This is the outside podcast with Paddyo.

I'm underwater, getting washed around in the white water, and then I come up and I scream as loud as I've ever screamed before. It was a visceral yell of spiritual

awakening and the direction of my life was chosen in that very moment. In Song of myself, Walt Whitman

describes it as the barbaric yop.

Which is just this guttural expression of emotion.

You bark and scream and yell.

It's a prayer.

It's a thank you.

It's an expression of joy.

It really is.

Thank you, Mr. Whitman.

Seriously.

In our outdoor community, we talk a lot about culture.

Our values, our goofy language, are sometimes funny, oftentimes inspiring behaviors and feats.

The dirt-footed rituals and practices that shape our lives.

Sometimes those things are easy to define, like how a steep, sweaty hike seems like a good first-date option, or how more conversations between strangers happen on chairlifts than any other transportation

device in the history of everything, or how outdoorsy stickers on cars, roofboxes, water bottles,

and coolers are a modern-day Rosetta Stone that allows us to understand each other. Culturally speaking, those types of practices are

ingrained in our DNA. But more often than not, culture is impossible to pin down into specific

activities or descriptors or phrases. Culture is impossible to pin down into specific activities or descriptors or phrases.

Culture is felt.

And in order to make sense of feelings, you need a wordsmith, a storyteller, a poet even.

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