SPEAKER_03 0:00

The sudden thunder clapped and wolf taking two breaks suddenly clapped.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

We need to look at the night sky.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

Be prepared to sink and feel in.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

There are no end.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Not knowing what's out there. Let's do it. Alright, welcome to the wonder pod. This week we're here with Jude Coleman.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Jude Coleman. Pew pew pew.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thanks for being on the show.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

This is our least favorite part. We're breaking the fourth wall. We're talking to the audience, whereas the rest of it, we're talking to each other. So it really sucks for like the intro and the closer. We both hate it.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

The closer is easier because you're just like, you're done. You know, it's like you don't have to lead it into anything, but you're here.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

You're listening. God. Jude, tell us three things about yourself. We're diving right in. They are raw dogging it this time.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

Okay. Um so the first thing about me, I feel like, is the obvious of my living situation is kind of cute as in a tiny house. Um with my husband and my three-month-old baby, and um our two dogs outside of the tiny house is three sheep and six chickens. Wow. Um and uh innumerable birds and bees and bugs. No bats. Bats. No, there's bats. Yeah. And you're in the sisters. I'm very close to sisters, yeah. I'm like technically uh I'm technically in the band zip still. Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. I'm like between Tomalow and Sisters, but it's like seven minutes to sisters, so for all intents and purposes. I would like to come over. You should. Yeah, yeah. Um one day we will have a gathering again. Yes. Okay. Hopefully soon. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I would be delighted for you both to come.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Yeah. We cordially accept. Good.

unknown 2:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:26

What's the second thing? The second thing is in a faster duration of my current life, um, aka about eight years ago, um, I was a mega climbing dirt bag. That is who I was. And I did the whole damn thing where I like graduated college and I built out my Honda element. And I was just like traveling around the West Coast, climbing in my element, uh, literally and figuratively. Um and after being on the road for like two weeks, I think, I adopted my dog Sol. Uh so I was in a Honda Element with a dog who is a sizable dog. He's like 50 pounds. Oh my god. Um, yeah. And uh yeah, so that was uh that was a great big part of my life. Um just being so dirt baggy. I did lots of dumpster diving. Ooh. Lots of good for you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Um there's probably a lot of treasures in there that you found. Uh you know, yes, and also non-treasures, obviously. Um yeah. I one time found like I want to say like 10 pounds of oranges that seemed completely fine, and so I made a bunch of marmalade, which was cool. I guess at this point I was uh I wasn't living in the element I was living in Moab at that time, still fully in the dirt bag phase of my life, but um, I did not make marmalade in my haunted element.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

With your big dog, with my big dog. Um why do you think that we call people like you dirt bags? You know, if I'm wondering about yeah, because you sleep in the dirt.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

I yeah, I think do they? Yeah, oh yeah, oh for sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

You just throw your sleeping bag down in the dirt and go to sleep.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

Climbers are dirt bags. Do all climbers sleep in the dirt? No, but not all climbers are dirtbags. Absolutely. I think to be honest, I think that like it originally went back to like uh the Yosemite folks who were like pioneering climbing in Yosemite, um, like Dean Potter and the like. Um and um Yvonne Chenort. Yep, that duder, whose name I still yeah, cannot pronounce, even though like how many times have I seen this guy's name? Um yeah, because they were literally sleeping in the dirt. But then also I think there is a a you know, a sprinkling of the spice of like the um more like derogatory side of it of like, oh that guy's a dirt bag from the sense of like not good.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah, not great.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

Like if all you're doing is like digging in dumpsters and climbing and like smelling real bad, like you know, I think some climbing dirt bags do do some genuine dirt bag things. Like, yeah, yeah. So I think that that's where that comes from. But for sure there's a positive connotation too of like you are just a dirt bag, a bag of dirt at this point from your climbing adventures.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

So you mean that you're dirty? Yes. Yes. And was that the el the part of that name that resonated with you, the dirty aspect, or was there a part of it, another part that you connected with?

SPEAKER_04 5:32

Um, I for sure was dirty, yeah. I I mean, because like showers were few and far between. I remember uh for a hot minute, um, I would sneak into the Dixie State College locker room, female uh women's locker room, uh, and use their showers because the uh okay the locker room was on the other side of the gym. So they tapped in your ID at the gym, not the locker room. So if you just like walked in and went straight to the locker room, no one bats you in. Anyone could go in. Yeah. Um I dyed my hair hot pink in that locker room. Wow. Yeah, so but I was I did, you know, on the road. I'm on the road for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think I also connected. A different type of marmalade.

unknown 6:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:28

I think I connected to like the other, like um like the connotations we have with being a dirtbag like these days, also to it, like just from the sense of like just being very vagabondy and uh climbing really was like the majority of my personality. Like totally committed to it.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Like I feel like there's like a romantic aspect to it that's like okay, I'm just committing my life entirely to this one endeavor, right? I'm not doing and I'm like not I'm spending as little money as possible so that I have as much time and money to put into climbing as possible.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think that there was uh lots of like, I mean that's that's probably like the phase of my life where I have like the most hilarious anecdotes from of just like stories where I'm just like, oh my god, remember when? And like that's when I was a dirtbag. Um yeah. My best friend, uh hi Ellie, I love you. Um, she specifically told me that I needed to mention that at one point in my life I had a rat tail, but it was my own hair.

SPEAKER_05 7:34

Oh, even worse.

SPEAKER_04 7:36

I gave my friend a haircut, and like at this point I had really, really short hair, like like mare's length of hair. I saw your pick on your website. Wow, wow, wow, yeah, and it was even shorter than that. That was when I was like in my surfer girl phase and I had like more longer hair, but in Moab, I was like, it was really short, but I really wanted a rat tail, and so I gave my friend Jane a haircut and I was like, hey dude, can I like have for your hair? And I like braided it.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Wow. So you guys were so close. Were we close, or did I just have the audacity? No, I mean you had her hair on your head, so I feel like that's pretty intimate.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

That is true, yeah. It was she was with me for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Did you have weird dreams after that?

SPEAKER_04 8:22

No, no, no weirder than the usual yeah, interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Um yikes.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

Yeah, real, like I said, dirtbag. Yeah, real dirt bag. True, yeah. Okay, number three. Um, okay, number three, my aforementioned sheep that I have at aforementioned tiny house. Um, I spin their wool into yarn, which is my fun fact. That is your fun fact. Yeah, that's my like mega fun fact. Yeah. So now I've kind of replaced climbing with being a fiber dirt bag. I'm not the fiber bag. Fiber bag. Exactly. Yes, yes. Um, yeah, I'm very obsessed with fiber art and natural fibers and my sheep. I've been obsessed with my sheep.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Have you been knitting um adorable bonnets for your baby?

SPEAKER_04 9:13

I have not yet knit anything for Winnie. I just I think because I was working on another project while I was pregnant that I wanted to get done and didn't get it done. Spoiler. Um, and then since having her, I she only contact naps. So I actually don't have a whole lot of like free hands, free time.

SPEAKER_05 9:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

Um so I haven't made her anything yet. But Matt made her, let's see, he made her two beanies and two pairs of socks. Oh super cute.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

So cute out of your yarn, not out of my yarn.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

Um, yeah, my yarn. So the pipeline of like sheep to knitted garment is so involved and takes so much time. Do you dye it as well? I do sometimes dye it, yeah. Um, yeah, which it just adds another element to it. So I've been working on a cardigan for a year now that's like just from my sheep's fleece. And so everything that I've been spinning pretty much has been going to that, other than a few skeins that I spun for a friend as a gift. But um, yeah. And then spinning takes so much time too. It's like I def you definitely can't do that while holding a baby. So like every limb is occupied.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

I mean, I only know about it from what sleeping beauty.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

I guess that's an accurate representation. Pretty accurate.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

You never went to like those old like towns where there's like actors and stuff, like showing you how like the pioneers lived and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 10:34

No, I guess I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

There's always a woman there spinning yarn.

SPEAKER_04 10:38

That's so weird that you've never done that. Have you never done that? No. What I did that so much as a kid. Okay, weird.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

I guess maybe there's maybe it's more of an East Coast thing. More old towns.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

Definitely. Okay, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah. That's true. And actually, the ones I've been to out here, there's not like reenactors usually. It's just like here's an old town, you pay six dollars and you walk around. Oh, they are LARPing. Yeah. But they're like, they're loving it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

LARPing and loving it. Hashtag LARP and love. Um, how do you dye it? Your wool yarn wool.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Um yeah, I so I mean the kind of short explanation of the process is you make a dye bath with whatever you're gonna dye with. You can use beets. Um calendula, mustard. Let's see, mustard probably wouldn't do anything. Calangula, you probably get like a faint yellow. Okay. Um beets so a lot of a lot of really vibrant stuff like beets are what we call fugitive colors, which means that it dyes it, but then it washes out. There's no staining power behind the dye. And so certain plant pigments, it it depends on like the basically like the molecular structure of the pigment, if it's going to bond on to the structure of the wool. Yeah. And so you first treat your wool. Oh my god, sorry. You first treat the wool uh with something called a mordant, which is um uh there's a bunch of different ones. I typically use alum, which is I think it's short short for aluminum. I'm pretty sure it's like a derivative of aluminum. Um and it kind of acts as like a middleman, so that bonds onto the wool. And then when you put the wool into your dye, the dye actually bonds on to the mordant and and the wool. So it like helps it helps keep those dyes in. So first you would mordant, then you would make your dye bath, whatever you're gonna use. I use flowers most of the time. Um, last year I tried to use indigo, which like had mixed results. Um, and usually you just make those baths with like steeping whatever part of the plant you're using, so kind of like just making a strong tea. Um and then you dunk your wool in and you just leave it until you feel like the color is good.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Um I mean, how long would you leave it?

SPEAKER_04 12:57

It it totally, yeah, it totally depends. Um, some dyes you don't have to leave for very long at all. Um, like marigolds, I really like using marigolds, and that's like uh it's it's kind of more of like a yellow, yeah, on the yellow side of orange. Um that you can get away with like five minutes in the dive round. Yeah, but then there's other stuff. Um, another thing I really like dying with is lichen. There's a type of lichen that grows in the woods around here. Um I can't remember what the Litharia Vulpina, I think, wolf lichen. Okay. And it gives you this incredible, like, it's like a day glow yellow. Where it's like almost green. It's really cool. And that you want to like leave it to soak overnight. And that's how you get the most oomph out of it. So it's really yeah, and that's what's fun about dying too, is it's like such an experiment and like such a I don't know, it's like so many things can affect what's happening and like give you different results. So it's just very variable, which makes it fun and a lot of experimenting and yeah, excited. Okay. Wow. Are we ready to spin the wheel of Wunda? Um excited for the wheel. Are you gonna skip core childhood memory again? As you did setting time. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

I don't know. Maybe, maybe we'll maybe we'll get a good one this week. Okay. Okay, we'll see. We'll see where we get.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

We're hoping that you get spin a yarn. No pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Wow, no pun intended, but we were like it would be good.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Okay, let's manage. But we were thinking earlier, like, oh, we haven't gotten to spin a yarn yet. Did it actually come?

SPEAKER_04 14:34

Spin a yarn! We got it! That's incredible. Oh my gosh. Okay. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

So the way this works is that we are gonna create a story together. Okay. We're gonna go around one word at a time. Oh, I love it. Who wants to start? Who has a word? At wolf's funeral. We delighted in. I don't love that we're talking about your funeral. Um, we delighted in gaping.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Holes of dough.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Oh, that's two words, bro.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Sorry, I took off. It's my funeral, okay?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Holes of dough. Dough. Okay, holes of dough. Uh, I can work with that, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

The sudden thunder. Clapped and wolf taking two brains.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Suddenly.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Clapped. In time. With death.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Period. I think that's good.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Wow. Wow. I'm sweating.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

What a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

You know what? Spinning yarn always gets me so sweaty.

SPEAKER_04 16:12

Um, I mean, I can imagine this one in particular.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Like, yeah, like him clapping suddenly, like, wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Clapping suddenly in time with death, though, is great because it's like, does that just mean I didn't clap at all, right?

SPEAKER_04 16:24

I mean, like Or does it mean you just really slowly clapped? Like you're just in your grave, like, oh slow clapping. Slow clap. Good job, death.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

I would hope there'd be some celebration from him. Question mark, but not too much. All right, moving on. Okay, hit it one more time. The spin. Okay. Big questions. Tell us about someone in your life who has shaped you into who you are.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Wow. Um you can take a sec.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

That's a big one. That's a big question.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

I guess I guess I guess the first person that pops to my mind is my nana.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

It doesn't have to be Beyonce or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_04 17:15

Oh, I didn't even think about someone I didn't know in my life.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

I'm just saying, your nana is a great choice.

SPEAKER_04 17:21

But that could be an interesting spin. Um, yeah, so my dad's mom, my nana, um definitely is the one that instilled uh all of my um, I guess I would say like homestead forward interests. Um she lives on a tiny island in the Puget Sound called Orcas Island. Um and yeah, lives in a little farmhouse. Uh I grew up with she had horses there, she had chickens, she had a great garden that like always seemed like there was something in it. Um and yet I never seemed to see her actually gardening. So like big question mark that she just like had things just like really set the heck off. Self-sustaining. So self-sustaining. Cool. Um I mean, I'm sure she did plant stuff. It's not like I was, you know, watching her through a webcam or anything. But um, yeah, and uh yeah, she, you know, just did a lot of kind of your classic like trying to live sustainably things that I think you know nowadays it's interesting because it's such a trend to uh try to live more simply and do things self-sufficiently, but in her heyday, it's just like what you did to be alive.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Especially if you're in a remote place like that, right? It's not like you could just drive to the grocery store.

SPEAKER_04 18:45

Exactly, yeah. And I mean she had I guess five, four or five kids and like not a lot of money, so it's like you're not canning stuff for the aesthetic, like you're canning stuff so you can like feed your family through the winter, yeah, exactly. So um, yeah, so I I mean I I grew up, you know, making jam with her, and uh for a long time she raised horses, and so I helped her. Like, I I don't know how much I'd really say I was helping to train them, but I spent a lot of time just doing what she told me to do with the horses, you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 19:19

Um, so I was definitely a certified horse girl.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Yay!

unknown 19:25

Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 19:26

Honestly, who's not a horse squirrel? Regardless of your gender, I think everyone is a horse squirrel at heart.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

I'd like to learn more about your perspective on that because I've never identified as a horse squirrel.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

Okay, fair enough. Maybe I'll say a lot of people are a horse squirrel.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

I mean, I'm gonna need to hear your definition of a horse squirrel.

SPEAKER_04 19:43

Just the horses. That's the definition. Honestly. Sounds complex. I feel like as a kid, like you just like look at a horse and you're just like, wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, they're just incredible and they are majestic. Majestic and quite powerful, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Are you a horse squirrel?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah. I used to ride horses when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Nice. I mean, you know, I got on a horse, but I was really scared of them. That's fair. I mean they are big.

SPEAKER_04 20:07

They a healthy dose of respect and respect for them. Yeah. Uh they'll kill you. Yep. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Um I was so scared of their butts because if you go behind them, they'll kick you.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

That's where the power happens. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Those rumps carry all the power. Yeah. So does mine. Anyway.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

Back to your nana. Is she still with us? She is. Yeah. She's uh I want to say she's 86.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

And has she uh come to your farm home?

SPEAKER_04 20:40

Yeah, she last year um when Matt and I got married, um, she came to Bend and she also visited some time before then, I believe, just really briefly, kind of a spontaneous. It's uh hard to get off the island, especially now. Um the ferries are buku because of all the tourists and stuff. So it used to be when I was a kid, back in mind's eye, you could just roll up to the ferry like an hour early and get on the ferry. Now you have to make a reservation like a week in advance. Oh my gosh, yeah. Super surprising, yeah. And I mean it's got like kind of a problem for the local people that live on islands.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Um it should be local reserve seats.

SPEAKER_04 21:18

I think that's a really good idea. Some degree of like flexibility with like the ferry guys when you're like, hey, I live here and I really need to get to the mainland. I'm sure that they will pull a few strings.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

How far is it from the mainland?

SPEAKER_04 21:33

Um, Orcas is one of the farther islands, so it's about uh I think direct the ferry line takes about an hour to get there, but it's usually the last stop. So you usually will stop at Lopez and then Shaw and then Orcas. So the whole thing is like an hour and a half ride. Wow. And then obviously you have to drive from the mainland. Yeah, you know, so it's definitely involved to get there. Um but it's a very cute island, super charming. Um I loved visiting there, and uh, I kind of felt like I like more or less partially grew up there.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

So I was curious how she um like, did she seem proud of you about all the stuff you're doing that she taught you to do? Seems kind of a bit like a big deal. If I were her, I'd be pretty excited. That's a really good question.

SPEAKER_04 22:26

I don't know that she's ever explicitly said like that she's proud of me, or like, oh, that's so dope, or you know, typical things Nana's saying. Yeah, no, she's definitely like expressed excitement about things. Um like when I got our chickens, uh she was excited that we were getting chickens, and she like you know, gave me the download of like don't bother doing XYZ and here's how many chickens you can fit in your coop and you know, whatever stuff like that. Um I'd like to think she's proud of me.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

That's really a big thing that she gave you.

SPEAKER_04 23:01

For sure. Yeah, I definitely I mean, I think we get so much influence like from so many places in our life. You know, I feel like it can be hard to like pinpoint exactly where our interests come from, but for sure, like I mean, from five years old I was running around on a farm. Yeah, it's no surprise that now I'm doing the same thing running around on a farm.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

It's amazing. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Wow, Jude. Wow, what a guy. Wow. I never asked you your pronouns. Oh, she her. Uh yeah, I knew them, but I didn't know if you wanted to say them.

SPEAKER_04 23:32

I yeah, forgot to mention.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah. There you go. Well, thanks for telling us about your uh sheep. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, thanks for thanking me.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Homesteading inspiration.

SPEAKER_04 23:44

It's like when you like go to the grocery store and you like buy like a you know specific thing and they're like, oh, have a good day, hope you enjoy that. And you're like, Yeah, hope you too.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Crap. Awkward. I'll write your letter. Yeah. All right. Um, let's go um eat some turkey outside.

SPEAKER_04 24:02

Outside turkey.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Outside turkey.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Thanks for listening to the wonder pod. Um, if you enjoy the show, send it to your friends, rate it, and you can leave comments. And uh if you have questions or thoughts, you can send us an email. Wow at wonder w n d r.media.