Welcome to Awe Nice, where we highlight moments of wonder while working outdoors.

This week, I interviewed Forrest Van Tuyl. Sound familiar? Forrest wrote Rockjack and he sent the instrumental version to me for the intro and outro. In a forthcoming segment, he’s going to talk about that song and the ranch structure that inspired it.

For this segment, he shared a moment when he was working in way eastern Oregon, not far from the Idaho border. Sounds like amazing country and here he is to tell us about a long, keen observation.

Forrest is married to Margo Cilker, who is a musician and also someone who sings about time outside. They have performed all around the country, in Europe, Scandanavia, and at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. I hope you check ‘em out.

Forrest

Margo

AweNice welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us here.

My name is Maddy Butcher, I developed Awe Nice to highlight moments of wonder outdoors.

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.

This week, I interviewed Rae Nickerson. Rae lives is persuing a PhD at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, but travels widely in the west. She studies large carnivores and specifically works on conflict reduction between wolves, grizzlies, and livestock.

Rae has had several encounters with bears, some scary, some hilarious, like when a bear was trying to get apples out of the back of her truck while she was trying to sleep in the cab. But she picked another kind of encounter to share with us.

Aside from all her work in the field and with producers, she also finds time to help the Western Landowners Alliance with conflict reduction outreach.

Apologies in advance for the audio quality. Sometimes when recording people for these segments, we don’t get the most stellar reception. Doing the best we can.

AweNice welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us here.

Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl, who knows a bit about wonders at work. Find more of his terrific music here.

My name is Maddy Butcher, I’m a journalist and day worker here in the Four Corners area. I developed Awe Nice in hopes of brightening your day. If you’d like to donate, head here and thank you.

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.

Welcome to Awe Nice, that’s a-w-e-n-i-c-e, where we highlight moments of wonder while working outdoors.

This week, I interviewed Beau Gaughran of Berwick, Maine. Beau directed A Brutal, Beautiful Life, a short documentary about ranching for which I served as writer and producer. It’s done well at film festivals and is now online.

Almost all of Beau’s work is outside, often in the backcountry. I’ve learned from him that you need athleticism as well as creative talent to excel at this kind of filmmaking.

The moment that Beau chose to share doesn’t unfold outdoors, but it sure is worth hearing.

One of the reasons I love working with Beau is because of how he sees, how he takes in his surroundings. Such a talent.

Hearing, of course, is huge. Because of his decades-long enthusiasm for water sports and because of particularly angular ear canals, Beau’s had lots of ear infections and compromised hearing. He’s right not to take it for granted, eh? Where would Awe, Nice! Be without it?

Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us at awenice.com.

Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. You can find a link to his music and a donate button on our about page.

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.

This week, I interviewed Kim Kerns. Kim is a fourth generation rancher in eastern Oregon. The country is remote. No Man’s Land. Services are distant, which is why her family and their neighbors banded together to organize a rural fire fighting entity, which you’ll hear about.

I met Kim several months ago and we talked about dogs, mostly. Kim and her family have about a thousand sheep and hundreds of cows. They have eight guardian dogs, several stock dogs – those are mostly kelpies and border collies, and she also has Burt, an 18-pound Jagd terrier, who keeps down the pack rat population and takes on all comers, Kim told me.

Predators are a constant source of concern. Mountain lions, wolves, coyotes. She relies on her incredible guardian dogs to keep her animals alive, especially during calving and lambing, in the spring, but really year-round.

It’s a big operation and she tackles it with her parents, her husband and two employees.

Kim said she met a big family from Seattle up on Big Lookout Mountain during the 2017 eclipse. They were planning to just watch the eclipse in a parking lot or something, but they ran into some NASA guys who said, “Heck, no. You’ve come all this way. You’re going to get up to this mountain!” And they did. Afterwards, that family tracked down Kim’s dad online and got a message to him that visiting with Kim and her friend, Maddie Moore, was a highlight of their trip.

Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us here.

Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. Find a link to his terrific music here. If you’d like to donate, find the link on our About page and thank you.

My name is Maddy Butcher, I developed Awe, Nice! to highlight moments of wonder outdoors.

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.

This week, I interviewed Sisto Hernandez. Sisto lives in Arizona and I met him at a training for range riders. Range riding is a successful strategy for deterring wolves from predating on cattle and Sisto was teaching, sharing his insights from work with the reintroduced Mexican wolves.

A few notes on some things Sisto mentions:

- Traps aren’t metal contraptions, they’re fenced off areas of between five to twenty acres, built for holding cattle.

- Tapaderos are leather fittings, sometimes rawhide, over stirrups that keep anything from getting wedged in your stirrup. That's a scenario which can be pretty dangerous for you and your horse.

- The Mogollon Rim forms the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau and features big sandstone and limestone cliffs. As you might imagine, it is a significant natural boundary for flora and fauna.

- The Rodeo-Chediski Fire burned nearly a half million acres in 2002. At the time, it was the biggest fire in Arizona history.

That country that I've seen on or abutting the Grasshopper Livestock Association acreage (which itself covers nearly 200 square miles) is everything he describes. Beautiful and sometimes treacherous. Hopefully you can check it out. At least by taking a drive down Highway 77, which runs through reservations, National Forest, and Salt River Canyon.

I did a little research and learned that aside from his work on the land, Sisto was an accomplished saddle bronc rider, competing for years at the national level. Brain and brawn.

AweNice welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us here.

Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl.

If you’d like to donate, find the link here and thank you.

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.

This week, I interviewed Sara Lowe. Sara lives in central Wyoming where she’s a livestock investigator and a detective for Fremont County. Fremont is about 9,200 square miles, about the size of Vermont and has about 40,000 residents.

At a mental health forum last year, I got to hear Sara and a few other officers talk about the on-the-job stresses that bleed into their off hours. Sara’s moment of awe didn’t happen during her work, but because of her work. Because of her work, she’s spent years cultivating a way to generate her own sense of peace and calm. Heck, it was Sara who taught me about box breathing. She also does horse clinics.

Sara said that just last week, a chaplain was brought in, to help the officers with the steady stream of tragedy and violence that has unfolded lately.

This fall, Sara is headed to the University of Wyoming, to work on her master’s in the mental health field. She wants to help the officers and ranchers who, in her observation, desperately need support.

Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us here.

Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. Find a link to his terrific music here. If you’d like to donate, go here and thanks!

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.

This week, I interviewed Summer Peterson. Summer lives in Colorado now, but up to recently she’s been in central Utah as a farmer, a horse vet, and a competitive rider.

By competitive, I mean, really accomplished. She was for years a semi-professional three-day eventer. Three-day eventing is dressage, cross country, and showjumping. The sport was originally conceived as a test for cavalry horses and riders, to gauge bravery, endurance, discipline. Summer calls it the triathlon for horses and riders.

I felt so fortunate to be able to record this moment. The pandemic hadn’t figured into the Awe, Nice! scheme of things until now. I know the outdoors was a great solace to many during this time, even for those of us who are (were) outdoors and away from other people as a matter of course. There are more stories out there, for sure.

Awe, Nice! welcomes interviewees. If you have a moment you experienced while working outside and would like to share it, contact us at awenice.com.

Our music is by my friend, Forrest Van Tuyl. Find a link to his terrific music here.

My name is Maddy Butcher, I developed Awe, Nice! to bring a bit more attention to those non-verbal connections that we have and that Summer generously brought to light with this segment. If you’d like to donate, find the link here and thank you.

Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Until next time.