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The last few episodes of the Take Me Outdoors podcast has been building up to this very, very special episode. Just before SHIFT starts up we are joined by the Founder, Director, and reason this event is so successful: Christian Beckwith. Christian Beckwith moved to Jackson, Wyoming, in 1994, and soon thereafter started his first publication, The Mountain Yodel. In 1996 he became the youngest person to edit the world’s premier mountaineering journal, The American Alpine Journal. In 2002 he co-founded Alpinist Magazine, an archival-quality climbing quarterly that Reinhold Messner called “the greatest climbing magazine in the world today.” More recently, he started the surfing, skiing and climbing extravaganza, The Alpinist Film Festival; coordinated the Teton Boulder Project, which developed a Jackson Hole bouldering park to honor Teton pioneers; and launched Outerlocal, a social media website for adventure athletes. He has made expeditions to Kyrgyzstan, Alaska, Peru and Tibet, skied the Grand Teton half a dozen times, and established numerous first ascents and descents around the world. Beckwith advocates a “place-first” approach to outdoor recreation that prioritizes the well-being of our places over the activities we love to do in them so that we may avoid the tragedy of the commons and the loss of John Muir’s legacy of wilderness preservation. In case you weren’t aware, SHIFT is an acronym that stands for Shaping How we Invest For Tomorrow. Outdoor recreationists, land managers, and conservationists simply are more powerful and create more positive change when they’re banded together into a single movement with a unified voice. And our unified voice and continued work to achieve shared objectives is more important today than EVER before – our public lands face unprecedented threat. This year’s SHIFT Festival explores the mega important theme of “The Business Case for Public Lands.” Specifically, there are three full days of panels, workshops and powerful conversations lined up about how investments in outdoor recreation and the protection of America’s public lands creates vibrant, resilient economies in communities around our Great Country. Download this episode today to learn more about SHIFT, it’s history, and what it’s doing to not only help conservation, but also economies.