The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 207: Bullfighting a Griz

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Alex Messenger, Corinne Schneider, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: The 29th day; even more titillation; walleyes as an easy-to-clean fish; thinking in fathoms and rods; a 600 mile canoe trip; breaking down canoe strokes; bear poppers and spray; group dynamics in the wilderness; an exponential sense of peace; being scared of musk ox; everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face by a griz; playing ‘possum; doing the trip you're dealt; 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.

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You guys even know what catatonic means? Super not happy. Because miss me and every it's so but it has but perk up come out of that catatonic stupor because there's still two venues left everything's sold out but we got still still two venues left april 15 and april 16 neighboring dates me cal yanni meteor off the air holy smokes mesa art center in mesa arizona for you phoenix market people or people that can get there in city national grove anaheim california like the la you people come on out man hurry up and get them everything else is gone, but get those. See you. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten,

and in my case, underwear-less. 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. the hunt app from the itunes or google play store know where you stand with on x you starting yanni you starting the whole podcast yeah because if you're going to say the first thing there's something i think you should say oh but then going welcome everybody no no you should say um so alex messenger you got uh attacked by a grizzly bear and then go into

whatever you're going to talk about all right because that's titillating very that's titillating and people want to hear all about that have you always been fond of that word do you feel like just recently it's like re-entered your vocabulary titillating titillating what i like about no it only recently i've always been fond of it i've just been trying to use it more um there's a tom robbins character named marx marvelous and uh he always liked that name because people loathe marx carl Marx, and real men never use the word marvelous. And so it was sort of an attack on language and stereotypes about language. So I feel like the word titillating is unexpected.

It is that. Like if I said rad or awesome or bitching, people don't care about that a rad story no one's gonna listen a titillating story yeah phil over there he always looks half asleep i can't be now i'm running cameras he fired right up now yeah you hear that word and they turn the volume knob so they know it's a titillating story about uh white water and a bear attack that's right so now what were you in a bear bite but before we get to that well once that let me just now i want to do him i want to do him justice as an author okay alex messenger author of the 29th day surviving a grizzly attack in the canadian tundra but first yanni on walleye

alex now lives in Duluth, correct? That's right. And I was telling him that we were just recently fishing walleye on Mille Lacs. He asked if I caught some walleye. I said yes, but I was just as interested in catching walleye. I was interested in asking everybody why the obsession with walleye. Why do you think it is? I don't know i think people appreciate the flavor and uh that it's a beautiful fish and it's pretty easy to fillet that's a great

way that's a great thing to say yeah that's yeah that's a good way to sell a fish yeah you know monk fish or no it's not like a shovel-nosed sturgeon. Yeah, exactly. Of all the people I've asked this question to, you're the first person, I think, that has added that point that it's easy to fillet. Dude, I'm going to add that to everything I talk about now. I mean, you look at a northern, it's like. No, I always talk about things that are hard to clean. Yeah. But no one ever praises, no one ever celebrates things that are easy to clean. I mean, that's utilitarian.

Especially if you've got a lot of them. You ought to be a writer. How old are you? You're not that old, though. 32. Oh, you are? Yeah. I got a baby face.

No, I just did some rough math. Reading your book, I did some rough math, and I had you pegged at 27. Oh, yeah. I don't know why. 05, 17, 20, 20, 33. Okay. 05-17-2020. 33. Okay. Later.

A long ways away. You good on walleye, Yanni? I'm good. So you're from Duluth. Yep. Born and raised? Born and raised in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis suburbs. My wife's from Duluth, so that's what brought me there.

So I was living up in Ely, Minnesota before moving down to Duluth. Oh man, my old man loved Ely because before my time, my old man was, they would do big, long canoe trips. And I still have this, I still have his, I'm thinking, I want to get it framed. I have like his Duluth pack that says I'm canoe country outfitters on it. St stenciled on there yeah like the big i had it rebuilt recently i want to get it put in a glass frame yeah so i can hang it on my wall or just keep using it i moved to duluth for an afternoon one time oh wow when i um moved well here here's the deal man uh what was weird about it is when i got out of graduate school I intended to

take all the things I learned about like I studied writing like in the West right and there's this very intense sort of sense of place in the West mm-hmm and and I wanted to take that way of looking at the world and apply it to the Great Lakes and so soon as I finished graduate school i left because i was going to go write a book about the great lakes um and my dad had just died so i took his truck and i started doing all my research and uh i had a girlfriend at the time and we were going to move to i was like i thought like what better place to write about the great lakes in duluth like you kind of just nudged right out in it, you know?

Oh, yeah. And there's some great stories up there. So I thought maybe we'll just rent a place for six months here and then I'll move to the kind of the other end of the lakes and live there. And I remember we were sitting in a bar looking at, we're sitting in a bar looking at apartments and cottages for rent and whatnot and my girlfriend got an email that she had uh gotten accepted into this writing fellowship awesome that she had to go to and so that just all of a sudden everything kind of like went into upheaval yeah and then wasn't long later i changed my mind anyway i moved back out west yeah but almost moved there that's crazy isn't that amazing how life just kind of switches i knew these um we'll get on to this we'll get on to your story

in a minute but uh it's cold as shit right because i knew these girls i knew these girls i met down in key west that were telling me that they were students at UMD. And they were telling me one time they realized that they went a month without going outside. Yeah. Because you can take tunnels everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. That campus is just like super connected and really easy to get lost in because

of, you know, these buildings weren't originally made for it, so they're all just like kind of bolted together, but yeah, you don't need to go outside. Yeah. You can like spend a month in your bedroom slippers. Yeah, exactly. Going from class in the cafeteria and stuff like that yep exactly taking walks for exercise uh what do you do like what's your main thing you do for a living you're a rider uh so my day job is marketing uh for a hospital in town they're called st luke's okay so um i

started that about a year ago before that i was doing marketing for an outdoor company called frost river who makes traditional canoe packs you know like the one your dad had um and uh yeah so i've been doing marketing for a long time and the writing and photography uh side work which is really vocationally exciting for me you got a scar on your leg from where the bear got you i do yeah i'm gonna drop your drawers and show us it's kind kind of a compromising location. I'll close my eyes. It's in a crock. It's in like a bad spot, right? Oh, it's real high. Yeah, it's right at the hip joint. So it's like drop trowel and then lift up the boxers and then you can see it.

So I don't show it in Plank Company. No, you don't just walk around and walk into bars and be, what happened? Yeah, you get kicked out that way tell uh tell people about the um you're on a 600 mile long canoe trip that's right lay that out yeah so like what is the trip the trip is long but he was a kid too yeah 17 okay yeah let's set the scene 17 years old 17 years old and you embark with some other kids on a 600-mile-long paddle. Yep. Yeah, this is the pinnacle trip for the camp that we were going through.

You know what? Let's back up to that. In your explanation, explain this camp. Yeah, so YMCA Camp Minojin, it's a wilderness trip based camp it started in i think 1922 um up in northern minnesota north of uh grand marais it's like literally a few miles south of the canadian border right next to the boundary waters um so they set up with the mission of um taking kids out for transformational experiences in a wilderness setting but not bad kids no no not like uh not like those um more yeah oriented towards kids who've gotten into

trouble or have chemical uh issues and things like that you know this is this is um kids that just want to have an adventure and see the wild places. Like a regular old summer camp, but just bumped up just a little higher notch of adventure. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's not like a residential camp where you're getting up, you're eating in the cafeteria, you're going and doing archery and catching frogs and doing arts and crafts and stuff, which isn't to knock that at all. That's a really fun experience, but this is just different from that. So you get to camp and you get packed out and they're, you know,

they kind of act like an outfitter in that sense. I thought one of the most interesting things about the camp was that you don't take a car to base camp or to headquarters. Yeah. Yeah. So it's this amazing spot. Like literally right on the edge of the Boundary Waters. You have to go across a lake to get to it, and there's like an old ATV trail that you can take around the lake to get there. But camp itself is just kind of out there. So you feel like you're, I mean, you really are in the wilderness even when you're at base camp.

Is it mostly, is it like blue-collar kids or mostly wealthy kids? It's a mixture, you know know and that's super intentional too um there's like scholarship programs for if you can't um afford the fees and you can apply for a scholarship yeah yep yeah so i actually was a recipient of a partial scholarship for this longer trip okay you can also be like a work camper where you're um at camp as like a work camper where you're, um, at camp as like a residential camper and you're helping out around camp with like chores and whatever. And, you know, having a lot of friends, a lot of fun with friends and kids your age. And, um, that's a really cool experience too. Um, but, uh, yeah, you know, it's a, it's a wide range of folks that go there, but

sessions start with like really short kind of intro. I think they even have a shorter session now that's like five days or something. But at the time, the shortest session was eight days. And my parents were like, you're going on this trip. I'm like, okay. I've gone to the Boundary Waters for a long time with my family. But my parents had heard great things and they kind of sent me on that first trip. Also, that's how the camp works.

You just go up and do a trip. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. Okay. So it's not like you spend your summer there. No, no. You go and do a canoe trip. Yeah. You go and do a canoe trip. Um, there's also like backpacking trips, um, climbing trips, things like that. Um, so it's just amazing experiences and, you know, you're with your contemporaries and you're also with guides who are, you know, really well versed in in what you're doing and we're not old not old no i mean they're you know um they're adults uh but they're not like middle-aged yeah were your parents adventurers they were yeah uh ours maybe still well they're getting they're they're both retired so the adventure the type of adventures changed a little bit but um they're both in anthropology, so my dad was a professor of anthropology at Hanlon university.

Um, the whole time I was growing up, my mom, um, was an adjunct professor and worked in administration and stuff, and they both worked together and they teach study abroad trips, um, every January. So we'd go and tour these ancient sites in Mexico and Peru. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was climbing up temples in Mexico when I was three with them for that. Before that, they did field work like in Guatemala, I think, and other Central American countries where they're setting up with hammocks in the jungle and you got to check your boots for spiders and your archaeological pits for snakes and stuff and yeah breaking up machete fights

between the workers and whatever so they definitely uh brought a sense of adventure to bring it up myself and my sister so you know it wasn't like totally out of the blue that they were like hey you should go on this trip but you know, a hugely important decision for them to send me there because, you know, like I said, we'd gone camping before. But going camping with this, like, organized group and seeing how you can move and do all this stuff really efficiently was just kind of a paradigm shift for me because up in the Boundary Waters,

you measure how far you have to carry your gear between lakes in um, in rods, which is like 17 and a half feet. Oh, really? Yeah. That's a thing? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so it's like, oh, how long is that porridge? Oh, it's five rods. That's super short. Or it's 320 rods, which is a mile. Um, and with my family, it was like, oh, 150 rods. That's like impossible. Did you learn how to think in rods?

Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, uh, when I started hanging out in Southeast Alaska, we have a fish shack there. 50 rods that's like impossible did you learn how to think in rods oh yeah yeah you know uh when i started hanging out in southeast alaska we have a fish shack there everybody does everything in fathoms and nice first all conversations i would need to like be running math right but after whatever i don't know years yeah got to do it the opposite now. Let's see how many fathoms is that. Yeah, like I think in fathoms. Like only when I'm up there. When I'm up there, I think in fathoms.

And someone says like feet, I got to go like, well, hold on a minute. And go the other direction because I just conceptualize. I've learned to conceptualize in fathoms. Tell me again how many feet? A fathom? Yeah. Six feet? Six.

I wonder if that's where the saying like you can't fathom something Yeah. Six feet? Six. I wonder if that's where the saying, like, you can't fathom something comes from. Huh. Do you know where the measurement, the rod comes from? Oh, I should know. It's, I don't believe this is where it came from, but it's the length of an old Minnesota guide canoe. Gotcha. You know Mark Twain? I think it's related to surveying, though, originally.

So, you know, the author Mark Twain. I think it's related to surveying, though, originally. You know the author Mark Twain? Yeah. Samuel Clemens. You know his pen name? Mark Twain is his pen name. Yeah. His given name is Samuel Clemens. Mark Twain is that they would, in the old steamboats, they'd have a dude up front with a rope.

They had knots tied in at increments. To see how fast they were going. Were they six-foot increments, Yanni? That's a good little project for you to work on right now. Yeah, we've done this one before. I know. Talk about this all damn time. And the riverboat captain's got a dude up front

with a weight on a rope with knots. And the dude's yelling out what knot depth. And Mark Twain's second knot is safe passage. Good water. So when you're a riverboat captain, you like that dude up front to be going, Mark Twain's second knot is safe passage, good water. So when you're a riverboat captain, you like that dude up front to be going, Mark Twain, Mark Twain. That means good shit.

Interesting. Yeah. So you portage and rods. Yeah, so you portage and rods. And my perception of what was achievable was totally different once I went on that first trip with camp. And I was hooked right after that. What's a long ass portage in your mind? Don't give it to me in rods.

Fathoms. Miles, yards, whatever the hell you want to do. Yeah. Well, I mean, when you get up over... A standard, but long ass portage. A standard, but long. I'm a fan. I enjoy portaging, which is, uh,

you know, some, some people can't understand that, but, um, between like one and two miles is like, this is good. Okay.

I, I enjoy that. You know, you get into the mode and, um, you get to the end and you're just super stoked to be ready to put your boat down. Yeah. Cause I want to bump into this, this 600 mile journey. So you did a ready to put your boat down. Yeah. Because I want to bump into this 600-mile journey.

So you did a number of trips over the years. Yeah. And sort of the pinnacle. Yep. The hell week. Sure. Is the, how long did it take you guys to go 600 miles? Or how long should it take to go 600 miles?

So this is a 42-day session. So a couple days less than that was end to end kind of what the goal was. Yeah, and the reason we're bringing up portages is because this trip is it's on a river for 600 miles. You're bumping from system to system.

So you get on a lake, the lake flows into your river, you go to another lake, paddle that lake, that lake's frozen, you drag your shit across the ice, then you like drag then you portage over into some whole other river system yeah and then move through that network right and it's and then you always need to go around rapids and everything yeah yeah so our route was amazing. I mean, we started out in the Northwest Territories on the DuBois River and made our way into Nunavut. And then eventually got off the DuBois and kind of did this, not exactly height of land, but this sort of traverse into another river system, the Koonwok, and made our way down that and then ended up on the Kazan. And so it was a really unique route.

Um, that was a combination of rivers that camp and other people had done, but we, we hadn't seen another trip that had actually taken this route and this traverse. So we were kind of felt like we were breaking trail and you guys, you guys kind of architected your own journey. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, uh, uh the six of us which includes the guide you know confabbed about you know what we wanted to have the trip be and and discussed a couple different options and um this one you know in addition to having that uh traverse and these different river systems which were very different in terms of the feel um it also went from the taiga forest which is like scrub trees um so yeah the largest biome in the world yeah is the taiga yeah and it's just amazing

uh it's kind of like everything's in miniature but there's still trees and everything um and they're black spruce poplar yeah and yep and shrubs yeah when you like when you roll in like siberia and russia yeah and then canada yeah i think it's like yeah i've read multiple times the largest biome on the planet like the largest like habitat type yeah that exists yeah and it's it's like the threshold between i don't know what's south of that as far as biomes go but it's kind of the next step north is the tundra so it's like right on the edge um yeah talk tell people about um sort of your perception of what it would be like to like travel across into the yeah tree line yeah you know when you look at old maps you'll see on old maps they use you'll see this line here and there yep it'll say the limit of wooded country oh nice

and old maps but talk about like what like what that transition looked like sort of your expectation of what that would be like and what it was like like yeah so i in my mind you know we're discussing this um looking over maps and everything and we didn't have that description it was kind of like the green zone turned into the whatever, you know, white zone. And that was right across the middle of Dubois Lake, which is the largest lake in Nunavut. And I just imagine kind of pushing off from shore on Dubois and paddling across the lake, which in my mind was, we couldn't see either shore. You know, you never do that. You never paddle in the middle of mind was, we couldn't see either shore. You know, you never do that. You never paddle in the middle of a lake where you can't see shore.

It's really big. Yeah. Uh, isn't that intimidating to get out? Like why not? Yeah. Like you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't go in the middle of the lake because if a storm came up or whatever, you'd be in a pretty bad situation. But that lake's that big. Yeah. I mean, you could probably see a sliver of it but in my mind's eye i was like we're gonna be paddling we won't see shore it's gonna be foggy we're gonna push off there's gonna be trees we'll get to the other side it's gonna be a complete start i understand what you're saying yeah so in my mind's eye that's what it was gonna be it was like you know a switch flipping like trees no trees and uh in reality it was just kind of like all the trees just kept getting smaller and smaller and fewer

and farther between until you kind of don't even realize you're in this place that just doesn't have any trees and the shrubs are like hidden in little hollows and stuff there's just like very very little vegetation that grows of any height at all. We've experienced that on the Dalton Highway. Yeah, I've crossed that a number, the tree line a number of times, and it's like a gradual petering out. Yeah, like the Beartooth Pass. Just like you described, everything just sort of slopes down, and then there's no trees.

And I think, believe it or not... Yeah, at one point in time, you're like, holy shit, there's no trees. And then, I believe there's actually a sign right next to, like, the last black spruce, and they mention it yeah it was like look over there is it named tree this is bob there's a really yeah i mean the last black spruce you can see from that spot there's a really good book about um the natural history of alaska and you know when you see like when you're going across the tree line the limited wooded country and then you see like some tree that's like, from wherever your perspective is at a given time, it looks like the last one. Yep.

It's tempting to imagine it as like a pioneer. Yeah. Whose seed like blew up there. Yeah. But in this book, it explains that what you're typically looking at are remnants. Yeah, it's the last one. It's the last one left. It's not the first's the last one. It's the last one left. It's not the first one there.

You're looking at the last one left. In that, you're still seeing the effects of the end of the Ice Age. Right. Of that line moving. Yeah, it's wild. And I mean, the remnants of the Ice Age up there are just so tangible in a way that's totally different from any other place i've been down here like you know you see stuff and you have to like think about oh like that boulder was dropped by the last ice age but up there there's these things called um eskers

which are remnants of old glacial rivers so that all the sediment would be, you know, in the ice at the bottom of this glacial river. And then when the glaciers recede, that sediment drops down and it's the river bottom, but now it's a ridge. It makes a raised sidewalk. Yeah. Often flat. Often flat.

Yeah. Awesome to portage on. Yeah. Great, great, great traveling. Hard to portage up. Oh, hard to get on top of it, but then you get on top of your smooth sailing. Yeah. So how many people you got with us on, how many then you get on top of your smooth sailing yeah so how

many people you got with us on how many people you got with you on the trip there were six of us two three canoes three canoes and you got one like uh like i don't know a guide counselor yep how old's that guy so he was in his mid-20s okay yeah the pictures he looks young yeah we all looked young yeah you do but it looks like it doesn't look like there's a guy so he's in his mid-20s yeah yeah lots of experience um he was pretty experienced woodsman yeah yeah he yep uh well all the above um we at the end of each trip with camp we get a little we tie a little bracelet for each other um that's kind of to commemorate the trip and um you're theoretically gonna wear it you know uh as long as you can kind of his reminder of everything you learned and his forearm was just like

covered in it I noticed that in one of the pictures oh yeah I was wondering if he had an injury no I saw it no those are each one of those is a trip that he went on or guided. Gotcha. Yeah. At one point in time, this being like the pinnacle trip, at one point in time, this is what's kind of ironic, is they used to run the pinnacle trip to the east, but quit doing it because of fears of polar bears. Right.

But no one ever got hit by a polar bear, right? No, there were some, some near misses that, you know, they paid attention to and were like, all right, you know, polar bears are, well, for one thing, polar bears will stalk humans. Yeah. And that's a level of creepy that is, you know, if you're going for, for a canoe adventure and stuff, you know, it's kind of something you want to not have as part of your trip. Yeah. I'll be worrying about a polar bear that's like following you from camp to camp and stuff

like that. Have you seen one in the wild? No. I never have. And I would like to, and a friend of mine that has some exposure to him talks about just the creepiness of them following you around. Yeah. I can't imagine i mean it'd just be hard to sleep and so they moved it over into grizzly country

yeah yep and what are your uh as you're on this long trip yeah remind me how many days 45 42 42 days yeah when you're on this long trip, what are your conversations and what is your awareness about that like, oh, and there's grizzlies. You know what I mean? Because I think that like I found in life, it's like I feel like you have all the things that you think are a problem. Yeah. You know, you're like aware of like these are the problems. Yeah. But then the problems are always something else. Right. problems. Yeah. But then the problems are always something else.

Right. Oftentimes. Yeah. You get blindsided by the actual things. Right. Right? You think you got to clean your garage and that's a real problem, but then your kid gets Lyme disease and you're like, wow, it wasn't on my radar.

But here you are, presumably, you're're like oh and there's like grizzlies and that's a problem right or a thing of concern yeah something to be aware of um so yeah i mean we were aware of it before we left um camp in northern minnesota you know we did uh we did training at camp on what you're supposed to do you know sitting around talking about uh we had bear spray uh pepper spray walking through you know how sitting around talking about, uh, we had bear spray, uh, pepper spray walking through, you know, how to use that. Were you using the practice cans? Uh, not at that point. Were the inactive ingredients? No, no. Um, we did, we were, you know, using the cans and kind of going through the motions and everything. Um, but

everything but the plunger press. so um but that training that training looked like like what was the training like here's a thing and here's how to use it yeah and then i mean it wasn't like 30 seconds you know we spent some time on it um to the point where when we were done i felt very uh comfortable with how to use it um but you still just left it in your tent. Yeah. Yep. Should have carried it. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Oh, no, no.

Yeah. Yeah, you have to have it on you in order to be able to use it. So you guys, like, took it seriously, but not that seriously. So, yeah, right. We had it. We did that training. We did other training as far as, like, here's what you do in general, you know, when you see it.

And then we'd been told that it was really, really rare to even see one up there. Gotcha. training as far as like here's what you do in general um you know when you see it and then um we'd been told that it was really really rare to even see one up there and you can see forever you know there's no trees you're up on high points a lot and you can see just everywhere um so we kind of went into it with like they're there but they're not like prevalent yeah and they're a way different critter than the coastal ones oh yeah just yeah. Just a way, like, just like, yeah, you just go forever, and then there's one way off in the distance. A lot of times they're scared shitless of people. Yep, they're like, I'm just going the other direction. They're not acclimated to all the people.

They, like, see it, and they're like, whatever that is is not good. Yep, exactly. There's a more kind of, just a little more, a little kind of more wigged out all the time. You know what I mean? Just kind of a cagey or sort of. Yeah. Yeah. And they're, you know, they don't have like salmon streams where they're just picking

dinner out and whatever. They're, they're pretty nomadic. They, they have a pretty wide range, which I understand is more wide than like a coastal grizzly, for instance. Yeah. Extremely low population density. Right. Where one of these things might have one of these bears up in these areas, he might have than like a coastal grizzly, for instance. Yeah. Extremely low population densities. Right.

Where one of these things might have, one of these bears up in these areas, he might have a hundred square mile home range. Yeah. Yeah. Or bigger, maybe. I mean, I have to look at the biology of it, but it's a pretty wide range that they go. But in addition to the bear spray

and just kind of like the other protocols, we had bear poppers, which are these noise-making devices that you shoot with like a bolt-action little pen, and then it fires off this thing, and it just goes boom, and it's just a noise deterrent. Did you experiment with those? No, that was like, here's how you use it, but you guys shouldn't use this. Like that's more something that the guide should use if that if that comes up you don't know they want to ask

about me i might as well ask about it now the the femmes like yes the girls group yeah we mispronounce we mispronounce the french names we say farms oh okay so it's a known mispronunciation. I kept reading the violent FOMS. Yeah. Or the French like FOM. So FOMS. Yeah. You guys got your trip. There's a guy's trip, a boy's trip, and there's a girl's trip. And they're kind of parallel on parallel river systems.

Yep. The reason I was going to ask you about this, when I was a boy, if you were out on a long canoe journey, and you were occasionally coming across an encampment of girls, I feel that there would be like, you wouldn't be able to pull them apart.

But you guys avoid each other. Yeah. Maybe specifically for that reason. Exactly. Like when you guys raided, you guys raided each other, you were out of all kinds of, you guys would like raid all your food reserves, like you guys raided you guys raided each other you were out of all kinds of you guys had like ran all your food reserves like you you guys are starving well not starving it was bad we were we were being uh aware that we needed to be careful with how much food we had

and they had certain reserves there was like there was a good moment i need to be careful yeah there was an exchange like they had like plenty of some stuff that you were out of. You guys had some... They didn't have the right fishing equipment. You guys are slaying lake trout like it's nobody's business. You like eating lakers? Oh, my gosh. You talk about how good they are. You should be a spokesman for the lake trout.

Lake trout is my favorite fish. Dude, you got some depictions in the book. You got a couple. One of those things is a tanker. That's my biggest fish of my life. It's probably going to be the biggest lake trout I ever catch. Someday I'm going to make a graphite mount of it. Oh, they're incredible.

They're absolutely amazing eating. I want to return to the, how do you say it again? The FOMS. I want to return to the FOMS. One of the coolest things, because I like to fish, is when you're in that big ass lake and the ice is breaking up and you're dragging over the ice and trying to find leads yeah you talk about the lakers are all up

finning yeah in the open water that's the weirdest scene it's crazy i mean it's and it would take spoons though yeah they took spoons um i mean they just loved spoons and they were really easy to catch so we just toss one out and be like or we'd ask you know hey you guys want fish for dinner and toss one out and like you pretty much get as many fish as you want yeah yeah and you guys would fillet them and do what with them yeah we'd fillet them we'd um i mean they're basically like steaks yeah because you filleted the big one that you caught right yeah this fish is as long as your leg in that photograph. Yep.

I'm not even holding it forward. It's so heavy. I'm just like, take the picture. And you filleted it. I mean, did you guys eat that in one meal? Yeah. Wow. They're grown kids.

We're grown kids. We were burning a lot of calories. Yeah, six people. And you were low on pasta. We were low on pasta. So we're like, all right, a couple more fish meals. So yeah, we pretty much would just fry it up, though yeah you don't need to do much with that but you run into the farms out in the middle of nowhere yep uh but yeah you got to kind of steer clear of them probably because the camp the the the boss man the counselor makes you guys

steer or the guide makes you steer clear of them no i mean we just like you guys didn't joined forces to party right we didn't want to impose on their trip you know i mean when you're when you're on a long trip like this the group dynamics are well i mean they're for one thing they're crucial right um the other thing is you know it's it's like uh it's being made oh it's almost being made in a vacuum like you don't have a bunch of input points. You're not checking your Facebook. You're not interacting with a bunch of different people. Like it's just your group that's out in the woods. Yeah.

And what you're making is something that's super special. And, you know, that was special for our group and it was special for their group. And we didn't want to, uh, you know, have them have a different trip because of us or whatever.

So, you know, part of it's mutual respect. And yeah, so. I once, you know, I always want to act like when I tell this anecdote, I always want to act like I heard it, but I actually heard it from someone that heard it. But a friend of mine went to, I can't remember who that was, went to see a lecture by a guy that does these extraordinarily long canoe trips, like what you're talking about. And he was talking about, you know when you spend a weekend, you spend a weekend out in the woods. Yeah.

And you feel time slowing down and you feel your mind clearing, your thoughts are focusing, right? You're developing a sense of peace. Right. At a rapid rate. He said that still happens. It's still happening at that rate after 30 days. Yeah. Yeah.

That clarification line doesn't stop. Wow. I believe that. And I can see why you might get like in that zone it might get that you didn't want you didn't need outside like you had your six guys right and you just didn't need the noise of other individuals right i mean that's part of what's amazing about going on a trip like this and you know to your point you don't need to be out for 30 days for that effect to start taking place. You know, you go into the Boundary Waters or whatever wild place you like to visit and it starts to happen quickly. Like getting away from all that technology and

everything and just being connected with nature and everything, it has a profound effect on, uh, on your psyche and, and your body and your mind and it's just it's one of the reasons that that i go out and i think it's one of the reasons a lot of people go out it's just that personal transformation and centering that happens when you guys during the whole trip um it seems like you're kind of traveling through two kinds of water one is just like one is just you're slogging right against the wind across lakes yeah and it's just probably incredibly monotonous right and the other the other is that um you're often in situations that feel like extremely threatening from whitewater. Yeah.

And canyons. Feel that way. We're working within our skill set and everything. But yeah, I mean, when you're in it, it's just like, whoa. You're making snap decisions. Yeah. And then portaging around stuff all the time. Right.

Which of those two things do you prefer? Did you like just the going, or did you like that stress of the whitewater? I really like both. I think both combined is really awesome. Tinnilating. Yeah, that was great. 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.

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Talk about the implications of having a spray skirt or not a spray skirt, which I thought was pretty interesting. Yeah, so a spray skirt is basically like a poncho that latches onto your boat and then comes up to your person and keeps water from coming over the sides or going over the top of the boat and um, and then comes up to your person, um, and keeps water from coming over the sides or going over the top of the boat and getting into the boat. Um. Splash water. Yeah. And now in a two person canoe, it's, is it connected or how does that work?

There's a couple of different ways it can be set up. There might be just a bow skirt just for the front, or there might be like a full one where, you know, both the bow and the stern person are like cinched in and there's, uh, all snaps all around the gunnels, um, of the boat and that's like full protection. So, um, we didn't have them on ours just cause it's kind of, it was, uh, the mental hope that we wouldn't paddle as big a water, uh, if we didn't have that. Um, and then, uh, policy switched not that long after to include them just because they are helpful in making sure that you're as safe as you can be out there and don't end up getting

a bunch of water. Because if you end up getting some water in your boat, it starts to affect how it handles pretty significantly. But because we didn't have them, we were paddling super conservatively. But it's sort of a calculated decision you made. I mean, you could have had them yeah but it invites it could invite you know the decision to be like ah we got the skirts let's do it you know um but uh i think if i went again i would have the skirts and camp uses the skirts now like i said just because it's uh it it just

raises your level of safety a little bit you know you're still paddling conservatively and you don't want to go into crazy stuff. Um, but it just, it makes it so that smaller things don't become bigger things. There's this pioneering, um, mountain hunter. He's dead now, but his name is Duncan Gilchrist. And he would did a lot of things that no one had done. And he had a similar approach to crampons. Sure. When he was hunting mountain goats.

Didn't wear them? he brought them okay but you do not put them on to get somewhere oh sure you only put them on to get out of somewhere right that was his like view on it right like it invites a level like it invites that like next we can do it it. Yeah. That next level of stuff. And you just had like a make a rule for yourself, you know? Right. Don't touch these to get somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

It's kind of like setting up bumpers, you know, so that you can't cheat in your mind. Yeah. Explain to me some of the river hazards. Recyclers, strainers. You do a pretty good job of walking through all these things. Yeah. So there's a lot of different, we call them all features basically in the rivers. Features. Yeah. So recyclers, basically tumbling water. I think some people call them haystacks.

Not positive on that. We want to fact check that. Okay. Throw pillow into this. Pillow. So pillow- I get confused about stuff. I look at it all as like, you know, I guess I kind of understand what it is, but I don't have the vocabulary that you have for it all. Yeah. And a really good resource for that is, um, uh, oh, I'm blanking on his name. He's like the pioneer of, of popular canoeing. Uh, he has a great book about it, but, um, Up in the Boundary Waters. Is he from that country? Is that stew you're thinking of? No, it's not stew. It's like a big

coffee table book with all kinds of instructional information about paddling. I'll buy this book right now. Yeah, it's awesome. Maybe one of you guys with a computer can check it out. Yeah, you might be able to find it. Yeah.

And he's got, he painted and he did a bunch of documentaries, but he's like the godfather of modern canoeing and popularizing it. I'll probably pop up, but the number two hit will be, the number two hit will probably be this gentleman. Okay, go on, explain some features for me. Yeah, so on the river, there's a bunch of different ways that the water interacts with, you know, the, the, uh, the rocks and, and the shoreline and different stuff that's in there. So, um, they're, you're typically aiming for downstream V's, which literally form a V that points downstream. And that's kind of like the safest way down. Um, and then behind the rocks, uh, or other things, usually there's an Eddie where the

current is kind of swirling around and it's kind of going upstream. It's calmer water usually. There are these kind of insidious ones called pillows. Yeah. Tell me about a pillow. I know one when I see one, but I don't understand the hydraulics of it. So basically the water is pushing up and over something. And that something, you know, it's a rock or a log or whatever, but it's pushing over it smoothly. So when you're looking at it from upstream, all you see is this kind of like infinity pool

edge and when you're tubing, it's a tailbone ruiner. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're going to get hung up on it or whatever, depending on the current. Um, but like behind them, there, there can be a, uh, like a waterfall pretty much. Um, so they're almost impossible to see from upstream and, and, uh, you gotta watch out for them cause they'll just come up and you're like, oh shit, we gotta do something. Um, then there's, uh, recyclers where the water. And that's what, that's what drowns people. We, we call them sleepers.

Sleepers. Yeah. Hold on. You call them pillows. A pillow sleeper. Okay. Yeah. Are you still talking the river or in bed? This pillow and sleeper kind of synonyms. Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. You call the pillow sleeper. Okay. Yeah. Are you still talking the river in bed?

This pillow and sleeper kind of synonyms. Yeah. Yeah. What the hell's with them? These sort of like very peaceful, innocuous, you know, it's called like a blanket. It's a pillow. It drowns you. It's a recycler.

It's good for the earth. Well, because it does, it has that look from above. It's hard to pick out. You can't. Oh, sleeper like that. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. We used to it's hard to pick out. You can't. Oh, sleeper like that. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, you can't share.

We used to confuse creeper and sleeper. Okay. Not with water, with alcohol. Oh. To be like, man, that drink's a real creeper, which meant that you'd enjoy it quickly. Yeah. And all of a sudden, it had crept up on you. Didn't know it'd hit you.

Yeah, and you were like Long Island Ice Teas. Right. We were creepers. Yeah. Or you could call Long Island iced teas. Right. We're creepers. Yeah. Or you could call them sleepers. Looks fine. I don't know. How bad could it be?

A beach bucket full. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the other features that's really dangerous is a strainer, which is basically typically like a branch or a tree where it's just straining the water. And that creates a lot of hydraulic pressure on the upstream side that can trap stuff, including people or gear, boats and stuff. Oh, they're bad too, man.

Yeah. I had to run in with one of those this year with my wife and her friend. We put our canoe in. I was like, there's a 50% chance we're all going in the river because it's just high and fast. Flippin' coins. But it's like people don't want to when you're coming up on a bad sweeper it's people don't want to accept the pain of leaning forward and letting it do whatever it's going to do to your back right like to jump over it you mean or no like there's a big limb out

yeah and you're going to go under you have to accept it like this is not going to be fun but i will lean over and my back will take in a duck all the branch you know the scraping right but that's what you have to do and i was like whatever we do when we hit this thing we're coming up i'm like we're hitting it it's like don't lean don't lean just take it yeah but they leaned you're saying don't lean back or to the side to the side yeah side. Yeah. Yeah. Like just absorb the blow. You know, like when you go, like a loose one, you know. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And if the branches are going down into the water, then it's a whole different story. You got to go around it because it can pull stuff down. Or like if you get hung up on it,

the way that the current's going can make your boat want to spin around or, you know, flip sideways because it's pulling at the, at the bottom of the boat. What are the most lethal features? Uh, probably the, the ones you get hung up on. The hung up on, not?

Well, like a strainer, like, uh, you know, if you get, if you broadside a rock or something, then it can just trap your boat and fold the boat around it. And then you're got, you're having to scramble out out of it, you know, take care of yourself and your gear's all garage sailing and your boat might be pretty significantly damaged or just stuck and require some rescue techniques or recovery techniques to get it pulled off of that rock. Did you guys carry equipment for jacking your boats off rocks?

Yeah, we carried a set of ropes and carabiners to set up i think it was a three to one like a standard z drag is what we call it um so but yeah because it goes to avoid that yeah in general when you when you imagine all the hydraulic like if you imagine a boat against a rock yeah and then add some you know some mass of water that's moving whatever yeah nine miles an hour pressing against that thing right it's an enormous amount of force it's huge holding it in place yeah yeah and the canoe is wrapped around the rock like a tin can so even if you get that z drag set up you know you're doing the three to one you're hauling on it and the rope stretching because of the water and then you got people in

the middle doing sheer force moving the rope all back and forth it can be a real uh struggle to get a boat recovered were they aluminum canoes these were um royal x royal x yeah rest in peace royal x it's done now done yeah cars carsogenic or something uh it was kind of like kodachrome there was one spot that made it i think is what i understand no shit really yeah royal x canoes are no more? Yeah. Where have they been placed by? A couple different materials. So they've made some super tough composite

kind of like Kevlar. I think I have an old town Penobscot. What's that? Yeah, that would probably be Royal X. This is like a plastic compound, right? Yeah, it's like plastic. It's kind of got this weird foam stuff in the middle, but once you get it pulled off of a rock, you set it out in the sun or next to a fire and the heat just let it pop back to shape.

Oh, really? Wow. Get back on the water. You might have to do a little patching or, you know, hammer the gunnels into shape. Did you guys carry gear with you to fix canoes? Yeah. I don't remember what the kit was like, but we had repair kits for everything. Stoves, canoe, uh, people.

I was surprised to see that you guys would run just those regular woven, like standard woven seats. You didn't do like crazy Creek setups with back support and stuff. You just got to learn to live with it. Yeah. I mean, get your posture right and go. Yeah. I, I really don't like a backrest in a canoe.

So is that like, is that not pro? Pros don't like a backrest in a canoe so is that like is that not pro pros don't like a backrest i'd probably say that i mean you know it's if you're if you're sitting when you see you do the backrest you're like oh i'm like i'd never do that you know with the exception of like if you're hanging out for a long time if you're if you're just sitting and fishing i mean by all means but if you're paddling big water stuff where it's, um, the boat's getting tossed around and stuff, uh, that backrest is making you kind of an extension of the boat in a bad way. Yeah. Like you need to have enough fluidity in your person.

Yeah. You know, if you're just sit there with a stiff back and, and stuff ends up, uh, tossing you around, then your center of gravity is pushing you over. You guys paddled most of that stuff, sitting in those seats, but on your knees. Oh, the rough shit you get on your knees. I like that. Yeah, lowers your center of gravity. You can move the canoe with your knees.

Like, you know, if the boat's getting pushed to the left, you can push to the right and get it straightened back out. And you know a wide array of strokes that maybe I know them and don't know that they have names. But what are some of the, you break down quite a few strokes. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to move a canoe, but the basic ones are forward paddle, backward paddle, which are exactly what you think. And then when you're in the stern, when you're in the back and you're, and you're doing the steering, um, there's the J stroke and C stroke.

Um, and the J stroke basically corrects, uh, the turn that naturally happens when you're paddling the boat from the back. You're on the right and you're just paddling. It's going to generally push you to the left and the J stroke. So you don't have to switch sides. Yeah. When you're doing J stroke, do you throw the J on every stroke or do you only correct like every other uh i typically correct every other but it's totally a nuanced thing

depending on the weather and and uh you know if there's any current or whatever so you get into the mode where you're not even thinking about it you're just like throwing a j in every once in a while yeah it seems like there's like a there's like i like it but there's like an inefficiency in it like you're definitely like throwing drag. You're throwing the least amount of drag that you can with staying on the same side. You know, a J stroke is just like a little hit at the end of the forward stroke. It's not like a rudder where you're like, boom, and the boat's just slowing down. Yeah, for people who aren't familiar with this, imagine that you're paddling along,

and you're paddling just how you'd imagine you're paddling where your paddle is hitting the water perpendicular to in line the blade is hitting the water perpendicular to the canoe yep and it's just following the canoe along well at the end you put a little hook on it where you shoot the paddle you like turn the paddle and shoot it slightly outward yep because the stroke is nudging it left and that little hook on the end just pops the bow back can you explain why because it's it's i mean i i understand now why right but i think to a lot of people it's like when i was learning to paddle a canoe yeah i'd be like there's a guy a person in front paddling the same kind of paddle that i'm paddling yeah and i'm in the back paddling yep why and they're on the opposite side,

why still is my stroke more powerful in pushing the canoe to the left if you're paddling on the right? That's a good physics question that I don't know if I can answer the exact physics of it. But yeah, typically the person in the front is the motor. You think of them as the motor, they're pulling

the boat along. They're pulling. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the back, um, for one, the stern seat is usually a lot closer to the end of the boat. So, uh, in terms of leverage, you know, um, if you were to pull the front of the boat or the

back of the boat, left or right, it's going to move it significantly. Whereas if you're sitting in the middle and you're trying to turn it, it takes a lot more force to sure to turn that um so you know if the boat is a lever you're further away from the fulcrum right then the person was right on the bow and he was stroking it might turn the boat a lot more i suppose yeah so like if you're in the bow and you need to move the boat a lot you're gonna you're gonna reach forward forward and out to try to um make that happen so that's something you do in white

water you're like oh shit here comes a rock and you know you're in the bow and you just you're it's super physical you know you're on your knees which also allows you to move your paddle position a lot more than if you're locked on your seat so yeah you're just further from the fulcrum in the stern and then the other main stroke is the c-stroke and that's kind of the opposite um you're you're pulling the the water back and then you do a little hook towards the canoe at the end and that just kind of makes that that uh automatic movement of the boat in the opposite direction that much more profound it's interesting that for a right-hander, both of those letters are backwards.

Yeah, that's a good point. It's Cyrillic. Speaking of prose, is the person you were speaking of before Bill Mason? Yes. Bill Mason and the Canoeist Bible's Path of the Paddle. Yes. Oh, man.

There we go. Yep, thank you. That's the voice of... Brain fart. ...esteemed podcast producer Corinne Schneider. Corinne, you haven't said anything yet today? Say chicharrones. Chicharrones.

Chicharrones. Saying it the right way. Corinne starred, had a starring role in our Christmas special. That was so fun. So fun. How many miles have you paddled in your whole life? I've never done the math. Thousands.

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Most of that in the Boundary Waters in the Quetico. And your book's called The 29th Day. Yeah. What happens on the 29th day? We had breakfast, you know.

It's a day off. You're taking a day off yep it's a little percent you're like i don't know what are you like four fifths done or three fifths done 29th day of a 42 day yeah yeah we're most of the way horrible at math i can't i can't do simple math we're most of the way um you know it's probably our third layover day of the trip we took our first layover day 20 days in so we're paddling for three three weeks before we took it out. So you're just kind of watching your schedule and seeing how you're making along. Yeah, making sure. Now that you just take a break.

Yeah, yeah. Just to recoup. How are we feeling? Are we just totally bushed? Are we on track? Do we need to make up time? Yeah. So... You guys take a little break. Take a little break. Have some breakfast. Yeah. Layover day, I like to say, is just one meal after the other, you know, you're

just like, oh, let's have breakfast. Cause you can't eat enough. You can't eat enough. Right. I mean, yeah, it's kind of like hiker's stomach where you're just like burning so many calories. You're like, I could eat nonstop and just still be hungry. So are you getting like, you're losing weight, but like you're losing weight, but, but your muscles gotta be doing weird things.

Yeah. Like your legs are shrinking. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're not moving too much with our legs. So, and, and you got to move a long distance in the flats to get anywhere. And so it's yeah, you're just getting lean. So, you know, your, your upper body with a paddling trip just gets really efficient and, uh, you know, your back muscles are, are doing awesome cause you're just doing thousands of paddle strokes every day.

So, you know, those days of rest are, are super important, um, in kind of recharging. But, uh, yeah, so this one we were camped on Princess Mary Lake, which is this enormous lake. I can't remember how far across it was, you know, 15, 20 miles across from shore to shore. And we're camped on this island in the middle of it. And we're a couple hundred yards up from shore, camped on a flat that's below this super steep ridge behind our campsite. And we have breakfast, we have lunch and, uh, after lunch, the rest of the guys decide to go up to the top of this Ridge behind our site. Um, it's the highest point around on the Island and the island is the highest point

around forever. It's just like a Rocky ass Ridge, right? Yeah. But it's got like crowberry or what's up there. Uh, it's just kind of empty there's like i mean because like the part the creature the ones that being up there is up there for a reason is it grazing on berries i didn't see any berries uh i don't know exactly what it was doing up there if it was just kind of roaming looking for berries you know but uh

yeah it's it's uh, even more stark landscape than the camp site that we had, which is like a lot of like bear rock up there. Yeah. Bear rock. It's kind of like, you know, the summit. And you're, but it's a big ass island. Right. In a freshwater lake.

How big is the island? I think it's five miles end to end. What is that bear doing out there? I don't know. That's a, that's one of the mysteries. And there's like muskox on the island. Yeah. In a freshwater lake. It's so weird. Yeah. Well, I imagine

you know, it's iced over a lot of the year, so it's easy for things to get back and forth. But I imagine they were getting ashore too. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't give a shit. He'll swim, but the muskox will swim too. Right. Yeah, I was thinking about, yeah, just they're crossing on the ice without even thinking about it. Yeah.

You guys are a little like bears I get being afraid of. You guys are a little afraid of musk ox. Yeah. Like real afraid of musk ox. You got to respect them. I mean, they are ornery and powerful animals. They can fight off a grizzly attack. They've got this helmet of horns, and it's just like this bone plate at the top of their head and

then the horns curl around in these kind of viking style uh helmets and um they'll mess you up and they'll charge at random what does it take to set them off i was just gonna ask you i mean if you're you know getting too close for comfort pretty much you know if you get if you get too close to them they're like hey get out of my business sure comfort, pretty much. You know, if you get too close to them, they're like, hey, get out of my business. Sure, but then you'd probably want to, I mean, you just keep your distance, but. Right.

Yeah, but then they show up in your camp. Yeah, sometimes it's not up to you. Or they just kind of like come out of nowhere, which is what happened for us. And no matter who and hollering and pan clanging, they're just going to come and graze in your camp. I guess. I mean, that was the only time that they were like, just didn't care about us. They just kept coming.

It was later that day on that layover day. But otherwise, they would take note of us and stare us down and say, hey, go about your business, go the other way. Or they'd look at us and turn away on their own. But I don't think there's a lot of thinking that's going on necessarily in musk oxen. They're just kind of really slow plodding and grazing. And, you know, they're just straight out of the ice age. I don't think they've changed.

Very buffalo-like, really, if you think about it. And I think that you should probably treat them like you treat buffalo, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, you shouldn't go. And I think that you should probably treat them like you treat buffalo, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, you shouldn't go up and feed them when you're in the parks. Yeah, don't put your kids on top of them. Plenty of videos on what happens when you do that. So you guys have the layover day. You're eating a whole shitload of food.

Yep. Everybody's like, let's go up to the top of the ridge. Yep. And you say, I'm going to have a nap. Yeah, I'm tired. I'm a little tuckered i'm gonna take a nap you guys do your thing i'm gonna hang out here so i retreat to the tent and curl up in my sleeping bag and they go up to the top of the ridge and how far how many yards up is

the ridge uh it's about a hundred feet of like steep climb pretty much 100 feet elevation gain yeah okay yeah well roughly like how many yards how many yards so it's 100 feet of steep so it's not it doesn't take that long like how long does it take to climb up there about 10 minutes because you got to kind of scramble back and forth so it's cliffy yeah yeah and i i mean it's probably like 45 degree slope um and steeper in places but yeah you got to like traverse it. Pick your way up. Yeah. And it's kind of chossy, you know, there's like

scree and some grass or whatever. You know that term? Hmm? You know that term? I've heard that term, but I don't use that term. But you know what it means. What does chossy mean? I know that it means broken up, unsafe rock.

Yeah. It's like crumbly, gravelly. It's like a climber term, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like scree would be a bigger version of it. If a rock that you don't want to climb. Yeah. You know who I think, you know who introduced me to that word is dirt myth uh i could that yeah big climber buddy of ours oh nice yeah but he uses uh like just you know

like just like that he'll talk about we'll talk about picking our way up through something he'll say he'll say that word and i'll be like what's that he goes oh it just is all it's not good there's no integrity. Yeah. Rotten. Yeah. Let me start calling certain people chossy. There you go. Okay.

So you climb on up there. No, they all climb on up there. Yep. You go sleeping. Yep. Snoozing. You sleep how long? I didn't know how long.

And recently I was talking to Mike, one of the other guys on the trip. Are you friends with all these dudes still? Uh, I don't get to, uh, talk with all of them just cause, uh, you know,

life takes you to different places, but, uh, yeah, I keep in touch with, with most of them. Um, so yeah,

good, good guys. You kind of screwed the trip up. I didn't try to. Yeah. It changed. It changed significantly at that point. But yeah, they all went up there and Mike said, yeah, three hours.

They were up there three hours. So I was napping for three hours. How were they doing? Oh, taking pictures and stuff. Taking pictures, hanging out, reading books. And they didn't notice a grizzly. No. I mean, that's one of the things that's totally crazy about this.

When I was reading the book, I'm like, oh, I'm going to get all five guys are up there moseying around and no one takes note of an island. Right. That's one of the, that's. It's five miles long though. Yeah. But that's one of the things that's super just weird. Right. I mean, five guys, they're all kind of, you know, they're not all focused on one thing.

It's not like they're up there filleting fish and paying no attention to what's around them. That's when the femmes join. Yeah, no, they, uh, the femmes had, we, you know, we said bye to them that morning. Uh, they stopped by and, um, and, uh, went on their way and we said, see ya. We're not going to see you for the rest of the trip. Cause you're going to be a full day ahead of us. So, um, but, uh, the guys were up on the top of this ridge for three hours it's the highest point around there's no trees anywhere that you can see you can probably see 30 50 miles in every

direction it's like a dome of rock yeah yeah can you see down to the water's edge no trees too not in the direction towards camp Not in the direction towards camp. Not in the direction towards where we were camped. You can see towards away from us. You could see towards where the bear would have been coming from. Okay, so they had a blind spot. Somewhere. Yeah, stuff

vanishes, man. It's down in some little crevice or crack. Yeah, or behind a boulder or whatever. There was a lot of debris up there in terms of rock. I don't want to make too much of a point of it but just interesting because you you wake up and grab your camera just to make a point of it is like we've walked around the mountains for 10 days at a time looking for them and i can't find them so right so i mean you know but but you know that kind of underlines the point of like why didn't we expect to see one up there because people were there a few minutes before I showed up there.

Yeah, because you wake up from your nap and you grab a little pelican case. The pelican case plays into this. You grab a pelican case and your camera gear and go up and catch them on the way down. So I wake up and I'm like, oh man, I gotta get up to this ridge. I overslept. Because apparently I had

someone to meet. I didn't know it. But I got up and grabbed my pel case, which had my camera in it. Yeah, you said you had like a weird sense of like having like slept too long and now your schedule's messed up. Yeah, the sense of urgency, like I need to get up there. And Mike was saying that he kind of had the same thing about coming down. Oh, is that right? We should leave, which is weird. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know, six cents or something. But yeah, so I get my stuff. I start climbing up the ridge. Dan, our guide, he's the last one coming down. I met him halfway and talked about what was up there. And he's like, yeah, there's an Anukshuk. And, you know, it's just gorgeous. Explain Anukshuk.

Take a look and nook shook is a stack of rocks um left by um in this case you know inuit or native peoples um it's used as like a place marker or a navigational aid or to commemorate something um some of them are used like for hunting um so they would set up almost like a funnel, kind of imagine like a fish, yeah, a driveline or a fish trap in a, in rows, um, to a, uh, narrower point. So they'd like drive caribou herds towards that is my understanding. Yeah. No, yeah. I've seen some of those and you guys are encountering a lot of like old mysterious rock structures all over your trip. Yeah. Which was amazing. Um, and a constant reminder that we weren't the first people there by any means.

So this was just a sole, a sole and a chook that was up there. So we weren't sure exactly what it was, but it was, you know, the highest point around. So maybe it was just kind of marking that as a special spot. So I talked with Dan and then continued up the ridge, made my way to the top where it flattened out to these rolling, rocky granite domes with the gravel and whatever. continued up the ridge, made my way to the top where it flattened out to these rolling, rocky granite domes with the gravel and whatever. And just was walking up, um, away from camp towards that Anuk Shook and, uh, walking up one side of one of those domes. And I didn't know it,

but a 600 pound barren ground grizzly bear was walking up the other side of that dome. And we were walking straight towards each other. And first register its presence how i see this flash of brown fur at the edge at the lip and it's in my peripheral vision and my head snaps up and i'm just like there's something here and i think it's a muskoxin oh shit this is a musk oxen and this is 30 feet away from me uh so it's just way too close to be to any animal that you got to be careful of and as soon as it kept walking because it hadn't noticed me yet because I was above its sight line um but as soon as it came a little further it noticed me too And that's when I realized that it wasn't a muskoxen, but it was a bear. And it was just like, worst case scenario, oh shit.

Why do you feel that you know how much the bear weighed? I made that estimate based on looking at bears in captivity since then. I got you. Yeah, so I went to... Looking at things with known weights. Yeah. So part of my, um, uh, self-prescribed, um, getting over that, uh, this whole situation was like to confront that fear. And, um, for me that was going in, you know, seeing grizzly bears in person. Um, so that was a challenge, but, uh, seeing those bears in, in zoos, I was like, okay,

well that looks a lot like my bear. So it's totally, totally an estimate based on that. And when it sees you, it doesn't immediately be like, I'm going to maul that dude. No, the bear and I really had the same reaction, which was what the hell am I looking at? And so we both just stopped and like kind of stepped back and appraised the situation for a moment. And during that time, I flashed back to that training that we had at Minojin. I told myself not to run because that's the one thing that you really can't do is run. And I pictured the bear mace, which we've discussed, was in the tent. Unfortunately, it wasn't on my person, which means it's totally useless.

But I imagine taking it out of its holster, taking off the safety cap, aiming it and firing it, and would have been able to do that if I'd had it with me. You feel pretty confident. Oh, yeah. 30 feet, standing still, staring at you. Yep. You'd have filled his eyeballs. Yeah.

Time was moving fast, but, you know, it was like. You think you would have fired it immediately, or would you have waited for the first charge? That's a good question. I would have waited for it to run away before firing it. Run away? Hopefully. Or run towards you, you mean.

No, well, sorry, sorry yeah let me correct myself i would have been ready to fire and then decided whether to fire based on if it ran away or ran towards me yeah i'm with you what are you supposed to do are you supposed to kind of do the first aggressive like worn off if there's enough distance? Are you... Because I wouldn't... You mean with that 30 feet with a bear staring at you? Your hands up, look big, don't run. Hey!

Hey! Like... But not to be trifled with. And you spray. Oh. Well. Well, and the wind was affected too. If I felt like...

I mean, you know... Ask this guy. He didn't have his bear spray having had bear spray at 30 feet i would probably hit it right away yeah right i mean what do you because you got several seconds i would blast i would shoot a blast i'd like to think i would everybody likes to think they got you know i remember uh joe rogan we're talking one time he said everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. Right. That changes the game a bit. So, guys are always talking about what I would do.

Yeah, well... Yanni had the wherewithal to smack one with a trekking pole that was charging him. I heard that. I didn't hear the details. God, I think I would have a heart attack before it. You have a 30-foot trekking pole? Probably not. I want to a heart attack before it. You have a 30-foot trekking pole? Probably not. I'm going to get back to the bears.

So here's the bear. You guys are both like, holy shit, that's scary. Yep. And you start yelling. Not exactly at first. So our training basically is grizzly bears get small, make yourself non-threatening. Black bears make yourself threatening, like assert your dominance is the training that we've had

for our area. So it sounds like that differs a little bit from what you've been told. I mean, we've effectively run off like, we've effectively run off a lot of bears that were

in that kind of like curious, coming toward you thing by, hey bear, hey bear, arms up. If there's multiple people, get close together, just look like you're not coming at it. But I'm here. But you're like, not a caribou calf. Yeah. Interesting. So, but, you know, again, everybody's got to play until they get punched in the face. Yeah, and every situation is different.

You know, every bear is going to react a little bit differently to various stimuli. Sure, sure. There's nothing worse than what I do in that situation. Armchair quarterback. Grizzly bear blowhard. So please do not think I'm laying that out. No, no, I'm not. And what you did is what you

did yeah and you're sitting here right now yeah so so part of our training uh like I said with grizzlies is basically like to convey that you're not a threat and that is backing away slowly avoiding eye contact talking to the bear kind of to your point making it making it understand that you're not its usual uh yeah uh thing it's going to run into and so in my brain uh i've got all these different steps kind of running through my mind um on what i'm supposed to do and again just really wanting to run i don't want to be anywhere near it but i can't do that so i just start backing away slowly arms kind of down at my side hey bear whoa bear it's okay bear and my voice is shaking and the bear is thinking about it he's thinking about he's looking at me and it doesn't take very long at all um and he goes into like a stationary bluff

charge so he launches on his front paws and grunts at me. Yeah. He's making a lot of noise, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, I listened to your episode with Amber and it sounds like she had a kind of similar,

uh, way that the bear was acting before it, uh, decided to charge. Uh, and so grunted at me, backing up slowly. And it basically faded from stationary bluff charges,

just launching onto its front paws to like coming towards me and then stopping like six feet and then 10 feet and i just keep backing up slowly the bear is moving six feet moving 10 feet yeah and huffing yeah bluff charges yeah and uh you know i'm i'm reading it and figuring out because it at first you know even with those bluff charges, it was still, it still felt like it was deciding exactly what it was going to do. Sure. Yeah. He hasn't charged me yet. Right. Yeah, exactly. And so I keep backing up slowly, you know, just mind over matter,

telling myself, don't run, don't run, don't run. And it fades from those, uh, stationary and short bluff charges to a full speed charge. And it comes at me. Bears can run, you know, mid 30 mile an hour range. And I'd increased our 30 foot distance by five feet. And keep backing up. Keep talking to it. Because he's keeping pace with you.

More than. He's getting closer. Okay. So his charge is to bring him closer closer closer yeah i mean this is happening really fast and like i said he got to you before you realized he was gonna get you uh probably like within 20 feet about 15 okay yeah where he's like like i feel like i can see his decision shift to okay okay, now I'm going to come at this thing. And, you know, I faded from hey bear, whoa bear to, you know, at this point yelling obscenities and help.

Yeah, very likely. Like, if you look at the landscape, like quite likely the first person that this bear has seen. He's never had any kind of close encounter with. Right. Yeah. He's trying to figure out what he's supposed to do. And like, I don't know how old this bear was or people have asked, you know, was it male or female? And I have no idea.

There were no cubs. It was just the bear. But yeah, it's just trying to figure out what it's supposed to do. And, you know, at that distance, fight or flight is pretty, I mean, it's kind of. What color is it? Really close. Real blonde? Lighter tan, like a little bit darker than blonde yeah long hair yeah not like shaggy yeah but like um i don't know how long it would

be but kind of middle middle length i'd say blowing in the wind kind of a hair a little bit like the tips would be blowing in the wind you have little peaks peaks of the fur you know yeah it's not like hanging off it's kind of sticking out kind of spiky so at some point at 15 feet you see something in his head shift yeah and then he's coming at me full speed and and you pelt him well that that didn't happen yet i was just like oh shit this is gonna be going to end poorly. And as it gets within that range, I can feel the ground shaking under my feet from its paws. Because that gallop's just like, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. And it's growling at me. Do the noise like how loud it's doing the noise.

I don't think I can. Come on. Okay, I'll do a noise. You tell me if it's louder or quieter. Okay. Well, it was louder than that. Louder than that? Yeah.

Did I have the right sound? More projecting. Kind of. No, that sounds like a dude. Sorry, Donnie. I remember the noise. That's how you remember it. I don't remember a noise.

Oh, bullshit. It was like grunting guttural roar that was just like yeah I mean like impulses it wasn't just like non-stop

you know it was like kind of oh that was good yeah that was good it came to me okay

so the sound is like so also here he's coming he's galloping the grounds are shaking yeah yeah and when he's and you're like I'm dead now i'm dead now and at this point uh my conscious decisions are kind of done and my brain is doing everything on its own yeah hey folks exciting news for those

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slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. And when it was five or ten feet from me, I had that Pelican case with, you know, a Nikon DSLR with a couple lenses and whatever else I needed to run the camera for the whole trip. So it's like 15 pounds. And it's the only time I'll throw my camera. You generally don't like to throw your camera. I typically don't throw it.

And I was a really bad throw at the time, so I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. But I did throw my camera. You practiced since? Not with the same projectile. I'm a lot better throw now, though. But I wound back and threw it underhand like i said just you know on instinct and uh it flies towards this galloping bear and it hit it square on the nose and with enough force to turn its head all the way to the side so it pushes this bear's head to the side it grunts like oh like i just punched it really yeah and the pelican case goes flying over its shoulder tumbling off behind it the

bear's momentum keeps going at the same pace um but it can't you son of a bitch i'm sure he didn't like that but he couldn't see me for a couple steps and like five to ten feet i mean that's that's turn his head turn i mean he didn't want to turn his head you're just the video that dude punching that kangaroo? No. Oh, my God. It's my kid's favorite video. Yeah, he turns his head on a kangaroo, like, in slow-mo.

Turns his head like a person getting punched. Oh, yeah. The bear had a plan until it got punched in the face. Yeah, his plan was to bluff charge you. Yeah, it didn't feel like that, which I've heard is how it feels. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know if he could have stopped at that distance. But it didn't, like, slow his run. No, his run just kept coming.

His gallop kept going. But he couldn't see where I was, and he couldn't, like, you know, roundhouse me at that point because he didn't know what to hit. But I jumped out of the way, again on instinct, and dod and dodged it like bullfighting style as this bear is running past me and he just misses you he just misses me yeah I mean I just jump out of the way right at the last second like his momentum carried him past me and then you know his head swung around by this point and he's flailing trying to get at me and as soon as he passes me he stops and change changes direction so fast like faster than i would have ever imagined that an animal like that could move they're incredibly powerful uh turns around and comes at me again

and i do the same move rather than throwing the camera case at it is it's mouth it's mouth's open uh yeah i mean it's like it's trying to grab you or. Well, it was like half open, like at the ready. Right. And then as it would come at me, it would use its paws and use its jaws to try to get me. So it came at me again and I jumped out of the way and, uh, it missed me again. Clean miss. I don't know if that one was clean.

That's, uh, uh, no teeth. Some claws start to hit me at that, you know, these passes, but. That's what, that's what like blew me away and reading and the description is like uh it's like a very lengthy like detailed description of yeah the fact that you could that you dodged it a couple times it was crazy and it had to actually turn around and come back at you yeah yeah so only kind of makes it worse i don't i mean i you know in my mind how long am i gonna be able to do this And it's like, you know, I'm not even deciding to do this. But as my brain's thinking through it, it's like, holy shit, I just dodged it. Not like, oh, sweet, I'm going to make it.

You're reacting at this point. You're not making conscious decisions. Yeah, exactly. I'm wearing Chacos. I've got sandals on, which are like really nice for being nimble. But, you know, my feet are all exposed and everything. I'm just not prepared for this. Did the thought of playing dead and like curling up into a ball and protecting vitals,

like the back of the neck and your, your core, did that ever come through your head? Um, it, it didn't. I mean, that is part of what you're supposed to do. Like if it makes contact with you, you know, play dead, protect your, like lay on your, on your stomach and put your legs out and put your fingers interlaced behind your neck to protect your spine and all that stuff. Which maybe it's, you know, you have a plan until you get punched in the face sort of a scenario. But it felt like if I did that, then it was just going to do some real damage, which I mean, yeah, I don't know. But you do get punched in the face but you do get punched in the face i do get punched in the face so i dodged it a couple more times where i was able to uh quote successfully dodge it meaning that it didn't bite me but maybe you're getting raped like you don't know but maybe you're getting

like scratched oh i i know at this point that i'm getting scratched you know he's hitting me with his claws he's hitting me with his claws down my arm down my back i can feel it and it feels like i'm just getting laid open um like as soon as it hits me but you know your adrenaline's winding at the red line and you're just moving super fast and the bear's moving faster and every time we got closer and closer every time i dodged it and so the next time it uh its head is now close enough where it can just like turn and bite my leg and it goes to bite my leg and uh again super fast and just like we're all spinning around each other and i pull my leg out of the way at the last second the jaw is snapshot right next to my leg and at that same moment it reaches up with its paw and swipes me across the face and just smacks you just bam

yeah you're saying you it was like as hard as you could just ever imagine being hit yeah with the flat pad yep yeah i saw the pad when it was a couple inches from my face and it was like millisecond where my brain's like oh no and it was uh i i compare it to like a board wrapped in leather that's just on a hydraulic arm. It's just swinging. And when it hits my head, it just doesn't react at all. It's like swatting a bug out of the air. And huge amount of power.

My head whips to the side and I went flying to the side. And that's when I truly realized like there was nothing physically that I could do to fight this bear. It's just so much more powerful gonna wrestle it yeah yeah no fisticuffs and uh did that take you off your feet when he hit you in the face yeah clean clean off my feet like threw me to the side i'm midair and then that same paw caught me like around the hip and and threw me down to the ground on my tailbone and then again like in that same motion I'm down on the ground and its head is is now right at my right at my thigh and people are like so the

adrenaline rush take care of the pain and it didn't it I felt its teeth going both sides of my leg so he doesn't opened mouth all the way around your leg. Yeah. Top of my thigh. Latches on. Right below the pelvis. Searing pain. Yep.

Latches on. And this is where, like, this part of the story is where the playing dead thing gets really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Because you don't play dead. No. But here he is. He's, like, clearly coming to get you.

Yeah. He's got a lot of energy into getting you. Yeah. He's hit you, scratched you. Yep. Grabs your you. Yeah. He's got a lot of energy into getting you. Yeah. He's hit you, scratched you. Yep. Grabs your leg. Yeah. I've been screaming the last couple of passes, yelling no and help.

And all of a sudden you... Black out. Yep. Vasovagal response. It bites me. It's just like a switch and I'm out. And it was just black. How much time do you think goes by when you black out?

I don't think it was long, but I was just so sure I was about to die. And so it was just like this really surreal sensation to have this switch turn off. Do you think that saved you? I mean, that's where this gets interesting, man. But let me focus on the bite a minute yeah um was the when he bit you and he's kind of like biting you at the seam of your leg yeah right where the leg joins the the hip the pelvis right below that yeah like right in that whole junction. Your scroll, your femoral artery. Yep. The groin, you could call it. The groin.

Yep. Yeah. Do you think, like, that's a fatal bite, or aren't you that clear? I mean, to me, it was like, this is the end. I wasn't like, you know, oh, I've got all this really crucial material there that can be the end. It was just like, I am about to die because uh that can be the end it was just like i am about to die because this will not be the only injury this bear is gonna do much more to me and yeah i'm not gonna dodge it once i'm laying on the ground and you pass out and i pass out and i

played that incredibly effectively in michigan we call that playing possum yeah yep exactly but you know what you know it's aptly named because i didn't know this till i was talking to fall out of trees right our colleague sam lungren um playing possum is not intentional yeah they're not like ha i'll play possum they like just get overwhelmed and yeah go into a state Like it's not like, it's not voluntary. Sure. He goes into a state. Yeah. So very similar.

Yeah. They become overcome and just go into a state. Yeah. Isn't like that when, when animals like are attacked by a predator and then go limp and it's not that you're necessarily dead. It's like you just go limp. Yeah. It's an evolutionary defense mechanism.

So it worked. How long do you think you passed out for do you have any estimation my estimation is not long at all my total time away from camp was really short oh that's a good way yeah yeah so maybe not minutes yeah right could have been less than minutes could been minutes. And what position do you wake up in? Fetal position, face down, like 180 degrees from how I lost. Hold on, fetal position, face down, like some kind of yoga thing? Or like you're on your side, but your face is turned? Like child's pose? More like child's pose.

I want you to get down and just show us. I mean, like in my mind, and I was a little disoriented when I came to, but it was just like, hey, he's down. He's rising from his seat. He's getting child's pose, everybody. Okay. He's on his knees. Oh, really? That's how you woke up?

That's child's pose. Yeah, child's pose. But in the air. Again. That's a strange position to wake up in. Yeah. That's like an awake but I would I thought you meant that you somehow were like fetal position like you're sleeping

on your side in the fetal position but your face was cocked down into the tundra yeah I know I as far as I can tell it was that like curled in a ball face down knees and knees and elbows and face down to the ground and you open your eyes and what do you see? The world's kind of spinning. And there's a bear standing there. And then I see the horizon and then I see that the bear's still there. But it's running away at a trot. And it's checking me out as it goes.

And at this point, I regain consciousness. At the point when he could have hit you. At the point when he had you dead to rights. Yep. Let the feast begin well and that's the that's the key difference between like a predacious encounter and a defensive encounter no that's what gives such credence to like the playing dead thing is that some bitch goes through all that and it really you don't like someone tells you something and you like don't believe them later you're

like oh no he really did it's like he was like i i'm sorry i found you threatening um i had to punch you you stopped being threatening and i and i left i mean like my bad yep you seemed threatening yeah that's all this was exactly you know and that and that kind of aligns up with how it acted throughout the encounter too it's like what am I dealing with here? Should I smack this thing? What do I do? Yeah. And also he went quiet and limp, but he's like, eh.

Yeah, all right. My job's done. I got to go. I got to put some ice on my snout from that pelican cage. And so, like, you don't know. I mean, he could come back and get you. Oh, yeah. I was absolutely terrified that was about to happen.

So I played dead consciously at that point. Totally averted my eyes so I could just see him. Yeah. Wait for him to go completely. Like I said, he's just watching me the whole time. And are you feeling... What's your understanding of your injuries at this point? You're like so out of it.

My feeling slash understanding is I don't care. Because I was... But you felt very alive understanding is I don't care because I was, Well, you felt very alive. Yeah. I was so sure I was about to die. And then it was like getting a second chance. Was it euphoria? It, it was.

Yeah. I was just totally, totally euphoric. Like so excited that I was seeing things again. And then when I saw that bear again, it was like back to dread. Oh shit, it's still here. Like, what's it going to do now? So I just was, you know, my mission at that point was

do everything that I could to make it not think that I was back in the fight. Make it think that its job really was done and that it was able to leave. But I was absolutely terrified that it was going to be like,

you know what? It needs a little bit more tossing around or whatever. Yeah, I'm going to go back and shake that thing and eat it was able to leave. But I was absolutely terrified that it was going to be like, you know what, it needs a little bit more tossing around or whatever. Yeah, go back and shake that thing and eat it. Yeah, which, you know, sometimes happens. What's weird, too, about it and about bears in general is it's eating all manner. You have to assume. It's killed and eaten muskox calves.

It's scavenged muskox carcasses. Kills and eats caribou calves scavenges carcasses eats marmots whatever the hell it gets hands on right and here it's got like 150 pounds of still warm protein that hasn't showered in months yeah like like what is their like, two days later would it have gone back up there and ate you? You know what I mean? Like, what is this comprehension of, like, what's food and not food? It's like, I killed this big thing. Yeah.

It's made out of meat, but I will continue my wanderings to look for little ground squirrels and lemmings and patches of berries. Whatever else comes around yeah like that's not food right well i mean that's the that's what's so like bizarre about what is in their head well and that's that's like why are you not food that's the difference right between a a healthy bear and a and a bear that's not getting enough food or that's sickly you know it's it looked good like this bear did not look scrawny you know it was well built um you just didn't smell right it didn't smell right i'm sure that's the case yeah i'm i'm not i'm not what it normally perceives as food yeah i don't you know look

like that yeah it's just it's so curious like what makes uh, what that decision process is like. I have a feeling it relates a lot to, you know, what happened before this situation, you know, is it, is it, is everything going well, you know, for this bear or is it in dire straits? Yeah. Is it going to use this opportunity to have a meal or is it just going to get away?

Cause you know, it wasn't looking for a meal. Yeah. Like the, something about the scenario was alarming enough to it and unusual enough that it just wasn't in a like eating mood. It was in a save myself, protect myself and get out of here. Like, I don't know what this is.

Right. I don't know what's going on. Yeah. Here's my window of opportunity to get away. Right. Yeah. That's how I perceive it. And he's as scared's going on. Yeah. Here's my window of opportunity to get away. Right. Yeah. That's how I perceive it. And he's as scared as you are.

Yeah, exactly. So it turns and goes and it disappears over the ridge. And I can't remember, I feel like you thought to grab your camera. Yeah. For some reason I was like. You went over and got your camera. I had things I brought up with me. I got to bring my things back.

I love it. That's great. That says a lot about you that you thought to go get your camera. Very practical in that situation. And then you haul ass. Yeah. Then I haul ass and I'm just checking my six the whole time trying to make sure that it's not coming back. And you realize your feet are bleeding.

My feet are bleeding. I didn't realize that until I was coming down the ridge to camp. But I knew that my leg was screwed up because it uh it hurt quite a bit and i checked it and thought it was covered in blood it was just covering bare saliva turned tail and started going back to camp because i was like i need to get back there before my adrenaline rush wears off because i knew i was significantly injured yeah i just didn't know what those injuries were and you know if i had a clock ticking or whatever um and he's gonna come back and kill you right yeah i definitely felt like i had that thing to worry about so i needed

to get back to the guys back to the bear poppers back to the bear spray and everything that all the support that i had back there so describe the wound like you get down and they strip you yep they kind of run up to meet you you're screaming like holy hell yeah yeah and and so they all are starting to get you know all the stuff and and they come up to get me and and help carry me down the last little bit because by the time i got to the bottom i couldn't move my leg anymore and i had scrapes and bruises all over um but uh the main wound was right at the top of my leg there. One of the canines went into full depth of the tooth, uh, in a puncture wound right at the, that joint between my leg and my hip girdle, a quarter inch from my femoral artery. Um, that would you, if you had hit that, you'd have been, that's it.

Yeah. I probably would have been. Cause there's no, you can't,'t as we as you explain in the book you smell the complication but there's no like immediate source of help right yeah serious help yeah and i mean even if there had been an immediate source of help it's like hours yeah and and ephemeral bleed is minutes three ish minutes you know good a good uh illustration that's black cock down when he you know they're trying to uh put some hemostat on the yeah on the femoral bleed from that it's just like spurting and you bleed out really fast um so that would

have been really bad right next to that puncture wound that same canine had pushed in to the full depth but hadn't um wasn't a puncture wound it's just a really bad compression wound with some surface injuries um that compressed all the tissue and did some serious damage to the muscle, but wasn't like bleeding. And I had several more of those wrapping around my thigh from the other teeth. So my whole leg had been in its mouth, but it was really just the main puncture was the source of bleeding, which was super lucky because we were able to control it pretty well. But what happened to the tips of your toes? Do you not have any idea? I don't. Like I said, I was wearing

sandals and the tips of my left big toe and the adjacent toes were just sliced clean off like avulsions. My buddy Ronnie hates sandals. He's going to love this. Because he doesn't like them. Because what if there's a volcano?

Or you get attacked by a grizzly. Oh, no. This is going to back him up. You want to be nimble in that situation. We often have a debate about whether sandals are okay or not. Because how are you going to defend your family? And we got a great email from a guy who wound up being in a microburst. Which fell like 200 trees on his property and all this damage to his house.

And he was out in his sandals when it happened. And he did everything as he should do. And only later, after this whole thing played out, someone's like, where's your shoes? And he realized he'd done it all barefoot. And his take is it doesn't matter. When it really matters, it doesn't matter.

Yep, exactly. Like he had no idea. That he'd done all this crazy shit barefoot. It doesn't matter. Yep. Exactly. Like he had no idea. Yeah. That he'd done all this like crazy shit. Yep. Barefoot. Yeah. Never occurred to him.

You don't think about it when you're doing it. It matters, you know, what you got on your feet. You're going to do what you need to do. Well, I think where it could play in though is if you did receive some injuries from having sandals on like Alex did, and then you had to continue on and you weren't at your house and in a town. Yeah. It could play into the – You should have had steel toe boots. I'm guessing, especially if you're on a rocky hillside, rocks can be sharp.

Yeah. And you're getting tossed around and you're jumping left and right. You very easily could have – I mean, it wouldn't be hard right now to go outside and take your shoes off and kick a rock and probably replicate the same injury. That's not what I think happened. What's your theory? I think that when you were passed out, he very delicately took his teeth and just nipped off the end of some of your toes.

And then he tasted badly, and that's why he ran off. Yuck, feet. I'm going to run out of here. That's a valid theory. You should have looked around next to your pelican case. Your toe tips were probably there. Yeah. Now a raven probably ate him.

At this point at the bottom of the hill, they strip you down. Are you now, how with it are you at this point? I'm super with it. So are you like, I will live? Well, I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to live. But I'm going to ask Dan because he knows better than me. Dan? Am I going to live? Am I going to live?

Famous Dan. And I think that's a quote in the book. And he's like, yeah, you're going to live. I'm like, okay, good. I was pretty sure, but I just need to check. But you still got to be shaken. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm just terrified and coming down off of a, you know, crazy adrenaline rush.

Yeah. Um, and coming off of that, you know, I almost pass out again. And, um, but, uh, you know, one of the important things when you're, um, assessing someone who's just had something crazy happen that, you know, they're not positive. What will happen is making sure that they don't have hidden injuries somewhere or a distracting injury that's making you miss what the important thing is. So he did a good job of doing that full assessment and making sure that these are the things that are going on right now. During the attack, did you lose your sense of time, or does it seem like things played in the way they should have played? So. Like when you review it.

Yeah. Does it seem like it took too long or went too fast or does it feel normal to you? It feels normal with the exception of the lapse in consciousness. Like that, there's just no actual sense of time. It's kind of like when you go to sleep, you know know you might wake up and feel like you slept for a minute and you've actually been asleep for a super long time so i had no actual sense for that but the rest of it plays in real time what was different was um my senses and my thought process were just going so fast. Like I didn't have to wait for my brain to think through things. It was either helping me just make conscious decisions so quickly

or making decisions for me based on, you know, whatever that was best. After we had a run in with a bear, there wasn't anything like yours because no one got hurt. Good. It inspired me to read a little bit about how time passes during near-death experience moments. Yeah. Right? Extremely high-stress moments.

And there's these different responses, which is you can become fixated on a detail. Yeah. And miss a lot. Tunnel vision. fixated on a detail yeah and miss a lot tunnel vision or you can become aware of general pandemonium and not have details uh the lapses and how time works is later like like your sense that it went fast or i saw my life flash before my eyes. Some people think it's something that gets laid over in memory and that you probably didn't experience it that way,

but when you go to remember it, everything compresses or not because of all the things that you missed when you were fixated on a detail or were living like a detail-less environment. Meaning if you fall off a roof and land on the ground and you recollect what the fall was like, that's probably not what the fall was like. Interpolating. Yeah, it gets confused and you try to explain the event.

Right. Because the event didn't play out like, it took away your sense of self-awareness. Like your mental system went out the window. The whole way you calibrate your experiences and understand the passage of time like you were in a in a situation that made no sense to you and so all the things you normally do to sort of like keep your equilibrium so to speak in life are are shed and it's saying that when they're trained like like people that are

training like first responders and things is if you imagine you come to a horror, there's been an explosion, and you come into the explosion and there's a severed arm, but there's still catastrophe playing out around you. Getting people to be like, there's a severed arm, but I will still be aware of the fact that there's a building that's going to fall. Right. Or there's a person that's going to fall. Right. Or there's a person that that arm came from. Yeah.

And not that you come in and you only see that or that you come in and you're just overwhelmed by the immensity of all the things that make no sense to you. And you see nothing. Right. Like, and I think that like what kind of person you are there. I became interested in that because I feel like the different people in our group, when we had an experience like this, different people in our group revealed to be different versions. Sure. Yeah.

I'm the shitty version. I was detail. Okay. A detail. One detail. One detail. Okay. Just a detail. One detail. One detail. Yeah.

One, like one crystalline detail. Yep. Is what I have in my head. Yeah. And I can't fill the experience in because all I have in my head is one thing that was probably. Right. It was probably like. A flash.

But in my mind, that drug on for an eternity. Yeah. Right. And so I look back and I can't make sense of the time. I can't understand other people's experiences. I just have this like thing. It's so annoying. Yeah.

And there were major things going on around me that I was completely unaware of. Yeah. I think in a sense, everybody had that too. Everybody had a version. Nobody recollects what anybody else did in those two seconds. You became, everybody became singular and focused. Together you are one. Singular and focused meaning everybody knew their own experience. Yeah.

But other people had a chronology, had at least a personal chronology. Right. I don't even have a personal chronology. To me, it was a thing. It was an image. And the image started and the image ended and it was over other people were like oh no this happened this happened this happened this happened i have no idea what you were doing but i know what i was doing yeah but i lost it all it's like in reading

about your thing like you you have whatever you did you developed maybe in recollection like a pretty like this happened that happened this happened this happened and deliver it in a pretty plausible way yeah and that was i mean there's so much of it that's just incredibly vivid in my memory um and then there's a lot of it that i had to dig super deep for the recall um and that was one of the real challenges in writing it was was uh going back to that spot in my mind and just pulling those memories out of the deep storage that some of them were hidden in. That's what I was going to ask about because the way that you write, it's so detailed.

Yeah. I mean, from being in the moment with a memory to, and I was going to ask, I know that you kept a journal on this, but, you know, is recall different from, and we can't really know, from the exact moment that you're experiencing, you know, how the wind feels against your skin or the smell of something that you recall. And then articulating kind of the play-by-play in such great detail. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

And that, I mean, that was one of the, I mean, that's always the challenge with writing memoir especially. And that journal was incredibly valuable for me. I journaled, you know, throughout the trip. So I had a very accurate log of every single meal we ate. Yeah. And the more. Yeah, that peanut sauce. Got to, ate yeah and and the more sauce and then you also had people there too yeah so that was valuable i don't want to i don't want to like uh i got a couple more questions for you sure but first i want to just explain one thing how many miles at this point how many miles are you from the nearest piece of aircraft um we're we have like over a hundred miles of paddling left and then it's like i think it was it was like 65 ish

miles from the nearest aircraft but there wasn't an aircraft available there so it's like like hundreds of miles to a helicopter yeah i mean wherever the nearest one from that would have been at that point i suppose which uh hundreds maybe thousands i don't know one of the other settlements down hudson bay which i don't even know which one the next one might have had an aircraft yeah the reason i bring this up is i don't want to um we've covered a lot of ground yeah i just want to know like i want to leave the chronology to be that here you are. Right. You've been mauled.

Yeah. What next? And the things that play out. Yeah. After this. Yeah. We'll leave. Okay.

But what I want to know as my last question. Yeah. How do you perceive grizzly bears now? Does it really bother you the idea that someone would hunt a grizzly bear because of this happening? Like hunt this specific grizzly bear? No. Do you find that you would be like, generally, I'm uneasy with people hunting? Because it's a contentious thing.

Did it make you be like, I respect them so much? Or do you feel they're an animal as long as there's healthy populations? Do you think of it as being like a mythic creature now is it like like what's your forget that part of it forget like whether people should hunt or not i guess let's start with this like how do you view not that bear but how do you view bareness now yeah is it sacred uh i have a tremendous respect for bears um sacred i mean i would probably put my bear on that spectrum um you know i for me personally i don't i don't think i could hunt a bear myself and you said you didn't want them to kill that bear right that's a real common thing i found with people yeah not not since they come because a lot of people get mauled by bear didn't kill it yeah

but um in the moment yeah but later sure i mean in the moment i would have defended myself there's like a sense of forgive there's a sense of forgiveness that seems to set in with people yeah about a particular animal yeah i mean you know bear that mauled amber that we had on yeah that bear is dead now oh yeah i think i i listened to that I happened to listen to that episode where you guys discussed that. She didn't want it to be killed, but it's dead. Yeah. And I mean, once that's the, that's the real challenge with bears is, um, you know, once they start having these human encounters, like it can, it can just have such a detrimental effect on those bears. Um, and it can lead to, you know, more and more problems and eventually the bear having to be destroyed, which is, you know, too bad. But this one just vanished into the landscape.

Mine just vanished. They went out and looked and. They looked for it and, uh, they were going to see how it responded to people. Basically determine if it was going to be a problem bear and then take, you know. I like the strategy you explained for that. Well, what we do is we have a person go up to it bob here we'll see how it acts and bob goes up yeah i you know and bob's quick with a shotgun bob was quick with the with a firearm but uh i like i think back on on that explanation i'm like

really is that actually what you guys do maybe yeah it It's like a very odd way to do that. But you know, at the same time, it was also, yeah, they didn't have to do that. So didn't have to worry about it. So I like to think that it's still out there and, you know, doing its thing. It could have done a lot more to me. I mean, you know, to earlier points that it could have uh decided that i was a meal or it could have you know uh bitten chunks out of me or or maimed me for life or or killed me straight up um but it didn't and uh i'm incredibly appreciative of it for that and ultimately it was just a bear being a bear and doing bear things in its own habitat so it didn't do anything wrong so i appreciate it yeah you got any follow-ups yeah um i mean you touched on it a little bit but tell me how like how do you think it affected everybody else on the trip i mean dan's like

a major player right because he's sort of he really has to take over at this point yeah as the trip leader yeah but like your four buddies that are your age like are they like holy shit now i can't sleep because we know there's a bear right near us and there could be more of these down the you know waterway that we might come up on some more like how did it change their experience for the remainder of the trip yeah i mean it's um it dramatically changes the trip right i mean the focus is different the sense of uh vulnerability is totally different and the and the responsibilities are are pretty different too so i mean all of those guys had a lot of extra uh pressure on them to deal with that. And they handled it well. You know, they rose to the occasion and helped us get to where we needed to get and dealt with it a lot. But I'm very cognizant of the fact that from that point on, it was just a very

different trip. And I'm sure that they were seeing things differently at that point yeah um because it's pretty and i would imagine at the time that even though they rose the occasion maybe they did or did not like seize the moment and just say this is how it is you know it's hard to do that sometimes especially as a 17 year old but i'm guessing now looking back on it yeah i'm not saying they're happy you got bit by a bear, but right. Like that's the kind of experience that, uh, like really can build a person. Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly transformative, you know, for me and for those guys. I mean, you know, just, just being a support person, uh, to a situation like that is, um, it sticks with

you forever. I mean, it's kind of like with search and rescue and whatever, you're not the person that's, you're not the victim, but you're there making a difference in this situation that's just like incredibly unique and very elemental, and that's very transformative. Right. I got another question. Are you glad you got attacked by the bear?

I don't know if I'd say I was glad I got attacked by the bear. No, are you now glad you got attacked by a bear? Forget the book. Yeah. Like, try to remove the book. Oh, thanks, I wrote a book. Yeah. Remove the book.

I mean, I'd be a different person if I hadn't been. So in a lot of ways, I feel like it was grounding and helped me to kind of appreciate everything in life just that much more. It's hard to say like, yeah, I enjoy getting mauled by a bear. No, no, but I'm, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we're a product of our experiences, right? You know, would I go back and do that trip again? Absolutely. Would I take precautions to change how that situation would have gone? Yes. Gotcha.

So, but I mean, it's an experience that has been incredibly important to me and directional in my life. So it's hard to think about that not being there. Corinne, what you got? I'm curious about the trauma of it all. And that there's a lot there, so we can make this short and wrap it up. But I'm curious about that and if you've kind of been, if you define yourself as and are kind of defined by others as like the bear attack guy.

Right. Like, and if that has colored everything else afterward, even though that was a singular and unique experience. Right. And it's a super short experience. Yeah. I mean, that trauma took a little while to kind of categorize in my brain and kind of put where it needed to go. While I was still out in the woods, you know, it was just like bears everywhere.

Not literally, but I was perceiving them everywhere. earlier about one of my steps was to kind of get myself back into situations that would, um, help me overcome barriers that I was now experiencing, you know, going to zoos and actually seeing live grizzly bears was one of them, um, getting back out into the woods, uh, in a, in a way that I had enough support around me that I could do that and and go through that evolution of of uh fear to kind of having control of the situation everything my family and friends were really important for that um and that took several years of kind of easing back into it and I looked like Rambo for the first couple of years going back to the Boundary Waters it's like why do you need a tactical vest and a machete and a bear mace instead of club i didn't carry a club but you had a mace i had yeah right yeah like a spiked mace

yeah so you know you control what you can and and i i never wanted it to define me in the sense of like i can't go do these things anymore so i was very intentional about going back out there and doing those things getting back in the race, man. Yeah, exactly. Get back up on the horse and, um, you know, being comfortable with the fact that I might be uneasy or my experience might be different at this point, but, um, you know, managing my risks appropriately and then getting back out there. Um, you know, when I was 17, I went, I started my senior year of high school three weeks after I was attacked. Really?

Yeah. You knew what you were going to write your senior paper about? Oh, yeah. What I did this summer. What am I going to do for a college entrance essay? What I did this summer. By Alex Messenger. Yeah, exactly.

What do you think about all that, Phil? I mean, it sounds crazy and intense, and I can't even comprehend it. Good shit, Phil. You like it? Thanks a lot. I love it. Love it. Phil likes it.

How are you enjoying your cameras, Phil? It's a learning experience. I think it's going well, though. I think we're going to make this work. Nice. Yeah. Cool. What we're talking about there is Phil.

Go ahead, Yanni. I just had some more bearing and canoe questions, but go ahead. Phil's filming. I don't know. We're going to start releasing highlight videos and whatnot. That's true. Yeah, this is a test run. You may or may not see some of this, but you will see things in the near future.

That is the plan. Audience, get excited. Let's fill the podcast engine. Go ahead, Janice. We're going to have to really gussy ourselves up and not pick our nose. I'm already planning on it, man. I'm going to change everything.

You know how Larry King always said? That's all I'm going to say. Suspenders. Suspenders leaning forward with your elbows on the table. Some bitch can sit there for hours like that. You were close to finishing, but you didn't finish. You were like, what, 40-some miles, right? From where the rest of the crew ended up taking out? At the point where I got evacuated.

No, where you got evac. 100 plus. Well, when I got evac'd, yeah, closer. But I was trying to leave those details as like, I didn't want to do his whole damn book. Well, I skipped ahead right to the very, very end. Okay, go ahead. So you got evac'd.

Pursue your line of questioning. you had to you had to bring a guy a guy with you yeah when you when you pulled out yep I know for a lot of people like when you're on a big trip like that you set out to do is a beginning and end if you don't finish it's like a gnaws at you yeah so is it gnawing at you are you guys gonna have to go back and go do the whole 600 miles again and finish her up yeah summit fever right yeah um i want to go back i don't know if i want to do the same trip exactly um but uh there is kind of that sense of like, oh, you didn't quite finish the trip that you had set out to do, but you did the trip that, that you were dealt.

Um, so that's kind of part of the whole vibe of like coming to terms with, um, with this and really with any long expedition like that, you get back and it's like, you have to recondition yourself to the world. Um, it's a hard transition so yeah someday i'll go back good last question i promise i don't care ask them all the questions you want man twice and i forget the chronology but twice you guys lose a canoe correct not on this trip once on this trip only once on this trip yeah like lost lost but i thought you guys got it back one time no well so one time it's like okay it barely slid away yeah okay is that

the one you're referring to right but then another time you guys actually lose a canoe yeah and it's gone gone gone yeah like you know it's not coming back you guys only have to at that point. Yeah. I'm just wondering like what sort of, like what's the protocol for beaching, tethering, putting, how does a canoe that you're so dependent upon get taken away? Yeah. Well. You were crippled up and you did a shitty job of yanking it up on the beach. Yeah. You know, and that night. But in that environment, is that the protocol?

You just pull it up on the beach, what crippled or not, and you tip it upside down and that's it for the night? So our protocol was to like pull it up out of the water and then weight it down so that the wind didn't take it. Gotcha. And what happened in our situation was we had like this century storm that came up. I actually pulled up footage of that like a couple of years ago from 2005. It looks like a hurricane going across Northern Canada.

Um, and it ended up, the water level rose a lot and it ended up taking it away. Um, so basically the protocol for securing your canoes is just that secure your canoes. So, uh, you know, next time I'd probably drive a stake in the ground or something. Um, or just like bring them so far up from shore. It's like, we're in like we're sitting, you know, we got bigger things to deal with if the waters rise to this point. Sure.

But yeah, so that was hard. You guys were doing everything right. It was just such an extreme circumstance. Yeah. Could not have foreseen it. Compounding factors. Yeah, right. Compounding factors.

And not to mention it was like super cold and stormy the night before and so we were all just struggling and you know dealing with the aftermath of a bear attack and yeah

so that was painful pretty incredible for a group of 17 year old kids yeah so very

learning experience I give you guys a lot of props man for not hanging out with those girls longer too I gotta say

I don't think I could have stuck to that. We were pretty mature. 17-year-old Yanni. Yeah, you guys were very mature. Very mature. Okay. Alex Messenger. The title of the book, The 29th Day. Surviving

a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra. Alex, thank you. Thank you. For making the Canadian Tundra. Alex, thank you. Thank you. For making the trip out. Yeah. Thanks for telling us your tale. Yeah.

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