Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry
Speaker 1: Roland there and this is the Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: and outdoors. The addition, if there ever was American master's voice,
Speaker 1: kind of, it's got a little Bob Ross too. Oh.
Speaker 1: Happy birthday Bob Dylan. By the way, Happy eightieth birthday
Speaker 1: to one of the great legends. Speaking of great Bob's Okay,
Speaker 1: I was like, how is that I propos of anything
Speaker 1: he said? Bob? There's a lot of online congratulations going around.
Speaker 1: That's good, So throw me in there. I know you
Speaker 1: don't care about Bob Dylan, but I do. That's fine.
Speaker 1: And you apparently you don't care about John York because boy,
Speaker 1: you were snaughty about this. I have no problem with
Speaker 1: John Muir. Well that's not exactly the only one. Other
Speaker 1: people doing stuff. It's a whatever. Let's just get into this,
Speaker 1: shall we. So we're talking John your today, and that
Speaker 1: name might sound familiar if you're not a member of
Speaker 1: this yer club. If you are remembers the club, you
Speaker 1: probably just dropped to your knees and did the secret
Speaker 1: sign when I said John Muir. I just had to
Speaker 1: do it again because I said John Muir. And there
Speaker 1: it goes again. Every time we say John Muir, the
Speaker 1: Yer Club members have to do something weird. Or if
Speaker 1: you've ever hiked any portion of the John your trail
Speaker 1: that was named after him? Is that in Yosemite. It's
Speaker 1: in California. Okay, Yeah, that's it's part of its in Yosemite.
Speaker 1: I think I should have looked that up. Well, he is,
Speaker 1: I asked that because he's basically synonymous with Yosemity. He
Speaker 1: was a huge driving force in getting Yosemite um into
Speaker 1: national park status and then fully becoming the Yosemite that
Speaker 1: we understand it today. No, I haven't, and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to because I saw some pictures online. Looks really
Speaker 1: not Uh. I've been to quite a few amazing national
Speaker 1: parks in the United States, and not all of them
Speaker 1: sump in the Yellowstone um, but I've been to a
Speaker 1: lot of them. In Yosemite is really it's really up
Speaker 1: there is one of the more special places. Like it's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. Um. But so John mur he but he
Speaker 1: played a huge role in Yosemite becoming a national park.
Speaker 1: But also like it's really kind of selling short the
Speaker 1: impact that he had on um the creation of our
Speaker 1: national park system, but also like the idea of what
Speaker 1: a national park is, what wilderness is, what needs to
Speaker 1: be protected, how we protected. He was certainly not working
Speaker 1: in a vacuum in that sense that he was kind
Speaker 1: of tapped into this larger way of thinking, for better
Speaker 1: or worse. But he was a huge driving force and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons he was a huge driving force
Speaker 1: for getting America into preserving wild spaces the face of
Speaker 1: the Second Industrial Revolution was just minting money and building
Speaker 1: railroads and just turning America into a powerhouse. Um because
Speaker 1: he he walked the walk, for sure. He was He
Speaker 1: was not just some you know Eastern you know Greenhorn
Speaker 1: who who had never set foot in the wilderness, but
Speaker 1: like the idea of it, right, he went and lived
Speaker 1: it for sure. Like he did some really wild stuff
Speaker 1: while he was living in Yosemite at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, later when he was in his late thirties,
Speaker 1: he was hooked up with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was older,
Speaker 1: and they really bonded. They went on a camping trip
Speaker 1: together and um, I think Emerson was like, what you
Speaker 1: need to do is come back to Boston, Emerson or
Speaker 1: thora Emerson, and he said, you need to come back
Speaker 1: to Boston and be among the intelligency advocating for this stuff.
Speaker 1: And at the time John your was like, no way, man,
Speaker 1: Like I gotta I gotta be in the woods from
Speaker 1: Roccer dude through and through. Yeah, And Uh, it would
Speaker 1: not be until later in his in his um kind
Speaker 1: of mid to late forties, his his life was kind
Speaker 1: of been two parts. It was the wild exploring and
Speaker 1: categorizing and botanical categorization of everything he could find, and
Speaker 1: then the mid forties on when he uh was very
Speaker 1: much a political advocate and uh kind of did that
Speaker 1: because he felt he had to. He would have rather
Speaker 1: he had a T shirt on the whole time that
Speaker 1: said I'd rather be camping, right. But I also saw
Speaker 1: that he went back after a little bit of a hiatus,
Speaker 1: I think like a nine month hiatus towards the end
Speaker 1: when he finally left Yosemite for good, um, and he
Speaker 1: felt like he was an intruder there, like he felt
Speaker 1: like his time there was done and he knew that
Speaker 1: he had to be out of there in the world
Speaker 1: to advocate for it for the preservation of this area.
Speaker 1: But also that he like he just he felt like
Speaker 1: that chapter was closed. So interesting. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: they They always say no, no when it's time to leave,
Speaker 1: and I guess he did the always say that. Um
Speaker 1: so let's talk about John. You're starting even younger than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's start with minute one. He was born at eight.
Speaker 1: He Scottish heritage. He was born in Dunbar and came
Speaker 1: to the US when he was eleven. Uh. He and
Speaker 1: his family settled in Wisconsin, eventually in Hickory Hill on
Speaker 1: an eighty acre farm near Portage. His father was a
Speaker 1: very stern Calvinist. Uh, super religious. Yeah, like it kind
Speaker 1: of if you ever seen the movie The Witch, sort
Speaker 1: of along those lines where such a great punishment was
Speaker 1: very heavy and strict. If you beat your child because
Speaker 1: they haven't memorized Bible verse to your satisfaction, you may
Speaker 1: be over the over the line. I think I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go so far as to say there was
Speaker 1: physical abuse, but there was, oh there was with his father, yes,
Speaker 1: for that reason. Okay, I mean I saw like corporal punishment,
Speaker 1: but like you know, these days, spanking a kid is abuse, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know where it fell on the meter back then,
Speaker 1: I don't. I well, I can't say where it fell
Speaker 1: on the meter. I can't say either. But yes, he
Speaker 1: would be but today he would be imprisoned probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons John Muir became John Muir's
Speaker 1: because of his father, because his the wilderness in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: was his refuge and his literal escape to kind of
Speaker 1: get away from him. So who knows what would have
Speaker 1: been you know, what would have happened had his father
Speaker 1: not been like that? Yeah, And I don't want to
Speaker 1: fully mischaracterize his father, just partially. Um he was, he
Speaker 1: was very stern. But John Muir was convinced that his
Speaker 1: father loved him still and cared about him, and it
Speaker 1: was even maybe a little bit proud of him in
Speaker 1: the ways that he deviated from what his father wanted
Speaker 1: for him. And one of the main ways that he
Speaker 1: deviated from him was in book learning. Basically, like all
Speaker 1: his father was turned with was his his boys working
Speaker 1: the land, farming, knowing farming, and knowing the Bible. They
Speaker 1: didn't need to know anything else. But that wasn't enough
Speaker 1: for job. You're he was basically a born tinker, a
Speaker 1: born engineer, but he did not have free time. His
Speaker 1: father was like, you're either working in the field, or
Speaker 1: you're studying the Bible, or you're getting hit with the
Speaker 1: switch by me, it's one of those three things what
Speaker 1: you're doing for all of your waking hours. And so John,
Speaker 1: you're hit upon the idea of expanding his waking hours.
Speaker 1: And so as a youth, he started waking up at
Speaker 1: one in the morning so that he could have five
Speaker 1: hours to himself between one am and six am when
Speaker 1: he was expected to start working on the farm, to
Speaker 1: just read or tinker or invent. And he actually used
Speaker 1: that to really great effects. Yeah, so he made a
Speaker 1: lot of little inventions. Uh. There was one called an
Speaker 1: early rising machine, which was basically a alarm clock attached
Speaker 1: to his bed that would quite literally tip his bed
Speaker 1: up and tip him out of it. I don't get
Speaker 1: the feeling that he needed it because he's getting up
Speaker 1: at one a m Anyway, his father used it. But
Speaker 1: he eventually would go to the State Fair in Madison
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty with a lot of his inventions and
Speaker 1: was sort of a boy wonder inventor. And he was
Speaker 1: twenty two at the time. Well, but he was I
Speaker 1: think he had invented a lot of stuff in his
Speaker 1: teen years too though. But imagine like you know, twenty
Speaker 1: two in the eighteen eighties or sixties, Like imagine the
Speaker 1: middle aged guy showing up to the four h fair
Speaker 1: being like can I enter one of the things a
Speaker 1: big relationship in his life that would last throughout his life. Um,
Speaker 1: he studied with a man named Ezra Carr, and his wife,
Speaker 1: Jane car became a really big mentor for him and
Speaker 1: exposed him to uh, you know botany basically like she
Speaker 1: was a scientist and he loved the outdoors, but she
Speaker 1: was like, hey, but botany is like a real science
Speaker 1: to it, and was a really big influence in his life.
Speaker 1: Introduced him to Emerson later like literally picked out a
Speaker 1: wife for him that was like this is who you
Speaker 1: need to marry because she can support you an hatchmaker
Speaker 1: then too because it seems like it because they loved
Speaker 1: each other very much, and um, she was totally fine
Speaker 1: with his comings and goings and all that. They were
Speaker 1: good together. Comings and goings is in going or Japan
Speaker 1: or something that made it sound a little bit like
Speaker 1: you know, dalliances. No, No, nothing like that. No, As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I read that, um, he left
Speaker 1: Yosemite at one point because of unwanted attention from a woman. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's like he was camping in this lady hiked by
Speaker 1: and looked at him, and he's like, I'm out. He Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't interesting dude, and that he was a bit
Speaker 1: like a hermit, but apparently also really enjoyed these one
Speaker 1: on one conversations with the people he would meet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like he was kind of build as a
Speaker 1: wild man of the wilderness, but he very much craved
Speaker 1: and needed human interaction as well. It's yeah, very odd.
Speaker 1: It's usually one way or the other in that sense,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. So he's working eventually the industrial part
Speaker 1: of his life because he was such a good tinker
Speaker 1: and engineer. He got work, uh, doing stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And in March of eighteen sixty seven, he's working at
Speaker 1: a carriage part shop in Indianapolis. His h and all pierced,
Speaker 1: like literally went into his eye and pierced it, and
Speaker 1: for a while he was blind in both eyes because
Speaker 1: of that. It was such a bad wound that his
Speaker 1: other eye was like I'm out too, Yeah, just because
Speaker 1: I feel bad for my buddy over there. Sympathy blindness. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this was a very monumental injury because after this
Speaker 1: he was like, you know what, forget this stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't want to ever be around another machine with moving
Speaker 1: parts again. And I just want to walk. He said
Speaker 1: that he bade a do you to all my mechanical inventions,
Speaker 1: determined to devote the rest of my life to the
Speaker 1: study of all the inventions of God. Yeah, he stayed religious,
Speaker 1: we should point out he was. It's not like because
Speaker 1: of his dad he went to atheist or something like.
Speaker 1: In all of his writings and talking about the natural world,
Speaker 1: it's all ezekiel, ezekiel, ezekiel. Well, it's all very spiritual
Speaker 1: and God oriented. He was like, this is my church
Speaker 1: though exactly the outdoors, which I can, you know, respect
Speaker 1: on a certain level. He he he loved creation with
Speaker 1: the capital C. Sure so um. When he's wandering, like
Speaker 1: he really wandered. He was kind of a Johnny apples
Speaker 1: E type almost. He walked from Indiana, where the I
Speaker 1: guess he recovered from his all injury, um, all the
Speaker 1: way down to cedar Key, Florida on the Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1: It's like a thousand miles. He just walked down there
Speaker 1: and pretty quickly too caught malaria and cedar ki almost died, recovered,
Speaker 1: sailed to the Cuba from there, sailed on to Panama
Speaker 1: from there, and made it all the way to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And apparently there's a story that may or may not
Speaker 1: be true where he got to San Francisco. Was immediately
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by this the hustle and bustle and city, and said,
Speaker 1: where's the how what's the fastest way out of the city.
Speaker 1: I think that's the deal. He got right out of
Speaker 1: there and the guy, the guy he asked, said, well,
Speaker 1: where you want to go? He said, anywhere wild and
Speaker 1: he pointed him in the direction of Yosemite, and apparently
Speaker 1: walked three hundred biles to Yosemite and fell in love.
Speaker 1: That's right. And on the way out of town, someone selled,
Speaker 1: you don't forget the rice RONEI it's the San Francisco
Speaker 1: treat and he went, what sure, Jerry's like, Jerry like
Speaker 1: disgusted by the joke. Yeah, he split immediately to get
Speaker 1: out there and went to California and uh, he's in California. Well,
Speaker 1: we went to Yosemite. He went to Yosemite, but he
Speaker 1: walked right, and he walked because for a very specific reason.
Speaker 1: He walked because that was the most intimate way to
Speaker 1: see the botanic and and uh and write about the
Speaker 1: botanic world around him. Yeah, because this was a time
Speaker 1: when you could be like remember our bone Moor's episode
Speaker 1: that you hooked us up with who Bone Wars, Like
Speaker 1: this is a time where like you or I could
Speaker 1: just start studying books and be like, Okay, I'm a paleontologist, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a botanist, Okay, I'm a geologist. All this stuff.
Speaker 1: These these fields were so young that anybody who had
Speaker 1: like half a brain and like a pencil and a
Speaker 1: piece of paper could basically contribute to the field. And
Speaker 1: that's what I guess he was doing along the way.
Speaker 1: He definitely did that in Yosemity. Oh yeah, he did
Speaker 1: that everywhere he went. And it's a good lesson to
Speaker 1: Like I remember in when Emily and I lived in
Speaker 1: l A. I had a couple of times where I
Speaker 1: had to drive to my mechanic and leave my car
Speaker 1: And this was pre ride share services and taxis were
Speaker 1: basically non existent in l A. So I would walk
Speaker 1: these long distances home and you you just you notice everything,
Speaker 1: like these neighborhoods that I drove around every day all
Speaker 1: the time, and you would just notice, like can study
Speaker 1: every house, every mailbox, every driveway, and it's really just
Speaker 1: a lesson to people to like to walk places when
Speaker 1: you can. There's a group in the UK I think
Speaker 1: called Amblers. Yeah, we talked about the months, okay, and
Speaker 1: they're they're basically they I think their motto is there
Speaker 1: dedicated the idea that humans human locomotion should be no
Speaker 1: more than like three and a half miles an hour
Speaker 1: at the speed you walk, you know, and then that
Speaker 1: that's how you take in everything. It's absolutely true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my two favorite speeds or two and a half
Speaker 1: miles an hour and like the expressways, right, yeah, what
Speaker 1: do the two? Um? So John mirror makes it to Yosemity.
Speaker 1: Have we taken a break yet? I think this is
Speaker 1: a great place for a break, don't you. He's entering
Speaker 1: Yosemite for the first time. Everybody imagine it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: John mirrors in Yosemite and he decides that he needs
Speaker 1: a little bit of work. Um. I think he stayed
Speaker 1: the first time for like ten days. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people who know something about John Murror and especially
Speaker 1: associated with Yosemite in the National Parks basically think he
Speaker 1: showed up in Yosemite and never left and lived and
Speaker 1: died there. That's not true. He lived there for about
Speaker 1: a six year period, I think, Yeah, eighteen seventy six
Speaker 1: years of his life. Yeah, so eighteen sixty eight to
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four I leave, Yeah, and those were a
Speaker 1: very like California just totally rocked his world once he
Speaker 1: got out there, Yeah, because he was living in Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: So I mean, basically anywhere would rock your world. But
Speaker 1: imagine showing up to California in the mid nineteenth century
Speaker 1: or late nineteenth century and seeing it. Yeah, and especially
Speaker 1: if you've I remember when I did my big out
Speaker 1: west trip years ago with my best friend over like
Speaker 1: four months in the summer, driving through Utah and Arizona
Speaker 1: and everywhere. It's just so blazing hot. And then when
Speaker 1: you drive over, especially southern California, California, and you drive
Speaker 1: over that mountain range, it's like someone turned on the
Speaker 1: air conditioning, and I just remember thinking, like, man, imagine
Speaker 1: what it must have been like for westward expansion when
Speaker 1: they finally got into the l A Basin, We're just like,
Speaker 1: whoa in the l A Basin? Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: go with that mountain range and it's just the Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean breezes are just kind of lock been there. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's really hot on the other side then high Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Death Valley. I'm not I'm not up on my
Speaker 1: California geography. I think Germany's landlock can right now. It's
Speaker 1: very lovely and cool near the coast, so um so yeah.
Speaker 1: I can imagine what it must have been like as
Speaker 1: like a nineteenth century traveler or something like that. But
Speaker 1: um he uh. When John Muir got there, as I
Speaker 1: was saying, um he, he stayed for like ten days.
Speaker 1: I was like, I need some money, and he went back.
Speaker 1: I guess he hitched a ride or else, walked back,
Speaker 1: got some more money, and then he came back to
Speaker 1: some He's like, I'm staying here for a while. So
Speaker 1: he got work in Yosemite as a sheep herder. One
Speaker 1: of his first jobs was hurting two thousand sheep up
Speaker 1: into the sierras. Of it. He hated it. He learned
Speaker 1: to hate sheep. He called them hoofed locusts. And he
Speaker 1: started to despise sheep because he thought that they had an,
Speaker 1: um a disproportionately bad impact on the natural surroundings. Just
Speaker 1: eight they did. They kind of have a Yosemite to
Speaker 1: a large degree, right, So he came to kind of
Speaker 1: see livestock as an extension of human occupation of these
Speaker 1: wild lands and how detrimental it wasn't It really occurred
Speaker 1: to him during this first little, you know, a few
Speaker 1: months period where he was a sheep arter. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think also the horse and the horses that led
Speaker 1: people on expeditions and stuff, they also overgrazed and the
Speaker 1: cattle overgrazed, and they were logging. And Yosemite was I
Speaker 1: think it was under the the care of the state
Speaker 1: of California. It's a state park at this point because
Speaker 1: it had been gifted by well, not gifted, but it
Speaker 1: was a land grant from Abraham Lincoln in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Civil War to California. He said, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I'm gonna do for you, You take Yosemite.
Speaker 1: But it was it was really mismanaged and just um,
Speaker 1: I mean, compared to what they're doing now, was in
Speaker 1: a pretty bad state. Yeah, which is one reason why
Speaker 1: John Muir was pushing for it to become a national park,
Speaker 1: so that it would be under the care of the
Speaker 1: federal government, who hopefully would enforce the laws of preservation
Speaker 1: a lot more than California had. So he shows up
Speaker 1: in Yosemite, he starts shepherding. He but more than anything,
Speaker 1: the thing that he became known for was these jaunts
Speaker 1: where he would become like the first white man to
Speaker 1: scale Cathedral Rock. Um, he would like not all these
Speaker 1: fossil formations and take samples of them and send him
Speaker 1: back to like the newly forming University of California. UM,
Speaker 1: he would like submit botany like descriptions like he was
Speaker 1: just basically it's like exploring Yosemite and documenting the whole
Speaker 1: place while at the same time, um taking notes for
Speaker 1: what would become a series of like books, essays. Like
Speaker 1: he really made his name as like a writer, Like
Speaker 1: he made a career for himself just as a writer.
Speaker 1: We think of him as like this concept asianist naturalist,
Speaker 1: and that's where he was coming from. But at the
Speaker 1: time he was a successful writer. And after he left Yosemite, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean another big kind of central relationship for him
Speaker 1: was a man named Robert Underwood Johnson, who um was
Speaker 1: the editor of Century Magazine, and Century Magazine was very
Speaker 1: much a sort of a progressive naturalist rag and he
Speaker 1: uh and and we should say that this, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not like this is the most interesting parts of
Speaker 1: his life. Like he also worked for a decade or
Speaker 1: more on once he got married. He married a woman
Speaker 1: named Louis Luisa Wanda stren Cel in eighteen eighty and
Speaker 1: her family had had a couple of daughters, Wanda and Helen,
Speaker 1: and her family had a fruit farm, fruit ranch, and
Speaker 1: he lived there in Martinez, California, UM and kind of
Speaker 1: quit doing his adventuring for a full decade and ran
Speaker 1: this farm and worked as a farmer. So all this
Speaker 1: stuff was going on, and then Robert Underwood Johnson basically
Speaker 1: doggedly pursued uh mirror and said, listen, man, you gotta
Speaker 1: we need you. You gotta start writing again, because you're
Speaker 1: the foremost naturalist in the country right now according to
Speaker 1: me and only me, and we need you to start
Speaker 1: writing some stuff and start pushing for political change. And
Speaker 1: he was working on this farm this whole time, and
Speaker 1: eventually he was like, all right, you know what do
Speaker 1: you what do you got for me? So the reason
Speaker 1: Johnson saw him out was because he had made a
Speaker 1: name for himself even while he was still living in Yosemite,
Speaker 1: like you can kind of look at mirrors life like,
Speaker 1: he went and got all of the experience he could
Speaker 1: possibly need in these six years living basically the that
Speaker 1: whole stretch in Yosemite, and then went in like and
Speaker 1: use that experience. Is that like a nomad land reference?
Speaker 1: Living deliberately? Now, wasn't that throw Oh yeah, I went
Speaker 1: to the woods deliberate deliberately Living deliciously is from the
Speaker 1: which um. But but it was basically like, imagine if
Speaker 1: like you had like a crazy six year period in
Speaker 1: your twenties and then you spent the rest of your
Speaker 1: life exploiting that, writing about it, talking about it, making
Speaker 1: a name for yourself, being a cause celeb from that experience.
Speaker 1: That's that's basically what he did. Yeah. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that did that. Yeah, who else?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I well, there is a great example.
Speaker 1: He went and lived at Walden for what a year?
Speaker 1: And that was like we're still talking about that guy today,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, that's true. And I've even heard that
Speaker 1: Walden Pond was like town was right there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like the the pizza hutt next to the pyramids, that's right,
Speaker 1: kind of like that. But yeah, so me're. Another big
Speaker 1: important relationship that he made was with a president named
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt, and THEO Theodore Roosevelt is known for um
Speaker 1: the two million acres of federal land that he acted,
Speaker 1: among other things, but Mure was a big reason why.
Speaker 1: I mean, Roosevelt was into preservation anyway. It's not like
Speaker 1: Mure came in and completely like change his mind about everything.
Speaker 1: But Roosevelt knew about him and and quite literally said,
Speaker 1: I I would like you to take me camping in
Speaker 1: Yosemite for four days. He said, just the two of us.
Speaker 1: Didn't they have to like give the the um Secret
Speaker 1: Service the slip? Well, I think there was secret service there,
Speaker 1: because apparently they just never shut up in the Secret
Speaker 1: Service people, and like one of their journals said, like
Speaker 1: these two like won't shut up. All they're doing is
Speaker 1: just yammering at each other about the woods. So I
Speaker 1: don't know they gave him the slip or not, but
Speaker 1: I know that originally their request was the Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: like I don't want anyone around, man, I just want
Speaker 1: you and I to get out there in the woods
Speaker 1: and like talk about this stuff. Yeah, like wax mustache
Speaker 1: to wax mustache, that's right. So he works hand in
Speaker 1: hand with Roosevelt to do a lot of work. I
Speaker 1: think the first or one of the first national monuments
Speaker 1: they established was Petrified Force and Arizona, which um he
Speaker 1: went out there and was like, oh, this place is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. He moved there for his daughter's health apparently,
Speaker 1: and while he was there, he's like, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: petrifive force. I'll just start submitting fossil. Yeah. He just
Speaker 1: did the same thing there as an older man that
Speaker 1: he did earlier at Yosemite. Yeah. And I think the
Speaker 1: deal with Yosemite was because it was a state park.
Speaker 1: The actual Yosemite Valley wasn't part of the park boundaries.
Speaker 1: That Mariposa Grove of those giant Sequoia trees wasn't actually
Speaker 1: part of the boundary, and Muro was like, man, this
Speaker 1: this is what needs to be a part of the
Speaker 1: boundary more than anything. Yeah, So that was one of
Speaker 1: the first things that UM, the Sierra Club took up.
Speaker 1: It was like basically their first initiative. And John Muir's
Speaker 1: synonymous with the Sierra Club because he was the first president.
Speaker 1: He was for I think this who basically twenty years
Speaker 1: or something like that. He died, Yeah, he died into
Speaker 1: and he became the president of security Sierra Club in
Speaker 1: eighteen nine two. So um, he helped found this organization
Speaker 1: that's still around today. Then one of the first initiatives,
Speaker 1: one of their first pushes, was to get the Yosemite
Speaker 1: Valley and the what's the name of the forest, the
Speaker 1: Mariposa Mariposa Forest, the Secoya Grove included into the boundaries
Speaker 1: of the National Park. And they were finally successful in
Speaker 1: nine six and from that success, they just started having
Speaker 1: more and more successes and eventually expanded because initially they
Speaker 1: were focused on the West basically because that's where all
Speaker 1: these people who founded the Club lived and that's what
Speaker 1: they cared about. They said, well, there's other places where
Speaker 1: this battle needs to be fought, and they became this
Speaker 1: national advocacy group that will sue your pants off if
Speaker 1: you try to mess with the National Park. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: opened an office in d c and sixty three and
Speaker 1: like you said, went off, you know, Alaska, Florida very
Speaker 1: key in trying to get things like the Clean Air
Speaker 1: Act pass, the Wilderness Act, the e p A created
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and UH, Alaska's kind of key too
Speaker 1: in mirrors life because he he gets engaged to Louis
Speaker 1: and I think in those days you kind of got
Speaker 1: just got engaged and got married pretty quickly. Like there
Speaker 1: there were there weren't these long drawn out engagements, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't his case, because he was like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're engaged. You're you are a good match, thank you,
Speaker 1: Geane carr Um. But I'm gonna go to Alaska now,
Speaker 1: And he did. He went to Alaska for a period.
Speaker 1: And if you think Alaska is like, you know, uncharted
Speaker 1: and wild now, like, imagine what it was like back then.
Speaker 1: I'm sure his diary was like what no snakes? Amazing?
Speaker 1: What the heck is this place? But like I said,
Speaker 1: they eventually did get married and have those daughters, and
Speaker 1: she very sadly passed away in nineteen o five of cancer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he um like he had to go home to
Speaker 1: be with her when she died, like he was away
Speaker 1: when she was partially, UH for part of the time
Speaker 1: when she was sick. Well, that's sad. It's very very sad.
Speaker 1: I guess that explains why he and his daughters were
Speaker 1: the only ones that moved to Arizona for his daughter's health. Then,
Speaker 1: I guess I think, so, okay, that's sad because she
Speaker 1: supposedly was well known for her Um. I saw that
Speaker 1: she was a very gentle person, a very sweet person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and very supportive of his efforts. Like what's truly a
Speaker 1: good match. She loved the wilderness and nature and God
Speaker 1: and all those things. Oh, she loved God. Don't get
Speaker 1: her started on God. She would take her second break.
Speaker 1: I think so. All right, So we're talking about John
Speaker 1: mur in the Sierra Club Chuck and and it's really
Speaker 1: hard to understate what mirror impact. No, yes, um, what
Speaker 1: impact he had, because like I said, he was a
Speaker 1: successful writer. He was really good at writing. And also
Speaker 1: he did really crazy stuff like riding an avalanche. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a very famous essay that he wrote called the
Speaker 1: Windstorm in the Forest, UM that he describes what it
Speaker 1: was like to climb up the top of a pine
Speaker 1: tree and hang on for hours during a storm in
Speaker 1: the Sierras, and how awesome nuts it was. Um, and
Speaker 1: and like just basically saying like this, this is real,
Speaker 1: this is nature, Like you could if you go out
Speaker 1: to these places, you could do this stuff. But this,
Speaker 1: this is not going to be around if we keep
Speaker 1: building railroads through these places where we build dams, or
Speaker 1: we let livestock just graze wherever, like we an just
Speaker 1: not do something about. It has to be preserved and protected.
Speaker 1: And he inspired people during his lifetime and long after
Speaker 1: his lifetime as well. Yeah, I think the I watched
Speaker 1: a pretty cool American Masters documentary on this, and um,
Speaker 1: this one guy with historian was like this was a
Speaker 1: little bit of macho involved, like he was this great naturalist.
Speaker 1: Not to take anything away, but like riding the avalanche
Speaker 1: and like climbing a tree during a snowstorm at the
Speaker 1: top or a rainstorm at the top of the mountain.
Speaker 1: He said, there was a little like makismo involved in that.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, or or body from Point Break? Wait was
Speaker 1: that Patrick? Um? Yeah? Or was it Kiano can Reis?
Speaker 1: That was Johnny Utah my friend. Oh that's right, so
Speaker 1: Bodie was or was that Flee from the Peppers? But
Speaker 1: it was actually Anthony Keti Ketas that was in Point
Speaker 1: Break sure he may have been in it, but Ketis
Speaker 1: was one of the Ruffians. I got his foot shot off.
Speaker 1: I think no, no, I know he was the leader
Speaker 1: of the Bad Guys Surfer Club, but I think Fleet
Speaker 1: was in that club. I think, well, what was he
Speaker 1: naked except for a sock on this? Probably pants? Pants
Speaker 1: made of Teddy bears? Do we take our second break? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just didn't. So but I was leading up to something.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about what a great guy John
Speaker 1: Muir was and that's how he was, um looked at
Speaker 1: and respected for decades and decades, a century actually more.
Speaker 1: Um he was looked at a great man. Maybe a
Speaker 1: little macho, sure, but that's forgivable. If that much he's
Speaker 1: moo is directed towards riding a tree in a storm
Speaker 1: rather than you know, picking bar fights in Lisbon or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, thank you so um. When
Speaker 1: we did our episode on Girl Scouts, I talked about how,
Speaker 1: like Juliette Gordon Lowe was one of the rare historic
Speaker 1: figures from a century or so ago that you were like,
Speaker 1: and actually she holds up today. John Miror is not
Speaker 1: that same way. There there's a real um. I guess
Speaker 1: a mia Kolpa sort of a reckoning. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great way to put it. That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: A reckoning by the Sierra Club not too many years ago,
Speaker 1: where they basically said, hey, John here was great in
Speaker 1: all these ways, he was also pretty racist. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a product of his time and the way
Speaker 1: of thinking, which we'll talk about, um, but he was
Speaker 1: still pretty racist. And in fact, the whole basis of
Speaker 1: the National Park system was built on this racist ideology,
Speaker 1: and it's we're still basically looking at it the same
Speaker 1: way today. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because the Sierra
Speaker 1: Club even acknowledged that our first our first years as
Speaker 1: a as a as a group was based on the
Speaker 1: notion of white people trying to protect the land that
Speaker 1: white people wanted to hike through and enjoys as campers
Speaker 1: and recreationalists. And in his earlier years, I think kind
Speaker 1: of through his thirties, up until his thirties, he had
Speaker 1: sort of bad things to say about people of color,
Speaker 1: whether it was indigenous people's uh in the United States
Speaker 1: or black people, and um used disparaging language towards them,
Speaker 1: which the whole thing with the indigenous people's is really
Speaker 1: counterintuitive because they were so aligned with his philosophies of
Speaker 1: how you and habit a land and share a land
Speaker 1: and use it and don't abuse it, and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't make much sense. And supposedly he I
Speaker 1: think in his forties he started to come around, especially
Speaker 1: when he went to Alaska, because they um indigenous people
Speaker 1: served as his guides and he started to learn more
Speaker 1: from them, and I think things turned around a bit
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah. But uh, the Sierra Club, you know,
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time over the past few years
Speaker 1: trying to sort of bring this delight and not whitewash
Speaker 1: it and say, hey, this is what it was. No,
Speaker 1: they and they did a very good job of it.
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah. So um. I was saying that
Speaker 1: he was a product of his time, and he very
Speaker 1: much was. There was an idea before his time, say
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties, when the West was like the frontier
Speaker 1: and the the United States didn't really need it at
Speaker 1: the time, where there was this view of the Native
Speaker 1: American as this this um noble race that was being
Speaker 1: encroached upon by humanity and that we we needed to
Speaker 1: preserve this wild area. This was decades before John Muir
Speaker 1: came around this idea that we needed to preserve the stuff,
Speaker 1: but we also needed to preserve Native Americans and their
Speaker 1: culture in this land that were preserved. So the initial
Speaker 1: idea for national parks was that the Native Americans would
Speaker 1: live on this land just as they always had, and
Speaker 1: it would be there land, but it would also be
Speaker 1: America's national parks that would be protected. And then the
Speaker 1: railroad came, and all of a sudden, the US started
Speaker 1: expanding further and further west, faster and faster, and now
Speaker 1: the Native Americans weren't this group of people over there
Speaker 1: that you could kind of idealize. They were now in
Speaker 1: the way of this westward expansion. So racism toward them
Speaker 1: went through the roof. And now there was this idea
Speaker 1: that Native American culture was already dead, that the best
Speaker 1: of the culture had died in the last decades and centuries,
Speaker 1: and that it was all the white man's fault. But
Speaker 1: what's done is done, and so let's just make this
Speaker 1: decline into extinction as comfortable as possible and preserved Native
Speaker 1: Americans not on our national park land, but we'll just
Speaker 1: make reservations for them to go over there and just
Speaker 1: die off and it's sad, but that's just the way
Speaker 1: it is, and that that is the mentality that John
Speaker 1: Muir became a conservationist with in the larger zeitgeis that
Speaker 1: that you no humans should be on the land, but
Speaker 1: in particular Native Americans shouldn't be there anyway because this
Speaker 1: is our white people land. Yeah, and you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to see her club and people in general
Speaker 1: are more comfortable, uh, calling this stuff what it is now.
Speaker 1: Like even in that American Masters, that was one line
Speaker 1: where they said, like, you know, early on he you know,
Speaker 1: he he, I don't even remember what they said. I
Speaker 1: don't even think they said disparaging, but like he said,
Speaker 1: some things were not so nice for Native American Indians
Speaker 1: is what they said while he was saying yeah, And
Speaker 1: then it was just very quickly like they wouldn't dare
Speaker 1: say that he had racist points of view. Uh, he
Speaker 1: just didn't say stuff like that. But I think now
Speaker 1: people are more comfortable with saying using that word and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this is how he was for a time
Speaker 1: in his life, and we gotta we gotta reckon with
Speaker 1: that because it's part of our history of of a
Speaker 1: of a foundation for sure, and not just tim like
Speaker 1: the national parks were they they evicted people and not
Speaker 1: just Native Americans, depending on where you were out West,
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Yosemite, Yellowstone, all of them required
Speaker 1: forced evictions to basically create this pristine area that was
Speaker 1: never pristine and free of human settlement or occupation or use.
Speaker 1: That's they created that to create the national parks. And
Speaker 1: they used like this idea. There was this um I've
Speaker 1: read this really interesting article dude from two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: so it would have been groundbreaking at the time. It's
Speaker 1: called Ethnic Cleansing and America's Creation of National Parks by
Speaker 1: Isaac Cantor and uh. Cantor points out that like the
Speaker 1: people who were setting up and promoting these first national
Speaker 1: parks like Yellowstone in Yosemite would say, there were never
Speaker 1: Native Americans here anyway, they were all these were all
Speaker 1: they were afraid of spirits in this you know, in
Speaker 1: this canyon, so they never hung out here anyway. But
Speaker 1: by the way, uh, can you send some military to
Speaker 1: protect us from Native america can attacks while we're setting
Speaker 1: up this national park? So it's which is yeah, yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: but that's a really interesting It was a really good
Speaker 1: read and it was very eye opening, especially for two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. Uh. So, I guess in closing, we want
Speaker 1: to quickly mention one of his last what he was
Speaker 1: actually trying to do when he died and and failed
Speaker 1: at doing, was preventing the damning of the hetch Hetchy
Speaker 1: Valley uh in Yosemite. And basically what happened in nineteen
Speaker 1: o six was there was a devastating earthquake and fire
Speaker 1: that destroyed San Francisco, which I'd love to cover that
Speaker 1: as its own episode at some point, basically completely destroyed
Speaker 1: it h and everywhere. And one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: the fire destroyed it was because their water uh uh
Speaker 1: what do you call them water water people? Their water system,
Speaker 1: I'll just say that um was destroyed by the earthquake.
Speaker 1: So San Francisco said, we need a better, more reliable
Speaker 1: a water supply, and we can get it in Yosemite
Speaker 1: with the hetch Hetchy Valley if we damn that thing up.
Speaker 1: And he was like, you can't do this, It's in
Speaker 1: a national park. And he lost that effort, but he
Speaker 1: made such a stink uh he was He was basically like,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other ways you can get water.
Speaker 1: You're just doing this because it's easiest and cheapest, But
Speaker 1: you can get water to San Francisco in other ways. Uh.
Speaker 1: And like I said, he was not successful. He did
Speaker 1: lose that battle, um and then passed away of pneumonia
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy six and nineteen fourteen. Um.
Speaker 1: But he they haven't There hasn't been a damn built
Speaker 1: in on national park lands since then. Yeah. Because that battle,
Speaker 1: even though he lost it, it really raised awareness and
Speaker 1: it also kind of set a certain mindset in people
Speaker 1: in the public's mind that now you don't really mess
Speaker 1: with national parks. And I guess we had to lose
Speaker 1: one to to to get to that point. That's right.
Speaker 1: Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? So
Speaker 1: that's job mirror for you. Everybody. Go check out his
Speaker 1: writings and read about him and uh see what you think.
Speaker 1: And also don't forget ethnic cleansing in the creation of
Speaker 1: America's national parks. Good stuff. Uh. And since I said
Speaker 1: good stuff, of course it's time for listening. Man. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is on the Cleft Palettes from Malcolm that's new
Speaker 1: in Calgary that came out today Alberta, Canada. Usa, North
Speaker 1: America Earth. Hey guys, been an avid listener since my
Speaker 1: friend introduced me when I very hungover car right home
Speaker 1: from an Iron Maiden concert about five years ago. Nice,
Speaker 1: it's a great way to get turned onto the show. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought I'd write in to share my experience with
Speaker 1: my son's cleft pallet after listening to the episode. My
Speaker 1: son was born with a midwife in June nineteen and
Speaker 1: had a ton of trouble breastfeeding, which in hindsight was
Speaker 1: because he couldn't get any suction. A couple of days later,
Speaker 1: the midwife noticed what she thought was a cleft in
Speaker 1: the soft palette. We took our newborn to the hospital
Speaker 1: and she was right. We became regulars at the Alberta
Speaker 1: Children's Hospitals Cleft Clinic in Calgary, Alberta, and two years later,
Speaker 1: my son has had a surgery to repair his clap
Speaker 1: pallett and another to put tubes in his ear drums parentheses,
Speaker 1: socialized health care is the best. The tubes are common
Speaker 1: with clefts because the muscles that drain the ear canals
Speaker 1: don't form properly, so the tubes allow fluid to leave
Speaker 1: the ear canals. One thing you didn't mention was the
Speaker 1: byfed uvela, which I have. It's related to clefts that
Speaker 1: the muscles don't quite form properly and it makes her
Speaker 1: uvula look more like a w than a tear drop.
Speaker 1: I saw that in research. I forgot to mention I
Speaker 1: did too. I can't believe I forgot that. We are
Speaker 1: currently visiting a geneticist at the Hospitality of Cleft in
Speaker 1: my bibid uvula. I'm sorry byfed uvela are genetically related,
Speaker 1: but I think the answer is probably yes. Love listening
Speaker 1: you guys look for it each episode. That is Malcolm. Nice,
Speaker 1: nice name, Malcolm. Um, that's great, Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for sharing. And also rock on mat. Yeah that's your name, Malcolm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my middle name. It's a great name. Me and
Speaker 1: my friends they have the night we're hanging out, Me
Speaker 1: and Emily and Justina Melissa. We're having a few drinks
Speaker 1: and we decided to start only going by our middle names.
Speaker 1: So it was Alex, Dawn, Renee and Wayne were hanging
Speaker 1: out for the rest of the night. We were just
Speaker 1: cracking jokes. Like someone did say something to be like
Speaker 1: that is so Alex. I don't know if it's gonna stick.
Speaker 1: But it was really weird to think of myself as
Speaker 1: a Wayne. That could be a one night thing. I
Speaker 1: think that one night, I think sticks. I will be
Speaker 1: really surprised. I think we determined. I determined that you
Speaker 1: don't have a relation to your middle name, like an
Speaker 1: emotional connection. If when you hear that name out loud,
Speaker 1: you don't have any reaction, Like if I hear someone
Speaker 1: say a Chuck or someone else's Chuck, I go oh.
Speaker 1: But if I hear someone say Wayne or whatever, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't even doesn't even register you, Like that name
Speaker 1: is dead to me. Yeah, that sounds about right right.
Speaker 1: All right, that's so Malcolm. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with this, like Malcolm did not me
Speaker 1: the other welcome one in the middle, you can send
Speaker 1: us an email like Malcolm did to Stuff podcast iHeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.