Angie Jenson | Photograph by Adam Williams
Overview: Angie Jenson was brought up in the Mormon church and, when she was a young woman, she sought excommunication from The Church. She talks with Adam Williams about why she felt that was necessary and about the formal exit interview that she went through to make it happen.
They talk about her 20+ years of solo international traveling, and how that traveling has influenced her spiritual growth, including a revelatory experience at a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka.
Angie also talks about her years as a wildland firefighter, working on helitack and hotshot crews, including a season Down Under. And how she became a “tree activist” along the way. Among other things.
SHOW NOTES, LINKS, CREDITS & TRANSCRIPT
The We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast is a collaboration with Chaffee County Public Health and the Chaffee Housing Authority, and is supported by the Colorado Public Health & Environment: Office of Health Disparities.
Along with being distributed on podcast listening platforms (e.g. Spotify, Apple), Looking Upstream is broadcast weekly at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays, on KHEN 106.9 community radio FM in Salida, Colo.
We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream
Website: wearechaffeepod.com
Instagram: instagram.com/wearechaffeepod
CREDITS
Looking Upstream Host, Producer, Photographer & Website Manager: Adam Williams
Looking Upstream Engineer & Producer: Jon Pray
We Are Chaffee Community Advocacy Coordinator: Lisa Martin
Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment: Andrea Carlstrom
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Transcripts are produced using a transcription service. Although it is largely accurate, minor errors inevitably exist.
[Intro music, guitar instrumental]
Adam Williams (00:15): Welcome to We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream, a conversational podcast of community, humanness and well-being rooted in Chaffee County, Colorado. I’m Adam Williams. Today I’m talking with Angie Jenson.
We’ve got some through lines of positivity, courage, and gratitude, and we talk about challenging paradigms and conventional thinking and rules. Angie is a rule-questioner, and I dig it. You’ve got to know by now that I’ve asked a lot of whys and I’ve tweaked some authorities in my time, as I’m sure some of you have. And really a good number of guests on this show probably have too. So I love this kind of conversation with someone of like spirit.
Angie was brought up in the Mormon Church, and when she was a young woman, she sought excommunication. She went after excommunication from the church, even insisted upon it. We talk about why she felt that was necessary and about the formal exit interview, so to speak, that she went through to make it happen.
(01:13): We talk about her 20 plus years of solo international traveling. As Angie says, that’s where magic occurs. We talk about how that traveling also has influenced her spiritual growth, including a revelatory experience that occurred for her while at a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka.
Angie and I also talk about her years as a wildland firefighter working on hell attack and hotshot cruise, including a season down under. She became a tree activist along the way and has been an entrepreneur and advocate for the forest for more than 20 years now.
We also touch on the community of small footprint houses that Angie built, the Poncha Crest Cabins, which don’t you know, ruffled some feathers, she says.
The Looking Upstream podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health and the Chaffee Housing Authority. Show notes with photos, links in the transcript of the conversation are published at WeAreChaffeePod.com, where you also can subscribe to the monthly newsletter. You can see more photos and connect with the podcast @wearechaffeepod on Instagram.
(02:15): All right, now here we go with Angie Jenson.
[Transition music, guitar instrumental]
Adam Williams: When I was introduced to you a while back, a couple of things stood out to me, and one of them was this effervescent positive energy that you have, and that’s how you greeted me this morning. And I want to tell you, it feels good to be around you. And I wonder how you feel. Is that something that you realize you convey? Is that how you see yourself as this happy, positive, smiley, laughing person?
Angie Jenson (02:44): I do. So this obsidian I hold in my hand as we speak, is to soak up any negative energy. So the negative energy as we all as human beings have inevitably, yeah, it doesn’t serve. It doesn’t serve me personally. And so I’ve always been known as this smiley girl. Even when I pick up the phone and I’m not smiling, my voice is different and people are like, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “Oh, I’m just not smiling.” So my voice is different, but I’m happy. I love life. And so thanks for noticing that.
Adam Williams (03:30): Well, I think it’s hard not to notice it and not to feel it. And if I’m really honest with myself and about myself, that’s not how I see myself. I’m not this smiley, whatever sort of, I’m always thinking some people might even think, oh, I’m brooding. I’m always in my head. And to some extent that’s probably true. And so there’s part of me that kind of wishes, oh, I was maybe a little bit more of that energy because it does feel good to be around.
Angie Jenson (03:54): Oh, thank you. That fills heart.
Adam Williams (03:57): That obsidian, do you carry that in your pocket all the time?
Angie Jenson (04:02): Not all the time, but it’s in my pocket right now, mainly because I’m nervous about the podcast.
Adam Williams (04:05): I was just going to ask if that’s why you’re holding it in your hand and kind of, okay.
Angie Jenson (04:08): Yeah, so here it is.
Adam Williams (04:09): Okay.
Angie Jenson (04:09): Yeah.
Adam Williams (04:11): Well, let’s go further here. Let’s jump into your story. I’ve learned that you grew up Mormon and that’s not the case now. That means something happened along the way. You described it as excommunicating yourself. So it feels to me like we’ve got a lot of story there. Why don’t we start with that and then we’ll move forward because-
Angie Jenson (04:30): Thank you.
Adam Williams (04:31): … you’ve got a lot.
Angie Jenson (04:32): That’s a big story for me. When you grow up in a paradigm and a belief system because your family, that’s your family, your parents, and you grow up in it and it’s a part of who you are. And then when I moved away from this little utopia Pleasantville of Idaho that I grew up in, and it was a beautiful, beautiful place and I have a lovely family. My parents are amazing. So the blessings of that time frame is indeed, I give gratitude for that. But as I moved to Colorado and started to experience life in a different manner, I realized that’s not my spirituality. And so the beautiful part about, I think the point in my life where I decided to leave the church and the church is kind of what they call it but with the capital T. It’s interesting, but that’s just how they do it.
(05:34): But I decided I didn’t want to just leave. I wanted to go through the process of actually excommunicating myself, which was not well accepted from the Mormon Church. They just said, “Well, you just can go. You don’t have to come to church, you can just distance yourself.” I said, “No, I want to go through the process.”
Adam Williams (05:58): So an official something.
Angie Jenson (06:00): An official something, which was awkward. Here I was a young mid-20s, and I sat in a series of interviews with men that are of the church, and they literally had to interview me to get my name off the records. It’s really interesting. They don’t do that nowadays. It’s pretty easy nowadays. But I guess this was in the time where I was one of the very few people that wanted and requested to be excommunicated.
Adam Williams (06:39): It sounds like a very intense exit interview.
Angie Jenson (06:43): It was intense, very intense.
Adam Williams (06:46): And were you sitting there alone? Was there anybody in support of you?
Angie Jenson (06:49): Thanks for asking that. I was alone. It was just me.
Adam Williams (06:51): Was that by choice of others to not be there and support you or were they not allowed?
Angie Jenson (06:55): That’s just the process. When you do your confessions through the Mormons, you do the same thing, you sit there and you do your confessions. Probably a lot of religions have this. So I guess in a sense it was kind of that. But for me it was like, this just doesn’t resonate with me and I’m finding my own spirituality and I want a literal clean break from it. The first 20, 25 years of my life, it served me, but I want a foundation down to ground zero so that I can build up my own spirituality. And so this was an important process for me to go through, literally
Adam Williams (07:43): When you mentioned confession, it’s almost as if you’re having to sit there with whatever size group of men and confess your sins and the reason you’re wrong for wanting to leave their system.
Angie Jenson (07:55): Exactly. Yeah. It’s a little awkward, right?
Adam Williams (07:57): Did it feel intimidating?
Angie Jenson (07:59): It felt intimidating, absolutely.
Adam Williams (08:01): Yeah. I’m sure.
Angie Jenson (08:02): It was very intimidating, but powerful on the other hand, because it felt empowering to me to make that clean cut and to leave on a decision. And this is a time too, when I didn’t know a single other person that has ever done this in my community and the Mormon community, I didn’t know anyone that had excommunicated themselves. So usually an excommunication is brought on to people as kind of a punishment. No one asks to-
Adam Williams (08:43): Be punished.
Angie Jenson (08:46): … to be punished, to be in their “punishment.” So for them, it was just a weird concept to have someone ask for excommunication. But that’s what I wanted because I truly, truly needed that for my personal self.
Adam Williams (09:02): There’s clarity in it.
Angie Jenson (09:03): Thank you. Yes, there’s clarity.
Adam Williams (09:06): I imagine you were nervous at the very beginning. So did you feel yourself, your confidence building as you were going through this conversation, this exit interview, so to speak, and finding that power? You’re like, I’m doing it. I’m actually doing it and I’m going to get through this.
Angie Jenson (09:21): I think the confidence came a little bit more after when I was starting because after I went and stayed at a Buddhist monastery and Sri Lanka, and that was lovely. And I just kept getting reaffirming situations that said I did what was right. That felt good to me. So the confidence came after. It was nerve-racking at the time.
Adam Williams (09:46): It seems like a very courageous and bold and difficult and scary and just all the things kind of experience, especially at your young age, very lonely.
Angie Jenson (09:55): Very lonely, yeah. And so that was the thing too. None of one in my family, no one in my community. I had never heard of this excommunication thing. And it’s interesting because a decade later, I have found actually quite a few people in Salida that have left the Mormon church. And it’s interesting because I’ll sit with them and I’ll talk and I’ll be like, “Well, what’s your story? How did you do it?”
And so there’s actually a pretty big community here of people that have, once again, not really gone through that process because nowadays you could just go to a website, mormonnomore.com, you put your name in, and they legally have to just get your name off. So you don’t have to go through the interviews. You don’t do any of that scenario, which is a lot obviously easier.
Adam Williams (10:51): Why is it important to the church to have the names removed officially from whatever roles or roster they keep? Why is that the thing of this?
Angie Jenson (11:02): Well, obviously they want numbers because the more numbers they have in the church, the more they… It’s a support group for each other. So they don’t want your name off.
Adam Williams (11:11): Are we talking about tax benefits or are we talking about just branding and marketing? Oh, we have this many million followers as if it’s a social media account.
Angie Jenson (11:22): I wonder. Yeah, that’s a good point. Just we have this many people in our church, which is different about the Mormon church because you have to be “baptized” to get your name on, and then the excommunication is what takes your names off. So they could baptize people once, and then that person maybe doesn’t come to church ever, and it doesn’t matter, they’re still using that as their numbers to say how big their church is. So I think it is kind of a numbers game possibly.
Adam Williams (12:04): Okay.
Angie Jenson (12:04): Yeah.
Adam Williams (12:05): I want to hear more about Sri Lanka and this Buddhist monastery. How long after you left the church did you go to Sri Lanka?
Angie Jenson (12:14): Yeah, I went to Sri Lanka, hard to remember, but maybe a year after I left the church. And so I was with some young monks and I was just there as a volunteer. And one of the confirmation moments of my life that I made the right decision was I was sitting in the monastery and the monks started to do their chanting. And I remember getting the goose bumps. Really the hair standing up and feeling this spirit. And I said, “Wait a minute. I can’t feel this spirit here. This only belongs to the Mormon church. What am I doing? I’m feeling this connection to the spirit, and I’m in a Buddhist monastery.”
(13:11): And that was very confusing to me, but also confirmation of like, oh yeah, God is too big for just one religion. And that seems common sense. And now to me at age 47, that’s obviously common sense. But to a young 25-year-old that grew up in the church and didn’t know anything different, that was a big move. That was a big scenario. When you grow up with a belief system, it’s hard to exit that and do something totally different. We all know this.
Adam Williams (13:48): People of all ages, if they have not ever left that system that was passed down maybe from their parents, maybe from their grandparents, on and on and on, they’ve just taken, it’s sort of entrenched on their blood at this point. And if people don’t ever question that and they don’t ever get out and experience these other things, I think it’s very easy, regardless of age, to just assume that everything you’ve been told, this is the way, this is the only way you’re going to connect with your faith, your spirituality with God, with that community. That’s not surprising at all that there was confusion for you in that, especially at that younger age.
Angie Jenson (14:25): Absolutely. And that getting out, world travel has been my book to learn from. And I’ve traveled internationally every year, mostly since the age of twenty-ish. So world travel and just seeing things in different people in different ways, different cultures, and I’ve had the ability do that just because I haven’t had family and commitments, and I work a seasonal job. And so I’ve been able to do every year, at least a month or two of travel internationally, and that’s been just a part of who I am. But yeah, I wish everyone could have that experience to see the world in real life, not just through social media or news media, but to actually experience a new culture.
Adam Williams (15:21): Was your family, well, your family and friends, anybody and whoever you wanted to maintain contact with from the church when you left, was that possible? Or was there sort of an official line of we don’t talk to this person anymore. She’s disavowed everything we believe. She’s no longer one of us, no longer accepted. Do you have those relationships still, or did you have to sacrifice that?
Angie Jenson (15:42): Yeah, so my parents, my family, they’re lovely, lovely. No, they did not disown me. We still have a great relationship. It’s awkward. They won’t talk about it. I’ll sit down and try to have our conversation about it, but they won’t.
Adam Williams (16:02): About your having left?
Angie Jenson (16:02): Yes, about me having left, and they won’t go there. In fact, my parents were just here a couple weeks ago, and it was their anniversary. It was 56 years, and I wanted to do this cute little ceremony for them. So I had a little altar with their wedding pictures, and I was going to do a little meditation and do a little plant essences and just kind of fall into this, what I would think in my new spirituality, a special place.
And it was really awkward because they wouldn’t even… My dad, my mom did, just to keep the peace, but they wouldn’t even come into my little space that I created. What came to my thoughts after that is I spent 25 years in their spirituality and they couldn’t even spend one hour in my spirituality. So that hurts. But despite that, they’re lovely and we still have a good relationship. We just can’t go in the spiritual route. We can’t go there because it’s uncomfortable for them.
Adam Williams (17:21): Doesn’t that probably bleed over into so many other things about how you view the world or think about it, or I don’t know if it’s necessarily values, but it could be. Doesn’t that end up extending to so much else?
Angie Jenson (17:32): Yeah, absolutely. And now that I study it 12 hours a day, I study different spiritualities and what it all means and it bleeds. Yeah, I try to let it bleed into my life. And going back to what you said at the beginning of this conversation, why do I feel happy? It just feels good because I’m living my truth.
Adam Williams (17:59): Did it feel that way before you left the church?
Angie Jenson (18:00): Yeah, because that was my truth at that time.
Adam Williams (18:03): Okay, so you’ve always been this happy, positive energy?
Angie Jenson (18:06): I always have been. And even though that spirituality no longer served me at a certain time in my life, but when I was going through it, I was in it and I loved it, and it did create this comfort and security for me, and it was part of a community, part of a family. So it was lovely.
It’s not like the church did something bad and I needed to leave it because they did something bad. That did not occur to me at all. I respect it even to this day, but there was just a point in my life where I’m like, this doesn’t belong to me. This is my parents. I want something that belongs to me. So that was hence the excommunication and starting my own spiritual path, which is no path. I am not a Buddhist. I didn’t join-
Adam Williams (18:59): It’s an openness.
Angie Jenson (19:00): It’s an openness, so I am unique. No one else on the face of this earth has the same spiritual path as I do, but I couldn’t say the same 25 years ago when I was in the Mormon. There’s millions of people that have that exact same spirituality, and they all believe the exact same thing. But now I’m open. And the beautiful part is I can believe something today and know that in five years my belief can change and I can go into a different scenario, which when I was Mormon, you can’t do that. This is the belief, and this stays the belief to the end. And so it’s not fluid.
Adam Williams (19:48): There’s a rigidity to the dogma.
Angie Jenson (19:50): Very rigid.
Adam Williams (19:51): And if we are part of that, then we have to embrace it. There’s no flexibility. There’s no ability to do what we might call for politicians a flip-flop. It’s like, well, as we grow as human beings, sure, shouldn’t I be open to the prospect of learning something more growing, seeing in a new way. We need to allow that, I think, for all of us rather than condemn it.
Angie Jenson (20:13): I think so. It’s a beautiful path, but it’s scary, because then you’re vulnerable.
Adam Williams (20:17): And there are no answers because there are no dogmatic rules.
Angie Jenson (20:20): Totally. And it’s so much easier when someone else can tell you what eternity means versus thinking for you.
Adam Williams (20:30): And all of the things. So there’s so much comfort in certainty, whether that’s good, bad, right or wrong. If I can just have some daddy tell me, this is the way it is, these are the punishments, these are the rules, this is how everything works. I think that’s why so many people gravitate to these things, whether it’s religious or if it’s political or it’s whatever the social rules and norms are. I think that’s where a lot of people find comfort is because someone is giving them a certainty whether it’s good or not.
Angie Jenson (20:58): Exactly. And I think a big part of when I left the church, I said, from here to this day forward, I will choose for myself to not be a part of a group. So rather that is political, religious, cultural, to be in a group where someone else speaks or talks for you or to be in a belief system where we believe this. So hence, I find myself very, very, very apolitical. I just don’t go there because I don’t want to be in a box again, and I don’t want to create that where I can’t think for myself. So the beautiful part is like, okay, now I can go within myself, mull it over, does that feel good? Does that feel bad? And then go by my own intuition, my own knowing versus what the group has to say.
Adam Williams (22:04): I think there’s less interference of the ego in that way too, because you’ve already opened yourself to being wrong, to being able to change, to just be open to something different than what you were five minutes ago. And a lot of times it’s our ego that also adheres to these rules that, no, I have to be right in this way. I cannot change because then I don’t know, I am a fool, I look bad, people think less of me. All the ways that our ego interferes. I think having openness, being, whether it’s apolitical or a whatever the word might be, if we’re not trying to fit into some box, then we’re allowed the possibilities of everything.
Angie Jenson (22:44): Yes, absolutely. And so in saying that, my current paradigm is trying to leave my little box of academia. So this is my current leap of faith. I had that first section of my life. First 20 years was religion, and then I went to university and I was in a career and very much had academia at my side, and then now I’m trying to jump into a whole different vibe of my life where there’s a little more esoteric, a little more magic, a little more spirituality and openness and flow, and just seeing things differently. So this is a whole different paradigm shift in this current stage in my life, which is really, really, really fun to play with.
Adam Williams (23:42): Have you ever thought that you were born at the wrong time or born into the wrong family or something because of being, sometimes we refer to people as black sheep, I guess it’s a common enough idea to be different than those who are bringing you up and you’re like, how did I fit in there? I live differently, I think differently. But occasionally I encounter somebody who’s also, I really think I was from 200 years ago, that’s where I fit in. Have you ever thought in the way that you live being so different than those other people who shaped you early on, maybe, I don’t know, like you’re from another time?
Angie Jenson (24:19): Right. Right. No, I think I’m so thankful for the exact path I’ve had for the time, space, energy. I think everything has flowed so perfectly in my life, and yeah, I’ve had a blessed, blessed life. So I guess I don’t ponder or wish I had anything different than what my current existence is.
Adam Williams (24:51): It would be hard for you to be so positive and grateful in life if you were having to question, oh, am I in the right place? Am I in the right body? Am I in the right experience?
Angie Jenson (24:59): I think so, yeah. Yeah, I’m full of gratitude. That feels really good to me of everything.
Adam Williams (25:05): I want to hear more about the travel because that’s been important to me as well, and for the last nearly 30 years of traveling the world and being open to those possibilities of this is how different people do things, and it’s also what we have in common. You get to learn it all. I’m curious maybe some of the other experiences or places you’ve been that come to mind or really that you’ve held onto over the years is, wow, that was a really life-changing moment when I learned X lesson.
Angie Jenson (25:35): So once again, I’ve traveled every year internationally for, oh gosh, probably 23 years now because I do get my winters off. So I’ve been able to travel. And I’ve always traveled solo, it’s just recently that I’m now traveling with other people. And what that looked like as a solo female traveler internationally at a time when there was no phones. Now everything’s online and it’s actually harder for me to navigate the international travel.
But when I went and travel, I would show up at an airport and then literally go off of energy and magic and things just unfolded perfectly, it seems like with every one of my travels. And then somehow I would get hooked up with a volunteer spot, or sometimes I was doing the where you go and farm, I forget what it’s called, woofing, I think, which is where you go and work on farms and you meet people from all over the world. Sometimes it was a spiritual pursuit.
(26:53): But the point is when I got to travel, that was where magic occurred because I didn’t know where I would be sleeping that night. I didn’t know who I would meet. When you’re traveling solo, you put yourself out there and you meet people, you’re in a vulnerable state. But I’ve never had a night where I couldn’t find someone to host me or take me in or give me a ride somewhere. So it was really magical, and I think that was a big part of my spiritual growth is trusting and just going with the flow.
Adam Williams (27:35): There’s so much confidence that can be gained when you allow yourself to be open, maybe bold, not try to control it all, and then allow room for serendipity to bring it together and you meet amazing people and you meet amazing opportunities.
Angie Jenson (27:48): Yeah, it’s like living a whole new world, right? Then I come back to my everyday world where schedules are obviously planned and stuff. But yeah, I think if everyone can put themselves in this state of being in state of existence with not knowing where you’re going to sleep for the night, it’s a powerful spot of growth.
And you realize there’s people out there that are incredible and there’s people out there and there’s magic that keeps surrounding you and protecting you. So once again, just growth opportunities. And I’ve been lucky enough in my life to have that because I know a lot of people don’t get a chance to travel, so it’s really blessed.
Adam Williams (28:35): I know that one of the experiences you had abroad was in Australia when you were a wild land firefighter, which you were for around what, five years?
Angie Jenson (28:44): Yep.
Adam Williams (28:44): Total. But there was a season that you went to Australia for that.
Angie Jenson (28:47): Yes.
Adam Williams (28:48): I’m curious about that piece of your experience, because I remember in college knowing a guy who had become a smoke jumper, I was curious and interested in that. I don’t even remember the reasons, but even pursued it. I never started with firefighting, so it certainly was not going to make it to smoke jumper. I think you became a hotshot, right?
Angie Jenson (29:10): Mm-hmm.
Adam Williams (29:11): Can you tell me, first of all, what that means? Is that in some relation to smoke jumping, what are the different roles? How does this work and what did that play in your life for five years of doing this work?
Angie Jenson (29:23): Yeah, five years. This was straight out of university, and I worked for the Forest Service, and so there’s different aspects of firefighting, wild land firefighting, and this was quite a while ago, so I’m going by memory, but there’s engine, which I did one year. There’s hand crew, there’s hell attack and there’s hot shot, and then smoke jumping, kind of being the “most elite.”
But basically there are ways, different modalities of getting you back into the woods to fight fire. And hell attack is where we would work with the helicopter. We’d repel close near to the fire so that we could hike in and get the fires when they’re small. And so the two helicopter transportation and then with the smoke jumpers is planes, they jump with parachutes.
Adam Williams (30:23): How high are they when they jump out?
Angie Jenson (30:25): I don’t know the answer to that exactly. With hell attack and repelling, the rope needs to touch the ground, obviously, and I can’t even remember the distance there. But in Australia, what they did is because we were more in the outback, and so they would just hover over the ground and you would have a five-foot jump. So it wasn’t a big deal. You didn’t repel. But here in the states, because we were fighting up in Idaho, you would need to repel because of the trees and the terrain. So there’s not places that a helicopter can land, so that’s why you repel in there.
Adam Williams (31:07): You might have 100 foot repel or something out there.
Angie Jenson (31:10): Yeah, and I was going to, can’t remember the distance. But yeah, that was super fun and oh my god, and I was in the Frank Church wilderness in Idaho, and that’s where I did my hell attack tour. And yeah, then a couple years after that, my Australia tour fighting fires up there. So yeah, really fun and got to see some amazing places and meet some pretty great people.
Adam Williams (31:41): Had you been wanting to make a career of this?
Angie Jenson (31:44): No, that was once again magic that it came about. My internship was the forest service, and then somehow I got into the fire scene, and then it just spring-loaded from there. But yeah, it’s not really something I was planning on doing.
Adam Williams (32:05): I think this factored into something else that stood out that first time I was introduced to you not long ago, and I said, “Oh, you’re so happy and joyful.” The other thing was you described yourself as a tree activist, and I think there’s a correlation here between what you’re saying, working with Forest Service, being a hotshot. So tell me more about how that transition then out of firefighting and into being a tree activist happened.
Angie Jenson (32:30): So firefighting is amazing. It’s super fun. But, there’s the but, you sit around a lot. So there’s a lot of sitting and waiting for the fire. And to me, it got pretty slow. I just want to be in the woods cutting trees, and with firefighting, you have to literally sit around when you get called to a fire. So I would say about 85% sitting around and maybe 15% excitement of actually being on a fire. So for me, it was a little too much sitting around. And so that’s when I started the tree business to go cut trees. I just want to be out in the woods every day cutting trees. I didn’t want to sit around the compound doing pushups. So that was what started my 19 year owning a tree service here in Salida.
(33:30): Halfway through my tree career, I started to question a lot of the prescriptions, “prescriptions” for the forest, and this kind of goes now back to what we were talking about before with the academia and the way that they prescribe forest health and what they wish for our forest to look like. Halfway through I started, this doesn’t feel right. The way they’re thinning the trees and the way they’re doing this wildfire “mitigation” didn’t feel right. And so kind of like how I got a clean cut from the church, I wanted a clean cut from academia and I wanted to go in and do things different. The prescriptions I gave for my clients were very, very different than what maybe the state forest service would prescribe.
Adam Williams (34:36): Can you elaborate on that a little bit so I can get clarity on what maybe was being prescribed and then how you felt, no, I think the solution is different in this way?
Angie Jenson (34:45): I think for me it was a lot of too much tree cutting and their prescriptions now, and this is now, insurance companies have jumped on board, the counties jumped on board. But 100-foot “defensible space”, that’s a lot of trees. They get cut for a home site. It doesn’t feel good to me when all of these trees in our forests, well, first of all, you got the developments that happen, but then 100-foot clearing, I’m a tree girl, so I really have questioned the paradigm of what they’re doing by cutting all these trees.
(35:32): And the main reason is when I see the trees being cut, what grows up are the grasses and the weeds, the fine fuels. And the fine fuels that is way more flammable and can start a fire way easier than the trees. So I’m seeing a paradigm in my career where all the trees are getting blamed for the fire when it’s the fine fuels. So when I bring this up and question that whole narrative and that paradigm, which is what I’ve been doing with my tree activism, is just like, why do we keep pinning the trees as the bad guys? It’s the fine fuels in our forests that oftentimes carry the fire.
Adam Williams (36:22): Do you feel like that idea is just generally rejected or is there more conversation around it? Are they listening to you, whoever they might be?
Angie Jenson (36:28): Yeah, whoever they might be, it is mostly rejected. And there hasn’t been a whole lot because once again, the paradigm for so long is when you think of a forest fire, you think of trees burning. But if you think about, okay, well, obviously we know that fire is natural part of our system, even when the trees do get burnt, you’ve got these snags. And mother nature knows what she’s doing. She’s doing this for a reason.
You have snag forest ecosystem, which is a whole different ecosystem than the live tree. But it’s hard to get people when the “professionals” of the forest service and state forest service, and this whole paradigm is saying, “Cut your trees, cut your trees.” And then I’m over here saying, “Let’s think about this a little bit.” And so what’s happening in our counties, we have giant now swaths because money is, there’s giant money because everyone’s scared of wildfire right now.
(37:38): So money federally, state, and local in the millions, has been now directed toward fire mitigation. And a lot of people put fire mitigation equals tree cutting. I am the outside voice saying, fire mitigation does not always equal tree cutting. Let’s reconsider. Let’s come back and think.
That’s about rewetting our forests and our soils. Let’s talk about the fine fuels. But right now, their current prescriptions are to cut trees and only cut trees. And that makes me really sad because I go out to these sites and I see what’s happening, especially on the sites that are just masticated. And masticated is when they take this big machine and literally just mow the tree, mainly-
Adam Williams (38:35): Chew it up.
Angie Jenson (38:36): Chew it up. They’re doing it in the pinyon juniper forest, and they’re not even taking the tree out for product. And it makes my heart so sad to see these “prescriptions” happening in our forest that do not feel correct at all. They feel really bad.
Adam Williams (38:56): Did this lead you to sell your business, which you did about a year and a half ago?
Angie Jenson (39:01): Uh-huh. I sold the business. My business was fully private. I only worked with the private. I never did these prescriptions, these state forest service, these bigger prescriptions because once again, I didn’t agree with them. They didn’t feel good to me, but I sold the business. It was time. I loved what I was doing, but three employees had found some investors to buy it.
And it’s interesting because they changed it when they bought it. I think they are going for these bigger projects, which is kind of interesting because these are the bigger projects I’m trying to be an activist against. So it’s a little bit of a paradox going on there. But life is funny and it has its flows, and I don’t really know exactly what they’re doing, but I think they’ve folded a little bit of the business.
Adam Williams (40:02): I’m curious about your decisions when you have moved on from the church, twenty-ish years. Sounds like you had the tree business twenty-ish years.
Angie Jenson (40:13): Yeah.
Adam Williams (40:13): I’m wondering about maybe the timing and flow and how you make decisions to say, you know what? I think I’ve had enough time with this experience. It’s time to move on. And how you have learned within yourself to identify that moment and then identify what is the next experience.
Angie Jenson (40:30): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. It’s not overnight, but it seems as if it’s been overnight with these two big things in my life, leaving the church, then leaving my business, and then, okay, what’s the next chapter? What’s the next chapter? And my whole scenario. And so I think that’s where I trust the flow and something greater is out there that’s prepping me for something. And I don’t know what that is, but I thought it might be the tree activism, but it’s been hard. It’s been resisted. So maybe that’s not it, but maybe that was prepping me for something else. I’m not quite sure.
Adam Williams (41:18): How do you tap into the intuition or spirit or whatever you refer to it within yourself to say, I feel like it’s time to leave this thing. I feel like this is emerging. Let me explore. I feel like this is the next thing. Let me move forward. How do you feel that within yourself? Because we’re talking about, and earlier we were talking about an openness to experience, and I used the word serendipity that connects us with things. And I think there is a spiritual sort of component that we tap into. Some might refer to it as intuition to follow our gut.
Angie Jenson (41:55): Yeah.
Adam Williams (41:56): Do you have a sense of that, of through the practice over years of, oh, I’m getting that sensation again?
Angie Jenson (42:02): Yes. Oh, you describe it so beautifully. Thank you. Yeah. I realize this is no longer my truth. And so that’s what happened with the whole tree work system and the whole tree work narrative. The way it is happening is no longer my truth. So I don’t like the prescriptions they’re putting out there. But why is it no longer my truth? Because it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right. It feels like there’s something… And the trees, the trees really do call to me. They really do talk to me. I know that’s woo woo and stuff, but because I’ve spent my whole career in the woods and I connect with them intimately, they were calling me and saying, “Help us do something differently.”
(43:07): So I don’t know what that looks like. How do I help them do something differently? I try to get the word out. It’s a little tough and it’s been met with resistance. But when you go off of, like you said, the intuition, the feeling, my truth is that this doesn’t feel right. My truth is that the forest, the mother nature is saying, “Hey, I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to be fixed, and this system is trying to “fix me.” But I sent beetles into my forest for a reason. I sent fire into my system for a reason. Like, please, please, please just trust me. I’m mother nature. I know what I’m doing.” And so that in itself is very intuitive and it’s very-
Adam Williams (44:03): And it happens over time. Our time, human time, we live for 70, 80, 90 years, and we act as if that is the entirety of all that matters. The universe is functioning on a billions of years long process. Mother nature can take her time. It feels like time to us. It’s nothing to her, because she has this perspective of billions of years. We’re talking about, or I did earlier, I referred to a lot of people’s need, the perceived need for comfort through certainty, absolutes. And what you’re describing and with feeling is there’s an abstract.
(44:42): We’re having to sit and allow what we feel to unfold until there is clarity when a lot of us feel like the only way to get clarity is to force it. We have to say, this is the thing I want to achieve. I’m going to go after it with all my ambition and everything I can. I’m going to make this thing happen, that feels comfortable to most people. And what you’re describing as I ask you to elaborate on what is this intuition? How do you recognize it? And I’m realizing as you’re answering me, that’s a very difficult question to answer because it’s abstract. It’s uncertain. You’re waiting for the feelings to reveal more clarity to you. And they will, but it can take time.
Angie Jenson (45:23): It can take time. It takes quiet space inside yourself. Can I tell you about an experience that happened just the other day?
Adam Williams (45:35): Sure.
Angie Jenson (45:36): I was in the woods looking at a prescription. We were going to do some tree work, and the trees that were marked were supposed to be the trees that go. And I was there with a logger, super awesome guy, and he’s a logger, right? We’re going out to look at this job, we need a bid on it. And as we walked across the meadow, as we started to walk up the hill, started to look at these trees, I picked up some feathers and I saw some animal beds. And then I picked up some rocks, and then I saw an owl sweep through the trees. And through this whole time, I was kind of showing him these little gifts that I’m seeing that nature had as we were walking on an animal trail trying to look at these marked trees.
(46:36): And when I said, “Did you see that owl?” He stopped and he said, “Angie, you are in a very different space than I am right now.” I said, “Oh, shoot. Yeah, we’re supposed to be looking at marked trees, aren’t we?” I’m like, “Sorry, I can’t help but to notice the wildlife that’s utilizing the space right now.” He turned to me and said, “We need a bell on this project, don’t we?” I said, “Yep.”
And that is the magic. That’s the intuitive. That’s the feeling. And he was a logger guy. This isn’t his normal way of thinking, but he could just feel the energy as we were out there. And it was actually his suggestion, we need a bell on this. We can’t disturb this ecosystem. And I said, “Correct.”
(47:31): And so we walked back across the meadow, went to our tracks, looked back to where we were, and an elk was staring straight at us. And both of our hearts just grew and this beauty energy of magic of he was the protector of this space and was giving us a message. And just those moments that you just realize how beautiful, and it doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t going to come in and take the project, but it’s not going to be us.
Adam Williams (48:10): So you still are engaged in this. You’ve sold your business, but you are still engaged as a tree activist.
Angie Jenson (48:13): Yeah. Well, yeah.
Adam Williams (48:16): Okay.
Angie Jenson (48:16): Like I say, yeah, big time because that’s what I do. That’s what I love, my forests. And once again, these prescriptions don’t feel right to me.
Adam Williams (48:27): I want to ask you about small footprint home building. With a little bit of time we have left here, I do want to hear something about what you have done to build these small footprint homes in Pontia. Why? What goes into that? I think there’s been some challenge in that process. Whatever you would care to share.
Angie Jenson (48:49): So another thing that I’ve done very outside the box that definitely challenged the paradigm is building these small footprint homes. There’s five of them, and it’s a little community. It’s not a house and a picket fence house. They’re built in community. They’re architecturally savvy. They’re different, meaning it’s not just a gray box. It’s funky.
Adam Williams (49:16): What is the size when we say small footprint?
Angie Jenson (49:18): Yep. 460 square feet is what they are. So they’re great for a single or a couple. So it’s not for everyone, of course.
Adam Williams (49:27): We’re basically talking about tiny homes.
Angie Jenson (49:29): Yep. Minimalist homes. Yeah, people, they don’t-
Adam Williams (49:31): Is there a reason you don’t use tiny homes? Is that intentional that you say, oh, it’s small footprint versus maybe the more common phrasing for people which are tiny homes, which might evoke a certain image of what that looks like on a trailer.
Angie Jenson (49:43): Exactly. On a trailer.
Adam Williams (49:44): So yours are not on a trailer?
Angie Jenson (49:45): These are stick-built foundation, yes.
Adam Williams (49:48): Okay.
Angie Jenson (49:48): Yeah. So that’s the tiny home. Yeah, invokes trailers and movable. These are homes just like any other house, but it’s smaller and they go up instead of out. They’re two stories. So once again, I’m a tree girl, so I wanted to preserve the landscape versus bulldozing everything and just putting up square boxes. So I wanted the creativity, and I was able to do that. I kind of got in under the par before all the development and rules.
Adam Williams (50:24): Some people did not take well to your having done that. It’s my understanding.
Angie Jenson (50:28): Right. Right. Yeah. Some people are very challenged to buy it because once again, it puts them in a challenging position of like, oh, does that mean I should be living minimally? Does that mean I have too much stuff? And I think it kind of throws in a little bit of a trigger for some people. But it’s interesting because it’s like, well, this doesn’t have to be for you.
Adam Williams (50:28): We are back to rules.
Angie Jenson (50:52): Yeah, we’re back to rules.
Adam Williams (50:53): So I’m hearing rules of church. We’ve got rules from the government in terms of the trees. We’ve got rules on home building, which of course, I really didn’t leave enough time for this part of the conversation. We could be talking and maybe ought to be talking much more about housing because it’s such a significant issue here. So many people cannot afford to buy a home. And what you’re talking about are solutions for an awful lot of people.
Angie Jenson (51:19): Yes.
Adam Williams (51:19): Maybe not for a family of four-
Angie Jenson (51:20): Correct.
Adam Williams (51:21): … but there are a lot of people here, seasonal workers and all kinds of people who could benefit from such a thing. And those rules, they got implemented after you did this, maybe because you did this?
Angie Jenson (51:34): Probably because I did this. The county literally said, this will never happen again.
Adam Williams (51:40): And why?
Angie Jenson (51:41): Exactly, why? Thinking inside the box, thinking outside the box. And why? Because it triggers some people to know that some people can live minimally and be happy with that, it’s a trigger. So in the paradigm, we have these big homes and we get married and we have kids, but things are changing. People aren’t having kids, and people are living smaller, and people are traveling the world more.
And so we don’t need these big homes with big yards. Some people still choose that, and that’s fine. But what about the people that don’t choose that? What about the people that just want to be small and want to live in community and want to interact with neighbors and have that space to do that? So that’s what I tried to create and do, very successful. There’s not been a single month that those homes haven’t been occupied.
Adam Williams (52:46): This is 10 years?
Angie Jenson (52:46): About 10 years.
Adam Williams (52:47): I tend to advocate for reasonable thinking, reasonable solutions, and on behalf of people compassionately. Something I keep hearing from people in the home building space and those who are very much paying attention to the need for affordable housing here, is that those rules are not allowing for simple, practical, reasonable solutions.
Angie Jenson (53:08): Thank you. Yes.
Adam Williams (53:09): That’s something you agree with.
Angie Jenson (53:11): I agree. 100, 100, 100%. And building codes are getting stricter instead of allowing more for this. So that I think a little more freedom and flexibility for creativity and diversity in the developers. Let’s diversify the type of developers out there. Let’s diversify that a little bit more.
Adam Williams (53:34): Angie, I think that courage is a through line in everything we’ve only touched on here about your story today. The travel and the church, and all the decisions and the way you lead your life, and you’re doing it for community with this home building and things like that. So I want to thank you for coming and sharing a bit of that courage with all of us. I really appreciate, again, your positive energy and attitude and spirit. Thank you so much for this conversation.
Angie Jenson (53:59): Blessings. Thank you. Thank you.
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Adam Williams (54:09): Thanks for listening to, We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast. I hope that our conversation here today sparked curiosity for you and if so, you can learn more in this episode. Show notes at Wearchaffeepod.com. If you have comments or know someone in Chaffee County, Colorado who I should consider talking with on the podcast, you can email me at Adam@wearchafeepod.com.
I also invite you to rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever platform you use that has that functionality. I also welcome you telling others about the Looking Upstream podcast. Help us to keep growing community and connection through conversation.
(54:45): Once again, I’m Adam Williams, host, producer, and photographer. Jon Pray is engineer and producer. Thank you to KHEN 106.9 FM, our community radio partner in Salida, Colorado. And to Andrea Karlstrom, director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment. And to Lisa Martin, community advocacy coordinator for the We Are Chaffee Storytelling Initiative.
The Looking Upstream Podcast is a collaboration with the Chaffee County Department of Public Health and the Chaffee Housing Authority, and it’s supported by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Office of Health Equity.
You can learn more about the Looking Upstream Podcast at wearechaffeepod.com and on Instagram @wearechaffeepod. You also can learn more about the overall We Are Chaffee Storytelling initiative at wearechaffee.org. Till the next episode, as we say at We Are Chaffee, “share stories, make change.”
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