Today Doug opens the container with writer, photographer, and editor Stephen Casimiro.
Doug starts the show by recounting his earliest experiences with outdoor magazines and how those experiences fueled a career writing about the outdoors. He reflects on the importance of storytelling for those who choose to spend time in nature and how moves like the recent layoffs by Outside magazine diminishes the opportunity for many to discover the magic of the outdoors.
Doug is then joined by Stephen Casimiro, founder and editor of Adventure Journal. Stephen talks about the evolving landscape of storytelling within the outdoor industry, emphasizing the necessity for authentic narratives that resonate with readers on a deeper level.
Doug and Stephen explore the shift from performance-oriented adventures to more contemplative engagements with nature. They also talk about the fight that is at our doorstep when it comes to protecting our public lands.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:00.320 - 00:07:10.096
Before we start today, I would like to take a moment to say farewell to a bright light in the outdoor world. Sarah Steinwann died in an avalanche on Monday, February 20, just before her 42nd birthday.
She was beloved to so many of us and shared the joy of snowboarding, hiking, mountain biking and just being outside with our dogs.
She began her career setting up women's Learn to Ride programs at Burton before working in PR in Jackson for Verde Communications and Purple Orange pr.
After a move to Crested Butte, she set up her own PR shop and was a fervent advocate for her clients, including Nara Romp skis and CEP compression socks. I have had to say farewell to far too many people over my years in the outdoor world, and the loss of Sarah hits hard for so many of us.
Sarah, we will miss you. Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. I'm a journalist, writer, and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and my garage is better stocked than your REI Outdoor magazines, be they the once big titles like Outside Men's Journal or National Geographic Adventure or the niche magazines like Powder Bike Climbing or the Alpinist have always fueled outdoor adventure.
These are the places where we got to hear the stories that inspired us and for those of us who were writers or aspiring writers got the chance to tell our stories. I was first introduced to the outdoor magazine world by my dear friend Michael Finkel, who at the time was a regular columnist for Skiing magazine.
Not only was Mike writing fun stories for skiing, like one of my favorites, about the smallest ski area in the countryside, Ski Acres in Syracuse, New York. He was also a pioneer of traveling around the planet, heading to some of the craziest places to ski, including Iran and China.
And he put out a beautiful book called Alpine Circus, all about his exploits.
When I was just a grunt working for the Forest Service and getting to know Mike by climbing mountains and skiing together, he offered me the chance to write for a magazine called pov, which was a sort of guide to the cool male life out of New York.
Mike was putting together a package of outdoor adventure for urban readers and hired me to write an essay about the joys and pain of backcountry skiing. It was the first thing I published, and I got to convey my passion to the world.
That was when I thought maybe I'd like to get into this career a little bit to be able to share my passion for all the things I did in the wild.
Meanwhile, I was devouring all sorts of magazines and books about the outdoors, often in my sleeping bag after I'd been hard at work cutting trails or fighting fires. And sometimes just when I was kicking back and crashing on the floor somewhere as a ski bum.
The first magazine story that really caught my interest, though, was in Harper's. I found it in 1989 when I was driving through Bozeman, Montana.
At this time, I thought Bozeman was a magical place because in high school I'd read the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which took place in this then sleepy Montana college town. So I was very excited to visit Bozeman. My friend Jonathan and I were 20 years old and driving cross country in a $300 car.
In Bozeman, we stayed at the house of a friend of a friend, a guy named Jim Vogli, who was an attorney in town, but also an adventurer. He wasn't even at home yet. He allowed us to stay at his house, which was weird. The door was open, and my buddy and I just went in and crashed there.
In his bathroom, I found this copy of Harper's. And there was a story about the 1988 wildfires in Yellowstone and fighting them.
And I think I stayed in the bathroom and read the whole piece through. I knew I wanted to be a firefighter then, and eventually I was.
Likewise, when I worked on a Forest Service trail crew, we used to pass around a tattered copy of Outside's best Stories. Everybody's favorite was the infamous King of the Ferretleggers.
And there were tales from great writers like Jon Krakauer, Susan Orlean, William Vollman, Mark Jenkins, and Sarah Corbett. Anyway, the stories in our magazines are so important.
That's why I was so disappointed when Outside magazine laid off 20 of its best editors in early 2025. These were people who had worked there for years, decades, friends of mine, and it was a real poke in the eye to see.
Less than a week later, the Magazine advertised for 10 new editorial positions for less experienced people to come in and take over those jobs.
It seems like they're really giving up on the most important part of this world, which is storytelling, which is this connection to deep experiences that we want to read about in these magazines. Because all that said, I think there's a revival of great storytelling in magazines.
My good friend Mike Roge is publishing the Mountain Gazette, and he's encouraging people, including me, to write long, meaningful stories.
Stephen Casmiro, who's going to be our guest today, has been doing incredible things in Adventure Journal and finding a way to continue the work These great magazines once did without all the extra fluff of gear reviews and how to get in shape pieces. Likewise, Trails magazine has just come onto the scene with a real dedication to being out there in the dirt.
So I think outdoor magazines are a lot like vinyl. People still want them. They matter. And right now, I think these magazines and these voices are more important than ever.
We're seeing a big assault on public lands on the people who work in public lands, and I'm really excited to see people like Mike Roge standing up and printing T shirts with the upside down flag on Yosemite as a protest against rangers losing their jobs. I'm excited to see Stephen Casmiro posting about how the outdoor industry needs to come together and fight this battle.
Honestly, there is no better person for me to talk to about outdoor magazines and how they can speak to so many adventurous souls out there than Stephen Casmiro. His work, from his introductions in Powder magazine to his move to found his own publication, have inspired and guided my own career.
Stephen Casmiro is the founder, editor, and publisher of Adventure Journal, the critically acclaimed print quarterly covering outdoor recreation, public lands, nature, and the whole cloth human experience of a life driven by curiosity. Previously, he was the west coast editor of National Geographic Adventure, the editor of Powder magazine, and the founding editor of Bike magazine.
His visual work is represented by Getty Images, and he taught photography for National Geographic Expeditions. So let's open the container with Stephen Casmiro.
Well, here I am with a longtime mentor and friend and someone whose career has really paved the way for my own and for so many other people. Stephen Casmiro, it's great to have you on open container.
Stephen Casimiro
00:07:10.288 - 00:07:14.460
Doug, man, it's such an honor. I'm so thrilled to chat with you. Thank you for having me on.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:07:14.760 - 00:07:24.180
Yeah. And I think the very first thing right out of the gate we need to ask you is that is print making a comeback? Was print ever dead?
Stephen Casimiro
00:07:24.520 - 00:09:29.910
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think that's the big question. It's a natural question. Sometimes I wonder, though, if it's not the wrong question, because the medium is.
You know, I mean, we bring in McLuhan and say it's the message, but I mean, it isn't. It isn't. I think in Prince case, the medium counts for a lot.
But what we're talking about is storytelling, and we're talking about storytelling that matters, that foundationally matters and feels real and, and authentic and. And direct. And that's what print can deliver in ways that I don't think digital often. Does digital can, but it doesn't often because of the model.
So I think that, that the storytelling is. I mean that's a basic human need. I mean that's, that's how we have religion and businesses.
All these things that these sort of imaginary things are only out there because we have storytelling. We tell stories about these things. Money is a story, right? Money doesn't exist outside of our imagination. So all these things are just.
They all come back to storytelling. Certainly within the outdoor culture, we've seen host of new publications come up, which is really exciting and I feel optimistic.
I think it, it bodes well. I actually we can unpack this, but I've never felt happier or more optimistic about kind of life in general.
I think that we're really at an inflection point where people are starting to recognize deeply for themselves how far deep down, kind of a shitty toxic path we've gone with technology and other things. And now we're starting to call, you know, the deeper you get, the deeper you get. Now we gotta claw our way back out of this.
And I think print is one of the. Is an example of that, of how people are going, you know what, the scroll sucks, you know, just listicles suck.
Like, I want to tell stories that matter to me and other people. And so I think print is an ideal reflection of that. And I think that the increase in titles you're seeing is a reflection in that.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:09:30.530 - 00:09:58.510
Yeah.
And I think that there was, you know, at least since the early 2000s, there was always that push and pull, right, Where a lot of like publishers and, and, and people would want a print magazine to look more like a website, right. With all sorts of these listicles and crappy things in. In. In it.
Instead of the basic reason why people want to pick up something in print, a magazine, a book or something, is to. To get lost in it, to get lost in a good story, to get lost in amazing photographs.
Stephen Casimiro
00:09:59.700 - 00:12:13.894
Well, yeah, I mean, but I think for every magazine in every magazine, customer base or potential customer base, there's a different reason for picking it up.
And if you look back at the magazines have been around for over a hundred years, been around for a long time, but they really boomed in the 80s 90s and the aughts. And then kind of really started to Crater around 2008, 2009. And first it was the recession and then it was social media kind of hammered on them.
But for about 30 years you had this boom in consumer magazines. By consumer, I mean consumption. Right.
Like where the model was to sell things and before that, you, you know, you always had more intellectual or current events and you would have enthusiast titles, but in the 30 year period, you just had this massive amount of things of titles that were built around selling gear, clothes, you know, whatever it may be.
And I mean, I remember, you know, getting subscribing to powder, subscribing to outside, and there were a lot of things, reasons that I look forward to those titles, you know, kind of lifestyle enhancement, you know, but also like, well, what's the gear? What's this? You know, how can my feel cooler or my life look cooler?
And God, the, I mean, the Internet, you know, and social media exists to shove supposedly cool things down our throats and try to get us to buy them.
So the mead for magazines, that whole consumer thing, and one of the reasons it's collapsed is because you have this other free source of all of those other things.
And so I think that what that does is it, it has exposed a lot of titles and they're gone now or they're struggling or they're failing to reinvent themselves.
But a title like Adventure Journal, you know, we've been built from the beginning on telling stories that I think are important and interesting and fun and inspiring. And we don't cover gear. You know, we cover gear a little bit digitally, but we don't cover gear in the magazine.
Because I want that to be, I want Adventure Journal to be for people and enjoyed by people who want to take a break and immerse themselves, immerse themselves in something that is probably well outside their daily lives but isn't coercive and trying to tell them, oh, you're, you're not cool if you don't do this.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:12:13.982 - 00:12:15.078
Right? Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Casimiro
00:12:15.174 - 00:13:15.980
Which is what consumer magazines, you know, consumer mag. If you, if you go and look, and it's still true, I think if you go to a newsstand and you look at blurbs, like AJ doesn't have any blurbs on it.
And most of the COVID blurbs, they're, they, they read really desperate, right? They sound like they're written out of desperation and, and they're preying on your insecurities.
You know, I mean, the, the trope of six pack abs or whatever, how to guide a guy in three days or whatever it is, you know, those are, they're built on the idea that you are incomplete. And that publication, by buying it, somehow you will be more complete. And I find.
And you know, so our magazine is, is built to really kind of nurture and celebrate people's strengths and not prey on their insecurities. And that's a real shift that I don't think. I mean, it's always going to be a struggle.
We're swimming upstream in this world where there's so much free storytelling. But there will, I really believe there's always going to be a human need for those stories that just feel, you know, honest and well told.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:16.500 - 00:13:32.120
Yeah. And I mean, I think there's a need too for the tangible thing. Right. People enjoy, people still enjoy holding it in their hands. Right.
And opening especially a break now from so much noise maybe that you get online or on your phone. Right. There's quietness to it.
Stephen Casimiro
00:13:32.580 - 00:14:38.810
Well, there is. And there's, you know, there's no distractions.
I mean, we spent a lot of time looking at paper and looking at cover coatings and really wanted it to be a very tactile and sensuous experience. Sensuous in the, in, in the sense of senses, you know, your touch and your smell and how, how the pages feel when you flip through them.
I mean, I think those are, those are all small pleasures that are often overlooked.
And you know, we, I think that we, we run through the world so quickly and we have so many sources of entertainment that we, and so much of it's free that we don't. We rarely slow down and you know, the whole mindfulness thing, like we very, very rarely slow down and be mindful of what we're doing.
And I think print is, that's why we did it.
I mean, print is a great way to do that and to set aside all of those distractions that we all know are there and allow yourself this gift of some quiet and maybe a little peace.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:39.390 - 00:15:15.150
Yeah.
I love what you had to say too about, you know, it almost seems that magazines now, print magazines can, can relieve themselves of trying to sell the six pack abs thing or this gear guide or whatever.
Whereas, you know, if we look back in the great magazines of the past that we enjoyed, if you look at old Outside or old powder or something like that, you didn't care about that part of the magazine really. You wanted the great stories, you wanted the amazing photos. Right. And it seems that to be an influencer, you really have to commodify.
You really have to commodify culture to try to sell and get likes and all that. And that's a pressure that's not on print anymore.
Stephen Casimiro
00:15:15.890 - 00:16:22.390
No. And I pray that that whole world collapses.
I mean, that's just ridiculous that you have people out there being paid to try to get me to Put some magic potion on my skin or something.
And I mean, if you go back to some of the sort of legendary stories from the magazine world, I guarantee you not one of them is around gear or lifestyle choices. It's going be reporting, it's going to be telling you a story and taking you to a place that you could never go on your own.
So, you know, and you know, we call it the magazines or publications, but I mean, yeah, I think you almost have to look at each one by its subject matter because they're so different.
Like, yeah, Time is a magazine and Age is a magazine, but I mean our similarity is that we're on paper, but beyond that, like it couldn't, it couldn't be more different. And so I think that we need to look at those like, who are we speaking to and what is the purpose? Why are we here?
You know, I didn't want to make a magazine. I wanted to sell. And I felt like in 2016 the best way to do that was going to be print.
So it certainly wasn't about making money as all of us with our little boutique magazines.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:23.530 - 00:16:26.242
Yeah, I mean it costs a lot of money to put a print magazine out there.
Stephen Casimiro
00:16:26.266 - 00:16:26.402
Right.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:26.426 - 00:16:39.150
So you have to find some way to be able to pay for that as well, whether it's advertisers, whether it's subscribers, you know, whether it's some kind of subsidy. Right. Like that's the hard thing I think about print is it's really expensive to do.
Stephen Casimiro
00:16:39.800 - 00:18:34.620
Well, anything, yeah, anything good is expensive to do. Print being a material thing is expensive to do.
When you do it the way we do with very high quality thick paper, thick cover stock, you know, it, it is extremely expensive.
And we pay, we pay, pay fair rates and you know, I mean, we, we pay our writers a dollar a word, which, you know, I mean, I know big writers have gotten, you know, five times that, but like in this day and age, to get a dollar a word for a story feels like a luxury. Yeah, that's great.
But I mean it's, but, but if you look at it the other way, like you write a 3,000 word story that maybe, I don't know how long you spend on it, but like. And so you've made $3,000? Well, we do four issues a year. Like nobody is making a living really off of this.
So it's, it's a fair rate, but it's a challenge for, for people out there.
And I think that's something that people don't, readers probably don't understand is, you Know, if you want something that's quality, you gotta pay for it. And if you want great writers and great photograph artists, they need to get paid. And no, no, no.
I guarantee you nobody we're working with has a lot of money. Nobody we're working with is rich.
You know, like, maybe if you're a writer writing a, you know, a solid book, you're getting 50,000 for a book that you spent a year or more on. So there's not a lot of money floating around except at the top of these giant corporations.
And the rest of us are here trying to, like, do things that matter, do things that we. We really care about. And if you.
I believe if you're going to do it, then you should do something that feels different and better than what everybody else is doing. Why bother? I don't want to make a commodity. I want to make a piece of art that people can enjoy that costs a lot of money. And you got to. Yeah.
Then the challenge is figuring out where does that come from and where does that come from in a world that, thanks to the Internet, is just changing so quickly and so often.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:36.220 - 00:18:37.556
So you. I mean, you've been.
Stephen Casimiro
00:18:37.628 - 00:18:37.860
When.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:37.900 - 00:18:40.000
When did you start in magazines? What year?
Stephen Casimiro
00:18:40.940 - 00:18:50.132
Oh, geez. I actually, believe it or not, I started freelancing for magazines when I was in my teens, in the late 70s.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:50.276 - 00:18:52.084
In the 70s, really? Wow.
Stephen Casimiro
00:18:52.212 - 00:19:16.906
And like, way back, I. I had a friend who connected me to this guy who worked for kind of a sort of a cultural political magazine in Washington, D.C. where I grew up.
And he hired me at first to do some research help for him and then started giving me little small stories to write. So, yeah, so I actually. It's been a long time.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:19:17.058 - 00:19:39.130
That's amazing.
And then obviously, you know, the glory days with powder and all that, but after all this time, all this time working in magazines, you know, all the effort it takes to put out Adventure Journal all the time, how do you keep it fresh? Does it ever get, you know, do you ever get to the point where it's too hard to do this stuff anymore?
What keeps you coming back continually and being invigorated by it all the time?
Stephen Casimiro
00:19:39.990 - 00:22:16.844
You know, I can get tired of some things, but I have the luxury because, you know, it's my magazine. I don't have to cover those things.
If I feel like the adventure world is shifting, and I do believe it's shifting, then I can shift this kind of stories that we're doing to go where I think things are more interesting and let go of the things that I think maybe had their time and aren't as interesting. Interesting as they once were. So. Oh, man, I'm. I'm so excited to make AJ And I'm so excited to share these stories, and I. I just.
I love it so much because adventure. Adventure changed my life. Adventure changes lives. It makes life better, however you want to define it.
You know, bird watching, hiking, ultra running, whatever. Having adventures, going out into the world with uncertainty, exploring it, accepting some discomfort, and seeing where that takes you.
Like, it makes us stronger, it makes us more dynamic, it makes us more well rounded. There's so many things that adventure in the outdoors brings us. And I get to take those stories.
I get to take stories from some of the most talented storytellers in the world who are spending time thinking about adventure and share it with my friends. I mean, how can I not be super fired up? The downside is, you know, is the business side, I don't. I didn't ever really want to be a business person.
Right. You know, it's. It's hard, and it's hard for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the product.
And I think that that's my biggest challenge is that, you know, we have an incredible retention rate. Like, our renewal rate is over 90%. People email all the time and tell us how much they love AJ Our advertisers.
We have advertisers who have been with us for 36 issues. You know, like, we. People love us. I mean, when. If. If there are. If they're like adventure oriented people who like storytelling, they love us.
It's bringing in people and new subscribers and new advertisers, new brands, when so many of the trends in the world are going against that. Right, right. So there's, you know, I mean, you can go scroll and pick your title.
You can find a lot of adventure content on Instagram or wherever you want and scroll, scroll it for free. It's not going to be as good, but it's not going to be as satisfying. It's not going to be sustaining. But if you want to do that, you can do that.
And so it's not that we're.
We have the challenges that any business has always had, bringing in new customers, compounded by the fact that our business, which is storytelling, is awash in a sea of free. Yes, mostly crap, but still free storytelling. Sure.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:22:16.932 - 00:22:29.330
Yeah. So what's an example? And it was interesting when you said that adventures really changed and you're following those changes.
What's an example of something that's become Passe now. And now new routes that adventure is going down.
Stephen Casimiro
00:22:29.950 - 00:27:13.894
I think the, the big one is that what I call performance adventure.
Just as I don't feel like that's perform, by which I mean, you know, mountain biking, trail running, you know, skiing, all of those things are amazing, and they're what get me out of bed in the morning. So I am.
I'm not negative on this in any kind of way, but having pursued these kind of obsessively for 40 some years, you know, at some point it's like, well, there are other things to do outdoors, you know, and we've never covered fastest known times or first so and so up on top of this or that, the other thing, because I think that those are incredible personal achievements, but I don't care about them. I mean, it's, you know, who. Somebody's going to break another record going up the nose in Yosemite, right? I don't really care.
You know, I mean, and I don't think our readers really care. Great, Tommy. Good job. That's awesome. But I think that those are personal victories and you can celebrate them however you wanted.
But from a storytelling standpoint, you know, I don't think that they're necessarily that interesting.
And so I think that what we have done is we have, whether it's through video or magazines or, you know, the TGRs of the world, like, we are saturated with ways to consume media about performance adventure. There's just so much of it.
And as an industry, I know that the industry has long struggled, like, how do we get more people outdoors and blah, blah, blah. Well, that's not a problem now. People are outdoors and they're doing, doing these things.
And so what I think is interesting is in what I'm spending time with Adventure Journal thinking about is how do we still retain all the joy and the stoke that comes with that, but how do we move not necessarily away from that, but toward things that are maybe a little bit more stewardship oriented or more personally connected and maybe better for the world. So I'll give you one example.
If you're only concerned about mountain biking and, you know, going hard, going fast, you know, leaving it all out there, which again, I can't count how many miles I have under my belt doing that, you're probably going to think about public lands just as playgrounds.
You're not going to think about them so much as places that, where, you know, mule deer live in either quiet or, you know, bobcats or what, whatever it is.
And we see this, you know, we saw in the big debate a few years ago about bikes in wilderness and this, this hardcore crew, lots of mountain bikers arguing that mountain bikes should be in wilderness. I would love to ride my bike in wilderness, but I feel very strongly that they should not be there. It is not part of the wilderness ethos.
And I, I can set aside the mountain biker in me and the nature lover in me. I can, I can hold those two things at once.
And so I think that when we, when we only view the mountains and the deserts and all these other places as, as, as playgrounds, you know, it's a very narrow, myopic way of looking at the world that ultimately for, for whatever we pull out of it in terms of our personal pleasures, it does have negative impacts on other living things.
And so I'm, you know, as a editor and as a writer, I'm like, all right, well, you know, if, if this is where I believe that we should be going, how do I write about this and how do I convey this in a way that doesn't throw performance adventure under the bus? Because I still love that with all that I have. At the same time, you know, I don't want to like, move away from that.
I want to move towards something and toward these things that I think people will be able to have. What I think ultimately is a health, healthier relationship with the outdoors and maybe more of a. I don't know what the word.
I don't know if it's gratifying or self sustaining, but you know, like you go for a mountain bike ride and like if you're, Maybe you're chasing PRs or whatever, but like, you know, the next time you go for a ride, it's all new. But the more that you.
I've been spending a lot of time in the last few years, starting with COVID like really kind of pursuing almost like a self educated naturalist track, you know, and just trying to learn a lot more about the things that live around me. And it just changes the way you feel about the environment you're in. You know, whether I'm walking or hiking or mountain biking, it changes it.
So anyway, I think it's been a long ass answer, but I think that ultimately having this other, you know, sort of more maybe nuanced personal relationship can, it doesn't have to replace performance adventure, but I do think that we are all going to be better for it if we make room for that in our lives.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:14.062 - 00:27:47.870
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, we're seeing this on a large scale, right? That Recreation.
You know, recreation is this use that we've all, in the outdoor industry, people who care about public lands, we've all had to glom onto it. Right. Because it is better than any extractive use. Yet it's still an impact. Right.
But it is the only leverage we really have to try to protect lands is we can say, hey, recreation is a trillion dollar industry, you know, and we need to keep people in it. But we lose something when we do that because as we say, we're missing an appreciation for the land having its own value and its own right to exist.
Stephen Casimiro
00:27:49.010 - 00:29:49.786
Exactly. Yeah. And you know what? This is not a new debate either. I mean, there was. You may be familiar. I'm guessing you are, Doug.
But the familiar with the concept of free, free lifts live. You know, that's sort of the open air life that comes from Scandinavia. Right. And that has been. It's a big part of Scandinavian. Scandinavian culture.
And it came in the 1800s in response to the increasing urbanization in those countries. But it originally was about connection with nature. And it has been. I was going to say co opted. That sounds almost like a conspiracy.
It's evolved into something that is more about adventure sports as opposed about being outdoors, as opposed to connecting with nature. And I mean, I believe with everything I have that those two things can exist comfortably.
But as a industry and as the media, we have almost solely focused on performance adventure without talking about this other side because it's exciting, it's fun, it's sexy, it's a blast. All those things that we know.
But one of the things that has not been traditionally is accessible for a lot of people, whether it's because you're an underserved group, because you, you don't have the money, because you feel like the outdoor media isn't talking to you because you have, you know, physical challenges or disabilities.
So this kind of, you know, communing with nature, whether it's bird watching or learning the names of plants or what's blooming when, or whatever it is, I mean, that's pretty much accessible to anybody. And so I think that it's a much more populist approach is that is.
Is again, not to throw performance adventure under the bus, but just say, you know what this other way of experiencing the outdoors.
I, I think that, you know, maybe where I'm coming from is because I grew up in the media world in, in an outdoor culture that was just incredibly elitist.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:29:49.898 - 00:29:50.266
Sure.
Stephen Casimiro
00:29:50.338 - 00:30:19.024
And was. And was dismissive of going for a hike or dismissive of bird watching and you know, there's echoes of that still.
You know, I mean, we see that still and we see it in brands, we see it in the media, and it's. But it is a challenge, right?
How do you celebrate, like skiing 55 degrees and at the same time going for a mellow walk and, you know, figuring out the names of. You can hold both those things at once. But we have not traditionally been able to do that. You know what I mean?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:19.032 - 00:30:42.862
They all add up together, I think, to something that's so basically American, too. This idea that we can. I feel like it's part of who we are. Right.
That we can go out there and find this freedom on our own terms, whether we're skiing a 50 degree slope, whether we're bird watching. Right. In natural spaces, in public land. In this part that's most America to me is the outdoors. And I think it's that way to a lot of other Americans.
I know it is to you, right?
Stephen Casimiro
00:30:43.046 - 00:30:44.158
Absolutely.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:44.334 - 00:31:46.280
Now, I think to step back for a moment to talk about magazines a little more until we get deeper into some of the public lands questions I really wanted to ask you. I was inspired by your intros early in Powder.
They kind of taught me, I think, how to do editor's letters different instead of just this is in this magazine. There are many stories. I think they even influence the intros I'm doing on this podcast. Right.
And I know that, you know, the first magazine story I read that really inspired me was this piece about fighting wildfires in yellowstone in a 1989 issue of Harpers. I found in a bathroom at a place I was crashing in Bozeman, Montana. I mean, there was.
I was inspired by Paul Gagne's climbing magazine, stories about Baffin island and the biggest cliffs in the world that I'd never known existed. The king of the Ferretleggers. And outside, what were the best story ever? That is the best story. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And what were some of those early.
What first inspired you, what got you going, and what made you think that this is the kind of stuff you'd want to see in Adventure Journal today, even?
Stephen Casimiro
00:31:47.140 - 00:33:42.440
Well, two things. I mean, I grew up. I was a kid during Watergate, but I. The first thing that I saw was the impact that the media had on exposing wrongdoing.
You know, I've always had a very strong sense of kind of righteousness and indignation when people do things that they just clearly shouldn't do. And so that made me want to get into journalism was just like, you did what you're the president. You did what? Like, no, no, that. That's. We can.
You can't get away with that. Why? You know, so. So there was that.
And then, I mean, I was, you know, all the, all the mags, all the titles, Harper's, New Republic, you know, New Yorker, Atlanta, all those. But I, for me and powder was tremendously impactful. I learned. I went skiing for the first time when I was 18. I just fell head over heels for it.
I was like, oh, my God, this is the coolest thing I've ever done. I discovered powder pretty much right away.
And Tom Carter and Alan Bard were this kind of adventure duo, pioneering telemarkers who traveled all over the world, you know, Ecuador and Mexico, you know, riding the bus with the chickens and their skis and, you know, skiing down volcanoes and. And there was. It was just so real. There was nothing polished about that. It was, yeah, pure, pure adventure.
And I don't think there were any tourism boards paying for their ticket down there. You know, they. Or, you know, giving them a fam trip or comping anything.
You know, they paid the little bit of money they had and found their way to go do these things. And, and so that. That really opened my eyes to that.
You could tell these stories that could really have an impact on your life that weren't polished or commercial or consumer oriented. That's great.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:42.900 - 00:34:03.520
I guess then to get to the dirty stuff, you don't talk about King of the Ferretleggers Outside, which, you know, I think we all have always had a sort of love hate relationship with it, right where it was in a kind of rarefied era. But they had all these great stories, and now what the hell is going on there? Is it even something we should care about?
Stephen Casimiro
00:34:04.860 - 00:35:12.752
Oh, I guess we gotta go there. All right, so let me preface this by saying I have nothing but respect for the people who worked there and have worked there.
I have never idolized outside because I work in the magazine business and I'll idolize any magazine, but I've always respected outside at its best and probably, like a lot of writers, been jealous of outside at its best because they've set such a high bar for so long. At the same time, like a lot of us in the outdoor space, I've. I've had complicated feelings toward outside and with the. Outside is not dead.
Supposedly they're going to have an issue in.
In March of here of 2025, but I think most of us who are close watchers, you know, with the firing a couple of weeks ago, of 20 key staff and the ownership by venture capital. I think that, you know, we kind of feel like whatever form of outside continues going forward. The outside that we knew is dead.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:12.816 - 00:35:13.200
Yeah.
Stephen Casimiro
00:35:13.280 - 00:37:06.326
So, you know, we'll, we'll. There are no signs that point to something coming that we're going to be excited about or that we're going to like. So, you know, any.
I feel highly critical of Outside, but I. It, it's, it's also. It is coming from a place of, at times, admiration and respect.
And I think, I think what I feel as I look at what's going on is just a lot of discouragement. And when you see something or someone squander talents. Right. Yes. When you see them go sideways year in and year out.
Sideways from your perspective, obviously. I'm sure the people outside probably felt differently. Yeah, I think I feel emotional about it because I've.
I've felt like again, the stories that Outside has done over the years have been game changers, Game changers. I mean, they have done such a phenomenal job of raising and addressing and enlightening people about really important topics.
At the same time, there's been so much cringy, so much cringe and outside, I mean, going, Going back to when Larry Burke owned it. Yeah. You know, I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's just been so much. You're like, what the. You guys, seriously, like, you gotta be kidding me.
And I was, I was looking at it. I gotta look at this. I did a screen grab this morning. Here's this headline from Outside three days ago. Your workouts are destroying your hair.
Like, really, you guys, I mean, this is. Maybe this is why I don't have any hair.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:06.438 - 00:37:06.998
Right.
Stephen Casimiro
00:37:07.134 - 00:37:19.170
My workouts just. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry. Outside. I take it all back. You were right. My workouts have destroyed all of. This is why I have no hair.
This is why I have a giant landing strip on the back of my head.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:19.870 - 00:37:26.336
But this is what you were talking about before, right? This is where we were saying, like, the, you know, six pack abs, all the workout stuff, all that.
Stephen Casimiro
00:37:26.408 - 00:37:26.736
Exactly.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:26.768 - 00:37:36.352
We didn't really care about in the magazine. We wanted the king of the ferretleggers. We wanted Krakauer. We wanted, you know, these great stories from great writers.
Stephen Casimiro
00:37:36.416 - 00:41:41.980
Right, right. And here's the thing. Like, you know, we always have to market. I mean, we have to market.
I mean, when I launched Adventure Journal and Print, I was so naive. I'm like, it's going to be so great. We're going to just get thousands of people because it's so great. It doesn't work that way.
So you know, that's the marketing, right? And I do think that there's this ridiculous idea that if you want to get brands that make gear, you have to cover gear.
I mean to me that's just absurd, right? Like if you are writing for an audience of enthusiast, broad based outdoor lovers as AJ does they care about gear?
They're going to be invested in wanting to hear from gear brands. That doesn't mean we have to cover it, right? I mean if we want to cover it, we can cover it, but it doesn't mean we have to cover it.
But there's this, you know, you see this with the gear guides and here's what our editors are buying on the REI Black Friday say all these things. Like there's this perception, I mean the whole affiliate thing and making money on when people click is, that's completely different.
That changed the game. But like I, you know, I sort of always thought that the, you know, to a great extent, you know, the gear was the sizzle.
It's like people want to see what's new. They, you know, it's the sizzle. But somewhere along the line a lot of that stuff jumped the shark. I mean I remember Outside's website.
There was this, they did this whole story around the Bowen not. And you know, and then like three weeks later it was like you can't ever trust the boat, the Bowen.
You can't like don't ever put, don't ever trust your life to this knot. Right? And I'm like, like three weeks, they're contradicting themselves.
And so, but again I just, you know, asterisk respect for the people who work there. They care, they care deeply about the outdoors. They're talented and they're smart. I blame the model to a great extent.
And I think that what we've seen with Outside and we, I think we saw this with Larry and I think that we've seen it now under Thurston with, with venture capital is it's, it's. I really think you have to blame the model more than the people. And yes, the people are part of that.
But what happened, yeah, I've never seen Outsides numbers, so I don't know. But I'm assuming from what I do know about magazines and how they work. Right.
The Internet came along and started to erode the reasons for print to exist.
And everybody thought that they had to have a website and they put all energy and money and they build up this massive overhead and, and for a while there was great advertising on the web and now that's all gone away. Right, right.
And so, and so what happened was, and this is what, this is why you get clickbaity things is because as probably most people know, if you have ads on your site, they pay for those ads based on number of impressions, the number of people that see those ads.
That's why you see websites with tons and tons and tons of ads on them, is because if you have 10 ads on that page, everybody is paying you a little bit because they got seen on that page whether they got clicked on or not. Well, like that world is going away, you know, with search ads and all this other sort of stuff. But the model has not gone away.
You still have a lot of money invested in websites and they're desperate to bring in people to click on these things. And so, you know, it's collapsing because of the model and not because of really anything to do with the quality of the highest quality stories.
And coming back to like what I said earlier about COVID blurbs, there's a reason they feel desperate. They're shouting at you from all those other magazines.
They're trying to do anything that they can touch, prey on basic human nature to get you to pick that up. So I don't know, my issues with that have more to do with like the newsstand is kind of dumb.
You know, giving away free content, which we did for a long time on AJ and on the website, is kind of dumb. I mean, I think you really have to do something better and different than anybody else.
You have to have a worldview that is better, that is different than everybody else and that you articulate that better and you make a difference in people's lives and you have a direct relationship with your readers. I mean, I really have come to believe that that is about the only way that you're going to be successful with a media property anymore.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:41:42.320 - 00:41:58.980
And I think as you said too, then that's one you have to sell. You know, I mean, magazines need money, right? You rely on advertisers.
So you have to sell to your advertisers that, hey, this isn't about like quick clicks, right? This is about long term engagement with your brand, with this lifestyle, with who you are.
Stephen Casimiro
00:41:59.520 - 00:44:59.006
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just, it's a complete falsehood to think that print is not a powerful medium for advertisers to talk to people.
It's actually, it's incredibly powerful. But the Internet is so you know, flashy and sexy and, and you can measure things easily.
But you know, you're reaching people in a, in a much more high quality environment. The readers in print retain things longer. They feel more engaged, they remember things.
And all the time I have AJ readers tell us that they specifically sh. The brands that advertise in AJ because they advertise in AJ I mean of course we, you know, we limit the ads.
We would not accept an ad from a brand that was not appropriate to the outdoor space. A lot of our advertisers build their creative specifically for AJ So I mean it all feels like of a beautiful piece.
But you know, and, and talking about the model, I don't know how much people know this but like Outside has long had about roughly 700,000 is there claim circulation.
And historically they and other large consumer magazines have given away their subscriptions at a loss or close to a loss to have giant circulation so they can charge more for advertising. So an ad page at its heyday probably cost I don't know, 80, I'm spitballing, but by $80,000 or something like a one time ad page, right.
And people are getting a year of a magazine like outside for $12 or Men's Journal or you know, pick any one of them. Well, who going to be more indebted to? The people are paying you $80,000, the people are paying you $12, you know, at a loss.
So you have 700,000 readers that you really only care about in aggregate in order to get, you know, these big brands that are going to give you X amount of dollars. And that's why so many publications collapsed in 2008, 2009, including National Geographic Adventure that I worked for.
Like the model was such that as soon as that ad base was, she kicked that leg out of the tripod, you know, it all collapsed.
And meanwhile a lot of these, clearly a lot of these titles, not nga, but I mean a lot of these titles they're writing for advertisers, not their readers. They're writing to get more readers in order to advertisers.
So I mean maybe we're getting too in the weeds on like the business side, but, but you see this in the public as a consumer and as a reader. Like I think it's important to be knowledgeable so you can judge the magazines that you read or that you want to support by buying them.
I think it's, I think it's really helpful to understand that model and why, why somebody puts something on a cover or why they put words or they don't put words or how many ads they have. You know, I think it's really critical to know the messenger, especially in a world where in a digital space, like, you can't trust anybody.
Like, it's all marketing now, it's all affiliate clicks. So.
And I think that most of us, especially in the outdoor space, which we think of ourselves as very value based, don't we want to trust the publication that we're giving our money to?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:44:59.078 - 00:44:59.262
Right.
Stephen Casimiro
00:44:59.286 - 00:45:03.038
I mean, don't we want to understand. I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm idealistic about that, but.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:03.174 - 00:45:50.950
Well, I think moving on from the business end of magazines and where magazines are, I think one thing you've done really well is, you know, you've established yourself as a presence and Adventure Journal as a presence. And I think recently you've taken advantage of that where, you know, you're someone who doesn't, you know, shout out there all the time.
So I think when you do make a big statement, it gets heard. And I think recently you made a really great statement about what's going on with public lands and what's going on politically right now.
And the, the gist of that was that you said that, you know, the whole outdoor industry, this whole supposedly $1 trillion business model that we have, really has to find a way to work together to stop what's going on, which in the end is going to be seeing public lands be sold off to private owners and, and just become a mess. Right?
Stephen Casimiro
00:45:51.810 - 00:46:35.610
Yeah. I mean, I don't think that there's any question that we're at a really critical inflection point in our culture, you know, in our country.
And I don't want to get into the politics of it, but I mean, everything is political and, you know, these are not. In the west in particular, we've always fought this supposed take back of lands by states to sell them off to private interest.
This whole Sagebrush rebellion and all that sort of stuff. First, it's baloney that those lands ever belong to the states.
The condition of joining the union was that those are federal lands and federal lands belong not to the federal government, but to all of us.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:46:35.730 - 00:46:36.122
Yes.
Stephen Casimiro
00:46:36.186 - 00:48:43.808
You know, and I'm not going to get into the whole thing about indigenous and Native Americans. That whole thing sucks. That's not just not going to go there in this discussion, but those lands belong to you and they belong to me.
They belong to every American. So this idea that this, these lands belong to Utah or Arizona or Idaho is just Complete baloney.
And I think that this whole idea of coming together and talking out, you know, we see if I can form this thought. I mean, I think that we, we live in fear of losing what we have. And there's a lot, there's been a lot of psychological tests around this.
You know, people would, don't want to, they'd rather like hang on to the dollar than risk the dollar to gain $2. I'm garbled and bungling that. But I mean like we are, we are risk averse as a species, so we don't speak out.
And brands are like, well, I don't, especially brands that are owned by public companies. It's like, well, you know, I've got my quarterlies to hit, I have my investor guidance, I can't do this.
Well, you know what, if you don't have public lands, you're not gonna have a business, you know, if you don't speak out for things that are right. And why, why are we alive? Why do we have these companies? Is it simply to make money? Come on, there's gotta be more, there is more to life than that.
Right?
Like we have values, we care about things and if we don't speak up, you know, somebody once said to me, you know, like, if you, if you don't act on your values, then they're just hobbies. And this came over, somebody was asking, so our advertising contract in ha.
Everybody gets the same contract, everybody gets the same terms, everybody pays the same amount. It has never changed, it will never change. It has always been the same from day one.
And I was agonizing because there was an agency that was, you're going to bring in quite a bit of money, but only if we changed in terms of the contract. And I was wrestling with it, which I should not have been wrestling with it, but I was kind of wrestling with it.
And then somebody's like, well, they're not your values if you don't stand up for them.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:48:43.864 - 00:48:44.224
Right.
Stephen Casimiro
00:48:44.312 - 00:48:56.848
And so I was like, no, we're not taking that contract. And so I think in, you know, what we're dealing with in terms of our public.
Public lands is probably isn't even the best term, like the natural world, the environment that we live in.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:48:56.904 - 00:48:57.424
Yes.
Stephen Casimiro
00:48:57.552 - 00:51:53.500
Like it's not just about whether you're making money from ads, it's about whether we're going to have an environment that is going to sustain us, that we're going to be able to live in, that we're going to have the space for protection from wildfires. Or that we're going to have the kind of basic human biological biophilia connection that makes us better as the animals that we are.
Like, if we turn into Texas, which has Texas. Their public lands in Texas comprise 2% of the state. 2%. To me, that's shameful. And Texas is a state. They can do that. That's fine.
But I don't want to live in a country where you have 2%. That's public lands. Like, we need those spaces. We need them as. Again, as biological beings. And so we also know that.
I mean, good God, it's the thing about the people that are running government now that this is not an issue of conservative versus liberal. This is an issue of nihilists versus people that want to live. Right. These people just want to destroy.
They want to destroy in the interest of making billionaires trillionaires. Right? This is. I mean, this is not about some conservative ideology.
And maybe for some people there's an element of that, but, like, these people just want more power. Power is always going to want more power. Money is almost always going to want more money.
And so, you know, whether it's AI or, you know, crypto, you know, the energy costs of those things, like. Like, if we don't fight those, we're screwed. Like, you know, and we have to somehow be a check on this unprecedented greed that is expressing itself.
I, believe me, I don't want to speak up. I don't want AJ to be a buzzkill. The last thing I want to do is, like, put on a political hat. I don't. I just want to go ride my bike.
I want to go smell the flowers. I mean, I really do. But, like, that's not the world that we live in.
And so, you know, I think that we do need to come together, and I think that we need to come together locally and personally. And one of the things that this boom in media and the Internet and free media is, like, we feel like global citizens.
We feel like national citizens, but it's very, very difficult to affect change at a national or global level. And we even saw this with this last election. For those of us who were involved in turnout and those other things, like, it didn't work out.
I think the best way, the way that we will see progress is if we do that face to face and individually.
And what I said in the thing that I wrote a week or two ago about this just horrific firing of people who steward our public lands is that we have to reach out to our friends. And if we don't Know what our friends need, we need to ask them.
And I don't know what that means in terms of the question that you asked about the outdoor industry and how that's going to happen, but I think that we have to act with the people that we see face to face.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:51:54.000 - 00:52:21.180
And I think you bring up a good point too, in that this isn't, it really isn't a political issue. Right. Because conservative, liberal, moderate, whoever, we all enjoy that freedom of being outside.
Everyone enjoys the natural world, everyone benefits from it. Right. It shouldn't be a political issue, but it has been politicized. So if there's any way to.
Do you find any way to reach people maybe who are in the shadow of it being politicized?
Stephen Casimiro
00:52:21.970 - 00:54:47.764
Boy, I don't know. That's a good question, Doug. I don't know. I mean, I've been contemplating whether I want to do not a substack, but a newsletter. So I redid.
I haven't had a personal website in a long time and I just launched one. It's mostly portfolio stuff for my photography. But most of us, I'm just exhausted and disgusted with social media.
I don't really want to be a part of Zuckerberg's. I do. Yeah, I, I do think that. I think that people, I think people are numb and I think people are exhausted.
I mean, we have had certainly since, you know, Trump 1.0, people have been kind of shell shocked. I mean, it's, we, we entered a whole new world and the media, you know, is.
It's like this God, psychedelic, bad LSD trip, but it's the real world, you know, and so after all these years of that, I think a lot of us are just, I think people are tuned out, they're exhausted, I think they feel impotent. You know, there's a sense of dread. I mean, we have all of these things that, I mean, you can go down the list, right?
Like the mental health crisis that we see all around. So I think just people, I think people feel stuck and they feel frightened and they don't know where to turn.
And you know, I said at the get go that I've never felt happier or more optimistic. And it's. I have been doing a lot of reading. I've been reading in the middle of reading a book about climate change and anxiety.
My wife is reading a book called Beyond Anxiety that talks about the power of creativity to sort of break through. And I actually, I feel hopeless. I don't feel like there's any hope for our species.
But in that I find this incredible freedom and because the things that I was trying to feel hopeful and optimistic about, I have almost no lever to pull to make them better. But what I can do is make my life better and meet and talk about how I'm making my life better and. And convey that to the people around me.
Do you think.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:54:47.932 - 00:54:49.876
Do you think we're still. Do you think a lot of people.
Stephen Casimiro
00:54:49.948 - 00:58:42.444
You know, it's still in denial that it's actually. It's a contradiction, right?
Like, I don't reality that we can lose public lands where we could, you know, but that doesn't mean that we're dramatically individuals. I've never felt change into for our privatized individuals. There's this very kind of trite cliche story about, like, the turtles on the beach.
The turtles are, you know, the baby turtles have hatched.
You know, instead of following the light of the moon into the ocean where they can swim and live their lives, they're moving toward the lights inland. And there's this one little boy on the beach.
There's one little boy or girl on the beach and he's like, picking up turtles and he's throwing in the water and the dad's like, what are you doing? It's not going to make a difference. And the kids, like, it's going to make a difference to that one, you know, and it's as silly as it is.
It's like, it's absolutely true, right?
Like, and the boom, the Internet and this idea of being a global citizen has given us illusion or this sense that, like, we can affect change globally by just tweeting about it or X ing about it or threading about it or whatever we do. And that's an illusion. You know, we can reach people that way, but we're going to reach people more powerfully, you know, individually.
And I mean, none of us know how long we're going to be here.
And so I think if we just focus on, like, battling for the things around us locally, it's not as sexy as caring about the Greenland ice cap, but, like, it's going to matter more to the people around us. And I don't. I think that the think globally act locally has never been more true. We just kind of forgotten it.
And frankly, it's easier to act locally. I mean, it's easier to like, go to coffee with. Have a coffee with a friend and talk about things you can do.
I mean, you can actually, you can see like, change if you do things like that. I hope so. I believe that I really do, you know, and I'm far from the first person to sing this tune. I mean, I have a piece, so I just got AJ36 back.
First bound today. I'm so excited for people to get it. It's a really rad issue, and I wrote a story that I was gonna say I'm nervous about it.
I'm not nervous about it, but it's. It's a little different. It's kind of about my path over the last couple years, and it's. I called it unencumbered, and the.
The subhead, the deck is the future of adventure is lighter, and I really believe this. And Rebecca Solnit, we're not worthy. Rebecca wrote a piece for us a couple years ago where she talked about how.
And this piece that I wrote, I quoted from that. And she's basically like, we have to give up some of the profligacy of this consumerist world. Like, we just have to.
But is it really serving us all that well anyway? It's not. We have more stuff than we've ever had. We're unhappier than we've ever been. You know, we are ruining our environment.
We are, you know, polluting the air. You know, so the path that we have chosen of material abundance has not made us any better.
Maybe this other way of setting aside kind of the material things will bring us to a different kind of abundance. And if I want to come back to the idea of performance adventure, there's a place for that. But I do think that this.
Whatever we're going to call this other thing, quiet, more thoughtful, communing with nature, whatever it is, I think that that world will be less material, that is less materialistic. And I think it gives us a more sustaining relationship with nature and an easier way, frankly, it's easier to share with people.
And I didn't put this into my story, but I'm spending a lot of.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:42.452 - 00:58:44.060
Time in the morning a tipping point.
Stephen Casimiro
00:58:44.100 - 00:58:48.080
Where everything's sliding and just negativity.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:48.900 - 00:58:52.460
Our species being screwed, where we turn.
Stephen Casimiro
00:58:52.500 - 00:59:37.202
It around, it's a lot easier to go for. I think all the people that live around me here on the coast that I.
That mountain bike that I don't mountain bike with, because they're a lot faster than I am or I'm a lot faster than they are. Right? Like, it's hard to find that, like, sweet spot, and neither one, like, wants to, like, push harder, like, drop back.
You can go for a walk with almost anybody, right? And I'm building these relationships and these Friends with people that really matter to me just by simply going for a walk with nature.
And like, like if you told me this 20 years ago, I was it, I would have laughed. I'm like, ah, it's so boring.
But I just, I think that we, we so many of us are, we see that AI and social media and in constantly connected world, all these things, they're not making us happier, they're making our lives worse.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:59:37.346 - 00:59:37.698
Right?
Stephen Casimiro
00:59:37.754 - 01:03:22.370
We don't know how to get out of it. So my hope is that whether I do this, you know, through my own newsletters or whether I do it, I am doing it through Adventure Journal.
But of course I have to be nuanced about this, is that I, I think that we need more voices pointing to this other way of living. 1 It is more personally connected, you know, with other real people in real life. One that's less about the stuff or the stoke or the speed.
And I, I, I, I think it's, I, I honestly think it's the only chance we have.
You know, I mean we, we need to like drive less, fly less, connect with people more, be outside more eat, you know, non processed food and just kind of have it, you know, and I guess to beat on a dead horse. Like we have been doing this in aj I ran a was last two years ago. I ran an essay from, by Yvonne Chouinard.
We all know Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. Yvonne wrote a piece that basically said the old ways are better, you know, that, that we need, we need to go back to the old ways.
We need to embrace the old ways with less stuff. You have one backpack, you have one pair of shoes. You go out into the world and you have adventures. You know, I mean we've just forgotten that.
We know this. We all know this. We've just forgotten it.
And the Internet shows us and the media, they show us all of these bright shiny things and they're great and they're fun and believe me, I would love to have 10 bikes. That's so much fun to have more than one bike, right? I'd like to have a steel single speed. Oh, and a steel hardtail.
And you know, I'd love to have all those things. Those don't make us happier and they make the world worse and they cost a lot of money. And so I do think that I can be a voice and AJ can be a voice.
And I do think that we need other voices that just talk about these simpler things that really are better for us individually and better for Us as a species. Life. Life gives me hope. As long as there's life, there's hope.
As long as there's life, as long as you're alive, no matter what your situation, no matter how bad it is, you can change it. And a lot of people have a lot of things stacked against them. I get that I'm as happy as I've ever been, but I.
I'm surrounded by sadness, by people who are sad, by people who are struggling. I have friends that are struggling. I mean, I. That's just the way of the world, but I.
By kind of letting go of the need to, you know, really change the outcome and just focusing on relationships, I see that you can make people's lives better. I've seen people make my life better through their friendships or their love. And so I think that if we.
If we really come back to the simple message of loving the people and the places around us, and everybody has to interpret that for themselves and really focus, I think focusing on doing it face to face in real life. And if you don't know how you can help, you ask them.
I think if we reframe and get rid of all that noise and all the shit and all that other sort of stuff, even though we're all going to go through, really, we all will have our turn. Losing people and going through tough times and getting sick and all these things that we know, you know, that it doesn't take away our challenges.
It won't take away having grief and sadness, but it's going to make that path, rhythm a heck of a lot better. And it might. It probably has the best chance of actually affecting change on a broader issue. So that's what gives me hope.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:03:35.950 - 01:05:39.320
Absolutely.
Well, Stephen, I could talk to you for another hour, but we're rounding at the end of our time here, and I wanted to ask you the final question that I ask every guest, and I think it's a good one. And I think you've darted around the edges of it already. But that question is, what gives you hope? I love that. Well, Stephen, thanks again.
You're a legend. Glad to have you on here.
Stephen Casimiro
01:05:39.440 - 01:06:10.494
And, Doug, man, you're my hero. You're my friend. I've loved working with you so much over the years.
A lot of people have come and gone in the outdoor space, and you are just one of the greatest, best people I know. I can't tell you how much I admire you and respect you, and I've never told you that. So I'm telling you that now. It's thank you so much. You are.
And people. People love you, and they love you for good reason because you're. You're a great human.
I'm honored to be here, and I really appreciate the time that you've. You've given me.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:06:10.582 - 01:06:22.808
Well, thank you so much. And hopefully we can. We can all work together, too, to, you know, create the kind of better life and the kind of hope we believe in.
All right, well, thank you so much, and hopefully we'll do this again sometime.
Stephen Casimiro
01:06:22.984 - 01:06:23.704
Amen, brother.
Doug Schnitzspahn
01:06:23.752 - 01:06:58.130
All right, thanks. Take care. Thanks for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rockflight, LLC.
You can subscribe to Adventure Journal at adventure-journal.com Check out Stephen Kazmiro's work at stephencasmiro.com and please, please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on and send us your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com our producers today were David Karsad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some. Thanks for listening.