National Park After Dark - Around the Campfire ft. Dave and Ilysa Kyu

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Today we welcome Dave and Ilyssa Kyu, the masterminds behind the books you’ve probably seen at your local outdoor shop - Campfire Stories! Volume II is out now and is full of amazing stories from parks around the country. Dave and Ilyssa speak to us about the inspiration behind the books and share some of their personal favorites.You can find Campfire Stories Volume I and II at your local bookstore, outdoor outfitter or online.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Beam: Use our link and code NPAD for up to 40% off.  Prose: Use our link for a free in-depth hair consultation and 15% off your subscription, plus $20 off your first subscription order.Apostrophe: Use our link and code NPAD to get your  first visit for only $5.Hello Fresh: Use our link and code 50npad for 50% off plus free 15% off the next 2 months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. We have a very special episode for you all today. Another book recommendation. I know. You're shocked. I know. Add it to the imaginary book club.

Yeah. Don't get on us either about that because I'm not doing it. it right now. It's going to happen. Stop trying to make the book club happen. It's never going to happen. It might happen. It might happen. It's just not right now. We're too busy. But we do have another book recommendation today. We're really excited. You may have heard this one before. Or you might have seen it on your adventures out into national parks because it's a very popular book. But in case you haven't, we have all the details for you today. Yeah. So today we have two very exciting guests, not just one. They are the editors of the book you've probably seen on your local bookstore shelves or like Cassie said when you're out and about.

I think I saw, did we just see it in Yosemite? Yosemite. Yeah, we definitely just saw it in Yosemite. Yeah, at the park store. So chances are you've seen it. You may already even have it on your own shelf. Inspired by America's beloved national parks, Campfire Stories, Volume 2 is a collection of modern prose, poetry, and folklore featuring commissioned new and existing works from a diverse group of writers who share a deep appreciation

of the natural world. While the original campfire stories, Volume 1, captured many historic tales reflecting the first 100 years of the National Park Service, this completely new collection depicts the parks as we know and experience them today. And they feature stories from all over the place, from the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, Olympic, Glacier, and Joshua Tree, as well as a National Scenic Trail. Contributors represent a wide range of voices with different backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences, including from the BIPOC and LGBTQ plus communities. The first volume of Camp Fire Stories swept the nation, and the second volume builds on this foundation of community and place-based outdoor storytelling with an emphasis on diverse voices

and contemporary tales perfect to share around the fire. Editors, Alyssa, and Dave Q are the dynamic duo editors behind the book. Alyssa is a design researcher focused on inclusion at a global creative consultancy and is also the founder of Amble, a sabbatical program for creative professionals to take time away with a purpose and support of nature conservancies, which she talked a little bit about in our interview, which was really interesting. And Dave is an artist, writer, and arts administrator. Born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in the U.S., he explores the creative tensions of

identity, community, and public space throughout his work. They live with their two daughters outside of Philadelphia and are always seeking adventure and connection in the outdoors. And we are so excited to have them on the show today to share some of their favorite tales from the book. Well, welcome Dave and Alyssa to National Park After Dark. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us. We are so excited that you're here because I personally have had both the Campfire Stories Volume one and two. They're right on my shelf over here. They're in like every REI. You go into every bookstore. So we're really stoked that you're here. And we know that you have a couple of things to share with us today. But we have a couple questions for you as well. Sure. So just to get started, can you tell us a

little bit about yourselves, you know, where you're from, how you got started in your careers and what inspired you to put together campfire stories? Sure. So I'm Alyssa. I'm a design researcher. I'm based in Philadelphia. My background is in industrial design and I work with nonprofits, corporations in developing new ideas or products or services. And I'll let Dave introduce himself and we can talk a little bit about how we got into Camp Fire Stories. Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Dave Q. I have a visual arts background. Also important, I was born in Seoul and came to the US around age one. So I grew up here. I specialize in a field called social practice art. So I'm not in my studio. I'm not in a studio. I'm not painting. I'm usually typically making artwork with communities.

So it was a natural kind of transition to looking for stories in, in and around national park communities as well. Yeah. And we kind of arrived at the idea for the book fairly soon after college, I would say, for me, I like to say that I had a quarter life crisis and kind of rushed through. to being an adult and, you know, went to college, got a job, got another job, got kind of bored with that job, and was always looking for another sort of project to fulfill my passions and interests. And we had this idea for something that I was actually looking for as a gift for Dave. I thought it would be cute to get him a book of camfire stories. We had recently kind of fallen in love with the outdoors. We're going camping a lot. Kind of by accident. We were supposed to go to

Toronto and there was a trash strike, but all the business is closed. So we were like, that does not sound fun. So we rerouted to Acadia National Park and really fell in love with the outdoors and camping and found ourselves at night around a campfire, kind of wanting a little bit more. We didn't have like stories to share. I kind of have this picture in your mind of like what a nice quaint campfire looks and feels like. And we found ourselves like reading all the like park maps and all the little facts and details in those. And, um, you know, we'd go to like Big Sur and go camping and read our little guidebooks. And there was always something about learning about the landscape and animals and geology and getting to know people during travel. And we just felt like that was like a really nice time to kind of like

settle in after a big hike and day of exploring and get to to know a place a little bit. more. So we decided to create our own collection of campfire stories centered around the national parks that year where it was the centennial celebration. And we thought, hey, this might be a nice way to kind of frame this collection of stories. And back to the gift idea, I could not find anything that was, you know, not just focused on spooky scary campfire stories and we're whims, which you probably have noticed in the there are not a lot of spooky scary stories. stories. Sorry for all the listeners here, but that's all we could really find. So we wanted to create something that was more about place and gave you a sense of place versus just kind of building

suspense or scaring people away from the outdoors. You know, I love that because I'm kind of the same way. I know we talk about spooky stories and things like that, but I have heavily veered away from true crime and things because I love the real stories that are happening in National parks that aren't so scary. So I love that you guys feel the same way because I know a lot of our listeners do too. We get comments all the time that are like, oh, I love this lighthearted story that you just did. It's like a cleanse. It's like a palette cleanser. I feel like there's, for me, there's a difference too between like true crime scariness versus like natural disasters. Like I could, I would much rather deal with like, I don't know, an earthquake in Yosemite than

someone deciding to murder somebody in Yosemite. Those things are just like very different for me in terms of how scary they are. An earthquake feels more survivable, I think. Whereas if someone's chasing, I just picture like being chased with an, I don't know. It's just like, you know, an earthquake, you're like, I could, I could get through that. But a murderer, I don't know. That's scary. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis,

Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So for your book that you have, this is volume two that has just come out, how did you choose the stories that are in there? Because there's a wide variety of topics that you chose and types of writing you chose as well. We do, we jump in with a lot of research for this, I guess, and we ultimately try to find aspects of the park that we want to represent. And we like the anthology format because it does give us, and the reader an ability to jump around, have different types of stories, but ultimately, you know, we want the collection to represent. If you as a reader sit down with Campfire stories,

is you can read these six to seven stories about these parks and walk away with a deeper understanding of how these places came to be, how they exist today, who the inhabitants were before this place was a park. We want to communicate all of that. For this volume, for the second volume, we did a new process where we worked with living writers, go figure. Because for the first volume, we thought the only way that, you know, we're in the Philadelphia area and we wanted to put in our, we thought we had to put in our time and our travel for us to understand the places well enough to communicate those places to the readers. But in the second book, we realized that I guess what happened was there was a pandemic, might have heard about it.

And we realized all of a sudden that a lot of these places, a lot of the people in these places were more available. Because if you were to ask someone to have a Zoom meeting from across the country in 2015, they'd be like, what are you talking about? You know, just come to my house. But all of a sudden, in 2021, we could make that request and start to get on the line with people and start to ask them the same questions. You know, what do you love about this place? What do you want to communicate about this place? And we decided that it didn't have to be us telling all the stories and then being in

these places for a couple weeks at a time trying to understand these places in our hearts and our bones and our feet before we told the, before we found this collection. And we thought we would find writers who understand these places put together a collection that way. Could either find existing stories or commission news stories. You know, we did put together a Kickstarter campaign, and it was important for us to raise money so that we could pay individuals to go travel to these national parks because there's a, we acknowledge that there's an access challenge and we wanted to make it. Yeah, I mean, with the collection, we do want to make the parks more accessible, but we also want to increase who gets to go to those parks, who gets to experience those parks, and ultimately who gets to tell the stories about these parks. I think one part that you left out and that kind of addresses your question when we worked on volume one and we went to the.

these places. A lot of the stories that we collected came from libraries and archives, which means that at some point in time, someone deemed these stories worth preserving or saving and telling, which unfortunately, given our history, leaves some people out and some voices out of that narrative. And from the very beginning of this project, we always set out for this book to be a diverse collection of perspectives and stories. And even with that goal, it was hard to find those stories from non-living writers and even some of the publications in those places. So we always had it in our mind that if we ever did this project again, we would do it differently. We didn't quite know how yet. But the pandemic weirdly being locked in opened up such a big opportunity for us to be more

proactive about reaching out to connecting with and being more, you know, selective in who we wanted to invite to write stories for the book so that it would be more diverse. And that's lovely. And I think it's so important to give people voices in the outdoor space that don't necessarily always have them firsthand. And you had these people who were writing these stories. You said go to national parks and write these. Yeah. So the folks that were awarded a travel stipend, went to six of the, well, five of the parks and one trail. So they went to the park and really open-ended in terms of what they were able to write about. We didn't really give them any criteria or anything, but we selected them based on the work

that they shared with us and what they were interested in exploring. Well, this volume includes a combination, obviously, a lot of different. types of stories. So we have firsthand accounts, indigenous histories, excerpts from different memoirs and diaries, there's some myths, even some ballads. So that kind of like kaleidoscope of different types of stories just really is so intriguing. Because number one, they're different types of stories, but like you just highlighted, they're coming from a lot of different types of people with various backgrounds and various perspectives on different parks. So we know that you came with a couple that you wanted to highlight and kind of share a little bit about from the book. Is there a

particular one you'd like to start with? Yeah. So when we were thinking about this podcast and the idea of like things going wrong, a couple of stories came to mind. So we selected two writers and two stories that we would share with you today from the new volume, volume two. And the first one is from the Grand Canyon, which people might, might know is considered one of the most dangerous national parks based on the fact that there are so many search and rescues that happen. I think it has the most search and rescue incidents in the park, the whole park system. I have here 785 incidents between 2018 and 2020. So that's a whole lot of search and rescues. A lot of times in the Grand Canyon, And people sort of plan for the hike down and don't really realize about, you know, the hike back up.

So that's kind of where people fall into trouble. A lot of times the incidents that happen relate to, you know, dehydration, heat stroke, water intoxication, which was new to me when we started working on volume two. We have, you know, desert parks in this book. We are not desert people. I feel like for all the reasons, you know, why people get into trouble, it's just it's hot, it's dry. You have to really plan when you go out into that type of landscape. So there's a story in the book from Mary Emmerich, who I believe we've reached out to her through the process. And she was a national park service and forest service firefighter.

And she shared with us a story about this time that she was stationed in the Grand Canyon in one of like the hottest June months. And she described it as, you know, she set out to fight fires. And she ended up picking up the dead and dying from canyons that are blazing on the inside. And a lot of times the people that find themselves in trouble, she describes as in a way like those people are the foolish, the unprudgeoning. the unprepared and the plain unlucky. So I'm going to share a little excerpt from her story. And I'm going to start at the beginning of it so you kind of understand what is about to happen. And I'll read a portion from a rescue that she was a part of. So when I arrived at the Grand Canyon Hella Base, the air is still deliciously cool. It is easy to believe that today will not be like yesterday.

Today, I won't end up a bystander to somebody else's tragedy. The rescue helicopter will stay at the base instead of dipping below the abyss to hover along the Tonto Plateau, searching for hikers in distress. Nobody will fall out of a raft into the Colorado River. Someone won't die today. I want to believe this even though none of the days preceding this have even borne this out to be true. It is June when nobody should hike below the rim, but everybody does.

A woman is lying on the ground. Her boots dusted with red limestone. She is still not moving. Her pack is abandoned by the side of the trail, A day hiker. I have hurt my eyes. It is too easy to be drawn in, and I've already learned that I can't be invested in the outcome. I have to shove all my emotions deep, where they can't prevent me from doing my job. I need to let the paramedics work while I deal with the husband. He is distraught. They always are. Is she going to be all right? We were just hiking. She was fine, he says, climbing into the extra flight

suit I brought along with and not protesting. The partners of the ones we rescue are combative sometimes, but he seems dazed and compliant. I have no answers as I lead him to. to the helicopter and the patient is loaded in on the backboard. He is lucky, though he wouldn't believe it right now. Sometimes we don't have room for the rest of the party and they have to hike back up all the way alone past the rest houses and the happy people coming down. Nobody can hike fast enough to escape their thoughts. Another name for hyponetremia is water intoxication, as if you were drunk on water and you are. Your body bursting with water but dry of electrolytes. People at this stage act intoxicated, wobbling and stumbling. They laugh,

they don't realize the danger, it can progress quickly as it has with this woman. The stage-pass intubation, a tube shoved down her throat to help her breathe, can be coma and death. We lift off quickly. Eddie's face is inscrutable. He has been at this for a long time and nothing rattles him. He points out that the remains of a car embedded in the top layer, Kabab limestone, an accident, purposeful, I never learned. But there it is again, someone who cannot be rescued.

The husband and I are left unceremoniously at the hellabase. He will have to drive to Flagstaff while the helicopter takes his wife to the hospital there. He lingers for a moment. Confusion written all over his face. How could a simple day hike have turned into someone fighting for her life? I want to tell him that I don't understand it either, that before I came here, I thought of wilderness differently, always working in alpine environments. I know about lightning and bears and creeks running high with snow melt. If you're prepared with the right tools, you can usually save yourself from a tragic fate.

But this place, stark and beautiful and indifferent, it draws people. in. The corridor trails lure them to go just a little bit farther. I have seen these people in flip-flops and carrying a half-liter of water. Before they know it, they're 2,000 feet below the rim and have to climb back out. I think uneasily that this man probably shouldn't be driving the 80 high desert miles to Flagstaff by himself, but none of us can leave the base. More rescues are being called in and I see one of the crew grabbing a flight helmet. The man leaves finally. I have never learned his name. I will never know if she lives or dies, though the scale is not tipped towards survival. The helibase is set far back enough from the tourist routes

along the rim that there may as well not even be a canyon, but I know better. I can feel its presence. In my mind, I can see the trails, red dust rising as I hike, a slender ribbon of river seen far above, a seduction. Soon there will be another call, someone wavering between life and death. I have goosebumps just because the way that she obviously painted that story, like you feel like you're there, even if you've never visited. The Grand Canyon, specifically, I think everyone has come across a hiker and flip-flops, you know, or whatever, you know, that presents itself as. Or someone, you know, hiking to the top of a mountain and, you know, with no layers and a t-shirt

and dusk is right around the corner. And you just internally, or maybe you have been that person in one way or another. And, you know, you just find yourself in this situation or see others in this situation. and the whole not knowing what happens to them, like you never see them again. And I think a lot of people, whether you're actually in search and rescue or not, can kind of relate to that story.

Yeah, I think one of our favorite things about the Grand Canyon chapter is there's a conversation happening between the different stories in the chapter. We have, you know, this rescue story, but before it, we have a story about, you know, a indigenous person. sort of experiencing the trail and making a comment in the story about people who are hiking down into the canyon barefoot. And then we have later a story from someone who is a barefoot runner and identifies as that in a way that she connects with the earth below her. And then you also

have this perspective of someone needing to be rescued in the Deborah Taffa piece as well as the one that I just read. So we like to give all sides, all perspectives of, you know, why people might make that decision and what can go wrong. I think that gives people such a more understanding to when you're reading firsthand accounts from so many different perspectives because I think it would be really easy to be like, oh my God, that person's going barefoot down this. And then when you hear the perspective of someone who actually does like full activities barefoot and a lot of people participate in grounding when they're out to feel more connected to nature. Like, oh, I didn't think of it that way before. So to have so many different perspectives in that is really cool. And I think even in

just that one story you told, there were lessons that this rescuer gave. The first one that popped out in my head was she was talking about drinking too much water and not having electrolytes, which I think for many people, you think, oh, I have water. I'm staying hydrated. It's hot. And then when you think about it, it's like, wait, my body needs salt. Wait, I need. more than that. And so I think even in just that small sentence, she said there was like a life lesson that was thrown into her story. Yeah, totally. I did not really know this before reading some of these stories from desert stories from Joshua Tree and Grand Canyon. That it is, it could be a lifesaver to just pack a little baggy of almonds or some other salty treat to make

sure you're replacing the sodium that you're sweating out and the electrolytes in your body. Yeah, I was recently hiking Mount Washington with my brother and he was like chugging water doing all this stuff. It was kind of a hot day and we get a mile to the summit and he starts cramping his whole like so much that he wasn't able to walk that well. And thankfully Mount Washington is covered with a ton of runners and things. And I had I had like granola bars and some trail mix and salty things that I gave him. But he just didn't. It wasn't enough. And all these runners came by. and they're pulling out these salty gummies and like these the goo and all the stuff and they're just giving it to him and it helped significantly and he got to the top and everything was fine. But for a while there, he was struggling and it just reminds me of that like you have to make sure your electrolytes because your body does shut down in ways that you may not necessarily think about.

Yeah, so often my relationship to like walking by somebody wearing flip flops, somebody that is obviously not prepared, you know, I think good luck. And that's the extent of my relationship to that. person. But it's so different when you are the person responsible for saving those people. All this, your relationship to people, your relationship to place, you see every, every type of thing that can go wrong, you see it. Yeah. I love hearing from that perspective. And the anthology format does give us the ability to kind of visit that perspective and visit, you know, other perspectives as well. Yeah. Well, I loved how at the end of the excerpt you just read,

she was describing the visual of the Grand Canyon and just how she was seeing it as far as like, I hope I don't have to go down there, but I'm going to, you know, there's going to be another rescue and how she sees the danger in the landscape, whereas through our eyes or a visitor's eyes, we see, you know, a hike or an adventure, beautiful scenic vista. And, I mean, everyone can say that based on their profession, I think. Like Cassie and I were veterinary technicians for a very long time. So we see, you know, very different situation, but, you know, people give their dogs like hard bones or antlers, deer antlers. And people see that as a fun treat for their dogs. And I see a cracked carnesial tooth and dental surgery in their future. You know, like your profession and your experience changes the way that you see certain things. And that was a beautiful illustration of that. Yeah, for sure. All right. What's next? I want to hear the other one. Okay, I get to tell you about Ed Rosenthal.

Ed is a poet and a real estate agent in LA, based in L.A. He was celebrating his biggest sale yet and decided to celebrate by going out to Joshua Tree and doing one of his favorite hikes. And what's notable about this is that, you know, he's not new to Joshua Tree, right? This is a park he's visited over and over, and he is just deciding, you know, Joshua Tree is just about an hour from L.A. So this is a hike, a place that he knows well, a hike that he knows well. He goes out just in a moment of celebration, but you'll find that he has quite an adventure.

So I'll read a little bit from, he has a great book, Salvation Canyon, outlining this experience, but I'll read a little bit from that book. So day three, I woke in the canyon, the white heat was gone. I tried to get up at my right leg buckled, so I held my stick and pushed down, using my left leg to stand, dragging my right alongside, limping, but grateful that I had not lost my legs on an open arroyo. I went in my stocking feet to a flat rock 20 yards away in the middle of the enclosure and sat on the two-foot-high perch. From there, I could see the wide basin. Again, I surveyed my situation.

I'd be found one day, dead or alive. Out of the elements, I could survive several days. My phone was long dead. The clip of a ballpoint hung on the pocket of my short-sleeved shirt. I searched for paper in my pack. I took off my hat and tested my pen on the inner lid, and it worked, so I began a letter to my wife and daughter. Dear Hillary and Nicole, I love both of you. Not sure if I can make it out of here. I made a wrong turn, and I didn't take enough water. Call Andrew for my commission. Collect the life insurance. Encouraged by my ability to communicate, I expanded my instructions. Give my love to Gary, Jerry, John, Harold, Mark, Tyson, Rabbi Debra, my brother, sister, Chris, Staron, and Felisa. Writing the names of my friends, I felt better. As each name brought a different

memory, my mind separated from the loneliness of my body on the rock. Many of my friends had never met each other and I began to plan. My funeral will be awake. Have the downtown poet Richard McDowell recite a poem. Now, I became encouraged that there might be a tomorrow. Now we're on to day six. Wednesday, September 29th. I opened my eyes. I was in my spineless situation under an undecided sky. The fly buzzed off my chest and circled my ring of possessions like a security guard on his rounds. I followed his flight without lifting my body.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw something extraordinary by the dull copper cliffs of the northern wall, 30 yards from the last night's signal fire. Propped on my elbow, I turned my body toward the place. It was a spot where I'd never slept or walked. I lifted my stick in my right hand, stuck it in the ground and leaned on to it to raise myself to my knees in a sacado motion of stick knees palm torso knees i crawled by the acacia and left the circle of possessions the horsefly rode on my shoulder beneath the cloudy sky we crossed the burrows and lines that my body and stick had left in the sand on my sleepwalking slides from the acacia to the southern wall i felt no bigger than one insect carrying another we got to the cliffs we were on a threshold of smooth sand and stared up at the rock alcove that seemed to be growing as my perception of it sharpened it took on a faint yellow color and then lifted a few feet above the floor of the canyon. The walls it grew were smooth. It occupied a space apart from the northern cliff that it pushed back. Glowing inside was a light, which was not anywhere else in the canyon.

I leaned on my elbows and stared. A fully formed, 15-foot high figure appeared. At the moment he materialized in his alcove, I was sure he came from the cliffs behind him, but I didn't see him come in. Unlike the alcove itself, he showed all at once. It was as if there was a portal that allowed him to enter from another dimension. His sudden appearance and calm demeanor suggested a messenger. My companion and I stayed on the desert floor looking up. His eyes desired to help me, assist me. His pleaded skirt was well pressed and held close to his slim waist by a simple leather belt. He emanated peace.

Speaking the first words I had spoken in six days, I asked him, What should I do? I waited for something and the desert responded. A ray of light hit his face and the sky turned blue. I think I'll stop there. But this is a hike that Ed has done often, but he just takes a wrong turn and finds himself in what he is now called Salvation Canyon. He's struggling to survive.

here and hoping to be found lighting fires every night. And by day three, this is September and Joshua Tree, it can still get up to triple digits. And by day, day three, he's writing his will on the, on the brim of his hat, giving instructions for his family once he's found, whether dead or alive. And by day six, you can see him hallucinating here in the Joshua Tree Canyon. And increasing his friend, a fly that stuck with him during the days. Yeah, his friend, he's like, this is my companion for this adventure. I'm on. I love that you chose this because I've read Salvation Canyon.

And I'm very familiar with Ed Rosenthal. And Danielle and I actually hiked the trail that he was attempting to do that day before after I had read that book. So his book is very good and his story is very interesting. Especially he, I read it a couple years ago now, but he ended up, he was lost for, how long was he, he was, he was out there for a while, right? Seven days. Seven days. Yeah. Under almost no shade. And the rescue team ended up finding him because they found remnants of his footprints in the sand. They did these crazy search and rescue efforts and they eventually found him. But I love that you chose his story because it's definitely a story that our. our listeners would love to know more about. And we, we did a live show once. It's not on any of our, it's not on any of our feet or anything you can listen to now, but we did a live show once where we discussed his story a little bit. Yeah. We actually had good fortune of getting to meet Ed back in

the spring. We did a little book tour in Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree and had invited Ed out to do a reading from his book and from our book, The Excerpt, Auto Camp, we did an event. And it was really great to get to meet him and hear his story through his own words. But one of the members of the audience that came out was part of the search party. And he had just that morning, gotten breakfast with one of the rescuers that came and got him on that seventh day. So it felt like a really special moment to get to meet him and ultimately celebrate his survival. because it is quite amazing that he survived that. It really is, and it shows what you can survive too.

I mean, seven days in Joshua Tree in a desert like that and to be able to make it out and back to your family. And that is really special that you were able to be there for that time. So how did it come about that he ended up as part of your book? I think we reached out. I think the more we looked into like Joshua Tree, the more and more we learned about how dangerous of a place it can be. So once we discovered Salvation Canyon and we started like, you know, it's, it's too long of a book to put into this format, right?

So we were like trying to figure out the right excerpts that we could put in. And we had to have a conversation with Ed because Ed's like, well, I have a book. I don't know. Look at my book. I don't, why would I want to put it, put it in your anthology? But I think I think the conversation turned when I referenced like that we really like your story because it's in the tradition of Truman Everts and Truman Everett survival in Yellowstone, the 13th. 37 days of peril. Are you familiar with that one? It's on my list to read. Yes. It's a good one. And it's an important one because, you know, it was the first kind of national park story that really,

really got a lot of attraction. You know, at the time, there were geological studies, groups going out and doing, we found this crazy place called Yellowstone, and we're calling it Yellowstone, and it has these geysers. It has these crazy cliffs. It has bubble, bubbling pots. But that, you know, that wasn't quite capturing people's attention. It was when Truman Everts got separated from his party. He did everything wrong. He got burned by a thermal feature. He lost his glasses on day one.

He was stalked by a mountain lion. He got frostbite on his feet. He did all of these things wrong and ended up surviving for 37 days. And his publishing that account in Scribner's magazine, that was the, that was like, that went viral. Right. In the 1800s, people ate that story up and all of a sudden the attention of the nation, you know, thinking about Yellowstone, all of a sudden that interest went way up and people started to go visit and really catch on to this idea that, hey, maybe we should preserve this place. So I think these stories are not only entertaining, but have this history of like, yeah, of giving us information about how to survive, but also play a really important role in the preservation of the national parks. It is really funny how a story like that were like I was burned in geothermal pools.

I had to survive in these horrible conditions for 37 days and people are like, wait, hold on a sec, where was that? Can I see it? And I think that's kind of like the running theme of, you know, this podcast, essentially. I mean, we didn't have that intention, really, but it's just kind of how it unfolded and we couldn't be happier about it, you know, just sometimes morbid curious. curiosity goes a long way. And if it garners more interest in the place that the awful story took place, then right on, at least we're getting attention to geothermal pools when maybe, you know, it's like a foot was found in a geothermal pool in Yellowstone. People are like, hold on. Which one? I think I sent you that article. Yeah. Right. So it's kind of like, you know, it's awful and it's at times heartbreaking, but it gets eyes on that particular. park or, you know, wild space and that is cool in its own way. And we love that Camp Fire

Stories, both volumes, do that in different ways. And they're not always bad and scary, but they grab attention nonetheless. And we know that you, for the first volume, at least, you mentioned a couple times that you yourselves traveled to these places and really got boots on the ground there. So we always ask any guess, you know, what is your favorite park if you had to choose? Whether it be a personal connection or just you really, you know, loved the landscape. So do you guys have a favorite? Yeah. So we have a favorite that I feel like almost doesn't count because we've been going there for like 15 years. So I will share that one and then I'll let Dave share another. Okay. So we have, Dave and I have been going to Acadia National Park for the last 15 years.

We love the landscape, the hikes, the island on the sea, the eco tones, you have forest jetting up against ocean, rocky beaches. I could just be there forever on a rocky beach looking for striped rocks and, you know, sea urchins and listening to the barnacles. I just, I love it there. We call it our soul home. It just keeps calling us back again and again. And now we have kids. So it's fun to share in it with them. And we know we're either riding bikes now.

So we are enjoying the carriage roads, which before we could care less about before. But now are really fun to do with them. And I always answer it with Yosemite. Feels like another stereotypical answer, but Yosemite just has so much going on for it. It's like the classically handsome park. You know, you have great photos that are coming out of it. But historically, it's actually the first place anywhere where we, tried to preserve a landscape. It's not the first national park. Yellowstone was the first national

park, but that's almost because of a technicality. You know, when we decided to, when Abraham Lincoln decided to preserve Yellowstone, it was given to the state of California to preserve. And then when we found, no, when Yosemite was given to the state of California, so it was a state park originally. But it was the first time anyone anywhere was like, hey, maybe the state should be in charge of protecting this landscape. When they found Yellowstone, they wanted to preserve it the same way that they did Yosemite, but there was no state of Montana yet. So the federal government took it over and Yellowstone is the first national park. But addition to these, you know, these two things that you also have just a really interesting subculture of people trying to make it, trying to live in Yosemite.

Did you know about the levy-vining gas station on the east end of the park? No. I don't know anything about that. It's the place to hang out, you know, the gas station. It's where you have concerts. It's a legendary place for people to go and hang out, meet up, and then, you know, you know, You know, you go to the concert at Lee Vining on a Saturday night. You go out then to the, to a thermal pool and just hot tub for the rest of the night.

They're just like hundreds of these stories of like people, people making cool communities in around Yosemite. That's a really fun to plug into. Yeah, there's a lot of great communities in the gateway town of Mariposa. We've had the good fortune of spending a lot of time in Mariposa and within Yosemite. Then you have like a whole other crew in El Portel, all the people that work for the park service. So we've kind of fallen in love with the park and the people who are there. We were both just in Yosemite very recently. And it was Danielle's first time.

What did you think of it? I was blown away. Obviously, this time, you know, with all the water and everyone's like, it's the best time to see Yosemite. And so I was fortunate that was my first experience there because, I mean, it's beautiful regardless, but the extra water flow definitely is like the cherry on top. And we got there just before, you know, everyone started going for the season. So that was great too. But yeah, I enjoyed it. And I do agree. I mean, we've done a couple of stories in Yosemite. And there is this like subsets of different cultures, you know, a one that we've really focused on a lot is the, you know, the dirtbag culture,

the climbers and, you know, the history of climbing in Yosemite is just so interesting. And it's just, it's such a lifestyle there. And people just commit their whole lives to it. And I'm sure in other parks, there are different, you know, subsets of people that are, like, making their lives focused around the park. But Yosemite does have a little different, it's different there, I feel like. Got a little dirt under the fingernails. That's right. I mean, they all, I guess every park does.

but this one culturally, metaphorically also has dirt under their fingernails. Yeah. It's funny too because when we went to the park, we had actually just recently been in contact with you both about doing this episode. And we were in the bookstore. And we saw your campfire stories volume one there and we're like, hey. And then we continued to see it in like multiple other stories like around the area. And we're like, that is too funny.

It was cool to see your book there. Yeah. I have myself had some like kismet moments in Yosemite. I spent, I took a little sabbatical and lived there in Mariposa for a month with one of my good friends and found myself back there a few years later. I was starting a sabbatical program for creative professionals called Ample. But at the time, it was just an idea. And I just like hopped on a plane and like pitched the program to the Yosemite Conservancy. And I remember, I mean, it was like brand new.

Like I had just made the pitch deck like days before. I flew out, stayed with my friend, got in this meeting. And they were like, this sounds really cool. Like, how about November? I was not expecting them to agree to do it at all. But to do it and then have a date in mind was super cool. So I'm like freaking out. I'm really excited.

And I drive to the Awani Hotel and our lodge. And I am like, do you have like an office or a place where I can like, make a call or get on my computer and he's like uh okay and he hands me this key for their like computer room and it's like one of those old-fashioned like gold keys and like no joke it said yes I was like yes yes this is a sign yes it's like amazing sign in moment that like things were to come so I'll never forget that and I was there at this time as well where the like water falls were like flowing and there were literal like rainbows all around me. It was just unreal. It all came together in Yosemite. Yes. That's beautiful. Well, congratulations on all your success, both in that realm and also

with the books. And we are thankful you guys decided to come on and share a little bit with us in our audience. So obviously we kind of hinted at the fact that your books, we keep seeing them everywhere, but is there a particular place that people should go to to find them? Yeah, I mean, I would say if you can check out your local bookstore, boutique shops, especially like if you're in like an outdoors or national park area, a lot of stores, even outside of the parks that we cover in the book, have the books. We always try to encourage people to buy it from like your independent local store. You can also find them R-E-I-L-L-B or directly from our publisher, Mountaineer's books as well. And of course, you can find them on Amazon and other distributors as well.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much both for being here and sharing those little excerpts. I think our audience is going to be very excited to go pick up your book. And we both have them on our desk. I have it right here. Thanks for supporting us. That's exciting. It's still, Whenever we see it in RIA, we're like, what? How do they find out about it? Like, oh, my, that's us right there. My daughter, my daughter always wants to, like, go tell someone. Like, I'm so embarrassed, like, and mortified. Like, I don't want anyone to know it's us that we're, like, in the store looking at our book. But my daughter is just like, who can we tell? Who can I tell right now? And she'll, like, go seek someone. That's really cute. You're hype girl. Everyone needs a hype woman.

Yeah, we were in L-L-B in Freeport recently, and she was really loving seeing it in the story. That was pretty cool. Amazing. That's so nice. Well, thank you very much once again. Yeah, thanks for having us. This was fun. Thank you so much for joining us again this week.

If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at NPADpodcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter. at NPAD Podcast. Join our Outsiders-only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions to listen ad-free, unlock monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting our show. For our exclusive discount codes and source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For more information on our show, our book recommendations, merch updates, and more.

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