← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 464: Nature Is Ready and Prepared to Be Our Ally | Dean Hall, The Wild Cure
01:00:30
Loading summary
Transcript124 lines
- [00:01]
Ginny Urich
You know that feeling when your kids are asking for another snack and you're thinking I just fed you, but you're also trying to avoid giving them junk? Yeah, same. That's why I love Thrive Market. My go to online grocery store for getting all of my healthy essentials delivered right to my door. No crowds, no label reading marathons in the snack aisle. Just real food that I trust. I don't know about you, but I want to pronounce the ingredients on my kids snack labels. Thrive market bans over 100,000 harmful ingredients so I know I'm in good hands. Their team does the research and I just click add to cart. Right now my kids are obsessed with the simple mills crackers, perfect for lunch boxes. And I love that Thrive remembers what we liked last time with their Buy it again feature. I also stocked up on Primal Kitchen sauces using their high protein filter which is such a time saver. Plus Thrive Market gives back. They accept Snap EBT and offer free memberships for low income families through their Thrive Gives program. So when I shop, I know I'm supporting a brand with heart. Healthy groceries simplified. Ready to make the switch. Go to thrivemarket.com 1000hours for 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. That's T H R I V E market.com 1000hours thrivemarket.com 1000hours welcome to the 1000hours Outside podcast.
- [01:24]
Dean Hall
My name is Ginny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have just read a book about miracles and, and the transformative power of nature and relationships and getting out and accomplishing your goals. The author of the Wild Cure From Death to Life on Oregon's Longest river. The author Dean hall is with us. Welcome, Dean.
- [01:44]
Welcome. I just, I am so happy to be here, Jeannie. I never ask people to be on their podcast anymore, but I love what you're doing, I love what you stand for. And so once I saw you online, I just had to ask.
- [01:58]
So glad because I adored your book. I love the way it's written. You did it with your daughter, which is such a cool thing, but it's almost written like a play script. I mean, you've got like different people who are chiming in and saying different things. I thought it was a really unique way to organize a book. You had all these really cool pictures in there. You're a licensed therapist, certified radical remission health coach with over 30 years and 50,000 hours of face to face experience in the mental health field. Two time cancer survivor world Record setting, extreme endurance athlete, no stranger to personal hardship. You have the life experience to stand behind your techniques and your advice. What an honor. What I'm like, yeah, sometimes you like, you think about yourself and you're like, what would I say about myself? I have none of these. So what an honor. What an honor that I get a chance to talk with you.
- [02:46]
The funny thing is you got to be careful what you pray for. Because about 15 years ago I wanted, I was developing my speaking career and everything and I was like, you know, I've done a lot of things, but I'm just an average white guy. I don't really have a story. And so I like, please help me develop a story. And then all hell broke loose. And now I've got a story. But I'm pretty happy to be on this side of that story.
- [03:18]
Yeah, what a story. So the story is that you are a two time cancer survivor, right. And you've had just really hard things. Your wife passed away. She passed away of cancer, right. And you were just, after that happened, just really, really struggling. And the doctors were saying, I mean, this is the worst case scenario. So you get leukemia in 2006, didn't even suspect it, but you were going in for knee surgery. And they say you have features of both chronic and acute sick for most of 2007. You know, all of these things that are going on and you're trying to do these natural solutions, but then you end up having this lymphoma and you got all these swollen lymph nodes. You said you could hardly move. I mean, the lymph nodes were growing and growing and you were just in such a hard spot. It says the lymph node itself didn't really hurt, but the ones under my jawline and the one under my right armpit had ballooned to such a size it made it difficult to move. So you're, you say by 2013 you're dying of cancer, right?
- [04:19]
Yeah, I'm, I'm six one and a half. And usually my fighting weight, even though I don't fight, is right around 210, 215. And if you can imagine, I was down to 152 pounds. And so I literally was look like one of those old pictures that you see of people coming out of Auschwitz. You could see my clavicle, my shoulder bones, every rib, my pelvic bones. I mean, I've never been a pretty boy, but I was ugly with a capital ugg. It was so bad that for two years I made it a point not to look in the mirror. Because it would. It would. It would startle me every time. I'd be like, oh, what? Who is that? Yeah, it was awful.
- [05:13]
And you say, you know, you're kind of on death's door here, but your daughter, who you wrote the book with, Bri, right, He was struggling because she had lost her mom. She lost her mom at 17. So your wife, she passed away. Your daughter was 17 when your wife Mary passes away. And what Bri says about Mary, about her mother, she was the bright spot in so many people's lives. But she was my son. She was the thing my life revolved around for so long. And when she was gone, just like that, I felt my entire world had collapsed in on itself. I missed my mom more than I could ever admit out loud. And I spent hours wishing I had one more day with her, just one. Then I spent many more hours getting slapped in the face over and over again by reality. I would never get one more day, one more hour, one more minute. I wouldn't even get a single second more. And so you're here now on death's door, sometime later, and you say to yourself, I have to stick around for my daughter, Bri.
- [06:13]
I have to. I walked in, into the bathroom in August of 2013 and accidentally looked in the mirror. And that guy that I saw looked so sad and so haggard and so sick. And for the first time in my life, I thought, you know what? I've had a good life. I had a good marriage. It's all I ever really wanted was to have a family and a good marriage. And I'd had a thriving practice before that. I taught public school for 20 years, worked with thousands of kids, and had a great time. Written a book before this one, and was my speaking career was going well. You know, everything I'd ever wanted to really accomplish, I had. And so I thought, you know, if I let the leukemia and lymphoma take me, no one will know, and I won't have to leave some kind of awful note. I'll just kind of slip away. And then my daughter came to mind. And I thought, man, that is an entirely selfish thought. I don't have the luxury of that kind of thinking. And I'd helped many people come back to life using Viktor Frankl's work, man's search for meaning. And many of you probably know, and I'm sure you do, Jenny, he was an Austrian psychiatrist that got put in Auschwitz. I had said out loud many times, oh, geez, you look like you've come From Auschwitz. But then when I was thinking of Victor, I thought, okay, buddy, you've had a tough time. I think Viktor Frankl had it worse. And. And so I. I thought, you know, if I use his principles and find a purpose that I can be passionate about, and I'd helped hundreds of people do so. So I knew the routine. I thought maybe I have a chance to bring myself back to life. And I found through many of the people I'd worked with, that, that resource, that purpose doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. And that just alone was pivotal for me.
- [08:28]
Well, because the purpose is very, very interesting.
- [08:32]
The purpose is a little wacky.
- [08:34]
All right, so you say this and you know, and there may be people who, who would completely agree with this sentence you wrote, death was a luxury I couldn't afford. I had to keep living. I had to be a good father. I could not leave my daughter alone. So I decided to do whatever I could to live. And like you said, you've got leukemia. Chronic lymphomatic and lymphocytic leukemia. Cll. Yeah, yeah, CLL and non Hodgkin's lymphoma. And you could, like you said, you could have just let that take you and no one would thought anything different. I mean, you have two different types of cancers. So you start looking for this purpose and you find it in the most interesting of places. You go back decades and somehow you come across your sixth grade journal. What does it say?
- [09:26]
It says, when I get old, I gotta. It wasn't even have to got to. It was G O T T A, I gotta climb Mount Everest, swimming English Channel. And even to this day, when I say it, I get goosebumps. It's just like this electric shock went through me in an effort to become responsible and to be a good husband and to get my wife the things I thought she wanted. I don't know that she did. I worked really, really hard. As a matter of fact, I put myself through college. Three degrees. I worked two jobs from the time I was 15 to the time I was 42. I just worked really hard. But I'd forgotten what I really wanted to do or be almost called to be. You know, my parents. I grew up here in Oregon. And what I. I think I hit the lottery of childhoods, especially for an ADHD kid like me. We spent almost every weekend way out in the Cascades, climbing and hiking and backpacking. Sometimes we wouldn't see other people for days and we'd get to an alpine lake and if it Wasn't. I mean, if it wasn't winter, you know, we weren't snowshoeing in. My parents would always say, hey Dean, wonder if you can swim across that. And back. I thought they were just training me to be resilient and they were proud of me because they'd always cheer and everything. I hadn't shut up the entire hours long hike. And I think they just wanted some silence. And so that didn't occur to me giddy until about two years ago. And I asked them and neither one of them would answer me. But they're both chuckling like they'd been caught. But to have that kind of parenting rearing, you know, my dad ran many of the world's major marathons. He's climbed every mountain on the west coast. He was a stud of studs. And he had a lot of pretty world famous mountain climbing friends that had climbed Everest back in the 60s and 70s. And all of them, or at least several of them, were sponsored by National Geographic. And so all I wanted to be was this National Geographic sponsored adventurer doing these crazy wild things. That's all I ever wanted to be. You know, all the other kids wanted to be astronauts, baseball players. I just wanted to climb mountain, swim rivers or whatever.
- [12:09]
Yeah, this is like, I think something that almost every person can relate to is that you have these childhood dreams and oftentimes you set them aside. You wrote, I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten that I wanted to become an adventurer as an adult. I just assumed until I was in my mid to late teens that adventuring was what my career would be. But life quickly became about hard work and responsibility. And because of that, I abandoned what I felt were childish dreams of adventure. And you talk about this. I mean, these are the things that is important to remember that, you know, life is fleeting and we're not promised another day. You wrote within your first year of marriage and you just speak so highly of Mary. It was a great marriage. But you made this list of 12 things that you wanted to do.
- [12:52]
Right.
- [12:52]
But you only ended up doing a few of them. Two.
- [12:56]
I think it was two.
- [12:57]
Yeah. We were always putting fun off to do the hard work of building wealth, planning for retirement and being responsible. What advice do you have for people who really struggle with finding the balance there of like, yeah, we're supposed to save for retirement, but also we have a couple dreams we want to fulfill.
- [13:15]
Yeah, don't drink the Kool Aid. Yeah, especially my generation. And now it's kind of sad. Boomer is a derogative Term. And so I hate to tell everybody I'm a boomer. I'm the last year of boomerdom. But man, our generation was taught leave parents home as quickly as possible. I was barely. It was only a few weeks after my 18th birthday and I never went back and worked two jobs, put myself through school, tried to pay my dues and put every. Put fun off. And I'd say, if anything, we err. Most of us, unless you're 20 something, most of us err on the side of over responsibility and thinking that you have an unlimited amount of time here on earth. Mary came, her grandparents came from Germany and brought some of the first Russian red wheat to Oklahoma. And boy, those folks, you'd have to beat them with a stick before they die. Most of them were in their hundreds and they were still doing harvest, what? And so we had always prepared for me to die first. I put her through school, I wrote most of her papers because she wasn't good at it.
- [14:50]
We have to go back because it's a really interesting sentence and you talk about it a little bit in the book because you had had this first cancer situation. But to say we had prepared for me to die first.
- [15:02]
Yeah, I mean, the statistics are, you know, women many times outlast men 15 to 20 years sometimes. And especially, you know, we got married in the 80s. It was definite. Life expectancy for men was somewhere in the 70s. Women 80s to 90s. And I just never. The way I lived in Ben, I didn't think I was going to make it past 40. The big joke in the neighborhood that I grew up in is my mom was so tough and I was such a thrill seeker. She got tired of me bleeding on her furniture. And so all the kids, whenever I get scraped or cut or if I was bleeding, which I seem to be bleeding most of the time during my childhood, they'd call it a door ringer. Because my mom finally, when I was about 4 or 5, made the rule, if you're bleeding, ring the doorbell. I'll bring things out to you. A whole different way of parenting, these are smart parents.
- [16:08]
They send you across the lake when you're talking too much. They say, I'm going to deal with your. We're dealing with it on the porch. It's not coming in the house. These are great parenting ideas.
- [16:17]
Yeah. And it's that kind of parenting that built resilience, taught me discipline. They taught by modeling it, watching it. I climbed the tallest mountain in Oregon, Mount Hood, when I was nine years old. And mostly it was because my dad had climbed it when he was nine, so it was kind of a generational thing. But also my sweet little Swedish mom's climbing. And even at 9, I was so chauvinistic. I'm like, I'm not letting my mom get there and I'm, I'm not letting her climb this better than me, you know. So it was just a pretty darn good childhood. Now as I was swimming the river, you know, there were a lot. It was 42 degrees, so I was always frozen. I was swimming 10 to 12 miles a day while I was still sick and fear. Folks aren't familiar with swimming the Iron man full Iron man triathlon. Distance for a marathon swim is 3.3 miles. So I was swimming three and four marathons a day for 22 days in 40 degree water.
- [17:33]
Ginny Urich
That shift, when you have kids, it's something else. One moment life is all about you, and the next, your future is tied to theirs. It's beautiful and a little overwhelming. And it raises a big question. If something happens to me, will my kids be okay? With life insurance, through Select Quote you can find the peace of mind every parent deserves. Selectquote is one of America's leading insurance brokers, helping over 2 million families since 1985 find more than $700 billion in coverage. While some brokers push one size fits all policies that cost more and cover less, Select Quote compares dozens of trusted carriers to help you find the right policy for your needs and budget. Best part, in just 15 minutes, a licensed agent can get you covered. Some policies cost less than a dollar a day and if you're in good health, you might even qualify for same day coverage with no medical exam. Head to selectquote.com and get a call from a licensed insurance agent right away. Select Quote they shop, you save. Get the right life insurance for your family for less@SelectQuote.com 1000hours Go to SelectQuote.com 1000hours today to get started. That's SelectQuote.com 1000hours this episode is sponsored by Active Skin Repair, a proud member of 1% for the planet. We love Active Skin Repair. If you spend as much time outside as we do, or really any time outside at all for that matter, you're bound to have kids that get nicked, scraped or banged up. That is why we love, love love Active Skin Repair. Their all natural non toxic topical solution helps repair and heal damaged skin by mimicking your body's natural immune response. It soothes irritation, reduces inflammation and supports healing it. And it's Safe for all skin types, including sensitive skin. Active Skin Repair believes our personal health and the health of our environment go hand in hand. That's why they donate 1% of all sales to grassroots environmental efforts. From cuts and scrapes to sunburns and rashes, Active Skin Repair has your whole family covered. Plus they're certified climate and plastic neutral through their giving partners. Visit activeskinrepair.com to learn more about active skin Repair and their commitment to 1% for the planet. And use code 1000 hours to save 20% on all active skin repair products. That's code 1000 hours to save 20%. Vacation season is nearly upon us. We are actually spending a week at the ocean in South Carolina soon and I can't wait. This year I'm treating myself to the luxe upgrades with Quince's high quality travel essentials at fair prices. There are super cute lightweight European linen styles from $30 washable silk tops and comfy lounge sets. And they even have premium luggage options and stylish tote bags to carry it all. The best part, all Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. I love that. I can't wait to slip on their 100% organic cotton crew sweater and slide into their Italian leather platform sandals for those cool evening walks on the beach. For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from quince. Go to quince.com outside for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q U I n c e.com outside to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com outside.
- [21:27]
Dean Hall
So let's talk about this. So you find your journal.
- [21:30]
Yeah.
- [21:30]
You basically have this childhood of adventure, right? And then you put it away for decades, decades. And then you pull it back out. And so your advice to people is, I mean, even this, we're, you know, we're considering doing, taking our kids, you know, possibly overseas or our oldest is a junior in high school. So we're sort of in the tail end of that, Right? So he has one more year home. And you think, do we do it? Do we not do it? Do we do it? Do we not do it? You know, do we save the money? I mean, it's, it's always this push and pull in this tension of being responsible versus, you know, going and living and having these adventures. So, I mean, even to me right now, you're like, don't buy the lie.
- [22:08]
Right?
- [22:09]
Don't buy the lie. Like you're, you have today, you're healthy today. Go do things. So that's such an important message. But you, you let it for 30 years. You don't do all the adventure. And then you find your journal and you say, this is my purpose. I was meant to be an adventurer. And instead of swimming the English Channel, which would be like, I've got a fundraise and I've got to go, you know, really far from home, you realize that you could swim the Will. It's called the Willamette.
- [22:35]
Willamette.
- [22:36]
The Willamette. Okay. All right. Great. Okay. For all the parents listening, maybe I will have bleeped that one out, but okay. So the Willamette. Sorry. Okay. No, it's right. That's a good way to remember it. So it's the Willamette Spam it. Okay. There we go. And you're gonna, you're gonna swim this and you're gonna be the first person who's ever swam the entire distance. You're going 200 something miles in Oregon, and what a great thing because you're doing it right in your home area.
- [23:10]
Yeah.
- [23:10]
Yeah.
- [23:11]
I was born four blocks from the Willamette. Even when I was a kid, I'd call it Mama River. It's the longest river in Oregon. It starts up in the mountains, it flows down through our two most important college towns. Then it comes through our state capitol. Then it feeds the Willamette Valley, which has always been a rich source of produce and agriculture. Now it's just these beautiful vineyards. And then it comes through the largest town in Oregon, Portland, where I grew up. And then it flows into the mighty Columbia, one of the biggest rivers in the world. And so it's just this fantastic river. And it was so polluted in the 60s when I was a kid that our joke was that if Jesus had walked on water across of Willamette, it wouldn't have been a miracle because it was just an oil slick. But then I left. In the late 70s, I went to a small college in Kansas to play soccer. And that's when I met this cute little Kansas farm girl and put myself in exile for love. But I came back to talk about.
- [24:25]
That because you were like, I feel like I am suffocating in Kansas.
- [24:29]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And if you've ever been there, you understand why it's Full of just wonderful people. But you really gotta like people because it doesn't have anything else but wheat. And you know, I grew up climbing mountains, swimming in lakes and rivers. There's none of that. It's just fat and wheat.
- [24:50]
Do they have sunflowers? Is that the sunflower state?
- [24:52]
Yeah, that's the sunflower state. Yeah, that's their state.
- [24:55]
They have wheat and sunflowers and people.
- [24:57]
Wheat and sunflowers and nice people. Hard working folks. Lots of wind, lots of cattle, but that's about it. Lots of crack.
- [25:06]
So you're there for a long time. You leave all this?
- [25:09]
Yeah, 34 years.
- [25:11]
Yeah. And this Willamette. Willamette. I'm trying to think of way spam it. Okay, I'm going with spam it. Willamette.
- [25:19]
Please do.
- [25:20]
Okay. It's a very wild river. At the same time a comforting sight. Serene river. I didn't know this. Willamette Falls. Never even heard of it. Yeah, you said it looks almost exactly like Niagara Falls, only a little shorter and narrower. It's ranked second in the contiguous U.S. i've never even heard of it.
- [25:37]
Right.
- [25:37]
So you, you didn't go. Well clarified. To make sure people know you didn't go over the falls.
- [25:41]
That was. There were two main questions I got asked by the media. And the first one was, did you swim it upstream or downstream? I don't know if you've ever tried to swim upstream, but the first couple times I'm like, what the heck? But then after a while I was just like, hey, I've been swimming my entire life upstream. So I decided to swim this down. And then the second one was, did you go over the falls? Well, it's like a 90 foot drop. No, I did not. And so I'd always, I always just say no. I couldn't get a barrel sponsor, so I decided to walk around them.
- [26:23]
People ask funny questions. They ask me a lot. What counts as being outside? So they'll, they'll literally email, they'll email Dean and they'll say, okay, my kids are out in the front yard and they're playing inside of a cardboard box. Does that count as being outside? You know, it's like all these questions like, I don't, I don't know, I can't, I, I can't deal. Okay. Okay.
- [26:44]
I think I see now how big is the box there? Had.
- [26:48]
They cut windows in it? There's a lot of information missing. But people ask funny questions sometimes. So here's the thing. You have been living in Kansas, no rivers, right? And you come back and you're going to be swimming the Willamette now. So you have to start training.
- [27:03]
Right?
- [27:04]
But the doctor. You were so sick that the doctor was nervous about you training in the pool because of your immune system.
- [27:11]
Yeah, yeah. He said, just getting in the pool itself could kill me because my immune system was so wrecked. And I said, hey, Doc, I'm dying anyway. I am not going to go out watching Wheel of Fortune sitting on the couch. No offense against Vanna White, but that's just not how I'm going to go. And when I came back in 1984, because there wasn't much to do in Kansas, so I really got into triathlons. And it was a great place to bike, road bike, because nobody was on the streets.
- [27:49]
They were all in their tractors, old pickup or.
- [27:52]
It was always a thrill to pass, just fly by a tractor and freak out the farmer. And so I really got into bike racing and triathlons. And so I came back here for a bike race in 1984, and I actually did pretty well. There are a little over 500 people in the race. And I came in like 14th or 15th. I was in podium. But, you know, for a guy that just from Kansas, that was pretty good. And my family being my family, they decided to throw a big picnic celebration at a park. And it was on the banks of the Willamette, and I had been gone, and we're there at this park and the Willamette. I couldn't hardly concentrate on anything else because it was big and blue and beautiful and flora and fauna were growing out of it. Instead of buckets and, you know, grease spots, there were waterfowl playing. And it was just this little slice of heaven. And so finally I. I couldn't stand it any longer. And when everything kind of slowed down, I went and stood by the river, and my dad, the great adventurer, came to stand beside me and take some of it in. And we were talking about how proud we were of Oregon for putting environmental protection laws in place and really reclaiming this beautiful river. And I said, I blurted out, hey, dad, has anybody ever swum this whole thing? Thinking he'd pat me on the back and say, that's my boy. Instead, he's like, where do you come up with that crap? He's like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Well, oh, my gosh, it was like sticking the arrow in, you know, Then I had to do it. And so I started scouring over maps and thinking how I do it. And I Get home. And Mary's like, what are you gonna do? I'm gonna become the first person in history to swim the entirely. And she's like, why? Because it's so cool. And she's like, how long is it going to take you? And I said, well, it's 187 miles long. And so even if I swim 10 miles a day, it's probably going to take me, you know, like close to three weeks. And she's like, so you're going to take three weeks off of work to swim a river and for a reason nobody cares about when we're trying to save up money to buy a house? And I'm like, yeah, it doesn't make sense, does it? And so I just kind of quietly tucked it all away. But about every 10 years, I pull those maps out and kind of think about it. But I totally, from about 2000 on, totally forgotten about it.
- [30:42]
Wow. But it had come up a couple times. It had come up a couple times in your life. I mean, you talked about swimming the English Channel, but this thought of swimming a long distance had come up several times in your life. What's interesting to me is when you swim a river, obviously, and I love to be on the water now. I like to be like in a tube.
- [30:59]
Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Nothing more fun than tubing. Yeah.
- [31:03]
To be on a river is so fun. And you talked about how, like, a river is alive. It's constantly moving. It's not resisting or fighting anything. Rivers move around, over, through. When it's blocked, it weights with quite quiet patience, slowly building up until it slips over, continues its journey. So you're on the river, there's eagles and there's people that talk to you with your dad. But in order to get to the spot that you could do it, you had to do a lot of training. And that training is boring. It's on your own. It's in a pool. You're not seeing eagles. How did you find the motivation to swim lap after lap after lap after lap?
- [31:41]
Well, I thought it would be the last thing I ever do. I thought, if I'm going to go out. What I did, Jenny, was we are taught in America, especially if you get cancer, the first thing all your families and friends say is, don't. Please recover or don't get well. What does everybody say? Fight it. You got to fight cancer. Well, the problem is, after a few years, I realized it's not a fair fight and I wasn't winning. And so I thought, man, and keeping in that state of fight or flight puts your body in constant tension, and that's not a way you're going to heal or recover. And so I traded fighting cancer for loving life. And that's a leap. But every day I would ask myself, am I fighting or am I loving? As hard as it was to get to the pool, it was out of my great love for my daughter and for a legacy. Even if I died swimming the Willamette, I would leave her with a legacy of courage and hope. I would be swinging for the fence, so to speak, rather than just be a helpless victim. I felt like even if I died, she have something to hold on to and be proud. And so that's what I did. But the swimming, getting ready for that year, the first time, you know, usually a lap takes me about 45 seconds or so. I did 11 laps the first time, and it took me over an hour because I'd swim one length and have to just rest and breathe and rest and breathe and rest and breathe. It was just so horrible. But when I got out, it was the first time I felt like myself since my wife had died. And I just felt so proud of myself and so back in control, like I was back in the driver's seat. But as time went on, it became just excruciatingly difficult. And I realized two things. Number one, all my life, I had done what I call soldier through. I'd put my head down because one of my good and bad traits is I'm probably the most stubborn person you'll ever meet. And so once I decide to do something, you're gonna have to kill me before I don't do it. And so I used that to my benefit. But each time I did, I remembered times I'd been stubborn with Mary. And I promised God and myself that if I ever fell in love again, or even in my relationship with my family members and my daughter, I'd never use that for power control, but for good. And so I was trying to learn how to use that stubbornness for the right. The second thing is, my mantra was the extraordinary becomes possible when you make it impossible to remain ordinary. So I put up several gates or roadblocks between bailing out, even on that day, what I had to do. For example, I was living in a little duplex, which was really weird to be renting again for the first time in 30 years. And living is the first time I'd ever lived alone because I'd gone from my parents to living with my team. I was on a pretty good soccer Team to living at college in the dorm, then living with Mary. I never lived alone. And so I'm by myself in a dark little duplex. It would been pretty easy to bail. Nobody would have known. But I made roadblocks. This duplex was actually a pretty nice little duplex, but in order. Had a little garage. But in order to get to the garage, you had to go out the front door and into the garage. So every day, the only TV I had was I had a really nice TV screen. And I would take a USB cable from my laptop, and so the only way I could watch TV was through my laptop. So every night, right as I was going to bed, I'd take my laptop, I take it out to the car, I put it on the front seat. I'd pack my swim bag, put it on top of my laptop.
- [36:06]
Wow.
- [36:07]
So in order to back out, I'd have to walk out the front door, get in the garage, pull up the swim bag, take the laptop, and go back in. And there were two or three times I'm right in the middle of that. I'm like, what am I doing? And then the second thing I did with that, that would make it impossible, is I just respect my dad more than anybody. It was his 90th birthday yesterday. Back then, he was 78, 79. And I would call him up every night before I go to bed. Hey, tomorrow, this is when I'm gonna swim. This is how many laps I'm gonna swim. He's like, okay, as soon as you get done, give me a call. And he actually sounds exactly like that. And to know that he knew when I was gonna swim and how many laps I was gonna swim, there's no way I was gonna. He wouldn't have shamed me, But I just didn't want to be that guy in front of my dad. And so I put up barriers. So I tried never to soldier through, to enjoy the moments. And sometimes it was hard. Once I got up to two, three miles in the pool. Three miles in the pool is 108 laps. It's really hard to do your first lap. Okay, one down, 107 to go. And what I don't put in my book that made it even harder is I had lymphoma. And before I had lymphoma, I didn't know much about the lymph system. And they're your strainers. They're your filters. They filter all the toxins out of your blood, and they don't work unless you're moving. Well, moving as much As I was in the water and them being swollen and full of toxins, within about a half an hour after each swim, they would decompress and flood my blood with toxins. And so I might have really severe flu like symptoms for the rest of the day, if not an hour or two. So knowing that I not only had to get my rear in the pool and swim along, but then probably be sick afterwards, that made it tough. So I had to put many roadblocks up to not remain ordinary.
- [38:29]
Wow.
- [38:30]
Yeah.
- [38:30]
And you relate it to Mount Hood. Like you just have to keep going, right? You were, I walked out of that pool a changed man, which I thought was really cool. You're talking about the first time you could have been discouraged that it took you an hour to do the 11 laps, but you weren't discouraged. You have this determination. I felt strong, like I was stepping back into my identity. But on the hard days, you wrote, a lot of it is mental. Your body is tired and making excuses. Just don't have a conversation with that part of your mind. And you wrote, I learned early on that what separated people who experienced mountaintops from those who did not was the courage to get out there in the first place.
- [39:05]
Right.
- [39:05]
So like you said, walking to your car and the strength that came with refusing to quit. The same can be said about anything in life. It's not about how smart you are, how talented you are, how brave. It's about how much you are willing to risk and how long you can resist the urge to give up.
- [39:22]
Ginny Urich
Do you know what is mind numbingly frustrating? Health insurance. The paperwork, the random denials, the sky high premiums. And don't even get me started on trying to figure out what's actually covered. In fact, 1 in 5 Obamacare claims were denied last year. That's not just frustrating, it's unacceptable. That's why I want to tell you about crowd health. Crowd health isn't health insurance. It's something better. It is a community powered way to pay for health care. For $175 a month for an individual or $575 for a family of four or more, you get access to telemedicine, visits, discounted prescriptions, and a community of people who step in to help when unexpected medical events happen. There are no networks to navigate, no big insurance companies profiting off your pain, just real people helping each other. Let crowd health help you with your health care needs. Get started today for just $99 per month for your first three months by using code 1000hours@joincrowdhealth.com Crowd health is not insurance. Learn more at joincrowdhealth.com that's joincrowdhealth.com Code 1000hours Spring savings are in the air.
- [40:39]
Dean Hall
And at Ross, where they have savings on all the brands you love, from the latest fashion to outdoor decor and even pet supplies, savings are in every aisle. Go to ross and save 20 to 60% off other retailers prices on your favorite spring finds.
- [40:52]
Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebglis. After an initial dosing phase of 16.
- [41:01]
Weeks, about 4 in 10 people taking.
- [41:03]
EVGLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin. And most of those people maintained skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies.
- [41:28]
Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids.
- [41:31]
Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur.
- [41:36]
Tell your doctor if you have new.
- [41:37]
Or worsening eye problems.
- [41:38]
You should not receive a live vaccine.
- [41:40]
When treated with Ebglis. Before starting ebglis, Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about epglis and visit epglis.lynnlily.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-5979. So here's a really special thing. I thought this was really, really special, Dean. They say something like 80% of the time you ever spend with your children is by the time they're 12.
- [42:03]
Right.
- [42:03]
Because then after that, right then they're off and they're especially 13, 14, 15. They're off in there and they're or.
- [42:09]
They think you're a total dork and they don't want to hang around you until they're like 25 again.
- [42:13]
Yeah, they got their own thing going. You invited your parents on this journey. Your dad kayaked alongside of you even though he had never kayaked before. And your mom, she kayaked at the very end too. Or came out at the very end on the last day. But she was your person at all the different stops.
- [42:33]
Making sure that everybody dropped us off and picked us up.
- [42:37]
Yeah, yeah. And food and making sure all those logistics were taken care of. So what I thought that was such a special thing to have built those memories like, you know, yeah, you adventured as a kid, but to bring that full circle and have an adventure. What's it like to have an adventure with parents who are in their, you know, 70s?
- [42:57]
Dad was 79. They were both 79 when I did this in 2014. And I had six kayakers, guide boaters. Because when you're swimming a river, especially one that's as wild as the Willamette and it's big and as powerful, a lot of people don't know it, but if you've got even a 1 mile an hour current, if it shoves you up against a log jam or a rock, it creates 2,000 pounds of pressure. And I getting off it. And with these huge Douglas firs, especially the first six days or so, a lot of them were in the river that I'd have to swim around, under or through. And there were two or three hairpin turns that one time. That's why my email is swim, Dean, swim. Because at one time I came around this hairpin turn and I'm only inches away from getting shoved into a log jam. And during the first six days we had two rescue boaters with us kind of to teach dad how to read the river and then just to make sure I was safe. And Lou or Al, he's just this old wonderful ex professor from University of Oregon, very thoughtful, quiet man. And all of a sudden he's screaming, sweat, sweat. And so I did and luckily the current took me past the log jam. But yeah, it's just really important to have the guide boater. And two months before the swim, all but two of them backed out. And so I went to dad. He was helping me plan every stage because he planned so many multi day backpacks and, and mountain climbs. And then he was instrumental with Bob Foot in the hood to coast relay race out here in Oregon, that he knew how to break it down. And so he's helping me plan the swim. And so I went to him, said, man, all my guide boaters have bailed. He's like, well, let me see what we can do. And he calls me up the next day and he's like, hey, I got an idea. I think I've got the solution. I said, what's that? Dad, he's like, I'll do it. I'm like, oh, you'll do one? He's like, no, I'll do the whole thing. Tell the other two they can go. I'm like, dad, it's 187 miles. No problem. Dad, you're 79. That's okay. Dad, you've never kayaked before. I'll learn. So. So we did. We learned together for two months, doing practice swims on different stages of the Willamette. And, you know, I tell everybody, when you go after a big impossible dream, as you've already pointed out, Jenny, there are glimmers throughout your entire childhood. There are things that, you know, everybody's like, oh, I don't know what my purpose is now. You probably do. You probably just forgot because it wasn't responsible. And then what happens if you have the courage to take action? Miracles happen. For years, my profile, my website was called Swimming in Miracles. I've since changed it because people either thought it was a religious site or that I was bragging about how long the swim was. And I'm not bragger kind of guy, but I believe it because what happens is when you start to look and see miracles, then pretty soon they're all around you and you're swimming in them. And what happened when I went for this big, impossible dream? I had no idea my parents would join me. It happened organically and authentically. And then to get the 22 days on the river with them was just a miracle. Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday was Dad's 90th birthday, and he's got pneumonia. That's why I'm getting a little emotional. And he's. He's. We had to celebrate his birthday in the hospital. And he told me even yesterday that that was the adventure of his life. And so good things happen out of. Out of tragedy if you'll just let them.
- [47:17]
We never know. We never know how our dreams will intersect with the lives of other people. And I just thought that was the coolest thing that they went with you. And that was even in the book where. And it was like your mom had finished your dad's sentence and he said something like, it was a thrill. One of our greatest highlights. You know, they kind of jocked and turned there.
- [47:39]
Sure.
- [47:39]
And if you wouldn't have gone after your dreams, then they don't have that experience for themselves.
- [47:45]
I think it's really important for your viewers to know that the first time I went and told them, they first two times, mom cried and begged me to wait till I was in remission. And Dad's like, that's a dumb idea. So if you tell people big impossible dreams, don't expect them at first to be too thrilled. You might even, like me, get a very negative reaction. And people, if you don't quit, the people that love you will come around, but not at first. And I think it's really important for people to know that Even my wonderful parents were dead set against it for the first four months. Yeah, they tried to talk me out of it.
- [48:32]
Your wonderful, adventurous parents, because their life came around too. I mean, that's a full circle moment for them. They're climbing Mount Hood with you, and then they get to partake in this adventure with you as aging parents. And I just thought, what an incredible thing. It made me think, like, are there adventures that I could include my parents in or my. Or my in laws or, you know, and I hope that people are listening. They might think the same thing. Can we come full circle with that? Can we include? Include, you know, can we include and know that it will be meaningful for everyone in the long run? Here's what I just came up with. Odine, do you know what rhymes with Willamette? I swam it.
- [49:11]
Yeah, we had T shirts that said the Willamette. I swam it.
- [49:17]
All right. That's it. That's what I'm going.
- [49:19]
Great mind. That's good.
- [49:20]
Okay, I did it. All right. I'm not very creative. It already gave up. Okay, let's tell the listeners what happened. You finish it.
- [49:28]
Okay.
- [49:29]
And your leukemia is gone. And it was a type of leukemia that wasn't supposed to ever go away.
- [49:35]
No cll, the current allopathic medicine lore, is that once you have it, all you can do is manage it. It ruins your immune system. It's a chronic illness, and someday you'll probably die. In 2008, I almost died of pneumonia for that very reason. I just. My immune system was so wrecked, it really couldn't fight the pneumonia. And, boy, that's a horrible way to go. So that's what current western medicine says. But I never really bought it. I believe more in the holistic, that if your body creates it, unless you've been poisoned, like I believe my wife was, she had brain cancer and a little town that she grew up in and. And then the agriculture. I mean, one of her cutest stories, until it just wasn't, was she used to hold the flags for the crop dusters. And she'd be so dusted, she'd be white, and then she'd play snowman. The rest of the day and sprayed with ddt. And so that's why they think many of those folks are dying of brain tumors back there. But for many of us like me, it's that constant state of fight or flight, being all tied up emotionally and not letting the body ever decompress. I believe that my body had created it to kind of get my attention and that if I did the right things, made the modifications in the way I thought and felt and acted in my routines daily, that within 15 to 18 months. I don't know if you've heard it, but within 15 to 18 months, every cell in our body sloughs off and regenerates. So we have a totally new body on the outside of 18 months. So I just hoped both times that if I did the right kinds of things, ate the right kinds of foods, thought the right kinds of thoughts and found ways to let my feelings go, that I would get well. And both times, I did. But the second time, I had no idea how powerful nature was and how ready and prepared it is to be our ally. Back when I did the willamette, it was 40 to 42 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 days. People have told me, oh, that sounds pretty warm. Yeah.
- [52:16]
Now we live near Lake Michigan. That is not warm.
- [52:19]
That is not warm. If you think it's warm this time of year, go ahead and fill your bathtub up with just tap water and get in it for a while. It's probably. Probably at 55 to 58 degrees, which most people would call freezing. Yeah, go 15 degrees below that, it's cold. I knew that that's probably why no one had swam. It is hard, and people don't like to do hard things. So I was prepared to handle that. But this was way before I'd ever heard of Wim Hof. Nobody was doing cold plunges. I don't even know was Instagram a thing? And 2014 wasn't to me. And so I'd never heard. I don't even think the science of cold plunging was out there, but I was in a constant hypothermic state. Had to get out every 30 to 45 minutes and run in place or do jumping jacks to warm my body up and then get back in and do it again. Did that eight to ten times a day. And so it was just hard. Little did I know. And this is such a great metaphor for life, Jenny. The hardest thing you face is what heals you.
- [53:34]
Wow. Well, what's so cool? As you said, your leukemia was gone, but you still have your lymphoma, right? So you wrote, if the river helped my leukemia, there has to be something to help my lymphoma. And you started to go to the forest from Thursday night to Friday afternoon. And it says after a year of going to the forest just once per week, my lymph nodes had shrunk back to a normal size. And By March of 2016, the lymphoma was gone. I was completely cancer free. I didn't know my cancer would vanish by me pursuing my dream to become the first person in history to swim the entire length of the Willamette River. I didn't even think it might help me in that way. I was just trying to live while I had the chance. What a book, Dean. What a book. It's called the Wild Cure. I think that kids would like it. Think you could read it as a family? The subtitle is From Death to Life on Oregon's Longest River. I want the listeners to know that you offer a lot. You offer coaching. You offer group coaching. You offer retreats, adventure retreats. They can adventure with you. People can find that atthewildcure way.com and I'll make sure I put the link in the show notes. You also have something that's very new, only been going for about 45 days called Natura.
- [54:44]
Right?
- [54:44]
Did I pronounce that right? Okay, yes. Tell us about that.
- [54:48]
Natura. The biggest DM I get on Instagram is, well, that's all fine for you, Dean. You live in this wonderful place called Oregon. I live in India or Indiana.
- [54:59]
Kansas.
- [55:00]
Yeah, or Kansas. I can't do what you do. And that's not true. But in order to answer their question, I need to know their personality type, their fitness level, their preferences, and even how they feel about environmental practices and do they use them in their lives. And so I spent quite a bit of time and put my clinical hat on because I've been a licensed clinical therapist forever and you know, tried to develop my own. Not tried, but did. Got nerdy enough to develop my own personality type test and preference test and environmental or ecological routine or strategy test and fitness level self report, fitness level test. Stirred all of them in. Did many tries and trials and attempts at what works best. Narrowed it down to 46 questions so that it doesn't take too long, about 15 minutes tops. And then that gives me a real good blended profile of who you are and what you would like most because there are all sorts of strategies. Not too many people are going to swim 187 miles or go out into the forest. Some people might just want to go garden or, you know, smell flowers or put their feet in the grass or, you know, go boating. I mean, there's literally hundreds of nature connection strategies. So once I get this profile, then Natura, by the way, stands for Nature Adaptive Therapy, Unifying Rewilding and AI. And it's taking ancient rewilding or nature connection practices and blending it with this new thing that we've got called AI. And so once we get your profile, then I have AI look through all the hundreds of strategies and pick which ones are most suited to you. Your personality, your preferences, your fitness level. Then I have AI analyze within a 50 mile radius of your home to tell you where you can do those things. And so far it's been just the best answer for people who want to do what I do, who want to spend more time outside in safe, happy ways that fit them. Yeah.
- [57:25]
And fit where they live.
- [57:26]
Yeah.
- [57:26]
Wow. So people can find everything@thewildcureway.com Correct.
- [57:30]
Right.
- [57:30]
Okay.
- [57:31]
Or I made as kind of a spiritual promise to myself that I'd never think I was that big a guy, because I'm not. So if you send me a dm, I'm going to answer you right now. It's become kind of a full time job, but I'm going to keep that promise to myself. And so if you contact me through my website or through Instagram, you're going to hear back from me. Unless you're just really, really toxically snotty. But I can't imagine any of your viewers would be. And one of the things that's my favorite thing to do and all the things I do is take a couple or a family or a single mom with her kids out on an adventure. Oh, those are fun.
- [58:19]
Oh, it's so cool. Wow. Isn't it interesting how you could never have imagined that this one adventure, and that was a big adventure, but this one adventure could have snowballed into so many things. It's incredible.
- [58:35]
And I wish I could say, well, I was smart, or I had it planned, or, you know, I'm so wonderful that it's just me. But if you talk to any of my friends or family, they'll be like, nah, Dean's an ordinary guy. And it kind of hurt my feelings. The first few speeches I had after I got done with the Willamette, I'd have a question and answer to time and people would raise their hand and say, dean, I thought you'd be bigger. Dean, I, I Thought you'd be stronger looking, Dean. I thought you'd look more athletic. And I. It was hurting my feelings. So I called up dad and he's like, well, that's just what you want. I'm like, what? And he's like, what they're telling you is you look like them. And so if you could do it, it gives them hope. And I thought, oh, that's true. I'm just an. I always wanted to be somebody special. I'm not. But that's really the power of my story. If you do what I did, you'll get what I got and probably better. What I found. I not only work with cancer patients and sick folks, I work with a lot of people trying to find their big dream and know how to execute it like I did. I found time and time again that if you do what I did, you'll get what I got. Because I'm entirely ordinary.
- [59:52]
I kind of feel the same way. Like, I feel like I'm your everyday mom. Like, I'm like, slightly overweight. We don't have a clean home. It doesn't look like some model home with cool decorations. And, you know, I'm not good at this, that or the other thing. But I. But I, you know, I think there's a place for that, right? There's gotta be a place for sort of the everyday person who is. Is trying. Who is trying things.
- [60:14]
And because Almost all of us, 80%, 85% are everyday people. That's probably why you have such a powerful voice with your folks, is you're relatable. That's one of the things that drew me to you. If you would have been some kind of influencer, Kardashian or something, I probably wouldn't have felt like you were real. And this was somebody I really wanted to connect with myself even.
- [60:44]
What a gift. Dean, this has been wonderful. I'm so glad I read your book. I want to end with this sentence. This is out of the Wild Cure. If you refuse to quit, Life hands you little gifts for not giving up every time.
- [61:00]
Not just sometimes, every time. Of that you can be sure.
- [61:05]
Dean, thank you so much for being here.
- [61:07]
Thank you, Jenny, for having me. This has been even better than I thought it would be. And I was expecting a lot, so thanks.
- [61:13]
That's awesome. Same for me. Same for me. If you work in quality control at a candy factory, you know, strict safety regulations come with the job. It's why you partner with Grainger. Grainger helps you find the high quality.
- [61:28]
And compliant products your business needs.
- [61:30]
To inspect, detect and help correct issues. And the sweetest part is everyone gets.
- [61:36]
A product that's as safe to eat.
- [61:37]
As it is delicious. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you're shopping while working, eating, or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of the hunt. But are you getting the thrill of the best deals? Rakuten shoppers do they get the brands they love with the most savings and cash back, and you can get it too. Start getting cash back at your favorite stores like Urban Outfitters, Samsung and Adidas, and even stack sales on top of cash back. It's easy to use and you get your cash back through PayPal or check. The idea is simple. Stores pay Rakuten for sending them shoppers and Rakuten shares the money with you as cash back. Download the free Rakuten app and never miss a deal. Or go to rakuten.com to start getting the most bang for your buck. That's R A K U T E N.