The following is the transcript of one of our most fun interviews, with prolific author, plant ID expert, paddler, camping enthusiast, and outdoorsman, Kevin Callan, also known as KC Happy Camper.
Pamela:
Good day, eh and welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. I’m Pamela.
Tim:
I’m Tim
Pamela:
and we are from supergoodcamping.com. We’re here because we’re on a mission to inspire other families to enjoy camping adventures such as we have with our kids. Today’s guest is just a wee bit of a camping and canoeing enthusiast. He has a popular YouTube channel called KC Happy Camper that chronicles his myriad adventures, many of which are hilarious. If you’ve ever seen or heard an interview about camping or Ontario Parks chances are it was Kevin. He writes columns and blogs for Explore Magazine and Paddling Magazine. He also writes books – 18 of them in fact. Please welcome the Happy Camper, Kevin Callan.
Kevin:
I love that you put “eh” in there, eh!
Pamela:
We’re Canadian, eh!
Kevin:
Yeah, we’re Canadian, eh! I love to paddle, eh.
Tim:
Exactly right. Following in the fine footsteps of Bob and Doug, right?
Kevin:
Everybody should know them. That was funny growing up. Koo loo koo koo koo koo koo koooo!
Tim:
Exactly.
[Dog barking in the background]
Kevin:
Angel [to the dog]. We’re fine. I’m on a podcast, it’s very important!
Tim:
Farley, that’s our puppy, “when it’s time for scratches, it’s time for scratches. I don’t really care what you’re doing.” “But I have to go to the washroom.” “No, no, no scratches now.”
Kevin:
Dogs are very self-interested, it’s terrible.
Tim:
They are, but they’re good fun. Thank you very much for coming and taking the time out of your wickedly busy schedule, especially now that you’re done with school because I know that you’re headed into the backcountry somewhere.
Kevin:
Today, I was actually quite excited. I had a great bunch of students this semester. I always do. But they’re fantastic. They’re all messed up, but they were fantastic. The lowest mark was 97%. These are kids that were never going to finish high school, probably end up on the street, and probably go to prison. 97%! They knew their trees like there was no tomorrow. And it wasn’t just memorization. It was so cool. They gave me gifts. We got pizza. We went out in the woods and got swarmed by mosquitoes. It was good, it was a good day. It was really good.
Tim:
Too cool.
Pamela:
You must be proud.
Kevin:
Yeah, it was a really good day, actually. And the colleagues that I work with get the credit too, because it’s just not me, right? I just teach them about plant species identification. We’ve got a counselor, and we’ve got a teacher. I just come in and say “Okay, here are the trees.” But of all the years that I’ve been teaching, I’ve never had any negative colleagues. Whoever takes that job has got to be there because they want to be there. I’m part-time but they’re full-time. They can just take a normal job and they don’t, which is good. You can tell that I have been in the woods all day. I’m bitten alive. The mosquitoes are out by the way. Holy jumping!
Tim:
Here in Toronto, they’re not, but I keep hearing nasty black fly things from people up north.
Kevin:
I don’t know why the black flies are bad. Well, the water level was high in the rivers so that makes sense that they would be bad. We need a really hot (I hate the heat) but we need a really hot few days to burn them off. So yeah, I was in Algonquin last week and first of all the blackflies are bad but also I went with Speedo-man. I have a B roll that nobody should ever see of that man. Nobody will ever, ever see.
Tim:
Excellent.
Kevin:
Well, it’s just wrong.
Tim:
B-man and Andy are my favorites to hang with you. I just love watching your videos.
Kevin:
What’s really cool about those two guys is that they were my neighbors. That’s how I met them. They both were my neighbors. “Hey, how are you doing?” I would help them work on the fence or whatever and we’d get talking: “Hey, do you canoe?” “Yeah, I canoe.” “You fish?” “I fish” [melody playing] Oh, that’s the alarm saying that I should be on your show. [laughter] Oh, my Lord. It was so nice to actually know just random people for no other reason, and just find out that they’re really funny and very passionate about being out there as well. I’m really grateful to have friends like that. First of all, Ashley is a really good friend because he has no concept of the canoe world whatsoever. He’s not on social media. He doesn’t even know he’s known as the Speedo Man. He knows none of this. He just wants to go out fishing because he works at a factory and makes wire and he just has fun going out with me. He could care less when I put the camera on.
And then Andy, he’s a manager for species at risk at the MNR [Ministry of Natural Resources]. He’s a very serious man at work. I didn’t know that! He just wants to go out there and he’s the Red Skeleton guy. Yeah, he is the comedian. I went to his work once and I gave a presentation and I showed videos of him. His entire staff was like – what? I guess he goes to work very seriously with a tie and he’s really funny.
Tim:
I never would have believed that because he’s hilarious.
Kevin:
Yeah, I think the wilderness does that to us. It brings out our true character. There’s no facade out there and it brings out our relaxation. The last video I think kind of proved that. I was wondering why so many people were watching the last video because it’s a good video, but it’s got a lot more views than my others. I go “what’s going on?” And it’s because everybody’s seeing themselves in that video. Good food. Good camaraderie. Good fishing. Thank goodness we’re in Algonquin. We haven’t been there for three years because of COVID. Right? I think everybody’s seen that. It was almost like Bill Mason’s Waterwalker. We’re seeing ourselves in that red canoe. Who cares about Bill Mason or who he was? We’re watching Waterwalker because we want to be in his canoe. I think that’s what’s going on right now.
Tim:
Cool. Yeah, I don’t disagree. We were having a chat with Camper Christina. Literally, the first question I asked her was: “How awesome was it to be back at the Outdoor Adventure Show and presenting to boot”? That’s the thing. The amazing Ontario camping community, especially all of the YouTubers, there are so many of them, and you guys all get together. You all get to do that meeting and see each other and have a yak and blah, blah, blah. And it’s been missing for two years.
The Outdoor Adventure Show in Toronto
Kevin:
The Toronto show, to be quite honest, was a love fest for YouTubers. It really was, and social media people. And I’m not saying that as a negative thing. Because think about it. Think about my life. Usually in the springtime, and I’ve done this for years, I do a tour. I start in February, and up until around early June. I do 45 to 50 shows in the US, Wales, England, and all across Canada. I do all these shows, and then that all stopped. And then I did talks on social media, which was good for a while. And then after a while, I was like, “Well, I think people are getting bored with this”. That Toronto show was my first time on stage for three years before everything got shut down. It was just five minutes before going on that I thought of that. I went, “Oh, I’m on stage.” “I haven’t done this for three years.” “I’m gonna vomit!” It was fine. Everything worked out fine. But actually, I really had a blast doing that. When I was driving home I thought: “This is proof that the live show is better than the social.” I get the whole social thing and that’s what we had to do. We had to be creative. But being onstage in front of real people, real paddlers, really passionate people, and especially other people in the market is so much better. It was so great to be with my colleagues, especially to see how many young people were there – young YouTubers, so many young bloggers, and young, passionate people. That means a lot to me and a lot to my generation, right? Because I remember years ago when I started doing a bunch of things and a bunch of very pompous paddlers were like “Oh, canoeing is done.” “It’s dead.” These young people don’t care. It’s like, go to hell. And then to see what happened at the Toronto show. Boom. They were wrong. Absolutely wrong.
Pamela:
Camper Christina said, “we weren’t sure if anybody was even going to show up.” But she said it was great.
Tim:
Yeah, and I don’t want to get sidetracked but I totally agree. There are so many more young, up-and-coming in particular in the YouTube and Instagram world, but they’re passionate like Tents and Timber. Your little video when you were at the show, where you kind of got everybody in a big pile, and then you spun the camera around and everything went blue. They told us that they were totally blown away that you even knew that they were YouTubers. And I said, “but you guys do great stuff.” You’re young, you’re up-and-coming, why wouldn’t we be paying attention to what it is that you’re doing? Because it’s something that we all love and that we’re sort of protective of, and we want to enthuse kids – sorry, anybody out there under 40 is a kid to me – we want to enthuse kids to get out there to do those things.
Kevin:
Yeah, but they are getting out there. And I think it’s really great. And also I do hear “oh, well, you know, these YouTube adventurers they’re narcissistic” and whatever. And actually, some are to be quite honest, but I have my fan base. I love watching. I literally can’t wait to see some of them. I sit down to watch them and I’m very excited. And everybody goes “Really? You?” What because I’m old? What’s kept me going is that I teach young people and I have to keep them inspired. If I don’t keep up with the times, I’m done, right? They’ve helped me along the way to be quite honest. Today I finished my class and we watched some videos about going outdoors. They’re all pumped. They’re all excited. And they listed off all the people that they watched on YouTube and it was all young people, right? And those outdoor adventurer people that some people knock, and I gotta say there are some that are narcissistic weirdos that should not be on YouTube, they should really think about what they’re doing but the majority are not. And I think that’s really important. I’m blabbing a lot. You can tell that I was outdoors all day.
Tim:
It’s not a bad thing. You’re one of the most recognizable faces publicly certainly of the Canadian camping and canoeing community. You just mentioned recently that you do some worldwide stuff, which is very cool. Why do you do it? What’s your end goal? That’s a lot of work, man. Why?
Kevin:
Yeah, well, how I do it is because I’m hyper, and also I’m the calmest in my family. I have three older sisters and I’m the calm one. I have a wedding this Saturday, my sister’s daughter is getting married and all the Callans are going to be there. My daughter was telling my partner, Kristine, and she said “You do realize that dad is the calmest of them all?” Christine said: “Oh my God.”
I need to be doing something. So there’s that, but why I do it ever since my youth to be quite honest, I wanted to make a change in the world. That sounds really sappy. It really does. But I did. I always wanted to make a difference. I always deep-thought everything. My thinking was okay, well, if the world comes to an end at least I tried to do something, right? I’ve always believed that if we reconnect with nature because we’re all from the wilderness, we’re all born from it, every culture unless we’re aliens, but we’re all born from it. If we can get people back to the wilderness and reconnect with it, then when things go bad, and we need to save it, they’ll want to save it because they’re connected to it. If they’re not connected to it, they don’t care. They just want to make sure their internet works during a massive thunderstorm. That just happened a couple of days ago, right? Which is really interesting. I saw that happen a few days ago here. There was a bunch of people, and we all gathered. I was making coffee on my camp stove because the power was out. Everybody knew that I was the camper, so they’d get coffee from me. But other people were like zombie world. They’re yelling at everybody. They’re getting angry because there was no gas. This is actually half a day into the storm. Not two days, not three days, a half a day. They couldn’t get groceries or gas. And they were yelling and screaming at everybody. And I was like, “Wow, if I was in the woods, I would care less if the storm happened.” It was brutal. But after five minutes, I’ll be okay. Well, okay, moving on. Yeah, so I don’t know. I’m blabbing again. So I know one day. But the idea as to why I did this is to reconnect people to want to save nature.
Kirk Wipper actually helped me focus because I was scattered a lot in my youth. I was doing all these jobs trying to do that. Kirk Wipper, the founder of the Canoe Museum, came to me and during one of my presentations, he says, “My God, you’re hyper! Oh my God, whoa.” And he goes, “You’ve got to focus.” Well, how would I focus? He says, “the number one job for you is to get them out there.” How are we going to do that? That’s why I started writing guidebooks. That’s exactly why I started writing guidebooks because guidebooks would get them out there. Those guidebooks if you read them sort of have hidden messages about why you want to go out there. It’s not really about going from A to B, if you read my guidebooks, it’s about the importance of going from A to B, the book will get you there, but their messages are far beyond that.
Once Around Algonquin and The Meanest Link
Tim:
One of my favorites is Once Around Algonquin. While I’m not up to The Meanest Link [a very difficult trip around Algonquin]…
Kevin:
No, don’t do it! It’s the stupidest trip I ever went on in my life!
Tim:
So that’s the thing. I’m slightly younger than you and I’m well aware of my limits. There’s not a chance.
Kevin:
No, don’t do it!
Tim:
After reading that yeah, no, but it’s a great story nonetheless. I really, really enjoyed it. And I could see where somebody who wanted to or was foolish enough to test themselves. They would be like, yeah, that’s a great idea. And they would go out and do it. Younger, more fit people.
Kevin:
I really got criticized for that whole trip, but I’m not holding anything back. Why did I do that trip? I did not do it as a race. Hats off to the people who do it as race, so I’m not knocking them. That was not me nor ever will be me, because I want to spend as much time as I can out in the woods. But there were a few things going on behind the curtain that people didn’t know were going on when I did the trip. One is my buddy and I turned 50. At the time, I was doing a lot of shows I was traveling a lot and it was during January-February when you have these great ideas from January-February because there are no black flies, no mosquitoes, etc. You have this feeling of “I can’t wait to do this!” So I had this idea to do The Meanest Link, I thought it would be a good storyline. CBC Radio that I do some work with thought it was a great idea. These two 50-year-olds, my buddy Andy didn’t even look at any emails. He just said, “well just pick me up because that’s what you always do.” Because he always did do that. He had no clue. All these books I’ve written and he’s been with me, he’s like “whatever Kevin.” But after that trip, he had to have knee surgery at the end of it. He didn’t tell me until a year later. But also what was going on was my wife at the time, for many years too, wanted to separate, but nobody knew. And I just needed to get the heck out of Dodge to rethink and it is the wilderness that soothes my soul. During that trip, those long portages meant nothing to me at that time. Poor Andy it did hurt him to hell, but to me, I could care less because I needed to be out there. Either that or talk to some psychologist or go off and do The Meanest Link, so I did The Meanest Link. Even he didn’t know that though at the time that that was going on. And then later on when he did he said “oh, I get why you did that trip.”
Pamela:
Nature therapy.
Kevin Callan’s Plans for 2022
Tim:
Yep. That’s not a bad thing. Two more questions, and then I want to talk about books. What are your plans for this year? Do you have a specific itinerary Do you have like 47 trips planned? What are your plans for 2022?
Kevin:
Yeah, lots of plans this semester or this semester? My God! I work for myself. I teach part-time at the college, and I’ve been doing that for 34 years. Basically, when I finished a contract, I’m done. I don’t even know if I have employment at the college until they call me in the fall. Which was always good for me, and bad for my paycheck, really bad. At the college, I make $24,000 a year teaching those students. Full-time people make $120,000, right, or $80,000 minimum, right? Financially, that was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I should have been teaching there full-time. But when I was teaching there part-time, I was able to go out and write during the summer. So I work for myself as a Canadian writer, just so everybody knows…
Tim:
12 bucks a year.
Kevin:
It’s not good. You make 8% royalty on a book, right? 8%. So that’s not a lot of money, right? But I knew that. I knew that going into it. So it’s no surprise, but it always gave me a reason to go out. You always need a reason. Because you’d be sitting on the couch, you’re all like “the bugs are bad, and there’s a heatwave.” So my reason this year or this season, is that they’re going to redo the Top 60 Canoe Routes of Ontario. I’ve done a lot of redos for the main publisher, because books are selling really well, because of COVID. Everybody’s going into the woods, right? So they said, “Can you do top 70?” Yeah, I can do that. So I have to redo that book, and it’s almost sold out, by the way. They said, “We need it by August 19, the 10 additional routes.” I was like, what??? It takes me about two years to write a book, right? So it’s like, I can’t do that. Yes, I can. So I finished work today at the college. I head out next week, and in June and July, I’m basically in the bush doing those routes. And that’s a reason. And it’s funny, Andy and Tim and all of them usually go and they like planning because they have normal lives. I actually told them the other day I went “guys, here are the days I’m going if you want to go follow my car, and we’ll go but I’m not waiting for you because I have to do this book by August 19.” So that’s kind of cool. So I’m doing the west bay of Lake Nipissing, the whole shoreline of Nipissing. I think that’s a really cool route that I did years ago, but I want to redo it. I’m going to circumnavigate all of Lake Temagami, even though it’s a busy lake, it’s a really good route. I don’t know if you’ve done that before, but the entire circumnavigation of Lake Temagami. I’m doing some inland Temagami. I’m doing a whole bunch of places.
Tim:
Yeah, cool. Our youngest just got an offer from Ontario Parks to work at Marten River Provincial Park and
Pamela:
Finlayson Point Provincial Park,
Kevin:
Finlayson. Oh, those are great parks! Marten River especially. So what’s he doing there?
Tim:
Who knows?
Pamela:
Park Ranger, working at the gate
Tim:
or pressure washing comfort stations and stuff.
Kevin:
But well, that goes with the job.
Tim:
Yeah, who cares? Get out there. They’re entry points for Temagami, which is amazing and he will be away from staring at his phone all day. So I’m good.
Kevin:
Yeah, he’ll also tell you that the pay is crap through Ontario Parks, but the experience is awesome. So I gotta say, like, all the jobs I’ve had in the outdoors, the pay was always crap. What’s really good is that you meet the people that you really like to meet, because they know the pay is crap. They’re not there for the pay. They’re there for the love of nature.
Tim:
Out of curiosity. Ballpark, how many camping days a year do you do?
Kevin:
At least 60 or I get very upset with myself. So since the very beginning, 60 nights or more, or don’t do it.
Tim:
Cool! I’m very envious. That’s how my dad is, man. I don’t even know how old he is. Now I’m gonna get in trouble for that, 70-something, and up until about four years ago, that was his target for ski days.
Writing Camping Guidebooks
Kevin:
Oh, yeah, back in the heyday, when I did those guidebooks. I still do the guidebooks, sounds like a friggin Loverboy band, the idea of a heyday. I would go up north and I would have those barrels which we now know, back then nobody would be doing but I would dehydrate meals in the wintertime. And I’d have a series of barrels in my truck at the time and I would do one 10-day trip. I would do the Steel River, flip my barrel, do the Chaplin and the Cassenda, and then flip the barrel when I was working on the guidebooks. Then when my daughter was born, she’d come up with me. She was doing all those trips when she was just a wee little girl. It just was life at the time. So it would be tough not to do that and it also gives me a reason. I need to be out for 60 days and then in the wintertime, I get real and say “Okay, pull your socks up and make some type of living.”
Tim:
I’m so glad that you have the opportunity to do that – to live that lifestyle and that it works for you. That’s amazing.
Kevin:
Yeah, it’s not for everybody, but it was good for me.
Camping Books
Tim:
So you mentioned the Top 60 Canoe Routes of Ontario is going to get a rewrite. What about The Killarney and French River book? That’s getting another edition as well?
Kevin:
Yeah, so that’s out now. The first edition went out of print and now it’s the second edition that is out now. The second edition of the winter camping book is out. Yeah, so that’s old. The new one is out now. It’s got much more routes in it, updated, whatever. But that’s a sign of the times. Your audience would find this really interesting. The publisher, the owner of Firefly, he doesn’t camp, and I don’t really talk to him. I talk to the designers and the editors, but I don’t really know the owner of Firefly, right? And he sent me a handwritten note, like a letter. And he said, “Why are your books selling so well right now?” They’re all going out of print, especially The Lost Canoe Route book, which he doesn’t know if they should redo. People are going nuts trying to get that book. He goes, “Why? Why are they doing this, Kevin?” Well because of COVID. Everybody’s going out in the woods right now. And they’re doing really well. So I gotta say, I’m doing all of these rewrites thanks to COVID. Not that I like COVID.
Tim:
No, but it certainly has shaken up the camping world. I mean, for me, I’m a lunatic planner. I book my trips five months out. I don’t do the five months and 23 days thing to screw other people over, but boy, was it a challenge to book five months out for the last two years, because everybody else figured out the loophole the 5 months and 23 days, and there are so many people booking. It’s just been insane.
Kevin:
Yeah. And that’s the yin and yang. That’s a double-edged sword, right? My entire life I’ve been trying to get people outdoors. That’s my entire career. I don’t know how many radio shows, how many TV shows, or how many podcasts I’ve ever done, but I try and do that. All I had to do is wait for COVID, right?
Tim:
Yeah, it’s been a real change. One of the comments with Camper Christina was just the number of campsites you get to and say, “Oh, somebody who doesn’t know about backcountry has been here.” I mean, it’s not that we haven’t had them all along. But wow, just the new level.
Kevin:
Yeah, the etiquette has been really bad for the last couple of years, a very small percentage, but when you see that small percentage, it’s pretty harsh. So you have a lot of older people that are saying not older people, more seasoned people are saying “these COVID campers, how dare they? Damn them to hell!” At the end of the day, they’ll go away, because when COVID sort of releases itself, they’ll all go to Mexico and to Hawaii and do the cruises.
Tim:
Back to doing the things that they did.
Kevin:
So they won’t do the outdoors as their new adventure because they’ve got nothing else to do. We will retain probably I’m guessing 10 to 12% of those people that will be hardcore. And we need to educate them and maybe enforce some of them because they’re just being idiots. But we’ll have to educate them. And this has been going on since the beginning of time – after World War I, after World War II, after the Great Depression, even after the depression in 1989, no, 1982. So basically, outdoor pursuits went up, it curtailed and then we have the hardcore people. That’s a good thing, guys. That’s not a negative. Well, right now. You get to that campsite and see what they’ve done, you want to
Tim:
say bad words.
Kevin:
Put them in prison!
Tim:
Yeah, for sure. So we’re headed towards running out of time. Briefly, you’ve got another book coming out. It’s a new one. It’s not a reprint or a new edition. It’s a new book, your memoirs, tell us why.
Kevin:
Remember, I’m only 58 years old. Okay, so memoir. First of all, it’s not something you write. It’s not an autobiography. It’s not a biography. A memoir is an idea. In fact, Margaret Atwood talked to me about this during the whole lockdown. She says a memoir is basically something that’s meaningful in your life, that focuses you in your life. The memoir was all about my high anxiety, which was major while I was growing up. I had a stuttering problem. I was very shy. I’m not like who I am now. So whatever happened? What did I do to help that? I’m still obviously high anxiety, I have always gone into the wilderness to cure that. So the book is based on my career since a kid until now of all the ways I figured out how to go into the woods to cure my anxiety. It’s called Another Bend in the River. Basically, the whole memoir is about going and continuing as opposed to thinking of the past. So it started off to be just a bunch of wilderness essays that I was running during the pandemic. I couldn’t write crap during the pandemic. Margaret was in the green room with me at CBC Radio, and I said, Margaret, I can’t write anything. She said, “well you should, you should be able to write lots right now.” I got nothing. I got nothing. I tried. Then when I started going canoeing again, I came back and in two months I wrote it all down, gave it to my editor, and she said, “Oh, you just wrote your memoir.” I said “what?” She said, “Yeah, this is a memoir.” We just wrote it. So it’s self-published. And I know we’re running out of time, but I’ll give the whole rundown of self-publishing because a lot of people are questioning me about this. I’ve written 18 books now. 17 books with Firefly, which was the large publisher, the largest in Canada. And then I went and did Once Around Algonquin and I wanted to do something separate on my own because Sandy Mowat, who is Farley Mowat‘s son, I worked with him at CBC Radio and he said “Kevin, you should self-publish.” So I said, I don’t want to self-publish because self-publishing authors aren’t really authors. He said “Yeah, that was 10 years ago, Kevin. Things are progressing right now.” And he said, “You do everything, everything possible for that publisher and you make 8 percent.” When I self-published Once Around Algonquin, I was making 70% on that book. That’s a huge difference, right? And so I decided to self-publish this book because nobody else would publish it. It’s just a memoir of Kevin Callan, who gives a darn about that, right? So I’d rather do it on my own. But what’s really nice is that I know all of these people from the past that are helping me out. I hired a really good editor that has edited all of my other books from Firefly. I hired them separately. I hired designers separately, I know them all, and they’re really good friends. It’s good to be old and know all these people as really good friends.
Tim:
Yeah, I’m glad I had concerns about you publishing a memoir. It’s like wow, why? Why is he doing that? Is he easing his way out of public life? Because, certainly for my money, you’re the most public face for the camping/canoeing community, certainly here in Canada. Seriously. Anytime you hear an interview about Ontario Parks, camping, canoeing, you name it on CBC, on CTV, I’m sure I heard you on CHCH at one point, you’re the guy. So you do again, for my money, you do so much education for those that don’t have as much of an interest in it or aren’t as serious about it. You put that out there for them. So I would be very sad if you were going “well, maybe I’m just going to chill a little bit.”
Kevin:
Oh, I’m not chilling at all. No, no, this memoir is not a chill thing at all. In fact, I’ve already got three books on the go right now. Yeah. It was just a cool idea, and I just wrote it. At the end of the day, if anybody’s out there saying “I want to write a book”, just write it and then try to publish it. Don’t say, “Well, how do I publish a book?” Just do it. It sounds so friggin’ cliche, but just friggin’ do it. People will say it was a lot of work. Well, you know, I can’t help you there. You say it’s a lot of work and you can’t do it. I can’t help you. It’s one of those things where if you have passion for anything in your life, you will do it.
Pamela:
Two little bits I wanted to add: One, was that I so appreciate your candor about your personal struggles that you interweave into your book. I thought that it’s so great that you’re open about stuff like that. It helps other people with mental health issues or with their anxiety or their depression or whatever it is they’re trying to go through.
Second thing was that I’m a Beaver Scout leader. When we had to go virtual during the pandemic, I was trying to engage Beaver Scouts who are five to seven years old and trying to get them their badge requirements. One of them was that they had to identify wildflowers. And I thought, well, how am I going to teach them wildflowers virtually? And sure enough, I found a Kevin Callan video with you and Kyla, I think was in it with your dog. And you’re walking around talking about wildflowers. I thought this is perfect. So we showed it to our Beaver Scouts.
Kevin:
Yeah, that’s the Kevin Callan that people don’t know in the Happy Camper world. When I teach at the college, my students have no clue that I’m the Happy Camper. Because it doesn’t matter, right? I’m a past Forester, a past Fish and Wildlife, so I do all those plant identification things. That’s what I do as a job and I know the species. During the lockdown, I thought “well, I might as well go out and do the ID teach my students but also put it on my social media for other people.” And everybody says “I didn’t know you knew all those trees.”
Tim:
This is kind of how I was getting into it and stuff.
Kevin:
Yeah, It’s kind of a split world, right? It really is. And also the main thing, I do not let the college use my Happy Camper name because I learned long ago that the administrators would say “well, parents, KC Happy Camper works here.” I said, “No, you pay me $24,000 a year here, part-time, and you treat me like crap. Not my colleagues, but the administration. You’re not using my name. I’ve got to be smart with that. And I know I’m going off on a tangent with that. But there was a day when I grew up and said, “You’re not doing that. I’m here because I’m teaching tree identification that’s what I’m good at, not because I’m this guy.”
Tim:
Yeah, social media celebrity, whatever. Cool. Well, we are right at the edge. Thank you, again, so much for coming out. This has been a riot. If you’re at all interested we would absolutely love to have you back just to yak.
Kevin:
Yeah, I think this is so great. I think you guys do an awesome job. And you’re looking good tonight. Look at that.
Tim:
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks so much for coming out, man.
Kevin:
Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it.
Pamela:
Take care. Have a good night. That’s it for us for today. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. We so appreciate Kevin Callan if you’d like to reach out to him. He is The Happy Camper on Facebook, KC Happy Camper on YouTube, KevinCallan.com is his website and he’s at KC Happy Camper on Twitter and at KC Happy Camper on Instagram. That’s it for us for today. My name is Pamela
Tim:
I’m still Tim
Pamela:
and we are from supergoodcamping.com If you’d like to reach out to us our email address is hi@supergoodcamping.com and we are on all of the social media if you would like to reach out to us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube we would appreciate it! Thanks! Bye!
Tim:
Bye!