TUS01506- Walk on the Wild Side Part 2

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is a sense of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by Emailing info@tellussomething.org.

The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell us something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around the theme. Live in Person Without Notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something.

Sometimes Adventure is chosen. Sometimes it’s thrust upon you. In this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, we delve into the journeys of four remarkable people. A father on a wilderness backpacking trip must trust his [00:01:00] nine-year-old daughter to decide if they push through a grueling trail or turn back.

Land Tawney: He got these black burn trees. You got the fireweed. It’s about yay high. That pink, bright fireweed, the just juxtaposition with that and the trees. It’s just gorgeous.

Marc Moss: A young woman chasing a childhood dream unexpectedly lands a job at an Alaskan salmon hatchery, finding her true calling far from the world of fashion

Hailey Glassock: when you’re 19, details like where the job is and the fact that you should be within an hour of a hospital a lot of times really don’t matter.

Marc Moss: Meanwhile, a mountain guides attempt at romance. Is derailed by a giant steak and a dramatic breakup he must fight to fix.

Bryan Dalpes: I noticed a little green sheen on the surface of that meat,

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well.

Marc Moss: Finally, a teacher overwhelmed by her [00:02:00] daughter’s cancer fight. Accepts a risky Peace Corps invitation to Africa, fundamentally changing how she views her life’s responsibilities.

Betsy Funk: My favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick and he’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix.

And as that matrix held the plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers shared their true personal story on the theme Walk on the wild side. Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater.

Remember this, tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves.

The University of Montana where the George and Jane Denison Theater is located, stands on the Aboriginal territories of the SLU and Kalispell [00:03:00] people. We also recognize the Kni, the Blackfeet, the Shoshone, and the many other indigenous peoples who have called this place home and whose histories, cultures, and languages continue to enrich our community.

When we recorded this episode of the podcast, the Aspens were turning gold and the air was crisp. It was a sacred time of transition for generations. The original stewards of this valley understood autumn as a time for the final harvests for preparing food and medicine for the coming cold, for the last hunts before the snow, and for gathering to share stories that will sustain the community through the winter.

This land is not a relic of the past. It is a living, breathing entity deeply connected to the ongoing lives and traditions of indigenous peoples. In our first story, Tawny seizes the chance for an epic backpacking trip into the Frank Church wilderness made even better by the inclusion of his [00:04:00] nine-year-old daughter and support llamas.

When the intense summer heat and rugged trail push the young girl to the brink of giving up, he must trust her to make the decision to push forward or turn back. Land calls his story, young Grit. Thanks for listening.

Land Tawney: All right. So I get this call from my friend Ryan. It’s the most amazing call ever. And he says, Hey, do you want to go down to the Frank Church Wilderness? No return on a backpack trip? And I was like, heck yeah. And then he says something even better. He says it’s gonna be supported by llamas and so we don’t have to carry anything on our backs.

And I was like, hell yeah.

So then he, then I asked him like, well, what are the dates? So he tells me the dates. I start running through my head. Okay, it’s not my anniversary, it’s, but it’s in the July. Oh man, I’m, I’m sorry. I can’t go. He’s like, why can’t you go? I’m like, [00:05:00] it’s my daughter’s Sidney’s 10th birthday. So I’d gone from just so excited, just, ah, I can’t go.

And without skipping a beat, he says, well, why don’t you bring her? And I was like, yeah. I mean, she’s nine, almost 10. Yeah, I think she could probably do it. So I get off the phone, I wait for my wife to come home and I talk to her about this trip that’s been offered, and she’s like, yeah, I think she can do it.

Since Sydney gets home, I think she was hanging at a friend’s house and she gets home and. Before it’s even all the way outta my mouth. She’s like, dad, I want to do it. So now we have this opportunity, dad and daughter, to go into the Frank Church wilderness of no return. And so we start training up on Mount Sentinel and I buy her a backpack.

Even though we’re gonna have these llamas, I wanna make sure that she’s got water. I wanna make sure she has snacks. Plus I want her to carry something as she goes into the first time into the wilderness. So we’re up on Mount Sentinel, we’re hiking. She’s getting strong. Feels good. [00:06:00] And so the day comes and we drive, if you know, it’s a long drive.

So we get up early in the morning and we drive down to Stanley. It’s about, I don’t know, about another hour outside of Stanley. And we get to the trailhead and it’s this just craziness of llamas and gear everywhere. And so we get there and we, and we, we give them our stuff and they pack it into a llama and we all get assigned a llama.

And so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna hike up this trail and we’re gonna all have our own llama and we’re gonna take them up to the top of this high mountain lake. It’s about a three mile hike. First mile’s gonna be flat next to are kind of steep, to get over the top of that ridge. If you’ve been in the woods, you know you gotta get over that ridge usually to get to that, get to that lake.

So it’s this chaos. But then Sidney gets assigned her llama, his name is Marshall. And Marshall is this old seasoned llama. He’s been around the block. I think he gets assigned to Sidney ’cause she’s the youngest one in the group by [00:07:00] far. And so we get all packed up and now it’s time to go. And so we’re going down the trail and what I haven’t told you yet is this is the middle of July and it is hot as Hades.

Like I’m talking hot. It’s about noon. Sun is beating down on us. We’re in a place that is recently burned, so it’s absolutely gorgeous. You got these black burned trees, you got the fireweed. Its about yay high. That pink, bright fireweed, the just juxtaposition with that and the trees. It’s just gorgeous. So we’re walking along this trail and, you know, it’s, it’s been hot for a while and so there’s this dust on the trail.

So as you’re walking it’s like,

and this dust just comes up in the air. Think about like pigpen and peanuts we’re like this mass of llamas and people, and dust. Sid’s not bothered by it. She’s having the time of her life. She’s smiling, she’s singing. I’m like, this is amazing. So that’s that flat part. [00:08:00] Yeah.

So then we take this hard left and that’s when we start to get a little bit steeper. Now, at the same time, Marshall decides to eat some of that fireweed. Fireweed makes him s lobber like uncontrollably, s slobber. And so he is slobbering down the back of her leg. This is the first sign that things are changing a little bit.

City’s like, that’s gross. And I’m like, ah, it’s okay. It’s just llama. It’s just llama juice.

And so we keep going and, and then, you know, since there’s a recent, recent burn. There’s a ton of downfall, like a ton of downfall, and over one of these logs, Sidney has, she’s got Marshal behind her and she goes over this log with this llama steps on the back of her calf, and I hear it kind of scream. Now, my first thought is if this is a horse, like it’s trip over horses with their hooves, they can’t really feel what they’re touching and that would’ve crushed her calf, like crushed her [00:09:00] calf.

Been a serious, serious injury. But llamas, they have these two toes and they can feel with those toes, it’s like her fingers. So when it touches that calf, it just bounces off. So all it did was scare. So we avoided that mess, but as I said, it’s starting to get steep. And you know, Sidney, she stops talking and we’re both big time motor mouses talking all the time.

And when she stops talking, something’s wrong. So I look at Sid and I’m like, Hey. Are you okay? She’s like, oh, I, I’m kind of getting tired. And so we gave her some water, a little bit of a snack, and I asked our leader, there’s about 13 other people with us, and I asked the leader of this trip, I said, how much longer till lunch?

Because I know we’re stopping for lunch. And he’s like, oh, just 20 more minutes. So I looked at Sid and I said, can you make it 20 more minutes? She’s like, yes. So we continue up the trail. Well, if you’ve ever been in the woods with people, that 20 minutes turns into 30 minutes, turns into 45 minutes [00:10:00] before we stop.

So we stop and she’s absolutely had it. Her face is bright red. She’s on the verge of tears. As a father, I’m looking at that man, I’ve ruined her. This is her experience in the woods and what an idiot. But there’s this creek that’s running along right there, comes out of that high mountain lake. It’s nice and cold.

I’m like, ah, she needs to cool down. So I pick her up and I dunk her in that water and I start shaking her. You can’t shake a baby, you can shake a 9-year-old, I can tell you that. So she cools down a little bit. We get some food in her, but she’s still, you can just see in her eyes, she’s still not quite there.

So I decided to tell her this story about Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt and our family is revered is why we have these public lands that we have today. And so she’s heard so many stories and probably as sick as telling or hearing these stories, but I’m like, I’m gonna tell you another one.[00:11:00]

So when Roosevelt was young, he had asthma, like debilitating asthma. And back in that time they didn’t have inhalers. That ability to, you know, to get rid of kind of that episode that you’re having. So what he decided to do, he decided to make himself strong and limb and strong and long. So we spent a ton of time out in the woods.

Doing just that, just tramping around the woods. And so we got over that affliction by facing it head on. So I tell her this story and I said, you got two options right now. We can turn around, we can go home, which is okay, or we can face that adversity and we can move on. I did the hardest thing I’ve probably ever done as a father.

I walked away and let her think about that by herself. Nine years old. So I come back couple minutes later knowing full, well, if she wants to go home, we are going home. [00:12:00] So I go, Syd, it’s up to you. What do you want to do? She’s like, I want to do it. I’m like, all right, we’re gonna do this. Wow. So we get up from lunch, and again, she’s the youngest by far, and she gets Marshall Marshall’s old, right?

Like he’s this old seasoned llama. We gotta get up to this high mountain lake and we take off, and I will tell you what, we crush, crush everybody else to the top. We’re the first to the top. She gets up the top and she raise her hand like this, and she’s, it’s in triumph. I will never forget that image. So excited.

And she strips down. She has her swimming suit on, which is probably one of the reasons why she was hot.

But she jumps into this high mountain lake and ice off. You know, even though it’s July ice off had not happened not too long ago. And so it was freezing. Asshole. She jumps in there, takes her breath away, then she gets out. She’s kind of, she kinda stumbles ’cause it’s so cold. But she’s got this huge smile on her face that she’s getting [00:13:00] out.

She sees this little bug. And we eat bugs at our house. It’s kinda this weird thing that my dad started. He’d say, A fish eat ’em. I eat ’em. And so we’ve carried that tradition on.

So she picks up this bug and it’s a stonefly nph. Have you ever seen these? They’re gigantic and they look like aliens. She picks it up. She puts it in her mouth and starts chewing on it. And these people are like, what is going on? And it falls out of their mouth, out of her mouth and everybody laughs like you all just did.

And she’s like, oh yeah. And she grows and grabs it and she picks it up and she eats it. So this trip is like, it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s so many memories. We go out, there’s, uh, somebody brought a blow up, uh, kayak. We go out on this lake. The cutthroat. So we’re just catching ’em hand over a fish. She’s in the front of this kayak.

I’m watching this 9-year-old catch these fish. It’s absolutely amazing. I’ve got a rod hanging out the back. These fish are trying to grab my fly, but I’d never get a chance to [00:14:00] fish ’cause she’s catching ’em all. Next night is her birthday. We have her birthday cake in a Dutch oven. People sing her happy birthday.

She’s now 10 years old and she did that in the wilderness.

Look up at the stars that night. You know, talking about all sorts of things, just contemplating the universe by looking at all these stars. There’s so many memories from that trip, but what I remember most is that grit. That grit that she showed in that moment of adversity. And sometimes, you know, you gotta face that adversity and.

And maybe take a step back and go home, but she instead, she, she found her inner self or inner grit. Now she’s here tonight and she’s a senior in high school.

She had her senior night tonight at soccer. I tell you, I didn’t [00:15:00] cry at that. I came close, but she’s gonna be going away to college next year. And undoubtedly she’s gonna be facing adversity. And Sidney Claire, what I know is what you face on that mountain, what we’ve already faced in your life. You’re always, always gonna be able to face that adversity.

I love you. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks land. Land. Tawny is a fifth generation Montanan prone to wandering and good times land. Earned his Bachelor of Science focused in wildlife biology from the University of Montana and has been working his entire adult life to conserve public lands and water and access to them at the local, state and federal levels.

From testifying in front of Congress in Washington DC to organizing grassroots volunteers all across North America [00:16:00] Land walks the Walk. He now co-chairs a new nonprofit, American Hunters and Anglers Action Network, and works tirelessly to protect our public lands for present and future generations.

Next up, we have Haley Glass, who was driven by a childhood dream of culture. And must abandon fashion for a seemingly stable career path, only to have a single brochure unexpectedly reroute her life. A misunderstanding at a job interview for a job in Cordova, Alaska, plunges her into the grueling world of salmon hatcheries, where she finds her true calling in the remote wilderness.

Haley calls her story, origin story. Thanks for listening.

Hailey Glassock: Our would melt away as I spend time sketching clothes with colored pencil. I solely built up a pretty large [00:17:00] portfolio that included everything from wedding dresses to couture out there styles. I watched Devil Wear’s Prada more times as I can count and can recite the Saru sweater monologue with a performance that rivals Meryl Streep.

My senior year of high school, I designed and sewed my prom dress. It was a deep purple, one shoulder taff at a gown with a pleated bodice and a crystal accent belt. The goal was, of course, to become a clothes designer walking the streets of New York and showing in the most famous of fashion weeks. I applied to many universities, but only one design school, and all the universities provided some form of financial aid or scholarship.

But the design school did not. I didn’t wanna go into massive amounts of debt in a field that was really cutthroat and had a low rate of success. So I decided to go to the [00:18:00] University of Georgia, go Docs, and shifted my focus to a career path that would arguably be just as glamorous, but much more stable.

You know the universal second career choice for all girls who don’t go to design school. I would of course become a high school biology teacher.

My freshman year I wandered around the majors fair and ran into a table for the forestry school. I picked up a pamphlet that said Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences and big bold word art letters of a photo with a bunch of smiling students holding up fish in a pristine looking stream. The table was manned by a few upperclassmen wearing camo with deep southern accents, and one professional advisor toting a mom haircut and wearing a red UGA logo polo that made 19-year-old me [00:19:00] cringe.

I asked the advisor if I could still be a biology teacher if I majored in fisheries. She said yes, and I declared my major. I quickly went to the bookstore and found a sail rack, UGA logo, camo hoodie. I decided at that moment that camo could be fashionable if it was intentional

that first summer I wanted to apply to jobs in my new field. I had one fish class under my belt. I was ready to be a professional. I applied to over 100 jobs, and to my surprise, one of them emailed me back. They wanted to schedule an interview for a Salmon Hatchery Bio eight position, and the address listed Cordova, ak.

I thought, alright, some salmon in a tank in the middle of Arkansas. I mean, [00:20:00] I’ve never been to Arkansas. It doesn’t seem that cool, but I’ll, I’ll suck it up for this summer and get the experience under my belt. Now, at this time, I didn’t know the difference between a trout and a bass. Sharks were still a mystery creature.

Definitely not a mammal, but unclear if they were a fish. And so when interviewing as a 19-year-old for a hatchery job in so-called Arkansas, I didn’t know that salmon had an intricate life history. That included maturing in the ocean and migrating hundreds of miles back to their natal streams to spawn die, and provide nutrients to the next generation of fish to perpetuate that miracle indefinitely.

The first question they asked me during the interview was, are you comfortable and prepared with living in remote [00:21:00] locations on islands in the Prince William Sound of Alaska?

Now when you’re 19, your reflexes are pretty quick. So I don’t think they noticed my hesitation as I realized the job was not in Cordova, Arkansas, but Cordova, Alaska, and I replied quickly, oh yeah, yeah, that’s not gonna be an issue. They didn’t need to know that my high school education clearly lacked geography and state abbreviations, and they also didn’t need to know that.

Just a few months earlier, I had been hospitalized and diagnosed with a chronic illness. It was taking 10 pills of day, manage the symptoms. You know, when you’re 19, details like where the job is and the fact that you should be within an hour of a hospital a lot of times really don’t matter. I loaded onto a plane outside of Cordova with a [00:22:00] suitcase full of Thrifted flannel shirts because that’s what you wear in Alaska, 1000 pills and A DVD copy of the Devil Wears Prada.

We took off and I could see the shadow of the plane on the water and the hill slopes of the islands. And before I knew it, we were landing at the hatchery and hooked up to the dock and the manager came out and shook my hand and said, I’ll show you to the dorms. We start at 6:00 AM and that night I’d, I’d like to tell you that I couldn’t sleep because of the midnight sun coming through the, the window in my room, but I know it was because my stomach was in my throat wondering what the fuck I was getting myself into.

The next day I found myself in the pitch black, wearing a headlamp, a device I didn’t know existed, and elbow deep [00:23:00] mixing salmon sperm into buckets of salmon eggs. They would hand me a three gallon bucket and I would insert my arm and slowly mix counterclockwise no more than five times. A very precise and important step I had to do, just so obviously mimic making exactly what the salmon would be doing in nature.

I would let the bucket sit until the eggs went from being squishy to a firm plump ball, the perfect gummy bear consistency to then be poured into the incubation tank sym, mature. Now, I had a few country boyfriends when I was in Georgia, so I did handle a few fish, but that summer I personally fertilized 53 million chum salmon eggs

while singing and laughing next to [00:24:00] a friend that I made at the hatchery James. James was about nine years older than me, and despite his singular nipple piercing, he seemed to have his head on pretty straight, and we talked over the weeks and I shared with him how I wanted to stay in Alaska, quit school and work my way up the ranks to become a hatchery manager.

I couldn’t imagine going back to boring old Georgia and leaving the wilds of Alaska. James always seemed to really care about my thoughts and and what I had to say, and so at one point he looked at me earnestly and said, Hailey, this will all be here next summer waiting for you. I went back to UGA and a professor got me involved in research and I did a study on BAS genetics.

And then next summer, because of all that experience, I was able to intern in Yellowstone National [00:25:00] Park, a place I didn’t know existed and camped for the very first time in my life, six miles back in the Lamar Valley where we collected fish for a graduate student doing their research. I froze my ass off every single night in a 40 degree Cabela sleeping bag that I bought in Georgia.

But my headlamp worked perfectly. And at that point I realized I didn’t wanna just be involved in research. I wanted to lead research projects. I would have to go to grad school. I applied to multiple master’s projects and got into one. But during my master’s, I was hospitalized again, and this my, this time my disease was much worse.

I had to relearn how to walk and I couldn’t complete my field work. I, I really had to grapple with whether I’d made the right decision. Maybe I should have [00:26:00] gone into fashion and massive amounts of debt, but now I, I kind of knew that this was my path. So I had to balance my disease with this new dream of becoming a fisheries researcher.

And luckily, my doctor found a miracle drug and my disease went into remission. And I stand before you as a doctor and a biologist, a fish biologist with the US Geological survey,

a job four years in, that still feels like an absolute dream. I get to do research field work and advise students. My very first master’s student will be graduating in December. I spent this past summer backpacking in the Sierra Nevada and driving across Nevada and Oregon to remote locations to collect stream habitat data off.

Not seeing anyone but the crew that I was with. [00:27:00] I. Always thought the most wild part of my life would be spent on the streets of New York, dodging people on the sidewalk and elbows on the subway and sucking in tailpipe smoke. And I no longer design clothes, but I still design. I design research projects, and I get to sew together stories about how humans affect our ecosystems and what we can do to keep those ecosystems in tact for future generations.

I spend my time dodging spider webs and tree branches while breathing in crisp, clean air in the wilds of deserts and forests. But every time I’m in the field, I always think about how I would design my waiters differently.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Haley. [00:28:00] Haley Glass migrated from her birthplace in Pennsylvania to Georgia, the state, not the country, and eventually to Montana where she has lived for eight years. Landing in Missoula has been a blessing for friendship, love, heartbreak, growth and community. After seeing te US something in 2022, she has been waiting for a prompt that would fit for her to share a story.

I. Haley was given lots of cheeky feedback from high school friends of how poor a storyteller she is. By sharing this story, she has broken that streak. A mountain guide’s attempt to turn an Alaskan fling into a real relationship was ruined by a giant stake in its disastrous aftermath. After his partner abruptly ends things, he has to navigate gossip and miscommunication to try to save their relationship.

Bryan Dalpes: I noticed a little green sheen. On the surface of that meat,[00:29:00]

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well.

Marc Moss: And a woman overwhelmed by her many responsibilities unexpectedly joins the Peace Corps in Africa.

Betsy Funk: My favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick and he’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix.

And as that matrix held the plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thank you to the Good Food Store and Exit Realty, who as story sponsors helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them@goodfoodstore.com and missoula realty.com. Thanks to our stewardship sponsor, marsh McLennan, who helped us to give away free tickets to underserved populations.

Learn more about Marsh mclennan@marshmclennan.com. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The [00:30:00] theme is. A sense of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch.

Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by emailing info@tellussomething.org. The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast where people share their true personal stories around a theme. Live in person without notes.

I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Brian Dalby hopes to turn his Alaskan summer fling into a real relationship and ignores food safety for a giant stake, which leads to a disastrous morning ritual right outside.

His would-be loves a-frame door when his partner abruptly ends things after returning from [00:31:00] a grueling trip. He must navigate gossip and miscommunication to save the relationship. Brian calls his story the rile. Thanks for listening.

Bryan Dalpes: It’s late August, 2012. I’m working as a mountain guide in the quirky little town of McCarthy, Alaska, and I’m living in the dry a-frame of my summer fling, Rachel. Now Rachel’s got this long, perpetually tangled brown hair, these bright brown eyes that when she smiles, she gets this really cute squint and that smile.

It’s got its own gravity. It pulls me closer every time she flashes it. And even though Rachel is, Rachel is physically a lot smaller than me, she can carry the same size pack on the most rugged Alaska terrain. [00:32:00] She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s beautiful. But what really hooks me is she’s so kind. Whether you’re a close friend, a total stranger, or one of the random dogs that wanders around, McCarthy, Rachel will meet you with kindness and a genuine curiosity about your life.

And so in those days we didn’t have running water, electricity where we were in McCarthy. And the biggest challenge we ran into with that was we couldn’t refrigerate our food. You know, eating canned and dried goods every day gets old really fast. And we had a friend visit who on their way out, they offered all the food left in their cooler.

And there were some veggies and some fruit, but what I saw was this massive sirloin steak, and she warned me, she said, you know, our ice melted a day, probably two days ago, [00:33:00] so be careful with that. I didn’t care it, it was too tempting. I fired up the grill. Got it nice and hot. Threw some extra salts on the steak ’cause.

That should kill some bugs, right? And I slapped that thing on the grate. The aroma was incredible. My mouth was immediately watering. And I will say I noticed a little green sheen on the surface of that meat,

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well. So I munched that thing down. Every bite was a dream. I went to bed that night feeling fat and happy only to wake up early the next morning with a GI emergency. And so I scrambled out of the loft, down the ladder in the A-frame, burst out the front door, and [00:34:00] started the sprint to the nearest outhouse, which is about a hundred feet away.

I made it. 75 of those a hundred feet before catastrophically shitting my pants mid-stride.

Now, with no electricity or running water, we didn’t have, you know, clothes washer or shower, so we’ll just say McCarthy Creek and I were well acquainted that day and I spent the rest of the day very close to the outhouse, needing to use it quite often. And I went to bed that night. Totally exhausted. The next morning I woke up and my first thought was, man, I feel pretty good.

I think I’ve turned the corner on this. Started down the ladder. All it took was being vertical, and I realized, Nope, I’m not through this now from the day before, I knew it wasn’t worth trying to outrun, so I just [00:35:00] stepped outside the front door. Down the couple steps, dropped trow and left a massive pile right next to the steps.

Rachel had left early that morning to fly out to guide a five day backcountry trip, so she wasn’t around. I had the day off and I thought, well, no, no rush to clean this up. I’ll go have a cup of coffee. So I’m having my cup of coffee. I’m looking out the guides window at the beautiful Alaska Vista, and lo and behold, here comes Rachel trotting past the window towards the A-Frame Uhoh.

So I start chasing after figuring I have to explain myself, and by the time I catch up, she’s already in the A-frame. I come in, she’s frantically ripping her clothes off, and she’s like, God damnit fucking Todd douche bag. I said, what happened? And she said, well, Todd just like [00:36:00] winged my bag into the van and exploded my bear spray all over me and all my stuff.

So she’s in this panic to get changed and repacked so she can guide this trip. So I help her as best I can and in a flash, she’s out the door, she’s gone, and I’m left with my thoughts. I hope. I hope she’s okay. I hope these clients are easy. I hope she has a good trip. Did she see the pile?

We’ll have to deal with that another day. So two days later, I leave for my own five day backcountry trip with a, a friend. And unbeknownst to us, we were attempting a route that hadn’t been done in more than 50 years. And over those five days we got what we call, uh, Alaska. And what that means is whatever harrowing and terrifying experience you imagine that Alaska backcountry could offer, we [00:37:00] experienced it.

And during that time, all I could think about was Rachel, that squinty smile, that tangly hair. And I realized this summer fling, I really wanted it to be a thing. I wanted to have a life with Rachel and I was genuinely concerned that I might not make it back to tell her that, but of course I did. And the plane landed.

I hopped in the van and I rushed down to find her so I could tell her how I feel and wasn’t hard to do ’cause McCarthy’s essentially one dirt road and she was walking up with two girlfriends. So I pulled over and started peppering her with questions only to get. One word, cold answers. How are you? Fine.

What have you been up to? Nothing. Where are you going out? Could we talk later? Maybe. I look up at her friends, they’ve got their arms crossed and they have these faint [00:38:00] kind of snarls on their faces, and one of them turns to Rachel and says, we should go r. And Rachel looks at me and just says Bye and walks away.

So I de dejectedly drive down to the guides quarters and I haul my gear to the wall tent that I use to store between trips. And as I get in, I see there’s a pile of my stuff from the A-frame, my clothes, my books, everything. And on top there’s a note and it just says this isn’t gonna work out. We should end it before we’re more entangled.

I was gutted. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I, I couldn’t compute what I was reading. So I had a very fitful night of sleep that night. And the next morning I went out early to try to find her and see if she would talk to me. And I tracked her down and she agreed to have a conversation. We found a quiet spot on McCarthy Creek and I just started [00:39:00] rambling.

I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to boop in your yard. I was sick. I, you know, I, and. She’s what? What are you talking? This is about you sleeping with the blonde girl. I thought Blonde girl. There’s no, oh, the blonde girl. So the blonde girl was a fan tour leader that I was schmoozing at the bar trying to network clients with the common thing in the guide world.

And after a few drinks, I walked her back to her tent and that was that. What I didn’t know is Rachel’s friends were in the bar and after I left, they finished the rest of the night from their imagination. Oh, Rachel says, oh, so you didn’t sleep with the blonde girl? I said, no, absolutely not. I want to be with you.

I want a life with you. And she said, oh my God. Yeah, me too. That’s, that’s why I was so upset. I, I was, I’m falling for you. And I thought we really had [00:40:00] something. I said, yeah, we, we do. And so we had this really excited moment of talking like what the next few months could look like. We could get a place together, we could travel.

It was just full of possibility. And after a moment, the the energy kind of settled and we had this very peaceful moment just looking out over the creek and the leaves were just starting to change colors. McCarthy Creek was just peacefully, you know, Burling right at our feet and. We, there was this moment of still clarity after so much confusion.

After a few moments, Rachel kind of cocked her head at me and with that squinty little smile, she said, wait. You shit in my yard.[00:41:00]

Marc Moss: Thanks, Brian. Growing up on the mean streets of suburban Colorado, Brian found refuge in the punk rock and skateboarding communities while voyaging on the courageous journey from child to manchild. His life course changed when he discovered the moving meditation that his rock climbing. After honing his climbing and alpine skills, he spent summers in Alaska guiding ice climbing, glacier exploration and backcountry trips.

Since those years, he has continued on to be a guide instructor, coach firefighter, EMT COVID Task Force Specialist, seedling nursery, crew Lead Mobile beer, canner, freelance video editor, graphic artist, handyman landscaper, ski patroller, house sitter, marketplace hustler. The list goes on. He is the proud dad of a floppy eared special needs dog named Ron, who is regularly recognized on the trail and pined [00:42:00] over by complete strangers.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something. Podcast is Betsy Funk. Betsy is feeling overwhelmed by her spinning plates of responsibility. Betsy receives an unexpected invitation to join the Peace Corps in Africa. She risks leaving her daughter and draining her finances to chase a desperate call for help embarking on a journey that will test her limits and change her perspective on what it means to keep life together.

Betsy calls her story Mother. Thanks for listening.

Betsy Funk: So when I was a child, we would watch television and some of the shows we watched were variety shows and the people on variety shows would get on and they’d sing and they’d dance. And the ones that I liked the most were the ones who did tricks. And my favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick.

He’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix. And as that matrix held the [00:43:00] plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time, the music would swell. He’d pop that plate off with a stick and he’d catch it and he’d go 1, 2, 3, until he had all 12 plates.

He’d take a bow. It was magical. So I’m sitting in my classroom during my planning period, and I’ve got plates spinning. I got plates in this corner and plates down the hall and plates above my head and plates in the store room. I got ’em all going and I’m hitting a point. Of too muy.

I’m stuck in too muy and I’m not sure how to handle it because I know all of those plates are important for all of the people I care about. And the biggest plate right in the middle is my daughter who’s finishing off her first year of chemotherapy fighting cancer. And I know all the other plates can kind of wobble and I can keep ’em going, [00:44:00] but that plate.

That one has to say spinning as long as it possibly can. And then I hear ding and I look over at my computer, pause and see who it is. And it’s Sally. Sally’s a good friend of mine who played with me in the symphony and she decided she wanted to take a different, different, uh, tack, and she joined the Peace Corps.

And so I hadn’t heard from her in about nine months, and there’s this message that says, Hey, Betsy. I’m like, great time to take a break from all my plate spinning and see if I can talk to Sally. So we have this conversation. How are you? I’m okay. How are you? We converse for a while and then she pops a question.

Hey Betsy, I got something to ask you. And I go, yeah, sure. What is it? She goes, um, would you come to Africa? And I [00:45:00] went, oh, what? She says, well, I, I, I kind of have to teach and I don’t know how, and I’m scared. And would you come and spend eight weeks in Africa teaching us how to teach? I went, ah, and I thought about my plates.

Well, they can wobble, but there was that big plate, and I said, hang on. I picked up the phone and I called Kelsey. I said, hi, Kelsey. I just got asked a wild question. What is it, mom? I said, Sally just asked me to go to Africa for eight weeks. She goes, I said, what? What do you think? She says. Mom, that’s awesome.

You should go. I’ll never go. You can come back and tell me the stories. So, began my first trip overseas. I. I was a single mom and had very little money. Um, recently married [00:46:00] to my husband, and I knew that this was gonna cost a lot, but I didn’t know how much it was gonna cost until I met with the very patient travel agent and I met with a very kind banker, and I had my very tolerant new husband who said, okay.

And about two weeks after I found out the price and got all the shots and the paperwork and all of the things that I didn’t know you had to do to go to Africa again, never been overseas, just had a passport. I went to the bank and I got $4,500, walked across the street and there was a glass front. On the travel agency and I went to go to our appointed appointment to buy my ticket to Africa, and I walked right by the window and I took my $4,500 and I walked around the block, came back by the window, and she’s looking at me.

I kinda look at her and I walk right by the window and I head back around the block. What I’m [00:47:00] thinking is. All the other plates can wobble, but can I leave Kelsey? Can I go? And what happens if it breaks? And then I think as I’m on my fourth lap around the block, Kelsey told me to go, I need to bring her back the stories.

So I go in, I hand her the money and she says, we’re gonna get you to Africa, Betsy. And I said, just be sure you get me home. And so I went to Africa. I went to Ethiopia for eight weeks, and I worked with the Peace Corps. And during that eight weeks I saw the Great Rift Valley. I saw poverty. I experienced extreme generosity, Ethiopian eyes, women winnowing, wheat in baskets.

In the morning light

I tasted. I smelled, I walked, I cried. I felt things that [00:48:00] I’ve never felt before and I ran away from all the things that I was doing at home to try to find a way to hold it together. And I taught, and I mentored and I taught. And about five weeks in. I get this, this enlightened young man, his name was Jake, he came up to me and he, he was, he was like the poster child for Peace Corps, right?

Beautiful teeth, hazel eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, chiseled jaw, bare feet. And, and he comes, he goes, I’ve got an idea. This is five weeks in. So I guess he liked me. We’re gonna take you in the hunt for the mother coffee tree. Now this is the part of Ethiopia, which I didn’t know before I got there that they had a rainforest.

And we’re in the rainforest and we’re in the ka region of Ethiopia. And those of you, uh, uh, please excuse me if you know this, I was, I was not, um, prepared [00:49:00] for that. So we’re in a jungle in the coff region and they believe in Ethiopia, that that’s where the mother coffee tree is, where all of our coffee addiction came from is the coff region of Ethiopia.

And so he says, we’re going to go and hunt of the mother coffee tree. I said, oh, okay. So we get on a bus and they bring us to the top of a ridge, sort of looking down on the canopy of the rainforest and drop us off because it’s too dangerous to go farther. The Peace Corps volunteers, three of them have machetes.

Jake is leading us with his bare feet telling us, mother Earth is calling me. I know where the coffee tree is, and I’m going, okay. And as I look out on these, on the canopy of the rainforest, I see the mist rising in the morning light, illuminating it. Not unlike the fall mist in the Flathead Valley that rises off the agricultural land.[00:50:00]

As things wake up and we drop down into the rainforest, and while I’m in the rainforest down there looking up at the canopy, the light comes and streams and in sparkling spots coming down, it illuminates. The Columbus monkey who’s watching us in the tree with this big white face and his big bushy long tail on his black body holding court in the jungle, it lights up the baskets that give the promise of sweet honey in the future.

It lights up the monkeys that are chasing us and throwing figs at us. It also brings the mid canopy to life. And in this mid canopy, it was like there were stars sparkling everywhere you looked, white starred flowers illuminated by this morning light. They were the flowers of the coffee trees everywhere you looked.

It was a sea of white [00:51:00] coffee flowers, everyone holding the promise. Of a ripe cherry that would then be dried and brought to market in giant bags with giant Ethiopian eyes looking at you. And partway down this jungle journey where they’re hacking away, we come to a ravine. And at this ravine it’s about 150 feet deep.

There’s a long log that goes across and it’s slimy. And they say, oh, Jake says. We have to cross the log. The mother coffee tree is calling me through my feet and I look at the ravine and I look at the log. I’m like, Ooh, I’m twice your age. I don’t think so. And the other thing that I don’t tell them is when I go down on down to that log, I realize I can’t cross that ravine because I might not make it home.

And there’s a plate that matters. And so I tell them, I don’t think I can cross the log. I think I need to go home. And they say, [00:52:00] okay, taking me back to the village not knowing. What I really mean is that I have three more weeks in Ethiopia and I want to go home and be with my kid. They take me back to the village and we’ve been invited to dinner at, uh, an NGO’s house, and it’s the Italian NGO and it’s a house.

It’s not a hut and it’s not in Jira and Watt and it’s not. A mat on the floor. It’s a big table with a kitchen and a generator and a refrigerator and beer. And so we all sit down and we, they’re drinking beer and they’re drinking wine, and she brings out papaya and mango and. Bananas and all of these things are sweet and tangy and wonderful, and they’re eating it and they’re excited.

And then she brings out bread who has bread in Ethiopia. So she brings out loaves of bread and they’re pulling the pieces off and they’re layering the mango and the banana and the pineapple all on the bread. Then she disappears into the kitchen again, and she comes out, she says, the PSA resistance, a giant chunk of Parmesan cheese.

[00:53:00] Now there’s, we didn’t have. Um, refrigeration. So some of these kids hadn’t had cheese in over two years. I hadn’t had it for five weeks, and I count cheese as a major food group in my life. So I was pretty excited. And so were the kids and they grated this mound of cheese and they started layering papaya, mango, banana, bread, cheese, bread, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, papaya, mango bread.

You get the picture. Then they start putting when they run outta food. They put it on their hands. They’re drinking beer. They put it on their arms, start licking it off each other’s faces until they, they just fall down in a heap of sticky cheese and, and sugar. And in this place they had these couches.

And I’m watching these kids and I’m experiencing these, these young people knowing that home is calling me. It’s saying, you need to go back. You need to stop running away. And I, I watch these kids and at the end of it, they go into this couch area and like only [00:54:00] mid twenties people can do, they’re a tangle of arms and legs and bodies sort of laying on each other.

And I’m heading back to my hut with Sally and I think to myself, you know, all of this is amazing and it isn’t home, but is beautiful.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Betsy. Betsy Funk is a mom, wife, sister, and friend, with a passion for giving back. As a member of our collective community at large, her greatest pleasure is when she is making the world a better place with a smile, a story, a bouquet, a hug, or a listening ear. She strives to inspire hope in the moments we share.

You have been listening to the Tele Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the stories from the [00:55:00] self-evident live storytelling event

Francis Davis: where I saw my fellow waiters like me. Artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break.

Adria L. Jawort: I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was like flipping through dresses and I turned around.

My mom was standing right there and I was like so scared.

Mark Matthews: And I knocked on the door and this big burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear and one bicep and a woodpecker on the other, opens the door and he looks at me and he said, I was wondering when you people would find me.

Christian Bazzano: I read into the wild and I just ate that up Alaska.

It wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

Marc Moss: Listen for those stories@tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our media [00:56:00] sponsors, Missoula events.net. Mike’s print and copy Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, the Trail 1 0 3 3, Jack FM and Missoula source for modern hits, U one A 4.5.

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. Thanks to Cash for Junkers who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzing and could be found on their album, which you can stream at cash for junkers band.com. Remember that we are looking for storytellers for the next tell us Something event.

The theme is a sense of place you can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org.

TUS01506- Walk on the Wild Side Part 1

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is a sense of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by emailing info.

At tell us something.org. The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell us something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around the theme. Live in Person Without Notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something.

Sometimes adventure is chosen, sometimes it’s thrust upon you. In this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, we delve into the journeys of four remarkable people. A wildlife biologist is forced to choose between a romantic [00:01:00] proposal and grizzly bear safety after embracing the title of poop ologist.

Rad Watkins: I had a friend actually that year who got bluff charged twice.

Twice. He had a bear come at him like 35 miles an hour or whatever they do, and stopped 10 feet away. That guy went through a lot of underwear.

Marc Moss: Across the globe. A solo traveler in Peru meets a mysterious motorcyclist and must decide if an invitation to ride with him to Canada is a leap of faith or pure risk.

Bridget Feerick: The music dims and fades as the lights and everything just goes to the wayside. He is now walking towards me as a sea of people. Part time slows down.

Marc Moss: Back home, a relaxing winter staycation quickly turns into chaos, involving 11 terrified chickens. A desperate call from Chile and an unfortunate fire,

negative windchill for two weeks and 10 degrees, [00:02:00]

maybe the high of 25. It was cold and the hellgate winds came ripping up the valley and we’re creating snow drifts like this.

Finally two hikers seeking mountain solitude in the Bob Marshall wilderness. Hold their breath for a wildlife encounter that could define their trip.

Brian Christianson: I’m running around like a headless chicken, trying to figure out what the compositions are, and the lights constantly changing. I am. Frantic trying to figure this out.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers shared their true personal story on the theme, walk on the wild side. Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater. Remember this, tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes.

Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves. The University of Montana where the George and Jane Denison [00:03:00] Theater is located, stands on the Aboriginal Territories of the Salish and Kalispell people. We also recognize the Kni, the Blackfeet, the Shoshone, and the many other indigenous peoples who have called this place home and whose histories called and languages continue to enrich our community.

When we recorded this episode of the podcast, the Aspens were turning gold and the air was crisp. It was a sacred time of transition. For generations. The original stewards of this valley understood autumn as a time for the final harvests for preparing food and medicine for the coming cold, for the last hunts before the snow, and for gathering to share stories that will sustain the community through the winter.

This land is not a relic of the past. It is a living, breathing entity deeply connected to the ongoing lives and traditions of indigenous peoples. Our first storyteller is Rad Watkins, who as a wildlife biologist, embraced the title of [00:04:00] poop biologist and carried a pungent fermented concoction called the Brew into the back Country to entice grizzly bears.

When the love of his life came to visit his remote camp, he had to quickly learn the true rules of bear country before a romantic proposal turned into a terrifying close encounter and a story that he calls wild proposals. Thanks for listening.

Rad Watkins: Thank you. Blood Lure is a combination of decomposed fish and cattle blood. It left in a barrel till it finally ages into what bear colleges call the brew. I learned this working on a bear, DNA project in Glacier National Park. During that project, we used the brew to lure in bears to hair traps, [00:05:00] where we used barbed wire to collect DNA samples on hair follicles.

We also did that by using rub trees on trails and collecting grizzly bear scat or bear scat, which is poop as you walk along the trail and shove it into little test tubes saying what it smelled like and what you thought they ate last. My father-in-law still likes to remind me that I used to be a ologist.

Being a ologist is not everyone’s dream job, but if you’re a wildlife guy like me, working in the crown of the continent with charismatic megafauna, grizzly bears in this case is a dream come true. The only bad part was I had to move even further from the love of my life. Gretchen. Gretchen and I met in graduate school in the [00:06:00] up of Michigan.

She was brilliant. She was an environmental engineering master’s degree student. She’s beautiful, blue eyes, blonde hair. She’s athletic. She liked mountain biking and snowboarding, and most importantly, didn’t care what the weather was like. She liked to be outside as much as I did, so I was so smitten, but being brilliant.

She graduated ahead of me and she moved away to Vermont to go do conservation work there. And I long to be in the Rocky Mountains, so Gretchen supported my dream job pursuit. Um, but you know, she was a little worried. She wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t come back to her, but she was worried that I wouldn’t come back to her because of the blood lure and the bears.

And so she bought me a little book, told me how to behave in the back country. How to watch out for these bears and what to do. [00:07:00] And so as I moved from Vermont to Montana, camping along the way, I spent my nights not reading that book. That’s because I went to the University of Montana and hey Bobcat guys, that doesn’t mean we can’t read.

What it means is that I’ve done a lot of backpacking in bear habitat, and bears always ran away. When I surprised them, they were gone, and if a bear did come at me, I knew what to do. I would curl up in the fetal position and play dead, which I just need to warn you guys, is not what you should do. So that was a misnomer at the time.

So I was a little scared, hiking and camping with the blood lure, but carrying around spools of barbed wire and blood lure, plus all your regular backpacking stuff off trail in the back country of Glacier National Park. You grew tired. Didn’t matter how scared you were, you slept. I didn’t worry about bears until Gretchen [00:08:00] came to visit.

I had a plan. This was her first time coming to Montana. The land that I love, the place of beautiful peaks and clean water, wild animals. My plan really needed Gretchen to stay alive. I wanted to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. So I decided to level up and read that first chapter of the book.

And it surprised me. It was like, Hey, bears are basically like humans. We all do things based on how confident we are moving forward, right? Like, do we think we can get away with this? And so bears, if they think they can leave comfortably, they’ll leave. But if they think you’re gonna get ’em, you’re gonna corner ’em, they’ll fight.

It’s a lot like, um, you know, if you’re taking public transportation and some tough looking person gets on the, the. Bus or train or whatever it is. You don’t wanna stare ’em down. You don’t wanna be like, I, I see you. [00:09:00] ’cause they’ll be like, what you looking at? And then you have a problem. But you don’t wanna be like, oh man, where’s my wallet?

Put in my underwear. Hope they don’t get me. ’cause then you invite an attack, right? So with bears you do the same thing. If you surprise a bear, you want it to feel comfortable going about its way. So you, you slump your shoulders and you just kind of keep your periphery on them. And you talk so they know you’re not appraised species and you hopefully give them their space to move out confidently.

If they do feel trapped, they might charge you, but you still don’t just drop and play dead. ’cause if you dropped and play dead and curled up in the fetal position, they might think it’s the DoorDash guy and they might think even though they weren’t going to attack you now they’re like, Hey, maybe that’s a cheap, easy meal.

I’ll do it. And apparently most charges from grizzly bears. Or what they call bluff charges. So they’re gonna stop 10 feet away or veer off. So if you are gonna play dead, you wait till that last [00:10:00] nine feet before you drop down and you don’t curl in the fetal position. You put your hands behind your head, you keep your pack on, you kind of spread your legs so you’re not so easy to tip over.

You keep face down. Maybe you have your bear spray to get off a shot if you can. Alright, so you know. Bluff charges. Oh, okay. I’m ready for that. I had a friend actually that year who got bluff charged twice. Twice. He had a bear come at him like 35 miles an hour or whatever they do, and stopped 10 feet away.

That guy went through a lot of underwear, so Gretchen came out and I have my plan to marry her. We’re below Heaven’s peak. I’m all nervous and sweaty not thinking about bears at all. Just thinking about, oh, is she gonna say yes? And she did. And I was so happy we went off Pinky swinging down the trail, you know, just blissing out, bam, turn the corner first time all year, right into a bear.

And so the bear like jump jumps off the trail and it’s like, you could see it moving around in the bushes. It’s [00:11:00] like 20, 30 feet away and it’s. Huffing it’s, it’s wooing. It’s like, which means it’s nervous. It’s trying to figure out what to do, but we knew what to do. We slumped our shoulders. Didn’t quite look at it, started talking like a human.

In fact, I talked to the bear. I said, Hey bear, thanks for having us in your habitat. You are a magnificent creature. It looks like you’re a vegetarian bear. A lot of huckleberries up there, so maybe you wanna go check ’em out. And lo and behold, bear went off and we, yeah, right. So we got to celebrate the night of our engagement by reading chapter two of that book.

It’s a much different deal. So chapter two said, sometimes these bears know where you are. They smell something in your camp. Something, you’re cooking something in your tent. Don’t bring food in your tent ever. It said, you know, hang your food over [00:12:00] there. Eat over here, camp here. Never bring food in the tent.

Stay in a tent because it’s an optical illusion for bears. They don’t really know what’s in there. Okay? It’s a different deal and scare them away. ’cause you don’t want them getting more confident with every step. You wanna say, Hey, I’m not an easy meal. This is not your territory. Get outta here. Alright.

So we did a couple of hitches, did our hiking all over the place. Then we got sent up to the two Chuck Campground, which is right by the Canadian border for a mission. The next day, on our way up there, we stopped at Pole Bridge, had a trout dinner, had a couple of beers. We weren’t in a government rig by the way, and uh, went on up.

Gretchen passed out. She was tired. She’s been hiking her butt. And I set up the the tent by the lights of the car. ’cause I don’t like to use flashlights. And you just see one little spot. You don’t have that whole night vision, but you need something to set up a tent. So I had my four season tent, I had pillows and everything, love nest.

But she was out so staggered, helped Gretchen stagger [00:13:00] into there. She passed out immediately. I went back to the car, clicked off the lights on the Isuzu Subaru, or not Isuzu Trooper, excuse me. Um, and just gave thanks for a minute to be out there and to about, to start my life with this beautiful woman.

And I lay down in my sleeping bag and I hear right outside the screen, like, yep. Oh, that’s a bear. So I sat up. Hey Bear. Hey, hey. And boom, bear moved off. You could hear it. You could hear it kind of circle and then go away. And I didn’t know what to do. Listen for a while, so decided to go back to sleep. So there we are, falling back asleep just as you’re drifting off right at the edge of this.

Hey, hey Bear. Get outta here. Hey, and the bear ran off again. [00:14:00] And I didn’t know was it gone. I didn’t have a flashlight. I wanted to come out of the tent. You know, I felt like my ear was like four feet wide, like listening. And you know that scene in the horror movie where like the guy and the girl are making out on the couch and they hear something outside and the guy’s like, I hear something.

Hold on, I’ll be back to check that out. Meanwhile, the ax murderer is like tiptoeing out there and you’re like, he’s not coming back. So I was like, okay, I watched that movie. I’m not doing that. So we were like, how do we get to the trooper and not get outta this tent? ’cause we’re supposed to stay in this tent.

It’s an optical illusion. Well, Gretchen’s an environmental engineer and the two of us got together and figured something out. So we ripped a hole in the bottom of the tent and we, we, we picked it up like Fred Flintstone’s car, like a giant turtle shell, and we booed over to the trooper. We unzipped that door, we reached in and we jumped into the [00:15:00] backseat and in the fetal position, we spooned all night long and we have been for the last 25 years.

Thank you so much.

Marc Moss: Thanks, rad. Rad Watkins is a lifelong nature lover and conservationalist based in Missoula, Montana. He currently serves as executive director of the Missoula Conservation District, where he helps lead efforts to protect local streams, wildlife, and working lands. His career has taken him from the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, studying endangered seabirds to Glacier National Park, collecting grizzly bear DNA to the north winds of Wisconsin tracking wolves and rehabbing bald eagles.

Rad also loves personal development because as he says, he needs it and he’s a certified life coach who does some [00:16:00] leadership speaking and training at home. He, his wife, Gretchen, and their kids, Lena and Norris, enjoy doing what Montanans do best. Floating rivers, skiing, hiking, and spending time outdoors with their dogs and horses.

In our next story, Bridget Ric flies thousands of miles to Peru and connects with a mysterious motorcycling, solo traveler, with a language barrier, a gut feeling, and a wild invitation to ride with him to Canada. She must decide if taking a leap of faith is worth the risk of a true life adventure.

Bridget calls her story, my gut says what? And it was awesome. Thanks for listening.

Bridget Feerick: I was 27 at a crossroads. I could either keep digging the grave. I had been digging for the last six and a half years. As I stayed stuck in a toxic relationship that never felt right from the start, or I could get on a [00:17:00] plane and fly thousands of miles away to another country to explore who I was beyond all the comforts, the conveniences, the pain, the sadness, and the tears that it consumed too much of my life.

At this point, I chose the plane. So now here my feet are exploring the dance floor, my hips moving to the Latin music and the club at the per hostel in Cusco, Peru. My eyes notice this very attractive man on the other side of the bar. I’m now enraptured in his eyes. Try not to be too creepy, staring Occasionally, his eyes are this deep brown eyes, dark black hair, dark bearded.

He has these glasses that are thick and studious, framing his also luscious eyelashes. He [00:18:00] wasn’t too long before he also noticed me, and now we are stargazing into one another’s souls throughout this evening as I’m moving my body. At one point I noticed he’s going for the wheel of deals. He’s about to spin it, and now it’s starting.

The arm is teetering between that. Buy one, get one, and then the 15% off. And then this little sliver that said, share a shout and have a kiss. So now our eyes are locked in on each other and the music dims and fades as the lights and everything just goes to the wayside. He is now walking towards me as a sea of people.

Part time slows down. I am freaking out because I’m also like, what’s my breath like, or is my, [00:19:00] am I stinky? I don’t know. Should I really just run? At this point, I am like shaking as I am actually right now. I am shaking and I find my feet. I find my gut that’s telling me actually just to root down in this moment.

Let him come towards me, and so now he’s six inches away. He asked me,

I kind of reluctantly say, see and be feeled before I know it, our lips are now locked. Our bodies are touching. The energy is now circulating between my body into his body and his to mine, and we are one Cosmo in this moment. Still nothing else matters. The next morning I wake up in his bed and now we are [00:20:00] taking our deep fluent language, a body and energy into the, into the breakfast in which we’re now entering a whole nother level of language in which it becomes quite apparent now that we have a language barrier.

I speaking little bit of Spanish and hoping at this point that all the swish with Spanish would just flood back. All those hours spent in classes had and it had not unfortunately, and he struggling with his English. We quickly grab our phones and are now using Google Translate. He says, may Shamo at one point and.

And so I’m kind of confused ’cause I’m used to saying mamo, which is my name is, and he explains to me that in Argentina people say, when they say the double L’s in the Y, it makes a sh sound. Which would explain why I was hearing a lot of sh happening. [00:21:00] He wasn’t trying to hush me. We were eager to understand and I quickly learned that he is also a fellow tra solo traveler artist.

And I too, he is moving, making the cha route on motorcycle from Bueno Aires, Argentina, to Canada. He asked me if I like to join him for a ride in the mountains in Cusco there. And so I quickly say yes. He introduces me to his bike. His bike is a very unique bike. It’s a CG Honda, Honda one 50. It’s a small one for those Motorheads, I might know what I mean.

And the, there was a brown sheepskin on the saddle with these plastic, maybe five gallon jugs that he had cut the top off and then drilled on the side as alternative. ER bags. He had a rack in the front and a rack in the back. I jumped on the back and now the wind is in my hair, feeling the cool air of the Andes.

At one point, we stop and take in [00:22:00] the Cusco view, the city view. It’s serene. We are nestled up with next to each other. He looks into my eyes and says, would you like to join me on my journey? He quickly follows that by, I’ve never asked anybody this before and I feel honored and also a little bit taken back like, I mean, who does that?

Like what Maybe we’ve known each other now less than. 24 hours, we would actually go now on our second or third date to, uh, jump on a motorcycle, be totally codependent and share a 2% 10, share a little motorcycle, uh, navigate the language barrier as we n navigate cultural differences. And on top of that, we’re traveling cohabitating.

Who the fuck does that? I say, here’s my number, let’s keep in touch. I had to finish, uh, two months here at the, at this farm that I’m working [00:23:00] at as an exchange, and, and you finish up your time and let’s just keep in touch. So during those two months, we’re now texting each other and it just kind of fizzles out.

I occasionally get a picture and that’s exciting, but I don’t feel that same electric pole, but that there’s something that I feel deep in my gut. So now I’m on that airplane. I am now moving from Cusco, Peru, the Andes, to Northern Peru, the to airport. I am actually not just taking one plane, but I am taking two planes and on this plane that gives me plenty enough time to go through all the what ifs.

So the what if he’s actually into black magic and he has a whole bunch of black magician friends in which I’m actually part of a setup in which when I get there, I’m gonna be part of a, a seance and I wanna be the sacrifice, and then brutally murdered and cut up to tiny pieces and then grilled, and then [00:24:00] be part of some cannibal ritual ritualistic feast.

I am now panicking. My little puddles of sweat accumulating in my hands are now lakes. I am flooding from sweat from my armpits. Breathing is a far distant thought at this point. I wish I had gotten my pilot license so I could really just hijack this plane and go back to Cusco, Peru, where at least I felt a little bit of comfort and familiarity there.

The plane lands. I find my feet. I find my gut, I find my breath. I get off that pain plane. I go to the baggage claim. I grab my heavy ass backpack, I put it on, I look at my phone and it’s actually, my phone is now dead. And so, and then I’m just trying to remember like, who, where did we even think about a place to meet?

I mean, I haven’t [00:25:00] seen him this far. So now I’m panicking once again and I am, uh, making circles in this small airport, and I’m trying, I’m losing my footing, I’m losing my breath once again. So I’m reaching into my pocket for that. Plan B, I am gripping that plan B, I walk out the doors and lo and behold, who’s standing there in that parking lot with his motorcycle and an extra helmet in his hand waiting there for me.

I’m feeling foolish. A kind of silly, a little bit awkward, and yet this little bit of intuition in me tells me keep walking forward. So now what? We are, six inches from each other, four inches, two inches. We are now embracing one another. Our hearts find one another. I’m reminded. Why I [00:26:00] got on that plane in the first place.

That energy is now circulating through us and we are back in the cosmos. I jump on that motorcycle, that motorcycle takes me three months in on this incredible journey that I could have never imagined. Moving from Northern Peru to Northern Ecuador. We always were committed to holding one another through the ups and downs.

One of our last adventures was the el de condor, the flight of the condor, the tallest swing in Ecuador. I got on that stage for that swing. The floor dropped beneath my feet, down and out 197 feet. I am now over the edge, flying over the [00:27:00] edge of the mountains in which I’m 8,500 feet in the Andes in Bonos, Ecuador.

I first, I, I’m scared and I shit my pants, and then I, I’m now laughing hysterically like a mad woman. And then after this rush passes, I feel this ease of going back and forth on the swing my eyes find the horizon. I take in the cool air and the beautiful view, and I remember how I got here, how I followed my gut, how all these people along on my journey.

Held me up. They supported me, they trusted me. They loved me, they accepted me. They shared everything that they had all these people on this journey. [00:28:00] And now here I am feeling the fullness, the richness of life. I, in that moment, I take a vow to myself. I will never turn my back on my intuition again because it is my intuition that got me here in this moment feeling the most alive.

I had felt so much in my life and I felt. My heart, I felt the love in my heart. I felt all the acceptance and beauty for myself and for the world. La Loca, E as Herso. This life is crazy and beautiful. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Bridget. Bridget Furich traveled the world before making her home in Missoula, Montana, and has continued to explore this country and the world beyond. Her passion for the outdoors is matched by a deep commitment to community engagement and social justice. [00:29:00] Bridget holds people in transitions using her intuitive powers as an organizer, cleaner birth, postpartum death doula, yoga instructor, herbalist reiki, and sound healing practitioner coming up after the break,

Brian Christianson: negative windchill for two weeks and 10 degrees, maybe the high of 25.

It was cold. I’m running around like a headless chicken, trying to figure out what the compositions are and the light’s constantly changing.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thank you to the Good Food Store and Exit Realty, who as story sponsors helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them@goodfoodstore.com and missoula realty.com.

Thanks to our stewardship sponsor, marsh McLennan, who helped us to give away free tickets to underserved populations. Learn more about Marsh mclennan@marshmclennan.com. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is. A sense [00:30:00] of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3.

You have three minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by emailing info@tellussomething.org. The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast where people share their true personal stories around a theme.

Live in person without notes. I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode share their stories in front of a full house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Our next storyteller is Mark Moss. Hey, that’s me trying to escape the dark Missoula winter. A staycation house sitting gig promises a hot tub and mountain views.

And instead delivers freezing temperatures in the demanding care of a dog, a cat, and 11 [00:31:00] chickens. What starts as a simple favor quickly turns into a crisis. When a frantic call from Chile reveals an unfortunate fire and a scramble to rehouse the traumatized poultry. I call my story the girls. Thanks for listening.

How many people here are new to Missoula? Yeah. Anybody? Yeah. Okay. Have you been here in the winter?

You hear the laughter because what happens in the winter, it doesn’t always look as good as it does today. Maybe you were here during the fire season and it was super smoky and it sort of just settled into the valley. You remember that? That happens in the winter too, but it’s not smoke, it’s clouds. We call it an inversion ’cause that’s what it’s called.

In the weather language and January, February, it’s like, when can we get [00:32:00] the fuck outta? I said, look, it’s so dark and I’m scrolling social media. And a friend of mine had a post that said, Hey, I’m looking for a house sitter, and he lives in the lower rattlesnake and I don’t spend a lot of time there, but I’m thinking rattlesnake.

Like the Rattlesnake Valley that gets me above their inversion. Right. And it doesn’t to let you know, but that was the first thing I thought of. And I, and I also, he’s gonna be gone for a month and so like that would be nice just to get outta my house for a change, a change of scenery. And Joyce could come with me and it’d be like a staycation.

So he said, I’ll house sit for you. He messaged me back. You sure. Have you ever done this before? You’ve taken care of animals? Like I, I’m an animal, I take care of myself. He says, come on up for the disorientation. [00:33:00] So I go to his house. His name is Ari and yeah, Ari Levo. He is a food writer for what was the Missoula Independent, and I’ve seen him in the pulp recently, I think.

Or maybe it was, um, Montana Free Press. Anyway, he’s a great food writer, great article on a, a recipe on Oui recently. Awesome. So I’m like, he’s gonna have a great kitchen and we’re gonna just hang out with the elk up on Mountain Jumbo. This is what he’s telling me is gonna be great. We’re gonna sit in a hot tub and just watch the elk up on the mountain drinking wine.

We have to take care of the dog and the cat, uh, which who, who go in and outta the house through this open window in the bedroom. And remember, it’s February and he’s like, and so it, it gets a little cold, but there’s plenty of blankets. And also there, you know, don’t use the furnace. That’s like, that’s last resort.

Use this [00:34:00] converted woodburn stove. It, it runs on gas now. And it keeps the house warm and the house was warm. I was like, oh, great. Like this is, this will be good. He goes, but if the pilot light goes out, which it ju I don’t, I can’t remember it ever happening, but if it does, here’s how you relight it. Okay.

Write that down. So he, he says also, he says, I won’t have cell service where we’re going. But I can text and I can receive texts, but I, I don’t think you’re gonna have any problems. You also, we do need to learn, I need to show you about the girls. Okay. So outside we walk and he’s like, there’s an outbuilding over there.

Like, you don’t have to like go in there very much, um, but just make sure the pipes don’t freeze. There’s a, so we walk in there, take our shoes off, and we walk. There’s like a little space heater by the sink. Okay, no problem. And that’s my office. There’s another [00:35:00] little outbuilding. He’s like, there’s no running water in there, so don’t worry about that.

Um, you probably won’t have to go in there much, but the girls like, they need your attention. And the girls are chickens and I can’t remember, I think they’re 11 of them. Um, and he’s like, have you ever taken care of chickens before? I said, no. He said, well, it’s pretty straightforward, you know, just make sure their water doesn’t freeze and there’s like this bowl of water and there’s some um, there’s some feed, you know, come out every morning, feed them and there’s a heat lamp in the chicken coop to make sure that they don’t freeze and that, you know, their body heat.

And plus the heat lamp, they’re gonna be fine for the time that I’m gone. It’ll be great. They generally don’t lay a lot of eggs this time of year, but just check and if there are eggs, harvest the eggs. And eat them. Like of course that’s what I would do. I like eggs, so he is like, you good? I’m like, I’m good.

So off he leaves. He leaves, he goes to Peru and or Chile. [00:36:00] He goes to Chile. Sorry, I was thinking of Bridget story and I move in, I got move all my stuff. I got a journal and some books and like laptop. I’m gonna like sort all those photos that I meant been meaning as sort. And 2018, this is, this is when this was.

And so I don’t know if you, people who have been here for a while, remember the February of 2018, it was like. Negative windchill for two weeks and like 10 degrees, maybe the high of 25. It was cold and the hellgate winds came ripping up the valley and we’re creating snow drifts like this. And I was having to like get a shovel just to get out of the house so I could shovel down like the driveway to get the car out to go to work.

The pilot light happens to go out and we relight that. It’s like a whole mess on texting and I’m like, we got it figured out. [00:37:00] And in the morning you like, dig myself out, take the dog for a walk up the road, there’s this nice little park and it’s like bone chilling, cold, but also like invigorating. Like if that, if I didn’t have a dog to walk, I probably wouldn’t be outside.

So. Bonus points for dogs. Like that’s a good reason to have one. Gets you outside, gets you moving around, picked up his poop on, you know, take it back home, put it in the garbage, he’s safe, he’s fed, watered, I gotta go to work. The cat’s good. So I go to work and I’m thinking, you know, the hot tub is not happening.

It’s like so windy. It’s takes so much effort to get in and out of the hot tub. I’m not, I’m just not gonna do it. Like, dude, Joyce, you wanna come over and we’re gonna have popcorn and watch movies? Like let’s do that. So, so I go to work, I’m at work and the phone rings. My phone rings and it’s Ari, and I’m like, hello?[00:38:00]

I thought you didn’t have a cell service. How are you? He’s like, good considering I was like considering, considering the fire department just left the house. Fuck. I’m like, did I leave a burner on? I’m like trying to go through. I’m like, what did I do that morning? He’s like, everybody’s fine. The girls are fine.

The dog, the cat, everybody. The house is fine, but I need you to do something for me. I’m like, what is it? He said, I need you to take the chicken coop burned down.

I need you to take the chickens somewhere else. ’cause right now they’re in my office shitting over everything. Like, okay, I’ve never transported chickens. He’s like, that’s okay. Go to the, go to the grocery store. Good food store. Thanks. Good food store for your sponsorship tonight, by the way, go to the Good Food Store, gets some produce boxes [00:39:00] and each, each lady gets her own box.

And so, you know, it’s, it’s dark now, but go, go get the boxes and in the morning. Each lady gets her own box and you’re gonna take ’em out to Josh Sch Slotnick Farm. Awesome, thanks Josh. What am I gonna do there? Well, he’s got a greenhouse that it’s obviously not being used right now, so he said that we can put the chickens in the greenhouse.

Awesome. Great. So I’m really sorry about the chicken coop. He’s like, mark, it wasn’t your fault, I’m sure like the heat lamp, the fire department said that the heat lamp must have fallen onto the straw. And set it on fire. And I was like, I didn’t knock it over. And he’s like, no, I’m sure you didn’t like one of the chickens.

I’m sure knocked it over. I’m not mad at you. It’s fine. I’m not coming home. You’re going to continue to house. Sit. Josh is gonna take care of the chickens. Like, thanks Josh. Thank you Josh. [00:40:00] ’cause Josh’s farm is way on the edge of town. I don’t wanna have to drive out there every morning and go take care of the chickens.

So we, Joyce and I go. To the good food store, get some produce boxes, load ’em into the back of her truck. In the morning we go, um, back, uh, take the boxes out and stage them outside of Ari’s office. And I’m like, are you ready for this? And she’s like, yeah, I guess so. I don’t know. Like I put gloves on. We’ve got jackets, of course, long sleeves.

I’m concerned about being pecked or scratched by these traumatized girls. Who, right? Like they’re in a space that they’re not used to being in their home just burnt down. Like, I feel so bad for them and I really wanna take care of them. So we open the door, they don’t run out. I’m like, that’s good. So I grab one and like, I’m sort of behind her grabbing her from the side so their wings aren’t flat, but are like keeping her away from me.

So their, [00:41:00] their talons aren’t scraping me and she’s like trying to peck me. And Joyce has the box open, sort of like a mouse trap. She’s like, ready. And so I placed her in the box and Joyce puts the lid on success. Like, okay, we can do that again. We have to do it 10 more times. Okay, we can do that. So we, we load them all into boxes and load ’em into the back of Joyce’s truck and go out to Josh Niks place.

And Josh told me, he’s like, I’m not gonna be home. And my wife is leaving for work, so she, you might not see either one of us. Here’s the greenhouse that you’re gonna use and like knock yourself out. So we get there and sort of get the lay of the land and figure out this is the greenhouse that we’re gonna use.

’cause there’s two of them. And so we just bring all the boxes into the greenhouse one at a time. To stage them and then get their food and get their [00:42:00] water and then open the boxes and they’re like, oh, this is our new home. This is our new home.

And it was,

thanks, mark. Thanks me. I found a tele something in 2011, and I live with my partner Joyce, and our perpetual kitten Ziggy on Missoula’s historic North side. In our next story, while trekking deep into the Bob Marshall wilderness to photograph the monumental Chinese wall, Brian Christensen finally slows down to appreciate the remote mountain solitude with his partner.

When a tiny movement catches their eye, they hold their breath. For what could be the wildlife encounter of a lifetime. Brian calls his story Ridge lessons. Thanks for listening.[00:43:00]

Brian Christianson: A little over a month ago, I found myself hurrying along in Airy Ridge en route to a moment on that ridge where a cliff bifurcated it, cutting it in half, eliminating easy, further passage. I had been to this spot before and I knew that there was a route through this a hundred foot tall cliff band, and I wanted to sort it out before I wanted to preview it again and figure it out before we crossed the cliff band early in the morning, in the dark to gain the other side, uh, to gain a saddle on the other side upon, upon figuring out the route I was, I was happy to do that and I started to re relax a little bit and on my quarter mile walk back.

Towards our camp, I begin to appreciate the lofty perch we had found for ourselves. There was our tent on our little null 4,000 feet above the valley floor [00:44:00] in the middle of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. We were several miles off trails with without a soul in sight. I get back to the tent and I look for Lynn’s, my partner, my wife.

And I see her just on the other side of the hill and I see her sitting there staring off over seven or eight layers of mountain doing what Lynn’s does best. She’s a master of finding the moment. Whatever it is. So often I move around the world with this veneer of worry and anxiety that clouds things being what they really are and makes them instead go through this filter that makes them some version of what they are, but not quite clearly.

Lens, on the other hand, can sit in one place and stare literally. I’ve seen her do this for hours and hours and hours. Analyzing a space. Whether it’s in a thrift store or, or in the Bob Marshall Wilderness where we found [00:45:00] ourselves, this is a gift that she has. And so I find myself calming into this space after an kind of a, an expunging of frenetic energy.

Going to try to figure out our route and think ahead. Always thinking ahead. And I go and I grab my camp chair and I go and sit next to her. And we sit and we look out over the landscape together. We enter into conversation, but then we wander out as we pick out different features in the landscape and talk about it.

And then just long periods of silence. After about a half hour, she announces switch. I was like, what? Switch? What? She’s like, oh, we’re gonna go and now absorb this other view of the landscape. It’s like, uh, okay. So we move our chairs and now we move to the point where we have an unobstructed view of the reason why we, why our tent was here.

And that was to view the magnificent masterpiece that is the Chinese wall. [00:46:00] We had perched our tent just with an eyesight of it. And what the wall is is a space where 60 plus million years ago, when our mountains, the Rocky mountains were formed, some of the oldest rock on earth by a fluke of geology, got pushed up over younger rocks, creating a continuous unbroken.

13 mile cliff that ranges from 600 to a thousand feet tall and our tent was within half a mile of the start of the wall, and we could see a four mile section of it swoop out in front of us before it did a dog lay left around the corner. And so we sat there conversing looking, and I occasionally picked up my camera to just take a.

Capture just a quick capture to get a little rock detail just to document the place. And I remember how grateful I am to have this camera in my hands. Because it is for, it is because of Lynn’s who I’m sitting next to that I have it. ’cause she loaned a camera to [00:47:00] me years ago when I was going to climb Mount Rainier.

Yeah, and she gave me this camera and she’s like, you gotta take pictures. I’d gone to photography school and I’d sold all my equipment, so I didn’t even have any equipment, and she gave me her camera and I took these photos and that has led now 10, 12, 15 years later into a full-blown career in landscape photography.

And I’m sitting there with her, with this camera knowing that she’s the reason. Why I have this and why I have this career, which has helped slow me down because I’m the opposite of lens. I have frenetic energy that needs to be channeled and in specifically into creative acts. And that has led me to photography.

And so we sit there, we take in the view, we converse, we look. And then she announces switch. And so we switch and we go to the next view. And this time, this view now completes the 360 degree panorama from our lofty knoll that gives us this uninterrupted view of almost the entirety of the Bob Marshall wilderness.

At this point, [00:48:00] the sky is getting inky dark blue, just past blue hour. The first stars are starting to show. And Lynn announces switch. And I’m like, what? What? It’s, there’s nothing else to look at. And she unclips her camp chair and she lays on her back and takes in the Milky Way, the late summer milky Way, which stretched directly overhead.

And I do the same. And we lay there, entertained by shooting stars and satellites for another hour until finally our eyes grow heavy and we turn in for the night. I’m startled awake at 6:00 AM where I had set my alarm for hoping to capture the sunrise. And I’m even more startled to see that there’s already a blush of red in the sky, which for photography, that means it’s already too late.

I would love to be at a location well before there’s any color or interest in the sky. Calming myself getting ready to figure out compositions to make [00:49:00] images. And so I wake up harried, I need to go and I grab my photography equipment. I rush the quarter mile to that cleft in the ridge where we have to climb the thousand foot band of, of, uh, the thousand or, or sorry, a hundred foot cliff band.

It was not a thousand feet. And I do a perfunctory scan of the basin below just to see if there’s any early morning wildlife moving around. And there’s not. And so I take a few pictures until Linz catches up to me. We navigate the cliff band together, and then we move on to the saddle where I wanna photograph the Chinese wall.

Now at the saddle, we are there and we see the rise of the wall go three, 400 feet up to our left and then unfold like a ribbon for four miles. It is spectacular and I set about, as the color starts to change in the sky, frantically going about at this point, ’cause I woke up frantic. It continued. And the color came through the sky, red oranges into the middle clouds, and the, that orange [00:50:00] started moving down until it started to give the first kiss of light up at the top of the wall.

And that kiss of light started coming down. And I’m running around like a headless chicken, sorry, marks chickens, trying to figure out what the compositions are, and the light’s constantly changing. I have no compositions in mind. I am. Frantic trying to figure this out, and I move around the light shifting and changing, and I’m shooting for about 45 minutes until the light finally turns into a nice, clear white, and the shadow shorten and the landscape loses its shape, and I lose my photographic interest, certainly not my, my interest as a human and visual one to look at this spectacular piece, and I’m frantic breathing heavy, and I look over at Lynns who’s sitting there.

With her eyes closed and the morning sun on her face, just breathing and I breathe. I go join her and I, we eat breakfast, and I drink some [00:51:00] coffee and we’re sitting there just enjoying this amazing summer morning. At this am at this masterpiece of geology and all of a sudden Lynn’s announces switch. I’m like, what?

Why would we switch? We are looking, we are here. This is why we came for the Chinese wall. It is in front of us and we are as close as you can get to it. It would be, I guess, like going to the Eiffel Tower and turning your back and saying, let’s look the other way and see what that looks like. And I, so I indulged Sure.

And I was like, okay. I get, yeah, okay, we’ll look the other way. Of course, there were mountains behind us. There was plenty to look at. And so we moved 20 feet away from our packs and my camera, I leave it there, we moved 20 feet to the other side of the ridge, and we, we start, we have our conversation. We’re talking like we have done this cycle’s repeated itself now many times until all of a sudden lens gets really quiet.[00:52:00]

And I see that she’s looking past me, up the hill, up the ridge, and I follow her gaze and I see something about 300 feet away, the size of a small to medium sized dog, an animal moving in our direction. And I’m like, oh my gosh, what, what is that? And I, I kind of know, I have a sense of what it is, but I’m not, but I don’t want to say, I’m not sure.

I’m not positive. And Lynn’s asked some with somewhat trepidation in her voice. She says, what do we do? And I thinking, projecting onto her, what she’s asking is like, well, my camera’s behind me so I can’t, and I know if I get up, I’m gonna spook the animal. So, uh, what I say to her, which sounds a lot more courageous than it is, I say.

Just watch. And so now the animal’s 150 feet away from us closing in on us. And now I I, I know I see the unmistakable lo of a weasel. We had owned ferrets at one point in the [00:53:00] past, and they have this bounce that they bounce along and I’m like, oh, that’s a weasel. I knew for certain. And so the weasels moving closer to us and I, I, I’m still not quite sure exactly what it is, but now I’m starting to realize.

What it could be. And I ask Lynn still, but I don’t think it’s this. I say a a, a pine Martin. And she and she emphatically says no. And now it’s 75 feet away from us closing in on us that seemingly unaware of our presence on this ridge. We’re quiet and the wind is in our favor. It can’t smell us. And so it’s moving closer to us and.

I now notice a bushy tail, a white V on its chest, big hanging canines, ferocious mouth just open and it’s moving in our direction. I had been on studies in which we had game cameras and, and tried to document these critters, and I put some of my own up in a basin in the northern remote, northern, uh, Bitterroot this summer in hopes of maybe one day catching sight of this [00:54:00] animal.

And so I turned to Linson and I asked Wolverine. And she says yes, and the wolverine comes within 40 feet, 30 feet, 20 feet, 15 feet, and whoosh. It’s past us and it scurries along the ridge well past, right over the next ridge in about 30 seconds. It was moving so quickly, and Lynn’s and I so giddy with excitement that this.

One of the rarest mammals in North America, for which there’s only thought to be a hundred in Montana, and we got to see one run right past us. We stand up and we start like hugging each other and like kind of jumping and shaking hands. Maybe like stranger contestants on a game show might when somebody wi And we didn’t know what to do.

We didn’t know what to do. We, this was an experience for which we had no basis and experience to know how to react except for jubilation. [00:55:00] And I am so grateful to Lynn for providing the space and presence of Moment to Sink into a space to have experiences like that. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Brian. Brian Christensen’s, love for Mountains began on the pages of books while growing up in southern Minnesota. A family trip to Colorado at age 10. Confirmed the future mountains or bust. Brian proceeded to study photography and geography at the University of Colorado before moving to Montana in 2008.

Brian works as a nature photographer with a curiosity for wilderness. In Western Montana, he shares a life with his wife, Lynn And Ka Roo. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net. Mike’s print and copy Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, the Trail 1 [00:56:00] 0 3 3, Jack FM Missoula, source for modern hits, U 1 0 4 0.5.

And thanks to our in kind sponsors, float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. When you patronize these businesses in Missoula, thank them for their support of live storytelling in Missoula. Remember that The next tell us something event is June 16th. The theme is a sense of place you can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at Tell us something.

Dot org. A father on a wilderness backpacking trip must trust his nine-year-old daughter to decide if they push through a grueling trail or turn back.

Land Tawney: You got these black burned trees. You got the fireweed. It’s about yay high. That pink, bright fireweed, the just juxtaposition with that and the trees.

It’s just gorgeous.

Marc Moss: A young woman chasing a childhood dream unexpectedly lands a job at an Alaskan salmon hatchery, finding her true calling far from the world of fashion

Hailey Glassock: when you’re 19, details like where [00:57:00] the job is and the fact that you should be within an hour of a hospital a lot of times really don’t matter.

Marc Moss: Meanwhile, a mountain guides attempt at romance is derailed by a giant stake and a dramatic breakup. He must fight to fix.

Bryan Dalpes: I noticed a little green sheen on the surface of that meat,

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well.

Marc Moss: Finally, a teacher overwhelmed by her daughter’s cancer fight accepts a risky Peace Corps invitation to Africa, fundamentally changing how she views her life’s responsibilities.

Betsy Funk: My favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick and he’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix.

And as that matrix held the plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time.

Marc Moss: Tune in to the Tell Us Something podcast to hear what happens with our four intrepid [00:58:00] adventurers as they share their walk on the wild side stories. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or stream at, tell us something.org.