You are all in for a treat this month. We sit down and have a chat with long distance hiker, trail builder/maintainer, wildland firefighter, skateboarder, gravel biker, and many other thing-er, Matt "Pretzel" Mason. After our normal catch up, we get into how Matt was introduced to the outdoors by family friends then quickly touch on his long distance hiking before getting into how he has been giving back to the outdoors and the people in them by building/maintaining trail and fighting wildland fires. Starting with trail work, we talk about what building vs maintaining trail actually entails, how trail maintenance is an extremely important albeit underappreciated activity, and how everyone should volunteer to do trail work at least once in their lives. As Matt's employment evolved from being on trail crews to fighting wildfires, so does our conversation. We talk about how he made the jump from to wildland firefighting, what you do when you are on the ground fighting a wildfire, different jobs he has had within wildland firefighting, what those jobs entailed, how you even get one of those jobs, and the current benefits/treatment of wildland firefighters. Matt is extremely passionate on this last subject and I won't spoil it here but in short there have been some small steps in the right direction but there is still a long way to go before the people risking their lives to fight the ever increasing number of wildland fires in the west are compensated fairly and taken care of afterwards. We close out the interview on a lighter note with Trevor's favorite questions and the normal wrap-up items. We had a ton of fun on this one with Matt and we know you will all enjoy it as well.  Check out these people/groups working for Fair Compensation for Wildland Firefighters: Grassroots Wildland Firefighters on Instagram @grassrootswildlandfirefighters The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) www.nffe.org Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act https://www.grassrootswildlandfirefighters.com/tims-act Call your congress-person and let them know you value better benefits for wildland firefighters!       -House of Representatives: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative       -US Senate: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member Get in touch with Pretzel: Insta: @firexneck Contact the Podcast: Email: adventuringformeremortals@gmail.com Insta: @meremortalpod  Discord: https://discord.gg/RkvwxAeyVF Trev’s Insta: @trevorbollmann