017 BILL HILL

Bill is a local author of the book… HIKING: The trail to Yesterday,  volumes 1,2&3.  He is also a musician who has been apart of the local music scene for years. Josh and I as him a few questions about his books and a few other things. Hope you enjoy the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

So you were looking for something to listen to and you ended up here. What's up? My name is Ethan, and I'm the host of the show. Over the past 25 years, I've had a wild group of people walk through my tattoo shop and tell me some of the craziest stories you would never hear unless you were sitting in that chair. I've invited a few of these maniacs to join me and talk about everything, anything, and nothing. Whether it's about UFOs, aliens, food, conspiracies, or whatever, you're sure to be entertained and probably get a laugh out of it. Or you're gonna think we're a bunch of nutjobs and never come back again. Either way, you're here with us now, so sit back, relax, take cruise control, and enjoy the ride. Welcome to the Tat and Chat Podcast. The Ted Chin podcast with Josh. We have a special guest today. And his name is Bill Hill. Here I am. Is the camera on Bill? I want to see Bill. Or some of them like to call him William C. Hill. His friends call him Hill Billy. Hill Billy. He's an author. This is one of his books. I think that's him on the back. It could be a stand-in, we're not sure, but we're assuming it's him. And uh he's written a couple books, hiking The Trail to Yesterday. And he's also a musician. I met Bill a couple weeks ago at a show. I was playing with Josh's band. Rather, I was just playing drums really loud, and and they were just doing something on their strings, and I was just I was just pounding away, closing my eyes. I was pretending I was on drummer. Yeah. But I met Bill. Josh has known Bill a long time. And uh welcome to the Tat and Chat Podcast, Bill.

SPEAKER_07 2:07

Thank you. Thanks for having me. So what's up? Yeah, just um I hadn't seen Josh in a while. Um I knew we were doing a show together up to Harrisville a couple weeks ago, the one you're talking about. And uh a few weeks before that I saw him in uh the Price Chopper. You know, and he's telling me about your your thing you got going here and stuff, and um said, you know, geez, you want to come in and uh do a show with us? I'm like, well, I got a new book gonna be landed in a couple weeks, so probably as good time as any.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

That's sweet. I had no idea when I met you. I knew you were a musician. We know a lot of uh musicians locally and uh some mutual friends, and I had no idea that you weren't uh an author until Josh had said that, and uh I think it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 2:50

If you know Bill, this won't come as any surprise, but we like you said, we ran into each other in Price Chopper and we talked in the middle of the aisle, people going around us for an hour.

SPEAKER_07 3:00

An hour. We had a lot of ground to cover.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Yeah. Well, it's if it's been a while, you gotta catch up. It's been a little bit. And plus, while you're while you're um creating a product, you gotta pitch that shit. You gotta make sure that you're you're you know, I wrote a new book, I want to be on your podcast, and uh that can take some time. So, so these are so these books, when did this first book come out?

SPEAKER_07 3:22

Uh let's see, the first one was uh 2019.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

2019. So like like a pandemic book? Like is that isn't that when the did the pandemic start in 2019 or actually started 2020?

SPEAKER_07 3:32

It started in 20, but the book was out and and going during the pandemic.

SPEAKER_03 3:38

So you had already written it and stuff. It wasn't like you were bored, you just you wrote a book, like you actually planned on writing a book. So it's uh bunch of people hiking with masks on.

SPEAKER_07 3:47

Yeah, that that that it was unreal. I bet. You know, you'd see somebody a hundred yards away out in the woods, they're hiking by themselves, full mask the whole nine yards, and they see you and they're like just freaking out. So you know, they run over and hide behind a tree.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Yeah, those are those are some dark days. Those are the days. Those are dark days.

SPEAKER_07 4:06

So I I was pretty messed up during the whole thing too. You know, it just you know, because I I'm a germaphobe.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Yeah, I am too.

SPEAKER_07 4:14

And so it's like I've been preparing for this all my life. You know, so uh, you know, I I had some bad bad vibes about the whole thing. I I kept it together, but uh you know, finally I had to sit down and do the math.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 4:29

You know, they're they're talking about, you know, you're seeing people say like half the population's gonna die. Yeah, you know, and then so you so you start looking at it, you know, and you find out it it's like you know, like a fifth of a half a percent is actually getting it. And you know, like anything, you know, once you you do the math and you see it and you know you can make sense of it, it's like yeah, I think we're gonna be alright. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Yeah, I mean, obviously here we are. Things things have cleared up. I know there are there's definitely I know people that have had a real bad go with it and stuff, and uh Yeah, I lost friends, but um it's it's kind of you know, it's also kind of like an age thing, right? I just turned 50 and it seems like sometimes simple things, you know, take you. You know, you get you get a cold. Next thing you know, someone's got some lung problem and they go. But let's talk about your book.

SPEAKER_07 5:24

All right.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

I'm I'm curious about this book. So this one is volume one, the trail to yesterday. Are they what's what's the second one called?

SPEAKER_05 5:31

Uh they're all they're all called The Trail to Yesterday, just volume two and volume three. So the last one says Tales and Trails?

SPEAKER_07 5:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

So what so what are these books about? So what so you wrote the a hiking book? So so are I did a little research on it and stuff, and it's about like your experiences and just things like is this information for people to like um to have if they're hiking, or what what what is what is it?

SPEAKER_07 5:56

They're kind of half and half, you know. In the in the front part of it, you're definitely gonna get a straight up trail guide. You know, how far is it? Where's the trailhead? How long you should you expect to be on it, you know, is it um is it easy? Is it terribly difficult? You know, all kinds of that stuff, like a normal trail guide.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

So so that's what this is. So this is actually a trail guide. So you could say you could pick a trail, like for example, um, I made a movie called Severance Mountain, okay, and it's based and and we we used Mount Severance, it was just a cool name. Have you I'm assuming you've hiked Mount Severance at some point. No. So it's in the Adirondacks, it's a small, it's a small, it's probably too small for you, to be honest with you. It's like the Kitty Hill. But like I'm assuming there's trails in there. So does this actually have real trails? You say, hey, if you go to this mountain and this trail, or there's this hike, so this actually, like I'm looking at right now, Streeter Lake, Bear Mountain, and Lampson Falls. So this actually has trails in there, and you give a uh a written guide. So we can take this up there.

SPEAKER_07 6:56

So I can get you to the trailhead, tell you what to expect when you're on the trail. But the second half is going to be okay, what was it, Lamps and Falls? You know, so it's um it's giving you some background on it. Um, a lot of fire towers, power dams, stuff like that, um, logging camps. So it it's a history, like, okay, this trail's there, but why is it there?

SPEAKER_03 7:22

That's cool, you know. So it's just like if you were on the trail and you're like, I see this spot. Now, this thing happened here a long time ago, and the reason why we avoid that now is because of this thing, or whatever the case may be. Right. So you're actually like showing people the trail, showing them how to get through there, what to expect, but you're also kind of fluffing it and filling in with some cool history.

SPEAKER_07 7:42

Right. So um, I I'm I'm hitting two demographics. You know, I'm I'm hitting the trail hikers, but I'm also hitting the local history buffs.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 7:52

You know, because half my people that read the books probably have no intention of getting on a trail.

SPEAKER_04 7:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 7:58

You know, for whatever reason. But you know, they they still like the um the local history and all that and stuff. So the the third book, I had done the first two, and um I had a lot of um information from other things that I couldn't really use in this format. You know, um, some of them I had permission to get there specifically, but nobody else has got permission to.

SPEAKER_04 8:25

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_07 8:25

So you can't really put that in a trail guide because you don't want people just running around trespassing.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 8:30

Um, you know, some of them I didn't have the whole story. Uh they were just they were fragments, but they were really good stories that need to be told.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_07 8:41

So I um I was sitting on the stuff. It'd been like five or six years since my my um last book. You know, I had really had no intentions of doing another one.

SPEAKER_04 8:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 8:51

You know, I thought, you know, it'd run its course. And so I'm finding out things that it's like, yeah man, I really need to put these out there. People need to know about this. And um so I had to come up with a kind of a new format to cover this stuff because you just not necessarily a trail to it. And that's this, that's the third book? Yep, the green one.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

You guys see the third book? So the so this one has a different format from the other two.

SPEAKER_07 9:16

Right.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Cool. Here's the book, here's the third book. So is this one out now or is it coming out?

SPEAKER_07 9:21

Yeah, that came out um I think it was like the 15th of April.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

And um you uh where can you get where can you pick this up?

SPEAKER_07 9:30

Um locally you can get them at um in Canton, you can get at Grass River Outfitters, St. Lawrence bookstore, um, the St. Lawrence County Historical Society. Uh you go up the country, you get them at Otto's in Wanakina. Um Adirondack Rustics in Aswegachi. Aswegachi up towards Star Lake, and and uh Adirondack Holy Grail, right in Star Lake. Sweet. Plus I I do them through eBay because you know, obviously not everybody can just scoot up to Wanakita to grab a book.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Have you tried to get them in like uh was it board is it borders or what's that what's this what's the bookstore Ethan we go to in Syracuse? Uh Barnes and Noble? Have you tried to get him in Barnes and Noble and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_07 10:20

No, because um I looked into the whole idea of having a a distributor. Yeah, and it just it made no sense. Cost a lot of money for they they wanted 45% of of the cover.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Yeah. That's cool. So you have three books out, and uh newest one just came out. I got a question for you.

SPEAKER_05 10:40

So I'm gonna be uh 100% honest with you. I uh I don't read hiking books, but I wanted to buy them because I know I know the author. So I wanted to buy the books.

SPEAKER_07 10:52

But I have other people like that, you know, they just they want to support your your deal and so I uh years and years ago when I was I don't even know how old I was, young.

SPEAKER_05 11:03

I was probably seven, eight, nine, something like that. And I was in uh Star Lake with uh my cousin and my her mother, and she took us uh to Crystal Lake, right? And I remember I got to Crystal Lake, and all I all I knew Crystal Lake was you know Jason from Friday the 13th. But so getting out there, I'm like, oh man, this is this is the same Crystal Lake, you know, because I was a kid, but I wonder how many crystal lakes there are, like just in New York, a lot of but in the United States.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

That's a cool question.

SPEAKER_05 11:36

So I get there and it's like the most beautiful lake I've ever seen. The water was just crystal clear and loved it. And the the beach was nice, and we swam for hours, you know, and it was great. And I never went back, and years and years went by, and I was an adult and I want to take my kids, and I I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't figure out where Crystal Lake was. I talked to my cousin, they're both my cousins. It sounds like she should be my aunt, but she's my cousin also. But so my cousin's mother takes us, uh took us there. They couldn't remember, they couldn't remember how to get there, they couldn't remember taking us or something, right? So I'm asking everybody I know around Star Lake area. Nobody nobody can tell me how to get there. So then I finally find out, like they give me general idea. So we drove up there one day, couldn't figure it out, couldn't get it. So you're coming on the show, and I've had these books. You said that was 2019. So I bought that in 2019. It's been sitting in my house for seven years. You're coming on the show, and I said, Well, you know, I should probably I should probably read these books. So I pick up the first.

SPEAKER_03 12:43

Just admitting he's just like, Oh, yeah, I got your book right now. I was just being honest. I'm sorry, bro. I mean, I have one leg. He knows I'm not gonna be able to do that. I just found out, I just found out about these books, so I'm actually I'm gonna I'm gonna buy all three, and I'm I'm actually gonna read them.

SPEAKER_05 12:56

So the very first chapter is Streeter Lake, and he talks about how to get to Crystal Lake. I said, You gotta be shit. And it's been sitting on your shelf the whole time seven years. But I have so I have a question for you. This is my question. Can I it appears as though what you're saying in that book is you can drive basically right to the lake.

SPEAKER_07 13:18

No, not to the lake, but you're probably you're less than a mile from it.

SPEAKER_05 13:24

Okay, well, since this guy doesn't really like to walk across the kitchen, really. I I think we're gonna give it a shot anyways, though, but I've got to get some uh better directions from you. I can't really like hiking. It's so crazy. Well, I'll really walk. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_07 13:39

But if you have the I believe it's called a D map permit through the state um for the access, the for the motor trails.

SPEAKER_05 13:49

I don't, but I could get one probably.

SPEAKER_07 13:51

I would imagine you could. So it's for ATVs and stuff and right to the lake. Yeah, that'd be that'd be the way to go.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

That way you can you can enjoy the scenery, but you don't have to walk it. And I don't have to carry my kayak.

SPEAKER_05 14:06

Drag it. That's the way to go.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

Yeah, so like have you ever done like um uh the hiking trail where you hike for like hours and you camp and then you hike further and you camp and then you come you hike back. Like have you done anything like that, or not really um when I was younger I did.

SPEAKER_07 14:21

I I as I've gotten older, I really have a dislike for tents.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Huh.

SPEAKER_07 14:26

You know, I've spent hundreds of nights in tents, and I just don't care to anymore.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Nope, me either. It's not that exciting.

SPEAKER_07 14:34

It's not that comfortable, and it's just it's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Um I try to tell my wife that all the time.

SPEAKER_07 14:40

I actually I build I call it my boonie camper. I build a little tiny one-man camper just for those kind of occasions. So if I want to go onto a trailhead, you know, throw my camper down, you know, five minutes to set up, do my hiking, whatever, come back, got a place to crash for the night.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

So you just love walking the trail, seeing nature and all that stuff. So are you like really good with like um forging and stuff? Could you forge? Are you are you familiar with berries and like natural, like, like, like I see people eating mushrooms and like they can, there's like natural onions out there. I watch, I watch like alone and all these shows. So all this stuff is really cool. I want like I said, I want to check these out and stuff. We have a pretty cool library at our house. And you know, I have like forging books and how to you know, and I just love all that stuff, like how to tie knots and and and how to survive basically. And this is kind of like this is like the roadmap to that stuff. If you're near a trail, I mean I know it's more like commercial trails where people like people can walk it, right? But I mean, some of the are some of these trails like kind of off-the-beaten path trails, like like like just this just just kind of like just just some people created it now, they're just there and everybody knows about it.

SPEAKER_07 15:47

Right. And some of them, you know, people just don't know about, you know, they were you know, they they get the book and say, wow, there's a trail there. I never knew that. I've lived here all my life.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah. I've never been like a hiking guy.

SPEAKER_05 15:58

I just I just my wife and kids hike a lot. They hike every summer, they hike quite a bit. I you know, I as you guys all know, I I uh don't really like walking. Walking up a mountain or walking miles on a trail isn't really something I'm you're not built for it. I'm not I I used to be built for it, but somewhere along the line something fell off.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Something fell off. And when you s like today when you stubbed your toe, I was really concerned. I was like, shit, he's only got he's only got one big toe. I mean, shit, he he definitely can't come on the show.

SPEAKER_07 16:31

Yep. Well in uh down to four September of 19 uh 2020. Um I had hurt my knee at work a couple days before that, and so it was all wobbly and stuff. So I got up, you know, played a gig the night before, got up the next morning, and um I'm getting off the the the toilet, you know, my my knee kicks out, I fall forward, head through the sheetrock, gone, knocked right out. So so you you wake up on the bathroom floor, what do you do? You you get up. Well, apparently I had tried, you know, like to break my fall on my ankle. Well, I had broken my ankle.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

Oh, the same, the same leg, the same knee, and no, the opposite one.

SPEAKER_07 17:18

Oh my gosh. So so I'm trying to stand up, and every time I do, I just get on a heap, and of course, you're in shock, you don't know what's going on. So finally, like the fourth time I just fall on the floor, and I guess I just have to live here. I, you know, I can't move, I can't, I don't know how to stand up anymore.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Now you're setting up a tent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 17:35

So, you know, the wife's knocking on the door, she's Are you alright? I'm like, No. Can I come in? Yeah, I guess. So, of course, you know, I'm laying against the door, so she's gonna slide my carcass across. By this time, my my foot is 90 degrees out of out of face, it's pointing the wrong way. The the bones are trying to get out through the skin. You know, so you know, so it's like, well, I guess I gotta go to the hospital. This looks kind of like I can't handle this myself, you know. But you know, I can't move because my my foot's not connected to me other than the skin. So every time I move, it's just grinding bones and it's just not good. So she's like, Well, what do you want me to do? It's like, I I I've got a triage this. Um get my get my hiking pack. You know, so I've got everything I need there to get my foot situated so I can.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

He's like, there's some some mushrooms, damn. Someone six pack of beer, fucking damn it, man.

SPEAKER_07 18:37

Like, I mean, this will help, I guess, but well, I was really happy to just find ace bandage just to get my foot connected to the rest of me again. So I get in the hospital. And um because I kept standing on this thing trying to walk, I've torn all the tendons and ligaments off from it, the ankle.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Jesus, just from taking a dump. Yeah, taking a dump, my knee hurts. Killer wings. I go into the bathroom to take a shit, and then when I come out, I got a broken ankle and a fucking dislocated knee. My tendons are all fucked up. That's a that's a that's a movie.

SPEAKER_07 19:08

So so the the doctor tells me, he says, we can put this back together, there's gonna be some bolts and screws and stuff involved. But he says, You can't put any weight on your foot for for three months, period. Nothing. So I go through that, and um, because there was so much you know, tissue damage, they couldn't control swelling, so they couldn't even put a cast on it. They they put me in one of them robo boots, you know, and strict orders to you know not do anything. So my niece calls, she had broken her ankle earlier that summer. She said, Hey, you know, I got a knee scooter and it really helped me. You know, so would you use one instead of crouches? So I'm like, Yeah, I'd give it a shot. So this thing's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

Yeah, it doesn't have like two handles, you just put your knee out and you kind of wheel around with the other.

SPEAKER_07 19:54

So, you know, it's got like like 10-inch wheels on it, but she's smart enough, you know, knows me. She gets me the off-road version, you know, with like 10-inch pneumatic Dobby tires. So, like, like three weeks later, I'm back out in the woods. On this thing? On my knee scooter.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_07 20:12

You know, so I mean, you know, I I just I didn't even let that bother me.

SPEAKER_05 20:17

And when you're shitting in the woods, there's no toilet to fall off.

SPEAKER_07 20:19

No, you just go poop.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

You just go poop and fall on the grass. Does a Bill Hill shit in the woods? Is that yeah, dude, it's funny. That story, when I was a kid, um, me and one of my buddies, he's a big dude like me, and like we uh we were at the top of this uh up in Ogdensburg on top by the golf course. There's a hill wherever we go sledding. I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but at the very bottom, people build ramps, and if you go sledding at night, you can't see where the fucking ramp is, and you're fucking cruising. So we had one of our friends down there, and I said we said, stand by it so we can see it. And so um we used to take the hood off his car and go sledding down on his hood of his car. It was it was fucking crazy. But well, me and him are going down the sled, and so we wanted to hit the ramp, and I got sick of I got sick of tired of walking up the hill back then. We were like smoking pot and shit. So we're just stoned, just fucking going down this hill. And uh he's like, let's do it one more time. And I kept riding the back and I didn't want to ride in the front, and we were switching bots. No, I don't want to go. He's like, Okay, I'm riding the back this time. We're going. I'm like, I don't want to go, dude. He's I was like, I said, I'll go if you ride in the front. He's like, Okay, fine, fuck it, I'll ride in the front. I'm like, all right, cool. So we told our buddy Brett, we're like, Brett, you know Brett St. Germain? No, he plays bass, he's playing with Scruffy right now and stuff. Used to play in Lunatics, he was the bass player for Lunatics back in the day.

SPEAKER_07 21:32

No, um, when I remember now that was way before my time, I guess, uh, knowing him.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah, so anyway, it was Brett. He we told, well, Brett, stand down by that hill. I'm pretty sure it was Brett. I'm 99% sure it was Brett. So he's standing down by the hill. So me and my buddy John Foster, we get on our on the sled. Last ride of the night, he had to go pick up his girlfriend. She was a nurse, she was just getting done nursing school, like me. I didn't think she was a nurse yet. So we go down this fucking hill. We're fucking hungry. Us and Brett's standing by the thing, he's pointing to us. We're guiding guiding ourselves, guiding ourselves. We hit this thing, and it's dark out. It must have been six o'clock at night. So white, it's just everything's just white. You couldn't see anything. We fucking hit this thing. Boof. I remember we were in the air, couldn't I couldn't anticipate when we were gonna hit nothing. Well, somehow, when we when we came down, I remember the thing was away from us and we hit so hard. I was like, oh, knocked the wind out of me. My ass was killing me. He's like, Oh, and he was in my he was a mechanic, he was a pretty tough dude. And so, like, he he falls on the ground and hear him moan, and I'm like, oh, he's like, Oh my god, I fucking broke my my ass, man. And he's like, I think I broke my ankle. I'm like, fuck you. And he gets up and like we look at his ankle, looks all his foot's all twisted. We were like, okay, definitely broke his ankle. We're like, fuck. So then we drag him, we put him on this slab, and we gotta kill. Now I'm like, I didn't want to walk up the hill by myself. Now I gotta drag his ass up the fucking hill. Fucking, he's driving the car standard and shit. He didn't want anybody to drive his car. I'm like, I can drive your car. I'm fucking driving it. So he's driving it with fucking one foot. I'm like, Jesus Christ, John. So we get up there, we didn't see his ankle, we get home, we see his girlfriend, now, which is now his wife. We get to this fucking house and he's sitting there. He was a mechanic over at like um I don't remember where he was working, but he was a mechanic, and that was that was his, you know, he had to work the next day. So it was a Sunday night, he's like, he takes his shoe off, sets his foot down, and like all this was like shattered, and his foot was like over here, and he puts his foot down. He's like, Does it look broke? And we're like, we're like I'm just dying laughing. And and and his wife, Stacey's like, uh, John, yeah, it's fucking broke. Your ankle shattered, your foot's over here. The left is like, fuck, I gotta work tomorrow. We're like, oh my god, you like he fucking had to have fucking uh plates put in there, surgery and all this shit. He fucking completely destroyed his whole fucking ankle. What had happened is me and his fat ass coming down the fucking hill, hit the ramp, couldn't see his leg got caught underneath it. So basically, like I was like 200 pounds at the time, he's like 200 pounds to 400 pounds from who knows how high just goes bam crushed his fucking foot and ankle.

SPEAKER_05 23:58

Well, as Nancy Reagan would say, don't do drugs, kids.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Probably would have been worse if he wasn't on drugs. It was just P.O.T. A little purple octopus tentacle. But yep, that that's that when you told me that story, that's I have I have forgot about that story. But yep, smashed his ankle, surgeries, and so I feel your pain, man. I don't feel your pain, but he did, and I watched it and I laughed actually, it was funny at the time.

SPEAKER_05 24:25

But I probably would have laughed. So either of you, I would have laughed at you flopping around on your bathroom floor, too. I can't last night I I coached baseball last night during practice. I felt so bad afterwards, but um, I have my catcher, he's catching the balls, and then uh I had all my pitchers pitch, whatever. I didn't want to throw too many pitches because we're gonna game tomorrow. So I was like, I'll finish off pitching. So it was the first couple of pitches that I threw. I threw a bad one. It hit went down in the dirt, and my catcher, he completely whips on it, and it bounces and hits him right in the balls. And he's like, Oh, you know, and he just kind of falls over, and I'm just dying laughing. I'm like, I'm so sorry I'm laughing at you. It's just it's hilarious. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

That happened to me when I was a kid. I got another story. I was when I when I was like 10 years old, all the older dudes they used to play baseball in the in the field across from me. And um, I remember uh this one dude used to always want to hang out with him, and he said that it was awesome when I came around because like all the dudes were like they used to pick on him, make him climb the tree. Now they pick on you, but I didn't I was too young and dumb to even realize it. And I was like, Yeah, I want to hang out with these guys. So they go, Okay, you're pitching. So they had their baseball team, so I was pitching, and and these these I was like 10 and they were like 15, 16. So they were like, so I pitched the ball. I I think it was the very first fucking shot. I pitched it, someone fucking hits it. I'm just a kid, line drive right into my nuts. I I remember like just dropping the ground, feeling like the worst pain of my whole fucking life, right? Yeah, and I'm and I remember I remember them all them all coming around me going, You okay, you okay? And he's like, dude, he's like, I was so glad that wasn't me when you got fucking hit in the nuts that time. I was like, I barely remember. I remember getting hit in the nuts, and I think I blacked out or something like that. But like, I remember bam falling around, like, oh, crying. My mom was always like, Ethan, it's time for lunch. And I'm these guys had me climbing trees and fucking doing all sorts of crazy shit. I mean, that that back then, I used to there's a baseball field there, and we used to like um I used to go up to um the true value hackettes up the road, and they would have warped wooden arrows like for target shooting. I don't know, back in the set back in the 80s, you could just buy arrows. I could be a 10-year-old kid.

SPEAKER_05 26:42

You could also buy cigarettes for like a nickel.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

So I'd go, I'd so I'd go up to fucking hackets and I'd buy I'd I'd they were like 39 cents or something that a piece, so I'd just buy a bunch of them, they're all fucked up. And I took um um like some rope, you know, when you you roped off a pool, you wanted to pull all the sod off and stuff, and they had this like heavy duty kind of like like rope. So I'd I'd take sticks and I would make a homemade bow out of it, and I would literally just go into this field and take those arrows and shoot them straight in the sky. And you run. No, I just stand there and wait.

SPEAKER_05 27:12

Like see what happens. The chances of it coming right back down on me are slim.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

They never they never would come down, right? Well, then one day I I my bow was missing. I said, where the fuck is my bow? So I go up the Hackett's, they didn't have any more arrows, they wouldn't sell them. So I'm walking home, I'm all fucking mad. I grabbed another stick, I'm like, I had some more that rope. I'm like, I'm making another one, and I'm gonna I'm gonna figure out how to make some bows. A cop drives by me and looks at me and shit, and I'm like, what the hell? I get home. My mom's like, hey then, what the hell? She grabs a stick from me, the cops are just here. I took your bow this morning. People were finding arrows in the roofs of their houses because when they when I was like launching them, they're the wind was catching them and they're coming down. I'm like, dude, when I think I mean, I moved out of the house when I was 10, so sometime before I was 10. So I was born in 76, so somewhere around 84, 85, somewhere around there. I'm fucking in a field launching arrows straight into the sky. Thank God it didn't go through a roof of a car, fucking hit some old lady whipped in her fucking dog. Imagine if that fucking shit happened. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Churchill mysteriously just go through David Spade's foot.

SPEAKER_05 28:17

Oh my god. So what's that movie? Uh Grown Ups. See that? I have, but I don't know, I don't really remember. They shoot the arrow up in the air and then they all run. It comes down and goes through I think it's David Spade's foot, right? Oh, dude.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

There's some crazy shit, man. But I wanted to ask you about hiking. So have you ever do you ever do like night hikes and stuff?

SPEAKER_07 28:39

Yeah, I um occasionally do some night hikes, but um uh one that I I kind of like, I've done several of them is um do night hikes to catch the sunrise from the top of a mountain.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Oh so early in the morning.

SPEAKER_07 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

So like when you're out there, are you ever like paranoid of like I don't know, Bigfoot, a bear, a bobcat? Like have you ever heard anything weird and shit?

SPEAKER_07 29:01

Oh, yeah, I've I've run into stuff and I've seen a few bears. Uh you know, the first time I saw a bear when I was hiking, you know, it was early morning, you know, just twilight and stuff, and I'm thinking, you know, it's really tight here. This looks like a really good or or a bad place to run into a bear. You know, and it's like a half an hour in. I look over and there's a bear looking at me, you know, 75 yards away.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

You're by yourself?

SPEAKER_07 29:27

Yeah, yeah. And you know, the only thing I can think of, okay, I got this bear is checking me out, and I'm checking him out. The only thing I can think of is I'm never gonna get the big lens on my camera before he runs.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

That's funny.

SPEAKER_07 29:41

Yeah, you know, so it's like I gotta make the best of the lens I've got.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

I gotta get this on film. He's running ch It's closer and closer.

SPEAKER_07 29:49

You know, but it you know, it was it was kind of neat because okay, I've seen the bear, you know, and I've seen bears before, you know. I'm I've I hunted for years, so I I've got a pretty good idea of why.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

Yeah, but like early morning, like it's going out forging, you know what I mean, and you're just wandering. Doo-doo doo.

SPEAKER_07 30:05

Oh, yeah. That's different.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

You're not, you didn't have a you didn't you weren't hunting.

SPEAKER_07 30:08

So I'm checking this bear out. It's like, this is a pretty solid-sized bear. You know, and in my mind, he's 300 to 350. So I get home that day.

SPEAKER_05 30:19

Are they big? Are they heavier than that? Are they like not really around here?

SPEAKER_07 30:23

Nah. So, you know, I I get home and I get my flashcard out and I'm downloading all of the pictures of stuff. This thing goes a buck and a half on its best day with a full belly.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Just had a lot of fur. No, a lot of hair.

SPEAKER_07 30:38

No, it's just my mind in the dark, he was a big ass bear.

SPEAKER_05 30:41

They look they look big when you see them in the woods. I remember I'm not gonna throw him under the bus, but I remember this person one time that I was talking to, and he said, I saw a bear this morning. I said, Cool, where'd you see it? Saw it right in the right in the road, right in the middle of the road. I said, Nice. He's like, It was like 600 pounds. I said it wasn't 600 pounds. He's like, I swear it was it was about 600 pounds that it wasn't 600. I know how big bears are. Unless you were like, you know, somewhere Alaska, maybe. But in New York, like 300 is about pushing it.

SPEAKER_03 31:15

Right. I don't I don't nothing about but how big a bear is. I just know that sometimes I see they look big. But we we've had uh scat in our our garden before, and we had a bear, uh a bear paw print. It was probably a good six inches, you know what I mean? But uh but I mean I mean I still wouldn't want to fucking tangle with a fucking with a smug with a 300-pound bear. I don't want to tangle with a hundred-pound bear. Yeah, I mean they're they're they're nasty. I think I just saw something on the news where there was a bear attack. I think a bear attacked like two people and fucked them all up. I think I I think I just saw it like I don't know where it was. But yeah, I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to fuck with that.

SPEAKER_05 31:53

The only wild animal I've ever seen that like it made me a little nervous. I was uh I was hunting and and I kind of got turned around where it was and uh just trying to get out, and I I thought if I walk in this direction, I'm pretty sure I'll come to a road, right? So I kept walking and it got dark on me, and then I I just stopped and I listened, and eventually I heard a car. I'm like, all right, road's over there, I'll just go that way. And like right after I started to move, I heard this like a little like a weird growl. And like I looked over and there was a bobcat sitting on a stump, maybe 15-20 feet from me. And it was just this low kind of it wasn't like it wasn't like really I don't think it was really pissed off at me. It was just letting me know it was there. And I was like, hey, if you stay there, everything's gonna be just fine. I kept going, but I kept watching it.

SPEAKER_03 32:50

Yeah, fuck that. That that shit would those those things can be pretty big, man. They're like the size of like a lab.

SPEAKER_05 32:55

It looked pretty big in the dark on a stump.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

But my my my buddy's father found one um on the side of the road and got hit by a car and it broke its back, so its front legs were but were were fine, but it could drag itself, but its whole back was limp, and he had to kill it, but it he he tried to save it. He tried he was gonna he was gonna try to rescue it, and he just couldn't, so he had it stuffed and he has it, he had it in his house, and I couldn't believe how long those front legs were and like how tall it was. It was like Yeah, they're all leg. Yeah, like my dog, I have a lab, Luna, she's really petite. She's really tiny, she might be 50 pounds. Uh she's just old and just frail, but it she kind of that this this bobcat kind of looked the smaller head, but like height-wise, the way the legs looked, it was it was sleek, but it was big. I was like, holy shit. I think I've heard stories of bobcats attacking kids and shit around here. Like not not like around here, here, but I think I've heard of bobcats doing that. I don't know if they do or not, but I mean I know any mountain lions out there.

SPEAKER_07 33:52

No, um and I I don't know what I think about that. There very well could be mountain lions around. I've seen one, so but um, you know, if if everybody that had seen one had actually seen a different one, you know, there's like tens of thousands of them, you know. I've talked to people, you know, I've seen like 50 butt, you know, mountain lions. Yeah, I I don't think you have.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

I've seen one when I was a kid. I mean, I see stuff out out by me, like I've seen evidence of like, like I said, the bear pop right in my backyard. I haven't actually seen one out there, but I heard that um, I don't know if it's the DC or who does it, but if they do catch a bear like in Hewletton or in Ogdensburg or something like that, because there's been bears in Ogensburg before they've had the shoot out of trees and shit. But I heard they bring them, I heard they did, because there's state land right up the road from me, up in up in De Poyster, out by Macomb, and they just drop the bears off that way and let them kind of go. I don't know if that's true or not, but I heard that.

SPEAKER_07 34:54

Yeah, they they do relocate them, not as much as they used to. Um you know, they're they're they found it's much more cost effective just to kill the animals. Um, and that's not working out good from a PR standpoint.

SPEAKER_06 35:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 35:07

Um two summers ago they had a deal in um Old Forge. There was a mom and a couple cubs in a tree, you know, and of course they're scared, you know. They they got all these people around them, they're they're they're they're pretty pretty tense, you know. Well, so they they get the idea we're just gonna kill them all, they wound one, you know, and he's crying up the tree and he's screaming and bawling, and it just turns into a bloodbath.

SPEAKER_04 35:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 35:33

You know, and and you've got 50 people standing around doing the thing, you know. It it wasn't good.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Yeah, no, I I don't I'm I don't I don't really care for that.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

That's kind of we went to uh water safari one time, stayed on the camp on the campgrounds. And when we were signing in, the the woman says, If you see any bears, don't feed them. My kids are like, There's gonna be bears. I'm like, there's you're not gonna see any bears. Don't worry about it. We're not gonna see any bears. Like, okay, okay. So we get to the campsite, we're we stayed in a cabin, but we get everything in the cabin, and then my wife, you want you start a fire? Sure. I go out and I start a fire. We weren't outside 10 minutes and freaking bear comes walks right through the freaking campsite. I looked at the boys, I'm like, Well, we're gonna see some bears. Yeah, we're throwing marshmallows at them.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

Yeah, well, that they're like that. Like, there's so because people do it all the time, so they're used to it. They're not scared of humans. And and uh years ago we were up there and uh one of the guys that were with us, we heard a noise, and everybody was drinking. He was getting he was getting pretty lit. And um we had a cooler, someone must have cracked, left it cracked open a little bit, or maybe, or maybe not. Maybe the bear just knew food's in this cooler because it walked over to the cooler. We heard like who the fuck's over there turned around, there's a little fucking bear, like I said, probably about 150 pounds on it, a real big bear. It popped it open, it was going through the thing. He's like, Hey, get out of here. I'm like, holy shit. We're just kind of sitting there. We kind of I didn't know if we should go to do anything, if we should like throw something at it, and just get the fuck out of here. But you know, I was like, I'm just kind of standing there. He walks over to it, he's like, get out of here. He's shooting it. I'm like, I don't know if you should be going near the bear, man. He's all like, oh he's always outrun you. Yeah, yeah, and fucking he shoot it away. The thing got scared and took off. But uh, but yeah, man, I mean they they're definitely up there, man. They come, they come out and about. I th I th I would I've camped up there a couple times and I've seen a few bears when I've been up there camping. So I mean I think I think it's like a pretty regular thing. I've been camping up there in years. I went I stayed up there once, but I stayed in a hotel or a little motel. And uh we didn't have to worry about the bears, but that's my kind of camping in a hotel.

SPEAKER_05 37:35

In the in the hotel. Last time I went camping, and this was quite a while ago, we stayed uh in a tent. I mean, we still we were at uh cranberry lake campground, campsite, whatever it's called, and I couldn't sleep. Okay, laid on the ground all night long, just toss and turn, toss and turn, could not sleep. I fucking hate sleep in the next zone. The next day, or uh it's around lunchtime or making lunch, whatever my buddy calls me. He says, Where are you at? We're in Cranberry Lake. He says, Oh, you care if I come up? I said, I think you should, and you should bring an 18-pack of beer, maybe some Captain Morgan, because I'm gonna sleep tonight.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

In an air mattress. Didn't need the air air mattress the next night. I always bring a fucking air mattress, doesn't matter anything, always fucking deflate. Every I don't I don't know if air mattresses are meant to stay fucking inflated because every single fucking one I ever had deflates. I swear to God. Yeah, they're temporary. That fucking thing sucks, man. But I uh um yeah, I do we do the I would do the hotel from here out. Fuck fuck that camping on the ground and shit. Yeah, it's funny you said the hotel, like it reminded me uh when my kids were young, they used to say words wrong, and one thing they used to call a hotel was a hoe and tell. So like, hey, can we stay in the hoe and tell? I'm like, yeah, and we just didn't ever correct them for forever. And probably probably up till about three or four years ago, they're like, Hey, can we go to a hoe and tell? I'm like, the hoe and tell. Do you remember calling it who and tell?

SPEAKER_02 38:59

Four years ago.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

How long ago did you how long ago did you say who and tell?

SPEAKER_02 39:03

I don't remember saying he's almost 15. You don't remember?

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Do you remember saying gloves?

SPEAKER_02 39:08

I remember saying gloves.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

They used to call gloves, gloves. And I was like, I actually I wrote uh an album, uh like a poppy album and stuff, and I was gonna call it Glubs. And I was like, that's gonna be my name. That's gonna be my like my my pop album name is Gloves.

SPEAKER_05 39:21

Gloves biggy.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

But like, but yeah, like Gloves, and like we Julia told the kids that if they um that they go, what are what are pretzels made of? Like the stick ones? They said they're actually trees, they break them off in little sections and put them in bags, and for forever, that's what they thought. And I think one of them tried to like uh break it off. Oh we were kidding! We were it was a joke. It was a joke.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

I was like so like confused. You do remember that too? I do remember learning about like it not being that. I'm like, and like I remember like a few years ago, probably when I was like, maybe 21, what do I do? I was like, Whoa, it's this is like how do we eat this? It's wood, right? Oh no, we were talking like you're joking? Yeah, we we we I believe that for the long joke.

SPEAKER_03 40:02

You told them a lot of weird jokes, and they're like, Oh, yeah, that was that was a lie. Don't don't don't yeah, you you can totally do that.

SPEAKER_05 40:07

So is there anything you want to tell us about your books before we switch topics here?

SPEAKER_07 40:12

Uh I think we kind of covered the highlights of it, but um, you know, I I think people will find if if you like the first two, you'll definitely like the the third one. Um because I won't this is more I inserted more of myself in this. You know, instead of you know so much as like being a text, this was so much factual stuff that's more your more your um your stories. Right. You know, it's kind of a a a a me book.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_07 40:45

You know, I mean the topics are still there, but it kind of concentrates on what I did there.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

Yep, tail tails and trails, right? Tales and trails. Hiking the trail to yesterday volume three takes a look at some local lore and mysteries as well as the woods and water of the north country, trails and tales explorers, forgotten fire towers, railroads, rivers, and lakes around St. Lawrence County. The book contains decades old historic photographs that bring the stories to life. Oh, so you have some uh there's some there's a picture book, so there's some photos in here. So is this like the this top this tower is uh is on the trail someplace?

SPEAKER_07 41:22

Um yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:24

That's cool. Yeah, so it's got some cool like pictures going on in here, and so these are just some stories like like this was the history of the station was established 1912, wooden tower and a tent for the observer. So people could actually this particular picture, people could like climb up that and observe the area they're in.

SPEAKER_07 41:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Wow, that's cool.

SPEAKER_07 41:42

And uh back to your uh your night hiking, that's one I did um for a sunrise. Climb climb the mountain in the dark, and uh yeah. I had another one I did. I I'd been Jonesing to get on top of this mountain for for a long time um for a sunrise, you know, because it it faced to the east, so you know, you know, you're gonna get a good view of it and stuff. And I wanted to do it in winter. So, you know, I'm I'm watching the conditions, you know, and and you know, because I drive a school bus, I can't just pick up and go. So we've got mid-winter vacation in February. You know, so it's like I'm you know, and I I need a full moon in there, you know, to have some light. So finally everything's coming together. I'm you know, I'm gonna have a big moon, so everything's good. And the the temperature bottoms out. You know, so like the first three days I think I'm gonna do this, it's like 35 below. So it's like so I finally like the fourth day, I get a good forecast.

SPEAKER_03 42:44

Good good forecast of negative five relative to what why weather in the north country. Let's go, let's go hiking on a negative five day. It's better than negative 40.

SPEAKER_07 42:54

Well, that's not far from how it it ended up. Yeah. So I dri I I get up there, you know, and I part the car and I look, you know, and it it's 19 below.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

Fuck that, dude. Dude, I can't even I I'm at a point where I'm like, it's it's 25. I'm like, God damn, it's 25 out. Fuck that shit.

SPEAKER_07 43:12

So like the week before I had driven by there and um, you know, to do some recon, and there there's snowshoe tracks going up the trail. So I'm thinking, all right, this is a bomb. There the trail's broke, you know, so I'm gonna have easier going. I don't know, the guy went like 200 yards and scrammed off to the right. You know, so I got a mile to go and I'm breaking trail.

SPEAKER_03 43:37

You know, and you know, it's you know, nineteen below, and you know, so I finally, you know, I'm going and it's just Well, how high so these trails are they in the mountains? So the is the elevation higher as well? Oh yeah. So not only is it higher, but I mean when it's really cold, especially like negative fucking twenty or nineteen. Yeah, it's getting colder. It's gotta be hard to to to breathe. And on top of you're working extra hard. I mean, that guy was snowshoeed. Were you snowshoeing too? Oh, yeah. So you're snowshoeing negative 20 on a fucking mountain. I mean, the air is already cold as this. In the dark. In the fucking dark. Yeah, fuck that, man. You know, but um, so I'm that does not sound fun at all to me. That sounds, I'm like, what the I'm like, that you chose to do this. You chose to do that. You chose that. Well, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_07 44:23

Sometimes you get these ideas that you just this is what I want to do. And hey, babe, it's negative 19.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

I'm gonna go up to the mountain. I'm gonna walk the trail with my snowshoes. I'm gonna get extra bundled up. It might not be enough, but I'm gonna go do it. You know, I know there's bears and bobcats up there, and they're probably really hungry this time of year because there's no fucking food. But yeah, that sounds like fun scope.

unknown 44:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 44:42

So so I finally I I get up there, you know, and I mean, and it it's just it's the perfect morning. You know, this you know, first you got your pinks and purples, and you you know we kind of get your golds and your reds with the sunrise. And I've been up there twenty times before, but you know, in the summer.

SPEAKER_04 45:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:01

And summer air is this is your first winter hike? No. My first winter hike there.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_07 45:08

Or and my first night hike there. So I get up there, and in the winter, the air is so much clearer. You can see so much further. And I mean, it's just like looking over there at him. There's Whiteface Mountain.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_07 45:22

You know, I've been there however many times, you know, in the summer. Whiteface was never there before. I mean, obviously it was, but you know, because the humidity and the clouds and rain.

SPEAKER_03 45:33

Yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_07 45:34

You know, and it's got a you know, part way up, it's got a big cloud around the the mountain and stuff, you know, and it it was just it was a perfect day.

SPEAKER_03 45:42

That's pretty cool. So it was totally worth it.

SPEAKER_07 45:44

It was.

SPEAKER_05 45:45

Does Susan ever go with you?

SPEAKER_07 45:47

Oh yeah, she goes. Um the the the sub-zero Arctic shit she doesn't want any part of. Yeah, you know, like 15, 20 degrees, that's about her limit and stuff. And she doesn't like the the bushwhack deal. You know, as long as we're on a trail, we're fine. If I tell her we're just gonna take a bear and we're running through the woods, she's as a flow crow as a flow cries.

SPEAKER_03 46:11

As a crow flies, we're going that direction. It'll be one mile, or we gotta take the trail and it's gonna be three miles. Yeah. Fuck that.

SPEAKER_07 46:17

Yeah, she she's not a big fan of that.

SPEAKER_05 46:19

So this is actually a pretty important question. Uh especially this year. Uh, with all the ticks and stuff out there. How do you keep ticks off you when you're out there? I was gonna ask about ticks.

SPEAKER_07 46:30

Well, you you don't always, and it depends where you go. Um, I've never even seen a tick. Past fine. You get up to Star Lake, Wanakina, I've never even seen one.

SPEAKER_05 46:42

Really?

SPEAKER_07 46:44

You go in Edwards, you go down to Huckleberry Lake. I don't know if I've ever been in there and didn't come out with a tick on me. You know, I took my daughter in there one time and she's like she's dug a tick off her. We can still see the car. You know, we haven't got outside the car and she's already got one on her.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

Yeah, I I I've been lucky with ticks. We live out in the country, we live out in the middle of cornfields. I mean, maybe all the maybe all the farmer stuff in there is uh Ethan, why don't you give man the kick?

SPEAKER_05 47:14

They're on my wife all the time. She goes outside, she got a tick. In my yard. Goes outside, she got a tick. We me, I I heard when I have a mommy, they came off the dog. That's I mean, I'll go out, walk through the woods, walk through tall grass, whatever. I'll never get a mommy. Sarah'll have 20 of them on. If she's walking beside me, she'll have 20, I'll have none.

SPEAKER_07 47:34

Yeah. So when we we do, you just you come home and you're getting on your hiking clothes, you know, you do a quick inspection, you know, see if you got anything crawling on you. Spread your cheeks.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

I've uh I've met we live out in the we live out in the uh the pointer in the country, and I've never had a tick on me. Ethan had a tick one time in his head when he was really young, and it was it got pretty big. Like we didn't we're my wife was feeling his hair and she found it, and we had to get taken out. We're like, oh shit, got all nervous. And my son Elliot had one on him before, but didn't bite him or anything like that. But we haven't had him. We've had him on our cats and once or twice on our dogs, but not it's not hasn't been like an issue. But I I've seen that like ticks are supposed to be gonna be bad this year. Last year they were bad, they're gonna be really, really bad this year. Do you see all that shit and all these weird diseases?

SPEAKER_07 48:13

Every spring they say this is going to be the worst year of ticks.

SPEAKER_05 48:16

And you do it.

SPEAKER_07 48:18

So dude, I know. So I mean, I don't know if it's worse than last year or if it's just worse because it's not winter anymore.

SPEAKER_04 48:26

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_07 48:27

You know, but they talk about the ticks like you know, they they they blame a lot of this on global warming. You know, and I don't want to go down the the you know the the the political path here, but this is the real deal. You know, they they say it's because of global warming. These ticks are on the increase and stuff. But I've got uh issue of the conservationist, which is uh the Department of Environmental Conservation's monthly magazine that predates me. I was born in 66, so this is like 64. And they're talking about the ticks then you know and how they're on the increase. So they've been increasing all my life. Global warming was not on the you know, was not on the bingo card, right, you know, 60 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 49:15

Well, someone told me uh a conspiracy, and uh they got really onto it, and and and it does it like it's definitely like I think probably plausible, but I I just I'm I'm getting I've had a hard time just getting into this whole idea that the government's trying to kill us all. Like I just maybe someone is, right? Maybe someone's trying to fuck with us, or maybe there's experience. But he had said something about um uh the military weaponizing ticks, mosquitoes, and stuff like that, and putting like uh and I and I guess you can look at them, and I guess they might have like a little um like symbol on them or something, like they were manufactured or something like that. I don't know. But they're just but they was it, Korea? But they put but they can drop them in an area and then they just kind of they just do their thing and they'll they'll infect you, they have to infect whatever with whatever they may already have or whatever, like Lyme disease, but it could be anything. I mean, whatever disease they want to give you.

SPEAKER_07 50:12

I'm thinking rabbit hyenas would be a lot a lot more cost effective. You know, just drop 40 of them someplace and just let them do their thing.

SPEAKER_03 50:21

When you talk about hiking, going nighttime hiking and stuff. I always think of like fire in the sky and like Travis Walton, those guys are up in the woods working up there, and like I'm like, I always go to that show. I'm like, dude, I I would definitely I was telling you the other day, like, we're like, let's do like a little like UFO um you know search mission. We'll sit out into this area where there people keep reporting UFOs, and he's and I and he's like, I just don't know if I could really walk out there. I'm like, well, I don't want to walk out there. I'm like, if if we see a UFO like in that direction, I'm probably gonna go to the other direction. No, I want to walk out there.

SPEAKER_05 50:52

I know you want to save with the hiking. Like that's what I'm saying. They'd be like the aliens would be like sitting there like watching. No, if you could pull them in your sled. Yeah, you know, it's not the first time.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

I'm not going that direction.

SPEAKER_05 51:01

Like, I want to, but then I'm like They'd be watching me trip and fall across the field, like, look at this fucking.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

He'd be Travis Walton and I'd be his buddies. I told him that the other day, it'd be like, I'd be taking off, I'd be videotaping it, and like, where's Josh? I'm like, we saw like this guy. He walked over to it and they shot a beam down and he passed out and then he was gone. We went back up, and he'd be like, Oh, and then but then he'd be tormented for the rest of his life. Like, he's like, the mean men, they did things to me. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_07 51:26

I'm like, yeah, well, if you ever want to dig into a great conspiracy and there's lots of stuff to read about it, and there is no answer, you know, you've got to come up with your own answer. Um, it was back in the I believe it was early 50s, maybe it's late forties, but in Russia.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Oh, yeah. Oh, I was gonna talk about this. That's why my phone died. The Dolotov? Well, they all went camping, and then when they came back, they were all over. I wanna yeah, I want to write a story about that.

SPEAKER_07 51:55

Um, that's just I've read everything I could find in English about that, and you know, you you really gotta work to try and come up with a a theory on what happened.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

Well, wasn't there radiation there?

SPEAKER_07 52:10

There was stuff.

SPEAKER_03 52:11

And was weren't there tents like then they like leave their tents or something?

SPEAKER_07 52:15

Okay, so what happened is these these university students went back into the the mountains. And it's winter, right? It was snow. You know, they they skied in and they're on the side of a it's a mountain range, but it's you know, it it's you know, not like the side of a mountain, you know, it's a gentle slope. Yeah. So they've got their tent set up. And they they don't come back when they're supposed to. So the the university got a hold of the the government to, you know, send somebody to look for them. So the first thing they do is they they fly over with helicopters, they find the tent, so they land. The the tent has been cut open from the inside.

SPEAKER_04 52:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 52:55

And you know, there's tracks leading all over and stuff. So they start piecing together and they they find these these kids and they're they're all dead. But of various things. You know, like one's got died of blunt forest trauma. But not a not an external mark on them. Um and they left, you know, and it's it's Arctic conditions, you know, it's winter. You know, it's zero they leave without their shoes and coats.

SPEAKER_03 53:25

Yeah, they I heard that like they were sleeping and they woke up or something. That's right.

SPEAKER_07 53:29

You know, so I mean there's been a million different theories of it. Um most of them, you know. I disregard right off the bat, you know. One of the latest ones was um it was uh an avalanche. The tent's still standing.

SPEAKER_04 53:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 53:46

You know, pretty sure an avalanche is gonna take down your tent. Um then there was um they tried to s I forget what they called it, but um it was some phenomena of like subsonic noise from the wind on this mountain was gonna make this noise, it was gonna drive these people mad.

SPEAKER_03 54:10

Yeah, I so that's like that's like a grounded scientific, okay. When when the wind whips through the peaks of the mountains and the trees, it up that high and that elevation, it creates this sound, kind of like sonic warfare, right? Like it would make them be weird. But like, but there's like alien theories and stuff that aliens came down, right? There's all sorts of theories.

SPEAKER_07 54:30

There's alien theories, there's you know, um, was it nominaty or something like that? Um the the the Russian Yeti.

SPEAKER_04 54:40

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yep. I've heard of that stuff.

SPEAKER_07 54:43

You know, that's a theory. Um there's just all kinds of theories.

SPEAKER_05 54:50

Government testing weapons, things like that.

SPEAKER_07 54:52

Well, that's where I I put my mystery, that's right. You know, because they had, you know, and they talk about a lot of the books, they were it had some kind of sonic weapon.

SPEAKER_04 55:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 55:04

That they they had used and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

This was like in the 60s or 70s, right?

SPEAKER_07 55:08

No, it was way earlier than that, like 40s, maybe early 50s. Early, early.

SPEAKER_03 55:11

Yeah, okay. Um I remember the story, that's what I was looking at when we were talking about this and you were winter hiking. That's that's the first thing that came to my mind. I was like, oh man, I'm I'm I'm I'm I was assuming you heard about it because it seems like everybody's heard about that. But that's like uh I mean, that's like a crazy story. And back then it's like, I mean, I don't think they really UFOs weren't what they are today, like the idea of an alien coming down.

SPEAKER_07 55:33

You know, I mean, they were probably trying to really Well they they had seen what they thought were meteors and they had and had you know written records of seeing the things in the sky.

SPEAKER_03 55:44

Yeah, I think around that time. So I mean around World War II, I mean they you know when the Nazis were doing their thing, and like like the there's pictures of like tanks with like like uh soldiers and tanks that they checked off that they got, and then there's one like a UFO. They used to call them Foo Fighters back then. That's why the Foo Fighters got their name. So I mean I mean in that time frame, you know, that was just kind of starting to really pop off. But but yeah, listen, guys, we're we're we're at kind of at the end of this rope right now, and uh I would love to talk about more of this stuff, and I hope this this book is uh gonna reach some people for you.

SPEAKER_05 56:22

Yeah, hope you sell some copies. We we uh we had last time I checked, we had 1.2 million followers.

SPEAKER_07 56:28

So well, all right. Yeah, like if one percent of those ponies up, I'm I'm in good shape.

SPEAKER_05 56:33

And Josh is million, I meant hundreds. Josh is a compulsive liar. Joke. The joke for today is I thought it was fitting because uh Bill brings on his hiking books. So there's these two blondes, and they go off hiking in the woods, and uh they come across, they come across some tracks. And the first blonde says, These are deer tracks. The other blonde says, No, those are bear tracks. The first blonde, no, they're deer tracks. No, they're bear tracks. And they go back and forth. And the first blonde says, My dad, he's an avid hunter, and he used to take me out in the woods all the time, and he showed me the difference between the tracks, and I'm telling you, these are deer tracks. The other blonde says, Well, my dad is an avid hunter, and he took me out in the woods all the time, and he showed me the difference between the tracks, and I'm telling you, these are bear tracks. And then they got ran over by a train.

SPEAKER_03 57:29

We're getting canceled now. I'm I'm hoping like when he tells me he tells me these jokes sometimes I'm like, all right, it's good. That some are funny, some are like, okay. And I'm like, stop, we're like, because, dude, a couple blondes. We're getting canceled right off the bat. That's it, it's over. Now every blonde that we have, it's gonna listen to the show's gonna cancel us. I'm sorry, blondes, that's Josh's joke. He just he just he just has to attack somebody every time. Earlier he was calling me fat.

SPEAKER_05 57:53

Now, hey, I love blondes, so but he said T-H-A-T-Fat.

SPEAKER_07 57:57

Well, you know, that there's a lot of talk, you know, about like with the UFOs and and Bigfoot and all that stuff. Um, and I I've got one experience that I think kind of ties all this together. Ooh. Now stick with me, but and because I I could prove this at the end. I think the reason why Bigfoot's don't get seen and stuff, I think they're psychic. They're on a different wave level. They know what you're thinking, know where you're gonna be, so it's very easy to avoid you. So a couple years ago, I'm up to Buck Pond, way up in the back of Vermontville, my little booty camper. You know, and I'd gone to bed, you know, and I don't know, it's like midnight or something, and I hear something out in the the the campground there. So I open up the door, you know, and you know, I I had a bottle of jack with me, you know, and that's still laying there. So I open up the door and there's Bigfoot, and he's taking a pull off my jack. So I you know what do you do? You reach for your camera. And so he he takes the bottle back down, he says, dude, don't even bother. Nobody's gonna believe you. And he knew that nobody believed me. See, he was psychic. He knew that you guys wouldn't believe me. So he knew not to even tell me nobody bother taking the picture. Nobody believed you.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

No, I believe it. 100%. So Bill Hill, author, musician. We didn't really talk about the music too much, but you play a lot of instruments, right? Yeah, string stuff. Guitar bass. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 59:31

That's how I met Bill back in the day. Music. Been 20 odd years.

SPEAKER_03 59:37

He's been in the scene for a long time, but he's also an author. Author of this new book called Hiking the Trail to Yesterday, volume three, Tales and Trails. It's right here. You pick it up, you can probably find him on the other website or anything. They place the plug.

SPEAKER_07 59:52

Yeah, um, you find, you know, hiking trail to yesterday on Facebook, and I've also got a blog page. More of a static kind of thing, you know, just kind of for reference, you know, people that want to go, you know, I'm gonna find the the waterclubs of the tweet on the road, you know, so they go to that website and like there's there's everything you need to get to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:14

Maybe maybe your next book can do like maps. You can have maps of all the stuff like follow up with a companion to your books. Maybe get a map book and you can draw them and say this is what I'm talking about. But Bill Hill, thanks for coming on, man. And uh, Josh. Great joke. It's good to see you again, Bill of Legend. Well, thank you. Yeah, man, very cool. And um, I'm ready as we've been at the next next Tuesday, so see you next Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Please, we're gonna be able to do