Today we’d like to introduce you to Travis Puglisi.
Hi Travis, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Prior to the international health crisis generated by Covid both my wife and I worked in the event production industry, traveling the country working for a number of music festivals and tours. We’d had a child in 2016, our lives were changing, and I largely had lost interest in crafting large format parties for people who I struggled to identify with as I aged and they stayed the same. By 2019, I had cut all but one of my contracts to avoid total burnout and decided I wanted a side project…something that felt like a “Passion Profit Project.” I’d been an avid solo hiker for a number of years and my self-guided studies and observations around botany, animal behavior, and local culture had arrived at a point where I had an intimate narrative to share with both locals and the guest community. On the last day of 2019, I was granted my permit to operate a professional guide service within the boundaries of Joshua Tree National Park, had secured my liability insurance, and had my first clients on Feb. 11 of 2020. This was before the collapse of the event production industry of course.
With entertainment of all sorts being the first domino to fall during the Covid Economy, I was grateful that I’d created a business model before my households income had entirely evaporated. What started as a side gig was now my principal profession. While 2020 was rather slow due to the prevailing conditions, I was able to build the core of my service and brand identity, which was really just me as storyteller, pattern reader, and safety buddy for people that wanted to find the edge of their abilities and play there with a trusted and engaged guide. The primary upshot is that I have found myself in a position of Right Livelihood, wherein I am focusing people’s attention on respect of the land, learning the connectivity between the biome, which humans are not separate from, while generating income for my family.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I found myself in a wave of experience, much like the rest of the world as we encountered covid. The fact that I’d created my model prior to the shutdowns was perhaps a stroke of luck. To have a framework to fall back on in an area of developed expertise was incredibly comforting. Like so many, we baked bread, spent a great deal of time together as a family, which made us stronger, and in general were able to cultivate a high level of gratitude which is the more positive byproduct of immense challenge. I was also afforded the opportunity to create a vision for my business that was much more a representation of “me” than some abstract product or service. Of course, the positive developments and opportunities that were afforded me during the early days of covid were largely facilitated by something that might be called “Rural Privilege.” While people in urban centers were locked in their homes surrounded by millions of others on the other side’s of walls, ceilings, or small lots, I had incredible access to wilderness that had not seen such quietude and low visitation since maybe the 60s.
It all conspired to create a terrifically intimate process of creating the idea of “guide” and developing the language that I could share with my guests so that they might tap into the depth of experience that the desert, and more specifically, Joshua Tree National Park, could generate. Perhaps the greatest challenge of working toward the embodiment of a “guide” was the anxiety of crafting experiences for people that met my expectations of what an experience had the potential to be. I would wager that the first 20 hikes were often proceeded by insomnia, anxiety, and general trepidation that they wouldn’t “get it” in the way that I thought was appropriate…which was an inappropriate expectation to have. Apart from the spoken language used to share the stories contained by the desert, there was also an interpretive language that is spoken by the land and how one travels over it. This language can be equated to topography and how one finds themselves in communion with the land. It wasn’t until the latter portion of 2020 that I felt I had properly integrated my personal method of travel within the landscape as established by my time hiking alone with that of the “guide” and hiking with others. The pre-hike jitters I had during those early hikes were simply a symptom of searching for this topographical language and making sure it translated to those who I was sharing my time with.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My career since Jan. 2020 has been in the outdoor industry specifically as the owner/operator of Wandering Mojave Hiking Services, an insured and permitted guide service that operates primarily within Joshua Tree National Park. Prior to that, I was a logistics specialist working at a number of the west coasts largest and most notable multi-day music and culture gatherings (Lightning in a Bottle, Coachella, Joshua Tree Music Festival, Symbiosis Events, and Burning Man). For five years, I managed the tour logistics for the Lagunitas Brewing Co’s Lagunitas Beer Circus, a multi-city tour where I produced shows ranging from 800 to over 3000. Prior to establishing myself in the world of event production, I worked in the trades, did social networking for local desert-based organizations and businesses, and spent 27 months working on the Antarctic Continent between the years of 2004 and 2008.
As a hiking guide, my role is to steward people through a landscape and environment that is often foreign to them. I create routes for groups and individuals after a fairly extensive process of communication that allows me to best assess their goals, objectives, and abilities. These routes are often a combination of established trails, animal trails, and cross-country travel, for which I have a specific designation on my permit from JTNP and the Department of the Interior. My routes serve only as plans, as meeting people in person goes a long way in determining what we will do that days. I consider it a frequent consideration for my hikes to help people feel trust in a place that is so large one might feel swallowed up by it. With trust people are often able to exceed their expectations of themselves and travel farther over more challenging terrain than they thought possible of themselves. These sorts of breakthroughs are common for people as they have been able to set down much of the stress around life so that the guide can carry it for them. This displacement of stress facilitated by the guide is replaced with my learnings of botany, animal behavior, geology, park history, contemporary local culture, wilderness ethics, and the challenges currently being faced in the region.
The greatest aid to all this is the landscape itself, which due to its enormity makes it very easy to feel more comfortable with one’s place in the universe. When talking, as I often due with my clients, about geologic or evolutionary time scales, it’s much easier for them to feel comfortable with where they are at…and how transient that moment really is. In terms of specialization, I am not formerly trained in any of these matters. Apart from being a 20 year resident of the High Desert, I did not start making any special forays into studies until 2018 when we had a fantastic superbloom. While I knew common names for many species of flowering plants, it was all casually acquired. That year, being surrounded by such intense color and variety, I started to feel like the guy at the party who couldn’t remember anyone’s name…I was embarrassed. So, at that point I picked up a book and dove in to plant identification. I’ve since done the same with other subjects. So, in a way, my lack of specialization is what makes me special. I am very actively engaged with my subject matter because in a way, I created the business as an opportunity to learn and deepen my exposure to the Mojave Desert.
Essentially, I created a job for myself that was all about educating myself, and in turn others. Because I’m active in my pursuits, I remain excited and interested in a way that I think my guests catch on to and take part in. The thing that I have become rather known for is going out for longer hikes than most guide services typically encounter with their clients. I’ve been out hiking novices on routes that took us over technical terrain and mileage that exceeds what they expected of themselves. People that think they can do 5 miles do 8. People that think they can do 8 do 12. I accomplish this by letting them know that time spent in the wilderness is more important than miles and that we aren’t racing against anyone or anything…except perhaps the sun. I think what sets me apart from other services is that I don’t used fixed routes and I make sure that a sense of intimacy exists between myself and the client and the landscape. Another thing is my history in the place, which allows me to speak as much about flora and fauna as how the High Desert came to be what it is in this age of Instagram, Airbnb, and economic development.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I group up in rural Maine, Rhode Island, and Virginia as a Navy Brat but was born in Colorado where my mom lived on a commune in the late 70’s. I loved being in the woods alone or with my grandfather who taught me the various deciduous and coniferous trees where we lived. When I was 15, I moved to Sicily on account of my mother’s position in the US Navy. I moved to 29 Palms, CA after dropping out of college in Rome, Italy. During my early life, I was a rather sickly child. I had severe ear infections, asthma, and debilitating environmental allergies. Around the age of 8 started swimming competitively and went through puberty which put all of those things very much in the background. In my early adolescents, I started to deal with signs of depression which persisted until my late 30’s but was completely solved by medication and years of personal work. Throughout my adolescents and early adulthood I was a reader and writer. After the period when one wishes to be Indiana Jones, I think the only things I ever really wanted to be was a writer and teacher. My position as a hiking guide and the way that I promote my business often allows me to feel that I have become those things, though in a fashion that I did not anticipate.
After Saturday morning cartoons, I’d flip the remote to MTV. I remember the first time I read about Burning Man in Spin Magazine, probably when I was around the age of 13 and still living on the East Coast. I ended up going for the first time in 2002 after meeting Black Rock Rangers that lived in the same desert as I did. I was romantic and enjoyed museums, hash in large quantities, and walking cities late at night. When my family moved to Italy, I was released from all the typical structures and curfews applied to most American youth, as my mother understood we were in a different culture. By the time I was 16, I was going to bars and clubs in Sicily. By the time I was 17, I had traveled to Denmark and the Netherland by myself. On the first day of 2001, I was the first to walk across Red Square on a fresh coat of snow with a Russian girl I’d met on the subway before midnight the previous evening. I traveled to Tunisia chasing a girl and felt that one of the greatest losses of my life was when I left a journal on a train in route to a ferry to Greece.
Pricing:
- Half Day Hikes: $250-$375
- Full Day Hikes: $345-$475
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://wanderingmojave.com/
- Instagram: @wandering_mojave
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wanderingmojave
