From the borders of the civil war in Burma to working with the desert nomads of Colombia, Carlton Klein was searching for his place in the world, and found it, embracing his love of travel, adventure and culture. From backpacker to entrepreneur, he takes us on his journey to creating a business that honors the crafts of the artisans he met along the way during his solo travels to South America, India and Asia.
Carlton Klein's first and most dramatic great adventure involved secretly dropping out of college, riding a bicycle to Mexico and taking every form of transportation but planes down to Bogota, Colombia. He writes, “I came away with some wild experiences like working on the Panama Canal, and trying to avoid drug mules in Mexico. That trip also did a lot for me in terms of reviving my zest for life and polishing out my social skills, but didn't sort out the larger issues.” It did, however, plant the seed for an idea that would become a business after another big transition.
Originally from Chevy Chase, Maryland, Carlton worked in Washington, D.C. and, once he headed back to school, earned a master’s degree in international development at the University of Maryland. He spent years spent living and working in developing countries including India, Burma (Myanmar) and Colombia.
He had just completed his field work in India, working with the Wildlife Trust of India, and returned to the U.S. Covid-19 hit not long after, and he wound up running logistics for two Covid field hospitals.
We discuss Carlton’s transition from backpacking wanderlust to entrepreneur with an import business, how he found his way out of his own personal nadir, how he got the idea for Lost Canyon Imports and how he envisions his future.
We talk about his concern over the growing homogeneity of the world, the fine line of exploitation and saving the arts of faraway cultures, and the sense of loss he feels as he witnesses cultures and traditions disappearing. One of the most tangible pieces of a culture, he believes, is the crafts they make. Carlton went back to Colombia, met with traditional artisans, filmed their process and the culture behind the pieces and started a company to sell their works in the U.S., contributing to a steady stream of income for them.
You can reach Carlton Klein here: lostcanyonimports@gmail.com
Instagram: @lostcanyonimports
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@LostCanyonImports
Website: https://www.lostcanyonimports.com/
Places mentioned in this episode:
Chevy Chase, Maryland
McDaniel College
University of Maryland
Washington, D.C.
Austin, Texas
El Paso, Texas
Mexico
Panama Canal
Bogata, Colombia
Nevado del Tolima, Colombia
Burma
Myanmar
Bolvia
India
Sibundoy Valley, Colombia
Magdalena River, Colombia
Christi: [00:00:00] Welcome to Moving Along. My guest today is Carlton Klein, who has been going through some big transitions in his life. These transitions have taken him from the borders of the civil war in Burma to working with the desert nomads of Colombia. He says he is searching for his place in the world. And to my ear, that's music. I want to talk to somebody who is searching for his place in the world by actually going to the wild places in the world. He grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and he writes, My first and most dramatic transition involved secretly dropping out of college, riding a bicycle to Mexico, and taking every form of transportation but planes down to Bogota, Colombia. I came away with some wild experiences like working on the Panama Canal and trying to avoid drug mules in [00:01:00] Mexico. That trip also did a lot for me in terms of reviving my zest for life and polishing out my social skills, but didn't sort out the larger issues. It did, however, plant the seed for an idea that would become a business after another big transition. Back in Maryland, after a lot of travel, suddenly Carlton, was faced with COVID, and he ended up opening two COVID field hospitals and running logistics for one of them. Welcome, Carlton.
Carlton: Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay.
Christi: Thanks for being here. You grew up in Maryland and not far from Washington DC. What did travel and moving mean to you as a child?
Carlton: I think there were sort of Two sorts of travels in my mind when I was a kid there was the more local stuff, because I, I did a lot of backpacking and sort of [00:02:00] outdoor stuff, and that, that felt like an escape and an adventure, and I think in a way a bit of a simpler space to be in and figure out and sort of develop my skills in, and then once a year my family would usually go on a bigger trip go to like Europe, or I think we went to Jamaica one year, And those were always really interesting and it was always something to look forward to.
Carlton: Something novel, a different culture, a different way that people were living and sort of experiencing the world.
Christi: Do you have brothers and sisters?
Carlton: I do, I've got a younger brother, he's three years younger.
Christi: the two of you and your parents would go on these trips together.
Carlton: yeah, no, so it was the four of us traveling around.
Christi: Resort oriented or kind of more on the wild side?
Carlton: I certainly wouldn't say it was on the wild side. There was, there was one resort trip to Jamaica when I was younger that I think my mom's grandparents sort of gave us as a gift. But most of it was quick trips over to like Germany or England. Usually pretty culture [00:03:00] focused and also we'd often be visiting family friends over there.
Carlton: So we'd, we'd pop in to see someone that either my mom or dad or both of them knew.
Christi: Were you bit by the travel bug when you were on these trips?
Carlton: Probably. It's, it's hard to say exactly where it came. I think it's, my family has a lot of travel in their history, going back to like great grandparents, great aunts, great uncles have done some kind of wild stuff and there's always been sort of artifacts of that lying around the house.
Carlton: So my mom. Partly grew up in Thailand when her father was studying economics over there. And so there's pieces of Thai furniture that they brought back after living there for years and just little odds and ends scattered around the house that are just part of everyday life that sort of hinted at that wider world.
Christi: That's wonderful. when you were in college, where did you go to school?
Carlton: So I started off at McDaniel, which is this tiny liberal arts school outside of Baltimore, more or [00:04:00] less. And it's only about 2, 000 students, so real tiny.
Christi: I was curious about the decision tree that you sorted through to Quit and ride a bike to Mexico.
Carlton: Yes so I guess the short version is probably I was getting a biology degree and I, I got to sort of a point where I realized I either needed to really buckle down and do work, which I hadn't ever had to do before or do something different and I wasn't really at a place where I was. Willing or able to put in the effort for it and I was really not very happy at that point in my life. And I decided to sort of try something completely different and sort of just change things up. I think I'd been doing that for a couple of years, just if things weren't working for me, make a bit of a dramatic change and see what worked for me and what didn't.
Carlton: And the life I was leading at that point just didn't I was doing biomedical research for the Navy at the time during the summers, and I had some ethics problems with some of the stuff I was doing was [00:05:00] questioning sort of going into biology in general and whether I found it satisfying and fulfilling or ethical in some of these things. And so that combined with Really, schoolwork actually getting hard for once pushed me to make a big change and to try and sort of step out and explore something.
Christi: semester abroad wasn't going to cut it.
Carlton: No. I mean, I don't think, I don't know if there would have been a good way to fund that, and I don't think that was really my style. I needed to really be a little more freeform and just sort of explore.
Christi: Okay, so you decided to shake things up and you got yourself a bicycle or maybe you had one. And did you tell your parents,
Carlton: No, not directly. So it was, it was pretty awful, I didn't want to deal with the confrontation, and I also, I knew that everyone would try and talk me out of it. And, That conversation wasn't going to go but one way. I knew I was going to do it. And it felt silly and stressful to go through this conversation with everyone in [00:06:00] my life.
Carlton: I thought it might make more sense if I was already doing it and it was happening. So I actually, I redirected my college's mail so it wouldn't keep showing up at my parents house. I organized for my internship that summer to end a little bit early. So I had room to sort of duck out before it became obvious that there was no sort of tuition or anything that needed to be done.
Carlton: And then I just, I, I wrote a letter to my parents and left it for them and just sort of dipped. And the bike part is also pretty funny because originally I had a bike and I was going to take my bike down South, but it got stolen One week or two weeks before the trip happened. So I actually wound up hitchhiking the first part and buying a bike partway down into the trip.
Christi: wow, hitchhiking,
Christi: where
Carlton: Sorry, a little bit there to unpack.
Christi: that's, that's great. How, I mean, so you had a backpack[00:07:00]
Christi: and you had some cash.
Carlton: Yeah.
Christi: Right, because you had worked your summer job
Christi: paid internship one presumes at with the Navy, right? Okay, so you're near DC that makes sense. How did you decide where to hitchhike to? And where did you go?
Carlton: So really it was just, south was the direction. I definitely intended to go into Latin America but I didn't have really a concrete plan and I, I kind of enjoy that style of traveling a lot when you can, you know, wake up or a few days ahead of time sort of sort out how you're feeling, what you want to do, where you want to go and originally I, I didn't really know much about traveling.
Carlton: travel on bikes. I'd done some bike trips, done a couple centuries and stuff just, you know, around the area, but never overnight or anything like that. And I didn't really know how that kind of gear worked and how, what the proper bike would be. So originally my plan was to use my backpacking [00:08:00] backpack and then bicycle, which would have been awful.
Carlton: But I ended up trading out after hitchhiking didn't really work for me. Trading out getting the bike and getting a couple of panniers to go on the, on the rack. And getting all my gear into that. But the bicycle was awful. It was probably too small for me. It was a mountain bike with shocks on the front.
Carlton: So, really not what you want to be traveling across the U. S. on.
Christi: So did you like buy a book or look up some bike trails or?
Carlton: I had road atlases. So in my panniers I would get a road atlas at like a gas station and the night before or two nights before I'd be sitting in my tent and just sort of pencil in the route that I wanted to go the next day.
Christi: So One time, I'll tell you, my partner and I did a long road trip. We were in a little Toyota pickup truck about the size of my desk. And we did all blue highways going L. A., back up to Maine, and then to New York, right? And [00:09:00] one thing that I learned along that trip was that if you go to the biker bars, they tell you where to go. The pretty routes, right? And I wonder, did you meet with people along the way when you were camping? did you ask, did you talk and say, where have you come from? Where should I go next? Or did you just kind of work on those maps?
Carlton: I don't know how much I was asking people where I should be going at that point. There were definitely a lot of interactions with people. People really. Curious, especially when I got off the bike and it was a lot of fun sort of going into a small town, stopping at like a little local restaurant or something, and then usually you find yourself sitting at a table with a bunch of other people who are local and just sort of chatting about stuff.
Carlton: I'm almost certain that I would have would have asked a little bit about certain roads and stuff and what good routes were, but I think mostly I was just looking at the map. Thinking what's a small road, what looks like it'd be a pretty way to get down sort of in the direction I'm going or the next city I'm going to [00:10:00] because I was always already thinking about, okay, I know someone here or here I can crash with them for a couple of days and sort of stringing those kinds of places together.
Christi: So you went down through Texas, Mexico?
Carlton: I ditched the bike in Texas. So I made it to Austin. I actually wound up at a gas station, maybe like 20 miles outside of Austin. And just out of curiosity, I was like, hey, so how far is Austin from here? And she's like, oh, it's about 20 miles, definitely too far to bike. Which was a great, a great little quote for the end of the day, the end of the whole ride there.
Carlton: But I, I packed up my bike and I think I shipped it back home. And then got my backpack mailed to me. And I took an Amtrak from. From Austin, after spending a little while there, over to El Paso, and then that was the introduction to Mexico, and that, that felt a little, you know, you step off the train and it, it's a change, that West Texas desert [00:11:00] is, you know, a little different from home, and most of the South is not so different.
Christi: That's right. It is. We lived for about we went to Santa Fe, and yeah, it's different down there, and Texas is different than New Mexico,
Christi: and El Paso is different than Texas, it's different than New Mexico, it's different than Mexico, but there it all is, right there, kind of in your hands, right?
Christi: It
Christi: feels, like you say, very, very different,
Carlton: Yeah, whereas like, The East Coast, you know, there's differences with the South and the Deep South, but it's not dramatic. It's not the same as going from like, temperate forest to desert.
Christi: exactly. Now did you have Spanish, or did you learn that along the way?
Carlton: God, I, so technically I think it took two years in high school. And that stuck about as well as it does for most people. So I was not very prepared language wise at that point. [00:12:00] I think I had a little workbook or two with me in my bag, and at nights I'd sort of practice a little bit, but that wasn't, that wasn't getting all that far.
Carlton: So really it was just sort of jump in the, jump in the deep end language wise.
Christi: Right. And lucky for you, your parents were speaking to you and sent you,
Christi: sent you, uh,
Carlton: Yes, I wasn't immediately
Carlton: disowned.
Christi: No, that's good. That's good. And so for somehow from how did you landed in Bogota? Like,
Christi: like, I mean,
Carlton: After, after a whole trip down there. So I took trains, I hitchhiked still a little bit in Mexico and, aren't really ways to get around and Uber was not a thing at this point. This is like 2010. I did not have a cell phone at this point and I really for a long time I refused to travel with a cell phone just because I, I really enjoyed that disconnection is the wrong word, but sort of periodic connection.[00:13:00]
Carlton: It feels a lot different when you're totally in that space without any internet or any other means of communication. And then you sort of drop into communication when you end up in a hotel or a hostel. And at that point, computer labs were sort of the normal thing in hostels. Or there were computer labs just in the village or something where they had a bunch of tower computers and you'd just go and pay money for 15 minutes or an hour of internet.
Christi: Wow. tell me how you got to Bogota. Cause I have a question. I want to know what you, if you,
Christi: would advise people
Carlton: Okay, I'll give the, I'll give the short rundown of how I made it to Bogota. It was mostly buses but there was, there was a little bit of hitchhiking in the more remote areas. And then there were some trains like the Barranca del Cobre in Mexico, which is an amazing ride if anyone's interested in trains.
Carlton: And then for like Panama to Colombia there's notoriously no [00:14:00] road so I, I paid for passage on a sailboat which was amazing. And go through these little postcard sandbar islands with palm trees and the Laguna Yala people that live down there. It's really, really pretty. But took a boat down to sort of the Darien Gap, the Colombian side, and then another boat down into more proper Colombia.
Carlton: And just before this, right before I arrived in Panama City, I knew my debit card was about to Uh oh.
Carlton: And I took out a bunch of cash. In preparation for this, I had my card forwarded to a location in Panama City. I, you know, it was all set up, but this was my first of several experiences with the mail not really working in some countries.
Carlton: And so the card never showed up. So all I've got is a certain amount of cash on me which is more than I'd like to carry, but also less than I probably needed. So at the end of this, I wound up in Bogota, sort of Buying 1. 50 [00:15:00] meal a day and splitting it between breakfast and dinner. And then people were, people were at this point people were very generous.
Carlton: I was, I was offered money and stuff that I refused to take from some of the people I was staying with and stuff. But made it through and it was a lot of fun.
Christi: So, eventually you got a card or something, right?
Carlton: Well, eventually I got a ticket out, so I, I flew back to the States.
Carlton: And then I
Christi: Does this have something to do with mom and dad?
Carlton: Yes. Yeah, because I had, I had no valid card, so I couldn't go online and order a ticket. So my dad was able to get me a ticket back up
Christi: Still, my question is uh, so, Columbia has figured uh, prominently your journey since then, but my, I guess, still, why Columbia? Did you feel drawn? I mean, did you feel, did you hear voices? Did,
Carlton: so I think, I think [00:16:00] there's a couple of reasons. For one, it was a pretty natural end point when I had no more access to cash. For another it's been sort of a natural spot for me to fly back to. Flights tend to start getting more expensive if you go further south than Columbia. So doing budget travel where the flight into the country is the most expensive thing there and then I can live off 20 or so a day it makes a big difference if the ticket's 200 or 400.
Carlton: There's a lot of stuff in Columbia, like I, organized a little mountaineering trip for me and my friend in Columbia cause it was, it was an option and it looked like a cool way to do things yeah.
Christi: do tell, You, you are a mountain climber, aren't you?
Christi: You've done some other
Carlton: A little bit, I, I'm a, I don't really want to say I'm a mountain climber, I've done some mountains, let's put it that way. But, so I was in this outdoor adventure club in the University of Maryland flashing forward a little bit when I get my stuff together later on. And I'm, [00:17:00] I'm good friends with the president of the club.
Carlton: We've had these ice axes that no one has ever used, as far as we're aware. They're just sitting in the gear unit and, He just sort of off the cuff, he's like, okay, if someone plans a serious trip using these, I will give you the ice axes. So I go home, I look up some options, and I, I find this mountain Nevado del Tolima in Colombia.
Carlton: And I'm like, this looks awesome, I've done a little bit of mountaineering before, it's a trekking peak, it doesn't require rope work, it's, it's a little more tame. It's still tall, it's I think it's 5, 100 meters, not sure what that is in feet exactly, but it's up there. But, ended up, he, he agreed to do the trip with me, we just flew down to Columbia and, and tried to do this mountain and there's a, if we got into it this would be a whole nother hour, but it was, it was quite a trip.
Christi: And no regrets, right?
Carlton: No. No. Everything was fine in the end.
Christi: In the end.
Carlton: It was a wild trip. I will say this, there were a lot of [00:18:00] stories that came out of this one, but we failed to make the peak because of weather. It was absolute downpour when we woke up at 3am to try and summit. And we just, we walked up through the rain until it turned into snow and it was just total whiteout conditions.
Carlton: It would have been insane to attempt to summit in those conditions. And so we, we backtracked, we went all the way down the mountain and then the next day as we're, we're taking a bus over to back to the main city, the driver very excitedly pulls out a newspaper on top of his steering wheel and is poking at it with his finger.
Carlton: And we go over and it takes us a minute to sort of figure out what, what he's saying and what's happened. But while we were on the mountain a group of Medellin students were kidnapped by their guide on the mountain. And the Colombian military had come in with helicopters in a rescue operation to get these kidnapped students off the mountain.
Carlton: And we had no idea this was going on.
Christi: My God, so it's kind of like the [00:19:00] universe was watching out for you and your friend, it
Christi: seems to me.
Carlton: Well, also everyone had said that we were idiots for not hiring a local guide or something. And then this happens. And it's not like we didn't do our research. We had a lot. A bunch of maps route stories from other people that had done it, done a lot of research on that sort of thing. Both very physically fit and I have, I have some mountain experience, so it was a little A little wild, but not crazy kind of stuff.
Christi: , did you feel grateful or lucky or just like gulp? What was your visceral reaction?
Carlton: A little bit shocked because it's, it's funny to be in such proximity to these things. There was another incident in the city before this that was much closer to home. But I don't know, it's, and a little bit of vindication for not hiring a guide. But you know, it's, it's always, it's always nice when, when you're able to make it out of stuff. So yeah, and people had, the local people had been incredibly nice to us. We'd gotten great hospitality along the way.
Christi: That's great. [00:20:00] So, somewhere between now, when you have your business Lost Canyon Imports,
Christi: And most of them are artisanal works from Columbia, right? Is that right?
Carlton: Yep, it's all from Colombia. I'm trying to be only partly stupid and start with just one country instead of running out there and grabbing everything that I would love to see out here.
Christi: It seems like Columbia a place in your heart. But between those initial jaunts and climbing up the mountain and escaping with your life Starting Lost Canyon Imports, you hit a number of other countries, including Burma,
Carlton: yeah, Burma, most of Southeast Asia some of East Asia,
Christi: And that just, just cause?
Carlton: So Burma, yeah, was, was just cause I, so to give a little bit of background, I wound up, you know, figuring things out for myself, going back to school. Started off by going to a community [00:21:00] college and then transferring into the University of Maryland. And when I went back, school was much easier for me, even though, especially at the University of Maryland I think it was a much more serious program, which in a lot of ways worked better for me.
Carlton: Because I got in the habit of actually doing the work and actually committing to making an effort. But I found school so much easier the second time and got invited to the master's program there and ended up doing that as well. But it was during the master's program during a summer break, I was like, you know, I, I need some, some time away.
Carlton: And so I just hopped on a plane and spent a couple of months in Southeast Asia. And I'm always drawn to to different cultures and trying to see how other people experience life and sort of interpret the world around them. That's always very satisfying to me on top of just being drawn to novelty.
Carlton: So few better places than Burma to to do that.
Christi: of all places. And so it just kind of, seriously, did you [00:22:00] just poke your finger on the map?
Carlton: I mean, more than that, like, I had a friend at McDaniel who was from Burma. So I think I got some experience, some introduction to the culture from him, and just sort of keeping an ear out as well. There's a great travel culture in hostels, and people that, that travel a lot that go to certain places, especially when you start getting a little further off the beaten track.
Carlton: You wind up with, you know, just a handful of, foreigners hanging out in specific spots, and, and talking about where's good, and. swapping wild stories, and you sort of get inspiration and desire to hit some of these
Christi: a different kind of expat community, huh?
Carlton: Yeah, yeah, much more temporary expats. Wanderers, maybe.
Christi: You went to visit working elephants, some of the last working elephants in Burma?
Carlton: I tried to. So there's, there's still some elephants that, that do, like, logging in Burma. they were, they were, Held in sort of fenced [00:23:00] courtyards in this city, in this village that I was in right about as far north in Burma as you could get at that time. And so, you know, it was normal for people to go and see the elephants at night when they were done working.
Carlton: But no one really went out to see them logging and I thought that would be amazing, you know, go see this very unusual draft animal really. You know, this is the sort of thing that, you know, horses or oxen, probably oxen used to be used for in Europe, but here's a case where people are interacting with an elephant in a working environment.
Carlton: It just feels like such an interesting place and thing to do. And so I went and I talked with the owners of the elephant and I was like, Hey, I'd really love to come and see you guys work. I think that'd be awesome. To sort of see what these elephants do and how you guys interact with each other. it's on the edge of rebel territory. There's a certain risk of mines in the area just generally, but probably a little more logging where they're going in and cutting stuff down. Somehow the local governor heard that I was planning this, and I had roped pretty much everyone else at the hostel into going with [00:24:00] me.
Carlton: And he actually showed up in person at the hostel to demand that we put a stop to this nonsense. So it didn't actually go through, but we were planning on leaving the next morning.
Christi: He didn't want to, he didn't want to be exposed, huh?
Carlton: sometimes it's very hard to say exactly what the motivation is There might well have been a genuine concern for risk in terms of mines in the region or maybe there was something he didn't want us to see. It can be hard to tease out when you really are not deep into the local culture and politics. What exactly is the motivation for
Christi: So Burma is the same as Myanmar?
Carlton: Yeah, so I I tend to default to the terms that friends of mine use. And my friend uses the word Burma because the military changed the name of the country to Myanmar even though Burma reflects one specific ethnicity within the country. I don't personally have an opinion on the term, but I tend to err on the side of the people that I know [00:25:00] and what they prefer to use.
Christi: I'm just curious. Okay. Are you a redhead? Are you blonde?
Carlton: It changes by the year. So I was, I was born absolutely bright red, like wildly cartoonishly red hair. And when I was younger, even a couple of years ago, my beard was bright red. The hair has mellowed and now the beard seems to be mellowing as well. I don't know if it's gonna change back or if this is how it's gonna be. I think of myself as a redhead, but the hair color seems to not have made up its mind yet.
Christi: So do people think you were from Ireland?
Carlton: I get, I do get that a lot. That's, I think, the default with, with Americans is to guess that I'm Irish, and then I think the default with most of the rest of the world
Christi: German.
Christi: Interesting. And I told you, I talked to somebody that spent quite a bit of time in India and also a redhead but she's a she. she's also very pale, white skin, like yours. And she said she got stared at, stared at, stared at. That was your, that was your [00:26:00] experience too?
Carlton: Oh, oh my god, yes. It's a It's an experience. India is probably hard mode when you're talking about travel. People are extremely curious about you they, they usually haven't seen someone that looks like you before, especially someone like me and on top of that if you're tall, I'm, six foot so I'm, I'm quite tall over there, you will get swarmed, you will absolutely get swarmed and they'll, they'll, usually if you're in a fairly crowded place, you will get swarmed.
Carlton: They'll be a little timid at first. They won't want to be the first one to approach you. But once you start hearing them whisper the word selfie to each other, you know it's coming and someone's going to make a move. And once the first person does, you will literally have a crowd around you and every one of those people want to
Christi: Wow. They want to take a selfie, but they're not begging. They're not begging. It's
Christi: the
Carlton: I mean, you'll get some begging. Begging just happens. It's a very different phenomenon, though. They're not They want to To take a picture [00:27:00] with you. That is, that is the main thing. There's also a strong culture of hospitality in India. So there's also a desire to, to interact and to, to offer you something.
Carlton: So just constantly getting offers for, you know, come have tea with me. Come sit down for like a little bit of food or something. It's, it's quite common.
Christi: photos because you're a curiosity.
Christi: Right, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Christi: What's the
Christi: strangest, oh
Carlton: and then the
Carlton: photos with the girls is often, the photos with, with foreign girls is often they want to pretend that they're their girlfriend. So they'll take a photo with them and then claim to all their friends that they're dating them.
Christi: here's my hunk,
Carlton: Not that I'm aware of. I think it's, it's a very conservative culture in that respect. For, for women it's very different than for men and it's, their families would probably be very upset if they, If they claimed that. If it turned out to be the [00:28:00] reality, I think they'd be quite happy, but it's, until you're married, they're not supposed to be interested in right? Plus the arranged marriages, right? Yeah,
Christi: that's the other part of that. Yeah. So I was going to ask you, what's the strangest place you ever been to?
Carlton: I think the place that felt most alien was probably going down into some of the mines in Bolivia. And their There's still a lot of traditional beliefs that have sort of been grafted onto Christianity, especially in that country. And in particular, there's a deity called El Tio, which is sort of like a patron god of miners and lives in the underworld and looks shockingly like the devil.
Carlton: And going into some of these mines there will be statues to El Tio in the mine. And on certain days a year they will sacrifice animals and throw the blood on Altio. And just being in these, [00:29:00] in this closed, dark space of a mine and having this ominous statue there and these offerings to the god.
Carlton: It's just, that's one of the times where it felt most alien. I think that and then certain times in Burma as well. Just the Buddhism, the lack of contact with the outside world for a long time. Certain things like, one thing that stands out to me is there is this cave, and every night at this cave mouth by the river, a monk would go and wait for the bats to start emerging at night.
Carlton: And as the bats started to come out, he would go and he would beat on this drum rhythmically. And every time he hit the drum, this River of bats flying out would jump in a different direction. And so they would, they would be startled by the drumbeat and the whole river of bats would jump to the left or to the right.
Carlton: And it was this like crazy visual and auditory experience.[00:30:00]
Christi: Was there, I mean, did you ever find out the reason why that, well, why the drum beats and why the
Christi: ritual with the
Christi: bats?
Carlton: I don't think I actually talked to him. I think I just sat there and watched it the whole time. I was probably too entranced. I wish I had more backstory on that.
Christi: Wow.
Christi: you've come to be concerned about is what you call homogeneity, right? And would you say loss of indigenous cultures or loss and just like the old ways of life or What's the concern?
Carlton: I don't know if I would narrow it to one thing specifically. I think there's a,
Carlton: The world's becoming more similar. you're losing a lot of, a lot of variation, a lot of cultures, languages crafts, arts, traditions. Everything is becoming more like the rest of the world. And some of that's simply from an efficiency standpoint.
Carlton: You know it's more efficient to build in [00:31:00] certain ways or build from certain materials than it is from others. It's hard to automate or scale up when you're building a house by hand with local materials. But I think there's also too much of a rush to some of this stuff. And in some cases a conflation between progress and a western way of doing things.
Carlton: I think there's overlap in some of these places, but other times Just because the West does something doesn't mean that it's better or more efficient. and also to a certain extent it's not entirely a logical feeling, but there is just a feeling of loss of all of this disappearing. You know, it's an emotional thing as well.
Carlton: That there's, at least for me, there's a lot of beauty in that diversity. There's a lot of beauty, it's interesting, it's fascinating to me. And seeing all of that. Getting lost year by year, all the languages disappearing, the ways that people dress or interact differently and the stories that they tell, and seeing that going away. That's kind of sad.
Christi: your master's degree is in [00:32:00] international development, where does that fit in to your view, your vision of the world?
Carlton: I think it taught me a lot more about about economics, about how Economics and policy works in other countries got a bit more of a holistic view on all of that. As well as other things like health issues and other development challenges like learning about tropical diseases just the fundamentals of nutrition, things like that. It helped to flesh out what I developed as sort of a gut instinct or understanding from living and traveling in these places, and give me a bit more of an academic background on it.
Christi: does it dovetail with your Concern about the homogenization
Carlton: Yeah, yeah, it's tough because in the same vein as, traveling can cause some of these problems in and of itself, there's a concern that If you work in development, you're, you're doing some of that work yourself. And that, paradox of you want people to do better, you want incomes to [00:33:00] rise, you want health to do better, and education to increase.
Carlton: But when you do most of those things, you're also westernizing a place in that process. And even if you avoid doing that, somehow you're still altering the culture fundamentally and the social structure. And so there's sort of this, paradox of killing what you love and what draws you to a place in the first place.
Carlton: And so I think that's something that a lot of people in that program and in that field think about and worry about is making sure that they're at least thinking about and trying to find The balance between these, trying to find ways to help people without imposing.
Christi: have you been accused of exploitation? With Lost Canyon Imports?
Carlton: I have had people come up to me and that's sort of the first question indirectly that I get asked.
Christi: How do they usually ask it?
Carlton: So one of the ways that people ask is, so does 100 percent of the money go to the artisans? And [00:34:00] I think that's just a way of expressing, hey, are you exploiting people? Because there's, especially here in the U. S., I think we have a sense that interactions between the U. S. and the developed world and developing countries are purely exploitative.
Carlton: And there's a lot of narratives around like sweatshops and things like that and a notion that people come to these things with. And I think that's sort of what's being expressed in that.
Christi: And what's the answer?
Carlton: I mean, the answer is no, I can't, you can't have 100 percent even if I was making no money off it whatsoever. There's still things like shipping, credit card fees, import taxes paying for the website, a million other things on top of that. And then I'm trying to make it a business, so I'm, getting a cut on top of this as well.
Carlton: So. The artisan is making more money usually than they would make retail in their home country. the idea behind the business and how it works is that in these countries they're getting overrun now with a lot of [00:35:00] imported goods. And a lot of the things that they make are very expensive relative to the stuff that they get in from China.
Carlton: So they, they can't afford to sell to the local populations as much. But to keep the craft alive, people in the U. S. are willing to pay a lot more for these things. For the quality, for the beauty of these products and the culture that's behind them. And so, you can still make a lot more as an artisan if you can get things into the U. S. So the idea is to give them access to the U. S. market, to bring them up here to market their crafts to communicate the traditions and the beauty behind these things and give them a steady source of income while the place that they're from gets richer and people come back around to realizing the beauty and the importance of the culture behind it for themselves.
Carlton: Because so often, and we've done this in the West, We go through a phase where we're obsessed with novelty and with new things and efficiency. And then after you find yourself [00:36:00] in a city with little connection to your roots and your past, you start trying to define who you are and what separates you from, you know, another place and other people.
Carlton: And that's when we start looking back to our roots and start looking back to our traditions. so often in countries that have developed. It's too late at that point and you've lost the craft and you've lost the artisans.
Christi: Explain for listeners some of the types of Crafts Lost Canyon Imports. sells
Carlton: yeah, for sure. So there's a bunch of different stuff. One of the ones that I really love is these wooden masks from Sibundoy Valley in the Andes Mountains in southern Colombia. And there's this amazing guy, Marcelino Chesoy, who carves these out of wood. And it's pretty much entirely using hand tools.
Carlton: And he'll spend four hours on a single mask very carefully chiseling out the face from the wood. And once, once he finishes making the mask, [00:37:00] it's handed over to other artisans either in the woodshop or the same village and they'll bead the mask. So they'll go and put a little line of glue and they'll take these very small beads and string them all onto a needle and then pop, pop, pop.
Carlton: Put all the beads in a line in really intricate color and pattern combinations. You guys should go, go either to Google or the website Lost Canyon Imports, and just take a look at the pictures, because it's quite visual and it's it's quite a thing to see.
Christi: you also, you have silver filigree earrings.
Carlton: those were actually the first ones I brought in in larger quantity. Just because it's much easier to bring in a small package of silver than a whole bag full of masks. But there's a, there's a truly amazing old city. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Almost all the houses are two, three hundred years old there.
Carlton: And it's right on the Magdalena River in Colombia. So very hot, very humid, monkeys running around. People coming up along [00:38:00] the river in their canoes with their produce. And in this village, they've been making jewelry for a couple of hundred years now. This used to be the major stopping point on gold leaving that part of the continent, on its way back to Spain.
Carlton: And so, with all this access to gold and silver, they developed a tradition of making things with it. And even when When Columbia became a republic and the rivers changed its course and the town really went through this huge decline became quite literally a backwater they kept the tradition up.
Carlton: And now people are starting to rediscover the place and rediscover the craft. And it's really cool because they've been quietly working away there this whole time.
Christi: speaking of declines, I wanted to ask you about your personal Nadir, you kind of went through a hard time before you were able to get back up on your feet and now here you are a successful entrepreneur in the import business. [00:39:00] What happened there?
Carlton: Working on the successful part. It's still growing. I mean, there's, I feel like there's been a couple of climb back up periods. The most recent I finished my graduate work in India. I was doing work with the Wildlife Trust of India out there in the jungle. after traveling around Asia for a little bit after that, I came back to the U. S. And Was just starting to get my feet under me, like I had just found a place to rent had started, you know, doing retail work again to get some income, so I can afford to pay rent and stuff. I was living in Maryland and then working in downtown D. C. at REI. And this had been going on for like a month or two before COVID hit.
Carlton: So I, I had really like just finally found my own place and was getting things a little bit sorted. And working on the job hunt, you know, for a career when bam, here comes, everything's changing. I've never really been one to sit things out. If something's happening, I want to be there and I want to be trying to fix it.
Carlton: So it was never really a question [00:40:00] of just hunkering down for me. It was more of, how do I get involved and how do I make things better? it felt like it took a shockingly long time for people to start hiring for hospital roles, but when they did I was able to get my foot in the door.
Carlton: Literally just applied to be sort of a helping hand in setting up a hospital, and that first day I, I just was lucky. The guy who was in charge of logistics said, okay, who here knows how to use Excel? I put my hand up, and he said, come with me. And that's how it all started. So I, I ended up Opening two COVID hospitals and then working in a third.
Carlton: These were all field hospitals, well, the last one was normal hospital. The other two had to pretty much be set up from scratch. that was sort of wild ride. Was not always treated the best in those roles. And ended up kind of burned out at the end of that.
Carlton: And really just decided I was tired of being treated like that and it was worth the risk to sort of venture out and try something on my own and see, see how that would go.
Christi: you just started [00:41:00] traveling or, I mean, once, well, the borders, everything was closed. Yeah.
Carlton: no, no, I, I just, I buckled down and started working on this. So after, after finishing up with the hospitals, I decided to give it a try starting my own business. I'd had this idea a while ago but not put the pieces together so it came to me pretty early on, you know, with all the travel and enjoying that aspect of culture and being curious and I would sort of just invite myself into workshops.
Carlton: I'd show up and be like, hey, I think what you're doing is really cool. Can you tell me about it? And most of the time people are really excited that you're excited. And invite you in and show you what they do and how it works and what it means to them. that had sort of been a part of travel for me for a long time. in the process of that I'd seen a lot of this stuff disappearing. Seen how it was getting lost and forgotten. And it was hard for them to make a living. And that combined with other things meant that they, there was no one for them [00:42:00] to train. People didn't want to go into this stuff. And so for a long time I thought it would be really useful if there was a way to bring those things up to the states so that they could get more money for it and get a regular source of income and be able to keep doing what they love doing.
Carlton: But it always seemed like it would be a very tricky thing to set up. Logistics and getting customers and getting all of that sorted would be a huge lift. But at the same time, Everyone had been saying that I should really get on YouTube and start filming some of the stuff that I'd been doing, and I finally put two and two together and was like, you know what, there's a couple people out here who are making interesting sort of off the beaten track videos.
Carlton: And it looks to me like their quality doesn't have to be that high for them to be successful at that. And if I can marry these two things up, that could be a good way of making this actually work.
Christi: We'll definitely put your YouTube channel in the show notes along with your Instagram. Yeah, you basically used [00:43:00] lockdown, not only were you working at the field hospitals, you're learning logistics, which is, seems to me would be,
Carlton: Definitely a helpful skill to
Christi: yeah, for an import company. And then You're also creating this whole business plan, right?
Christi: And you still have friends in Columbia. You decided Columbia is the, that's where you're going, right? That's what you're going to do.
Carlton: I interviewed a few people to see what was most interesting to them. And South America was number one and India was number two. So, I think I know what's going to be next on the list. But, it made sense. Columbia had a lot of background. I already knew a fair bit about the crafts. And you know, would be insane to start with more than one country.
Christi: How long did it take you to really get it up and going until you had material in hand? Did you go back down there when you could? Or did you do all this by email and WhatsApp?
Christi: Yeah.
Carlton: to do it remotely. I went down and I [00:44:00] did sort of a two month exploration trip, and at the same time I was still doing research. I was trying to figure out what was going on. I was talking to local people for their advice. I was lucky enough to get access to a database of Native artisans.
Carlton: And a lot of it just ended up being sort of cold calling. I would say, hey, this is who I am. This is my idea and what I'm about and what I'm trying to do. Would you be interested in having me over at your workshop and talking about this? And that got a lot of doors open for me. I was able to, go and meet people.
Carlton: And film them which was also a great way to get to know them. Just sort of sit with them while they worked for a whole day. Sometimes a couple of days. And just talk to them about their culture and the craft and what it meant to them.
Christi: How did you come up with the name Lost Canyon?
Carlton: I feel like I'm never great at naming things. And it was really, what it came down to was, I need to print off some business cards so I have something to hand people in Columbia. And I couldn't come up [00:45:00] with a better name. It was a name that wasn't taken by someone else, which when you've got a couple billion people on the planet is a fairly rare thing.
Carlton: And the name itself, I wanted to communicate a bit of what the company was doing, a little bit of mystery, and I didn't want it to be culture specific, so I didn't want to use a Spanish word, or like a Hindi word or something. I wanted it to be universal for hopefully when I expand.
Christi: who are your customers here?
Carlton: I'm still dialing in exactly who the customers are. It's, the vast majority tend to be women. And it's usually people who are middle aged or a little bit older really have an eye for this stuff.
Carlton: I think money is part of it they're able to afford some of this stuff.
Carlton: Because while some of it's pretty cheap, like some of the decorated pens and things I have and some of the earrings are in the 30 range some of it's more expensive. But there is a subset of, like, younger men who are really fascinated and are some of the most excited about this stuff. I'm still trying to [00:46:00] understand exactly who that customer is and what they see in it, because I came at it from the opposite side. I was like, here's a problem, here's a way I think I can solve it, and I'm still figuring out that side of things.
Christi: What makes you so mad you want to explode? Mm
Carlton: So mad I want to explode. I think in general I, I, I tend to get sad more. Yeah, I'm thinking about it and I think it's more just being really down about certain things, which is a very trite way of putting it, I guess. But like, there's certain things that I feel like we just don't talk about or gloss over. Cause it's not really in our awareness, and that really gets to me sometimes.
Carlton: There's some genocides that are actively going on right now. And just terrible things in the world, and that, that gets to me.
Christi: so your business is one, one step out of that sadness, one thing that you feel you can do.
Carlton: yeah, I, I think I've always felt like, [00:47:00] Helping or being useful is the best thing that I can do. And it's one of those things that makes me feel good. All the other stuff can feel good as well, you know. But I've never been attracted to, to fame or really to money in the way that some other people are.
Carlton: It always feels better to be useful to me.
Christi: are you going to bring some of these artisans to the U. S.? Is that part of the,
Christi: your look forward?
Carlton: I mean, that would be amazing. I would love to bring them up here. I would love one day to maybe have an annual festival and bring a bunch of them up and demonstrate what they do and show off their culture and everything. I think that would be incredible. Very long ways from that point, but I've actually had artisans bring this up to me just off the cuff and be like, Hey, I think it would be really neat to come up to the States and demonstrate for people how we make these things and what we're about.
Christi: There you go, you put that in your bucket list.
Carlton: Now that, that would [00:48:00] be a dream. That would be awesome.
Christi: do you recommend people go to Columbia as tourists?
Carlton: I do. I think it has a bad reputation, but I think reputations take some time to catch up with reality. Columbia right now is much safer than say, Mexico. Does it have problems? It does. It absolutely has problems. if you're going to go, do some research ahead of time.
Carlton: There are some places that are safer than others. There are some places that I just don't go inside the country. But those are not going to be the places that are recommended by like Lonely Planet. So, that might be a good starting point for you. Columbia is a gorgeous country. Wonderful people.
Carlton: Incredibly varied landscapes and another thing I really like about it is that it has its own indigenous tourism culture. So there are Colombians that like to go and see their own country, and it doesn't feel like it's overrun with foreigners. It feels like it's part of the day to day life in a way that I think is very very satisfying and probably more culturally sustainable.
Christi: That's great. And what about for you? Where [00:49:00] next?
Carlton: It's probably going to be Columbia for a minute. While I'm getting this off the ground, while I'm sorting out, right now I'm working on scaling up imports so that I'm doing it officially as opposed to the unofficial importation, which is like a smaller amount of goods. So I'm trying to scale up And it's, it's a lift, because some of these places don't even have proper addresses.
Carlton: Some of these artisans, it's like 25 miles down this road on the west side, you know. So, being to sort all, all of that out and get it all done. And then also just, you know, want to and need to go down and see them from time to time. Because it's, not purely a business relationship for either of us.
Carlton: It's, it's more important than that.
Christi: That's great. how can people contact you?
Carlton: Yeah you can just email me if you want to, or you can you got plenty of contact information on the website lostcanyonimports. com. My email is lostcanyonimports at gmail. com. And then go check out, I've got a few of the videos [00:50:00] up. I'm working on the mask one actually right now. YouTube channel's got the same name.
Carlton: And I've also got Instagram, lostcanyonimports.
Christi: Do you think you'll ever open a store? IRL?
Carlton: I've thought about that. I don't, I think that would be down the road. It is really nice. I love getting the physical things in front of people. Because there's only so much you can see or communicate when it's on the website. I go to a lot of craft fairs and stuff and I show people in person.
Carlton: And I enjoy that as well, being able to talk about it and meet people is a lot of fun. But I think opening a storefront right now would tie me down in a way that would just kill the business. Because I couldn't go down whenever I need to. And couldn't expand either because it's, it's very intensive when I'm down there.
Carlton: There was one of my last trips I was down for about two weeks and I went to eight
Carlton: different cities. So there was, there was a lot of meal skipping in that
Christi: yikes, but at least you've got more than 1. 50 for your, for
Christi: your three meals a
Carlton: Yes, [00:51:00] When I do have a meal I can spend a little more than a dollar fifty on it
Christi: That's great. Well, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on here. I really appreciate it.
Carlton: Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's been great.
Carlton: