Tyrhee Moore is a mountaineer, outdoor guide and founder of the non-profit, Soul Trak.
Tyrhee Moore is a mountaineer, outdoor guide and founder of the non-profit, Soul Trak. Growing up in Washington D.C, Tyrhee first fell in love with the outdoors on a 7th grade trip to the Grand Tetons with City Kids Wilderness Project. He was blown away by the beautiful views, but he was also impressed by his own power and ability to climb mountains. He was hooked on outdoor adventures. Several years later, Tyrhee was asked to be on the first all-Black American team to climb Denali and was featured in a documentary called An American Ascent about the group’s climb. After becoming a trained mountain and river guide, Tyrhee started the non-profit Soul Trak Outdoors, an organization that connects urban communities of color with green spaces in the D.C. area.
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Shelby Stanger: Tyrhee Moore grew up in a housing project in Washington, DC. His school was three blocks from his apartment and the community center was across the street. He lived a lot of his life within those few blocks, that is, until he was 12. When Tyrhee was in the seventh grade, he joined a program that took him to hike the Tetons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Tetons were far away and hiking was a completely foreign activity, but Tyrhee was curious and itching for some adventure, so he convinced his mom to let him go. Little did he know that trip would profoundly influence his life. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger: On that trip, Tyrhee fell in love with the outdoors. He went on to become a guide and to climb Grand Teton, Mount Kilimanjaro and Denali. But besides a few excursions organized specifically for Black communities, Tyrhee recognized that the adventure industry was largely white.
Shelby Stanger: Not only did Tyrhee want to see more diversity on the trails, he also wanted his community in DC to understand his deep connection with nature. That's what motivated him to start his non-profit, Soul Trak. The organization connects urban communities of color with green spaces in the DC area. Before we talk about Soul Trak, I want to take us back to how Tyrhee's love affair with the outdoors started.
Shelby Stanger: It was on that seventh grade trip with City Kids Wilderness Project. Every summer, City Kids takes kids from DC out to Jackson Hole for a few weeks to hike, backpack, climb, and paddle.
Shelby Stanger: I wanted to start with DC, you grew up in Barry Farms housing projects, and then you said in seventh grade, you went to Wyoming and saw the Tetons for the first time. What was that experience like?
Tyrhee Moore: Growing up, I thought... My world before seventh grade was extremely small, life looked pretty similar amongst many people that I interacted with. People had very simple jobs, people had really day-to-day lifestyles that were an expectation from the next generation after them, to take on those same roles. And I think that for me, being able to travel to Jackson hole, which I think is worlds apart from DC, urban neighborhood that... First, demographic, just being able to see people that didn't look like me was a huge culture shift. I spent very little time around people who weren't Black, but then geographically, I had never seen mountains. I used to love watching Animal Planet, and Discovery Channel, and all of these really wild adventure shows.
Tyrhee Moore: To be honest, watching those things seemed very mythical, they didn't seem like real places, it almost, in a lot of ways, seemed like a white people's world. And so being able to leave those three blocks that I lived in for most of my life at the time, it did many things. So it taught me, one, that the world was so much bigger, obviously, than I had known it to be. But it also had shown me... It put me in a space where I knew I could be there. It put me in the Discovery Channel and that was something that I never could depict in my mind. I knew that those places were there, but I thought it was another world for other people. And so being able to go to a place like Jackson Hole was very special for multiple reasons.
Tyrhee Moore: One, that was my first introduction to another world, but it's a very staple dramatic, very extreme example of traditional nature and the outdoors. Everything that you can possibly think of, you can climb, you can paddle, you can hike for miles, days after days, there's wildlife everywhere. And so anything that you can possibly think of, is in Jackson Hole, and so to take such a huge leap at a young age was like me really getting put into the mecca of where you can go to really get thrown in it. And so for me, I had a very fortunate opportunity through a summer camp called City Kids Wilderness Project, at the time I was a seventh grader. And just being able to really explore what it is that I wanted to do as a kid.
Tyrhee Moore: I always played a ton of sports, but being able to go to Jackson Hole and be able to do all of these different things, really showed me that, that's what nature can do for me, it offered me countless, endless opportunities to really be the person, kid at the time, that I wanted to be, and really learn so much about myself. I had never been so scared at moments in my life, like hanging from the edge of a cliff. I was a really tough kid, but feeling afraid in front of my friends was something that I never had to be, a position that I never had to be in.
Tyrhee Moore: But also feeling extremely accomplished to stand at the top of a 10,000 foot mountain and come walk away from that and share that story with other people. It just brought so many different developmental things for me as a kid, that coming back to DC really... It made me a much more well-rounded, full person. It brought a completely different level of Tyrhee back to DC in a way that, I think, many other kids, especially where I grew up, weren't able to find in themselves, they were still in those three blocks.
Shelby Stanger: That's awesome and you were 12 or 13, usually in seventh grade.
Tyrhee Moore: Yeah, I was 12 years old, which is crazy.
Shelby Stanger: So I'm really curious, when you were seventh grade and you went to the Tetons for your first time and what was your favorite activity?
Tyrhee Moore: My favorite activity probably was backpacking, that was one of the things that I felt like I was really being challenged, I love to push myself and prove my strength. That was a big thing for me, especially as a kid, and I think that carrying a really heavy backpack, that's probably half my weight, was something that I felt like I was really being strong. Get into camp, eight hours after starting and feeling like you had a really long day, which is very empowering as a kid, I think it really instilled a level of strength in you that you might not have known that you had.
Tyrhee Moore: But also I love hiking, I love backpacking, for the simple reason of utilizing your body, your legs as a source of transportation and seeing so much of the environment over the course of two or three day trip. And I think that I really enjoyed that, especially when I was young, because it all was so new to me. And so just being able to really feel like I was deep in it and hiking for days into the wilderness was something that I felt was this is a very Indiana Jones explorer experience, and I think that, that was really fun for me as a kid and I think that, that's what I latched onto initially.
Shelby Stanger: Seventh grade Tyrhee was blown away by the Tetons, but also by his own body, his power, and his ability to climb mountains. He was hooked on backpacking. A few years later when Tyrhee was 16, he went on a backpacking trip with NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School. On that trip, he went from being a camper at City Kids, to becoming a Mountaineer.
Shelby Stanger: Clearly Wyoming had a big impact on your life path, now you do basically what City Kids taught you for a living, it's incredible. So tell me about your first NOLS trip.
Tyrhee Moore: I had went to Alaska for 30 days, a 30 day backpacking trip and we just backpacked, but we went through the Talkeetna mountain range, which had some incredible peaks along the backpacking trip that we were on.
Shelby Stanger: 30 days straight?
Tyrhee Moore: 30 days, 30 days straight, for an entire month. No joke.
Shelby Stanger: No cell phone, nothing, 30 days.
Tyrhee Moore: No cell phone, food drops from a plane every week, so-
Shelby Stanger: Wait, from a plane?
Tyrhee Moore: From a plane, we would get our food delivered to us.
Shelby Stanger: And you're eating those wafer crackers or-
Tyrhee Moore: We're eating wafer crackers, but grains, food in bags that were just rationed off for... We pack them two days before the trip, just try to schedule out our meals. And sometimes you run short on food and you're trying to scrape your way to the next ration, two days out. But it was the real deal and I was 16 at the time, so that was a real challenge, in terms of my own personal leadership skills and meeting new people that I had never known before and having to spend the next month with them under very extreme circumstances.
Shelby Stanger: Did you have to apply to be accepted? How does that work?
Tyrhee Moore: I applied, actually NOLS offered me a scholarship there for that program and then coming out of that experience, I think that it just was... There was obviously challenges that existed within that program, but I think that coming out of it, it was one of those things where I have felt so accomplished, because that was probably at the time, the hardest thing I had ever done, and wanting to figure out how I could stay connected to that.
Tyrhee Moore: And so I remained in touch with NOLS and trying to figure out how I could potentially one day become an instructor, that was my goal, was to become a NOLS instructor. And I decided to then, at 18, so two years after the mountaineering course, so I applied again and it was for the Outdoor Educator course. So I wasn't old enough yet to become an instructor, but this was a step towards that, so learning how to become more familiar with teaching and facilitating outdoors. And that was the first time I think I had seen a professional direction that I could potentially have gone in, in this round, in this outdoor industry.
Shelby Stanger: After participating in the NOLS trek, Tyrhee graduated from high school and went to college at the University of West Virginia for Sports Management. All the while, he kept in touch with some of his contacts at NOLS, particularly Aparna Rajagopal. Aparna was the head of diversity and inclusion at NOLS. She wanted to build the first all-Black team to climb Denali in 2013. It was a big deal. Their climb was called Expedition Denali and the team consisted of incredible Black outdoors people, including Tyrhee, who was just 20 years old at the time. Expedition Denali's summit was filmed and turned into a documentary called An American Ascent.
Shelby Stanger: Tell me about Expedition Denali, how did that come about? What was it like to be part of the project?
Tyrhee Moore: Yeah, so Aparna was trying to figure out ways to... There had been a huge disparity of black participants, students at NOLS. And I think that coming up with a project where they were able to visibly show representation of people who are existing in these spaces, who are doing things like something as cool as climb Denali, hopefully, could be a spark to... A shift or a shift in interest for so many people to also think about potentially doing something similar, not climb Denali, if they want to fair enough, but just simply taking a step into a new world like I had once, to try something different. So she connected with brands like North Face, to put together this project where she would find really prominent Black outdoor leaders or athletes to come together and have this filmed project of nine Black climbers, starting to attempt Denali, which is north America's highest peak. And so that is what we did in 2013.
Shelby Stanger: That must have been incredible. So what impact did that have on you as a young climber?
Tyrhee Moore: The reason why that experience, I think, was extremely life-changing for me, is because prior to Expedition Denali and beyond, I had been very young, so I had spent a lot of my time outdoors for my own personal interests. I wanted to do these things because I was having my own personal enjoyment, it was self-fulfilling. But also I have recognized that in a lot of cases, I was the only person, so on my NOLS courses, I had been the only Black student on those courses. And so everything I had been engaged in, beyond City Kids, I had stepped into this reality of, "Okay, this is what the industry looks like." And for me, I had left my comfort zone and started to question my existence, and nature, and I think that being introduced to Expedition Denali created another sense of validation at a much higher level, because I had met people like the first African American woman to climb Everest.
Tyrhee Moore: Rue Mapp from Outdoor Afro, Morgan Dixon from GirlTrek, these really prominent figures who had existed in this space for decades, even before I had been born. And so being able to be on a mountain and share those stories and share those experiences was incredibly important, especially for me at the time, because I was graduating high school, I was going to college that year. And so I was trying to figure out, what does my life look like? Do I take a more traditional route like the rest of my friends back in DC? Or do I continue to do this really cool stuff that I'm enjoying and having fun with, but what does the future look like for me doing this? Because most people I met were doing this for fun, this was something that they were doing during the summers. And where I come from, I couldn't afford to have leisure time to do whatever it is that I felt like doing, and then going back to some really privileged world that I didn't have.
Tyrhee Moore: And so from that experience, I had learned about non-profit work that people were doing, I had learned about athlete work that people were doing, and all these really incredible stories that really taught me that there was a space for Tyrhee in the outdoors, beyond Expedition Denali. But also it gave me a platform that I didn't have previously, to really extend the work that we were set out to do on Expedition Denali. It was up to us to really take accountability and share these spaces and really push the message that this is all of our land, we all can enjoy these spaces because at first I didn't feel like that, I felt like it was me against the rest of the world.
Tyrhee Moore: And I think that being able to see that this project gained so much traction, traveling around the country, which we did after the climb, we traveled around to different schools, colleges, Boys & Girls Clubs, telling the story, showing the film. And it showed me that I had the ability to really create change. And so being able to be a part of Expedition Denali taught me that I could affect other people and bring other people into this space because at first I was just trying to get myself there.
Shelby Stanger: What's so interesting, is normally when I ask people about climbing a mountain, they talk about the climbing the mountain, and for you, the mountain is not the mountain, it's everything else.
Tyrhee Moore: Right. And that's a good point because I think that... So I climbed Denali twice, so I went back to Denali after my climb with the first all African-American team, because I think that, that climb meant so much more than the summit. I think that for me, I was learning so much about myself, I was learning so much about what our community, what our planet needed, that I was there for a much greater purpose. And I think going back was a very self-serving climb, I wanted to just take on the mountain for what it was. But the climb itself was... The first climb at least was one of those things where I had felt strong, I was young, I enjoyed the athleticism aspect of climbing the mountain, that in a lot of ways, that came really naturally to me.
Tyrhee Moore: I think that for me though, where I struggled, is really understanding what role I play in this much larger conversation. So sometimes I do have a hard time talking about how long the days were, really talking my tent mates up around wanting to give up or not being able to feel like they had anything left in the tank. Because I think that for me, I was so confident, like we got this, we can do this, this is easy, this is part of the climb. But to my point the second time, I went back and it was... We never seen a day above zero degrees and it was freezing cold, it was only four of us. And so we moved up the mountain a lot quicker until we couldn't because we ended up getting stuck at 14,000 camp for about two weeks.
Tyrhee Moore: And I think that for me though, I was able to see the mountain a lot differently because I felt smaller again. Again, to my point, that first expedition was so big, there were cameras, there was this message that we were pushing, and then the second climb, it was like, "Oh, wow. We're just four people in the side of the largest mountain on the continent." That for me, was what I wanted in that experience, I wanted to really be thick in the mountaineering mode again. And so being able to go back and see the mountain from a different lens was really incredible.
Shelby Stanger: While his first climb was slower and had a larger purpose than just getting up the mountain, Tyrhee's second climb was colder, faster, and in a lot of ways, more physically challenging. During Expedition Denali, he learned a lot about the power of seeing other black people outdoors, about conquering summits and breaking trail for other people of color in the industry. When we come back, Tyrhee talks about the lessons he learned from Denali and how he started his innovative non-profit, Soul Trak.
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Shelby Stanger: Both of Tyrhee's Denali summits shaped his path as an outdoors person, but they also impacted his outlook on life. Climbing Denali was more than just a physical feat, it taught him lessons that he carried back to his life in DC.
Shelby Stanger: For me, I'm a surfer and there's a lot of lessons I learned in the ocean that I just... It's hard to describe, but I would never learn them on land.
Tyrhee Moore: Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: What are the lessons you learned in the mountain, especially on Denali, that you could never learn on land?
Tyrhee Moore: For me on a mountain like Denali, I learned several lessons. I learned that we all... Nothing can be done alone, mountaineering is... Some people can solo things, which is great, but to do it efficiently, to do it with a positive mindset and feel comfortable, it takes a team. And everyone has something to contribute. And you don't really understand that until your livelihood is on the end of a rope. You don't understand that until you can't get out of the tent and someone else has to make sure a meal gets to you after a 12, 13 hour day. You don't understand that until it's up to you to build the snow wall or everyone's tents get blown off the mountain and you're stuck on the side of a mountain at negative 20 degrees.
Tyrhee Moore: And so for me, learning that, my role in a team is critical, no matter what it looks like or what the title is behind it, anything that I do is going to have an impact on a much larger picture. And so for me, that is something that I always take with me off the mountain, because it's just such a very extreme example of, if someone doesn't carry their weight, we all can't get to the summit. And I think that that is something that I apply constantly through the work that I do. Secondly, weight is a huge conversation around climbing a big mountain like Denali. What are we carrying? What do we need? What don't we need? And we have to shed off the things that we don't need, and need is a very... You have to pay very close attention to what that means.
Tyrhee Moore: Not what you want, what you think you need, what you may need, but what is a necessity right now that you're going to carry on your back for the next 30 days, potentially, that you may not need to carry with you, so that weight can not be any more of a burden than it has to be. And for me, that is incredibly important because sometimes it's so hard in your regular life to shed weight. It's so hard to not carry too much of a burden and pick up extra things along the way. And when you're in a situation where it is, again, going to directly affect the progress and success of climbing a mountain, it's a lot easier sometimes to be able to say, "No, I'm not taking that." But learning how to do that also, here in DC in my regular life, it has been incredibly rewarding because it has made me so much lighter, it has made me so much more happier, it has made my work so much more pleasant.
Shelby Stanger: I'm really interested because I think that a lot of us have a lot of stuff.
Tyrhee Moore: Yeah.
Shelby Stanger: I say stuff with quotes, and letting go of stuff and BS baggage that we carry around is really cool, and I like the metaphor you're describing on the mountain. So what's the third thing?
Tyrhee Moore: And my third thing, the last thing is, mountaineering is a very slow pace sport, you're taking one step at a time, one step at a time, to climb thousands of thousands of feet. And so for me, living in a fast paced society back in DC, sometimes it's really hard to live in the moment, it's sometimes really hard to pay attention to the day-to-day and you leave things behind, you skip over, things quickly become memories. And for me, being on a mountain like Denali, it gives me the opportunity to slow down, pay attention to my breaths. It gives me the time to look around, see what the world looks like around me, check in on other people that are with me, pay attention to my steps, listening to what that sounds like. And so it makes me a lot more present in life.
Tyrhee Moore: And I appreciate that because sometimes it's really difficult to be here and not think about next week, or two weeks from now, or this deadline that I have. And being able to be present and stop sometimes, is all you need to realign and adjust to ease some of the anticipation and stress that is waiting for you later on, beyond that moment. And so that's the last thing I would say, is being able to be on a mountain like that allows you to really be present and not think about anything else.
Shelby Stanger: Yeah, there's nothing like hanging off the side of a mountain to make you actually pay attention and focus.
Tyrhee Moore: Feeling what those rocks look like, the crystals against your fingers, hearing your breaths against the wall, you don't get to be that conscious of where you are in that moment, anywhere else and so that's something that I just love about nature is that it really forces you to be there.
Shelby Stanger: Expedition Denali made history. It was written up in National Geographic and the documentary won a bunch of awards. All this attention changed things for Tyrhee. He started to realize that his role in the outdoors was bigger than just enjoying the mountains. As a Black outdoorsman, Tyrhee wanted to show other people of color that they have a place out in nature. He became a NOLS instructor, a raft guide and he was building partnerships with brands as a mountaineer. Tyrhee was having a lot of conversations about diversity in the outdoors, but he wasn't seeing it on the trails. He decided to do something about it.
Shelby Stanger: How did you get the wild idea and when to start Soul Trak?
Tyrhee Moore: So I got to the idea because I had spent a lot of time in the industry. And at some point, it became very isolating again, I started to feel very alone in that space. But I'm to the point of where I was saying, I have really leaned in on Instagram and different social media platforms to share my experiences, but I quickly started to feel just as disconnected as I did before. I started to become Tyrhee, the Black guy that does white people stuff. And that became hard for me because my intention was to be a resource and be accessible and really promote something that does feel accessible for people. But then there was people who I connect with who were in those really small worlds, that grew up in very similar environments as I was. That same light years away from what they've seen for themselves.
Tyrhee Moore: And so I decided that the work that I was doing, I wanted to feel more powerful in my position and have the greatest impact. And I decided to come back to DC, so at the time I had just been traveling and working, seasonal work, guiding, and I started to work back at City Kids as a Program Coordinator.
Shelby Stanger: That's so cool.
Tyrhee Moore: But then at the time, I still feel like there was extra work that needed to be done, and there's always more work that can be done. And I think that City Kids is doing really incredible work, but understanding that there can be more. And so for me, I understood that it takes more than pouring resources into a 11, 12 year old. There were 40, 50 other kids that also went to City Kids that may also have had similar interests as me, but weren't supported by their community as well, weren't understood by their community as well.
Tyrhee Moore: And those interests eventually fade sometimes, they are lost, they're doubted, or rejected by the community. And so I wanted to figure out a way to, not only show youth that there is space for them, and learning and development in the outdoors for them, but also for their older siblings, for their parents, for their mentors, and just really approach programming from a multi-generational aspect. There's space for all of us to enjoy nature, not just one demographic of Black people, not one demographic of... Every white person I know, feels invited to nature. They feel like they can do that also, beyond the age of 12, they feel like they can do that as adults. And so understanding that my mother shouldn't think that, that's something that just I can take advantage of.
Tyrhee Moore: She should know that she can walk her dog in the park that's literally 10 minutes down the street from her, but that's never really been something that she's felt like is a space that she can exist in. And so the work that I'm doing with Soul Trak, is to reinforce that, these are our local spaces, these are public lands that we pay taxes on that we should be accountable to, we should maintain them, as well as enjoy them. And so we do a lot of work bringing, not only youth, but college students, we bring adults, we bring professional level leaders, as well, into these spaces to really paint the picture of that these places need to be cared about. But we deserve to be there, we deserve to be invited and take care of these environments because they're in our neighborhoods, they're down the street.
Tyrhee Moore: And also, to hopefully show that, if I can enjoy these spaces, I can also go out to Jackson Hole and there's a connection equally there as well. But I found that sometimes we skip our local spaces, we point too frequently to places like Jackson Hole or to Boulder, Colorado. And if I grew up in Washington, DC, I am immediately excluded from the conversation. If climate change, if environmental justice is focused on these very extreme, more traditional environments, it's harder for me to feel connected to that, and so for me, it's been really important to start local, start at home. We do it through cohorts, so we have 10 environmental leaders, which is the adult cohort, we have college cohort that we work with students at Howard University, a local historically Black university. And then we have a youth cohort that we partner with an elementary school here and we take them through a year of programming that, again, allows them to enjoy our local spaces through both recreational and stewardship opportunities.
Shelby Stanger: I love that, and I saw on your website, you guys also cater to families.
Tyrhee Moore: Yeah, and so part of that youth program is that we require parents to be present for those programs, because it's really easy sometimes to pass your kids off to a really cool opportunity, or a really cool activity that they can be a part of. But we really want families, households to understand that, not only can your child enjoy this hiking trip or this climbing trip, you can too. And we're not requiring anyone to climb on the side of a cliff, if that's something that you aren't comfortable with, sure, but you can maybe be there and cheer on your child and be... I love doing that, that's something that I've signed up to do through my work, but how important is it also to have your parent there to be a part of that experience, be a part of those first really... It would be incredible for my mom to have flown out to Jackson Hole with me and gone backpacking.
Tyrhee Moore: We all have a role here and we can really create so much beauty in these spaces if we all are susceptible to understanding that there's a space for us, no matter what that looks like. And so that's part of why we decided to go the family route, as opposed to just youth, because I think that it has a different meaning when you're understood as a 12 year old, when your parents can really see what that space does for you. And then also, make their own individual connection as well. It creates an opportunity for you to really be cultivated and nurtured throughout your development and not have that be something that you carry on your back as something that you enjoy. When I was 16, to the point of going out to Alaska, leaving City Kids, and so no longer being in this bubble and going to Alaska for 30 days, I immediately felt isolated.
Tyrhee Moore: And I went through that experience and I learned so much about myself because I had gone into that with, four years at the time maybe, of outdoor experience. And I had, at the time, there was maybe 15 other kids on that course and they all were white and they probably had a lot less experienced outdoors than I did, but I immediately fell to the back of that group. Because I didn't feel any connection points, I didn't know where I fit within the group, and immediately introverted and stayed to myself. But coming out of that experience, there was a lot of positive things that I had taken away from the level of resiliency, as a group... Obviously, by the end of that experience, I connected with those students, we were really close coming out of that, but trying to go home and describe that and talk about those experience, what I had dealt with, with my mother, with my older siblings, was really hard because there was a question of, why did you even go and do that to begin with?
Tyrhee Moore: You don't need to go and do that again, why would you put yourself in that circumstance? And I think that for me, it was one of those moments where that was hard to even... How hard was it for me two years later to tell my mother that then, "Oh, I'm going to go, again, to the same type of course." Because I still enjoyed it, but it would have been a lot easier to be able to have a home to go back to, that still knew what that experience did for me from a positive aspect. But a lot of that went over my family's head, they heard what was going wrong. For me, the value of being able to have all levels of our community involved and not just put in that one demographic to take the burden into the next generation. We can change now, we don't have to wait 10 years, 15 years for that change to happen.
Shelby Stanger: Soul Trak is just a few years old, but the organization has already made a tremendous impact. Tyrhee has also started programs that facilitate climbing, backpacking, biking, and hiking. They also do cleanups, trail maintenance, and tree planting in local green spaces. It's great that Tyrhee has found a way to redefine the outdoors and help people realize that there are places to explore close to home.
Shelby Stanger: I love that Soul Trak has programs for everyone. For youth, college students, and adults and families. You can learn more about Soul Trak and you can give your support at SoulTrak.com, that's, S O U L T R A k.com. Tyrhee, I am blown away by your creativity and your dedication to the work you do. It's incredibly inspiring that you've been able to bring your passion full circle. You can get in touch with Tyrhee on Instagram @Tyrhee.Moore, that's T Y R H E E dot M O O R E.
Shelby Stanger: Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Sylvia Thomas and produced by Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Palo Mottola and Joe Crosby and our presenting sponsor is Ford. I have a new podcast out, it's called Vitamin Joy, you can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm also on Instagram at @ShelbyStanger. As always, we appreciate when you follow this show and when you review it wherever you listen. Remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.