WEBVTT - John Muir: Outdoor Enthusiast 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.880 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.320 There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.239 Roland there and this is the Stuff you Should Know 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:27.560 and outdoors. The addition, if there ever was American master's voice, 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:32.360 kind of, it's got a little Bob Ross too. Oh. 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:34.880 Happy birthday Bob Dylan. By the way, Happy eightieth birthday 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:38.040 to one of the great legends. Speaking of great Bob's Okay, 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:40.320 I was like, how is that I propos of anything 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:45.560 he said? Bob? There's a lot of online congratulations going around. 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:47.479 That's good, So throw me in there. I know you 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.320 don't care about Bob Dylan, but I do. That's fine. 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.520 And you apparently you don't care about John York because boy, 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.160 you were snaughty about this. I have no problem with 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:58.240 John Muir. Well that's not exactly the only one. Other 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:02.760 people doing stuff. It's a whatever. Let's just get into this, 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.400 shall we. So we're talking John your today, and that 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:07.480 name might sound familiar if you're not a member of 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.160 this yer club. If you are remembers the club, you 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:12.560 probably just dropped to your knees and did the secret 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:15.880 sign when I said John Muir. I just had to 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:18.080 do it again because I said John Muir. And there 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:21.320 it goes again. Every time we say John Muir, the 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:24.759 Yer Club members have to do something weird. Or if 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:26.880 you've ever hiked any portion of the John your trail 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:31.080 that was named after him? Is that in Yosemite. It's 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.760 in California. Okay, Yeah, that's it's part of its in Yosemite. 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:36.959 I think I should have looked that up. Well, he is, 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.679 I asked that because he's basically synonymous with Yosemity. He 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:45.800 was a huge driving force in getting Yosemite um into 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:50.080 national park status and then fully becoming the Yosemite that 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:54.440 we understand it today. No, I haven't, and I really 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:58.080 wanted to because I saw some pictures online. Looks really 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:03.200 not Uh. I've been to quite a few amazing national 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:05.080 parks in the United States, and not all of them 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.760 sump in the Yellowstone um, but I've been to a 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:11.880 lot of them. In Yosemite is really it's really up 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.320 there is one of the more special places. Like it's 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.400 pretty incredible. Um. But so John mur he but he 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:23.080 played a huge role in Yosemite becoming a national park. 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:27.360 But also like it's really kind of selling short the 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:32.040 impact that he had on um the creation of our 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:36.519 national park system, but also like the idea of what 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.080 a national park is, what wilderness is, what needs to 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:44.200 be protected, how we protected. He was certainly not working 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.600 in a vacuum in that sense that he was kind 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.360 of tapped into this larger way of thinking, for better 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:54.160 or worse. But he was a huge driving force and 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:56.120 one of the reasons he was a huge driving force 0:02:56.160 --> 0:03:01.519 for getting America into preserving wild spaces the face of 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.480 the Second Industrial Revolution was just minting money and building 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:10.440 railroads and just turning America into a powerhouse. Um because 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.720 he he walked the walk, for sure. He was He 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:18.440 was not just some you know Eastern you know Greenhorn 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.480 who who had never set foot in the wilderness, but 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:23.840 like the idea of it, right, he went and lived 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:26.680 it for sure. Like he did some really wild stuff 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.400 while he was living in Yosemite at the time. Yeah. 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.360 In fact, later when he was in his late thirties, 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:36.280 he was hooked up with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was older, 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:38.960 and they really bonded. They went on a camping trip 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.880 together and um, I think Emerson was like, what you 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.240 need to do is come back to Boston, Emerson or 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:47.840 thora Emerson, and he said, you need to come back 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.520 to Boston and be among the intelligency advocating for this stuff. 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:54.560 And at the time John your was like, no way, man, 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:58.640 Like I gotta I gotta be in the woods from 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:02.000 Roccer dude through and through. Yeah, And Uh, it would 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.600 not be until later in his in his um kind 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.440 of mid to late forties, his his life was kind 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.680 of been two parts. It was the wild exploring and 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:15.520 categorizing and botanical categorization of everything he could find, and 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.400 then the mid forties on when he uh was very 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.279 much a political advocate and uh kind of did that 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:25.440 because he felt he had to. He would have rather 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:26.800 he had a T shirt on the whole time that 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.000 said I'd rather be camping, right. But I also saw 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.320 that he went back after a little bit of a hiatus, 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:35.400 I think like a nine month hiatus towards the end 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.400 when he finally left Yosemite for good, um, and he 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.919 felt like he was an intruder there, like he felt 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.680 like his time there was done and he knew that 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.640 he had to be out of there in the world 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.200 to advocate for it for the preservation of this area. 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:54.960 But also that he like he just he felt like 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:58.000 that chapter was closed. So interesting. Yeah, I mean that's 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.640 they They always say no, no when it's time to leave, 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.520 and I guess he did the always say that. Um 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:07.480 so let's talk about John. You're starting even younger than that. Yeah, 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:12.040 let's start with minute one. He was born at eight. 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:16.680 He Scottish heritage. He was born in Dunbar and came 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:18.960 to the US when he was eleven. Uh. He and 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:22.920 his family settled in Wisconsin, eventually in Hickory Hill on 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:27.320 an eighty acre farm near Portage. His father was a 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:32.080 very stern Calvinist. Uh, super religious. Yeah, like it kind 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.640 of if you ever seen the movie The Witch, sort 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.240 of along those lines where such a great punishment was 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:43.520 very heavy and strict. If you beat your child because 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:49.080 they haven't memorized Bible verse to your satisfaction, you may 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.480 be over the over the line. I think I'm not 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:54.200 going to go so far as to say there was 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.920 physical abuse, but there was, oh there was with his father, yes, 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:01.479 for that reason. Okay, I mean I saw like corporal punishment, 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.080 but like you know, these days, spanking a kid is abuse, Like, 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.680 I don't know where it fell on the meter back then, 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:09.599 I don't. I well, I can't say where it fell 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:13.240 on the meter. I can't say either. But yes, he 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:17.320 would be but today he would be imprisoned probably. Yeah. 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:21.240 But one of the reasons John Muir became John Muir's 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.760 because of his father, because his the wilderness in Wisconsin 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.480 was his refuge and his literal escape to kind of 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.039 get away from him. So who knows what would have 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:32.719 been you know, what would have happened had his father 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:34.760 not been like that? Yeah, And I don't want to 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:38.880 fully mischaracterize his father, just partially. Um he was, he 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:43.120 was very stern. But John Muir was convinced that his 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.560 father loved him still and cared about him, and it 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.240 was even maybe a little bit proud of him in 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.440 the ways that he deviated from what his father wanted 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:54.200 for him. And one of the main ways that he 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:59.120 deviated from him was in book learning. Basically, like all 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:03.520 his father was turned with was his his boys working 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.600 the land, farming, knowing farming, and knowing the Bible. They 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:08.720 didn't need to know anything else. But that wasn't enough 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.320 for job. You're he was basically a born tinker, a 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:16.080 born engineer, but he did not have free time. His 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:18.920 father was like, you're either working in the field, or 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:21.720 you're studying the Bible, or you're getting hit with the 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.640 switch by me, it's one of those three things what 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.520 you're doing for all of your waking hours. And so John, 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:30.880 you're hit upon the idea of expanding his waking hours. 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.560 And so as a youth, he started waking up at 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.240 one in the morning so that he could have five 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.600 hours to himself between one am and six am when 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.400 he was expected to start working on the farm, to 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:46.520 just read or tinker or invent. And he actually used 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.400 that to really great effects. Yeah, so he made a 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.400 lot of little inventions. Uh. There was one called an 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.400 early rising machine, which was basically a alarm clock attached 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.200 to his bed that would quite literally tip his bed 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.560 up and tip him out of it. I don't get 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.240 the feeling that he needed it because he's getting up 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:10.680 at one a m Anyway, his father used it. But 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.560 he eventually would go to the State Fair in Madison 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.520 in eighteen sixty with a lot of his inventions and 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.720 was sort of a boy wonder inventor. And he was 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:22.360 twenty two at the time. Well, but he was I 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:23.920 think he had invented a lot of stuff in his 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.280 teen years too though. But imagine like you know, twenty 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.720 two in the eighteen eighties or sixties, Like imagine the 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:33.840 middle aged guy showing up to the four h fair 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.240 being like can I enter one of the things a 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.800 big relationship in his life that would last throughout his life. Um, 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:43.480 he studied with a man named Ezra Carr, and his wife, 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.120 Jane car became a really big mentor for him and 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:54.920 exposed him to uh, you know botany basically like she 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:57.640 was a scientist and he loved the outdoors, but she 0:08:57.679 --> 0:08:59.600 was like, hey, but botany is like a real science 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:04.120 to it, and was a really big influence in his life. 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:07.679 Introduced him to Emerson later like literally picked out a 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.480 wife for him that was like this is who you 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.520 need to marry because she can support you an hatchmaker 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.400 then too because it seems like it because they loved 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.600 each other very much, and um, she was totally fine 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:22.679 with his comings and goings and all that. They were 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.680 good together. Comings and goings is in going or Japan 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:29.360 or something that made it sound a little bit like 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.920 you know, dalliances. No, No, nothing like that. No, As 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.240 a matter of fact, I read that, um, he left 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:39.080 Yosemite at one point because of unwanted attention from a woman. Oh, 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.120 he's like he was camping in this lady hiked by 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:45.840 and looked at him, and he's like, I'm out. He Well, 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:47.640 he wasn't interesting dude, and that he was a bit 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.280 like a hermit, but apparently also really enjoyed these one 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.600 on one conversations with the people he would meet. Yeah, 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.600 he was like he was kind of build as a 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:01.320 wild man of the wilderness, but he very much craved 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:05.880 and needed human interaction as well. It's yeah, very odd. 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.040 It's usually one way or the other in that sense, 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:13.720 you know. Yeah. So he's working eventually the industrial part 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:15.679 of his life because he was such a good tinker 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.560 and engineer. He got work, uh, doing stuff like that. 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.960 And in March of eighteen sixty seven, he's working at 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:28.320 a carriage part shop in Indianapolis. His h and all pierced, 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:32.040 like literally went into his eye and pierced it, and 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:34.400 for a while he was blind in both eyes because 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:36.520 of that. It was such a bad wound that his 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.280 other eye was like I'm out too, Yeah, just because 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:43.920 I feel bad for my buddy over there. Sympathy blindness. Uh, 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.240 and this was a very monumental injury because after this 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.559 he was like, you know what, forget this stuff. I 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.480 don't want to ever be around another machine with moving 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:58.600 parts again. And I just want to walk. He said 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:02.000 that he bade a do you to all my mechanical inventions, 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.280 determined to devote the rest of my life to the 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:08.640 study of all the inventions of God. Yeah, he stayed religious, 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.199 we should point out he was. It's not like because 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.000 of his dad he went to atheist or something like. 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.000 In all of his writings and talking about the natural world, 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:21.199 it's all ezekiel, ezekiel, ezekiel. Well, it's all very spiritual 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:23.240 and God oriented. He was like, this is my church 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:27.600 though exactly the outdoors, which I can, you know, respect 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.640 on a certain level. He he he loved creation with 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:37.680 the capital C. Sure so um. When he's wandering, like 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.160 he really wandered. He was kind of a Johnny apples 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.360 E type almost. He walked from Indiana, where the I 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:48.440 guess he recovered from his all injury, um, all the 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.280 way down to cedar Key, Florida on the Gulf Coast. 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:54.079 It's like a thousand miles. He just walked down there 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:58.520 and pretty quickly too caught malaria and cedar ki almost died, recovered, 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.720 sailed to the Cuba from there, sailed on to Panama 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.000 from there, and made it all the way to San Francisco. 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.080 And apparently there's a story that may or may not 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:13.679 be true where he got to San Francisco. Was immediately 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:17.760 overwhelmed by this the hustle and bustle and city, and said, 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.319 where's the how what's the fastest way out of the city. 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:22.040 I think that's the deal. He got right out of 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:24.319 there and the guy, the guy he asked, said, well, 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.000 where you want to go? He said, anywhere wild and 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:29.640 he pointed him in the direction of Yosemite, and apparently 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.360 walked three hundred biles to Yosemite and fell in love. 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:34.920 That's right. And on the way out of town, someone selled, 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:39.239 you don't forget the rice RONEI it's the San Francisco 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:45.800 treat and he went, what sure, Jerry's like, Jerry like 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:51.360 disgusted by the joke. Yeah, he split immediately to get 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:57.360 out there and went to California and uh, he's in California. Well, 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:59.760 we went to Yosemite. He went to Yosemite, but he 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:05.480 walked right, and he walked because for a very specific reason. 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.920 He walked because that was the most intimate way to 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.680 see the botanic and and uh and write about the 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.080 botanic world around him. Yeah, because this was a time 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.400 when you could be like remember our bone Moor's episode 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.440 that you hooked us up with who Bone Wars, Like 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.480 this is a time where like you or I could 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.480 just start studying books and be like, Okay, I'm a paleontologist, Okay, 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:32.080 I'm a botanist, Okay, I'm a geologist. All this stuff. 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:36.120 These these fields were so young that anybody who had 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.960 like half a brain and like a pencil and a 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.280 piece of paper could basically contribute to the field. And 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:43.880 that's what I guess he was doing along the way. 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.280 He definitely did that in Yosemity. Oh yeah, he did 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.360 that everywhere he went. And it's a good lesson to 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.080 Like I remember in when Emily and I lived in 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.640 l A. I had a couple of times where I 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.760 had to drive to my mechanic and leave my car 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:01.520 And this was pre ride share services and taxis were 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.400 basically non existent in l A. So I would walk 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.559 these long distances home and you you just you notice everything, 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:12.880 like these neighborhoods that I drove around every day all 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.600 the time, and you would just notice, like can study 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.440 every house, every mailbox, every driveway, and it's really just 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.560 a lesson to people to like to walk places when 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.560 you can. There's a group in the UK I think 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.040 called Amblers. Yeah, we talked about the months, okay, and 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.080 they're they're basically they I think their motto is there 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.960 dedicated the idea that humans human locomotion should be no 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:39.960 more than like three and a half miles an hour 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:43.720 at the speed you walk, you know, and then that 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.600 that's how you take in everything. It's absolutely true. Yeah, 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.080 that's my two favorite speeds or two and a half 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:53.480 miles an hour and like the expressways, right, yeah, what 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:57.240 do the two? Um? So John mirror makes it to Yosemity. 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.560 Have we taken a break yet? I think this is 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:01.720 a great place for a break, don't you. He's entering 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:30.240 Yosemite for the first time. Everybody imagine it. Okay, So 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:34.200 John mirrors in Yosemite and he decides that he needs 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:36.960 a little bit of work. Um. I think he stayed 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.680 the first time for like ten days. And a lot 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:42.960 of people who know something about John Murror and especially 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:45.960 associated with Yosemite in the National Parks basically think he 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:48.160 showed up in Yosemite and never left and lived and 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:51.440 died there. That's not true. He lived there for about 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:56.280 a six year period, I think, Yeah, eighteen seventy six 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.800 years of his life. Yeah, so eighteen sixty eight to 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.840 eighteen seventy four I leave, Yeah, and those were a 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.680 very like California just totally rocked his world once he 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.800 got out there, Yeah, because he was living in Indianapolis. 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:12.600 So I mean, basically anywhere would rock your world. But 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.840 imagine showing up to California in the mid nineteenth century 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.080 or late nineteenth century and seeing it. Yeah, and especially 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.040 if you've I remember when I did my big out 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.320 west trip years ago with my best friend over like 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:30.120 four months in the summer, driving through Utah and Arizona 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.000 and everywhere. It's just so blazing hot. And then when 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:37.840 you drive over, especially southern California, California, and you drive 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.360 over that mountain range, it's like someone turned on the 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:44.720 air conditioning, and I just remember thinking, like, man, imagine 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:48.200 what it must have been like for westward expansion when 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.080 they finally got into the l A Basin, We're just like, 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:55.280 whoa in the l A Basin? Yeah, I mean you 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:57.840 go with that mountain range and it's just the Pacific 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.760 Ocean breezes are just kind of lock been there. Wow, 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:03.200 it's really hot on the other side then high Yeah, 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:06.919 like Death Valley. I'm not I'm not up on my 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:11.000 California geography. I think Germany's landlock can right now. It's 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.920 very lovely and cool near the coast, so um so yeah. 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:16.760 I can imagine what it must have been like as 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:20.080 like a nineteenth century traveler or something like that. But 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:23.040 um he uh. When John Muir got there, as I 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.640 was saying, um he, he stayed for like ten days. 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:28.359 I was like, I need some money, and he went back. 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.640 I guess he hitched a ride or else, walked back, 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:33.560 got some more money, and then he came back to 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:35.959 some He's like, I'm staying here for a while. So 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.880 he got work in Yosemite as a sheep herder. One 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.679 of his first jobs was hurting two thousand sheep up 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:45.720 into the sierras. Of it. He hated it. He learned 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.879 to hate sheep. He called them hoofed locusts. And he 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.120 started to despise sheep because he thought that they had an, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.840 um a disproportionately bad impact on the natural surroundings. Just 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:00.879 eight they did. They kind of have a Yosemite to 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:03.600 a large degree, right, So he came to kind of 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:08.440 see livestock as an extension of human occupation of these 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:12.200 wild lands and how detrimental it wasn't It really occurred 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:14.400 to him during this first little, you know, a few 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.080 months period where he was a sheep arter. Yeah. And 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:20.880 I think also the horse and the horses that led 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:25.200 people on expeditions and stuff, they also overgrazed and the 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:30.320 cattle overgrazed, and they were logging. And Yosemite was I 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.280 think it was under the the care of the state 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:36.320 of California. It's a state park at this point because 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:41.399 it had been gifted by well, not gifted, but it 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:43.560 was a land grant from Abraham Lincoln in the middle 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:45.919 of the Civil War to California. He said, I'll tell 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.000 you what I'm gonna do for you, You take Yosemite. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.480 But it was it was really mismanaged and just um, 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.080 I mean, compared to what they're doing now, was in 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.160 a pretty bad state. Yeah, which is one reason why 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.280 John Muir was pushing for it to become a national park, 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:03.840 so that it would be under the care of the 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:08.680 federal government, who hopefully would enforce the laws of preservation 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.119 a lot more than California had. So he shows up 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:16.520 in Yosemite, he starts shepherding. He but more than anything, 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.440 the thing that he became known for was these jaunts 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:22.639 where he would become like the first white man to 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:28.520 scale Cathedral Rock. Um, he would like not all these 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.520 fossil formations and take samples of them and send him 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:36.760 back to like the newly forming University of California. UM, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:41.439 he would like submit botany like descriptions like he was 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:47.399 just basically it's like exploring Yosemite and documenting the whole 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.760 place while at the same time, um taking notes for 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.680 what would become a series of like books, essays. Like 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.399 he really made his name as like a writer, Like 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:58.280 he made a career for himself just as a writer. 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:00.960 We think of him as like this concept asianist naturalist, 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:02.639 and that's where he was coming from. But at the 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:06.480 time he was a successful writer. And after he left Yosemite, Yeah, 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.400 I mean another big kind of central relationship for him 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.919 was a man named Robert Underwood Johnson, who um was 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:18.879 the editor of Century Magazine, and Century Magazine was very 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:23.600 much a sort of a progressive naturalist rag and he 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:26.280 uh and and we should say that this, you know, 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.280 we're not like this is the most interesting parts of 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:33.879 his life. Like he also worked for a decade or 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.720 more on once he got married. He married a woman 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:41.600 named Louis Luisa Wanda stren Cel in eighteen eighty and 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:44.800 her family had had a couple of daughters, Wanda and Helen, 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:48.119 and her family had a fruit farm, fruit ranch, and 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.600 he lived there in Martinez, California, UM and kind of 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:54.800 quit doing his adventuring for a full decade and ran 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.680 this farm and worked as a farmer. So all this 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.560 stuff was going on, and then Robert Underwood Johnson basically 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:07.080 doggedly pursued uh mirror and said, listen, man, you gotta 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:10.120 we need you. You gotta start writing again, because you're 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:14.119 the foremost naturalist in the country right now according to 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:17.600 me and only me, and we need you to start 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:22.360 writing some stuff and start pushing for political change. And 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:24.280 he was working on this farm this whole time, and 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:26.359 eventually he was like, all right, you know what do 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:28.800 you what do you got for me? So the reason 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.159 Johnson saw him out was because he had made a 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:35.359 name for himself even while he was still living in Yosemite, 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:37.640 like you can kind of look at mirrors life like, 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:42.120 he went and got all of the experience he could 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:45.320 possibly need in these six years living basically the that 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:49.600 whole stretch in Yosemite, and then went in like and 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:54.080 use that experience. Is that like a nomad land reference? 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:58.240 Living deliberately? Now, wasn't that throw Oh yeah, I went 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:01.399 to the woods deliberate deliberately Living deliciously is from the 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:05.400 which um. But but it was basically like, imagine if 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.000 like you had like a crazy six year period in 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:10.359 your twenties and then you spent the rest of your 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:12.880 life exploiting that, writing about it, talking about it, making 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:16.280 a name for yourself, being a cause celeb from that experience. 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:19.080 That's that's basically what he did. Yeah. I feel like 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:22.840 there's a lot of people that did that. Yeah, who else? 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:25.640 I don't know. I well, there is a great example. 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:27.480 He went and lived at Walden for what a year? 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:29.879 And that was like we're still talking about that guy today, 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:32.840 you know. Yeah, that's true. And I've even heard that 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:37.160 Walden Pond was like town was right there. Yeah, it's 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:41.840 like the the pizza hutt next to the pyramids, that's right, 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:46.920 kind of like that. But yeah, so me're. Another big 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.000 important relationship that he made was with a president named 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:56.919 Theodore Roosevelt, and THEO Theodore Roosevelt is known for um 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.240 the two million acres of federal land that he acted, 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:04.240 among other things, but Mure was a big reason why. 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:06.720 I mean, Roosevelt was into preservation anyway. It's not like 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:10.040 Mure came in and completely like change his mind about everything. 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:15.000 But Roosevelt knew about him and and quite literally said, 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:17.040