TUS01603-Part 1_mixdown

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme, live, in person, and without notes. I’m Marc Moss, your host, founder, and executive director of Tell Us Something. Tell Us Something is supported this year in part by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something, at its core, does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast.

Katie Little: I didn’t have a cellphone, so I have a landline. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with a landline, but a landline [00:01:00] is, like, a stationary phone at your house. And so I’ve got this landline, but it’s, like, a fancy landline ’cause it’s cordless. But it’s not fancy enough to have caller ID.

Barbara Bartmess: I can’t describe the thoughts and the feelings that jumbled through me when I heard that word. All of my years of trying to fit in finally had a name.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme pursuit of happiness.

Stasia Orkwiszewski: During and after this period, I developed horrible postpartum depression.

I felt like I had touched life and death, and motherhood had cracked me open, and all of the despair of the world came rushing in.

Marc Moss: Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on September 23rd, 2026, at the George & Jane Dennison Theatre.

Jeroen “JT” Thornton: And at that moment, as I’m heading to the bathroom, I hear, “Hey, Jaron, you should come with us.”

I turn around and I look, and the bride and groom standing in front of a Hummer stretch limo.

Marc Moss: Stay with us [00:02:00] Having just crossed the threshold of the autumnal equinox, we want to pause and ground ourselves in the history of the space we occupy. The University of Montana is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Salish and Kalispel, and other Indigenous peoples.

We honor their generations of stewardship and their enduring, unbroken connection to these valleys, mountains, and rivers. Autumn is a season of transition. It is a time of harvest, of preparing for the winter, and historically, a time that brings communities closer together as the days grow shorter. As we celebrate the power of personal storytelling, it is vital to recognize the thousands of years of oral traditions, shared histories, and profound stories that have echoed across this very specific landscape long before the University of Montana existed.

Let us carry a deep respect for this land and for its original and current stewards [00:03:00] into the stories that we share and listen to today

Remember this: Tell Us Something stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. To that end, our third storyteller in today’s podcast speaks about suicidal ideation and pregnancy trauma with frank language. Sensitive listeners, please take care of yourselves. In our first story, it’s summertime in small town Missoula, and freshly single bartender Katie Little thinks she’s struck gold when a handsome skateboarding-toting regular walks into her bar.

In the pre-smartphone world of handwritten phone numbers, fogged up head colds, and landlines with no caller ID, a mix-up leaves her planning a date with the wrong man. Katie calls her story A Bottle of Wine. Thanks for listening.

Katie Little: So it’s the summer of 2002, [00:04:00] and I had just gotten out of a relationship And my brother and I are living together, and I’m bartending in a bar in downtown Missoula called The Ale House. And The Ale House was really interesting because it was this bar that was, like, kind of attached to this skateboard shop called Elements.

I don’t know if any of you remember those places. But the bulk of the people that came into the bar were skateboarders. One day that summer, a guy comes in, and I had never seen him before, and I usually knew everybody that came in. And he comes in, and immediately I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this guy is, like, so cute.”

He is tan, and he’s got dark hair, and he’s got a skateboard, and he’s this cross between, like, a hippie and a mountaineer and a skateboarder. So he’s great. And I’m meanwhile doing, like, what you would do in a skateboard bar. I’m sitting at the bar reading a book, listening to Tracy Chapman. I’m just, like, luring men [00:05:00] in.

And so this guy comes in, he sits down, and I’m already like, my heart is beating probably as much as it’s beating right now. And he asks me for a glass of water, and it’s not the normal order. Usually it’s PBR. And so already I’m thinking, “Okay, this guy, like, this is great.” And he asks me what I’m reading, and he tells me his name is Dan, Dan the skateboarder.

And he tells me he just moved to town from Telluride, and we have this, like, nice conversation, and the bar’s really empty ’cause it’s in the daytime. And so we talk for a while, and then Dan leaves. And if you’re familiar with Missoula back in the early 2000s, especially in the summer, it felt really small.

So Dan and I inevitably just keep running into each other. And we finally decide that, like, we should exchange numbers. So we exchange numbers, and I kinda just let fate lead itself. At that same time in the summer, being Missoula small, my cousin Ben moves to town, and we exchange numbers as well. And when I say exchange [00:06:00] numbers at that time, we didn’t have cell phones, so we’re, like, literally writing on a piece of paper, and we’re exchanging numbers.

So I’m feeling, like, good about myself. I’m like, yeah, I’m, like, crushing– I’m, I’m making the social calendar for myself. During my newfound single life, I have this best friend named Maya, and she’s on this journey with me of me being single, and she knows any of the dates that I’ve gone on. She knows all about this guy Dan that I’m, like, becoming obsessed with.

And, uh, she tells me that she’s having a party at her house. And Maya and I both agree that that is, like, a great time for me to ask Dan to go to this party. So I give it a couple days because I’m, like, trying to play it cool. And in the meantime, I get a phone call. And back then, like I said, I didn’t have a cell phone.

So I have a landline. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with a landline, but a landline is, like, a stationary phone at your house. And so I’ve, I’ve got this landline, but it’s, like, a fancy landline ’cause it’s cordless, but it’s not fancy enough to have caller ID. [00:07:00] So I have no caller ID And I get this phone call, and at this time I have this, like, horrible head cold.

My– I’m congested. It’s hard for me to hear. I’m all plugged up. And I answer the phone, no caller ID, and in my foggy brain, I hear this person say, “Hey, Katie, it’s Dan.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s Dan the skateboarder. Like, what are the chances of him calling me? This is, like, incredible.” So I tell him that my friend Maya’s having this party, and we make a plan, and he asks me where we should meet, and I tell him I’m bartending at the bar, but I’m getting off early so he can come.

And then he asks me what he should bring, and I tell him to bring a bottle of wine because at that point I’m like twenty-two and I’m, you know, like adulting and doing what I’m doing. And I get off the phone and along on this single journey is my brother that I’m living with, so he knows all about Dan too.

So I tell, tell him that I’m like going on this date with Dan. [00:08:00] And my brother and I devise this like plan that we think is so clever that my brother is gonna sit at the end of the bar and see who this Dan guy is when he comes to go on this date with me, and we just think it’s like the most brilliant idea.

So the day comes and my brother is sitting at the end of the bar and I’m finishing up my shift and we’re both like anxiously awaiting for Dan to show up. And instead of Dan walking in, in walks our cousin Ben. And my brother and I are like, “Okay, well that’s like weird.” But then my eyes immediately go to Ben’s hand, and in Ben’s hand is a bottle of wine And at that point, I know that I, and my brother knows that I have asked my cousin out on a date And I’m on a date with my cousin, and my brother is giving me this look like from the bar like, “You are [00:09:00] crushing this.”

Like you are like, dang, you are knocking this out of the park, this whole dating thing. And my cousin Ben is the nicest person that you’ll ever meet, so I don’t have it in me to tell him that he was not the suitor intended for this date. So I pull myself together, and I say to Ben, I’m like, “Hey, Ben, um, let’s go to my house, and I’ll get ready, and then we can go to Maya’s party.”

So we get to my house, and the very first thing I do is I grab that cordless landline, and I run straight up to my bedroom, and I call Maya. And I tell Maya what I’ve done, that I’m dating my cousin, I’m on a date. And Maya does exactly what I think she’s gonna do. She starts laughing hysterically and, you know, making fun of me.

Then because I’m on the phone and I can hear everything, she decides to tell the whole party what I’ve done. And that’s when the party chimes in and starts saying things like, um, “What base do you [00:10:00] think you’re gonna get to tonight?” Or like, “Did you guys make this plan at your family reunion?” Or like, “Is there chemistry there?”

So I immediately realized like, this is a bad idea. I’m not– I’m– We’re not gonna go to Maya’s party. So I go downstairs, and I tell Ben, and Ben’s so nice. And I say, I, you know, “I think that we should just stay here.” So Ben opens our bottle of wine, and we start our date. And because my cousin is so nice, he’s saying things to me like, “I’m so glad that we’re alone,” or, “I just wanted this like alone time with you.”

And in my mind, I am thinking, no. Like, no, this is bad. No, no, no. Because Ben doesn’t know, but I know that I’m dating him, and I’m on a fucking date with my cousin. So, so we finish the bottle of wine, and the night ends, and, you know, it’s a lovely evening. Ben’s a perfect gentleman. And he leaves, and I end my date with my cousin.[00:11:00]

A few weeks later, I am at the bar at Charlie’s, and I’m sitting in the back. And if you know Charlie’s, like, the back is kind of bright and illuminated, and I’m probably thinking about all, like, the great decisions I’ve been making lately. And all of a sudden, in walks Dan, the skateboarder. And every– My heart, I’m just like, “Oh, my God.

He’s just as cute as I remember. His– He’s got these hazel green eyes,” and, like, he– everything. All the feelings are coming back. And I look at him, and he looks at me. I, like, motion for him, and he immediately comes over and sits down by me. And I tell him, um, “I ne- I need to tell you something. There’s, there’s this story I have to tell you.”

But then I say, “But before I do it, I’m gonna buy you a drink because I think you should have a drink before I tell you this story.” So I buy Dan a drink, and I tell him how I accidentally dated my cousin, thinking I was dating him. And Dan has this [00:12:00] most, like, kind demeanor, and he’s so sweet, and he’s listening to me, but then he gets really quiet.

And I’m thinking, “Oh, God. This is, this is bad. This is, uh, this is bad decision.” But I’m like, “This is a second bad decision I’ve made.” ‘Cause the first one was when I dated my cousin. So I’m having this moment, and I’m like, “Oh, God, why did I do this?” And Dan looks at me, and I’m still dreading this, whatever is gonna come out of his mouth.

And he says to me, “Katie,” in the nicest, kindest voice, “That is the best story I’ve ever heard.” After that, Dan and I start dating. We’ve been together ever since I know. He is, he is the love of my life. We have two incredible teenagers who I definitely remin- remind not to date your cousin. It’s, it’s a hard, hard rule at our house.

Um, but oftentimes when I think about this story, and I’ve told it to [00:13:00] people, I think about where else in the, in the world could you go on a date with your cousin only to find the love of your life? And the answer is Missoula.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Katie. Katie Little is a wife, mom of two kiddos, and two and a half dogs. In our next story, Barbara Bartmess suddenly sees her entire life of isolation in a breathtaking new light after watching her neighbor’s toddler being diagnosed with autism. Realizing the invisible curtain she’s lived behind her whole life finally has a name, she sets out on a raw, deeply personal quest to unlock what she’s missed most: human connection.

Listen to Barbara’s journey about breaking through self-imposed barriers and learning how to truly love in a story that she calls My Journey to Unlocking My Heart. Thanks for [00:14:00] listening.

Barbara Bartmess: Our neighbor John talked about the excitement and joy in his three-year-old son Ryan’s eyes as he ripped paper and revealed another Christmas toy. Without warning, a change came over those beautiful brown eyes. John says it’s like a curtain, a visible barrier that shuts out his family

I know that, Curtain I live inside that curtain, fingering its threads, ready to pull it tight and shut out the [00:15:00] world John says he’s thankful that Ryan lives in a time where he has help. Ryan had just been diagnosed with autism I can’t describe The thoughts and the feelings that jumbled through me when I heard that word All of my pain All of my loneliness All of my years of trying to fit in finally had a name, autism I was 61 years old.

I have autism Autism wasn’t recognized when I was born. [00:16:00] Even in the ’80s when my children were young, autism conjured up a, a picture of a non-verbal individual sitting in a corner rocking back and forth

Today, the autism spectrum ranges from that nonverbal child to those who are considered high functioning but have other signs of autism. That’s me. In school, I knew all the answers, but I never raised my hand because I couldn’t put into words [00:17:00] the things that I knew

I wanted to learn all that I could about autism and as I studied I came across articles like The secrets of small talk, body language, the importance of eye contact

These seem to focus on building relationships Was autism the reason I had no friends?

I read, “To have a friend, be a friend. If you want to be invited out, invite someone first.” I invited an artist to go to a drawing class with me [00:18:00] She said yes, and I was so excited. “This is working,” I thought. Then she invited her artist friend, and they sat chitter-chattering while I sat drawing in silence.

Well, that didn’t work out so well, but I didn’t quit. I kept trying. No friends. In despair, I poured out my heart to God. I’ve tried everything Why can’t I make friends?

The answer pierced my soul You don’t love. Love? What is love? As a child, [00:19:00] being different I felt ignored more than loved

I want to be noticed, and then I’d shrink, afraid that I might be noticed

My husband was my greatest example of love

Jim was deeply hurt every time that curtain came crashing down Yet for 42 years, his was the first face I saw when I was ready to peek out[00:20:00]

What I learned through this is w- that one doesn’t make friends by reading a book. One doesn’t develop love by watching others But God in his mercy started placing people in my path to help me learn to love Carla

She came to me, her heart troubled over things that were happening in her young family I had no advice

I listened. I cried with her[00:21:00]

That thread created a bond of friendship that continues despite the difference in our ages

Bob enjoys flowers and photography. I just had to invite him and his wife, Wendy, to Vipond Park in the Pioneer Mountains of Montana There

The camas grows so thick that it looks like bright blue ponds in the meadow. We laughed as Bob took picture after picture after picture after [00:22:00] picture after picture Later, we shed tears toge-together as Wendy slipped into dementia

These are some of my friends. But my very best friends are my children Mark

So outgoing. He loves to tease and he tells really dumb jokes

Joyce

tender heart she reaches out to all in love and makes time [00:23:00] For friends and things that nourish her Cherilyn and Scott always laughing finding humor in the moment Nyssa of the quick wit, the wisdom And to continue the alliteration, she’s a little weird

And Cliff, who always catches the biggest trout in the pond and refuses to eat fish

They bring me the greatest joy I still have my autistic moments, but they don’t last for days like they [00:24:00] used to. Autism doesn’t define me So friendship, happiness I don’t have to chase after them like a deer in the forest. All I need to do

has opened my heart

Marc Moss: Thanks, Barbara. Barbara Bartmus was born in Billings, Montana, and was reared in Southern Idaho. She has also lived in Arkansas and Oklahoma, where she met her husband, Jim. Barbara, Jim, and family moved to Montana in 1980. They lived in Clinton, Montana, for 42 years. Barbara currently lives in Spokane, Washington.

Coming up after the break.

Stasia Orkwiszewski: [00:25:00] During and after this period, I developed horrible postpartum depression. I felt like I had touched life and death, and motherhood had cracked me open, and all of the despair of the world came rushing in.

Jeroen “JT” Thornton: And at that moment, as I’m heading to the bathroom, I hear, “Hey, Jaron, you should come with us.”

I turn around and I look, and the bride and groom standing in front of a Hummer stretch limo.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thanks to Parkside Credit Union for partnering with us this year to help us produce the shows with volunteers, back-end support, and a great cheerleading section. Thank you to The Good Food Store and Exit Realty, who, as story sponsors, helped us pay our storytellers.

Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com and missoularealty.com. Thanks to our stewardship sponsor, Marsh McLennan, who helped us give away free tickets to underserved populations. Learn more about Marsh McLennan at marshmclennan.com. Thanks to Soma Massage and Wellness for being our accessibility sponsor.

Treat yourself to an Ashiatsu massage at Soma. Learn more at [00:26:00] somamissoula.com. Thanks to Art Attic for being our artist sponsor. Find them for all of your framing needs at artatticmt.com. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true personal stories around a theme, live in person, without notes.

I’m Marc Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on September 23rd, 2026 at the George and Jane Dennison Theater in Missoula, Montana. After surviving three traumatic pregnancies, Stacia Orkwiszewski finds herself trapped in a silent battle with severe postpartum depression and sleepless nights spent wandering.

Shielding her dark thoughts behind a people-pleasing exterior, Stacia struggles to stay grounded in an overwhelming world. A note on Stacia’s story: Stacia speaks about suicidal ideation and pregnancy trauma with frank language. Sensitive listeners, please take care of yourselves. Thanks for listening.

Stacia calls her story The Wanderers

Stasia Orkwiszewski: [00:27:00] It’s never good when doctors are running. I have had three traumatic pregnancies. The first one had said doctors running as they pushed me on a gurney down a hallway while I vomited into a little bag and listened to the sounds when the fetal heart rate monitor get slower and slower.

My second pregnancy was a miscarriage, blood in the bathtub. During my third pregnancy, I developed preeclampsia, and that is a condition where the mom’s blood pressure goes up and up and up, and it can be fatal to the mom and the baby, and the only recourse is for the baby to be born. And this is a condition that we as humanity have known about for thousands of years.

Eclampsia is the Greek word for lightning, and they used it because otherwise healthy-looking pregnant women would suddenly fall to the ground with a seizure as if they’d been struck by lightning. So I had to have a C-section, [00:28:00] and I remember lying on the C-section table, and I felt like I couldn’t get a breath And the doctors said that my pulse ox was fine, but I felt like I couldn’t get oxygen into the base of my lungs and I lay there struggling to breathe as they took my too small baby out of me and into the NICU where she would stay for the next two months until we could bring her home.

And during and after this period, I developed horrible postpartum depression. I felt like I had touched life and death, and motherhood had cracked me open, and all of the despair of the world came rushing in. And during this period, there were times where I felt like I didn’t want to be alive anymore. And it’s really tricky ’cause I am nothing if not a people pleaser.

And despite being up here [00:29:00] today, I don’t love a lot of attention. So it’s really hard to think of a way to kill yourself that, one, doesn’t create a fuss, and two, is not an inconvenience to other people

There was a time when I was trying to figure out if my family would still get my life insurance money if I killed myself, and I was attempting to log into my insurance company’s portal. Wrong password. Wrong password. I never use this. Wrong password. Pop up, “Would you like an email to reset your password?”

Hell no. That’s something that my healthy brain would usually give up at that point. There’s no way my depressed brain was gonna get there. I thought about how I knew where I had access to a gun, but I never shot a gun before. Should I go to the firing range first? Well, the target’s not that far. Oh, but man, that would make such a mess, and I can’t let my husband find me.[00:30:00]

Ugh, and that would just ruin that day of that poor paramedic, so that’s not gonna work either. I thought about throwing myself in front of a train because it seems quick, and I know it’s kind of like a popular choice, so maybe engineers are used to it But I couldn’t convince myself of that either, so that wasn’t going to work.

I was also a very high-functioning depressed person. I didn’t really talk about it. Um, I never missed a day of work because I was feeling depressed. And one of the main ways that it manifested was an inability to rest, and especially to sleep, because when you go to sleep You need to let go. And as soon as I would close my eyes and try to let go, all of the horrible things that I tried to keep away would come flooding, and I would see skeletal children in Gaza, [00:31:00] and I would see a bombed out maternity hospital in Ukraine, and I would see the Watson Children’s Shelters wish list that had size two diapers on it, and that’s so small to be in a shelter.

And so I could not rest. And I developed something that I called the wanders to myself. After the rest of my family had gone to sleep, I would wander around our little house trying to find things to do to keep myself busy so that I could avoid having to lie down and try to sleep. So I’d go, “Oh, front door is locked.

Excellent. I wonder if the stove’s on. It’s been four hours since dinner, but you never know. Stove’s off. Oh, look, and the clocks on the microwave and the stove, they match. That’s, that’s excellent.” I wonder if the animals need fresh water. No, it’s full, but I’ll go ahead and refill it anyway so they have cool water for bedtime,” and so on and so forth until I just had to go lie down and try and sleep.

And I remember one afternoon, the girls must have been [00:32:00] napping ’cause I was cuddling with my husband on the couch, and I remember the dust motes floating in the afternoon sunlight through the window, and how our old couch smells like dog. And I was lying there attempting to be snuggly, but all of my muscles were so tense.

And I was rubbing my fingernails together ’cause that’s something that I do when I’m anxious. And he grabbed my hand and he said, “You’re not okay.” And I wasn’t okay, and I had not been okay for more than a year at that point. And I had already tried talk therapy, and my therapist would say things like, “Oh, you’re focused on, like, the macro and, like, all the problems of the world.

You need to bring it in and focus on the micro and the things that you can control.” Scintillating stuff. Thank you.

Barbara Bartmess: Um,

Stasia Orkwiszewski: I had thought of that, but my brain just [00:33:00] wasn’t in a… Like, I just couldn’t do it. My brain was not in a place where it could do it. But I also knew that I could not keep living and suffering as I was, so I decided to try EMDR therapy, and that stands for Eye Movement Desensi- Desensitization Reprocessing.

I did it. Um, and the idea with EMDR is that all of us have a little librarian in front of us, and as we’re going through life and having experiences, our little librarian is sorting them away and creating, like, our sense of self. And when you go through a trauma, your little librarian gets all messed up and sorts the traumatic experiences into the wrong places in your brain and your body, and that makes it really hard to move forward as a healthy person.

So with EMDR, the idea is that we’re kind of going back through the body and helping that little librarian sort things where they need to be. [00:34:00] And so I would sit there in therapy, and I had these buzzers And they would buzz back and forth in my hands. And we didn’t talk about, like, the actual traumatic events.

We would talk about what was going on in my body, and it was incredible ’cause I would say the craziest shit to my therapist, and she would say, “Whoa. Yeah.” Or, “Wow, let’s hear more from that one. What does that one have to say?” Or, “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.” And I would say things like, “I have this lump of the thickest possible mucus in my throat, and it’s blocking my head from the rest of my body.”

Or there are times I would feel this ooze way down deep in my guts, and sometimes it was black, and sometimes it was red, and sometimes it was hot, and sometimes it was cold. And there was one time when she asked me to look into my own mind, and I said, “My mind is this fizzy little black animal, [00:35:00] and it’s all in italics, and it’s just shaking in the corner of a cage.”

And it was incredible ’cause after every session, I felt like I needed a juice and a nap, but it was starting to help me feel better. And I remember one day, I was lying on my back And we were looking into my body, and I had this sense of pinkness and warmth and coziness and safety

And I understood it to be my womb. And this was very confusing because previously my womb had only been a place of great shame and failure. And I haven’t been able– I haven’t had that feeling again, but it’s incredible to know that it’s in there [00:36:00] And I’m, I’m not going to therapy anymore. I’m still cracked, but doing much better.

And I don’t do the wanders the way that I used to, but I do have one compulsion before bed, which is I always feel the need to check on my kids before I go to bed. So I go, and I sneak into their room, and I look at them in their bunk beds to make sure that they’re safe, and they have been every time. And for that, I feel incredibly grateful.

Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Stasha. Stasha Orkwizewski was born outside of Philadelphia and has been living in and loving Missoula since 2010. She lives with her husband, two daughters, two dogs, and a majestic orange cat. Stasha works as an environmental educator, teaching folks how to grow food and live in the rhythms of nature.

She loves being outside, cooking, and wearing [00:37:00] aplaca wool socks. Her current mission is baking a superb sourdough loaf. Closing out this episode of the podcast, JT Thornton is a sheltered, socially awkward 22-year-old from rural Colorado and finds himself way out of his depth at a high society Philadelphia wedding.

When the cool crowd unexpectedly invites him into their stretch Hummer limo, he jumps at the chance to fit in despite having downed a night’s worth of drinks with a rapidly full bladder. Stuck in a 45-minute ride with no pit stops, JT faces an urgent crisis that demands a plan. JT calls his story Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Pee.

Thanks for listening

Jeroen “JT” Thornton: First, let me put you in the mindset of me at age 22. I’m super anxious, socially awkward, raised pretty sheltered in a small rural Colorado valley. [00:38:00] So when I got invited to, um, be in attendance at, uh, the wedding of one of my close family members in the outskirts of Philadelphia, my anxiety was pretty much through the roof.

Um, your boy’s not really good at meeting new people at this age. And that feeling only increased as we get to the ceremony and I notice this group of about 15 to 20 people all around my age. They were the friends of the bride and groom, and they were all over in their little group on one side. And at this point in my life, I don’t know what cool is, but I know I’m not it.

And when I look at these people, I think to myself They’re cool. They’ve got the latest clothing. They are dripping in just necklaces and watches, and [00:39:00] their makeup is on point. They look like they have it together, and I’m sitting there in my thrift store button up shirt and pants, half size too small shoes, and a haircut that was out of style probably a year ago.

And I’m just thinking to myself, “They’re not gonna want a single thing to do with me.” We get to the reception, and the reception is amazing. It’s great. There’s so many things to do. There’s a photo booth with costume props and all these things that you can do. There’s a dance floor. There’s karaoke.

There’s yard games outside. There’s so many things to do, and what am I doing? I’m sitting at the table with my parents just endlessly drinking alcohol to calm my nerves. Red wine, sure. White wine, don’t really have it all that much, but sure. Cider, beer, anything that anyone hands to me, I’m taking it because I’m just so anxious The reception wraps up and I go to my parents and I say, “Hey, I need to run to the restroom real quick.

I’ll [00:40:00] grab my stuff and then I’ll meet you in the parking lot and we can go.” And we were all staying at the same ranch house together, so I start to go inside and the need to pee at this par- at this point in time is, it’s kind of at that level where you’re just like, “Ah, I could go to the bathroom, but I’ll be fine.”

And at that moment as I’m heading to the bathroom, I hear, “Hey, Jaron, you should come with us.” And I’m just like, “Okay, I don’t often hear those words.” I turn around and I look, and it’s the man of honor, and it’s the group of 15 to 20 people that I was looking at, and the bride and groom standing in front of a Hummer stretch limo that I learned was gonna be taking the wedding party and the bride and groom to their hotel for the evening, and they wanted me to come with them.

So this is the moment where the freeze frame would happen, because at the best of times, my brain is like a wall of TVs all tuned to the, a different station, you know? And at this [00:41:00] moment, the volume on some of them starts to come up really loud, and it starts off with, “Oh my God, dude, the coolest kids just asked you to come with them.

That never happens. You should totally go.” And then there’s another part that says, “Oh, wait, you should probably go to a ba- go to the bathroom. That’s probably a good idea.” And then there was another voice that said, “Dude, they’re, they’re loading up right now. It’s now or never. If you don’t go, they’re gonna leave without you.

What do you wanna do? Tell them, ‘No, I’ll catch a ride with my parents and I’ll see you later?'” No, I hear myself say, “Hell yeah And then I feel my body move in the opposite direction of the bathroom That’ll come in later. So we all load up into this stretch limo, and this thing is wild. This is my first time in a limo.

It’s standing room, there’s a dance floor, there’s a karaoke machine, there’s an almost full-size fridge that is stocked full with more alcohol. I’m in trouble. We [00:42:00] all settle in and we start to pull out of the parking lot, and I’m thinking that it can’t be a very long ride to the hotel. I mean, it’s, it’s urban Philadelphia.

Everything is, like, so, it’s so close together. It should be quick. And I ask up to the driver, “How long until we get there?” “45 minutes, no stops

All right. All right. Okay. I’m nervous, but the first 30 minutes I somehow make it okay. And I say somehow because the karaoke started, the dancing started, in a driving Hummer limo, no less. And then the drinks were flowing. And of course, me, I wanna fit in, so I’m not saying no. I’m still drinking, gang. I have to pee so bad by this point, and I’m just realizing I need a plan.

And that comes into stark relief when we hit construction [00:43:00] We slow to a crawl and this, this one guy, he’s just like, “Oh, perfect timing.” Pulls out a little bag of coke from his pocket and starts lining up lines for them to do at the front of the limo over there. And I’m just sitting here doing that thing where you’re just like, “I don’t have to go to the bathroom.

No, what are you talking about? Nope, nope, I’m good.” And as we are leaving the construction zone, I ask up to the driver in one last Hail Mary, “Is there any way that we can stop at all? Because at this point it’s an emergency, y’all. I think I’m about to pee my pants in front of all of these people on this limo.”

Driver calls back, “Hold it All right, time to execute the plan. I get as many of these drunk idiots to fill in the space between the driver and the back of the limo so he can’t see what’s happening in the rearview mirror. I get a red Solo cup, and I kneel in [00:44:00] the back of this limo, and I roll down the window to my left, because I was not going to pee my pants in front of all these people.

And I thought to myself, “You know what? It’ll be fine. I’ll just pee into the cup, toss it out the window, and I’ll be good. I’ll be done

So I enact the plan and I start to pee and I get to the top of the cup

Start again. And I get to the top of the cup. Again, and I fill it, and I have to fill that thing seven times, throwing it out the window each time. I did not spill a single drop

The rest of the ride [00:45:00] passes by in a haze. Like, as soon as I’m done and everything’s, like, cleaned up and I’m, I’m, I’m back together, everyone is, like, clapping me on the back, shouting my name, and just being like, “That was amazing. I can’t believe you just did that.” And I have no idea what’s going on. I’m in a complete fugue state.

I’m just like, “Yeah, sure, man.” I’m just like, I’m so glad that what I thought was going to happen did not happen. We get to the hotel and everybody unloads, and we’re all kinda standing outside of the limo and talking and laughing and still coming down from this crazy shit that just happened. And the driver gets out of the car.

I hear this loud slam of the door, and I hear a stomp, stomp, stomp around the front. And he comes to where we are. He puts a big fat finger in my face, and he says, “If there’s even a single drop of pee on that car, it’s a minimum $1,000 cleaning fee.” And he storms off to go look at the damage. And I have no time to process what that might mean for me, because immediately [00:46:00] afterwards, the guy who pulled the little baggie of coke out of his jacket pocket comes up to me, grabs me by the shoulders, and he says, “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

If there’s any fee, I’ve got you, dude. I’ve got you

I can’t remember the name of a single person in this limo, so the only thing that I can think of to say is thanks, coat guy

Marc Moss: Thanks, JT. Since moving to the city in 2016, Jaren Thornton, known by most as JT, has been immersed in Missoula’s performing world, both on the stage and on both sides of a film camera. His first featured acting role was in a short film that [00:47:00] premiered at Camp Horror 2024. He’s currently in the process of writing his first short film.

You have been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the concluding stories from The Pursuit of Happiness: Tell Us Something Live Storytelling event.

Zach French: About 8:00 local time, an alert came on our cell phones and over the radio. And the alert read, “Ballistic missile threat inbound for Hawaii.

Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”

Stasia Orkwiszewski: I open the box and I look at the

Maria Merkley: ring and I look at him and… So then I look back down at the ring and I look at him and I say, “Are you asking me to marry you?” Right now we are in a four-man raft, and there are two of us, and we have no paddles and no life jackets.

And I said, “Yeah, okay but I really can’t hear a lot of what she’s saying because I can only hear the [00:48:00] rapids.”

Marc Moss: Listen for those stories at tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Cash for Junkers who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com.

Thanks to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, The Roxy Theater, and Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5. Thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. Stay connected with us on our social media channels and our email list.

The date of the next Tell Us Something event is January 26th at the George and Jane Dennison Theater. Watch our newsletter and social media channels to stay up to date on the theme, learn how to pitch your story, and get tickets. Learn more and listen to almost 16 years’ worth of stories at [00:49:00] tellussomething.org.

TUS01602- June-Power of Place – Part Two

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme live in person and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Tell Us Something is supported in part this year by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something at its core does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast-

Karna Sundby: So we would pick up the nursing students at 5:30 in the morning, and they would run to the car with these eager smiles and bright eyes, just so grateful to have a safe ride to [00:01:00] their classes and clinicals that started at 6:00 AM.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme power of place.

Greg Munro: I went to that window and looked out and was astounded because there was a whole farm out there, just like I had seen on TV.

Marc Moss: Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed lawn on June 16th, 2026 at Bonner Park Bandshell in Missoula, Montana.

Adyasha Nayak: My grandparents’ house, pretty old house that my grandfather built.

It’s next to a pond, and every morning I would hear the neighborhood children jumping into the pond, splashing, having fun, their shouts.

Mandy Moonbird: We had bedbugs always, and dirty needles hidden in the mattresses, and murders and overdoses, and a lot of people said there was a ghost.

Marc Moss: Stay tuned. As we gathered under the summer sky at the Bonner [00:02:00] Park Bandshell, we acknowledged that we are standing on the ancestral homelands of the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, Kalispel peoples.

For generations, these tribes have stewarded the Missoula and Bitterroot valleys, deeply connected to the rhythm of this land. We recognize that our event’s theme that night, the power of place, is intimately tied to their enduring relationship with this region. June brought the vibrant blooms of the bitterroot, Montana’s state flower, and a sacred plant of deep cultural, historical, and spiritual significance to the Salish people.

In this season of growth and renewal, we honor their past, present, and future descendants who continue to live, create, and enrich our community today. Ways that you can honor the land we occupy and celebrate the Indigenous peoples who were the first peoples here are to support Indigenous artists and partake in celebration with Indigenous peoples Remember this: Tell Us [00:03:00] Something stories sometimes have adult themes.

Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourself. Just a heads-up before you listen to the stories in this episode. The recording engineer was unable to get a clear recording of the live event. During the quality assurance process, I noticed a distinctive hum permeating the entire recording.

In order to fix this issue, the engineer applied techniques that unfortunately removed much of the live feel of the recordings. It is unfortunate, and this is the best he could do. Thank you so much for your understanding. All right. Let’s get to the stories. In our first story, when local communities face relentless fear, ordinary citizens step up in extraordinary ways.

Karna Sundby shares her story of driving into Minneapolis to support refugees and students who are in the country legally and in hiding [00:04:00] from ICE. From delivering food boxes to driving terrified students under the threat of arrest, discover the incredible power of neighboring and community resistance in a time of crisis.

Karna calls her story Neighboring. Thanks for listening.

Karna Sundby: A place of power, Minneapolis 2026. My husband Kirk and I spent two weeks there in January helping people who were in hidings from ICE. We have a friend there named Jesse, who years ago developed a nonprofit organization called the Urban Village to help the Karen people who are being persecuted in Myanmar.

Their government is dropping bombs on them, burning villages, and thousands of people are being forced to flee, to live in the jungles or escape to refugees cla- camps. Jeff- Jesse, through his nonprofit, has helped many of these displaced people to immigrate to Minneapolis, where they can be safe and seek asylum [00:05:00] through the legal path of citizenship set up by our government.

In early January, we got an email from him saying that his community was being targeted and twenty people had already been detained by ICE He was, as he was searching for safe housing for people, uh, on social media, Fox News got ahold of the story and broadcast that he was helping illegal criminal immigrants escape from authorities.

This was not true. Every member of the Urban Village community is here legally seeking asylum or on student visas, and none have criminal records. Now Jesse was getting death threats. His wife Becca was 33 weeks pregnant with twins, and they were having to go into hiding too. So we didn’t know, what can we do?

We didn’t know how we could help, but we decided we had to try, so we jumped in our car and started driving towards Minnesota. Once we arrived, we tapped into two organizations there. One was this large Hispanic [00:06:00] church called DHH, and the other was this amazing food rescue organization, and they were packing boxes of food and delivering them to im- immigrants that were in hiding all over the Twin Cities.

We would stand at our station, whether it was apples, potatoes, rice, or beans, and this conveyor w- belt went by, and as quickly as humanly possible, we’d put the appropriate amount of food in the box, and the boxes went by. The goal was every day to pack and deliver 1,200 boxes of food on each shift. And then we started giving rides to students who were here from Myanmar.

Public transportation was too dangerous. License plates were being targeted, and these kids were afraid that if they missed classes, they might lose their scholarships. So we would pick up the nursing students at 5:30 in the morning, and they would run to the car with these eager smiles and bright eyes, just so grateful to have a safe ride to their classes and clinicals that started at 6:00 AM.

We’d pick ’em up at 11 o’clock at night, [00:07:00] still had this indomitable spirit after working eight hours shifts at the nursing home. These days were so long for them, and when we trained to be drivers for them, we were warned that we could be picked up and imprisoned by ICE simply for giving rides to the students who were here legally.

We had to carry our passports everywhere we went. We downloaded this app that we would push to notify someone if we were apprehended. And we took this training called the Rapid Response Training to teach us how to respond to ICE if they showed up where we were. Everywhere we went, we wore our whistles.

It was, it was intense. And w- when we were there, we just were so inspired by these students who were so grateful. We’ve… There was this incredible network of [00:08:00] communication on safe apps called WhatsApp and Signal, and this amazing communication was constantly happening where they would give you information of where ICE was right now, so you could go and help if you wanted to.

You could go and join packs of people that were walking endangered kids to and from school. You could go to targeted neighborhoods and blow your whistle or honk horns to notify the neighborhood. That’s what Rene Good was doing before she was killed. You know, I’m sure that there are illegal immigrants who are here committing crimes, but I don’t know those people.

I know these people from Myanmar. I know their stories about how they escaped from a coun- country where they are being killed and persecuted, and were so grateful to come here where they could be safe and get jobs and further their education and get citizenship. And now they’re being persecuted again by the United States.

We heard so many [00:09:00] stories. I was heartbroken to hear the story of the woman cowering in her apartment while ICE was pounding on the door, threatening to break it down. So traumatized that she miscarried the baby she was expecting. And then I was confused when I saw this gut-wrenching dash cam of a young by- guy outside of his car trying to show his visa to ICE, and they assaulted him and took him away.

And then it was explained to me that ICE doesn’t care if they have a visa, ICE just cares about their daily quotas. And then I felt angry when I heard the story of the young man in El Paso who went to his bond hearing, and his was deter- termed an incorrect detainment, so they told him he could leave after paying 500 bucks, and as soon as ICE returned the documents they had taken from him to the courts.

They didn’t return him for two weeks, and he had to spend this unnecessary another two weeks in prison. And when he left, he wasn’t given his cellphone back. Just such [00:10:00] intentional cruelty. And then we started hearing the stories from people who were released from prison. No change of clothes, no shower, no toothbrush.

La- sleeping on the floor with no blanket. Cement floors, no pillow. Lights on 24/7. Dinner is a sandwich. I started thinking about the… how much better the conditions are of con- convicted criminals who are in prison One day we got an email saying that a member from the Urban Village was going to his bond hearing, one of 60 people, and they asked that at 10:00 AM we stand, light a candle, say a prayer, say his name, stand with him in solidarity, which we did.

He was released, but the 59 other people went back to the hell of detention. And when he was released, he was told he had to pay a $7,000 bond. Now, the Urban Village raises funds to pay those bonds, and then they fly a [00:11:00] volunteer down to Texas to rent a car and drive the detained person back to Minnesota.

That’s how people from the urban, Urban Village make it home. I don’t know what happens to people who don’t have a community like that to support them

But we, we were so… I was so just shocked by what we saw in Minnesota. I was… I just, I don’t think you can understand how real it was unless you were there. What it’s like to watch ICE target and surround a neighborhood or a vehicle in America. But I think we can all understand how deeply wrong it is.

This was not some country in a dictatorship. This was Minneapolis where I, a citizen born in this country, initially felt afraid to give rides to kids here on student visas. This was Minneapolis where every day [00:12:00] one or two planes would fly out to Texas carrying immigrants to get them out of T- Minnesota jurisdiction and into Texas jurisdiction as quickly as possible.

This was Minneapolis where we had a friend who owned a warehouse near the airport and somebody wa- talked to him about wanting to rent space. And as he was showing them the place, the guy was taking measurements and explaining the size of the vehicles or the cages that they intended to build there. We were so happy to be there to help.

It just felt so purposeful. We stayed with dear friends in downtown Minneapolis and they would introduce us as their friends from Montana. And sometimes people would just burst into tears so touched that somebody came, cared enough to come and help. The only reason we left was that I got sick and what a miserable drive that was back to Missoula.

Just burning sore throat, splitting headache, [00:13:00] fever, chills, body aches and all I could think about was, what would it be like to be this sick in detention? When we were in Minneapolis we heard a new word, a new verb called neighboring. Neighboring means protecting and supporting the people that live next door or down the street a couple blocks.

We saw so many examples of this. Neighbors giving food, shelter, money, breast milk from a, for a woman who, too stressed to make her own. Neighbors carpooling endangered people to appointments. Workplaces setting up sleeping arrangements when it was too dangerous for their workers to go home at night.

Teachers going to teach kids at home after school, kids who were too scared to go to classes. And people, clinicians going making home visits to people too afraid to seek medical help. We were so inspired [00:14:00] by the The strategies and the effective results that the people in Minneapolis got by organizing, creating neighborhoods, neighborhood communities, by teaching tactics of resistance and remaining resilient.

Minneapolis, a place of power, the power of people with whistles, organizing and uniting to create hope and to create a model of solidarity for our country.

Marc Moss: Thanks Karna. Karna Sundby’s journey of self-discovery has led her to explore many paths in life, from teaching meditation to a successful career in corporate sales. What has always driven her most is the desire to make a difference. Often, the toughest times in life are the ones which break us open and forge within us a deep well of compassion.

In our [00:15:00] next story, Greg Monroe wakes up on his grandparents’ Montana homestead at eight years old. He falls in love with the land and the hard-earned romance of ranching. Decades later, as a law professor working alongside indigenous colleagues, a stark realization shattered his nostalgia. Today, we explore one man’s journey from boyhood wonder to confronting the deep history beneath his roots in a story that Greg calls The Expanding Power of Place.

Thanks for listening.

Greg Munro: It was June 8th, 1956. I woke up in a strange place that I didn’t recognize because my family had arrived, uh, during the night, uh, the night before we had arrived. Uh, I was in the upper floor of a log ranch house or farmhouse, uh, at my grandparents’ homestead eight miles east of Dutton, Montana out in the prairie I heard sounds I had never experienced in real life.

[00:16:00] There were roosters crowing, there were hens, uh, clucking, and there were cattle bawling. There was an open window at the end, the gable end of this, uh, upper floor where everybody slept, and I went to that window and looked out and was astounded because there was a whole farm out there just like I had seen on TV.

We’d been on the East Coast in the Gulf of Mexico for years. And I, I, I couldn’t wait to get outside. We lived there for about a, a month. It was my grandparents’ homestead. They’d homestead since 1910. And in that month, I got to explore every inch of it. It was heaven for any child, and I was eight years old.

When my father arrived late in the summer, we moved down to Great Falls, 36 miles away. And my mother was a devout Catholic, and she enrolled us all at St. Thomas Orphanage as day students. All the s- all the s- the Catholic kids in the neighborhood went to the orphanage as day [00:17:00] students. And at the orphanage, I was fortunate enough to meet my first Native Americans, uh, and they were either orphans or boarding there, and I observed that they were very quiet.

They said little, they were shy, and they, uh, didn’t make eye contact, and they stuck with themselves. Every summer while we lived in Great Falls, my parents took us up… I, I shouldn’t say every summer, but most summers they took us up to Browning, Montana, uh, because the North American Indian days were held up there.

It was a large powwow, and it was, it was fascinating because I was in heaven, enthralled with all the horses, uh, all the tipis, all the Native American dancers, all the costumes, uh, even the hand, the hand bone gambling games. It was all amazing. But Browning had another thing that was amazing, and that was the Museum of the Plains Indians, and we went there every time we went to Glacier Park, and I could [00:18:00] not get enough of that place because they had dioramas, and they had all kinds of drawings.

They had the weapons. They had the tipis, uh, the dress, uh, tools, everything that the Native Americans used on the prairie, uh, and, and that they used that came from Buffalo, and I was absolutely from, uh, uh, thrilled with it, and it was, it was kind of a whole romantic notion I s- uh, s- uh, got back to the farm much in the summers.

I spent a great deal of my f- summers as a teenager on that place. By the time I graduated from the eighth grade, I was a full-time farm and ranch hand, paid, living in a bunkhouse on that homestead. And I heard all the stories, the stories of my grandfather and his brother coming out and being led by the landman, or sent by the landman, I should say, out eight miles east of Dutton to look at this particular homestead and pick out the, the staked out [00:19:00] lots.

And I heard the stories of his building his first, uh, homestead shack. I saw the pictures of it. Uh, the pictures of the giant steam engines breaking the prairie into, uh, fallow for wheat. Uh, the pictures of threshing crews. The stories of my grandfather going 75 miles by wagon to the Rocky Mountain front to bring the loads of logs back with which he built this log place, uh, that I woke up in.

I loved being on that place, and the sense of power and responsibility to work with my homesteading German grandfather and my uncles and operate big crawler tractors with plows and big trucks full of grain, and to be standing out in the amber waves of grain. It was all amazing to me, and it was an ungodly sense of place, and I have an ungodly nostalgia for it.

Uh, life goes on. I moved off and I went to college. I went to the army for a couple of years. [00:20:00] I went to law school. I was a trial lawyer in Billings. And whenever I got a chance, I’d go back to any events they had back at the homestead. It was, it was wonderful. My nostalgia was awful. Uh, and, uh, then in 1988, I made a major change in my life.

I gave up law practice and trial practice, and I took a position at the University of Montana School of Law. And there had been big changes there. Marge Brown, one of my classmates from 1975, was the, the, uh, uh, associate dean. She started the first Native American law clinic in the United States, and other schools soon followed.

They had a very active rep- recruiting program to try to get Native Americans from the tribes in Montana into the law school, get them through law school, mentor them in finding jobs, and mentor them in their profession. And the school is very proud of what happened in the, in the [00:21:00] 30 years that I was there.

Uh- And the school had the clinic, and they had a Native American law program in the summer. They had all kinds of Native American law courses and courses on the treaties, et cetera. And an amazing thing was that Ray Cross, r- uh, Raymond Cross, arrived one year and joined the faculty. He was a famous lawyer and the, and the subject of a book called Coyote Warrior.

Raymond Cross was the Coyote Warrior. He, as a young lawyer with the Native American Rights Foundation, made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court and the United States Congress and got hundreds of millions of dollars of reparations for the three North Dakota tribes, the Mandan, Arikara, or, or Arikara, and Hidatsa, uh, for the, the, uh, homeland that had been flooded in 1951 by the United States government to make way for the Harrison [00:22:00] Dam and never paid any…

Garrison Dam, and never paid anything. And he got the reparations, and here he was, officed right next door to me. A profound change took place. One day, I was standing in the hallway, a long hallway, and the law school had placed on that, on the wall, the history of all the treaties, all the law that was forced on the Native Americans was all down that wall.

And I, it, it came full force, the full realization That my grandparents could homestead that place and could provide for themselves on land that the United States government forcefully took away from Native Americans. They took it away from the Blackfeet Nation. They pushed the natives off after they’d killed all the buffalo.

They pushed them off to Browning, Montana, a place that’s so arid and has such a short grazing season that there are no amber waves of grain there, and you’re lucky if you can raise a cow-calf pair on less than 50 acres. [00:23:00] And as a result, what I witnessed in my lifetime going back and forth through Browning was the city is po- impoverished, the reservation’s impoverished, and I know what the suicide rates are and what the rates of disease and desperation and everything and the- how bad the economy is there.

And the disparity between what happened. My mother and all of her siblings, and my father, who also grew up on the homesteads, and their siblings, and even their spouses in many cases, were on those homesteads, and almost every one of them went… My mother and all of her siblings went to college. And you know what?

I and my 40 cousins, any of us that wanted to, went to college. And that, uh, that realization was, was really, uh, a stark thing. And then the other realization was that all over the world, I had come to realize that white people from Europe and from the United States had pushed, um, the, [00:24:00] uh, people off the land and the native peoples off the lands, uh, and in order to make way for monocultures, whether it was pineapple or rubber or, um, uh, sugar or wheat and barley.

And the realization that my grandest days as a teenager out there on those tractors and those combines were spent in a giant monoculture where we had shoved all the animals and all the people off the land, the indigenous people were all off so that we could have a monoculture because it was all wheat and barley.

And, and the animals were gone. And that’s another stark realization. Today, I have that same longing for that place. I have a terrible nostalgia for it. I have a deep, deep sense of place and a deep s- sense of self because of my years there. But my sense [00:25:00] of that as a place is so much deeper now because I know how much history there was there before.

As giant John Hiatt sings, “There’s a graveyard under that cattle herd.” Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Greg. In Greg Monroe’s 50-year career as a trial lawyer, including 30 years as a law professor at the University of Montana, he has made storytelling the center of his advocacy. Greg is awed by this ancient and beautiful communication. He is now the patriarch of both sides of his large family. He was born curious, and persons, places, and things are endlessly interesting to him.

Greg describes himself as the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none. Coming up after the break.

Adyasha Nayak: My grandparents’ house, pretty old house that my grandfather built. It’s next to a pond. And [00:26:00] every morning, I would hear the neighborhood children jumping into the pond, splashing, having fun, their shouts.

Mandy Moonbird: We had bedbugs always, and dirty needles hidden in the mattresses, and murders and overdoses, and a lot of people said there was a ghost.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thanks to our partner for the 2026 season, Parkside Credit Union, a community credit union that likes to say yes. Learn more at parksidefcuonline.com. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers.

Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. Also, big thanks goes out to the KettleHouse for donating the beer that we enjoyed the night of the performance. Check out the KettleHouse in fine retailers across Montana and select parts of the United States. Visit them at their tap room in Bonner, Montana, or learn more at kettlehouse.com.

You are [00:27:00] listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live in person and without notes. I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on June 16th, 2026 at Bonner Park Bandshell in Missoula, Montana. Opening the second half of the Tell Us Something podcast, every year, Adyasha Nayak’s grandparents’ home in India offered an escape filled with chai, warmth, and the captivating tales of her grandfather, a former Forest Service ranger.

Years later, after following in her grandfather’s footsteps and eventually moving across the world to Montana, a moment of deep homesickness revealed something unexpected. The comforting power of home can be found where you least expect it. Adyasha calls her story Finding Home. Thanks for listening.

Adyasha Nayak: Let me take you back a couple of years, um, to the other side of the world.

This is in India. My [00:28:00] family has been moving about since I was 10 years old. We never spent more than two years in any single city. But every year, without fail, during holiday season in October, we would go back home to my grandparents’ house, and it was a momentous occasion for me. Um, I got to spend time without my parents telling me to do homework or anything at all.

I was allowed to, uh, roam free, and I remember those days. Uh, my grandparents’ house, um, pretty old house that my grandfather built. It’s next to a pond, and every morning, I would hear the neighborhood children jumping into the pond, splashing, um, having fun, their shouts. Um, I would hear the bread vendor, uh, come out, and I would run [00:29:00] downstairs, grab myself a breakfast, come up, have breakfast and chai So this is 2018, late 2018, um, few months before we started to hear inklings of a certain virus up in China.

This is a year before the rest of the world gets to know about it. And we had just gone home, but this occasion was different. Slightly somber because we were there for my grandmother’s first death anniversary. We call it Barsi, and in Hindu culture, the first death anniversary is important. We believe that the soul remains attached to their body, to their worldly possession for the first year of their life.

And you celebrate with food, you make their favorite things, and you gently tell them to go back to heaven, [00:30:00] or you gently help them exit the cycle of life and death. So we are there to see off my grandmother. She was kind of a bitch, uh, but she knew what she wanted and always stuck to her guns. So it makes sense that for her Barsi, everything had to be perfect.

Um, so my dad and my mom, as the oldest, uh, son and the daughter-in-law, are spending their whole time making sure that everything is perfect. My grandfather, on the other hand, is in… was incredibly calm, quiet, never spoke up. And me and him, because I want to avoid all the questions that aunties are throwing at me, and he’s just old and tired, we are sitting there at one of the chairs just talking to each other, not even talking sometimes, just enjoying the silence.

[00:31:00] And he wants to go home because he’s tired. I took him home. I put him to bed. I left the next day And a year later, we got to learn that my grandfather passed away. That was the last time I saw him Surprisingly enough, um, my grandfather was a ranger in Forest Service, and he told me bunch of stories from his old days of traveling in Indian rainforest, finding ghosts, which just turned out to be foxes.

Uh, sometimes running into tribal people trying to hunt in the night with their bows and arrows. And he opened up this one box. In there is a little compass, an old water skin, one of the oldest kits for making animal footprints ever. [00:32:00] And I loved that. He was, he was different than any other adult in my knew in…

I, I knew in my life. He didn’t have a nine-to-five. He had interesting stories. Um, he never just sat in an office. He went outside. And I only wish that he had gotten to see me where I am, because 2020, in the middle of pandemic, I ended up taking a job with the Indian Forest Service. And I ended up working with tribal communities, traveling through Indian rainforest, not seeing ghosts, unfortunately That experience was something I had wanted to share with him, but I would never get to.

Now we jump back to 2023. Um, I had just moved [00:33:00] to Missoula, and as somebody from the Global South, I hated the winter, and I also did move here in the peak of winter, and I immediately wanted to go home. So this is peak of winters. I, um, I had actually made friends through the Missoula International Friendship Program, and they had very kindly recognized that I was homesick and sent me a gift basket.

So on one very cold winter evening, as I am not having a great time far away from my family, I can’t talk to any of my friends in person, and I had this gift basket that, uh, was full of caramel chews, which I had just offhandedly told them that I love caramel chews. So in my state of grief, I sat there, entered a fugue state, and when I came out of it, I was sitting amidst a carnage of caramel [00:34:00] chew candies.

Um, my teeth hurt. And I don’t know what to do. Um, I felt lost, and in that moment, I got a text from my friend Stephanie just checking in with me, and I gave her a call, and I broke down, and I started crying. I said, “I’m missing home. I’m missing family, and I’m not having a great time.” Almost within an hour later, um, we made a plan and Stephanie showed up to my door with a bag full of groceries.

We made pancakes and chai, and we had long conversations about just anything. And in that moment, I knew that whatever life threw at me- The same way I always had my grandparents’ house to go back to, [00:35:00] to root myself in, in myself, in my culture. The same way I had finally found people in Missoula that were there to make a home for me, a home that I could go back to every time I needed any kind of support I just wish that where I am today, I had been able to tell my grandfather all of my stories.

But I just know that he is too impatient to not be out here listening to me

Marc Moss: Thanks, Adyasha. Adyasha Nayak is a researcher and artist from India. Love of stories drives many of their interests in life. They are about to finish their PhD and excited to be using their degree helping marginalized [00:36:00] communities in their home state. When not on their computer, you’ll find them bird watching or painting.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Mandy Moonberg is the last employee left standing at the city’s seediest no-tell motel. She survived bedbugs, crime scenes, and hiding out in empty rooms watching Law & Order. But her final week on the job brought an even bigger disaster. Pick up your broom and dustpan and listen along in a story Mandy calls Last Housekeeper Standing.

Thanks for listening.

Mandy Moonbird: I am alone in the dark in a room in the worst motel in town. I’m peeking out the window at the office of the motel where I can see there’s a cop banging on the door and no one’s answering. So he takes out a phone to make a call and my phone starts ringing. That’s because I am the only employee at the worst [00:37:00] motel in town, and he probably wants to talk about some heinous crime that’s been committed here, but I don’t have the emotional fortitude.

I’m not getting paid enough. So I silence the phone, and I carefully close the curtains, and I go back to watching Law & Order When I started, I was not the only employee at the worst motel in town. I was part of a whole team of housekeepers, but this place had a real hard time hanging on to its employees.

To be fair, it was like walking into a nightmare every morning. We had bedbugs always, and dirty needles hidden in the mattresses, and murders, and overdoses, and a lot of people said there was a ghost. So gradually, everybody else just stopped showing up, and I was the last housekeeper standing. People like to call this place a no-tell motel, which is a cute little euphemism for the type of stuff that goes on [00:38:00] there.

But it had a deeper meaning to me because I didn’t like telling people that I worked there. I did, however, start to identify with the clientele of the no-tell motel because it was the type of place where no one would stay if they had any other choice, and it was the type of place where no one would work if they had any other choice.

So I felt like we were all trapped in there together. Uh, while the housekeepers were dropping like flies, the same thing was happening at the front desk. So I started having to cover some of those shifts too, and when that happened, I was the only employee on the whole premises. And I was terrified of working in the office.

I always felt like someone was gonna point a gun at me. So I got in this routine where I would lock up the office and put my number on the door, and then I could just go find an empty room and watch Law & Order until the shift was over, and I could go home. So I passed a long, hard winter that way until I [00:39:00] finally got a better job offer at a respectable grocery store with a generous employee discount.

And at that time, I still believed in some sort of sacred trust between an employer and an employee, so I went back to work and I put in my two weeks notice at the No-Tell Motel. Then I got to have the glorious honeymoon that comes after you put in your notice at a job that you hate. I was showing up late.

I was saying good morning to the dead raccoon that had been out front of the office since I started this job. And I was washing blood off of walls, just carefree. Until towards the end of the two weeks, one morning, the owner of the motel came in, and she was having a crisis because she and her husband also own a nice hotel on the other side of town, and that morning, all of their housekeeping staff had quit and walked out, and they had a ton of reservations, and they wanted me to go out there and clean for the day.

I declined because I didn’t have a car, and she said her [00:40:00] husband could come pick me up, and he would take me home at the end of the day, so I agreed. Uh, then the husband arrives, like an alien landing in the parking lot of the No-Tell Motel, where everyone’s having the worst day of their life. He’s in this huge, shiny, show-off, gaudy BMW.

I never met him before, but I get in the car, and he’s covered in jewelry, and he reeks of cologne, and he’s a huge creep Did you see that coming? Um, he propositioned me in a number of ways. He said he has mistresses that work in all of his hotels, and he gets them management jobs, and in some cases he’ll buy them a car, and he calls it helping me out.

He said, “You could help me out, and I could help you out.” And he wants me to manage the housekeeping department at the nice hotel, and he says he could buy me a car, and he’s like, “Don’t you like my car? It’s a BMW.” And I’m like, “Yeah, cool car.” And I’m thinking, [00:41:00] because at this point I’ve watched a lot of Law & Order You’re not supposed to allow yourself to be taken to a second location-

by a guy like this. So for safety, I text my roommate, and I tell him where I’m going just so if anything gets any weirder, somebody at least knows where I am. And we arrive at the nice hotel, and the owner introduces me to the manager, who is now the only employee at the nice hotel. And he gets her to corroborate his story.

He’s like, “Didn’t I get you this job, and didn’t I buy you a car, and don’t I help you out, and you help me out?” And she says, “Yes” but she is seething with hatred for this man. It’s palpable how bad she wants to kick him in the balls. And I’m just here to clean rooms. I’m an incredible professional housekeeper, so I get a big list of all the dirty rooms and a master key, and I take off to start cleaning this hotel, which I had never been to before, but it’s one of those big [00:42:00] franchise places, real homogenized.

There’s a surface level illusion of luxury, like the sheets look like cotton, but they don’t feel like cotton type of place. It’s not fooling anybody. Um, I’m cleaning, and my key stops working, so I have to go back down to the lobby, and the owner’s still down there just bothering this poor woman. I ask her to reprogram my key, and while she’s doing that, he turns to me, and he starts going off again about he could get me a job, he could buy me a car, he could help me out, I could help him out.

And at this point, I have started to suspect that if all of your employees are always walking out of all of your businesses, the problem might be with the business and not with the employees. So I’m staring straight ahead just trying not to make eye contact. I’m looking at the wall between the lobby and the pool, which has this huge fake carved mantle covered in fake ceramic [00:43:00] vases full of fake plants, and I was thinking, “I didn’t think I could hate any place worse than the No-Tell Motel.”

‘Cause that place sucks, but at least it’s honest. And I was thinking because everyone’s always walking out of these terrible jobs, maybe no one has ever actually told this man how bad it sucks to feel trapped in his shitty motel, and maybe no one’s ever looked him in the eyes and just told him to fuck off.

I feel this rumbling, like something’s in the walls trying to get out. It feels like a dam is about to break. And then suddenly, he shuts up, and we’re all just staring at the wall. And I’m starting to think, “Everyone can feel that rumbling?” And then the wall just explodes- … and water comes pouring in. A lot of [00:44:00] water.

The fake mantle breaks, and all the tacky decorations go flying, and all the fake plants are floating at our feet because all the water that should be going into the pool is coming into the lobby, and now the lobby is the pool- … and we’re standing in ankle-deep water. So the owner runs to turn off the water, and the manager and I just have a moment of peace just listening-

to the water come in. And I don’t know what it was about the wall exploding, maybe it’s just that my feet got wet, but I finally took out my phone and I texted my roommate, “Could you actually come pick me up right now?” And then I grabbed a mop and kind of pretended to try to help clean up. I don’t know what that’s gonna do.

This place is trashed. It’s, like, completely underwater. And my ride shows up, and I start to make my exit, and the owner tried to stop me. He’s like, “No, no. Wait, wait. I could give you a ride in [00:45:00] the BMW. Don’t you want a ride in the BMW? It’s, it’s a BMW.” And I was like, “No, thank you. Uh, it was wonderful meeting you.

I actually have to go, but, you know, thanks for the opportunity. Good luck with all of this.” And I think I shook his hand, and then I sprinted to the car and got in, and I never went back to the nice hotel or the no-tell motel ever again. And telling this story and looking back, I wish that it could have ended with me speaking my piece and telling him how I felt about him and his creepy motel and his tacky car, but I didn’t.

Uh, what I can do is choose to believe in my heart that eventually some brave employee kicked that man in the balls.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Mandy. Mandy Moonberg is an [00:46:00] artist from Kalispell, Montana. She is trained in sustainable construction and is currently studying art at the University of Montana. You can catch her painting live on stage at concerts and festivals across the world. She is passionate about creating community-wide art projects and wants to apply art therapy practices to public art.

Mandy is on a mission to find the sourest sourdough in Missoula. You’ve been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Thanks again to the Montana 250th Commission for their support of Tell Us Something in 2026. Thanks to our media sponsors, missoulaevents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, The Roxy Theater, and Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5.

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. Thanks to Cash for Drunkards who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called [00:47:00] Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashfordrunkardsband.com.

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme live in person and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Tell Us Something is supported in part this year by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something at its core does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast.

Karna Sundby: I could smell horse sweat and leather and, and gun smoke in the air, and I was holding my rifle and felt the weight of it against me and the sweat [00:01:00] running down my neck, and I could taste the salt and the dirt on my face. And I looked around and I saw my friends standing up in the back of these wagons.

Noura Mahmoud: One day after the lesson, a student called Lily raised her hand and asked a question, “Can one person change the life of someone?” I looked at her and answered, “Well, Lily, one person, one conversation, one teacher-”

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme power of place.

Madeline: I was drooling all over the flashlight.

And about 15 minutes in and I’m just crying and I’m like, “Please, take them, take them.” Nothing’s happening. I, I kind of stick them in my armpit and then I go back into the barn. I finally call Andy and I pl- say, “Please, like, get down here. I, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Cathy Scholtens: We tore into [00:02:00] that chocolate like a pack of wolves.

You just take a bite. If you didn’t like it, you just spit it out, just threw it on the ground. It was insane, and we weren’t saying much, okay? It was very quiet. We’re just bah, bah, bah.

Marc Moss: Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed lawn on June 16th, 2026 at Bonner Park Bandshell in Missoula, Montana.

Stay tuned As we gathered under the summer sky at the Bonner Park Bandshell, we acknowledged that we are standing on the ancestral homelands of the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, Kalispel peoples. For generations, these tribes have stewarded the Missoula and Bitterroot valleys, deeply connected to the rhythm of this land.

We recognize that our event’s theme that night, the power of place, is intimately tied to their enduring relationship with this region. June brought the vibrant blooms of the bitterroot, Montana’s [00:03:00] state flower, and a sacred plant of deep cultural, historical, and spiritual significance to the Salish people.

In this season of growth and renewal, we honor their past, present, and future descendants who continue to live, create, and enrich our community today. Ways that you can honor the land we occupy and celebrate the indigenous peoples who were the first peoples here are to support indigenous artists and partake in celebration with indigenous peoples.

Remember this: Tell Us Something stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourself. Just a heads-up before you listen to the stories in this episode. The recording engineer was unable to get a clear recording of the live event. During the quality assurance process, I noticed a distinctive hum permeating the entire recording.

In order to fix this issue, [00:04:00] the engineer applied techniques that unfortunately removed much of the live feel of the recordings. It is unfortunate, and this is the best he could do. Thank you so much for your understanding. All right, let’s get to the stories. In our first story, a random audition lands Linda Grinde on the set of one of Hollywood’s most notorious movie disasters.

It’s 1979, and Linda is headed to Montana for a summer theater gig. She ends up wrapped in layers of wool, riding in buckboard wagons and holding a rifle near the Canadian border. Linda calls her story Time Traveler. Thanks for listening.

Karna Sundby: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to time travel? To drop in to another time in a place and experience it with all your senses?

Well, I believe I [00:05:00] had such an experience I came to Montana in 1979 to work, to work at the Bigfork Summer Playhouse as an actor, and it was a fabulous experience. And at the end of that summer, one of the actors told me that he was going into Kalispell to audition for a movie they were shooting, and asked if I wanted to go.

It turned out that a number of the extras in the movie were teachers or students, and it was September, and they had to go back. So they took one look at us and sent us right to costumes. I knew immediately this was gonna be a really special experience because they dressed us to the underwear I put on bloomers, long [00:06:00] black cotton socks, leather tie-up boots, long woolen skirt, and a cummerbund, and a rough linen shirt, and a woolen shawl, and a babushka.

They took a picture of me, and I had to put it up on a locker because I had to dress exactly like that every day

So it turns out this movie was Heaven’s Gate. Now, you might have heard that it was a huge disaster, but at the time, Michael Cimino was the golden boy of Hollywood. He had won five Oscars for The Deer Hunter, and this story was a true account of something that happened in Wyoming called the Johnson County Wars, where in the late 1800s when the government had opened up [00:07:00] the West to homesteading, a wave of immigrants came out, and the local cattle barons were not happy.

So they hired mercenaries to scare them off by killing them And the story is how the immigrants fought back. So most of the movie had been shot, but we were there to be in the big battle scenes. Now, in case you think that being an extra in a major motion picture is really glamorous, let me tell you what a typical day was like.

We had to be at the Quonset Hut, the costume shop, at 3:30 in the morning, and in September it was cold, and put on our costume and then trundle into these five waiting school buses, old school buses, and then [00:08:00] head up the North Fork. Now, at the time, the North Fork was not paved. So we were in this stiff school bus going over, going over washboard and potholes and chattering our way all the way up there.

So there was no sleeping. And when, when we got there… Oh, uh, on the way, we would stop in Polebridge to pee, but then it was another hour up to the Canadian border, and they had gotten some, uh, permit to film on the Flathead National Forest. So we were in some very remote area. We’d get there about dawn.

They’d feed us breakfast. They’d take us out to the set. They’d bring us back, feed us lunch, take us back out to the set, put us back in the buses, and drive all the way those three [00:09:00] hours back to Kalispell, getting there about 10:00 or 11:00 at night. We did this every day for three weeks And what did we do out there on the set?

Well, the set was simply a long line of buckboard wagons and about 40 horses. There were stunt people. There were some of them professionals, but most of them were local people or people that had come in from all over the country. We had nothing to do. All we could do was wait. You weren’t allowed to bring anything.

Anything you brought along had to stay on the bus because God forbid you were wearing a watch when they shot this thing. So nothing. Oh, we could bring sunglasses. That was it, because it was treeless and hot. So here we were in these woolen clothes, trading off the shade of the wagon we had to stay by or climbing [00:10:00] underneath it because every once in a while, an assistant director would come by with a megaphone and say, ”

Linda Grinde: Lose the sunglasses.”

Karna Sundby: We’d have to take them off and tuck them somewhere, get up into our buckboard, and they’d slowly take us out on this roundabout trip just so the, the cameraman knew where we were going and bring us back to wait. You see, in the strata of the movie business, an extra sits at the bottom rung. We’re not even considered people.

They call us atmosphere

So, um, I, I knew there were big stars in this movie, but we didn’t get to see those people, except one day a storm blew in and we had to quit early, and we all hung out at the Outlaw Inn, and I got to meet Kris Kristofferson. [00:11:00] I actually got my picture taken with him, and that Christmas I sent it out as a personal card.

Merry Christmas from Kris and me. Except I spelled his name wrong. Well, the day finally arrived, the big day of the battle. We’d been waiting for this. We were all so excited and, and tense. They issued us rifles, a- authentic replicas of the rifles of the period, and sh- taught us how to shoot them. It was blanks, but they’re still dangerous.

And they pulled some of the extras out to take them to makeup and gave them horrible injuries. Like, one guy had a slash across his face. His nose was almost falling off. Another guy had a broken leg with the bone sticking out, two bones sticking out his leg. It was great at lunchtime to watch these guys playing Frisbee.

Make [00:12:00] believe. Well, after lunch, we were all set. Everyone was standing up in their wagon. We had our rifles, and finally we heard it. The assistant director said, “Okay, camera’s rolling. Action.” And we took off, as my father would say, like the hammers of hell. Those wagons flew like we’d never gone that fast before.

And we went over this little bridge rattling, trying to keep from falling out, firing our guns and screaming and all that pent-up immigrant mania. Just ch- we’re acting our asses off, man. Just trying to keep from dying The whole thing lasted about five minutes. But this time, instead of going around to the right, we went into the woods on the left side, a place we’d never been before, and that’s when it happened.[00:13:00]

It was like this silence settled all over everything. No one was talking, and then I could hear the creak of the wooden wagons. We were about four or five deep and, and I could hear the wheels, the metal wheels hitting the rocks underneath us. And, and I could smell horse sweat and leather and, and gun smoke in the air.

And I was holding my rifle and felt the weight of it against me, and the sweat running down my neck, and I could taste the salt and the dirt on my face. And I looked around, and I saw my friends standing up in the back of these wagons, and suddenly I, I wasn’t in a movie anymore. I wasn’t even in the 20th century.

All that make-believe fell away. I was a pioneer woman fighting for [00:14:00] survival in this terrifying and beautiful wild place I…

I’ve held onto that moment through all these years. And even today, when I ride along I-90, I’ll look out at the foothills and I’ll wonder, what would it be like to cover that vast expanse in a wagon?

Marc Moss: Thanks, Linda. Linda Grinde loves adventures and theater in equal measure. She is an actor and director who has traveled to three continents with her productions. She once hung by her knees on a trapeze 30 feet in the air and flew into the arms of a burly acrobat. But that’s another story. To see the [00:15:00] snapshot of Linda with Kris Kristofferson, visit tellussomething.org.

In our next story, one place holds the key to Nora Mahmoud’s life work, her greatest love story, and her family’s future. Follow Nora on a journey that began with a 12-year-old girl’s trip to the Library of Alexandria. From discovering a lifelong passion for teaching to a first date over Shakespeare, discover how a single sacred space can shape who we are across generations.

Nora calls her story A Place Kept Finding Me. Thanks for listening.

Noura Mahmoud: I was a 12-year-old child standing on a school trip to the Library of Alexandria. The air felt different, silent, weighty, almost sacred. The air carried the smell of familiar scents, of old books, ink, papers, stories, [00:16:00] stories waiting to be discovered, stories that I would later come to love.

My classmates were busy looking around the buildings, but I was completely focused on something different. It was our history teacher.

She spoke with great passion about the history of the library, that legendary place that gathered all the knowledge of the ancient world.

At the time, I was convinced at that age that my teacher would probably know more than Google. Yeah? Yeah.

She didn’t just teach history, she made it come alive And in that [00:17:00] day, inside one of the most powerful symbols of knowledge in ancient world, I had a dream, a dream to become a teacher like her

That day, I wasn’t just a normal girl in a normal school trip. I was a girl witnessing the beginning of her dream, a dream she didn’t yet understand I thought this was the end of my story with the library, but it wasn’t. Years later, I became the teacher I had imagined to be that day. That school trip was a turning point in my life When I started teaching, I realized that teaching wasn’t about teaching vocabulary, [00:18:00] teaching grammar, or even test scores.

It was about opening new doors and exploring new worlds. One day after the lesson, a student called Lily raised her hand and asked a question, “Can one person change the life of someone?” I looked at her and answered, “Well, Lily One person, one conversation, one teacher, one place can change the life of someone.

And of course, I was talking about myself

It still amazes me how one place can hold so [00:19:00] many beginnings, so many meanings. I started teaching literature, drama, novel, poetry. My students started exploring different worlds, different cultures, different ideas Some places we go to while others stay with us

And when the moment come to meet someone special, it wasn’t even my choice of place. It was his, my husband’s choice. Out of all the cafes, restaurants, places in Alexandria, he chose the library

Later, I asked him, [00:20:00] “Why did you choose the library to meet?” He answered, “Well, I know it meant a lot to you This kind of answer tells us who is Ahmed really. He is very thoughtful. He’s that kind of a person that pays attention to very small details that really matter. We started talking, but I remember well the day we met.

I arrived a little bit earlier than him. I tried to look calm, although I was a little bit nervous. Yeah. Then he showed up in his white shirt, smile on his face, carrying a book in his hand. He said hi, and I said, “Hi, what’s the [00:21:00] book in your hand?” He said, “A Shakespeare’s Twelve Nights.”

The guy was smart

Yeah, this means a lot to me. Yeah. We started talking, minutes turn it into hours, hours into stories. We talked about people who shaped our lives, ideas shaped our lives. I remember later asking him, and I was courageous enough to do so, “How much do you care?” He said 75%.

I said, “Oh, really?” I care [00:22:00] 85%.

A friendship turned into love, and love into marriage. We got married in six months, and I think, thinking back, that Ahmed didn’t give the exact percentage

Library of Alexandria is no longer part of my past. It’s still part of my present. I take my children. Hopefully, they get a glimpse of what inspired me once there, and every time we go, something beautiful happens. My daughter, Noor, [00:23:00] is a very smart girl. Every time she goes to the library, she gets more and more interested in history and geography.

One time on a display, she stopped and asked, “Well, Mom, how do we know a lot of, a lot about the civilizations that lived thousands and thousands of years ago?” I smiled and looked at her and answered, “Yeah, they kept asking questions like what you’re doing now.” She looked around and said, “Then I will keep asking questions.”

She’s 18 years old now. She’s studying history at her final year at high school and she is a volunteer at a [00:24:00] program running within the walls of the library My son Hazem has a different kind of interest. He is interested in maps, books, countries. Once he asked me, “Do children in other countries go to school like I do?

Do they have dreams like mine?” I remember we spent like an hour talking and discussing about other children End

When he went back home, he drew a picture of a chess board that was on the cover of the book he saw at the library. I asked him about this drawing. He said, “Well, [00:25:00] I wish I can find books that tell me how great players think.” I’m pretty sure that we didn’t share the same interests, me and my children, but we shared the desire to learn and to discover.

From a school trip to a love story to motherhood, it’s amazing how a place can have so many beginnings and so many stories. Some places we go to, while others stay with us. Thank you so much.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Nora. Nora Mahmoud is an experienced English language teacher and certified trainer from Egypt with over 18 years of experience in secondary education and teacher professional development. She is a certified trainer with the Professional [00:26:00] Academy for Teachers, the British Council, and the American University in Cairo, and has contributed to large-scale programs such as NTTP, TEA, and Connect.

Throughout her career, she has been recognized for her excellence in education, including being ranked among top teachers in a UNESCO innovation competition and receiving the Ideal Teacher Award at the secondary level. She is particularly interested in integrating technology and artificial intelligence into education, as reflected in her project, My Smart Blog Speaks a Global Language.

She values collaboration, lifelong learning, and building supportive learning communities, and is excited to join international programs to exchange experiences and expand her impact in education. To see photos of Nora and her family at the Library of Alexandria, visit tellussomething.org. Coming up after the break

Madeline: I was drooling all over the flashlight and [00:27:00] about 15 minutes in and I’m just crying and I’m like, please take them, take them.

Nothing’s happening. I kind of stick them in my armpit and then I go back into the barn. I finally call Andy and I say, please get down here. I don’t know what I’m doing.

Cathy Scholtens: We tore into that chocolate like a pack of wolves. You just take a bite. If you didn’t like it, you just spit it out. Just throw it on the ground.

It was insane. And we weren’t saying much, okay? It was very quiet. We just And then we heard it.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thanks to our partner for the 2026 season, Parkside Credit Union, a community credit union that likes to say yes. Learn more at parksidefcuonline.com. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers.

Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. [00:28:00] Also, big thanks goes out to the KettleHouse for donating the beer that we enjoyed the night of the performance. Check out the KettleHouse and find retailers across Montana and select parts of the United States. Visit them at their taproom in Bonner, Montana, or learn more at kettlehouse.com.

You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live, in person, and without notes. I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on June 16th, 2026 at Bonner Park Bandshell in Missoula, Montana. Opening the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Madeleine M.

loses her 29-year-old partner, leaving her lost in grief and overwhelmed by the heavy logistics of loss. An unexpected phone call from a near stranger leads her to a small Utah town, where a community embraces her. Listen to Madeleine’s story about grief, grace, and finding a way [00:29:00] forward. She calls her story Dawn and Dusk.

Thanks for listening.

Madeline: It’s nice to see everyone. To start off right into the meat of it, uh, in 2020, at the beginning of the global pandemic, the world lost Wade. He was 29. He had just been enrolled in nursing school. Um- And one day he was gone. And I, I lost him too. We had been dating for almost a year, and our relationship was kind of in that beautiful incubator in the honeymoon period before things start to get real.

And when he disappeared, myself, probably 26 years old, was quickly inoculated into the world of grief. And I can imagine that many of you in the audience understand the emotional weight of what it’s like to lose someone, and [00:30:00] perhaps theoretically, I, I understood that too, but the thing that I was not prepared for was, were the logistics.

The trying to open his phone to inform his employer that he had passed away, the shuttle to pick up his parents, the lack of a will, the many pieces and parts that it takes to put together someone’s life and how they’d like to be remembered. Not to mention, in the beginning of a pandemic, when it’s hard to gather and to celebrate, how do we remember the people that we loved and lost?

I still, I still don’t know. But what I do know is that I was living in Bluff, Utah. Anyone been to Bluff? Yeah. Town of 250 people in the southeastern corner of the state. And the day after Wade passed, I got a phone call from a woman who lived in another nearby town called Boulder. Her name is Blake. She still lives there, and she said, “I, I don’t know what’s going on, but I just get this [00:31:00] sense that something’s not right with you.”

Mind you, I had met Blake one time. We barely knew each other. Um, and there was no social media post. There was no obituary. There was no way for her to have known that this person had passed away. And she said, “When you’re ready, you should really come to Boulder. It’s a beautiful place to grieve.” And for those of you who haven’t been to Bluff or Boulder, they’re towns of comparable sizes in the southeastern and south-central corners of the state.

They’re on the doorsteps of national monuments, one on Bears Ears and one on Grand Staircase-Escalante. And between the two of them, they are beautiful places to grieve. They’ve hold generations, centuries of memory for many people. And I will say right now that it was not the beauty of Boulder Town that caught me when I finally had gathered enough of my affairs to make it down there.

It was the people, and I [00:32:00] think that a lot of small towns are like that, Missoula included. They’re beautiful, but it’s the people that make them special. Boulder opened a hotel room for me for two months in the middle of the pandemic, and for the first 40 days or so of my grief, I didn’t make a single meal.

People who didn’t know me dropped off food, invited me to their table, invited me on hikes. I talked to other people who had lost loved ones, and the most important thing that the town gave me was something to do. I didn’t know at the time how to put one foot after the other, but there were people in that place who made sure that I was always occupied, and I didn’t understand at the time how much of a gift that was.

There was one person in particular in that time named Andy. Andy still thankfully is a close friend, and he, uh, is a manager on an operation in [00:33:00] Boulder and has something like, I don’t even know, team, at the time, maybe 300 goats, 20 or so sheep, and a beautiful family, two young girls, a wife named Andrea.

And Andy in particular wanted to make sure that I didn’t spend a single dinner alone. And it was one night after dinner that he very kindly enticed me to s- take shifts with him and his girls that night in the barn because they were expecting a slew of overnight lamb births. And for anyone educated in that world, timing and practicality can be unpredictable.

It was by that time probably on the cusp of winter. I don’t know. It was kind of a plateau, maybe October, maybe November, but it was cold. And I slept out, didn’t really think too much about what I was wearing, and woke up at about 3:00 [00:34:00] AM, um, to go check on the sheep and see if there were any lambs, and at that moment, there were two, one white, one black, completely still and abandoned in a thin layer of snow.

And remember, it’s me six months into grieving, and I don’t even have my shoes on, let alone my… a jacket. So it’s me outside, a flashlight on these two lambs, and I’m like, “Ooh, damn.” I see the mom over in the other corner completely backed up. I don’t have my cell phone. I don’t have anything I need, so I kind of just, like, pick the lambs up, and I put the flashlight in my mouth, and then I kind of, like, approach the mom hoping that she’ll take these two animals in.

Anyone who’s ever worked with livestock knows that cornering a mom is probably not the best thing to do in an emergency situation, but team, I was [00:35:00] desperate. I wanted this mom to take these lambs in more than anything. And so I cornered her, and then I cornered her again, and I was tipping them and I was trying to get them to make sound, and I really just couldn’t.

I was drooling all over the flashlight. And about 15 minutes in and I’m just crying, and I’m like, “Please, take them. Take them.” Nothing’s happening. I- I kinda stick them in my armpit, and then I go back into the barn. I finally call Andy, and I pl- say, “Please, like, get down here. I, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

And Andy, in about five minutes, is down there, grabs the lambs, tips them back one time, and they go baa. And just, like, the perfect way that they’re supposed to, the mom’s instincts immediately… Yeah. They’re reunited. It’s almost like he does this for a living, you know? And I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful, and I haven’t stopped crying.

It’s kind of like a combination of snot and [00:36:00] tears at this point. But the thing that I felt so grateful for was the sense of relief that Andy gave me in that rescue, in that companionship, in that occupation, in that meaningfulness. We named those lambs Dawn and Dusk, one for white, one for black, for that period of the morning in which they were born.

And reuniting them with their mother gave me the opportunity to fight for the first time in a while for life. Maybe not yet my own, but something, someone else’s. And that is the day that I decided to step back into my life. Thanks, everyone.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Madeleine. Madeleine is a storyteller, media producer, and nonprofit communications strategist based in Missoula. As director [00:37:00] of storytelling at Resource Rural, she works with communities across the country to document how people are shaping change in the places they call home. Colorado-raised, Utah-forged, and Montana-polished, Madeleine has spent much of her career helping rural communities tell their own stories and challenge assumptions about rural America.

When she’s not working, you’ll likely find her riding gravel roads or gabbing with the gals. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, rebellious 15-year-old Kathy Scholtens is desperate to escape a chaotic home life, landing her at an all-girls Catholic boarding school run by an eclectic group of nuns.

Discover how these stubborn, funny, and compassionate women showed Kathy what it truly means to be home in a story she calls Lesson Learned. Thanks for listening.

Cathy Scholtens: Home. I didn’t want a home. Home meant chaos [00:38:00] and strife and trouble. I wanted an escape from home. A friend said, “Hey, there’s this all-girls Catholic boarding school right down the road from where you live.”

And I’m like, “Good. I’m going.” I didn’t know anything about Catholics, and I surely didn’t know anything about nuns. But there I was. The nuns wore these burgundy purple habits that were just folds and folds of, of material and, and they had these white veils that all you could see was the very oval of their faces, and they were a little scary.

They also all wore very sensible shoes These women were an eclectic bunch. They came from all over the world, and they were patient, and intelligent, and cranky- … [00:39:00] and compassionate, and stubborn, and some of them were really, really funny. Now me, I’m a 15-year-old full of false bravado, questionable behaviors, and I don’t give a shit attitude.

Those nuns saw right through me When I was in 10th grade, my best friend was Betty Martinez. Now, you could count on Betty for trouble and mischief any day of the week, and that’s probably why I loved her so much. One Sunday, we’re lounging around the dorm, and she comes running up, and she’s got the biggest box of chocolate.

I mean, it’s huge. And she goes, “Look what the nuns were gonna throw out, you guys.” And we’re like, “What?” She goes, “They were underneath all the newspapers. They were gonna throw them out. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.” And we take off, and where we’re going [00:40:00] is the book closet in the high school because it was our little hideaway, our little gonna do something wrong, go there.

So we haul ass down there. We go in, and there’s a bare bulb on the ceiling on a long string. Smells like mildew, and old textbooks, and a little bit of mimeograph paper, and, and it’s dirty. And we sit down, and there’s that box of chocolate. Now, if any of you guys have ever been handed a box of chocolate and been able to pick something, you know that little exploratory poke you do.

Like you, like you just kinda, like do a little… In case it’s, like nugget or something, and you really don’t want it. There was none of that. We tore into that chocolate like a pack of wolves. You just take a bite. If you didn’t like it, you just spit it out. [00:41:00] Just threw it on the ground. It was insane, and we weren’t saying much, okay?

It was very quiet. We’re just… And then we heard it.

What was that? That was rosary beads knocking against that habit. And we had all learned very quickly that each nun had a different sound. Their stride determined what those wooden beads sounded like, and that was Mother Anne Claire, the principal of the high school. Stood about this tall. Well, Betty, stupidly, reaches up and turns out the light.

Dumb. And, uh, so Mother Anne Claire notices that and opens the door. Sunlight pours in. We have chocolate all over our faces- … caramel in our [00:42:00] teeth, vanilla cream and marshmallow all over our hands, and we just look up, and she says, “Girls.” We’re like, “Mother.” She’s like, “Where’d you get the chocolate?” And like good, loyal friends anywhere, all of us went-

Betty. That came as no surprise to her. And, uh, she looked at Betty, and Betty started trying to explain. “Mother, Mother, the nuns, it was in the newspaper, and they were gonna throw it out.” And she did the quintessential nun stop-talking hand. And Betty stopped talking. And she looked at all of us, and she goes, “Any of you believe that?”

And we had to look down in shame. And she said, “You know,” she looked around that little, lovely little room, and she said, “The measure of how wrong something is can be determined [00:43:00] by at what lengths you’ll go to hide it.” Ugh. “I want a 500-word essay from each one of you on my desk in the morning. You can pick.

Lying, stealing, complicity, or how about gluttony?”

Lesson learned: gluttony When I was a junior, I had decided that God was calling me, me, to be a nun. Now, in retrospect, obviously it didn’t happen, thank God. Uh, but in retrospect, it was just some pre-lesbian tension happening. Um, I didn’t, I didn’t really get the, you know, I knew I wanted to be around women-

uh, but I had, the details hadn’t quite come clear, ‘kay? But the nuns were very excited about this and, and, uh- … Mother Dorothy, who was this adorable 80-year-old [00:44:00] English nun, decided that what I needed to do was learn more about the foundress of the Religious of the Assumption, which was the order. And so once a week, we would grab little Montessori chairs and take them out into the lawn, and she would sit next to me, and she would read me the story of Mother Marie Eugene.

Like, I didn’t really care. But it was so nice to be out there, and it was lovely, and it was idyllic, and it was perfect. Until Taffy. Now, Taffy was the oldest convent dog, and dog is pushing it, okay? Dog is more like floor mat. ‘Cause what Taffy did was lay splayed, all four legs out on the cool terrazzo of the chapel, never moving, and people would actually walk by and reach down and see if it was breathing.[00:45:00]

But not today. Today, Taffy was breathing because Taffy was with Theodora. Theodora, Theodora was the newest dog at the convent, and she was dragging Taffy by his penis backwards- … because they were in copulation You guys, I’m in 11th grade. I’m like, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t look up. Please, Mother Dorothy, just keep reading.

Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up.” Of course she looks up, and she says, “Oh, Taffy, I didn’t know you had it in you. Bangers, Taffy. Absolute bangers, my boy.” I’m looking at her like, “What?” And she said, “Kathy, religious life, it’s not all prayer and contemplation. Our job is [00:46:00] to- love all of God’s creation.

And God’s creation isn’t always perfect. It’s messy and muddled, and sometimes very embarrassing. And I hope that you spend your whole life enjoying and celebrating God’s creation. That’s your job. Lesson learned. 11 puppies later, God’s creation When I was a senior, I asked if I could do a religious retreat over the Christmas holiday.

So instead of going home, I would stay and, and be mentored and pray and hoogie boogie woogie. Um, but I was the only one that asked to do it, and so I was gonna be alone in a 40-man dorm. And there was a little group of more progressive nuns [00:47:00] who had a little community on campus, and they said, “Why don’t you come and stay with us?

You know, it’ll be fine.” So they made me a little bed next to French doors with glass, and they s- You know, it was lovely. I was thrilled. And I went to bed that first night with my little pillow and my little blanket, and every nun came by and bid me good night, and they went upstairs to their rooms The temperature dropped that night below 50.

This is Miami, Florida. When it gets below 50, it’s freezing, okay? I went to bed with one pillow and one blanket. I woke up with one pillow and eight blankets on top of me

Every nun had woken up at some time during the night, realized it was cold, thought about me, and took their own blanket down and put it on top of me. [00:48:00] That, you guys, is fierce love by women in sensible shoes. Lesson learned, finally home. Thank you

Marc Moss: Thanks, Cathy. Cathy Scholtens is a retired pediatric nurse, veteran, and professional noticer of weird little things. She talks to strangers, loves the color yellow, and occasionally follows curiosity down questionable paths. She believes life is best lived with laughter, kindness, and a willingness to look slightly ridiculous.

She remains completely unsupervised. You’ve been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the concluding stories from the Power of Place Tell Us Something live storytelling event.

Karna Sundby: So we would pick up the nursing students at 5:30 in the morning, [00:49:00] and they would run to the car with these eager smiles and bright eyes, just so grateful to have a safe ride to their classes and clinicals that started at 6:00 AM.

Greg Munro: I went to that window and looked out and was astounded because there was a whole farm out there just like I had seen on TV.

Adyasha Nayak: My grandparents’ house, a pretty old house that my grandfather built. It’s next to a pond. And every morning, I would hear the neighborhood children jumping into the pond, splashing, having fun, their shouts.

Mandy Moonbird: We had bedbugs always and dirty needles hidden in the mattresses and murders and overdoses, and a lot of people said there was a ghost.

Marc Moss: Listen for those stories at tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, [00:50:00] The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U 104.5.

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. Thanks to Cash for Junkers who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com.

TUS01601- January -Self Evident Part 2

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme, live, in person, and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Tell Us Something is supported this year in part by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something, at its core, does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast:

Scott Davis: The air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We’re coming up on people that are really [00:01:00] struggling in their event. Pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme self-evident.

Ruthie Castle: I began to think, “What if I wasn’t an unruly kid? What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?”

Marc Moss: Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at the George and Jane Dennison Theater.

Emily Farrell: I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you, a belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend.

Marc Moss: The theme that night was self-evident.

Shayla Paradeis: I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest. And so I did. I [00:02:00] turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Marc Moss: The University of Montana stands on the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people. And we must acknowledge in the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States that our founding fathers arrived here as colonialists and stole this land from the indigenous people that were here long before Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn and landed here.

For millennia, winters were a time for indigenous communities that were here, and continue to live here, to come together, passing down history and wisdom through the art of storytelling. We recognize the deep, sacred relationship that they have with this land, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have shared our own stories in this place.

Remember this Tell Us Something [00:03:00] stories sometimes have adult themes Storytellers sometimes use adult language

In our first story, ash falls from the sky and a nearby wildfire casts an ominous glow over the high desert as Scott Davis pushes past total physical collapse in his first 100-mile race. With the air quality hitting dangerous levels and the race officially canceled, Scott must decide if his broken body can endure the final six miles of the race in the dark.

Scott calls his story Are We There Yet? 100 Miles of Ash and Fire. Thanks for listening.

Scott Davis: Thank you Driving into Central Oregon, it’s a hot August summer day, blue sky, high desert, dusty, and there’s a single black line of smoke rising off in the distance, which is a bit ominous ’cause I’m about to run my first ever hundred-mile trail race in [00:04:00] just two days in the same area.

It’s even more ominous the next day when at packet pickup, which is down in Bend, Oregon, ash is literally falling from the sky. The race organizers have told us, uh, they’re monitoring the situation, but they’re optimistic that the weather is, is gonna change and we’ll be able to actually have the race. So the race is meant to start in Bend, Oregon, do a lap around the Cascades, and then finish in Sisters, Oregon, a small town about 20 miles north of Bend.

And so the fire is then also a little bit north, um, of Sisters as well. So we’re starting further away and gonna slowly make our way closer. Um, but the morning of the race, uh, they were correct. We had blue skies, clear– You wouldn’t have guessed anything was wrong. And the race got off, I assume, normally.

It was my first one, so, uh, I didn’t really know. Um, but at mile 50– Well, I’ve ran ultras before, but this is the first time I’ve gone this distance. [00:05:00] And at mile 50, um, I’ve actually found myself in third place, not because I’ve gone out with the leaders, not because I’ve even necessarily passed a lot of people.

I mean, it’s a hot day, it’s really dusty, um, and a lot of the leaders have dropped out. Um, but being in third place is pretty good motivation. Uh, and even though my body is hurting quite a bit, I’m, I’m feeling optimistic that things are about to change, um, at this 50-mile mark. Uh, for one thing, I’m about to start running with my buddy Dustin, so I’ve got a pacer for the, the rest of the race.

He will accompany me for the next 25 miles. And, um, my body is hurting a lot. Uh, it’s been a lot of running, but we’re about to do the biggest vertical climb of the race, meaning it will start being more glutes and hamstrings, a little less quads. Um, and I’m thinking like, “Okay, I’m gonna get this second wind,” which maybe seems a little crazy, but the year before, I did my first ever 100K, [00:06:00] and halfway through the race, I just had this amazing second wind and I finished and, um, I got third place, and that was very, very cool and a little unexpected.

And so I thought, “All right. This might be another situation like that. I’m gonna start feeling better.” Um, my body, for context at this point, um, I’m so sore. I don’t know if you’ve ever been so sore you can’t really straighten your legs or muscles at all. Um, that started happening about mile 30. Um, we’re at we’re at mile 50 and I’ve got a long way to go yet.

Uh, this is the hottest part of the day and, uh, my second wind does not come. We- what does happen instead during this next 25 miles is the air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We actually start crossing paths with a 50-mile trail race that’s going on at the same time, so we’re coming up on people that are, uh, really struggling in their event.

Um, pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point. [00:07:00] Most of them are starting to wear masks. Several are sitting on the side of the trail, and at least three or four of them are legit laying down in the middle of the trail. Um, I kept running, not because I’m cruel, but Dustin, my buddy, did stop and check and make sure everyone was okay.

The fourth place runner, the only runner to really catch me, um, catches up to me at this point, and I ask him, “What does it look like on the course?” Because I’m really nervous that now there’s gonna be, like, a bunch of people passing me and I’m gonna lose third place. And he says, “Oh man, it’s carnage out there.”

Uh, which is an apt description both of the, the course, but also of my body, which again, I’m, I’m continuing to get more and more sore. Uh, my feet hurt so bad I would eventually get X-rays thinking I had broken them. I’ve got chafe the entire length of my thighs that I just keep slathering in Vaseline at aid stations, which then gets covered in the dust [00:08:00] of the high desert.

Oh. So I put more Vaseline on. Um, Dustin later would describe me as the dirtiest human he’s ever seen. And he is the parent of two, uh, three or younger children, so. Anywho, um, Dustin and I are able to keep my third place as we make it to the 75-mile aid station, and here I’m gonna switch, and my friend Zach is gonna now take me the rest of the way.

Uh, and it does not take long before… Well, uh, this is also the furthest I’ve ever been. Um, my 100K was my previous furthest, so now at mile 75, every single step I take is the furthest I’ve ever gone, and I am very aware of that. Uh, at, pretty quick into that stretch, um, that fourth place runner passes me looking fresh as a daisy by my standards, and I am…

My run is [00:09:00] slowing down to a jog, to a walk, to pretty much a shuffle, uh, and I’m just waiting for more and more people to, to keep passing me, right? Things are getting dark, um, both mentally and also because the sun is legitimately setting, and the sky is filling with ash from the fire. It’s getting pretty bad.

In our headlamps, the, the little stream that you can see, it’s just full of particles, um, smoke and ash. Um, and you can see at one point when we’re running along the ridge, you can see the glow of the fire off in the distance and hear the ambulances, um, and the fire trucks, right, attending to it, and we just keep on going.

Um, by the time we make it to the second to last aid station, we’re 13 miles from the finish. I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m gonna not be on the podium, right? I’ve, um, the fourth place guy is well past me. I am making peace with the fact that I’m gonna probably have to walk the rest of the way, uh, which [00:10:00] as a half marathon, that’s a long way to go, and I, I start crying to myself a little bit leaving that aid station thinking about this daunting task.

And, um, I don’t get to have my moment really because that fourth place runner, who’s now in third, is being carried back to the aid station. Um, he is– he fell and hurt his hip. Um, I, I don’t know what all happened, but I can say that if I had fallen, there’s no way I would’ve gotten up. Uh, so once again, I found myself in third place, though not necessarily feeling deserving of it and trying not to get too excited because I am walking so unbelievably slow that I can’t imagine anybody wouldn’t pass me.

Um, we’re doing like 23-minute miles, and I’m not exaggerating. Um, I, I had done my race prep plan and anticipate as like best case, worst case. My worst case was 17-minute miles, so we were wildly off course. Um- And so we’re [00:11:00] walking in the dark, and I’m just waiting, like, all right, people are, are gonna start passing us.

There’s just gotta be an army of these runners ’cause we’re going so slow, uh, and we don’t see anybody, right? It’s just, it’s just me and Zach and the air, which is so full of dust and ash. I had Zach look up what the AQI is, and it, it’s 250. Oh. Um, well, I don’t know for how long, but w- the moment that we checked, it was at 250.

Anything above 150 is considered unhealthy. Uh, like, you shouldn’t be out there. And we make it to the very last aid station, six miles from the finish, um, and they tell me that the race has been canceled. Oh.

Here’s the thing, though. Um, oh, I forgot a very important detail. In addition to all of the smoke, um, before I make it to this aid station six miles from the finish, uh, I start to pee a Coca-Cola brown color. Oh. [00:12:00] Uh, this is a sign of rhabdomyolysis, which is a condition where your muscles start breaking down and release a protein into your body, um, that your kidneys can’t really process, and it can l- lead to kidney failure if not treated.

Um, but I was with Zach. He’s a veterinarian, so I felt fine. H- h- he’s got my back. Um, and we, we make it to this last aid station. We’re six miles from the finish, and I find out that the race is canceled, but here’s the thing. So all racers are being sent home. Um, volunteers have, are going to evacuate their homes ’cause the fire’s expanding, and they just can’t keep volunteers out anymore.

But I’m at the last aid station, and I don’t require any more volunteers, so the race directors have offered to let me finish, um, if I so choose. So, uh, if I can just get this broken body, um, the last six miles across the finish line, in spite of everything telling me I should probably stop, including my own body, um, [00:13:00] we kept on going.

Uh, we had two more hours of slow trudging through the dark. Finished in third place. I got a hold a big, dumb novelty check that was $250 and didn’t even pay for my X-rays. Uh, And, uh, as we packed up and, um, were driving back to the Airbnb, which definitely should have been a hospital, I am now realizing. Uh, didn’t know at the time, but, uh, I said to everyone in the car, um, “I love my body too much to ever do that to it again,” but we’ll see.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Scott. Scott Davis is a bit of a masochist, as two of his favorite things are wildly unpopular in our culture: running ultramarathons and mathematics. One of those [00:14:00] he does professionally, teaching math at Missoula College, while the other is just for fun. A self-described cartoon enthusiast, he has 15 cartoon-related tattoos and counting.

Scott Davis is powered equally by curiosity, a drive that borders on unhealthy, and a high-carb diet. In our next story, after a childhood defined by unexplained meltdowns and a desperate attempt to mask her way through a remote religious upbringing, Ruthie Castle, a graduate student in mental health counseling, finds herself arguing with a professor about how to diagnose neurodivergence.

Her search for clinical answers leads her to become her own guinea pig in an assessment that finally challenges everything she was ever told about being an unruly child. Ruthie calls her story Under The Mask. Thanks for listening.

Ruthie Castle: Growing up, I had a capsule wardrobe before it was trendy to [00:15:00] have a capsule wardrobe.

This meant that I had about five outfits that I would wear on repeat. They were predictable and dependable. I knew exactly how they would feel on my body, where they would touch me, what the textures were like, and I could be certain that I had already cut off the tags or I could wear it inside out. The issue was when my parents would get me a present, a piece of clothing from a thrift store for my birthday.

It wasn’t one of my five, and I felt like I had to wear it. I felt compelled. If I didn’t wear it, it wouldn’t feel loved. It wouldn’t feel like it was enough. It didn’t feel appreciated. So I would force myself to wear it instead of one of my normal five outfits. And the texture wouldn’t be right. The fabric was wrong.

The neckline was different. There was tags in unexpected places. And so inevitably, this would lead to a complete meltdown. If the texture was too much, I had too many sensory issues. [00:16:00] I couldn’t hear what was going on. I couldn’t make sentences. Everything shut down. And to be fair, I was well known for these meltdowns.

It could happen because I was getting my fingernails trimmed, because I was getting my hair brushed, because there was a change in plans, and suddenly I would go nonverbal. I would start biting. I’d claw and cry endlessly. And at a certain point, I knew that these were unreasonable based on the stimulus that was causing them, but it felt like I had no control over them.

I grew up in a religious community, um, about 30 minutes outside of the closest town, and that town had a population of 3,000 people, so it was a very remote upbringing. I was told by the adults in this community that I was too rowdy, I was too loud, and then I’d be too quiet, and I would [00:17:00] share too much, and then I wouldn’t share enough.

I would say things that were rude, but I wouldn’t understand why they were rude. And so I watched the kids around me, trying to figure out how they effortlessly fit this middle ground that I could never seem to find. If I was told that I was too loud, I wouldn’t find a middle area. I’d swing exactly in the opposite direction and go non-verbal for a while When it came time to go to college, naturally I chose a large public school that was known as the party school in the state.

And I remember my first week there during orientation week, I went to a frat party. And it was sticky, it was hot, it was loud, and there was so many people. And very quickly, I realized the rest of the world does not operate the way that the community that I grew up in does. So I did what I did then, I watched people.

I learned to dress like the other girls [00:18:00] dressed. I talked about what they talked about, even if I didn’t find it interesting, and used a lot of substances to try to cope. At the time, I wrote this off as being a little different. Like, yeah, I’m a little bit odd, I’m a little bit quirky, and this is just because of the way that I grew up.

Like, I’m homeschooled, I wasn’t well socialized, and I’m just having trouble adapting to this Fast forward about seven years, and I am in my grad program. I’m getting a degree in clinical mental health counseling. And one of the first classes that you have to take as a part of this program is called Skills Class, and it’s an experiential class where essentially you are pretending to be a therapist for one of your classmates, starting in like fifteen-second increments and then building up to thirty minutes.

And all of these sessions are recorded. There’s a little camera up in the corner of the room, and you take these recordings, [00:19:00] and you show them in front of your supervisors, your professors, and your classmates to get feedback both on what you’re saying and the interventions that you’re using, but also just how you’re showing up as a physical form in the room.

Pretty quickly, I’m getting feedback that I need to dress more professionally, for one. So I start to dress more professionally, even though it’s c- uncomfortable and a sensory nightmare again. I’m told that I can’t cross my legs because that shows that I’m closed off to the client, so I learn to sit with my feet flat on the floor, my hands in my lap.

I’m told that I need to make more eye contact, which is weird because they’re just a camera in the corner of the room. How can they tell if I’m looking at the person’s forehead or at their eyes? But I realize that these are just hoops that I have to jump through if I wanna get this degree. The next semester, we are in diagnosis class, and we are learning how to do a differential diagnosis to tell apart autism spectrum disorder and [00:20:00] complex PTSD.

It will probably be a surprise to none of you that I tend to be a bit of a wallflower. Um, I sit in the back of the class. I only talk if it’s necessary for participation. But suddenly, I found myself arguing with the professor. I could not understand how you’re supposed to tell these two diagnoses apart that essentially have the exact same criteria and presentation in a person.

So I’m doing all of this research in my free time outside of class, trying to figure out how to tell these two things apart. I’m sending the professor articles, and I just, I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it. So I decide that the best way to figure this out is to go in for an assessment myself. I’m gonna use myself as a guinea pig and see what questions these professional assessors are asking to figure out how to tell these two things apart.

I go in for the [00:21:00] assessment and it’s ridiculously easy. Um, first question that he asked me is if I can hear things that other people can’t hear. Um, I respond, “You know, that’s kind of… I don’t know what other people can hear, but yeah, like, I can hear electricity in the walls and I can hear the lights.” He asked me how I would eat a plate of Thanksgiving dinner, and I was like, “Well, duh, obviously you eat your way around the plate taking a bite of each food so they all end at the exact same time.

Like, this stuff is easy.”

So I’m feeling confident. I’m like, “I’m nailing the shit out of this assessment.”

No surprise, um, came back and he had diagnosed me with autism and ADHD. And originally, I’m super defiant. I’m like, “There’s no way that I’m neurodivergent.” Um, the way it had been explained to me my whole life from therapists was just that I had complex trauma, and that’s why the symptoms were what they were.

I [00:22:00] start to do research again and learn from people’s first-person narratives instead of just these research articles written by people who are not neurodivergent, and things kind of start to make sense. I get flooded with all these memories of childhood, and I began to think, “What if I wasn’t an unruly kid?

What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?”

So now I took a year off after the program, kind of just to de-stress, um, after how stimulating and how overwhelming that was, and more and more these memories are flooding back in. Things are starting to make more sense. Viewing myself through this lens, I have way more compassion for myself. I do research on how there’s such a strong correlation [00:23:00] and comorbidity between autism spectrum disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, especially if you were undiagnosed, which is very common for females.

We’re very good at masking and observing people’s behavior like I did at the frat party. So I get to this place of why can’t I be both? Why can’t I be neurodivergent and also have experienced trauma? Currently, I am working full-time as a therapist, primarily with neurodivergent, neurodivergent adults who have also experienced trauma.

And when I get to work every day, I’m wearing outfits that feel comfortable for me, even if they’re not considered professional. I take off my shoes when I walk in the office. I turn on all of my low mood lighting, no overhead lights, and I get my snacks out, and I sit crisscross applesauce in my chair [00:24:00] modeling for all of the clients that I’m seeing what it’s like to unmask and be in a space where they are radically welcomed, loved, and accepted.

Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Ruthie. Ruthie Castle would rather talk about her dogs, Pippin and Tigger, than herself. She eats copious amounts of beans and oatmeal on a daily basis, and she read 82 books last year. She spends her free time finding bones, rocks, and other treasures in the plentiful public land around Missoula.

Coming up after the break

Emily Farrell: I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you. A belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend. [00:25:00]

Shayla Paradeis: I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest.

And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. The next Tell Us Something event is September 23rd. The theme is Pursuit of Happiness.

Tickets are on sale now. Get yours at tellussomething.org. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live in person without notes. I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on January 20th, 2026 at the George and Jane [00:26:00] Dennison Theater in Missoula, Montana.

Opening the second half of the Tell Us Something podcast, Emily Ferrell’s world is upended when her magical grandfather flies her and her sister into the heart of the Ringling Brothers Circus to become guest performers. What starts as a dream of running away with the circus turns into a night of sensory overload and a lonely moment of panic that redefines what it means to be brave in a story that we call Send in the Clowns.

Thanks for listening

Emily Farrell: It’s the summer I turned five and I live in Condon, Montana also known as the Swan Valley a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees sweeping majestic mountains and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you a belief that for me would not survive the upcoming weekend [00:27:00] I’m pretty sure this is one of my earliest memories.

I’m getting on a small Cessna 182 with my mom and my three-year-old sister, Shelley. This plane has just landed in the middle of a field between the Mission Mountains and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and to me at the time, this all seems pretty normal because the pilot was my grandfather, who we called Grack

Grack was the kind of grandpa who could make an ordinary day into something completely magical. And one of my favorite memories of Grack are his infamous candy trees at our family cabin near Seeley Lake. Every summer, Grack’s trees would grow sugar-coated peach rings from their branches that my cousins and I would harvest [00:28:00] and then gobble up on the back porch before we had even had breakfast.

But today, there were no candy trees because GRAC was taking us to see the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus in Billings, Montana. And at the time, my mom’s cousin, my Aunt Sarah Jane, was the performance director of this circus. So as my mom was loading us up onto this plane, she informed Shelly and I that we had both actually been invited to be in this circus.

Ooh. And we were all about it. Um, we could not believe our luck. We were so down, and for the next two and some-hour plane ride, the two of us were just vibrating in the back of that airplane like a couple of little hummingbirds. We absolutely wanted to be in that circus. And so as you can imagine, as we arrived at [00:29:00] the event center and smelled the popcorn and the zoo animals, our anticipation hit a fever pitch.

And walking into that building, the room was enormous, and there was movement going on in every direction. And at this point, the circus hadn’t even started yet. Uh, we got there a little bit early to meet up with Sarah Jane and find out about this being in the circus business. And as we entered this room, the three rings came into view, which is where the performers did their performances.

Um, there were women in rhinestone leotards that caught every light. There were elephants in these elegant blankets with gold tassels on the ends. And then there were the clowns. There were so many clowns, like, just clowns everywhere, stretching, talking, warming up, and some of them were even smiling and making eye contact with [00:30:00] us.

We found Sarah Jane, where she took us to see the elephants, and I got to ride one. And little me loved elephants. I loved elephants because they were so grand that the earth would shake as they walked, and I loved elephants because around this age, I took a ballet class and the teacher asked me to demonstrate a ballet jump.

And if you don’t know what a ballet jump is, it’s when you throw your foot forward as you jump across the room, and this lady said that my ballet jumps looked more like an elephant than a ballerina. But I actually thought that was really awesome because I had always wanted to be an elephant and stomp around and take up space and be big, ’cause I was little.

And so when I got on that elephant, I just felt it, you know? I felt like I was borrowing a body that wasn’t my own, and I felt like the star of that show [00:31:00] After I rode the elephant, Sarah Jane took us to see the clowns that we would be walking out to be in the circus with, and these clowns were like a completely magical family of souls.

Some of them were on stilts, some of them were on unicycles, and all of them were just completely whimsical and cute. Now, leading up to this circus, my little sister and I had been watching a video about this circus on repeat, and one of the acts that both mystified and completely terrified us was a man named Tahar the Alligator King.

And Tahar was a Moroccan alligator wrestler with striking good looks, big muscles, and a clean-shaven, shiny, bald head. Tahar was known for hypnotizing his alligators [00:32:00] and then putting his shiny, bald head right between their jaws So as my sister and I are standing with these clowns, we’re on the edge of the ring as the show begins, and Tahar was performing his act right in front of us.

And this is when I remember my excitement beginning to quietly turn into significant anxiety. I started to become very concerned about where Tahar and his alligators might go next, and whether they might make their way toward my three-year-old sister. But luckily, I didn’t have too much time to spiral because at that moment, Tahar’s act was over and the clowns were whisking us away into the ring.

But at this point, I’m completely overstimulated. I’m sweating. I’m worried about rogue reptiles and holding onto this clown’s hand like it was my only lifeline. The [00:33:00] clowns led us out around the perimeter of this circle as the ringmaster announced us as the circus’s special guests. And that was it. That was our big moment I wish that I could say it was more magnificent, but I think I was more excited to get back to my seat, ’cause Grax scooped me up, and from the safety of his lap, I continued to watch the show.

And the three rings w- sta- continued in constant motion as the ringmaster, uh, announced where to look, like a traffic cop of awe and wonder. My mom pointed out Sarah Jane, who was standing on a podium directing the performers and wearing a top hat, a coat with tails, and neon hot pants There was a man who was shot out of a cannon, which I later learned was the most dangerous job in the circus.[00:34:00]

And as I watched this spectacle unfold, I remember just being completely transfixed by the way these performers were able to blend the lines between humans and animals. People were flying around like birds, elephants were doing dances on tiny stools, and tigers were jumping through hoops of fire. Uh, as the performance ended, Sarah Jane invited us to see the train where the performers and the animals all lived together.

And I’m pretty sure this was the part that, uh, fantasi- or f- made me the most excited, because I began to fantasize about running away with that circus. And Sarah Jane’s train car was as magical as I possibly could have imagined. It had a little bed on cables that went up and down, and windows on both sides, and to me, it felt like a tiny fort [00:35:00] on wheels And at this point, I’m pretty sure my sister and I were completely exhausted, ’cause the next thing I remember, my mom was putting us to sleep in this little space.

And as I was drifting off, I was totally in my fantasy of running away with this circus. Until the train lurched. I sat straight up. The car was dark. There was just some soft light coming through the windows. My sister was asleep. My mom was gone, and I wasn’t sure if I had dreamt this or if I had, uh, if it had actually happened, but in that moment, my f- fantasy completely collapsed and I started to panic.

I wanted to look for my mom, but I thought if I got off that train, it might take off with my sister in it, so I just stayed there, trying to be very brave and very quiet at the same time. [00:36:00] And as I sat there, I thought about the show, and I thought about the elephants and the flying and Sarah Jane’s hot pants, and I couldn’t get over the way that these performers seemed to bend the laws of nature.

And then I started to think about Grack and how he had always kinda had his own kind of magic like this with things like the candy tree. As we got older, becoming teenagers and then adults, the candy tree grew barren for many years. But now, Shelly and I both have kids of our own, and most of my cousins do too, and I’m happy to report that the candy tree blooms peach rings quite regularly now.

My oldest is 16, so I’ve been a mother for quite a while, but sometimes it still feels like I’m just per- performing the role, and underneath the responsibility, and the bills, and the work, sometimes I just feel like I’m a kid [00:37:00] who’s in the costume of being a parent. Sometimes I even feel like I’m all alone in a, in a box on wheels, and I can’t control where I’m going.

And then I remember that I’m still the very bravest big sister, stomping around and taking up space like an elephant doing ballet. And I know that little me would be so proud. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Emily. Emily Farrell is a communication major at the University of Montana, as well as a mother, writer, and lifelong learner. A dedicated puzzle enthusiast, she enjoys playing cards, sampling fine cheeses, roller skating, and kicking her kids’ butts in Mario Kart. Emily grew up in the Seeley-Swan Valley, where she developed a deep love of catching [00:38:00] frogs, building snow forts, and jumping into ice-cold rivers and lakes.

Her work and life are shaped by curiosity, humor, and a strong conviction that connection, much like play, is both an art and a discipline. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Shayla Paradise has a profound encounter in a Montana cedar grove and begins her lifelong quest to truly listen to the natural world.

This journey eventually carries her across the globe to a sacred ceremony in the Australian bush, where an unexpected lesson from an elder and a conversation by a river change her entire understanding of what it means to belong to the Earth. Shayla calls her story The Shape of Embodied Listening.

Thanks for listening

Shayla Paradeis: I was twenty three years old the first time I heard the [00:39:00] trees. I was walking in my favorite forest in northwest Montana It’s this beautiful old growth grove of cedars. And right before I came back to the parking lot, right before stepping out of the woods, I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest.

And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly. And as I did, I felt this sorta emulating energy coming out of me almost like a wave, as if the being that is me had somehow come out of this body into the field around me, and I could send a thank you.

And then I immediately felt something come back, like [00:40:00] this warm touch on the back of my heart that sent this warm sensation all throughout my body, and I realized we have real communion with nature

And since then, I’ve been on a journey of cultivating that practice, and I’ve been treating it like it’s my job to listen to nature and have communion with it, and to be good at that practice, to take it seriously, and to kinda keep growing and keep listening and cultivating that skill And throughout that process, it has brought me to some incredible teachers, uh, some of them indigenous elders.

One in particular in Western Colorado, a sweet old man named Chi. And still unknown to me, he could somehow tell that I was doing something that I didn’t really know I was [00:41:00] doing, and he helped me learn a few practices, like calling in the four directions, setting sacred space, or saying hello to country.

So when you get somewhere and you get out of your car, you offer it your vibration before you do anything else, and basically stand there and say hello. Offer yourself. And these teachers that I’ve been working with eventually connected me to elders in Australia. So in the spring eq-equinox, our spring equinox, their fall equinox of twenty twenty-four, I got invited to go to a ceremony called the Rocky River Corroboree, and it was hosted by a man, a custodian of the land of the Rocky River.

Uncle Lewis Walker is his name, and I was asked to attend and to stay at the [00:42:00] healer’s camp I arrived, uh, as the sun was setting, by plane in Brisbane, and then I rented a car and drove on the left side of the road down windy paths in this sort of jungle bush of wild grasslands and eucalyptus trees. And I got there in the dark to camp, and, uh, I got out of the car, and I just felt buzzy and sort of like I didn’t belong.

I had really strong imposter syndrome. And I don’t identify as a healer, so I didn’t know why I was invited to be at this camp. And the next morning when I woke up, I went for a little walk to say hello and kinda get oriented. And when I got back to camp, one of the elders scolded me for wandering. I was like, “Oh, no, I did bad,” and I’m already an American and so afraid of cultural misappropriation in this situation and not sure that I belong and nervous.

And [00:43:00] right after that conversation, everybody stands erect in the camp, and this man is walking toward us in a long black robe with red trim, no smile on his face, real serious eyes, and it’s Uncle Lewis Walker. And he comes into camp, and he says, “Where are the Americans?” And I was g- hiding behind the outer circle.

But there were only three Americans present, so I stepped forward, and he looked at me with real pinpoint focus, just met me with his eyes, and then he drew out, and then he pinned right back in And he went, “Good.” And he smiled a little bit. So that helps me relax and, and enjoy the ceremony, uh, which started that night with Uncle Lewis Walker standing on the stage, r- a grass stage, with a banner over him [00:44:00] that says, “One Blood” in red writing on yellow fabric.

And there’s a big fire in front of him, and we’re on a plateau where his voice in the microphone echoes over the river valley. And he started the ceremony by inviting us all to cleanse ourselves and make eucalyptus smoke, which we did. We brought these branches in, and there’s probably 250 people at this gathering.

We threw in these branches and cleansed ourselves in the yummiest smoke I’ve ever been in. And then we started to dance, ceremony dance, to the didgeridoo. And the first song was for the kangaroo, so everybody dances like the kangaroo, and then the emu, and then the eagle, and then the goanna, where you crawl on the ground all around the fire to the didgeridoo.

And then we sit with embodied animal [00:45:00] spirit, and we listen. And Uncle Lewis Walker told us a story about the Pleiades, the seven sisters. And he said that in his lineage and in his oral tradition, it has been long known that there are eight sisters, and that the eighth sister is this unseen energy bet- between them all.

The woman who put out the fire by bringing the water. And he says he calls this gathering in part for all of us to understand how important it is that we access that energy to bring the water to put out the fire, and to come together to do it at this crucial time.

After his ceremony, I was introduced to a [00:46:00] woman named Ria. Ria was getting a PhD, and she’s from a colonial background like myself, in listening to river. And she had a real relationship with this land and a great relationship with Uncle Lewis Walker. He was really one of her mentors. And she took me to this beautiful part of the camp, the women’s camp, they call it, and it was a soft swimming hole.

And we went for a nude swim together and we sang and we listened to song, and I felt like a mermaid. It was amazing. And I could kind of feel this beautiful blending of my song and her song, hers of river and mine of forest. It was really quite a splendid experience. And when we were walking back to camp together, I asked [00:47:00] her, “Ria, what do I do with all of this?

Like, how do I carry this back to the people that I come from and share it in a way that’s useful or appropriate or respectful or tangible?” And she just looked at me and laughed, and she said, “It doesn’t work like that. Like, right now, where we’re standing, it has so little to do with what you’re doing or saying or even thinking.

What’s going on right now is that those magpies are interacting with you, and those cicadas are reacting to your vibration. There’s stuff happening all around you. It matters very little what you make of it or how you shape it.” And I had this huge aha moment as the shape of how I think changed [00:48:00] It’s a dialogue, of course.

So while I’ve been spending so much of my time thinking there’s this, like, cultivation of this linear growth that just keeps adding and getting better, it’s really that there’s this ever-tethered, ever-present shape, multidimensional, that we are and that everything else is, and that we can’t really do it wrong

And so while I had been looking so deeply into nature and wanting to listen, nature had been also looking very deeply back into me. Our journey is our offering

Marc Moss: [00:49:00] Thanks, Shayla. Shayla Paradise is a walking ecosystems storyteller who identifies as a wild animal. Although she looks a bit out of place in some social settings, she is mostly well-behaved and has managed to walk across entire countries five times without a smartphone to navigate. Her narratives from meandering experiences over 18,000 miles of through-hiking are poetically expressed in her book, Footprint of a Heart, and through events as a public speaker and singer-songwriter.

Shayla is a believer in beauty, a seer of connectivity, and is consistently mesmerized by the experiences of being human. Lately, she has been activated to remind us of what we have by telling stories of the Earth, animals, and stars. Next week on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Linda Grinde: I could smell horse sweat and leather and, and gun smoke in the air, and I was holding my rifle and felt the weight of it against me and the [00:50:00] sweat running down my neck, and I could taste the salt and the dirt on my face.

And I looked around and I saw my friends standing up in the back of these wagons.

Nora Mahmoud: One day after the lesson, a student called Lily raised her hand and asked a question. “Can one person change the life of someone?” I looked at her and answered, “Well, Lily, one person, one conversation, one teacher, one place can change the life of someone.”

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme the power of place.

Madeline M: I was drooling all over the flashlight and about 15 minutes in and I’m just crying and I’m like, “Please, take them, take them.” Nothing’s happening. I, I kinda stick ’em in my armpit and then I go back into the barn. I finally call Andy and I pl- say, “Please, like, get down [00:51:00] here.

I, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Cathy Scholtens: We tore into that chocolate like a pack of wolves. You just take a bite. If you didn’t like it, you just spit it out, just threw it on the ground. It was insane, and we weren’t saying much, okay? It was very quiet. We just … And then we heard it.

Marc Moss: Tune in for those stories on the next Tell Us Something podcast.

The next Tell Us Something event is September 23rd. The theme is Pursuit of Happiness. Tickets are on sale now. Get yours at tellussomething.org Thanks to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5.

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and [00:52:00] Joyce of Tile. Thanks to Cash for Junkers, who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com. You have been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme, live, in person, and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. The next Tell Us Something live event is right around the corner.

We are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana. The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org. Tell Us Something is supported this year in part by a grant from the Montana 250th Commission, which was established to coordinate statewide efforts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

The objectives of the commission include promoting civic engagement, and Tell Us Something, [00:01:00] at its core, does this by encouraging community members to share and listen to the stories of those who live, work, and play here in Montana. We are grateful to the Montana 250th Commission for their generosity.

This week on the podcast.

Where I saw my fellow waiters like me, artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break.

Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme self-evident.

I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was, like, flipping through dresses. And I turn around.

My mom was standing right there, and I was, like, so scared.

Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at the George and Jane Dennison Theater.

And I knocked on the door, and this big burly guy [00:02:00] with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.”

The theme that night was “Self-Evident”.

I read Into the Wild, and I just ate that up. Alaska, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

The University of Montana stands on the aboriginal territories of the Salish and Kalispel people, and we must acknowledge in the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States that our founding fathers arrived here as colonialists and stole this land from the indigenous people that were here long before Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn and landed here.

For millennia, winters were a time for Indigenous communities that were here and continue to live here to come together, passing down history and wisdom [00:03:00] through the art of storytelling. We recognize the deep sacred relationship that they have with this land, and we are grateful for the opportunity to have shared our own stories in this place

Remember this Tell Us Something stories sometimes have adult themes Storytellers sometimes use adult language In our first story, Francis Davis is an aspiring novelist who receives a letter that promised to change everything. He had won a prestigious $50,000 arts grant. As he celebrates the windfall with his fellow dreamers and artists in the South Philly arts scene, a strange coincidence involving a famous jazz writer and a second piece of mail begins to cast a shadow over his sudden fortune.

Francis calls his story The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Thanks for listening[00:04:00]

It was 1994 Frances Davis won $50,000 in an arts grant and I’m sure my life was about to change

I was living in South Philly working part-time as a caterer

And I came home one day, find a piece of mail that I took up to my one-bedroom apartment above an accounting office. It was from the Pew Charitable Trust Walked into my apartment, opened the letter. There were two pieces of paper. The first piece of paper, “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you. We’ve read with interest, but please apply in the future.”

I was a loser. I was a [00:05:00] loser. I was a loser. But the second piece of paper, the list of winners, there was my name. Francis Davis. Francis Davis. Francis Davis. I was a winner. I was a winner. I was a winner That afternoon, I was working a party at Rittenhouse Square, 15th and Locust. I gathered up my secondhand tuxedo, put it in the garbage bag that I used to haul around, and walked to work, where I saw my fellow waiters like me, artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break Mine had come in

As we set up the [00:06:00] tables and chairs, the bars and the food stations, the decorations, strung lights in the trees, I told all my fellow waiters the good news. I was a winner. Fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars. I could take off a year, maybe two, write my novel. They were happy. They congratulated me Maybe a little jealous.

One girl who had broken up with me by telling me she’d like to do things looked at me like maybe she had misjudged

It was one of the best nights of my life. By the time I had changed out to my tuxedo, I told nearly everyone in work the good news. Serving the fancy food to my patrons, the rich and [00:07:00] influential of the arts community of which I would soon be part

I felt great. That night, my coworkers took me out, bought me drinks, slapped me on the back. I told stories. But when I went home, there was the two pieces of paper on my kitchen table. The rejection letter, “Dear applicant,” the list of winners. There was a number at the bottom of the rejection letter. I called the number, left a message.

“There’s been a mistake. I’m a winner. My name is among the winners, but there’s also a rejection letter. Could you call? Could you explain my quandary?”

I must confess, about two years [00:08:00] previous to this, I was in my West Philadelphia apartment with a, my girlfriend at the time. We were watching a VHS movie. We’ve rented from Blockbuster The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola and the phone rang And I went to the kitchen to answer it. I picked it up.

Person on the line identified themselves as a reporter. They said I was Francis Davis. They began to praise my book, how much they liked my book, how much they liked my writing, my book of jazz. I let them go on. I had received a call like this more than once

When he stopped talking, when he asked when would be a good time to set up an interview, I had to tell him the truth. There were two Francis Davises. Two [00:09:00] Francis Davises. One, the famous jazz writer who’d written a book on Miles Davis. Me, a short story writer published by his friends in zines I hung up the phone, went back with a fresh bowl of popcorn, finished the movie with my girlfriend.

We laughed about it

You might guess what happened. I got a call Monday morning from a very sorrowful cl-clerk, “We’re sorry. We’re sorry. There’s been a mix-up. There’s been a mistake.” But it was my mistake The rejection letter was right. The list of w- won- winners was right. There was two Francis Davises. But he had done nothing wrong.

But I ask you, had I done anything wrong? Wouldn’t you have done the same? Enjoyed the weekend. [00:10:00] Live a little bit in your head as a dreamer

So I went back to work that Monday. There was an indoor party, this one at the Franklin Institute for bankers And I knew what I had to do

But I couldn’t. I served the prime rib, the garlic whipped potatoes And between the entree and the dessert, I wandered upstairs, the second floor of the science museum where there’s a giant replica, fiberglass replica of the human heart. You could walk into it. There was a set of stairs up the right ventricle into the aorta, down the left ventricle.

The da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum of the [00:11:00] heartbeat. Facts Were drummed in as well. The average human heart beats two billion times per lifetime. I knew what I had to do. I walked down and told all my coworkers, “There was a mistake. There was a mistake. There was two Francis Davis. I actually didn’t win the fifty thousand dollars.”

Let me tell you, if you tell a group of dreamers, artists, writers, musicians who would die for fifty thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars may be a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in today’s money, and you had to tell them you didn’t win, they will laugh at you They will look at you with a mixture of pity and ri-ridicule.

The girl who had said she liked to do things when I told her the news she [00:12:00] looked at me and scoffed like something had been confirmed

But I was not wrong. I was not wrong. I was not wrong because two weeks after this, I get a call from Lois Welch, the creative writing director, U- University of Montana, the MFA program. She was offering me a full fellowship. “Francis, come to Montana. Would you like to come to Montana? Are you interested? We loved your work Yes, Lois.

Yes, Lois. Thank you so much. But I thought, “Is this a mistake? Is this a mistake? Is this a mistake?”

But it was the truth I left. I disappeared to Montana

18 months after this news broke, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber was [00:13:00] found in a cabin outside of Helena

When the news broke, I thought of my coworkers back in Philadelphia who by this time must have figured that I’d gone, disappeared. I wondered when they thought, heard about Ted Kaczynski, if they thought about me. I wondered if they believed me now I wondered if they thought about me. I wondered if they believed me now

Thanks, Francis. Francis Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia and has lived most of his adult life in the West. He has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska. [00:14:00] Francis loves American working class literature and teaches college writing, creative writing, and literature at Gallatin College.

He’s also recently been certified as a hot yoga instructor and teaches at Headwaters Hot Yoga in Missoula. Francis published a collection of short stories, West of Love, and his stories have appeared in Story, Natural Bridge, and Weber: The Contemporary West, among many other publications. Francis Davis has also worked as a journalist throughout the state of Montana and has earned a variety of writing fellowships from around the country.

In our next story, Adria L. Jwart spent years as a functional alcoholic in order to bury her true identity. Adria finds herself in an intensive treatment center where the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself enough to survive. Her journey toward recovery leads her to confront a childhood memory in a Kmart clothing aisle and a deep-seated fear of being, [00:15:00] quote, “an abomination,” leading to an act of truth-telling that accidentally goes viral on a global scale.

Adria calls her story Prestigious Education. Thanks for listening

Many a times people have, uh, queried me about my education. It’s like, “Um, you’re very well educated. You’re, uh, very articulate, well spoken.” Well, for an Indian. Just kidding. Lots of Natives have heard that before, but, um, and they’re like, “So where’d you go to school at?” Or, um, “Where’d you graduate from?” And I just jokingly, not jokingly say, “Watch East.”

And they’re like, “Oh, where’s that at?” “Well, it’s, uh, back east.” “Oh.” “It’s very, uh, prestigious. They only have like 50 people in there at a time.” But the fact is Watch East is actually stands for like [00:16:00] the Worm Springs Addiction Center Treatment for Change or something. It’s like an acronym for that. And East means they had another location out in Glendive, Montana.

So it’s very eastern Montana. Basically West Dakota. Yeah.

But the fact is, I am– That is one of the hardest things I ever did, was graduate from that place. It was an intensive treatment place where for six months, day in, day out, seven days a week, you, like, dealt with your own self and inner soul and being and just let everything out, or tried to anyway. Because, um, one of the things they teach you there is, uh, the number one cause of relapse is resentment.

So what does that mean? Well, resentment is like you always have these reasons to go back to drinking. Okay, you’ll be going good. You’re sober for two years, and then, um, wait, what about my… You know, [00:17:00] something maybe happened when you’re a kid or whatever, and you’re holding something against your… Anyways, whatever haunts you, it always comes back and gives you a reason to drink, including at yourself.

It’s like, “I’m doing good. I’m doing well. I’m doing… You know, everything’s going well. My job is good,” and then all of a sudden, “No, you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this happiness. You’re a piece of shit. You know? You’re a piece of shit. You’re a felon.” I know I can say that about myself.

And so you just kinda slide, “Yeah, I am,” and you just give up on yourself and start drinking again or s- whatever your drug of choice is. And, um So, um, it’s one of the things that you also had to combat that was, uh, you have to love yourself enough to quit drinking. What does that mean? Um, well, basically means, like, I know you can use, like, a reason for, like, not to drink.

Like, “Oh, my, uh, you know, I’m gonna quit drinking for my wife,” you know? [00:18:00] But heaven forbid, what if your life-wife leaves you and then you don’t have that reason no more? Or, “I do it for my kids.” Well, you can use your kids as a, you know, reason to help give you strength and everything. Ultimately, it comes up…

You have to, um, you have to do it for yourself. You have to love yourself enough, and that’s, uh, something, um, you know, I took from that place. And, um, there’s one other thing that they made me do is, like, they found out I was a bohemian, artsy person. And so they had me do all these big murals there, but one of the murals said, uh, “Your story still matters.”

And underneath it, even though the place had only been there since, like, nineteen– the late nineties, there was, like, thirty-six or forty names or something, and two names actually popped up while I was there, and these were names of people who had died while still on paper after leaving that place. So it was very, like, a stark reminder of, um, you know, [00:19:00] what could happen or what the reality was.

Like, one day, they, like, had us all, like, grab a piece of paper. One, two, three. So paper one, they opened it all up. We all stood over there. It was like, “You guys all relapsed.” Paper two, “Y’all died of your addiction.” Paper three, “You recovered. You’re living in recovery. Which one do you want?” And that was the thing.

Th-they straight up said, “This place has a one-third addiction recovery rate.” So we– That’s basically– That’s the honest truth of this place is, like, two-thirds of you aren’t gonna recover, and it’s, like, even worse for other places. It’s only, like, ten percent. But anyways, um, the thing about Not loving yourself enough to drink.

It’s like I got out of there and I hadn’t been thinking about relationships. I didn’t really love myself enough, just been a functioning alcoholic for the last eight years. And I was just like [00:20:00] thinking about getting into a relationship, but there was stuff haunting me from back before when I was like a teen and little kid and everything, and that was my gender identity.

And I never really thought about that too much until, you know, I started thinking about relationships again. It was just something I had to deal with. So, um, so I think back to when I was a little kid. I was in a Kmart Blue Light Special, and I’m shop– my mom is shopping for Rustler jeans. I had to try on Rustler jeans.

I hated those jeans so much. They were so uncomfortable and whatever. And I was just like, “Mom, I gotta go look at toys.” “Okay, sure, whatever.” And I ran off to the toy section, except I didn’t go to the toy section. I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was like, uh

This works as a prop. Um, it’s like flipping through dresses. [00:21:00] It’s like, “Hmm, wonder if they have this one in my size?” And I turn around, my mom was standing right there, and I was like so scared, so embarrassed. And she– I, like, I literally said that out loud, and I thought she was gonna be mad at me ’cause she’s evangelical Christian.

But she just looked at me, not with a look of judgment, w-with, like, sadness in her eyes that her kid was, you know, a queer kid in Montana, in eastern Montana, that was gonna have a tough life, and it was something they’d probably have to hide, and there’s nothing she could do about that to protect her. So-

I remember a few months later, I’m in the church, at a church camp, some random, one of the many church camps that got in up around Livingston, Montana in the boondocks. I’m [00:22:00] sitting there praying on a prayer bench, like crying my little eyes out, asking for forgiveness. Like, “Please, God, I don’t wanna be an abomination.

I don’t wanna be an abomination.” And that was because I read in the Bible that if you wear clothes, if you’re a male, wear women’s clothes, you’re abomination unto the Lord, and that course meant you’re going to hell or you’re gonna burn, and I didn’t want that. I’m just crying my little eyes out and stuff, and that’s one of my, um, most intense memories of, uh, whatever growing up.

But there was also another instance of, uh… I saw this person on the– this movie, Little Big Man, and, um, there’s a Heemane character in there, which is, uh, basically the Cheyenne word for trans. Um, yeah, it’s born women, heart and soul of that of a– or born male, that heart and soul of that of a female trans, [00:23:00] basically.

And, um, and I, I kind of– It was just like nice having a word of that person. Maybe that’s what I am. But at the same time, it was like, it’s a comedic movie. Even though they treated the character respectfully in hindsight, at the same time, it was just like, that’s a character people also laughed at, and you didn’t wanna be that.

It was like, “You look tired, Little Big Man. You wanna come to my teepees and rest on soft furs?” Cue everyone laugh at character. It’s like, I don’t wanna be that. So So, um, yeah, so it was just something I kind of kept hidden and everything, and I act- when I was a, being an artsy bohemian and everything, about 16, 17, I started, you know, being more bisexual in the closet and stuff, and, you know, I was what they called a closeted femboy with the girlfriend I had.

But then after that, about 25, I was a, had what you call a, lose my twink death or [00:24:00] whatever. And I just like, “Well, I guess I missed that window.” Be- ’cause I was gonna actually try to go to school here or in down south and just, like, get away and just so I could transition, but it just never happened, and I figured that window had, that opportunity had passed.

So, so cue fast-forward about 10 years later. Um, my brother is murdered, and I’m, like, turned a functioning alcoholic until I couldn’t function anymore, until I’m in the treatment place. So I get out of there, and I’m thinking about this whole time, this whole, um, situation of, well, I’m just, like, ashamed of myself.

I’m sitting there where as a Native activist, #decolonize and, you know, love yourself enough to quit drinking. I couldn’t even love myself who I was, who I truly was, this Hiamani character. And to truly decolonize, I ha- had to accept who I was as a Native person, [00:25:00] which is a Hiamani, and, um, it was just something that…

So I wrote about it in some article. Gotta wrap this up here. You know, it was like a… I never thought the, um, character was like, um, or it was like, it was like a line in there. It said, uh, maybe I would have been, uh, decolonized. Maybe I would have been more, um- In my gender identity or something in the article, and then, um, it became this…

Uh, you know, I figured a few hundred people would read it online in Indian Country. Then, and then all of a sudden, I start getting all these emails and people actually wanting me to speak, and this is a great article. And I was like, “Well, what’s going on? I didn’t expect them to… Oh, congratulations on coming out tonight.”

I was like, “I wouldn’t expect that many p- people to see it.” But apparently, Jake Tapper of CNN had retweeted the article, so when I came out, it was just, like, announced on CNN, basically. But, um, so I guess I… [00:26:00] Yeah, I guess I’m out. I g- There was no, uh… But anyways, the thing is, I just, you know, for self-realization, that one kid, that little kid that’s crying, the one in the church camp, that kid, I wish I could just go back to him and just say, “You know, you are not an abomination.

You are who you are. You’re a himane. And you know, I wasn’t gonna, I wouldn’t promise your life’s gonna be easy, but at the same time, it’s just like, just love yourself enough to be you, and your story still matters.” And maybe I’d remember that when I’m feeling suicidal or unwanted later. Anyway, thank you

Thanks, Adria. Adria Zweit is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and transgender two-spirit journalist. Her writing has [00:27:00] appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among other publications. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Indigenous Transilience.

You can also find her on Instagram Coming up after the break

And I knocked on the door, and this big burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.”

I read Into the Wild and I just ate that up.

Alaska, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

Stay with us. Thank you to our story sponsor, The Good Food Store, who helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. The next Tell Us [00:28:00] Something live event is right around the corner.

We are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana. The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast, where people share their true stories around a theme live in person without notes.

I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on January 20th, 2026 at the George and Jane Dennison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Opening the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Mark Matthews is a freelance journalist assigned by the Washington Post to cover a high-profile assassination attempt at the US Capitol.

He thinks he’s found the scoop of a lifetime in a small Montana mining town. After tracking down the shooter’s best friend and securing what he thinks of [00:29:00] as a bag of gold in the form of a delusional handwritten manifesto, Mark discovers that in the world of big city journalism, landing the story is only half the battle.

Mark calls his story Front Page News. Thanks for listening.

So, uh, in, um, on July 22nd, 1998, when I was working as a freelance journalist, I got a phone call from The Washington Post. And the editor told me that a resident of Montana had apparently driven to Washington, DC, to try to assassinate Senator Conrad Burns.

His name was Russell J. Weston, and he went by the nickname Rusty because of his red hair. So when Rusty went to the Capitol Building, he tried going around the metal detector, and a security guard confronted him, and he took out a pistol, and he shot the man dead. [00:30:00] And then he ran down a corridor and got into a gunfight and was injured himself and arrested.

The editor want- wanted me to drive over to Rimini, Montana, which is about 15 miles west of Helena, to get some information about Rusty, and that’s, that’s where he was living at the time in a small shack. So this was a couple years after I graduated from J-School, and I’d built up a pretty good freelance, uh, business.

And, uh, what I would do, I would take a local story that I wrote for the Great Falls Tribune, give it a regional twist and sell it to High Country News, and then give it a national slant and sell it to The Washington Post If it dealt with Native Americans, I could sell it to Indian Country Today or if it was a dam removal on the Clark Fork to Engineering News-Record or if it was about a Black lab to the Retriever Journal[00:31:00]

So I, but I’d never got an assignment, uh, to go cover a breaking news story of national interest, so I was pretty excited, uh, when I was driving down from McDonald Pass on Highway 20, uh, down to the flatlands, and I found the dirt road going to Rimbey. And I drove over there to check it out. And it was a old mining town.

There were just a few cottages, shacks, and, um, log cabins and a spat- um, smattering of, uh, modern houses in, in the trees. So next morning, I went back to Rimbey and the first person I ran into was an elderly gentleman who called himself the mayor of, of Rimbey. And he invited me into his house and, uh, talked to me for about an hour.

And he told me how Rusty would stand in front of this, um, satellite dish and shout into the dish, “I am here. I am [00:32:00] here.” And apparently he thought the FBI had set that up to spy on him. And I later learned that he had spent time at, at the mental institution in Warm Springs and had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic After, after talking to the elder- elderly gentleman, um, I went down to find, uh, where Rusty lived, and it was easy to find ’cause there was a, a gaggle of reporters already assembled there, about 30 reporters and two giant vans with, uh, satellite disks on the roof from the television stations.

But nobody could, um, enter the property ’cause it was cordoned off by the FBI, and agents were trying to determine if Rusty had booby-trapped his shack And none of the other neighbors really interested in being interviewed, at least for that day. [00:33:00] And the FBI finally entered the shack. It didn’t blow up, and the reporters dispersed.

And I drove into Helena to call up the, the Washington Post and give my report. And the editor said, “Why don’t you hang around another day and see if you can dig something up?” So I did. And the next day, I got to talk to some of the neighbors, but they didn’t give me any new information. And kind of, uh, in a deje-dejected state, I started heading back to Helena to call into the Post and, um, stopped at a mom-and-pop gas station at the outskirts of town.

And while talking to the proprietor, I said, “Did, did you know Rusty Weston?” And he said, “Oh, sure. He used to stop in here all the time, buy cigarettes and groceries.” And during the conversation, I found out where his best friend lived and a descri-got a [00:34:00] description of the house, and it was just off Highway 20, just outside of Helena.

And I drove over there, and I found the house, and I knocked on the door. And this big, burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one bicep and a woodpecker on the other opens the door, and he looks at me, and he said, “I was wondering when you people would find me.” And he invited me in. And he told me this nice story about how he and Rusty worked for an entire summer excavating an old gold mine, uh, in the forest.

But after a while, he got very angry and emotional, and he stood up, and he started just gesticulating and pointing his stubby finger at me ev-every time he said something. And he started berating the Forest Service and then the government in general. And it turned out they were mad at the Forest [00:35:00] Service because, uh, the mine was in a wilderness area, and they couldn’t build a road into the mine to take out the tailings.

And then he went off about everything, everything about the government, and I started getting nervous. And then he said, “Wait a second.” And he walked into another room, and I thought, “Should I run out the door? Is this guy gonna come back with a gun and shoot me?” But instead, he came back with a piece of paper And he handed it to me.

He said, “This is a letter that we wrote to Senate- Senator Burns.” And this is only part of, of what it said. It was full of misspellings, and you could see that Russ probably had a hard time growing up, and he had been described as a loner, uh, by his high school mates. He said… He wrote, “Mr. Burns, I have seen the speech made by the representative of Iraqi at [00:36:00] Geneva, Switzerland.

Iraqi is making the same accusations as myself. Organized crime coming from the Office of the President of the United States. Criminal acts perpe- perpetrated by criminal faction in control of the US government. I know and have evidence of this. I would like to make my case to the United Nations and make public through advertising.

Myself and many influential persons are asking for the arrest of George Bush, B-U-C-H, and his outlaw band of criminals. We are mad as hell. We demand peace in the Gulf, withdrawal of troops for the purpose of capturing the outlaw Reagan-Bush outlaws.” Signed Russell E. Weston Jr. I felt as if I had a bag of gold in my hand.

I could just picture the headline, front page, Washington Post, my [00:37:00] article, my byline. So I turned to the fellow and I said, “Could I borrow this to take it to photocopy?” He said, “No.” And without thinking, I said, “I’ll give you 50 bucks.” “No, okay.”

So I photo– got it photo- photocopied it. Um, and then I went into the Associated Press offices in Helena so that they could fax it to The Washington Post. And then I went and wrote my story. And at that time, you had to call it in and dictate it to a stenographer. And they said, “Well, the paper’s already gone to the presses tonight, so it won’t come out tomorrow, but the next day.”

And I drove home feeling ecstatic. I had, I had out-scooped all the other reporters. And, uh, I woke up the next morning and emailed The Washington Post an invoice for two days work and fifty dollars to [00:38:00] gain access to this thing. And this is when it will be self-evident that the so-called fake media actually works under strict moral and ethical standards.

Because two hours later, I got a call from The Washington Post, and the editor asked, “Did you really pay for this information?” “Well, not really. I paid blah, blah, blah, blah.” And she said, “We’ve argued with the– with our lawyers for an hour, and they said we can’t use it.” So, so no headline, no front story, no byline.

But I did get my fifty bucks back

Thanks, Mark. Mark Matthews was born in 1951 in Lynn, Massachusetts. During the 1980s, he lived in a fishing shack perched on a [00:39:00] dock at South Freeport Harbor in Maine. In 1989, he moved to Montana. Mark has spent the last 50 years of his life sculpting, painting, writing, making music, and teaching people of all ages the community-inspiring patterns of American folk dances.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Christian Bazano is hoping for clarity and a Deadliest Catch-style adventure. He heads to Bristol Bay, Alaska, to work on a fishing boat. Between 20-hour workdays, stinging jellyfish, and the relentless melancholic gray of the ocean, Christian discovers that the intellectual endeavor he planned is quickly dissolving into a battle to keep his own sanity from cracking.

Christian calls his story Lessons From the Last Frontier. Thanks for listening.

When I was 25, for no particular reason, I signed on to a fishing vessel for the sockeye salmon season in Bristol Bay, Alaska. [00:40:00] It was a 10-week season. I signed on as a deckhand. Uh, it was 2022. I say no particular reason, but I actually had a lot going on in my life at the time, kind of pushed me to do such a thing.

For starters, when I was in high school, I read Into the Wild, and I just ate that up. Uh, Alaska, it was, it wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. Um, it was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity. At the time, uh, I was pursuing my graduate degree, my master’s in philosophy, and philosophy had provided me a, a structure, an analytical way of looking at the world around me.

And in that structure, I could point out, this is where I’m gonna get some clarity to some of life’s biggest questions. Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s my purpose? And now Alaska was wrapped up in this as well. Alaska was gonna point me in a direction that I needed to go. I probably watched too much Deadliest Catch and a few other things that I [00:41:00] thought this would be a, a journey.

You know, I wanted an adventure. I wanted to get away. I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted something new. And while philosophy had provided a, a larger structure, it was in these tangible things like fishing in Alaska and another number of other experiences I had done that, that would give me the answers I was looking for.

And I’m in a bar in Naknek, Alaska. And Naknek is, if you have Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, uh, you follow them up, that’s Bristol Bay where the fishing happens, and Naknek is a, a little tiny fishing town. And when you think large scale mountains, your picturesque Alaska, it’s not really that. This is a, a tundra, dilapidated buildings, and it’s a fisherman’s village.

And one of two bars are in Naknek, and I was sitting in one. This is the day before we head into the water. Myself and Spencer, the other deckhand, are, are sitting at the bar [00:42:00] and, and the bar is pretty packed, but there’s not a lot of talking going on. No music was playing, and I remember that, which is just, uh, kind of emblematic of the, the environment that we were in When I was a kid, I watched The SpongeBob Movie, and there’s the Salty Spitoon.

Um, that’s what it reminded me of, of just these pirate figures in this bar and, and I was SpongeBob in this case. I just didn’t really belong there. And we’re talking to this older gentleman. He’s, he’s on my left. Spencer’s on my right. We’re both new deckhands. And the conversation happens, ki-kicks up, and, and I can tell he’s not really interested.

He’s actually looking straight ahead and, and doesn’t turn to acknowledge us once. Should’ve been my cue to fuck off, but I was just kinda pressing him, just so excited. And the conversation turns to, “Are you, like, w- are you excited for what’s about to happen? How do you feel about this season?” And he says, “Yeah, I’m, I’m really excited, and everything’s going to plan, and it should be a good year,” X, Y, Z.

The conversation turns just more [00:43:00] general and, and we ask, you know, how things are going, and he, he, he tells us he’s a captain, and if everything goes to plan, it’ll be a good year as long as he doesn’t have the problems that he had last year. And so I look at him and I say, “Well, what problems did you have last year?”

And then he goes, “Oh, just with my deckhands.” And Spencer and I, we cast our first glance at each other, and I say, “Well, what happened to your deckhands?” And so this man, he’s sitting at the bar, and he’s got a hand on a bottle of Budweiser. On each knuckle is a callus maybe the size of a golf ball. He’s got a, a baseball hat pulled down really low, long hair, and a, a thick beard.

Um, I kinda picture him like Neptune, but really he was just probably what most fishing captains look like. He had a flannel that was ripped open from top of his shoulder down to the middle of his forearm, the kind of flannel that in Missoula we pay $30 to $50 for. And, but he, he earned this flannel. Um, and yeah, and so we ask, I ask, “Well, what happened to your [00:44:00] deckhands?”

And rather flippantly, he takes his hand off his Budweiser, puts it in the air, and he says, “Well, one broke his femur.” Spencer and I look at each other again. And he says– puts his hand back on the bottle, “And the other, he just cracked.” Spencer and I look at each other again. Spencer leans forward and his voice kinda breaking, he goes, “W- what is cracked?”

And for the first time in the whole conversation, the man actually acknowledged that we exist. He turns and he looks at us, and he was like, “You boys must be green.” Greenhorn being the, the term for, for newbies in Alaska, which we certainly were as we probably were like, “Yeah, we’re, yeah, we’re new. You can tell.”

And the conversation kinda died there, and with the excitement of getting into the water the next day and everything that was happening, just really didn’t think anything of it I’m about four weeks into the, the season, and I’m standing on the bow of the boat, and the bow is the front, and it’s just me out there.

And for some context to fishing in Alaska, the boat is 32 feet long, um, [00:45:00] so maybe not much longer than this stage. It’s a pretty small boat, and most crews have four to five people. My crew was myself, Spencer, and our captain, which was good because we made a lot more money, uh, that you get paid at the very end of the season based on how many fish you catch.

Um, but it was bad because we just got our asses kicked for pretty much the whole time There was about 15 to 20 hour days, uh, pretty much on end, never ending, of, of fishing. Um, but fishing felt more tangential to the experience than anything else. It was really just try not to get egregiously injured, maimed, or killed, um, while you’re fishing.

And we use fish hooks with these really sharp pointers to, to pull fish out, and each fish weighs about eight pounds, and in the few hours of rest you would have, your hands would be so tight that you couldn’t move them, and you’d have to heat them up on a stove to get your nerves working. And just in the sleep deprivation and the waves coming over the side, and again, I, I watch too much Deadliest Catch and, and I, [00:46:00] I recognize that.

I romanticize it a little bit more than I should have. I had bought this leather journal, and it was probably like 50 or 60 dollars, and this Alaska experience was also gonna be a-an intellectual endeavor. I was going to write and document and figure some things out. And I have a, a journal entry on the first page, and it begins with, “The adventure begins.”

And I started that on the day we flew up. It takes about two days to get there. And it was… It’s this very well-written entry I have and, and that’s the only fucking time I ever wrote in the journal. I never got to it again after that. And pretty emblematic of everything that was happening and just, yeah, the nonstop picking fish, and there’s jellyfish coming over the side stinging your face.

And, uh, I got what I asked for, that’s, that’s certainly true. And I’m standing on the bow of this boat. You know, my life has now led up to this singular moment, and I’m looking out at the gray. And this time in Alaska, there’s [00:47:00] 24-hour daylight, but it, it’s not actually daylight. It’s just a gray that doesn’t really change.

And no matter what time of the day it was, it pretty much looked the same. I’m looking out, and I’m noticing where the skyline meets the horizon, and it’s this gray, this, this melancholic, somber gray. It’s palpable. You can feel it. It’s, it’s, it’s got substance to it. And I’m looking where the, the waterline meets the horizon line, but then I’m actually not sure if that is where they meet.

And then I’m thinking, “It’s all just one gray.” And then I’m thinking, “I think I’m gonna be here forever, and I don’t think I can leave.” And I just started to spiral. And in that, somewhere it, it hit me. I, I, I understood. I understood. I was starting to crack. You know, I got it now But somewhere in there, which r- in reality was, uh, the borderline psychotic break I was having, um, in my lapse of sanity, [00:48:00] I had a deeper acknowledgement.

I was looking at this all wrong. Alaska was gonna be this means to an end. I was gonna walk away with some newfound knowledge about who I was, what my point being here is. And, and I had it backwards. Um, you know, and maybe it took something like this for me to recognize, but philosophy, where it had failed was, was in that pursuit.

You know, I think, we all think at the end of the day that that thing we’re working for, it’s coming. It’s coming. One day it’s gonna be there, and that’s just what our focus is. And then one day it is there. We’ve, we’ve arrived and, and we’ve got what we wanted, but we probably don’t feel very different from how we’ve always felt.

We’ve thought of life by analogy of a journey, a pilgrimage, with success or that thing at the end is, is the point of it all. And, you know, the, the analogies or the… Yeah, the analogies ring true. It’s the journey, not the destination. Ferris Bueller tells you to look up or you’re gonna miss it. You know, when [00:49:00] you’re a kid and you’re looking at your iPad in the car and, and it dies and the world is ending.

Instead, you just look out your window. All these things that we hear told to us repeatedly, and we, we don’t think too much of it. But again, we’ve had it all wrong. It’s, it’s a musical thing, and we’re supposed to sing and dance and laugh while the music’s being played around us. Brian Andreas, an artist, he says, “There are things you do because they feel right.

They may make no sense. They may make no money. But maybe that’s the reason we’re here: to love each other, to eat each other’s cooking, and to say it was good.”

Thanks, Christian. Christian Bazzano moved to Montana almost six years ago from his home in Tennessee. He spent many years of his life doing seasonal work in various roles across the Northwest, from guiding whitewater to sawyer to ski operations to Alaska commercial fisherman. [00:50:00] Christian has his master’s degree in philosophy and works for an environmental education nonprofit

You have been listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the concluding stories from the Self Evident live storytelling event.

The air starts getting hazier as we’re getting closer and closer to the fire. We’re coming up on people that are really struggling in their event.

Pretty much every single one of them is walking at this point.

I began to think, what if I wasn’t an unruly kid? What if I was just trying to exist in a neurotypical society while being neurodivergent?

I live in a place that is mostly made up of a lot of trees, sweeping majestic mountains, and the overall belief that nothing too strange or unexpected ever really happens to you.

A belief that, for me, would not survive the upcoming weekend. [00:51:00]

I had this sudden strong urge to turn around and thank the forest. And so I did. I turned around and I put my hands in front of my heart and I bowed just ever so slightly.

Listen for those stories at tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our media sponsors MissoulaEvents.net, Mike’s Print and Copy, Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5. And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, Float Missoula and Joyce of Tile.

Thanks to Cash for Junkers, who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzin’ and can be found on their album, which you can stream at cashforjunkersband.com. The next Tell Us Something live event is right around the corner. We [00:52:00] are excited to be returning to Bonner Park Bandshell, located in the University District of Missoula, Montana.

The theme for our summer event is The Power of Place. Tickets are on sale now. Learn more and get your tickets at tellussomething.org.

TUS01506- Walk on the Wild Side Part 2

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is a sense of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by Emailing info@tellussomething.org.

The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell us something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around the theme. Live in Person Without Notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something.

Sometimes Adventure is chosen. Sometimes it’s thrust upon you. In this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, we delve into the journeys of four remarkable people. A father on a wilderness backpacking trip must trust his [00:01:00] nine-year-old daughter to decide if they push through a grueling trail or turn back.

Land Tawney: He got these black burn trees. You got the fireweed. It’s about yay high. That pink, bright fireweed, the just juxtaposition with that and the trees. It’s just gorgeous.

Marc Moss: A young woman chasing a childhood dream unexpectedly lands a job at an Alaskan salmon hatchery, finding her true calling far from the world of fashion

Hailey Glassock: when you’re 19, details like where the job is and the fact that you should be within an hour of a hospital a lot of times really don’t matter.

Marc Moss: Meanwhile, a mountain guides attempt at romance. Is derailed by a giant steak and a dramatic breakup he must fight to fix.

Bryan Dalpes: I noticed a little green sheen on the surface of that meat,

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well.

Marc Moss: Finally, a teacher overwhelmed by her [00:02:00] daughter’s cancer fight. Accepts a risky Peace Corps invitation to Africa, fundamentally changing how she views her life’s responsibilities.

Betsy Funk: My favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick and he’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix.

And as that matrix held the plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers shared their true personal story on the theme Walk on the wild side. Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater.

Remember this, tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves.

The University of Montana where the George and Jane Denison Theater is located, stands on the Aboriginal territories of the SLU and Kalispell [00:03:00] people. We also recognize the Kni, the Blackfeet, the Shoshone, and the many other indigenous peoples who have called this place home and whose histories, cultures, and languages continue to enrich our community.

When we recorded this episode of the podcast, the Aspens were turning gold and the air was crisp. It was a sacred time of transition for generations. The original stewards of this valley understood autumn as a time for the final harvests for preparing food and medicine for the coming cold, for the last hunts before the snow, and for gathering to share stories that will sustain the community through the winter.

This land is not a relic of the past. It is a living, breathing entity deeply connected to the ongoing lives and traditions of indigenous peoples. In our first story, Tawny seizes the chance for an epic backpacking trip into the Frank Church wilderness made even better by the inclusion of his [00:04:00] nine-year-old daughter and support llamas.

When the intense summer heat and rugged trail push the young girl to the brink of giving up, he must trust her to make the decision to push forward or turn back. Land calls his story, young Grit. Thanks for listening.

Land Tawney: All right. So I get this call from my friend Ryan. It’s the most amazing call ever. And he says, Hey, do you want to go down to the Frank Church Wilderness? No return on a backpack trip? And I was like, heck yeah. And then he says something even better. He says it’s gonna be supported by llamas and so we don’t have to carry anything on our backs.

And I was like, hell yeah.

So then he, then I asked him like, well, what are the dates? So he tells me the dates. I start running through my head. Okay, it’s not my anniversary, it’s, but it’s in the July. Oh man, I’m, I’m sorry. I can’t go. He’s like, why can’t you go? I’m like, [00:05:00] it’s my daughter’s Sidney’s 10th birthday. So I’d gone from just so excited, just, ah, I can’t go.

And without skipping a beat, he says, well, why don’t you bring her? And I was like, yeah. I mean, she’s nine, almost 10. Yeah, I think she could probably do it. So I get off the phone, I wait for my wife to come home and I talk to her about this trip that’s been offered, and she’s like, yeah, I think she can do it.

Since Sydney gets home, I think she was hanging at a friend’s house and she gets home and. Before it’s even all the way outta my mouth. She’s like, dad, I want to do it. So now we have this opportunity, dad and daughter, to go into the Frank Church wilderness of no return. And so we start training up on Mount Sentinel and I buy her a backpack.

Even though we’re gonna have these llamas, I wanna make sure that she’s got water. I wanna make sure she has snacks. Plus I want her to carry something as she goes into the first time into the wilderness. So we’re up on Mount Sentinel, we’re hiking. She’s getting strong. Feels good. [00:06:00] And so the day comes and we drive, if you know, it’s a long drive.

So we get up early in the morning and we drive down to Stanley. It’s about, I don’t know, about another hour outside of Stanley. And we get to the trailhead and it’s this just craziness of llamas and gear everywhere. And so we get there and we, and we, we give them our stuff and they pack it into a llama and we all get assigned a llama.

And so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna hike up this trail and we’re gonna all have our own llama and we’re gonna take them up to the top of this high mountain lake. It’s about a three mile hike. First mile’s gonna be flat next to are kind of steep, to get over the top of that ridge. If you’ve been in the woods, you know you gotta get over that ridge usually to get to that, get to that lake.

So it’s this chaos. But then Sidney gets assigned her llama, his name is Marshall. And Marshall is this old seasoned llama. He’s been around the block. I think he gets assigned to Sidney ’cause she’s the youngest one in the group by [00:07:00] far. And so we get all packed up and now it’s time to go. And so we’re going down the trail and what I haven’t told you yet is this is the middle of July and it is hot as Hades.

Like I’m talking hot. It’s about noon. Sun is beating down on us. We’re in a place that is recently burned, so it’s absolutely gorgeous. You got these black burned trees, you got the fireweed. Its about yay high. That pink, bright fireweed, the just juxtaposition with that and the trees. It’s just gorgeous. So we’re walking along this trail and, you know, it’s, it’s been hot for a while and so there’s this dust on the trail.

So as you’re walking it’s like,

and this dust just comes up in the air. Think about like pigpen and peanuts we’re like this mass of llamas and people, and dust. Sid’s not bothered by it. She’s having the time of her life. She’s smiling, she’s singing. I’m like, this is amazing. So that’s that flat part. [00:08:00] Yeah.

So then we take this hard left and that’s when we start to get a little bit steeper. Now, at the same time, Marshall decides to eat some of that fireweed. Fireweed makes him s lobber like uncontrollably, s slobber. And so he is slobbering down the back of her leg. This is the first sign that things are changing a little bit.

City’s like, that’s gross. And I’m like, ah, it’s okay. It’s just llama. It’s just llama juice.

And so we keep going and, and then, you know, since there’s a recent, recent burn. There’s a ton of downfall, like a ton of downfall, and over one of these logs, Sidney has, she’s got Marshal behind her and she goes over this log with this llama steps on the back of her calf, and I hear it kind of scream. Now, my first thought is if this is a horse, like it’s trip over horses with their hooves, they can’t really feel what they’re touching and that would’ve crushed her calf, like crushed her [00:09:00] calf.

Been a serious, serious injury. But llamas, they have these two toes and they can feel with those toes, it’s like her fingers. So when it touches that calf, it just bounces off. So all it did was scare. So we avoided that mess, but as I said, it’s starting to get steep. And you know, Sidney, she stops talking and we’re both big time motor mouses talking all the time.

And when she stops talking, something’s wrong. So I look at Sid and I’m like, Hey. Are you okay? She’s like, oh, I, I’m kind of getting tired. And so we gave her some water, a little bit of a snack, and I asked our leader, there’s about 13 other people with us, and I asked the leader of this trip, I said, how much longer till lunch?

Because I know we’re stopping for lunch. And he’s like, oh, just 20 more minutes. So I looked at Sid and I said, can you make it 20 more minutes? She’s like, yes. So we continue up the trail. Well, if you’ve ever been in the woods with people, that 20 minutes turns into 30 minutes, turns into 45 minutes [00:10:00] before we stop.

So we stop and she’s absolutely had it. Her face is bright red. She’s on the verge of tears. As a father, I’m looking at that man, I’ve ruined her. This is her experience in the woods and what an idiot. But there’s this creek that’s running along right there, comes out of that high mountain lake. It’s nice and cold.

I’m like, ah, she needs to cool down. So I pick her up and I dunk her in that water and I start shaking her. You can’t shake a baby, you can shake a 9-year-old, I can tell you that. So she cools down a little bit. We get some food in her, but she’s still, you can just see in her eyes, she’s still not quite there.

So I decided to tell her this story about Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt and our family is revered is why we have these public lands that we have today. And so she’s heard so many stories and probably as sick as telling or hearing these stories, but I’m like, I’m gonna tell you another one.[00:11:00]

So when Roosevelt was young, he had asthma, like debilitating asthma. And back in that time they didn’t have inhalers. That ability to, you know, to get rid of kind of that episode that you’re having. So what he decided to do, he decided to make himself strong and limb and strong and long. So we spent a ton of time out in the woods.

Doing just that, just tramping around the woods. And so we got over that affliction by facing it head on. So I tell her this story and I said, you got two options right now. We can turn around, we can go home, which is okay, or we can face that adversity and we can move on. I did the hardest thing I’ve probably ever done as a father.

I walked away and let her think about that by herself. Nine years old. So I come back couple minutes later knowing full, well, if she wants to go home, we are going home. [00:12:00] So I go, Syd, it’s up to you. What do you want to do? She’s like, I want to do it. I’m like, all right, we’re gonna do this. Wow. So we get up from lunch, and again, she’s the youngest by far, and she gets Marshall Marshall’s old, right?

Like he’s this old seasoned llama. We gotta get up to this high mountain lake and we take off, and I will tell you what, we crush, crush everybody else to the top. We’re the first to the top. She gets up the top and she raise her hand like this, and she’s, it’s in triumph. I will never forget that image. So excited.

And she strips down. She has her swimming suit on, which is probably one of the reasons why she was hot.

But she jumps into this high mountain lake and ice off. You know, even though it’s July ice off had not happened not too long ago. And so it was freezing. Asshole. She jumps in there, takes her breath away, then she gets out. She’s kind of, she kinda stumbles ’cause it’s so cold. But she’s got this huge smile on her face that she’s getting [00:13:00] out.

She sees this little bug. And we eat bugs at our house. It’s kinda this weird thing that my dad started. He’d say, A fish eat ’em. I eat ’em. And so we’ve carried that tradition on.

So she picks up this bug and it’s a stonefly nph. Have you ever seen these? They’re gigantic and they look like aliens. She picks it up. She puts it in her mouth and starts chewing on it. And these people are like, what is going on? And it falls out of their mouth, out of her mouth and everybody laughs like you all just did.

And she’s like, oh yeah. And she grows and grabs it and she picks it up and she eats it. So this trip is like, it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s so many memories. We go out, there’s, uh, somebody brought a blow up, uh, kayak. We go out on this lake. The cutthroat. So we’re just catching ’em hand over a fish. She’s in the front of this kayak.

I’m watching this 9-year-old catch these fish. It’s absolutely amazing. I’ve got a rod hanging out the back. These fish are trying to grab my fly, but I’d never get a chance to [00:14:00] fish ’cause she’s catching ’em all. Next night is her birthday. We have her birthday cake in a Dutch oven. People sing her happy birthday.

She’s now 10 years old and she did that in the wilderness.

Look up at the stars that night. You know, talking about all sorts of things, just contemplating the universe by looking at all these stars. There’s so many memories from that trip, but what I remember most is that grit. That grit that she showed in that moment of adversity. And sometimes, you know, you gotta face that adversity and.

And maybe take a step back and go home, but she instead, she, she found her inner self or inner grit. Now she’s here tonight and she’s a senior in high school.

She had her senior night tonight at soccer. I tell you, I didn’t [00:15:00] cry at that. I came close, but she’s gonna be going away to college next year. And undoubtedly she’s gonna be facing adversity. And Sidney Claire, what I know is what you face on that mountain, what we’ve already faced in your life. You’re always, always gonna be able to face that adversity.

I love you. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks land. Land. Tawny is a fifth generation Montanan prone to wandering and good times land. Earned his Bachelor of Science focused in wildlife biology from the University of Montana and has been working his entire adult life to conserve public lands and water and access to them at the local, state and federal levels.

From testifying in front of Congress in Washington DC to organizing grassroots volunteers all across North America [00:16:00] Land walks the Walk. He now co-chairs a new nonprofit, American Hunters and Anglers Action Network, and works tirelessly to protect our public lands for present and future generations.

Next up, we have Haley Glass, who was driven by a childhood dream of culture. And must abandon fashion for a seemingly stable career path, only to have a single brochure unexpectedly reroute her life. A misunderstanding at a job interview for a job in Cordova, Alaska, plunges her into the grueling world of salmon hatcheries, where she finds her true calling in the remote wilderness.

Haley calls her story, origin story. Thanks for listening.

Hailey Glassock: Our would melt away as I spend time sketching clothes with colored pencil. I solely built up a pretty large [00:17:00] portfolio that included everything from wedding dresses to couture out there styles. I watched Devil Wear’s Prada more times as I can count and can recite the Saru sweater monologue with a performance that rivals Meryl Streep.

My senior year of high school, I designed and sewed my prom dress. It was a deep purple, one shoulder taff at a gown with a pleated bodice and a crystal accent belt. The goal was, of course, to become a clothes designer walking the streets of New York and showing in the most famous of fashion weeks. I applied to many universities, but only one design school, and all the universities provided some form of financial aid or scholarship.

But the design school did not. I didn’t wanna go into massive amounts of debt in a field that was really cutthroat and had a low rate of success. So I decided to go to the [00:18:00] University of Georgia, go Docs, and shifted my focus to a career path that would arguably be just as glamorous, but much more stable.

You know the universal second career choice for all girls who don’t go to design school. I would of course become a high school biology teacher.

My freshman year I wandered around the majors fair and ran into a table for the forestry school. I picked up a pamphlet that said Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences and big bold word art letters of a photo with a bunch of smiling students holding up fish in a pristine looking stream. The table was manned by a few upperclassmen wearing camo with deep southern accents, and one professional advisor toting a mom haircut and wearing a red UGA logo polo that made 19-year-old me [00:19:00] cringe.

I asked the advisor if I could still be a biology teacher if I majored in fisheries. She said yes, and I declared my major. I quickly went to the bookstore and found a sail rack, UGA logo, camo hoodie. I decided at that moment that camo could be fashionable if it was intentional

that first summer I wanted to apply to jobs in my new field. I had one fish class under my belt. I was ready to be a professional. I applied to over 100 jobs, and to my surprise, one of them emailed me back. They wanted to schedule an interview for a Salmon Hatchery Bio eight position, and the address listed Cordova, ak.

I thought, alright, some salmon in a tank in the middle of Arkansas. I mean, [00:20:00] I’ve never been to Arkansas. It doesn’t seem that cool, but I’ll, I’ll suck it up for this summer and get the experience under my belt. Now, at this time, I didn’t know the difference between a trout and a bass. Sharks were still a mystery creature.

Definitely not a mammal, but unclear if they were a fish. And so when interviewing as a 19-year-old for a hatchery job in so-called Arkansas, I didn’t know that salmon had an intricate life history. That included maturing in the ocean and migrating hundreds of miles back to their natal streams to spawn die, and provide nutrients to the next generation of fish to perpetuate that miracle indefinitely.

The first question they asked me during the interview was, are you comfortable and prepared with living in remote [00:21:00] locations on islands in the Prince William Sound of Alaska?

Now when you’re 19, your reflexes are pretty quick. So I don’t think they noticed my hesitation as I realized the job was not in Cordova, Arkansas, but Cordova, Alaska, and I replied quickly, oh yeah, yeah, that’s not gonna be an issue. They didn’t need to know that my high school education clearly lacked geography and state abbreviations, and they also didn’t need to know that.

Just a few months earlier, I had been hospitalized and diagnosed with a chronic illness. It was taking 10 pills of day, manage the symptoms. You know, when you’re 19, details like where the job is and the fact that you should be within an hour of a hospital a lot of times really don’t matter. I loaded onto a plane outside of Cordova with a [00:22:00] suitcase full of Thrifted flannel shirts because that’s what you wear in Alaska, 1000 pills and A DVD copy of the Devil Wears Prada.

We took off and I could see the shadow of the plane on the water and the hill slopes of the islands. And before I knew it, we were landing at the hatchery and hooked up to the dock and the manager came out and shook my hand and said, I’ll show you to the dorms. We start at 6:00 AM and that night I’d, I’d like to tell you that I couldn’t sleep because of the midnight sun coming through the, the window in my room, but I know it was because my stomach was in my throat wondering what the fuck I was getting myself into.

The next day I found myself in the pitch black, wearing a headlamp, a device I didn’t know existed, and elbow deep [00:23:00] mixing salmon sperm into buckets of salmon eggs. They would hand me a three gallon bucket and I would insert my arm and slowly mix counterclockwise no more than five times. A very precise and important step I had to do, just so obviously mimic making exactly what the salmon would be doing in nature.

I would let the bucket sit until the eggs went from being squishy to a firm plump ball, the perfect gummy bear consistency to then be poured into the incubation tank sym, mature. Now, I had a few country boyfriends when I was in Georgia, so I did handle a few fish, but that summer I personally fertilized 53 million chum salmon eggs

while singing and laughing next to [00:24:00] a friend that I made at the hatchery James. James was about nine years older than me, and despite his singular nipple piercing, he seemed to have his head on pretty straight, and we talked over the weeks and I shared with him how I wanted to stay in Alaska, quit school and work my way up the ranks to become a hatchery manager.

I couldn’t imagine going back to boring old Georgia and leaving the wilds of Alaska. James always seemed to really care about my thoughts and and what I had to say, and so at one point he looked at me earnestly and said, Hailey, this will all be here next summer waiting for you. I went back to UGA and a professor got me involved in research and I did a study on BAS genetics.

And then next summer, because of all that experience, I was able to intern in Yellowstone National [00:25:00] Park, a place I didn’t know existed and camped for the very first time in my life, six miles back in the Lamar Valley where we collected fish for a graduate student doing their research. I froze my ass off every single night in a 40 degree Cabela sleeping bag that I bought in Georgia.

But my headlamp worked perfectly. And at that point I realized I didn’t wanna just be involved in research. I wanted to lead research projects. I would have to go to grad school. I applied to multiple master’s projects and got into one. But during my master’s, I was hospitalized again, and this my, this time my disease was much worse.

I had to relearn how to walk and I couldn’t complete my field work. I, I really had to grapple with whether I’d made the right decision. Maybe I should have [00:26:00] gone into fashion and massive amounts of debt, but now I, I kind of knew that this was my path. So I had to balance my disease with this new dream of becoming a fisheries researcher.

And luckily, my doctor found a miracle drug and my disease went into remission. And I stand before you as a doctor and a biologist, a fish biologist with the US Geological survey,

a job four years in, that still feels like an absolute dream. I get to do research field work and advise students. My very first master’s student will be graduating in December. I spent this past summer backpacking in the Sierra Nevada and driving across Nevada and Oregon to remote locations to collect stream habitat data off.

Not seeing anyone but the crew that I was with. [00:27:00] I. Always thought the most wild part of my life would be spent on the streets of New York, dodging people on the sidewalk and elbows on the subway and sucking in tailpipe smoke. And I no longer design clothes, but I still design. I design research projects, and I get to sew together stories about how humans affect our ecosystems and what we can do to keep those ecosystems in tact for future generations.

I spend my time dodging spider webs and tree branches while breathing in crisp, clean air in the wilds of deserts and forests. But every time I’m in the field, I always think about how I would design my waiters differently.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Haley. [00:28:00] Haley Glass migrated from her birthplace in Pennsylvania to Georgia, the state, not the country, and eventually to Montana where she has lived for eight years. Landing in Missoula has been a blessing for friendship, love, heartbreak, growth and community. After seeing te US something in 2022, she has been waiting for a prompt that would fit for her to share a story.

I. Haley was given lots of cheeky feedback from high school friends of how poor a storyteller she is. By sharing this story, she has broken that streak. A mountain guide’s attempt to turn an Alaskan fling into a real relationship was ruined by a giant stake in its disastrous aftermath. After his partner abruptly ends things, he has to navigate gossip and miscommunication to try to save their relationship.

Bryan Dalpes: I noticed a little green sheen. On the surface of that meat,[00:29:00]

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well.

Marc Moss: And a woman overwhelmed by her many responsibilities unexpectedly joins the Peace Corps in Africa.

Betsy Funk: My favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick and he’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix.

And as that matrix held the plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thank you to the Good Food Store and Exit Realty, who as story sponsors helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them@goodfoodstore.com and missoula realty.com. Thanks to our stewardship sponsor, marsh McLennan, who helped us to give away free tickets to underserved populations.

Learn more about Marsh mclennan@marshmclennan.com. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The [00:30:00] theme is. A sense of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch.

Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by emailing info@tellussomething.org. The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast where people share their true personal stories around a theme. Live in person without notes.

I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Brian Dalby hopes to turn his Alaskan summer fling into a real relationship and ignores food safety for a giant stake, which leads to a disastrous morning ritual right outside.

His would-be loves a-frame door when his partner abruptly ends things after returning from [00:31:00] a grueling trip. He must navigate gossip and miscommunication to save the relationship. Brian calls his story the rile. Thanks for listening.

Bryan Dalpes: It’s late August, 2012. I’m working as a mountain guide in the quirky little town of McCarthy, Alaska, and I’m living in the dry a-frame of my summer fling, Rachel. Now Rachel’s got this long, perpetually tangled brown hair, these bright brown eyes that when she smiles, she gets this really cute squint and that smile.

It’s got its own gravity. It pulls me closer every time she flashes it. And even though Rachel is, Rachel is physically a lot smaller than me, she can carry the same size pack on the most rugged Alaska terrain. [00:32:00] She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s beautiful. But what really hooks me is she’s so kind. Whether you’re a close friend, a total stranger, or one of the random dogs that wanders around, McCarthy, Rachel will meet you with kindness and a genuine curiosity about your life.

And so in those days we didn’t have running water, electricity where we were in McCarthy. And the biggest challenge we ran into with that was we couldn’t refrigerate our food. You know, eating canned and dried goods every day gets old really fast. And we had a friend visit who on their way out, they offered all the food left in their cooler.

And there were some veggies and some fruit, but what I saw was this massive sirloin steak, and she warned me, she said, you know, our ice melted a day, probably two days ago, [00:33:00] so be careful with that. I didn’t care it, it was too tempting. I fired up the grill. Got it nice and hot. Threw some extra salts on the steak ’cause.

That should kill some bugs, right? And I slapped that thing on the grate. The aroma was incredible. My mouth was immediately watering. And I will say I noticed a little green sheen on the surface of that meat,

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well. So I munched that thing down. Every bite was a dream. I went to bed that night feeling fat and happy only to wake up early the next morning with a GI emergency. And so I scrambled out of the loft, down the ladder in the A-frame, burst out the front door, and [00:34:00] started the sprint to the nearest outhouse, which is about a hundred feet away.

I made it. 75 of those a hundred feet before catastrophically shitting my pants mid-stride.

Now, with no electricity or running water, we didn’t have, you know, clothes washer or shower, so we’ll just say McCarthy Creek and I were well acquainted that day and I spent the rest of the day very close to the outhouse, needing to use it quite often. And I went to bed that night. Totally exhausted. The next morning I woke up and my first thought was, man, I feel pretty good.

I think I’ve turned the corner on this. Started down the ladder. All it took was being vertical, and I realized, Nope, I’m not through this now from the day before, I knew it wasn’t worth trying to outrun, so I just [00:35:00] stepped outside the front door. Down the couple steps, dropped trow and left a massive pile right next to the steps.

Rachel had left early that morning to fly out to guide a five day backcountry trip, so she wasn’t around. I had the day off and I thought, well, no, no rush to clean this up. I’ll go have a cup of coffee. So I’m having my cup of coffee. I’m looking out the guides window at the beautiful Alaska Vista, and lo and behold, here comes Rachel trotting past the window towards the A-Frame Uhoh.

So I start chasing after figuring I have to explain myself, and by the time I catch up, she’s already in the A-frame. I come in, she’s frantically ripping her clothes off, and she’s like, God damnit fucking Todd douche bag. I said, what happened? And she said, well, Todd just like [00:36:00] winged my bag into the van and exploded my bear spray all over me and all my stuff.

So she’s in this panic to get changed and repacked so she can guide this trip. So I help her as best I can and in a flash, she’s out the door, she’s gone, and I’m left with my thoughts. I hope. I hope she’s okay. I hope these clients are easy. I hope she has a good trip. Did she see the pile?

We’ll have to deal with that another day. So two days later, I leave for my own five day backcountry trip with a, a friend. And unbeknownst to us, we were attempting a route that hadn’t been done in more than 50 years. And over those five days we got what we call, uh, Alaska. And what that means is whatever harrowing and terrifying experience you imagine that Alaska backcountry could offer, we [00:37:00] experienced it.

And during that time, all I could think about was Rachel, that squinty smile, that tangly hair. And I realized this summer fling, I really wanted it to be a thing. I wanted to have a life with Rachel and I was genuinely concerned that I might not make it back to tell her that, but of course I did. And the plane landed.

I hopped in the van and I rushed down to find her so I could tell her how I feel and wasn’t hard to do ’cause McCarthy’s essentially one dirt road and she was walking up with two girlfriends. So I pulled over and started peppering her with questions only to get. One word, cold answers. How are you? Fine.

What have you been up to? Nothing. Where are you going out? Could we talk later? Maybe. I look up at her friends, they’ve got their arms crossed and they have these faint [00:38:00] kind of snarls on their faces, and one of them turns to Rachel and says, we should go r. And Rachel looks at me and just says Bye and walks away.

So I de dejectedly drive down to the guides quarters and I haul my gear to the wall tent that I use to store between trips. And as I get in, I see there’s a pile of my stuff from the A-frame, my clothes, my books, everything. And on top there’s a note and it just says this isn’t gonna work out. We should end it before we’re more entangled.

I was gutted. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I, I couldn’t compute what I was reading. So I had a very fitful night of sleep that night. And the next morning I went out early to try to find her and see if she would talk to me. And I tracked her down and she agreed to have a conversation. We found a quiet spot on McCarthy Creek and I just started [00:39:00] rambling.

I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to boop in your yard. I was sick. I, you know, I, and. She’s what? What are you talking? This is about you sleeping with the blonde girl. I thought Blonde girl. There’s no, oh, the blonde girl. So the blonde girl was a fan tour leader that I was schmoozing at the bar trying to network clients with the common thing in the guide world.

And after a few drinks, I walked her back to her tent and that was that. What I didn’t know is Rachel’s friends were in the bar and after I left, they finished the rest of the night from their imagination. Oh, Rachel says, oh, so you didn’t sleep with the blonde girl? I said, no, absolutely not. I want to be with you.

I want a life with you. And she said, oh my God. Yeah, me too. That’s, that’s why I was so upset. I, I was, I’m falling for you. And I thought we really had [00:40:00] something. I said, yeah, we, we do. And so we had this really excited moment of talking like what the next few months could look like. We could get a place together, we could travel.

It was just full of possibility. And after a moment, the the energy kind of settled and we had this very peaceful moment just looking out over the creek and the leaves were just starting to change colors. McCarthy Creek was just peacefully, you know, Burling right at our feet and. We, there was this moment of still clarity after so much confusion.

After a few moments, Rachel kind of cocked her head at me and with that squinty little smile, she said, wait. You shit in my yard.[00:41:00]

Marc Moss: Thanks, Brian. Growing up on the mean streets of suburban Colorado, Brian found refuge in the punk rock and skateboarding communities while voyaging on the courageous journey from child to manchild. His life course changed when he discovered the moving meditation that his rock climbing. After honing his climbing and alpine skills, he spent summers in Alaska guiding ice climbing, glacier exploration and backcountry trips.

Since those years, he has continued on to be a guide instructor, coach firefighter, EMT COVID Task Force Specialist, seedling nursery, crew Lead Mobile beer, canner, freelance video editor, graphic artist, handyman landscaper, ski patroller, house sitter, marketplace hustler. The list goes on. He is the proud dad of a floppy eared special needs dog named Ron, who is regularly recognized on the trail and pined [00:42:00] over by complete strangers.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something. Podcast is Betsy Funk. Betsy is feeling overwhelmed by her spinning plates of responsibility. Betsy receives an unexpected invitation to join the Peace Corps in Africa. She risks leaving her daughter and draining her finances to chase a desperate call for help embarking on a journey that will test her limits and change her perspective on what it means to keep life together.

Betsy calls her story Mother. Thanks for listening.

Betsy Funk: So when I was a child, we would watch television and some of the shows we watched were variety shows and the people on variety shows would get on and they’d sing and they’d dance. And the ones that I liked the most were the ones who did tricks. And my favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick.

He’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix. And as that matrix held the [00:43:00] plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time, the music would swell. He’d pop that plate off with a stick and he’d catch it and he’d go 1, 2, 3, until he had all 12 plates.

He’d take a bow. It was magical. So I’m sitting in my classroom during my planning period, and I’ve got plates spinning. I got plates in this corner and plates down the hall and plates above my head and plates in the store room. I got ’em all going and I’m hitting a point. Of too muy.

I’m stuck in too muy and I’m not sure how to handle it because I know all of those plates are important for all of the people I care about. And the biggest plate right in the middle is my daughter who’s finishing off her first year of chemotherapy fighting cancer. And I know all the other plates can kind of wobble and I can keep ’em going, [00:44:00] but that plate.

That one has to say spinning as long as it possibly can. And then I hear ding and I look over at my computer, pause and see who it is. And it’s Sally. Sally’s a good friend of mine who played with me in the symphony and she decided she wanted to take a different, different, uh, tack, and she joined the Peace Corps.

And so I hadn’t heard from her in about nine months, and there’s this message that says, Hey, Betsy. I’m like, great time to take a break from all my plate spinning and see if I can talk to Sally. So we have this conversation. How are you? I’m okay. How are you? We converse for a while and then she pops a question.

Hey Betsy, I got something to ask you. And I go, yeah, sure. What is it? She goes, um, would you come to Africa? And I [00:45:00] went, oh, what? She says, well, I, I, I kind of have to teach and I don’t know how, and I’m scared. And would you come and spend eight weeks in Africa teaching us how to teach? I went, ah, and I thought about my plates.

Well, they can wobble, but there was that big plate, and I said, hang on. I picked up the phone and I called Kelsey. I said, hi, Kelsey. I just got asked a wild question. What is it, mom? I said, Sally just asked me to go to Africa for eight weeks. She goes, I said, what? What do you think? She says. Mom, that’s awesome.

You should go. I’ll never go. You can come back and tell me the stories. So, began my first trip overseas. I. I was a single mom and had very little money. Um, recently married [00:46:00] to my husband, and I knew that this was gonna cost a lot, but I didn’t know how much it was gonna cost until I met with the very patient travel agent and I met with a very kind banker, and I had my very tolerant new husband who said, okay.

And about two weeks after I found out the price and got all the shots and the paperwork and all of the things that I didn’t know you had to do to go to Africa again, never been overseas, just had a passport. I went to the bank and I got $4,500, walked across the street and there was a glass front. On the travel agency and I went to go to our appointed appointment to buy my ticket to Africa, and I walked right by the window and I took my $4,500 and I walked around the block, came back by the window, and she’s looking at me.

I kinda look at her and I walk right by the window and I head back around the block. What I’m [00:47:00] thinking is. All the other plates can wobble, but can I leave Kelsey? Can I go? And what happens if it breaks? And then I think as I’m on my fourth lap around the block, Kelsey told me to go, I need to bring her back the stories.

So I go in, I hand her the money and she says, we’re gonna get you to Africa, Betsy. And I said, just be sure you get me home. And so I went to Africa. I went to Ethiopia for eight weeks, and I worked with the Peace Corps. And during that eight weeks I saw the Great Rift Valley. I saw poverty. I experienced extreme generosity, Ethiopian eyes, women winnowing, wheat in baskets.

In the morning light

I tasted. I smelled, I walked, I cried. I felt things that [00:48:00] I’ve never felt before and I ran away from all the things that I was doing at home to try to find a way to hold it together. And I taught, and I mentored and I taught. And about five weeks in. I get this, this enlightened young man, his name was Jake, he came up to me and he, he was, he was like the poster child for Peace Corps, right?

Beautiful teeth, hazel eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, chiseled jaw, bare feet. And, and he comes, he goes, I’ve got an idea. This is five weeks in. So I guess he liked me. We’re gonna take you in the hunt for the mother coffee tree. Now this is the part of Ethiopia, which I didn’t know before I got there that they had a rainforest.

And we’re in the rainforest and we’re in the ka region of Ethiopia. And those of you, uh, uh, please excuse me if you know this, I was, I was not, um, prepared [00:49:00] for that. So we’re in a jungle in the coff region and they believe in Ethiopia, that that’s where the mother coffee tree is, where all of our coffee addiction came from is the coff region of Ethiopia.

And so he says, we’re going to go and hunt of the mother coffee tree. I said, oh, okay. So we get on a bus and they bring us to the top of a ridge, sort of looking down on the canopy of the rainforest and drop us off because it’s too dangerous to go farther. The Peace Corps volunteers, three of them have machetes.

Jake is leading us with his bare feet telling us, mother Earth is calling me. I know where the coffee tree is, and I’m going, okay. And as I look out on these, on the canopy of the rainforest, I see the mist rising in the morning light, illuminating it. Not unlike the fall mist in the Flathead Valley that rises off the agricultural land.[00:50:00]

As things wake up and we drop down into the rainforest, and while I’m in the rainforest down there looking up at the canopy, the light comes and streams and in sparkling spots coming down, it illuminates. The Columbus monkey who’s watching us in the tree with this big white face and his big bushy long tail on his black body holding court in the jungle, it lights up the baskets that give the promise of sweet honey in the future.

It lights up the monkeys that are chasing us and throwing figs at us. It also brings the mid canopy to life. And in this mid canopy, it was like there were stars sparkling everywhere you looked, white starred flowers illuminated by this morning light. They were the flowers of the coffee trees everywhere you looked.

It was a sea of white [00:51:00] coffee flowers, everyone holding the promise. Of a ripe cherry that would then be dried and brought to market in giant bags with giant Ethiopian eyes looking at you. And partway down this jungle journey where they’re hacking away, we come to a ravine. And at this ravine it’s about 150 feet deep.

There’s a long log that goes across and it’s slimy. And they say, oh, Jake says. We have to cross the log. The mother coffee tree is calling me through my feet and I look at the ravine and I look at the log. I’m like, Ooh, I’m twice your age. I don’t think so. And the other thing that I don’t tell them is when I go down on down to that log, I realize I can’t cross that ravine because I might not make it home.

And there’s a plate that matters. And so I tell them, I don’t think I can cross the log. I think I need to go home. And they say, [00:52:00] okay, taking me back to the village not knowing. What I really mean is that I have three more weeks in Ethiopia and I want to go home and be with my kid. They take me back to the village and we’ve been invited to dinner at, uh, an NGO’s house, and it’s the Italian NGO and it’s a house.

It’s not a hut and it’s not in Jira and Watt and it’s not. A mat on the floor. It’s a big table with a kitchen and a generator and a refrigerator and beer. And so we all sit down and we, they’re drinking beer and they’re drinking wine, and she brings out papaya and mango and. Bananas and all of these things are sweet and tangy and wonderful, and they’re eating it and they’re excited.

And then she brings out bread who has bread in Ethiopia. So she brings out loaves of bread and they’re pulling the pieces off and they’re layering the mango and the banana and the pineapple all on the bread. Then she disappears into the kitchen again, and she comes out, she says, the PSA resistance, a giant chunk of Parmesan cheese.

[00:53:00] Now there’s, we didn’t have. Um, refrigeration. So some of these kids hadn’t had cheese in over two years. I hadn’t had it for five weeks, and I count cheese as a major food group in my life. So I was pretty excited. And so were the kids and they grated this mound of cheese and they started layering papaya, mango, banana, bread, cheese, bread, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, papaya, mango bread.

You get the picture. Then they start putting when they run outta food. They put it on their hands. They’re drinking beer. They put it on their arms, start licking it off each other’s faces until they, they just fall down in a heap of sticky cheese and, and sugar. And in this place they had these couches.

And I’m watching these kids and I’m experiencing these, these young people knowing that home is calling me. It’s saying, you need to go back. You need to stop running away. And I, I watch these kids and at the end of it, they go into this couch area and like only [00:54:00] mid twenties people can do, they’re a tangle of arms and legs and bodies sort of laying on each other.

And I’m heading back to my hut with Sally and I think to myself, you know, all of this is amazing and it isn’t home, but is beautiful.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Betsy. Betsy Funk is a mom, wife, sister, and friend, with a passion for giving back. As a member of our collective community at large, her greatest pleasure is when she is making the world a better place with a smile, a story, a bouquet, a hug, or a listening ear. She strives to inspire hope in the moments we share.

You have been listening to the Tele Something podcast. Tune in next week to hear the stories from the [00:55:00] self-evident live storytelling event

Francis Davis: where I saw my fellow waiters like me. Artists, writers, photographers, actors, dreamers, all waiting for their big break.

Adria L. Jawort: I went to the Easter dresses they had, and I was like flipping through dresses and I turned around.

My mom was standing right there and I was like so scared.

Mark Matthews: And I knocked on the door and this big burly guy with dark hair and a tattoo of a grizzly bear and one bicep and a woodpecker on the other, opens the door and he looks at me and he said, I was wondering when you people would find me.

Christian Bazzano: I read into the wild and I just ate that up Alaska.

It wasn’t a place, it was an objective. It was traveling west. It was doing more. It was wrapped up in this idea I had of some clarity.

Marc Moss: Listen for those stories@tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our media [00:56:00] sponsors, Missoula events.net. Mike’s print and copy Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, the Trail 1 0 3 3, Jack FM and Missoula source for modern hits, U one A 4.5.

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors, float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. Thanks to Cash for Junkers who provided the music for the podcast. The song is called Buzzing and could be found on their album, which you can stream at cash for junkers band.com. Remember that we are looking for storytellers for the next tell us Something event.

The theme is a sense of place you can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org.

TUS01506- Walk on the Wild Side Part 1

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is a sense of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by emailing info.

At tell us something.org. The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell us something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around the theme. Live in Person Without Notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something.

Sometimes adventure is chosen, sometimes it’s thrust upon you. In this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, we delve into the journeys of four remarkable people. A wildlife biologist is forced to choose between a romantic [00:01:00] proposal and grizzly bear safety after embracing the title of poop ologist.

Rad Watkins: I had a friend actually that year who got bluff charged twice.

Twice. He had a bear come at him like 35 miles an hour or whatever they do, and stopped 10 feet away. That guy went through a lot of underwear.

Marc Moss: Across the globe. A solo traveler in Peru meets a mysterious motorcyclist and must decide if an invitation to ride with him to Canada is a leap of faith or pure risk.

Bridget Feerick: The music dims and fades as the lights and everything just goes to the wayside. He is now walking towards me as a sea of people. Part time slows down.

Marc Moss: Back home, a relaxing winter staycation quickly turns into chaos, involving 11 terrified chickens. A desperate call from Chile and an unfortunate fire,

negative windchill for two weeks and 10 degrees, [00:02:00]

maybe the high of 25. It was cold and the hellgate winds came ripping up the valley and we’re creating snow drifts like this.

Finally two hikers seeking mountain solitude in the Bob Marshall wilderness. Hold their breath for a wildlife encounter that could define their trip.

Brian Christianson: I’m running around like a headless chicken, trying to figure out what the compositions are, and the lights constantly changing. I am. Frantic trying to figure this out.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers shared their true personal story on the theme, walk on the wild side. Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater. Remember this, tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes.

Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves. The University of Montana where the George and Jane Denison [00:03:00] Theater is located, stands on the Aboriginal Territories of the Salish and Kalispell people. We also recognize the Kni, the Blackfeet, the Shoshone, and the many other indigenous peoples who have called this place home and whose histories called and languages continue to enrich our community.

When we recorded this episode of the podcast, the Aspens were turning gold and the air was crisp. It was a sacred time of transition. For generations. The original stewards of this valley understood autumn as a time for the final harvests for preparing food and medicine for the coming cold, for the last hunts before the snow, and for gathering to share stories that will sustain the community through the winter.

This land is not a relic of the past. It is a living, breathing entity deeply connected to the ongoing lives and traditions of indigenous peoples. Our first storyteller is Rad Watkins, who as a wildlife biologist, embraced the title of [00:04:00] poop biologist and carried a pungent fermented concoction called the Brew into the back Country to entice grizzly bears.

When the love of his life came to visit his remote camp, he had to quickly learn the true rules of bear country before a romantic proposal turned into a terrifying close encounter and a story that he calls wild proposals. Thanks for listening.

Rad Watkins: Thank you. Blood Lure is a combination of decomposed fish and cattle blood. It left in a barrel till it finally ages into what bear colleges call the brew. I learned this working on a bear, DNA project in Glacier National Park. During that project, we used the brew to lure in bears to hair traps, [00:05:00] where we used barbed wire to collect DNA samples on hair follicles.

We also did that by using rub trees on trails and collecting grizzly bear scat or bear scat, which is poop as you walk along the trail and shove it into little test tubes saying what it smelled like and what you thought they ate last. My father-in-law still likes to remind me that I used to be a ologist.

Being a ologist is not everyone’s dream job, but if you’re a wildlife guy like me, working in the crown of the continent with charismatic megafauna, grizzly bears in this case is a dream come true. The only bad part was I had to move even further from the love of my life. Gretchen. Gretchen and I met in graduate school in the [00:06:00] up of Michigan.

She was brilliant. She was an environmental engineering master’s degree student. She’s beautiful, blue eyes, blonde hair. She’s athletic. She liked mountain biking and snowboarding, and most importantly, didn’t care what the weather was like. She liked to be outside as much as I did, so I was so smitten, but being brilliant.

She graduated ahead of me and she moved away to Vermont to go do conservation work there. And I long to be in the Rocky Mountains, so Gretchen supported my dream job pursuit. Um, but you know, she was a little worried. She wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t come back to her, but she was worried that I wouldn’t come back to her because of the blood lure and the bears.

And so she bought me a little book, told me how to behave in the back country. How to watch out for these bears and what to do. [00:07:00] And so as I moved from Vermont to Montana, camping along the way, I spent my nights not reading that book. That’s because I went to the University of Montana and hey Bobcat guys, that doesn’t mean we can’t read.

What it means is that I’ve done a lot of backpacking in bear habitat, and bears always ran away. When I surprised them, they were gone, and if a bear did come at me, I knew what to do. I would curl up in the fetal position and play dead, which I just need to warn you guys, is not what you should do. So that was a misnomer at the time.

So I was a little scared, hiking and camping with the blood lure, but carrying around spools of barbed wire and blood lure, plus all your regular backpacking stuff off trail in the back country of Glacier National Park. You grew tired. Didn’t matter how scared you were, you slept. I didn’t worry about bears until Gretchen [00:08:00] came to visit.

I had a plan. This was her first time coming to Montana. The land that I love, the place of beautiful peaks and clean water, wild animals. My plan really needed Gretchen to stay alive. I wanted to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. So I decided to level up and read that first chapter of the book.

And it surprised me. It was like, Hey, bears are basically like humans. We all do things based on how confident we are moving forward, right? Like, do we think we can get away with this? And so bears, if they think they can leave comfortably, they’ll leave. But if they think you’re gonna get ’em, you’re gonna corner ’em, they’ll fight.

It’s a lot like, um, you know, if you’re taking public transportation and some tough looking person gets on the, the. Bus or train or whatever it is. You don’t wanna stare ’em down. You don’t wanna be like, I, I see you. [00:09:00] ’cause they’ll be like, what you looking at? And then you have a problem. But you don’t wanna be like, oh man, where’s my wallet?

Put in my underwear. Hope they don’t get me. ’cause then you invite an attack, right? So with bears you do the same thing. If you surprise a bear, you want it to feel comfortable going about its way. So you, you slump your shoulders and you just kind of keep your periphery on them. And you talk so they know you’re not appraised species and you hopefully give them their space to move out confidently.

If they do feel trapped, they might charge you, but you still don’t just drop and play dead. ’cause if you dropped and play dead and curled up in the fetal position, they might think it’s the DoorDash guy and they might think even though they weren’t going to attack you now they’re like, Hey, maybe that’s a cheap, easy meal.

I’ll do it. And apparently most charges from grizzly bears. Or what they call bluff charges. So they’re gonna stop 10 feet away or veer off. So if you are gonna play dead, you wait till that last [00:10:00] nine feet before you drop down and you don’t curl in the fetal position. You put your hands behind your head, you keep your pack on, you kind of spread your legs so you’re not so easy to tip over.

You keep face down. Maybe you have your bear spray to get off a shot if you can. Alright, so you know. Bluff charges. Oh, okay. I’m ready for that. I had a friend actually that year who got bluff charged twice. Twice. He had a bear come at him like 35 miles an hour or whatever they do, and stopped 10 feet away.

That guy went through a lot of underwear, so Gretchen came out and I have my plan to marry her. We’re below Heaven’s peak. I’m all nervous and sweaty not thinking about bears at all. Just thinking about, oh, is she gonna say yes? And she did. And I was so happy we went off Pinky swinging down the trail, you know, just blissing out, bam, turn the corner first time all year, right into a bear.

And so the bear like jump jumps off the trail and it’s like, you could see it moving around in the bushes. It’s [00:11:00] like 20, 30 feet away and it’s. Huffing it’s, it’s wooing. It’s like, which means it’s nervous. It’s trying to figure out what to do, but we knew what to do. We slumped our shoulders. Didn’t quite look at it, started talking like a human.

In fact, I talked to the bear. I said, Hey bear, thanks for having us in your habitat. You are a magnificent creature. It looks like you’re a vegetarian bear. A lot of huckleberries up there, so maybe you wanna go check ’em out. And lo and behold, bear went off and we, yeah, right. So we got to celebrate the night of our engagement by reading chapter two of that book.

It’s a much different deal. So chapter two said, sometimes these bears know where you are. They smell something in your camp. Something, you’re cooking something in your tent. Don’t bring food in your tent ever. It said, you know, hang your food over [00:12:00] there. Eat over here, camp here. Never bring food in the tent.

Stay in a tent because it’s an optical illusion for bears. They don’t really know what’s in there. Okay? It’s a different deal and scare them away. ’cause you don’t want them getting more confident with every step. You wanna say, Hey, I’m not an easy meal. This is not your territory. Get outta here. Alright.

So we did a couple of hitches, did our hiking all over the place. Then we got sent up to the two Chuck Campground, which is right by the Canadian border for a mission. The next day, on our way up there, we stopped at Pole Bridge, had a trout dinner, had a couple of beers. We weren’t in a government rig by the way, and uh, went on up.

Gretchen passed out. She was tired. She’s been hiking her butt. And I set up the the tent by the lights of the car. ’cause I don’t like to use flashlights. And you just see one little spot. You don’t have that whole night vision, but you need something to set up a tent. So I had my four season tent, I had pillows and everything, love nest.

But she was out so staggered, helped Gretchen stagger [00:13:00] into there. She passed out immediately. I went back to the car, clicked off the lights on the Isuzu Subaru, or not Isuzu Trooper, excuse me. Um, and just gave thanks for a minute to be out there and to about, to start my life with this beautiful woman.

And I lay down in my sleeping bag and I hear right outside the screen, like, yep. Oh, that’s a bear. So I sat up. Hey Bear. Hey, hey. And boom, bear moved off. You could hear it. You could hear it kind of circle and then go away. And I didn’t know what to do. Listen for a while, so decided to go back to sleep. So there we are, falling back asleep just as you’re drifting off right at the edge of this.

Hey, hey Bear. Get outta here. Hey, and the bear ran off again. [00:14:00] And I didn’t know was it gone. I didn’t have a flashlight. I wanted to come out of the tent. You know, I felt like my ear was like four feet wide, like listening. And you know that scene in the horror movie where like the guy and the girl are making out on the couch and they hear something outside and the guy’s like, I hear something.

Hold on, I’ll be back to check that out. Meanwhile, the ax murderer is like tiptoeing out there and you’re like, he’s not coming back. So I was like, okay, I watched that movie. I’m not doing that. So we were like, how do we get to the trooper and not get outta this tent? ’cause we’re supposed to stay in this tent.

It’s an optical illusion. Well, Gretchen’s an environmental engineer and the two of us got together and figured something out. So we ripped a hole in the bottom of the tent and we, we, we picked it up like Fred Flintstone’s car, like a giant turtle shell, and we booed over to the trooper. We unzipped that door, we reached in and we jumped into the [00:15:00] backseat and in the fetal position, we spooned all night long and we have been for the last 25 years.

Thank you so much.

Marc Moss: Thanks, rad. Rad Watkins is a lifelong nature lover and conservationalist based in Missoula, Montana. He currently serves as executive director of the Missoula Conservation District, where he helps lead efforts to protect local streams, wildlife, and working lands. His career has taken him from the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, studying endangered seabirds to Glacier National Park, collecting grizzly bear DNA to the north winds of Wisconsin tracking wolves and rehabbing bald eagles.

Rad also loves personal development because as he says, he needs it and he’s a certified life coach who does some [00:16:00] leadership speaking and training at home. He, his wife, Gretchen, and their kids, Lena and Norris, enjoy doing what Montanans do best. Floating rivers, skiing, hiking, and spending time outdoors with their dogs and horses.

In our next story, Bridget Ric flies thousands of miles to Peru and connects with a mysterious motorcycling, solo traveler, with a language barrier, a gut feeling, and a wild invitation to ride with him to Canada. She must decide if taking a leap of faith is worth the risk of a true life adventure.

Bridget calls her story, my gut says what? And it was awesome. Thanks for listening.

Bridget Feerick: I was 27 at a crossroads. I could either keep digging the grave. I had been digging for the last six and a half years. As I stayed stuck in a toxic relationship that never felt right from the start, or I could get on a [00:17:00] plane and fly thousands of miles away to another country to explore who I was beyond all the comforts, the conveniences, the pain, the sadness, and the tears that it consumed too much of my life.

At this point, I chose the plane. So now here my feet are exploring the dance floor, my hips moving to the Latin music and the club at the per hostel in Cusco, Peru. My eyes notice this very attractive man on the other side of the bar. I’m now enraptured in his eyes. Try not to be too creepy, staring Occasionally, his eyes are this deep brown eyes, dark black hair, dark bearded.

He has these glasses that are thick and studious, framing his also luscious eyelashes. He [00:18:00] wasn’t too long before he also noticed me, and now we are stargazing into one another’s souls throughout this evening as I’m moving my body. At one point I noticed he’s going for the wheel of deals. He’s about to spin it, and now it’s starting.

The arm is teetering between that. Buy one, get one, and then the 15% off. And then this little sliver that said, share a shout and have a kiss. So now our eyes are locked in on each other and the music dims and fades as the lights and everything just goes to the wayside. He is now walking towards me as a sea of people.

Part time slows down. I am freaking out because I’m also like, what’s my breath like, or is my, [00:19:00] am I stinky? I don’t know. Should I really just run? At this point, I am like shaking as I am actually right now. I am shaking and I find my feet. I find my gut that’s telling me actually just to root down in this moment.

Let him come towards me, and so now he’s six inches away. He asked me,

I kind of reluctantly say, see and be feeled before I know it, our lips are now locked. Our bodies are touching. The energy is now circulating between my body into his body and his to mine, and we are one Cosmo in this moment. Still nothing else matters. The next morning I wake up in his bed and now we are [00:20:00] taking our deep fluent language, a body and energy into the, into the breakfast in which we’re now entering a whole nother level of language in which it becomes quite apparent now that we have a language barrier.

I speaking little bit of Spanish and hoping at this point that all the swish with Spanish would just flood back. All those hours spent in classes had and it had not unfortunately, and he struggling with his English. We quickly grab our phones and are now using Google Translate. He says, may Shamo at one point and.

And so I’m kind of confused ’cause I’m used to saying mamo, which is my name is, and he explains to me that in Argentina people say, when they say the double L’s in the Y, it makes a sh sound. Which would explain why I was hearing a lot of sh happening. [00:21:00] He wasn’t trying to hush me. We were eager to understand and I quickly learned that he is also a fellow tra solo traveler artist.

And I too, he is moving, making the cha route on motorcycle from Bueno Aires, Argentina, to Canada. He asked me if I like to join him for a ride in the mountains in Cusco there. And so I quickly say yes. He introduces me to his bike. His bike is a very unique bike. It’s a CG Honda, Honda one 50. It’s a small one for those Motorheads, I might know what I mean.

And the, there was a brown sheepskin on the saddle with these plastic, maybe five gallon jugs that he had cut the top off and then drilled on the side as alternative. ER bags. He had a rack in the front and a rack in the back. I jumped on the back and now the wind is in my hair, feeling the cool air of the Andes.

At one point, we stop and take in [00:22:00] the Cusco view, the city view. It’s serene. We are nestled up with next to each other. He looks into my eyes and says, would you like to join me on my journey? He quickly follows that by, I’ve never asked anybody this before and I feel honored and also a little bit taken back like, I mean, who does that?

Like what Maybe we’ve known each other now less than. 24 hours, we would actually go now on our second or third date to, uh, jump on a motorcycle, be totally codependent and share a 2% 10, share a little motorcycle, uh, navigate the language barrier as we n navigate cultural differences. And on top of that, we’re traveling cohabitating.

Who the fuck does that? I say, here’s my number, let’s keep in touch. I had to finish, uh, two months here at the, at this farm that I’m working [00:23:00] at as an exchange, and, and you finish up your time and let’s just keep in touch. So during those two months, we’re now texting each other and it just kind of fizzles out.

I occasionally get a picture and that’s exciting, but I don’t feel that same electric pole, but that there’s something that I feel deep in my gut. So now I’m on that airplane. I am now moving from Cusco, Peru, the Andes, to Northern Peru, the to airport. I am actually not just taking one plane, but I am taking two planes and on this plane that gives me plenty enough time to go through all the what ifs.

So the what if he’s actually into black magic and he has a whole bunch of black magician friends in which I’m actually part of a setup in which when I get there, I’m gonna be part of a, a seance and I wanna be the sacrifice, and then brutally murdered and cut up to tiny pieces and then grilled, and then [00:24:00] be part of some cannibal ritual ritualistic feast.

I am now panicking. My little puddles of sweat accumulating in my hands are now lakes. I am flooding from sweat from my armpits. Breathing is a far distant thought at this point. I wish I had gotten my pilot license so I could really just hijack this plane and go back to Cusco, Peru, where at least I felt a little bit of comfort and familiarity there.

The plane lands. I find my feet. I find my gut, I find my breath. I get off that pain plane. I go to the baggage claim. I grab my heavy ass backpack, I put it on, I look at my phone and it’s actually, my phone is now dead. And so, and then I’m just trying to remember like, who, where did we even think about a place to meet?

I mean, I haven’t [00:25:00] seen him this far. So now I’m panicking once again and I am, uh, making circles in this small airport, and I’m trying, I’m losing my footing, I’m losing my breath once again. So I’m reaching into my pocket for that. Plan B, I am gripping that plan B, I walk out the doors and lo and behold, who’s standing there in that parking lot with his motorcycle and an extra helmet in his hand waiting there for me.

I’m feeling foolish. A kind of silly, a little bit awkward, and yet this little bit of intuition in me tells me keep walking forward. So now what? We are, six inches from each other, four inches, two inches. We are now embracing one another. Our hearts find one another. I’m reminded. Why I [00:26:00] got on that plane in the first place.

That energy is now circulating through us and we are back in the cosmos. I jump on that motorcycle, that motorcycle takes me three months in on this incredible journey that I could have never imagined. Moving from Northern Peru to Northern Ecuador. We always were committed to holding one another through the ups and downs.

One of our last adventures was the el de condor, the flight of the condor, the tallest swing in Ecuador. I got on that stage for that swing. The floor dropped beneath my feet, down and out 197 feet. I am now over the edge, flying over the [00:27:00] edge of the mountains in which I’m 8,500 feet in the Andes in Bonos, Ecuador.

I first, I, I’m scared and I shit my pants, and then I, I’m now laughing hysterically like a mad woman. And then after this rush passes, I feel this ease of going back and forth on the swing my eyes find the horizon. I take in the cool air and the beautiful view, and I remember how I got here, how I followed my gut, how all these people along on my journey.

Held me up. They supported me, they trusted me. They loved me, they accepted me. They shared everything that they had all these people on this journey. [00:28:00] And now here I am feeling the fullness, the richness of life. I, in that moment, I take a vow to myself. I will never turn my back on my intuition again because it is my intuition that got me here in this moment feeling the most alive.

I had felt so much in my life and I felt. My heart, I felt the love in my heart. I felt all the acceptance and beauty for myself and for the world. La Loca, E as Herso. This life is crazy and beautiful. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Bridget. Bridget Furich traveled the world before making her home in Missoula, Montana, and has continued to explore this country and the world beyond. Her passion for the outdoors is matched by a deep commitment to community engagement and social justice. [00:29:00] Bridget holds people in transitions using her intuitive powers as an organizer, cleaner birth, postpartum death doula, yoga instructor, herbalist reiki, and sound healing practitioner coming up after the break,

Brian Christianson: negative windchill for two weeks and 10 degrees, maybe the high of 25.

It was cold. I’m running around like a headless chicken, trying to figure out what the compositions are and the light’s constantly changing.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Thank you to the Good Food Store and Exit Realty, who as story sponsors helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them@goodfoodstore.com and missoula realty.com.

Thanks to our stewardship sponsor, marsh McLennan, who helped us to give away free tickets to underserved populations. Learn more about Marsh mclennan@marshmclennan.com. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is. A sense [00:30:00] of place. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3.

You have three minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the deaf community are welcome to Pitch by emailing info@tellussomething.org. The pitch deadline is May 21st. I look forward to hearing from you. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast where people share their true personal stories around a theme.

Live in person without notes. I’m Mark Moss. Storytellers in this episode share their stories in front of a full house on October 7th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana. Our next storyteller is Mark Moss. Hey, that’s me trying to escape the dark Missoula winter. A staycation house sitting gig promises a hot tub and mountain views.

And instead delivers freezing temperatures in the demanding care of a dog, a cat, and 11 [00:31:00] chickens. What starts as a simple favor quickly turns into a crisis. When a frantic call from Chile reveals an unfortunate fire and a scramble to rehouse the traumatized poultry. I call my story the girls. Thanks for listening.

How many people here are new to Missoula? Yeah. Anybody? Yeah. Okay. Have you been here in the winter?

You hear the laughter because what happens in the winter, it doesn’t always look as good as it does today. Maybe you were here during the fire season and it was super smoky and it sort of just settled into the valley. You remember that? That happens in the winter too, but it’s not smoke, it’s clouds. We call it an inversion ’cause that’s what it’s called.

In the weather language and January, February, it’s like, when can we get [00:32:00] the fuck outta? I said, look, it’s so dark and I’m scrolling social media. And a friend of mine had a post that said, Hey, I’m looking for a house sitter, and he lives in the lower rattlesnake and I don’t spend a lot of time there, but I’m thinking rattlesnake.

Like the Rattlesnake Valley that gets me above their inversion. Right. And it doesn’t to let you know, but that was the first thing I thought of. And I, and I also, he’s gonna be gone for a month and so like that would be nice just to get outta my house for a change, a change of scenery. And Joyce could come with me and it’d be like a staycation.

So he said, I’ll house sit for you. He messaged me back. You sure. Have you ever done this before? You’ve taken care of animals? Like I, I’m an animal, I take care of myself. He says, come on up for the disorientation. [00:33:00] So I go to his house. His name is Ari and yeah, Ari Levo. He is a food writer for what was the Missoula Independent, and I’ve seen him in the pulp recently, I think.

Or maybe it was, um, Montana Free Press. Anyway, he’s a great food writer, great article on a, a recipe on Oui recently. Awesome. So I’m like, he’s gonna have a great kitchen and we’re gonna just hang out with the elk up on Mountain Jumbo. This is what he’s telling me is gonna be great. We’re gonna sit in a hot tub and just watch the elk up on the mountain drinking wine.

We have to take care of the dog and the cat, uh, which who, who go in and outta the house through this open window in the bedroom. And remember, it’s February and he’s like, and so it, it gets a little cold, but there’s plenty of blankets. And also there, you know, don’t use the furnace. That’s like, that’s last resort.

Use this [00:34:00] converted woodburn stove. It, it runs on gas now. And it keeps the house warm and the house was warm. I was like, oh, great. Like this is, this will be good. He goes, but if the pilot light goes out, which it ju I don’t, I can’t remember it ever happening, but if it does, here’s how you relight it. Okay.

Write that down. So he, he says also, he says, I won’t have cell service where we’re going. But I can text and I can receive texts, but I, I don’t think you’re gonna have any problems. You also, we do need to learn, I need to show you about the girls. Okay. So outside we walk and he’s like, there’s an outbuilding over there.

Like, you don’t have to like go in there very much, um, but just make sure the pipes don’t freeze. There’s a, so we walk in there, take our shoes off, and we walk. There’s like a little space heater by the sink. Okay, no problem. And that’s my office. There’s another [00:35:00] little outbuilding. He’s like, there’s no running water in there, so don’t worry about that.

Um, you probably won’t have to go in there much, but the girls like, they need your attention. And the girls are chickens and I can’t remember, I think they’re 11 of them. Um, and he’s like, have you ever taken care of chickens before? I said, no. He said, well, it’s pretty straightforward, you know, just make sure their water doesn’t freeze and there’s like this bowl of water and there’s some um, there’s some feed, you know, come out every morning, feed them and there’s a heat lamp in the chicken coop to make sure that they don’t freeze and that, you know, their body heat.

And plus the heat lamp, they’re gonna be fine for the time that I’m gone. It’ll be great. They generally don’t lay a lot of eggs this time of year, but just check and if there are eggs, harvest the eggs. And eat them. Like of course that’s what I would do. I like eggs, so he is like, you good? I’m like, I’m good.

So off he leaves. He leaves, he goes to Peru and or Chile. [00:36:00] He goes to Chile. Sorry, I was thinking of Bridget story and I move in, I got move all my stuff. I got a journal and some books and like laptop. I’m gonna like sort all those photos that I meant been meaning as sort. And 2018, this is, this is when this was.

And so I don’t know if you, people who have been here for a while, remember the February of 2018, it was like. Negative windchill for two weeks and like 10 degrees, maybe the high of 25. It was cold and the hellgate winds came ripping up the valley and we’re creating snow drifts like this. And I was having to like get a shovel just to get out of the house so I could shovel down like the driveway to get the car out to go to work.

The pilot light happens to go out and we relight that. It’s like a whole mess on texting and I’m like, we got it figured out. [00:37:00] And in the morning you like, dig myself out, take the dog for a walk up the road, there’s this nice little park and it’s like bone chilling, cold, but also like invigorating. Like if that, if I didn’t have a dog to walk, I probably wouldn’t be outside.

So. Bonus points for dogs. Like that’s a good reason to have one. Gets you outside, gets you moving around, picked up his poop on, you know, take it back home, put it in the garbage, he’s safe, he’s fed, watered, I gotta go to work. The cat’s good. So I go to work and I’m thinking, you know, the hot tub is not happening.

It’s like so windy. It’s takes so much effort to get in and out of the hot tub. I’m not, I’m just not gonna do it. Like, dude, Joyce, you wanna come over and we’re gonna have popcorn and watch movies? Like let’s do that. So, so I go to work, I’m at work and the phone rings. My phone rings and it’s Ari, and I’m like, hello?[00:38:00]

I thought you didn’t have a cell service. How are you? He’s like, good considering I was like considering, considering the fire department just left the house. Fuck. I’m like, did I leave a burner on? I’m like trying to go through. I’m like, what did I do that morning? He’s like, everybody’s fine. The girls are fine.

The dog, the cat, everybody. The house is fine, but I need you to do something for me. I’m like, what is it? He said, I need you to take the chicken coop burned down.

I need you to take the chickens somewhere else. ’cause right now they’re in my office shitting over everything. Like, okay, I’ve never transported chickens. He’s like, that’s okay. Go to the, go to the grocery store. Good food store. Thanks. Good food store for your sponsorship tonight, by the way, go to the Good Food Store, gets some produce boxes [00:39:00] and each, each lady gets her own box.

And so, you know, it’s, it’s dark now, but go, go get the boxes and in the morning. Each lady gets her own box and you’re gonna take ’em out to Josh Sch Slotnick Farm. Awesome, thanks Josh. What am I gonna do there? Well, he’s got a greenhouse that it’s obviously not being used right now, so he said that we can put the chickens in the greenhouse.

Awesome. Great. So I’m really sorry about the chicken coop. He’s like, mark, it wasn’t your fault, I’m sure like the heat lamp, the fire department said that the heat lamp must have fallen onto the straw. And set it on fire. And I was like, I didn’t knock it over. And he’s like, no, I’m sure you didn’t like one of the chickens.

I’m sure knocked it over. I’m not mad at you. It’s fine. I’m not coming home. You’re going to continue to house. Sit. Josh is gonna take care of the chickens. Like, thanks Josh. Thank you Josh. [00:40:00] ’cause Josh’s farm is way on the edge of town. I don’t wanna have to drive out there every morning and go take care of the chickens.

So we, Joyce and I go. To the good food store, get some produce boxes, load ’em into the back of her truck. In the morning we go, um, back, uh, take the boxes out and stage them outside of Ari’s office. And I’m like, are you ready for this? And she’s like, yeah, I guess so. I don’t know. Like I put gloves on. We’ve got jackets, of course, long sleeves.

I’m concerned about being pecked or scratched by these traumatized girls. Who, right? Like they’re in a space that they’re not used to being in their home just burnt down. Like, I feel so bad for them and I really wanna take care of them. So we open the door, they don’t run out. I’m like, that’s good. So I grab one and like, I’m sort of behind her grabbing her from the side so their wings aren’t flat, but are like keeping her away from me.

So their, [00:41:00] their talons aren’t scraping me and she’s like trying to peck me. And Joyce has the box open, sort of like a mouse trap. She’s like, ready. And so I placed her in the box and Joyce puts the lid on success. Like, okay, we can do that again. We have to do it 10 more times. Okay, we can do that. So we, we load them all into boxes and load ’em into the back of Joyce’s truck and go out to Josh Niks place.

And Josh told me, he’s like, I’m not gonna be home. And my wife is leaving for work, so she, you might not see either one of us. Here’s the greenhouse that you’re gonna use and like knock yourself out. So we get there and sort of get the lay of the land and figure out this is the greenhouse that we’re gonna use.

’cause there’s two of them. And so we just bring all the boxes into the greenhouse one at a time. To stage them and then get their food and get their [00:42:00] water and then open the boxes and they’re like, oh, this is our new home. This is our new home.

And it was,

thanks, mark. Thanks me. I found a tele something in 2011, and I live with my partner Joyce, and our perpetual kitten Ziggy on Missoula’s historic North side. In our next story, while trekking deep into the Bob Marshall wilderness to photograph the monumental Chinese wall, Brian Christensen finally slows down to appreciate the remote mountain solitude with his partner.

When a tiny movement catches their eye, they hold their breath. For what could be the wildlife encounter of a lifetime. Brian calls his story Ridge lessons. Thanks for listening.[00:43:00]

Brian Christianson: A little over a month ago, I found myself hurrying along in Airy Ridge en route to a moment on that ridge where a cliff bifurcated it, cutting it in half, eliminating easy, further passage. I had been to this spot before and I knew that there was a route through this a hundred foot tall cliff band, and I wanted to sort it out before I wanted to preview it again and figure it out before we crossed the cliff band early in the morning, in the dark to gain the other side, uh, to gain a saddle on the other side upon, upon figuring out the route I was, I was happy to do that and I started to re relax a little bit and on my quarter mile walk back.

Towards our camp, I begin to appreciate the lofty perch we had found for ourselves. There was our tent on our little null 4,000 feet above the valley floor [00:44:00] in the middle of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. We were several miles off trails with without a soul in sight. I get back to the tent and I look for Lynn’s, my partner, my wife.

And I see her just on the other side of the hill and I see her sitting there staring off over seven or eight layers of mountain doing what Lynn’s does best. She’s a master of finding the moment. Whatever it is. So often I move around the world with this veneer of worry and anxiety that clouds things being what they really are and makes them instead go through this filter that makes them some version of what they are, but not quite clearly.

Lens, on the other hand, can sit in one place and stare literally. I’ve seen her do this for hours and hours and hours. Analyzing a space. Whether it’s in a thrift store or, or in the Bob Marshall Wilderness where we found [00:45:00] ourselves, this is a gift that she has. And so I find myself calming into this space after an kind of a, an expunging of frenetic energy.

Going to try to figure out our route and think ahead. Always thinking ahead. And I go and I grab my camp chair and I go and sit next to her. And we sit and we look out over the landscape together. We enter into conversation, but then we wander out as we pick out different features in the landscape and talk about it.

And then just long periods of silence. After about a half hour, she announces switch. I was like, what? Switch? What? She’s like, oh, we’re gonna go and now absorb this other view of the landscape. It’s like, uh, okay. So we move our chairs and now we move to the point where we have an unobstructed view of the reason why we, why our tent was here.

And that was to view the magnificent masterpiece that is the Chinese wall. [00:46:00] We had perched our tent just with an eyesight of it. And what the wall is is a space where 60 plus million years ago, when our mountains, the Rocky mountains were formed, some of the oldest rock on earth by a fluke of geology, got pushed up over younger rocks, creating a continuous unbroken.

13 mile cliff that ranges from 600 to a thousand feet tall and our tent was within half a mile of the start of the wall, and we could see a four mile section of it swoop out in front of us before it did a dog lay left around the corner. And so we sat there conversing looking, and I occasionally picked up my camera to just take a.

Capture just a quick capture to get a little rock detail just to document the place. And I remember how grateful I am to have this camera in my hands. Because it is for, it is because of Lynn’s who I’m sitting next to that I have it. ’cause she loaned a camera to [00:47:00] me years ago when I was going to climb Mount Rainier.

Yeah, and she gave me this camera and she’s like, you gotta take pictures. I’d gone to photography school and I’d sold all my equipment, so I didn’t even have any equipment, and she gave me her camera and I took these photos and that has led now 10, 12, 15 years later into a full-blown career in landscape photography.

And I’m sitting there with her, with this camera knowing that she’s the reason. Why I have this and why I have this career, which has helped slow me down because I’m the opposite of lens. I have frenetic energy that needs to be channeled and in specifically into creative acts. And that has led me to photography.

And so we sit there, we take in the view, we converse, we look. And then she announces switch. And so we switch and we go to the next view. And this time, this view now completes the 360 degree panorama from our lofty knoll that gives us this uninterrupted view of almost the entirety of the Bob Marshall wilderness.

At this point, [00:48:00] the sky is getting inky dark blue, just past blue hour. The first stars are starting to show. And Lynn announces switch. And I’m like, what? What? It’s, there’s nothing else to look at. And she unclips her camp chair and she lays on her back and takes in the Milky Way, the late summer milky Way, which stretched directly overhead.

And I do the same. And we lay there, entertained by shooting stars and satellites for another hour until finally our eyes grow heavy and we turn in for the night. I’m startled awake at 6:00 AM where I had set my alarm for hoping to capture the sunrise. And I’m even more startled to see that there’s already a blush of red in the sky, which for photography, that means it’s already too late.

I would love to be at a location well before there’s any color or interest in the sky. Calming myself getting ready to figure out compositions to make [00:49:00] images. And so I wake up harried, I need to go and I grab my photography equipment. I rush the quarter mile to that cleft in the ridge where we have to climb the thousand foot band of, of, uh, the thousand or, or sorry, a hundred foot cliff band.

It was not a thousand feet. And I do a perfunctory scan of the basin below just to see if there’s any early morning wildlife moving around. And there’s not. And so I take a few pictures until Linz catches up to me. We navigate the cliff band together, and then we move on to the saddle where I wanna photograph the Chinese wall.

Now at the saddle, we are there and we see the rise of the wall go three, 400 feet up to our left and then unfold like a ribbon for four miles. It is spectacular and I set about, as the color starts to change in the sky, frantically going about at this point, ’cause I woke up frantic. It continued. And the color came through the sky, red oranges into the middle clouds, and the, that orange [00:50:00] started moving down until it started to give the first kiss of light up at the top of the wall.

And that kiss of light started coming down. And I’m running around like a headless chicken, sorry, marks chickens, trying to figure out what the compositions are, and the light’s constantly changing. I have no compositions in mind. I am. Frantic trying to figure this out, and I move around the light shifting and changing, and I’m shooting for about 45 minutes until the light finally turns into a nice, clear white, and the shadow shorten and the landscape loses its shape, and I lose my photographic interest, certainly not my, my interest as a human and visual one to look at this spectacular piece, and I’m frantic breathing heavy, and I look over at Lynns who’s sitting there.

With her eyes closed and the morning sun on her face, just breathing and I breathe. I go join her and I, we eat breakfast, and I drink some [00:51:00] coffee and we’re sitting there just enjoying this amazing summer morning. At this am at this masterpiece of geology and all of a sudden Lynn’s announces switch. I’m like, what?

Why would we switch? We are looking, we are here. This is why we came for the Chinese wall. It is in front of us and we are as close as you can get to it. It would be, I guess, like going to the Eiffel Tower and turning your back and saying, let’s look the other way and see what that looks like. And I, so I indulged Sure.

And I was like, okay. I get, yeah, okay, we’ll look the other way. Of course, there were mountains behind us. There was plenty to look at. And so we moved 20 feet away from our packs and my camera, I leave it there, we moved 20 feet to the other side of the ridge, and we, we start, we have our conversation. We’re talking like we have done this cycle’s repeated itself now many times until all of a sudden lens gets really quiet.[00:52:00]

And I see that she’s looking past me, up the hill, up the ridge, and I follow her gaze and I see something about 300 feet away, the size of a small to medium sized dog, an animal moving in our direction. And I’m like, oh my gosh, what, what is that? And I, I kind of know, I have a sense of what it is, but I’m not, but I don’t want to say, I’m not sure.

I’m not positive. And Lynn’s asked some with somewhat trepidation in her voice. She says, what do we do? And I thinking, projecting onto her, what she’s asking is like, well, my camera’s behind me so I can’t, and I know if I get up, I’m gonna spook the animal. So, uh, what I say to her, which sounds a lot more courageous than it is, I say.

Just watch. And so now the animal’s 150 feet away from us closing in on us. And now I I, I know I see the unmistakable lo of a weasel. We had owned ferrets at one point in the [00:53:00] past, and they have this bounce that they bounce along and I’m like, oh, that’s a weasel. I knew for certain. And so the weasels moving closer to us and I, I, I’m still not quite sure exactly what it is, but now I’m starting to realize.

What it could be. And I ask Lynn still, but I don’t think it’s this. I say a a, a pine Martin. And she and she emphatically says no. And now it’s 75 feet away from us closing in on us that seemingly unaware of our presence on this ridge. We’re quiet and the wind is in our favor. It can’t smell us. And so it’s moving closer to us and.

I now notice a bushy tail, a white V on its chest, big hanging canines, ferocious mouth just open and it’s moving in our direction. I had been on studies in which we had game cameras and, and tried to document these critters, and I put some of my own up in a basin in the northern remote, northern, uh, Bitterroot this summer in hopes of maybe one day catching sight of this [00:54:00] animal.

And so I turned to Linson and I asked Wolverine. And she says yes, and the wolverine comes within 40 feet, 30 feet, 20 feet, 15 feet, and whoosh. It’s past us and it scurries along the ridge well past, right over the next ridge in about 30 seconds. It was moving so quickly, and Lynn’s and I so giddy with excitement that this.

One of the rarest mammals in North America, for which there’s only thought to be a hundred in Montana, and we got to see one run right past us. We stand up and we start like hugging each other and like kind of jumping and shaking hands. Maybe like stranger contestants on a game show might when somebody wi And we didn’t know what to do.

We didn’t know what to do. We, this was an experience for which we had no basis and experience to know how to react except for jubilation. [00:55:00] And I am so grateful to Lynn for providing the space and presence of Moment to Sink into a space to have experiences like that. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Brian. Brian Christensen’s, love for Mountains began on the pages of books while growing up in southern Minnesota. A family trip to Colorado at age 10. Confirmed the future mountains or bust. Brian proceeded to study photography and geography at the University of Colorado before moving to Montana in 2008.

Brian works as a nature photographer with a curiosity for wilderness. In Western Montana, he shares a life with his wife, Lynn And Ka Roo. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net. Mike’s print and copy Missoula Broadcasting Company, including the family of ESPN Radio, the Trail 1 [00:56:00] 0 3 3, Jack FM Missoula, source for modern hits, U 1 0 4 0.5.

And thanks to our in kind sponsors, float Missoula and Joyce of Tile. When you patronize these businesses in Missoula, thank them for their support of live storytelling in Missoula. Remember that The next tell us something event is June 16th. The theme is a sense of place you can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at Tell us something.

Dot org. A father on a wilderness backpacking trip must trust his nine-year-old daughter to decide if they push through a grueling trail or turn back.

Land Tawney: You got these black burned trees. You got the fireweed. It’s about yay high. That pink, bright fireweed, the just juxtaposition with that and the trees.

It’s just gorgeous.

Marc Moss: A young woman chasing a childhood dream unexpectedly lands a job at an Alaskan salmon hatchery, finding her true calling far from the world of fashion

Hailey Glassock: when you’re 19, details like where [00:57:00] the job is and the fact that you should be within an hour of a hospital a lot of times really don’t matter.

Marc Moss: Meanwhile, a mountain guides attempt at romance is derailed by a giant stake and a dramatic breakup. He must fight to fix.

Bryan Dalpes: I noticed a little green sheen on the surface of that meat,

but I just flipped it over and thought, I’ll, I’ll cook it real well.

Marc Moss: Finally, a teacher overwhelmed by her daughter’s cancer fight accepts a risky Peace Corps invitation to Africa, fundamentally changing how she views her life’s responsibilities.

Betsy Funk: My favorite trick was the guy who spun plates. He’d have this stick and he’d get the plate going up there and he’d get it spinning, and then he’d put it in this matrix.

And as that matrix held the plate, he’d keep it going and he’d get 10 or 12 plates going at one time.

Marc Moss: Tune in to the Tell Us Something podcast to hear what happens with our four intrepid [00:58:00] adventurers as they share their walk on the wild side stories. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or stream at, tell us something.org.

TUS01505- June – Lost and Found – Part 2

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tele Something podcast. I’m your host, Marc Moss, founder and executive director of Tele something. The next tele something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is, welcome the Wild Side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. This week on the podcast,

Aunvada Being: I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it.

He was thrilled and that was shocking to me and also terrifying and I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified.

Jilnar Mansour: Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew. Curfew is something that was happening then and is still happening now, where people are not able to leave their home for hours or.[00:01:00]

Days at a time.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme. Lost and found.

Steve Schmidt: I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence and I yell,

Lauren Tobias: sir, on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint.

I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog.

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person on June 30th, 2025 at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field in Missoula, Montana. Closing out Pride Month. On this episode of the podcast, we’re trying out something a little different. Tell us something.

Board member Beth Ann Osteen generously offered to bring in a professional sound engineer to better capture the feeling of a live event. We’re going to try to keep the essence of the live evening by [00:02:00] using the storyteller introductions as I introduce the storytellers the night of the event. As usual, I’ll give a little teaser the story before the storyteller shares their story.

We’d love to hear from you what you think. Shoot me an email and let me know how you like the new format. You can email me at info@tellussomething.org. Love it, hate it. Let me know what you think. Thanks. Huge thanks. Goes out to the Greater Montana Foundation who encourages communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

We are so grateful to the Greater Montana Foundation for their support to make the June event possible. Tell us something acknowledges that this land where Ogre Park, uh, ogre Park now stands is the ancestral territory of the Salish and Kalispell peoples who have stewarded it for generations.

Summertime is traditionally the prime time for indigenous peoples to [00:03:00] gather various berries and roots that are in season while the bitter bitterroot are already harvested. Now is the time for processing and storing any remaining bitterroot that have been gathered. Another staple Camus bulbs are being dug and prepared for storage.

Huckleberry’s, serviceberries, and choke cherries are ripening and being harvested for immediate consumption and for drying to preserve in winter. We take this moment to honor its land and the native people and the stories that they share with us to honor them, you can support the ongoing efforts of the Confederated Salish and Kni tribes by learning about their cultural initiatives and advocating for indigenous rights.

More information can be found@kskt.org. Woo.

Tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves from a childhood crush to a series [00:04:00] of unexpected turns on Vada being shares her story, following her lifelong journey of self-discovery and the difficult choices she made along the way.

Listen to an vada as she navigates a societal expectations, personal struggles, and ultimately finds her true self amidst unforeseen losses. Onda calls her story. Skittles. Thanks for listening.

Aunvada Being: Since I was a little girl, I knew that I liked girls, and when I thought to do this, a picture of myself came to my mind At Girl Scout Camp, I’m in Pocahontas, hiking boots and shorts, a flannel and a bucket hat. It was pretty cringey, but still one of my favorite things to wear.

Um, when I [00:05:00] was about seventh grade, I met this girl. She was throwing Skittles at me as on the bus, and she became one of the dearest loves of my life. Uh, we spent three years together. Having a blast. Uh, and early on in that time, when we were about 12, we were at a party, at a friend’s house. It wasn’t really our age party.

Her brother was throwing one, and there I met a man and his name was not necessary, but for the sake of the story, Brad. So at that party, he gets a camera and he interviews me about my interest in girls. And it was a very inappropriate situation. He was much older than I was, but I didn’t understand where that was gonna go.

About three years later we’re 15 years old. Sarah and I and Rascally, we’ve, we started drinking and, uh, really kind of [00:06:00] becoming,

oh, chaotic little messes really. And, uh, hard to control. So this guy appears in my life again and I. He offers to, you know, take care of me, uh, and wanted me to move in. I thought, I am a nut for a, I should probably take him up on this, uh, or I’m, it’s gonna probably go pretty poorly for me. I moved in with him and I thought, this is gonna be fine.

I’m gonna have a 1950 style life and, uh, it’s just gonna be, you know, beautiful blue birds and sunshine all the time. And it was nothing like that at all. Uh, it was very chaotic. It was violent and difficult for me to understand from my young perspective. And what was more difficult for me was that I found out [00:07:00] over those years that he was not okay with the fact that I liked girls, which was pretty difficult for me because then I had to accept that.

I was going to be in this relationship forever without that opportunity to ever, uh, have that experience again. Uh, my 21st birthday came around and all I wanted for that was to go to the strip club, and we did. It was great. I drank a ton, got to go up on the stage, uh, and it was a blast. She invited me home.

I was thinking that’s what was gonna happen. And I got down off the stage and Brad says, we need to go. And I get in the car and I was still thinking, this is great. And then I found out he did not, he did not think it was as great as I did at all. Uh, in fact, he had seen the way I looked at her and realized I would never look at him that way.[00:08:00]

And so for about a year after that, things got much worse and I spent. All that time trying to convince him that I loved him and thought he was attractive. But now I really wonder whether I was trying to convince myself of that or not. And so, look at the divorce. I lost my son in that as well. And I don’t go too deeply because that’s its whole story in its own.

But it broke me. It was hard. I was just barely 21 and I went rampant. I ended up pregnant again. And, uh, ironically or not, I had found out two weeks after breaking up with the guy, um, and we broke up because I was making out with a girl at the MMA fights. Uh, you know, if I just learned from my lessons. [00:09:00] So.

Two years go by. I have my daughter and I, there’s a girl I was very interested in that time, but didn’t pursue it. And then I almost dated another woman. But this man came into my life and my daughter called her dad. And I had not had examples of how to have a, a female female relationship in my life. So it didn’t even seem possible to be able to introduce that.

I went back into this heterosexual relationship, uh, with a guy and I spent about eight years with him. And because of the effects from the first relationship, he had no idea about my interest in girls. Not at all. Uh, we got married and I felt pretty secure. So one day I thought, you know. [00:10:00] I’m gonna have to say something or I’m not gonna make it.

I was losing myself completely, and I did, and I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it. He was thrilled. And that was shocking to me and also terrifying. And I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified because I spent about two years fielding a lot of text messages, asking if it was okay that he had sent pictures to them.

Uh, it was crazy and I, I lost my mind. I was sad. Three kids and a husband, a second one, and I didn’t have what I was realizing I needed.

So two years go by and we meet a girl and about one month in. [00:11:00] Uh, he left me for her, which was not what I was expecting when I opened up the relationship at all. I, I, I broke completely after that. Like I found out I was getting a divorce very suddenly and I couldn’t pull myself together. I didn’t expect to lose two relationships.

I didn’t expect to have kids like scattered, uh, amongst these different homes. I, I lost everything that mattered to me. Everything that I thought defined who I was as a good lady, my, my kids, my husband, my dog, my kid, my things. All of that was gone in all of this, and that is its own long story about how it all got lost, but.

What I [00:12:00] found when I lost everything was that I had covered up everything that allowed me to glow with all of these things that people said I needed to have, to be able to be okay.

So when I, uh, pardon me,

when I came back here to Missoula after what felt like an odyssey, but was really just a year, I ended up at the Tell Us Something event coming home, and it, it was very literal for me to come home to Montana, but then also to hear all these stories. It was pride Month that I. Could identify with everything that people were saying.

And I spent this last year thinking about it all [00:13:00] and thought about everything that I had applied to myself and questioned whether it did actually apply to me, whether I agreed with the people who’d said it, whether I agreed with the statements and I didn’t. I said it, and here I am now. And what I found was that once I lost everything, I found myself.

Marc Moss: I must apologize to Anada for mispronouncing her name when I introduced her the night of the show. You’ll hear me do that here, Anada. I’m so sorry. Thank you for your grace. Avada. Being Avada was blessed with a creative [00:14:00] Western spirit she was born in and has lived in Missoula for 35, up for 37 years.

She’s keenly aware of the vast history of all the lands we walk and is deeply grateful to walk them. She picked magical Missoula as her home after spending a year living off grid near the garden of the Gods in Colorado. In our next story, NAR Mansour, a Lebanese American volunteer in the volatile heart of a Palestinian refugee camp confronts the harrowing realities of a strict curfew set by the Israeli Defense forces.

Amidst chaos and desperation, she recounts an extraordinary act of quick thinking and unexpected alliance leading to a moment where vulnerability becomes a powerful tool for survival. Listen to Zulnar share the difficult choices that she made and the blurred lines of impact versus intention in a story that she calls Who made your breakfast?

Thanks for listening.[00:15:00]

Jilnar Mansour: Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew. Curfew is something that was happening then and is still happening now, where people are. Not able to leave their home for hours or days at a time. At this point, I think people were on curfew for 11 or 12 days.

And so we were watching people running from one direction to the other, trying to exchange goods. There were no new resources or no new resources in the area, uh, often [00:16:00] and at that time ever. So this would be like someone running to the next village to exchange rice for a flower that had not been peed on by the Israeli Defense Force or the IDF.

So we have people in different villages and, uh, we’re witnessing this chaos. Nah, we hear. Next is Yaha Yan and the soldiers are screaming you animals, you animals. They’re going to stop the curfew. It’s only been a matter of an hours. So there’s been a security breach and now the soldiers want people to go in to whatever home, a stranger’s home, and they’re being called animals so quickly.

Well, in advance of this trip, we had done some affinity training. This was the Michigan Peace team. They had recruited me to travel to [00:17:00] Palestine after seeing me speak about the conflict there for so many years, putting on human rights conferences at law schools. And I thought they were wild for recruiting me.

Um, I had spent time in southern Lebanon, a year and a half under occupation by the Israeli Defense Force. And, um, the odds were differently against me traveling in this. But I definitely thought it was time for me to see what it was I spoke about and what I studied about. So I decided to go, and here I am, we also had done this affinity training on how to make quick decisions, um, in tricky situations.

So I huddled, uh, the people together and I said, it’s, we gotta get the women and children home back to their village. [00:18:00] Everybody quickly said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And one guy that had, uh, recruited me the hardest and um, thought that there’d be some rom-com love story of him having me in his life and, uh, traveling to Palestine with a Middle Eastern woman.

So he was kind of against it. He wasn’t in charge and whatever, uh, democratically I won. And this is the story about me creating a checkpoint in the land that they call Israel or Palestine. I quickly turned and found a woman of beauty and knew that I needed her help. And so I grabbed this woman with long red hair from Brooklyn and said, come with me.

And she, she came with me. And as we walked over towards the soldier, I asked her to ask the soldier, uh, who made his breakfast, and she did. [00:19:00] And he conveniently answered his truth, which was that his mother made his breakfast. It was easy to slip it to a space of vulnerability and humanity with him. And in that conversation, he let us know that him and most of his friends pray each morning that they’ll never have to use their gun.

You see in Israel. Men and women are conscribed to three years of military service and during that time they must carry their artillery. It was an interesting fact. So he was ready to help negotiate something that was less than violent. So now we have lines of women and children on both sides of this file of soldiers and they’re checking paperwork and, well, I, I got my way, but I created a checkpoint.

So women and children got home presuming something [00:20:00] didn’t happen to them on the way home. This was during the second Intifada or the second uprising 25 years ago. One of the other things that I did on this trip was, and many of the volunteers, we. Held our passports outside of ambulances for the U-P-M-R-C or the Red Crescent or Red Cross in order for the ambulances to be able to get to the homes to help, uh, people.

Turns out when you’re locked in your home, uh, a lot of babies are made or domestic violence happens. So we would protect the ambulances and make sure they could get back to the clinic to care for people with our American passports, it was, uh, something we were hoping, uh, would, would create safety.

So I helped babies be [00:21:00] born, essentially, and I look back on that experience and I know in both situations where I created a checkpoint and helped babies get born, I had the best of intention. And there’s a part of my life dedicated to studying impact over intention. Uh, in many ways, I think that maybe our actions are not responsible unless we know how it impacts ourself, others, and the whole.

But I know that those babies are 25 years old now and able to see themselves or their loved ones be blown up. I don’t know what is right or what if I did was right. I do know what I saw.

Thank you.

Marc Moss: Nar Mansour. NAR is a [00:22:00] person who creates spaces for all to be loved and heard in order to stop generational violence. Nar is the daughter of an immigrant. She is a survivor. NAR stands for love. As we were working Jill NA’s story, she shared with me more about what the experience was like for her, how she came to decide to go to Palestine, and some interactions with children there.

That stuck with her.

Jilnar Mansour: When I asked my dad to go to Palestine, well, when the Michigan Peace team approached me about going to Palestine, I was like, you guys are crazy. You guys have a privilege that I don’t have to travel in that way. But I’ve already been to the Middle East and I’m on list when I travel in Lebanon.

I’ve never taken citizenship there, but I’ve been offered it. But I do travel in Lebanon on a Lebanese ID card, and I have tried to cross into the country they call [00:23:00] Israel from Southern Lebanon. This is that bad neighborhood. So this causes concern. You get on a list when you try and cross that border. Oh, and my folks tried a couple of times when I was a child to cross me over the border.

I wasn’t allowed, uh, either way. So finally I convinced myself I wanted to go to Palestine to be able to be of witness to that which I speak about. And so I told my father that I was going, I asked his permission. He never said no. He never said yes. He never said no. So, because he never said no, it was a yes for me.

He said, I, I need to talk with them. And my father is very image oriented. Mm-hmm. And so the woman who was gonna be the base operations person in the US for a trip, my father is not one to speak [00:24:00] Arabic in front of non-A speaking people ever. And that day, for whatever reason, he decided to start to speak to me in Arabic, very rudely.

And so he said, what are you gonna do for my daughter? And she said, well, we have these affinity trainings and you know, we’ll call a lawyer if we need to, if she gets somehow detained over there. And my dad’s just rolling his eyes just, it’s like the peanuts mom talking to him. He’s just like, whatever. And he looked at me and, and then looked at her and he said, in English, there’s nothing you’re gonna do for her.

And then he looked at me and he said,

so he said, my daughter is a soldier of peace. She’ll be helping you. That’s when I received my yes to go. But he remained pretty firm that [00:25:00] I knew. What I was getting into more than they knew what they were putting me into. And I was never confused as a young person that I was gonna go make change. But I think many people that I traveled with thought they were gonna do something.

I just wanted to witness what was going on. So I become a little bit differently versed. Just like in war. There’s war theory, right? There’s ways to go to war. These children pick up on these things and they know their children. So I say, aren’t you afraid of being shot? They said Anyone would hesitate to shoot a child, and by that time, I’m quick enough to be gone.

That’s what they banked on. Another child told me

he witnessed his best friend get shot and blown up. [00:26:00] They picked up a ball, it had gunpowder in it. He touched his friend and the sniper shot and it blew the kid up and that kid wanted to be a freedom fighter. Coming

Marc Moss: up after the break,

Steve Schmidt: I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space Naturally.

Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence. And I yell, sir,

Lauren Tobias: on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint. I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog.

Marc Moss: That’s next on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Thanks to our media sponsors, [00:27:00] Missoula events.net and Missoula Broadcasting Company. Learn more about Missoula Broadcasting Company and listen online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com.

Thanks to our in-kind sponsors Float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile.

Joyce Gibbs: Hi, it’s Joyce from Joyce of Tile. If you need tile work done, give me a shout. I specialize in custom tile installations. Learn more and see some examples of my work@joyceoftile.com.

Marc Moss: Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th.

You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Alright, let’s get back to the stories. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss opening up the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Steve Schmidt is a rookie police officer in Kansas City in 1997.

Steve responds to a seemingly routine recovered property [00:28:00] call that quickly escalates into a tense and dangerous encounter of a burglary in progress. What unfolds is a story of split second decisions, unexpected revelations, and a profound moment that would forever shape his understanding of duty perception, and the weight of a single choice.

Steve calls his story, get down on the ground. Do it now. Thanks for listening.

Steve Schmidt: It was 1997 and I was driving my car in South Kansas City when my radio began to speak to me. 5 44. 5 44 From Banister and Hillcrest. Go ahead. 5 44, respond to the area of a hundred and sixth and wall end on a reported recovered property call. Now I was a very, very young police officer. In fact, two years prior to this call, I graduated from the Kansas City, Missouri Police Academy.

[00:29:00] Nine days after turning 21 years old. I looked like I was about 15 and a half years old, and that I was just wearing a really authentic looking police Halloween costume. So I respond to the area of 106 and wall end where I’m greeted by a family, and we go through the typical, you don’t look old enough to be a cop thing.

They hand me over a duffel bag that they had found at the edge of their property that they thought might’ve been involved with a purse snatching in the area. I looked through the contents of this duffle bag and one thing stands out, and that’s an envelope with a name and address on it. So I check with dispatch and I see if there’s been any burglaries at that particular residence in the last 30 days or so.

They said there hasn’t been. So I said, hold me out at that address. Let me check with the homeowner. So I drive about three or four blocks away to this split level home where the main living residence is all on one level and the bedrooms are above the garages. [00:30:00] And I walk up to this house and I notice that the deadbolt is still in the locked position and the dwarf frame is splintered in towards the inside of the residence, meaning the door has been kicked in and it’s been recently burglar burglarized.

So I call for a second car because we’re gonna have to go inside and search this residence for any burglars that might be left inside. So I call for my second officer and he shows up and we do a procedure called holding the air, which means we have priority for any radio traffic on that particular frequency in case there’s an extreme emergency on the inside.

All the other officers know that we’re searching this house and it’s really important and pretty dangerous. So my officer partner shows up. We walk up to the front door and we open the door and we yell, police, is there anybody here? And I don’t hear any answer. We do a search of the main living area of the house, and I don’t see any [00:31:00] signs of burglary whatsoever, and I’m quite confused the fact that the VCR is still there because back in 1997, VCRs were the probably one of the most common things stolen from burglaries.

We still have the upstairs to search. So I begin to make my way up the flight of stairs and I see a bedroom on my right hand side. I see a bedroom straight ahead, and I see another doorway on the left. I peek into the first room and I see a suspect laying face down on the bed sleeping. The first signs of burglary I see are directly behind this individual where a dresser drawer is pulled out and sort of cockeyed a bit, and there’s some clothes thrown.

I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence, and I yell, sir, he wakes up, gets up on his hands and knees, deer in the [00:32:00] headlight look, looking at me.

Do you live here? Yes. I don’t really like the way he answered that question, so I ask it again. Do you live here? No. Okay. We need you to get down off the bed now. Get down off the bed. He hops off the backside of the bed and he’s holding a T-shirt in his hand and he starts to say, I need to go outside. I need to go outside.

I need to go outside. He walks to the end of the bed and pretty much the, the width of a queen size bed is all that separates us. And if you imagine. A running back on the one yard line with one second left in the fourth quarter, and they’re given the ball trying to score that touchdown. This guy charges us.

We both have our handguns out. I know that in order for him to reach out and grab my handgun, he has to drop this t-shirt first as he hits us. Both my partner and I holster up [00:33:00] simultaneously and we hit the back wall. We drop to the ground and he starts pushing and kicking. I need to go outside. I need to go outside.

I’m on the radio assist, assist, assist, and I have visions of top gun in my head going, eject, eject, eject. Because all I want to do is get outta there. We fall down the flight of stairs. I’m on top of the suspect, the suspect’s on top of my partner. We land at the base of the stairs, glass breaking from a nearby coffee table.

I am trying to get this individual’s hands behind his back, and I am just not strong enough. My little 15 and a half year old sized body just isn’t gonna do it. I let go of his left arm, I get a handcuff on his right arm, and I just yell, relax, and he just magically goes limp. And I get the handcuffs on. I get on the radio 5 44.

We got one party in custody. The house is still hot. Keep the officers coming because when I yell, assist, assist, assist on the radio, all the officers in the area drop everything they’re doing and they come rushing to [00:34:00] our aid. I run back upstairs to search the other rooms that are upstairs and this is where I see most of the evidence from the burglary.

Nobody else is in the house. I clear the air, I go downstairs. I said, we have one party in custody. Start me in an ambulance because this individual sustained a small cut on his arm from the fall. I begin to try to investigate who this guy is, and I’m asking him all these different questions, and he’s not telling me his name in any way, shape or form.

And in fact, all he keeps saying to me is, put your socks on. Put your socks on. And I’m like, thanks man. I appreciate it. As he’s sitting on the floor, I’m like, thanks, I appreciate it. I got my socks on and I go, are, are you on drugs? And he’s like, yes. And I’m like, okay. That was probably one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever asked anybody.

Like I knew he was on drugs, and I wish I remembered the exact line of questioning I had for this individual because one thing [00:35:00] led to another as I was trying to figure out who he was, and I asked him, what’s your mom’s name? And he goes, Theresa Williams. And I freeze. My partner looks at me and is like, what’s wrong?

I’m like, dude, Theresa Williams, that’s the name that was on the envelope in the duffel bag. Four blocks away that brought me here. This guy lives here and he’s not on drugs. I don’t know about you, but this is the closest I’ve ever come to shooting somebody and my partner goes, if you would’ve shot, I would’ve shot.

I go into the kitchen, I look through some paperwork, and I find some information about who his parents are. I get ahold of his dad, who’s a principal of a local high school in Kansas City, and I call him and I say, there’s been an incident here at the house. You need to come here. Your son’s [00:36:00] okay. We already had an ambulance for the, the, the son, and he was in the back of the ambulance being taken care of.

Dad gets there. And I’m explaining everything that happened that got, that led to me being in his house. And I’m to the point to where we were walking up the steps, I peeked inside and I saw him sleeping in the bed and I asked him, I was like, sir, do you live here? And he said, yes. And I said, I didn’t like the way he said that.

So I asked him again, sir, do you live here? And he said, no. And he goes, hold on a second. Let me tell you a little bit about my son. My son is 33 years old and he has autism. He gets dropped off by a cab every single day. He has a garage door opener in his backpack, and he’s enter, enter the house through the garage door.

He goes into the kitchen, he makes himself a sandwich, and then he goes upstairs and lays down in one of the three bedrooms and goes asleep until we get home. If you ask my son a yes, no question, he will always respond with yes. If you [00:37:00] ask him that question again, he assumes the only reason why you’re asking him that question is the second time is he must have got the the first one wrong.

So he is gonna answer no. So, do you live here? Yes. Do you live here? No. And I’m thinking, how are we supposed to figure this out when I have a burglary suspect in front of me

not pulling the trigger? That day was the best decision I’ve ever made in my entire life. If I would’ve harmed that guy,

I would not be here today.

The headline in the newspaper across the country the next day would’ve been two white officers shoot an unarmed, autistic black man in his own home, and I would not have been able to live with that.

It’s been 28 years, and I think about this guy [00:38:00] often. I have so much love for him and his family, and I hope life has been kind to him. And if he was here today,

I would just wanna say, I’m sorry, I scared you.

Marc Moss: Steve Schmidt, also known as Schmidty, starting from his small town origins in Malta, Montana. Schmidty is dedicated to positive change. With eight years experience as a police officer in Kansas City, Schmidty has developed strong skills in law enforcement and community engagement, all while connecting with thousands of fans as a professional mascot.

Now based here in Missoula, Schmidt Schmidty [00:39:00] leads Drive Safe Missoula, a traffic safety initiative within Missoula Public Health. That’s focused on saving lives through education. His expertise extends nationally where he speaks on influencing behavior and leveraging AI for road safety and public health.

Schmitty stopped by the tell us something studios in the days following the event to share more about his story. Hey, I’m Marc Moss. Thanks for listening to the Tele Something podcast. We just heard from Schmitty, his story he told on June 30th, 2025 at Ogre Park, at Allegiance Field, and I caught up with Schmitty later after the fact.

I, I’m here with him now in the tele something studios. Hey, Schmitty.

Steve Schmidt: Hey Mark. How are you? It’s

Marc Moss: great to be here. Thanks for coming and thanks for initiating this. You, you’ve said you wanted to fill in some gaps.

Steve Schmidt: Yeah. You know, it was interesting going through the entire process of learning how to tell this story, which I think was so important [00:40:00] during that process.

Of course, when you get out there and you’re in front of everybody and you’re trying to stay at a time, you forget a few things, and there were some key elements of my story that I would love to share with people because I think people walked away with a few big question marks in their head about what the story really was all about.

Yeah, and if you just listened to the story, one thing that I failed to mention in front of the group of people was that we believe this individual. Uh, interrupted a burglary in progress and speaking with his dad about his autism and all of that stuff. He didn’t even have the ability to understand that he interrupted a burglary in progress.

So when he arrived home using a garage door opener, he comes into the house and he goes into the kitchen. He makes himself a sandwich and then goes and lays down in one of the bedrooms upstairs and waits for his parents to get home. That when the garage opened is when we believe the actual burglars that were inside the house.

Bolted out the front door, which is why so much of the house was left [00:41:00] undisturbed is they didn’t have that much time to really go through everything. So it was a really interesting situation, of course, being there live and trying to put all this into place and, and then reflecting on it basically over the last 28 years of what that scene was really like and how scary it must have been for that guy, you know, with us being there yelling at him in his bedroom and the fact that if those burglars that were in there, uh, thankfully most burglars aren’t out to really hurt people.

They, they try to go into places when people aren’t there and thankfully they left, but thankfully they didn’t do anything to harm this individual either,

Marc Moss: you know? Yeah. And I’m, I was always so curious, you could have responded to that situation in so many different ways.

Steve Schmidt: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a scary thing.

You know, I think I may have mentioned like when we were falling down the stairs and I was putting the assist out on the radio and I was yelling, assist, assist, assist. You know, it was images of the top gun movie, eject, [00:42:00] eject, eject that were going through my head because I was so scared at that moment. I mean, I wanted to get out of there and it was weird how I’m like looking back on it that evening why my brain responded that way and how I had those images in my head as we are falling down the stairs and I’m on the radio yelling, assist, assist, thinking that there’s still other people in the house.

Who are going to come out of the house and be shooting at us as we are falling down the stairs and trying to put all of that information together. It was just a really

Marc Moss: crazy moment. Right, and you still didn’t know, had no idea that he wasn’t actually right. Perpetrator?

Steve Schmidt: Yeah. Yeah. We thought he was the burglary suspect that for one reason or another, here he is in the house and he was acting very strange.

So it made sense that if he was on drugs, maybe he stayed behind for one reason or another, stranger things have happened. Then of course, I’m not thinking at that moment when I see this individual laying on the bed that, okay, so if this [00:43:00] is the burglar, then how did the duffel bag with the contents end up four blocks away?

Like, you don’t think about those questions in that moment. Right. Um, but you know, as things settled down and we were asking him questions and trying to figure out who he was, those things are the things that started to pop into my head, which ultimately led me to ask him. What’s your mom’s name? And then when he said his mom’s name, you know, I just froze.

I mean, I was just, you know, sick to my stomach automatically. I mean, this is the closest I’ve ever come to pulling the trigger on somebody. And thankfully our, you know, our training, the constant ongoing training that we have to deal with these situations allowed me the ability at such a young age to make the right decision at that time, to not pull the trigger, which I think was vitally important, you know?

Marc Moss: Yeah. Clearly we never hear this story. Yeah. We always hear the story of, of the cop that made the wrong decision.

Steve Schmidt: Right. That’s what makes the news.

Marc Moss: And how do we get [00:44:00] more of this story? How do these cops who have made the wrong decision, or how the cops that haven’t yet made the wrong decision because they haven’t been placed in this circumstance.

Steve Schmidt: Yeah.

Marc Moss: How do we get them that kind of training or you know, like I, it just blows my mind, you know? And some people, some of the listeners don’t know that my dad was a cop, so I’m very familiar with police training and what’s required and decision making. And in tough circumstances, he was on the police force in cities about the size of Missoula in Ohio near Akron for 40 years as a detective, and also out on the streets and.

It’s not easy work.

Steve Schmidt: Right, right. It’s not easy work in any way, shape or form. And most of the issues that I have seen over the last several decades when it comes to police officers making the bad call or you know, really negative press related to police officers, I always chalk it up to, well, there was a failure in training [00:45:00] that occurred that allowed this to occur the way it did.

And so I wonder how departments really focus on, analyze these situations internally to utilize the worst case scenarios or the worst case situations that are being broadcast maybe nationally. How do they utilize that as an opportunity to learn to make their departments better? And I was really impressed with the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department.

Not that I had anything to ever compare it to, but I was impressed with how well they analyzed situations from any use of force report to any sort of major interaction from citizen complaints. How do we utilize this to make our department better? And obviously, this was a long time ago when I was wearing the uniform and behind the badge, and it was before police officers had body cameras and.

We were just starting to get video cameras in our cars and it was still being recorded on VHS [00:46:00] tapes. And it was interesting how many officers were upset with the fact that they’re gonna be on tape because they would think that, oh, well this is just gonna be utilized to punish me when I do things wrong.

And I always had that concept of. You know what? I’m super excited that this is being recorded because one, I want my supervisors to be able to see all the good that I’m doing because just like the news doesn’t see it, my supervisors didn’t get to see it because they weren’t on every single call with me, right?

They might be on one call a week with me, and I have 28 calls a day that I was going on. So this’ll be an opportunity that they would be able to see the good work that I’m doing and utilize that maybe as a training opportunity for other young officers coming up. But I was really excited about the fact that if I ever made a mistake that it could be recorded, and not only myself, but every other officer had an opportunity to learn from it because we learned most from our mistakes.

And I would’ve a new [00:47:00] recruit student next to me in the car and I’d be like, Hey, what did we learn most from, we learned most from our mistakes? Well, then let’s go mess some stuff up. As long as it doesn’t result in a, you know, a hundred thousand dollars lawsuit and nobody gets injured or killed tonight, then let’s go say the wrong thing.

You know, not intentionally, of course, but let’s appreciate the fact that we said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. And now we learn from that. And now we’re gonna have a 30 year career where we’ll never make that same mistake again. Yeah. So let’s mess it up now, learn the most we possibly can and, and make ourselves better, and then let’s share those lessons with everybody else so you don’t have to drive down this same exact road that I drove down to learn these hard lessons.

You know? And so that was the, the culture that was built into our environment in Kansas City that I was so impressed with is that everybody said, Hey, look, let’s, we’re all learning and we’re all gonna make mistakes. Let’s go. And it was.

Marc Moss: Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. [00:48:00] What begins as an unlikely friendship for Lauren Tobias with a free spirited dog on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana takes a heartbreaking turn when the dog mysteriously disappears.

Days of agonizing searching lead to a devastating discovery, a poignant makeshift funeral, and an outpouring of community support. Just as grief settles in a shocking revelation, sends everything spiraling into an unbelievable twist. Lauren calls her story off leash. Thanks for listening.

Lauren Tobias: I never thought I’d have a dog. I, it’s not that I don’t love dogs, obviously, it’s that I just like the guilt of anyone who’s a dog on her nose. The guilt of just like watching them stare at you in your house, uh, it was just like too much for me. Um, so when I moved to the [00:49:00] Fort Peck reservation in 2018, late 2018, um, my perspective on dog relationship kind of got blown out of the water.

Um, anyone who, um, maybe in the, who’s listening in the audience might know, um, the relationship that people have with dogs there is just very symbiotic and, um, people consider the members of the community. It, from the outside, I might look like, um. It might look like they are just like, don’t have homes, but actually like people take, take care of them and it’s their meaningful parts, parts of the community.

And so when I, I met many, many dogs while I was living there. Um, I spent about four years and, uh, this one particular dog stood out to me. She was a big poofy, white, [00:50:00] fluffy dog, and she had a slap happy personality. I would see her on the streets with like this pack, this like mi um, miscellaneous pack with dogs.

And every time she saw me, she would like jump on me and like greet me. And we had this like, developing relationship over the course of months. And she would do this thing where I swear she like, knew that she could make people laugh. Um, direct eye contact and like a foot long tongue, just like. Hanging out of her mouth.

And, um, she would like dip her shoulder butt would just flop down to the floor like a seal’s tail. And then she would just like get on her belly to ask for belly rubs and she would just like still be making eye contact with you. And so that’s how I like met her. And, um, eventually she kind of started following me, like in town and we sort of developed a courtship and after a couple months decided to make it official, [00:51:00] which meant that I got her vaccinated and slapped a collar on her.

Um, and a week later she told me that she was pregnant and I was not the father. And so, um, that was our first experience together. So my whole thing about the guilt and the dogs, um, we had this very fluid relationship. And we never went there just for the record. Um, um, so she, we, we had this like, come and go.

She would just sort of like sit on my porch all day and she would kinda like knock on the door. She wanted to come in in the house, she’d knock on the door if she wanted to leave, she’d wander around all day. So, um, it was kind of perfect, like we just had developed trust and then through like the raising of her babies, like we developed even more of like this really [00:52:00] natural, beautiful trust.

And, um, she was like my best friend. It sounds like cliche, but it was true. Everyone in town that knew me knew that she was my dog. And um, so yeah, we spent probably about a year that she was kind of like with me. Um, and so because of our, the nature of our relationship, when she didn’t show up home one night, I didn’t really think very much of it.

Um, and then two nights went by and I was like, you know, she’s done this before, you know, it’s probably no big deal. Um, three nights, four nights go by and I’m like, okay. Like I let her out of the house with a collar, without a collar on because I like didn’t always put a collar on her when she was, um, leaving the house.

’cause we had just kind of come in and out. And so I was like, she probably got lost. And, um, I hung up posters all over Wolf Point. Those of you who know Wolf Point, probably like, didn’t take that long to cover the town. It’s pretty small, small town. But um, on the sixth [00:53:00] day I got a phone call and, uh, it was from, there were three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza joint, uh, like the, the, the dial phone there.

And they were like, I was like, hello? Uh, they were like, all they said was, we found your dog. And I was like, oh my God. Like, where can I come get her? Like, yes, thank you so much. Like, I’ll be right there. And I was just met with silence on the other line, and this was like literally the first time throughout the entire six days where I was like, like maybe something’s wrong.

Like maybe she’s, something happened to her. I never considered it. She grew up around cars and she was always really good around, you know, cars and stuff. So I never thought that that was like a possibility. So I run across town, I drive across town, I pick them up and they, I’d ask them to show me where she was.[00:54:00]

And when we start walking up to the train tracks, I was like, like, oh my God. Like, no way. Um, so I walk up and I see, I walk up and I see her body deflated and, and lifeless and just like formed to the, uh, reels of the track. And yeah, sorry, that was really graphic. Um, so the kids are still with me and they’re like, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened to us all day.

We just located your dead dog off of a missing poster sign. So we’re like, here for this. And I was like, can you please leave me for a second? And so they did. And they left me for like, you know, 10 minutes. And then I saw them circling back and I was like, okay, I think we’re in this. And I’m like, okay, if I was, I, you know, if I’m remembering myself as a child and I had done that, like sleuthing, like I’d probably be pretty invested too.

So I was like, all right, you can come with me. And they were like, what are you gonna do? I’m like, [00:55:00] I don’t know. Do you have any ideas? Never been in the situation before. So, um, they came with me. I went back to my house, I grabbed a bathrobe, went back to the train tracks. I wrapped her up 65 pounds, picked her up, put her in my trunk.

Uh, did the only thing I could think to, you know, thank the kids. Went to the McDonald’s drive through, dog still in the back of my trunk. Um, and, and then I took them home and I go home. And now I’m like alone for the first time making phone calls. Uh, and I’m getting text messages from people I didn’t even tell, sending their condolences.

Um, and I made a, an appointment the next morning with the Wolf Point Crematorium. They said they’d make an exception and Cree made a dog, um, the next day. So my friends who live downstairs, three friends came upstairs. They were devastated because they like, loved her too. They knew her spirit. Um, [00:56:00] and we had like probably the most beautiful funeral and ceremony that I’ve ever been to.

We took her body out of the trunk, we put it on her bed, uh, outside in like this kind of mud room. And we, um, put her toys around her, her treats, sweet grass, sage. They, they kind of burned sage and we were drinking whiskey, laughing, uh, crying. And there was like also this moment I wanted to stamp her paw print.

I was like, which arm am I gonna get tattooed? Um, I wanted to stamp her paw print on something like sentimental. The closest thing I could find was my ukulele. I can’t get into that side quest right now. But basically it was like some ped tremors, um, a uh, nail polish, navy blue nail polish. And my friend’s CSI knowledge about like rolling it, which like was not intuitive at all.

It was like a mess. But it gave us like the first belly laugh of, of like the 24 hours. And, um, so I went to [00:57:00] bed, got a really terrible night’s sleep. And I wake up the next morning, I’m flipping pancakes. I’m still, I’m still crying. And, um, I, it’s the first thing I’ve eaten since the McDonald’s the day before at like 3:00 PM and I get a text message on my phone and I see a picture.

Someone forwards me a Facebook post and I see a picture of my dog. Um, I know I’ve lost credibility of saying this, but it was her, the, the picture. I’m like, why, why is someone sending me this? I look at the caption and it says, and anyone know who sweet dog this is? Like, she showed up on my porch today. I look at the timestamp.

It was yesterday, so I’m like, maybe it’s an old picture. I don’t know. And so I message her, find her address. Then my friend mush from the night before the funeral comes banging on my door and it’s like, have you seen [00:58:00] this? Her text message, like she just got it forwarded to you. And, and so I’m like, shut the fuck up.

Like, I don’t know, like, please don’t get my hopes out. We’re like, drive. So I’d like make her get in the car with me. We drive six miles to get to this person’s house and we open the door out. Comes running my actual dog.

This is Fluffer.

Um, she’s seven years old now, and we’re a pet therapy team. Um, uh, yeah. And so she, nothing happened. She was just pumped. She was like, wow, haven’t seen you in a week. Like, what’s up? Like, I’ve been through a lot. Like, whew. She didn’t like look like she lost weight because she just, you know. [00:59:00] She’s chilling.

She probably made some friends. And so anyway, the the de ma of this story is, um, I still have the dog in my closet, you know?

Um, yeah. So the appointment to get her cremated was like in an hour. And so I did the best thing I could do. I took real fluffer in the rod daylight. It was April. So the ground was really hard. I tried, I promise I did my best. I know this is not environmentally friendly, but I like took a, the bathrobe, the dog dug a shallow grave in the hills of Wolf Point.

Um, and yeah, I, that was it. And then, um, I invited the kids to come on an adventure with Fluffy and I, and they got to meet her and hear the things I was telling about. And, um. [01:00:00] Yeah, now we’re just living life and that’s, that’s my story of Lost and Found. So thank you.

Marc Moss: Closing out her evening. Tonight is Lauren Tobias. When Lauren moved to Montana from the suburbs of New York City nine years ago, in search of some peace and quiet she never could have expected she’d be making home here. She loved visiting the many nooks and crannies of Montana via highways, gravel, tire, track, roads, hiking trails, bike paths, and her favorite and eight cedar plane.

During her time here, she’s been called to infinitely learn from how to recognize what’s under the hood of her car to self-expression through photography, to embracing a queer identity, to picking up beer league, ice hockey in her thirties. Those last two things [01:01:00] are related only by pure coincidence she assures me.

Lauren has found more life here than she could have ever imagined. She spent COV living on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, learning a more holistic history of our country and about the incredible culture and decolonization efforts of indigenous nations. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast.

I’m Marc Moss. Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Blue Sky and visit Tell us something.org to explore 14 years of our story archives and let me know what you thought of the new format.

You can email me at info@tellussomething.org to share your [01:02:00] thoughts.

Welcome to the Tele Something podcast. I’m your host, Marc Moss, founder and executive director of Tele something. The next tele something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is, welcome the Wild Side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. This week on the podcast, I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it.

He was thrilled and that was shocking to me and also terrifying and I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified. Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew. Curfew is something that was happening then and is still happening now, where people are not able to leave their home for [01:03:00] hours or.

Days at a time. Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme. Lost and found. I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence and I yell, sir, on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint.

I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog. Their stories were recorded. Live in person on June 30th, 2025 at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field in Missoula, Montana. Closing out Pride Month. On this episode of the podcast, we’re trying out something a little different. Tell us something.

Board member Beth Ann Osteen generously offered to bring in a professional sound engineer to better capture the feeling of a live event. We’re going to try to keep the essence of [01:04:00] the live evening by using the storyteller introductions as I introduce the storytellers the night of the event. As usual, I’ll give a little teaser the story before the storyteller shares their story.

We’d love to hear from you what you think. Shoot me an email and let me know how you like the new format. You can email me at info@tellussomething.org. Love it, hate it. Let me know what you think. Thanks. Huge thanks. Goes out to the Greater Montana Foundation who encourages communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

We are so grateful to the Greater Montana Foundation for their support to make the June event possible. Tell us something acknowledges that this land where Ogre Park, uh, ogre Park now stands is the ancestral territory of the Salish and Kalispell peoples who have stewarded it for generations.

Summertime is traditionally the [01:05:00] prime time for indigenous peoples to gather various berries and roots that are in season while the bitter bitterroot are already harvested. Now is the time for processing and storing any remaining bitterroot that have been gathered. Another staple Camus bulbs are being dug and prepared for storage.

Huckleberry’s, serviceberries, and choke cherries are ripening and being harvested for immediate consumption and for drying to preserve in winter. We take this moment to honor its land and the native people and the stories that they share with us to honor them, you can support the ongoing efforts of the Confederated Salish and Kni tribes by learning about their cultural initiatives and advocating for indigenous rights.

More information can be found@kskt.org. Woo.

Tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves from a [01:06:00] childhood crush to a series of unexpected turns on Vada being shares her story, following her lifelong journey of self-discovery and the difficult choices she made along the way.

Listen to an vada as she navigates a societal expectations, personal struggles, and ultimately finds her true self amidst unforeseen losses. Onda calls her story. Skittles. Thanks for listening.

Since I was a little girl, I knew that I liked girls, and when I thought to do this, a picture of myself came to my mind At Girl Scout Camp, I’m in Pocahontas, hiking boots and shorts, a flannel and a bucket hat. It was pretty cringey, but still one of my favorite things to wear.

Um, when [01:07:00] I was about seventh grade, I met this girl. She was throwing Skittles at me as on the bus, and she became one of the dearest loves of my life. Uh, we spent three years together. Having a blast. Uh, and early on in that time, when we were about 12, we were at a party, at a friend’s house. It wasn’t really our age party.

Her brother was throwing one, and there I met a man and his name was not necessary, but for the sake of the story, Brad. So at that party, he gets a camera and he interviews me about my interest in girls. And it was a very inappropriate situation. He was much older than I was, but I didn’t understand where that was gonna go.

About three years later we’re 15 years old. Sarah and I and Rascally, we’ve, we started drinking and, [01:08:00] uh, really kind of becoming,

oh, chaotic little messes really. And, uh, hard to control. So this guy appears in my life again and I. He offers to, you know, take care of me, uh, and wanted me to move in. I thought, I am a nut for a, I should probably take him up on this, uh, or I’m, it’s gonna probably go pretty poorly for me. I moved in with him and I thought, this is gonna be fine.

I’m gonna have a 1950 style life and, uh, it’s just gonna be, you know, beautiful blue birds and sunshine all the time. And it was nothing like that at all. Uh, it was very chaotic. It was violent and difficult for me to understand from my young perspective. And what was more [01:09:00] difficult for me was that I found out over those years that he was not okay with the fact that I liked girls, which was pretty difficult for me because then I had to accept that.

I was going to be in this relationship forever without that opportunity to ever, uh, have that experience again. Uh, my 21st birthday came around and all I wanted for that was to go to the strip club, and we did. It was great. I drank a ton, got to go up on the stage, uh, and it was a blast. She invited me home.

I was thinking that’s what was gonna happen. And I got down off the stage and Brad says, we need to go. And I get in the car and I was still thinking, this is great. And then I found out he did not, he did not think it was as great as I did at all. Uh, in fact, he had seen the way I looked at her and realized I would never look at him that way.[01:10:00]

And so for about a year after that, things got much worse and I spent. All that time trying to convince him that I loved him and thought he was attractive. But now I really wonder whether I was trying to convince myself of that or not. And so, look at the divorce. I lost my son in that as well. And I don’t go too deeply because that’s its whole story in its own.

But it broke me. It was hard. I was just barely 21 and I went rampant. I ended up pregnant again. And, uh, ironically or not, I had found out two weeks after breaking up with the guy, um, and we broke up because I was making out with a girl at the MMA fights. Uh, you know, if I [01:11:00] just learned from my lessons. So.

Two years go by. I have my daughter and I, there’s a girl I was very interested in that time, but didn’t pursue it. And then I almost dated another woman. But this man came into my life and my daughter called her dad. And I had not had examples of how to have a, a female female relationship in my life. So it didn’t even seem possible to be able to introduce that.

I went back into this heterosexual relationship, uh, with a guy and I spent about eight years with him. And because of the effects from the first relationship, he had no idea about my interest in girls. Not at all. Uh, we got married and I felt pretty secure. So one day I thought, you [01:12:00] know. I’m gonna have to say something or I’m not gonna make it.

I was losing myself completely, and I did, and I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it. He was thrilled. And that was shocking to me and also terrifying. And I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified because I spent about two years fielding a lot of text messages, asking if it was okay that he had sent pictures to them.

Uh, it was crazy and I, I lost my mind. I was sad. Three kids and a husband, a second one, and I didn’t have what I was realizing I needed.

So two years go by and we meet a girl and about one month [01:13:00] in. Uh, he left me for her, which was not what I was expecting when I opened up the relationship at all. I, I, I broke completely after that. Like I found out I was getting a divorce very suddenly and I couldn’t pull myself together. I didn’t expect to lose two relationships.

I didn’t expect to have kids like scattered, uh, amongst these different homes. I, I lost everything that mattered to me. Everything that I thought defined who I was as a good lady, my, my kids, my husband, my dog, my kid, my things. All of that was gone in all of this, and that is its own long story about how it all got lost, but.[01:14:00]

What I found when I lost everything was that I had covered up everything that allowed me to glow with all of these things that people said I needed to have, to be able to be okay.

So when I, uh, pardon me,

when I came back here to Missoula after what felt like an odyssey, but was really just a year, I ended up at the Tell Us Something event coming home, and it, it was very literal for me to come home to Montana, but then also to hear all these stories. It was pride Month that I. Could identify with everything that people were saying.

And I spent this last [01:15:00] year thinking about it all and thought about everything that I had applied to myself and questioned whether it did actually apply to me, whether I agreed with the people who’d said it, whether I agreed with the statements and I didn’t. I said it, and here I am now. And what I found was that once I lost everything, I found myself.

I must apologize to Anada for mispronouncing her name when I introduced her the night of the show. You’ll hear me do that here, Anada. I’m so sorry. Thank you for your grace. Avada. Being Avada was [01:16:00] blessed with a creative Western spirit she was born in and has lived in Missoula for 35, up for 37 years.

She’s keenly aware of the vast history of all the lands we walk and is deeply grateful to walk them. She picked magical Missoula as her home after spending a year living off grid near the garden of the Gods in Colorado. In our next story, NAR Mansour, a Lebanese American volunteer in the volatile heart of a Palestinian refugee camp confronts the harrowing realities of a strict curfew set by the Israeli Defense forces.

Amidst chaos and desperation, she recounts an extraordinary act of quick thinking and unexpected alliance leading to a moment where vulnerability becomes a powerful tool for survival. Listen to Zulnar share the difficult choices that she made and the blurred lines of impact versus intention in a story that she calls Who made your breakfast?[01:17:00]

Thanks for listening.

Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew. Curfew is something that was happening then and is still happening now, where people are. Not able to leave their home for hours or days at a time. At this point, I think people were on curfew for 11 or 12 days.

And so we were watching people running from one direction to the other, trying to exchange goods. There were no new resources or no new resources in the area, [01:18:00] uh, often and at that time ever. So this would be like someone running to the next village to exchange rice for a flower that had not been peed on by the Israeli Defense Force or the IDF.

So we have people in different villages and, uh, we’re witnessing this chaos. Nah, we hear. Next is Yaha Yan and the soldiers are screaming you animals, you animals. They’re going to stop the curfew. It’s only been a matter of an hours. So there’s been a security breach and now the soldiers want people to go in to whatever home, a stranger’s home, and they’re being called animals so quickly.

Well, in advance of this trip, we had done some affinity training. This was the Michigan Peace team. They had recruited me [01:19:00] to travel to Palestine after seeing me speak about the conflict there for so many years, putting on human rights conferences at law schools. And I thought they were wild for recruiting me.

Um, I had spent time in southern Lebanon, a year and a half under occupation by the Israeli Defense Force. And, um, the odds were differently against me traveling in this. But I definitely thought it was time for me to see what it was I spoke about and what I studied about. So I decided to go, and here I am, we also had done this affinity training on how to make quick decisions, um, in tricky situations.

So I huddled, uh, the people together and I said, it’s, we gotta get the women and children home back to their village. [01:20:00] Everybody quickly said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And one guy that had, uh, recruited me the hardest and um, thought that there’d be some rom-com love story of him having me in his life and, uh, traveling to Palestine with a Middle Eastern woman.

So he was kind of against it. He wasn’t in charge and whatever, uh, democratically I won. And this is the story about me creating a checkpoint in the land that they call Israel or Palestine. I quickly turned and found a woman of beauty and knew that I needed her help. And so I grabbed this woman with long red hair from Brooklyn and said, come with me.

And she, she came with me. And as we walked over towards the soldier, I asked her to ask the soldier, uh, who made his breakfast, [01:21:00] and she did. And he conveniently answered his truth, which was that his mother made his breakfast. It was easy to slip it to a space of vulnerability and humanity with him. And in that conversation, he let us know that him and most of his friends pray each morning that they’ll never have to use their gun.

You see in Israel. Men and women are conscribed to three years of military service and during that time they must carry their artillery. It was an interesting fact. So he was ready to help negotiate something that was less than violent. So now we have lines of women and children on both sides of this file of soldiers and they’re checking paperwork and, well, I, I got my way, but I created a checkpoint.

So women and children got home [01:22:00] presuming something didn’t happen to them on the way home. This was during the second Intifada or the second uprising 25 years ago. One of the other things that I did on this trip was, and many of the volunteers, we. Held our passports outside of ambulances for the U-P-M-R-C or the Red Crescent or Red Cross in order for the ambulances to be able to get to the homes to help, uh, people.

Turns out when you’re locked in your home, uh, a lot of babies are made or domestic violence happens. So we would protect the ambulances and make sure they could get back to the clinic to care for people with our American passports, it was, uh, something we were hoping, uh, would, would create safety.

So I helped [01:23:00] babies be born, essentially, and I look back on that experience and I know in both situations where I created a checkpoint and helped babies get born, I had the best of intention. And there’s a part of my life dedicated to studying impact over intention. Uh, in many ways, I think that maybe our actions are not responsible unless we know how it impacts ourself, others, and the whole.

But I know that those babies are 25 years old now and able to see themselves or their loved ones be blown up. I don’t know what is right or what if I did was right. I do know what I saw.

Thank you.

Nar Mansour. [01:24:00] NAR is a person who creates spaces for all to be loved and heard in order to stop generational violence. Nar is the daughter of an immigrant. She is a survivor. NAR stands for love. As we were working Jill NA’s story, she shared with me more about what the experience was like for her, how she came to decide to go to Palestine, and some interactions with children there.

That stuck with her. When I asked my dad to go to Palestine, well, when the Michigan Peace team approached me about going to Palestine, I was like, you guys are crazy. You guys have a privilege that I don’t have to travel in that way. But I’ve already been to the Middle East and I’m on list when I travel in Lebanon.

I’ve never taken citizenship there, but I’ve been offered it. But I do travel in Lebanon on a Lebanese ID card, and I have tried to cross [01:25:00] into the country they call Israel from Southern Lebanon. This is that bad neighborhood. So this causes concern. You get on a list when you try and cross that border. Oh, and my folks tried a couple of times when I was a child to cross me over the border.

I wasn’t allowed, uh, either way. So finally I convinced myself I wanted to go to Palestine to be able to be of witness to that which I speak about. And so I told my father that I was going, I asked his permission. He never said no. He never said yes. He never said no. So, because he never said no, it was a yes for me.

He said, I, I need to talk with them. And my father is very image oriented. Mm-hmm. And so the woman who was gonna be the base operations person in the US for a trip, my father is [01:26:00] not one to speak Arabic in front of non-A speaking people ever. And that day, for whatever reason, he decided to start to speak to me in Arabic, very rudely.

And so he said, what are you gonna do for my daughter? And she said, well, we have these affinity trainings and you know, we’ll call a lawyer if we need to, if she gets somehow detained over there. And my dad’s just rolling his eyes just, it’s like the peanuts mom talking to him. He’s just like, whatever. And he looked at me and, and then looked at her and he said, in English, there’s nothing you’re gonna do for her.

And then he looked at me and he said,

so he said, my daughter is a soldier of peace. She’ll be helping you. That’s when I received my yes to go. But he remained pretty firm that [01:27:00] I knew. What I was getting into more than they knew what they were putting me into. And I was never confused as a young person that I was gonna go make change. But I think many people that I traveled with thought they were gonna do something.

I just wanted to witness what was going on. So I become a little bit differently versed. Just like in war. There’s war theory, right? There’s ways to go to war. These children pick up on these things and they know their children. So I say, aren’t you afraid of being shot? They said Anyone would hesitate to shoot a child, and by that time, I’m quick enough to be gone.

That’s what they banked on. Another child told me

he witnessed his best friend [01:28:00] get shot and blown up. They picked up a ball, it had gunpowder in it. He touched his friend and the sniper shot and it blew the kid up and that kid wanted to be a freedom fighter. Coming up after the break, I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space Naturally.

Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence. And I yell, sir, on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint. I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog. That’s next on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. [01:29:00] Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net and Missoula Broadcasting Company. Learn more about Missoula Broadcasting Company and listen online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com.

Thanks to our in-kind sponsors Float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile. Hi, it’s Joyce from Joyce of Tile. If you need tile work done, give me a shout. I specialize in custom tile installations. Learn more and see some examples of my work@joyceoftile.com. Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th.

You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Alright, let’s get back to the stories. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss opening up the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Steve Schmidt is a rookie police officer in Kansas City in 1997.

Steve responds to a seemingly [01:30:00] routine recovered property call that quickly escalates into a tense and dangerous encounter of a burglary in progress. What unfolds is a story of split second decisions, unexpected revelations, and a profound moment that would forever shape his understanding of duty perception, and the weight of a single choice.

Steve calls his story, get down on the ground. Do it now. Thanks for listening.

It was 1997 and I was driving my car in South Kansas City when my radio began to speak to me. 5 44. 5 44 From Banister and Hillcrest. Go ahead. 5 44, respond to the area of a hundred and sixth and wall end on a reported recovered property call. Now I was a very, very young police officer. In fact, two years prior to this call, I graduated from the Kansas City, Missouri [01:31:00] Police Academy.

Nine days after turning 21 years old. I looked like I was about 15 and a half years old, and that I was just wearing a really authentic looking police Halloween costume. So I respond to the area of 106 and wall end where I’m greeted by a family, and we go through the typical, you don’t look old enough to be a cop thing.

They hand me over a duffel bag that they had found at the edge of their property that they thought might’ve been involved with a purse snatching in the area. I looked through the contents of this duffle bag and one thing stands out, and that’s an envelope with a name and address on it. So I check with dispatch and I see if there’s been any burglaries at that particular residence in the last 30 days or so.

They said there hasn’t been. So I said, hold me out at that address. Let me check with the homeowner. So I drive about three or four blocks away to this split level home where the main living residence is all on one level and the bedrooms are above [01:32:00] the garages. And I walk up to this house and I notice that the deadbolt is still in the locked position and the dwarf frame is splintered in towards the inside of the residence, meaning the door has been kicked in and it’s been recently burglar burglarized.

So I call for a second car because we’re gonna have to go inside and search this residence for any burglars that might be left inside. So I call for my second officer and he shows up and we do a procedure called holding the air, which means we have priority for any radio traffic on that particular frequency in case there’s an extreme emergency on the inside.

All the other officers know that we’re searching this house and it’s really important and pretty dangerous. So my officer partner shows up. We walk up to the front door and we open the door and we yell, police, is there anybody here? And I don’t hear any answer. We do a search of the main living area of the house, [01:33:00] and I don’t see any signs of burglary whatsoever, and I’m quite confused the fact that the VCR is still there because back in 1997, VCRs were the probably one of the most common things stolen from burglaries.

We still have the upstairs to search. So I begin to make my way up the flight of stairs and I see a bedroom on my right hand side. I see a bedroom straight ahead, and I see another doorway on the left. I peek into the first room and I see a suspect laying face down on the bed sleeping. The first signs of burglary I see are directly behind this individual where a dresser drawer is pulled out and sort of cockeyed a bit, and there’s some clothes thrown.

I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence, and I yell, sir, he wakes up, gets up on his [01:34:00] hands and knees, deer in the headlight look, looking at me.

Do you live here? Yes. I don’t really like the way he answered that question, so I ask it again. Do you live here? No. Okay. We need you to get down off the bed now. Get down off the bed. He hops off the backside of the bed and he’s holding a T-shirt in his hand and he starts to say, I need to go outside. I need to go outside.

I need to go outside. He walks to the end of the bed and pretty much the, the width of a queen size bed is all that separates us. And if you imagine. A running back on the one yard line with one second left in the fourth quarter, and they’re given the ball trying to score that touchdown. This guy charges us.

We both have our handguns out. I know that in order for him to reach out and grab my handgun, he has to drop this t-shirt first as he hits us. Both my partner and I [01:35:00] holster up simultaneously and we hit the back wall. We drop to the ground and he starts pushing and kicking. I need to go outside. I need to go outside.

I’m on the radio assist, assist, assist, and I have visions of top gun in my head going, eject, eject, eject. Because all I want to do is get outta there. We fall down the flight of stairs. I’m on top of the suspect, the suspect’s on top of my partner. We land at the base of the stairs, glass breaking from a nearby coffee table.

I am trying to get this individual’s hands behind his back, and I am just not strong enough. My little 15 and a half year old sized body just isn’t gonna do it. I let go of his left arm, I get a handcuff on his right arm, and I just yell, relax, and he just magically goes limp. And I get the handcuffs on. I get on the radio 5 44.

We got one party in custody. The house is still hot. Keep the officers coming because when I yell, assist, assist, assist on the radio, all the officers in the area drop everything they’re [01:36:00] doing and they come rushing to our aid. I run back upstairs to search the other rooms that are upstairs and this is where I see most of the evidence from the burglary.

Nobody else is in the house. I clear the air, I go downstairs. I said, we have one party in custody. Start me in an ambulance because this individual sustained a small cut on his arm from the fall. I begin to try to investigate who this guy is, and I’m asking him all these different questions, and he’s not telling me his name in any way, shape or form.

And in fact, all he keeps saying to me is, put your socks on. Put your socks on. And I’m like, thanks man. I appreciate it. As he’s sitting on the floor, I’m like, thanks, I appreciate it. I got my socks on and I go, are, are you on drugs? And he’s like, yes. And I’m like, okay. That was probably one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever asked anybody.

Like I knew he was on drugs, and I wish I remembered the exact line of questioning I had for this individual [01:37:00] because one thing led to another as I was trying to figure out who he was, and I asked him, what’s your mom’s name? And he goes, Theresa Williams. And I freeze. My partner looks at me and is like, what’s wrong?

I’m like, dude, Theresa Williams, that’s the name that was on the envelope in the duffel bag. Four blocks away that brought me here. This guy lives here and he’s not on drugs. I don’t know about you, but this is the closest I’ve ever come to shooting somebody and my partner goes, if you would’ve shot, I would’ve shot.

I go into the kitchen, I look through some paperwork, and I find some information about who his parents are. I get ahold of his dad, who’s a principal of a local high school in Kansas City, and I call him and I say, there’s been an incident here at the house. [01:38:00] You need to come here. Your son’s okay. We already had an ambulance for the, the, the son, and he was in the back of the ambulance being taken care of.

Dad gets there. And I’m explaining everything that happened that got, that led to me being in his house. And I’m to the point to where we were walking up the steps, I peeked inside and I saw him sleeping in the bed and I asked him, I was like, sir, do you live here? And he said, yes. And I said, I didn’t like the way he said that.

So I asked him again, sir, do you live here? And he said, no. And he goes, hold on a second. Let me tell you a little bit about my son. My son is 33 years old and he has autism. He gets dropped off by a cab every single day. He has a garage door opener in his backpack, and he’s enter, enter the house through the garage door.

He goes into the kitchen, he makes himself a sandwich, and then he goes upstairs and lays down in one of the three bedrooms and goes asleep until we get home. If you ask my son a yes, no question, he will always respond [01:39:00] with yes. If you ask him that question again, he assumes the only reason why you’re asking him that question is the second time is he must have got the the first one wrong.

So he is gonna answer no. So, do you live here? Yes. Do you live here? No. And I’m thinking, how are we supposed to figure this out when I have a burglary suspect in front of me

not pulling the trigger? That day was the best decision I’ve ever made in my entire life. If I would’ve harmed that guy,

I would not be here today.

The headline in the newspaper across the country the next day would’ve been two white officers shoot an unarmed, autistic black man in his own home, and I would not have been able to live with that.

It’s been 28 years, and I think [01:40:00] about this guy often. I have so much love for him and his family, and I hope life has been kind to him. And if he was here today,

I would just wanna say, I’m sorry, I scared you.

Steve Schmidt, also known as Schmidty, starting from his small town origins in Malta, Montana. Schmidty is dedicated to positive change. With eight years experience as a police officer in Kansas City, Schmidty has developed strong skills in law enforcement and community engagement, all while connecting with thousands of fans as a professional mascot.

Now based here in [01:41:00] Missoula, Schmidt Schmidty leads Drive Safe Missoula, a traffic safety initiative within Missoula Public Health. That’s focused on saving lives through education. His expertise extends nationally where he speaks on influencing behavior and leveraging AI for road safety and public health.

Schmitty stopped by the tell us something studios in the days following the event to share more about his story. Hey, I’m Marc Moss. Thanks for listening to the Tele Something podcast. We just heard from Schmitty, his story he told on June 30th, 2025 at Ogre Park, at Allegiance Field, and I caught up with Schmitty later after the fact.

I, I’m here with him now in the tele something studios. Hey, Schmitty. Hey Mark. How are you? It’s great to be here. Thanks for coming and thanks for initiating this. You, you’ve said you wanted to fill in some gaps. Yeah. You know, it was interesting going through the entire process of learning how to tell this story, which I [01:42:00] think was so important during that process.

Of course, when you get out there and you’re in front of everybody and you’re trying to stay at a time, you forget a few things, and there were some key elements of my story that I would love to share with people because I think people walked away with a few big question marks in their head about what the story really was all about.

Yeah, and if you just listened to the story, one thing that I failed to mention in front of the group of people was that we believe this individual. Uh, interrupted a burglary in progress and speaking with his dad about his autism and all of that stuff. He didn’t even have the ability to understand that he interrupted a burglary in progress.

So when he arrived home using a garage door opener, he comes into the house and he goes into the kitchen. He makes himself a sandwich and then goes and lays down in one of the bedrooms upstairs and waits for his parents to get home. That when the garage opened is when we believe the actual burglars that were inside the house.

Bolted out the front door, which is why so [01:43:00] much of the house was left undisturbed is they didn’t have that much time to really go through everything. So it was a really interesting situation, of course, being there live and trying to put all this into place and, and then reflecting on it basically over the last 28 years of what that scene was really like and how scary it must have been for that guy, you know, with us being there yelling at him in his bedroom and the fact that if those burglars that were in there, uh, thankfully most burglars aren’t out to really hurt people.

They, they try to go into places when people aren’t there and thankfully they left, but thankfully they didn’t do anything to harm this individual either, you know? Yeah. And I’m, I was always so curious, you could have responded to that situation in so many different ways. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a scary thing.

You know, I think I may have mentioned like when we were falling down the stairs and I was putting the assist out on the radio and I was yelling, assist, assist, assist. You know, it was images of [01:44:00] the top gun movie, eject, eject, eject that were going through my head because I was so scared at that moment. I mean, I wanted to get out of there and it was weird how I’m like looking back on it that evening why my brain responded that way and how I had those images in my head as we are falling down the stairs and I’m on the radio yelling, assist, assist, thinking that there’s still other people in the house.

Who are going to come out of the house and be shooting at us as we are falling down the stairs and trying to put all of that information together. It was just a really crazy moment. Right, and you still didn’t know, had no idea that he wasn’t actually right. Perpetrator? Yeah. Yeah. We thought he was the burglary suspect that for one reason or another, here he is in the house and he was acting very strange.

So it made sense that if he was on drugs, maybe he stayed behind for one reason or another, stranger things have happened. Then of course, I’m not thinking at that moment when I see this individual laying on the bed that, [01:45:00] okay, so if this is the burglar, then how did the duffel bag with the contents end up four blocks away?

Like, you don’t think about those questions in that moment. Right. Um, but you know, as things settled down and we were asking him questions and trying to figure out who he was, those things are the things that started to pop into my head, which ultimately led me to ask him. What’s your mom’s name? And then when he said his mom’s name, you know, I just froze.

I mean, I was just, you know, sick to my stomach automatically. I mean, this is the closest I’ve ever come to pulling the trigger on somebody. And thankfully our, you know, our training, the constant ongoing training that we have to deal with these situations allowed me the ability at such a young age to make the right decision at that time, to not pull the trigger, which I think was vitally important, you know?

Yeah. Clearly we never hear this story. Yeah. We always hear the story of, of the cop that made the wrong decision. Right. That’s what makes the news. And [01:46:00] how do we get more of this story? How do these cops who have made the wrong decision, or how the cops that haven’t yet made the wrong decision because they haven’t been placed in this circumstance.

Yeah. How do we get them that kind of training or you know, like I, it just blows my mind, you know? And some people, some of the listeners don’t know that my dad was a cop, so I’m very familiar with police training and what’s required and decision making. And in tough circumstances, he was on the police force in cities about the size of Missoula in Ohio near Akron for 40 years as a detective, and also out on the streets and.

It’s not easy work. Right, right. It’s not easy work in any way, shape or form. And most of the issues that I have seen over the last several decades when it comes to police officers making the bad call or you know, really negative press related to police officers, I always chalk it up to, well, [01:47:00] there was a failure in training that occurred that allowed this to occur the way it did.

And so I wonder how departments really focus on, analyze these situations internally to utilize the worst case scenarios or the worst case situations that are being broadcast maybe nationally. How do they utilize that as an opportunity to learn to make their departments better? And I was really impressed with the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department.

Not that I had anything to ever compare it to, but I was impressed with how well they analyzed situations from any use of force report to any sort of major interaction from citizen complaints. How do we utilize this to make our department better? And obviously, this was a long time ago when I was wearing the uniform and behind the badge, and it was before police officers had body cameras and.

We were just starting to get video cameras in our cars and it was still [01:48:00] being recorded on VHS tapes. And it was interesting how many officers were upset with the fact that they’re gonna be on tape because they would think that, oh, well this is just gonna be utilized to punish me when I do things wrong.

And I always had that concept of. You know what? I’m super excited that this is being recorded because one, I want my supervisors to be able to see all the good that I’m doing because just like the news doesn’t see it, my supervisors didn’t get to see it because they weren’t on every single call with me, right?

They might be on one call a week with me, and I have 28 calls a day that I was going on. So this’ll be an opportunity that they would be able to see the good work that I’m doing and utilize that maybe as a training opportunity for other young officers coming up. But I was really excited about the fact that if I ever made a mistake that it could be recorded, and not only myself, but every other officer had an opportunity to learn from it because we learned most from our [01:49:00] mistakes.

And I would’ve a new recruit student next to me in the car and I’d be like, Hey, what did we learn most from, we learned most from our mistakes? Well, then let’s go mess some stuff up. As long as it doesn’t result in a, you know, a hundred thousand dollars lawsuit and nobody gets injured or killed tonight, then let’s go say the wrong thing.

You know, not intentionally, of course, but let’s appreciate the fact that we said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. And now we learn from that. And now we’re gonna have a 30 year career where we’ll never make that same mistake again. Yeah. So let’s mess it up now, learn the most we possibly can and, and make ourselves better, and then let’s share those lessons with everybody else so you don’t have to drive down this same exact road that I drove down to learn these hard lessons.

You know? And so that was the, the culture that was built into our environment in Kansas City that I was so impressed with is that everybody said, Hey, look, let’s, we’re all learning and we’re all gonna make mistakes. Let’s go. And it was. Closing out this episode of the [01:50:00] Tell Us Something podcast. What begins as an unlikely friendship for Lauren Tobias with a free spirited dog on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana takes a heartbreaking turn when the dog mysteriously disappears.

Days of agonizing searching lead to a devastating discovery, a poignant makeshift funeral, and an outpouring of community support. Just as grief settles in a shocking revelation, sends everything spiraling into an unbelievable twist. Lauren calls her story off leash. Thanks for listening.

I never thought I’d have a dog. I, it’s not that I don’t love dogs, obviously, it’s that I just like the guilt of anyone who’s a dog on her nose. The guilt of just like watching them stare at you in your house, uh, it was just like too much for me. Um, so [01:51:00] when I moved to the Fort Peck reservation in 2018, late 2018, um, my perspective on dog relationship kind of got blown out of the water.

Um, anyone who, um, maybe in the, who’s listening in the audience might know, um, the relationship that people have with dogs there is just very symbiotic and, um, people consider the members of the community. It, from the outside, I might look like, um. It might look like they are just like, don’t have homes, but actually like people take, take care of them and it’s their meaningful parts, parts of the community.

And so when I, I met many, many dogs while I was living there. Um, I spent about four years and, uh, this one particular dog stood out to me. She was a big [01:52:00] poofy, white, fluffy dog, and she had a slap happy personality. I would see her on the streets with like this pack, this like mi um, miscellaneous pack with dogs.

And every time she saw me, she would like jump on me and like greet me. And we had this like, developing relationship over the course of months. And she would do this thing where I swear she like, knew that she could make people laugh. Um, direct eye contact and like a foot long tongue, just like. Hanging out of her mouth.

And, um, she would like dip her shoulder butt would just flop down to the floor like a seal’s tail. And then she would just like get on her belly to ask for belly rubs and she would just like still be making eye contact with you. And so that’s how I like met her. And, um, eventually she kind of started following me, like in town and we sort of developed a courtship and after a couple months [01:53:00] decided to make it official, which meant that I got her vaccinated and slapped a collar on her.

Um, and a week later she told me that she was pregnant and I was not the father. And so, um, that was our first experience together. So my whole thing about the guilt and the dogs, um, we had this very fluid relationship. And we never went there just for the record. Um, um, so she, we, we had this like, come and go.

She would just sort of like sit on my porch all day and she would kinda like knock on the door. She wanted to come in in the house, she’d knock on the door if she wanted to leave, she’d wander around all day. So, um, it was kind of perfect, like we just had developed trust and then through like the raising of her babies, like we developed [01:54:00] even more of like this really natural, beautiful trust.

And, um, she was like my best friend. It sounds like cliche, but it was true. Everyone in town that knew me knew that she was my dog. And um, so yeah, we spent probably about a year that she was kind of like with me. Um, and so because of our, the nature of our relationship, when she didn’t show up home one night, I didn’t really think very much of it.

Um, and then two nights went by and I was like, you know, she’s done this before, you know, it’s probably no big deal. Um, three nights, four nights go by and I’m like, okay. Like I let her out of the house with a collar, without a collar on because I like didn’t always put a collar on her when she was, um, leaving the house.

’cause we had just kind of come in and out. And so I was like, she probably got lost. And, um, I hung up posters all over Wolf Point. Those of you who know Wolf Point, probably like, didn’t take that long to cover the town. It’s pretty small, small town. But [01:55:00] um, on the sixth day I got a phone call and, uh, it was from, there were three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza joint, uh, like the, the, the dial phone there.

And they were like, I was like, hello? Uh, they were like, all they said was, we found your dog. And I was like, oh my God. Like, where can I come get her? Like, yes, thank you so much. Like, I’ll be right there. And I was just met with silence on the other line, and this was like literally the first time throughout the entire six days where I was like, like maybe something’s wrong.

Like maybe she’s, something happened to her. I never considered it. She grew up around cars and she was always really good around, you know, cars and stuff. So I never thought that that was like a possibility. So I run across town, I drive across town, I pick them up and they, I’d ask them [01:56:00] to show me where she was.

And when we start walking up to the train tracks, I was like, like, oh my God. Like, no way. Um, so I walk up and I see, I walk up and I see her body deflated and, and lifeless and just like formed to the, uh, reels of the track. And yeah, sorry, that was really graphic. Um, so the kids are still with me and they’re like, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened to us all day.

We just located your dead dog off of a missing poster sign. So we’re like, here for this. And I was like, can you please leave me for a second? And so they did. And they left me for like, you know, 10 minutes. And then I saw them circling back and I was like, okay, I think we’re in this. And I’m like, okay, if I was, I, you know, if I’m remembering myself as a child and I had done that, like sleuthing, like I’d probably be pretty invested too.

So I was like, all right, you can come with me. [01:57:00] And they were like, what are you gonna do? I’m like, I don’t know. Do you have any ideas? Never been in the situation before. So, um, they came with me. I went back to my house, I grabbed a bathrobe, went back to the train tracks. I wrapped her up 65 pounds, picked her up, put her in my trunk.

Uh, did the only thing I could think to, you know, thank the kids. Went to the McDonald’s drive through, dog still in the back of my trunk. Um, and, and then I took them home and I go home. And now I’m like alone for the first time making phone calls. Uh, and I’m getting text messages from people I didn’t even tell, sending their condolences.

Um, and I made a, an appointment the next morning with the Wolf Point Crematorium. They said they’d make an exception and Cree made a dog, um, the next day. So my friends who live downstairs, three friends came upstairs. They were devastated because they like, loved her too. They knew her spirit. [01:58:00] Um, and we had like probably the most beautiful funeral and ceremony that I’ve ever been to.

We took her body out of the trunk, we put it on her bed, uh, outside in like this kind of mud room. And we, um, put her toys around her, her treats, sweet grass, sage. They, they kind of burned sage and we were drinking whiskey, laughing, uh, crying. And there was like also this moment I wanted to stamp her paw print.

I was like, which arm am I gonna get tattooed? Um, I wanted to stamp her paw print on something like sentimental. The closest thing I could find was my ukulele. I can’t get into that side quest right now. But basically it was like some ped tremors, um, a uh, nail polish, navy blue nail polish. And my friend’s CSI knowledge about like rolling it, which like was not intuitive at all.

It was like a mess. But it gave us like the first belly laugh of, of like the 24 hours. [01:59:00] And, um, so I went to bed, got a really terrible night’s sleep. And I wake up the next morning, I’m flipping pancakes. I’m still, I’m still crying. And, um, I, it’s the first thing I’ve eaten since the McDonald’s the day before at like 3:00 PM and I get a text message on my phone and I see a picture.

Someone forwards me a Facebook post and I see a picture of my dog. Um, I know I’ve lost credibility of saying this, but it was her, the, the picture. I’m like, why, why is someone sending me this? I look at the caption and it says, and anyone know who sweet dog this is? Like, she showed up on my porch today. I look at the timestamp.

It was yesterday, so I’m like, maybe it’s an old picture. I don’t know. And so I message her, find her address. Then my friend mush from the night before the funeral comes banging on my door [02:00:00] and it’s like, have you seen this? Her text message, like she just got it forwarded to you. And, and so I’m like, shut the fuck up.

Like, I don’t know, like, please don’t get my hopes out. We’re like, drive. So I’d like make her get in the car with me. We drive six miles to get to this person’s house and we open the door out. Comes running my actual dog.

This is Fluffer.

Um, she’s seven years old now, and we’re a pet therapy team. Um, uh, yeah. And so she, nothing happened. She was just pumped. She was like, wow, haven’t seen you in a week. Like, what’s up? Like, I’ve been through a lot. Like, whew. She didn’t like look like she lost weight [02:01:00] because she just, you know. She’s chilling.

She probably made some friends. And so anyway, the the de ma of this story is, um, I still have the dog in my closet, you know?

Um, yeah. So the appointment to get her cremated was like in an hour. And so I did the best thing I could do. I took real fluffer in the rod daylight. It was April. So the ground was really hard. I tried, I promise I did my best. I know this is not environmentally friendly, but I like took a, the bathrobe, the dog dug a shallow grave in the hills of Wolf Point.

Um, and yeah, I, that was it. And then, um, I invited the kids to come on an adventure with Fluffy and I, and they got to meet her and hear the things I was telling [02:02:00] about. And, um. Yeah, now we’re just living life and that’s, that’s my story of Lost and Found. So thank you.

Closing out her evening. Tonight is Lauren Tobias. When Lauren moved to Montana from the suburbs of New York City nine years ago, in search of some peace and quiet she never could have expected she’d be making home here. She loved visiting the many nooks and crannies of Montana via highways, gravel, tire, track, roads, hiking trails, bike paths, and her favorite and eight cedar plane.

During her time here, she’s been called to infinitely learn from how to recognize what’s under the hood of her car to self-expression through photography, to embracing a queer identity, to picking up beer league, ice hockey in her thirties. [02:03:00] Those last two things are related only by pure coincidence she assures me.

Lauren has found more life here than she could have ever imagined. She spent COV living on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, learning a more holistic history of our country and about the incredible culture and decolonization efforts of indigenous nations. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast.

I’m Marc Moss. Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Blue Sky and visit Tell us something.org to explore 14 years of our story archives and let me know what you thought of the new format.

You can email me at info@tellussomething.org to share your [02:04:00] thoughts.

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Something. The next tell us something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is, welcome the Wild Side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at Tell us something. Dot org this week on the podcast.

Hammy: That was the first thought I have gonorrhea. The second immediate thought was the place I need to go to treat this gonorrhea is my first day at the health department. I thought, oh my God, this is gonna suck. I get dressed. For some reason, I decided to put on white underwear. To this day, I don’t understand why I chose white.

Katie Van Dorn: And I probably should have figured it out, but I didn’t. And I came outta surgery with my right leg, an inch and a half shorter than my left, and I was pod to say [00:01:00] the least, and a doctor said, well, that’s the way it has to be. So it just was

Marc Moss: four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme.

Lost and found.

Karna Sundby: When I found his body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answered the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up. I look over and there’s a copy of the kinmen.

Kara Adolphson: The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet. I’m gonna read that, so I drag it over. And I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s what I see underneath the photo.

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person on June 30th, 2025 at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field in Missoula, Montana.

Closing out Pride Month. On this episode of the podcast, we’re trying out something a little [00:02:00] different. Tell us something. Board member Beth Ann Osteen generously offered to bring in a professional sound engineer to better capture the feeling of a live event. We’re going to try to keep the essence of the live evening by using the storyteller introductions as I introduce the storytellers the night of the event.

As usual, I’ll give a little teaser of the story before the storyteller shares their story. We’d love to hear from you what you think. Shoot me an email and let me know how you like the new format. You can email me at info at tell us something. Dot org. Love it. Hate it. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Huge thanks. Goes out to the Greater Montana Foundation who encourages communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. We are so grateful to the Greater Montana Foundation for their support to make the June event possible. Tell us something acknowledges that this land where Ogre Park, [00:03:00] uh, ogre Park now stands, is the ancestral territory of the Salish and Kalispell peoples who have stewarded it for generations.

Summertime is traditionally the primetime for indigenous peoples to gather various berries and roots that are in season while the bitterroot are already harvested. Now is the time for processing and storing any remaining bitterroot that have been gathered. Another staple canvas bulbs are being dug and prepared for storage huckleberry’s service.

Berries and choke cherries are ripening and being harvested for immediate consumption and for drying to preserve in winter. We take this moment to honor its land and the native people in the stories that they share with us to honor them, you can support the ongoing efforts of the Confederated Salish and Kni tribes by learning about their cultural initiatives.

And advocating for indigenous rights, more information can be found@kskt.org.[00:04:00]

In our first story, hammy shares his tale about family faith, and finding yourself what starts as a journey of self-discovery after a life altering decision. Takes an unexpected turn leading to a hilarious and surprising public health crisis on the very first day of a new job. Sometimes life’s most challenging moments can also be the most liberating.

Hammy calls his story, Ham’s First Day at the Health Department. Thanks for listening.

Hammy: Hello everyone. My name’s Hammy, and before I begin, I need to tell everyone that I just grew up loving my family. I, me, my mom, my brother, my sister, my dad. We were all so very close. Um, also, I never really heard my parents fighting at all, which was pretty cool. They would always fight about religion, though.

You see, my [00:05:00] dad was Roman Catholic and my mom’s a Jehovah’s Witness. And, uh, their son had a secret. Um, so I always knew that I had to, I always knew that one day I was gonna make this decision. And I, I tried, I prayed, I, I did the baptism, I did the conversion therapy. And when I was 27 years old, I finally realized I couldn’t do it anymore.

So I, uh, kind of, kind of came out. I, I started downloading the dating apps. I started dating. And I met this boy. There’s this beautiful man in Indiana and I decided to, to get married. Someone go, woo Indiana. Yeah. Um, don’t hear that often. So, uh, he, he just completely swept me up. And I, I came out and, uh, sure enough, my church gave me that phone call and they excommunicated me and my mom, my brother, my sister, my cousins, my friends, everyone.

Dead. That’s it. They just, I believe the church said they handed me over to [00:06:00] Satan. And I’m like, that is a little dramatic. I’m the gay one. Easy there, Satan. Um, but anyways, we were married for five years. We had a good relationship and till one day he decided that he didn’t wanna be married anymore. And so I thought, well, I, I left my family to marry you and, and you change your mind and, and that’s okay.

But what am I gonna do? I knew I wasn’t staying in, in, in Indiana, so, um, I, I wanted to go home. Everything in my body told me I gotta go home. I have to go home. And I knew that if I went home, I would get sucked into the church again. And I knew I would just end up killing myself. ’cause I would just, I would be conflicted.

So I decided to do one of those, you know, eat, pray, love things and just go find myself. But I really don’t like Europe, so I just came to Montana instead. So I got, I got a job at Yellowstone and in Big Sky and I did all those kind of things of working seasonal [00:07:00] jobs. And I finally decided what I wanted to do more than anything was.

Work in public health. I was in a first responder and then in occupational health and now I was in public health, so I got accepted back into a public health program online and I got a job at the Gallatin County Health Department. And so my very first day, right, well, let me actually back up just a minute.

After I, um, came off the mountain, uh, the girl was in heat. Let me tell you. I was divorced. I was in a new city. It was, I was feeling good about myself. You know, the grinder notifications were rolling in. So, uh, I had a lot of fun that first weekend. Now that morning, on my first day at the health department, I woke up and I went to go take a piss and I thought, shit, it started burning.

I said, this can’t be good. Maybe I’m just dehydrated. So I hop in the shower and I look down and this discharge is coming out. Well, you know what? We don’t need to get too [00:08:00] graphic, but I think I knew exactly what it was. That was the first thought. Shit, I have gonorrhea. The second immediate thought was the place I need to go to treat this gonorrhea is my first day at the health department.

I thought, oh my God, this is gonna suck. So I go to the I I, I get dressed. For some reason, I decide to put on white underwear. To this day, I don’t understand why I chose white, but I loaded up on underwear and I headed into work. And I thought, I don’t know what I’m gonna tell them. I don’t know if I’m gonna just keep it kind of quiet.

Um, but then they’re all gonna know they’re gonna do the contact tracing. So I met the health officer and she says, hello James. Welcome my, my real name’s James. She says, hello James, welcome. And I said, hello, and I have gonorrhea and I’m gonna have to talk to someone. And she says, okay, um, let’s get your boss, who’s the communicable disease manager.

Uh, and I’m like, of course, that makes total sense. So I tell her. I’m like, Hey. And then I kind of do it like at, by [00:09:00] that point I kind of go on like this one man show where I’m just telling everybody they got the first two out. So like epidemiologist, you knew front desk reception. I was letting her know, I just had to own that story.

So they, they arranged the, they, they do the, the follow up and contact tracing at the health department, but they do actually the testing, uh, at a different party. So I go down. Hey, I go get tested, um, and the doctor comes in, I’m like, I have gonorrhea. And she’s like, okay. So I pulled down my pants and then I look down and she looks down and we both notice a bump.

Now this was August, 2022. If anyone in public health knows what was happening around August 20, yes, there it is. Monkey px, m MPOs. She looks, I look, she says, I’ll be right back. Come leaves the room. She comes back in looking like monsters ink. It was head to toe, PPE, the mask, the shield, the gloves. The runway category was PPE, and she crushed it.

So she’s coming in and [00:10:00] so she like takes, you know, and, and. She, she, she starts slicing it. And I’ve only been in, yes, exactly. Oh, because I’ve only been in one public health class my first semester and three days at the health department. And inside I knew, I’m pretty sure it’s a swab, but I’m not gonna tell you like, Hey, by the way, doctor, I’m new to public health.

This is what to do. So she cuts it and as she cuts it, there’s like gonorrhea dripping out of my penis. It is a whole Hello. Yes. Um, there is a whole, it’s, it’s a whole production. So now I gotta call my boss on my way home and be like, Hey, um, they think it might be Empo and I have to quarantine. So Do you guys have like a remote or a computer?

Yeah, like a pickup. They were very great. The, the health department, I’ll tell you when, when they say you have, these, were all strangers and you have to rely on, on the, the compassion and kindness of strangers. They were all absolutely amazing. And, uh, they just re reaffirmed my life. And, uh, the people [00:11:00] in Butte, that queer people were being taken care of because there was no stigma.

There was no judgment. They were just right to the facts. Um, so. I get a phone call a couple days later. It’s, it’s negative. Um, for em, PX, gonorrhea, we all knew. Yes, that was, we, we had that one coming. So we get there and she’s, um. So I go back, I go back in and they say, okay, you gotta do your follow-up test.

Or I do my follow-up test and uh, they call me back. They say everything’s negative. We just wanted you to come back in one last time for a shot of penicillin. I thought, okay, that’s fine. Gimme a shot of pen penicillin. I wait a couple weeks. I go on another date. Now I have to go to Butte for this date. I go to Butte.

I first time, I think it’s really fun. Here I go. Have a nice beautiful morning with Clayton. His name was a wonderful man. We’re just having some coffee and he says, you know, we like to get lunch. He. I said, yeah, I just want to let you know I’m allergic to seafood. And he says, okay, well we’re in Butte, so relax.

Um, and [00:12:00] then, uh, I said, are you allergic to anything? He said, it’s just penicillin. And I said, okay, well, we can’t have sex after lunch because I might give you penicillin. Uh, I had gonorrhea. And they had, it wasn’t, but then thought it was monkeypox, but it wasn’t that, but it was gonorrhea actually. So if I can transmit it, I’m not, I’m only in my, like, third week of public health right now, so I don’t really know how all of this works.

Um, he said, I just want, I just wanna buy you lunch. So, uh, good guy. So that, that’s, that’s thinking about that now, you know, getting lost. Getting found was I, was I lost when I came out here? I think a little bit, and I think we’re always a little bit lost, right? Because that’s so, it makes life kind of exciting.

And, um, have I been found? Well, I found a really good therapist. Um, thank God for her. Uh, uh, I, uh, found a community. A [00:13:00] family. My partner Clayton, he stayed with me by the way. Uh, great guy by the way. Doug is here. Oh. Um, by the way, every interaction since then is always that of me being like, I have a wild story.

And him being like, sure. So it’s like the perfect relationship. Uh, and, uh, I, I found a great community in, in Butte. Uh, it’s such a wonderful town. Thank you to Missoula. Butte. It’s able to hang a pride flag. We got that passed. So thank you guys. Thank you Missoula for that. Um, but. In, in conclusion of this story, I, I try to talk openly about this.

I don’t want us to feel like we ever have to hold in that shame, that darkness. ’cause I know what that darkness does when we bring that darkness to the light in front of strangers. Um, just sharing our stories, we’re able to own that, right? So thank you guys so much for having me here. I appreciate it and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of this time.

Thanks, Marc.[00:14:00]

Marc Moss: Hammy is thrilled to be sharing his story tonight. He works in occupational safety, health and risk management. He is the founder and creative director of Queer Butte Arts and Culture, a new group celebrating local, queer art, queer culture, and local queer history. Last year he was named one of Southwest Montana’s 20 under 40, and this year he was honored as the young professional of the year by the Butte Local Development Corporation.

He is a homosexual and he lives in Butte with his partner Clayton. Also, a homosexual

ham is passionate about harm reduction, ending stigma, and walking on his hands. Above all, hammy believes that storytelling can save lives. In our next story, Katie Van Dorn recounts a childhood marked by an unexpected physical challenge to a life defined by adventure and a [00:15:00] relentless pursuit of wellness.

Katie’s journey is filled with extraordinary feats, unexpected setbacks, and profound self-discovery. Katie calls her story, the cracks are how the light gets in. Thanks for listening.

Katie Van Dorn: Wow. The only time I hold a mic like this is when I am in a room all by myself. So now I’ve gotta see all these faces. Anyway, um, well, good evening everybody. Have you ever heard the joke about the lost dog with three legs blind in his left eye, missing an ear and no tail? Well that dog answers to the name of Lucky and my, my brother used to call him.

Say that I was that dog named Lucky. And, and the reason for that is, is it began at birth. I was born with a dislocated hip and I was a [00:16:00] cesarean baby. So either the doctor pulled too hard or they, um, or somehow they didn’t check my hip at birth. So around. Age two, my parents finally discovered that I had a dislocated hip when I fell and couldn’t get up.

And, um, so I was braced, just, uh, just tucked in and kept in a brace. And I would be standing in the yard in the patio just spreading, go like this with my brother and sister running all around me. And a little tiny dog named Clyde would just knock me over flat on my back. And, uh. And so anyway, I, um, that actually did wondrous for me.

It, it sent me on my way. And I, because I grew up in Lala as Mark said, I, um, I was able to swim and, and surf body surf, and. Hike and run and all that. My childhood wasn’t affected, but at high school I started to have a lot of hip pain again, and so [00:17:00] I went to the orthopedic surgeon and he said, well, you need a pelvic osteotomy.

In other words, a total restructuring of my right hip, and basically it just rotates your. Acetabulum your socket straight down instead of down and out. And that actually six weeks, um, in a body cast, then seven months on crutches. And the body cast was like, my parents had to have a baby all over again.

They had to come give me the bed pan and water and food and everything. And I, um, I was not a happy baby. Um, and so anyway, I, uh. I got through that and it was like, I felt like the lucky dog. It was pretty miraculous. I was able to run, I was, I started school at the University of California Davis and I was able to run a half marathon and I just really got into running and I also got into swimming.

Um, I used to swim in the ocean, but I started swimming in a pool with a master’s program and the coach [00:18:00] there asked me if I wanted to do a race from. Lanai to Maui in Hawaii, swimming across the channel. And so I did that and it was a pretty neat experience with huge swells. And some of the, some of the swimmers were seasick ’cause the boat had to go as slow as the swimmer.

But I did it and it just fueled my love of adventure and my desire for more. And soon thereafter, I was invited to cook at a guest ranch in the cell way, bitter wilderness. And that was my introduction to Montana. And so I went back and cooked for five summers. I loved it. I would run along the river’s edge and jump into big pools.

And so for five years, I alternated summers in the cell way and winters cooking at a guest or at a restaurant at the top of Aspen or snow mass. Mountain and then I decided, okay, I gotta, I need a real job. So I went back to school in exercise physiology and learned about how, how exercise and nutrition [00:19:00] and all sorts of things factor into.

Staying healthy. And uh, but then soon after I graduated for my, got my master’s, once again, my hip was bothering me. So now I was facing surgery number three, and this was from the femoral side instead of the pelvic side. And I probably should have figured it out, but I didn’t. And I walk, came outta surgery with my right leg, an inch and a half shorter than my left, and I was.

POed to say the least. And, um, the, the, you know, doctor said, well, that’s the way it has to be. So it just was so, I just learned to use poles for hiking and I put lifts in on, in and outside of my shoe and I got a lot of body work. And my name used to be Katie Bodywork, van Dorn. And to this day I live by that principal, but I met my husband around that time and he also loved hug.

Hiking Ray, he’s up there [00:20:00] and, um, so we did a lot of adventures that involved hiking, trapper Peak, Lolo Peak, et cetera. And he, if I got sore, he would give me a piggyback and just bounce my, my hips around until I was. Good to go again. And, uh, so anyway, that, uh, went on. And then around 2001, when I was 45 years old, I decided to have a hip replacement.

And to tell you the truth, that was a very lucky experience because to this day, I still have that hip and it works wonderfully. I might have a. Funky gate, but it still works. And, um, and so because of that good surgery, we decided to do this ski trip from Finland, in Finland, from Russia to Sweden. And we skied about 40, uh, about 40 to 50 miles a day for seven days.

And that, again, was, was quite an adventure. And what I realized with both swimming and [00:21:00] skiing is that they’re very rhythmical. And so if you just put a piece of music like Taco Bell’s cannon in your head, you can just. Get into the flow. And so, um, so we, I did a lot of skiing and then I, um, because of this funky gait, I found myself needing knees, two of them in 2014.

And so I went back and I had, um, knee surgery. And again, that was so fortunate. It just flowed. So well, and, um, I had, I still to this day have the knees and the hip, and they both do really well. But what happened a few years later was that I started to have foot pain, left foot pain, and I, um, and I consulted doctors after trying ibuprofen and tons of steroid shots.

I kept pushing myself, pushing myself, and finally the doctor [00:22:00] said, you know what? You’ve, you’ve your foot. Uh, talus bone, which is your landing pad, has collapsed and your only option is amputation. Cut that off. And I said, I’m gonna cut my head off before I cut any foot off. And I, um, I meant it. And, um, so I.

Um, and this was the first time that there wasn’t a solution. There was always solutions to all these things. This is the first time when I thought, okay, you’ve got to figure this one out for yourself. And um, Henry David Throw once said that, not until we are lost. Can we begin to find ourselves? So I sought out, um, a lot of alternative medicine.

I got stem cells and prolotherapy and platelet rich plate plasma, and I, I sought it all out to try to help the foot. At least structurally. And then my mom passed, happened to pass away in the middle of all this. So I had time to [00:23:00] just go inward and think about, okay, what, what have I done wrong here? Maybe I’ve been, um.

Not a nice person because I lost my SOLE, but I felt like I needed my SOUL saved, and so I tried to do a lot of meditation and studying neuroscience and y. Um, how meditation can help that. And I studied energy medicine and I studied restorative yoga. And I, I just went, just went deep for three years. I just kind of hid out and all my friends up there were with me when, you know, I, Ray would put on his, his ski closer, his running shoes, and go to, to go out and exercise and I would start crying and I just would always be in tears.

And finally after a lot of work and it internally and a lot of outside work, little by little my foot started to be a little less blue [00:24:00] and so did I, and less swollen. And gradually I was able to do more and more. First I could walk without the brace. I had a A FO brace on my foot, and then I could. Walk a little bit longer and then I could double pull cross country skiing.

And finally, in 2022, I hiked to jump top a jumbo for the first time and I just wept. And um. With joy and gratitude. And ever since then I’ve really thought, okay, you’ve gotta be grateful for this body. ’cause you know, it’s, it’s pieced together. Lots of, lots of replaced parts, and so you’ve gotta take good care of it and honor it.

And when it doesn’t wanna do something, let go. Just let it go. And so. I wanna summarize my story, my lost and found story with a, a little verse from one of my favorite Museum, museum [00:25:00] musicians, Leonard Cohen. And the song is called Anthem. He says, ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Katie Van Dorn

is originally from Lala, California. Katie studied exercise physiology at the University of Montana. She is passionate about the outdoors and is a compassionate real estate agent who has been caring for home buyers and sellers alike in Missoula for over 20 years. Katie loves hiking, cross country skiing, swimming, gardening, and cooking.

You may have heard her freeform show on Montana Public Radio, where she is a rotating host and producer of Thursday freeform coming up after the break.

Karna Sundby: When I found [00:26:00] his body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answered the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up.

Kara Adolphson: I look over and there’s a copy of the caman. The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet. I’m gonna read that, so I drag it over and I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s when I see underneath the photo.

Marc Moss: That’s next on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net and Missoula Broadcasting Company. Learn more about Missoula Broadcasting Company and listen [00:27:00] online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com.

Thanks to our in-kind sponsors, float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile.

Joyce Gibbs: Hi, it’s Joyce from Joyce of Tile. If you need tile work done, give me a shout. I specialize in custom tile installations. Learn more and see some examples of my work@joyceoftile.com.

Marc Moss: Alright, let’s get back to the stories.

You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss, opening up the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something Podcast. Karna Sundby goes on a blind date in Seattle, which leads to a whirlwind, romance and a life that feels like a dream when an unimaginable tragedy strikes. One woman’s world shatters, forcing her to confront the deepest of despair, follow her incredible journey through loss, unexpected healing, and the profound discovery of purpose amidst the pain.

Know that Karna’s story speaks frankly [00:28:00] about suicide. Karna calls her story, finding the gift. Thanks for listening.

Karna Sundby: Hello everybody. Can you hear me?

Come with me to Seattle. It’s after work and I’m on an escalator, headed up to a restaurant, and I’m feeling anxious and wondering why am I doing this? I get to the top and sitting on a couch is a very handsome man. Eyeing the escalator, he stands up, flashes me. A big smile, has perfect teeth, and maybe this blind date isn’t such a bad idea.

After all, we sit in the bar for hours telling stories about our families, our sales careers, his love of sailing, my passion for skydiving and all of our bizarre blind dates. Later, we would [00:29:00] agree that it seemed like a reunion. Like we already knew each other, maybe from some other time. His name was Ed, and his gentle spirit won my heart.

We spent almost every weekend on his sailboat, which was so relaxing and so exhilarating when you’re keeled over and the spinnaker’s out, slicing through the the swales, and then there’s nothing so tranquil as being lulled to sleep. By waves slapping against the hull of a gently rocking boat. Eventually we moved into a guest house, I mean a, a house on the Puget Sound, and it was summer in Seattle.

We were so happy. Life was so good. As I got to know him over the next couple years, I felt we had the happiest relationship of anybody that I knew. He was more quiet with other people than he was with me, and so I started [00:30:00] thinking of him as the strong, silent type. We were both in sales and I realized that he never should have been.

There was just too much pressure, too many quotas, too many, too much selling, and so I wish that he had had some different kind of career. We never had an argument. I never saw him upset or. Depressed until one November night. And then when I asked him what was wrong, he said it was his job. And I said, well, ed, you can find a different job, but I’d never seen him despondent like this.

And I didn’t know how to support him. So I just thought, well, I’ll just let it be. Let him watch Monday Night football and we’ll talk about this more tomorrow. But for us, there would be no, tomorrow I was 42 years old. Living a charmed life with the man of my dreams. Those dreams died the next day when I came home from work and found him dead.

[00:31:00] He had chosen to end his life. When I found his dead body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answer the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up. Yeah, just then my neighbor shouted.

I called 9 1 1 and whoosh. All of my freaking out parts just came rushing back together and I thought, help us on the way. Maybe he’s not dead, maybe they can save him. The firetruck came very quickly and got him out of the, the car. We’re trying to resuscitate him on the driveway. It was so unbelievable. I ran into the house to get a pillow for his head.

I remember standing against this post just praying out loud. I swear I could hear the sound of my life shattering on the concrete. When I realized he was gone. I now know [00:32:00] that he’d been fired from that job for not making his sales skull. And later I would find a box of mail that he didn’t want me to see.

Debts a recent bill from the IRS with six years of unpaid taxes. The strong, silent type with secrets that I would never find answers for the next year was hell, full of dark emotions, sorrow to pray, despair, hopelessness, and I needed community to heal. So I went to visit some dear girlfriends in the LA area and happened to be there when the Northridge earthquake happened.

We were talking until late into the night when suddenly the earth just started quaking. The walls were shuttering, shirking violently back and forth, and it was dark as a tomb, and there was this dead silence except for my friends shouting, are you okay? Are you okay? They were [00:33:00] diving for door jambs and hiding under fufu furniture.

I was laying on the ground spread eagle in front of a plate glass window that went from the floor to the ceiling, hoping that it would shatter and kill me. And I’d made an instant decision that if it broke and didn’t kill me, I’d take a shard of glass and slip my juggler vein and no one would know that I had done it.

That’s how much I didn’t wanna be here. I wished that I could die, but I knew the pain of suicide. There was just this constant ache. This. Empty, endless hole that nothing could fill. And there were the nightmares that first year. It was a supportive family, friends, grief counseling and a spiritual connection that got me through the tough times.

I wanted to be free of the bad dreams. So I went to a professional. That first session was pretty scary because she wanted to take me back into the garage. The source [00:34:00] of the, the sight of the. Bad dreams where I would wake up in a cold, sweaty panic, sometimes screaming. But what she said made sense that I had, I was reliving it because that’s the way my brain had recorded it and that we needed to rewire my brain.

So she taught me how to disassociate in a healthy way from the event so that I could observe it instead of live it. After two sessions, I never had a nightmare again. After a few more sessions, I was blown away at how much better I was feeling no longer merely surviving. I was thriving. The modality was called NLP, which stands for Neural Linguistic Programming, and I decided I wanna help people heal from their trauma.

So I went to school, became a master practitioner of neural linguistic programming. [00:35:00] And when I first started working with clients, it was the most fulfilling thing I ever experienced in my life. It was such a gift, and there were other gifts that came from this tragedy, the gift of compassion. When I felt such deep pain, it led me to such deep compassion for human suffering.

I don’t know if I could have become someone who cares so much what people go through if I hadn’t gone through so much myself. That was such a gift, and another gift that I received was learning how to forgive. If I hadn’t been able to forgive the people that I wanted to blame, I think I’d still be haunted by this tragedy stuck forever in the past.

Maybe even using it as an excuse for why I couldn’t be happy or successful in life. But I like what Nelson Mandela says about forgiveness. To stay [00:36:00] in a state of non forgiveness is like me drinking poison, expecting the other guy to die. I didn’t wanna drink the poison, so I became someone who can forgive easily, and that is a great gift.

Another gift that I received was I learned how to feel all my feelings, no matter how dark they were, without being afraid of feeling them. I learned the truth of grieving, which is this, to heal you must feel. When I, when Ed first died, I never thought I’d be happy again, and I sure never thought I’d fall in love, but maybe it’s because I was willing to so deeply feel that I was able to truly heal my broken heart and create new dreams.

I’ve been with my amazing husband, Kirk, now for 24 years. Actually, it’ll be [00:37:00] 24 years on July 7th, and I would need that my whole 10 minutes up here to tell you what a wonderful man he is. I’m gonna start crying. So communicative. So reliable. So passionate about life and handsome. With perfect teeth.

When I first met Kirk, I realized that for me, some of the grief work was only gonna be completed when I was in a relationship again, and he was willing to walk that path with me bringing us so close able to talk about everything. I created new dreams with him, like moving back to Missoula where I went to college.

Our life is so good and I’m so grateful that I didn’t die in that earthquake. That I live to find this joy and I love my work. I love to help people transform. And when I help somebody heal their trauma, their depression, their PTSD, you know, the [00:38:00] really deep stuff, it means the world to me. I feel like I’m doing the work that I’m meant to do.

Do I think about Ed very much? Not so much when there’s a, some, you know, anniversary. Yes. When I hear of another suicide, yes, but when I heard that the theme tonight was lost and found, I thought maybe I would like to tell my story. I lost so much. I lost the man I loved. I lost my hopes. I lost my dreams, and I found so much.

I found my passion. I found meaningful work. I found my life’s calling, and maybe I was destined to work with people to help them heal their trauma. And maybe I wouldn’t have found my destiny without this tragedy. So the whole experience has brought me to develop kind of a new core belief in life, which is that when the really tough times happen, maybe there’s a gift in there [00:39:00] somewhere.

And if we can just keep our eyes and our ears and our hearts open, maybe somehow will be guided to find a gift amidst the pain. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Karna Sundby’s journey of self-discovery has led her to explore various paths in life. From teaching meditation to a successful career in corporate sales, what has always driven her most is the desire to make a difference. Often the toughest times in life are the ones which break us open and forge within us a deep well of compassion.

Her story tonight is about one of those times when a terrible tragedy led to a precious gift. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Kara [00:40:00] Adolphsen is a college freshman, grappling with a secret grief. Kara vows to herself that she will navigate her new life and grief silently. But on the anniversary of a profound loss, an unexpected invitation leads to an art exhibit, a surprising discovery and a breakthrough moment of joy and healing.

Kara calls her story finding humor after loss. Thanks for listening.

Kara Adolphson: Hello out there.

The first day of my freshman year in college was on the six month anniversary of my best friend’s death, and I had just come from this small Montana town where all of my day-to-day interactions had shifted from, Hey Kara, how’s it going? To, Hey Kara, how are you? [00:41:00] And I became so desperate to get away from that, that I moved as quickly and as early as I possibly could here to the University of Montana campus.

And as I arrived in the town that my friend and I had planned to move to together without her. I made a solemn vow to myself that I would tell no one that I was grieving, not only because I was so tired of these other sum interactions that I had been having, but also because at 18 I really didn’t have the words to explain what I was going through.

So it became my closest kept secret, and I told no one. I didn’t tell my professors. I didn’t tell my new bosses. I didn’t tell any new peers that I met. I didn’t even tell my [00:42:00] roommate that I lived in a proverbial shoebox with. It was truly a secret, but the thing about grief is that it tends to show up even when it’s uninvited, especially when it’s uninvited.

And my grief really showed up in my poor academic performance my freshman year. I had a hard time attending my classes, let alone doing anything to pass them. I practically flunked out my very first semester. I lost all of my academic scholarships, and while that was really difficult to hold. For anyone out there who has experienced grief, you can corroborate that.

One of the more difficult emotions to hold when you’re grieving is surprisingly joy. These two seemingly opposite emotions are hard to balance at [00:43:00] the same time, and it’s something that took me years of practice to master. But one thing during this year that really cracked open this joy for me was I, of course, met a boy and he really brought that glimmer back into my life.

I could tell that he could see through the facade that I was offering, and he was treating me like a normal person. And even so still, I couldn’t tell him about my grief. And as the year continued on and the seasons changed, and winter was preparing to give way into spring, there was this horrible date that was approaching, which was the one year anniversary of my friend’s death.

And I could tell pretty quickly that I wasn’t gonna be able to handle it very well. So I was [00:44:00] making plans of how I could kind of cancel the day and pretend that it. Didn’t even happen. And on the night before the one year anniversary, I was sitting in my dorm room predating calling out of work, canceling my classes, shocker, and just hiding away in my room.

And that’s when I heard a familiar ping on my laptop. A Facebook message because the year was 2013 and we still, Facebook messaged each other to communicate. And so I went over and it was a message from this boy and it said, Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? I thought, well, nothing. And he said, how would you feel about coming to one of my classes with me?

I thought, well, that’s really bizarre. Um, but what class? And he said, just show up. You’ll find out when you get there. So I agreed, [00:45:00] having no idea what I was agreeing to. The University of Montana offers over 300 different courses, including things like acrobatic trampoline class, so it really could have been anything.

But the next morning, instead of hiding away from the world as I had planned, I went out into it. And I went over to the social sciences building on campus, which is a kind of catchall building for a lot of classes to meet this boy. I went up to the third floor to a room that I knew was a lecture hall, hoping that I could walk in and blend in with the crowd.

But when I opened the door to that room, there was maybe 15 people in that room. There was no blending in, but I went in anyway and I sat down next to this boy and I said. Where am I? And he said, well, this is my art history class. I said, okay. [00:46:00] And right then the professor says, well, class, as you know, today is our big field trip day, so gather your belongings.

We’re leaving right now. Okay, so I get up with the rest of the class and we leave and we go all the way downstairs in the same building. There are student art exhibits on the first floor, and the class was to go around and just meander around the exhibits and make of them what you will. And this boy, he was beaming, so excited.

Because at some point over the last several months, I had told him that I love art, but what he doesn’t know that’s more salient to me on this day is that my friend, she really loved art. And so somehow on the one year anniversary. [00:47:00] I’m there at an art exhibit and as we go in, I’m pretty novice to the whole art exhibit scene.

So I’m breezing past the artist statements and I’m really taking like a vibes based approach to what’s in the room. And I walk into the very first exhibit. In The first display is this giant block of ice being melted by sound.

And I thought, oh no, I have no idea what this means, but I’m staring at this block of ice and this boy is staring at me staring at the block of ice. And I think you gotta say something brilliant. So I say something to the effect of, well, we’re all blocks of ice and. We’re all slowly melting. I’m having a rather existential day.

Mind you. [00:48:00] And he loves it and it encourages me to go authentically through the rest of the exhibit. So we go through serpentine all of the different art that’s on display until we enter the final room. Which is this magnificent display of all of these different hourglass shaped ceramic sculptures in all different shapes and sizes.

There’s one that’s four feet tall. There’s some on pedestals, like flower vases. There’s a hundred of them pinned up in a grid system, repeating over and over again, and I tell him how very. Warhol that is or something, and we spend a lot of time in this exhibit. We’re really enjoying it. And at the end, there’s this huge container of tiny versions of this sculpture that the viewers get to take home.

Perfect. We dig [00:49:00] through this container. We’re reaching to the bottom. We’re pulling them up to see how the glaze shines in the light. We’re rolling them in our palms to see the texture and the weight, and he finds one that he thinks speaks to him. I find one that speaks to me. We slip them in our pockets and we leave.

And as I made my way back to my dorm room, I was overcome with gratitude, how on a day that I had planned to disappear, I had been seen and really seen. And that night as I laid down in bed, I took my sculpture and I gave it a big kiss and I tucked it under my pillow, just warmed by the events from that day.

The next morning I even took it with me to the food Zoo for breakfast, and I went to the Food Zoo, the campus cafeteria, and I sat down with my cereal and my orange juice [00:50:00] and I look over and there’s a copy of the Caman. The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet.

I’m gonna read that. So I drag it over and I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s when I see underneath the photo in rather large writing. University butt plug exhibit is a huge success, and that’s when I realized that my sweet sculpture is in fact, yes. And I let out the biggest belly laugh that I had in a very long time, and it was during that time of tremendous loss for me that I found my sense of humor about life again.

Thank you,[00:51:00]

Marc Moss: Kara Adolphson. Kara is a Montanan community member, therapist and storyteller who finds joy in the arts, the outdoors, and Bluebird days in Missoula. She believes in the power of vulnerability, humor, and shared experience to bring people together, a lover of language and listening. Kara is committed to fostering connection, whether it is in the counseling room on a trail or around the dinner table.

Coming up in the next episode of the Tell Us Something podcast.

Aunvada Being: I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it. He was thrilled and that was shocking to me and also terrifying. And I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified.

Jilnar Mansour: Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew.[00:52:00]

Curfew is. Something that was happening then and is still happening now where people are not able to leave their home for hours or days at a time.

Steve Schmidt: I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence.

And I yell, sir, on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there

Lauren Tobias: was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint. I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog.

Marc Moss: Listen to the concluding stories from the June, 2025 live event that closed out Pride Month.

The theme was lost and found. Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be sure to catch those incredible stories. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Blue Sky and visit Tell us something.org. To explore 14 years of our story archives [00:53:00] and let me know what you thought of the new format. You can email me at info@tellussomething.org to share your thoughts.

Live recording by the recording Studio in Missoula, Montana, podcast production by me, Marc Moss Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org.