We are the Solution: Writing a New Story with Author, Naturalist, and Educator, Steve Ramirez

In this episode, we share ideas of how we can write a new story and paint a different picture of this world by envisioning change and acting toward solutions.

Transcript

Speaker 0:05

Welcome to the Heart Path podcast. I'm your host, Yvonne Ellis, the Heart Path Podcast, spotlights, authors, change makers, nature lovers, and creators of all kinds. Each of our podcasts aim to share interviews and stories of beauty, resilience, and inspiration for all. This week's guest is Steve Ramez. Steve Ramez. Is a naturalist educator and an award-winning outdoor and conservation author who lives and writes in the Texas Hill country. He is the author of a series of books with lions press, including casting forward fishing tails from the Texas Hill Country, casting on. Fishing adventures in search of America's native game, fish casting, seaward fishing adventures. In search of America's saltwater game fish and casting homeward, an angler and naturalist journey to America's legendary rivers.

Speaker 2 1:12

Thank you so much, Steve, for being here. I'm so glad to have you here.

Speaker 3 1:17

Oh, I'm so pleased to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 2 1:20

Each one of your books starts with adversity. Yeah. And I'm wondering what it is that helps you to move through adversity.

Speaker 3 1:34

That's a great question. You're gonna get a long-winded answer, which is kind of normal for me. So the first thing I'll say is his perspective. I switched my perspective on adversity, so I embrace it, and now I'm as human as the next person. So I am going to take that first hit, whether it be a health issue or a life issue. You take that first punch that smack in the face, and that's part of life, you know, that's it. I always address any kind of adversity as not a problem. I never use that word a challenge. I guess it's the Marine Corps in me a little bit after the original hit. The first thing is perspective. I ask myself, what can I learn from this and how am I gonna get through it and come out the other side a better person? I'm gonna sound like a marine again here. Perspective is my strategy and tactics will include writing, poetry, friendship. Music and fly fishing for sure, and just being out in nature. I don't go hiking. I go walking. When you're hiking, it's like you're trying to get somewhere in some amount of time, and I'm not doing that. I'm trying to be present. I just want to walk in nature and if it takes me three hours to do this little trail, that's fine. If it takes me four hours, that's fine. It's, did I, did I enjoy it? Did I gather, did I see things there? Same when I'm fly fishing, when I'm riding. Someone recently asked me, is writing work for you or Joy? And my answer was, easy writing for me is joy, but I work hard at it. The first thing about adversity is perspective. And you can go, oh God, what now? Or you can say, okay, what am I gonna do now? What's next? Uh, and those are your only choices actually. So you asked about the books. The first one, casting Forward, which I'll share with your listeners if they'd already know, is in a movie, a really beautiful movie called Mending the Line. Josh Caldwell, who's become, my dear friend, is the director into a wonderful actor. Stephen Camilio was the screenwriter for that movie, and I love that my words in my book and some of my character are part of that movie. Not because of anything of ego,'cause I don't care about that, but because I believe that movie, like my books is intended to be healing and healthy, that film is, it has, you have to stick with it.'cause some of it's challenge and tough and even sorrowful. But at the end it's a very good ending. So my first book, casting Forward, that opening line is when I lost my job, I went fishing. The second book is when I walked off my job, I went fishing. You see a theme there? When I was in academia as a college professor, I got so disillusioned with academia. I just decided there was no passion in it for me anymore as time to go. The third book is when I turned 60. I went fishing. And the fourth book, the final book is when I was diagnosed with heart disease, I went fishing.

Speaker 4 4:52

Wow. So there's

Speaker 3 4:53

plenty of those. I think that's what I'm saying is no matter what hits us, everything is survival. I'm trying to remember who originally said that. I think it was Oscar Wild. And even the last thing is most likely a passage somewhere else. Um, we don't know. So I just take it as it comes. You know, like being in the river. I'll also share with your listeners that everything I write is written in the way I see and feel and perceive the world, which is poetry and metaphor.

Speaker 2 5:30

Would you mind reading a little bit from one of your casting books?

Speaker 3 5:34

Sure. Actually, I set two aside, the first one and the last one, so maybe later on our discussion I can read a piece out of the last one.

Speaker 4 5:41

I would love.

Speaker 3 5:42

What I'll read now is a piece from the first book. Some of these words are in the moving, mending the line. You should mention to your listeners that one of the things that are my challenges, uh, beside things like heart disease, recurring skin cancer, and advancing asthma. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But it's actually, I plow through all of it. But the other thing is I've had post-traumatic stress issues. Most of my adult life, I just tell you that in order to put this in context, what you're about to hear. So here is from a second chapter called Joshua Creek. In my first book, casting Forward, I don't know why it is that some of my best days on the river have begun with waking alone in the darkness, truly alone with that deep empty feeling, that hollow aloneness that you cannot shake free of. It has been some time since my service in the Marines, but years later, the ghost came to call and I found myself afraid to sleep, knowing they would come back. A doctor helped me to chase away the ghost, but the feeling of emptiness remained, I guess sometimes surviving is your punishment, so you stand in the river facing upstream with the water rushing down. Upon you is if it could somehow fill that hollow emptiness and somehow it always does. So it was one morning I stood there without even casting it with no trout rising. And as the water rushed past me, I knew it was washing my burdens behind me, swirling them downstream. Like so many autumn leaves, there's a great deal of living that trout can teach us. They teach us. How to keep swimming even as a steady current trout. Know that if they stop swimming, they cease to be trout and become debris floating without purpose wherever the current may take them. Trout know that if they keep swimming facing into the current, perhaps in the dy of a rock, all they need to truly live will eventually come to them. I learn a great deal from trout.

Speaker 2 7:56

Thank you so much for sharing. I was thinking while you were reading about how we use Metaphor and how it, it's so beautiful to compare ourselves with the, the natural world around us because we are nature. Connecting with nature is a very healing process. I see. From your work, and I know from my own life, when did you start connecting with nature?

Speaker 3 8:27

Oh, as extremely young child, I'm very open in my writing about my story, not because I think anything about my life is important, but by sharing openly, I think writers have to be brave. You have to be brave enough to put yourself out there. And hope that in doing so, you're connecting with people that have similar stories. One of the toughest things I think with dealing with hardship is thinking you're alone. So when I write, I write about the things that I'm fighting through and overcoming, not because it's about me, but because it's about us. The reason I'm telling you that is I started out as a child with a very loving father. Raised me pretty much on his own as a single parent. When my mother left, uh, she walked out when I was 12, which I used to say was the only kind thing she ever did.

Speaker 4 9:22

I

Speaker 3 9:22

don't mean this meanly, but my mother was not a pleasant human being to her own detriment. And I say this with compassion, she was, what I would say is a, uh, narcissistic sociopath. And was extremely cruel to me. So I was an abused kid, uh, both physically violently abused and emotionally abused. And I say that not as a poor me, but as that's when I started to learn, uh, when my father wasn't home to protect me. I ran out into nature every day and I stayed out there as long as I could until I knew dad was coming home from work. And nature is so healing. It's not like a Disney movie. It's not. All happy blue birds. Blue birds eat worms. And the Lion King, I always say this eats his subjects. Nature's not kind, but it's honest. So yeah, as a little kid, I climbed trees just so I could get closer to the birds. I played in the streams and I saved box turtles, helped them cross the road, and now I never see a box turtle and nature really was my safe place, literally. So as a child, as your long-winded answer.

Speaker 2 10:35

I will take any answer you wanna give me. I read the other day that your work is based in an earth ethic. What is that ethic?

Speaker 3 10:48

You read that? I'd love to see where you read that because it's pretty good. Well, I would say outta Leopold in his fantastic book that wasn't published till after he had died, uh, San County Almanac talk about a new earth ethic. I try to take that the next step and go again. I try to write from a perspective, you started with it that the earth is a living being. It's a living.

Speaker 4 11:18

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 11:19

It's a living being that human beings are not the only living beings all living. Want to live, look into the eyes of any creature that's being killed and you'll know it wants to live. My earth ethic is about us truly connecting with nature, realizing that we always have been, and ultimately we're seeing now, I believe, I know this has been politicized. It shouldn't be science should not be political. Um, and that is that we're seeing now that nature gets the final word, whether it be with massive floods, heat domes, rising temperatures, rising sea level, people don't realize it's changing the. Chemistry of the ocean, which is killing off plank. Then it gives us 80% of our oxygen, uh, nature gets the final say. So I'm hoping that the way I write about my interaction and our interaction with nature, uh, I guess in my wildest dreams, it starts a new perspective and a growing movement where we realize we need to be able to coexist. Each other and with nature. So if you looked at my website, you would see that in the beginning. People ask me, what do you write? And I said, I write about nature and the best of human nature. Uh, that's what I write about. I'm not really writing fishing stories or trekking stories, hiking stories. I'm writing about life beside the childhood stuff. I told you I spent 35 years of my life armed as either a US marine, working in counter-terrorism. Or as a civilian working in the areas of counter-terrorism, active shooter, counter bomb, all kinds of homicide investigations, undercover narcotics and weapons. Wow. So I've seen the very worst of humanity and what I'm writing about now is what if we accentuate the very best of who we are? What if we do that? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 13:24

Yes, please. That actually leads into something that I've been thinking about lately, which is. What if we created our own individual stories of love for ourselves? I feel like a lot of us have gone through trauma, have gone through issues in our lives with people surrounding us or society or schools, and I've been thinking about a love ethic. What if we were to forgive those around us who have hurt us and heal our hearts individually, would that actually will lead to us being able to take better care of each other and take better care of earth? What do you think?

Speaker 3 14:19

Uh, yeah. You tapped on something it's core to, to. To me in my writing and my lifestyle as well, I always say that my only religion is love. My practice of it is open-minded curiosity to learn, to grow, to change, to be brave enough to stand up. So to me, love is key in everything. Even when I was carrying one to three weapons every day of my life, it was an act of love because I was placing myself between. People like yourself and those who would harm you, and the people that would harm you, could not be harmed by me unless they forced that situation. I can't do anything about someone else's choices. I can only respond to them. Mm-hmm. And so, to me, love is absolutely the key, whether we're talking about ourselves. You mentioned forgiveness. I, uh. I also write a column for Fly Fisherman magazine. I, I really loved writing for them. I think the publisher editor, Ross Parnell is doing a beautiful job of making it so much more than about casting a line and catching a fish, which is not what I write about. He's trying to make it about how do we make a better world. We are so simpatico in this. I wrote a piece recently called Redemption. The whole piece of me going down a river in New Mexico was really about talking about forgiveness. I mentioned my mother, and hopefully your listeners can hear in my voice that I have nothing but compassion for her. Mm-hmm. Nothing. And this is a person who physically and, and spiritually and emotionally abused me all my life. And that's her burden. I'm free of it. I forgive that. And it doesn't mean I forget. I don't think we should forget because there is darkness in humanity as well. If that wasn't true, I wouldn't have had to wear a ballistic vest and carry a weapon for 35 years of my life. We can't be pollyannish about it. I think love is the key. You talk about the earth ethic. Love is the key of my earth ethic too. You say, oh, you hear people all the time. They go out doing whatever their outdoor recreation is and they'll say, oh, I love the outdoors. Well, if you do, why aren't you protecting it? And I would say, you can tell. Your listeners can tell. I'm very philosophical, I think in the English language, in the United States, we throw words around without any meaning. Love is the most thrown around word There is. I'd say love, God, and friendship are the three most thrown around words. We say, oh, I love you, but we don't really care about that person. Or, I love being outdoors, but we just threw a beer can into the bushes. You know what I'm saying? I love the outdoors, but I just made a choice. It's going to allow laws to happen that are going to cut down that forest. Poison that water and kill off those fish. So if we really love Samoan, we protect them.

Speaker 4 17:43

Mm-hmm. We watch

Speaker 3 17:43

out for them and we're honest enough to even tell them, Hey, you're really hurting yourself right now. I guess that's what I'm trying to do is be honest enough to say we're really hurting ourself right now because mm-hmm We gotta love the planet. We gotta love ourselves. I think you're right. You gotta love yourself first. In an honest way, you can look at all our failings. We're human. The fact that we're striving is something.

Speaker 2 18:13

Yeah. While you were talking about how we treat Earth, I was wondering if you have any advice for our listeners of. All the different ways that we can take action as who we are because all of us have different strengths, right? All of us have have different abilities. Do you have some ideas for our listeners of how we can take steps toward giving more to Earth?

Speaker 3 18:43

Yeah, that's a great question. Great question. I do, because I try to do it myself. One of my struggles I've had recently even more than ever, is just trying to create hope

Speaker 4 18:59

in my

Speaker 3 18:59

mind. The writer Camu wrote in times when it seemed hopeless. It is incumbent on us to create that hope. So, uh, the way I do that is say, well, what can I impact and what can't I, I let go of what I can't do. This is part of loving yourself. I start every day by saying I'm grateful. I really actually do that out loud and every night I end my day by noting all the things I'm grateful for. Gratitude leads to joy under any circumstances. The next thing I'm gonna say is start small Every day. Go out and be kind. Be kind to the clerk. Be kind to the barista. Be kind. What does this have to do with saving the earth? It has a lot to do with it. Our perspective on life changes the way we see everything, each other, even evil behavior in the world. We see it with a different eye. It doesn't become personal. And so beside kindness, the next thing is be kind to the earth. Every day. I've done small things. I feed the birds. I have a bird feeder. I fill up my bird DAFs. I have turned my tiny piece of property into a native garden. I've dug out all the grass that I can without getting in trouble with a homeowner's association. I'm replacing what grass I have to keep with native grasses, which it will be kept mowed. I have put in nothing but native wild flowers and native trees in my tiny plot of land. I'm looking out the window right now at the hummingbirds and the finches and the lizards that weren't here, and I've created a little peaceful place for the earth right here in my tiny spot. The next thing I'll say after kindness is be kind to the earth right where you're at. Get out in nature. Make sure you know it. Don't try to, don't try to hike five miles. Try to take a walk and see what's there. Then the next thing is, let's go bigger.

Speaker 4 21:09

Ooh.

Speaker 3 21:09

When I was a college professor, I used to try to teach my students life lessons more than try to teach them what's in a textbook, which drove my fellow college professor crazy. I would say paint a picture of the life you want to live. Write it down. Paint a full picture of how your life would be. Now ask yourself every time and every day, is the decision I'm making or decision I'm failing to make, gonna bring me closer to or further away from that life? I think we need to do that on a small scale each day and a big scale. In other words, the choices I'm making in my community, in my state, in my country, the choices I'm making, um, of what I put my money behind, if I have any. For example, you can join. Support at a modest level, organizations that support protecting our natural world. I don't like calling'em resources'cause that means they're there for us to use. I'm a life member of Trout Unlimited. I am a contributing member of the Nature Conservancy, Audubon the Wilderness Society. These are things that we all can do. Choose the ones that help us that. Accumulates our voice for nature or for a better human nature. So then I'd say, as much as you're comfortable, be active, be involved. Stand up for your community. Stand up for a better place to live. As you're doing this, you feel less out of control. You're giving yourself agency. You're forgiving the small wounds that happen and learning from them. You're getting stronger and braver. How's that?

Speaker 2 22:51

I love that. Thank you so much for that. I love the idea of taking action because I feel like it's so easy these days to think about all the things we don't like. I don't like this and I don't want this, and I don't want this to happen, and I don't agree with this, but I think that there's a lot of power in. Thinking about how we can move forward and how we can actually heal and how we can create a world that is safe and that is loving and kind. I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I feel like even people I love point the finger at others saying, oh, you're not doing enough. You're not doing enough of this. There needs to be more of this, and I, I think that we'd all do much better if we actually have compassion for ourselves and each other, especially through times of hardship. I feel like it's so important. I've been thinking lately about the phrase, how are you usually. In US culture, we say, how are you to strangers, to people at the store, to all these random people in our lives, but how often do we say it to our loved ones? How are you?

Speaker 3 24:25

How often do we mean it?

Speaker 2 24:28

How often do we wanna actually hear the answer? Right? Right.

Speaker 3 24:32

Having lived in different parts of the world, I've really noticed, and trust me, I, I love many things about my home country, but I also love it enough to face it and to to point out the things where we've fallen as human beings is not a bad thing. It's not on patriotic. It's more patriotic. It's more loving for me to say to someone I care about, Hey, I think maybe you're drinking a little too much alcohol. You know, it's more brave. Um, so having traveled, I notice in the United States today, if you say to someone Thank you, often the response is, aha, Uhhuh, or it's a corporate response. They've been taught to say, my pleasure, but it's, there's nothing to it. And when I've lived in other countries. They're really saying it's nothing. I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to do it. And there's a feeling behind it. Uh, when we compliment each other in this country, the immediate response I often have seen is, what do you want from me? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just be where our compliments were genuine? We're just trying to share, Hey, I see you.

Speaker 4 25:44

Thank you.

Speaker 3 25:45

Oh, and I'm that way with fish and turtles and birds too, by the way. I see you. I remember being at Paris Island in the Marine Corps and at the very end of your three months of, of challenge, we'll call it, and you start off with a platoon of say, 60, and you end up with 40 making it through. Remember, the first time I was able to have a cookie, you, you could've been giving me a million dollars. We each got one cookie and one of the guys next to me said to is the person beside me said, I'll pay. Five bucks for anyone's cookie and they said no, 10, 20, no one would sell their cookie because we hadn't had one. Sometimes I think we have so much now that we tickets for granted, that we flip a switch and the light comes on. We take it for granted that, you know, we turn the spigot and wrinkle water comes out. I've lived in places where that's not true. Um, so yeah, I. We need to look at all that is good in life, but face what is not. Since we're having a conversation, which is the way I know you like to run this, I think it's beautiful. I have moved away from saying bad and good or do the right thing because every, every terrorist in the Taliban. Believes they're doing the right thing when they execute. Someone

Speaker 4 27:12

love

Speaker 3 27:12

every soldier on both sides of every battle, thinks they're doing the right thing most of the time. So that's really variable. I say what's healthy? Mm-hmm. Am I doing the healthy thing for me, for the other person, for the country, for the earth, for this forest that I love, or this ocean? If we start doing that, we're good.

Speaker 2 27:33

That sounds good to me.

Speaker 3 27:35

I guess I don't take myself seriously at all, and I laugh every day, usually at myself. We need more humor. Uh, don't take me seriously. And if someone's thinks that, uh, uh, that I just don't at all, it makes life much easier.

Speaker 2 27:53

I bet. Yeah. I totally understand. Anytime I fall, I just start laughing. It's just always you learn in a way that I handle.

Speaker 3 28:02

Sure you learn and you move on. As a matter of fact, I've lived, as you might have guessed, through a lot of inflicted violence in or into defense of myself or someone else. It's not something I ever wanted. I'm a nice person. I don't wanna hurt anyone. But I say that because I've been in some really terribly dangerous situations in life with other troops. I was the one always cracking jokes through the whole thing as part of my defense mechanism. You know, I'm a laughing. While we're in mortal danger because it is just, you just flow with it. I don't mean to be too deep, but I'm going to be, we're all dying the day we're born and we waste so much time on silliness, so much time on silliness, and we're not getting this time back, so why not just have fun? That's what my books are about. And now I'm writing a new series for Lions Press, which is basically looking at the season of our life. In different ways. And this one that's going to be coming out in September of 2026, I travel the path of the conquistadors all the way from Portugal and Spain, down through Mexico, central America, through the Brazilian Amazon, the Peruvian RI Cloud Forest, and all the way down to the southern tip of Patagonia. And it's really a, it's a journey of how do we create hope Now in this part of. Human existence. That's what the journey's really about.

Speaker 2 29:36

I love that. What have you learned so far about creating hope on your journey?

Speaker 3 29:40

Oh, I'm not gonna get too far ahead of my book. No one will read it, so, but it comes down to a whole lot of what I said already. We need a new, you talked about stories. There's a fantastic book that I talk about all the time called Sapiens by, I'm probably butcher's name y Harari. And, uh, Val Harari and he talks a lot about how stories have changed human civilization. It's probably why in this I'll be nice to myself and say, late autumn, early winter of my life, I'm so dedicated to writing stories.

Speaker 4 30:20

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 30:22

Stories change. We need a new story. That's what we need. We're not going to get there from here. The old saying Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I had a stepfather used to say, you're like the guy that keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer.'cause it feels so good when he stops. That's what we do as humans and we just need to write a new story. We need to stop with treating everything like a football game. I win. You lose. Hemingway was right when he wrote Winner takes nothing.

Speaker 2 30:58

I've actually been thinking so much about that lately, starting a new business. The first thing that came to me the day that I published my website was don't beat'em. Join'em. I don't want to beat anyone. I want to join with others. I want to collaborate with others. I wanna work with others. I've been thinking a lot about what you just mentioned about a new story about the world we wanna create. What kind of world do we want to create and what do we want to see in this world? Because, like I said earlier, it's so easy for us to say, I don't want this anymore. I don't want that anymore. I don't want this. But how many people are saying. This is the world I want to see. This is what I would like, right? This is the president I would like to have. This is the mentality that I would like to have moving forward. These are the changes that I would like to see moving forward. I know that there's always this struggle between what we take and what we leave, right? Because. We're humans living on this planet who have been taught to consume, right? We've always been taught to consume and to take more than we need. I don't know if it's a survival tactic or what it's about, but moving forward, I've been thinking about how we can change the narrative to where we can actually birth a world that takes care of everyone. And Earth still has so much. Every time I see intact trees, I am so excited that they're still there. Every time I see water flowing, I'm so happy that it's still flowing. Every time I see an ecosystem where birds are still thriving and there's still creatures out, and there's bears, and there's still a world that can be lived in, I think. This still exists and we can still appreciate what we have. So I'm wondering as we move forward, I know that you don't wanna give too much away about your new book, but can you maybe impart some wisdom of what helps you to be hopeful moving forward?

Speaker 3 33:32

Uh, I'll do my best. First of all, I'm gonna be open in saying that I have struggled more in this past year with hopefulness than I ever have in my life. I think I have to be open about that. I have to be open, that I'm very disappointed in what I see humanity doing right now. I travel around the world and I write these stories. I just came back from the Brazilian Amazon where I spent half a month. Wow. I was actually spending most of my time in the middle of pristine Brazilian Amazon, deep in the jungle. But I can tell you that is a rare thing now. I flew over the Amazon for four hours solid in a small plane twice, and all of that four hours, I spent two hours of it, roughly at least an hour and a half flying over. Total devastation.

Speaker 2 34:28

Wow,

Speaker 3 34:29

where there were no trees left at all, where everything had been mined for gold and diamonds. The trees had been lumbered and things had been turned into soybean fields. Wow, rainforest gone. So we have to face what we're doing. That's the first thing that you asked about Hope. How do we build hope? Well, I believe we are the proximate cause of most of the problems, even in our own lives. We're also the proximate solution. That's the good hope. We are the solution. Yes. So what I'm doing with my next book. By taking this path at the conches to doors. And by the way, all my books have a parallel story of Euro-American and indigenous Americans with points of view. I don't deify nor vilify any group because we're all human. I believe indigenous people have a lot to teach us who are not. But I also know that indigenous cultures had their own issues. Still do. So I try to face it as it is. But one thing I saw in indigenous cultures and see again and again, is they understand that you mentioned about consuming. We need to realize that tribally, we learned to hoard because there was not that many of us, and we were not working cooperatively to create food for each other when we're done. With this recording, I'm gonna get in my vehicle and drive to the grocery store. I'm not going to go out to my garden till it times have changed. Also, there are 8 billion of us, which I would say is about 4 billion. Too many, 4 billion, too many humans. We're not meant to have this many humans on the earth, and we're gonna have to face that one way or another. We've gotta face the world we've created. Healthy and not healthy. Then we have to say to ourself, I want to paint that world of what it would be like if you pictured every city with almost like its own little cul-de-sac where you, you lived as a community where there was gardens everywhere, where there was fresh water for kids to, to be in. We could make so much better. A world. I don't like small thinking of, oh, we can't do that. We need more electricity. There's lots of ways for us to fix these problems. We just need to paint a picture of the world we want and then keep working towards it. So if I look at these books of mine, all of my books have been huge challenges. I don't have a bunch of money. I'm a retired public servant who can't get a retirement check for another six months. I do this because I set the goal and I just figure it out. That's what we have to do. And you know what? I couldn't do it without the kindness of other people that are helping me make these things come true. So I think that's what we do. We, we paint the picture of the world we want, but we've gotta look in the mirror every single day.

Speaker 4 37:51

Mm-hmm. Because

Speaker 3 37:52

you and I both like writing poetry. I have friends that we know in common who write beautiful poems, but if, if our poetry is about anger and division, because we're angry about the anger and division on the quote other side, we've become that which we love. So I think our poetry has to work in life and on paper to being, what do we have in common? Yeah, and where our differences are. What can we build on Uhhuh? If we're striving, we're gonna fail, it's okay to fail. When we fail, we get up, we try again. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 38:34

I wanna be thriving. I feel like the more that society is thriving emotionally, spiritually, and in our own bodies. The more that what is around us will thrive. That's just my mentality. It may be you nailed it. Ideal, but it's,

Speaker 3 38:59

it's practical because, and I've said this to friends of mine who are young fathers and mothers, mostly mothers, but. Fathers and mothers. And I always say that because too many times I was very much involved as a father, but I know a lot of times in our culture it's the mom holding a lot of the weight. To me, it's 50 50 at, you know, 60 40 back and forth. But I've said to a lot of friends of mine that are burying themselves in martyrdom. Trying to be everything to everyone, and I've done that by the way. I've just as guilty as anyone, as when I was a young father.

Speaker 4 39:38

I

Speaker 3 39:38

try to tell them, you've got to take care of yourself first because you're not good for those kids. You're not good for your spouse, you're not good for your friends. You gotta take care of yourself first. That's why I started to write in my books. I write certain things repetitively. There was a wonderful writer named Monty Burke that caught this when he did a review of one of my books and he said, Steve Ramirez sometimes repeats himself, but he's doing it on purpose. I write little sayings like Everything's connected to everything. To talk about how we're connected to the Earth. Perspective is everything and everything is perspective because we seem to think we know truth, which is pretty much silly. I have written many times that the most laughable thing to me is human certainty.

Speaker 4 40:23

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 40:23

So, I mean, gravity exists whether I believe in it or not, but everything else just about is faith. Um mm-hmm. Including the existence of God. Um, and what I mean by that is if you believe in God, that's faith. And if you believe there is no God, that's still faith. It's just your belief. None of us can prove it either way.

Speaker 2 40:44

Uh, what is it that gives you faith?

Speaker 3 40:52

That's a tough question.'cause it depends on what you mean by faith. If you mean religious faith, I am no longer religious in any way. I'm very spiritual, no matter what religion you may belong to. I think faith is, we all have to have our various path up the mountain, as a Buddhist would say. But faith to me is I have faith that there is a path. I have faith in our ability to find it. I have faith in our ability to choose. Good things happen, bad things happen. I'll change that around. Healthy things happen and not so healthy things happen. That's just life. I have faith that we can turn these things into something positive.

Speaker 4 41:41

Definitely.

Speaker 3 41:42

So choose so. I think we have to separate what's faith and what's fact, and they're not the same thing. Faith is good, but for me, hope is not a passive thing. Hope is a action verb. In other words, it's a call to action. So if I say I hope we can restore our clean waters and bring back fish and wildlife that lived in our streams a hundred years ago, that's my action call to do something about it. I hope we can. Not have the largest prison system in the world and start having a more peaceful, that's my action call there. It's not just a, I'm not gonna sit around and just hope it, I'm gonna try to do something about it.

Speaker 2 42:28

Heck yes, dude. I am so happy to hear your beliefs and faith and hope, and I am wondering if you can share from your book.

Speaker 3 42:42

Oh sure. One more

Speaker 2 42:44

one then.

Speaker 3 42:45

So if people were to read the series, and you can pick any one of them up, some people have asked me, if I only read one, what should I read? And I always say, read the first one or the last one if you're only picking one. If you're only getting two, get the first one and the last one. Then I always hope they'll read the ones in the middle. This is the final book of the series of the four book series. There's all kinds of symbolism that I embed into all my writings. So for example, these books, I have a wonderful publisher in Lions Press. I have a wonderful managing editor who these books are what I wrote. No one else changed these, and they allow me a lot of leeway in creating these titles. So all the titles will all these. Covers will have stillness on the top and movement below. They all have 21 chapters'cause that's a number that repeats throughout nature. Um, there's little things like that. So I'm gonna read from casting Homeward. It's kind of interesting that this is the piece I put aside because we just talking about faith. Someone wrote, it might have been Einstein, wrote, I Spell God Nature. I don't know who it was that wrote that, but to me, when I see. Earth, nature, the universe. It's all part of what I would call God. So I see it more as love. So here we go. Just because something is invisible doesn't mean it's not there. I can see how the air moves the clouds, trees, and grasses. I can feel how gravity holds me close to the earth, rooted without roots. I can notice how love is reflected in the eyes and actions of another living being. I can see in nature the creations of something far more vast than mere human imagination can conceive. We all struggle to hold onto what cannot be held still. The invisible carry songbirds up into the sky and raindrops down into the river and me onward towards feelings of hope, joy, and gratitude. It was a beautiful morning. I was once again, simply happy to be alive. Whenever I walk into a river, I do so with reverence. Nature is my sacred place. Nature is my home. I imagine God is an outdoor enthusiast like me. If anything was made in his image, it must be rivers. They too have no real beginning or end. They live on the land and in several seasonal forms and in the sky as the most invisible member of the Holy Trilogy. Water, vapor ice. They too are eternal ever changing, yet unchanged. Nature prays through the sounds of falling, raindrops, rushing rivers, and rolling seas. I pray that way too. Water, wind, and bird songs connect me to the divine.

Speaker 4 45:35

That's what.

Speaker 3 45:39

So as hopefully your listeners can tell, I may take them on a fishing trip to the Amazon, Patagonia, Alaska, or Texas, or, uh, we may be trekking through the mountains of Peru together or across the African Savannah, but I'm not actually writing about fishing or trekking or mountain climbing. I'm writing about this life we're living and how we can grab a hold of it and do what we can do. Feed the birds.

Speaker 2 46:16

Thank you, Steve. Thank you for all of the ways that you serve Earth and serve humanity through your writing and your actions and who you are. I really appreciate this time with you and everything that you're doing right now to give to this world. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 3 46:35

Pleasure. So truly mine. I'm honored to be a part of you doing this, and I think it's beautiful and admirable. Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 2 46:45

Thank you.