Quince Mountain told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife Blair always talks about how the wilderness doesn’t care about you. There’s a thunderstorm, it’s not there to make you afraid or even an animal who’s chasing you. It’s not personal.

That was kind of nice when I was a person who grew up suffering, often in very deliberate ways, because of classmates and other kids who were pretty awful to me.

I found solace in the indifference of the wilderness. But I think what I had to learn to do later was connect with other people and trust other people.

My friends call me Q. I live in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I’m a dog musher and an outdoor educator who works online. I think of it as edutainment, I guess, and I get the privilege along with my wife, Blair Braverman, and our 25 sled dogs, of sharing the story of our journeys and the people we meet on Patreon and Twitter and other social media. It’s a lot of fun.

This is gonna sound funny, but I didn’t set out to be a professional dog sledder or go in the Iditarod or anything like that. It just kind of happened. I just fell in love with Blair, and it was something she had done.

Dog mushing is something that turns adults into children. If you think about sledding, you see people sled down a hill, how fun that is. The dogs are just pulling you. I dare you to get on the runners of a dog sled with a decent team on a bluebird day and not fall in love with it.

I’ve always loved animals, too. Some of that I think comes from a person who grew up with social difficulties with people. People know I’m trans; I’m very, uh, public as a trans person. But I’m also not neurotypical. So, I had a lot of social difficulties and a lot of sensory difficulties as a kid. It was just easier to understand the intentions of the animals around me.

It’s such a collaboration. When I’m out at night with the dogs, crossing a mountain range or something, people will say, “Well, how can you do that? How can you be out there by yourself?” But I’m not by myself. I’m with 14 of my best friends.

There was this moment at this dog led race near Kotzebue, Alaska. I wasn’t actually in this race, my wife was, and she didn’t need my support. I just sort of had a few days off, and I ended up renting a snow machine or a snowmobile with a photographer, Katie Olinsky. Katie and I took this snow machine and we followed a little bit behind the race, and we went to this town called Noorvik. There’s no road. You don’t take a car there. You can fly there, you can take a snowmobile there. You can take a dog sled there.

We went across the street to check out the checkpoint in this community building. And of course they had put out this beautiful spread of food. There’s moose stew and chili and coffee, and all this stuff. Just feeding the mushers. I saw, in one corner of the building, there were some people working on some kind of carpentry project with some wood. There’s a woman there, and she just starts wailing, crying. The saddest sound.

It’s kind of awkward because we’re outsiders. We don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not gonna pretend it’s not happening. So I just wanted to say, “Hey, do you care to share what’s happening?” She had lost a grandson, I believe. They were getting ready to have this service. That’s what people had been building in the corner, the carpenters were working on a casket for this young man.

Then there’s a knock at the door, and it’s like a hunter who lives in the village. They had shot a moose, but it was not the season to do that, so I was kind of curious about it. It’s not really my business, but somebody just mentioned to me, “Oh, well Fish and Game authorizes us to go get these animals, because there’s a food shortage.”

I thought, There’s a food shortage, and these people had been entertaining the mushers, feeding everybody, building a casket, planning for a funeral, all these things. And the mushers didn’t even know it. I just thought, Wow, that is a community that can hold so much.

The race goes in a loop and then comes back through this community a few days later. So they said, “Well, come on your way back, we’re gonna give you some stew meat.” And I said, “No thanks. We don’t need that. We’ll be okay. I appreciate the offer.” But they weren’t taking no for an answer.

A couple days later we’re riding back, and go through this village at three o’clock in the morning. Just crawling through slowly on our snow machine, not to make any noise, and we’re not gonna stop. It’s three o’clock in the morning, you know? But sure enough, this woman runs out of the community center and brings Katie and I this cooler of stew meat and just insists that we have some of it. And I thought, This is what this is about.

This isn’t about times or days. I don’t remember who came in what place in the race. Actually, my wife had a top five finish. It was amazing, but that’s not the point.

As a trans person, I’ve gone down to the Wisconsin State Capitol, and I’ve been to these debates about trans inclusion in sports and so on. It was just a half hour of somebody reading the high jump records from New Mexico from last year, and when this person went through transition, look how much better their scores got, and what’s that gonna do for the sport? I’m like, This is so missing the point. Sports for most people isn’t about a college scholarship or becoming a professional anything like that. It’s about the connections we make. I wish we could begin to have this conversation, not in terms of competitive advantage, but in terms of belonging.

I happen to be in a sport that men and women can be in and it doesn’t matter. So it doesn’t matter in that sense that I’m trans, nobody’s checking my gender card. Being able to be a part of something competitive at an elite level without having to worry that being trans will disqualify me has given me the perspective about how important it is that people are able to participate in the sports that they’re working on, that they care about, in the communities where they belong, being who they are.

I think here’s what I want to tell trans people and trans young people. Trans people, people who don’t fit in in all kinds of ways, and who doubt their own validity, and try to figure out where they belong, and maybe feel like they landed in a spaceship in their family and in a community, and no one’s like them, or a few people are, and they’re trying to find their way…people like us have been here for hundreds of years, thousands of years. We’ve been here for millennia in human history, and somehow a lot of us have found ways to survive. We’ve found ways to find each other. So I want you to be able to find your people that you can trust, whether they’re adults, they’re other kids, whoever.

If you feel that love and openness from people, move toward that. And you’ll be able to get through this. I don’t know how, but there’s gonna be a way, it’s gonna open up. It’s not gonna come from politicians, or your school principal, or your teacher, or me, or anyone else. It’s just gonna be a journey that you find and it’s gonna be a really cool one, and I hope you stick around for it.

I want to hear about it.

Quince Mountain is an outdoor educator and dog musher living in Wisconsin. He is one half of the BraverMountain mushing team with his wife, Blair Braverman. Quince is the first openly trans person to compete in the Iditarod and on the reality TV show Naked and Afraid. Learn more about Quince at .

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Jessica Huneycutt told her story to producer Sarah Fuss Kessler for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After sitting in the Saints lobby for four days, I think this receptionist just really took pity on me. She sent this coach an email. He comes out and we talk for two hours, and he’s like, “Thanks for the info. Love your enthusiasm, but there’s no precedent for yoga in the NFL. Stay in touch.”

I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. I grew up as a competitive swimmer, a junior Olympian. And it was kind of like, What is yoga? Is that like a religion? I don’t get it. Now I have been practicing yoga for about 15 years, and teaching for about 11 or 12 years.

Yoga helped me to be at peace within my body and find more stillness, to combat that anxiety and the PTSD that I had felt for a long, long time after being sexually assaulted as a teenager.

There are times where life challenges us to take a step back and look maybe with a more macrocosmic lens.

It was 2016, probably one of the lowest points of my life. At the time, I was going through a divorce and I was teaching dozens of classes a week at different peoples’ studios and barely making ends meet. I knew that it was gonna be tough. At the same time, my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer, and she was given two years to live.

It was just devastating. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to live, I wasn’t sure how I could live.

One of my very early teachers was hosting a yoga retreat in Belize, and I had already done two separate, 200-hour yoga trainings. Really at that time, I was teaching, but I still didn’t consider myself a teacher. I just wanted to really learn.

On that retreat in Belize, we spent a week waking up with the sun, and going down to the water and practicing yoga twice a day, just really absorbing the natural beauty. I was so full of energy and life from the setting and the people and the situation. The training was so lovely.

I decided to stay in Belize for an additional week. It was just me and my backpack and a couple bucks in my pocket.

I met a couple who turned out to be these scientists from the UK who were in the jungle in Belize studying spiders. We got to talking and they invited me to come to their outpost in the middle of the jungle. And I said yes.

At 7:00 AM, I waited by the side of the dirt road by a stop sign. They picked me up in their truck, with me just running on blind faith. It was a lot of heaviness in my heart, and I kind of felt like, What do you have to lose?

We drove for a long time down a one-lane dirt road and then this guy looks to his wife and he just says, “I’ll get the boat.” And I’m like, “Oh gosh.”

So he comes back a few minutes later with this little, tiny motor boat, and the three of us get in.

When I say remote…it was so isolated. I couldn’t even tell how this guy was navigating the waters. There were no landmarks, no signposts whatsoever. We saw a few crocodiles, a few monkeys, and that was it.

He ties up the boat, and then he digs in the ground and uncovers a few machetes. And he hands one to me, and one to his wife, and he takes one himself. And he says, “Stay close, there are big cats in this jungle.”

We walk another 45 minutes, and we get to their little outpost, which has a water tank and solar power. Everything they need to survive. It was really there, in that remote part of nature, with two absolute strangers, that I really was able to sit. And just kind of think and be.

Life is short, and none of us know how long we have. I just knew that I had to do something to change my life in a way that it felt like I wanted to live it. I thought to myself, What do I want my life to look like?

My first thought in my heart is just, I have to be in New Orleans. New Orleans has always, since the moment I first set foot here, felt like home and has called me back. For my second thought, I got this wild idea that I was gonna be the yoga instructor for the New Orleans Saints football team.

Maybe it was a few days before or after that trip, but at the time, a friend of mine was running a school in inner-city Philadelphia. I started an afterschool yoga program there, and the first day, like a hundred 15-year-old young men showed up. And I thought, Surely, something is amiss. And I asked this kid right in front of me, “Did one of your teachers offer you extra credit?” And kid looked at me and he said, “No, ma’am, we play basketball and we heard LeBron does yoga.” That’s when it really dawned on me the incredible impact and power that somebody with a platform like that can have, because I want to help people heal in the ways that yoga has helped me heal or in any way that it can be beneficial.

When I came back from that trip, I researched the role of yoga in professional sports. I researched who the strength coach for the Saints was, and wrote a really hilarious-to-me-now report entitled “Yoga for Elite Athletes.” It was a bullet-pointed four-page list of the ways that it would prevent injury and save money, et cetera.

Then I just flew from Philadelphia down to New Orleans, and I gave myself a week.

I had my report printed out, and I would go and sit in the lobby and ask for this coach and the receptionist, the first day she’s like, “Well, is he expecting you?” And I’d say, “No, ma’am.” And she’d be like, “OK.” And I would sit down and I would just sit from nine to five.

This continued Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I want to say the fourth day this receptionist sent this coach an email. And he welcomes me back into his office and we talk for two hours and he’s like, “There’s no precedent for yoga in the NFL. Stay in touch.”

I was like, OK that’s it. I’m moving back to New Orleans. I’m gonna go down there and make it happen. Everybody was like, “Love you, Jess, but you’re crazy to move down to New Orleans. It’s not gonna happen.”

I had been down here for a month or two, and was starting to really sweat it. Then I ended up getting a text that just asked me if I could come back out to the training facility. I was so excited because I thought, Gosh I’ve got a second interview.

When I got out there, he said, “Thanks so much for coming back in. There are 90 guys on the indoor football field, you have 15 minutes to warm them up. Good luck.”

I walked out on the football field and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. “All right, everybody, lift your arms up by your ears. Bend your knees. Sit back into a chair.” And while they were sitting in a chair, I just said, “My name is Jess. I was a junior Olympic swimmer. I’m trained in Russian kettlebells and pilates and yoga and martial arts. I’m here to stretch you guys out and keep you injury free. Fold forward, touch your toes.” I was sweating, screaming, shaking. And then afterwards, I shook the coach’s hand. I said, “Thank you so much for the opportunity.”

He just said, “You’re hired. We’ll see you Monday.”

This will be my eighth season coming up this year.

I have taken vows as a Buddhist. And a lot of these athletes, my students, who I consider my teachers, are very devout Christian. I might speak a very different language, but it’s all love.

Something I say to them is, “OK, great. Demario Davis, you’re a very Christian man, right? You’re a man of God. Yes?” “Yes.” And I say, “Great. Well you know prayer is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you listen.”

The best and hardest lessons that I’ve ever learned throughout a lot of hardship in my life is to be still and to be quiet. Because, as one of my teachers said to me very early on, you already have everything you need inside of you. And you’re gonna need it all.

Jessica Honeycutt is a lifelong athlete and lover of movement, the arts, the great outdoors and other people, most of all, her son. She has been Team Yoga Instructor for the New Orleans Saints since 2016.

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Jennifer Logronio told her story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The wind stayed for at least four hours. A strong wind that you could hear your ear having that pressure. You can see the roof of your neighbors flying around, fridge on the ground, everything, basically. The trees especially.

I’m currently residing in Siargao Island of the Philippines. I was born in Davao.

I teach freediving. I’m passionate about actually quite a few things. One of them is teaching. I’m also very passionate about giving back to nature, especially in the ocean.

When I was 19, I started moving around. First I went to Manila. It was very eye-opening for me, because coming from Davao that doesn’t have very many people, I was like, Oh wow, there’s so many things here. But then after a couple of years working there, I said to myself, I can’t do city living anymore. Then I started to check on jobs in Siargao.

Siargao is a small island down south of the Philippines. It’s a surfing capital. So I thought, OK, maybe I belong here. So I started working in one of the resorts here, and that’s when I got into surfing. I work, I surf, I work, I surf. And then COVID hit, and the resort closed. Most of the people did not have work at that moment, but that’s when I started to learn more about surfing.

It was December 16th, 2021, when another thing happened, which is the typhoon. It destroyed the whole island. No electricity, no food, no water.

Unfortunately there were not a lot of warnings coming from the government. They didn’t say anything, like “OK, you evacuate here,” and whatnot. So we chose somewhere uphill, and there were around 80 people in that house. We stayed there overnight. Because it was uphill, we were scared of storm surge. We had some snacks with us, but there was not enough water.

The day after it was a beautiful sunrise, beautiful sunset, like nothing happened. After three days I left the island, because I didn’t feel very useful. I didn’t think I could help any of the people I know that were in need, not even for myself. And so I left, I went to Manila.

I felt like everyone that got out of here was carrying this weight in their heart. Because we felt guilty, leaving the island. But I couldn’t go back yet because the house was destroyed. The electricity was not back until almost two months later. And I had to continue working, I could not stop my life.

A friend of mine owns a freediving school in Batangas, that’s three hours from Manila. It’s a really nice spot for swimming, freediving, a lot of coral. I was not that interested. I was thinking, Oh, OK. I just go down and go up and that’s it. What else? Those were my thoughts. And so I did and I was like, Oh, it’s actually really challenging. Holding your breath with all the movements you need to do and equalization in the ears, it kind of made me think, Actually it’s not easy.

The challenge I had was my breath hold and equalization, basically the two big factors in freediving for you to go deeper. I started with a 30-second breath hold, and could barely reach three meters.

Most of the sports that I get into, what makes me do it is the challenging part. It kind of hits your ego in a way, like, Hm, you can’t do it. So your ego’s like, Can you not do it? You can do it. It’s a lot of self-talk. So I started doing a lot of training.

I told my friend, Hey, I wanted to learn and I wanted to teach under your school. So they agreed, like OK, you work for us, you can train, and then you can teach for us.

My very first deep dive, I hit 28 meters. I reached negative buoyancy, where your body just falls without you doing anything. We call this free falling, and I did not want to stop. That was the time that I knew that I’m gonna do more and I wanna do more.

I got back to Siargao, and you could still feel the devastating part of the typhoon. You could tell that everyone was trying to rebuild their stuff. I was here for a month, fixing our place and the things I needed to settle. But I did not want to give up freediving, because I saw so much potential in it for myself, and I liked to teach.

So I had all these big thoughts, like OK, so I’m gonna have a freediving school in Siargao and then if I get funding, I’m gonna teach all the locals, then this, so on, so forth.

Freediving kind of changed my perception in life. You learn a lot in freediving, the technicality of it. But the thing is that you can also apply it off-water, like being patient, calming down, relaxing. If off-water, let’s say if you have an argument with your boyfriend or whatnot, and you step back, relax first and then speak. Before, I was a very impulsive type, I didn’t have much patience. The thing is that it kind of makes me wonder, I don’t have a lot of patience for other things, but I have patience to do my training. So it made me think that maybe I have that patience inside of me.

I told this to myself. OK, the typhoon was a good thing and a bad thing. It was a bad thing because destroyed my island and my home. But then it was a good thing because I found something that I would never have found if it didn’t happen. I was directed to that. I was directed to freediving.

I found peace in freediving for sure. I did not need to see anything, coral or fish. It’s just the feeling that the water is accepting you, being there, not spitting you out. I’m already too grateful for it.

Jennifer Logronio is a freediving instructor and surfer based in Siargo Island, Philippines. One of her hobbies is crocheting beachwear and accessories. To learn more about her, check out her Instagram .

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Drew Hulsey told his story to producer Sarah Fuss Kessler for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

There’s always a bit of embarrassment when it’s a bigger person doing a typical smaller person sport. Kind of like, why am I even here? Why would I even attempt to do this?

My real job is that I’m a social worker case manager. I didn’t have many outdoor hobbies before. I went fishing a good bit. But I never really saw myself doing “extreme sports.”

I saw the movie Free Solo in early 2019. It was about Alex Honnold, who free solo-d El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. So he climbed about a 3000-foot route without ropes.

It was just something I wanted to go see, and I talked my wife into going to see it as well. I just knew it was gonna be a pretty documentary because it was a Nat Geo film. But I didn’t really know much about climbing.

Watching that movie, I was super interested in how climbers live their lives, as far as living in vans and chasing rocks.

I felt like I wanted to be in that situation where I was on a side of a cliff, and I was looking around me, and just that thrill and that adventure and that moment of, My body took me here. And I had not really had that much beforehand.

Immediately I looked over to my wife, I think as the credits were rolling. I was like, “I want to try that.” I didn’t want to try free soloing. I just wanted to try climbing. So I went home and I Googled, “Can fat people climb?”

I did not find much information or anything. So I made it a point to go to a gym and just ask those questions. Can the ropes hold me? Can bigger guys get on climbing routes and the gym? Will there be a safety issue with it?

And the first gym I went to, they were like, “No, you’re good. The ropes hold thousands of pounds.” And they had harnesses big enough for me, too. That was like, “Oh, I can do this within my means. I can do this.”

I came back a week or two later. Me and my wife bought a Groupon to go to get like three visits and gear. We had our Valentine’s Day date.

I think at the time when I started, I was 310, maybe. I was still pretty nervous. It seems silly for me to wanna go after this goal, but I think at most their walls went 20 to 30 feet, which is good to learn ropes on. I made it to the top of the wall, so that was encouraging enough to keep me going.

The goal the whole time was to be comfortable enough to go climb outside. So we both learned together. We took a trip with my gym and we read some books that helped us out, learned anchor systems and that kind of thing.

I’d say the climbing community is pretty welcoming. You gotta work on your self-esteem. Climbing is a sport where you’re gonna be surrounded by probably the most fit people you’ve ever seen. I’ve had panic attacks at the gym. It would come when I would start comparing myself. I would think that I should be accomplishing it, not falling, or, Oh, so-and-so’s climbing this route right now out in Yosemite and you can’t even climb this 5.6 in a gym. And that’s not healthy for anybody. So in those moments, I’ve just left the gym and talked to my therapist about it.

There’s better ways to talk to yourself than hateful comments. That was me not giving myself space to love myself and be happy for what I was accomplishing.

It became less about trying to climb harder and more about just the fun of it. The goal was never really to lose weight with it or anything, it was just to get my body moving.

A year after seeing that documentary, I got my own climbing van to live in on the weekends. We did a big road trip out there to go to see Yosemite, and that was awesome. I climbed my biggest route, at that point ever, on that trip.

It’s an amazing area for climbing, but it can be hard. But I did it. I always think of that moment of going up that wall and climbing 350 feet, and being surrounded by Half Dome, and El Cap’s just to my left. And climbing behind Camp Four, which is a big historical climbing area. It was an awesome moment because my wife, Sarah, got to meet me at the top, because there was a walk around. You could just hike to the top of the rock. So I got to climb all the way up there and then get to celebrate with her. All the stoke, big hugs and kisses and pictures, and it became a full circle moment, where everything lined up and I realized bigger things could happen.

When it’s not shown in outdoor media that bigger folks go and do these things, the general public probably has no idea that a 300-pound man can go climb a wall. It’s just not shown. So that’s why I posted it on the climbing Reddit, I think I posted my, “I got my 300-pound self up a wall,” and that became the third most-liked post in that climbing Reddit’s history. It was more than Alex Honnold soloing El Cap. It passed that.

So that’s why I started my Instagram. Where I was like, Oh, maybe people are interested in this. And it’s inspired a ton of folks out there to try climbing. It’s led to me having climbing clinics focused on body positivity, I get to do those at climbing events.

My focus then became doing cool stuff in the body that you got. Don’t let society or norms hold you back from doing those things you wanna pursue. You can just start now. Take it a little bit at a time to start, start small and work your way up. That’s the journey. That’s what it is really about. Because once you start moving, you really can’t stop. Especially if you find the right folks to do it with that are encouraging and that’ll keep you motivated.

Climbing is for everybody.

Drew Hulsey is a rock climber, social worker, and an outdoor enthusiast in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Find him on Instagram .

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Anna Wilder Burns told her story to producer Cat Jaffee for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My heart just dropped and I was like, “Oh shit. No, no, no, no.” I could kind of tell it was about to happen, but I didn’t wanna believe it. I thought I was doing well. I was always the hardest worker in the room, I was like, Control what you can control. You can control the fact that like no one can deny the fact that you want it more than anybody else, and that you’re more passionate about this sport than anybody else. This was my entire life and identity.

I’m a filmmaker and photographer, a former-athlete-turned-creative. I like finding people in the world who don’t know how cool they are, and I like showing them through film and photo.

I’m 25. I’m a little bit blunt, and I have that kind of East Coast salt.

I grew up in Maine. I was a very outdoorsy kid. But I also was a very, very, very serious gymnast. I trained for five hours a day, five days a week, getting out of school at 3:00 PM, quick sandwich in the car, practice from 3:30 PM to 8:30 PM. Go home, do homework, go to bed, do it all the next day. My dream was to do college gymnastics. I started gymnastics a little bit late, and moved through it really quickly, and so I caught the attention of some schools, but I definitely wasn’t at the caliber that I would need to be to step on the floor my freshman year and compete.

But, I wanted to try anyway. I thought I got a walk-on spot at the University of New Hampshire, and worked my little booty off. I got there on day two, I was, first of all, a nervous wreck obviously. I had practiced one time, they had seen me do stuff one time. And at the beginning of practice, all the girls were all warming up, and I get pulled out of the running line and they’re like, “Anna, can we come meet you with you in the hallway?”

I’ll never forget how ruthless this was. They pulled me into this side of the gym where everyone could still see me and them. And they told me, “We’re so sorry, but we just can’t have you on. You’re just not there.” And then I just remember my ears ringing, like full panic attack, burst into tears, begging, “Can I just try, can I train on my own? I won’t even train with the team. I’ll do anything. I don’t wanna lose this. I am a gymnast. This is all I know.”

The coach was just like, “No, sorry. No, no, no.” Gave me a hug at the end. I was like, Not only did you just cut me, but you decided to do it in front of everybody. Why not just call me to your office three hours ago and make this way less traumatic?

So I called my mom. She drove right down and picked me up and I went home. This is my second day of freshman year of college. I’m literally on my couch at home wondering, What the hell am I gonna do?

I ended up deciding to say, “Screw you” to those coaches and see if I could train on my own and get to where I need to be to then re-tryout in the Spring. But in the meantime, it was really hard socially because obviously when you’re a D-1 athlete, your team is your family on campus. And so I really wanted to still be involved with the team, especially if I was gonna be on it hopefully the next year. So funny enough, I used to make these GoPro videos of my friends, doing gymnastics, kind of like a ski edit. So I made gymnastics edits, and one of them ended up going semi-viral on YouTube. My Olympian heroes shared it, and so seniors on my team saw that video and were like, “Wait, can you make videos for the team?”

I was like, Well, yeah, I know how to edit a video. And I had just gotten a camera that could record video and not just photo. And so a week after I had gotten cut from the team, I was at the first like exhibition of the gymnastics team at my school filming.

Other teams started to notice, the soccer team would be like, “Anna, can you come to our game and film our game and make a highlight video?” And I was like, “Sure, yeah.” It was so much fun. I was meeting all these people, making friends, still training. As time went on, I just started to burn out. I was tired. I wasn’t eating enough, wasn’t fueling my body correctly, and I kind of knew that it was over. I went and had a final meeting with the UNH coaches to be like, “Maybe I impressed you enough with my work ethic and the fact that I did this all year, that you give me a chance.” And they said, “You know what? No.”

At that time, the video side was rising, and I was hoping maybe I could turn this into something. I got an email from the school diving coach. “Hey, we’ve taught a gymnast how to dive before. We heard you’re kind of done, if you don’t wanna not be an athlete, do you want a spot?” And I was like, Oh, I’ve never jumped off a diving board in my life.

Learning to dive was a much less intense training schedule, but still D-1. And because of the fact that I was still in the athletic department, meeting all my athlete friends, and had a less intense training schedule, my sophomore, junior, and senior year I got to do a lot more video work. I got an internship with the athletic department. They let me go and film all these games, and get paid $7 an hour, and make edits. Getting the chances to play with cameras in college, low-stakes, and just tell stories of my fellow athletes, led me to where I am now.

I remember vividly saying, “I don’t wanna not be a gymnast anymore. What? How can I not be a gymnast anymore?” And I think it takes a lot of time to find that, it’s not gonna be an immediate thing. It took me a full year to really accept that there were more sides of me. I wish kids knew this more, that if you’re a serious athlete, there’s so much more to you, and there’s so much more that the world needs from you than flipping on a four-inch beam.

Anna Wilder Burns is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and photographer. She combines her passions for the outdoors and athletics to tell inspiring stories spanning adventure, conservation and sports. She’s the director of the 2023 film To Be Frank. To learn more about Anna, visit .

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Duy Nguyen told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguiliar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I knew it was gonna be hard, but I didn’t anticipate, honestly, how, how weak-minded I could become. Really wanting it all to be over like, I don’t care how many miles are left, I wanna go home. And I thought I could beat that mindset, and I was better than that mindset.

I’m in Los Angeles, California. I was born in Vietnam, came to America when I was one years old, and lived on the East Coast, Virginia, for about 18 years.

Professionally I run a couple of businesses. I have a restaurant out in LA. I’m a community organizer, host a couple of different event, I have a run club.

I went on a trip to Haiti to film this documentary about regular people running across the country for this nonprofit. I saw what running could do.

It was 200 miles over seven days, and these people weren’t professional athletes.You would see these people running down the street in your neighborhood. And so when I shot this, I kind of realized, Hey, this running thing is pretty cool.

These are all strangers, they decided to run across this country. The bond that they built, the relationships that were formed, it was such an incredible thing to see. I came back to LA and told my friend Mike, “Hey, we gotta do a run club. We gotta get people running.”

My friend and I started Koreatown Run Club maybe eight years ago. We weren’t runners, and we kind of just got pulled into the running world. Meeting all these people, and wanting to do something different and new, we’d never thought it’d grow and change our lives to how it has today.

This run across Haiti is kind of what started my running journey and starting the run club. I would go back every year when they would do the run. The first year, I brought a friend from the run club, and they finished it, and I filmed them. I documented the whole journey.
The next year, I was like, You know what? I got three marathons under my belt. I kind of know what I’m doing. I’m just gonna run it. I’m just gonna sign up. And I signed up to run the 200 miles. And honestly, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

So March or April 2018 was when I ran. It’s a multi-day thing. When you’re running 200 miles across Haiti, you gotta run a marathon, and then the next day you gotta run another marathon. It’s very stressful on the body, obviously. Ultras are different than marathons for sure. It’s a different mindset you go into to finish it.

So the year I ran it, I really knew a lot of people there, but honestly, I was on my own a lot of the time, because the group spreads out when you’re running 30 to 40 miles per day. Me being on the slower end, I was coming in pretty late.

The first day, a 32-mile day, I did it. Obviously it was hard. But I did it, and then I had six days left. The second day was only 13 miles, but it was over a literal mountain.

Throughout the day, I just got slower and slower and more and more tired, as you would, and my mind was just going in a really dark place like, Man, I’m keeping everyone behind, I’m slowing everything down. There was a truck following me, making sure I was OK at that point. That truck had other things to do, but instead it was just pacing me at the end, and I just felt really bad. I was walking, and I could walk fine. I wasn’t injured or anything, but my heart just wasn’t in it. My lungs just were not in it. I was really wanting to stop at that point.

I was just walking and they were walking with me and they were talking with me. “How are you doing?” And I just didn’t wanna talk at all. I just wanted to tell them, “Just leave me, I’ll finish and I’ll see you there.” But they didn’t, and they probably shouldn’t because, you know, safety-wise, you don’t know what can happen out there.

Then it just got to a point where I was like, You know what, I’m gonna call it. I’m keeping everyone up. I don’t wanna be the guy that basically walked this whole thing.

So I called it, I was like, “It’s OK, I’m gonna get in the truck.” And they’re like,”OK no problem.”

I got in the truck, I drove maybe half a mile up the route, and I was at the top of the mountain at that point. From then on it was maybe two miles, all downhill.

That’s when I kind of felt it. I was like, Man, I could have just walked for another ten minutes and I would’ve been at the top of this mountain, and I could have just coasted down. But the moment I got into the truck was the moment I took that DNF, which stands for did not finish.

I knew even if I ran every other day of this race, I’d still have that asterisk of not running those three last miles, of getting into the truck and going back home.

And so the next day I felt really bad. Everyone was sympathetic and everything. They knew where I was coming from. They knew I wasn’t a “real” ultra marathoner, or runner. And, I did too, but I really wanted to be able to say, “Hey, I ran across Haiti, the race that got me into running.”

Even though I didn’t finish that second day, there were five, six days left.

It’s crazy because when you’re running a marathon or you’re doing something really hard and then you come up to the cheer zone where all your friends are and they’re cheering for you, you just get this boost of energy that I can’t explain. You just run hard. You just get all this energy from seemingly nowhere. For a brief moment, everything’s good. Everything’s cool. You’re not in pain.

When that third day came and there was like no real pressure, I was like, Well, no one’s looking at me. No one really is expecting anything from me. I’m just gonna have fun. And I went out there and I just ran. I didn’t really think about finishing it. It’s like, Hey, if I don’t finish, I already didn’t finish.

So I just ran with no pressure, just fun, all smiles. Ran with different groups. And I felt really good. I felt really, really good.

The final day was 52 miles. I had run the whole thing with my friend Iggy. I know he had suffered from an ankle injury, so we’d probably be going the same pace. And we ran the whole thing together and we really pushed that last two miles.

Me and my friend were just running from pole to pole. There’s a little light pole, you run there. Then, “Let’s go to that other light pole. Let’s go to that other light pole.” And it’s just a straight shot, and there’s nothing really around. You’re just running from one light pole to the next endlessly.

And I just remember, Oh my goodness, it’s about to be over. We’re finally going to stop running and we don’t have to run again the next day. And we ran all the way to the beach, and he ran literally all the way to the beach and got into the water. Once I passed that finish line, I just sat down and watched him get in the water and I was like, I’m done moving. Next time I’m moving, I’m going back in the car, going to the restaurant. But I just wanted to sit down, and that’s what I did. I sat down and reflected over the past couple days, and I was proud of myself, because I continued on and I did run 160-some miles. And for me at that time, that was a big thing. So I was proud of myself for being able to finish that, especially that last day. Because the last day was really, really tough.

I knew I wanted to sign up for it again while I was still there. I was probably the first person to sign up, and I came home and I was like, Yeah, I ran most of it. I didn’t do it all. But I knew that it was just a personal thing. No one thought of me any differently. They weren’t like, “He said he was gonna do one thing and he only, he didn’t.” It wasn’t anything like that.

I saw myself how others saw me. It wasn’t a failure. It was like a learning experience. Of course, one thing I really learned from that experience was to really take a step back outside of what’s going on, outside of how you feel, outside of what you’re even thinking. Think more clearly about everything that’s happening around you. I feel like if I had done that, I would not have dropped out. I would not have gotten on that truck. I would’ve said, I’m half a mile from the peak and I can cruise down, and finish and continue on to the next day.

But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I think I was just too in the moment. Everyone says to live in the moment, but sometimes you have to take a step back and pause and maybe just stop running and walk and really think about what’s going on before you make any decisions like that.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. And just carry forward.

Duy Nguyen is a creative entrepreneur and community-builder based in Los Angeles, where he co-founded the Koreatown Run Club. He is still hoping to return to Haiti to complete the run again, this time officially. For more information about his work, check out .

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Russel Palecek told his story to producer Sarah Fuss Kessler for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

A couple of officers that worked for me were in the Reserves and got deployed and came back, and you could see a change in them and you could see the struggling some of them went through.

Once you meet a veteran that went through what these guys go through now with the conflicts they’ve been in, you know how lucky you were. I volunteered in 1975, and was planning on graduating and joining the service whether or not Vietnam was still there. I just got lucky that I joined after it was over. So I felt I should be able to give back.

I live in the Villages, Florida. It’s between Leesburg, Florida and Ocala, Florida. I am with Patriot Service Dogs. I am a board member and assistant trainer.

Before I retired, I worked for the New Jersey Department of Corrections as a corrections sergeant.

From 1975 to 1978, I was military police for the Army. During the Cold War, as most veterans say. During my service, it was more of a security capacity, escorting ammunition and missiles from bunkers to Air Force bases. So I feel uncomfortable if somebody tells me, “Thank you for your service,” because I might have joined, but I didn’t have to go through what the veterans I’ve met have. I feel that I should be able to give back to them because they have seen combat and I was lucky enough not to.

I had many dogs in my childhood. My first childhood dog was a golden retriever named Lady. I was one of four children, and I was always bringing a dog home that I would find as a stray somewhere. Even when I was in the service and I was stationed in Germany, I had a dog over there.

A dog will be your companion. Your best friend, without looking for something in return. So that’s what appeals to me about a dog. A dog is loyal to the person that they live with, and nothing can change that.

I moved from the Philadelphia area to the Villages in 2019, basically for retirement. Our last dog passed away probably about six months before. So I was looking for something where I could still travel and not have a dog at home, but that I could still have a dog in my life.

I started working with Patriot Service Dogs after meeting an individual that spoke to me about him volunteering with the organization. I reached out with an application online, and they responded to me and explained what the program was doing.

The mission of Patriot Service Dogs is to train dogs for disabled veterans. Our program provides a veteran with a much-needed service, but it also provides some way for the women inmates in Lowell Correctional Institute to do something also to help veterans, and also for themselves.

They’re actually the backbone of the training for the dogs. The women of Lowell Correctional do 90 percent of the work. The hard work I should say, especially when you have an eight-week-old puppy that needs to be potty trained and taught the basics.

My desire was to be a weekend raiser. Because the dogs can learn all the tricks, but they need to know how to do it in the world. You don’t have sliding doors like you have at grocery stores in prison. You don’t have cars riding by. You don’t have trash trucks riding by, you don’t have buses. So the dogs need to be exposed to all that.

They would drop off on a Friday, and you would have the dog and give it real world experiences, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then the director would drive them back to their inmate trainers.

Now some dogs are proficient in areas of retrieval where if you drop your keys, they’ll grab the keys and bring them to you. If you point to it and tell them, they’ll grab your phone and give it to you. They’ll grab the remote control. We teach the dog to retrieve canes if a person has a cane. They can brace if people need help steadying when they get up.

Lately there’s been a lot of PTSD dogs, and for some reason you can’t really teach a dog about PTSD, but their senses can tell, once they start bonding, that that person needs some calming or that person needs some attention.

And I’ve met veterans that had a dog for that specific reason. One of them had started getting Parkinson’s, and the dog, itself, would put his head in his legs when he felt the guy was shaking. And then he would call his wife over and say, “I need my meds.” Because the dog alerted them that he’s starting to shake. So, dogs are phenomenal at just having the instinct to adjust to their owners and what they need.

The first placement I did with the veteran training was with a black lab. He was probably seven months old. I had him numerous times, and got to do a lot of firsts, like going to the airport with him, going to malls, going around buses at the airport. He was going to a veteran that never had a dog before. So, I got to see what it’s like for somebody that really needs to be taught from the ground up on how to have a dog in his life.

Before he got the dog, he couldn’t do crowds, he couldn’t go out in public. It was a unique experience just to see him become more open as we did things. Even for him not being a dog person, you could see that dog was focused on him on day one. I had him for months. He was still focused on that veteran. So, it’s just amazing to see that happen. These dogs that make it through our program, they know who they’re working for once they get placed. It doesn’t take that long before a dog becomes a bonded pair with their veteran.

That veteran, the first veteran I helped with, he was amazed at everything the dog could do. It’s a comfort for them. They know that their buddy’s there, their buddy is next to them, and nothing’s gonna change that.

It doesn’t matter who you are, the tears flow at graduation. It’s hard to explain until you can actually speak to a veteran after he just gets his dog, after that week of training, and how he feels. It’s so rewarding.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been thanked. And you want to just say, “Stop saying ‘thank you.’ I’m thanking you because of what you did.”

I’m getting a benefit just as much as they are.

Russel Palecek is an Army veteran and retired corrections police sergeant. He works with dogs and his fellow veterans at Patriot Service Dogs, a winner of the 2022 Defender Service Award. Established by Land Rover, these awards recognize the nonprofits doing selfless service for their communities every day. You can learn more about this winner at .

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Andrew Bernstein told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was trying to get back into the gym and I was working out, from a seated position in the wheelchair, but I was just not used to moving around again, and everything was out of balance.

It was scary, because every time I couldn’t stand up, It was a reminder of how weak I was, and how much my body had changed, and how much my life was going to change going forward.

Everything was hard.

I am better known as Bernie. I’m originally from Brooklyn, New York, and I’ve lived in Colorado since 2018.

I am a PR and marketing professional, and I work for the virtual cycling platform Zwift.

For a lot of my adult life, I was an amateur bike racer, and had a lot of passion for cycling and riding and racing bikes. Now that I’m no longer actively racing, I still ride a lot, and I’m very passionate about it, but I also have a passion for just being outside and hiking.

In 2019, I was the victim of a hit-and-run, and survived pretty traumatic injuries, including a lot of broken bones and collapsed lungs and internal bleeding.

I suffered a spinal cord injury, which resulted in paraplegia. My left leg is now paralyzed, and it also affects my bladder. Whenever only one side of your body’s impacted, you get all these imbalances. So I live with a lot of chronic pain as a result of my spinal cord injury.

I was hospitalized for three months and then I went home with his new paraplegic body and, and had to spend a lot of time learning how to get in and out of the car, and get into the house, and use the bathroom, take a shower. All basic things that you have to relearn when your body no longer functions as it did.

There were a lot of challenges, but one of the ones that has stuck with me as the hardest to overcome was learning how to stand.

When I was in the hospital, I was largely using a wheelchair. And when I was discharged from the hospital, I had been given a leg brace called a KAFO, which stands for knee, ankle, foot, orthotic.

When you don’t have any strength around those joints and the muscles around those joints, the brace can keep your leg rigid. It almost becomes like a peg leg, and you can put weight through it.

I was learning how to walk with that, and I was getting along pretty well, but they still tell you “Listen, when you’re out in the world, you’re on the sidewalk, you’re getting in and out of the car, sometimes slips and falls happen.” So it’s important before they let you leave the hospital that you know how to get yourself back on your feet.

The way that I did that was with a physical therapist in the hospital. She would get out a wrestling mat, and she’d have me transfer to the floor, that’s the physical therapy term, transfer.

I’d get down to the ground, and then we’d try all these different methods of standing. Sometimes she would grab me by the waist of my shorts and haul me up to my feet. I didn’t quite have the strength to get there. I had all these weird imbalances, and my muscles were super atrophied. I had previously been bed bound for two months. So sometimes just the act of standing would be painful. I’d wrench my back, and then I wouldn’t wanna try again for days or weeks.

Finally I was coming to the end of my time at the hospital. Being in the hospital is terrible, but at the same time there’s a huge amount of support, and that particular hospital was well staffed and the staff there was very caring and very supportive. This process of learning how to stand was daunting because not only was there a physical challenge, but it was also like every time I did it was a reminder that I’m taking a step towards leaving this very supportive environment.

But it eventually got to a point where it’s like, OK, it is time. I shouldn’t be here anymore. I’m well, or I’m well enough. I’m occupying a bed that could be used for someone who needs it more. Plus, you wanna go home, you wanna be with the cat.

I realized I really did need to learn this skill if I wanted to be able to exist in the community. So, I was practicing with my physical therapist, her name was Natasha. I just remember one day, close to the end of my time where I was like, “OK Natasha, I really need to get this down. Let’s try it.” I think I know the right positioning for my hands and I think I know the right position for my feet and I think I know exactly what to do this time. So, I got transferred to the floor on the wrestling mat, and got my feet all set, and got my crutches set so I could lean on them, and started to get myself up. I didn’t quite make it, and fell back to the ground.

Natasha knew from all of our previous tries that oftentimes, I was one and done. And she asked if I wanted to try again. I was like, “Yeah, I do.” And I stood up for the first time.

Natasha asked me what I had done differently and I just said, “Natasha, I just decided to do it this time.”

I think that moment will always stick with me because it taught me that mindset was such an important part of everything in front of me. And that was very important because getting back on my feet was just the early part of this recovery. And since then, I’ve decided that I wanted to ride again, and I do ride again.

I decided I wanted to hike a lot, and I figured out how to do that. And I’ve been able to drive my recovery by setting goals and then deciding what I want to do, and then working backwards and figuring out the steps that I need to take to get there. And that’s been very helpful to me.

It’s helped me accomplish a lot of things despite, or maybe even because of, my paraplegia, my spinal cord injury.

I think the single biggest lesson was just that I had a choice. I could choose to wallow, and certainly I met a lot of people who had made that choice. Or I could choose to move forward. And that’s enabled me to have a strong recovery. And I’m very grateful.

I’m relatively new to this. I’ve been injured for four years, and I’ve had the great privilege to speak to both people who are newer in their injuries and also people who have been in it way longer than me.

This is advice that I’ve been given and also advice that I’ve given to others: You should approach it with curiosity. I think our natural inclination is to be scared and depressed and fearful. And that’s completely understandable. I definitely was in those spaces at times, and still am. But I think what I’ve come to learn is that if you’re curious about what this means for you, if you’re curious about what you can do that makes your body feel good, and what you can do that maybe helps you improve. If you’re curious about what your life looks like now, and what it can look like, those are all things that I think can help you focus on the right things and improve.

Some people with spinal cord injuries will not see a physical recovery. I’m very fortunate that my injury has these things go relatively minor, so I’ve been able to recover. That’s not the case for everyone, but I do think that any person with this type of injury can try to think about how they will move forward in their world, and how they will continue to be an engaged member of their community and continue to enjoy life.

And I think we can all do that. And it just takes a little bit of work, a little bit more work for a person with a disability to do so than an able-bodied person. But it’s possible for all of us.

Andrew Bernstein is an elite track cyclist and marketer in the outdoor industry. He has also written about his recovery on outsideonline.com. You can follow him on Twitter @bernietweets.

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Stephanie Prellwitz told her story to producer Sarah Fuss Kessler for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I remember seeing things like a gas station lifted off its foundation and moved across the parking lot. I remember there was this dentist office where the entire building was gone. Everything, all the walls, the plumbing, but a single dentist chair was left bolted to the ground. It felt like an impossible task for these communities.

I live in Ripon, Wisconsin. I’m the CEO of a nonprofit organization called the Green Lake Association. I am an engineer. I’m a gardener. I’m a mother. I’m a wife. And I’m trying to keep it all in balance.

I was a sophomore at the University of Kentucky, and I was studying biomedical engineering. So I was working in labs dissecting mice, and Hurricane Katrina happened.

I took my fall break with a student group, and I headed down to Pass Christian, Mississippi, east of New Orleans. We were tasked with going there to help with the cleanup. And often we were working with the homeowners themselves to provide some relief, an extra set of hands to help them clean up the wreck.

The hurricane happened in August, so months had passed, and it was still in disarray. It looked like the day after it happened.

Obviously I wasn’t affected like the entire community was, but what I saw there I think forever changed me. What I saw is that Pass Christian, Mississippi was completely destroyed. It was leveled. Nothing was standing there. Rubble that filled entire city blocks was as high as buildings. Old photographs and heirlooms and history…it was all washed away.

It seemed out of balance, that nature was out of balance. The hot summer, it was this oppressive heat. We slept in a hollowed out church, so just the frame of the building existed, and a roof. We slept in our sleeping bags.

I remember pulling out moldy insulation, pulling out refrigerators that had been rotting in the sun. We had to duct tape them shut and make sure that the black oozing goo didn’t make its way out of the refrigerator onto your arms.

It felt impossible.

I think for me, the moments of hope were during mealtime. Putting on a lunch or a dinner for an entire community was no small feat. Still seeing that people found moments to laugh and to smile and to talk about their day. These were people who lost everything, but they still had hope.

And what was so inspiring was that working together and seeing the community working together made a difference. We didn’t solve all of the problems, but in this teeny town, in this single community, that we were able to work together to make a difference, felt like somehow restoring that natural balance.

So I came back to Lexington and I ditched biomedical engineering. I got out of the lab and I changed my major to biosystems and agricultural engineering. That for me really opened the door. I got to learn about these living, breathing systems, using engineering and biology to work with communities to solve environmental problems.

I worked for a few years at a consulting engineering firm, a civil engineering firm. I was sizing bridges, sizing culverts, and doing erosion control plans, but for me it was missing that people component. So I went back to grad school in the same major at Madison. I found myself living in Ripon, Wisconsin. I then took a job at the Green Lake Association.

Green Lake is in central Wisconsin, in the Lake Michigan watershed. So the water that flows from Green Lake makes its way northward and eventually drains in Green Bay to Lake Michigan. The mission of the Green Lake Association is to safeguard this amazing lake to improve its water quality and protect it from critical threats.

Last summer, right after the Fourth of July weekend, we started to hear some noise from really concerned neighbors about this non-metallic mine, which is really a quarry, that was going in their neighborhood. What was so alarming to us is that this non-metallic mine, that would be a 40-acre gravel pit, would be a single farm field away from these really incredible springs which are well known in the community, revered. These are magical spaces. They form the headwaters of our trout streams, and also this is the same groundwater that is flowing into people’s drinking water wells.

Literally just that year we had learned that brook trout were finally, naturally reproducing in Dakin Creek. They were last seen 70 years ago. The Green Lake Association worked on this project to bring brook trout back. And not only were they living and thriving, but they were naturally reproducing, which is such an important indicator of the water quality.

And so when this mine project came along, I think the whole community realized what was at stake.

We worked in the coming months, and we filed an appeal to the Board of Adjustment. We rallied the hell out of the community. All of that came together on December 23, two days before Christmas. There was a blizzard like I had never seen before, and I thought, We’re gonna lose the community voice here. But when I showed up at the courthouse, there was a line out the door, and as I weaved my way through the line and went through security, what I saw was there were probably a hundred people in the courthouse. There were hundreds of people who had joined online.

For hours during public comment, people came to the microphone. I remember hearing from a dairy farmer who lived across the street. He was worried about the quality of the water and the quantity of the water that he relied on to water his dairy cows. We heard stories from the Ho-Chunk tribe, who talked about the spiritual value of these properties, and how much it mattered to not have short-term gains permanently degrade these natural resources.

And so yes, we had the science and we had the data to show that this mine was gonna be a problem. But I think most importantly, I felt like the community carried us through. Their stories were so powerful that we were able to stop the mine.

When I think about what we were able to accomplish, it reminds me so much of what I saw in Hurricane Katrina. I think a lot of the work is about community trying to bring back balance to make these natural systems resilient. So that when the next challenge comes along they’re more able to cope with it.

Stephanie Prellwitz is the CEO of the Green Lake Association, a winner of the 2022 Defender Service Award. Established by Land Rover, these awards recognize the nonprofits doing selfless service for their communities every day. You can learn more about the Green Lake Association at .

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Jr Rodriguez told his story to producer Cat Jaffee for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s really hot and they’re just like, Wait, when are we gonna get there? And we’re like, “It’s around this bend, and we want everyone to look up at this area.” They see this really big, brown blob. And one kid says, “What’s that big brown blob? It looks like a monster.” We’re like, “That’s the nest. That’s the bald eagles’ nest.” They’re like, “What?”

It’s the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It’s a very large nest that this pair of bald Eagles has been living in for a long time.

I’m a Mestizo filmmaker and photographer based out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I am from Houston, Texas. Born and raised. I like to say the Bayou City, it throws people off.

I grew up, on the north side of Houston, pretty poor. I was the first person to graduate college in my family, first-gen. So that’s a pretty big deal that I think not a lot of my close friends even know.

The year was 2015. I was 25. I had scheduled an interview for an environmental conservation organization.

I don’t know if you know, but Houston floods. There’s a few seasons in Houston. There’s hot, hotter, and hurricane. So when there’s a hurricane, it’s just dumping. And because these Black and brown neighborhoods don’t have flood mitigation, these bayous swell up and homes get flooded.

This organization would couple federal dollars to establish these flood mitigation banks, which are essentially holes in the ground to store water, during hurricane season. But the other seasons, they double up as parks.

I took this job to try and be a part of a solution in my community.

We took a group of like, God, I wanna say it was like 20 kids, and it’s a lot. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with kids like that age, middle school, high school range. They’re a lot to handle, people say, like herding cats. I think they’re more like herding different species. Imagine Noah’s arc and it’s you got a goat, you got an elephant, you got a giraffe. They all have their own characteristics, their own way of being. Trying to wrangle them, not only the kids on land, but then you put them on water, we put them on kayaks. You add this element of the bayou having a negative connotation. That’s what we’re taught, as kids. You throw your trash in the bayou, you see carts of trash just floating in the bayou.

A bayou is a meandering stream. It’s not technically a river; it’s usually man-made. It used to have a natural flow, but if you go to Houston, the banks are concrete because they really are just trying to move water out of where people live. There’s not a lot of current, so it’s fairly easy to paddle up the bayou.

We’re going up, and there’s one bend after about a quarter of a mile of paddling. It’s really hot in Houston. This is the hot, hot time. We hear a huge whap. And the kids were like, “What was that?” Somebody yells, “Enrique just slapped the water!” And Enrique’s like, “No, I didn’t.” And then it happens again, slap, and it’s really loud. I’m scared. I’m like, What the hell? What is happening? And I look at my guide like, What’s going on? You know, the old head shake with the big eyes, and he’s like, “Oh, that’s an alligator gar.” And I was like, OK, I know what an alligator gar is.

They can get really big, they have a very large snout, very sharp teeth. If you watch River Monsters, there is an episode about alligator gar.

So I have this thing in my head. I was like, Oh God, this alligator gar is trying to defend its territory because there’s 10, 15 boats in the water. If it’s making that big of a noise, it’s really big.

The kids are kind of freaking out. Just knowing that there is a large predator fish around was very nerve-wracking, and just keeping the kids calm and telling them, “We’re in their ecosystem. This is the nature that we wanted. It’s not all majestic, it’s real out here.” And as we’re all gonna calmly turn our boats around to start heading back to our entry point, another kid is like, “Oh my God, look at the bank!” There’s a sunbathing alligator. And the kids just start screaming.

We calmly all start going back to our entry point. Things calm down, and you just hear a lot of laughter. You hear a lot of, “Oh wow, I had no idea. I wonder where else we can see big birds?” I think that’s what I was trying to teach those kids. It’s like right in, not only their backyards, but it’s under the bayou. You’re driving around it all the time. If you just look up, Houston is in the flyway of all these migratory birds. There’s a lot of greenery that exists in Houston, and so because of these bayous there’s a lot of water. That’s nature. Nature is the overgrown lot next to your mom’s house. That’s what I had, and I had the opportunity to try to change their perception of what nature is, because in media they’re gonna show you one specific type of nature and I think the kids in my neighborhood, we have the overgrown lot, and that’s just as good and just as powerful and it’s gonna teach you the same things.

That’s why I came back, because I learned the same thing that the kids did. That nature is in Houston, Texas. It’s in the, people like to say, the inner city. It’s the tree in the neighborhood. Trying to reconcile that within myself because I did feed into the like, go climb the big mountain, go experience this far away place.

And our reality is over here, and it’s not that you shouldn’t chase that, but what we have is equally as valuable.

Junior Rodriguez is a first-generation bilingual, bicultural storyteller, conservationist, and multi-sport athlete, born and raised in the Bayou City. He currently lives in Jackson, Wyoming, where he focuses on creating projects that empower communities to tell their own stories. To learn more about him, visit .

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