The Spotlight: National Park After Dark

It was a bear. It was definitely a bear.

WHO: National Park After Dark, Hosted by Cassie and Danielle

WHAT: Podcasters, Adventurers, Almost chased by a bear

Here at The Live Lost, I live by the mission: Connect Adventure. Today’s Spotlight features two people who not only love going on adventures themselves, but who have started a podcast that has connected adventures for others as well. Meet Cassie and Danielle, the creators and hosts of the podcast National Park After Dark. The podcast has found success telling stories through a National Park lens, stories of deaths, murders, and mysteries that are tough to explain. Read on to hear why they find sharing stories so important, the difficulties and learning curves associated with podcasting, and hear a story involving the two of them, a hiking trail, and one pissed off bear.

National Park After Dark was an idea in the making for a while. Danielle and Cassie worked together and had tossed the idea for the podcast around, but when Danielle moved from New Hampshire to the Pacific Northwest, they knew that presented the perfect opportunity to keep the stories going. That’s where we start.

Me: Why is it important for y’all to be able to share [the podcast] with each other even though you live on opposite sides of the country?
Cassie: When we started this podcast, we just thought that, we hike a lot together, and on these hikes, we’d talk about these horrible stories, so it’d be really cool to get a couple people who were excited to go outside because of the podcast, but we’ve gotten so many people who have said they went to a national park for the first time because we recommended it. So for me, one of the really cool things about starting this podcast is that we’ve gotten a lot of messages saying “you’ve inspired me to go outside, to go to these parks, to try camping for this first time”.
Danielle: Exactly. I mean our friendship was based off of outdoor excursions and talking about messed up things that happened there and we already had that laid down. And it’s transformed into something now that other people are enjoying and that just blows our mind when people reach out to tell us that we inspired them, and that drives us to keep going.

As of this writing, they have 26 episodes. (Want to support them? Become a patron!) The reception to the podcast has been incredible, with their first episode being downloaded over 100 times, and their first month’s download total racking over 3,000.

Cassie: We thought it was crazy. We knew our moms were going to listen, but they didn’t listen 3,000 times.
Danielle: My mom didn’t even know what a podcast was!
Cassie: For the most part, people are so great. They’re going out of their way to be so nice.
Danielle: Overwhelmingly nice. Now that it’s gaining some traction, we’re being taken more seriously, but with that comes a greater responsibility [to tell accurate stories]. It’s a big responsibility, but we want to make sure we’re painting an accurate picture. We don’t want to lose the magic of how it started though. We want to still be able to laugh about some things.

I’m on this trail that somebody died on.

Me: When I think of National Parks, I think of kayaking, wildlife, beautiful views. I don’t think about who was murdered around the corner. Why do you think people find the darker parts of the national parks so interesting?
Danielle: I think people are interested for the same reason they’re interested in true crime, that it can happen to you. You listen to a story of someone going hiking and getting lost and never being found. I mean, that’s almost been us. It’s an otherworldly experience.
Cassie: It’s also that these national parks are places that everyone can travel to. It’s not like true crime where something happens in someone’s house. It’s in a park. You think, “I’m on this trail that somebody died on.” There’s something about it being more accessible and intriguing that you can go stand in that spot and know exactly what happened there. You become connected to the story because you can be there.
Danielle: Things like that stick with you. Cassie is such a good storyteller that you feel like you’re there.
Me: But that’s a good story, right? It makes you feel like you’re there. Do y’all feel like you’re particularly good story tellers?
Cassie: I used to work in outdoor education where we did sit around a campfire at night and tell stories, but they were kid’s tales that I already knew, so for the podcast, we’re coming up with our own ways to tell stories and keep it engaging. There’s definitely a learning curve there, to make it so people enjoy it and keep listening.
Danielle: I worked at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, and though I did a lot of public speaking, I wasn’t relying on storytelling as much. I was standing in front of an enclosure with 125-pound wolves for people to look at. On a podcast, you’re not looking at anything or using anything to help the story along, its literally just you and how you’re presenting the story. And it’s totally different to anything we’ve ever done before. So it’s definitely difficult.
Me: Were there any technical learning curves?
Cassie: You’re going down the rabbit hole here.
Me: Ok ok. There was at least one episode that sounded like you were speaking through a paper towel roll.
Cassie: Just one?!
Danielle: We joke all the time that we can’t believe people got through the first few episodes. You think that once you get the right equipment and the right settings, you’re golden. We haven’t mastered that yet.
Cassie: You think that you just talk into a microphone and it will sound like your voice and everything is fine, and that is not the case at all. We’re learning all these different things and finally it sounds like we’re not smothering ourselves with a towel. It’s been a journey.
Danielle: We’ve thought about re-recording some of the older ones but it’s just so difficult because there’s just so much that goes into it.
Cassie: And I think that a lot of those early episodes are genuine. We often don’t tell each other our stories beforehand so our reactions are real, so re-recording loses that authenticity.
Danielle: We’re at the point where if people stuck with us, great. They’ve come along on the journey with us as we’ve progressed. We weren’t born knowing this stuff. The point is, we’re getting better, and that counts.

Me: I feel well-versed in national parks, but there are some episodes where I’d never heard of the place. I know y’all have talked about how there are things you’re learning about places you didn’t even know, how fun has that been? How fun is it researching stories about places you aren’t familiar with?
Cassie: It’s definitely influencing and inspiring our own travels because we’re learning these cool new in-depth things about the parks that we didn’t know before.
Danielle: Even places we’ve been before, the podcast gives you a stab in the heart of “I want to go back” and experience it in a different way. It inspires you to revisit places with a new lens, with a greater appreciation than you had before.
Me: Why do y’all like to travel? Why do you like to be adventurous?
Cassie: It’s a free space. There’s so much you learn. You discover yourself when you’re out in the wild. You go through these experiences when you’re adventuring, it’s like a spiritual journey. And all the people you meet, that’s such a huge part of it. Traveling shapes you into a new person.
Danielle: You’re stepping outside yourself in a way. It humbles you. When you’re out in the wild away from cell service and errands and work schedules, you’re transporting yourself back to a time where you are part of nature. You’re one little link in the chain of the world. So going out on a hike or going out for an overnight, you just feel humbled. It brings life into perspective. I feel refreshed and I have a renewed appreciation for life and how we’re all interconnected with it.
Cassie: Traveling makes you feel smaller. You realize how big the world is.

We hear this growling, screeching noise really close to us

Cassie and Danielle both grew up in New Hampshire and became friends when they started working together at a veterinary clinic. I asked about any cool encounters with wildlife that they’d had when they both started laughing, thinking about one instance in particular…

Cassie: We were hiking in New Hampshire and we ended up taking the wrong trail that was way longer than we thought it would be. While we’re hiking this trail, we hear this like growling, screeching noise really close to us, and the trail we were on, there was a bit of a drop on the side and we could hear and see this thing moving around in the brush.
Danielle: It was a bear. It was definitely a bear.
Cassie: Yeah it was a bear. We didn’t see it but we could see the leaves and branches moving and we got out of there very fast. So we go home and look up bear noises, and it was the exact same noise they make when they’re upset and ready to attack. It was not great.
Danielle: My only other cool encounter was when I was driving home from work, down a dirt road. About a mile from my house, my headlights caught eye-shine on the side of the road and I thought “this has got to be an elk”, but a mountain lion came out and checked me out. I remember it was so beautiful. It looked at me, sauntered down the road, and disappeared. It was probably only twenty seconds long but it felt like forever. I’ve never seen one before or since, but it was wild and I think about it a lot.

There’s always new things to see and new adventures to be had.

Me: What’s next for National Park After Dark?
Cassie: We’re definitely not going anywhere. One day we’d love to do live shows at national parks, or with hiking groups, something. We don’t have any concrete plans but we are growing every week.
Danielle: So many people have reached out to us and feel inspired to get outside so it would be so cool to do a story and then do a group hike together and get out there, put into action what we talk about in the podcast. We’re starting this community of people and it would be nice to get together.
Me: What keeps you inspired? What keeps y’all wanting to go on adventures?
Cassie: All the positive feedback we’re getting. Everyone that’s listening and being so kind and supportive is really what’s driving us to keep going.
Danielle: There’s always new things to see and new adventures to be had. We have people that say they’ve been to these places but they never knew the stories. That’s been really cool.

As a fan of adventure and podcasts, including National Park After Dark, I can wholeheartedly recommend you check out their show. You can find NPAD on a range of platforms, and I find that the best time to listen is when you’re headed outdoors. You never know what can happen.
Find National Park After Dark online at npadpodcast.com, and their Instagram account is NationalParkAfterDark.
To follow along with Cassie and Danielle themselves, you can also find their accounts here and here, respectively.

As always, stick around to find more stories from the world of adventure. Live Lost. Find it on the way.