May 28, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of the Don't Die Rusty Podcast, Rick and Ricky have a chat with Wild Mountain Man Dan. Dan shares his vibrant outlook on life, emphasizing the importance of positivity, connection through hugs, and the value of friendships. He discusses his journey of writing a book about a historical figure, the significance of community, and the lessons learned from hard work. Dan's passion for gardening and creating his own peaceful space is evident, as he inspires listeners to find joy and purpose in their lives.
Wild Mountain Man Dan shares humorous anecdotes from his life off the grid, discusses the importance of social media in uplifting others, and reflects on his experiences during an Aboriginal trek where he honed survival skills.
The discussion also delves into the significance of community gatherings for learning and personal growth, as well as Dan's aspirations for the future, emphasizing the joy of meeting new people and sharing experiences.
You can find Wild Mountain Man Dan on Instagram @wildmountainmandan
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Takeaways
- Wild Mountain Man Dan believes in changing the world for the positive.
- He emphasizes the importance of hugs as a form of connection.
- Dan aims to live a long and fulfilling life, aspiring to 150 years.
- He values friendships and the lessons they bring.
- The journey of writing a book can uncover hidden truths.
- Friendship is like a lost diamond ring; its value never diminishes.
- Inspiration can come from community and shared experiences.
- Hard work and patience lead to personal growth and success.
- Finding peace in one's own space is essential for happiness.
- Life lessons can be learned from simple acts, like saving a starfish. Life off the grid can be challenging yet humorous.
- Social media can uplift and connect people.
- Experiences in nature can lead to personal growth.
- Survival skills are essential for self-sufficiency.
- Community gatherings provide valuable learning opportunities.
- Meeting new people can change your life for the better.
- Foraging teaches important life lessons about sustenance.
- Humor plays a vital role in overcoming challenges.
- The anticipation of new friendships is a driving force.
- Memories created through shared experiences are invaluable.
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You can find The Rick's at:
Rick Hanson
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Ricky Brule
Instagram: @ricky.wayne80
Facebook: Ricky W Brule
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Well, hello, Don't Die Rusty Nation.
We are here tonight with myself, Rick Hansen, and co-host Ricky Bruhle.
And we, yeah.
And we are lucky enough to have one of our first guests here, Wild Mountain Man Dan,professional hugger and making the world better every day of the year person.
(00:29):
You are awesome and
You know what?
uh you have the energy of a 10 year old and I wish I could have just a little bit of yourenergy.
I've been dead for 60 years.
Hahaha!
uh
Carry the two.
You know, and we were talking earlier, know, Ricky and I, it's lucky for the people thatwe get to talk to because you become friends and I follow you through social media and we
(01:04):
message each other here and there and know that each other's alive and kicking.
And the good thing about this is, and like I said, we were talking earlier is uh you makeme better.
You know, because you give me energy.
You give us, you give us something to think about and you give the world a smile and a hugand, and you have some interesting words to say to get me thinking about being the best
(01:37):
me.
think I've said it before, but I don't want to change your oil.
I just want to change the whole world for the positive.
That's really true.
I do.
Every moment of my life I spend contemplating, what can I do?
What can I put in my calendar this week that's going to make me a better person, but makeeverybody I meet happier and livelier?
(02:02):
I don't know if they're going to get wild like me, but...
Ha
Hahaha!
One step at a time is the plan.
Yeah.
Well, you know that here's how I feel.
Like if we're talking about cars, we'll say, since you have a nice Corvette, we justposted on our Instagram page, but here's what Rick wants to do when I, a little red
(02:30):
Corvette.
There we go.
uh Love it.
Love it.
But you know,
If we're a car, I don't wanna be stuck out in the pasture and die rusty.
(02:50):
I wanna be like Thelma and Louise when I go out and go over that cliff.
I wanna have a wreck.
If we're gonna do this, I'm gonna blow up the engine and we're gonna have a wreck.
There's not gonna be any parts left.
I heard one time, if you shoot for the sun and you hit the moon, that's okay.
the second goal out there.
(03:14):
I want to live till I'm 150 years old and I have a great start on it in my head and in mymind and my body.
I do.
feel like, well, I don't know if I feel like I'm 10, but I feel like I'm 18, you know,just a little more knowledgeable and more reserved and more wild than most 18 year olds.
You are more wild than 18 year old.
(03:36):
new management though.
My wife, she says be wild, you know, tone it down sometimes.
There's a place and a time, right?
And I have to say, I love that Don't Die Rusty shirt you have on.
That is amazing.
I got it from some really neat people and it's pleasure to wear it, you know.
(03:59):
Yeah, well, you won't.
since I was a little guy.
My parents, it's funny, when growing up, you know, they never said, I love you, but weknew it.
We knew it so much that all of their friends would come over.
And my dad was a chef in a restaurant.
We went camping with the dishwashers.
(04:20):
uh so when I turned to be a teenager, I learned a little bit more about life and then Imet some people that...
They have everybody, didn't matter who it was, they just hugged everybody.
You know, and it's way before COVID happened and maybe that changed things a little bit.
But I love the feeling of, I don't know, that really deep communication has to do with,you know, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and even that body language, but
(04:51):
even just the warmth of a big hug.
And there's different kinds of hugs and stuff, but...
I just go all at it and sometimes I have to say things like a little reserve like, wouldyou like a hug or I'm a hugger.
Would you mind if I get a hug?
You know, so you gotta kinda ask permission, kinda feel it out a little bit.
But yeah, 95 % of the people are all in for it.
(05:14):
They haven't had a big hug in a long time and that's sad.
Well, that is, that's awesome.
And you know, cause I mean, we hug a lot of all of, you know, most of all of our friendshug each other and, and that's just what it's, it's about, you know, you have to be
(05:36):
comfortable in your own skin.
That's right.
And it's kind of a visual feely thing where they almost instantly know your character,your honesty, you know, the right foot forward and making a statement by, you know, I love
you.
You know, I'm not perfect, but yeah, it just feels good when you do a good job.
(06:02):
Not too long, you know, there's an appropriate...
oh
Yeah, Yep, definitely.
Well, what have you been up to, Dan?
Since the last time we talked to you, you are a busy, busy fella.
You make me tired.
Uh, so the weather was pretty good a few weeks ago.
(06:25):
So I started painting my house, which is quite an ordeal, you know, and working off a fewboards and fixing a few things and getting really deep into that and staining the porch.
But, uh, I had a fellow going to come up and do an off-grid magazine article on me.
And so I'm getting this ready.
I have major big gardens.
Uh, I've planted just this last week and I pruned my fruit trees.
(06:49):
I was on three radio shows recently about a book I'm writing.
I've been to a gathering.
are, those are my family things I do with my worldwide friends.
They're so good.
I got to spend quality time with, with some most inspirational good teachers.
And, you know, I have quality time with my wife and I have also another gal that's my bestfriend and, she's really special.
(07:16):
And then I have my.
25 grandkids and eight kids.
I'm pretty busy.
I guess you are, you know.
Tell us a little bit about that book that you're writing.
Well, so there was a fellow that lived about 120 years ago out where I'm at near MatlockAberdeen area, Washington state.
(07:42):
And he grew up as a little boy, but their family immigrated from Germany and they didn'treally know a lot.
They moved up to the mountains out of Homestead and come to find out recently hisneighbors were a small Indian tribe.
And he just loved going over there, we feel.
There's not a lot of written records on it because the fellow turned into kind of a hermitwhen a lot of things happened in his life that weren't bad.
(08:09):
I mean, that weren't good.
Anyway, his nephews died and everybody blamed the wild crazy man in the mountains fordoing it.
But in a lot of ways that was his favorite sister and that was her only twin sons.
And when they died, the crazy man did it and they immediately, that's a hundred and
220 years ago, they put up a reward, $5,000, dead or alive, kill him on sight with notrail, no interview.
(08:37):
The crazy man must have did it.
Let's go kill him.
Even to the point of sending letters out to other sheriff's office asking if they can gethim a pack of man-eating dogs just to let go on the guy and destroy him.
So the problems are is that there's no evidence that he
heard it killed anybody.
(08:59):
There is evidence that he never drank and smoked.
He was a logger, you know, and a guy that's in the mountains all the time, learning toshoot well.
He was the best marksman.
But anyway, the saddest part about it is, is he might've killed no one, but all thenewspapers went wild.
They had all these hundreds of newspaper articles across the country saying, you know, themanic murderer.
(09:25):
and the gorilla man and the ape man.
And cause he looked pretty wild, but he basically just loved the wilds.
And his, one of his last statements we have is, that a sheriff did catch up with him.
And, and he said, I love the wilderness and there's food everywhere.
And, know, and then they went and killed him.
But so we're writing a book, you know, like there's a lot of stories about, you know,different things, but we want to try to set the truth of.
(09:52):
most correct information we can find because most people nowadays they just hear storiesfrom their grandfathers and a lot of it gets kind of jumbled.
Anyway, so that's a big push.
I've been writing on it for probably five years.
And you're co-authoring that book, correct?
You're co-authoring that book with a friend,
(10:14):
Tracy Travers, who's a real estate agent in the Montesano area.
She's a go-gator.
man.
It's like, it's almost scary because she'll stay up all night long.
Look, going through the internet.
There is another book or two written on the subject before internet happened and, and,they're, they're really great.
(10:35):
But now that internet's happened, we can just type in something, you know, that'sinteresting and hundreds of
Original newspaper articles come up in our, in original photos.
We've got newspaper articles from New York and Australia, British Columbia, Salt Lake,California.
And we're kind of thinking it was one of the largest stories across the whole country.
(10:58):
One year after the Titanic sunk in 1913, it sunk in 1912.
Yeah, that's just another part of my life that I work on almost every week besides.
At this moment in my life, I go to a gathering somewhere across the West and then I comehome for a week and I go another gathering and teach and then I come home and it happens
(11:18):
maybe six or seven times a year.
I'm not perfect, but...
I try to have a lot of what's called excellence in my life, which is quite a little bitunder perfection, but I love the word excellence.
good.
It's good for me.
Yeah, yeah, I like that.
(11:39):
I that.
look forward to reading through the book when you when you get that finished.
And hopefully one of these days we can join you for one of those gatherings, because I Isee the you know, I see the content you put out there, those gatherings, and they just
looks like a good time.
It looks like a lot of uh great like minded individuals and seems like it'd be a lot offun.
(12:01):
So I want to talk about friendship and the value of people.
And I spoke a little bit earlier to you, em like if you have a ring, a very beautifulring, say it's a diamond ring, you know, and it means something to you.
(12:23):
It's a wedding ring or some kind of ring, but then you lose it, right?
I would like to think about that as a person.
You know, and the value of this person and has that value lost?
You know, if you, if you lose a diamond ring, did the value go away?
Did the value diminish?
You know, is it the same value?
(12:45):
And then when you find that diamond ring again, you know, say it's a year later orsomebody finds that it gives it to you, you know, you know, it's like, it's like renewing
old friendships or, maybe communicate with somebody that you.
uh
Maybe there was a problem at some time and a disagreement, but you know, did the valueever really go away or was the value there the whole time?
(13:07):
you just, you know, now you're much happier because you got to, you know, reunite with thering or a person.
That's a very important lesson for people to know.
And, and, uh, yeah, there's, there's people in my life that I wished I could see again.
or my father and let him know how I feel and what's going on in my life.
(13:29):
But I'll see him again.
have a pretty, I don't know.
Sometimes I don't look like it, but I'm fairly religious, but I'm also wild and like aClark Kent Superman.
That's better than crazy or better than dangerous.
I used to be dangerous Dan the mountain man, but I changed that.
(13:55):
Well, I love that thought because I don't think people think about that.
Like, yes, the diamond has value when it's in a store or, then when you put it on yourhand in the ring or whatever, but if you lost it, it has never lost its value.
You just lost the ring.
But
Even if there forever, you know, like gold, diamonds, they literally last forever.
(14:19):
So the value, you know, maybe in another lifetime that will be as valuable or morevaluable.
So I was a teacher for 20 years.
don't know if you're that new.
I taught culinary arts and restaurants.
My father was a big time chef and he was a president of the Washington State Chef'sAssociation.
(14:41):
And I wanted to bring up another point about people that's, think, also important.
um You know, like, like we were talking about, maybe something went wrong or you lost somefriends, but when I received my Washington State Teacher of the Year award, they called me
up on stage and I immediately started talking about a guy on the beach and he was pickingup a starfish and throwing it back in the water, feeling that, if these
(15:10):
under this bright sun, are these starfish gonna all die?
Maybe they're gonna hydrate and stuff.
And he's picking up one and throwing it and picking up another starfish and throwing it.
But there's thousands of starfish on this beach.
And another guy coming up and goes, what are you doing?
He goes, I'm gonna save the starfish.
And he's throwing it in and picking up another one.
(15:30):
I'm gonna save this starfish, they're gonna die.
And the guy says the important part, he says, you're never gonna save all those starfish,it's just impossible.
And he says, yeah, but I'm going to save this one and I'm going to save this one and I'mgoing to save this one.
And I think that's a, that's a wonderful outlook.
You know, just, you know, one starfish at a time is about the only thing you'll ever dothat's quality, but it is, you know, saving one at a time.
(16:00):
Yeah, I that story.
Yeah, you know, it's about, it's kind of what we're trying to do too.
You know, don't die rusty because we're trying to help.
It doesn't matter if it's, we aren't trying to save the world, but we're trying to say,you know what, bring inspiration or bring thoughts to people one story at a time.
(16:26):
so it's like one starfish at a time.
you,
it all starts with me or it all starts with you.
You know, that's the best place to go.
Well, it does start with you because you're on here and what you, well, yeah, you know,because you, if you say something like that and somebody catches it like boom, then it's
(16:49):
that little thing that can change their lives, which can change somebody else's life.
Cause you can save that one starfish and that other starfish can save another starfish.
And then it keeps just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
And we start changing this world.
Mm-hmm.
I wanted to say something about this last week too.
em I'm not going to say that some people are more important than others.
(17:15):
I'm going to say that I have some of my friends that are so special.
They're everything they inspire me to be good.
And I just love hanging out with them.
And uh yeah, I got to have a whole week with some pretty neat people.
(17:35):
Some of them were from the Alone Show, some of my good friends.
yeah, so yeah, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
Or it's not something about, people don't, they don't care what you know, they just wannaknow that you care.
em In my earlier years, I had lots of heroes.
(18:02):
You know, like Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Superman, that were the days.
I think, my goodness, I wished I could, you know, go back to some of those days because ofthat way of looking at life.
All the kids, that's what we did.
We didn't have confusing heroes, or maybe they're not even heroes anymore, but I wish, Iwish the youth had more heroes like I had, because yeah, that was, maybe that was the
(18:31):
leaving.
leave it to beaver days and you know, you know, we're, we're never wrong.
And the government was great and all this, you know, wonderful stuff.
But I learned a lot from those days.
You know, that was my youth.
I went out and tried to be a, you know, like a native type of attitude where I'm going togo out and learn about the trees and make little shelters and try to make arrowheads.
(18:56):
And that was like a seven years old.
And I loved that part of my life.
You just brought up, I've had this discussion.
My stepdaughter Chloe is into anime and into comic books and stuff.
(19:17):
And I said, I don't want superheroes to have that dark side.
like, why can't we have people that are just good and they do the right thing?
We don't have to have a dark side that, uh
We have to wonder if they are they good or bad, you know, I like to have like, like yousaid, the old Superman, the old, you know,
(19:45):
wore white hats.
mean, it was very easy to see the very positive things in life and the value.
Yeah, it was very clear back then.
Cause when we lose the clearness, when we lose the, it's a question.
It's it's it.
We shouldn't have to question good or bad.
We should just know that it's good or bad.
(20:07):
Yeah.
And it should feel right, you know, like a lot of, in a lot of different ways in a bigspectrum from all different angles.
Yeah.
Trust your instincts.
another thing about that is like, I love the word inspiration and I love, you know,instincts or, know, those kinds of things.
(20:32):
And when you, and when you trust your instincts,
And you react or you do something for good, you're going to get more good out of it.
em You're going to recognize good and you're going to be able to follow good even, evenstronger.
And then all of a sudden, you know, a whole world of things are going to open up to you.
(20:53):
I got, I got to talk you about my Corvette.
I've always had a sports car, but I've never had a Corvette.
I always wanted a Corvette, but I couldn't afford a Corvette.
I'm, I'm the probably the richest man in the world.
that doesn't have any money, you know?
Yeah.
But I went to a Native American Sundance ceremony and there was an elderly native thereand we hit it off so good.
(21:18):
And, you know, I was going to show him how to make arrowheads and we talked about so muchstuff.
And at the third day of being there, he says, I got three Corvettes.
You want one?
That's about how it happened.
Holy moly.
And the reason that happened is, you know, when, you make friends and people get to beolder, they want to pass on something in their life or you want, they want you to tell
(21:46):
their story, you know, like even in somebody's death bed, you know, if you could heartheir story, I think they can pass away even a little easier by using their story.
Anyway, so I, I bought the Corvette, but for a very good price and
It's pretty special now.
(22:07):
Pretty car.
Yeah, that's really cool.
What year is that car?
Um, so they made different kinds of corvettes and they call them a series.
So if you have a C1, you know, it's like 54, 55, 57, 58, and then there's a C2 and a C3and the C3s a lot of times are known as stingrays.
(22:27):
It's an even one, but they stopped calling them stingrays, but they look just like thecorvettes before that were called stingrays.
So anyway, so I got this because it says
It's a 81 body style, but it says Corvette Stingray and and Corvette people get upset atit.
Corvettes.
(22:47):
it.
uh
82s weren't called stingrays because it didn't say stingray on the body.
Ehhhh?
Okay, I like got the mini version there.
I'd love to talk about my home, my little cabin on the creek and how free I am.
(23:12):
Actually, I'm pretty expensive, don't pay for electricity, five acres with a stream, lotsof gardens.
I have 60 fruit trees.
I have a root cellar that I spent five and a half years on.
Uh, yeah, everything's paid for.
(23:37):
What's that?
That's the best part, isn't it?
Everything's paid for.
my goodness.
Yeah.
You know, and I got a teacher's retirement and social security coming in and, you know,every couple of weeks, I just say, Ooh, what am I going to do with this money?
You know, it's a really good feeling, you know, and I have limits and I have boundariesand I have budgets, but yeah, I still get to go and do kind of whatever I want to do.
(24:04):
And yeah, but the sacrifice to get there.
was being a dishwasher for all of the years and then being a cook's helper for a lot ofyears and saying, yes, ma'am.
Yes, sir.
For a lot of years, you know, and just working so hard.
I even worked for people that, um, you know, sorry to say that there were some people onlyworked there for one day because it was so hard, but I thought if I could just stick it
(24:33):
out, if I can just, you know, rise above that, you know, I'll be a better person.
And, uh, yeah, anyway, I love my land.
And here's another crazy thing.
If I could pick in the whole universe where I'd want to live, I think I'd pick the earth.
And then I think I would pick, uh, but Olympic peninsula.
And then I think I would pick up in the Northern kind of the Olympic peninsula and wherethere's lot of rain and creeks and streams and, you know, plant fruit trees.
(25:03):
I, I live right exactly where I want to live.
And I do what I want to do.
And it's a wonderful feeling.
hope everybody can make that happen.
I really don't know much about apartment life.
I've never done that.
So.
Well, that's very inspiring.
It really is like that.
That's a that's a dream of mine, too.
(25:26):
Yeah, you know.
oh
learn from doing the dishes and doing that stuff?
You said some people would quit in one day and you hung on and kept on doing it andwashing your dishes.
You know, there's a thing called faith, F-A-I-T-H, faith, right?
(25:48):
And there's another one called fate, where it's going to happen somewhere in that circle.
I just had a positive attitude and I worked hard and I was patient.
And, know, one thing builds into another thing and builds into another thing.
And then you hear something and then you investigate and you say, Oh, I like that.
(26:12):
One of the things I also believe is if you're going down a trail in your life and you kindof know, I want to go that way, but there's a fork in the road, right?
Which way do you go?
Do you go this way or this way?
I think every direction is good, at least so you can recognize, I'm off the path a littlebit.
(26:33):
I need to go back.
I need to go back to where my center focuses.
So having a focus, you know, and having a lot of patience and hard work.
I guess those are the big things.
And you know, I was just, I guess lucky enough to find my five acres for 10,000 bucks.
You know, the house just burnt down.
(26:54):
Well, it was a few years ago, but you know, maybe you don't see that, but my son bought apiece of property with a creek two years ago for 30,000.
And a year later he sold it for a hundred thousand, you know, so maybe those things areout there somewhere, but I'm fine where I'm at.
Well, that's, are you, you're content and happy.
(27:21):
You aren't, what I'm trying to, I don't know the word I'm trying to say, but you know,mean that, peace, that might be the best word at where you're living.
Like when you find that one place that gives you peace.
Pardon me.
I actually built my own Garden of Eden.
(27:43):
Yeah.
it probably, for me, would give me peace that I built this garden of Eden and I did it onmy own.
And you gained the knowledge to do it again, or you gained the knowledge to do it betternext time.
know, I still gotta go back and build a better bathroom, you know.
(28:09):
Hahaha!
Well, that probably never stops.
But originally, sounds kind of funny, but it was, you know, we had six or eight littlekids and it was dark out and they had to go to the restroom.
you know, they had to sing the song, over the river and through the woods to the outhousewe go.
(28:30):
That was a hard life, you know.
So upgrading, was that a two-holer then or just the one-holer?
Well, we had an upstairs and a downstairs.
Somebody would have a crappy day then wouldn't they?
uh
(28:56):
Standing outside one time somebody was inside and they were going no no no no and what'swrong and the guy picks out a five dollar bill and throws it down the hole and and he's
going I can't believe it and I'm going what's wrong what's wrong he picks out a $20 billand he throws it down the hole and you're finally he says I'm not gonna go in there for a
(29:18):
quarter
Hahahaha!
We figured it out!
Good story.
Hey, if anybody wants to follow me, they can do, uh you know, Facebook, Dana Anderson, orthey could do wild mountain man Dan on Instagram.
(29:41):
And they'll probably, you know, they'll have every emotion in the world if they, if theysee four or five in a row, they'll be rolling on the ground.
And, know, sometimes I'm serious and beautiful music.
And sometimes I'm just flying through the air and crashing into bushes and jumping off.
I was going to bring that up because that was the last one I saw you were running and Ithought, oh my gosh, he fell into the bush.
(30:04):
Well, what happens is that there was a gal at the gathering and she goes, aren't you wildmountain man Dan?
I go, yeah.
She goes, I love it when you dive into the bushes.
And I go, come on, let's go.
You're the photographer.
When that happened, I go, okay, get ready.
Here we go.
Boom.
Well
(30:25):
Yeah, definitely.
Everybody needs to go follow uh follow his page.
You'll certainly be entertained without a doubt and uplifted.
If you're having a bad day, it's a good place to go.
It's exactly what I was going to say too.
And you can go to the show notes too.
We'll have his uh Instagram and Facebook pages uh in there too, in our show notes herelater in the, when we, this episode comes out.
(30:51):
So, but you do need to go watch cause there are days I try to be uplifted.
I mean, I try to be uplifting myself and there are days and you can, you, could
You could call it faith or you can call it fate, but all of a sudden here comes a post ofwild mountain man Dan and I get a smile on my face.
(31:14):
Like somebody knew that I needed that.
Well, you get that from Rick's page too, oftentimes.
that's when we did the first episode, that's what we talked a little bit about that, how Ifelt like Wild Mountain Man Dan is Rick about 20 years from now.
(31:39):
In 20 years, I'll be 90 years old.
Can you believe it?
I can't even believe it.
Yeah.
I'm 90!
Woo!
uh There we go.
But the one thing though is you have more hair than I do, so.
Nah, Blondes have more fun, something like that.
(32:00):
Either that or...
Yeah, but you know, I wanted to show some of these skills.
uh I was gone for a month uh last year about this time and I was on an Aboriginal uh trekwith 15 people and we couldn't bring anything that was glass or plastic.
(32:21):
We had to make everything from scratch.
And so this is a salmon skin tanned with bark of a tree and coyote tanned with brains.
And then these are uh
sticks, they're Osage orange and they're also ocean spray and turkey feathers and sinew,but you had to harvest everything and then, you know, make arrowheads.
(32:49):
Yeah.
So this whole trek we did was pretty much, um, you know, we didn't have sleeping bags andwe didn't have shelters or we didn't have tents.
had to make everything from scratch.
So I just wanted to mention.
how beautiful that trip was.
Is that trip on anywhere you watched it or did you, that we can watch your trip or was itfilmed at all?
(33:13):
was partially filmed.
And so there's a gal by the name of Lynx, like Canadian Bobcat Lynx.
It does a lot of Aboriginal outings.
But anyways, one of the best times I've had in years in that we kind of relied on our ownskills.
And it was kind of a handpicked group to go out into the wilderness and do these things.
(33:35):
And I was a flint knapper and carver and stuff.
And we had people that were experts in weaving.
and fire making by the time the end of it, we're experts in everything.
But I just wanted to say in my life, that's probably the slowest pace I've ever beenreally happy.
(33:56):
But you know, like the sun would let us know when to get up and the sun would let us knowabout time the dinner was.
And the sun would let us know about the time start winding down, make sure the fire'sgoing good.
And, uh, yeah, that was probably the finest time of my life.
(34:16):
And it was the quietest and the most peaceful, even more peaceful than now without all,you know, electronics and phones and cars and blacktop.
And so, yeah, different aspects of my life are the best, but that was probably the highestlevel of, of who I wanted to be is, you know, more content.
(34:39):
and quiet in some ways too.
So.
days were you on that trek?
About a month.
Yeah, it was nice.
You know, I shot a chipmunk and ate it.
A snake and ate it.
I ate grubs.
You know, we harvested dandelions and stinging nettles and there were no berries.
(35:04):
You know, there wasn't a lot of meat.
We did.
We brought some jerky along with us and some wild rice that we picked.
I lost 20 pounds.
Hahaha!
uh
20 pounds wow.
Yeah, that is though.
I do have-
insight into like, you're gonna get some food and you're gonna eat some food and you canhave breakfast and midnight snacks and everything.
(35:29):
We didn't, we had to forage for almost all of our food.
And by the end of the day, we had a very small dinner, but we never came up with enoughfood to actually put it away like.
Like a real life society, you'd have to eat, but you'd have to also put food away fortomorrow or the winter.
Yeah.
We never got to that level.
(35:49):
I'm so, I don't know, mysteriously confounded about, you know, was there more animals?
Was there more edibles?
You know, was life even just so much harder then?
And I'm sure it was all, you know, great experience.
(36:09):
did you, so was there a trek?
Did like, did you walk from a point to point or did you just stay in one location?
to set up like a nomadic party, but there was some of us that fell ill and, and, so Istayed behind, not because I was wimpy, sorry, but I was going to be there to gather water
(36:33):
and firewood for a group that was not doing well.
There's 15 of us.
yeah, so half the group as hunters and gatherers and, know, maybe only
out of 15, maybe four of us stayed behind to, you know, tend to the sick and have a basecamp.
(36:53):
But then I went on lots of like a five mile trek every day, you know, out discoveringthings and hunting.
Very cool, but I think inquiring minds are gonna wanna know, how many chipmunks does ittake to make a meal?
ah If you're greedy and you share There was a mouse caught in a Paiute deadfall.
(37:18):
I never got none of that.
They ate it before I got there, but
I just see a chipmunk as a bite-sized morsel.
That's about it.
All right.
The last Instagram did, I don't know if you saw the mice that we, uh, me and JoelVanderloon from the Alone Show did a, did a class and I was kind of helping him.
(37:41):
And we caught two mice out of seven traps and yeah.
It wasn't enough to feed seven people, but, but, uh, maybe we can catch a rabbit next timeor something.
You
because that's, that's interesting to think about, you know, I mean, that's kind of likea, it'd be fun to go do to learn about yourself.
(38:05):
Cause you had to learn about yourself or you're out there too.
yeah.
And your management styles and your teaching styles, and these are all brilliant collegewords, but really when it comes down to it, what do you do with what you got?
And what if you don't have nothing?
What can you make?
Maybe the secret to survival is just having a lot of skills and not having a lot ofequipment.
(38:29):
What can you actually physically do and make?
Can you make fire with sticks?
Can you build a shelter?
How do you stay warm?
You know, keep your core temperature up, you know, and water.
How do you gather water?
How do you transport water?
How do you transport fire?
You know, if you don't have a lighter, once you make fire, you know, and then you're goingto leave, can you take it with you?
(38:50):
Yeah, you can, you can take fire with you if you do it just right, you know, keep oxygenaway and keep some hot coals and stuff.
Yeah.
I would recommend everybody look up the ancient skill gatherings.
Uh, they're great to go to.
learn so much stuff about.
(39:11):
Mm-hmm.
uh
hope it's all.
I mean, know Ricky really, I mean, you make me interesting and interested because Rickyis, you know, this is how we got to know you a little bit, but I would love to go to, I'd
love to challenge myself.
Like you were just saying, like drop in there and just have what you have right with youand have to figure it out.
(39:39):
Yeah.
And that's what these gatherings do is teach you how to figure it out, correct?
Yep.
And, you know, maybe there's a hundred instructors and maybe two or three or 400 students,but, but, know, every instructor might have a skill, but their knowledge base is so vast.
(40:01):
I went to one class by David Holliday and everybody gathers in and it was like the openingwas, Hey, what do you got in your pockets?
Our airplane just crashed.
What do you got with you right now?
You know, and that was the basis of a class.
And we put a
He put a class together with, I got a credit card and I have a fingernail file.
I got this, this, this, but you know, we were able to survive hypothetically with whateverthey had in their pocket.
(40:28):
has such a huge knowledge base on, you know, a rock just as in the rock, you know, there'sso many different things you can do with a rock and then a stick.
But if you have some metal items, you know, can you, can you file that down?
Can you chip a piece of glass into an arrowhead?
You know, can you make a bow out of a stick?
(40:48):
You know, can the credit card be the feathers on an arrow?
uh You know, it's not going to get you through the wilderness, is it?
You can't eat it.
yeah speaking of gatherings we spoke in the last episode about uh the Pacific Northwestsurvival games that you are of and I super excited.
(41:10):
In fact, I found a teammate and it was well, it was Mr.
It was Dr.
Ray Jensen.
But unfortunately, when I saw the date, it's my daughter's birthday.
Oh man.
Ow.
make it, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye.
(41:32):
I've been communicating with Tony and we still kind of keep in touch.
So we'll be keeping close to that event, you know, when it comes, when it happens andjust.
brilliant, brilliant, I guess, entrepreneur.
uh He's a Superman when it comes to inspiration on just motivating people.
He's a good one.
(41:53):
And I really hope this Pacific Northwest Survival Games becomes the thing because a lot ofpeople are talking about it.
It's got all the qualifications of being, you know, the best of the best, better thanalone, better than forged in fire, you know, and interaction with, you know, people.
(42:16):
Right.
We talked about it.
We talked about it.
But yeah.
There's going to be at least four or five people from the Alone Show that are suchbeautiful friends of mine and E.J.
Snyder from Naked and Afraid and some other really wonderful people that have many skillsas teachers and yeah, I was just talking with Tony this morning about about this and
(42:41):
stuff.
I have a question could a stupid person learn because if I went you know I'd you'd have tohave a lot of patience with me
There's people with every skill, people that have never been camping before, that had themost wonderful time of their life.
It learned so much.
(43:02):
And then when it kind of comes down, you know, they're trying to get the winner, buteverything along the path, there's so much success for every person, the camaraderie, the
talking up and jokes and the great fun.
I mean, what would you pay for the, you know, a memory that was going to last you alifetime and new friends?
Yeah, yeah.
(43:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And Rick, I think as long as it doesn't have a battery, I think you're probably safe, but
Yeah
we go.
That is right.
Well, I enjoyed this moment again.
Thank you.
(43:45):
Yeah.
Always a pleasure.
Always a pleasure.
is, you know, thank you so much for chatting with us and then moving and getting goodservice and, and so we could chat with you.
You know, the blessings and I'm not going to say the horrors, but the challenges of livingoff grid, you know, and you learn so much about, you know, what's important and things you
(44:12):
need to know.
Like, yeah, water goes downhill and the heat rises.
Can you make a, can you make a wood stove to heat your hot water that goes through thewood stove?
Yeah, you can.
My water comes off the mountain with no power and goes through my wood stove and comes outas hot water.
(44:37):
It's fantastic.
Yeah, same to you.
want to just say thank you for letting us call you friend.
Yeah.
you.
If friends were like flowers, I'd pick you and you and everyone.
oh
So, so we usually ask the last question of what's the good life, but I'm going to ask youinstead of that, what's, what's in your future?
(45:08):
Wow!
How far is out the future?
How far?
Well, we'll go like six months to a year.
uh
When I go to these gatherings or when I go to something where I meet other people, thegreatest thought I have is who am I going to meet that changes my life for good?
(45:35):
And it happens all the time.
If not every day, maybe once a week or once a month.
But I have so many beautiful friends.
ah That's probably the greatest thing in my future again is to meet
You know, I'm not, not being uh silly or anything about this, but I, I, the anticipationof meeting beautiful, warm people is, is probably number one in my life right now.
(46:03):
I don't think that will ever stop.
Uh, I'm going to have a new stereo in my Corvette, probably the sewer.
I'll save my sticks and stones.
And, uh, yeah, I love to teach.
What what?
I mean, I'm trying to get us going, but what kind of music would you listen to in thatCorvette?
(46:27):
You know, uh okay, so Rap music if you want to look up rap in the dictionary.
It starts it starts with a C.
Oh Well, if you can look it up you find it under C rap music uh You know, two rap songsbut yeah, I you know all the way from Beethoven to country to techno, you know
(46:53):
So.
You know, Elvis Presley and, I love so much music as long as it's quality music and it'sharmonious.
And, um, you know, I really don't like a lot of bad words in there.
have these filters.
What?
Mm-hmm.
(47:14):
Yeah.
by the way, swear words are the result of a feeble mind who overpowers a situation withverbal abuse.
But sometimes they're appropriate, but not very often.
I said one last year.
one.
(47:34):
I said one last year, maybe it was two.
But yeah, there's no more than two.
But before that, I don't think I said a bad word for 20 years, or at least I try not to.
Kind of different, but I'm different.
Hahaha.
Yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic conviction.
the goal, not to say many words appropriate.
(47:56):
Yeah.
You got anything else, Ricky?
Yeah, no, other than just once again, thanks so much.
Always a pleasure and stay in touch.
Thanks for supporting us and wearing the shirt and, uh, and yeah, we look, I look forwardto the next conversation.
And I'm, I'm the only thing I'm disappointed about right now is that I can't, I stillcan't get that hug, but we'll, you know, we'll do a, we'll do an on air podcast hug here
(48:21):
and then, you know, make it a priority to someday make sure that happens in person.
Thank you and God bless you.
You're good people, good friends.
you.
Thank you so much.
we're going to meet someday.
All right.
We'll do.
Bye.
(48:42):
We'll see ya.
Well, Don't Die Rusty Nation as usual.
It's been a fun episode with Wild Mountain Man Dan and keep chasing your dreams, being thebest you and don't die rusty.
Thank you.
Well, hello, Don't Die Rusty Nation.
We are here tonight with myself, Rick Hansen, and co-host Ricky Bruhle.
And we, yeah.
And we are lucky enough to have one of our first guests here, Wild Mountain Man Dan,professional hugger and making the world better every day of the year person.
(00:29):
You are awesome and
You know what?
uh you have the energy of a 10 year old and I wish I could have just a little bit of yourenergy.
I've been dead for 60 years.
Hahaha!
uh
Carry the two.
You know, and we were talking earlier, know, Ricky and I, it's lucky for the people thatwe get to talk to because you become friends and I follow you through social media and we
(01:04):
message each other here and there and know that each other's alive and kicking.
And the good thing about this is, and like I said, we were talking earlier is uh you makeme better.
You know, because you give me energy.
You give us, you give us something to think about and you give the world a smile and a hugand, and you have some interesting words to say to get me thinking about being the best
(01:37):
me.
think I've said it before, but I don't want to change your oil.
I just want to change the whole world for the positive.
That's really true.
I do.
Every moment of my life I spend contemplating, what can I do?
What can I put in my calendar this week that's going to make me a better person, but makeeverybody I meet happier and livelier?
(02:02):
I don't know if they're going to get wild like me, but...
Ha
Hahaha!
One step at a time is the plan.
Yeah.
Well, you know that here's how I feel.
Like if we're talking about cars, we'll say, since you have a nice Corvette, we justposted on our Instagram page, but here's what Rick wants to do when I, a little red
(02:30):
Corvette.
There we go.
uh Love it.
Love it.
But you know,
If we're a car, I don't wanna be stuck out in the pasture and die rusty.
(02:50):
I wanna be like Thelma and Louise when I go out and go over that cliff.
I wanna have a wreck.
If we're gonna do this, I'm gonna blow up the engine and we're gonna have a wreck.
There's not gonna be any parts left.
I heard one time, if you shoot for the sun and you hit the moon, that's okay.
the second goal out there.
(03:14):
I want to live till I'm 150 years old and I have a great start on it in my head and in mymind and my body.
I do.
feel like, well, I don't know if I feel like I'm 10, but I feel like I'm 18, you know,just a little more knowledgeable and more reserved and more wild than most 18 year olds.
You are more wild than 18 year old.
(03:36):
new management though.
My wife, she says be wild, you know, tone it down sometimes.
There's a place and a time, right?
And I have to say, I love that Don't Die Rusty shirt you have on.
That is amazing.
I got it from some really neat people and it's pleasure to wear it, you know.
(03:59):
Yeah, well, you won't.
since I was a little guy.
My parents, it's funny, when growing up, you know, they never said, I love you, but weknew it.
We knew it so much that all of their friends would come over.
And my dad was a chef in a restaurant.
We went camping with the dishwashers.
(04:20):
uh so when I turned to be a teenager, I learned a little bit more about life and then Imet some people that...
They have everybody, didn't matter who it was, they just hugged everybody.
You know, and it's way before COVID happened and maybe that changed things a little bit.
But I love the feeling of, I don't know, that really deep communication has to do with,you know, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and even that body language, but
(04:51):
even just the warmth of a big hug.
And there's different kinds of hugs and stuff, but...
I just go all at it and sometimes I have to say things like a little reserve like, wouldyou like a hug or I'm a hugger.
Would you mind if I get a hug?
You know, so you gotta kinda ask permission, kinda feel it out a little bit.
But yeah, 95 % of the people are all in for it.
(05:14):
They haven't had a big hug in a long time and that's sad.
Well, that is, that's awesome.
And you know, cause I mean, we hug a lot of all of, you know, most of all of our friendshug each other and, and that's just what it's, it's about, you know, you have to be
(05:36):
comfortable in your own skin.
That's right.
And it's kind of a visual feely thing where they almost instantly know your character,your honesty, you know, the right foot forward and making a statement by, you know, I love
you.
You know, I'm not perfect, but yeah, it just feels good when you do a good job.
(06:02):
Not too long, you know, there's an appropriate...
oh
Yeah, Yep, definitely.
Well, what have you been up to, Dan?
Since the last time we talked to you, you are a busy, busy fella.
You make me tired.
Uh, so the weather was pretty good a few weeks ago.
(06:25):
So I started painting my house, which is quite an ordeal, you know, and working off a fewboards and fixing a few things and getting really deep into that and staining the porch.
But, uh, I had a fellow going to come up and do an off-grid magazine article on me.
And so I'm getting this ready.
I have major big gardens.
Uh, I've planted just this last week and I pruned my fruit trees.
(06:49):
I was on three radio shows recently about a book I'm writing.
I've been to a gathering.
are, those are my family things I do with my worldwide friends.
They're so good.
I got to spend quality time with, with some most inspirational good teachers.
And, you know, I have quality time with my wife and I have also another gal that's my bestfriend and, she's really special.
(07:16):
And then I have my.
25 grandkids and eight kids.
I'm pretty busy.
I guess you are, you know.
Tell us a little bit about that book that you're writing.
Well, so there was a fellow that lived about 120 years ago out where I'm at near MatlockAberdeen area, Washington state.
(07:42):
And he grew up as a little boy, but their family immigrated from Germany and they didn'treally know a lot.
They moved up to the mountains out of Homestead and come to find out recently hisneighbors were a small Indian tribe.
And he just loved going over there, we feel.
There's not a lot of written records on it because the fellow turned into kind of a hermitwhen a lot of things happened in his life that weren't bad.
(08:09):
I mean, that weren't good.
Anyway, his nephews died and everybody blamed the wild crazy man in the mountains fordoing it.
But in a lot of ways that was his favorite sister and that was her only twin sons.
And when they died, the crazy man did it and they immediately, that's a hundred and
220 years ago, they put up a reward, $5,000, dead or alive, kill him on sight with notrail, no interview.
(08:37):
The crazy man must have did it.
Let's go kill him.
Even to the point of sending letters out to other sheriff's office asking if they can gethim a pack of man-eating dogs just to let go on the guy and destroy him.
So the problems are is that there's no evidence that he
heard it killed anybody.
(08:59):
There is evidence that he never drank and smoked.
He was a logger, you know, and a guy that's in the mountains all the time, learning toshoot well.
He was the best marksman.
But anyway, the saddest part about it is, is he might've killed no one, but all thenewspapers went wild.
They had all these hundreds of newspaper articles across the country saying, you know, themanic murderer.
(09:25):
and the gorilla man and the ape man.
And cause he looked pretty wild, but he basically just loved the wilds.
And his, one of his last statements we have is, that a sheriff did catch up with him.
And, and he said, I love the wilderness and there's food everywhere.
And, know, and then they went and killed him.
But so we're writing a book, you know, like there's a lot of stories about, you know,different things, but we want to try to set the truth of.
(09:52):
most correct information we can find because most people nowadays they just hear storiesfrom their grandfathers and a lot of it gets kind of jumbled.
Anyway, so that's a big push.
I've been writing on it for probably five years.
And you're co-authoring that book, correct?
You're co-authoring that book with a friend,
(10:14):
Tracy Travers, who's a real estate agent in the Montesano area.
She's a go-gator.
man.
It's like, it's almost scary because she'll stay up all night long.
Look, going through the internet.
There is another book or two written on the subject before internet happened and, and,they're, they're really great.
(10:35):
But now that internet's happened, we can just type in something, you know, that'sinteresting and hundreds of
Original newspaper articles come up in our, in original photos.
We've got newspaper articles from New York and Australia, British Columbia, Salt Lake,California.
And we're kind of thinking it was one of the largest stories across the whole country.
(10:58):
One year after the Titanic sunk in 1913, it sunk in 1912.
Yeah, that's just another part of my life that I work on almost every week besides.
At this moment in my life, I go to a gathering somewhere across the West and then I comehome for a week and I go another gathering and teach and then I come home and it happens
(11:18):
maybe six or seven times a year.
I'm not perfect, but...
I try to have a lot of what's called excellence in my life, which is quite a little bitunder perfection, but I love the word excellence.
good.
It's good for me.
Yeah, yeah, I like that.
(11:39):
I that.
look forward to reading through the book when you when you get that finished.
And hopefully one of these days we can join you for one of those gatherings, because I Isee the you know, I see the content you put out there, those gatherings, and they just
looks like a good time.
It looks like a lot of uh great like minded individuals and seems like it'd be a lot offun.
(12:01):
So I want to talk about friendship and the value of people.
And I spoke a little bit earlier to you, em like if you have a ring, a very beautifulring, say it's a diamond ring, you know, and it means something to you.
(12:23):
It's a wedding ring or some kind of ring, but then you lose it, right?
I would like to think about that as a person.
You know, and the value of this person and has that value lost?
You know, if you, if you lose a diamond ring, did the value go away?
Did the value diminish?
You know, is it the same value?
(12:45):
And then when you find that diamond ring again, you know, say it's a year later orsomebody finds that it gives it to you, you know, you know, it's like, it's like renewing
old friendships or, maybe communicate with somebody that you.
uh
Maybe there was a problem at some time and a disagreement, but you know, did the valueever really go away or was the value there the whole time?
(13:07):
you just, you know, now you're much happier because you got to, you know, reunite with thering or a person.
That's a very important lesson for people to know.
And, and, uh, yeah, there's, there's people in my life that I wished I could see again.
or my father and let him know how I feel and what's going on in my life.
(13:29):
But I'll see him again.
have a pretty, I don't know.
Sometimes I don't look like it, but I'm fairly religious, but I'm also wild and like aClark Kent Superman.
That's better than crazy or better than dangerous.
I used to be dangerous Dan the mountain man, but I changed that.
(13:55):
Well, I love that thought because I don't think people think about that.
Like, yes, the diamond has value when it's in a store or, then when you put it on yourhand in the ring or whatever, but if you lost it, it has never lost its value.
You just lost the ring.
But
Even if there forever, you know, like gold, diamonds, they literally last forever.
(14:19):
So the value, you know, maybe in another lifetime that will be as valuable or morevaluable.
So I was a teacher for 20 years.
don't know if you're that new.
I taught culinary arts and restaurants.
My father was a big time chef and he was a president of the Washington State Chef'sAssociation.
(14:41):
And I wanted to bring up another point about people that's, think, also important.
um You know, like, like we were talking about, maybe something went wrong or you lost somefriends, but when I received my Washington State Teacher of the Year award, they called me
up on stage and I immediately started talking about a guy on the beach and he was pickingup a starfish and throwing it back in the water, feeling that, if these
(15:10):
under this bright sun, are these starfish gonna all die?
Maybe they're gonna hydrate and stuff.
And he's picking up one and throwing it and picking up another starfish and throwing it.
But there's thousands of starfish on this beach.
And another guy coming up and goes, what are you doing?
He goes, I'm gonna save the starfish.
And he's throwing it in and picking up another one.
(15:30):
I'm gonna save this starfish, they're gonna die.
And the guy says the important part, he says, you're never gonna save all those starfish,it's just impossible.
And he says, yeah, but I'm going to save this one and I'm going to save this one and I'mgoing to save this one.
And I think that's a, that's a wonderful outlook.
You know, just, you know, one starfish at a time is about the only thing you'll ever dothat's quality, but it is, you know, saving one at a time.
(16:00):
Yeah, I that story.
Yeah, you know, it's about, it's kind of what we're trying to do too.
You know, don't die rusty because we're trying to help.
It doesn't matter if it's, we aren't trying to save the world, but we're trying to say,you know what, bring inspiration or bring thoughts to people one story at a time.
(16:26):
so it's like one starfish at a time.
you,
it all starts with me or it all starts with you.
You know, that's the best place to go.
Well, it does start with you because you're on here and what you, well, yeah, you know,because you, if you say something like that and somebody catches it like boom, then it's
(16:49):
that little thing that can change their lives, which can change somebody else's life.
Cause you can save that one starfish and that other starfish can save another starfish.
And then it keeps just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
And we start changing this world.
Mm-hmm.
I wanted to say something about this last week too.
em I'm not going to say that some people are more important than others.
(17:15):
I'm going to say that I have some of my friends that are so special.
They're everything they inspire me to be good.
And I just love hanging out with them.
And uh yeah, I got to have a whole week with some pretty neat people.
(17:35):
Some of them were from the Alone Show, some of my good friends.
yeah, so yeah, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
Or it's not something about, people don't, they don't care what you know, they just wannaknow that you care.
em In my earlier years, I had lots of heroes.
(18:02):
You know, like Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Superman, that were the days.
I think, my goodness, I wished I could, you know, go back to some of those days because ofthat way of looking at life.
All the kids, that's what we did.
We didn't have confusing heroes, or maybe they're not even heroes anymore, but I wish, Iwish the youth had more heroes like I had, because yeah, that was, maybe that was the
(18:31):
leaving.
leave it to beaver days and you know, you know, we're, we're never wrong.
And the government was great and all this, you know, wonderful stuff.
But I learned a lot from those days.
You know, that was my youth.
I went out and tried to be a, you know, like a native type of attitude where I'm going togo out and learn about the trees and make little shelters and try to make arrowheads.
(18:56):
And that was like a seven years old.
And I loved that part of my life.
You just brought up, I've had this discussion.
My stepdaughter Chloe is into anime and into comic books and stuff.
(19:17):
And I said, I don't want superheroes to have that dark side.
like, why can't we have people that are just good and they do the right thing?
We don't have to have a dark side that, uh
We have to wonder if they are they good or bad, you know, I like to have like, like yousaid, the old Superman, the old, you know,
(19:45):
wore white hats.
mean, it was very easy to see the very positive things in life and the value.
Yeah, it was very clear back then.
Cause when we lose the clearness, when we lose the, it's a question.
It's it's it.
We shouldn't have to question good or bad.
We should just know that it's good or bad.
(20:07):
Yeah.
And it should feel right, you know, like a lot of, in a lot of different ways in a bigspectrum from all different angles.
Yeah.
Trust your instincts.
another thing about that is like, I love the word inspiration and I love, you know,instincts or, know, those kinds of things.
(20:32):
And when you, and when you trust your instincts,
And you react or you do something for good, you're going to get more good out of it.
em You're going to recognize good and you're going to be able to follow good even, evenstronger.
And then all of a sudden, you know, a whole world of things are going to open up to you.
(20:53):
I got, I got to talk you about my Corvette.
I've always had a sports car, but I've never had a Corvette.
I always wanted a Corvette, but I couldn't afford a Corvette.
I'm, I'm the probably the richest man in the world.
that doesn't have any money, you know?
Yeah.
But I went to a Native American Sundance ceremony and there was an elderly native thereand we hit it off so good.
(21:18):
And, you know, I was going to show him how to make arrowheads and we talked about so muchstuff.
And at the third day of being there, he says, I got three Corvettes.
You want one?
That's about how it happened.
Holy moly.
And the reason that happened is, you know, when, you make friends and people get to beolder, they want to pass on something in their life or you want, they want you to tell
(21:46):
their story, you know, like even in somebody's death bed, you know, if you could heartheir story, I think they can pass away even a little easier by using their story.
Anyway, so I, I bought the Corvette, but for a very good price and
It's pretty special now.
(22:07):
Pretty car.
Yeah, that's really cool.
What year is that car?
Um, so they made different kinds of corvettes and they call them a series.
So if you have a C1, you know, it's like 54, 55, 57, 58, and then there's a C2 and a C3and the C3s a lot of times are known as stingrays.
(22:27):
It's an even one, but they stopped calling them stingrays, but they look just like thecorvettes before that were called stingrays.
So anyway, so I got this because it says
It's a 81 body style, but it says Corvette Stingray and and Corvette people get upset atit.
Corvettes.
(22:47):
it.
uh
82s weren't called stingrays because it didn't say stingray on the body.
Ehhhh?
Okay, I like got the mini version there.
I'd love to talk about my home, my little cabin on the creek and how free I am.
(23:12):
Actually, I'm pretty expensive, don't pay for electricity, five acres with a stream, lotsof gardens.
I have 60 fruit trees.
I have a root cellar that I spent five and a half years on.
Uh, yeah, everything's paid for.
(23:37):
What's that?
That's the best part, isn't it?
Everything's paid for.
my goodness.
Yeah.
You know, and I got a teacher's retirement and social security coming in and, you know,every couple of weeks, I just say, Ooh, what am I going to do with this money?
You know, it's a really good feeling, you know, and I have limits and I have boundariesand I have budgets, but yeah, I still get to go and do kind of whatever I want to do.
(24:04):
And yeah, but the sacrifice to get there.
was being a dishwasher for all of the years and then being a cook's helper for a lot ofyears and saying, yes, ma'am.
Yes, sir.
For a lot of years, you know, and just working so hard.
I even worked for people that, um, you know, sorry to say that there were some people onlyworked there for one day because it was so hard, but I thought if I could just stick it
(24:33):
out, if I can just, you know, rise above that, you know, I'll be a better person.
And, uh, yeah, anyway, I love my land.
And here's another crazy thing.
If I could pick in the whole universe where I'd want to live, I think I'd pick the earth.
And then I think I would pick, uh, but Olympic peninsula.
And then I think I would pick up in the Northern kind of the Olympic peninsula and wherethere's lot of rain and creeks and streams and, you know, plant fruit trees.
(25:03):
I, I live right exactly where I want to live.
And I do what I want to do.
And it's a wonderful feeling.
hope everybody can make that happen.
I really don't know much about apartment life.
I've never done that.
So.
Well, that's very inspiring.
It really is like that.
That's a that's a dream of mine, too.
(25:26):
Yeah, you know.
oh
learn from doing the dishes and doing that stuff?
You said some people would quit in one day and you hung on and kept on doing it andwashing your dishes.
You know, there's a thing called faith, F-A-I-T-H, faith, right?
(25:48):
And there's another one called fate, where it's going to happen somewhere in that circle.
I just had a positive attitude and I worked hard and I was patient.
And, know, one thing builds into another thing and builds into another thing.
And then you hear something and then you investigate and you say, Oh, I like that.
(26:12):
One of the things I also believe is if you're going down a trail in your life and you kindof know, I want to go that way, but there's a fork in the road, right?
Which way do you go?
Do you go this way or this way?
I think every direction is good, at least so you can recognize, I'm off the path a littlebit.
(26:33):
I need to go back.
I need to go back to where my center focuses.
So having a focus, you know, and having a lot of patience and hard work.
I guess those are the big things.
And you know, I was just, I guess lucky enough to find my five acres for 10,000 bucks.
You know, the house just burnt down.
(26:54):
Well, it was a few years ago, but you know, maybe you don't see that, but my son bought apiece of property with a creek two years ago for 30,000.
And a year later he sold it for a hundred thousand, you know, so maybe those things areout there somewhere, but I'm fine where I'm at.
Well, that's, are you, you're content and happy.
(27:21):
You aren't, what I'm trying to, I don't know the word I'm trying to say, but you know,mean that, peace, that might be the best word at where you're living.
Like when you find that one place that gives you peace.
Pardon me.
I actually built my own Garden of Eden.
(27:43):
Yeah.
it probably, for me, would give me peace that I built this garden of Eden and I did it onmy own.
And you gained the knowledge to do it again, or you gained the knowledge to do it betternext time.
know, I still gotta go back and build a better bathroom, you know.
(28:09):
Hahaha!
Well, that probably never stops.
But originally, sounds kind of funny, but it was, you know, we had six or eight littlekids and it was dark out and they had to go to the restroom.
you know, they had to sing the song, over the river and through the woods to the outhousewe go.
(28:30):
That was a hard life, you know.
So upgrading, was that a two-holer then or just the one-holer?
Well, we had an upstairs and a downstairs.
Somebody would have a crappy day then wouldn't they?
uh
(28:56):
Standing outside one time somebody was inside and they were going no no no no and what'swrong and the guy picks out a five dollar bill and throws it down the hole and and he's
going I can't believe it and I'm going what's wrong what's wrong he picks out a $20 billand he throws it down the hole and you're finally he says I'm not gonna go in there for a
(29:18):
quarter
Hahahaha!
We figured it out!
Good story.
Hey, if anybody wants to follow me, they can do, uh you know, Facebook, Dana Anderson, orthey could do wild mountain man Dan on Instagram.
(29:41):
And they'll probably, you know, they'll have every emotion in the world if they, if theysee four or five in a row, they'll be rolling on the ground.
And, know, sometimes I'm serious and beautiful music.
And sometimes I'm just flying through the air and crashing into bushes and jumping off.
I was going to bring that up because that was the last one I saw you were running and Ithought, oh my gosh, he fell into the bush.
(30:04):
Well, what happens is that there was a gal at the gathering and she goes, aren't you wildmountain man Dan?
I go, yeah.
She goes, I love it when you dive into the bushes.
And I go, come on, let's go.
You're the photographer.
When that happened, I go, okay, get ready.
Here we go.
Boom.
Well
(30:25):
Yeah, definitely.
Everybody needs to go follow uh follow his page.
You'll certainly be entertained without a doubt and uplifted.
If you're having a bad day, it's a good place to go.
It's exactly what I was going to say too.
And you can go to the show notes too.
We'll have his uh Instagram and Facebook pages uh in there too, in our show notes herelater in the, when we, this episode comes out.
(30:51):
So, but you do need to go watch cause there are days I try to be uplifted.
I mean, I try to be uplifting myself and there are days and you can, you, could
You could call it faith or you can call it fate, but all of a sudden here comes a post ofwild mountain man Dan and I get a smile on my face.
(31:14):
Like somebody knew that I needed that.
Well, you get that from Rick's page too, oftentimes.
that's when we did the first episode, that's what we talked a little bit about that, how Ifelt like Wild Mountain Man Dan is Rick about 20 years from now.
(31:39):
In 20 years, I'll be 90 years old.
Can you believe it?
I can't even believe it.
Yeah.
I'm 90!
Woo!
uh There we go.
But the one thing though is you have more hair than I do, so.
Nah, Blondes have more fun, something like that.
(32:00):
Either that or...
Yeah, but you know, I wanted to show some of these skills.
uh I was gone for a month uh last year about this time and I was on an Aboriginal uh trekwith 15 people and we couldn't bring anything that was glass or plastic.
(32:21):
We had to make everything from scratch.
And so this is a salmon skin tanned with bark of a tree and coyote tanned with brains.
And then these are uh
sticks, they're Osage orange and they're also ocean spray and turkey feathers and sinew,but you had to harvest everything and then, you know, make arrowheads.
(32:49):
Yeah.
So this whole trek we did was pretty much, um, you know, we didn't have sleeping bags andwe didn't have shelters or we didn't have tents.
had to make everything from scratch.
So I just wanted to mention.
how beautiful that trip was.
Is that trip on anywhere you watched it or did you, that we can watch your trip or was itfilmed at all?
(33:13):
was partially filmed.
And so there's a gal by the name of Lynx, like Canadian Bobcat Lynx.
It does a lot of Aboriginal outings.
But anyways, one of the best times I've had in years in that we kind of relied on our ownskills.
And it was kind of a handpicked group to go out into the wilderness and do these things.
(33:35):
And I was a flint knapper and carver and stuff.
And we had people that were experts in weaving.
and fire making by the time the end of it, we're experts in everything.
But I just wanted to say in my life, that's probably the slowest pace I've ever beenreally happy.
(33:56):
But you know, like the sun would let us know when to get up and the sun would let us knowabout time the dinner was.
And the sun would let us know about the time start winding down, make sure the fire'sgoing good.
And, uh, yeah, that was probably the finest time of my life.
(34:16):
And it was the quietest and the most peaceful, even more peaceful than now without all,you know, electronics and phones and cars and blacktop.
And so, yeah, different aspects of my life are the best, but that was probably the highestlevel of, of who I wanted to be is, you know, more content.
(34:39):
and quiet in some ways too.
So.
days were you on that trek?
About a month.
Yeah, it was nice.
You know, I shot a chipmunk and ate it.
A snake and ate it.
I ate grubs.
You know, we harvested dandelions and stinging nettles and there were no berries.
(35:04):
You know, there wasn't a lot of meat.
We did.
We brought some jerky along with us and some wild rice that we picked.
I lost 20 pounds.
Hahaha!
uh
20 pounds wow.
Yeah, that is though.
I do have-
insight into like, you're gonna get some food and you're gonna eat some food and you canhave breakfast and midnight snacks and everything.
(35:29):
We didn't, we had to forage for almost all of our food.
And by the end of the day, we had a very small dinner, but we never came up with enoughfood to actually put it away like.
Like a real life society, you'd have to eat, but you'd have to also put food away fortomorrow or the winter.
Yeah.
We never got to that level.
(35:49):
I'm so, I don't know, mysteriously confounded about, you know, was there more animals?
Was there more edibles?
You know, was life even just so much harder then?
And I'm sure it was all, you know, great experience.
(36:09):
did you, so was there a trek?
Did like, did you walk from a point to point or did you just stay in one location?
to set up like a nomadic party, but there was some of us that fell ill and, and, so Istayed behind, not because I was wimpy, sorry, but I was going to be there to gather water
(36:33):
and firewood for a group that was not doing well.
There's 15 of us.
yeah, so half the group as hunters and gatherers and, know, maybe only
out of 15, maybe four of us stayed behind to, you know, tend to the sick and have a basecamp.
(36:53):
But then I went on lots of like a five mile trek every day, you know, out discoveringthings and hunting.
Very cool, but I think inquiring minds are gonna wanna know, how many chipmunks does ittake to make a meal?
ah If you're greedy and you share There was a mouse caught in a Paiute deadfall.
(37:18):
I never got none of that.
They ate it before I got there, but
I just see a chipmunk as a bite-sized morsel.
That's about it.
All right.
The last Instagram did, I don't know if you saw the mice that we, uh, me and JoelVanderloon from the Alone Show did a, did a class and I was kind of helping him.
(37:41):
And we caught two mice out of seven traps and yeah.
It wasn't enough to feed seven people, but, but, uh, maybe we can catch a rabbit next timeor something.
You
because that's, that's interesting to think about, you know, I mean, that's kind of likea, it'd be fun to go do to learn about yourself.
(38:05):
Cause you had to learn about yourself or you're out there too.
yeah.
And your management styles and your teaching styles, and these are all brilliant collegewords, but really when it comes down to it, what do you do with what you got?
And what if you don't have nothing?
What can you make?
Maybe the secret to survival is just having a lot of skills and not having a lot ofequipment.
(38:29):
What can you actually physically do and make?
Can you make fire with sticks?
Can you build a shelter?
How do you stay warm?
You know, keep your core temperature up, you know, and water.
How do you gather water?
How do you transport water?
How do you transport fire?
You know, if you don't have a lighter, once you make fire, you know, and then you're goingto leave, can you take it with you?
(38:50):
Yeah, you can, you can take fire with you if you do it just right, you know, keep oxygenaway and keep some hot coals and stuff.
Yeah.
I would recommend everybody look up the ancient skill gatherings.
Uh, they're great to go to.
learn so much stuff about.
(39:11):
Mm-hmm.
uh
hope it's all.
I mean, know Ricky really, I mean, you make me interesting and interested because Rickyis, you know, this is how we got to know you a little bit, but I would love to go to, I'd
love to challenge myself.
Like you were just saying, like drop in there and just have what you have right with youand have to figure it out.
(39:39):
Yeah.
And that's what these gatherings do is teach you how to figure it out, correct?
Yep.
And, you know, maybe there's a hundred instructors and maybe two or three or 400 students,but, but, know, every instructor might have a skill, but their knowledge base is so vast.
(40:01):
I went to one class by David Holliday and everybody gathers in and it was like the openingwas, Hey, what do you got in your pockets?
Our airplane just crashed.
What do you got with you right now?
You know, and that was the basis of a class.
And we put a
He put a class together with, I got a credit card and I have a fingernail file.
I got this, this, this, but you know, we were able to survive hypothetically with whateverthey had in their pocket.
(40:28):
has such a huge knowledge base on, you know, a rock just as in the rock, you know, there'sso many different things you can do with a rock and then a stick.
But if you have some metal items, you know, can you, can you file that down?
Can you chip a piece of glass into an arrowhead?
You know, can you make a bow out of a stick?
(40:48):
You know, can the credit card be the feathers on an arrow?
uh You know, it's not going to get you through the wilderness, is it?
You can't eat it.
yeah speaking of gatherings we spoke in the last episode about uh the Pacific Northwestsurvival games that you are of and I super excited.
(41:10):
In fact, I found a teammate and it was well, it was Mr.
It was Dr.
Ray Jensen.
But unfortunately, when I saw the date, it's my daughter's birthday.
Oh man.
Ow.
make it, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye.
(41:32):
I've been communicating with Tony and we still kind of keep in touch.
So we'll be keeping close to that event, you know, when it comes, when it happens andjust.
brilliant, brilliant, I guess, entrepreneur.
uh He's a Superman when it comes to inspiration on just motivating people.
He's a good one.
(41:53):
And I really hope this Pacific Northwest Survival Games becomes the thing because a lot ofpeople are talking about it.
It's got all the qualifications of being, you know, the best of the best, better thanalone, better than forged in fire, you know, and interaction with, you know, people.
(42:16):
Right.
We talked about it.
We talked about it.
But yeah.
There's going to be at least four or five people from the Alone Show that are suchbeautiful friends of mine and E.J.
Snyder from Naked and Afraid and some other really wonderful people that have many skillsas teachers and yeah, I was just talking with Tony this morning about about this and
(42:41):
stuff.
I have a question could a stupid person learn because if I went you know I'd you'd have tohave a lot of patience with me
There's people with every skill, people that have never been camping before, that had themost wonderful time of their life.
It learned so much.
(43:02):
And then when it kind of comes down, you know, they're trying to get the winner, buteverything along the path, there's so much success for every person, the camaraderie, the
talking up and jokes and the great fun.
I mean, what would you pay for the, you know, a memory that was going to last you alifetime and new friends?
Yeah, yeah.
(43:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And Rick, I think as long as it doesn't have a battery, I think you're probably safe, but
Yeah
we go.
That is right.
Well, I enjoyed this moment again.
Thank you.
(43:45):
Yeah.
Always a pleasure.
Always a pleasure.
is, you know, thank you so much for chatting with us and then moving and getting goodservice and, and so we could chat with you.
You know, the blessings and I'm not going to say the horrors, but the challenges of livingoff grid, you know, and you learn so much about, you know, what's important and things you
(44:12):
need to know.
Like, yeah, water goes downhill and the heat rises.
Can you make a, can you make a wood stove to heat your hot water that goes through thewood stove?
Yeah, you can.
My water comes off the mountain with no power and goes through my wood stove and comes outas hot water.
(44:37):
It's fantastic.
Yeah, same to you.
want to just say thank you for letting us call you friend.
Yeah.
you.
If friends were like flowers, I'd pick you and you and everyone.
oh
So, so we usually ask the last question of what's the good life, but I'm going to ask youinstead of that, what's, what's in your future?
(45:08):
Wow!
How far is out the future?
How far?
Well, we'll go like six months to a year.
uh
When I go to these gatherings or when I go to something where I meet other people, thegreatest thought I have is who am I going to meet that changes my life for good?
(45:35):
And it happens all the time.
If not every day, maybe once a week or once a month.
But I have so many beautiful friends.
ah That's probably the greatest thing in my future again is to meet
You know, I'm not, not being uh silly or anything about this, but I, I, the anticipationof meeting beautiful, warm people is, is probably number one in my life right now.
(46:03):
I don't think that will ever stop.
Uh, I'm going to have a new stereo in my Corvette, probably the sewer.
I'll save my sticks and stones.
And, uh, yeah, I love to teach.
What what?
I mean, I'm trying to get us going, but what kind of music would you listen to in thatCorvette?
(46:27):
You know, uh okay, so Rap music if you want to look up rap in the dictionary.
It starts it starts with a C.
Oh Well, if you can look it up you find it under C rap music uh You know, two rap songsbut yeah, I you know all the way from Beethoven to country to techno, you know
(46:53):
So.
You know, Elvis Presley and, I love so much music as long as it's quality music and it'sharmonious.
And, um, you know, I really don't like a lot of bad words in there.
have these filters.
What?
Mm-hmm.
(47:14):
Yeah.
by the way, swear words are the result of a feeble mind who overpowers a situation withverbal abuse.
But sometimes they're appropriate, but not very often.
I said one last year.
one.
(47:34):
I said one last year, maybe it was two.
But yeah, there's no more than two.
But before that, I don't think I said a bad word for 20 years, or at least I try not to.
Kind of different, but I'm different.
Hahaha.
Yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic conviction.
the goal, not to say many words appropriate.
(47:56):
Yeah.
You got anything else, Ricky?
Yeah, no, other than just once again, thanks so much.
Always a pleasure and stay in touch.
Thanks for supporting us and wearing the shirt and, uh, and yeah, we look, I look forwardto the next conversation.
And I'm, I'm the only thing I'm disappointed about right now is that I can't, I stillcan't get that hug, but we'll, you know, we'll do a, we'll do an on air podcast hug here
(48:21):
and then, you know, make it a priority to someday make sure that happens in person.
Thank you and God bless you.
You're good people, good friends.
you.
Thank you so much.
we're going to meet someday.
All right.
We'll do.
Bye.
(48:42):
We'll see ya.
Well, Don't Die Rusty Nation as usual.
It's been a fun episode with Wild Mountain Man Dan and keep chasing your dreams, being thebest you and don't die rusty.
Thank you.
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