On this episode of Appalachian Outdoorosity podcast, host Dr. Joy James interviews Subaru Leave No Trace (LNT) traveling team members Haley Toy and Gary Huey. The couple shares their personal journeys into outdoor recreation, how they became passionate about the outdoors through a college experience in Yosemite, and their current work educating people on minimizing environmental impact through the LNT principles. They discuss their favorite outdoor activities, challenges, and the importance of balancing personal and professional life while working full-time together. They emphasize that Leave No Trace isn’t about perfection but about being mindful of the environment and learning through experience.

Notes

Haley Toy (she/her) and Gary Huey (he/him)

Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Team

www.LNT.org

PO Box 997 | Boulder, CO 80306

haleyandgary@lnt.org

LNT Instagram handle: @leavenotraceorg

Brendan Leonard Climbs 7 Summits … Of His Neighborhood

www.LNT.org

Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Teams

Kula Cloth

TRANSCRIPT

Becki 

Welcome to Appalachian Outdoorosity, where we encourage you to get outside and keep going outside. Here we will share Appalachian State stories that entertain, inspire, and inform listeners about living an active outdoor lifestyle. Each episode features a story. The goal to get you outside and keep you going outside to improve your overall wellness. This podcast is presented by The Hope Lab, where our purpose is to investigate the role of outdoor physical activity, exercise and play on the health, environment and human development. The vision of the Hope lab is to continue developing the foundation for promoting and supporting outdoor physical activity, exercise and play through interdisciplinary research. Feel free to check us out at hopelab.appstate.edu. Hi, my name is Becki Battista. I am a professor of exercise science at Appalachian State University and a self-proclaimed outdoor physical activity addict. I'm your host for today's episode of the Appalachian Outdoorosity Podcast. In today's episode, Dr. Joy James, a professor in recreation management, sits down with Subaru Leave No Trace traveling team members Hayley Toy and Gary Huey. Together, they delve into the core principles of Leave No Trace, reflecting on their experiences as part of the Subaru LNT traveling team and sharing insights from their own outdoor adventures. 

Joy 

So, welcome to Outdoorosity. I have here Leave No Trace Team Hayley and Gary, who have generously agreed to give some of their time to tell us a little bit about how they came to the outdoor space, as well as a little bit about Leave No Trace. So welcome, and thank you for being a part of this. 

Gary 

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having us. 

Haley  

Thank you. 

Joy 

All right. So what I'm going to do first is have you introduce yourselves kind of where you're from, and then tell us what your favorite outdoor activity is. 

Haley  

I can start. My name is Hayley, and I grew up in the Seattle area in Washington state. And my favorite outdoor activity right now, it's a toss up between hiking and just sitting outside in the sun and reading a good book. 

Joy 

I like how you said right now. It changes, doesn't it? 

Gary 

It does. It really does.  

 And I'm Gary and I'm from Northern California, and my favorite outdoor activity would be fishing right now. So I enjoy it. 

Joy 

Line fishing or fly fishing? 

Gary 

A little bit of both. A little bit of everything. I get out there and catch fish. I enjoy it all. 

Joy 

Awesome. All right. So I'm going to ask questions and as we've been doing kind of alternate back and forth. My first question for you is how did you first get interested in the outdoors? 

Haley  

For me, I actually had the privilege to grow up kind of being exposed to outdoor recreation specifically like national parks. So I grew up every summer. My parents were generous enough to take us, like on multiple weeklong road trips. And every summer it was like a whole list of different national parks. So that was kind of my first exposure to the outdoors. And because it came at such a young age, I think those ideas were always kind of instilled in me, whether I realized it or not. But yeah, so I guess from an early age, I had the benefit of just getting to see how much stuff there is to do outside. 

Gary 

And for myself, I grew up not really doing too much outside, and I played more like traditional sports, like basketball outside. But it wasn't until college where they had a semester right outside of Yosemite called High Sierra, where you spend a whole semester outside, and there's professors out. It was at like a summer camp campus. But there are the professors there and we had a cohort of like 30 to 50 other students. Through that immersive experience. I felt like I discovered a whole other world in the outdoors. And so it was a little later for me. 

Haley  

And that's also how we met. 

Gary 

And that's how we met as well. We met that semester. Exactly. I know. 

Haley  

So, lots of positive outcomes. 

Joy 

That's what I love about outdoors and recreation is that it connects people, and it is an opportunity to discover oneself as well. So I love that you explained about that immersive experience. I think a lot of people actually are comfortable in outdoor settings through sports, and they don't know about some of this other stuff that's going on, or they just think we're weird because we camp, you know, like, why would you do that? No shower. It's not until you have the experience that you're able to feel comfortable and then connect with others. So that's really cool. So my next question is what are your favorite outdoor activities? We kind of hit that at the beginning, but what are some more that you enjoy doing when you're able? 

Gary 

Specifically together, we have gone backpacking a bunch. We go car camping, but I feel like a goal we've had within the past only maybe 3 to 4, maybe five years, is that we’ve tried to climb like a bigger mountain or like a little goal every year. And so we've done a few of those together and usually they're overnighters. If not, you know, 1 or 2 nights. 

Joy 

Multi pitch type climbing or just climbing a mountain? 

Gary 

More so yeah, just hiking mountains. So we climbed like Mount Saint Helens and Whitney and we did the cables on Half Dome...last year maybe. And so that was really fun. 

Haley  

Only once a year so far. 

Gary 

Only once...I know. It takes some planning. 

Joy 

Was that inspired from this immersive experience that you had or just something you said, oh, we want to climb these mountains? 

Gary 

You know, it was...What do you think? 

Haley  

It was him. 

Gary 

I think the making of the push was I'd have these different photo books of different outdoor photographers, and I'd see all their photos, and I was like, oh, that looks really cool to do. And when you look at an image and you try to do a similar experience, you realize how much planning there is. And so once we saw that, we were like, okay, one a year would be a good goal. And so I don't know. That's where it kind of came. 

Haley  

It just became that. 

Gary 

Yeah, it kind of became that. 

Joy 

I just watched something where a man from Missoula, Montana did the Seven Summits...that he could see from his dog walk. 

Gary 

Oh, wow. Oh. 

Joy 

I thought that was pretty...And what he was doing, he said, you know, I don't have $140,000 to go do the Seven Summits around the world. So I'm going to make my own plan. He goes, I walk my dog all the time. And then he showed the different ways he was biking. So it was really interesting. I'll send you the link and I'll include the link in for our listeners, but I, I love how you're like, it's a goal and we do it once a year because of the amount of planning. But I think a lot of our other skills kind of lend itself towards your success, whether you actually make the climb or not. Right? Like the weather might impede or do other things for us. Since you two have different stories about how you came to the outdoors, how do you think you became comfortable in the outdoors? Like it's not always easy to go to the bathroom in the outdoors, not have a shower, be sweaty, be stinky. So how did you get comfortable in the outdoors? 

 Haley  

Not to keep like pumping up this experience that we had during our semester in college in the Sierras, but for me, that really was how I became comfortable in the outdoors. Part of that semester experience. Is that you...I don't want to say you're forced, but you are required to...I felt like I was forced at the time...to go on a backpacking trip in the backcountry of Yosemite, and one of them was in the dead of winter. So it was like late January, maybe early February. That was my ver