#140 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 in studio to discuss life lessons, mental health psilocybin, wildland fires, Native American culture, wildland firefighting, hot shots, smoke jumpers, 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.7waystomedicine.com www.healtheheros.org www.mountainmindtricks.com www.bornofashes.org www.grassrootswildlandfirefighters.com
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Ben Strahan - Wildland Firefighter
In this episode, joining us in the studio is my good friend, Ben Strahan. He’s a Federal Hotshot Superintendent, running one of the most elite Hotshot Wildland Firefighting crews in the country. It was a privilege and honor to have him here in the studio. He traveled all the way from Northern California to hang out with us. This is our longest episode to date. We had a great conversation. We did a deep dive on so many things. There’s a lot to unpack in this episode. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Thank you so much for being here, Ben. Welcome to Colorado. You made a long-ass trip and rolled into town.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
The last episode we did, we recorded virtually. I have to apologize to you because there were some technical difficulties that happened during our episode. We were having some great conversations and then we had to divert because you forget where to pick up or where you left off a little bit. I'm so stoked that you're here in person. I try not to even record virtually anymore. That little bit of connection is missing. Let me tell you this too. You are one of the most interesting people out of 140 episodes that I've talked to and I couldn't wait to talk to you again.
I appreciate that.
During that episode, you genuinely helped me out as a person with like, “God, am I looking at life the right way?” You opened my eyes to some thought processes that I didn't have in my brain at that point and I'm stoked to have you here.
Thank you for those compliments. I agree. The show world is super interesting in general to me. It's this shared perspective between individuals. Maybe I said it the last time we were talking. How we collectively grow closer together as humans is by sharing our perspectives, staying away from opinions as much as possible, and telling our stories. You get that in the virtual world for sure but then there are those bumps. I didn't even notice them but it's all good.
It's weird because you get these blinders. I feel like you get a higher cognitive function when you put on the headphones. Maybe it's the JOCKO GO. I don’t like the advertisement either but I'm addicted to those. It’s the culmination of both. For a guy who doesn't have a very high IQ, this enhances it. It’s that little bit of, “You're going to be held accountable for what you say because you don't know who's listening to it.”
Sometimes that's gone out the window with me because I forget that we're even recording it. I know that we're recording it but in the back of my mind, I get so involved in the conversations or the people that I have in here but it's a very selfish thing for me. I only bring in people that I genuinely want to talk to because I've done the other side of that and it's rough. There's this uneasy tension.
I like what you said right there about the accountability piece. When I do public speaking, it's one of those things. Within my being that I'm trying to constantly maintain is speaking truthfully always, especially as a man. You are not lying and not even beating around the bush but being direct. Maybe somewhat sometimes softly direct but the spaces if done correctly give you the ability to express yourself from an authentic place. A new person is way better. Being able to feel each other's energy and allowing that to shape whatever this is going to turn into is beautiful in my opinion.
On the accountability side, first-hand it's helped me. I've mentioned something publicly that I'm going to do so I have to go do it where I could come up with an excuse or something like that. That's been one aspect. The thing that lingers the most in the back of my mind is I've had a career in live entertainment.
When you have that career, there are all these film crews, especially those who are filming documentaries and stuff. They want you to sign these NDAs and be a part of it. Maybe they'll even pay you a little bit extra or whatever to be in it. They want to do the behind-the-scenes footage and all that stuff. I always veered away from it. I was like, “I always want to be the guy in the shadows. I don't want people knowing who I am when I get off the plane.”
Why?
It’s because they took it out of context. They made the guys and the crew that I work with, the guys that work their asses off for 20 hours a day whether they're in high steel at 110 feet in a rig pulling up chain hoists or unloading or loading trucks at 2:00 in the morning in the cold in the middle of Europe. At 3:00 in the morning in Germany or something is brutal. The guys are getting frostbite. There's some suffering that goes along with it.
I'm not saying that it's this horrible career. Everybody loves their job and that's why they're there but those film crews would turn around and make it depict like you're a bunch of jackasses fucking off. They would take the little chirping back and forth or the camaraderie that we have of us giving each other shit because that is funny. From an outsider's perspective, that's the best.
They would take that a lot of context and then every one of these DVDs was like, “Look at these idiots that work backstage.” That's how I felt. They didn't depict what we did or the sweat dripping off your brow or anything like that. I always stayed away from that for the sheer fact that I thought at some point, this is my timestamp in the perceived now or you could call it the future even. After I'm dead, 6 feet underground, and buried, people are going to go back and be able to see some of this. I want that to be portrayed in the right way.
When I started the show, I went to my immediate family first. I was like, “This might come with some implications because I'm going to be truthful. I want you guys as a blessing. This might put you guys in some situation because if I'm going to do this, I want it to be 100% truthful with all the cards on the table. I'm going to cry when I want to cry. I’m going to laugh when I want to laugh. I'm going to tell you my opinion.” That's what's going on in the back of my mind. I hope at some point when my kids do miss me or something, these things will still be around that they can go back and listen to or something.
It’s like a legacy of some sort.
I feel like the conversations that I even have here are the conversations you can't have with a child at some point.
An interesting thing too is we want people to know who we are at a soul level versus the superficial things that we are up to and/or dealing with in our lives but knowing us. This is a great opportunity for this platform. It is a good opportunity for you to share your interests with people and what you're into, your vulnerabilities, and all that shit that makes you a better individual but it also gives people a glimpse into the actual person you are. That's what we're all searching for. No one wants to be hiding behind our jobs and identifying with our jobs.
You talked about that last time and that hit hard home because there are so many people that do this like, “I'm an electrician.”
You could even take that on a deeper level. You can look at your family dynamic and see whether or not they are identifying with you. Even from the healing work I do in the background, it's also about encouraging people to make sure that they're not just identifying with a job necessarily but whatever partners they have, even your kids, or whatever it is. You are trying to give them the opportunity to figure out exactly what they want in life so they can express themselves the way they want to.
I couldn't agree more with you. Another thing that we talked about the last time that hit home and it was something that I knew in the back of my mind but you drove it home was the neuroplasticity of a child and how long they have it and then into their teenage years. You hit me hard that whole episode. I urge everybody to go back and read it. I believe it's episode 124. We did a deep dive on a lot of different shit and it was epic. I don't want my kids to identify with anything. I want them to be themselves and follow their drive.
Are there certain things that I've influenced them in? One hundred percent. My son likes to fly fish because I like to fly fish. He likes to shoot archery because I like to shoot archery but he's also got his things. I taught him how to play chess and all of a sudden, we're going to chess tournaments. I'm going to say this publicly. It is one of the worst things as a father because I do not fit in with any of these people.
I can't beat my kid at chess. All these people want to have intellectual conversations and it's hard. They're on a very different level than me. These are all computer programmers or code writers. I tell them what I do. I have a show full-time. I do rock and roll shows. That opens a whole other can of worms.
I know you know this probably already but who gives a fuck? At the end of the day, if you're authentically expressing yourself the way you want to, no one can touch you.
However, it's weird. It's like a status thing. If you're the country club or something, people are like, “What do you do for a living?” That's their first question. “What can I get out of you?” It's weird. It's a sneaky and creepy kind of feeling.
However, they're asking you, “What do you identify with?” We're sitting there. This is a cool experiment. It's one of my favorite experiments, being in an environment. I'm a wildland firefighter. I'm a Hotshot Superintendent. I don't think a lot of people would deem us the most intelligent people on the planet. A lot of times, we label ourselves. We’re like, “I'm a dumb firefighter.” First off, fuck that. I know more about things than just that but a great experiment is going into an environment like that and observing what's going on.
A lot of times, we label ourselves like, “I'm just a dumb firefighter.” There are actually more things about you than just that.
Even an individual asking, “What do you do for a living,” they're interested in what you're identifying with because they want to compare their value to you. They're going to be looking at, “I'm a CEO. You're just a podcaster.” At the end of the day, we can break that down further. It is asking a simple question like, “Is this individual even expressing his authenticity or is he identifying again with something that's not going to last forever?”
I'm not saying all of them are like that but a majority of them are that. It’s like keeping up with the Joneses mentality and it's a very competitive thing. They want to know what your son does. However, he’s on the defensive end. He's got that mentality in peewee football and stuff. You have to have that mentality to destroy everything.
It is an interesting world to mold your kids. Some parents are so strict like, “You have to do this because I did this.” I'm very lucky that I got a good partner. We've taken a different approach and chased whatever they wanted to do. It’s like, “Do you want to be a chess state champion? We got to go these tournaments.”
What's that like? How fast did he pick that up?
The pandemic was a major driving force of that. This kid went to jiu-jitsu. He wrestled in the winter and played soccer like crazy. He was into football but didn't play until post-pandemic.
Is he big like you?
He's slender. He's more athletic than I’ve ever been.
Is he tall and big like you?
He'll be tall. The pandemic came along and it wrecked everything. We were sitting around at Christmas. We had been playing checkers and I was like, “If you want to take this to the next level,” because he's a super-intelligent kid. I was like, “This is chess. This is all about strategy. There's no luck in this. It's you versus somebody else. There's no good luck.” This is a war game.
You are planning what's the next move.
He dove full in. There was a little bit of The Queen's Gambit that came along and we're transparent about letting our kids watch. I'm not going to let him watch John Wick. I've never even seen that. I'm not into movies all that much. My brain doesn't shut off. I'd rather be in here doing this or something creatively, or being outside. I don't take in a lot of movies but The Queen's Gambit was a catalyst to it. He went down a rabbit hole in all these movies.
Movies have influenced me as a kid. That's why I was a roadie. There's Metallica and Roadhouse. I wanted to be a bouncer. Patrick Swayze was a pretty badass motherfucker. He deep dove into that. There was a ton of opportunity during the pandemic because a lot of the classes that he took and stuff were online. He started excelling to where he's gone way beyond.
Does he still do jiu-jitsu?
No.
I hear people compare chess and jiu-jitsu a lot. It’s like the moves, the strategy, planning ahead, and anticipating. I’m curious about that.
It applies anywhere. He's super into football. I feel like he knows the playbook better than anybody on his team to the point he never leaves the field. He plays defense. He's the kicker and backup quarterback. I attribute a lot of that to chess. That’s strategic thinking because if you think about it, football is a chess game on the field. It's a bit more physical but it's all about placement, strategy, and being in the right spot at the right time to cause a fumble, intercept the ball, or catch a football. Maybe I'm going way too deep with it.
I agree with the kid stuff though because what you're saying is giving your kid the opportunity to figure out who he is. That's what we were talking about. I have two daughters. As a parent, we're guiding and telling them to do this or that in a lot of ways when they're young. For me, I feel like we're probably pretty similar in this regard of trying to get your kid into everything to see what they're into so we can guide or support them in trying to define who they are or explore something interesting to them. With my older daughter, where I'm at with it, there was so much tension between my wife and me about this. We're getting to a point as parents where telling her what to do doesn't work when you're a teenager.
Try to get your kid into everything to see what they're into so that we can guide them or support them in trying to define who they are or explore something interesting to them.
At some point, you got to cut all that and correct them when they'd done something wrong.
You have to get good at explaining and defining boundaries with your teenager or anybody. It’s if they're in an intimate relationship with you or any kind of relationship like, “Here are my boundaries.” We had to tell her, “Here are the boundaries. You can operate as you wish within these boundaries. Just let us know what you're doing.” All she wants is freedom.
When you're 15 or 16 years old, you want freedom. You're tired of being told what to do. When I was her age, I grew up in a very Catholic household so there were rules like, “This is what you're doing,” and a lot of telling what to do. I became super resistant to that to the point where someone telling me what to do was a trigger. I'm like, “You're telling me I can't do this? Watch me.”
My dynamic is all fucked up. I had a crazy childhood to the point where at 8, 9, or 10 years old, I was expected to be a man. I was the man of the household with a single mom. There were some douchebags that came in and out of her life and our life. That was a weird dynamic because I've always been the oldest in my immediate family. I was always that male role model at that point. I had to tone that down a little bit as a parent because it was very much like, “Do this and that. This is where you're going.” From a very young age, that's been ingrained in me for years.
What was it like? You said six is when you're on your own as far as your mom is gone.
My father and I don't have a relationship because he's never been around for any part of my life. It was just me and my mom. She married the exact opposite of what my father was which was not a good individual or human straight up. I have no quarries with that. I can publicly say that. I'm sure that there was a good side to him but he never showed my mother or me that side at all. There was no relationship there.
My mother married the exact opposite, a super hyper-religious person. I was still pretty young at that point, like 5 or 6 years old, somewhere in there. I guess it was good from what I understand for a while and then something happened mentally to where he was super abusive to me. Never sexually but would full-on punch you like a man. He was a smaller guy of stature and it was weird. In public, he was the nicest guy in the world to everybody.
I vividly remember him at one point beating my mother and reading the Bible to her. He was a sick individual. Me interjecting as a kid, I don't even know how old I was. Maybe I was seven years old trying to pull him off and then getting my ass kicked trying to help my mom. I was going to get my ass kicked. It was a messed-up thing. Luckily, my mother broke that relationship but I have two siblings from that marriage. I love them to death. He was out of the picture because of what he did. You can't have somebody like that around. My mother is a super strong person.
The sense of abandonment in those issues too is pretty interesting. A lot of us feel that weird abandonment feels. You felt it twice.
I felt it more than that. It's crazy. It happened the third time too. I have another sibling. There were four of us.
How old were you in this next one?
I was a teenager, thank God because I saved my mother's life. It's an even worse story. My poor mom is going to hate me for this. The third marriage was a few years later. She married a drummer of a rock band. He was a nice guy. He was sober and fell off the wagon. He came home one night and was holding her at knifepoint. I don't know if it was alcohol or what the hell he was on but I had to interject there too. I wake up at 2:00 in the morning again. I was like, “What is going on?” Luckily, I was old and strong enough at that point that I got the better part of a grown man.
Have you talked to her about this?
Yes, a lot.
What's her take on all that?
There was a ton of guilt on her part. She was like, “I’m sorry I put you guys in this situation.” If you ever met her, she's the most loving person in the world. The guilt was heavy. I went down a bad path too as a teenager and stuff because I had to be the protector. I would go to work before I went to high school at 5:00 in the morning at a ranch here and feed bison, which was super awesome. I had so many epic experiences with these animals and being out there.
However, I would get out of school. If it wasn't football season, I would go straight to work to the point that my teachers knew what was going on. We live in a ranch community so there's this elective program that if you need extra money, you can leave school early and we will give you electives to go work and get money. I had a part-time job. I would go to school until noon and at lunch, I would leave. I would go drill holes in a rock, which was one of the best jobs. My grandfather worked in a road construction company.
Are they in the area too?
Yes. We built a ton of the subdivision roads into the subdivisions here. It's in the Rocky Mountains so you can't just cut a road in. He would set me up with an air-compressed drill. It's like a jackhammer. You have different sizes of steel. He would mark them with spray paint or something and it would be 60 holes. I got out of high school. I would drill these 60 holes and rocks. It was a mindless job that you had to pay attention to. I was in great shape. It’s this physical ass work.
How old were you then?
I was probably fifteen. I got my license early because of that too. They gave me a company truck and as long as I was in the company truck and going to work or driving on the ranch, I could have the license. It was at fourteen or something that you could get that license but I got it at fifteen. I had that freedom.
I was also earning and being able to help provide which made me feel good but the best part of that job is all the shit that we drilled that day, we got to blow up with a dynamite. To the point, my grandfather got on me a couple of times because he would have me help load so we would be punching holes and dynamite, putting the primer in, and dropping it in the hole. He knew the blast sequence. He was an ex-firefighter. He did this part-time later on after his retirement.
Is he still around?
Yeah. He became a grandfather when he was 40. He's been around the better part of me. He's been the best influence in my life as a father figure. Even though I was lacking that, my uncle's, his sons, my mom's brother, they're the best people in the world.
I can relate to that a little bit. My parents are still together. My dad's always been in the picture but when I was growing up, we were broke-ass poor. My dad was working two jobs all the time. My mom had me when she was maybe 19 or 20. I can't remember.
My mom was eighteen. My grandparents had my mom when they were seventeen or something, which is crazy.
It’s the old times.
There's nothing else to do but they’re still married and together. That's the crazy part. My mom’s loyalty is different.
However, there is also an issue with that too. Growing up, my dad's two years older than my mom. He has no career. He's hitting all these jobs to put food on the table. Growing up, I didn't ever see my dad ever because he was always working. He was digging ditches for a utility district and bartending at night to put food on the table. He was hustling hard. I resented that for a long time because I never built a childhood relationship with him. I remember him coming home every once in a while. We're already eating dinner. He would come show up for a long time but my grandfather was there. My grandfather was the best man at my wedding. That's how close we are.
Mine too. That’s wild. I don't know anybody else who's done that. One of my buddies did it. His dad was his best man. It’s so awesome.
You are the only two dudes I've ever met to do that.
I told my grandfather, “You're planning the bachelor party.” He's like, “What?” I was like, “You better get some strippers.” He was like, “Let's go.” He was wild when he was younger. I was talking to some of his firefighter buddies that I've met throughout the years. There's a whole side of him that I don't know and I wish I had some recordings like this. That was in the back of my mind too.
How old is he?
He was born in 1940. I was born in ‘80s. We have a 40-year gap. This guy means so much to me.
My grandfather was the best man at my wedding. He was talking about jobs in high school. My parents are broke. My grandfather's like, “Let's start a business together.” I'm a freshman in high school. I’m like, “Let's do it.” He had a handyman business called Ben and Ted's Grand Works. We live in a small town. We’d go around and fix sidings, repair decks like plumbing and electrical, and build retaining walls. We build a shit ton of horse fences. It was the dopest experience growing up because I learned. I look back at that and I'm like, “I learned work ethic, how to prioritize my time, how to save and use my money appropriately.” I bonded with somebody. It was endless shit-talking all the time to each other. It was the most awesome experience ever.
That's why I have the work ethic that I do. My grandfather's philosophy was, “You work your ass off. You drill these 60 holes, and let's take a 30-minute break. Let’s sit down and show for a minute,” or whatever it was. He was a stand-up guy, the perfect role model for somebody like me. I wish I would have followed a little bit more of it.
I wouldn't trade anything in my life, my learning experiences at all, or the way I grew up. Even that horrible story that I talked about my mother imprinted something in my mind to be a protector and be a good individual. It can go both ways because most people who are abused end up becoming abusers at some point.
I don't know either but what I'm seeing in your situation is you have a good relationship with your mom as the person who's trying to protect her, which in itself seems like inspired you to grow up very quickly, which can suck sometimes.
It was hard on her too. I was the man and that was weird.
How did I go? Did she respect that stuff sometimes or was she like, “Bobby?”
There were times when I was out of line. It was a learning curve but I was always looking out for fear. I felt like, “I got to protect this.”
“If I lose my mom, then what?” How's your relationship with her now?
It's great. With my siblings, it’s great. Even though they're my half-brothers and sisters, they’re the best people in the world. We've been through all that together. I don't think we'd be as close of a family if we hadn't gone through it. I'm big on this. Going through adversity makes you a stronger person whether it's climbing in an ice bath. To bring it back full circle, all those experiences molded me into a person, good and bad.
Going through adversity makes you a stronger person.
I became such a protector that this hindered me later in life in a court case when I was over eighteen because of protecting a girlfriend who was in a bad situation that she put herself in. These guys that tried to rape her were in the wrong but I felt like I had to take care of it. It was like vigilante justice does not work according to the law and I had to learn that the hard way.
It took me being summoned to anger management classes, which I was sitting in a room with ten individuals that I despise. The people that at this point in my life, I would have no problem beating to a pulp or killing. These guys all beat their wives and had reasoning behind it. They were all sitting in this class. You would go around the circle and tell your story. They would get to me and I was seething.
I walked out of the first two classes and luckily the guy who was running it saw what I'd been through. He's like, “We need to get through what your issues are and why you're in here.” I was like, “There's no reason for me to be in here. I'm the exact opposite of all these people.” It was court-ordered so I'd never would have stayed or sat through that.
Are you glad that you did?
One hundred percent. It was because I had no idea that I was a protector until he brought it to light. He's like, “This is how your past has influenced you.” It made me realize too. I have a bad problem with where I genuinely want to help anybody and everybody. I want to make them better people, help the homeless guy in the corner, help somebody who's on the side of the road who needs to change a tire or help a woman who’s in an abusive relationship even if I don't have anything.
What's the reason why?
Growing up and having that as something that was always in the back of my mind, I had to solve this problem. With my immediate family, it's a natural motor skill. It's a muscle memory type of thing to where I still get it but there are times when you shouldn't interject in somebody else's business.
It’s as if they don't want to be helped. That’s one of the hardest things that I've ever had to learn and still struggle sometimes to be quite honest with you. Especially as you evolve as a person and you have people around you that you love, you want them to evolve with you. However, if they're not ready to do that, you have to be patient.
As you evolve as a person and you have people around you that you love, you want them to evolve with you. If they're not ready to do that, you just have to be patient.
You have to embrace who you are as a person and allow yourself to maintain this being that allows them to be in the present. My definition is servitude is creating an environment based on who you are as a person that allows people to enter an experience that gives them the ability to find their authenticity or healing, not me healing you. I don't want to heal you. That's not my job. My job is to create an environment that allows you to discover that for yourself.
As you grow, transition, and become whatever it is that you're trying to become, sometimes people have a hard time seeing that. It's hard for them to follow that path. At times, with all the coaching that I've done and all the stuff, someone hires you to do something and you're like, “I'm going to give you this eight-week physical fitness nutrition plan so that you can fit in your bathing suit when you go on vacation,” they do that. They meet their goals. They go on their vacation. “Call me when you're back. Let's start where we picked up.” They don't call you and you see their Instagram photos a year later and they're right back to where they were. You're like, “I'm not in it for that.”
I see how it's easy to slip into that too but if you're trying to help somebody, the last thing you want to see is for them to fail. “I guess I didn't help them.”
I try and define the conceptual meaning behind the term or the word of whatever it is. The word help for me has always had this behind-the-scenes self-gratification. I’m like, “I'm here to help you but I'm here to feel better about myself.” We say that a lot of times. Helping others helps make you feel better. If we're saying that, then are we trying to help somebody or are we trying to make ourselves feel better? I try to stay away from helping and embody serving. I'm here to serve you in a way.
What I'm gathering from it or my perception of that, I want to make sure I'm on the same page as you, are, “Here's what I'm available to offer. You take from it what you will. Here's the toolkit or some things to sharpen your tools or some other tools.” You take what you want but it's not like you expect something in return.
I expect nothing in return even though it is important to understand the energy exchange between individuals. Otherwise, you can be involved in a relationship with somebody where they take.
That is one of my biggest downfalls.
If you are in a helping paradigm, you're willing to give and it's hard to walk that line or recognize that line between taking and giving because as a giver, you're not going to recognize it maybe soon enough where they're taking and taking and maybe they don't have the mental awareness of the fact that they're even taking but they're trying to relieve stress or pain or whatever it is they’re feeling. As much as possible, they're thinking about themselves a lot. Since you're a giver and helper, you're giving and giving.
It's taken me a long time to realize that. I was going through some horrible relationships and stuff like that to where it’s like, “Do you want this shirt? Here it is.” I'm that sort of person. I was a people pleaser. To bring it back even a little bit more beyond that, I had such success in my career in rock and roll touring background.
Every day, you have to solve problems and it's very strategic. There are high-profile people involved. Every venue that you go into is different, whether it's meeting fire codes to where the dressing rooms are located from the stage and all that sort of stuff. You're constantly dealing with different people on a daily basis like managers of a building or local stagehands. You’re problem-solving. It feels good to problem-solve. You do it instantaneously.
You have to do it on the fly or the show doesn't happen. Problem-solving as fast as you can as a roadie, that's beat into it. A lot of guys go home from the road and start doing that at home. “I'm going to problem-solve the stove and why these mixing bowls are out of order.” It's OCD. I have it. My wife used to get on me because we had toddlers at one point and there were toys everywhere. There were dog toys and shit. I would be holding the kid and kicking the shit out of the way with my feet.
She's like, “Why are you kicking stuff?” I was like, “I was so used to walking across the arena floor and if there are shackles or something that somebody's going to trip on, you don't even take the time to bend over and pick them up. You politely move them out of your way with your feet.” It's those little things like that. She's like, “You're taking my anxiety in my life.”
It’s super similar and very comparable to the fire world. Wildland firefighting is what I do for a profession. Our tours are 2 weeks and then we come back for 3 days off. We rinse and repeat. Back in the day, it was only 2 days off and we would do 21 days often. That doesn't happen so much anymore but regardless. When I was a younger man, the transition between that and the home aspect of my life was so drastic. You miss them. You haven't seen them for a long time.
You're gone for two weeks. You're physically or emotionally exhausted sometimes but your job as a wildland firefighter is to solve problems and mitigate risk. As a Hotshot, we do that to the nth degree. That's what we're there to do. I'd come home and it's the same thing. The shit has not picked up. The kitchen is not clean. There's an issue between my wife at the time and then the kid. They're arguing about homework. I'm seeing like, “Solutions and solutions. If we do this, we do that.”
Everything will be dialed in half an hour. Meanwhile, you don't realize that you're coming in and fucking up the flow that they have because you haven't been around for three weeks.
You're then wondering, “Why are we always fighting when I come home? All I want to do is see and spend time with you but we spend 2 to 3 days fighting the whole time.” It took me the realization eventually. I had to be like, “They got their shit going on.” When I come home, I will say, “What can I do to help you?” It's that simple. “I need you to take the kids here and do that.” There's also an expectation from potentially them because you come home and they're thinking, “I got the help, finally,” but all you're doing is fuck or getting a breath. Desperately, all I want to do is relax and not do shit, maybe go on a hike or something.
You want to do something fun.
“Drop everything you’re doing, family. Let's go do something fun.” They're like, “We can't because we have this going on like this kid's sport or school.”
That was an issue too because my wife at one point, and I hope she's okay with me sharing this but I'm going to share it, was like, “You're making me out to be the bad parent because I'm the one that has to enforce all the rules and everything. You come home and you're like, ‘We're going to Chuck E. Cheese or whatever it was.” You are like, “Let's go hike.” You miss them so much when you're gone. It's almost like you're trying to make up for the lost time.
That is exactly my point. We finally had gotten to a point in our relationship where I'd come home and I'm going to be like, “I know you have a routine, plans, and things going on. What can I do to help you, first off?” We may not be able to go to Chuck E. Cheese but picking them up from school is a big help and that feels good too.
It’s the same with her. She should say, “What do you want to do?” She would also come back at me like, “Why don't you just rest?” I want to rest but I want to be integrated back into the family more than resting. We will have a conversation about that. Maybe it's like, “We got a little bit of time. Do you want to go get some dinner?” “Let's go get some dinner.” It's not Chuck E. Cheese stuff but it's better.
That was a bad example because I hate Chuck E. Cheese.
I see what you're saying. It could be anything. You could go mountain biking with your kids. “Let's go camping.” For me, it became more about not disrupting as much shit as possible and reintegrating into whatever they had going on. She is a single mom for 6 to 8 months out of the year. That's fucked up. For me to come in there and pretend like anything is different, I got to be there and integrate with the family and whatever they need. The kids also are working. They are hustling playing sports and I'm like, “Let's go do this now.” They are like, “I have this only day off to relax. I wanted to binge out on TV.” You may have dessert that. Why do we have to plan your life for me?
I feel you 100%. A few years ago, I quit touring. I was gone 285 to 300 days a year. You get on a world tour with a diva or something like that, they don't stop. It's not like you leave a backpack because you never know. Even on your day off, especially if you're a stage manager, it's like, “We got Jimmy Kimmel. You got to fly to LA.” You have to get there before the band does.
That's an interesting place to be too because one of the things that I struggle with is the sense of loneliness. You have somebody in your life that you know you have like a wife, significant other, partner, or however you want to say it but you're gone so much that you don't really have them. You get this feeling that you're doing this life by yourself. That's a tricky place to navigate.
In that industry, marriage doesn't last. Another reason I quit is I could be that miserable. I've seen so many miserable old guys on the back of the tour bus signing divorce papers or pissed off that their kids are off doing whatever. They can't do that. We're in Abu Dhabi or somewhere in a hotel lobby or the back of the tour bus going down the road at 3:00 AM drinking instead of sleeping.
People have this misconception with that lifestyle too that everything is Coke, tits, Jack Daniels bottles, and Marlboro Reds. It’s this total debauchery and that's not the case at all. Transitioning out of touring, I still was doing major sporting events like Super Bowl halftime or something like that. Those would be six weeks. You start right after Christmas. There's the whole fabrication time and the rehearsal time.
You're there well before you even know what teams are going to the Super Bowl. That's how I was able to pay the bills over the years. I've slowly been able to transition out of that more and more so I can be around more. The value of being around as a parent is crucial, especially in those early years. Being there is very different than talking. It's like you sitting across from me as opposed to us being on Riverside to record that episode. I’m like, “Riverside's great. There's no internet lag,” but it's different when you're there especially when you have young kids.
I relate to this deeply where I'm at in my career with the fire service. I've been doing fire for many years. It's a long time. I started two days after graduating high school and have not stopped. I've missed every summer for many years or six months every year. It's challenging for me like what you're talking about. I am at a place for sure where my value is time with the people I love. I want to spend more time with these people badly. I'm doing a high-risk job for sure. Even though I pride myself on mitigating risk to the highest degree and that's what my position is about, there's still that lingering feeling all the time.
I'm in a place where my value is time spent with the people I love.
You're going into a wildfire.
That's not like I'm sitting there afraid like, “This is going to happen.” I don't put my mind in that area. I still operate at the highest level but at the end of the day, it's the value of spending that much time away and realizing that they're going to be in college soon. It's going to be a lot harder to see them. I even talked to an old superintendent a few years ago. He ran another Hotshot crew close to where we're at. He had retired and his son was working underneath me when I was on a different Hotshot crew.
I had asked him at his son's wedding. I said, “Rick, how is retirement going? How did all that stuff go? How are you feeling? What's something that you weren't expecting?” I can't remember any details. I’m paraphrasing but I do remember what he said. He said, “It's hard because when I retired, I thought that I was going to all of a sudden have this time with my son and my daughter. I realized that they were adults. They have their lives.” It sent him into depression.
He probably wouldn't say that because he's a super manly man but that's what happened. I'm like, “Holy shit.” First off, what a great story for me to understand. The time that I do have with him is so valuable and I have to see that. If I don't see that, I'm missing out. It's not about me. It's about being in their presence and being together as much as possible.
Bringing it back to your grandfather and my grandfather full circle, the reason why I got that job opportunity with him was it wasn't because I was the most qualified. That's for damn sure or because I did the best job, believing I screwed up or I was the most reliable or I showed up at work at noon. There was an underlying thing. There was like, “I need to lead by example.” He very rarely mandated anything. It was like you were saying. “Here are the parameters. You need to operate within those.”
Leading by example, you probably know more about leadership than a lot of people in their careers. What I found is the guys that have post-military careers or even military and then fire and government agencies, from a leadership standpoint, are one of the biggest assets you guys take away from some of the low-paying jobs that you have.
For me, leadership is such an amazing concept and topic in general. I have a consulting company strictly dedicated to leadership stuff but it's very specific leadership. It’s self-leadership specifically in many worlds or anywhere leadership can be applied which is everywhere. A lot of us are trying to get people to follow us in some regard. “I need to get this person to do this action so that we can make money or achieve this objective.” There are all these different dynamics. Jocko is the real deal when it comes to that shit.
He's the leader master and he'll tell you all in a pro-wrestler voice.
His philosophy on leadership is very amazing to me. All these military guys, fire dudes, and public servants, or anybody who has a leadership background when it comes to doing all-risk type of stuff, they're saying a lot of the same stuff sometimes. However, what I realized is that if you want to be a good leader and get people to influence positive outcomes, you have to be leading yourself first. You have to be a good self-leader.
If you want to be a good leader and get people to influence positive outcomes, you have to lead yourself first. You have to be a good self-leader.
You have to start trying to understand yourself. You have to try and have good habits. You have to have discipline. Jocko talks about that shit all the time. You have to be consistent too. You have to be able to understand your emotions. You need to know that the only thing that is permanent is impermanence. How you navigate that change is the amount of love that you carry through it.
What was that quote you used from the last one? “No man stands in the same river twice.”
It's the same thing. It’s from Heraclitus. He is a Greek philosopher. He is deemed as one of the first stoics or something like that. He talks about how no man steps in the same river twice because the water's always flowing and moving.
If you think about it, everything changes around you.
If you want to go deep, you can influence change if you're consciously aware of it. We're influencing change all the time but most of us are influencing change from an unconscious perspective.
Look at politics. I don't even want to go down this path because we're having this great conversation but let’s bring it back to being a good parent. Have you read the book The Daily Stoic?
I think so.
Look up The Daily Stoic on Audible. I can’t read books but I listen to books. That's a great book too. That'll blow your mind. You're supposed to listen to 1 a day for a year is the concept but my dumbass will listen to 20 or 30 of them once so I don't remember anything. To bring it back to parenting, part of being a good leader is leading by example. In the last couple of years, I was such a giver that I wasn't physically taking care of myself.
I wasn't taking the time and it's hard as a new parent, especially if you have infants and stuff. You're not eating the best diet because you don't want to cook two dinners, which is crazy. You're not taking the time to go to the gym because you want to spend time with them. At some point, you can't throw your toddler down on the towel at the gym and be thrown around 2:25 power cleaning. It's not the safest thing.
It's hard to take them on hikes. You're not going to go hike 7 miles of climb and 13,000 feet or 12,000 feet with a baby on your back. Shit like that is not going to happen once they get a little bit older and they start walking. I was so fortunate. I have three kids and the youngest was unplanned straight up but the biggest blessing in my life.
The first two were so close together that at one point, they were both in diapers and that sort of thing. I was being a rock and roll roadie coming off of that, quitting touring to be a father. We lived in Redondo Beach, California at the time. We were on Avenue A in Catalina, which is a block off the water. We have a beach cruiser life. We park the truck on the weekend. We rode the beach cruisers to Trader Joe's and the bar to meet friends for dinner.
We had a great life as a young couple having a good time. You add two kids to that. They make an attachment for your beach cruiser where you can put a kid on it. It's awesome. The kids love it. How I got my kids through their adolescence was beach cruising. However, as a parent, you want to move the needle faster and problem-solve.
My philosophy was like, “Let's get them to walk as fast as they can. Let's get them to talk. Let's get them potty-trained. Let's speed this up. Let's get them reading before they even get to school.” You want to speed up the process. There's that aspect of it and then also taking care of yourself. You're so hyper-focused on this and you’re new at it so you're sacrificing your health. You're not going to the gym as much or surfing every morning. You're sleep-deprived.
It’s super important to maintain that though. I've seen this with women a lot of everything you're describing. They have their children and that happens. You talked about the old life or the life you had before kids which is like, “This is so rad. It's a great life.” However, women have kids oftentimes and when they do, they do everything and their life immediately becomes their children. Every aspect of them becomes their children and then the children go to college. What happens then? Severe depression, their identity is lost, and all this stuff.
They're young and they take a lot of our energy and stuff. Not everybody has the freedom to go to the gym. I get that too. You can't just leave your baby on the beach while you go surfing. I get it but it is also still very important to try and maintain a sense of self. Also, even more importantly make sure that as individuals, we're still building in goals and dreams from an individual perspective that allows us to achieve that may not have anything to do with their kids. It may be something that you want to pursue because that's going to allow you to maintain some sense of purpose as you're navigating your life. A lot of the parent issues once the kids leave the nest and they're flying on their own, that feeling of them not needing you anymore is pretty gnarly.
It is very important to try and maintain a sense of self and, even more importantly, make sure that, as individuals, we're still building goals and dreams that are going to allow us to maintain some sort of sense of purpose as we’re navigating life.
Believe me, they check the fuck out. I love my mom to death but there was a period where they’re going to call you every night. “I want to call and make sure that you're okay.” I don't know. It's a rough one. Going back to that leading by example and bringing it back even further, the first two, I wanted them to grow up as fast as they could and then I realized how fast they grew up. I was like, “Shit.” With my third one, I was able to pump the brakes and be like, “I'm going to enjoy you for what you are.” As a parent, that has been so much more gratifying. She has got twice the character of my other two. My other two will attest to this. She might be a problem.
There's a lot of wisdom in that, taking a little bit of a different approach in a way.
I am enjoying it.
You're not stepping back. You're still involved. You're just taking a different approach to their life and allowing them to turn into whatever they want to turn into with a little bit of guidance. That's less stressful for you and also pretty enjoyable to watch them become something that you're like, “This is a cool experiment.”
It's like a science experiment or something. The first part of that too is I wasn't taking care of myself to the point where I was in the worst shape of my life. I quickly realized and was fortunate enough to realize, “I need to grab control of this thing.” For me to be the best example for my kids now that they're older, “I want to be able to beat you in push-ups.” I know you can beat me in chess. I'm not going to build my brain overnight but there's some of that that you have to lead by example. If I'm asking you to do 40-yard sprints, I better be able to do it as fast or not faster.
Some are even lower on the totem pole. If I'm going to tell you to put your plates in the dishwasher, I better be putting my plates in the dishwasher. It's as simple as that. Leading by that example is one of the more difficult things to do as a parent because a lot of times we are tired and inundated with all this crap. I always hear my kids say this to each other all the time. When I asked Kennedy, my youngest, “You need to do this,” he was like, “Maddie doesn't do it.” She's saying that about me for sure. That example piece is super important for kids.
Leading by example is one of the more difficult things to do as a parent.
Especially, once they get a little bit older and they can do all that. That's super important. If you're the parent that's on your phone while your kid’s in a waiting room, they're going to want to be on their phone too. I call it shelving the phone. I try my very best to throw it up on top of the refrigerator on Do Not Disturb at a certain time and it's there. “I'm here for you,” and that sort of thing.
More importantly, for me to be genuinely present in the moment is trying to check out what's going on whether it's in here with you. When I'm with them, I'm with them. You are trying to be present where you're at and not let your mind wander like, “I got a podcast tomorrow that I haven't prepared for. I have this that I haven't done. Did I pay the mortgage?”
There's plenty of time for all of that outside. It comes down to values but you got to lay it out and figure out what is the most important part of you. Also, you feeling good and then checking out of those other things. There will be time. You can solve those problems later but what's the most important? This is my perspective. I'm sure that there are a million different ways to parent, whether it's with a nanny or maybe I'm not involved enough.
I think of taking care of myself number one. A) I have to do this creatively. B) I'm going to take the time to cook two dinners. You can have some of my dinner if you'd like. I'll be glad to make you whatever you want but this is what I need to do to stay in line. C) I need to be physically fit. “I'm going to invite you. Do you want to go to the gym with me or walk the dog with me?” Now that they're a little bit older, there's that opportunity.
Setting the example and these types of things, for sure.
I have personally become a better parent when I realize, “My kids aren't going to see me for 1.5 hours because I'm going to go for a 1.5-hour long hike. I'm going to go to the archery ranger.” I try to time that around when they're at school or they have other activities going on so I'm not missing out. I'm there for the important stuff.
One of the biggest things in the healing space, when I'm with adults, is at the most fundamental level, we all carry this. This translates into my kids. I'll talk about it. In the healing space when people come into these environments that we’re holding retreats for or whatever we're doing in a healing way, every individual that I've met carries around a sense of not being good enough.
That sense of not being good enough is directly linked to fear and fear has two sides. Fear on one side has the ability to create something beautiful like the fear of not eating created agriculture or the fear of not having shelter created skyscrapers to some extent. The opposite side of fear is doubt and it is directly linked to this fear of not being loved.
For me as a parent, one of my values is making sure that my kids know that I love them and that they have endless love but I can't do that unless I love myself. That's the self-leadership. It's working out and eating correctly. It's like taking care of this physical body while having a mental practice so that I can understand and see things appropriately without having a spiritual practice to some degree. I'm connected to this crazy shit that we're seeing or living in.
The self-leadership part is I have to love myself so that I can lead my kids so that they don't carry around the thing that I've been seeing in every single individual that we work with. It’s this feeling that they're not worthy of love. If I can approach that within myself and love myself, then I can teach them how to not have that fear. When you don't have that fear, you can do anything. Doubt is the worst and it's crazy to me.
We do it to ourselves. I doubt myself all the time and I have to catch myself. Every career move I've ever made, and this is relating it to my career but this is the best analogy, but this could go with a relationship, anything, or something new, is there's this level of fear and doubt that are playing at the same time. Doubt is an aspect of fear.
Fear can help us create something.
You have to push through that fear and take that next step across that line or into that gym or river, off that cliff, out of that plane door, or whatever it is so you don't have the doubt because it's weird. Doubt is almost infectious. It creates more doubt. You didn't cross that line this time. I'm not saying everybody should go jump off a cliff.
What's that old cliché saying? “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?” It’s doing something that is scary to you or you have a fear of doing it. If you don't execute that and get over that fear, that doubt stays with you forever. It's in the back of your mind like, “I should have taken the opportunity to skydive but I didn’t because I was scared.” That's always going to be there.
Doubt is directly linked to not being worthy of love. This is instilled into us when we're children oftentimes. We talked about neuroplasticity. 0 to 7 theoretically is when we become who we are. I take that a step further and take it to fourteen because of adolescence and there are so many big experiences that happen within that. It’s 0 to 14.
At the end of the day, this feeling of not being worthy of love, if we can get to a point, what we do in some of the healing work is trying to get people to understand that love is everywhere. It's everything. You have endless amounts and access to it. If you can get to a place where you fully understand that you have endless amounts of love in you to tap into whatever you want, energy itself is love. Creation is love. It comes from that place.
If you can get past that, then you can use the fear of like, “Is this going to hurt me? What is this going to feel like,” to inspire you to problem solve. That problem-solving is fun, in my opinion. That's where you get to taste your curiosity and be like, “I have this fear but I'm going to keep going.” That process is beautiful but doubt is the killer of most things like creation. The question comes to this, “Why can a tree exist? Why does the tree not have doubt of being a tree? Why does a dog not have doubt of being a dog?”
Why do humans always have this conflict of, “What am I? Why am I here?” Why is there always this doubt? Why is that there? The answer that I got when I asked this was, we need to have fear. Our ability to have fear creates problem-solving, the agriculture from that fear of not eating, and skyscrapers. Ultimately, what it creates is endless possibilities that creation uses to create upon. That is our purpose.
Our purpose is to innovate, create, and experience so that creation continues. For me, it's important to know. If I'm starting to feel afraid about something, I have to take a step back and go, “Where's the doubt in this?” There's the doubt. “I know I have love. People love me and I love myself.” I'm going to use this fear, get inspired to create something, chase my curiosity, and solve problems. Something always beautiful comes from it.
I have no argument for that at all. You’re spot on with it.
When we build awareness and understanding of life in general, and we get rid of some of our traumas, we start feeling love on a much deeper level with ourselves and the people that we love. Connecting to nature, you start feeling love on a much deeper level. However, because you can feel love on a deeper level without awareness, you're also going to feel pain on a much deeper level.
You're going to go through painful shit that you're like, “I cannot believe how I got here.” If you can maintain your understanding of doubt in those moments, the pendulum swings back to creation. You create amazing things and that pain is necessary. You can, at some point, understand how that swings back and forth and take something called neutrality.
Another way to describe this from my perspective would be as the role of the observer where you can pull yourself away from that pendulum sling and watch it swing unaffected so that when it comes back, you can come back and get to work again. That pendulum is always going to be swinging. You're going to feel deep love and pain all the time when you start gaining more awareness.
The pendulum is always going to be swinging, so you're going to feel deep love and deep pain all the time when you start gaining more awareness.
Being transparent, sharing, and being truthful is huge because that creates guilt. Do you think that they correlate with doubt at all? Maybe in the back of your mind, there's some unpacked business. A few years ago, I couldn't share that story about my mom, having multiple conversations in here and going through some therapy that I didn't want to be in. I'm looking at it from an outside perspective, stepping back from that pendulum. That's what's made me be able to be open and genuinely share it. Not even some of my closest friends know what I told you. Now, they do.
Thank you for sharing. I was trying to figure out the connection. If you can say, “I'm feeling guilty,” is there fear behind that guilt? If fear is behind that guilt, then fear has two sides and one of them is doubt. I'll say this very honestly too. For most of my life, I've felt guilty for who I am. It's a big thing that I was transitioning through. It’s this feeling of guilt that I’ve had in my whole life.
It's not my mother's fault. She has four kids. I was the oldest of four. She was very young when she had me. She was a kid raising a kid. There were a lot of things that she did to me that I perceived or took on as a feeling of her not loving me. I was medicated when I was very young on Ritalin. I was bouncing off the walls because my mother didn’t know how to control me while raising three other children. She had said some things to me in the past that made me question whether or not she loved me.
My mom and I have healed from this. I got tired of living like this. We had a great and beautiful conversation. We're on the mend. I know she loves me and all this stuff. That's another powerful thing to do but at the end of the day, I carried this guilt my entire life feeling that I had to prove people wrong for being told I can't do something or feeling guilty for who I am.
That guilt this fear inside of me that I would never be worthy to anybody. I’ll never be worthy of love and all that stuff, even though I know to my soul that I have that endless amounts of that shit. There's still this loneliness that gets attached to it. There's nothing worse than feeling like you're navigating this life alone. It's hard.
Nothing's great unless you have people to share it with.
When you're sharing that energy with somebody or co-creating anything with anybody, this shit you can do is phenomenal.
This conversation is a prime example of that. This is awesome. Thanks for making the jump. This is great. We unpacked a ton of shit. I love my conversations with you. I’ve learned so much. I'm sure that you always didn't think like this. From a young man's perspective when you have all that testosterone and no wisdom, this is another level of thinking that I don't think the average person unpacks or spends the time on. I feel like people get caught up in the rat race. Myself, even.
I've been more aware of this and since talking to you, there are some shit that I need to lay out on the table and look at like, “Am I doing this the right way? Does this feel right? Is what I'm chasing what I want to do or am I getting caught up?” You start getting sponsorships, obligations, and all the stuff or people want to PC your time. This show could have gone astray from me very quickly.
If you sign with a major label or something, they have full creative control at that point. They're going to produce you any way that they want unless you're the creative director and then they’ll fire your ass and do it anyways if they're not getting what they want. I've seen it happen a million times. How did you unpack all this? In the last episode, you had me in tears. You told me your story and how close you came to taking your life.
I am so grateful that you're sitting here with me. The truth that you are spitting and laying out for people can help so many individuals in so many different ways even if you take one little piece of it. Just that one little piece could change somebody's life or perspective or make them have a better relationship with their kids. How did you unpack all this?
In my junior year of high school, I've always had a very healthy relationship and curiosity about human performance in general. I've always been nerding out. I was a kid running from my mom's house to school. It's like 4 miles or 5 miles one way and running home again after school to be better at playing soccer. I'm running track to be better at playing soccer. I've always been interested in how to optimize myself.
To the nth degree, I’m obsessed. I got to a point where I started doing nutrition coaching and things of this nature. I was realizing with the people I was coaching that there's something beyond the physical body that needed to be trained. I started looking into sports psychology and things of this nature. Also, philosophy in general. For me, it's always like, “I'm curious about this. I'm going to go do it first and see what I get out of it.” I'm then going to try and back-engineer how to give that to other people.
When you say coaching, was it sports coaching?
It’s personal training mostly. I like to say on my recovering ultra-endurance athlete. I was coaching ultra-endurance athletes. Also, a lot of firefighters because they want to get on a Hotshot crew. “How can I train to be on the Hotshot crew,” and things of that nature. There is a lot of that type of stuff. Also, that's a job requirement for a Hotshot. Some people take it more seriously than others but at the end of the day, one of the things we're known for is being physically fit.
I went through a program. I was quasi-coaching for a company called Veda Wellness. They're still around. They are dope as hell. They started this program called Authentic Self. I was like, “This will give me a good idea to break into this.” I'm authentic as shit. I don't wear shit but it might be cool to check out. They started this program. It was a year program and I was doing it. The first half of that year, I did it with my oldest daughter. She was 8 or 9 at that time. I was like, “It fuck me up. I got some shit to work on.” I'm not authentic as hell at all.
You were going through this one little program and it was eye-opening.
It was about going back and checking out our stories. What stories am I carrying around that were given to me during those times of neuroplasticity in those first fourteen years? What was told to me that I think is true that isn't true but I'm living my life by that? I think about it like this. Back in the day, our ancestors and indigenous relatives, and the Native Americans, primal people had direct contact and relationship with the spirit. They worshiped spirits, gods, and all these things. They prayed.
We need to go back and check out our stories. What stories are we carrying around?
They understood the seasons and did rituals for all of these things. They had a practice that they had to spear. As soon as they were born, there was a ritual. They understood consciousness to some degree. Consciousness in mind is awareness but I like to look at it in this term to describe it. Our conscious mind is a library full of books, all the books. Our unconscious mind is the same library with no books. If we don't have a relationship with the spirit when we start coming into this world in our physical form, the library that doesn't have any books is filled with stories from other people. Your operating system is off on these stories.
It’s whoever you trust the most which is who's protecting you. This is how the Holocaust happened.
This is how a lot of things happened. For me, it was that Authentic Self program that I was like, “I have some stories here that I don't think are true like this feeling of not being worthy.” I have this direct experience with the story. I did this hypnotherapy thing during it and I remembered this thing that I had forgotten. I was 6 or 7 years old. I was on the soccer field. We tied or lost the game. I can't remember what happened but I missed a goal and then the game ended.
I'm coming off the field. My dad's the coach. I'm super down on myself. I'm coming towards him. He shoots me this look that I perceived at the time as being disappointed. I was like, “I am not worthy.” That was the first time I could remember not being worth a shit but in that moment, I remember seeing all the different parts of that. I'm like, “There are 12 other 6-year-olds running at him at the same time and he's like, ‘What am I doing?’” He just happened to have this confused, “How am I going to hurt all these kids’ looks? All they want is orange slices and Capri Suns.” I had nothing to do with it.
Especially after hearing a little bit of his backstory, if you're not around kids, when you get around them, it is nerve-wracking.
That's how simple it can start to have this feeling of not being worthy of love from your father and you don't even remember it. I had an experience where I tapped into that and I was like, “Wait a minute. There's no way that's true.” It shifts the paradigm. I started realizing, “There's a whole mental game here that I'm not even focusing on. I'm so focused on performance and how I can drop a minute off 1 mile or reduce time. How can I you know lose more weight so I look lean for whatever it is?” That's superficial bullshit. If you don't have your mental game squared up, this is everything that David Goggins talks about.
This has been a parent-heavy episode but to bring it back to that, have you ever had any Steven Pressfield scenario and stuff, especially if you're a creator or an artist? I don't agree with everything that he says. There's some wild shit out there but he is an amazing writer. He talks about becoming an artist and what it takes.
Also, the feelings that you have and the feelings of inadequacy or not being good enough. Every creator goes through this. One of the examples, which is crazy, is he tells this example of this young girl coming home from her choir class or church choir. Her mom had worked a sixteen-hour day and was extremely tired. She is a single mother trying to provide for her family.
Her daughter is singing in the living room and the mother yells at her, “Stop. That's enough. No more singing.” It stops the potential for this girl to become the most incredible singer in the world in one instance of being told that you're not good enough or having that feeling. That blew my mind. It's a correlation of that.
That is another beautiful example.
You might not even know that you're doing this. You're losing your cool and yelling at your kid. It happened to me.
It still happens with my oldest daughter. I'm glad this is a parent-heavy conversation because as a parent, there's nothing more important to me than raising beautiful children. We talked about being a creator. We're the creators of our life but we also have responsibility when we have children to co-create what they can have. It's such a beautiful responsibility. It's important to highlight that because that's the most important thing that we have in our existence at the moment.
There's nothing more important to me than raising beautiful children.
Even with this awareness, I still trip up with my kids. My oldest daughter is incredibly intelligent and she's beautiful as hell. She's an athlete. She's got the trifecta in life. I don't know how my wife and I created this thing that's light-years better than a guy who got Cs and Ds in high school. She's killing it with no help for me. I never helped her with Math or anything. She's crushing it. At the end of the day, she's a straight-A student and then she gets a B. I'm like, “What's going on with this B? What are you doing with this B? You need to get that up.”
I then walk away and I'm like, “Wait a minute. I need to go back.” “I don't care if you get a B but let's talk about why you have a B. What's going on in your thing? I know you're an A student. I know your potential. I see your potential. What's going on in the background that's preventing you from getting an A?” She has goals. She wants to go to a good college and stuff like that. I'm like, “To get this, I'm going to help you. I want to make sure that you're aware of this goal. What's happening in the background? Let's understand this together.” She goes, “Tests are 65% of your grades.” I’m like, “That's crazy. What?”
I wouldn't have passed high school.
There is no way.
I graduated early because I had to go to work. They're like, “Get this motherfucker out of here before he breaks any more stuff. Football season's over. Let him graduate.”
That's another beautiful opportunity because a lot of times, we make assumptions as humans. That's what we do. It's our operating system. Instead of trying to understand what's going on, we're trying to go from point A to point B as fast as possible. We fill in the gaps with assumptions. We all do it.
We make assumptions as humans. It's our operating system instead of trying to actually understand what's going on.
Especially when you reach the top tier of something, to stay on top is a whole other level. That takes even more effort. If you're a world champion kickboxer, you only hold that title for so long. It can be a very slippery slope to where you go back down to rock bottom and guys have restarted their careers. It’s the wherewithal that goes with that. A good friend of mine, Dustin Jacoby, has a second run in the UFC. It's crazy. It’s over twenty years of fighting but he loves it.
That's inspiring. It's important to know that in that situation, instead of attaching guilt to that experience to your kid or anybody, it's about asking a better question. Instead of making an assumption about the intention behind an individual, what I've come to understand is asking a better question to understand their perspective. Very rarely does someone have a negative intention in mind.
No, especially as a parent.
Your kids too. No one's trying to fuck you most of the time. Sure, there are dickheads out there that are doing that but at the end of the day, if you were questioning what's going on, ask a question to understand their perspective to understand that they were maybe lacking perspective but their intentions were good. You then maybe have the ability to give more perspective that allows it to sit a better decision or path to be walked on. To me, that's another thing about parenting.
You then know you have somebody in your corner too because you're both laying it all out. All the chips are out on the table. You can see everything. If both sides are honest in that, you feel invested. It's weird. We are coming back full circle. We're going to dive off a bunch and I don't care. This is all for me. I appreciate everybody that reads but this conversation is for us.
How I got into some of this deep philosophical thinking is it did start in 2000. I've always been curious about human performance. I can't even talk about this stuff. I'm going to be this authentic person, I can't talk about these things without talking about psychedelics. Psychedelics have 100% given me the opportunity to go deeper into who I am and understand who I am and how I react in this external world. Also, have a connection and a practice to the spiritual aspect of life.
Psychedelics have given me the opportunity to go deeper into who I am and actually understand who I am, how I react in this external world, and also have a connection and a practice with the spiritual aspect of life.
Spiritual throws people off sometimes. I'm not dogmatic about it. I used psychedelics in a way to allows me to practice with spirit so that I can access consciousness in a way that allows unlimited information to come into me so that I'm accessing that library full of books. In 2015 or 2016, my curiosity peaked around psychedelics and what they could do from a performance perspective because I had this performance background.
I did Ayahuasca and it changed my life about what was possible and what the truth about things is. I took a very long break. I integrated that into my life. The next time I did any kind of psychedelic was in 2020 when I was struggling with thoughts of suicide. At that moment, I was sitting on the edge of my bed on this beautiful day. It was like November-ish.
My windows are open in my bedroom. The sun's pouring in on me and hitting my skin. It felt amazing. I had no reason to be unhappy. The day was beautiful and here I am on the edge of my bed like, “What the fuck am I doing here? It'd be better if I wasn't here.” The family leaves. They go off to do their thing. My wife was dropping off the kids and she's doing that or something.
At that moment, I was so miserable. I was like, “Everything's perfect and I'm not perfect.” I found myself ready to kill myself. At a sobering moment, I’m like, “What am I doing?” I collapsed to the floor. I was shaking. I’m like, “Something needs to fix me. I need to do something.” I found courage in that moment. I apologize if I'm repeating things that we've talked about before.
It's fine. It's a visceral moment in your life and the story gets me emotional.
It’s because we all know somebody who didn't find courage. It's sad as fuck. Courage is the difference maker and I'm lucky that I found it. I'm not saying I'm better than the individual that didn't. I'm saying there is so much gratitude for someone or something showing me that and me being open to that. I found courage.
Courage is the difference-maker.
I'm grateful for you.
I appreciate that.
Not having been in this world would be a heavy blow and I feel horrible for anybody. I guarantee you that 90% of the people reading this know somebody that they've lost to suicide.
I found courage and the courage was like, “You have to do something. You can't give up.” That was the moment that I was like, “What do I do?” At first, I had to tell somebody so I told my wife. “I am having this issue and I need support.” She was like, “What do we do? Whatever you need, I don't care what it is. Let's do something.” She has gone through our normal medical system of antidepressants and talk therapy. That helps people in some regard. I'm not trying to talk shit about it.
I'm not a fan of it to be blatantly honest.
I'm not a fan either because I've seen what it does to people. SSRIs and antipsychotics were only supposed to be a short-term fix while somebody goes through a therapeutic session to get off of them and then enter the world again. You can look that up. That's what they're for but people are on the shit for years.
Sometimes a lifetime or half a lifetime, whenever that crack happens.
I saw her and was like, “I don't want to do that. I can't go on these drugs and shit. I don't want to go talk to somebody who doesn't understand me.” The way I look at this is there's a difference between knowing and understanding. Knowing is like a smoker smoking cigarettes. Every cigarette smoker in the world knows that that'll give them cancer or shorten their life to some degree. I would be shocked if they didn't. They teach it in school. Understanding is that same smoker going to the doctor and the doctor saying, “You have cancer from smoking cigarettes.” It's way different.
I knew this was going to catch up to me in the back of my mind but I did nothing about it. It’s that guilt. Can you imagine that type of guilt?
That's understanding and awareness. I'm telling my wife this stuff and I was like, “I don't want to go do this normal medicine or this doctor shit. That's not what I want. I had done psychedelics in the past and they helped me a lot. One time changed my life. That's what I want to do. I want to go find this healing for me.” I don't care what anybody thinks about psychedelics in general. There's a lot of fear wrapped up in that. Even though things are changing, there's a renaissance happening.
There's a Renaissance happening right now.
There's a lot of curiosity.
There's a lot of research that is starting to show the benefits of it.
Myself included. I've had some experiences and they were never purpose-driven. It was always recreationally like in a party environment which isn't the best environment. I'm heavily curious about tapping into some of that. The timing has to be right for a person. Also, the environment that you're in is set. Also, consulting a professional physician. You can't go to your normal doctor, which I don't anyway.
Even for what I was going through with high blood pressure, I went to my normal doctor and they were like, “You need to stop eating red meat, take this medication, and cut salt out of your diet.” When I went to people who work with professional athletes and on nutrition, I did the exact opposite of whatever the primary doctor said. I was off blood pressure medication within six weeks or something like that. It was a drastic change. All I was eating was red meat and salt.
It was heavy, not to mention the weight loss that I had. Some of that drastic weight loss was muscle mass too. Besides all that, there are some genetic things that could have an adverse effect on you mentally taking psychedelics. That is an issue. If schizophrenia, psychosis, or something like that is prevalent in the family, you probably don't want to go down that path.
The tricky part about telling these stories is, “I'm going to say all these great things that I got from all these benefits.” The responsible thing for us to do is to say that it's not for everybody. You have to do your homework. It is probably good to consult a physician.
You probably need to be a certain age in your life and not cross the acid when I was twelve years old on top of the roof.
I don't even want to talk about that stuff because I don't want to give advice that sounds stupid but if you're past your mid-20s and you're into your 30s, usually with psychosis, you're pretty safe. At the end of the day, this is my story and perspective, and how I reached what I was doing. I can't talk about the things that happened to me and the questions you're asking without talking about it.
What I want here is honesty. I want to have a real conversation. Forget everybody that's reading. That is important to me. This is me wanting to learn about your experiences. One reason why we've had so much success here is I've kept that model in all conversations. Nothing that we do here is scripted. We walked in and hit record. Look at where the conversation has gone, which is awesome. It feels like we're just getting started.
We've made all the disclaimers and that sort of thing for the readers because that is in the back of my mind. I don't know how much you want to share because I feel like this is probably the most intimate. I don't mean in a sexual way. The most personal question you can ask is for somebody to share their true feelings especially when it comes to taking your life. It is unbelievable what you've shared with us already.
Number two, those journeys that helped you out of that. What were some of the visualizations? How drastic was that transition coming out of it or coming down, whatever you want to call it off of the psychedelics? How painful was that? What did you go through? Was there therapy behind that? That's another thing? You can unpack all this shit but it does not fix it.
I'll start with the suicide one. For transparency purposes, I've lost count of how many ceremonies I've been to at this point. There are well over 100 probably or more. I don't know. I'm talking about psychedelic use. I'll unpack the experience that I had on psilocybin in a legal ceremonial context for that healing purpose and then we can talk about maybe a couple of other ones. There are so many that we would be here forever. What happened is I decided, “I wanted to do psilocybin.”
I found a place that would allow me to do that legally because that's a fear. I don't want to do things illegally with my job, the kids, and all this stuff. I go there and do this ceremony. I take 5 grams of psilocybin. I don't know what kind of mushroom it was at the time but that's what I did. That's what would be labeled as a “heroic dose.”
Why did they label it as a heroic dose?
We’re microdosing. There are no visions. You can barely even feel it. It enhances the mood and your awareness a little bit. Also, there are in-between phases. The heroic dose is you're going in the medicine. You're in the portal. I did that. In the very beginning, what happened is I came into this experience and felt very feminine. There's always this weird energy that happens. It feels masculine or feminine sometimes. I felt feminine. What I directly started to experience was going into this experience.
I visually see this woman feeding her children food at the dinner table. I came in and kicked this door down as they were eating dinner. I'm asking all these questions. She's like, “Chill the fuck out. You're welcome here in my home, in this psychedelic space, but you need to be not so aggressive.” I'm like, “I apologize. I'm sorry.” She asks me questions like, “What's going on?” I rattle off all these questions. She's like, “You need to die now.” She kills me, which would be labeled as ego death in many places.
I want to dissect this a little bit. It was an ego death. Whoever's helping guide this journey or the psychedelic experience for you is an ego death. Is it a general term? Is this something that happens commonly against a lot of different people?
Have I explained to you my definition of what the ego is?
We touched on it but I don't think we did a deep dive on it. I'm willing to take this wherever you want to go. This is your time.
A lot of people don't even understand what the ego is. This is how I've defined the ego from my perspective. Everybody is born into this physical dimension or world, whatever you want to call it. You have this little character with no face. It’s a little whatever. This thing gets put into this area. Around him or her is a square foundation built of bricks. Depending on what stories or what kind of life you're born into, the level or height of those bricks might be higher or lower.
The people who listen to Joe Rogan, he talks about it like a starting line. Some people are starting way further back than other people. This might be considered a privilege. Some people call it that. Depending on what you're born into, your bricks might be higher or lower than some other people. You might have 1-layer bricks or 2 feet of bricks. Those bricks resemble stories. You're born into a story already depending on who you are.
All these stories exist. As you exist in your life, this little character inside is putting more bricks and building these bricks up high. Sometimes, these bricks get so high and you build a roof over the top of you that you're living in darkness. That thing in the middle is you. It's yourself. That's your truth. That's your authentic person but the only thing everybody sees on the outside are your stories. That's what's being projected.
It takes courage and character of the will to look at the bricks from the inside and realize that they're not letting you live your life appropriately and you need to start understanding those. Smash them out into building windows or doors or make them transparent. The wall itself is the ego. It's trying to protect the soft, supple, little fragile person inside and the egos build on your stories. You're never going to get rid of the ego.
We go back to the experience. I'm asking all these questions. I'm being aggressive. To understand the character in the middle, you have to have a death of the ego, which means you have to blow the walls down so that you can exist and understand who you are, what is truthful, and what is real. The ego death is that. It doesn't have to happen for everybody but in this circumstance, it had to happen for me. It was because of the suicidal tendencies and thoughts. I was asking these questions and searching for answers and all these things. What was told me is, “That's all bullshit. Your questions are garbage.”
To take it back, were they questions to solve problems? Were you looking to solve problems or was it like you wanted to know something?
I’m like, “Why am I here? Why am I in pain? What is going on?” It was all these existential questions. It's like, “Slow down. Let's die. Let's remove your ego and get rid of these stories for a little bit and we can start understanding yourself. You can then see how connected you are.”
Did that take you back to a vulnerability state a little bit?
The thing is it takes you to a very freeing and empowering state. I realized, “I'm a part of all of this.” I’m very connected. What I realized was our life is made up of endless moments. As soon as you come into a moment, you're exiting that moment into another moment. It keeps going and going. There's no reason. “Why would I leave this moment to go to the next moment?” Enjoy this moment because you're going to be in the next moment in a minute. Give it some time.
If you want to break it down even further, you go to seconds or milliseconds.
You then realize that time doesn't even exist. At the end of the day, I've made this realization of what was happening to me. I had to experience an ego death three times in that experience. The last time that I had to experience it, it killed me the second time I came to this space. I was like, “I get it.” This is a beautiful life and I shouldn't leave this life. I need to be living and enjoying all of this. I got it and I was like, “I'm going to set the couch up perfectly and sit here. I'm sitting in a movie chair. I'm going to experience this life.” It's like, “No, you don't get it.” It kills me again. I came back and was like, “What the fuck? It's beautiful.”
Is this all your visualization that's happening while you're under the influence of psilocybin or is this post?
No, this is at the moment. It tells me, “You are not someone watching a movie. You are a participant. Be involved.” I was like, “Now, I get it.” If I want to experience this life from a beautiful perspective and create all the things, I have to participate. I can't just be sitting on the sidelines. That's when things changed. I then had this whole conversation of like, “What are my needs versus my wants?” We talked about that last time. I was like, “What’s desire?”
I want to experience this life from a beautiful perspective and create all the things I want. To create all these things, I have to participate. I can't just sit on the sidelines.
Was this your list of six things?
I can't remember off the top of my head.
I went back and wrote those down so I could excavate and understand it a little bit better because we flew through it that night. People can go back and read that or we can bring it up here but I want to learn more about your journeys and experiences. Let's do some of your feelings after that but those six things, fire through them real quick. Now that I've had more time to look at it and dissect it, it's helped me. It could help anybody. I think about it. It's something that you could give to a kid as soon as they can understand emotions. The first time that they can understand, “I'm having a bad feeling and I don't like it,” those principles could apply.
The first one is taking care of the physical body. It's nutrition, sleep, and movement. If you're not doing that, then you're not taking care of what I would say the chemistry experiment that we call body. The next one is being an observer. I compare this to sitting on a park bench and watching people play in the park. Everybody in the park is playing around and doing their things. That's an emotional-based state. The guy who stepped on dog shit is angry or the old couple walking holding hands. Also, understanding all those things changes but from an observer's perspective, you allow them to change unaffected. That's the observer.
Next is don't identify. It is making sure that you have the understanding that all things change. The only thing permanent is impermanence. How you navigate that change is the amount of love carried through it. The next one is acceptance. Accept that there are things in this life that you can't change. There are so many things.
The only thing permanent is impermanence. How you navigate that changes the amount of love you carry through it.
Accept that if you get hit by somebody on the freeway in your car unaware of what happened, there's nothing you can do about that. Accept that it happened. Being the creator of your life is how you respond to that situation and then you get to create the experience. Also, sharing perspective and letting go.
Fear was in there too that we had talked about previously because I remember writing that down but you nailed them all. Those are awesome things. I highly encourage you. If you're reading this, go ahead and finish reading this but go back and read episode 124.
That gets me to that stuff. Once I understood that, I realized, “These are my actual needs to be a successful human for me to navigate life because I had everything else. I had shelter and food.” Those things are needed too but I had all that in space already and it's not a worry. However, I need to do this. My wants still exist like everybody else's but they are not here to replace a feeling of being lost, loneliness, or anything like this. It's to make life doper. You want to blow us some shit. I want to blow some shit too. I want that super sick car.
I always joke with all my friends because I always hang out with the Pyro technician. I was like, “I should have been a Pyro but they would never let me pass the class.”
Once I moved out of my way in that experience, my life changed. Post psychedelics, in general, post work of any kind where you unpack some deep stuff, there has to be integration on the backend where you take time to integrate what you've learned into your life so that you can make the appropriate changes to successfully live your life.
Are you doing this on your own or are there other people involved? Sometimes an outside perspective or another person's perspective might influence. That's probably a lot to figure out.
It is but I love it. I love doing it by myself too. I will write and journal. I've been writing a book for forever.
I'll be the first one to buy. I'm going to buy the first copy. You got to sign it. I'll come get it from you. We'll come to you to record next time.
I write all these things in there. I speak very openly about this stuff. Part of my curiosity is sharing perspectives, which is how we collectively grow closer together. That's on the list, sharing the perspectives of the need. I always remember that sharing perspective, I think of ancient people sitting around a fire telling stories about the game that they caught.
Sharing perspectives is how we collectively grow closer together.
It is so incredible that I have a total infatuation with it that I've studied it. I've gone down some serious rabbit holes. I have a good friend who recommended a book to me that has been mind-blowing. It connects nature to indigenous culture to religion. It's beyond my thinking capabilities and I'm pretty sure that there are some psychedelics. They talk about in the book how some of these cultures achieve visualization into the spirit world and some of their beliefs.
One sticks out to me and I applied it. Even though I'm a bow hunter, I feel like in this category or box, you have to be Cameron Hanes. This isn't a dig at him or like that where you have to show your big trophy boy and be this badass. Especially, in the bow hunting community, it's very ego-driven, almost to the point where it puts a bad taste on everybody else.
You're not a real bow hunter if you're not doing it this way.
For me, it's more about a spiritual connection to the point where I don't even share any of it. I've gone down even further in my spiritual past or connection with the past. Fortunately, my very good friend Donny Dust made all these stone tools. He had a similar experience spiritually, not suicide or anything that I know of but he was at a point in his life where he was a rock climber and a former Marine. He loves the outdoors.
He had the baddest thing that you could buy from REI, like the baddest-ass sleeping bags, backpack, and the best rock-climbing gear. It’s whatever he thought that he needed to enjoy the outdoors. In one moment, he woke up out of some dream or something. Donny would have to tell the story. I'm sorry if I'm butchering this, Donny. He decided, “This isn't the actual connection that I want to have with nature. I'm going to take it back as far as I can and have a primitive experience.”
He started making his stone tools, hunting that way, and becoming a hunter-gatherer. He still lives a normal in-the-moment life but he's connected with nature in a different way. He invited me to a bison experiment that was happening through CU Boulder with Dr. Devin Pettigrew. Shout-out to him too. We took stone tools and they tested their effectiveness on an actual bison carcass. Donny, me, Dr. Pettigrew, and several other people who were there still dressed and butchered the whole thing using nothing but stone tools for the entire process.
It was so humbling. It was so cool because he had made me a bunch of these tools that had been sitting on the table for over two years. I asked him, “Can I take these so I can use them?” I'm a big thing in you can build something beautiful but until it's used, how badass are these? There's even a connection with it. It's always blooded. I cut out the heart with that, not to get too graphic, but that particular piece right there removed the heart or some of the organs.
Did it work pretty well?
Yeah. It’s taking that meat home, sharing it with your family, and Donny sharing that with me. That whole experience and the connection that Donny and I have, you can't explain that to anybody. I can't explain it here on this show. When you start connecting with nature, to bring it back full circle, there's a huge correlation that we have lost our connection with nature to the point that our creativity has made skyscrapers and air-conditioning and heat to sit in. We're taking ice baths to put ourselves in a vulnerable situation or discomfort. Cold therapy is a thing and sauna therapy. There was none of that shit back then. To bring it back full circle, The Spell of The Sensuous. Have you not heard of this book?
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
No.
It is by David Abram. It’s a good friend of mine. He turned me on to this. This is something that's right up your alley. It's a pretty mind-blowing book but you have to be open-minded to nature and indigenous cultures.
In the psychedelic work that I've had, we talked about fear pretty deeply. I had an experience where everything was about fear. All the skyscraper shit I was talking about all came from an experience that I had. The fear, doubt, relationship, the reason why we're here, the mind, and purpose stuff, all that came from one experience. One of the things that was shown to me in that experience was how we are increasingly becoming more disconnected from nature.
What I was shown was like, “Mother Nature, everything that we need as humans is here for us.” Yes, we innovate. Part of our purpose is to create possibilities but we have gotten to a place where we're taking and not giving back. That's the issue that is difficult for Mother Nature to accept. She's willingly giving it to us. She’s giving this to you as a gift and we're just taking it. We are not only just taking it but we're not showing any respect. In many ways, we're damaging.
Respect and appreciation are the biggest things. Let’s say this is a stone. This is made from stone and wood. Donny physically took this from the ground, chipped it, made it into a tool, and put this handle on it so it could be more useful. This is one of the most used pieces for field dressing that bison that then turned around and provided more life to my kids and me. It didn't have to. I could go to the grocery store.
You're allowing that connection to continue to take place.
When it comes to hunting or conservation, I want to be very clear on this. One thing that The Spell of The Sensuous touches on a lot is conservation. Sometimes taking for Mother Nature is helping her. Let's bring it back to fire, for example. A wildfire goes through an area that has a ton of downfall undergrowth. The soil is losing nutrients because there's so much plant life and vegetation that it can't support it all so it starts to die. The fire goes through and burns. It creates new life. On a burn scar, if you've ever hunted especially in Colorado, some of the most nutrient-rich food for elk and deer are on that burn scar. Animals will hang out like bears, birds, and mice.
However, the fire's not taking. The only difference between what you and I are saying is when I say take, I mean you're taking and not giving back even to the extent of appreciation. You can take something but give thanks. “Thank you, Mother Earth, for providing this to me so that I can feed my family,” versus every time we go to the gas pump or fill in our gas, we’re going on with our lives but that gas came from somewhere.
Anything like the loaf bread you grab off the shelf.
It all comes from her. At the end of the day, it's taking but not showing gratification. It could be as simple as before you lay down, saying thank you for this life, this experience, or whatever it is. I love prayer. We start rolling into spirituality and religion. I'm not coincidentally religious or anything. I'm very spiritual. Before I go to bed, I give thanks. I say, “Thank you for this life, for the things that you provided me, and for allowing me to experience this thing. I'm stoked to do it again tomorrow.”
Reflection and gratitude on a daily basis are something that I've applied in my life. Thanks to Justin Wren. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He is an amazing human. He's doing all kinds of amazing work with the Pygmy tribes in Africa and stuff like getting them clean water to the point where he almost died from a parasite. He's a former UFC fighter. He's a selfless human being. He does what he enjoys.
One of the things I took from him was from a podcast episode with him and Rogan. Shout-out to Rogan too for having some of these guys on their platform. He had a five-minute journal that he did every day. I can't remember exactly what all the parameters were of the 5-minute journal but one of them that I took away from it and applied was taking 1 or 2 minutes of what am I grateful for? I'm grateful for my health, my family, and everything that I have.
People have these blinders on sometimes like, “I got to go to work. Do I have time to stop at Starbucks? The traffic is horrible.” All those things add up and it's blinders. Sometimes it's all right. It has honestly helped me drive where I want this show to go. It's not always about reaching the biggest platform or having the most downloads. It's like, “I should be grateful for the moments that I get to have in here with somebody like Ben, Chris, Donny, or whoever.”
The ripple effect of that is worth it. No matter how many readers are reading, even one ripple effect of one person is going to change the paradigm. That's something I’m constantly trying to remind myself. No one needs a big following. Can you change the paradigm in one person and even yourself?
Even just one ripple effect from one person is going to change the paradigm.
I get more out of this probably than my readers do. It's awesome to me. It's cool that I have people that read and genuinely enjoy it. We get messages like, “Thanks for sharing this. I didn't understand this perspective. I think you're wrong. You should check.” I've gotten fact-checked by some of the readers where I've been wrong. I'm like, “I guess I was wrong. My bad.”
That's one thing I want for people that do read this. A lot of times, I am thinking out loud. That's what podcasting is. Just because I say it doesn't mean it's right or truly what I believe. Sometimes, it's just thinking out loud. Sometimes I learned something from it or sometimes I go back and read it. I'm like, “What was I talking about,” but it's thinking out loud, especially in those early episodes.
To bring it back to nature and what I was talking about with the bow hunting, ego, and that whole community, with hunting and this book, I always knew that I had a connection to Native American culture. There is a little bit of it in my family. I'd always have that connection. That's why I'm a bow hunter and why I grew up in a family of bow hunters. They've always had a fascination with it even when it wasn't cool. It’s going generation-deep. That was instilled in me but I never put it together until I read this book. I didn’t kill an elk in 2023 but I had the most amazing trip going into the wilderness with a different perspective.
That last sentence in that book, the description was dope. “This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.”
This is one of the best. It’s $12.29. You can spend that much on Starbucks. If you have Audible, it's free.
The Flowering Wand is a very interesting book too.
If you have Audible, this is a free book too. Let me wrap this up.
I'll finish one thing with the psychedelic stuff to put a bow on it. Once I excavated and moved past the trauma that I had suffered through, I entered into a place where I could have conversations with the consciousness directly. That ability has been able to gift me the ability to talk about very interesting conversations and topics that I can apply instantly in my life and also use to serve other people. I couldn't have done that until I got my suffering out of the way. I'm having these conversations on these deep levels in a way that allows me to serve life better.
It's incredible. How good does that make you feel knowing that you've gone that far? Is there still a level of fear at this point? You're so open. It's so rare for a person to be this transparent with your feelings and emotions. It's very genuine. I don't feel grossed by it. Sometimes people share too much and it's like, “Why are you telling me this? I don't want to know.” Maybe it's the wrong content too. Sometimes, it's not a good perception to share everything that you've been through. You're sharing some of your biggest hurdles, whether it's from being a parent to sitting on the edge of your bed that day. Is there a fear that comes along with sharing some of this stuff?
Not anymore.
I don't think a lot of people have that openness.
I'm more aware of who I'm sharing it with. As we talked about, not everybody's ready to hear it. Let’s say I say something crazy spiritual or I start talking about how to transmute vibration to manifest the things you want in your life, and that person doesn't even know.
You lost me there but I'm interested.
If you do stuff like this with people who aren't ready to talk about it, then they're not going to get the lesson. They're going to think you're crazy. The next time you talk to them, they're going to be like, “Who's this wacko?” To me, it's more about reading. Something we all know reading the room or the person, understanding where they're at energetically in their life. I tend to ask questions about them. I want to know them first. Maybe that gives an opportunity to me to provide a suggestion and that's the way I serve. I will give you a suggestion because we all have maintained choice.
That choice is what is going to lead you towards wherever you want to go. I try and meet people on the path that they're at and provide them with a new choice. A gift that I have is the questions I will ask oftentimes, I try and get past small talk quickly and ask a question that allows somebody to demonstrate to me their authenticity in any way. If I can even barely get a glimpse of that, I can track your potential.
We all have a choice, and that choice is what is going to lead you towards wherever you want to go.
What does one of those questions look like?
It’s like, “What do you do for a living? What do you do this or that for?” At some point, after I hear all the little nuance-y things that you people identify with, I’m like, “What do you dream of? What's something you want to hear?” Even that slight like, “No one has ever asked me this question. I can't wait to talk about this.”
How many people have never thought about it?
There's a lot.
You hit me with an uppercut on that last episode virtually. When you started talking about like, “I want to know Bobby, what he's into, and what his life aspirations are.” I was like, “I was here having a good time. I’m not ready for this.” You want to have the perfect answer to that but to figure out the perfect answer, you have to think about it.
Does that feel like, “What lights you up? What makes you excited?” “Fishing.” “Tell me about fishing. What about fishing that makes you stoke? Have you ever thought about this or that?” I'm providing suggestions for that person to make choices to follow the things they're passionate about because the things that are created out of the passion that you have creates so much more.
The amount of success that comes from the things that are created out of your passion is so much more.
The only reason I've had any success with this is I genuinely care about it.
You’re good at it too.
I enjoy hanging out with people like you who can talk on a spiritual level on a more open and honest level. I've tried to keep it that way. I don't care how big your platform is or how big your Instagram is. None of that matters to me. What matters to me is the person sitting across from me and also the connection. Thanks. I love you, brother. Do you want to keep going? What do you want to do? Do you want to make this the longest show?
Jeremy has a beer.
Jeremy is the man. He is my ride of die. Jeremy makes me a better person.
I wouldn't go that far.
There's a reason Jeremy stumbled into my life.
Tell me that shit. What’s going on?
It was wild. We were both Watch D.O.G.S.
What does that mean?
Sadly, our society has come to this but even in our mountain community in Colorado specifically, school shootings are a big deal. No person in their right state of mind with any care or love would want that to happen in any school across the country or around the world. Children should be the most protected. I feel like we should have steel walls around every school but then at the same time, you're not letting any of that natural light in. How do you navigate it?
You can't put a wall around them.
Our biggest fear here is elk or wildlife on a playground. Shout-out to Matt Cormier. He's our old school principal. He's a badass. He kicked some ass for sure.
What is this shit?
It's a whiskey smoker. He made this for me. It’s super cool.
How does this work?
You take one of these whiskey. Do you want to meet an amazing individual?
Yeah.
He is the salt of the earth. He reminds me of my grandfather and a world-renowned archery coach who's right here in Denver on the traditional level. He killed that bull with a traditional bow. His sons are the best. Shout-out to Rocky Mountain Special.
If people are doing shit like this and stuff like that, I respect you because they have so much more connection to all this.
It's a definite passion.
Tell me about how you guys met.
We're Watch D.O.G.S.
Was it the school principal that started it or was it a group of dads? Was it at Jefferson County?
It's a JeffCo thing.
The county that we live in is the same county that Columbine happened. The backstory, and I may be getting this wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was a group of fathers. One of them might even have a student who went to Columbine during that. They started a program here at the school to get parents involved. This program was dad-specific. There are moms that do it but it's primarily dads. They are there to keep an eye out for what's going on in the school. You can come and go. You have to go through your background check. There's a vetting process.
We both passed it.
I've been to the White House and so have you. I feel like this background check, they pulled up more shit. They were like, “Tell me about this.” I had to explain it to the principal. I was in the principal’s office, which made me feel good. They're going through the process. They don't want any criminals, sex offenders, or anything like that in there, which legally they can't be around in school anyway. They're doing their due diligence.
You have to get accepted into the program. You then go and meet all these other amazing dads like Jeremy. This community is cool. We're art-driven. Everybody ranges from firefighters to a lot of people in the outdoor industry and a lot of people who work remotely. Some of them are account executives. There's nothing wrong with that but they all share a common interest in living in a mountain community. That's what you get growing up in these small mountain towns. It’s Garden Valley.
One of the responsibilities in school is being there when the kids are exiting and entering the school. In the morning at 9:00, they want the biggest presence. The second thing is going around and making sure all the doors are locked. They lock the classroom doors. Sometimes, it's policing the other teachers, like the gym teacher would leave the back door propped open. It was like, “No. To make this secure, we want all the doors locked so nobody could go into the school,” unless they go into the front of the school where there are seven barriers of entry or something.
There are seven sets of doors that an active shooter would have to make it through to get into any classroom anywhere where the kids are. It's a well-thought-out process to where they remodeled the school. They're taking that extra step for that. The Watch D.O.G.S. are also encouraged to talk to the kids. You're not there as a security. It’s more of a good time thing to where the head of the Watch D.O.G.S. would be like, “There's a mandatory Watch D.O.G.S. meeting tonight at the Little Bear Lounge at 9:45. It's going to go until midnight. We're going to have live music and drinks.”
Tell me you have Watch D.O.G.S. t-shirts too.
I never had one.
They made them but they didn’t get it.
They did make a sweater like a high vest.
They wanted to make sure of your wholesome presence and you're not just some rando cruising around the perimeter.
That’s how you guys met each other.
Yes. I met Jeremy and we started bullshiting.
When was this?
Your kids were in kindergarten, right?
Yeah.
A few years ago or something like that. You tell the story, Jeremy.
Neither of us knows how to tell people what we did in real life for a job. It's easier for him because he does concerts and in corporate. He sits around like a roadie and I immediately was like, “No way.” That's where I am.
I gravitate toward the dads who have tattoos and are like your people.
I had a slight edge. I was like, “Holy shit. Me too,” and that was it. He worked for a company that I know. We probably know a lot of the same people. In a community of 9,000 people, I bumped into another mook like me. I’m like, “This is incredible,” and that was it. Everything started crashing when our industry shut down due to COVID. He called me up one day and was like, “This is Bobby. I want to talk to you about something if you could come down to this place that I rented.
Was it this place?
It was next door. It was the closet.
I was like, “What's this guy even talking about?” We knew each other on the playground. I came down here and he seemed pretty cool. He's like, “I'm doing this thing.” I'm like, “This is wild.” That was a few years ago.
It's been awesome having Jeremy in my corner because we've had moments where we've had guests coming in and I'm like, “How do I talk to a two-star general?” Jeremy is awesome. He's like, “Let's ask him about aliens and Osama bin Laden. Let's go full-on.”
Jeremy, I have a question for you. Bobby told me how it has helped him and stuff but how has it been for you?
It's like having awesome tickets to something. I'm not the guy talking but it's cool.
We've done some cool stuff too. We've traveled a little bit with the show. We've built a friendship here more so than when we first met each other.
I live four minutes from here. This venue with this kind of people popped in here. You get to meet and engage with a different caliber of people throughout your normal day. It's like free tickets to an awesome show. It's pretty cool.
With the podcasting, you should start putting a candle right here because this is like the new age fire talk. It could be a cool way to have a ceremony.
How about we record our next one around the campfire?
That would be dope.
We recorded one during COVID in a park.
We need to do that.
I’m like, “Why don't people pick up their dog shit?” I'm asking a park ranger dude. We were going to change the world.
A campfire would be dope though. We should do it.
I want to do some more. Donny wants to record one with me in a cave that we've yet to do. He goes and lives in a cave.
I got to meet this motherfucker. Let's do it.
As soon as we get off this, let's call him and see what he's doing. Maybe we'll go to dinner or something.
Is there a fire that you need to get back to?
No.
How has that been? Are you still in the superintendent role?
For the readers, I’m the superintendent of what's called a Hotshot crew, the Eldorado Hotshots to be specific. Look at my Instagram. I used to hide that fact but it's so easy to figure it out. It's pointless for me to do it. I still run that crew but my tenure there is coming to an end pretty close. I've been doing it for many years. I have a lot of other interests that I'm being called to do, specifically leadership consulting, podcasting at some point, writing a book, and then running retreats for healing work for people. All those things in the background are taking place.
The fire world is great. Don't get me wrong. I worked for a Federal Land Management agency. It doesn't take much guessing to figure out what it feels like to work for a Federal agency in this climate. It has a lot of challenges. We don't make a ton of money. Don't get me wrong. I'm very grateful. I don't want to sound ungrateful while I'm saying this but my base paycheck is less than $60,000 a year. I live in California where gas is $6 a gallon.
The fire world is a great world, but it has a lot of challenges.
That's ridiculous. I've been a big advocate after talking to Brandon of Anchor Point. He's the one who connected us. Maybe we'll do one with him around the campfire. That would be rad. The little platform that I have, I do want to create some change. I do want people to have a connection with nature. I want them to appreciate nature a little bit more but also, I'm a huge advocate for people of service, whether it's on a personal level or a grand scheme of things like our former military members or even active, first responders in general but that somebody that gets shit on and swept under the rug more than any other degree of service is wildland firefighters. They are disregarded. It's being brought to light more but you weren't even classified as firefighters at one point.
We are wildland technicians. It may sound ridiculous but at the end of the day, what that has done has kept us away from getting legitimate coverage for things like mental health.
Isn't it crazy that a title is driven by how much money you make? If you're an account executive, you might be titled that because you need to make X amount of salary. It’s the same with insurance companies and naming winter storms. That's why there's winter storm Sally. The bomb cyclone. We never had a bomb cyclone. It was a fucking blizzard.
Has there been recruitment issues?
Yes. First off, I want to say this. My job is super dope.
It's rad. It’s a job that I would want to do.
I get a work in nature and be connected to nature. I was raised to be a steward of the land and have a connection with the land. Even as a kid, I don't want very much anymore. I grew up hunting although I stopped at some point for some reason. I took a job that kept me outdoors. We're a national resource. I fight fire in nature all over the United States from Alaska to Minnesota to Florida to the Western United States. We come to Colorado all the time, to Montana, Arizona, California, and all over.
I love that I get to work in nature and be connected to nature. I was raised to be a steward of the land and to have a connection with it.
The Hotshots go to some of the most remote places in the United States. I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am for that. To be sitting on a mountain in Alaska off the Stewart Highway around Southern Alaska, the South of Anchorage, up on this peak side of a slope. We were sitting there looking over this bay and recognizing how small you are.
I'm going to talk to you about something from my experience.
I'm so insignificant but yet I'm a part of this. Also, how special those moments are being in the middle or even a different part of Alaska. Being dropped in the Northern Fairbanks area and the flat where there's nothing. There are no people. The only thing close to you is moose.
It’s the oil territory, is it?
It was past that. There's nobody. The only way you get in is by helicopter and boat. You're remote. It was North past the Yukon River and the Arctic Circle. You get to think, “I wonder if any human had stood in this spot. Maybe I’m the only human that stood here.” Those moments, I live for.
It’s so rock and roll though too. I love high intensity. That's why I had a passion for metal music and working on those shows or even when I was out with Lil Wayne. We would start the show with seven concussion grenades, which was my suggestion. I would purposely sit there and try not to flinch during those because it makes you wake up. You are alive.
How did that work for you?
I do not want to meet the person who can sit through seven of those without flinching. That's a special operator right there.
Just a weird random story. The first time I shot my brother, it was a Black Friday sale or something. He is like, “They're selling all these M1 Garands at Big 5 for super cheap.” I was like, “You should go get one of those.” He stood in line at this Big 5 to get this M1 Garand for 24 hours.
What is an M1 Garand? Is it a high caliber?
Yeah. It's what they used in World War II. It’s Woodstock. It’s super old school. He's buying a World War II rifle. The clang sound is when the magazine is empty. It’s old-school shit. He's buying a gun that probably took some lives.
It’s repurposed.
They're selling all these things from an armory somewhere. He goes to go get this thing. He gets one. He brings it to my dad's house. My dad has a lot of property and we're like, “Let's shoot this damn thing.” We shot it and it was so loud. I'm immediately taken to the spotlight. Could you imagine sitting in a trench with somebody? It was crazy.
Saving Private Ryan is one of my favorite films of all time. You can put yourself in that moment.
That was the first movie that made you feel that way about war.
That's so crazy. That's what I think about when I find an arrowhead or something on the ground. I pick it up and I'm like, “Who is the last person to touch this? What did it do? Did this take somebody's life? Did it provide a game? Was it just dropped?” Sometimes it was like, “This one sucks? What an asshole.” I have a story to tell Donny. He'll fix it. My buddy Bito owns Half Face Blades. It’s a super cool blade company.
Does it have a Native American history?
Yeah. I own a bunch of his knives and stuff. He's an awesome individual but he started a collection because of that with some of his means. I forget the name of the website that he goes on. It's an artist website but they auction off period-type stuff. He has some tomahawks that are made out of steel, like piece pipe tomahawks from 1750 right before the Revolution. It has engraved notches on the handles. It's got burn marks from them smoking out of it. It has Liberty with a heart etched in one part of the blade. It's so badass.
He makes some dope shit.
He is a good person too. Picking up something like that during that period is incredible. It was on episode 100 that we did with him. We went to San Diego and recorded at Half Face Blades. We did a blade giveaway.
Is he originally from San Diego?
He's a Northern Cal kid. He lost his dad and 2 brothers when he was 7 years old in a plane crash. It was in Montana.
That's the logo I was looking at. It was upside down.
He later went on to the SEAL teams and had a pretty extensive career at a high level.
How did you connect? How did he get into knife or blade making or metalwork?
He needed something to do post-military and it was always a passion of his. He wanted to make better tools for deploying. He was a kid who grew up very similar to you and me in the outdoors throwing sticks.
Does he do the whole piece?
They do everything. They're making hundreds of knives a week. It’s incredible. He employs 30 or 40 people. Some of them are veterans. Some of them are ex-pro skaters. It's a good group. It's been a way for him and he spoke about this. I'm not speaking for him. We've recorded two episodes with him.
Leaving the high-level SEAL team or that Special Operations community, you have all this camaraderie and a team around you. You are doing everything together in and outside of work. You're going to the bar. I would imagine firefighting or being a Hotshot is very similar because you're on the road. It's like, “When we go eat dinner, we go eat together.” Not all the time but 90% of the time. You face some serious adversity with these sorts of people too. That builds a bond.
You get to see what somebody is and their true characteristic when they're put under the highest amount of pressure. I don't believe that there's anything higher than probably being in combat and a firefight or something like that. Some of these guys have told me stories of guys checking out. Having all this training and shit to fall back on, they were so scared when they leave the base with a good reason. Not everybody's cut off for it, even if they make it through BUD/S training or shell shock.
It happens in hunting. When a giant bull comes in and you bugle one end, the knees are knocking. I've taken the training and the extra steps through Tom Clum. I learned a shot sequence also I had a mantra behind it. Use your subconscious mind. He teaches that. Believe it or not, it's a surprise element like a trigger press. You don't want to know when the gun's going to go off because then you're going to flinch. It has to be a surprise or screw up your shot. It's that sniper mentality.
Diamonds are made with pressure. I agree with everything you said. Even to the extent where someone comes up to me and is like, “I got this dude that wants to be on your crew. He's super awesome. He's super physically fit,” I'm like, “Sweet dude. That’s one step. It’s cool that he or she is working towards that but we'll wait until we put him in a challenging situation.” That's when you understand someone's true character straight up. When someone is in the most stressful situation, are they giving up and complaining?
When a person is put in a really challenging situation, that's when you see someone's true character straight up.
That's why I urge anybody to get a little bit of education and first aid, especially if you live in the outdoors and want to experience the outdoors, even if it is just camping, to protect your family. At least the CPR or to stop the bleeding because you don't want to be that person on the phone with 911. It helps but if you're dispersed like we are, a lot of the fire department up here is volunteer-based because we don't have the infrastructure. We’re an unincorporated mountain town inside of a huge county. We pay less in taxes but we don't have the infrastructure that you had so a response time is probably double because they got a job at the fire station.
People are remote all the time.
It's had to grow. There are a lot of homes here. I'm not saying it's all like that. When I grew up as a kid, it was. A lot of homes burned to the ground before the fire department. You also don't have the infrastructure of fire hydrants. They're showing up in a pumper truck or something like that but we've had some paramedics on and stuff too that worked at a high level like Swamp Medics and stuff that works as actual helicopter medics like flight transport critical care.
He said this straight out. I'm pretty sure that 100% of the calls that he went on for cardiac arrest where CPR wasn't started didn't make it. Have that little bit. It takes nothing to go get CPR. To bring it back full circle, we’re all over the place. Bito is working at a high level and that sort of thing. To bring it back, he built this business around having his boys around him. He's got his badass team of awesome individuals.
I respect that. That's something that I've been cluing in on a lot. There’s Jocko. You got your boy doing knives. You got the Shawn Ryan Show. I know a lot of Navy SEALs and/or Special Operations military people. Once they got out of the military, they went to work.
They have a different drive.
They're giving back. They're still serving because it's a part of who they are. There's something super inspirational about that. I find a lot of inspiration in that because that's what I want to do too. I can tell you the definition of what I think a warrior is but it's not so much about being a savage on the battlefield. It's about being a servant.
A warrior is not so much about being a savage on the battlefield. It's about being a servant.
I don't think that because you were a Navy SEAL, you're any better than the local patrol police officer. It’s still a point of service. The one reason why I like having somebody sitting across from me who has been part of a Hotshot crew, a Navy SEAL team platoon, a former Green Beret, or a paramedic is that you guys are exposed to so much in life that you have a different understanding of value time. You hold a higher value to friendship and/or love in a different way but at the same time, you're very loving to yourself.
Your values are important to you as an individual. Those mixed with time create truth and transparency. If I were to say something that you didn't agree with, as a friend, you should be able to say, “I don't agree with that,” and not worry about what I think. We're just having a conversation. In that community or those high-level stress jobs, and I'm not comparing rock and roll roadies to it, that's how I came up, but it's very similar. It's high-stress. Everybody's up your ass.
Your body doesn't give a fuck about what's causing the stress.
We don't have bullets flying over our heads.
I'm lumping the military into that category listening to you say that. The only potential difference is we potentially understand how fragile life is very quickly. That's a thing to me. It's not to say that you don't value life. You do, but it comes from knowing to understanding. My number one value is to value life over all else. That’s it. That's not yours or mine. It's the thing we all share.
My number one value is to value life above all else. That’s it.
In the first responder world, you understand how fleeting a human life can be and that value becomes so apparent that you're like, “I need to do whatever I can to encourage the existence of individual experience and life to continue.” How I can support that for somebody is my mission. That's what it is. It doesn't matter whether or not I'm doing it as a firefighter. These SEALs get out and continue to do it. He's making something creative with knives but he's employing homies from the military to continue to give them purpose.
There's a culture there. It is like a little tribe and that's an awesome people.
Sometimes we say tribalism has this negative context to it. A tribe is important.
That's why they make it negative because it's so positive. It’s the most effective thing.
If you want to think about how it’s structured, and I've broken this down, I don't mean to but I don't want to forget this, that tribal mentality, and Sebastian Junger’s book opened this beautiful ideal to me a little bit, the concept of tribe is well broken down. I've done a deeper dive into it because of my infatuation with Native cultures. Part of the aspect that intrigues me is how I build community and know that people genuinely are sharing what I'm sharing with them.
That's important that we're on an even playing field when it comes to emotions and everything else, even though there might be a hierarchy in the tribe. You want to take this into a modern-day concept of a way to govern people, money, and everything else because money wasn't a concern. There were different currencies. Maybe this obsidian rock was carried across the country. You add some value and then start employing guns, gunpowder, and bullets. It's crazy. Buffalo hides became a currency. A buckskin is named that because it used to cost $1.
The tribal concept when you break it down is like, “What are you good at and what do you enjoy doing?” Having some conversations with some other people has helped me realize this. If you are happy petting the horses, feeding them, and cleaning up after them, if those animals like a dog or somebody give you joy, maybe that was your job because you were happy doing it. You were good at it and you genuinely cared about it. If you want to take it a step further and you're the shaman, that's a different level.
Let me ask you this question. What do you think about recognizing that someone is into what brings them joy? What do you think within a tribe pushing that individual to do something else, to expand their being into a potential they may have that they may be fearing? Is that part of a tribe too, inspiring someone to pursue something better?
There were demands because if you're under a war, everybody's going to war. There are only so many people in the tribe. When it comes to food and providing for the tribe, that's mandatory, no matter what your level of skill is. Maybe you're not the hunter or the warrior but maybe you are the one that has to sew the scalps on the back of the headdress or whatever it is. Maybe you're the clothes-maker. Maybe you have to make the breastplates for the warriors. To bring it back to the military or the level of service, whether you’re a husband or a wife or you're the provider of the family, it’s all level of service or servitude. Also, whether you're a cook in the Navy or not.
We also talk about this on the crew because the Hotshot crew is a small tribe. It's 20 to 25 people. One of the first things I tell everybody is, “It's written in our Standard Operation Guidelines or SOGs. This tribe here that we have or this family, there's a communal wood pile. You can either take wood and do what you have to do or take wood and give more back.”
That was gifted to the crew by another crew member because he was into the Native American culture and stuff. He was in prison and everything was taken from him at some point because he was into drugs and shit. He came to the crew once he healed all that shit. He had this beautiful perspective about this community, this job, and this family that we have is about giving back. It's not about taking from the communal woodpile because everything that you take is taking away from everybody else in the community and the family.
To me, a lot about being in a tribe is that philosophy. We're not only doing something together to reach a goal or an objective, survive, or whatever it is. There's a common interest to make everybody better. To me, that's where that question came from. It's like, “Do you think that's true? Do you think that there's a way? Do you think there's also being a part of the tribe that we're inspiring each other?”
This family that we have is about giving back. We're not only doing something together to reach a goal or an objective, to survive, or whatever it is. There's this common interest in making everybody better.
I think so. Why wouldn't there be? The stone tool wasn't an invention or a human creation, whether it was first discovered from a lightning strike but we figured out how to recreate it and harness it to the point where tribes took it so sacred that they have the same fire going and they thought it was there to keep their ancestors alive.
The fire never went out. Some of the most sacred leaders in the tribe, their job was to watch the fire but also, what did they do when they left because they were nomadic people and were following their food source? They also understood that fire breeds new life. It gave back so they would backfire wherever they left. They even had what we would call an ultra-marathon runner. They were fire runners.
They were the youngest fittest, badass warriors in the tribe. Their sole mission was to carry this fire. They would take an aspen conk, pull it out, and those burned for 24 hours or something. They packed it into some bison horn that was lined with clay so they could keep the fire burning and run 50 or 60 miles guaranteeing it wouldn't go out. They would restart the fire to where they were camped.
This is where smoke signals came from apparently. They would send smoke signals and the rest of the tribe would migrate to wherever they were 50 or 60 miles away. They would set up a new camp. “There's food here. “Sometimes it was a leapfrog. They had multiple fire runners that were scouting the air. It's so cool, especially the concept.
It’s like the rugged terrain. The elevation is so badass. We were on a fire in the Klamath National Forest, which is super Northern California near the Oregon border. Oftentimes, when we get into a country like that where it's super remote, there are a lot of Native American reservations and things of this nature. When we fight fire in those areas, we have to be in conjunction and work with the native tribes in that area. The native tribe in the place where we're working called Happy Camp is the Karuk Tribe.
Where is this?
Klamath National Forest. It was a very small town that we were in. The tribe working with the crew was in a place called Happy Camp.
Is this in the United States?
It’s in Northern California. It was right near the Oregon-California border. It's separate.
It’s a beautiful country.
It has tall mountains and lower elevations. I don't even know if they have a 6,000-foot peak. It’s probably 4,000 or 5,000-foot peaks but it has deep river cut canyons. There are tons of poison oaks. It’s right off the I-5 up North past Yreka. You take Highway 96 and then it takes you back to Horse Creek, Seiad Valley, and Happy Camp. We're in the Happy Camp area. It's these giant river cuts. You got the Klamath River that runs through there and it still has salmon runs.
It’s this badass super dope spot. It's all Native reservation places. The Karuk Tribe specifically is one of the only tribes in California where settlers were coming West that didn't lose a lot of their traditions. As they were coming West, they were gathering up all the Native American tribes and putting them into concentration camps. They're sending them over to Hoopa. You follow the 96. It’s in this general area of the Orleans, the Six Rivers National Forest area. There's a place called Hoopa. There's a giant valley right there.
They're floating these rivers. The 96 road follows the Klamath River the whole time. They're gathering up all these Native Americans and putting them in boats. They are bringing them down into Orleans in the Hoopa Valley and then sticking them into this concentration camp. The Karuk Tribe was escaping these camps and getting onto the ridgelines. They are making their way back to Happy Camp before the settlers can come back to Happy Camp. They're using horseback navigating. The camps are so steep.
The Karuk Tribes are up there. Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa Tribes used ridgelines as their highways to trade. There are so many artifacts and prayer rocks on these beautiful ridgelines. It's powerful and so rugged. It's so dope. They got elk in there too. There was all this beautiful stuff going on there. When I was a young fireman, I didn't give a fuck about this. I'm out here fighting fire.
How did you learn about this? Just talking with some of these natives?
It came down to this last fire. My spirituality has been increasing over the years. For this last fire that we went on, I got in contact with some of the tribes’ members who were advisors to how we should fight this fire in these canyons. They want fire in the landscape for everything. They got the fire runners.
They've been advocates.
It's a healthy part of the ecosystem to keep the brush down for hunting grounds, watersheds, and everything. They're all about fire. Lightning comes through there and that's typically what starts the fires up in that country. It depends on what the threat is. I don't want to say something stupid and say they want to manage it but they want us to work with the fire in a way that allows it to benefit the resource on the ground.
That's the thing too. Isn't that part of what's going on? There's so much fuel that it's burning so hot and scorching the Earth so shit cannot grow back. The fires are burning hotter than they normally would have.
Way back in the day, in the early 1900s, they had these large-scale fires. It was millions of acres and they were super destructive. It was burning down cities and immense loss of life. Thousands of people are dying and things of this nature. A lot of it had to do with the logging industry. It was the way the logging industry was managing the land. They are coming in and expanding. They were moving West, trying to build cities, and taking resources to support life or whatever they were doing. They had the log to build homes and structures but they were leaving a ton of slash on the ground without management of the forest.
It turned into the hottest fuel you can get.
They had these giant fires that were uncontrollable. You can even get people into it because there's so much slashing garbage on the ground. It decimated towns, forests, and all kinds of stuff. The government came up with this rule. It’s a weird policy where we had to put the fire out within a certain period. The fire started. Everybody is thrown at it. They would hire people from bars and things of this nature to put out these fires right away.
They’d go to happy hour.
They’re like, “Who needs to earn $5?” They run people out there. We put fires out. We have been doing that for over 100 years. People will say, “We need to log more to manage the land.” I’m like, “That's a sliver of the story.” The logging industry has developed tons of very healthy practices on how to take care of the land. They're logging and planting. They're replanting or managing the land in appropriate ways but it wasn't like that in the beginning. Logging is a very small part of the fuel management issue.
The bigger issue that I've been seeing is the fact that we will put fires out super small and that is removing fire from the environment. We are not appropriately managing the amount of fuel reduction work that needs to take place to prevent catastrophic wildfires because we have removed wildfires from the ecosystem. There's this huge push from all Federal agencies to start starting fuel management programs or large-scale burn programs and things of that nature.
They're doing that around here pretty heavily.
It’s everywhere. The Karuk Tribe has been doing this forever. We manage to work things with them and do all this kind of stuff.
They've been doing this since day one, the fuel management.
It's a part of their culture. They would send young boys for their coming of age or manhood stuff up to ridge lines to start fires to come back down. We're on this fire and it's super crazy. I'm interacting with the tribe and having these conversations. I was listening to what they wanted to say and all this type of stuff. There's not a lot of threat. We got the lines in. It's all about approval. It’s a give-and-take type of thing. We're having all these great conversations. This gentleman named Bo, you got to have this guy in your show.
I’m down. Anybody you want to come on here who can have a conversation with you is welcome to sit with us.
This guy is a full-power dude. He's dope as hell. I'll hook you up with him. He's telling me all about the tribe, the history, what they've done, and all this crazy stuff. He's telling about their ceremonies and how they maintain all this culture still. It's pretty rare. There are the fires in this fucked up spot in this crazy canyon. It was super steep with poison oak. There's a thing called taro. If anybody knows about taro, it's the worst stuff. It's like a bush but it's got these crazy waxy leaves. When you're smashing through the brush on it, it puts off this powder.
It makes you cough, gag, and sneeze. It can make you sick. The fire's backing down in this creek and we're like, “We can't get people down there because you can't see the fire. We don't know where it's at. It's dangerous.” It's been sitting there for a long time and we couldn't figure out why. I'm like, “I need to go in there and look.” I was asked to walk this 4 or 5-mile stretch of ground. It was the most rugged terrain you've ever seen in your life. It was a super steep canyon. It was overgrown.
You're smashing through the brush the whole time with poison oak and blackberry bushes and this taro crap. It's hot. You got face flies all up in you all the time. There are mosquitoes. It's all the crap that I love. What I'm asking to do puts me right onto these sacred trails and grounds that are immensely sacred to these tribes.
There's a trail that takes you up this river drain and this creek drainage up this ridge line that takes you to this very ancient 200 to 300 years old village up on this top of the mountain that we were protecting while we are up there. I'm with this guy Bo. I'm like, “We got to go check this out. If I don't go look at this, then we're talking about doing some serious resource damage with dozers and things like this drawing this huge box around this fire that may triple the size of the fire.” He was like, “Okay.”
Do they get equipment like that up there?
There are roads up in there from the logging industry. We can track dozers and stuff. We'll run them on the ridgelines. Every ridge and peak has a prayer rock on it. Back in the day, the relationships weren't that great so they would blow dozers over prayer rocks. It's stupid. We've developed a better relationship so we're trying to help them maintain a lot of their culture which is, in my opinion, very beautiful. The point of the story is I get access to this trail that hasn't been walked in 200 years.
This guy Bo is like, “This is the first time a human has walked this trail in 200 years. I'm like, “Here's where we think it is.” It's a 4 to 5-mile-ish walk smashing brush. It took me almost five hours to walk it. That's how crazy the ground was. He's like, “No one's walked this for roughly 200 years.” We had to say a prayer. I walked the trail with 60 pounds on my back in the most humid conditions because it gets humid there. I couldn't drink water the entire time.
Why couldn't you drink water?
That’s a sacred part of the process. If you get on these sacred trails, you can't.
You have to follow the tradition.
I was fully in the spirit world by the time I was done. I was dehydrated and cramping. I was dizzy as hell.
You can have psychedelic experiences if you put yourself in some adversity or float tank. Have you ever done one of those?
Yeah.
It was pretty insane.
What was it like going to these remote areas where typically people aren't out camping or hunting? What's the weirdest thing you've seen? There's a crazy thing going on in Oregon.
It's not weird because I already know it's there but we run into an illegal marijuana cartel stuff.
We've had John Nores on too. Are you familiar with him?
No.
He's awesome. I got to connect you, guys. He was part of the MET team. They were combating that but he's a game warden.
I think I've heard about this dude.
Brandon introduced John to me. We had an awesome conversation. I need to catch up with John. He's an awesome guy. He lives up in Northern Montana. He was part of the whole National Geographic show. Above and beyond that, that was the Hollywood side of it. He wrote a book called Hidden War. Check it out.
The craziest thing happened to me though on a grill. We've come across old stuff all the time but I was out scouting a chunk of ground trying to figure out how to contain this fire camera with maybe fewer shots or something. I'm cruising around. I dragged my foot through some brush and my foot caught something. I was like, “What the hell is that?” I almost tripped up a little bit. I look back and my foot is caught up in a bunch of strings. Have you ever seen a paracord?
Yeah.
It's like paracord so you can strip the sheath off and then take these thinner strands underneath it. It was colored brown, like someone took a Sharpie to it so it was hidden better. It was attached to two trees through some eyelets and then it came up to a piece of pipe with a shotgun shell in it. They built that at face level but it was so old that the string broke.
They take Vietnam tactics and build Punji pits from the Viet Cong. They dig holes, put bamboo spikes in them, and cover them in poisons.
To go further on this, I was on another fire. I was a younger fireman. I got the squad boss position. I was working on getting my firing boss call which gives me the ability to run firing operations like backfires and things of this nature. I can't remember the name of the fire. I remember they’re like, “Ben, you need to go burn this. This will be your training assignment.” I was like, “Let me go beep around inside where I'm going to burn to get an idea of what's in here.” I started walking.
A lot of times, what you'll see is these big pits or dugouts where they're capturing water or doing some plants. The telltale thing that you see when you know it's a grill is there's this black PVC pipe everywhere like an irrigation pipe. I'm walking around and I start seeing the irrigation pie. I see some of these pits. I’m like, “Whatever it is, it’s not a big deal.”
I walked over further and came across something. “Why are all this brush concentrated right here? What is going on here?” I walk over there and there's a tarp. They cut a bunch of soil down to a low level so that they could lay a tarp at the same level as the ground. They covered it with brush and underneath it was a full-on camp with hot beans boiling a little bit. People are here.
They walk in carpet and stuff so you can't see their boot prints. It’s wild.
It's crazy. We see that all the time.
It's wild. The laws that are set up are even crazier. Even when John was arresting these people, they would let him out because there was no crime. It's wild. It's probably one of the most devastating things to an ecosystem that is being done within the United States.
A lot of people that they're hiring to do that work aren't cartels. They're dudes trying to send money back to their families.
They're trying to get by.
They are indentured servants too. They are paying off their debts.
I want to bring it back to the prayer trail. What happened? Is there anything specific on the side?
I'm walking up this creek drainage and everything's good. I'm coughing and hacking from the taro. I finally hit the ridge that brings me up to the spot I'm trying to make it to. I make it halfway up and I'm fucked up. I’m dehydrated and super dizzy. I'm like, “I'm not allowed to drink. I'm not that far away.” I'm maybe 1 mile away. The only thing that happened was I heard a weird voice. It was a woman's voice. I'm telling you, it sounded shit. I heard this voice and it sounded like, “Hey,” or something like this. I stopped.
Are you by yourself at this point?
I was by myself, which is stupid. I should have probably brought somebody with me.
Where is Bo?
I love Bo but he wouldn't have made it.
You got a GPS on you?
I got a GPS. If I would have gotten fucked up, they would have known where I was at. I hear this woman's voice saying something. It was like, “Hey.” I sat there and stopped. I was like, “Maybe I'm closer to the destination I thought it was. Maybe they're right above me or something.” I go, “Hey. I'm right here.” I whistle like we usually whistle at people. I kept walking. When I got to the top, I told Bo. I was like, “I heard this weird woman's voice down there.” He was like, “Maybe it was the spirit world.” It was dope.
It's not cool but it is cool that you got to do that. There are some spots here I'd love to show that modern American culture has decimated but we know our Indian burial grounds and stuff. My family goes twelve generations deep here. All those meadows, barns, and stuff that you passed on the way down here were all part of their ranch back in the day or part of the family. I know a little bit about some of the history in and around here that's not publicized. There are some amazing spots right here that are pretty cool. You can see why it was a prayer rock or something. Could you tell when you were on one of those spots because you're surrounded 360 degrees?
It comes down back into awareness. If you pay attention to your environment and you know yourself, you can get to places and know right away that it's sacred. You are like, “This is a special spot. There's no way I'm the first person to see this.” When you get on a peak or a ridge and you can see 360 degrees around you, you're like, “This is a special place.”
If you pay attention to your environment, you can get to places and know right away that they're sacred.
You come up to a rock and the rock all of a sudden changes color. There's a lot of granite up there too and serpentine but also limestone and stuff. You get this type of limestone that looks like straight tiger stripes. I’m like, “What is going on here?” It's soft like sandstone. It's like, “This is strange. This was some special place for somebody.”
We're getting to these flats and there's all this bear grass and stuff. You're like, “The women came up here and they would make baskets out of this straight up.” Their connection to the Earth is crazy. With all the stuff that we walk by not paying attention to, there was a reason that was there for them. It was an integral part of their life.
That's the cool part of your job, I would imagine, having these experiences like that. There's got to be an element of that rock and roll aspect where you guys are going in and it's walls of fire. You get to drive a truck into that and you're going in through air.
That stuff is exciting. Don’t get me wrong. The danger of riding the razor's edge and all that stuff gets me going for sure. I've lived my life by that for a long time but I'm trying to do things slightly safer maybe like mountain biking and backcountry stuff.
You have a lot more at stake than you did when you were a young man. I lived a little bit crazy. Going into some of these third-world countries and people didn't come out of them because I wanted to go see what it was about was eye-opening.
It's eye-opening to see how people thrive.
Would I do that as a growing 40-year-old man with 3 kids? There is no way. If I died back then, I didn't care. If I died, it doesn't matter. In this next chapter, you mentioned the book. Is this going to be post-retirement?
Retirement is a joke.
I think it is too. I get exactly what you mean. I don't think you should ever stop doing whatever you're doing.
I'm building this in the background so that it gives me an opportunity to leave the agency.
Good for you to have a plan. That's one of the biggest things that hit home for somebody who's in a line of service. If they don't have some plan when they get out, everything stops.
The idea of drinking coffee and smoking weed on the swing of your porch would last a day for me. I get bored very quickly.
I'm the same way. I have to have some point of focus. You’re always welcome here. I appreciate you making this trip. I have a little bit of regret that we've gone 3 hours and 45 minutes and I haven't asked you what you want to talk about. We just talked.
We did talk about what I wanted to talk about.
As part of this next step, you're helping with some coaching. If people wanted to get ahold of you for anything that you're doing outside or in the Federal agency, maybe there are some guys that could use some recruiting advice or something like that.
It's easy to reach out to me. Instagram is probably the easiest way to reach out to me for job opportunities within fire. I'm transitioning on that. I still believe in that work. If you want to get ahold of me there, hit me up. It's @BenStrahan. If you're interested in leadership consulting for whatever organization you’re with, Ben@MomentConsultingLLC.com is the best place to hit me.
The healing work I do in the background with first responders and stuff, we can touch bases there as far as Instagram's going but there's an organization that I'm working with that is healing work in general. It's Heal the Hero. You can find them on Instagram. Those are the main ones. Otherwise, I’m super stoked to be here and I know we'll do more.
We'll keep it rocking and rolling. As far as the healing process for some of these first responders and stuff because that's something that's the most prevalent, what is the process of getting integrated into that? Is there some application process? It's not just like, “Show up here. Here's your mushrooms.” We talked about that last time.
It all starts with whether or not you're interested and stuff. The healing work we're doing is not all psilocybin or plant medicines either. There are other things too. There are some psychoactive processes as well. There are a lot of other healing things that we are doing. The first step would be to reach out and hit the Heal the Hero up to see if this is a thing that interests you and make sure it's the right fit. We need to know where you're at and what your history is.
Do you have to be a first responder?
Not at all. This is for everybody.
It’s for the general population.
We do a lot of hero work. This isn't my organization. It's somebody else's. I’m just an advocate for them. I also do a lot of partnership work with them and I believe in it. It started with first responders’ stuff to begin with but it's more than that because we are the heroes of our life. It’s not to sound cliché and silly but that's what it is.
The hero is you. It's me. It doesn't have to be a first responder. At the end of the day, it all starts with an introduction of the humans and seeing where people are at to make sure it's the right fit and that you're prepared. A lot of times, people are in so much suffering that they're looking for relief. This type of work is not for that.
It’s not instant gratification.
You need to do the work and be committed to yourself and the healing process. You have to understand yourself at some level before you do things like psychedelics in general. We'd run retreats out of Mexico.
Is that how it becomes legal? It's not legalized in the United States so you're having to travel out of the country.
A lot of times, yeah. We're using non-psychoactive things. It's connecting with people that understand you or maybe it's breathwork. Maybe it's sound healing or whatever is popular. Maybe it's a men's retreat that involves understanding and talking with like-minded men to talk about what masculinity truly is, like with men building a tribe or doing something together in a tribe that creates something or provides something for somebody.
Maybe it's about incorporating suffering into your life in an intentional way so that life doesn't throw it on you unintentionally when you're not prepared. It’s super important. This is what we're trying to do. It’s not just about healing work. It's about giving people the ability to find their inspiration, purpose, and authenticity so they can live the best life.
It's super rad. Thank you so much. We're going to do this again. I joked about it being 50 episodes but maybe by the time you and I are done, we'll be two happy old men. Jeremy, if you're still alive, you're welcome here anytime.
Thanks, Ben.
There’s nobody better to break it with. No offense to you, Josh. I love you too. Thank you everybody for reading.
Important Links
Ben Strahan - LinkedIn
Audible - The Daily Stoic
Donny Dust - Past Episode
Justin Wren - The Joe Rogan Experience Past Episode
Instagram - Ben Strahan
Episode 100 - Past Episode
Shawn Ryan Show - YouTube
John Nores - Past Episode
Heal the Hero - Instagram