Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#682 Beauty Will Save the World! With Rocky Mountain Artist-Photographer and Author Erik Stensland
Love to hear from you; “Send us a Text Message”
Beauty isn’t a filter on life; it’s a way to understand it, and ourselves.
Jack sits down with Artist-photographer and author Erik Stensland to explore how a season of crushing burnout in the Balkans led him toward solitude, quiet attention, and a life reoriented by wonder in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Together we unpack why silence feels unbearable at first, why many of us would rather hit the metaphorical shock button than face our inner world, and how a simple practice—ten phone-free minutes in a forest—can begin to settle the mind.
Eric explains the difference between loneliness and chosen solitude, and how beauty, understood as goodness rather than glamour, becomes a practical guide for daily decisions. We also dive into desire: not suppressing it, not indulging it, but tracing it to the deeper longing for meaning, belonging, and purpose.
If environmental news leaves you frozen, EriK offers a third path beyond doom and denial. Inspired by John Muir, he shows how falling in love with places fuels lasting care and healing... paying attention, telling small stories, buying less.
Ready to test it for yourself? Put the phone away, take a quiet walk, and notice one true thing. If this conversation moves you, follow, share with a friend who needs a breath of fresh air, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to beauty.
Visit Erik and Purchase "The Journey Beyond, Learning to Live Beautifully in a Troubled World" and the shipping is free:)
Read Jack's Latest "Directing Our Passions and Desires to a Love that is Beautiful" Here are the links to Jack's Substack and X https://x.com/JP2Renewal
Check out the Podcast on YouTube
Contact me: info@jp2renew.org
Beauty will save the world. And everyone looked at the guy who said that in his novel and said, You're mad.
SPEAKER_00:You're mad. No, actually there's actually great truth.
SPEAKER_01:And it's one of the things we're missing in our world today. We talk about truth, but it's all these factual this, this, this, my idea, my perspective on things. But beauty kind of brings a little balance to that and uh helps us to orient as I make decisions based on what is truly beautiful, healing, and good, and brings makes this world a more wonderful place. It changes how I look at things, it changes how I act, it changes what I do.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Jack Riegert, your host. So glad for all the young people joining us, too. That's Claymore. That's our logo behind me, the Claymore Sword made uh famous by William Wallace and Braveheart. These young guys that we're talking to, speaking to, they know something's up, something's wrong. They don't know quite what it is, and we're inviting them into this beautiful story. I'll give you a little background here. I am with Eric Stensland. Eric uh wrote this incredible book. Uh actually, he's uh he's a landscape photographer, and then he put this prose, this beautiful prose to this book. I'm in Estes Park and part of the Rocky Mountain National Park, there to do some hiking and some sightseeing. I walk into a bookstore with my wife and I see this beautiful book on the shelf, and I have not put it down since, and that was some months ago. I invited Eric on the show. So, Eric, thank you so much for being with us.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:You you know, you know, when specifically talking about this young audience, uh uh, Eric, there beauty is missing in so many of their lives. They're so busy with stuff, you know. And there's now there some of them are starting to slow down just long enough to say, what's going on? What is what is the purpose and meaning to my life? I want to get them outside. I want to get them just to walk through, yeah. I don't care if it's the forest preserved down the street. And I thought I'm gonna introduce them to this incredible uh photographer and author, Eric Stenslin, to talk a little bit about this. And Eric, if you had to pick one picture and one one one pro, something that you wrote of from this beautiful book, The Journey Beyond Learning to Live Beautifully in a Troubled World. And when I edit this, I'll put it up behind me there. So we'll have the picture of that book up behind me. If you had to pick out one picture, and I that would be difficult to do, I don't know how you would do it, or something that you wrote there just to talk about this that captures that journey beyond for you. Could you do it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, you know, every picture in there has a really special memory for for me, whether it's standing at the edge of uh standing on a cliff in the Grand Canyon uh in a remote area for four hours waiting for the sun to set, or you know, uh, or yeah, all these different places. But if I was to maybe choose a picture um that that kind of defines what this book is about, I I probably would choose this it's definitely not one of my best photos, but it's um this lone, stark little white church sitting on a hill in Iceland. Um and I'm there in mid-December, which means it's dark all the time except for from 11 a.m. till about 1 p.m. The sun just crests the horizon. But this church is perched up on a hill where it can, despite the almost constant darkness, you can see the light just at the edge of the uh ocean in the distance. And uh for me, that's kind of how I wrote this book, thinking we live in challenging, even dark and difficult times. And uh it's all about how do we not just look out at the darkness, but how do we look and find those little glimmers of light that are out there on the horizon that give us hope and help us to live uh more meaningful lives in the midst of the challenges?
SPEAKER_00:When I thank you for that. When when at night, what I've done now is I put your book with a couple other books I like to read kind of at night as I'm unwinding. And man, you do it. You hit it. You know, I can meditate on that uh on something you wrote there. It's amazing. How how did your own search for meaning lead you from burnout you talked about at at one time in your life, to healing in the Rockies? Because we have these young people, I wouldn't say they're burnt out, but they're anxious, they're nervous, uh, they have this ache inside, and they're always just noise and noise and noise. And uh and how did you do it? And how did you, you know, it how did you get into the depth of not only taking these beautiful pictures, but again in that prose, there's a lot of wisdom. There's a lot of wisdom.
SPEAKER_01:Wisdom gained through pain and suffering.
SPEAKER_00:I was gonna say that's usually where it comes from, doesn't it? You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Most most of the time. I don't really wish what I'm anyone. And that's yeah, that's where you can find things. But yeah, I guess for me, I you know graduated from college and I wanted to change the world. I wanted to do big things and important things, and gave myself to uh uh working primarily overseas, living in the Balkan peninsula, uh in Albania and Kosovo, and doing all these, running these organizations and starting refugee agencies and doing just all sorts of crazy things. But I worked myself, I was well known throughout the region, uh, worked day and night, did, you know, we started a refugee agency that became the largest in the Kosovo War, you know, ended up going in and um coordinating.
SPEAKER_00:What years what what years were that? Uh what was that?
SPEAKER_01:I was in the Balkans from ninety two to about two thousand three, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Can you give our audience uh a little uh just a little history, a little background on what was going on then?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Yeah, it's a complicated area of the world. Uh and the Balkan Peninsula is just east of Italy, you know. You're looking across the Adriatic at the former Yugoslavia, uh Albania, Kosovo, uh you've got uh northern Macedonia and a lot of areas. But uh communism had just fallen when we moved in, and uh great poverty, uh great ethnic tensions. Uh we ended up having huge wars going on throughout the former Yugoslavia as it disintegrated from one nation into many different nations. And uh yeah, I was kind of right in the middle of it. I I'd spent my high school years uh fascinated with Balkan history. And so I knew all the ins and outs and the relationships between all these people. But yeah, we were there uh and so stuck kind of in the middle of uh of the Kosovo war, I was quite uh engaged with.
SPEAKER_00:A lot of brutality there. A lot of brutality there. I could see not only that your work, but also what you saw probably could give you a pretty good, a pretty good case of burnout, Eric, couldn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was it was that. It was all the work that we were doing, it was the ugly hate that surrounded every everyone and everything during the war period. It was uh my best friend who was working with me, uh died at while working with me out there at age twenty-seven, uh, and leaving a wife and two kids. Yeah, it's just a lot of different things happened. But the main thing is I just didn't take care of my inner world, and I ended up kind of having a breakdown. Uh just in terrible state. I needed to get out of there and uh took a short break to uh back to the US and started to think about things and realized I'm empty, I'm doing a lot of good things, but I have nothing inside. I was I I just hollow and started to rethink things and went back to ground zero of what's important, what's real? Is any of this faith that I have real or is it just something in my head? And started digging into it and trying to figure out what's really there. And what I realized is what was there was this deep ache and yearning, and I didn't fully understand it, but I thought I started by looking into all the science and all of that and found it could only get me so far. But as I I followed that yearning and what is it actually asking of me, it took me on this journey, uh d this this hunger for goodness, this hunger for purpose, hunger for uh meaning and uh this little life of mine to have a real significance because I saw that I was doing a lot of good things, but really it wasn't as significant, and I was falling apart. There had to be a better way to live.
SPEAKER_00:And so I I you know, we speak about this a lot in in in the work that we do, that uh you know, you can have the best intentions and do the best things in life, but you gotta be filled. Something's gotta fill you up. And I think at the end, what these what these young people are sensing true, you know, this is innate in us, uh, isn't it, Eric? You know, this desire for all that's true, good, and beautiful, the the philosophers would talk about, huh? And and we search for that. You know, what is the truth of things? What is the meaning and purpose of my who am I? And this is innate. Uh what happens with these young people is the same thing that happened to many of us. You you're describing it too. We we jump out there and we want to do good things, we want to act, but somehow we can't give what we don't have. Over time, we're gonna burn out, so we got to receive. Somehow you figured out a way to do that. And and and that's what I I would love to help you to help these young people do. When I was a young guy, Eric, I I was a backpacker. I loved to ride a bike. I still love all those things. And I knew somehow, I knew I was gonna find, without really understanding it, I was gonna find some peace in the woods, in in nature. You say nature is a teacher, but most of these young people are glued to these screens, not trails, and I wanted you to give them a little advice because they're they're they I want them to try this. I want to take your book, read it, and then tomorrow morning, don't plan a two-year vacation two years away. I want you to go out and find a forest tomorrow. For someone who's never hiked alone or even sat in silence for 10 minutes. How can a single encounter with the wilderness, right? Begin to rewire their sense of awe, wonder, and identity. How can they just boom? Let's be a little quiet. Let's just go take a walk outside. What does it do for you and and and you're you're you're a mentor, uh, Eric, and uh I want them to hear from you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I'm not so sure that uh a microdose of nature is going to rewire you.
SPEAKER_00:No, no. No. And that's a good point. I shouldn't have said you know, rewire all at once, right? This I should have said the spark that will be put you on a journey. You're right. You're right. Thank you for that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think part of it is we we have all these addictions uh to technology, to information, to keeping up with all of our friends and people and everything going on. And it's uh it's a little bit of releasing a sense of control, and it's a scary, scary thing to do for people. But I I would encourage everyone to um to go for a quiet walk in the natural world, just 10-minute walk in a forest by yourself, no music, no phones, no nothing, and it's gonna make you so uncomfortable, and you're gonna hate it probably so much. Um but it's you know, an interesting thing. Um, what I I speak a lot about solitude, and uh there have been a lot of studies about it. Um, a study in the Journal of Science, uh that's the name of the journal Science. In 2017, they did a test where they brought people in, put them in the a room by themselves for 15 minutes. Nothing else was in the room, except for one button that they were told would give them a shock if they pushed it. And it actually did. It's a five out of ten on the pain scale, and people couldn't stand their own boredom, so they would push the button and shock themselves. Oh my god. And then would do it more consistently than anyone, and they would repeatedly shock themselves rather than deal with the quiet of boredom. And uh, you know, and so we're terrified of silence, we're terrified to be alone. While it's the very thing that we probably most need in life. Um, you know, Blaise Pascal, the 14th century philosopher and uh mathematician who I'm sure you're well aware you know very well, no, he said, uh humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Isn't that amazing? What does he mean? What what what is this about? Why are we so afraid of that inner world? And my what I've come to realize is that we have this vast inner world, I think, of us kind of like the TARDIS in uh Doctor Who, if you've ever seen the old show running for many years. And that's the way our inner worlds are. But what we what we've done is we've taken all of our pain, every failure, every wound, junk in our life, and we've stuffed it into that quiet place. And then when we go out into somewhere silent or quiet, that all comes to the surface. And that I think is the very reason we avoid the silence.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, what a good analogy that is. Yeah, that could be a little overwhelming for someone, can't it? Um especially somebody that's been hurt, you know, or you know, abused, uh, and who hasn't in this pornographic crazy culture we're in, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a lot of that. And but the interesting thing is if we can find a way to bring all of that junk out into the light with a therapist or uh a pastor, a priest, uh uh, or even just if it's you know not too traumatic, just ourselves, bringing it out into the light and looking at it, it loses a lot of its power, and that empty place inside of us becomes this place of peace and a place of safety and a place of healing and transformation, and where we hear that gentle whisper of calling out to us. But uh, we gotta deal with that junk first, and that's not a lot of fun. So those first years in wilderness could be a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's why that's why I think a forest might be a good way to start because because I remember my son when he he he's he lives out in uh Colorado, and and so we're out there often. He's he's in uh Highlands Ranch, just south of uh Denver, and I have a brother in Littleton. And so we get out there quite a bit, and when he was young, I I took him backpacking a couple times, and he and I said, Jake, are you okay with this quiet? You know, and he wasn't at first. He said, I I don't like it. And it just took him a little while, and I bring it up because you can be very uncomfortable in the beginning, but you got to sit in the ache. I always tell these young guys, just sit in the ache. And you know, if you open that ache up to your point, let some of the stuff fly out, and then maybe even invite, if if you're a believer, invite God into that space uh where you go real deep, and there's just two people there, you and God, and and you open up that interior life, like you said, it's so beautiful. But here's what I like about nature, and you describe it so well in the book. One it at one point, one of my favorite uh uh points, you were sitting in silence, and I should have marked all these. You were sitting in silence and you hear the wind. Do you I don't know if you remember this, but but I I remember that so so in in uh in Kings in the Old Testament, this prophet goes out and uh and he's and he's searching, and you know the the earthquake comes and the and the storm comes and all this, and then he's then he finds God in the tiny whispering sound, you know, the tiny whispering sound. So you talk about the wind and you're sitting there and you expect you were talking about silence, and then you were sitting there for a few minutes, and now you start to hear the wind. And I've done this in in Estes Park, too, because the I don't know how the wind comes around the mountains, but it'll start to blow, and you could almost hear it from a ways away, but you say something so cool in there. I I I I can't do justice to it, but it it like vibrated on the needles, you know, in the trees and different things, and makes this sound, and then it would it would fall away, and then you could start to hear it come again. And those kind of things are going on all around us, so we don't really hear those, do we?
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's so much happening in the in the wilderness, and and that's one of the big things you can do to help quiet your crazy racing mind when you're out there in the quiet, is just start to pay attention, whether it's to the bark of a tree or to what's going on with some uh, you know, you see some ants crawling around, or there they're beautiful things happening everywhere if you just stop and start to pay attention to it. And uh, as you pay it focus on any one thing in the natural world, your mind starts to empty out, your spirit calms down, there's a peace that starts to develop, and I'll guarantee you, if you start to do that on a regular basis, you will become a more peaceful person, uh a more content person, and uh it will begin to change who you are. It will rewire you over time uh to create in a very different way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and like you said, you know, you mentioned all these addictions. We, you know, every young guy that we meet has had some dealing with pornography now, and and the problem, Eric, is is I call it stolen innocence. It's really not their fault. They hear something in the culture in school when they're eight, nine, ten, eleven years old, they Google it, and they get caught into this. Before they know it, they get caught in their innocence, was actually stolen from them. I think one of the ways to get it back again is to walk in the awe and wonder of the great prose that you're writing and and other people have written, but also the beauty at the same time. What you've done in this book, and I and I and I'm just not pushing a book here. I I'm pushing the beauty of nature, and also you've put this wisdom to it. And so tell us where you got that from. You know, it we this is coming from deep within your heart. And when I'm reading this, I'm connecting to this, you know, as an old, again, an old backpacker that sat out there by myself, sometimes very scary. Sometimes, you know, you hear noises and and man, the demons start to, you know, you know, go around for me. You know, I'm thinking I'm gonna get attacked by a bearer, the devil out here, you know. It's scary by yourself, but you've spent a lot of time outside. How did you overcome this? And and here's the distinction I want to make. There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. Solitude and loneliness, you know, and I'm not saying a guy should go backpacking by himself. I in fact, if you're new to this, you shouldn't probably should go with one or two people, but still walk, you know, a few feet a little ways apart so that you can still almost sense the silence with somebody else. But there's a difference between solitude and loneliness, and you make this point uh uh really well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, it's definitely a distinction between solitude and loneliness. You know, loneliness is oftentimes due to a uh a sense that uh if I just have this other person nearby, they will affirm me, they will fill that hole that I have within me. You know, I need, I need, I need, I need. Uh and you're seeking that in other people. And yet solitude is is a is a deliberate choice to say, I I'm going to take some time and be alone and I'm going to find that uh that wholeness that I'm looking for, that that I've got that big empty, big hole inside of me, and I I'm looking to fill it, and I'm going to find that in the silence. Um and when you do, you come back and you have relationships that you can pour into, um, and you become a fountain rather than uh uh seeking to to receive. But uh yeah, that time and nature, you know, for me it's all about getting to a point where we can listen to that quiet whisper, uh, and it is calling out to us, it's calling our name, and it's calling us into goodness, into wholeness, into beauty. And uh, you know, for me, beauty's been a real metaphor for my life. Uh it's it's been a kind of a guide over the last twenty years or so. Uh when I came out of uh being completely broken and fallen apart after my years uh working overseas, beauty became what I started to pursue.
SPEAKER_00:And I how old how old were you then?
SPEAKER_01:I probably was 34.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So so this is you you've gone through this for a while at this point, you know. I mean, right? Were you married at that time yet? Yeah. Yeah, wow. So so this is affecting a lot of things.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it affects everything, it's changed my world. Um and I I I I look back and think, boy, I'm so glad I crashed. I'm so glad I had that horrible falling apart uh that I did back then because it's led me to reconsider my life and find what's really true and meaningful. And beauty has been kind of that one of those guiding paths for me. And we think of beauty, and as men we kind of go, uh yeah, I'm not not really into that. But uh it it's beyond just an outward appearance of something. It is this uh it is far, far deeper. Um there is beauty in the actions of a person who who does something brave or selfless uh in service to another person. Uh there is uh beauty in a mathematical formula. There is you know, beauty is this bigger thing than we than we'd like to to make it. We think of beauty as glamour, like the paint job on a car that you can just scratch, you know, and something substantial, something deep. And it it's a it's I think of it as a mystery that that we're called to pursue. Um, you know, as Dostoevsky wrote in one of his novels, you know, uh beauty will save the world. And everyone looked at the guy who said that in his novel and said, You're mad.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're mad. He's right.
SPEAKER_01:There's actually great truth, and it's one of the things we're missing in our world today. We talk about truth, but it's all these factual this, this, this, my idea, my perspective on things. But beauty kind of brings a little balance to that and uh helps us to orient as I make decisions based on what is truly beautiful, what is truly uh healing and good and brings makes this world a more wonderful place. Uh it changes how I look at things, it changes how I act, it changes what I do. And so, yeah, beauty is kind of that guide for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, when I asked young guys, you know, what what you know we talk about beauty, uh, you know, I said, okay, who is the most beautiful creature in the world that's ever been created? And they get it, Eric, you know, they say a woman, you know, but but it reminds me of what you said. She's a mystery too. And you also said this, you said, I see the beauty, but you're you're called into a deeper story. And when we talk to young guys today, like again, I mentioned just this pornographic culture, we say when you look at a woman, you see her outer beauty, this she is a mystery, the mystery of love, the mystery of goodness, the mystery of that beauty. She's calling you into a story of the heart. And if you can open yourself up, and that's what what you're you're you're talking about, you know, nature, beauty, goodness, it it allows you to see another person or to see the stars and allow your heart to be called up into that beauty. Nothing like the beauty of a woman to do that, where where you can get to a point, Eric, not to push down your passions and desires, not to indulge them, but to open it up and say, Thank you, Jesus, for the beauty of that woman. I offer her up to you. Thank you for drawing me into something bigger. And it takes work. And I think nature and this connection that you're doing with your work uh through photography and this prose is bridging that gap, you know, inviting people into a bigger story to see the beauty around us and allow them to open themselves up to that larger beauty because this is healing. We need this, Eric, because we're all broken. What you mentioned with your brokenness, everybody I meet today is maybe not in the same way, obviously, right? And everybody's got their own stories, but uh man, we need this. And and I think your work is a bridge to to allow us to go out even further.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, I agree. And we live in a very superficial society, and as I said, it started for me with trying to figure out what's real, what's substantial, what what's gonna stick around, what what gives meaning. And that whole idea of uh of beauty uh ends up being one of those things. The other thing, and you mentioned it, is that uh the issue of desire uh because we all have these desires for different things, but the funny thing is I used to think I needed to suppress my desires. Now I've realized no, actually I need to understand what is it I'm really desiring? Because I think it's this thing, but actually it's underneath it, it's deeper, it's something more, you know, because you get that fancy car, okay, now I'm bored with it. What was I really looking for?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Now you gotta pay for it.
SPEAKER_01:What is it? Uh is it uh respect from other people? Well, why do I want that? What's underneath that? And as you keep going down to the core of what is the desire beneath the desire, I think then you then you can redirect and re-reorganize your life in a way that'll actually be filled with meaning and and happiness, and you won't be content with all those superficial things that we thought we wanted.
SPEAKER_00:We have to be quit being consumers of just it and what I mean consumerism, not just look at I I need uh I need a car to get to work. I need to I okay, we need certain things, but we gotta stop being just consumers just to consume, don't we? We have to put that aside, get out into the woods, start to read beautiful literature, start to to bring beauty and goodness into our lives, don't we? And and you know, I just want to scream at the top of my lungs, quit buying stuff you don't need. Quit fill, you know, to to you know, to you're you're a nature, you're an outdoor guy. We have to take care of the environment, and you bring this out too. But we can do these things if we stop consuming all these plastic bottles and just do our part, start looking at at creation as hey, I'm gonna take some responsibility for this. Uh, not just this isn't climate porn, right? You know, this climate fear, you know, all around us, but yet we do have to take care of the uh the environment, don't we?
SPEAKER_01:We've seen horrendous things happening in in the natural world. Yeah, I'm uh speaking all the time about what we're seeing happen in our natural world, uh the loss of species and the uh just uh devastation uh of the wild world. Um we just think it's endless.
SPEAKER_00:But uh how how you you you bring up some practical things. How would you say to talk to young people that are just here climate fear, climate fear, don't have kids, don't form families, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, versus the way you approach it. I I I have a sense, I don't know everything about you, of course, but I have a sense that you think there's some real practical things we can all do to be cognizant of the environment and also do some positive things without just being fearful and distraught and bring a darkness into. To our own lives. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of problems in our world, including all the the uh issues with uh with the well-being of our natural world. But I I I find that people will choose one of two paths. They'll say, either it's all doom and gloom, or I'm not gonna look at the bad stuff, I'm just gonna look at the good stuff. And somehow we need to walk in between those two poles of honestly recognizing, yeah, this is bad. And yeah, here's the really good stuff over here as well. And and how do we hold these two things together? Um, my favorite um environmental activist would be John Muir. Everybody loves John Muir.
SPEAKER_00:I I I I I hiked the John Muir Trail in uh through Yosemite, the Pacific Crest, all the way from Canada to Mexico, and I got on that and I started to read about John Muir. What what a special guy, huh?
SPEAKER_01:Amazing guy. He's he led to uh the start of you know our whole national park system in in a way. He had a real big impact on a lot of the thinking in those early days. But um, what I loved about John Muir is that he was facing a lot of environmental challenges in Yosemite National Park, and even before it was a national park. And yeah, he pointed those out. But what he did more than that and was more successful at was um telling the story of a little squirrel and how its life and in a tree, and he would talk about an individual tree and how it grew and what it did, and he would write these articles for the papers that help people fall in love with the natural world. And if you fall in love with a place, you're gonna care for it. And he understood that it's not by saying you should, you ought, you must, you shouldn't, you know, all of these things they don't get us very far. But but a different attitude, one where we are able to pay attention to what we already have and what is good and worth protecting and fall in love with it and share our enjoyment and love with other people, it creates a uh passion in people to, yeah, we got to take care of this stuff. This this is important.
SPEAKER_00:When you came back, so you're 30 in your early 30s, let's call it, and you're looking for a new path. How was there a catalyst, Eric, for you that that that turned it? Or what was it a what kind of process was that? Because we have a lot of uh young guys again, they're they're they're on that path and they're looking like, you know, and sometimes there is a catalyst, something comes into their life. Uh and sometimes they just have to be aware that that they're actually being led by led by the divine providence if they pay attention and to allow their their pain and suffering uh to open this up somehow. It'll open up paths, won't it?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, that pain and suffering can be your greatest gift. Um for me, I realize I never thought I would end up work doing what I'm doing. I this is just too hard for me.
SPEAKER_00:No, I never imagined it. So when you're when you're in the Balkans, you weren't just taking pictures and into photography and stuff. So so tell us a little bit about that. You bridged that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I was in the Balkans and falling apart, and uh a friend of mine called me on the phone and said, Hey, I know you're helping to coordinate 134 organizations or whatever. Do you know anyone over there who's struggling and who just like a break? I said, Well, yeah, I know people who a lot of people like that. It's but what he didn't know is a few days before I had prayed and I said, God, I need to get out of here. I need a break. And if I could have my way, I I want to be out in the mountains, up on a mountain. I'd like a trail nearby, and I I need high-speed internet because I want to do a master's program. And this friend called and said, You know, do you know anyone out? And I said, Yeah, I think I might tell me about this place. He said, Well, it's in the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, up in the mountains. I says, Oh, interesting. Does is there a trail nearby? He says, Yeah, there's one just up the street. Okay. I said, Does it have high-speed internet access? He said, She works for Time Warner over the internet, the person that's letting this place. I bet there is internet. I said, Well, then I know someone who'd like this place. And uh, my wife and I moved out there a little later, um, thinking it would be a short break. And once I got to Colorado, I soon realized we didn't have enough funding to uh keep us afloat. Uh for we were just gonna be back for a year or so. And so I needed to get a job, and I thought I'm burned out. I don't want to be in a cubicle, I don't want to be running an organization. I I need something that's gonna restore me. And nature restores me. How could I get paid to hike? And I worked from that premise. Oh, beautiful and looked at different options for how I could get paid to hike. And one day I walked into one of the local uh art galleries and they had some photographs from the area, and I said, Who takes these photos? And they the person working said, Oh, yeah, this person. I said, Hmm, I wonder if I should become a landscape photographer because uh to earn a living. And they said, Oh, it would be impossible to make a living here as a as a full-time nature photographer. And so that night I went home and thought, that sounds like a challenge. I'll do that. I'd love that. So I had a dummy guide and taught myself photography and uh started a business.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that wild? Now, did you did you do some guides, some guiding? Or did you know did you take people on hikes and stuff? How did how did you transition between, you know, there's a little learning uh learning curve there, Eric.
SPEAKER_01:I spent a lot of time in the local library looking at art books, uh, trying to understand how they painted or how they made photographs or where how they can' c composed them and where the light was coming from. Then I would go out and take pictures, and I met this group online, Nature Photographers Network, and submitted a photo and say, is this good, is it bad? And they would critique it, and I would go take another one and they would critique it. Uh, but part of my early business plan was I thought, okay, my goal then is to become Mr. Rocky Mountain National Park and photograph all 415 square miles of Rocky Mountain National Park. And so I set out to do that.
SPEAKER_00:And uh what did your wife think at this point? Does she think, uh-oh. What is nervous? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Me heading out into the mountains in the middle of the night, uh just about every day. And uh, you know, I I was doing a master's program, had a young child.
SPEAKER_00:When you say master's program, what were you studying?
SPEAKER_01:Organizational development.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So something different unational nonprofits. Okay, okay. And you have a child at that time? You have a boy or a girl? Young boy, just uh was just born as just after we got here. And so this is pretty courageous, I would think, right? You you have a you have a wife, you're you're starting a whole something totally different, you've got a little baby, so it's not like you can just completely roll the dice. So this is this is a little story.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, I uh I because I yeah, I didn't know well how much work it was going to be. I'm supposed to be recovering from a breakdown, and here I am trying to uh yeah, do a master's program and working day and night. I would be up at three most mornings and up at you know, and then I would uh when I opened my gallery, then I would run that till eight in the evening and then be out again. And yeah, it was it was hard going. We barely made it. Uh, but I fell in love with this park and fell in love with the natural world in a way that far beyond what I ever thought possible. I always thought those crazy eco uh nature lovers, you know, were just a bit over the top, and I fell in love myself with the natural world and found myself passionately wanting to protect these places.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. And that's I remember, you know, backpacking with a I had a little plastic bag on on one side where I could reach it, and if I saw a cigarette butt or something there, you pick it up, don't you? And you put it away. Eric, I I have a sense that you understand very well there's some dark elements in in the world out there. Yet you're bringing this beauty and goodness in, and you have this great depth. Uh, you know, tell us how you're seeing this, you know, because you know, you mentioned before, you know, the balance, right? Uh, you know, not not despair, but not not, I'm just not gonna push the despair aside and see the good. I mean, we're realists, you know. We there there's some kind of a do you have do you sense this spiritual battle that's going on that around us, and yet at the same time, we we can't give in to despair because and and what nature does and what goodness does, um, and what beautiful books do is they show us something's wrong. You you know, don't don't don't fall into this despair because there's nothing there. Lift yourself up and and look at this is a temporal life, right? We're not here forever. Um you know, you gotta find meaning and purpose and do some good things, don't you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I and I really think that pulling away excuse me, pulling away into the natural world, spending some time alone gives you a chance to kind of process and say, okay, stand back. What's the bigger picture here? What's really going on? Uh, because we can get so wrapped up in uh supporting a party or a uh an idea idea or uh ideology or this or that. And and we need to step outside of all that and step outside of all these little boxes to see the bigger picture of what's going on. And as I said, as I look at it, we we, as the majority of people in this country, live shallow, rather meaningless lives.
SPEAKER_00:Um Henry David Thoreau, huh? Yeah. Most men lead lead lives of of of quiet desperation. And I think I think he's he's right. He's very right.
SPEAKER_01:And and yet we can't see it in ourselves because we're so caught up in the activity and the noise that's going on. If we can pull up a little bit and start to see the bigger pictures, um we begin to be transformed and we kind of become a little bit like outsiders in this, you know, we don't fit in either political. We don't fit in any of the boxes. But I think at that point we can start to give some meaning and perspective on the bigger, more important things, and we can become the type of people that can make this world a better place. Uh, you know, for me it's it's changed from a focus on on changing the world to realizing my own need for continued transformation and change, and the outflow of that has been greater than when I was out trying to make big things happen.
SPEAKER_00:And uh yeah. You you say that that this path of wholeness always begins with an honest look within. You know, uh I'm Catholic. And so John Paul II, I love John Paul II, he was our old Polish uh Pope for 27 years, and he said the first battle every man has to understand, man meaning men and women, have to understand is on the battlefield of the heart. That we, you know, between being a self-giving person and a grasper, right? Someone that that is a gift to others and someone who who's uh lusting and selfishness, right? Lusting for sex and money and power, whatever. And you have to be able to see that, what's going on around you, and then fight that battlefield, that battlefield of the heart and be filled with divine life and love, and then become that in the world. So it does start, it starts in the heart, and the heart is not in an island, but it's connected to everything else. And I think what you're talking about is bridging that, you know, you know, the bridging that heart, I step out and I want to fill with myself with beauty. We determine ourselves by what we see, what we take into our senses and to into our heart. And that's why I was so drawn to your to your work, uh, Eric, because right away I I got all these things on my mind, and I see the beauty in your pictures. Tell us where you got where you came up with that prose, though. You know, those that those beautiful words just seemed, and I know that it probably took more work than it seems, but every page has got this beautiful picture, and then you write something on it pertaining to what you can see in this photograph. I mean, wha where did that come from? That's just really beautiful. I I guess it's all of this that we're talking about here, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I suppose it comes from 20 years of wandering quiet trails up on myself in the middle of the night and uh thinking and praying. But yeah, that's just kind of become my my style.
SPEAKER_00:Third book in this series is off to the Yeah, so talk talk about that uh as we're as we're winding down here. Tell tell our audience where they can uh you know where they should get this book. I I think what it does is it it does what you said. Instead of just being left or right, uh I'm pro this, I'm anti this. You have to become above the fray because as human beings, we have a tendency to push so far this way, and that's what these young people are doing. They're seeing that this world of consumerism, capitalism, you know, unless it has a moral, ethical base to it, just becomes greed too. So what do they do? They they they vote for a communist mayor, say in New York, and now we're pushing the other way, right? Because while this doesn't work, so that works. What you're talking about, what you just said a little bit, we we got to go above that a little bit and say, hey, let me find out who I am, how the world's supposed to work, and maybe I could do something good uh with within it, right? And and whatever that means to different people in your job, your vocation, the people that you love around you. And of course, you have to love our country and and say, hey, we've been given a lot of great resources, let's do some good things out there, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, I it does. It's it starts with with going within and being willing to look at yourself honestly, is uh a even the things that sometimes seem like the best things that we hold on to it inside of ourselves have motives behind them you realize later and go, Oh, I didn't realize. Yeah, okay. And so my life has become a life of letting go. And the funny thing is, it seems like it's constant giving up and it's constant death, but it's actually just the opposite. I I find out I'm letting go of the things that uh that are destroying me, that are choking me, that are keeping life from flowing through me. And so it's it's just for me. Oh, I've got to deal with this now. Oh, I didn't see this in my life. And as I let go of the things in my own life, I see our world with more grace and more compassion and care, and uh feel like, yeah, well, we can live a life that actually has meaning and brings hope to people around me. Um, and I think all of us can do that, but we gotta step out of the rat race. Gotta step out of the rat.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, thank you for that. Thank you for that. Tell us a little bit about your studio, uh, where they can look at these books. Uh, I know is this part of a trilogy, Eric? The the one the one I'm talking about. Is that the second book in the trilogy? Or or so tell us about how that works. This is a beautiful cover, too. This is the second one? That's the second one. Okay. Yeah, that's the one. And the first one is is Whispers in the Wilderness. Okay, and how does that differ than than this one?
SPEAKER_01:That was the the first book, Whispers in the Wilderness, and that's my most popular book. All the photos are from Rocky Mountain National Park, and it's um an introduction to our inner world and uh through the natural world. The second book here is about I should retitle it and call it uh The Journey Beyond Ourselves. It's stepping outside of that inner world to engage with an ugly world outside.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I I love the caption underneath learning to live beautifully in a troubled world. I think that's I I I don't know if you can get much better than that, but that's just my opinion. The subtitle. Well, I yeah, the subtitle was awesome. When I read it, I go, I gotta have that that book. And when I looked inside, it just got better. But, anyways, I I I sorry I keep breaking you up while you're trying to explain this trilogy. Now, who what's the third one gonna be like?
SPEAKER_01:The third one is it's actually going to the editor uh in the next week. And it is emotion-based. And it's called Into the Mystery, where we follow that whisper beyond our comfort or control. And it leads us into uh a profound encounter that uh changes and transforms us, and where we finally find the wholeness we've been seeking all along.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, and it brings you into the ocean, into the into oceans? Is that what you said? Wow, it's all you know. You say in here, wind in the trees, that that that what I was mentioning earlier, where you're you're quiet and you hear that sound, and you say this connection. The forest shares much in common with the ocean. It's fast, full of life, and essential for the well-being of our planet. I didn't really think about that. I mean, I know that. I'm a I'm a diver also, and so I do a lot of uh I wouldn't say a lot, but when I can, scuba diving and and uh you know, Turks and Caicos and these beautiful long dives. Uh for we were on a boat for five, six, seven days at a time. But when you when I read that in your book, I go, you know, he's right. This is a vastness here, different than the forest, but they both have these gifts, right? So now this last book is bringing us out into the ocean.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Are you doing any underwater things or mostly on surface stuff?
SPEAKER_01:I have some photos taken underwater, I mean, at aquariums, yeah, yeah. Showing the underwater life, but uh no, I haven't done any diving and photography together.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. Oh, I look forward to that. And and and tell them a uh a little about your studio if anybody's out in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes. And Estes people should visit Estes. And I and I love where your your location of your studio.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I have a little gallery down in the center of town called Images of Rocky Mountain National Park. And uh yeah, everyone in town knows it. So if you're in town, just ask for it. Uh they all know me.
SPEAKER_00:But uh yeah, so and internet, Eric? Uh where could where should we visit? What's what's the internet uh connection?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, I've got so many different websites.
SPEAKER_00:Uh where should they where can they buy this the these two these at least these two?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you can buy them. Tell you what, I'll send you to my own personal hub that links into all my different websites because I run Rocky Mountain Nationalpark.com, I run you know different organizations, but it's uh ericstenzland.com. Eric Stensland, just your full name.com.com, and that'll bring you you can order the books, you can find my other websites and videos and YouTube channel and all of that stuff is on there.
SPEAKER_00:So well, I'm gonna ask everybody to visit it. And it's just you're you're just a treat. I you know, I couldn't do justice, even trying to describe some of the the the beauty that's in here, but thank you so much. You're so gracious. And any any parting words for our our especially our young audience, because man, somehow you you we I just want them to to enjoy nature, to get out, to bridge the gap in their heart, and just relax a little bit. Just relax. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I would just say challenge yourself to uh be bold and courageous and buck the trend of what everyone else is doing. Uh put your phone away and make a practice of you know, once a week or once a day to just go for a walk by yourself in the silence and uh see what comes up. And don't be afraid of whatever comes. Anything that comes, you can handle by bringing out into the light, and uh, you will see your life transformed as a result.
SPEAKER_00:God bless you. Hey, thanks everyone. Thanks for joining us, Eric. Thanks again, brother. Talk to you again soon, everyone. Bye bye.