The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 320: NEW STORY—Braving the Elements

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

It might not be as bad as you think.

Do do do do do do do do. Dumb. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle.

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And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with sort of, super useful information, and again, it's free at netseweet.com slash mike. That's netseweet.com. NetSweet. I got a story to tell every word of it true, except for the parts I made up for you,

just some history that has been reworded into a mystery called the way I heard it. Thank you, Chuck, for singing the tenor on that. I think you made it better. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. It was very, very high. I do hope these, all this unauthorized singing isn't ruffling any feathers. We do it because it makes us laugh. And as my granddad used to say, if you're not laughing, Michael, the joke is on you. This is episode number 320 of the way I heard it. It's called Braving the Elements. It's one of those brief, truish mysteries for the curious mind with a short attention span. Chuck, I know this pleases you. am I still correct? Yes, it pleases me very much.

I love the fact that you're writing these stories again and that we're able to put up as many as well. This is the second one in this month, which is pretty, pretty, pretty amazing. Okay? If I don't say so myself, it's pretty good. Excellent. Best story ever.

No story, the greatest story of all time. Greatest. Greatest. Oh, God. Well, look, they're still fun to write, although I don't have the time that I used to have, so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. But my promise to you, gentle listeners,

is to get at least one of these up a month through this year. And then we'll just kind of see how it goes. This one is called braving the elements. And there's really not much to say because it's a mystery. What's the point in teasing a mystery, Chuck? I don't even know how to do it, really. I mean, you could have stopped right there. And it's called Braving the Elements.

And then it would be do-da-do-do-do-do-do. Yeah, I know, but I still, I'm just listening. listening to myself talk and I'm liking it. Because it reminds me of the conversation with Mike Easter we just had about the comfort crisis. Yes. It's about living off the grid. This is a story about a guy who lives way off the grid. Mike, you can't tell us.

I mean, that's enough. Okay, okay. Right? All right. You're right. This is the way I heard it. It's a bonus episode. It's number 320.

It's called Braving the Elements. Here it is. after the inevitable guitar sting. On a cold winter morning, in the winter of 2016, a reporter from Reuters went to interview an old man who lived in the forest. Ivan Shemayanook was one of a small group of individuals who had chosen to live off the grid in a thousand square miles of wilderness that few people had ever visited.

The reporter drove as far as he could over rough terrain until he was forced to leave his four-wheel drive behind and hike through the trees. He was struck by the natural beauty that surrounded him. The flora rivaled that of many national parks, and the fauna was no less impressive. He'd read that deer, moose, wild boar, beaver, lynx, and brown bears roamed with impunity. A lone wolf howled in the distance, providing an eerie soundtrack for his trek. When the temperature began to drop and the snow began to fall, the reporter picked up his pace.

By the time he arrived at Ivan's home, he was chilled to the bone and eager to get inside. He knocked on the wooden door and was greeted by an old man who appeared to be in excellent health. Mr. Shemayanook? The old man nodded. Please, call me Ivan, and come in, get warm. Would you care for some tea? Yes, said the report. Porter. Yes, tea would be lovely. Ivan poured water from a bucket into a kettle and placed the kettle atop a cast iron stove as the reporter took in his surroundings. A wooden table with two chairs,

windows with no curtains, a few burning candles and gas lanterns strategically placed, no electricity or indoor plumbing, obviously. I trust your walk through the forest was uneventful. No problems, said the reporter, though for a while there I thought I might have wandered into a zoo. Ivan smiled broadly. Yes, the creatures of the forest are my constant companions. The reporter asked Ivan about his daily routine and took notes as the old man spoke. Ivan Shemayanook rose every morning at 6 a.m., fired up his cast-iron stove and made himself a modest breakfast. Then he ventured outside to milk his cows, feed his pigs, and walk his dog,

after which he gathered wood for the fire and tended to his garden. The reporter was reminded of Henry David Thoreau, the American philosopher who moved to Walden Pond to escape civilization and write about life in a simpler time. When the tea was ready, the reporter took a sip and got to the point of his visit. Mr. Shemayanook, 30 years ago, no one thought you would survive out here. They said you'd be dead in a year. They were mistaken, said Ivan. Apparently, said the reporter, you just turned 90. What's your secret to living a long life? Outside, the wind blew through the pines, and the snow fell hard. Ivan sipped his tea and thought about the question.

The secret to living a long life, he said, is to remain close to the place you were born. The reporter wondered if perhaps the old man was insane. He didn't look insane, but why would a 90-year-old sane person choose to live out here in the elements? How is your health? The reporter asked. The doctors came last week, Ivan said. They examined me from head to toe. They said, everything's fine.

with you, Granddad. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. No aches, no pains, said the reporter. None. No medicines? No prescriptions. I sometimes drink a small glass of vodka before meals to help the appetite, but that's all the medicine I require. What about your wife? The reporter asked. Outside, the wolf howled a bit closer than before. My wife died and a little bit closer than before. My wife died our bed one year ago. I'm sorry, said the reporter. Was she sick? No, said Ivan. She was old. And your sister? My sister and her husband live just down that road. Ivan pointed toward the window into the thick woods where a road used to be. I think of them every day, he said. What happened to them? asked the reporter. They died shortly after they left their

homes, said Ivan, 30 years ago. From the elements, the reporter asked. Outside, the wolf howled again. The wind shook the glass window pane and the snow fell harder. No, said Ivan. They died from anxiety, like most of the others who left. And you were never anxious yourself, Ivan. Never afraid out here in the elements? Ivan shook his head and smiled. I live just as I have always lived. I sing. I take a turn in the yard. This place is still my home,

and a man should never be anxious in his own home. The reporter thanked Ivan for his hospitality and walked back to his truck along an asphalt road, now covered with a foot of topsoil, lichen, and pine needles. He thought again about Henry David Thoreau and his decision to leave the civilized world behind, But of course, unlike Thoreau and his simple life on Walden Pond, Ivan Shemayanook had not moved to the wilderness to escape civilization. The wilderness had moved to him. And so the reporter from Reuters wrote an article about a forest

that came from nowhere and the people who stayed behind to brave the elements. Not the freezing cold or the howling wind or the driving snow, The other elements, the ones that sent 200,000 of Ivan's neighbors running from their homes in the spring of 1986, the elements that put the entire world into a state of high anxiety that persists to this day. The elements, they said, would kill anyone who stayed behind. Iodine, cesium, strontium, and plutonium. Those were the elements that transformed a thousand square miles of suburban real estate into a contaminated wasteland called the exclusion zone, where the politicians, scientists, and environmentalists said nothing would grow for many hundreds of years. Nothing, that is, except for the forest that began to emerge the moment everyone left.

an impossible forest that quickly swallowed up all that man had labored to build, a forest that today has become a model of environmental biodiversity, teeming with hundreds of unexpected species, including a handful of inexplicably healthy Homo sapiens, the elderly Ukrainians, who continue to brave the elements by refusing to leave the only homes they ever knew. Forgotten homes on the outskirts of an abandoned city, a city whose name still fills an anxious world

with a deep and abiding dread. A city called Chernobyl. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.