This is Rumbel Strip, America Heilman, happy new year.

It's really cold here, but that's okay.

I'm feeling pretty good.

And today it's up to 21 degrees already,

and it's only 9.13 in the morning. I'm working on a couple big shows right now that

are taking longer than usual to produce. I'm going to keep my head down and

keep working on them and in the meantime I wanted to play one of my

favorite Scott Carrier stories which is actually his very first story he made it

when he was 26 and before the show starts he will explain how he came to make the show back in earlier times in public radio.

Here's Scott Carrier.

34 years ago, when I was 26 years old, I woke up next to a two-lane highway running across the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona.

Sagebrush, rabbit bush, no traffic.

I had my things in a backpack and I was hitchhiking across the country, interviewing people who picked me up, hoping

to use the interviews for a radio story I'd produce at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.

Once I got there, I'd sent them a letter telling them I was

coming. Across the road there were two big mounds of red sandstone

rising up out of the desert floor like whales surfacing at sea.

And they seem to be humming or producing static, a buzz, or something was in the air, and it was coming from the smooth hump-like mounds.

I'd heard stories about the Indian Reservation, how there are ghosts and spirits flying around, and I got scared.

Suddenly felt like I had no idea what I was doing.

My life was a mess.

I've been married, and that was a mistake, and it was my fault. I was unemployed, nearly broke.

...