Today Doug opens the container in search of awe and finds it with Stacy Bare.
Moments of awe transcend mere experiences. They serve as pivotal junctures in our personal narratives, fostering healing and a deeper understanding of our existence. And while the outdoors is a source for awe inspiring moments, awe can also be found everywhere.
Today's guest is Stacy Bare, who has dedicated his life to harnessing the therapeutic power of awe, particularly for veterans and individuals grappling with trauma. Our conversation underscores the importance of cultivating awe in our daily lives and encourages listeners to seek out and embrace these moments, no matter how small.
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Episode Transcript
Rock Fight!
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:58.650
This is Colin True, and if you think outdoor media might be broken, come join us over at the Rock Fight, where we speak our truth, slay sacred cows, and sometimes agree to disagree, because this is an outdoor podcast that aims for the head. Every Monday, join me, producer Dave, and our industry insider and consigliere Owen Comerford to dig into the weeds of the business of going outside.
On Wednesday we get a little more adventurous as accomplished outdoor journalist Justin Houseman and I talk about the latest headlines to come out of the outdoor adventure community, and Fridays are reserved for hot takes and special guests. There will also be parting shots and views expressed that you probably won't get from a corporate press release or a standard outdoor podcast.
So join us on the Rock Fight, where we break down the outdoor industry by saying the quiet part out loud. It's an open discussion and we'd love your feedback.
So don't forget to bring your rocks, look for and follow the Rock Fight on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast, apparently.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:01:00.180 - 00:06:47.706
Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. I'm a journalist, writer and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I was a starter on the Bozeman City Sea League Championship basketball team. Everyone has experienced awe in the outdoors.
This isn't a feeling that's limited to extreme skiers or mountain bikers or even people who live near trailheads. It's the great equalizer, really.
Awe is simply the experience you get when you're able to shut away everything we think is reality in our overwhelming, tech heavy world. It's when the moment takes over. It could be a sunset on the beach, it could be a moment above a steep cool bar or the first turn down.
It could be time with someone you love in the tall grass. It's a basic human need. It's also the way the outdoors heals us.
You could say it's something spiritual, and I think for many poets and philosophers it has been.
I think a lot about the poet Percy Shelley when he looked on Mont Blanc and wrote the everlasting universe of things flows through the mind and rolls its rapid waves, now dark, now glittering, now reflecting gloom, now lending splendor.
Where from secret springs the source of human thought, its tribute brings awe has been such a basic experience for me, and it's really driven and shaped the way I've lived and built my life. Recently I've been thinking back on an early moment of awe with my parents when I was a kid.
I lost my dad last year and it Was my mom's birthday recently. So I keep going back to this glorious moment that's deep within me.
I grew up on the seashore in New Jersey, near a wonderful place called Sandy Hook, which is a spit of dunes and holly forest with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the bay on the other. This moment is one of those that's so clouded in memory and nostalgia.
But as I remember, we were on the beach on the bayside, finding the shells of horseshoe crabs and other flotsam in the shallow salt water. And tucked in along the plants was an old rowboat with a hole in the bottom that must have beached after a storm.
We went over to it and plugged the hole and got the boat to work, and my mom and I got in it. I must have been five or six years old. We took it out on the water.
That moment has stuck with me so powerfully all these years later and helped me get through some tough times. Now it was a moment of adventure and discovery and most of all, of awe. And it happened just after my mom had been quite ill.
She lost a kidney and was hospitalized for a while. So this day, so far in the past, brought a lot of joy and healing to me at that time, as a kid.
Soon after that, my brother was born and my parents were able to kind of return to the life they had wanted to build. And that moment is still powerful now when life has been challenging. I have had so many of these moments in the outdoors.
I'll go again to another poet, William Wordsworth, who talks about emotion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things. It's important to have that feeling. I don't think awe has to be limited by religion or even science. It's a personal feeling we get in the outdoors.
It can coexist with everything, with any belief. It's a moment of feeling alive, knowing you are alive. And when you do feel it, there's hope for you, for the world, for being.
I think in these times, awe is even more important than ever. We are constantly assaulted by technology and news. The prevailing culture wants to fill us with anger and need and angst.
But in these moments, we can simply remember who we are. And today's guest is one of the world's biggest proponents of the concept of awe and how important it is to all of us.
In fact, he sort of coined the term as I'm using it. Stacey Bear received a bronze star for meritorious service in Iraq and began climbing to deal with addiction, depression, and PTSD.
He co founded Veterans Expeditions in 2010 with the intent of getting veterans outdoors and being led by other veterans. He worked as the director of Sierra Club Outdoors, encouraging all Americans to get outside with an emphasis on military, veterans and youth.
He launched the Great Outdoors Lab in partnership with the University of California at Berkeley to study the impact of the outdoors on health and during the pandemic. He even took a job in the Specialized Bike Warehouse in Utah.
He has produced three films, Crack Climbs and Landmines, Alex Honnold Climbs Angola, Adventure Not War and the Afghan Champ, documenting his return to war zones as an adventure traveler instead of a soldier.
He is currently the executive director of Friends of Grand Rapids Parks, working to make Grand Rapids the healthiest, most park equitable city in America. So let's open the container with Stacy Baer.
Okay, here we are with Stacy Baer. And buckle in because this is going to be a good one. I've been on numerous adventures with Stacy.
I know how he operates and I know how much passion he has for the outdoors and helping people. Stacy's currently the executive director of Friends of Grand Rapids Parks.
And I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today, Stacy, is just how awesome the Midwest is, which is something that doesn't get heard enough in outdoor circles. So welcome to Open Container.
Stacy Bare
00:06:47.818 - 00:07:13.030
It is great to see you, Doug. This reminds me a little bit, Open Container, when you told me about this podcast, you know, it was the 90s. It was a different time.
But a friend of mine in college used to spend a lot of time with an open container listening to Wilco and Sunbolt right after Uncle Tupelo broke up driving those back roads. And then in the hills of Mississippi. And, you know, pretty much everything I learned was from, from a drive by Truckers or Southern rock album.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:07:13.690 - 00:07:18.242
I absolutely love that. And I think we need to get Jeff Tweedy on the show. I think that's something.
Stacy Bare
00:07:18.266 - 00:07:39.080
We're Jay Farrar, dude. Jay Farrar. Get Jay Farrar on the show. Sure. There's, there's such a split.
I still have two friends that haven't talked to each other because in Mississippi, at Ole Miss, it was the J. You know, are you a jfra? Are you Tweety? Are you Sunbolt? Are you Wilco? And it's still a conversation that's happening.
And Lucy wants to be on the podcast as well.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:07:39.460 - 00:07:55.340
Lucy is Stacey's dog who's crawling on his lap right now. But anyway, Stacy, why don't, you know. So we're here if people don't know you.
Why don't you tell us a bit about the journey that brought you to Grand Rapids, Michigan where you are now and are currently working and why you are so extremely happy to be there.
Stacy Bare
00:07:55.800 - 00:14:32.190
Yeah, I am thrilled to be in West Michigan. I love being in the Great Lakes. You know, Michigan is a Midwest state.
The Midwest is a ridiculous amalgamation all the way from the, from the Great Plains states. I was actually born or grew up in South Dakota. I was born in Nebraska, grew up in South Dakota all the way to like Pennsylvania.
And then sometimes you hear people say Louisville is in the Great Lakes because it's close enough to Iowa, but or the Midwest. So excuse me, close to Ohio there. I don't even know my geography evidently. I moved out here three years ago from Salt Lake.
I've been out there for 10 years. Before that we had been in Boulder, Colorado and before that I went to graduate school in Philly.
And before that I was in the United States army for about seven years and also spent some time kicking landmines out of the ground. I had four years in combat zones or immediate post combat zones, so Bosnia, 304, Angola, 0405, Abkhazia, most of OH5.
And then I got recalled to the United States army and was in Baghdad 2006 and 2007. So like for the listeners who maybe remember the surge, I was there right before the surge and then and then right after the surge.
And when I came home and ended up in graduate school, my first job after the economy collapsed in 2009, lucky enough to be in Boulder, Colorado. And that's where a friend got me out climbing as an alternative to suicide.
And that sent me on this whole trajectory way different than what I thought I was going to be doing when I was in graduate school and when I left the Army. But it's been amazing. I got to meet people like you. I've got Chris Kazar who actually introduced us and all these just amazing people.
And I've gotten to travel all over the world. I've been able to represent some incredible brands, make some fun movies. I did a climbing movie with Alex Honnold that's on Vice.
Went back and skied in Iraq, I've skied in Afghanistan. Ben Sturgielski and Katie Sternholm have taken that film from what I thought was going to be a five to seven minute film.
It's now this 90 minute beautiful film. It just won at Banff at one People's Choice at one Grand Prix at Banff. So but in that process right. So around 2018, I went out on my own.
I hung up my own shingle. I was doing consulting work for other outdoor non profits. I was doing big corporate outdoors, corporate speaking.
And I thought it was made, man and going up into 2020. So coming home, I went to Afghanistan in 2019. The Afghan skiers said, hey, what can you do to help us and not just raise awareness, right?
There's too many times we just raise awareness about things and they're like, what can you do to help? And so we said, well, what if we started a ski competition in Central Asia?
And so a couple Dutch guys and I and some Kyrgy skiers, we set about to our. Our. Our initial goal was to rival the Freeride World Tour, but in Central Asia because the mountains are incredible.
So we're like, we're like, we're gonna, we're gonna beat the Free Ride World Tour by going places that they don't go.
And these Kyrgyz skiers and a couple Dutch guys and I, we ended up launching the Kyrgyz Freeride Competition, which this year is actually Free Ride World Tour qualifier, which is really fantastic. So we did that in 2020 and we came home and we all talked about having the Kyrgyz hell cough. Like, I don't know if it was Covid.
Certainly felt like, like looking back on it, I'm like, oh, maybe, maybe, like, sorry, America, maybe it was us. But I mean, it was already starting to, starting to appear here. And the pandemic shut me down and it shut my business down.
So I went from like high flying corporate speaking to throwing boxes at FedEx. I drove a forklift for a bike company, learned a ton about the bike industry, learned a ton about so called unskilled labor.
I think anybody who's had like a professional career, get to your 40s, think you're doing really great, go get a job.
And unskilled, quote, unquote, unskilled labor, and you really figure out who you are and who your friends are and what matters to you and what matters to your friends. But it was a total identity shift. I ended up going back to work for the Department of defense with the U.S.
air Force, which was a great experience, but my wife and I are like, what are we doing?
Like, and I felt like I had run my course in Utah and we finally started speaking and both of us had felt for a long time that the Wasatch was telling us. The Wasatch Range in Utah had been telling us to leave. It's where we got married. It's where our daughter was born.
It's where we bought our first house. It was such a warm place for us. It was such a home. It was such a place that we needed where so much of my healing post Iraq really happened.
We had then felt the wasatch telling us to go, but we didn't want to share that with one another because we were both so into the outdoors, and we both believed that, you know, we believe the hype.
Like, if you're in the outdoors, if you want to be great in the outdoors, you got to be out west or Pacific Northwest or, you know, there's, like, places where it's acceptable to be in the outdoors and other places where news media maybe tells us or outdoor media tells us, like, you can't have the adventure there. But we, because both of us have roots in the Midwest, and Mackenzie, who's my wife, has roots in Michigan. We had been back to Michigan a lot.
We'd been to Minnesota a lot. We really love the Northwoods.
We have a picture of two loons that's been in our bedroom for years and trip there in 2019, where our daughter got into. She was 3, and she got into Lake Superior the first time, and she didn't want to get out. You know, she was turning blue.
She was freezing, and we were trying to take her out of the lake, and she just kept crying. She just didn't want to leave the water. And. And still you. You put Wilder in water, and she just grows, you know, she's. She's 100x, she's 10x.
She's so much bigger when she's in the water.
And so in 2022, you know, we're fighting traffic in the Wasatch in different directions, and we said where we need to go, and we just felt really called to the Great Lakes. And we wanted to be closer to loons. We wanted to be closer to water, to the freshwater dune system.
And we reached out to some friends and they told us we should go to Grand Rapids. And we came out and checked it out, and a job opened up and we took a huge leap.
Man, your mid-40s is a weird time to leave regions, switch careers, but it's. It's been a really incredible, incredible space for us to land. And Michigan has embraced us and we've embraced the Great Lakes. And I.
I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. And I hope everybody comes and visits.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:32.930 - 00:14:50.430
I love that.
And before I go anything on, I think people should know, too, when you're doing the skiing and got into outdoor Activities, you weren't just doing those for your own edification. You're also saving lives. You were working with people with PTSD and veterans and other people who really needed the outdoors to stay alive.
Stacy Bare
00:14:50.850 - 00:17:48.330
That's a big part of it. It's been really interesting, too, coming here, because nobody knows what I did before. Right. And they don't really care, in a way.
I mean, they do, but, like, I. I made so much of my mark in the outdoor industry before this as a veteran and really pushing around the.
The healing power of the outdoors, which I still am working on, but now I'm working much more on building the infrastructure so that people can get there. And, yeah, I mean, you know, the work we did with Dr.
Keltner at the Greater Good Science center and awe research, you know, that's the foundational research you see in. In outdoor.
Like, when people talk about the health benefit of the outdoors, they're referencing the research we did together and the benefit of time outside and how it impacts trauma and how it, you know, reduces symptomology and how it reverses inflammation of cells. Like, we did all that research, and that's. That's why I did it.
Like, going back to these places, going back to Iraq and Angola, it was so that I could clear the air, so that I could change the narratives, that I could share other narratives of these places that, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan aren't full of horrible, angry people. Yes, there are horrible, angry people there, and yes, they are sometimes in charge.
But even those horrible, angry people, just like here in America, there's beauty inside them. Somewhere there's something that's causing that. Like, there's a fear, an anger, a loss.
And I've been able to see both the worst sides and from, you know, a perspective of combat and cleaning up after combat. And I've been able to see the best sides through skiing and climbing. And that's my goal, is to get more people on that.
You know, we access our better angels outside. And that's been a lot of the journey. And I see that journey here, too.
I think one of the other things about this work is, you know, the big adventure, the big expeditions. Amazing stuff. I wasn't home, man. From 2016, when my daughter was born, to 2020, I just wasn't home. And my.
My daughter didn't always recognize me, you know, sometimes didn't want to. Want to be held by me because I wasn't home enough. So in my own life, I had become like the uncle to my daughter, as opposed to her dad.
And that was one. You know, the pandemic was horrible, and it wasn't great in a lot of ways, but for us, there was this opportunity of a really hard reset.
And that got my head straight. And it made me realize that time outside can look a lot of different ways. And you can still. You can have an epic adventure in 45 minutes.
You don't have to be out for 45 days or four to five days. And that's been a real gift here.
You know, where we live, you know, there's about, I don't know, 45, 50 miles of mountain bike trails within 20 minutes of my house. So it feels pretty damn world class to me.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:17:49.030 - 00:17:54.734
Yeah, well, let's get into that. I mean, so what is your. Your current role and what you're doing there in Grand Rapids right now?
Stacy Bare
00:17:54.902 - 00:21:21.386
Yeah, so Friends of Grand Rapids Parks Michigan started the recession a little bit before Everybody else in 2008. And when the property tax base fell away from Grand Rapids, they couldn't fund maintenance of their parks.
So a bunch of citizens stood up Friends of Grand Rapids Parks to do park maintenance. And that's changed and evolved as things have come back. And, you know, Michigan is back in a big way this last year.
I'm about two and a half hours west of Detroit. So if you know anybody from Michigan, you know, they like to show you the hand, the thumb, the mitten.
So we are on the other side of your thumb, about 45 minutes from Lake Michigan. And West Michigan's booming, and it's. It's a really exciting place to be right now. And a lot of our work is parks, trees and trails.
So we support the city with natural resource management, invasive species control.
We're doing a lot of work to enforce the 1821 Treaty of Chicago, which is the treaty that ceded this land from the Anishinaabe and the indigenous communities that are here, the Ojibway, the Potawatomi, the Odawa, to the United States government.
And by enforcing treaties, what we're doing is natural resource management that allows for improved foraging and hunting, which goes all the way back to that treaty. And so that's one of the big things we're doing with natural resource management. The second thing is we do tree planting.
So there's a lot of our streets and our neighborhoods that were not planted when trees died. Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer. Those trees didn't get replanted. They're in historically red line neighborhoods.
So we received a $5 million grant from the US Forest Service through The Bipartisan Inflation Reduction act. So we're one year into five years there. Our goal is that 90% of people will be within 10 blocks or less of a dirt trail, a natural service trail.
So we've got about, I don't know, I want to say about 7. 7 to 10 miles of natural surface trail already. And we're working on a pretty ambitious plan to bring that to 22 miles of national service trails.
So multipurpose hike and bike, adaptive, 42 inches across, so that, you know, an adaptive mountain bike can get through there, a stroller can get through there.
So it's a lot of fun building that outdoor infrastructure so that this city that you can have a pretty rad adventure after work over your lunch hour, if you got 45 minutes on a Saturday morning, that you can get out and be in nature. But one of the really beautiful things about where I get to live is the ravine system.
There's so many ravines throughout here, left over from rivers, streams, glaciers, and so you'll drive by an area and you'll just think it's a thick forest, but you get in there and you can really slam some elevation, have a lot of fun flying down ravine ledges and just poking around through the ravines. And there's some strands of old growth timber even in town that never got cut ever. So it's like 400, 400 plus years old toolbox just down the street.
And, you know, they're not as big as redwoods, but they are deserving of awe. And when you enter into those spaces with those trees, you can feel the sacredness and you can feel the wisdom of those trees, and it's really cool.
It's really cool. Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:21.418 - 00:21:44.506
I mean, I think that's something really important that we ignore a lot, right? We focus on the big peak, we focus on the big national park.
When really, I think the future of conservation and the future of people getting outdoors is more focusing on what's out your back door, no matter where you live. Right? And it seems like you're finding a lot of that.
You tell me all the time the Midwest rocks that, you know, you can find more adventure skiing there, surfing there. Right?
Stacy Bare
00:21:44.578 - 00:24:10.650
So, yeah, I mean, I love it here so much, and I think that what's been so amazing here. So, like you're talking about, I think we're so used to this one type of awe, right?
We're so used to this visual expression of awe and that everything needs to be a Bierstadt painting or like a North Face drone shot, you know, and those things are wonderful. My daughter said we'd been here about three months and it was at the end of the first summer. And I said, how do you like Michigan?
And she said, I love it, but you have to go to the beautiful thing here and know where it is. You don't get to just see the beautiful thing all the time. Right. Because we could see the Wasatch out our front door.
Like, we could look out our window and see the Wasatch. You may not be in the mountains all the time, but the mountains were always there here.
You know, I can get to Lake Michigan about the same amount of time from my front door to Lake Michigan as it took me to get to, you know, say, Solitude Ski resort in the Wasatch. But I don't see the mountains the whole time. And so that is one of those differences.
But when you drop down into the woods and you feel embraced by the trees and bar owl swoops down on you as you're riding your bike and you stop and I mean, the light out here, man, like, there are these shifts in the lights through the trees that are mind blowing, but you have to be open to the subtleties and those shifts. And the birds, the smells in Michigan are really incredible.
Springtime, the fall, and then, you know, when I do want really big sky, I head out to, you know, if I want a little view of sky, I can head out to a lake or the river valleys.
And if I want to see an expansive sky, I have my favorite spot in the dunes that I would look forward to showing you and looking across over Lake Michigan. Or, you know, I can drive up to Lake Superior, I can drive over to Lake Huron, I can drive to Lake Erie.
Four out of the five Great Lakes chose Michigan. You should, too. Yeah, it's been amazing. And. And like, I.
What I was trying to say earlier, and then I went off on this tangent was I love being here, and I do miss the mountains. And this is the first time in my life that I've been able to hold that tension and not feel like I should be somewhere else.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:24:10.730 - 00:24:19.466
Sure. Is this the first time you felt that, that kind of contentment? The first, really time you felt this way after you've had a tumultuous life? Right.
Stacy Bare
00:24:19.538 - 00:25:41.210
So, yeah, it is the first time I felt this way.
Even when I lived in Utah, you know, I was lusting after, you know, how in Japan I was lusting after Alaska, like the desert, you know, getting down to Oaxaca to ride, which I still haven't done. You know, meeting with meeting up with you in Rabbit Valley, doing other things, like.
Like, I was always frothing at that, and I think it could just be the opportunity to, you know, try and raise a wild child in a chaotic time. It could be just the sense of groundedness that we have here. It could just. You know, my grandma used to tell us that she was from gypsies in Roma.
And, you know, the. The worst thing you could do to a gypsy or Roma is make them stand still. And so maybe this is just the next step in the caravan for us is.
Is the Great Lakes Midwest. But. But yeah, I mean, I love roaming through these. Through the glacial moraines and through the river valleys and. And through the lakes.
I had an opportunity to write an article for a local journal here, and I hope I get to travel my whole life. But honestly, if I never left the Great Lakes, I think I'd be all right now.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:25:41.250 - 00:25:56.738
You talk a lot about awe, and I think that's central to the way you see the world.
Can you explain to everyone kind of what you mean by that and how you find it in both those big expanses and also in doing simple things with your daughter, being right where you are.
Stacy Bare
00:25:56.874 - 00:29:38.480
I think the other thing going back to that, that I'm really enjoying at this part of my life is the infrastructure build. Building opportunities, building trail, helping to plant trees, helping to manage landscapes so that people can have more of those moments of awe.
And ah is, you know, it's an emotion. It's the only emotion that's phonetically correct in the English language. Right. So you. When. When you have an awe experience, it's. When you go, right.
It's. It's that kind of release. It's. You can hear it in an amazing concerto. You can feel it, you know. You know, Hate Breed gives me moments of awe.
They're just such an incredible metal band. They, you know, sometimes when it all comes together and the rage and the beauty of it all, and you're like. Like, that's odd too. And. And it's.
It's that idea of feeling when it's expressed positively, it's feeling small but connected, and that it's okay that you're connected and you're small to this much larger world. And the negative sense is. I think when you feel small and overwhelmed, that's the negative sense of awe.
But when you're small and you feel connected and in this really beautiful space, and I think for a lot of people right now, we're feeling both the positive and the negative side of that Awe, right. So outside of being outside with awe and oftentimes it is visually engaged.
You know, so maybe it's that, it's, it's the sunset over Lake Michigan, it's the sunrise of, you know, on Lake Huron. It's seeing at a distance, you know, the, a red tailed hawk as it fans its wings in, you know, after and you see the dew. Like it's those moments.
But outside of the outdoors, you know, concerts, art museum and political rallies are where, where people see awe. So awe can be very positive and lead to a lot of positive outcomes.
In the research we did, you know, openness to, other than all the physical stuff that we've already talked a little bit about, openness to new information, curiosity, pro social behavior, connection to others. But the flip side of that, it can be used to manipulate people.
And I think there are times where for me, like in my early days in the outdoors and you met me like right after I started in the outdoor industry and I had the zealot of, you know, I was a zealot man about outside and what it could do and the healing powers. And what I've really come to realize is that the power of the outdoors is amazing because it opens doors.
But I think if you get to a point where you can only go outside and you're always seeking these giant off field experiences and if you don't find it, it wasn't a good day or you use the outdoors to run away from everything consistently, it's going to be a problem.
But when you allow auto open the door and you do the work to move through the door for whatever it is of healing and engagement you need, I think that's where the magic is.
But even like you and I, right, I mean you and I spent years talking about going on an adventure before we did, but because we talked about our adventures and you know, you're a passionate guy and you embrace things. And I remember, you know, the first time I met you, I was like, this is what the guys from Dead Poets Society were talking about.
This is the guy I've been looking for who like sucks the marrow out of life. I was like, this, this is the guy. Like he is Doug. Dead Poets Society is everything right and wrong with America all all wrapped up in one.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:29:38.520 - 00:29:40.640
But oh, Captain, my captain.
Stacy Bare
00:29:40.800 - 00:33:06.990
Yeah, exactly. And I mean I do. I, yeah, like stand up on a desk. Like that's how I felt when I met you the first time. I was like, this is, this is my guy.
Oh, Captain, my captain indeed. Like I think there's a transference that can happen. And I think that's what helps build the community, even if you're not outside together.
And I think when we look at other movements that are happening around the world today, it's easy for us to nitpick or to blame or to castigate, but there is something that I think is happening in those movements related to awe and community and connection.
The problem is, and I've said this before, for years, I thought the benefit of time outside was because it replicated the positive aspects of war, camaraderie, sense of togetherness, mission. And there is a lot of awe that happens at war. There's a lot of awe inspiring things, positive and negative, and there's a lot of boredom.
And then it happens. But, like, you know, sometimes there's a lot of boredom.
Mountain biking, you're just like, thrashing yourself up a hill and your head's down and you're not seeing the beautiful things, and then you see that awe. But I think in those movements, we see community.
You see that connection where it wasn't able to get there, and maybe a constant fight or flight emotion as well.
And what I came to realize over time, though, and I don't know if Stacy of 2007, recently returned from war, would probably tell Stacy, 2024, to go fuck off, given the years of experience that I've lived since then.
And I don't know how you deliver that experience, you know, that conversation to somebody, but war is a shadow of the stone and timber, of the beauty and the awe we see outside. But that shadow is what's more accessible to more people.
Like war and violence and pain and hazing and disconnection and being kicked out of a community are, unfortunately, I think, far more accessible to people than the beauty of time outside and adventure and engagement and community that we've been able to find. Yeah. And I think if we can.
I think if we can adjust our mindset to recognize that the other is likely feeling community and experience in some sense of awe as well. And what does that hurt that they're looking to escape from? And you know as well as I do in the outdoor community how many of our friends who are.
Or colleagues who are these really intense climbers or runners and skiers, they'll share with you eventually what the herd is. Yeah. And not everybody has that, which is great.
And I think you get to a point where you're healthy and you can understand, you know, maybe we're all a little bit healthier now than we used to be in our experience of the outdoors. But when you no longer feel like you have anything to prove, that's what awe is, is that sense of overwhelmness.
And when it's positive, you feel small and connected and safe. And when it's negative, you feel maybe small and disconnected and deeply unsafe.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:08.020 - 00:33:18.860
Well, it seems to me that the work you're doing there now in Grand Rapids is helping cultivate that with people, no matter what their background is, no matter where their political affiliation is, no matter what their philosophy on that is.
Stacy Bare
00:33:18.900 - 00:33:19.244
Right.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:19.332 - 00:33:32.440
As you said, you give people the choice to plant trees, and they want to plant them. Right.
You get them on the trails, and they get to experience a bit of awe some way or feel some reason why they'd want to save these places or stand up for them, Right?
Stacy Bare
00:33:33.150 - 00:35:18.748
Absolutely. And, I mean, I think, you know, I had never planted trees. I hadn't done. I hadn't done smaller landscape conservation. Right.
Like, the amount of effort it takes to build three and a half miles of trail in an urban environment is insane. And so you're like, yeah, we just built three and a half miles. And I'm like, you know, I'm thrilled about it.
And other people, like, three and a half miles, it's not that long. Like, what is that, two laps? Like. Like, how many times do you go around it? And I'm like, yeah, but think about where we are and what we can do.
And Ball Perkins is. Is like, it's just a gem of a park. There are these two beautiful ravine systems. There's a hill that in the summertime, there's an old tree had died.
The light flows through. It's gorgeous. There's another spot where I can look out and see, and I feel like I'm in, you know, uncut Forest from 400 years ago.
It's just so incredible.
And if you've ever had the opportunity, for example, to clear a tree of oriental bittersweet, which chokes the phylum around a tree, there's a moment where it looks like the tree is exhaling for the first time because it's been so choked. And that is an optical illusion, but, you know, there is the filament, like. Like the tree is taking more material back up.
And it looks like the tree exhales. And if I just showed you that tree as a picture, you wouldn't get it.
But if you were there cutting and pulling away that vine and seeing the tree seemingly exhale and back expand, and the scars that will be on that tree, but now that tree can live Again, I'm telling you what, Doug, I have seen the same look on people's faces as they removed Oriental Bittersweet or planted their first tree as I've seen pressing over the Grand Teton at sunrise.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:18.904 - 00:35:43.978
That's fantastic.
Well, I think we could talk for another two hours, and I think we will, because I think I'm going to have you back on the podcast again in the future because we only got into, like, a quarter of the things I wanted to talk to you about.
But since we are nearing the end now, I want to ask you the question that I ask everyone at the end of this podcast, and I'm excited to hear your answer on it. And it is simply, what gives you hope?
Stacy Bare
00:35:44.164 - 00:36:17.910
You give me hope, man. Like so many things give me hope, man. Planting trees. I planted. I planted. I got to be a part of planting 20 trees today with the rest of my team.
That gives me hope. My kid gives me hope. The way I'm seeing communities rally and lean into each other right now gives me hope.
The amount of just incredible rock music, death metal. Punk's making a comeback. If there's one thing we need more right now than any other time, we need. We need punk.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:18.330 - 00:36:21.778
It is making a comeback on college campuses, and, yeah, it sure is.
Stacy Bare
00:36:21.834 - 00:36:53.960
Yeah, we need punk. You know, we're in a perfect moment. Somebody's going to write the best bluegrass album ever coming out of this. You give me hope.
People coming together to say we can create a better future. We can create. And not even just create a better future, but create a better today.
And I get to see that a lot in my work with these new trails, with planting trees. And they're not just relying on hope. They're doing the work.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:54.660 - 00:37:08.642
That's fantastic. I think that is a beautiful place to end. And I can't thank you enough, Stacy, for being on the podcast.
It was great to open the container with you of all people, and can't wait to hear on the show next time. Thanks so much.
Stacy Bare
00:37:08.746 - 00:37:09.710
Cheers, man.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:11.370 - 00:37:33.340
Thanks for imbibing Open container production of Rock Fight, llc. Please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you're listening to and send your emails and feedback. To myrockflightmail.com our producers today were David Karstad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Genser. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some.
Thanks for listening.