Chris Burkard has always viewed his photography as way to inspire people to adventure outside. His new memoir, Wayward, captures some of his most memorable stories.
For Chris Burkard, photography has always been more than just taking spectacular pictures. He’s used his craft as a way to tell stories, inspire people to adventure outside, and most of all, to push himself to the edge of his comfort zone. He’s caught freezing cold-water waves with professional surfer Pete Devries. He’s biked with champion mountain biker Rebecca Rusch. He’s hung off cliffs in Moab, surfed in Iceland, and skied near the Arctic circle. After spending much of his career documenting other people’s lives and adventures, Chris recently decided to turn the camera on himself and share stories from his own travels in his memoir called Wayward.
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Chris Burkard:
When you don't grow up getting on planes, and seeing the world, and yada yada yada, and the breadth of your existence is where I could drive to in a day or in a couple days, that was as far as I went until I was 18, 19 20. So my world was, at most, Colorado, or Wyoming. So all of a sudden picking up a camera and seeing this broad, broad, big, beautiful world out there, I was just so blown away, and it just opened my eyes to so much, and it gave me such an appreciation for what we have in front of us. And I just felt like, man, if this can teach me all these things, then what could I teach other people?
Shelby Stanger:
For Chris Burkard, photography has always been more than just taking spectacular pictures. He's used his craft as a way to tell stories, to inspire people to adventure outside, and most of all, to push himself to the edge of his comfort zone. When Chris was 19 years old, he decided to forge his own career path as a surf photographer, shooting pictures of some of the world's most epic waves. Now, 15 years later, Chris is an award-winning photographer and he's a legend in the outdoor industry. He's worked with world class athletes, and brands like Patagonia, Apple and Toyota. He's also published several photography books, and he has over 3.7 million followers on Instagram.
Shelby Stanger:
After spending much of his career documenting other people's lives and adventures, Chris recently decided to turn the camera on himself and share stories from his own travels. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Shelby Stanger:
Chris Burkard spends his days adventuring with some of the best athletes in the world. He's caught freezing cold water waves with professional surfer Pete Devries, he's biked in Iceland with champion mountain biker Rebecca Rush, he's hung off cliffs in Moab, surfed in Iceland, and skied near the Arctic Circle. Chris told us about some of his adventures when I interviewed him on the show back in 2017. Since then, he's continued to live a pretty wild life and he's collected quite a few stories over the years. In February of 2022, Chris released a photographic memoir of his adventures called Wayward.
Shelby Stanger:
Chris Burkard, welcome back to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Chris Burkard:
Yeah, I'm so stoked to be chatting again, it's been a minute since we have connected and chatted.
Shelby Stanger:
I've listened to a lot of podcasts you've done recently, and your career has taken off and it's been fun watching you grow. I get a lot of inspiration from you. I want to go back and talk about your book, Wayward, because it's so cool. I had no idea about your career at Surfline and all the characters you worked with, like Pete Devries, who's been on the podcast, all your cold water surfing. So, the book, Wayward, there's photographs, there's stories, it's absolutely beautiful. I like that you dip your toes in a memoir, you tell, it's not your full story, but it's a lot of your story. How did you choose which stories and which photographs to include?
Chris Burkard:
That's such a good question because what I really wanted was to extrapolate some of the nuggets, the kernels of truth that I learned from some of these moments and put them into a book that was digestible. But I think just the hidden challenges in that were coming to terms with, people care about what I have to say. Because it's so easy as a photographer, and any creative, just to hide behind the enormous shadow that people put in front of you, that you're often documenting. Like the amazing athletes, and the Olympians, and the whatever, that's easy. You're just like, "Oh, you're just an observer," but, in observing you experience things and you learn stuff.
Chris Burkard:
And so, to write a book that was then about my experience in these places, what was happening with me in the arc of my career, I had to really come to terms with what the heck this was going to be. And what's funny is I actually wrote 140,000 words, a real, proper memoir. And then we stripped it down to about 40,000 or 30,000 words, because I also kind of just, there's certain experiences that were so sacred and so special and so unique that I was like, I'm going to save this for another book in five years.
Shelby Stanger:
I like that in this book, you share a lot of the things that happen when shit hits the fan.
Chris Burkard:
Yeah. When a lot hits a fan.
Shelby Stanger:
When things go wrong.
Chris Burkard:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
And I find that those make the best stories, and I think it's like Yvon Chouinard, who said, "It's not an adventure until something goes wrong." The one that sticks out to me, you probably told a million times, but I think it's such a great story because everybody can just picture this, but the Russian jail cell.
Chris Burkard:
Yeah. It's like the token, you're sitting around and everybody shares a story, and you're like, "Oh, I had this one moment." But you know what's interesting about it is that, and I'll just briefly go over it, is more what I learned from it, which actually, interestingly enough, took years. It took years to fully process, digest, actually unpack, that's a very popular podcast word, unpack that story.
Shelby Stanger:
I try not to use that word.
Chris Burkard:
And honestly it was something I had to figure out because I just spent a lot of time being mad about it, being angry, being pissed off. I was traveling to Vladivostok, Russia, at this certain point in my life, I had realized that what I wanted to do was really explore the cold and more remote locations on Earth to surf and to shoot and to photograph. And I fell in love, and I jumped in, headfirst, it's all I wanted to do. I was over going to Australia and Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Maldives and whatever. I was like, "All I want to do is tell stories from places that hadn't been seen."
Chris Burkard:
And so we jumped in, and in doing so I rushed the process. I rushed the process of everything, of learning the culture, respecting them, learning what this place is about, who goes there, who lives there, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The only thing I didn't rush was the visa process. I actually did that very well and I did it for the whole group.
Chris Burkard:
And upon arriving there, in Vladivostok, flying through Korea, et cetera, et cetera, every single person from our crew got patted down and talked, and then they got to go through customs. And then it came to me and I was sitting there having this very nonverbal communication with the lady at the customs office, and she was just pointing to my passport, shaking her head. And I realized, upon looking more closely than I had before, that my entry date was two days off, and that I was absolutely screwed. And what ensued was a six hour interrogation, and then they took me and they put me in a jail cell, like a holding cell with bars in the windows, no door handle, lock on the door, with a toilet in the floor, and just a bed chained to the ground.
Chris Burkard:
And Vladivostok is one of Russia's major military bases, this is a place that's no stranger to having war camps and other things like that, and it was really terrifying. I was thrown in this cell. I had all my belongings with me, basically had a guard at the door the whole time. I'm not trying to make any James Bond references here, but literally his name was Igor and he had one eye. I swear to God. It was the first time in my life where I had all my rights strip from me, and everything taken from me, and I called the embassy and they basically were like, "Well, the only way we can get you out is if there's cruel and unusual punishment, if they don't feed you or they don't give you water or whatever." And I was like, "Okay."
Chris Burkard:
And then, in making that call, they made a call, and at midnight, I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, I get a knock on my door. I get taken down to this room, this military, stainless steel kitchen thing, huge long table made for a hundred people, and they're just a tiny, two cups. And I go down there and I eat one cup that's soup, and one cup that's cucumbers or whatever, and mayonnaise. I just ate it because Igor was standing behind me breathing, and I went back to my cell and I just had full diarrhea the rest of the night. It was terrible.
Shelby Stanger:
Sorry.
Chris Burkard:
But oddly enough, oddly enough, the one person that I had met, from church of all places, a friend of my mom's, was like, "Oh yeah, I had a Russian exchange student for years. Good friend. There's these two words you need to know, you need to know this word and you to know this word. And this word means where's the bathroom please?" And I remember knocking on the door, because my toilet wasn't working, it was a toilet in the ground, and the hose to flush things down wasn't working. And I was knocking on the door, Igor comes, and I'm trying to tell him I feel like shit and I'm not great. And I remember telling him like, [Russian word], or something like that, and he looked at me, and I'll never forget that because in that moment that he looked at me, I was like, what I just told him was not what I meant to ask, and he looked at me, and he kind of cocked his head. And I was like, "Never mind, I'm good. All good, no worries. Just going to go to bed." Whatever.
Chris Burkard:
And it turns out, I didn't even realize this til later on, actually multiple days later, because the next day I got deported to Korea and I had to stay there for a day, and then I came back to Russia a couple days later and I was able to go through the process again and finally get into the country. But my wife called me urgently, and she's like, "Whatever you do, don't say the words. Don't say those words that what's-her-name told you." And I'm like, "What's going on? What's going on?" And my mom's friend, this classic, classic lady, I love her, she was playing a prank on me. She thought I'd be in some hotel, or in some place, being like, "Oh, where's the bathroom?" When really I was like, "I need an enema." And so I don't think that she envisioned I'd be telling my Russian guard, where I was effectively imprisoned for the day, that I needed an enema. I mean, I could only imagine what he was thinking. So it was pretty epic. It was a good one.
Chris Burkard:
But what I learned from the whole experience was I spent so much time being angry and being upset and just being pissed off, being like, "Well, no, t's the visa lady's fault, and it's this fault," but the thing I learned is this process of traveling, where we dream and we wax poetically about allowing travel to make us become a better person, it doesn't really happen while you're out there on the trip. It happens before you leave your front door. The process of becoming a better person through travel, it happens as you study these cultures, as you prepare yourself to go to these places, as you give the respect that they deserve. And as you, in some way, prepare your mind, body and spirit to go and take on a trip like this.
Chris Burkard:
And I can say full well that I wasn't prepared, and had I been prepared, I would've been more cognizant to what I was getting myself into. And I just think that it's so easy to point the finger when really it's like, you should think about all reasons why maybe you weren't really ready.
Shelby Stanger:
I love Chris's point here. The real work of travel starts way before you leave your front door. I can definitely relate. Whenever I'm planning a trip, I get giddy about the possibilities ahead of me. Chris has learned a lot about himself as he's traveled the world, but growing up, he didn't really leave home except for the occasional family road trip. It wasn't until he picked up a camera in his late teens that Chris's horizons expanded. Photography opened up his world and taking pictures helped him sink into moments as they happened in real time. In fact, Chris remembers images better than anything else.
Shelby Stanger:
What's one of the stories that you think might get overlooked that you really liked writing in the book?
Chris Burkard:
I literally can't even remember what I wrote in the book. I wrote down so much, and it's almost like I wrote it down so that I can remember it, because I have a terrible memory. I'm the worst at remembering names, and I'm great at remembering faces, and I'm amazing at remembering photographs. I'm like, "Oh, that photo, I know that photo was shot in..." so and so. Like even the photo behind you, I'm trying to identify it, that's either West Australia or San Diego, or-
Shelby Stanger:
That's San Diego, La Jolla Shores, by some surfer.
Chris Burkard:
I love it. So I'm always, I identify that, but when it comes to stories, it's hard because it has to really have registered an emotion for me to remember it. And there are so many of them, there's losing all my camera gear in Chile, the first three years of my career and going home, pouring water out of my lenses, being like, "My career is over." I literally had to leave the trip early because I had nothing to shoot on. And then claiming insurance, and getting some of my gear back but then also being uninsurable for the foreseeable future, because I was such a liability.
Chris Burkard:
And just stories like that, like hiring this drunk boat captain in Chile to go take us out to this wave. Things like that, where most of them, they're so funny, because they're so avoidable and they seem so obvious. But when you take the circumstance, and you take a kid who just hadn't seen the world, hadn't known what was out there, and you thrust him into these opportunities, and they're just so eager to make the most of themselves, this is what happens. You become wayward, and you try to take a very unconventional path to get to your goal. And I think that's kind of what the book is about.
Chris Burkard:
But I think what I really try to address is more of the inner turmoil of wanting the most out of a career, and then trying to explore that, and then just be being beaten down by the world, and being beaten down by the realities of the world. There was a period of time where I felt so disenchanted by surf photography, and just being like, "Well, what am I doing? I'm just traveling around the world documenting people riding waves?" Like it seems so, I don't know, just frivolous.
Chris Burkard:
And I remember going to Nicaragua to document, at the time La Curacao, which was one of the big seven obscenities of the world, this huge trash dump where thousands of people lived, and there was tons of incest and prostitution among young kids, and I was photographing there. And it absolutely, just absolutely tore me apart. I could not hang, I could not handle it. I felt too emotional and too disturbed, and because of that, I almost felt like, in some way, what's wrong with me? This is the greater good, this is you fighting for the greater fight. But knowing myself, and coming to terms with what I was capable of, and I had to come to terms with the fact that that's not something that I can do in a way that's going to really tell the story in a meaningful way, because I can't disassociate that much. I wasn't given that skill set.
Chris Burkard:
And I had to come to terms, almost like a rebirth of the fact that, I glorify the beauty of this world in the hopes that people will go out and see that beauty and that they will spend time in that beauty and protect it and vote for it and advocate for it and be healed by it. And I think that coming to terms with that was a big part of my personal journey. But that happens throughout our career, we question things, we go down random paths, we learn about ourselves. I didn't always have it figured out, and I still don't, question it every day.
Shelby Stanger:
It takes courage to admit when something is beyond our ability, but when you're pursuing a wild idea, you have to push against the boundaries of your comfort zone. When we come back, Chris talks about accepting discomfort and honing his artistic process. He also talks about his approach to imposter syndrome, which is something most creatives have experienced.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2016, Chris gave a TED talk called, The Joy of Surfing in Ice Cold Water. It was about surfing in freezing temperatures and taking photos during a blizzard. Underneath the surface of his lecture, his message was that pursuing wild ideas can be uncomfortable, but sometimes, there's magic in discomfort.
Shelby Stanger:
So I just want to ask you this one thing, it seems like, you did this TED talk, and a lot of what you talked about before was why you need to be uncomfortable to pursue this wild idea.
Chris Burkard:
Yeah, totally.
Shelby Stanger:
And now, it almost seems like you're comfortable being uncomfortable.
Chris Burkard:
It's so funny, my wife and I were walking on the beach on Valentine's Day, and this was our exact subject. And I think it's funny because oftentimes people just see it as like, "Oh yeah, typical male creative needs to be a masochist to feel anything." And I don't think it's that, I think it's so much deeper than that. I feel like, in many ways, it's about creating space for change to occur, to become something better, to become something new. And to create that space, you have to pry, you have to work, you have to open up something. Sometimes that's really challenging.
Chris Burkard:
I heard this phrase, in yoga this morning, of all things, and it really stuck with me because it kind of sums it up. It's like, people always say like, "Oh, enjoy the journey, enjoy the journey." What if there's no end to the journey? And then all you have is the work? You better learn to enjoy the work. And so I've tried to adopt that in every way that I can. Life is a constant process of refining what you know, and what you love. And to, even for a second, think that you just have it figured out, oh my gosh, that's literally the death of any creativity.
Chris Burkard:
For me, we oftentimes talk about this imposter syndrome, and I crave that. I crave the idea that I don't know what I'm doing, and I want to learn from other people. There is no end in sight as a photographer and a creative person, even too, like where you're going to all of a sudden shoot "the" image and then once you've done it, you've done it, and you're done. I think that if there's a question that I get apprehensive about the most, it's when somebody says, "So what do you want to be doing in five years? What is Chris Burkard going to look like in 10 years?" When somebody asks me that, I'm just like, "No," I just shutter.
Chris Burkard:
I love what I'm doing, right now. Like, even this, I love this, the fact that someone even cares enough to hear what I have to say is so special. So I'm like, why don't I just enjoy this, and not be so concerned with the five, 10, 20 years out scenario, and just focus on what's this next three months going to look like? What's this year going to? What goals do I have for this year outside of work? And that's been really helpful. I've really been able to shift in that way.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you decide what you react to? And you say yes to? Versus what you plan and go seek out? Because that's a really hard balance for a creative. You've got to make money, you've got to pay the bills, you now have an overhead with employees. You have a big business. You're not Chris, the surf photographer, living out of his van, okay, eating Ritz crackers and salami anymore. You've got two kids, a wife, and what, seven employees?
Chris Burkard:
So, I guess when I'm looking at my year, a big part of it is like, "Okay, yes, I'm going to have the branded partnerships, the commercial work, the this and that, that stuff is going to be coming towards me." But then, throughout the year, I'm thinking about usually a couple things. What is my environmental or social initiative? Who am I partnering with this year to support, promote? What is the personal project that I'm going to be working on? What is the expedition, the trip, that is going to, I guess, feed my being? And then, beyond that, I'm looking at all of the commercial projects that come up, like the stuff I do for brands, and I'm trying to evaluate each one being like, "Is this something that I love?" And if I love it, and I'm passionate about it, then I'm going to give everything to it. I'm going to make sure it's great.
Chris Burkard:
If I'm not so in love with the idea, then why am I doing it? Am I fearful of not making enough money because I have people I need to support? Am I doing it because I feel like I'm not relevant and I need my name to try to be bolstered up? I try to look at these things from a deeper, more personal perspective that is not just, when you write this out on paper, this looks like a good idea, why would you say no? I'm trying to understand why I want that. And I think, monetarily, I have to really disassociate from the money value because it would only make sense from a human survival perspective to take every single job you can, make as much money as you can, but that's not really the objective of the business model. The business model for me is to be as happy as I can while also supporting all these people that I work with.
Chris Burkard:
So that's been a big part of how I've operated, and I've had to really learn to do that. I read a book by Greg McKeown, called Essentialism, where he talks about, you say no, to say yes, right? By saying no, you're saying yes to what you want. And that was like a huge eye opener for me, I'm like, "Ah, so I've just been saying yes this whole time to everything, and this is my problem." I'm a consummate worker, I'm a self-professed workaholic, and I just come from that background of working really hard, blue collar family, trying to make it work. So this has been an eye opener, and I've been trying to shift the way I do things.
Shelby Stanger:
I love listening to you talk about this because I come from a workaholic family, like massive workaholic. We also come from a family that's addicted to being busy.
Chris Burkard:
Same.
Shelby Stanger:
Busy is placed on a pedestal. And I've fought that almost to the point where, now, if I have too many projects, I physically get sick.
Chris Burkard:
Yeah. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
I know people listening to this podcast, you're like, "Adventure photographer, adventure journalist, dream job." In so many ways, it is the absolute dream job, but, you will bust your ass harder than ever to make it happen.
Chris Burkard:
No, you're absolutely right. I mean, I've had projects where I've literally, literally, pulled hair off of my head because I was losing my hair because of lack of sleep and lack of nutrition, and things like that. It takes an absolute toll on the family, on all these things. So, here's the thing that's challenging, and you can relate to this, to your point, Shelby, is like, there's no school that you go to be like, "Oh, you want to be a good architect? Well, you do this, and then you do this, and you work for a firm." When you're like, yeah, you want to be an adventure photographer? Well, there's no recipe, there's no direct access point. You're just going to absolutely struggle, try to figure it out as you go, make a ton of mistakes along the way, and then, maybe, at some point, you'll learn something and you might actually cultivate a healthy relationship with it.
Chris Burkard:
Because it's so easy, in your line of work and my line of work, to have an unhealthy relationship with the job. Because when it is so much of your own seed of passion, you just want to nurture it, and you can nurture it to death, in some ways. And I've seen it burn a lot of people out, where like, "Oh yeah, that guy who was the super famous, amazing world class photographer who did this, now he does real estate because he can't stand to pick up a camera because of what it means to him."
Shelby Stanger:
Even if you're in love with your work, even if every cell in your body comes alive when you do it, that doesn't necessarily make your job easy. The stressful moments in Chris's career have taught him that he needs to check in with himself. He prays, he does yoga, and he gets a lot of insights from conversations with his wife. These moments of self-reflection have also allowed him to pursue things simply because he likes them. For example, during his travels, Chris fell in love with Iceland, the beauty, the culture, all of it. He now has an apartment there that he uses as a home base for adventures with his family.
Shelby Stanger:
So let's talk about Iceland, why that place? Because in your book, you said when you went there, you're like, "It felt like home instantly, but it was just so crazy wild."
Chris Burkard:
I think that, it's so weird, I mean again, like a random Mexican kid from California growing up, and not in cold weather, and then all of a sudden falling in love with country that's 7,000 miles away, seems really odd. I don't know, I don't know why, but-
Shelby Stanger:
Are you Mexican? Did I not know this?
Chris Burkard:
Yeah, I am. My last name was Gallegos. I'm like over 50%, and then the other percentage is Ashkenazi Jew and Native American. So yeah, it's a weird mix, but.
Shelby Stanger:
Maybe that's why you're so good at connecting with so many different types of people. So what are the people of Iceland like? What attracts you to Iceland?
Chris Burkard:
That's the funniest thing is that they have this saying called theta lelas, which, it means it'll all work out. And it's basically the way that many of them live, because if you think about it, they live in this very, very volatile country where nearly their entire population, at times throughout the last couple thousand years, has been wiped out by volcanoes, and smoke and ash, and huge waves, and et cetera, et cetera. They can't plan for a wedding six months down the road. They don't know if it's going to be snowing or raining or whatever, so they truly live in the moment. They live in the moment. I love that. I love the fact that there's this people that, one of their, I don't mean to rag on anybody, but one of their worst qualities is making long term solutions to problems. They often think in short term solutions, short term solutions.
Chris Burkard:
But it's so beautiful, it's the coolest thing, because they're just always thinking about like, "Okay, well this is what we need to fix. Let's do it right now. The weather's good. Let's get on it." And I love that. And I also appreciate so much the storytelling tradition, sagas. They use sagas as a way to translate their history, their stories, the purpose of why the people have done things, and this very imaginative culture. And that imagination has translated into beautiful films and music and all of these things that they've been able to use as tools to teach and to educate. And I love the music, and I like the food, and the landscape is beautiful, but it's the people that have drawn me in more than anything, I would say.
Shelby Stanger:
There's so many people who want to be photographers. And I think in your book you wrote, there's like 30 professional surf photographers that actually make a living as a surf photographer.
Chris Burkard:
Well, there was, now none. I think the key thing was, back in the day, which was six, seven, eight years ago, there were magazines that would pay your retainer, and there were photographers that did that for a living. And so I think that's awesome, and rad, and something that I absolutely look back at as such a special period of time. But I think that nowadays it's non-existent. But in terms of the question, which is, there's a lot of people who want to be a photographer, and I'm guessing that the other part of that question, because I kind of cut you off, was where do they go? What do they do? How do they start? Is that kind of?
Shelby Stanger:
Just one piece of advice, what's the common advice that you just keep giving photographers?
Chris Burkard:
Yeah, it's really easy. I think the only thing is we constantly are trying to tell ourselves, photographers, that we need to be good at everything. That in order to deliver to a client, or to get them something they need, we need to be good at portraits and landscapes in action and yada yada yada, when really, you're often hired because of your strengths, because of your skill sets, you're really good at X, you're really good at Y. And I think that being a specialist is often overlooked as a very, very good skill set, and that's what I've really honed my craft on is being a specialist, being great at something. And that has paid off, and it doesn't mean you can't learn other traits, but that's where I feel like I developed my greatest skills and skill sets. So yeah, I mean, that's what I would always urge people to do.
Shelby Stanger:
When we talked last time you gave advice on how others could live out their wild ideas. How has your advice on living wildly changed?
Chris Burkard:
I was trying to think about what I said last time, but I think, if anything, wildness means something so different to everybody, and if anything... My wife said this to me the other day, she's like, "You should only do the things that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up." The things that truly get you excited, you need to have one of those things throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, that you dedicate yourself to. I think that there's a lot of truth to that. Like what is it? And I said this in another podcast, like a couple weeks ago, I was like, "I love the idea of being of the fake it till you make it." Like, I fake it till I make it every day. I fake it every single day. Like, I don't know what I'm doing.
Chris Burkard:
I love the concept of being thrust into a situation where I've just got to make it up as I go. Because that's truly what we're doing, we're just figuring it out. And being pushed into a situation, at times, willingly and/or unwillingly, where you maybe feel slightly unprepared or whenever, it's so validating to see yourself rise to the occasion. And so, to me, like that's what it means to live wildly. It also means to live very bravely. And I would say, if anything, those two words should be synonymous, they should be one. And I really like to think of my life as one that, maybe, more than anything was lived bravely.
Shelby Stanger:
In what ways are you inspired to live more bravely? What makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up? How do you cultivate the confidence you need to go after your wild ideas? If you're listening to this, you're brave and you can pursue the things that you love, even if no one else has done them before. When you take on a new adventure, you give yourself an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to rack up some wild stories.
Shelby Stanger:
For Chris, living wildly has involved a few literal, sometimes freezing cold, plunges into the unknown. In the process, he's learned to embrace uncertainty and capture the now. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. I always love chatting with you and hearing your insights on your life and your journey. If you want to learn more about Chris Burkard, you can follow him on Instagram @chrisburkard. You can also check out his website, chrisburkardstudio.com. That's C-H-R-I-S-B-U-R-K-A-R-D studio.com.
Shelby Stanger:
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Amy Fasler and Sylvia Thomas of Puddle Creative, and our senior producer is Chelsea Davis. Our executive producers are Palo Motola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow this show, when you rate it, and when you take time to review the show wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.