SPEAKER_00 0:00

Especially as like a a young, queer person growing up in a rural community, I always like longed for community.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And 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_05 0:21

There are no forbidden.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Not knowing what's out there. Great, let the dogs out. Let's do it. Alright, welcome to the wonder pod.

SPEAKER_05 0:36

Welcome! Kai. Hello, hello.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

You want to give us your pronouns and then tell us three things about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I 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_02 1:23

It's a yeah, we check the explosive box every time.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

It's a it's a pretty like core uh tenant. Yeah, like verb, noun, adjective.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

It fits all.

SPEAKER_05 1:34

It does.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Um, 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_05 2:13

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Uh, and we live out in the country and do country things like I don't know, grow food and shoot guns.

SPEAKER_05 2:20

That's fucking awesome.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

What 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_05 3:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Um 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_05 3:24

So if you're such a shy guy, why on earth are you on this podcast?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

You 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_05 3:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

And 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_05 4:08

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

It's a good challenge.

SPEAKER_05 4:10

Put some hair on your chest. So here I am. Hell yeah. Well, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

I 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_05 4:21

Like a habit.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

So now everybody knows. No, just like straight belly eyelids.

SPEAKER_05 4:26

Wow, fun.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Now you know.

SPEAKER_05 4:28

And 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_00 4:36

Yeah, 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_05 4:53

In my shoulders and my chest. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 4:58

Can you tell Wolf about the bunnies?

unknown 5:01

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah. 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_03 5:16

Orange?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, 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_05 5:30

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Uh, 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_01 5:39

Oh no. And I just about so tragic. I just about lost his.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, 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_05 6:22

Also, you said yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah, absolutely. I was like, yes, you know.

SPEAKER_05 6:28

So funny.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

All my colleagues watched me murder a bunny a couple years back on live video.

SPEAKER_05 6:34

I just love that.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Wow. Yeah. And none of none of them were surprised because they're like, yeah, farm daddy, okay.

unknown 6:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:41

And also they they fucked with your trees, and that's shitty.

unknown 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

But 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_00 6:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

They'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_00 7:02

I'm not a good gardener as is, so I don't need the bunnies to help me cook things.

unknown 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:07

You can do it all by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 7:09

Um, okay, beautiful introduction. Thank you. Um, we have the Wonder Quest to address.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Well, Meredith, why don't you start and tell us what your experience was with the Wonder Quest?

SPEAKER_05 7:23

Well, 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_01 7:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 7:43

And 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_01 7:56

But it was nice.

SPEAKER_05 7:58

Anyway, 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_02 8:21

If you ever got a gravestone, that would be the thing it would say.

SPEAKER_05 8:27

I'm a Taurus, what can I say? Um and so that's where I stopped.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

What kind of music was it?

SPEAKER_05 8:33

Fucking 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_02 8:58

Um Kai, did you what was your experience?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Well, 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_02 9:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

And 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_05 10:02

Or you could be calm.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Or 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_05 10:13

So you got lucky.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

It could have been really weird. At least it was like got me going. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:19

At least it was when you were trying to do something high energy.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

That's true.

SPEAKER_05 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah. 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_05 10:30

And your dog was okay, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:32

He was good. Okay, yeah. He's a saint.

SPEAKER_05 10:35

So yours, you did an album in Greek. Oh, wait, was that this one?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, 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_05 11:08

Um used Arabic numerals, like regular numbers. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Like, I don't think there's Greek numerals.

SPEAKER_05 11:17

Okay, I was like, V, I, okay, gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Um 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_03 12:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Um 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_00 13:00

You 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_05 13:06

Oh yeah, I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

I 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_00 13:23

Like where did you find that album, Wolf?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Um 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_05 14:24

So is this whole block ones you haven't listened to?

SPEAKER_02 14:27

No. 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_05 14:49

I get it. Yeah, you just see it too many times. I keep skipping over this.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:55

Well, cool. Sounds like a great time.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Big range of experiences.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Let 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_02 15:04

Oh, nice. You collect records or do you buy records and listen to them?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

I buy them and listen to them. I wouldn't say I collect them.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

I'm like, oh, that looks cool. Let's try it out.

SPEAKER_05 15:13

Are you trying to um have your own collection of media that's not dependent on the internet?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

It's never been my aim, but I think it's noble.

SPEAKER_05 15:24

It is an arduous pursuit. It is noble for sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:28

Um, do you want to spin the wheel of wonder?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah, I sure do.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Wait, wait, wait. We need the next wonder quest.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 15:37

That's from you.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got this. Okay, okay, okay, okay. 2026. My goal is to lean into things that scare me.

SPEAKER_05 15:47

Oh lord.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Oh that. So one of the things that terrifies me that we have a lot of in Central Oregon are caves.

SPEAKER_05 15:57

Oh, yes, I'm very scared of those.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Oh, 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_02 16:09

Okay. I have been to no Central Oregon caves. There's a ton of them. I know.

SPEAKER_05 16:14

I've been wanting to go to a cave recently, actually. It's perfect. Even though they really freaked me out.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

They really freaked me out too.

SPEAKER_05 16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:21

I was in one once like there was water in it. I was like floating on a river. What? In Loos, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

That's like double scary. I'm not.

SPEAKER_05 16:32

I 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_02 16:51

Oh 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_05 17:05

No. No, you don't.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

There's no blind cave snakes.

SPEAKER_05 17:09

There could be like a like like antenna with eyeballs on the end of them.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:15

And tentacles with slime coming out of them.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Sasquatch. Um yeah, that's a good point. Teenage be ninja turtles could be in there.

SPEAKER_05 17:21

Thank you. And don't make fun of me. Don't be making fun of me.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Alright, ten minutes in the cave.

SPEAKER_05 17:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

And 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_05 17:40

Holy mow.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

I knew about that. I did not know it went under the highway. That's wild. You can check that one out.

SPEAKER_05 17:45

Can you hear the highway?

SPEAKER_00 17:47

You're deep. Wow. How deep? I think there's at least like 20 feet of solid rock between you and the highway. Crazy.

SPEAKER_05 17:56

I'm scared.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

What do we got? Core childhood memory.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Alright.

SPEAKER_05 18:10

By 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_00 18:19

Okay. I almost said just go do something that terrifies you.

SPEAKER_05 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

And then maybe I could have asked you to like come to speak to my employees or something.

SPEAKER_05 18:30

Oh 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_00 18:48

Do you? Core childhood memory.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

If you need a second, I have one.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah, maybe you should go with it.

SPEAKER_05 18:54

But it's but whoever goes first will influence everyone else's. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Such is life.

SPEAKER_05 18:58

Yeah.

unknown 18:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 19:00

There she says.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Do 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_05 19:52

Your curls amongst the cherry blossoms. I can see it. So delicate. So whimsical.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Whimsy whimsy whimsy before I even knew it was gonna be my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:06

That you would lead a life of whimsy?

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 20:08

Well, didn't even know.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Um actually, maybe I probably did know better actually at seven than now, but to be honest.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

So the core childhood memory is you sitting in that tree.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah, with the with the blossom. Thank you. Yeah. Take a little photograph in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Maryland.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Thanks. Yeah. Can you like smell the when you think about it, can you like recreate what it smelled like?

SPEAKER_02 20:32

No. I don't remember it having a strong smell. But maybe it did.

SPEAKER_05 20:39

It most certainly did.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Okay. Oh, you were there.

SPEAKER_05 20:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Oh, okay. Okay. Thanks for reminding me.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

I was just curious I was just curious. Sometimes for me, smell is like what brings memories back to the strongest.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

I 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_05 21:05

Well, now your memory has influenced my memory.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Oh, well. Good.

SPEAKER_05 21:15

The way that we talk to each other. It's kind of funny. Kind of like, what's our deal?

SPEAKER_01 21:20

What is our deal?

SPEAKER_05 21:21

Um okay, two things came to mind. Um so I grew up on Kodiak Island in Alaska.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_05 21:29

Yes. 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_02 21:56

Yeah, but not when you're seven.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

They 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_01 22:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I felt interesting.

SPEAKER_05 22:25

I 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_01 23:22

Aww.

SPEAKER_05 23:24

The end.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

How lovely.

SPEAKER_05 23:26

Yeah. 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_00 23:35

Yeah, 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_05 23:50

Wait, where in Washington?

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Uh 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_02 24:34

I mean, it's 80% of the way there.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

It 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_05 25:08

We don't have enough berries.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

And 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_02 25:37

Right, but you already decided you were lost. So you were lost.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

We needed rescue. Cute. Yeah. Yeah. Adorable. We talk about that still to this day. Like, remember.

SPEAKER_05 25:48

When 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_00 25:57

It's like listening, listening to the Mariners game.

SPEAKER_05 25:59

Um I grew up, I went after Alaska, I moved to Squim, Washington. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Nice. Yeah. I would happily move to Squim today.

SPEAKER_05 26:09

It's gorgeous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah. It's on my list.

SPEAKER_05 26:13

It's no lapine.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

It's no lapine. That's true.

SPEAKER_05 26:18

Yeah. It's a very tidy retirement town. It is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah. 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.

unknown 26:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Alright. 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_05 27:28

Yeah, because you went to DC and spoke with who? Whomst?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

I 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_05 27:46

Or spoke to all, like you presented. Yeah, I presented. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Yep, 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_05 28:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

It 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_02 28:25

It was like not a great experience.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Not 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_05 28:38

Yeah, like that's a stacked question.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

So 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_05 28:57

But it sounds like your outfit was really nice.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

I 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_03 29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Uh 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_02 29:23

I was like, I don't know you, but uh this feels like this feels like a 1950s movie, you know?

SPEAKER_05 29:30

Yeah, don't chase their dreams and save the town.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

I 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_03 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

So 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_04 32:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Totally. 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_05 32:30

Wow. Um, so yeah, I got you like work around the clock and you you're doing hard stuff.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

There'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_03 33:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Um, 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_05 34:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

But 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_03 34:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

It'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_03 35:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Um 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_05 35:31

What 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_00 35:51

Yeah, that's fair.

SPEAKER_05 35:52

Um can you teach me something about it? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Yeah, 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_04 37:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Um 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_05 38:20

Whoa! Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Yeah. That needs a hat. You know, you've got that right across the front.

SPEAKER_05 38:29

That needs a badge.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

That's legit. Uh I wish that wasn't actually what they called us, but that is like you are a burn boss.

SPEAKER_05 38:37

That's hot.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah. 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_05 39:04

I just feel more comforted.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Yeah. 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_05 39:40

So what does fire do for the ecosystem?

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Fire, 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_05 40:56

Wow, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Yeah. First rad. Is there anything I'll bring you on a prescribed burn if you want to go?

SPEAKER_05 41:03

I would love to.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

That's like that's how we do demystify it for people. Yeah. Is we show it to them.

SPEAKER_05 41:08

I 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_00 41:20

I 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_05 41:34

Yeah. Yeah, it's very dangerous, of course. How do you like decide which areas to do prescribed burns in?

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Yeah, 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_05 42:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Um 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_05 42:57

A host plant, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Exactly. 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_05 43:51

Okay, 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_04 44:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:18

But what are you expecting for like the next decade or so? Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen?

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Yeah, 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_03 45:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

And 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_05 45:27

I know, it sucks.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Yeah. 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_02 45:38

Well, 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_00 45:46

True. 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_05 46:01

What kinds of resources? Like air purifiers?

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Yeah, 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_05 46:38

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

Yeah. 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_05 47:03

Praise me. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

You got it. Any anytime I'll talk about fire all day long. Yeah. Do you have any questions?

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Um, no, no. Uh that was uh that was really illuminating. Thanks for sharing.

SPEAKER_05 47:24

Thanks. Okay, should we take a little break?

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Let's do it. Take a break. We'll be back next week.

SPEAKER_05 47:29

Okay.