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Journey on Magic lies within the trails we ride. You're listening to the Journey On Podcast with Warwick Schiller.
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Warrick is a horseman, trainer, international clinician
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and author who helps empower horse people from all over the world with the
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skills, knowledge and mindsets needed to create
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trusting partnerships with their horses.
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Warrick offers a free seven day trial to his comprehensive online video library that includes hundreds of full length training videos and several home Study courses@videos.warwickshiller.com
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G' day everyone. Welcome back to the Journey On Podcast. I'm your host Warwick Schiller and my special guests. That's right, guests. There's two of them this week, Bernie Harvitz and Julia Carpenter. They're a married couple and they're up to some amazing things in the world. So Bernie is a long rider, which means he's ridden more than 10,000 miles on a horse. I think Bernie's a long rider, an adventure sailor who has sailed alone around the world. He's taken a mule and a wagon from Canada to Mexico. He's ridden a mule and a pony from coast to coast in the U.S. so from the, I think from the East Coast, North Carolina to San Diego in the bottom of California. And he's ridden two of our mules from our farm in western North Carolina to Idaho, which is, which is, you know, 2/3 of the way across America. He's written two books about his trips and filmed a movie called the Lost Sea Expedition which had been on Amazon prime for quite a while and now you can actually watch it on Free on YouTube. It was only put on there a couple of days ago. I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard it's pretty amazing. And Julia is an equine seer and the founder of the Two Step Way. The Two Step Way helps horse owners and caregivers learn how to be with their horses and how to really see them to promote connection, trust and health. Julia is interested in helping animals, particularly horses, heal from trauma and has studied intently with that goal in mind. She's coined the phrase and teaches the deep meaning of see the being. She has a degree in Wildlife Management and Environmental Policy from Boston University and Tufts and has worked in the wildlife and environmental fields. She's a painter and her animal paintings have been shown in galleries and shops in Boston area and in Western North Carolina. So yeah, it was great chatting with these two. They've got some amazing stories to tell. Hope you guys enjoy this episode of the podcast as much as I did recording it. Bernie and Julia, welcome to the Journey on podcast.
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A
Thanks Warwick. Great to be here.
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B
This, you know, reading you guys bios, it's like we don't have enough time to even scratch the surface of what's going on in a couple of hours here, but we're gonna, we're gonna try. Julie, why don't you start out and tell us, you know, tell us what exactly you're doing in the world these days and we might unravel how you got there, but we might just hear some stories from along the way too.
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C
Yeah. So my name is Julia Carpenter and I am the founder of this two step way, which is a way of being how to be with a horse and how to really see them. And so what I do in my work is I try to teach people what they're transmitting. Oftentimes we aren't aware. I know a lot of your audience is aware, but a lot of people aren't aware of what we're transmitting with our nervous systems when we work with our horses and sometimes with our expectations of them or with our, our just our distractions. So horses are neuroceptors and so they're reading our nervous, their, our nervous systems and our gestures and so forth. And they're not so much reading what you think you might be presenting to them. They're sort of going on the. More what they're seeing, what they're finding in your mood. And so I teach people, as you do, how to be really present and how to. You can't really control your own nervous system, but you can, you can meditate, you can calm yourself, you can do active things that actually then reflect in the nervous system. And that's what the horses are reacting to. So for me, I teach them that and then I teach them how to deeply see. And my type of seeing is really, I know, similar to you in the sense that you know, you're looking, you're truly allowing them to be. So you're looking at them without a judgment. You're looking at them in the present moment. You're looking at maybe their, what their posture is, the face, facial expressions they're making. And you're reacting on a moment to moment level with them. And so it ends up being very right brain work. And it's, it's just fantastic because I can do this with a horse and they will tell me what's going on with them. They will tell me the relationship with their owners. And to some people it looks like I'm some sort of animal communicator. But really what I'm doing is watching much more gesture physiology, where they are in their nervous system, how they're reacting. Are they sort of doing things that we consider anxiety ridding? Are they giving me a lot of calming signals or just displacement behavior? And then from there I let them know, just as I know you do. I let them know that I'm truly seeing them right then in the moment. And that makes them feel a lot more secure. I become a lot more important to them or the person their owner does from knowing how to do that kind of work. And so that's basically what I do.
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B
When I first made contact with you on email or whatever you guys were, you guys were. That wasn't what you were doing. You were off elevating around. You were. Had something to do with sailing and wild horses. And what the heck was that?
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A
Yeah, so this. So I'm going, this is Bernie Hart, so I'm going to jump in Julia's husband. And you got that email like probably the day after a 40 knot gale hit our boat which lives in a hay barn and we were on anchored off Shackelford island, observing the hundred something horses that live there. And so to kind of frame this up, Julie and I are both very interested in horses, you know, behavior. I'm really interested in sailing as well. So we thought let's take the boat there to Shackelford. It's a nine mile long island, bottom of the outer Banks of North Carolina, quarter mile wide. And let's go observe this incredibly unique band or bands of wild horses. These hundreds. So wild horses from the vantage of not as day visitors who go there on a boat the morning leaving the afternoon, but let's go spend two weeks going through what they go through. If there's a gale, holy crap. Because we didn't know there was going to be a gale. And that depth, that a bit of adrenaline that really gave us just a real much better understanding of these horses out on their own. How they grow as a group over 400 years when people don't really mess with. So that's where you enter your email intersecting our anchor.
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C
And for me, Warren, my interest in that was to go listen to a horse that lives in their own environment the way that they would choose to live surrounded by other generations of their their band. And to watch and see what behaviors I saw out there. And I went with a couple of questions. One was to watch them do orienting behavior. So anything novel that appeared like say us coming over a dune or something, I would watch their reaction and how the Rest the whole band would react to those moments and also how they pay attention to each other and what it is that they ask for and make that known to one another. Because I feel. And I didn't know what I was going to get for answers, but I thought that would give me a framework within which to really pay attention and watch them. And some of what I came away with was not that at all. It was so much more valuable than that. About how different the lives of horses choosing to live the way that they would live on their own versus the way they live with us. And it gave me a new, even deeper, tremendous respect for the efforts and ability that they have to regulate their nervous systems when they are not being given the opportunity to do it. How they would normally do it.
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B
Yeah, how. Let me ask you about these horses. How did they get there, you know, and how long have they been there? You said something about 400 years.
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C
The 400 plus years is what they think. And originally they thought they came off the Spanish ships that got shipwrecked on all the sandbars around there. As Bernie will tell you, the sailing is a little tricky to know because there's so much sand around there. So you can see how that could happen. But they think it was more horses from Spain that had been brought to the islands and from the islands they had gotten, you know, they had come by Shackford, maybe gotten shipwrecks then or been brought on or were in the gene pool of the local horses that had been traded to the settlements. However, it's been. They've been wild on that island for over 400 years. None of the generations of people living there remember a time when there wasn't wild horses there, there. And that's how they came to be protected. And I think they're one of the only band of wild horses that has a government mandate to keep the population numbers at a certain level. And they actually have that as legislation because the islanders did not want them to be removed from the island. And the National Park Service, when it took it over, had wanted to take them off the island.
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A
So just to jump in real quickly to just describe one of these horses, it's a. It's amazing war because they kind of evolved away from the kind of the standard slices of genetic stock we see in feral horses or mustangs, quarter horses, some draft horses was none of that. These horses evolved into these very compact, very short jaws for they live off cord grass, centipede grass, which are just very low nutrient feeds. So they were really different. Yeah, they looked really resemble anything.
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C
We found a skull, and it really looked very different. And you can see it in their faces. I think they have something called the Q2 variant gene, which is only seen in Spanish mustangs. And there's the ones in the Prior mountains. And the Shackelford ponies are the only ones that they really see that gene in. And they actually are bringing. Trying to get some of those genes preserved back in Spain. So this is a very important herd of horses even, you know, worldwide.
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B
I'm just looking at pictures of them here, and I don't see, you know, a lot of, I don't know, differences than really any other horses.
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C
To us, we noticed a lot of over. There seems to be a fair amount of overbite and then a very sort of a deeper. A deeper jaw. You know, it's. It's subtle. Like, certainly there are some ponies that resemble that, but they don't have. I think of the skulls of most horses being a little more elongated than these.
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A
Very squat. And the. The primary colors are, you know, bay or chestnut or sorrel. Really no other color aside from no pintos, no whites, no pintos, no pace. And it was just. There was a really interesting feeling of uniformity, both physically and an understanding that ran through. You just felt like generation after generation of these horses knew who was in their band and the band next to them and how they were related.
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C
And they're very. And they're quite short. They're like 12. 12 hands to 14.
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B
So they're a bit like the chink.
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C
Yeah, yeah. They aren't as though they're. They're genetically a little different, a little more special than the Shinka Tig, but that's this. They're all called banker ponies, and they're all from that same, you know, the Eastern. Eastern Shore bank of Ponies.
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A
Banker ponies. Yeah. That's like a term of endearment, bankers. This being from the Outer Bank.
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B
Okay, what. What are the Outer Banks?
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A
So the Outer Banks, if you look at North Carolina, imagine it being like a. Kind of like a key, like to an old, you know, old housekeep. Pointy on the left, fat on the right. And then the Outer Banks is a chain of islands that runs down along the coast. It's a barrier set, a barrier of islands. And they start in Virginia, run about a third of the way down the coast of North Carolina. The most famous places like Cape Hatteras. And then the Banks kind of turned back south a little bit and rejoined the coast. They're Shifting. They've always shifted. They think 30,000 years ago, they could have been 15 or 20 miles farther out in the Atlantic Ocean, and they're moving east over time. And, and that's. Shackelford is kind of at the bottom of those islands.
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B
Okay, so. Yes. So the term outer banks is. It's one of those regional terms that if you live there, you just say it like it's no big deal. But for someone like me, like, like, I, I, I thought that was. I thought it was the, the financial institution that was closer to the edge of town or something or other, you
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know, as opposed to the inner banks, which does exist. There's inner banks and outer banks.
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B
Yeah, well, that's. And so, so you guys were. When you said you were observing horses off a boat, you actually went onto the island. Yes. And the other thing, I was just looking up the pictures of them. I'm not sure they're actually wild horses, because I saw lots of pictures of tourists, like, taking, you know, so there's. They've probably had a lot of interactions with humans. Have they?
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C
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to comment on that point, because so sort of every summer, that beach just gets completely covered with tourists. And so. But they have. They have a rule, the National Park Service, of trying to keep the people 50ft away or more from the length
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of the school bus.
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C
And they have a. They have a pretty horrible time trying to do that.
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B
I was gonna tell.
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C
You know, and they have some pretty.
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A
You see where this is going.
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C
They have some pretty serious problems. But given that, I've got to say that these are not ponies or the ones that we saw. They do not try to walk right up to you. They continue having their behaviors and going on with their lives the way they should. And what is so terrible about the fact that people won't respect that is that that starts to interfere with how they actually do live. The neat thing is I don't think it's happened enough to wreck it. It's one of the wonderful things that you can actually go. And if you're polite and respectable and really trying to understand what they're doing, you'd sit at a good distance from them and just observe them. And when you can, you feel like you're given an opportunity with something that's still living wild in bands. You know, there's no. They're not just like a big unorganized group of horses out in a pasture. There's a very special hierarchy. There's all these bands. There's parts of the island where the stallions defend their territories. And then there's parts of the island where it's harder for them to because there's more dunes and trees and so forth. So they actually, those bands can kind of coexist, but they keep very clear social networks and you can sit quietly and observe a number of things. You can see mother nursing a foal. You can see stallion bringing a mare back into its band. You can watch, I mean you can really literally see and follow the story of these horses lives.
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A
And what's really, what's an amazing overlap is if you go out west to look, you know, for wild mustangs you'll see them, but the moment as you know they see you, they could be gone or smell you or they're gone. So it's really hard unless you're observing them through a telephoto or something to get a sense of the dynamic between a main herd stallion and a lieutenant stallion. Like to get hours and hours of that. It's tough out west. It's tough and they're moving. Whereas on, on Shackleford it is compressed. And it reminded me a little bit more of being like in the Galapagos where there are no apex predators that eat the giant tortoise. So the tortoise are doing their tortoise things and they don't really worry. But it's fascinating to watch tortoise do tortoise things and wild horses or wild ponies do wild horse things for long blocks of time. And actually where we went, we didn't see anybody.
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C
Yeah. So we were lucky we were there when it's still considered kind of stormy and cold. And that was one of the good things about it. And I guess the bugs get horrible there in the summer. So we were lucky for two reasons, that we had no people the evenings at all of the few people on the beach during the day sometimes. But mostly we didn't see anybody.
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B
Yeah. And the thing about the bugs. No bugs in 40 knot gales, you know.
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A
No. Yeah, but, but, but when they hit your little mesh on the boat, the bronze mesh, they go right through it.
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B
They get blez.
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A
It's.
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B
They get.
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A
Yeah, I know. I mean to, to good.
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B
I was going to say. Yeah, they get, they get blown right through that.
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A
Yeah, yeah. I mean to put this into perspective, like Blackbeard was the famous pirate on the Outer Banks. His Queen Anne's Revenge got hung up on the sandbar and was in effect scuttled maybe five miles from where we were.
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B
Oh really?
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A
Like it's yes, it is. What like swirling sands. We were sitting in the boat at 9:30 at night, dead calm, mirror surface. And we're like, should we play a game of gin rummy? Very refined. And all of a sudden this little breeze comes out. It's beautiful, romantic, you know, it's like, you know, Julia blowing on my ear and she's like, that's a beautiful breeze. And then all of a sudden, bam. This gale comes up. The boat gets smashed over. We haul back, the boat is pushed back on both of our anchors. I crawl out. It's pitch dark out, the wind drops a little bit and I look on our. We have a little wind speed indicator and it's 30 and a 38 and a half knots, which is 40 miles an hour. And I later learned that ocracoke, the next two islands up, they saw 70 knots.
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B
Wow.
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A
So out of the blue it was not forecast. So it was a real eye opener to the conditions that these horses are out there and why it was such an honor to have spent time clinging on for two weeks to get this depth of.
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C
Yeah, I mean you get a real, real appreciation. What they must ride out in the middle of the winter. You know, it's very low and you walk across it from the bayside, which is all those big sandbars to the oce. It's just this narrow little strip less than, I don't know, maybe a quarter mile, quarter mile in some of its narrow places. And you just think it's amazing that they can make it not much higher than sea level. And so, yeah, it was pretty amazing. And one of the things that both of us liked the best is we went one day, we were walking along the bayside trying to get back to the boat and there had been all the tide had come in and there was all this sort of downed trees where we were trying to pass. And so we went inland a little bit. We went up into the highest piece of land on Shackelford and it's this forest. And we sort of crawled in through the forest and then it opened up and it. And we both got at the same time a sense that we were entering a cathedral in a place that all of a sudden there was, you know, there was no more poop on the ground. Like the horses seem to kind of put stud piles all over the place. And you just look around on the grassland part and you'll just see, you know, manure around. But this forest was almost like a free of manure and it had all these little trails through it and you kind of got the sense that the horses had that as sort of a sacred space, that during storms that they would all go. That it was understood that you didn't really enter it otherwise that, you know, you would be there and you could nibble what maybe is in there. But otherwise, I mean, they eat everything, every little teeny pennywort growing in the sand. Anything they find they're nibbling on. But this looked like it was some kind of, you know, nature's law that you leave that for sanctuary during storm. And it was, it was phenomenal to see.
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B
Wow, I bet that was beautiful. So Bernie, you mentioned sailing in your bio it says you spent five years sailing. Where did you sail to for five years?
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A
Pretty much wherever there was a horse.
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C
Around the world.
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A
Around the world, really? You know, that was my excuse to. Yeah, so I went around the world. I set off in Oriental, North Carolina, went to Beaufort, where we were recently, went down the Caribbean. And this, this was a. I paid like 10 grand for the boat. This was in the early 90s, had water pipes for mass, old steel boat. The engine died in St. Thomas. And so I needed a job. So I had, growing up writing English, I wrote as a steeplechase jockey, did three day venting. And so I had my parents send down my riding boots and my britches. And so my luck being what it is, I found work there very quickly in St. Thomas riding horses. And then I kept sailing, went through the Caribbean and I would go back to this stable. They would hire me to come back to give lessons. They ended up going through the, across the Pacific Ocean and I would fly back from, flew back from like Colombia, Tahiti. And then as I got farther into the Pacific, I just, I got fascinated by the horses. The few horses I was finding like on an atoll called Aitutaki, little horse there. I spent a week riding around the island visiting the villagers. Ended up in New Zealand, two years and the boat at this point was trash. There's only so far you can sail a water pipe as a mast. It was shot. So I had a little newspaper column called Ship to Shore. I'm a writer that started me out and I spent the next two years fixing the boat and then droving and mustering cattle.
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B
The stock in New Zealand.
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A
And then in New Zealand. In New Zealand. Oh, it's fabulous.
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B
Where in New Zealand were you?
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A
So I was in Fungare, north island. And Alan Crawford, he was up in towards car carry north part of the island. And he had this amazing niche where New Zealand is. You Know, it has a fair bit of cattle. And the larger operations shipped their cattle from summer to winter quarters. Alan would have been in his late 60s, big lantern jaw, big guy. And he'd found a niche where he would first muster, which is find all the cattle, you know, with his dogs and help and me get them all into a mob. And then drove them, which is pushing them by horse over the road two days to the winter quarters and then back. So that was a fabulous insight to a way of, of working stock which is disappearing. It's just, it's, you know, that, that was a. An incredible insight. And then from there went to New Caledonia, northern New Zealand, over Australia, down under Cape of Good Hope, and then 65 days back to St. Thomas and home.
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C
So across the doldrums.
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A
Yeah, through the, the horse latitudes.
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B
How long a boat is this?
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A
So this was 34 and a half feet.
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B
And you saved it around. Saddled around the Cape of Good Hope.
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A
Good Hope. My mom, the Cape of Storms, but my mom had an even better name for it. So my mom was Swiss and she had great geography, but she would mix it up with the other Cape, Cape Horn. So she would call it the Cape of Good Corn. For some reason she thought it was a Cape of Good Corn.
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B
Okay.
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A
And it's rough. You got the Agulhas current. It's very cold sailing, north winds against it. Got through that and then, yeah, made it home. It was a very simple boat. It had originally had a hand crank engine, so mentioned water pipes for masts when I started out. No winches, but it was just good enough to do the trip with. And there's a real value in doing things with things that are just good enough to get you started as opposed to waiting for the perfect boat, the perfect horse. You know, I, I hesitate to say the perfect spouse.
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B
That's. So how many crew did you have?
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A
Me just.
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B
You did that alone?
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A
Yeah. Yeah. This was bonkers. Oh yeah. So I had, I had one crew. So my dad was 72, bum hip. He sailed from North Carolina to St. Thomas with me and then he went home. Incredible thing. Took us 19 days. Everyone else, they did not have water pipes for mass. They had actual hundred thousand dollars boats. I had $10,000 boats. They got there in like 12 days. We show up 19 days. We got these big long beards. He's got, he's stuck like an earring in his ear. And he's a very conservative guy. And after that he left home and I went all alone. It was, it was an analog period. This was 98. It was before all the electronic autopilots, before the collision avoidance radar, before GPS plotters. I used paper maps. I used to. To keep from getting run over at night. I used. It was in a wind up egg time. It was a rooster. I remember it so well. This little rooster. 20 minutes. Why turn the rooster's head? 20 minutes would go off. You look for a ship. It was a different era.
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B
You would sleep for 20 minutes at a time.
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A
Yes, because that's the time it takes for a freighter or fishing boat to come over the horizon and run over you. 20 minutes.
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B
Oh really? So if you can't see him, you can have a little 20 minute nap and then. Yeah, yeah.
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A
And like it just totally messes up your sleep cycle. Like I was like, God, I was like hallucinating.
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B
I was gonna ask you, does that. What is. What is sleeping for 20 minutes and waking up for a couple do to you over a long period of time?
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A
Oh for. You were incredibly adaptable. So I would sleep do that all night long, especially in shipping channels. And then I would sleep three or four hours in the morning. Which is incidentally the time when most single handers get run over by a ship. It's in the morning when they're asleep or they sail onto an island the night after they've been up all 20 minutes. But it's a very thin margin when you're sleep deprived and if you have anything go a little wrong. Like I had a little tooth infection and that led to like there was no starlink. I didn't have any communications. I was literally launching bottles with messages in the ocean and I got this infection and I just like, I hallucinated. There was like this gesture with like the, you know, the hat and he's like chasing me and I'm climbing up a church and I like grab him and I like throw him out of the boat. And it was just.
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C
But you said you passed out on your deck and you woke up two days later.
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A
Oh yeah. Passed out at one point in the boat and woke up. It's like a day later. The boat just kind of.
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C
But not from drinking. Not from drinking from the infection in his teeth.
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A
Yeah, just I got a really bad infection another time. So it was a different world where you couldn't. And this is something that we've left and we're leaving more and more the analog world where we can't reach out for an instant Google answer or an instant medical advice. And there's a lot of advantages to that world that we have that in. But at that point, there was none of that. And so it was a defining time by not being able to escape a bunch of those. That craziness.
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B
Yeah, there's something too, that. Oh, I've told this story in the podcast before, but I love telling this story. Met a lady in Australia a few years ago at a clinic, and she was from South Africa, and she'd been in Australia for like, seven years. And I said, how often do you go back to South Africa? And she said, I've been back every, you know, for a visit every year I've been here. And I said, so how do you like Australia compared to South Africa? And she said, oh, there's less energy here. And I thought she meant Australia is a cool, beachy vibe, or whatever, you know. I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, when I get off the plane in South Africa, there's an energy in the air that I can feel. I can sense it. And I said, have you got any idea what that is? She goes, oh, I know exactly what that is. And I said, what is it? And she said. She said, in South Africa, every man and animal wakes up in the morning knowing today is the day I could die. And it's a different. And you'd be like that on that. That boat sailing around the ocean. I mean, you. There is no guarantees. And. And you're. I don't know, I just feel like your interaction with the world is completely different when there is no guarantee of things working out. Right.
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A
There's not. And you know this on a. On a boat. So Seabird is named. My boat is. She was 12ft wide. And so you really had it in your head that you're always six feet. So if you're standing in the middle of the boat, you are six feet from drowning, and there's nobody out there. And it. That margin gets much closer than it does day to day.
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B
Right.
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A
And. And there's a. There's a terrifying beauty in that, but it's not something I think that we seek out because it's a. It's a pretty intense place to live permanently, you know, if that makes sense.
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C
Yeah, it's nice to know that there's some leftover ability to get to that type of vulnerability. Like you were just saying that. That feeling that maybe you could be eaten or that you're just out there and you're. You're going to have. Have only your faith to rely on what, you know, whatever that is. And when I'm not as familiar with it as Bernie, because I don't get myself into quite the same situations, but when I was in his boat and that I just work hard and that storm started and, you know, we were just in there and it was pitch black and, you know, the anchors are out, but if they hold, we don't know. And I said to Berry, well, you know, is there anything we can do? And no, there's really nothing we can do. So it's sort of a wonderful feeling of, okay, you know, you. You change like all of a sudden you. You're like, well, you just have to sit with that. And I think there's something in that. That's maybe when you come through the other side. Really exhilarating.
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B
Yes.
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C
Like just something really cool.
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A
And, you know, there's something to. In that moment that's a real animal like state.
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C
Calm down, slow down, calm down.
- [36:56]
A
We. It was fascinating. We. We felt this animal like state where everything was beyond our control and our bodies just actually almost save energy, made like a tranquilizer. So, yeah, the next morning when we got up, we felt like, yeah, really.
- [37:17]
C
And it was flowing just as hard as it flew for 24 hours straight.
- [37:23]
A
But. But those are. As we become more and more used to our comforts and, you know, that. That drifts away. It does. It's not somewhere you can live permanently, but I think it's important that everyone visits it on their own terms as possible.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah, most, Most certainly did. What I was just thinking about the, the six feet from drowning thing. That's like, you always only six feet from drowning. When you were hallucinating, were you aware while you're hallucinating that you are six feet from drowning? Like, were you. Was there some part in the hallucination? Like, I still. Were you still conscious of not being anywhere near the edge or you have no idea? Like, you could have fallen over, fallen over the side easily? No.
- [38:20]
A
You know, it's fascinating. There was a different time when that was an issue. In those moments of feverish hallucination, I think the animal wants to live. The animal wants to live. And there was a little voice inside myself that said, stay close to the center of whatever your universe is. And that was my little boat. So my reptilian brain kept me below decks with my craziness.
- [38:50]
B
Okay. Yep.
- [38:52]
A
Where it was different was on calm days after not speaking to somebody for 40 days, my voice started going away, started losing my voice. My skin on my hand came off. I almost had, like, baby skin. The hearing got super intense. That's when I occasionally thought, what if I step over the side of Seabird onto this beautiful smooth water and start walking. That's when occasionally I thought, whoa, stop. It wasn't in the hallucination craziness. It was in the quiet times. That's when it was like a little half halt, like, oh, no, don't do that. That's when it happened.
- [39:45]
B
Yeah, see, that'd be. My other question is, like, when, when you're out there alone, not talk to anybody for 40 days, what can you tell us? What changes you experienced? And I was thinking of. I heard a podcast with Tim Ferriss. The guy that was his guest was a guy named Boyd Varti from South Africa. Have you ever listened to that?
- [40:10]
C
I've read his book.
- [40:12]
B
It's the best podcast episode I've ever heard of anybody. It's full of amazing stories. But one thing he did, he spent 40 days in a tree. Like he made like a tree house, sort of like a platform. And he spent 40 days in this tree. He would come down and walk around and gather food and whatever, but didn't talk to anybody for 40 days. But he said one day he did something and he bumped his head on a branch or something in the tree, like whacked it pretty hard. And he started like, cursing, my God. And he got angry and then he realized there's no one to complain to. And he said that the anger just went away because all that anger is a. An outward projection to land on somebody, to have them reflect it back to you. And when did you find being alone for those long periods of time that you had maybe entered states you don't normally enter or, or did. Did it change you in any way?
- [41:01]
A
Yeah, it did. And so I'll. I guess the best way I can think of it was a gradual dissolution of the, Of. Of the being of the self in the sense that I took off, clean shaven and definite steps, five to six days, vomiting, just seasick. So it's like a purge. It's like taking a medic when you go on a spiritual voice, except this was just seasickness. And then, as I mentioned earlier, then I noticed, like, my hearing started getting really sensitive. I had all this wax pouring out of my ears. Don't know why I've never had it before. Wax just dribbling down my cheeks. And then one day I looked at my skin and like I said earlier, it was like a baby. So there was all these physical things happening, almost like a regression to babyhood physically. And by the time I got to the doldrums, the Whole I was out 65 days alone, non stop, never touching land.
- [42:13]
C
Just on the sailing back part, Right.
- [42:15]
A
Going from Cape Town to the Virgin Islands. And so I got into the cycle where everything was a circle. Of course, the world is round. The sun would come up and then on the full moon, you know, as the sun dropped, the moon would come up at the same time and you would get synced into this. And by the doldrums, I was where. This is where the wind dies. Really feeling more and more part of that cyclical universal nature that I was surrounded by because it's only. It's only water and sky. And I remember so well in the doldrums. Seabird, my boat had a bow spritz, which is this thing that sticks out over the front of the boat. And I remember sitting on the bowsprit. It was a starry clear night and I looked out and down and I looked up at the sky and everything was starry. And I looked down below me and everything was starry. And it was like I had been reborn and I was in space. And the closest experience was on a really powerful psilocybin trip, feeling the dissolution of self being in the universe. And that's just took me 40 days as opposed to 2 caps to get there. Yeah, but it's.
- [43:54]
B
It's, isn't it? I didn't. When you started telling that story, I was thinking, sounds like it sounds like a psychedelic trip to me. And then you mentioned one. But it doesn't matter how you get there.
- [44:05]
A
But it's kind of.
- [44:06]
B
It's kind of the same when you are there. You know what I mean?
- [44:10]
A
Totally. It's. It's. I think you meditate. I have my own meditations. I think it steers towards the same thing. Whether it's psychotropic drugs, whether it's deep meditation. It's all head in the same place.
- [44:30]
B
Yeah. It's almost like however you get there. Yeah. Have you ever done a sensory deprivation tank?
- [44:37]
A
No.
- [44:37]
B
You know what? You know what?
- [44:38]
A
They are absolutely like you. Is that like where you float in saline?
- [44:42]
B
Yeah. So, you know, it's a. The water is exactly the same temperature as your body. The air is exactly the same temperature body. And it's a big like an egg shaped pod that's a little bit longer than your body.
- [44:56]
A
Yeah.
- [44:56]
B
And so there's like £2,000 of Epsom salts dissolved in it. So it's more buoyant than the Red Sea or the Dead Sea. Yeah, yeah. And so. And you. And there's a pod that, you know, it's a pod that you close the lid so it's completely black.
- [45:10]
A
Right.
- [45:11]
B
You can't feel where your body ends and the water or the air begins because it's all the same temperature. And you just lie just, you just completely relax and you lay and it just supports you and.
- [45:22]
C
Wow.
- [45:22]
B
So there's no sound, there's no sensation and there's no, no sight of anything. And I was going to say that, that in the doldrums, it was probably something similar to that. Like there's nothing happening, there's nothing.
- [45:37]
A
And yet there is. So on this one particular day I thought, you know, of going for a walk, which I quickly, like, don't do that. You can't do that. So instead I launched my little. I have, I had a little tiny rowboat. It was 11ft long. I chopped it in half, like four and a half feet, five and a half feet sections. And I got into one of those and I rode away from the boat. So now I've stepped off the little sailboat and I'm floating in a 5 and a half foot plywood salad bowl. And I got out there and I thought, this is about as away from humanity that you can get or any life.
- [46:27]
B
This is like space walking. Like coming out of the. The exact.
- [46:32]
A
Yes. You know, without the tether.
- [46:34]
B
Yes.
- [46:35]
A
And so I'm out there and the waves are going up and down. There's always a little swell. You see the boat disappear. And it felt like, now this is as alone as I can get. And then I looked over the side of the boat and I saw these little tiny, tiny spiders, just minuscule spider. And they were jumping up onto my rowboat and below that were these little matchstick length blue fish chasing them. And I thought, just when I thought I had reached the limits of it, there's a whole other reality. Because imagine if you're that little bitty surface living water spider in the doldrums. Like these things are tiny. They're, they're, they're, they're the size of a, you know, just a breadcrumb. Wow. And that really gave me the impression of just how, you know, powerful nature is and that that animal wants to live. And after that I didn't feel nearly as alone out there. There was something there. There was something there. Yeah. Yeah.
- [48:12]
B
That I can just only imagine. I can't imagine that. Did you. Was there. How, how did you go. Was there any point in time where you got in your head about being out there alone and like, did the like did any point in time. Did, like fear have its way with you?
- [48:36]
A
Fear only came when I came back to shore and tried to figure out if I should get married or not. That was fear. That fear lasted 31 years. It's a whole different story.
- [48:51]
C
But Bernie really has a very. Yeah, he. He does not have the typical fears that most of us do. He has a very differently wired brain.
- [49:02]
B
His amygdala is a bit different than us, I think.
- [49:06]
C
So, you know, from being. Everything he's done is sort of. And the way when you live with him, he's never worried about what the bigger picture might be at all. It's a different mindset. And I think that's what makes him such an extraordinary traveler. Whether it's crossing the country on a mule or sailing around the world alone. He does everything alone and unsupported. And where he's going to sleep one night or any of that doesn't. It doesn't seem to bother him.
- [49:42]
A
But, you know, but this. And I laugh. Talk about the fear. But this is where I think one of the biggest wonders in my life is that. And Julie and I are very good alone. But for a person to have this way of traveling, of traveling across, you know, country on a mule or Newfoundland or whatever, and then find another person that. That can mesh with, that's a huge thing. And that was my fear. That was my fear that getting married would really limit or compromise what I passionately loved and. And did. And that's why finally. So we met. Julie and I met through a mule, of course. Whole other story. And finally, at 51, at the ripe young age of 51, I said, it's time to marry Julia. Because this is the relationship that lets both of us retain the identities in each of us that we love. I love traveling. Julia loves and excels at working with horses. But we were able to combine that. But that was a real fear. A real fear. Warwick, that took decades to work on.
- [51:26]
B
Wow. It's amazing what people are afraid of. So you talked about riding across country.
- [51:30]
A
Mule.
- [51:31]
B
You're a. You're a member of the Long Riders Guild. And I saw somewhere. It was in your bio. Did you had 10,000 miles?
- [51:40]
A
Yeah. So in multiple steps, I rode Atlantic Pacific, North Carolina to California. Drove a wagon, one. One mule wagon from Canada to Mexico, which became. That's the documentary the Lost. The expedition premiered on Rocky Mountain PBS. It's on YouTube now.
- [52:01]
B
What's it called? The Lost. What's it called?
- [52:04]
A
It's called the Lost Sea Expedition.
- [52:09]
B
C as in ocean Ocean, as in ocean?
- [52:12]
A
Yeah, the last sea Expedition and Expedition.
- [52:16]
B
It's a documentary on you driving a mule from Canada to Mexican.
- [52:22]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:23]
C
Completely filmed by Bernie himself. And it's just absolutely beautifully done.
- [52:29]
B
When did you do that?
- [52:30]
A
Because I did that 2007. I took off and I thought, well, you know, there are a lot of sailboats everywhere. You know, people go to the Southern Ocean. It's been done. It's great. But I want to go explore an ocean that, like, nobody's been to. So I just. I learned that there was this ancient sea that covered the Great Plains, essentially all of central of Middle America, from the Gulf of Texas to Canada 65 million years ago. It's called the Western Interior Seaway. So I've got my mule, Polly. We still have. She's 34. Built a tiny wagon. Like, it's 31 inches wide, which is like. If you put your fingertips together, Your elbows are 32 inches wide.
- [53:18]
C
It's like being in an MRI machine.
- [53:20]
B
Oh, really?
- [53:22]
C
Oh, God.
- [53:22]
B
Yeah.
- [53:23]
A
So, like, it's like inside it's 21 square feet, which is the amount of skin the average person has. Tiny. So I take off with two movie cameras. My mule Poly. No chase team, no support vehicle, no sponsor in Canada. With my 92 Dodge that hauled me there and homemade trailer, and I start going south.
- [53:46]
B
Where did you start in Canada?
- [53:49]
A
So in the fittingly named Neptune. Saskatchewan.
- [53:54]
B
Not in Saskatchewan.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah, Neptune. Little dead village in Saskatchewan. Ended up in Fort Hancock, Texas, on the Rio Grande, 400 days later. Filmed it all myself. No drones. If I needed an aerial shot, I'd climb a windmill or a mountain or whatever. And then I took all this footage and I didn't know how to edit anything, Warwick. I was like, I had 120something hours of footage. And I'm like, what you shoot it with?
- [54:24]
C
I don't know.
- [54:26]
A
So I shot it with a. So I shot it to tape stock. So I had two Sony movie cameras. So it was. It was the. It was tape stock, not digital, which meant I had to watch all the stuff in live time for 124 hours. And then I. This is before transient. I went to the library and I watch it. And then I hand typed out the whole transcript because there was no AI, There was no Claude to do that. And so I took this bonkers thing and I gave up. After three years. I was talking with a friend of mine, Morgan Potts, pbs, North Carolina. We've worked together. We just got stuck. And Julia finally was like, you know, you need to finish that. And so four more years later, I finished it. It premiered on Rocky Mountain. PBS did super well. It's now a feature length film. It will let people experience what it's like to walk, ride in a mule wagon 400 days across America. Tumbleweed storms, houses getting covered in tumbleweeds, moving rattlesnakes, and also the people
- [55:47]
B
along
- [55:48]
A
the way that explain what this ocean was. It was wild.
- [55:54]
B
Okay, I've just looked you up on YouTube here. The lost Sea Expedition. A man, a mule, America. Yeah, Just went, one man, one mule, 2500 miles, full uncut version. Aaron. 32 minutes. Can't wait to watch that.
- [56:11]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [56:13]
B
So imagine if eight days ago. So you've just put it on.
- [56:16]
C
On.
- [56:16]
A
Yeah, it just went up. It just went.
- [56:18]
C
Yeah, because before that it was a four part series that, the series, that show star was on Rocky Mountain pbs and then it was on Amazon prime for a long time and then they cut it from Amazon, so.
- [56:32]
A
So we've cut it at the full length. So. So you interviewed Philippe Marcet, like, we love him. We went to the premiere in Beaufort, South Carolina, Claire. Exactly. Awesome. So imagine if Felipe had said, I'm going to do this with a wagon. But you took out the drug lords. That's kind of what the laws. And you didn't go 16,000 miles, you
- [56:57]
C
went, yeah, but it's a be. It's a beautiful film.
- [57:01]
A
Similar, big feel. Yeah, it's wild. Lost the expedition.
- [57:05]
B
Wow. I can't wait to watch that. So you've got that bit, but then you're an author and filmmaker. What did you, what did you write, Bernie? So
- [57:18]
A
there are a couple books. One's called Too Proud to Ride a Cow, which. There you go. These are very folksy titles.
- [57:29]
B
So where did that title come from? Too Proud to Write a Cat.
- [57:33]
A
So I was out west. I was in damning New Mexico and this old boy named Sucker Rod, he was a cat, he was a rancher, smoked a pipe, you know, had. He's the kind of guy, you've seen these tables, you walk into the kitchen, they got like rowel marks on the table. We'd sit up, he was old bachelor, put his spurs on the table, you know, light his pipe, drink some coffee. And he looked at me one day and he said, you know who rides a mule, don't you? And I was going to say something snarky like, you know, a sailor or whatever, a guy that's smarter than the rest. And he said, no, that's a guy that's too broke to ride a horse, but too Proud to ride a Cat. I was like, that's the title. There's something in there. Yeah.
- [58:23]
B
When I. When I was a kid and we had quarter horses, there was a. There was. It was basically an Appaloosa joke. You know, only ride an Appaloosa if you're too poor to ride a quarter horse, Too proud to ride a cow. So I was wondering.
- [58:35]
A
Oh, really? Oh, yeah.
- [58:36]
B
Yeah.
- [58:37]
C
No kidding.
- [58:37]
A
I've never heard that.
- [58:38]
B
No, it used to be.
- [58:39]
A
Wow.
- [58:40]
B
It was a. Oh, that's. It wasn't Appaloosa joke, but apparently in Texas, it's a mule joke. Yeah.
- [58:45]
A
So when's the last time you heard it?
- [58:48]
B
10 seconds ago. But it was about a mule.
- [58:50]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So that was the first book. Then the second book, you didn't say
- [58:58]
C
what that was about, though. You went.
- [58:59]
A
Yeah, so. So the. The. The Too Proud to Ride a cow was riding from the town dock in
- [59:06]
C
Oriental a very crazy mule.
- [59:09]
A
This. This mule is named Woody. Like, looking back on it, it's one of these mules that you feel. You feel sorry for them. Like, I have really come a long way in my journey. Thanks a lot to Julia's. Really seeing the being. Like, you have to see the being in there. Those eyes looking at you. There's your mom's in there, your dad, your mule. I want to make a joke that the devil was looking at me through those eyes. It's not funny anymore. This mule had serious problems, but unlike Felipe, who, like, he's the meal.
- [59:50]
C
Why we got married, too.
- [59:51]
A
So, yeah, this is. This is coming. This is the. The link is coming. So Felipe, like, he went and he worked with Stan Woolchecker at Long Ride. A great guy. Getting ready. God, Warwick. I got an old McClellan saddle I was giving to the kid. You know those cavalry.
- [60:07]
B
Yeah, the cavalry saddle. Yeah.
- [60:09]
A
Yeah. I take this bronchie mule. I put the saddle on him. Like, this is, like, February. He runs away under a cedar tree. Now, I was a steeplechase jockey, so I'm pretty quick. And so, like, I duck and he runs through a mobile home park and finally, like, scrapes me off under a pine tree, dumps me on the ground. I didn't know anything about britching.
- [60:30]
C
That was before.
- [60:31]
A
Before the trip. I didn't know about britching breastplates. I didn't know anything. Warwick. I just took off with. At the town dock in Oriental.
- [60:41]
B
Where is Oriental?
- [60:41]
A
So in North Carolina, on the coast.
- [60:45]
C
Okay. This. We started our other trip.
- [60:46]
A
It's where we started the boat trip to Shackford. And so I left There, one mule, no pack pony. Just totally ignorant. I feel so badly for Woody. But 13 months later ended up in San Diego. And then to flash forward, I hit a spot, a not proud spot in my life a few years later where I was looking for a home for Woody and I ended up with a 13 hand pack pony that walked with me from North Carolina to California.
- [61:20]
C
With Woody.
- [61:21]
A
With Woody. With Woody. And so some woman answered the ad.
- [61:26]
C
He was selling them after the trip.
- [61:29]
A
What an idiot. Like what a jerk. Like you've just written across America and you sell your mouths. What's wrong with you?
- [61:40]
C
So long story short, I told him I wouldn't pay for them, but if he wanted them to have a nice home for the rest of their life, he could send them up to me.
- [61:48]
B
Oh, you're the lady who answered the ad.
- [61:51]
A
She's the lady. And so, so we ended up.
- [61:56]
B
So you don't use, you don't use Tinder. You use like horse for sale ad you say that you're trying to sell a mule, but you're actually looking for a wheel.
- [62:05]
C
Dream Horse. I found him on Dream Horse.
- [62:08]
A
Yeah, this, like this could be a thing like this could lead to a lot of new relationships. So lots of sort of wrap the story up real quick. So to bring it full circle, I leave Town Dock. Julie and I get married February 23, 2019, at the same Town Dock in
- [62:29]
C
Oriental where he left on that trip
- [62:30]
A
to where I left for the mule. And then six weeks and then like that week I bought another mule that week later and decided to ride that mule from North Carolina to Idaho to see Julia's brother, my new brother in law, which is. No, it's kind of a shaky way to start a marriage. Like you're going to see his brother in law. Are you kidding me? Anyway, that was the third book called. The second book called Two Mules to Triumph. Two Mules to Triumph.
- [63:06]
C
That one's still available. It's fantastic. It's on Amazon.
- [63:10]
B
And what's the two mules? When was this?
- [63:19]
A
That was 2019. It took seven months. It was exactly 200 days from Lenore, North Carolina to Haley, Idaho.
- [63:31]
B
When did you go to San Diego?
- [63:35]
C
2008, was it?
- [63:36]
A
No, it's 2000. Okay. I finished 2005.
- [63:42]
B
Okay. So it's not enough. So there's, there's a. Yeah, there's a friend of mine lives in, on the outskirts of LA down there. But there's a mule guy that she. That stayed at her place a couple of years ago, had two mules and he had a great story. He was crushing the country with two mules. But no, that was only a couple years ago. So it wasn't.
- [64:00]
A
So it was. So it wasn't. So it wasn't John Sears, because there's John Sears. He's got three.
- [64:06]
B
There was a mule. There was a mule guy. But anyway.
- [64:08]
A
Yeah. Well, I wish I could say it
- [64:10]
B
was me, but okay, it wasn't so long Rider. We've got the author bit, the books, the filmmaker. That's the last sea expedition. Did you made any other documentaries? It was one enough.
- [64:24]
A
No, no. You know, after spending two more, I did. So this is the one I just totally did myself. And then I worked with PBS North Carolina to do two documentaries that are just absolutely beautiful. One is called Mule Rider where I took the same mule. Paulie and I traveled a bit of the wagon. It's the same wagon I took through Newfoundland. I took a half a year traveling across Newfoundland, then took that wagon and went with a film crew for a week to interview people, fishermen on the coast, net makers, you know, coastal people. So that's called Mule Riders. That actually won an Emmy award for PBS North Carolina. And then just most recently did Swan Song, which is taking the same Yule Polly, who's now 34.
- [65:18]
C
It was her last big trip.
- [65:20]
A
It was her swan song to Last big trip, 100-year-old wagon along Lake Madam Mesquite, which is the biggest natural freshwater lake in North Carolina, in the winter in a snowstorm, which made for. It was amazing. And the film crew couldn't get there. So they were like, I guess you're filming it. So of course I was like, this is great. So I filmed all that. And that came out beautifully. It's just stunning. That's a feature. It's an hour long. So those are the major ones I've done.
- [65:54]
B
You know, thinking about your. The. The. The Lost Sea Expedition. I recently, only just recently got to watch Felipe's movie. And watching it, I'm. I'm thinking about thinking about the ride itself. And this is the same with you thinking about the. Doing the trip itself, but then thinking about documenting it. When you said if I wanted a drone shot, I had to climb a windmill, like, like setting up the shot, then ride past the camera, then go back and get the camera and like that's got to make. Make the whole thing.
- [66:30]
A
Yeah.
- [66:30]
B
Three times more work than it would have been in the first place.
- [66:34]
A
Yeah, but. But, you know, and, and. And I can't speak for Felipe, but. But I'm going to Speak for Felipe. There's something in Felipe and me, and I would say you as well, that just is going to go to lengths to, to grab a thought, a conversation, an experience, even if it's inconvenient. You're going to pull that camera out because you're seeing a horse to capture something amaz. Yes, yes, exactly. And, and it takes that to do that. And the, the big work was afterwards taking all that footage 100 and let's say 24 hours and condensing it into 1.5 hours. That's where it, it took years because I did my, I did everything war like I cut everything I, and I didn't know anything about was.
- [67:35]
B
You're a bonk. You're a renaissance man. Like you can do pretty much anything.
- [67:40]
A
I think I'm hard headed and, and Julia has. But again it's, this is the power of working with other people. So on the surface, you know it, I appear mostly alone in the film. But it was only through having Julius say, you know, we, we can do this like we can find the underwriters for pbs. That is a huge. And it was the hugest part because without that there would be no loss to the expedition. There would be no two mules to triumph. So that's, that's a vital, hugely important and not thing. And not every person has that in a relationship, you know, with a spouse, let alone a spouse, I should say.
- [68:33]
B
Right. Speaking of spouses, Julia. So you have a degree in what, wildlife management?
- [68:42]
C
I have. Well, it's actually, it was at the time I was in school. It was in. Mine was in the environmental policy department, it was in the geography department. And then my specialty was in wildlife management and I worked in that field doing research. They serve on the international level and anything always Warwick through my whole life that had something to do with animals is what I was up to.
- [69:10]
B
So what, what sort of work have you done with wildlife management?
- [69:17]
C
So those jobs were quite a long time ago. And so when I did my graduate work at the university, well actually at Tufts University I was working on a PhD at UNH after that. But mostly I would do research work for like the Wildlife Conservation Society which is linked to the Bronx Zoo in New York, but they have a big international wildlife wing. And I worked with a guy who had been my advisor during graduate school who was working on the bushmeat crisis in Africa. And so we were, we were doing a lot of. Mostly in that job. My, my job, my work was, was research and desk job kind of stuff. Not, not you know, secretarial work, but research for those papers. So I've written, co authored quite a few scientific articles on that long ago in the past is sort of not something that I've done recently in my life at all. But back then I also would volunteer. I. I went on the first wildlife research team that took the temperature of a, of a wild, wild African elephant untranquilized. And my job, my job is right up in the front being the one that would hand him.
- [70:43]
B
I was going to say, were you putting the thermometer under his tongue or
- [70:48]
C
was there the other method I didn't have to do? No, I was on the distraction end. So we had from the Range Rover, we would have a series of loaves of bread and bunches of bananas being handed out in a line down to me at the end of the line who would feed it to the elephant. Well, and we had been working on this for a while and she was a bit habituated already in the sense that she had a little guard and a scar that took care of her because she was an orphan that the Sheldricks had saved. And so she would hang out around the entrance to Tsavo national park, but she was free to go when the other elephants would call for her or there would be other elephants coming. You know, she was just. But this guy would follow around because she had such beautiful big ivory tusks and they didn't want her to get shot. So she was assigned her own guard. And so she was quite used to it. And she had grown up being taken care of by the Sheldricks in the sense that they had, you know, fed her when she was young and taken good care of her. And so she was, you know, habituated. She'd be like a half.
- [72:00]
B
So she'd been through the orphanage, the Sheldrakes orphanage there in Nairobi.
- [72:04]
C
Yeah, it was before that. She was the first elephant of that orphanage. It hadn't really been established yet. And the next one was, Mary was another young one that was hanging out with her, little younger. And so, you know, this was a guy who, Dr. Von Melangman from, I think Louisiana State University had applied to do this research down there. And he was going to, he was trying to figure out how to. Elephants regulated their temperature because they're so large. So he had us, we were little peon researchers. So if we bought our tickets, they would feed us and put us to work in the summer. So I went over just out of college and our jobs were to sit in a tree and Count how many times she flapped her ears with a little clicker. With a little clicker. So I'm not sure how accurate that was because there was all kinds of swatten flies. Yeah, Pepper ticks in the grass there. So if you walk, all of a sudden you think you're covered in red clay dust, but you look more closely and it's all crawling around and you realize that you're going to be really itchy in the night if you don't do something. So we would sit in these trees, just click a little more looking down. Oh, did I miss one?
- [73:23]
A
That was three flats.
- [73:26]
C
But on the other hand. So then the other thing we did besides that, we had. We had a long stick with a copper thermocouple on the end of it. And we would take skin readings of the different parts of her body during the day. Because the dermis of the elephant's so thick. One of the thoughts was that they receive the sunlight, solar during the day, and that's actually stored in the dermis and helps keep their core warm in the evenings when the. When the temperature cools down. And then the ear flapping, you know, there's so many veins, if you ever seen that. So as they wave them, that's like a cooling system. The blood runs all through the ears and they wave back and forth and it actually brings down the temperature. And then, then on the last, the p. Was the. Was the plunger that was made with a thermocouple on the end that we were going to actually take the reckle to rectal temperature. And so on the day, we had a lot of practice that we decided to do this, we had this long assembly line and I was given, you know, bananas and loaves of bread. And I was right up with Eleanor and her. You know, they've got amazing trunks, but they're all very, very wet, you know, and she's grabbing all these things from me and a whole line is coming. And so she's enough distracted. And the head researcher runs over with a milk crate to stand on, and he takes his plunger and he puts it in her bottom, and she puts her tail up and she puts her trunk up and she just takes off. And the researchers go every direction, but it was in there long enough so that he actually did get a reading. And so that was one of the more exciting field jobs I did. And another one was down in Belize setting up camera TR on grids to help collect data of the leopard spots so that they can tell how many individuals, because each it's like a fingerprint. Each pattern of the pelt is different one from another. And so when you, you can actually kind of get a count of how many leopards are in each territory on a grid. And then you can use statistical, some kind of statistical package to figure out population densities. And so those were my field research jobs, but other than that, I was mostly doing research, you know, to help support papers and field work from other scientists.
- [76:08]
B
I imagine you only get one chance to rectally thermometer an elephant. I don't think she.
- [76:14]
C
I think so.
- [76:14]
B
I don't think she'd figure out. I think she'd figure out the setup and the next time she's like, that ain't happening.
- [76:23]
C
Yep.
- [76:24]
B
So. So you were setting up camera traps to take pictures of these leopards?
- [76:31]
C
Yes, yes. Of jaguar.
- [76:33]
B
They're such amazing creatures.
- [76:35]
C
Aren't they beautiful? Yes, just beautiful. They're very, very hard to actually see off camera. I mean, you're incredibly lucky if you ever do get to spot one, even doing the research.
- [76:51]
B
So what led you to. Where did you. So where did you grow up, Julia? Were you always kind of interested in animals?
- [76:59]
C
Oh, all my life. So I, I grew up in Vermont. I would consider myself the Mowgli of the woods of Vermont. Was. I was always out in the woods or in the. Out on my pony. I grew up on a horse farm. Just animals were everything to me. If I were on a trip with my parents, you would find me in somebody's pasture with their goat or you would find me holding a pigeon in Venice or Actually my parents were. We were in Africa and Morocco when I was a kid and my parents had just arrived and they stepped onto the beach and I went flying by on a, on a camel and they thought it was being stolen.
- [77:43]
B
So what were you guys doing in Morocco?
- [77:47]
C
We were visiting early on. It was quite a trip. I was only seven, but it was very, very memorable. I had parents that really loved travel, so we went a lot of places.
- [77:58]
B
Oh, you weren't, your parents weren't working there? You were just visiting?
- [78:02]
C
No, those were visits.
- [78:03]
B
Oh, okay. Okay, Very cool. And have you traveled, you know, have you been to a lot of different countries?
- [78:10]
C
I, I have one a lot more when I was younger and then doing the, you know, I, I did research work in, in Belize and in Africa, but. And, and I'm. I've always loved rock climbing too. So I've been on a fair amount of rock climbing trips to different places and. Yeah. And now, you know. Yeah, just most of Them are all just fun trips. Not a lot of them were working trips.
- [78:37]
B
You know, it's interesting talking to Bernie before about the, you know, the, the sitting. Sitting on the bow of the boat and looking up at the stars and seeing all the stars. But then you look down, you see all the stars, too. And it's that, you know, like, really present moment. But don't you feel like the rock climbing is. I've done a little bit of climbing. Not very much at all. You know, almost. I'm. I'm the kind of rock climber. If I was a horse, if it was about horses. I rode a horse on the beach once. It's like that. I have been a couple of times.
- [79:09]
A
I'm the same rock climber. Yes.
- [79:11]
B
But I get the fact that it's just you and the rock and you, you know, you. I don't know you, you, you, you. I know your vision company. I don't know what it is.
- [79:21]
C
Absolutely does. Yes, it does. I. I mean, I. I think maybe it's that it brings you really into the present moment, and it brings you into being very aware of your safety and your physicality and where your body is. And that is something, I think that's really lacking these days. We. We don't even really feel our bodies that much anymore, and we're sort of losing our senses a little bit, and
- [79:54]
A
it's a real issue.
- [79:56]
C
And, And I find, I. I find that in my work, too, that getting people back physically, even aware of their. Their bodies and how, how, how they may be feeling. You know, I've had people that I've taught how to become present, and they felt like they were going to pass out or feel sick. I've had other people that like the feeling so much, they couldn't believe that, you know, they'd missed it for so long that they actually quit their corporate job. And I. So, you know, but there is a strong reaction to coming back to the body. And I think that something like rock climbing can just become addictive just because you're so aware of the physicality.
- [80:43]
B
Yeah. Yeah. You're in the moment as interesting. You said that you've had people quit their corporate jobs because of that, you know, doing clinics over the years, I've actually, you know, helping people with their horses and giving them a different way of looking at horses also gives them a different way of looking at life. And I have to say, of course, some divorces people get divorced from because I went to a clinic and they started thinking about how they treat their horse, how they are treated by others and the. The things they put up with and the things that they allow and their boundaries and. Yeah, it just kind of.
- [81:22]
C
Yeah, absolutely.
- [81:24]
A
But. But that's a. That's a incredibly rich kingdom to enter. You know, that seeing the being. But it can also really.
- [81:34]
C
Yep.
- [81:35]
A
Tear your life apart, you know, especially if maybe it wasn't the life you were really supposed to live in a good way. But that can. That can be a real hindrance, I think, for people to get that insight and then just be afraid of the price. And it can be relationships, as you say. That's a.
- [81:55]
C
Do you work? Do you ever feel when you're helping someone with their horse that you end up. That you're really. It's really helping them? I mean, you know, that's. That's kind of obvious, but it's come to some point where the type of help that you're giving them is better in some ways than therapy that they've had before. And they start to try to seek you out in a capacity that is not what you're trained as, even though you. You know that we're all social mammals and so we know we're getting at something that is super helpful. I've many times just gently had to say. I've asked people. People have asked me if I'd be their therapist. Without me ever. You know, I don't play that role at all. I'm really there to help you with your horse. But sometimes there's a need and a seeing. It's that same thing. I feel very strongly that the, you know, when you help a horse with nervous system regulation, that that's just such a mirror of what's maybe going on with a person or a larger thing. And a lot of the times, and I'm very aware when I do it, and I actually came from a place where I did a fair amount of that, where you are tough on your own nervous system the same way you'd be on your, you know, your horse. You just. That control of, you're okay, you know, you're okay, you're okay when you're not okay, and there's no outlet for it. So I find sometimes in this work that that's just such a overlap that you end up at the end of a day kind of exhausted that you end up being. Or. And not being one to be misinterpreted. And I love this job, but I feel sometimes that. That there's a real need out there.
- [84:00]
A
So how do you disentangle that, Warwick, because of Someone crossing the line interest wise and saying, wow, you know, you're showing me this amazing insights with a horse. You're bringing me peace. Like, could you, I don't know if they ask you, they probably do ask you time and time, could you be my therapist? But like, how do you work with that?
- [84:22]
B
I've never really had anybody ask me that. I think for me, what tends to happen is, you know, me helping with their horse probably gives them some insight into, you know, a world view that was drummed into them by their family or their school as a kid or society in general. And they, they come to the realization that, that, that, that no longer fits, that no longer works, that's no longer who I am. But I think for me, yeah, I, I don't, I've never really had anybody say, you want to be my therapist. But I think what helping with their horses does make them realize, oh, there are some things about me that I'd like to change, that need changing. Maybe I will seek help. But probably the big thing that I see a lot is, you know, whether I'm doing a clinic or doing a demo at a horse expo or having a, having a, doing a podcast, having a podcast guest on whatever. What I see a lot is somehow the, like, if it's a clinic or, you know, if it's clinic, it's the demo. If it's podcast guest, it might be the conversation. But something will, will shatter one of their long held truths. And I feel like a lot of times if it's that person's first ever shattering of one of their long held truths, our work's done. Because then they go, well, then they start going, what, what other things that I think were the absolute truth that are not the truth. And I feel like, you know, that's when they, that's when people tend to do the work themselves and go seek things on their own. I don't feel like I need to be involved in. No, but once you've had.
- [86:17]
A
But the first one, yeah, the first window is always the hardest one to smash.
- [86:21]
B
Right? And, and for me, that's what I feel horses are really good at because I've said it a lot. You know, people will, people will do the work for their horse. They will make changes for their horse that they wouldn't make for their husband or their wife or their kids or their boss or their co workers or whatever. People are passionate about their horses and I feel like wanting to get to the bottom of their troubles with their horse. A lot of times, you know, they get One of their long held truths. Busted. And like you said, that first, that first one is the hardest one. But because they're really passionate about horses, they actually stick with it and come out the other side. And I feel like, yeah, then you can't answer as a, as a, as a human, you can't unsee that. Then you start to question, you know, reality. You know, at some point in time you get, you're questioning your view of reality itself. And, and yeah, that's where the magic is. That's when, you know, I feel like that's my job to, to lead him any further down the garden path. They do it himself.
- [87:27]
C
No, yeah, right.
- [87:29]
A
We have this discussion actually a lot because we, we both grew up riding, riding English. And as we get deeper and deeper into our journey now with our horses, we mostly just ride. We don't, do not ride competitively. Mostly it's trail riding or in my case, the long riding. We look at some of the things that we did to our horses in the 80s and it's like, oh my Jesus. And it's taken us this long to process that. And that has really started both of us on a whole new journey of understanding. Like the horse's side, Like, I would know more like as a steeplechase jockey, you ride around, you exercise your horse, you always carry a jockey bat. You almost never use it, but come race day, if there are two of you head to head, heading for the finish line, you're probably going to pull it out. And if you're a moderate jockey, you would use it a little bit, you know, as reinforcement. But I've seen horses just have the crap beat out of them and I have hit them with jockey bats in a race, but now it's like, oh my God. Like, no, no, no. It's just takes seeing that. And once I started seeing that, man, you see all kinds of things in our relationship with a horse.
- [88:57]
C
I like what you said, I heard you say once though, that you said that everybody was just somewhere on their journey. And I think that's an incredibly important point, is that, and as you also said is once you see something, you can't unsee it and it does change you, but it is, you know, there, it's, it's a journey, it's a path and we can all do better. And you, and you learn as you go along and, and you're where you, where you are. And yeah, the first step is great.
- [89:32]
A
First stuff is. First step is tough.
- [89:34]
C
Yeah.
- [89:36]
B
I think there's two important parts to that to that growth is one is when you see someone who is on their journey is where you used to be, that you have some grace, that, hey, you were there at one point in time, so take away the judgment of that. But then also on your journey where you realize, oh, back in the 80s, I used to do this stuff. You got to forgive yourself for that too. You know, you forgive yourself for what you didn't know, you know, when you didn't know it sort of thing. And I think so. So both of those ideas stop you from judging yourself, but they also stop you from judging others who are exactly where they're supposed to be. And the thing. I think the big thing about horses is they are so tolerant. If you're in the beginning of your journey, they put up with that person. You know what I mean? They might provide you with some challenges, but. But it's almost like they. They are quite happy to, you know, serve the roll they need to serve until we show up differently. I really feel like they, you know, they're just such amazing creatures to.
- [90:47]
C
Well, or they're. Maybe they're responding the way that they need to teach you. So sometimes I feel that when you have a problem with a horse, you're hitting an opportunity in your life.
- [91:05]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [91:06]
C
To. To move on. They're. They're bringing something to you that will change you.
- [91:11]
A
Yeah.
- [91:12]
B
Oh, yeah. Most. Most certainly. You know, you like.
- [91:16]
A
I was like.
- [91:17]
B
I like to say you get the horse you need.
- [91:19]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [91:21]
B
You might think you didn't need this problem at the time, but there's always some. There's always some growth in it.
- [91:28]
C
Yep.
- [91:29]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So how did you get into. Because your bio says you are a seer. Tell us about an equine seer. What? You want to explain what a seer is or your version is?
- [91:46]
C
So my. My version of a seer is someone that will not come to their horse with any preconceived judgments or agendas. And that. What I try to do when I work with a horse, and. And it will. I mean, it could be somebody has a. A problem, a really specific problem that they want solved. Like their horses stopped going for a ride uphill and is being stubborn and won't move in one direction but will go in others. That could be one thing or it. And what I'll do while I work with a horse is I'll just really withhold any judgment. Sometimes I don't want the backstory or what the. What the owner thinks, what was wrong with the horse until after, and what I do is I basically sit with an open mind and allow the horse to be how they want to be. Very loose rope or even loose, and I'll be with them. And the kind of communication I'm actually picking up on is really, after a while, after that horse starts to realize that I'm noticing him and I'm reacting back based on the feedback he's giving me. They'll do things, show you things. Like the horse that didn't want to go uphill, which I had already expected because it was very nice horse, it suddenly didn't want to take the guy riding uphill anymore. I said, well, you're probably dealing with a medical issue of some sort of pain, because, you know, this a good old guy, your horse, and he'd never given a whole lot of problem before. So I'm guessing, you know, we're going to find pain. But I withhold judgment. Went to see the horse, and I always start by everybody getting sort of in a nice, quiet, meditative state. And we start watching, just watching the horse. Is he, you know, how is the horse standing? Does he always stand on the same three legs? Does he, you know, does he stand like a table? Is it nice even structure to how he's trying to stand on his feet? What's the gesture? Does he keep making some similar gesture? Does his, you know, what's his expression doing? What's the muscle tone? What's the. Where does he seem like he's in the nervous system? What's the physiology doing? And. And we just quietly, without giving the story any judgment. So instead we would be just saying, you know, he. He's standing on three legs and one leg is bearing less weight, instead of saying, oh, he's lame on the right leg. We're not making a judgment call. We're just watching the behavior. And over time, I mean, the things that the horses have shown me, they've shown me one horse that didn't like to sleep showed me he wanted to live in a different stall. I suggested the owner move him to the stall. He got in that stall and he just. That first night, he laid down and he went to sleep. It was a new horse, and he'd shown signs of ulcers. He wasn't eating his. You know, put him in that stall, his poo went back to normal. He started to regulate, had a horse, the horse that was not wanting to walk uphill. Well, when we were. Bernie was there that day filming, and the three. Three of us, we started to just get very present and watch what the horse was showing us and the horse was like, well, I'd love to join you in your lovely feeling, but I'm. I really sore. So he went over and he sat on the wall. He literally sat on the wall. I've had a horse make a gesture of turning their head completely sideways over and over again. And we found that it had a embedded cap and that cracked cap in its, that had been embedded into its cheek. So it's just getting still enough to see. I've had horses that have showed me that all their anxiety during the ride has come from the way they were bridled. They slow down the bridling and have the horse come to the bit rather than the bit being shoved into the horse's mouth. And all of a sudden the horse doesn't gnash its teeth anymore. And so it's that kind of seeing. And some people will say that I have a gift, but I think it's a skill that everyone can learn to do. And it's just really getting that attunement and that presence where you're really. And allowing that horse to know that you fully see them, see them deeply so that they realize that you're open to receive the communication. And then they will, they will tell you.
- [96:49]
A
And the beautiful thing is about this is you're able to. So the way Julia has set this up after years and years of study is broken the two step way to definable steps. So it can be taught. Because a lot of times, you know, you'll. There's this whole horse whisper thing. Oh, this person is just, you know, has this mystical air about them, but sometimes there's almost a sense they don't really want to share and break it down like, this is exactly what I'm doing. And you're very good at that wall.
- [97:20]
B
Well, I think some people though, if it comes innately to them, they don't know what they're doing.
- [97:27]
A
They can't, you know, they can't. Absolutely.
- [97:29]
B
You know, I think I, I don't think what's, what's that saying? You know, the, like the. Something about the, the best horsemen no one's ever met him because you can't see them from the road. You know, I feel like the people who were really good probably couldn't tell you what they were doing. That's probably not repeatable. But there's also another part of that too. I just had a discussion with someone recently about this is what part of us. I'm not talking about you guys. I'm talking about Say people like me, what part of us needs that external validation to make us put ourselves out there in the public a lot? You know what I mean? There's got to be a certain. There's got to be a certain thing going on there. The person I was talking to about this was a musician who's in a band, you know, so they're on stage light and like, what. What. What leads. What. Yeah, what. What leads us to those things? But yeah, as far as, like, the. The. I think that. Getting back to your point there, Bernie, that I think the people who are really, really good sometimes couldn't tell you what they were doing because it's a felt sense. It's not a.
- [98:45]
A
It's.
- [98:45]
B
It's not a. It's a. It's a right brain thing. It's not a left brain thing. It.
- [98:49]
C
That's absolutely right. Yeah. Right brain.
- [98:51]
A
Musicians will say the same thing. Incident. They're like. I don't know, like. But Tom Petty's like, that thing just came. Like.
- [98:57]
C
But Warwick, I. I think we can teach people to get more into that right brain. Oh, you know. Oh, yeah, talking. Talking about what. What you said. You know, you. You were saying that those that are.
- [99:10]
A
Are.
- [99:10]
C
Are really good. Can't. Can't really tell you what it is. But sometimes, you know, it's some of us that are. They're actually trying. Well, you know, because I used to have people say. I used to think things I was saying about horses. Well, didn't you see the. That he didn't want that. Didn't you see that expression? I started realizing that some of the stuff that we think is innately understood by others isn't. But it doesn't mean that they can't do it. It means that they just don't have their attention on it right now. And so I've been trying to backpedal because every time that somebody is. I've realized that somebody did not understand something I thought was obvious. Now I try to find the words to articulate that.
- [100:00]
A
Right. Yeah, it's tough.
- [100:03]
C
And so skill. I do think that if people learn. And I am so psyched that you said right brain, left brain, because I recently have been really interested in the. What that right brain is doing. That open receiver. Right. So we're not trying to run it through language. We're trying to feel it. Like it's just. Just grab it. And I think if we can open people's attention to that width sometimes and not that sort of narrow focus and not, you know, a preconceived story or an agenda or if trying something they're trying to fix. Because that's all left brain. It's all left brain thinking. So I think the more that we just try to articulate these things, that actually there are a whole lot more people that. That, you know, can really do this stuff.
- [100:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, most certainly. But, you know, some. You think about a lot of us who've had the, you know, the head's been severed from the body sort of thing. You know, you. You're taught to be in your head and not in your body. Especially, you know, if you've been taught to suppress emotions as a child. So you, you know, your body tells you things and you're like, can't hear that. Can't do that. Don't do that sort of thing. So it takes a while to get. Takes a while to get that. That working again because it's, you know, it becomes it like the default mode, you know.
- [101:41]
C
Definitely.
- [101:42]
A
Yes.
- [101:42]
C
Yeah.
- [101:43]
A
But the good news is that there is. There are ways to do that. Yeah. Which is.
- [101:50]
C
Yeah.
- [101:52]
A
That lead. That's. That's Leads. Optimism. Yeah. Yeah.
- [101:57]
B
Yeah. I imagine one of those ways would be like, I don't know, floating around an Ocean for 65 days. I'm sure. I'm sure your body would be talking to you there.
- [102:08]
A
Yeah. You know, the interesting thing, though, is when you're on the boat, it's an inanimate object. So it's a boat, and it's you. So it's kind of all about you in the universe. And you see that boat, you know, you start seeing it, you know, as like she or, you know, sailors have, you know, like, terms of affection for a boat. They're almost all women. Grit, incidentally, is a man boat. But I think with horses, we do live in such a mechanistic world, which, you know, that's okay with a boat because you just. If you need to sheet something in tighter, you just crank it in. The boat's got no feelings, but I think there's an extra depth to the horse that it's now two of us. With a boat, you can disappear with yourself into the universe on the ocean. That is a solitary. Well, solitary you and the universe experience. But what I actually find more gratifying is to, I wouldn't say disappear into a horse, but really this journey of seeing the being in the horse that we're working with in and learning, like, maybe just don't just walk up to it in the pasture. Just stop and observe it. Just stop and watch. And that's the journey that I'm actually more interested in than the dissolution itself on a boat. Which is very cool.
- [103:56]
B
It's very cool.
- [103:57]
A
Yeah.
- [103:58]
B
Yeah. I think for me, it's almost like the. The journey with horses is led by levels of understanding of their sentience. It's almost like. It's almost like every time you understand, oh, they're even more sentient than we thought, you know, because think about. Science is very big on not anthropomorphizing. And you cannot, you know, animals don't have emotions and all that garbage. And, and when you. When you understand the level of sentience and the. That they notice everything and, you know, you. And then that. And when. Especially when you can read expressions on their face or in their eyes, when you can tell when you know their eyes are different, when they're like, hey, how's it going? And do I have to do that? And when they, you know, they don't say much, but there's enough there when you can read it. I think those are. Yeah, yeah, those are the.
- [105:07]
A
And that was what.
- [105:08]
C
Yep.
- [105:08]
A
And that was one of the beauties on Shackleford is just to put massive amounts of time in just watching their stories. No agenda. There's no. You just watching them. And we can all do that with our horses. We could all take a little time to just, yeah, watch. And I think that does lead to that flow back and forth. It really does. It has. Has certainly for me.
- [105:36]
B
Yeah. Like what Julie was talking about before the other day. Oh, maybe it was a couple of weeks ago, I put a. A post on Facebook and it was just. I had, you know, I went out to catch one of my horses out in the pasture and I walked up and I was probably 60, 80ft from him and I. He was just standing there and I just stopped and I got my phone out and I said, okay, so I'm going to go and catch so. And so here. And I've got to where he's aware of me. I'm just going to wait here and see what happens. And I said, you might think your horse is just standing there not doing anything because he hasn't flicked in here. He hasn't done anything. They're aware. And I said, if you can just stand here and wait without expectation and then I get that will happen. And their head turns towards you and then they walk all the way over to you. And I said, that's right, you can.
- [106:25]
C
That's right.
- [106:25]
B
Could have walked up and caught him. He wasn't going to go anywhere. I could have just walked up there.
- [106:29]
A
Right.
- [106:29]
B
But I feel like the day starts out completely differently. If you can pause and wait over here with no expectation. Not like he's going to come over soon. Just like, hey, I'm here.
- [106:40]
C
No.
- [106:41]
B
And they come over and they, they. They come over and they say, hello. And I said, that's a. I feel like that starts out the whole. Your interactions for that day in a completely different place.
- [106:51]
A
So it affects the saddling, everything ride. You get the whole everything downstream wherever you see it.
- [106:59]
C
Yep.
- [106:59]
A
First contact, the moment you saw them. Right. Yeah, it affects it. It just does. And sometimes we're in a hurry. We're all getting a hurry and want to get our horse, you know, get going.
- [107:09]
B
I'm not, you know, I have a saying. I'm not in a hurry to get it wrong. So, you know, it's funny. And I think in one of those videos I did, I was talking about people will say, I have this problem with my horse. What do I do? And my question will often be, well, how is he to catch. Oh, he didn't like to be caught. Like, okay, well, that's where it's. I mean, he's exactly. He's communicating to you how he feels about interactions with humans. Right there. If you override that bit, that's a part of everything you're doing.
- [107:41]
C
Exactly that. Yes.
- [107:43]
B
You know, and. And the funny thing is, you know, people have these horses that are hard to catch. Whatever. The horses would love to do things with you. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's interesting.
- [107:55]
C
I had a. I had a. I had a client. I went to see her. She had three connameros. One. She said, oh, don't. I heard this horse banging in the background. She said, oh, I have his stall door closed because he's really scared of strangers and he doesn't like others. Well, his door was closed and we're working in an aisle. But afterwards, we took the horse that we had been working with and we went out to the pasture, and they're allowed to walk in and out of their stalls, so the backsides were open. Well, this horse comes out. And she said, oh, that's funny. He usually doesn't come out when there's anybody new around. Well, pretty soon he came right over with us. And I started just to say, how are you doing? Acknowledging him, letting him see that. I saw him when he, you know, tipped his head away, like, oh, that's a little too much pressure for me. I backed my eyes off.
- [108:43]
B
Yeah.
- [108:44]
C
And all of a sudden we he came over and he started being even more friendly. And I, I just kind of dropped my shoulder. I said to him, I said, would you like to take a little walk with me? And he and I walked out around the pasture. No halter, no rope, nothing. And she had two other horses and just standing there. He did a full lap with me and came right back. And it's once, honestly, once, all some of those horses are looking for is a connection point with someone that sees them. And as soon as they felt seen and invited instead of sort of forced to come, the whole game changes. And so that, and as I know, you know, but once that social engagement part of them is lighted up, they are ready to be curious and friendly and do something.
- [109:37]
B
Yeah, but it's like you talked about earlier on, about seeing them. You know, when I had Mark Rashid on the podcast, he was talking about him and Jim Masterson made a documentary a few years ago called A Mind Like Still Water. And I said, can you explain that? And he said, well, you know, when you go out in the morning, you look at a pond before the breeze comes up, when you look at that pond, you get a direct reflection of what's on the other side of the pond. But if you take a little pebble and throw it into the pond and make some ripples, now you're seeing a distorted view because of what you bought to the party. And I mean, you know, that lady said, oh, he doesn't like strangers.
- [110:13]
C
That's a, that's exactly right.
- [110:15]
B
That's.
- [110:15]
C
That's a resistance.
- [110:16]
B
That's a projection that she. There's a, that's an, there's an energetic signature to that. I feel like there is a, there's a judgment, there's a, There's a, yeah, that's not present. That's, that's like throwing a bunch of
- [110:29]
C
rocks in the pond. It's already shutting down. That receiver.
- [110:33]
B
Yeah.
- [110:34]
C
You've already pre. Made a decision in your mind of what's going to happen instead of having that receiver open and seeing, oh, he is kind of curious. What if I just lowered my shoulder and said, would you like to. If. What if instead of that, you were right there in the moment catching the seeing of what's coming. You know, what, what, what you're being offered. And, and that's what I mean, I think a lot of the time what stops flow, no matter what it is, whether, you know, it's, it's self healing or are an artist at work, is anytime some sort of resistance gets in there like that's the wrong line or this isn't quite good enough or, and any kind of resistance or oh, this is great so far, but I don't want to wreck it. But anything that we put there that stops that direct flow from coming in.
- [111:32]
B
Yeah, well, see, but what you're talking about there is not a horse thing. And you know, last weekend I was in Canada for a horse expo. And one of the things they did at this horse expo, it's called Horse Expo Canada, shout out to those guys. They have this big stage with this big screen behind it, but they had a thing called the Elite Horseman Summit. So they had Jonathan Field, Josh Nicholl, Tick Maynard and myself up on stage. And like they had two people interviewing us, asking us questions about stuff. And the thing, and there's quite a crowd of people watching. But the thing I really wanted to point out was that these three other guys up on the stage here have all done a lot of work on themselves outside horses. You know, Jonathan Field had a, an accident in the oil field when he was younger and basically cut his hand off and had some struggles, mental struggles with the aftermath of that and sought some counseling. And I guarantee you that's a part of what Jonathan brings to the horses. Tick Maynard, he.
- [112:42]
A
Right.
- [112:43]
B
He's read more books than I have and I've read a lot of books, you know what I mean? Similar types, you know, like.
- [112:50]
A
That's right.
- [112:51]
B
You know, ways of looking at the world type books. Josh has done a, you know, a lot of work and you know, I, I so Tick Maynard, he is one Road to the Horse twice.
- [113:01]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
- [113:02]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [113:03]
B
So when Tick went the first time, the first time he did it, one of the other competitors is a, is an older horseman who's probably started thousands of horses. And in Road to the Horse, I'd say the up to this, up until Tick did it, the least experienced person who's ever done it has probably started at least a hundred horses, went to Road to the Horse and had started less than 20 horses in his entire life. And not only did he win it once, he won it twice in a row. And I say, I think a lot of people who want to get better with their horses think they need to learn more horse stuff. And I think Tick Maidard win and Road to the Horse is the biggest wake up call for anybody, that he had the least amount of experience to do that, but he had the most unique perspective on his interactions with horses. And I feel like that is more important than all the horse knowledge in the world because I see a lot of people, especially professional horsemen that the only thing they do is.
- [114:08]
C
Yes.
- [114:08]
B
Is learn more about horses.
- [114:10]
C
Yes.
- [114:11]
B
Not.
- [114:13]
C
I totally agree with that and I just, I want to tell you about one article on my blog post that I think you'd love because I think I've been on sort of a very similar journey to yours in trying to. Because I'm also interested in hands on healing and what shamans are up to and what it is that flow is because I think they're the same thing as why we can communicate with other animals in the sense that we can drop the language side of our brain and become intuitive and aware and watching and offering and reacting and responding right in the moment. And I, I've studied, I've read a ton of books myself and what I love doing is taking my experience and stories and things that the animals have that have just been the experience with me and the animals and then been able to see how they relate to, you know, enter, you know, what our energy is doing what where our awareness is a bunch of things. But so what I ended up doing was I wrote a blog post that talked about how healer what's the secret to healers and horses from black box radionics to I don't know. I had a whole bunch of them. But what I went through is and found out in healing scenarios in communication with our horses say even things like master. What's the similarities between Masterson method and Reiki Healy? A lot of of modalities and what I ended up seeing was kind of a list that's similar for all those things and also for flow. So it's holding a good intention, it's wanting to offer help or communication. It's right brained. Often healers are in alpha theta state. It's where you are in your brain, where you are in your nervous system whether you're sympathetic, parasympathetic. I made a whole list of the sort of overlapping Venn diagram qualities that are in all of those things. And I completely agree with you that there's something in all those things that is the same and that it's the underlying thing to know whatever discipline in the horse world you're going to go into. I, I'm never nervous about who I'm going to help because I know it can slide under what else they're doing. And I, and I know that there's helpful information in this.
- [117:28]
B
Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me that you said in there was help. You know, one of the things you said was you're coming from a perspective of trying to help. I feel like an action with a different intention is a different action. And if you are coming at it to help the horse, it's different than if you're coming at it to fix the horse.
- [117:51]
A
Fix.
- [117:51]
B
You know what I mean? Helping them. Helping them feel better. You know, I. At a horse expo in Canada recently, I had a horse and there was a laundry list of things this horse doesn't like. Your horse won't. Horse pulls away, horse runs into you, horse this horse that horse or something else. And in the end, at the end of the session, none of those were there. But the point I tried to make with them, at no point in time am I trying to fix this laundry list of stuff. I'm trying to help this horse feel better in this environment.
- [118:22]
C
That's right.
- [118:22]
B
And about humans and all this stuff kind of went away. So really I'm a big believer in that. That things done from a perspective of trying to help from a more of a collaborative perspective, more than a, you know, more of a care for versus power over dynamic. You could do exactly the same thing and it would land completely differently.
- [118:45]
C
Yeah. And interestingly enough, with the healing, I. I've done two. Let two. Two levels of cranial sacral work with horses with Shea Stewart.
- [118:58]
B
Oh, really?
- [118:59]
C
And yeah, I love Shay Stuart. And it's. It. Yeah, she's wonderful. In the. The same. In the same thing there. You're. When you're working with a horse, you're never trying to fix the problem. Say, you know, the compression in the skull. You're. You're always thinking of the health. So you are in envisioning the healthy animal, the healthy tissue. You're never looking at something as. It's. As if it's broken.
- [119:31]
B
It's the opposite of Big pharma.
- [119:33]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that's the same thing as not trying to fix the horse, but to offer help. But you're offering help in also recognizing that the horse is already perfect, he's who he needs to be. But doesn't mean you can't offer, you know, some. Something to make him feel better or help him.
- [119:57]
B
Yes. Yeah. No, I think that's the. That's the. The. I really feel like the secret to the universe is like, oh, my life's pretty amazing now. And all the really amazing things that have happened to me, if I trace them back to what triggered them, what triggered that whole thing came from doing things with no thought of getting anything back for the. For the thing I was doing. You know what I mean? They just happened to be. And, you know, they just happened to be things that I was passionate about, and I wasn't doing it to get anything back. But those are the things that evolved into the things that made my life amazing, you know? You know, the things I was trying to do to make money. Didn't make money.
- [120:38]
C
Right.
- [120:38]
B
Because I had different intention about it. The. Yeah, it's the other things that.
- [120:42]
C
That. Yeah. You have to hold on to goals real loosely.
- [120:48]
B
Very, very loosely.
- [120:50]
C
Yes.
- [120:50]
B
Well, it's bad. Time has flown by. It's been two hours. And, you know, usually. Usually the journey on podcast is about where you are now in life and what was your journey to get there. We didn't get to too much of the journeys except Bernie sailing around the ocean and. But wow, what a fascinating pair you two are. We're gonna have to have you back in here a second time and hear some more stories. But before I wrap up here, how can. How can people find you guys?
- [121:21]
C
Okay, I. I can be found on the2stepway.com and@consideringanimals.com considering animals.
- [121:30]
B
I love that.
- [121:32]
C
Yeah. Well, and that, you know, that has a little bit of a story behind it, because, as I say, I've always loved animals. And I think one of your questions was, what do you think your purpose was in life? And I think mine was, ever since I was a little kid, is to let other people really know how smart and satient all animals are. And at one point in my life, I was a painter, and I would paint shows of individual animals with true stories of the most amazing things that animals have done. A lot have just been researched recently. And we're on. You know, one of your podcast guests, the English lady, a lot of those names, Jack Penscape, a lot of the people that you read, Mark Beckoff, I've talked to him personally. I Painted a Fox was a story from a story that he told about a fox whose mate had died. And he saw that fox actually bury its mate and sit on its grave for two days. And I thought. And I thought it needed to be painted. But I. Those stories, I wanted. I wanted people to see. And so I thought the way I could do it was to paint the animals in bright colors and put next to it, the store, a true story about them. So I had carefully researched that, and that's how Considering Animals got started. And the early, early parts of Considering Animals were all individual stories about animals that had done exceptional things about research that had been done about things like crows that learned to use traffic lights and they'd see when the crosswalk turned to green and then they could walk out and eat the nuts that have fallen in the road on the crosswalk and then. Yeah, but I mean they're so smart. So smart.
- [123:22]
B
So yes, most certainly. So those are to myself and Bernie. So tell us, tell us again the name of your books. Yeah, so the Too proud to write a Cow. I know that one.
- [123:34]
C
Yeah, you can't get that one right now.
- [123:36]
A
You can't get that one on your head. Yeah. So that one is being, is going from it's going through the traditional publisher to online metamorphosis where it gets in the ebook and all that. So that's currently on the used market. The Two Mules to Triumph book. So Two Mules to Triumph is available on Amazon hardcover soft cover. Be happy to send you a copy. The Lost Sea Expedition is the feature length film on Amazon about traveling 395 days solo from Canada to Mexico.
- [124:15]
B
I can't wait to see that. Because you know what I want to see is the same. When I watched Felipe's movie, every shot I saw I knew that he got off, set the camera somewhere.
- [124:26]
A
Yeah.
- [124:27]
B
And I was, I was looking at from the making it point of view, you know.
- [124:30]
C
Oh yeah, you'll love it.
- [124:31]
A
Then you'll get a kick out because I actually filmed some of the making of it that's in the film. Like you know, going back to get the camera. There's a big shot, you know, high shot, walking under. But then you see me like climbing windmills all sped up, going up, touching the windmill, you know, the camera. So it really kind of shows the, the nuts and bolts a little bit.
- [124:51]
B
That's funny. Can't wait to watch that.
- [124:55]
A
You never get a film crew to
- [124:56]
C
do that and then travel and then
- [124:59]
A
the, and then the, the, the final things to watch would be Mule rider. So that's the, the mule rider won
- [125:08]
B
the, that's the Emmy award winning.
- [125:10]
A
For PBS North Carolina. Yeah, yep, for PBS North Carolina. And Swan Song is this great gorgeous almost hour long PBS North Carolina feature with mule Poly. And then website wise my main site is riverearth.com so that's like the Rio Grande river and the planet Earth. Riverearth.com that's over 20 years old. It's got over 800 posts. It's got. I spent half a year going around Tasmania on a ten dollar bicycle so bad you had to push it downhill. It was that this thing was horrible. This is a shocker. So that's on there. The sailing stuff's on there. Riverearth.com There's a Lost Sea expedition.com site that's a standalone site for.
- [126:09]
B
For the lost.
- [126:11]
A
The Lost Expedition series. And then this is what I'm super excited about is I've just launched a website called Travel Grit. So, like, travel grit, like you travel
- [126:24]
B
and grit, like gritty, like your boat.
- [126:26]
A
So, yeah, like grit. Yeah. What a coincidence. Yeah, it's like a franchise now. No, no, no. So travel grit, travelgrit.com. this is so cool. I love this. This is my way of capturing the old school analog minds that are still there before those minds. And all of ours go digitally and rely on AI and screens and that's fine. So, like, I've interviewed Webchilds first I got to go around Cape Horn, you know, alone, American. He drifted for 26 hours in the ocean without a life jacket. A guy named Reza Bellucci, he wants to run like from Taiwan to Florida. And it looks like a giant wheel. It looks like a hamster wheel.
- [127:20]
C
It's on the ocean.
- [127:21]
A
The Coast Guard calls it the hamster wheel of doom. Give you an idea. Interviewed him on the horse side. Beautiful, beautiful interview. This will make a great guess for you. Warwick Ginza. Gola. Have you heard Gin's story?
- [127:38]
B
No.
- [127:38]
A
The name Ginsengal, I need to look
- [127:41]
B
that up on travelgrit.com okay.
- [127:44]
A
Yeah. James, go. First person to ride without a chase vehicle across southern Australia, including the Nullarborg.
- [127:53]
B
Your neighborhood. Yeah.
- [127:54]
A
Went across the Nullarbor. And what's most impressive to me is not the technical side because you can make horses do stuff. You can make them do it. But the care, the planning, the thought.
- [128:10]
C
She loves her horse.
- [128:11]
A
She horse is a wild brumby from the snowy, snowy mountains.
- [128:15]
C
She's probably ridden less than for five years and she's ridden a wild. She took a mustang, had a little help breaking it, but wrote it across America. And then she took this one, trained it all herself. A wild Australian brumby that she got from a rescue and rode it across Australia.
- [128:34]
B
I can't look her up.
- [128:37]
A
Okay, so lots of awesome.
- [128:40]
B
I got all sorts of stuff to do, especially watching the loss. Yeah, can't wait to watch that one. Well, thanks, guys. It's been amazing having this bit of a quick chat with you. I can't wait till next time to hear more stories about you. But yeah, thanks so much for joining us.
- [128:55]
A
Yeah, thank you. Sure. Thanks for the good recovery on all the. Whoa.
- [129:00]
C
And thank you for your podcast because we love, love it. We love it and we like your work.
- [129:05]
B
Oh, thank you. And yeah, you guys at home, thanks so much for joining us and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Journey on Podcast.
- [129:13]
A
Thanks for being a part of the Journey on Podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warwick has over 850 full length training videos on his online video library@videos.warickschiller.com Be sure to follow Warrick on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to see his latest training advice and insights.