Linville Gorge Wilderness

But then if you look deeper, there's everything outdoor related to do.

So there's tons of Lake James recreation, Linville Gorge.

So that's really our powerhouse location.

And then I'm sure something that, you know, you can identify with as well, but like food has really been the thing that's been a game changer for us.

In December 2023, a tracking crew went down into Linville Gorge in North Carolina looking for what was supposed to be a problem animal.

There were five of them.

They were told it was probably a bear.

There were also strange breaks in the brush, almost like someone had been building paths through it.

The crew was brought in because the regular teams didn't want to keep going down there.

Linville Gorge is a bad place to work in even when nothing is wrong.

It's steep, thick, and once you're down below the rim, the radio can become useless.

The rhododendron gets so dense in places that you have to crawl underneath it.

We were an elite team, Ethan, not just a couple of rangers.

No one else volunteered for the off-grid sector near Linville Gorge.

The place where GPS devices go blank, where hikers' radios start whispering songs that shouldn't exist.

The service called it, peculiar interference, official language for, holy god, what the hell is happening out there.

Yep.

Um, and there's a particular story that you've talked about where your family took like an old pop-up, you went to Linville Gorge.

It was kind of your first experience in wilderness.

Of course, you didn't necessarily know it was a wilderness designated place at the time, um, but it had a really big impact on you.

We went, we went to a place called Black Mountain Campground.

It's on the South Toe River.

Um, they're right below Mount Mitchell, which is the highest mountain in the East, but we would, we would hike all over sort of, uh, the Pisgah National Forest there, and of course, that took us to Linville Gorge.

Uh, again, 1975, I'm 10 years old.

I was probably about 35 years old.

And, uh, um, this is Linville Gorge.

And, uh, I knocked on a tree three times just because I wa- you know, I'd watched Finding Bigfoot, and, and always, always been curious about the paranormal all my life.

Um, and, uh, I didn't have a direct experience.

I'll, I'll tell the story.

Sorry, finished telling the story.

So at Brown Mountain, or near, near Brown Mountain in the Linville Gorge area, um, I was at a different place than the parking areas.

I was in the forest.