Episode 688
Edgar Gomez, River Selby, and Hunter Noack
Photo of Hunter Noack for IN A LANDSCAPE by Arthur Hitchcock
Writer Edgar Gomez discusses his collection of essays Alligator Tears, which follows his various hustles as a youth in Florida—from being a flip flop salesman to getting fake teeth through a little bankruptcy fraud; author River Selby recounts how they overcame addiction and sexism to become a hotshot wildland firefighter; and classical pianist Hunter Noack performs at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon, as part of his outdoor concert series IN A LANDSCAPE.
Edgar Gomez
Award-Winning Writer
Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of High-Risk Homosexual, as well as the winner of the American Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award. His latest memoir Alligator Tears was called “triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish” by Publisher's Weekly.
River Selby
Writer and Former Wildland Firefighter
River Selby is a former hotshot and wildland firefighter, a writer, and a nonbinary person. They hold an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University; they are currently pursuing their PhD. They were the recipient of the Emerging Writer’s Prize for Fiction from Boulevard Magazine for their story, “How Certain Fires Burn.” Their writing has appeared in the New Ohio Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Vox, and High Country News. They currently live in Tallahassee, Florida.
Hunter Noack
Classical Pianist
Hunter Noack is a classical pianist, naturalist, and founder of the award-winning wilderness concert series IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild. He spends his days traveling with his over a century-old Steinway piano to some of America’s most inspiring settings—mountaintops, deserts, and old-growth forests. The audience experiences the music through wireless headphones, a soundtrack to their outdoor experience, as they are encouraged to wander around during the show. Hunter’s debut album topped the classical music Billboard charts and his work has been featured on the CBS Mornings series A More Perfect Union. Beyond IN A LANDSCAPE, Hunter loves to collaborate with artists outside the classical realm, which has included performing around the world with Pink Martini at Hollywood Bowl, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royal Albert Hall among others, and appearing with his partner Thomas Lauderdale alongside groups like the National Symphony.
Show Notes
Best News
Elena’s story: “Naked bike riders demonstrate against federal troops in ‘quintessentially Portland’ protest”
Luke’s story: “Elephants squashed squash today”
Edgar Gomez
Edgar reads from his latest memoir, Alligator Tears.
With humor and warmth, Edgar shares his experience growing up as an American-born child of immigrants in Florida, the role memoir has played in his relationship with his mother, and what it’s like to share stories of a marginalized experience with mainstream audiences.
River Selby
River’s new memoir is Hotshot: A Life on Fire.
River shares their experience as a non-binnary, AFAB person in the fire industry, and uses their personal story to delve into the historico-political side of wildfire theory and policy.
Live Wire Listener Question
What job did you learn the most from?
Hunter Noack
This portion of the show was recorded at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon, as part of his outdoor concert series IN A LANDSCAPE: Classical Music in the Wild.
The IN A LANDSCAPE project was named after a John Cage composition of the same name.
Hunter performs Rosanna Scalfi Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D, transcribed for piano by Bach.
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Elena Passarello: From PRX it's LIVE WIRE. This week, writer Edgar Gomez.
Edgar Gomez: That was always my fantasy that my book would be at the airport, because my mom, my mom worked as a barista at Starbucks at the airport.
Elena Passarello: Author River Selby.
River Selby: My crew bus on the contract crew. I said I want to be a hotshot and he was like, girls can't be hot shots. And that was the moment I decided to do it.
Elena Passarello: With music from Hunter Noack. And our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank: Thank you so much, Elena Passarello. And thank you all for coming out to the Alberta Rose Theatre in beautiful Portland, Oregon. We have an amazing show in store for you this week. First, though, we got to kick things off like we always do with the best news we heard all week. All right, here's the thing. The news can seem a little bleak out there in the world, but of course there are good things happening. And what we do in this segment each week is we find those things. We thought this week, though, let's do something special. Because Portland has been getting a certain kind of attention nationwide.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: That might make someone think there isn't any best news happening in the Rose City, but au contraire. There is best news that is happening here this week. And we've found it. And we'd like to report out to the entire nation who's listening in right now just how okay things are going here. This is a lightning round of best news stories coming from right here in Portland, Oregon. What do you think? Elena, what's first item of best news that you have heard about in Portland?
Elena Passarello: Okay, we all know about the world naked bike ride here in Portland.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Elena Passarello: It's a tradition. And might I add, it is always a protest. It's always a reaction to fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry and sort of promoting alternative modes of transportation that don't use said fossil fuels. Usually because it involves nudity, it happens in the summer, which is probably the best time.
Luke Burbank: I requested that.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. But listen, they had to call an emergency naked bite ride.
Luke Burbank:: Yes.
Elena Passarello: Right? Riding through downtown, past the protesters, past the ice facility, clothing non optional. Is that how you'd say it? Non-clothing optional. So there were some people on that cold Sunday who had on hats and scarves, and there was a David S. Pumpkins costume, apparently, a Beetlejuice costume, and then they all drove over the Burnside Bridge and parked their bikes and kind of laid down on the ground and kind of stopped traffic for a little bit. All to sort of make protest an act of joy. And nothing says joy like nudity on a 50 degree rainy day. What's yours?
Luke Burbank: I mean, you know, of course we're always looking for business development and folks to have successful businesses here in Portland. And right now there is a company that is just doing actually booming business. It's the Lippman company. They've been around for about seventy seven years. It's a great
Elena Passarello: That's brand recognition.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, well they've been there for seventy seven years down over on Yamhill and it's a party supply company and the reason that their phone has been ringing off the hook is because they are the place in Portland to get your inflatable frog chicken or dinosaur costume.
Elena Passarello: Your gear. Your protest gear.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Apparently it's been very fun for the manager of the store, Robin Adair, because Robin gets to sell people these things and then see them on national television. Hours later, she told the paper, A couple bought Garfield and a banana the other day, and then I saw them on the news. Let's support our local inflatable frog.
Elena Passarello: Yes.
Luke Burbank: Business is here in Portland. All right, hit me with another best news thing happening right here in much maligned Portland, Oregon.
Elena Passarello: Luke Burbank, friends in Portland, this is also the season for Squish the Squash.
Luke Burbank: Oh my gosh.
Elena Passarello: Which is a 30-year-old tradition at the Portland Zoo that started in the 90s when an award-winning 800-pound pumpkin in Canby was donated to the zoo so that the elephants could squish it. They got gourds, they got squash, they got pumpkins, and they've been doing this forever. And these are, I mean, the size of the elephants' heads. That's happening this week, but there's a new special development because sort of the hot it girl of the Portland Zoo this year is Tula Two, who is the eight month old baby elephant.
Luke Burbank: I know. I mean they're giving the baby elephant a baby pumpkin to smash.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I mean the 800 pounders were so big, like there's no way that she could even like get up around it. So she's gonna squish her own squash and then she's gonna be able to watch her mom wreck shop on one of the big mama pumpkins.
Luke Burbank: Why is that so satisfying?
Elena Passarello: Apparently, it's really good for the elephants. Like it's a kind of enrichment that you know it's it's fun to watch, but the it's it started as like an animal behaviorist therapy.
Luke Burbank: Okay, here's a last bit of best news coming out of Portland, Oregon this week. You know, of course the the seasons are changing and we're getting closer to eventually winter, there's going to be snow, there's gonna be ice, and here in Portland that can be a real problem, which is why the city of Portland has fifty six snow plows.
Elena Passarello: What?
Luke Burbank: That's a lot, right?
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: And that by itself could be the best news. We have prioritized
Elena Passarello: Yeah, good job.
Luke Burbank: Buying snow plows for this city. Well they decided the Portland Board of Transportation decided to have a contest where they would name five of these snow plows. One of 'em is gonna be called the Big Snowplow Ski.
Elena Passarello: Good, good. Approved.
Luke Burbank: That one's going to handle the Southwest Hills. There's going to be one called the Brrr-n Side. Like Brrr. I can't really say that word.
Elena Passarello: Brrr.
Luke Burbank: There you go. Thank you. That one is gonna handle, that's actually a salt spreader that's gonna handle West Burnside. Then you got a plowey McPlow face.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, you have to
Luke Burbank: I mean at this point [Elena: It's par for the course.], if you allow people to vote on naming something, you're gonna get a Mc-something face. There's also Salt & Thaw.
Luke Burbank: Which if you're listening somewhere outside of Portland, we have a beloved ice cream operation here called Salt & Straw, which that's a reference to. And then of course, the fifth and final snowplow is Beverly Cleary.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Right.
Elena Passarello: Does it plow click a click a tad stream?
Luke Burbank: It absolutely does. It is going to plow the Beverly Cleary K through eight school and the neighborhoods that were made famous in the Beverly Cleary books. Yes. So the fact that we have 56 snow plows and that as the seasons progress, even if it snows, you can all come to Live Wire. You have no excuse because the roads will be Beverly Clearied for you to get here no matter what's going on. That, my friends, that is the best news that I heard all week. All right, you're listening to Live Wire. Our first guest this week is the recipient of the American Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award for his first book, which was titled High Risk Homosexual. Edgar Gomez was born and raised in Florida, where his new memoir is set. It's called Alligator Tears. It's been called triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish. All things that could describe Edgar as well. Here's a conversation we recorded with him live at the Kiln co-working space in Portland, Oregon. Edgar, welcome to Live Wire.
Edgar Gomez: Thank you so much for having me.
Luke Burbank: I found this book to just be so fascinating and human and readable and relatable. I really, really enjoyed it. I I wanted to kind of set the scene for people that maybe haven't had a chance to read it yet. You grew up in Orlando. What sort of a kid were you? Were you a shy kid? Were you outgoing? What was your deal?
Edgar Gomez: I was a really shy, nervous, nerdy kid who was always reading. So my family moved around a lot when I was a kid and books were like this source of stability where no matter where we were, I could at least be following the same story. And so in that way it it gave me like this consistency. But I didn't have a lot of friends because I was like, you know, I love reading.
Luke Burbank: Your relationship with your mom is a big part of this book. And I'm I'm just curious, can you kind of, it went through phases, it sounds like, in your childhood and in your coming out and just based on her health and and your life, but generally speaking, what was that relationship like for you growing up?
Edgar Gomez: We had a little bit of a complicated relationship where when I was really young, like a lot of other gay kids, she was my best friend. She was my my rock. And when I came out to her in high school, I came out to her at Saks Fifth Avenue at the mall. And when she was there to use a coupon. And I like looked around and I was like, this is kind of a safe space in a way, because she's not gonna make a scene around all these rich white ladies. So I came out to her there, and her initial reaction wasn't great. It took some getting used to. And in fact, there were a lot of you know, not great things that happened. And afterwards I tried to have conversations with her about them. Like, oh mama, you remember that time that you got so mad that you, you know, tackled my bedroom door and came in and were like, Are you you know, curse word? Are you a slur? And she would always be like, no, that didn't happen, or you're exaggerating, or like classic immigrant mom, like, you don't know how much I sacrificed for you. So I could never really talk to her about those things and write.
Luke Burbank: She was from Nicaragua.
Edgar Gomez: She's Nicaraguan. Yeah. And writing my books, writing my memoirs has been my way to sort of have those conversations with her. Without her telling me, no, that didn't happen. And after these books came out, I was so, so nervous. In fact, I didn't tell her that my first book came out until like a year afterwards. It was-
Luke Burbank: She's like walking through the airport, it's like a Hudson news. Her son is on the cover.
Edgar Gomez: Well, that was always my fantasy that my book would be at the airport. Because my mom, my mom worked as a barista at Starbucks at the airport. And I was always in there. She would take me for Bring Your Kid to Work Day. And so she would like let me loose at the airport. And it was always like this like status symbol. Like, if I get my book in the airport, that means that I made it. Yeah. It hasn't made it there yet.
Luke Burbank: Well, if enough people hear this interview. We've got to get Alligator Tears in the finer booksellers in the airport in America. I think I think those places and Costco are where all books are now sold. I mean very seriously, that's like the two places you want to get your book.
Edgar Gomez: Yeah, buy it in bulk. Yeah. Buy a twenty four pack. That's right.
Luke Burbank: You're listening to Live Wire from PRX. We're talking to the writer Edgar Gomez, and we have to take a very quick break, but do not go anywhere. When we come back, Edgar will explain how his mom made some very creative financial decisions to get him new teeth as a teen, which completely changed the course of his life. Stick around, more Live Wire coming your way in a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening to a chat that we recorded with the writer Edgar Gomez talking about his latest book, Alligator Tears. We recorded this at Kiln Co-Working Space in Portland, Oregon. Let's get back to it. Your mom also did something incredibly kind and I want to say smart for you as a kid, which was, and again, I hope it's okay that I'm talking about it, but it's in the book, so I feel like it's fair game. She realized as essentially a single mother raising a family and and trying to make it work that, like for so many Americans, the math wasn't mathing on the finances. And she realized that she was likely to need to declare bankruptcy. And this is very, very smart. Realized that if she was gonna declare bankruptcy, she might as well make it worth it and get your teeth fixed.
Edgar Gomez: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Because you your your teeth were not great when you were a little kid and and the the the most effective way to fix it was to eventually to do these veneers that were very expensive. But she brings you in for this process. And actually, there's a a part of the book where you talk about that actual like the sort of procedure and the way it made you feel. Would you mind reading that section?
Edgar Gomez: Sure, yeah. And if you see me tonight, don't look at my teeth. Okay.
Luke Burbank: I'm very close to them and they look great.
Edgar Gomez: Thank you. Yeah, so this is a passage we we just arrived at the dental offices so that I can get my veneers put on.
Luke Burbank: And you're about how old at this time?
Edgar Gomez: I'm in high school. I want to say I am 15 years old.
Luke Burbank: Okay. Yeah.
Edgar Gomez: And I just got expelled from my last high school. So I'm really depressed.
Luke Burbank: Were you in like a sort of a cop training program?
Edgar Gomez: Yes.
Luke Burbank: More or less.
Edgar Gomez: Yeah, what I was gonna- I was kicked out of it, so I think, you know.
Luke Burbank: You got cred.
Edgar Gomez: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: You gotta get your credit back.
Edgar Gomez: So this is from Alligator Tears. The day of the procedure, mom picked me up from school right after she got off work. We arrived at the dentist's office 20 minutes early and parked under a shady tree. While we waited, mom pulled a thin cardigan out of her purse, buttoned it over the green Starbucks mermaid sewn onto her uniform, then lowered the driver's seat mirror to dab concealer under her eyes and apply a fresh coat of mascara. She must have been exhausted. Ready? She asked. I leapt over the divider and wrapped my arms tightly around her chest. Thank you, I whispered. She kissed the top of my head. You're welcome. Now you can't say I don't love you. Before he began, Dr. Franklin gave mom and me a lecture on the upkeep. There were hard foods I'd need to avoid for the rest of my life. No apples, no candy. And I shouldn't try opening bottles with my veneers, he winked. I noddedly politely, as if any of those things mattered to me. I would have given him my soul. He said the veneers were made to last about 10 years, though with proper care, they could last up to 15, and then I'd have to replace them. That actually gave me pause. It meant there'd come a day when I'd need to come up with $8,000, an impossible sum of money, nearly half what mom made in an entire year. Yet I also knew that once I had veneers, money would never be a problem again. They'd cover all my ugly parts, my drug record, my broken-ness and broke-ness. I brushed my uneasiness away. After asking mom to wait in the lobby, Dr. Franklin had me lie back on the operating bed and open my mouth. I stared up at the strip of bright white lights on the ceiling as he wrenched out my baby tooth with a pair of pliers, turned on what sounded like a power drill, and proceeded to slowly sand down my teeth, bone particles filling the air. When he was finished, he brought out the tray of off-white veneers his assistant had recommended and cemented them one by one over my newly flattened teeth. The whole process took about two hours. It was heaven. Finally, he had me sit back up and placed a mirror in my hand. My heart pounded as I brought it up and pried my lips open. It took a second for what I was looking at to sink in. The veneers didn't merely close the gaps in my teeth. They also made my face fuller, my jaw rounder instead of tense and jammed tight like I usually kept it. I scrutinized my reflection, turning from side to side. I looked like myself. I looked like the real me, not that other shame-filled version of me I'd been living as before. A startled giggle shot out of my mouth. Instinctively, I reached up to cover it with the back of my hand. But I stopped and lowered it halfway. I didn't need to hide ever again. Dr. Franklin summoned mom from the waiting room, and within minutes, she and half of the office were hovering over me, ooing and eyeing. Amazing work, they patted his back. It's incredible. You're a genius, Doctor. Precioso, mom said, kissing my cheek. Mi nino lindo. A flash went off. I was back against a blank wall for my after picture with Dr. Franklin's assistant. She snatched the Polaroid from the camera and waved it in the air, then fit it into a plastic sleeve inside a binder next to dozens of other clients before and after photos. It reminded me of a yearbook. All our smiles, vulnerable and self-conscious. As I stared at my before photo, a strange pang of grief shot across my chest. I'd been that person my whole life. Whatever I'd felt about myself over the years, they'd kept me alive through everything.
Luke Burbank: Edgar Gomez reading from Alligator Tears here on Live Wire. We are coming to you this week from Kiln here in Portland, Oregon. One of the things that you write about so eloquently in the book, Edgar, is a feeling that if somebody didn't grow up poor, I don't know if they would instinctively know this, but one of the biggest things about growing up poor is embarrassment, constant embarrassment. You know, people think it might be food insecurity or safety problems, and it may be those things as well, but there's just this kind of low of feeling embarrassed all the time, which really does a number on your brain.
Edgar Gomez: Yeah, yeah, no, that was a huge thing. And I always felt like people were looking at me and judging me, you know, by the clothes I was wearing, but especially by my teeth. You know, you could always sense when somebody's like looking at your teeth and all the things that they're thinking. And I think my mom was really smart where she knew that if I ever wanted to be successful, that I would need to kind of hide that part of myself and fake it till I make it with literally fake teeth.
Luke Burbank: You had a number of different like jobs and money making opportunities growing up that you write about in the book, starting with like boosting cookies that you were supposed to be selling, but they weren't monitoring the supply, so you were getting some extras that you could then sell and pocket the money. You worked you sold flip flops.
Edgar Gomez: Yes, I am a flip flop connoisseur.
Luke Burbank: This was Florida after all.
Edgar Gomez: This was Florida. I worked at the flip flop shop at the Florida mall. Shout out to them.
Edgar Gomez: And mostly, you know, it was a, it wasn't just a flip-flop shop, it was a luxury flip-flop boutique. We sold the flip-flops that Oprah wears.
Luke Burbank: Oh.
Edgar Gomez: Yeah. Oh, see how everybody was like, oh that's how I would sell flip flops.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. No. Was that totally made up?
Edgar Gomez: No, it was real.
Luke Burbank: Oh okay.
Edgar Gomez: And so for the women it was Oprah, for the men it was the rock. These are the ones the rock wears. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Do you feel like being kind of on your grind as a young person has helped you in your literary career?
Edgar Gomez: One hundred percent. Especially working all these like minimum wage mall gigs. I really do believe that helped my writing because what that job is is all about audience and how to immediately hook somebody coming into the store and convince them to do something. And I mean that's what I'm doing in my writing. I'm like trying to hook you right away and convince you to keep reading.
Luke Burbank: Something that I've heard you say in other interviews and and I think you you mention it in the book in passing is this idea that for marginalized folks, so often the the the value quote unquote in their stories is their trauma. That it's this it's like, oh, you know, you had a hard life, it was traumatic, now let's all just sit around and hear about it. How do you balance the joyfulness of your life with the actual trauma that happened?
Edgar Gomez: You know, I think that's something that I learned from my mom. You know, my mom didn't have the easiest life in in Nicaragua. And when she came to the US, you know, once you've experienced, you know, a dictatorship, your brothers being forced to be child soldiers, once you've experienced like trauma like that, like every other problem just feels trivial in comparison. And the way that my mom and my family tell stories, they're always just like they could be telling the darkest thing, but they're cracking up the entire time. And I think that's something that I learned from them.
Luke Burbank: I think I heard you say in an interview that therapy is expensive but laughter is free.
Edgar Gomez: And that part. [Luke: You know?] Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Edgar Gomez, thank you for coming on Live Wire.
Edgar Gomez: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: That was Edgar Gomez right here on Live Wire. Make sure you grab a copy of his book, Alligator Tears, wherever it is that you get your books. Live Wire is brought to you by Powell's Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powell's offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at Powells.com. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank: here with Elena Passarello. Of course, each week on the show, we ask the Live Wire listeners a question. And this week, inspired by our chat with Edgar Gomez, we asked the listeners what, Elena?
Elena Passarello: We wanted to know what job taught them the most. Oh wow. Yeah. I feel like you have a few answers to this question yourself.
Luke Burbank: I sure do. But I'll turn it over to the live wire listeners. What are they telling ya?
Elena Passarello: Liam said that Liam learned a lot from being a camp counselor. I learned how to unclog toilets, start campfires, and survive on four hours of sleep. That sounds like a oh you have to be a multi hyphenate in order to-
Luke Burbank: Like a quintuple threat. Also add to the list delicately telling young people when it's time to start exploring deodorant options.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, yeah, it's a stinky gig, I think.
Luke Burbank: Feel like you're right at the tip of the spear there about that change happening to folks' bodies.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, that's right.
Luke Burbank: All right, what is another life lesson that somebody in our listening audience learned on the job?
Elena Passarello: Rohan worked as a dishwasher at a diner and says that hot water and loud music can fix almost anything.
Luke Burbank: Did you ever have a job like that working in a dish pit?
Elena Passarello: No but the- I worked in restaurants, but the closest dish pit, I was in the back of a limited express clothing store and all I had to do was unbox and steam clothes. And it's, I loved it. Like I loved it so much more than being on the floor because I just got to be by myself and play whatever music I wanted. I just listened to music all day and steamed, you know, circa 2000's era Buffy the Vampire Slayer tops, you know.
Luke Burbank: All right, one more thing that has really impacted someone that they learned on the job.
Elena Passarello: I love this one from Whitney. Whitney says, I worked at Hollywood Video in college and spent a significant amount of my wages on discounted used DVDs. I have sadly learned that this was a terrible investment. When was the last time you played a DVD?
Luke Burbank: I bought a DVD player like six months ago, Elena, because I wanted to watch a specific film called Streetwise, this amazing documentary. And it was only available on DVD. So I had to buy the DVD and then buy the DVD player to play the DVD in. And I did, and it was very satisfying. It felt very old school to me to actually put the disk in and watch.
Elena Passarello: I bought one for 'cause I'm writing about Elvis movies and a lot of Elvis movies are only they're not streamable. So I've gotten to know the D V D menu again and the joy of special features and all that jazz. So Whitney, if you wanna ever wanna commiserate about your D V D collection, it sounds like we're here for you.
Luke Burbank: You know who to talk to. Hey, thank you to everyone who sent in a response to our listener question this week. We appreciate it. You're tuned into Live Wire. Our next guest is a former elite wildland firefighter who is part of a crew known as the Hotshots. That's an experience that's detailed in their new memoir, which is called Hotshot: A Life on Fire. It examines the collision of fire suppression policy and colonization and climate change and their own journey in the dangerous and very male-dominated world of wildland firefighting. This is River Selby, recorded live at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. River, welcome to the program.
River Selby: Thank you. It's so great to be here.
Luke Burbank: I really, really enjoyed this book. And it kind of starts out when you're around nineteen years old and by your own kind of telling in in the book you were sort of struggling at that point. Like what was going on for you at nineteen? What did your life kind of look like?
River Selby: So I'd grown up in a pretty chaotic environment and moved around a lot. And when I left home, I started going to community college and then dropped out just because I wasn't equipped to be able to do that and started using a lot of drugs and a friend just suggested to me that maybe I should try wildland firefighting, just you know.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, like you do.
River Selby: Just- [Luke: Sure.] She she was like, Maybe it'll distract you. That's literally what she said.
Luke Burbank: I mean I would imagine it it could be a distraction.
River Selby: Yes. So yeah, I went in and they were really excited that I had a driver's license. It was a contract crew.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
River Selby: And so they hired me immediately. We did two weeks of training and then the last day we did a field day and my crew boss later told me that he was very sure I wasn't gonna come back after that, but I did.
Luke Burbank: We should clarify too that you are non binary, but at this time that you write about in the book during your years of wildland firefighting, do I have it right you identified as female and you went by a different name?
River Selby: Yeah, I went by the name Anna. So yeah, in the book, in the intro, I talk about how I am nonbinary, but I refer to myself with she/her pronouns because that is how I experienced the world. It was the mold I was trying to fit into at the time.
Luke Burbank: And what was the the sort of welcome like for you, I guess, in this very male dominated world?
River Selby: So I spent two years on the contract crew, and sometimes there would be other women on the contract crews, but once I started on the hotshot crew, and a hotshot crew is essentially a crew of 20 people, elite wildland firefighters who do an initial attack. Hotshots consistently work in direct contact with fire. So either we're digging fire line, which is like digging a ditch near a fire to prevent the fire from burning. Or we are back burning, which is starting another fire that will burn the fuel before the main fire comes to it and theoretically put out the fire. And I was the only person who wasn't a man on the crew. And they hadn't had a woman on the crew in several years. Our first day of training, the captain made sure to tell everyone in the room that women have smaller lungs than men. So I couldn't be expected to to do the same level of work that the men could do. So that was the environment that I was walking into.
Elena Passarello: Does that make you go just watch me?
River Selby: It does. That's literally how I became a hotshot, because my crew boss on the contract crew, I said, I want to be a hotshot. And he was like, girls can't be hot shots. And that was the moment I decided to do it.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire Radio. We're talking to River Selby about their book, Hot Shot, A Life on Fire. It sounds like a very dangerous job. How actually dangerous is it in your experience, I guess?
River Selby: So it's quite a dangerous job. For instance, when we're conducting a backburn, say on an active wildfire, about 70% of the crew are people who are just doing the manual labor. And then there are the overhead who have more experience and are making the decisions. And then there are other people on the fire who are not associated with the crew who are also helping to make decisions. So it's very, a lot of intellectual decision making happening, logistical decisions, but things can go wrong at any point. I write in my book about a time that we were flown into a fire in the Angeles National Forest. And we often were flown by helicopter because of the rugged terrain. And on the first load of the helicopter, I got off with some of my crew, and we realized that the fire was burning up the ridge. We were dropped off at the top of the ridge. And we were told to dig fire line. But when the helicopter lifted up, it lifted all of these embers up with it.
Luke Burbank: Oh my god.
River Selby: And they all went everywhere, including past us and down the hill. And so we had to run and try and put out all these embers and also try to dig a fire line so that the approaching fire would stop. And then there were still formal loads of people who came in. So with each load, more embers would go.
Elena Passarello: More helicopters. Wow.
River Selby: So neither of my parents graduated high school. When I was younger, I didn't really think about my future that much. I didn't think that I would live past my young twenties, really. And so when I did, I started thinking about kind of what I wanted to do. But my last year of fire was in 2010 in Alaska. And that year my mom died at the beginning of the season, and I finished out the season. And of course I had to take a couple weeks when my mom died. And the feedback I got at the end of the season, even though all of my reviews had been great, was that I hadn't been cheerful enough. And I promise you I was more cheerful than a lot of the guys I worked with. Even with that. So I think that it was a combination of just really being fed up with, with the double standards I faced. And also just understanding that my life that I was mortal and also that I had agency in my life. So I actually started my undergraduate degree when I was 32, and I am about to have my PhD by this summer. So.
Luke Burbank: Congratulations. Well it's a really great book, River, and it covers so many different things, not just firefighting but but your life and again sort of public policy and nature and indigenous culture. There's a lot in this book. It's Hotshot: A Life on Fire, written by River Selby:. River, thanks for coming on Live Wire.
River Selby: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: That was River Selby, recorded live at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Their debut memoir, Hotshot: A Life on Fire, is available right now. Live Wire is supported by Literary Arts, which presents the Portland Book Festival featuring author panels, a book fair, and more November 8th in downtown Portland. Learn more at PDXBookfest.org. You're listening to Live Wire. Our musical guest this week is Hunter Noack. He is a classical pianist, he's a naturalist, and he's also the founder of this thing called IN A LANDSCAPE, classical music in the wild. And this is what he does. It's really amazing. He travels around with this Steinway piano named Maud, that's like over a hundred years old, and he brings it out into some of America's most inspiring settings, like mountaintops or deserts or old growth forests. And then he brings an audience together who listens to his performances through wireless headphones and then sort of wander around the landscape with this music that he's playing as a soundtrack to their outdoor experience. We got to experience one of these amazing concerts at Silver Falls State Park, right here in Oregon. This is our chat, which we started off with talking to Hunter Noack. Hunter Noack, welcome to Live Wire.
Hunter Noack: Wow. Thank you.
Luke Burbank: IN A LANDSCAPE, that is a John Cage reference. It is. And I think most people, if they know the name John Cage or if they have my level of sophistication, their awareness is that's the guy that did the song that didn't have any music in it.
Hunter Noack: That's right. That's four minutes and thirty three seconds written for the piano. And I actually sometimes do perform that because it works very well in the outdoors, 'cause we can all take our headphones off and just listen to the landscape.
Luke Burbank: That's maybe what he's known for by people that haven't really experienced a lot of his work, but obviously he's someone who is really important to you. What what is it about his his work that speaks to you?
Hunter Noack: Well, I I appreciate what John Cage and his contemporaries, that whole sort of school of composers were doing when they were trying to challenge us to listen to different sounds and noises as music, things that weren't just coming out of the instrument. But, you know, John Cage would have some silverware and throw it in a bathtub up on stage, and it would cause us to, to ask the question, is that music? And when we're outside of a concert hall when where we don't even have the illusion of control, there are a lot more sounds that end up as part of the show. Sometimes it's something that we think of as pleasant, like a bird song, other times it's, you know, a helicopter or a train going by. You know, in a concert hall there's so much anxiety and tightness around extra sounds. And what I love about being in the outdoors is that everybody's just sort of inherently a little bit more relaxed. And so-.
Luke Burbank: Edibles are legal here in Oregon.
Hunter Noack: That's right.
Luke Burbank: That helps.
Hunter Noack: I wish actually more people- Never mind. This IN A LANDSCAPE concert is a great and safe experience for, you know, bringing your tinctures and your elixirs and whatever else you want. But what I really wanted to say is that what I what I hope that people do is try and embrace all of the sounds of the landscape as a part of the show, as a part of the music. And that just sort of puts people in a state of mind, even if there is like, you know, somebody's sort of near the piano with a bag of chips or there's a a child making noise, we just sort of, we embrace that as a part of the experience, a part of the landscape. Like we are actually here. Some of us are actually eating, and there are also kids here, and that's wonderful.
Luke Burbank: As your introducing a song, you're also encouraging people pretty strongly by the end of the concert to leave the concert, at least temporarily. Like it seems like you really like people to be because everyone's wearing headphones. You can't see this on the radio, but everybody here has these headphones on so they can hear the music even if they're wandering off into the woods or over by the waterfalls. Why is that part so important to you that people are kind of in movement while they're experiencing this?
Hunter Noack: You know, we're accustomed to sitting down and looking at the performer. And so it takes a little bit of extra nudging to get people to leave their seat and go wander around because it's not normal. You know, one thing I love, especially in places where I can, you know, see a distance, is I love seeing people out, you know, s looking up at a tree or staring at a blade of grass or watching the waterfalls. To me, I feel because I know that, you know, with their headphones on, the microphones are right next to me. So I feel like I can whisper right into their ear and feel quite connected to them, even if they're, you know, a half a mile away from me. And that is that creates this like very special feeling where we're all kind of witnessing the world around us constantly change. But I know that you know, I know that somebody out in the audience might be having a very personal and intimate experience with something in the landscape or with another person, and I get to be a part of that without necessarily being the center of it.
Luke Burbank: You're listening to Live Wire. We've got to take a very quick break, but stay where you are. When we return, we're actually gonna hear some music from Hunter Noack, performed live in Silver Falls State Park in front of a crowd of roaming, headphone wearing Oregonians, including me. More Live Wire coming up in a minute. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Okay, before we get to this week's musical performance by Hunter Noack, a little preview of next week's show. We're going to be talking to the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, columnist, and author Timothy Egan. His latest book is A Fever in the Heartland, which Kirkis calls riveting history, excellently rendered. We're also going to be talking to poet and rapper Dessa, who shared some poems from her latest collection, and then we tried to return the favor and share an AI-generated poem that we made about her that went about how you would imagine. You don't want to miss next week's episode of Live Wire. In the meantime, let's get back to our musical artist this week. Before the break, we were talking to Hunter Noack about how he developed his outdoor classical music concert series called IN A LANDSCAPE. So let's hear a performance from him now. This is Hunter and his piano, Maud, at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon, recorded this summer back in August. Well, could we hear a song?
Hunter Noack: Absolutely. The next piece is a great one for wandering about or closing your eyes. It was written over 300 years ago in 1723 by Rosanna Sculfi Marcello. She was a singer, started out as a singer on the gondolas of Venice, and then a nobleman by the name of Benedetto Marcello heard her singing, and they started a relationship and also a compositional relationship, where he was sort of formally trained in composition, and so he taught her how to write down some of her original compositions, many of which were later attributed to Benedetto or his brother Alessandro Marcello, because the Marcello family did not approve of this union because Rosanna was not of the noble class. So I can't tell you for sure that this piece was penned by Rosanna, but it was most certainly influenced by her voice. This is a sort of a slow, steady, spacious piece that's good for wandering slowly or watching something that's sort of moving if there's any bit of a breeze. Rosanna Sculfi Marcello's Oboe Concerto in D, which was transcribed for the keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach.
[Hunter Naok performs Sculfi Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D transcribed for the keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach.]
Luke Burbank: Everybody, thanks for coming on Live Wire.
Hunter Noack: Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Had so much fun.
Luke Burbank: That was Hunter Noack, recorded at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon as part of his series IN A LANDSCAPE, which you can find out more about by going to inalandscape.org. All right, that's gonna do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks, as always, to our guests, Edgar Gomez, River Selby, and Hunter Noack.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather de Michele is our executive director, and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our assistant editor, and Teja Pallikonda is our production fellow.
Luke Burbank: Valentine Keck is our operations manager, and Ashley Park is our marketing manager. Our house sound is by D. Neil Blake, and our house band is Sam Pinkerton. Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This show was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. Adios, Haziq, so good to have you here. Also, special thanks this episode to Ryan Blay and Lori Noack, along with the rest of the IN A LANDSCAPE team.
Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tennenbaum and Kate Sokolov. This week, we'd like to thank members James Levi of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Karen Markins of Portland, Oregon.
Luke Burbank: For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.
PRX.
Staff Credits
Laura Hadden is our Executive Producer, Heather de Michele is our Executive Director, and our Producer and Editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our Technical Director, Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our Assistant Editor, and our house sound is by D. Neil Blake. Jennie Baker is our Photographer. Valentine Keck is our Operations Manager, Ashley Park is our Marketing Manager, Tiffany Nguyen is our Intern, and Ezra Veenstra runs our Front of House. Teja Pallikonda is our Production Fellow. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Sam Pinkerton, Ayal Alvez, and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. Additional funding provided by the James F. And Marion L. Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members James Levi of St. Paul, MN and Karen Markins of Portland, OR. Special thanks to Ryan Blay, Lori Noack, photographer Arthur Hitchcock, along with the rest of the IN A LANDSCAPE team.
