Save What You Love with Mark Titus

00:00:00:12 - 00:00:18:09
Mark Titus
Welcome to Say what you love. I'm Mark Titus. Well, here we are. This is the Ray Troll episode. I have been looking forward to this for a long time. As a matter of fact, when I was dreaming up, Say What You Love, I knew Ray was going to be a big part of this. This is the first interaction we get to have with Ray.

00:00:18:11 - 00:00:38:01
Mark Titus
His whimsical ways, his ratty wrap, fish fascination, and honestly, his depth of curiosity. That is the driver for saving what he loves. That's where we connect. I hope you connect there, too. I hope you dig this episode as much as I did while making it. Enjoy the show.

00:00:38:03 - 00:01:15:22
Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love when things are upside down?
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:01:16:00 - 00:01:17:23
Ray Troll
Mark Titus? Yes, good to see you sir.

00:01:18:03 - 00:01:23:14
Mark Titus
It's happening. I'm so grateful you're on today. Thanks for joining us.

00:01:23:16 - 00:01:31:02
Ray Troll
Well, an honor, a privilege, and yeah. Podcast land man. That's the new. It's. Here we are.

00:01:31:04 - 00:01:44:21
Mark Titus
It's. It's the coolest. I mean, I really have been digging into these conversations. Get an hour at a time or so with folks, and it's honestly, it goes so fast, it doesn't even feel like you got it all.

00:01:44:22 - 00:02:00:11
Ray Troll
Yeah, I understand. So I've been doing a podcast as well and we've been it's amazing. We have a little list and we we plays right through it, but so we go for 2 hours. We've actually gone for 2 hours sometimes, but. Let's see if we can do this in an hour.

00:02:00:11 - 00:02:24:09
Mark Titus
Yeah, let's. Let's try I. We're going to go and plug into that podcast and plug it real good down the line here when we start talking about your work. But I know you are coming to us from the nearest and dearest place in Salmon Nation. For me, Southeast Alaska, for our listeners who've never been to this gem of a place on this planet, what's it like there?

00:02:24:10 - 00:02:30:08
Mark Titus
What does it sound like and look like and feel like in southeast Alaska?

00:02:30:10 - 00:02:55:23
Ray Troll
I'm in. I'm living in Ketchikan, Alaska, where I've lived for 38 years. This is the traditional and contemporary lands of the Tongass. Click it, people. And this is also the shared waters, the Haida and Simpson peoples. So this is a great Ketchikan. Is this part where these. This one spot, the sweet spot where these three in native peoples nations all met here.

00:02:55:23 - 00:03:20:05
Ray Troll
But basically I'm in click a territory today is snowing sideways. There is such a thing. It's usually raining sideways. But we have a we're experiencing a howling storm as I speak. I could point the camera out the window here a second, but yet but also lucky enough to live in the Tongass National Forest. The time with National rainforest.

00:03:20:07 - 00:03:38:15
Ray Troll
This is a temperate rainforest, though, is this is such a magical place. This is a place where, you know, you've got old growth trees, hundreds, maybe even a thousand years old that meet the ocean. And this this magical place that I'm lucky enough to call home. It.

00:03:38:17 - 00:04:06:12
Mark Titus
You are always from Ketchikan. You ended like that sometimes. Yeah. That I've spent as I've spent a few winters there myself as you know. But you came from other places. How did you find your way to the Tongass National Forest? And can you tell us a little bit about your story? How did you come to love the things that mean so much to you and are such a big part of your work right now?

00:04:06:14 - 00:04:56:14
Ray Troll
Well, good question. How they come to be here. And really, it's a sibling story. I'm from a big military brat family. We were Air Force brats, the troll family. So there are six kids in the family. We later found out about two more, but that's another story. But since we're in the Air Force, we moved all the time, every two or three years, perpetually being the new kid and leaving old friends behind and so that itinerant lifestyle and grew up in places like Japan and Puerto Rico, Alabama, Virginia, the list is long, but really, it's kind of amazing to think that four out of the six kids ended up finding Alaska and calling Alaska their

00:04:56:14 - 00:05:19:02
Ray Troll
home. So. Wow. That is I was the last Troll two to arrive, the first troll to arrive. They're usually arguing about that. But my sister Kate, who lives in Juneau, my brother Tim, who lives in Anchorage, and my sister Mary, who also lived in Anchorage for many years. And so the trolls found their home up here, the wandering trolls, and what a magical cool place it is.

00:05:19:02 - 00:05:43:06
Ray Troll
And it was a sibling. It was my big sister, Kate, that in the summer of 1983, in the spring of 1983, she reached out to me. I was fresh out of grad school, pretty much had already been out for a little bit of time, but I had a master of fine Arts degree from Washington State University. Go home and go, kids.

00:05:43:08 - 00:05:46:03
Ray Troll
But we love the dogs, too, right?

00:05:46:05 - 00:05:47:07
Mark Titus
Some doing.

00:05:47:09 - 00:06:23:17
Ray Troll
So. Yes. Okay. And so anyways, yeah, I moved to the Greater Northwest in 1977, was in Seattle, got my a master of fine arts out at Pullman. I've been a lifelong art guy and but I didn't have anything gone that summer. And Sister Kate said, Hey, my husband Bill Ansin and I are going to have a little fish store, a retail fish store on the docks in Ketchikan, Alaska, where there's this thing where these cruise ships are coming.

00:06:23:19 - 00:06:39:04
Ray Troll
And we're going to put this right, this little fish shack right down on the dock, and you come up, can you want to help us out? So I came up to be a fishmonger in 1983 with a couple of art degrees and. you know us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:39:06 - 00:06:41:08
Mark Titus
Story sounds familiar. Yeah.

00:06:41:10 - 00:07:06:17
Ray Troll
If you have an art degree, you put an art major in a fish store, what do you get? You got me. So. And a guy with a little bit of an entrepreneurial streak in me, you know, And, yeah, I ended up kind of establishing an audience and found a career and have a family and raised a couple of kids here.

00:07:06:17 - 00:07:10:19
Ray Troll
And. And now I'm an old man.

00:07:10:21 - 00:07:27:21
Mark Titus
Well, you're a beloved old man. I have traveled the highways and byways of Alaska and other places with you. And there is a certain recognition when you come trundling through the door. It's a matter of fact, I remember having a magazine cover off with you one time in the.

00:07:27:21 - 00:07:28:11
Ray Troll
Drive.

00:07:28:16 - 00:07:30:19
Mark Titus
Cars up in Seward.

00:07:31:01 - 00:07:32:22
Ray Troll
We should tell that story. That's a good story.

00:07:33:02 - 00:07:36:02
Mark Titus
So let's do it. That's pretty funny.

00:07:36:04 - 00:07:44:03
Ray Troll
Yeah, because, you know, I'm a you're a you're an artist with your own following in establishing, you know, you know, an audience. And this.

00:07:44:04 - 00:07:45:14
Mark Titus
Is particularly funny, though.

00:07:45:19 - 00:07:49:13
Ray Troll
And we we were humble. Humble bragging.

00:07:49:15 - 00:07:50:13
Mark Titus
Yeah, that's right.

00:07:50:15 - 00:07:57:01
Ray Troll
To each other about, you know. Yeah, sure. A lot of people know my stuff. Yeah. Mark Yeah. How do they go? You tell.

00:07:57:02 - 00:07:58:11
Mark Titus
Yourself we were we were.

00:07:58:12 - 00:07:59:03
Ray Troll
From.

00:07:59:05 - 00:08:23:22
Mark Titus
We were provisioning in Seward, Alaska. We were working on a project together, filming stories about sharks that is still in the works, so stay tuned. But we were provisioning in the grocery store and you went running over to the aisle to the checkout stand. You said, Hey, hey, check this out and proceed to show me your picture on the cover.

00:08:24:00 - 00:08:25:15
Ray Troll
Whatever or whatever.

00:08:25:17 - 00:08:28:01
Mark Titus
I think he was. Alaska magazine.

00:08:28:01 - 00:08:29:18
Ray Troll
Was it Alaska magazine? Yeah. Yeah.

00:08:29:18 - 00:08:31:10
Mark Titus
And yeah, know.

00:08:31:12 - 00:08:32:15
Ray Troll
And credibility, which.

00:08:32:15 - 00:08:37:13
Mark Titus
Is super cool. And I mean, like, you know, how rare and special and cool is that?

00:08:37:13 - 00:08:38:13
Ray Troll
It's cool. It's it's your.

00:08:38:13 - 00:09:01:17
Mark Titus
Mug on the face of a killer magazine. But and the funny the funny part was when I and this was just the most coincidental thing in the world, I didn't even know this was the case. But the article I had just done for Alaska Sportsman magazine had just come out and was also on the cover. So we held them up at the same time and we showed it to the checker and they're just like.

00:09:01:22 - 00:09:16:14
Ray Troll
They're like, You know what? I Next item, please beat it. Yeah. Okay. But anyways, you and I are. Yeah, that was, that was a fun trip. And hopefully we'll we'll get some gold out of that too. Did we take a selfie or anything. There were we, we, we did.

00:09:16:14 - 00:09:45:01
Mark Titus
I've got an awesome selfie and we'll put it up in the show notes so you can see it. But you know, so if you know Rachel, you love Rachel, I would dare say you are a patron saint of Alaska and most folks down here in the Northwest know your art. You're wearing it right now. It's in fact, you're really broke out of the gates with a particular shirt.

00:09:45:01 - 00:09:57:03
Mark Titus
And I know you've got one nearby that was worn by the likes of Daniel Radcliffe, among others, around the world. And that is spot until you die.

00:09:57:05 - 00:10:13:01
Ray Troll
I have four. I did that in 1987, that image. And I figure if if not the notes, people will know me as the spawn til you die guy. And so maybe I'll maybe I'll have that I'm a tombstone or something, know, But I want to see one shot. I hold it.

00:10:13:07 - 00:10:38:06
Mark Titus
Hold it up, hold it up for us. So let's raise. Holding up here is a his spawn to your diet T-shirt, which has a skull smack in the middle. Two salmon crisscrossing over the top of them. The words spawn til you die. And around the edges, lots of naked humans to suggest what's going on. When you salmon go to finalize the deed at the last act of their life.

00:10:38:07 - 00:10:59:15
Ray Troll
When they get to the last party, man, the last party everybody wants to go to that party. And yeah, actually there's been spotted has been very good to me over the years. And it seemed to hit the zeitgeist just right and it's still going on and kind of a bit of a classic, you know, do two versions of it, one in color and one in the classic black and white.

00:10:59:17 - 00:11:27:23
Ray Troll
But yeah, you know, those naked people on the border, I, I remember that as the t start getting out there and different retailers picked them up. You know, my wife and I, well, my wife runs a gallery here in Ketchikan, but we have other retailers that carry the stuff. But in the early nineties, the Monterey Bay Aquarium was doing a little salmon display and they were like, we love this, love your art, and we want to carry this body of Dasher maybe in the gift shop.

00:11:27:23 - 00:11:33:20
Ray Troll
And I was like, Yeah. They said, There's only one problem. We got to take out the naked people.

00:11:33:22 - 00:11:35:20
Mark Titus
my God.

00:11:35:22 - 00:12:02:03
Ray Troll
So they, so they, yeah, they airbrushed all the naked people out of that. But the reason I put that in there, Spawn to die obviously was and you know me, Marc, you and I have known each other for over a decade now. Pretty good. There's just a reminder that, you know, we're all vertebrates and we're all variations of the same kind of vertebrate dance of life as it were.

00:12:02:03 - 00:12:20:18
Ray Troll
And we are all connected. And so. So I wanted that connection in there, you know, that we look at the salmon in the stream and like, you know what they're doing? Is it really so alien from what our lives are about, Right? I mean, so right, do the same stuff.

00:12:20:20 - 00:12:31:21
Mark Titus
God forbid we look at the human form. We were brought into the world with. I mean, we have such a weird stigma in this country. It's just it's amazing to me.

00:12:31:21 - 00:12:34:16
Ray Troll
Well, right. Yeah. Cover up those naked bodies, but.

00:12:34:18 - 00:13:15:16
Mark Titus
Well, here's another part of that. I and it really kind of drifts into the next part of this. I wanted to talk about those salmon make life happen where you are. And as matter of fact, they made life happen. Where I live right now in Seattle, traditional Duwamish territory for a time, you know, salmon were as they are in in the Tongass and in a place like Bristol Bay they are the DNA makeup of that place and which leads to the question, why is the Tongass so golden special?

00:13:15:21 - 00:13:26:10
Mark Titus
Why is this place that you've made your home such a jewel in the crown of Alaska and our American heritage?

00:13:26:12 - 00:14:05:00
Ray Troll
Why? I believe we have to have the fact checker double check this, But this is the picture. This is the last basically intact, temperate rainforest left in the world here in southeast Alaska, there has been industrial scale logging that's happened here and a lot of big, big on the industrial scale. You know, starting in the fifties, 1950s. But these the forest is basically still intact and the trees are massive and beautiful beings unto themselves.

00:14:05:00 - 00:14:36:01
Ray Troll
But this ecosystem that you're talking about, this is a place where it's still working and that ecosystem has been in place since the ice ages. And, you know, this forest has been here since the ice ages and likewise all up and down the northwest coast. And this this remarkable creature salmon have co-evolved with the with this temperate rainforest.

00:14:36:03 - 00:15:05:01
Ray Troll
You know, they stretch back in time in the Pacific Northwest, back 50 million years ago, 50 million, you know, right after the age of the dinosaurs. There's a creature called EO ESMO. And it's pretty clear that Eocene almost means Dawn Salmon. Beautiful fossils of these are found in British Columbia and in Washington State. And some of these ESMO are are pretty big clunkers, actually.

00:15:05:02 - 00:15:28:01
Ray Troll
I've seen some from Republic Washington that are King salmon sized and they're 55 million years old. So it's a remarkable thing to think that, you know, this is a sea creature born in the rivers, goes out to the oceans, it comes back to the very spot it was it was raised here, but basically that it was born in.

00:15:28:01 - 00:15:56:13
Ray Troll
And it goes out and it's this thing that literally ties the seascape and the landscape together. And this it's an incredible source of food that sustained this vast number of creatures because, you know, the spawning strategy is to make, you know, only 1% of the salmon ever really make it back. The wild salmon, even hatchery fish. These find the centers to do something like one or 2%.

00:15:56:15 - 00:16:10:11
Ray Troll
That means that 98% is basically feeding the rest of the ecosystem. They're being picked off, you know, but they sustain it. And, you know, it's a beautiful thing that still happened.

00:16:10:13 - 00:16:43:05
Mark Titus
One of the things that I just am entranced by in your work is the interconnectedness of things. And as a matter of fact, you and I were connected long before we ever actually met in person. I was connected to you through your art when I was 19. yeah. My very first piece of art I ever bought was in a museum in Dillingham, Alaska, when I was working on the slimline dragnet fisheries in Bristol Bay and I saw Midnight Run, which is the name of your print.

00:16:43:05 - 00:17:03:20
Mark Titus
And I was like, I don't have any money at all. But the money I dredged up from my pockets and picked the lint out, I bought it. I bought it with what I had because it just it entranced me. It took me to another place. And in in that print we'll link to it. In the show notes, there is this cascading series of waterfalls.

00:17:03:20 - 00:17:22:14
Mark Titus
You know what? You're the artist. Why don't you describe to me what's happening? You mean run? And especially the interconnectedness and the little the little friends who peek out from place to place that, you know, really make up the special part about the Tongass and other places like that.

00:17:22:16 - 00:17:46:17
Ray Troll
Yeah. Well, you know, I painted that in 1986. That was my first piece of public artwork as a wonderful program that the state of Alaska had in place at the time. I think it's still in the law books somewhere, but they're not actually building much of anything here in Alaska since the state is broke. There's a wonderful program that 1% of public monies, state public money spent, will be spent on art.

00:17:46:19 - 00:18:14:05
Ray Troll
Just the wonderful thing to actually require buildings to have public art. And so as I made a proposal, there's an elementary school being built to support the town. And I drew out this little drawing. And I, I had spent part of my youth in Japan, living in Japan. So it was kind of a Japanese sort of inspired water pattern, sort of rainbow water.

00:18:14:07 - 00:18:41:15
Ray Troll
And I'd also been I'd landed in this magical place called Alaskan. I was living on thatch concrete for a while. So seeing this whole thing with the salmon. Yeah, I did a painting of all five species that I just transformed to by learning so much about salmon inside right here. That moment thing in 83 to know how to be from a hole in the ground and had to learn almost interspecies versus a fishmonger.

00:18:41:15 - 00:19:06:00
Ray Troll
So I was and I was truly inspired and enthralled by the fish. And I had you know, I'd worked in the slime line and actually I had a studio with Silver Lining Seafoods at the time so I could go down. I was above the slime line at Silver Lining Seafoods to go down to the slime line below and grab a fish and bring it up to the studio and draw it, paint it.

00:19:06:02 - 00:19:37:13
Ray Troll
So yeah, it includes all five species of salmon plus steelhead, which is really technically a salmon and it's in the same genus stuck to Dolly Parton in there. It's a black bear hiding around. There's a comet in the sky because it was a comet that you're just remembering all this stuff. But yeah, and I went around and photographed fish species and walked in the forest and studied streambeds and looked at all that, had all the pictures taped up on the studio wall.

00:19:37:18 - 00:19:59:22
Ray Troll
It's got a big piece of canvas stapled to the wall. It's like I said, it's 12 feet long. It's been about eight months painting that. So and it's at the elementary school now. And so generations have it's in the library at North Point. Hagans and generations have been raised looking at that. So it's cool that you got the poster.

00:20:00:00 - 00:20:16:23
Ray Troll
You know, I got to say that my siblings helped me out printing some of my first posters. You know, Tim and Kate and Mary helped sponsor actually put on loan me some money to print some of those first posters and get them out there. So you got one man is cool.

00:20:16:23 - 00:20:34:04
Mark Titus
It's so cool. And you know, it was 1991, so it wasn't too long after you first made it. And it has stayed with me through every house that I've ever lived in. And there have been quite a few through college and everything else. So, you know.

00:20:34:09 - 00:20:43:14
Ray Troll
Markets remote, always buy. You could buy another one, you know, it's probably fairly nowhere Good money, man.

00:20:43:20 - 00:21:07:06
Mark Titus
That's right. So the the other part about this is in this interconnected piece that I learned when making the breach, the first film that we we worked on together is that salmon are actually a part of this rain forest, a part of this system in a very real way, in a way that is was incredibly surprising to me.

00:21:07:06 - 00:21:09:10
Mark Titus
Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:21:09:12 - 00:21:26:13
Ray Troll
Yeah, actually, you had some scientists on in that film. And to actually borrow one of the lines in the film, the salmon bring the nitrogen in from the ocean. Who was the scientist that was talking about that on screen? Maybe it was me, but.

00:21:26:15 - 00:21:33:22
Mark Titus
It was You were you were definitely talking about it. And I know Bruce Brown was talking about it and thought.

00:21:33:22 - 00:21:58:04
Ray Troll
It was serious. Yeah. Yeah. But he he put it very eloquently in that. But basically and I did my hippie thing, you know. Wow. When you think about it in the riparian zone, in other words, the river zones where the trees are the biggest in the forest because because of a reason, there's actually this nitrogen, basically a fertilizer that comes in from the ocean and into that area of the river.

00:21:58:04 - 00:22:41:17
Ray Troll
And then the bears end up driving it up into the forest. So literally the salmon are inside the trees. And when I was hanging out with some scientists and biologists back in the in the nineties, this idea that actually, you know, we could test for the isotopes to see if technically, you know, you can go over and you can look at I don't know how they do get these isotopes, but it's a fairly straightforward process Now nowadays I guess, but the actual material from the salmon is inside the trees and as a scientific surrealist, you know, quote unquote, I've thought about that.

00:22:41:17 - 00:23:11:13
Ray Troll
And it's surrealism bringing dreamlike qualities. And just with my artwork, try to convey some of these scientific terms or even these cosmic hippie kind of things, but without getting too overboard because sneaking in there. But I did a painting called Deep Force with the same of swimming through the forest. And also if you look, you know the details, because I work in these paintings sometimes for well over or maybe a year or so, I'll stick a lot of details in there just to kind of amuse myself.

00:23:11:13 - 00:23:21:20
Ray Troll
But the astute viewer might see that, you know, I've actually got salmon swimming in the bark shapes in the tree. And so, yeah, a lot of cool stuff.

00:23:21:20 - 00:23:33:23
Mark Titus
I love that stuff. Why do you think we I've gotten my own answer for this, but why do you think so many of us are so enamored of these creatures, these salmon.

00:23:34:01 - 00:24:05:16
Ray Troll
For all kinds of reasons. You know, a myriad. There are almost too numerous to count, aren't they? In a way, You know, they're. Well, they're beautiful. Number one, as an artist, I think they're just beautiful. The streamlined nature of the ocean going fish, the goofy, big eyed nature of the of the juveniles who don't know. They're I mean, they're so much like us, you know, And then in their senility, when they come back and they hit the fresh water, they go through this incredible physiologic change.

00:24:05:16 - 00:24:38:23
Ray Troll
And within a couple of weeks, their their bodies just change. And and they get on those, you know, like to go to the party, get those spawning colors on, you know, and dogs and and get that deep kind of cool camo going. And some guys turn or right a bright cherry red and and kings and cohoes go kind of dark you know they get sort of this black kind of sheen to them but yet the current the big teeth and then humpies of course look start they're probably the most ridiculous looking of the whole bunch.

00:24:38:23 - 00:25:07:12
Ray Troll
You know the males at least and the ridiculous big hump. But that's they look cool. They look cool. They are tasty as hell. You know, I love to eat them. I feel guilt when I kill them, though, you know, that's how can you kill such a beautiful creature? But they sustain us, they feed us, they are within us.

00:25:07:13 - 00:25:27:12
Ray Troll
And they're also just kind of. Yeah, analogies for our own lives, you know? And they get a bit cooler. Mark, if I may, to a segment please get in a cooler when you go to the prehistoric past.

00:25:27:14 - 00:25:30:08
Mark Titus
Well, you are reading my mind and.

00:25:30:10 - 00:25:30:14
Ray Troll
We're.

00:25:30:20 - 00:25:36:08
Mark Titus
We're writing the same wave here because you are you're just going right off my script. Why?

00:25:36:10 - 00:25:38:18
Ray Troll
You know, this is scripted.

00:25:38:20 - 00:26:02:19
Mark Titus
I have a light script. Okay? It's just so I don't get completely lost because I could I could talking to you, I could go way down that road into the woods. But I never come out. Yes, but I love how you put this. You talk about deep time. Yeah. And you are currently hosting a podcast called Paleo Nerds, which is awesome.

00:26:02:21 - 00:26:03:15
Ray Troll
Thank you.

00:26:03:17 - 00:26:21:16
Mark Titus
What is it about deep time that fascinates you? And you might find this an odd question, but I thought a particularly germane to you and gives you comfort thinking about things in terms of deep time.

00:26:21:18 - 00:27:03:01
Ray Troll
Well, actually, weirdly, maybe what gives you comfort in terms of deep time is, you know, well, I've been a paleo nerd all my life, and so I am doing this podcast with my ventriloquist pal, David Strassman. We've been having all kinds of experts on, but, you know, time really gives you perspective on the planet, gives you perspective on who and what we are, who you are, what we are, where we came from, how we're all interrelated, we're related to everything at some point and to really understand where creatures diverge from each other and the and the and the kindred spirit that we have with so many animals.

00:27:03:01 - 00:27:23:20
Ray Troll
You know, I mean, we're with mammals. You know, dogs are our best friends, right? Because we're kind of variations of the same mammalian brain. But then there's reptilian brain and there's a fish brain, and then there's the squid brain. You start just keep going back. You see this connectedness. But the comfort really is, you know, species come and species go.

00:27:23:22 - 00:27:47:20
Ray Troll
Genera, the genus that we meet belong to, we're in the genus Homo. Our genus has been around for 2 million, maybe 4 million years. The genus Anchorages goes back much longer than that. But, you know, basically the comfort is life is going to go on with or without us. The way things are looking, it's going to go on without us.

00:27:47:22 - 00:28:11:04
Ray Troll
And when you go way back in deep time, you see that viruses, which we all know about now, we're all amateur epidemiologists. yeah, Viruses may have been the first things on this planet, you know, And yeah, there's this crazy stuff called horizontal gene transfer that's kind of blown my mind that 8% of our makeup is actually viral in nature.

00:28:11:04 - 00:28:40:20
Ray Troll
And anyways, there's just all this interconnectedness that is truly mind blowing. So maybe it's not comforting to know that species come and species go, but because unless we our species has been around for Homo sapiens has been around for maybe about 200,000 years ago, but it's just nothing like the salmon have been around, like basically in the selmoni form for 50 million years.

00:28:40:22 - 00:28:42:00
Ray Troll
You know.

00:28:42:02 - 00:28:49:20
Mark Titus
Yeah, you mentioned the genus anchoring such as salmon. That's what you're referring to. It's the the different specific.

00:28:49:22 - 00:28:50:06
Ray Troll
Salmon.

00:28:50:11 - 00:28:52:14
Mark Titus
Pacific salmon, correct. Yep.

00:28:52:16 - 00:28:54:16
Ray Troll
Five plus more actually.

00:28:54:18 - 00:29:00:08
Mark Titus
Right. When you're talking about my kiss and which is steelhead. Yep.

00:29:00:10 - 00:29:01:05
Ray Troll
Copper.

00:29:01:06 - 00:29:35:17
Mark Titus
Clark. Clark. Right. You know the comfort thing I think is in that continuity that you alluded to that maybe there is something that is bigger than my concerns at this very moment that are bigger and going to outlast these things that I'm fretting about and, you know, future tripping or, you know, guilt tripping on in the past and that there is going to be life carrying on despite and despite.

00:29:35:17 - 00:29:59:06
Ray Troll
And yet but yet, as we know, I mean, the wild world is vanishing within our lifetimes like we've never seen before. And the other thing is that really when you look at deep time and you look at these massive extinction events, life does get through it, but life is radically changed at all these big junctures in the past.

00:29:59:08 - 00:30:40:11
Ray Troll
The end of the Cretaceous, there was a comet that leveled the playing field, got rid of a lot of stuff at the end of the Permian. We're still not quite sure what happened, but over 95% of the planet went extinct and it was a whole new ballgame. After that, you reset everything after an extinction event to completely reset and scientists, you know, over the last couple of decades and within the last two decades, you know, have realized, wait a minute, that the extinction rate that we're going into, loss of habitat, the loss of wildlife, the losses species, we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction right now and the global climate change is driving a lot

00:30:40:11 - 00:30:52:22
Ray Troll
of that. But habitat loss and the sheer numbers of one certain species that is just overwhelming and taking us beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, you know, and that.

00:30:52:22 - 00:30:53:20
Mark Titus
Would be us.

00:30:53:21 - 00:30:55:18
Ray Troll
That would be us.

00:30:55:20 - 00:31:23:13
Mark Titus
All right. I am going to wrap this all up together, I promise. So bear with me for one second. But given that notion of kind of a if not general awareness, definitely an emerging awareness that we are in this time of rapid decline for other species, for our natural wonders, for a lot of things we hold dear. How do.

00:31:23:13 - 00:31:26:01
Ray Troll
You.

00:31:26:03 - 00:31:57:08
Mark Titus
See the light at the end of the tunnel and maybe not even see the light at the end of the tunnel, but persist on? Where does your persistence of vision come from? When I talk about you to friends and family, I talk about your volume of work, which is astonishing. I've been to your studio and the the things people see, you know, all of you out there that no race shirts and posters and prints, that's a fraction of the work you've actually done.

00:31:57:10 - 00:32:08:08
Mark Titus
How do we number one, how do you get up every morning? The catch can can be gray and rainy. We're living through a pandemic. Yeah.

00:32:08:10 - 00:32:13:16
Ray Troll
And how do you take its toll? Yeah, well, last great for us to get to you, but yeah.

00:32:13:18 - 00:32:32:02
Mark Titus
Life is life. Life is hard, but you still get up with an innate curiosity and get in the chair and start working on these beautiful, weird or transformational visions. How do you keep doing that every day?

00:32:32:04 - 00:33:04:21
Ray Troll
Well, you know, the the well, yeah, there's a lot weighing it down here when you talk about the state of the planet. But, you know, I mean, that that endless fascination and a simple thing called inspiration, you know, is what keeps me going. And I think what keeps creative type people going, you know, at least I'm wired. I really I'm just die and paint and draw these this world around us, you know, It's what I just I literally hummed to myself and make weird noises when I'm out.

00:33:04:23 - 00:33:30:05
Ray Troll
You know, doing this thing I'm lucky enough to do of creating these things and kind of seeing a vision in my head and one getting it out of my head. But, you know, really doing this, doing a podcast, I salute you for doing this because you get to dive in deeper with people in the topics and I've learned a lot of paleo nerds that actually we've been talking to a lot of people about, you know, deep time perspective.

00:33:30:07 - 00:34:07:00
Ray Troll
And just this last week we talked to a fellow by the name of Sam Gunn, and Sam lives on Oahu. He's a native Hawaiian who's also in a fossil deprived kind of place, probably the world's expert on trilobites of all things. And so he loves trilobites, but he's a bio cultural ecologist. And he turned to is is the study of what's happened in Hawaii and in the past.

00:34:07:02 - 00:34:39:19
Ray Troll
So he's worked for that He works with he's a chief scientist for the Hawaiian Nature Conservancy, but he published a paper it was in American Scientist magazine in 2019, basically, there were almost about the same number of people living in Hawaii 600 years ago as there are now. You know, his work and through the all the research he did, basically it was a large population of people, you know, nearly a million people on the Hawaiian Islands and that archipelago.

00:34:39:22 - 00:35:02:22
Ray Troll
Wow. Well, yet they were doing it sustainably. You know, there was an attitude they had about the land and attitude they had about the oceans. And they were able sustain a large community. And Sam wrote this paper that was really inspirational. We can we could put our heads to this. We are the smart monkeys, after all. We hope right.

00:35:02:22 - 00:35:23:06
Ray Troll
And science can show us the way. And actually and one of the things that Sam was saying in our interview, which will be out in a few weeks, was just saying, you know, get to know the place that you were in. And that's what he did. Yeah. Really learn more about it. And I have been 38 years studying the Tongass, have run around the world a lot in the meantime.

00:35:23:06 - 00:35:40:08
Ray Troll
But, you know, just in this last pandemic year, I've really been paying a lot more attention to the forest. I'm actually getting to know all the Ravens in town this year. They know me now. Yeah, but. But, yeah. Hey, if I could steer the conversation up there.

00:35:40:08 - 00:35:40:18
Mark Titus
Have it.

00:35:40:18 - 00:35:44:18
Ray Troll
For one second. I wanted to do a show and tell with you, though.

00:35:44:20 - 00:35:45:08
Mark Titus
Okay.

00:35:45:13 - 00:35:50:03
Ray Troll
Because we've mentioned off branches before the paleo nerd.

00:35:50:05 - 00:35:50:14
Mark Titus
my.

00:35:50:17 - 00:35:54:10
Ray Troll
And this is guess what this is.

00:35:54:10 - 00:35:55:04
Mark Titus
Wow. Ray is.

00:35:55:04 - 00:35:56:06
Ray Troll
Bringing, like, you know, this.

00:35:56:09 - 00:36:12:20
Mark Titus
Camera here a pretty grotesque looking well, in the coolest way possible. Skull and skeleton of a giant anchor. Rex Something I think you're going to tell me what it is.

00:36:12:22 - 00:36:46:11
Ray Troll
Anchorage is rest grosses and for gill rakers rush process all the extra gill rakers it had It's a prehistoric salmon and I'm sorry, I just had a geek out there for you. But it lit during the Pliocene about 3 million years ago in Pacific Northwest and all down the California coast. And it was a gigantic filter feeding probably much like a basking shark or actually, you know, sockeye and chum are kind of filter feeders, has these massive canines.

00:36:46:13 - 00:36:53:04
Ray Troll
But weirdly enough, the canines point sideways. And you know what? That's all about me.

00:36:53:06 - 00:36:57:15
Mark Titus
I if I were to guess, I would say that's to do battle.

00:36:57:17 - 00:37:02:18
Ray Troll
To do battle with the your rivals in the creek they were anatomists.

00:37:02:19 - 00:37:03:07
Mark Titus
Yes.

00:37:03:13 - 00:37:32:16
Ray Troll
And if you look at dog Salmon Creek is key to their teeth to get rather large and they grow them you know as they get into the into the streams. But those teeth kind of point sideways, too. But this is a a 3D print from a fossil. Well, there's actually a spot in Eastern Oregon, They were first discovered in the 1960s, but only in the last couple of years did scientists realize that actually they were called the same or too same.

00:37:32:18 - 00:38:02:06
Ray Troll
But now with these sideways, pointy big tusk like things, I'm calling it the giant spike to salmon. And maybe there's an ecological lesson to be learned here, too, in that it was a salmon that reached probably eight feet, perhaps even ten feet. Marlin size anatomists going up the big rivers. But it's the bigger creatures in the world that are the most vulnerable.

00:38:02:08 - 00:38:30:19
Ray Troll
So when the ice ages came in, salmon had to adapt to the ice ages because this lived before the ice ages. Somehow the loss of that I mean, I'm just actually spitballing here, but I think having maybe glaciers expanding in some of the larger rivers maybe being cut off, I don't know. Basically, you have a the bigger creature you are, the more things you're going to need.

00:38:30:21 - 00:38:50:06
Ray Troll
And actually, this is a planktonic. Theodore So yeah, there's something that affected it, but that's the mysteries of looking in deep time what happened with that creature. But it's also inspirational. You want to see how cool salmon are. They once were gigantic, but it also bring us back around. You know, that's the bigger salmon. You know, about those legendary £1 salmon.

00:38:50:08 - 00:38:54:11
Mark Titus
Yeah. And the Elwha and the Columbia dune hogs.

00:38:54:13 - 00:38:55:06
Ray Troll
Yeah.

00:38:55:08 - 00:39:25:02
Mark Titus
Yeah. And, you know, been talking a lot lately about diversity and why diversity is so important. The big fish are indicators. The big creatures are indicators of the health of the planet and the current bio system that they're in. What do you think? What do you think the state of affairs with salmon are telling us right now on the West Coast and in all of Salmon Nation?

00:39:25:02 - 00:39:29:16
Mark Titus
Maybe Bristol Bay, with being the exception?

00:39:29:18 - 00:39:57:00
Ray Troll
Well, yeah, the runs here in southeast Alaska last year were disappointing in a big way. What do we attribute it to? The the world is changing. The oceans are changing. We understand the carbon cycle with the atmosphere now. And I mean, in the 38 years I've lived here, I've seen just like the color of the ocean around here, change a bit.

00:39:57:00 - 00:40:30:18
Ray Troll
You know, there's just these unsettling things. Yeah. But I think that there's still a chance. There's still, you know, salmon are the canaries in the coal mine, as they say, the warning sign that something's wrong and Bristol Bay seems to be hanging in there. But as you said, diversity is the key. And scientists have really begun to understand that the diverse nature of Bristol Bay in that there are all these different runs of salmon that go into Bristol Bay.

00:40:30:18 - 00:41:03:17
Ray Troll
It's not just one. There's all these that whole big web of rivers that feeds Bristol Bay. And each one of those has like specific runs. So if this one in one year, Peters out or that group is is a like you know afflicted with something hit with something it's kind of like the in the portfolio in wall Street this will take care of that that will get you through and nature's like that if you got if it's a monoculture with just a few things and you lose that one main thing, you're screwed.

00:41:03:19 - 00:41:15:11
Ray Troll
You know, it's great to have all these different things that orchestra players with a lot of band members. So if the bass player doesn't show up, you've got another back there. I want to go back.

00:41:15:17 - 00:41:38:18
Mark Titus
To where you were talking about getting to know where you live. I you know, I can't help but keep thinking about a lot of folks I know. You know, me too, from time to time. It's like these are daunting issues that we face in terms of climate change and the world we live in. And God help us politics.

00:41:38:18 - 00:42:11:23
Mark Titus
And I have found real comfort and inspiration in getting out even here in Seattle. And we've got God knows we've got our problems here in Seattle right now, growing as a city, going through some pretty hard times right now, but in our in any direction of this city. And I can get out and go explore a new waterfall that I've never seen before or like you, knowing the Ravens know every part of the Snoqualmie River, which is just 30 miles or 30 minutes away from downtown Seattle here.

00:42:12:01 - 00:42:48:15
Mark Titus
And so when folks out there are contemplating the vastness of the issues we face and how to approach those things and save the things that we love most. What have you learned by living in the Tongass and by loving the Tongass so much about how to do what you can based on your heart space, the love that you have for this place to save it and and see it perpetuate for the next generation.

00:42:48:17 - 00:43:11:21
Ray Troll
Well, knowledge is power and knowledge is love, right? And getting to know just exploring that idea for a second, you know, getting to know where you're at, really paying attention to things. And, you know, COVID has made me just stay at home and really just stay here and go into the forest a lot and begin to really see.

00:43:12:02 - 00:43:40:01
Ray Troll
And I just began to want I wanted to know the names, the trees and maybe the scientific names of the trees. And just the way I focused on on salmon, but then also realizing, you know, there's 10,000 or maybe more years of knowledge about this place that might click in Highland section. Friends have that so much deeper. They've been in this place so much longer.

00:43:40:01 - 00:44:01:14
Ray Troll
They know this place like no other people can. And in in my short lifetime, I'm trying to learn as much as I can, but to know what is, to love it, right to No, no, no. You is to love, you know, to care about the place that you live in and to just understand what it is and, how it's affected by things like climate and storms.

00:44:01:14 - 00:44:26:10
Ray Troll
And knowing that we didn't get this amount of rainfall this year is going to affect the whole rainforest knowing, you know, it's kind of like the Kansas farmers are always concerned about rain and the rain content they can give you weather forecast, salmon and always tracking how the salmon runs are going every year. I'm always asking how what's the what's the season like?

00:44:26:10 - 00:44:52:23
Ray Troll
What's what's this going to be like? You get a sense of the health of the ocean by talking to the commercial fishing guys, men and women that work commercially, but also the sports fishing people, people, sports fishers that get to know a section of the river very well. I got to say that, you know, knowing like the Naha River, you've been up there many times and just bay, your guide up there, you get to know that section, you get to really care about it.

00:44:52:23 - 00:45:15:01
Ray Troll
What affects it? I was lucky enough to actually finally get to go around the island that I lived on for 38 years. Just this last week I was finally able to go around the north end of the island. There was a friend couple new friends came through with a boat and I said, You know, I've never been around river like a gentle island, so I want to know it so badly.

00:45:15:01 - 00:45:45:06
Ray Troll
Summer Bucket list. Then they took Michelle and I, and I got to see the Unit River for the first time, and I heard about it as this powerful and it was powerful to see it. And it it's right there. And Seattle is in a magical northwest. You're in such a magical place. You've got the mountains and the ocean and the native peoples and a thriving culture.

00:45:45:08 - 00:45:52:14
Ray Troll
That's yeah, and there's a culture there. It's also off the hook too. So down that back.

00:45:52:16 - 00:46:22:04
Mark Titus
Well, drifting back to your village, you know, the island you live on, that catch is on. And I identify what you were talking about, knowing the different species of the trees, the birds, the critters that run through the forest, the different species of fish in the water I spent to winters living out in bay. I used to get out at Yass Bay Lodge, as you said, and took care of the lodge out there for two winters.

00:46:22:04 - 00:46:31:05
Mark Titus
And it wasn't unlike this covered business we're going through right now in that we couldn't go anywhere. I mean, you.

00:46:31:05 - 00:46:33:15
Ray Troll
Were the caretaker in the winter out there. Yeah. Yeah.

00:46:33:15 - 00:46:34:12
Mark Titus
For two years.

00:46:34:14 - 00:46:37:23
Ray Troll
Yeah, well, that's. You get a lot of thinking done, don't you? Get a lot of thinking?

00:46:37:23 - 00:47:01:15
Mark Titus
I wrote a couple of screenplays, fix a lot of reels, did some plumbing and some carpentry and a whole lot of things. But I have never been more content in my life because of the knowledge of and the hunger for the knowledge of place. You mentioned the north tip of revealing a ghetto. I've never been to the Munich proper myself.

00:47:01:15 - 00:47:41:09
Mark Titus
I seen the color from the unique flowing into the waters we used to fish. My very favorite place on the planet to fish is that north part of your island? In the beam narrows up up by Bell Island. And just like you were saying about knowing every bit and every inch of that, I knew every inch of the bottom of that place I could fishing it, you know, from the sonar that we use, but also just from snagging my lines up and, you know, losing too many down your balls here than I care to mention.

00:47:41:09 - 00:47:44:11
Mark Titus
But it's a.

00:47:44:13 - 00:47:52:03
Ray Troll
Phrase you just use the knowledge of place or the what was yet it you just said something really good there man.

00:47:52:05 - 00:47:53:16
Mark Titus
I'll have to go check the recording.

00:47:53:16 - 00:47:57:20
Ray Troll
The crew write it down. So that's your.

00:47:57:22 - 00:48:19:18
Mark Titus
Knowledge of place? Yeah, the just knowing every square inch of it. And I'll tell you, there are nights where I will be sitting on the couch with the wife and two dogs. And, you know, there's some kind of a TV on in the background, but I'm looking at my Google Maps and checking out the beam narrows and retracing my steps.

00:48:19:18 - 00:48:23:21
Mark Titus
And there's such a love in my heart for that place.

00:48:23:23 - 00:48:27:18
Ray Troll
That powerful, powerful landscape, seascape.

00:48:27:20 - 00:48:52:02
Mark Titus
So much life going through there. And I think where I'm driving with all this is that, you know, the central focus on this show and the things we talk about, about your heart driving you to do things as opposed to just your mind in dictating the choices you make and the things that you really apply your life force to.

00:48:52:06 - 00:49:19:17
Mark Titus
And that's certainly true with me. I know that's 100% true with you. It shows up in your art. It shows up in the work you do. And I know the Tongass like many places, but in particular being such a gem that it is is facing some problems right now, some coming up against challenges again, with transboundary mining issues on the border with Canada and possibly opening it up for logging.

00:49:19:17 - 00:49:21:23
Mark Titus
The past administration has.

00:49:22:01 - 00:49:24:15
Ray Troll
Yeah was wrong.

00:49:24:17 - 00:49:42:15
Mark Titus
So what what do you do? What do you do as a everyday person to try to make a difference, to try to save these things you love? And you know, obviously if you live there, you get to see that and and be a part of that. But what what can we do you know.

00:49:42:20 - 00:50:14:10
Ray Troll
Well, you know, I, I was on the board of nonprofits and I was I support nonprofit organizations that fight the fight because I've realized they fight the fight and it was taking too much out of me. And right in the letters and getting on the phone and running for office, that wasn't that wasn't me. But what I realized that my own work, you know, and it's what the nuns used to tell me, I was brought here, you know, God given talent.

00:50:14:10 - 00:50:42:18
Ray Troll
It's a it's a sin if I don't use it. So but I feel like I tried to do the best work I can with what I do. And maybe in my own subtle, weird, offbeat, funny, irreverent, sneaky, surreal way I am, I'm communicating that love of my subject matter in places I care about, you know, so it's there in my work.

00:50:42:18 - 00:51:05:17
Ray Troll
And if I do the good work, people get it. And some people don't. Maybe they just see the joke. But there's something I try to bring some substance in to it. And, you know, if I'm not passionate about if I'm not inspired, I can't do the work, you know? I mean, yeah, so.

00:51:05:19 - 00:51:26:06
Mark Titus
Well, I think that is a perfect place to land on my little bonus round that I'm doing with everybody. And that that is your I've been to your house. It's beautiful and your studio is beautiful. And we're going to pretend for a minute this knock on wood won't happen. But your house was on fire.

00:51:26:08 - 00:51:31:13
Ray Troll
no. Or yes, I did. It was hard. Yeah, I had.

00:51:31:15 - 00:51:42:21
Mark Titus
Great minds. Other than your loved ones. Of course, you can only take one thing out of the house. Physically. What is that thing?

00:51:42:23 - 00:51:57:12
Ray Troll
One thing out of the house. This is a trick question of some sort Here. I'm looking around the house. Can I take two things?

00:51:57:14 - 00:52:00:09
Mark Titus
Just because it's you array? Yes, two things.

00:52:00:11 - 00:52:31:18
Ray Troll
I'm looking around my living room right now. What would I if I ran to the house? And actually, I would do do this. I would say I used to do this was drawing students. And I would say, all right, okay. Of all these drawings, there's the house is on fire. Which one do you like? So if I had to run back to the house, I have a there's a mask, a beautiful raven mask that a friend of mine is real shot rich card and that maybe around 1990 and commissioned him.

00:52:31:18 - 00:52:55:14
Ray Troll
I asked him he's Thomas Kinkade Carver. He lives on Bashan Island now, but I know the most beautiful things he's ever created, and I feel so lucky to look at that every day. So and it's traditional style and just reminds me where I'm at. And it was a relationship with a fellow artist. We we inspired each other. And then of course, there's another painting I'm looking at.

00:52:55:14 - 00:53:11:22
Ray Troll
There's a painting behind me. So but I don't know, I'd probably grab that man's by Israel. But there's there's a lot of art in the house, and I don't have my own art in my house because it just tire me or too fatiguing to look at because I would be mentally working on it.

00:53:11:22 - 00:53:14:15
Mark Titus
So I really I go home and watch the Wild every night.

00:53:14:15 - 00:53:26:12
Ray Troll
It Yeah, well, you know what I mean. Yeah. So take a break. I leave the studio stuff in the studio, but that's what I would do. I'd grab that raven mess by Israel.

00:53:26:14 - 00:53:30:21
Mark Titus
Okay, here comes the trick part. now it's your spiritual house.

00:53:30:23 - 00:53:31:15
Ray Troll
What were the.

00:53:31:15 - 00:53:39:12
Mark Titus
Two parts about you that you would take out of the fire that you had that you couldn't go on without?

00:53:39:13 - 00:53:41:00
Ray Troll
To me?

00:53:41:02 - 00:53:41:11
Mark Titus
Yeah.

00:53:41:12 - 00:53:45:02
Ray Troll
Like my spirit or someone else's spirit. My spirit.

00:53:45:03 - 00:53:59:20
Mark Titus
About you? Yes. Like, what are those things? Are they. Is it could it be, you know, your sense of compassion or like, what are those two qualities that you take out of the burning house that you couldn't go on without about yourself?

00:53:59:22 - 00:54:29:11
Ray Troll
Well, my sense of humor, which is kind of weird and offbeat and kind of dark, which you can't explain humor. It's like you can't explain. You can't explain art. Sometimes you just get it or you don't. And humor is that way either. Humor has got me through. Get a lot of funny friends. I'm doing a show with a ventriloquist, and every now and then he's really funny.

00:54:29:13 - 00:54:49:06
Ray Troll
But yeah, my sense of compassion, love. You know, we can't function without love. I love my family. I love my kids, I love my neighborhood. I love the history. I love the forest, I love the sea level, the fishes. So it's love, compassion. Yeah.

00:54:49:08 - 00:54:55:16
Mark Titus
Anything you leave in that purifying fire, anything you'd leave behind on purpose.

00:54:55:21 - 00:55:06:04
Ray Troll
God, this is. This is like him on the couch. Fan tears. I leave the darkness behind.

00:55:06:06 - 00:55:08:01
Mark Titus
I'll take it. I'll take that.

00:55:08:02 - 00:55:12:06
Ray Troll
You need to expand on the darkness. Yeah, Leave the darkness behind.

00:55:12:08 - 00:55:15:23
Mark Titus
I. I know I've tasted the darkness. I know what you're talking about.

00:55:15:23 - 00:55:34:15
Ray Troll
We got to get. We got to get through life, you know? And you've got to. There's a lot of dark in this world. Dark, dark, ugly. And I'd leave that ugliness and the darkness and the hatred behind only level conquer, hate and hate. There's just no good.

00:55:34:17 - 00:56:10:23
Mark Titus
Well spoken, my friend. We have a really cool collaboration about to unleash the world and. Right. Yes. It's a I got to say, you gave me a call and said, hey, you've got a new design. I'm going to let you describe the design. But would we be interested in bringing it out into the world together as a collaboration and my heart leapt because it really brought me back to that 19 year old kid standing in front of Midnight Run in the museum and Dillingham, Alaska.

00:56:10:23 - 00:56:27:15
Mark Titus
And that guy asked me to collaborate on something, even if it's just carrying it in our little merch store. It's it's a huge deal for me. And so tell me a little bit about this this shirt, this project that we're bringing out into the world.

00:56:27:17 - 00:56:52:18
Ray Troll
Well, I've known you for, you know, over a decade now, and I trust you. And I know that you're doing good things for the planet in your own quirky, weird, creative, fun way. And I know your heart's in the right place. And so actually bring it back to midnight Run. Midnight run as the oil painting and oil and al-kidd on canvas.

00:56:52:20 - 00:57:14:07
Ray Troll
And it's a long and it doesn't quite fit on a T-shirt in the right way. And we've done it on a T-shirt, but it's just not really designed for a T-shirt. T shirts want to be t shirts and designs for t shirts really should be designed for t shirts. So for decades have wanted to kind of redo it as something that was very t shirt appropriate.

00:57:14:12 - 00:57:36:12
Ray Troll
So it was going to work graphically in print. Well, my printer would be happy and it would print and look cool on a shirt because you get into the technical end of it. So I read it and it's got once again the five species of well known Pacific salmon, although as we know, steelhead are also salmon and so are cutthroats.

00:57:36:12 - 00:58:01:10
Ray Troll
And but let's get off those species in their glorious spawning colors, leaping up that sort of rainbow stream. But this time I also did pen and pencil drawing drew every little scale. And then I turned to my good friend Grace Freeman, who's a young digital colorist, to really spend some time with digital color and hired Grace to work with me on that.

00:58:01:11 - 00:58:22:13
Ray Troll
And Grace Freeman did a marvelous job and we tweak the colors a little bit, threw some type on there, and you have a special version of that shirt and mine is going to say Long may you run, which is I'm borrowing from Neil Young, who was actually writing about a car that song of all things But your says what?

00:58:22:15 - 00:58:43:16
Mark Titus
Well our says, guess what save what you love, All right. And it's in a different color. Ours is a seafoam green, which is actually kind of a throwback to green. And then the art inside of it, your art in the border is a yellow and it's a it's a kind of a throwback to our beloved Seattle Supersonics here.

00:58:43:18 - 00:58:46:05
Ray Troll
So let's see that name in there.

00:58:46:05 - 00:59:12:09
Mark Titus
I say someday we'll come home again. But yeah, and great song. One of my favorite songs, by the way, and what wonderful print. I will be wearing it proudly. And of course, our version you'll be able to get on our shop at Ava's Wired.com and how do folks get any of your products and follow along with the Rachel phenomenon?

00:59:12:11 - 00:59:31:15
Ray Troll
Well, I'll just Google my name, Rachel, you'll find me, but troll Art dot com is the website, and if you like to listen to the podcast, check out Paleo nerds. We get a lot of crazy cool guests there, but it's not just about dinosaurs, but a lot of other stuff, a lot of heavy stuff. But yeah, so Justin.

00:59:31:18 - 00:59:33:21
Mark Titus
You're on social media to.

00:59:33:22 - 00:59:56:17
Ray Troll
Get a Facebook page. I can't take any more friends. They cut you off at a certain point, but if you just click on semi friend request, then you're following me and I occasionally do Instagram recap troll on Instagram. There is a hashtag re troll things that somebody else started years ago. And so I'll go and look at that every now and then and people put their Rachel stuff up there.

00:59:56:17 - 00:59:59:00
Ray Troll
So it's fun to see as well.

00:59:59:02 - 01:00:31:03
Mark Titus
I encourage any of you out there to wear your favorite Rachel shirt or get a new one. Proceeds from our version of the new collab, The Save What You Love Shirt are going to benefit your brother. Tim Trolls work in Bristol Bay and five I'm $5 from each one of the T-shirts is going to go toward preserving land in Bristol Bay for all time so it can be cool left people and the salmon to continue to flourish.

01:00:31:03 - 01:00:41:00
Ray Troll
Their brother Tim runs the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust. It's a nonprofit putting land into protection. So it's cool. That's great. Mark. Thank you for doing that.

01:00:41:02 - 01:01:07:09
Mark Titus
Yeah, of course. Man. This is this is how we do these things and this is how we roll. And it's always amazing getting the chance to hang out. We've done it in road trips and a few airplanes and a lot of phone time, but this is a whole new world on this podcast deal. And I thank you so much, my friend, for joining me today and for joining the Save what you Love community here.

01:01:07:11 - 01:01:16:13
Ray Troll
Thank you. Pleasure, privilege and always love hanging out with you. Mark So give me a call whenever Matt and let's go fishing sometime. We haven't done that yet.

01:01:16:15 - 01:01:18:01
Mark Titus
Hi This summer.

01:01:18:03 - 01:01:19:02
Ray Troll
The summer.

01:01:19:04 - 01:01:22:21
Mark Titus
Summer. All right, cool. All right.

01:01:22:22 - 01:01:30:13
Music
How do you say the you.

01:01:30:15 - 01:01:32:23
Music
How do you say.

01:01:32:23 - 01:01:37:19
Music
What you like?

01:01:37:21 - 01:02:03:20
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening to say what you love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on Apple Podcasts. You can check out photos and links from this episode at Eva's Wild dot com. While there, you can join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter. You'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door and notifications about upcoming guests and more great content on the way.

01:02:03:22 - 01:02:42:22
Mark Titus
That's It Eva's wild. That's the word Save spelled backwards. Wild dot com. This episode was produced by Tyler Wight and edited by Patrick Troll. Original music was created by Whiskey Class. This podcast is a collaboration between Ava's Wild Stories and Salmon Nation and was recorded on the Homelands of the Duwamish people. We'd like to recognize these lands and waters and their significance for the peoples who lived and continue to live in this region, whose practices and spirituality these were and are tied to the land in the water and whose lives continue to enrich and develop in relationship to the land waters and other inhabitants today.