Transcript
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People often ask me about my story and how I got into podcasting.
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So, after nearly 100 episodes and numerous requests to share, I'm excited for this special episode as my daughter, carson, interviews me about my life as the voice behind Exploration Local.
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We'll delve into the origins of my passion for the outdoors, rooted in family adventures growing up and camping across Europe in family adventures growing up and camping across Europe and we'll discover how Exploration Local evolved from a blog to a podcast, capturing authentic stories that inspire others to explore the great outdoors.
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This podcasting journey has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding.
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Listen in as we discuss the technical growth of the podcast, engaging guests in dynamic locations and memorable episodes that have left a lasting impact, from overcoming imposter syndrome to dreaming of creating documentary style content.
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I'll share insights and aspirations that have fueled my passion for storytelling.
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I'll reflect on the podcast influence in my life, and Carson will share how it's enriched her life too.
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This was so much fun and I hope you enjoy it.
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You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique.
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My name is Mike Andrus, the host of Exploration Local.
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Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel the spirit of adventure.
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We encourage you to wander far, but explore local, let's go.
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All right, well, welcome back.
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Today's episode is going to be a little bit different because I am interviewing my dad, mike Andres, host of Exploration Local, and basically we're just going to be recording the conversations that we already have, whether that's on the trails or riding up the mountain to go skiing, like we did a lot this past winter.
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But we're just going to talk about dad's love for the podcast and basically what kickstarted that.
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So let's just start with that.
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What kickstarted your love for the outdoors?
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Listen to you.
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You're so good.
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Thanks, yeah, You're trying to take them over, aren't you?
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I need to hand it over and run off into the sunset.
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Mom and dad, Mimi and Papa to you, I think most of us, a lot of people, are going to probably say their earliest influence was their parents, and it sounds cliche, but it's certainly the case for me.
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You know, we, oh gosh, from living in South Carolina to go camping just about every single weekend when we were younger to living in Europe.
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My dad constantly had this sense of adventure, and you know that because Papa still to this day is out on hikes with you and planning adventures halfway across the country and flew out to Colorado to see you and but but I think mom and dad, both of them, both of them really sort of had a a flair for adventure.
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Mom comes from the Rockies, Dad came from farmlands in Michigan but was a world traveler, and then we got a chance to actually move across the pond, as they say.
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We moved to Spain, lived there for gosh, about four years and just had the best time.
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I mean, it was constant camping.
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We didn't know the language right off the bat, but we were camping with the Spaniards sitting in the middle of the creek.
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You know we would constantly go on these little mini excursions and then I think one of the things that really, at least in my life, that really sort of gave me that love for adventure, finding new places, seeing new towns, was when we were in Europe and dad took about 30 days off from work and we had a 1972 Volkswagen van, pea green ugly as sin, but man, dad got it outfitted and this was long before the days of the van life.
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Yeah, you should have kept that, you should have kept it.
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It would probably be worth a lot of money these days.
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But he did that and just kind of sitting in the front seat, you know, I didn't know where we were going, but he gave me the map and I felt like I was the co-pilot and so I felt like I was invested in this journey with him.
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That, for gosh, we got a chance to see much of Spain, france, belgium, italy, switzerland, holland, rocca, gibraltar, africa, morocco, Africa, you know, and others.
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Portugal and we live right on the coast is Spain, and so we were constantly outside and just, you know, it was just part of life, it's part of what we did.
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But Mimi and Papa kind of gave me that my first true love, I think, and also kind of being a military dependent and I didn't mention that just the resilience and the adaptability and an expanded worldview, open-mindedness, resourcefulness, all of those things really sort of kind of came into play, both being a military dependent and then also all the activities that we were kind of choosing to do as a family.
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So those were some of my absolute earliest experiences with the outdoors.
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You know I love how you talk about where Mimi was from, where Papa was from, where you went on these crazy adventures and all these different things.
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But everyone still had a sense of adventure and that sense of adventure still grows no matter where you're at, especially us growing up in Western North Carolina.
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That even spiked my sense of adventure and our siblings to where we're going off and doing our own things.
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Keely's going to Switzerland and.
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I went to Colorado Kaiint out there in Colorado and did three semesters out there and all of a sudden now you're like.
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You know what?
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I'm a Southern Appalachia girl and I'm like.
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I'm okay with that.
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There's nothing like Western North Carolina.
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And you ask other people I'll be on the trail or just talking to someone at a swimming hole and they say the exact same thing that there is just nothing like Western North Carolina.
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And you don't realize that until you got to go off for a little bit.
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And then you realize it.
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That's right, that's exactly right.
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Well, you know that sense of adventure.
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I think once it's there and once the seed is planted, it doesn't really go anywhere.
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It's just a matter of are you watering that seed, you know, and does it grow, and are you in an area or areas that even allow some of the adventure?
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But I will tell you, I think you can adventure anywhere.
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It doesn't matter if you're in the middle of New York City, if it's just adventuring up and down the concrete, there's a venture to be had.
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I think it's a mindset to be perfectly honest with you.
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But one of the people early on you're talking about the influences that really affected me was a man by the name of Wayne Taylor, wt.
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He was at Middle Tennessee State.
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So this is back in the time when I was your mom and I were at the University of Tennessee, memphis.
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I was fresh out of graduate school, I was the director of the recreation program and we started an outdoor program.
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We had no money, we had no budget.
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So we went to the student government and we got a fleet of boats, canoes and kayaks and backpacks and we want to make an investment to sort of get students out and about, and WT was the one that probably made not only the biggest influence in my life at that time, but in many people's influences, because WT was all about developing students, but it was also about developing young professionals too, and that's where he sort of took me underneath his wing, and I'll never forget.
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We went to the NOC in 1994, I think it was and we were at the NOC.
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It was the Intramural Recreational Sports Association.
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It was an outdoor conference.
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That's where WT and I I took my staff, we met up with him, drove up to the Nantahala and was blown away.
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It was my first time ever being at the NOC, unbelievable experience, met so many great people.
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Leaving there though, we got on the Hawassie River, heading back, we went to the takeout and he just wanted to make sure that I could do a wet exit.
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And we did a wet exit and, man, we headed out.
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And so for all the safety boaters and the safety talk people, this may not be, this may fly right in the face of how you lead people on trips, but this is what we did didn't flip, I could get out of my boat, made it down and absolutely fell in love with it, and then from there it was taking students on trips at UT as often as we possibly could and we, if we weren't taking students on trips, your mom and I or some of my staff, we were out doing scouting trips all up and down Tennessee, missouri, kentucky, as many places that we could possibly go to sort of take students, staff, faculty, into the outdoors.
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And we grew that program and it was a very successful program for the reason of adventure People were.
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It was a health science campus, we had medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, physical therapy, all these schools, and so it was very high stress academics and we got people into the outdoors and they could just let their guard down, they could just be, they could forget about the real world for a minute and just just exist, and for a lot of them they really told us that is what got them through.
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In fact, one of my earlier episodes is with Yashdeep Kumar.
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He was straight out of India and he um, this program made such an influence on him.
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He reached out to me like two years ago after he started listening to the podcast again.
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He was one of my guests actually and all of that made a huge impact on him and he continues to adventure to this day.
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He sends me pictures all the time.
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I just got one not too long ago on Instagram about hey, once I had the love for the outdoors.
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I always had the love for the outdoors, and it's amazing what he's done for his family too.
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So yeah, it's made a big influence on my life, for sure.
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That's awesome.
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I do.
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I like how you describe it, though, that when you have a sense of adventure, you can't hold it in and you want everyone to just experience this like physically.
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I mean mentally like what it can do for you.
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Um, it's, it's what, let's talk a little bit about that.
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I mean, you're out there, you saying that you're hooked.
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Why were you hooked?
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Oh, good question.
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Why was I hooked?
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You know some people may call it escapism.
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I don't really think it's escapism.
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I think it's a way to sort of get grounded and get out and get back to the point where, when we remove distractions, when we have the ability to just hear our own thoughts and not get in the way of our own thoughts, I think that's incredibly wonderful.
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And there's also countless, especially now, countless studies on what just looking at green trees and looking at the color, what that does to bring down tension and blood pressure and anxiety and all of these things.
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Forest bathing is something that is so common today.
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It's becoming more common, but I think it's just that I think it's getting into the outdoors.
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I think you have an ability to connect with nature.
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I think it's where we're designed to be, and I just think that there's a reason why most people, when they start to pull away from their home and they get closer to the mountains, or they say the mountains are calling.
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I must go.
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John Muir, I mean, he was on to something there and I just really think that there's something special about it and really I'm probably describing something that anybody who's experienced being in the outdoors already knows.
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But it's my go-to place.
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There's many times in my life where, if it's either driving to the river to sit by the river and just sit, meditate, think, pray, whatever it may be, that's my opportunity to sort of be out and sort of disconnect.
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And I love the fact that we're literally 10 minutes away from some place, that you have no cell service, and so it's very easy to get out there and just completely unplug.
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It's great, even the backyard.
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Yeah, sometimes you just got to walk around in the backyard.
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Blow off some steam.
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That's right.
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Just growing up.
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I think that's a good example that you've led is you always have the outdoors.
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Always.
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Protect it, you always have it.
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That's right.
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All right.
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Well, dad, you are four years into Exploration Local.
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You have about 100 episodes, Is that right?
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Yeah, getting really close.
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Yeah, okay, so we're going to have to think back to four years ago, but what inspired you to start this podcast?
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Back then, I had recently started a blog and I love to write, so it was a way to sort of scratch a niche to write.
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What I found, though, is that I was bringing my recording device and I was listening.
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I was recording every conversation I had, and then I would spend the time to go back and try to rewrite what they said and be able to make sure I had all my facts straight, and so forth.
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Well, the challenge with that is I always felt like I could never do as good a job writing out as they're telling me the story, so I can never write it as well as they could say their story or tell their story, and I was invited to come on a podcast speaking of travel.
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It's a local one here, but it's on iHeart, so it is broadcasted nationwide, connected with the Asheville Airport as well, and it was at that time that I had already been kind of thinking about it, and, after I went through the process, it made such an impact on me that I said I want to give this a shot and purchased a little startup kit and little handheld portable recorder, a couple of cheap microphones and no headphones at the time, and I just I went after it I got a first few episodes in which the episodes were fine on the guest side.
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On my side it was terrible, like a deer in the headlights Talk so slow and monotone.
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Well, this is hard, this is not easy, this is not easy to be asking some questions.
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And I mean it's only taken us about four hours to get started on this, oh my gosh, a couple of days.
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We'll do it after dinner, that's right, I think.
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It's just that.
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I think it was a situation or an opportunity to say let's try a different medium.
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I know podcasts were popular and gosh.
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Yeah, we hit that first record on the first one four years ago and haven't looked back and won't look back, yeah.
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Do you think it makes a difference of where you're at?
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Because I know, I mean, this is portable.
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You take your studio to a couple of cool places.
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You've been to the beach, you've gone by the river.
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I mean we're sitting here in our own home and it's a nice studio.
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I'm going to say, but does that make a difference of where you're at and how you engage with your people on the podcast?
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I mean I think so.
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You know, when I first started, most of it was all remote.
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It was during COVID.
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I had a little space in an area that I could record and be private, but people would call in primarily, and that's how we got to record their episodes.
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So there is something to be said for recording in person.
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I think that there's just a different dynamic, it's a different element altogether.
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But going out on site is fantastic too.
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I mean just what it.
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You know being sitting at, you know Surf City, sitting at the beach, sitting at the trailhead, you know sitting beside a river, sitting inside, sitting on the front porch of a cabin.
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All of those were remarkable experiences and I'll continue to do that kind of stuff for sure.
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It gets a little bit more complicated to kind of travel and set up and as my equipment here grows.
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You see this little recorder here has grown into this big, you know, mixing table here.
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So it's a little bit harder.
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But I do like being out on site and we still will do it.
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But it's really cool the number of people that say when I say would you mind coming into the our basement studio in Hendersonville, they're like absolutely not a problem.
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And then the wall behind me that people are signing is just the really coolest thing too.
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So it's growing, it's growing yeah.
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Yeah, I love it, but yeah, I mean anyway, I mean we have a, an episode that's we're going to be recording next week and and the guest and I have really tried hard to schedule this we can't get it together, so we're going to do it live, just so we don't keep pushing it back.
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So, or, excuse me, we're going to do it remote, so we don't keep pushing it back.
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So tell me about that very first episode.
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How do you think it went?
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I felt like I was reading a book report.
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It was so bad.
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It was.
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It was my first episode and then the first episode we recorded.
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I think it it went as well as it could.
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I know I was nervous as all get out very much like you the first time that you turn on the microphone and put a set of headphones on and you hear your own voice.
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You're aware of your voice.
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You're aware of your voice.
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It is very weird, but it was Matt Moses with USA Raft and we had a remarkable time.
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He's such a just an incredible human being that he made the whole process just simple and didn't make me feel as if there was any pressure on me.
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He was just honored that we were telling his story and so it was really cool to have that as one of my very first episodes.
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It's changed a lot, so, listeners, you can go back.
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If I could mute my voice in those first few episodes, that'd be great and you could just listen to the guests, because it's definitely been a growth process for sure.
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So that first one heart's beating 100 miles an hour, dry mouth, lots of drinks of water, Just scared to death.
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And you stuck with it.
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Stuck with it, absolutely so obviously you had to have fallen in love with talking to people face to face.
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Well, Carson, you know me.
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I mean, we're always the last ones to leave.
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We're never the first ones to get there, but we're always one of the last ones to leave.
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We always walk around and I'm like how do you know that person, how do you know this person?
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It's like I said the same thing about you and your mom now.
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So okay.
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Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
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Well, you've done.
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We said about a hundred episodes, so clearly we've gone through a bunch of different experiences, so why don't you just talk about the most memorable moments or interviews that you've had so far?
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Every one of them have been memorable.
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I think I mean, it's so cool.
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Everybody has an amazing story.
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We just have to take the time to listen to these stories.
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And obviously, the stories that we're listening to and talking about are all the things that are about the outdoors and adventure and about the things that we love.
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So naturally, it's easy to talk about.
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You know those things, but in terms of the ones that have been the most memorable to me, it's really it's hard because you feel like you don't want to leave something out, but there are a few that really have made a personal impact on me.
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The very first one was Old Fort, I think, and it's still one of our top five most listened to episodes, and that was a couple of years ago.
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And I think that one was so memorable because you had so many different stakeholders coming together and it was the town of Old Fort and I had been driving through Old Fort and just imagining what this place could look like as it was beginning to, or if it could be revitalized, and it was already well on its way.
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So you had Hillman Brewing that was there.
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You had Kitsbo that was there, and you had other companies.
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Other businesses were beginning to open up and today it's much different, two years later, than it was then, but it was such an investment of private, the forest service, the community it, the forest service, the community fundraisers.
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There was a lot of people that had a hand in making this episode and making the G5 Trail Collective that we were talking about come to life and it was really cool to sit on that.
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We were out at Camp Greer.
00:18:39.210 --> 00:18:41.181
We're sitting on the canoe dock.
00:18:41.181 --> 00:18:43.144
I mean it was just a great experience.
00:18:43.144 --> 00:18:54.721
We were outside, so speaking of going somewhere and recording remotely, but I think it was the story and the connection, the interconnection between all the people that were a part of that that made that episode so special.
00:18:54.721 --> 00:19:05.162
And then being able to see the improvements that are continuing to be made in that area, the new trails that were actually finally broken ground, the new trails that they're adding in, that was a.
00:19:05.162 --> 00:19:07.106
That was a pretty cool experience.
00:19:07.106 --> 00:19:18.855
Also, I think, the Outdoor Economy Conference having the I'll call it the privilege to go and be a part of that and my first one was a couple of years ago.
00:19:18.855 --> 00:19:30.200
It was sort of a fly on the wall kind of experience it, but I also was there invited by Made by Mountains and they were setting up interviews for me with a handful of people with a handful of people.
00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:42.612
So those very first on-site at the conference interviews were really really special experiences for me.
00:19:42.612 --> 00:19:46.119
And then last year, going back just continued to be a really cool experience and just continue to meet new people and have that whole network.
00:19:46.119 --> 00:19:50.173
So all of those episodes that I recorded there I think are pretty cool.
00:19:51.295 --> 00:20:02.276
Another one that's been impactful on me is working with Create the Uproar and they were doing a special program with Visit NC and now it's out there in the public.
00:20:02.276 --> 00:20:15.555
So when you see Outdoor NC, which is a part of Visit NC, uproar was the one who's responsible for a lot of that all the creative assets and the program for creating the Leave no Trace.
00:20:15.555 --> 00:20:21.217
There's a connection with Leave no Trace, with Visit North Carolina and they are very much a part of that.
00:20:21.217 --> 00:20:28.891
And also Create the Uproar is working on a national campaign with Leave no Trace and there are other little things that they're working on along the way.
00:20:29.531 --> 00:20:40.398
And we did an episode with Derek and Nathan in their little office space Still, I'll never forget that one because it was barely enough room for three of us to fit in, but we had the absolute best time.
00:20:40.398 --> 00:20:43.230
I don't think there was any air in there either, but we had a really good time.
00:20:43.230 --> 00:20:53.663
And then seeing what they've been able to do with that episode and some of the doors that they've used I didn't open up those doors for them, they just used the recording and people learned about them, which was really, really cool.
00:20:53.663 --> 00:21:01.876
And then, most recently, with their, with them going to the media and influencers day at Catawba Falls when it reopened a couple of weeks ago.
00:21:01.876 --> 00:21:05.938
The really cool thing is they did all the assets for that, all the trail design, the trailhead.
00:21:05.938 --> 00:21:09.157
They did everything and you can see their element of their work.
00:21:09.157 --> 00:21:14.830
You can see it.
00:21:14.830 --> 00:21:19.803
You know you look at an artist and you can see things in art that you know who the artist was, and that was very much the same way with Create the Uproar.
00:21:19.950 --> 00:21:22.416
So that one was pretty special for me.
00:21:22.416 --> 00:21:24.060
I've already mentioned the Made by Mountains.
00:21:24.060 --> 00:21:24.810
That was really cool.
00:21:24.810 --> 00:21:33.700
Going to the cabins at Sandy Mush Bald was a really special experience for me because it was one of still to this day.
00:21:33.700 --> 00:21:39.633
It's one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been in Western North Carolina anywhere in East Tennessee, western North Carolina.
00:21:39.633 --> 00:21:52.152
Being up on top of these balls well over 5,000 feet, 500 private acres, and just the history, the hundred plus year old cabins that were on this property, was absolutely amazing to me.
00:21:52.933 --> 00:22:03.943
And then I think probably the one that has impacted me and stayed with me kind of the most is Jason Bowman with Ogre Sports, outdoor gear and recreation equipment.
00:22:03.943 --> 00:22:05.775
Jason has since passed away.
00:22:05.775 --> 00:22:06.436
He passed away.
00:22:06.436 --> 00:22:10.882
He had stage four prostate cancer and succumbed to it this past year.
00:22:10.882 --> 00:22:14.298
That's not why that episode made it really special for me.
00:22:14.410 --> 00:22:19.019
What made it special for me was the fact that here is somebody who is literally dying.
00:22:19.019 --> 00:22:29.742
In his words he would tell you that he was living with stage four cancer because that's how he attacked life and I think, coming out of that it just made me not focus on my issues, my problems.
00:22:29.742 --> 00:22:34.994
Here I am sitting across the table from somebody who he doesn't know how many days he has left and when.
00:22:34.994 --> 00:22:38.823
He would explain to me his experience with Warrior Surf.
00:22:38.823 --> 00:22:43.791
He had never surfed a day in his life and he just kind of explained to me how he found that organization.
00:22:44.192 --> 00:22:48.632
And it's really chilling if you go back, and I would highly encourage anybody to listen to those episodes.
00:22:48.632 --> 00:22:53.961
But this particular one really sort of caught me at the core.
00:22:53.961 --> 00:23:06.571
It hit me at the core because there were things that happened all along the way in his story, in his life, that were so interconnected and they were so timely that there's no way that you can just say that it's just happenstance.
00:23:06.571 --> 00:23:11.511
I mean, it was created, it's by design and he really made an impact on me in that way.
00:23:11.511 --> 00:23:17.660
I still have on my dresser upstairs the seeds that he wants, that his wife had available at.
00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:18.761
Yeah, celebration of life.
