for the first time after the diagnosis and we’d started talking, it was his last birthday. We’d gone for a walk along the river near the house in Idaho. We’d fallen back in to our patten of banter when there was an obvious and palpable break. I tried to bring up the past year, gutted that I’d lost the time, time I now saw was more finite than imagined. He wouldn’t let me go there. He interrupted, hugged me and said “we are here, right now, let’s enjoy this”He showed us how to put aside grievances, accept or offer an apology in a meaningful way, and move on. That there is no time like now to let go.
He used to say “Perfection is adequate” and as a child, I thought this some unachievable goal. But I learned as I grew, and knew him in a different way, that this was how he saw life. To be complete, to be perfect, was adequate. The true magic was in the journey there, to that adequate destination.
We each have those moments, those reminders of his life and ours. These are the reminders of shared life and love and friendship.
We were fortunate to be part of his journey and he along for ours. And in the pain of saying goodbye, let’s remember gratitude for what we had and the joy, learnings and love he brought to us.
May 1, 2019
How to Shit in the Woods
In Episode 103 of the Boldly Went Podcast, "You Can Do(o) Better," we featured the humiliating and hilarious story by Dan Clem who learned the hard way about how to poop in the woods.
Dan's story was an honest, and unexpected, depiction of the trials that shitting outside can bring. After electing to poop under a rock, he came into contact with the famous, Bogachiel Beth. It only seems right to pay tribute to Bogachiel Beth, the longest serving National Park Service Volunteer Ranger (30+ years). Then, in our effort to make a wrong a right, we do our best to help you avoid unwelcome poo angels in the forest by teaching you proper technique for shitting in the woods.Beth "Bogaciel Beth" RossowBeth is one of the world's best dirtbags... and get this... she's from Tacoma, the same gritty home of Boldly Went!
Beth's everything we aspire to be! Beth lived in a self-constructed treehouse made of styrofoam and managed to survive on only $2,000 per year while saving the rest of her income each year to fund her international trips!
Beth Rossow, or Bogachiel Beth, has become an almost legendary figure in the Bogachiel Valley where she has been living for 3 decades. She's said to be the longest serving National Park Service Volunteer Ranger (didn't fact check that because we're a storytelling platform, not a news source, but seems possible enough).
Beth saw the valley as an area that got little attention especially in comparison with the Olympic Peninsula’s other more famed attractions, so 30 years ago she reached out to the National Park Service to offer to maintain the valley. Beth defined the conditions for volunteering which were that she wouldn't be required to wear a park service uniform, and that she would be allowed to stay in the back country indefinitely. Since then, Beth has resided in the Bogachiel Valley for 100 consecutive days every year for 30 years!
Original Note from Bogaciel Beth.The big doody no-noIn Episode 103, Dan described the emotions he had after received this reprimanding note from Bogaciel Beth after an admittedly poor decision about his wilderness waste disposal.
It remains a mystery about how Beth found the evidence. Was she watching? We don't know. Or was it actually possible that she noticed this trail disturbance? This option's more likely since Beth is intimately famililar with this trail that she has spent over 2500 days in the Bogachiel and hiked over 9000 miles on this 25 mile trail.
Here's a list of supplies to get you started shitting in the woods:A sealable plastic bag for packing out your used toilet paper. A camp trowel to dig with. Highly recommended. This is my favorite.Some high-elevation or sensitive areas require people to pack out solid human waste. In that case don’t forget human waste disposal bags. There are a few different kinds: some are simple plastic bags known as “blue bags,” others are sealable, double-layer bags containing gel for absorption. These bags are supposed to be leakproof, but, I think it’s very wise to place them in another plastic bag to be safe. Personal preference.
The best ultralight titanium trowelDoing the doodyWhen nature calls, carry your supplies 200 feet, that’s 70 steps, away from a trail, campsite or water source.Choose underbrush for privacy if you like.Before you leave the trail, pay special attention to your surroundings to make sure you can find your way back to your camp or trail. Seriously, this has happened to me and many others who I have known who have gotten turned around in the middle of the woods after a number 2 and couldn’t then tell which way was the correct way to get back on course.If possible, find loose, rich soil and a sunny site. These conditions help decompose waste more quickly. Use a trowel, stick, rock or boot heel to make a hole about 4 inches wide and 6 to 8 inches deep.
6- 8 inches is way deeper than you think!
I carry a 6-8 inch long trowel (pictured just above), it’s titanium, super light, and honestly one of my favorite pieces of equipment. I’ve heard many people’s stories who have used a stick or boot heel, then switched to a trowel that they then realized they were never getting deep enough.
Consider a trowel.
Use as little toilet paper as possible. To reduce your use of TP, you can:Wipe off with natural objects such as large leaves (make sure they’re not poisonous), smooth stones and even snowballs.Create a backcountry bidet by using a tiny refillable, spray bottle. A popular choice is to use one of those drink flavoring drop bottles, for example Mio brand, which is pictured just below. Find these in the instant coffee aisle of your grocery usuallyNot an ad
This looks like an ad, but it isn't, it's an example of a bottle that you can fill with water then spray your butt off with. Boldly Went strives to be 100% listener supported, and we hope you'll be a supporter and join us on Patreon. Click on this butt sprayer to learn more....promise, it will take you to our Patreon Page!If you’re not carrying out your TP, you have one other option - grab a stick, and mix your TP into the poo well. You may need to spray with some water to help mix.
Do not just lay that TP on top for it to poke out of the ground in an ugly little TP bloom later. Don’t do it!
After mixing, or packing it out, then cover the waste with the original dirt from the hole you dug, fill the hole and make it into a mound.Place a rock or branch over the space to discourage animals and critters from digging there. You can also place an upright stick in it to discourage the next humans in need of a hole, but I don’t recommend that because it rubs against leave no trace principles.Lastly, and very important, apply some sanitizer in the palms of your hands. Do me a favor and soak your nasty, smelly, disgusting, germ-carrying little fingertips into it first before spreading it around on the rest of your hands. What about pee?If you’re just peeing, you don’t need to dig a hole, but if you are using toilet paper and deciding not to carry it out, you absolutely better dig a hole and bury that stuff deep so it doesn’t create nasty little TP blooms! Seriously, no one wants to see that. Our friends over at Wander Woman Gear have snapped these disgusting photos to prove that your nasty TP doesn't just disintegrate like you might think. Gross! Don't be that person!
Nasty TP Blooms off trail. All toilet paper should be packed out, or at a minimum buried deep.Try a pee rag (good for use in the wild and at home too!)If you can’t bare the thought of the shake it off method, also known as the drip dry method, but let’s be honest, no one ever sits there long enough to dry… then get yourself a re-usable pee rag. There’s some really awesome ones and the one I use every single day and love for it's soft inner and waterproof external shell is from Wander Woman Gear that's owned by Nurse Betty, a hard core, triple-crown thru-hiker who really knows what's up.Go out and try it!Now you’re ready to continue on your way! When you do, think of us, Bogaciel Beth, and, of course, Dan Clem!
When Dan heard his story was coming out in the podcast, he replied, "Woot woot! I just pooped myself with joy... and cleaned it up!"
Special thanks to Michaela Elias who co-wrote this piece.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to listen to Episode 103. And for more tips on how to be a responsible dirtbag, check out our book, "The Dirtbag's Guide to Life: Eternal Truth for Hiker Trash, Ski Bums, and Vagabonds."
Before you go, sign up for our newsletter and at least click this link to visit our Patreon Page to see what it's all about. We are able to bring you stories like this and weekly podcasts because of listener's like you who support us on Patreon. Be a part! #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;} /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */Never Miss an Episode or Event: Get Our Newsletter
Dan's story was an honest, and unexpected, depiction of the trials that shitting outside can bring. After electing to poop under a rock, he came into contact with the famous, Bogachiel Beth. It only seems right to pay tribute to Bogachiel Beth, the longest serving National Park Service Volunteer Ranger (30+ years). Then, in our effort to make a wrong a right, we do our best to help you avoid unwelcome poo angels in the forest by teaching you proper technique for shitting in the woods.Beth "Bogaciel Beth" RossowBeth is one of the world's best dirtbags... and get this... she's from Tacoma, the same gritty home of Boldly Went!
Beth's everything we aspire to be! Beth lived in a self-constructed treehouse made of styrofoam and managed to survive on only $2,000 per year while saving the rest of her income each year to fund her international trips!
Beth Rossow, or Bogachiel Beth, has become an almost legendary figure in the Bogachiel Valley where she has been living for 3 decades. She's said to be the longest serving National Park Service Volunteer Ranger (didn't fact check that because we're a storytelling platform, not a news source, but seems possible enough).
Beth saw the valley as an area that got little attention especially in comparison with the Olympic Peninsula’s other more famed attractions, so 30 years ago she reached out to the National Park Service to offer to maintain the valley. Beth defined the conditions for volunteering which were that she wouldn't be required to wear a park service uniform, and that she would be allowed to stay in the back country indefinitely. Since then, Beth has resided in the Bogachiel Valley for 100 consecutive days every year for 30 years!
Original Note from Bogaciel Beth.The big doody no-noIn Episode 103, Dan described the emotions he had after received this reprimanding note from Bogaciel Beth after an admittedly poor decision about his wilderness waste disposal. It remains a mystery about how Beth found the evidence. Was she watching? We don't know. Or was it actually possible that she noticed this trail disturbance? This option's more likely since Beth is intimately famililar with this trail that she has spent over 2500 days in the Bogachiel and hiked over 9000 miles on this 25 mile trail.
We can’t prevent shitting, but we can do better when trying to be less shitty to the environment. ~Ep. 103, You Can Do(o) BetterHow to Shit In the Woods: An exhaustive explanationFor all you adventure buddies and dirtbags out there wondering about the correct way to poop in the woods, here are our practiced tips. First, make sure you know what the rules are in the area you will be hiking in and therefore what supplies you will need.
Here's a list of supplies to get you started shitting in the woods:A sealable plastic bag for packing out your used toilet paper. A camp trowel to dig with. Highly recommended. This is my favorite.Some high-elevation or sensitive areas require people to pack out solid human waste. In that case don’t forget human waste disposal bags. There are a few different kinds: some are simple plastic bags known as “blue bags,” others are sealable, double-layer bags containing gel for absorption. These bags are supposed to be leakproof, but, I think it’s very wise to place them in another plastic bag to be safe. Personal preference.
The best ultralight titanium trowelDoing the doodyWhen nature calls, carry your supplies 200 feet, that’s 70 steps, away from a trail, campsite or water source.Choose underbrush for privacy if you like.Before you leave the trail, pay special attention to your surroundings to make sure you can find your way back to your camp or trail. Seriously, this has happened to me and many others who I have known who have gotten turned around in the middle of the woods after a number 2 and couldn’t then tell which way was the correct way to get back on course.If possible, find loose, rich soil and a sunny site. These conditions help decompose waste more quickly. Use a trowel, stick, rock or boot heel to make a hole about 4 inches wide and 6 to 8 inches deep.
6- 8 inches is way deeper than you think!
I carry a 6-8 inch long trowel (pictured just above), it’s titanium, super light, and honestly one of my favorite pieces of equipment. I’ve heard many people’s stories who have used a stick or boot heel, then switched to a trowel that they then realized they were never getting deep enough.
Consider a trowel.
Use as little toilet paper as possible. To reduce your use of TP, you can:Wipe off with natural objects such as large leaves (make sure they’re not poisonous), smooth stones and even snowballs.Create a backcountry bidet by using a tiny refillable, spray bottle. A popular choice is to use one of those drink flavoring drop bottles, for example Mio brand, which is pictured just below. Find these in the instant coffee aisle of your grocery usuallyNot an ad
This looks like an ad, but it isn't, it's an example of a bottle that you can fill with water then spray your butt off with. Boldly Went strives to be 100% listener supported, and we hope you'll be a supporter and join us on Patreon. Click on this butt sprayer to learn more....promise, it will take you to our Patreon Page!If you’re not carrying out your TP, you have one other option - grab a stick, and mix your TP into the poo well. You may need to spray with some water to help mix.Do not just lay that TP on top for it to poke out of the ground in an ugly little TP bloom later. Don’t do it!
After mixing, or packing it out, then cover the waste with the original dirt from the hole you dug, fill the hole and make it into a mound.Place a rock or branch over the space to discourage animals and critters from digging there. You can also place an upright stick in it to discourage the next humans in need of a hole, but I don’t recommend that because it rubs against leave no trace principles.Lastly, and very important, apply some sanitizer in the palms of your hands. Do me a favor and soak your nasty, smelly, disgusting, germ-carrying little fingertips into it first before spreading it around on the rest of your hands. What about pee?If you’re just peeing, you don’t need to dig a hole, but if you are using toilet paper and deciding not to carry it out, you absolutely better dig a hole and bury that stuff deep so it doesn’t create nasty little TP blooms! Seriously, no one wants to see that. Our friends over at Wander Woman Gear have snapped these disgusting photos to prove that your nasty TP doesn't just disintegrate like you might think. Gross! Don't be that person!
Nasty TP Blooms off trail. All toilet paper should be packed out, or at a minimum buried deep.Try a pee rag (good for use in the wild and at home too!)If you can’t bare the thought of the shake it off method, also known as the drip dry method, but let’s be honest, no one ever sits there long enough to dry… then get yourself a re-usable pee rag. There’s some really awesome ones and the one I use every single day and love for it's soft inner and waterproof external shell is from Wander Woman Gear that's owned by Nurse Betty, a hard core, triple-crown thru-hiker who really knows what's up.Go out and try it!Now you’re ready to continue on your way! When you do, think of us, Bogaciel Beth, and, of course, Dan Clem! When Dan heard his story was coming out in the podcast, he replied, "Woot woot! I just pooped myself with joy... and cleaned it up!"
Special thanks to Michaela Elias who co-wrote this piece.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to listen to Episode 103. And for more tips on how to be a responsible dirtbag, check out our book, "The Dirtbag's Guide to Life: Eternal Truth for Hiker Trash, Ski Bums, and Vagabonds."
Before you go, sign up for our newsletter and at least click this link to visit our Patreon Page to see what it's all about. We are able to bring you stories like this and weekly podcasts because of listener's like you who support us on Patreon. Be a part! #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;} /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */Never Miss an Episode or Event: Get Our Newsletter
April 14, 2019
Why and How to Learn Spanish in Latin America: A Dirtbag's Guide.
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. You can learn Spanish here for about $200 US/week, including food and accommodations. Learn Spanish. Build connections, not walls. Our friend Vicente just opened a Spanish school in Sucre, Bolivia, which got me thinking about Latin America. Which also got me thinking, if you haven't already, I highly recommend learning Spanish, especially if you’re American.
Even just a little.
If you learn even enough to muddle through signs at museums, basic conversations, and the signs at bus stations, the door will be cracked open on a beautiful, interesting, previously inaccessible world populated by 500 million people. You'll be able to interact at a basic level and travel confidently in an entire, spectacular, continent (and a half) of people a few hours flight from the US. It'll change conversations with the 41 million Spanish speakers in the US from a daunting, awkward task to a learning and connecting experience, and will help you understand the culture of the country of 130 million people living right across the border from you that, admit it, you know almost nothing about. There are bilingual people all over the world. There's no reason you can't or shouldn't be one of them.
The more Americans that know Spanish, the better off the world will be. And personally, knowing a bit will totally make your life more rich and interesting. It's entirely worth it, and the initial time investment is not that significant. If you go and immerse yourself you can get to a level of basic functionality in three weeks - which will give you a fantastic base to learn more. I know, because we did. And if you go to the right place, you can manage the whole thing, from classes to transportation to food, on about $1000. I also know, because we did. (Volunteer somewhere, and you might be able to figure it out for even less!)
This post is designed to give you a big picture understanding of how to make it happen.
If you want, you can study in Sucre, Bolivia for about $130/week. How to learn Spanish in Latin AmericaYou can learn Spanish in community colleges or with local or online tutors from where ever you happen to be at the moment. That's good (DO IT IF YOU CAN!), but this is a post about learning in Latin America specifically. Because learning abroad is a genuinely life changing experience, and in many cases (I know it's hard to believe this), it can be even cheaper than hiring a tutor and learning at home in the US, even factoring in travel costs. It is definitely cheaper than learning in a university, so skip Spanish 101 and buy that ticket to Costa Rica.
There are some daunting aspects of learning abroad - I get it, I was stressed about the idea before we did it - but the things that I can absolutely assure you are that it is doable! It's affordable, safe, and manageable even on a week-long vacation, and definitely if you're someone with a bit of flexible time - between semesters, jobs, or contracts. Got three weeks of vacation time this year? Those 3 weeks could open up the world.
Here are the steps to take, and the order to take them.
1) Pick a country and town.
To tell you a little bit of our story, a few years back, in 2016, Angel (my wife) and I spent 4 months in Latin America on a self-organized trip, and we spent the first three weeks in San Pedro, a small town in Guatemala on Lake Atitlan, in structured classes (20 hours a week) and a homestay organized through Guatemaya Spanish School.
Our choice to go to Guatemala - and San Pedro specifically - was largely based on word of mouth recommendations. We had two friends who'd studied there on different occasions, and both of them felt like it was the right choice. They said it was a beautiful, friendly town, where quality of instruction was high and cost was as low as you'll find anywhere. And it was true. $200/week got us 20 hours of 1:1 instruction from university trained educators in an open air school with a beautiful view of Lake Atitlan, a homestay with a local family, and 3 meals a day. The three week cost, including flights (we caught a deal), was a little over $1000 total for both of us.
After Guatemala, we traveled for two months independently - El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina - and then ended our trip with another three weeks of instruction, in Sucre, Bolivia (which is where we met the aforementioned Vicente, who was my instructor). Budget was a major factor in our decision again. Courses there were $130/week for group instruction with 3 - 4 other people. We covered our own accommodation and food this time because we wanted the privacy after a lot of time in hostels and homestays. But beyond just budget, word of mouth and environment were also major factors in our decision making. We talked with friends who'd studied in South America, and Sucre was one of the top choices for culture and scenery. We'd visited Bolivia after Central America, and it was frankly one of the most stunning places we'd ever been. It wasn't hard to convince us to go back to study. We definitely didn't regret it.
Cost, word of mouth, and scenery are all important factors that influenced our decisions on where to go.
Another thing to consider is ease of access, depending on your time frame. Latin America is full of great places to visit that have Spanish language schools, but not all are easy to get to. If you want to study in Peru, you'll have no issue getting to Lima or Cuzco on an easy, frequent flight. But if you want to be near the Cordillera Blanca in Huaraz, you'll need to navigate 8 hour bus rides or infrequent flights. Similarly, if you want to study in Bolivia, lots of people fly into La Paz, but Sucre flights were expensive so we spent an overnight on a bus to get there. Central America obviously is easier to access from the US, but some locations require long bus connections. If I'd been staying in Guatemala for just a week, I likely would have studied in Antigua, which is easier to access than Atitlan as it's just outside of Guatemala City, where the main airport is located.
Factors like geography, climate, culture, and style of Spanish also are considerations. If you're looking for a big, metropolitan experience, and budget isn't your number one consideration, it might make sense to pay the premium to study in a place like Mexico City, Buenos Aires, or Santiago. If you want to learn to surf while you learn Spanish, it might tip the scales in favor of a place like Costa Rica, Peru, or even Uruguay - which are pricier than some other options. Or if you want to climb mountains on your weekends off, it might make sense to sacrifice the time needed to get to Huaraz or La Paz. Spanish in Chile and Argentina are idiosyncratic, and may be harder to learn if you already have a little bit of a base because you'll have to change your listening patterns and accent (Chile is to Spanish as Scotland is to English, roughly speaking. It's the same language, but only sort of.)
Affordable, beautiful options that come highly recommended include Peru, Mexico (my personal all around favorite Latin American country), Columbia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador.
Pricier countries are Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.
This article is a decent review of some of the pros and cons of different countries. The site is ugly but it is pretty useful as a starting point (scroll to the bottom for the pros and cons list).
2) Pick a School
There are about a billion options, ranging from one person who takes on a couple students when they feel like it to big programs that cycle through dozens of students per week. Most towns of any size in Latin America will have someone who will teach you Spanish. But there are definitely some places where Spanish students congregate more than others.
My recommendation is to use Google to research the country you want to go to, then drill down to the city or area, and then drill down to the school to see if you can find a fit. Googling a “Latin American Spanish School” will be like trying to pick where you’ll have dinner by googling “restaurant North America”.
We studied at Guatemaya, a small school with just a few other students in Guatemala, and Me Gusta, a larger school with about 20 other students in Bolivia. Both were good experiences. We got to know our instructors really well in Guatemala, which was great, but we also came away with a few lifelong friends in Bolivia, so were happy with both decisions and would recommend either. The small school with 1:1 coaching meant we could ask whatever we wanted to know, but the large school offered specialized classes covering medical and other types of Spanish, so this was a perk of a larger environment.
For us the option to include a homestay was really valuable in Guatemala, because full immersion makes for a much deeper, if slightly exhausting, learning experience. By the end of our homestay, we were attempting (and failing) to explain group games in Spanish at a birthday party for the daughter in our host family, and that type of real world experience is hard to duplicate in a school environment.
But Airbnb is a way that you can replicate the experience all over, even if it isn't offered by your school. Some of our best personal connections in Latin America are with people who hosted us in Airbnb's, and it forces you, similarly to a homestay, to use Spanish practically. And costs are very frequently remarkably low. In Mexico we usually budget $20 - 30/night for two people, and in Bolivia it’s easy to find a nice room in someone’s house for $15 - 20/night.
To save yourself some research, you could just make it easy and go study with our friend Vicente in Sucre at El Camino, or our friend Javier on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala at Guatemaya. You have my word that they're both amazing options!
Us with Vicente. He taught us Spanish when we went to Bolivia, so we bought him a beer when he came to Seattle. 3) Pick a timeframe, but pay by the week.3 weeks was a great amount of time for our purposes, starting mostly from scratch (Angel had never had classes, I took a bit of Spanish in college 15 year prior), to pick up enough to travel on. It gave us a base to learn more and travel functionally before sandwiching on another 3 weeks at the end of our trip. In that time frame we were confident in our ability to communicate our basic needs, and even speak one on one a little bit conversationally. I can figure out how to read the majority of signs and understand basic instructions. I still have no idea what people are saying if they’re speaking at a normal rate in long sentences, or conversing with each other in a conversation that I don't have context for.
Whatever your time frame though, pay week to week for classes. This is a standard approach so most schools will be happy to work with you on it, and it will give you the option to re-up if you like a place, or switch schools or locations if it isn't working for some reason. Booking ahead for your first week is a smart idea if you're making an international trip, but we showed up at the door in Sucre and everything worked out to start classes the next day.
4) Figure out how to get there.
A rule in Latin America is that finding transportation literally anywhere is possible, but if you want to get somewhere out of the way, you might be in for a bit of an adventure. Lots of places have easy direct flights, but flights to less popular destinations can be infrequent, so also quite expensive. Lots of places also require a bus or cab connection, and if you're really clever you might find yourself in the back of some guy's cousin's truck in order to get where you're going. Research what your trip will look like beforehand to save yourself some trouble and anxiety.
Transportation to most of the heavily visited areas in Latin America will be easy enough to figure out without knowing any Spanish. There's something of a Gringo Trail of backpackers from all over the world that form a steady stream through any place you're likely to end up on a first trip to Latin America. As such, even if there's no direct flight, if you want to go there, you can probably find an English speaking bus driver to book online that will get you there. You'll pay a premium over the local public transit cost, but you'll be able to communicate.
Once you've picked up some Spanish, you'll learn that you can just do what the locals do and save yourself a lot of money if you want. Book your transport on the ground using local transportation options. In most cases, this is relatively straightforward, and dramatically cheaper than options you'll find advertised online.
Rome 2 Rio is the best online resource to piece together the various types of transportation you might need to utilize. Other tips for Latin American travel are in this post. It's about Mexico but applies pretty much universally (although bus costs in Chile and Argentina are much higher than other parts of Latin America.)
5) Get resources and prepare
Anything you can do to give yourself a base in the language before you go will be valuable. Most classes are going to be customized to your skill level, so don’t pay someone to teach you the alphabet or basic grammar when you're just going to have to memorize it anyway. The basics are easy to learn for free. We used Duo Lingo, which is an amazing free app, and practicing with it for a couple of months beforehand was really valuable when we flew to Latin America. It teaches basic vocabulary and grammar. It would be hard to get fluent when you're being taught by a robot, but it does give you a framework to build on later.
SpanishDict is a strange name choice, but to me it's the best, easy to use free dictionary app.
6) Go Learn and immerse yourself!
After all of that, it's really just a matter of diving in!
If you have other questions I haven't answered - please comment or contact us and ask them! I'll answer you and update the post! It's easy to forget the questions you have before you do something, and I want this to be valuable to newbies!
If you like this post, you'll probably also like The Dirtbag's Guide to Life. It's our new book about living an adventurous life on the cheap and doing things like spending four months in Latin America when you don't have much of a budget to work with.
And if you like what we're doing here, consider joining the legion of Boldly Went supporters on Patreon! Become a Patron!
April 4, 2019
UP North! with Ras and Kathy Vaughan
Angel and I go way back with "Team UltraPedestrian" Ras and Kathy Vaughan. We ran a DIY race out of their back yard years ago, but one of the first times we really hung out was in 2012, when Ras was attempting a "Double Wonderland", completing the 94 mile Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier twice in one push. We went on a long run with Kathy, and mostly just sat around wondering if he was okay during big lightning storms. At the time it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard of someone doing. (Now I'm aware of much worse.)
The thing we love about these two is that all of their outdoor projects are creative endeavors focused on inspiring other people to try new things. Ras threw down the Wonderland double because he loved the trail, and realized doing it twice in opposite directions was a different experience than just doing it once. He had an instinct that other people would want to follow him, and they did. Since then, several other friends have completed the double in one push, which is, to my mind, one of the most difficult trail challenges possible.
A year later, my first proper outdoor publication was an online interview with Ras for TrailRunner Magazine in 2013, after he complete a "Rim to Rim to Rim to Rim to Rim to Rim" - a sextuple crossing of the Grand Canyon. In that article, we referred to the attempt as an "Only Known Time" - a humorous play on the idea of a "Fastest Known Time," designed to show that no one else had been ridiculous enough to try it yet. The idea also contained the seeds of inspiration, because the reason to pursue an OKT, as we talked about it, isn't just so you can say you've done something no one else has. You do it because you think other people will be inspired to follow behind, either to emulate or to one up you. The term OKT now pops up from time to time in trail publications, and I just realized there's a guy making a film with the title. Coining the term is our crowning achievement together so far.
(Side note - the "OKT" inspiration worked with Ras' Grand Canyon endeavor - Portland trail beast Christof Teuscher later completed a 168 mile 8x crossing, which he talks about on this episode of Humans of Ultrarunning!)
In the spirit of inspiration Ras and Kathy have also gone on to found the UltraPedestrian Wilderness Challenge, an "adventure blogging" contest that challenges individuals to try out a series of wilderness routes of various difficulties and distances and report back on how it went. It's kind of an un-race, and prizes are given for a variety of speed- and non-speed related achievements. You should really check it out. It's a genuinely clever take on organized trail pursuits that's different from anything else out there that I'm aware of. Oh yeah, the point is, check them out because they're touring right now! All these stories are really just by way of introduction. I really wanted to write here and now because Ras and Kathy are headed out on a six week speaking tour today, April 4, 2019, around WA and OR where they'll be presenting about their most recent OKT - the completion of the "UP North Loop" - a roughly 2600 Mile overland trail loop through the inland Pacific Northwest, which connects the Pacific Crest, Pacific Northwest, Idaho Centennial, and Oregon Desert Trails into one massive loop route spanning mountain and desert in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho (with a few steps into Montana and Nevada).
We attended their first presentation in Tacoma, and it was really inspiring. If there's one thing I love, it's people coming up with amazing things to do because they want other people to realize it's possible. This felt like that. It was, in ways, a massively difficult route with a lot of route finding and heavy carries involved, and a short weather window between snowfall in the spring and winter of the Northwestern mountains. But it was also just the kind of thing anyone can pull off if they want to. They planned the route by looking at a map, saying "that looks amazing, and possible", and then doing it before they were even really sure if it would "go", since large parts of the Centennial trail are unfinished, the Oregon Desert is largely an overland route, and there were several connectors between the two that no one had actually hiked yet. Spoiler alert - they figured it out, but like all good adventures, it didn't go to plan.
If you like what we do here at Boldly Went, I highly recommend checking them out when they come to your town (The schedule is linked here, but I also cut and pasted it below.) They're totally entertaining storytellers, and the UP North Project is the type of thing that the world needs more of - a real adventure created whole cloth out of a bit of inspiration that came from staring at some hiking maps. You should hear about it firsthand.
I'm also excited that they're going to be traveling sales-people for
The Dirtbag's Guide to Life
on this tour - they bought a bunch of wholesale copies and will be selling them at events along with their own book, 98 Days of Wind. We'll be selling that one at our upcoming events as well, because dirtbag authors gotta stick together. All proceeds will go to making sure we all keep doing ridiculous stuff in the hopes that it'll inspire you to do the same.These guys are old school dirtbags, so another way to support is to host them when they come through town. Like us, they tour the punk rock way, sleeping on couches, camping out, and paying their way by selling merch from the back of their overpacked beat up old car. We can hook you up, or they're on social media on Facebook or Instagram.
If you want to support Team UltraPedestrian, or buy their book, but can't make an event, go to their website, Ultrapedestrian.com. For more on the UP North Loop, there's a website for that too. Check 'em out! You'll be inspired! UP North Loop Tour Dates April 4 - Seven Hills Running Shop, Seattle, WA - 7:00 PM
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April 5 - Mountain Shop, Portland, OR - 7:00 PM
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April 8 - Fleet Feet, Vancouver, WA - 6:00 PM
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April 9 - REI at WildCraft Cider Works, Eugene, OR - 7:00 PM
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April 11 - Footzone, Bend, OR - 7:00 PM
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April 15 - Tall Town Bikes, Lakeview, OR - 6:00 PM
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April 22 - Fleet Feet, Tacoma, WA - 6:00 PM
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April 23 - Fleet Feet, Seattle, WA - 8:00 PM
more details to come
April 24, Mountain Supply, Bend, OR - 7:00 PM
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April 25, Fleet Feet, Portland, OR - 6:oo PM
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April 26, Obsidians Lodge, Eugene, OR - 7:30 PM
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April 27, Peak Sports, Corvallis, OR - 3:00 PM
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April 29, Fleet Feet, Spokane, WA - 6:00 PM
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April 30- REI, Kennewick, WA - 7:15 PM
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May 1 - REI, Boise, ID - 7:00 PM
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May 2 - Fleet Feet, Meridian, ID 6:00 PM
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May 3 - BSU Trail Stewardship Club, Boise, ID
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May 6 - Mountain Shop, Portland, OR - 7:00 PM
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May 7 - Bend Library, OR - 6:00 PM
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May 9 - Christmas Valley Library, OR - 6:30 PM
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May 10 - Paisley Library, OR - 1:30 PM
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May 10 - Lakeview Library, OR - 6:30 PM
more details to come
Hey, did you know we wrote a book called "The Dirtbag's Guide to Life: Eternal Truth for Hiker Trash, Ski Bums, and Vagabonds"?! Of course you did. I won't shut up about it. But really, have a look. People like it. I think you'll like it.
March 22, 2019
An update on developments...
Dirtbag Book Launch. Photo credit Tim "Ironhusk" Macauley. When you’re a big time blogger like myself, sometimes you craft a well thought out post and say exactly what you want, and sometimes you just need to download your emotions on the internet. This is the latter. I just need to tell you all about life these days!March 2019 has been a consequential month in the life of Boldly Went. We went on our most extensive tour yet - with 9 events happening between Mammoth Springs, CA, and Calgary, Canada next week, book sales events at an American Long Distance Hiker Association (ALDHA) gathering, our first public storytelling workshop and the Mountain Venture Summit in Mammoth, and our official book launch in Seattle, which happened this Monday, March 18th at NW Peaks Brewery.
It’s not over yet, because tomorrow Angel is headed up to another ALDHA event in Bellingham while I’m at work, and next week we fly up to the Canadian Rockies for two more Boldly Went events - in Canmore on Wednesday, March 27 at Canmore Brewing (note if you click that link - the event location is incorrect on the Eventbrite site at time of posting! That will be updated asap! Canmore Brewing is the correct location) and in Calgary on Thursday, March 28 at the Village Brewery. That’s a lot, and it’s all on top of usual life stuff, a day or two of “real” work a week, and a spur of the moment move.
The launch itself was such a great experience for me. It was really amazing to have a room full of people who’ve been such a support throughout this process, and we organized a lineup of presenters that were all huge inspirations for the book:
Angel, who has managed to organize our financial lives strategically for years so we’ve been able to fit in big adventures from the time we were broke college students up through now, when we’re trying to bootstrap a business from the ground up.
Noa Nadeem, who’s traveled to 95 countries and all 50 states across the last decade while holding down a 9-5.
Tom and Jess Kelley, who’ve managed to support each other and raise a kid while Tom’s developed a successful distillery (Four Leaf Spirits) as a side hustle and Jess has built a coaching business and a life of adventure, including a 1300 mile bike and packraft trek through the Alaskan wilderness in 2018.
Troy Nebeker, who founded The 24 and Monster and Sea after a family brush with cancer, and has sparked a grassroots movement in the paddling community that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to give to families dealing with cancer. The 24 paddling relay is happening in mid-April in cities all over the US and Canada so look it up!
And Heather "Anish" Anderson, who in 2018 became the first woman to complete a “Calendar Year Triple Crown” - hiking all 7000+ miles of the major American long trails in 8 months - the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trails. She's a friend and just happened to be touring the PNW to support her new book, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home - which is amazing, and you should also buy!
The event was so good, and was made even better by the fact that it was followed by a spike in sales for the book on Amazon - it sold 60+ in the three days following, owing largely to the fact, I’m sure, that Anish, social media influencer that she is, posted about it on Instagram on Tuesday. But also because lots of you have been reading, posting, and reviewing. We’re creeping up towards 300 total sales across platforms, and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads are ticking along, and it’s been a great start for this project. I’m getting the feeling that people are finding it to be a fun, valuable read! Thank you so much for your support!
Screenshot of book sales for the month - guess the day Anish told Instagram about it. Ideally I would have been riding that wave of momentum and marketing the Amazon sales spike somehow (I guess - I don’t really know how to sell books on Amazon), but after the launch it’s been a week straight out of a bad sitcom. On Tuesday, what we thought would be a routine plumber call spiraled into the discovery of a water heater leak, which then led us to discover tons of hidden water damage in the walls and floor, which then led into an endless stream of contractor and insurance calls. Then, yesterday, I had a fender bender (my first real accident since high school!) to add even more calls to the insurance agency. Today I’m hiding in the woods where it’s safe. Next week they’re going to tear our cute little house apart. Then we have to figure out someone to put it back together.Whatever though. Life right now feels like we’re hustling, but making progress. It’s been a month of hard work, but it’s been hard work that seems to be paying off in various ways. Tour was our most well-attended ever overall, we had our largest first-time event in Mammoth, our biggest Tacoma event ever, and both of our Seattle events sold out. The book’s been well received, and insurance is covering a fair bit of the house and car carnage (knock on wood…). So jeez, we’re going to keep pushing ahead.
We’ll see folks in Calgary and Canmore next week, and we have a Seattle storytelling workshop on the books for April 18th, and a Seattle Boldly Went on April 25th. And if you’re local to the PNW, stay tuned, because I also have an idea for a Tacoma book launch event that I’m excited about that I’m hoping to get set up in late April or early May. It will be a bit different than the Seattle one - still a lot more fun and interactive than a normal author reading, but a bit more Tacoma.
There are some other irons in the fire that you may hear about later as well, but I just needed to tell someone about all of this. It’s been an exhausting, fun, exciting month. Thank you all for being a part of it, and we’re really excited to see this thing growing and developing! Stay tuned!
If you’re in Calgary or Canmore, you can buy tickets to the events here. Please come and share the event around with your friends!
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March 4, 2019
New Zealand doesn't have to be (that) expensive.
Worth the price of admission Top experts agree, New Zealand is frikkin' rad, but there’s no getting around the fact that it isn’t the cheapest place in the world to visit. It's a couple of small islands located a billion miles from anywhere, with a tourism economy and excellent education, healthcare and welfare systems funded, in part, by taxes waged on the masses of visitors that find their way there annually. After about two and a half years of life and travel there, I would estimate that costs on the ground are generally similar to those in Canada and the pricier parts of the US, which is actually slightly less than most other island countries in the Pacific. But if you tack on the price of a flight to get there, a trip to New Zealand quickly starts to seem cost-prohibitive for budget travelers from the English-speaking world.
Personally, I feel the pain of that fact intensely. New Zealand is my favorite place for a whole bunch of reasons. Angel and I lived there during a formative time of life, in our early 20's, and fell in love with the people and the landscape. We visited again in our early 30's when we were in the best shape of our lives for outdoor pursuits, and saw hundreds of miles of stunning trail that we hadn't previously explored, whetting our appetites for more of the country's infinite beauty. And we visited again last year in our late 30's, and were overwhelmed by waves of nostalgia and desire to spend more time there. But like a beautiful night out at an expensive restaurant, it may be well worth the cost, but the cost is undeniable.
The last several years, we've made month-long trips to Mexico a winter routine, but this year we replaced that trip with a two month visit to New Zealand. I haven't broken down the cost comparison meticulously, but roughly speaking, on a per day basis, we spent twice as much per day in NZ as in MX, and the cost to fly there from the West Coast of the US was three times as high. In addition, in MX we definitely live more high on the hog - eating out most meals and staying in hotels and Airbnb's the vast majority of nights. In NZ we camped as much as we could (about half the nights we were there), and most frequently bought our food at groceries.
But I just love New Zealand so much, and it's totally worth the cost, so I want you to go there. So, since the trip, I've been putting together this brief guide to navigating finances on a visit to the country. I want you to have a sense of where costs lie, and where you might save money. New Zealand is a relatively expensive destination for a budget traveler, but if you plan correctly it doesn't have to be that expensive. You can totally figure it out.
(All costs listed are in $US and are approximations based on our most recent trip, in December 2018.)
Free Things that cost a lot, in the grand scheme of things New Zealand is a long way from everywhere else, and is an island in a big ocean. There are some things that just will cost a lot of money there, inevitably. To give you a picture, here's my rough list of pricey things:Flights. Unless you're reading from Australia (or to a lesser degree Hawaii), if you can find a round trip flight to NZ for under $1200, you're doing pretty well. We tend to find that our LA to Auckland leg is in the range of $1000 round trip, with connections adding another couple hundred dollars (we live in Seattle, and typically skip through Auckland to the South Island.)Gasoline/Petrol. Taxes are high. Gas has to be transported there overseas. It costs 2 - 3x as much there as in the US. Restaurants. Costs in restaurants also are usually a few dollars higher than we're used to in the US.Intercity buses. Buses in NZ are high quality and functional ways to travel, but it isn't unusual to shell out $30 - 50 per ride between cities that are only a few hours apart by road. Hotels. A decent, cheap hotel is hard to come by in NZ, and we've spent $80 - 100 on some real stinkers.Soda. I think they tax sugary drinks extensively to try to dissuade their consumption, because a Coke can easily cost $3 even in a grocery.Alcohol. Ditto above. Drinks out, after the exchange rate, usually cost probably $1 more than we're used to, even in Seattle, which is itself a pricey place to go out. Drinks in groceries cost significantly more, and if you like Microbrews like me, expect to pay about 1.5x US prices. It's sad, but probably better for everyone that booze is pricey in NZ.Gear. If you need outdoor gear, it will almost definitely be more expensive in NZ. It's a long way from everywhere, and a small economic market. If you want to save money, buy your gear before you go if you're from anywhere that locals would describe as "the mainland".Day trips/tours. They know you are there to spend money. They want as much of it as you'll give them. Tours are quick and easy ways to get to nice places. They're also a killer if you're trying to stay on a budget.Great Walks. One of my key reasons to visit the country is for the hiking, and it is varied and plentiful, with great options for all four seasons. But it is possible to spend a lot of money even for this seemingly cheap activity. Their "Great Walk" system highlights a bunch of their most beautiful, well-supported trails, and you should totally explore them. But they all operate on a permitting system, and feature huts that are relatively expensive to stay in. It's not difficult to spend $150 just for hut permits for a 3 - 4 day walk in the woods. Totally worth it, but not cheap. (Pro tip: you can day hike on any Great Walk for free, and many of them can be fully completed in a day if you're fit and intrepid. And even if you're not, on the upside, NZ if full of great walks that aren't "Great Walks," so if the price bums you out, this is a great list of alternatives!) 
Kiwis are the budget traveler's best friend. Places to save money After all of that bad news, there is plenty of good, and there are ways to avoid breaking the bank on a trip to New Zealand. The country is a tourist economy, it's true, but for decades it's also been a top destination for backpackers and budget travelers, so there is well-developed infrastructure and cultural support for this kind of thing. Kiwis are awesome, frugal people themselves, and they have made it possible to travel like an awesome, frugal person when you're there.So here's a list of the places where you can save money while traveling in the country. In country flights. Much like in Europe, once you're on the ground it's actually relatively cheap and easy to fly. Individual legs in country usually cost less than $100, and can be even cheaper than busing. Check out Air New Zealand's Grabaseat and Jetstar for budget options. If you're going to be there for a while, book your flight into Auckland or Christchurch, and then buy in-country flights once you're on the ground.Staple foods and takeaways. New Zealand is a long way from everywhere else, but it is also a massive agricultural powerhouse. So, in season, staple foods from groceries and farmers' markets are a great, affordable, high quality way to go. It's hard to find bad dairy or veggies there, especially if you buy local, and prices can be lower even than the US if you buy what's in season. On the opposite end of the spectrum, corner store "takeaways" are the cheapest fast food option, and tend to give out massive portions of fish and chips or Asian options for dirt cheap prices. Not healthy at all, but cheap calories in a pinch.The sharing economy: hitching, couchsurfing, and Airbnb. I have never been somewhere more hitchhiker friendly than New Zealand. We were walking down the road on the North Island, and without even sticking out our thumb a guy pulled over to pick us up. Kiwis make friends easily, they tend to be seasoned travelers themselves, and life on a budget is the most common way of being there, so I always find them to be amazingly helpful. The same is true of couchsurfing culture - Couchsurfing.com will get you to the official places to crash for free, but if you're there for any amount of time, you will almost definitely be invited to stay at someone's house for free. You meet people on the street or in the pub, they're super friendly, and they invite you to stay. Follow your instincts of course, but it's normal there in a way that it isn't most places. Airbnb is also in widespread use there, and you can find a huge range of options that are very frequently a better value than hotels, and a great way to make new friends.Car rentals. For some reason, it's easy to get a cheap ride in a basic, utilitarian car in New Zealand. We rented cars on two occasions on our last trip, and in each case the cost was about $20 US/day, including insurance. Petrol is expensive, but this still made for a much cheaper option than busing for two people when we wanted to visit a variety of locations. There are multiple options, but check out Rent a Dent for an example. You won't get anything new or fancy, but you will get a functional car to drive for a surprisingly low price. In my opinion, road tripping is the best way to travel in NZ, and it doesn't have to be particularly expensive.Buying a vehicle (including camper vans). If you're going to be in the country for months at a time, you might consider buying and reselling a vehicle. While #vanlife is an activity usually reserved for the relatively privileged in the US, NZ has to have more campervans per capita than any other country in the world, so up front costs are much lower than I personally would have expected. (Think about $4000 for a decent, functional camper van that can be resold to another backpacker for the same a few months later.) The country has a massive stock of old, well-maintained cars that travelers can buy and resell reliably to bring transportation costs down (functional cars for under $1000 are not unusual). This is a great guide to the buying and selling process, and it can be well worth the hassle if you're going to be in the country for a couple of months or more.Camping. On that note, if you have a camper van, there are hundreds of "Freedom Camping" sites where you can park for free. There are fewer places to pull over and put up a tent, but they exist as well if you do your research. Wikicamps NZ is a helpful app to guide you to the right spot. In addition to these free spots, New Zealand has an extensive network of "holiday parks" - commercial campsites that are affordably priced - in almost every town. We paid about $20 a night for campsites with access to kitchens, bathrooms, and indoor lounges. (Pro tip: These are a great option when the weather is bad but you don't want to spring for a hotel.) Also, a pro-tip for the Great Walk system is that a camping pass is much cheaper than a hut pass - both are permitted and limited, so book ahead, but if you want to do the walks but don't want to shell out quite as much money, take your tent.Public transit in cities. While intercity buses can be pricey, in cities public transit costs tend to be totally sensible. If you're staying in a big urban area (which you probably shouldn't because the wilderness is so freaking amazing), you will save money if you just ride the bus.DOC Huts. And one of New Zealand's greatest resources for the outdoorsy budget traveler are the 950 Department of Conservation Huts spread throughout the country These range from lean-to's in the mountains to impressive drive up cabins that can house 40 people at a time. Almost unbelievably, a six month pass for unlimited nights in these huts is only $90 NZ, or at time of writing about $65 US. There are significantly fewer of these on the North Island than the South, and there are some huts where you can't use the pass (notably, at all huts in Northland), but you could spend months in the New Zealand back country, traveling by foot and staying in generally really comfortable structures for essentially free. (While the North Island is a bit of a different story (which I plan to write sometime soon!) this is essentially what Te Araroa trampers do on the South Island.) Even if you're only there for a few weeks, a hut pass is likely a great investment.Hostels. New Zealand is also dotted with an expansive network of backpacker hostels where you can book shared accommodation for $20 - 30/night. They're a great place to meet other budget travelers, and are in the vast majority of cases clean and friendly. Hostel World is a go-to site for reviews and options.National Parks and Museums. New Zealand is smarter than most of us, so their public National Parks and Museums are very frequently totally free to visit. Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington, is one of the best museums I've visited anywhere in the world, and it's free. And the South Island is completely covered in spectacular National Parks that you can spend days exploring at no cost for entry. New Zealand really is one of the world's great places, and that reputation has gotten around. While the infrastructure is in place now for luxury travel, and that does have the potential to blow your budget, it really doesn't have to. Budget travelers can absolutely figure it out. The culture and scenery are worth the cost of admission at virtually any price, but you can travel for long periods of time on $1500 - 2000 a month if you plan correctly. I hope you do! If you're the type of person who believes that even if the best things in life (like New Zealand) aren't free, but can be figured out on a budget, you're going to love our new book, "The Dirtbag's Guide to Life: Eternal Truth for Hiker Trash, Ski Bums, and Vagabonds." It's kind of like this article, but is aimed to help you figure out an entire life of adventure on the cheap. Check out the webpage, or if you prefer buy it on Amazon. Become a Patron!
February 11, 2019
Review: Thirst, by Heather "Anish" Anderson
TLDR: The Patron Saint of Dirtbags wrote a book, and it's so frikkin' good! First things first: i'm going to be upfront with you. There's no way that this is an unbiased review. The author is a friend who has appeared in our podcast, and was one of the central players in our own book,
The Dirtbag's Guide to Life
. I helped with beta reading and a little amateur editing on a small section of the project, and the publishers sent me a free copy with a subtle request to help promote it. I don't have any financial stake in the book, but in most other ways I have every reason to have warm feelings towards it and want it to succeed.Having said all of that, I'm not just saying this: Ahh! I just finished this book, and I loved it so much! I'm writing this review because I want you to know about it, and I think you'll love it too. A little backstory If you haven't heard of Thirst, or the author - Heather "Anish" Anderson - it's a personal memoir of her successful attempt to set the Fastest Known Time on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2013, completing the 2650 miles in 60 hours, 17 days, and 12 minutes. It was a massive achievement that breaks out to hiking an average of 44 miles per days for 60 days straight. She did it in classic thru-hiker style, meaning no one met her along the way to provide support, she dealt with her own logistics and resupply, and she didn't accept any aid that wasn't accessible to every other hiker out there. She beat the previous record by 4 days, and in a time when elite athletes are attempting and knocking down long trail FKTs every year, her self-supported record still stands. She holds multiple other thru-hiking speed records, and for a time held the self-supported FKT on both the Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails. Among thru-hikers, she's spoken of reverently as potentially the greatest endurance athlete on the planet, male or female.
Thru-hiking literature is a genre unto itself - walking across a country is something you can't easily explain in a sentence or two, so it makes sense that a lot of people end up writing books about it. And because of who she is, Anish's book was destined to be a classic in that genre, regardless of content. But I really think it stands out as more than just a hiking story written by someone who's done impressive things. It's a genuinely excellent piece of writing that stands on its own as a unique contribution to the outdoor canon. Anish the underdog. Angel and I initially encountered Anish as a public figure in 2013 - first when she was co-directing the Chuckanut 50k in Bellingham, WA, and later when she was giving a presentation to a small group of people in Seattle's Seven Hills running store following her successful PCT FKT attempt. She makes it into our Dirtbag's Guide to Life in part because of that presentation, when she suggested that the best way to carve out time for a thru-hike is to just quit your job. For us, that message came at exactly the right time, and after thinking about it for a year, that's what we did when we hiked the PCT in 2015, and we've never really looked back.
The first time we hung out in person was after our PCT hike, when we were living in the Las Vegas area for a few months, and she crashed on our floor on the way through town on a peak bagging trip in the Southwest. While we were honestly honored to play host for her, she was incredibly courteous, and unpretentious to a fault. Since then, we've occasionally hung out socially, and I've always gotten the impression that other people are much more impressed by her than she is with herself.
The book is strong, in part, because that unpretentious character comes through clearly, and you can't help but feel excited about the quest she's describing. While she's since gained some level of notoriety in the outdoor world, her PCT hike was a real underdog story. She had grown up as a non-athlete, and a self-described bookworm, and even when she became a serious hiker and trail runner as an adult, she hadn't accomplished anything that would lead one to view her as a world-class athlete. Additionally, she was tackling the PCT attempt after several years away from serious thru-hiking, during a period when her life was essentially falling apart - she'd just gone through a divorce, and left a house and career when she decided to tackle the trail. To say that people doubted her ability is a little bit misleading because very few people even knew who she was, or what she was attempting, until midway through the hike, when people along the trail began mentioning her online as "the Ghost", and began to recognize that she was keeping a record pace on her progress north. Reading her account of the experience in hindsight, it comes off not as the crowning achievement of a notable athletic career, but as the superhero origin story of a remarkable adventurer. (Even if her superhero status is still only recognized in small circles of hikers and outdoor athletes...)
There's something particularly timely about this aspect of the story - an unpretentious woman, setting out without fanfare and accomplishing something that most people would have said was impossible - crushing a longstanding athletic record set by Scott Williamson, a man, and a thru-hiking legend who'd spent years chiseling away at the FKT. While others have now hiked the PCT faster with the aid of support crew, Anish's pure thru-hiker style speed record has still never been matched. She's since set records on the Appalachian Trail and Arizona Trail, and this year she became the first woman (and just 6th human) to hike the Triple Crown in a year - all 8000+ miles of the PCT, Appalachian Trail, and Continental Divide Trail. Approaching 6 years since she set the PCT record, it's hard to deny that the most world's most remarkable pure thru-hiker during that period has been a woman. That fact resonates beyond just the hiking community, and makes her stand out as one of the most important athletic figures of the 2000s - whether or not she's been widely recognized as such. Anish the quintessential dirtbag. Anish also made it into our Dirtbag's Guide to Life as the key example of a prototypical dirtbag,and the reasons come through clearly in the book. A dirtbag, at least in my definition, is someone who sacrifices normality in other aspects of life in order to prioritize the outdoors and adventure, and they're the most dedicated practitioners of outdoor culture.
Heather beautifully communicates the pull of wilderness throughout the work, in physical descriptions of the trail that are as evocative and appealing as any other book on the PCT that I'm aware of. Despite the fact that the book chronicles an experience that sounds absolutely physically unbearable, I came away energized to hike the trail again because she captures the trail's essence, and the book brought back lovely memories of the people, places and experiences that define a thru-hike.
But Anish also powerfully communicates the struggle involved for the true dirtbag who centers their existence on time in the wilderness. One of the book's core themes is her wrestling with the sacrifices she has to make in order to do what she's doing. Some of that relates to concrete, physical suffering - anecdotes about digging dead skin out of blister-holes with a pocketknife, and using sticks to separate her pack from open wounds on her back illustrate the fact that she spent two months pushing constantly against levels of pain that are genuinely mind-boggling. But the book also chronicles a series of sacrifices in her personal life, made in order to devote her life to the trail. She includes a particularly funny (and cringe-inducing) story about explaining her plans to her university adviser to forgo a career in order to become a vagabond, And that experience foreshadows a series of similar experiences, explaining herself to her family, leaving a marriage, jobs, and stability, in order to devote her life to the trail.
While some element of competitiveness comes through in Heather's push to set a speed record, the dominant message I took away from the book was about the inescapable emotional pull of the wilderness. She presents her PCT record hike as an athletic achievement, sure, but more personally important as a pilgrimage where she made peace with devoting her life to the wilderness, and the sacrifices that would require in other areas of her life.
And I don't think it's a spoiler to say that she concludes the book with a summary of her emotional experience on trail, as an experience where she finally came to terms with who she was.
My despair was interlaced with wild grandeur and strength - rebirth carved along a mountain path. My life was now woven from the experience, a cloth created from beauty as well as struggle.I loved this book, and I would entirely recommend it. It's an incredible adventure story that stands on its own, but it's also a lovely memoir of an emotional experience of wilderness that gets right to the heart of the appeal of thru-hiking and a life outdoors more generally.
"I am who I am and that person is OK. I do what I do because of who I am and what I am meant to be. The wild brings me insurmountable blessing and joy. It makes sense that when I leave it to eke out my survival in society, I spiral into despair."
If you want to buy it, Heather is selling autographed copies here.
And the Mountaineers are selling non-autographed copies here.
Our own book, The Dirtbag's Guide to Life, in which Anish figures largely, is also now live and on sale at this link.
February 1, 2019
The Dirtbag's Guide to The Dirtbag's Guide to Life!
I'm really excited to tell you that our new book, The Dirtbag's Guide to Life, is officially on sale! Pre-orders have shipped, and you can buy it directly in our online store, or through Amazon for Kindle! And if you're in the Seattle area, get one of 50 tickets to our launch party on Monday, March 18th, which will include a free electronic version and a very special limited edition copy that we're hand-making out of stuff we find laying around the house! Say hello to our new baby, The Dirtbag's Guide to Life! Ahh! It's here! Our first publication at Boldly Went is live and beaming out to e-Readers around the world!Despite spending a year and a half with my head buried in this project, I clearly can't stop writing about it, because to celebrate, I want to give you a thorough behind-the-scenes introduction, talk about how it fits into the big picture of what we're up to here at Boldly Went, and let you know how you can help if you want to see this thing blow up!
From the blurb, here's a short summary of what the book is:
While a life of adventure has traditionally been reserved for the rich and the sponsored, to the dirtbag, it's a birthright for the masses. Partly a celebration of an underappreciated subculture of hiker trash, ski bums, and vagabonds, and partly a "how to" guide for adventure on the cheap, The Dirtbag's Guide to Life is the first solid attempt to define an outdoor movement that has taken root in backpacker hostels, long trails, and climbing crags around the world.While the book focuses on those lovable, cheap, smelly, hardcore adventure junkies we refer to as dirtbags, I’ve done my best to make it as fun, interesting, and useful as possible for anyone who thinks of themselves as a part of the outdoor community. It's divided into chapters focused on five of the biggest challenges that confront people trying to build a life centered on adventure, and the topics are relevant for anyone who's likely to have found their way to this blog - how to save money on travel, how to balance a career and a passion for outdoor pursuits, how to live responsibly in a complicated world, how to navigate relationship challenges when your interests drift towards the extreme, and how to find meaning in life by immersing yourself more deeply in the things that you love.
To get there, I do my best to distill the concrete wisdom that Angel and I have learned through our own experiences, and through our interactions with other people who center their lives on outdoor pursuits. The book gets right down to the specifics of articles to read and organizations to get in contact with directly, the PDF edition is densely hyperlinked, and all versions include a long appendix with further resources to check out. I've done my best to include as much practical advice as possible, because I want to be able to confidently say that the things readers will learn will easily offset the cost of purchase. We really do want everything we do to be helpful to you all. That’s not just me being altruistic - it's the only way I personally can feel good about pouring so much into this. A major theme of the book is that people shouldn't waste time amassing useless "stuff" that doesn't improve their lives in any meaningful way, so I've done everything I can to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem!
While there have been other good, practical guides to budget and adventure travel, as far as I know, there’s nothing quite like The Dirtbag's Guide out there. To my knowledge, it’s the first book-length attempt to comprehensively define the dirtbag counter culture, and to talk about why it's significant in the bigger picture. The book gets into big philosophical questions about how to be a decent person in a screwed up world, and beyond just a guide to saving money when you're hiking, the book is something of a dirtbag Tao - an outdoor "rule of life".
But let's be honest: you can't take yourself completely seriously on a project about dirtbags, that's primarily focused on organizing your entire life around playing outside more often, so even when it veers into serious issues, the whole thing's all in good fun. The book in the bigger picture of Boldly Went The book stands on its own, and I think dirtbags outside of our existing community will love it. But I think that those of you who are connected to the bigger Boldly Went project will have the richest experience. There's a lot of personal backstory from Angel and I that we haven't talked about in other venues, but more importantly the vast majority of examples, ideas, and references came from people we've met through Boldly Went. You'll almost definitely recognize some names you know! You might even be in it! (Don't worry, you all are awesome, and I only included positive examples!)
Rob "Danger Muffin" Zimmerman, who helped me shape the content and clean up an infinite number of typos, told perhaps my favorite PCT story ever in the podcast, and has been the key player in helping us get established in Truckee, CA. Megan Myers, who designed the logo, was one of our earliest Bend, OR supporters and also designed our business logo. Patreon supporters read early editions and offered advice on the text and first attempt at a cover, and the book really is an outgrowth of this community!
We also see the book as having the same overarching goals as Boldly Went. Everything we do is focused on building up the outdoor community, making outdoor adventure more accessible, connecting like-minded people who wouldn’t meet otherwise, and promoting important personal values that we also think are important in the outdoor community - environmentalism, simplicity, humanism, and a visceral connection with nature. How can you be involved and support this project? I genuinely appreciate that you're interested enough in this project to read this far into the post! So thank you! If you want to help us make it a success, there are a couple of important ways you can do so!
Where to purchase a copy, and why
You can currently purchase electronic versions of this book in three different formats: PDF, ePub, and Kindle, and if you're in the Seattle area you can sign up for a super limited edition handmade print copy!The PDF and ePub versions are on sale through our online store on Gumroad, where there are also notes to help you decide which format would be best for your situation. From our perspective, the advantages of buying there are that the PDF text is densely hyperlinked with useful resources for you (vs the other editions where the resources are only linked in an Appendix), and we get about 95% of the actual sale price from that site (vs Amazon, where authors receive 70%). The Kindle version is available through Amazon.com. While we don't make quite as much per sale there, buying on Amazon has some advantages. If you use a Kindle, it's a super easy process to download. But it's also a great marketplace for the book, and the site does some automatic marketing. I secretly launched the product for sale on a Wednesday at about 1 am, and by the end of the next day it sold a couple of copies in the UK and the US without me ever so much as mentioning that it exists. The more people that buy there, the more likely Amazon is to recommend it to other readers.The limited edition handmade dirtbag print edition is also on sale at our Gumroad store. There will only be 50 produced, and they'll be handed out at our official launch party. Visit the store for more details!
Where to leave a review, and why
If you do read, it's hugely helpful if you leave a review online - even if it's nothing comprehensive or stellar.Amazon, like a lot of other online services, pushes the products with the most reviews to the top of search results. I've heard that the number of reviews is more important than the number of stars or length, so if you buy on Kindle, it hugely increases the likelihood that other people will find the book if you leave a review! (To actually leave a review, simply scroll to the bottom of the product page and click on "leave a customer review".) Goodreads and Google Books are the two other most influential review sites, that similarly direct people towards books they might like. If you didn't buy on Amazon or just want to be a super awesome supporter, it's also hugely helpful to get reviews on those sites (I'm currently working on getting a book profile set up on each page - I'll hyperlink here when they're live!)(Update: The Goodreads page for the book is live, and linked here.)
Where we'll be online The book page currently lives on the Boldly Went site here.The primary place we're building a social media account specifically for the book is on Instagram @dirtbagguide And most exciting to me is that, along with the book, today we’re also launching the “Boldly Went Dirtbag Book Club” on Facebook. It's not actually a book club, but we wanted to keep it a bit confusing so that only people who are in the know will try to join. And if it is what we hope, it will be a group with the same spirit and goals as the Guide. In essence, it's a curated way to connect the mass of awesome friends we’ve met through Boldly Went with each other. We want it be be a social media resource that's actually fun, useful, and inspiring rather than the usual "people arguing or selling things", so the goals are specifically social, practical, and oriented towards real-life, non-Facebook-based adventure! We want to help the Boldly Went community make personal connections when you’re traveling, or find people close to home who might be open to teaching you a new skill, letting you borrow gear, or showing you a new place. If you've made it this far into this post, you're the type of person we're hoping will be a part of it, so I hope you'll request to join and learn more!
Other, maybe less-obvious, things you can do Send me your feedback! This might not be standard writing practice, but this project has been hugely crowd sourced, and I would love to hear your feedback about literally everything related to the book - content you'd change or add, people who would be good to include, bad grammar, anything! This thing is a living document that's relatively easy to update, and I plan to re-release on a regular basis (maybe every year or two) to make sure references stay up to date and the project stays fresh. I'm already building a file of reader input to consider for the 2nd edition!Let me know about "watering holes" where dirtbags gather where I might be able to promote this. If you know a place where the target audience hangs out, either online or in person, let me know, because those are great points of connection to help get the book into the hands of people who might like or benefit from it! (An example, if you're not sure what I'm talking about - a friend just recommended that we try to set up a vendor spot at an American Long Distance Hiker Association gathering that's coming up in a couple of weeks. Those sorts of ideas are super helpful!)Of course, share around with friends who might find this kind of thing interesting or useful - your recommendations are a lot more valuable than my own!Our main thing is live events! If you're interested in promoting this project in your town, or in a group you're a part of, let us know - we'd love to talk about organizing an event that hits on the themes we talk about in the book. And finally, the people who pledge on Patreon are ultimately the most important supporters of this project! Consider becoming one of them! Upfront financial costs for the book were several thousand dollars, even factoring in discounted editing and art production services from friends, and doing everything as cheaply as possible. Considering the time spent on the project, it'll take thousands of sales for this project to really "pay" directly. I'm hopeful that we can get there, but many authors don't, even with full-blown marketing teams. We're appealing to a niche audience, which is part of what makes this awesome, but it also means that pledging supporters are even more important to making sure we can keep producing projects like this. (Just to be clear here - I'm not complaining or trying to guilt you in to anything - I'm just laying out the realities of self-publishing, and trying to offer as much gratitude as I can for the people who've invested in making this happen!)
Now, onward to trying to figure out how to get this thing to the masses! Thank you so much for helping make this writing dream a reality, and supporting this next big step in our crazy little Boldly Went project! Become a Patron!
January 9, 2019
How To Listen To Podcasts
Hi Adventure Buddies! Angel here, producer and host of the Boldly Went podcast. Listening to a podcast is like listening to the radio, but you have complete control over what program you listen to. Pretty awesome, right?
If you're a long time listener, you already know how to listen to podcasts. Before you go, we need your help! I hope you'll help us demystify the world of podcasting for the 2 out of every 3 people who don't currently know how to listen to podcasts. You can do that by telling them about this show, but better yet, share this article with anyone who you think would like step by step instructions about how to start listening. And at the very end of this article, I've listed some of my favorite podcasts, and I'd love to hear your recommendations too!
Can you believe 2 out of 3 people are missing out on all this amazing content? For someone like me, this can be easy to forget because I spend so much of my time in podcast production, but I see the real-life evidence because people ask me all the time how they can listen. This is a great question, buddies, and I'm here to help.
It seems like there are a million ways to listen to a podcast, and I'm regularly learning new ways to listen myself, so no judgement here if you find this world to be full of nebulous sound waves that you aren't sure how to access. In this article I won't be covering all 1 million ways to find and listen to new podcasts, but this handy-dandy guide will get you started then you can help others along in their podcast discovery journey too by sharing this article with them!
Note to readers: You'll notice I reference the Boldly Went podcast in the examples given throughout this article. If you are trying to listen to any other podcast, just substitute the name of that podcast and that should get you where you need to go. Ready to ignite your adventure? Welcome to the Boldly Went Podcast The Boldly Went podcast is released every Monday morning (Pacific Standard Time). We do that on purpose because we know that you adventure buddies might be having an adventure hangover come Monday, and we want to do what we can to help launch you into your work week. The Boldly Went Podcast is always free to listen to! Episodes are usually around 30 minutes longIn every episode you’ll hear the brief and true adventure stories told in front of live audiences at Boldly Went Shows by outdoor enthusiasts and athletes of ALL kinds. How do I find the Boldly Went podcast and start listening? Through the Boldly Went websiteBy finding your ideal podcatcher (that's a techie term for a program you can use to download podcasts) - we recommend Radio PublicTons of information about how exactly to do this just below. 1. Through the Boldly Went Website Many podcasts have a corresponding website where you can stream episodes for free. So the easiest and fastest way to find a podcast that you've heard of is to Google it.
At Boldly Went we have multiple ways you can listen through our website.
Here's the first way you can listen through our website.
Follow these steps (numbers corresponding to image below):Go to www.boldlywentadventures.comSelect the Listen TabScroll until you see the web playerClick the play button to immediately start listening.Or, select the specific episode you want to listen to then hit the play button.
Here's the second way you can listen through the Boldly Went website.
Follow these steps and see picture below with corresonding numbers:Go to www.boldlywentadventures.comSelect the Listen TabBrowse and select episodes byGoing to the Season pages under the listen tab,Going to the Field Notes Pages, orGoing to the Latest Episode.Locate the web player for the selected episodeClick the play button to start listening
2. Use a Podcatcher If you just said to yourself, 'What the --- is a podcatcher?,' join the club. I never hear this word in use, so don't worry too much about it. A podcatcher is commonly a podcasting app. What I want you to know is that using a podcatcher, after the initial set up, is the easiest way for you to follow podcasts you love so that you never miss an episode. A podcatcher tracks your listens and lets you pick up right where you left off. New episodes can be automatically downloaded and ready for you the next time you want to listen. Following a podcast in a podcatcher is way easier than listening through a browser.
In that picture just above, you'll see I added some blue stars. They're right next to Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, and Google Play. Those are podcatchers. You'll see links to some other podcatchers just below the web player including Stitcher and TuneIn.
Boldly Went is on a bunch of other podcatchers too, as many as we know exist, but it gets to be a bit much to list those out all over the website so that's why you'll hear me say, "or Search Boldly Went on your favorite podcasting app and subscribe."
To get started with a podcatcher, it's pretty simple:Select the Listen TabClick one of those buttons anywhere you see it on the page.Follow the steps to start listening, create an account, or download the app. Please keep in mind that most, but not all, podcasting apps are free to download.
What podcatcher / podcast app should I use? Choosing a podcast app comes down to personal preference. (Don't you just hate when people say that? I'm usually like, 'Just tell me which one to get so I can get started.' I totally understand, so here are my suggestions...) I recommend listening with Radio Public
To start listening to Boldly Went using RadioPublic follow these steps:Send to your phone by visiting Boldly Went's RadioPublic page If you’re on your computer: click the "Share" button, then type your phone number into the "To:" box and hit “Send.” Then we’ll text you a link to our show. Open the link on your phone, then tap the “Get the app.”If you’re on your phone, you’re one step closer: just tap the “Get the app” button.Open the app. Once you’ve downloaded the RadioPublic app, you’ll be presented with Boldly Went in the app. Click on the Episodes tab to see a list of episodes. I suggest starting with our most recent episode. Tap on an episode description to read more or press the play button to listen directly. If you want to download an episode to listen to on the go or without using your phone's data, click on the description and tap the button on the right with the downward arrow. Click "Follow" to get automatic updates in your shows queue when new episodes release every Monday!
If RadioPublic isn't really your thing, and/or you want to learn how to listen in other ways, here are my other suggestions.iPhones and iPads all have Apple Podcasts built in so you probably already have it. See the YouTube video below for step by step instructions. Androids can easily download Google Podcasts by searching the Google Play store.If you use Spotify, you can listen to podcasts directly from there. To listen to our podcast, type 'Boldly Went' into the search bar.If you have other phones, I have no idea what apps will work best for you, but I would like to update this section using your advice! So tell me what you're using, and how it works. Then I'll add it here.Sorry, flip phones and land lines probably don't have the capability to run podcasts. ;) Start Listening Our episodes stand alone so you can start listening anywhere you want. Here are some suggestions for first downloads:Start with the most recent episode which you can link to through the Listen Tab.Then check out Season Highlights episodesSeason 2 Highlights: Ep. 69 & 70Season 1 Highlights: Ep. 35 & 36And you might check out these special episodes featuring Destination Trail's 200 mile running races for something different.Field Notes 79: The Moab 240! Live From The RaceField Notes 74: Tahoe 200 Endurance Trail Run Other Podcasts to Follow I intentionally seek out podcasts by people I think might be different from me and who might be able to show me a part of the world that I don't normally get access to. So, surprise! This is about ready to go off brand because most of these are unrelated to outdoor adventure! We strive to be well rounded people over here!
Love + Radio https://radiopublic.com/LoveAndRadio Sacred Rage Dear Sugars https://radiopublic.com/DearSugarsBundyville https://radiopublic.com/bundyville-G3... Snap Judgement 99% Invisible https://radiopublic.com/99piThe Moth (duh!) https://radiopublic.com/TheMothWelcome to Night Vale https://radiopublic.com/welcome-to-ni... Mention to this brand new podcast by my friend, Beth Baker. A brand new podcast called "Why We Run" which interviews people while running about why they do it! It's oddly relaxing as you get into the cadence of their heavy breathing as they run along.
I could go on, but please, I want to hear what you like! I'm all ears! (haha!) Leave your comments and suggestions below.
If you're a long time listener, you already know how to listen to podcasts. Before you go, we need your help! I hope you'll help us demystify the world of podcasting for the 2 out of every 3 people who don't currently know how to listen to podcasts. You can do that by telling them about this show, but better yet, share this article with anyone who you think would like step by step instructions about how to start listening. And at the very end of this article, I've listed some of my favorite podcasts, and I'd love to hear your recommendations too!
Can you believe 2 out of 3 people are missing out on all this amazing content? For someone like me, this can be easy to forget because I spend so much of my time in podcast production, but I see the real-life evidence because people ask me all the time how they can listen. This is a great question, buddies, and I'm here to help.
It seems like there are a million ways to listen to a podcast, and I'm regularly learning new ways to listen myself, so no judgement here if you find this world to be full of nebulous sound waves that you aren't sure how to access. In this article I won't be covering all 1 million ways to find and listen to new podcasts, but this handy-dandy guide will get you started then you can help others along in their podcast discovery journey too by sharing this article with them!
Note to readers: You'll notice I reference the Boldly Went podcast in the examples given throughout this article. If you are trying to listen to any other podcast, just substitute the name of that podcast and that should get you where you need to go. Ready to ignite your adventure? Welcome to the Boldly Went Podcast The Boldly Went podcast is released every Monday morning (Pacific Standard Time). We do that on purpose because we know that you adventure buddies might be having an adventure hangover come Monday, and we want to do what we can to help launch you into your work week. The Boldly Went Podcast is always free to listen to! Episodes are usually around 30 minutes longIn every episode you’ll hear the brief and true adventure stories told in front of live audiences at Boldly Went Shows by outdoor enthusiasts and athletes of ALL kinds. How do I find the Boldly Went podcast and start listening? Through the Boldly Went websiteBy finding your ideal podcatcher (that's a techie term for a program you can use to download podcasts) - we recommend Radio PublicTons of information about how exactly to do this just below. 1. Through the Boldly Went Website Many podcasts have a corresponding website where you can stream episodes for free. So the easiest and fastest way to find a podcast that you've heard of is to Google it.
At Boldly Went we have multiple ways you can listen through our website.
Here's the first way you can listen through our website.
Follow these steps (numbers corresponding to image below):Go to www.boldlywentadventures.comSelect the Listen TabScroll until you see the web playerClick the play button to immediately start listening.Or, select the specific episode you want to listen to then hit the play button.
Here's the second way you can listen through the Boldly Went website.
Follow these steps and see picture below with corresonding numbers:Go to www.boldlywentadventures.comSelect the Listen TabBrowse and select episodes byGoing to the Season pages under the listen tab,Going to the Field Notes Pages, orGoing to the Latest Episode.Locate the web player for the selected episodeClick the play button to start listening
2. Use a Podcatcher If you just said to yourself, 'What the --- is a podcatcher?,' join the club. I never hear this word in use, so don't worry too much about it. A podcatcher is commonly a podcasting app. What I want you to know is that using a podcatcher, after the initial set up, is the easiest way for you to follow podcasts you love so that you never miss an episode. A podcatcher tracks your listens and lets you pick up right where you left off. New episodes can be automatically downloaded and ready for you the next time you want to listen. Following a podcast in a podcatcher is way easier than listening through a browser.In that picture just above, you'll see I added some blue stars. They're right next to Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, and Google Play. Those are podcatchers. You'll see links to some other podcatchers just below the web player including Stitcher and TuneIn.
Boldly Went is on a bunch of other podcatchers too, as many as we know exist, but it gets to be a bit much to list those out all over the website so that's why you'll hear me say, "or Search Boldly Went on your favorite podcasting app and subscribe."
To get started with a podcatcher, it's pretty simple:Select the Listen TabClick one of those buttons anywhere you see it on the page.Follow the steps to start listening, create an account, or download the app. Please keep in mind that most, but not all, podcasting apps are free to download.
What podcatcher / podcast app should I use? Choosing a podcast app comes down to personal preference. (Don't you just hate when people say that? I'm usually like, 'Just tell me which one to get so I can get started.' I totally understand, so here are my suggestions...) I recommend listening with Radio Public Personally, I've started listening to all podcasts using the Radio Public app, because I like knowing that my listens are helping to financially support the shows I follow.RadioPublic makes it easy to find and subscribe to podcasts and is available for iOS and Android. I only learned about this app over the summer of 2018. I wish I'd known about it sooner, because RadioPublic actually pays creators a tiny amount for every listen through the app. The Radio Public app is totally free to download and use so consider trying it out!
To start listening to Boldly Went using RadioPublic follow these steps:Send to your phone by visiting Boldly Went's RadioPublic page If you’re on your computer: click the "Share" button, then type your phone number into the "To:" box and hit “Send.” Then we’ll text you a link to our show. Open the link on your phone, then tap the “Get the app.”If you’re on your phone, you’re one step closer: just tap the “Get the app” button.Open the app. Once you’ve downloaded the RadioPublic app, you’ll be presented with Boldly Went in the app. Click on the Episodes tab to see a list of episodes. I suggest starting with our most recent episode. Tap on an episode description to read more or press the play button to listen directly. If you want to download an episode to listen to on the go or without using your phone's data, click on the description and tap the button on the right with the downward arrow. Click "Follow" to get automatic updates in your shows queue when new episodes release every Monday!
If RadioPublic isn't really your thing, and/or you want to learn how to listen in other ways, here are my other suggestions.iPhones and iPads all have Apple Podcasts built in so you probably already have it. See the YouTube video below for step by step instructions. Androids can easily download Google Podcasts by searching the Google Play store.If you use Spotify, you can listen to podcasts directly from there. To listen to our podcast, type 'Boldly Went' into the search bar.If you have other phones, I have no idea what apps will work best for you, but I would like to update this section using your advice! So tell me what you're using, and how it works. Then I'll add it here.Sorry, flip phones and land lines probably don't have the capability to run podcasts. ;) Start Listening Our episodes stand alone so you can start listening anywhere you want. Here are some suggestions for first downloads:Start with the most recent episode which you can link to through the Listen Tab.Then check out Season Highlights episodesSeason 2 Highlights: Ep. 69 & 70Season 1 Highlights: Ep. 35 & 36And you might check out these special episodes featuring Destination Trail's 200 mile running races for something different.Field Notes 79: The Moab 240! Live From The RaceField Notes 74: Tahoe 200 Endurance Trail Run Other Podcasts to Follow I intentionally seek out podcasts by people I think might be different from me and who might be able to show me a part of the world that I don't normally get access to. So, surprise! This is about ready to go off brand because most of these are unrelated to outdoor adventure! We strive to be well rounded people over here!
Love + Radio https://radiopublic.com/LoveAndRadio Sacred Rage Dear Sugars https://radiopublic.com/DearSugarsBundyville https://radiopublic.com/bundyville-G3... Snap Judgement 99% Invisible https://radiopublic.com/99piThe Moth (duh!) https://radiopublic.com/TheMothWelcome to Night Vale https://radiopublic.com/welcome-to-ni... Mention to this brand new podcast by my friend, Beth Baker. A brand new podcast called "Why We Run" which interviews people while running about why they do it! It's oddly relaxing as you get into the cadence of their heavy breathing as they run along.
I could go on, but please, I want to hear what you like! I'm all ears! (haha!) Leave your comments and suggestions below.
January 8, 2019
On border walls and breaking down barriers: What our show hosts bring to their communities.
Rick, Jan, and Tim Mathis at the US/Mexico Border, PCT Southern Terminus Angel here. I'm pretty excited to be putting final touches on our 2019 Winter Spring Show Tour line up RIGHT NOW! I was just tapping out an email to our show hosts in towns all over the place, and realized that I had a lot of feelings that I wanted to share with them, but with you too. So rather than burdening our hosts with all of these feelings in a lengthy email, I thought it would be better to jot out those thoughts here. Then I can do the next most annoying thing to sending a really long touchy-feely email and provide them with a link to this blog post in the shorter email I send to them instead....that most of them will probably never click. Let's face it, they're small business owners too, busy beyond belief, and clicking another link in an email is probably not at the top of their "Should Have Gotten Done Yesterday But I Didn't So Now It's On Today's List." That's precisely why I didn't end up sending all of these thoughts in that email. What do you think? Good or bad decision?I started writing this email because I wanted to share with them how important I view their roles as show hosts. Not only because they are giving us the opportunity to hear, record, and distribute stories by local adventurers from their communities that leave us flat out awe-struck, but because of the additional, non-tangible benefits they are providing to our communities, and by extension, the world.
When our hosts bring us to their towns, they are doing so much more than giving us the opportunity to listen to some cool stories. The true magic of what show hosts bring to their town when hosting Boldly Went is the creation of an inclusive space that provides equal access to adventurers of all kinds so that we can share intriguing, inspiring and impactful adventure stories together. They are giving voice and value to the stories that aren't traditionally heard. They are providing space for us to go, and to be open, and to be exposed to those stories that maybe we would never encounter otherwise.
This is why we love creating Boldly Went, because we are essentially directing the focus away from our differences and towards our audience's common connection point, outdoor adventure. When we see a person who is sharing a story that we previously perceived as different from us, connecting to the same world we do, we are suddenly opened up to see them as friends. When we do that, a tiny pathway in our brain might be prepared to learn things about the world that we didn't know or understand before and, most importantly, that we didn't even know we didn't know or understand before.
This has been hugely encouraging for me lately. Maybe because I live in a country that is increasingly divisive... (Hi Canada! I see you up there on our show tour schedule! I know these aren't your problems. I hope maybe you can see me and understand me as I write this? The government down here is shut down. I can't visit my National Parks. Public toilets on National Forest Land are untended. Park rangers, their families, and thousands of federal workers are soon to be forced to miss their paychecks because their livelihood has suddenly been pulled out from beneath them by this shut down. For...what...a border wall?)
Seriously, a border wall. Every time I think about a border wall, I remember the time I stood next to it when I started my northbound journey on the Pacific Crest Trail. It looked ridiculous; a giant ugly eyesore that blocked me from seeing the sweeping landscape as it was meant to be seen. It stopped poor animals from following their normal foraging and migration patterns. I realized then that a border wall is as much a conservation issue as any other.
I remember trying to take pictures so that the wall wouldn't ruin my memories of that day when I started such a monumental journey. And I see that border wall, that taupe colored metal monstrosity with barbed wire all over the top of it so even a tired and innocent bird would not be able take rest on it, seared into my memory as I stood with Tim, my mother and father-in-law who drove us to the southern terminus. I resent that border wall as being part of a memory that, unknowingly at the time, would be the 2nd to last time I would ever see my father-in-law walk unassisted. He died of brain cancer just a couple months later.
So yeah, I don't have a strong affection for the border wall for that reason but also for another reason. This reason has to do with how that border wall made me see at least a glimpse of what it means to be a person of color hiking in the outdoors. I remember hiking and leapfrogging along with another thru-hiker who also happened to be brown. I didn't think much about it until we ran into some police on the trail. Sometimes the trail crosses roads, and this was one of those instances, the police had barricaded the road and the trail because they were looking for people who had crossed the border illegally. I was hiking. Tim was hiking. All thru-hikers were hiking. That's what they do. We walked right by, as most everyone did. But guess who didn't walk right by? If you guessed the brown thru-hiker, you are right. He was the only one of us who was stopped for questioning. His story to me is one that made me understand the world a little more that day.
What we're creating here at Boldly Went isn't just a fun story time. I mean, it is that. It definitely is that! But it is also actively and intentionally creating spaces where we can hear all stories. This is a story that I don't usually think about, but with the border wall dilemma, I remember it. These are stories that would not be considered important enough to share with an audience. I mean, what would the draw be? But these kinds of stories are important and they are the heart of Boldly Went.
When our show hosts partner with Boldly Went and bring us to their towns so that we can work with them to create a way for people to tell their meaningful outdoor adventure stories, no matter if they are professional athletes or weekend warriors, what they're really creating is an opportunity to share important stories in the context of outdoor adventure which allows us to gain deeper understanding of who we share this big world with and how we can be better stewards of it.
That's what Boldly Went is trying to accomplish, and we think our hosts share these values and we couldn't be happier to have them on board for the 2019 Winter Spring Tour.
Don't see a show in your town and want to? Consider hosting one. It's fun! We work with you to make it easy. And your community will love you for it!
