“The Call of the Mild” – A New Short Film Starring Minnesota’s Mikah Meyer Reveals Mentorship’s Universal Allure 

It’s only been running for a quarter-hour, but the movie already nears its climax. Within the frame, there is a sound, and a heartbeat after its birth, a second sound, an ersatz version of the first is heard. It soon becomes obvious that the first sound is a song, and the second sound is its echo, as if the song has begun singing a song of its own. 

They’re the last sounds you’d match with the scenery gracing the screen: a tea-colored, green-garnished river is flanked by sallow cliff faces. The place is called Desolation Canyon, and it lives up to its name.

The song’s song belongs to the rocky ridges, naturally, but the original tune, “A Wade in the Water,” is generated by Mikah Meyer. As impressive as his scale-scratching range is, it might be the least impressive aspect of the man. Mikah Meyer describes himself as “a Minneapolis-based, professional adventurer since 2016, when I set off on a world record, three-year journey becoming the first person to visit all of America’s four hundred plus National Park Service sites in one continuous journey.”

Even more impressively, Meyer became the first openly gay man featured in an outdoors recreation campaign, that of REI. In 2020, in furtherance of his mission to make the outdoors more inclusive, Meyer created the Outside Safe Space Program, which enables the easily identification of adventuring queer people, along with their friends and allies, by the wearing branded rainbow-treed pins, stickers, and patches, along with T-shirts and tank tops. 

Mikah Meyer’s current endeavor is Canyon Chorus, a sixteen-minute movie that, like song notes bouncing and re-bouncing off cliff walls, defies easy identification. The film veers from documentary to confessional to nonfiction buddy film like a rubber raft crossing rapids. 

Above all, it represents…no, it embodies a literal voice that has rarely been heard in the literal wilderness—a queer voice. “Before 2020, almost every company in the outdoors industry was actively against including LGBTQ+ people or topics in their marketing,” Meyer recounts. “Aside from REI and Eddie Bauer, every brand I approached and encouraged to include LGBTQ+ people, told me some version of, ‘It’s too politically risky. It would offend too many of our customers.’”

But distressing change arrived like a river’s flow, winding and undeniable. Notes Meyer, “After George Floyd was murdered and the United States’ culture became more aware of its deficiencies in inclusion for all forms of diversity, suddenly all those brands, outdoor publications, and the culture wanted to feature LGBTQ+ stories.”

What followed was something most politely described as a sloppy overcorrection. Observes Meyer:  “In the rush to check the LGBTQ+ box, many of the stories about me had headlines that were so over the top proof of LGBTQ+ inclusion that the article might as well have read, ‘Gay Guy Does Gay Hike For Gay People to Be More Gay.’”

The end result was a frustrating redundancy. “Nobody who wasn’t already an LGBTQ+ ally would read that article,” Meyer says. “And as an LGBTQ+ advocate, my job is to reach people who can have their hearts and minds changed to accepting LGBTQ+ people.”

In Meyer’s case, that acceptance began with a hard-earned self-acceptance nurtured by Meyer’s college choir class professor, Larry Edwards.  “I’ve always wanted to tell that part of my story, a story that at its core has nothing to do with being gay, but just happens to be about someone who is gay,” Meyer declares. “In this case, that relatable topic is the story of someone stepping in as my father figure when my own biological father passed away. That’s something anyone could relate to, regardless of their sexual orientation.”

Canyon Chorus, like all of Meyer’s previous efforts, is meant to build a bridge that can be crossed by potential straight allies. “Those who watch the film will see themselves and their own journeys in the documentary–whether those are LGBTQ+ journeys or just anyone who’s ever felt ‘not enough’ or ‘not perfect enough’ for their culture,” Meyer nuances.

The film’s universal appeal was put to the test at its headwaters. “Canyon Chorus premiered at the 5Point Adventure Film Festival in Carbondale, Colorado, on April 26, 2024, to a mountain town audience clad in flannel and drinking [IndianPale Ales],” Meyer remembers. “Exactly the type of straight audience I wanted to reach with the film.” 

And reach them Canyon Chorus did. “The 800-person theater gave us a 35-second standing ovation after the film played, and the festival director said in his five years of working there, he’d never seen the audience do that,” Meyer says. “The reception thus far has been amazing.”

Like a musical note bouncing around the walls of a canyon, the adventurer’s journey into film is just another unit of his lifelong mission of making the world, inside and out, a more inclusive place…and like each note bouncing around the walls of a canyon, it’s taken on a life of its own.  Concludes Mikah Meyer: “My number one goal with this film is that anyone watching it will finish it and say to their children, their godchildren, their nieces, their nephews, et cetera, ‘I will love you whether you’re straight or gay or purple’…and make it clear that their love for those in their care is not conditional on them being straight. So the more people who see this film and share it, the closer we’ll get to that goal.”