WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Going Out Like Socrates

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week they have special guest, Luke Burmeister, on to share his encounter with poison hemlock, monsoons, and more. 

To Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. Hey, it's me, Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Seguir Tau, and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. This week, we have a very special guest on with us. Guest episode. It's been a while. We have Luke Burmeister. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it. Dude, it's good to have you on. It's been a minute, man. It's good to see you.

Yeah, good to see you, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Luke is a big outdoorsy guy. He lives outdoors. He's never been inside ever. No. Yeah, yeah. Like, recording this is the first time he's been inside.

I've never seen a microphone before in my life. So since you live outside permanently, we're going to have you go first with Trailmarkers. What's your little highlight of the week? My highlight of the week, did you prep him for this? Yeah. I forgot. I didn't think of one.

Go forward. So yesterday I was able to get out to Lost Nations, build a little fire in the snow, get the boys together, sing some sort of, hymns. Wait, dude, that's so sick. What? The stars are beautiful.

Yeah. Yeah. No crazy pyrotechnics, though, unfortunately. Yet. That's what it's all about. Yeah. Yeah. Storm, do you have one or do you make one up?

No, that's actually kind of mine, too. We did a, we went, we took some Simpson guys and built a campfire on the snow last week. And it's like, it's so cathartic, just like fire and ice together inside around it. We sang Misty Mountain from the Hobbit. Oh, so tough, bro. Nice. Yeah, I felt awesome.

Mine's boring. I went on a run. I went on a run. Yeah, no, I went on a run, and it was 40 degrees, and I got to wear shorts, and it was pretty awesome. Well, thank goodness you didn't die. Almost die like last week. True.

That was, I almost got hypothermia. Maybe. But maybe. I'm exaggerating a bit. Okay, story time. Story time. So speaking of almost dying, Luke almost died this past spring. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I almost did. Whoops. Whoops. So, yeah, so I was going outside and write, you know, as one does. Yes, yes. I was, I had my pocket knife out and I was cutting down some, some stems and some little plants. And I found, I was with Gabe Higby, we found this little, this little stem that had a hollow tube on the inside. And so naturally, my first thought is, can I make a flute out of it?

Oh, yeah. So, you know, I cut off a little section. I made my little top flute hole. I made the mouthpiece, and I started drilling in the holes. That's sick, dude. And it was actually super fun. And I was starting to get it to make noise, but Gabe had to run. So I took my phone and I've got this app called Seek, and it identifies plants.

And so I identified the plant so I could come back later and go make some more flutes. And I identified it, and it said, poison hemlock. I was like, yeah. Oh. Yeah. Very funny. Very funny. And so I closed it and I re-identified it again.

And lo and behold, poison hemlock. And so after the fifth identification, I believe it. You're like, just to quintuple check. And so Gabe's like, you're all right, man? And like, yeah, so want to know a fun fact? We just put poison hemlock in our mouths. Like, there's a fun fact. And so, I mean, I was kind of fine.

How bad is Hemlock? Aristotle died from it, right? Socrates. What? Socrates, that's what was. So do you use to kill himself instead of, yeah, at the public execution? It's actually, it's so, okay, it's bad, but it's, like, it's bad if you eat it. We weren't eating it, but it's like if you eat, I mean, it varies based on studies because they don't really, you know, throw somebody in a lab and have them eat in a plant of Hemlock.

but there are studies some studies that will say it's like two or three leaves can actually cause you to start going into, I don't know, death basically. Going into death? Yeah, so. And you threw a whole stalk down the gulet. I didn't eat it, but

it was in the gullet, I guess. So, so quick question, because I guess you've done a bit of research. I don't know if you know the answer to this, but it's like what are the symptoms? Because did you experience any symptoms after this of like a headache or something?

Yeah, that's why Gabe was really pushing us to go to the ER. I didn't want to go, but I mean, both of us started getting like little tingly fingers and tingly lips. No real lightheadedness or... Tingly lips. Dude, one of the symptoms is actually death. That's a pretty funny. I just looked it up and it was like swollen, like tingly numbness and then death, which is great.

but yeah there's we just got some some tingly fingers some tingly lips that's about it no real headache but they kicked us out of the ER after 10 minutes of calling poison control or whatever they're like poison control said you should stay the night but you can go back you're fine so you were if did they give you anything any treatment or would they just give you look over make sure it wasn't like a lethal dose they just eyeballed it wow I bawled it I don't know if I'd be confident that would be like someone tying my parachute who's not I mean you look eye little green around the gills maybe but get on out of here just take some water yeah that but I mean think about it how many people are they treating for

poison hemlock it's like they don't know what to do I mean they do to an extent but it's like what do they're the doctors yeah but how many doctors are like someone comes in like oh yeah I just put poison hemlock in my mouth probably about as often as people see a plant and try to make a flute out of it which is so rare no one does that no offense I don't think you know men very well this is if I I think I do. I saw that. If I saw a little flute thing, I'd make a flute of it out of it too. I go toot, toot on it. And then I as well.

On your flute. Yeah, my little flute. And then I as well would be, would have tingly lips. Wow. So were there any like more symptoms? Like did you like, was like itchy or did you like, was it painful? Not really. I mean, no real pain.

I mean, if symptoms did really start, it kind of be like, I mean, there's no point really because there's nothing that you can use to treat it. Yeah. But I mean, not, not. much. That was fine. Because neither of us had actually consumed any of it. Okay.

We just put it in our mouth. Is that the big one? The big killer is consumption? Yeah. So if it goes into your gut and you start breaking it down, then it's bad news. But actually, it's supposedly toxic enough that it can, you know, give you, it can, like, harm your skin if it touches your skin because of the oil on it. But because it was probably about two to two and a half years dead, it probably didn't have nearly as many oils on it. Thank goodness.

Oh, that's good. I'm going to see you can get him locked out of life. So after this experience, have you just started? identifying everything that you come in contact with? Because you're like, uh-oh, maybe if I touch it, it'll kill me. Oh, I was on that grind even before. I thought about it. I got, I got like 600 and some, 600 and some plants I've identified on my phone already, different species.

Wow. Does it keep track? Yeah. Is it like Spotify wrapped at the end of the year where it's like, you've identified 600 plants this year? Great job. It should. I mean, I keep track with myself.

200 of them are poisonous. Well, that's certainly. something. Insane work. Yeah, I would die though. And so you carried this knowledge forward with you because you then worked at a summer camp this past summer. Deerfoot? Yeah. Yeah. Where is that?

That's in North Carolina. Oh my gosh. The Carolinas are so beautiful. Is it a, is it like a boys camp or like a, yeah? Yeah, it's an all boys camp. For campers ages 9 through 16, we'll teach him, you know, survival skills, camp craft skills, archery.

Don't make flutes out of things. Don't make flutes out of points. and happen lock like I did. Yeah. And we'll take him on hikes all throughout the mountains, which is amazing. You are listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So speaking of hikes. Speaking of hikes.

We're talking about his camp. Yeah, but no. I want to ask, how did you get into it before we get to the story? Like, how did you get into, like, camp counseling or is your counselor? Yeah. Yeah. Like, what was that like? It was, uh, it was an amazing experience.

I got referred by Garrett Goolsby. He is now Hillsdale grad. But he heard about, you know, the type of stuff I was doing, like, making flutes out of Poison Hatlock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was like, what a legend of the game. Yeah, maybe this guy should go teach other kids how to do that, you know. Imparts some wisdom, yeah, yeah. But amazing experience.

Just get out there, completely disconnect. And, yeah, totally wonderful. Yeah. So you took these campers on hikes. Did you have any memorable ones? Yeah. actually one sort of relative to the poison hemlock it all comes back so yeah it goes full circle so there was there was one hike it was my it was in my last session at deerfoot

it was the first week hike so it was about a day and a half hike and we came in we made it about nine miles that day find a nice beautiful campsite drop packs and the guys are moving real slow because it was beautiful weather and it was like you know what can happen well it's north Carolina, so a lot can happen. So it went from being full, beautiful sunlight with it, and I'm not, I'm not exaggerating, probably within 90 seconds, I couldn't see, I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Wow. The whole sky was completely clotted over. It was, it was unbelievable. And so now, like the dudes who are moving one mile an hour, setting up the tarps, I'm yelling at them, dude, get the tarp up now. And so dudes are sprinting around, trying to get the tents up,

and it just starts pouring, absolutely pouring. It was crazy. And none of us had our tents, hammocks, anything up. And so it's just whip and wind and poured and everything. Yeah. Because it's... That's what I'd do. It's in the summer.

So it was... It was warm, but also like, bugs? Ew. What I would do is I put my sleeping pad on the bottom of the hammock so bugs couldn't get through there. And I got a bug net on the top. Oh, okay. That's smart. So I was pretty immune.

But then rain. But, yeah. Well, I have a... I have a... It's like a tent that I'll put over the hammock. It's a rain fly. Oh, okay. I have seen those.

Yeah. You're not very hammock savvy, Nicole. No, I'm not. I do have one, but I very, really use it. You just sleep on the ground? Yeah. It's nice if you can get it up before the rain starts. Yes.

Which I was not able to. So my, you know, like you said, my hammock got soaked. And so I ended up pulling an all-nighter because I was awful. You know, there was no space in the place where the rest of the guys were sleeping. And the fire. kept needing to get stoked because the guys were shivering because they were all soaked because they didn't get their stuff up. But on that night, before all the rain had hit,

back to the poison hemlock point, I was just wandering around, looking for whatever because you're in North Carolina. That's what you do. You wander around. And I found a little plant, and it looked like a carrot. And so I picked it. Turns out there are a lot of poisonous plants in the carrot.

Your curiosity is going to kill you. Probably. The carrot family? Yeah. Actually, I think Poison Hemlock, yeah, Poison Hemlock is in the carrot family. Oh, interesting. And so... I'm dead me, dude, I love carrots.

Well, so I picked this thing, and I'm joking, right? So I walked over to the campers. I'm like, hey, he wants to eat a carrot with dinner. And one of my campers, I love the guy. He's a funny guy, but he said, I'll do it. And so I threw it over to him. I was like, by the way, I turn around and I'm like, by the way, I'm joking. Like, that's not actually yet.

And I turn around, and he's got the entire thing. stuffed in his mouth and he's swallowing it as I'm talking like, dude, I don't think that was a carrot. I was joking, bro. He didn't even clean it off nothing. It still had dirt on it. He just ate the whole thing. And he was like, ugh. That was like minty and sharp. What? That would definitely was not a carrot. And now I'm stressing out because, you know, like the beginning of the beginning of camp, they're like safety for the campers safety. Right, right. I'm the only one in charge there. Like, if anything happens, it's on me. And so I just fed this camp. hamper this completely unknown plant knowing that I you know all these toxic plants are

yeah yeah yeah he ended up being fine I looked it up later and it was Mountain Angelica which is technically edible but not really but it's not toxic so he survived that's good thank goodness yeah that's really scary but also I guess if you hand guys something and you say eat it they actually do yeah without like I'd eat it exactly like I would never if had during it be like let me washing thing with dirt on it and said, dude, eat this. I'd be like, I'd eat that. I mean, you probably would too. Yeah, probably.

I'd shout down. Okay, I just, yeah, well, that's why you guys die sooner, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. But, hey, someone had to go through and eat all the poison plants so the human race could figure out what's edible and what's not. Yeah, I'm glad that happened out a long time ago. Yeah, I'm still on that mission.

You're going to find a new one. I'm still on that mission. Dude, the best. part of camps are the campouts. I firmly believe this. When I used to go to summer camp as a kid, I loved the camp out parts because it's like you're going away from home to the camp and then you're going away from camp to the campsite. It's like your two stages removed now and it's like anything could happen. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. It does. By far my favorite part. I never went to summer camp. So I'm going to live vicariously through through your stories here. You mentioned a lightning

story. Storm has also had some interesting experiences with lightning. Oh yeah. Yeah, I was I was on a trip with my family to Tennessee near the Pigeon Forge area, a beautiful spot. Oh my God, Pigeon Forge is gorgeous. Yeah, it's amazing. And we were right on the side of a mountain. And we were probably 1,700 feet from the top. And so, you know, my dad and my brother, we just, we decided we'd hike to the top one day. And we checked the weather and said, like, there's a big storm going to hit at 5, but we left

at, like, one. So we were going to be fine. But it took us about twice as long as we thought to get to the top. And so we get to the top and we're like, oh. Uh-oh. The storm is going to be here in like two minutes. No, no, sorry, two hours. Two hours?

Yeah, yeah. And so we're headed back down the mountain. And as we're pulling up to the house, like the storm clouds are rolling in. And so we step foot in the door and it starts raining. And there's, you can see like, beautiful, like amazing lightning off in the distance, just shooting down. I got some amazing. I was just standing on the porch recording. And there's just some amazing videos of lightning just like crawling through the sky.

Yeah. And it was getting closer. and closer and closer and closer and closer. And then my dad and I are standing on the porch recording because now it's like less than a mile away. And it's striking and it's awesome. And so I'm facing to the right and my dad is facing to the left

and there's like probably a 10 degree gap in between us that's not being recorded. And in that 10 degree gap, about 45 feet away in the middle of the yard, lightning strikes, boom. 45 feet from you guys? from us. It was literally in the yard where we were. And so my ears are like ringing. I got flash banged. And so like now I'm trying to like crawl back in the house because I don't want to

get struck by lightning. And we go back on the videos to see it. Because like I couldn't even see my phone to see whether I got it on. Yeah. Yeah. And so we go back later to see the videos and we find like you can see just on the left edge of the screen of mine and on the right edge of the screen of his was the lightning where it struck right in between the video. So neither of us got it on. I don't even know if a camera, phone camera could capture. Yeah. No, that's.

Like burn out the camera, white. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And I mean, and then the hail rolled in. Oh, no. And dude, just like slamming against the windows. My brother was trying to get a picture in the hail because he thought it'd be sweet. And so, like, he set up his phone and he's going outside, like, taking pictures.

And when he came back inside, like, he just unlocked the door and it, like, slammed open. afterwards, like, it took like two people to close the door. Yeah. And like 10 minutes later, we're going downstairs. And we realized that in the time that he had opened the door to come inside, Hale had flown down the stairs and into a different room in the basement. Whoa. Oh, my gosh.

It was wild. Oh, man. That's my old number. We do not have storms like that in California, at least not where I live. Like, my goodness, that stuff is crazy. Oh, yeah. You know, we have them in North Georgia. We go up to my grandparents' house.

we like to sit on the porch and watch. There's like weekly humongous monsoons and just pass over the mountains and the southern Appalachians. And we'll sit on the porch, me, my dad, my grandpa, all three generations, and just watch the clouds, like, light up.

Oh, yeah, that's awesome. And, like, read books and stuff. Like, yeah. I love it. If I'm from a distance, because I do really love watching lightning. Like, I think it's so mesmerizing, but I've never quite been

in the heart of a storm like that before. I think the closest I've ever been to being struck by lightning was a couple summers ago, we were up in the San Juan Mountains. We had a campfire with my dad and some of his friends. And we're all sitting around the campfire like, this storm is rolling in, but it's kind of off to the distance.

It's not raining where we are. And we're in this bull. So it's like sound reflects, light reflects. And there's lightning off in the distance. And then all of a sudden it looked like lightning struck our fire. I know it didn't. Like I'm dead serious. But the way the light like bounced off the walls of this little bull that we were in

and then reflected into the fire, it just, it looked magical. Like, white light just shot out of the fire. And again, I know it didn't happen, but it must have struck, like, the ridge or something. Just refracted straight down into the... Yeah, it was insane. But I can't imagine being 45 feet away from it.

So already that was so loud. And it was just like, who knows where it was, maybe half a mile away or something. That's awesome. No wonder humanity was like, that's probably God. Way back in the day. No, seriously.

Probably that's got to be. I don't know what else that is. Yeah. I told you my story about orange lightning. Did you? I think so. This was like a year ago. This is one of our early episodes.

When you were on a roof? Yeah, we were on a roof and we saw in the distance. I think we were in Florida and we saw like off the coast, down the coast really, like a storm with like a bunch of orange lightning. Whoa. And we were like, I don't even know how that happened. It was like over a city too. So it was like all lit up under it. And we were like, what the heck?

We didn't publish that episode. Oh. I don't think we, I think that's the one we didn't publish. It was the only one we've never not published. Well, I saw orange lightning one time. Mr. viewer who has listened to all of our episodes

and is keeping track of the topics we've talked about. Yeah, and it was absolutely insane. We sat on the roof of like the beach house we were at and just looked down the coastline.

It was like pretty, it was like pretty condensed. It was like we were, there was no rain, we were fine. We just had strong winds where we were. And then it was like maybe

two miles away that way was just this, this like dark cloud with like orange fireish lightning that was striking down to the city. We were like,

what even causes that? Like the only bit I've ever seen as like very blue blue and purple. Why is like electricity, you know? Like sometimes we're like sometimes yellow and sometimes blue, you know? Like lightning is blue, but then like like power boxes always have yellow.

I don't know. It's not scientific. And I saw red one time. Dude, next up in the bucket list, green lightning. Green lightning. You can do that with chemistry stuff. We should make it. We should make it.

Luke, you're a bio major. We have time for one more quick story and you mentioned something about a camper passing out. Yeah. That was a crazy time. That was my second hike at Deerfoot. And now, I had never been a camp counselor before, and I loved the outdoors, but I grew up in a suburb. So I really didn't know much going into camp. And so that was my second hike.

We were with the Mountaineers, which is the oldest age group, 14 to 16. There was a camp, one of my campers came in, and they said he had some condition where he was prone to epilepsy or something like that going in. but they said it wouldn't be it wouldn't be a problem he never has problems with it and it never flares up or whatever uh wrong so we were out on the trail and everything was looking great it was a beautiful day great weather um and we're hiking along we're probably about four miles in and i'm hiking and i hear and i turned around he just fell over i was like what was that and he was on the ground oh my gosh yo what and so i went i went i checked big dog you all right yeah it's like

good. And you're like, no, yeah, no, I'm doing fine. I was just a little lightheaded. I was okay, you've been drinking water? He's like, yeah, yeah. Like, when was the last time you ate? And it was like, probably two hours ago. Okay. So I opened up a little hydration packet, gave him some hydration, helped him up. We paused for a second, let him cool down a little bit. And we kept on hiking. And he could tell his face was starting to get a little red, but he seemed to be doing fine. And he was a dog, he was pushing. So about a mile and a half. later. Yeah.

I saw it coming. I turn around, but this time he's like, he's actually unconscious on the ground. Oh, shoot. And so I walk over, I'm like, hey, you okay, man? And he didn't respond because he was unconscious. I think he was like, he was twitching a little bit or something. But after like five seconds, he wakes up and like, dude, are you good? And he was like, yeah, man, I'm just, I'm super lightheaded.

And so now I'm starting to get a little concern, right? Because liability is on me. And so I took my phone and I ran like half a mile up the trail. I'm like running every which way trying to find some signal so I can call back to camp. Nothing. And so we helped him up and we helped him up and we ended up hiking through. He ended up being all right. Thank goodness, dude.

Yeah. He was moving real slow for the rest of the time. You kind of attract danger. Yeah. Do you feel inclined to be a doctor? That was my point about the biomature. Like you could. You know stuff about.

Poison, you know stuff about kids fainting. Lightning. Lightning. Yeah. I think I'd be more inclined to do wilderness medicine than traditional medicine. That makes sense. Well, thank you so much for joining us this week. We really appreciate all your amazing stories.

It's super fun and interesting. I want to go back around. Yeah. Then you can really be stormed. And play a hemlock flute. Yeah. Do for the dad lore. Thank you for listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

We hope you have a great week and make time. to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors we'll see you out there happy trails do do do bye guys