[00:00:00] Speaker A: Conservation travel sometimes provides us with experiences that we were not anticipating for the better and for the worst. Between missed planes, unexpected injuries, and close calls with wildlife, travel gives us some of the best stories to retell around a warm campfire.
Welcome to Rewildology, the nature podcast that delves into the human side of conservation travel and rewounding our planet. I am your host, Brooke Mitchell, conservation biologist and adventure traveler.
Today's conversation is the second episode in the super fun miniseries called Conservation Chronicles Tales from the field, where I sit down with a former guest to explore the most unforgettable tales etched into their memories. The next storyteller in this series is Court Whalen, PhD, chief sustainability officer at Natural Habitat Adventures.
Prepare yourself for remote medical evacuations, lost travelers, an intimidating silverback, and so much more.
Oh, and once you've enjoyed court's stories, scroll through the archives all the way back to episode five to listen to court share his journey into conservation travel, what the field is, and how we all can maximize our positive impact through travel.
I do have one little quick ask before releasing you into court's adventurous world. Please rate and review the show through Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and or any of the above. Share this episode with a friend if you'd like this post on social media, be sure to tag us at rewatology and let me know your thoughts about today's conversation. I always love when you all reach out to me in chat.
So whether you're a seasoned traveler or wildlife enthusiast, prepare to be entertained by court's incredible adventures and his dedication to conservation tourism. Today on rewildology, Court, welcome back to the show.
It's been years, literally, since you've been on the show, and I'm sure in this amount of time you have more stories and all those crazy stories from your wonderful career that you've had so far. So I want to set the scene here. Let's pretend that we are at a campfire right now in the Rocky Mountains post hike. You're telling me crazy stories. You have a nice beverage in hand today. I have my coffee. And what is one of the wildest stories you've had in your career? Set the scene for us.
Where are we? What year is it? What are the things? All the things. Go for it.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it's awesome to be back here, Brooke. Great to see you again.
So, yeah, there's always one that clearly comes to mind for this. And we're going in the sort of wayback machine to the year 2010 in Meru National Park, Kenya. And I had been guiding a bit up until that point. I really kind of started expedition leadership and guiding in 2003, I believe.
But as you can imagine, the amount that I'm guiding today is so much more. So I still kind of felt sort of green at that point. But I also had dozens of expeditions under my belt, so I kind of felt like I was really getting in the groove of it. And this one, of course, just totally threw everything for a loop. But like all stories, stories are made when it hits the fan. And, yeah, it's a wild one. So, yeah, we're in Mayro National park in Kenya, 2010. I'm leading my first african safari. And of course, we have local guides and local naturalists and all that. But at this point, I was a graduate student studying ecotourism, and I was there with my mentor, and we were running a travel program for the Florida museum. And so we got people that were like members and people that were local and kind of friends of friends. And so we, for lack of a better word, kind of cobbled together this group of great people, maybe like 1515 guests, something like that. So if you know the safari industry, we're in about three different vehicles.
So the way that I had planned those safaris is we were all rather local to the Gainesville, Florida area. Maybe a couple people flew differently, but at that know, not having planned a lot of travel. But how do I put this? I thought it was the expectation to plan everybody's flights and fly with them and go over there.
This trip was one of my big lessons is to just don't do that. Let guests fly on their own, get there on their own, have someone ready to pick them up. But trying to do that and guiding a trip, it's just too much of a storm. Anyway, I digress. So it started off with a rainy afternoon in Gainesville, Florida. Flying, getting ready to fly across the Atlantic over to Nairobi, Kenya. And so in the summer, I think it was an August trip because we were timing it to hit the migration in the Masai Mara kind of, you know, Florida thundershowers in the afternoon can be pretty commonplace. And again, another learning experience. Know, try not to get an afternoon flight out of Florida for like a big adventure because if thunderstorms get pretty hairy, which they can do, it just shuts the whole place down. So this is like a multi part story, but I'll make this part of the story know. We fly out of Gainesville, we fly to Jacksonville, so we're know a two hour car ride away, but we took a quick puddle jump flight just so we could be on staging ground and make the big flight. Anyway, massive thunderstorms are all in flight from Jacksonville to, I think it was, to maybe Amsterdam and then to Nairobi. But anyway, it was the big international flight gets canceled and it is just a total mess.
It's weird to say, but the airline industry, I think, has gotten a lot better in the last decade. And so just think back almost 15 years ago, and it was just a total mess. And so I'm on the phone with different travel agents and folks to help book us, and I've got my co guide standing in line at the Delta calendar that's now 200 people long. This is a big international flight. And so the trip starts off with, like, I have basically 15 people under my watch and I have all their records, all their booking, like, it's my show. And the flight gets canceled. And their alternative is like, oh, well, the next flight that we automatically rebook you on is like four days from now.
What is not acceptable? You can't miss that much of a safari. It's ruined.
Anyway, so the trip starts off in this really kind of crummy note.
Again, part of the issue with flying when everybody's under your command is I had to get the hotel for the night because, well, I'm just going to go to the airport at 04:00 a.m. When the first desk for the first flight opens. And I'm just going to hound them to get this group of 15 people on the next flight. It's one thing if it's like, you and your partner or whatever, but, like, 15 people is kind of an act of God. So to this day, I don't know exactly how I did it, but I went just with game face on, and I got everybody booked on the first flight. You can imagine the logistics of telling people when you go to bed, like, hey, I might be calling you at 05:00 a.m. To get packed and ready and board a flight, or I might not. I don't really know. I'm just going to see what I do. So I'm this young graduate student, and these people are trusting, but they're also like, oh, my God, this young kid is in charge of our next three weeks of happiness and whatnot. So the reason I'm telling this part of the story is that it did work out. We were only one day delayed, but it kind of set us off on this really exhausting foot. It was like, oh, my God. What trials and tribulations. So we finally get there, we get picked up because we missed a day and a night. We essentially just completely nixed the first overnight in Nairobi. Right. Normally when you do a big trip, your first overnight's kind of sort of like near the arrival area just to make things smooth and easy. So we nixed that and just went straight into the field. So we get out there, and then we go to this amazing camp.
It's kind of like one of the world premier camps, especially in canyon called Elsa's.
It looks like it's pronounced cop j, but it's like, cope. Elsa's Cope in Maryu National park. We get there, we go to our first game of drives, and it's amazing.
I had not been in safari before. I don't think anybody else on the trip, except for my co guide had been on the safari. So they're all amazed we're seeing elephants up close. It was awesome. And we're just like, heck, yeah. You know, like that sigh of relief when it all works out. You're like, those last two or three days were pretty much hell, but we're here, and look how awesome this is. And since I set up the trip to have local guides and kind of directors and all that, I knew I could not totally go on cruise control, but I wasn't likely going to have any major logistical snafus because our partners on the ground, even if it happened, would be the ones most knowledgeable on how to solve it. So I'm like, okay, great. So we get on the first game drive. Fantastic. We go on our second game drive, and we're loading the vehicles, and we're just about to take off. And I'm like, the last one in.
The last one in my vehicle. So, like, the other two are still loading. And I just hear this scream from not too far away that just is like, help.
You just know. Anybody out there knows when you hear this certain tone and the frequency of help, you, like, something bad just happened. And here we are in Africa. It's like an open camp. I'm like, my mind's already wild. We run over there. And fortunately, it wasn't any sort of, like, wildlife issue, but one of the guests just coming out of her room, probably tired from travel and all that, just made a slight misstep. Slipped on a little bit of gravel or something. It was like a very normal pad and compound fracture in her leg.
Compound fracture, bones sticking out?
Yeah.
And it was such an innocent little thing. It was nothing crazy. It wasn't like, a feat of strength.
I think she was, like, 83. And so it's a pretty big deal. And so I go over there. I'd had some first aid medical training, and again, we just hear help. We see her roommate propping her up from the back and her just sitting on the ground with her knee up in the air. And I look down, I see her shin, like, the bottom of her pants are, like, all wet. And I'm like, that's all blood.
Her bone came out. Yeah. Really gnarly.
So that's the stage. So here we are, kind of still exhausted. Kind of know. I'm kind of thinking of this sort of cruise control type mentality. And here I have a major medical situation, like a day's drive from Nairobi or anywhere. Like, meru is a national park that is not really on the safari trail, but it's one of the biggest national parks in Kenya. It's beautiful. It's extraordinary. It's not going to compare to, like, the masai mara or some of the more iconic ones that are just, like, chock full of wildlife. But there is great stuff there. But as a result, it's really remote. The beauty of it is it's super duper remote. And so then the lodge manager comes over and we're assessing the situation, and we're like, holy cow. The first thing we need to do is take care of this bone. Because what happens when a compound fracture is the tendons and ligaments and all the stuff kind of constrict and kind of make it perpetually worse? If you don't initially address the bone that's now poking out of the skin, and then you have risk of infection and all sorts of stuff.
So he gets an elementary school ruler, basically, as a makeshift split. And we get, like, rubber bands and t shirts and tape, and we're, like, taping her just to stabilize. Meanwhile, she is a trooper of all troopers. She's not crying. She's not wincing. She's like, thank you for helping. Let me know what I need to do. Yeah. And so then the next thing is to call what's called the flying doctors. Unfortunately, I have not had to deal with them since. But at that time, there is a company. I don't know if it's, like, nonprofit or what, but they're basically just doctors that are kind of, like, on standby at major airports, I think around Africa, but definitely in Kenya. And we mobilize them. And this is a full on medical evacuation, like, a really big deal. And so they fly in this private airplane with all the medical supplies. Kind of like a mobile hospital that can fly. And they land on the airstrip. You can imagine the logistics of getting us, like, where are you? Okay, got you. What's the situation? What do we need to bring with us? Like, anticipating supplies and gear and medications and whatnot. And so then they get to the airstrip. The airstrip is like an hour and a half away or something. It's not real close, or at least it seemed like that. I mean, this is all like triage blur. So we're just there with this lady for sitting on this gravel, trying to make her as comfortable as possible for like three plus hours. We're on a satellite phone calling her family members and just being like, listen, we definitely need to let you guys know what's happening. We probably are going to need some assistance.
We don't think she's going to be able to make it back to the US on her own. This is a full on medical evacuation.
And so we call the family. They're, of course, appreciative and understanding. And this is still even, like, in the early days of. In my opinion, the early days of satellite phones. But nevertheless, we do. All this family is notified. The flying doctors finally come in. They are in this bumpy back of a pickup truck with like a full stretcher. We get her on there. We kind of had to make it underneath her, just the way the stretcher works. And the whole time I could just see her leg kind of moving and she's holding it. And we've got it splinted and we've got people holding it. But it had to be painful. And so I felt so bad seeing this. And so we finally get her. We get her in the back of the pickup truck, which is. This is all like the most expeditious way to get her from point a to point b, from the field to a hospital in Nairobi, which actually has very good hospitals and doctors. So we get her there and we finally get her to this airstrip. And this is in the afternoon, and it's taken a long time just because they're kind of like splinting with medical devices and they're getting some medication in her to help dull the pain, taking really good care of her. But then we get in the plane, all secured. So then I go back with her to Nairobi. I volunteer my co guides to lead the rest of the expedition. I'm going to go back, make sure she gets adequate care or great care. And so I'm sitting in the plane and now with all this time, the sun is starting to set, and these are all, like, all these bush planes are all visual flight rules. And so if it gets pitch black, that plane may not take off and we may have another night.
All these worst case scenario things right through your head. And so then there's a doctor, and then there's a nurse. And so I'm in the back of the cabin, basically completely hauled out with a stretcher, and the nurse is putting in ivs and giving me the bag of fentanyl to hold up over my head so it drips.
And then the doctor is the pilot, so he's in the front and he's getting all these instruments and pushing things and cranking these. And meanwhile, the sun is setting. The african sunsets was like this blood red sunset, very ominous. And he gets us in position and then he kind of backs off and sort of starts shut things down. I'm like, oh, gosh, what happened now? So fresh in my mind of airplane woes and travel woes of issues.
We've all been in the plane, and we hear the engines turn off for big commercial flights.
What are we going to hear about maintenance issues? Anyway, he's kind of slowed things down, not shut things off. But then he starts swatting at things in the cockpit, and he's got this bag, and he's, like, scooping things. And it turns out that there are titsi flies, and this guy is african. And Africans are not afraid of much. They're not afraid of lions, they're not afraid of elephants, but they are quite afraid of titsi flies because they're possible vector for african sleeping sickness, a pretty major disease. And so for some reason, instead of just, like, swatting them or killing them, there were, like six of them in there. They were flying all around. He's bagging them with these ziploc bags and keeping them as if to study how you would like a goldfish at a carnival. He's, like, scooping it, blowing hair and twisting it off and tying it. And so here, the seat next to him, there's like these piles of teepee flies and bags. I'm just like, this could not get any freaking weirder.
And so, fortunately, we rumble down the strip, the airstrip, we do take off our flight or something like that, get into Nairobi. And of course, it's all just beginning, basically. Now we got to get her to the hospital, we got to get her checked out. We got to figure out how many days. Got to figure out how family is going to come in and take her back and she was given really great care, but it had to be rushed into emergency surgery because with compound fractures, you can get infections in those bones pretty quickly. So immediately into surgery, and it was like just three days of checking on her, morning, noon, and night, make sure she's doing well. But then by the time her son, her family, was able to get to the hospital, it was like three or four days. And so this whole ordeal is just kind of going on and on and kind of hitting this plateau, and it was just like the wildest experience. There's no real crescendo to this. She got out safely, and she went back home and said she was under medical care from her physician. And I believe she probably had to have another surgery or so because it's a challenging thing. So, yeah, that was the crazy experience of my first medical evac. That was. Well, they're all unexpected, but it was unexpected how wild it was. But fortunately, she was all right in the end. But, yep, through a lot of craziness. And it can happen at any time. Can happen at any time. So, anyway, that's my big medical backstory. That's when things don't go according to plan.
In rural, remote Kenya.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: How did you recover from.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Mean? I did rejoin the safari once she was airborne and went back to the United States. My co guide needed help as well because it was a big group when you're in three different vehicles. So, yeah, you kind of got back on safari. I'm just, like, shaking up, like, oh, gosh, I was young at the time. I was a student, and so I'm sort of hardened now from years and years of doing this kind of stuff. But, yeah, it was a shocking moment, and I was like, is this really the industry or the career or the occupation for me? And ultimately, yeah, totally was.
If that kind of experience won't scare you away from it, I don't think anything will. So, yeah, I stuck with it. Completed the safari. It was a great safari. Super duper exciting. I think we had, like, air issues on the way home, too.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a trip that just kind of kept on going. But anyway, yeah, it was a wild one.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. That's freaking crazy. What made you decide to stay in the field? Because, like you said, I'm sure a lot of people would have been like, all right, if that's what this field is, I'm done. We're out. I did not sign up for that shit. Why did you stay?
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, to keep on guiding trips. It is the most thrilling thing you can possibly do is be traveling for a living, showing people the natural world for a living, and kind of piggybacking on their awe and wonder and reliving places time and time again. I've been guiding some of these destinations, some of these trips for 20 years now. And, yeah, people often ask, like, after your 20th or your 40th trip down there, do you still get amazed at seeing the monarch butterfly migration or what have you? Yeah, when you get to kind of see it almost vicariously through your guests eyes, it's really invigorating, and it's also just awesome to be out in nature and seeing this stuff time and time again. So, yeah, it didn't deter me.
It did make me think about what can we do to avoid anything like that in the future? And fortunately, and unfortunately, it was just a total random accident. There was just nothing that could really have been done, unfortunately. I think just when people are tired from those big international flights, that's certainly part of it, but nothing you can do there either.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely know that feeling as well. I almost always start most of my trips sick anyways because I think it's like the exact same thing. Just lack of sleep, these big international flights, and then you have to be on point and, oh, man, I'm so glad she was a trooper. Holy crap.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'm not a medical doctor, so I don't know what the body goes through in terms of adrenaline and cortisol and all these different chemicals that help you persevere through the most difficult times. I'm sure I had a lot of it in me. I know she probably had more in her because she had literally acute injury. So, yeah, I'm sure her crow body was doping her up real good.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Okay, that is a crazy story. And now that I'm in the field, I'm almost positive that it will happen eventually. But thank God that hasn't happened yet. But just like you just alluded to, you've been doing this for 20 years all over the world. There has to be another story of a different dimension, or even the same dimension. They said that's your only evac. Is there another story that comes to mind that just like, oh, my God, I got to tell you this one story?
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Yeah, another one. Fortunately, not really any other major medical evacs. I've had plenty of folks that have come down with flus at high altitude before, and that's a worrying situation. None of them had to be evac, but that's always, like, high alert because you can go from the level of emergency can go from zero to ten real quickly. But, yeah, one other story. Well, I should say before this story, so many of my stories kind of begin and end with the whole airport kerfuffle, right.
Travelers out there know that if you travel a lot, your fair share of just harrowing airport experiences, you could write a book just on nothing but that. But the reality is, even though I had a really recent one going up to Churchill, where the polar bear migration happens on the shore of. And, you know, in the moment, it was nuts, like how we had to get rerouted and the plane situation. But it's funny, the story of it is like, oh, really? You got rerouted to a different airport? Like big. Yeah. Like, you know, we're up there, we get this whole group of three different groups of travelers going to see polar bears for the first time. And you were just about to land in a little, tiny Churchill airport, and it's a two and a half hour flight. We're like ten minutes from landing. And you just know when you're playing circling, I feel like we're circling the airport. Why are we circling? And pilots come on and say, well, there's an aircraft maintenance issue. And they were kind of cagey about it. But what we learned later was it wasn't that we couldn't land, it's that if we landed, it probably wouldn't be able to take off again until maintenance got there to fix it. And that's the issue with a lot of these remote places. If they don't have the maintenance crew or the parts there, what do they do?
If that plane is grounded for days?
The airplane company is losing a ton of money, so they elected to reroute us to Thompson. You probably haven't heard this story, but this is from no alma mater. It's not that crazy of a story. But we were rerouted to Thompson, which is kind of a little bit of like a rough and tumble town that's just at the very edge of the Arctic. It's kind of like the northernmost extent of roadways in Manitoba, and maybe not throughout all of Canada, but it's a very northern town, kind of end of the road, literally, metaphorically. And we land there, and here we're in this. It's kind of like a mining town and a forestry town. So people are a lot of Paul Bunyan type folks that are down on their luck. And I don't mean to stereotype, but it just has that vibe. And here we are, our nat hab groups of all these american travelers. Little blue jackets and like, oh, God, this is going to look so weird because we weren't supposed to be there. We never go there and we're just these uniform eco travelers walking in. And so then they needed to dispose of that aircraft and get us a new one. So a 1 hour delay becomes a two hour delay. The airport is one room, there's no food, and we were supposed to be getting lunch the moment we landed. So we're kind of like getting that point. So our operations team gets Quiznos delivered and gets pizza delivered. And after 7 hours of delay in one room with 50 people, the room is made for like 14.
Oh, my God, you had to be there kind of thing. I'm sure nobody in the audience is feeling bad for me, getting the urgent polar bears and having to wait in a small waiting room. But in the moment when you have the care of all these people that have such high expectations, you're losing time. There's a ton of uncertainty and it's not real pleasant because it's not where you want to be.
We finally take off. It's now nighttime, so the entire day has gone by waiting in this airport.
And the cool thing is, actually, I forgot about this part of the story, but this is a little bit of like a lesson in life. So then we had our moment of relief. We're like, oh, it was all worth it. So we're on the plane and we're, I don't know, halfway in. So we're about like 30 minutes from takeoff, 30 minutes before landing, the pilot comes on and says, hey, folks, if you look out your right hand side of the plane, we get a little shimmer of aurora in the distance and we're like, oh, my gosh, that's so cool. And so we look out the window and it's like this guy was really dumbing it down. It was like a blazing aurora. Like the entire east was like all aurora. It was actually one of the best aurora shows I'd ever seen.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: And you were in the sky?
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we were in the sky in an airplane. Yes. They're taking iPhone photos and they're turning out amazing. And it wasn't just like a show. It was like a really good northern light show. And I've seen a lot of them. And it was like from that point on, everyone was like, oh, yeah, that's why this happened. That's why the delay happened. Like the universe had a plan for us. It was really cool.
Nobody was really outwardly complaining. Everybody knew we were all in this together and it was just total bum luck. But everybody was like, okay, that was worth it. So that was a good one. But. So I have other airport delay stories, but I'll save you from that. The story I was going to get into before I took the tangent there on air travel stuff. So in the late aughts, like 2007 through nine or whatever, I guided several expeditions to Papua New guinea, which is an awesome place. I'd love to go back there. I wonder if it's changed at all. It was just very remote and rural and folks there are kind of living like in the Stone Age. It was just extraordinary.
The cool thing about it is you have this amazing village culture and the people are so welcoming and it's so amazing to sit down with them. And a lot of what you do is just kind of like sit with them and see their daily life and they're very welcoming. Like the chief of the village meets you personally upon arrival because there's not a lot of interaction at that time. Anyway, so a local company set out to build several really high end eco lodges to support western visitors visiting these really remote locations. And of course, it's all part of this idea of ecotourism and conservation travel to help get income to these remote communities, to help with things like education and health care and food and clothing and all that, just to provide some income with local guides. And when you visit the village, you're obviously paying them for visitation and whatnot, but it's all very authentic. Anyway, so these lodges are really nice. When you look at them like, oh my gosh, that looks like a house in Aspen. It's like really nice. But then they're on the edge of just BFE, like just total wilderness. Like, who knows what's out there? There aren't any real crazy predators, but there are headhunters, or there were. And I wouldn't want to bump into a tribe in the forest unannounced, you know what I mean? So it's really a wild place and so we're at this lodge and we're in between activities and this guy apparently just decided, one of my travelers decided to go on a hike on his own without telling anybody in the adjacent forest. And he saw a trail and it's probably a wildlife trail. There really weren't extensive trails in the forest.
These areas are really well known for birds of paradise. There are like dozens of species and each one of these lodges, in addition to being close to local villages and extraordinary culture, there's usually a set number of bird of paradise species you can see. So there's like rudimentary trails, but it is dense and penetrable forest. I mean, Papua New guinea. The reason it's still so remote and rural and undeveloped is because most people think it just can't be developed. The topography is way too many ravines and gorges. It's too hilly. You just couldn't efficiently build. So to get into a lot of these places, whether they're doing any sort of humanitarian aid or development, it's all helicopter like. They're just really arc roads. But this guy decides to go for a little after he would hike, doesn't tell anybody, and then by the time dinner comes around, his wife comes, he's like, have you seen such and such? I don't remember his name, but I protect it to keep him anonymous. But have you seen such and such?
No. Isn't he with you?
What do you mean? I don't know. There's like this lodge and there's that hill. I don't know. And so we're just checking the whole lodge. We go into every single room.
Is he here? Is he here?
If we're going to set out into the forest to find him, that's a big deal. Eventually we conclude that someone saw him walk into the forest, like one of the folks at the lodge or something, didn't say anything about it. And now it's on. Now it's like search party, and it's getting dark.
Basically, we had to hire local tribesmen that were formerly hunters, headhunters, to use their skills of looking for little branches broken and tracking scents. So he's being hunted now. All for the right purposes? Yes, for all the right purposes. But at the end of the day, I didn't hire these guys to go find them like the lodge did. And they're like, no, these are the guys that you want tracking a person in the forest. I'm like, do you?
Hopefully all of him comes back.
It takes a long time. And I'm just thinking, like, how did this guy get himself into such a situation? Because we had schedules and he knew to be back at a certain time.
And it's getting cold because I don't remember the elevation. But it's one of these rainforests where it's hot in the day but very cold at night and very humid, so if you don't have proper gear. And so, long story short, and this is also kind of in the days where cell phone coverage wasn't ubiquitous, and certainly we're so far remote, so we weren't able to know where these trackers were. But after, like, 4 hours from getting the search party out, they finally get him, and then they walk him back, and he's walking out of the forest with these guys, like, bones through their noses, locking arms, because he was kind of, like, weak. I think his nervous system was probably just freaking wrecked. I think he really got himself into a pickle, and he knew it. And, yeah, he just looks like a ghost coming out of the forest. And who knows?
I don't think those trackers spoke English, so who knows what was going through his head as they approached and made noises and making shouts. And the way the search parties would often communicate is from bird calls and reptile calls, like, weird little clicks and sounds that help them communicate to the forest without talking. And who knows what was going on to this guy's head as he was hearing this approach. But, yeah, end of the story is that he's safe and sound. He got back, but, yeah, he went in the forest, he got turned around, all the trails looked the same, and eventually he just decided to sit down. And the right thing to do is don't get further in, wait for people to find you. But it was a long time before people found them, and that was a really nerve wracking experience. This is actually before the Kenya trip. And just knowing how quickly someone else's decision that you don't really have any governance over or even awareness, can turn into a pretty serious life issue. Unfortunately, all is well that ends well. We got him back. His wife, I'm not sure if I remember completely right, but when she saw him, she walked up to him, and I think she slapped him or punched him, and they gave him a huge embrace.
Damn you for making me worry so much.
But he was a great guy.
Just the naivety of people in different lands. So, yeah, that was another one that comes to mind, is just. I was very nervous. I'm like, oh, my God. This is probably only a handful of years in my guiding career did I just lose someone in Papua New guinea.
So, yeah, wasn't a real great feeling. But again, the crazy catastrophes kind of make for sort of interesting stories, hopefully.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Now, what about wildlife encounters? Because you are in conservation tourism. For anyone who didn't know, court and I used to work really closely together at Nathab, and you've been guiding for so long, and the focus of what we do is wildlife. And while we know the rules, wildlife doesn't always know the know. It's like we need to say this amount of feet away from you, but that doesn't necessarily mean, the wildlife does or what have you, whatever your crazy stories are. But what about that? How does wildlife fit into this story of yours?
[00:36:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so, yeah, indeed, a wildlife guide. That's kind of primarily what we're after for most of these expeditions, at least those in the last ten years.
And, yeah, I could go on and on with the number of times I've just seen something cool. I'm like, that is memorable, whether it's a 70 foot whale or not 70 foot, but a 70,000 pound whale breaching big humpback whale right next to your boat. But they're so hard to describe and get people to relate to. A lot of you had to be there moments or times when you get right next to big male orangutans, or you're on the Kinibitangan river in Bordeaux and you see a huge troop of proboscis monkeys. But, yeah, kind of. You had to be there. But there is one time, again, going with primates where. Yeah, I got a little bit startled, little bit of an.
But. So we're tracking gorillas trekking, but our trackers are tracking them. We're trekking. We're hiking and we're getting very close to the troop. And if you haven't done gorilla trekking experience, know Uganda and Rwanda, it's very similar, regardless of what entrance, what national park, where you're at, but you're kind of trekking for a couple hours, and then the guards and rangers that kind of keep tabs on these gorillas, they let you know when they're close. So we knew we were close. We encounter this awesome silverback, big male, and he's away from the troop, they tell us, and they're like, but he'll lead you to him. I'm like, oh, really? He's going to be like our concierge just to walk us up the troop. And lo and behold, he did. And so I'm leading the pack of guests behind me, and then I've got, like, a ranger right in front of me, kind of like up into my left, like at my 10:00 and this is a pretty short story, but I remember we were walking probably maybe 20, 30ft behind this gorilla, something like a respectful distance, not too close, but not too far. And this is just how it's done. And I remember walking and I had this sort of unimpeded view of this big silver back. Big silver, like, literally a silver back. And just massive brew, 400 pounds plus. And like, man, this would be so cool. I had my camera around my neck. This would be so cool if I got a video of me just, like, following this gorilla. How cool. And so I get my camera. I'm opening up. I'm fiddling with it, and then I hear something, and it's my ranger, who's now splayed out on his back, tripped over a log. I'm like, I look in front, and here is a male gorilla right here, six inches in front of my face.
Yeah, apparently, maybe he wasn't showing us the way.
Maybe we were a little too close. And for that, I feel bad. But for whatever reason, he decided to do a charge at us. It spooked the ranger. The ranger backed up, and he's no longer my guard. He's just flat out on the floor, and I have his gorilla in my face.
But within that same split moment, he turned around and left as well. So it's like he was in my face, and I kid you not, before my brain fired off neurons to process it and react, he was already moving away from us. And so I just sat there. Like, that was pretty cool. Everybody behind me, because my dumb ass is, like, looking down at my camera to try to get it on, get settings. And so I just awakened to surprise the gorilla. Everybody else is shocked, like, oh, my God. How are you still standing there? And that's all well and good. It was kind of a cool experience, a fun story, but I am so bummed, so bummed I wasn't a little bit faster with that camera recording, because you can only imagine how insane that footage would have been. And I'm not trying to say, like, at the expense of the animal, but the gorilla was in control. But it would have been a really interesting video of me walking and having this gorilla just be right up in my face. I didn't even see it, didn't record it anyway. So that was a pretty wild one. Of course, I love watching gorillas. I mean, they're so extraordinary. And apparently, these bluff charges are not uncommon. They're extremely habituated animals. And this is just kind of. It's actually not so much of a, hey, don't get so close or don't follow me as much as a, hey, don't forget who's boss. So he showed me who's boss. I knew it from the get go. He was boss, but it underlined the point.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I'd chat my pants when a creature four times my size even. I mean, I've been mock charged by elephants on multiple continents. Now rhinos, and they never actually show full aggression but that alone in a vehicle, I could only imagine being on foot with a silver back. A silver back in his prime. He was the leader of that troop.
Wow. The fact.
It's probably a good thing you didn't see it coming because you might have either fell down or lost your balance.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Who knows? Maybe that was the best scenario.
Yeah. Seriously? Yeah. Because if the ranger tripped and fell backwards, like, jeez, that must have been quite a show of force.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Right? And he does that literally every day of his life, probably more than once.
Wow. Okay. That is incredible.
So with those amazing stories in mind, and I just reminded everyone that it's been now years since you've been on the show. What have you been up to? What updates can you share with us since the last time you sat? I mean, wow. We recorded in December 2020, and it is now the fall of 2023. So, please, I'm sure you've been up to so much, but I would love to hear the updates, as I'm sure everybody would.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Certainly will. Oh, gosh. Yeah, a lot. And I'm so stoked that rewildology is still kicking and going strong and bigger and better and better than ever. So kudos to you for the last three years as well. But, yeah, since that time, obviously a lot more expeditions, a lot of guiding, including some pretty exciting places like Iceland and a lot more on Borneo and all sorts of great stuff. Sort of guiding our Florida trips, which is actually a pretty funny thing, down to the Everglades and Florida Keys. You wouldn't really think of Florida being on par with some of these bigger wildlife adventures, but I got to say, it's kind of surprisingly delightful when you get down into the heart of the Everglades and into the beautiful aquatic system of the Florida Keys and all the kind of weird, wacky tropical wildlife that has found a home only in these little keys, like deer key deer that are half the size of a normal deer, amazing burrowing owls, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, just guiding whatever I can. But then also for my more day job professional desk career, I've fulfilled the role, or climbed in the role of chief sustainability officer at natural habitats. So previous to that, I was still very much in sustainability, but it was very split into different priorities and positions that were under my umbrella. So just the hardcore sustainability conservation didn't get as much attention as we would have liked. And so now it's 100% of the show, which is fantastic, is doing things like, we just published our first sustainability report, annual sustainability Report. We're doing some really great YouTube videos on the natural habitat adventures channel that has me kind of at my little home studio. My computer is a little bit off kilter right now, but if you were to see the rest of it, it's a nice little home studio. Got little video light up there. Yeah, it's very organized. Got the bottle head in the background. So, yeah, conservation films there, which is fantastic. And then, of course, looking at greening operations across the world. And like I always say, when I look at sustainability in the travel business, it's really a two sided coin. You have the minimizing negative impacts, which we all know that's like kind of classic sustainability. You're minimizing your footprint. But then the other part that doesn't often get lubed into the definition, but I think is cornerstone of it, is maximizing the positive impacts of travel, because you can only minimize your negative impact so much. There's a point where your sheer existence is the impact, and we're not going to do anything about that. Right. But the great thing about conservation travel is that it provides this extraordinary good around the world. Some of these examples, like I was talking about in Papua New guinea, supporting local villages. Of course, anywhere conservation travel touches, you get maximizing positive benefits. And so storytelling on that and showcasing it and helping to increase the positive benefit is a big part of what I'm up to on a day to day basis.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Well, congrats on that and everything that you're doing. That is so exciting. Yeah. You've always been, to me, one of the most knowledgeable people in this field. Like, how can we make conservation travel the most impactful in a positive way? So that is great to hear that you're even deeper and deeper into that. And, of course, I'll need to hear all of the updates. We won't bore everyone on all the specifics because that's your and mine. We can geek out all day on that and everyone's like, okay, Brooke, you talk about conservation tourism too much as it is, so won't bore them all those details. But that is fantastic and I'm so happy to hear.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: Thanks, Brooke. No, it feels great. We're making a pretty big impact.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome. Well, again, court, thanks so much for coming back on and sharing those crazy stories. Now we have them in audio form and video form from here on out so that we can listen to those stories and just how fantastic they are and we can unbundle from our campfire flannel and come back to reality. But again, court, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: My pleasure, Brooke, great to be here.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure today. I hope you've been inspired by the incredible stories, insights, and knowledge shared in this episode. To learn more about what you heard, be sure to check out the show
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