Hey folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.

I'm your host, Mason Gravely.

And today's episode is really cool because I feel like a lot of people might find this really relatable.

You grow up somewhere and you see these, you know, standard challenges or standard

opportunities in your area. Maybe that's a river or a hike or something around you that

people come do and you've been around it, but you've never done it yourself. That was the case

for Eric. He had seen this 120-mile race that takes place on the river near his

hometown, small town in Michigan. And he was like, you know what, I've seen this my whole life.

I'm going to do it. He didn't do the race, but he did the route and did it solo on his own,

his own pace, his own terms, almost like this, you know, initiation into adulthood.

And it just gave him so much confidence to travel the world and go see other places.

Well, he has, and he is still very much tied to home.

He's a writer for Sports Illustrated and writes about Michigan football where he went to school.

However, through his travels, he's been made aware of so many things around the world that he has fallen in love with the Amazon rainforests and protecting it.

So we're kind of talking about this story that is in the works and still happening.

I mean, everybody's story is still going on.

But this one especially, because this is also new to them, we're talking about how, you know,

this canoe trip in Michigan leads to advocating for the protection and conservation of the Amazon

rainforest, which is an enormous task and an enormously important thing to do.

But we're going to talk about how all these worlds work together for him.

How do you talk about sports, go do your solo adventures at home, and also these things

around the world.

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