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Speaker 1: This thing that was so rare and therefore valuable in

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Speaker 1: Europe is here in abundance, and I want to claim

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Speaker 1: and tame the wilderness as the advance of using that

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Speaker 1: loaded terminology civilization. That's how that's how we civilized Europe,

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Speaker 1: and that's what we're going to do here.

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Speaker 2: Who knew that American wilderness was such a contested, loaded

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Speaker 2: and difficult term to define? In this second episode, I'm

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Speaker 2: still in search of understanding American ideals on wilderness and

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Speaker 2: if in fact America's handling of wild lands is globally unique.

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Speaker 2: But really, I'm on a personal journey to understand the

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Speaker 2: genesis of my own ideas on wilderness. I thought they

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Speaker 2: were my own, self generated, but as I learn about

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Speaker 2: America's peculiar history, I'm seeing more and more that I'm

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Speaker 2: a product of a culture. I've got the same crew

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Speaker 2: plus one new guy on this episode. We've got authors

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Speaker 2: doctor Sarah Dant, doctor Dan Flores, and Hal Herring, also

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Speaker 2: author and Thorreau critic Stephen Ranella. But new to the

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Speaker 2: crew is documentary filmmaker, Native Texan and mustang wrangler Ben Masters.

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Speaker 2: The Bear Greece Academy of Backwoodsmanship Philosophy and Culture is

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Speaker 2: back in session. I really doubt that you're gonna want

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Speaker 2: to miss this one.

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Speaker 3: The idea that American's energy was capable of literally taking

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Speaker 3: the last barrel of ol out of the last piece

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Speaker 3: of ground, well that was evident. This movement began to say,

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Speaker 3: what if we didn't do that to every place?

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Speaker 2: My name is Clay Knukem, and this is the Bear

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Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search

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Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the

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Speaker 2: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the

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Speaker 2: land presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting

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Speaker 2: and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as

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Speaker 2: the places we explore.

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Speaker 1: I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of

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Speaker 1: the Spring, For instance, thinking that I have here the

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Speaker 1: entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that

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Speaker 1: it is but an imperfect copy that I possess, and

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Speaker 1: have read that my ancestors have torn out many of

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Speaker 1: the finest leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in

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Speaker 1: many places. I should not like to think that some

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Speaker 1: demigod had come before me and picked out some of

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Speaker 1: the best of the stars. I wish to know an

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Speaker 1: entire heaven and an entire earth.

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Speaker 2: That was doctor Sarah Dant reading a quote from and

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Speaker 2: I hate to bring him up so early, Henry David Thereaux.

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Speaker 2: We're continuing on in our pursuit of defining what wilderness

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Speaker 2: is and what it means to America.

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Speaker 4: What is wilderness? And that's a loaded question. You know,

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Speaker 4: there's the capital W wilderness, and then I think there's

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Speaker 4: the the wilderness experience that a person can have, which

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Speaker 4: is different, you know, for everybody, but wilderness to me.

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Speaker 4: I think of my ideal wilderness, and that is the

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Speaker 4: headwaters of the Yellowstone River in a tributary called the Thoroughfare,

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Speaker 4: in a place that's called Hawkshrest. It's thirty miles from

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Speaker 4: the nearest trailhead. The only way to get there is

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Speaker 4: by foot or by horseback, and it's a place where

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Speaker 4: there's no dams, there's no really sign of human civilization

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Speaker 4: at all except for a handful of trail signs, and

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Speaker 4: it embodies everything that I think of as wilderness. And

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Speaker 4: that's where I get my wilderness experience, you know, very

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Speaker 4: far from humanity, as far from humanity as you can

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Speaker 4: get in the lower forty eight. And I feel that

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Speaker 4: whenever I go to places like the Bob Marshall or

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Speaker 4: the HeLa or the Teton Wilderness and the Thoroughfare and

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Speaker 4: the Wilderness of No Return in Idaho, these classic big

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Speaker 4: wilderness spots in the American West.

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Speaker 2: This has been masters He's very well traveled in America's

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Speaker 2: big Western wildernesses.

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Speaker 4: So I think that the idea of what is wilderness

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Speaker 4: and I've struggled with this what is that wilderness experience?

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Speaker 4: But and I think every person is going to get

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Speaker 4: that feeling in a different place. And for me, I

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Speaker 4: get that experience when I do a two week pack

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Speaker 4: trip into a deep wilderness. For other folks it could

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Speaker 4: be something as simple as going for a weekend camping

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Speaker 4: trip in a three thousand acre state park.

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Speaker 2: Defining wilderness in terms of geography and defining the wilderness

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Speaker 2: experience are very different things. We'll learn it gets even

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Speaker 2: harder the further we go back in American history. Here's

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Speaker 2: meat Eater Zone Stephen Ranella with some opening statements on

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Speaker 2: defining wilderness.

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Speaker 5: This is just how I use it, Okay.

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Speaker 6: The Lee Metcalf Wilderness Area in Montana, the frank Church

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Speaker 6: Wilderness Area in Idaho, the north slope of the Brooks

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Speaker 6: Range in Alaska, portions of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, portions of

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Speaker 6: the Mississippi Delta, some of the Sky Island mountain ranges

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Speaker 6: of New Mexico and Arizona, portions of the San Juans

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Speaker 6: in Colorado, the boundary waters of Minnesota. I could go

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Speaker 6: on our wilderness landscapes in my mind because relative to

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Speaker 6: everything else, they most closely resemble, relative to everything else,

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Speaker 6: what this landscape looked like upon European contact. So it's

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Speaker 6: the wildest stuff relative to everything else, it's the stuff

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Speaker 6: that most closely resembles what it did at the time

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Speaker 6: of European contact, considering my caveat that then it was inhabited, however,

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Speaker 6: sparsely by Native people. And now it's not, and it's

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Speaker 6: vulnerable because once you mess with it, it ceases to

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Speaker 6: be wilderness anymore, and it becomes some other thing. And

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Speaker 6: I worry about running out of itness.

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Speaker 2: And what it means to America is an important endeavor,

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Speaker 2: why you may ask, partly because of a little word

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Speaker 2: often used in economics, it's used in farming, it's used

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Speaker 2: in life, called scarcity. In our current times, wilderness is

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Speaker 2: one of the Earth's scarcest resources, and scarcity dictates value.

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Speaker 2: It's ironic, but scarcity is often a more powerful force

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Speaker 2: than overflowing bushel baskets of plenty. Here's doctor dant on

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Speaker 2: where some of our big wildernesses are.

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Speaker 1: The big ones are, of course up in Alaska. The

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Speaker 1: biggest one in the continental United States is in Death Valley,

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Speaker 1: so it's not like we're all going to go camp there.

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Speaker 1: And the second biggest one is the Frank Church River

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Speaker 1: of No Return in Idaho. So there are lots of

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Speaker 1: big wilderness places, but there are also a lot of

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Speaker 1: small wilderness places. And there are wilderness places in the

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Speaker 1: East as well as in the West. And that was

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Speaker 1: again something Frank Church really worked hard on because he said,

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Speaker 1: we should have these rare and valuable places, rare.

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Speaker 2: And valuable, rare and valuable, large and small in the

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Speaker 2: West and in the East. The largest wilderness in the

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Speaker 2: lower forty eight is in Death Valley in California, in Nevada,

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Speaker 2: and it spans over three point one million acres.

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Speaker 5: That's news to me.

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Speaker 2: In the last episode, doctor Dan Flores told us wilderness

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Speaker 2: is an idea and a reality. It's these two things,

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Speaker 2: the idea part being the abstract way we talk about

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Speaker 2: places where humans don't live in natural ecosystems dominate how

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Speaker 2: Herring told us that wilderness was a feeling the reality

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Speaker 2: of wilderness. The second part is one hundred and eleven

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Speaker 2: million acres designated as federal wilderness with the capitol W.

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Speaker 2: That's roughly five percent of American soil, which is governed

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Speaker 2: by the strictest land designation in America, only open to

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Speaker 2: human foot in equine traffic. You can't use anything with wheels.

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Speaker 2: You can't even use a hang glider. True story, it's

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Speaker 2: on the little signs, and you can't use anything with

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Speaker 2: a motor. But to understand modern wilderness, we've got to

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Speaker 2: understand the macro scale journey of mankind. For this series,

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Speaker 2: I've leaned heavily into a book written in nineteen sixty

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Speaker 2: seven by Roderick Nash called Wilderness in the American Mind.

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Speaker 2: I nerded out hard on this book and loved it.

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Speaker 2: Here's Doctor Flores with a critique on this past era

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Speaker 2: of American ideals on wilderness. Remember the Wilderness Act was

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Speaker 2: signed in the law in nineteen sixty four, so there

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Speaker 2: was a lot of activity around this stuff in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixties when this book was written.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, so, I mean, that's a fantastic book. It's also

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Speaker 7: fifty years old. I mean. One of the things that

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Speaker 7: we began to cope with about twenty five or thirty

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Speaker 7: years ago was an emerging critique of not just Nash's

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Speaker 7: story of wilderness, but a critique of what misperceptions lay

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Speaker 7: at the foundation of what wilderness was in the American

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Speaker 7: cultural story. Because the idea of wilderness in America, which

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Speaker 7: begins very early with people coming out of Europe, who

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Speaker 7: of course have lived in towns and villages and have

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Speaker 7: done so for a thousand years, and in a part

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Speaker 7: of the world in Western Europe where all the charismatic

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Speaker 7: animals have long since been wiped out. I mean, they're

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Speaker 7: hunting partridges and things. And of course ordinary people are

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Speaker 7: kept out of the kings and the nobleman's forests because

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Speaker 7: they preserve stags and deer hunting and so forth for

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Speaker 7: the wealthy. So being introduced to a continent that struck

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Speaker 7: them as being a wilderness continent, Virgin America was the

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Speaker 7: term that was used so often. You know, the name

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Speaker 7: given to Virginia for the Virgin Queen, and was also

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Speaker 7: carried on to the continent itself as a virgin place.

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Speaker 7: It was a misperception of what America was, because America

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Speaker 7: was actually an anciently occupied place. There had been people

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Speaker 7: here for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And

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Speaker 7: I mean, as one of the geographers, William Denovan, who

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Speaker 7: wrote a fantastic article in nineteen ninety one, put it.

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Speaker 7: He called it the Pristine Myth was his. One of

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Speaker 7: the things he said in that article was that it

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Speaker 7: took Europeans and their presence in America three centuries before

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Speaker 7: they had imposed the kind of landscape changes on the

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Speaker 7: continent that they found from native people when they arrived.

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Speaker 7: But for a couple of reasons, they just sort of

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Speaker 7: ignored that. One of the reasons, of course, was that

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Speaker 7: as soon as Europeans arrived, they're bringing these old World

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Speaker 7: diseases with them to a population of people who have

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Speaker 7: never been exposed to things like smallpox and influenza and

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Speaker 7: cholera and so forth and so on. And almost immediately

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Speaker 7: within the first fifty or seventy five years of European

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Speaker 7: arrival in North America, the native population goes from nearly

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Speaker 7: five million people in what is now the United States

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Speaker 7: and Canada down to about nine hundred thousand people, and

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Speaker 7: so suddenly the native population has shrunk by five hundred percent.

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Speaker 7: And it not only allowed for an ecological release of

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Speaker 7: wildlife all over America because there wasn't the same hunting

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Speaker 7: pressure that had been imposed on animals that there had

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Speaker 7: been for ten thousand years, but it also the relative

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Speaker 7: scarcity of native people in many parts of North America

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Speaker 7: sort of confused Europeans into thinking that they actually had

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Speaker 7: inherited a place that didn't have any prior human history

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Speaker 7: to it, and so it made them think from the

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Speaker 7: very beginning. It made us think from the very beginning

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Speaker 7: that we had snagged ourselves. You know, this original garden

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Speaker 7: of Eden.

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Speaker 5: Those are some deep waters.

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Speaker 2: And I think that perspective is very important to consider

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Speaker 2: when we think about wilderness and America. I've heard doctor

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Speaker 2: Taylor Keene, a member of the Cherokee and Omaha tribes,

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Speaker 2: say that upon first European contact with North America, there

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Speaker 2: was no wilderness, but rather a great Native American civilization.

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Speaker 2: And this is where this stuff in history gets contentious.

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Speaker 2: I think every side looks back and wishes it could

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Speaker 2: have been handled differently, but that's beyond the scope of

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Speaker 2: this conversation. However, it's useful in framing the foundational definitions

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Speaker 2: of wilderness because a fundamental tenet of our definition of

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Speaker 2: wilderness is that people aren't on the landscape altering it

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Speaker 2: in any way. That's kind of what wilderness is. And

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Speaker 2: doctor Flores is saying that you'd have to go back

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Speaker 2: so far in history to find this place humanless that

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Speaker 2: it's almost pointless to think about it.

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Speaker 5: I'll also say.

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Speaker 2: That since the release of the first podcast, a friend

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Speaker 2: of mine from the Chalktaw nation named Clay from Oklahoma,

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Speaker 2: he told me that they do have a traditional word

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Speaker 2: similar to the English word of wilderness. We had made

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Speaker 2: the statement that there were no words in the Native

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Speaker 2: American languages that were similar to the English word wilderness.

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Speaker 2: I stand corrected. Here is Clay saying the word in

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Speaker 2: his native chalk Taw language.

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Speaker 3: You would say these canni hiaka wilderness.

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Speaker 5: That is interesting.

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Speaker 2: He also said that the central stories of the Chalktaw

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Speaker 2: and Chickasaft people tell about how they came into an

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Speaker 2: uninhabited land and settled there.

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Speaker 5: In the southeast. Here's more from doctor.

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Speaker 1: Dant, this idea that when people first come from somewhere else,

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Speaker 1: not so we're not talking about indigenous people, we're talking

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Speaker 1: about people coming from somewhere else. When they get to America.

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Speaker 1: Part of what they see is all the things that

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Speaker 1: are gone from where they've been in England, in France,

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Speaker 1: in Germany, and they come to America and here are trees,

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Speaker 1: and here wild deer, and here are here's this wealth

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Speaker 1: of nature, and they think of it in those terms

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Speaker 1: that this thing that was so rare and therefore valuable

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Speaker 1: in Europe is here in abundance. And I want to

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Speaker 1: claim and tame the wilderness as the advance of you know,

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Speaker 1: using that loaded terminology civilization. That's how that's how we

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Speaker 1: civilize Europe. And that's what we're going to do here.

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Speaker 1: And the way you do that is to get big

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Speaker 1: on nature. You cut down the trees, you drain the swamps,

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Speaker 1: she harvest the animals. And that's a way of creating value,

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Speaker 1: both because those things are rare in Europe and also

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Speaker 1: because then you're converting these wild, chaotic landscapes into something

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Speaker 1: that's ordered and knowable. But again, it has to do

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Speaker 1: with those those ideas of value, what has value as

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Speaker 1: what is rare, and once those wild places become rare,

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Speaker 1: then we have that shift where romantics are thinking, you know,

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Speaker 1: has some demigod come before me and harvested the best

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Speaker 1: of the stars. I want to know an entire heaven

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Speaker 1: and an entire.

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Speaker 2: Earth, converting wild, chaotic landscapes into something ordered and knowable. Now,

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Speaker 2: that's interesting. What's hard to debate is that as a species, globally,

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Speaker 2: we've worked extremely hard to get away from the instability

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Speaker 2: of wild lands. You remember the etymology of wilderness right

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Speaker 2: self willed or uncontrollable land of wild beasts. Here's Stephen

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Speaker 2: Ranella with an interesting observation about human nature.

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Speaker 6: People who inhabit wilderness and again acknowledging that it's a

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Speaker 6: somewhat squishy definition. People who historically have inhabited wilderness have

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Speaker 6: jumped at every chance they could get to chip away

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Speaker 6: at that wilderness. There are some exceptions, there are some

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Speaker 6: rare exceptions, but for the most part, they've jumped at

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Speaker 6: any chance. Our own Western European ancestors obviously jumped at

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Speaker 6: it in a big way ten thousand years ago on

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Speaker 6: this continent, native Americans were very receptive to firearms, were

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Speaker 6: very receptive to steal axes. We're very receptive to different

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Speaker 6: building materials, to different modes of transportation, to things that

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Speaker 6: just would strike us as development, strike us as having

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Speaker 6: the means to make a greater, faster, more profound impact

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Speaker 6: on their environment. So yes, people that have. When I

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Speaker 6: say people, I just mean like us, humans outside of

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Speaker 6: our outside of all these differentiations we create, like Western Europeans,

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Speaker 6: Native Americans, just people across the globe have marched willfully

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Speaker 6: and readily in the direction of civilization. Very few except so,

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Speaker 6: if I didn't have this civilized veneer, if I didn't

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Speaker 6: have this this thing that I've just was born into,

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Speaker 6: raised in civilization, and came out of that respecting wilderness. Yeah,

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Speaker 6: I think it's fair to say that had I just

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Speaker 6: been born of wilderness, I probably would be just like

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Speaker 6: everybody else, and that I would grab at any chance

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Speaker 6: to make it a little.

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Speaker 5: Less hard to be there.

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Speaker 6: I'll tell you this, Clay, if you and me were

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Speaker 6: in that situation where we were indigenous hunter gatherers who

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Speaker 6: for thousands of generations had been on the same patch

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Speaker 6: of ground, and all of our implements All of our

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Speaker 6: building tools, building equipment were just made of natural, naturally

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Speaker 6: occurring things that we could find in a landscape, stone, bone, hide.

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Speaker 6: And someone showed up and gave us a palette of

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Speaker 6: ready mixed concrete, we would have laid that ready mixed

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Speaker 6: concrete down in some fashion or another. We would have said,

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Speaker 6: this stuff is amazing. Look at that made me a

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Speaker 6: big old paved area, and here's where I'm gonna start cooking.

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Speaker 6: It's hard, doesn't wash away, doesn't get muddy, and we

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Speaker 6: would wish we had more. We would want another palette.

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Speaker 6: We would quickly want another palette of ready mixed concrete.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I guarantee it, dude.

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Speaker 6: But knowing what we know right now, me and you,

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Speaker 6: knowing what we now know, we might say, uh oh, man,

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Speaker 6: you get to touch it.

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Speaker 7: You get that ready mixed.

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Speaker 5: Concrete out of my face. I know we're.

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Speaker 2: That's an interesting point and it's hard to argue with.

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Speaker 2: There are exceptions, but in general, mankind has been moving

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Speaker 2: away from wilderness lifestyles and to go back. In the

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Speaker 2: Bear Grease Academy, the Shawnee leader to Kumsa also in

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Speaker 2: the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, and his brother Tinsquadawa.

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Speaker 2: The prophet preached that going back to the traditional Indian

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Speaker 2: ways of life and getting rid of all influence of Europeans,

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Speaker 2: that would be their salvation.

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Speaker 5: That's what he preached.

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Speaker 2: However, they were met with stiff resistance from within their

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Speaker 2: own tribe and the majority of other tribes. And in

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Speaker 2: modern times us trying to imagine ourselves not leaning into

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Speaker 2: modernization is kind of a stretch. It would be like

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Speaker 2: in modern times someone who chooses not to have a

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Speaker 2: cell phone. I mean, it's almost unimaginable. Ninety nine percent

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Speaker 2: of people can't pull that off. Nor could our ancestors

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Speaker 2: resist modernization. That's not a perfect analogy, but I think

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Speaker 2: it's helpful. We've covered some ground already, and if you remember,

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Speaker 2: doctor Flores talked about the peculiarity of American history that

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Speaker 2: gave us a union perspective on wilderness, which we've covered

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Speaker 2: the first part, which was the European perception of the

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Speaker 2: North American continent upon arrival. However, things shifted once wild

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Speaker 2: lands became scarce, and this is one of the most

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Speaker 2: interesting parts of this conversation. This will be on the

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Speaker 2: Bar Greece Academy Quiz at the end of the series,

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Speaker 2: we've got to learn about a census in eighteen ninety

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Speaker 2: that shook the nation into an identity crisis. Doctor Dant

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Speaker 2: is about to tell us about a pivotal moment in

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Speaker 2: America's development of our modern wilderness doctrine.

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Speaker 1: There was a census in eighteen ninety that no longer

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Speaker 1: said there was a you know, and they used the

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Speaker 1: word frontier, which is the I mean, it's the census

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Speaker 1: says that frontier is two or fewer people per square mile.

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Speaker 1: That's the definition of frontier. And there was no obvious

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Speaker 1: demarcation between those lightly settled places and the more heavily

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Speaker 1: settled places by the eighteen ninety censes. And for a

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Speaker 1: lot of Americans in particular, that sort of provoked this

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Speaker 1: crisis of identity. If that had been what had made

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Speaker 1: us uniquely Americans. That's what Frederick Jackson, Turner and some

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Speaker 1: others argue. You can hear the Darwinian idea in there,

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Speaker 1: that we're evolving from Europeans into this unique American species,

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Speaker 1: Homo americanas I like to call it. If that's gone,

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Speaker 1: then how do we retain our uniqueness and our specialness.

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Speaker 7: So it all gets amplified then at the end of

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Speaker 7: the nineteenth century when Frederi Jackson Turner writes that famous

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Speaker 7: essay of his The Frontier, the significant the Frontier in

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Speaker 7: American History, where he argues that it's the interaction with

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Speaker 7: wild lands that turn Europeans into to Americans, right, And

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Speaker 7: that of course leads to when we get to the

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Speaker 7: twentieth century and it looks like, you know, the census

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Speaker 7: in eighteen ninety announces that the frontier is over. I mean,

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Speaker 7: it throws some Americans into a kind of a crisis

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Speaker 7: of identity that historians sometimes refer to as you know,

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Speaker 7: a wilderness angsed our frontier anxiety because we didn't have it,

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Speaker 7: because you don't have it anymore, and so how are

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Speaker 7: we going to create more Americans if you don't have it?

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Speaker 4: Right?

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Speaker 2: I mean, in an American had to have a frontier,

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Speaker 2: had to have it. That's what I made us Americans

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Speaker 2: that we had this frontier. Frederick Jackson Turner was like,

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Speaker 2: the frontiers dead.

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Speaker 7: The Frontier, well, he doesn't say necessarily it's dead, but

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Speaker 7: he publishes this essay in the early eighteen nineties, and

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Speaker 7: it happens to come at the same time that the

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Speaker 7: US Census announces in the Census of eighteen ninety that

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Speaker 7: the frontier has been so broken up by bodies of

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Speaker 7: settlement that it's no longer possible to say that there

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Speaker 7: is a frontier line in America. And that's what throws

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Speaker 7: people into this frontier anxiety notion, and you know, I mean,

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Speaker 7: out of it emerges things like the Boy Scouts, for example,

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Speaker 7: where okay, we've got to go out and teach kids

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Speaker 7: something about living in nature before they lose it an at.

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Speaker 2: Well, when we've got to have this formulated organization to

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Speaker 2: do this, because before Americans would have just intrinsically had

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Speaker 2: these opportunities and known these things absolutely.

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Speaker 7: Now we have to be a lot more proactive about

378
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Speaker 7: setting up the possibility for kids in particular to be

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Speaker 7: able to experience the wild.

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Speaker 5: And it's one of the.

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Speaker 7: Reasons that hunting the Booming Crucket Club at the time

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Speaker 7: becomes most very important in conservation for example. In fact,

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Speaker 7: in the lead up to the passage of the Wilderness

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Speaker 7: Act of nineteen sixty four and the debate on it

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Speaker 7: started in the late nineteen fifties, supposedly Frederick Jackson Turner's

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Speaker 7: essay The Significance of the frontier in American history was

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Speaker 7: mentioned in testimony more than two hundred times. So the

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Speaker 7: people who passed the Wilderness.

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Speaker 5: Act were reaching back that far.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, and they were. What they were saying is that

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Speaker 7: we need wilderness because this is how America and Americans

392
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Speaker 7: are created.

393
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Speaker 2: Americans were created by interaction with wild lands. Now, that's interesting.

394
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Speaker 2: Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis is important.

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Speaker 5: It's kind of wild.

396
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Speaker 2: I'm not sure that it's true, but this is how

397
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Speaker 2: national identity is formed. This pioneering spirit, independent self reliance

398
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,439
Speaker 2: are all very American things applied in modern times in

399
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Speaker 2: a whole bunch of areas of life outside of land management.

400
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Speaker 2: Hanging in my home for the last fifteen years is

401
00:26:55,359 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 2: a framed quote from Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. It says, quote,

402
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,359
Speaker 2: to the laborer in the sweat of his labor, the

403
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:09,400
Speaker 2: raw stuff on his anvil is an adversary to be conquered.

404
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 2: So was wilderness and adversary to the pioneer. But to

405
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,680
Speaker 2: the laborer, in repose able for the moment to cast

406
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 2: a philosophical eye on his world, that same raw stuff

407
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 2: is something to be loved and cherished because it gives

408
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 2: definition and meaning to his life.

409
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Speaker 5: End of quote.

410
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Speaker 2: Do y'all remember the infamous question I asked Steve Ranella

411
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Speaker 2: about how much being an American impacted his way of

412
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:43,360
Speaker 2: thinking about wilderness. As I learned this deep history, It's

413
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 2: as clear as a bell to me that I've been

414
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:50,160
Speaker 2: influenced by my culture. What the things hanging on your

415
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:53,840
Speaker 2: walls celebrate is a window into your culture. And I

416
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:57,720
Speaker 2: didn't even know about Fjt's frontier thesis when.

417
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Speaker 5: I hung Aldo's quote on my wall.

418
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 2: I'm sure y'all remember Alabama's son wild Land's author Hal Herring.

419
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Speaker 2: Here's how on the wimpification of America and FJ.

420
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Speaker 3: Turner, Some of the arguments made for conserving the last

421
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 3: of the wilderness were coming from Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier

422
00:28:23,520 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 3: hypothesis or frontier theory that what defined the American spirit

423
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 3: was the adversity and the self reliance required by the

424
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 3: frontier or the wilderness, and people like Teddy Roosevelt particularly

425
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Speaker 3: wrote about this. They were worried about kind of the

426
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 3: wimplification of Americans, you know, coddled by civilization, and they

427
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 3: wanted to make sure that there were places where people

428
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 3: could still test themselves against nature, you know, raw and unaltered,

429
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Speaker 3: and so there's a lot of currents here.

430
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Speaker 2: I want to say wimpification one more time. Maybe the

431
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:03,959
Speaker 2: algorithm will pick it up and direct people here who

432
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 2: are looking for a cure. I asked, how for more

433
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 2: about American identity being wrapped around wilderness.

434
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Speaker 5: Here's an interesting sequence.

435
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Speaker 3: In the United States. The reason that we kind of

436
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 3: have this designated wilderness. How we got to that came

437
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,880
Speaker 3: from the earliest days of the frontier, when say, the

438
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 3: buffalo were gone eighteen seventy six seventy seven in Miles City, Montana.

439
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 3: People were looking for the last of the commercially huntable buffalo,

440
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 3: right and the Civil War had shown Americans the true

441
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 3: bloodiness of our national experiment. So eighteen sixty seven, you're

442
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 3: seeing like a lot of the plains Indian wars starting,

443
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 3: and you're having all these people back east. And I

444
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 3: don't want to say this in a derogatory way, but

445
00:30:00,560 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 3: people back east are realizing that the frontier is being

446
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 3: pushed so hard, so fast, that there may be absolutely

447
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 3: nothing left of that if we don't make some choices.

448
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 3: And these are people who are more insulated from it.

449
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 3: Although they may might make expeditions. But one of the

450
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 3: things so you're listening to I always talk about John

451
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 3: Muir and Gifford Pinchot as these two dynamos that are

452
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 3: working against each other and mirror. John Muir was completely

453
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 3: immersed in the beauty of solitude and the grandeur of

454
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 3: untrammeled spaces in wilderness, whereas Gifford Pinchot was a man

455
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 3: who believed in managing landscapes and getting the most out

456
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 3: of them with sustainable yield. Right, And those two dynamos

457
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 3: are kind of like that a picture of America. We

458
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 3: have these hugely contradictory notions at all times, and I

459
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 3: always like to talk about it like two turbines. It's

460
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,880
Speaker 3: two magnets and a turbine, and they're spinning, and they're

461
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 3: making this electricity through their contradictions. And it's part of

462
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 3: what I love about our country the most is there's

463
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 3: all these contradictory ideas that are spinning at the same time.

464
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 3: In our case here, it was the kind of preservation

465
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 3: of the wilderness versus the absolute exploitation that people were

466
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 3: witnessing at that time. Right the eastern forests were going

467
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,200
Speaker 3: down like wheat in front of a combine. The white

468
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 3: Pines were going down and cleared to Michigan at that point,

469
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 3: I think even into Minnesota. And so the idea that

470
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 3: American's energy was capable of literally taking the last barrel

471
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 3: of oil out of the last piece of ground, well,

472
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:56,960
Speaker 3: that was evident. This movement began to say, what if

473
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 3: we didn't do that to every place?

474
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 2: What if we didn't do that to every place? Sometimes

475
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 2: it's shocking to me that we slowed down enough to

476
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 2: ask that question. I really like How's talk of America's contradictions.

477
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 2: We wiped out the wilderness, and then right at the end,

478
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 2: right when we were about to lose it all, we

479
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 2: decided to save some of them. I'm going to dig

480
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 2: in with how and I'm still trying to quantify if

481
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 2: America's wilderness doctrine is unique.

482
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 5: Here he brings up a unique point.

483
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 3: What we have in America with our system of wilderness land.

484
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 3: It's unique in the world because it was a choice

485
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:47,600
Speaker 3: that the American people, through Congress and everything made So

486
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 3: if you go, I've been in places in Mexico that

487
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 3: I would be wilderness. They are wilderness quality lands, as

488
00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:58,479
Speaker 3: they say, but a lot of the things that are

489
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 3: left in the world. I think of parts of the Amazon,

490
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 3: and I've been in the Amazon, but I've been not

491
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 3: into the farthest backcountry. Those are only there because people

492
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 3: lacked the means to get at them. You'd think of

493
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 3: some of the Himalayas or Kazakhstan. You know, those are

494
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 3: places you couldn't build roads into, right. They weren't looking

495
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 3: for anything there, Whereas in the United States after the Frontier,

496
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:33,239
Speaker 3: we found ourselves capable of getting everywhere, right, Like you

497
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 3: look at the system of roads in the say Shoshone

498
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 3: National Forest, or you look at how people were using

499
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 3: the Sierras of California. We could get everywhere, and we

500
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 3: were getting everywhere, and so the American system. And I

501
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 3: don't know about the largeness of it, the size of it,

502
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 3: say Vsavis what's in Russia and Siberian and the Taiga.

503
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 3: But I think what's the difference here is in Ameria

504
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 3: was a choice to have it.

505
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 2: The fact that we chose to designate and protect wilderness,

506
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 2: especially in the early days, was unique globally, and I

507
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:17,800
Speaker 2: think that's really important. I'd say today though, more lands

508
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 2: globally are being protected on purpose, but in many parts

509
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 2: of the world, the remaining wilderness was a byproduct of

510
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 2: not being able to get to it, and I do

511
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 2: think that intent is important. It's also only fair to

512
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 2: bring up that wilderness preservation is a direct result of

513
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 2: financial prosperity. We had the luxury of being able to

514
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 2: preserve wilderness. Sometimes in other parts of life, you wonder

515
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 2: how somebody is able to do something so good, and

516
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 2: often it's simply an issue of the financial ability to

517
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 2: pull it off. If seventy percent of us didn't have

518
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 2: jobs and we couldn't feed our families, perhaps our ideas

519
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:01,720
Speaker 2: on setting aside wilderness would be much different. Front here's

520
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 2: how with an interesting thought about prosperity and wilderness as

521
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 2: a status symbol.

522
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 3: Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico was a leader

523
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 3: of the conservation movement in the eighty eight Congress, and

524
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 3: during the Wilderness hearings, he said, wilderness is an anchor

525
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:26,319
Speaker 3: to windward. Knowing it is there, we can also know

526
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,560
Speaker 3: that we are still a rich nation, tending our resources

527
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:34,720
Speaker 3: as we should. We're not a people in despair searching

528
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 3: every last nook and cranny of our land for a

529
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:40,839
Speaker 3: board of lumber, a barrel of all a blade of

530
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 3: grass or a tank of water. And so what I

531
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 3: think that Senator Anderson meant right there was exactly what

532
00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:52,359
Speaker 3: they were talking about in eighteen sixty seven sixty eight.

533
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 3: He was talking about making a choice, that we were

534
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 3: the kind of people who could make a choice. Yes,

535
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 3: we could destroy this, but we choose not to because

536
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:06,399
Speaker 3: we don't have to sack every last corner for every

537
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 3: last piece of grass.

538
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:11,760
Speaker 5: That was good.

539
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 2: Here's Ben Masters on America's uniqueness with wilderness, and hey,

540
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,360
Speaker 2: my first intro to Ben was through his twenty fifteen

541
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:25,520
Speaker 2: film called Unbranded, where he and someboddies rode mustangs from

542
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 2: Mexico to Canada through the Rocky Mountains. It was a

543
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 2: really cool film. I'm sure he's done a bunch of

544
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 2: other stuff since then that he's way more proud of.

545
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:34,279
Speaker 5: But here's Ben.

546
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:40,440
Speaker 4: I think that our American ideals of wilderness, of preserving

547
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 4: places that should be untouched by humankind isn't unique to

548
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 4: the United States. But I do think that it is

549
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 4: truly remarkable that the United States was the first country

550
00:36:53,760 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 4: to in policy and within government, value that. I think

551
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 4: that that should be something that should be recognized and treasured.

552
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 5: I feel like there's this.

553
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 4: Sense within our modern day society that you know, the

554
00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:17,800
Speaker 4: United States is a country that you know, is very materialistic,

555
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 4: that is very consumer driven, that really only cares about

556
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,319
Speaker 4: the economy. But in reality, the fact is that we

557
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 4: have we kind of set the stage and set the

558
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 4: precedent for a lot of governments to emulate around the

559
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 4: world of the value of conserving wilderness.

560
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:41,400
Speaker 2: To bring us further along on this reality of wilderness

561
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 2: actual geography. On March first, eighteen seventy two, the federal

562
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 2: government bought two million acres in northwest Wyoming for forty

563
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. It was America's and the world's first large

564
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 2: scale preservation of wilderness, and they call the Little Track

565
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 2: of Land Yellowstone National Park. I think this was a

566
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 2: landmark moment in human history. The trajectory of Homo sapiens

567
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:13,360
Speaker 2: up until very near this point, had been fighting to

568
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 2: get out of the wilderness, but at this tipping point

569
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:20,280
Speaker 2: we reached back to save some of it. Alanis Morset

570
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:23,360
Speaker 2: should have added a fourth verse to her nineteen ninety

571
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 2: six hit song Ironic about the irony of the preservation

572
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 2: of a wilderness.

573
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 5: I can't believe I'm about to do this for.

574
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:40,840
Speaker 2: Twenty thousand years, he fought against the wild too many variables.

575
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:45,040
Speaker 2: To keep his family safe and fed, he cut down

576
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 2: the trees, he planted grains with his wife. Then in

577
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy two, we bought two million acres out right,

578
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 2: isn't it ironic?

579
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 5: Don't you think?

580
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 2: I can't believe that made final cut, cut that out,

581
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 2: fill back on track and to understand more of the

582
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 2: general timeline. And I really hate to do it, but

583
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:13,720
Speaker 2: we've got to bring back up Henry David Thereau again.

584
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,799
Speaker 2: But in the eighteen fifties he was credited as one

585
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:21,800
Speaker 2: of the first voices calling for practical action to preserve

586
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:24,880
Speaker 2: wilderness in America. He believed that each town should have

587
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 2: a primitive forest from five hundred to one thousand acres

588
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 2: where people could just go. He also believed in this

589
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 2: larger scale preservation of wilderness and that that would be

590
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 2: an intellectual reservoir and nourishment for civilized man. And as

591
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:44,399
Speaker 2: far as I can find, Arkansas's Hot Springs is the

592
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,120
Speaker 2: oldest land set aside in America as what they had

593
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 2: originally called a national reserve, and that was done in

594
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty two. Later that would become a national park.

595
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 2: So the first preservation of land started in eighteen thirty two.

596
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 2: Was a recipient of this message in the eighteen fifties,

597
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 2: and then it wasn't until eighteen seventy two that the

598
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:12,280
Speaker 2: first national park, Yellowstone, was actually preserved. But in case

599
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 2: we're getting too proud of our American wilderness efforts, here's

600
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 2: how bringing us back down to earth. Remember these two

601
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 2: words rock and ice.

602
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 3: I mean, American wilderness is similar to wilderness in other

603
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 3: parts of the world because it's like, it's not the

604
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 3: rich grasslands, you know, it's it was still lands that

605
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 3: you could not make them pay like you couldn't. You

606
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 3: couldn't if there's I tell you, Nevada would have all

607
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,399
Speaker 3: kinds of wilderness, but it has gold. Right, There would

608
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:48,440
Speaker 3: be all kinds of places in America that would be

609
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:50,759
Speaker 3: kind of wilderness, but there was something there that you

610
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 3: could make pay. And so those are not wilderness, Like

611
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 3: there's no wilderness in Iowa because it's all black dirt.

612
00:40:58,600 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 7: Right.

613
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 3: Wilderness areas share something in common with the rest of

614
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:05,800
Speaker 3: the world in that they were the last places people

615
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,360
Speaker 3: could go and find something that would you know, that

616
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 3: would pay early, like nineteen sixties fifties wilderness folks in

617
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 3: the United States, they were kind of admitting that this

618
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 3: every wilderness bill was a rock and ice bill. They

619
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 3: were saying, well, all the wildernesses that we got are

620
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 3: basically lands that you can't do anything with anyway, and

621
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 3: so it was kind of like defacto wilderness because you'd

622
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 3: have to get a climbing rope, you know, and hardware

623
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 3: to get up there. That's not totally true, and especially

624
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:42,799
Speaker 3: not true like in the Bob Marshall, which encloses a

625
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 3: large grassland system in the upper North Fork of the

626
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 3: Sun River. So there is grass in there, and that

627
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 3: was made it very controversial because people said, well, there's

628
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 3: grass in there, I want to keep running the thousands

629
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 3: and thousands of sheep in there. And so we have

630
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 3: mostly set aside as wilderness the places we couldn't do

631
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 3: anything else with.

632
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 5: That's true.

633
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 2: Shucks, man, that takes some of the nobility out of

634
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 2: the story of preserving wilderness. But I guess that doesn't matter.

635
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 2: Maybe nobility in matters like this is a myth. Anyway,

636
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:22,800
Speaker 2: here's another mic dropper pragmatism.

637
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 3: So so the other thing here, I don't want to

638
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 3: miss this because there is an enormous pragmatism in American

639
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 3: wilderness that was not in other countries. Okay, So the

640
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 3: Bob Marshall Wilderness, which is one I'm most familiar with,

641
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:44,839
Speaker 3: it was set aside very early because it is the

642
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 3: headwaters of the Sun River, and the Sun River is

643
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 3: the Gibson Dam project, which is a huge irrigation project

644
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 3: on the Fairfield Greenfield Bench here where I live. And

645
00:42:56,520 --> 00:43:00,840
Speaker 3: so the Bob Marshall Wilderness owes its exists things to

646
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 3: the need for irrigation water down below, and if you

647
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:10,880
Speaker 3: go through the American West, the same thing applies in

648
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 3: almost every wilderness area that I know of. Is was

649
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 3: set aside. Originally the idea was to protect some kind

650
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:23,319
Speaker 3: of headwaters. Sixty two percent of all the available water

651
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:29,359
Speaker 3: in the American West originates on federal public land, and

652
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:30,720
Speaker 3: that is not a mistake.

653
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 2: Pragmatism is a good word for taking the romance and

654
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:38,840
Speaker 2: fun right out of the story.

655
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 5: Nah, I'm just kidding.

656
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:46,400
Speaker 2: It actually makes American wilderness a tighter story and more understandable.

657
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 2: There are multiple reasons these lands were preserved, and multiple

658
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:55,480
Speaker 2: reasons why people celebrate their preservation today. I think all

659
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:59,239
Speaker 2: of this stuff is fascinating and it's helping me unravel

660
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 2: and dec who we are as Americans. And oh, did

661
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:07,840
Speaker 2: I just hear the three point thirty bell ring? Sounds

662
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 2: like the Bear Grease Academy is out for this session,

663
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,440
Speaker 2: but we've got one more session on wilderness and it

664
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:17,920
Speaker 2: won't be easy. It turns out there are even more

665
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 2: problems and challenges ahead. I can't thank you enough for

666
00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:26,800
Speaker 2: listening to bear Grease at First Light. We just launched

667
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:31,359
Speaker 2: our new CIRCA Big Game Western Hunting pattern CAMO. I've

668
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 2: worn it extensively out west and it's good stuff. Brent

669
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 2: and I will be at the Black Bear Bonanza on

670
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,360
Speaker 2: March ninth in Bentonville, Arkansas. We hope to see you there,

671
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:45,400
Speaker 2: and I look forward to talking with everyone on the

672
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 2: Bear Grease Render next week