The story of Natty “Lipstick” Hagood, the 29-year-old ski instructor at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming who impaled his lip on a tree branch earlier this month, has circulated through American mainstream media outlets and internationally by some located in Canada, Spain and New Zealand.

But Hagood doesn’t know what to make out of his recent fame and said this is a perfect example of what’s wrong with America.

“Are people grabbed by my positive attitude or the graphic nature of it?” Hagood said. “I mean, Jeff Sessions is talking to the Russians and Trump is making these completely false, outlandish claims about Obama wiretapping his house. That stuff is so much more important than a stick through my face.”

While it’s true stories about Trump and Sessions surely travel internationally, if Hagood had it his way, the stick story wouldn’t be as nearly important as people make it out to be.

He can’t complain about the unreal outpouring of support to his GoFundMe account, which surpassed the $1,500 goal by more than $600. However, Hagood would have much preferred that an earlier online crowdsourcing campaign of his to raise $1,000 to make pink “pussy hats” would be the story to go viral.

“My mom, stepdad and a family friend were the only people who donated to that campaign,” Hagood said. “I may have gone too much into the weeds before explaining what I was doing, but I don’t care, and for me standing up for people is so much more important.

When the pink hat campaign started in January, Hagood had also orchestrated a town hall meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, and invited U.S. congressional representatives for those constituents to come listen to the concerns of the people.

On the heels of the Women’s March on Washington following Trump’s inauguration, Hagood and about 500 local citizens felt, and still feel, it is crucial to stick up for oppressed individuals such as minority groups, women, immigrants or LGBT people.

“One of the senators, John Barrasso, said he couldn’t make it because he wasn’t going to be in the area,” Hagood said. “Low and behold he was 12 miles away hosting a $1,500-per-plate fundraiser.”

Apparently, Hagood reached out to television host Rachel Maddow with MSNBC, CNN and other unnamed major outlets, but nobody wanted to hear or run the story.

Now that his $1,250 insurance deductible is no longer an issue, Hagood is debating what to do with the leftover cash.

“I’ve thought about donating to ACLU, Planned Parenthood or one of the causes I believe in,” Hagood said. “I think I’ll end up saving it to kick off this environmental outdoor educational program I want to start in Colorado so that kids and the youth can get outside and realize how important the environment and nature is.”

Hagood grew up loving and experiencing the outdoors and said it connected him to this planet and made him a better human being. He’s spent his entire young adult life educating children for someone else, so now he wants to do it himself.

He also wonders when the tree jokes will stop sticking around.

“They’re hilarious and I honestly don’t know how long this will last but I’m kind of over it,” Hagood said. “I’m just a decent guy who cares with a lot of energy and feeds off connections with other people. This whole media frenzy is getting old.”

What Americans should be reading about, according to Hagood, is how many Americans will lose access to health care if congressional Republicans successfully repeal or somewhat modify the Affordable Care Act. Or that China isn’t stealing American jobs. Rather, American citizens are driving manufacturing jobs out of the country because of their purchasing tendencies.

Or the simple fact that so many people will read a news story about a ski instructor with a gruesome flesh wound, but won’t spend the time educating themselves on a story about taxes or important bills passing through the legislature.

So, if Hagood can use his recent fame as a platform for anything, it’s that Americans should stop caring about celebrities or bizarre stories and start educating themselves about how and who is running the country.

“Why does everybody care more about this stick in my face more than who I am as a person?” Hagood said. “Or more about all these Americans struggling around us?”

Those familiar with the skiing pastime of Gaffney’s Numerical Assessment of Radness, or the game of G.N.A.R, know that calling your mom before taking the next line naked and stopping mid-run for a bathroom break is a surefire way to win the game.

But when 29-year-old Natty Hagood, a ski instructor for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, impaled his face on a branch while trying to jump between two trees, he called it a game-breaker.

“When I laugh, I have to hold the left side of my face down at this weird angle that makes me look like this crotchety old man,” he said. “And I drool more than I used to.”

Hagood said the image of the stick stuck through his lip is still one of the most gnarly things he’s ever seen.

His 15 minutes of fame didn’t start at the impalement, however, as his Internet notoriety started a week prior when video surfaced of him breaking up a mid-mountain brawl.

A verbal altercation at the terrain park escalated into a fight at the bottom of the mountain near the Casper lift line. Hagood saw a disorderly snowboarder punching a fellow skier, who called out for ski patrol, before jumping between the two.

“Being the individual that I am, be it my sense of right or wrong, my size or my huge holistic background, I wasn’t afraid to step in put the kibosh on the violence,” said Hagood, who is originally from Spokane, Washington, but has lived and worked at Jackson Hole the past three years now. “I’m the guy in the Jackson Hole jacket and pink hat saying, ‘Violence is not the answer, man.’”

On the day of his injury, he was boarding with his roommate, Pete, and another woman from out of town who they were showing around the mountain.

“I was coming down Thunder and it was our first run of the day,” he said. “I had made the first five turns and was coming back to lift line when I saw a gap between two trees. With my experience, you can bash between trees and it’s not that big of a deal. But this time I guess I didn’t get away with it.”

Hagood collided through the trees, which knocked him off balance, and he tumbled through the snow.

“I thought maybe my chinstrap got pushed up into my face, so I tried to brush it off and that’s when I felt the stick,” he said. “So, I shook left to right and saw the stick moving in my peripherals. I reached out and grabbed it and wiggled it before realizing it was pretty far in there.”

That was when Hagood had his first aha-moment. He said, “Holy crap, I just got impaled. And then I yelled over to Pete, ‘Hey look I got a new piercing.’”

Apparently, the incident occurred so quickly that Hagood experienced zero pain from the impalement, which left an 18-inch long timber branch gouged through one side of his lip and sticking out the other.

Ski patrol said that he needed to brace it before riding down.

“It was initially about a foot and half long,” Hagood said. “But I braced it against my cheek and snapped it down to about 6 inches. Ski patrol was all like, ‘You’re crazy, man.’”

Ski patrol wrapped it, stabilized it by securing the stick to his face and loaded him up into the sled before transporting him to the bottom of the mountain.

The true pain set in once he got to the hospital, but it wasn’t from the tree branch sticking out of his face.

“The most painful part of the experience was the numbing shots from the hospital,” he said. “Then they cut the top-left section of my lip near the exit-wound, trimmed the back half and pulled it through.”

After a quick rinsing, Hagood — now referred to by his students and the local community as “Lipstick” or “Sticky” — left the hospital not only with 15 stitches in his face, but also with a hospital bill close to $1,500.

To help with the funds he started a GoFundMe page, which is accessible by visiting www.gofundme.com/please-help-me-pay-for-my-new-lip. As of Saturday evening, the page has raised over $1,100.

Reduced to drinking beer from a straw, Hagood said the experience has left him with a bit of “PTS-Tree,” but the outpouring of support, including one donor giving $100 on the condition that “Lipstick” gets a new haircut, has been unreal.

He’s thankful for the kindness and generosity from ski instructors across the country and from complete strangers, but also said the feedback hasn’t all been positive.

“I don’t know where they’re from or what their ideologies are, but some people have said that’s the problem with America is that people need to suck it up and pay for their own stuff,” Hagood said. “Some people have been vocal about what I’m doing is distasteful or irresponsible and I’m not taking credit for my own actions.”

He continued, “It’s made me have some interesting thoughts, but I certainly don’t feel bad asking people in the community to pitch in $10 so that I don’t have this crippling expense.”

FORT HALL — People aren’t the only Southeast Idaho residents affected by recent extreme weather conditions.

Wintering elk that migrate onto the Fort Hall Reservation in search of ranges with forage and refuge from frigid temperatures have been pushed to even lower elevations because of extreme winter weather.

“We’ve been seeing the elk come down here for numerous years,” said Chad Colter, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes Fish and Wildlife director.

“They’re wintering on two different ranges here with the majority of them east of Fort Hall and a smaller group that comes down on the west side over near Arbon Valley.”

Colter said that the smaller group will start making its way to Interstate 86, and the larger group will move toward Interstate 15.

Weighing more than 800 pounds and oftentimes even more, these animals pose large risks to motorists, especially when road conditions are poor.

To warn motorists about the potential for wildlife on the interstates, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes have requested the Idaho Department of Transportation utilize several LED message boards.

“We’ve been preparing for this for several years,” Colter said. “We’ve seen this occurring more and more, and the more severe the winter it seems like the more animals are pushed down lower.”

Colter added that Southeast Idaho, including Pocatello, Fort Hall and Blackfoot, lies right in the middle of the elk’s winter range.

“If we weren’t here, they would be,” he said. “Municipalities have displaced them a bit, but they’re still here and they know nothing more than to move to lower ground when the weather gets bad. They’re just following their natural patterns.”

Colter and tribal officials have drafted a big game winter management plan in anticipation that these events will continue to occur and expect some years to have bigger herds than others.

Currently, the smaller herd in the western area consists of about 200 or 300 elk, and the larger group is about 400 or 500 strong.

“We have to implement some measures to protect the animals as well as the public,” Colter said. “We don’t want to see any motorist-and-animal accidents, but we also don’t want to make this into a big feeding program.”

A supplemental feeding program has been initiated along with road closures and additional signage cautioning motorists of wildlife presence on rural reservation roads.

Colter said that the elk aren’t used to a bale of hay getting put out so it takes some time for the animals to adjust.

“They are starting to eat some of it as well as some high-density pellets,” he said. “We are targeting their trails and intercepting them with feed to keep them from getting too low and causing havoc on the interstates.”

These proactive measures are to ensure a viable and sustainable elk population survives for future generations.

According to a Shoshone-Bannock Tribes press release, “The tribes are aware that these elk herds provide great viewing opportunities but during these critical winter months, these animals are at their most vulnerable.”

The tribes are asking the public to refrain from any travel through the elk’s winter grounds to avoid triggering a mass migration across a public roadway.

And motorists are advised to slow down and be cautious because the roads are slick and there may be wildlife species present on or along the interstates and rural reservation roads.

“We want to keep the animals safe and the public safe, which means lots of patrolling,” Colter said. “We have guys out there every day, every evening and all the time really just making sure these animals don’t get over to the interstate.”

FORT HALL — People aren’t the only Southeast Idaho residents affected by recent extreme weather conditions.

Wintering elk that migrate onto the Fort Hall Reservation in search of ranges with forage and refuge from frigid temperatures have been pushed to even lower elevations because of extreme winter weather.

“We’ve been seeing the elk come down here for numerous years,” said Chad Colter, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes Fish and Wildlife director.

“They’re wintering on two different ranges here with the majority of them east of Fort Hall and a smaller group that comes down on the west side over near Arbon Valley.”

Colter said that the smaller group will start making its way to Interstate 86, and the larger group will move toward Interstate 15.

Weighing more than 800 pounds and oftentimes even more, these animals pose large risks to motorists, especially when road conditions are poor.

To warn motorists about the potential for wildlife on the interstates, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes have requested the Idaho Department of Transportation utilize several LED message boards.

“We’ve been preparing for this for several years,” Colter said. “We’ve seen this occurring more and more, and the more severe the winter it seems like the more animals are pushed down lower.”

Colter added that Southeast Idaho, including Pocatello, Fort Hall and Blackfoot, lies right in the middle of the elk’s winter range.

“If we weren’t here, they would be,” he said. “Municipalities have displaced them a bit, but they’re still here and they know nothing more than to move to lower ground when the weather gets bad. They’re just following their natural patterns.”

Colter and tribal officials have drafted a big game winter management plan in anticipation that these events will continue to occur and expect some years to have bigger herds than others.

Currently, the smaller herd in the western area consists of about 200 or 300 elk, and the larger group is about 400 or 500 strong.

“We have to implement some measures to protect the animals as well as the public,” Colter said. “We don’t want to see any motorist-and-animal accidents, but we also don’t want to make this into a big feeding program.”

A supplemental feeding program has been initiated along with road closures and additional signage cautioning motorists of wildlife presence on rural reservation roads.

Colter said that the elk aren’t used to a bale of hay getting put out so it takes some time for the animals to adjust.

“They are starting to eat some of it as well as some high-density pellets,” he said. “We are targeting their trails and intercepting them with feed to keep them from getting too low and causing havoc on the interstates.”

These proactive measures are to ensure a viable and sustainable elk population survives for future generations.

According to a Shoshone-Bannock Tribes press release, “The tribes are aware that these elk herds provide great viewing opportunities but during these critical winter months, these animals are at their most vulnerable.”

The tribes are asking the public to refrain from any travel through the elk’s winter grounds to avoid triggering a mass migration across a public roadway.

And motorists are advised to slow down and be cautious because the roads are slick and there may be wildlife species present on or along the interstates and rural reservation roads.

“We want to keep the animals safe and the public safe, which means lots of patrolling,” Colter said. “We have guys out there every day, every evening and all the time really just making sure these animals don’t get over to the interstate.”

FORT HALL — People aren’t the only Southeast Idaho residents affected by recent extreme weather conditions.

Wintering elk that migrate onto the Fort Hall Reservation in search of ranges with forage and refuge from frigid temperatures have been pushed to even lower elevations because of extreme winter weather.

This full article is available on our website for subscribers only.

Dry, brown slopes throughout Eastern Idaho are leaving many “pole-planters” and “knuckle-draggers” worried about the winter conditions.

Though it was set to open Nov. 18, Grand Targhee Resort made the tough call last week to delay opening day until the snow arrives. Pebble Creek Ski Area, however, is still on track to open mid- to late December.

“We usually don’t open as early as Targhee,” said Mary Reichman, Pebble Creek’s general manager. “Our standard opening is mid-December and about a quarter of the time we’re open earlier and about a quarter of the time we’re open later.”

Reichman added that Pebble will begin making snow as early as Monday of next week, and she’s hopeful the cold weather sticks around.

A persistent ridge of high-pressure kept things warmer than normal across most of Eastern Idaho, which accounts for the warm weather at the beginning of November, according to Dawn Harmon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“We are starting to see signs that has changed quite a bit,” Harmon said. “Temperatures were definitely closer to normal this week than we had earlier.”

As far as a three-month winter forecast goes, Harmon said it’s tough to fully predict, but her estimations are that Idaho can expect temperatures being slightly higher than normal and precipitation being slightly above normal.

“At some point in the time, the snow will arrive,” Harmon said. “It’s just difficult to tell exactly when or how much for the season.”

Though several resorts — including Targhee, Pebble and Pomerelle — saw a significant amount of snowfall in early October, unseasonably warm conditions have erased a decent amount of accumulation since.

“We got some good snow in October that put moisture into the soil, which we desperately need so that things can freeze up,” said Gretchen Anderson, Pomerelle’s spokeswoman. “We’re looking at some storms coming in, but it all comes down to Mother Nature or Old Man Winter.”

The National Weather Service issued a special weather alert calling for snow Sunday night through Monday and again Wednesday night through Thursday.

“Over the next week or so, we are looking at a fairly active weather pattern with active systems coming through East Idaho approximately every other day,” Harmon said. “It’s difficult to say how much snow we’ll see on the valley floors, but areas like Pebble and Grand Teton could stand to see a couple of inches or more through the week.”

Stefan Naylor, an avid snowboarder at Pebble and an employee at Barrie’s Ski and Sports, said the lack of snow has left him slightly edgy.

“I know it has us a little bit nervous.” Naylor said. “We have over $3 million worth of merchandise that needs to get sold, and it doesn’t get sold if it doesn’t snow.”

This problem isn’t specific to Idaho or Wyoming. Areas all across the Rocky Mountains and Intermountain West are grappling with warmer conditions.

The Colorado snowpack is off to its worst start in more than 30 years, said Brian Domonkos, who supervises the U.S. Department of Agriculture snow survey in the state.

At least five Colorado ski resorts have postponed their opening day, and the men’s World Cup downhill, super-G and giant slalom races at Beaver Creek in two weeks have been canceled because of unseasonably warm weather.

As skiers and boarders alike continue to pray for snow, Reichman remains optimistic and said she knows that winter will be here before we know it.

“It’s coming,” Reichman said. “And we’re looking forward to another great winter.”