The Hike Like A Woman Podcast

Pitching Stories from the Mound to the Mountain

• Rebecca Walsh

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Meet Suzanne.

She's a baseball fan. Mental health professional. Author and big fan of long walks.

Today we talk about everything from baseball to the Camino. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

To learn more about Suzanne visit: https://www.suzannemaggio.com/

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Speaker 1:

Should we just pretend we're getting coffee together? Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

That's my favorite kind of conversation. Those are the kinds I have too.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, perfect.

Speaker 1:

So I see this picture of a baseball player behind you, which is a great segue into how I want to start today's conversation and you, on your website, you mentioned baseball and how you think baseball is kind of this really good metaphor for life. All of my baseball experience comes from a little league mom, where I'm just sitting in the bleachers and, because it's Wyoming, it's always really cold and I'm always like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired and this game is so long, and so I can kind of see how that relates to life. But talk to me about baseball, why that's important to you and how you, how, how it applies to just your, your general everyday life and your, your view on that application.

Speaker 2:

Well, first of all, let me just say thanks for having me, rebecca. This is so much fun for me and you. You hit me right in my wheelhouse. I love baseball. I grew up just a fan of. I was raised in New Jersey, I grew up a fan of the New York Mets and I went to my first baseball game when I was eight years old and I have loved the game ever since and I the reason I say that I think baseball is a lot like life is that you know, baseball is a. It's a long game. You're in it for the long haul. It's nine innings. People complain about how long it is, but the reality is it's.

Speaker 2:

There's so much that could happen at any moment.

Speaker 2:

Every player on the field, the batter in the batter's box, the pitcher that's throwing the pitch, the manager, this, all this nuance.

Speaker 2:

There's all this kind of shifting and changing and and kind of sort of playing a mind game, but also trying to figure out what's going on at this moment and what's this person going to do. And you know, and and so, and there are times when, when your team is down and you're disheartened and you just want to, you know, head for the doors and you don't, because you know that at any moment everything can change, and so I have been to so many baseball games where we were losing going into the bottom of the ninth, just for things to change on a dime and all of a sudden we go home victorious. In fact, the the um uh on my car, my license plate is bottom of the ninth and I I have that just to remind myself, and you know for other people that love the game that things can change in an instant, and so we need to be open to that right. We need to be able to make adjustments and appreciate the fact that nothing is planned. So that's kind of my thinking about baseball in life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's like this moment of just high intensity, all of a sudden, and if you blink you miss it Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Can you think of a?

Speaker 1:

time in your life when you felt like you were at the bottom of the ninth and it's been like, oh man, I feel like I'm down and out here, and then has something ever like sparked and and and and? You've had that quick burst of excitement or energy, because you are a very interesting woman and we're going to talk more about your life here but everything that you've done, can you think of a story or example to share with us?

Speaker 2:

Oh so many. We were talking before we came on the air about talking before we came on the air about I told you that I had lived in Montana, in Ashland, montana, on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and it was the time that I was there was very hard. You know, I went in kind of with sort of savior syndrome I would guess I would say you know white woman going to, you know, try to help the, you know the Native people, and I certainly went with good intention. But when I got there I realized that people had been doing that for years and I was looked at with suspicion and I experienced what it was like to be discriminated against and to just be disliked because of the color of my skin. And it was very painful because I knew in my heart I was coming from a place of really wanting to be there with a generous heart and make a difference. But I had to look kind of deep inside and go okay, like what's happening here. And it wasn't until you know, later on and some you know it was it was a tough time, it was a really tough time and it wasn't until later on that I realized what a gift it was right To be able to walk in someone's shoes, to the extent that you can, because I'm not convinced we ever can really understand what it's like to walk in someone's shoes, but we can get a facsimile of it, meeting people where they are. It was an important lesson about recognizing that we are not meant to rescue other people, that we're meant to join in the journey with them and to bear witness to their struggles and try to walk beside them.

Speaker 2:

I think really those moments were the moments that led me into social work and those were tough times. Like I said, those were definitely bottom of the ninth times, but they were life-changing for me and I can look back at those moments in my life. It's funny. I often tell folks that my favorite movie and sort of mixing metaphors here is the wizard of Oz, and one of the scenes in the wizard of Oz that kind of strikes me the most is when the scarecrow, you know, is talking to Dorothy and he says you can go this way or you can go that way. And those are those are for me, those are my bottom of the ninth moments. Those are those moments when things could change and they often do and, like you said, you don't want to blink. You don't want to miss it because there's a lot to learn there. And yeah that, that experience in Ashland, it was life-changing for me and it really set the course of the rest of my life and my career and I'm you know as painful as it was. I'm really grateful for it.

Speaker 1:

You said on your website that you're you don't consider yourself a courageous soul, on your website that you're you don't consider yourself a courageous soul. But when I'm hearing you talk about this experience and and what you went through and and you said you had to dig deep to like get through it and to figure out where, where do I belong in this, in this situation, um, how did you? How did you find the courage? Because I think it takes tremendous courage to even put yourself in a situation where you're really outside your comfort zone.

Speaker 2:

I guess you know I don't think about it that way, so I don't think I really do. When I think about myself, I don't think of myself as courageous. People have said that to me, but I really I'm very curious. That's one of the things that I know about myself. I'm curious about the way people live. I'm curious about human beings. That's really my passion in life is human beings, and so I think I just step into curiosity a lot. I think that's what it is, and so it doesn't feel courageous. It feels like I'm just kind of following my interest and my curiosity and my passion. And maybe that's hard for other people. I haven't found it hard for me. But that being said, you know human nature is challenging at times, and so those moments in Montana and other moments in my life certainly haven't been easy. But when I look back, man, the growth it's just been, it's almost hard to even wrap my head around, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love. I like thinking that sometimes, when we're in the thick of something that's really challenging or really awful or really scary, it's so easy to get wrapped up in the. This is really difficult challenge. To get wrapped up in the this is really difficult challenge. And it almost takes this gift of being able to take 10 steps forward and look back down the path and then and then be able to see things we couldn't see as we were going through that difficult thing. And you said you're a social worker and but you're also an author and you hike the Camino, like you've done all of these cool things. How, how have you been able to use your career as a social worker to write your books and to, to, to, to share those stories that you've experienced? That is such the right question.

Speaker 2:

It's so interesting, right? Because a lot of times people say how has your book impacted your work? Well, for me, it's the opposite. My work impacts my writing, right? Yeah, so, as a social worker, what I have learned and I've been a social worker for a lot of years and I've learned that what is really important in life is human relationships. That's the game right there. That's everything. It's not how much money you have or where you live, or what your job is, or how many places you've gone on vacation. It literally is those ordinary moments when you're looking someone in the eye and hearing their story. And for me, that is what I've loved about being a social worker.

Speaker 2:

As a social worker, I was a family therapist when I practiced clinical work. For the last almost 20 years, I've been teaching, I've worked in the nonprofit sector, I've worked with the mentally ill and the people that are unhoused, and I've worked with kids and families, and in every circumstance, what I have learned over and over and over again is they're just people. Everybody is a human being, and if they're struggling with schizophrenia, or they're unhoused, or they're a victim of some kind of you know horrible abuse, or they're just a mom or a dad doing the very best they can. We're all just people and we all just want somebody to love us and we want a place to feel safe and we want to be able to provide for our families. And so when I write, those are the stories I try to share is really to bring humanity to the characters whose stories I share.

Speaker 2:

And it's funny because a lot of times I write nonfiction, I write memoir and creative nonfiction. And it's funny because I've thought about writing fiction. But I think why write fiction when real life is so fascinating? And that was, for me, the Camino. That was like wow, what an opportunity to hear stories of ordinary people and to have them have a profound effect on me. Profound effect on me that still I walked the first time in 2019, still in 2024, their stories still affect me, still resonate with me. So for me, it's all about the human experience.

Speaker 1:

I was in the army for several years and I was a public affairs officer. So one of my jobs was to go out and take embedded reporters out to our soldiers in Iraq so that they could tell the story of that soldier and tell the story about what we were doing in Iraq. And I remember when I was at my public affairs school, one thing that my instructors just kept saying over and over again that I didn't really understand was that everybody has a story, everybody has a story to tell, and you talked about like these ordinary moments that make up those stories. So something that's very ordinary to me or to you might be fascinating to someone else, and I love to write, but I'm not an author. But I'm wondering how could you encourage someone who is feeling like they have a story within them? How would you encourage someone to share that story In writing or just verbally, just in general? How do you open up and find the confidence or the belief that your story is worth sharing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a great question, and I think the reality is that I think ordinary stories, what's ordinary to us in the sense of this, is my life. So, like you said to me, you don't think of yourself as courageous. No, I don't. This is the life that I lead, this is just what I do, and I find that true with so many of us. The experiences that, for us, are normal or just part of the fabric of our lives are fascinating to other people, and so I think what I have learned, and one of the things that I do I'm an instructor, I teach psychology and counseling skills and one of the things I kind of found into my students, particularly the counseling students, is it's about learning to listen, and so I think that what I think is the way to get people to share their stories is to be willing to listen, because I think people want to be heard. I don't. I don't think anybody wants to not tell you who they are. I think they want to tell you who they are, but you have to be willing to listen, and a lot of times what we do inadvertently is, you know, somebody tells us a story and the first thing we want to say is oh, me too, me too, me too. And then we've hijacked the conversation. So one of the beauties of the Camino was walking side by side with folks for an hour, half a day, maybe a couple of days, and hearing what was a normal experience for them, but just listening and, you know, asking open-ended questions. There was this one walk that was life-changing for me, really because of the time it was 2019.

Speaker 2:

And if at the time, there was all this kind of crazy stuff going on between us and North Korea, if you remember that time in our history and I met a young man from South Korea and he had been in the army and he was 21 years old, and in South Korea you have to go into the army and, of course, the other thing that's interesting in South Korea is the first day you're born, you're one. So he was really only 20, not 21. And he had already been in the army for two years and he was talking about what it was like to be on the front lines and it was life changing for me, because I looked at this guy and he looked like a kid, you know, and I thought and at the time we were, as a country, engaged in egging on the conflict there. You know, we had political stuff going on that was kind of sparking that and I'm thinking, wow, you know, this moment, where you go, our actions are affecting someone else's safety, right?

Speaker 2:

This young kid and all the other young kids that are on the front lines in South Korea. It was an eye-opener for me and for him it was just well, yep, that's what had happened, and I'd finished for two years and I, you know, and he, it was scary. He told me that he was scared to death when he was there, but he was just sharing it because it was part of his life experience. But for me, hearing that story, it really shook me and it was another reminder that we're not on this planet alone and everything we do impacts somebody else, everything. So, you know, it's stuff like that. It's like I think I think the answer to the question is be willing to listen and people will share their stories yeah, I, I was stationed in korea for a little while.

Speaker 1:

So, as you were talking about that, my heart, I felt my heart pounding and my palms getting sweaty, because it was a really difficult place, as an American soldier, to be stationed. Why did you hike the Camino?

Speaker 2:

You know that's a great question and I have many ways to answer that. And that was. It's one of the questions that they ask you while you're walking the Camino. Everyone you meet asks you that question For me, initially, I was in a moment of transition. I was about to turn 60. I had lost my parents just a few years earlier and they had both died from prolonged illnesses that were pretty awful.

Speaker 2:

So it was hard and I, I had, uh, read cheryl strade's book wild and I'd watched the way, um, and I thought, well, I don't think I'm going to be walking the pct anytime soon, um, although I love to hike. And I just thought, and, and I love Europe. So I was like I want to walk the Camino and, and so I, you know, I, I said it sort of out loud and my husband said have a great time, because he's not really a hiker. But I, you know, I'm very grateful because I think a lot of spouses and partners maybe wouldn't say that, and my husband was super supportive and so, you know, it was just one sort of day in late fall in 2018. And it was like, okay, I'm going and you know, that was the beginning. That was the beginning.

Speaker 2:

I think one of the things about the Camino you know, a lot of people know about the Camino and they know of it as a pilgrimage, and I didn't really. I mean, of course, I knew that it was a pilgrimage and I was raised Catholic, so I wasn't like I didn't know what I was getting myself into in that sense, but that really wasn't my focus and of course, it turned out to be an extraordinary spiritual experience, but that wasn't really my initial intention. So, yeah, I mean I think I wanted adventure, I think I was ready for something big. I mean 60 is a big birthday.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And when you were walking the Camino, what did you learn about yourself?

Speaker 2:

Well, back to the Wizard of Oz. You know how Dorothy says at the end, when she wakes up and she's surrounded by all the farmhands who, of course, she has met when she's been walking to the Emerald City, and she says, if I ever go looking for something again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, to paraphrase. Backyard to paraphrase. And I think what I realized from walking the Camino was, in a weird way, the whole world is one big backyard, like we are. We're brothers and sisters. You know, we may, we may grow up in different parts of the world, but we again, like I said before, we want the same things. We have people who love us, we have dreams that we want, and so I think when I came back, I think when I came back, there was a way in which the Camino cleared the fog for me. I came back and I was like, oh, it's pretty simple, just be present for one another and listen and hold compassion and be curious, all the things I had known.

Speaker 2:

Obviously I practiced that as a social worker, but there was a way in which it simplified all of it and the stuff that kind of I got caught up in before it was gone. It was gone. The biggest change for me and I'm sure he won't mind saying it, because me saying it and also I wrote about it in the book was my relationship with my husband, because we've been married a long time. Marriage is a wonderful experience, but it's also really hard and over the years you come up with a lot of gripes about one another if you're not careful. And one of the things that happened while I was walking, unplanned and to my surprise, the first morning I woke up and there was a text message from my husband and he said to me have a great walk today, we're really proud of you, and I think there was a picture of the dogs or something like that.

Speaker 2:

And every single morning for 31 mornings I woke up to a message from him, you know, cheering me on, telling me they were proud of me, telling me they missed me. There was a, you know, a picture of a flower I had planted. You know those kinds of things. Yeah, and for me again, it was one of those moments where the fog cleared. It was like, yeah, I could like focus on all the gripes about how he's not the perfect husband, or I can look at the gift that he is to me and how grateful that I am that I found somebody that's been willing to walk this journey with me for all these years.

Speaker 2:

So there was a lot of those moments and it was life changing, and I can honestly say that our relationship is dramatically different since I came back. You just needed 32 days apart, I guess so. But there was a way in which, like like I, I remember responding the very first message I got from him. I texted. I texted him back and I said who is this and what have you done with my husband? And of course, he laughed. But it was like, wow, I had never even allowed myself to see that in him he's the same guy. It's the same guy that I've been married to for 38 years, you know, but I had gotten so caught up in this stuff that I that that clouds our vision, that that's what the Camino did for me on many, many, many levels.

Speaker 1:

I feel like sometimes we go on these, these adventures that really, really change our lives, but sometimes, when we come back, we fall into those old habits, or those old habits, those old rituals, those old thoughts that we had before we experienced this transformation. How have you been able to and you talked about with your husband how have you been able to, like, keep that perspective long-term? It hasn't worn off. How have you been able to keep it from wearing off?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, of course you fall back into old patterns. It's human nature, right. But I also, as I say to my students, the thing about learning is that when we learn something new, we're changed forever. It's just the way the brain works. So I can, it's going to want to slip back and I can remind myself, and I do. I can remind myself and I do that. I also get a choice to not let it slip back. Right, and I can focus on, on what I learned and how things are different, and I think in general it is.

Speaker 2:

It's funny like a lot of times we'll say, oh, this was life changing, this was life changing. Yeah, I said this is life changing before about other things and and they were great experiences, but for me, the Camino was life changing and I, I liked what I learned. So there was a way in which I wasn't willing to to go back to what was. And it doesn't mean that I don't have those moments. Of course I, you know we have a normal marriage. I, I have a normal I get, you know, caught up in minutia.

Speaker 2:

I have a normal, I get you know, caught up in minutiae, but I also can catch myself now and I can make choices, and I think that's that's part of the lesson for me, which was, you know, and also the Camino, and you know, I walked. I've walked two different Caminos and I'm about to start a new walk. Actually, next week I'm going to walk the third leg of the Via Frantigiana, which is from Luca.

Speaker 2:

And that's an 18-day walk. I'm really excited about that one as well, yeah, but I think there's a way too, when you're walking it slows everything down. And that's one of the beauties of the Camino is like you hear the birds, and I remember thinking, do the birds sing like this at home? Like, of course they do, but I didn't take the time to listen to them Right, and what does the sun feel like on my skin and what does that breeze feel like? And you know who are those people that are up ahead and all those things that you can do when you slow way down. So I think you know just reminding myself to take that time. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's been a lot of lessons and I do think that, at least me, I know consciously, I've made a commitment. I'm sort of not going back. I don't want to lose sight of that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we live in this go fast society. I can have a pizza to my house in 10 minutes. I can order something and have it shipped here in 24 hours. I love just to walk because it reminds me what you were saying to slow down and to not everything doesn't always have to be a rush. I think that is one of the beauties of just a walk around the block, but especially a long walk where you're not checking your phone every five minutes and you're unreachable and not sitting behind a computer. I think that's such a powerful, powerful, powerful experience that everyone needs to have that, that moment of disconnect. And I think that leads us into your books. You've written two or three books Two, two, two. Can you tell us a little bit about your books and how you got started and what they're all about?

Speaker 2:

I'd love to. So the first book I wrote was a long time in the coming. My mother, when she was in her early 60s, developed Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's is a horrible, horrible, horrible disease where you literally watch someone disappear in front of you. And she had early onset and then she had it for a prolonged amount of time. She lived to be 79 with Alzheimer's. She had it for a prolonged amount of time. She lived to be 79 with Alzheimer's. So we literally watched her disappear over the course of those 19 years.

Speaker 2:

And I wanted and I had had, as I think many mothers and daughters do a relationship with my mom that was in some ways fraught. In some ways we were very much, very similar. I was the oldest girl, the oldest daughter in my family desperately to figure out how to save her, to preserve her so that my children would know their Nana. That was my initial reason for wanting to write the book, and so I started it and stopped it over and over and over again, and it wasn't until a year after my mother passed away that I was sitting on my friend's couch and she's a writer as well and I was crying and I said I can't. I want to write this book and I can't write it. It's not, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to write, I don't know how to do it. And she, because I had tried and failed so many times and she had said to me you just just write, just tell the story. And she referred me to a friend of hers who became my writing coach and she walked me through. Basically, you know, she would ask me questions, she'd say we'd meet and she'd say go write about your sister, go write about your brother, go write about you know baseball, go write. And I would just go home and I would write, and then we would meet again the next month and over a year and a half the book came together and, of course, as any writer will tell you, the book you end up with is never the book that you thought you were going to write.

Speaker 2:

So the book ended up being, um, uh, a way of processing my relationship with my mom after her death and for me, in the end, a way to heal the fraught relationship that I had with her. Oh, because I understood at the end who she was more deeply. So that was really a labor of love, that first book, and it was very hard to write and there were a lot of times that I sat at my computer and cried. But you know it was Um, but you know it was uh. In the end, I think it's a gift to her and to our relationship, and for folks that know someone that struggles with Alzheimer's, I think a lot of our story will resonate um, in terms of how painful it is to watch somebody disappear and simultaneously remember who they were and all of those moments that they were alive and active in. That is disappearing right in front of you, is disappearing right in front of you. So you know that book I think most of the feedback I've gotten that book is has has really been. You know, I, I see myself in these pages and, and so I had that experience of writing my story and realizing again the same lesson that I learned on the Camino the universality of the human experience. You know, all of us have fraught relationships with our family members. All of us have expectations. All of us, you know, want to be seen. All of us, you know, want to be seen. All of us, you know. So there's all of that in in those pages. The second book, estrellas um, is so the first book is called the cardinal club uh, and it's the subtitle is a daughter's journey to acceptance, and I've just recently re-released both the books with book club guides and podcast episodes, because I also have a podcast where I talk to people who are making a difference in the world. That's sort of my area of interest.

Speaker 2:

Stregas is about walking the Camino, and I didn't walk the Camino with the intention of writing a book. But, similarly to my experience with my first book, I realized there's a lot of processing that happens when you write, and so part of what happened for me was when I came home from the Camino. I wanted to understand what had happened. I wanted to make sense of it. Yeah, and a lot of times people will say, you know, they're like oh, you walked the Camino. And I understand this because I have felt it and I understand how other people feel the same way. It's like, yeah, well, it doesn't really. I don't really know how to tell you what just happened. I don't know how to explain it to you. The pictures don't do it justice. How many miles you walked a day doesn't do it justice. The fact that I had blisters doesn't do it. It just like none of it does it justice. And so I was trying to figure out, cause I knew I came home and I'm like I am a different person and I don't know how, I don't know what happened. So writing that book was my way of trying to figure it out.

Speaker 2:

And what I realized when I looked back, not surprisingly. I mean, we all, we all live life through our own eyes, with our own lens, and for me, the Camino was all about the people I met. Yeah, I mean, that's what the book is about. It's not like, if you want to know what shoes to wear and and what, what kind of backpack to buy, and that's not what this book is about. This book is about the magic that happens when you show up fully and pay attention, and that's what the Camino was for me. It was like, okay, I'm here every day and I'm in this moment and I'm feeling the dirt under my feet and I'm looking in the eyes of these people from all over the world that I may never see again. Yeah, and they changed my life.

Speaker 1:

Just this.

Speaker 2:

You know this short time we've spent together you've made me want to, as you just said, show up fully and pay attention, and pay attention to the people who are around me. We have so much to offer one another. I mean, that's the thing that's so amazing, right? It's like there's this one class that I teach that I love my students and this one class it's a class where the students are all learning to be drug and alcohol counselors and they've all lived really hard lives and they have really struggled and talk about being at the bottom.

Speaker 2:

I mean sometimes I their resilience is just so inspiring to me. But there's an exercise I do with them where I have them bring in a picture and I ask them to share the story of the picture. And this one guy brought in this picture of a fish. He had been out fishing and he had this gigantic fish and he's holding this fish in the air and he says, you know, he starts talking and I'm looking at this going. Okay, I mean, the whole idea of the exercise is for the other students to practice listening.

Speaker 2:

So, he tells the story and then they respond and learn how to listen. And so it turns out it had nothing to do with the fish. It had to do with the fact that that was the first time that he had gone fishing sober and it was the beginning of his journey to recovery. And it was by the end of the conversation we were all crying. It was such a beautiful story and so that's it.

Speaker 2:

Like you show up and you listen and look at what you get, this gift of this guy's struggle, where that moment you know that fish, where that moment you know that fish, that fishing trip that led to him, you know, signing up to go to classes at the junior college and it led to him getting a new career, and it, I mean all of that. That's what happens when you show up and you pay attention. Show up and you pay attention and if we don't, we miss it. Right, if we go, oh yeah, picture of a fish, that's it. That's interesting, yeah. But no, I mean I'm looking at your, your picture of mountains behind you, and I'm thinking I want to hear that story, I want to know what happened that day, I want to know what it was like to be on that walk. What you learned? You know that that's. That's what happens when we show up.

Speaker 1:

That's so powerful. I want to show up better. You've inspired me to want to show up better, and and the timing is perfect because I'm headed out to climb Kilimanjaro with 23 women here in two weeks, and so I think, as I, as I've been preparing for this hike mentally and physically now now I want to show up and I want to hear the stories that they share as we're climbing the mountain.

Speaker 2:

So that's the thing, right. It's not about the climb as much Like that's what I kept saying to people about the Camino. It's not about the walk, yeah, yeah, it's about those moments when you're walking.

Speaker 1:

Right, that little touch with humanity, and it's like now I want to know about the porters and the guides. I'm going to get everybody's story and I's like now I want to know about the porters and the guides. I'm going to get everybody's story and I'm going to come back and it's going to. It's going to be life-changing. Suzanne, this has been amazing. Where can we go to learn about your books, to learn more about you?

Speaker 2:

I have a website right, and it's SuzanneMaggiocom, and I'm on Instagram at Suzanne Maggio author and on Facebook as well. Suzanne Maggio author and I have a podcast and the podcast is called From Sparks to Light and it is a podcast where I share the stories about people who have followed their spark and are making a difference. And yeah, I mean I would love to hear if you read the book, if you walk the Camino, if any connections. I would love to hear from listeners and, man, I want to walk Kilimanjaro too. I'm going to put that on my list because that looks amazing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah Well, thank you so much.