Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Sarah Pytalski and Jan Pytalski remind me of my favorite summer camp counselors. They’re super cool and really kind in the curious and really expansive way. Sarah Pytalski and Jan are just full of generosity and fun, and they’re well-read and well-traveled, and they look like they belong on the cover of a Patagonia Magazine. But for real, if you follow them on Instagram, you get the sense that they live for sunrises and sunsets on their piece of land in rural Oregon, and that they organize their schedules around river walks and hikes with their Aussiedoodle [pup 00:00:55] Pipsqueak or Pip for short. I asked Sarah Pytalski and Jan to join me on Everywhere Radio because I’m in awe of this husband and wife team. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And I think all of you listening out there will be swept away by them too. Their love story is pretty unique and they have this mutual yearning for a rural existence. It took more than a couple of years of patient planning to arrive where they are today in Roseburg, Oregon. I think you’ll be moved too by their reverence for the connections that exist between people and the land, both historic and contemporary. And a little more about each of them. Sarah Pytalski has a master’s in public policy and she’s a senior associate with Burness, a global communications firm where she supports the rural health, let me say that again. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Sarah Pytalski has a master’s in public policy and she’s a senior associate with Burness, a global communications firm, where she supports the rural health equity and data portfolios of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and its grantees. Sarah Pytalski came to Burness from the National Congress of American Indians in DC, which is where I first met her and asked her to join the steering committee of the Rural Assembly. And Jan, Jan is a fellow [rustat 00:02:09], that’s our nickname for the Center for Rural Strategies. Jan and I worked together at rural strategies where he is the associate editor for our rural news platform, The Daily Yonder. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Jan is originally from Poland where he started working as a reporter for the Reuters [NewsWire 00:02:25] Service. He’s a graduate of the University of Warsaw and University of Rochester. And prior to joining The Daily Yonder, Ron, excuse me. And prior to joining The Daily Yonder, Jan worked with 100 Days In Appalachia, covering federal policy from Washington, D.C. and he freelanced for Reuters Washington Bureau helping with coverage of the White House. Jan and Sarah Pytalski, here they are. I hope I didn’t make you all blush too hard with that intro. And I’m just really excited to have you here on Everywhere Radio. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

We’re thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting us. 

Jan Pytalski: 

Thank you for having us. It’s a pleasure. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

How are things where you are? 

Jan Pytalski: 

Think things are okay. We try to stay positive and we try to be grateful for where we are and what we have, and we have a lot, we have family here, we have a beautiful home and beautiful property that thankfully so far remains safe and we, together with the whole community around us, we do our best to keep it safe, which isn’t a very interesting topic if you ever want to talk about it, it’s a Firewise community, which means we put in some work to make sure that our quote unquote, mountain stays green. So things are good. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

It’s been- 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Sarah Pytalski, how are you doing? Sorry. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

It’s been- 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Sarah Pytalski, how are you doing? 

Sarah Pytalski: 

It’s been a really interesting time, overall, I’m doing well. As you know, I am now eight and a half months pregnant. It always sounds lovely in theory to be pregnant in the summer but then we didn’t really quite anticipate the heatwaves reaching the Pacific Northwest. So that’s been a bit of a challenge, but working through it. I’m, similar to Jan, feeling grateful for every day we have. We just returned from a trip to visit his family in Poland, we had two weeks just to catch up and man, after a year of lockdown and COVID, I feel like we just hit a sweet spot, we had a little window, a small opening there, to make this trip happen. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

And I’m really grateful we did because it was good to reconnect and just feel all that love and support and to hug on people now that folks are safe and vaccinated, and I’m grateful for that. So we’re obviously anxious about the weeks and months ahead. Things are changing rapidly in our nation and certainly in our community and a lot of unknowns. So we just take it day by day. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I wonder if you all could tell me a little bit about your community, where are you calling from today and describe it a little bit? Sarah Pytalski or Jan, you can jump start. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

In many ways, this is a new found home for both of us. I spent about half my life growing up in Glide, which is a small community of about 700 people, 30 minutes East of where we live now, on the North Umpqua River. And all of my childhood memories, some of the best are wrapped up being right there on the river, out in the forest, spending time with family and friends and so when we finally did navigate our move back to this area, the Umpqua Valley in late July of last year, it was a really, it does feel like a homecoming. Roseburg, where we live, has less than 25,000 people here. 

I always like to describe it as a really eclectic microcosm of people. We have a lot of things that divide us but also unite us. I think politically, we’re an interesting mix of a conservative and libertarian and hippie environmentalist views and perspectives and legacies. We have been known as Timber Capital of the Nation, so we have that as part of our history here, surrounded by huge Douglas fir trees. We are somewhat of a, sorry. We are somewhat of a recreation destination with the Umpqua National Forest, people know that crater lake is nearby. 

And we’re about an hour from the coast. We’re situated right between the Cascade and coastal mountain ranges, kind of moderate climate typically, although that certainly has been changing in recent years with increased wildfire and other extreme weather impacting us. We are very agrarian, huge producer of all kinds of produce. We’re actually climate matched with Northern Spain and Southern France and so, anything that grows there can grow here, it’s been described as Mediterranean. So it’s really quite ideal. 

We are known as a bit more of a retirement, sleepy community, but I think that has changed in recent years, a lot of young families moving back and they say we’re about 15 years behind Bend, Oregon, which has really exploded. And I personally hope we manage to keep this place a little bit of a secret for longer. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Can you tell me a little bit more about the Umpqua and the relationship to the indigenous community there? 

Absolutely. Thank you for raising that. This is the homelands of the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe of Indians and has been since time immemorial and the tribe is a very active and powerful presence here in the community, extremely charitable and the Umpqua, their name is connected to the river and yeah. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Thank you. I wanted to make sure we talked a bit about that because I know too, your background puts you in touch with so many native communities across the country, and I know that’s a really important part of your participation in community. And Jan, I’m wondering how this rural existence in Oregon compares to your growing up in Poland. If you could tell us a little bit about that. 

Jan Pytalski: 

Sure. Well, it compares to my summers growing up in Poland. My family on my mom’s side is from a agriculturally active and very rich area and so I would say the good 90% of all my summers up until I was really a real, real adult, were spent out there. And I got the benefit of being a big city kid in a small, rural town where because my grandma and my other family members were well-liked, I guess I got to participate in all the cool stuff, but I didn’t really have to work too, too hard. 

So it was always fun to take part in harvest or any other kind of work and in that sense, it’s similar because it allowed me to get to know some of those practices and people who grow things for a living and grow off of the land and we have those folks here, and it’s the very similar appreciation for the land that you see. I think it’s a very universal thing among folks who need to work with the land. And as I grew older, I really wanted to, or I should say, I realized that I’m drawn to those places more and more. 

And it was a happy coincidence that when I met Sarah Pytalski, we met in Oregon and we roughly met in this area, although we went all over, but it was one of those things that when I saw it, I kind of… At first half jokingly, we used to say that we definitely want to retire here but that quickly turned into, we want to be there, and the planning started. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Tell me why you wanted to be here, why Roseburg? I know Sarah Pytalski, you just talked about your roots in Oregon, but you both had really incredible experiences elsewhere and you’ve lived in other places that have perhaps more amenities and more opportunities professionally but you’ve chosen to build this life in Roseburg, so tell me why? 

Jan Pytalski: 

For me, I just see this as this absolutely crazy and fairly complex story of so many things coming together. When I came to Oregon first, I didn’t know the first thing about this place. I literally just googled it or went on Wikipedia and I packed for like a Alaska winter and it was March and it made no sense but… So we met here and that was important to us. I knew… Sarah Pytalski managed to show me so many, absolutely incredible things all over because she had so much experience here and spent so much time here. So I fell in love with the landscape. 

And then over time, through her work and some of her connections, I was pulled into rural spaces more and more, and that all clicked together, and then when we started thinking about, where would we like to start a family? It really felt like a natural choice for, well, one reason being that we just loved this place already another reason being that we knew that we will have family close by. And so it really didn’t take much to make up our minds, and the logistics of it all and the amenities of it all, really were sort of secondary. 

I mean, certain things you can’t do without, especially now, but we always worked off of an assumption that we will figure it out and a lot of the things I have to say, we were just lucky with, like our broadband hook-up here. We just happened to be in a good spot that has that service, not everywhere as we well know, it’s not everywhere in rural areas. I don’t know, we really just fell in love with the place and as we go on, we can talk more to the community itself, that composes this eclectic population, but it sort of came from all places all at once and we just kept going. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And that the… Go ahead, Sarah Pytalski. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

[inaudible 00:14:45] it’s true what you said that we’ve lived all over, [Jannick 00:14:49] was in Rochester. I’ve lived in Montreal, Canada, in Great Falls, Montana, in Corvallis, Oregon where we met. And then we moved to Washington, D.C. All of these places were somehow oriented to building lives and careers and trajectories in certain directions or school, all that. And I think it really did come down to when we think about the kind of life we want to live and the community we want to keep and the place that we feel most bound and connected, there was something about this land that just kept calling us. 

We certainly thought, well, the strategic move is we go to Portland, that’s where the jobs are, and that sort of thing, but then over time we thought, we’ll find a way. And Jan always has been quite blessed to have his work remote, and I think certainly after this past year, there’s a lot more flexibility in workplaces. And so to be able to facilitate, keeping a livelihood in a rural place where there might not have been as many opportunities for us normally, has been really fantastic. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And what does that engagement with this diverse community you were describing look like for you all on a day-to-day basis? You mentioned the political persuasions, but I know it’s also diverse demographically too. So, have you found that community that you want to keep, like you said? 

Jan Pytalski: 

I think we are just starting to find it, I mean, we’ve met a whole bunch of wonderful people already over that past year, but because of the pandemic, it was slower I think, a slower start in many ways. And so as the situation was getting better, we started going out and engaging more and more. And earlier today when we were talking with Sarah Pytalski and just getting ready for this interview, we said that it’s one thing to look at this place through a red and blue political analysis map, and then it’s very clear and stark and you see where the Democrats are and the Republicans are and all that. 

But then I really don’t find it daily to be such a major factor. I mean, you see all the signs of our times and some people like to express their views more boldly than others, but it really doesn’t affect me at least to the extent that I go around fishing out who’s on my side versus other side or whatever. Our experiences so far, I feel like have been really good. We met everyone from local farmers to local artists, home builders, health specialists, I mean, it’s younger folks, older folks, and we managed to make friends among all of them and it’s been very welcoming. 

If I can quickly just say my favorite anecdote from that time, or at least… As a hobby, I like to go climbing and when we moved out here, it was the first time I was in a place where I could climb outdoors on real rocks. So I started looking out, searching out people to do that with, and I found this local coalition and it turned out that the two oldest members of this coalition and one of whom founded the organization live in Roseburg, and they took me in, and if not for them, I would not be able to go out and discover all those places or at least it wouldn’t be that easy. 

And they took me under their wing and teaching me, and it’s that sort of connection that we managed to make over one weekend, and before that it was a couple of emails and suddenly I found myself in that community and felt very welcome from the beginning. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

I think it’s been really exciting for me to see the way folks have started engaging with us and in particular, to Jannick’s experience of having these elders of our community see us as open vessels for information and knowledge and history and tapping Jan almost immediately once they find out he’s a writer, to document some of these oral histories of the climbing in the Umpqua Valley or the environmental movement here locally and putting him in contact with all of these people that have been at the helm for so long. 

I think that’s a really precious and rare opportunity and I’m just grateful for it. I think the fact that these folks have befriended us, I feel like we have no life stories, such young lives, such limited experience and their stories are just so rich and profound and we like to joke that we’re perfectly comfortable having good friends in the 65 and up category. It’s a nice change of pace. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I really love that. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

Beyond that, I think there’s certainly more work to be done on the community engagement front. I have been involved with some small efforts around food systems in our county. We do have a strong… High rate of poverty in this county broadly, compared to other parts of the state and food insecurity is very much a challenge. And so I work with a couple of groups that are focused on improving that landscape and the livelihood of folks here, locally children in particular. And we also were grappling with homelessness. We saw that very tramatically during these recent heat waves, there was a death in the community and it was a very stark reminder of the types of resourcing that we need to mobilize in these moments of extreme climate and so forth. 

And I think like many communities, we haven’t quite honed in on what the right response and right solution will be, and there’s a lot of listening to that community, to folks that are unhoused and living on the edge, sleeping in cars and so forth, that we really need to be supporting. And after the wildfire of last year, there was just this mass displacement of families, the Archie Creek Fire really shook up the Glide community where I had spent most of my childhood and people lost, some families lost everything and that’s put… It’s really hard to see and to know how best to mobilize, but the community does show up. There were restaurants that opened their doors twenty-four seven as just on the ground food distribution sites and donations for any sorts of basic needs. 

And the community always comes together, we’ve seen that time and again, whether it was the shooting at the Umpqua Valley Community College back in 2014 or other really traumatic community-wide experiences, we always band together under the banner of Umpqua Strong or Glide Strong or whatever it may be, and it’s comforting to know that people will put aside their political views and other things that might divide us to really support one another in those moments. I don’t know, there are a lot of other things going on. I don’t know if we want to go into, this is off script, but we also have a raging debate around high school [massacre 00:24:22] in this community, and I don’t really know where that’s going to land. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I guess, and we know that’s happening across the country, even in my hometown, truly. Well, I’m wondering, I mean we three are from the same peer group, same set of colleagues, we’re all part of this movement of wanting to cultivate community and be part of social change and social justice movements I think, in our small towns. And I wonder, how do you all show up in these spaces? You come bearing many tools and a lot of education and a lot of interesting experiences and relationships to people across the country. 

So you’ve got this national perspective and even global perspective that you can bring to bear here locally, but what are the foundational ways that you step in as a contributor to community as people who accompany others? Have you thought much about that? 

Jan Pytalski: 

Well, like Sarah Pytalski mentioned, she started some work with local organizations that focuse on food systems here. We both got engaged with a group that’s working on environmental issues and when you’re asking about the skills and tools that we bring to the table, they’ve been surprising to me, I didn’t expect that, but they were very excited about communication skills and editorial skills or whatnot that I might have to help them craft their messaging and or writing stories. They have a radio station that I hope eventually to be plugged into. 

So in terms of just the skills that we had that were useful in a urban setting that are also working here, I think Sarah Pytalski’s policy experience in her engagement and my skills, I’m still working on and using The Daily Yonder. But we also, I think we’re just very eager and interested in physically showing up to events and places and doing things with people. And again, I just feel, and I try not to think about it too much, but I feel like that year was so… We had to stop ourselves so many times from doing certain things because we had to make that calculus of whether it’s safe or not because of the pandemic. 

So it really is still ahead of us in many ways. And then the community itself is only now starting to organize those events and we often talk about how awful it would be if everything would have to shut down again, right after it reopened and everyone has this energy that they want to tap into, and if someone wants to put a kibosh on it immediately after because COVID is on the rise, it would be a very unfortunate thing. I personally just love the scale, I call it a human scale, and for me being in a place like this, things are on a human scale. 

And I can just wrap my head around the issue, around the problems, around the needs, and I feel like I can contribute in a way that’s tangible. I also start feeling like I begin to know folks here and that gives me a lot of pleasure and it also gives me a sense of we’re in this for a long haul, so I’ll know those folks for a long time. And I don’t know, Sarah Pytalski might tell you I’m not the most outgoing or maybe the most social of all people, but I do enjoy going somewhere to run an errand and being able to say hi to folks as I walk by, that gives me a lot of joy. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I love what you just said about long haul, you’re in this for the long haul. So that’s a really powerful feeling. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

I similarly feel that we’re just at the beginning of orienting and engaging and understanding the community in many respects. Certainly I can’t lean on my knowledge from childhood and many years ago because things have so dramatically changed here locally. I’m heartened to see quite a bit of organizing being done across the community on these issues, these social justice issues in particular, whether it’s food justice, environmental justice, work on housing, work for our children. And I’m honored to say the least, to be part of a group of women organizers in particular in the community that have been in the trenches for years, and to just learn from their knowledge and experience. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

And to try to really roll up my sleeves and slowly over time, engage in this space of what we might call power building or just organizing, I feel that in many ways, because we’ve worked at a national level, it’s harder to feel the impact of the work that you’re doing, and so some of the work that I am involved in now and formerly with the National Congress of American Indians, it was hard for me to feel that there was anything, there’s something tangible there. I get to come alongside and support advocates across the country who were doing this type of organizing and power building. 

And I’m constantly inspired by them, and to now sit back and think, oh, how can we deploy those similar strategies here where we live, is really energizing. And I think a lot of where we are right now as a community is we have to… We’re moving beyond this understanding that our health and wellbeing is wrapped up solely in our individual choices, and is affected by place in the environment and other systems that impact our daily lives, and policies that need to be revisited and histories frankly, discrimination, you name it across race, class and gender or other divides. 

So I think it’s exciting to on the ground, it presents its own challenges because it’s that much more real and it can get that much more heated. And even in some of this environment and conservation work that we’ve slowly started to get up to speed on, it’s tricky when you are… You know the people that are running the local fish hatchery, and then you have people arguing that there should only be wild fish, it’s just, I don’t know, it’s all relationships, it’s all connected. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Yeah, it is. It’s all relationships. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

And so how do you find that common ground and try to find the direction that we can all get on board with as best as possible and really look back at the values and identities that are going to shape our willingness to move together on things. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Something we talk about a lot in the Rural Assembly is, how do we help our country move in the direction of narratives that are about us together, as opposed to this group and this group, separately or siloed, what are those narratives that are articulating like the roads and the fibers and all the ways that we’re actually connected? And both of you are writers, Jan, you’re a journalist, Sarah Pytalski, you do amazing communications work for a really important global communications group. So I wonder, what are the stories that you are telling and what are some that you wish you could be telling more of, to drive that narrative of us. 

Jan Pytalski: 

I’m going to give you a non-answer answer, I feel like, which is that I, anyone who reads Daily Yonder knows that already, and anyone who is about to start, I’ll give you a heads up. We write about a whole bunch of issues that are important for rural communities, quote unquote, globally or nationally from broadband to healthcare to economic recovery, economic development but also arts and culture. We try to be really broad in our coverage and I love that about our coverage. That’s what is exciting for me, that we have so many pitches coming in from all different angles. And in those stories, I see what unites folks in rural spaces because those issues don’t discriminate or don’t fall neatly, not all of them fall neatly along certain divides. 

But what I feel, and I keep repeating that same thing over and over to anyone who’ll listen, is that we need to work on reaching folks and breaking through certain kinds of misinformation or types of media and platforms that might not necessarily allow equal access to all the information without naming any names, but there are powerful algorithms at work that put certain content in front of people, and then once you engage with that content, they reinforce that habit and they eventually silo you in and I see this as the biggest problem because I do believe that if folks were willing to give us their time of day, they would see that what we write about and what we present is of interest to them. 

If not because of their passions, it’s because of very pragmatic reasons, but unfortunately we’re going up against market forces that are extremely well-designed to do what they do. So I feel like we write about the right things and I feel like we keep writing more and more, and we’re expanding and it’s exciting and and that’s all good. But I think the biggest challenge will be to make sure that folks find us in the first place. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

That’s such an important distinction that you’re making about, there’s the structure and there’s the content, and there is content, and there are incredible pieces of media out there that could be driving the narrative I was just talking about, but it’s getting it in front of people and overcoming some of those [welfare 00:38:01] systemic barriers. Sarah Pytalski, what about you? 

Sarah Pytalski: 

This is the internal question in my mind is, what are the narratives that can bring us together and can be most effective? And I think it does vary issue by issue. When it comes to climate impacts, when people see it and feel it in a very real way, experience it firsthand, it’s easier to build consensus on the kinds of things we need to do, and then the challenge becomes what’s the scale where people feel that they can be most effective, does it have to be government that’s intervening? Can it be us as individuals making a strong impact? So there’s challenges in every sector in silo. 

And of course, it’s not all siloed, it’s all connected to how we live and experience our life day-to-day. I think one thing that, especially where we are, is critical is this pride of place, feeling a connectedness to home and wanting to make a good life for us and our family, that when you return to that rooting and that value system, that that’s where you can start some conversations about what we’d like to see in the future and how do we get there and- 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m thinking of you both right now, just miles away from fires all around I guess, what are the two that are named right now? Jan, you told me earlier. 

I just want to ask you a pointed question about, what is it like to live on the front lines of a changing climate? I think a lot of us don’t exactly feel it as profoundly as you all are right now. What is it like? 

Sarah Pytalski: 

I remember the phrase I kept coming back to last year in the thick of the Archie Creek Fire that was just ravaging the Umpqua National Forest, was that it’s hard to breathe. It was hard to breathe last year because of the pandemic, and then it was hard to breathe when you knew that all you could do was refresh these fire maps and wait and see if the home you grew up in was going to make it. The smoke was so thick that you literally couldn’t breathe sometimes. It was just a crushing feeling of anxiety and loss of control. 

And a lot of waiting and hoping and praying and cheering for the fire crews that were out there day and night doing the work and trying to save what could be saved and knowing that at the end of it, many of your family and friends would have lost everything and did lose everything, and that then it would take time to learn how to best come alongside and support them and help them rebuild. 

Jan Pytalski: 

Everything that Sarah Pytalski said holds true. But I feel like it’s important to add or note that amongst all of this, we were the lucky ones, we really were the lucky ones. So it’s jarring to think that at the end of the day, we really got off scot-free in the sense that the air was horrible, it was hard to breathe it and it felt like poison is everywhere and yet we personally as a family, we didn’t lose anyone or anything, and yet it was a such, to an extent, a traumatic experience. So I personally, I don’t feel like I have a slightest inclination of how it must be to go through that. 

Jan Pytalski: 

As Sarah Pytalski mentioned, we do have close friends who did lose everything. So we were able to go and see the aftermath of it all, and it’s one of those things that I think you don’t quite register when you see it. I mean, it’s so overwhelming to destruction of everything because it’s not just a burnt house, it’s a complete devastation, a complete devastation of an entire area that’s bigger than anything you can see all at once with your eyes. 

Jan Pytalski: 

And so for me, however many years I’ve been living in the states and reading and hearing about wildfires in the summer on the west coast, that was the first time I was anywhere even remotely close to them. And it’s an experience that, it’s hard to describe it in a way that really lets you feel it the way you do when you’re close or God forbid if you were affected directly. So that’s a very, very jarring experience and scary too. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Thank you for sharing those really vulnerable responses with this audience, and I feel like that proximity you were talking about, Sarah Pytalski, maybe just bringing that to the airwaves here is impactful in some ways. So I do appreciate you answering that question. Yeah, Jan. Jan is raising his hand. 

Jan Pytalski: 

I just wanted to add because the one thought that always comes back to me when I think back on last year and thank God it didn’t happen this year so far, but when Archie Creek Fire happened, literally over the course of a single day, it felt like the entire environment, everything, everything that you can think of turned hostile and dangerous. When all news agencies in the world were showing the pictures of the orange sky, it’s really hard to overstate how ominous that is, I mean it’s literally the entire sky. The air is bad everywhere. There’s not a place, there’s no breeze that makes it better for a moment. It’s just smoke. 

Jan Pytalski: 

I remember looking at a map at one point, that showed air quality and the closest place with good air quality was 100 miles away from us in whichever direction. So to have an entire environment turn dangerous is a unique experience. I have no comparison to, with anything else really. That’s why all those analogies to a war zone and so on even though a little tired, they do have some truth to them, in that it really feels extremely oppressive in all of its forms. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

You said, Sarah Pytalski, about, I can’t breathe. That is very visceral and attached, especially to Jan’s description there. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

I think it’s eye opening on many levels because we had family in California who’d been confronting wildfires for years before we moved back West. And to hear their firsthand experiences of it was frightening but it never registered in the same way until you’re really in the thick of it. And I hope that it’s not an experience that everyone has to live firsthand to see the need for adaptation and change. And I really… It’s hard to know what precisely the right mix of solutions are, but part of it is that we… Tribes have been for millennia, hundreds of years, managing their lands and forest in ways that are adapted to prevent these types of mass wildfires. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

And unfortunately where we are, because of the timber industry that we mentioned earlier, we’ve monocropped our forests and it doesn’t do well for the health of the forest and there’s no incentive to do controlled burns because it affects the bottom line, those are dollars in the trees, they’re treated like corn or soy and it’s… There’s a lot of interests at the table that have to be navigated in terms of how do we prevent this from destroying communities in the future. 

And I think we have a lot we can learn from our indigenous communities and our neighbors. And there are solutions out there, it’s just, how do we build up that public will to keep fighting for the health of our land and our forests and in other places. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

And our community, all those things connected, [inaudible 00:49:41] one. Well, I just want to shift just a little bit and tell everyone again that you all are expecting. Your due here shortly and I just, thinking about this conversation, there’s just so much going on in your lives and in our nation’s life and I wonder if you, I’m sure you’ve put a lot of thought into, what are your hopes and dreams for this baby that’s coming into the world? What’s the first thing you’re going to do with him, her? 

Jan Pytalski: 

I’m supposed to go first. Oh boy, okay. Well, the first thing, I’m just excited for the baby to be growing up here and the whole… Everything we talk about when it comes to climate and all that, it worries me, but just for the sake of mental health, I need to stay positive about that and hopeful. But I’m excited to be taking the little human out and just showing her everything that I find exciting. So that’s as far as why I’m so happy we’re here and we’ll be here with her. And then I’m just looking forward to messing with her when starts growing up and just [inaudible 00:51:20] telling her crazy stories and all that. So those are my two priorities. I don’t know if they align with Sarah Pytalski’s. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

It’s interesting because back when we were living in DC, I had this weird dream and vision of us having a little girl and working in the garden with her grandparents nearby and being on the river. And it’s pretty cool that it’s going to happen. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Yeah, oh man, it’s so huge and so wonderful. So wonderful. So it’s a her everybody, it’s a her that we’re sharing, we’re sharing. Okay. So one last question I always ask because I am really interested and I think we’re all interested in, and what everybody’s reading, listening to or watching that brings you, hope, joy tickles you in some way, what should people be watching right now or reading or listening to that’s making you happy. 

Jan Pytalski: 

I’ll go local first. There’s a radio station out of Eugene, Oregon, KLOC, and there’s this radio program called [i5 00:52:56], which is sort of a play on words because we have the i5 going North, South here, but it’s eye like in your head, eye and it’s two hours of just phenomenal music, all over the map, I don’t know who this guy is. He’s been doing for years. I love it. We’ve made it a little tradition to turn it on. It’s on Fridays and Saturdays now, it used to be only on Fridays. So it brings me tons of joy and it also exposed me to a lot of new music, which makes me happy, period.

And you can find it online, the broader point, you can listen to it online, you don’t have to be anywhere near Eugene, Oregon. So that’s as far as listening. As far as watching, I don’t have any recommendations because I’m watching things that don’t make me happy. They make me more informed, but they make me worried. But then I recently started reading this guy, his name is Ted Chiang and he’s a science fiction writer. 

And the broader public might know him because one of his short stories was turned into a movie called the Arrival. But he published I think two or three volumes of short stories and those are phenomenal. And he talks about many issues that we are facing now and I find his thoughts refreshing and inspiring and thought provoking in the best of ways. So I highly recommend Ted Chiang. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Those are great recommendations and I appreciate you holding back on sharing more angsty pieces. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

I think this journey into preparing for motherhood has me consuming a lot of information about that right now, but beyond that, which has been really incredible in centering and empowering and knowing more about one’s body and everything miraculous happening in this time. I’m really feeling that in radical ways, I’m going to be having new boundaries and new… Just a complete recentering once this baby arrives. But another book I’ve been starting, which I’ve been meaning to come to for many years is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Yes. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

And she was featured on this really great podcast project also, called The Confluence, which is all about centering indigenous voices of the Columbia River Valley, so you have Oregon and Washington and that sort of thing. And I actually, I pulled up this quote that I captured that I think kind of, I don’t know, reflects back on a lot of what we’ve already discussed here today. And if it’s okay, I’ll just read it quickly. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

I’d love it. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

I won’t do it justice because Robin is genius and I can’t but, the land is our home. We claim and think about land, not as a place for which we claim rights, but as a place for which we have responsibility. Is land merely a source of belongings? Or can it be our most profound source of belonging, and indeed the common ground that we long for. So she has inspired me deeply these days. And if anyone hasn’t picked up her book yet, I would strongly recommend it. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Yes. Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer, and if Robin Wall Kimmerer is listening to this podcast right now, will you please come speak at Rural- 

Sarah Pytalski: 

Please. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

… Assembly Everywhere, virtual event. On October 19th and 20th, we would love to have you. That book does speak to everything about our lives right now. And I remember crying through pieces of it too. Oh man, speaking of just wonderful people, thank you all. You guys are some of my favorite people. This has been an incredible conversation and interview and I wish we could keep talking. I wish I could come visit you right now. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

Same. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

But we’re going to get back together. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

We will. We will. 

Jan Pytalski: 

Thank you, Whitney Kimball Coe, for having us. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

Thank you so much. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Thank you. Best wishes. 

Sarah Pytalski: 

Love you. 

Whitney Kimball Coe: 

Love you. 

Jan Pytalski: 

Bye.