Transcript
Speaker: Race aliens!
Speaker: Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Reskillians, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.
Speaker: I'm gratefully recording in Jarrah country in southern Australia, where the elder trees are covered in sprays of white umbels, dragonflies are zigzagging along the creek, and the air is filled with the buzzing of bees and the drone of ride-on lawnmowers.
Speaker: Sorry to leave you episode-less for a couple of weeks there. I've been too sick to face the edit suite and listening to lots of podcasts in bed to distract myself from the hazy fug of unwellness. You know when you're not quite sure what time of day it is, whether your vocal cords still work, or how in the hell you're going to muster the cellular energy to heave yourself from beneath the blankets to relieve your distended bladder?
Speaker: Anyway, I thought maybe someone out there who's also feeling a bit shit might need the companionable presence of a new Riskilliance episode, and I don't want to hold out on you, especially with a conversation like this one up my sleeve.
Speaker: So all of this glorious spring weather is giving me flashbacks to last summer and a freak storm that caught us and our garden completely off guard. It was late afternoon and Jord and I were just about to leave for a housewarming party, but when we looked outside and saw the sky, we decided to give it five because out of nowhere, a pack of blue-black clouds had slunk in from the south, probably prowling past the house, low and swift and bristling.
Speaker: They were some of the most sinister clouds I'd ever seen, and set against a sick shade of green, the penny dropped that this might not be the low-key chance of showers that my iPhone had forecast.
Speaker: The first few droplets struck the tin roof like gunshots, and then it was on. Sideways rain and a screaming southerly smashed into the tiny house, luckily the side without windows, but it was deafening, all of that wind and water hurling itself against our corrugated iron walls, and I reflexively covered my head like the world was caving in.
Speaker: Through the window, we watched in horror as our upstanding crops of maize and zucchini and shallots were bent to the ground, flayed by the rain which was now turning to hail, shredding everything in its path.
Speaker: I was fretting so hard about the chooks, who last I'd seen were sheltering beneath the boughs of a tree, which was now being mashed against the fence by the hurricane-level winds. The roof on the chicken coop gaped and yawned, threatening to blow right off, and then the door to the coop actually did blow right off its hinges, landing with a thwack on the concrete, surely turning my beloved birds to schnitzel.
Speaker: It definitely wasn't safe to do so, but we couldn't stand it any longer. We sprinted across the yard, in the hail, to check on the chooks, who we found huddled in a pile of wet feathers in the corner of the coop, surrounded by swaths of ice.
Speaker: One egg sat in the nesting box, cracked by a piece of rogue hail. Everyone was alive, but the garden. Oh my god, the garden! At the height of summer growth, our veggies now lay in tatters. Spring onions blasted into ribbons, pockmarked pumpkins, raised maize, decapitated tomatoes, and beleaguered beetroot.
Speaker: The fruit trees stood bare and bruised, Tiny birds lay dead on the grass. Jord's parents' old white caravan sported more dings and craters than the moon.
Speaker: Later, walking around the town, so many trees were down and live power lines writhed hot and venomous across the road. Windows missing, sheds upended, and a few neighbours drifting like flotsam through the streets, taking in the damage.
Speaker: And thinking back on this dramatic and hyper-localised weather event that appeared seemingly out of nowhere, i have to wonder, were there really no signs, or did I just miss them?
Speaker: Did the shape of the morning clouds portend afternoon disaster? Did the birds broadcast a red alert hours in advance? Did the skin on the back of my neck prickle with a change in air pressure?
Speaker: And did I just brush it off as a sensory anomaly? Extreme weather is no joke, and things can turn hairy and scary fast. These days we rely on our emergency apps to ping us when shit's about to hit the fan, and until then, it's BAU.
Speaker: But what if these systems fail, aren't accurate, or we just ignore them because nobody else seems overly concerned? On a meta level, what will it take to register and react to the slow emergency, the chronic emergency that's unfolding all around us, as members of our extended animal family go extinct, as the rivers dry up, as humans in faraway lands suffer unfathomable miseries?
Speaker: How do we conjure the clarity and courage to say, hey, something isn't right? When you know we look around and Barry over there is still type, type, typing away at his desk, your boss is bugging you about the quarterly sales report and the sky outside the office is a luminous shade of blue, so clear and benign that surely nothing bad could happen on such a beautiful day.
Speaker: Here to help us understand the psychology of emergencies and disasters, and how you can be that person who reads nature's signs to better anticipate what's on the horizon, is Chris Gilmore.
Speaker: Chris has over 20 years experience in emergency planning and prep, is a deep nature connection practitioner, homesteader, forager, permaculturalist and so many other things besides.
Speaker: I absolutely love how Chris weaves ancestral skills and nature attunement into the disaster conversation. It's so not gung-ho survival energy and so very life-affirming.
Speaker: I had a real fun time recording this interview and I'm grateful to Chris for sharing about these topics in an uplifting rather than crushingly solemn way. You know who else I'm grateful for? The patrons of this show! You guys, it's hard to describe how much it means to me to have random humans from around the world value these conversations enough to pledge a few bucks per month to the show because it's it's just me over here. No producers, sponsors, ad revenue, or silent investors.
Speaker: Your donations make Reskillians more personally sustainable for me, even when I'm sick as a penguin who ate a few too many rank sardines and need to take a couple of weeks off. Thank you to all the patrons of this podcast and particularly new patrons Maya, Carmen, Arana, Heather and Rachel. You can find us hanging out at patreon.com forward slash reeskilliance.
Speaker: Oh gosh, I have one more announcement in this monumental intro that I hope is building great anticipation for the interview. So the return to the village festival slash permaculture convergence is happening in April next year. in South East Queensland, where there will be an actual reskillience hub filled with workshops and conversations and confidence building nested within a week-long village co-creation, which is centred around permaculture principles and future possibilities.
Speaker: If you're keen to go along to the festival, maybe think about snaffling your tickets sooner rather than later because the early bird price is valid till the end of October, which isn't too far away, and we all deserve a discount.
Speaker: I don't get anything for promoting this, by the way, i just think it's going to be a really epic event and I would love to see some of you there. I'll link the deets in the show notes and let's get into it. Let's hear about building our human capacity through nature connection to face whatever comes with Chris Gilmore.
Speaker: Enjoy.
Speaker: Absolutely. Well, I will start by just saying a huge welcome, Chris. I'm so glad that you can join us on Risk Alliance today. Where are you calling in from? ah so I'm from an area for folks that know Ontario, Canada, or maybe the the big city called Toronto. I'm about three hours north of there, up in kind of a wilderness region. So we're in the land of rolling lakes and hills, ah the the territory of the Anishinaabe people.
Speaker: um Yeah, yeah, real beautiful place to live in the world. A lot of people come here for vacation, so I feel blessed to live there every day. Oh yeah, it looks absolutely lush. And I'm also extremely stoked that you can help me diversify the accent quota on Ruskillians because we haven't had too many people rep the Northern hemisphere. And yeah, one thing, one of the many things I love um about engaging with your work is hearing of all the storybook beings that surround you there on the land, like mink and fishes and maple trees and cardinals and streams brimming with trout. Like it's all so fantastical to this heathen Aussie down under. So I'm wondering if you can paint a bit of a picture for us of the place that you call home.
Speaker: Oh yeah, lovely. Lovely. It's actually really interesting. So if you were to think about going back in time, like literally millions of years, the piece of land I lived on actually used to be an ancient mountain range, but you would never know that today.
Speaker: ah Today, it's these like really ancient worn down hills. um So it's a rolling landscape and there's tons of lakes and rivers kind of mixed up in it. We're on a formation they actually call the Granite Shield.
Speaker: which basically speaks to the bedrock that we're on. So granite is the stone. It's an acidic type of stone that is volcanic. So igneous in nature. um And, you know, not huge amount of diversity, actually, as far as trans plants and trees because of that. You know, if you go a couple hours south of me, you know, towards Toronto, you drop into the what they call the Great Lakes St. Lawrence floodplain, ah which is alkaline soil because it literally used to sit underwater from after the last ice age.
Speaker: So ah from Toronto, you're literally driving up a hill out of the bottom of that ancient lake up to the beach of this old ancient mountain range. So that's what I sit on there. And, you know, it's home to wolves and moose and deer and turkey and fishers and minks, all kinds of beautiful wild animals. Of course, lots of people. And, and you know, there's there's cities and developments and all that kind of stuff happening as well. But it's, ah you know, all the roads are windy.
Speaker: um because they're moving around the rock formations. ah There's water, you know, no shortage of places to go for a swim. The water is relatively clean, I think, compared to a lot of places in the world. So ah it it really is ah a beautiful, beautiful landscape and and a rich cultural history, too. You know, um people have been living here for, well, you know, many, many thousands, tens of thousands of years, you know, so that the history of this land is is quite rich as well.
Speaker: m That is such a beautifully ecological description of where you live. So thank you for sharing a little sliver with us. ah So Chris, I want to get straight into um one of your core focuses, which is education around disaster and emergency preparedness. I'm so keen to hear your thoughts on all things prepping with a little holistic nature connected spin today. So I thought we'd start with something that I've been reflecting on and I feel like a lot of listeners might relate to as well. And it's it's this shaky feeling that I have underneath of being so utterly dependent on modern systems and technology and comfort that if I suddenly found myself in a, and you know, a bit of an unexpected or an emergency situation, even just in the forest without a map or a GPS, I'd be totally cooked. I'd be lost. I feel a bit like an animal that's been kept in a zoo and has lost all of my wildness and can't be re-released. So I'm wondering if you can speak to this shaky feeling that I'm describing and that I feel like sits underneath a lot of our lives. And if you've ever felt that.
Speaker: Yeah, you know what? It's so interesting that you asked this right now because I have a ah super interesting story from the other day that I think speaks to it so deeply. But I was actually, so there was a really special event in our community last week or over the last two weeks. An Indigenous Algonquin elder was actually building a birch bark canoe in one of our local parks. And I got to be part of it. I was volunteering a bunch over the two weeks, which was such a beautiful and rich experience in and of itself.
Speaker: But the story that's interesting is that we had a ah take shelter tornado advisory on the last day when we were launching the birch bark canoe out into the water. And, you know, to speak to this kind of shaky feeling and you talked about kind of this like reliance on technology we have, there there was such an interesting kind of phenomenon that played out here, you know, and witnessing this as somebody that's, you know, formally studied emergency and disaster preparedness and management.
Speaker: So we're in the park. I'm going to just kind of paint the scene again. So imagine we're in this little, so this is ah a town amongst those rolling hills that I described a minute ago. You know, i think maybe like 40,000 people or something like that. So it's a decent sized town. And we're on the side of a river and there's, you know, I think maybe 100, 150 people inside of a park. And we've had this beautiful morning of like speeches and kind of ceremony and drumming and all of this stuff. And the weather's kind of been mixed. You know, it rains a little bit and then the sun comes out a little bit.
Speaker: And they they've just put the canoe, this birch bark canoe made out of the bark of a birch bark tree into the water. And all of a sudden, a bunch of people's phones start going off with this alert notice. So here in Canada, we have an emergency alert system.
Speaker: So all of this is going on. And I'm literally holding the side of this birch bark canoe, helping an elderly man get into the canoe. um He gets in and I look at my phone. And here's the thing that there's a tornado warning, which is not particularly common where I live.
Speaker: And I get up and I look around and everybody's just heard the alert. A bunch of people are looking at their phones and nobody's doing anything, including the police officers. there's I think there's seven or eight police officers that are there.
Speaker: Right. So I'm looking around and nobody's reacting. And I realize there's this dependency on technology that's happening right now. Well, it's twofold. It's really weird.
Speaker: So our phone is telling us that there's something off. When I look at the sky, you can see that the clouds are building off in the distance. And then a bunch of people are looking at their radar on the phone, like the weather radar, and it shows the system going just north of us.
Speaker: And I think because everyone's looking around and they're like, oh, well, no one else is worried and the police aren't worried. It must not be a big deal. And when I look at the radar on my phone, it shows this is going north of us. It must not be a big deal.
Speaker: So I'm kind of watching all of this. I'm not an organizer. I'm just participating in it. Right. and And nobody really does anything. So things kind of keep going on. And i'm I'm kind of thinking about it. I'm tracking the weather right now. And then all of a sudden, another alert comes on. It's literally a take shelter alert. It's like everybody take shelter now, you know, incoming tornado.
Speaker: And again, this goes off and now you can see people are still kind of a little bit panicked, but all of the conversation switches to, oh, well, it looks like it's going north to us. We should be okay. And even the OPP are, you know, the police officers, they're like, oh, well, the the main base hasn't told us to react yet.
Speaker: We should be okay. So I go up to the organizer and I'm like, hey, I think you need to make the call like right now. And she kind of freezes and scrambles. It was the first person that broke this psychological feedback loop that was happening where everyone's just looking around like, oh, well, no one else is reacting. I guess it's OK, even though my phone is saying something's off.
Speaker: And then looking for the confirmation bias that, well, if I look at the radar, it shows it's north of us. It's probably not going to hit us. We're probably OK. No one else is reacting. We're, you know, we'll just carry on as usual.
Speaker: um So witnessing the psychology of all that and the dependency on the technology and what stood out to me was like the lack of relationship with the sky and the weather. You know, people not actually tuning in, tuning into their phone instead of tuning into their own body radar, instead of actually tuning into the environment and thinking about the situation that we're in.
Speaker: So if I now look at it from that lens, it's like, okay, so there's a tornado or not a tornado. There's the potential for a tornado to form right now, right? And a radar shows it going just north of us. You can see the cloud stacking.
Speaker: How fast can a tornado change direction? You know, how quickly can that storm shift from going just north of us to being right on top of us to just south of us? But people look at the radar as though the radar is like the predict, not that it's a prediction. They look at the the weather radar app as though like, oh, well, my phone tells me it's going this way. So it's going to go that way.
Speaker: Well, your phone doesn't know which way the tornado is going to go. It doesn't know when it's going to develop. It's reading a whole bunch of little sensors that are giving it like data and it's making a prediction, but they're not realizing it's a prediction that their phone has given them. It's not the absolute truth. The truth hasn't been determined yet, right?
Speaker: if you actually think about weather, we're talking about a very volatile system here that moves fast. And if it does get on top of you, suddenly the time to actually react and do something is incredibly low.
Speaker: So one, people aren't connecting to their connection to the land. They're relying on technology. um And then two, they're not, they don't have a ah framework to use inside of their own brain of how to actually weigh risk versus reward. And as an emergency management, like the reward of evacuating, or sorry, the risk of evacuating compared to the risk of this tornado actually hitting us, it's a complete no-brainer.
Speaker: Like, we we canoe out of the water, everybody get to shelter now. Like, complete no-brainer. But I think people just A lot of people don't have a process for navigating risk because we're often...
Speaker: we're not put in the places where we need to. You know, we kind of assume other people are taking care of the risk and we we rely on technology or authorities to tell us when something's wrong. And in this situation, you know, the authorities were actually falling into the same trap that all the people were.
Speaker: So long story short, I'm kind of going on and on here. 20 minutes later, we got engulfed in hail. You know, this is ah a summer day, you know, it's, or sorry, a fall day. You know, it's beautiful, sunny weather. People are in t-shirts and 20 minutes later, it's hailing.
Speaker: ah There were elderly folks with canes. There were women with two kids by themselves hanging off them. Man, if we had ignored that and that hail came on us, suddenly you could have had a real scenario. Fortunately, the tornado didn't touch down.
Speaker: But um I thought that was a really interesting thing around just that that reliance on technology that we have. And then to bring this back to your original question, well, the shaky feeling that we all have.
Speaker: What I'm tracking right now and noticing is I think most people are realizing how disconnected we've become from nature and even our own tuition. A lot of people are starting to question, is the infrastructure that's been keeping us safe as reliable and as safe as we thought it? Or are some cracks showing? And can we even fully trust the authorities all the time or what we're hearing on the news?
Speaker: So I think there's actually this chronic low-level stress that almost everybody is feeling right now in their bodies of like knowing is something up. And honestly, I feel that probably leads to people distracting themselves more or you know addictions and phones and all like more time on your phone, almost the opposite of the solution and the opposite of what's new needed because we don't actually know what to do about it. And maybe we can't even find the words to name what the problem is. you know we We don't necessarily...
Speaker: identified as, oh, like we've lost this connection to the land. We've lost the ability to tap into our own intuition. We've lost our framework for making decisions under stress in complex scenarios where we don't have all the information that we need.
Speaker: um We're not, i would imagine most people aren't able to articulate that in a super clear way, but they feel it in their body. And that feeling, I think, is that shakiness that a lot of people are feeling. Like the cracks in the system are showing.
Speaker: We don't necessarily know what to do about it. That's a complex question. And if we're already strained and maxed out, then... we look around and say, well, no one else is reacting. So I guess we just distract ourselves and keep going on about it.
Speaker: But there's, I'll just argue that I think that that is creating chronic low level stress that is actually having a negative impact across our entire population right now. So sorry, that's a pretty long answer to your first question there. But I hope I hope that speaks to what you're you're asking.
Speaker: Absolutely. Yeah, that is such a fascinating story and study and to be part of that is also very intense. And one thing that strikes me is the, you know, the fact that not no one wants to be the the party pooper, the person who is raining on the birch bark canoe parade, because that was a monumentous occasion. And you can kind of argue that most things we're doing feel really important to us at the time, whether that's, I've got to go to work and earn money for the day. And I can't, I can't take the day off because I feel like maybe there's a change in the weather and driving to work isn't going to be safe. And There's this point that we we come to making that decision where the risk of being seen to be catastrophizing a situation or calling people away from a really important moment is actually in our minds a bigger risk than
Speaker: than death and impending peril, like impending peril and death. It's kind of this funny equation that we run. So I wonder what does it take, in your opinion, Chris, to be a person who says this doesn't feel right and to kind of rally people to to take action? Because obviously there's a big parallel here with we're living in ah in a chronic ongoing emergency in the state of the world.
Speaker: the The knowledge that things are so wrong, but the business as usual that's playing out all around us that tells tells us on so many levels that everything is fine and just keep trucking. So it's like how do we be those people who break the spell,
Speaker: o Well, you know, it's funny. The first thing that comes to mind to me is like, not necessarily in all occasions, because I definitely know there's probably communities and circles where if you say something, you actually do get ostracized or people say you're crazy, you know, but I think in other scenarios, that social stigma might actually also be in our head as well. And the risk of saying something is actually, and and of being judged by it is actually maybe more in our head than actually real.
Speaker: Because in this scenario, like as soon as everyone was acting as though it was okay, as soon as I said something, everybody just shifted on a dime and everyone was like, oh yeah, of course we we should take shelter.
Speaker: Like it actually happened really quick. there There was probably a handful of people there that thought I was being too extreme. um I'm sure when the hail hit 20 minutes later, I would hope that some of them changed their mind about it.
Speaker: But I think ah we sometimes put pressure on ourselves as though the rest of the world is pressuring us when we're actually just afraid of, that judgment and we might not actually get that judgment. So you know one thing is just to kind of remember that that you know sometimes maybe that stigma and that pressure is actually coming from our own mind and not actually the world around us. I think that was the case in that event.
Speaker: You know a really simple model literally is like risk versus reward right? um So you know what is the so if I say this and I'm wrong what is the risk? Well we've just spent two hours outside having this beautiful experience if i ah If I say something and I'm wrong, the risk is that it ends a little bit early and a couple people think I jumped the gun, right?
Speaker: The risk if I'm right and I don't say anything is people die. You know, the that the extreme end of that risk. So when I go into like risk versus reward in in a purely objective way, I take my fears out of it.
Speaker: I take my emotions out of it. And I literally just think risk versus reward objectively. Like there was no question in my mind that evacuation was the right decision. Because the the worst case scenario is literally that people die.
Speaker: And ah there's been a tornado calling on the form. And when I look at the sky, I can see the dark clouds forming, right? So to me, it was actually a risk versus reward. no brainer there. And I think sometimes people get so caught up in their emotions and their fears and all of these different little rabbit holes that um that we actually maybe make a decision like that. And not not all the time. I think sometimes maybe we make these decisions actually more complex than they are when we really just need like really simple risk versus reward in this scenario right now.
Speaker: So to that scenario specifically, I think that would that would maybe be a piece of advice there. And I'm sure that would apply off of off of other scenarios. Maybe the second layer I could add into that is Of course, i am more confident in making that because I've been educating myself around um how to make decisions under stress. um And when I don't have all the information, like what is a framework or a process you can use?
Speaker: And number two, you know, very intentionally trying to cultivate my relationship with my senses, with the land, with the elements. I was just listening to one of your other podcasts before coming on here and you were talking about going to your sit spot.
Speaker: You know, literally just going out in the woods and sitting and observing nature. And I would argue that that is like a fundamental skill for building human capacity that humans have practiced throughout the ages. And in a very short period of time, a lot of people don't actually do that anymore. And thus, they don't actually trust their own spidey senses. You know, they don't actually really understand how the wind works or the tornadoes or what is the sign or how fast could this change? Like they they honestly don't know.
Speaker: um You can definitely make a decision like that more confidently when you actually spend time on the land engaging with the elements. You know, when you have a relationship with wind and rain and fire and, you know, how water moves across the landscape, how fire moves across the landscape.
Speaker: um If you have a relationship with the bears and the predators of the landscape, the more of ah a relationship you have with all of those elements, you know, the more confidence you're going to have if you put it are put it in a place where you need to make a decision around it.
Speaker: um So I would kind of add those two layers on top of it. Yeah, I love that you fuse the disaster preparedness and deep nature connection. That's something that's very inspiring to me, very fresh, and I think a beautiful spin on a more conventional kind of emergency prepping style vibe or story. And so i wonder if you can speak a little bit more to that fusion of deep nature connection and disaster preparedness.
Speaker: And maybe even some examples of how you've used your senses and your relationship with those elemental forces on the land to anticipate things that are coming up. It's so much more than just checking an app on your phone.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Beautiful. And you know, that's really one of my biggest passions in the world right now. um I'm just going backtrack just for a second then I'll come back to that. But um so my one of my first passions, you know, is a young, late teenager and young adult um outside of growing food. That's one of them. But it was actually, you know, time on the land and nature connection. um I love, you know, tracking, like going out and following animal tracks across the landscape. I love listening to birds and following birds and trying to figure out what they're communicating. So I have this deep passion for nature.
Speaker: It was later in life, kind of like in my mid adulthood, that I actually went to school to study emergency and disaster management. Because I started kind of seeing the direction that the world was going. I was already teaching and practicing wilderness survival.
Speaker: um And I started thinking about, you know, what is it? What principles can I take from wilderness survival and apply to some of the biggest predicaments of our time? You know, the the changing world, the changing climate that we're in. um And it kind of led me to go study emergency and disaster management formally.
Speaker: um I started working with a consulting firm. You know, I've worked with some governments and hospitals, hydro companies, small businesses, farms, events. I've got to kind of dance around that field.
Speaker: ah But in that time, what I realized is how, you know, there's all these amazing frameworks and tools we've designed in modern emergency management that make a lot of sense and are really powerful.
Speaker: But humans in general, as it as as yeah as a generalization, I would say here in the West, where I'm from at least, most humans don't have that deep connection with the land anymore and that deep knowledge that all of our ancestors would have once had and relied upon for survival.
Speaker: And I realized in modern emergency disaster management, often the people preparing for and planning for disasters still lacked like basic foundational and fundamental naturalist knowledge.
Speaker: And if the nature of a lot of disasters come from weather and come from nature, but we don't actually understand nature deeply like our ancestors did, like there's a huge mist that's happening there.
Speaker: So I was actually observing this in modern emergency management, like the mist between like all these best tactical systems and all this gear and the systems and the organization and this gap between that. And it's like, yeah, but this is all nested inside of an ecosystem.
Speaker: It's nested inside of elements, wind, fire, water. and And the people that are creating the systems and the gear don't necessarily have a deep relationship and connection to the elements and the ecosystem themselves. So that's kind of become my my passion right now is trying to bridge those two worlds in in ah a holistic way, you know, where we're designing our systems, our lives to work with nature and to know that we're nested within ecology and we're nested within these elements, right? This isn't, I guess, a direct benefit to my life, though it could be, and it definitely would have been to my ancestors. But even just tuning into the alarm calls of the New Holland Honey Eaters, which we've got
Speaker: in droves around he there here, these little nectivorous birds with these long curvy beaks and they are very vocal and they're just like beep, beep, beep, beep all the time. And as soon as I hear that, I'll whip my head around and I'll see like ah a um raptor bombing it, you know, through the trees, coming through, scattering the birds. And it's like...
Speaker: I just know to look, either to look up or to look down. Maybe there's a snake and this kind of, it feels like you're a bit of a ninja when you start listening. The birds are like the ecological broadcasters, right? They're kind of, they're that they're literally tweeting the news.
Speaker: And um even that makes me feel so much more connected as a human. But yeah, I'd love i'd love to pass over to you and bird language and how it connects with what you're talking about. yeah Thank you so much because I was holding that when I started that story and then and then I lost my thread there. So to now bring that story back there, merging those two worlds.
Speaker: um I mean, we can look at that example of the tornado that I told you just a second ago. ah One of the funny things, you know, so again, picture you're sitting in this park, the canoe is going in the water and everybody's phones are going off, right? With this warning. But everybody's looking up at the sky and they're like, oh, it's sunny right now.
Speaker: It is actually really calm right now. But what's interesting, it was actually too calm. Like all morning long, we had had gusts of wind and then little bits of rain and then the sun would come out.
Speaker: And then there'd be like a couple more gusts and then some clouds would come over. And there was this like undulating pattern. Picking up on patterns in nature is part of how we predict what's coming next. And the pattern of that day was this undulating pattern with wind.
Speaker: What happened in that moment is it actually was sunny and it was beautiful, but it was incredibly still. There was actually no wind in that moment. It was it seemed like a beautiful, beautiful day. So people are getting this alert and there's almost like this disconnection between like, well, how could there possibly be ah be a tornado? It's so still right now. But if you put that tornado in context to the weather of the day, or sorry, that potential for a tornado to be created, it shouldn't have just gone super still.
Speaker: Like that was actually a pre-indicator that it was about to get worse, right? So people are now being like, well, should I trust my phone? Should I trust the radar? Should I trust the police? What about trusting the pattern that nature has been showing us that day and the pattern had just broke and that's telling us that something is about to happen. I mean, that's what bird language is. And, you know, I've had fun with that, you know, when mentoring people in the woods before. I remember working with a group one day year, similar kind of thing. We were hanging out, working some skills out in the forest and the birds actually seemed quite chaotic to me.
Speaker: Like there was a lot more activity than there should have been for this type of day. And I picked up on and I called the whole crew in and I said, hey, what are you folks, you guys, anyone paying attention to the birds? And everyone's like, oh, I hadn't really thought about it. I'm like listen for a second.
Speaker: you know, people listen and they're like, oh yeah, i hear lots of birds. they're They're kind of moving around doing their thing. i'm like, okay, go back to your stuff. um You know, like an hour later, ah the birds go completely quiet, like dead quiet.
Speaker: And the wind is completely stopped. Same scenario, beautifully sunny. So I call the group back in. i'm like, hey, folks, come on back in for a second. What are the birds doing now? And everyone stops and listens. Oh, I don't hear any birds right now. What's going on?
Speaker: It's a beautiful sunny day. i don't know. Are they just napping middle afternoon? I don't know. OK, great. Go back to doing what you're doing. Literally 20 minutes later, the trees are blowing over sideways. The sky is dark. The thunder is coming in the distance. You know, those birds were telling us for four hours that the weather was about to change.
Speaker: um That's the power of starting to re tune into this stuff again. um So that's when it comes to like our own awareness and, and you know, what allows us. And then actually i should say to now pair that with the radar on your phone and the alert system.
Speaker: Now we have a very amazing system to work from, you know, cause the radar is actually a really great tool. The alert system is a great tool. Um, Being able to now read the weather and read the the birds as well. Wow. Now we're talking about, you know, some real resilience and adaptability and some real capacity to work with there. But if any one of them, if you only have the radar in the phone, there's a liability.
Speaker: If you only have the nature connection, I wouldn't call it a liability. But man, it's also helpful to have that that radar as well. Right. To make those minute decisions there. ah To make a little bridge, though. So that's personal awareness and some you know direct examples where tuning into that stuff can actually be helpful.
Speaker: From a design perspective and a safety perspective, thinking about the the realities of our changing world, having that same kind of knowledge that maybe we have about the weather or how the birds behave under certain situations, what if we apply that to trees now?
Speaker: You know, not all trees are created equal when it comes to wind or water or ice, right? And so many people, you know, landscape their yard or, you know, maybe someone even works as an urban planner for a city and you're literally designing the landscape of the city, the ecology of the city. You're choosing what trees to plant more.
Speaker: But if you don't actually understand how different trees actually hold up under different climatic conditions, you could actually be creating a liability right there, you know? um I would guess like...
Speaker: you know, 70% of the power outages in Ontario, and I'm kind of making that number up right now, it really is a guess, but like I would guess that like 70% of the power outages in Ontario are caused by a handful of species that if we just didn't let them grow on power lines in the first place, we would have way less power outages, you know, um because some trees are way more likely to have branches break or blow over in a storm, you know. um Some trees actually don't burn as fast when it comes to wildfires, you know, and can actually slow wildfires where other trees speed them up.
Speaker: So as human beings, as we develop our relationship with the natural world and our understanding of ecology and our relationships with trees, we can actually think about the design of landscapes in a way that naturally mitigate against some of the threats and disasters that we we might actually face.
Speaker: um And I would argue that this is probably been part of how humans think and move through the world for a very long time. And in a very short period of time, a lot of people are are kind of oblivious to that. I mean, to no fault of their own. We, you know, we were all brought up in that world and that design.
Speaker: But i'm I'm really passionate about, re you know, kind of bringing that kind of, yeah, bringing that back into our awareness. m Yeah, such great points. And I just spent a few weeks with some exceptional friends of mine who are very intrepid, very skilled. And when they go camping, for example, they just dig for water. Like they're looking for water rather than, you know, they take a bit to be safe, but it's like they're extremely self-reliant people. And it makes me...
Speaker: equal parts inspired and just awestruck, but also circling back to our original discussion about that overwhelm and paralysis, I feel a little bit paralyzed because I'm, you know, I'm a person approaching 40, maybe half of my life, um if I'm lucky, is is already behind me. And I feel like there is just such a vast body of knowledge that I need to key into to start building this confidence that that you're talking about, that you're encouraging. What do you say, Chris, to people like me who are so on board with what you're saying but also might feel like we've been deprived of of a childhood? I mean, i've I've had a pretty great childhood, no no shade on my mum or my upbringing, but like just just facing what everything we don't know, everything we have to remember and relearn, Like, what's your what's your pep talk for folks like me?
Speaker: Yeah, awesome. well Well, the first one that I would probably remind you of is just like how much experience you've already acquired in 40 years. So the whole realm that I'm talking about might seem new to you and almost intimidating, but don't let that make you forget about what you've already developed. I'm sure you've had to make hard decisions under stress and you've learned a lot, whether it went well or not already many times.
Speaker: I'm sure there's times when you've been put in tough situations and you had to dig deep and find something inside of yourself to overcome that situation and get out the other side. So to remember that that's actually already in you and that you actually have a ton of life experience, um that you're not actually starting from scratch. You know, maybe you're starting from scratch, learning the birds names and what it means, but you've been listening to birds your whole life, you know, um and you you have a ton of life experience to offer already. So that would probably be the first thing I'd say.
Speaker: ah The second thing i think I would say is it's you know it's really easy to almost get ourselves in a state of panic and paralysis when we start to think like, oh, well, you know the when we think about all the stressors the world has right now, and and that's very real. you know I don't want to sugarcoat that.
Speaker: I believe pretty strongly the next 10 to 20 years are going to look very different than the past 10 to 20 and that we're going to face some pretty stressful things as as a civilization globally. A lot of places in the world are actually already living that. you know um I actually feel very privileged to live where I do in the world and that I would say life has been relatively easy here for a pretty decent size of the population compared to other parts of the world.
Speaker: I suspect a lot of these parts of the world that have lived you know on the easier side of things relatively are going to see some big disruptions and challenges on so many different fronts in the coming years.
Speaker: So that's real. That can be intimidating and it can make you feel like you're you're so far behind. right At the same time, There's what you already have in life experience to build off of. There's also knowing that and an aspect of this, i actually believe, is intuitive and inside of us.
Speaker: Like the human baseline, if we we tend to think about like you know life over like decades or maybe a lifetime or two, as opposed to like looking at the human story over hundreds and thousands of years.
Speaker: And if you zoom out over hundreds and thousands of years, like humans are instinctively survivors, um as are all the other species out there, right? Like living in uncertain times is actually the norm.
Speaker: You could probably argue are you in a lot of places in the world, we've actually gone through like a relatively unhistoric period of stability. um At least where I live in Canada and in North America, you could probably argue the last two generations were some of the most stable times in the last couple thousands of years.
Speaker: which actually allowed us to kind of become disconnected and allowed us to become kind of complacent and allowed us to pursue all these other amazing things, you know, in the arts and sciences and stuff that maybe we wouldn't have been able to do if we were under harder stresses.
Speaker: But all of that is to say is that I really do believe that like being adaptable, being a, having that survivor instinct, figuring stuff out, actually doing more than what you're capable of is actually what we've been designed to do and what we've been doing since the beginning of the time.
Speaker: So I think if you, if you can actually connect into that, with the experience you already have, you might actually be further ahead than you realize. And you might actually be able to progress at a way faster rate knowing that if you take some of the pressure off.
Speaker: So I think those two points come to mind for me. And then the third one I also just like to say to folks is just like, so don't underestimate that slow, consistent things really do compound over time. Those slow, consistent efforts, you know, I remember 20 years ago when I first started thinking about preparedness, yeah you know, and and, you know, being, you know, in my 20s at the time, um my mid 20s and being I was a little paranoid back then. I literally thought the world was going to be over by now. When I was in my 20s, I was like, there's no way this can go on more than five years. like The whole world's falling apart. like I thought that in my early 20s. Here we go, like 25 years later. It's like, oh, no, everything's still kind of kicking, you know?
Speaker: And if I had just been like, oh, my goodness, we're all screwed. The world's coming to an end in the next five years and fall into a depression about that, I would probably be in a pretty rough space right now in life. Because five years later, if the world doesn't fall up apart, it's like, oh, shoot, I'm screwed now.
Speaker: Because it's actually, go I'm not screwed because it's falling apart. I'm screwed because it kept going. um Fortunately, I didn't succumb to the depression and anxiety. I did kind of motivate me, though, to start taking action. You know, I remember making my first emergency bag for my car.
Speaker: I remember being like, you know, I want to get a little more serious about growing food. You know, i want to know my neighbors better, you know, and starting to just like slowly pick away at all these little things, building capacities, building relationships, building knowledge. And, you know, so any given year, it felt like I probably didn't do enough You look back over the last two decades, it's like, wow, I've done an incredible amount and I'm actually so much further ahead.
Speaker: So the the third thing I'll layer on top of that is just like, don't underestimate those little small steps taken consistently, even with breaks and falling off the horse over time, actually adding up exponentially over time.
Speaker: ah Top quality pep talk. Thank you. I feel ah much better having heard that. And here's another kind of comment, not question. I'm just feeling and this is something that comes up for me a lot, actually, as like a philosophical, I guess, a belief that bubbles to the surface that regardless of the outcome, regardless of what we of what befalls us,
Speaker: the opportunity to remember and have a reunion and like a reclamation with these human skills, the joy and the fun and the delight of of of just um of the contrast of, you know, where we've been and where we can go, where we've been anaesthetised and where we can awaken. Like there's something really special about the opportunity to feel incompetent and capable, you know, like to actually have that journey, to to enjoy the fruits of that labor. And something something about that feels, in ah maybe a spiritual way, one of the greatest gifts of this time. And I know that it's so different depending on where you're at in life and the struggles that you face. But just for me personally, i come back to this feeling of of real gratitude that I get to be part of this extreme contrast and this reunion with human life ways if I choose to take that up. And I do choose to take that up and I feel like, you know, people like yourself really remind me of what's possible and that the spirit and the aliveness that can come through when we lean in to these opportunities and challenges. And I wonder if you've got some deeper layer of of belief or spirituality around these things too, Chris?
Speaker: um I don't know if I'd say I have something deeper. I mean, I'd say I'm very much on board with you. um You know, ah comfort and safety can also create complacency, you know, um and in this world, you know, where You know, you could argue we' we're dealing with some mental health crises right now as well, um you know, and crises of distraction, you know, crises of addictions to phones and scrolling and living through other people's lives.
Speaker: um You know, a little bit of stress and a little bit of friction to shake us out of our are just seductive comfort. um with those things can actually make us feel really alive um and actually you know when we start to connect to that that longer story you know over the thousands of years of that that human journey and what it means to be alive um on this planet in and and to navigate risk to me that actually becomes kind of inspiring you know it it literally kind of lights a bit of a fire under me and don't get me wrong i'm not being naive uh because
Speaker: I can be inspired and still have something happen that's devastating and even create trauma, you know. But I guess my argument is, you know, we don't necessarily have a choice in the matter of where the world is going.
Speaker: I think there really is something to like, you know, when we re-embrace these, yeah, our instincts, when we re-embrace our connection with the land, when we actually re-accept that risk has actually been part of the human story since the beginning of the time, um It can really make us feel alive and and you know motivate us to do things that are deeply meaningful um with our lives. you know Yeah, and and I feel like you know doing things that are purposeful and meaningful in challenging times has innate value in itself for the human psyche and and the collective psyche.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, cool. So I want to circle back to this this thread of the conversation around nature's cues and nature's news and how that can inform our actions, how it can help us make decisions. For example, birds in your immediate vicinity being part of your understanding of what's unfolding in the weather and what actions you should take. But what does it mean to you, Chris, when the scale is global? Say you're literally, you know, looking at your newsfeed and seeing
Speaker: doom you know doom and gloom stories about AI's gone rogue and Russian lab leaks and nuclear disaster. Like what is informing your perspective on these giant global possible catastrophes?
Speaker: How can you anchor those in your everyday reality? How do you pass them in terms of their legitimacy? What actions you should take? Navigating the micro and the macro, this hyper local entangled experience that you're having on the land and then also keeping the context of the world that we live in, which is hyper-connected and, you know, we're all part of this um unfolding story. Like how do you make decisions then about the bigger stuff? What's a danger to you and what you're going to do about it? Yeah, that, that,
Speaker: Yeah, that that's a really great question. You know, and I think that comes to what I opened with, you know, is talking about, you know, just humans needing to develop a system for making decisions under complex situations where you don't have all the information. Right.
Speaker: um Which is the reality of a lot of these situations. you know we're getting inundated with all of these news and these events and we're hearing and a million different opinions and we don't know what to trust and what is true. um So what what do we actually do with that? You know, how do we function in that? What's our what's our tool set for navigating that, I think, is what you're speaking to.
Speaker: um And funny enough, you know, I think, again, reclaiming these ancient ways can actually support the development of that part of our brain in really, really healthy ways. I'm going to I'm going to tell a quick story that talks about tracking wildlife. And then let's apply it to the scare we've been recently going through around, you know, this suspected lab death over in Russia.
Speaker: You know, and and is this the plague and is it being covered up? Because I think there's a direct connection between tracking wildlife in our own backyards and how it can help us actually track a scenario like that.
Speaker: Oh, I'm so here for this story. Hey, awesome. Awesome. I thought you might be into this one. And again, i I just love this stuff. So I'm so glad you're asking these questions. I don't get to nerd out with this in this way that often. So this is this is phenomenal for me too.
Speaker: So tracking, if folks aren't familiar with what I mean by tracking, tracking, i mean, a track you could look at as like a footprint from an animal left in the ground. But to me, that's the tip of the iceberg. What tracking means to me is you're literally reading the story of life.
Speaker: um So you might look at a string of footprints left by an animal or a person on the ground. And you're basically being like, OK, that's not just, oh, who made it like that animal is actually alive.
Speaker: And as it moves across the landscape, its story is being registered in those footprints. So a tracker is learning to read the story like, oh, there was a cat, you know, and the cat just slowed down and it looked over its left shoulder and then it took off running because a car was coming down the road from off in the distance. You know, like a tracker is piecing together that story.
Speaker: But it's not just footprints. The tracker is also listening to the bird language. It's paying attention to the weather. It's maybe looking at a building that's made by humans and tracking, you know, the craftsmanship of it. It's literally tracking is reading the story of life. OK, so thats that's my definition of tracking to start off the story.
Speaker: What I was taught by my mentor in tracking, a guy named Dan Gordoki, a really fascinating individual that's been one of my big influences in the world of tracking. He's always trying, really pushing back that, you know, when we start tracking,
Speaker: We need to turn off are the search images and the stories that we've created in our brains and just take in objective data. And so many of us struggle to do this in life. you know it's It's actually a very natural thing. We're given so much information, we can't take it all in.
Speaker: So what we tend to do is take little samples of a bunch of things and be like, okay, I've seen this before, I've seen this before, and we put it into a story that may or may not be true. um you know People do this every single day. I do it every single day.
Speaker: As a tracker, we're trying to do the opposite of that. So if I'm looking at a footprint, I don't want to look down and say, oh, it's roundish with some toes and some claws. It's probably a dog. That's actually really poor tracking.
Speaker: It might be a dog. But if I just look at it and just say, oh, well, I've seen a bunch of dogs before. That looks like a dog. It's a dog. It's really easy for me to miss the clue that tells me it's not a dog. So what being a good tracker is, is like when I get down and look at a footprint, I don't say, um is this a dog?
Speaker: I actually say, well, what's right in front of me? OK, there's one really big divot and then there's four smaller divots that are on the right side of it. And of those four smaller divots, there's four tiny little divots on the outside of them.
Speaker: And then I say, OK, well, my hypothesis right now is that that big divot could be a heel pad and the four other divots could be a toe. And then the tiny little divots could be four nails.
Speaker: So that's my hypothesis right now. But I'm not saying those are toes and those are nails. I'm saying I have a hypothesis that they could be toes and they could be nails. This is keeping it really, really clean and objective, right?
Speaker: And here's here's so here's two examples of the trap. And then I'm going to take this to the the Russian example right now. I'm looking down at this and I say, OK, well, it's got a heel pad. It's got four toes. It's got four claws. Now I can say it's a dog, right?
Speaker: Because dogs have four toes. They have a big heel pad and their claws register. Cats also have a fairly big heel pad and four toes and their claws don't usually register.
Speaker: So I could pretty quickly be like, OK, cool. Four toes, pad, claws. It's a dog. But what about that one time that a cat slips a little bit and they actually extend their claws and they make it?
Speaker: And what if I just happened to look at that one print from the cat where their claws were actually out there, but I called it a dog because it just fit my search image in my head for a dog, right?
Speaker: So I did this once. you So I had a huge, like literally a life-changing epiphany when I was teaching a tracking course. This was about... 16, 17 years ago that this happened. I was actually teaching a workshop on wildlife tracking and there was a track. So imagine we're walking through the woods and I'm following a really cool animal, this thing called a fisher that I'm really excited about this fisher.
Speaker: And this person is like, Hey, Chris, I just found this other track over here. And I look over from a distance and it looks just like a rabbit track. Like I've seen a million rabbit tracks. I'm not that excited about tracking the rabbit. I want to follow the fisher. So I look over, i'm like,
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it's a rabbit track. And then I go on about the Fisher and he's like, hey, Chris, I thought you told me that most of the time rabbits only register four toes on their one foot. And i was like, oh, shoot. So I walk over there. I get down super, super close and I look at the track and it's actually an otter.
Speaker: An otter does not look anything like a rabbit. Way longer body, way bigger feet. Like there's nothing remotely close. And there was just this one time I've never seen an otter do this since then that it got its body so compressed. And it just like it made a track that from a distance look perfectly like a rabbit track from a distance.
Speaker: And because I had a search image of a rabbit track, I just looked and said, oh, that's a rabbit. Right. And then the student calls me out on it. When I actually look at it objectively, my student, of course, is being objective because I just taught them to be it. Meanwhile, I'm not doing that as the teacher.
Speaker: I was wrong. This was a life changing moment for me because I realized how often in life do I ah form an opinion or a story based on my past experience and my past search images, but I don't actually look at it fully objectively first.
Speaker: And I realized like I actually do that every single day. Like you almost have to do that to be able to navigate the amount of information coming at us. But it's also a huge liability when we're navigating risk.
Speaker: So um I think about that all the time now. It's just like, it's a natural human phenomenon that when things get scary or our reality gets shooken up, like we want a story to give it meaning and to give us an explanation for it. Like that's actually just natural human psychology, right?
Speaker: um Like you think about like COVID-19, times and I don't want to get into the politics or go down this rabbit hole at all right now, but you think about COVID and like all the different camps that formed, you know, and I remember just sitting back and watching all of the different camps, you know, whether you're pro vaccine, anti vaccine, this is all a hoax. This is killing everybody but anywhere where you're on the spectrum. It doesn't matter.
Speaker: It was so fascinating to me easy to see how so many people just jumped into a camp with complete conviction about the camp that they were in and realizing, oh, you know, when your world feels like it's being challenged,
Speaker: You know, whether it's being challenged because people are dying or it's being challenged because you can't leave your house. um You need it's is' it natural to want to grab onto a narrative or a story that explains it and gives it meaning.
Speaker: And that's actually very natural. It's not innately bad, but stories can also and narratives can also create liabilities for us. Because suddenly we're looking for things to support it and we're potentially missing that one tiny little piece, that little claw that says, oh, it's not a fox. It's actually the one time the cat put its claws out.
Speaker: Or that's not a rabbit. It's the one time the otter made a track that didn't look like an otter track. It actually grouped like an otter, right? So if you're following me on that kind of thread, let's look at Russia. um So um just last week or two weeks ago, you know, we had this this story break on the news about a lab over in Russia and a lab worker that had died.
Speaker: And the suspicion is that, you know, it could have been the plague and maybe a test tube broke and maybe this person died of the plague. And maybe the Russian government is actually covering up how bad this is because there's massive quarantines going on. We know that was true.
Speaker: Within 24 hours of that hitting the news, i actually went on X, or formally Twitter, um because I do find Twitter interesting just for like tracking human psychology around stuff.
Speaker: So I went on X, and you could see the two camps had formed already. like One camp was just absolutely like, this is a government cover-up. This is rampant. like This is going to spread so fast. We're all screwed. like like There was one camp that was so sure already that this was the plague. It had been genetically modified.
Speaker: And we have a lot to worry about. The other side of the spectrum was people being like, oh, well, hey, you dummies. Like when we had the plague or when the plague killed, you know, whatever percentage of the human population we had, we didn't have antibiotics. We have nothing to worry about. We have antibiotics now.
Speaker: Within 24 hours, you have these two extreme camps with incredible conviction in their answer, right? Like either, nope, we don't have nothing to worry about because of antibiotics or we're all screwed. This is being covered up.
Speaker: we didn't actually have enough information to jump to either of those conclusions. I don't care who you are, where you lived in the world. ah You ah did not have that information unless you were in the lab when it happened.
Speaker: So all of that is a narrative, a story. So I try to learn from my tracking experience there and say, okay, well, you know what I've got two ends of ah a spectrum here from like, everything's fine. And she died of something unrelated to this is a bioengineered weapon coming out.
Speaker: And I don't actually have access to the information I need to know which one is right. So I tend to try to hedge my bets and say, okay, what risk reward. The same thing we talked about with that tornado, you know, what's the risk of doing nothing?
Speaker: What's the risk of taking action? And I didn't feel like the risk to take extreme action in that moment was warranted. But I also thought that the risk of ignoring it and being wrong was could also have gone very, very wrong. So then it's like, okay, well, what metrics could I actually work with here? Like, what can I keep tracking that can give me the next piece of information? So I tried to just stay open to like being anywhere on the spectrum and what piece of information might tell me or pull me one direction or the other.
Speaker: So then it's like, okay, well, if it was a plague, it could be a Bioneer engineered plague, or it could be one of the old strains of plague. We don't know which one, right? So we have antibiotics now. Cool. do Does that mean we have nothing to worry about?
Speaker: Then I think about scale. It's like, okay, well, how fast does it take the plague to actually spread? And then, you know, and it it spreads quite quickly. It can spread quite quickly, especially in an urban environment.
Speaker: Then it's like, well, how long does it take between when somebody gets the plague to when they can potentially have severe symptoms? It can be as little as 48 hours. now it's like, OK, yes, we have antibiotics, but do we actually have the capacity to get them out at scale fast enough if this is spreading and get ahead of it?
Speaker: Oh, suddenly, maybe it's not as simple as just antibiotics. We have nothing to worry about, right? The other end of the spectrum, though, is like we still don't actually know was this actually the plague or not? Like that actually hasn't been released. As far as I know, I don't even know if it even has been officially released or not yet.
Speaker: So then it's like, well, what other indicators can we start tracking that I should be more worried or less worried? um And then based on the rate of spread of the worst case scenario, I kind of figured, you know, within like five to 10 days, it would be really hard to completely cover this up if it's starting to spread at any scale that I'd have to be worried about on the other side of the world.
Speaker: So I just kind of kept searching the various alternate, the the mainstream media and the alternate media. ah Are there anything coming out that that is suggesting that it's spreading at a faster rate than it's being reported at?
Speaker: So I'm still open, but at at the moment, I haven't seen anything to me that's suggesting that this incident is spreading at a faster rate. Now, does it bring up questions about What are they doing in that lab in the first place? Absolutely, yes.
Speaker: Does it bring up questions about why did they do such a big quarantine? um Absolutely, yes. you know i am concerned about all those things. But here's the thing. I find if I start going down the rabbit hole of like, well, why did this happen? What's going on? What did they do?
Speaker: That's when I start falling into my narrative as opposed to being like, You know what? What do I want to achieve here? Well, what I want to achieve is I want to be safe and I want my family to be safe and I want my community to safe.
Speaker: I don't actually need to understand the narrative or even have a narrative to keep my family safe. I need to think what are the metrics and variables that tell me that this is getting worse or getting better? How do I start tracking those in the system?
Speaker: So that's the kind of mindset that I try to hold when I'm um when I'm navigating things like that. Like. and And it's not that I don't have narratives and opinions. I absolutely do. I try to be incredibly harsh with myself and on myself when I realize that I'm letting my narrative dictate the way that I'm taking in the information.
Speaker: Gosh, this is so helpful, Chris. ah I love your tracking analogy and the lessons that you've gleaned from not leaping to conclusions, which I know I'm so thoroughly guilty of. And just before we move on to you know a slightly different topic, I'd love to know, because you ah and I know you and your wife are herbal um mavens, herbalists and wild crafters.
Speaker: Did you have a few herbs up your sleeve that you would you would lean into if there was something that showed like antibiotics antibiotic resistance or the potential, like a plague-like potential? Because I was like, oh, which herbs am I going to have in my toolkit for something of this magnitude?
Speaker: Yeah, I hadn't, I mean, with this one specifically, i hadn't gotten into that yet. So there's a bunch that come to mind. I mean, when I think about herbs, so there's two different, they're not different approaches.
Speaker: they're they're They're both tools that we use when we work with herbalism. One of them is like, wait if you actually have a bacteria or a virus, is like is there a herb that actually takes on the virus and actually you know kills it or you know that like literally kills the bacteria or or sets it at bay?
Speaker: So that's the one classification or grouping. The second grouping is like the ones that just support the different systems in our body. Right. Because a huge part of herbalism isn't like, oh, I'm taking this herb to kill the bad thing.
Speaker: It's actually like I'm taking the herbs that support the system being impacted. Right. So when all of the I'm i'm not going to speak on the plague one because I don't actually understand the biology of it enough.
Speaker: to to comment on it with any accuracy with herbs. But what I can say is, you know, when when the whole talk of this respiratory infection, which turned, got named COVID later on, first started going around, it wasn't really even in North America yet or known to be in North America yet. We were hearing all of these rumors.
Speaker: You know, that was actually one of the first things we started doing is because we don't actually know what this is. So when I don't know what it is, it's hard to find a herb that's going to potentially attack it or kill it. But what I can ask is, like well, what systems does this appear to be affecting?
Speaker: And it's like, oh, it seems to be causing people to have an overreactive immune response. And it seems to be impacting their lungs and their nervous system. So then I go to, OK, well, what are the herbs that I can use to support, um,
Speaker: ah lung health or breaking up congestion. What herbs can support my nervous system? So some of the herbs, for example, that we started getting ready before COVID even made it to North America, which is so interesting because by the time it was here, you couldn't get any of those herbs.
Speaker: Like they all sold out from the large distributors, but we were buying them before it was even here. And then when it went, as soon as it got here, they all disappeared off the shelf and then they weren't available the same way that masks disappeared off the shelves in the early phases of it. Right.
Speaker: Which is why it's so important to to, you know, to be ahead of the curve if you can in in tracking these things. So anyways, for COVID particularly, when I started realizing the neurological symptoms that people were having and the fact that people, it was lasting for a long time in weird kind of ways. I started thinking about some of the mushrooms um that are really supportive, like brain function. You know, we hearing all about like this brain, this lingering brain fog.
Speaker: So I was thinking about like heresium and lion's mane. I was thinking about reishi, which is a really potent adaptogen mushroom. and also supports lung health and just general vitality. So cordyceps, reishi, and lion's mane were three of the herbs where I was like, I don't actually need to know what this virus is.
Speaker: i just know that it's impacting the systems. And these herbs are all deeply supportive to those systems, the nervous system and your um your immune system, right? And then we started looking at, okay, well, it's it's definitely impacting people's lungs in a potent way. So we started thinking about you know elderberry um as an antiviral, but also an immune tonic. And then we started thinking about, you know, those potent herbs that um can help break up congestion in the lungs themselves.
Speaker: And we made a ah ah nice tea bomb or sorry, tea blend that was like basically a really strong lung support tea blend ah before we even really knew what it was. And that was based on just thinking about the systems. Once we actually know what the pathogen is, then we can say, well, is there a herb that actually would...
Speaker: attack this a pathogen or not. And sometimes there are and sometimes there's not. you know you know Herbs often don't work that way. The same like you know antibiotics you know are that you buy from a pharmacy are designed to be systemic, get into your blood, travel well through your system.
Speaker: Very few herbs are actually systemic in that same way. like You often need to get the herb to the tissue that needs to be impacted. So they don't often work in the same like that magic bullet kind of way.
Speaker: that antibiotics can. So you really need to know the specific of what the ailment is or like what is the infection, you know? And then is there an herb that will actually impact that infection? And then can I actually get it to it? That's the big one with herbalism.
Speaker: You know, you can treating um wound infections with herbs is is you know something you can have a fair bit of success because it's easy. Like I can literally put the herb on the the wound itself. But if you have a blood infection, you know, that's a lot harder to treat with herbs because it's harder to get them to go systemic, right? Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, I could just fling all manner of questions at you all day. This is such great information, but I am aware that we need to bring it home, bring it full circle. And i think because, you know, I just feel so lucky to be able to have these insights coming from someone who is not only really practically minded around potential problems that we might be facing, but also so informed by the wild world with this gorgeous kind of spirit of nature connection that's that's woven through everything that you've been discussing. So I'd love to ask you, Chris, as we wrap up, what kind of things can the listeners
Speaker: be thinking about to build resilience for themselves, in their household, maybe even their community, but really bringing it to that individual household level. And I know that every context is so unique and so different, but broadly, what would you say to people who just want to feel more prepared, like they will have a firm footing in an unexpected situation?
Speaker: So let's let's start off just talking. We've talked about mind a lot in this, you know, maybe indirectly. um But, you know, recognizing the role that our nervous system actually plays in how we'll respond under stress and disasters. So I think there's two pieces there that that I could comment on really quickly. One of them is like actually just being real, that things are actually changing and almost kind of preparing ourselves ahead of time. Like, hey, things going to change. Don't be too used to things staying the way they are. Like actually just being real about that.
Speaker: Which that then brings up a little bit of fear and anxiety naturally for people. But I think if we're actually real about that now, it's actually a lot easier to not get stuck in our narrative and then not be ahead of the curve because we are stuck in our narrative or we froze in the time.
Speaker: So I think I think it is good to actually be real about it. And then as I say that, it's like, what is your tool set for regulating your nervous system? Like, don't underestimate that, you know, because if you can have all the gear and the systems and the plans in place, um if mentally you you crumble under stress, that's really tough.
Speaker: So knowing yourself, you know, what are the tools you can start to cultivate for inside of yourself to actually calm your nervous system under stress? You know, is that breathing techniques? You know, is it remembering that like, OK, I tend to act like this when I get stressed and I need to train myself to catch that?
Speaker: walk away for a minute, take my time and then come back, you know, whatever that tool set. We could do a whole talk just on the that that tool set of like, you know, and that's something i've I've dove into a lot in my work, you know, because psychology is such an important important part of it. So I'm just gonna leave it there. That's just kind of planting a seed.
Speaker: ah The second one I'll get into, though, I think is actually um I can give us some little bit more tangible examples. So once we realize that mindset is important, community is going to be probably the next most important thing that I think about, you know, beyond gear, beyond systems, knowing your neighbors, knowing who you can count on, who you can call, who you maybe want to go help out, but actually building those relationships under good times.
Speaker: And, it you know, sometimes people get really hard on themselves or really like, oh, man, like, you know, if I start talking about disasters with all my neighbors, then they're going to think I'm crazy. I'm like, you don't actually need to necessarily talk about disasters with your neighbors to create a resilient community.
Speaker: It's really helpful if your neighbors want to talk about it openly, because then you can dive into the specifics and weeds like that is really valuable. But I'll tell you, you know, where I live, my neighbors aren't thinking about this kind of stuff like I am.
Speaker: They're not really interested in having that conversation. And they might think I'm kind of crazy if I talked about it the way that I'm talking about with you today, you know. So what do I do is I make an effort to know all my neighbors, you know, ah the lady across the street, her husband died, you know, I've made it really clear to her, like I'll go over and her fix her steps for her, you know, and we'll have a tea. You know, she brings me over some applesauce afterwards.
Speaker: we'll We'll throw community barbecues and we don't talk about disasters or preparedness. We talk about and I talk about stuff I don't even care about at some of these barbecues because it's like, you know, i don't know. I'm very particular about the kinds of conversations I like. I don't actually go out and socialize a whole lot, you know.
Speaker: um But I make a point to have community gatherings with the neighbors. And I actually don't care about whether it's conversation. I'm genuinely engaged because for me, it's not about the conversation. It's actually about building the relationships with the people right around me.
Speaker: So we can talk about sports or whatever the neighbors want to talk about because I just want to build trust, likability, genuine, real connections with those people. And when we build that, if stuff happens, I have no doubt that any one of our neighbors could call on any other neighbor in an emergency.
Speaker: You know, and we're actually all very different people. We have different political beliefs, you know, all those kinds of things. If we actually talk politics at our gatherings, we probably wouldn't all get along as well as we do. You know, it's actually avoiding those kinds of things and actually just focusing on being in real relationship with each other. That makes me feel like, yeah, I can count on my neighbors, even though they're very different people than me.
Speaker: So I tell that story just to say, like, don't let the fact that your neighbors think different than than you be a barrier to actually just feeling like you can trust each other and build a relationship, you know. So community is the next big one.
Speaker: And then ill I'll leave you with a really interesting framework that I use in my professional consulting practice around emergency management. um This is what we do with like municipalities. We do this with events. We do this with businesses, organizations.
Speaker: But you can apply it on a household level. And I think this is where so if you start thinking about all the different disasters that could happen, you know, is it a is it a tornado? Is it a pandemic? Is it a cyber attack that knocks out the grid?
Speaker: Like we can go down so many rabbit holes and that gets so overwhelming and so scary fast. what do How do we approach that when there's so many possibilities of where things could go? ah There's a really simple system that I use that I learned from modern emergency management. And it's like, what is the critical infrastructure that we actually rely on day to day?
Speaker: So for a government, you know, Governments actually have identified critical infrastructure. The country of Canada has identified 10 pieces of critical infrastructure. It's like, you know, the transportation networks, the communication networks, our health infrastructure and hospitals, you know, our energy grid.
Speaker: Like these are all considered national level critical infrastructure. You can do a critical and and for the entire country, we've actually just identified 10 areas that are the critical infrastructure.
Speaker: You know, it's not a list of 120 things. We could come up with 120 disasters easily. But there's only 10 when we really think about that essential critical infrastructure. You can come up with that same list for your house or your community. you know For a house, it's like, OK, well, I live in an environment that gets really cold in the wintertime, and I rely on electricity. So if I don't have electricity in the wintertime, that's a real hazard. So critical energy is definitely part of my critical infrastructure.
Speaker: Maybe it's like, oh, I have eyeglasses, and I'm almost blind without them. So if my eyeglasses get broken, I suddenly am in trouble. So eyeglasses are part of my critical infrastructure. I need to drink every day. Water is part of my critical infrastructure.
Speaker: So if we actually just identify those things that are absolutely critical, and that list probably isn't going to be that long. And then we think about, okay, well, is there any way that I can make that piece of infrastructure more resilient?
Speaker: And can I have a backup plan if it gets taken away? Then suddenly I'm working on, you know, 10 or 15 problems instead of 150 different potential hazards. And the cool thing in emergency management, we call this an all hazards approach because it's like, well, electricity is helpful, whether I'm in a pandemic, a tornado, like, you know, name and an emergency and electricity is probably a useful thing to have in it.
Speaker: So if I can think about hardening my electricity or coming up with a backup plan around how I do other critical functions without electricity, then suddenly I'm actually preparing for all of the disasters at the same time.
Speaker: And I don't have to go down a rabbit hole around any given one of them. And, you know, over time, you can start to go down the rabbit holes and take off some of the more specific preparations. But when you're starting out, think about what is critical for you.
Speaker: How do you make it more resilient? And do you have a basic plan for if it gets taken away on how you do the other critical things without it? and And I find that actually a way less overwhelming and and very strategic way to start to approach it your your personal preparedness planning.
Speaker: Fantastic. Yeah, so practical and very approachable. Where can people tap into more of your practical, approachable and inspiring teachings and work? Yeah, awesome. Probably my newsletter would be one of the best places for people going to check out. um So I write a pretty regular newsletter where i actually share about all this kind of stuff. You know, I wrote an article kind of debriefing the the situation with the canoe build. I actually debriefed a neighbor's barbecue hit in one of my newsletters and talking about how we're building resilience through barbecues.
Speaker: But then I also share deep teachings around nature connection. No, it's not all about preparedness. You know, we talk about tracking and birds and plants and growing food and all this stuff. So my website is Chris, C-H-R-I-S, outdoors.ca.
Speaker: I'm in Canada, so not.com,.ca. So Chris Outdoors.ca. Jump on the newsletter there. That's a great way to to tap in on the education. I do sometimes post on YouTube and it's Chris Outdoors ON for Ontario. So Chris Outdoors ON on YouTube. I just did a whole series this winter on kind of resilient gardening. How do we think about growing food in a changing climate and and being practical with that?
Speaker: And I do actually have ah a free class. So one of my passions and one thing I think from a food security perspective that makes us really resilient and medicine is learning to grow and forage mushrooms.
Speaker: I think mushrooms are just such a gift to humanity and to the world um as a species. I mentioned actually in my COVID ah preparations and my flu preparations how like three of my top things that I work with um medicinally were medicinal mushrooms. So I have a free intro talk that I did on growing, ah foraging and working with edible and medicinal mushrooms. So if you go to chrisoutdoors.ca slash easy mushrooms, chrisoutdoors.ca slash easy mushrooms, you can get access to that free yeah that free class on starting to work with mushrooms in resiliency, medicine and food.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. Mushrooms are such a gift, but it is good to know the basics or at least, you know, even more than the basics because they do like to take human sacrifices. So, yeah, I important i will definitely be checking that out. And I've never had so much fun talking about disasters and emergencies and all things preparatory. So thank you so much, Chris, for just bringing this um such spirit of fun and joy and education to the airwaves. So I really appreciate having you on Reskillians.
Speaker: Oh yeah, it was really a pleasure. And and I also, you know, I just echo that back. I think the work that you're doing in the world and the the holistic approach that you're taking to, you know, talking about some of the the real hard pressing conversations of our time. I feel like that's good medicine as well. And I'm super thankful for the work you're doing and thankful to the listeners for actually showing up and and doing something about this as well for being that in their community.
Speaker: So. remember Remember how resilient you already are and how much you're building off of Don't just think about what you're lacking. susan Amazing. Thanks, Chris.
Speaker: That was Chris Gilmore, who you'll find as Chris Outdoors on the interwebs, and I've connected you in the show notes. I'd love to know what you thought about today's episode, so feel free to leave a comment on Spotify. Send me an email, katie at katie.com.au, and that's with a C, C-A-T-I-E, or shower Chris in likes and shares. It's really helpful to know if these conversations are resonating.
Speaker: Otherwise, have a delicious spring or fall fortnight, and thank you so much for tuning in.
