E57 — Jody MacDonald

Jody MacDonald has sailed around the world twice but says she got seasick almost every day for ten years. She’s also visited over 100 countries and creates incredible, award winning photographs everywhere she goes. To celebrate International Women's Day, host Feet Banks gets the honour of connecting with Jody as she motorcycles through the Himalaya to discuss ditching the office job, leaning into your passion, and the value of insignificance in the face of nature's most vast spaces. Find Jody's work on her Instagram @jodymacdonaldphoto and hit up her website for stunning prints of her work. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, all right, kiddos. It's time to sharpen up those edges and grease up your chains. We are going to live it up, mountain life. Dropping in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

What's up, mountain lifers? How are you living? Large as possible and posse unstoppable? Tough as nails in aluminum pails? Down to shred and then go to bed? Okay, that's enough of that. My name is Feedbanks. Thank you for joining us on the Live It Up with Mountain Life podcast. And actually, what you might be living right now is confusion, because we just dropped an episode like six days ago. And here we are back already with another, which has never happened before. But you know, there was a lag at the start of the year. And also we're pumped because we have a new pod partner with Citizen Watches. And today, in honor of International Women's Day, March 8th, we have Citizen Promaster team member, global adventurer, and absolutely incredible photographer Jody MacDonald on the pod. Jody has sailed around the world twice. She's visited over 100 countries and she creates incredible photographs everywhere she goes. Right now she's in Nepal but she got up early to make the time zones work and we're going to jump into my chat with her real quick. But now it's time to hear from Citizen Watches. Spoiler alert though, it's still just going to be my voice. Time is important in the mountains. Out there in the wild, missing a rendezvous or misjudging how much daylight is left can have dire consequences. For over 100 years, Citizen have been known for creating quality timepieces and embracing ideas and actions that elevate society above self and respect the planet we love to explore. Need an altimeter or a pro-quality dive watch? Citizen's ProMaster series provide functionality, durability, and the spirit of adventure up in the air, on land, or at sea. With a huge line of professional-grade, sport-inspired designs, Citizen keeps you on time and makes every minute account find your next perfect timepiece at citizenwatch.com better starts now so yeah stoked to have citizen on board and even more stoked to have jody mcdonald here today she has won a ton of photography competitions and awards including a red bull illum and exposure award and she once took home top spot at the world open of photography she's done tedx talks written blogs about how to shoot photos while paragliding in the air and she once spent 10 years at sea and puked pretty much every day. So let's get into it. Here's me using the technology of our modern era to talk to Jody McDonald during a break on a solo motorbike journey in the Himalaya. All right. I like to come in hot, but you have spent a lot of time in vast, empty, natural spaces, and you've stared death in the face at least once that I read about, probably a few times. What's your relationship right now to insignificance?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Insignificance? Wow, you are coming in hot. What a good question. Oh, wow. I mean, I actually love insignificance. I really, I mean, I think that's definitely one of the things I love about big, wide, open, remote places and big mountain landscapes or just like the grandeur and feeling small for me is so important. I guess it just, it helps me in so many ways, you know, like give me perspective on my life and feeling like, you know, really what my problems are and what, you know, what things are going on in my life are not really that important in the big scheme of things, you know? And I think, and I think, you know, always keeping that in check keeps me mentally sane. And I think it keeps me humble in the best of ways. And yeah, I just, I think it's really, really important to feel insignificant.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Did you, or have you, do you remember when you started to understand the importance of feeling that way? Has it been something since you were a teenager, since before, since you kind of embarked on this journey that you seem to have been on for quite a while now?

UNKNOWN 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, I mean, I think I've been on this journey, like, you know, looking back, I think my whole life, but I think the insignificant thing, if I had to guess, it probably started when I lived at sea for a decade and just being, you know, maybe it wasn't, it started like just being in the middle of these huge ocean passages that would take two weeks. And I remember feeling like, wow, like I'm a blip where we are blip, you know, like, I think, I think when you just kind of get that perspective, whether it's in the mountains or the ocean or just feeling like, wow, you, you know you could die at any moment and nobody would know, nobody would care and nothing would change. And you are really just a speck. And so I think, I think You know, and all those long, long passages where I just spent like weeks looking out the window or on watch, you know, you think about, you have so much time to think about all this stuff and contemplate.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

And everything's so vast on the ocean. It's the most

SPEAKER_01 5:35

vast. It's the most vast. I mean, you don't see land for weeks if you're, you know, crossing the Pacific or Atlantic or, you know, And you're just like, Holy shit. There's not even land to look at for two, for two weeks, you

SPEAKER_02 5:54

know? Awesome. Okay. Well, we'll, we'll come in. We're going to come back to that. We'll come in with a little bit of backstory. Uh, these days you're best known as a photographer, you're, you know, multiple award winner. Some places have called you the, uh, the real life Indiana Jones. Um, you shoot a lot of landscapes, animals, people, portraits. You've been to over a hundred countries. You've, you've seen a lot of the world. What, what makes a good photograph for you? What do you, when you're creating a photograph, what, what does it just happen? Or do you like, how does it happen for you?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

No, I mean, it's, you know, for me, photography is, it's so hard to get a good photograph and it's, It's the process of trying to get that, which I just, I've, I love because it's just like this never ending quest of improvement in how you see the world and light and motion and like all these elements have to come together, you know? And a really good photograph to me is one that not only evokes motion, but has like, balance and the right composition and how, you know, it's just, and, and the right lighting and yeah. And it has to really evoke an emotion in the, in, in me, in the viewer, uh, whoever. And, um, yeah, so it just has to have these, it has, has to have all these elements kind of come together.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

It's interesting. It's interesting to hear about that. I had a buddy who was an artist. He tried photography, but he found he couldn't capture, uh, passage of time in a photograph he couldn't capture a complete moment like a full sunset you know um have you have you struggled with that have you ever have you found a way around that when you talk about capturing these things is it is is a photo still a moment or time or how do you get it outside of that into a you know a mood in time or a sense of place or because you know usually it's one thousandth of a second right or whatever

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times it's a moment in time, but I think where those photographs kind of transcend the moment in time is when they're like a timeless image. And what I mean by timeless image is like there's sometimes you can, you know, somebody can take a photo of a location and you can't place whether if that was 75 years ago or 100 years ago or today. And That, those, those photos to me transcend time because they're just, you know, it could be taken anytime. Yeah. But then, but then there's, there's so many that are just like in the moment you've caught an amazing moment and this is your documenting history life, you know?

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah. When we, when you talk about those, those timeless images, I, I yeah. The power of a photograph can be so unreal. And one image can change the world. You think of the first image of the Earth from space really helped the environmental movement get forward. Or that monk that set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War. Or for me as a Canadian, I remember being a kid and seeing the famous face-to-face photograph of the standoff between a Canadian Armed Forces person and a... an Ojibwe soldier or an Ojibwe activist in Quebec at a standoff. And that's 35 years ago. And I still remember that image and it's still pertinent today. Were there photos like that for you when you were growing up or now where you're just like, this is a timeless image that'll never be outside of my mind?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Well, I mean, I think I have those, but I can't actually think of one off the top of my head at the moment other than Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I know there's ones that I keep coming back to, but they're more like in relation to location, I guess. I

SPEAKER_02 9:59

mean, for some people, some of your photographs are that photograph for some people, right? Like the swimming elephant or, you know, some of these photographs have really struck a nerve.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean, I don't, I mean, yeah, as the artist, I think it's hard to know that for sure, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'd be great. It's great if that happens, but you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

I bet you it does. But let's go back. We skipped, we jumped ahead there a little bit, but start at the beginning. So you're born in Ottawa and your parents traveled. Born in Ottawa. Grew up in Saudi Arabia. Yeah. How did

SPEAKER_01 10:35

that happen? Moved there when, yeah, I moved there when I was two. My dad worked for a Canadian telephone company and they, Bell Canada, and they got a big contract to set up the phone system in Saudi.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Right. And

SPEAKER_01 10:49

so how long were you there? A while? Lived there 13 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

And did you have brothers and sisters or was it just you and your folks?

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah. No, I have one brother and two sisters. And in Saudi, I'm the youngest of the four. And in Saudi, they only let you stay till grade nine because they don't want you, you know, staying longer and kind of becoming as a Westerner, you know, becoming part of society or, you know. Right. In Saudi. So they, yeah, you'd have to leave at grade nine. So my sisters, my oldest sister never spent any time in Saudi. And then my second oldest sister, she spent a couple of years. And then my brother was there for seven years, I think seven, around seven. So I was there the whole time. Right. And

SPEAKER_02 11:37

so growing up there, what was their outdoor recreation? What did it look like for, you know, the weekend trips with the family?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, no, there was a lot of restriction in Saudi, especially at that time. I think it's like loosening up now since COVID. So yeah, no, I mean, there wasn't a lot of outdoor recreation. And as a female, you can't go anywhere without a male. So I couldn't go anywhere without my dad. But I would, you know, remembering... Most of the recreation. I mean, you have like we live in compounds and in the compounds they have. It's kind of like being in a resort. You know, they have all the amenities. They have the Olympic sized swimming pool and the tennis courts and the squash courts. And so you always have that component. But one of the perks my parents got was paid vacations. And so and they had never traveled anywhere. So

SPEAKER_03 12:39

yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah. So we started every school break, every summer holiday. It was like, we're going to go somewhere new, see something new we've never seen. So when I returned at the age of 16 to Canada, I had already seen, traveled to a large part of the world with my parents.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

And then what was it like coming back to this part of the world? Where did you come back to? Back to Ottawa? Or did you end up out west? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah, I came back to Ottawa for a couple years and did high school and then went one year in high school in the States and then came back, did my grade 13 in Canada, which I'm still so bummed I had to do 13 years of high school, grade 13 of high school.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Because we're in British Columbia, it's baffling to us. Like that's an extra painful year. You could have been doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I know. I know, and I'm still really upset about it. Yeah, and then I did my university outdoor bachelor degree at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

And then

SPEAKER_01 13:52

moved to Vancouver. And

SPEAKER_02 13:55

became a guide? You were a guide?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Well, after university, I did a lot of guiding. I did guiding in the... based out of Vancouver into the Coast Mountain Range. And then I also did a lot of rafting in Alaska, raft guiding.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

So not too bad. Yeah. Looking back, you know, you've spent some time, that's where we are on the west coast of BC. Compared, you've been all over the world. How do the mountains, you know, the Canadian West Mountains compare how do those stack up against some of the other mountains in the world? You know, obviously they're not as tall as many as you're in Nepal right now, but what, what's your, what, what's your, what goes through your mind when you think about those years in, in the Canadian mountains?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

I mean, I think, I think that whole Pacific Northwest, Canada and, you know, upper U S is just, I think it's a magical place. I mean, I, I, there's nothing quite like the mountains there, you know? I mean, they're so lush and beautiful and, you know, there's not a lot of people living around there, you know? So they're really pristine and beautiful and huge old growth. And I mean, yeah, no, incredibly, incredibly special and completely unique, you know, to that area. Yeah. So they're kind of hard to compare because, like, I've been the last three years, I would say, in the Himalayas here. And that's just, you know, super high, dry, desert-like, you know, with, like, little to no vegetation. So it's completely different.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

I think a lot of people, they always wonder about the inciting incident of the story, but... You were working at Mountain Co-op, which for our American listeners is kind of like the Canadian REI. And what did you do there? You were a photography something there? You were already into photography by that point?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, I was. Well, I was because I did my bachelor's in outdoor recreation in university. And then I... you know, the electives, I did a lot of photography and that's where I fell in love with photography. And then for me in university, it was kind of like a light bulb moment in terms of like, wow, I can combine my passion of photography and outdoor adventure by taking my camera with me on all my adventures, you know, and just being able to document all these incredible experiences that I was having outdoors in the wilderness, you know, whether it was climbing or paddling or, or whatever. And just, yeah, just being able to take pictures. And I had no, you know, at that time there, there was no, I had no outdoor adventure photographer role models to say that's a career, that's something you can do. I just knew that I really loved those two things and I was like, I can combine them. So when I was guiding after university, I started taking my camera with me and just taking pictures while I was on trips.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Was it film or had the digital revolution started?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

No, it was film. It was film, so it was a pain in the ass. And

SPEAKER_02 17:20

expensive.

UNKNOWN 17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

And expensive. And then when I started working at Mountain Equipment Co-op in Vancouver, I just worked in the store. I don't even remember how long now, just like one year or something. And then I had a friend of mine was the photo editor in the head office. And I was so interested in photography. So I was constantly asking him like, oh, what's this job like? You know, what is it? What do you do? The

SPEAKER_02 17:50

catalog was a thing back then.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

And it was a thing, like a Patagonia catalog in a lot of ways. And so I got really interested in his position at head office. And then he was leaving. And I said, you know what? I'm going to apply for that job. I would love that job. And so he knew how interested I was in it. So he recommended me for that position. Awesome. Just because he could see I was really passionate about it. And then so I ended up doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

And you also worked with Frank Wolf, who is no stranger to this pod.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

I love Frank. Was he the same

SPEAKER_02 18:30

savage adventurer that he is now when you worked with

SPEAKER_01 18:32

him? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, yeah,

SPEAKER_02 18:35

yeah. I'm sure he was savage since he was young. Back to that inciting incident, and maybe Frank's adventures played a role, but how did you make that leap from the nine-to-five office, even in an outdoor industry, to just heading off on your own, doing your own thing? What was that transition like? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah, I mean, I was dating a... um a bush pilot and paraglider pilot and a like ex-pro surfer guy um from the states and he was just a really adventurous guy and he he was always traveling between like Alaska and Mexico California Oregon and then he'd you know he'd come up to visit me in Vancouver and he would come into my he would come into my office and at the time my office at the co-op was like in the basement in the corner in like this dark kind of basement office and he used to like go in there and he'd be like yeah this is a cave like what like what is going on in here you're just like this place is sucking your soul you know and you know at that point I'd been doing the job for a couple of years and I had learned everything I wanted to learn. And I think it was driving me crazy that I would get these photo submissions of, you know, everybody having these amazing adventures and back country. And I was just sitting in the office and I was like, I wish I was out there taking these pictures, not in here.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

That's relatable. I run a magazine. So that happens to me. Yeah. I'm at a desk looking.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

It was, Yeah. And it was really hard at the time because having a job at the head office at Mac was very coveted and because they gave you all these perks and, you know, I mean, it was just, and you could kind of have the freedom to work when you wanted. I remember they didn't really care so much as long, like how many days, how much hours you were in the office, as long as you were getting your work done, you know? And so it was a really solid, secure environment. coveted position. And like, my parents were so happy because they're like, oh, finally you're getting a real job, you know? And so, but then I had my, my boyfriend at the time, he was just, you know, his name was Chris and he was always just like, what are you doing? This place is just, yeah, sucking your soul. And I, and I, you know, I started thinking like, you're not wrong. You know, like this is too comfortable for me. I could see I could see 10 years going by like that and nothing changing in my life and not being able to really discern one year from eight years, you know, just like the routine, the routine, the monotony. And I just thought, Oh my God, I, I have to do, I have to change something.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

You know? And then, so I planned on quitting and, um, Chris had said to me, I was like, what am I gonna do if I quit? And he's like, I don't know, but let's just go on a road trip down the West Coast and we'll paraglide and we'll surf and we'll just hang out for a few months and you can just take the time and we'll figure out something for you to do next. And I was like, okay, yep. Like I gotta rip the bandaid off to make the change. I can't just wait to figure out what I'm gonna do next. I just need to make the change. So, yeah, that's what I did. I gave up my apartment and, you know, quit. And everybody, my parents, everybody's like, oh, my God, you're crazy. Like, what the hell? You know, and then I remember my last day of work. I was I was done at like two o'clock and I think it was like 11 a.m. I got a phone call saying that Chris had died that morning in a paragliding accident.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Heavy.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

And. Yeah, it was super heavy. And like you can imagine, like I was just getting ready to like.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Yeah, the plan was the plan was made.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah, the plan was made. And it was just like I was closing up shop at this one life and, you know, getting ready to go on another. And I was just like, oh, my God. And then. Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Well, I was just going to say, like, obviously you went anyhow. Yeah. But how how long did that was? Did that take a while or was that a quick decision to be like, no, this is what I'm going to do?

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Well, yeah, I mean, I was in shock for definitely I would say a couple of weeks and then and then, you know, just dealing with like the funeral and all that kind of stuff. And I had all my friends and family saying, like, look, just get your job back and get your apartment back and, you know. go back to that. And I, and I just thought to myself, yeah, yeah. And I just thought to myself, like, I can't do that. Like mentally that's moving backwards and I need to move forward. And, and, you know,

SPEAKER_02 23:43

was there a sense of like, I almost, I owe it to Chris a little bit to follow through. Did, was, did

SPEAKER_01 23:49

that play a role? I think definitely a hundred percent. You know, Chris was, larger than life in so many ways. And I just, he was all about, you know, living life to the fullest and every day, like really going after it. And I, a hundred percent, I was just like, I, I know that if I stay in that life, I'll be stagnant, you know, mentally, physically, you know, all those things. And I was like, I, I just got to go for it. So I did the road trip we were going to do, but I did it alone. Yeah. And I just took that time to like process and Work to the grief. That takes years. Forever.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Was it shortly after that you ended up on a boat? Because you talked about 10 years going by pretty quick. You spent 10 years on a sailboat.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yeah. I ended up in Sun Valley because Chris had been doing some paragliding work in Sun Valley, Idaho. And that was actually one of the places I went to for his funeral. We took his ashes and we paraglided off the mountain there into the funeral home parking lot for his funeral. You were operating a

SPEAKER_02 25:11

paraglider by then. He'd gotten you into paragliding?

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah. Exactly. Well, actually, not he got me into paragliding. I learned with my brother in Alaska. But But he kind of amplified it. And then I was in Sun Valley. And then I remember he had a really good paragliding community there. I just really fell in love with Sun Valley as a town. It's a ski town in the community. And I had become friends with a lot of those paraglider guys. And one of the guys said... you know, hey, why don't I own a home? He was a like a home. He was a contractor. So he was building homes in the valley. And he just said, hey, I need an office manager. Do you want to in the meantime, do you want to just hang out in Sun Valley and you can be my office manager? And I was Canadian. So I was working, you know, I was under the table. So, yeah, I was fortunate enough to have someone who was willing to do that for me, especially during that time when I was just going through that grieving process.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

And that job, did it have a closed date on it? So you knew I'm only going to do this for this long or did, did the wall start to close in again?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

No, he was fantastic. He was just like, I mean, I remember I went to Alaska for a few months to raft guide for the summer season. And then I went to sun Valley and then he was great. He was just like, you know, just do this job as long as you need, you know, like as long as it feels good. And so that was great. And then I met someone who offered me to start sailing in the South Pacific in Sun Valley. And I remember just thinking, I'm going to go. Because... I have nothing to lose, everything to gain. I don't know anything about sailing. If I hate it, I can always come back and find some other job. But I won't always get an offer to go sailing in the South Pacific. So I was like, hell yeah, I'm there. This is a new opportunity, something I've never done, new skill to learn, you know?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

And so that's when the sailing initially started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

And obviously you've already been shooting photos for a while, developing film. Were you submitting them to magazines? Was there any hint of a career at that point? Or are you just shooting photos and keeping them?

SPEAKER_01 27:46

No, not even close. Just shooting photos, I think, you know, just to document the cool things I was doing outdoors again. You know, like I was always... outside, whether it was like paragliding, raft guiding, you know, all these different things. And I just, yeah, I had no, no connection to it being a job at all. I mean, that really began when I started sailing. Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

And would you, you know, put together slide carousels and show your friends or was it really, really a private endeavor? I

SPEAKER_01 28:17

mean, looking back, I would, I was more private endeavor, you

SPEAKER_03 28:23

know,

SPEAKER_01 28:23

I, I mean, I might show family, you but that would have been it. Yeah. You know,

SPEAKER_02 28:31

um, was there a hesitancy to paraglide after Chris's loss? Did you, were you, were you tentative about the sport? I just know because, you know, I lost a friend ice climbing and like, I stopped doing it. Like, did, did you, did

SPEAKER_01 28:46

those thoughts go through your mind? A hundred percent in, in, in paragliding world, you see, You experience quite a few deaths and accidents. I remember it was a huge deal for me to paraglide off the mountain with his ashes into the funeral home. But I knew I had to do it. I knew I'd really be disappointed in myself if I didn't do it. Like it was like ripping the bandaid off or getting back on the horse. I just knew it was a really pivotal moment. And if I didn't do it, I would not have been happy with myself. And I just said, I got to do it. And then I think a lot during that whole grieving process time, I really thought a lot about paragliding and risk. And at the end of the day, I just keep coming back to, you know, these are, these are activities that make me really happy and make me feel really alive. And there's, you know, there's, I just see so much risk in the world in general, you know, like I could get cancer and die. I could get, you know, in a car accident. And it was just like, it would be in my mind, it was always just, it would be a shame for me not to continue these things because of that fear. When you just, don't know, you know?

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a, uh, an elder gentleman here in town who says risk is a spice of life, not variety for some people. Right. That's what keeps you feeling alive. Yeah. Um, yeah. Do you still paraglide? Do you still paraglide today? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 30:33

I do. Uh, I mean, I've got, I really enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, I, it's been probably about a year since I was paragliding. Right. Um, And I would love to do more of it. My life has taken me into this motorcycling trajectory at the moment. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Is that what you're doing right now, motorcycling through Nepal?

SPEAKER_01 30:58

I have been doing some motorcycling, but I've been mostly motorcycling in the Indian Himalayas for the last three years. My motorcycle is in India at the moment, and I can't get into India, so I'm trying to get into India. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Right. And your motorcycle, I believe it is, because Todd has the same one, he was excited. It's the Royal Enfield Himalayan. Do you have the sidecar? No,

SPEAKER_01 31:26

I don't have the sidecar.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Because he said you brought your niece. You took your niece motorcycling through India? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

No, my niece had a job here in November that got postponed to this month, but here in Nepal. And so she joined me because she was taking a gap year and I still couldn't get into India. So I rented a motorbike and we cruised around here in Nepal on the motorcycle.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

And like, is it worth talking about why you're not allowed in India or do we just let that one lie?

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Oh yeah. No, we know we can talk about it. So I'm not allowed in because of Trudeau and Modi. Oh, they've been fighting. They've been fighting all year. They did about the Sikhs getting assassinated in Canada. So they're not really letting any Canadians in. I hear that they are letting some, but it's very like, it's like very lottery. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Okay. So it's not just, it's not just something with you.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

No, it's not me. I didn't do anything illegal. Unfortunately, I have no good story there.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Well, I feel like we might as well take a quick break and hear from our partners at Citizen Watches. Hey, buddy, have you got the time? Or is it time to get yourself a new Citizen Watch? Did you know their EcoDrive watches are powered solely by light? Any kind of light? Or that their atomic timekeeping watches are constantly syncing with atomic clocks all over the planet to ensure your watch's margin of error never exceeds one second every 100,000 years? Check out all this wild tech and all their great watch options at citizenwatch.com. All right, great. Fantastic. Great break. But we're pumped. Citizen is our new partner on the pod. And I mean, I love a wristwatch because I don't have to look at my phone as much. But it's obviously also no coincidence that you're here. You're on the Citizen Promaster team. It's a heavy lineup of adventurers. Do you get to hang out with those people on the regular or is it more just a team in theory but not in contact with each other?

SPEAKER_01 33:41

no no there's four of us and will gad is a longtime friend of mine and i've been a couple expeditions with him and jeff shapiro is also a long longtime friend of mine so um yeah those guys i see fairly often and then um william drum though i i this is the first time meeting uh will and he's he's awesome he's great

SPEAKER_02 34:06

he's a photographer also

SPEAKER_01 34:09

so yeah yeah underwater

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Fun.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

He's a diver. Yeah. He's great.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

I guess we'll go a little bit Hollywood style here, but on this trip, you know, in the Himalaya, what watch are you wearing?

SPEAKER_01 34:23

This is the pro master tough, but it's the toughest one they have. So like I can eat the shit out of it and you, you can't even tell actually, it doesn't even scratch. Well, it's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

I think it, speaking of tough. Okay. Um, You've been around the world a lot. You've been through a lot of things. In 2017, Men's Journal magazine named you one of the 25 most adventurous women of the past 25 years. We're trying to get this pod out for International Women's Day on the 8th. I feel like you've probably met, in your travels most of your life, you've been going around the world, more than 100 countries. I feel like you've met a broader cross-section of women than a lot of people on Earth. What are your thoughts on International Women's Day? Like, oh, here's one day for 50% of the population. But does, you know, as someone who's seen a lot of women in countries of all different kinds, is a day like this valuable?

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it's just, you know, anytime you can recognize women, you know, anybody, I mean, that, that has immense value. Yeah. I mean, it's great. You know, I mean, I, I, I mean, I, especially I think in a lot of the, the third world countries or poor countries I travel to, you know, oftentimes I think a lot of women are kind of not given, definitely not given the recognition they deserve. So I, you know, anything, any, any, Yeah, I mean, 100%. It's incredibly valuable.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

This industry that we're in, you know, the outdoor sports industry, adrenaline sports, whatever, traditionally kind of a sausage party. Yeah, sure. Has it been a disadvantage for you being a woman or has it been like, oh, sometimes you get to, you know, as the culture shifts, it's opened up doors that were previously closed?

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Yeah, I mean, I've... never viewed it like that. And I've never experienced it like that. I, I, you know, to be honest, I just think of myself as a human and I, I just, I try not to think of things in terms of gender too much. I just feel like I'm a person. I can do what I'm capable of doing and what I want to do. And to me, gender doesn't come naturally. into it so much. I mean, I definitely think being a female gives you a ton of advantages just in terms of access and, but it can also bring disadvantages. You know, I just, I just, I guess personally, I never view it as, as a female thing so much, but I mean, I'm fortunate that I haven't, I haven't had it be a limiting factor in any way, shape or form in my life.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

As a traveler, I think a lot of that is just solving problems on the fly, right? Figuring it as you go with what you have. No matter who you are, you've only got what you have and you have to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that was one of the great lessons I learned from sailing in, you know, really remote locations. Like when the boat breaks down and you're in the middle of nowhere and you can't get the parts and you can't get the... The stuff you really do. You really do think. I mean, I thought so many times like I'm screwed, like we're screwed, you know, and then you you figure it out. You become resourceful. You learn you learn how to adapt and cope and problem solve. And, you know. So now I just think, oh yeah, that's just problem. So how can we figure it out? And it's a good challenge now. And yeah, exactly. When you're in those situations, gender doesn't matter. You're just a human trying to get out of that situation alive. It's just like same with paragliding. So same with a lot of things that I do. It's just the gender component doesn't play a part so much. Yeah.

UNKNOWN 38:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Do you think that some people are just innately born with that ability to MacGyver a solution? And of course, you can you can learn it through experience. But are there those people that are always those tinkers? Were you one of those people when you were younger that was just, you know, I'll find a solution with gum and thread and a piece of tinfoil? Or or was it more for you something that you learned at sea and beyond?

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Well, no, I think my brother is like a real life MacGyver in Alaska. He's a bush pilot and mechanic and he can build anything. And he was always a huge role model to me. So I think, you know, having him in my life growing up, I was always kind of interested in what he was interested in. And he, you know, he was so curious about how things work and how things, you know, are put together and how you fix things. And I... And that's definitely rubbed off on me. I do love now problem solving. And I just think those sailing took it to a level that not many people get to experience because you're not, you know, most people are not in situations where they have no options, you know, or they feel like they have zero options, you know.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

A lot of people don't, they don't know how to change a tire because they don't need to anymore, right? Like when you're

SPEAKER_01 40:08

on the road, you can call.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Or even drive stick shift, like, you know, basic. That's

SPEAKER_02 40:15

the best anti-theft device, right, is just a stick shift. No one's stealing your car in this country, anyhow. Exactly, exactly. On a boat, everything has a place. So what's your apartment like? Is it super organized? Did that boat life rub off on you for the organization and the sort of OCD of everything? Or is it the opposite, where now that you're off the water, you're... You know, everything can go wherever you want.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

Well, I think it's I think it's a bit of both, to be honest. I mean, I think that I think the boat really taught me that less is more. Just having less shit in your life. Yeah, really, really is fantastic and freeing and in so many ways. So I try to bring that into my my home and I'm just like, why do I need this shit? I don't need it. Let's get rid of it. That was another valuable lesson.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Right now, you must be traveling pretty light.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Well, no. That's the crappy thing about being a photographer. I end up lugging around too much shit. How

SPEAKER_02 41:32

many

SPEAKER_01 41:32

cameras? That's hard. When gear comes into play, I think... It kind of takes priority, I guess, in my life a little bit. But I'm always thinking about paring down. And like motorcycling, another great thing. You can't take that much shit on the motorcycle, you know? And

SPEAKER_02 41:51

half of its cameras.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

And then I think that makes you better. Yeah, and drones. And I think it makes you a much better photographer, too. When you have limitations in your creativity, again, it forces you to... to move to think differently be

SPEAKER_02 42:10

more creative

SPEAKER_01 42:11

and uh i think and be more creative and it definitely helps with my photography for sure i

SPEAKER_02 42:18

want to talk a little bit about collaboration just because i saw a video of you with a bmx athlete in hawaii and you know you you've worked with 60 year old elephants and all different kinds of wildlife but also all different kinds of people But when you meet somebody that you're supposed to collaborate with, maybe if you haven't met them before, is there a personality trait or a vibe or something that you realize early on, like, oh, yeah, this is going to work? Or does it always just kind of happen naturally?

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Yeah, I mean, I think you, when you work with a lot of different people, you kind of learn to adapt to what they're, you know, what their vibe is. But I think it always is great when people are very humble, self-deprecating, you know, love to make fun, joke around, don't take things too seriously. And it's usually the athletes that have been around a long time and like seen a lot of shit. And, you know, like even in the toughest situations, we're making jokes. you know, and I think, and not complaining. I mean, those, you know, those are always the best, the best people to work with and the easiest ones to work with, you know, cause they're, they're easy going and they don't take life too seriously. You know, I guess it ties a little

SPEAKER_02 43:49

bit

SPEAKER_01 43:49

back to the, back to the insignificance. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

And not taking things too seriously. Of course, you know, there is serious things happen. Um, I did read an article of Vancouver sun, you know, one time you were told in 2019, four years to live. Right. Uh, yeah. Are you tired of talking about that? Can we get the Cole's notes on that? Yeah. What was, you were already living a dream life, but what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

It's a, it's actually a crazy story and one worth talking about because it is pretty nuts. Um, But yeah, I was having all these like abdominal issues and they just kept telling me, oh, it's like ovarian cysts, it's normal, it'll go away. And it wasn't going away. And then finally, I got a CT scan and they were like, oh yeah, you have a five inch tumor in your abdomen and you've got like one to four years to live. And I was like, oh my God. you know, Oh my God. Yeah. And I went, they put, they got me into surgery right away. And I remember the surgeon said, you know, when we're on the table, we're going to remove the tumor and we're going to do pathology on it. And, and within, you know, 20 seconds, we're going to know if it's benign or malignant, but they were pretty sure it was ovarian cancer, which is why they give me, gave me the one to four year diagnosis to live. And yeah, And he said, you know, when, if it, if it's, if it's malignant, we're going to remove as much as we can in your abdomen so that you can have the longest, you know, more of that four year span to live, you know, to kind of like max out your, yeah, your lifespan as much as you can. And then, and so I went into surgery, just like, you know, expecting that to happen.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

And then I remember I woke up and I said, you know, the doctor came in and I said, so what, you know, what happened? And he's just like, we don't know what it is. He said we had to send it to Harvard.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

Your medical anomaly.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Yeah. I was like, what? Like, this is crazy. And then, yeah. So he's like, you got to wait a couple of weeks and then you might have to, you know, improve. likely going to have to go reopen you and then remove everything we were going to remove and stuff like that. And then two weeks later, he calls me. He says, you're not going to believe this, but you're one of eight people to have grown this tumor that's non-cancerous, completely benign, just like this tissue. Like wild, you know, this weird tissue. And he said, I've never seen this in my career. I will never see it again. He was just like, this is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. And he said, you're fine. You're good to go. And I was just like, well, I was like, how did it happen? What caused this? He's like, we have no idea. We never see it. We don't know. We don't know anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

What was that two weeks like? Obviously, you've already led the life of your dreams for much of it. What was going through your mind those two weeks of waiting?

SPEAKER_01 47:11

I mean, I, I think it, you know, the, the couple of days going into the surgery and then the waiting. Yeah. I mean, it just, um, I mean, it, you know, it did, it took me back to the same kind of mental space I, and thoughts I had when Chris died. Um, it just, just like, you know, what do, what do I do now? And what do I do? what's really important and how am I going to spend my time and who am I going to spend it with? And, you know, I just, everything comes rushing into focus, I guess, to the most basic, most important building blocks of your life. And like, you really try to focus and drill down on those and like, okay, if I've got four years, like, what do I want that to look like? You know, in every way, shape and form, you know?

SPEAKER_02 48:07

And now you've had that focus in a couple varying degrees, but this is your own mortality, very focused. Does those two weeks and that sense of what's really important to me, you're still carrying that around to some degree, I'd imagine? That

SPEAKER_01 48:25

focus of what matters? Oh, yeah. In so many ways, I am so grateful for those reminders, whether it was Chris' death or this situation. I mean, they are profound reminders to live your life with purpose and that it's fulfilling and that you're not trying to waste time and just doing things you really want to do and and spend it with the people you want to spend it with. I mean, that's a profoundly valuable gift that you can hear people say these things till the cows come home, but you don't fully understand them in your core until you go through experiences like this. And that's so powerful. And then the next thing is to try to implement those. It's like one thing to... to say, okay, I got to do it. But then it's a whole other thing to live it, you know, and make those tough decisions and cut those shitty people out of your life. And, you know.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

And face those fears a lot of time. Yeah. What if, what if.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

And face, exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

I want to come back to photography.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

That's why now I'm constantly like, I try to tell everybody like, Anybody I meet, I'm like, what are you passionate about? What do you want to do? Like, go do it. Just don't stop thinking about it. Just go fucking do it, you

SPEAKER_02 49:57

know?

SPEAKER_01 49:59

Yeah, yeah. Anything can happen to us at any time, you know? So it's just like, go after it.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

Yeah. I do want to come back to photography because, you know, you're our... like one of the greatest photographers in the world. We've barely talked about it, but you, you mentioned you started kind of submitting when you were on the, on the sailboat or, or shortly after that, or how did your photography career come around?

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Yeah. So I, I, I don't know if you saw my TEDx talk about like my first 10 days of sailing ever was from New Zealand to Fiji.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Well, it was actually, we were trying to go to Vanuatu.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

And

SPEAKER_01 50:44

seasick the whole way. Well, I was seasick for a decade. I was seasick the whole time I was at sea. But those 10 days on that passage was a full-on sailing nightmare. I mean, we almost lost the mast. We had, you know... 80-foot rogue waves. We had like$40,000,$50,000 worth of damage in those 10 days. And nobody ate. We plotted to ram it into a reef to get rescued by hopefully a helicopter or something. I mean, I would have even rather been eaten by a shark at that point than be on that trip. And it was my first 10 days. And I remember... when we limped into Fiji because we really did limp in, I remember I was just like, I just gotta get off this thing and get the hell out of here. Like I'm getting on a plane and I'm getting the hell out of here. And I remember after like a day and a half of like sleeping and eating, I just remember thinking to myself, no, I can't give up. I haven't even really given this thing a chance. And if I give up now, I'll regret it. If I go home with my tail between my legs and just thinking, oh, that sucked. I was just like, I'm going to regret it. It

SPEAKER_02 52:21

feels like you tell yourself that a lot. I'm on a precipice, but I'm going to regret this if I don't push forward.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

No, I do. And that's a really guiding force for me. It's like, how am I going to feel if I don't do it? I don't know how I'm going to feel if I do, but I definitely know how I'm going to feel if I don't. So then I'm like, oh, well, I got to give it a go a little bit longer. And then I also remember thinking, okay, well, if I'm going to stick with this or give it a try, I'm going to take my photography seriously. And I'm going to be in all these amazing places forever. you know, hopefully having all these great adventures. So I want to, this is my chance. Like if there's any ever time to like really go for it, this is my opportunity. So then I just started doing that. I was like thinking about taking pictures a lot and all the time basically, and just trying to get better and just, you know, see what that looked like. Cause I just knew I loved it. So I was just like, okay, I'm going to go for it.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

Yeah. And then, so

SPEAKER_01 53:28

what did you sell that first photo? It wasn't overnight, of course. I was to a kiteboarding magazine because we started doing a lot of kiteboarding. And this was just on charters before I started the World Kiteboarding Expedition by Catamaran with my partner. And so... Yeah, it was just that we were just doing a lot of kiteboarding and surfing and stuff like that. And so I submitted it to kiteboarding magazines. And at the time, I mean, it was really good because the boat was getting us access to places that, you know, most people can't get access to. And kiteboarding was growing. And yeah, I mean, so the editor, it was kind of easy because editors, anything I would submit, editors were like, wow, we've never seen this before we've never seen this place before you know we've never seen kiteboarding here before you know so um i think and think in some ways it was pretty easy entry in that way for getting starting to get published at least yeah nice but you know working working at working at mech helped a lot as a photo editor because i had learned uh you know what kind of submission like the photos I liked what worked, what I thought worked and what a submission looked like, you know, like you, you keep it, you keep the submissions like a really tight edit. You don't like bombard the editor with like a hundred, hundreds of images or even a hundred images, you know?

SPEAKER_02 55:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Like you can't waste their time. Like if I ever got a submission like that at Mac, I'd be like, what the hell? Like, Jesus, I don't have like five hours to go through all these things, you know?

SPEAKER_02 55:13

I feel

SPEAKER_01 55:14

your pain. You're not, you know, Yeah, I mean, you're not being critical enough of your own work, you know, just send me your 10 best shots or your five, you know. And so that, you know, being on that side at MEC really helped me, I think, you know, with submitting and being super critical of my own work, you know. And just knowing like, oh yeah, that's shit, that's shit, that's shit, you know, pretty quickly because I had already been analyzing and looking at pictures so much.

SPEAKER_03 55:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

And I remember being at parties in Vancouver and people were like, what do you do? And I was like, oh, I'm a photo editor at MEC. And they were like, oh, I just did this amazing backcountry ski tour and I took these incredible photos. And can I submit them to you? And I like immediately knew they would be shit, you know? Because I'm just like, no good photographer will tell me they have like a lot of amazing photos. It's just... You know, you learn that, right? Like you

SPEAKER_02 56:17

said, the people you like to collaborate with are the humble, humorous type, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:22

Well, yeah. I mean, you can tell the people have been around the block a long time and learned a lot of lessons. And then they've also learned about their insignificance, you know? So they're, you know... Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:38

Your photos, you sell your photos. Obviously... I feel like people that spend a lot of time in the world try to do their best to make it a better place. It's all carbon neutral, your prints, your shipping. Was that hard to set up? Did you have to take a large hit to make that happen in the way that you want it to happen for your print shop?

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely more effort because not a lot of people offer it in terms of suppliers. So, yeah, it is. Yeah, it's, yeah. But at the end of the day, you know, yeah, I just try to do the right the right thing, you know, to try to do the better thing. It's a right thing would probably be not selling prints at all, but you know, it's just, everything's a, everything's a balance in life and trying to minimize, you know, that, that impact in any way, you know, you can in a reasonable way is definitely worth it for me. You know, I think that's the, sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

Do you get feedback from customers like saying, Hey, I love this or a great, great idea, or this played a role in my decision?

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that much detail into... I do hear sometimes, because I think that's a lot of my audience, you know, is that people that care about these places, like the wilderness and, you know, protecting these areas. So I'm sure it's appreciated. I mean, I would imagine it is just because I think that's a lot of my audience.

SPEAKER_02 58:18

Yeah. Well... You know, this has been fantastic. I could talk forever, but I know it's early in the morning for you in Nepal. You've probably got a bunch of stuff to do. But before we wind it down, can we just rapid fire a few things? Yeah, let's do it. What would you rather have for your birthday, cake or pie?

SPEAKER_01 58:38

Shit, it depends on the cake. It depends on the pie. Give me your top flavor for each. Raspberry pie. My all-time favorite. And then I have a longtime family friend that makes this incredible spice cake, which is kind of like chai kind of cake. I mean, it's incredible. It's my all-time favorite too. So there you

SPEAKER_02 59:08

go. What's the last good book you read or a book you think everyone should read?

SPEAKER_01 59:15

I mean, one of my, that's a hard one. I mean, there's so many, there's so many great ones, but in terms of like travel and one that really impacted me, especially traveling through Asia was Shantaram, which has been around forever. But I still think if people like, going to India and haven't read it, definitely need to read it. But it's really kind of, it really had a huge impact on me and how I see kind of like the poorer regions of the world and the beauty in those places. And so for me, that was really significant. Yeah.

UNKNOWN 59:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

I liked the first half more than the second half, but definitely.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

Me too. I didn't enjoy the site, but the first half was pure magic. They turned that

SPEAKER_02 1:00:03

into a TV show. I didn't finish it, but is there a movie or TV show that you do love?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Wow. I mean, yeah, there's quite a few that come to mind right away. First season of True Detective. Amazing.

UNKNOWN 1:00:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:23

There you go. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:26

What about music? You're on the road a lot. Is music a big part of your life? Huge. Is there a band or two bands that you think everyone should know?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

Well, I've got Ghost Woman pretty much on repeat lately. Dope Dope Lemon

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

There we go. Another one. I'm not familiar with either. Ty Siegel. Yeah. Excellent. Ty Siegel. Yeah. Who do you think would win in a fight, a burrito or a grilled cheese sandwich?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:07

A burrito.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:08

Come on. How come? Just because of sheer mass?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

Mass. It's got a lot of stuff going on. It's like the bigger bully. I think it could kick the shit out of a grilled cheese sandwich.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:22

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

I mean, a grilled cheese is more like laid back, melted.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

Yeah, but it's very together. It's hard to tear apart.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

What? I'm sorry. You broke up there. What

SPEAKER_02 1:01:37

did you say? It's hard to tear a grilled cheese apart. It's very together. It depends on the bread. I think it has good core strength.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

It does have great core strength.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

Is there anything that you're afraid of? Is it spiders, snakes, the dark heights? Is there anything that you're a weird fear of?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Yeah, a nine-to-five job in an office. That's my fear. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:06

Big time. Yeah, I mean, that is worse than any snake. When you come back from a big trip, how do you treat yourself? What's your greatest extravagance?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

Oh, man, you know, it's funny. Just being at home in North America feels like an extravagance to me after doing what I do most of the time. But, you know, it's funny. I have... I mean, I think it comes down to food, just like eating really good salads, organic salads and stuff like that. It's just because I haven't usually had them in a long time and my body craves it. And that's a really nice luxury for me. But other than that, it's quite funny. I feel often really guilty about indulging in things. Like even for me to pay for a massage is... is a very rare thing. I kind of feel like a bit of an asshole when I start indulging in a lot of luxuries for some reason. I have to say it's food.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

How much of the year will you spend on the road, not at home? Is it most? Is it half?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:27

I would say in the last... couple years I mean it kind of it's it fluctuates yeah um I would I would say though since I've been motorcycling um I would I would say more like eight months out of the year I'm gone

SPEAKER_03 1:03:48

wow

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

yeah eight to nine even a lot

SPEAKER_02 1:03:51

cool

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

um and I was trying to before that uh you know I was I was COVID COVID made me stay home for a while, for sure. And that was tough.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:04

What did you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

And then also, well, I was still recovering from my tumor thing. Right, right, right. So the timing of that worked out kind of well, actually. And yeah, I just kind of stayed at home and was doing home stuff, but Nothing too exciting. I wish, though, if we go into another pandemic, I'm going to make sure I'm on a remote beach in Indo, like in a shack near Surf Break, where I can just surf every day or something. That would be ideal.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

Or take the Frank Wolf approach and just paddle around Vancouver Island for your isolation.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:50

You know what he did? Is that what Frank did? Yeah.

UNKNOWN 1:04:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

Amazing. Frank's so awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

Besides a camera, is there one piece of gear or equipment that you don't like to leave home without on these trips?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:12

Geez. I mean, the thing that comes to mind right away is toilet paper, but... I mean, there's

SPEAKER_02 1:05:19

a reason people

SPEAKER_01 1:05:20

hoard that stuff. I know. Yeah, just because... A lot of the areas I'm in, it's like, it's like gold. It's invaluable, you know, but you can get it, you can get it in cities. So it's not like I have to leave home with it. Um, no, I mean, other than that, it's, it's really the, the camera, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:39

Yeah. Yeah. And

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

then

SPEAKER_02 1:05:42

like right now, how many cameras do you have in your, in your kit?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:47

Here in Nepal, I have just two bodies, three lenses on me at the moment. But usually, I often create a home base when I'm traveling somewhere. And then I kind of leave the bulk of the gear and then go out and do different side trips or missions or projects or whatever and then kind of come back. So I always try to... be somewhere with minimal amount of stuff if I can. That makes sense. Depending on the project. I don't just stay somewhere two weeks. I'm often somewhere many months.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

This is the first question they teach you in journalism school. Looking back, is there one big regret that stands out?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:38

One big regret... I mean, I don't, you know, it's funny. Like I often don't think of things like that. Like I don't think of regret because I always feel like everything I've done has got me to where I am now. And I'm a big believer in like stoicism where the bad shit that happens to you is the best stuff that happens because that's where you really learn and grow. And, you know, so I... I don't think of regret like that. I just feel like all the shitty stuff is usually where the gold is. I am who I am today because of it. That

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

maybe leads into our last question. If you could go back in time and talk to the 14-year-old version of yourself, what would you say? What advice would you give? I

SPEAKER_01 1:07:40

would probably say this is probably pretty shitty advice for many people but i wouldn't have i wouldn't have gone to university i would have just been out in the world out in the world earlier going after shit i really wanted to go after and do or like at least figure that out because i know i understand at that age you don't really know but i i don't think i i needed university to you know help help me in that regard. So I think I would bypass that. I would have listened to my father who always bothered me to learn more languages. And I remember thinking, oh, you know, why, why do I need to know all that stuff? Um, now I, now I'm really kicking myself in the ass for that. And then, uh, and he always, always said instruments too. And I'm really kicking myself in the ass for that. Yeah.

UNKNOWN 1:08:38

So

SPEAKER_01 1:08:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:40

I relate to your father there. I have a son. I tell him and his buddies, like, if you can play an instrument and ride a skateboard, you can go anywhere in the world and make friends, right? Oh, yeah. And if you've got an Iron Maiden jacket on, even better. That's awesome. Oh, man. Jody, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a real treat. Thank you. Yeah. What a gift to get to be exposed to your photography. Thank you. I appreciate it. We'll put a link to your website in the description. But is there anything else people need to know if they want to learn more about you?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:23

No. I mean, I think my main form of communication to the outside world is my Instagram account, JodyMcDonaldPhoto. Um, I'm, I'm, I do a lot of story stuff more than main feed stuff. So if anybody really wants to see behind the scenes of my, my day-to-day life, you usually got a lot of stories going on there. So that's probably the best way.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

We'll, we'll put a link to that into it. It's Mac Donald, not McDonald. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the phone book. Right. But you used to have the mix and max section right in the book. Right. So I don't know, that's a slightly a bit higher than insignificant to have your own section like that. Jodi, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:09

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:16

Okay, how about that? Jody McDonald is so badass and so awesome and we're definitely going to have to get her back on the show. I feel like we barely scratched the surface there. As mentioned, check out her site, jodymcdonaldphotography.com and add her Insta to your list of people who can inspire you daily. It's at jodymcdonaldphoto. And as we mentioned, that's Mac, not Mick. Thank you, Jody, for your time. Thanks also to Shirai Rules and Adrian Jendro for the voiceovers and guitars off the top. And of course, thank you, dear listener, for your time. I know the clock has ticking on winter here and spring break is just around the corner. We have some pretty good travel stories up at mountainlifemedia.ca. Everything from heli skiing to winter e-biking to surf sojourns. Dig in and have fun. While you're there, feel free to hit up the Mountain Life shop for a sick hat, toque, mug, poster, shirt, whatever, and let the world know that you're living that mountain life, or at least living it vicariously. Happy International Women's Day. Sending huge love and respect to all the women in our lives. Thank you for literally creating life. And I eagerly await the day when women run the world, because I think we can all agree it's looking like it's well beyond time for that. So yeah. Be kind to each other out there, mountain lifers. Have fun. Get rad. But if you see someone struggling, stop and lend a hand. And please, leave the campsite and the people you meet there better than you found them.