everybody i know you sent home wine and cry and by you missed get tickets four mediator off their like you just despondent catatonic what other kano words yes you know catatonic means super now happy because you miss me at every somebody has but perk up model that catatonic stupor because well to venues laugh everything sold out we got a still to values left april fifteen april sixteen neighbouring dates me cow jani mediator off their holy smokes mason art center mesa arizona a few phoenix market people are people that can get there in city national grove anaheim california like the l a you people come on man hurry up and get them everything else is gone but get those to you

this is the meat eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely voted in my case underwear listening to your podcast you can't predict anything presented by an ex hunt creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters download the hunt app from the itunes or google play store nor stand with annex you start new start the hope i've got you act as if you can say the first thing there's something you should say then go and i welcome regarding on an essay on so alex messenger yet attack by a grizzly bear go into whatever you're you going titillating very nice titillating and people want to hear all about that you always fond of that word do you like this recently it's like re enter your vocabulary innovating

titillating what i like about were now only reason i've always been fond of i've just been trying to use it more there is a tom evans character name marks marvelous the eyes like that name because people love marks karl marx and real man never used the word marvelous sort of an attack on language and stereotypes about language so i feel like the word titillating is unexpected it is that i said read awesome herbage and do not care about that red story nausea listen titillating story

you don't feel over there he always looks half asleep i can run the cameras fired right up now you hear that word and they turn the volume so they know it's a titillating story about white and a bear attack that's right by and bye bye get to that one ones that made just now what do i want to do him justice as an author ok alex messenger author of the twenty ninth day surviving a grisly attack and the canadian tundra first the audio waller alex now lives in duluth correct answer it tell him that we were just recently on fishing why on the lax he asked caught some while i said yes but as or just as interests in catching while i was interested in asking everybody why the obsession with why why do you think it is

i think people appreciate the flavour and then it's a beautiful fashion it's pretty easy to fully i agree way that's a great thing to say this it's a good way to sell a fish monkfish or like a shovel no sturgeon yeah the people i've asked this question to you're the first person i think of that has added that point easy to follow i'm going to add that everything i talk about now gonna northern like now what about things are hard to clean but no one ever praises no one ever celebrates things that are easy to clean irene utilitarian it's and spend a lot of them the ought writer that although thirty two oh you are a baby face

no just math reading your book i did some rough math and that had you pegged at twenty seven oh yeah i dunno y o five seventeen twenty twenty two thirty three okay later why are we gonna lie down and get so you from duluth born and reared border raised in the twin cities most suburbs when wife's from duluth so that's what they're brought me their size and up an early minnesota before moving down to with all me and my old man loved eagerly because before my time mile man was they would do big long canoe trips yep and i still have this i still have his unseemly i want to get it framed i have like his duluth pack yeah yup that says them canoe country outfitters an essential down there like the big lie i had it rebuilt recently i want to get it put in a glass frame so i can hang on my wall or just keep using it i moved to duluth for an

afternoon one time our well when i moved out here's the deal man was worried about it is when i got out of graduate school i intended to take all the things i learned about i studied writing like in the west right and there's this very intense sort of sense of place in the west and and i wanted to take that way of looking at the world and apply it to the great lakes and so since i finished graduate school i left cause i was going to go write a book about the great lakes and my dad had just died so i took his truck and i started doing all my search and i had a girlfriend time and weird i moved 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 you know yeah there's some great stories up there so i thought maybe we'll just rent a place for six

once here and and i'll move in to the kind of the other end of the lakes in the air we're sitting in a bar on looking at we're sitting in a bar looking at apartments cottages for rent and whatnot and my girlfriend got an email that she had began except accepted into this writing fellowship awesome did she had to go to and so oh that is shells and everything catholic when an upheaval yeah an wasn't long there are changed my mind anywhere move back out west but almost move there that's easy amazing i live just kenneth switches these are all good under this programme your story men but it's cold the shit right because i knew these girls that i knew these girls i met down in key west that were telling me that they were students at amd and there are tommy one time they realize this they want a month

without going outside yeah because you can take tunnels everywhere yeah yeah campus is just like super connected and really easy to get lost in cause of you know these buildings weren't originally made for it so it all just like kind of bolted together but yeah you don't need to go outside spend a month your bedroom slippers in class in the cafeteria and stuff like that yep exactly taking walks for exercise what do you do like what's your main thing you do for a living you're a writer so my day job is marketing for a hospital in town there called st luke's or so and i started about a year ago before doing marketing for an outdoor company called frost river who makes traditional canoe packs not like the one you dead head and ass no marketing for a long time in the writing in photography side work which is really vocational exciting for me got a scar you like more the bare guy i do i drafted

worst kind of kind of all my eyes is progress in like a bad spot right it's real high yeah it's right right at the hip joint so it's like drop drop drowned and lift up the boxes and then you can yet so i don't show it polite company no you don't just walk around and walk into bars and b wow yeah you get kicked out that way to tell people about the there are six hundred mile long canoe trillions rate lay that out yeah so long as the trip the trip elbows law he was to seventy ok i'll set since seventeen years old seventeen years old and new bark was some other kids on a six hundred miles long paddle is the it's the pinnacle trip for their camp that we're going through one of the earlier you know what isolation the outlined this camp

so whimsy can't origin its willingness trip base camp at started in i think nineteen twenty two up in northern minnesota north grandma ray it's like literally few miles south of the canadian border right next the boundary waters so they set up with the mission of taking kids out fur transformational experiences in a wilderness setting but not bad gives no no not like not like those mom more oriented towards kids have gotten a trouble or have chemical issues and things like that oh this is this is kids that just wanna have an adventure and see the way places so regularly summer camp but bombed out just a little higher knowledge of it

yeah exactly you know it's not it's now you're residential camper you're gettin period in the cafeteria you're going to do in our tree in catch and 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 and so you get to camp and you get packed out and there you know they kind of act like an out in that sense i am i the interesting things about the camp was that you don't take a car to base camp or to headquarter yeah yeah assets this amazing spot like literally right on the edge of the boundary water is you have to go across the lake to get to it and there is like an old tv channel that you can around the lake to get there but cap itself is just kind of out there so you feel it here i mean you really are in the wilderness even when you're at base camp is it mostly is it like i like blue collar kids are mostly wealthy kids it's

the mixture you know and that super intentional too there's like scholarship programmes for if you can't afford he's alive or scholarship yeah yeah so actually was the recipient of a partial skype scholarship for this longer trip so be like a word camper where you're at camp is like a residential care and you're helping out around camp with like george in whatever and you know having a lot of friends a lot of fun with friends and and kids your age and that's a really cool experience to do but it's it's a wide range of folks that go there but session start with like really short kind of intro i they even have a shorter session now that's like five days or something but at the time the shortest session was eight days in advance regarding this trip like ok the boundary waters for a long time my family but my parents were had heard great things

the kind of sent me on that first trip also there's nothing here in order goeben do a trip yeah i got you so now you spend your summer there no no you aren't you a canoe trip in the moon or a canoe tribune there's also like backpacking trips climbing trips things like that so just amazing experiences and you're with your contemporaries and you're also with guides who are you know really well kristen and what you're doing and we're not old not no i mean there you know their adults but they're not like middle aged your parents adventures they worry are maybe still while they get in there they're both retired so of the adventure the type of adventures change a little bit but they're both in answer policy so my dad was a professor of anthropology at hand and university the whole time was grown up my mom it was an adjunct professor and worked in

administration and stuff and they both work together and they teach study abroad trips every january so we go in tourism ancient sites in or you max yeah yeah i saw climbing up the temples in mexico and i was three with them for that before that they did fieldwork like in guatemala i and other central american companies countries whether certain up with him in the jungle and you gotta check your boots for spiders in your archaeological pits fur snakes and stuff and breaking up machete fights between the workers and whatever so they definitely brought a sense of adventure to bring it up myself and my sister so it wasn't like totally out of the blue that they're like hey you should go on this trip but you know are hugely important decision for them to to send me there cause you know like i said we'd gone camping before but going camping with this like oregon

his group grouping and seeing how you can move in and do all this stuff really efficiently was just kind of a paradigm shift for me cause up in the boundary waters you measure how far you have to carry your gear between lakes and in rods which is like seventeen and a half feet oh really yeah that's the thing yeah yeah so it's like oh how long is that porridge oh it's five rather super short or three hundred and twenty rods which is a mile and an my family it was like oh one hundred and fifty rods that's like impossible did you learn how to think of rods oh yeah yeah you know when i started hanging out in southeast alaska we have a fish actor everybody does everything and fathoms nice first all conversations i would need i'd be running math right but after what arousal years yet i gotta do the opposite now

but soon items is yelling i think not i think in fact my only went about their when there are digging fathoms and some others like me i gotta go on it and go there the direction cause conceptualize right to conceptualizing and fathoms tell me again how many feet a fathom here sixty six honor that's really saying like you can't fathom something from her you know where this is where the measurement the rod comes from i should know it sir this is i don't believe this is where it came from but it's the length of an old minnesota guide canoe mark twain i think it's related surveying though originally no the author mark twain samuel clemens you know his pendant like mark twain as his pen yeah has been given name samuel clemens mark twain as they would steamboat that have dude up front with a rope there are tied in increments

alpha six foot increments johnny that's a good little project for your work on right now listen before on out does not resolve them time and the river what can we do to front with a weight on a rope with knots any in the dude yelling out what not depth in marked a second second not is safe passage good water your report have you like that dude up front begone mark twain mark twain nummies good shit interesting how are you portage rods yazzi region rods and and my perception of what was it like achievable was told different once i went on that first trip with camp and i just i was right after that was a long ass portage in your mind i'll give it to mean rods fathoms miles yards but i really wonder yeah well

and you get us over the standard but long ass portage asking but long i'm a fan i enjoy portages which is you know some some people can understand that but between like one in two miles is like this is good ok i enjoy that you get into the mode and you get to the end need a super stoked to be ready to put your boat and yeah cause i want to bump into this the six hundred mile journey so you do a number of trips over the years yeah in sort of the pinnacle yep the hell week share it is the with howard you guys go six hundred miles or how long should it take to go six hundred this is a forty two day session so a couple days less than that was was below and end kind of the goal was yeah like and three to reign of porridge is because this trip is it's it's it is on a river for six hundred miles right you're bumping from

system the system you like the get on a leg the lake falls into a river you go to the lake paddle at lake that lake's frozen you drag your shit across the ice then you like drag then you portage overdue the somehow or other river system yeah an move that network right in its in europe we need to go wrong rapids everything yeah yes our out was amazing and we we started out the northwest territories on the do want river and made our way into none of it and then eventually got off the deployment and can it did this not exactly height of land but this of traverse into another rivers stem the coon walk and made her way down that and then ended up on the kasane and so is a really unique route that combination of rivers that camp and other people had done but we

we haven't seen another trip that had actually taken this roundness traverse so your kind of felt like breakin trail are you guys gonna architect of your own journey yeah yeah i mean you know the the six of us which includes the guide you know confab about you know what wanted to have the trip be in and discussed couple different options and this one in addition to having that traverse and these different for systems which are very different in terms of the field and also went from the tiger forest which is like scrub trees so what are the largest biome in the world yeah is the tiger yeah and it's just amazing it's kind of everything's a miniature but there's still trees and everything and black spruce poplar esben and and now he's living under a role in like bulgarian russia yeah in canada

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 dunno itself 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 you have to tell people i'm sorry your perception of what would be like to like travel across into the yard three line look at old maps you see on old matt they use you'll see this line here and there the limit of wooded country nice in 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 were discussing this looking over maps and everything in we didn't have that description it was kind of like green zone turned into the whatever you know white zone

i was right across the middle of de lake which is the largest lake and none of it and i just imagine hannah pushing off from shore under buoyant and paddling across the lake in my mind was we couldn't see either shore you know you never do that you never paddle in the middle of a lake where he can't see shores has its really big guy is no intimidating get out like what you like wouldn't do that you wouldn't go in the middle the late because if a storm came up everywhere already a bad situation without legs that big yeah i mean you could we see a sliver of it in my mind's eye i was like we're going to be paddling we won't see sure it's gonna be foggy we're going to push off there's going to be trees were gets the other sites all right i understand yeah so in my mind's eye that's what it was going to be as like you know a switch flipping like trees

trees and 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 little hollows and stuff is this like very very little vegetation that gross of any hide it are we experience that on the dull now you have cross a number that the tree line a number of times and it is like a gradual petering out narrowly convincingly ass dislike you described it is everything to sir slows down those no trees nothing bulgaria was large areas like holy shit is no trees and believe me i realize i ain't right next to like view ass blacks bruce they they look like that like all air is at nine trees but there's a really mean last grass roots use even those about there's really good book about the union

history of alaska and you know when you see we're going to go across the tree line the limit of one country in any sea like some tree this like the from wherever you're perspective given time looks like the last one it's tempting to imagine it s like a pioneer yeah whose sea like blew up their young boy in his books is that what you're tipperary looking at a remnants yet the last one is the last one left is not the first one there you're looking at the last one left in there you're still seeing the effects of the end of the ice age right of that of that line moving its wild and i mean the right hence the ice age up there just so tangible unaware that totally different from any other place i've been here like you know you see stuff and you have to like think about all like that border was dropped by the last ice age but up there there's these things called esquires

which are remnants of old glacial rivers so the sediment would be you know in the ice the bottom of this glacial river and then when the glaciers recede that sentiment drops down and it's the river bottom announced ridge that makes a raise sidewalk flat often flat under port agenda gray for larger rate travelling are deported up it's hard to get on top but then you have your smooth sailing yeah so how many people you got was a hub only people you get with you on the trip there were six of us two three canoes three is any one white guy like well a guide counsellor yep holds that guy so he's in his mid twenties okay the pictures he looks young areola to you do what it looks like this is he looked like there's a guy silesian is made twenty yeah yeah lots of experience he's pretty experience wasn't yeah he on europe while the above we at the end of each trip

camp we get a little retire little bracelet for each other that's kinda to commemorate the trip in your theoretically to know where it now as long as you can kind of as reminder of everything you learned and his forearm was just like in it i noted that unwanted pictures from all his adventures wondering if he had an injury no as i know those are each one of us is a trip that he went on are guided god you near so at what point time this be like the panic trip yeah at one point two and this was kind of ironic is they use around the pinnacle trip yeah to the east but quit doing it because of fears of polar bear threat so we're not ever got hit by a polar bear right now there are some some near misses that you know they paid attention to

really aren't you know polar bears are well for one thing polar bears will stock humans and that's a level of creepy that is new goin for fur canoe adventure and stuff you know that's kind of something you wanna not have as part of your time yeah be worried about a polar bear that's like following you from camp to camp and stuff like that you want well no as i never have and i would like to you and a friend of mine has had some exposure to them talks about just the the creepiness of them following you around yeah i can and i mean it just be hard to sleep and so do they move over to grisly country yeah if water year as round his long trip yet remember how it is forty five forty to forty two days when you're always long trip warrior conversations and worry view what is your awareness about that like all others grizzlies

good like that i like i found life it's like arm i feel you have all the things that you think are a problem yeah you know you're like aware of like these are the problems but they the problems are always something else right oftentimes yeah but you you're blind cited by the actual things right right like you think yellow green roger has real problem but then like you kick his line disease and like why was you know it was not a radar like yours but here you are like he paused probably you're like others like grizzlies and problem right are a thing of concern yeah something to of so i mean we are aware of it before we left hampton or the minnesota you know we did we did training at camp on what you're supposed to do you know sitting around talkin about we had better spray

pepper spray walking through you know how to use that recent israelis hands not a point with an active ingredients now no we did we were using the cannes and kind of through the motions and everything but everything but the plunder press so but time that training look like work what was it here's a thing and here's how to use it yet i mean it wasn't like thirty seconds you know we spent some time on it to the point where when we were dying i felt very after with how to use it but you left the new ten yeah the other should a carried out by their alert yeah yeah yeah on you in order to be able to use it so so you guys i took it seriously but not that seriously

so yeah right we 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 ve been told that it was really really to even see went up there you can see for ever yeah there's no tree is european points a lot and you'll see this everywhere what kind of went into it with like they're there but they're not like prevalent and other away different greater than the coastal once oh yeah just wait like dislike yea disco forever and there's one way off in the distance the advertisers scared shitless apple yap i'm just going tonight i'm not acclimated all the people they re asean like that whatever that is not good actually there is a more conner just a little more on look more rigged out all the time you norman discover cage year sworder yeah yeah

and there you know they dont have like salmon streams were there just picking dinner out and whatever their they're pretty nomadic they they were pretty wide range which i understand is more wide than like a coastal brazil argentina zia extremely low population density right where one things might have one of these better of these areas he might have a hundred square mile home range yeah yeah or bigger navy i mean i've too that if you 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 a bear poppers which are these noise making devices that you shoot with a like a bolt action little pen and then it fires off this thing and it gets just goes boom and it's just a noise deterrent spare me those no that was that was like here's how are you guys should use this like that's that's more something with a guide should use god if that comes up

you know they want to ask about my mother s about now the the films like yes the girls group here we must bring us we miss pronounced the french names we say farms okay so known most pronunciation of green light by the violent films yet or the french from so farms yet you guys go you're too there's a guy's trip voice trip gap there's a girl's trip and are kind of parallel on parallel river system yet recent mass about this when i was a boy if you are out on a law on canoe journey in europe occasionally coming across and encampment of girls away

but there would be like you wouldn't be able to pull them apart for you guys avoid each other yeah specifically for exactly exactly avoidance guys where did you guys really are you're out of all kinds of you guys would like raid all your food reserves like you guys are starving well not starving bad we're we're we're being aware that we needed to be careful with how much food we had and they had certain reserves there there was like there was a need to be there was an exchange like they had like plenty of some stuff you were out of you guys hasn't yeah they didn't had a very efficient equipment yet you guys are slaying lake trout like it's nobody's business exactly do you like eating lakers oh my gosh he talked about how good they are for the lake trout lake trout is my favorite the pictures in the book you've got a couple like one of those things the tanker that's my like

biggest fish of my life is probably going to be the biggest lake trout i ever catch someday i'm going to make a graphite amount of it crumble yeah and i mean they're they're absolutely amazing eating the wondering but i want to return to the how'd you say it again the farms you're the boss but what cool things because i like fish on the cool things is when you let me ass lake yeah an ice breaking out but you can like dragon over the eyes and trying to find leads yeah new top up the lakers are all finning yeah water tat is the way to see it's crazy i mean it's anyone who s boons oh yeah they took spoon i mean they just love spoons and they were really easily so we just tat when i really be we ask you know hey guys one fish for dinner and toss went out and uganda has many faces you want yeah and yet i am and do what with them yet we feel em with me there basically stakes

now you're only where the big one you car right yeah this dish is as law your leg young at photograph yeah i'm not even earlier for it so having this like a lady i mean just then one meal yeah wow their ground kids or grandkids we are burning calories yeah six people and you low on pasta or lampasas or a couple more fish meals so yeah we've pretty much just fry it up though with that but you running of the farms out in the middle of nowhere yup but yeah you got and steer clear of them probably because the camp of the boss man the counselor may she gets steered nor the guide makes a steer clear of it no i mean we just like he hasn't joined forces the 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 there for one thing they're crucial writing and the other thing is

it's it's like its being made it's almost being made an imf in a vacuum like you don't have a bunch it if emperor input points you 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 deal what you're making is something that super special and yellow especial for our group and especially for their group and we didn't want to know and have them have a different because of us or whenever you're part of its mutual respect and so i would you know i want to act like when i tell this anecdote we want to act like i heard but actually heard it from someone that heard but a friend of mine went to keener who those was went to see a lecture by god does is it's ordinarily long canoe trips like what you're talking about and he was somebody you know you spend a weekend you spend it in other words there and

you feel time slowing down and you feel your mind clearing your thoughts saying right you're you're developing a sense of peace right at a rapid rate he said that still happens is still happening at that rate after thirty days yeah yeah clarification line doesnt doesn't stop now that and i can see why you might get like in that zone it might get the you didn't want need outside but you had your six guys right and you didn't need the noise of other individuals 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 thirty days for that affects to start taking place you know under 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 hasn't proof sound effect on your psyche in in 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 been one of the reasons a lot of people go out is just that personal transformation and centering that happens when you guys during the whole trip that you your kind through two kinds water one his leg just use logging right against the wind across lakes yeah just probably incredibly monotonous right or the other is that you in situations that feel like it extremely threatening from water air and canyons feel it

we were working within our within skill set everything but yeah i mean that when you're making decisions yeah an then portages around stuff all the time right which are those two things you prefer did you like just the just the golan or did you like that that that stress of the white water i really like both i think both combined is is really awesome titillating great talk about the impulse issues of having a spray skirt or now to spray skirt which allows pretty interesting yeah so spray skirt is basically like a poncho that latches onto your boat and then comes up to your person and keeps water from come on over the sides are going over the top of the boat and getting into the boat one year now to community person canoe its is connected or how does that work there's a couple different ways i set up there may be just a bow skirt just for the front or there might be like a full one where you know both the bow and

stern person are like cinched in and this up naps all around the gunnels other boat in that's like full protection so we didn't have them on our is just cause it's kind of it was the mental hope that we wouldn't paddle as big a water if we didn't have that and then policy switched not that long after to include them just because they are their health for making sure that that you're as safe as can be out there don't end up getting a bunch of water because if you end up getting some water in your boat starts to affect how it handles pretty significantly so but because we we have them we were we were paddling super conservatively but it's sort of a calculated decision you made i mean you could have had him yeah but it invites could invite you know the decision we like we had the skirts let's do it now but

i think if i went again i would have the skirts and camp use the skirts now like to discuss it sir it it just raises your level of safety a little bit yeah you're still paddling conservatively and you don't want to go in and crazy stuff but it just in may so that small things don't become bigger things theirs pioneering mountain hunter he's dead now but his name is duncan gilchrist and he would delay things that no one had done and he had a similar approach to crampons sure when he was hunting mountain goats he didn't aware and every broad ok but you do not put them on to get somewhere oh sure you all he put them on to get out of some rare houses like view on it right leg it invites a level legged advise that like next hour the next level of sovereignty is that i can make a rule for yourself you know right i don't touch these to get somewhere yeah it's going to like our bumpers you know

you can't cheat in your mind explain to me some of the the river hazards reason anglers strainers you 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 yeah so recyclers basically tumbling water i think some people call them haystacks and not positive and that would want to fact check that ok throw pillow into this pillar so well i get confused about so i i look at it all is like i guess i kinda understand what it is but i don't have the vocabulary that you have for it all yeah a really good resource for that is armed lincoln and his name is like the pioneer of of popular canoeing great book about it but in the boundary waters is from that country stew you're thinking over now it's not stew it's like a big coffee table burke with all kinds of instead

external information panel i get that file i want i'll buy this book right now yeah yeah it's awesome and maybe when he gets a computer can check it out yeah you drive on yeah he's gotten he painted and he did a bunch of documentaries but he's like the father of of modern canoeing and tied down rising it probably pop up for the number do here will be the number two probably this gentleman gone explain some features forming yes on the river there's a bunch of different ways that the water interacts with you know that the rocks and the shoreline indifferent stuff it's in there so there you are typically aiming for downstream these which literally form of e that points downstream that's kind of like the safest way down and then behind the rocks or other things usually there's an eddy where the current is kind of swirling around and it's kind of going upstream calmer water usually and there are these kind of

serious ones called pillows yeah and if me about oh hello no one when i see one but with don't in the hydraulics of it basically the water is pushing up and over something and that something rocker of law or whatever but it's 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 and one or two urban the tailbone ruin or yeah exactly yeah you're going to get hung up on it or whatever depending on the current and but like behind them there there can be one of like a waterfall pretty much there are almost impossible to see from upstream and he gonna watch out for him cause they'll just come up and you like oh shit we gotta do something than theirs recyclers where the one and as that's what drowned wee wee causing sleepers sleepers there you call a pillow sleep okay

are you still talk in the river and by this villain sleeper since the idea what the hell's with them is sort of like very peaceful and i know it's calico blanket what rounds you are cycling is good for there because it does it has that look from above it's hard to pick out you can't sleep or like that yeah gosh are we used to is creeper sleeper ok with water with alcohol to manage rings around creeper wishes what was meant that you didn't enjoy it quickly and all the sun had crept up i didn't no what hit yeah yeah long island ice tease right retrievers yet we could sleepers looks fine oh how bad could it be beach bucketful yeah yeah and one of the other features it's really dangerous as strainer which is basically typically like a branch or a tree or its

straining the water and that creates a lotta hydraulic pressure on the upstream side that can trap stuff including light people are gear boats and stuff and all they're bad to man yeah i had a run in with one of those issue with my wife and her friend we put our canoe in i was like there's a fifty percent chance rog going in the river because it's just but it's like people do wanna when you're coming up on a bad sweeper its i don't want to accept the pain of wood going forward and letting it do whatever is gonna do to your back right to jump over demeanor no like this big limo go on i do said the like this is not going to fall below a lean over in my back will take ranch you know the scraping right but that's it i have to do and i was like whatever we do when we hit this thing we're coming up with like we're hitting it it's like don't lean don't lean just take it yeah but they leaned

going back to the side of the side why just absorbed the blow you know we're gonna go like a loose warning on rail them if the branches are going down into the water that is the whole story i gotta go around it gives a can pull stuff down orally if you get hung up on it the way that the currents going can make your boat want to spin around or or you know flip sideways cause it's pulling at the at the phone bottom of the boat so what are the most lethal features probably the the ones you get hung up on the hum of well if strainer like 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've got your cavern to scramble out of it and you know take care of yourself and your gears of sailing in your boat might be pretty signals we damage door or just stock and require some some rescue techniques are recovery technique

to get it pulled off that wrong did you guys carry equipment for jack and your boats off rocks yeah carried out of ceta ropes and carabiners to set up i think is a three two one legged standard z drag is what we call it now self but yes it was to avoid that when you when you measure all the hydraulic like if you imagine a boat against a rock and then add some you know some mass of water is moving whatever i miles an hour presi again that thing right it's an enormous amount of force its you holding in place yeah yeah the canoes wrapped around the rock like a tin can so even if you get that z set up you know you're doing the three to one year holland on it and the ropes drink the water and then you go people in the middle doing sheer force moving the rope our back and they can be a real struggle to get both recovery they aluminum careers these were royal lacks royal ex yeah rest in peace roy lex

it is done now done the cargo carcinogenic or something i it was kind of like kodachrome there was one spot that made it i think is what i am there's no shit really royal exclusion no more yeah whereas others either couple different materials so they some super tough like composite kind of cover was alive and i think i have opened our old town punjab's got what they are probably roy lacks is like a placid compound yeah that's a plastic it's gonna get this weird foam stuff in the middle of it once you get it pulled off of iraq you set it out in the sun or next to a fire in the heat slow to pop back to schiff really keep your back on the water might have to do a little patching or you know hammer girls and you guys carry gear worthy to fix canoes yeah i remember what the cat was like but we had repair cats for everything stoves canoe people may i was surprised to see you guys would run just those regular woven like stay

warm woven seats you didn't do likewise z creek set out with back supports obvious get learn level it yeah your past your right go yeah i really don't like a back rest in a canoe so like is that not pro programme go back rest i proudly say that i mean you know if you're if you're so do the background you like oh my god never do that you know the exception of like if you're hanging out for a long time if you're still here to sit and inefficient mean by all means your paddling big water stuff where it's the boats gettin tossed around and stuff that back rest is making you kind of an extent the boat in a bad way that you need to have enough we we only in your words in the air a few to sit there at the stiff back in and stuff ends up

tossing year round when gravity is pushing over you guys paddled most of the stuff not sitting in those seats but kneeling you get on your lowers lorries you're centre gravity you can move the canoe with your knees like enough if the bus but there if the boats getting pushed to the left you can pushed to the right and get it straight back out you know a wide array of strokes maybe i know women don't know that they have names what are some of the breakdown quite a few stroke yeah so i mean there's a lot of different ways to move a canoe but the basic ones are for paddle back or 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 and there's the j stroke these drugs and the j stroke basically corrects the turn that

actually happens when you're paddling the boat from the back you're on the right and you're just paddling and it's going to generally push you to the left and then switch sides yeah do when you're doing j stroke do you throw the j on every stroke or the only correct every other i typically correct every up but it's totally a nuanced thing depending on the weather and and 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 and every once in a while there's like a there's like a like is like an inefficiency in it but you know we like throwing drag throwing the least amount to drag that you can best with staying on the same side ill j struck is is just like a little will hit at the end of their at the end of the forward drug it's not like a runaway like boom well that was just slowing down yeah people who are familiar with this imagine that you're you're paddling allowing your palin just how you'd imagine you're paddling where your pack was hitting the water perpendicular

in line the boy it is in the water perpendicular to the canoe yap just following the canoe along where at the end you poor little look on it were you shoot the paddle you like turn the paddle and shoot it slightly outward yap because this work is nodding at laughed and that little hook on the end pops the bow back explain why because it is a mere i understand now why right but i think to a lot of people it's like when i was learning to power canoe yeah i'd be like there's a guy a person in front palling the same kind of power paddling yeah now in the bank paddling why and there on the opposite side while still is maestro more powerful in pushing the canoe to the left if you're piling on the right that's a good physics quest and then i don't know if i can answer the exact physics of it but yeah typically the person the front

is is the motor you think of them as the motor they're pulling the boat along yeah yeah and then in the back and for one the stir in seed is usually a lot closer to the end of the boat so in terms of leverage you know if you were to pull the front of the boat to 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 assure to turn that so boat is a lever your further away from the fulcrum allows right on the bow and he was stroke it might turn about a lot more i suppose so if you're in the bow and you need to move the boat alot you're gonna you're gonna to reach forward forward and out to try to make that happen so that's something you do in my what're you like oh shit here comes iraq in you in the values you're at super

if the goal 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 near your porn on the water back and then you can do a little hut towards the canoe at the end the matches kinda makes that that automatic movement of the boat in the opposite direction that much more profound during the four oh right hand both those letters or backwards as good boy adele cyrillic speaking of prose is the person you are speaking out before bill me send yes buildings sin and the canoeist bibles path of the paddle thank you that's the voice of brain fart steam podcast producer cringe i really haven't said anything yet today as a cheat erroneous cheat

it is the right way star down had a starring role in our christmas special cell phone how many miles we paddle rural life we've done the math thousands probably most of that in the boundary waters and we're in your board scope of twenty ninth day where are the toilet day i had breakfast you know the day off you've taking a day off yep it's a present you're you're like i don't know what do you like four fifths done or three fifths done twenty ninth day before the two day pair yeah most the way horrible math i get up where most away it's probably our third layer the trip we took our firstly everyday twenty days in solar battling for three weeks we're just gonna watch new scheduled seen how you make along the main in china to take a break yeah

do you know how we feel in a reduced totally bushed are we on act do we need to make up time phil saw bigelow break take little break has some breakfast labor day i like to say is is just one meal after the other you know you're just like oh let's have breakfast cause you can't i mean yeah it's kind of like hikers stomach where you're just like burning so many calories you're like i could eat nonstop and just still hungry so you how you get unlike you lose away like you lose away but but your model evident weird thanks yeah where's your legs are shrinking yeah gary we're not moving too much of a leg so and you gotta move along instance in the flats to get anywhere and so it's a yeah you're just getting lean and so you know your your upper body with a paddling trip just gets really efficient and you know your back muscles are are doing awesome because you're

doing thousands palace rogues every day so you know those days arrests are are super important encounter recharging but yeah so this one we were camped on princess mary lake which has this enormous lake and i can't remember how far across it was you know fifteen twenty miles across from shorter sure and we're camped on this island in the middle of it and were a couple of hundred yards up from shore and camped on a flat that's below this super steep ridge behind our campsite and we have breakfast we have lunch and after lunch there s the guy's decide to go up to the top this ridge behind our sight for high point around on the island in the recital as high as a rocky ass rid right here we ve got a crow barrier what's up there it's just kind of empty there's like because i

the part that the creature the wines of being up there is up therefore reason is grazing and berries i didn't see any berries and i know exactly what doing up there if it was just kind of roaming looking for berries you know but yeah it's it's even more stark landscape than the camp site that we had what use is a lot of bear rock of their yeah barrack it's kind of you know the summit in europe but it's a big ass island right enough water like how big is the island i think it's five miles and end what does it beer do another i don't know that's it that's one of the mystery and mosques in ireland we have freshwater lay its failure yeah imagine you know when it's iced over a lot of a year so it's easy for things get back and forth but i imagine they aren't getting the shore to bear he doesn't give a shit he'll swim but the most casual slim too but right yeah i was thinking about yeah just the crossing on the ice without even thinking about it yeah

when guys are little like bears i get being afraid of afraid of mosques yeah they really meda moscow there yet respect them i mean there's there ornery and powerful animals they can fight off a grisly attack they ve got this helmet of horror and that's just like this bone plate at the top of their head and then the horns curl around in these kind of viking style helmets and they'll mess you up but one i just ran what does it take to set them off i was just going to ask you i mean if you're you know getting too close for comfort pretty much you know if you're if you get too close to them they're like hey get out of my business sherman and then you'd probably want to i mean you just keep your distance but like the other than they show in your camp yeah sometimes it's not up to you it is kind of like armada come out of doors which is what happened for i know my who in hollerin in pain clang and

they're just going to come and graze and you can't i guess i mean that was the only time that that they were like just didn't care about us they just kept coming later later that day on that labour day but why is there like they would take note of us and like stare ass down and say hey go go go your business go the other way or they look at us and in turn away on their own but think there's a lot of thinking that's going on necessarily him ask the scanner really slow plotting in an grazing in there you know they're just straight out of the ice age i think they ve changed very buffalo like yeah if you think about it and i think that you should probably treat them like you treat buffalo yeah yeah exactly you know you shouldn't go up and feed them when you're in the parks it is working on top of and plenty of videos on what happens when you do that self lay over day the whole shitload of food everybody like let's go up to the top of the ridge yup and you say i'm going to have a nap yeah

entire number of tuckered i'm going to take a nap you guys do your thing i'm going to hang out here so i retreat to the tent and curl up in my sleeping bag and they got to the top there imagine how far a how yards up as the ridge it's about a hundred feet of like steep climb pretty much harvey elevation gain yeah why the roughly like a hundred yards a yard soda venus deep so that it does like hollows had to climb up there about tat that's all you got a kind of scramble back and forth so clearly yeah nice i mean it's probably like forty five degrees slope and steeper and places but yeah gotta like triggers anyway yeah and it's gonna chassis in others like scry you ground term so you know they've heard that term but i don't use that term you know what i mean josie monogamy broken up on save rock like crumble eager outline a term right yeah like scream

being a variety you dont want to climb yo i think it was me to that word is dirt they climber but the bars so nice yeah but he uses it like just you know like just like that he'll talk about what about picking our way up through something he would sit he'll say that word nebulae was that he goes oh just as all it's not good there's no integrity yeah rotten vietnamese our concert people chose the hague game so you climb up there you know they all time on up there you go sleeping snoozing nuclear power i didn't know how long and recently i was talking to make one of the other guys on the trip you friends always do so i don't get it top with all them just because you know life takes it places but yeah i keep in touch with with most of em so yeah good good guys screw it up i didn't

i do yeah i changed james significantly at that point but they are there and and mike said yeah three hours there appear three ourselves napkin for three hours darling i'll take pictures taking pictures hanging out reading books and he didn't notice the grizzly know i mean that's what's great that's that's one of the things that totally crazy read the book of my home and i'll get all five guys are up there moseyed around and no one takes know of an island right that's one of the that's just five miles long yeah but that's one of the things that super just weird right i mean five guys there ok there now focused on one thing it's not like they're up therefore lay in fish and paying no attention to its around them when the fence joy yeah i know that the funds that we know we said by to them that morning they start buying

and went on their way and we said see sir we're not going to see you for the rest cause you're gonna be a full day ahead of us so but the guys on the top of this ridge for three hours eyes point around there's no trees anywhere that you can see probably see thirty fifty miles in every direction a dome of rock yeah yeah can you see down to the water s edge no trees to now is not the direction towards camp not in direction towards where can't but in all you see you like but you can see towards away from us you could see towards where the bare would have been coming from cancer

one spot sort of stuff vanishes man is down and some little crevice or cry or behind a boulder or whatever there is a lot of debris up there in terms of it which is interesting cause you wake up and grab your can't we just make a point of it is like we've walked around the mountains for ten days at a time looking for them and i can't find them so great so i mean you know that but you know that kind of underlines the point of like why didn't we expect i see one up there because people were there a few minutes before i showed up there because you wake up from your nap and you grab a little pelican case the pelican case plays into this pelican cases your camera gear yep yeah go up in catch them on the way down yeah so i wake up like oh man i gotta get to this ridge i overslept because apparently you gotta

i had some one to me and i know it but got up grab my pelican case which had my camera is sensibly have like slap too long and now you're schedules macedonia the sense of urgency like i'd i need to get up there and micro saying that he can have the same thing about coming down there we should leave which is weird six cents or something yeah so i get my staff i'd start club the ridge dan our guide as the he's the one when coming down i met him half way and talked about what was up there and he's like this the next nutshell and you know it's just gorgeous like explained to a shirt take a look at gives us a stack of rocks left by in this case in your native peoples used as like a play marker or navigational aid or to commemorate something some of them are used like for hunting

so they would set up almost like us nor can i imagine i guess fish the driver and our fish trap in in rose to a narrower points they'd like dr caribou herds towards that understanding the job seeing some of those and you got your a lot like all mysterious rock structures already out your trip now is amazing constant reminder that we weren't first people there by any means so this was just a soul a soul and check that was up there so we're cherries equitable but it was me eyes point around some areas this kind of marking that is a special spot so i with dan and then continued the ridge may my way to the top where it flat out to these rolling rocky granite domes the gradual and whatever and this was walking up away from can't towards that annex shook and why

in up one side of one of those domes and i didn't know it but a six hundred pound baron grizzly bear was walking up the others that dome and we're walking straight towards each other and you 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 in my head snaps up and i'm just like there's something here and i think it's a musk oxen oh shit this is a mosque oxen and this is thirty feet away from me so it's just the way too close to bees to any animal that you gotta be careful of ends as is it kept walking because it hadn't noticed me because i was above it sideline but as soon as it came a little further notice me too and that's when i realized that it wasn't a mosque oxen but it was a bare and his dislike worst case scenario oh shit

why do you why do you feel that you know how much the bare wade i made that i based on looking at bears in captivity since then the gods yes i went to look at things with known waits yeah so part of my self prescribed getting or that this whole situation was like to confront that fear and for me that was going in you know seeing grizzly bears in person so that was a challenge but seeing those bears in in zoos i was like okay well that looks a lot like my bear so it's totally toy investment based on that and when it sees you doesn't immediately be like a mall that dude no the baron i really have the same reaction which is what the hell am i looking at and so we just stopped and like canada stepped back and an appraisal duration for a moment and at times i flash

to that training that we had a minnow jane i i told myself not to run because that's the one thing that you really can't do is run and i pictured the burmese which we discussed was in the tent unfortunately was no my person which means it's totally useless but i imagine taking it out of its holster taking off the safety cap aiming at firing it and would have would have been able to do that if i'd had it with me you feel pretty government oh yeah thirty standstill stared area yeah i mean it was revealed his eyeballs yeah time was moving fast but you know is like he would have fired immediately or you would you waited for the first charge that's a good question i would have i would awaited for it to run away before firing it run away

hopefully a run towards you know run it well sorry yeah let me correct myself i would have been ready to fire and then decided whether to wire based and if it ran away or ran towards me with you and what are you supposed to do are you supposed to kind of do the first aggressive like worn off if there is enough distance or you can i wouldn't you mean for me where the bare stared at your hands up look big don't run hey hey light but not to be trifled with any spray oh well well now you know when i felt like if i mean you know but as this guy you don't have a very heavy bear bears at thirty be out probably hit it right away for i mean what do you actually gotten to several seconds out blast out suitable ass i like to think up one

they they got member your road and we're talkin one time he said but he has a plan to get points in the fact that changes the game of that guy's eyes of double what i would do yeah yeah yeah yeah the wherewithal to smack one with the dragonball yeah it was charging him that the details i think i would have a heart attack before you have one if the dragon pull the target on your back as severe as the battles you guys are both like holy shit that's scary yup and you start doing eric yellin not not exactly i ever so our training basically is grizzly bears get small make yourself non threatening blackberries make yourself like assert your dominance is the training that we have had for our area so it sounds like that differs a little bit from what you ve been told

none of that we will effectively run off like we ve we run off a lot of bears that were in that like curious common toward you sharing by where haywire arms up if is most people get calls to gather does look like you're not coming at it but i'm here you're like not a caribou calf yeah interesting insulted again he always got a player til 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 eli zilch you're sure i'd like it does not worse than of what i regard as aren't very personally bear blowhard so please do not think i'm laying in order and in what you did is what you did yeah and you sit here right now so so far

our training like i said with grizzlies is basically like to convey that you're not a threat and that is backing way slowly avoiding eye contact talking to the bare kind of to your point making it making and understand that you're not that's usual thing it's gonna run into and so in my brain i've got all these different steps kind running through my mind on what i'm supposed to do and again this really one neuron i don't wanna be anywhere near it but i can't do that so i just start back in a way slowly arms the down at my side haber wolbert it's ok bare and my voice is shaking and the bear is thinking about it he's thinking about he's looking at me it doesn't take very long at all 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 there

and i was near episode with amber it sounds like she kind of similar way that the bearers acting before it decided to charge 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 in ten feet and i just keep back an upswing bears moving sixty moving ten feet yeah and having yeah bluff charges yeah and i'm reading it and figuring out cause it at first you even with those left our does it was still it still felt like it was deciding when it was gonna jirga feeling has generally yeah right now 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 those stationary and sharp left charges to full speed charge in it

at me where's can run you know mid thirty mile in our range and i'd increased our thirty foot distance by five feet and keep back keep pace with you more than he's getting cold ok so i'm in charge the brain and closer closer closer yeah i mean this is happening really fast and like a clumsy gaudy before you realize you gonna get you probably like within twenty feet about fifteen year where he's like like i like i can see his decision shift to ok now i'm gonna now i'm going come at this thing and you i feared from haber well there you know at this point obscenity is help helping and very likely like landscape like quite likely the first person that does either he's ever had any kind of close and counter with right yeah he's too to figure out what he's supposed to do

i dunno how old this bear was or people have asked you know if 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 we're colors really close real blonde lighter and a little bit darker than blonde yeah hair yeah now like shaggy but like i don't know how long it will be the kind of middle middle like that they blown the wind calibre her a little bit like the tipps of be blown in the wind peak something of a hurry you know it's not like hang enough it's gonna stick an outcast baby some point fifteen theses open in his head shift yeah and then he is coming to me for speed and impelled him that that didn't happen yet i always like oh shit this is gonna be this is going to

and poorly and as it gets within that range like i can feel the ground shaking under my feet from its pause does that gallops just like but don't put but cumbersome and it's it's growlin at me in do you know like do the noise at how loud it's doing the noise i think i can i'll do annoys you tell me if a louder laws are in that loud or net did have the right sound more projecting sounds like a do it nor is the euro i remember a noise apples let me raise gonorrhea grunting guttural roar languor yeah i mean in pulses it wasn't just like nonstop minos like kind of ass good ass good a came to me

kay so sound is lakes also here is governed gallop and the grounds of shaken yeah yeah money you're like i'm dead now i'm dead now and at this point my car just decisions are kind of done now my brain is doing everything on its own when it was five or ten feet for me i had that pelican case with neo an icon dslr with couple lenses and whatever else i needed a run the run the camera for the whole trip so it's like fifteen pounds and it's the only time i throw my camera generally there don't like you're lying to regulate or throw it and i was a really bad throw at the time so juno couldn't get the bright side of barn but i did my camera dragged us is now the same projectile i'm a lot better through another but i won't back

and through an underhand do i guess i just you know on instinct and it flies towards as galloping bare and hid it square in the nose air with enough forrester turnus had all the way to the side so bushes this bears had to decide it grants grunts like like i just punched really and their pelican this goes flying over its shoulder tumbling off behind it the bears momentum keeps going at the same pace you son of a bitch i'm sure you do like that but he couldn't see me for a couple steps and like five to ten feet i mean that's third turn head i mean he didn't want to turn his head if you take the view that dude punch net kangaroo like his fair video head on a kangaroo like slow my turn out like a person didn't punched oh yeah then there had a plan and

i got punched in the face charges yeah it didn't feel like that which i've heard is how it feels but yeah i mean i dunno if he could have stopped at the destabilize like the law is run noise renders cap common is gallop kept going we can see where i was and he couldn't like you know around house me at them link if they didn't know what to hit but i jumped out way again on instinct and dodged like bullfighting style is this bears running pass me and he does mrs you it just mrs me died i mean i just jump out away radical second like his momentum carried and pass me and then he always had swung around by this point and his flight in trying to get at me and as soon as he passes me he stops and change changes direction so fast like after than i would have ever imagine that an animal like that could move their incredibly powerful

turns around it comes out me again and i do the same move rather than throwing them the case is his business and i well its mouth open yeah i mean it is trying to grab your well it was like half open like at the ready rail and then as it would come at me it would use its paws and use it's jaws to try to get me so it came at me again and i jumped out of the way and it missed me again clean miss i dunno that one was clean it that's a no teeth some claws start to hit me at that i guess these passes but that's a letter like blew me away and reading it in the description is like a it's like a very lengthy like detailed description of yeah the fact that you could you how'd you get a couple times is crazy ahead you turn around and come back i yeah yeah

i only kind of makes it worse i don't i mean i you know how long am i gonna be able to do this as well right 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 i'm going to be reacting at this point you're not making the right decision yeah exactly i'm wearing charcoal i've got sandals on which are like really nice for being nimble but you know my feet are all exposed and everything just not prepared for this did the thought of playing dead and like curling up into a ball on protecting vitals like the back of the neck and and your your court that ever come to your head its didn't i mean as part of what you're supposed to do like make contact with you you know played add protect year like way under on your stomach and put your legs out and put your fingers interlaced behind her neck to protect you spy and all that stuff which maybe it's you know he had a plan

i get punched in the face sort of a scenario but it it felt like if i did that then it was just going to do some real damage which i mean yeah no but you do your punch in the face i do given in the face so i dodge it a couple more times where i was able to court successfully dodge it meaning that it didn't bite me but didn't really know or maybe you're getting like scratched oh i i know at this point that i'm getting scratched with his claw he's hitting me with his claws down my armed on my back i can feel it and it feels like i'm just getting laid open like as soon as it hits me but you know you're a airlines wine and that the red eye red line and you just move in super fast and there is growing fast and every time we got closer and closer every time a dodged it and

next time it its head is now close enough where it can dislike turn in and bite my leg and it it goes to bite my leg and against super fast and just like we're all spinning around other and i pull my leg out of the way at the last second than just snapshot right next my leg and that same moment a reaches up with its power and swaying across the face and just smash it as bam yeah i understand you guys like is hard as you could just imagine being hit yeah with flat pad yeah yeah i saw the pad when it was a couple inches from my face is like millisecond wherever hands like oh no and it was i i compare to like a board wrapped in love it's just on a hydraulic arm is just swinging and when it hits my head it just doesn't react at all it's like swatting a bug out of the out of the 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 that's when i truly realized like there was nothing physically that i could do to fight this barrier just so much more are gonna razzle and yeah yeah no fisticuffs and ah 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 mid air and then that same pa cup around the heaven and threw me down the ground now my tailbone and then again we can that same motion i'm down on the ground and its head is now right at my right at my thigh and people like saw the adrenaline rush take care the pain and it didn't i felt its teeth going both my leg so he doesn't open mouth all the way around your leg up top my pie latches right below the pelvis searing pain now

large and decent work like this part of the story is where were the playing dead thing gets really interesting yeah yeah you don't play dead but here he is he's like clearly coming to get you yeah he's got a lot energy and getting you yeah he's hit you scratch you up grab your leg i've been scream don't you know last couple passes yelling known help and then all of a sudden you blackout these are vague response it bites me as you said a switch and i'm out and it is black palestine you think goes biology blackout ngos long but i was just so sure i was about to die and so sounds like this really a real sensation to have a switch saved you oh

i mean is it s america's so but i believe the report presented by the minute now was the one he bit you these countries by the scheme of your leg yeah right where the leg joins the the him the pelvis right below them the l rain their whole junction grow more lottery the growing you go the drawing yeah you think like that's a fatal by or you that clear i mean to me it was like this is the end i wasn't like you know got all this all israel crucial material there that that can be the end it was just like i am about to die because this will not be the only injury raspberries they do much more to me and you i'm not gonna die once i'm lay on the ground and he bears out pass out and i play dead incredibly effective

initially we call our plane possum yeah yeah exactly you know it's aptly named because i don't know this stuff hearken to freeze wring our colleagues and longer and play a part ms not intentional yeah they're not like a play possum village get overwhelmed and yeah are you a state like it's not like it's not voluntary sure he goes into a state nasa very simple yeah they become overcome and is going to stay here isn't like that when when animals are attacked by a predator and then go limp it's your necessarily lead you just go in and evolutionary defence mechanism so there how long did you passed out for you estimation my estimation is not long at all my time time away from camp was really short ah cigarette yeah now saw

maybe not minutes yeah right could have unless the minutes minutes and what position do you wake up and feel position faced like a hundred eighty degrees from how i feel opposition based like some kind of yoga thing earlier on your side but your audience is turn childbirth child you down and i mean like in my mind well disoriented why i came to you but it was just like gazed down his rising busy you can chapters everybody is on its knees oh really does why you won't go that transparency pose but in the air strange position to wake up and now like they're gonna boy that's like an awake but i will i thought you meant that you some hours philip is this like you're sleeping on your side in the feed opposition but your face was cock down into the tundra

as far as i can tell this issue is that like curled in a bald faced our knees and needs and elbows and face down ground in the open your eyes and what do you see the world's kind of spinning barrister and an ac the horizon and then i see that the bear is still there but it's running away at a trot and it's checking me out as it goes and at this i agree and cautious on why would he couldn t when he had you like he had dead the rights yup let the feast begin one at that that's the key difference between like a predaceous encounter a defensive encounter don't that's what gives such credence unlike the planned dead thing is that some bitch goes through all that and it really europe someone tells you something like don't blame the later you i don't know what he really did as i write he was like i m sorry

i found you threatening i had the pleasure you start being threatening alive and i laughed at me i like my bad you seemed threatening that's all this was exactly and that and that kind of lines up with how it acted throughout the encountered to its like what am i doing with your nice man what do i do yeah and also quite quiet reside there that merit drama gentlemen i gotta go i gotta put some ice snout from that pelican gave and as so do you like you don't know i you could come back get you oh yeah i was actually terrified that was about to happen so i played dead consciously at point totally averted my eyes i get to see him yeah way for him to go completely like i said is watching me the whole time and our feel a nome what understanding of your injuries at this point you like so out of it my feelings my feeling slash understanding is i dont care because i was well you felt very alive

i was so sure i was about to die and then it was like getting a second chance why don't euphoria for it was yeah i was just totally totally euphoric like so excited that i was here things again and then when i saw that berrigan it was like back to dread oh shit it's still here like what's it going to do now scientist was in on my mission at that point was do everything that i could turn make it not think that i was back in the fight mega thing that its job really was done and that it was able to leave but i was absolutely terrified that to me like you know what it needs a little bit more and around her yet ever go back take that they need it yeah yeah which you know sometimes happens we do about it about bears in general is on its eaten all men have to assume its killed needing mosques calves scavenge coastguards card kills needs

the cariboo calves scavengers carcasses eats marmots what our delegates hands on right and here is garlic a hundred fifty pounds still warm protein the hasn't showered in months yeah like what is their comprehension like little two days later we got back up their name you know me like what comprehension like what's food not food is i killed this big thing yeah it's made out of me or continue my wanderings too for little ground squirrels and lemmings any heads the fairies and whatever else comes around yelling that's not food right well i mean that's that's what's it like this our but what is in their head will nuts that's why are you not food that's the difference right between a healthy baronet and a bare that's not getting enough food or that sickly you know it's it looked good like

this bear did not look scrawny he knows well built use smell right and in small right yeah i'm not what it normally perceives as food yeah i don't look that area is that some curious what makes what that decision processes like i have a feeling it relates a lot too you know what happened before the situation you know is it is it is everything gone well enough for this bear or is it in dire straits zeal is it going to use this opportunity to have a meal or is it just gonna get awake is it wasn't looking for me only i like the sunday about the scenario was alarming enough to it now unusual enough right it it just one in in a like eating mood it was in a save myself re protect myself and get outta 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 now that's easy scares you are exactly so turns and goes in it does over the ridge and i can't remember like you thought to grab your camera if for some reason i forgot i have i had things i brought up with me i gotta bring my things back that says a lot about you that you taught you get your camera very practical that situation any haul ass yeah than i ass an unjust checking my six the whole time turned to make sure that it's coming back and then you realize your feet you're bleeding feeder bleeding i didn't realize then tat was done coming down the river to camp but i knew that my leg was screwed up because it does it hurt quite a bit and i checked it and thought it was covered in blood is discovered bear saliva turn tail and started going back to camp because i was like i need to get back there before my adrenaline rush wears off cause i knew it was significantly injured yeah i just didn't know what those injuries were and

you know if i had a clock taking or whatever easy to come back and kill you right yeah i definitely fella that thing to worry i need to get back to the guys back to the bare poppers back to the bare sprain everything that now the support that i had back there so described the wound like you get down and they strip you up the kind of but up to me you're screaming like wholly hell yeah yeah and so they all are starting to get you know all this stuff and and they come up to get me in and help carry me down the last little bit cause by the time i got to the bottom i couldn't move my leg anymore and and scrapes and bruises all over and but in wound was right at the top there are one of the canines went into full depth of the tooth and a puncture wounds right at the that joint between my leg and my hip girdle quarter inch from my femoral artery you if you hit that you'd been that's it you

would have been no way you can as we as you explain in the book he's mentally complicated case there's no like immediate source of help right his help yeah and immediate even if there had been an immediate source of help like ours yeah and and a femoral bleed is minutes three ish minutes you know good a good illustration that is blackhawk down when he you know they're trying to it puts him he missed out on the hill on the femoral bleed from that it's just like spurting and you bleed out really fast 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 and wasn't a puncture when it's just a really bad compression when with some surface injuries and 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 the whole my whole leg had been in it's mouth but it was really

i just the main puncture was the source of bleeding which was super lucky because we are able to control it pretty well but were like honestly like what have the tips of your toes do you not have any idea i i don't like it i ring sandals and the tipps of my left big toe and the adjacent tells her dislike sliced clean off like a vulcan this is where my body ronnie hate sandals he's gonna love this diseases like because work is a volcano yeah or you get attacked by a grizzly oh no it's going to be like this is going to back them all you want to be nimble in that situation we we often have a debate about whether sandals are okay or not because how you can defend your family and we got a great email from a guy who want to be a microburst just like fell to two hundred trees on his property and all this crazy damage his house and he was out in his sandals when it happened yet and he did everything as he should do and only later or after this whole thing played out someone's that wears your shoes anyway

has he done it all barefoot in his day it does matter when it really matters doesn't matter up exactly he had no idea yeah he done all this like crazy shit yeah barefoot never come if you don't think it matters you know what you got on your feet right do what you need to anywhere it could play in those 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 if you play into that you should have started i'm guessing especially if you're on a rocky hillside rocks can be sharp yeah you're gettin tossed around you're jumping left and right you were easily could have you mean all right now to go outside take your shoes often kick iraq and pray and probably you know replicate same re routing haven't what's your theory

we passed out he very delicately not just nipped often anderson allows and then he tasted madly anatomy yeah yeah i'm gonna run out here without a valid theory he should have looked around next to your pelican case your toe tips are probably there yeah now a probably eightam at this point the bottom of the hill they stripy down are you now how how with that are you at this point i'm super with it are you like i will live well i was like i'm pretty sure me to live but i mean ask me i did cause he knows better than me that michael stan and i think that's you know a quote in the in the book and it's like yeah you're you're gonna live like okay good i was pretty sure but it's needed check

as in all you still gotta be shaken oh yeah i mean i'm i'm just terrified and coming down off of the crazy adrenaline rush i am coming offer that you're almost pass out again and but you know one of the important things when you're seeing 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 are 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 yup these are the thing these are the things that that are going on right now so did hearing the attack did you lose sense of time or does it seem like things played in the way they should have played so when he review it asked him it's too long went to faster that feel normal to you

feels normal with the exception of the lapse in consciousness like that there is no actual sense of time it's kind of like when you go to sleep you know he 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 i 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 and it was either helping me just make conscious decisions so quickly or making decisions for me based on whatever it that was passed after we had a run in with a bear it wasn't like you don't hurt the good

inspire me to real of it about how time passes during like near death experience mole nazarite extremely high stress moments in these different responses which is arm you can become fixated on a detail yeah and miss alot tunnel vision or you can become aware of general pandemonium and not have details the lapses in how time works is later like legs you your sensitive went faster i saw my life flash before my eyes some people think it's something that good laid over in memory and they probably didn't experience it that way you can't when you go to remember it everything compresses or not because of all the things that you when your fixated on a detail or living like a detail this environment meaning when father roof and land

the ground and you recollect what the fall like there's probably not what the fall was like percolating yeah gets confused and try to explain the event right because the and play out like took away her sense of self awareness like you your mental system when all the window the you calibrate your experiences and understand the passage of time like you were in a situ and it made no sense to you and so on the things you normally do to sort of like keep here equilibrium so to speak in life are are shed understand it when the train like like people the new training at first responders and things is if you magic onto a horrible has been an explosion and you come the explosion there's a severed arm but there's still catastrophe playing around you getting people to be like there's a severed arm but

still be aware of the fact that there's a building that's going to fall right or there's a person that that came from yeah and not that you come in any only see that or that you come in and you're just overwhelmed by the immensity all the things that make no sense to you and you see nothing right like in i think that like what kind of person you are there i remember as a now because i feel like the different people in our group we had an experience like this if people are group revealed to be different versions sure yeah i'm the shitty version how's detail a detail one data one detail one like one crystalline detail is what i have in my head and i can't fill the experience

and because all i have my head is one thing that was probably right it probably like white flash but my mind that draw down for an eternity yeah right and so i looked back and i can't make sense of the time i can't understand it people's experiences i just have this like thing it's so annoying yeah there are major things going on around me but i was completely unaware of the bank in a sense but he had that to everybody i don't know what a wreck alas what anybody else did in those to sack yeah he became everybody became so you and focus together or one single focused mainly on new their own experience but other people of chronology had lisa per nor chronology right i don't even have personal chronology to meals a thing he was an image and the image start in the imaginative was over but like all now this happened this happened this happen this happened i have no idea what you are doing but allows doing but i lost at all

like in reading about your thing like you you have what we did you developed recollection like a pre like this haven't i haven't this happened this happen and delivered a pretty possible where yeah and that was i mean there's so much of it this incredibly vivid in my memory and then there's a lot of it that i had to dig super deep for the recall and i was one of the real challenges in writing it was was going back to that spot in my mind and jests pulling memories out of the deep storage that some of them were were hidden in and that's what i was going to ask about because the the way that you write it so detailed i'm that you know from being in the moment with a memory too and i was going to ask i know that you kept a journal on this but you know his recall different from

and we can't really know from her from the exact moment that your experiencing you know how the wind feels against your skin or the smell of something that you recall and then and then article eighteen kind of the play by play in such great detail i you know yeah that i mean that was one of the i is the challenge with writing memoirs actually and that journal was incredibly valuable for me i join nino throughout the trip so i had a very accurate log of every single meal we ate yeah and the more that sauce herbs in there and then you also have people there too yeah so valuable i don't wanna i don't wanna like we've got a couple more questions for you sure but first i want to just explain one thing how many miles i read this point ninety miles you from the nearest piece of aircraft

we were we have like over a hundred miles of paddling left and then it's lakes i think it was it was like sixty five ish miles from the nearest aircraft but there wasn't an aircraft available there so it was like one the hundreds of miles you helicopter yeah i mean wherever the nearest one from that would have been at that point i s pose which hundreds maybe thousands one of the other settlements down hudson bay which i may when the next one might have had aircraft yeah a brain disorders i don't want arm with a lot of ground i want to know i like i want to leave the chronology be that here you are right you ve been mauled yeah what next and the things that play out yeah after this

we'll leave but what i want to know if my last question how do you perceive grizzly bears now does it really bother you the idea that somewhat hunt de grizzly bear because of this happening like hunt this specific liberal the barrel do you find that you like would be like generally i'm uneasy with people hanukkah's its contentious think today you be like iris i so much or do you feel they're 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 you like what's your forget that part of it while the people's your home and i guess you are with us like hard view not that bear but how do you view baroness now yeah is it sacred i have a tremendous respect for sacred i mean would probably put my bare on that spectrum and you know for me personally i don't i don't think i could

to bear myself and you said you didn't want them to kill their bare right that's a real common thing i follow people yeah not carnations accounted lobby with big malta bird and kill it in a moment yeah but later azure i mean in the moment i would have defended myself is like a sensible forget there's a sense of forgiveness this seems a set of people yeah about a particular animal i mean you bear that mauled amber that we have yeah a bird dead no no i think i i listen to that i happened to listen to that episode where you guys discuss that and she didn't want it to be killed but yeah that yeah and i mean once that's the that's the real challenge with bears as you know once they start having these human encounters like it can it can just have such a detrimental effect on those bears and led to more more problems and and eventually the bare having to be destroyed which is too bad at this one vanished into the landscape mindless vanished marijuana lurked in there

for it and arena see how it responded to people basically determine if it was going to be a problem bare and then take i like the strategy explaining for that person go up to it bob here we'll see how it air from bob goes up quick with the yeah bob was quick with the with a firearm but i i think gun on that explanation link really that actually what yes do maybe it's very odd way to do it but you know at the same time so 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 it's thing it could have done a lot more to me i mean you know to er the points it could have decided that i was a meal or could of vietnam bitten

it's out of me or or maimed me for life or or killed me straight up but it didn't and i'm incredibly appreciative of it for that and ultimately was just a bear being a and and bear things in its own habitat so they didn't do anything wrong so appreciated now you're gonna follow ups nea i mean you touch on a little bit but tell me how like how do you think it affected everybody else on the trip mean dans like a major player right because he saw and he really has to take over at this point as the trip leader gear for by that are your age like are they like holy shit now i can't sleep because we know there is a bare right near us in there could be more of these down the middle waterway that we might come up on some morning they change their eggs

as for the remainder of the trip yeah i mean it's a dramatically changes the trap right i mean the focus is different sense of vulnerability is totally different and in their responsibilities are are pretty different too so i mean all of those guys had a lot of extra pressure on them to do that and they handle that well you know they rose the occasion in and help help get to where we needed to get in 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 the point yeah cause it's pretty an hour imagine at the time that day even though they rose to the occasion maybe they did or did not like is the moment and just say this is how it is you know it's it's hard to do that sometimes especially as a seventeen year old but i'm guessing now looking back on it yeah

i'm not saying there haven't you got bit by a bear but right like that's the kind of experience that like really can build a person i mean it's incredibly transformative here for me and for those guys i mean you know just just being a support person to a situation like that is and 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 and you're not the victim but you're there making a difference in this situation it's just like incredibly unique in and very elemental and that's very transformative right again our question are you going you go attacked by whether their idols no if i'd say i was glad i got attack on our year now glad go tag weber because the book yeah i would try to remove the book cause i wrote a book yeah remove the book i mean i would it it i'd be a different person if i

and then so in a lot of ways i feel like it was grounding in helped me to kind of appreciate everything in life just that much more it's hard to say like yeah enjoy getting old labour no i mean where a product of experiences right you know what i back into that trap again absolutely would i take precautions to change how that situation would have gone yes gosh and so on but i mean it's an experience that has been incredibly important to me and directional my life so it's hard to think about that not being there grimwig ma am i'm curious about the trauma that all that there is there is a law there so we can make that shorten rapid

but i'm curious about that and if and if you've kind of been if you define yourself as an are kind of defined by others just like the bear attack guy wrote like and if that has colored everything else afterward even though that was a singular and unique experience right and it was super super short experience and yeah i mean that trauma took a little while to kind of categorize in my brain and kind of put put where it needed to go and while i was still out in the woods you know it was just like bears everywhere not literally but perceiving them everywhere and then you're talkin you're about one of my steps was the kind of get myself backing to situations that would help me overcome barriers that i was now experiencing going to zoos and actually seeing wives grizzly bears

was one of them getting back out into the woods in in a way that i had enough support around me that i could do that an end go through that evolution of of fear to kind of having control the situation everything my family and friends are really important for that and that took several years of kind easing back into it and i'd look like rambo for the first couple years going back to them it is like fighting needed a tactical vest and a machete yeah racing club club mace i yeah right yeah like a spiked mace yeah well 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 and get back up on the horse and and you know being comfortable with the fact that i might be uneasy or my experience might be different at this point but i you know managing my risks appropriately and then getting back out there you know when i was seventeen i went i started my senior of high school three weeks after i was attacked real yeah you you're right you senior paper about areas this summer what am i saying what i met the exactly so while i feel i mean sounds crazy an intense and i can't even comprehended because you will you like it thanks a lot i love it love it though like how you enjoy your cameras will i it's a learning experience i think it's going well though i think we're going to make this work nice yeah over time others feel good eyes had some more you know bearing and canoe questions but go ahead

those pills filming well i'll like start releasing highly videos one that's drew near the 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 excited excited let's feel the podcasts engineered go ahead y'all we're going to have to really like garcia ourselves up and the car knows that america changed everything and start you know what larry king always said as long as the suspenders suspenders leaning forward your elbows on the table or somebody can sit there for hours like that eating my why lying here classification mean and finish your legs why forty some miles re from where the rest the current not taken out at the point where got a where you got two hundred plus but when i got back dia closer like trying to leave those details as like what i wanna do is holding damn book why give to head right to the very very end

guys i gotta you pursue yolanda questioning necessary and whatever you say you had to you had to bring a guy a guy with you when you when you pulled out yup and i know for life people like when you're on a big trip like that you set out to do there's a there's a beginning and end if you don't finish it's like nos acha yeah well as a non adger you guys are going to have to go back and go do the whole six hundred miles again and finish up yeah summit fever right here i want to go back unfortunately the same trip exactly but there is i know 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 so that's kind of part of the whole vibe of like coming

terms with and with this and really with any long expedition like that you get back in it's like you have to re condition yourself to the world it's a hard transition so yeah someday i'll go back last question i promise longer asthma causes you amen twice i forget the chronology but twice you guys lose a canoe correct yeah not on this trip once on this trip while he was on this trip yeah what was lost but i thought you guys got it back one time no well so time it's like slovenia is barely slid away yeah ok is when the one to write down others are you is actually lose a canoe it's gone i'm gone gone may like you not coming back years only have up to that point almost one really what sort of like was a protocol for beaching tethering pony how does a canoe that you're so dependent upon get taken away

well you did it you're you're crippled up and you did a shitty job yanking it up on the beats yeah you know and that environment is that call you just you just pull it up on the beach were crippled or not and you tip it upside down and that's it for the night so our our protocol was so like pull up out of the water and then wait it down so that the wind didn't take it and what happened in our situations we have like this central storm that came up actually pulled up footage of that like a couple years ago from two thousand five it looks like a hurricane go across northern canada and it s a bit the water level rose a lot in it and have taken away so basically the protocol for securing the canoes is just that secure canoes so next time i probably drive a stake in the ground or something or just like bring them so far from sure it's like we're in worse it means we are bigger things to deal with if the waters rise to this point sham but yeah so

that was that was hard you guys were doing everything right it was just such such a circuit extreme circumstance yeah could not have foreseen compounding factors yeah right compounding factors and and not to mention it was like super cold and stormy the night before and so we're all just struggling and dealing with the aftermath of a bear attack and yeah so that was painful incredible for if a seventeen year old can do so very learning experience i give you guys a lot of props man for not hanging out with those girls longer to you i don't think i could advise stuck to you that british year old jani amateur amateur gagged alex messenger the title the book the twenty ninth day sir having a grizzly attack in the canadian tundra alex thank you thank you making the trip out thanks for telling us your tale yeah thanks for having me

lisbon everybody