[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the We Are Chaffey Podcast.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Where we connect through conversations of community, humanness and well being. In Chaffey County, Colorado, I'm Adam Williams.
Today I'm talking with Nathan Ward. Nathan grew up in southeast Colorado and Salida.
Then he went out into far flung corners of the world living an adventurous and creative life before returning to Salida for long enough to raise his son with his wife.
We talk about how Nathan's parents laid a foundation for the big adventuring life that he would get into later, and how he steeped himself in books as a kid to learn about the outside world and its possibilities.
Classics like Moby Dick, Lord of the Rings, and what Nathan calls the best adventure book ever written were among the countless books he read in those early years, stoking that fire to live his own stories.
Not that Nathan would necessarily describe it that way. I don't know, he was a little hesitant to share some of these stories in this public format.
When that happens, I usually want to find out why because I think that sharing our stories is helpful. It's a point of connection and relationship between people and it can be inspiring.
So Nathan and I talk about that, especially given the fact that he is a professional storyteller on behalf of others.
We also talk about how he got started as a globe traveling professional writer and photographer in the mid-90s after quitting his office job, his first job out of college, working in the financial district in Hong Kong.
We talk about bikepacking, which he's done in Mongolia, in Bhutan, Botswana, Borneo, South Africa and elsewhere. We touch on the Himalayas and on his living in Kathmandu and on I.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Don'T know how many different things.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Ultimately, I think that what we might have done here is highlight that Nathan has a ton to share and it will either take more of these kinds of conversations to draw it out or like I do with him before this one is done, encourage him to write a memoir or two or three.
I love talking about this kind of stuff and and reading about it. And Nathan no doubt has a lot of stories closer to home. Some of you might recognize his name for his documentary filmmaking, including the Emmy Award winning film the Rider and the Wolf.
That film digs into the story of Mike Rust, who many far and wide knew as an innovative mountain biking legend, and then about how he mysteriously disappeared.
The We Are Chaffey Podcast is supported by Chaffey County Public health. Go to wearechafod.com for all things related to this podcast, including links to Nathan's work, which includes the Rider and the Wolf. You'll Also find a transcript and photos related to this episode and all others in the archive.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: All right, there's a lot to talk about.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So here we go with Nathan Ward.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: You're a professional storyteller. You work as a filmmaker, a writer, a photographer. I know you do some other things as well.
But I also think that you're hesitant to share your own story. And I'm curious if we can just start with understanding that because I think it's a really important piece of, of who you are. You've spent so long doing this work and doing amazing, adventurous things.
Why are you hesitant to share that?
[00:03:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it goes back when I was younger and people didn't always really seem interested in hearing about, you know, sort of the things I was doing.
So I'd write about them in magazines, but I wasn't out to really do them, to tell people about them. You know, it was more of a sort of a personal quest to do things. Yeah. And so sometimes I found that sharing them sometimes met with more disbelief than interest.
And so after a while, you just keep it to yourself.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: I think sometimes people maybe carry, whether they recognize it this way or not, some envy because maybe they don't have the means or the imagination or the will it takes to get out into the world, into these far flung places that you have, have been and spent so much time to learn the skills that you have to figure out how to be, I think, a self employed creator in the world.
So maybe sometimes it just hurts more to hear about how cool someone else is than have to face it and think, well, maybe I could do it too.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Maybe that could be part of it. You know, I think certainly when I was younger there was, there was some envy from other people because I was able to go out and do things.
But it took, you know, it takes everything to go do it. If you're in the creative industries, I mean, you're, you're all in or it doesn't happen, you know. So the funny thing is now that the sort of tables have been turned because I did travel and not save my whole life, you know, now that I'm in my 50s, you know, all my friends are going on vacation all the time. I'm just working. So, you know, I always said I was going to retire young and then work later, but. But I didn't really get what that meant until recently.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: I understand that. Yeah. I mean, I feel like my peers, guys that I went to high school with, college with, whatever, and they came out of those places and started a career and they've, you know, risen through whatever ladders of, you know, titles and prestige.
And I spent a good part of my 20s and into my 30s with travel and doing things on a smaller scale of what you did, I would say, and we'll get to some of those stories in a bit.
But then I felt like I was behind and I didn't have some of those comforts and I didn't have the money necessarily put away, things like that, that then it does get to a place where I sort of felt like, wow, I got to live these things. But now I feel like I don't have what you have. And now I'm a little bit jealous of how do I create that for myself when I'm late to the start?
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Yep, same story. Absolutely. Yeah. It's a hard thing to go through life. I mean, I'm trying to impart on my son, you know, some. Some other strategies, you know, to start from a young age as far as investing and thinking about the future, where I was just thinking about the next plane ticket and sort of the next cool trip that I could put together, which is good, though I. I don't regret any of that. It was fantastic.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: I think one of the things that we're taught with that model of go to school, go to college, come out and get a corporate job and you work the.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: The.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: The conventional path is the idea that when you retire, you're going to be equipped and have the freedom of time to go travel and do things that you want. But of course, at that older stage of life, you would not necessarily be equipped physically, if nothing else, to go do some of the rigorous things that I'm sure you have done in developing countries, for example, you might have money at that time, but what if we get there and we don't have all the health?
And so I think that's the way we hedged, my wife and I, is let's do as much as we can in our earlier years and we'll deal with, you know, the corporate and the career life on the back end. I think it's worked okay, I think. I mean, would you agree overall, for you?
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Well, yeah, I think it's worked okay. I mean, it's the only option. So it's not like you can back up and start it over. But, yeah, no, I wouldn't trade it for anything. You know, I was lucky when I was young.
I was young and hungry and fit, and I didn't mind discomfort or living cheaply or, you know, doing Basically whatever it took to.
To make my next vision happen. You know, I don't. I never cashed in on any of those, but, you know, that was sort of in the days when, you know, it's just sort of print.
The outlet was, you know, print magazines and things. It wasn't like you had this whole worldwide audience like, you know, you do now. And I think it would be pretty cool to be a young person right now, growing up with just the. The media landscape that's out there and your ability to get these adventures out to literally the whole world within minutes.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: You know, I think things like YouTube and TikTok.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's magic. Yeah.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: About the comfort piece, have. Has that shifted for you over time? Do you find now in your early 50s, that you're thinking, you know, my grit for some of What I did 20, 30 years ago has shifted? I don't mind a good hotel, you know, pillow and bed and shower, you know, compared to some of the other things that I imagine you've done.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Just the other day, I was telling my kid about this place I used to live in in Kathmandu. It was a dollar a day, you know, but it was so dirty, you wouldn't ever sleep in the bed. You know, you put your sleeping bag on top of it. But it was right in the middle of Tamel, the tourist district, and there was stuff happening everywhere. And.
Why do you need a room anyway? You shouldn't be sitting around your room in life.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: You went to high school here in Salida, is that right?
[00:09:13] Speaker C: I did. I graduated from Salida High School.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: But you were born in southeast Colorado, is that correct?
[00:09:18] Speaker C: Yeah, my family homesteaded southeast Colorado around Los Animas and Rocky Ford area.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: And farming and ranching all the way up until, you know, the Front Range. Bought the water off a bunch of the ranches and farms down there. And then we moved here the first day of seventh grade. My seventh grade. My dad dropped me off at school and gave me a little map to where we were staying.
So before that, we were living. He and I were living in a cabin up by Tin cup, which is on the other side of the Continental divide from here, so 36 miles outside of Gunnison, and we just spent the winter up there.
And at the time, you couldn't access anything, so it's either ski inn or snowmobile in seven miles, so.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: My parents definitely laid, you know, a lot of the groundwork for, like, sort of the. The adventures I took later on. Yeah.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: So you were, let's say, 12, a seventh grader having to either ski or ride in and out, and then to come to school, then that's part of your commute to school, is to make that effort and get to a vehicle. You're saying that was.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Age 11.
Yeah. I was doing a lot of backcountry, like, snowmobiling and skiing by age 11.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: And when we lived, you know, sort of in off the grid up there by Tin cup, and then we moved here to town in Salida the first day of seventh grade.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: And he gave you a map with that. That's crazy to me that you didn't even know. By the end of that day, you're like, okay, now I need to figure out where home is.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: That's right. Yeah. It was only a few blocks. So what was lucky at that time, there used to be two schools here at the time. There was St. Joseph elementary, and there was Longfellow Elementary.
And this first day of seventh grade was the first time all these kids had actually been in a classroom together from these two different schools. So no one even knew that I was a new kid. So some of the kids I met in the first 10 minutes of going into school are still friends of mine 30 years later, which is pretty cool.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: You've written that your family homesteaded in southeast Colorado until the Dust bowl covered them over and sent them to town.
And I'm curious if you grew up hearing about those stories of the Dust bowl, which of course, now is. I mean, nearly 100 years ago. But did you hear or have you read since, something like Timothy Egan's book the Worst Hard Time, which was many years ago since. I've read that, but I think that was great.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good book. I like that book. I did hear about the Dust bowl growing up. My grandma, who was almost 102, she just died last year. So she had grown up when they came out from Kentucky or wherever they came from, they actually lived in a tent out in southeast Colorado for the first winter, which, if you've been out there in the winter, it's. That had to be a horrible experience, you know? And then they upgraded to a sod house, which is kind of what the.
You know, that sod houses were kind of the option if you didn't have any money and you needed structure. So, yeah, she lived out there with several brothers and her parents, and, yeah, it sounded horrible, really.
She took me out there when she was about 85, and I remember we went to the old homestead, which is about 20 miles south of Los Animas and, you know, you wouldn't look at it today and think that you could live out there, you know, because with the drought, it's just sand and weeds. But, you know, that during that part of the homesteading time, you know, we were coming off the end of a couple of decades of above average rain.
And so I think, you know, when they came to sort of these last pieces that were left during homesteading, there was vegetation. You know, you did think that you could, you know, dryland wheat farm out there and make a living of it. And I asked her, I said, you know, how could you ever come to this place and think, you know, hey, this is where we want to put down roots and we can live here. And she said it just came down to free land. You know, if you have nothing and you have the option of coming out here, any free land is better than no land somewhere else.
So her family lived there. She left home at age 14 and moved to town, and her brothers and family lived out there a little while longer. But the dust ball really put the end on it. Yeah, so we had other family in the area with better plots of land, but those were chipped away eventually, you know, due mainly to water rights and water availability, you know, until finally, I think the last ranch, the city of Aurora, bought the water off, and now it's just sitting out there with a bunch of weeds and alkali doing nothing.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: When you were young, I think you did a lot of reading of books. You spent a lot of time at the library, and you wanted to know about the greater world out there, and I think adventure that was out there.
Do you remember any of the books that influenced you?
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Yeah, when I was a kid, we didn't have a tv. I remember my parents had a tv, but they traded it for a vacuum one day. So I was in the TV until, I think I was in high school.
So, yeah, books were the only option.
And, you know, growing up in southeast Colorado and then here, there really was, you know, you weren't exposed to the world like you are today. There's very little out outside influence. So it was all in the form of books.
So I read everything.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: No movies?
[00:14:39] Speaker C: Well, movies later on. Yeah. But, you know, the town I was born in didn't have a movie theater, and the one here had a movie theater downtown. The unique. But it sometimes played movies, and sometimes they didn't play. So.
Yeah, and when you're a kid, you know, you don't always go to the movies to watch the movies. You just go to mess around so, sure, yeah. So books. I read thousands of books, all kinds of books about adventures. Climbing explorers, you know, Moby Dick, the Hardy Boys adventure series, you know, how you could go solve mysteries and crimes, and of course, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, I think, which is still the best adventure book ever written.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: So it sounds like those would be highly influential. However, your parents and the family before them, I mean, there's a lot of grit in all of this. You're talking about skiing in and out or snowmobile to the cabin and tin cup and all of these things. It sounds like you had a lot that was influencing you toward what would become your adult life of getting out into the world and living your own ideas and imagination and these adventures.
Does that resonate with you that. That the whole package was there? Was there something in particular that ultimately was really what pushed you out onto your. Your own path?
[00:15:59] Speaker C: I think so, yeah. There are a lot of things in addition to that, too. You know, we grew up in ranching, family hunting and fishing, and that's just what you did, you know, in. In southeast Colorado. But I would say the thing that pushed me out the most was during. In high school, I wasn't the best student as far as listening to the teachers. And so at one point, I think I was given an option of being asked to leave school for a while or I could do something else. So I came home one day and I said, mom, dad, I'm gonna be an exchange student. And I signed up, and within like a couple months from then, I flew to Australia to become an exchange student and.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Because your teachers were tired of you in your own school, Basically, Yeah.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: And my dad was president of the school board at the time, you know, so it must have been bad behavior.
Yeah. But anyway, you know, it's.
That's a whole other time of life. But, yeah, so I went as an exchange student to Australia, and it really just opened my eyes, and I thought, man, there's so many amazing things out here. This is what I want to do.
And.
And that's. That's what I pursued.
So. One of the things I started, though, in Salida that I like is the. It's called the Shavano Academic Booster Club, and I started that when I came back from Australia, and it's basically a scholarship program we started 35 years ago now to help support other students in academic endeavors, you know, and when we first started that, I started with teacher Ed Lambert and Carl Larson, who was in the Rotary Club, and the idea was to give scholarships for other students to go on international exchanges because it had such, you know, a formative effect on my life that I wanted other people to do it.
Today we, we mostly give scholarships to graduating high school seniors to support, you know, college education of any type. Could be trade school, could be whatever type. After high school, they want to pursue four year university.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: It sounds incredible. We don't all learn the same way or at the same time or same pace or whatever. All it is to have that international experience, you know, to be something that would kick off so much else in your life, it changed the course of your life.
That's pretty amazing.
[00:18:18] Speaker C: It did, yeah. It changed the course of my life. It made me hungry for more.
Sort of got me out of the really small towns I had grown up in.
And where were you?
[00:18:30] Speaker A: In Australia.
[00:18:31] Speaker C: In Australia, I was in the town of Bendigo, which is about an hour north of Melbourne.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Okay. Melbourne, yeah, sure.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: New South Wales. Yeah. And then I had the chance, you know, to travel across the outback and up to the Great Barrier Reef. And then, you know, after that, in later years, I went back to Australia quite a few different times. You know, I drove almost the entire perimeter of the country, did a bunch of stories through the outback in different spots. And yeah, it's a great, great place.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Have you by chance read Matthew McConaughey's Greenlight's memoir? He talks about a time where he went over as an exchange student and had just wild experiences with the families, the host families he was staying with there. You might want to read that. And it might, I don't know, ring funny true something for you.
So you spent a number of years over in Asia and in Africa. I mean, all kinds of places. But in particular, I'm interested in your time in the Himalayas and in Bhutan and elsewhere.
Tell me something about that. Because the only time I ever had a plan to go to the Himalayas, it ended up getting sidetracked and I came back to the US For a while instead.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: Yeah, well, they're still there, so.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, true enough, true enough.
[00:19:42] Speaker C: Well, yeah. Who's. I mean, the Himalayas. Biggest mountains on earth. Right. So if you grew up in the mountains, really, that is, I think the goal is to go see them at some point.
And at that time, let's see, maybe I'll back up a bit first. You know, after college, I went to work in the financial district in Hong Kong. That was my first job out. So I flew to Hong Kong. I was working in office on, you know, the 32nd floor, right in the middle of, you know, Hong Kong island. And every night when you, you know, you'd still be working when the sun went down so you could see these mountains over there in China, across the border. And I was just sitting there thinking, what am I doing here?
And I still made more money then than I do now at age 22, which is fine, but, you know, I didn't last long in that world.
And sort of the goal there was to get to the Himalayas because, you know, you're right there. It's really like a two hour flight away. So it's, it's super close and it but it still, it took me years. I didn't get to, you know, the Himalayas until I was 27.
And by that time I'd become, you know, a writer and photographer for magazines with not, not for a love of like writing or doing photography, either one, but as simply as the tool to move around the world and make enough money to, you know, feed myself and live somewhere.
And so the first time I went to the Himalayas was on a climbing trip and we climbed some of like the highest, they're called trekking peaks, and they're basically the highest peaks you can do without paying the big mountain permits. You know, the biggest mountains have really high. Yeah, really high cost, but, you know, you can go climb a bunch of these peaks up to about 22, 000ft by paying, you know, a couple hundred bucks.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: So big difference.
[00:21:30] Speaker C: Yeah. And so I went over and I did a story on this guy called Skip Horner, who was the first guy to guide the Seven Summits and, you know, the first guy to run the Bobo in South America and parts of the Yangtze. And so he was, you know, this big guy in the adventure world. And the job I had was to sort of follow him around and do a story on what he was doing now.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: So how did you get started? How did you transition from this office building in Hong Kong to where people would hire you to be a writer or photographer when that really wasn't what you were even trying to do necessarily?
[00:22:05] Speaker C: That's true. Yeah. Writing was my English. And writing, as you can tell from how I talk, is my worst subject in high school and college.
So it really wasn't something I ever expected to be doing in life.
After I worked in Hong Kong for a while, I actually quit and I went into the Peace Corps in South America, which I did that for a few months, but I didn't have a place to live, so I ended up quitting that as well.
And then I flew back to Hong Kong.
And I made up basically some articles.
I wrote some stories and took some photos, and then I went around with this portfolio I'd made up and told people I was published, and look at all this work I've done. And I hadn't published anything. So that's how I started. I started getting some jobs. There was a magazine over there called Action Asia, which was basically sort of the outside magazine of Asia at the time.
And it's kind of when adventure sports were kicking off, you know, And I didn't have any great abilities in adventure sports, but I'd grown up here in Colorado, so I could do a lot of things.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Was this in the 90s?
[00:23:09] Speaker C: It was in the 90s, yeah. So it would have been around 95 or 96.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: So it wasn't like people could have really verified on the Internet because they wouldn't have found some big, beautiful website for these publications you supposedly published with. Right. They couldn't have. They couldn't have validated that.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: Correct. Yeah. You used to be able to travel around the world pretty incognito. You know, no one could check anything, which was helpful when I got started as a journalist. Yeah. So I went there and then told him I'd done all this stuff, and no one checked because there was no way to check. And then so I just started getting one job after another. And, you know, my goal really was to do, you know, more important stories about, you know, and the environment and social issues and things. But the stories that were selling were, you know, adventure travel and adventure stories. So I ended up doing that. I thought I'd do it for a couple years. And then, you know, 20 years later, I was still, you know, packing my bags and doing the next trip.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: That fire stuck around for a long time.
[00:24:08] Speaker C: It did, yeah. Well, it's a big world, you know, I'd still like to be out there.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: I was just. I was going to ask, I mean, do you still feel that. That pole again? If we go back to the comfort question, I think, you know, my younger self would be mad at me for this, but I've aged to. I'm about 50, so I'm a few years younger than you, and I've gotten used to the comforts. It's not that I don't want to travel in the world, but with kids and life going on, a lot of years are passing without me necessarily tapping into that fire again.
Where do you sit with that?
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I don't live in Salida because, you know, I'm ready to retire. I Live here because, you know, we had a kid. We're living in East Africa and we had a kid, and, you know, you don't want to grow up with your kid in a place where meningitis is, you know, a common thing. So we moved back here to be around family. And he likes it. You know, I'm always asking him if he'd like to move somewhere else. I was like, we can live anywhere you want.
But he's like, no, I want to stay in Salida, at least through high school. So I would say, you know, it.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Is an incredible place.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Three more years to live and I'm going to hit the road.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Hopefully we'll see. You never know what happens.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Well, what ambitions do you have then in terms of whether it's just personal travel, personal adventure, or if it's professionally speaking, is there a film or something out there that you're, you know, got your eye on to go make a documentary film about?
[00:25:34] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good question.
It's not something I've focused on a whole bunch lately as far as, like, what is sort of like this burning project that, you know, I want to take on.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: So the ideas are always there. I'm sure that, you know, that when.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: The time comes, the stories are out there for sure. You know, I'd certainly like to go back to Africa, probably around. I'd like to go to Botswana more and figure out, you know, Africa is this huge part of the world, 50 some countries, and you hear nothing about it except, you know, bad things most of the time. But, man, it's a. It's a fascinating place. And if the world was interested, there's, you know, thousands of stories that could come out of there that, that are amazing.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: You've done some bike packing trips there, right? In Botswana, South Africa also. Was it Bhutan where you have as well, other places I'm not even aware of.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I used to like to bike pack before bike packing was a thing, and mostly just because I didn't like to carry a lot of stuff. But, you know, mountain biking was certainly a tool I like to use across countries, you know, so I rode across the US Parts of Australia, Borneo, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, parts of Botswana, South Africa and a bunch more.
Yeah, and it's just a good way. I mean, you can move faster than walking. Walking is too slow. You know, I never got into backpacking because you have to carry all the stuff. But, you know, bikes, you can cover some mileage and there's always people biking in all these countries, and it's just a. It's a cool way to travel, cool way to meet people. It's quiet. You can see animals.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: A lot of those countries, you're going to stand out simply for your skin. I mean, you're going to obviously be, well, that guy's not from here. Does that draw people more to you in your experience, because they're curious and they want to connect and they come with smiles? Or did you ever encounter moments where it was kind of the flip side and people were like, why are you here? And you felt like, maybe I'm not safe riding this next, you know, batch of miles?
[00:27:36] Speaker C: Yeah, well, if you put yourself out there, there's certainly times when it's not safe. You know, most of the time people are nice, but you. Yeah.
So two friends and I biked across Mongolia back in the sort of mid-90s, you know, just a few. Couple years after. Well, a few years after the Soviet Union had broken up. Okay. You know, at that point, like, all the. The Russians had pulled out all of the infrastructure, factories, the pensions, everything that Mongolia depended on for like 70 years. So when we were walking, you know, being white people, sort of biking across Mongolia, we'd go into these villages and people would just be hurling rocks at you and bottles.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Assuming you're a Russian.
[00:28:15] Speaker C: Assuming you're a Russian. Yeah, yeah. Until you, you know, you learned how to yell in Mongolian really quickly, then you're American.
And then it got to the point, you know, we'd stop, you know, outside of a town.
We wouldn't ride into them anymore. So you kind of stop outside, and then people will come up to you, and then, you know, you can talk to them with just two, three or four of them at a time. And then once they find out that you're not rushing, they. Then you can travel with them sort of through there. But yeah, the first couple times it was pretty hairy. And then, of course, you know, when you're bike packing, you're, you know, you're at the mercy of the road. You're at the mercy of cars. People, you know, people throw M80 firecrackers at you out the window, they throw bottles, throwing you off the road.
And you're camping, you know, in some pretty sketchy places sometimes because you don't want to pay any money to, you know, so you're camping. If you abandoned buildings, abandoned gas stations, you never know what happens.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: A lot of times, you were maybe in your 20s during some of this stuff, maybe a little more brash and willing to take that on than. Than a Lot of people would be.
[00:29:16] Speaker C: Yeah, probably wouldn't do it now, but yeah, 20s, 30s, early 40s.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great.
Like I said, my experience was on a much smaller scale. And so that's why I'm so fascinated to be able to talk with you. You, you know, I love to be able to hear the stories. If we circle it back to the fact that you couldn't tell stories when you were younger to people who weren't necessarily getting out and doing those things, I'd have to admit there was a time when I was really young, before I got a chance to do some things where I maybe was envious myself. It's like I need to go get my own experiences. And once I did that, I was no longer envious because now it's, it's a matter of being able to connect. We all have our own, you know, experiences in getting out there and doing these things. And so. So I love to hear about it.
[00:29:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I think once you like sort of get in this tribe of adventuring, you know, and you know, really what it is to sort of extreme dirt bagging, it is a tribe, you know, and you can relate to each other better and you realize sort of what it takes, you know, and it, it all sounds great on paper that you get to fly somewhere and do something, but you know, a lot of the times it's not that good. I mean, you have dysentery. You know, I always said, you know, you're not really traveling until you poop your pants, you know, and that can happen in any country. You know, I've been robbed at gunpoint, kidnapped, all sorts of things. So I mean, you have to be ready if you want to be out there in the world. You know, there is a cost.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that, that segues wonderfully to reality of this versus people's perception, you know, because when you talk about traveling in some of these, you just name some of the countries or bike packing or depends on who you're talking to for what part stands out right. As kind of this sexy rosy glasses view.
But it's hard to do. You have to have the constitution to say, I'm going to take on the hard things you're describing. To live with little money, maybe not quite know where you're going to get food next and that won't make you sick.
I mean, you tell me more like what are some of the things you've encountered in terms of here's reality versus that, you know, rosy colored view that some people who don't do this just assume, well, you must have a lot of money to do it and you're just living some dreamy life that somehow they don't have access to.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, certainly. You know, I think for, for a lot of my life, people thought, you know, that I had. Must have won the lottery or something to do all this, but, man, it's. I skimped everything for, you know, decades really, to make it happen. So, sure, it sounds good and you can write a story about it. It's kind of like when you watch those videos on YouTube now. It's like, you know, the influencer video compared to the influencer reality. You know, the reality is always harder than what it is when you tell people about it afterwards, you know, because I would write these glowing stories and magazines, but, you know, often nothing like that really. But you still had to get paid so, you know, you had to write a certain thing.
But yeah, I mean, real travel is tough and I think it's a lot easier now because one of the hardest things early on was finding anything in the world, you know, because you'd be in these places cold and, you know, again, no Internet. You get to some South American town, you know, on the bus at dark and try to find some place to stay and you might be in part of town that you shouldn't be in.
Yeah, I mean, it was stressful, so it wasn't always. It wasn't always roses.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: But how great is some of that? Well, let's say the ignorance is bliss approach that when we don't know, you know, when we have these perceptions of what's dangerous, let's say in our own country, you go to Denver, just to name one city that's nearby, and you might have these perceptions of, oh, that area I shouldn't go into. I wouldn't be as comfortable, as safe as welcome, whatever the case is. But we don't have any of that really, when we go to so many places around the world so we can walk around with a lot more ease because we just don't know better and be willing then to encounter and discover a lot of positives in that experience that otherwise our fear but might have kept us from. From getting to do.
[00:33:18] Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah. You know, I do miss the days, you know, people call me a curmudgeon now, but I do miss the days, you know, when, when you didn't know everything, you know, now you know everything in your phone and you know exactly how many steps it takes to get to whatever place you're going to stay and what it's rated against 500 other places in the city and blah, blah, blah, you know, and it, I think a lot of the mystery is sort of gone. Although when you're traveling with kids, it's great because you not, you know, wandering around aimlessly in the heat trying to figure out, you know, what the heck you're doing.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: They need food in your way to get it.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Yeah, but you know, I, yeah, there's good and bad to both of them. You know, when we biked across Mongolia, we didn't even have maps because they hadn't been declassified by the Soviets yet or the Russians at that time. And so, you know, we, all we did is we looked at a map on a, like a one page map on a book and then we wrote down the names of these areas we wanted to go through.
And then I went to like the language school in Ulaanbaader and I had him write out the Cyrillic name and then I had him write it out phonetically.
And then I had him write out like three or four responses, you know, and we carried this, this little paper and we wrote, you know, 700 miles across the country knowing that if we got lost, we'd go south until we hit this really big river and then we went left. That was the backup plan, you know, so it's not like now where it's all sort of laid out for you so you can strava at all and get your GPS and upload it and see how many calories you burned, see how many marmots you have to eat to replenish.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: I am curious to know how many hours, days, months, years, miles you put in on bike. But of course I, you know, you weren't riding around with a garment on your wrist. It was going to track all of that and how many calories, you know, you need to replace and all that things. Right. So. And also when you're talking about writing and well, there's the sometimes glossier version of what actually gets published versus some of the realities you're encountering those dangers. And sometimes people might not know about those. And then even when those come out, if you've ever published some of that, my guess is that as a reader you always know the person lived to tell the tale. So everything must be okay, right? It couldn't have been too dangerous, it couldn't have been too dark, you know, because you're still there with your byline telling the story. So, yeah, I think there's this, well, you mentioned the tribe, people who engage in this sort of Lifestyle, profession, that there is this common ground. And then, I don't know, maybe there's kind of a gap between everybody in that tribe and the people who are living the conventional life. And maybe it is hard to talk with, you know, the mass is about some of that and what the realities are.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. Well, I think it's, you know, highly romanticized. And so, you know, living in Colorado, you kind of miss that because you, you are disconnected, I think, from, you know, what the majority of this country is like. You know, you go other places in this country, you realize it's really not like this at all. And you get pretty spoiled living in a place like Salida or Crested Butte or Eagle or wherever, where, you know, you know, life is good and people pursue things and we have the means to pursue things, and people understand more of what you're talking about. But even getting it out in the parts of the US not far away, you know, there is a giant disconnect between lifestyle and this sort of adventure lifestyle. And, you know, they view it in a romanticized way or a crazy way, but I think you can bring it to them. I mean, no one really wants to hear, you know, about having dysentery. Although you can tell those stories pretty easily.
Yeah, you know, one of the stories, I had just written this mountain bike guidebook in Salida, and two friends or one friend and I, we were going to go and bike the Rainbow Trail, you know, all the way from Monarch Crest down to the sand dunes. You know, you can do like a 70 mile stretch. Most, you know, about half of it on single track across the mountains. There's.
And we headed out the end of the first day. We didn't take much gear because Ed Quillen, who was an old rider and sort of Salida local, famous Salida local, was gonna drive our stuff up to the Rainbow Trail. So we'd put in like a hard first day, and then we'd get the gear from him and then continue on from there.
But, you know, he went up there and some new homeowner had blocked off the road with a gate, you know, so he wasn't able to get there. So we went on a little further and pretty soon it was like pitch black. I mean, so pitch black. One of those literal nights when you're like, wave your hand in front of your face and you can't even see your hand, you know. And we finally stopped after one of us walked face first into a tree and then the other one fell in a creek and, you know, so we're camped out in the middle of the Rainbow Trail with a fire and it's snowing. And, you know, my buddy was like, we gotta get the cell signal. We gotta get outta here. I was like, no way, man. We gotta stay till morning so I can sell this story.
Said no one better call search and rescue though, because I just wrote this book and I look like a total fool.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:22] Speaker C: So, you know, so yeah, you get, you know, I guess as far as writing and stuff, you know, the stories where things go wrong were always easy to sell, but no one was going to pay you beforehand to do them. You know, it's only when you messed up and you tried to make the most of it later on.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: That is what makes the stories most of the time. Right. Is when things don't go perfectly. But that's the essence of the hero's journey, is that you have to have trials and tribulations as the hero of that story overcome them. Now you have a story to tell.
So let's talk about your documentary film, the Rider and the Wolf. This is one that you received an Emmy award for.
And it also features Mike Rust, who many long timers or mountain biking fans, maybe anywhere, will know who he was.
Did you know Mike when you were growing up here?
[00:39:11] Speaker C: Yeah, growing up in Slida. I think mountain bikes hit the town somewhere in the, you know, mid-80s.
And there was one bike shop at the time.
And so I got this, my first mountain bike then. And then Mike and Don McClung sort of opened the Colorado Cyclery over, across from where Trace Leachro's is now. You can see there's a, there's a light up there that has a high wheel bike on it still. And that was their shop. And so I, I knew Mike a little bit, you know, because there weren't many mountain bikers at the time and they were making these shorty bikes which everyone wanted, you know, and at the time I think there were 800 bucks or something would seem like a fortune.
And so they, yeah, they really became the, the guys to be admired. And Don still is. I mean, Don, I think he's in his 70s now and he still rides. So, you know, they're really people to look up to. So kind of knew them, but not really his friends because they were so much older. I was just in high school. But we, we certainly looked to them and there used to be a big fourth of July ride here. There still is, but there used to be ride all the way back into the 80s where, you know, all the, the good Riders and pros in Colorado would show up on the crest to ride. And so we. We jumped in on that a couple times and watched them all right into the distance as we slowly tried to keep up. But that's. That. That was kind of my.
How I knew them. And then, you know, after high school, I moved away for a lot of years and, you know, heard sort of through the grapevine that Mike had disappeared. And I thought, wow, that's weird. But didn't think much more about it until I moved back here and then, yeah, just learning about it and talking to his friends, and I think there was, you know, there was a great deal of fear in the community and in the Valley, especially San Luis Valley, about what happened to him, and people didn't want to talk about it. And I kept contacting other filmmakers. I wasn't actually a filmmaker at the time. I was still a writer. Yeah, I was like, here's this story. Someone should cover this story. This is like the perfect story you guys are looking for. You know, no one would do it. And so that's, you know, kind of the reason I started into film. I said, finally, I was like, well, no one else is going to do this. I'll do it.
And, yeah, that started an interesting journey that took, you know, I think, three years to make that film.
Lots of challenges along the way.
Not only, you know, challenges in making the film, but, you know, raising the money, you know, the film team fighting with each other and breaking down, getting new partners on the project.
You know, at one point, we're told, like, that, you know, the. The cartel was involved in drug trafficking. And so we stopped production altogether.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: In his disappearance and death.
[00:41:58] Speaker C: Yeah. And so, you know, that's not something you really mess with for a story.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: So, you know, did you find that to not be true or how did you negotiate that information?
[00:42:09] Speaker C: I think enough people. Enough people in the San Luis Valley said that, you know, that wasn't the case. You know, people down there knew what happened, so they just needed some encouragement, basically.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: And that's something in your film that, you know, is said over and over. There's somebody or many people who know what happened, but they wouldn't talk.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Out of. Out of, you know, fear. Right. They were. They were afraid of the repercussions from what they knew and who would come after them if they did help.
[00:42:38] Speaker C: Right, Exactly. Yep.
People knew it happened. You know, people are scared to talk because it's a tiny community.
And, you know, once we are in this film project deep enough, we thought, wow, Was this a super dumb idea to start this? You know, and I've said that since then, you know, you shouldn't make murder films where you live because it was stressful, you know, weird. You know, just a small team of like three going out through the San Luis Valley. We were, you know, searching abandoned homesteads, cabins, mine shafts, dropping can, you know, cameras down mine shafts. And his brothers were also involved. So, you know, Mike had four brothers. Two of them were highly involved in this and one, one was out to solve it down there also. So, you know, it was, it was a pretty challenging, confrontive thing that was going on.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Did you feel personally connected to this because of growing up here? And you knew who this guy was, you knew who some of these people involved were.
Was there anything personal and maybe, I mean, in that emotional connection for you alongside what sounds like just a sense for story and you felt like there was something to be reported essentially and discovered in this.
[00:43:54] Speaker C: Yeah, well, the best stories are personal, right? If you don't have an emotional attachment, then it's just work you check off and don't even think about again.
So you want to find stories that are as personal as possible because unless you're, you're invested, then you're not invested. You know, you're not invested. You have to be, I mean, you have to, to do good work, you have to be in the story somehow.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: And for a long term project like this.
[00:44:21] Speaker C: Yeah. So I knew Mike's friends, I knew, you know, his partner, people that had his best friends, really. And then I got to know his brothers and I got to know the sort of this whole large cycling community around, you know, the, the Russ brothers, which are pretty, you know, big and wild family that came out of Colorado Springs out of the military community. And they rode, you know, high wheels, these big penny farthing bikes and all the big tours, you know, over the mountain passes. And we found this crazy footage of them, you know, with their feet up on the handlebars going like 40 miles an hour down the mountain pass on a high wheel bike. So there was, there was a lot of good material. But unfortunately what makes the story is not, you know, all the, the fun and amazing things they did or their brotherhood. I mean, what makes the story is that Mike went missing. And that's just how stories work if you want to sell them. But it was a great project there. And it wasn't just me. I mean, there were so many people in this community who worked on this film. I mean, there's probably 50 people in this town who work, helped us work on it. So Claude DeMoss, who works over at Subculture, he did a lot of the editing and, you know, field work with us. And then Carlin Walsh, who owns, you know, part of Elevation, he was involved with us. And Lyman Smith, who's, you know, a top notch editor, helped us finish the film.
And then Mike's brothers helped us reenact what we think, you know, happened. When he got murdered, that was actually the first weekend I'd ever met them. We met these brothers out in the middle of the nowhere in San Luis Valley, and I think they were just like, who the hell are these guys and why do they want to talk about our brother? And, you know, three days later, we'd had him reenact, you know, what we think happened to him.
So, you know, it was kind of a trial by fire. And at that time, you know, I'd only made, like, a couple of short films and really had no idea what we're doing, so we did pull it off.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: It's great.
[00:46:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: I mean, you. You won an Emmy for it, and I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. I mean, is that something, professionally speaking, you appreciate and enjoy? Is it anything you actually aim for, or are you somebody who's just like, awards? That's not the point. Who cares?
[00:46:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Awards are good because they help you get more work. Right. And you sometimes get a free dinner, but not always.
Yeah.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: You know, gather investment in future films.
[00:46:48] Speaker C: It does, yeah. You know, and. And I did. I set out a goal of winning an Emmy for sure. So, you know, I've been a finalist, I think, eight times, but I've only won once, so that was the first nomination I had and the only one I've won, so that was the best one by far.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: What do you think is the difference, like, between winning and not winning? What is it they're looking for? What did you get right if. Even if we put air quotes on.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: It is, I assume, a little bit subjective here, but what did you figure out that worked this time?
[00:47:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Between winning and not winning is the story.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: Do you think the stories weren't as good in the other films?
[00:47:23] Speaker C: Yeah, they weren't as good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's. There's a reason why, you know, true crime podcasts are so popular, and people want to know what happens in mysteries, you know, disappearances, murders. It's this dark side of our society.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: We want the answers to what happened and why. Yeah, sure.
[00:47:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So. But with the Emmy, the only thing I regret on that Is that, you know, at the time when we applied for it, we only had enough money to sign up one person.
So I'm the person who had their name on the Emmy, but really it should have been the whole team, you know, so we did take it around and get photographs with everyone afterwards. But, you know, other than that, I think it's still in the box in my storage head.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: So you have a teenage son, you mentioned a few more years before he is going to be out of high school.
I've been thinking about the connection here between where you grew up at a time we've talked about the technologies or lack of. At the time we were growing up compared to now, and you were reading tons and tons of books and that was where you got your sense of adventure and ultimately would want to go out into the world. But now your son not only has the technologies, but has you this living walking library who has actually even written down some of the stories, who has captured them in photography and on film.
Does he. He have an interest in your stories? Is he like, you know, like a lot of us, it's like, there goes dad again, you know, or is it something that is inspiring him to say, man, there's a big world out there and I also want to go pursue similar adventures?
[00:48:59] Speaker C: Well, yeah, that'd be. The parents dream, right, Is that you can pass sort of this love and curiosity onto your kid and that they're going to take it and explore it in their way. Yeah. And so that's certainly been, you know, part of what I've tried to do as a parent is instill curiosity and cultures, adventure, you know, love the mountains, love of the outdoors in him. And he does. I mean, he snowboards, he river surfs, he backpacks, fly fishes, ride bikes, Unicycles makes films, all these things that are passed on to him now, you know, he's a teenager, so he kind of has to take it and run with it if he wants to you. Because kids are easy to influence when they're younger, but as they get older, they get much harder, right? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, he's.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Have you traveled with him?
[00:49:51] Speaker C: Yeah, he's been on four continents so far. You know, we. He's been in the Himalayas because I was working over there for a Tibetan Rinpoche every year up until Covid.
[00:50:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:02] Speaker C: So he came over into dad. We did some stuff in South America. We took him out of school for several months during middle school, we just did world school instead. So, you know, that's incredible. Our lessons Were, you know, how to book flights, how to exchange currencies, how to, you know, order in different languages. And then, you know, we also did a film in Cuba, he and I. He was at the time, is really into unicycling. So we went over and planned to film and filmed it, you know, all around Cuba. These sort of cool places to unicycle and cool landscapes and interactions with people and what it means to be a kid, you know, trying to learn about the world outside of the classroom.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: You mentioned that when he graduates and you would like to get back to the things that you have done in the past, you know, that fire is still there. Well, it sounds to me like you both have this. This in your future together, maybe travel together, work together.
[00:50:56] Speaker C: Yeah, that'd be. I think, you know, I think a lot of parents dream about doing something, you know, with their kids in the future, and that's. That's certainly a dream, you know, but it's really up to them. Sure.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:51:07] Speaker C: You know, I think part of parenting and the hardest part for me at least, is letting go, you know, and.
And, yeah, go out there and make the right choices and hopefully by this point.
But, you know, he could certainly be a filmmaker. He's expressed interests. You know, I've taught him techniques, he's made films. So we'll see what happens.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: I'm going to ask something that I imagine you've heard from so many people over the years, but from the excerpts that I've read from some magazine articles, I don't know, maybe they weren't really for magazines, given what you've said, but they're on your website, and you are a fantastic writer, especially. I mean, somebody who wasn't even trying or intending to be that person.
You know, I love the. The flow of language and the imagery there.
So here's the question that probably everybody has asked you over time. Are you going to write a memoir that collects a lot of these things together or even just an anthology of these articles? Maybe. But do you have any interest in doing that, especially given the fact that you don't necessarily want to share your own story?
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of people have asked, you know, that same question, you know, am I ever going to write a book sort of putting all these adventures together?
And, I don't know. It's a weird thing, you know, do people really care? I mean, is it just entertainment? You know, I don't know. I mean, I did a lot of cool stuff. I didn't do it to really talk about it or Share it with other people. That much I did. You know, totally self centered, you know, honestly, you know, you know, I think there is a value in like, in, in telling people that it's possible, you know, and that, you know, there are different ways to go about and live your life and that you can, you know, you can come from small places and really go out and sort of explore the world. And the coolest thing I guess I would like to convey is if you find a way to enter different worlds, you know, because just as a white male, you're not really. When I first started working, the world was different. I mean, 30 years ago, the world's radically different than it is now. And there was still, I think, the vestiges of colonialism in Africa and Asia where you could, you, you walk around with complete white privilege everywhere and you could get away with everything, you know, and I don't think that's the way to do it. So I think what, what really made the difference in my life, you know, is picking up a camera and just saying, hey, this is the magic key that you can enter any situation you want to, whether that's, you know, did projects on like, you know, heroin addicts in Hong Kong and you can walk straight in and hang out with, you know, that or with the triads and the gang members. And as long as you have the camera and this reason to be there, you get accepted into almost any situation safely that you'd want to be in, in life. And I think that was kind of the key for me is discovering that and just running with it, you know.
[00:54:01] Speaker A: Was that an example or have you actually hung out with the triads?
[00:54:04] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so I lived, I lived in Hong Kong and I did this story on this place called Chunking Mansions, which was basically the lowest of the low income housing developments in Hong Kong. And there's five towers and I forget how many thousands of. It's like the population of several sliders in each tower. Right. But a lot of these buildings are run by, you know, the gangs and then then consequently run by, you know, these Nepalese men who were, you know, sons of Gurkha soldiers that were left there after the British left. And so, yeah, so I photographed it all for, moved in and lived with them and did that project for Life magazine.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:54:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And I did get stabbed, so it's cool.
[00:54:49] Speaker A: So obviously you've got tons of stories. We've barely scratched the surface. I would have tons of questions, but I think we've done what we can for this this moment in time. And that also means I think you really just need to end up writing a memoir or two or three.
People can read more learn more watch
[email protected] gritandthistle.com that's your film company.
All right, I'll include those things in the show notes. But Nathan, thanks for talking with me and sharing what you have. This is awesome. I'm so glad you were willing to give it a try.
[00:55:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work, man. It's a good show. Thank you.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the We Are Chaffey Podcast. You can learn more about this episode and others in the show
[email protected] and on Instagram.
[00:55:40] Speaker A: We are Chaffeypod.
[00:55:42] Speaker B: I invite you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I also welcome your telling others about the We Are Chaffey Podcast. Help us to keep growing community and connection through conversation.
The We Are Chaffey Podcast is supported by Chaffey County Public Health. Thank you to Andrea Carlstrom, Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment, and to Lisa Martin, Community Advocacy Coordinator for the larger We Are Chaffey storytelling initiative. Once again, I'm Adam Williams, host, producer and photographer for the We Are Chaffey Podcast. Till the next episode, as we say.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: It, We Are Chaffey.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: Share Stories make changes Sat.
