S6, Ep 76: PODCAST INTERVIEW: Casting Homeward: Steve Ramirez Shares River Wisdom and New Adventures

Marvin Cash: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, friend and author Steve Ramirez returns to the podcast. We have a great conversation about lessons from the river, and Steve updates us on his latest book, Casting Homeward. I think you're really gonna enjoy it. 
But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out, and I hope everyone had a safe and relaxing 4th of July with family and friends. 
I want to thank all of our listeners for their patience as we took last week off to attend the Outdoor Writers Association of America's Field Fest in Johnson City, Tennessee. It was great to spend time with colleagues and get more content for the show. 
And we will be in Orlando later this week for iCast. If you will be too, hit us up on social media if you wanna connect. It's always great to meet listeners on the road. And we recently released an interview-only show, The Long Haul with The Articulate Fly. So, if you prefer to listen to The Articulate Fly without the fishing reports, just search The Long Haul in your favorite podcatcher. 

Now, onto the interview. 

Well, Steve. Welcome back to The Articulate Fly. .

Steve Ramirez: It is truly my pleasure, you know that. And thank you for inviting me.

Marvin Cash: Oh, gosh, I love our conversations. You know, folks, it's kind of funny. We were talking before we started recording, and it's been almost two years since Steve was on the last time, and, there's been a little bit of water under the bridge. I know you've, several more books in the Casting series, and I know you've got the last of that series is gonna get released in September.

Steve Ramirez: Yes, September 3.

Marvin Cash: And, so I'm trying to remember if it was two years ago you had two of the books in the series out, is that right? Or was it just one?

Steve Ramirez: I think it toured out, and the third coming out last time we spoke. So Casting Forward, which since we've spoke, has been the last number of months, number one on Amazon, which is a beautiful thing, and was highlighted in the movie Mending the Line, which is why it had a second life. And then Casting Onward was the second book. I think those two were out when we spoke last. Casting Seaward was coming out, and it's now been out for two years. And since I seem to be running it about one book every two years, Casting Homeward, which is the final in the Casting series with Lyons Press, that comes out September 3, and it's on pre-order right now for people that want to pre-order. And I'm really excited.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's super neat, too. And I know, cause we've talked a little bit that you're sort of meditating on what the next project will be because you are in perpetual motion a little bit like I am.

Steve Ramirez: Yes, and I basically know the next project. It's not something I'm gonna go public with yet, except to say that I'm excited about it. It's challenging, and it's the kind of thing, you and I've talked before, my writing is a lot about destination, both in reality and philosophically. And so, yeah it's an expansion on, even though it's the start of something completely new from the Casting series, it's a great expansion in a wonderful, I think it's gonna be a great adventure for everyone. And they get to do it with me without, you know, the mosquitoes and the bears

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and while they wait, they can always read your column in Fly Fisherman Magazine.

Steve Ramirez: That's true. Thank you for bringing that up. I'm actually quite open about the fact that I feel very fortunate and love it that I'm a small part of the Fly Fisherman Magazine family. I do love it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's a neat magazine, and I think Ross has done a really good job of kind of bringing that magazine into the 21st century.

Steve Ramirez: See, that's, I'm gonna say stuff. Up front, Ross is my friend, and so I have to say that right up front. But he is my friend because of who I see him and how I see him. And I think he's worked really hard to make that such a rounded experience, everything from how to,  to where to, to why to. You know, why we do it, and then what's our responsibility which is the part I love the most, you know.  I think he's really getting us all to sync or helping us, bringing people together to help all of us sync together about how we can protect what we love, you know, and love what we protect. So, yeah, I'm definitely, don't mean to go on too much, but I think he's done a great job, and I'm really very happy to be part of it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's very neat. And, you know, we've talked multiple times since the last interview, and, you know, one of the things I always enjoy about our conversations, and I enjoy this, you know, not all of my interviews are like this, but I love what I call the journey interview. And, you know, we've been kind of kicking around, I mean, gosh, we've probably been talking about this for six months, you know, kind of what did we want to talk about when we got together again. And, you know, I don't generally do interviews where it's like, the book's out, let's talk about the book. But we thought it would be kind of interesting to just talk about lessons from the river and, you know, I mean, I think we've got a handful of kind of topics, but, you know, I'll kind of open it up cause, I mean, one of the things, you know, everyone that knows me, everyone will get ready to laugh. I'll say I'm moderately wound tightly.

Steve Ramirez: I laughed, too.

Marvin Cash: And so, you know, one of the things I think that's, that's really one of the things I've kind of taken away from kind of my, my life, you know, on the water, is that you can only take what the river is willing to give you.

Steve Ramirez: Right. Just like life. No matter how much we think we have control, we don't. We only have control over our decisions. So you can cast over here, cast over there, stand here, or stand there, and it's pretty much life, it doesn't, doesn't mean, you know what’s coming around the bend.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And, you know, we can control how we react to those situations as well.

Steve Ramirez: Right. That's exactly, that's, a lot of times I'll write to myself and to others, I'll say I can do nothing about what happens in life or what happens in fishing. They're really the same. I mean, it's been said before, but you can really connect anything you want to, to fly fishing and nature, and you can learn anything if you pay attention. So, but it's true. I can choose, I can see what's happening, and then I can make a choice with my response. Rather than simply react out of emotion. I can respond out of something bigger than that. So, I do think it all connects, whether you're deciding, I'm gonna toss a dry fly right now, and I'm gonna do it here in this way, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna do something that I'm not a big fan of, but I've done it, a lot of it, which is nymphing. And, but in life, we do the same thing. You know, we can take a moment and decide, this is what I'm gonna do. Some of, some of the best things are scary.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And it's interesting, too, right? Cause, you know, kind of with my..kind of lawyer banker background, you know, if you apply enough force and resources, you should get what you want. And, you know, one of the things is you just, you know, some days you go fish and it's like, this is all we can get today. 

Steve Ramirez: Right. 

Marvin Cash: And it's okay.

Steve Ramirez: And the victory is, can you go fishing, catch nothing and have a great time? And my answer is always yes. But I know, you know, I remember a friend who golfed. I don't even remember his name now, it was so long ago. And I asked him why he loved golf. He said, it's so relaxing. And I was a big runner back then, cause I could be. And I was running the trail through the golf course and I heard some guys cursing, through cursing, and I saw this golf club come flying past my head. It was him. You know fly fishing and golfing is like an island. If you don't bring it with you, you're not gonna find it. So he didn't bring peace with him. He wasn't gonna find it. But yes, if you bring peace to that river, you seek it, you're gonna find it. And I learned so much by paying attention as an angler about life and about myself. So, yeah, the reflection in the water is more than just you.

Marvin Cash: It's interesting, too, cause I'm fortunate enough to get to spend time with people, cause, you know, I always say I'll be proper, since it's you, and say, you know, fly fishing is something that heals me, and so if I can, you know, bring that to other people, I'm always happy to do that. And one of the things I try to tell people because beginners so often get so frustrated, and it's like there's so many tiny victories from a day on the water.

Steve Ramirez: Yes. And if you really want to be brave, and this is, you know, everything is subjective, so this is my subjective view. If people read my work, you'll find that I'm constantly throwing myself into positions I've never been in before and doing things I've never tried before. So I'm always a beginner. And you've gotta learn how to forgive yourself when things don't go right. That's how you learn. So, I constantly am trying something new, and it's really cool. So I'm 63 years old, but I don't feel it. I feel like a kid because I'm always trying something new. And if it doesn't work out, big deal. I mean, when you're a kid, you fall in the mud, you get back up. When you're an adult, you fall in the mud, and you think your day's ruined. So I’m definitely a 63-year-old kid. And, I like it. I like it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting, too, right? Because there's, you know, when you face that kind of adversity and newness, and you know you don't always triumph, however we want to define triumphing, but you know, what I think it does is it, it expands your capacity to do more crazy stuff. Right?

Steve Ramirez: Yeah. And I think it's all practice. So if you, I think the failure, failure is possible, but to me, failure is if you've failed to complete something you're trying to do or trying to learn, and then you didn't learn anything from it, then you failed. But if you, if you made a mistake and then you learn something, you pick up and you go again, then you're good. You're golden. So, I love it. To me, fly fishing, lessons from the river are always coming. They're always there. And I think we brought this up cause I was sharing with you earlier that no matter what I write next, there's gonna be lessons from the river embedded into that book. There have been in the past, but there's gonna be more. And that is because, again, my subjective opinion, the world is really hurting right now. And, to me, we humans are the proximate cause of that hurt, including to ourselves. And so, if we ask ourselves, what can we do to make things better, the first thing we got to do is make ourselves better. Fly fishing the river and paying attention to nature helps me become a better person. Does that make sense?

Marvin Cash: No. It does. And you know while you were saying that, I was kind of thinking about something, you know, a lot of what I do. I, you know, and I've talked to you a lot about my boys, and they're at that age where, you know, I'm coaching, right, but I, but I'm also sort of, you know, try to, you know, be a helpful soul in the world. And it's kind of interesting cause, you know, to your point, there's so much rancor, right?  And to me, it's a choice, right? You know, whether you wanna get up in the morning and have a little bit of outrage on your corn flakes or not. 

Steve Ramirez: Not for me.

Marvin Cash: And so, you know, it's funny, and so, like, I really push my boys, and, you know,  you know, push other people that are in my circle. I just kind of suggest that maybe they should start by being the change they want to see in the world.

Steve Ramirez: Right. And that's where it starts. I mean, that's what we can do. I had a deep conversation with a friend yesterday who spent 30, 40 years of her life working for peace in the world. And we talked about the struggles. And, I have another friend that spent time with the Dalai Lama and spent time with the doctor of the Dalai Lama. And one day, she was actually talking to the doctor of the Dalai Lama about struggles she was having in dealing with the world. And he just leaned over and said, “You can always feed the birds.” He said, “What?” She says, “You can feed the birds. All we can do is what we can do” 
You know, so sometimes what I do is those small thing, and on the river, those are those small things, you know, I was with..years, ago when I wrote Casting Onward, I was on a river high up in the mountains of Colorado with Kirk Deeter from Trout Unlimited, also a dear friend. And Kirk and I were fishing together, and this young man was, his girlfriend came down, and basically they parked by our car because they saw that we were there, so they figured it might be a good fishing spot. And he just jumped right where we were gonna go and went and fished right in the water we were gonna go to. And I watched how Kirk handled that, which was beautiful. He said he probably has no idea what he's doing. So Kirk offered to teach him how to be more successful fishing, gave him some great tips, and then handed him some flies that he could use, and then was able to teach him, in that process etiquette, you know, where other people might have yelled at the young man who it turned out, just came out of the military after serving in Afghanistan. He just didn't know what he was doing. 
So yeah, I don't want any corn flake, I don't want any rage in my corn flake. You know, I carried a weapon for 35 years, don't need anymore

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's  interesting, too, Steve, cause, you know, I'm always fascinated, you know, talking to creatives, and, you know, I'm fortunate to be able to interview a lot of authors and other creators, you know on the podcast, and you know kind of one of the things, too, kind of another thing I think about when I think about lessons from the river, is how it helps us create that serendipitous space, right, to solve problems and to be creative.

Steve Ramirez: Right. It does, it does. Why don't you tell me a little bit more of how you see that.  I'm interviewing.

Marvin Cash: Oh, fair enough. I'll indulge you. It's fine. So, you know, it's an interesting thing, right? So if you go back and if I say that I'm moderately tightly wound, right?  So you think that, you know, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. It works. And, you know, I don't know when I sort of connected this dot, late no doubt, but that you know, you just don't schedule at 09:00 on Friday morning I'm gonna find the cure for cancer. Right?  It just…

Steve Ramirez: Right

Marvin Cash: it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. Right?

Steve Ramirez: No

Marvin Cash:  And so, you know, for me, I try to kind of order the world in what I call strategic and tactical.

Steve Ramirez: Okay.

Marvin Cash: And, you know, strategic is kind of a narrow word, really, cause it's all, it's any, I would say it's any kind of created and creative endeavor. And I think that, you know, not relentlessly applying force and resources, sometimes you just have to learn how to do that and that it's okay and that it's not a waste of time. Right?

Steve Ramirez: Okay. And I, you know I've learned so much from all the different things that I've done in the marine corps. Of course, when you start talking about strategy and tactics, then I go there in my head, I go to strategy as a plan, and tactics are the way you execute that plan. But, there also is a great lesson in that life happens to us as we plan. And, I think the number one thing we're gonna have for the 21st century that's gonna decide which of us are gonna survive as part of our species is our ability to deal with the, we do not know what's coming next. So, we're gonna have to be able to deal with that. 
And, yeah, I think we do have to hold space. When we're fly fishing, we're on a river, we're in nature. And anything, whether you're a fish or hunter or a wildlife photographer, there is serendipity involved in that process. And that has to be, a lot of times what happens for me is the best things happen when I simply wait.I just I'm open to them happening. I'm paying attention. And you keep hearing me saying, paying attention, paying attention, because that's what it is. And when I find myself being blocked, even as a writer, I'm thinking, “Okay, what am I gonna do here?” You know, the terror of the blank page. The first thing I'm gonna do is make some coffee and relax and just let it be. There's this there we creating force, and also I spent years in martial arts as well, and I learned, studying Aikido. That force is not always the answer. A lot of times it's redirecting force. So yeah, you can't force it. You just can’t, you just got to go with the flow. And that's such a cliche, but, see, what, there is so many ways that I look at what we do standing in a river. 
I'm much more of a river guy than a lake guy, by the way, cause I like movement. I love fishing in the surf and reading the surf. It makes you pay attention. It makes you focus and learn and adapt and improvise and overcome. And so, to me, fly fishing obviously, is just something that grabs all of that. And we've talked before about it being healing. It's certainly a conduit for creativity if we're open. But, if what our focus is is how many fish we can catch and how big they are, then we're very limited, especially as I see our rivers are largely suffering with every passing year. I think there's a whole lot more to it than that, I think. What did you call fly fishing? The bicycle?

Marvin Cash: Yes.

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, I like that a lot. So, I hope I didn't go on too much there.

Marvin Cash: No, not at all. And I would say, I'll also have to acknowledge, Steve, that that's a little bit building on a metaphor that Steve Jobs had at Apple, where he said that computers, I think, were bicycles for the brain.

Steve Ramirez: Okay. Well, and again, it is much more convoluted. So, your listeners are gonna hear how deep we get here because I mentioned before, everything's like an island, which if you don't, if you don't have it with you, if you don't bring it there, it's not there. And, what we bring to the river, what we bring to our life, we can either have rage or we can. I've had people that were saying, “I'm just so angry about that.” And I'll listen to them and I'll say, “Okay, well, you, you have a right to be that way, if that's what you want.” And they'd say, “What do you mean? At least that's what I want.” I said, “Well, you could choose not to be angry.” I mean, again, I'm gonna get kind of zen here, but I think it was the Dalai Lama that said, you will not be punished for your anger. Your anger is your punishment. So I don't, the last person to flip me off in traffic I think I blew a kiss, which freaked him out a bit.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people could say that was passive aggressive, but but..

Steve Ramirez: Maybe. But I just laugh. “Like, what are you so angry about?” You're in such a rush and we're all going to the same place. So..

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's an interesting thing about,you know, while we're kind of in this little zen place, you know, it's like, it’'s funny cause I'll, like, tell my boys sometimes I was like, you know, so if you're twice as angry, what does that help you change, right? In the metaphor I use with them to help them understand that, as I said, so once you see the tiger, if you're twice as scared, do you run any faster?

Steve Ramirez: Perfect. Perfect.

Marving Cash: Right? 

Steve Ramirez: And will it serve you to run?

Marvin Cash: Yeah, so

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, we get,  we get to be human, and we all are. And, so here again, I use the river metaphor, and it goes. Part of my, you know, imperfect text in Buddha persona that I've taken on myself. And I get these things that grab ahold of me in that negative way. I look at them like I'm analyzing something in a glass box, and I say, “Okay, I'm feeling anxiety or anger or stress or whatever happens to be. Why is that?” And then I think it through, and I think, what do you want to do about it? And then once I figured that out, I stick that in the river and let it float around the corner and let it go. That sounds cliche, but it works for me because I can only do what I can do. 
So we go back to fishing. You can go and have a fantastic time no matter what happens, or you can choose to be pissed off cause it didn't come out the way you planned. And, you know, the fish don't have a script. And their job is to survive and procreate and pass on their genetics, just like us. Their job is not to get caught by you. So, I'm never upset if I don't catch the fish. That's my fault. And when I do catch them, it's wonderful. And then I treat them nicely, you know, unless we're gonna eat them.

Marvin Cash: It's interesting, too, you know, because talking about bringing things to the island always, you know,  makes me think about how important it is to bring curiosity to the island and what a safe place fly fishing is to be curious.

Steve Ramirez: Oh, I love that. I love that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And we're losing that, I think. And again, I'm just being, you know, I'm saying what I think, doesn't mean I'm right. But to me, one of the problems with the answer at your fingertips is we're losing our creativity. And we're also becoming way too easy to simply accept. If you don't have..I talked about being a 63-year-old kid. Well, I'm forever flipping rocks over. When I was a little kid, I was always flipping rocks over to see what lived under there. I know. Oh, a salamander, ooh, under the water, I flip some rocks. Okay, there's some mayfly.  I'm still doing that. And keep that curiosity. What's going on here today, and what does it mean and what can I, what can I learn from this? It also puts us into a really good sense of our place in the world. And you and I have talked about this. You know, we're a blip. A nice blip or blip.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. It's an interesting thing. It's really kind of a great kind of segway kind of into the, kind of the next thing I was gonna talk about, which is how it helps us get out of that egocentric worldview. Right?  And, you know, you know, you can get a lot of perspective. Like, you can get perspective if you're in Yellowstone and you get lost or you see a bear. Right?

Steve Ramirez: Yes, yes.

Marvin Cash: Like, that's one kind of perspective. But I also, too, to your point, I think, you know, when you look at, when you're observant and you see, you know, what's going on, but you also see, you know, entire life cycles that are much shorter than yours, right? How does that inform how you should live your life, right?

Steve Ramirez: Sure.

Marvin Cash: I think I've told you before, I have a favorite rock that's three fourths of the way through a wade trip that I take relatively frequently, where I sit and eat the sandwich and watch the kingfishers. 

Steve Ramirez: I love that.

Marvin Cash: And, you know, I, I know, I know about how long I have. You know, on some days, I can sit on the rock and you can smell the deer, but you can't see the deer.

Steve Ramirez: Oh, yeah. I love that. I love that. That is that is what it's all about.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so, you know, it's an interesting thing. And I think, you know, that, you know, helping with context also might, you know, help us maybe find something other than rage for the corn flakes in the morning.

Steve Ramirez: Sure. And there's times when I think, I don't wanna say rage, but maybe outrage. I don't know. There's times when it's okay to say this is wrong. And that's another thing I love that fly fishing can do for us. It connects us not just to a fish, but the fish to the river, the river, to the, you know, to the mayflies, the riparian habitat, the need we have trees to cool the water, and it goes on, and goes on, and why we need rain. And, once you've done all that connection, you understand how small you are, but also that you're part of this huge thing, that is so beautiful. And once we have that, it's okay for us to feel a certain degree of this is wrong when we notice that people are throwing their beer cans in the river, or that they're randomly killing fish and throwing them up on the shore to die. Or, you know,  we could go on and on about that, but then how do we deal with that? 
And so what I love, too, is a lot of fly fishing organizations, and I'm not a big organization guy, even though I am a life member of Trout Unlimited, are doing great work at cleaning up rivers, of teaching people to respect nature and each other. And that, to me, is what we need to pass on, you know, that respect, that empathy. So, empathy for the fish. And I have killed and eaten fish, so it's not like I'm, you know, saying, this is. You get where I'm coming from? 

Marvin Cash: Mm, hmm. I do. 

Steve Ramirez: We have empathy. We have empathy for the fish, so I have asthma and heart disease, and I write about that in this fourth book coming out. And with my asthma, which is beginning progressively worse, I remember what it's like not to be able to breathe. So when I pull, take a fish, I try to keep it in the water, and I always know if I have to bring out, for some reason, that one eye is looking towards the water, wanting to get back, and the other eye is looking right at me, and I've got its life in my hand, literally. That kind of empathy is something I see us losing in the world. And this is coming, not, this is coming from a former US marine, you know, I'm saying? It's nothing,  I'm not a big mush, but I am. Every true warrior I've ever known has nothing to prove, and I've served with a lot of them, and they had nothing to prove. There was no big ego. They knew that they were small, and I don't mean to be too graphic here, but I've seen a lot of death. They had seen a lot of death. And all you have to do is notice what it's like to see a human being turn into a sack of potatoes and you realize, okay, I'm not that important except for what good I can do here. 
So, I think fly fishing, being in nature, it is part of what we need both in the healing of our world, in ourselves, and in the teaching to remind us. And I hope you don't mind that I went a little crazy there in sharing, but I'm passionate about it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it deeply concerns me in a slightly different way. And so, you know, you know, I see, And part of, you know, this great thing about being on a river where your phone doesn't work, which I think is glorious, is finding that connection and being truly connected to the resource. And I think, you know, as I watch the challenges that say, for example, some of our not-for-profits are facing. I mean, people are not engaged, and this isn’t in a judgmental way, but if you look at the data, if people fly fish one to three days a year, and that’s half the people that fly fish in a year, it deeply concerns me. It’s actually something I’ve made a mental note to sit down and talk to Chris Wood  the next time I’m with him. Because I think that if you fast forward 15 years, were gonna start to really see how difficult it's gonna be to care about these things that I know you care deeply about.

Steve Ramirez: Right.

Marvin Cash: Because we're literally breeding that attachment out of our humanity.

Steve Ramirez: Yes. I'm so glad you brought that up. And the fourth book, the one that's coming out, and this is not a book plug. there's a real reason I'm telling you this. I am very honored that a gentleman who's become a friend, Richard Louv, who wrote Last Child in the Woods, and I don't know if you're aware of that..

Marvin Cash: Mm, hmm

Steve Ramirez: ..book, but it's a book that I wish at least every parent would read. Every school board should be mandatory reading. But anyhow, Last Child in the Woods, and I'm very pleased that Richard Louv has done the foreword for this fourth book and pleased and honored. But he's really, that's what his focus has been, is our connection to what we're doing with our children. We don't save what we don't love, and we don't love what we don't know. And as a former warrior, and I don't say that, you know, flippantly, like somebody just has a sticker on their pickup truck. I've actually been out there and done hard stuff. As a former warrior, you know that how you train people to kill other people is to take the humanity away from the target. 
And we're taking the reason to care away from nature. We're treating it as a thing to be used up and spit out. And there's too many of us, there's 8 billion of us and growing, and it's gonna take care of itself if we don't. Because I was fishing for the, for this book, actually, I was fishing the Big Hole River, which has lost, I don't remember the actual number, but something like 40% of its trout, gone. And we're seeing this impact. I really, but, here's where I see the hope. I think us anglers, I think us people who are, who are part of the outdoor community, anglers, ethical hunters, people who are into gardening, all these sort of groups, we're the ones that can drive this forward and say, no more. You know, we're the ones that can say, I'd love to see what Richard Louvre has written about that. Every child is exposed to nature as part of their teaching, as part of their learning and growing. I mean, everything attaches to it. And if they had that, first of all, I think it's gonna make their life richer. And in this book, I actually have a little thing I say where I wish that every every child in Gaza and Israel had to go fishing together as a mandatory part of their education. Now, that may seem very Pollyanna, and I'm not silly, I know what the real problems are there. I was dealing with Islamic Jihad up close and personal when I was in my twenties. But I do know that I saw how people separate themselves from each other and from nature. And as long as you treat all of this as just something to be used, then you're not gonna care until it's too late. I don't know if you saw the thing where howler monkeys are falling out of the trees in the Yucatan, dead from the heat.

Marvin Cash: Ah, no, I haven't.

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, I mean, that's just one of many things I can bring up right now. And I want people to pay attention cause I don't know about all the anglers in the world, but I can tell you I would not be interested in going into an ocean or down a river where I knew everything was dead. I'm just not interested.  I wouldn't be interested in knowing that it's all been done in a stainless steel tank and dumped in there for me to catch like it was a kiddie pool. And that's the direction I'm afraid we're gonna go if we don't pull together and say we love this, and we wanna keep it alive. So, yeah, I'm. I'm passionate about it. There's no doubt about it.  And I don't. Hey, like I said, I'm a 63-year-old kid. I don't care if people make fun of me. 

Marvin Cash: Yeah, but I think there's even a broader issue there, Steve, is I think it's not consumptive, just as it relates to the outdoors. It's consumptive for everything, right?

Steve Ramirez: I agree. We've been sold that bill of goods.

Marvin Cash: And so everything now is a packaged experience. And so, you know, you look at. I mean, it was interesting. I was actually eating a sandwich in one of the local grocery stores, and I like going there because I talk to the people that work there, right, which is a rare thing. It actually shocks them, almost scares some of them.

Steve Ramirez: And, you know, I do the same thing, by the way. You know that about me.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so about living in community and all of these things that we've lost where, you know, if you DoorDash. And I'm not, I'm not hating on this, and I wanna talk about tech, too, cause I think it's a really important adjacent issue. I just think we should be mindful because there's such tremendous value at eating dinner at the kitchen table. There's tremendous value in baking cookies with your grandmother and going and cutting down a Christmas tree. And I'm not saying, like, these are pinnacle experiences, but where everything is just an exchange, we become disconnected.

Steve Ramirez: Right. I so deeply agree. And people may say, well, “What does it have to do with fishing?” It has everything to do with fishing, because fishing is life, you know, we talk about lessons from the river, standing in a river. Everything we ever wanted to know about life, we can learn. And it, it really is everything is connected, and that includes us. We're mostly made of, I've written this before, were made of stardust and water. That's it. That can contemplate itself briefly. 
So yeah, I mentioned to you that I do the same thing. I read people's name tags. I call them by first name. There's sometimes the only good I can do in the world is to be kind to somebody in the grocery store. And something happens that I was just telling my wife that one of the clerks from the grocery store here went off to the military and his boot camp right now, just sent me a letter from boot camp. And we've only talked when she was checking me out, you know, when I'm getting groceries and she's working at the cash register, and she just sent me a letter from boot camp. We need community. We need to treat people, you know, that we see them. And I think we also need to see each other, and we need to see. Again, I'm getting into my sort of thing, but right now, what part of the things I'm writing a lot into this fourth book is that all living things are living beings. That doesn't mean I didn't shoot a kudu in Africa. I did. So, but I was aware of its aliveness. Do you get what I mean?

Marvin Cash: No, no, I do. And I mean, it's, you know…

Steve Ramirez: I knew what I did.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And it's. I mean, you knew it, but you appreciated it, right?

Steve Ramirez: Yes. And all of that meat was donated to the local Herero tribe, and the money I paid went to wildlife protection in Namibia, and I knew what the practice was of what I was doing, The Campfire Project, to help people have some monetary dog in the hunt of keeping wildlife alive in Africa. Oddly enough, by allowing some people to come kill them.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And it kind of comes a little bit back full circle, because it's another thing that I kind of fixate on when I talk to my boys, like, I talk about being the change that you wanna see. 

Steve Ramirez: Right.

Marvin Cash: And then what you find is people are outraged by lack of community, but then you, when you ask them what they do, they don't do anything. And I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, I'm saying that in an observational way, right? And I find it incredibly powerful to watch that and say, “Well, you know, if it bothers you so much, you know, what are you gonna do? What one thing can you do today?” Right? 

Steve Ramirez: Right.

Marvin Cash: To make it better. 

Steve Ramirez: Right.

Marvin Cash: And not to go watch whatever news you wanna watch. Completely your business. I don't care. It's just, how does that add to your journey? And it kind of gets us to this technology point, and I preface all this by saying I love technology., right? You know, when I was ten years old, eleven years old, we had one TRS 80 in my middle school. We didn't have a hard drive. I don't even think they had hard drives. They didn't pay for floppy disks in the TRS 80, so we would sit at lunch and write computer code. So I love tech, right?

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, I had an abacus.

Marvin Cash: Well, I would think you're a slide rule guy. I would give you a little bit more credit than an abacus. But I've been asked to give a talk on generative AI with creatives at the Outdoor Writers Association meeting in July. And I think this is a fundamental issue of what it means to be human. And, you know, I generally think about these things as they're shovels and their tools, and some of that's generational, because..

Steve Ramirez: That's what I was gonna say.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I'm a Gen Xer, but I always tell people, like, the shovel is not inherently bad, but if I hit you on the head, I did something bad with the shovel. And I think…

Steve Ramirez: Exactly.

Marvin Cash: And I think we need to be incredibly reflective, and this flows back into these lessons from the water, because you start to appreciate your humanity while you're there. Right?

Steve Ramirez: Sure.

Marvin Cash: And so do you need, like, AI can be very, very useful, but, like, what is it that you want to allow it to do for you?

Steve Ramirez: Well, I can't speak much to AI right this moment, but I can say this, that, I, first of all, I see it the same way you do, as a tool. I see everything from a firearm to a fork to a shovel as a tool. And what happens to it is an extension of the choices made by the person operating it. And with that said, and that's true even if you're standing on the river with someone. By the way, one of the greatest things I'd love to do is teach someone and have watched them experience catching their first fish. There's a scene in the movie Mending the Line that was actually, I'm grateful to say, taken from me, where the main character, Ike, he teaches the young man how to be grateful to the fish. Because you know this about me already, because we've been friends for a while, that, I say thank you to fish when I release it, and the character says thank you, and he teaches the other young marine that. And that marine then comes up with his own thing and says, peace. I think the teaching part. 
So, getting back to the technology and technology, you and I have become friends, and I've met some of the best friends of my life through technology. I met some of the best people of my life. I use technology for me to write my books and my stories and my essays, which I hope help people. It's a tool, and it can be used for really beautiful things or really ugly things.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and I think that's, you can say that again in an observational way where it's not that what you write is the Catholic sense of what's right. Like, not to, like, get…

Steve Ramirez: No

Marvin Cash: …the double entendre with right, but it's a, it's a posture in the world of generosity, right.? And being deliberately generous, that I think is so powerful. 

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, I wish that our, so it used to be when I was a very young person in my life  that I fell into the idea of do what's right. Do what's right. But then I learned. I grew up, and I learned that a lot of people doing horrible things think they're doing the right thing. As I said, no one in any foxhole fighting in any war on either side, ever thought to themselves, “I wish I wasn't the bad guy.” They always think they're doing the right thing. To me, it's more about us having values that are, so when you mentioned about where people get their news or which way they vote, and I don't get into any of that. I don't have to. I don't have to knock anybody down because I can raise them up. I can simply say, “Is this person I'm choosing to spend time with kind? Are they brave, you know? Are they willing to learn? Are they open minded? Or are they fixed in their ideology?” As long as I can answer all those questions, then the rest of it takes care of itself. 
And I think we see that, too, when we're looking at getting back to rivers. If we're gonna save our rivers, if we're gonna save the fish, if we're gonna save the trees and they're going fast, we had better break that of our fixed ideas of consumption. You know Everett Abbey said, unlimited, growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Sorry, did I wander again?

Marvin Cash: No, no, no. I just kind of, I sit and I think. And I mean, I think it's about, you know, deliberate curiosity. But one thing I wanna kind of touch on before we maybe come back a little bit is, you know, I think about, you know, talking about, you know, being with people in a non judgmental way, when you're kind of seeing these qualities of curiosity and humility, right?  

Steve Ramirez: Right. 

Marvin Cash: That I think that one of the greatest gifts we can share with other people is sharing our time with them and sitting with them in the darkness.

Steve Ramirez: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And taking and accepting. Here again, we'll go back to lessons from the river. You have, you can't say, I'm gonna go to the river and it's gonna be this way today. You go to the river, and you have to adapt to how it is. Is it running fast? Is it running low? Is it clear? You know, is it got a lot of silt in it? What's going on? And it's the same with humans. So I fished with some wonderful people in my books, and a part of what I'm writing about is that relationship. And there's some people that, I frankly, I love every single person I've fished with, but I know I'm gonna have a whole different experience depending on who it is. And I'll leave names out of this. But I know if I go with one person, it's gonna be a hard driving angling experience because that's where they're at. They, they wanna get to the river as fast as they can, get on the river fast, and they're focused on catching fish, Catching fish. 
Another person, we're gonna sit on the tailgate for a half hour and talk before we even start. I have my own preference of how I do that, but I can do it both ways. And I'm just, I accept them where they're at, just like the river, you know? If you wanna drive, sure. I'll catch up with you. We'll get to the river, we'll fish. But slowly they'll notice me sitting on a rock, just watching the river go by and see how weird I am that I don't have to be fishing all the time. I can have that sandwich on that favorite rock like you, and watch the kingfishers and be really, really happy. I think we teach each other things, not through judgment, but through just doing and being together. Does that make sense, as I always say?

Marvin Cash: No, it does. I mean, it really comes back to this idea of being in community, right?

Steve Ramirez: Yes.

Marvin Cash: And, you know, I think humans are, unfortunately, incredibly adept at differentiating, and I think, you  know,  if you get to focus on all of these things that we have in common. So, for example, in fishing, we share this love of fly fishing, right? You may, you may be a warrior warrior fly fisherman, you may be a poet fly fisherman. But the question is, you know, where does the common ground from that, your experience on the water and sharing that with other people? You know..

Steve Ramirez: Right

Marvin Cash: ..what is it? How does that inform? Because I think all of these things, right, if you kind of come out of this, they're, they're practices. If you see them, you know, they're not only about fly fishing, it's why I say fly fishing is a bicycle. There are modalities and habits that you can bring back to your regular life that make your life better.

Steve Ramirez: Absolutely. Absolutely. More than anything. I know actually, but absolutely. If that's what you're open to and if the, and I think this is just again, subjective, if we address our fly fishing, if we address our interaction with nature, then our interaction with each other through that lens, our lives get better and it ripples out. And that is also, gonna bring it back to the books in a second, my books are written on purpose in a certain way. They're, as you know, they're full of fishing stories and adventures, but that's not what they're really about. The first one, Casting Forward is in here, the Texas Hill country where I'm from. And then it goes across America, going after native fish through all the freshwater waters. And then Casting Seaward, that was Casting Onward, Casting Seaward is our oceans from Alaska all the way around and out to the Caribbean and back. And this last one, Casting Homeward, I’m traveling backwards in time from the furthest reaches of Alaska all the way to New York City. And by backwards in time, what I mean is I’m going backwards from the movement of Euro Americans as they spread across this country and interacted in often and not great ways with indigenous Americans. 
And the next one I'll be doing, without getting any details, is gonna be looking at it very internationally. You know, once we get outside the borders, once we get outside our hemisphere, there's so much we find out that we have in common. So, I can spend some times with my hard-driving fishing friends and I realize, “Oh, okay, I see what it is. Where you live, you have to get to the river in a hurry because there's so many anglers here, you're not gonna get a spot.” I have to, you know, have some empathy and find out where they're at. And I also have to remember that maybe when I was younger, maybe when I was their age, I’d have been more hard driving. I'm at that place now where, you know, Bob White and I were up in Alaska, and on our last day we decided to fish for a half day and then go into the lodge together while everybody else was fishing, and Bob painted while I wrote the book. You know, that was really cool for me, but a lot of guys would never do that. I'm not gonna waste a half day of fishing. But we buzzled each other and said, “We've caught all the fish we need to in our life. Let's go paint and write.” So we're just in different places.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting too. I mean, it's not just fly fishing. I mean, a lot of stuff in nature, you know, if you can leave a little bit of the technology behind. I mean, I literally started going to Montana because my BlackBerry didn't work there. Right?

Steve Ramirez: That was a long time ago, if you're saying BlackBerry.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And also, too, it was kind of an exotic place. It's less  exotic  than it used to be. And so, you know, it was kind of like telling people at work that you were going to the moon. They were like, “Gosh, we can't get him. He's in Montana.” But it's this, it's funny but true. I mean, you know, and so…

Steve Ramirez: No, I love it. I used to have these high-speed jobs where I made real money, and they would say to me, “Well, how do we get you?” And I say, “You don't.” They would always say that to me, “How do, how do we reach you?” I said, “You don't. I'm gonna be on an island or I'm gonna be in the mountains.”

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's an interesting thing too, right? Where they don't wanna pay you like you're irreplaceable. But then when you wanna leave for a week, God forbid,  you have to be tethered with an umbilical cord.

Steve Ramirez: It’s a uniquely American thing, too, I'd have to say, as having lived different parts of the world. Only in America have I seen where we are taught that our job is to do our job. And when the economy is going down, the message everybody gets is spend more money, spend more money, bring the economy up, spend, buy more stuff. And then when you don't have enough room for that stuff, you can always rent space to hold your stuff that you don't use. So, this is getting off of fly fishing, but I'm trying to get, well, a little bit. I'm trying to make sure that my fly fishing quiver of rods and reels is exactly just what I need and nothing else. And I'm donating the rest of the ones I have to good causes like, Project Healing Waters. And I’m getting in my home down to the minimalist stuff of just what I need, just the pots and pans and dishes and things that I need and want. And the rest of it I am giving away to be repurposed. It's so freeing.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And you've already done that with your library, right?

Steve Ramirez: Oh, yes. I gave away to the local library here in my little town in Texas four pickup truck loads of books. And they have what they didn't keep for the library, they sell it and make money for the library. And, yep. So I've given away almost all of my books. I have a very small collection of books that I will not let go of. And I read them again and again. So, when I told Bob White this, he said to me, “I'm kind of interested in seeing which ones you kept.”

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I would say a related question. You know, I think people are gonna wanna know, you know, what fly rods does the Texan Buddha think are critical to keep? What do you have? 

Steve Ramirez: Well, for me, it's weight.  Rather than getting into, now I have to say that almost, it just so happens that, so if I talk to another one of my friends, he's gonna say all I only use Hardy and Miller and Tony use Sage. But, most of my stuff is Orvis. And, but when I talk about the rods that I hold onto, first of all, I love glass, but I also have graphite. And I have one beautiful bamboo rod that was made for me  by Jerry Kustich and at Sweetgrass Rods. So, but any rate, for me, I like having. In my quiver, I like having a three and a four cause I love using light rods in high mountain streams or, you know, and for smaller fish. I always am gonna have a five, an eight, and a ten. So to me that covers things. I have a five, eight and a ten then. And then I usually have multiple spools. So, like on my eight weight, I'm gonna have, I have one. It's a tropical floating line. I'm gonna have one that's an intermediate sinking line. I have one that's really good for surf and going in deep. And, that's what I do. It's what do I want to achieve? It's not about how many things can I have. It's what tool is going to get me where I need to be and to do that, to have the experience that I need, that I wanna have.
So people have asked me, “Well, how do you travel all these places?” It's not cause I have money. It's because I redirect what little I have. So, in order to do Casting Onward, I had to sell a lot of my firearms from my hunting life, almost all of them, actually, to help pay for airfare and things like that. We put our priorities where we want them. And for me, it's not about things, it's about experiences. So, yes, to me, if I have a three, a five, an eight, and a ten, I'm pretty much covered for everything I wanna do.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting. It's, you know, this theme, again, of being deliberate, right? And, you know, I'm sort of the same way, and it's kind of funny cause, I mean, I remember looking up at one point and I was like, gosh, you know, I'm making all this money to spend all this money to make all this money to do something that doesn't fulfill me. 

Steve Ramirez: Mmm,hmm

Marvin Cash: And so you kind of jettison that. And, you know, part of it, too, is I always tell people, like, I'm a Generation X kid. I grew up in the seventies. Like, we're gonna be fine, right? You know, just a completely different thing where, like, you don't eat out every meal.You know, you know, you actually repair stuff, which is kind of a mind blowing thing to people. 

Steve Ramirez: Right. 

Marvin Cash: But, you know, it's an interesting, I don't know. And I say this again, it's just an observation. It's just where I am in my journey, I don't care what other people do. I'm not judging them.  This works for me. 

Steve Ramirez: Right. 

Marvin Cash: Right? Like, I will always trade  more rustic accommodations for more days on the water.

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, I wish I could say that's true for me. I actually confessed up in this fourth book that there was a time when I was a true wild man. There was a time when I was quite happy that I could go out into the wilderness. And I did this all the time. Sometimes I did crazy things where I was making a lean-to, like, out of, cause I chopped my own wood and built a lean-to and tie it together, and I actually remember doing this in South Florida where I would cover it in palm fronds, and that would be my shelter and sleep on the ground. And those days are gone. And I have to admit that while I will do those things, I have definitely really enjoyed stepping out of a floatplane and having someone hand me a glass of wine. Judge me, if you will. Like I said, things are a little more creaky than they used to be. And I'm out there all day long, and I'm fishing, and I'm climbing, and I'm doing all that stuff, but it is sure cool to have a nice shower and glass today.

Marvin Cash: Yeah.

Steve Ramirez: So I'll fess up.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. As long as it doesn't get in the way of the fishing, I think I can approve. So.

Steve Ramirez: Sure. That's, that's it. I'm not saying I'm skipping the fishing. I'm saying that, you know, given, given the chance between the lean-to now and when I was young, that seemed all really cool. But now I've got that kind of been there, done that. Yeah. I had the bears walk in on me. Woke up once with the snake in my, in my sleeping bag with me. I've done it. I don't need to keep doing it. I have nothing to prove. So, yeah, I'll put mosquito net on my head. That's okay. 
I was with my buddy Bob one time. We were on the St. Croix river. He handed me this mosquito suit to put on while I was gonna stay with the boat while him and Lisa went to set up the vehicles. And I said, “Oh, I won't need that.” He said, “Put it on.” Oh, my gosh. I was completely covered within seconds in mosquitoes. I have no problem putting on the mosquito suits, what I'm telling you.

Marvin Cash: Duly noted. And, you know,  as we, before we get back to kind of upcoming travel and book details and things like that, Steve, is there anything else that you can think of we should talk about in terms of lessons from the river?

Steve Ramirez: Well, I guess the number one thing m I'm gonna share is that what keeps me going is that I never stop learning. And that's what's really cool about lessons from the river. Because we're always changing. I hope we are. If we stop changing, we stop growing. That's why I'm really against the idea of a fixed ideology of any kind, because it means you're not growing anymore. And I have a lot of younger friends, and I thought about, well why is that? And I thought, too many people my age have given up learning. They're not learning anymore. They're not growing. So, I know that I don't know much of anything. And I've changed my mind a lot because I've learned new information. I think lessons of the river are eternal. They keep coming. And as long as I keep saying, we pay attention and we ask ourselves honestly, “How did I handle that?: And forgive yourself when you don't handle it well. So, I think that's the thing. We can never stop learning. Just by stepping out there and paying attention and life for me, because, you know, my brain works weird, I think, in poetry and metaphor. So I'm constantly learning. And when I make a mistake, I laugh about it, usually write it into the book, how I screwed up and move on. Nothing and no one has any power over us unless we give it to them. And so I'm not afraid to make mistakes. I wanna learn.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting, you know, it makes me think, too, Steve. Like, one of the things that attracts me to fly fishing is it's not consistently solvable, right?

Steve Ramirez: No.

Marvin Cash: And that's one of the allures, because I think if, you know, I, quote, figured it out, it would have bored me ages ago…

Steve Ramirez: Yeah

Marvin Cash: …and I would have maybe become a golfer, God forbid.

Steve Ramirez: Yeah, I would still take you as you as you came, but I just, we wouldn't have as much to talk about because I grew up around golf courses, part of my life, and I was constantly being chased off of them cause you know what I was doing, right? Instead of golfing I was fishing in the ponds illegally. It was chasing me out of their ponds. Yeah so, anyway, I love our conversation, and I really appreciate that you've shared this time with me.

Marvin Cash: Oh, it's been tremendous fun. And I know you've got some speaking engagements. I know you said just locally, but you've got some travel coming up, too.

Steve Ramirez: I do. I have some great travel coming up. I'll be spending some time down in Patagonia, in various parts of Patagonia. If it all comes together, I'll be in both northern and southern Patagonia and Argentina, and then various areas around Argentina and Piranhas River, going after golden dorado and a few other undisclosed places. And I'll be spending some time in Campeche, Mexico, soon going after tarpon. But you know what I'm really going after, of course, is lessons from the river in the ocean. So, so yes, I've got some good travel coming up. Also gonna be going out to Portugal. And all these things are going to connect into me, sharing with those people who I so deeply appreciate that read my work. That I'll be sharing these stories with them, and the lessons that I learned along the way. That's what I do. I learn new things. And I say, “Here, this is for you. Take it.” You're never gonna learn a fancy way to cast from me or a special new knot, but you're gonna learn a whole lot of ways to attach better things to your life and let go of others.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And I will drop a link. I know that Amazon, and I imagine other, like Barnes & Noble and others, had the presale links up for your last in the Casting series, which I guess you told me was gonna come out officially on Labor Day weekend. Is that right?

Steve Ramirez: It's September 3. It's on pre-order now. I'm grateful to say that it's been doing well in pre-order right now. And the reason I care about that, by the way, is, you know, I don't do this cause you don't become a writer for money. So it's because I want people to read these stories. I want people to get something out of it. It makes me so happy to get letters from people saying, I just love this book, or I love this essay in Fly Fisherman. It really helped me. So, yeah, it comes up the third. It is available on all major booksellers like Amazon. It's probably one of the easiest one, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBooks. But I also want to share that if they want a signed copy, the way to get signed copies is through my friend bobwhitestudio.com. He is taking pre-orders for signed copies, and that's the only place I do currently sell signed copies.

Marvin Cash: Got it. And do you have any, do you have any promotion in the schedule? Or is it a little early yet?

Steve Ramirez: Right now, the only things I've got coming up are pretty local here. So I don't know how much it matters to your listeners. Rather than me traveling around the country, because if I do, it's because I'm traveling for other reasons and I'm able to do those things, but I will, they can always look on my website, steveramirezauthor.com, and whenever I have something, like I'm traveling to Arizona, Colorado, whenever I'm gonna be at a local bookstore, something, I always post it up there. Yeah.

Marvin Cash: And I will drop all that stuff in the show notes. And I also know that you are activeish on Instagram, and probably more active on Facebook, right?

Steve Ramirez: Both. Instagram is steveramirezauthor and same thing with Facebook.
steveramirezauthor and you're welcome to connect with me on that, long as you're a real person and a nice person. And so, and I write on both of them and keep people connected with me. But also, the reason you mentioned Facebook is cause that's where I actually write some little mini essays that people seem to like, and I just put them up there.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And, when you were talking about why book sales were important to you, that's the topic for our next conversation. We'll spend an hour or so talking about the intersection of commerce and art. So..

Steve Ramirez: Beautiful.

Marvin Cash: Well, Steve, I super appreciate you carving a little bit of time this evening out and spending it with me.

Steve Ramirez: My pleasure. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you. I look forward to it, and I really enjoyed it. Take care.

Marvin Cash: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.