Episode 175 with Steven Rinella
How to Poop in the Woods and More!
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Ginny Yurich Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours outside and back today so pleased to tell you is Steven Rinella. Thank you for being here.
Steven Rinella Hey, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So last time we talked about your book, Outdoor Kids in the Inside World, and we have taken so many of those concepts into our life, I think a lot of times you read a book. You know, it's really cool in the moment and you move on and you forget. But just literally the other day, one of my oldest kids said, I'm going to wear it dry. You know, she was all wet. I think you ought to change. So they now does wear it dry. I'm like, that has really stuck. And one of the things also that's really stuck is your concept about hanging out with cool people when you get older. You know, they talk about kids doing hard things and they say, well, why do I have to do hard things? So it's really changed my perspective, even on just some smaller things which can kind of rain. Squall the other day and everyone is all upset about it. And I was like, Well, you're going to have this story to talk about when you're older. So, so much of that book has stuck with our family. People are constantly talking about it. So I really appreciated that conversation. Love that book. And you have a new one that's out. Catch a crayfish. I mean, these are phenomenally beautiful.
Steven Rinella Oh, thank you.
Ginny Yurich The unsung heroes of the cover art. I mean, this is a gorgeous book.
Steven Rinella Well, he's the if you go to the title page, he's song.
Ginny Yurich He is done. Okay. Is it someone you know or someone that they knew or.
Steven Rinella Is he is he not? Let's see. Is his song on the cover? Oh, no, you're right. Is not song on the cover? That's a little song on the title page. No, we found him. We are Max to mess you. And we were working with an illustrator, and he took a full time job right when we got started.
Ginny Yurich How dare he? Well, I know.
Steven Rinella I know, I know. So he said, Man, you know, we just kind of got it where he was into it. We're going to do it. And he took a full time job instead of freelancing. So that was just horrible, you know, And and then we reached out to sort of like a illustrators I can't remember, like an association of illustrators or something, you know, And as we were jumping around trying to find who would do this, and it was one of the people we had reached out to in search of leads, one of being just a great collaborator.
Ginny Yurich Who did the illustrations throughout the book.
Steven Rinella Yeah, same person.
Ginny Yurich They're so good.
Steven Rinella Oh, no, they're good. And, you know, yeah, the amount of corrections that he tolerated without ever once losing his mind, being like, what's the difference?
Ginny Yurich Do it no matter where. It's phenomenal. I mean, it is an absolute beautiful book. So catch a crayfish, count the stars, fun projects, skills and adventures for outdoor kids. A really cool follow up to the last one because this one is written to the kid.
Steven Rinella Yeah. And then we actually I keep using we I work with over writing partner. I work with Brody Henderson and then we have a little at at our company Meat eater. We have a little we have a publishing team, so we work on multiple projects simultaneously. And as I was in I, as I was writing Outdoor Kids and an Inside World, we kept talking about we kept talking about making this sort of appendix. You know, they would go into it with a lot of this information. And that conversation gradually evolved into that just producing a book with all of these projects and lessons that even people who didn't have didn't hold the knowledge. Right. But had a desire to use these very practical skills and things that illustrate bigger picture issues about nature. And, you know, in some cases the cosmos, right, that they would have a guide to do it. So in writing a book that was aimed squarely at parents, it became evident that we should do one that's meant for kids. And we viewed it as a sort of companion text, though you wouldn't know that really from from handling them. You might not put that together. Right. But they stand quite independently.
Ginny Yurich You know what they do. But our core thing to have is a duo in your home, that's for sure. And the kids got to feel good about that. You pick up a book that says you're probably the kind of kid who dreams of having a lot of adventures in the outdoors, and so was I. That's a really enticing way to start a book. And what a gift for these kids who are picking it up and getting to read through. And like you said, I mean, some of this stuff is no longer generational, where maybe before you were learning how to catch a crayfish from the neighborhood kid in the creek down the street, and that's not happening anymore. So you're laying out all of these different things. What are the topics that you talk about is that kids are sometimes getting harassed when they're outside, that the grown ups are saying, Why are you doing that? You shouldn't do that.
Steven Rinella Oh, yeah.
Ginny Yurich Have you seen it with your own kids?
Steven Rinella Oh, you know what I'd like to say all the time, but it's really not all the time. But routinely I can think of instances where I can think of multiple instances where well-meaning busybodies interrupted, like something my kids are doing. Because they help. They held a rule in their head that wasn't elastic or adaptive enough to understand the situation, you know? So, you know, if you go to a beach, we live in Seattle for some time and there's a large lake right in town, Lake, Washington. And there are some absolutely habituated mallard ducks that live there. And these mallard darts will chase you down to get food. Okay. So, you know, I my kids kind of engaging with they're dealing with these ducks. And so I'd be like, don't disturb the wildlife, which and if it was a wild mallard, like a wild mallard chick, you know, there's no way I would tell my kids like, Hey, go grab that wild mallard check and scare the daylights out of its mother. Not that they grabbed the chick anyways, but circum the circumstances are different. These are like, absolutely habituated town mallards. And so knowing that, you know, if they're going to get up and whatever, give them some bread. I mean Suzy bread all day long and then someone comes and gets mad and they get hostile and you really feel like debating it out, Right? Or another time I talk about is very similar situation fishing down in Florida. There's these herons that they just they see fishermen. They know the fishermen have bait and they call it they want to get the bait. I remember my kids giving through a shrimp to a heron and he got just hollered at by again, probably a well-meaning person. And he was playing like this. Like, how much time do you want to spend on this? Because the reason that Heron is standing here is because it knows.
Ginny Yurich It's waiting for.
Steven Rinella It's like waiting for you to catch a fish because it's going to grab it, right? So it's like there are great guideline rules, but, you know, you have to sort of read situations. And then another thing, too, is we hunt a lot, you know, and we fish a lot. And a friend of mine who is an outdoor writer in Wisconsin made the comment about it. He's older than I am. I believe he is in his late sixties, early seventies. He once made the comment about Wisconsin. He said, if you're if you're not a deer hunter, you share a bed with one. Right. And like, I grew up in a very similar situation where not everyone but every I mean, honestly, every house, every household had a a family member who in some capacity engaged in hunting and fishing. I mean, not everyone, but every household, every family. And that was in a rural area in Michigan. That's not the case here. So even we live in Montana and my kids will routinely deal with people who are classmates and otherwise who will kind of come after them and try to take them to task about the fact that that will hunt for food and fish for food. And that's mean. And it can happen in a fair spirit of debate, which I welcome and I don't try to arm. I don't believe in arming my kids with. I don't say to them, the next time someone brings that up, you say this, this and this. We just engage in the discussion and engage in the discussion to the point where I believe they're well armed and sort and articulating and understanding what it is that we do. But I don't try to feed them lines. Right. But yeah, it's a it's a thing. We dealt with it as well as how about this? An outdoor kids is an inside world. We have guns in our home and in places where we've lived. That became a for some people that was a line they were not going to cross. And not even the fact that we keep everything locked up. We use trigger locks, practice, great gun safety. Some people are going to be comfortable that. And so, you know, my wife would preempt, my wife would say to new friends, just so you know, we have guns in our home. They're locked up in a gun safe and we use trigger locks. And I would get a little annoyed with her throwing this out there. But she's like, listen, it's on their mind. It's like, yeah, they want to come over. I'm not going to change anything, but I'm just telling them, Yes. And here's the what, you know. So it is there's you know, you need to be aware of the fact that you're living in our you know, we live in most of us live in mixed communities with different perspectives. And some of the things we talk about in here, like marksmanship, hunting, fishing are not for everyone.
Ginny Yurich Mm. Yeah. Well, it's a good way to start the book then, because you're laying out to the child like, look, there's going to be people that don't approve of different things that you do and you have to know how to navigate that. And I even like what you said. You said you literally said some advice from grown ups is dumb as a great thing for Kittery. Well, you were talking about that in terms of someone said to you not to be a writer, which I love that you put that in your ninth book.
Steven Rinella Yeah. Yeah. The other point. Yeah, that was I was talking about kind of the because there's some things in the book that require supervision and, you know. Like being safe and learning how to take an informed, calculated risk. I want to talk a little bit about upfront. I want to talk about advice and then I just want to be fair that all advice isn't great. And I pointed out that I had been told that you're not going to you can't be a writer, you know. What do you talking about then? And here I am. Then I talk about the kinds of advice that I think are helpful. And I feel that in giving advice to kids, I felt like it's only fair to point out that they need to be in some ways suspicious of advice. And I tried to sell my advice on why it might warrant paying attention to.
Ginny Yurich I was great. It's great to read that line in your ninth book. That's fantastic. Shouldn't become a writer. It's not realistic. You are worth all these books. It's fantastic. And the even that a lot of adults are encouraging kids to be indoors because of safety. And then you talk about I love your responses that, okay, so here's well, you guys do a lot of trivia, right? Yeah. So here's trivia. It's from your book. What Safer cheerleading or Camping?
Steven Rinella David, Log cabin Fever.
Ginny Yurich I love that you put that in there, though, because everyone is just all up in arms about things not being safe. But you say even hunting with a firearm is actually a very safe activity, that billiards is the only thing that safer. I don't even know what billiards is.
Steven Rinella Yeah. It's like they look at array of injuries per thousand hours or something like that. You know, when you look at all the stuff that want to be in that like, yeah, playing pool, shooting pool, shooting pool is our billiards.
Ginny Yurich Is that the only thing that actually seems kind of dangerous?
Steven Rinella The Supreme Court will have the rate of it, and I don't know what people are doing. I'm guessing you're hitting the ball. It's bang and you know.
Ginny Yurich The ball.
Steven Rinella Hits you. You know, I think I went out with with so my wife my wife didn't have quite the same background that I had. And we've had a lot of discussions over the years about what's appropriate, what say things for the kids.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Steven Rinella I remember one time I I'm not recommending this necessarily one time, you know, when your pumpkins, like the car bomb kids, they eventually started to write down.
Ginny Yurich Mhm.
Steven Rinella So I wanted to break our pumpkins out like for the compost bin and I'd given the kids and they had a machete, you know, showing them with a machete how to like chop pumpkin up. And my wife kind of came in without any context and there's my daughter came with a machete and kind of turned into she was mad, but it turned into a family joke. But there's these jokes about things that I'll do that seem not sad. But then when and my wife doesn't contest us all of our emergency room visits, you want me to tell you what we've done emergency for?
Ginny Yurich Mm, Yeah.
Steven Rinella The swing set that my wife bought for my kids. The scooter that my wife bought for our kids, a head injury from Legos, which I don't know where they got the Legos. I could go on, but you get the point. Mm hmm. We haven't been.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it's not from the fishing pole. Not that it.
Steven Rinella Wouldn't happen, but we have. Not that the emergency room or the things that are discussed in this boat.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. That's. That's good to know. You say camping related activities aren't nearly as dangerous as football and cheerleading, and that golf has a higher rate of injury than hunting golf. So it's good to know the things because I do think a lot of kids are discouraged from being free in the outdoors and not free in a way that lacks wisdom. You talk about situational awareness, but just that freedom to be a kid and to make some of your own decisions. And they're very discouraged. So it's a great start to a book. So, you know, kids going to pick this up seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12 is really good advice, written right to them, even about life. Like you talk about your dad saying find work that you love. A great thing to put in a book for kids.
Steven Rinella Yeah. My you know, my dad, he enlisted my dad's old when he had me. He never finished high school. He enlisted in the army to fight in the war. And he later he got a GED. Well, he was. He sold insurance locally to local people, you know, like the community. It was very happy in his work. And, you know, it was a real firm believer in the in the American dream. Right. As he understood it. And that was the thing. The only pressure, the only career pressure we got was he would say, you're going to spend 30 your life working, do something that do something you love. And I think that you bring up another thing about me making that comment about being able to hang out with cool people. I just think that when it comes to career opportunity, ability to do things later in life, being able to hang out with people who have a drive and a curiosity and want to go on and explore and experience things. It's a great gift to give your kids, to make, to give them pragmatic skills, right? Problem solving and just simply how to make things. And now might even sound kind of bland, but just a basic familiarity with hand tools. Right. Yeah. A basic familiarity with dealing with dirt, rocks and shovels and screwdrivers. You know, I mean, just problem solving. It can be extended to all kinds of things. Like I've said this bunch times, like if my daughter and I don't know what she's going to do, but if my daughter decided to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in in media and never step foot outside ever again. Right. Some while hypothetical, she would do that. She would do that informed by a set of experiences. It doesn't need to be that she continues to do them, but she would whatever she approaches and live, she'll approach with having had these kind of gritty, rugged hands on experiences that teach a lot about what someone's capabilities are. Right. And a good familiarity with nature, your environment, rural lifestyle. Right. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be that you then do that the rest of your life. They'd be great if she did, but if she doesn't, it's like she's armed with a mentality. Yeah. Right. Mentality. And in an awareness and appreciation for a way that someone can live life.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. And armed with experiences that you can talk about.
Steven Rinella Sure. Oh, absolutely, man. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich And then you can join in on all sorts of different conversations. So it really does a lot for our kids to lay down this foundation for them. And this is a great book because some kids aren't going to get it naturally through their grandparents or parents. I think it used to happen that way. And so your book can help them to come up with some different ideas or to try some things maybe that they've always wanted to try and just didn't really know necessarily how to do it. But just talking about your path. That's interesting. Your dad didn't graduate from high school, but just always instilled in you to do the things that you loved and try and find a job that you loved. I mean, you are like a media mogul. I looked at your I was looking at your podcast. Now it's 41,000 reviews. I never seen anything like it.
Steven Rinella Well, I didn't I didn't know that. That's good.
Ginny Yurich It does. It's a global ranking. So, like, you know, you got like people that are in the top 5% during the top 1% globally, like around the whole world in yours was like 0.0 1% in the entire world. I like I've never seen that in my life. So just absolutely unbelievable. It's really inspiring to see that you have been passionate about things and then been able to turn that passion into a whole lot of things.
Steven Rinella I would have never imagined where it would lead. But what's what occurs to me, what occurred to me some time ago, I guess, was and let me reframe that. I'll just tell you a quick story. I'm not quite out of frame it up. When I was coming out of school, coming out of someone's regular college, and I went to graduate school to study writing and I was coming out of graduate school in 2008. And it was, you know, the Internet was really taking hold and changing things. And before we started recording it, I made a comment to you about an audio book, like, is it a book? Right? And of course it is. But I made a joke about like, what exactly is a book? So at that time, I had lived my whole life around just books, Like I wanted to communicate through magazines and books. And all of a sudden here's this whole, this whole riot of new ways to communicate. And initially, I was very threatened by it. I was threatened by it.
Ginny Yurich Interesting.
Steven Rinella You know, I was, ah, if I could have made the Internet go away, I would have just done it right. I would've been like, Yeah, I don't need this and make it go away. But over time, like, I got involved in things that were new. Podcasting, you know, I like to do some stuff on social media making video content for digital platforms, like I deal largely in digital media now.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Steven Rinella But on one hand, one could look and be like, wow, what a you know, with the Internet and digital media, what a transformation. That changed everything. On the other hand, sometimes are looking to be like, But I have dealt with the same sort of collection of ideas through it all, meaning what I'm interested in and what I'm talking about hasn't, in fact changed. It's like I'm talking about a set of ideas and things that I'm interested in, and they've evolved over time as I've had experiences like, for instance, having raising kids had a huge impact on the work I did. Mm hmm. But yeah, I've just still been true to a a concept. I've been true to a an interest. And so I've learned to be somewhat agnostic about how I communicate it.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. The medium, meaning everything.
Steven Rinella If everything we're doing right now went away, but someone presented like. Hey. All that's going away. But here's this new set of ways in which we transmit information at this point. Now, I'd be like, okay, yeah, I'll have to dig in and have dig in and find out, right. See what it's all about.
Ginny Yurich Well, yeah. So you would have been like, Nah, I don't want the podcast. No, thanks. And then here you are. I mean, top 73 podcasts in the in what I looked, it was the top 73 podcast in the entire world. I'm like, What is that?
Steven Rinella The I don't know. I don't know.
Ginny Yurich But it is a really cool thing though. The thought was to be a writer. And then you adapted. Mm hmm. It's an interesting way to look at it that this is all just different ways to share a message, to share what you're passionate about. And obviously people are interested and you're fantastic at it. And I loved looking at those rankings because I'd really hardly ever seen anything like it. So you will definitely have to check out. Your podcast comes out every Monday and Wednesday, right?
Steven Rinella Yeah. So on Monday is our regular show. Mm hmm. Which covers, you know, yeah, we do news and current events and we have everything from comedians to paleontologists on the show as well. It's pretty focused conversations, not free flowing. And then on Wednesdays, we do a trivia show, and that's a lot of fun. And so the trivia show is a shorter ten question trivia contest. And the way we plug it is it's the only game show where conservation always wins because the winner gets to designate a conservation organization that will receive their winning their winning pot of money.
Ginny Yurich That's so cool. I love all that creative stuff. So this particular book, Catch Crayfish Count the Stars that just came out recently, are you split up into four sections navigation and exploration, collecting and foraging, fishing, hunting and wildlife and garden and home just really covered it all. It is really cool. I think that you could pick it up and a child could enter and a family could enter into any spot. Whether you want to talk about doing things at home or you want to talk about making a kick net and going to try and catch the crayfish or whatever is near you. Can we pick a section to talk about? Do you have a one that stands out or do you want me to pick?
Steven Rinella You tell me. You tell me which one? Which one? Grabbed one of the sections. It's funny because the sections kind of came at a later process in the outlining. It was just. It was. Oh, yeah, it was. You know, I would just write down everything. And then later, in order to apply some discipline to it, we created the sections. It was just funny how, you know, however something comes through its shape like that was the that was how it came into shape.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And they fit into those four categories, which I like that because you could do things right in your backyard, right in your home, right in your garden, or you could go out and poop in the woods. Let's start there. How do you poop in the woods?
Steven Rinella Well, the one rule well, there's a couple of rules. One of the primary rules is just to be discreet. And we cover like it takes it all policy. If it's possible to go find a restroom, go find the restroom.
Ginny Yurich Stop it. Expecting you to beat it.
Steven Rinella But that doesn't work. Like you can say, like, if at all possible, go find the restroom. End of story. Well, that's not the end of the story, because it's not always possible, especially if you have kids, man. They'll, like, let you know. They don't tell you, like, hey, in a while, you know, like, while I might need to go to the bathroom, dude, they'll sort of like for whatever reason they like, it's just it's this game on, you know, all the two, the two things is get away from water sources, especially in places where people are going to be camping, perhaps, and sourcing water from streams, which are how to purify water and the importance of purifying water. But there's no sense in, you know, be clear of water, be of water sources, because you don't want to introduce those, you know, human waste borne pathogens into water and to is is dig a hole and dig a deep hole and get it covered up so that you're not leaving it laying around. It's it's it's quite similar to the etiquette that would be employed by people out walking their dogs inconsistently employed by people out walking their dogs.
Ginny Yurich And that's the trick.
Steven Rinella So there's a way to get to your restrooms that's really best. If not, you get away from the water, get away from the trails, get away.
Ginny Yurich Be discreet.
Steven Rinella Find a place and dig a good hole. Yeah, and do it. And then next time, maybe, you know, maybe next time you'll be able to do a little bit better job of planning ahead and in the situation. But it's just an unavoidable situation. And I think that leaning into reality in some of these things is more important than leaning into wishful thinking.
Ginny Yurich Does good just get to got to have a plan. I like this navigation part because I just read a book called The Cold Vanish, which was written by a michigan guy. He lives in the Upper Peninsula, and it's all about these people that have completely vanished in a national park. Oh, it's like interesting. And also just. Kind of freaky and bizarre. Like he talks about these weird ones where they'll send out a search party of 500 people, and then a couple of days later, they'll find the person just a couple hundred yards away. So it's just bizarre and interesting.
Steven Rinella I read about a new one of those the other day. And in the article, it was a guy that just vanished, sent a text message from he was hiking up to peaks and a text message from the peak on foot gone. And then and then it recapped. You know, sometimes the article do write, recapped a couple other ongoing ones and it's just like vanished. Then if you've ever looked for something, I mean, you know, someone can fall, you can fall down into a crack in the rocks unless someone very specifically looks, you know.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. Yeah. So it's a little as interesting. It's an interesting book, but this book gives a lot of good information about navigation, which I thought was a great one. Good for safety, good for situational awareness. So one of the things you talk about is how to even walk in a straight line through the woods. I didn't realize that our natural tendency would be to curve.
Steven Rinella Oh, yeah, it's horrible. Yeah, people were curve. So we talked about a couple things and we get into some of that in the book. There's some sophisticated stuff, like there's how to make a little compass at home.
Ginny Yurich I love that one. And even if you hardly have anything, you're saying, you can you can rub it on your rubber, on your sock or.
Steven Rinella The maybe it's a magnet, a needle, a magnet, a needle in a foam cup, Right? Yeah. So. But again, you know, that helps. I think that that helps kids begin to understand the concept of magnetic north and of compasses in general. But again, you're out, you know, what are the chances? Like, Oh, thank God, I have my magnet, my my needle and my.
Ginny Yurich Flat broke up.
Steven Rinella So that's that's that project is great because there's as I explained, there's magnetic poles and here's how they function. And we have cardinal directions. But things that are more easy to remember in real world is just a Yeah. How to pick a course.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Steven Rinella It's a walk in a straight line. What does that really mean? Right. And you look ahead and find an object and walk to that object. When you get to that object, you pick an object and walk to that object could be anything. It could be trees or hill, an antenna.
Ginny Yurich You could throw something. That was an idea in there, right?
Steven Rinella Yeah. There was a there's a reference long ago to some Native Americans on the Great Plains who, when traveling across this structure called the, ya know, staccato, the Texas Panhandle, someone observed that they would get to a spot and shoot an arrow.
Ginny Yurich Wow.
Steven Rinella And then walk in the line and get to that arrow and shoot the arrow again to stay a straight straight course. But also things like that in the mountains and mountainous areas. Your best bet is to go downhill, right? How do you know downhill water flows downhill? If you can like your best bet, if you can find a moving water. Well, first we cover one, right? Stay poor. Don't you know? Yes, all the rules. But then also these other things to consider that teach you instruct kids like just some basic rules of how things function, meaning water flows downhill and creeks get to rivers. Rivers get the highways, rivers get the towns, you know, whatever, you know, rivers get to campgrounds, things like that.
Ginny Yurich Yeah.
Steven Rinella And then just understanding and then some celestial pieces of navigation.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm.
Steven Rinella That there is a star. If you look in the northern hemisphere, there is a star that does not move in the sky and appears to be stationary. And that stars Polaris or the Northern Star. All the other stars twist around that star. And when you're looking at that star, you're looking north. You can find it by the most recognizable celestial object, which is the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper points right to the one star that doesn't move so quickly. And when you see it, you're looking north.
Ginny Yurich And even with the sun, you could use the sun to use a shadows to figure out your directions. It just gives kids a lot of confidence that there is a lot of things in nature because you talk about nature also gives us a run for our money, right? Sure. You go outside, you don't really know what it's going to be like. But then there are also a lot of things in nature that are dependable that you can know that will give you confidence in different situations to make decisions for yourself. Like the Sun Compass, working with the shadows, like the stars. And I think that's great for kids to know.
Steven Rinella Yeah, I think that and in talking to my kids, the sorts of things we explore, there's these kind of contradictory ideas that they might seem contradictory, but I think they're actually complementary is there's a lot of chaos. Well, I mean, I use the word chaos. There's a lot of there's a lot of dynamism. There's a lot of dynamic features about nature. For instance, where we live, especially south of us, we had a very, very wicked winter cold, lot of snow, a lot of animals died last winter, got almost like catastrophic losses of some animals due to winter kill. So we spend a lot of time talking about that. Like, what does that mean? What does that look like? How do they recuperate? Why did that happen? That might seem chaotic, but in explaining. Why that happens, what would be the logical outcome now, and pointing out that the surviving animals. Imagine like how much food is available now, how low stress will be to them now from competition. And so in looking at the natural world, you take something that might risk being chaotic, but be like it's dynamic, but it also makes sense and there's like a continuity to it. The nature has a way of rejuvenating, you know, and things die, but things you're born in. So you're able to look at all this stuff that's going on around and draw pretty valuable lessons about the way that our world is governed in a way that nature, I mean, for lack of a better word, like the the way that nature has solved some of its own problems, you know, and I think it makes it more welcoming, I hope. And that's been my finding, because one of the things that I've had good luck in is as a parent, I'm not I'm not a parenting expert. But one of the things that I've had good luck in is getting my kids to have like a pretty personal relationship with nature.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it's so important and really that you learn and this is one of the things you talk about in outdoor kids in an inside world that you learn that I don't think really anything is a loss. You know, we went up, we took our kids up to Lake I've ever been up to Lake of the Clouds now in the Upper Peninsula. So anyway, this is a cool national park or not a national park. It's a state park up there, lake of the clouds. And we went and then you walk up and it's supposed to be like, huge overlook. And you see all these the river goes through. Anyway, one of these like quintessential spots in the Upper Peninsula. And I mean we're just completely fogged over. Oh, I mean it is a walk as it's a white, you know, you can see nothing. And what is it? What are you going to do? You know, these things are. That's really what you remember.
Steven Rinella Yeah. You have to trust me. Trust me. It's a big lake.
Ginny Yurich Right? That is a white fog. So that kind of stuff. And you learn to roll with the punches. And that's one of the big things that I got out of Outdoor kids and anti world and we've experienced it that it you know things don't go perfectly but they're still good they're still exciting and there's still stories and there's still things that bind you together. And so this book is Leading Kids and Families to try some different things maybe that they hadn't tried before. One of the things that we've never done is shared hunting.
Steven Rinella Oh, yeah.
Ginny Yurich Oh, that sounds real fun.
Steven Rinella Oh, my daughter. My daughter, she kind of it's there's people have found there's two kinds of people in this world. There's people with a real good eye for shed antlers, people who don't have a great eye for appetites. And I would I would almost I'd probably put myself in the not a great I forget antlers because I feel like I'm looking for them. But my guide is my daughter. Find them. And, you know, of course, like all the deer, so all the servants, all the members of the deer family shed their antlers annually. So that used to be our concept for my kids to get is that that when they a buck that that's a brand new.
Ginny Yurich Unbelievable.
Steven Rinella Like every year those things fall off and they grow and so to go out and find them we like we like to go out, look for them, find them in and you know, they turn up here and there. But you can be by observing, you know, by knowing when they drop, when the specific species of animal drops as antlers and observing where like spend its time when that season changes, you can go in and look for those little things. And we have a tree in our yard that we hang them on from. Oh.
Ginny Yurich That's so.
Steven Rinella Cool now. And Dad and my kids all need to go gift one to a teacher or whatever and we'll have yeah, we'll have a big argument about which Antler can be given away and then they get an argument about who found what one is kind of funny.
Ginny Yurich So yeah, well, I would put myself in the latter category as well because I've never found one and I didn't know it had a name and I didn't know that sometimes you can sell them. So for a kid that's motivated by money, that would be a really enticing thing to get outside. So even from that one topic, there was a lot of things that I learned from the book beyond the activities, like the fact that a Bull moose can grow a set of antlers in 100 days. That's six feet.
Steven Rinella Yeah.
Ginny Yurich And what are the differences between horns and antlers? I mean, these are the type of things that maybe you just wouldn't know how. How do you know the difference between horned animals and. And then what was the word you just used there with the Secret.
Steven Rinella Service.
Ginny Yurich Curb?
Steven Rinella It's not serve it. That's like members of the family. So it'd be.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, those are the ones that shed.
Steven Rinella White tailed deer. Mule deer, moose, caribou. Okay. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. Those are the ones that shed their antlers. Yeah. So that. Right?
Steven Rinella Yeah, they should have.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. Super interesting. And then you can find beetles that will eat off all.
Steven Rinella Of the flesh that will clean the skull. Yeah, You can find them. You can find them. Literally find them. And there's places that have beetle cleaning the offer, beetle cleaning service like businesses. Dude, I guarantee anyone listening to your show, if you went and if you typed in beetle cleaning school getting near me, anyone listening to your show is within a was within a 30 to 60 minute drive from a beetle cleaning place. Where you get away first.
Ginny Yurich Good Skull cleaning. I'm Googling is seeing as we get off.
Steven Rinella Oh, yeah, I heard. Sure, dude. Where you can get. Where you can find out. You could find a. You could find a school used alongside the road and get it cleaned and bleached and have it as a.
Ginny Yurich Livable.
Steven Rinella Little home.
Ginny Yurich I'll clean.
Steven Rinella Out some. You know this. Well, this one I found is clean. And we just found this out of the woods. Right? That's all.
Ginny Yurich Just like that.
Steven Rinella It's all. Yeah, that's been all there. It's the old Kyle School. I've no idea where that came, how that came to be. Here's one we found. This is a pronghorn antelope. You can see that's how decayed it is.
Ginny Yurich But wow.
Steven Rinella Now it's, you know, once you bring it into a stable environment, you have it sit there for eons. You know, my kids love that stuff, man.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. That's cool. It's cool This to be able to find things. It's like hide and seek throughout your whole life. So it's awesome. Even for adults, I think it'd be super fun to come across some antlers. You said if you find one, you probably can find the other one because they have two.
Steven Rinella So get yourself a matching set. No matching set, they call it.
Ginny Yurich Hmm. There you go. Give one and keep one. Steven, this awesome book. I so appreciate your time. I really love what you're doing for families, normalizing even the marital struggles you brought up here. You brought it up in your other book.
Steven Rinella Oh, yeah, man.
Ginny Yurich I think it's good we got to talk about it. It's hard. We have come from different childhoods, different opinions on what's safe and not safe and clean and not clean and what clothes are we going to bring and not bring. And it's just great just making it accessible for families to get outside and to make memories. So. Love the book. Catch Crayfish, Count the Stars. It's gorgeous. And tons of ideas. So thanks for being here.
Steven Rinella Thank you very much. I'll look forward to talk to you again.
