#103 Peter Barr: LIving a Life of Adventure Revisited

My guest for the latest episode of Creative Spirits Unleashed is Peter Barr. He’s a repeat guest with this being his third time on the podcast. We last spoke in July 2021. You might remember that Peter and his wife began living out of their RV six years ago, with the intention to live a life of adventure. In the prior two conversations Peter spoke about some of his harrowing experiences in the mountains, and this conversation had plenty of that and more as he describes two of his biggest changes in the last few years, as he became a father 3 years ago, and then discovered a reason for his vertigo. That became it’s own journey. 

Peter is known as a “peak bagger”, which means he loves to get to the highest places everywhere he goes. In Peter’s case, that means he’s made it to thousands of them. He has hiked all 900 miles of trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, reached the highest point in 40 U.S. states and was the second person to reach the high point in all100 North Carolina counties. He completed the 2,181 mile Appalachian trail in 2010. And that’s just the beginning. He’s climbed the Adirondack 46ers, New England Highest Hundred, all summits (790 of them!) above 4,000 feet in elevation in the Eastern United States and more than 2000 ranked peaks nationwide. He’s also the author of the definite guide on Carolina fire lookouts titled Exploring North Carolina’s Lookout Towers.

When you listen to this conversation, remember those statistics, because Peter tells several stories of achieving peaks and also making the difficult decision to turn around when the conditions are not right. You will also get a sense of his perseverance when he tells the story of his journey through the vertigo-causing brain tumor. Many would have given up, and without a doubt, this one tested his limits.

We spent some time reflecting on the mindset required to navigate the kind of challenges that Peter seeks out. Once again, Peter gives us a masterclass on balance under pressure. 

Enjoy this conversation with Peter Barr.

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to Creative Spirits Unleashed, where we talk about the dilemmas of balancing under pressure. And now, here's your host, Lynn Carnes.

Lynn: 0:12

Well, Peter Barr, welcome to the Creative Spirits Unleashed podcast.

Peter: 0:17

Thank you for having me back.

Lynn: 0:19

I can't believe you are back, and that it's been five years,

Peter: 0:23

Lynn. I cannot believe it's been that long. It feels like a blink of an eye to me.

Lynn: 0:28

A blink of an eye. So, it was five years ago we were doing our second podcast. The first one was as you were entering what you called your life of adventure.

Peter: 0:40

Sure.

Lynn: 0:41

To go live in an RV with your wife, and some things have happened between that time, which was almost six years ago, that you came here to Mystic Waters, just a few feet away from where I'm sitting right now, and said, "Hey, I have this idea, and I'm floating it with several people. What do you think? So, for people who want to catch up, and if you like things in sequence, we have two more podcasts to go check out back in 2020 and 2021 with Peter. But in the meantime, a few things have happened. The last podcast you did, this is a podcast about balance under pressure, and you gave a masterclass on balance under pressure in that podcast. But in between, the way I opened that podcast was tell me what death defying experiences you have had. In the meantime, you've had a couple that I'm aware of, and I'm sure many, many more. So I'm going to start with the same question. Tell me about both your death defying and life-affirming things. Let's just start with what comes to your mind to talk about what's happened in the last five years, and then if you don't give me what I'm looking for, I'll prompt you. But let's just go.

Peter: 1:51

Okay. Well, wow, a lot's happened in five years. So, just as a quick update, my wife Allison and I were were still on the road. We're still living a life of adventure. We're still traveling the country in our RV, and so coming up in September, we're about to hit six years doing that. But in the meantime, we haven't always been on the road in that six years, and so two very significant things that have occurred was in spring of 2023. We returned to Asheville for about five months to our home, and my wife gave birth to our daughter Lillian, and that was now a little over three years ago. She's now three years old, and we came home about a month, month and a half early. We had kind of a Allison had a kind of a pregnancy complication that was just very random, a condition called vasa previa, which is very treatable but very scary, and it the way they treat it is basically to deliver the baby very early, ideally a month early. The name of the game is to try to keep baby inside mom for as long as possible, and then induce delivery before baby gets too big. Because of if baby gets too big, then there's complications to both baby and mom. So they call it baby jail, where the way they treat this is they put Allison into the hospital really, really early and have her sit there for weeks on end, potentially potentially two to four weeks, you know, and so the idea is to make sure she's in the hospital in case she goes into labor, because they said the condition, you know, it's it's very manageable as long as you're within range of medical care. So they said you better be within 10 minutes of the hospital, and so how you solve that is you go into the hospital early, and so she did that, and she was planning to be there for several weeks. But our daughter Lily decided to come arrive early, only within a couple days' time, and so she was born six weeks early, and she was born healthy, and it was a an emergency C section, but that was kind of, you know, expected and planned. Though we had hoped to that she would stay in there for a couple more weeks, but she spent a week in the NICU, which also was expected, and then we got to take her home. Happy and healthy. So, in spite of that complication, everything you know, it all turned out super well. And she's the absolute joy of our life now. And we kept her at home for let's see, May, June, July. We kept our home for three months, and at kind of three to four months, we put her in the RV and we set out on the road again. So we had a still a newborn baby, and we're traveling across the country. So that was exciting, and that definitely made various challenges that we encountered more complicated. Because as you can imagine, there's times where dealing with various problems or obstacles, and I thought, oh gosh, am I a terrible father? Are we terrible parents for doing this? And I don't believe that to be the case, but it just kind of adds an element to to the to those things. So the The second major thing in my life that occurred since we last spoke was right about a year after that, I had I'd done a big hike and I finished the hike and climbed a big mountain and had basically kind of a golf ball sticking out of my my belly button, and I thought, oh darn it! Like this is-it's a very common thing. It's an umbilical hernia, right? Yeah. But you have to fix it with a pretty simple surgery. And so I thought, okay, that's-you know-I'm gonna do this. And we-we for the past several years we've been coming home at the holidays to see friends and family. So we came home to Asheville around Christmas, and the surgeon could get me in right after New Year's, and he did. And I had it fixed, and it was very simple. But what I did is, right after New Year's, I had maxed because of the surgery. I had maxed out my insurance, so I'm at home. We're not quite getting back on the road yet. We have a few more weeks, and so I say, well, now's the time to go do all the doctor's appointments. We're kind of playing on house money now because the insurance or the surgery maxed out the insurance, and I'm home and seeking medical care and going to the doctor on the road is is kind of a complicated and tricky. So I went and did all the appointments, and I had been dealing with a vertigo issue that wasn't tearing down my life. It was just kind of an annoyance. I had been dealing with it for five or six years, even a few years prior to getting on the road, where I would get dizzy. I would I would look up, and my head, you know, I would kind of have this spinning sensation like I was in a washing machine, so went to the doctor, got that checked out, and it was it was very odd. They they they were very flabbergasted. They said, "Well, we sent you to the kind of occupational physical therapist where they put you on the table, they spin you up and down, and they realign the crystals in your ears, and I said, "Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. I did that probably a dozen times. And Asheville's very lucky, or I'm very lucky that Asheville has a it's called a balance in Disney's center. So they have specialized therapists for this thing, and I always seem to confound them. They would do all these, you know, spin me and all these maneuvers on me, and sometimes they could replicate this. You know what I was experiencing. Sometimes they would fix it for a week or two, and then sometimes they couldn't replicate it, and then sometimes they couldn't fix it, and they they were always kind of confounded. But I thought, you know, whatever. So I go back to the doctor, and they said,"Well, we've never ever had anybody come back to us after going to that clinic. And I said, "Well, you know, I'm here. And they said, "Well, the only last thing to do is get an MRI. We they they did all these other tests, and they're like, "We don't think anything's wrong. But I said, "Hey, playing with house money. My insurance is maxed out. Let's let's let's do it. So okay, well you know we're gonna we'll do the MRI, but we're not gonna find anything. In fact, you don't even need to come back in. We're only gonna even call you if there's anything you know if they find anything. So Lynn, I I admit to sitting in that MRI tube smiling ear to ear because I was there to screw the insurance company because I felt like they've been sticking it to me for decades on end, and I thought this is my year to really cost them a ton of money. And you know, the doctors say this is a thing that maybe needs to be done, but they don't think they're going to find anything. A few days later, they called, and I saw it pop up on my phone, and it was a Monday, and I didn't answer. And they called on a Tuesday, and I didn't answer. They called on a Wednesday, and I didn't answer

because here's the thing: 9:57

if you're. Calling to tell me you found something where you scanned, which is my brain. I don't. I'm not very excited to hear that news.

Lynn: 10:09

Yeah, procrastination at its best.

Peter: 10:13

Yeah, it's almost like I just want to keep living the reality that nothing is actually wrong, and I recognize that, you know, when I connect on that phone call, I I could be getting a death sentence. They called on Thursday. I didn't answer, and at this point, I'm getting pretty scared. And I didn't, no pun intended. I didn't want it hanging over my head over the weekend, so on Friday I called them back, and they told me that they had found a assist in my brain. They said, "Well, we think we know this was causing your your balance and dizziness issues. They didn't seem super concerned, but admittedly, they didn't. This wasn't really their expertise. This was beyond ear, nose, and throat. This was brain. They said there's a a pretty large. It was about the size of a lime cyst pressing on my cerebellum. So in one regard, this is exciting in that hey, we know what's causing this now. It's always been a mystery. On the other hand, this was pretty terrifying because you know they said, well, you know we're we're now going to refer you to whatever whatever neurology, and of course that's really scary. And so you do what anybody does is go to Google and type it in. And I got to admit, this you could you could type in a hangnail in Google, and they might tell you you're going to die. If you type in a brain cyst, it's actually not that bad. They say you got to drill into your brain a small drill and drain it, and you're good to go in two weeks. So, okay, well, scary, but not bad. A really complicated process of the whole referral system and everything, and but eventually I got to see about a week later a a neurosurgeon at Duke University, and I go in. I sit down and he walks in and he says, "Well, how did you know you had a brain tumor? And I said, "No, no, no, no, no. I said, "No, I'm sorry. I have a I have a brain cyst. Well, he said, "You have that too. And what do you mean? He goes, "You have a cyst because you have a brain tumor, and that was a very, you know, where you kind of almost I felt very weightless because suddenly the reality was was was setting in like this. This was suddenly not a small thing. You type in Google that can get taken care of. This was a big deal. I had done my research and I said,"Oh, well, you can you can do this non-invasive gamma ray thing, right? You can shoot it with a laser or radiation or something and and zap it. And he goes, "Oh, he goes, yeah, no, we can't do that, he said. "Because you have a cyst, also. If we do that, we'll pop the cyst, and if we do that, you you die. He said, "No, we gotta we gotta cut you open.

Lynn: 13:11

Doctor Google never does work right, does he? Right,

Peter: 13:14

right. So he said, "No, you gotta have a full scale craniotomy, and we have to cut open in the back of your head, and take it out. And very, very fortunately, I my tumor was benign, and they were. He was almost certain of that even before he got in there. But it was also very rare and very risky. It was called a mangioblastoma, which was basically this big bundle of blood vessels, this ball of blood about you know the size of a lime, and so therefore it's very risky to remove it because if you touch it, it it bleeds and you don't want to do that inside your head. And so and he also and I said, well oh well the brain doesn't have any nerves this isn't going to hurt very much. He goes oh no this is going to hurt really bad. He said I have to go in through the back of your head, and there's a whole bunch of nerves and muscles and all that. He said,"It's going to hurt really bad. You're going,

Lynn: 14:10

doctor. I love you. You've given me. Yeah, no.

Peter: 14:13

I mean, he he he minced no words. He was very upfront about it. He didn't sugarcoat anything. And as it turns out, I didn't. You know, I just wanted to get treated as soon as possible because it was very scary. I didn't go seeking out like, oh, I got to have the best best brain surgeon ever. As it turns out, I had one of the best Ted Kennedy, who had a brain tumor like 15 years ago, far more complicated and risky than mine, he sought out the surgeon that that I had. He came down from Massachusetts to Duke, and my surgeon is the guy who took out Ted Kennedy's brain tumor. So this is pretty fortunate, and I remember. I got a second opinion at Wake Forest University, and Lynn, it was pretty scary. That that surgeon, I was crying, and so was she.

Lynn: 15:09

Wow! And

Peter: 15:10

she said, "I can't tell you if you're going to be able to walk again. I can't tell you if you're going to be able to eat. To, you know, you need to make long-term plans to be in Winston Salem because we might have to reteach you how to do all these things, and she's teary-eyed. I'm crying. You know, it's pretty scary. I chose to have the surgery at Duke because this surgeon he acted like it was-I call it an oil change, which is is kind of terrible bedside manner because he didn't really seem to care, but it's. I asked him. I asked the Wake Forest surgeon how many surgeries of these of this type of tumor have you ever done? She said, "I've never done one. She said, "My entire team at a at a major research university medical center has does about one of these a year, and I've never done one. I asked the same question to the surgeon at Duke, and he said, "Oh, you know, so so many I don't know. I haven't kept count. So I went with the guy who could do the oil change on me, and so I had it done. That's by

Lynn: 16:17

the way. I'm going to use a pun probably, but I think that's a no-brainer because you know

Peter: 16:25

it-it was and it wasn't right because the the surgeon at Wake Forest was very compassionate and felt very realistic, and I was questioning whether the surgeon at Duke was maybe minimizing it or not taking it enough seriously. This is this is my life. Well, I

Lynn: 16:40

can certainly see that, especially on that side of the equation, before before all this that you've been through.

Peter: 16:46

So it was it was a bit of a debate, and like, wow, what a wild difference of outlook on this from no big deal. And I asked the Duke surgeon how he said, you know, you've had surgery, you'll be good six weeks, six weeks, and the surgeon awake forced to tell. I don't know if you're going to walk again, talk again, eat, all that sort of thing. So it's it's pretty scary. So I don't know. Maybe Lynn, it's a bit naive. I went with the guy who the outlook is is kind of peachy, right? Well,

Lynn: 17:18

you know, it's also the experience and the belief, like he believed in himself, and he had a reason to because he had some experience under his belt. Whereas she was like, "I've, I've not, I don't do that, do do this that often. So, yeah, you know that to me was a deciding factor, notwithstanding sort of what I'm going to say is the lack of compassion, but I really like the sort of matter of fact believe in yourself approach that your guy had.

Peter: 17:46

Yeah, and you know what? Compassion is nice, but at the end of the day, what matters is the ability to execute, and that's what I was going

Lynn: 17:56

for.

Peter: 17:57

Right? I needed somebody who this was no big deal to, and and that's what I went with, and and so to to end this story is he took it out and the surgery went well. I've had some experience now since where I've sent a friend to the same surgeon, same MRI tube as me, same surgeon, same table, gotten his taken out, and he woke up, and the news wasn't good, and and that friend isn't isn't with me anymore, and so that gives me perspective that it's a big deal that I never take for granted that I woke up from that surgery. You know, full stop. That I woke up. The end of this story is that it's. I didn't get better in six weeks. It was a a long process and was was really scary, and after a month, I was worse off than the day I woke up from the surgery, and I was sick and dizzy and nauseous and grumpy, and I couldn't sleep, and everything would make me just motion sick. Taking a shower was a big ordeal. I could do it, but I would be just so nauseated and sick. And this is really challenging. I was essentially bedridden. I wasn't literally. I couldn't get out. It's not that I couldn't get out of the bed. It's that I was just so sick and so horrifically feeling that I, the only thing that I could do was lay in the bed to to feel okay, and that was very challenging on me personally. That was challenging on my marriage. That was challenging in my perception of what type of dad I was able to be. To Lily, who was about a year old at that time, and most of all, it was very challenging that I didn't know if I was ever going to get better. Like, if this was the new reality,

Lynn: 20:15

that's the big question, right? Like, is this my new life?

Peter: 20:19

Right, right. And it ended up being ended up being very challenging between Allison and I. And at the time, I thought, oh, oh, she doesn't care. This isn't as big of a deal to her because she's not experiencing this. Oh no, she cared a lot, but it was really scary to her too. And so you know, the way she reacted was almost like this is too scary, too big. You know, almost tried to to minimize it for her own sake. I can imagine.

Lynn: 20:47

I cannot even imagine the fear. I really, which

Peter: 20:50

at the time I perceived that, oh, she doesn't care, but she did care. Me, on the other hand, I honestly, Lynn, I I double downed. Like I was, I became a huge grump. I was so grumpy, and I was determined to get better, like one way or another. And I was unconvinced that Duke University was going to fix me. We made seven or eight trips over three months' time up there and from the mountains, it's it's a seven-hour round-trip drive, and I kept getting no answers, no answers. All my tests would come back fine. I met with the neurosurgeon about six weeks later, and I told him, I said, I regret having the surgery. As you can imagine, he did not like that. He told me, he said,"Well, I can't put it. I can't put the tumor back in you. Ultimately, what it was, and to kind of bring this ordeal to to a close and summary, is that something about the brain surgery caused me to be to have to to have horrible sleep apnea, and essentially, I was hypoxic for three months. I was hypoxic. My brain wasn't getting enough. And I eventually figured this out. When you sit in the bed long enough and you type enough things in Google, believe me, I had so many different theories of what was wrong with me. But eventually, one of them was right, and so I eventually went to my primary care physician and got like a sleep study ring that I wore at night, and it determined that you know I should be in a hospital because I'm such low oxygen. That would be bad for any human. However, I just had brain surgery, essentially a brain trauma where your brain needs extra, you know, not only sufficient, if not extra oxygen, and so I eventually got that solved, and I started to heal once I became not hypoxic, and I eventually got better, and and very very slowly, I was better in a couple weeks, and I was a lot better in a couple months, and then honestly, it took another year to completely feel back to myself. We did get back on the road in July, so I know that looking back, that seems very gosh, that was only four months after brain surgery. But what I can tell you, Lynn, that was way too soon. Like I wasn't ready, right? However, I had been sitting in the bed for three to four months, and I felt like life was passing me by. I felt like this opportunity for us to adventure was passing me by, and I I felt like I needed a change from sitting around the house. So we got back on the road, and like I said, it was probably too soon. I wasn't better yet, but at the same time, I don't really know if I say it's too soon. But would a sitting around home have been any better? Probably not. So, however, so what I'll tell you now is that it's now been two years and I'm I'm good I'm like 98% There's little things that'll remind me that it happened. There are little things that'll remind me that'll always be with me. I'll always still get sick and dizzy sometimes. I'll occasionally still spin. The neurosurgeon told me, well, that's probably going to happen because the tumor was in there a long time. It caused some damage. I've had follow-up MRIs. Sure enough, I have some damage irreversible to my cerebellum, but not so much that it's catastrophic. Just enough to to remind me. So I'm not 100, but I'm I'm 99, 98, 8 percent, and we've been traveling on the road again ever since. And we we set out to do it for five years. I probably told you that in the first or second podcast, but we extended it to eight years because when we had Lily, we said, "Well, we stay on the road for five more years until she's ready for school." And then we'll come home to Asheville, and she'll go to school. So, where that leaves us right now is that we have two years left, which to many people probably sounds like a long time, but to me feels like it feels like a blink of an eye. And I'm already a little bit struggling mentally with, gosh, what what comes next once once we're home,

Lynn: 25:22

that story, man. First of all, I am so relieved because there was the time when all of us were, you know, we know each other through conserving Carolina. We knew this was going on, and we were having to get tidbits and how's Peter and all of that. And then I feel like maybe I've seen you once since then. Maybe right at the tail end of the grump period when you were just figuring this out,

Peter: 25:43

yeah, yeah, you saw me right in that period where I was starting to figure it out, but I was still in kind of bad shape. Yeah, I think that's right. So it was kind of touch and go of how is this gonna end up?

Lynn: 25:56

And the the thing because of because of the way I see the world now. The thing I'm picking up on is that probably what saved your life was that you didn't give up, and that you may be right that you weren't too soon in getting out of bed because I I feel like if we if we give in to our depression almost our trauma or whatever's happening, and just lay down. I think that only makes things worse. And

Peter: 26:26

I wholeheartedly agree. And plus, if you lay

Lynn: 26:28

down too much, you'll get pneumonia. Like one of my one of my hospital one of my hospital executive clients once said, you know, you put somebody in a bed long enough, I don't care how healthy they are, they'll get pneumonia.

Peter: 26:39

Yeah, yeah. You know, it was very frustrating. You know, quite a lot of people, important people in my life, came to see me during that time period, and I would present fairly normal to them. I think most people who came to see me, they would leave and saying like, "Wow, he's he's not that bad, and I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back on that, it makes sense, right? I was hypoxic. I my brain wasn't getting enough oxygen. However, two things would make it get more oxygen, kind of in a short term but forced way. If I was highly involved in conversation, you know, very like active, or if I was like out walking, it was kind of a forced oxygenation, and so people would see me and be like, "He's not that bad. They would leave, and life would be miserable because I would just go back to. I would sure I'd get all dizzy and that, so I'd go back to the bed and yeah, and therefore not oxygenate. But yeah, to to to your point, you know, I had I had very very important people people close to me in my life tell me that well, it's been so long. Maybe it's time to start thinking about acceptance. And boy, Lynn, that was a tough thing. Like I did not like to hear that, and if anything, it caused me to kind of double down. Of like, no, I'm gonna figure this out. Like, I I think I can get better. Like, I just I have to unlock what the problem is. And you know, I'm I'm I'm rather grumpy at kind of the healthcare system because they didn't figure this out. I figured it out, and I brought it to them, and I said, "Fix, like this is what it is, and fix it. You got all the best doctors in the world, all the best tests, and that, and they didn't figure this out. I woke up from brain surgery snoring not just a lot, but horrifically. Allison recorded me before I woke up from brain surgery, and she's like, "Look, I've been laying next to this man for more than 20 years at night. Sure, he might snore every once in a while, but it's never sounding like this. They wrote it off as oh, it's the breathing tube, as the anesthesia. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Well, it never went away. It never ever went away. And so I was I was written off, and you know I tend to think like gosh I was written off what if my goodness what if I didn't speak English what if I I wasn't a white male like I took took three months to figure this out and so but I think like getting at what what you're referring to is that I became more obstinate for better or worse like I got grumpier and grumpier and grumpier in my kind of hypoxic and motion sick state of like no you know what I'm gonna figure this out and like I will not accept this and like you know who knows maybe that in many cases that's how it was gonna be but I wasn't ready to accept that and I was at least gonna go down, I guess, fighting. Right, I was gonna go down very obstinate about it, and because of that, I did figure it out, right? Like I, like I really did, and I know it might not have gone that way, but when some people are telling me just accept that. And the the the scenario is very scary to Allison, so I think she thought I was, and I'm sure I was being very like kind of overbearing, like almost you know too proactive, like let's check this, let's check this, let's check that, right? I'm sure there's a happy medium of what's actually reasonable, but the point is I was very intensely obstinate of like, no, like I will not accept this, and I have to figure this out, and let's get to the bottom of it.

Lynn: 30:31

That it makes me think that word, you know, acceptance is part of the Serenity Prayer.

Peter: 30:36

Yeah, and

Lynn: 30:37

God grant me the wisdom to know the difference.

Peter: 30:40

Yeah,

Lynn: 30:40

and the word that is coming up for me as as I'm listening to you talk is also the willpower to make it through the the change piece because I'm I'm just listening and going you know that's the same willpower that got you to the top of how many peaks I I don't even know have you counted how many peaks you've bagged?

Peter: 31:04

Several 1000. But I

Lynn: 31:06

yes, and in particular in the in the podcast we did five years ago this month, you were talking about making decisions to go or no go when it was dangerous up on mountains, and you told a harrowing story. We won't repeat it here because it's already been recorded, but of having to make it off a mountain that had a sudden snowstorm in Las Vegas, and that you had made good decisions, and that you had made those calls to turn around, and when you were outside of yourself, as you called it, and so as I'm listening to to what you've been through with your with your brain tumor, I'm hearing the same combination of wisdom and willpower. You know, I have you have the will to to go beyond limits that a lot of people set for themselves because you have a high tolerance for discomfort, from what I've seen, but also you-you weren't going to let your high tolerance for discomfort take you into acceptance of something that you just knew at some level wasn't right, like you knew you weren't right.

Peter: 32:13

Yeah, totally. I-I wasn't right, and I-I wasn't willing to accept it, and I don't know at what point I would have been, and maybe at some point there's a reality where I should be. But I almost think like, why, why accept something that you're not happy with? Like, I wasn't willing to accept it, I feel like you have a certain amount of energy, and even if the reality is that I should accept it, if I still have enough energy to to fight against it and to try to figure it out, why not? Right? Like that's that's where I want to put it towards.

Lynn: 32:59

That makes that makes sense to me, and also, you know, you even now you're talking about you have two two years left of adventure. Although, you know, as somebody on a different end of life, I can tell you there's still a lot of adventure yet to come, and raising children is one of them. But but you have also this zest for life and this just awareness that you do have limited time, which I think is what makes us live. I think if you feel like you have all the time in the world, it's a lot harder to live as if you're fully alive. But when you recognize each day is a gift and you want to make the most of it, first of all, they do seem to burn faster because that's kind of how I've been approaching life, and again, I'm on the different end of the life scale than you are. But also, it makes me just appreciate every bit of life. Like I don't want to be sitting around doing nothing. I don't want to accept. And I'm with you. I'm not accepting aging very well, so I figure I'll just get into the grave. I may, I may.

Peter: 34:02

Yeah, I don't anticipate accepting aging very well either.

Lynn: 34:05

But but but moving means you don't age as much. Like I am really convinced that a lot of people, by accepting age, actually create that the very thing that they are accepting, and so I think it's a fine line to recognize what is truly something you have to accept-that wisdom piece-and what can you let go of? Like, what what can you say? No, I'm not going to accept that. So that's what I'm seeing as I hear this story. And again, I'm just so grateful that you had the determination, so that you're back out on the road, and now we have to talk talk, of course about some of your other adventures.

Peter: 34:43

Well, sure. Well, I you know I told you this when when when we spoke last month. I said it's interesting after brain surgery, and you know I want to say like was it a you know death defying experience? Well, sure. I think anytime you get your. Head cut open. That's fine, but you know, it's. I remember speaking with Allison, speaking with our counselor, speaking with friends and family ahead of time. I said, you know, this is pretty scary, but I I cannot go into this with a oh gosh, I got to do all the last things just in case I don't make it. I can't. I literally can't do that. I just have to treat this as if I'm going in. If it was like a hernia surgery, right? Just like this is all going to be fine. Everything's going to work out. Um, but I didn't expect that it would be somewhere in the middle. Yes, I lived. I woke up from that surgery again. Super grateful for that, but things didn't go well for many months afterwards, and that was potentially my new reality. That that was how the rest of my life would be, and that made me very frustrated, disappointed, angry, defiant, all those things. But coming full circle in a way that makes it a little more like, oh, well, a lot of these challenges that I face on the road, whether it's it's hiking or repairing the RV or obstacles that that get us stuck, oh, well, they're easy now, right? Like they're not actually easy, but in the grand scheme of things, like well, hey, it might sound trite to say, hey, this isn't brain surgery. This isn't. I don't know if I'm ever going to be normal again. But it definitely gives me a perspective of like, wow, you know, what might seem like a really really big deal in this moment actually is not in comparison to potentially not coming back from that brain surgery, and by not coming back, I don't mean alive, but I mean like not functional, not life as I knew it.

Lynn: 36:53

Exactly. Although you know, I feel like our brain doesn't necessarily make the distinction between. Between whether we actually died or whether we could die, in other words, when you actually die, you're gone anyway. But but when you could die, like I think our survival mode makes a lot of things feel like life and death, even when they're not. And and I have actually taken, especially when I'm working with people in in my world, I'm working a lot of times with corporate clients where it feels like if they didn't get the raise or they didn't get the promotion or the company might get merged or or or it feels like they're going to die. And and in fact, we have this thing we call the homeless sequence, which is well, I might lose my job, and if I lose my job, I won't be able to pay my mortgage, and if I can't pay my mortgage, then I'm gonna, you know, end up being like in a smaller house or maybe even on the street. Next thing I know, I'm gonna be living in an overpass, you know.

Peter: 37:49

Yeah, yeah,

Lynn: 37:49

and it feels like you're, you know, the homeless sequence feels like you're gonna die, you know. And so one of the things I'll practice with people is to just capture the didn't die moment, even if it's like that the RV broke down on the side of the road, or you had a flat tire, or you ran out of gas, or you missed your flight. You know, I heard Alex Honnold, who I'm sure you know who he is. Sure, love one of my heroes. Love. I'm

Peter: 38:14

still hoping I run into him while I'm on my travels. Oh, I

Lynn: 38:16

hope you do. And then ask him to be on my podcast. No, but he he was talking about going into airports, and it totally changed my experience in airports because I have that sort of don't like to be inconvenienced, want to sail through the line and have everything go smoothly and all that, and he goes out he he goes I go to the airport and I watch these people all freaking out about being here and there, I was like, "Yeah, that's one of I'm one of those. And he's like,"And you're literally surrounded by more resources than you can imagine. There's food everywhere. You have shelter. There's bathrooms. Everything you could possibly need is there, and yet you act like everything is so bad. And I was like, "Oh, capture the didn't die moments in the airport, you know, and it completely changed how I travel, because it's it's true. Like, where did I get that I'm gonna die? You know, I might have some crappy food at the at the vendor counter or whatever, but I'm I'm gonna be fine.

Peter: 39:17

Yeah,

Lynn: 39:18

and so yeah, I think that you have kind of wisely, sort of talked about that as well. Is that, you know, things like the RV breaking aren't nearly as much. And honestly, it is through those things I think that we really discover who we are. I just think if things are smooth sailing, you don't really know whether it's you or the river that's taking you. It's when things aren't smooth sailing that you find out who you are and how you can navigate.

Peter: 39:45

Yeah, you know, for example, Lynn, you know, I was a few minutes late for this podcast. Of, we've been we've been stuck south of Portland, and I say stuck because I've been having various mechanical problems that have been trying. To fix and go to fix them, and you know, in the meantime, I immobilize our vehicle that gets us around town, and I have to fix that to make us mobile again. And we we quote unquote feel like we've been stuck for a week or two now. And when I say stuck, like we want to be adventuring in that. But it's it's this experience that I went through. That actually, it's like, yeah, you know. Right now, I tell Allison like it's it's challenging, but we'll get through this because it's not in that case three or four months. And I know, you know, I try to have perspective that that I can't even have, but know that others it takes many more months or years or lifetime, right? Like, so when things are bad, like it doesn't make it doesn't make it so they're not bad, right? Like I still get frustrated, I still get overwhelmed, I still get disenchanted in that. Gosh, this seems like we're never gonna go anywhere. I told Allison, I said, you know, based on my work yesterday, not only are did we lose a day, we're actually a negative day because I broke this and that, and I'm going to have to spend the next day to fix it. And so, in two days from now, we'll be back to where I was before, and then I still have to fix the original thing. All that sounds very daunting and very challenging, but it's also like you know, what two years ago, or three years, yeah, two years ago, this time of year, I was sitting around stuck in the bed, wondering if I was ever going to get better. So, it's like, well, it's still exciting to be having this problem, and we're out west somewhere, and and still kind of on an adventure, and this is just kind of kind of part of it, and I think that applies to all of life, even like the airport, like you said, right? Like it seems very heightened in that moment, but ultimately it's not that big of a deal. And like when you think about it, yes, at the airport you have all those resources. Where we're at now, it's it's fine. Like we're in a city and we're in a town. We have access to the parts I need, we have access to internet. Like we're we're not even out in the middle of nowhere, stranded. So so it's been it's been very very illuminating for me. Like I said, I still get frustrated in those situations, but then I the experience has kind of helped me realize that hey, it it could be a lot worse, and yes, delays, setbacks, obstacles are very frustrating, very challenging. But you know what? We'll we'll get through them. It is

Lynn: 42:34

amazing. I am going to be up in Oregon, by the way, next week. I'll be camping, so that's right. You won't be far away, and I'm still

Peter: 42:42

here. I I told you I thought, oh, we might be moving on. We're

Lynn: 42:46

you may you may not be, but I'm gonna I'm I fly into Redmond. We we start in Bend, and I really don't even know where we're going. I just know we're going to be camping and riding horses for four days to get them prepared for a huge 100 mile endurance race that I will not be riding in Tevis, the Tevis Cup, which is the following week in California. But it's interesting because I'm packing for my camping trip and trying to make sure I've got everything ahead of time. And I I notice the little things that I just really care about, like I want to be sure I have my baby wipes because I probably won't get a shower for like four days, and I've got my bug. I got my bug. I use bug wipes, you know, because I don't want to get ticks and mosquito bites and stuff like that. I'm not that afraid of those things, but I'm trying to avoid them. And it's just those little comforts, and it's like, and where's the bathroom going to be, and all that. But at the same time, there's nothing like you know you mentioned being in a city where there's all the resources, but there's nothing like just being in a tent and having a nice cozy sleeping bag. Tell me some of the adventures that you've had of on the mountains and things like that, because I know I'd love to know what you guys are calling adventure these days, because I I would guess over five years that what seemed like a daring thing to do five years ago now your adventures need to be stretching you a little more. So tell me, what is stretching you these days?

Peter: 44:18

Sure. Well, what is stretching me these days, I think is I have gotten into a little bit of mountaineering, and what that involves is climbing these big snowy or glaciated volcanic peaks, which is completely new to me. I've climbed 1000s of peaks. peaks that aren't glaciated or snowy, or that I have more experience with, where I'm essentially just a hiker. And so last summer I climbed Mount Olympus in. Washington State in Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula, and this is completely new territory to me because it's a full-scale expedition requires a handful of days, and you have to hike, you know, 1520 miles through a rainforest, and then you get to the edge of the glacier, and you have to hike across the glacier, which there's crevasses, and so there's danger and risk involved with that, and then there's very very steep snow climbing that was very unnerving to me, and then at the top there's a technical rock climb, which is extra scary for me. So that's been very exciting. But how I've approached that is that I'm I'm really eager to learn and to get better and to get more experience and comfortable at that scenario. But to do so, you know, just because of brain surgery doesn't mean I'm I'm reckless or you know just have reckless abandon. So I've teamed up with people who have skills and who who are experienced. So I put together a kind of a team, this expedition team, to climb that mountain. One was a dear friend, Mike Reardon, who's the executive director of the Carolina Climbers Coalition back in Asheville, and he's a super experienced rock climber, and he was also eager to get into kind of mountaineering. So he was our expert rock climber at the very top. And then I invited a mutual friend of yours and mine, Chris Braun, who is his former town manager of Lake Lore, who has climbed a number of snowy and glaciated peaks in the Pacific Northwest, and a few others who, two other friends who had experience on these snowy glaciated peaks, and we set out and we had an incredible expedition. You know, very fortunately we had good weather, but we were able to execute everything safely, crossing the crevasses, safely climbing the steep snow. I remember one time asking Chris. I said, "Hey, this is pretty intense, and I'm pretty scared because if I slipped right now, I would I would fall several 1000 feet and slide down on the snow, and it wouldn't be good. And he said,"No, he's like, you know, in my experience, like this snow is is perfect. Like we're in good shape. We're safe right now, and you know I've got you. And so that was very very reassuring, and you know it helped me learn from him to assess conditions, but also that balance between you know safety and your comfort level versus versus reality. You might be feeling more scared than than the conditions really imply, and and so he was able to really help me with that. And so we were able to to get to the top of that summit, and it was an incredible outing. Chris Braun joined me a year later, just last month. He came out and we climbed to the top of Mount Shasta, which is a 14,000 foot volcano in the Cascade Range in Northern California. Not not too far from where you're flying into, Lynn. You'll probably see it.

Lynn: 48:14

Oh wow! I'll have to look.

Peter: 48:16

And so very similarly, really really steep snow, and you know we're wearing all the gear like crampons and ice ax and that, and this is very much a new thing for me. But again, like kind of taking steps and going with those who are experienced and taking steps to to gain that comfort level. You know I might be a little less comfortable and he's much more comfortable because he has that experience. So, trying to learn from others to be able to accomplish getting up these these really amazing but challenging peaks that ultimately lead to an incredible experience. And it's very exciting to get to the top, but it's even more rewarding to look back at it, you know, the next day down in town and look at the mountain that is one of the most beautiful mountains you've ever seen, and say, "Wow, we made it to the top of it, and it was really hard, and it was kind of scary, but we did it, and and we did it safely. So Chris and I hope to do a number of of big kind of snowy, glaciated, volcano peaks next year, including Mount Rainier. So we're we're both. I mean, especially me, but but him as well. It's kind of advancing experience and skill so that we can keep building up to to bigger and more more challenging mountains. So that's that's something that I've been pursuing while we've had our travels on the road recently.

Lynn: 49:48

That is like it's like almost fountain of youth one and one, which is continuing to be a beginner, you know. And what I love because. What you do is pretty consequential. Is that you build a team so that the mistakes you make, and the only way we really learn is through our mistakes. It's a great mistakes are great because that's how we figure out how to do things. But you don't want your mistakes to be so consequential that they take your life. So it sounds like you're going about it the right way, where you're challenged, but not not too far, like right on the edge. Like it sounds like you're living on the edge, and it's working.

Peter: 50:28

Right, I I think so. I you know I told you that since brain surgery, you know, quote unquote, oh things are easy. Meaning like, well, whatever is scary or whatever is challenging isn't as hard as that because that I didn't know if I was going to come back from and sat around for many months. I will say there has been a counterbalance to that in that being a dad for the first time and having our daughter Lily. I have to admit, like when I'm on those mountains, and I'm scared. I think about her a lot, so I think to myself, like, well, don't do anything stupid, don't do anything rash, because you know my life is is not just important to me, not just important to Allison, but is really important to her, and will be for many many years to come, infinitely beyond. So it is interesting that I've had the counterbalance of like, oh well, this isn't that bad, or this isn't nearly as bad as what I went through during and recovering from brain surgery. But wait a minute, things are now a little bit different. And you know, referencing Alex Honnold, who it's it's funny, Lynn. I don't quite remember the the thing about the airport that you mentioned, but I swear swear I've listened to almost every minute of the you know copious hours of of podcasts and recordings and YouTube videos that Alex Honnold's ever done. He's who I listen to when I when I'm hiking. I have him in my ear listening to interviews with him, but I, you know, many times recently people have asked him,"Well, oh, are you gonna stop free soloing, or has things changed now that you're a dad? Because he now has two daughters, and he said, he said very astutely, I think he said,"Well, you know, I didn't want to die before I was a dad, and now that I am a dad, I still don't want to die. He's like,"So things haven't really changed. He said, "Things have maybe slowed down because he has more responsibilities and kind of more preoccupation helping raise his daughters. But I think that is completely true. But I have to admit, like, and I wonder for him too. Like, the mentality is a little different. Like, when I'm in a scary situation, like I was on the side of Mount Jefferson, a big cascade volcano south of Portland last week, and there were a couple dicey parts. Like it wasn't overly scary. This particular objective, I wasn't going all the way to the top, which has has much higher risk. But I thought of my daughter Lily a number of times, and I think that's a good thing because I didn't think it like held me back. It didn't say,"Oh, it didn't like stop me. Like you know what? I shouldn't do this because, you know, I'm Lily's dad. But it did give me pause and say, like, "Oh, I need to really focus and be extra careful here because it's. It felt like it's not just about me. So I guess what I'm saying is like, there's been this counterbalance where brain surgery and and the tumultuous recovery has given me one perspective where some things aren't as hard or not as bad or you know what's the big deal and then suddenly being a dad to Lily is kind of like oh well you know what no it's still really important to to be careful and to pay close attention and to make very calculated, you know, conscious decisions.

Lynn: 54:06

You know, yeah, and it's interesting because the conscious decision piece. There's a I don't know if you've heard about Alex Honnold, but your story about Chris Braun telling you the snow was okay reminds me of something I heard Alex Hon say on Andrew Huberman's podcast, which you probably listened to, but he, you know, there there had been this thing after he did the free solo thing, the movie, and all the neuroscientists and people jumped in and started saying,"Well, his amygdala just doesn't fire; like he's his brain is wired differently, and Huberman kind of did almost like a throwaway comment with Honold in that podcast that I I really was glad Honold made this distinction because he said he said oh yeah but I know your brain is wired differently but and like kind of like but for the rest of us and Honnold stopped him and said hey in the. MRI machines where they were testing me. All they did was show me black and white pictures of things like guns and stuff. And he goes, "Black and white pictures never killed anybody, but they didn't test me like with a room full of snakes, which I promise you, my amygdala would have fired if there had been snakes in the room. And what I recognized in that, because it's a journey I've been on for the last several years, is that most of us don't calibrate our fear. We don't actually know the difference between when we're in real danger and when our brain is sending us noise. In other words, what's signal and what's noise. And so when Alex said that, I was like, that's why he can do what he does because he knows how to stay within what he knows. He knows he's taking dangerous moves, but as he said, climbing the rock he did for free solo, I knew every single move, and I had done it many times before, and I knew what temperature I had to do it at, and I knew what time of day to do it at, so if you think about what Chris said to you, you were well cali. He's he was well calibrated around that snow. It's like you're not in that much danger because this snow, I'm guessing, is more grippy. Yeah,

Peter: 56:17

absolutely. I think too. You know, listening to Alex Honnold's perception of that MRI and that he said, you know, it's not that his amygdala is messed up or different than everybody else's. It's just, you know, he'll vow that he's just more conditioned that he doesn't respond as as extremely to the stimulus of what would cause the rest of us fear, so I think, and that's what

Lynn: 56:49

I mean by well calibrated. By the way,

Peter: 56:50

right, right. I'm not ever going to be on his level, but I think that's why perspective is important. And I don't think you know for anybody listening to this that they can say, oh well, I got to go out and get brain surgery in order to get that perspective. It's not that it's it it can be anything in your life to adjust that calibration to your point between you know real danger and perceived danger that is just scary but not actually dangerous.

Lynn: 57:20

It's funny because years ago, several years ago, it was actually before my dancing the tightrope journey started. I started. I don't know if you're familiar with the Wim Hof method with ice baths and breathing and all that.

Peter: 57:34

Ah, only mildly.

Lynn: 57:35

But but I I got I can't remember how I found out about it, but I was like, this is interesting, and so I started playing with it, and especially got interested in the ice baths. And what I noticed the summer I did that was when I was water skiing, it used to be pretty common. And Austin Abel can tell you this because he's pulled me. We've been skiing together now probably for 15 years, and that summer, what started happening was after I had done ice baths, I was less likely to freak out when I got a bad bobble on the water ski. And what would happen to me before that is, if I had a bad bobble, I would get such a rush of adrenaline. I even blogged about this some back in the day, such a rush of adrenaline that I couldn't keep skiing. Like I didn't trust my body to work right with that much adrenaline flowing through me. So I'd have to pull up, stop skiing. Sometimes it'd ruin the whole set. After the ice baths, where you have to go through a didn't die moment, because if you think about, have you done ice baths, Peter?

Peter: 58:39

I have not.

Lynn: 58:40

So the the the the negotiation with the brain is you get in this really cold water, and your brain is telling you you're going to die, and then you kind of have to take control of the wheel and say we're going to breathe, and we're not going to die. And the key is if you can control your breath, your brain will start believing that you're not going to die, and about 30 seconds in, it actually starts instead of telling you to get out of the water, it says, "Well, okay, if you're not going to get out of the water, I'll just heat you up, and then it turns on sort of your internal heater. So it's

Peter: 59:15

all mental.

Lynn: 59:16

It's almost 100% mental, and what what happened for me was it was not only mental but then physical because once I got past that thing with my brain, which I had a lot of tendencies towards panic, my body didn't panic anymore, and so I rarely get an adrenaline hit anymore when I'm skiing and and bobble because I just think, okay, which way do I have to move to get back in balance? So in other words, it's it's just a tuning in. The calibration is no longer, oh my God, you're going to die if you keep skiing. It's more like, okay, you need to lean a little less or a little more. Like I'm pretty good at guessing which direction to go, to to restore balance, and to. To me, that's what calibration is. Is like Honold will talk about reaching for a particular reach and knowing how far you have to go because sometimes you don't want to overreach, but underreaching is also catastrophic.

Peter: 1:00:17

Well, I think I think the you know it's sort of like when we get sick, right? The body often over responds with its whether it's a histamine reaction or you know to try to make you better. It's like there's a threat here, so I have to like double down, and right that can be bad in many cases, like like a muscular musculoskeletal injury, like it swells up, right? Like there's like kind of an over response to it, and I, I very much believe that, and and personally, like I, I struggle with this, but like I, I acknowledge it and and and continually seek to want to master it or improve at it. I think there's very much that mentally. I think it's exactly what you're getting at, right? Let's take a scary mountain, whether it's the steep snow or whether it's exposure, but yet you, you know, sure, there's a many 1000 foot drop and it's super scary. However, if you focus on what's there versus what's not, everything is actually very safe. Meaning, like you've got you know good grips and hands and feet and all that. And if it weren't for the scary part that you see over you know quote unquote over there, this is actually straightforward. This is no different than if you were walking on a parking in a parking lot. So I think it's very much that, and it is very much mental. And I don't want to. I don't want to be trivial. That it's like, oh, well, just you know, just don't worry about that.

Lynn: 1:01:59

Oh no, that's the problem. You can't do that. Like you actually have to both be aware of the consequences, and at the same time aware, like you said, of what you have. I've got plenty of walking room. I walk something. I don't need this much more than this 12-inch space to walk all day long. I can. It's just that if you make that 12-inch space 100 feet high, then the consequences are much different, and my mind changes, and then I don't walk the same, and then I'm more likely to trip and fall.

Peter: 1:02:28

Right, 100 times out of 100 you would be able to walk this part, or you know, walk this, and you know, just make sure you hold on, and it's really no big deal. But because there's that high consequence, you know, quote unquote, over there, and suddenly, like you feel like it's a one out of 100 chance that you're going to make it, which is not reality.

Lynn: 1:02:49

No, but the key is training the mind to actually see what you have, and what what I've discovered is how much we train our minds the opposite way. So we're focusing on our lack as opposed to our abundance at times, and because of that, we actually create the thing we're afraid of. I've been playing a lot with this lately because I think about you know if you're if you if you're consciously saying I want something, but you have serious doubts that you maybe not even saying out loud, then you're holding two conflicting

pictures: 1:03:26

one for the thing you want, and one for the thing you don't want. So I'll give you an example that happened to me on a trail the other day riding a horse. We were I was riding with someone, and this was just two of us out on a trail together. So you know we could take risks that you normally don't take on, quote unquote, trail rides. We came upon a tree down, and it was next to a river bank where there was probably a 30 foot fall down to the river, and there was just enough space for the horses to walk around the last bit of tree branch and not slide down the river as long as the horses were okay with the branch touching their side. And I was super aware because horses will pick up our mental pictures. That if my mental picture was, oh my God, we can't go down that that river bank, then that's what the horse would have picked up on. So what I was very mindfully did was I actually asked the person because I was on her horse. I said, "Is he going to be okay with this branch touching his side? And she said yes as she walked by and her horse touched it. So I I was very confident and just visualized the path that we needed to take. It was exactly horse wide, again, but the horse had to touch that branch, and we walked past like it was nothing. But I thought, you know, if my picture had been full of doubt and worry about that slide or going down to the riverbank, I could have created a disaster right there, because. I would have been acting according to my doubts as opposed to my confidence. Does that make sense?

Peter: 1:05:05

No, it makes total sense. That's really interesting. You know, I think about that being a dad to Lily now, and it's crazy how much she picks up on the nonverbal. You know, literally just our disposition, our mood, our sensation, right? And I often think about that like I don't want to create for her, even subconsciously or non-verbally, this like overly cautious scenario of everything is dangerous, right? Because even if I don't say that, right? Like she's gonna be able to tell, just like your horse was gonna be able to perceive from you. At the same time, I also don't want to just be reckless about it. I don't want to, you know, make her think that oh, everything's gonna work out because you have to make calculated decisions. So there's a balance there, but I absolutely and that's balance

Lynn: 1:06:01

under pressure. That's exactly what we're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah. It's like it's not pressure if there isn't consequence, and it's not balance if there's not two sides.

Peter: 1:06:14

Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, I definitely think like that. I don't want to. I I never want to make her shy away from a situation because there is any risk at all. You know, a good friend once told me he literally worked as in an attorney's office that dealt with risk management, and

Lynn: 1:06:36

it's

Peter: 1:06:36

always stuck with me. He said, "Risk management is not the avoidance of risk, he said."It's literally the management of risk. So many people think risk management, the quote-unquote, oh, there's a liability or whatever, is to avoid risk is the name of the game, but no, it's to manage it. It's to acknowledge what the risks are, like we were talking about earlier, 100 times out of 100 or you're not going to fall, even though there is a high consequence. Donald Tunnell talks about this a lot. He says, you know, what I do, there is very, very high consequence, but the risk is very, very, very low, and so people perceive that high consequence of an increased risk, but it doesn't actually change that the risk

Lynn: 1:07:28

is very low. So

Peter: 1:07:30

that that's the I never want to portray, like for example, to Lily, but also living my own life that because consequence is high, that risk is therefore influenced by the consequence,

Lynn: 1:07:45

right? Because you're exactly right. Risk management is, you know, I look at it as, what does it take to recover from this, and is this recoverable? And and sometimes you're still taking risks that aren't recoverable. But driving a car is that you know it's more dangerous than flying an airplane, for example. We can have accidents. That that is that is just the the consequence of being on this earth as a human. Is there are going to be things that can kill you that you can't control? That just can happen. But in general, can I recover from this? Is the key, and and can I manage this risk? Can I can I work my way through it? Can I handle it if something happens? In fact, this is another horse story. But I was out west riding in March, and this was a public trail ride. But they he sent me out with two guides. It was not a he didn't have anybody riding that day, and they put me on one of the guide horses. And as the guy gave me the reins, he said,"Now, if this horse gets away from you, I will not be able to catch you. And me five years ago would have said, "Well, then please don't put me on this horse. I don't know how to stop the horse. That was my whole dancing the tightrope journey. And what I realized at that moment, I looked at it, I felt inside, and it didn't even make me wince at all. I just said,"Well, then I better not let her get away from me, huh? And and what I also realized later is, why did could I say that? And it was because in the in intervening years, as I've learned to ride, I've actually ridden a bolt. And if a horse bolts when they go at full gallop, first you actually have to ride the bolt. So the question is not, can I stop a horse? The question is, can I stay on the horse when they're running as fast as they can? And then, if I if I can't do that, then don't be on a horse. But once that happens, then if I can ride the bolt, then I can actually have enough presence of mind to stop the horse at the right moment,

Peter: 1:09:42

yeah, yeah, you know, in in mountain climbing, rock climbing, whatever, we we the exact analogy would be called no fall zones, right? Where you know one climber will be like, say, okay, this is a no fall zone. Don't. Fall and and it almost seems trite at first, right? Like, oh, okay, sure, I'll just not mess up right here, you know. Because, but it's it's that risk versus consequence. It's still the risk is very low, but this is the this is the point to pay attention because the consequence is is very high, so in the case of you on the horse, that's a no fall zone, right? Then you just don't let them go, right? At the same time, it doesn't mean that it's extra dangerous. It's just that you have to be on your game and make sure that the risk is still low, but you need to be aware. You need to be more aware of that risk than ever because the consequence is high.

Lynn: 1:10:44

Exactly, and actually, what what I what was interesting what I did, we were in a wide a lot of trail rides. You know, you just basically, especially in the East Coast, you're on a trail where there's trees on either side, so there really is just a trail. And and in this case, we were in a wide open field. He just said, head for that fence post over there, which was like 300 yards away, and in between was a lot of rocks and sticks and a few pieces of horse poop and stuff. And so, what I wanted to do was figure out: okay, can I establish communication with this horse? She's never met me before. I haven't ridden her. I don't know what kind of communication works for her. He gave me a few tips, and as we were walking, without me really doing as much as minimal physical moves, but maximal mental moves, I would be saying,"Let's go to the left of that poop. Let's go to the right of that rock. Let's go, you know, far over there and go around that, like make a loop around that tree stump, and so forth. And it was interesting because those guys they kind of noticed it, but after about 200 yards, I was like, "We're going to be fine because she's reading my mind perfectly. And so I established communication because that was going to be really important. If I let this horse, if we're not communicating, then if she does bolt, I'm not going to be able to stop her. I'm just gonna have to ride her to the barn, and that would have been by the way down some really steep hills. Because later we had a we were going down this one hill, and I said, "Now wait a minute, are we going over there to that hill? And they said, "Yes. And I said,"That that I said, is this going to be a man from Snowy River Hill? And they said, "No, not that bad. But it was like just shy of it. It was pretty steep and pretty rocky, but we handled it great because the whole time we were in communication. And again, I thought of that hill as another no fall zone, which I fell on. A that's what started my journey was I fell on a hill, but I've since learned how to balance and I've learned how to let the horse find her way down because she knows the steps to take better than I do,

Peter: 1:12:42

right, right.

Lynn: 1:12:43

So I, you know, back to your your thought about mindset. I really do believe that there's a saying that I think it might have been Henry Ford that said,"Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right.

Peter: 1:12:57

Yeah, yeah.

Lynn: 1:12:59

And what I have recognized is, for example, mindset around pressure. I try to at least carry the belief that pressure is happening for me rather than to me. And when I think it's happening for me, then when I have to do things that I maybe would rather not do, or I'm facing pressure, I can see it as a moment of growth, as opposed to a moment that crushes me.

Peter: 1:13:27

Sure, you know, there's another quote that I I like. It's a I think it's a Thomas Jefferson quote that says, you know, I'm a great believer in luck, and I I find that the the harder I work, the more I have of it, which I always thought was it always made me smirk, right? Because it's essentially saying that great luck comes to those who work hard, and by work hard, I would in the scenario of what we're talking about, I would relay it to preparation. So, you know, people say, "Oh, you did this scary thing on the mountain or on the horse, right? Well, you were lucky that you made it through. Well, maybe. However, you you very likely prepared very significantly, and you were ready, physically, mentally, everything that goes into it for that moment. So, sure, were you lucky? Yeah, maybe. Except that you were luckier because you were ready for it, and your mind was in the right place for it. Your body was in the right place for it.

Lynn: 1:14:38

There is no question about it. And in fact, I think sometimes we create the things that we call unlucky. In other words, my mindset when I first got back on the horse after 40 years before I went through this journey was I knew how to ride, and I might have cockily said to that guy, "Oh, I can handle it, and I certainly wouldn't. Have been ready, and we could have. I could have produced, like I could have produced the other day with the horse, the event of possibly falling down the mountain if I had, or down to the river, if I was not aware of how much control I was in of our communication, the horse and mine, and our and my mindset. So you're exactly right, and you know Jim Collins, who wrote the book Good to Great, actually did a whole study on companies as it relates to their return on luck, because he said lots of companies have actually had the same luck event, but did they actually take advantage of it? And it makes me think about us in our lives. Is like a lot of times people who don't know how to look for what they've just been given don't see it as something worth looking at as a positive, so they don't even realize they just had some luck so that they can get a good return on it. They just see, you know, the 12 inch beam and say that's not enough steps for me to take safely, right? does that make sense? So I think we can make it. I think luck. You're right. Luck beats preparation.

Peter: 1:16:09

Well, so many people would say Alex Honnold has been very lucky in his life, right? Because he hasn't fallen to his death while he's done all these incredible death-defying free solos. Yeah, maybe, but the reality is that he was extremely prepared and highly competent, and he wasn't going to do anything that he wasn't ready for. It personifies

Lynn: 1:16:35

absolutely. He talks a lot about that. Like that, he didn't just go free solo that mountain without having climbed it with proper gear many many times over. Like he said, he knew every move, and I mean you probably know this better than I do. But there were it took a long time before the conditions were right for him to actually do

Peter: 1:16:55

it. For the temperature, you know, he prepared for it for years.

Lynn: 1:16:57

The weather, yeah.

Peter: 1:16:59

And and to his credit, you know, I think the most significant and impactful thing about his feat of free soloing El Capitan is he tried it one time, and he backed off. He he got seven or eight pitches up, and he said, "You know what? This isn't it. I'm not like I don't feel good. I'm. I don't. He was scared or he was worried. He just wasn't in the right mindset. And he said, 'I'm bailing. And you know that failure of you could call it a failure. To me, it's a great success. It was maybe more success, more successful than him actually doing it because it showed that he he didn't feel like he was all in or that the conditions were all in or you know whatever variable, and and so he bailed right. Like it's a big deal to know when it's not the right time. That's back to risk management, right? To him, suddenly the risk seemed higher, and he he aborted. And that's to me, it's like, wow, that's really hard to do, because wow, like it's a lot goes into that, and to to say I'm not going to go forward is is not only really mature and has a lot of wisdom in it, but it's just it's just so smart and healthy. Because again, risk versus consequence, right? Suddenly he was realizing, yes, the consequence is always high in that, but that the risk was elevating for him there in his mind for whatever reason, that it it it was a no go for him, and he's like,"That's it, you know what? I'm scrapping. And he had to wait six months, and that

Lynn: 1:18:49

right

Peter: 1:18:50

in a in a in a way feels like a high con. I'm sure feels like a high consequence at the time. Like, what really? I'm gonna have to take all this time to regroup, but he did right, and that was the most impressive thing to me is that he bailed on on really his first, you know, very very serious attempt. I could not be more impressed.

Lynn: 1:19:13

I agree with you, and I I realize again back to him being I think what I call well calibrated. He's reading the signals and not the noise because I do think it's noise. If you say, "Well, the film crew's here, and I've committed to this, and I got to show that I can, you know, follow through, and you know, I don't want this to be a failure. All of that stuff is noise, but I'm reading myself. I'm reading the mountain. I'm feeling into what's happening here, and I can tell that this is not the conditions under which I can be successful. Backing away under that is truly understanding how to be well calibrated in your mindset. If you ask me,

Peter: 1:19:55

yeah, I think we all aspire to. I think he has a unique ability to. Filter out the noise, and we all aspire to be able to do it that well. But I think that it literally what it boils down to is the ability to to do that.

Lynn: 1:20:12

Yeah. Well, and I think you've probably found this one of the one of the practices that I've I've been learning and continuing to learn is the premise of being a conduit rather than thinking I have to know, and so it's literally like when I'm hiking. Instead of me feeling like I'm walking through the woods, I feel like the woods are walking me through the woods. So, in other words, the trail tells me where to put my foot, and if I'm really tuned in, I'm more of a conduit. My picture is whatever the trail is, whatever the hike is, but the but the way I do it is based on how the trail is constructed and where does it make sense to put my foot. The the it's not my job to to know that the trail tells me, and when I have that kind of, I don't. This I this is kind of sounding weird as I talk about it, but when I have that give and take, it's the same as driving a car. The road tells me how to drive it. Then I'm much more likely to be able to hear the signal and not put my foot, for example, down on a copperhead, or in a place that's going to wrench my, you know, a root ball that's going to wrench my ankle, or, you know, if I'm driving on the road, I'm not going to have an accident because I'm trying to pass the slow driver. We have a lot of those in a place I probably shouldn't be passing. So it's like giving when you yield to the conditions of the mountain or the hiking trail, or as as Alex Honnold did to the conditions of his place, I feel like you end up in a different in a different relationship with the picture you're trying to create. So I call that being the condyle, which I'm guessing you have experienced. I don't know. Was there any resonance for you in that as I was speaking?

Peter: 1:21:59

Yeah, absolutely. I mean more than I can even speak to it. You know, almost constantly, and like I could say, even in sometimes, like every step I take on these big mountains.

Lynn: 1:22:17

And and I mean, to me, that's one of the reasons I think you and I have connected so well over the years is because we sort of get that it's an unseen way of being. But have you seen other people approach the mountain differently and have a different set of consequences as a result, where they sort of march through the woods, if you will, thinking that they know and then maybe have consequences as a result of that.

Peter: 1:22:46

Well, that's a good question. I do, you know, I do see people out there that they seem like they may just muster their way through it or get through on physicality, meaning they're in really good shape, or and they can eke it out. And I often think like, well, that doesn't seem very wise, but it also seems very proficient in because they have high ability, right? But maybe their ability is superseding their say literal risk management, so I often think like there's a lot of people who climb these mountains that they will almost unknowingly mitigate their risk through you know high ability, or and on the flip side, maybe maybe disregard for the risks and risk management, and they'll they'll make it through. That doesn't, in my opinion, make it a smart thing. And so yes, maybe they'll get to the top of the mountain. But I think when I assess like some of these big mountains that we've climbed recently, did sure did I get to the top? That's a litmus test for success, right? Did you achieve your objective? But did did I do it safely? Did did I have a good experience, or did I just eke it out, or oh, was that literally luck? And so, for some people, I do think that that is the case sometimes, and and that's not really how I want to go about things.

Lynn: 1:24:33

Well, yeah, because as we were talking, you have your life has different consequences now, and it's making me wonder. I was thinking about now. Lily's how old now? Is she three?

Peter: 1:24:44

She's three.

Lynn: 1:24:46

And is she so? She's walking, and I'm assuming she gets to go out and do some kinds of hikes with you, right? You you all oh all all the time.

Peter: 1:24:54

Yeah,

Lynn: 1:24:54

yeah. She gets

Peter: 1:24:55

to the top of the mountain and she touches the top and she she look she says, Dada, I. Got

Lynn: 1:25:01

it. So, so how many how many peaks has she bagged?

Peter: 1:25:06

Oh, you know what? I I made an account for her on these peak bagging websites, but I update it every so often, and I don't know. But she's probably at a good 75 to 80 at this point, yeah. It's always one of these funny questions of like, well, do you count it if she got carried all the way to the top or something? And I think the answer is yes, because you know I'll count a peak if if I can drive to the top of a peak, I still count it, right,

Lynn: 1:25:37

right.

Peter: 1:25:38

And I always rationalize that sure I'll drive to the top of some peaks, and that might seem cheap or trivial, but my goodness, do I put in the effort to climb these other ones? You know, exactly.

Lynn: 1:25:51

Yeah, that's a lot, but that's a lot for a for a three year old, and she's going to be so comfortable in the outdoors as a result of all of this.

Peter: 1:26:00

I hope so. You know, I was out with her yesterday. We're just outside the RV, and we're we're looking for bugs. She has her bug collector kit, and she's going through the the kind of the brush. And you know, I'm kind of like don't want to do it because you know, like let's just walk over here. And she goes, Dada, I'm a good bushwhacker, and that melted my heart because I shortly after Mount Shasta, Chris Braun and I took her on a hike, and we got to the top of the mountain where, you know, unfortunately, the very very top is is like another 50 yards off trail, and it's through the brush and trees and and down stuff and all that, and I told Chris, I said, "Hey, you know, you you guys just wait for me here. I'm gonna I'm gonna go just touch the top real quick. You know, it's just kind of a crappy little mountain. And Chris didn't have any interest in touching the exact top. You know, we got to the top where the view was, but Lily was insistent. She's like, no, no, Dada, I, I do it, and I'm like, okay, okay, and and so you know she bobs and weaves her way through, and um, and and Chris tells her, you know, wow, you're a really good bushwhacker, and that has stuck with her, so that anytime she's near any, you know, brush or bushes or trees or, uh, she she wants to go bushwhacking, which I have to admit, Lynn just absolutely melts my heart.

Lynn: 1:27:27

I just think that's so cool. And by the way, we have to mention Chris has been actually on this podcast. He and he and his wife Karen were on back in 2020, right as COVID was flaring up. We had them on. I think it might have been my first Zoom podcast because we couldn't get together and talked about all kinds of adventurous things. I'm really glad he's out still hanging out with you out west.

Peter: 1:27:54

Yeah, yeah. I think I remember listening to that one, and gosh, it's been six years since you should you should have them back.

Lynn: 1:28:02

I was gonna say it's time to have them back too because what I have found is I really like to keep up with people. You're one of several people I've had on more than once. Stevie Della Hunt, who I'm going to ride with next week, is somebody I've had on a couple of times, and there are several others that I haven't that are not coming to mind right off the top of my head. But I like being able to like keep up with people as they adventure. So, what do you have on the horizon right now for your next big adventure?

Peter: 1:28:32

You know, one big. I guess the biggest project I'm working on right now. You know, it's sort of like rock climbers will have projects, right? Like they'll they they'll want to climb this particular wall or do these link ups or or something like that. And so, you know, I'm I'm a hiker, but I'm predominantly a peak bagger. And peak baggers have projects too. We have lists that we follow or that we pursue. We try to get to the highest point in you know all 50 states, or all the counties in a state, or the all the highest peaks over X number of 1000 feet, and so my big project is. And my wife Allison asked me. She kind of paused, and she said, she asked me, she said, is this like a next couple year project, or this a lifetime project? Well. Well, is it all a little bit of both? But because we're on the road, but honestly, it's a lifetime project. My my big project is to climb the all of the county high points, the highest point in each county in all of the western states in the United States. Wow, and that's a lot. There's there's 414 of them, and there's three people who have done this previously. There's a fourth person, a friend of mine, who's probably within a year or two of finishing, and and maybe I'll be the fifth. There's four. 114 of them. I just passed 200 which sounds like wow. I still I'm not even halfway, but no, I have a lot. You know, I've completed all the county high points in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, two thirds of them in California, and a handful of them in in other states. But that that's kind of my big project that I'm and and I'll be working on that far beyond when we're on the road. But because we're on the road, there's an opportunity to to to get quite a handful of them out here. So so that kind of guides a lot of my mountain climbing. But I'm a big believer in that lists. You know that it's kind of like a big list that not all that many people have that interest in, and and that's fine. But I like them because it takes me to so many different places, both geographically and terrain-wise. You know, a lot of these county high points are in the the Great Plains at the edge of Montana and Wyoming and and Colorado, and or it'll take you to the top of these glaciated volcanic peaks in the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest and anywhere in between. I really like that diversity. I like the geographic diversity. I like the diversity in terrain. I like the diversity in skills, whether you like off-road driving or climbing with crampons and ice ax and rope, or rock climbing or long hard hikes that are big slogs. It kind of is a very multidisciplinary list where it'll both take you all over, but it'll test you in all the different ways of all the different skills, and so that is is a is is the project I'm working on, and kind of takes me all all over, and I enjoy seeing all the places and and doing all the different different types of things. This summer, Allison and I will spend the rest of it in the Pacific Northwest. We're about to head into Washington State, and we hope to spend some meaningful time, several weeks up in the North Cascades of Washington, where we've never been before, but are looking forward to. And then in the fall, we'll head back down to the desert Southwest, living full time in an RV, you kind of need to travel with the weather. Yeah. So when it gets cold or rainy up here, so it's time to go south and to to more warmer environs, and so hope to climb some mountains on the way in Colorado, New Mexico, and so forth, and then next year at this time, hopefully, I'll be back in this area climbing more big mountains, and hopefully, Chris will come out and join me, and I'll keep chipping away at that that big project.

Lynn: 1:32:53

That so, I have a question. It seems like probably probably obvious to you, but it isn't to me. How does how does one go about finding the highest point in each county?

Peter: 1:33:06

That's a good question. I said back in the day, and back in the day, it was probably only a couple years ago and beyond. There's topographic maps for all the United States, and so you basically scan all the topographic maps, and there's there's people who have done this, and identify looking at all those maps, like where does the map say is the highest point, the the highest contour?

Lynn: 1:33:33

Yeah,

Peter: 1:33:34

and in some many places, it's very obvious. You know, in a place like Mount Rainier or Mount Shasta, there's this giant mountain, yeah, and yeah, the top of that is definitely higher than anywhere else. So that's the obvious county high point. Well, yeah, now that I

Lynn: 1:33:49

think about it, an aviation map would probably do that because I have aviation maps that tell you high.

Peter: 1:33:55

Yeah, I mean exactly. Topographic maps are are kind of founded in that, right? They flew planes overhead, and they're this kind of. That's essentially how they they kind of got that data in the first place. Nowadays, still related to aviation, in the past several years, the technology's been around for a while. I'd say decade and a half or more, but it's only really gotten really refined and really trustable in the past couple of years. Is a technology called LiDAR, and that's an acronym that basically stands for lasers. And this this comes from airplanes, so they fly airplanes overhead and shoot lasers down at the ground. And while a topographic map in many places, you know, like in the mountains of Western North Carolina, they have 40 foot contours. So each line on the map it represents about 40 feet. You know that's pretty good, except when the difference between two places is less than 40 feet. Then, kind of back in the day, we used to have to, well, if they're. There's a place tied, or in some places like eastern North Carolina, there's there's a county that had 36 places that were tied, and what you do is you go to them all, and that's that's pretty frustrating. But nowadays, these this plane flies overhead, shoots the lasers down, and it gets really accurate data. It's not 100% perfect, but it's like 99% good in that it can get elevation data within a handful of inches, and even the air range is within like one or two feet. So if you're talking the difference between 40 feet of range, now it's one to two feet of range because you have this laser technology. Now it's a lot more straightforward and more exact to determine where the highest points is. Sure, there's places where beneath two feet, there's still places where oh you need to climb them both because you don't really know for sure. But nowadays, most of the time, we we can tell for sure based on on this data.

Lynn: 1:36:07

That's interesting. So, what is the highest point in the county I'm in, Rutherford County? I'm sure you bagged it.

Peter: 1:36:12

Oh no, that's a good story, Lynn. But I'll be short about it.

Lynn: 1:36:16

I want to hear it.

Peter: 1:36:17

I've been to the top of North Carolina has 100 counties, and I've been to the top of all 100 counties. That was my big first county high pointing project. And Rutherford County was my number 100 in Sugarloaf Mountain, which the county line runs over. So Sugarloaf Mountain's half in Henderson, half in Rutherford County, and it's on the kind of southwest boundary there of Chimney Rock State Park.

Lynn: 1:36:44

Yep, and there's a VOR on top of it because when we're able exactly, exactly, and so the loaf all the time,

Peter: 1:36:51

right? And so I had to get permission to go up there.

Lynn: 1:36:54

Oh, I bet you did. And

Peter: 1:36:55

because it was my last one, I kind of wanted to do it maybe a little more meaningful and dramatic. So, this is actually when I I had maybe corresponded with him, but I had never met him in person. This was maybe let's say it's 2015. I I had never met James Ledgerwood, the superintendent of Chimney Rock State Park, in person. But I got in touch with him and told him, hey, I want this is my project, and back then it was just a project to do that state, and I want to finish on this one. And so I I started from the river down there in Chimney Rock and hiked up the road in Chimney Rock State Park, which I had to get special permission for because that's not allowed either, and hiked all the way up to the chimney and and beyond, and then all the way up to to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain, the highest point in Rutherford County, and several friends and family met me up there to celebrate, and and James met met us up there and let us let us through the gate for this special occasion. So so yeah, the the answer is Sugarloaf Mountain, which is a very special one to me.

Lynn: 1:38:00

Now I'm looking at the actual aviation map because Sugarloaf has all the points going to it. In the circle, it says about 4,800 is the highest point in that area. But what exact? Do you remember what your exact altitude? I doubt you remember it, and I can't see it for sure on the mountain here.

Peter: 1:38:17

Oh, I don't remember, but I seem to recall that Sugarloaf was actually a little shorter than that. Well, it looks

Lynn: 1:38:24

like it could be like 20-760-four almost. Or yeah, honestly, I don't

Peter: 1:38:29

quite remember. I know it wasn't a 4000 footer. It could have been a two or 3000 footer. You know, Rutherford County is an interesting county where it has Piedmont and much of you know foothills and Piedmont Plateau and much of the county, but you know where you are and at the edge of the Hickory Nut Gorge, it then rises abruptly, and so you go up 1000 2000 feet.

Lynn: 1:38:49

Yeah, exactly, and and and it's it's pretty treacherous to fly through there. By the way,

Peter: 1:38:54

I'm sure, I'm sure.

Lynn: 1:38:56

You know, because you're going between Sugarloaf Mountain and on the other side, Round Rock and so forth. When you're coming down through Lake or Round Top, when you're going down through Lake Lure, and and then as soon as you get across that, you've got the Asheville Airport in sight. It's like right there. So I was just curious what the tallest one. And so so do you ever go to the same one twice? Is there ever or is this always a new adventure for you?

Peter: 1:39:24

Every once in a while, oftentimes, like so, in kind of the hiking and peak bagging world, I'm much more inclined to to repeat a peak if it's to to join a friend who either wants to go there, or maybe is working on their own project. So there's been a handful of mountains that I've I've repeated. I mean, dozens and dozens that I've I've repeated in the company of friends, even though I've been there, because it's you know they either want help getting there, company getting there, or it's a meaningful experience. Say it's their last one. To the top of that one, and sure, I've been there before, but I'm you know equally excited to go back again because it's a important or special to them.

Lynn: 1:40:11

So it's especially if it's with somebody else, it's worth going back for. I tend to go to the same places over and over again. I do the same thing with menus. If I find something I like at a restaurant. It's really hard for me to get off of it. Yeah, no,

Peter: 1:40:25

I get it. Well, I say I get it. I don't completely get it, but my wife Allison is like that. You know, particularly for hikes, she likes to go to places that are familiar that she likes and repeat them. And and I often will kind of say like, we've been here 12 times. Like you know, so no, I definitely do enjoy and appreciate and seek out new places far more often, and that's why maybe it takes a little bit of impetus to repeat a place when there's a reason, like a friend wants to go there or a special occasion.

Lynn: 1:41:00

Well, yeah, because you got 414 to get through for this current project that you're on, so you know you don't want to waste too much time.

Peter: 1:41:10

Right, right. There's plenty, plenty, plenty new ones to to get to.

Lynn: 1:41:14

Well, so I'm curious because as we, I'm going to call this landing the plane, you know, for this conversation, and it has been five years since we did. You know, we did the first two kind of like a year apart or less than a year apart. It's been five years, but I the question that just keeps coming up for me as I think about the progression of your six years on this life of adventure is, and and and things that were not expected. You could have maybe predicted that you'd have a child along the way. You certainly didn't predict the brain tumor, or some of the things that have happened on the different mountains. Which, you know, we could we would talk for 30 hours if we wanted to talk about all your adventures there. But I'm curious how it has all changed you. How would you say it's changed you?

Peter: 1:42:02

Huh. Let me think about that. Trying to think how how much of a different person I am now than when we set out six years ago on the road, and I think that I think the answer is is that my perspective, both in my experiences, whether it be on mountains, the the people we've interacted with, the obstacles we've overcome, are so much wider than when I left. I think there's a lot of value in getting out and being in not exactly what you know, and by that I mean whether that's physically climbing a mountain. The mountains out west are not like the Southern Appalachians where you and I are most used to. The all around the country, the people that we've encountered and and the relationships we've formed or the interactions that we've had are are different than back at home. The obstacles and challenges we've had to deal with and overcome might not have turned out the same way, or might not have manifested the same way as back home, so I feel like how I'm changed between now and six years ago is I still like to climb mountains as as much as ever. I'm highly motivated to to travel and and have more adventures. I'm far from oh I've done this for six years and so I've wet my whistle and I'm done with this. No, I'm I'm actually want to do it even more. I'm starting to grapple with what what am I going to do in two years when when we're not traveling full time. But I think the perspective of all of the variety of everything, mountains, terrain, people, their personalities, the ability to deal with obstacles and challenges in different places and different scenarios has just made me so much more open-minded. It's made me proud, proud of our our country and all of the terrain, the natural features, the the the people, the communities. It's it's just given me a really wide breadth of experience and perspective from when we left home six six years ago, and I think a really profound but like really really positive way, and I feel like it's made me more open minded, more kind, more excited to continue to explore, and I and I. I think ultimately more open to more and more and more adventure.

Lynn: 1:45:05

Oh, I just love it. I I I just love that we got a chance to do this and to hear how your adventures have been going. And I have to believe that those who are listening are just feeling a little bit of an urge, as I am, to get out and get some new perspectives, and be a little more open and a little more adventurous.

Peter: 1:45:29

Yeah, well, I highly recommend a lifestyle of adventure and to explore wide and far.

Lynn: 1:45:38

Wow. Well, this is a perfect conversation for me to have a week before I get on an airplane to come out that way and ride horses for four days, so I'm looking forward to who knows what the heck is going to happen out there. You never do know, so I'm excited about that. And for those of you listening, thank you for joining the Creative Spirits Unleashed podcast. If you are interested in staying up to date on all things that are going on in this world? You can subscribe to my Coaching digest@lencarns.com and we look forward to seeing you on the next podcast. Thank you for listening to the Creative Spirits Unleashed podcast. I started this podcast because I was having these great conversations, and I wanted to share them with others. I'm always learning in these conversations, and I wanted to share that kind of learning with you. Now, what I need to hear from you is what you want more of and what you want less of. I really want these podcasts to be of value for the listeners. Also, if you happen to know someone who you think might love them, please share the podcast and, of course, subscribe and rate it on the different apps that you're using because that's how others will find it. Now, I hope you go and do something very fun today.