Stories That Move
We've been dreaming about this for a long time... and now it's finally here!
Get a first look at DreamOn Studio's brand new podcast, Stories That Move!
When we create videos for our clients, there's often incredibly rich narrative that we can't include in the final cut. Being behind the scenes, we're fortunate to hear the depth and full context behind each story.
So in this podcast, we want to pull back the curtain and allow you to experience the extraordinary stories of extraordinary people we've been honored to connect with.
Go on an adventure with us.
Gain a new perspective.
Learn something new.
Be challenged.
Feel inspired.
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Stories That Move
Micah LeMasters | Rewilding Dreams and Global Adventures
World traveler and adventurer Micah Lemasters takes us on an extraordinary journey from the serene landscapes of Winona Lake, Indiana, to the vibrant and diverse cultures of Madagascar and the Dominican Republic. Micah's stories captivate with their rich tapestry of experiences, offering listeners a glimpse into how his global escapades have shaped his unique perspective on life and storytelling. Discover the inspiration behind his project of rewilding 45 acres of land near his hometown and the lessons learned about nature's surprising resilience and the importance of biodiversity.
As Micah recounts his transformative travel experiences, listeners will be drawn into the humor and warmth of community connections and the thrilling spontaneity of adventures, like sailing to Cuba. From the pivotal decision to join the Peace Corps in Madagascar to understanding the cultural nuances of a small farming community, Micah's tales emphasize the value of embracing discomfort through travel. These stories serve as a testament to personal growth and deepened family connections, inspiring us to appreciate the richness of shared adventures and the unexpected paths life can take.
Throughout this engaging episode, the conversation weaves through life-changing decisions, cultural immersion, and the significance of compassionate travel. Micah shares valuable insights into the importance of learning local languages and fostering genuine interactions with people around the world. With heartfelt anecdotes, including a touching story about traveling with his father to the Dominican Republic, Micah illustrates how such experiences can strengthen family bonds and shift perceptions. Join us for an episode brimming with adventure, curiosity, and the transformative power of stepping out of one's comfort zone.
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you go back and you look at the trip and you're like, okay, what was the lowest point of my trip, what was the highest point of my trip and what are the points that are in between? Like, what are these? What were the lows, what were the highs, what was the worst day, what was the best day? And you start going through that and you start like seeing like you've got all of these like peaks and valleys, and then everyone else that's experiencing that with, but sometimes it's like contrasting peaks and valleys, and you know you start graphing all of this out and at the end of that, when you connect all of those dots, they look exactly, almost exactly, like a really healthy heartbeat.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of Stories that Move. I'm Mason Geiger and I'm here with my co-host, matt Newell. Today we've got a guest with one of the most adventurous and diverse backgrounds we've really ever had on the show.
Speaker 3:Man, you are not kidding. Our guest today is Michael Amasters, a world traveler, peace Corps alum and someone who has lived and worked in places all over the globe. His journey has taken him from sailing to teaching, building houses, guiding expeditions and now rewilding 45 acres of land near Winona Lake, indiana.
Speaker 2:Micah's stories are incredible. Whether it's his six years living in Madagascar or his wild sailing adventures, he's got a perspective on life and the world that's very unique. We're going to dive into all of that today and hear more about what has shaped his journey.
Speaker 3:This was such a fun and moving conversation, so let's get into it. Please welcome, michael Amasters, to Stories that Move. Welcome back to Stories that Move. I'm your host, matt Duhl, with me, as always, mason Geiger.
Speaker 2:How are we doing today? Doing really good I realized real quick that I say that every time. Yes, our podcast release at like 5 am on a Tuesday morning.
Speaker 3:Oh right, right, so I'm going to go with how's everyone doing this morning? Oh, that's good, yeah, early this morning, having our coffee, doing well, driving to work yes, so excited. This morning. We have a just incredible guest and sitting here just kind of chatting about it. We don't even know where the conversation is going to go this morning, but I think it's going to be fun. We have with us today Micah Lemasters. Micah is a world traveler, adventurer, educator, sailor, among many other things. So, man, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super cool to be here. Kind of quite an honor to be invited to talk about stuff Awesome.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, to kick us off, just yeah, introduce us to yourself a little bit of what you're up to right now, what's happening in your world these days?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my name is Micah. I grew up in up in Winona Lake and, uh, it's was home for me for the first 18 years of my life and then has always sort of been my place to land when coming back or heading off to some other, some other place. Um, I grew up in Winona Lake in the 1980s and early nineties when it wasn't a cool place to live. So I like to say that I'm from there because I was from there before. It was cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the rough streets of Winona.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I just got back to the country. I was out for the last six weeks in the Dominican Republic helping my brother with a project. He bought a beach bar hotel in like a little tiny like beach town in the very far flung northeastern part of the country. I'm down there helping him build some stuff. I don't even know what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Sweating and being hot.
Speaker 1:Then I saw my other friend, caleb, who lives there.
Speaker 3:My brother.
Speaker 1:Caleb and my friend Caleb.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think that's what connected you to us was Courtney France, our client development manager, said you guys have got to talk to Micah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. I think their kids enjoy listening to me tell stories. So if that's any indication of the quality of stories I have to tell, 12 year olds love it. They're pretty smart, 12 year olds, so yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. All right, so you said you were just mentioning you are in the process right now, working on about 40 acres of property here in Winona that you're rewilding. Yeah, and you said that and I was what does that? I don't even know what that means. What does that mean?
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny because when I tried to write it on the form I filled out before this conversation, I was like I don't even know if this is a word.
Speaker 2:I tried like four different ways.
Speaker 1:I was like spellcheck, wanted to be rewinding, which I thought was interesting. I was like, but I didn't know if it was like hyphen word or just not a word. I added it to my dictionary so that's part of it.
Speaker 3:I'm glad that you did I went down that same track. When I read it, I was like rewilding.
Speaker 1:My parents bought a piece of property on the edge of Winona Lake in the 1980s a woods and then they've always had that. And then about 10 years ago, the neighbor's field was for sale and so my parents went to the auction that it was for sale at and it was the. They bought the field because the second, third and fourth highest bidders were all neighborhood developers. Um, so they bought it and didn't really know what to do with it, and so they just leased it to a farmer and he maintained it and farmed it for the last like decade.
Speaker 1:And then last summer I had convinced my parents that, like, when you buy a field at neighborhood price, no amount of leasing the field will ever like recoup the money that you had to pay for. And I was like so what are we doing that for? It doesn't sound any fun. I was like what if we just let it turn back into whatever it was supposed to be or whatever it wants to be, and then sort of just be there to guide that a little bit and just sort of see what happens and react to um, nature doing its job? Um, so, two, last summer was the first summer we stopped farming it and just did nothing okay and then planted.
Speaker 1:I think the first summer we planted 3 000 hardwood trees, like on the back part of the property, which turns out well we'll get to that in a second and then moved, I think, nine or 10 beehives out there. My mom had gotten really into beekeeping, so the only thing that I did that wasn't like totally natural was I tilled up three acres of it and planted a three acre wildflower garden forward slash bee buffet.
Speaker 1:Just to see what happened If you put nine beehives next to three acres of native wildflowers like, how much honey can they make? And it's a lot Like. So much the bees like will fly over to the wildflowers and then they walk home because I'm not sure in the long run.
Speaker 1:If it's a good idea to like allow them to be to work that little um. So that's going on out there. Um, I think the planting of the trees was like in hindsight, like so unnecessary. There's woods on all sides of the field. Well, three of the trees was in hindsight so unnecessary.
Speaker 1:There's woods on all sides of the field well, three of the four sides we dug 3,000 holes with shovels and planted 3,000 trees. I can't even find those trees because there are 25,000 sycamore trees that have planted themselves that are all doing better than the trees I planted anyway, which was an interesting thing to learn. I was like it was so much work that are all doing better than the trees I planted anyway, which was an interesting thing to learn. I was like no, I mean, it was so much work to hand plant 3,000 trees and you didn't even need to do it. I mean, I guess we're going to diversify the trees that are. Most of the trees that are planted are either cherry or sycamore that planted themselves. But still no idea that if you just didn't do anything, you'd get 15,000 trees growing within a year and they're all maybe like seven or eight feet high now. Wow yeah. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's a weird project. I think the goal is to just create more natural space within, to just create more natural space within. It's on the edge of town Actually, town goes past it now, and so, as Winona is being more developed and sprawling out to, instead of turning a piece of property into more neighborhood, taking it and turning it back into just natural space. And a big part of it was just providing some habitat for squirrels and hawks and bunny rabbits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's been really fun, Very cool it's amazing.
Speaker 2:So what would you say has been your big? I mean, aside from the trees that you didn't need to plant 3,000, like what's been like an aha moment or something during this process.
Speaker 1:Incredibly interesting how effective pesticides and herbicides are, but also just how horrifyingly effective they are, because if you just don't do anything, the amount of plants, the different types of plants, and flowers and wildflowers and grasses that just grow without doing anything it's all in the ground, it's there, it's just being repressed every single season and if you just stop spraying it, all of it comes up and I think that that's been really interesting. It's like, wow, people are really good at killing plants and also man. Maybe we shouldn't be killing all these plants.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I've been really interested in my own perception, challenging my own perceptions is that most people that work in the agricultural industry would walk through that field and call every single thing that's growing a weed and just like lump that all into this idea of like these are all weeds and they're unnecessary and they should be killed.
Speaker 1:And they're, they shouldn't be there. And and I think that we have historically, maybe in the last couple of hundred years, like agreed to that, like passively, yeah. So like, for example, like thistle, everyone hates thistle, thistle's weed. You shouldn't have it. You can kill the thistle. Like farmers don't want it, people don't want it growing near their houses. But it turns out goldfinches love thistle. Every morning, I don't know why, I'm not sure what they're doing, but like, every morning I go out there and all of the thistle that's growing is covered in goldfinches. So it's not a weed to a goldfinch, it's apparently super necessary. I mean, so is milkweed Like milkweed?
Speaker 1:I mean it has the word weed in it, but milkweed is the only thing that monarch butterflies eat and it grows in ditches and people just spray it and kill it and like, if you just let it grow, turns out you have thousands of monarchs that come and lay their. You know, the caterpillars build their cocoons in milkweed.
Speaker 1:They feed milkweed to their like super necessary yeah, and so, seeing all these things that are there and challenging my own perception of like, oh, these are all weeds. If you grow milkweed in your garden, you look stupid. My parents grow milkweed at their house in Winona and I had to get them little signs that said pollinator garden.
Speaker 3:Because people are like why are you growing this? You should kill that, and plant something else.
Speaker 1:But this is the coolest thing that there is, so that's been a really interesting part of it.
Speaker 3:That's so cool. So all the post-apocalyptic movies and shows that show the Empire State Building covered in weeds are getting it right. It'll all just come back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. It's interesting that it's. It's interesting that, like it might, it's not necessary for the production of corn, but it's incredibly important to the production of everything else that's alive. So somewhere like finding a balance between, like, killing all of that stuff yeah and like maybe letting some of it grow, and I think a lot of it is.
Speaker 1:I think people would stop killing milkweed in their you know people that live in the country if they knew that it was the only food source for monarch butterflies One of the coolest animals that exists, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like a butterfly making a 10,000 mile, like round trip, like generationally to like live in Mexico. Yeah, super cool Like people wouldn't if people knew that they're like. Oh, we will maybe not kill the milkweed this year, so knew that they're like oh we will, uh, maybe not kill the milkweed this year, so and then you get butterflies, yeah, which everyone likes yes, yes, absolutely it's been.
Speaker 2:So we not to the scale that you've got to. We are the side lot next to our house. We bought it to kind of naturalize it, and so keegan is like she's three now, and so we created keegan's trail, and so we just I got tired of mowing it, and so we're like, hey, we're gonna let it grow wildflowers and then just cut a little trail for her and that's like her playground.
Speaker 2:But it's been so cool just in the last so we've been doing it for just over two years now and in the last year to see the wildlife that has come into it, yeah, and so I mean, like she's out there and she's, yeah, picks up a snake or spiders and like all these things that are out there. That it's like most people it's probably not great, but leah hates the spider side, but just like so cool to see. Yeah, just like her getting to experience and, yeah, see the monarchs and the the different birds that come in um this. Yeah, she's been really cool to almost have a little like nature preserve, like right next to our house.
Speaker 1:it's so cool, and I think another another you saying that it's remarkable how resilient nature is. We've spent generations trying to destroy it and if you leave it for a year, all of it comes back, which is really inspiring. It's like oh, maybe we haven't ruined everything.
Speaker 2:If we just stopped.
Speaker 1:Just pump the brakes a little bit. You let one summer go and you have flowers and snakes and spiders and all of these really cool things and frogs. Everything moves in. I don't know where they're hanging out right now, but it's cool creating that space. It feels really productive, even though it looks unproductive from the outside, yeah, that's awesome, so cool.
Speaker 3:All right, so we're five minutes in here and you strike me as someone who is just hardwired to be curious. Is that fair? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Where does that come from for you, man? I don't know where. I'm not sure where it's come from because it's gotten me in more trouble than it's probably rewarded me with. But yeah, I just need to know. I need to know like I need to know things. I need to understand why all the time and that's just asking why a lot I don't remember when I wasn't that way.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, so did you drive your parents crazy growing up.
Speaker 1:I'm the middle of five kids, so I got a pass. I learned really early to ride the middle. Just stay under the radar a little bit. Yeah, stay way under the radar Awesome.
Speaker 3:So tell us a little bit about growing up and just, I think, some of those early experiences that led you to some of the traveling and some of the passion for educating those kind of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so growing up, where I did super small town, a town that was like really interestingly well conceived and then existed for a function, it was just Chautauqua. I don't know if people know what Chautauqua is Late 19th century idea out of New York Northeast of building summer camps. Basically it's a summer camp for adults and Winona Lake, indiana, was built as Chautauqua originally, so people would come from all over the country spend the summer, take classes, hear lectures, just like general adult summer camp.
Speaker 1:And then it slowly turned into a more religious-themed town that held a lot of like revivalist kind of that like second grade awakening era of people coming in for the summer to like hear very specifically like protestant religious ideology and um, and then obviously became the home of a very famous evangelist, billy. But by the 1970s, early 80s, all of that went away and Winona was kind of abandoned and that's the Winona Lake that I grew up in. It was this really cool, beautiful space that no one was taking care of at all. There was lots of green space and park space but as kids we had to take care of a lot of that stuff. It was part of our chores to, like you know, mow public space and weed and plant flowers and do all of that. So it was a cool place to grow up, a lot of like freedom. I think growing up in the in like the mid eighties, early nineties was a really cool. It was like that last bit before the internet you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It was still that, like you can go outside, be home when the street lights come on. Yeah yeah, which is super cool and I think that, like having that freedom within the confines of a very small space was. I was used to always going out, always getting to do what I wanted to, always going exploring, but I can never really left this like tiny space. And I grew up in the same house, slept in the same room from zero to 18.
Speaker 1:And then, um, when I went away to school, I met like my first like color friends in college were study abroad students. Okay and um, they invited, I think, my freshman year. A couple of them invited me to come visit them over Christmas, and that was. I had never left the country.
Speaker 1:I was eight, I think I was 18 or 19. I'd never left the country I left for the first time. I went to Ireland and it was incredible. I was like just like one of those things like, oh, this is what I should be doing. Like I should go places Like there are so many places to go Like. Once you go one you're just like how many can I go to Like? Where can I go to Like, where can I go to next, kind of thing. And it never really slowed down from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So what were you in school for?
Speaker 1:My undergrad I studied American history and literature. Okay, so not. I have literature. Okay, so not the. I have a long history of studying things that won't make you any money so it's amazing.
Speaker 2:So I was like imagining so one on a lake very different as you're growing up in it. Um, I'm sure that your explorer's mind you probably know all of the nooks and crannies of the woods and the trails and like around the lake. And then having that open up to the world in your first experience of Ireland. Once that like yeah, the world opened up for you. What was next?
Speaker 1:what was next. So I came back from that first trip, went to England, went to Ireland, came back and then immediately applied to study abroad. And I didn't really know where to study abroad, so I just figured I was like, okay, I'm from central Indiana, what's the furthest place you can go, which is Australia. If you go much further past Australia, you're on your way home so I was like that's where I'm going.
Speaker 1:So I spent a year in Australia. I was supposed to be there for three months and then I just kept staying and then that was pretty. At that point I was like, oh, I think I can do, I think I can actually figure out how to live other places, actually settling in. I rented a place in Australia, which was how easy it really is to get things done, things that seemed like at the time how could I live here, how could I actually move here? But once you're kind of doing it.
Speaker 1:So I got back from that, finished school and I was supposed to be going to law school and so my senior year of college I got back from my junior year abroad and then did my senior year and finished up all my things and took the LSAT and picked a law school and did all of that. And then I didn't tell my parents that at the same time I had applied for the Peace Corps and my parents were super excited about me going to law school. There's a lot of lawyers in my family. I thought it was like one of those things like you know, you meet like a Peace Corps recruiter person and I was like that sounds interesting. I'll like fill out the forms Turns out like it's so much harder than anything else. The paperwork the amount of paperwork Peace Corps requires is absurd. I think it's their first weeding out process. The cheapest way to get rid of half of the applicants is just overwhelm them with really complicated paperwork. So a really funny moment in my life. So I'd already picked her out the law school was going to go to school, and then I got accepted to the Peace Corps.
Speaker 1:I got accepted to the Peace Corps the same day I was playing Risk, the game of world domination, and I don't know. This seems like maybe I should have thought about this more at the time. But I had lost the game of Risk and my little armies had retreated through the African continent and ended up on the island of Madagascar, which I didn't know was an actual place other than it was on the Risk game. Yeah, and the same day or the next day or something.
Speaker 1:So the Peace Corps person calls me and is like you know, we're going to offer you a position. We have two options available for you. You can go right now or in a couple months, and it would be in West Africa and Benin. Or if you want to wait nine months. There's an opening in Madagascar that you could wait for and you could be part of that program. And I was like I feel like that's a sign, even though on you could wait for and it could be part of that program. And I was like I feel like that's a sign, even though, like on the board game, it was where, like, my army is like fizzled out. But like I was like man they're like, do you know anything about Madagascar?
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah totally Just there.
Speaker 3:I know exactly where it is.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I think that was a big shift in my life, so I chose Madagascar. I waited around for a while, I think I went and worked on a ski slope or something, and then went there when I was 23. And that I think was like the watershed moment in my life, of like I don't know if I can go back from here, and I didn't.
Speaker 1:I chose a completely different path. I didn't come back. I didn't go. I chose a completely different path. I didn't come back. I didn't go to law school. Yeah, it took me a couple of years to assuage my parents, particularly my dad. They were not. My dad was not happy about that. It was like one of those weird times in my life where I was. I don't know if he has ever done this, but or if you remember the first time that you did this but I asked my parents to talk.
Speaker 1:I was like, hey guys, we need to talk about something, and I was like I think you should sit down, kind of thing and I was feeling really cool.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm 23 years old now. I just graduated from college. I can have this conversation and I was like so I decided that I'm not going to go to law school, and I just saw my dad was just like angry and I was like yeah, because I joined the peace corps and my dad graduated high school in 1969. Like you know, he was cool back then. He looks at me and he just goes stupid.
Speaker 4:And then walked away and I was like well, that didn't go super well it was one of the cool.
Speaker 1:I like really worked on that sentence too. I was like I decided not to go to law school because I joined the peace corps um so but yeah, that was a big thing. So I think that was like in the shortened version of my life story. Peace corps was um, for a lot of different reasons, but like a definitely a big watershed moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so two things in that. One having your dad as a teacher. I can absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I serve on the school board, so I also know your dad, so I'm like I can see it.
Speaker 3:I can just visualize the moment, so that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I got that from him a couple times in class where you just get the look.
Speaker 4:He's just the shake of the head, walk away. He's like stupid, stupid.
Speaker 2:But so, in all that, what? What was it that drew you to the peace corps?
Speaker 1:I think it was another one of those things of like growing up in a tiny little midwestern town, like once you realize how big the world is how interesting it is and confusing, and like as a person who just like needs to know stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I, when I had signed up for when I had initially applied to Peace Corps, I had chosen sub-Saharan Africa as my, like, preferred space, which is how you like, back in the early 2000s, like Peace Corps worked that way you just like you could pick a region you can be, like I want to be in the South Asia or I want to be in Western Europe or something.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't mean Western Europe, but Central Europe. I had picked Sub-Saharan Africa because it was a place that I knew nothing about and it was a place that I didn't know how to get to. Otherwise, having traveled quite a bit, by that point I was like I don't know how to get to Sub-Saharan Africa in a way that would allow me to experience it, not experience it from like, oh, I went to Kilimanjaro and I hired a guide and we climbed it, which is amazing. I'm sure I've not done that, but I was like I want to know what it's like to live in what is a small rural farming community in sub-Saharan Africa look like, compared to, like the small rural agricultural community that I grew up in. So that was the impetus. There was like trying to get that far away. I grew up with National Geographics.
Speaker 1:That was like our one thing, they were always around and like growing up looking at those maps and like looking at the photos and like learning all of these like weird places, like I wanted to see what that was like really.
Speaker 3:So tell us, when you got there, what, what, what did you find? What, what started to stand out to you?
Speaker 1:I think yeah, kidding, madagascar is a really interesting place. I didn't know how interesting it was when I first got there, but then spent, I think, six years and change now at this point. I didn't know the history, I didn't know the people, I didn't know where they came from. I didn't understand. I mean, the language is incredibly unique, but also not unique. It's unique because of where it's at, but I think it's consistently in the top five countries in the world with the highest rate of extreme poverty. There's 25 million people that live on that island and 78% of them live in extreme poverty, which that stands out. Like no other place I've been in the world does it stand out as much as it stands out in that country. Like poverty, just a level of poverty that is so overwhelming because almost everyone that you meet is existing within it, that is. I mean, that's like when you get there, when you fly into Antananarivo, like it's a massively overcrowded, underperforming, non-functioning capital city that smells like poverty, like you get off the airplane and you're just like, oh whoa, this like what is that? Like old diesel, yeah, but the rural, like.
Speaker 1:So I moved from, I mean, I was in the capital city for a little while in that area for a few months and then I but the rural, so I moved from. I mean, I was in the capital city for a little while in that area for a few months. By the time I got to my permanent Peace Corps location, which was a super small farming community I mean there's just so many things to talk about but a really, really interesting place because, as I said, like everyone that lives there is, everyone that lived in Amparo Faravula for the most part were extremely impoverished but still living their lives and still managing to like get stuff done and like be productive and do what they need to do and have families and kids, and I taught school there but it was interesting to see. I think my biggest takeaway from that like living in that town was like I think my second year there I got I came down with. I came down with can you come down with malaria? I can't. I got malaria.
Speaker 1:So, and you know, I'm 25 years old, I'm living alone. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm living in a town with. You know we don't have electricity, we don't have running water. You know there's probably it's kind of the same size as Winona, it's like 3000 people, I think, that live in a part of Arvula and so I'm living there, I get malaria and I already had this weird relationship with my neighbors. This is a really cool story actually. So my neighbors that lived across the street from me, I move in, I go to my house. I lived in this little former school building. I lived in the like principal's office of a non-used school building that was kind of falling over. It's not there anymore. It doesn't exist. I went back to visit it and it was gone. The only thing that was left was like a bench that I made and a mango tree that I planted. So I get there, I'm at my house, I'm like settling in. It's really weird. It's like you don't really know anything, you don't know where you are, you don't know any of the people like.
Speaker 1:I've met, like a couple of the teachers that teach at the school and, like first night, I'm in my house knock on my door and I was like what, I'm not even supposed to be outside at night, like it's, everyone goes inside when it gets dark kind of place. So someone knocks at my door and there's like this 10 year old kid who looks like real, like scared to be standing at my door. And so I know how to say hello. I've already, I've already learned that. So I say hello and and then he says hello and then comes to my house and sits down like right inside the door, just sits there and I was like all right, no idea what's going on here.
Speaker 1:So he stays for like an hour and then leaves Next day. Same time, knock on the door. Different kid comes in, says hello. I say hello. I'm like you know. This goes on for like a week and I'm like why? I was like I don't understand why this is happening.
Speaker 2:Is it a different kid every time?
Speaker 1:It's like sometimes the same kid, sometimes a different kid kid every time, sometimes the same kid, sometimes a different kid and I'm like these are the kids from across the street Like why are they coming to my house? Like what am I supposed to be doing with these kids?
Speaker 2:And you guys talk or they sit there A little bit. It's like hello.
Speaker 1:And they're just like hello. They're not really used to like having conversations with foreign people and I'm not really used to having conversations with like 10 year old Malagasy kids and I don't even have the. And then one of the days in there, their daughter, who was 15 or 16, she came over and so we're talking a little bit and I'm cooking food. At this time this is one of my favorite things ever. So I'm cooking and she's watching me and she has a few sentences of English and I can say a few more things at this point. It's a weekend, two weeks in, and she's watching me cook. I have like a little camp stove kind of thing and I'm cooking. I'm making rice and some vegetables, and so, as I'm just like cooking, she stands up and she looks at what I'm cooking. She like walks over, she takes the lid off of it, puts the lid back on it and leaves the house and I was like well, whatever, I guess that was as long as she was staying.
Speaker 1:Two minutes later, the entire family is in my house, Like mom, dad, all the kids there's like all of them, and they're talking like really fast and I don't understand what anybody's saying and I'm just like all right, I guess everyone's coming in. It's not a big house, it's like the size of this little space. They're all in there and she walks over and pulls the lid back off my pot and they all look at it and this lady, the mom, just looks at me and he just goes and just takes it and they leave. So I learned like much later that like it is not okay to cook vegetables and rice in the same pot at the same time. Like rice has to be cooked on its own and you can cook other vegetables and combine it later, but you cannot. I was like, well, I'm just saving time here.
Speaker 1:I was like I'll put it all in there, let it steam and I'll eat it. And that family adopted me and I learned like I'm still keeping contact with a couple of them. The idea was I was alone, like by myself, and that's not okay. And they were like we started Sambitra the daughter. She was like we. It was like a punishment at first, like whoever was in the most trouble that day had to go sit in your house for an hour. But it was like so you weren't alone. They're like wow, you needed someone to be around.
Speaker 1:Like you can't just be by yourself all the time and I was like that was such a wonderful like lesson to learn.
Speaker 1:They were like we can't give you anything, but we can give you some company. We can give you like some cooking lessons, like we can invite you over for dinner, which is what they started doing, like forever after that. They're like you clearly cannot do that, like you're going to make, you're going to kill yourself and you're also just like breaking a lot of rules here with, like, your attempt at cooking our food, um, and I think like those are the things that stand out Like. Later, when I got malaria, I think is where I started talking about that same family who literally have nothing. They found me basically barely conscious and took me in for a week.
Speaker 1:I don't remember it. I have very, very few memories of that week. I know that they killed their chickens to make me so I get a little emotional thinking about that. They borrowed money to get medicine. I'm not participating at that point, I am just super sick and for that amount of generosity from people who don't know anything other than poverty and they know that I'm not poor. Yeah, like they get that, you know.
Speaker 1:I was poor in a lot of ways to them, but they knew like, at the end of the day, like I was going to go home.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're this American who's come over. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But like that amount of generosity and that amount of like care without having the financial way to like, show that yeah, it's incredible and that that's what stands out to me the most about about that place, and that that, particularly like that place in time, was how generous people were with everything that they had, even though they really didn't have much. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're there for six years.
Speaker 1:No, that first time was two and a half. Okay, two and a half, yeah. Two and a half years, the first time, and so because yeah, peace Corps, you guys catch me up, I'm not like super familiar. You'd like station in spots?
Speaker 1:and it's of training and then you get a position. So I went as an educator, so I went to teach English. At the same time there was like education was a sector, environmental stuff is a sector and healthcare is a sector. So technically, most people's experience is you go, you do your training and then you get a position and then you stay there for two years and do that job and then at the end of the two years you can extend or you can go home, or you can go home whenever you want to. It's not like you can quit when you want to, but they're obviously trying not to get you to quit, hence all the paperwork.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I stayed for my two, I stayed for my full time and then stayed around a little bit longer. A friend of mine got married there, which was pretty fun, and then I came back to Winona after that, which was kind of a cool, very strange experience to come back to the other side of things and then. So from that then I decided I was really interested in why. Because I was a really bad teacher, like I didn't know enough about anything to do that job. Well, but I had no real understanding of. I knew I was bad at it. I didn't know why I was bad at it and I was really interested to know why I was bad at it. So I applied to some graduate school programs to study basically the same thing I like to get. I just was like I gotta know stuff. So I was like I ended up at IU in a department called Literacy, Language and Culture Studies.
Speaker 1:It was a part of the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies School, but the whole impetus was like I know you can do this job well, it can be done well, and I was like I'm not good at it, so what do I need to learn here so I can be better at it? I had this experience as a Peace Corps teacher, where I had man.
Speaker 1:My first school I taught at. I taught at two different schools. The first school I taught at I gave a test. It was like the first month. It's Northern Madagascar, it was a different town than I ended up in and I've got 80 or a hundred like 10 year olds in this class. They're five kids to a desk. That school the school in Nabila Bay I had sixth grade, so my sixth graders I had 500 sixth graders and that year two kids graduated high school. So they are getting from 500 to 600 kids at middle school and they're graduating too. And I know one of those kids that graduated paid for it. I mean, it's a pretty easy place to bribe stuff.
Speaker 1:But that first month of school I gave a test and these kids are sitting like five to a desk. They're crammed in together and I'm like man, these kids are all going to cheat. Like how can they not cheat? How can they not just like, look off? And so they're doing their test and they're talking and I can't get them to be quiet and they're all talking to each other and they're clearly like I don't understand the language very well at this point, but I know what they're doing, I know they're cheating. I don't know how to say cheat at the time, but I went and learned it and I literally went back to my house, which was like right by the classroom, got my dictionary and I looked up the word for cheat, which is mangala tahaka, and I went to the principal's office and I was like every student and I sound like an absolute moron at this point like me mini kids all bad cheat and I'm like the principal's is like what I'm like, all the students are cheating, they're all cheating.
Speaker 1:And so this the principal like just like what I'm like, all the students are cheating, they're all cheating. And so the principal gets the serviant, which is like the administrator, like the punishment administrator, and they have a conversation and the punishment administrator guy comes over, gets all of my kids, marches them outside into the central dirt foyer. It's also it's in a Muslim community in Northern Madagascar and it wasyear. It's also it's in a Muslim community in northern Madagascar and it was Ramadan. It's a billion degrees. These kids have no water, no food, because most of the kids are practicing by Muslim. So all these 10, 11-year-olds, super thirsty, 90 degrees outside, they have an idiot for a teacher who's just yelling about stuff that they don't understand. The servant walks them all inside into the courtyard area and then makes them do this like weird squat thing with their hands sticking straight out and their knees bent at like a 45 degree angle as punishment, and then walks around like, has them like lined up like a, like a military formation, and walks around with a piece of bamboo and anytime a kid like breaks, stands, stands up too high. He hits him across the back of the legs with this like bamboo switch, like knocks him over and I'm like, wow, I have created this like horrific, like torture situation.
Speaker 1:Because I learned many years later that there's no wrong, there's nothing wrong with like learning something collectively, like me forcing these kids to like memorize information and put it back on paper in the way that I grew up, like learning, like I didn't understand our own educational system and I didn't understand how that educational system is. Then like left in places like Madagascar, like left in the developing world. This like top down wrote like you know, corporal punishment, beat kids If like and like graduate to like, and then that was like what I wanted. I went to grad school and being like okay, I once had 60 kids outside and like the burning sun getting beat with a bamboo switch because I accused their cultural like system of learning, like Malagasy wasn't written down until the 1890s as a written language.
Speaker 1:Like they don't learn by reading books, they learn by like, like having conversations, like talking to each other, like teaching each other how to do things. And I didn't really understand that at the time. I was just like oh, if two students are talking during a test, they're cheating and they should be disqualified. Where their entire like culture was saying, like if you don't understand something, ask somebody. Like ask your older brother or your younger sister, ask somebody to help explain this to you so you can learn something. And I was like depriving them of that opportunity to learn by like forcing my own like idea of what education looks like. So that's what I went to grad school for.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's, amazing.
Speaker 2:So then, the learnings that you had in Madagascar, you come back grad school. What's the next step in your journey?
Speaker 1:The next step in the journey. I finished grad school and I'd come back to Winona Lake and I wasn't super happy and I found myself like kind of needing to do something and like I wasn't. I didn't realize at the time how unhappy I was with what I was doing, but it became apparent later and I'd gone through like a pretty, pretty messy breakup that I'd gone through like a pretty messy breakup that I'd been dating this woman for five or six years, I think at the point and we split up and I didn't really know what to do and I was hanging out at my brother's house Like I was living with my older brother for a little while. And.
Speaker 1:I was just like the depressed, boring guy on the couch who was like sad and just like mopes around all the time. And my older brother, who's like one of my closest friends. One day he was like dude, you want to get a boat and sail to Cuba?
Speaker 1:I was like yeah, of course I do, that sounds like a great plan and I was like where are we going to get a boat? He's like I found this boat in Michigan. I'm like, okay, michigan is really far from Cuba, caleb, and he has a long history, okay, it's a yacht captain and yeah and. But he'd been like living in indiana too. And he's like I didn't wasn't paying attention to him because I was being a jerk, just like only worried about my own like little problems, and so he wanted to do something. He was like I found this boat super cool. It's in michigan. I think we can buy it and then we can fix it and then we'll sail it to cuba.
Speaker 1:And I was like how are we gonna get to cuba? He's like you just go up and then you go to new york and you go through new york and you just go down. And I'm like, dude, it's september and all the time this boat's in the water. It's gonna be october and it's cold and you don't even like cold. And he was like, cool, then we'll go down the river it's like what river?
Speaker 1:it's like the river, you just go down the river. And I was like I don't know if we can do that, but whatever, like, let's give it a shot. So we bought that boat Super cool boat. It was built in South Africa. Guy had sailed it around the world. Somehow it ended up basically abandoned in Muskegon, michigan, bought it, did some bare bones repairs to it, got it in the water, sailed it across the lake.
Speaker 1:Somebody thank God, somebody told us that, dude, if you're going to go down the river, there's a lot of them. Told us that, like, like, dude, if you're gonna go down the river, this is, there's a lot of them. Also, you have to get the mast taken down right bridges. So we sailed it across lake michigan, went to hammond, indiana, hired some like weird marina to take the mast off the boat, which is like. The boat was only 38 feet long, but the mast is like 50, so it like sticks out front and back and we just like built little like sawhorses for it. I guess, yeah, and it turns out you can go down the river, which is hilarious. Uh, you just like.
Speaker 1:We went into the cal sag waterway near chicago and it feels like you shouldn't be in there, but you're technically allowed to be in there because just the barges and like, yeah, people doing work Learned a lot of really good things about staying out of big boats ways. They're not super excited about you being on the river. So it took a little while to like figure out the lingo and figure out how to like get through all the locks. There's like 30 locks that you go in between. But you can't actually just go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't even cost anything, wow Okay, but you can't actually just go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't even cost anything, wow yeah. You would think that like a lock big enough to move, like a city block, will do that for you if you just ask them to, and then you don't have to pay them. I don't understand it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's really fun. That's wild, yeah. So we did that, sailed down eventually. Yeah, we eventually went to Cuba. It took a little while because we broke the boat and got stuck in Key West for like a year and a half like had to get jobs quick detour. Yeah, we had to get a job and like save up enough money to get the boat fixed okay but we did make it to Cuba, which was pretty fun so wait, what's the time frame on going to cuba?
Speaker 3:I mean, what? What year are we talking about?
Speaker 1:I think that was like 2013, 10 years ago could you just pull up to cuba in 2013?
Speaker 1:yes and no like not legally like, not on paper, but you can get into cuba and should are very different, like we just sailed in to Hemingway Marina, which was like rather poetic, I thought, and like it was really scary. We got caught in a storm. It was my first time ever sailing like offshore, where you're far enough away that you can't see anything, and sailing all night. Got caught in this huge storm absolutely terrifying it was like. When I got off the boat I did like the lay down on the ground and like kiss the ground.
Speaker 1:But we got there and the people at the marina, like the customs and immigration people, were like where are you from? We're like we're from America and they're like you're not supposed to be here. And we're like I don't know. But we're here and they're like well, we're going to have to do some inspections on your boat. And I was like okay, and those inspections, which were hysterical, they came on the boat. They took a case of beer which we had strategically placed out in the open along with like a carton of cigarettes.
Speaker 1:They're like oh, we got to confiscate this and we're like, of course you do. And then they inspected all of our food, food which we had caught on the way over, like that morning, like maybe five miles offshore there's really good fishing, like on the what would that be? The north side of Cuba and we had caught this like beautiful blackfin tuna and like filleted. It was all in the refrigerator and it looked like drugs because it was like all wrapped up in aluminum foil and they're like what's that?
Speaker 1:and we're like oh, it's tuna, like it's fresh, you can have it. It's tuna Like it's fresh, you can have it. It's like have some. And they were like no. Then they opened up a cabinet which was full of like low rent dollar store tuna fish cans, like in our actual like pantry, and the guy like sees all of them, there's like 20 cans of tuna fish and he's got this like he has like this like really nice leather briefcase and he just opens it up and just starts getting cans of tuna fish in there. I was like dude, what I was like we have like world-class sashimi grade tuna like that's three hours old and you can have it. And I was like you want, I was like that's not even tuna, it's probably dolphin.
Speaker 2:Like it's not even good tuna it's tuna, it's bad tuna.
Speaker 1:It's 35 cent a can, like dollar general tuna fish. So they took tuna fish and some beer and some cigarettes and 20 bucks and didn't stamp our passports. They stamped a piece of paper and gave the piece of paper to us. Okay, wow, I think we were there for like six weeks or so Just hanging out. We went rock climbing.
Speaker 3:Okay, so no problems once you're inland at that point, no, not really, it's just okay yeah wow, it was weird.
Speaker 1:It was another like interesting thing to learn. I hadn't been growing up in the 80s and 90s. I always cuba to me just looked like communist russia right like bread lines. Everything is dreary and drab and like the idea of like late Cold War, soviet, like lifestyle.
Speaker 1:You know where you think people are and then you get to Cuba and you're like, first of all, everyone else in the world is going to Cuba, like it's just full of like all the other people, like Europeans and Canadians and like all of the all the other white people are there, yeah, and it's also like really pretty, it's beautiful, it's like people are having a good time, like music's incredible, the food's fantastic, like obviously there's probably you know, I'm looking at it through like pretty rose tinted glasses, but I expected it to be like just like impoverished, depressed, dirty, non-functioning. Yeah right.
Speaker 1:Coming from a place in sub-Saharan Africa, I was like I expected it to look like that and it didn't at all and it was actually really cool. I got to experience a lot of. That was my first Caribbean culture. Okay. Yeah it was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to find out.
Speaker 2:There's so many people listening who I don't think can even flip their brain into being able to even put themselves in a situation where, like, hey, we're just going to go buy a boat, yeah, go down. Or like, go on these adventures and just like live life. Because I think so often it's like our culture is very much like hey, you have a plan, this is what you're going to do, you execute on it. And it's like our culture is very much like hey, you have a plan, this is what you're going to do, you execute on it. And it's like you're just constantly moving forward and you just have this very like there's so much of the world to experience and it's like I want to experience as much of that as possible. And it's, yeah, just trying to find that like connection of yeah, we all have limits. Connection of, yeah, we all have limits. And so what were those moments where you kind of like bounced into some of those and like kind of defined of like, oh, this, this may be I've had a very interesting relationship with sailing.
Speaker 1:Um, it's one of the weird things in the world where you can experience both like the best day of your life and, and then an hour later it's the worst experience you've ever had. And there's been a couple of times on boats where I've gotten in a little bit over my head and been out. You know, the interesting thing about sailing on the ocean is like, once you're away from land, like, you're really just like in a little universe by yourself and you are responsible for everything. And there is no. I mean, you might get some help, but probably not. And so then you become responsible for all of these things and it really gets you to a position where you have to question whether or not you're confident enough to be. It's a great like Occam's razor of, like self-confidence, and I have found like and that a couple of times like I've been out, when things go wrong on a sailboat which they always do always you cannot go sailing without a problem. I try to explain this If you're driving your car down the road and you get a flat tire on the highway, you just pull your car over to the side of the road and even if you can fix it by yourself, without calling triple a or calling a tow truck. You're just like oh, I have the tools to fix this flat tire, I have a spare tire, I have the tools, I have the knowledge to do it. You can do that. You can pull over, take a deep breath, get outside, assess the situation like, and fix it and then get it all put back together and then get back on there and a sailboat. You have to do all of that while moving and that is like on that first trip, the first time I got into a weird sailing situation where I was like I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't think that we should be doing this. I think we need to make a serious plan to fix this problem.
Speaker 1:We had caught, so we're sailing down. I think we were on the Tennessee river that day. To get through the country, you can go all the way down the Mississippi or you can take the Tom Bigby waterway, which is like a little bit smaller. The barges aren't quite as big, but these barges are massive and they can't see you. If they do see you, they don't care. Right, like your job is to get out of their way. Yeah, so we're driving, we're so we're motoring down the middle of this river and there are like huge barges like coming up the river and they're annoyed with you anyway, like they're working and you you have to call yourself southbound pleasure craft to their like northbound working boat, like just like you call them on the radio, and you're like, yeah, I'm an idiot, I'm just out here for fun and I know I'm in your way, like that's how you start every conversation with a barge.
Speaker 1:And so they're coming up the river and we're going down the river and all of a sudden, like we have no more power, like our boat is no longer, is no longer, like the engine's running but the boat's not doing anything. And so my brother's asleep. I wake him up. I'm like dude, something's wrong with the boat. I was like I don't know what's happening right now, but like I can't drive the boat anymore, like we're just adrift in this river.
Speaker 1:And so he's annoyed with me because he always thinks things are my fault. And he comes up onto, like into the cockpit and he like does a few things and he was like dude. I think that he's like we must have hit something in the water, like caught a rope that's wrapped around the prop, he's like because the prop's not moving, he's like he like opens up the engine compartment, looks down in there and he's like it's not moving, like the drive shaft is no longer moving. And he's like I was like okay. He was like this is what we're gonna do. I was like. I was like what are we gonna do now?
Speaker 4:and and I was like what are we supposed to do?
Speaker 1:I was like we're adrift in the river by these massive things that could squish us. And so he then decides he's like, okay, here's what we're doing. He goes down and gets a boat hook and he duct tapes a Bowie knife to the boat hook and jumps into the river. He's like keep the boat in the middle of the river. I'm like, how am I going to keep the boat?
Speaker 2:in the middle of the river, I can't drive the boat. I was like, yeah, we'll be exactly where we are, that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1:We're towing the dinghy. He jumps into the dinghy and then he's underneath the boat sawing in the water. I think it's probably November at that time was really cold, like trying to saw this rope. I'm on the radio just like begging and pleading. I'm just like hey, I was like big boats, please. I was like we have no power. We're stuck here and like in my mind I'm like what are we doing here? I was like I don't think we're going to make it. Like I was like we're going to get smashed by a boat or we're going ground. There's all of these like terrible.
Speaker 1:Like I think over the years I've just like found myself in those situations on boats like five or six different times, sometimes in the like just trying to fix those things and not knowing whether or not. Like you can't predict the problem, so you can't like prepare for the solution. And then you get stuck in these spaces where, like you get through them but like in the moment you're like, wow, I should have prepared better for this or we should have like fixed this problem. We should not be here. Like how did we actually get here? And I hate those moments, but I'm kind of addicted to it like I, like I quit. Every time I get off a sailboat I'm like I'm never going sailing again and then like three months later I was yeah.
Speaker 1:A couple months later my brother would be like, hey, you want to help move a sailboat? And I'm like, yeah, even though I know I'm not going to sleep.
Speaker 2:I'd be super stressed out like how much of that is. It's the. It's almost like the addiction to self discovery because you find out so much about yourself. Absolutely, that's the best way to put that.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to my ramblings. Yeah, you find out a lot. Yeah, and those situations out. So much about yourself. Absolutely, that's the best way to put that. Thank you for listening to my ramblings. Yeah, you find out a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and those, those situations are cool. I prefer doing them like in slightly more predictable environments like third world countries. It's way more predictable than like a sailboat. There's nothing more unpredictable than the ocean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like so many, yeah. Than the ocean? Yeah, I feel like so many, yeah. I just feel like, as humans, we spend so much of our life seeking comfort and trying to avoid that feeling of the, the unknown, or it's like I don't want to be in this position where I'm in, like in over my head, and it feels like you're constantly almost like seeking those opportunities out yeah, I, I think.
Speaker 1:so after that sailing trip, something, I got a job for this really cool company based in Boulder, colorado, who was a study abroad company Gap Year they do like Gap Year programming and study abroad.
Speaker 1:Super small, like little boutique company called when there Be Dragons, and they were at the time I didn't even know they existed, I didn't even know this was. I grew up in the Midwest, I didn't even know. People did gap years, so they were trying to start a program in Madagascar and somebody that worked there I had met previously, like 10 years prior and they worked there and they're like I know a guy that like lives in Madagascar and also, like you know, kind of has a background in this kind of stuff in education. So they contacted me and asked if I'd help design a program for them in Madagascar. And that took up probably five years of my life, six years.
Speaker 1:I went for three months against my will. To be honest, the thought of like I designed their program, gave them some contacts, gave them some places. I was like you know, you could do like this, this, this and this, and here's people that you could do this with and this is a cool place. It's not a cool place. And then they offered me the position to help run the program and the thought of like taking 12 rich kids to like experience Africa felt bad to me.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:I just like I don't know if they're trying to do this in a way that like makes sense or is ethical, or like will like be beneficial to themselves or anyone that they're going to meet. Yeah, um, but they also offered me an open-ended plane ticket. I was like I don't really want to do the job, but I guess I'll do it, um, because I can go early and I can stay as long as I want. And I was like, oh, I'll get through this. Like six weeks. It was just a six week program, it was super short. I was like I get through the six weeks and, um, then I can hang out and I can go visit my friends and I can like I hadn't been in Madagascar in probably five years at that point. So I went for six weeks, I stayed for five years.
Speaker 1:I stayed with the company for five years and one of the things that they do is they have built this business and pride themselves on taking people into uncomfortable situations. They are super upfront like this is not going to be a comfortable trip. We are going to go out of our way to like make you emotionally, mentally and physically uncomfortable. And they were incredible. I mean they're an incredible company but they are incredible in the way they taught me how to facilitate those experiences. When I was in Peace Corps, my little brother came to visit me. He was 15 years old and I had no ability to facilitate his experience and I think it traumatized him for a significant amount of time, like years. We still talk about his trip there and he would see these horribly, these really difficult things. Like saw a guy that was a guy that had like drowned in a puddle of water behind like this like kind of seedy little nightclub that I took my little brother to when he was 15, which was already like an inappropriate like operation. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And this guy like left and people drink a lot of moonshine there like just like homemade, like terrible, like so bad, and he'd like passed out and fall into a puddle and he was bleeding and he used any more, he drowned and my little brother and I was like so Whatever. That happens.
Speaker 1:I didn't know how to discuss any of that and I never went back and talked to him about it, I just let it go. I was like, yeah, whatever People die all the time, man, so fast forward to 10 years later and I have all of this training, I've done all these things and I've like been taught like how to, how to facilitate somebody experiencing that and because I think like pursuing uncomfortable situations for the like, if you're just like out there trying to get uncomfortable like I always think like bear the bear grills, like lifestyle, just like I'm gonna eat that snake, why?
Speaker 1:You should have just brought a snack, but being able to get in those situations and learn something from that, and then also facilitating somebody else's learning, growth experience through confronting something that's uncomfortable, which I think that we don't do very much. There's this idea that I've worked on and I used to discuss this a lot when I was working with students, for most of those trips are like three months long, 12 students, three instructors and at the end of a three-month trip or the end of any trip, I try to like you go back and you look at the trip and you're like, okay, what was the lowest point of my trip, what was the highest point of my trip and what are the points that are in between? Like, what are these? What were the lows, what were the highs? And you go back through and you think through like, okay, and what was the worst day? What was the best day?
Speaker 1:And you start going through that and you start like seeing like you've got all of these like peaks and valleys, and then everyone else that's experiencing that with you has similar, but sometimes it's like contrasting peaks and valleys, and you start graphing all of this out and at the end of that, when you connect all of those dots. They look exactly, almost exactly like a really healthy heartbeat, because a healthy heartbeat is not this level of comfort like this, like flat line, just like comfort. Like I don't want to be too hot, I don't want to be too cold. I have my like thermostat set at 71. And even though it's going to range from 105 degrees to negative 20 degrees in the 365 days this year, my house will never deviate from this one degree.
Speaker 1:Like when you look at an experience that's uncomfortable and challenging and like confusing and often like just awful, and you look back at that and realize this is healthy. Like I need to experience these valleys so I can experience these peaks. Yes, this is healthy. Like I need to experience these valleys so I can experience these peaks. And as soon as, like you start to and this is what happens when I come home I'm like so excited to just be at 71 degrees, but after a few weeks I start to feel like my life is flatlining. I mean, that is like when you look at a non-healthy heart rate it's just a flat line that doesn't move and that means death. And I think that understanding how to be uncomfortable and how to like go back and look at that and like appreciate it is super necessary.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, that's awesome. So, and we both I mean, we talk about this all the time we appreciate travel and love to travel. Don't travel to the degree that that you have, but just valuing what it means to get out of the normal every day to experience things, different cultures, um, what would you say to our listeners who are leaning in and and just kind of I have this itch to do something? What would you say to them? But maybe they're not comfortable in terms of, yeah, I'm going to buy a boat in Michigan and go down the river.
Speaker 1:Don't buy a boat. Yeah, I think that in my experience of everywhere that I've ever been, I have experienced kindness, joy, like understanding, empathy, compassion 99 out of 100 experiences. Every 100 experiences I've had in my life, 99 of them have been positive. Everywhere that you go, everywhere that I've been, 100 experiences I've had in my life, 99 of them have been positive. Everywhere that you go, everywhere that I've been, everywhere that I've traveled, people are scared to travel. It's been my whole life. People are like you. Better be careful. Why?
Speaker 3:Be careful of what.
Speaker 1:There are bad people out there. There are bad people everywhere and most people when they don't know you don't like I have, like I don't assume that like everyone I meet on the street is like a bad person and I don't think they're experiencing that about me, like they might think that after like a week or two. But, as you think, like going out into the world, going out with a sense of compassion and understanding, and I always tell, I always tell if you're going to go anywhere, if you don't speak any other language than English and you're going to go to, let's say, go to Mexico, before you land you should know how to say. If you can say nothing in Spanish, you should say hello, please, thank you and I'm sorry. If you can say please, thank you and I'm sorry in any language in the world, you will have a tremendous experience.
Speaker 1:That's like a mindset, the mindset of a traveler, of a guest. I'm not from here, clearly, I'm so happy to be here and I'm so sorry for whatever I just did that made the situation. If you can just say I'm sorry to people, I think that if you go out into the world like that, people want to get to know you the people. I mean, for every time I've thought like I felt unsafe, 10 people have invited me into their homes for like a cup of tea, you know, and I think that is not unique to like my experience. I think that is pretty common for anyone that, like just you know, pushes off Just go for you know land somewhere and go for a walk.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, it's considerably less scary than we're taught to think.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, and there's definitely like places that you shouldn't go, depending on the time, and like depending on like, whatever. But like everyone should go to Nepal. That's my opinion. Okay. If anybody wants to. They're thinking about traveling just somewhere that they don't know, and they want to experience something cool. There's no better place in the world than Nepal.
Speaker 3:Why is that?
Speaker 1:It's the food's great. People are super, super, super nice. The country itself it's enough like India that you feel like you're experiencing a little bit of that. But India is a little crazy. India can overwhelm you. It's like quiet, calm India. So I mean, obviously there's a lot of differences and it's not the same place, but they share a geographic region and Nepal also has. It's very small. The southern border of Nepal is like the end of the Gangetic Plains sea level. It's a jungle. There's giant snakes and rhinoceroses and elephants that live there and if you go a hundred miles north you're at the top of Mount Everest. So they have like this incredible breadth of offerings Like you can whitewater raft and you can go on a safari, you can see rhino, like just walking around, or you can go mountaineering, you can go up in the mountains and it's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1:This, the Kathmandu Valley, has been permanently inhabited for the last 3000 years, like consistently inhabited so the culture and the history and the people and like just the clothing and the colors and all of it's just incredible and it's super quiet. English will get you pretty far. Yeah. Like it's. I mean, people aren't speaking fluent English, they're on like most people aren't, but like you can get yourself, you know, understood yeah. So you don't really have to learn. You know you have to like contribute, like spend a year there trying to understand how to talk to people, so it's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, paul's going on the list. Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 1:It's so good. It really is it's. It's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, micah, what's, what's next? What's on your radar? I?
Speaker 1:don't really know. It's kind of weird, of weird. I I didn't plan on being here. I 've never really planned on being here, but I've kind of been here at least half the year for the last couple years. Um, I don't know what's next. I'm open to opportunities. I'm kind of waiting for something to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I've always wanted to like, I've always like tried to maintain like this availability, like when something comes up and like so many cool things have come up in my life, like so many opportunities, that you have to be available for that opportunity, and so alright.
Speaker 3:So last question I have is we're wrapping this thing up, so you made a huge turn. You know your dad looked at you and was like stupid, but obviously you're still made a huge turn. Your dad looked at you and was like stupid, but obviously you're still coming home connected to him. So for listeners who are thinking that I have this certain set of expectations, things I have to live up to talk about just making the tough decisions you made, but then how? Maybe family community still came around you and rallied in a certain way.
Speaker 1:I think my dad started teaching at Warsaw Community High School in 1977, and he still works there. He's dedicated his entire life to education and I think that he has slowly learned to appreciate that. That's really important to me as well, and yeah, so we get along pretty well these days. Yeah, and I think that it was super cool like that I got to take my dad to the Dominican Republic this year. It was the first time in his entire life he's left the country. He just really likes the Grand Canyon, wow, like he loves it yeah.
Speaker 1:Every time, like my mom, travels over the world. They've been married for 50 years. My mom's always traveling.
Speaker 1:My mom got kidnapped in South America. Kind of my fault, my dad has never left the country until this year and I think that was such an incredible experience. I was terrified. I was like my dad has never left the country. I'm going to take him to the Dominican Republic. I've never even been to the Dominican Republic. My brother had sailed there and we were going. I was going originally to go down and help him move the boat, so I took my dad and he had like the absolute best time.
Speaker 1:It took him 20 years of me traveling the world to like agree to go on a trip and he went for 10 days and I thought he was going to hate every second of it and he loved it and he was obsessed with like things I never would have predicted. Sure, yeah, but it was like this really cool moment in my life where, like I think he was so impressed with my brother and I like navigating this space, that was like always to him this like foreign, far scary, like don't want to do it, I don't speak the language, I don't understand the place, I'm just not going. And then for him to see that and be like okay, like this is really cool, like this is super interesting. I really happy to be here. He had a million conversations with people that didn't understand a word of what he said, but he loved having those conversations. He was just like super positive about talking to like random people selling chicken on the street, like dudes doing like non OSHA approved construction projects.
Speaker 3:Right, right, yeah. Really excited about that. It was yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I think that it was really cool. It took it took 20 years, I think, of him to think what I was doing didn't make a lot of sense to seeing, like 20 years later, like going on that trip together to see, like you know, 20 years later, going on that trip together to see he'll go back. He's definitely going back.
Speaker 1:My older brother lives there right now and I think that was a really cool. I didn't do what I was supposed to do as far as my parents were concerned when I was 21 years old, but I've spent most of my life at this point doing kind of a thing that I thought that I watched my, my dad, do my whole life. Yes, and to bring all those things together, and it was super cool of him to agree to go on the trip and I felt like it was really fortunate to get to like show him what all of what all of that looked like. Yeah, and I've and, and I think, for years and years and years, spending my life taking other people to those places. I think that, like his willingness to go on a trip with me, he realized that, like I had done that for hundreds and hundreds of people and shown them like expanded their worldview and like their understanding and their ability to like be compassionate and have empathy, which we need a lot more of in the world right now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I hope that answered your question.
Speaker 3:It did In some way no, in a really, really beautiful way, because, again, knowing your dad and sitting here and listening to you, like I see and hear the similarities right, the heartbeat again, different set of circumstances, different paths, but there's rarely a meeting that your dad doesn't leave with some sort of like perspective of here's what he's learning and here's what, and he pours that out to other people, which is what I hear you doing. So to me, I think that's really beautiful, really full circle moment that you all got to do that together.
Speaker 3:So that's incredible, that's awesome, well, cool, well, this has been such a blast, Micah. Thank you for being so generous with your time and your stories To our listeners. Thank you for joining us and listening in to another episode of Stories that Move. We will see you next time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories, that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios.
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