Adventures Worth Taking + Resiliency with Aaron Ragon (part 1)

What happens when life pushes you to the absolute edge of your capabilities? Aaron Ragon's journey from broke college student to global adventurer reveals the transformative power of confronting our greatest challenges.

Aaron takes us to the remote shores of Bristol Bay, Alaska, where a violent confrontation with a troubled man named Earl became one of his life's pivotal moments. With remarkable clarity, he recounts being cornered on a deserted beach, facing a drunk man wielding rebar who threatened to kill him. The split-second decisions Aaron made that night—and his choice to show mercy rather than seek vengeance—illustrate how resilience forms in our most desperate moments.

But this story doesn't end with survival. Years later, when Aaron returned to Alaska, Earl picked him up at the airport. During their drive, this once-violent antagonist acknowledged how Aaron had changed and, in his own gruff way, expressed appreciation and gratitude. This unexpected reconciliation demonstrates how our most difficult relationships sometimes come full circle in ways we could never anticipate.

Aaron's adventures didn't stop in Alaska. His pursuit of meaningful experiences led him to Nepal and Antarctica—the latter journey undertaken primarily because he "couldn't let her go alone" when his future wife decided to work at McMurdo Research Station. These global experiences eventually guided him to his true calling in education, where he now supports high-risk, high-potential youth, becoming "that adult for kids who were like me and just kind of untethered."

About Aaron Ragon

Aaron Ragon is a keynote speaker, education leader and licensed therapist with 20 years of experience in mental health and student support. He serves as a Partner of Student Support in Cherry Creek School District and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver. Drawing from global experiences in Alaska, Antarctica, and Nepal, he brin

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Transcript

Reigniting the Inner Flame

Speaker 1 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. Resilience where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

Speaker 2 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, natalie Davis, and I am so excited to be back with all of you today, and joining me, of course, is Pam Kass. Pam, how are you today?

Speaker 3 0:56

I am fabulous today. You know we've been doing this for two years now and a lot of times we record and we post them and we don't hear get feedback a lot of times from people you know every once in a while. And our marketing person just shared a message that came across our Instagram account and it was a girl I went to high school with. I have not spoken to her since high school and she found our podcast and just shared how important this has been and how much it's impacted her, and it's just one of those things where you're like, okay, well, this is why we do this.

Speaker 2 1:28

You know, I love that.

Speaker 3 1:30

I mean, we're meeting incredible people and we do this because we absolutely are passionate about this and creating this community. But when you get those messages, you're like, oh okay, so it's, it's working.

Meeting Our Guest Aaron Reagan

Speaker 2 1:40

Oh, absolutely, I love that. What a great testimonial. I love that piece.

Speaker 2 1:44

I love hearing those stories as well Because, yes, I often get feedback and comments from my partner and and then I know when we have a ton of nuggets because he'll mention, oh, I had to listen to it twice because I had to take so many notes. I'm like, oh, I am so excited to introduce our listeners to our special guests that we have today, Because, I mean, if we're talking about individuals that have overcome adversity, I think this is a person that absolutely has. I mean, we all have, but we get the honor of hearing some of his journey today. So, Pam, why don't you share with our listeners who's joining us?

Speaker 3 2:22

Yeah, I'm excited for this one.

Speaker 3 2:23

So when I am part of a speaker Academy right now and I love to move around the room so that I can sit next to different people every time I go and I had the honor of sitting next to our guest, aaron, who told me a little bit about his story a very little bit about his story, because after I read some of his bio is like oh my gosh, there's so much more to his story and so asked if he would join us, and so I'm so grateful he's here.

Speaker 3 2:49

So today we have Aaron Reagan. He is a keynote speaker, education leader and licensed therapist with 20 years of experience in mental health and student support. He serves as a partner of student support in Cherry Creek School districts and an adjunct professor at the University of Denver. Drawing from global experiences in Alaska, antarctica and Nepal, he brings a unique perspective filled with warmth, humor and candor to all of his endeavors. Welcome, we are so honored to have you with us today and I'm going to hand it over to you for you to share your story, because you've got quite a few.

Adventures in Remote Alaska

Speaker 4 3:29

Thank you for having me. I'm really honored to be here. Okay, so I am going to share a story that I don't get the opportunity to share a lot and to give you a little background. When I was in college, I was a broke college student and I had a group of friends and we were all broke together, and back when people read newspapers this is in the early nineties there were ads to go to Alaska work in the fishing industry and make money. So a group of us traveled up there. We ended up missing the window for hiring and we were about to go broke. We were camping, we were pooling our money just to survive and we ended up getting a job at the last minute in remote Bristol Bay, in this area near the village of Agagak, and so if you imagine that Alaska has that beard that extends out into the ocean, we we were at the base of the beard, which is in Bristol Bay, and so this is a really remote area. The only way to get there is via small aircraft or boat, and so we went up there.

Speaker 4 4:39

I worked incredibly hard and when I returned the second year, I was told hey, we want to place you at our remote buying station. Ok now, the plant is very remote, but the buying station is six miles away. There's no indoor plumbing, there's a generator that sometimes runs when it cooperates, and there's a group of really feisty fishermen out there. And I had never purchased fish I was about 20, 21 at the time and I said, sure, I'll do it. So the first summer we were pretty successful.

Speaker 4 5:13

The second summer the plant decided to invest in this buying station. I got a larger crew and there was this guy who showed up and so basically our lifeline to the plant was this truck that would deliver supplies, but the guy would also bring groceries. His name was Vern, and Vern was a really unique person because he had been a Vietnam veteran and he'd been a police officer and he had had this really traumatic past. And what I learned later was that a week before arriving in Alaska, vern had been living under a bridge and he'd gone from living in a four-bedroom home with an RV and a couple of boats to losing everything. This was precipitated by a really nasty divorce and, going after the new romantic interest of his ex-wife lost his job, and so this is a guy who was coming to Alaska to start over again.

Speaker 4 6:11

As I tell this story, I'm about the age that he was at that time, so I'm currently 53. And at the time, like I said, I was 21 or 22. So Vern's this imposing guy. He's about six foot four, weighs about 280. And he started to bully me. So he would bring his truck and he would give me these little nicknames which were really inappropriate. He resented the fact that I was a college student and so his favorite nickname for me was College Puke, but he also called me Shit Stain and a bunch of other names that I can't even repeat here because they're actually, you know, pretty bad. So this continued for about a week where he would insult me in front of my crew and put me down, and it triggered me, because anybody who's been in junior high or middle school, high school, knows what it's like to be bullied and I had that experience. I came to the conclusion that I could not tolerate this, that this was not acceptable.

Speaker 2 7:13

And at 21, 22 years old, you're not working through any of that yet you probably don't even realize that it was a trauma that you had to deal with.

Speaker 4 7:21

Absolutely, absolutely, natalie.

Speaker 4 7:23

Yeah deal with. Absolutely, absolutely, natalie. Yeah, I just knew that I was going to blow up if I didn't have this conversation, so I knew that there was going to be kind of a confrontation to come to Jesus, you know. So Earl arrives one day and he starts talking to me the way that he typically would and I said, hey, come over here, I want to talk to you for a minute. So I pulled him aside and I let him know in no uncertain terms this is not acceptable, this has to stop and I will not allow you to talk to me this way anymore. And he was completely caught unaware by this, didn't know how to respond to it, and then the next day he was no longer our truck driver. So his position in the company was that he oversaw all the truck drivers and he had chosen to be our truck driver, but he assigned someone else to drive the truck. I was hugely, hugely relieved.

Speaker 4 8:14

The new truck driver, a couple of days later, mentions to me he's really angry at you. I said, yeah, that's fine, I don't care, you know I'm six miles down the beach from him, this is not an issue. And he said I would be careful if I were you. And that's all he said and that's kind of ominous. In this area of Alaska there's no law enforcement. It's just this incredibly wild area, and this doesn't. This isn't just the fact that there are brown bears, bald eagles, porcupines, the people are really wild as well, and so it's an environment that can be really dangerous.

Confrontation on the Beach

Speaker 4 8:48

And so I just kind of filed that away, and so the following week I received a call from the office and there was this woman in the office that let me know that I'd forgotten my paperwork, I had not sent it back with the truck, and so she demanded that I get the paperwork to her and I said, okay, I will bring the paperwork. This is about 11 at night, but because we have 20 hour days in Alaska, there's still some sunlight, and I had a and a beat up pickup truck that barely ran. I had one headlight and you have to understand, there's no road. You drive along a beach and interspersed in the beach there are these set net stakes, because fishermen use these stakes to put their nets out in the ocean. Okay, and I'm really afraid of this woman in the office. She's totally intimidating anyway. So I decide I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 9:40

Just you're doing it. That's enough to motivate you to just get there you know how.

Speaker 4 9:45

There's people you can't afford for them to be mad at you. Yes, yes, so this is. It was a situation like that. So I get into the truck, I have my paperwork, I start driving and I see another truck come in the opposite direction and I recognize that it's one of the trucks from the plant. So I stop and the truck pulls around to the side so that its headlights are directly pinned on me. They are perpendicular to me. And then I hear it. I'm going to kill you.

Speaker 4 10:17

The truck goes into reverse, lurches forward from about 20 feet out and it t-bones me. Now the truck that I'm in is like from the 70s. It doesn't have a seatbelt or anything and there's one of those running seats, oh yeah. And so it sends me hurtling across the seat and I hit my head on the far side. The window is rolled down in my truck and I hear it break. But my truck is still running and I don't lose consciousness, and so I scurry back over to the driver's seat, pop it in, drive and I floor it. Now I have one headlight.

Speaker 4 10:55

The sun is starting to go down, it's starting to get dark and I can hear Vern in his truck behind me screaming, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you. And so this continues for a couple of minutes, but it seems like a couple of hours, and it's really precarious. I can't see. Well, I'm shaken and then I feel it Bam, front left tire hits one of these set net stakes and I am immobile, set net stakes and I am immobile. So I jump out of the truck and Vern, or rather Earl, pulls his truck around. He jumps out of his truck and he's carrying a piece of rebar, you know. So it's like a quarter inch round piece of steel, probably about three feet long, that you use to put in concrete. You know, it reinforces concrete foundations and stuff, and he's staggering and he's drunk, drunk, and he's really drunk.

Speaker 4 11:55

So I'm looking at my situation and I'm assessing it, and so I have the ocean on one side and the tide is coming in, and there's a bluff on my other side and the bluff is about 40 feet tall, and there's a bluff on my other side and the bluff is about 40 feet tall and there's a lot of loose sand. And so my options are run up the beach, run down the beach or try to talk him down. So I decide I'm going to try to talk Earl down. And so I put my hands up. I say look, earl, I know you're mad. I think we need to talk about this. I'm sorry if I upset you. And he starts telling me it's too late for sorry. You're going to suffer now. Now you're going to suffer.

Speaker 4 12:35

And he's staggering towards me and it's this moment that felt kind of surreal and I started thinking to myself OK, I was about three years out of playing high school football and from playing high school football I was still in decent shape. And I know that Earl has a bad knee and I know that he's drunk. So I decide that I am going to try and take his legs out from under him and wrestle that piece of steel from him. And so I'm talking to him, walking towards him, he's making threatening motions to me. He's calling me all kinds of names, he's raising his voice, he's yelling, he's shouting, and at one point there's a pair of lights that show up, probably a quarter mile down the beach. He turns to look at the lights. I tackle him, so he's about six feet away. He goes to the ground. I get on top of him, I grabbed a piece of steel from him and I am so viscerally angry at this man that I start saying I'm going to kill you. I am going to pop you in the head with this piece of steel. You cannot treat me this way.

Speaker 4 13:43

Well, the headlights get closer and I don't hit him with it, and his friend shows up. His friend is the mechanic at the plant and he starts shouting at me you get off of him right now. Now the thing I should tell you about his friend is that he always carries a nine millimeter Glock inside his Carhartt jacket, and I know this because he had passed out in front of my house a couple of weeks earlier and I had to start buying fish, and so when I went to wake him up, he looked at me and said you should be a little more careful about how you wake people up. And then he pulled open his jacket and showed me his gun. So I get off of Earl, I keep the piece of rebar and you got to deal with him. And he says I know.

Speaker 4 14:27

I says I know you rebar, and you got to deal with him. And he says I know. I says I know you go home, I'll deal with Earl, he's not going to bother you anymore. And so I gave him the paperwork. He took Earl with him and because he was the mechanic at the plant, he got a pickup truck that I was running operational again, and so I was faced with this ethical dilemma. The ethical dilemma was do I file charges against Earl? What do you guys think I did?

Speaker 2 14:51

I think you let it go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 14:54

You called it. Yeah, I did. I let it go and there was a lot of reasons for that. If I had filed charges against him, my credibility would have been shot and there was a part of me that wanted him to have a second chance. There was a part of me that, in spite of everything, there were times when it was just him and I that he was fine to be around, that he was kind of funny and charming. So here's the unexpected part of the story, and as I've grown older, this is the part of the story that means the most to me.

Speaker 4 15:26

I returned to that beach for a total of eight summers and Earl and I kept our distance from each other. We didn't speak the last time that I returned. I had been gone for a couple of summers because I had been working in corporate America and I absolutely despised it. I kind of had this job that didn't agree with me, and so when I landed it was Earl who picked me up. It was Earl who drove me to the buying station and as we drove there he said I can tell you've changed. I can tell that you've been beaten up a little bit by life and I can see that you've basically become someone who might understand more about my situation. What he basically let me know on that 30-minute drive was that he appreciated me, he valued me and in his own way he let me know that he was grateful to me, and so it wasn't like we ever had a restorative conversation in the conventional sense, but it was as close to making peace as I think he was capable of, and so yeah.

Speaker 4 16:37

That's the story.

Coming Full Circle with Earl

Speaker 2 16:38

Wow, what a story. And that was your final summer there.

Speaker 4 16:41

That was my last summer. Yes, that was my last summer. Yeah, wow, yeah, and I mean in his own way he was a big cheerleader for me. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, and so it felt nice to be able to kind of come full circle in that way with him.

Speaker 3 16:55

Yeah.

Speaker 4 17:03

Did you ever keep in touch with anyone from up there after you left? Yeah, so what's interesting is that my wife was up there for a couple of summers. She was part of the original group.

Speaker 3 17:08

that went Okay.

Speaker 4 17:09

It was actually her idea to go. So, wow, yeah, so I'd say that's probably the most important person, okay. And then my best friend my two best friends also spent summers up there. So you know I'm in close contact with them and then I'll hear things through the grapevine every now and then. You know about that place, but it was an incredibly fascinating experience and it really pushed me to my limits in a number of ways. I worked a 44-hour shift one time. Oh my gosh, I only went to bed when I started to hallucinate. Yeah, I met some really interesting people up there.

Speaker 3 17:49

So it was a physical, emotional, just kind of every type of growth that you had up there.

Speaker 4 17:55

It was. It was and in the backdrop of this, is one of the most significant biological events on earth, you know, with one of the biggest salmon runs in the world, naturally occurring salmon runs. And so there's this collective experience where people are working really hard for really long periods of time, and so, in looking back at it, I really feel like it was a rite of passage.

Speaker 3 18:20

Yeah, absolutely, and I imagine some of that experience has carried over to everything that you do today.

Speaker 4 18:27

Oh, absolutely so. I work with high risk youth, high risk, high potential kids and it yeah, I think the lessons that I've learned there are imprinted on my soul, kind of like Alaska is. You know, there's a little piece of me that belongs to Alaska and always will. Yeah.

Speaker 3 19:41

That's incredible.

Speaker 2 19:42

Well, I'm impressed that you and Earl were able to get some type of closure not formal closure and discussion, and you know the kumbaya moment, but I think there was just a understanding in that drive where you realize, okay, we've had our instance, and I think a lot of it I don't know Earl, but I'm thinking a lot of it comes from the stance that he was basically entering into that space where he'd lost everything, had lost everything, and here you come, 20, 21 years old, wet behind the ears and invincible to the world, and the world is your oyster.

Speaker 4 20:16

And he's like you just wait, it's not what you think, yeah so right of passage I think is such an appropriate description for that it was such a fascinating experience to me that I wrote an honors thesis on it really it's entitled uh, trial by fishing male initiation in remote Alaska.

Speaker 3 20:35

Oh, wow, perfect.

Speaker 4 20:36

And then so as part of that, I interviewed a lot of people and I took field notes and this was not this was a different summer than when Earl attacked me, but it yeah. I had a conversation with someone who had homesteaded with his girlfriend on this frozen lake for nine months, oh wow, and they realized about a month in that they were not a good fit for each other. But they were stuck together for another eight months and on a frozen not the lifestyle.

Speaker 3 21:06

But each other.

Speaker 4 21:08

Yeah, it was yeah, I mean, you know, and they were just yeah. So so it's a really. It was a rich, rich experience, a lot of really remarkable people.

Adventures in Antarctica

Speaker 3 21:19

That's incredible, yeah, incredible, that's amazing. Oh my gosh, that is amazing.

Speaker 2 21:24

Well, erin, let's take a step back, because we started this story by sharing that you were in college and broke with your broke college friends. I think many of us can relate to that. It's so interesting.

Speaker 1 21:35

I just thought about that too. I was like my college friends were also broke.

Speaker 3 21:41

I think most college kids are. When you said broke college kids, I felt like it's kind of like an oxymoron.

Speaker 4 21:45

It goes together.

Speaker 2 21:48

But what was your journey there? Was that something that you were looking forward to in terms of going to college and graduating and entering into corporate America? Or were you just there by happenstance, because it was the?

Speaker 4 21:59

next thing to do? That's a really good question, Natalie. And so I think the only interest I had and I know this is going to sound, I don't know really juvenile, but that's who I was. I was a juvenile. You ever seen Indiana Jones? Oh yeah, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. The only thing I wanted to do was be like Kane from Kung Fu and walk the earth and have adventures. I really was unfocused going into college and I knew that I wasn't dumb and I knew that I had potential. But things like making money and climbing the corporate ladder did not appeal to me. So I made a deal with myself my freshman year of college that every summer I would have an adventure, I would have a job that presented me with the opportunity for adventure. So I was a whitewater rafting guide. Then I did Alaska. I ran a study abroad program in Nepal after being a student there, and then, ultimately, my first job after college was at a research station in Antarctica.

Speaker 3 22:58

Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 22:58

And so I spent five months working at McMurdo Research. You know McMurdo, and that again, was my wife's idea. So you know, I seem like the adventurous one, but if I'm being completely honest, it's her.

Speaker 3 23:12

She's the one. Did she go there too? Was she working?

Speaker 4 23:15

there as well she did, we went together yeah.

Speaker 3 23:18

Oh, wow, okay, so it's for a girl. Then really you went for a girl. You went for a girl. Then I did she went for the adventure, you went for a girl.

Speaker 4 23:29

I went for a girl and the funny thing is she wrote me a letter and I've got it somewhere where she said hey, I met someone in a steam room in Boulder who told me about employment in Antarctica. Do you want to go? And I wrote her back and I said I would rather take a bullet, but flash forward three months. We're in Antarctica. There you are.

Speaker 2 23:51

Somehow she convinced you. Well, you know.

Speaker 4 23:55

I couldn't let her go alone. No, so I went for a girl. Chivalry is not dead for anyone. No, I couldn't let her go alone. No, so I went. I went for a girl.

Speaker 2 24:00

Chivalry is not dead for anyone. No, it isn't Anyone's listening.

Speaker 3 24:04

You follow your girl to Antarctica?

Speaker 4 24:06

Yes, If I can tell a quick story about that, please yes.

Speaker 4 24:11

So, lisa, my wife said look, you know we should room together. And I said, ah, I don't know. You know that seems like kind of a lot and you know, at this point we've been together a long time and I don't know. I was in my mid 20s and so we flew down in separate groups and I flew down a few days early and when we arrived you know you live in a barracks and when I got into my barracks we arrived, you know you live in a barracks and when I got into my barracks there's a 45 year old man sitting naked in his bed and the room was about 100 degrees oh so it's it's.

Speaker 4 24:47

it's 25 below zero outside, it's 100 degrees in the room. He's there naked and he tells me you made a big mistake, this place sucks, you're going to hate it. And I just thought, yeah, I made a big mistake, but it's rooming with you.

Speaker 2 25:04

Exactly yes.

Speaker 4 25:07

And the beds were like these little single beds and they were lined up directly next to each other. There was like a foot of space between them and I'm thinking, oh my, he's not going to work, Not sleep a foot away from this naked guy. That's so negative. So I went to the housing guy the next morning. I begged him. He made the arrangements so that we could room together. I still remember what the guy looks like because I'm so grateful to this day. And so, yeah, that was how we ended up living together for the first time, and so I'm a process person.

Speaker 4 25:43

Go back to your question, Natalie, about how did you kind of figure out what you wanted to do? It evolved over time and I slowly came to realize that my passion was education. So, yeah, and I think I ultimately became a school counselor that's what I do by trade but I kind of wanted to be that adult for kids who were like me and just kind of untethered, lacking direction, needy and untrusted adult to have a conversation with. And so, yeah, it's a I feel incredibly lucky to do something that I love.

Speaker 3 26:18

Yeah.

Speaker 4 26:19

Yeah, and so that's a very long answer to a very straightforward question.

Finding Purpose in Education

Speaker 2 26:24

No, that's great. Well, and what was your journey to get to being a school counselor? What did that journey look like? Because these others quite honestly sound like side quests that were happening along the way there were side quests. Yes.

Speaker 4 26:40

Okay, so I mentioned that I had returned to Alaska after working in corporate America.

Speaker 4 26:45

Yes, so, I worked for this phone company called US West oh yes, they no longer exist, but I answered incoming calls from customers and it was just soul-killing. Everything that I did was observed and measured. And there was this I had to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. Oh, wow, you know, it was not good. And my wife, lisa, was also there and we had had these incredible experiences in our 20s and it was, you know, it was kind of soul-killing. So we did a bunch of research, we applied to the Peace Corps and we applied to this thing called the Japanese Exchange Teaching Program. Ok, we were on our way to Ghana, at the headwaters of the Amazon, that's where we were going to be placed at the Peace Corps. And then we found out that we were. We were medically disqualified because Lisa is allergic to peanuts. Peanuts are a big part of the local diet. Okay, our backup was Japan.

Speaker 1 27:41

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real-life ideas. To fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes and, of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.