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I'm April Voki and you are listening to Anchored. My chance to speak with some of the most influential people involved in the outdoors today. Join me as I sit down with my guests to learn more about the careers, opinions, history, relationships, and lifeboat indoors and out.

For decades, Mike Taylor has been involved in pre-hospital emergency care, focusing on remote and wilderness medicine.

As director of operations and co-founder of Finns West, he's provided remote medical services from Mount Everest to Antarctica.

Palo guides for several fly fishing outfitters spanning Colorado all the way to Chile. In this episode of Anchored, Palo shares how his passion for fishing, paired with his profession as a wilderness and remote paramedic, made a business unlike any other in the fly fishing industry.

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I was born in Western North Carolina, so in a small town called Elken, just down from, I'd say, the closest place that people would know is probably the Boone Asheville area in the mountains.

Oh, it's beautiful over there. I love Asheville.

It's a cool place, and ironically, I'm here on the coast now.

Okay, so you never left, I mean, is that the south? Are we calling that the south?

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're North Carolina. That is south as you can get.

I remember years ago I did an event down there, and driving through the beautiful mountains, the Appalachians, I think I used to call it Appalachian, and I was corrected.

I remember I was coming off of living for a year in Arkansas, so I was pretty comfortable with the south, and I was seeing houses with Confederate flags, and all sorts of new things that this Canadian girl had never seen before.

Is it still very much like that? I don't want to go into a rabbit hole. I mean, I've just pressed record, but is it still very southern or has it come a long way over the last decade or so?

Yeah, I think it depends on where you are, right? Because a lot of folks, I mean, again, I've moved away for 30 years and came back, but a lot of folks are coming to the coast and mountains of North Carolina.

So there's little pockets of change, but yeah, it's the little pockets are still there, there's the house, there's several houses down the river here that are throwing the Confederate flag for sure.

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