March 10, 2025 • 44 mins
Paddling 1600 kilometers in less than 50 days in boreal Saskatchewan, Stephan shares some great pointers, some definitely do not do tips, wild animal stories, and how much fun it is to duct tape ruined maps back together.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello and good day, eh?
(00:01):
Welcome to the Super GoodCamping Podcast.
My name is Pamela.
SPEAKER_02 (00:04):
I'm Tim.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
And we are from supergoodcamping.com.
We're here because we're on amission to inspire other people
to get outside and enjoy campingadventures such as we have as a
family.
Today's guest is an adventurer,jujitsu practitioner and
instructor, and a firefighter.
He has traversed the CanadianNorth for over 40 years, both on
his own and as a guide.
He has a master's degree inbiology from McGill University,
(00:25):
which has informed and deepenedhis appreciation for the natural
world.
As a firefighter for over Over25 years, Stephen has been
commended for his courage, beingawarded the Canadian National
Medal for Bravery.
He has been published incanoeing anthologies.
He's the author of severaljiu-jitsu instructional books
and has written thousands ofonline and magazine articles in
the martial arts and outdooradventure space.
(00:47):
Follow him on YouTube, TikTok,Instagram, Threads, or also on
Blue Sky because we found him onBlue Sky.
We did too.
And via his popular podcast, TheStrenuous Life with Stephen
Kesting.
Please welcome Stephen Kesting.
Stephen Kesting.
Casting author of Perseverance.
SPEAKER_01 (01:03):
I'll answer to anything, but thank you so much
for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (01:06):
Thanks for coming.
SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
Cool.
SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
Yeah, welcome.
SPEAKER_02 (01:10):
I have to ask right out of the gate.
So it's a very cool book.
Thank you very much for thepre-published copy.
We both quite enjoyed it.
What was the impetus to go onthe trip and what becomes the
impetus to write the book?
SPEAKER_01 (01:30):
Well, I've always loved the outdoors.
I think one of my very earliestmemories is waking up in a tent
when my parents had a place onCrane Lake, which is a place in
sort of central Ontario.
And they were thinking aboutbuilding there.
They didn't.
But I remember waking up in thetent and going outside.
And I don't think it's animplanted memory.
I think it's true.
(01:51):
And then I, like all other kidsgrowing up in Ontario, I did the
canoe camp thing.
Shout out to Camp Big Canoe.
And Sparrow Lake, I also wentthere.
And so, yeah, it was just a partof a normal upbringing.
But then that kind of shifted.
In my 20s, in my late 20s, Iwent through a couple of
(02:12):
tragedies.
Two of my younger brothers diedin quick succession, totally
preventable accidents.
And I ended up using theoutdoors as kind of a place of
healing or processing that andjust to create the space to be
on your own and go through thoseemotions and I guess ultimately
(02:32):
not feel judged.
And there's just something aboutbeing in nature that I think is
inherently healing, at least formost people.
And you can argue that there'sevolutionary reasons for that,
but that's my happy place.
And so if we jump forward abunch of years, when I was 45
(02:54):
years old, I was dying.
I was dying of kidney failure.
I had polycystic kidney disease.
I'd inherited it from my mom.
It's a genetic condition.
Basically, your kidneys getlarger and larger and larger.
And as they get larger, theywork less and less and less
well.
And eventually, I had to have akidney transplant.
I got a kidney from my brother,for which I'm eternally
(03:14):
grateful.
And in the last little whilebefore going through the
transplant, and one of my lastcogent thoughts before going
under anesthesia was, for theoperation was, you know, maybe
if I come through this, if Isurvive this, and if I get
enough function back, I canfinally do that trip in that
part of the Canadian North thatI'd been thinking about for, I
(03:36):
think about 25 years at thatpoint.
And so in some ways that tripwas, you know, the reward or the
light at the end of the tunnel,if I can do everything right, if
I can go through all thephysiotherapy, if I can, you
know, follow my doctor'sinstructions, if I can, make it
through all this really quite agrueling process.
(03:58):
Maybe I can do that.
It was also, I think, a way ofcoming to terms with my own
mortality, because there'snothing like mortality as a
memento mori.
There's nothing like a mementomori of nearly dying to remind
you that you are going to diesomeday.
So you might as well go do thethings that you have always
wanted to do.
And in some ways, it's a bigmiddle finger to death.
(04:21):
You know, hey, you didn't get metoday.
you know, I'm going to go dosomething crazy.
So I went and did somethingcrazy.
That's excellent.
SPEAKER_00 (04:29):
And you survived.
And I
SPEAKER_01 (04:31):
survived.
It'd be hard to be sitting
SPEAKER_00 (04:33):
here and have a conversation on this.
I never know.
SPEAKER_01 (04:36):
It could be a documentary.
Like a guy goes and, you know,plays with bears by himself for
an entire summer and it doesn't,and I'll film all of it and it
won't end well.
Yes,
SPEAKER_00 (04:47):
you're right.
When you had a lot of wildlifeinteractions with your trip, did
you want to just tell us aboutsome of those?
SPEAKER_01 (04:54):
Sure.
So I started the trip innorthern Saskatchewan in the
boreal forest.
So that's, people think ofSaskatchewan as this flat area
full of wheat and barley andother grains.
And that's true for southernSaskatchewan.
It's true if you're driving toTransCanada.
But as you go further north, youenter into the Canadian Shield,
which is very, very similar toOntario or Minnesota.
(05:17):
You know, the rocky granitichills with spruce, a larch.
Aspen.
And so I started there.
I started an hour past where thepaved road ends in Saskatchewan.
And so that's black bearcountry.
Then as you head further northand you start crossing over into
(05:38):
the, through the tree line, youstart getting tundra grizzly,
brown bear.
And then you move out onto thetundra where you still have
tundra grizzly.
And now you start adding otherlarge animals in like caribou.
And then when you get downtowards Hudson Bay, which is
where I ended up, I ended up ata small little village, an Inuit
village called Arviat on thewest coast of Hudson Bay.
(06:01):
You go through a very densepolar bear region because all
the polar bears that are therein that Hudson Bay is something
like a thousand kilometersacross and 1300 kilometers south
to north.
And in the winter, that's allcovered with ice.
And on that ice are polar bearslooking for seal, basically.
And in summer, when that icemelts, all the polar bear go and
(06:22):
sit on the shore, basicallygetting hungry and grumpy and
waiting for winter when they caneat again.
So you end up with a very densepolar bear concentration.
So it was kind of a black bearto brown bear to white bear
gradient as I went along thetrip and I got increasingly bear
annoyed as I went along.
SPEAKER_02 (06:43):
Yeah.
And I'd be very nervous as Iwent along for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (06:47):
I recall some encounters you had with a bear.
SPEAKER_01 (06:52):
Yeah.
So right in that transition areawhere you're going from the
forest to the tree line, thathappened for me on Newton Lake.
So Newton Lake is this amazinglake.
It's 150 kilometers long.
It's the most complex andbeautiful lake I've ever been
on, I think.
And there used to be a fishinglodge on that lake.
(07:17):
And I didn't know where it was.
They weren't returning myemails.
They weren't picking up my callsbecause I wanted to establish
contact with them saying, hey,I'm coming through.
Maybe if I was injured, I coulduse them as a potential flyout
point, or maybe I could fly someemergency supplies in there if I
broke something.
Never got in touch with them.
(07:38):
And then I heard a rumor they'dgone out of business.
And so, okay, well, that kind oftakes that out of the picture.
And then on Newton Lake, Ipaddle around a corner, and
there's the lodge.
And I paddle up to the lodge,and it basically looks as if, I
don't know, there'd been azombie attack in the sense that
it was in full swing.
All the boats were out.
(07:59):
The tools were still in theshed.
All the little cabins were stillthere, but everyone had just
vanished.
And So I started, I just wantedto explore.
It was too early in the day tostop.
So I started heading up throughpart of the lodge system by the
little cabins.
(08:19):
And the cabins had been prettydestroyed.
Wolverine and Bear had been inthere.
So I'm kind of watching out forBear.
But there are no tracks.
So there's some very old tracksin the ground.
So I'm not too worried.
If there was an active Bear, Iwould see it.
I'm an expert outdoorsman.
I would see it for sure.
(08:39):
So I continue up towards thelodge.
And the lodge is this really bigbuilding sitting on this crest
of a sandy ridge overlookingthis beautiful bay on Newton
Lake.
And as I'm going around, I seethat they've got bare boards.
And for your listeners who don'tknow maybe what bare boards are,
they're sheets of plywood thatyou drive three or four inch
nails through and then turn itupside down so that the nails
(09:03):
are all pointing up.
And you put that around yourcabin.
So a bear trying to get in willstep on the nails and decide not
to bother your cabin.
So I'm going around.
Every door is protected by bearboards.
And then I get to the main doorof the lodge and the bear board
has been shoved aside.
I'm like, who would do that?
That's just going to allow thebears in and they're going to go
(09:23):
in and ruin the joint.
Still hadn't clicked in.
Bears are smart.
Bears can move bear boards as itturns out.
And then I realized three thingsin quick succession.
Number one, the main door of thecabin has indeed been kicked in.
And there's a big gaping hole.
Number two, I am surrounded bypiles of bear turd.
And number three, there'ssomething growling at me from
(09:46):
inside the lodge.
So it's one thing to come acrossa bear on a hiking trail or a
portage.
Usually they run.
But if you corner a bear in itsden, or even worse, at a kill,
now it's territorial.
Now it's trying to defend itsden.
Maybe it's cubs.
I don't know if there are cubsin there.
(10:06):
You might trigger a defensiveattack.
And of course, I'd left my bearspray and my shotgun in my
canoe, which is now about 300meters away.
And yeah, I can't outrun a bear.
So I, that was a, that was amistake.
I had just, yeah, I'm just goingto look around.
I'm an expert.
What could possibly go wrong?
(10:27):
I got complacent is the answer.
Yeah.
So I now start backing off.
You know, I don't want to run.
I don't want to trigger itchasing reflex.
So I'm backing off.
And I start going back the mostdirect route to the canoe
possible.
And now I go through a sandyarea, a different sandy area.
And that sandy area is justrotten with bear prints,
(10:49):
including some that couldn'thave been more than 30 minutes
old.
I mean, they're still wet.
And the sides of each claw marklooks like somebody has gone in
there with a razor blade cuttingthrough the sand.
I'm not a hunter.
I'm not a tracker.
But I can tell when a print hasjust been done.
Yeah, so this bloody bear hastaken over this enormous lodge.
He's got the nicest view of anybear in history.
(11:15):
He's just sitting there lookingout over his lake.
And as it turns out, there issomebody who's trying to rebuild
that lodge system.
So what happens there?
I'm not much of a fisherman.
I'll fish if given theopportunity, but the fishing on
that lake would be amazing.
So if that lodge opens up, it'skind of bittersweet.
On the one hand, I had thatenormous lake to myself.
(11:39):
On the other hand, it wouldallow other people to experience
that.
So I'm torn.
I know the guy who's trying torestart it.
I like him.
So I'm vouching for him, rootingfor him.
But on the other hand, it's aspecial privilege to have such a
gigantic body of water and sucha unique body of water all to
yourself.
SPEAKER_00 (11:59):
When you said that you didn't do much fishing on
this trip or hadn't planned todo fishing on this trip.
SPEAKER_01 (12:04):
Yeah.
I mean, the fishing in the northis amazing.
Whether you're talking graylingor on Newton Lake, for example,
you see these fins come up.
It's like a mini shark comingup.
And so there are enormous laketrout and enormous pike in that
lake.
And they've basically beenuntouched for close to a decade
(12:26):
now.
And it's an enormous lake andthere's not a lot of fishing
pressure on it.
The reason I didn't fish isnumber one, I had to push as
hard and as fast as possibleover a long distance.
That trip was over a thousandmiles, about a thousand miles,
1600 kilometers.
I only had a certain amount offood and there were a lot of
(12:48):
upriver sections and overwatershed sections connecting
two different watersheds andthat's slow going.
And so I would eventually runout of food and Another
constraint was as summer goeson, the storms near Hudson Bay
get worse and worse.
So arriving in Hudson Bay inmid-August is very different
from arriving there at the endof August, very different from
(13:10):
arriving there in September,because now the odds of getting
pinned down by a four or fiveday long storm really go through
the roof.
So I didn't want to waste timefishing.
Also, I didn't want...
The main way of staying safeagainst bear...
was not by minimizing smell andi didn't want fish on my hands i
(13:33):
didn't want fish smell in myboat i didn't want fish smell on
my cooking gear i didn't want tocreate fish smell at a campsite
so it was for time expediencyand for smell reduction uh the
the main way you end up withbear trouble is when bears
(13:54):
figure out that you have food Imean, look at what happens in
Algonquin Park.
The bears have learned that, youknow, ripping open the bags that
these silly humans bring is apretty good way to get a tasty
snack.
Yeah.
So
SPEAKER_02 (14:08):
or coolers or whatever.
SPEAKER_00 (14:10):
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you mentioned cooking.
So did I remember in the bookyou said something about a
burner.
So you took like a was it a twigstove or it was more of a you
took cam fuel with you?
SPEAKER_01 (14:21):
Yes, I did take an MSR stove.
just a white gas stove.
The twig stoves are okay, but ifyou're dealing with really wet
fuel, and especially as you getfurther north onto the tundra,
you might spend an awful lot oftime with a set of clippers
trying to gather enough willowbranches.
So just to have something thatreliably puts out a ton of heat.
(14:45):
I also wasn't cooking thatoften.
I was cooking once a day.
Everything else was a cold meal.
And I would occasionally light afire, sometimes just to keep the
bugs down.
Sometimes at the height of blackfly season, you have to light a
fire.
And as a firefighter, I doeverything I can to stay out of
smoke.
In the last 50 years, theprofession of firefighting has
(15:07):
evolved tremendously, where webasically have close to a zero
tolerance for inhaling smoke.
So we're wearing the SCBA, theself-contained breathing
apparatus.
We're using ventilation.
And now you go on a camping tripand the bugs are bad.
You light a fire and you standright in the smoke.
Maybe it's a little bit betterfor you because it's not as many
(15:29):
plastics burning.
It's wood, but it's still notgood for you.
So mostly cooking on a littlewhite gas burner.
SPEAKER_00 (15:40):
The mention of the bugs just had me cringing and
itching.
It sounds like it was prettycrazy.
SPEAKER_01 (15:46):
Yeah, the analogy that I use with the bugs is,
it's like somebody tells you, Iwent to outer space and I hated
it.
I didn't like it at all.
Well, when you went into outerspace, were you wearing a
spacesuit?
Oh, no, no, I just stepped outof the spaceship and my eyeballs
began to freeze and I gotdecompression syndrome and I
(16:07):
went blind.
Like, well, you can't go intoouter space without a spacesuit.
You can't go into the far northduring...
peak bug season without theright gear either.
Now that's long, you know, evenin hot weather, which happens
sometimes, long sleeve shirtsthat bugs can't bite through,
(16:27):
gloves, taking special care ofhow to get the sleeves to fit
over the end of the gloves.
I put thumb loops on most of myclothing so that I can put my
thumb through that thumb loopand then that pulls it up over
the glove.
or a mosquito, a bug jacket.
And it's kind of oppressive tobe in a bug jacket for 12 hours
(16:48):
a day, 14 hours a day.
But when there's no wind, thenthat's what you have to do.
And it just gives me even morerespect for the native people
who are out there and justbasically using lots of
stoicism.
Once in a while, you hear thingslike, yeah, they used to rub
rancid bear grease on theirfaces.
(17:10):
And honestly, if I was up therewithout a bug net, I would try
rancid bear grease as well.
I don't know if it would work,but I would try it.
SPEAKER_02 (17:19):
So you ran into it, and this I found interesting,
just in how you managed to savesome wet maps.
So right out of the gate, forthose that don't know, right out
of the gate, You went over and awhole bunch of gear went in with
you.
And it never occurred to youbecause the tubes for the maps
(17:41):
are waterproof, except the tinyholes where the straps join.
So water penetration into themaps, much as you waterproofed
them, they sat overnight or20-ish hours in water.
Then they were just a gluedtogether mass.
What's the win there?
SPEAKER_01 (18:01):
What's the
SPEAKER_02 (18:01):
wind there?
Not for that situation.
I mean, how do you come out theother
SPEAKER_01 (18:06):
end?
Yeah, there was no wind.
That was a disaster.
And it was entirely my fault.
And it was complacency again,right?
The bear incident and the goingover in the first two hours of
the trip.
That was, you know, I waslooking down when I should have
been looking up.
I was looking at a map when Ishould have had a paddle in my
(18:26):
hand.
I should have been payingattention to the wind.
and how it was shifting.
And I wasn't.
I was just happy that I wasgoing fast and had a little sail
up.
And sailing a canoe is great.
But unless you're rafted up withmultiple canoes, if you're a
sail in a canoe without a bigkeel, then you're tippy.
(18:48):
And if the wind shifts and hitsyou from the side, you've got,
yeah, exactly.
You've got this massive forcemultiplier of the sail.
You know, levers work.
As it turns out, Science andengineering figured out
something pretty important whenthey figured out levers.
And if you have this five-footmast on your canoe and somebody
pushes at the top, you go over.
(19:10):
So, you know, that was a massivecomeuppance for me.
And it's not like I hadn'tsailed canoes before.
It's not like I hadn't spent10,000 hours in a boat before.
But I got sloppy.
and yeah as you said all themaps that i had were
waterproofed and they were in awaterproof case but i didn't
(19:32):
test the waterproofing and sowhat's the opposite of a shout
out a uh i used map seal andyeah map seal might be okay to
keep a couple of raindrops offyour maps but if your maps are
sitting in water they're they'regoing to melt so two days Two
hours into the trip, I basicallymelted most of my maps and I had
(19:57):
little shards of paper andthat's, it's a long way to go.
I had something like 50 mapsthat were both one to 50,000 and
one to 250,000.
Now, yeah, I had a GPS as well,but navigating just off of a GPS
is, especially in a complexarea, if you just need a
(20:18):
direction, Okay, GPS, I'm hereand I want to go there.
Yeah, it'll give you adirection.
Great.
But that's not what canoetripping is.
Canoes, you're going aroundislands, you're trying to find
the right channel.
And then as you zoom in on yourGPS, what looked like one island
suddenly splits up into fiveislands.
And so navigating off thatlittle GPS screen is really
(20:40):
difficult.
It's also battery intensive.
So what if it's not sunny for aweek?
What if it's rainy for a week?
SPEAKER_02 (20:47):
Yeah, how's your panel
SPEAKER_01 (20:48):
going to work?
Exactly.
You're not going to be able tocharge your GPS with your solar
panel.
If you hook it up to your phone,now you've got another thing
that you're going to be drainingpower.
So what works for a quick hikein a provincial park or even a
two- or three-day hike, you needa different technology if you're
(21:09):
going for– I had it planned for50 days.
So the maps getting shredded wasa real– Point of difficulty
caused me so much trouble Ibasically every time the Sun
came out even a little bit Iwould take all these maps out
and lay them out and put rockson them and like try and dry
them and when I ended up withthis massive collection of
(21:31):
pieces of paper roughly the sizeof your hand and Used up every
piece of duct tape I had tryingto hold them together to create
this mosaic and then I wentthrough and the native village
of South End and which is rightat the bottom of reindeer Lake
and bought a bunch more ducttape, not to fix my canoe and
(21:51):
fix the maps.
So yeah, the, it speaks to thenecessity of if there's some
mission critical item, you needa way to repair it or to
duplicate it.
Now, how do you, and you needto, if your mission critical
item depends on something, saywaterproofing, anti shout out to
map seal, Yeah, I don't want youas a sponsor.
(22:18):
Then test it.
Take that, what I should do istake those maps, put them in the
bathtub.
Yeah.
You get this great rain gear atthe thrift store.
You score and you get this hellyHanson hard weather, whatever
their top of their line thingis.
You know what?
It's totally worth putting it onand standing in the shower.
(22:39):
for half an hour while you'relistening to a podcast to see if
that rain gear actually worksthe way it's supposed to.
Because it's one thing for yourgear to fail when you're using
your rain gear to run from yourcar to the Safeway.
It's another thing when it's theone thing keeping you from
hypothermia.
Even on a four or five day trip,you can get hypothermia plenty
(23:02):
easy in an afternoon.
So yeah, test everything asoften as you can.
is I think one of the bigtake-home lessons that I learned
on that trip.
SPEAKER_00 (23:14):
Is there anything else you would have done
differently for that trip?
Or would you do that trip againif you were contemplating doing
it again?
SPEAKER_01 (23:20):
I've done part of that trip again.
Last summer, I was hoping to doan expedition on the Tha'ane,
which is a river to the north ofthere.
So I set off, I flew into NewtonLake.
My time was really limited.
My best friend made theincredibly bad decision not to
get married, but to get marriedin the end of July.
(23:41):
So who gets married in themiddle of canoeing season?
I ask you.
So I was, I was constrained.
Uh, there were also a coupleother reasons I couldn't go for
the entire summer last summer.
So I, I set out to do the Thane,but then I ran into such ice and
wind on Newton Lake that it, itadded like five or six days to
(24:05):
the trip.
And then I was like, Ooh, I,don't know if I have enough time
to do the full trip.
I might run out of food and I'mcertainly going to miss the
wedding.
So I did the Fluiaza a secondtime, this time without the
detailed maps that I wouldreally like.
So I have done it a second time.
I've done other trips sincethen.
But your question was, whatwould I have done different?
(24:29):
I think I would have...
So when you're pushing yourselfthat hard...
There are only a couple ofthings that you can do to put
money back into the bankaccount.
When you're going day after dayafter day, it's like going with
your credit card and saying, I'mnot going to cook today.
I'm just going to buy breakfaston my credit card.
(24:51):
I'm going to buy lunch on mycredit card, buy dinner on my
credit card.
I'm going to fuel up my car witha credit card.
I'm going to pay my mortgagewith my credit card.
And you can do that for a while,but unless you're putting money
into that account, you're goingto end up in major trouble
fairly quickly.
So when you're pushing yourselfday after day after day for 10,
(25:11):
12, 14 hours a day, that'spaying for everything on your
credit card.
So how do you put stuff back in?
There are really only a coupleof ways.
Number one is sleep.
Number two is nutrition.
And number three are drugs.
Like when you've got proathletes training four times a
(25:32):
day, reason they're doing thatis because they're cranked to
the gills on steroids andstimulants so i'm not on
steroids i'm not on testosteronereplacement therapy i'm not on
any of that stuff so that onlyleaves food and sleep as
positive or we'll call sleep andrest those those things together
(25:52):
are the only ways to pay offyour credit card and In
subsequent trips, what I did wasI increased the amount of
protein I was eating, and thathelped significantly.
That allowed for more repair ofmuscles.
I have to be careful with eatingtoo much protein because I only
have one kidney.
(26:13):
So it's this balance between howmuch protein do I eat to not
knock out my kidney, but at thesame time, if I'm pushing myself
that hard, I need more, so Ineed to really hydrate.
So Improving my diet somewhathelped.
And then improving the qualityof sleep helped.
(26:33):
So things like an eye patch,like a sleep mask, that helped.
Things like trying to regularizethe time that I went to sleep
and leaving a little bit oftransition time at the end of
the day.
even just half an hour to justchill out as opposed to paddling
(26:53):
all day, setting up a tent andthen going to bed.
And like, why am I not asleep?
It's because you're stillpumping with adrenaline and
cortisol.
That's why.
So trying to create a little bitof a transition time, the
darkness helped.
I, yeah, I don't.
Another thing that I tried thatworked for me, there's one of
(27:15):
the, It's funny.
I don't smoke pot.
I'm not a pothead.
But I went to the head shop, Iguess.
The cannabis dispensary.
SPEAKER_02 (27:25):
Head shop in the old days,
SPEAKER_01 (27:26):
yes.
Yeah, head shop in the old days.
And got some CBN, which is anon-psychoactive cannabinoid
that helps with sleep.
And I tested it.
First, I tested it at home.
And then I never had anyproblems waking up from it.
That was my big concern.
What if a bear comes into thetent in the middle of the night,
(27:48):
I don't want to be groggy wakingup.
So I never had, for me, it neverhurt my sleep.
It never hurt my waking up fromsleep.
So that helped.
So yeah, so improving thequality of sleep and improving
the quality of nutrition issomething I would have done a
little bit different.
That's a long, long answer toyour question.
(28:09):
Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_02 (28:10):
No, we like detailed stuff.
but on the note of, of sleeping,I know you mentioned like
physically a thousand miles iswith a, Oh, I can't even
remember how much you said.
We think you had 250 pounds ofgear.
I can't remember what the canoeweighed, but it's almost 18 feet
long.
There's you in the canoe.
I mean, that's, that's a lot tomove.
(28:32):
That's a lot to keep motoringaround.
Right.
I know what you said.
It took, it took a toll,especially in the early going on
your shoulders.
And then you ended up I want tosay you ended up with a swollen
hand at one point.
How does that...
Because those are things youwant to recover from by doing
things like sleeping, right?
I can't imagine, unless you're aback sleeper and you're totally
(28:54):
cool and that's all good, but ifyou roll around at all, that's
got to interrupt your sleep.
How much did that affect yoursleeping rhythm?
SPEAKER_01 (29:05):
Being sore all the time certainly didn't help,
especially in the back.
So one thing I've done onsubsequent trips is change my
pre-trip strength andconditioning a little bit.
So on that trip that's coveredin the book, the thousand mile
(29:27):
solo, that I did a lot ofpreparation for, but it wasn't,
I missed a certain area.
And that's the posterior chain,basically your spinal erectors
that hold you upright whenyou're sitting.
I was pretty strong in astanding position when my spine
is straight.
But when you're sitting in acanoe, especially a narrow canoe
(29:49):
where you've got a seat, you'rebasically sitting in an L
position all day long.
So now that's a differentposition from where I was
strong.
And so on subsequent trips, whatI've done a lot more of, if any
of your listeners are familiarwith things like Romanian
deadlifts or stiff-leggeddeadlifts, basically
strengthening the spinalerectors in a bent position.
(30:10):
And And really becoming morecomfortable with being stable in
that bent position that reallyhelped reduce the amount of pain
in my back.
So that was an interestingdiscovery.
And I do wonder if that would betransferable to other people or
if this was just a sort of auniqueness to my body and my set
(30:33):
of injuries and wear and tearover the years.
But it is difficult to sleepwhen you're in a lot of pain.
SPEAKER_00 (30:40):
Well, and you'd mentioned, too, that you'd had a
shoulder injury from jiu-jitsubefore the trip and then also an
electric skateboard.
You're a racing electricskateboard.
I would love to hear the storyof what was going on with the
electric skateboard.
SPEAKER_01 (30:54):
So, yeah, before I did that trip, I had all these
plans about how I would trainvery specifically, right?
I would train for paddling bypaddling.
But then, because I'mstubborn...
I buggered one shoulder by, Iwas training jiu-jitsu with a
friend of mine.
The friend of mine is smallerthan I am, older than I am, not
(31:18):
as experienced as I am.
So he caught me in some weirdarm lock, basically where your
arm is getting forced behind theback, but it wasn't done the
right way.
It's like, I'm not giving up tothis.
I'm not tapping out to this.
This is stupid.
It's not even the proper way toapply this lock.
So I got out.
I got out by taking a big breathand then exhaling and just
(31:41):
yanking my arm out a little bit.
And I got out and good for me.
But as soon as I cooled down andas soon as the adrenaline wore
off, I was like, oh, I'vereally, you know, I've hurt
something in there.
So I strained or sprainedsomething.
And soon I could barely liftthat hand above my shoulder.
I had that trip planned at thatpoint.
(32:03):
That trip was in the books.
It was coming.
I had received permission frommy wife-to-be to head off on
this.
I was starting to dehydratefood.
I was like, oh God, I hope thatthis shoulder heals.
Then I just bought one of thoseelectric skateboards and my kid
was on a bike.
I was on the skateboard.
We went out for some food andwe're coming back.
(32:25):
We started racing.
So, you know, it's a validquestion of what somebody in
their late 40s is doing racingon a skateboard.
But at some point, I don't knowif it wasn't calibrated
properly, if I wasn't ridingproperly.
The nose dipped, I planted, andI planted hard on the pavement
with my hand above my shoulderof my other arm.
(32:46):
So now both shoulders werefairly injured.
And I basically wasn't even ableto do a push-up.
Certainly not pull-ups,certainly not paddling.
And so the only thing I could doto condition for that trip was
cardio.
At least I'm going to take theheart and lungs out of the
(33:08):
equation.
The heart and lungs are going tobe good.
I don't know about the rest ofthe body.
So I went into that trip inexcellent cardiovascular
condition and terriblemusculoskeletal condition.
It turns out that the phrasethat motion is the lotion, that
if you do something like take...
(33:29):
20 or 30,000 paddle strokes aday with minimal resistance,
just get that body moving.
It does bring blood in to thedamaged areas and the shoulders
actually healed.
The rest of my body, not somuch.
The back especially.
So I'm figuring these thingsout.
(33:49):
I think there's real value.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm not a physiotherapist.
But in general, it really doesseem to be that if you have an
injured body part, that 80% ofthe time by strengthening it and
moving it, you make it better.
I totally recognize there couldbe situations where you make it
worse.
But most of the time,strengthening around an injury
(34:11):
or at least getting that injurymoving is the right thing to do.
Cool.
UNKNOWN (34:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:16):
On a different topic, you'd mentioned about
buying duct tape to repair themaps and not having to repair
the boat.
But did you run into any issueswith the boat where you did have
to do some last minute emergencyrepairs?
SPEAKER_01 (34:29):
No, not really.
I was paddling a C1.
So like it's a canoe kayakhybrid produced by Western
Canoeing out here in BritishColumbia.
And so as you pointed out, it'slong.
which means it goes reasonablyfast, but it's slow to turn.
I did get a few extra layers ofglass put in at the high wear
(34:55):
areas.
I'm figuring it better that it'sheavy, but durable, than lighter
and faster, but less durable,because you are inevitably
gonna, you're gonna crash thedamn thing.
You're going to bump it.
Especially, I come from, I havea fair background in play
boating.
So in play boating, it's totallynormal to, Hey, I want to break
(35:18):
from this rapid.
I'm just going to let the boatdrift sideways into this rock
and we'll pin ourselves on thisrock.
While I look downstream, right.
We'll do a rock scout.
It's not the way that you wouldhave paddled a birch bark canoe
back in the old days,
SPEAKER_02 (35:32):
but in a square, no big deal.
SPEAKER_01 (35:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So I was paddling it as if itwas some kind of exotic plastic.
So yeah, the boat held up reallywell.
It, The bottom of the hull didtake a beating.
I did have to get it repaired,and that was not cheap.
Just from repairing all thegouges and the scratches and the
(35:55):
wearing off of the gel coat.
But it held up well.
It's always tricky to know howmuch repair stuff to bring.
I mean, you could bring glassand resin and epoxy...
And I have.
But how much do you bring?
Do you bring enough to build awhole new boat?
(36:16):
Well...
Or do you just bring GorillaTape?
You know, that's usually what Ido.
And that stuff's pretty solid.
You can only repair a certainamount of...
You know, there's definitely anupper limit to how much you can
repair.
I also bring a little bit ofepoxy.
A little bit of two-part epoxy.
But not a lot.
(36:38):
I also bring a little bit of...
Well...
on other trips i've used packboats those are folding aluminum
frame boats they're pretty toughbut i'll bring a slightly
different repair kit for thoseso it's it's the size and weight
versus do i have everythingcovered it's always a trade-off
(36:59):
right you're trying to have uhand on any longer trip you're
always going to be spendingusually by after the first week
count on spending an hour a daydoing repairs of clothing of
your bags of your stove of yourbarrel arm of your maps right
that's one i never thought iwould have to repair that took
(37:20):
more than an hour a day so yeah
SPEAKER_02 (37:26):
and sorry you mentioned the barrel arm which
is something i'd never heard ofbefore tell me about that
because that was pretty cool
SPEAKER_01 (37:32):
yeah so years and years ago I had the brilliant
idea that I would use a fishingreel.
And one of those, they call themrape alarms.
It's like a little thing, maybehalf the size of a phone with a
tab that you'd pull out andmakes a shrieking noise.
So I tried to, and I knew thaton that trip, I would be ending
up close to Churchill, Manitoba,which again, got a lot of bears.
(37:55):
And so I would rig this fishingline on this reel around my
tent, then hook it up to thislittle alarm device and And it
worked okay, but it just took solong to set up that in the end,
I used it only in the very worstof the bear country.
(38:15):
Since that time, somebody elsehad the same idea and they built
it and they built, it's called apack alarm, P-A-K alarm.
And I don't get any financialcompensation for saying this,
but the things about the sizeof, I don't know, a half a slice
of a grapefruit.
Okay.
And it's less than a hundredbucks.
and it contains an integral reelon a monofilament line.
(38:37):
And you rig the monofilamentline to go around your tent.
I bring those, they have thoselittle hooks and Velcro devices
you can attach to branches.
What I prefer to do is bringlike shower hooks that you would
use to hang a shower curtainonto the rod.
So they're bigger.
And then I bring some string soI can tie some parachute cords.
(39:00):
So I can tie that around a bush.
there's photos on my Instagramand on my essential wilderness
channel if you dig hard enoughyou'll find what it looks like
and it's then it's got a leverthat gets triggered it's it's
really a pretty cool piece ofkit and I can vouch for it
(39:21):
because I've not had it set offby a bear but I've had it set
off by a caribou I've had it setoff by a bird and and i myself
have set it off what i meant tosay is tested it yes on about
one-third of all mornings when iget out of the tent because i'm
blurry-eyed and i just need topee and then i stumble into the
(39:42):
line i set it off like yeah uhsay a four-letter word and then
go look for the stupid alarm toturn it off so it it does work
pretty well if i was going to bedoing a trip And that line is
pretty tough.
But again, these things, youknow, the line snaps.
Now you've got to tie it backtogether.
(40:03):
At some point, the knob brokeoff because after 30 days of
use, going into a pack, gettingbanged around, the knob broke
off.
So I had to find a way to repairthat.
There's also, if you poke aroundon the Essential Wilderness
site, you can see the repair kitI took basically fits into a
large Ziploc bag.
So that was the compromise thatI made.
(40:25):
About the same size as themedical kit I took.
It was a large freezer Ziplocbag.
Lots of drugs, lots of drugs.
SPEAKER_02 (40:33):
Lots of drugs.
That's how I win my trips.
Lots of drugs.
Okay, well, we know that youneed to get out the door and
head off to the OutdoorAdventure Show in Vancouver.
So we're going to wrap this up.
Very cool book.
Very cool trip.
(40:54):
So much planning and yet like somuch effort to cover all the
dot, all the I's, cover all theT's, still miss shit.
Like it still happens, right?
Every time.
So try to cover them all as bestas you can and away you go.
SPEAKER_01 (41:08):
The planning really does make a difference.
I mean, planning is useful in acouple of ways.
I mean, obviously there's thatphrase that proper planning and
preparation prevent piss poorperformance or, you know, Fail
to plan, plan to fail.
Right.
So there is truth to that.
You can't plan for everything,but if you don't have a plan,
(41:31):
then things are going to goreally severely sideways.
Yep.
Because if nothing else,planning is an exercise in
thinking about worst casescenarios.
And your plan for worst casescenario one, you might be able
to use part of that plan to dealwith worst case scenario two
that you didn't think of.
Number two, planning, I enjoyit.
(41:52):
It gives me a way to think aboutthe trip for, well, in some
case, months or even years inadvance and kind of vicariously
appreciate it forwards in time,if that makes any sense.
I get to think about the routeand think about the trip for
long before I ever actually doit.
So planning really does help.
(42:14):
I use Excel.
I've got multiple spreadsheetsand then tabs within
spreadsheets and lists of lists.
And I've been hit in the head alot in the context of my
jiu-jitsu career.
So I can't keep it all in myhead.
I definitely have to write itdown.
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (42:35):
Well,
SPEAKER_00 (42:35):
it was a pleasure talking to Stefan Kesting.
Please do check out his book,Perseverance.
Is it out now or it's out soon?
SPEAKER_02 (42:43):
When we air this, it'll be out
SPEAKER_00 (42:45):
now?
We got a pre-coffee.
We feel
SPEAKER_02 (42:47):
special.
It's out
SPEAKER_01 (42:48):
March 4th.
Please
SPEAKER_00 (42:54):
do check it out.
I felt like the book was, Imean, not only just the
adventure, but it was also anexercise in mindset of like just
the tips and things that yousprinkled throughout the whole
book, I thought was just so goodto help people just kind of
grasp like doing hard things,but you have to do it with the
right mindset.
SPEAKER_02 (43:11):
Exactly.
And I do want to just say like,like Paul Mason gives you a
shout, Frank Wolf, April Henry,Adam Schultz, like all of them
going, hey, yeah, this is a coolbook.
This is good writing.
This is good stuff.
Go read this.
Okay.
I mean, I'd be like, yeah, I'mall of that in a bag of chips.
SPEAKER_01 (43:34):
I'm very grateful to the people who read the earlier
versions and said nice thingsabout it.
Their checks are all in themail.
Exactly.
And I'm super grateful to youguys.
So thank you for the show andthank you for having me on your
show.
SPEAKER_00 (43:48):
No problem.
Please do check out Stefan onYouTube, TikTok, Instagram,
Threads, Blue Sky, and check outhis podcast, The Strenuous Life
with Stefan Kesting.
And please do check us out.
We're on all the things andemail us if you would like.
We are at hi atsupergoodcamping.com.
That's hi atsupergoodcamping.com.
We'll talk to you again soon.
(44:09):
Bye.
Bye.
Hello and good day, eh?
(00:01):
Welcome to the Super GoodCamping Podcast.
My name is Pamela.
SPEAKER_02 (00:04):
I'm Tim.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
And we are from supergoodcamping.com.
We're here because we're on amission to inspire other people
to get outside and enjoy campingadventures such as we have as a
family.
Today's guest is an adventurer,jujitsu practitioner and
instructor, and a firefighter.
He has traversed the CanadianNorth for over 40 years, both on
his own and as a guide.
He has a master's degree inbiology from McGill University,
(00:25):
which has informed and deepenedhis appreciation for the natural
world.
As a firefighter for over Over25 years, Stephen has been
commended for his courage, beingawarded the Canadian National
Medal for Bravery.
He has been published incanoeing anthologies.
He's the author of severaljiu-jitsu instructional books
and has written thousands ofonline and magazine articles in
the martial arts and outdooradventure space.
(00:47):
Follow him on YouTube, TikTok,Instagram, Threads, or also on
Blue Sky because we found him onBlue Sky.
We did too.
And via his popular podcast, TheStrenuous Life with Stephen
Kesting.
Please welcome Stephen Kesting.
Stephen Kesting.
Casting author of Perseverance.
SPEAKER_01 (01:03):
I'll answer to anything, but thank you so much
for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (01:06):
Thanks for coming.
SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
Cool.
SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
Yeah, welcome.
SPEAKER_02 (01:10):
I have to ask right out of the gate.
So it's a very cool book.
Thank you very much for thepre-published copy.
We both quite enjoyed it.
What was the impetus to go onthe trip and what becomes the
impetus to write the book?
SPEAKER_01 (01:30):
Well, I've always loved the outdoors.
I think one of my very earliestmemories is waking up in a tent
when my parents had a place onCrane Lake, which is a place in
sort of central Ontario.
And they were thinking aboutbuilding there.
They didn't.
But I remember waking up in thetent and going outside.
And I don't think it's animplanted memory.
I think it's true.
(01:51):
And then I, like all other kidsgrowing up in Ontario, I did the
canoe camp thing.
Shout out to Camp Big Canoe.
And Sparrow Lake, I also wentthere.
And so, yeah, it was just a partof a normal upbringing.
But then that kind of shifted.
In my 20s, in my late 20s, Iwent through a couple of
(02:12):
tragedies.
Two of my younger brothers diedin quick succession, totally
preventable accidents.
And I ended up using theoutdoors as kind of a place of
healing or processing that andjust to create the space to be
on your own and go through thoseemotions and I guess ultimately
(02:32):
not feel judged.
And there's just something aboutbeing in nature that I think is
inherently healing, at least formost people.
And you can argue that there'sevolutionary reasons for that,
but that's my happy place.
And so if we jump forward abunch of years, when I was 45
(02:54):
years old, I was dying.
I was dying of kidney failure.
I had polycystic kidney disease.
I'd inherited it from my mom.
It's a genetic condition.
Basically, your kidneys getlarger and larger and larger.
And as they get larger, theywork less and less and less
well.
And eventually, I had to have akidney transplant.
I got a kidney from my brother,for which I'm eternally
(03:14):
grateful.
And in the last little whilebefore going through the
transplant, and one of my lastcogent thoughts before going
under anesthesia was, for theoperation was, you know, maybe
if I come through this, if Isurvive this, and if I get
enough function back, I canfinally do that trip in that
part of the Canadian North thatI'd been thinking about for, I
(03:36):
think about 25 years at thatpoint.
And so in some ways that tripwas, you know, the reward or the
light at the end of the tunnel,if I can do everything right, if
I can go through all thephysiotherapy, if I can, you
know, follow my doctor'sinstructions, if I can, make it
through all this really quite agrueling process.
(03:58):
Maybe I can do that.
It was also, I think, a way ofcoming to terms with my own
mortality, because there'snothing like mortality as a
memento mori.
There's nothing like a mementomori of nearly dying to remind
you that you are going to diesomeday.
So you might as well go do thethings that you have always
wanted to do.
And in some ways, it's a bigmiddle finger to death.
(04:21):
You know, hey, you didn't get metoday.
you know, I'm going to go dosomething crazy.
So I went and did somethingcrazy.
That's excellent.
SPEAKER_00 (04:29):
And you survived.
And I
SPEAKER_01 (04:31):
survived.
It'd be hard to be sitting
SPEAKER_00 (04:33):
here and have a conversation on this.
I never know.
SPEAKER_01 (04:36):
It could be a documentary.
Like a guy goes and, you know,plays with bears by himself for
an entire summer and it doesn't,and I'll film all of it and it
won't end well.
Yes,
SPEAKER_00 (04:47):
you're right.
When you had a lot of wildlifeinteractions with your trip, did
you want to just tell us aboutsome of those?
SPEAKER_01 (04:54):
Sure.
So I started the trip innorthern Saskatchewan in the
boreal forest.
So that's, people think ofSaskatchewan as this flat area
full of wheat and barley andother grains.
And that's true for southernSaskatchewan.
It's true if you're driving toTransCanada.
But as you go further north, youenter into the Canadian Shield,
which is very, very similar toOntario or Minnesota.
(05:17):
You know, the rocky granitichills with spruce, a larch.
Aspen.
And so I started there.
I started an hour past where thepaved road ends in Saskatchewan.
And so that's black bearcountry.
Then as you head further northand you start crossing over into
(05:38):
the, through the tree line, youstart getting tundra grizzly,
brown bear.
And then you move out onto thetundra where you still have
tundra grizzly.
And now you start adding otherlarge animals in like caribou.
And then when you get downtowards Hudson Bay, which is
where I ended up, I ended up ata small little village, an Inuit
village called Arviat on thewest coast of Hudson Bay.
(06:01):
You go through a very densepolar bear region because all
the polar bears that are therein that Hudson Bay is something
like a thousand kilometersacross and 1300 kilometers south
to north.
And in the winter, that's allcovered with ice.
And on that ice are polar bearslooking for seal, basically.
And in summer, when that icemelts, all the polar bear go and
(06:22):
sit on the shore, basicallygetting hungry and grumpy and
waiting for winter when they caneat again.
So you end up with a very densepolar bear concentration.
So it was kind of a black bearto brown bear to white bear
gradient as I went along thetrip and I got increasingly bear
annoyed as I went along.
SPEAKER_02 (06:43):
Yeah.
And I'd be very nervous as Iwent along for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (06:47):
I recall some encounters you had with a bear.
SPEAKER_01 (06:52):
Yeah.
So right in that transition areawhere you're going from the
forest to the tree line, thathappened for me on Newton Lake.
So Newton Lake is this amazinglake.
It's 150 kilometers long.
It's the most complex andbeautiful lake I've ever been
on, I think.
And there used to be a fishinglodge on that lake.
(07:17):
And I didn't know where it was.
They weren't returning myemails.
They weren't picking up my callsbecause I wanted to establish
contact with them saying, hey,I'm coming through.
Maybe if I was injured, I coulduse them as a potential flyout
point, or maybe I could fly someemergency supplies in there if I
broke something.
Never got in touch with them.
(07:38):
And then I heard a rumor they'dgone out of business.
And so, okay, well, that kind oftakes that out of the picture.
And then on Newton Lake, Ipaddle around a corner, and
there's the lodge.
And I paddle up to the lodge,and it basically looks as if, I
don't know, there'd been azombie attack in the sense that
it was in full swing.
All the boats were out.
(07:59):
The tools were still in theshed.
All the little cabins were stillthere, but everyone had just
vanished.
And So I started, I just wantedto explore.
It was too early in the day tostop.
So I started heading up throughpart of the lodge system by the
little cabins.
(08:19):
And the cabins had been prettydestroyed.
Wolverine and Bear had been inthere.
So I'm kind of watching out forBear.
But there are no tracks.
So there's some very old tracksin the ground.
So I'm not too worried.
If there was an active Bear, Iwould see it.
I'm an expert outdoorsman.
I would see it for sure.
(08:39):
So I continue up towards thelodge.
And the lodge is this really bigbuilding sitting on this crest
of a sandy ridge overlookingthis beautiful bay on Newton
Lake.
And as I'm going around, I seethat they've got bare boards.
And for your listeners who don'tknow maybe what bare boards are,
they're sheets of plywood thatyou drive three or four inch
nails through and then turn itupside down so that the nails
(09:03):
are all pointing up.
And you put that around yourcabin.
So a bear trying to get in willstep on the nails and decide not
to bother your cabin.
So I'm going around.
Every door is protected by bearboards.
And then I get to the main doorof the lodge and the bear board
has been shoved aside.
I'm like, who would do that?
That's just going to allow thebears in and they're going to go
(09:23):
in and ruin the joint.
Still hadn't clicked in.
Bears are smart.
Bears can move bear boards as itturns out.
And then I realized three thingsin quick succession.
Number one, the main door of thecabin has indeed been kicked in.
And there's a big gaping hole.
Number two, I am surrounded bypiles of bear turd.
And number three, there'ssomething growling at me from
(09:46):
inside the lodge.
So it's one thing to come acrossa bear on a hiking trail or a
portage.
Usually they run.
But if you corner a bear in itsden, or even worse, at a kill,
now it's territorial.
Now it's trying to defend itsden.
Maybe it's cubs.
I don't know if there are cubsin there.
(10:06):
You might trigger a defensiveattack.
And of course, I'd left my bearspray and my shotgun in my
canoe, which is now about 300meters away.
And yeah, I can't outrun a bear.
So I, that was a, that was amistake.
I had just, yeah, I'm just goingto look around.
I'm an expert.
What could possibly go wrong?
(10:27):
I got complacent is the answer.
Yeah.
So I now start backing off.
You know, I don't want to run.
I don't want to trigger itchasing reflex.
So I'm backing off.
And I start going back the mostdirect route to the canoe
possible.
And now I go through a sandyarea, a different sandy area.
And that sandy area is justrotten with bear prints,
(10:49):
including some that couldn'thave been more than 30 minutes
old.
I mean, they're still wet.
And the sides of each claw marklooks like somebody has gone in
there with a razor blade cuttingthrough the sand.
I'm not a hunter.
I'm not a tracker.
But I can tell when a print hasjust been done.
Yeah, so this bloody bear hastaken over this enormous lodge.
He's got the nicest view of anybear in history.
(11:15):
He's just sitting there lookingout over his lake.
And as it turns out, there issomebody who's trying to rebuild
that lodge system.
So what happens there?
I'm not much of a fisherman.
I'll fish if given theopportunity, but the fishing on
that lake would be amazing.
So if that lodge opens up, it'skind of bittersweet.
On the one hand, I had thatenormous lake to myself.
(11:39):
On the other hand, it wouldallow other people to experience
that.
So I'm torn.
I know the guy who's trying torestart it.
I like him.
So I'm vouching for him, rootingfor him.
But on the other hand, it's aspecial privilege to have such a
gigantic body of water and sucha unique body of water all to
yourself.
SPEAKER_00 (11:59):
When you said that you didn't do much fishing on
this trip or hadn't planned todo fishing on this trip.
SPEAKER_01 (12:04):
Yeah.
I mean, the fishing in the northis amazing.
Whether you're talking graylingor on Newton Lake, for example,
you see these fins come up.
It's like a mini shark comingup.
And so there are enormous laketrout and enormous pike in that
lake.
And they've basically beenuntouched for close to a decade
(12:26):
now.
And it's an enormous lake andthere's not a lot of fishing
pressure on it.
The reason I didn't fish isnumber one, I had to push as
hard and as fast as possibleover a long distance.
That trip was over a thousandmiles, about a thousand miles,
1600 kilometers.
I only had a certain amount offood and there were a lot of
(12:48):
upriver sections and overwatershed sections connecting
two different watersheds andthat's slow going.
And so I would eventually runout of food and Another
constraint was as summer goeson, the storms near Hudson Bay
get worse and worse.
So arriving in Hudson Bay inmid-August is very different
from arriving there at the endof August, very different from
(13:10):
arriving there in September,because now the odds of getting
pinned down by a four or fiveday long storm really go through
the roof.
So I didn't want to waste timefishing.
Also, I didn't want...
The main way of staying safeagainst bear...
was not by minimizing smell andi didn't want fish on my hands i
(13:33):
didn't want fish smell in myboat i didn't want fish smell on
my cooking gear i didn't want tocreate fish smell at a campsite
so it was for time expediencyand for smell reduction uh the
the main way you end up withbear trouble is when bears
(13:54):
figure out that you have food Imean, look at what happens in
Algonquin Park.
The bears have learned that, youknow, ripping open the bags that
these silly humans bring is apretty good way to get a tasty
snack.
Yeah.
So
SPEAKER_02 (14:08):
or coolers or whatever.
SPEAKER_00 (14:10):
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you mentioned cooking.
So did I remember in the bookyou said something about a
burner.
So you took like a was it a twigstove or it was more of a you
took cam fuel with you?
SPEAKER_01 (14:21):
Yes, I did take an MSR stove.
just a white gas stove.
The twig stoves are okay, but ifyou're dealing with really wet
fuel, and especially as you getfurther north onto the tundra,
you might spend an awful lot oftime with a set of clippers
trying to gather enough willowbranches.
So just to have something thatreliably puts out a ton of heat.
(14:45):
I also wasn't cooking thatoften.
I was cooking once a day.
Everything else was a cold meal.
And I would occasionally light afire, sometimes just to keep the
bugs down.
Sometimes at the height of blackfly season, you have to light a
fire.
And as a firefighter, I doeverything I can to stay out of
smoke.
In the last 50 years, theprofession of firefighting has
(15:07):
evolved tremendously, where webasically have close to a zero
tolerance for inhaling smoke.
So we're wearing the SCBA, theself-contained breathing
apparatus.
We're using ventilation.
And now you go on a camping tripand the bugs are bad.
You light a fire and you standright in the smoke.
Maybe it's a little bit betterfor you because it's not as many
(15:29):
plastics burning.
It's wood, but it's still notgood for you.
So mostly cooking on a littlewhite gas burner.
SPEAKER_00 (15:40):
The mention of the bugs just had me cringing and
itching.
It sounds like it was prettycrazy.
SPEAKER_01 (15:46):
Yeah, the analogy that I use with the bugs is,
it's like somebody tells you, Iwent to outer space and I hated
it.
I didn't like it at all.
Well, when you went into outerspace, were you wearing a
spacesuit?
Oh, no, no, I just stepped outof the spaceship and my eyeballs
began to freeze and I gotdecompression syndrome and I
(16:07):
went blind.
Like, well, you can't go intoouter space without a spacesuit.
You can't go into the far northduring...
peak bug season without theright gear either.
Now that's long, you know, evenin hot weather, which happens
sometimes, long sleeve shirtsthat bugs can't bite through,
(16:27):
gloves, taking special care ofhow to get the sleeves to fit
over the end of the gloves.
I put thumb loops on most of myclothing so that I can put my
thumb through that thumb loopand then that pulls it up over
the glove.
or a mosquito, a bug jacket.
And it's kind of oppressive tobe in a bug jacket for 12 hours
(16:48):
a day, 14 hours a day.
But when there's no wind, thenthat's what you have to do.
And it just gives me even morerespect for the native people
who are out there and justbasically using lots of
stoicism.
Once in a while, you hear thingslike, yeah, they used to rub
rancid bear grease on theirfaces.
(17:10):
And honestly, if I was up therewithout a bug net, I would try
rancid bear grease as well.
I don't know if it would work,but I would try it.
SPEAKER_02 (17:19):
So you ran into it, and this I found interesting,
just in how you managed to savesome wet maps.
So right out of the gate, forthose that don't know, right out
of the gate, You went over and awhole bunch of gear went in with
you.
And it never occurred to youbecause the tubes for the maps
(17:41):
are waterproof, except the tinyholes where the straps join.
So water penetration into themaps, much as you waterproofed
them, they sat overnight or20-ish hours in water.
Then they were just a gluedtogether mass.
What's the win there?
SPEAKER_01 (18:01):
What's the
SPEAKER_02 (18:01):
wind there?
Not for that situation.
I mean, how do you come out theother
SPEAKER_01 (18:06):
end?
Yeah, there was no wind.
That was a disaster.
And it was entirely my fault.
And it was complacency again,right?
The bear incident and the goingover in the first two hours of
the trip.
That was, you know, I waslooking down when I should have
been looking up.
I was looking at a map when Ishould have had a paddle in my
(18:26):
hand.
I should have been payingattention to the wind.
and how it was shifting.
And I wasn't.
I was just happy that I wasgoing fast and had a little sail
up.
And sailing a canoe is great.
But unless you're rafted up withmultiple canoes, if you're a
sail in a canoe without a bigkeel, then you're tippy.
(18:48):
And if the wind shifts and hitsyou from the side, you've got,
yeah, exactly.
You've got this massive forcemultiplier of the sail.
You know, levers work.
As it turns out, Science andengineering figured out
something pretty important whenthey figured out levers.
And if you have this five-footmast on your canoe and somebody
pushes at the top, you go over.
(19:10):
So, you know, that was a massivecomeuppance for me.
And it's not like I hadn'tsailed canoes before.
It's not like I hadn't spent10,000 hours in a boat before.
But I got sloppy.
and yeah as you said all themaps that i had were
waterproofed and they were in awaterproof case but i didn't
(19:32):
test the waterproofing and sowhat's the opposite of a shout
out a uh i used map seal andyeah map seal might be okay to
keep a couple of raindrops offyour maps but if your maps are
sitting in water they're they'regoing to melt so two days Two
hours into the trip, I basicallymelted most of my maps and I had
(19:57):
little shards of paper andthat's, it's a long way to go.
I had something like 50 mapsthat were both one to 50,000 and
one to 250,000.
Now, yeah, I had a GPS as well,but navigating just off of a GPS
is, especially in a complexarea, if you just need a
(20:18):
direction, Okay, GPS, I'm hereand I want to go there.
Yeah, it'll give you adirection.
Great.
But that's not what canoetripping is.
Canoes, you're going aroundislands, you're trying to find
the right channel.
And then as you zoom in on yourGPS, what looked like one island
suddenly splits up into fiveislands.
And so navigating off thatlittle GPS screen is really
(20:40):
difficult.
It's also battery intensive.
So what if it's not sunny for aweek?
What if it's rainy for a week?
SPEAKER_02 (20:47):
Yeah, how's your panel
SPEAKER_01 (20:48):
going to work?
Exactly.
You're not going to be able tocharge your GPS with your solar
panel.
If you hook it up to your phone,now you've got another thing
that you're going to be drainingpower.
So what works for a quick hikein a provincial park or even a
two- or three-day hike, you needa different technology if you're
(21:09):
going for– I had it planned for50 days.
So the maps getting shredded wasa real– Point of difficulty
caused me so much trouble Ibasically every time the Sun
came out even a little bit Iwould take all these maps out
and lay them out and put rockson them and like try and dry
them and when I ended up withthis massive collection of
(21:31):
pieces of paper roughly the sizeof your hand and Used up every
piece of duct tape I had tryingto hold them together to create
this mosaic and then I wentthrough and the native village
of South End and which is rightat the bottom of reindeer Lake
and bought a bunch more ducttape, not to fix my canoe and
(21:51):
fix the maps.
So yeah, the, it speaks to thenecessity of if there's some
mission critical item, you needa way to repair it or to
duplicate it.
Now, how do you, and you needto, if your mission critical
item depends on something, saywaterproofing, anti shout out to
map seal, Yeah, I don't want youas a sponsor.
(22:18):
Then test it.
Take that, what I should do istake those maps, put them in the
bathtub.
Yeah.
You get this great rain gear atthe thrift store.
You score and you get this hellyHanson hard weather, whatever
their top of their line thingis.
You know what?
It's totally worth putting it onand standing in the shower.
(22:39):
for half an hour while you'relistening to a podcast to see if
that rain gear actually worksthe way it's supposed to.
Because it's one thing for yourgear to fail when you're using
your rain gear to run from yourcar to the Safeway.
It's another thing when it's theone thing keeping you from
hypothermia.
Even on a four or five day trip,you can get hypothermia plenty
(23:02):
easy in an afternoon.
So yeah, test everything asoften as you can.
is I think one of the bigtake-home lessons that I learned
on that trip.
SPEAKER_00 (23:14):
Is there anything else you would have done
differently for that trip?
Or would you do that trip againif you were contemplating doing
it again?
SPEAKER_01 (23:20):
I've done part of that trip again.
Last summer, I was hoping to doan expedition on the Tha'ane,
which is a river to the north ofthere.
So I set off, I flew into NewtonLake.
My time was really limited.
My best friend made theincredibly bad decision not to
get married, but to get marriedin the end of July.
(23:41):
So who gets married in themiddle of canoeing season?
I ask you.
So I was, I was constrained.
Uh, there were also a coupleother reasons I couldn't go for
the entire summer last summer.
So I, I set out to do the Thane,but then I ran into such ice and
wind on Newton Lake that it, itadded like five or six days to
(24:05):
the trip.
And then I was like, Ooh, I,don't know if I have enough time
to do the full trip.
I might run out of food and I'mcertainly going to miss the
wedding.
So I did the Fluiaza a secondtime, this time without the
detailed maps that I wouldreally like.
So I have done it a second time.
I've done other trips sincethen.
But your question was, whatwould I have done different?
(24:29):
I think I would have...
So when you're pushing yourselfthat hard...
There are only a couple ofthings that you can do to put
money back into the bankaccount.
When you're going day after dayafter day, it's like going with
your credit card and saying, I'mnot going to cook today.
I'm just going to buy breakfaston my credit card.
(24:51):
I'm going to buy lunch on mycredit card, buy dinner on my
credit card.
I'm going to fuel up my car witha credit card.
I'm going to pay my mortgagewith my credit card.
And you can do that for a while,but unless you're putting money
into that account, you're goingto end up in major trouble
fairly quickly.
So when you're pushing yourselfday after day after day for 10,
(25:11):
12, 14 hours a day, that'spaying for everything on your
credit card.
So how do you put stuff back in?
There are really only a coupleof ways.
Number one is sleep.
Number two is nutrition.
And number three are drugs.
Like when you've got proathletes training four times a
(25:32):
day, reason they're doing thatis because they're cranked to
the gills on steroids andstimulants so i'm not on
steroids i'm not on testosteronereplacement therapy i'm not on
any of that stuff so that onlyleaves food and sleep as
positive or we'll call sleep andrest those those things together
(25:52):
are the only ways to pay offyour credit card and In
subsequent trips, what I did wasI increased the amount of
protein I was eating, and thathelped significantly.
That allowed for more repair ofmuscles.
I have to be careful with eatingtoo much protein because I only
have one kidney.
(26:13):
So it's this balance between howmuch protein do I eat to not
knock out my kidney, but at thesame time, if I'm pushing myself
that hard, I need more, so Ineed to really hydrate.
So Improving my diet somewhathelped.
And then improving the qualityof sleep helped.
(26:33):
So things like an eye patch,like a sleep mask, that helped.
Things like trying to regularizethe time that I went to sleep
and leaving a little bit oftransition time at the end of
the day.
even just half an hour to justchill out as opposed to paddling
(26:53):
all day, setting up a tent andthen going to bed.
And like, why am I not asleep?
It's because you're stillpumping with adrenaline and
cortisol.
That's why.
So trying to create a little bitof a transition time, the
darkness helped.
I, yeah, I don't.
Another thing that I tried thatworked for me, there's one of
(27:15):
the, It's funny.
I don't smoke pot.
I'm not a pothead.
But I went to the head shop, Iguess.
The cannabis dispensary.
SPEAKER_02 (27:25):
Head shop in the old days,
SPEAKER_01 (27:26):
yes.
Yeah, head shop in the old days.
And got some CBN, which is anon-psychoactive cannabinoid
that helps with sleep.
And I tested it.
First, I tested it at home.
And then I never had anyproblems waking up from it.
That was my big concern.
What if a bear comes into thetent in the middle of the night,
(27:48):
I don't want to be groggy wakingup.
So I never had, for me, it neverhurt my sleep.
It never hurt my waking up fromsleep.
So that helped.
So yeah, so improving thequality of sleep and improving
the quality of nutrition issomething I would have done a
little bit different.
That's a long, long answer toyour question.
(28:09):
Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_02 (28:10):
No, we like detailed stuff.
but on the note of, of sleeping,I know you mentioned like
physically a thousand miles iswith a, Oh, I can't even
remember how much you said.
We think you had 250 pounds ofgear.
I can't remember what the canoeweighed, but it's almost 18 feet
long.
There's you in the canoe.
I mean, that's, that's a lot tomove.
(28:32):
That's a lot to keep motoringaround.
Right.
I know what you said.
It took, it took a toll,especially in the early going on
your shoulders.
And then you ended up I want tosay you ended up with a swollen
hand at one point.
How does that...
Because those are things youwant to recover from by doing
things like sleeping, right?
I can't imagine, unless you're aback sleeper and you're totally
(28:54):
cool and that's all good, but ifyou roll around at all, that's
got to interrupt your sleep.
How much did that affect yoursleeping rhythm?
SPEAKER_01 (29:05):
Being sore all the time certainly didn't help,
especially in the back.
So one thing I've done onsubsequent trips is change my
pre-trip strength andconditioning a little bit.
So on that trip that's coveredin the book, the thousand mile
(29:27):
solo, that I did a lot ofpreparation for, but it wasn't,
I missed a certain area.
And that's the posterior chain,basically your spinal erectors
that hold you upright whenyou're sitting.
I was pretty strong in astanding position when my spine
is straight.
But when you're sitting in acanoe, especially a narrow canoe
(29:49):
where you've got a seat, you'rebasically sitting in an L
position all day long.
So now that's a differentposition from where I was
strong.
And so on subsequent trips, whatI've done a lot more of, if any
of your listeners are familiarwith things like Romanian
deadlifts or stiff-leggeddeadlifts, basically
strengthening the spinalerectors in a bent position.
(30:10):
And And really becoming morecomfortable with being stable in
that bent position that reallyhelped reduce the amount of pain
in my back.
So that was an interestingdiscovery.
And I do wonder if that would betransferable to other people or
if this was just a sort of auniqueness to my body and my set
(30:33):
of injuries and wear and tearover the years.
But it is difficult to sleepwhen you're in a lot of pain.
SPEAKER_00 (30:40):
Well, and you'd mentioned, too, that you'd had a
shoulder injury from jiu-jitsubefore the trip and then also an
electric skateboard.
You're a racing electricskateboard.
I would love to hear the storyof what was going on with the
electric skateboard.
SPEAKER_01 (30:54):
So, yeah, before I did that trip, I had all these
plans about how I would trainvery specifically, right?
I would train for paddling bypaddling.
But then, because I'mstubborn...
I buggered one shoulder by, Iwas training jiu-jitsu with a
friend of mine.
The friend of mine is smallerthan I am, older than I am, not
(31:18):
as experienced as I am.
So he caught me in some weirdarm lock, basically where your
arm is getting forced behind theback, but it wasn't done the
right way.
It's like, I'm not giving up tothis.
I'm not tapping out to this.
This is stupid.
It's not even the proper way toapply this lock.
So I got out.
I got out by taking a big breathand then exhaling and just
(31:41):
yanking my arm out a little bit.
And I got out and good for me.
But as soon as I cooled down andas soon as the adrenaline wore
off, I was like, oh, I'vereally, you know, I've hurt
something in there.
So I strained or sprainedsomething.
And soon I could barely liftthat hand above my shoulder.
I had that trip planned at thatpoint.
(32:03):
That trip was in the books.
It was coming.
I had received permission frommy wife-to-be to head off on
this.
I was starting to dehydratefood.
I was like, oh God, I hope thatthis shoulder heals.
Then I just bought one of thoseelectric skateboards and my kid
was on a bike.
I was on the skateboard.
We went out for some food andwe're coming back.
(32:25):
We started racing.
So, you know, it's a validquestion of what somebody in
their late 40s is doing racingon a skateboard.
But at some point, I don't knowif it wasn't calibrated
properly, if I wasn't ridingproperly.
The nose dipped, I planted, andI planted hard on the pavement
with my hand above my shoulderof my other arm.
(32:46):
So now both shoulders werefairly injured.
And I basically wasn't even ableto do a push-up.
Certainly not pull-ups,certainly not paddling.
And so the only thing I could doto condition for that trip was
cardio.
At least I'm going to take theheart and lungs out of the
(33:08):
equation.
The heart and lungs are going tobe good.
I don't know about the rest ofthe body.
So I went into that trip inexcellent cardiovascular
condition and terriblemusculoskeletal condition.
It turns out that the phrasethat motion is the lotion, that
if you do something like take...
(33:29):
20 or 30,000 paddle strokes aday with minimal resistance,
just get that body moving.
It does bring blood in to thedamaged areas and the shoulders
actually healed.
The rest of my body, not somuch.
The back especially.
So I'm figuring these thingsout.
(33:49):
I think there's real value.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm not a physiotherapist.
But in general, it really doesseem to be that if you have an
injured body part, that 80% ofthe time by strengthening it and
moving it, you make it better.
I totally recognize there couldbe situations where you make it
worse.
But most of the time,strengthening around an injury
(34:11):
or at least getting that injurymoving is the right thing to do.
Cool.
UNKNOWN (34:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:16):
On a different topic, you'd mentioned about
buying duct tape to repair themaps and not having to repair
the boat.
But did you run into any issueswith the boat where you did have
to do some last minute emergencyrepairs?
SPEAKER_01 (34:29):
No, not really.
I was paddling a C1.
So like it's a canoe kayakhybrid produced by Western
Canoeing out here in BritishColumbia.
And so as you pointed out, it'slong.
which means it goes reasonablyfast, but it's slow to turn.
I did get a few extra layers ofglass put in at the high wear
(34:55):
areas.
I'm figuring it better that it'sheavy, but durable, than lighter
and faster, but less durable,because you are inevitably
gonna, you're gonna crash thedamn thing.
You're going to bump it.
Especially, I come from, I havea fair background in play
boating.
So in play boating, it's totallynormal to, Hey, I want to break
(35:18):
from this rapid.
I'm just going to let the boatdrift sideways into this rock
and we'll pin ourselves on thisrock.
While I look downstream, right.
We'll do a rock scout.
It's not the way that you wouldhave paddled a birch bark canoe
back in the old days,
SPEAKER_02 (35:32):
but in a square, no big deal.
SPEAKER_01 (35:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So I was paddling it as if itwas some kind of exotic plastic.
So yeah, the boat held up reallywell.
It, The bottom of the hull didtake a beating.
I did have to get it repaired,and that was not cheap.
Just from repairing all thegouges and the scratches and the
(35:55):
wearing off of the gel coat.
But it held up well.
It's always tricky to know howmuch repair stuff to bring.
I mean, you could bring glassand resin and epoxy...
And I have.
But how much do you bring?
Do you bring enough to build awhole new boat?
(36:16):
Well...
Or do you just bring GorillaTape?
You know, that's usually what Ido.
And that stuff's pretty solid.
You can only repair a certainamount of...
You know, there's definitely anupper limit to how much you can
repair.
I also bring a little bit ofepoxy.
A little bit of two-part epoxy.
But not a lot.
(36:38):
I also bring a little bit of...
Well...
on other trips i've used packboats those are folding aluminum
frame boats they're pretty toughbut i'll bring a slightly
different repair kit for thoseso it's it's the size and weight
versus do i have everythingcovered it's always a trade-off
(36:59):
right you're trying to have uhand on any longer trip you're
always going to be spendingusually by after the first week
count on spending an hour a daydoing repairs of clothing of
your bags of your stove of yourbarrel arm of your maps right
that's one i never thought iwould have to repair that took
(37:20):
more than an hour a day so yeah
SPEAKER_02 (37:26):
and sorry you mentioned the barrel arm which
is something i'd never heard ofbefore tell me about that
because that was pretty cool
SPEAKER_01 (37:32):
yeah so years and years ago I had the brilliant
idea that I would use a fishingreel.
And one of those, they call themrape alarms.
It's like a little thing, maybehalf the size of a phone with a
tab that you'd pull out andmakes a shrieking noise.
So I tried to, and I knew thaton that trip, I would be ending
up close to Churchill, Manitoba,which again, got a lot of bears.
(37:55):
And so I would rig this fishingline on this reel around my
tent, then hook it up to thislittle alarm device and And it
worked okay, but it just took solong to set up that in the end,
I used it only in the very worstof the bear country.
(38:15):
Since that time, somebody elsehad the same idea and they built
it and they built, it's called apack alarm, P-A-K alarm.
And I don't get any financialcompensation for saying this,
but the things about the sizeof, I don't know, a half a slice
of a grapefruit.
Okay.
And it's less than a hundredbucks.
and it contains an integral reelon a monofilament line.
(38:37):
And you rig the monofilamentline to go around your tent.
I bring those, they have thoselittle hooks and Velcro devices
you can attach to branches.
What I prefer to do is bringlike shower hooks that you would
use to hang a shower curtainonto the rod.
So they're bigger.
And then I bring some string soI can tie some parachute cords.
(39:00):
So I can tie that around a bush.
there's photos on my Instagramand on my essential wilderness
channel if you dig hard enoughyou'll find what it looks like
and it's then it's got a leverthat gets triggered it's it's
really a pretty cool piece ofkit and I can vouch for it
(39:21):
because I've not had it set offby a bear but I've had it set
off by a caribou I've had it setoff by a bird and and i myself
have set it off what i meant tosay is tested it yes on about
one-third of all mornings when iget out of the tent because i'm
blurry-eyed and i just need topee and then i stumble into the
(39:42):
line i set it off like yeah uhsay a four-letter word and then
go look for the stupid alarm toturn it off so it it does work
pretty well if i was going to bedoing a trip And that line is
pretty tough.
But again, these things, youknow, the line snaps.
Now you've got to tie it backtogether.
(40:03):
At some point, the knob brokeoff because after 30 days of
use, going into a pack, gettingbanged around, the knob broke
off.
So I had to find a way to repairthat.
There's also, if you poke aroundon the Essential Wilderness
site, you can see the repair kitI took basically fits into a
large Ziploc bag.
So that was the compromise thatI made.
(40:25):
About the same size as themedical kit I took.
It was a large freezer Ziplocbag.
Lots of drugs, lots of drugs.
SPEAKER_02 (40:33):
Lots of drugs.
That's how I win my trips.
Lots of drugs.
Okay, well, we know that youneed to get out the door and
head off to the OutdoorAdventure Show in Vancouver.
So we're going to wrap this up.
Very cool book.
Very cool trip.
(40:54):
So much planning and yet like somuch effort to cover all the
dot, all the I's, cover all theT's, still miss shit.
Like it still happens, right?
Every time.
So try to cover them all as bestas you can and away you go.
SPEAKER_01 (41:08):
The planning really does make a difference.
I mean, planning is useful in acouple of ways.
I mean, obviously there's thatphrase that proper planning and
preparation prevent piss poorperformance or, you know, Fail
to plan, plan to fail.
Right.
So there is truth to that.
You can't plan for everything,but if you don't have a plan,
(41:31):
then things are going to goreally severely sideways.
Yep.
Because if nothing else,planning is an exercise in
thinking about worst casescenarios.
And your plan for worst casescenario one, you might be able
to use part of that plan to dealwith worst case scenario two
that you didn't think of.
Number two, planning, I enjoyit.
(41:52):
It gives me a way to think aboutthe trip for, well, in some
case, months or even years inadvance and kind of vicariously
appreciate it forwards in time,if that makes any sense.
I get to think about the routeand think about the trip for
long before I ever actually doit.
So planning really does help.
(42:14):
I use Excel.
I've got multiple spreadsheetsand then tabs within
spreadsheets and lists of lists.
And I've been hit in the head alot in the context of my
jiu-jitsu career.
So I can't keep it all in myhead.
I definitely have to write itdown.
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (42:35):
Well,
SPEAKER_00 (42:35):
it was a pleasure talking to Stefan Kesting.
Please do check out his book,Perseverance.
Is it out now or it's out soon?
SPEAKER_02 (42:43):
When we air this, it'll be out
SPEAKER_00 (42:45):
now?
We got a pre-coffee.
We feel
SPEAKER_02 (42:47):
special.
It's out
SPEAKER_01 (42:48):
March 4th.
Please
SPEAKER_00 (42:54):
do check it out.
I felt like the book was, Imean, not only just the
adventure, but it was also anexercise in mindset of like just
the tips and things that yousprinkled throughout the whole
book, I thought was just so goodto help people just kind of
grasp like doing hard things,but you have to do it with the
right mindset.
SPEAKER_02 (43:11):
Exactly.
And I do want to just say like,like Paul Mason gives you a
shout, Frank Wolf, April Henry,Adam Schultz, like all of them
going, hey, yeah, this is a coolbook.
This is good writing.
This is good stuff.
Go read this.
Okay.
I mean, I'd be like, yeah, I'mall of that in a bag of chips.
SPEAKER_01 (43:34):
I'm very grateful to the people who read the earlier
versions and said nice thingsabout it.
Their checks are all in themail.
Exactly.
And I'm super grateful to youguys.
So thank you for the show andthank you for having me on your
show.
SPEAKER_00 (43:48):
No problem.
Please do check out Stefan onYouTube, TikTok, Instagram,
Threads, Blue Sky, and check outhis podcast, The Strenuous Life
with Stefan Kesting.
And please do check us out.
We're on all the things andemail us if you would like.
We are at hi atsupergoodcamping.com.
That's hi atsupergoodcamping.com.
We'll talk to you again soon.
(44:09):
Bye.
Bye.
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