Bonus Episode: Eric Masterson Tells his Story of Hawks, Near-Death, and the Best of Humanity

Hey there, I’m Tricia Rose Burt and I want to ask you some questions. What creative work are you called to do but are too afraid to try? Is there a change you want to see happen in your community but you’re waiting for someone else to step up and do it?

Is fear of failure preventing you from starting new things that will make a difference to your life and to others. In this podcast, we look to artists to lead us and show us how they use creativity and courage to make changes in their lives and in the world. Pay close attention because this is no time to be timid.

If you’re a regular listener to the show, you may remember I mentioned at the end of episode 10 with Eric Thomas, where we talked about creativity and hope, that I was going to talk about creativity and kindness. And I was going to do that by telling a story about my husband, Eric Masterson, and his catastrophic hang gliding accident, which he miraculously survived. Then I thought, well, that’s silly. You live with the guy. Why don’t you interview him instead? I still plan to tell my version of the story on a stage at some point

But for this episode, you get to hear his story, actually a couple of his stories. So let me set the stage. Four years ago, on a beautiful day in August 2020, in the height of COVID and with a toxic political environment as a backdrop, Eric hang glided into the side of a mountain. It took three hours and 23 volunteer firefighters to rescue him off the ridge. After four hours at New Hampshire’s Concord Hospital

He was airlifted to Boston’s Mass General Hospital. Basically, he broke the entire right side of his body, some of his left, and had three brain bleeds. It’s a miracle he’s still alive, that he’s still walking, and still Eric because his brain injury was a nine on a scale of 10. But from the moment that Eric hit that mountain and the months of recovery that followed, we both experienced a tidal wave of care and kindness that profoundly changed us. From people we knew to people we didn’t know, from people of faith to people who’d never prayed a day in their life, from people born in this country and those who immigrated here. At Mass General, I kept a list of the different nations that had a hand in his care. It was the ophthalmologist from Nepal, the trauma doctor from Sri Lanka, the nurses from Haiti. And in this time in the United States, when we’re told repeatedly about how divided we are as a nation,

I thought it was important to tell some stories that remind us how kind people really are. And this episode covers more than kindness. We talk about the importance of practicing your craft, of holding our plans loosely, about passion, about seeing the best of humanity, and about risk. My husband is a lot of things and timid is not one of them. When he’s not surviving a near -death experience, Eric’s an expert birder and author of the book, Birdwatching in New Hampshire.

He also wrote and was the subject of the regional Emmy Award -winning documentary, Night Songs, which focuses on bird migration. Night Songs was directed and produced by Liz and Matt Meyer Bolton, the ordained pastors now filmmakers, who were my guests in season one, episode two. And if you didn’t catch that episode, make sure to listen. Eric and I have been married for 25 years, 26, this September. And like every marriage, we’ve been through some stuff.

But as you’ll hear in this episode, mostly we’ve been swimming in a sea of grace. Thanks for joining me.

Well, hey, Eric, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. And we are sitting in our dining room table. Instead of eating dinner, we’re going to be talking. OK, so I want you to tell my listeners how you first got excited about birds. my gosh. Well, it’s actually an easy story because I was 11 years old. I have a notebook. So I grew up birding before the digital age. And so everyone, instead of taking, I mean, this is not only before the digital age, it’s before

folks really had cameras. That makes me sound really old. But we used to go in the field with notebooks and pencils to draw birds. And so I have a notebook that has that day written, first page in this notebook. And it was in 1981 and a friend of the family took me out birding in County Wicklow in Ireland. And he showed me three species of birds, a pied wagtail, a field fair, which is kind of like an American robin, and a tree creeper

which is like the brown creeper we have here. And I was like, what, you mean there’s different types and they have different stories? And I guess the analogy to kids collecting baseball cards may be apt, but I was just hooked from that day when I was 11. So that’s how I got into it. So talk about how you were drawing in the field. I mean, I know they had cameras. It’s not like we didn’t have cameras. But we did. They just weren’t using them. Well, I also grew up in Ireland in the early 80s was not a wealthy country. So I didn’t have a camera.

And a lot of my friends didn’t. And if we did, they were early cameras and would, of course it was all film. There’s a large part of birding that’s around identification. You you have 800 and odd species have been seen in the U S that occur in the U S, you know, a similar number occur in Europe, in Western Europe on an annual basis, well, not an annual basis, but if you pick up a field guide to the birds of Europe, it’s about 800, 700, 800 species. And so that’s a lot to sort out to know. You’re not just dealing with 800 species, you’re dealing with juvenile plumages. Some birds take four years to mature. So it’s first year of plumage, second year of plumage, third year, male, female. There’s a lot of data involved in being a birder and figuring out what species you’re looking at, what time of year they’re supposed to be where you are, et cetera, et cetera. And so one of the ways to do that, to get really good really quickly was to study. And one of the great ways of studying is to actually draw because it forces you to look at things really closely and make notes. One of the really interesting things is everyone has the capacity to become quite a good artist. Some of my early drawings are terrible, but I just looked, I kept all those notebooks, they’re some of my most valuable possessions, and I get an awful lot better. I never become the 1%, the guys who illustrate field guides. That’s kind of like something you’re born with. But everyone has the ability to get to a certain place. And so that’s what I use notebooks for. Now I’ve seen those notebooks and I’ve seen you get better. They’re beautiful. Okay. So when did you start getting fascinated with migration? Wow. So my dad who’s deceased now these 10 years, used to tell me that I really chafed against any sort of stricture, that I really, you know, I’d refuse when I was given a directive, I’d refuse. And then I’d think about it and 10 minutes later I’d say, okay, I’ll do that. The explanation was that I really chafed under any sort of control.

And so another way of saying that is I really desire freedom as a person in every expression of what that word means. And so I look at birds and their ability to be transnational, to basically pick up and go to Brazil when they want. When they want happens to be winter, you know, they leave in the fall, they go south. But from the perspective of a human who has to get up at a particular time every day, report into a job and has a very organized life, just this idea that they pick up and go somewhere else, I just found that so enchanting. So that’s what got me into it. Because you’re fascinated with broad-winged hawks, right? And say why you’re fascinated with broad-winged hawks. I was fascinated. So I just love the whole concept of migration. I just love it. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a hummingbird or a hawk. But most migrant birds, and most birds in New Hampshire, most birds in Ireland, move to some degree between winter and summer. There’s very few birds that you can say there’s not some element of movement in their annual life cycle. But a lot of birds that move, especially long distance migrants, do so at night. And they’re not only nocturnal, very often they’re smaller species, they’re migrating at altitude. Maybe they’re migrating over, at least partially over the ocean. And so it’s very hard to see. This really incredible thing that means so much to me, it’s really hard to see. hawks, especially broad -winged hawks, any migrant hawk in America migrates during the day. And so there’s few other examples but I think hawks offer the best example. It’s an opportunity to see into this cool world a phenomenon that’s otherwise invisible to the naked eye because hawks migrate during the day, they migrate at an altitude and in big enough numbers that if you go to these known hawk watch sites you can see this thing called migration that is otherwise invisible.

Talk about how many hawks can fly by in New Hampshire, and then how many will end up flying by in Costa Rica. So it’s like a snowball going downhill. And when the snowball starts at the top of the hill, there’s not a lot of snow and it’s a small snowball. And it’s the same with hawks. As the hawks empty out of the U .S., they’re, know, Broad-winged hawks for example, it’s the one we’re talking about. They basically leave during the month of September and specifically in the northeast, they leave during the kind of middle two weeks in September. And so as they, as that snowball moves down through the continent along the Appalachians, it picks up more birds as it goes. And so in a, on a big day in New Hampshire, you could see two, 3000 birds in a single day. If you know how to, you know, there’s, there’s a timeline where they move and then a lot of it depends within that timeline on the particular weather conditions. And so if you know how to read the weather, you can pick the right day and go up and have a good day with maybe two, one, two, 3000 hawks on a really good day. If you find yourself down in Corpus Christi, you you’d be looking at a big day of a hundred thousand. And when you go down to Veracruz or further south in Costa Rica, big days of several hundred thousand. But don’t they also get like up to the millions at some point? Or did I make that up? Veracruz is probably the best known pinch point in their migratory journey and they have an annual, their numbers are something like four million. They can be four million in the course of a season. And a season can be August through November, a little bit later. Okay. So you were tossing around ideas about different birding projects you wanted to do. And you floated the idea to me that you wanted to ride your bike from New Hampshire to Central America following the path of the broad-winged hawk. And you wanted to do it in 2016. And I tried every way I could to talk you out of that idea. And then you said to me, Tricia, if I don’t do this, it’s death by a thousand cuts, which is something that I could understand given what I have done in my world. So I was kind of like, okay, I guess we’re doing this. And then remember you gave a talk at Amos Fortune and announced in August of 2015 to a crowd of 200 people that you were indeed doing this. So it was a go. Yeah. So I announced it to Amos Fortune because… And just so my listeners know, Amos Fortune is a speaking series that happens here in the Monadnock region where we live in New Hampshire. And Eric was one of the featured speakers. And what were you talking about that night anyway? I was talking about hawk migration. you were talking about hawk migration? Okay. Because I used to — when I worked at Audubon I had published a book on birdwatching in New Hampshire by that stage and so I was well known. I’d been on any NHPR and I had managed the the hawk watch project at Pack Monadnock for for New Hampshire Audubon and so I can’t remember exactly I think I was asked just to speak about hawk migration and I had been thinking I need to do this because there’s a guy in where I work at the Harris Center who says I had a midlife crisis and he actually might be correct but I think it’s a pretty, it’s way better than a red Ferrari. You know, if it was midlife crisis, so be it. But I really wanted to do this again, my love of migration and so forth. And so the opportunity would pass I knew unless I held myself accountable and the way to do that was to announce it, to shame myself in front of 200 people. And so that’s what that was, that was about. And so I basically spent the year between that announcement and September 6th, 2016 raising money because it was a book project, buying all of the equipment I would need and doing all the research I would need to do. Then on September 6th, quite literally, no, I mean, this is again, this, I love this story because it’s exactly what, with the exception of the, you know I’ll anthropomorphize a little bit, but it’s essentially no different. One day I got up, I had my breakfast, I kissed my wife and I left the door went to South America and that’s what the hawks do. It’s really, really super cool. Although I will also say that because we live in a small town in New Hampshire, the small town in New Hampshire was on the side of the road, waving you out of town and you had a police escort and there were people standing out and holding signs and it was all — the hawks don’t get that, but you did. Yeah. And so you commenced on a six and a half month journey, 6 ,000 miles, six and a half months. One of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show are a couple of reasons. You know, we’re in this political climate right now where a lot of the animosity that’s happening in this country is being manufactured as if, you know, we’re all against each other and at each other’s throats, whatever. And you had experiences on that trip, also during a presidential election, 2016, that cycle, you had experiences that were, that completely negated and still negate, you know, this idea that we’re very divided. Tell the story about staying at the hotel. So this was, yeah, I’ll never forget this guy. And I have a whole box of notes and so I know the fellow’s name. I have it written down, but I can’t remember off the top of my head. But I think it was Covington, Virginia, I think was the name of the town. And so the way I was going, again, just part of the trip, just, like a hawk doesn’t know what branch it’s going to be sleeping on every night. And I literally, as I traveled, had no idea where I’d be staying every night. And let’s, we need to interject this. You were following four hawks that were tagged, three hawks that were tagged with satellite transmitters. Yeah. Okay. So you were, you, you were, that really dictated your route is where those hawks went. That’s where you went. Yeah. So I was following these hawks to, to the, I couldn’t fly south, at least at that stage, I thought I couldn’t fly south. And so I wanted do their journey in as close a fashion as possible. And so I thought about doing it on a motorbike and that just didn’t fit with me. It was an internal combustion engine, it’s human technology. What’s the best way? I can’t fly south, I can walk, it’s gonna take forever. So if I do it under my own energy, I figured the best closest way possible will be to cycle. that’s why I decided to cycle. And so I wouldn’t, just like hawks don’t know where they’re staying every night, I didn’t know where I’d be staying every night. I would, you know Five o ‘clock six o ‘clock would start to get dark. I’d look look see what the map see where the nearest town was I’m following the hawks route. They’re dropping points every day as they go south and I’m to follow following their breadcrumb trail and I stay in the nearest hotel or campsite or free camp. I had a tent with me and so I was in this night I was going to wind up in Covington, Virginia and I found this motel this cheap motel and I pulled in and I wish I I again I have the fellows name written down It was an Indian fellow owned this motel in Covington. I pulled in and I was on my bike, which kind of, you know it’s not like rare to be, to be cycling long distance in the U S but it’s not a common endeavor. A lot of the cyclists you see on the roads are day cyclists. So you can tell the long distance cyclists are a breed apart. They’ve heavily loaded up bikes. And so it sets you apart a little bit. I think the owner asked me a few questions and I told him what I was doing. And so he, he took my money and showed me to my room and a couple of minutes later there was a knock on my hotel room door and it was the owner and he said I’d like you to come back to the office and so he brought me back to the office and he took my card and he recharged my card with the the fee that he and this was a guy from India he told me a story later he was an immigrant from India he arrived in the country via New Jersey Wisconsin, I think it was, and then wound up in Virginia. So he recharged my card, refunded my card with the price of the night. And he then bought me breakfast the next morning. And then he’s, he didn’t quite understand what I was doing because the third thing he offered showed, showed, showed this misunderstanding. It was, it was a beautiful offer, but he offered to put my bike in his car and drive me to my next destination and I was just blown away. This, this person I had never met before. when you don’t know what you’re going to experience every night, it doesn’t matter, you know, your skin color, your background or your ethnicity, just these random acts of kindness. So I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that he was Indian. It’s just to do with this random act of kindness from a, from a total stranger who I’d who I’d never met before and would probably never meet again. It was just, these things happened again and again and again. It was remarkable. So he basically gave you a free night to stay. Breakfast the next morning and then asked me, offered to drive me on my journey South, which I declined that. I took him on the breakfast and had the free night. And tell about the gentleman in Texas who also was trying to… Yeah. Yeah. So this was another, and these things, these sort of random acts of kindness happened all the time. And as Trish said, this was right during 2016 election. I was cycling down through the Appalachians, which is the route the hawks take. And so it was just the you know, it was, was Clinton versus Trump and there were signs everywhere. I was actually, I had left September 6th and the election was November. And so it was just right in the middle of that. And you know, it was the, the, the political atmosphere was pretty poisonous. So at, at that time, all of this, these random acts of kindness were set against that. It was just remarkable. So in Texas, I was standing at the side of the road because I was trying to tell my story again, for the purposes of writing a book, I was trying to get as much data as possible to be able to tell the hawks journey through, you know, crazy guy on a bicycle. And so I’d stopped at this field in Texas. There was a flooded field, a lot of, a lot of shorebirds in the field, some raptors. And I was, I was looking at the birds with my binoculars and this fellow pulls up on a white truck and he, he gets out, his name was Kevin. I can remember his name and he gets out of his truck and he, we chatted for a little bit. I told him what I was doing. I told him where I was going. At that stage, I was, I was going, I didn’t know where I’d end up, but I was going to South America. Again, like the Indian fellow in Covington, he didn’t quite understand…what I was, I guess there was a, there was some misunderstanding there again, which is that I guess the take home message here is just this random act of kindness. He offered to put my bike — cause I think there was a perception because I was cycling that I couldn’t afford to drive. So if you have a bike, it’s cause you can’t afford a car. If you have a car, it’s cause you can’t afford a plane. And so he saw me on my bike and figured this guy must, must be short of dollars, so to speak. And so he offered to put my bike in his truck and drive me to an ATM and get me some money. And just like that, he was going to get me some, he was going to, he was going to take money out of his bank and give it to me, to help me on my way. I just, again, it doesn’t matter that it was, it was, it was, misplaced because I was not the person he thought I was. It was just a random act. A guy just driving down the road, saw me at the side of the road and, and just stopped and, wanted to help just from remarkable. So many instances like these. So while you were in Texas, you got exposed to hang gliding. Yes. So talk about that experience while you were in Texas. Yeah. So I was passing through, Alabama, I think it was, and I stayed at a house of a sister -in -law, some relation to a friend of ours in New Hampshire. And she said she knew this hang glider pilot. And I was explaining how these hawks fly. So essentially broad -winged hawks, they’re like the Prius of the bird world. Studies of bird flight that basically estimate that powered flight and powered flight is a bird flapping its wings, uses something like 30 times more energy than a bird that just soars. So broad -winged hawks soar. They rarely flap. They catch thermals. They glide down, catch another thermal, glide down. And they try and do that to the extent possible all the way south. Now, obviously, there’s days where there’s no thermals, and there’s regions where there’s fewer thermals. But they try to do that to the extent possible. And that’s why you could ride your bike, because they’re always on land. They never cross over water. Yeah. So a lot of birds might get to the coast and migrate out over the Gulf. And broad -winged hawks don’t. They follow the Gulf all the way around because they need to be over land to catch thermals. And so I was explaining this to this lady I was staying with in Alabama. And so she said, you know, that’s a friend of mine is a hang glider pilot and you should talk to him. So anyway, I did, long story short, he introduced me to this, he said, you’re going to be passing close to a school in Texas, that it’s a hang gliding school in Texas. You’re to be passing really close. And so I just decided, you know, it’s part of the research. And so I went out to take a, to spend a day at this school to see what I could find out. And so they took me up on a tandem flight. The way hang gliding works is that you have to be certified to fly, you know, it would be suicide to go up on your own without any proper training. So you go up, as a novice, you go up in a tandem. And so they took me up and I had a half hour flight and I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool. I guess a penny dropped and I just let that penny rest in the back of my mind while I cycled south on the rest of my journey. So you get to, it was Panama City. You got back in March. We went five and a half months without seeing each other, which was pretty intense. It was nice to see you when you came back home. And then you immediately started hang gliding because as luck would have it, there is a school an hour from our home. The word luck is in quotes, air quotes here is in quotes. You hang glided, hang glided whatever the past tense is for how many years? Four. So what was your plan with the hang gliding? I don’t know, other than, you know, I have a pretty strong, my belief in a higher power has strengthened over the course of last 10 years and so when you come back from this, this felt, this journey felt elemental to who I was and to this part of my life. And so I get back and the only hang gliding school in New England is an hour from my house. And I think that’s too that’s a really wacky coincidence. There’s very, I mean, the sport, it’s, essentially a dying sport because paragliding, which is hang gliding, except using something that looks a little bit like a parachute. Paragliding is kind of displacing it in the same way that snowboarding displaced skiing. So it’s a sport that’s struggling to survive. So there’s very few places you can learn. There’s this school an hour from the house. And so I thought, well, I got to follow this. So I didn’t know what I was going to do. I guess I kind of in the back of my mind, I knew there was no — well, let me start up again. I knew there was no way I could hang glide following broad-winged hawks as far as South America. I just knew that but I say that intellectually and in the back of my mind, there’s a weevil digging its way into my brain thinking maybe if, maybe if, maybe if. And even now at the age of 57 with everything that’s happened, that weevil is mostly gone, but it’s still what if, maybe if. And so I guess I did have some idea that I could do something that wild dreamer in me would think maybe I can do the whole thing. And then the realistic side of my mind would tell me, well, maybe I can do a short cross -country trip just to, you know. So you were gunning to do… I wanted to do hang gliding from A to B, to do a cross -country hang gliding trip, to get a sense of what that aspect of the hawks’ journey was like. Okay. And so you basically wanted to fly with the hawks. Yeah. I wanted to get up in the thermal and to get distance, find another thermal and get distance, to basically do what the hawks were doing. If I could do it across the state line, great. If I could do it across several state lines, even better. If I could do it to South America, I would probably wind up in the cover of National Geographic, but I didn’t think that was going to happen. 

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Okay, so what happened on August 9th? What happens that day? Gosh, I forgot. My whole story is tied to presidential elections. How weird is that? Well, I mean, you have this backdrop of, again, this manufactured animosity, this poisonous environment that’s getting cultivated, and your experiences are very different than…You know, you’re, you’re experiencing kindness and the media is saying everybody hates each other. So I was practicing the sport of hang gliding obsessively for four years, basically every moment. Birding took a backseat and birding is my first true love and it took a backseat every, every, because the hang gliding is a summer sports spring through fall. And, I, yeah, I was just doing it all the time and I can second that. And so the way you progress in hang gliding, it operates under an FAA waiver. And so there’s a national organization that they don’t provide the training, but they establish standards. And so you have to get trained to a standard to get your first rating. And there’s ratings up to, there’s one, two, three, four, and five ratings. And so to be able to fly anywhere. To be a pilot. To be a pilot, yeah. To be able to fly at all of the sites at the, using the best equipment you have to be rated 4. And I was, I had gotten to three and I was working on getting my fourth rating. It’s, it’s an advanced rating. And so I was pretty close. And one thing I’ll say about hang gliding is it’s a Zen sport. You have to fly the day, you have to fly the weather. And so you have to be prepared to say, you know, today’s not a good day. I’m going to go home. And so any ulterior motive, any ulterior agenda like following birds that you have is kind of, it doesn’t work with the sport. And so I had planned out in my mind and I, you know, I knew the sport, knew the weather, I knew intellectually what I just said, that you have to fly the day, but I had this other thing pulling at me. And so I had planned, I had driven the route I wanted to fly beforehand. I had driven from the house where we live in Hancock to the coast, to New Hampshire’s coast. I had found, so essentially the way it would work is I’d catch a thermal. In New England, you can get a thermal up to five, 6 ,000 feet, 7 ,000 feet, maybe 10 on a really good day. And so on my hang glider, that would give me, I had just bought a new hang glider that would give me 10 ,000, well, 5 ,000, 6 ,000 feet would give me about a 10 mile glide. And so I was finding landing suitable, because the problem in New Hampshire, is you have to be able to find a place to land. It’s no problem in Arizona or New Mexico, where there’s a lot of open fields, but in New Hampshire where the state is 70 % forested, it’s a problem. So I had found, I’d driven the route and I’d found fields that would work every 10 miles so that if I got to 5 ,000 feet, I could head out knowing I wouldn’t have a problem landing. And so already there’s a problem there with hang gliding because again, I’m not, I know I’m supposed to be flying the day, but I have this other thing pulling at me. And so I just know that now, given what happened. So I took off on August, what? August 9th. August 9th, 2020. It was a site about five miles from the house, Hedgehog Ridge, owned by the Forest Society on the Hillsborough Deering Line. And immediately upon takeoff, I hit a really rough patch of air. It was like a rogue thermal, which stalled my hang glider. And when you have a stalled aircraft, the aircraft…dives to gain airspeed so it can fly again. And that’s fine if you’re a thousand feet. It’s not fine if you’re close to the ground. I dove — when you’re in a hang glider, you’re, you’re hanging prone head first. I dove head first into a cliff at about 30 miles an hour. And I broke my neck, broke my back, broke my arm, broke my leg, broke my hand, broke my foot, broke three ribs, broke my clavicle and had three brain bleeds and a punctured lung. I think that’s, I think that’s everything. I think you, and you break your left hand. A little bone in your left hand just for kicks. Talk about that experience as far as, because you’re obviously, you’re a very self -sufficient guy. You rode by yourself from New Hampshire to Central America. Not a lot of people are going to do that. I would tell people that you were doing that and they’re like by himself. I’m like, yes, by himself. And so you’re very self -sufficient. And then suddenly you’re in a place where you are relying on so many people to take care of you. So I know you don’t remember much of anything of Mass General because you just don’t. For our listeners, you were taken from the mountain to Concord Emergency Hospital. The ER doctor told me our surgeons won’t touch him. And so you were medevaced to Mass General Hospital, who put you back together. They had to reconstruct your spine. Where’s all your titanium now? All the right side of my body. OK. And your back. And my back, So it’s a miracle he’s walking. It’s a miracle he’s alive. It’s a miracle that you’re still Eric. But talk about what it felt like to suddenly go from being completely self -sufficient to when you’re at Spaulding is when you’re starting to remember, Spaulding rehab. You can start remembering some things there. What did it feel like to go from being that self -sufficient to having people take care of everything? Well, it’s hard. I mean, I’m sure folks in New England, Yankees will understand this because it’s the Yankee mentality. And I’m not a Yankee, I’m Irish, but the same mentality where you want to take after your, look after yourself. And so I’ve never really, I’m capable, smart and fairly strong. And so I’ve never really found myself in a position. Well, this is a good example. I actually, this will give you an idea. I’m not saying hang gliding is a dangerous sport, but perhaps I should because this was my second accident. My first accident was two years prior where I, a bad break, I broke my arm, flying down in a Wellfleet and it was a bad break. had to be repaired with metal with surgery and they, they, the surgeons in, in Dartmouth Hitchcock, put in a metal plate, but I still went back out. But the point I’m can I just say I am the best wife ever? You the best wife. You are. Yeah. So again, maybe I wasn’t the person who should have been doing this sport, but anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The point I’m making is when I broke my arm in Wellfleet, I had the dog with me, Rusty, and I drove myself home from Wellfleet. I drove myself to the ER. They basically gave me a temporary splint. They x -rayed me, said, your arm’s broken, you need surgery. They gave me, I told them I was driving, so I guess what they gave me was okay to drive. But anyway, I drove home from the Cape to Southwest New Hampshire, it’s like a four hour drive. And so that’s kind of who I am. I just need to be, you know, I need to be able to take care of myself. And I had the dog in the car. And so it was difficult to be completely, beholden to someone else like that was difficult, but when I can remember there’s an incredibly few moments where I have vague memory so I was on the cliff and I knew I knew I knew something was up. I couldn’t put together you know what had happened had I crashed or but I was in pain on the cliff and the guy who was looking after me Sam I asked Sam would he move me to make me more comfortable and he said he wouldn’t do that. So already there I’m asking for help and I was just in such bad shape that I guess  I didn’t have the mental capacity to process the question you’re asking me. I mean, over the course of my recovery in Mass General and Spaulding Rehab, where I was for a month, I mentioned earlier that my belief in a higher power is a lot stronger now. And it’s partly because of my experience in those places. I don’t think this will make sense to anyone who hasn’t experienced the sort of experience, the sort of…cataclysmic event that I’ve experienced, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. So tell us why. Because well, when I was hang gliding, I was frantic. I was frantic. I wanted to do this thing which seemed unachievable and I was always trying to second guess the weather and trying to be one — it was an incredibly difficult thing that I was trying to do and I just was forcing myself. I hold myself to a high standard and I was trying to attain the yet unattainable and I guess it introduced a level of panic and franticness into my life and so there was a yarning that, you know, an itch that could never be scratched. And so I had this accident and it just removed that equation. So I’m much calmer now. I live in incredible gratitude, which I don’t think I lived in to the degree I do now. I don’t think I lived there beforehand. I have amazing gratitude for the fact, cause I really should be dead. And the surgeon who put my spine back together, one of the top spinal surgeons in the world said, I think he was mystified that he was able to repair my spine and that I was able to walk. And today you wouldn’t even know I had an accident if you saw me walking. So I live in incredible gratitude. That freedom that I talked about at the top of the show, the thing that I love about migration, I’ve experienced that, but I didn’t need to fly to South America. The freedom, it’s an internal job and I was looking for it outside. So it’s just been a profoundly enriching experience. It sounds corny because I had to die to get there, but there you have it. Well, fortunately you didn’t die to get there, but you did scare those of us who love you. Almost die, I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah. There’s a couple of things that I find really interesting. When you’re talking about, you had an idea about what you wanted to do and you were forcing it. And for you, it ended up in cataclysmic crash. For others of us, we may be forcing something and it’s a different kind of crash. It’s either our creative project doesn’t work or a relationship doesn’t work. I mean, it’s just interesting to me that parallel between just holding things loosely in our lives and not trying to force solutions or force things to go a way — I mean, that’s exactly the creative process. You can’t force it. You just have be guided and read it and not try to force that end result. So there’s sort of some parallels here. I mean, unfortunately for you, it was what it was. I don’t regret it. I regret the anguish I caused you. I have two regrets. One, I regret the anguish that I caused you because no one deserves that. And one of the lessons that’s come out of this is I’m not an island, that I’m answerable. My actions have consequences and so I’m perfectly, you know, I’m aligned with that. The second regret I have is that I can’t hang glide anymore because I absolutely loved it. It was an incredible experience. you know, when I look back at the first regret, that makes saying no to the second hang gliding makes it much easier because I don’t have the right to make those decisions for, I can make them for myself, but not for other people. I remember one time sitting on the floor of the hotel room because we had…We were just bombarded with so much kindness, so much kindness from everywhere. I like to always say, since it was during the presidential election cycle, that we enjoyed bipartisan support during your event. But I can remember sitting on the hotel room floor and thanking God for the experience because there was just so much amazing love and kindness that got poured out to us. It was, I don’t want to do it again, but it was that thin place. That thin place, it was that thin place for both of us. You’ve always been, you’re a risk taker. How do you feel about it now? I mean, name of the show is No Time to Be Timid. We talk a lot about not being timid and taking risks and doing those things that you love and stepping into things that may be hard. How do you feel about risk now? Well, the biggest change, mean, yeah, I’ve always been comfortable with physical risk. I guess there’s a few things that have changed. First off, the strong belief in a higher power really insulates me from, in my mind, not from the consequences, but I don’t fear dying. I really don’t. And so I don’t want I don’t fear dying in the context of the hereafter. I have no idea what lies hereafter, but I just have a sense that there’s something. I just don’t know what it is. And so when my number’s up, my number’s up  have a changed relationship to risk now because I saw firsthand the degree risk can play with other people’s lives. My desire for risk or my appetite for risk can affect other people’s lives. So I really understand that now. So to that degree, to that extent, my appetite for risk has changed because now I look at the effect it’s going to have in a wider circle than just me. So that’s changed. But I’m still very comfortable taking risks as long as there’s a rationale for it. So if it’s just to get an endorphin rush, no. But if it’s in service to something that I think is important, like this book that I’m trying to write, then I think it has a place, but it has to be in context and well thought out. There’s also, you now have a physical limitation you didn’t have before because your neck is still broken. Yes. Apparently you can go through life with a stable fracture, which you have. And so how does that play into your choices too? That’s really interesting you should ask that because I think my relationship to my broken neck is, is answering your question through that is perhaps the best way to get to the answer. So I have this broken neck and I, guess some people might, some people’s response to that might be to never leave the house, to move to a state where there’s no ice in the winter, to live in fear. And I’m just as far from that as, I can imagine. I, I, I’m as active as, I mean, like I say, you, you can’t physically see any, any, for such a devastating accident, you can’t see anything wrong with me now. I’ve made it more or less full recovery. And you can’t see the fact that I have a broken neck. And so you know, I live my life in a way that you wouldn’t know I had a broken neck. I guess if I was walking around very tentatively and if I was afraid to walk downstairs, then you might say, there’s something up with that guy. But I don’t have any external manifestations of someone who has a handicap, including the one that you can’t see, which is this broken neck. So I live my life fully. And if something happens, I just, there’s no other way to say it. I live my life fully. And if, you know, if as long as I’m trying to do the right thing, trying to live my life the way here, I’ll say it, the way God wants me to live it. You’re allowed to say God, nothing’s going to happen to you. Yeah. Then, you know, then I’ll have done my best. And so I have no regrets about that. Does that make sense? Yeah. I have a couple of things I want to ask you. One, do you, do you remember a surprising act of kindness that happened during your recovery? It all stood out. I started to get my, consciousness back in Spaulding Rehab. I started to, you know, really, I knew what was going on while I was there. And the culture was sort of, and the culture of kindness in that place. I mean, these people may get paid, but you, you don’t pay someone to be the way these people were. This comes from somewhere deep inside them, the kindest people I’ve ever met, and so to be in hospital and in a rehab facility for as long as I was and to experience that was, you called it, the thin place. I completely agree. I felt like I was holding a flickering candle and trying to guard that flame with my life. It was an incredible experience, so one of the most profound experiences of my life. So it was just kindness all the way. I mean, all the staff were incredibly kind. I mean, Sam with me on the mountain was incredibly kind to take care of me for the poor man, I think I am I traumatized him and he gave up hang gliding shortly after that. Well, just just to be clear, he held your head still my head for for an hour and a half while they waited for the paramedics to come and get you. Where did you draw your strength from during all of your healing? You. Oh, that’s very sweet. Yes, you and a developing relationship to a higher power. But you were incredible. And I also had a sea of people lifting me up. Yes, yeah. Because this was during COVID. And so it really was just you and me because it was during COVID. So we couldn’t have loads of people around us. I think you’ve kind of answered this, but if you have anything more, how did it shift your worldview? How did the accident shift your worldview?

Well, you you talked about the toxicity earlier of the time we live in. I fall prey to the same toxic impulses because I, you know, I go on the same Facebook and I read the same newspapers and I struggle with, I mean, I really, really hate the political climate we’re in. I hate it. And so it’s not that I don’t go there anymore, but I’m more aware of the fact that I go there now and I’m more aware of the fact because there were people from both sides of the aisle who just took care of me. And so I’m a more empathetic person now. I just hope I go there less and I hope I pull myself up more frequently. We did see the best of humanity. I mean, there were 23 volunteer firefighters who got you off the mountain. Nobody stopped and said, I’m sorry, who are you voting for before I help you? It was really a wonderful, you know, if you’re going to do that, we had, as you said, the only bad thing that happened that day is you crashed into the mountain and then everything that happened after that was good. Okay. I’m going to ask you the same question I ask all of my guests. What is the thing that’s scaring you right now and what do need courage for? Writing this book. So, and I mean this sincerely. It was easier to cycle 6 ,000 miles to the Panama Canal. It was easier to take up a new sport and four years later, almost kill myself. It was easier to do those things than to write this book for whatever reason. I don’t know. I guess it’s just, there’s something about it that is scaring the hell out of me. So that’s, does that answer? Yeah. And so we’re all just going to be lifting you up so you can write the story, because it’s an incredible story. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the show. And thank you for being so supportive of me when I make it. I mean, honestly, a round of applause to you for going with me through every episode. Well, thank you. And to everyone listening, two people had this accident. And I think to a degree, I had the easier run of it. So thanks, Trish. I love you. You too.

Well, as you can tell, this marriage has been a lot of things and boring has not been one of them. I’m so grateful to still have Eric. And on this fourth anniversary of his accident, we want to thank again all the volunteer first responders from Deering, Hillsboro, and Henniker, New Hampshire, and the folks at Concord Hospital who assessed his injuries and then decided Mass General was the best place for him. We’re forever gratefulto everyone at Mass General, from his surgeons, especially Dr. John Shin and Dr. Ian Valerio, who literally put him back together, to the maintenance man who saw me collapsed on the floor, exhausted, and without saying a word, got me a chair to sit on. The culture of kindness was amazing. And Spaulding Rehab? Well, it’s just filled with angels. If you want to learn more about Eric, you can go to his website, ericmasterson .com. That’s Eric with a C. You can follow him on Facebook @ericmasterson and on Instagram @bellcurvebirding. Send him a message of courage so he can start writing that book. And I’ll post the link to the documentary Night Songs in the show notes. You don’t want to miss that.

If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s because you care about creativity and courage too. And believe like I do that this is no time to be timid. This year, I’m taking the no time to be timid message on the road and maybe you’re part of the world needs to hear it. If you’re looking to awaken boldness and creativity in your company or organization, I’d love to come speak to you. Let’s have a conversation. Please reach out to me at booking at triciaroseburt.com.

So this wraps up season three. Thank you so much for joining us. And we’d love to hear what you thought about the season and what else you might like to hear in the show. So please reach out to us at podcast@triciaroseburt.com That’s podcast@triciaroseburt.com And remember, if you haven’t downloaded a copy of your manifesto yet, please do so at triciaroseburt.com/manifesto you can stay inspired.

We’re working on several projects right now, including an episode on Eric’s and my upcoming trip walking the Camino, something we are so grateful we can do. So we don’t have a drop date yet for season four, but make sure to subscribe to the show so you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, please be kind to everyone out there. Most people are wonderful. We’ve seen it firsthand. And remember, this is no time to be timid.

No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch. And our theme music is Twist and Turns by the Paul Dunlea Group. If you like what you hear, please spread the word, subscribe to the show and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of I Will Be Good Productions.