The Stories That Built Snowbird

In this episode, Brody invites his brother Duke and cousin Paco to share unfiltered stories behind Snowbird’s early days and stories from their upbringing. From a chaotic frat house rescue to a near-fatal hornet sting, they revisit the intense moments that shaped their lives. Through it all, they highlight what’s never changed: a mission rooted in the Gospel, strong relationships, and faithful teaching.

Rudolf, Beethoven, and The Chainsaw Man

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Transcript

Cold Open And Quick Warning

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to this week's episode of NSR. So glad you guys are able to tune in. Um, we were not able to film an intro for this uh episode. We just jumped right into it. So, fair warning, this episode picks up right as Brody and his brother Duke and his cousin Paco are sharing childhood stories, and it's super entertaining to listen to. It's probably one of my favorite episodes that we've done so far. It's just so cool and entertaining to hear these guys talk about their childhood. Um, and then they get into some really cool conversation about the early days of Snowbird. And for me, that's just so interesting and so encouraging, just listening to all the hard work all those guys have done. Um, and truly just like what a blessing they have been to this ministry of Snowbird, and just hearing, like I said, all of the long days and hard work that they put in to get Snowbird to where it is now. Um, so I'm super grateful for those guys coming in. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. Like I said, the episode picks up kind of right in the middle of a story, a pretty crazy story of Duke in college. But I hope you guys enjoy it. I definitely enjoyed it. And I just want to give a big shout out to Duke and Paco for coming down and doing this interview. It really did mean a lot to me and Brody, and I hope you guys enjoy it and are encouraged by it and get a few laughs out of it. Welcome to No Sanity Required.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Welcome to No Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

SPEAKER_07 1:51

You remember a story with old boy and getting in a fight with the fraternity?

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Oh, I know the story well. Because you were you got angry. You were angry.

SPEAKER_07 2:01

We okay, Cliff Notes, throwing people through shit.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

That was 96. That was 96. I was struggling I was on a bad week.

SPEAKER_07 2:09

Having a bad week. Duke got in a fight with so Duke, you just tell, give the brief version. You get a call from a girl you had dated, but then y'all weren't.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

Me and my roommate this okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:22

This is extra.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

This is not snowbird, but this is a good story for somebody. This is a fun story. So me and my roommate, we both had ex-girlfriends who were roommates. Um, and we would not not have been together for that semester, and we'd broken up the previous semester. Well, they called us, they were at a frat party. Well, it was a frat, and there's only just a handful of girls there. And they'd gotten these girls up there and tried to get them get them wasted and get them um to stay the night. Well, these girls called us like, hey, we're at this frat house, they're not letting us leave, and we don't have anybody to take us, and nobody will come get us. Um and so, you know, we were still friends with these girls. We even though you know we weren't dating them anymore. So I looked at my roommate, I said, let's go. Um, let's go get these girls. And our I don't I don't like calling us sweet mates. So the guys across the hall, most people call them sweet mates. We were not sweet.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

They were sweet mates. It was a sweet mate. There was you and your sweet mates.

SPEAKER_04 3:27

He's one of our linemen who sick played for the Panthers, 6'6, about 320. He, where y'all going? I said, we gotta go get these two girls. Um and he goes, I'm in. And then we had another friend that's more of the bandy rooster, um, was not as big, but he liked to start stuff. And uh he goes, Well, if y'all going, I'm going. So in a matter of two minutes, there's four of us loading up in our truck, and we're driving this frat house, and there's about 35 to 40 guys at this party, and probably eight, ten girls. And uh so we get there and I walk through the base. There was kind of two layers. You had you pulled up, you can go through the garage door where the dance floor was, then you could go up their steps and where their kitchen and their, you know, the other stuff that they do is up top. And um, so I told two of them, I said, y'all go around up top and go in the top floor. Um, me and so-and-so will go through the basement. So we walked through the basement, we're just looking for these girls, can't find them. So I make it up to the steps. We kind of meet at the top of the steps, and there's a bedroom. And but as soon as we got there, to kind of go back, I had gotten in a fight a couple weeks before that at the same paternity. So they didn't like me to begin with, and they didn't like football players. And uh, so we were and we were not there to party, we were there uninvited, and so two of the guys like tried to ask what we're doing. We're like, we're just getting these two girls and we're getting out of here. So we get to the top of the steps, and there's a bedroom, and so I poke into my head of the bedroom to see if they're there. Well, we see one of them, and then mom like, hey, y'all need to come with us, and we're getting y'all out of here. When that happens, I turn around, me and the roommate are standing out the doorway, and there's probably 30 guys packed in that kitchen screaming and hollering at us that we're not going anywhere. And didn't know where the exit was, so I just back up into the room and get back where I could get my back against a wall somewhere so I could not get sucker punched. And one of their leaders comes and uses some foul language and asks me what we're doing, and and I tell him, I was like, We're here to get so-and-so, and we're taking them out, we don't mean any trouble. So he pokes me on the chest and he goes, You're not going freaking anywhere. And I was like, Don't touch me. We're getting these girls and we're leaving. Well, then he touched me again, and so I hit him and knock him through the little sidewall that goes into their laundry room. Through through the wall, and uh through the wall. And then at that time it was uh it was an onslaught. They all just started running at us from the door, and um, so we just started swinging, just trying to catch them faster than catch us, and knocked two guys out right there and went through the hole in the wall where the guy was the original guy went through, and there was an exit out that laundry room to the outside. So I went through the hole and got to the laundry room door, and one of the guys stopped me at the door and was swinging and come at me, and he swung and he was drunk. So I just grabbed him and he fell between my legs and I hit him about four or five times and said, I'm gonna let you up. And the rest of the guys couldn't get in because it was that door was so small and I had it pinned. I said, All we're doing is getting these girls and we're out. I said, If I let you up, you gotta let us go. He's all right, all right, I'll let you up. So he stands up and as soon as he does, he swings at me again. So we fight for another five or ten minutes and work our way all the way down to the car. Needs to say, we got the girls and did a lot of damage to the house. Um, but at the end of the night, we made it back, all four of us, safely.

SPEAKER_07 7:01

And uh how many stitches did you have to get?

SPEAKER_04 7:04

I got so on the way to the car, I finally got to the car and got my back up against it, and that was probably I don't know, I couldn't count. Like, there's just a ton of guys swinging. So I would look this way and swing. Then I looked this way, and some guy caught me, split my lip open. I got four or five stitches in this one. I said, ooh, that was a good lick. So I turned and worked on him, and then when I turned to work on him, some other guy had a bar stool leg and hit me in the back of the head, split my head. I don't know how many stitches back here I got. Um split my head open. I said, ooh, that was a really good hit. Thank by the grace of God, it didn't knock me out or knock me down. Um so I turned to see what that was, and by that time, my other roommate came flying down the hill and gave that dude a rushing sickle, took him down the hill and got him. And then luckily there was there was a couple of the guys there that were sober, and they got us into our car. And uh, you know, thankfully we all got out of there alive and got the girls and got back. And that cost me uh I was minoring in history at that moment, and because we had to do a lot of stuff with the deans, I got kicked out of the dean or the history department. Uh, I went to see that change. That's a shame. I know. You're a good idea. I think God knew that this is not what you need to be doing. I'm gonna allow this fight to happen so you get kicked out. Um, so that was a yeah, that was a lot of anger built up, and those guys got the got the worst end of it.

SPEAKER_07 8:34

They got they got the worst end of two years of pin-up anger. Three years at that point. Yeah. Um it's so funny. I remember I remember you calling me, you're like, I just got all the ER. I had to get a bunch of stitches. I got it in another fight.

SPEAKER_04 8:48

And the the next day we're out there, I'm back in the dorm and we had basketball courts out beside us, and the guy that's kind of the ringleader of them was out there playing pickup ball. And I wasn't done. I was still I was still mad. And so I saw him out there playing basketball. I was like, so so I'm gonna go play some pickup ball. And I saw him play it, so I went down there. I said, I got next. And so our team went in, and I probably made it two trips until he had a fast break layup, and I just went run. I just remember sprinting from half court and saw him getting ready to shoot a layup and just came in, not aiming for the ball, caught him with a fist right in the side of the head while he's going up and shoot a layup and split his eye wide open and laid him out. And then I said, Oh, follow me, I'm done, and turned around and walked off. That was a not a not a good not a good place in my head at that moment.

SPEAKER_07 9:40

Yeah, but makes for good storytelling. Good stories and stories.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

And thank the Lord has uh brought me a long way from there.

Cutting The First Road Into Camp

SPEAKER_07 9:50

That okay, that was in '96. So the first trip, then, this is crazy because this is all in the same little era window of time. You spent the summer with us in '96, you'd spent a good bit of the summer. All that was happening. And so then Snowbird is established in 1997. Little known trivial fact, our papers of incorporation, we got incorporated as a as a nonprofit uh corporation in December of 1996. Really? So you always see established 1997. So that's a little insider trivia. The folks here all know that, obviously. But um, yes, because our first our first students didn't come until uh the summer of 97. Rob Esther brought a group of kids and they went and camped. But I was still at the Master's End and we were we were going back and forth to the property. The first trip we took was in February of ninety seven. The picture we're gonna we'll we'll link the picture, it's in the book where we're all leaning around the tailgate. Oh, yeah. And we came in February of '97.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

I didn't even have my license. No, we picked you up on the way to the show. I mean, there was no cell phones. I don't know. I guess we got a message on the answer machine at the farm that said, Hey, we'll be there Friday night at whatever we met at the old Walmart. It was probably 10 o'clock when you picked us up. Yeah. I don't know how we all got into the single cab pickup. Uh we all rode in the back. A bunch of people rode in the back of the truck. It's February. February. Sleeping bags.

SPEAKER_07 11:15

We had zero degree sleeping bags and people just piled up in the back of the truck.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

So I'm 15. I rolled onto the property for the first time around midnight. And you woke up the next morning, you know, early, early days, man, six o'clock. And it was like, all right, we're gonna grab some breakfast at Hardy's or whatever. We're gonna go down here and we're gonna build the entrance to the camp. There was no way to get onto the property, I guess, other than maybe a logging road.

unknown 11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

So you just pulled up in the curve. I that's how I remember it. Yep. And we got out with chainsaws and weed eaters and loppers and clippers and said, All right, this is like a good place.

SPEAKER_07 11:47

This would be a good entrance, right? It's a good spot, what do you think? Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

And we just started clearing brush and trees to make the entrance to what is now the main entrance to main campus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 11:58

Yeah. And did we pick you up? We picked you up. You drove over. Because you're an Iowa.

SPEAKER_04 12:04

Yeah. I was at Western at the time. So I just came over that night. Yep. We cut that.

SPEAKER_07 12:09

We cut that entrance, and then there was an old wagon road that is now the road that goes through the middle of the paintball field for people that have been to Snowbird. The road that goes through the middle of the paintball field, that was an old wagon road that used to connect a mountainous area to the town of Andrews that went across what's now our property. But it was all grown up, and we cleared that road out.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

And so that first of being exhausted by the end of the day.

SPEAKER_07 12:35

Six in the morning till dark, which would have been six o'clock. It's February. It's cold. Worked all day and cleared an entrance to camp, what would become an entrance to camp and cleared that road out. Burn brush and took creek baths in February.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yeah, yeah, took creek baths, shared a bar of soap in the creek and a whole everybody's down there in the creek.

SPEAKER_08 12:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 12:56

And then we came back then we came back a few times, but that summer we did another big weekend. Rob Hester had brought a group of kids and they had tent camped. And uh he just kind of did his own thing. He was a youth pastor friend of mine who I talk about in the book, but um he went to be with the Lord in 2007, but this was in '97, and we came in either right on the front end of that or on the back. I don't remember and overlap that, but we came and we worked. That was that summer, and everybody and that that trip we brought a crew of people from the Masters Inn. I think Austin Rammel was on that trip, maybe Josh Ray, maybe uh guy we called Dog. Dog. Yep, and then y'all worked that that was in the summer of 97. So y'all literally the first two work days in Snowbird's history, y'all went there.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

And I mean, I think I had my license then and drove over a couple times that next year. Yeah. But it was just, I mean, there was nothing here. Yeah, because we moved in grandma's cabin.

SPEAKER_07 13:54

That was it.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 13:56

Because we moved down after that summer, September 97, me and Little, and it was just the two of us living on property in that old cabin.

SPEAKER_03 14:02

And did the Freedom Cabin get built winter of 98 into 99?

SPEAKER_07 14:07

No, we started it January of 98. January of 98. And built it that winter and spring. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

That's when I fit that's when I learned that I have a fear of heights. I mean, it's just I drove out for the weekend, what whatever, and we're gonna stain this cabin. All right, we'll stay in the cabin. You got scaffolding, you know, I don't know where you got the scaffold and borrowed it from somebody, put it together with nails.

SPEAKER_07 14:31

Yeah, we put we built it.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

We're gonna we're gonna go to the top of this thing and start staining this cabin. All right, man, let's go. I get it to the top. By the time I stepped foot up to the top of that cabin, I mean, my knees are shaking. I'm like, what is this? And you looked at me and you said, Yeah, you better go back down. You better stay on the ground.

SPEAKER_07 14:52

Oh man, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, we stay in that cabin that weekend, and we had people come stay in that cabin like right after that. That was a group of seniors from First Baptist Church Woodstock, and that was like the second group of kids that ever came. And they were helping us work. Um But then, okay, so the first summer that we were that we had anybody come in was 98. We had just a few people in and out that summer. You did you live with us that summer?

SPEAKER_03 15:25

No. Um It was the next year. I graduated in 99 and moved out here the next week and lived.

The Hornet Sting That Nearly Killed

SPEAKER_07 15:31

Okay. So you moved out here, you graduated high school in 99, and then you moved out that next week. Yeah, the next week. When uh that was the year that Duke got stung.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Yep. Yeah, so me.

SPEAKER_07 15:43

You were living, you were staying with me in Littlewood. Y'all were staying in a camper.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Yeah, me and Stephen Coleman and Chris were living in about a 1980 prowler camper on property with an extension cord run out to it.

SPEAKER_07 15:53

Yep, we had two cabins on site.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

And I I have the the B allergy, you know, so I had an EpiPen, but I didn't have it with me. You know, in in the middle of the night, I don't know, one or two. Yeah. Because you were staying I was up in the cabin with them. And Crody comes knocking on the door, banging. He said, I need your EpiPen. I'm like, uh I don't have it. Duke's been stung. And just I threw you in the truck and drove you to the hospital that's no longer there. Saved his life.

SPEAKER_07 16:21

Yeah, he you would have died if that if it was nowadays. Well, I guess we would have just drove to the rescue squad now.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

They would have had epinephrine, but hopefully I would carry it with me now. Now I've got about four of them on me. Yeah, but you got stung.

SPEAKER_07 16:35

We had all gone in and go to bed, and Little and I just laid down and you were in the next little room. There was two little bitty bunk rooms in that cabin, and then it was one big room with two little bitty bunk rooms, and you had gone into the one room and laid down. I remember laying back.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

It's like I hit my head on, I thought I hit my head on a nail. That's what you kept saying. I was like I've hit my head on a nail, and there was no nail there. So it was like this big old Japanese hornet thing. It was the worst thing I'd ever had. So I came out, I knew I was allergic, but not like deadly. So I come out and uh I said, just let you know I got stung, and it's like I'm starting to itch a little bit. And it wasn't 10 minutes, you're like, dude, you gotta go. We gotta go. Your head. I was like, what's wrong? My head looked like a basketball blown up, and uh I remember I was conscious enough to get down to their camper, but then by the time we asked them for it, I was out. Yeah. I just remember waking up, going through Andrew's, seeing flashing lights where you were flying through Andrew's and we'd pass traffic lights, and once in a while I'd come through and see a traffic light. I know the nurse put two bags, one in each arm.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Yeah. And she was squeezing the bags to make it go faster.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

I came th came back to life just like shaking and jumping, and they had the paddle sitting right there beside, getting ready to shop me. I think my blood pressure dropped to 40 over 20. Like it was almost flatlining. And the cop came in there, and the nurse chewed him out, said that you had saved my life, that the cop didn't need to give you no ticket.

SPEAKER_07 18:06

I went by the police station going 95 down Andrews. Down Main Street Andrews. It was your blood pressure 60 over 40 when they got stabilized. And that dude standing, I'm I'll never forget because we just ripped your shirt off. You might not even had a shirt on, but I feel like I remember him ripping it off in the dude. He's got the paddles, and he's I thought he was gonna die. You were in full-blown anaphylactic shock. But what here's what's funny they say you get an adrenaline rush and you can do crazy stuff. You know, you hear people picking a car up. You're not a little guy now.

SPEAKER_04 18:40

I was lying. You were 260.

SPEAKER_07 18:43

250, 260. And I carried him like a ragdoll. Like I scooched a boom and ran across from my truck through the hospital door. He was out at this point. He was kind of convulsing, and I'm carrying him like this. There's no way I could carry him like that. There's sheer adrenaline in the sovereign will of God. The door opens, I carry him in and I just scream. He's in anaphylactic shock, and they they get to work. And uh, but that was the hospital in Andrews, it's gone now. Yeah, that that cop pulled in and comes walking in, and he's like, What's going on? I guess I'd gone. He said I went by going 98 or something like that. That's scary. You spent the next couple days in intensive care. Take your beast thing seriously. But after that, so now at camp, we have a doctor that prescribes us. You're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

Well, fast forward a couple of years. Eric Bath. Eric Bath goes down in the middle of summer camp, and I had one. And you and Paco, get you, get your pen. And I never used it. I've been waiting 15 years to use that thing. I popped the cap on that thing, and I came, I came with the with the sword from up top, right into that knee, and man, he rose up like a mummy to his feet. He was dying. He was dying. I mean, he was out and he wasn't coming back. It brought him back like that.

SPEAKER_07 20:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

He got in the truck, took him to the hospital.

SPEAKER_07 20:05

Yeah, him in the hospital. I remember his pupil, his eyes were just black. His pupils were completely dilated, his eyes were blacked out. And I so I was taking a wilderness first responder course down at the Nana Hale Outdoor Center about a year after that. And this this would have been probably 2002, 2003, maybe 2003. It was in the winter, it was about February. I'm taking this 10-day first responder course. And I remember on like day four, the instructors are going over anaphylactic shock. What do you do if you have a if you're trip leading? Everybody in that class did trip leading in the backcountry, you know, backcountry guides, fly fishing guides, hunting guides, backpacking people. And and I remember the instructors, they were out of New Hampshire. Solo was the name of the company out of New Hampshire. And they just were gonna blow over the EpiPen section. They're like, you know, this is something that you need to be aware of. But I remember the guy was like, in 21 years of instructing in this course, I've never heard of anyone having to deal with this. And I was like, Because it happened twice. In three years. In three years. Yeah, and I told the stories and they were like, Okay. At first they didn't, I don't think they believed me. Um, but yeah, we had two life-saving EpiPen episodes. It's crazy, really crazy. Um so your first summer then was 99, 99, which was our first full summer of camp. I think we ran six or seven weeks of camp. And you worked that summer.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

Yeah, I worked that summer. The biggest group was maybe 120 once, but there were several groups who were like 45.

SPEAKER_07 21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

Fifty. Full time staff of of like 15 summer staff.

SPEAKER_07 21:45

99, less than that. Less than that. Yeah, 99 uh was like I think 10. And then in 2000 it was twenty two.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

Yeah, we met that ninety nine year was when we had services in the little white church at McClellan Cove. Oh, yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_07 22:01

We would walk from Snowbird down the road to this little white church. They would let us use their sanctuary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

I think you'd run into the walls there as well as the summer. I had I had back surgery that summer, so I got to do like the cleaning stuff. I didn't really get to do much wreck or work that one summer. The summer after that and the summer before that was able to, but I was more or less just a Was your last year of football falling 98 or falling 99? Falling 98. So my first that was this summer. So I was here when I got my first real job, like call to coach. Um I was just gonna plan on I'd had it at back surgery. We were here, I was here working that summer, um, doing whatever I could, uh, cleaning bathrooms, whatever that didn't require any lifting. And I remember I'd applied for about four or five coaching jobs and had not got anything. And we're at the end of July. You know, I wanted to coach football. That was my goal and dream, that's what my calling I thought was gonna be. And we're last week of July, nothing. I was like, all right, Lord, I guess I'm gonna be working at Snowbird. I was like, I'm just gonna, I didn't had no, I had no other plans other than teach. And if that wasn't gonna happen, I was just gonna stay here and and keep working. And then that last week of July, Polk County called me, and uh God that my head football coach had gotten me a coaching job down there. And so I left and that they said we need you here Monday, and that was like on a Thursday. So I left here on the end. I was like, Well, it's been fun summer, I'm out. That was a middle school job. Yeah, it was a middle school basketball girls' basketball job and a high school like helping assistant, JV football. Um taught at a middle school there, and that was my first teaching gig.

SPEAKER_07 23:50

So when did you stay with me in Little? You lived with us first semester.

SPEAKER_03 23:55

Yeah, so I stayed here '99 and worked and then went to Western. And so that would have been what, August 99, and did that first semester. It was miserable. And so from January to the to June of 2000, left Western, went to Tri-County, came, stayed with you and Little for that spring semester, and then worked the summer again and then went back to Western in the fall. Okay. Sophomore year.

Fighting Culture And Early Camp Brawls

SPEAKER_07 24:23

I want to go back to that 99 summer. And so the rest of our time, what I want to do is just kind of talk about what y'all remember, personal experiences, kind of what it how it played in your own spiritual formation being at Snowbird in those early days. If funny stories come up, great. But just talk about what what was what do you remember about that era? Because there are very few people that were here then. I mean, y'all are the only two people I'll ever talk to that worked summer of 99. We don't have anybody here that was here then. Our we have uh Zach Mabry and Sean Clark came in 2000. But nobody else. Amy Davis came in 01. Um, so you're talking about an era where to this point, me and Little are the only people that have ever been able to tell stories about it, um, which is pretty crazy to think about. We took a little break there, um, but we're back girl and on the break, we're uh one quick funny story. We were talking about how me and uh Duke, we're growing up, we fought all the time. All of us did. And you don't have that, it's not the culture now. It's just not. My kids didn't grow up with that. And Tuck got in a couple of scraps, and um Tuck got in a good fight last year in football, like um at the facility with the dude who is a linebacker who's his dog. It was a good fight, you know, and I was like, Yeah, okay, it's still in the gene pool, you know. And uh but I got to I remember getting to college my freshman year and I was playing basketball. My first two years, I was playing basketball, and I remember, you know, you're not allowed to play pickup. And I went out, some all these students were out at this one park where they would all play pickup. It was on campus, and I go out there, and there was a dude, so I'm 18, there's a guy, he's like 23 years old, he just got out of the military and he was going to college, the military's paying for it. He's a grown man, and I weighed a buck sixty, buck fifty-eight, buck sixty, you know. I was a s I was a skinny dude, and but I mean, we fought a lot, yeah, you know, and I just only knew how to deal with conflict like that. Just find it out. The gloves come off, and here we go. And and our dad always taught us if you if it's worth fighting, fight then and there. And if you can, throw the first punch. Yes. So that's contrary. A lot of people are like, don't start a fight, but finish it. Our dad was like, if you think it's coming, you've just get the first punch in. And don't, hey, we're gonna meet up at you know right now. We're gonna fight right now. And so this dude, I just remember getting into it with this guy, and he bowed up. He was gonna do the there's apparently like an appropriate song and dance. Like you bow up, you make a few threats, you stick your chest out, you're like, you don't want none, whatever. I remember a dude comes at me and I turn around and he bowed up, and I and I mean I broke his nose, knocked a tooth pretty, pretty jagged, broke a tooth, like popped him three or four times, and it was over. And he's like in a pool of laying there like semi-conscious. We didn't do the dance. Yeah. And I remember I remember these dudes were like, and I was like, I gotta get out of here. I'm gonna lose my scholarship. And I left. I'm not even supposed to be there. We were playing pickup. And I remember these guys coming to my room and like, dude, uh campus police are looking for you. Somebody said who it was, and I was like, I'm staying in my room. And I denied plausible deniability. No cell phones, no cameras. And uh, but this one dude was like, Man, I heard you sucker punched him. I was like, You call it whatever you want to. That dude stuck his chest out and bowed up on me, and so it's on, you know, and just a different background and cultural upbringing, you know. And um Can I tell one more? Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:12

Just because we can't leave Paco out. We can't leave Paco out. So when we were at Georgia, you may remember y'all remember. Lake House with family reunion in Georgia, and there's this I don't I evidently he was related to us. So, distant cousin on the distant cousin family reunion, and he had it was bragging about him being like a black belt and all these different karate and jujitsu, all these different things. And so we started, me and Brody were a lot older than Paco. That I mean, you could have probably missed it. I was probably five or six, no, I was way younger. Really? Yeah, so you could have been little. Yeah. And we're like, I think you can take a Paco. And so we started talking junk to that kid. Because we knew our cousin could whoop him. So we started talking junk, and that kid was like bragging and bragging and bragging about his karate. I just remember, I don't remember the details other than the fact that he broke the kid's nose.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

He threw a kick.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

He's like, I don't know, yeah. I throw a kick. Throw your kick.

SPEAKER_05 29:12

I caught his threw him across the room and he came back, and I started popping him up. Punched him right the nose. Like, so we trained him up right early.

SPEAKER_07 29:20

We trained him up.

SPEAKER_05 29:21

That was the culture. You said it, man.

SPEAKER_07 29:23

And Duke. Duke owes me a debt of gratitude for teaching him how to fight.

SPEAKER_04 29:27

Yes, because he whooped my butt growing up. I tell people all the time I've been knocked out one time, and that was by my brother. And we he would make us get boxing gloves. We'd go outside and make a boxing ring, and he would only allow to hit me one time. He's four years older than me. And so he was allowed to hit me one time in the head each round. I could hit him whenever, however. And so he would wait till the last minute. We would set a little timer up, one of those kitchen timers, and just let it tick, tick, tick, tick. And when it got close, I knew it was coming. I would try my best, swinging haymakers, jabs, and then boom. I remember one time he hit me. I just remember hitting the back of my head to the ground, waking up, seeing this guy, seeing the sky because we're outside. It was so loud, my mom comes running outside.

SPEAKER_06 30:13

Wake up, man.

SPEAKER_04 30:14

Hurry up. Mom is coming at us up.

SPEAKER_06 30:15

Wake up.

SPEAKER_04 30:16

You're okay, man. It was you good. She runs out, what's going on? Oh, nothing. I was just fell down. And uh we had it tonight and go on. But I tell people I got knocked out one time. And I never let them hit me in the head again. We changed the rules. We changed the rules.

SPEAKER_07 30:30

Oh. Um we probably won't get into this, but we would do fight, like we do fight nights at camp now with those big jumbo boxing gloves. We would do fight nights those early stuff.

SPEAKER_04 30:43

No gloves. No gloves. And we would do wrestling, like just we had wrestling matches every day. MMA. Where's the snack shack? Yeah. We would sit around the snack. It wasn't much of a snack shack then. It was just like a little bit.

SPEAKER_07 30:54

It was one little pavilion.

SPEAKER_04 30:55

One little pavilion. And I remember a staff would sit there and call people out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

And and we just go at it.

SPEAKER_07 31:02

We would have five nights. Saturday night. Saturday night, just a staff. Between weeks of camp. We would just get together and I got you. And then boom. And then we would throw down. Yeah. Girls. Until you were tired. Until you were tired or tapped out. Yeah. Or couldn't continue. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

Something's broke. I'm bleeding.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

We got it. Covered staff. No training, just brawl, just having fun. Couldn't do that now. Yeah, and somebody would somebody's mama would sue us. Oh yes. Could not do that. The stuff that we did that summer.

Rappelling Days With Too Little Sleep

SPEAKER_07 31:33

Okay. What stands out, obviously stuff like that. Yeah. Do you got any Pucker? Do you remember wreck? Me and you running repelling?

SPEAKER_03 31:42

Yeah, so we would, it seems like maybe in the mornings I would ride a mower or run a weed eater or something like that. And then we would have lunch, and then we'd do the afternoon wreck. And me and you most of the time would go do the repelling because I was so highly trained. Do it, man. Yeah. To send kids down the rope in the middle of the Nanhale Gorge. And we would drive out there, and I would usually drive and you would take a nap on the way out there, and then we'd get there.

SPEAKER_07 32:08

Because I would I wouldn't sleep in the house. No, you wouldn't sleep. Usually you were getting not sleep. So because it's like we're serving food, cleaning, doing everything, teaching, running a share group, running rec. I would usually sleep. Yeah, I'd do all the counseling. So I'd sleep usually from 2 a.m. to about 4 30.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

Yeah, and then get up, do it again.

SPEAKER_07 32:30

I would catch an app while you drove me to we would go to do repelling.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Go do repellent in the gorge and get the equipment out of my vehicle and cross the swinging bridge, walk down the road tracks, which is probably illegal. I don't know. And then we would go up to the cliff and set it up. And an hour later, a bus would show up with kids and they'd walk down the road. They'd walk down the road with tracks. Yep. And we'd start hollering, they'd find us and the train was active then. Yeah. Oh yeah, it was active. You hear it go by. We'd yell, train's coming, everybody get off the tracks. Start sending kids up and down the rope. Or down the ropes, I guess. Yep. Up the backside. Yep. Yeah, I remember it. I also remember we had a 1970 suburban. Gutted. It was an old ambulance. Old ambulance, okay. So it didn't have anything. It had the front two seats and then the back of it was just and we built benches, wooden plywood benches, no seat belts. And we'd pack that thing full of kids and haul them to the site. And I mean the steering wheel with no power steering, no power steering, the steering wheels 28 inches across. And I'm driving it, and at the time there were no basketball courts. Yeah, it's and this is probably summer 2000s. We had the metal building. We'd eaten lunch, and the kids were outside the metal building waiting for their wreck pickup. Well, I picked a bunch of kids up at the bottom in the old 1970 bourbon with no power steering, and it had been raining. And I came up past the volleyball courts to the top, and there was a couple cars parked in the road. Go around them to the left. We didn't have a sidewalk or a wall. We just slide with 15 kids in that suburban from in front of the metal building. All the way down laterally to where the basketball court is. It's just a steep. Y'all good? Okay. Put it first. Turn around, drove back to the top. And I got my little stopped. And he comes over there, rolled the window down. And I was like, oh, here it comes. And I don't know who was in the passenger seat, but she grabbed me and said, You're not driving. And she pointed to whoever was there and said, You're driving. I said, Yes, ma'am. And we switched and we drove off the wreck. That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_07 35:01

What wreck? Do you remember? I have no idea. Who knows? I have no idea. Because we would pull, we had that suburban. I pulled it to Sally a bunch. We had a trailer. It wasn't on the story. We had a trailer and we built a rack where we would we would mount bikes on that trailer and go mountain biking. And you were so that story, you're at Solly. Y'all are two, three miles out on the trip. Soli's a a mountain bike trail system here. It's a really good single track trail system. Way too advanced to take kids riding. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

And we are especially when you're taking their word for it. Are you an advanced mountain biker? Yep. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_07 35:41

They had road from the cul-de-sac to the 7-Eleven in their suburban Marietta home, you know?

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, I'm like Hey, watch Marietta.

SPEAKER_07 35:50

Watkinsville. So y'all are. This is a crazy story. JB, I don't know if you've ever heard a story. I've not heard a ton of these. Okay, so y'all are settled in. Y'all are on the farthest point of the loop.

SPEAKER_03 36:03

Driving that suburban, pulling a trailer with bikes on it.

SPEAKER_07 36:08

But then you're on bikes, you're two, three miles out the trail, and I'll let you take it.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

I don't know how many kids we had, 15 maybe. And you know, we'd put two two staff members. I don't know who was with me, maybe Russell Darnell, I can't remember. Somebody was up front, I was in the back. I'm I'm caboosing this thing. And this girl had no experience whatsoever on any bike. I think she could ride with training wheels. And uh I just come around the curve and we're going down a really steep grade, and she's locked the front brake and she's bitten it. And the bike's flipped, and she's gone overboard and just smashed her face on a rock. And I come around the corner and there's just it looks like a train wreck. And I mean, we're we're at least a mile and a half from either the entrance or the exit.

SPEAKER_07 36:54

She had broke, fractured her chin, broke her nose, knocked teeth out.

SPEAKER_03 36:58

And you talk about you talked about getting the adrenaline dump and just carrying somebody. We left the bike and I picked her up and put her on my back and slow jogged uh the rest of the way out. To the suburban. To the suburban with her with her teeth through her mouth. I told the other guy. Yeah. I told the other staff member, I said, You get everybody on the bikes, y'all ride back, load it, and by the time I get there, be ready to go. And I don't, did we have a phone? Did were we able to call ahead? So you had an ambulance or something waiting.

SPEAKER_07 37:28

There was a payphone, there was a phone in the parking area. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:32

So the other staff member called ahead. I don't know how long it took me, but I got her out. I carried her out and got her in the suburban and put her up front. We ain't gonna make her sit in the back. You know, she face is falling off. So we put her between me and the other staff, and I we hooked the trailer, here we went. 1970 suburban through the gorge, pulling the trailer. I got this girl, she's knocked out. I mean, she's out, she's loopy. And we get back to uh to camp and the ambulance is waiting on her. And I think they ended up flying her to Duke.

SPEAKER_07 38:01

Uh to Erlanger.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 38:03

Uh either to Erlanger in Chattanooga or to Mission and Asheville. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_03 38:07

But I mean they did they did emergency cosmetic surgery on her teeth, her gums, her face, everything.

Mountain Biking Crash And A Long Carry

SPEAKER_07 38:13

You carried that girl almost three miles. Like this. And half the time she ain't helping you. No, half the time she's not out. Yeah. That was crazy. She's a mess. That was crazy. Yeah, it's it's crazy thinking about all the wreck we did. We didn't have much on campus. Now the majority of wreck takes place on campus. We do obviously Whitewater stuff and a few other things, but our risk management protocols are so in place, they're so dialed in, and they have to be. Back then, it was such a small operation. But everyone's got a phone. If you're in a place where the phone doesn't work, we now have satellite compatibility and you can SOS. Back then, uh, we tried walkie-talkies, we tried different, but you like we would go, we would go caving. Remember the caving rack? We would take people caving at the G Creek Cave. And if you have an incident in there, there's no somebody's gotta go out, get to a phone, call 911, and we man, it was by God's grace that that we survived? Yeah. And get shut down? Yes. Absolutely. And we would go, I would drive the the first bus that got donated, we call it the hippie bus because we graffitied it. Yeah. We let kids graffiti it. I would drive that bus.

SPEAKER_04 39:29

No bus, no CDL.

SPEAKER_07 39:30

I ain't have no CDL. No. Let's go. Y'all wanna go caving at G Creek through the Okoe Gorge up to G Creek Caves. No, no license. Statute of limitations. This was in the late 90s. Can't get her the anybody that was in the police business then is retired now.

SPEAKER_03 39:51

I also rode on the top of that bus from the gas station beside Hardy's coming back from rafting. We pulled in there to get gas. And I got out and went in and paid for the gas and came out and said, I think I can make it back to camp on the top of this thing. And so the other staff member, yeah, Teen Wolf, rode on the on the drove the bus and the kids were on it, and I crawled up the back and laid like this on the top and rode back to camp.

SPEAKER_04 40:20

I was just thinking about those wrecks you had. The puddle hopping. Yeah, puddle jumping. You had the mountain surfing. Um and I know you've talked about some of these uh in your book, but also on the podcast before. I can remember those vividly taking kids up the top of the mountain and just jumping off the other side and just sliding down the mountain. That's the thing. Um taking them to different puddle hops. Um and I remembered that first couple years when y'all were looking for caves, and we would just get permits and just go go through the gorge to these uh unman like caves that you yeah, unmapped caves that y'all got me in some hairy situations that I don't know how I got out of.

Caving Keys And Midnight Quarry Rappels

SPEAKER_07 41:03

We went, you there was so there was a cave there's a cave down in the Nanahala Gorge. It's called Blowing Springs Cave. You can go, it used to be uh it's just a it's just a hole in a rock and you crawl into it, and it's this cave system. And it's it's a decent size, but it's very unstable. And a guy got in there, and there's a section in there where you crawl across, it's a it's a rock bridge, but it's probably 20 feet down into this pit. And people would go in there and tie off and they would do bouldering and climbing, and they would repel, maybe more than 20 feet. It's enough you had to repel down into it. And so a guy got in there, broke his leg, was a big evacuation situation. I had never been in that cave at this point, but they closed the cave down. And so what they did is they came in, the Forest Service came in. You can, I mean, it's there to this day. They bolted like a like an angle iron gate with a with a section of that gate that's bolted in and locked with padlocks. Well, I don't know if it's still like this, but you could go to the um the ranger station over on the Franklin side of the mountain, because it's in the that piece is in the Waya Ranger district. You could go fill out an application with the Forest Service and they would issue you a key. You had 24 hours to return the key. If you didn't return it, that meant you were stuck in that cave. Yeah. So we I filled out the application, went and got the key. Me and you and Little went into that cave and almost got stuck in a bad situation.

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Yeah, I remember y'all going through there was that one section that seemed like it was forever. It was probably 15, 20 feet. Yeah, it was longer than that.

SPEAKER_07 42:50

Where we're crawling. Yes, yeah. It was probably 70, I think it was 70 feet through there.

SPEAKER_04 42:54

Yeah, because I remember it was long enough where and I was still really big then. Big Duke. And I had to send y'all through first. I was like, because y'all are tight getting through there. I was like, y'all get the other end and let me know if you think I can get through. And I remember just screaming in the sound carry, and y'all like, you got it, come on, come on, Duke, you can do it. I might get about 30 feet in that thing, and I've got my hands straight out by the arms against my ears, just inching. Every side of my body's touching, and you talking about freaking out. Like, well, ain't no turning back. I couldn't crawl backwards. So I'm like, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, and get through. But man, when we got through the other end, it was everything they said. I mean, it was amazing. Yeah. When you got through and saw the next room in the neck cave, you just don't realize what's under these mountains.

SPEAKER_07 43:41

And I remember the way we found that it was during the Rudolph hunt, and I'd met a guy. A lot of people listened to our Rudolph episode, and um I'm getting ready to interview the sheriff the guy that was the sheriff at that time. Awesome bumper. And so JB and I are gonna interview him. But um I met a guy. That was a cave expert that the FBI or the North Carolina Bureau had uh SBI, I don't remember, they had contracted this guy to help them go into these c they're unmapped caves, and he was going in there. They thought Rudolph might be hiding in one. And that was how I'd found out about that to begin with. But we're tr we're trying to find wrecks to do with students. And we're like, can we take kids in here?

SPEAKER_06 44:22

I remember sitting in that cave, like, you think we could get 20 kids in here?

SPEAKER_04 44:26

Yeah, come on. After I went through that, I was like, no kids coming into here. I'm not taking them.

SPEAKER_07 44:31

And we wanted to do ropes, harnesses, because we repelled a section of it. That's insane. I've never been back in that cave and have no desire to go. None. Some of our staff were gonna listen to this and go, we're gonna go. Take it from my experience. Yeah, you can do it. Yeah, so JB just brought a story. There was a rock quarry that I had worked in when I was 15 or 16, and there's an abandoned pit in this quarry. It's a big, big operation. I mean, these guys, they ship rock all over the place. Gravel. And I'd wanted to cliff jump into this abandoned pit that had filled up with water, and there was a pretty big cliff, and I was like, because we would go rock jumping, we go cliff jumping at the spillway. Well, this is way bigger than the spillway. And I'm like, I want to go. So what we did, I I thought, you know what, we could go in there and repel. We'll put on life jackets, we'll we'll we'll get we'll sneak in in the middle of the night. Not saying where this was. Um, this was in the late 90s. We'll sneak in early to this was 2000. I think it was 2000. Yeah, it was 2000. We'll sneak in, we'll repel down that cliff into the lake and then swim out. We'll wear life jackets in case anything goes wrong. We'll repel off this cliff in the cover darkness. But we had to park and walk. I had to give me the getaway car. You drove us in, you had gotten your teaching job. Yes, I'd just gotten hired at the the new the new school, and I was like, you're sitting here teaching you like I can get this is too close to home right here. Yep, I can't get caught doing this. So we sneak in, we were wearing climbing harnesses, and we take a repelling rope, and we got life jackets on, and we s we go through the woods. It takes us a while to get in there. We tie this rope and we drop it and realize we had snuck in. Me and one other person had gone in, maybe me and you, during the daylight. We had snuck through those woods and got to the edge and tried to guesstimate how high it was. It was high. Just knew it was high through a rock and counted one one thousand, two one thousand. Like, I don't know if the rope will reach the water. Let's do it anyway. So it's two in the morning. We sneak in, we tie the rope, we drop it. I go down the rope first, get to the end of the rope, just ease it. So repel a little bit, get down there, and I'm like, okay, I'm at the end of the rope. And I can see that I can dangle the rope and see I'm I'm at the end. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bounce, push off the rock, and let go, and the rope, I'll run off the end of the rope and I'll free fall into the water. And I'll count one 1,000, two 1,000, and try to guesstimate how far I'm falling until I hit the water. Yeah, consistent in the dark. Yeah, no headlamps because we don't want to get seen. So I remember getting about halfway down the rope and we had forgotten to bring gloves. If you've ever repelled, you have to have repelling gloves. They're like double leather gloves because of that rope will burn. It would burn the flesh right off your hand. And I'm like just gripping and going. And I'm like, little, you cannot come down. You can't do it because we didn't have gloves. I'm like, I don't think I don't think it's safe.

SPEAKER_04 47:40

I don't think your hands make it. Y'all don't need to do this. I'm already in it.

SPEAKER_07 47:44

So I get to the end of the rope and I just push off and free fall. You know, like one 1,000, two, 1,000, 3, splash, you know, hit the water. And then I'm trying to yell up without my voice carrying because they had a security guard shack across that. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 47:58

I'm like, I think it's about 40 feet off the end of the rope that you got to free fall.

SPEAKER_07 48:04

And then the next couple of guys go, and then we all we're all just out there in the water in our life jackets, and we're just laughing, and we we slowly swim all the way across this lake and sneak up through the woods and go out. We're like, yeah, we can't take students to do this.

SPEAKER_05 48:18

No. Definitely not without gloves. Definitely not without gloves. Remember, bring your gloves, kids.

SPEAKER_07 48:25

Let's just pause and think about the fact that you worked repelling with me and you're scared of hot.

SPEAKER_03 48:30

And I was 18, barely.

SPEAKER_07 48:34

Did you just stay on the were you on the bottom and I would go up on the top? I think I did both. That's funny. We just tie you in good.

SPEAKER_03 48:40

Yeah, just tie me in and just bite my cheek. Here we go. Don't let down.

Why Those Summers Changed Us

SPEAKER_07 48:45

That's crazy. Anything else stand out for most summers?

SPEAKER_03 48:51

Man, I just remember that first summer in 99. I mean, I'd never I was really young and never experienced anything like that. I mean, I'd gone to a you know, one week Kumbaya camp, which was fun growing up each summer, but it wasn't, I mean, it's not Snowbird, you know, even in the early days. And I remember so in '99, I just graduated high school, and three days later I'm working at Snowbird. And I don't I don't leave. I mean, I'm here. Like I was going into my freshman year at Western and we had freshman orientation. I didn't go. I'm taking a day off from camp to go to that. I'll be there soon enough. And we had something else, like you had to go, a little meet and greets and stuff, and I didn't go to that. So the first time I set foot on campus at Western was the day I moved in. I'd never even been on the campus. No campus tours, no orientation, just uh, you know, my car and betting and suitcase, and here I am. So then so I come from three months of summer camp at Snowbird, like we've talked about how that goes. And then boom, I'm at Western. And I was miserable. And I was homesick, but I wasn't homesick for home. I was homesick for Snowbird. It'd been so impactful, not just the funny stories, but you know, the growth and just the three months of discipleship and the services and the worship and the just, you know, it was it was I was miserable. Man, that's and I I all I could think of throughout college was getting to summer the next summer to come back to Snowbird. You know, I would come on the weekends, we would hang out, we'd do stuff, but just getting to Snowbird, like that was sort of like I just got to get through a year of college so I can get to summer camp and work it again. And it was that, you know, that's what I remember the most about it.

SPEAKER_07 50:32

Do y'all remember, you know, now we emphasize so much our mission statement, which we didn't have written then. We wrote it some years later. We wrote the mission statement sort of retrospectively. This is who we are and what we've been doing from day one. But now let's articulate this. So the idea behind the mission statement is it drives everything we do. So we're not going to do something if we're going to expand or add a new program or add, you know, if anything we do is driven by the mission statement. So we say, does it make sense to do this based on what our mission statement is? And everybody that comes here has to memorize the mission statement. I say has to, they want to. It, you know, it's it's the cohesiveness of what we do. But the mission statement is it's if you kind of lay it out in tiers, it's written so you can say it in one long sentence, but you can break it down into about five statements. Snowboard outfitters exist. Snowboard wilderness outfitters exists. So we talk about what a miracle it is that we exist. You know, you go back to those early days, it's like, how did we get to where we're at? How do we survive? How do we survive? We we'll we'll cross the 300,000 student mark before long. And we're now a year-round staff of over so we have full-time staff of 30 or 40 something, but then we have an institute and interns another 30 something, and then a summer staff of 120 plus. So our our all-in summer team is 200 people, um, seasonal staff included. And to get to where we've gotten to and to have grown and expanded the way we have is pretty miraculous.

SPEAKER_03 52:06

But I don't think even that your people that are on staff have any idea. Like JB, when was your first year here?

SPEAKER_02 52:12

2021.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

The first time you ever set foot on campus.

SPEAKER_02 52:15

Oh, as a camper, as a camper. Probably 2015.

SPEAKER_03 52:18

Okay, so I'd say the most it's changed was that 2020 year. Right. So that's the kind of the big growth expansion. That was this is what we're talking 15, 16 years before that. So to see where it has come in 30 years, it's you can't even explain it to people.

SPEAKER_04 52:35

I think that's growth. What I was gonna say right before you I'm glad you said about the mission statement, because that's in my mind the unchangeable. You know, there's in in coaching world, we have certain standards or certain things that are um non-negotiables. And I feel like from day one, Snowbird's mission has been non-negotiable. And you know, you have like you said, you might not have been on paper, but what I saw with those early years is the same passion and vision and mission that you and your staff have today. Um you know, and I was fortunate to get to see that on the front end and to see how God has kept y'all on course, on mission, faithful to doing what he put on your heart and have not swayed through time or social changes or any other reason you've stayed true to the gospel or true to the purpose of what God put in y'all's heart 30 years ago.

Holding Mission Over Public Pressure

SPEAKER_07 53:39

Yeah, because the components in that mission statement are the proclamation of the gospel, exposition of scripture, building personal relationships, and then church church partnership or equipping the church. And I appreciate you saying social changes because I remember I remember during the George Floyd incident, you had all these riots, and there was this big pressure for ministries to come out and make statements on social media. And I was like, we're not doing that. Not because I it wasn't, it wasn't about what's my opinion about something cultural or political. It was that's not what we do. Right. We uh our mission statement is clear. We proclaim the gospel, we teach the Bible in the most biblically faithful way. Uh it's text-driven. We build relationships with people, and we partner with churches to to do that all of that together to advance the kingdom. And we're not gonna get bogged down in sociopolitical issues. We'll speak to cultural issues. We do that on NSR, but we're not gonna make political statements and things like that. And I remember there was this pressure from a lot of former staff members that had, because you know, we've had several thousand people come and serve at least for a summer. And uh, and like anybody else, like any other ministry or church, we've seen a lot of people stay faithful, and this became a pivotal part of their development and growth. We've seen people deconstruct and apostasize and turn away and become very politically active or socially active, and and there was this pressure to make a statement, make a statement, make a statement. And I just remember holding the line through that period saying, No, we're gonna keep doing what we do. And I think, you know, going back to y'all's era, there's so, like you said, Dick, there's so much that has changed. But then, like what you're saying, Paco, there's so much that is exactly the same. People leave going, I experienced discipleship, community, a shared vision and ministry objective, um, and that hasn't changed. And it's just cool for people to hear y'all's perspective 27 years later, you know, from that first summer.

Positivity As A Core Discipline

SPEAKER_02 55:53

I think about that picture that Moose left backstage. Me and Brody, um, I was about to go out on stage a couple nights ago to close or something, and I was looking at this picture that Amy Russ Mooson left, and it's like thanks, thankful for 16 years of playing together. And it's a picture, and it's the band is like literally the same. It's little uh Zach Spencer, and it's crazy. I was like, man, that's mind-blowing that 26 years later later, because you we talked about they've been playing since the start of camp, and they're still doing the same thing, you know, and like even on a smaller scale, I think of those guys often singing the same songs over and over again for 10 weeks in a row, like that for anything. That's kind of like, you know, you can get bogged down, but I've never ever seen those guys be negative or complain or have a bad attitude. Like just watching Zach Mabry, you see the love and the passion that he has for what he does, and he's been doing that for 26 years. Like, that is really encouraging to think about and like hearing you guys talk, and yeah, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_07 56:58

Yeah, one of our core values, we have five core values. One of them is to be positive. And um you I think that comes through and it goes back to then. Again, it wasn't a core value then. No whining, no complaining wasn't allowed. No.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

What's the what's the rain plan? What's the plan?

SPEAKER_07 57:19

Same plan. Same thing if it was sunny.

SPEAKER_03 57:21

Same plan.

SPEAKER_07 57:22

And we're happy about it.

SPEAKER_03 57:23

We're happy.

SPEAKER_07 57:24

We're positive. I don't know if you remember this, but we transitioned from that repelling site the next year to the old rock quarry on uh the McNabb property down on 294. That was a really cool spot.

SPEAKER_03 57:35

It's a cool little hike to get in there.

SPEAKER_07 57:36

Yeah, and we repelled there for 10 years from 2001 to no, from 2000 to 2010. So 11 summers, and then he passed away and they they sold that off to a a big rock quarry company, and so we couldn't use it anymore. But we would take students over there and we would repel. And I remember it was so hot in that quarry in the middle of July. It would be, if it was 85 degrees here in the valley, out in that rock quarry, it'd be close to a hundred degrees of reflective heat. And there was just this when we don't complain, and people would yell things to to remind themselves they're being positive. We're like, this weather's awesome. Everybody loves it. And everybody's screaming and cheering, and four hours in that on that rock, repelling and taking students up and down, and it's be positive. We're not gonna whine, we're not gonna complain. There's nobody's nobody's we don't have room for that. We know what our mission is.

SPEAKER_04 58:35

That goes beyond here. I think, you know, if you as a staffer, that's something I think your staff, the ones that you know, you're gonna have those the college kids, uh your counselors and stuff that come and go. Some of them may stay two or three years. You're you're fortunate when you get a JB or somebody that locks in, you got somebody that you know that that commits and God calls them into this ministry. But for eighty probably percent of your staff, you're gonna have them for a year, two years. Um and that's it. And I I can remember, and I I tell my girls this my so I coach some basketball and I have them for three years. And what kind of marks can I make in their life in those three years? And just a couple of summers that I worked here, that was probably one of the biggest, not just uh learning how to minister to kids and and having that relational transformational impact on their lives, but not complaining. Um always being positive, having that mindset of speaking positivity in every circumstance that this is our calling, this is what we whatever circumstance we're in, we can find good in it. And I think y'all do an outstanding job of that from day one until now. Your staff has always been very uplifting and encouraging and positive no matter what the circumstances. And Lord knows it rains here a lot. And that's never a complaint.

Feeding Camp With Fast Food Staples

SPEAKER_07 1:00:02

We talk about that a lot with food. Yeah, and now we're spoiled. We've got a phenomenal food service department.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:08

What what y'all remember how we uh how we fed kids fast food, taco bell, KFC, just go get a they would deliver it, or we one of us would have to ride and go. Party time pizza. Hey, we're ordering a hundred cheeseburgers and we'd come and have them set up for the campers to come through and get them a cheeseburger.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:26

You knew what day it was because it was like Tuesday was Subway, Wednesday was cheeseburgers, and Thursday was the the river, and get back and you had pizza from party time. Yep. Which was uh local pizza joint. Local pizza slash ice cream slash VHS rental. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

You could rent sausage biscuits from McDonald's.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:44

And the bag cereal table set up in the metal building, bag cereal and gallons of milk. Kids come back.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:54

Peanut butter and jelly.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:55

That was meal time. Loved it. We loved it. I remember Subway, we would only get the cold cut trio, I think they called it, and we would get 106-inch subs. And we would always, I would always order, Little would order, or Lou would order about 20 extra so that y'all would have something to eat on if it's 10 o'clock at night. We didn't have a snack shot. You're like, man, I'm so hungry. Go get a soggy sitting in a cooler up there at the metal building. And just crush it. Yeah. Just eat it up. And happy for it. Thankful for it.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:27

Oh man. I f uh the the meals were that that's one of the craziest things to think about how we fed people. We would do one night a week, we would do Coleman stoves, big pots, and dump Denny Moore beef stew in it. Yes. Heat it all up and get those big dinner rolls from Ingalls, and everybody get a big bowl of beef stew. I loved it, man. Oh yeah. And a little Debbie or something.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:50

Boxes of little Swiss cake rolls and little Debbie's. You can top it off of that. Powder Kool-Aid.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:55

Powder Kool-Aid and those big igloo coolers.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:58

And you had to like the worship center was served. I mean, everything was in one location. So you had to set up, cleanup, worship. I mean, you name it, like you were saying earlier, like the staff did everything. It was a small staff and you had to set up, cleanup, get ready for worship, put the tables up, fold the chairs, fold the tables. I know a lot of that you still do, but now you have this. It's it's amazing where you've come from from that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:25

But man, I learned so many lessons being on staff and just the way we operated that I use now, like with my students. Like I think that our culture pushes this, or I don't even know if they push it, it's just the naturalness of the culture that if you're not 100% healthy on anything you do, you gotta take a break and you can't do it today. I do that with my students. Students will come to me, I stepped my finger. Good. You'll be all right. You're good. I hit in the head with a ball. You'll be all right. Good. Let's go. Battle scars. Yeah, I think that they're just I think a lot of them are just raised. Oh, you gotta hit in the head, let's sit down for an hour. But I, you know, I think a lot of that stuff was learned during my time here was oh, it's raining today. Good. Let's go. Yeah. Oh, today it's 106 and the mosquitoes are carrying us away. Good. Let's go rafting.

Bucket Boats And Raw Strength

New Land News And Closing

SPEAKER_07 1:03:16

Yeah. Good day to hit the river. Yeah, it's a good day. Yeah. The uh the the things that I think you learn here, you do carry them with you for life. 100%. Yeah. Um one one story before we wrap up. Uh and tell us a story about Duke. We were going down the river and we we were in the media office with you guys the other day talking about bucket boats. So now when you raft, you know, we've since 2003, all of our boats have been what's called self-baling rafts. And so the floor inflates and you've got holes around the boat. You don't have to dump water out. The water kind of runs in and out of the boat. So you raft from the time you get in till the time you're done, you don't have to get out of the boat if you don't want to. But early days we had what was called bucket boats, it's an inflatable raft, but it would fill up with water as you're hitting rapids. So however a few rapids, you'd have to you'd pull your boat over, get out, everybody get out of the boat, you'd flip the boat upside down on the bank, dump all the water out of it, flip it back, push off, everybody get in, you keep going. And I remember a boat got stuck and pinned behind a rock and it filled up with water. And he had six kids in the boat, and he had gotten them all out onto a rock, but they're in the middle of the river, and they can't go anywhere. And he's he's the boat's kind of stuck, and and Duke pulls over. That boat weighed 500 pounds. Duke pulls over, wades, parks his boat, wades over in there. That dude is on the rock with the students, and Duke grabs a hold of that boat and gets just kind of starts rocking it and starts to get it up, and the water starts to dump out of it. I should add, Duke set a program record for power clean at Western Carolina football. And he power cleans that boat and dumps 500 pounds of water out like this, and then flip it back over, and he pulls it around and he's holding it against the current, and everybody gets back in, including the guy. Then he lets it go and then goes back and gets in his boat. Every once in a while I'll talk to that guy. He's a good dude. He he turned into a really solid dude. I know you're man. I give him heck. I'm like, hey man, remember that time you you and your students got stranded on the rock. So funny. So many good memories. Yeah. Anything else y'all can think of? Appreciate y'all coming. We'll go let's go jump on the side by side tour y'all around all the new properties. We just bought another piece of property. Um, just go ahead and say this now a little teaser. Snowbird just picked up seven acres that's uh adjacent to our existing main campus. And so um it's exciting what guys are doing. We've picked up almost fifty acres in the last few years. So Lots of room for expansion and excited to see what God's going to do in the next 30 years. I probably won't make it, but it'll outlive me. I'll be all right. I'll be happy with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

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