WunderPod
On the WunderPod, Mer and Wolf have intimate and broad-reaching conversations with a wide range of creative guests about the wonders of existence: unscripted, unrestrained, and uncut.
Contact: wow@wunder.media
WunderPod
Kai Pt 1 - Farm Daddy Burn Boss
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Wolf and Mer are joined by Kai who, after accidentally becoming a firefighter, has been leading fire crews and developing fire policy ever since. We had an incredible conversation with this funny, insightful, spicy human who taught us about burning for ecological benefit and the history of our local ponderosa pine forest. Fire is medicine for the earth!
Reach out at wow@wunder.media
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Especially as like a a young, queer person growing up in a rural community, I always like longed for community.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_00And you build that really like quickly and concretely when you work in fire with other folks. Cause you like you share risk and you share hardship and you share joy when you have that too. When you look at the night sky. Be prepared to think and feel anything.
SPEAKER_05There are no forbidden.
SPEAKER_02Not knowing what's out there. Great, let the dogs out. Let's do it. Alright, welcome to the wonder pod.
SPEAKER_05Welcome! Kai. Hello, hello.
SPEAKER_02You want to give us your pronouns and then tell us three things about yourself?
SPEAKER_00I do. Yeah. Um, so my pronouns are he, they pronouns, which is a recent change for me. Excited. Start start with that, thank you. Uh used to be they them. Recently threw the he in. Love it. Um, three things about me. All right. First and foremost, I am a shy guy. Uh, which you both may know from interacting with me. But um the secret part about that is that underneath it, I'm a a really goofy motherfucker. Excuse my language. Sorry. It's the firefighter in me. Uh so yeah. You can say fuck. Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_02It's a yeah, we check the explosive box every time.
SPEAKER_00It's a it's a pretty like core uh tenant. Yeah, like verb, noun, adjective.
SPEAKER_05Yes, right.
SPEAKER_00It fits all.
SPEAKER_05It does.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, so a shy guy, but goofy underneath it all, which I think surprises people when they get to see that side. Sure, sure, sure. Um I identify as a farm daddy. So I live in Le Pine, Oregon. Wait, wait, wait, hear me out, hear me out. I live in Le Pine, which is like this is where you put banjo, bear turn or but I live on a little bit of land and I have chickens and I have ducks, and I have lots of rabbits, uh, not by pets, not by choice. Um, and a barn and a greenhouse and a really rad dog.
SPEAKER_05Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and we live out in the country and do country things like I don't know, grow food and shoot guns.
SPEAKER_05That's fucking awesome.
SPEAKER_00What the liberals in the pine do. Um, so that's number two. And uh for number three, I would just say I have a pretty spicy brain. So I um have ADHD have my entire life, always will. Uh, but it definitely has an impact on like my hobbies, the things that I'm interested in. I like go hard when I dive deep into things. So um, like we were just talking about fishing, that's like all I think about right now. I have a spreadsheet with like 200 bodies of water just in central Oregon that I want to fish this summer.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_00Um so yeah, I got a little bit of a spicy brain, which you'll probably also see play out. And probably why I'm a firefighter. Because it makes sense. It's always interesting. Yeah, lots of new things going on. I like I like the stimulus. Yeah, yeah. Caffeine, chocolate, danger, fighting fire. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So if you're such a shy guy, why on earth are you on this podcast?
SPEAKER_00You know, that's a good question, Mary. I asked myself that about an hour ago. And uh I don't know, it's good, it's good for me to get outside of my comfort zone. There we go. Push the boundaries a little bit. Yeah, I do I do a lot of like forward-facing things for my job. Um I'm yeah, I'm like in front of public audiences a lot as it relates to fire. I've been in like the New York Times and the Washington Post.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_00And I it's not my favorite part of my job, but I also it's good for me to like put myself out there and make myself articulate things.
SPEAKER_05Yes, it is.
SPEAKER_00It's a good challenge.
SPEAKER_05Put some hair on your chest. So here I am. Hell yeah. Well, thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_00I have no hair on my chest. Um I did start testosterone in January, and I have hair on my belly. It's the only place I can grow it.
SPEAKER_05Like a habit.
SPEAKER_00So now everybody knows. No, just like straight belly eyelids.
SPEAKER_05Wow, fun.
SPEAKER_00Now you know.
SPEAKER_05And congrats on that as well. Thank you. Yeah. Also, you look more stacked every time I see you. Is that because of this? Or well, you also you also lift.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but I don't know that it that's why I'm getting it. I think it's the I think it's the T. Totally. You're like farm daddy. Yeah, I farm daddy. Well, it is farm season, but um yeah, I've put on like 15 pounds since January. And all of it, I think, is it's all in your like shoulders.
SPEAKER_05In my shoulders and my chest. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_05Can you tell Wolf about the bunnies?
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I love the story. Uh somebody at some point in Le Pine in my neighborhood had a bunch of 4-H bunnies. We're talking like, you know, like 15-pound orange rabbits.
SPEAKER_03Orange?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, orange. Whoa. Legit. Uh, and they they must have released them because there's this like domestic feral rabbit population in my neighborhood. And they're huge. They're like the size of a small dog.
SPEAKER_05Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and they do what bunnies do and they breed like crazy. And they live under all my buildings. And two years ago, they girdled all my fruit trees.
SPEAKER_01Oh no. And I just about so tragic. I just about lost his.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've um, I maybe had to purchase an air rifle and start eradicating bunnies uh from my property in La Pine with a silencer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but the funny story is that one time I was on a work meeting. I work for a conservation organization, and uh there was a bunny out the window, so I I went, I went to like put my work meeting on mute or Zoom or like I'm away, I'm not here, to uh eradicate the bunny out the window of my house. And it turns out I didn't actually pause my video when I looked back, all the people in the video's mouths had dropped.
SPEAKER_05Also, you said yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I was like, yes, you know.
SPEAKER_05So funny.
SPEAKER_00All my colleagues watched me murder a bunny a couple years back on live video.
SPEAKER_05I just love that.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah. And none of none of them were surprised because they're like, yeah, farm daddy, okay.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05And also they they fucked with your trees, and that's shitty.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02But the fruit trees and the fruit trees are touchy. Like my neighbors have them, and it's like it keeping them going here is a struggle. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They're really uh they're really sensitive. And they take and it takes a long time before they can like produce and I'll be honest, I'm like not a good green thumb.
SPEAKER_00I'm not a good gardener as is, so I don't need the bunnies to help me cook things.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05You can do it all by yourself.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05Um, okay, beautiful introduction. Thank you. Um, we have the Wonder Quest to address.
SPEAKER_02Well, Meredith, why don't you start and tell us what your experience was with the Wonder Quest?
SPEAKER_05Well, Wolfgang. Um, so our last guest, Mariah, she assigned uh she told us to choose an album we didn't know anything about and listen to it all the way through twice. And I knew in the moment this would be so hard for me. Um I just got a tattoo of lavender on my shoulder.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05And I was gonna do my homework and I went on Spotify, which is not a nice way to do this um quest. Like Wolf has like hundreds of records. That would have been a dope way to do this.
SPEAKER_01But it was nice.
SPEAKER_05Anyway, I went on Spotify and I just searched lavender and I found an album by some band. I could say who it is. Okay, it's Half Wafe, W A I F. And I hated it. And um I got like halfway through, and then I'm like, I I hate depriving myself of pleasure.
SPEAKER_02If you ever got a gravestone, that would be the thing it would say.
SPEAKER_05I'm a Taurus, what can I say? Um and so that's where I stopped.
SPEAKER_02What kind of music was it?
SPEAKER_05Fucking like like pop like like indie pop, like I don't even fucking know. Yeah, yeah. Just not I couldn't do it. And the point of it was to, you know, be surprised, right? Yeah. Like, oh, you're gonna whatever. I hated it. And um and I knew I would. Who's next?
SPEAKER_02Um Kai, did you what was your experience?
SPEAKER_00Well, I similarly used Spotify, but I closed my eyes. I'm all about the random. I like leaned heavy into that, and I typed in four random letters with my eyes closed. Then I opened my eyes and I scrolled down in the results to like the first album, okay, and I picked that album. Okay. And I had to write down it was a a composer, producer, his name was Andrew Arcady.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And I like turned it on to go for a run with my dog, and I'm like running through the hood in La Pine. And it's like it's kind of a vibe of being in an action movie that's also a video game. Okay. Boom, boom, boom, chom, chom, you know, I was just like, like felt my heart rate coming up, and I was like running really fast, and then some dogs started chasing me and my my dog, and I was like, I was like, this is a lie. I got to where we were running, and it was just about the end of the album, and I was like, I could listen to this on the run back.
SPEAKER_05Or you could be calm.
SPEAKER_00Or I could be calm, so I did not. But then I looked it up, and the guy, the producer, composer, uh, is literally known for creating scores for video games.
SPEAKER_05So you got lucky.
SPEAKER_00It could have been really weird. At least it was like got me going. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05At least it was when you were trying to do something high energy.
SPEAKER_00That's true.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The dog was literally chasing me, and I was like, Oh my god. Yeah. You were in a video game. I felt like I was. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And your dog was okay, right?
SPEAKER_00He was good. Okay, yeah. He's a saint.
SPEAKER_05So yours, you did an album in Greek. Oh, wait, was that this one?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was this one. So um, yeah, this record that all the whole like cover and everything was in Greek. Um, and the only sort of clues were like there's like a very like 70s, like super soft photograph portrait of like a woman on the front, and then the inside there were like a couple photos of this guy with the synthesizer. And it's like, I think the release date was like 1978, because they're still using Arabic numerals, right? And I was like, okay, I I don't know what we're getting into here.
SPEAKER_05Um used Arabic numerals, like regular numbers. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Like, I don't think there's Greek numerals.
SPEAKER_05Okay, I was like, V, I, okay, gotcha.
SPEAKER_02Um so anyway, so I listened to it and it was totally not what I expected. Like I looked at it and I was like, I think this is gonna be some kind of like 70s soft rock thing with like some synthesizer component. But it was like I looked it up afterwards to figure out what it was and who it was. And it was, it's like they're like electronic versions of Greek folk songs, but they're like they're really good. And um it turned out that the artist was actually somebody I was familiar with. I just like had no idea because it was in Greek. Um, it's this guy, Vangelis, who scored a bunch of movies. Um, he did Blade Runner, he did um Chariots of Fire, like that super famous song, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_02Um so uh yeah, it was a great, a great listen. Actually, I had a great experience. That's awesome! This was really magical. It was it was I was like listening to sitting on the couch, just like letting it go. And it's kind of interesting because I mean it's very it's kind of like your movie or your um video game score guy, like it felt very cinematic, kind of like big movements in the music, you know, and the way that the um arrangement was. But um it was fun listening to it twice, too. I never do that. Like I can't remember the last time I like put us put a record on or a CD on or whatever, and like listened to Got in the end and was like, again, you know, like I never do that. But it was fun because the even though it was only my first and second listen, like there were parts that I rem like on the second time I could like anticipate a little bit of what was gonna come, you know, in a way that was like more engaging than I would expect.
SPEAKER_00You know, very nice. There's something rewarding too about listening to it on record and your the fact that you're gonna flip it twice.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah, I didn't think about that.
SPEAKER_02I think it's so much easier to listen to full albums when they're like either a CD or record than on my phone. Like, I don't know what it is about it, but like it's so much easier to just be like, Oh yeah, I put it on and then don't touch it again. Because your phone, you're like, what if I skip this song? What if I what if I do something else? What if I engage with it more?
SPEAKER_00Like where did you find that album, Wolf?
SPEAKER_02Um uh there's a new-ish record store um called vinyl stop that's in downtown Bend. And like once or twice a year they have like the and the way that they work, I think, is like that guy like just like goes all over the place buying up like old record stores that are closing and people's collections and whatever, and like he also sells Pokemon cars and stuff, and I don't really get that part, but um okay, dick. Um but so anyway, once or twice a year they have a $2 record sale where I think it's like all the weird stuff, you know, all the stuff that he's like, yeah, no one's coming in here to like spend ten dollars on this copy of like this thing in Greek, right? Like and they just have like probably like 20 bins of records that are all two dollars, and you just flip through. And so I went and I was like, I'm gonna get like, I don't know, maybe like five or six records, right? It must be like 10 bucks, and like ended up with a stack like you know, three inches thick, and it's like, well, hey, it's only once a year, it's fine.
SPEAKER_05So is this whole block ones you haven't listened to?
SPEAKER_02No. Uh the section at the bottom where it says new, or actually you can't really see from your side, but yeah. Oh, you labeled the new even. I got the new. So there's there's maybe like 20 records in there that and some of them have been there for a really long time, and I'm just like, I don't want to listen to them really. Although it's probably gonna be great, or I don't know, it's probably gonna be fine, right? But they're just like I'm less interested in them, or like I do that with books.
SPEAKER_05I get it. Yeah, you just see it too many times. I keep skipping over this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, cool. Sounds like a great time.
SPEAKER_02Big range of experiences.
SPEAKER_00Let me know next time it's the two dollar records sale. Yeah, I will. I'd like to check that out. It's do you have a record player?
SPEAKER_02Oh, nice. You collect records or do you buy records and listen to them?
SPEAKER_00I buy them and listen to them. I wouldn't say I collect them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm like, oh, that looks cool. Let's try it out.
SPEAKER_05Are you trying to um have your own collection of media that's not dependent on the internet?
SPEAKER_00It's never been my aim, but I think it's noble.
SPEAKER_05It is an arduous pursuit. It is noble for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, do you want to spin the wheel of wonder?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I sure do.
SPEAKER_02Wait, wait, wait. We need the next wonder quest.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_05That's from you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got this. Okay, okay, okay, okay. 2026. My goal is to lean into things that scare me.
SPEAKER_05Oh lord.
SPEAKER_00Oh that. So one of the things that terrifies me that we have a lot of in Central Oregon are caves.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yes, I'm very scared of those.
SPEAKER_00Oh, perfect. This is gonna be great for you too, then. I propose for your next Wonder Quest, you spend at least 10 minutes in a Central Oregon cave.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I have been to no Central Oregon caves. There's a ton of them. I know.
SPEAKER_05I've been wanting to go to a cave recently, actually. It's perfect. Even though they really freaked me out.
SPEAKER_00They really freaked me out too.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I was in one once like there was water in it. I was like floating on a river. What? In Loos, I think.
SPEAKER_00That's like double scary. I'm not.
SPEAKER_05I got in the entrance and I was like, I am not going any farther. And I waited until everyone was done having fun and exploring in the dark. And then I I mean, water that you can't see if I can't see what's in the water, I will not I cannot relax. So doing that in a cave when it's pitch black.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, I've done that a couple of times. It was so fun. To me, the comfort is like in the cave. I'm like, nothing lives and grows in the cave other than like a couple weird random fish and those blind grasshoppers and whatever the thing is. Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_05No. No, you don't.
SPEAKER_02There's no blind cave snakes.
SPEAKER_05There could be like a like like antenna with eyeballs on the end of them.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05And tentacles with slime coming out of them.
SPEAKER_02Sasquatch. Um yeah, that's a good point. Teenage be ninja turtles could be in there.
SPEAKER_05Thank you. And don't make fun of me. Don't be making fun of me.
SPEAKER_02Alright, ten minutes in the cave.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_00And we'll bring it up I don't know if you know this. Yeah, we'll definitely you'll definitely bring lights. Okay. Um there's a cave, the Lava River Cave. I don't know if it's open yet, but it actually goes under Highway 97.
SPEAKER_05Holy mow.
SPEAKER_02I knew about that. I did not know it went under the highway. That's wild. You can check that one out.
SPEAKER_05Can you hear the highway?
SPEAKER_00You're deep. Wow. How deep? I think there's at least like 20 feet of solid rock between you and the highway. Crazy.
SPEAKER_05I'm scared.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_00What do we got? Core childhood memory.
SPEAKER_02Alright.
SPEAKER_05By the way, I'm just glad you didn't say that we had to do public speaking for the Wonder Quest, because that is like one of my number one scariest things.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I almost said just go do something that terrifies you.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then maybe I could have asked you to like come to speak to my employees or something.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah, I have so much to tell them. Okay, core childhood memory. Um there's really no prompt here. You just kind of like can share whatever comes up first. So does anything come up?
SPEAKER_00Do you? Core childhood memory.
SPEAKER_02If you need a second, I have one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe you should go with it.
SPEAKER_05But it's but whoever goes first will influence everyone else's. I like that.
SPEAKER_02Such is life.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_05There she says.
SPEAKER_02Do you want to go first? No. Okay then. Um at one of the houses I grew up at when I was a little kid, there was this big cherry tree. Um with the pink blossoms, you know. It was really like I hadn't thought about this at the time, obviously, because I was a child, but like it was really old and like very wide. Like it went very far, you know, like I had these branches that just like went all over the place. And um, it was my favorite tree for climbing in. And I was big on climbing trees as a kid. Nice. And um, yeah, I just remember this who knows, it was probably seven or something like that, or six, whatever. And uh it was like springtime, peak bloom, and I was like up on one of the limbs in there hanging out, just like being in this little pink paradise.
SPEAKER_05Your curls amongst the cherry blossoms. I can see it. So delicate. So whimsical.
SPEAKER_02Whimsy whimsy whimsy before I even knew it was gonna be my life. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That you would lead a life of whimsy?
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_05Well, didn't even know.
SPEAKER_02Um actually, maybe I probably did know better actually at seven than now, but to be honest.
SPEAKER_05So the core childhood memory is you sitting in that tree.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, with the with the blossom. Thank you. Yeah. Take a little photograph in my mind.
SPEAKER_00Where'd you grow up?
SPEAKER_02Maryland.
SPEAKER_00Thanks. Yeah. Can you like smell the when you think about it, can you like recreate what it smelled like?
SPEAKER_02No. I don't remember it having a strong smell. But maybe it did.
SPEAKER_05It most certainly did.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Oh, you were there.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. Okay. Thanks for reminding me.
SPEAKER_00I was just curious I was just curious. Sometimes for me, smell is like what brings memories back to the strongest.
SPEAKER_02I feel like it, but it it goes only one direction. It's like the smell brings the memory. It's not that often I have the memory that I can like remember the smell from it, you know? That makes sense.
SPEAKER_05Well, now your memory has influenced my memory.
SPEAKER_02Oh, well. Good.
SPEAKER_05The way that we talk to each other. It's kind of funny. Kind of like, what's our deal?
SPEAKER_01What is our deal?
SPEAKER_05Um okay, two things came to mind. Um so I grew up on Kodiak Island in Alaska.
SPEAKER_00I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_05Yes. And I lived in this house and um we moved away in 05, and then I went back to visit maybe a few years after, and my friend and I went to knock on the door because I wanted to visit my old home because I totally felt like it was still my home, even though new people were living in there. And so we knocked on the door and we asked, I was like, Hey, I used to live here. Can I look around? Which is a really weird thing to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but not when you're seven.
SPEAKER_05They were so annoyed. Oh, I was. Older than seven, so I was eleven when I moved away, so I might have been like I don't know. Maybe yeah, I just felt totally entitled to do this. So they seemed annoyed, and they're like, Yeah, okay. And they s uh they smoked cigarettes, and it was so rude to my uh system because it was such a strong smell that I that didn't associate with home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I felt interesting.
SPEAKER_05I felt upset about that. Um and then the other thing was when you were talking about smell being linked to memory, I was thinking about taste. How every time I have raspberries, I think about when we went to visit my grandmother and and grandfather in Seattle from Kodiak. And of course, anytime you leave the island, any everything seems wacky, like crazy tropical. Like we went to Texas once, and there we went to a Denny's and there was a cockroach, and we were just absolutely like whoa. Um anyway, we were in Seattle and my grandma would always um for dessert, she would always give us a a little like grandma-asque glass bowl um a berry bowl of berries with white sugar on it, and it was just the most like quintessential summer at grandma's taste.
SPEAKER_01Aww.
SPEAKER_05The end.
SPEAKER_01How lovely.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Am I influencing you? You are influencing the first one. Yeah, see, this is the thing. Whoever goes first, it colors everyone else's.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I um I grew up in southwest Washington in a pretty rural community on a couple of acres. Uh it's like west side, Douglas fir forest and ferns, and there's a creek that went through the yard where I grew up in.
SPEAKER_05Wait, where in Washington?
SPEAKER_00Uh it's outside the closest city is Vancouver. Okay. It's outside of Battleground. Uh-huh. Uh, and it's a town, an unincorporated town called Hawkinson. Is where I grew up. Yep. Um and my middle sister and I, she's five years older than I am, would go and pick all the red huckleberries in the yard, which are like not the sweet huckleberries. They're like slightly tart. And we would put them in a cup, and then we'd put like literally probably a quarter cup of sugar on top of them and mash them all together, and we'd be like, ah, we made jam, but we're just eating like sugar crack berries.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's 80% of the way there.
SPEAKER_00It was it was the best. Um and I do remember one time in particular we were like out forging for alcohol berries down by the creek, and it's not a very big property. It's my my folks are on two and a half acres, but we uh I was I was probably like six, and she was maybe 11, would have been 11. Yeah. And we got lost, or at least we thought we were lost, and it was probably just her telling me we were lost, and I got really scared and I was like, we're gonna have to spend the night out here. There's coyotes, we don't have enough berries.
SPEAKER_05We don't have enough berries.
SPEAKER_00And then we saw my dad like ride along the riding lawnmower, like a hundred feet away. And instead of just going towards him, we were like, We have to, we have to summon him and show him we're lost. So we're like yelling. He can't hear us because he's on the lawn, like listening to the baseball game, you know. But I'll never forget that. Like us maniacally yelling in the woods, like, help we're lost, instead of just like walking the like hundred feet through the brush.
SPEAKER_02Right, but you already decided you were lost. So you were lost.
SPEAKER_00We needed rescue. Cute. Yeah. Yeah. Adorable. We talk about that still to this day. Like, remember.
SPEAKER_05When we got lost back there. I love the contrast. Have you guys being worried about the future and not enough berries and then dad's just cruising along? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's like listening, listening to the Mariners game.
SPEAKER_05Um I grew up, I went after Alaska, I moved to Squim, Washington. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Nice. Yeah. I would happily move to Squim today.
SPEAKER_05It's gorgeous. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's on my list.
SPEAKER_05It's no lapine.
SPEAKER_00It's no lapine. That's true.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. It's a very tidy retirement town. It is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'd probably live on the outskirts. Yeah. I'd probably live on the outskirts of any town. That's just kind of how I am. Deal.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Alright. It's interview time. Um okay, so you mentioned that you work in wildfire mitigation, and um it's interesting. You I mean, I've had a lot of friends who did fire. Um, and you're the only person I think I know who like did that and then was like also involved on the policy side and the decision making rather than just like, you know, you work on a crew, then you run a crew, then like you're the safety officer for a crew when you're retired. Like, you know, everybody I know has pretty much been on that path, you know. Um so anyway, um I'm interested on like how making that transition from you know doing the work, like the handwork, right, to making the bigger picture decisions has been. And also, like you mentioned, you've been in a couple of news articles about it, you know, in national newspapers, kind of what your experience has been working on that or being engaged with that at a um at the national level as well.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because you went to DC and spoke with who? Whomst?
SPEAKER_00I spoke with all the um so every congressional member, like all our senators and our uh representatives, they have chairs of like natural resources that help make all their natural resource policy decisions. So I spoke with all of them.
SPEAKER_05Or spoke to all, like you presented. Yeah, I presented. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep. And then sat down, this was last December, and then sat down with seven of our Oregon congressional delegates, so um congressmen and representatives, uh, and talked, yeah, specifically about wildfire issues.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_00It was wild. I bet. It's like a whole I have you all been to DC? Yeah. But like for like so I'd only ever been to go to a a music show once. Okay. Um, and when we were there, the person I was traveling with like got all their their car broken into and all their stuff stolen. Oh no.
SPEAKER_02It was like not a great experience.
SPEAKER_00Not a great experience. A great show, uh, but not a great experience. Um but yeah, rewinding, like to go at from being and I'll I'll go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, like that's a stacked question.
SPEAKER_00So a lot of layers. But the DC part, like to going from being like a human that's so much more comfortable in fire boots and like a hard hat to putting on like fancy leather shoes and a vest and sitting in front of a bunch of politicians was quite a transition. I can only imagine.
SPEAKER_05But it sounds like your outfit was really nice.
SPEAKER_00I I went shopping just for the outfit. I love a and then as I was buying it, I told the uh ladies working at Banana Republic where I bought it. Because I didn't really know what to do. I don't own nice clothes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh where I was going, and they were like, they stopped the whole store. They were like, this person's going to Congress. It was really sweet. I was like, I am, I'm really nervous. And they're like, you're gonna do great.
SPEAKER_02I was like, I don't know you, but uh this feels like this feels like a 1950s movie, you know?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, don't chase their dreams and save the town.
SPEAKER_00I tried. Whoa, yeah. No, um, yeah, so I I this is kind of a cool year for me. I uh I'm 36 years old and I started fighting fire when I was 18. So I've officially been in fire half of my life as of this year. Which is wild. But has been really cool to like think back and and reflect on it all. Because I did. I started out as a basic, you know, firefighter type two at 18 years old. I totally got into fire on accident. I um I took a job as a fuels technician with the National Park Service because that's what we call firefighters. That's recently changed. But I showed up for work and they were like, okay, now you go to fire school. And I was like, What? I'm a fuels technician. And they're like, You're a firefighter. And I was like, Oh, oops. Uh what did you think your job was? I thought I was gonna be like pumping gas. I don't like maybe like I mean, could have been, although I knew I was working for the park service. So I thought I was gonna be doing like, I don't know, invasive species or something, or like botany. I had no idea. I was 18 years old. My brain was like half developed still. Um but yeah, I spent uh almost 10 years working for the federal agencies, the National Park Service and the Forest Service, doing all sorts of different kinds of firefighting on the ground, um, working on hand crews and helicopters and uh engines. And during all of that, I was so freaking hooked that I decided I wanted to go to grad school after my undergrad, but I didn't want to take time off of firefighting in order to do it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I like negotiated with my um grad school advisors, like, I okay, I'm gonna come, but in the summer I'm gonna fight fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And whatever research project I do is gonna have to be in the winter. And they actually supported that. So that was like my foot in the door eventually back to policy because I did get a master's in environmental science and policy. Okay, okay. Heavy on the policy part. Um, but yeah, I just like I kept fighting fire because it was like I was getting paid to go beautiful places, uh, to see things that people never get to see in their lives. Yeah. Uh and I was like young and I had this beautiful family that I built within fire. Um in a lot of ways I tell people that I was like raised by fire.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Uh yeah, I it just especially as like a a young, uh queer person growing up in a rural community, I always like longed for community. Sure. And you build that really like quickly and concretely when you work in fire with other folks because you like you share risk and you share hardship and you share joy when you have that too.
SPEAKER_05Wow. Um, so yeah, I got you like work around the clock and you you're doing hard stuff.
SPEAKER_00There's all that, yeah. But I like I love that. Probably back to the spicy brain. Like my brain's like my job's always changing literally minute to minute. Um so yeah, I fast forward I I left working for the federal government about 10 years ago, and I started working for a nonprofit. Um, so my my day job is like working for a nonprofit leading uh prescribed fire crews across Oregon. But also as part of that, I do a lot of policy work and um public outreach and marketing to try and kind of rebuild people's relationships with fire. Sure. Because so much of fire it scares people, rightfully so, right? Um what we see in the news or what we experience often is like the evacuations and the property damage and the when you really look at fire as a as a problem, um, it's really it's a human problem in that we we as humans have lost our long-term relationship with fire and our comfort with fire. We evolved with fire. Our brains literally are the brains that we have now because we started cooking food.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00Um, so it's like it's a really innate part of us as human beings. Some cultures are a lot more closely attached to that still than than what I would call like dominant uh colonial western culture. Sure, yeah. But um yeah. So I started working for the for this organization. I still in the summers I go out and I work on wildfires in a leadership position where I like create strategies for fighting large fires. Um and and that's really fun. That's uh I get to kind of put all the 18 years of firefighting knowledge together in that I'm like, okay, I understand fire behavior, I understand strategy, I understand leadership, and I get to do that on the ground stuff.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But then as my day job, um I get to really lean into that, like reconnecting people with fire, whether that's legislators or uh the public, like anybody in the community I interact with.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's all about like, let's talk about like how does fire make you feel? Let's educate about how western forests evolved with fire. Like we wouldn't have these forests if it weren't for fire since the recession of the last ice age.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00Um so it's been a it's been a journey. Uh and one that like I haven't it hasn't always been easy because the thing that I really love doing is like being on the ground, sure. Either lighting the woods on fire or digging in the dirt. Right, right, right. But I also recognize for like long-term change and like shifting how people interact with fire, like there's all that other work that needs to be done. So I in my day job try and lean really heavy into a lot of that.
SPEAKER_05What a beautiful answer. I was really hoping um that you would teach us some stuff about fire. Like I know that I'm very like you were just talking about the people, the average person around here, um, their relationship with fire and they're scared of it. I am scared of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_05Um can you teach me something about it? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So here where we live in uh in central Oregon, the dominant forest are ponderosa pine forests that you see all around us. Um these forests have been pretty dominant since the recession of the last ice age, somewhere around like 12,000 years ago. And fire uh before Western colonial settlers came into the West and uh stopped cultural burning, removed indigenous people from the landscape, would have naturally burned through any given part of the forest here in Central Oregon every like five to thirteen years. Wow. So fire was super awesome frequent and it was large. There's we can go back and we can look at tree ring data, like we can pull the dent the a core out of a tree and we can time date fire scars uh across centuries. Wow. And we can see um exactly when fire stopped, essentially when like white people came west and said, no more fire here. Uh and before that, either through cultural burning or through lightning, fire was frequently, like I said, every five or thirteen years, and then right around 1900, 1910, we started suppressing all fire. So when you think about the woods around our community now, in areas where there hasn't been any fire for the last hundred plus years, that means it has missed potentially up to like 10 of those fires that it should have had through time. And that what that then results in is just the intense buildup of uh pine litter and sticks and fuels, etc. Yeah. And so then when fire does burn through, it's uncharacteristically severe, hot, it's what we see on the media.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um so part of the goal in terms of like creating resilient forests in this place that we live and making sure that we have forests into the future, um, is chipping away at that century of fire suppression, whether through like ecological thinning, taking out like small and healthy trees, or through what I do um in my role as a burn boss, which is burn boss.
SPEAKER_05Whoa! Very cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That needs a hat. You know, you've got that right across the front.
SPEAKER_05That needs a badge.
SPEAKER_00That's legit. Uh I wish that wasn't actually what they called us, but that is like you are a burn boss.
SPEAKER_05That's hot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh is I go into these areas that haven't seen fire in you know a hundred years. And I um do a bunch of computer modeling to figure out the white, the right weather and the right uh vegetation moisture in which to put fire down. And then we go and we we reintroduce fire into these places that it hasn't been in. And um, it's pretty incredible. It's a pretty cool thing. I don't know if I tell you anything, but we need fire. We need fire in these forests.
SPEAKER_05I just feel more comforted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's very intentional. Everything we do. And like the more intentional, beneficial fire we can have on the landscape, the less of the like blow the tops off, burn through communities fire that we're gonna see in the future. There there like is a solution here right in front of us that we can do with forest restoration. It's actually a problem we can solve, which is really helpful compared to some other things like not that we can't solve it, but climate change, which is a lot more like augered into politics and yeah.
SPEAKER_05So what does fire do for the ecosystem?
SPEAKER_00Fire, you can kind of think of it in Ponderosa Pine ecosystems at least, and it's different in every ecosystem. But here you can kind of think of it as like uh it like it mows your lawn. Like if you never mow your lawn and it gets super tall, um, you're gonna have uh it it as you like relate that back to a forest concept, like if you never see fire go through, um it you start to see in increasingly dense forest stands, you have less light penetrating the forest floor, you have less plant species diversity, you have less mixed-aged forest stands, so you essentially get a monocrop, which is then uh the worst. The worst. Yeah. It's like one pathogen outbreak, one bark beetle outbreak, all the trees are the same age, everything's gone. Um, so fire, yeah, it's like nutrient cycling, uh it supports species diversity, supports the right structure of the forest. It it is like it's like the in my opinion, it's like the heartbeat. Like I have a a friend who's a cultural fire practitioner in southern Oregon, and she always says fire is medicine for the earth. Sounds like it. That's how it's resonated with me.
SPEAKER_05Wow, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. First rad. Is there anything I'll bring you on a prescribed burn if you want to go?
SPEAKER_05I would love to.
SPEAKER_00That's like that's how we do demystify it for people. Yeah. Is we show it to them.
SPEAKER_05I feel like it's similar to watching a baby be born. Yeah. Like it's I've never done it, but I think that's something that I need to experience at some point. Yeah. So this is also like a key life experience that I need, probably.
SPEAKER_00I can see that. I have seen a baby be born. It was terrifying. Whereas fire I think is pretty cool, but it can be scary too. I've definitely had my moments with it that I'm like, ooh, wish that hadn't happened. Yeah. Oh, of course.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah, it's very dangerous, of course. How do you like decide which areas to do prescribed burns in?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's there's like multiple different reasons we would burn. Um, the cool thing about the organization I work for is we're really rooted in burning for ecological benefit. So there's kind of like two trains of thoughts around prescribed fire. One is like you burn because that's the important process that does all the positive things for the ecosystem. And then there's one that's like you burn because it reduces fuels and it reduces wildfire risk. And both are super important. Um, and oftentimes when you burn to reduce fuels to reduce wildfire risk, you get ecological benefit.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but when a lot of the times when I'm prioritizing where to burn for my organization, it's because there's prime habitat, whether it's like this is um a elk calving area that we want to make sure that we burn during this time of year so that the aspirin regenerates, so that there's a good forage space for the young elk to come in the spring. Or interesting. There's this one in the Willamette Valley where we burn, there's this uh there's a fender's blue butterfly that depends specifically on this one plant called a kincaid's lupin for like 90% of its life cycle. So we burn literally for that one plant.
SPEAKER_05A host plant, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, a host plant. Yep. Um, so that's that guides a lot of where we burn. But then at the larger level, uh, like federal agencies or like what, you know, when I go out on wildfires in the summer, uh, we burn areas that intentionally are going to protect communities if a wildfire were to come through. Because what I don't want to do as a firefighter is I don't want to be fighting the wildfire in dense forest right next to your house. I want to have a buffer zone that's already been burned, that already has less fuel, that that's where I want to fall back to so that there's like some space between your house and where I'm putting dozer line or doing a burnout operation. Um so oftentimes, yeah, we prioritize places that are in or around communities or in or around uh transportation routes to and from communities so that we can evacuate people, things like that.
SPEAKER_05Okay, here's the the big the one to bring it home or whatever. Um what do you Do you foresee for the future of central Oregon and also just areas around here that there are a lot of there's a lot of wildfire risk? Um because I have said many times really the only reason I would move out of central Oregon is because of the wildfires.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But what are you expecting for like the next decade or so? Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a really that's a challenging question because it's like short-term trade-offs versus long-term benefits. I think the cool thing about Ride Around Bend and Sun River is there's been a lot of proactive work already. Um there's been a lot of prescribed fire, there's been a lot of thinning, and there's also been a lot of wildfire that burns in low intensity, which can be a great benefit on the landscape. These forests are never not gonna have fire. What we can really do instead is we can set up the forest to receive that fire, and we can set up the communities, the people that live them in them to know how to live with fire.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And so I would say in the next 10 years, there's probably gonna continue to be a fair amount of wildfire in and around Central Oregon. The benefit being uh there's areas around Bend and Sisters where more than 40% of the landscape has had prescribed fires or thinning treatments. So those aren't gonna put off as much smoke and they're gonna be easier to handle when we actually have wildfires. Yeah, because smoke is what people are concerned about, right?
SPEAKER_05I know, it sucks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And there's that's what there's this like short-term trade-off is uh I know every time every everyone in the spring is like, oh, it's smoky because they're doing all this controlled burning.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's better for the Yeah, I'm like, okay, you could have some a couple days of smoke or you could light your house on fire. Like your choice. True.
SPEAKER_00True. And the nice thing about prescribed fire smoke is like we can tell you when it's gonna hit you. We can prepare, we can give you resources, especially like even if you're a human in Deschutes County who's super susceptible to smoke, like you can reach out and you can get resources to help protect yourself from that.
SPEAKER_05What kinds of resources? Like air purifiers?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, air purifiers. One really simple thing you can do is you can buy uh and the county and oftentimes different communities will help you with this cost if it's cost prohibitive. But you can buy just regular box fans. Like I was just at the restore yesterday and they had multiple just like box fans for like 12 bucks. And then you can buy one of those square like a furnace filter. Furnace filter and tape it to the box fan, and it'll it pull and so that you're pulling the air in your house through the filter. Wow. And that circulates a large amount of smoke out of your your household.
SPEAKER_05Damn.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There's like all there's all sorts of cool things, and we can be prepared for that smoke. Right, right, right. We can't control wildfire smoke, especially when it comes from freaking Canada. Yeah, you know, like so. Ideally, as a community who lives in a fire adaptive place, we can do a little bit of smoke in the shoulder seasons with the long-term 10-20-year goal of less smoke in the future because there's less fuel in the landscape.
SPEAKER_05Praise me. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00You got it. Any anytime I'll talk about fire all day long. Yeah. Do you have any questions?
SPEAKER_02Um, no, no. Uh that was uh that was really illuminating. Thanks for sharing.
SPEAKER_05Thanks. Okay, should we take a little break?
SPEAKER_02Let's do it. Take a break. We'll be back next week.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
