Feeling Feelings: Ely Wildfires Part 3

Part 3 of our mini series responding to the 2026 July lightning wildfires in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. M Baxley from Grand Marais returns to explore the experience of living on the edge of the Wilderness at this particular time. (This episode was recorded on Thursday, July 23, 2026.) 

Dancing on the Edge with M Baxley (Wilderness Edge Podcast episode 3) 

Big Think on Joy (>7 minute YouTube video) 

Ely Community Response (Online hub for Ely Community Response efforts)

Ely Community Response (Wilderness Edge Podcast episode 8)

Northeastern Minnesota United Way (Nonprofit slated to be distributing relief funds soon)

Boundary Waters Connect (Sponsor of this podcast) 

Transcript

M Baxley 0:08

We're up here because we love to be outside and we do all these things outside this movement and being out there to kind of regulate our nervous systems on a regular basis, you know, with the clean air. Yeah, with the clean air. And so all of a sudden, I'm not saying that the majority of people that live in the proximity of the woman is all of a sudden not be able to come outside. So nominally is the place we live sort of the cause of our upset. And then the way that we would come up with it is now off the table. Off the table.

Lacey Squier 0:53

Welcome to Wilderness Edge, a podcast about the people on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe area wilderness and the communities they inhabit and the people who love them and think about them. My name is Lacey Squire. I'm the host of this show. Um it's produced by Brett Ross of Boreal Roots Media. And this is part three of a three-part series on the July 2026 lightning incident and the wildfire complex that is currently burning portions of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. And my very special guest is M Baxley, a person you may be familiar with, was our guest on episode three, Dancing on the Edge. Hey M.

M Baxley 1:38

Hello. So good to be with you, Lacey and you, Brett. Again, it's always rich to hang out with y'all.

Lacey Squier 1:48

I feel like I got to hang out with you last night and well, well, I did. We went for a walk. Um, but also when I went home and I was prepping blueberry hand pies for my Ely Folk School blueberry hand pie class, I listened to that episode. And it was just delightful. So cool that I could sort of um connect with you at any time, any place. Because you're just like in my pocket, so to speak.

M Baxley 2:15

Absolutely. It's like the best part about recording these conversations.

Lacey Squier 2:21

Yeah.

M Baxley 2:21

Um, we come back to them when we need to.

Lacey Squier 2:24

We can return to them.

M Baxley 2:26

Which I love. Although I will say I always prefer a walk in person.

Lacey Squier 2:30

Yeah, certainly. Certainly. Yeah. Certainly.

M Baxley 2:33

Don't shortchange me, Lacey.

Lacey Squier 2:37

Well, we we are friends. And when the wildfire um incident was unfolding, right, as we understand, the lightning, you know, the many lightning strikes on July 6th eventually evolved into these fires that really started um popping off and then expanding on July 12, 13, 14. And then somewhere in that week of chaos, we connected over a text message and decided we wanted to have a phone call.

M Baxley 3:08

Yeah.

Lacey Squier 3:09

And

You are a person in my life with whom I feel safe to feel the full spectrum of emotion around

Lacey Squier 3:11

you are a person in my life who that feels really comfortable and safe to feel the full spectrum of emotion around. And we were able to touch base, however, briefly, over the phone and connect about how it feels to be here now in this moment in time.

M Baxley 3:35

Yeah. Yeah. It I think it's really hard to go through this stuff. I think it's really hard to go through it, those of us who live here, and it's really hard to go through it for folks that don't live here but love this place. And there's so much attention on this region right now because a lot of people feel so connected to to it. And so it seems like there's there are two different experiences being had being experienced. Those of us who live here and are navigating that complexity in roller coaster, and then all the people that are witnessing it from afar. Um and they're related a lot.

Lacey Squier 4:28

Well, and there's so many nuances inside of that too, because it's like I have had, you know, I've had my own emotional roller coaster, my own anxieties, my own fears, my own losses, griefs, sadness. Um, but I live in town and I'm in a secure place, relatively speaking. I'm not in a ready-set-go evacuation order. I was just talking to a friend last night. You know, she got evacuated a week ago, and there's no, there's no end in sight. And she really has extremely limited opportunities to go back to her place. She may or may not be escorted by a, you know, public official when she does. And so I feel embarrassed, but I didn't ever think of evacuations as being so long-standing. I had this vision of like, well, a fire either comes through or it doesn't. And then your evacuation, you know, I just envisioned a evacu as a short-term thing. Um, so we have the people who are living it because they're evacuated, and or someone like me who's, you know, quote unquote living it, but I'm just a neighbor to it almost. I feel removed.

M Baxley 5:38

Yeah. Yeah. And I think in in that way, it's really hard, and I really want to be careful not to like as we talk about what it's like to go through this, to um overgeneralize. Right. Um, because obviously the level of disruption for somebody who's evacuated is far more extreme than um, yeah, say for you living in town, or for where I live in proximity to the wilderness, where fire is not a threat. It's not an immediate threat. So there is a lot of differences in that disrupt. But what is true is that for all of us in these wilderness edge communities, this is not how life is. This fire has completely disrupted daily life, moment-to-moment life. And that's a pretty big deal. And I think to have that, to have the catalyst for that be something that feels so catastrophic, wildfire, so threatening, wildfire, and whether you're close to the fire or not, the experiences I think we all shared with the smoke. Um having the having smoke so thick that it darkens the entire sky to the point where your headlights come on automatically on your vehicle, to the to the where the hue of the everything you're seeing changes to dark or orange or sapiotone, but like not romantic, just sad. Yeah. And you combine that with actually ingesting smoke. I mean, everything in our bodies is saying danger, run, flee, hide. That is a total nervous system response that I think we all collectively experienced, regardless of our proximity to the fire.

Lacey Squier 7:33

I feel like a wave of sadness just having you talk about it that way because it makes me realize how intensely like the overdrive to not give that sensation permission, how how strong that drive is. Like my way of being can be so like adaptable that it's like, all right, move on, on to the next thing. Now we gotta do this, now we gotta do this. And you I say you proverbially, I'm talking about myself, but it's just like that. It's what your words are even just like giving me a period of grace and permission to just realize like the clenching of my own body and just giving that up for a second, but give it up for a second, and then I start crying.

M Baxley 8:17

Yeah.

Lacey Squier 8:18

And I feel silly, like I don't think that I should be sad or scared because I know that fire is natural, and I know that I know that there's over 700 people whose job it is right now to protect us. Like I I know that I don't need to be in fight or flight, but yet I almost feel like embarrassed to feel sad. Like it's just very complicated, huh? We're just like animals.

M Baxley 8:46

We are, and it it does feel that complicated. You know, I when the smoke was at its worst, and you know, there's ash falling from the sky. Oh my god. And I remember just like you, like this um contradiction in my embodied experience with what I knew to be true. In my mind, I kept telling myself, you're safe, there's no danger. You're safe, there's no danger. Just just go about go about your day. But my entire body was screaming terror. And really, I think the the point I think we're talking about is it doesn't matter what rationally it does. Like our bodies don't need to be invalidated by our minds. Like our our bodies need to work through this. And yeah. Can I just share share a a thing that felt really important for me? And we were talking about this Brett before we were rolling. About, you know, we talked about this in my the last interview we did about we're up here because we love to be outside and we do all these things outside, this movement and being out there to kind of regulate our nervous systems on a regular basis, you know, it's with the clean air. Yeah, with the clean air. And to all of a sudden, and I'd say that's the majority of people that live in proximity of the wilderness, and to all of a sudden not be able to go outside, um, to not be able to go be active outside on top of everything else we're talking about. So not only is the place we love sort of the cause of our upset and what's happening, natural or not, and then the way that we would cope with it is now off the table. Off the table. And, you know, I had conversations with folks where they they were talking about feeling trapped in their homes, feeling claustrophobic, feeling, you know, just um yeah, just completely un undone by how to manage what was happening. Um yeah, we were all in that. And even even though it's sort of the worst of that moment has passed for now, um we know that all of that stress still lives in our bodies. You just illustrated that beautifully, Lacey, by saying as soon as you sit with it and give it permission, it starts to move.

Lacey Squier 11:19

I also think about like there's the the visceral stuff, the physiological, like, oh my gosh, smoke, danger signals in your body, ash gently falling from the sky against a you know, damning sapiotone, hazy background. You know, there's all that. But I think maybe what's been hardest, harder challenging for me, where where some of the feelings come up is just the you have this notion of like what July is gonna be like, what August is gonna be like, what September is gonna be like. You spend, you know, I I'll use myself as an example working with Boundary Waters Connect. I've I've spent, you know, five years working on this project with many layers and lanes and branches. And, you know, you work and you build plans and strategies, you have things you're looking forward to, and then all of a sudden full stop. Full stop. Like none of that stuff is probably gonna happen. And also all of the stuff you thought you were gonna do, you're not gonna do, and now you have other stuff to do. And there's just like that's a micro level of feeling that I can only imagine what it feels like to be a business owner, right? I have a friend who owns a business and her business um has many layers to it, but one of them is selling items on consignment. And it's just like, you know, the work she thought she was gonna be doing in July versus like coordinating, you know, emergency evacuans with dozens of artists and their livelihood under her purview. You know, just the loss of um the ability to plan ahead, the loss of the plans you made. It's all it all like I can hear myself, and then I think, oh, that's like small potatoes, it's so unimportant. But it's also like the stuff of my life and the stuff of my inner dialogue and where I put my attention, and it's all been sort of grabbed away. I had earlier this spring, I was really high on my mantra. I had watched uh I love Big Think. It's a YouTube channel with a lot of like philosophy, psychology, science stuff. And there's a psychologist who specializes in the study of like joy and happiness. And joy is superior to happiness because it's layered and mapped onto sadness and trauma and tragedy. You know, you feel you don't feel joy instead of, you feel joy kind of in spite of and on top of those things. And she said the prerequisite, one prerequisite for joy is being experientially surprisable. So this spring, I was like, that's my mantra, all summer long. I'm gonna be experientially surprisable. And then I got my ass kicked. It's like, oh no, no, actually, I really wanted things just to go according to plan.

M Baxley 14:22

Surprise, yeah. Like you would have been nice if you could have been sort of eased into it, right? Like maybe finding a dollar on the sidewalk or yeah.

Lacey Squier 14:35

Yeah, and then I I think to all of the all of this stuff to kind of culminated in like a feeling like my brain wasn't working, you know? Yeah, not only do I like now have like a whole new set of things I need to do, not only are they kind of like urgent, and also my brain doesn't feel like it's working. Did you experience that?

M Baxley 15:00

Yeah, absolutely. And I I love that you brought that up. I experienced that a lot of people that I've talked to were were experiencing that, and I think that's I mean, because you think about it, like the part of our brain that is fight or flight is like that hypothalamus, you know, that's really pretty teeny tiny. And when we go there we're not in our frontal lobe. You know, we're not in our reasoning, we're not in our and and it's because it's survival, and because there's not time for in survival mode, there's it's not budgeting energy for nuance and for those things. And so yeah, I've it's just what we do.

Lacey Squier 15:49

Yeah, and it's I guess it's just natural. Like, yeah, Lacy, it's okay. Your brain stopped working, you know, like you were operating at uh with less functionality. I just wasn't 100% online in my brain and in my body.

M Baxley 16:04

Yeah. And I, you know, I think about just even over the course of this conversation, we talked about the immediate sort of overwhelm of the fires and the smoke and the massive change. And then now we're we're in this prolonged period of an even more substantial change, which is the change to our everyday life because we're tourist economies. One of the main tourism drivers is closed, not to mention the the fear and perception of how it must be terrible here. Um, and that all changing our lives in a pretty profound way. And the way that we sort of talked about is uh like the one of the first things that comes up for me is COVID and the way that all of our lives changed in such an instant, and um that being so disorienting and so confusing and having so many feelings and not knowing what they were or what to do with. And in that time, I discovered what through trying to make sense of what was happening. I discovered the concept of grief, individual grief and collective grief. And when we think about what grief is, it's it's a very natural emotional response to loss or to like longing that is unmet. And we are in we are in a loss. We are all responding to a significant loss of similarly to COVID, of our daily life ritual orientation. And that cannot be minimized.

Lacey Squier 17:56

I also feel like we lost I'm trying to decide, you know, like I don't want to like it's it's vulnerable to have this conversation. Um but we also lost some control of the narrative. Like we have a good thing going up here, and we have, you know, I can speak to Grand Murray. I don't have numbers for the broader wilderness edge region, but I have access to some understanding of the Ely picture. And like we have 200 businesses, we have a hundred nonprofits. We have um what I have authentically seen ever since I've been here, bearing witness to this like picture of hope. And and I'm not saying like I don't want to speak conclusively about the narrative right now, but I what I'm trying to say is I feel a sense of grief of like, oh my gosh, like this the story of this place just got a lot more complex and a lot harder to tell. And and now, you know, there's the narrative is like, oh my gosh, this fire dragon beast is eating us all. Um, our town is shut down, air quality is terrible. Like, you know, like now there's all these other um things that need more nuance. And I was gonna say messages to combat, and we don't have to combat them, but it's like I don't know, the everything just got harder.

M Baxley 19:41

Everything got harder. Yeah. I mean, it this is I think the loss of control is just or the loss of the perception of control.

Lacey Squier 19:59

I was gonna say we never had it.

M Baxley 20:00

Um is a pretty profound part of all like cocktail of being feeling dysregulated and feeling uh out of sorts. And yeah, I think there's some really you know, especially an emergency response, right? Like all of us and a lot other of people more so than myself were responding with a lot of heightened emotion and intensity, which was really appropriate for the time. And um, it's really hard to come down from that. And it's more hard to come down from that in the context of the this idea of like things are now different, and that control, that loss of perception of control still feels present. So it still feels like we're in an emergency. And it's always gonna feel like an emergency until we let our bodies complete the stress cycle. You know, I'm talking on a very personal level. Right. And like shake or cry or move, do whatever. Find your find your skill, find your strategy, but let the stress cycle complete. Because we're not one, we're not gonna be able to be healthy enough to help each other and ourselves until we do. Yeah. And then there's that really important narrative piece, and it's just as profound. Um, it's profound all over the wilderness. The reality, it's a narrative, but it's a reality that people aren't here. Right. And that, and there are a lot of business owners who are even, I've even heard about people have said we're not gonna be able to make a mortgage payment. Um and the fear around what that means for a lot of folks. And that's real, right? That's not gonna go away until it goes away, until we see some things change. But I have to say, Lacey, walking around Ely last. Night with you was the most delightful scene.

Lacey Squier 22:04

It was so charming. Oh my God. Brett, yesterday we went for a walk. I was in the middle of, you know, of course, it's like a pretty intense season at work. It was like budget season, and I had this like epic project that needed to be done last Friday. Whatever, none of that matters, but I was like, yes, let's go for a walk. I need to step away from my computer for a second. So we walked just naturally with no real aim towards Whiteside Park and saw that Little League was having some sort of celebration night. The fire truck was out there with the ladder and the hose sprinkling down the street. Okay. Dancing dozens of children running around in the water. If we saw a family playing bocce ball, there was a T ball game, they were giving away free hot dogs, kids all over the park.

M Baxley 22:52

Mopey teenagers in the band shell.

Lacey Squier 22:54

It was utterly charming. It was utterly charming. And if you didn't, if you were just plopped into that moment with no context, you would have no sense of any of the grief or loss or anxiety or fear or fire. Like air quality was great, lovely blue skies, breezy evening, like just the most lovely possible Wednesday night in July.

M Baxley 23:19

Yeah. And that's also real. Yeah. That's 100% what is really happening right now, too. And I don't know about you, but in those moments, yeah. I mean, especially because I've like been done up doing a lot of nervous system work.

Lacey Squier 23:37

Yeah.

M Baxley 23:38

To like complete those stress cycles and do what I need to do. But to it's like this is the best of everything in the summer right here, right now.

Lacey Squier 23:46

Yeah. Well, and even I said, and I I meant it for better or worse. I was like, wow, for a couple days, the people who live in town get their we get our town back in July. Like this is on that particular Wednesday night, that felt kind of like a gift. All due respect, we love our guests, our tourists, our visitors, we do. And I I love living in a tourist town. I think it's so cool to live in a place where people go on vacation. Because even, yes, I've been a cranky tourist, you know, but generally speaking, people are people have gone out of their way to choose to spend their precious PTO, their precious retirement, their precious dollars. And they are fantasizing about what it's going to be like for them when they get to this place and then they're here. Like even if I don't get to interact with very many of them one-on-one, and I'm no longer serving at a restaurant. I don't have as many like opportunities to interface with strangers. Um, I make plenty, but I don't have as many. You I think it's in the air. Like I think we breathe it in, that like vibe of like choosing to be here, wanting to be here, being excited to be here. Like I love it, and I'm on record as saying, like, I love November when everyone leaves. You know?

M Baxley 25:08

But that's part of it. Yeah. It's all part of it, like the surge of summer.

Lacey Squier 25:13

The yin the yang.

M Baxley 25:14

Yeah. And it be because of that surge and that high, the lows feel so good. And it it's a really rhythm I've come to appreciate. And and it and I think we all we all love it. And we all love the elements of being in the community and a part of the community that everyone wants to come see. But it's interesting that there are different ways that people want to orient to that around this narrative of a community that's going through hardship. And, you know, I've I've heard business owners uh talking about how if people call uh to hear how things are, how are things going up there, to to be, you know, to staff to be instructed not to talk about their personal feelings and to downplay the fire and to say every basically everything's fine, everything's great here. You know, and I and I sort of get, I think I get the intention is to not deter people from coming to visit, uh, to sort of help get visitation and the economy back rolling again.

Lacey Squier 26:31

And every bit helps we need it all.

M Baxley 26:33

Yeah, and we do. We want, please come. Please come now. Um but it it didn't land right with me. Yeah. And I and I'm I'm curious what y'all think, but I feel like people are calling and saying, how are things? It's out of care. And it's out of curiosity, and it's maybe out of their own concern and fear for the place that they love. And there's a reality to letting ourselves experience the solidarity of of how we're feeling with people who aren't here who care. Because I think that it is that care that will inspire folks to come. That the hardships will draw us closer together, whether you live here or not. And it is in our authenticity and the honesty of our stories that we actually get through this. And trying to minimize that doesn't feel like good business or good community.

Lacey Squier 27:41

Right. I'm I'm with you, right? Like, and I get it, and I observe too in the last two weeks, um, week and a half, have observed that. Like I can see that um for some people, like their their strategy, whether even they know it or not, is just like everything's fine. And like this desire not to like really see, or even you know, like a desire to like brush it under the rug or something. Like the way we're gonna get through this is by just like moving on, like and I think the the better long-term strategy is to give it space, shine light on the complexity of the the moment. I'm with you.

M Baxley 28:34

Yeah, yeah.

Lacey Squier 28:37

I I mean, I have a unique lens, like the the Boundary Waters Connect effort is meant to do positive things for the community and the economy. And I am by nature and by choice oriented toward hope. But it does compel me, I feel compelled at this moment to be honest about like the precarity of some of our friends and neighbors. Like, so because it got brought up, you know, we just did part one was with Bria Shirke and Megan Wynne. We talked about the Ely community response. And Bria brought up in passing towards the end of the conversation, I don't remember exactly what it was, but she asked, she brought up the average income of people in Ely. And I looked it up, and the average income in 2023 was about $40,300 a year. But our friends and neighbors who work in the leisure and hospitality industry in Ely in the primary market area made an average of $432 a week in 2023, and that is $22,464 a year. But of course, this is not distributed evenly across the year. July would be the highest wage earning month for people in the tourism and hospitality industry. And it was noted in this economic report for Ely in the primary market area that was commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce and conducted by the University of Minnesota Extension again in 2024, using generally 2023 numbers, that wages in the leisure and hospitality industry in our area have been slower to recover from pandemic economic disruption. And I think, you know, I'm this wildfire, this moment, this period of grief and this sort of like call to bear witness to our community and the economic disruption compels me to really sit with that information. Simultaneously, I accessed uh City of Ely did a housing study a couple of years ago because we recently broke ground on a new housing complex that's going to be built, and that's really exciting. But along the way, um, there's a record that says that median gross rent in 2021 was $560 a month, but that seems way too low. I don't know anyone who pays that little rent in Ely. Granted, I don't know, you know, like I am not, I'm talking anecdotally, and this official study says that the median gross rent was $560 a month, but that doesn't include utilities. And utilities in Ely are famously high because the cost of heating is really intense. So I I just want to, I want to name that, that like precariousness. And when we're talking about grief, some of that is what is in my spirit, is just thinking of the contingency of our friends and neighbors who work in the leisure and hospitality industry and the precarity of it. And like having a good September might not be enough. And so there is an economic, you know, roundtable happening tomorrow. I I know that our representatives, our our elected officials are thinking about this. I I have faith in our collective ability to do something about this, but it's it's just bluntly too bad that we're even in this place. You know, like that the wealth gap in our country is increasing, worse than it's ever been. And that word precarity, right? That like I've been thinking also about the sort of the difference between the word insurance and usurance. And it's like, we need to be able to offer assurance to our neighbors. And finally, I like just had to look it up. Like, what is the difference between those two words? An insurance is a policy that helps you in case, but assurance is defined by the guaranteed nature of the thing that will happen. And honestly, these wildfires were all but guaranteed. And economic hardship is all but guaranteed. Like it's not about insurance, it is about assurance. And we need stronger economies and we need more of a buffer zone. We need to not have one, well, it's it's like 17 wildfires, but we need to have not, we need so that one lightning incident doesn't put a huge percentage, a huge percentage of our friends and neighbors in a precarious situation. I don't know how to do any of that. That's what makes me sad.

M Baxley 33:54

Me too. In the face of both the immediate hardship and the reality, Lacy that you just described, which I think was well said for like some real systemic change, whether that's in forest management or in economic function and form. So much it feels all feels so fragile. The economy here feels fragile, the forest feels fragile, we feel fragile, and pretending like pretending like any of that isn't true is not going to help us. So thank you for naming it. And you said it basically, the losses aren't over. In this immediate sense, we're s we're in the middle of it. And we are assured that they will happen again on some level. So this is a time of both building our skillfulness in how we hold ourselves and each other in loss, how we make room to grieve, how we make room to be human, while at the same time coming together and figuring out how we do change. And that's a long journey. And unfortunately, it is ours.

Lacey Squier 35:34

And we have no choice. And I see that almost as a message of hope, because it's like, well, any progress is good because this journey is infinite. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't I don't have as entrenched of a practice as you do about processing grief, particularly like, you know, you're so good at embodiment.

M Baxley 35:56

My Venus is in Pisces. You can take that out if you need to. It sounds naughty. Sorry, go ahead, Lucy.

Lacey Squier 36:08

Well, I I had I did finally like, I just I can uh be moving constantly and just on to the next. I have to get this done, I have to get this done, I have to get this done. And um I knew I needed something to be different in that moment. And so I have a tarot deck that I love, and it's my triple goddess tarot deck. And I pulled a card, and my my inquiry was just like, what is a message that I need right now that I can just for the next couple hours that I can just chew on some wisdom. And that is sort of how my deck functions. It's not a a super classic deck. And um, yeah, I I pulled in my deck, it's the the number two card, the sanctuary card, and a normal deck, it's the high priestess card. But basically it's it's it was a call to sit and meditate. It was a call to be still. It was like, you need to be still. And and I did. I just like I don't normally, I know some people do this, but I do not just like hang out in my bed, you know. But I did. I just like sort of said, like, I'm not, I'm not like giving myself permission to leave this zone and just like sat there and listened to music. And it was it was like really what I needed to transmute some of the energies and the feelings. I don't have a point, I don't know what my point was.

M Baxley 37:43

Well, I I mean I love that because it because uh another example, I mean this is a good thing to sort of move towards wrap-up, but like our systems function in a way that pausing is not really it doesn't feel possible, it doesn't feel allowed. You know, we gotta keep going, we gotta keep going.

Lacey Squier 38:04

Especially in an emergency, especially in a community crisis.

M Baxley 38:07

Absolutely, especially. And what you described was taking a pause. And yes, Tarot brought it to you. And you know, I finally broke last Friday as at home. Listen, I was at home listening to a podcast that had nothing to do with anything. Uh, but it had some cute animal love story in it where like a parakeet lost its mate and was grieving. Uh, and I just lost it. I just started sobbing, right? You know, while I'm making dinner, and I'm like watching myself just let the grief out wherever it will, and then it's sort of like chaotic that's doing this. And then I was like, okay, I want to go with this. I I loaded up the canoe, it was like almost dark, went to the closest front country lake and got in my canoe, paddled it, paddled, paddle out as far as I could, and then just set the paddle down and cried. Oh. And there's no right or wrong way to do that. It can be in your bed with a tarot deck, it can be in a canoe, it can be listening to a podcast, like whatever will let it move. It needs to move because I've sort of, you know, this is totally an analogy, but I've started to really see grief as like a composting energy. Yes. And when we have all these feelings in our body, like grieving, however, crying or moving or shaking, it actually breaks down all those overwhelming emotions in a way that allows something else to emerge. That allows something else to then live. And so if we grieve, that that's not the end, that's the beginning of whatever comes after the grief. And most of us haven't experienced that in really profound ways, but it's it's waiting for us.

Lacey Squier 40:08

And there's no, like you said, there's no right or wrong way to process grief, but there's no right or wrong reason to feel grief. I've heard, I've felt it myself in this conversation. Like, oh, I don't want to say that I feel grief about that. That's embarrassing. Like, I'm not evacuated. I don't own a business. I um I don't fall into that place of precarity in the economic spectrum, right? So why it's not for me to feel these things. And it's like, oh no, you don't get to decide that. Like the feelings are there. It does like using any sense of logic to assess the value or the worthiness of a feeling has no place here. You really just I really again, the proverbial you, it's always me talking to myself. I really just need to let myself feel these feelings. And and yeah, then you can move on. It feels so much better to express yourself and then move on.

M Baxley 41:09

Yeah, and I I love that total non-judgment is powerful for for it to work. And I also want to name that it goes so much farther beyond an individual because collective grief is a real thing. And so you you may not even be experiencing the crisis or the loss directly, but you can have grief come up in your body because of your proximity to it. Somebody listening to this podcast who lives in St. Paul could start crying, listening to this because the way that they're experiencing the collective grief. So yeah, let it, let it move.

Lacey Squier 41:50

And that that's what we wanted to, that was the goal of this episode three, right? Like, I've been in conversation where someone said, no, don't feel grief about that. And it was well intentioned, and I know the details of what I had said and what they were saying, and it's all good, but it's also like this is the exact opposite of that. Yeah. There is, it's okay to have whatever feeling you have about this situation. And I think what I'm hearing you say, Em, is that actually in order to pace ourselves for the lifestyle change that will be required, right? There's like, what did I say? Eric and I now have a new drinking game every time a news reporter says this fire could be going until snowfall. We drink rhetorically, we don't actually, but it is kind of funny. And it's a crazy drinking game if you ever want to do it. Um we want to pace ourselves for this kind of lifestyle change, we have had this reckoning, this awakening to the need to be more fire ready, more fire-wise, smoke ready, and really figure out how our economic systems are going to work so that this precarity isn't just like, you know, one lightning incident doesn't decide who makes it or doesn't make it in this business market. Like that's gonna be a long game. And if you want to have stamina, you will have to process the feelings as they come. That's the strategy. The strategy isn't put it under the rug and move on. The strategy is when you can, when you feel safe, when you're in a secure environment, give yourself permission to process the feelings so that you can allow them to compost and become the fertile ground for new efforts, new ideas. As an energy for the work yet to come. You said it.

Brett Ross 44:07

We said it. You know, I just it's made me think of so many things that have happened over this last week and a half with this conversation. And I just wanted to share something, you know, about sort of where I've been through all this. Um, you know, again, I'm not horribly directly affected by this. Like I still have work. I still am not evacuated from my home. I've, you know, I've I'm very fortunate to have not had an enormous effect. But regardless of that, I felt like this deep, heavy emotional response to it, you know, the the fear, the grief, the anxiety over all these things. And and my my tendency, you know, and I guess from like growing up in a Catholic family is like suppressing all those emotions. You suppress those things. You bit like I I built up this sort of like emotional levy to keep all those things at bay. And um, a couple of nights ago, there was a celebration of life for a friend of mine who passed away, a friend of ours, who passed away back in June. And um, the family made this great slideshow, and it had um some words recorded from him and some photographs, and and there was one image that came up of a letter that he signed, and it said, Love Grandpa John, and I saw that, and that levee just broke, and I started crying for the first time, and I I can't remember how long, and I was so overwhelmed by that. But having that release, having that movement of those emotions, I thought, what an amazing gift that my friend John gave me. Yeah. One last gift to be able to have that release and find that release, and then to like start looking at things with uh more of a sense of gratitude, gratitude of these people in this community that have come together to help people, the gratitude for the hundreds of firefighters that were camped across the street from me here. And um, the next morning I walked over there with my dog, and I just happened to run into a friend who was bringing his dog over to this group of firefighters from Tennessee that had every morning he'd been bringing his dog over and they were loving up on the dog. And I brought my dog over and they were loving up on Reba. And then one of them said, Let me bring you my phone and show you pictures of my labs, and uh, and had this great experience, and I got to thank them for what they were doing. And then we had this clean air, and so I got to go and exercise at my favorite on my favorite trails, and then coming back from there, my friend Sunshine was running his adventure school there, and so I come back, you know, at a dead run back to the trailhead, and I get mobbed by this group of kids that I made this movie with, and I was just like, oh my god, just the overwhelming sense of gratitude for that. And then, like the final piece of that was deciding yesterday afternoon. I have all this work that I should be doing, but I can put it off and do it tonight after the sun goes down. For now, I'm gonna take my shoes off, I'm gonna go barefoot into my garden, and I'm gonna dig in the dirt, and I'm gonna hang out with my dogs. And it was such a watershed, it was such a change in my whole perspective that I like I can't, I can't say enough about how valuable it is to recognize that we're in a state of grief, that we're all processing this trauma in some degree or another. And the more we try to hold that in, the more we try to, the more we stay in that hyper-vigilant state, the more we try to suppress all those feelings, the harder it's gonna get to really be productive and to really focus on how do we move forward, how do we keep our community strong. Um so uh yeah, just thank you both for having this conversation. It's it's really important.

Lacey Squier 48:03

Oh thank you, Brad. Thank you for chiming in. That was a really powerful anecdote to actually just give the whole thing a finer point. Thank you so much.

M Baxley 48:17

Brett, I was totally over here tearing up as you shared that because you articulated this significance of the reality that grief is a portal. Yeah, and when you pass through it, it changes everything. So thank you.

Brett Ross 48:34

Thank you for listening. Thanks for the opportunity.

Lacey Squier 48:37

Grief is a portal. Rest in peace, John Collins.

Brett Ross 48:49

Thank you, John.

Lacey Squier 48:52

John had a career in behavioral psychology, and he spent his life working with vulnerable people who really needed the tender, loving care and patience he brought to giving people he brought to giving people full permission to be themselves. And I think it's extremely poetic, like you said, that that was one final gift from John to you, to let that levy down, to access that portal because that is the behavioral therapeutic treatment that you needed in that moment, and maybe we're all gonna need in cycles as we keep living life through this season of like sweet and spicy. Yeah. Thank you, Em, for being here. Thank you for having the wisdom, um having the wisdom and the the ability to see that grief is a portal and that this conversation would be a meaningful and necessary addition to the series on the wildfire conversation.

M Baxley 50:20

Thanks for including me. I should be really honest and say I'm just finding my way through the wilderness of all of it too. And um it feels like really special to not do it alone. And with y'all and and all the folks that are listening, it feels it feels good, it feels big.

Lacey Squier 50:38

We can get through this, we will get through this. Grief is okay. It's a portal and it's a beautiful portal to pass through, and on the other side is more goodness. Uh listeners, thank you. Thank you for joining us in this conversation. Thank you for being with us in these moments. Um, please know that there is a function on our website. So if you go to the the episode page on Buzzsprout, and I think it's linked to in the show notes. There's like a tell us what you think or send us a message function. You can send us voice memos. How fun! Yeah, so I I love I'm gonna do that. I want to be in dialogue with you. I want to know what you're thinking and what you're feeling. I I do think of you as members, like honest participants in this conversation. I just interestingly don't know what you're thinking. So by all means, share. It doesn't have to be one way. No, it doesn't have to be one way.

Brett Ross 51:34

Um and I'm seeing a voice memo feature on future episodes as well.

Lacey Squier 51:40

Wouldn't that be cool? Let's hear from listeners.

Brett Ross 51:42

Let's hear from listeners in their voices.

Lacey Squier 51:44

Oh yeah, I I want to know what you're thinking. I want to know how these conversations are landing for you. I want to know what's going on with you. Um I this is a conversation and you are a part of it. And and and I'm I'm interested. I'm interested in you. I'm curious about you. Um, but we'll get to that for now. I just want to say thank you again. M. Baxley, bear witness media. Thank you for being here. You're so cool.

Brett Ross 52:14

So cool. Thank you for being here. I'm so grateful for both of you. I love you both.

Lacey Squier 52:22

Thanks, listeners. See you next time.