#124 Ben Strahan - Wildland Firefighter
Ben Strahan - is currently a Hotshot Superintendent of an elite Wildland Firefighting team known as Hotshots. Widely considered the best at fighting wildland fires in the world, Hotshots are known for their high physical performance and ability to solve complex problems within the wildland fire arena. With over 20 years of experience, Ben has developed a deep understanding on how to lead teams of individuals in high-risk environments to achieve a common goal. Ben’s true passion in life is to serve others in the discovery of self. He approaches this by telling deep and powerful stories about his past struggles with suicide and how he overcame it. His unique way of sharing his story in an authentic way creates an environment that allows others to feel safe, so their authenticity can be expressed, and they too can find the growth or healing they are looking for. Ben is also the founder of Moment Consulting LLC, a consulting company bringing corporations and organizations awareness and understanding of how self-leadership is the catalyst of high-performance teams. He also works directly with first responders who struggle with mental health balance, by exploring alternative healing methods. As an advocate for mental, physical, and emotional resiliency, Ben is on a mission to elevate himself by elevating others, through sharing perspectives so we can all collectively grow together. Tune in as Ben joins Bobby Marshall virtually and discusses wildland fires, wildland firefighting, hot shots, smoke jumpers, helitack modules, fire mitigation, mountain life, family and so much more.
Please subscribe or like us on social media platforms for updates on shows, events, and episode drops.
www.themountainsidepodcast.com
www.grassrootswildlandfirefighters.com
Sponsor Links:
Mountain Side listeners receive 10% off all Jocko Fuel products! Use Code TMS10 to save.
Mountain Side listeners use Exclusive Link to receive specials on select TRX products!
Mountain Side listeners receive 10% off Origin & Jocko Fuel products! Use Code TMS10 to save.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Ben Strahan - Wildland Firefighter
Our guest for this episode is Ben Strahan. He spent several plus years as a Hotshot Wildland Firefighter, fighting some of the country's biggest forest fires right from the fire line. He is the Superintendent of a wildland firefighting crew. When it was not the fire season, he devoted much of his time to helping other first responders with mental health and overall wellness. He is also a leadership consultant. Above all that, he is an incredible human. I enjoyed every minute of our conversation. This was an incredible episode, and thanks for reading.
Ben, we have been going back and forth for several months, trying to get you scheduled to come to Colorado. We couldn't make it happen with our schedules. You are a busy man. You are a family man. I am too. We live in different states. You are in Northern California. I'm glad we are doing this. We are doing it not the exact way that I want to do it, but this is good enough for me. I try not to do these virtual ones, but only with heavy hitters and real badasses I want to talk to and can't connect with in person. We tried, and in the future, hopefully, we can do one in person too.
I don't think it is a hopefully. It is going to happen.
The planets have got to align a little bit. The main reason I wanted to have you on the show is most everybody that we have on the show is from a mountain community and has a heavy outdoor influence but also individuals doing extraordinary things. Wildland firefighters are some of the most extraordinary quiet professionals I know firsthand from the few I know personally.
I'm grateful for anybody that serves in that service. Living in Colorado and the mountain towns where I grew up and lived, I have been evacuated a couple of times, and to see you guys come in there and put out a fire is badass, from the equipment that runs in the hotshot trucks, the engines, the aircraft, smokejumpers, and all that stuff.
As much as I can shed light on that and help some nonprofits to help support those guys, women, and all walks of life that put their lives on the line to go out and try to 1) Mitigate some of this fire risk and 2) Save some homes and lives. It is important to me here. It is an honor to have you on because you are a hotshot. You have been in the media quite a bit. You do a lot outside of firefighting to help wildland firefighters.
I don't even know where to start. I got many things I want to talk to you about. Could we start with your background? I don't know much about you. There was a reel that I watched that is ten minutes long and well put together piece. It covered a lot, but I want to do a deep dive. I want to spend some time with you. We could start with where you grew up and how you grew up.
The intent of your show lines up with a lot of the stuff I do. The first eight years of my life were spent in Orange County, where my parents lived, met, and raised me and my three siblings. I have a younger sister and two younger brothers. My dad is an Arkansas boy. That is where he primarily grew up. He transplanted to Southern California when he was in high school.
He got over the hubbub and the fast-moving pace of Southern California. He wanted to find a more remote and calmer place to raise his kids. He moved us up to a town called Garden Valley, which is in Northern California. It is about roughly an hour East of Sacramento and an hour West of South Lake Tahoe. It is in the foothills of California. It is a small community. It is remote, not a big population. My graduating class in high school is under 60 people. It is a small community and very tight-knit. It consists of a few different places. There is a world-renowned river rafting community in Coloma that is near us. In the summertime, it can get touristy a little bit, but we are up above that.
It is a great place to raise a family. You can be in the woods every day. The logging community and wildland firefighting were huge. There are a lot of construction worker-type folks. There is a lot of access to public lands. We are close to the entrance of the Rubicon Jeep Trail for reference. My parents moved us up here, and it was an awesome childhood. We went to a small high school.
For people who are reading, my job title is the Superintendent of a Hotshot Crew for a government land management agency. We can get more into the specifics of that. I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to go to college. I didn't want to spend a bunch of money trying to go to school to get some education on something I didn't know what I wanted to be. I wanted to be outside. That was the primary thing. I wanted to work with my hands.
My grandfather and I had a small business growing up called Ben and Ted's Grand Works. We would run around doing small odd jobs, building horse fences, repairing septic tanks, or building a deck. These are fun little odd jobs here and there that kept me busy. That taught me a lot of strong work ethic growing up as a kid. I was outside almost every day.
When you grow up in these places and you are connected to nature, it becomes an intricate and crucial part of your life, at least it did for me. Out of high school, I didn't feel like I had any other skills outside of using my muscles and body to be a laborer type of person. The choices I thought were available at the time were logging, construction, or a wildland firefighter. Thankfully, my school had a program that teaches skills or certifications to enter the workforce straight out of high school. They had a fire program. I got my basic certifications. Two days after graduating high school, I'm working for the Forest Service fighting fire. It has been history. That is 2001.
I love your connection and backstory because it sounds similar to mine. I grew up in a small mountain town. I felt like I was going to be stuck there my entire life. I chose the same path, but the connection to nature brought me back there and where I want my kids to grow up. I get everything you are saying, but I didn't know that my high school had a program like that where you could do some entry-level career-type stuff. It was a bus ride to Denver. Your high school had a Wildland Firefighter Program.
I have done a few of these interviews before. I have always mentioned ROP Program. There were three different classes you would take during the school year. I took all the fire classes. It was the equivalency of taking a welding or construction class at the high school. They gave you these base-level skills to enter potentially that workforce when you left high school. It is the same thing here. We did a structure side where we learned how to throw a ladder or put on some turnouts and learn the basic knowledge of fireworks and when it is burning down a house. We did a medical side where we learned first aid and CPR. We broke it down a little further, and there was a wildland side.
If I'm being honest, I didn't want to be a wildland firefighter. When you are a kid, you are like, “I want to be a firefighter.” For me, when you think of a firefighter, I would assume a lot of people think of red trucks, city departments, saving kittens out of trees, and doing all these silly things. I didn't know much about the Forest Service. Why I say red truck is because we drive green trucks. It is a different thing. That is not even in your perspective when you are going through that stuff and trying to think about what you want to do.
It wasn't until 2003, during the Cedar Fire, the largest fire in California history that I was like, “This is what I want to do for my life.” It was this challenging fire. It was Santa Ana winds. There were multiple fires in the Southern part of California. This fire was smoking homes like crazy. I remember seeing immigrants run out of bushes with no clothes while the fire is advancing. They are partially burned. It was gnarly. It was this crazy fire. I'm 21 years old at the time.
Is this your entry to wildland?
2001 is when I started. There is a bunch of different things within the Forest Service. There are different modules. There are engines and helicopter modules. There is something that people know about called smokejumpers. They jump out of planes and parachute into fires. There are hand crews and different typings of hand crews. You have a Type 2 hand crew and Type 2 IA. The IA stands for Initial Attack. They work around the initial stages of fire, trying to catch them small. You have what I do now, which is called Hotshots. They are Type 1 hand crews.
Hotshots, smokejumpers, and helicopter rapellers are your three special operations or elite teams within the agency. They are highly specified and trained. There are lots of physical fitness. The requirements and training needed to do those are at a much higher level. You are going to hear a lot about smokejumpers and hotshots being the primary elite teams.
The only difference is one jumps out of a plane and fights fire on a smaller scale. The smokejumpers try and catch things small in remote areas where vehicles can't get to them. Hotshots are a 20 to 25-person team that also does remote things, but we are built for large-scale campaign fires, those fires that burn all summer. We come in and attack the areas of the fire that people can't get into. We are self-sustaining. We take over large areas of fires with all the bodies that we have. It is the dopest thing you could do within the agency.
Wildland Firefighter: If you’re from the city and you're going camping in a rural area, understand that when you have a fire in a remote place and it escapes and causes a fire, the amount of destruction that it can cause is serious. So be responsible while you're there.
What I was getting to is Cedar Fire was in 2003. I had two seasons under my belt. It was this insane, chaotic fire. I hadn't seen anything like that. Coming through the ranks, a big fire back then was 20,000 acres, which still seems huge, but that was a crazy large fire. This fire was 100,000 acres. It is moving fast, brush, and windy. The Santa Ana winds, for the people that have been to Southern California, these winds come out of the desert. You can get some high winds that blow all night, super dry, and fire races straight to the ocean. This is what we were having.
We were in this area, trying to protect these homes in what we called a donut. It was like a cul-de-sac area, this field in the middle of all this community, sub-development around, and the fire is pushing downhill, which typically doesn't happen, but you have the wind on it. It is pushing straight downhill. The heat goes up. The fire typically goes uphill. We are doing a backburn to save these homes. During that time period, the deputy incident commander comes up to me and goes, “You guys are the ones putting out this fire. I want to say thank you.” He jumped in his truck and drove off. I was like, “That was weird.” I instantly had this sense of pride. I was like, “What the fuck.”
Before that, you are driving by these towns, cities, and multimillion-dollar home development areas, and it is the red trucks that I talked about earlier. This is not a diss on these guys. It is my perspective and observation when I'm 21 years old. They are parked in these towns where the fires may or may not get to. They are way far away from the fire. We are rolling by these guys. As a 21-year-old kid, I had a ton of ego. I'm like, “These guys are being fed. They are in the newspaper every day.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger was our Governor at the time. He showed up to the incident command base and shook all these dudes' hands while we were out there putting in the work, sleeping in the dirt, and getting after it. That was the moment where I was like, “This is what I want to do.” Once that switch clicked in my head, I was like, “How far can I take this? What's the most elite thing that I can do with this?” For me, it was becoming a smokejumper.
In 2003, 2004, and 2005, I was training my ass off. I'm on an engine. It is a much-needed resource, and it's awesome, but it is not the most elite thing you could possibly do. There are elite people in those modules. I don't want people to read this and think that I don't like engines. They are great, and we need them, but I wanted to be a smokejumper. I worked hard to do that, and some things fell through.
In 2006, I met a girl who eventually became my wife. In every sense, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have two beautiful children and a lovely marriage because of her. In 2006, my smoke-jumping dream didn't pan out. I got on a hotshot crew instead on the Tahoe National Forest. I was there for several years, and the rest is history.
I started in 2016. I transitioned off of that crew after working my way up the ranks and got a captain's position on a crew in the Eldorado National Forest. I have worked under a great leader, Aaron Humphrey. In 2020, in the midst of COVID and all the bullshit happening there, I got the superintendent's job. That was the career goal that I set for myself in 2006. I remember it vividly. We are on a fire in Alaska. I'm sitting on the bank of this river. It is after a grinder of a shift. We haven't showered for twelve days. We are eating out of boxes and cooking our meals every day in camp.
It is beautiful. There is not a human body except for our crew in a 100-mile radius. It is remote and freeing. I’m sitting on the bank of this river and taking it in. It was my first year as a hotshot. I was like,” This is epic.” I look over and see my superintendent on that crew. He is cooking food for the crew and having fun. They are talking shit, and they are having a blast. I'm like, “This is what I want to do with my life. I want to be a superintendent someday.” I found myself getting that job in 2020. Here I am, and I'm a superintendent of one of the most elite hotshot crews in the nation. I couldn't be more grateful for that.
I'm sure there is a lot of stuff that happens in between all that. A lot of people don't understand what you guys go through unless you have talked to somebody because it is not in the media a whole lot. You don't have film crews on the fire line with you a lot of the time because it is fucking dangerous. You guys are the quiet professionals.
Dive into a little bit more of what a hotshot job entails. It is self-explanatory. It's those little things like the camaraderie. I come from a rock and roll roadie background, and there is some camaraderie that happens through some suffering and bad fucking moments. Nobody likes loading 40 semi-trucks at fucking 2:00 AM in Germany in the middle of winter. That sucks.
Those are suck moments where you can look to the guys to the left and the right of you. It doesn't matter what color their skin is as long as they have a good attitude in the trenches with you and helping you. Honestly, the attitude goes a lot further than even how good you are at your job sometimes. It was like, “How much can you be my buddy or make me laugh at this moment where we are fucking hating it?”
I don't want to pass over that, but for people that are reading this, how much do you travel? Are you primarily staying in California because you are in Eldorado National Forest? When that fire pops up in Alaska, Colorado, Montana, or in some of these Western states that have big burns and huge fire danger, are you going to those fires?
The hotshot crew is 20 to 25 people with a hierarchy of different positions. Superintendents at the top, two captains, and we have something called squad leaders, lead firefighters, senior firefighters, and so forth making up people. For the longest time, our job was primarily the overhead stuff. Squad bosses would be permanent employees working year-round. The rest would all be temporary positions. That is going by the wayside. We are hiring almost full 25 people permanently year-round because our fire seasons are year-round now. That is one aspect. That leads to the question, “Do we just stay in California?” No, hotshot crews are a national resource. We can fight fire anywhere in the United States year-round.
Hotshot crews are a national resource. They can fight fire literally anywhere in the United States year-round.
We have been to Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado is a hotspot. We are always over there. There is Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and the West. You have the off-season in the West. When it is raining in the wintertime, you might find yourself out in Florida, the Carolinas, or some of these places. We are all over the place year-round. It leads to some challenges. The ability to manage stress, fatigue, and some of these things become difficult.
That is one of the reasons that we are an overtime-based business. We work for the federal government. We don't get paid. We are not rich. Because of that, we have to make a ton of overtime to make ends meet in a lot of ways. What our season looks like between roughly May and November, we are trying to lock down 1,000 hours of overtime.
If I get an order to go to take an assignment in Colorado, we travel to Colorado. That might take us two days. Once we get assigned to a fire out there, we are there for two weeks, and we may have another 2 to 3-day drive back. Anything outside of California, you are pushing close to a month gone on some of these assignments, 20 days or so. It is fourteen days out, excluding travel, three days off, and fourteen out. We repeat, rinse, and repeat that until the fire season stops, which doesn't stop anymore.
The rest and the fatigue can be real. The 1,000 hours is a benchmark. We don't get paid while we are sleeping in the dirt. We don't stay in hotels when we are on fire like other resources. We sleep right in the dirt, in camp, or on the edge of the fire or spiked out while these things are going on. We don't see showers for two weeks to a month sometimes. We are eating the best we can and getting as much rest as we possibly can. The 2022 year was a lull. It was a slower season. There was a lot of not craziness that we have been seeing in the news of most recent years where you see these campaign fires. We had a million-acre fire in California in 2020 when I got the sup job. That shit is unheard of. It is insane.
We are silent warrior type. We have pride in what we have done for a long time. That is the way I was phrased. Walk small but carry a big stick type of situation. You don't need to be talking about what you do. Know that what you are doing is there to serve the communities. That is great. There is a lot to that. What that means to me is don't have a big fucking ego. You don't need to be walking around telling everybody you are a hotshot.
The issue is when you are looking for reform, and you are trying to get a better paycheck. Technically, we are not even classified as firefighters. We are forestry technicians. There was a whole issue with that in and of itself trying to get taken care of because part of the problem is we work our butts off. We are gone several months out of the year. We are competing agencies to get paid a lot more money, specifically in California with the state. Recruiting and retention has been a challenge.
You brought up something that I want to touch on. I think it is okay to have an ego. I'm on the fence now with this whole toxic masculinity-type movement that is going on. It is okay to be masculine, fit, show that off, and have a little bit of an attitude because I would imagine that without some cockiness, you can't do your job.
There is a point to being professional, but in any career, whether you are working at Apple or whatever, and you want to be top and excel, you don't need to be an asshole, but you can still be masculine and have a little bit of swagger or whatever the kids' terms are that they are using now. I personally think it is okay to be a little bit cocky. It takes a little bit of that to excel in something, especially physical.
The way I see it is you are not getting rid of it. Everybody got a fucking ego. We can get philosophical if you want to hear my definition of ego. The way I see it is everybody is born with a certain amount of stories. Joe Rogan talks about, “We don't all start on the same start line.” That is true. Some of us have more privileges. We have more things available to us. This could be for various reasons. We don't need to get into race and gender.
Everybody is born with a certain number of stories. We don't all start on the same start line.
It could even be genetics at that point.
We can think at a higher level, like a more observatory level, that people have different access points. Sometimes those access points come with a story as to why or why not they don't exist, and you are born into that environment. I like to think about it like this. I typically ask people to close their eyes. You don't have to close your eyes, but if you are reading this, close your eyes and imagine a figurine with no face, no nothing, this cartoonish character gets dropped into this square box, and it is like a foundation of bricks. Imagine bricks, one level high, and you are standing in the middle of it, and the walls are arm's distance away from you. It is like a little brick foundation.
Depending on who you are and what was available, that foundation could be 2 or 3 high bricks high. Maybe it is a few bricks on the ground. It is not a complete foundation. Each one of these bricks represents a specific story. Sometimes a story could be generational. This is passed down from your grandparents to your parents, and now it is yours, whatever that might be. You can think about the different stories that happened, but typically these stories are generational.
Over the course of time, because of these bricks that are sitting there, you are now going to form your own stories. You are going to slowly start building this brick house. Oftentimes, what happens is these bricks get taller than you. You put a roof over it, and there is no door. Nobody can see the little self, the little thing, the vulnerable thing with no clothes or cartoon character in the middle. They don't see that person anymore. You are living in a dark room, and it never gets to be expressed. What people do see is all of your stories. Those walls represent your ego because the ego is trying to protect that soft little supple creature inside.
For me, it is about understanding these different stories that exist by contemplating where they came from and what they are. Do they hold value to me? Do they make sense anymore? You start removing some of these bricks, and you build a window or a door. You may build a few windows. You build a skylight and let some light in there. People can see the vulnerable self that exists inside, but that ego house is never going away. It is always going to exist. Understanding it better is how I see it.
How did you come up with that? I don't know what it is like to think that deeply. That is incredible. I want to talk to you about what you are doing with some of these other people. Shout out to Brandon from Anchor Point. He is such a great human. He is the one that connected us. He told me what you are doing. What a great outlook and way to explain. I have never thought about it that way, but it is your outside influences, whether it is your friends, family, or maybe something that is happened to you.
I hear Rogan say this all the time. It is cool, and to put it in perspective a little bit more, it is like, “The worst thing that is ever happened to you is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.” Whether it is somebody made your latte wrong or somebody shot and killed your whole family in the middle of the night. That shit happens.
One of the issues is as you exist inside this house of stories with no view of the outside world, those stories become your identity. That can be a big problem. My job became my identity. How many people identify it as their job? How many people introduce themselves and say, “My name is Ben, and I'm a firefighter?” the truth of it is we are way fucking more than our job, specifically in the first responder world, that identity is associated with a definition that you have created in your mind.
The problem when you exist inside this house of stories with no view to the outside world is that those stories become your identity.
A firefighter, a wildland firefighter, and a hotshot see itself as, and this is how I saw myself, I'm speaking from my perspective, is this person who is incredibly resilient and could take whatever was thrown at him, bury it down, and keep going. That is what I thought I was. I was this rough exterior, fucking strong dude who could take all the dead bodies, the suicides by your friends, the destruction of many, like communities getting leveled, the lack of sleep, and the damaged relationships.
The issue happens when that definition gets challenged by feelings that don't line up with that definition anymore. You are like, “I have feelings that contradict what this definition of identity is.” That sends you down a fucking spiral. When we talk about confidence, we are talking about toxic masculinity. We should be masculine.
Something within the work that I do outside of fighting fire is there are a lot of men that don't know what masculine is anymore because society, social media, or whatever this is my observation is telling us what it shouldn't be or should be. It is about confidence and knowing who you are as a person. A man can do many things, but it is the confidence in being balanced in yourself. That doesn't have to be toxic. That can be healing for people.
A lot of men don't know what masculine is anymore because society, social media, or whatever is telling us what it should or shouldn’t be. It's just about having confidence in knowing who you are as a person.
I have two daughters and a wife. One of the things that happened to me with this identity stuff was at one point, and it was 2016. I was having a struggle with whether or not I wanted to keep doing this job because I had these daughters. I was going to work, and it was complete on hardcore men pounding their fucking chests all the time. I was going through this spiritual quest at the moment. I realized, “I can't talk to my daughters like hotshots when I come home. That is not fair. I can't talk to my wife like she is a hotshot or understand it better.” I like to live in a state of balance. It is not abrasive.
That was this process. As I was learning this, I was like, “I'm like all masculine.” That is a problem. All man is too much. I have to have feminine energy or characteristic. I'm not saying I wear dresses, but I need to have this feminine quality because I have to interact with the feminine. I have to interact with my daughters, hug my wife and understand where she is coming from. It is about understanding both and having confidence. Not just the confidence but the awareness of what you are as a man and what that responsibility is. It is not to be abrasive and aggressive.
I get what you are saying there. I also think that part of being a man is not being masculine, like, “We beat our chest, run through fucking walls, and go drink beer at the bar.” I'm fucking fortunate the way that I grew up. The men that raised me were my grandfathers and uncles. I grew up in an abusive household with my stepdad. He was beating the living shit out to my mom to the point where I would try to go in and stop it, but I was a kid, and I would get my ass kicked. That was a huge learning lesson for me.
If I didn't have those outside influences, like my grandfather and uncles, that taught me that women deserve the utmost respect, that was the way they treated my mother and their wives, and they told that to me straight up. Part of being a man is being respectful and genuine, not being a bullshitter, having a good work ethic, and showing up on time. There are all these different things that are part of being a man too. It is not the masculinity thing. Social media is saying or telling kids how to act and feel. That is to each his own to figure out, you know, and those brick houses like you talked about. It goes back to your stories and your experiences in life.
I'm going down a slippery slope here, but do you think that because of some of those social influences and toxic masculinity stuff that is hurting career positions like wildland firefighters is where I was going with it because you need a little bit of ego to do that job or be a special operator or police officer. Whether you are a male or not, and if you are a female, you have to have some masculine traits to enforce or combat something.
Is it hurting people getting the job?
I don't think it is hurting people getting the job, but is it hurting us as a general population in getting the job done?
I can only speak from my perspective. I want to hire a good person. I can make you a good hotshot. That is fine. Good people happen to be good hotshots. The person that comes in with too much ego, piss, and vinegar, that person is going to burn out. From my perspective, and some of the work I do outside the thing, there are some serious stories going on there. They may not have had the same upbringing I had, or there might be some imbalance between what a man is and should be.
Most of the people that work on my crew are in their twenties. I'm a fucking old man now, which is insane. I’m 41 years old. I tell them the first day, “What I want you to do here while you are here, one of my intents is for you to be authentic. Learn how to be an authentic human. Don't give me what you think I want. Think outside the box. You need to be a self-starter and self-thinker. You need to be into this shit too. You can't be here for a paycheck.” We get those people, but if you want to have a successful life, learn how to express yourself from an authentic place because that is where beautiful things get created.
The organism that is a hotshot crew operates more efficiently when everybody is thinking for themselves and also recognizing their shortcomings, the lack of knowledge or awareness they have, and have the ability to ask questions, keep learning and turn into this beautiful learning organism. You can be high functioning in that way. Getting people to even understand what being authentic is when you are twenty-something years old is another challenge in itself. What do you do? What I can do is show up and be that thing.
I had some mentors, but maybe they weren't the best influences at that age on the back of a tour bus.
I had some mentors, but the ones I leaned into at times were the ones that could shotgun three beers in a row. There is time for that. That is what your twenties are all about in a lot of ways. When you are in high-risk environments, you want people paying attention. If the people working for me are always worried about what they think I want them to be doing, they are not paying attention to the fire environment and these high-risk environments.
It is all about hiring good people and working with them to develop themselves in a way that lets them live a full life. I love what I do, but it is a fucking small fraction of who I am. In the mentoring aspect, I like teaching people how to be self-leaders. These things are more valuable to me. The job-fighting fire is super fun. Going to remote places all over the United States and getting dropped into a place like Alaska where there is nothing around you but wild animals and fire is rad. That is not going to change humanity or this world in a positive way as much as turning one person into a rock-solid, awesome, authentic human. That ripple effect will last forever.
Nothing changes humanity or this world in a positive way as much as turning one person into a rock-solid, awesome, authentic human. That ripple effect will last forever.
It is awesome that you are thinking outside of the career because what a great mentor to have in that aspect and more of a life mentor than a career mentor. People get caught up in that. You mentioned, “People identify with their jobs or what they do.” One of the first questions that people ask you, especially if you are on an airplane and you are anywhere near first class, which I hardly sell them in, but every time that I have sat in first class, the person sitting next to me goes, “What do you do?”
It is like a status thing. It drives me a little insane. I get where you are coming from there. I appreciate somebody like you taking the time to think outside the box. You are not building your fire crew. You are building these people's future and trying to think outside the box for what is best for them and genuinely help. That is pretty unheard of.
It speaks to how I feel about it. Myself, my overhead, and everybody on the crew, but specifically for me since this is what I'm talking about, they are my family man. I'm not thinking about them. I'm thinking about their wives, girlfriends, kids, and the communities they live in. It is an extended family. I, in every essence of the word, believe that to be true, whether you come through our crew for one season or you are there for ten seasons. You are a part of this family now.
I make decisions that affect people's lives straight up. I take that fucking seriously. Anything I say can change the course of the game, or somehow somebody's thinking about something. That could potentially have a serious consequence or have a beautiful outcome. I see these people as my family. I love them dearly. Because of that, I treat them as such. It is not about the time they are giving me or giving the crew while they are here. It is about their entire life.
Where did you get some of your leadership philosophies or mentorship? Is it something you have built yourself? I'm sure you had some mentors yourself. You mentioned one a few minutes ago. A big thing about letting people not micromanage people is huge is what I found. Make a decision and execute it. If it is wrong or right, we will talk about it after the fact. That is important. I can't speak for being a wildland firefighter because I have never done it. I'm sure it is a little bit different when people's lives are on the line.
Task, purpose, and state are the leadership framework. I'm going to give you a task. I'm going to give you what the purpose is behind it. You understand why and what it needs to look like. It gives them the freedom to operate within that space. That is how we figure out the micromanaging shit. As far as how I figured out my leadership qualities or philosophies is straight-up mentorship. It is by observation.
I have been paying attention to a lot of people, good and bad leaders. As to what has worked and what hasn't worked, I am desperately constantly tapping into that stuff, trying to make the best decisions I possibly can. Shout out to my wife and my kid. They are the best fucking goddamn mentors a person can have. In a lot of ways, the self-development and philosophies that I have come to grew from a place of not wanting to be a shitty father.
It is crazy how much that will change your life. It is unbelievable. You can't explain it to somebody.
Through the process of like, “If I'm not going to be a crappy dad, what are the things I need to make sure of that I don't do?” You learn about neuroplasticity and how the first seven years of a child's life, they become who they are because their neuroplasticity is the most plastics as their learning centers. They discover who they are within the first seven years. From there to fourteen is another puberty and teenage years. I have a fifteen-year-old.
I got one going on twelve in 2023. The two others are a little bit younger. I'm nervous. I'm going to be calling you for advice. We are going to have one of these off airs.
I’m learning about neuroplasticity. For the first fourteen years of a child's life, they become who they are. There are influential things. That is where they develop other stories. They are building those foundational walls up. I'm thinking once I'm learning, I'm like, “What stories do I have? What did I learn?” It is this deep dive into myself and who I am as a person. I have been excavating garbage out of me for the last several years.
Through that process, one of the things I have come to understand is before we even ask anybody to lead anybody, we should be good self-leaders. Walk the fucking walk. Understand who we are. Show discipline and balance. Show up every day and put those feet forward in a positive direction the best you can. That's what a good leader should embody. Before we lead anybody, we should lead ourselves first.
To take care of other people, you have to take care of yourself first. If you are not in a good mental state, or you slip on that, it is a hard balance. I struggle with it all the time. Time is my biggest enemy but also my greatest friend. I cherish all the time, but I always want to be in seven different places at once. You have to figure out that balance of, like, “If I want to be physically fit, I need to spend this much time a week doing it.” I break it down into a schedule. It doesn't always work out. Shit comes up.
Part of it is making yourself feel good first before you can help others feel good because if you sacrifice all the time, that is not healthy either, but you got to prioritize. It is hard for me to have a family and kids. I have a show, which I genuinely enjoy and love doing because we are having conversations like this. I don't get that anywhere else. You don't get that sitting at a bar or a text message. A one-on-one conversation is hard to have these days, even in your family.
I have gained so much value from what I have learned in the show. I have learned about my kids. This sounds fucked up, but I will sit down, and they enjoy it. I will bring them into the studio and put them on a mic. They like listening to themselves. You can have a real conversation where it is like, “We are on tape. Be genuine. It is not fake. I'm going to ask you.” They are to the point where they are like, “Dad, when are we going to do our next one?” We have these 30 episodes of the kids. I started thinking about it. It is not often that you can sit down in an uninterrupted situation and have a conversation. It is very seldom. There are two spots that I have found it. It is in the backcountry, in bow hunting, or the studio.
I'm starting my podcast career for the same reasons. It is undeniable watching. With all the technology shit that has happened in the last few years and the craziness, podcasting has been fascinating. I think humans have lost this ability to set positive intentions in their lives and follow through with them. Podcasting, in a way, is intentionally setting time to have deep conversations with people. It is incredible. It is not only is it incredible, but it is also an interesting space.
One of my values is living a life of servitude. I'm in a service type of thing, where I'm a wildland firefighter. A lot of people would say, “You are a wildland firefighter. You are living a life of servitude.” A lot of times, we don't look at what that means correctly. Living a life of servitude is creating a space where when people enter into it, they can find their true and authentic selves. The podcast environment allows for some authentic conversations for those to take place. It is beautiful you are having those conversations with your kids. That is an intentional conversation to spend time with your children and understand who they are. That is fucking awesome.
Living a life of servitude means creating a space for people to enter and find their true and authentic selves.
It has been incredible for me. When I started the show, it was to help educate other people living in mountain communities. I was trying to fill a gap. I was going to start another one that was more the selfish thing. It was stories from the road with my roadie buddies. That one is still going, which is cool. What I have learned in over 100 episodes is it is more about me. Who do I want to talk to? If people read, it is great. If they don't, they can turn it off. I'm still doing it for me because I get so much out of these. Somebody else's perspective is important. I feel like it has made me a better person. Hearing it from your own family and kids is even better.
I believe that the best things that people create come from a place where they want to do it. It is their thing. Continue to do that because the things you are doing from that place are going to be badass.
One of the things I got to ask, and I want to get into some other things with you, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but I'm sure you have had some crazy moments being on the front lines of fires. I shouldn't be telling you this. I grew up in Colorado. One of the fires I got evacuated from was the Hayman Fire.
We went in on the fire line, being stupid kids and going into our house to rescue a puppy. It was a girlfriend's puppy. I got some family photos out of another friend's house that burned, which was cool. Some of the stuff I saw in there on the fire line was insane. Pine trees explode from the sap. I don't know when it is in a campfire, and a cinder pops out of a little log. The fire was burning hot, fast, and hard. I'm sure you guys have had some moments like that.
I could go with crazy ass stories. It is hard to describe the intensity of things because without being there, it is almost hard to fathom how intense things can be when you are driving down an interstate, you have a wall of fire on both sides of a four-lane highway, and the flames are 300 feet tall. You can feel the heat radiating through the car windows, even with the AC on full blast.
You are at Sierra Tahoe Ski Resort during the Caldor Fire. The entire resort is burning to the ground around you. You are parked in place in a parking lot because there is nothing you can do. You are underneath a column. It was the car fire in Redding, California, that is burning, consuming fuel that the hot air is condensing high in the sky, turning to clouds, it gets heavy, and that cloud collapses, sending 70-mile-an-hour winds straight down to the ground and pushing fire all out in all different directions. Everything instantly ignites. The environment can be extremely intense, but we pride ourselves on being hotshots. That is being professional risk mitigators. One of the things I tell the crew is, “Always have a safe place to go.” If you can make sure that is in place, you can do a lot of things.
You mentioned a little bit about the pay. To people understand how inefficient the pay scale is for somebody that fights wildland fires, can you dive in? Do you feel comfortable speaking about some of that?
I don't mind. I'm going to speak from my perspective and what I have seen for the longest time. We need to know the history a little bit. We are not classified as firefighters. We are forestry technicians. From my perspective, because of that classification, we haven't been able to come to the table in a way to get the same benefits and stuff like this as a firefighter would. The benefits and the pay weren't the same. This wasn't the same as someone working for a city or a state department. A few years back, in California, the state minimum wage was higher than our entry-level position because we are a federal agency.
How is that even possible? That is insane.
Biden fixed it when he bumped everything up to $15 an hour. Now our entry-level position is fine, but the pay was a big reason that we were having these catastrophic wildland fires. We weren't able to staff all of our engines because we couldn't hire anybody. The infrastructure bill that was passed by the President is supposed to fix the classification and come up with a solution around pay. In 2022, we got a $20,000 supplemental pay. I'm not the best person to be asking all these questions. Brandon would be a better person.
We have talked about it a little bit with Brandon.
The pay is an issue. It is sad when you have people working for you and a young couple gets married. They are like, “I legitimately can't afford to have a child now because I can barely afford my gas to get to work. We can't even pay people a livable wage that allows them to start a family in many ways.” It is the wrong thing to be doing.
It is the same story over again. Our facilities are garbage in a lot of places. People are camped out of their trucks in the parking lot at our bases because there are no barracks or they're not livable. I was like, “This is how we are treating our first responders here. This is not the right thing we should be doing.” I'm glad that we have the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters folks who are working on these things, folks Brandon who can talk about this shit all the time because as much as I want to be involved with this stuff, it is a fucking energy suck. I want to focus on developing healthy crew members, fighting fire safely, getting after it, and trying to enjoy our jobs and shit.
I got to a place where I realized my personal value. I was like, “I can't keep doing this job forever. At some point, I'm going to have to retire or quit, but what other value do I have?” In the fire service, we feel like the only thing we are good at, especially if you start your job at nineteen years old, two days after graduating high school, it was like, “All I have done is this. All I can do is fire.”
I'm of a belief that we all have a lot of value. I started an LLC to talk about self-leadership stuff and do some consulting work. I'm trying to start a podcast. I got many other irons in the fire with mental health things and a non-profit. I appreciate the question a lot. There are a lot of people who want me to talk about this, but I'm getting to a point in my life where I don't give a shit anymore, which is sad because I have been pushed enough to where I'm like, “I don't want to keep talking about this shit anymore.”
The conversations I have had with Brandon and some of my other friends on the same career path as you, and maybe not quite as big as hotshots, but they all do this for a path, and it is not for a paycheck, honestly. It is a paycheck at the end of the day, but these people are genuinely passionate about what they do. The more that we shit on them, the less people are going to want to do this job. That is why I like to shed light on it and try to talk about it. If somebody wanted to advocate for you guys, or maybe they don't have time to advocate, they want to help. What is the best foundation out there that is genuinely helping you guys?
It is the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.
If you go and read Brandon's episode, it was Episode 99. We talked about it there.
They are the ones crushing it. Without them, a lot of this reform stuff wouldn't even be on the table. I'm all about helping. Don't get me wrong, but I have spent a lot of time pissed off. A lot of times, I was shaking my head, pissed off. I was like, “Why is it hard to take care of people the best way we can?” We work for a federal agency. The shit moves super slow. I'm not saying that is an excuse, but it is the way it is. I'm tired of coming home pissed off at the agency. I rather enjoy my fucking job and the people that work with me and provide the best possible experience that I can. That reduction of stress has helped me out quite a bit.
There is only so much I can do. A big part of it and one of the reasons why you will see me in other podcasts, the Vice video, or other things that I have done in the media is because I have the willingness to talk about it. I will talk about it for sure. The thing I want to highlight is things are changing. In the past, when I have been vocal about it, things were not in place yet. They weren't changing.
We were trying to gain a voice because you can't be that quiet hero type of person and ask for changes in culture, not even knowing who the hell you are. No one knows who a hotshot is, yet we are asking for a ton of money. If we are not in the limelight, how can we ask for these reforms? A lot of the stuff I have done has been all about educating the public, and people in general, like, “We are out here doing things. We are in need of help.” Our suicide rates were three times higher than the general population compared to the military.
In 2020, I was contemplating suicide for the first time. It got that bad for me. It is a real thing. When you're asking for things and reforms, and no one knows who you are, I don't know how you get what you get or get what you are asking for. It is an important part of this conversation. I'm happy that Grassroots, Brandon on the Anchor Point, and you are giving these people space to talk about these things. It is important because we need the public in our corner to be asking for these things. Finally, things are happening. It is slow. It is not at the pace we want it to happen. Classification got passed and lost. That should be happening soon.
Wildland Firefighter: Giving people a space to talk about things is very important because we need the public in our corner to be asking for these things.
Wildfires are not getting any smaller. They are only getting bigger and longer.
It is in a good direction. I'm staying positively optimistic, but I'm also trying not to invest as much of my energy into it anymore. I'm trying to invest more energy into the crew and developing good people that give a shit about living the best possible life.
You will get more self-reward out of that than you will on the other end. Those are my thoughts. You mentioned something, and I feel awkward asking about this. I have lost a few friends and a family member to suicide in the last couple of years. It seems to be a plague in the country, and the world, in general, but specifically in the United States.
We have done a full episode on suicide awareness because it is another thing I'm passionate about. If you are okay, would you mind sharing your moment with contemplating taking your own life? We can go as deep as you want. You can end it at any time that you want. I'm not prying, but the reason why it is important to share that is if one person out there relates to what you were going through and what brought you out of that darkness, that will help 1 or 100 persons. One thing I have also learned about podcasting is it is okay to share your feelings. It is okay to be genuine and have these moments. If you are comfortable talking about it, I would like to hear your story because even I can learn from it.
When I talk about what I'm doing and the personal aspect of my life outside of fire, it has to do mostly with mental health with first responders. 2020 was the year I got my dream job, the superintendent of my hotshot. It happened in April 2020. COVID is fucking going off like crazy. I'm trying to navigate this new position and lead these men and women around that.
We had the most epic year in California history from my perspective during that time. We had the million-acre fire, the north complex, which was massive, and a few others that were big and devastating fire season. I never once, during that fire season, felt guilty, sad, or woe is me. I recall being driven and focused. I had a good time. I had an amazing supporting cast underneath me, helping us get through that fire season. I never once did I feel sad. I was excited. It was a good fire season. We did some amazing things. Everybody came home safely, and no injuries.
It wasn't until November that we were transitioning. That word is important. We did a 1,300-hour overtime season, which is a lot. It is between May and the beginning of November 2020. That transition from going balls to the wall, living in a state of stress for several to nothing, and being like, “I am looking forward to this break. I need to have a break. I’m excited to relax and spend some time with my family.” That is not what happened. There was more asking of me to continue to perform and take on priorities given by other people from a management perspective, or sitting at a computer all day, typing administrative bullshit. I never got the break that I was looking for.
I started contemplating to myself like, “Is this fucking worth it?” My job is less about fighting fire and more about making sure other people don't fucking die. I get paid next to nothing to do this shit. I don't have any other skills. That was all in my mind too. I was like, “Am I going to live on this perpetuating hamster fucking wheel for the rest of my life, getting my ass handed to me, not seeing my family, doing administrative stuff, and being asked to fight fire in other states during the wintertime and come retirement. My body is broken that I can't even enjoy the things I enjoy now outside of the job. Is this going to be my life now?”
The question that popped into my head the first time was, “I will step off the fucking hamster wheel and end my life and get this shit over with. I'm not enjoying myself. I'm a total pain in the ass to my family. Maybe me not being here would be better for them.” I remember vividly one morning, it was a day off, and it was in November 2020. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed in my room. The windows are open. It was such a beautiful day. The sun was coming in. I could feel the sun. It felt good.
I'm trying to put on my running shoes because the way I cope with stress, or I have always coped with stress in the past, has been working my ass off, working out destroying my body, running, lifting weights, or hiking and drinking my face off. It was a combination of those two things. I remember sitting on my bed on a beautiful day, trying to strap my running shoes on, and feeling low and over it. I was like, “I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be here.”
I was arm's distance away from my handgun safe in my closet. I remember thinking, “I could do it now. Nobody is home. I can do this real quick and be done with it.” As I stood up to make a decision to go to my safe, someone dumped a bucket of cold water on me. I was like, “Woke up. What the fuck am I doing now?” All the emotions came rushing in. I'm crying. I'm like, “What the fuck?” It is a powerful and visceral experience. I can take myself back there and see myself at that moment, not from a place of I can do that again but from a place of it was powerful.
I’m finding myself. I was like, “I need to do something. I can't do this. I need to fucking get help. I have to tell somebody. I have to tell my wife about this shit.” I told my wife. When she came home, I pulled her to the side, and I was crying my ass off. I told her, “I'm struggling badly. I'm having thoughts of suicide. I need help.” I told her what I wanted to do. She was like, “Message received. We will make it happen.” I sat with myself for a long time.
I'm open about this shit, and I'm going to fucking say what I did because it is important for people to know. I did not have success with therapists. I didn't want to be on a fucking medication. I'm an incredible health nut. My wife and most people that know me will attest to that. As a kid, I was on fucking Ritalin for a long time. I didn't want to be on medication, and therapists weren't working. I found a place legally where I could do psilocybin mushrooms to heal from what I needed to be healed from, or at least give me something that I knew could potentially help me.
By reading stories and what Johns Hopkins is doing with that stuff, I did a bunch of research. I found something. I got the perspective I needed. One of the things that happened was I set myself a goal to become a hotshot superintendent. I got that shit, and there was like, “Then what? What is my next goal? I reached my goal. What the fuck? I didn't know what to do.”
I will talk about what my goal is now because I learned something during that experience. What I identified was my needs versus my wants were all fucked up. What I thought I needed versus what I wanted. It was all messed up. I realized that our life is a compilation of entering and exiting moments endlessly. I came to a realization like, “It doesn't matter. If I end myself at this moment, I'm going to be over here in this moment, looking back at that moment wishing I would've done more with that moment.”
There are nothing changes. I'm like, “I should enjoy the moment I have now in front of me.” To do that, I had to understand what I needed to be successful and live a successful life. I came up with a list. The first three things on there are I need to make sure I'm taking care of this fucking chemistry experiment we call body first.
You have to enjoy the moment you have in front of you. To do that, you have to understand what you truly need to live a successful life.
I don't mean to laugh. I'm emotional now, but I'm glad you are here and sharing these moments. Thank you.
I appreciate that. I have lost a lot of people, and I keep losing them. One of the reasons why I enjoy speaking about this is because I want to let people know that they are not fucking alone. The deep, dark shit that we go through can be the most important part of our life if we choose courage. We choose the courage to move past what that is and learn from it and apply it to our fucking lives. That is the point behind this.
It is sleep, nutrition, and movement. Take care of your chemistry experience. That is what I need. If I can nail those three things, it would put me in a place I could now find myself in a place of observation, where I can observe myself like a person. I will talk about it in these terms. Pretend like you are someone at a park sitting on a park bench, watching people play in a park. If the man throws his dog for his Frisbee, maybe that is joy in his life. If you see two old people walking and holding hands down the park, that is love. If you see someone angry because they stepped in dog shit, that is anger.
Whatever those are, those are your emotions, stories, and things you are seeing, but you are not identifying with any of them. You are casually observing them be themselves, and you are the guy sitting on the park bench. That is an observation to me. It is observing yourself, emotions, and things you should be unattached to and letting them fucking pass by, like not attached to them, but feeling them. Feelings are important.
It put me in a place of observation. I could observe myself and how I reacted to the external world. It gave me a place for the other need that I have. I was like, “Don't identify with anything because everything fucking changes.” That is the point. The Buddhist said, “The only thing that is permanent is impermanence.” Another beautiful philosopher said, “No man steps in the same river twice.” The river is never the same. The man is always moving.
Everything changes, your feelings and job. You can change your fucking name and the place you live. You don't identify with anything because they can all be changed. It doesn't mean you don't embody the positive things that those things can give you. Understand that these things can change. Don't identify. I often tell people, and I say this to myself, “I am who I am when I am not. When I don't identify with these things, I'm much closer to the thing I truly am than I am if I'm identifying with things.”
Acceptance is my next need. Accept that there are things out of your fucking control. I hated the word fate growing up. I was like, “Don't tell me that shit. I create my own destiny.” Fate is bullshit, but it is also true. If you are driving down the damn road, and someone rear-ends you like in the wrong place and time, that was a compilation of events that were taking place cause and effect over again that led to you getting smashed without your awareness of it. There is no reason to get pissed off about it. That is happening on a large scale.
What you do have control over is my next need is the creation of your thoughts. How you react to that situation is how you are going to project yourself out into the world. Understand that you do have control of your destiny. You perceive things coming in and the way you project them out. That is for everybody. The person yelling at you and telling you that you are a piece of shit is a reflection of how they are feeling in the moment and has nothing to do with you. That is how they are taking that information and pushing it back out.
The next one for me, and a lot of people who are fucking doers or can relate to this, is stillness. I need to create stillness in my life because I'm someone who wants to do a million things at once. It is hard for me to sit down and sit. I can watch fifteen minutes of a Netflix show, and I’m up doing something else while the show is playing in the background. I come back, and I'm like, “I miss the whole damn show.” It is about telling myself, “Sometimes it is okay to be still.” Find a meditation practice or a quiet spot. Go outside and sit and look at something awesome for a little bit. Create stillness in your life because it is important.
Find a meditation practice, a quiet spot where you can sit and look at something awesome for a little bit. Create stillness in your life because it's important.
Have you shot archery at all?
I grew up shooting archery.
My meditation is an act of meditation, whether it is zoning out on the run, shooting my bow, or playing a game of pool. There are different ways to meditate than sitting there. That is a misconception. For example, riding a dirt bike. You don't think about much else other than being on that thing and trying to stay on it. There are certain little things like that. If you can find something you truly enjoy, and that blocks out all the other shit, like, “Did I pay my mortgage? Is my wife happy with me? Am I being a good dad?” All that stuff goes out the window. If you can find something like that, that erases your mind, even if it is for a split second through an archery shot.
I have tried sitting and meditating a million times. I work out, ride my mountain bike, go snowboarding, get in the backcountry shooting archery, and even handgun shooting, and anything that can get me in somewhat of a flow state in any way to quiet the noise. Oftentimes, I tell people, “Meditating or mindfulness can be one breath.” If you can take a deep breath and let go, you did it. It could be that simple. I did go through a period of my life where I got to sit here for twenty minutes cross-legged and do my things. You got to figure out what works best for you, like anything else.
Everybody is an individual. What works for me is not going to work for you.
That goes with this needs list that I'm talking about. I got stillness, and the last one I have on here is letting go. Let go of the fucking bullshit. Don't hold onto all the crap that is happening. Your stories, and all these things, give time to look at these things and let it go. The better we get at letting go of things, the easier life gets because you are going to have the ultimate let go at some point, which is when you pass away. Being able to let go also gives you the ability to invest in your relationships and see the people you love in a much easier way because they are not going to be with you forever. Be with them and love them. Love yourself. You are not going to be here forever. It is all that shit.
The better we get at letting go of things, the easier life gets because you are going to have the ultimate let-go at some point, which is when you pass away.
Some people ask me, “You don't have a community on there?” I have always had a community. It wasn't a need. It wasn't something that was missing. A lot of these things people might relate to, but there are other things that work better for you. I still wanted shit, but I had a better intention behind it. I didn't want something because I needed it to fill a void in my life, a void of love or acceptance. It was like, “No, I want this cool ass gun, bow, hiking boots, or this badass truck because it is going to make life more fun.” Driving dope trucks is fun. It enriches the life. It is okay to have wants. Understand they are not there to replace something you think you are missing because everything you have is in you already.
Thanks for sharing it. I appreciate you being open. It is unusual to find somebody that genuinely cares about other people and is open with their personal life. I'm glad that Brandon set us up to talk. This is incredible. This is making my wish. Looking at your parameters and your list, do you think, and what I'm getting out of it a little bit, and I perceive it wrong, is living in the moment and not worrying about the future and/or the past?
I know that is a cliché thing, and it has been popular, but there is some truth to that. It is trying to be present in the moment because if you are sitting there worrying about the past or something you might have said or done, you are genuinely not there to spend time with your kids. Those thoughts are running through your head. That is a hard cycle to break, especially if you have any guilt.
Something that comes with age is understanding how to manage that. Many of the people I know that have taken their lives have been young. They feel trapped or cornered. There is no way out. It is like, “I'm on this hamster wheel, and nothing is changing.” You mentioned your awesome analogy of building those bricks. Sometimes you need to build another brick, or build a window would be a better analogy so you can see. You can look at it from a different perspective. Talk to somebody and get somebody else's perspective. One thing we are getting out of this show is you can genuinely read somebody else’s perspective. We read yours, and that is important.
For some reason, I didn't mention it, but one of my other needs is sharing perspective. Sharing perspective is how we collectively grow closer together. I may have my cell phone here. You can see the back of the cell phone, and I can see the front of the cell phone. We know conceptually that this concept of cell phones exists. If it was stationary and couldn't move, I can tell you what the front looks like, and you tell me what the back looks like. Maybe someone will tell me what this corner edge feels like. This is how we collectively rotate this motherfucker to understand what it is collectively.
Sharing perspectives is how we collectively grow closer together.
It is from experience. You are experiencing the backside of this cell phone. I'm experiencing the front side. Opinions, the way I see it, lack information. We oftentimes share opinions over perspectives. Perspective is important. I'm here to share my perspective because I want to know you. I want to know Bobby. I want to know what your story is. I desperately want to know where you want to go as a person.
What is important to you? That is awesome. Where are you going to create that authentic thing? That is powerful because I have lost a lot of friends and close people to suicide. It is sad. I can't speak about exactly where those people were, but I can potentially relate. A lot of it was coming from a place of fear for me.
Fear is our emotions, and fear is a gift. If we look at fear correctly, it is a gift, the fear of not having shelter led to skyscrapers. Fear of not having food led to agriculture. Fear can be used to create amazing things, but there is always the opposite and duality of everything. The duality or the opposite of fear is doubt. Doubt is what stops creation. The thing we fear more than anything else, at least from what it was for me, is not being loved. We have this innate fear of not being loved. It manifests and comes out in this feeling of not being worthy and not being good enough.
I'm here to tell people that it is hard for people to understand this sometimes, especially when people are suffering, but love exists inside you. You can tap into that shit whatever the fuck you want. You have to understand that it is there. You are good enough. We need to figure out where that story came from. Where did you learn the first time that you were told and believe that? It was probably when you were a kid. It was passed down from a parent or someone close to you that was passed down from their parents and passed down from theirs as generational bullshit. If we can understand that love comes within inside of us and we can tap into that shit whenever we want, we can start to see that there is love. Love is almost made up of everything now. This energy exists.
There is nothing like unconditional love. Nobody will show that to you more than your own children if you are a good parent. You can't explain that to somebody that doesn't have kids. You can't explain the feeling or know what unconditional love is without having a kid. I got three of them, and I can attest that all of them were the same exact feeling. As they grow older, it tends to go away.
I was talking about this with my wife because my oldest daughter had her birthday. I was texting her because we got back from Mexico. My wife and I went on vacation. I was reminiscing about when she was born. I was talking to my kid. I was telling her, “You taught me what it was to love.” I love my wife, don't get me wrong, but when you have a child, you are like, “What the fuck? How did I do this? I don't want to fuck this thing up so bad. I love it so much.”
I have worked for a lot of high-profile people and mainly rock stars and divas. I have gotten to know some of them personally. I'm not going to mention any names. Some of these people had everything you could imagine, but they had nobody to share it with. They honestly were not loved, and there is a huge void there. They were miserable people. Some of them tried to treat other people like shit. Some of them used drugs and alcohol to help mask that or cope with some of that. Some of them never stopped working.
There are many different rabbit holes that you can fall down. You are 100% spot on. In my perception, what I have perceived and seen some people go through is we get caught up in the material world a little bit with the latest iPhone or success. I want success with the show. I want success in my home life. It is taking a couple of steps back and looking at it perspective-wise, like, “What am I trying to achieve? Can I achieve it without doing a bunch of stupid bullshit along the way?”
For me, what happened after I saw some of this discovered shit is I started to realize, like, “I know what my needs and wants are. How am I going to live my best possible life? What is fucking truth?” Part of my curious nature is I try and identify or understand a specific word or meaning behind a term. It was like, “What does that all mean? What is true? What do I value as a person?” I got to this point where I was looking at these different things. I started to realize, “My life is comprised of many different realities.” Some people might say endless realities.
On the one hand, I'm a wildland firefighter and a hotshot. On the other hand, I'm a husband. In another reality, I'm a father, son, mountain biker, and snowboarder. These are all different sets of realities that exist. These realities are built on concepts. The concepts are great. We showed the phone. That is a conceptual word. They help us describe something and communicate or guide people to places. We have to understand that a concept doesn't define the truth of what something is.
If you go to a pine tree, that is a conceptual term we use, and look at it, that tree does not tell you what it is. It pumps in CO2 and pumps out oxygen. There are ants living in the bark. There are all these different layers. It is sucking water out of the ground. A human is a conceptual word, but the chemistry experiment, tell me what that is all the way down to the atoms.
When you look at it deeply like that, it is unbelievable.
When you look at it in those terms, you go, “Cool.” Our realities are built on concepts, but we understand that concepts aren't necessarily the truth and are fundamental. If I can create concepts, that means I can create endless realities. Let's understand we can create endless realities because we create concepts.
Our realities are built on concepts, but understand that concepts aren't necessarily truth.
Part of the problem I was having was living in all these different realities and trying to live in them separately with the same value system taught me when I became a firefighter, which was a duty, respect, and integrity. Duty, respect, and integrity didn't work well when I was playing with Legos on the floor with my children. It didn't work good when I was trying to have a good time on my mountain bike, smashing down a hill somewhere.
It is not to say they aren't values, but they weren't in the right order. I was compartmentalizing all these different realities and trying to be a son and a firefighter, a firefighter and trying not to be a dad, but that is bullshit. When I'm a firefighter, I'm still a son and a father. When I'm a father and son, I'm still a firefighter. I'm all of these things. I started asking myself, “If I am all of these things, how do I live amongst all of them at once? How could I do that?”
I developed a system of values that worked amongst them all the time. I never had to change my value system. My value system now is to value life above all else because it is not your life, and it is not my life. It is our life. Everything in it, the trees, the plants, and nature, are all a part of life. It is our responsibility and my responsibility to value that above me.
My second value is to be loved. It is the one thing we all want. The one thing we are all looking for is love. We all want more of it. At the end of the day, the only thing we all want is to be loved. What if I can be that thing? If I can be that thing and bring love into any situation, people will have an easier ability to communicate with me, feel accepted and be vulnerable so they can express their stories and authenticity. That is my thing.
The third value is to have a willingness to learn. Don't let my old programming become the only thing I adhere to constantly go back and like, “Does this serve me? Does this work? Does this make any sense?” Be open to perspective because someone's perspective might completely blow out what I thought I knew and make me a better person.
My last one is to live a life of servitude, which is creating a space for people to discover who they are. I want people to find out who they are so they can live the best quality life. It is not about me. It is about serving this life and others in the pursuit of their authenticity. I can do that as a firefighter, a husband, a father, a son, and as I'm smashing my mountain bike. I can do all those things with that value set. I can live amongst all of my realities at once now. I'm not compartmentalizing anything, and I can continue to create.
I know we just met, but you got a lot of shit figured out. I'm sure there is still a lot to learn, but you are on the right path. I agree with everything you are saying now. It makes perfect sense. I want to dive into what you are doing now. Tell me about the coaching, some of the journeys that you have been doing, what is happening there, and how you are helping some other people.
I have been honest about my participation in the use in illegal contexts with psychedelics. I have had a lot of great experiences with specific compounds of psilocybin and ayahuasca. For everything I discussed has been discussed, psychedelics have helped me achieve some of those insights. The way I look at them is key to a door to possibilities. You still have to walk through that door and learn something from the experience.
I have had a lot of success with it. Some other people have started to invest a lot more time into developing ways for first responders to participate in some of those activities so they can heal themselves or at least excavate some of the trauma and identify some of those stories. We have been doing that. We are in a bunch of iterations at the moment.
I and a couple of other people are partnering with a specific organization called Heal the Hero. They do great work. We are going to be holding retreats down in Mexico. We can do it legally and safely. There is an onboarding process and an integration process. You are working with legit people in a safe way. Everything is done safely and professionally. We do it legally. People understand that.
I work with Born of Ashes. Ashley Taylor is her name. She is a great person doing some alternative healing around the emotional mental release. It is a different type of therapy. It is great to work there with first responders. The same with Thomas Wurm of Mountain Mind Tricks. He also does some great stuff. He has been on the Anchor Point Podcast a few times.
I have been working with these three organizations quite a lot, trying to provide firefighters who are in positions like mine, where therapy and medication weren't working. Maybe there are other options out there for people. They are trying to get people to understand. It is unfolding into many different things, but at the end of the day, it is getting people to find that courage within themselves so they can make the right positive steps towards healing from whatever trauma they have, become an authentic person, and live a nice, successful, creative, and abundant life. I’m educating people and trying to get people closer to the land, and developing that relationship with the land again.
Nature is super healing.
We have wizzled it out of our lives in many ways. For a lot of people, that is their medicine. Maybe the medicine is being outside more. It is taking part in giving back to some indigenous cultures stuff in America and some places in Mexico and trying to pay it back to these people that are upholding a lot of these traditions that our society is forgetting about. That is what I'm doing in the background with the mental health stuff.
Is this open to anybody, or is it only first responders? Are you taking on veterans?
We started with first responders in the beginning, mainly wildland firefighters. We had some trickle-in people who were the general population and some other public servants. We realize it is a common thread. Everybody is suffering. It is not just first responders. The first responders might be filling the peripheral glass up faster because of the amount of things they are exposed to, but this is people's shit. It is open to people. Heal the Hero is not just about heroes. It is about normal individuals being the heroes of their life. That is what we are doing.
This is a crazy healing process to put yourself in an altered state. What advice do you have for people that potentially want to go down this path but are on the fence? What is the safest way to do this from your experience? It is not to go down to the 7-Eleven, meet the guy behind the dumpster and get some ayahuasca, and what you think ayahuasca is. We got to be careful here, especially if there are young people reading this. How do you start the process? Is there a vetting process? Is there any counseling that goes on before any of this happens? Can we dive into that a little bit?
A lot of times, we say psychedelics and the context around that is this taboo thing that we remember when we were in our high school years.
Our government still looks at it that way.
This word gets overused sometimes. I believe these are sacred things. They are powerful medicines that have been used by ancient people for thousands of years. They put people in a vulnerable state. It is important if you are looking to do something like this and if this is something that is calling to you, that you find the right people because there are plenty of stories out there of being in a psychedelic and a vulnerable state, and there are charlatans out there that will take advantage of you. We have to talk about those and have to be known.
The vetting process is extremely important, specifically around ayahuasca. You can't be on SSRIs, which are serotonin. It is an antidepressant. You need to make sure that we understand where your medication is. We have people that do these onboarding calls that we go through medical history and all of the things to make sure you are a right fit and you are prepared. It also comes down to where you are as a person.
If you have done no self-work at all with the therapist, excavating or opening up, you don't have the practice to come back to after ceremonies. We might need to take a slower approach where you work with Thomas, Mountain Mind Tricks, or Born of Ashes for a little bit, doing one-on-one therapy sessions to develop a practice to release as much trauma as possible before we put you in this incredibly powerful experience that you don't have the tools yet to process and deal with.
There is some science behind it. I have learned a ton from little life hacks that have helped me. It is simple stuff, and understanding how the human mind works and what chemicals that are naturally in your body can do to you or alter your own state, even from a feeling perspective, feeling good or happy. I urge anybody to go down that path first.
It is important to educate yourself. There are plenty of resources out there to learn. People are reaching out to me like, “I'm dealing with this. This is happening to me.” I can be that person if you want to talk. Let's talk. That is a sign of courage, putting down the thought for a minute and reaching out to somebody who is willing to listen. I have been there. It is okay to ask for help and share perspective if you want to. I'm willing to do that shit for people. It doesn't have to be psychedelics or anything. I do weekly runs. Run with me. Let's go on a run. Let's enjoy nature together.
There are plenty of ways to find the medicine. I don't want people to think psychedelics are the end all be all because it is from my perspective that we are the medicine when we can finally figure out what it is, excavate, understand ourselves, and get to a place. The goal is to understand you are the medicine. You have it all. You have everything you need to be successful. We want you to see that.
You're the medicine. You have it all. You have everything you need to be successful. You just need to see that.
If anybody is reading this and they want to get ahold of you specifically to start one of these journeys, what is the best way to contact you or one of these organizations that will help them?
If you go to HealTheHero.org, that is the more retreat stuff taking place. There is one going to be happening in June 2023. They have some stuff going on. They are beautiful. They may not do medicine with you. Maybe they do some one-on-one therapy-type stuff. You have BornOfAshes.org, MountainMindTricks.com, and SevenWaysToMedicine.com. Those are the four that I would recommend reaching out to if you are interested in some of the stuff. If you want to reach me, it is @BenStrahan on Instagram. That is the best way to do it.
The other thing I wanted to ask you before we jump off is if anybody is looking for a career in wildland firefighting, what is the best advice you can give to some young man or woman that wants to get into that career path?
I get asked this question all the time, and I never have the same answer or the best answer. What I look for in a person is someone who is actively working on themselves. I'm trying to develop good people. That doesn't mean you didn't bump your head on the road a few times in your life. We hire ex-inmates all the time. We hire females and all kinds of people. Be a good person. Take your fucking physical fitness seriously because the more fit you are, the easier the job is, and the safer you can do it. I take physical fitness seriously.
Show that you want to be here. That level of character is missing. I don't want to sound like an asshole, but I'm seeing less people that want to be here and more people that feel like they deserve it, the entitlement type stuff. If you want to be a hotshot, work for the foresters, or be a firefighter, want to be there. Do what it takes to be there. Put the work in. Come say hi. Give us a call, but show that you want it. Work on yourself, develop strong physical fitness, and want it.
We live in a mountain community. We have a lot of people reading that are learning through us how to be good stewards of the land. I ask a lot of questions I already know the answer to a lot of the time. I'm not saying that I know everything, but I grew up in the mountains, twelve generations deep of good stewards and good mentors in the outdoor space, whether it is hunting, fishing, or having a campfire the proper way. What can we do to help mitigate some fires?
If you are living in the woods, take care of the space you are in. If you are a homeowner and you are living in a rural area in the wood, take your clearance seriously and do what you can. If you are going camping, you live in the city, and you are going into the rural area, understand when you have a fire in a remote place that, if that escapes and causes a fire, the amount of destruction it can cause is serious. Be responsible while you're there.
If you’re from the city and you're going camping in a rural area, understand that when you have a fire in a remote place, if that fire escapes and causes a fire, the amount of destruction that it can cause is serious. So be responsible while you're there.
Pay attention to the fire, especially in September. It is the height of our fire season in Colorado and around the country. It is also the start of the hunting season. I don't know how many times I have been out where there are people dispersed camping and pulling into camp. Some of them are out of state. There is a full-on fire ban, but they are not paying any attention to it. They are having a campfire.
We talked about educating yourself. Be a good steward of the land. If you are going to be in the woods, educate yourself on where you are going, what you're doing, and the fire danger. Don't be a person taking from the wood pile and not putting wood back. Be someone in there who is putting wood back. Being a steward of the land is giving back to the land. It is not taking from it. Those would be my big things.
Ben, this has been awesome. We are going to go ahead and wrap it up. I want to continue this. I can't wait to get you out to Colorado. I will come to you. Please be safe during this fire season. Stay in touch with me. You are starting a podcast. Can we talk about that for a minute? Is it up and running? What is the premise? What is going on there?
I deboxed the equipment now. It is not up and running yet. The fire season is about to crack off. Our crew comes on at the end of May 2023. I have limited time to get episodes out there. It will be clunky in the beginning. It will be some downtime. It was 100% crowdsourced. The people donated money so I could do it because people kept telling me to do this. I’m appreciative.
The premise of it is storytelling, like what we are doing. I want to find interesting people out there doing badass shit that nobody fucking knows about and get their word out because there are incredible people doing incredible things nobody knows about. They are silently doing what is awesome in this world. I want these people to have space to share their stories.
That is what we are doing here and what this has turned into. I am fortunate from what I have learned from it. You are going to crush it. I enjoyed listening to and talking with you. I'm happy for you. Anything that we can do to support you here, it is an open door. More than anything, as podcasters and up-and-coming podcasters, we are a community. Don't be afraid to help somebody else out. I'm an open book. I’m always open to anything that I got going on or what has helped me. I am no professional by any means. I have made a lot of mistakes along the way. I would be glad to at least share those with what not to do.
Ben, I value your family's time. Keep crushing it. Let's stay in touch. Let me know whenever, podcast or not, you got an open line to me. One last thing before we jump off, Instagram or any websites you want to plug in. Check out some of these amazing foundations and retreats that are available. Anything you want to drop? There is no rush.
If you want to see what I'm doing social media-wise, @BenStrahan on Instagram is the best way to see what I'm up to. I’m constantly fucking around doing things and speaking philosophically if you like that shit too. If you want consulting work from a self-leadership perspective, Moment Consulting LLC is my consulting company. I do a lot of public speaking in that space, telling my story.
If you are into the mental health game, the practitioners I'm working with are HealTheHeroes.org, Seven Ways to Medicine, Mountain Mind Tricks, and Born of Ashes. Those four that I mentioned are the people crushing it, helping a lot of people out. If you want to support fire and the movement for pay, classification, and all the stuff we talked about early in the show, the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters are the people. They are doing amazing work.
Shout out to the Anchor Point. Check that podcast out if you haven't already, especially if you want to get into wildland firefighting or if you want to know anything about it. You are an incredible human, even if you are not into any of that shit. Listen to Brandon. He is awesome. I love that guy. Thank you. I appreciate it. We will catch up soon. You are welcome here anytime.
—
Thanks for reading. If you haven't had a chance to do this already, please take a moment, follow, like, subscribe, or rate on whatever platform you catch the show. If you like some more information on upcoming episodes, safety tips, access to all of our affiliates, and all the badass discounts we get here at the show, check out TheMountainsidePodcast.com.