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Bob Marshall: The Haunting of Bill’s House · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [thunder] Happy Halloween, and welcome back to our ongoing conversation about this wild, connected, and ever-changing world of ours, the collection of stories we lovingly call the "Wild Idea Podcast." My name is Bill Hodge, and as always, I am joined on what is shaping up to be a very windy day with my friend, my buddy, and a truly professional advocate for wild places, Anders Reynolds. And folks, [chuckles] I'm excited about today's episode for a couple of reasons. First, and I'm, and I'm just being honest here, this is, this is our biggest episode yet. I mean, big. A-as folks know, Anders and I live in one of the most competitive congressional districts this election season, and that race has brought all sorts of VIPs out from both parties in hopes of riling up the base and getting out the vote. Well, Anders and I noticed that two very different politicians would be here at the same time, and so, as they say, we shot our shot. We reached out to their respective camps and asked if they would come together, put their differences aside, and talk about wilderness. And lo and behold, they agreed. So today's episode, a round table of sorts, featuring an uneasy alliance, is gonna feature progressive hero and activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, congresswoman from New York, in conversation with none other than the President of the United States himself, Donald J. Trump. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but that's not all the good news, because secondly, Anders and I are recording this one together, in person. That's right, Anders and I are in the same room. Now, that can be a dangerous situation for me, as I'm sure you've noticed. I'm more than often the butt of more of Anders' jokes, and I put jokes in air quotes here, when we record together. But despite the risk of, yes, catching a few strays, I think this is my favorite way to talk to our guests. What about you, buddy?
• 2:03
  Happy Halloween, Bill. Gosh, this wind. You know, I'm, I'm way too excited about our guests to offer any sort of ribbing to you today. This is
• 2:15
  obviously a huge gift for us, and I cannot wait to jump into the conversation.
• 2:22
  But before we do, I suppose I do have one nagging question. Why on earth are you carrying around that ancient Ouija board?
• 2:33
  Y-you don't, you don't remember this? I, I bought this thing in Coupeville last month.
• 2:38
  Oh.
• 2:38
  When I brought it up at the time, you seemed annoyed that I was rushing spooky season a little bit. But given that this episode comes out just a few days before Halloween, I thought it would be fun to kind of give it a whirl, right?
• 2:50
  [chuckles] Are you serious? On the, on the day we interview a sitting president?
• 2:54
  Uh, yeah. I mean, we've got five minutes. Why not? What's, what's more wild than the great unknown? You game for a quick round-
• 3:01
  [chuckles]
• 3:01
  ... with the Ouija board?
• 3:02
  I'm deeply skeptical about this. Look at this little planchette. It's just plastic. It's not magic. It's gonna be the, uh, uh, uh, ideomotor effect moving this thing around from letter to letter. Nothing more than our fingers.
• 3:15
  Spoken like a man who's terrified of being wrong, as always. Okay, Anders, now, fingers on what, what'd you call it? A, a planchette? Is that what it's called?
• 3:23
  Planchette. Planchette, yeah.
• 3:26
  Well, maybe that can be our nerd word for the week. You've already used it, so kinda got that out of the way. We've got just five minutes, so humor me, all right?
• 3:35
  Uh, okay, fine. [door creaks]
• 3:40
  [clears throat] Is there anyone with us tonight? Any spirit of the wild places who cares to say hello? [thunder]
• 3:51
  O-okay, that's just weather. That's just thunder.
• 3:54
  Asking something.
• 3:55
  [chuckles] Fine. Spirit, if you're there, give us a sign. [knocking]
• 4:01
  Okay, now, now that was you.
• 4:03
  That was not me. Both my hands are right here. You can see them. [eerie sound]
• 4:08
  Wait, it, it's, it's moving. This planchette thing, it's moving. [door locks]
• 4:15
  Did the door just lock on its own? What's happening? What, what about our guests?
• 4:19
  Forget about them. Something's happening. Look, it's, it, it, it's moving on its own. It's spelling a name.
• 4:26
  B-O-B-
• 4:33
  Unbelievable. Bill, quit.
• 4:35
  ... M-A-R. It's, it's spelling... [yawns]
• 4:47
  Bill, you, you good?
• 4:51
  Good? My boy, I haven't felt this good in the wrong side of 80 years. Ha ha. A roof, four walls, not a flake of snow on my boots, but where in the world am I?
• 5:04
  [chuckles] You're, uh, you're in Missoula, Montana. Remember, we're recording the podcast?
• 5:11
  Missoula, Montana. Now you're talking. Best country the good Lord ever forgot to pave.
• 5:19
  Okay. I, I have to ask, and I feel foolish asking this of a fellow who appears to be wearing my co-host like a coat, who exactly am I speaking with?
• 5:27
  The name's Marshall. Bob Marshall. Forester, walker, and lifelong troublemaker on behalf of wild country.
• 5:36
  Bob Marshall. The Bob Marshall. Mr. Marshall.
• 5:40
  If you called me son of a bitch, I might feel badly, but not entirely overwhelmed. But when you call me Mr. Marshall, it just makes me feel so thoroughly miserable. I wanna knock my head against the side of the house. My name is Bob. It's always been Bob, always will be Bob. Unless you wanna be very cruel, I hope you will use that title.
• 6:02
  Bob it is. Do you, you know what year it is?
• 6:05
  Judging by that glowing little slab in your hand and the fact that I appear to be some decades past my expiration, I'd wager it's a good ways past 1939.
• 6:16
  It's a plan chat. Try 2026.
• 6:19
  '26?
• 6:22
  And there's any wilderness left to walk? Or did you fellas pave the whole works while I was resting?
• 6:28
  Some of it's still standing. In fact, there's a stretch of country north of here, around about a million and a half acres. No roads, no cars. We call it the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
• 6:39
  You named it
• 6:41
  after me?
• 6:43
  We did.
• 6:44
  [chuckles] Well, I'll be. A million acres with my name on it, and here I only ever asked for was a good pair of boots and 40 miles before supper.
• 6:55
  Yeah, about that. Is it true you'd sometimes hike 30, 40 miles in a day?
• 7:00
  40 on a slow day. Did 70 once. Dawn till dusk, just to see if the legs would hold. And you know what? They held.
• 7:09
  [chuckles] Okay, so it really is you. Well, Bob, since you're here, and since I've no idea how long this arrangement lasts, forget the schedule. I'd rather interview you, founder of the Wilderness Society, 1935, a man who fought to keep wild country wild for everybody. You up for a few questions?
• 7:29
  Fire away, my boy.
• 7:31
  Okay. Where is that theme song button? Ah, here it is. [click] Oh, that wasn't it. That was the advertising button. Uh, oh, okay, here it is. Let's roll that beautiful bean footage. [click] [upbeat music] Welcome to the "Wild Idea Podcast," the undead edition. Today, Bill and I, or I guess just I, will be talking to Bob Marshall. Bob was an American forester, writer, and wilderness advocate, best known for leading the 1935 creation of the Wilderness Society. His attachment to wild country began in childhood. A devoted hiker and climber, he spent much of his youth exploring the Adirondacks and became one of the original Adirondack Forty-Sixers, the first to summit all 46 of the range's high peaks. His travels later carried him far north to the Brooks Range of Arctic Alaska, journeys he chronicled in a string of articles and books, among them his 1933 bestseller, "Arctic Village." Marshall was also a trained scientist, holding a doctorate in plant physiology, and he came into considerable wealth after his father died in 1929. He had begun a career in 1925 as a forester with the US Forest Service, and his newfound financial freedom bankrolled expeditions into Alaska and other remote places. He went on to hold two influential government posts under Franklin Roosevelt, Head of Forestry at the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1937, and Chief of Recreation Management at the Forest Service from '37 to '39. In those roles, he pushed through regulation shielding vast stretches of roadless federal land, country that, decades after his death, won lasting protection under the 1964 Wilderness Act. For Marshall, wilderness was as much a social cause as an environmental one, and he championed the idea of a national organization devoted to safeguarding untouched land. As one of the Wilderness Society's chief founders, he personally underwrote most of its early operating costs. He was also a lifelong supporter of socialism and civil liberties. So, without any further ado, let's get into it. Bob, thanks for joining the show.
• 9:36
  Uh, happy to be here, I think.
• 9:38
  Bob, you were a city kid, born and raised in New York, but your summers were spent at the family camp in Nola on a place I've paddled myself, Lower Saranac Lake. Is that where this all starts for you? Tell me about those summers, the sports, the exploring, uh, and also tell me about Herb Clark and how the two of you, with your brother George, set out to climb every one of the 4,000-foot peaks in the Adirondacks.
• 10:03
  The Adirondacks was a place that seeped into my soul as we made our way north every summer from our home in New York. It was a place that so informed me what I became.
• 10:16
  It was me and my brother, my siblings, prowling around, playing baseball, and the games that stimulated health, strength, deftness, a democratic spirit, and the ideals of sportsmanship. But as you mentioned, my real passion became to see all those high peaks of the Adirondacks, particularly with my brother George, but we had help. Herb Clark was a friend of the family who helped us navigate days where sometimes we would bag three or four summits all in the same day, and that was a really important part of my life there in the Adirondacks. It informed what became an ethic that I took with me for the rest of my life, this commitment to
• 11:01
  wild places that, that honestly partially came from my father.
• 11:05
  Let's talk about your dad, uh, Lewis Marshall. On paper, it's almost hard to believe he's real. Um, he was one of the great constitutional and civil rights lawyers of his day, accomplished enough that President Taft considered putting him on the Supreme Court. Uh, he argued cases for the NAACP. He helped build one of the biggest, uh, rabbinical schools in the country. He sat on the board of the State College of Forestry at Syracuse, and that's gonna come back later. And as a delegate to New York's Constitutional Convention, he helped put in place maybe the strongest set of state wilderness protections in the country. When you think about your father, what do you remember about him as a person, and do you see his values in yourself?
• 11:49
  Well, when he was committed to a cause, he was truly committed to a cause. Uh, even when maybe those causes were holding back further opportunities for himself or his family, uh, he- ... always put his money where his mouth was when it came to the environment, when it came to social justice, what I think you call social justice today. Um, so yes, I mean, he was there when they wrote that redraft of the state constitution, the first place in which the word wilderness would appear in a formal government document in our country's history. So yes, you could say he informed a lot of what I became,
• 12:30
  not just my ethic for protecting wild places, but for connecting communities that would otherwise not know the joys of being in the woods that I got to know at Knollwood and throughout the Adirondacks.
• 12:41
  Okay, so you studied forestry at Syracuse, then Harvard, and eventually you were awarded a PhD at John Hopkins, which is also my alma mater. But between Harvard and Hopkins, you came out here to Missoula, and that's when you really started going into the big, big country. Tell me about those years, Bob, the fire camps, the walks of 30 or 40 miles a day, and the habit you got into of counting everything, uh, counting miles, counting peaks, counting hours.
• 13:10
  Oh, Missoula. Missoula, Missoula was such a fun place for me, living down there along the Clark Fork,
• 13:19
  getting to experience truly big, wild country, whether it was the Selway country on the Idaho side of the line or north of me, climbing along the Swan Range and down the South Fork of the Flathead country. Yeah, some days cranking out 40 miles at a time, winding up at incredible places that I think now are called Big Prairie, uh, just really special, amazing places. But I also got to spend time pressed into service to help handle logistics in fire camps, 'cause as we know, back in the early days when I lived, wildfire sort of was a struggle for the Forest Service on what to do with it. And, you know, it was in those fire camps where I started to realize how labor can be exploited, how they were dragging men out of bars and out of jails even and paying them a pittance, but putting them in grave danger in front of these walls of flame.
• 14:19
  So Missoula, such a special place in my heart. All of those mountain ranges, the Swans, the Bitterroots, all of those places sort of informed what I
• 14:32
  sort of came to love about wild places and would later put to use in protecting wild places. Um, Missoula has a really special place in my heart.
• 14:42
  People say your politics got a lot more progressive at Hopkins. What changed?
• 14:47
  Well,
• 14:49
  I started to become a little more interested in the ladies,
• 14:53
  but I also started to become a little more socialized and became a little more in tune of what was going on around me, and, and I started to enj- join clubs that later would maybe start to spark some resistance to what I was trying to accomplish in life. But I just, I found myself coming back from Missoula with these values that, that the time out west, whether it was in, in Missoula or in these fire camps, but now in a major metropolitan area that had access to communities of thinkers, so we would sit around and discuss big ideas. And I became worried about the robber barons of our day and how the ordinary folks of our country were being carved out of what was their right.
• 15:42
  After Hopkins came Alaska. What did the Brooks Range teach you that Montana hadn't?
• 15:49
  Well, what I really got to see, uh, in the village of Wiseman were people that were living
• 15:56
  on the edge. They were living in a, a, a wild place where the meal on the table came from what they accomplished that day, quite literally. Uh, I got to spend time on the Koyukuk and, and these great peaks that, that I came to name the Gates of the Arctic, because these mountains were truly the gateway to the Arctic. These were amazing people that inspired me, the, the 100 or so people that lived in Wiseman that could live on an edge like that. I, I
• 16:28
  came to realize that we were possibly capable of disturbing even a place as pristine as these beautiful mountains. They're just on the edge of the Arctic. It's a place that I challenged myself and those who would dare to venture into the back country, challenged myself in ways that maybe started to take a toll on my health a little bit, but it was a place that, like, was hard to ignore, so much so that I, I, I later came to write a book about this place. And, and that book was so
• 17:05
  informed by the people I got to live with in Wiseman that I chose to share the proceeds from that book with the people that lived in Wiseman, because they were the book. I was just the vessel.
• 17:19
  Now the question that I really wish Bill were here for.
• 17:23
  It's 1934. You're in a car in East Tennessee, Bill's old stomping grounds, with Benton MacKaye, Harvey Broome, couple of others, and you all pull over to the side of the road to solve the big problem.
• 17:38
  Take me into that car. Who said what, and when did you all realize you were starting something bigger than a club of like-minded people?
• 17:48
  Oh, that car ride. That car ride, it was, it was such a memory.
• 17:54
  You know, probably the most vocal person in the car that day was old Harvey Broome,
• 18:00
  lawyer from Knoxville. You know, Harvey, I don't know if you know this, but Harvey was a pretty sickly young boy.
• 18:08
  Uh, they didn't think he would live to see adulthood. Uh, and honestly, it was from his parents' third-floor window that he could see off in the distance the Great Smoky Mountains, and his desire to see those places, and then later his time in those places,
• 18:24
  really lit a fire in him, and it also re- reinvigorated his health. And he, of course, went on to live an amazing life. But in that car, what Harvey saw,
• 18:37
  but the fact that we were in a car, was something that really disturbed him, which was, it was possible that suddenly we as a society would start to only see the sights in a place like the Smoky Mountains
• 18:50
  from a car, from a windshield. And he had heard tell that there was plans to possibly build a road through the heart of those beautiful Appalachian Mountains. And so, Harvey was pretty worked up. And, and on our little field trip,
• 19:07
  the car overheated at some point, and we pulled over to the side of the road and opened the hood, and there's steam bellowing out from underneath the hood of the car. And the conversation got more and more agitated. I mean, Harvey was, he was worked up. He was really worked up. And eventually, we were like, "Well, what should we do?" And once the car cooled down, we closed the hood of the car. We got out a piece of paper, and we wrote what would become the articles of incorporation for the Great Wilderness Society. And so, we have Harvey Broome to think about that. Benton MacKaye was there, and I remember Benton one time saying, "Well, if we're gonna be a group of wilderness advocates, it would be like becoming a group of cannibals. Like, if we're cannibals, then only cannibals shall we let in." Like a, a call for purity in the community that fights for wilderness. It was, it was quite, it was quite the car ride, I will say that.
• 20:03
  Bob, the Forest Service later asked you to help figure out what to do with recreation on our national forests, and out of that came the U regulations, that's the letter U, which are really the bones of what became the wilderness system.
• 20:18
  How did a recreation assignment with the Forest Service turn into a framework for keeping wild places forever roadless, and where did Gifford Pinchot fit in? Was he an ally? Was he a mentor? Or was he something more complicated to you?
• 20:37
  Oh, Gifford. He, he, he was a friend. He was a friend. He was an odd one. I, I don't know if you know, but he dated a ghost for a number of years. Like, would go on dates with a ghost, and of course, now they've been reunited where, where we are. But like, he was a character. But, you know, people think of my friend Gifford as, as a conservationist, and he, and he, and he was a conservationist, but some people think that he only saw conservation as a means in which to produce more. You know, his famous line about the greatest good for the greatest number. Um, he, he was about that. But, you know, later when we were starting the Wilderness Society, and we were thinking about this idea of places where we didn't manipulate the landscape, it was Gifford who would come over to the house, and we would have talks about what, what we should look for in protecting the pristine nature of places. I mean, Gifford was,
• 21:32
  he was, he was really influential in that. And, and yet, Gifford was the man who allowed me, as such a young fella, to write these U regulations that, as I understand, have come to sort of undergird the management of what we call wilderness today. I, I, I was just writing regulations saying that we should leave places wild so that people could go experiencing them in a more primitive sort of way. Uh, little did I know that those would become, you know, almost tenets of wilderness management today. But, you know, he gave me those assignments, and, and it was in those assignments that I also started to lean in to things that I thought were important. I, I don't know if you know this, but like,
• 22:17
  the Forest Service
• 22:19
  in the South had segregated campgrounds. There were white folks who were one campground, and Black folks in another campground. And long before those knuckleheads in the military decided to integrate, I proposed that we desegregate the campgrounds in the Forest Service. And Gifford gave me the bandwidth to think of big ideas like that. So, he was very, very important to me in giving me those opportunities. I mean, boy, I was in my 20s when they let me write these regulations. I was, I was not a seasoned veteran, but I had a passion that I think Gifford saw.
• 22:56
  I knew that inside the Forest Service, you had taken on segregation in campgrounds, facilities, at a time when almost nobody else inside any federal land agency was doing that. And additionally, you kept insisting that public lands weren't just for people who could afford a pack string and a month off. You wanted everyday working-class people from cities and other places out there in the wilderness too. Where did that conviction come from, and what were those fights like inside the agency?
• 23:30
  I think they came from my time as a child who split my time from New York, which was becoming ever more befouled with soot and smog. Then I spent time in Baltimore and Washington, DC, and seeing communities that didn't have the opportunities like I did to go to places like Missoula, Montana, or Wiseman in Alaska. And I channeled my father in this idea that we all are owed the same opportunity. That's something that I think this country promises us, is that same opportunity. And so, as I was asked to write these wil- these- ... recreational elements direction for the Forest Service, I thought there should be a component of it that was about creating the pathways in which people who maybe lived in cities that were becoming less and less healthy at the time, to have access to places where they could fill their lungs with fresh air and their eyes with the splendor of wild nature. And again, I think it comes from my father, it comes from having spent time in major metropolitan areas. It was just a part of what I was taught as a young man, that what I have access to, all should have access to.
• 24:50
  And that got you named a communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Uh, a lot of people were targeted by that committee, but unlike most of them, you never really ran from the socialist label. How did you think about that? Was it a smear you had to manage, or did you see your politics and your wilderness work as sort of the same project?
• 25:16
  When your ethics are grounded in who you are,
• 25:20
  people can call you what they want. They can try to paint you for something that you're not.
• 25:26
  I was more interested in spending time in the wild and not dealing with the shenanigans of being one of the eight that was being called a communist or leading to, uh, communist ideas grabbing hold in our country. I was purely standing up for those who were less served. And again, this is a time when, much like I think you're living in today, where
• 25:51
  a gilded age, where robber barons were absorbing the wealth and so many people were forced to live in squalor or live without. And if fighting for those people
• 26:04
  made me a socialist, made me accused of being a communis- communist, then so be it. That is who I was at my core, was that the opportunities and gifts I was given to be able to experience wild places, whether in New York or in Montana or in Idaho, I thought those opportunities belonged to all of us. I thought the opportunities for pay, workers' rights, I think probably my involvement in the workers' rights movement had a lot to do with it. But, uh, that's, that's why I was so committed to the idea, even while my name was being splattered across the front page of the New York Times and shouted in the halls of Congress. I could care less.
• 26:46
  Take us to that last night on the train out of Washington, DC. What was on your mind? And if you could tell us now what you'd want people to remember about you then, what would it be?
• 26:59
  Well, I don't know what you mean by the end, but I can tell you, uh, I have a memory of that evening
• 27:06
  before heading to the train station late at night.
• 27:09
  I went to, to see a friend, the, the daughter of, of my very dear friend, Bob.
• 27:15
  You may know him as Robert Sterling Yard. At the time, Bob was the executive secretary of, of the Wilderness Society, which we had just formed, uh, a few years earlier.
• 27:28
  And I'd gone to see his daughter,
• 27:30
  mm, who I had a keen interest in, but I, I really wanted to talk to her about that I didn't feel like I was paying her father enough.
• 27:39
  I was... You see, I was, I was pretty much
• 27:43
  funding the organization. I was paying Bob out of my own bank account, and I just really felt like while he was such a easy, humble man, we owed him more for what he was doing as executive secretary of this organization that we would hope would go on to preserve some of the wildness that still remained in our country. I, I remember having a nice, quiet dinner with her before, before I headed off to the train station. I was, I was heading home to New York.
• 28:14
  Sorry. E- excuse me, Bob. Am I, am I the only one hearing this train?
• 28:20
  No, you, you're not alone. Clickety-clack, that's my train. Missed my stop the last time. I'll, I'll, I'll not be missing this one.
• 28:28
  But didn't you... Well, well, didn't you pass away on that train?
• 28:34
  Well, as you can see, that was only a temporary condition. Say, before I go, and speaking of temporary, I hope your listeners understand that our public lands are only as permanent as our defense of them. I put it this way back in 1930. There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambitions of civilization to conquer every ditch of the whole Earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness. So I want to encourage them to continue the fight, continue the advocacy, and don't let anyone tell you wild country is a luxury. It is absolutely necessary and meant for everyone.
• 29:22
  Whoa. What, what,
• 29:24
  what happened? What? Why do I, why do I taste campfire smoke? What... Man, my legs are freaking killing me. What, what is going on?
• 29:34
  Well, you, you did once walk 70 miles.
• 29:37
  What, what are you talking about? How, how, how'd the interview go? Did I miss talking to the president?
• 29:43
  No. You did great, Bill.
• 29:46
  I, I, I, I, I don't know what's going on. I don't remember a thing.
• 29:50
  Why don't you let me handle the ending this time around?
• 29:53
  Thanks for joining us today, folks. Coming up on the Wild Idea Podcast, we explore once more the world of private land conservation with the folks from Wild Idea Buffalo. And next month brings another holiday surprise when Bill and I catch up with an old friend and award-winning chef, Mike Costello of Lost Creek Farm, to talk about wilderness, food, and gratitude. As always, if you've got a question or a suggestion, you can offer them up at thewildidea.com. While you're there, sign up for our newsletters, and please, if you can, take a moment to financially support us through Buy Me a Coffee. In the meantime, Bill and Bob and I all wish you a safe and spooky Halloween. We'll see you down the trail.
• 30:38
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Brynn Russell at Podlad. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Springhill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating. And if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [music]