Darien Fernandez and Billy Mason

[00:01] BILLY MASON: And good afternoon. My name is Billy Mason. I am the upper Rio Grande conservation program manager for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps. I'm 59 and a half years old. Today is March 20, 2023, and I'm in Taos, New Mexico. I'm here today interviewing my coworker, Darien who also happens to be my ski partner.

[00:20] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: And good afternoon as well. My name is Darien Fernandez. I am 41 and a half years old. Today is March 20, 2023, also in towns, New Mexico. And I'm interviewing Billy Mason, who is a co worker and becoming a friend. The more I get to know him. And we look forward to kicking this off. So, Billy, I've got a question for you.

[00:42] BILLY MASON: Yeah.

[00:43] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: You grew up largely in southern Colorado, Telluride. You've also spent some time in Durango. These are very happening, cool mountain towns kind of similar to Taos, right. Going back with a lot of the same challenges that cool communities across the country are facing with lack of affordable housing, recreation activities that tend to target people from out of town versus locals. And you've probably seen a lot of that unchecked growth in Telluride and Durango through the lens of how you work in conservation and maybe with your insight growing up in some of those more popular communities. What can Taos learn from Telluride, from Durango about how to balance recreation, how to balance conservation, how to balance growth?

[01:40] BILLY MASON: Yeah, that's a great question. First I say is Taos is unique. It's its own self. It's similar to Telluride and Durango, but it has its own unique characteristics that are really beautiful. It's very enchanted. In hindsight, I would say some of the great things that came out of our work in Telluride and Durango was that we built community by bringing people together to protect and conserve our environment. By introducing each other to this environment, we are able to actually build our community stronger as a group.

[02:18] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Can you go into detail about some of the work that you did in Telluride back in the day or Durango back in the day?

[02:24] BILLY MASON: Yeah, I'm so proud of, of my community and, you know, and what we were able to do. And I, one of the things in Telluride is Telluride is the only historically preserved town in the state of Colorado. The entire town. Other towns like Georgetown and Vail and Aspen all have a street. But Telluride is historically preserved. And when Telluride was going through this transition, there was a lot of folks that we all came together and we all had this, this common dream for our community and what happened was there's horseshoe Telluride sits in like, a horseshoe valley, and there's about a three mile approach through this beautiful, pristine valley to reach the town at the very end. And there was a gentleman that came to our town and wanted to develop the entire valley floor, about 500 acres. And all of us thought, wow, last thing we wanted to do is become like another mega resort, right overbuilt, where, you know, it was a hard place to live. It wasn't a very fun place to live anymore. Maybe our environment would be damaged. So we were really concerned. And so we came together as a town, and we approached the Smithsonian Institute. We asked the scientists, say, can you find something out in that valley that needs to be saved? And we took this approach where we all the above. Then we went and we said, you know, this is a historically preserved town, and if we built this mega resort next to it, we're going to lose the character of our town. So we collected people, we collected funding. We worked for about three years, and eventually we ended up in court, got a condemnation, and we were awarded, and we had to raise $50 million within three years with a town of 2000, which seems impossible, but the truth is, is that we, we brought people in from the outside. We welcomed the visitors that the new guests that came to town, the new people that arrived in town, and instead of trying to push them away and become an enemy, we said, hey, would you like to be part of our community and create a sense of ownership in the community? And it was actually by embracing the people that came to our town and working with the people in the town as a community that we were able to preserve Telluride as it is today. So that was one of the great, great projects when I was a director of the Sheet Mountain alliance that we worked on.

[04:49] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: And how does that tie into your role now as a program manager with Rocky Mountain Youth Corps? And maybe you can tell a little bit about Rocky Mountain Youth Corps. Yeah.

[04:58] BILLY MASON: So Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, what an incredible program. So our natural environment is very important, sacred to us. And I know just in the short time I've been in Taos, how sacred and important it is to this community. Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, what it does is it's a vehicle that allows the community to come together to protect and conserve our natural environment. It allows the community access to the natural environment. We build trails, and it allows safe access to this environment for the community. It also brings all these different partners in our community together, whether it be the town of Taos, whether it be local businesses, whether it be the national forest or the ski area. All of us come together, and in doing so, we all create this singular sense of ownership. And I think when a community does that, there's less division and we work together and we can address some of these issues. So, Darien I got a question for you. So with Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, how do you see it fits within our community?

[06:20] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: I think it provides a means for youth and young adults to figure out who they are, what they want to do, where they want to go, in the context of building a trail or hiking a chainsaw five, 6 miles into a forest and being thrown together with a group of other people of a similar age, different backgrounds, learning how to get along with each other for eight days at a time out in a backcountry setting and teaching valuable skills along the way. And I think that we do a lot of trainings. Right. We talked about mental health, first aid and wilderness medicine and financial management and all these things. But the biggest lesson that I think our program gives that isn't in a formal lesson, planning or anything is grit. And it's the grit that comes from figuring out how you're going to live with eight other people who you've probably never met before for eight days at a time in a challenging setting and come back and do it again six days later, six days after that with the course of our camping spike schedule. And I think that grit is something that carries on and builds success in whatever person's going to do next.

[07:50] BILLY MASON: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And, you know, what's cool about our program, too, is I've seen these young adults discover who they are.

[07:56] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah.

[07:57] BILLY MASON: You know, and learn to work with each other, and they take this, our program, and I've seen them sometimes they stay with us. But I've noticed that this is a stepping stone. A lot of times they're not sure what they want to do in their life or where they want to go. And they'll come in here and they'll discover who they are and they'll come out so much stronger. And we provide them these skills along the way. Not only do we teach them how to use the tools in the field, but we're providing some personal and professional skills that they take with them later in their life. And to me, to see their success is probably the greatest gift I receive.

[08:30] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah. And going back to what you were talking about earlier in your efforts to help preserve the Telluride valley. Right. Identifying what was sacred, what was special about the place, and your comments about just house being a sacred, special place with land very much valued. I think, hopefully that we're able to impart that type of a mentality on everyone who comes through our program, too, as they're working in a forest, as they're working in a park site, or maybe just volunteering in a day of community service in town. So I think it's cool that you spent so much time in Telluride preserving that now in a different capacity. In Taos, you're kind of doing the same thing.

[09:19] BILLY MASON: Yeah, I'm really excited to be here and do that, because we did make mistakes in terrorite. There were certain things that maybe we didn't bring enough employee housing into the community, and that was one of the issues. Another issue with trails is, I think back, is I wish we would have done more work connecting trails so there was continuity between locations. That would have been something really neat. I would have liked to seen. Speaking of this transition that young adults go through, you went through this transition of Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, didn't you? You were like a skate punk or something. Can you tell me about that a little bit?

[09:58] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah. So I grew up here in Taos. Didn't always feel like there were a lot of opportunities for youth in the community. And I was part of this little gaggle of BMX and skateboard punks who dye our hair and just cruise around town looking for mischief, because we didn't really have anything else to do. Like, skiing was very expensive, so that wasn't something we could do regularly. There wasn't a lot of other cool things, like a mall, which we thought was the coolest thing in the world. Back when we were teens, right, we kind of built out this network of secret skateboard and bike jumps and ramps throughout the community. And we'd go from one to the other, and someone new came to town, and they seemed cool. We'd let them in on the secret, and then we just started getting harassed by the cops as they started figuring out where all these things were. So we'd show up to a parking lot, and our features would be busted, and we're like, come on. We're trying not to cause, like, real trouble. We're just, you know, hanging out. Maybe we stole a piece of plywood or something from a construction site in the middle of the night, and I think that's beyond the statute of limitation, so I don't feel like I'm incriminating myself there. And we build these features, and we were doing it because there wasn't any support from elected officials or leaders in the community at that time to do anything for youth. And we got tired of getting slammed into cop cars for riding our bikes and riding our skateboards and just being targeted because we had green hair. So we banded together and we're like, you know what? Let's go legit. Let's make the town build us a skate park. So my friends and I, we set up a meeting with the mayor of town, and we called the newspaper and said, hey, we're setting up a meeting with the mayor. We're going to show these plans for a skate park, and they're just going to go and they're going to build it for us because they're going to think it's the greatest idea ever. So we set up this meeting with the mayor. We got the paper taking photos. The mayor listened politely for about an hour and says, you know, Darien this is a really good plan, but we just. We don't have the money and we just don't feel it's a priority. So we're like, what the f, you know, like, we thought that's how the system was supposed to work. Like, we tried working outside the system and we got hassled by the system, and then we tried to work with the system, and we're still hassled by the system. So we decided to use the system to our advantage and we started organizing our parents, we'd roll and other members of the community, and we would roll into the council meetings, like 40 kids deep. And these council meetings started at 06:00 p.m. and we would hijack the public section, the public comments section of the agenda for like, 3 hours, and each one of us would get up and we'd use our five minutes and we would filibuster the hell out of that council and say, you guys need to build us the skatepark. Like youth in this community are dying. We need some sort of healthy resource, some sort of healthy avenue that is sanctioned in a way so that you're not hassling us for riding on the plaza or setting up these illegal features anywhere else. Give us something. And after a couple of years of us hijacking those council meetings and forcing the council to work into the wee hours of the morning to get their agenda done, they relented and they built us a skatepark, and they built the youth and family center. And today, that center is a testament to the willpower of the community. But it's a testament to the commitment that our government finally made to youth and young adults in the community. And I think it's like thinking back to that early taste of political activism and organizing around means of recreation that were accessible to people. I still see myself doing that in the role that I am with Rocky Mountain youth Corps and hopefully also encouraging a sense of activism to get the next generation of changemakers out there hijacking council meetings and pushing through needed changes.

[14:22] BILLY MASON: Yeah, that's beautiful. You guys are really making a difference in your community. And think of how many hundreds of young adults now have, because of that facility, now have gotten that healthy first step versus maybe being distracted by things that weren't healthy for them.

[14:40] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah. And thinking about the direction that Telluride and Durango and so many other communities have gone, I feel like there's always an emphasis on building out infrastructure to attract more tourist dollars. And it's cool. Tourism is cool. I like to travel. I welcome people to the community. But you got to focus on building out infrastructure for the people that make up that tourist economy, that support that industry and are here day in and day out. And I think the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps is cool in that sense, because we're, you know, we're out there. We're building trails that are enjoyed by locals in the community and also visitors. And we're going. We're treating forest landscapes that have been overgrown and removing some of that excess fuel, like we're reducing the impact of the next catastrophic wildfire. And that means a lot to people who are here full time. And we're the engaging, primarily youth and young adults from our community while we're doing that. So we're showing that sense of stewardship. We're providing that avenue for people to give back in their community and make things better for themselves and the next generation.

[15:58] BILLY MASON: Yeah, you're planting seeds for future generations for our community. So it keeps to grow and grows in the way that we wished.

[16:04] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah.

[16:04] BILLY MASON: Yeah. That is such a beautiful thing. You know, I had a similar experience in Telluride, because in Telluride, we had boundaries to the ski area, but there were soft boundaries, and people were skiing out of bounds. And then eventually it got a little harder and someone got arrested. One of my friends. And that's when I decided to use the Tirade Mountain club, this organization that I co founded as a vehicle. We went to the defense. We got a local lawyer to pro bono for us, and we went to the defense of these young adults that had skied out of bounds and that led to the conversation of, okay, we can't go back in time. There's more. And more people skiing in the backcountry, wanting to enjoy the backcountry. So maybe the best course of action was to create an access point. And so through that event, through those arrests, that led to the involvement of the whole community coming together and saying, well, what can we do to make this work in the future? And that led to us having the first backcountry gate opened in the state of Colorado to give that access which allowed people to enjoy the backcountry. It provided a safety point. Like you were mentioning, the trails are safety concerned, and it helped build the community because everybody riled around it. The other great thing I see about the Rocky Mountain youth Corps is, you know, I also see people coming to us, and it gives them a place to maybe overcome difficulties they're having in their own personal lives or in their family lives. And that's another big part that I really appreciate, because that's how we once again build our community and become stronger. Do you have any experience or stories in your time with Rocky muth Corps that highlight that kind of. I can think of one last summer down in bandelier, I was working with a young gentleman from one of the Pueblos, and his family is a very difficult family. You know, use of illegal drugs, there was guns involved, there was violence, that type of thing. Thing. And this young gentleman really looked forward to coming every day, showing up, because we became his family and we became his hope for our future. And so we had someone to talk to to get through his difficult times. And that, yes, we do this conservation work and this preservation work, but we also do this, a big part of this community work where we really try to care for each other and care for our community.

[18:50] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah. Yeah, I think that was the example that I was going to go towards as well, you know? And sometimes it's. It's just having that person to talk to that's going to make all the difference in someone's world. And having that mission, that task day in and day out that they are working on with other people that is keeping them going, and it's showing them that they can, like, be. They can thrive in an environment that is. That is healthy and supportive and encourages people to take manageable risks and says, you know, it's. It's okay if you fall because we're all gonna help you get back up and dust yourself off. And I can think of, gosh, friends of mine who went through the program who were able to really move away from shitty situations and go to school and make a life for themselves. That they didn't ever think that they would have because they looked around them and their family were users and maybe they were being raised primarily by their grandparents or their great grandparents. And I don't think it's just the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps. It's so many other organizations, so many other programs that provide that type of healthy environment, stable environment that's needed by so many people.

[20:44] BILLY MASON: Yeah, so true. Hey, you know, earlier you mentioned, we talked about sometimes people might not see the economic benefit of Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, but earlier you mentioned a little bit of my past from Durango and Durango. I went to college there, Fort Lewis, my first university I attended. And I was part of the Durango Wheel Club. It's a hundred year old bicycling club. And we used to race bikes. And when I was there, there wasn't a mountain bike. At first, it didn't exist right commercially. And then they came out. So we started riding these bikes around trails and building trails and Durango. Today, a big component of their economy is the mountain biking. In fact, it's considered the center of mountain biking in Colorado. And they've produced some great riders. Seven time world champion Ned overend, you know, three time world champion John Tolmack. But it was that trail work that we did, that early trail work just as a bunch of friends, that led to an organization being formed, the Durango Trail association. And that trail association brings in huge dollars, revenue for the community. So by protecting our community, by building trails that gave access that were safe, we were actually able to build that community up, and it benefited everyone. And I really see that opportunity here in Taos. Can you kind of expand upon how you think Rocky municipal and the work we do can actually help our economy also?

[22:17] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah, I guess I approach it from a slightly different perspective. I think that the work we do, first and foremost, needs to support full time residents and improve quality of life. And when you as a community, when a community invests in its full time residents, it opens up doors for affordable housing. It provides recreation amenities for people who live here full time, especially in service industry economies like ours. People see that. People see, wow, this is a community that cares about its own. And if it cares about its own, it's going to be welcoming to others. So, you know, yeah, like trails can draw people in, ski areas can draw people in, but none of that matters if everyone who's supporting that economy of trying people in can't live here or doesn't have access to those opportunities. So I think there's like a significant social justice element of investing in amenities for full time residents and then sharing what. How you support as a community that so people will be enticed to come and maybe not just stay, but maybe want to live here and contribute what. What they know. And I think, like, healthier residents equals, like, healthier workforce equals, like, a happier community. And that translates financially, too, because people aren't having to see the doctor as much, they aren't stressed as much. They feel like they can perform better. And then if other people want to come into the community and use the trails, too, that's cool also. But it's like coming from that perspective of the green haired punk who at 15 years old was like, man, the town is doing so much to bring people in here, but they aren't doing anything for the kids in this community. And the kids are suffering. You gotta focus on the kids first.

[24:34] BILLY MASON: Yeah. You know, I couldn't agree with you more. And you know what? In Telluride history, one of the things that when the people would come to our town, yes, it was a beautiful location, but one of the things they would always say to us is how nice the people were, how happy the people were in our community. And it's because we built that community relationships. And I think Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, I know it does this because when I came to this town and I would mention, yeah, I'm gonna work at Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, every single person in this community would just praise that organization and the work that we do. So, yeah, I absolutely agree that we're building a community to build our future. So I got a question. What is the funniest experience you've had at Rocky Mountain Youth Corps that we can talk about here on the radio?

[25:24] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: All right, so a week on the job. As I started in the role that you are now as a program manager, a week on the job, I was taking our executive director and his boss, the chair of the board of directors, out on a site visit to a forestry project just a little ways north of here. And we're in this giant f 350 diesel pickup. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I've got this. I've driven off road a bunch of vehicles before. We were coming back onto the highway, and our board directors house was right around the corner from where we were, where we had a crew doing the work. So we were just going to drop the chair of the board off at our house and head back to the office, trying to navigate this very narrow northern New Mexico mountain windy road, turning onto an even narrower northern New Mexico driveway with a ditch next to it in this giant truck. And I thought I had the turn right, but I got the truck stuck in a ditch with my boss and his boss in it, and it took our board director's neighbor with a backhoe to lift the truck out. And, man, was I red faced. I was just like, I thought I was going to get shit canned. I was like, oh, man. Like, what are the odds that I'm going to get a stuck truck? Like, a truck stuck with my boss and my boss in the car? But it was all good. And we laugh about it to this day.

[27:14] BILLY MASON: Yeah. Right. It gave you something to connect with. Yeah, that's great. I can't think of a day, actually, that I haven't gone to work where someone makes me laugh, to be honest. Right. It's just. There's just. There's just something about our work that just brings out the best in us. The best in the people, even, and the funny spots of people. Because I've noticed in Rocky Mountain youth Corps, one things I love the most is how authentic the organization is that when we get together, we take the time to get to know each other and to open, to be and create this, like, really safe environment where people can express themselves. And I think that's a really important piece for building future leaders in our community is because what if, as a young skate punk, you didn't come out and express yourself right? We wouldn't have that center here today. And so I'm really proud that we put our young adults first and that we really try to create an environment to help them grow. And I just. It brings me to tears thinking about it on a lighter note or a different note. So we do conservation work. We talked about how, in a roundabout way, we help our economy and we help build our future leaders and we talk about protecting our environment. We all experienced the worst forest fire in state history last summer. I happened to be here for that. It's quite devastating, and you can really see the heart of town come together. But we also do cool things, like, we do this wood donation program. Give me a little insight about that.

[28:58] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah, I think it harkens back to core of what we do in the core part of the pun as we talk here on Storycorps. And I'm doing a dab joke. So quick aside, I invented a type of joke. It's called the dab joke, where you drop, like a dad joke and then you dab. And it's a dab joke. So I drop those quite frequently. And I know it's a completely tangential, weird aside, but we're talking about core and the esprit de corps. And I think our mission over anything else is service. And we, we live in a community where a lot of people use firewood to heat their homes in the winter. And we have some pretty harsh winters in northern New Mexico. I mean, you know, we're, we're a high desert community. People think desert dry, warm, sure, but then it gets wintery and snowy and it gets cold. And every year we take wood that we collect from different forestry sites and we'll bring it into town and we give it to members of the community who need it, whether they're from South Pueblo or elderly or infirmed or on a fixed income. We're giving them this resource that they need to heat their homes, stay comfortable. Sometimes they're also using it to cook. Right. And we give a load to a person and it's not just like we're giving them a load of wood. Right. I mean, with, with a monetary, like, I mean, if we look at the value of a quart of wood, it's like 300, 5400 bucks.

[30:59] BILLY MASON: Yeah.

[30:59] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Right. We give them half of that and if we can give them more, we give them more. And it's, it's saving them money that they'd otherwise have to, you know, decide whether to spend on heating material or food or medicine or something else. And it's like there's, there's a lot of gratitude that's expressed, obviously, like the people collecting the wood are very thankful that they're, they're getting the wood, that they are able to rely on us year after year. The coolest thing for me is seeing the gratitude of one of our members or one of our staffers just sharing something and sharing in that person's enjoyment. And it goes back to, I think, what we've been talking about this entire time of community, of bringing people together for a cause. Whether that cause is historic preservation or a skate park or something else, and whether it's us or another organization, any other organization, as long as they're centered on people first, on community first. That's how change is made. That's how impact is made at the most local level that is possible. And to be able to help a friend or a neighbor in need is a gratitude.

[32:44] BILLY MASON: I couldn't agree more. My first experience with the wood donation program was this year. And the beauty I saw with it was I saw these young adults who spent the whole season out there working really hard, you know, in hard conditions, growing learning to grow together. And then the wood donation program, they were allowed them to see the gratitude and how important their work was when they were giving that wood to these people in need and to me. And then they have them to turn to me with this smile on their face. And their whole year was worth it right at that moment. You know, they. It just, to me, that is just so beautiful. It's a beautiful thing that we do that way, you know, really, really special programs indeed. What do we think for the future of Rocky Mountain youth Corps? Where do we see us. See us going in the Taos and the way Taos is changing and how can we can accommodate the changes as they grow?

[33:50] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah, I think it's not just Rocky Mountain youth Corps, it's other service cores across the country and service cores internationally. And it's looking at the challenges of the day and at a local level. Yeah. Like we provide workforce development opportunities and life skills training. Work skills training for youth and young adults. And we do that by reducing fuel load in a forest or revitalizing a segment of trail, or building a new segment of trail, or helping to restore habitat for threatened or endangered species. Rio Grande cutthroat trout. Right. It's looking at those challenges and putting members to work doing that. And we're tied to, historically, the civilian Conservation corps programs of the 1930s that lifted this country out of a depression. And again, I think that's an example of investment in people, investment in community, to lift everyone up. So I hope that that model continues, whether it's the Rocky Mountain youth Corps or any other core, and looking at the biggest threat, existential threat, on this planet, it's climate change. And are we allowed to say climate change these days? Because I know for a few years we weren't. But it's climate change.

[35:29] BILLY MASON: Yeah, absolutely.

[35:30] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah. And these catastrophic wildfires that we're seeing are exacerbated by a warming climate, these monstrous storms that we're seeing that are leaving people buried in snow 15, 20ft deep in the sierras, or dealing with mudslides in fire affected territory because of all these rains that are coming down, that's climate change. And I think us other service cores, we're the warriors on the front of addressing climate change. And if there's going to be any action taken to mitigate some of those impacts, it comes from the core community being able to put boots on the ground, but also requires a commitment from leaders at all levels to acknowledge that this is an issue that affects all of us. It's an existential threat. To this planet. And it takes resources, it takes a commitment to get things done. And I think when that resources and that commitment are there to address the challenge, cores across the country, cores across the world are ready to stand up and do what they can to help modernize houses, weatherize houses for people to address other impacts of climate change in their local communities. So it's not just Rocky Mountain youth Corps, it's so many other cores across the country. And I think that we're using Rocky Mountain youth Corps as an example today because of where we work. But reality is we are one of many similar organizations across the country doing this work day in and day out and with a long history of service and commitment to community and hopefully influencing, establishing the next generation of changemakers.

[37:44] BILLY MASON: Yeah, I definitely see that. I see us making a difference in the world and I see that. You know, the great thing is also I see the people that do participate, they take a lot of sense of pride in their work. There's a lot of pride in our work. And I agree. You know, I'm a climate change scientist. That's my academic background and some of my previous work background. And it is one of the greatest challenges that's going to be facing humanity in the future, in the next hundred years presently and for the next hundred years. So. And we do do that. You know, when I think of all that conservation work we took, you know, we go back to the wood donation. Well that wood we got was from a blowdown which was an extreme weather event.

[38:24] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Yeah.

[38:24] BILLY MASON: Right. You know, we're out there taking wood out of the forest that could help prevent a forest fire. We're helping weatherize or making other homes safe. Right. Because maybe extreme, other extreme events that happen with their events. So.

[38:39] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: So Billy, I got question for you. Oh, all right. Let's say we're lucky and this gets picked up broadcast nationally. What would your message be to people.

[38:50] BILLY MASON: Listening to us banter, to us banter on like this? I would say to everyone, take a breath, take a moment and do me a favor and go somewhere out in the wilderness outside that is special to you that you might think of as a sacred place and then sit with that place for me and think about how you could help your sacred place, help your community, right? Conserve that place for future generations. And if you think about that, then I think what will come to mind is organizations like Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, right? Organizations that serve as vehicles to protect those sacred places for all of us in those sacred places where it gives most of us our peace of mind. So I think if I could say anything, I would like people just to go out and talk to a tree, take a minute, introduce yourself and see what happens, and see if we can build that connection with our land and then share that connection so we can build connection with our community. And I think that's really what I would like to see. How about yourself?

[40:02] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Get involved however you see fit. I mean, if there's a pothole on your street and hasn't been getting fixed, lobby your local government. Show up in force with your neighbors. Be that change. If there's an abandoned lot that can be turned into a playground, grab some neighbors, grab a can of paint, rake, whatever, and put that elbow grease to use and do something that's going to improve your community. Do whatever you can, whatever works for you to make this place better for you and the next people who get to live here who will inhabit the place.

[40:45] BILLY MASON: Darien thank you so much. Thanks for spending this time with me and hanging out. And I'm really excited for us to become better friends and to make a difference in our community and for us to get involved. And I invite everybody to get involved because my greatest gift in life is making dreams come true. So please let me help make your dreams come true.

[41:04] DARIEN FERNANDEZ: Awesome.