The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 204: It Should Be Difficult to Get Lost Forever

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Roman Dial, Anthony Licata, and Ryan Callaghan.Topics discussed: the death of a son; dip-netting salmon; quitting climbing for marriage; playing the long game in child rearing; scaring yourself; being aware of what's dangerous; out dates; deadly snakes; the helplessness of modern humans; getting kicked out of the search for your own son; documentary tv vs. reality tv; the stink in the room you no longer notice; weeping through writing; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by OnX Hunt, creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters.

Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. All right, we have a special guest today, Roman Dial, who has a new book out with a gigantic, I have the what do you call these, advanced readers copies? Yeah. They call them arcs in the business.

Right. Giant quote from John Krakauer. A brave and marvelous book, a page turner that will rip your heart out the book's called the adventurer's son by roman dial and it tells the story you just give me the one sentence it tells the story about looking for my son who went missing in costa rica that's a good job yeah a heartbreaking story about raising an outdoor son and then losing him in the jungle and trying to find him yeah uh also i call these what you mentioned before we

started recording you mentioned um that you're not a hunter but you hunt and you're not a yeah you're not a climber but you climb no no no no or no so i i'm not a hunter but i do hunt and i love to hunt you know and uh but what makes you not a hunter i don't know if you even realize this but we were talking about this earlier you've hunted moose with my brother danny i yeah and we got two we got a you live in alaska i live in alaska yeah and we got a bull and a cow the same day and and your brother brother, Dan, and my friend, Chris Flowers, who's a friend of his too, they, they clean the bull and I clean the cow. Okay. And so, um, but I, I, I hunt every year. I really like, I like to eat. You hunt every year. I try to, I didn't hunt this year.

And you fish, I know. You know, I only dip net. Dip net salmon. Yeah. I'm not really a fisherman. Um, but I do dip net. I'm kind of like a, you know. Very efficient fisherman. Yeah, salmon, dip net, you know, I like to do that. I don't have the patience for hook and line, you know. It's just I can't. Fly fishing, I love the idea of fly fishing. I think it's marvelous.

I think it's one of the most beautiful activities, you know, an outdoor person could do, but I can't do it. It's just you have to stay in one one place and I can't do that. What strikes you as beautiful about it? All the flailing around? No, I think the idea of it, the beauty is that you have to be an ecologist. You have to be like a practicing applied ecologist. You've got to think about what the fish is going to eat. Oh, God.

No? That's not true. I feel like 90% of people go down to the fly shop and they feel like, what should I, come on. Well, that's why I'm not a fisherman. There's a handful. I like the idea of it. I don't want to do it. But as far as not being a hunter, I don't shoot my gun very often.

I probably, I didn't even know it was called processing until a few years ago. What did you think it was called? Butchering. I don't know. That's good. I like it. And I like to clean animals. I think that's, you know, like I don't really like to kill them.

I mean, I've killed a lot of moose. I've killed a lot of caribou. I've killed a bear, a lynx. I've killed a lot of animals, but I don't, I'm not a great shot, you know, and I don't like to go shoot my gun. I got a lot of guns, but I don't really like shooting, but I really like to clean them. You know, like I like to, I feel like if I, I feel like I do a good job, I take them apart real efficiently. They're super clean. And a moose is a big animal to take apart. I'd love to get a buffalo. That's my kind of dream. I've, I've spent enough money putting in for the lottery of the buffalo in Alaska to just go buy, you know, somebody's buffalo over the last 30 or 40 years.

Yeah, but it spreads it out nicely for you. Yeah. Well, I feel like you should be able to call it. I mean, I would like to think that with your approach, I would, in my hope, you would be like, yeah, I'm a hunter. Well, I hunt, you know, and I'm like, let me finish off the thought about I'm a climber, but I don't climb. Yeah, because, well, I want to get into that. So, yeah, we'll leave hunting behind and get into that. Yeah.

I wanted you to talk about when you quit climbing. When I quit climbing, sure, yeah. If that's a good way of explaining it. Yeah. Why I quit climbing? Yeah, it's like a chapter in my book, right? And you were an alpinist. An alpinist.

Yep, I was an alpinist. Yeah, an alpinist is like a climber. I think of climbers generally, most people think of climbers as sort of like rock climbers. There's ice climbers and rock climbers. But an alpinist is somebody who just rock climbs and ice climbs so that they have the skills and the technique to go to the big mountains and climb the big mountains that have rock and ice. And they're remote and they're in the wilderness and they have weather. And it's just like it's kind of like you're in the wilderness and they have weather and it's just like it's kind of like you're living on the mountain trying to get up it yeah as a not climber

i've often fantasized that uh if i wasn't into what i was into if i didn't hunt and fish and stuff that i would i would want to pursue that but they get whittled away they do it's dangerous you wind up but you get to be 40 and all your friends are dead. Yeah. Well, you know, I feel lucky to have made it as far as I did. And I quit when I was about 25. And had a lot of friends die. Had a lot of friends die.

Yeah. And they still die. I mean, like today, you know, more good climbers die than bad climbers. You know, like if you're a bad climber, you kind of realize right away that this is maybe not for you. It's dangerous. Maybe you get out of it. But if you're a good climber, you kind of realize right away that this is maybe not for you. It's dangerous. Maybe you get out of it. But if you're a good climber, you just keep climbing harder and harder things and going to wilder and wilder places until, you know, until you get killed. Because the mountains don't care how good you are.

Yeah, you know, we've established that you know my brother in hunting with him. His old roommate, Jared, you might have known. He died on K2. Oh, really? No, I didn't know that. He went and attempted K2, got knocked in the head, wound up in a hospital in Pakistan, came home, recovered. The next season went back and died. And he kind of like knew it was going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's two guys, Kyle Dempster and his partner, they climbed a mountain in Pakistan and they didn't make it to the top. They were rappelling down and like an anchor pulled or something like that.

They fell several hundred feet, broke a leg, came back the next year and disappeared on the same mountain. Both of them. Yeah. And they were like the two best, like there's an award called the Piole d'Or, like, you know, the golden ice axe. And this kid, Kyle Dempster, he'd won it twice as the best climber in the world, basically. And then, you know, he died. So yeah, the mountains don't care how good you are.

Is that what got you to Alaska? Climbing mountains? Well, no, you know, when I was a kid, I went to Alaska because I had some uncles who lived up there and they worked in a coal mining kind of, it wasn't really a town. It was sort of like a camp in the Alaska range. Yeah. That's a crazy story in your book about just getting sent up to hang out with your uncles and they weren't that interested in really watching after you. Well, yeah, they were busy working. Yeah. And it was a great time. And that's how I kind of fell in love with Alaska. I was nine and I had, back in those days, we didn't really have,

there were no computers obviously. And this place didn't even have like telephones or a TV. And so I'd got a taxidermy correspondence course that you used to be able to get this taxidermy correspondence course. And I can't probably put off some beautiful work. I mean, I mounted a Raven, I put some, uh, caribou antlers that were in velvet together. And, um, so I, i got the whole course was you're supposed to get it over a year i said hey i'm going to alaska send it all to me right now so i had the whole course and i took it up there and i had a bunch of glass eyes and excelsior and wire and and that's what i i kind of did nine years old you know it was it was awesome you got to go a little feral they let you roam around while they were working exactly it ruined me for life yeah you

know i could do whatever I wanted. I had a motorcycle and my uncle had this dog. It was named Moose and it was half wolf. And he would, I would go out all day with Moose. And then they gave me a motorcycle, but I couldn't really, it was too big for me. You know how you see kids on bicycles that are too big and, you know, they can hardly get up on them? Well, with a motorcycle, when you have to jump up and kickstart it, you know, if you don't get it going, it falls down.

And, you know, the lever, I don't remember, I forget which side was which, but the, maybe the clutch or the brake lever, one of them were, was broke off because I'd fallen down so many times. There's no going back from that. You get that taste of freedom at nine years old and being like, oh, I'm capable of doing all these things. That's old. Yeah. And being like, oh, I'm capable of doing all these things. That's it. Yeah.

And so I, you know, I went back to the lower 48 at the East Coast. I was in Virginia. And as soon as I graduated from high school, you know, there's only one place I wanted to go and I was back to Alaska. But so anyway, yeah, I've been, I've been living in Alaska for about 40 years now. I like it. You know, your brother, do you think your brother will ever leave? He talks about it.

He says he's getting sick of wet brush. His wife doesn't want to leave. He kind of wants to hang out somewhere that has dry grass instead of wet brush, so he's kind of wanting to come back down here. But, no, he's just up there. His gripe about it, two gripes, wet brush. And the other thing is, like, everything's such up there. His gripe about it, two gripes, wet brush. And the other thing is like everything's such a production. Like anytime you go to hunt, it's like boats and journeys.

And you don't just like go out messing around for a couple hours. Like everything's a production. I don't know. I don't know. I went fat biking yesterday. Well, no, I traveled traveled yesterday the day before yesterday one of my former grad students came by and it was like 10 below 12 below where we went biking it was probably like 15 or 20 below and that was like right out my door yeah i live right in town i

live in town like in midtown yeah he hunts tarmigan local and fishes but i think like i think he's talking about kind of the more you know like you don't go and have a like your tree stand out in your backyard and you go out there and sit for white tails every night well probably not yeah but i i've hunted moose within view of my house like i've killed a moose and i can see where my house is that's great yeah but you know um i understand what you're saying but i never lived any other way like i moved to alaska when i was 16 and so i don't really i never lived you know i never hunted when i was 16 and so i don't really i never lived you know i never hunted deer i've shot one deer i don't really like deer meat that much i probably shouldn't say that but no i like moose meat yeah you know you know when you're talking about riding

that motorcycle that's too big for you my friend deirdre was just telling me about uh they had horses when they were little and she said they were so small that they would put grain down yeah so the horse would lean down to get the grain, and they'd jump and straddle it behind the ears, and it'd jerk its head up, and they'd slide down into position and ride off. Oh, that's cool. That's really cool.

Good way to mount. So get into being an alpinist, and then kind of like when you got scared. Did you have your boy at that point in time, or did you not yet? No, no, no. You were facing two? I wasn't even married.

You weren't even married. Yeah, but I was with the same woman I am now she because i remember you had like kind of a like a sort of an epiphany sure well you know i would climb these mountains you know like and i i would ski into some really distant mountains like one time when i was 21 the year i graduated from college uh like over spring break this guy and i Steve Will, we skied 60 miles in and climbed Mount Debra, which is a beautiful mountain. You can see it from Fairbanks. And Fairbanks is in the middle of the state and it's cold and dry all winter. And you can just see these mountains on the skyline. They're beautiful and it's cold. So they get, they look real close because the cold

air magnifies the mountains. And in the winter, you can't do anything but look at the mountains and the sun just kind of rolls along the top. It's freaking beautiful. And Mount Debra is the prettiest one. And we skied in 60 miles, climbed the West face, a big steep face. Um, you had to like scratch out a pad to sleep on the way up, you know, like a little ledge and climbed it and came down. And, um, and then we were going to go climb Mount Hayes, the highest in the range, but we chickened out rappelling over this pass and skied out. We ran out of food. I had to break into some guy's cash. His food, his cash, like a little cabin on stilts next to his cabin looking for food.

And I found dry dog food, ate the dry dog food, you know, cause I was so hungry, um, skied out and I was like, I'm not going to climb anymore. This is ridiculous. You know? And I, it was miserable, you know, hungry, you know, like, skied out and I was like, I'm not going to climb anymore. This is ridiculous. You know? And I, it was miserable, you know, hungry, you know, like where you hungry, where you eat half rations for a couple of days and then you go to like quarter rations and then your eighth rations and then you eat your last apricot, splitting it with your partner. And then you look where you drop some gorp in the snow three weeks ago and you're pawing through the snow, looking for the gorp. And instead of sitting on your pack and eating a chocolate bar you sit on your pack and then you

fall asleep because you don't have anything else to do and you're hungry and i thought you know this climbing is nuts and i want to quit but i it was like being an alcoholic i think you know like an alcoholic says i'm not drinking anymore but the next weekend they drink anyway and uh and i would go back and climb some more. And I really, I'd been with this girl, you know, I met her when she was 18, I was 19. And I, you know, I wanted to get married and have a family, but it wasn't until this one particular climb where I realized, you know, climbing was just kind of more or less about luck. You know, it wasn't really about how good you were. And I tell the story in the book. That's an interesting perspective, the luck factor.

I had a couple of things I noted in the book. One, just like how tense things get with climbing partners, where you mentioned getting into a fist fight. Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, he... And then picking up and continuing. Right, well, we didn't really... Settle that.

We didn't get enough. We had verbal fights, you know, on climbs, but we never had a fist fight on the climb. We had the fist fight, you know, back in town. Oh, I see, okay, okay. Yeah, no, I never had a fist fight. I mean, that would be a bummer. Maybe it was the girlfriend, you know,

old Yvonne Chouin yeah he he'd said the uh one of the guys in his climbing circle he's like yeah you know we could tell he was never going to be very good because he always had a girlfriend yeah that's i'm for sure you know i didn't i didn't really you know but this this this particular climb when a cornice broke and Chuck Comstock, the guy that I had gotten into a fight with in town, and he had just untied from the rope. Like we were – we'd climbed this really steep face, took several days to get up, camped on top. It was in March. It was like 30 below. And then we were feeling so full of ourselves, we decided to go down this ridge that had only been climbed once.

And the people who went up, it didn't want to go back down it we were like oh we can go down it so we went down and had all these cornices you know going both ways and yeah explain explain to people what a cornice is because this is really there's another thing i wanted to ask you about when you're in your climbing discussion was what i had no idea that this happens what you do when one of those breaks. A cornice when it breaks? Well, you know, there's- Like how you and your partner work in tandem to not die,

but first tell people what a cornice is. Yeah, sure, a cornice. Well, you know, if you don't live in a snowy area, a cornice kind of looks like a frozen wave of snow, but instead of like the ocean and wind pushing the ocean into a wave, the wind pushes the snow over the crest of a mountain, a ridgeline, and then it builds like a frozen wave up on top. And the wind keeps piling up more and more snow until, you know, it's kind of flat on top and you are walking on this ridge. You might not really know where you're overhanging you know the top of this cornice and

then in certain places in in the world and in the alaska range in particular you'll get um moist air blowing from the ocean side and it condenses on the mountain like the ice that used to build up in people's refrigerators if you have an old freezer for example with a bad gasket and you got a bunch of meat in there you know if you got bad gasket, you'll get that rimey ice around the edge. And that rime ice can build into this huge bulge, like a big overhanging bulge, you know, like it can be, you know, 20 or 30 feet of overhang, this big rime bulge. And then on top of that, the wind is usually blows from the ocean side and it'll blow snow that makes this frozen wave on the other side. So you kind of have a sort of like a double cornice where you got an overhanging wave on one side and then

this big bulging rime on the other so it's kind of an unstable feature and you know in rock climbing they have cams and pitons and stuff you can stick in a crack and in ice climbing they got screws you can screw into the waterfall but on this ridge ridge climbing, you know, you can't really protect it. So the only thing you can do is if the thing breaks, you got to go off the other side. So the rope kind of goes over both sides of the mountain with the guy.

Like jump off the other side. Yeah. You got to jump. And then the rope cuts into the cornice. Yeah. And stops. Yeah. Well, it'd be hard.

Yeah, exactly. And it's a, it's kind of a mythical thing. Like nobody ever thinks you're ever going to have to do it. And very few people have actually done it as far as I know. And so on this particular mountain. Oh, yeah, but like when it does happen, the soft, you know, wind side. And I went off on the rimey side. And then, you know, fell a long ways. I thought I was going to die or at least get broken. Because I tumbled because it's like a big cartwheel.

Because he went straight down when he broke the cornice. He falls straight down and he's out ahead of me. And I jumped off and then I had to pendulum down, you know, over a bunch of space. If you hadn't done that. We probably both would have gone off the same side and tumbled down and got broken up. Yeah. It would have, he just would have yanked me off. So, um, but yeah.

Scared the shit out of you. It did. And I was like, yeah, this is it. Um, you know, we skied out and, you know, I actually, right after that, I thought, you know, I might come back and climb that mountain, I see back to town and and went and I was telling the stories about this climb and I was like you know this is nuts I think I'm just gonna get married so I got married like just like that was March and I was married in June. Wow.

And then, so that was, like, the end of my climbing. Not a big wedding, right, if I remember right? You know, I don't know. There were 20 or 30 people. It was in a big field, you know, outside of Fairbanks. It wasn't huge. No, not at all. My parents were there. Her parents didn't come, you know, because they didn't think a wedding should be outside.

They thought it should be in a church. So they decided not to come at all. That'll fix you. Yeah. But Peggy's the youngest of 10 kids, and her parents, maybe they didn't have a lot left for her by then. I don't know. They were tapped out. I think so so uh when you you quit like kind of

like that biggest form of adventure but when you had your kid you really focused heavily on i would say like an extreme version a pretty extreme version of of a association with nature an adventure sure i mean i. You guys did crazy stuff. Well, I mean, I still like being outside. I mean, you can't, if you live in Alaska, you don't like being outside, you're not really going to like live in there much. Cause that's, that's what Alaska has a lot of.

And, um, and I had found that I liked, uh, going to the mountains. Like I, I didn't like just climbing the mountains, but I like, like skiing into the mountains or, um, on another just climbing the mountains, but I liked like skiing into the mountains. Or on another trip, we climbed the mountain and then we rafted out. And one time I had gone into the mountains with this guy, Carl Tobin, and another guy. And we didn't get up the peak.

We got avalanched off. And I was antsy because I wanted to do something. I said, hey, let's just ski out to the highway. It was like 55 miles. And they're like, no, we don't want to ski. We're going to stay here. So I skied out by myself. And the year before I'd skied out from a different mountain in a parallel route. And I thought, wow, I wonder which way is faster. This was like 1983. So it was a long time ago. And I thought, wow, I know how to find out. And it's like 50, 55, 60 miles. We should have a ski race and see what is the fastest way. In fact,

let's just have a wilderness ski race across the Alaska range from highway to highway, like 150 miles. And there hadn't been any, I mean, ultra running wasn't a thing yet, you know, especially, and no ultra skiing. And so uh, so that I was like 20, 20 years old, maybe. And, uh, I met a guy at a, like on campus at the university and he had a flyer and he had an idea for like a foot race across the Kenai peninsula. And the Kenai peninsula is like that. When you look at a map of Alaska and you know, Anchorage is right down there in the Southern part. And the Kenai peninsula is that little kind of like that moose bell that hangs down from Alaska. And he was going to have a race from Hope to Homer across the Kenai Peninsula.

And he called it a foot race. And the rules were really simple. Everything you needed, you had to carry with you, including all your food. And you couldn't use any roads. You couldn't use any pack animals. And you couldn't use any motorized vehicles. And you couldn't get any help from anybody along the way. And he envisioned us swimming the rivers. And I saw this idea. I was like, wow, that's the same idea that I have. But, you know, I want to do a ski race. He goes, well,

kid, because he was in his thirties. Well, kid, he was a mountain guide. Well, kid, why don't you come down and do my race and then we'll do yours. So I went down there and there was an old man there. And he says, hey kid, where's your tent? I said, oh, I didn't bring a tent. I'm not taking a tent. I'm going light. And he says, well, where are you going to sleep tonight? And I said, I'm just going to sleep out here in my bivy sack. He goes, oh, come on into my tent. So I slept in his tent. And I looked at him. He was like my age now. Actually, he's younger than I am now. And I thought, this guy's not going to finish this. He shouldn't even be here. And then I saw some other guy and he looked kind of clumsy. Well, the clumsy guy caught up with me the first day after I'd done like 40 miles.

The only trail we all did, we hiked the trail, the whole 40 miles of trail the first day. It was like a 150-mile race. You had to carry all your food and everything with you. And I had skis with me because I was going to ski across the Harding Ice Field because I didn't want to have to swim all these rivers because that's how we were going to cross the river. So you were going to go up higher and ski where it's frozen. Yeah. Because I didn't want to swim rivers. Swimming glacial rivers seemed stupid to me.

And so we got to the first glacial river and usually you wait for the morning because the sun melts the snow on the glacial rivers. And then in the morning the water's down and it seemed like a smarter time to swim it. Because it's been cold all night. Yeah, yeah. It's been cold all night. So we yeah. It's been cold all night. So we're waiting around, and everybody catches us, me and this guy, Manzer. We're out in the front. And then that old man, I'm like, what the?

He caught up to us? And he pulls out of his pack like these Viking horn hat, you know, like some soft, goofy hat. And he puts it on. He goes, you know, what are you guys doing here? You young guys should have been halfway to Homer by now. And we're like, yeah, well, we got stuck by the river. He goes, yeah, you young guys, you don't know nothing and eat too much. And then he reaches into his pack and he pulls out this little inflatable raft, kind of like the pack raft you used when you went, you know, on your buffalo hunt in Alaska.

But this was like a Kmart vinyl raft. And he pulls it out. He says, you guys can't swim these glacial rivers. You know, they're too swift and cold and dangerous. He says, you know, old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time. And he blew up his raft. Yeah, exactly. And he paddled across and he almost won the race without running a step, you know. But anyway, when I saw that pack raft, I thought, yeah, that's, I want one of those. And just crossing like 150 miles of Alaskan wilderness, it took me a week, you know, which is like nowadays we do, not me, I'm kind of too old for

that. But, you know, nowadays people do like 150 miles across Alaskan wilderness in like three days or less. And, but to have that kind of freedom to be able to go through trackless wilderness like with rivers and glaciers and bogs and dealing with bears and boulders and bad brush, it was an incredible sense of freedom. I don't understand how when you guys are doing these races, I don't understand, Danny's the first one to talk about this,

but you guys use the mountain bikes, but there's no, but totally off trail. You riding on gravel bars? I have done. Like askers or what? No. Yeah. Sometimes I have done, I did one of those races with a mountain bike with my son.

Cause I didn't want him to hurt his feet. Cause when you walk, when you go 50 miles in a day, it hurts your feet, you know? And I didn't really want him. He was 16. He wanted to do one of these races. I said, well, let's just use our mountain bikes. And, and so when you take a mountain bike, you know, you have to go to the right place. Like I wouldn't do it

on the Kenai because it's too brushy. But the Talkeetna Mountains are real nice. And there's a bunch of ATV trails for like 50 miles. So we rode those for 50 miles. Oh, I got you. Yeah. And then the ATV trails ended. And then what you do is you kind of push your bike up a hill and then you coast down the tundra. I mean, so it's, you can, you do is you kind of push your bike up a hill and then you coast down the tundra.

I mean, so it's, you can, you know, you can really milk the tundra. You don't just ride the steepest way down. You kind of go at a real gentle angle to milk it, you know? And so you can hike up the trail, hike up the hill, pushing your bike at like, you know, a mile an hour, which is the usual hiking speed. But then when you go down, you're going like three or four miles an hour, which is much faster. And then there's game trails. If you get good at following game trails, you know, moose trails aren't so good, but caribou trails are good.

Bear trails are pretty good. That's what Danny was telling me too, is he said a lot of times, you're not down in the valley floor. You're not down in the rocks. He talked about like trying to like go and going off the side, going off the sides a little bit looking for good trails. Oh, yeah. I love following trails.

And I got into the mountain bike and thing. I got into the mountain bike and thing for about 10 years because the hiking was kind of easy. Anybody can hike anywhere. You could hike in a straight line if you wanted to. But with a bike, you can't. You get punished if you go in a bad place. You're just pushing your bike or carrying it and you're thinking, why did I bring it? And so you're always looking for good, you have to know how to read the landscape and how to find good traveling conditions and find gravel bars. Like I used to say, gravel bars, game trails, and glaciers, those were the best riding. And if you go late in the season,

the glaciers, especially nowadays, all the snow is kind of melted off and you can ride on the bare ice. So, yeah, I went from Canada to Lake Clark with a mountain bike in 1996. How far was that? It was 800 miles or so. And there were these three hikers and they started ahead of us. And it was sort of like a race to see who would be the first people to traverse the Alaska Range, which goes kind of from Canada over to Lake Clark, which is to the west of Anchorage. And they left, you know, six weeks ahead of us and they started a hundred miles shorter route than we did. We started right at the Canadian border and they started over by Toke. And, uh, they were, when we left the Canadian border on the 4th of July, they were in

Mount McKinney or Denali National Park at Cantishana having a party for the 4th of July. And we caught him. We caught him at Rainy Pass, not Rainy Pass, near Rainy Pass, where the, you know, the Iditarod goes over the Alaska Range called Roan Roadhouse. Actually, we didn't catch him there. They left us a note because we had a food cache there. And there were three of us on our mountain bikes and a really good mountain bike riding right after that because there are all these buffalo trails. There's another buffalo herd on the Kuska quim on the south fork

of the kuska quim and the hartman and buffalo they don't like brush they don't like logs and so whenever there was a log they would walk around the logs so there were all these buffed out single tracks that we were riding you know in the wilderness it was like spectacular and then we we had pack rafts so So whenever we were going down river, if the river got big enough, we would just put our pack rafts on our, put our mountain bikes on our pack rafts and then float down. And we caught these hikers and then we traveled with them and we were all going to finish together, but we had a bike problem with a break or something. And they hiked off into the fog and then we never saw them again, and we ended up getting to the end faster than they did.

So anyway, that was, you know, I was into mountain bikes for a while, but using them as sort of a wilderness travel tool because walking is kind of, it's not, it's just, it's easy. I like walking, and I do that. I'm an old man now, so I do a lot more walking. I don't do those bike trips anymore, but they were really satisfying. How old are you? 59. Oh, I know, that more walking. I don't do those bike trips anymore, but they were really satisfying. How old are you? 59.

Oh, I know that's old. Almost 60. Yeah, I'll be 60 this year. Yeah, I'm feeling it. Really? Mm-hmm. You look fine. Yeah, I agree.

Hair's all gray. Yeah, well, I can't walk 50 miles in a day anymore. No one can. Nobody should, let me put it that way. Yeah, like 99% of people don't. Uh-huh, yeah, they're the smart ones. 50 miles in a day anymore. No one can. Nobody should, let me put it that way. Yeah, like 99% of people don't. Yeah, they're the smart ones. But yeah, you only compare yourself to yourself, right?

Yeah. If your measure was just the average person, it'd be pretty dismal. How old are you? 45. Uh-huh. Well, do you need to use reading glasses yet? Uh-huh.

Do you forget where your keys are and stuff like that? No. Well, that's coming. Have that to look forward to. Me and Anthony here were out ice fishing the other day and we were trying to, we're trying a little, we're trying to put some like 7X tippet through, you know, what, a size 18 or 20 flies. Oh, yeah. Dude, we were cursing up storm. Neither of us had our cheaters.

Steve, you have your old man glasses? Nope. I forgot mine too. Oh yeah, like holding it up to the light and messing with it. Yeah,

look, I have to carry them around like all the time. I got that same kind but you know what, I like those clicker little dealies but when you got a hat on

they start to be a pain in the ass. Yeah, or a hood. Yeah, lots of things. They're good for sitting around. That's about all I do right now.

But, a lot of sitting. Yeah, Lots of things. They're good for sitting around. That's about all I do right now. But. A lot of sitting. Yeah. It's wintertime. Yeah. I'm a professor. So I don't have a. I got to teach my classes and write my papers and stuff like that.

But summertime's coming and I'll get out again. Like I'm really. The Brooks Range is my sort of favorite mountain range right now. I love the Brooks Range. Yeah. Have you been to the Brooks Range? Oh yeah. Many times.

I should say many times. But yeah. What are you. Have you hunted up there then? Yeah. What are you. It you like sheep or caribou caribou uh-huh where'd you go handful places so uh out i spent some time with some anthropologists um up in uh npra yeah like the utica area i have a talk utica yeah and then hunted over um hunted caribou a little bit South of there. Oh yeah. That was in your book. Those archeologists, right?

Yeah. And then, um, a hundred, a handful of those rivers that are on the North slope, on the North slope, East of the pipeline. Like the hula hula or the Jago or the I chillick or the canning. No, none of those. But the stuff that flows into the pipeline. Like the hula hula or the jago or the ichilic or the canning? No. None of those? But the stuff that flows into the sag? The sag.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I've hunted caribou. Sag of a nurktak. Yep. The sag of a nurktak. Yeah.

Like you, it's a pretty, the Adagan gorge is a nice way to get into the sag. Yeah. My son and I did a caribou, pack raft caribou hunt. We paddled through that Adagan gorge and then hunted caribou along the sag. Cause you can get five miles from the road really easy that way.

Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.

onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Talk about your son a little bit. Having him and kind of what you tell everybody about, sort of like the philosophy you had. Because I think you did stuff, like I was saying earlier, you did stuff with your boy that would strike a lot of people as maybe even irresponsible.

Probably, yeah. Well, you know, my dad didn't do as much with me as I wish that he had done. You know, my parents divorced when I was pretty young young and my dad hadn't, his parents had divorced. And so he didn't really know how to be a dad. And maybe I didn't either, you know. But I did know that I wanted to have a better relationship with my son, you know. And I wanted to do stuff with him like from the beginning, you know. And I wanted him to enjoy what we were doing. And so, you know, from a young age, like I would take him out,

you know, on nature walks or we'd go to the ocean. He liked a tide pool like everybody does, you know, especially when I was in grad school on the coast of California, there's all kinds of cool things in there. It's just a fascinating place. And then when I worked on my PhD, I did this canopy project in Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. And his name back then was Cody. His name was Cody Romandile. And he and I went to scope out where I would stay before my daughter and wife came out to Puerto Rico to join up with us. So we wandered around the rainforest. He was three years old, you know, and it was fun. He liked it, you know, and I tried to be real.

I want, I didn't want to like freak him out. I didn't want to like make him carry a pack or be uncomfortable because I wanted him to want to go out. You know what I mean? I wanted him to be a partner. I wanted, I mean, I wanted, I wanted him to be a partner now. I wanted him to be like at the point where he would carry my stuff instead of me carrying his stuff. You know what I mean? And I think it's a pretty primal thing. You were playing the long

game. I was playing the long game. Yeah. I mean, I think, I know you, your father probably took you out, right? All the time. And I, I love going out with my son and, and I tried, I didn't want to spoil it. You know what I mean? I, I want? I was playing the long game. I never wanted to spoil it. And when he was six, you know, I wanted to take him on a wilderness trip in Alaska. And because we just moved back up there, I got a job as a professor up there. And I wanted to go a place where it was sort of safe, like no big glacial rivers. You know, I didn't want to have to take a pack raft and deal with carrying that kind of stuff. And I didn't want there to be any grizzly bears, you know. And so I found this island in the Aleutians called Umnak, and it had a geyser base. And I thought he might want to see these.

It was like a little miniature Yellowstone. I thought that'd be a cool place to go. So I don't know. Somehow I wrangled a way to get out to the third Aleutian island. Like Unamak is the first one. And then Unalaska where Dutch first one. And then on Alaska, where Dutch Harbor is, and then there's Umnak. And Umnak had like the secret military base in World War II on one end, and it has an old Aleut village on the other end.

It's got reindeer, wild cattle. Yep. It has reindeer and wild cattle. And it's, you know, there's no- Not caribou, but reindeer, right? Reindeer. Yeah. They introduced them there and they're kind of weird colors and stuff. That's become like a popular thing. As far as it strikes me, when people from the lower 48 want to go up and hunt caribou in Alaska, but they wind up hunting like introduced reindeer on one of the Aleutian Islands. People love it, but it's like you could go hunt caribou where caribou live.

Yeah. Well, you know, I've never shot a reindeer. I think a lot of those Western Arctic caribou, though, like the ones up around the Uticaq and NPRA, I think a lot of those have reindeer blood in them. Yeah, I mean, geneticists, like people like taxonomists just regard it all as one. One species. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, but they're a different animal. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and they look different and act different and everything. So anyway, I took my son out there, and he was six, and we walked across this island like 60 miles. And I carried everything, and sometimes I carried him. And it was like a life-changing thing for both of us. Six years old and 60 miles, how many days? Like a week. I think it was like seven days. And then we got stuck out there for another week.

But when we landed at this, you know, at one side at this secret military base, it wasn't secret, but from World War II, it was secret. And there was a family living there who were trying to make money off the cattle that were kind of feral on the island. And, you know, I'll never forget the father was like, well, what's your name? I said, oh, I'm Roman Dial. And he goes, he bends over, he goes, well, what's your name, little fella? And my son goes, I'm Roman too too and he'd never said you know his name was Roman and I was like blown away I mean like I don't know it's kind of maybe embarrassing but I think you know as as fathers you kind of do want your son to you know do the stuff you want to do is to have him call himself because

that was his middle name and ever after that he was Roman it was like a little validation a dad. It kind of is, yeah. Do you have kids? Nope. You should. Well, Steve's wife would agree. Yes, not due to lack of trying on my wife's part.

Not that she's trying to have kids. Yeah, I was like, whoa. Steve, do you have any kids? Oh, I got a whole pile of them, man. Yeah. Well, good. I got three young kids. Oh, really?

Yeah. I love being a dad. It was awesome. Anthony's got a couple. I have two young kids, too. And that's why I think we can all relate to what you're saying. You want them to have a good time. You want them to do the things you do.

One of the things that I found really interesting about your book is how you incorporated your kids into your work a little bit. You talked about that being in the canopy, right? So you're a scientist. You're doing research. And kids love to do that. So as they grow older, they're helping you with that. And I found that really interesting. And do you think that helped foster their love of the outdoors and nature?

Well, I hope so but you know they you know my my daughter um i pushed her too hard because if you have like two kids and they're let's say like my kids are two years or three years apart and you're kind of this is your first you know we don't get a lot of chances with kids you know what i mean and so when you got like a four-year-old and you want to take them on a hike you know you're like oh i'm going the four-year-old pace but the two-year-old and you want to take them on a hike, you're like, oh, I'm going the four-year-old pace. But the two-year-old who's there is just like struggling to keep up. Yeah. And then they end up hating that.

I have that issue with my kids. Same thing. I've seen it like in multiple, like they grow up. And then the older ones like this outdoor stud. And then the younger ones like, you know, stay at home or ride four-wheelers, something like that. And I've watched it now and i that's that's the answer i've come up with it's like my hypothesis is that we tend we think we're being real easy on our kids and we're being easy on the older one but then the younger one is

like uh you know i don't know but you're the youngest of your three brothers of you three right and you turned out okay i guess yeah but raising them it's hard i have we have a spread that's significant in ability you know when i think in in a decade it probably won't be but right now i mean there's a huge difference between a nine-year-old and a four-year-old oh yeah you can't it's hard to take them both on the same trip i know and that causes tension that causes a lot of tension my wife because she's like why is i'm like she goes well like the older one, when,

but when he was four, he would go do that. I'm like, cause it was only one and keeping one kid dry and warm is different than keeping three kids dry and warm. So it's like, I don't know. I mean,

uh, I don't know what to do. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I need to like, yeah, I need to like hire someone to come along.

Cause it's hard to keep three people warm and dry. So the one at nine, when he was whatever, he had had more experiences. We were all checking muskrat traps this morning. And I grabbed him because he's up and gets his clothes on by himself. And then when I had to wake up and get his clothes on, so I just got lazy. I've been trying to leave home my 12-year-old and take out my eight-year-old daughter once in a while. Oh, that goes over real well, don't it?

Right. And that's difficult. Do they burn the house down when you try to do that? Yeah, he gets annoyed, but I say, look, I've done plenty of things with just you and I. You know, Hannah and I, you know, this is just for her, but it's, I don't know what the easy answer is, but I've tried to do that to avoid that problem. Oh, they look gut shot when you bring that up. Well, I'm glad you're doing that because I remember when I came back from that UMNAC trip, my daughter's like,

Dad, when are you and me going to do a six-day trip? She wanted to do one. And I was like, oh, it's coming. And I never did one until she was kind of grown up and then it was too late. And I look back and I think, oh, I wish I had done that. Because, you know, she's not really an outdoorsy person. Although I asked her once, I said, well, what does it mean to be outdoorsy for a girl? And she goes, oh, it means you can go to the bathroom outside.

Yeah, that's a measure. Like how comfortable you are peeing outside. I proposed to a friend of mine, Tracy, the other day. I said, there's a good little spot to go pee. And she said, I'll just wait. There you are. Yeah. Guess not outdoorsy.

She's pretty outdoorsy. Yeah. But yeah, she viewed it like, you know, would rather hold it than pee outside. Well, I mean, I would imagine every time you had to pee, you had to pull your pants down, especially if it's like windy and snowy. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why they have skirts they should get they should have really good outdoor skirts so that you there's an idea just for peeing yeah i guess yeah were you were you i'm gathering you weren't surprised when your kids started doing

um when your son who will call roman yeah roman yeah you call him roman of course yeah i he wouldn't let me call him cody like he wouldn't let me call him cody and um yeah so anyway he got to late teens early 20s yeah started doing crazy ass trips by himself you know i i don't know if he i tell you what happened is he um he went away to college and he met a girl in college and she was from Chicago and he brought her to Alaska and he took her out on a bunch of trips. And that's when I knew he was sort of serious about her because he'd grown up thinking that trips were about family. You know, like other kids at his school would be like, oh, come on, let's go. But he would go with them, but they didn't really know enough. You know, he's like, used to going out with like me and my friends and we'd go really light and we could get along with nothing. And then he'd go with these kids who were kind of clumsy and had too much stuff. And he didn't really seem right.

He wanted to go with me and Peggy and our family or my friends. And so when he came to Alaska one summer with his girlfriend and he took her sea kayaking and backpacking and rafting, that's when I knew he was serious about her because he was taking her on these trips and taking care of her. And he, you know, he wasn't really a risk taker. You know, like, I, you know, I had an, I don't really have it anymore. All my testosterone's kind of drained away.

And so, I don't really need the adrenaline rush that I used to need. You're painting a really nice portrait of. Getting old. What happens to a feller? Yeah, well, this feller used to be a lot more sort of adrenaline chasing. But my son wasn't. He was kind of like my wife. He was more risk averse.

You know, my wife, it was sort of, that's why I loved her. And I feel like she's a good balance for me is because she doesn't need to like scare her. I mean, she likes to scare herself, but she doesn't have to scare herself at the level that I do. And I mean, everybody likes to scare themselves. That's why amusement park rides are fun. You know, as long as you're not going to get hurt, getting scared is fun. And, um, and so, but he was more thoughtful about getting hurt. He didn't really want to get hurt.

And, uh, and so the trips that he would do were not quite as crazy as the trips that I had done, you know, and, uh, but he would go out and he was exploring things. And by the time he was in his late teens and his twenties, he was doing things on his own and really enjoying it. And, uh, and when he headed to Central America, you know, that was a really big experience in the sense that, you know, he was traveling through foreign countries on his own for like six months. I'd never done anything like that, you know, and especially not in my 20s. And speaking Spanish and doing some pretty, I think, you know, amazing wilderness trips in Central America. Yeah, but that was like a different, kind of the difference with the approach he was taking on this trip,

which we're talking about the, like this is the trip that ended up being his last trip. Well, no, like before, like, because he went to Mexico. I went down there and saw him and we went pack rafting. And then- Yeah, but this is all one continuous- Yeah.

One continuous thing he was on. Sure, exactly. Moving from country to country. Country to country, yeah. But within that, like a lot of people do that. I mean, a lot of people will go and do, you know, we used to do a little bit of that stuff. Like go down and kind of do like the trekking around, riding buses. Sure, yeah.

Visiting villages. But the weird part about it that I thought was just unusual is he was putting in jungle tracks, sometimes like kind of off trail and like little transacts and like doing like jungle trips. Exactly. Heading off by himself into kind of like wilderness. The same way if you were up in Alaska and you want to go do a trip, it just never occurred to me that you'd go and do a trip through the jungle. Right.

You go to a foreign country, a remote area and then just go wander around in there right yeah no i i was actually you know as a father i was really torn you know like i was proud of him for doing that you know what i mean like i i kind of raised him with that not with that i wanted him to do that kind of thing but then when he was doing it i was like oh my god you know what i mean like i i don't know i guess if you were in the military and uh and then your son joined the military you'd be both proud and terrified at the same time yeah yeah and so i was like i was really proud of what he was doing but i was terrified you know like i was oh my god i can't believe he's doing that.

You know, I've never done anything like that. Couldn't do anything like that. And he's doing it. And, you know, at one point he said he was going to go to this ruin, you know, in this deep wilderness in Guatemala. And he told me how he was going to go in the back way. And it was going to be like, you know, this long wilderness walk. And I wrote him an email because he kept in touch with me. He said, here's what I'm going to do.

And then usually he'd go do it and he'd say, hey, I'm back. I'll tell you about it in a couple of days. And he'd write a big, long story about it. And so he wrote me and said, here's what I'm going to do, Dad. And I wrote him back. I said, no, don't do that. Don't do it. That's too dangerous.

I don't want you to do that. I went through all the reasons not to, but I didn't send that email. I wrote it, but I didn't send it to him. And then I wrote another one. I tried to like tone it down and I wrote another one and I couldn't send them. They were all like, don't do it. And I was telling him like all the things people had said to me over the years, like taking a mountain bike across the Alaska range. What kind of idiot are you?

You know, oh, you're going to walk across the Wrangell St. Elias in October. No, you're not. You know what I mean? I kind of have spent 40 years listening to people say that. But a difference, not to discredit the feats you did, but the difference there is you could rattle off, because of your familiarity with the state, you could rattle off the reasons why not. Sure.

And when you get into being like someone who's from the north and they go down and they're in this area, you wouldn't be able to make a, you wouldn't really have what it takes to make a comprehensive list of the potential problems. Well, he, he, I kind of, he'd been to the tropics a lot, you know, like when he was three years old, he spent, you know, almost, you know, seven months in Puerto Rico. And then, then we traveled the world and he'd been to Costa Rica twice, you know, when he was taking, you know, he went down there on a tropical ecology class. I taught there and he went down there with me when I did a research project.

You spent a lot of time in Borneo. I spent a lot of time. Yeah. He and I spent two months like in a jungle in Borneo at a research station and he'd already been there like three times. So he knew the rainforest, you know, like he was showing it to me. And I was like, oh, here, son, let me see that ant. You know, like you can put an ant on your finger. And I put it on my finger. And as soon as I put it on my finger, boom, it stung me like a hammer. It hit me, you know, and I was like, ah. And he was like, yeah, dad, I knew that was like a bad ant, you know. And so he was really well aware of what was dangerous and what was not.

Because he'd grown up in the tropics. And he, that's part of the reason he was risk averse because a lot of the things that are really cool in the tropics like colorful things especially can be nasty so based off of that did you whittle your email down eventually to like just don't do it because i don't like it no in your head i i didn't i whittled the email down to, hey, watch out for fer-de-lances and bushmasters and, you know, be careful. And I sent it away and I didn't tell him not to do it. I couldn't, you know, how could I? You know, it was his trip. And he came back and it was like, you know, an amazing experience for me. He wrote me like the 6,000 word, you know, story about it. And I was super proud of him. I sent it to all my friends, you know, like, wow, look what he did. And, um, and then he did some even more like amazing trips, you know, that were amazing in different ways. Like he, he went down this river in Honduras through what he called like the cocaine hub of Central America. Cause like what happened is,

you know, the Americans disrupted the typical cocaine trafficking route from Colombia. So the Colombians changed it up and they sent it across sort of the southern Caribbean to this part of Honduras, like the Mosquito Coast. And then they ran it across Honduras up these rivers and then into Guatemala and then it went overland into Mexico. And so this river is where all the cocaine trade goes through or transport. And he went down that river with this Canadian. And I had no idea that that stuff was going on. You know, he didn't tell me about that. He just said, oh, I'm going through this biosphere reserve.

And it's a big wilderness area. But because it's a wilderness area, it's also a good place for, you know, outlaws to go. Traffickers. Yeah, sure. So anyway, he had like all these really had all these really wild and crazy experiences that he told me about afterwards, usually. He'd say, I'm going to go do this. He said, hey, I'm going to go down the Patuca River through the Muscatia. And then he sent this email about what it was like when he came back.

So when he went missing in Costa Rica and I went down there. Yeah, but hold on, back up. Hold that thought for a minute, because the trip that he went missing on, were there red flags in your mind about that trip? Well, I didn't really know he was heading on that. Like what happened there is it was in the summer, and in the summer, you know, I'm kind of busy doing stuff. And he was communicating with us, and he and I, he'd ask me about, like, maps. Hey, Dad, do you have any secret sources for good topo maps?

Because I think, you know, I kind of knew, maybe he'd mentioned it or we talked about it, but I sort of thought he wanted it to cross the Darien Gap, you know, in the highway. Which is sort of, you know, like, I think we all want to do it, but none of us really should do it. And, um, and I had, you know, I think I would have told him don't do it, but I was sort of, I don't want to say I was pleased that he was thinking about it, but I don't know, you know, like. You kind of rooting him on in a way, right? I guess I kind of was. And I, you know, I, I sent him some map ideas, you know, even though it wasn't specifically about the Darien. And so anyway, we were talking back and forth about maps. And I came back from a pack rafting trip in the Talkeetna Mountains.

And, you know, there was an email there. It was like, you know, the best map yet. So I just thought it was about maps. And I took off because Peggy, my wife, was like, hey, you've been gone. You know, we got to go dip net some salmon. This is the time when all the salmon are and let's go. So we went down to the Kenai and had some house projects when I got back. And we hadn't heard, we didn't hear from him, you know, and I kept expecting to hear from

him, but I hadn't really read the email. You know, like I really, I still feel guilty about that. And I didn't really read it through when I should have. And when we got back and, you know, we were in Lowe's shopping for something to work on the house and Peggy got nauseated. We were talking like, Hey, haven't, why haven't we heard from Roman? And she got nauseated. We went home and I read this email and it was like, you know, holy, can I say shit on here? Holy shit. You know, I read the email. I read the email and he was supposed to have been back like 10 days before. And I just felt awful that I hadn't looked.

And I felt even worse, like he's missing. I haven't heard from him. We should have heard from him. He was only going to be in there for like five days. In a 10-day gap. 10 days, yeah. On a five-day trip was definitely abnormal. For sure.

Yeah, I mean, he would, that would never, it would be way out of the ordinary. Like he usually, like when he came back from that crossing in Guatemala, you know, he says, hey, I just got out. I'll tell you more later. Just to let us know. Yeah. Because you guys had a little bit of a protocol just from your experiences too about sort of the importance of your out date. Yeah. He grew up with that.

You know, he grew up with like being, we were always responsible. You know, I didn't want to freak my wife. I had a wife and kid at home. I had to make sure that I came back when I said I was going to come back. Or if I didn't, they knew I would be back. And then we would, you know, he grew up with that. And he was a responsible kid about that. So he always let us know.

So when, you know, I didn't hear, I rushed down, you know, like I left the next day. And so that's kind of like the third part of that book is about looking for him down there. And it was frustrating to get down there and have all these people. And you brought a friend down. Yeah. Well, I needed somebody, you know, and so I brought Ty Verzoni down who speaks fluent Spanish. And I, you know, he's the kind of guy that, you know, one time I, I was going to the Himalaya to look for these ice worms in the Himalaya and that my collaborator, another scientist couldn't go. And so my, my collaborators, it was Thursday

and we're supposed to leave on Sunday. And he's like, Hey, I can't go. And I'm like, Hey, Ty, can you go to China next week? And he's like, sure, when? And so, Ty was the kind of guy, he could drop everything. At one point, Ty went to every continent every year. And every continent, he went to every continent, he was paid to go. He was a guide, or he was doing logistics in Antarctica, or he was doing logistics in Antarctica or he was doing medicine in Africa. You know, he was that kind of guy. And his mom is Vietnamese and his dad is Italian. And so he looks like he's from anywhere, you know, and he's got a big smile.

He's real gregarious. And, you know, he's super strong, but he's kind of, you know, I don't know. He just looks like you would like him you know if he was here we would all like him immediately so i needed him with me because i'm i'm not the kind of guy people usually like right away or ever for that matter i don't know but he is and so i needed him to come and he we went down there and he has jungle experience and we've done a lot of stuff together and your initial impulse was to go where you now understood that he went. Yeah. And just like, like physically look for him, like look around to find him along a route.

Well, yeah. Well, he told me where he was going. He sent a map. You know, he said, I'm going to go up this river and I'm going to go out this river. It's going to take five days. He was very specific. And I took that as, I mean, I would send somebody that, and I'm going to go out this river. It's going to take five days. He was very specific. And I took that as, I mean, I would send somebody that, and I have, you know, for 40 years, I've sent people that kind of thing because, hey, look, if I don't show up, come get me. If I'm not here by this day, come get me. And officials down there though were.

No, they just thought he was some kid who was, you know. Ran off. Yeah, like the backpackers we were talking about earlier who traveled through Central America and, you know, hang out at the hostel and smoke cigarettes and talk about how they'd like to do stuff, but they don't do anything, you know. And so they just thought he was, you know, hanging out with a drug dealer and or has just ignoring his parents, you know, none of that added up. So it was very frustrating to me who had, had spent this life. So I wrote this book. Cause you're just another, you're just another parent who thinks their kid's an angel. Exactly. And you just clearly can't see that he, whatever, he ran off with a girl.

That's it. It's exactly. Yeah. And I, it was really painful. I mean, to like, sort of, first of all, to have my son missing, you know, and it's like a, I'd spent, you know, more than half my life and his whole life doing stuff with him. You know what I mean? And not like just playing cards, you know, or chess or watching TV. You know what I mean? But kind of the stuff that really bonds us. I mean, I think that's part of what like hunting or being outdoors really bonds us in a really very deeply human way. And especially with your kids, you know, or your wife and your friends. And so it was just like, it was a real insult to this injury of loss to lose my son and then have people tell me like, I didn't know him or this is what he was doing. And so the book is a lot about that. You know what I mean? Oh, for sure. It's like, that's like one of the aching parts about it i know you spent a lot of time on this i don't want to i don't we don't need to spend a ton of time on it right now but

like i want to get to how you actually searched but try to explain to people like the false lead that emerges oh you mean the patalora story which takes months like for months it takes a year it took years to get that where people are like this is what happened and and you're like that that's not what happened but everybody's like why can't this guy see that this is what happened but explain this guy well he's sort, he was like the pariah of the Osa Peninsula. So the Osa Peninsula is like this elbow that sticks out in southern Costa Rica on the Pacific side near the border with Panama. And it's a pretty, it's, you know, it's a pretty rural area. Very wild, too. There's the biggest national park.

I think it's the biggest national park in Costa Rica. Corcovado National Park is there. I think it's wild enough where there's like illegal gold miners. Yeah, it's the biggest national park in Costa Rica. Corcovado National Park is there. It's wild enough where there's illegal gold miners. Yeah, it's totally wild. Setting up camps that no one knows about. Yeah, well, it's wild enough to have jaguars and bushmasters and herpy eagles and all the monkeys that live in center. Yeah, people living out there that no one knows about. Right.

And then it's so big. And it's got gold miners who hang out in the park and they hide out and the rangers go in. And then the west coast of the park, you used to be able to hike around there and the west coast was a great place to hike. But I think there's a lot of cocaine boats that come up and bring drugs from Panama now. And they've shut all the hiking down on the west coast along the beach basically north of Serenaena which is the most touristic part and it's it's really a remote you can't drive into the park you have to hike into it and now they don't let you hike there without having a guide and they only let you hike on certain trails and the rangers go in there and they chase the miners out and they change chase the poachers out and uh and then

there's this out just outside the park there's um a big mining community, but it's all, it's all like hiking, I don't know, backcountry mining, like it's hand mining. Backcountry miners? Yeah. They hike in and their sluice boxes are like three feet long and their, their shovels are metal shovels, but they've whittled some, you know, pieces of hardwood down to stick into the shovel. When the handles break, they just make a new one. And they live in these plastic, you know, tarps. And their running water is through plastic pipes that they use to kind of drain areas to mine for gold. It's all by hand, you know.

And so anyway, there's this one mining trail that goes from one mining community all the way to the coast. And everybody thought that they'd seen my son with this guy, Patalora. And his name, Patalora, it was like his nickname for parrot foot because he had like a deformity of his foot. And nobody liked him. And he, nobody liked him. And he was the pariah of the Osa, you know, and anything that bad that happened, they blamed it on him. Even his own family didn't like him. And so he was with this gringo who apparently looked like my son and everybody was sure that my son had been with him.

And he didn't do a whole hell of a lot to dispel the notion that he had been with your son. Oh, no. He encouraged it. Yeah, he fed it. He came up, he spun all these stories. I don't want to tell too much because my publisher will want somebody to buy the book. And if I tell you the whole story, nobody will want to read it. Is that true?

If I tell the story, nobody will want to read it? I don't think that that's true. No. Maybe they'll want to read it? I don't think that that's true. No. Maybe they'll- Page one. Yeah, well, the Patalora story, it just, it never went away. You know, like right up to the end, it never went away.

And I just couldn't see Roman like walking with this guy. You know, like it would be, I think I used the phrase in the book, it would be sort of like this guy, because I talked, I interviewed people. You know, I followed the Patalora Trail. You know, I talked to the people. I mean, I hiked into the jungle.

I spent like weeks in the jungle. You know what I mean? I hiked all around. You know, illegally, eventually legally. Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to bring up, that you wanted to go in and, okay, so the book gets into, spends a lot of time on what everyone else is telling you must have happened. Yeah.

And you needing to be the naive Rube who insists that you're right while everyone else is behind your back, probably saying like, this guy has no idea. Probably. Yeah, for sure. But I mean, like I knew my son, you know, and I- You can't get his bank records. I couldn't get, it took us two years to get his bank records, but I, you know, I knew my son and I'd been in the jungle enough to know that I could look and I wanted people to help me. And so the

only people I could really get to help me because the officials did everything they could to keep me out. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you about is they literally forbid you. Threaten me, threaten to arrest me. To go, forbid you, you cannot go look for your son. Yeah, that's pretty much what they said.

Yeah. You know, and I went down there to look for him. And this is months long. Yeah, for, yeah, months. And and I went down there to look for him. And this is months long. Yeah, for months. And I went down there specifically to look for him. And you'll have to go out on illegal minor trails, sometimes with illegal minors, to try to find your way in there to look around. Right. Well, they knew it much better than I did.

So I got minors and poachers to help me out, you know, because nobody else, the officials wouldn't. And so. Under, yeah, you're under threat of arrest. Yeah. I mean, at one, I remember one time I had like this kind of bushy beard and I shaved it off cause I knew they were looking for me and I hid in the car, you know? I mean, um, cause I, I needed to find him, you know, and I was gonna do whatever it took.

So it must be so frustrating. It's so many levels to be kept out from that. Yeah. I was like trying to, I felt like it was like some kind of football game where they're trying to tackle me, but I'm trying to get to the end zone there, you know. And the officials were trying to keep me from going that direction. But the locals were really helpful, you know, like the people who live there and they're very family oriented and they understood, you know, what I was trying to do. And, uh, and my friends,

you know, came down and helped me, but then they'd come down and I, I realized how dangerous, dangerous it was to have people who didn't have any experience in the jungle and have them with me, you know, cause there's snakes. And I mean,

it sounds, uh, cliche to say, Oh, there's snakes, but no, there really are snakes, you know,

like full on. Yeah. It's full on, you know, like you get hit and you're going to like, you got an's snakes, but there really are snakes. Full on. Yeah, it's full on. You get hit and you're going to, you got an hour and you're going to be dead. Basically, yeah. And you're a couple hours in and they're not going to get a helicopter in there. And there's like three snakes you kind of have to really watch out for. There's the palm vipers that hang kind of like

right at eye level and you don't see them. And this kid came down, I really like this kid, Todd. He came down to help and he almost walked into one. He did. He walked literally and he almost got hit. Ty Verzoni stepped over a log and there was a palm viper coiled up on the log. He didn't see it.

I saw it when I walked up to the log and I was like, holy cow, I can't bring my friends down here. This is too dangerous. You know, then there's feral ants. Those are the ones that are definitely poisonous. And I never saw a bushmaster, but they're the really bad ones. And it was dangerous. And I could see why they didn't want me in there.

And they didn't know me. I had to get the lieutenant governor of Alaska who does know me to write a letter and say, no, Romundial knows what he's doing. He's been around. You can trust his judgment. But they wanted to protect me. They didn't want me to get into trouble. And I could see their side, but the other side of me, there's no stopping me. I was going to do whatever it took.

I had to sell my soul to reality TV eventually. I didn't know it was reality TV, but it turned into reality TV. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. I'll ask about that in a second, but another thing I wanted to touch on is you, initially you felt like there was like a race against the clock. Oh, yeah. It wasn't recovery. It was rescue.

Yeah, no, I pictured him. He was like, I could see him in the tent and it was all soggy and wet and cold because the rainforest is actually cold, especially here. You're in the mountains. And when it rains, you know, the rain's coming from 30,000 feet up. So it's cold. It comes down and chills you. And I could see him like in this tent and he was broken. And hey, dad, where are you? I'm out of food. That's what went through my head. And so I was trying to find him and people were trying to keep me out. You know, it was terrible. Yeah, it was terrible. I don't think, forgive me if you bring this up in your book, but did some of the local response to you, did you ever get a sense that it was just like another view of American exceptionalism where you have this place where no doubt many, many people go missing because of drug trafficking, because of, uh human migration because of whatever reason but then everyone needs to drop everything and get everyone on board because an american is missing no i never felt that and i never asked for that you know what i mean like i didn't ask for the helicopter i didn't ask for the whole army of red cross people i would have done it myself i would have preferred if they would just like let me do this. Like here's the way I sort of feel is – and this is maybe a little too libertarian for most people.

But to be part of society now, we've had to give up everything, okay? Like society is great. But we don't get to take care of ourselves. You get a doctor to take care of you. There's no justice. We don't take care of our own justice. We have a justice system that takes care of ourselves. You get a doctor to take care of you. There's no justice. We don't take care of our own justice. We have a justice system that takes care of that. We don't get rid of, if somebody's breaking into your house, you can't do anything about that. You got to call the police. We don't do anything for ourselves. It's all we get to do is put food in our mouths now, maybe,

you know, and maybe we can reproduce it. Who am I to defend myself? Yeah. And so I should get the authorities. That's it. That's what it comes down to. So to be part of society, we've given up all these things that when we were like primitive humans, we did ourselves. You know, like we don't even like build your house anymore. You have somebody else build your house. You know, we don't really get to do much. And so this seemed really important to me is to take care of my family member, you know, but we don't get to do that. No, we have specialized teams who are going to do that, but they're never going to be as invested in it as we are.

When I follow a trail, right, a wounded animal trail, I don't want anybody else out there messing with the evidence. And I want to be the one collecting it and processing it. And again, nobody's more invested in the person that sent the bullet or the arrow, right? Were you feeling any of that? Like if I involve a lot of people, then I'm going to miss critical information and I may be the best person to decipher that information. Absolutely. That's, that's, I think that's a really good analogy. That's kind of how I felt. But I know, maybe I was just too emotional about it.

You know what I mean? And I should have just got out of the way, but there was no way I was going to. Yeah, and there's an enormous amount of variables where you can't, you're not able to rule out foul play. So you're trying to get into the jungle to look, but you're also looking at everyone you walk by and everyone's backpack. You're curious about what are their shoes. And you know what gear your son had.

And you're trying to see like, am I going to see someone come by with a pair of Solomon shoes on? Oh, and then the longer I was on the Osa, the more you heard about these stories. You know, like the Austrians who lived in this little town and sold gold and how they had been killed. Well, they disappeared, but there was blood on their walls and somebody was driving their car around and using their ATM card. But they never found a body until years later when bones washed out.

And then there was the Canadian woman who was shot in the head and they didn't have any idea who did that. And then there was another woman, an American, who was smothered in her bed, you know, in an iPod or iPad were stolen. And so you heard about these things along you were there. And then you'd hear about this guy, Pat DeLora, who some people would say, oh, yeah, he's a murderer. He's killed people. He killed your son and blah, blah, blah. And

I mean, it is, it's kind of a lawless place. And- And if there's no body, there's no murder. Yeah. And yeah. They don't, they like, you could, no matter what evidence exists without a body, there's no murder. Yeah. Like those Austrians, everybody knew who did it because he was driving their car around and spending their ATM money. And they knew that he'd done it. But until they found this body two years later, the bones that had washed out of this riverbank, then they realized, okay, yep, you're the one.

There's the body. Yeah. But you even go arrange and meet with the guy who's claiming to have been one of the last people to see your son alive? Right. Well, I was eager to meet the guy who, his name was Jenkins, and I was eager to meet him because early on in the search, when they'd kick me out of the search because I was emotionally unstable is what they said. Were you looking back now? No, wasn't i was very calm you know i it was the guy who was in charge of the search was emotionally unstable from my perspective and he just didn't he just didn't you know um maybe like you know i this friend this mutual friend i have with your

brother named chris you know he he'll complain that I have a type A personality, whatever that is exactly. He says that you do. Yeah. And I guess what that means is- Maybe he does. No, I have a type A is what he says. Yeah, but I know him.

When we get together with another- He's a pilot. He is a pilot. So when type A's get together, there's not enough oxygen in the room to breathe, you know? And so a lot of these guys who are in charge of things are type A, like a pilot. And so the guy in charge of the search was type A. And there I was, you know, like, no, we've got to do what my son said.

And he's like, hey, you know, I'm in charge here. Yeah, yeah. And he pushed me out. And I was very calm because I've been in some sketchy situations. You know, I've been in, I don't, I'm not trying to brag here or anything. I'm just trying to say that i know that when things are bad you got to be calm you know what i mean yeah and you've been on searches i've been on searches yep i found people that's why i thought i could find my son because i've

i found people before like in storms and so i was there and this guy kicked me out and then um ty was i was able to ty was able to talk his way and they walked down this trail and they got to this village and this guy said oh hey i met i met somebody in the jungle and he said his name was roman and that's when i knew that they really this guy had really seen him because everybody else called my son cody because that's the name that was on the flyer so the name on the on the flyers was cody roman dial and in costa rica um his middle name you know would be like a second last name so everybody had like down there in costa rica the first name is your given name and then the last name is your father's family name and your second your middle name is

your mother's middle name and so everybody called my son Cody, nobody called him Roman unless you'd met him. Yeah. Because he would say, yeah, I'm Roman. And you also kept secret certain pieces of gear that you knew he had and other stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Little things that you knew and no one else knew so that you could try to sort out the BS from the reality. Exactly. Exactly.

So when I met this guy Jenkins who said he'd met Roman, I quizzed him. This guy's a minor. He's an illegal minor, yeah. And he had great risk to himself. And I kind of figured, yeah, if he's risking himself to tell this, then I know he's telling the truth. I mean, that's how we – like if you expose yourself or put yourself at risk, like if you handicap yourself, that's a way of sending an honest message. Like there's this idea of sending an honest message. Like there's this idea about animals with big horns. Like, like, I don't know if you've ever seen a moose, like a big moose go through thick alders and they get hung up. It's a lot of work.

You know, those horns weigh a lot and they're like, and, and there's this idea that a moose or any other big animal that's got big horns, it's a message that they send out. Like, I'm such a badass that I can walk around with this huge handicap. You know what I mean? It's like an honest message. Like, I am a badass and here's how I'm going to show you. I'm just going to handicap myself. So, for this miner to come forward at great risk to himself, you know, he was sending an honest message because he was handicapping himself. He could be arrested for being where he was. And yet he came forward to say, yeah, I met this guy named Roman who said he was a biologist from Alaska. And I was like, where was that? And I didn't ask the authorities, hey, let's go up there tomorrow.

I was like, I went up there with the illegal miner and we snuck up there. And I went up there, I got another poacher to go up there too and we went up there and he showed us the spot and I kept going back to that area and um and then eventually even to the point where you guys are rappelling into areas well yeah I did I we did a traverse across this big high plateau and um and we left the plateau, we left the little trails like there's these trails, they're about like game trails. They really are they're game trails that people also will kind of maintain and nick with their machete and stuff. And we

left those little trails and we dropped off the plateau and it was really slippery and I could see it was steep and slippery and I could see, you know in Hollywood movies where like when somebody falls down and they slide for like five minutes and they end up in a creek and that always seems so corny and stupid, like that would never happen. Then I realized, oh, this is where that could happen. You ever see Romancing the Stone?

Exactly. That's the classic. That's the classic. That set the bar. It set the bar, yeah. And so I was thinking that could have happened to him. And he could have slid into, like, where he had been seen. He just climbed up out of this canyon.

And people thought he had climbing gear, you know, to have made it out of there. But he didn't. And that little canyon, I imagine maybe he could have slipped trying to get back in it somehow. And so the only way in was to rappel down waterfalls to get into it. And I thought maybe he'd slipped in there. So we went down and did some canyoneering. He wasn't there, obviously. But I went in there looking because I thought, you know, he had been in this area.

I thought he had to be close by. So I just kept looking. It seems like the perfect crew to kind of know where, where the harm is in that terrain, like poachers and illegal miners, as far as like everybody knows an area and where like, oh yeah, that would be a good spot for something bad to happen.

Yeah. This would be a good spot to stay out of that stuff, you know? Right. And to be with those guys, I'd much rather be with them than with these, you know, Red Cross volunteers who are all coming from the big city and they were, you know, kind of like fleshy and

pale and, you know, had too much gear and had never been in country like that. Whereas the miners and the poachers, you know, they've got to be super careful because it's like, they're not going to be able to get a rescue from the park service if something happens to them. So the whole point with them is to be where no one knows where you are. Yeah, and they are skinny and tough. They're out in the sun all the time.

They know what to avoid and what you can use. Yeah, I mean, they were like the perfect guys to be. But it didn't matter to me who I was with. I just needed to get in there and whoever was going to go with me, that's who I was going to take. Explain, you met, you made a remark about sold yourself to reality TV. Yeah. Well, you know, give it whatever version of that you're comfortable with what you did and why you did it. Well, you know, um, what I, know um what i i when i i mentioned those

that race where dick griffith pulled a pack raft out and told me that old age and treachery beats youth and skill every time and that was when i was 21 and then by the time i was in my 30s those um that eco challenge race which was a big television race that mark burnett you know who kind of put reality tv on the map so he started the eco challenge and i did a bunch of those races and i could see like every time i did one of those races um not every time but most of the time i was on a team that they watched you know what i mean like they followed with the camera and so then i'd see the television show i'm like i wasn't there that's not the race I was in.

Right. You know, and I was like, this is, so I was real, a little, a real apprehensive about television. I'd done from the science side, I'd done some sort show is not like this, but I never saw like what I did on that show. You know, it just, they, they rearrange things and they cut it up and it looks like reality, but it's really not. I much prefer writing or radio. I don't know why. So I was apprehensive.

I didn't want to deal with TV. Yeah. But somebody got through to Peggy and, and, uh, hey, I lost my father in, I think it was Honduras or El Salvador and he was killed. He was murdered. And I spent 10 years trying to bring his murder to justice and I wasn't able to do it until I brought a camera down there. And the local people just opened it right up to me once i had a camera they thought everything they said was being sent by satellite and being transmitted it was like a truth serum this is the way to find your son so these are producers reaching out they

look for stories like this yep and that they think are going to make dramatic tv and they find people and reach out and do that right and i mean I mean, I had lots of, you know, producers, but this one was different and they got to Peggy. I don't want to say they got to her, but they convinced her. And I was like, yeah, that sounds good. And then they offered up this, like, it sounded really good to me. They said, hey, here's what we'll do. We'll get a criminal investigator, which I had no experience doing that. And then by that point, you know, this is like a year later, foul play seemed just as likely as anything else. But I also wanted to keep looking in the jungle and they got this PJ, you know, a para jumper,

one of those air force guys that, you know, they can do everything. You know, they're scrawny little guys. They can jump out of airplanes and swim and And, you know, they swim underwater until they pass out. That's how you know you can be a PJ, too. You swim underwater until you pass out. And professional rescuer. They're a professional rescuer. Yeah, they can shoot guns. They can save lives.

They can do it all. And I have a bunch of friends. They did the Wilderness Classic race and they would win. And super cool guys. And I met this guy, Ken Fournier. He'd done a race I'd put on, an armed forces eco-challenge race that I put on. And he had been on the winning team like two years in a row. And so I was like, wow, yeah, he'd be great. He and I can go in the jungle and look. And this, you know, retired DEA agent,

he can do the criminal investigations. He'd spent 25 years in Latin America. You know, he was like 10 feet tall and bald with like, you know, an AR-15 tattoo down his arm or something like that. I don't really remember, but. Gets people to open right up. Yeah. That's what I figured. Yeah, you know, and I, it seemed like the dream team, you know, and, and I had done

enough with television to know that they were really. And this is for, this is for Nat Geo? Well, you know, they were an independent producer and they were trying different channels and they ended up selling the show or getting financing from Nat Geo. They sold the proposal. And they had a couple different – I don't watch TV, so I don't really know all of them. It's hilarious that the reputation that National Geographic has was sort of like the truth. But then the, the TV is the,

the, I don't know. Richard Murdoch is the one who owns it now. You know, it's like, it's not national. It's not the national geographic that you're Rupert. Thank you.

It's not the national geographic that your parents grew up with. You know what I mean? It's not that. And they wouldn't be happy with you if they knew you haunted either. Probably not. No, those guys, those guys are horrible.

Well, so I asked these guys on the telephone, like, hey, is this reality TV or is this a documentary? And by the way, what's the difference to you guys? To these producers I asked, what's the difference to you guys between reality TV and a documentary? And that was this long pause on this conference call. And then, you know, looking back, I'm kind of like, oh, this was reality all along, you know. And they said, oh, well, reality TV is when it's really overproduced. And so anyway, that became like my code word whenever I thought they were doing something to kind of manipulate me or Peggy for their show. I'd say, hey, this feels a little overproduced.

And I would put a stop to it if I could. But we went down there and I thought that the television would be able to get permits to get into the park. Because that had been my big bugaboo. My big stumbling block was trying to get permits where I could go into the park to look around. I mean, I ultimately did. Even in the first six weeks while I was down there, I was able to do it thanks to, you know, Mead Treadwell and these other guys who knew people in Costa Rica. But my experience with television shows is they were really good at getting permits. They had whole divisions who would get permits in parks and things.

So I thought, oh, this sounds great. We'll have, you know, the ex-DEA guy do criminal investigation on the outside and me and Ken will go on the inside and I can pick up where I left off. Just keep searching legally and everywhere I want. But it turned out they couldn't get permits to go in. So everything became about, you know, the criminal investigation. And the only thing the criminal investigation could come up with was this Patalora story. And Patalora spun it even crazier, you know, and, you know, with more murderers and like cutting up my son and feeding him to the sharks and stuff like that.

Yeah, like he's schizophrenic. He was, yeah. So anyway, it's just, you know. And they bought that hook line stuff like that. Yeah, like he's schizophrenic. He was, yeah. So anyway, it's just, you know. And they bought that hook, line, and sinker. Oh, yeah. The TV people. Oh, they did. They made like little reenactments.

Oh, it was horrible. And then this guy, Carson, who was this ex-DEA guy, he was mad at me and offended that I didn't embrace his ideas. I'm like, you know, I remember when I first met him and they fired up the cameras and, you know, Carson's like, tell me everything you can. He didn't say can. Tell me everything you know about your son.

I'm like, wow, you know, how can I tell you everything I know about my son like in five minutes on the television camera? And so I just told him the same story I'd been telling for a year, you know, like I knew my son, I raised him in the wilderness. He, uh, had been on a six month trip through South America, through Central America. He'd done some really radical, crazy things already. He has a lot of experience and, uh, and I laid it all out. And then it was like,

he didn't even hear me, you know, and then anything I ever told him, he just dismissed it. And it was, everything was about his hypothesis, you know? And I'm a scientist and it's just, it's hard for me to throw away data or to discount things. You know, like I don't, I'm not allowed to do that. I can't, it doesn't work for me to like throw away data to make something fit what I want to believe. And that's all this guy did.

And it was just- It fit the story. Everything had and that's all this guy did and it was a story everything had to fit the story oh it was painful and he was like offended that i wasn't like thankful to him for this yeah you know what was it like watching uh reenactment of your son being dismembered by a machete well i don't know you can you could probably tell it to me just as well as i could say it. It's not exactly something you want to see. But you were told to avoid it. Yeah. He said, don't watch it.

I mean, but I was in a hotel and it was advertised. What was the show called? Missing Dial. Missing Dial? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, you know what? I'm glad you just said that because that's a stupid question when i asked you what it was like yeah i mean anybody should know shit

like yeah i just it's just it was uh i don't know so anyway um you know maybe i was too hard on the tv like my agent seems to think i was too hard on the television people and in the book yeah in the book and other people think i wasn't hard enough i i tried to be honest about how i felt all i did was tell all i do in the book you know how i felt you know i used to be friends with the writer chris offett and uh he wrote a book that was very critical of his family and someone pointed out to him uh you know how he didn't really do a good job telling their side of the story and he said we'll have them write their own fucking book well they made it they got to make that's what i'm saying they already made their own show they made their

own show he had so like this is your turn now that's how i feel yeah exactly it's like i mean it's like they got plenty of you know like, I shouldn't give them an audience. I mean, they got all the audience they want. And I was grateful for the help and I was grateful for what they did. And I mean, they convinced me and I was ready to believe them because I gave up. And plus, you don't hire a consultant to argue with them. So, I don't know. It was kind of a wild ride.

You know, like I read it because I knew I was coming here. So, I had to read it again. I mean, I've read it a lot of times. I can read it pretty quick. And when I read it, sometimes I can't believe all that stuff happened. You know what I mean? It's sort of like- It was a really unexpected turn.

I was not anticipating. I'm respecting your desire to not just divulge everything because I get it. I think people will buy your book. I want people to buy your book. But I'm trying to do this in a way that doesn't have any spoilers. How... how when I read it to be honest with you in the end I don't feel that you're

naive being naive but in the end I wasn't I'm not entirely convinced about the certain I'm not entirely convinced what happened to him. Yeah.

Well, I don't. How convinced are you? So, you know, it kind of, it kind of goes different ways, you know, like I'm, I don't think I'd ever, you know, that's a really good question. I'm 99% sure, 99.99% sure that he died either from a snake bite or a fallen tree, you know, because there wasn't any evidence that he was, you know no marks on the bones. You know what I mean? And it was just, I've seen his bones. I saw his bones. So I, I just, I can't see him being murdered. You know, like it didn't, there's a chance, you know, like aliens could have abducted him and killed him. I mean, there's that chance, but I'm really, the odds of that are so, so super small, like having been there and where it happened and who would know who would have done it. I just,

I can't, like, you know, I've been around law enforcement enough now, like, you know, and it sort of sounds cliche, but what would be the motive, you know? And it's just that nobody would have any motive for doing it. You know, the minors wouldn't have any motive for doing it. So I the miners wouldn't have any motive for doing it so i'm pretty sure you know like 99.99 yeah at least that he died a natural death you know that wouldn't be a natural death no that he was killed by a tree or a snake bite is that kind of natural occupational i don't know well i guess not guess an unnatural death. Not a man. Right. Yeah, that's all I – I'm with you.

Yeah, I think it's – maybe it's natural to die from somebody else, but I would kind of – that's kind of the dividing line for me is a natural death is where you die by like accident or nature. You know what I mean? Like, I guess accidents kind of fall into nature, like an act of God, you know, an earthquake or even a car wreck could be considered unless somebody's drunk and they hit you and then somebody killed you. But if, you know, if long trying to find an answer? It was like two years, you mean? And then. That's all you thought about for two years. Well, you know, I did do some other stuff, you know, but yeah, it was always on my mind. Yeah. I mean, it was a very, it was definitely a relief to, to kind of get, I mean, I'd still be looking, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know when I would have stopped. I don't know when I would have stopped. Did you have some loss in, in your relief though also? Or are you like, oh, what, what the hell do I do with my life now?

Well, I definitely had a loss. You know, I do, I feel, you know, sounds kind of corny, but I do, I feel broken, you know. I put a lot, I mean, it was my son, you know. I mean, if any of you guys lost your kid, you probably feel similarly. You know, I mean, especially if you love your son and put stuff, or your daughter, you know, or your wife. But I'm really fortunate, you know, I have my wife and my daughter and my friends and, you know, I've got work. And it was worth it to write the book. I didn't write the book to make any money. I didn't write the book for money, you know. I wrote the book because I needed to tell the story.

I wrote the book for me and I wrote the book for my family and my friends. So they knew what happened, you know. I wondered about that because I used to feel that anytime someone wrote a book about something damaging, that them having written a book about it was evidence that they were no longer damaged because it's hard to write books huh well you know i mean it's like you have to step outside of it and look at it and so i was curious before meeting you i was curious if you were um like to what degree you were a mess to what degree you were damaged by it or came out different yeah and how you came into it you mean ended writing the book? Yeah. My dad lost, you know, before I was born, my father lost a son, right?

And you could hang out with him. I imagine there's people that knew him for 10 years and didn't know that that happened. Uh-huh. Well, I got stuck, right? Because I ran down there to look for my son. I wrote an email. I called people in Costa Rica. I said, my son's missing.

My son's missing. I got to find him. You got to find him. Help me find him. And I ran down there and I looked. And then people were like, hey, I had to tell the story over and over and over. And then it just threw a natural progression. It was, I'm still looking for him, but he's probably dead.

And people wanted to hear the story. And then there was the TV show. So I got used to telling the story, you know, like from the beginning. It's like, you know, like a stink in a room, you know, in your house. You've got a stink. You don't notice it anymore because you live with it, you know, or a pain that you have to live with. You don't hardly notice it or a sound. You know what I mean?

So having to tell the story was a natural thing. And when I was down there, you know, like I'm an older guy, so my memory's kind of shaky. So I had to write everything down and I ran down there with the notebook that had, you know, like the sketches for the remodel I was doing in my house and the shopping list to go dip netting. And then I ran down there with that notebook and then it was phone numbers to people to talk to and notes of what people said. And then that notebook was filled up and then it was stories and I was recording what people, you know, what they described. I was transcribing as they told me stories. And then it was sort of, I had to process what I was thinking, like, what happened?

Who, who, how, what could have happened? And how did I feel? And then it just, you know, turned into three or four journals. And I was like, wow, this is, this is kind of a book people would, I want to straighten this out. So people really know what happened here, especially after the TV show, you know? Did you make any effort to, or was there any effort needed to make, you know, some of these officials that weren't issuing permits or folks trying to really tell you, like, you don't know what you're doing, that they knew the conclusion once you found it. You'd be like, hey, not every white dude missing a kid is crazy. Yeah.

Here's a good example. Like I was saying. Well. Like I was saying. I think that he. Well, here's what happened is, you know, it became big news because everybody had already heard about it. And in Costa Rica, when they found the body, you know, it was still news. So it was kind of clear to everybody what had actually happened in the sense that it didn't really match up with the TV show.

People were freaked out by the TV show, at least in that area, you know, because of the way they portrayed the people who lived there. Oh, yeah. There's like a handful of murderers walking around among you. Right. Yeah. With machetes chopping people up. Feeding them to sharks and they're just like hanging out now in town. Exactly.

Yeah. They were freaked out. And I feel like that's part of the reason that, you know, my son's remains were found is because the, this village was freaked out and they sent, you know, this real, this really a miner in there to really look. And he did. He found him. So anyway, I'm kind of like I feel – no, I don't – you know, I didn't write the book to tell like, oh, I told you so.

You know what I mean? I didn't do it for that. I just – I don't know. There's a lot of – I mean I wept a lot as I wrote that book. You know, there's a lot of, I mean, I wept a lot as I wrote that book. You know, there's a lot of heart in there. I could never write another book like that. You know, I mean, I don't think, I hope I never have to write a book. I would never do.

I think I can only write one book like that, you know. And is the books out now? No, it'll be out in February. Like February 18th is the release date so in the in the process of writing the book you i mean you obviously were very close with your son and knew a lot about him but did you learn you did some research you found out some things people he met did you learn more about him or things you didn't know oh for sure yeah i mean because you got into his emails well i got into his emails yeah and I mean, his friends gave me some of the stuff like from his, you know, high school days and things like that and college days. And I did, I learned a lot more about him, you know, things maybe that as a parent, you really don't want to know. Um, but you kind of suspect and, uh, and he's a normal kid, you know? And, uh, and I think to, um, to like take his emails and turn them into that second section.

So there's three parts to the book. There's sort of raising him and then there's his trip and then there's looking for him. And on his trip through Mexico and Central America, you know, to really pick apart his emails and then rewrite them, you know what I mean? That was, yeah, it was like, wow, you know, to really pick apart his emails and then rewrite them. You know what I mean? That was, yeah, I was like, wow. You know, and I kind of, you know, I'd read them before as emails, but I didn't really, I don't know, when something, when you take something and it goes through your eyes and into your head and comes out your fingers,

you process it a lot more thoroughly. And I wish I'd had a chance to tell him, you know? Yeah. I just realized we're saying the book a lot. We should be restating. I'm going to do that. The name of the book, The Adventurer's Son by Roman Dial. Available, well, I don't know when we're going to release this,

but we'll make it. Go get the book. Yeah, I hope a lot of people. I think they will, and thank you for writing it. I mean, you know, you hear, we used to even laugh about it where you guys hear books described as like brave. I said, what the hell does that mean? But it's a brave book and it get to a part of a book where

someone's coming up a trail and you see that they have a plastic sack with your boy's bones. Um, it's heart wrenching. The adventure son by Roman dial and, uh, Roman, thank you very much for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to meet you. Appreciate it. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-axe hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.