Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Steve Featherstone. He's been on the program a couple of times previously to discuss magazine articles that he's researched and written. But he's with me today because, since 2021, he's been the outdoors reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and syracuse.com. In that role he covers everything from hunting and fishing to hiking and ecology. Steve welcome back to the program, congratulations on this position.
Steve Featherstone: Yeah. Thank you. It's good to see you again.
GR: Good to see you. So let me just start by, you know, the job itself. I mean, it seems like for a lot of people it's got to be a dream job. You go out in the outdoors, you experience different fun things and then then you write about them. Is that the way you thought about it when you first approached it?
SF: 100%. As you know me from previous times on the program, I had 20 years as a freelance writer. And what was nice about that job, I got to pick and choose my stories. Bad thing about that job is that you've got to convince someone else that story's worth doing, right? Oftentimes the answer's no, even if I thought it was great. This job, because it’s a daily job and it's a newspaper, there's an endless hole for content, as we call it now, called content. And so I can just do virtually anything I want as long as it's related to upstate New York and recreation and it is really a dream job. In fact, I could not imagine having or taking another newspaper job if it wasn't the outdoors beat.
GR: Wow. Yeah, well, my understanding about you is that prior to taking this beat, you were someone who got out in the outdoors, you enjoyed them, but you weren't like a hardcore survivalist or outdoors person. You weren't someone who, you know, goes out and lives on only what they can forage or, you know, hikes and insane distance in a certain amount of time. I was just curious, first of all, if I'm right in that impression, but also, do you think that gives you a certain sort of everyman's or every person's experience? And so it gives you a particular view about what you're writing about that is kind of immediately connecting with the people that are going to read it?
SF: Yeah, you just totally nailed my personality in the way I (unintelligible) stories, 100%. I'm doing it right then, if that's what you're getting out of it.
GR: (laughter)
SF: Yeah. I'm not the guy who, okay, let's take a look at what the outdoors writer used to be. My relationship to outdoor writing. You’re right, in the past, for instance, I've gone to Chernobyl, as you know, right, or Fukushima, and I've written stories about the impacts of these disasters on the ecology of these regions. So, you know, it's in some ways it was outdoor writing it was writing about nature in this very sort of specific way. When I began my very first job out of, at the master's program at Syracuse, was out in the middle of Kansas working for Garmin International, the GPS manufacturer, which, they hired me with my master's degree and everything else, because I actually had some of a background in hunting and fishing. That's what they liked on my resume. Not that I, you know, had a master's degree, not that I had written, you know, this or that. It was because I had some hunting and fishing background. So they got me all the way from New York State to move out there because my job was to speak to outdoor writers. My job was to get outdoor writers to write about this new technology. So my interface with this industry that I am now part of was as on the other side, right? Back then, it was a very different job than what I think what it is now. Back then, it was just all guys and they were just old dudes. I was this young, you know, twentysomething kid out of college and I would walk into these rooms at these conferences and they would all be like these, to me they’re me now, I'm 57 years old, right, I’m old. I was looking at dudes that were like, looked like me, they had white hair, you know, they wearing flannel, and all they wanted to talk about was like rifle calibers and, you know, and deer and fishing. And I had some background in that, but nothing like they did. So I was, you know, like a little bit like a fish out of water. But, you know, that was a really great position to be in, especially being a young man, because in that environment, they wanted to kind of treat you like, almost like a son. Here, buddy, let me show you what this is about. And that, I think, has kind of been part of my approach to this industry, to this subject, to this topic, the outdoors all along as this sort of outsider, very enthusiastic, interested outsider who's willing to basically try anything as long as it's related, you know, to the outdoors, whether it's fishing, hunting, some kind of weird ice climbing. I did snowmobiling this past winter, which was, you know, hit or miss.
GR: Yeah. I'm going to ask you about that later. So let me ask you a different kind of question, a little bit more kind of higher altitude, what do you think is the most important aspect, your impressions anyway, were the most important aspect of the different kinds of outdoor activities or aspects about the outdoor environment here in Central New York, that we as Central New Yorkers have the least appreciation of? You know, the sort of the hidden thing perhaps that you've experienced. I don't know if there's something that comes to mind.
SF: Well, here's something that comes to mind. And it's immediate and it's related to a story I literally just published this morning, and that is trout fishing. Okay, so I'm going to ask you let me ask you, Grant, you think of trout fishing, what comes to mind?
GR: Well, I have done a fair amount of it, so… (laughter)
SF: So, oh gosh you’re not the guy to ask. (laughter)
GR: So what comes to mind? What comes to mind is the kind of almost the competition or the healthy way, a pleasant way, the mutual tension between the fly fishermen, the people who won't use bait, the people that go out there with a worm and a sinker. And what I have discovered is my son is now explicitly a fly fisherman. And what he has convinced me to do is, I won't use bait anymore. So like, if we go out there together, he's looking down on me because I've got a spinner and then, you know, we're both sort of looking funny at the person with the big worm hanging off their hook. (laughter)
SF: Well, the advantage to that, as you know, is that if you can fish, year-round for trout, as long as it's artificial, catch and release and the artificial lure, so, you know, you had an advantage if you're not fishing with that worm because you can do it year-round here. So one thing I think maybe a lot of folks don't appreciate, and if I were to answer that question, if you asked me what I'm not a huge trout fisherman, I've probably fly fished just a couple of times in my life. I'm thinking like A River Runs Through It, right? Brad Pitt, golden light, you know, you see the leader and you know, he's whipping that line back and forth and it lays on the water, right, we have that here in New York State, right? It's the, you know, Roscoe, New York is where in some ways it's the birthplace of fly fishing, as we imagine it that way, right? I think is maybe in the popular imagination is how it's understood. You have a much more, you know, specific appreciate appreciation for trout fishing, you know, you can do spinners, spin reels. Here in Onondaga County we have probably one of the best trout fisheries, not just in New York, but probably regionally. Now, let's go down the list, some four, we we've got Butternut Creek, we've got Limestone Creek, we've got Nine Mile, probably the big daddy, and then Skaneateles Creek. Four all within Onondaga County. And the great thing about it is we have a county run fish hatchery out in the Elbridge, Carpenter’s Brook Fish Hatchery, paid for by our county tax money, right? And they stock all these streams, you know, beginning now in mid and late March through May with 70,000 fish. 70,000 fish. Now if we just left that up to DEC, that's the State Department of Environmental Conservation which stocks around 2 million fish statewide every year, now, here we have our own little hatchery that does it just for us in Onondaga County. So if, even if you don't fish I would highly recommend you buy a cheap rod, get out there with your worm or salted minnow, right?
GR: (laughter)
SF: Head over to Nine Mile Creek on April 1st, buy your license of course, your fishing license, and just tour in the creek, see what everyone else is doing. Catch a stocked fish, okay? There's no shame in that. And you will be hooked.
GR: (laughter) Yeah. You didn't mention a couple of little gems that my son and I go to and I'm not going to say them on air (laughter).
SF: Oh, no. Of course, yes, a true fisherman.
GR: Yeah, that's right.
SF: We're going to squeeze it out of you, Grant and it's going right in the paper.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with Steve Featherstone. He's the outdoors reporter with the Syracuse Post-Standard and syracuse.com. So, you already spoke to this, I think, just now, but I wanted to get your thoughts about how the outdoor opportunities, recreational opportunities in Central New York compare with other places and you know, there are a lot of, you just mentioned the incredible fishery that we have here. But I'm thinking like when I think about it, I think there are a lot of activities and a lot of opportunities, but in a lot of ways they're more subtle than what you might find in some other more dramatic areas. I mean, it's not like, you know, we're ocean fishing, you know, for tarpon or we're, you know, hiking on some glacier or something like that. I don't know if you had any reflections about that.
SF: Sure, I think about that all the time. So when I was freelancing, one of the great things about freelancing is it's great if you're raising children. My wife is the breadwinner, she allowed me to do everything when I was freelancing because I could pick and choose my assignments. But in between then I had three kids I had something to do with. So let me tell you, having three young kids in this area in Central New York, the opportunities to get them out and doing something outside are just endless. I was just up, was it at last at the end of February, fishing, steelhead fishing. I did a story about that up on the Salmon River. And I was still steelhead fishing with this guy who he's kind of a nut, great guy, knows the river well. He goes to Kansas every year because he likes to storm chase. And we got to talking about that and his experience of Kansas was exactly my experience of Kansas when I moved out there back in the early 90’s to do this job at Garmin, which I spoke about. His first impression was, what do these people do? There is no water here. And that was the first thing I thought, where do people fish? There's no, in the summer, there was one reservoir that everybody would drive their boat to. It would be like an hour into the water. I mean, just think about around here all the opportunities you have. You've got Oneida Lake, the largest freshwater lake within the bounds of the state borders. Just right her, actually Onondaga County borders it. But right here in Central New York, it's the biggest fishery in the state, right in our backyard. You've got, you know, you've got Skaneateles Lake, which is fantastic as you probably know, fantastic rainbow and lake trout fishing in addition to the usual stuff, you know, perch and bass and walleye, which gets a lot of people upset. And so these things, that's just fishing. If you wanted to talk about hiking, I live over here in Manlius. Within 10 minutes, I can be in a county forest, a state forest, another state park, or at Clark's reservation. I can be in two land trust properties, Three Falls Woods, which is literally I could probably walk there from here, right? Beautiful property, it's, you know, owned by the Central York Land Trust and you can go in there anytime you want. And then there's another one over not that much further away off of Woodchuck Hill Road. That's all within ten, you know, ten, 15 minutes. And I could take, great places to take the kids, which I did quite often. And if you just, I think probably in Central New York, if you just looked at a map, anybody, these opportunities are probably within five, ten minutes of every residence in Onondaga County, whether it's for hiking, fishing, kayaking. I mean, look at Syracuse, you've got this Onondaga Creek runs right through the middle of the city. The city of Syracuse itself has three trout brooks that run it in the city limits, it’s nuts.
GR: Yeah, no, you're right, that's a great point. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Steve Featherstone. He's the outdoors reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and syracuse.com. So you had quite an adventure with snowmobiling this winter, from what I read of your story. Tell us a little bit about that.
SF: Well, I really so you know, we live in Central New York. You can't be an outdoor writer and not write about snowmobiling. Part of the problem is that we've had some really bad winters lately for snowmobiling. If you look, just last year, not this year, last season there was almost no snow. Now Tug Hill always gets snow. Here in Onondaga County, I think for the first time in history, not a single trail opened. Imagine owning a sled and paying insurance on that and you can't even ride it on the local trails. So, you know, Tug Hill got a lot of business. So this year, lots of snow, great weather. And I thought, this is my year, I'm going up there, I'm going to do a snowmobiling story. So I got a friend to take me up there. He had, you know, this very powerful snowmobile and he also belongs to a club where we could, like, spend the night. It's like, oh, this is great. And it was a really awful weekend weather-wise. I mean, great for snowmobiling, there’s tons of snow there was lake effect happening. So we got up there and yeah, I got on a sled for the first time in 50 years and probably, I don't know, within a couple of hours, I had already, I hit a tree.
GR: (laughter)
SF: Yeah, yeah, not good, you know, $900 worth of damage to this guy’s sled, he was not happy. But here's the thing, it was super slow. I wasn't doing anything dangerous. I wear glasses. I don't know if you can see me, you can't see me on the radio, but if you're looking at the feed, yes, I wear glasses and they had fogged up and I was just lifting the visor up. And in that moment that I was lifting it up, I just, the snowmobile kind of jerked and went off the trail at like one mile per hour, climbed a snowbank and then just hit a tree and bent the bumper on the snowmobile. No one was hurt.
GR: But you almost went over the side of a cliff too as I understand.
SF: Why did you bring that up? I've gotten in trouble from my readers for this.
GR: I mean, as I recall, you were reassured, all right, my question is, were you reassured? Your guide, I think, or your buddy told you, yeah, you probably wouldn’t have survived.
SF: Well, this, okay, my buddy, this tells you about his attitude, the fact that he put me on a sled like this and literally just said, oh, okay. I told him, I said, Martin, I have not been on a sled and probably 50 years. Technology's changed quite a bit, these are very powerful machines. These aren't the machines that I drove when I was, you know, whatever, ten years old. So he literally he puts me on this machine and then just takes off and says, follow me. So I'm okay, I'm on this thing and I'm thinking, okay, he's going much faster, I'm not going to try to match his speed. He ended up going like 96 miles per hour at some point he told me, and he showed me on his console, how fast he was going. I got it up to about 74 before I thought I was going to lose control of the sled. Not in a bad way, I was like, this is, this feels too much like I’m hydroplaning so I'm going to slow it down. Well, that part where we were up in the, near that cliff in Whetstone Gulf, I couldn't see the cliff, it was just woods. And Martin, of course, knew what was there because he rides up there all the time. I wasn't going fast. It was a wooded trails, going very moderate speed. I was enjoying looking around and all of a sudden I see Martin leap off his sled because he's ahead of me on the trail and stand in front of my sled. And he puts his hand on my break and says, stop, stop, stop. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? And I was about three feet from a 200 foot drop off. I just didn't see it. (laughter)
GR: Well, maybe leave your ride there (laughter). So you mentioned the trout season starting up. We're talking just a couple of days before the official opening of it.
SF: Are you are you going out?
GR: Yeah, I think I am. But I just wanted to ask you, I assume you'll be out there because you've already talked about it.
SF: Oh sure, yeah, it's going to be cold. It's going to be like 39 degrees or something.
GR: Oh, dear, okay. Well, the thing I'll ask you, just a personal question and we'll do it real quick and move on to something more important. But the problem that I have with the trout season is that there's always this idea in the family that on the first day, we're going to keep them. Usually we're catch and release, but I have to clean them.
SF: (laughter)
GR: And so by the time I'm done doing that, it's like the last thing I want to do is sit there and eat that thing. (laughter) Will you guys be eating trout on Tuesday?
SF: I would love to. You know, the nice thing about being an outdoors writer is because I'm often covering these things, so I think people feel sorry for you. So you'll have a kind of like, I've had this happen so many times, especially like up at the Salmon River during the salmon run, right? It's like, oh yeah, you're not able to fish? Sorry buddy, here, take this fish and there's like giving me fish. I’m like, I would love to, but what am I going to do with this? I’ve got a job, I’ve got to walk around and take pictures, I’ve got to, you know, talk to people, I can't carry a fish with me. So will I be eating trout? I, you know, maybe you inspired me, maybe I will put a cooler in my car and I will accept trout that are given to me, and I'll run back to the car and throw them in there and eat them later.
GR: There you go. You don't need a cooler at 39 degrees. So of all the new activities that you have been exposed to that you hadn't done prior to taking this job, what's the one so far that you've most liked?
SF: Wow. Okay, so it's interesting that you ask that because I was talking with my editors and we're thinking about starting kind of a new, I don't know, a new thing and like a video intensive, right? Because this is where I think eyeballs as we call them, right? Eyeballs are going, you know, people aren't reading as much they like they like to see video. And, you know, my kids are a great example of this, right? They want to consume all their content in video. So, you know, we're thinking about that here at the paper and we’re starting a new series and then thinking about what kind of things can I do, you know, what kind of weird stuff can I do? One of them we were thinking about was like, you brought it up earlier, is bushcraft - like survivalist kind of stuff. I thought it would be really fun, well, I don't know if it's fun, it probably won't be fun, is to just to go out for a weekend with a survivalist with someone who knows bushcraft and just live in the woods for, you know, bringing nothing with you, nothing, Not a sleeping bag, not a tent, nothing, you know, not a cell phone, obviously. And just go out and see what it's like to have to make a fire, find stuff to eat and just videotape the whole thing and make a video and write a story about it. That would be fun.
GR: Well, don't invite me on that one.
SF: And you know it’s just going to rain too.
GR: Well, I am among other things, I am just done sleeping on the ground, that ship has sailed for me. (laughter) If you've just if you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is syracuse.com outdoors reporter Steve Featherstone. So, of course not all activities are going to be everybody's cup of tea. I was curious, maybe the answer is snowmobiling, but what's the one activity that you've tried so far in this role, in this job that you know, you could have done without? You came home and said that I won't do that again on my own.
SF: I don't know. You know, I like everything, I really do. Let's bring it back to the steelhead story. The thing that attracted me to the steelhead story wasn't the fish so much. I mean, you know, fishing at some point is just fishing, you know? So the thing that attracted me to it was like, look what these steelhead fishermen are doing. The worst time of year you can imagine. It's January, it's 20 degrees out, it's probably snowing. If it's not snowing, maybe it's sleeting. You're out in your waders in a stream that's maybe 33 degrees and you're standing there in this awful weather casting over and over for a really hard to catch fish. That to me sounds awful. I don't want to do that personally, but I do want to talk to the person who does love that. So yeah, so personally, yeah, there's lots of stuff I wouldn't want to do that I don't personally care for. I mean walleye fishing, hugely popular here, not a big fan. I mean, it's okay, I love to eat walleye, but just sitting there and jigging over one spot and catching walleye, it's not my thing, you know, ice fishing, not my thing. But I love the fact that people here love these activities and I love talking to them about it. I love meeting them and listening to their passion for it. And people in this region are very passionate about these things.
GR: That's interesting. And you and I are on the same wavelength because ice fishing, the steelhead, the walleye trolling, those are not in my list of fishing types of fishing that I like.
SF: You're a trout snob, Grant.
GR: No, no, no actually, I'm a small mouth bass and northern pike snob. That's what I really am.
SF: Small mouth, they’re crazy, right? We've got one of the best small mouth fisheries in the United States right here in Central New York.
GR: And I've got some nice tiger huskies over on Otisco Lake.
SF: Oh, beautiful for that, wow.
GR: So I wanted to come back and ask you a question that you alluded to in an indirect way when you were talking about your experiences with your children. I know that, for example, in the realm of hunting, there's a real concern that the younger generation is not replacing these old guys in flannel shirts as you said before, in insufficient numbers to keep these pastimes going. And I just wondered, have you noticed any kind of concerns similar across the board based on your experiences? I mean, you know, we read all these things about kids are doing gaming all the time, they're on their phones, they're, you know, totally entrenched in social media. Do you think there's something we should be worried about?
SF: Oh sure, absolutely, yeah. And this has been a long going trend. I'm an example of the trend. My dad was a very active outdoorsman. He was a city cop in Syracuse for many, many years. But when he wasn't doing that, when I was very young, I mean, he would be gone for two weeks, you know, in Pennsylvania, hunting whitetail with his buddy at hunting camps, right? And he hunted all of his life. He fished all of his life. I would go, we would go up to the St. Lawrence River and fish for bass up there. So me though and my brother, my brother, you know, he hunts occasionally. We've got some properties, you know, south of town here where we hunt on. It makes it easy for us. I don't hunt. I have not hunted since I was 18, big game. But I love it. I just don't have the, I don't know, I just don't have the passion for it, I guess. Now, that is probably, I'm probably part of a trend I think that really is concerning for a lot of outdoorsmen now. If you go to these outdoors clubs, every town has one. There's one of Fabius, there’s one in Fayetteville, there's one in Camillus, they're all over the place, right? They're loaded with, you know, 60 plus old guys, right? There's not a lot of young blood in there. There's some. The fact that syracuse.com even has an outdoors writer is probably testament to the fact that there is a, maybe a larger concentration of people who hunt and fish here than there are elsewhere in the state. It's the reason why I have a job. But yeah, I mean, it is a concern, absolutely, and I'm probably an example of it.
GR: So we only got a couple of minutes left. I want to squeeze two quick questions in if I can. First of all, setting aside the limitations of this area, but if you want to include the area in your answer to this, it's fine. But thinking here and also thinking about anywhere in the world, what is the top on your bucket list of future outdoor activities?
SF: Wow. Okay, well, it meanders. It's such a smorgasbord. What one of the top thing be, you know what I want to do? This is weird. I want to carp fish.
GR: Oh, my goodness. Okay, so you are going to have to hook up with my son because. He is an accomplished carp fly fisher.
SF: Oh, carp fly fishing.
GR: We'll talk later. (laughter)
SF: Okay, so you might know this then, maybe your son certainly does. So the Syracuse area, Onondaga Lake and Seneca River is a world class wild carp fishery. And wild carp, carp fishing in general, worldwide, extremely popular. It's on TV. You know, it's a TV sport, right?
GR: Well, they fight like crazy, they just dive. Yeah, he's caught them everywhere.
SF: They’re big!
GR: Yeah, they're big, they get huge.
SF: And here in Syracuse, we've got this world class fishing. I want to fish for carp in the way that carp fishermen do here.
GR: All right, great, last question. I have to ask, it's kind of silly. Your name is like, perfect for this job. I mean, it's a really cool name anyway, but it's perfect, Featherstone. I mean, it's like if I was writing a novel and, you know, you were the outdoor writer, this is what it would be. Do you think you were, like, born for this?
SF: Well, my name could be. Well, you might remember the old days. There was a columnist in the Syracuse paper, I remember named Rod Hunter?
GR: Yeah.
SF: I think up I’m going to need a made up name like that, that would be even better.
GR: Well, I like Featherstone, so, okay, we'll have to leave it there. We could talk for hours, obviously. That was Steve Featherstone is from syracuse.com, he's the outdoors reporter. Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. This has been an absolute delight.
SF: Thank you. Grant. Maybe I'll see you on Tuesday, opening day trout.
GR: All right, you've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
