Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 523: 10 Books Every Aspiring Conservationist Should Read with Ed Roberson

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Ep. 523: 10 Books Every Aspiring Conservationist Should Read with Ed Roberson · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
0:05
Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome
0:12
Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon,
0:16
Speaker 1: and today in the show where you're discussing ten books
0:19
Speaker 1: that all aspiring conservationists should read, and joining me is
0:24
Speaker 1: Ed Robertson of the Mountain and Prairie podcast. All right,
0:38
Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
0:42
Speaker 1: by First Light. We're here for what I think is
0:44
Speaker 1: going to be our last episode of Conservation Month, and
0:49
Speaker 1: I wanted to wrap this one up with a little
0:51
Speaker 1: bit of um I guess suggestions for those of you
0:56
Speaker 1: who want to go further. If you've been interest did
1:00
Speaker 1: in some of the conversations we've had over the last month,
1:02
Speaker 1: if you've been inspired, if you're just a person who
1:06
Speaker 1: loves deer hunting and deer and open spaces and other
1:11
Speaker 1: wildlife hunting, fishing, public lands, anything like that, and if
1:14
Speaker 1: you want to try to do some of the stuff
1:17
Speaker 1: we've talked about and you want to learn more about
1:19
Speaker 1: how you can give back to these animals and places
1:22
Speaker 1: and causes, I want to give you some suggestions for
1:24
Speaker 1: where you can go to learn more or where you
1:27
Speaker 1: can go to be inspired further or to dive into
1:30
Speaker 1: these topics even deeper. So we're gonna go through a
1:34
Speaker 1: set of book recommendations. This is gonna be our little
1:38
Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt book club set of reading resources for
1:43
Speaker 1: those who want to dig into this even more. And
1:46
Speaker 1: the guy joining me is Ed Robertson. He's the host
1:50
Speaker 1: of the Mountain and Prairie Podcast, a really, really, really
1:53
Speaker 1: good podcast that I listened to personally, UM exploring all
1:56
Speaker 1: sorts of issues related to the American West and conservation
2:01
Speaker 1: issues of all kinds UM. He's also the conservation director
2:05
Speaker 1: at the Palmer Land Conservancy, and he's the writer of
2:10
Speaker 1: a terrific newsletter that comes out I think every other month,
2:13
Speaker 1: full of book recommendations. The reason why I want in
2:16
Speaker 1: this show in particular is that he's one of the
2:18
Speaker 1: only people I know who seems to read as voraciously
2:22
Speaker 1: as I do about these types of things. So I'm
2:25
Speaker 1: always looking forward to his book recommendations. Whenever he mentions
2:28
Speaker 1: the book, I'm always on it. I'm always looking it up.
2:31
Speaker 1: I know it's gonna be a good one. So he
2:33
Speaker 1: seemed to be the perfect person to come on here
2:34
Speaker 1: and talk about this kind of stuff. So you know,
2:38
Speaker 1: what we're gonna talk about is, of course book recommendations,
2:40
Speaker 1: but we also do get to some other media suggestions.
2:44
Speaker 1: We talked about some favorite documentaries, we talked about some newsletters,
2:47
Speaker 1: we really like, a couple of podcasts we like. Um So,
2:50
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about anything along these lines,
2:52
Speaker 1: we've got ideas for it. But I will say, if
2:55
Speaker 1: you are not a big reader, if you don't buy
2:58
Speaker 1: a lot of books and sit there in your chair
3:00
Speaker 1: at night and read, I would at least you know
3:03
Speaker 1: I'm biased here, but I would still suggest you tune
3:06
Speaker 1: into this one because man, if you're listening to a podcast,
3:10
Speaker 1: you can listen to an audiobook, and audio books are
3:13
Speaker 1: often just as just as much fun and just as
3:16
Speaker 1: engaging as listening to a conversation like this. So tune
3:19
Speaker 1: in and try a couple of these through your earbuds,
3:22
Speaker 1: go on your morning run, go on your drive to work,
3:25
Speaker 1: whatever might be. And you know, while I of course
3:28
Speaker 1: would hope you still listen to this podcast, add one
3:30
Speaker 1: of these audiobooks to your listening repertoire as well, because
3:34
Speaker 1: I think you know, we talked about this later in
3:36
Speaker 1: the show, a book allows you to go deeper into
3:40
Speaker 1: a subject. You can engage it in a just totally
3:43
Speaker 1: different way than you ever could with a podcast conversation
3:47
Speaker 1: like this. You know, we're only ever able to go
3:49
Speaker 1: surface level with these kinds of conversations. A book can
3:52
Speaker 1: take you down many, many, many layers deeper. And I'm
3:59
Speaker 1: a big advocate of that kind of thing. I'm a
4:01
Speaker 1: big advocate of all these books. I'm a big advocate
4:04
Speaker 1: for reading in general and continuing to learn and grow.
4:08
Speaker 1: Um And of course I love to do that when
4:10
Speaker 1: it comes to actually deer hunting. But as we've been
4:13
Speaker 1: talking about this last month, there's more to being a
4:16
Speaker 1: deer hunter than just hunting deer and uh, I think
4:19
Speaker 1: these books will help inspire and form and educate and
4:24
Speaker 1: empower us all to to do a little bit of that.
4:26
Speaker 1: More so, ten books all aspiring conservations should read with
4:33
Speaker 1: Ed Robertson. That is the conversation we're going to have.
4:37
Speaker 1: I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this one. We go back and forth,
4:40
Speaker 1: we bounce back. Each of us had five ideas. We
4:42
Speaker 1: each share our recommendation and we kind of discuss why
4:45
Speaker 1: we like it, what the books about many of these
4:47
Speaker 1: books both of us read, so we kind of riff
4:50
Speaker 1: off of each other and dive into not just the
4:52
Speaker 1: book topics themselves, but also just talk about these issues
4:54
Speaker 1: in general. So this conversation really ends up being more
4:57
Speaker 1: than just a set of like, read this, read this,
4:59
Speaker 1: read this. It really ends up being Hey, I love
5:02
Speaker 1: this book, here's why, and then let's talk more about
5:04
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. UM. So I enjoyed it. I
5:08
Speaker 1: think a lot of you will too. I appreciate you
5:10
Speaker 1: tuning in, So let's get to my chat with Ed.
5:15
Speaker 1: Alright with me now on the show is Ed Robertson. Ed,
5:19
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. Thanks for having
5:22
Speaker 1: me Mark. I'm I'm really excited for this one. And
5:25
Speaker 1: this is a oh. This is like an intersection of
5:29
Speaker 1: two different circles on a ven diagram that that maybe
5:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as obvious to some folks, but to me,
5:35
Speaker 1: it's a perfect fit. Um. I've been a big fan
5:38
Speaker 1: of yours, a big fan of your work for a
5:40
Speaker 1: number of years now, and I've just been waiting for
5:43
Speaker 1: the right excuse to pull you into my world, and
5:46
Speaker 1: and this seemed to be it. So I'm glad, I'm
5:48
Speaker 1: glad we're here. Thanks for making the time. Oh yeah, man,
5:50
Speaker 1: Well I'm saying, you know, right back at you. I've
5:52
Speaker 1: I've been a huge fan of everything you're doing. And
5:54
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, you said there two ven diagrams,
5:57
Speaker 1: but I think it could possibly be like or fifteen
6:00
Speaker 1: different circles and then we're right there in the middle.
6:04
Speaker 1: But you know, everything you said, I say back at
6:07
Speaker 1: you tenfold. You know, I'm just a huge fan of
6:09
Speaker 1: everything you're doing and how you've built your business up
6:12
Speaker 1: and how you you know, you really add a lot
6:15
Speaker 1: of value. I'm not, by by any means, I'm not
6:17
Speaker 1: a hardcore big game hunter, but I still, you know,
6:21
Speaker 1: get so much value at every out of everything you do.
6:23
Speaker 1: And uh, anyway, it's just great to be here. Thanks
6:25
Speaker 1: for having me. Yeah, I appreciate it. So let me
6:28
Speaker 1: give you a little context and and and some of this.
6:30
Speaker 1: You know, But over the last four or five weeks
6:33
Speaker 1: or so, I've been doing a series here on Wired
6:36
Speaker 1: to Hunt kind of exploring a number of different conservation
6:39
Speaker 1: related topics, um questions, issues and at different kind of
6:45
Speaker 1: levels of how directly relevant it is to the core
6:48
Speaker 1: audience of wire Hunt, which is you know, we're mostly
6:51
Speaker 1: pretty darned hardcore white tail hunters, but we're also outdoor
6:54
Speaker 1: enthusiasts more generally hunt other things. We fish, we hike,
6:58
Speaker 1: we can't, We do a lot of different things. So
7:00
Speaker 1: I know that these people listening uh are like you
7:03
Speaker 1: and I and that we we generally love the outdoors
7:06
Speaker 1: and want to make sure it's around into the future
7:09
Speaker 1: for us and our kids and grandkids and other people
7:11
Speaker 1: to enjoy. So this this Conservation Month series has kind
7:16
Speaker 1: of been all over the place. We've talked about things
7:18
Speaker 1: directly tied to white tailed deer. We've talked about things
7:21
Speaker 1: related to white tailed deer habitat. We've talked about things
7:24
Speaker 1: like the influence of some of our forefathers like Aldo
7:28
Speaker 1: Leopold and the legacy he left um. But one of
7:32
Speaker 1: the topics we really focused on last week was what
7:36
Speaker 1: does conservation look like in in a regular life? Like
7:41
Speaker 1: we talked about this idea of like being a conservationist,
7:44
Speaker 1: but what does that mean, you know, on a day
7:47
Speaker 1: to day basis? Uh? So, So I wanted to talk
7:51
Speaker 1: to you and because of because of two things. Number One,
7:55
Speaker 1: from the outside looking in, it sure seems like you
7:58
Speaker 1: are a person who's taken this love of the outdoors
8:01
Speaker 1: and this desire to give back in some way. You
8:04
Speaker 1: have seemed to have found some really great ways to
8:06
Speaker 1: put that into day to day practice in your own life.
8:09
Speaker 1: But then you've also been someone who seems to be
8:13
Speaker 1: fascinated and curious and interested with the whole suite of
8:18
Speaker 1: ideas and philosophies and adventures that all are related to
8:22
Speaker 1: these topics, and and like me, read about those things
8:26
Speaker 1: a ton and engage with a lot of media. So
8:29
Speaker 1: so my my mission here today as twofold number one,
8:32
Speaker 1: I want to get a little bit of insight into
8:34
Speaker 1: how you got to where you are and why you
8:36
Speaker 1: went to where you are, And then the bigger discussion
8:40
Speaker 1: will be kind of having a two person book club
8:43
Speaker 1: here if you're willing and talk through a number of
8:46
Speaker 1: different book ideas, and maybe some other things too, podcasts
8:50
Speaker 1: or films or anything like that that folks can take
8:53
Speaker 1: a look at if they want to go further in
8:55
Speaker 1: this kind of exploration, if folks want to learn more
8:58
Speaker 1: about conservation or for an ideas or different people are different.
9:02
Speaker 1: I don't know the history or the future of any
9:04
Speaker 1: of these issues. I want to give folks a bunch
9:06
Speaker 1: of options, a menu of what they could turn to
9:09
Speaker 1: next to keep dive into this stuff. And with your
9:12
Speaker 1: podcast Mountain Prairie and your book recommendations that you send
9:15
Speaker 1: out in your newsletter and everything you do. UM, I
9:19
Speaker 1: know that you are similar to me, very well read
9:22
Speaker 1: on a lot of these things. UM, so I thought
9:24
Speaker 1: you'd be the perfect guy to talk about this stuff.
9:26
Speaker 1: Are you? Are you game for that? Oh? Yeah, man,
9:28
Speaker 1: I just again, I appreciate you have me on and
9:31
Speaker 1: um I was getting ready to say, well, that's actually uh,
9:35
Speaker 1: that's actually a character I play, is that the conservation
9:37
Speaker 1: GUYDA work for actually work for excellent. But it's been
9:44
Speaker 1: quite a cool story, I mean as far as that
9:48
Speaker 1: how ended up in this conservation world. But I think
9:51
Speaker 1: you and I are very similar in that we're um,
9:54
Speaker 1: you know, both curious, it could possibly be curious to
9:58
Speaker 1: a fault, um just trying to absorb this this information
10:01
Speaker 1: across a wide, um you know, wide spectrum of of
10:05
Speaker 1: any different kind of media we can find. And so I, UM, yeah,
10:08
Speaker 1: I think we will have a lot to talk about
10:10
Speaker 1: and I think, if anything, the challenge is gonna be
10:12
Speaker 1: to keep it within uh like ten hours yeah, well
10:16
Speaker 1: give me, give me a little bit of that backstory. Ed, Um,
10:19
Speaker 1: how did you get to this point where so much
10:23
Speaker 1: of your life does revolve around conservation related issues? What
10:28
Speaker 1: was kind of impetus for that? And how did it
10:30
Speaker 1: go from maybe uh uh an inkling of an idea
10:33
Speaker 1: to a vocation and career. Yeah, well, I mean to
10:37
Speaker 1: to go way back. People can tell by this accident.
10:39
Speaker 1: I'm not from the West Originally. I grew up in
10:41
Speaker 1: eastern North Carolina, and uh, I always loved the outdoors,
10:46
Speaker 1: you know, I spent I think I spent the vast
10:47
Speaker 1: majority of my childhood hanging out in this ditch in
10:50
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, uh, chasing frogs and catching, you know, trying
10:54
Speaker 1: to fish and doing all this just outdoor type stuff.
10:57
Speaker 1: And I think I went to college in North Carolina. Uh,
11:00
Speaker 1: and I always wanted to go out west and move
11:03
Speaker 1: out west. But I think at HWO, I took myself
11:07
Speaker 1: too seriously just to go out and be a scheme
11:10
Speaker 1: bum like I think I probably should have been. And
11:12
Speaker 1: so when I got out of college, Um, you and
11:15
Speaker 1: I share a similar um, you know background in the
11:18
Speaker 1: early days of our careers, and I decided right it's
11:21
Speaker 1: time to be a grown up. I'm gonna go get
11:23
Speaker 1: a job at Merrill Lynch and I'm gonna wear a
11:25
Speaker 1: suit every day, and I'm gonna be a serious grown up.
11:28
Speaker 1: And I mean, it's, uh, it's funny how how we
11:34
Speaker 1: we do that? And you know, you're trying to be
11:36
Speaker 1: responsible and trying to follow this well worn path. And
11:40
Speaker 1: I think, you know, for some people with works and
11:41
Speaker 1: some people they love it, but for me, it just
11:44
Speaker 1: didn't click. And I couldn't quite figure it out because
11:47
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I'm doing what I feel like I'm
11:49
Speaker 1: supposed to do, but this is very boring and I
11:52
Speaker 1: don't really feel fulfilled doing it. And I eventually got
11:55
Speaker 1: into the commercial real estate business, which is really more
11:58
Speaker 1: the same in North Carolina, wearing a suit, you know,
12:00
Speaker 1: trying to sell warehouses and office buildings and things like that.
12:04
Speaker 1: And I just had this urge like I really want
12:06
Speaker 1: to move out West. I want to move out West.
12:07
Speaker 1: And I didn't even really know what that meant. I mean,
12:09
Speaker 1: I'd had a few trips, like my dad and I
12:11
Speaker 1: rafted the Grand Canyon when I was in high school,
12:13
Speaker 1: and I went on a like a backpacking campig trip
12:16
Speaker 1: in Colorado, but I just had this urge to be
12:18
Speaker 1: moving west and so eventually, um, I just made up
12:23
Speaker 1: my mind, all right, I'm gonna move to Jackson Hole.
12:25
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't really care if I have
12:27
Speaker 1: to if I have to wait tables or do whatever.
12:29
Speaker 1: I just I really want to live out there. But
12:32
Speaker 1: it was during the real estate boom, um, you know,
12:34
Speaker 1: around two thousand and four, two thousand and five, and
12:36
Speaker 1: I found out about this job selling ranches called a
12:40
Speaker 1: ranch broker, and I was like, what, like, that's a
12:43
Speaker 1: real job. You get to broker the sale these and
12:45
Speaker 1: these you know, these big ranches, like the kind of
12:47
Speaker 1: things like Ted Turner spots and um. And so I
12:52
Speaker 1: just kept hassling different companies and sending my resume out
12:55
Speaker 1: and finally one of them was like, hey, we're interested
12:57
Speaker 1: in talking with you. And so I flew out, flew
13:00
Speaker 1: out of Jackson Hole, had a meeting with them, and
13:02
Speaker 1: they ended up hiring me. So I moved to Jackson Hole.
13:05
Speaker 1: And at the time, you know, it was awesome. Um
13:07
Speaker 1: it was I was in the real estate business doing
13:10
Speaker 1: what I had been doing, and I was able to
13:11
Speaker 1: kind of step up my real estate career because I was, um,
13:15
Speaker 1: you know that everything was just crazy during that time.
13:18
Speaker 1: The the real estate market was wild, and um, so
13:22
Speaker 1: I was able to be out west. I wasn't married,
13:25
Speaker 1: didn't have a girlfriend. I just had a dog. And
13:27
Speaker 1: so I was traveling all over Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado
13:30
Speaker 1: doing these ranch deals. And this is where it's kind
13:34
Speaker 1: of funny because a lot of who I was working
13:37
Speaker 1: with were real estate developers, and I had this idea that, well,
13:43
Speaker 1: if they're doing that, if these guys are doing this,
13:45
Speaker 1: I know I could do it. And you know, I
13:47
Speaker 1: felt like for every dollar I was making, they were
13:49
Speaker 1: making a hundred dollars. And so I got in my head,
13:53
Speaker 1: all right, I want to be a real estate developer.
13:54
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that. So I'm gonna
13:55
Speaker 1: go to a business school. And so I started applying
13:58
Speaker 1: to different NBA program, got accepted to one, got a
14:01
Speaker 1: full scholarship, which was kind of a surprise, and went
14:04
Speaker 1: back to business school. But I saw halfway through the program,
14:09
Speaker 1: so this would have been uh oh, seven oh eight.
14:12
Speaker 1: Halfway through the program, and two different things happened. One
14:15
Speaker 1: the whole real estate market collapsed, and I saw that
14:20
Speaker 1: a lot of these so called developers that I've been
14:22
Speaker 1: working with out West were not really developers. It was
14:26
Speaker 1: just kind of a scam. And a lot of these
14:28
Speaker 1: big plans they had to turn, you know, ranches into
14:32
Speaker 1: these shared communities or whatever, just fell apart and in
14:35
Speaker 1: there in the wake of their poor business, left kind
14:41
Speaker 1: of a destroyed landscape. And so, you know, this obsession
14:44
Speaker 1: with the West I had had forever I was I
14:46
Speaker 1: was just I wanted to live out West. I wanted
14:48
Speaker 1: to play a part in it. I had moved out West,
14:50
Speaker 1: and in some ways I had helped facilitate the um
14:54
Speaker 1: screwing up of a lot of these landscapes that I
14:56
Speaker 1: love so much. And then I also had a terrible
15:00
Speaker 1: health scare during business school the summer between my first
15:02
Speaker 1: and second year. Um, I went to the doctor one
15:06
Speaker 1: day and they're like, yeah, you got to testicular cancer,
15:10
Speaker 1: and uh, it was a it was quite a it
15:15
Speaker 1: was like I had a midlife crisis at age thirty.
15:17
Speaker 1: And so the combo of all those things, I ended
15:20
Speaker 1: up being fine with the with the whole health scare,
15:22
Speaker 1: no big you know, no big deal in the in
15:23
Speaker 1: the long run as far as my my health. But
15:26
Speaker 1: it was a big deal as far as my outlook
15:28
Speaker 1: on things. So the combination of thinking I was gonna
15:30
Speaker 1: die there for a little while, combined with seeing this
15:34
Speaker 1: destruction that had taken place in this area of the
15:38
Speaker 1: West that I love so much, it just made me
15:39
Speaker 1: really start re evaluating my choices and what I wanted
15:42
Speaker 1: to do. And so I didn't want to be a
15:45
Speaker 1: real estate developer anymore. But I really didn't know what
15:47
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. But I did have all these
15:48
Speaker 1: skills in real estate, and so when I got out
15:51
Speaker 1: of business school, my wife and I actually lived abroad
15:53
Speaker 1: for a year, and then after that I got back
15:56
Speaker 1: into the real estate business, but with the conservation focus,
15:59
Speaker 1: and so I worked like, for example, I did a
16:01
Speaker 1: deal with Cresty Butte um Ski Resort where they owned
16:05
Speaker 1: some property and we sold it to a land trust.
16:07
Speaker 1: Um it was conserved in perpetuity and there was some
16:09
Speaker 1: trail access that was put in place in perpetuity. I
16:12
Speaker 1: worked with some different counties in Colorado to turn private
16:16
Speaker 1: ranches into open space through acquisition, and I realized kind
16:20
Speaker 1: of over the course of doing these deals that I
16:23
Speaker 1: really felt a connection to the conservation side of things
16:26
Speaker 1: more than I did to like the deal making fast
16:28
Speaker 1: talking like selling stuff. I mean, it's a cool it's
16:31
Speaker 1: a good way to make a living, and you can
16:32
Speaker 1: make a lot of money doing it, but I just didn't.
16:37
Speaker 1: I didn't really feel that much of a connection to it.
16:39
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of um that that ranch brokerage
16:43
Speaker 1: business can be very adversarial. So even though we were
16:45
Speaker 1: doing some cool deals that led to conservation outcomes, it
16:48
Speaker 1: was it was kind of a rough business, and so
16:51
Speaker 1: I just just I was on the board of a
16:53
Speaker 1: local um, a regional land conservation organization, and I got
16:58
Speaker 1: I got a pretty big deal done with a county
17:01
Speaker 1: open space program up in the mountain here in Colorado,
17:03
Speaker 1: and then I went to the executive director. I said, hey,
17:05
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'd have a need for somebody
17:08
Speaker 1: like me with my background, but if you would, I
17:10
Speaker 1: I'd love to do this full time. And thankfully she
17:13
Speaker 1: was able to find a spot for me. So now
17:16
Speaker 1: for about the last four years, I've been doing full
17:18
Speaker 1: timely and conservation, which is you know, it's basically real estate,
17:20
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, it's for what
17:23
Speaker 1: at least what I consider to be a greater good.
17:25
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the it was supposed to be
17:28
Speaker 1: short but long version of my weird career trajectory. It wasn't.
17:32
Speaker 1: It wasn't too long. Um So, now you work for
17:36
Speaker 1: a land conservancy, right, can you can you describe real
17:40
Speaker 1: briefly just what that actually means, Like, what does a
17:44
Speaker 1: group like Palmer do? I mean, I know involves easemans
17:47
Speaker 1: and different things like that, but how does conservation and
17:49
Speaker 1: real estate, you know, intersect. You mentioned a couple brief
17:53
Speaker 1: examples they are in crestedbut but can you just kind
17:55
Speaker 1: of describe that a little more. Yeah, Palmer has three
17:58
Speaker 1: main buckets that we work in. One is public open space.
18:01
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of public parks here and
18:03
Speaker 1: called the Colora Springs area that we have conserved, and
18:06
Speaker 1: we use a tool called a conservation easement, which is
18:09
Speaker 1: is basically a deed restriction that prevents development on a property.
18:13
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of really beautiful hiking and
18:16
Speaker 1: mountain biking trail areas here in Colora Springs and we
18:19
Speaker 1: have protected those in perpetuity they will always be open space.
18:23
Speaker 1: We also work with a lot of farmers and ranchers
18:25
Speaker 1: and that's mostly what I do. One of my big
18:27
Speaker 1: projects is trying to figure out a way to balance
18:30
Speaker 1: the water needs here in the West, which is a
18:33
Speaker 1: you know, that's a big issue obviously, and trying to
18:36
Speaker 1: figure out how do we keep irrigated farm land irrigated
18:39
Speaker 1: but not at the expense of um cities and municipalities
18:42
Speaker 1: being able to grow because they need water. And so
18:45
Speaker 1: we work with farmers and ranchers really to try to
18:47
Speaker 1: keep their farms and ranches as farms and ranches and
18:49
Speaker 1: not be turned into uh, you know, housing developments or
18:53
Speaker 1: shopping centers or anything like that. Not that there's anything
18:56
Speaker 1: wrong with that, but we do you know, we obviously
18:59
Speaker 1: need farms and ranches for a lot of reasons. And
19:01
Speaker 1: then the second, the third bucket is just scenic views.
19:04
Speaker 1: You know that if if you drive from here in
19:06
Speaker 1: Carra Springs up into the mountains, there's this big view
19:09
Speaker 1: of Pike's Peak, and we have conserved all the ranches
19:12
Speaker 1: along the highway there so you'll always have this really
19:16
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful big view of Pike's Peak and those
19:19
Speaker 1: ranches will always be open space and they'll never be
19:21
Speaker 1: you know, track houses or anything like that. Man, It's
19:25
Speaker 1: it's such important work these days. That kind of thing
19:29
Speaker 1: all across the West, with you know, just so many
19:33
Speaker 1: more people wanting to live these places, and so many
19:35
Speaker 1: ranchers or farmers aging out and trying to figure out
19:38
Speaker 1: what to do with their land once they don't want
19:41
Speaker 1: to work it anymore, and kids not wanting to carry
19:43
Speaker 1: on the family work. And you know, I mean, I'm
19:46
Speaker 1: sure you deal this all the time, but just locally
19:48
Speaker 1: around like the places that I've spent the last decade,
19:51
Speaker 1: when I go out West and Idaho and Wyoming and stuff,
19:53
Speaker 1: just seeing more and more houses and developments popping up.
19:56
Speaker 1: It's just it's scary, you know, thinking about one of
19:59
Speaker 1: my locally content their twenty or thirty years if there
20:01
Speaker 1: aren't more things done like what you're describing. So, oh yeah,
20:05
Speaker 1: it really is. And and I think as more people
20:07
Speaker 1: want to move out here, and you know, I'm one
20:08
Speaker 1: of them, North Carolina and I've moved out here. And
20:11
Speaker 1: but the as the property values increase, as these you know,
20:15
Speaker 1: as the generations, um, you know, as as the properties
20:18
Speaker 1: moved through generations, when somebody dies, the you know, it's
20:21
Speaker 1: a big deal for some of these farmers and ranchers
20:23
Speaker 1: are being to pay the estate taxes as the real
20:25
Speaker 1: estate value UM increases, and so that's where these conservation easements.
20:29
Speaker 1: They're a tool that can allow that can generate some
20:32
Speaker 1: income and can reduce the property value so that that's
20:35
Speaker 1: not as much of an issue because you know, some
20:37
Speaker 1: of these farmers and ranchers they don't have any choice
20:39
Speaker 1: other than to start selling off their land because the
20:43
Speaker 1: value is so high now. So it's UM. You know,
20:46
Speaker 1: it's it's a challenge and it's tough, but it's it's
20:49
Speaker 1: fun to be working on and it's fun to spend.
20:51
Speaker 1: You know. I'm I'm forty four, so I've been working
20:54
Speaker 1: for quite a long time now, and to be able
20:55
Speaker 1: to UM, you know, kind of apply these skills I've
20:58
Speaker 1: learned over the years to something that matters to me UM,
21:02
Speaker 1: and I think matters to a lot of people. I
21:03
Speaker 1: think it's it's a real it's a real honor to
21:05
Speaker 1: be able to do that. Yeah. So, so how about
21:09
Speaker 1: this other half of your life? Though? You host the
21:11
Speaker 1: Mountain Prairie podcast and you you know, do this. You've
21:14
Speaker 1: got this terrific reading list that you send out every
21:17
Speaker 1: month with book recommendations, and it seems like you've you've
21:21
Speaker 1: filled up any other gaps in your life with you know,
21:26
Speaker 1: learning more about conservation and wild places and these things
21:30
Speaker 1: you care about and discussing these ideas of other people
21:34
Speaker 1: that also care about them. Um, do you think there's
21:41
Speaker 1: as okay as a person who wants to let's let's
21:45
Speaker 1: just say, as as an individual who says, you know what,
21:48
Speaker 1: I care about these places, whether it's you know, an
21:51
Speaker 1: open farm in Michigan or the National forest in Colorado.
21:56
Speaker 1: I care about wild places. I care about wild animals.
21:59
Speaker 1: I want to do some then I want to be
22:01
Speaker 1: some kind of positive Um. I want to have some
22:04
Speaker 1: kind of positive difference. So, like, let's let's just say
22:06
Speaker 1: that is a feeling that one of us has. Is
22:09
Speaker 1: there is there actual value, like intrinsic value, or is
22:16
Speaker 1: it in some way a good thing to read about
22:19
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, learn about this kind of stuff,
22:22
Speaker 1: dive into a library of books related conservation, or listen
22:25
Speaker 1: to podcasts like yours who talk with folks to do
22:28
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. Is that valuable to the cause
22:31
Speaker 1: or is this just entertainment? How do you look at
22:33
Speaker 1: like all the hours you spend at night, probably sitting
22:35
Speaker 1: in your chair or your bed reading these books and
22:37
Speaker 1: learning about this stuff. Is that just entertainment for you
22:40
Speaker 1: or do you think that that actually serves a greater
22:43
Speaker 1: good in some kind of way. Yeah, you know, I've
22:46
Speaker 1: always said that. And and one of the books actually
22:49
Speaker 1: that I was gonna recommend this by a guy named
22:51
Speaker 1: David Gestter, and he talks about um. He talks about
22:53
Speaker 1: how in order to want to protect something, you have
22:56
Speaker 1: to love it and it or in in order to
22:58
Speaker 1: to buy into some calls and to to make it be,
23:01
Speaker 1: you know, rise to the top of your priority list,
23:03
Speaker 1: you need to love it. And so I feel like
23:05
Speaker 1: whether it's going out for a hike or a run,
23:07
Speaker 1: or going on a hunting trip, or you know, spending
23:09
Speaker 1: time outside with my girls or reading these books. You know,
23:13
Speaker 1: I read a wide variety of books, but when it
23:16
Speaker 1: comes to the Western conservation, like, yeah, it's entertainment, yeah,
23:19
Speaker 1: and enjoy it. But if anything, it just kind of
23:22
Speaker 1: fuels this love of the place and of open space
23:26
Speaker 1: and of wild places that causes me to want to
23:30
Speaker 1: devote more and more time to it. And so, you know,
23:32
Speaker 1: when I was working at Merrill Lynch, I was reading
23:35
Speaker 1: all these books about the West. Whether it's likely you know,
23:38
Speaker 1: adventures of mountain climbers or people on these river trips,
23:42
Speaker 1: or then you know, dreaming about fishing on Flat Creek
23:45
Speaker 1: and Jackson Hole or whatever, and that is kind of
23:48
Speaker 1: a yeah, that kind of obsession, um is eventually lead
23:52
Speaker 1: me to where I am, which is where I'm doing
23:54
Speaker 1: it full time. And I don't think, I don't think
23:56
Speaker 1: if anybody wants to make a difference, whether that's you know,
23:58
Speaker 1: devoting their career to it or even just donating fifty
24:01
Speaker 1: bucks to a local land trust, no matter what, you've
24:04
Speaker 1: gotta be, you've got to be kind of obsessed with
24:07
Speaker 1: it or buy into it, and and and and it's
24:09
Speaker 1: got to be important to you. So I can't speak
24:12
Speaker 1: for for anybody other than myself, but for me, this
24:15
Speaker 1: endless reading and just curiosity about all this stuff that
24:19
Speaker 1: is yes, entertainment because I enjoy it, but it just
24:22
Speaker 1: fuels the work. I mean, I think all the stuff
24:25
Speaker 1: you do with you know, with the back forty and
24:28
Speaker 1: and your podcast and everything on Meat Eater like that,
24:31
Speaker 1: that is fueling people who are sitting at home and
24:33
Speaker 1: maybe they're you know, a job that they need to
24:36
Speaker 1: pay the bills, but it's not necessarily the best thing
24:38
Speaker 1: in the world. But I would guarantee that there have
24:40
Speaker 1: been a lot of people who have sent their money
24:42
Speaker 1: to like back country hunters and anglers because of watching
24:45
Speaker 1: you and your colleagues at meat Eater, And so I
24:47
Speaker 1: think it's kind of both. Really, it's both entertainment and
24:50
Speaker 1: fuel to make you to to make you fall in
24:54
Speaker 1: love with something and make you care about something so
24:56
Speaker 1: you'll devote your resources towards it. If that makes sense, Yeah, yeah,
24:59
Speaker 1: it does. At think it falls very much in the
25:01
Speaker 1: line with with with my view, I guess too. I
25:04
Speaker 1: feel like I if I were to sit and I
25:08
Speaker 1: had this debate myself often, not terribly often, but ever
25:12
Speaker 1: once in a while, I'll watch and we'll watch a
25:14
Speaker 1: couple episodes of some comedy series or something, and I
25:17
Speaker 1: get done with it, and I kind of feel like
25:19
Speaker 1: I just ate junk food, like I just ate a
25:21
Speaker 1: meal at McDonald's. But if I were to sit down
25:24
Speaker 1: and read a book or something, I always, always, always,
25:28
Speaker 1: even if it's mostly for entertainment, I always feel like
25:31
Speaker 1: I did something more valuable, like I ate my vegetables,
25:34
Speaker 1: um and particularly if it's a book about wild places
25:37
Speaker 1: or conservation or history of these things or something like that.
25:41
Speaker 1: It just it like fills up you said, fuelly, it
25:44
Speaker 1: kind of fuels you. I feel like it fills my reservoir.
25:47
Speaker 1: It like fills my gas tank, both with Sometimes it's
25:50
Speaker 1: just actual tactical knowledge, like how do you make a difference,
25:54
Speaker 1: Like how do I do something that's going to keep
25:57
Speaker 1: this chunkle land wild? Or sometimes it's teaching me how
26:02
Speaker 1: to keep hope or how to get piste off. Or
26:06
Speaker 1: it inspires me, or it shows me that oh wow,
26:09
Speaker 1: these people did this a hundred years ago. You still
26:13
Speaker 1: you can do it too, or or your generation can
26:15
Speaker 1: do it too. Or sometimes it changes my mind on
26:18
Speaker 1: things and makes me look at stuff in a different way.
26:21
Speaker 1: Sometimes it further uh solidifies my passion for something. Sometimes
26:27
Speaker 1: it points me in a brand new direction that I
26:29
Speaker 1: need to learn a whole bunch more about so that
26:31
Speaker 1: I can start working on the right things. Um, I
26:34
Speaker 1: just feel like, and I'm obviously biased, but I do
26:37
Speaker 1: feel like if if if I want to say that
26:42
Speaker 1: I care about these things and want to do something
26:44
Speaker 1: about it, I have to constantly be engaging with it
26:47
Speaker 1: and learning about it to make sure that my tanks
26:50
Speaker 1: full and then my compass is point in the right direction.
26:52
Speaker 1: I think that. And you know, and then also still
26:55
Speaker 1: like have that you talked about, have that like love
26:57
Speaker 1: and passion for it, and this is a way to
26:59
Speaker 1: engage that thing to um. So I think that's why
27:02
Speaker 1: I keep on buying these things in stamp late and
27:05
Speaker 1: night reading them. No, I agree, And and I also think,
27:08
Speaker 1: you know, in school, and you know, I've had this,
27:11
Speaker 1: I've had the fortune of having this fabulous education, probably
27:14
Speaker 1: too much education. But the reality is in school, like
27:18
Speaker 1: when you're learning history, you're reading these you know, quote
27:21
Speaker 1: history books, and it's just this like laundry list of
27:24
Speaker 1: one thing after another. But what what I found as
27:27
Speaker 1: a as I found I realized it probably midway through
27:30
Speaker 1: college when and and I've you know, kind of gone
27:33
Speaker 1: crazy with it as a as an adult. But they're
27:35
Speaker 1: all these books out there that are really, really, really
27:39
Speaker 1: fun to read. It's not like just boring history. And
27:42
Speaker 1: because I didn't really like history when I was in school,
27:44
Speaker 1: in high school or college, but when you can have
27:47
Speaker 1: access to books, and I mean, I think yours is
27:49
Speaker 1: a perfect example of of a book that's kind of
27:53
Speaker 1: like a personal journey, you know, some adventure, but by
27:58
Speaker 1: by reading this book about this guy who's out exploring
28:00
Speaker 1: all this public land, you kind of sneak in all
28:03
Speaker 1: this this very specific knowledge about the history of public
28:06
Speaker 1: lands and issues facing public lands. And so I think
28:09
Speaker 1: for for people who may not be like big readers now,
28:12
Speaker 1: or may not or may think readings boring or whatever.
28:14
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, I've been there and I
28:16
Speaker 1: know that. But I think, what if you if you
28:19
Speaker 1: find the right books, and they don't have to be
28:21
Speaker 1: hardcore just straight up academic history books. They can be
28:24
Speaker 1: a biography about somebody you know or like, like Hampton
28:27
Speaker 1: Sizes for example, I think he's the master. He wrote
28:29
Speaker 1: The Blood and Thunder, which is basically a biography of
28:32
Speaker 1: Kid Carson. And but by reading this crazy story about
28:37
Speaker 1: Kit Carson, you also learned the history of the American Southwest.
28:40
Speaker 1: And and so I just think, you know, for people
28:42
Speaker 1: who read a lot, this is all you know, it's
28:45
Speaker 1: nothing new. But I think if if you just one
28:47
Speaker 1: of these people, and I get it, who's like I'd
28:50
Speaker 1: rather watch TV you're reading? You just you're probably reading
28:52
Speaker 1: the wrong books. And so go for these awesome books.
28:54
Speaker 1: And I know, I know you've got some really good
28:56
Speaker 1: ones to recommend here, but I think yours is a
28:58
Speaker 1: great place to start for this kind of stuff. Off,
29:00
Speaker 1: so anybody Mark's pro bono publicist, read that book immediately,
29:06
Speaker 1: that Wild Country and that Big Journeys to the Past
29:08
Speaker 1: President Future of America's Public Lands, available at all bookstores.
29:12
Speaker 1: Blah blah. I do appreciate the kind of words, d um.
29:19
Speaker 1: But you're right um about the about the other stuff. Um.
29:23
Speaker 1: I do think you know one thing that I think
29:27
Speaker 1: is helping a lot of folks these days who maybe
29:29
Speaker 1: weren't historically readers engage more of books. Which is a
29:32
Speaker 1: cool thing is is how accessible and convenient audio books
29:36
Speaker 1: are now. Yes, you know so, So we're about to
29:39
Speaker 1: get into a bunch of book recommendations. If you're not
29:42
Speaker 1: a person who likes to sit down with a physical book,
29:44
Speaker 1: but you're listening to a podcast right now, well this
29:48
Speaker 1: is just like a podcast these books, you know, grab
29:50
Speaker 1: a subscription to Audible or go to Libby and get
29:54
Speaker 1: these for free. Some of these you can get on
29:55
Speaker 1: like that. This is Libby is like a like a
29:58
Speaker 1: digital library for adio books. Um, and listen to some
30:02
Speaker 1: of these. It's it's a great way to fail your
30:04
Speaker 1: time while taking a run or driving to work or whatever. Um.
30:09
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of ways to get this kind
30:11
Speaker 1: of stuff, but I do think that books have have
30:15
Speaker 1: a unique way of diving deep into something and really
30:20
Speaker 1: like taking you on a journey that very few other
30:22
Speaker 1: media forums can. Um. Like, podcasts are great, but I
30:26
Speaker 1: don't think I can do here on my podcast anything
30:29
Speaker 1: like what somebody can do in a book. Uh, same
30:32
Speaker 1: thing for like a magazine article or you know, a
30:35
Speaker 1: TV episode or something like that. You just can't do
30:39
Speaker 1: the same thing as a book can, in my opinion,
30:42
Speaker 1: which is which is why I think they're so powerful.
30:45
Speaker 1: I completely agree. So that said, I guess ed, should
30:48
Speaker 1: we should we get into these book recommendations. Um, you've
30:52
Speaker 1: got some good ones. I've got some good ones. The
30:54
Speaker 1: idea here is I want to give folks a set
30:58
Speaker 1: of ten maybe more by the time, and we dive
31:01
Speaker 1: into some of these and kind of related books, but
31:03
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ideas of books they can pick
31:05
Speaker 1: up and listen to or read if they want to
31:09
Speaker 1: learn more about any number of different issues related to conservation.
31:13
Speaker 1: So I I've got five recommendations, and I think you've
31:17
Speaker 1: got five recommendations UM, let's just let's run through this
31:21
Speaker 1: list and talk about a little bit. All right, who
31:23
Speaker 1: want you want to go first? How about you? Ed,
31:25
Speaker 1: You're you're the guest. What's your first one on the list. Well,
31:30
Speaker 1: anybody who listens to my stuff or has seen my
31:32
Speaker 1: reading list, they know that I've got possibly a weird
31:36
Speaker 1: obsession with you or Roosevelt, really everything about the guy,
31:39
Speaker 1: Like obviously from a conservation standpoint, but I always talk
31:44
Speaker 1: about THEO Roosevelt, his operating system of just going as
31:49
Speaker 1: hard as you can every day, you know, being being
31:51
Speaker 1: very very focused and doing purpose driven work and living
31:55
Speaker 1: what he called the strenuous life, just working working very
31:59
Speaker 1: very hard towards a purpose that means something to you.
32:02
Speaker 1: And so I could recommend, you know, Roosevelt books all
32:05
Speaker 1: day long, but when it comes to conservation, I feel
32:08
Speaker 1: like one of the best books out there, and it's
32:11
Speaker 1: it's of all the ones I'm gonna recommend, this is
32:13
Speaker 1: probably the toughest read. Um is The Wilderness Warrior, Theodore
32:18
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley. And
32:21
Speaker 1: I know this is an important book to you and
32:23
Speaker 1: you reference it in your book A lot um, but
32:27
Speaker 1: it is probably I mean it's close to eight hundred
32:30
Speaker 1: pages at least, and it is thick, and it basically
32:33
Speaker 1: goes through every part of Theodore Roosevelt's conservation legacy, from
32:38
Speaker 1: his time as a child and how he became so
32:41
Speaker 1: obsessed with the outdoors all the way through his presidency.
32:45
Speaker 1: And you know, when I know a lot of folks
32:47
Speaker 1: who listen to your podcast or public land advocates and
32:50
Speaker 1: I feel like, if you're gonna, you know, gonna be
32:53
Speaker 1: involved in the public lands world, in public lands advocacy
32:56
Speaker 1: these days, which is more important now than ever, you
32:59
Speaker 1: really need to understand this time period when Theodore Roosevelt
33:02
Speaker 1: was was around um and when because a lot of
33:05
Speaker 1: the work that he and his colleagues did set the
33:07
Speaker 1: stage for where we are now and to understand kind
33:11
Speaker 1: of the the challenges facing public lands. It really helps
33:14
Speaker 1: to kind of understand the foundation of it. But I mean,
33:16
Speaker 1: everything from the Boone and Crockett to the Lacey Act
33:20
Speaker 1: to the Antiquities Act, all that stuff is is based um,
33:24
Speaker 1: you know, during on Theodore Roosevelt's time both before he
33:27
Speaker 1: was president, when he was president, and then one of
33:30
Speaker 1: the things I always look for in books and is
33:34
Speaker 1: I like to read a book that makes me want
33:36
Speaker 1: to go out and read like ten more books on
33:38
Speaker 1: the same subject. And this is probably the ultimate example
33:41
Speaker 1: of that because like he talks I remember I read
33:43
Speaker 1: this probably, I mean it was probably ten years ago
33:45
Speaker 1: when I read this, but he talks about Gifford Peen Show,
33:49
Speaker 1: and I thought, man, that guy seems like an interesting dude.
33:52
Speaker 1: And that's I when I first read this, I've never
33:55
Speaker 1: even heard of him. And then it's kind of led
33:57
Speaker 1: me down a rabbit hole of reading different books like
33:59
Speaker 1: The Big Burn for example, and um, and so this
34:03
Speaker 1: is it is a tough it's a tough read, um,
34:06
Speaker 1: just because there's just a lot of info in it.
34:09
Speaker 1: But uh, it's not like you need to read every
34:13
Speaker 1: single word and absorb every single word. But I think
34:16
Speaker 1: if you can just kind of crank through it, it
34:18
Speaker 1: will expose it at least exposed me to all these
34:21
Speaker 1: new ideas and new people and kind of during this
34:24
Speaker 1: very formative time of conservation the United States. And so
34:28
Speaker 1: it's a it's a wonderful book. I'd love to hear
34:30
Speaker 1: your thoughts on it, um, since you you used it
34:33
Speaker 1: when writing an actual book. Yeah, now a percent agree
34:37
Speaker 1: with you. Basically everything you just said is is exactly
34:39
Speaker 1: what I think about it. Um. It is. It is
34:42
Speaker 1: a like you said, it's a big, comprehensive book. So
34:46
Speaker 1: it's not light, easy beach reading. It's not at all.
34:50
Speaker 1: It's the book that you read, like if you want
34:52
Speaker 1: to get a PhD. And this stuff, Like if if
34:55
Speaker 1: you read that Wild Country, if you read my book
34:57
Speaker 1: and you enjoyed that and you left that thinking, man,
34:59
Speaker 1: I really want to get more into the details of
35:02
Speaker 1: this history and more into Teddy. Like that's the first
35:04
Speaker 1: one to jump to if you're willing to, like, if
35:07
Speaker 1: you really want to dig in, if you want to
35:08
Speaker 1: come out of this and like be a you know,
35:11
Speaker 1: a a an expert of sorts, like within you know,
35:15
Speaker 1: just regular life type of people and you want to
35:17
Speaker 1: really get it. You can't find a better resource than
35:20
Speaker 1: that one. Um. But what's particularly interesting about this for
35:23
Speaker 1: hunters is that it's it's not just you know, a
35:27
Speaker 1: heady history of politics and conservation. There's also some fun
35:32
Speaker 1: stuff in there about Roosevelt's early years as a hunter
35:35
Speaker 1: and rancher and cowboy and all that kind of stuff. Um,
35:38
Speaker 1: So you get a little bit of that adventure side
35:41
Speaker 1: of things. And really, I mean it's the dude's fascinating
35:44
Speaker 1: and in his his impact is so far ranging. It
35:47
Speaker 1: wasn't like he was just making a big difference when
35:51
Speaker 1: he was president, which is what he gets a lot
35:52
Speaker 1: of the you know, the uh rightfully still the publicity
35:57
Speaker 1: today for what he did as president, but also as
36:00
Speaker 1: the governor of New York, also as one of the
36:02
Speaker 1: co founders of the Boone and Crocker Club, also as
36:05
Speaker 1: you know, just what he was doing in those early years.
36:07
Speaker 1: I mean he uh, he really had his fingerprints on
36:11
Speaker 1: things for a very very long period of time that
36:14
Speaker 1: you know, as as hunters or anglers or hikers or anything. Today,
36:17
Speaker 1: if you do something outside you are you're enjoying something
36:20
Speaker 1: that Roosevelt had his his his his thumbprint on. Oh yeah,
36:25
Speaker 1: definitely one of them. And I think, you know, if
36:27
Speaker 1: somebody wants to, I get all these questions because I'm
36:29
Speaker 1: so obsessed with t R publicly, and people were like, well,
36:32
Speaker 1: what's the one book I should read, Like, if you
36:34
Speaker 1: want to read one book on him, my favorite book
36:36
Speaker 1: ever is called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward
36:39
Speaker 1: Edmund Morris, but there's another one called The River of
36:41
Speaker 1: Doubt that just focuses on his expedition he did in
36:44
Speaker 1: Brazil after he was president. And those are good entry
36:48
Speaker 1: points just to the man um But if you want
36:50
Speaker 1: to go deep, I don't know of a better book
36:53
Speaker 1: than this one. Yeah, now, I'll give it like a
36:56
Speaker 1: complimentary recommendation off this one that's not on my list.
36:59
Speaker 1: But if you if you are willing to dive deep
37:03
Speaker 1: into that one and you're interested in that, Brinkley wrote
37:06
Speaker 1: another book that kind of acts as a sequel to
37:08
Speaker 1: this one, and it's called Rightful Is It? Rightful Heritage?
37:13
Speaker 1: Rightful Heritage? And that story that book is is just
37:19
Speaker 1: like this Theodore Roosevelt book, but it's with Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
37:22
Speaker 1: so it's about his cousin, and it covers the same
37:26
Speaker 1: type of things. It covers basically the conservation history of
37:31
Speaker 1: this time period from basically where Theodore Roosevelt leaves off,
37:35
Speaker 1: all the way towards till the end of Franklin Roosevelt's
37:39
Speaker 1: life and really going extending a little past that, even
37:42
Speaker 1: talking through everything from what went on during the dust
37:46
Speaker 1: Bowl and the Depression and the conservation, civilian conservation Corps,
37:52
Speaker 1: all sorts of things related to actually Eldo Leopold's involvement
37:55
Speaker 1: in some programs in the thirties and forties. UM. I
37:59
Speaker 1: mean there was those to that family, the rose Up family.
38:01
Speaker 1: Between the two of them, they really had a an
38:04
Speaker 1: enormous influence on public lands and conservation and in early
38:09
Speaker 1: environmental protections here in America. So if you really want
38:13
Speaker 1: to dive deep, that would be the next one to
38:15
Speaker 1: kind of keep it get you down the road a
38:17
Speaker 1: few more decades. Um. Both of those were super helpful
38:21
Speaker 1: as I was exploring the history of these things, UM.
38:24
Speaker 1: And I read somewhere that Brinkley was actually working on
38:28
Speaker 1: another one which covers like the sixties and seventies, UM.
38:32
Speaker 1: But I haven't seen news of that in years, so
38:34
Speaker 1: I don't know if that one got if that one
38:36
Speaker 1: fell off his radar, or if he got lost with
38:38
Speaker 1: other product projects he's working on. But he's a he's
38:42
Speaker 1: a great writer in his story, and I hope that
38:43
Speaker 1: that one comes out because because I've really enjoyed his stuff.
38:46
Speaker 1: If you like to get deep into it, he does
38:47
Speaker 1: it about as good as anyone. Oh yeah, he's great.
38:51
Speaker 1: I when I when I see books like this. I
38:54
Speaker 1: just I wondered, just from a very practical standpoint, how
38:57
Speaker 1: they go about writing something like that, because it's just
39:00
Speaker 1: it's just an amazing piece of work and there's so
39:02
Speaker 1: much info. I don't I don't even like him or
39:04
Speaker 1: Doris Currents, Goodwin people like that, and it's just it's
39:07
Speaker 1: really amazing that they're able to compile that much info
39:10
Speaker 1: in a readable form. So those are great, no easy task, great,
39:15
Speaker 1: great recommendation there, I second it, all right, Can I
39:32
Speaker 1: give one go for it? Okay? So I I kind
39:35
Speaker 1: of I kind of looked at my set of recommendations
39:39
Speaker 1: almost as um they kind of fall in a chronological
39:43
Speaker 1: timeline of sorts. So so my recommendations start by looking
39:47
Speaker 1: back and the end by looking forward. And so my
39:51
Speaker 1: first recommendation is a book called American Serengetti by Dan Flores.
39:57
Speaker 1: And I've talked about this book in the past. My
40:01
Speaker 1: buddy and colleague Steve Ronelle has had him on his
40:03
Speaker 1: podcast and talked about it. So probably people have heard
40:06
Speaker 1: of this one, um, but if you haven't, I can't
40:10
Speaker 1: recommend it enough. And I recommend this as a book
40:14
Speaker 1: that you should read if you want to you know,
40:16
Speaker 1: live out a life focused on conservation, because this book
40:19
Speaker 1: documents documents a series of real mistakes that I think
40:29
Speaker 1: our predecessors made in the decades preceding us. It talks
40:34
Speaker 1: about the Great Plans, It talks about how the American
40:38
Speaker 1: planes were some of the most wildlife rich and vibrant
40:43
Speaker 1: landscapes in the entire world, on par with with like
40:45
Speaker 1: the African Serengetti Um. Just incredible both during the Pleisto
40:50
Speaker 1: seeing you know, fifteen thousand years ago, when there were
40:54
Speaker 1: cyber saber tooth tigers and short faced bears and all
40:57
Speaker 1: those kinds of critters run around, but then also more recently,
41:00
Speaker 1: you know, three years ago, prior to Lewis and Clark
41:04
Speaker 1: and then the preceding um March West by Europeans um,
41:09
Speaker 1: there were just these unbelievable herds of buffalo and prong
41:14
Speaker 1: horns and and packs of wolves and grizzly bears, and
41:18
Speaker 1: just the wildlife was was unbelievable. And so this book
41:22
Speaker 1: takes a look at that history, and it uses a
41:25
Speaker 1: handful of specific species to kind of illustrate, you know,
41:28
Speaker 1: what this looked like. So we get to dive deep
41:31
Speaker 1: into the story of pronghorn, coyotes, wild horses which interestingly
41:36
Speaker 1: evolved first here in North America and then disappeared. And
41:40
Speaker 1: then we're also later uh they had crossed BARRINGI and
41:44
Speaker 1: went over to uh Asia and then that's where they
41:48
Speaker 1: ended up being domesticated and brought back here. Um so
41:52
Speaker 1: wild horses, grizzlies, buffalo wolves. So we we take a
41:56
Speaker 1: look at those six species or seven species and dived
42:00
Speaker 1: into their stories, like what these critters were doing three
42:03
Speaker 1: d four hundred years ago, and then what happened when uh,
42:08
Speaker 1: you know, Americans moved west and proceeded to basically decimate
42:13
Speaker 1: the populations of all these animals and many others. And
42:16
Speaker 1: then we we dive a little bit into within each
42:19
Speaker 1: chapter how each of those two varying degrees has recovered.
42:24
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's just this very interesting look.
42:27
Speaker 1: It's it's both fascinating because I love reading about what
42:31
Speaker 1: these places were like and what these what these wildlife
42:34
Speaker 1: populations were likely. I can't help but read something like this,
42:38
Speaker 1: and then when I'm driving out west and going over
42:40
Speaker 1: the plains in North Dakota, I can't help but come
42:42
Speaker 1: over hill and think in my mind, man, what would
42:45
Speaker 1: have looked like with a million strong buffalo streaming across
42:49
Speaker 1: this grassy valley or something like that. So so I
42:53
Speaker 1: read it and part of me is just like a
42:55
Speaker 1: kid imagining this amazing thing. And then the flip side,
43:00
Speaker 1: when you get into just the this the destruction that
43:05
Speaker 1: we wrought on these places too, it's it's it's then
43:08
Speaker 1: very sobering. So I think it's it's useful to remind
43:13
Speaker 1: us what's possible, both the good and the bad. Right,
43:16
Speaker 1: It's it's possible, like this is what this landscape could support,
43:20
Speaker 1: and then this is what the worst inclinations, the dark
43:24
Speaker 1: side of kind of human nature can also lead to overexploitation. Right,
43:28
Speaker 1: So many stories of ever overexploitation um. And then again
43:32
Speaker 1: the good, which is two different degrees. We kind of
43:35
Speaker 1: right of the ship, we figured out whoa, whoa, whoa.
43:38
Speaker 1: We can't just take take take, take, take, kill, kill, kill,
43:40
Speaker 1: kill kill. We have to moderate, we have to protect
43:43
Speaker 1: and conserve. And because of that, we do have great
43:47
Speaker 1: populations of pronghorn, and we have recovered grizzly bears to
43:50
Speaker 1: a degree, in wolves to a degree, and you know,
43:52
Speaker 1: buffalo to a smaller degree um and and so it's
43:56
Speaker 1: it's both sobering and inspiring to me when I read
43:59
Speaker 1: this book. UM, and it's it's one of those books
44:02
Speaker 1: where it's talking about history and kind of biology and
44:07
Speaker 1: conservation history and all those kinds of things which could
44:09
Speaker 1: be kind of deep text, kind of text heavy, tough reading. Um,
44:14
Speaker 1: but this is actually a very easy reading book. Uh.
44:17
Speaker 1: Dan does a great job of of really telling these
44:21
Speaker 1: stories in a way that um kind of pulls you
44:24
Speaker 1: into the landscape and and makes it um not like
44:29
Speaker 1: not as easy reading as like a fiction book, but
44:31
Speaker 1: but one of the easier reading books that where you're
44:33
Speaker 1: gonna learn a lot about history and about wildlife. It's
44:37
Speaker 1: just it's just a fun and interesting book that I
44:39
Speaker 1: think really can inform what got us to this point. Um,
44:45
Speaker 1: I don't know, have you read that one? Yeah? I have,
44:48
Speaker 1: and I love it. I mean, I think that book
44:51
Speaker 1: and then his other book, Coyote America. He's actually had
44:54
Speaker 1: Dan on my podcast long time ago. I didn't even
44:57
Speaker 1: know him. I just I've gotten to know him since. Um,
45:00
Speaker 1: but I'm kind of cold reached out And I remember
45:02
Speaker 1: my mom listened to that episode. We were talking about coyotes,
45:06
Speaker 1: and we talked a bit about like wild horses and
45:09
Speaker 1: that kind of think. My mom said something like, you know,
45:11
Speaker 1: I don't I don't care one single bit about coyotes.
45:14
Speaker 1: I've never thought anything about coyotes. But I couldn't stop
45:17
Speaker 1: listening to to him talk about it because it was
45:19
Speaker 1: so interesting. And I think he writes just as he speaks,
45:22
Speaker 1: And I think you don't have to have a connection
45:24
Speaker 1: with any of those animals to just be drawn in
45:27
Speaker 1: and completely fascinated by the stories of the animals and
45:31
Speaker 1: then the stories of human interaction. But I'm with you,
45:34
Speaker 1: and I hadn't really thought about it to you said it.
45:36
Speaker 1: But I think, if anything, the books are are very
45:39
Speaker 1: interesting or a historical perspective, but they if they're kind
45:44
Speaker 1: of like uh, advertisement or something for for um game
45:48
Speaker 1: management and wildlife management and what how humans can you know,
45:53
Speaker 1: for better or worse, humans are here. We're here to
45:55
Speaker 1: stay with you know, humans have have always been here
45:57
Speaker 1: since we came across the Bearing Strait. But um, and
46:01
Speaker 1: we're part of the ecosystem. But we can with with uh,
46:04
Speaker 1: with thoughtfulness and with effort, we can manage things so
46:08
Speaker 1: that these wildlife still can thrive, you know, in spite
46:12
Speaker 1: of all the development and in the human interactions, and
46:16
Speaker 1: so I I can't recommend that book enough. I love it,
46:19
Speaker 1: and I think, as you know, especially for for myself
46:23
Speaker 1: and other hunters listening like it is, it is exceptionally
46:27
Speaker 1: important to understand the history of hunting in America, and
46:32
Speaker 1: like we have this dark past that we have to
46:36
Speaker 1: we have to recognize, we have to acknowledge, and we
46:40
Speaker 1: have to think and keep that in mind as we
46:43
Speaker 1: look at what we do today and making sure that
46:46
Speaker 1: we don't ever fall prey to the same ah, I
46:50
Speaker 1: don't want to say instincts, but the same, the same temptations.
46:56
Speaker 1: I think that that drove a lot of what happened
47:00
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds can still pop into day to
47:03
Speaker 1: day life today. It wasn't like not all, but many
47:07
Speaker 1: of these folks that are part of this back in
47:09
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties, forties, sixties, seventies, whatever. It wasn't like
47:13
Speaker 1: they were um, you know, um malevolent. It wasn't like
47:18
Speaker 1: they're going out there trying to extrapate species. It wasn't
47:21
Speaker 1: like they were going out there thinking that they were
47:23
Speaker 1: destroying um buffalo populations. A lot of these folks were
47:27
Speaker 1: out there just trying to get there's They're just like,
47:30
Speaker 1: I just want to go out there have a good time,
47:31
Speaker 1: or I just want to go out there and feed
47:32
Speaker 1: my family, or I'm just gonna go out there and
47:33
Speaker 1: try to make pay the bills. Right. They were all
47:36
Speaker 1: just doing their thing, which is kind of what most
47:39
Speaker 1: of us are still doing today. We're all just trying
47:41
Speaker 1: to go out and have a good time or get
47:42
Speaker 1: ours or fill our freezer today. But none of these
47:46
Speaker 1: folks were able to zoom out enough to see what
47:49
Speaker 1: was going on at the next level up the bigger
47:52
Speaker 1: picture implications of millions of people all trying to do that.
47:56
Speaker 1: And so today we're fortunate that there are, like you said,
47:59
Speaker 1: there's game management practice at the state level, and nationally
48:02
Speaker 1: there's different things, and and we have we have restrictions
48:06
Speaker 1: and regulations, and we have a North American model of
48:09
Speaker 1: conservation that has helped inform how we can do this,
48:12
Speaker 1: but it also has to play out on the individual level.
48:15
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, having that historical foundation is
48:20
Speaker 1: it's just this little thing that's in the back of
48:21
Speaker 1: our minds. I think is is a is a useful
48:24
Speaker 1: and important, an important kind of insight to have as
48:27
Speaker 1: as a modern day hunter. Um, and I think this
48:31
Speaker 1: book does a good job of providing that in a
48:33
Speaker 1: way that's still enjoyable to read. So it's, uh, it's
48:37
Speaker 1: right up there at the top of my list. Yeah,
48:40
Speaker 1: I keep I keep that book like on my desk.
48:42
Speaker 1: I put a bunch of them stacked up in front
48:44
Speaker 1: of like in front of my computer when I'm working.
48:46
Speaker 1: It is one that I keep set up and I
48:48
Speaker 1: look at it all the time, just because it's a
48:51
Speaker 1: very important book and it's just it was very eye
48:53
Speaker 1: opening to me. I mean I learned stuff that now
48:55
Speaker 1: it's second nature and it's it's just important facts that
48:59
Speaker 1: that I considered just kind of standard facts. But at
49:01
Speaker 1: the time when I read it, I had no idea
49:03
Speaker 1: about it. Like about horses. Now they disappeared and then
49:06
Speaker 1: came back. I mean it's so interesting. Yeah, highly highly recommended. Yeah,
49:10
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw to bonus kind of supplementary recommendations on
49:14
Speaker 1: that one. If if anyone's read that book already and
49:16
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, or if you read it and then you're like,
49:19
Speaker 1: I still want more on this, you gotta read American
49:22
Speaker 1: Buffalo by my Pale Steve Steve RENNELLI amazing, amazing book,
49:27
Speaker 1: really fun read. You learned specifically about the history of Buffalo,
49:31
Speaker 1: UM and you go on this great adventure with him.
49:33
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite books of all time. That's
49:35
Speaker 1: a great one. And then another one called The Last
49:37
Speaker 1: Stand Um by Michael Punke or Punk I can't remember
49:40
Speaker 1: how you say his last name, but that is about
49:42
Speaker 1: the history of Buffalo as well, but UM with a
49:45
Speaker 1: more specific focus on the impact that George Bird Grinnell had,
49:49
Speaker 1: who was another one of those guys who sits on
49:51
Speaker 1: the conservation kind of Mount Rushmore there with Theodore Roosevelt
49:55
Speaker 1: and Gifford pin Show. Um. George Berg Grannell was one
49:58
Speaker 1: of the first editors of Field and Stree. Uh did
50:01
Speaker 1: a did a ton and so you get to learn
50:03
Speaker 1: about his story and his conservation impacts and and that's
50:06
Speaker 1: really right within the same Um family of books. So
50:10
Speaker 1: those are two others that are great. Yeah, I was
50:13
Speaker 1: I was thinking that exact same thing. Um. I was
50:16
Speaker 1: flipping through it as you were talking and looking at
50:17
Speaker 1: the Buffalo chapter in Steve's book, and Uh, I guess, Punky,
50:22
Speaker 1: I guess that's how you said. But I've read both
50:24
Speaker 1: of those books. I remember. I remember I got them
50:25
Speaker 1: both from the library and Boulder when I still live there.
50:28
Speaker 1: And um, again, just just eye opening and easy and
50:32
Speaker 1: fun to read. So we're on the same page there,
50:35
Speaker 1: all right, So what's your next one? I got another
50:38
Speaker 1: one that's kind of kind of related to American Serengetti
50:41
Speaker 1: is called Losing Eden, An Environmental History of the American West,
50:45
Speaker 1: by Sarah Dance, doctor Sarah dan who is a history
50:49
Speaker 1: professor at Webber State. I think it is it we
50:52
Speaker 1: were Webber State, but I think I think it's Yeah,
50:56
Speaker 1: it's like the opposite one. I think it should be
50:57
Speaker 1: Weber State. And and Sarah uh is married to Dan
51:02
Speaker 1: Flores and which I mean, that's a that's a power
51:05
Speaker 1: couple if there was one. Yeah. But um, I met
51:09
Speaker 1: Sarah at a event that I went to a few
51:12
Speaker 1: years back, to my conference about the West, and she's
51:15
Speaker 1: just she's super fun and obviously just sharp as a
51:19
Speaker 1: web and um she I got a copy of her
51:23
Speaker 1: book there and I read it and it's really just
51:25
Speaker 1: it's relatively short. I mean, I think it's less than
51:28
Speaker 1: two hundred pages, but it's just this broad overview of
51:31
Speaker 1: the history of the American West, from kind of an
51:33
Speaker 1: environmental slash conservation perspective. So it starts out talking about
51:38
Speaker 1: the natural history a lot of the same things that
51:40
Speaker 1: are covered in American Serengetti and about Native Americans, Um,
51:44
Speaker 1: you know, before European settlement. And one of the title
51:50
Speaker 1: that Losing Eden, and one of the themes that she's
51:53
Speaker 1: trying to get through, you know, over the course of
51:55
Speaker 1: the book is that, um, there's this myth that when
52:00
Speaker 1: white people showed up and started you know, quote settling
52:03
Speaker 1: the West, that they were going into this eating the
52:06
Speaker 1: garden of Eden and it was untouched in this beautiful,
52:09
Speaker 1: unspoiled wilderness. But what she lays out in a lot
52:12
Speaker 1: of different ways is that ever since humans have been
52:15
Speaker 1: in North America, it's never been a straight up eating
52:19
Speaker 1: I mean they're there have always been hunting grounds, and
52:21
Speaker 1: there's always been different forms of agriculture. And and while
52:26
Speaker 1: you know, obviously it was it was a lot closer
52:28
Speaker 1: to a Eden ten thousand years ago than it is
52:30
Speaker 1: is today. Um, she really is trying to bust this
52:34
Speaker 1: myth of of Eden. But you know, over the course
52:37
Speaker 1: two pages, she she lays out, um, you know, the
52:41
Speaker 1: Native American, Um, how they you know, how they hunted,
52:44
Speaker 1: and how they made the West a place where they
52:47
Speaker 1: could live even though they were the resources and the
52:50
Speaker 1: natural resources were were slim, you know, water and all
52:53
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And then she talks about there
52:56
Speaker 1: there's a big portion of the book where she talks
52:58
Speaker 1: about UM the Mormon and how they played a really
53:01
Speaker 1: big role in the settlement of the West, and how
53:04
Speaker 1: they introduced um a lot of irrigation on large scale,
53:09
Speaker 1: and how they were able to kind of really stretch
53:12
Speaker 1: particularly water resources very thin to to um, you know,
53:18
Speaker 1: to to allow for a lot of people to thrive
53:20
Speaker 1: in a region where that's pretty harsh region. And then
53:23
Speaker 1: she there's one chapter where she talks about the difference
53:26
Speaker 1: between preservation and conservation, you know, conservationist versus preservationist. And
53:32
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt was the kind of the the definition of
53:35
Speaker 1: a conservationist. Whereas, yeah, he wanted to use all the
53:39
Speaker 1: natural resources we had in North America UM in the
53:43
Speaker 1: most effective way possible. So Theodore Roosevelt is not necessarily hey,
53:49
Speaker 1: let's look at that big forest at hillside over there,
53:51
Speaker 1: Let's keep it a forest at hillside wherever. He was
53:53
Speaker 1: more in the mindset of right, there's a lot of
53:55
Speaker 1: timber over there that can help fuel the United States,
53:59
Speaker 1: and so let's consider this a renewable resource that we
54:02
Speaker 1: need to take care of. But you know, there's nothing
54:05
Speaker 1: wrong with cutting those trees down and then growing them back.
54:08
Speaker 1: Whereas John Murro was more along the lines of let's
54:11
Speaker 1: preserve this how it is, don't touch it, leave it
54:14
Speaker 1: completely as it is. And she doesn't really take a
54:16
Speaker 1: side one way or the other about which one's right,
54:18
Speaker 1: but really lays out out both sides of the argument,
54:21
Speaker 1: which I really appreciated. And then she goes through a
54:24
Speaker 1: lot of the kind of booms and busts that make
54:26
Speaker 1: that have made up the history of the American West,
54:28
Speaker 1: whether that is the fur trappers in the very very
54:31
Speaker 1: early days, and this goes to a lot of things
54:34
Speaker 1: you were talking about in um in American Serengetti. You know,
54:37
Speaker 1: the fur trappers came out and basically eradicated all the beaver,
54:41
Speaker 1: all the different furs, and this has been the history
54:44
Speaker 1: of the West for about as long as white people
54:46
Speaker 1: have been around. We come in, extract resources until they're gone,
54:50
Speaker 1: and then leave, and so you could think about fur
54:52
Speaker 1: mining forestry. Now, energy is a big part of that,
54:56
Speaker 1: and she she just kind of digs into all the
54:59
Speaker 1: different um time periods and the different different things that
55:03
Speaker 1: have happened as as we people have have tried to
55:08
Speaker 1: kind of extract value from the landscape of the West,
55:11
Speaker 1: and then as we kind of learned our lesson and
55:13
Speaker 1: had to had to to balance things out a bit.
55:16
Speaker 1: And then she talks similar to like in your book.
55:19
Speaker 1: She she mentions a few of these names of historic
55:22
Speaker 1: people that I've heard forever, but I never really um
55:27
Speaker 1: known the details. But one that stuck out in my
55:29
Speaker 1: mind was she tells about Frank Church and he was
55:31
Speaker 1: a senator, and there's the Frank Church Wilderness I believe
55:34
Speaker 1: in Idaho. She talks about him and everything he did
55:37
Speaker 1: as far as the Wilderness Act, the wild and Scenic
55:39
Speaker 1: Rivers Act, and um. And then she kind of finishes
55:43
Speaker 1: up in modern day with a lot of the clashes
55:45
Speaker 1: between industry and like the Endangered Species Act and so
55:50
Speaker 1: again less than two hundred pages, but really really sets
55:54
Speaker 1: the gives you a good framework to go out and
55:58
Speaker 1: read different, you know, dig in a lot deeper. And
56:01
Speaker 1: it's kind of the perfect book as I mentioned, of
56:04
Speaker 1: allowing you to giving you this menu of really really
56:08
Speaker 1: interesting things at at kind of a high level, and
56:10
Speaker 1: then you can go dig in as needed. And she
56:12
Speaker 1: has um suggested reading or further reading in every single chapter,
56:16
Speaker 1: so she even does that part of the work for you. Um.
56:19
Speaker 1: But really a great book and fits in well with
56:22
Speaker 1: your recommendation. Yeah, you know, I own that book, but
56:26
Speaker 1: I actually have not read it. I hate to admit, UM,
56:29
Speaker 1: but I was. I was gifted it like right after
56:32
Speaker 1: I finished writing mine, and I remember thinking that I
56:35
Speaker 1: was just kind of burnt out on the history of
56:37
Speaker 1: this stuff. Is like, it's probably all the same stuff
56:40
Speaker 1: I already just researched and wrote about. So I never
56:43
Speaker 1: ended up picking it back up again, and it's just
56:45
Speaker 1: sitting at the like in the bottom corner. And as
56:48
Speaker 1: you're describing this to me, you're making me realize what
56:50
Speaker 1: a mistake I made, because there's a number of things
56:52
Speaker 1: you mentioned in there that are are different than stuff
56:55
Speaker 1: I covered, or that dive into different avenues that I
56:57
Speaker 1: wish I had. UM. So, so I got to pick
57:00
Speaker 1: that up and dive into it. And and something you
57:03
Speaker 1: mentioned there that sounds like she led her book with
57:07
Speaker 1: is uh is the history of of the Native American
57:11
Speaker 1: perspective and and uh impact that they had on the
57:15
Speaker 1: land and how they were to live with the land,
57:16
Speaker 1: in the the ways that they worked the land, and
57:19
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, the myth I think that
57:23
Speaker 1: so long has been thought like you you said it right,
57:25
Speaker 1: they you read about Lewis and Clark coming across this
57:28
Speaker 1: untouched wilderness when actually there have been millions of people,
57:31
Speaker 1: millions of people living there for thousands of years, um,
57:35
Speaker 1: and we just kind of conveniently forget about that. Um.
57:40
Speaker 1: One of the greatest regrets I have with my book
57:43
Speaker 1: is that I didn't talk about that at all, UM.
57:47
Speaker 1: And I think that I just it wasn't It wasn't
57:51
Speaker 1: on purpose, it was it was more so like I
57:55
Speaker 1: didn't even I didn't know how to handle that. I
57:58
Speaker 1: didn't know how to dive into of that appropriately. Um.
58:03
Speaker 1: And And because of that, I think it just seemed
58:05
Speaker 1: like that just seemed like a totally other book for
58:07
Speaker 1: someone else, and I thought I could only butte off
58:09
Speaker 1: so much. UM. But in retrospect, I wish I had
58:13
Speaker 1: tried to at least at least cover it in some
58:18
Speaker 1: kind of way, because I think, unfortunately it's it's this
58:21
Speaker 1: big glaring black hole in the beginning of my book
58:25
Speaker 1: that I ignored completely and and I wish I had.
58:28
Speaker 1: So I'm glad that that, you know, this is something
58:31
Speaker 1: that's being talked about more often and something of this
58:34
Speaker 1: book is a good place to to dig into that
58:36
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I'm definitely gonna check that out myself. Yeah,
58:39
Speaker 1: it's definitely worth a read. And it's not a you know,
58:41
Speaker 1: it's not a huge time investment. It's not like Wilderness Warrior,
58:44
Speaker 1: where you gotta you gotta really clear the calendar to
58:46
Speaker 1: to tackle that. I mean, it's it's and for you know,
58:50
Speaker 1: for somebody who specializes in academic writing, it's not at
58:53
Speaker 1: all an academic type book. I mean, I think it
58:55
Speaker 1: could be used as a textbook. But I enjoyed reading
58:58
Speaker 1: it and uh actually at Sarah on the podcast to
59:01
Speaker 1: talk about it, and so she's just very charismatic, very funny, um,
59:05
Speaker 1: very very wise when it comes to all these topics.
59:08
Speaker 1: So yeah, I highly recommend it. Yeah, I'm I'm gonna
59:10
Speaker 1: put that back at the top of my list. Okay,
59:14
Speaker 1: next one for me. So if if my first recommendation
59:17
Speaker 1: was looking way back at um some of our historical
59:22
Speaker 1: crimes I guess to to the natural world here in America.
59:27
Speaker 1: My next book is a little further down that timeline
59:31
Speaker 1: to one of our awakenings, one of our kind of
59:36
Speaker 1: ecological awakenings, uh to how we might do things better.
59:40
Speaker 1: And this book is a book I've talked about a
59:43
Speaker 1: million times in the podcast, and just recently, like two
59:47
Speaker 1: or three weeks ago, talked about in the podcast. So
59:49
Speaker 1: I'm not going to spend a lot of time because
59:51
Speaker 1: people have heard about it plenty of times before. But
59:53
Speaker 1: I couldn't have a podcast called the ten Books that
59:55
Speaker 1: all aspiring Conservationists should read and not mention a sand
59:59
Speaker 1: con The Almanac by Aldo Leopold. UM. I look at
1:00:03
Speaker 1: this as like a foundational text, Like anyone who who
1:00:07
Speaker 1: wants to do anything related to conservation or the natural
1:00:12
Speaker 1: world or or anything along those lines, just like has
1:00:16
Speaker 1: to read this. It's it just seems like required reading. Um.
1:00:19
Speaker 1: It's this text that really I think helps you know.
1:00:22
Speaker 1: It's kind of a three part book. It's sorts. The
1:00:25
Speaker 1: first part of the book is just a beautiful series
1:00:27
Speaker 1: of essays about Leopold's experiences in nature, working this little
1:00:32
Speaker 1: farm he had in Wisconsin, watching wildlife, UM, it's it's
1:00:36
Speaker 1: it's kind of easy fun reading. It's it's it's great
1:00:39
Speaker 1: to sit on the porch and kind of, you know,
1:00:42
Speaker 1: just kind of soak in these these great ideas and
1:00:45
Speaker 1: thoughts and experiences that al those A will put on
1:00:48
Speaker 1: the page. UM. I do think that through these short,
1:00:52
Speaker 1: simple essays he does like illuminate some interesting ideas and
1:00:56
Speaker 1: like a very powerful way. But you know, it's it's
1:00:59
Speaker 1: easy reading. UM. And it's all kind of that midwestern
1:01:02
Speaker 1: Wisconsin focused It's it kind of walks through month by
1:01:05
Speaker 1: month these different vignettes across the year on his little
1:01:09
Speaker 1: stand farm there, so so interesting. And then the next
1:01:12
Speaker 1: series of essays follows him on some of his travels
1:01:15
Speaker 1: across the continent, stuff that he experienced as a young
1:01:18
Speaker 1: man down in Arizona or New Mexico working for the
1:01:21
Speaker 1: US Force Service, things he did later in life. UM.
1:01:24
Speaker 1: Some really famous foundational essays like UM, Thinking like a Mountain,
1:01:29
Speaker 1: in which UM, he really really powerfully writes about the
1:01:34
Speaker 1: challenges that we have had as people living and coexisting
1:01:40
Speaker 1: or trying to co exist with predators. UM. I think
1:01:42
Speaker 1: it's very poignant and a really important read for hunters. UM.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: That one in particular. UM. But again it's it's mostly
1:01:50
Speaker 1: stories about these experiences. But then you get to the
1:01:52
Speaker 1: third part. I think he calls this part like the
1:01:55
Speaker 1: up shot, and and this part of the book is
1:01:58
Speaker 1: where he really this like it's a good different thing.
1:02:01
Speaker 1: The second the third part of the book is like
1:02:03
Speaker 1: a different book almost, in which he kind of said, Okay,
1:02:06
Speaker 1: you read about these stories and experiences that kind of
1:02:09
Speaker 1: shaped who I am and why I care about things. Well,
1:02:12
Speaker 1: here's now how I make sense of what all that
1:02:14
Speaker 1: means to us moving forward. UM. And he has a
1:02:17
Speaker 1: series of I guess essays or chapters or something would
1:02:21
Speaker 1: be how you describe it, where he he dives into
1:02:23
Speaker 1: ideas around protecting wilderness and hunting and um outdoor recreation
1:02:30
Speaker 1: and how that impacts wild places and wild animals, and
1:02:33
Speaker 1: then finally diving into this whole idea of of a
1:02:36
Speaker 1: land ethic, which I think, is this this idea that
1:02:40
Speaker 1: has really defined a lot of what modern conservation is
1:02:43
Speaker 1: and how we think about things today. UM. And so
1:02:46
Speaker 1: I think, better than probably anyone before, he helps put
1:02:50
Speaker 1: words to a lot of ideas that many of us
1:02:53
Speaker 1: have felt or considered and helps kind of um focus
1:02:59
Speaker 1: a lot of these emotion is maybe we have to,
1:03:01
Speaker 1: so I won't. I won't rant anymore about sand kind
1:03:05
Speaker 1: of alminact because I've done that plenty. But uh, but
1:03:09
Speaker 1: I had to mention it. I don't know, would you
1:03:11
Speaker 1: add anything on that one? Is there anything that I
1:03:14
Speaker 1: missed there? I mean you've read it, right, yeah, And
1:03:17
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those books. It's it's like
1:03:19
Speaker 1: when when I had kids and you hear people they
1:03:22
Speaker 1: say all these things like, oh, they grow up so fast,
1:03:24
Speaker 1: all these cliches. I'm like, well, those things are cliches
1:03:27
Speaker 1: for a reason because they're percent true. And I feel
1:03:30
Speaker 1: like saying County Almanac. It comes up so often and
1:03:33
Speaker 1: on my podcast, you know, I have such a wide
1:03:35
Speaker 1: variety of guests, but I mean, just all the top
1:03:37
Speaker 1: of my head that there have been like some ultra
1:03:39
Speaker 1: professional athlete, ultra runners that mentioned it as one of
1:03:41
Speaker 1: the most important books they've ever been. There's a guy
1:03:43
Speaker 1: who was a lawyer in Chicago and read that book
1:03:46
Speaker 1: and quit his job and started a bison ranch in
1:03:49
Speaker 1: Montana because of that book. Um, you know, I've heard
1:03:53
Speaker 1: your buddy Steve Rinella talk about it. I've I've you know,
1:03:56
Speaker 1: I've got some art of these, you know, world famous
1:03:58
Speaker 1: Western artists. They talk about it, and so it's one
1:04:02
Speaker 1: of these things where everybody's talking about because it is
1:04:04
Speaker 1: that important and because it's it really is. Um. I
1:04:10
Speaker 1: think he took all these ideas that are floating around
1:04:12
Speaker 1: in people's heads and that people kind of knew these
1:04:15
Speaker 1: universal truths or truths about the land and in anybody
1:04:19
Speaker 1: who has spent um you know, connected to the land
1:04:21
Speaker 1: in one way or another, understands this stuff at a
1:04:23
Speaker 1: at a real base level, and he was able to
1:04:26
Speaker 1: put words to it. And so um, I mean, there's
1:04:29
Speaker 1: nothing I can add to all the great stuff that's
1:04:32
Speaker 1: been said about it other than if you haven't read it,
1:04:34
Speaker 1: you need to read it. It's not hard reading. You
1:04:36
Speaker 1: can you can crank through it. I've got like three
1:04:38
Speaker 1: copies of it in my in my little ship. I'll
1:04:40
Speaker 1: buy That's funny. You mentioned that I was at the
1:04:43
Speaker 1: Elder Leopold Foundation a couple of weeks ago, and I
1:04:47
Speaker 1: saw all these different, you know, additions of the book
1:04:50
Speaker 1: and different covers and things like that from over the years,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: and I had this this urge is like, man, I
1:04:55
Speaker 1: gotta buy some of these other editions that I really
1:04:57
Speaker 1: like that cover this one, and then I thought that's
1:04:59
Speaker 1: kind of a aiculous to buy multiple copies. But at
1:05:01
Speaker 1: the same time, like, no, it's not. It's yeah, it's
1:05:04
Speaker 1: not so like is I don't know who's listening, but
1:05:08
Speaker 1: like I can tell you that's normal by by like
1:05:11
Speaker 1: ten of them, it's worth it. Um So, yeah, that's
1:05:15
Speaker 1: that's my next one. What's what's your next? Um So?
1:05:19
Speaker 1: My next one is it's called Down River, Into the
1:05:22
Speaker 1: Future of Water in the West by Heather Handsman who
1:05:26
Speaker 1: she is a journalist writer. She writes a lot for
1:05:29
Speaker 1: Outside magazine, and so in my daily work at palmer
1:05:32
Speaker 1: Land Conservacy, most of what I do is working with water.
1:05:36
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I'm from East North Carolina, where
1:05:39
Speaker 1: if anything, there's too much water, you know, every time
1:05:41
Speaker 1: a hurricane comes through, the whole town floods and so
1:05:44
Speaker 1: and then out here there's there's none. But one of
1:05:46
Speaker 1: the challenges that I found with water, even for somebody
1:05:48
Speaker 1: like me who that's my job, is it is unbelievably
1:05:52
Speaker 1: boring talking about water rights and you know, the doctrine
1:05:57
Speaker 1: of prior appropriation and all this kind of stuff, and
1:05:59
Speaker 1: water rights attorneys make tons of money because it is
1:06:04
Speaker 1: just such a complex and confusing subject that really it
1:06:10
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense, but it kind of doesn't. There's
1:06:12
Speaker 1: a lot of gray area in there. And so there's
1:06:14
Speaker 1: this one book called Cadillac Desert, which a lot of
1:06:16
Speaker 1: people refer to as like the Bible of water in
1:06:18
Speaker 1: the West. And then there's Beyond the hundred Meridian by
1:06:21
Speaker 1: Wa Stegner, which is another great book that will help
1:06:24
Speaker 1: you kind of understand water. But if you want to
1:06:26
Speaker 1: get a good overview of water without having to invest,
1:06:30
Speaker 1: you know, months of your life into to reading all
1:06:33
Speaker 1: this really detailed stuff, Down River is the book, and
1:06:36
Speaker 1: it's in a lot of ways it reminds me of
1:06:38
Speaker 1: your book more because she's this adventure she has. So
1:06:41
Speaker 1: she this Heather starts at the base of the Wind
1:06:44
Speaker 1: River mountain range the headwaters of the Green River and
1:06:48
Speaker 1: floats down mostly solo by ourselves, floats the whole length
1:06:51
Speaker 1: of the Green River down to where it the confluence
1:06:54
Speaker 1: with the Colorado River in Utah. And so that story
1:06:58
Speaker 1: is kind of the structure of the book. And along
1:07:00
Speaker 1: the way she examines all the different issues or challenges
1:07:03
Speaker 1: facing water in the West, and she gives you this education,
1:07:07
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a perfect book for somebody like
1:07:09
Speaker 1: me who doesn't want to read like hardcore just straight
1:07:12
Speaker 1: up history, but wants to learn. And she sneaks in
1:07:15
Speaker 1: all this really really interesting info and and so, you know,
1:07:20
Speaker 1: she she kind of hits all the different aspects of water,
1:07:23
Speaker 1: everything from you know, cities and how cities are taking
1:07:26
Speaker 1: water um, to outdoor recreation and what that means for water,
1:07:29
Speaker 1: to the to agriculture. You know that agriculture is a
1:07:32
Speaker 1: huge use of water in the West. We you know,
1:07:34
Speaker 1: divert water out of these streams, irrigate fields and then
1:07:38
Speaker 1: the water goes back in. Talk us about it from
1:07:40
Speaker 1: an ecological standpoint, particularly about fish um. But it's just
1:07:44
Speaker 1: it's really fun and she's a she's very she's very funny.
1:07:48
Speaker 1: And one of the things I thought was cool unrelated
1:07:51
Speaker 1: water in this book is she talks a lot about
1:07:54
Speaker 1: how a lot of these books that feature women adventurers
1:07:59
Speaker 1: are you know, like one of the women, whoever the
1:08:03
Speaker 1: protagonist is, the woman who's going on this venture, has
1:08:05
Speaker 1: had some traumatic life experience and she's kind of like,
1:08:08
Speaker 1: all right, screw and I'm gonna go on this crazy adventure.
1:08:10
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hike that pleach and trail or hip the
1:08:12
Speaker 1: Pacific Crest Trail. Whatever. But in her mind she says,
1:08:16
Speaker 1: I just want an adventure for the sake of adventure.
1:08:18
Speaker 1: I'm not running from anything, I'm not trying to change
1:08:22
Speaker 1: my life. I just want to have a cool adventure
1:08:24
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna do this. And so if if anybody
1:08:27
Speaker 1: is interested in water, and it is a endlessly fascinating subject,
1:08:31
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, the whole West is a is a
1:08:33
Speaker 1: big plumbing system. Like my city of Colorado Springs sits
1:08:37
Speaker 1: on the front range of of Colorado sits on Colorado's
1:08:40
Speaker 1: front range on the east side, and we get eighty
1:08:42
Speaker 1: percent of our drinking water from the Colorado River basin,
1:08:45
Speaker 1: which is on the western side of the continent or
1:08:47
Speaker 1: divide there. So the water is being pumped underneath the
1:08:49
Speaker 1: mountains to this city of five thousand people. And so,
1:08:54
Speaker 1: you know, everybody talks about Las Vegas and Los Angeles
1:08:56
Speaker 1: and how it depends on the Cold River, Well so
1:08:58
Speaker 1: does Colorado Springs. And um so, if you want to
1:09:03
Speaker 1: really understand conservation, particularly in the West, you have to
1:09:07
Speaker 1: have some understanding of water. And if you want to
1:09:10
Speaker 1: learn about water without being bored sinceless and actually being
1:09:13
Speaker 1: very highly entertained. That is the book. Man. That's good
1:09:17
Speaker 1: to know. I've had that one in my on my
1:09:20
Speaker 1: Amazon booklist for a while now and I haven't committed
1:09:24
Speaker 1: to it yet, but it was, it's been in there.
1:09:26
Speaker 1: It's one of the one of those like I should
1:09:27
Speaker 1: probably I should probably read that. I've been recommended a
1:09:30
Speaker 1: few times or I've seen it recommended a few times,
1:09:33
Speaker 1: so I thought, I gotta do it someday, and I
1:09:35
Speaker 1: think this is the push to finally hit by UM.
1:09:39
Speaker 1: So I read another one this past summer. I can't
1:09:42
Speaker 1: remember what's called, and I think it's on my bookshelf
1:09:44
Speaker 1: in Idaho, so I can't find it right now, but
1:09:46
Speaker 1: it's it's got this like orange and like orange and
1:09:52
Speaker 1: yellow and green like topographic map kind of cover. It's
1:09:55
Speaker 1: written by a guy named Dave something. Where the water goes.
1:09:59
Speaker 1: That's David. Yeah. That's a good one. That's a good
1:10:03
Speaker 1: one too. Yeah. I thought that one was pretty good. Um,
1:10:05
Speaker 1: But at times I wish the adventure was more of
1:10:08
Speaker 1: an adventure, Like I think that what you're describing with
1:10:11
Speaker 1: Heather's trip would have pulled me along and I would
1:10:14
Speaker 1: have had more fun with it. Um, So I think
1:10:17
Speaker 1: I want to dive in further and go on that
1:10:19
Speaker 1: journey too. Yeah. Heather's great, and I'm not trying to
1:10:22
Speaker 1: like shamelessly promote my podcast, but I've had her own twice,
1:10:26
Speaker 1: once for this book and then once for a new
1:10:27
Speaker 1: book she wrote about ski towns and their impact on
1:10:31
Speaker 1: the West, and she she's just super, super cool and
1:10:33
Speaker 1: and obviously extremely talented writers. So um yeah, people ask
1:10:38
Speaker 1: me all the time about water, and that's the one
1:10:40
Speaker 1: I tell them to read. Yeah. Man, that's my favorite
1:10:43
Speaker 1: kind of book, and that's why I wrote the book
1:10:45
Speaker 1: I wrote, and why I want to write more books
1:10:47
Speaker 1: like that. I think it's like a super like that
1:10:50
Speaker 1: kind of book. And my this is my opinion, just
1:10:52
Speaker 1: my opinion, but that is just such a great format
1:10:57
Speaker 1: if you can take some And maybe it's just because
1:10:59
Speaker 1: this is what I'd like to read, so maybe I'm
1:11:00
Speaker 1: completely wrong, but I love with I love reading a
1:11:03
Speaker 1: book that takes you on an adventure. You're gonna have fun,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: you're gonna live vicariously through this person, and then along
1:11:09
Speaker 1: the way they slip in all this fascinating information that
1:11:13
Speaker 1: you you come out the other side having learned a
1:11:15
Speaker 1: bunch too. I mean, that is just like the ultimate
1:11:18
Speaker 1: combination for me. It's just such a such a great
1:11:22
Speaker 1: kind of book to read. I could just if what's
1:11:25
Speaker 1: interesting that there's there's so many topics where I find myself,
1:11:28
Speaker 1: like in a bookstore or looking online, thinking I really
1:11:31
Speaker 1: wish there was a book that would take you like
1:11:33
Speaker 1: down this thing or to do this thing, and then
1:11:35
Speaker 1: I could learn about it. And I keep on finding
1:11:37
Speaker 1: that there's not books about those topics or in those places,
1:11:40
Speaker 1: and so I have this long running list of all
1:11:42
Speaker 1: these books now that I feel like I need to
1:11:44
Speaker 1: write because I want to read this book, and I
1:11:46
Speaker 1: want to read this book, and I want to read
1:11:48
Speaker 1: this one. No one's done it yet, so I feel
1:11:50
Speaker 1: like I guess I need to do that. So I
1:11:52
Speaker 1: have this long list. You definitely need to do it. Um,
1:11:56
Speaker 1: but you mentioned American Buffalo. I think that's kind of
1:11:58
Speaker 1: the great exam ample that you know, this cool hunting
1:12:02
Speaker 1: adventure in a wild place, and then when you get
1:12:04
Speaker 1: done with you're like, wow, now I have all this
1:12:07
Speaker 1: these facts and figures about buffalo that I never knew before.
1:12:10
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's for me, I think we're
1:12:12
Speaker 1: wired pretty similarly when it comes to our reading taste.
1:12:14
Speaker 1: But like there's nothing better than that, And so I think,
1:12:17
Speaker 1: and I think with anything, whether it's a business or
1:12:19
Speaker 1: a podcast or or writing, like you want to be
1:12:22
Speaker 1: scratching your own itch, you know, and so like if
1:12:24
Speaker 1: that's what you want to read, there's there's you know,
1:12:27
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of other people out there who would
1:12:29
Speaker 1: want to read it as well. So as I've told you,
1:12:32
Speaker 1: you need to just keep writing. It's so it's soundly
1:12:35
Speaker 1: to do list. It's definitely on the to do list. Um, okay.
1:12:39
Speaker 1: So I've got another recommendation that kind of falls in
1:12:41
Speaker 1: line with them, and that it is it's kind of
1:12:44
Speaker 1: one of these books where you you go on a
1:12:46
Speaker 1: series of trips and you don't even realize that you're
1:12:50
Speaker 1: really learning a ton along the way. And this is
1:12:52
Speaker 1: like the most sneaky of those types of books. Um.
1:12:56
Speaker 1: It's called Encounters with the Arch or the Arc jur
1:12:59
Speaker 1: I don't Arch Steward or archcharg Archward by John McPhee.
1:13:03
Speaker 1: Have you read this one? Yeah? I read it and
1:13:05
Speaker 1: it was like it blew my mind. I read it.
1:13:07
Speaker 1: So I read it probably twelve years ago something like that.
1:13:11
Speaker 1: I was so glad to see that you were going
1:13:12
Speaker 1: to recommend this book is phenomenal. UM. So John McPhee
1:13:18
Speaker 1: is one of our He's an absolute icon of nonfiction
1:13:23
Speaker 1: writing in America. I mean, he's he's pretty well recognized
1:13:27
Speaker 1: as one of the very very very best to have
1:13:29
Speaker 1: to have ever done it. Um. He's a frequent contributor
1:13:34
Speaker 1: to The New Yorker and written a ton of books
1:13:37
Speaker 1: and every one of them is just like beloved UM.
1:13:40
Speaker 1: And he he just has this wonderful way of examining
1:13:43
Speaker 1: seemingly very very random topics and making them interesting and
1:13:48
Speaker 1: making them both worth reading and learning about. UM. I mean,
1:13:52
Speaker 1: he's written about oranges, He's written about Chad. I think
1:13:56
Speaker 1: he's written about I mean, just bizarre things. But just
1:14:00
Speaker 1: like one tennis match, he wrote a whole book about
1:14:03
Speaker 1: a single tennis match, and then you read it, you're like, wow,
1:14:07
Speaker 1: it's incredible. So this book, though, is is this book
1:14:10
Speaker 1: he wrote that really does an interesting job of examining
1:14:16
Speaker 1: the conservation and environmental movement and I think a series
1:14:21
Speaker 1: of philosophies, and he examines this larger topic by zooming
1:14:27
Speaker 1: in on one person in a series of experiences. This
1:14:30
Speaker 1: person had a very influential person in the sixties and
1:14:33
Speaker 1: seventies and and really before that even um. And so
1:14:36
Speaker 1: this book, the author, John McPhee goes on a series
1:14:40
Speaker 1: of trips with a guy named David Brower, who was
1:14:44
Speaker 1: who who is or sorry was a very famous and
1:14:47
Speaker 1: influential environmentalist conservationist. He headed up the Sierra Club at
1:14:52
Speaker 1: one point, uh, Friends of the Earth at one point
1:14:55
Speaker 1: maybe Earth First. I'm gonna I should have had this
1:14:57
Speaker 1: written down. Um. But was one of the main main
1:15:01
Speaker 1: voices for a lot of these important environmental issues back
1:15:04
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies. He was one of those
1:15:07
Speaker 1: major faces of the movement back then. Um. Sometimes controversially,
1:15:11
Speaker 1: Um he was. You know, he took things pretty far
1:15:14
Speaker 1: in some instances, but he did plenty of good and um.
1:15:18
Speaker 1: This book follows John along with David Brower on three
1:15:23
Speaker 1: different experiences of sorts where he is paired up with
1:15:28
Speaker 1: someone who feels very differently about these things. And so
1:15:32
Speaker 1: what you end up getting is this very interesting examination
1:15:37
Speaker 1: of the push and pull between the conservation of natural
1:15:41
Speaker 1: resources in wild places versus the use of them. And
1:15:45
Speaker 1: so I think it's I think it's a really helpful
1:15:49
Speaker 1: thing for anyone to do who cares about these things,
1:15:52
Speaker 1: who wants to be an advocate, because I think we
1:15:54
Speaker 1: need to understand and look at these things from all
1:15:56
Speaker 1: points of view. And I think you do yourself a
1:15:59
Speaker 1: dis service if you go into any kind of conservation
1:16:04
Speaker 1: issue and only look at it from your point of view.
1:16:06
Speaker 1: If I were to go and if I were to
1:16:07
Speaker 1: think about, Okay, the Boundary Waters are an incredibly special place.
1:16:11
Speaker 1: I loved hunting there, I love canoeing there, and damn it,
1:16:14
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do anything to keep them as they are.
1:16:17
Speaker 1: I think that's a place. I think that's something a
1:16:20
Speaker 1: lot of us can relate to. But I think it
1:16:22
Speaker 1: is useful if you want to fight for those places,
1:16:24
Speaker 1: to also be thinking about what are the folks that
1:16:28
Speaker 1: work at minds think about? What do the people who
1:16:30
Speaker 1: depend on those jobs think about? What's their point of
1:16:33
Speaker 1: view in this You know, I think it's oftentimes better
1:16:38
Speaker 1: not to just demonize folks on the other side, but
1:16:41
Speaker 1: try to understand them, because that might help us get
1:16:43
Speaker 1: to a a better place. In this book, in a
1:16:46
Speaker 1: very sneaky way, does that, And in no way in
1:16:50
Speaker 1: this book does John McPhee really take a stance on anything,
1:16:53
Speaker 1: or advocate for anything or push anything on you. Instead,
1:16:57
Speaker 1: you are just like a fly on the wall. As
1:17:00
Speaker 1: you follow this character David Brower on these trips with
1:17:06
Speaker 1: these kind of confrontational people or people that he has
1:17:09
Speaker 1: confrontations with different sorts, um, and they kind of go
1:17:13
Speaker 1: back and forth on all these different things, and somehow
1:17:17
Speaker 1: you come out the other side of this book, you know,
1:17:20
Speaker 1: really in a different place. So the first part of
1:17:21
Speaker 1: the book follows Brower on a trip into a newly
1:17:26
Speaker 1: designated wilderness area in Washington with a geologist and mining engineer.
1:17:31
Speaker 1: I think the guy's name was Charles Parker something like that. UM.
1:17:36
Speaker 1: And so you they're they're on this trip, they're hiking
1:17:38
Speaker 1: and backpacking through this wilderness area while also you're you're
1:17:42
Speaker 1: learning about Brower's history, You're learning about some of these
1:17:45
Speaker 1: early stories of the environmental movement. And then you're hearing
1:17:49
Speaker 1: Brower and then this mining engineer debating whether or not
1:17:54
Speaker 1: there should be a new mind put into this wilderness area.
1:17:56
Speaker 1: There was, there was a mind that was being proposed there.
1:17:59
Speaker 1: They're working on starting to survey it and do all
1:18:01
Speaker 1: this stuff. And so you're you're kind of getting this
1:18:04
Speaker 1: back and forth push and pull between these two guys
1:18:07
Speaker 1: who have very different views on what should happen here. Um.
1:18:11
Speaker 1: And then also sometimes they have similar views on what
1:18:14
Speaker 1: should happen there. So again you kind of go on
1:18:16
Speaker 1: this adventure with them while you get a two sided
1:18:20
Speaker 1: conversation happening between two people, UM on this just tough topic,
1:18:25
Speaker 1: and you never McPhee is just a master at doing
1:18:30
Speaker 1: this in a way that you don't realize it's happening.
1:18:33
Speaker 1: It's just like you're you're like a parrot on the
1:18:36
Speaker 1: shoulder on this adventure and it all seems so natural
1:18:39
Speaker 1: through dialogue and back and forth between these guys. Um,
1:18:43
Speaker 1: I wish I could somehow do what he does, because
1:18:45
Speaker 1: really he does it better than anybody else. But the
1:18:47
Speaker 1: first part of the book is this, this backpacking trip
1:18:49
Speaker 1: into the wilderness. The second part of the book follows
1:18:52
Speaker 1: Brauer out to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, where
1:18:56
Speaker 1: he tours what's going on here in the island. This
1:18:58
Speaker 1: is back in you know, I don't remember, and these
1:19:00
Speaker 1: or eighties or something like that with a developer and
1:19:03
Speaker 1: this developers wanting to you know, Um, he's wanting to build.
1:19:08
Speaker 1: He's wanting to plan what's going to happen on this island.
1:19:10
Speaker 1: Where can we build houses and where can we do things?
1:19:12
Speaker 1: And so it's it's this idea. Now we're exploring the
1:19:15
Speaker 1: push and pull between the conservation and preservation of places
1:19:18
Speaker 1: versus development, and is there a way to responsibly develop
1:19:22
Speaker 1: and plan development in ways that's better than others? And
1:19:26
Speaker 1: so you're you're getting that push and pull here. So
1:19:28
Speaker 1: that the first one between the push and pull of
1:19:30
Speaker 1: wilderness and resource extraction, the second part of the push
1:19:34
Speaker 1: for preservation and preservation versus development, and then the third
1:19:39
Speaker 1: book or sorry, the third part of the book follows
1:19:42
Speaker 1: Brauer on a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon with
1:19:46
Speaker 1: Floyd Domini, who was the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, which,
1:19:50
Speaker 1: as you know and anyone who knows water, is the
1:19:53
Speaker 1: government agency that manages our dams and water resources and
1:19:56
Speaker 1: things like that. So Domini is is kind of he
1:20:00
Speaker 1: was viewed as a as a villain of sorts back
1:20:02
Speaker 1: in the day because of his um you know, his
1:20:05
Speaker 1: his part in damning the Colorado River, putting up the
1:20:08
Speaker 1: Glen Canyon damn and a series of others UM that
1:20:12
Speaker 1: I even wrote about in my book UM, where basically,
1:20:18
Speaker 1: basically you've got the guy who represents the oh for
1:20:24
Speaker 1: better for lack of a better term, like the rapacious
1:20:27
Speaker 1: use of water versus browers ideas of keeping these rivers
1:20:32
Speaker 1: running free and wild, and Floyd Domines saying no, we've
1:20:36
Speaker 1: got to use these rivers. We need to, we need
1:20:39
Speaker 1: to bridle them for human use and energy. And so
1:20:42
Speaker 1: you have this back and forth between those two while
1:20:45
Speaker 1: on this trip. So what's interesting in each one of
1:20:48
Speaker 1: these is that you have this confrontation like one side
1:20:52
Speaker 1: versus the other, conservation versus use, preservation versus development, um,
1:20:57
Speaker 1: wilderness versus resource extracts, and you've got these confrontations. But
1:21:02
Speaker 1: also in each one of these situations, you also are
1:21:07
Speaker 1: getting to be this fly on the wall of these
1:21:09
Speaker 1: two people who seemingly in each instance seemed to be
1:21:12
Speaker 1: so far on either side, actually realizing they have a
1:21:15
Speaker 1: lot in common along the way to UM and coming
1:21:20
Speaker 1: out the other side. I think it it's both inspiring,
1:21:23
Speaker 1: it's kind of informing of how we might be able
1:21:25
Speaker 1: to think about these things. You do learn some really
1:21:27
Speaker 1: interesting stuff about the history of some of the environmental
1:21:30
Speaker 1: and conservation movement back in the fifties and sixties and seventies. Um,
1:21:35
Speaker 1: And you get to go on these very interesting adventures.
1:21:37
Speaker 1: You get to backpack into the wilderness of Washington, you
1:21:39
Speaker 1: get to float the Grand Canyon. Um So it's it's
1:21:42
Speaker 1: a fun read in that regard. You learn some interesting things.
1:21:46
Speaker 1: You kind of have to mentally push through these like
1:21:49
Speaker 1: tensions that I think are still present today in different forms,
1:21:52
Speaker 1: but the same push and pull between those two different
1:21:55
Speaker 1: things are still going today. And uh, it's like a short,
1:22:00
Speaker 1: quick book that actually covers a massive, massively important topic.
1:22:04
Speaker 1: UM So that's a long winded, rambling way of saying,
1:22:07
Speaker 1: you gotta read this one. No, that's I agree with
1:22:10
Speaker 1: all that, and I think it's um I think that
1:22:14
Speaker 1: book in some ways I hadn't really thought about it
1:22:16
Speaker 1: until just now, but it's it could be seen as
1:22:18
Speaker 1: more important now than ever because people just seem to
1:22:21
Speaker 1: be so divided across no matter what the issue is. Ums.
1:22:25
Speaker 1: People just kind of hold up in their camp and
1:22:27
Speaker 1: they're not interested in listening to the other side. And
1:22:31
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about it's probably hard to really understand,
1:22:35
Speaker 1: but how polar opposite Browler is from these three guys
1:22:39
Speaker 1: that he goes on trips with. I mean, it's it's
1:22:40
Speaker 1: the equivalent of like if you took somebody from that
1:22:44
Speaker 1: that organization called c Shepherd that smashes into uh smashes
1:22:49
Speaker 1: into whaling boats and and made him go on a
1:22:51
Speaker 1: camping trip at the CEO of a whaling a whaling company.
1:22:55
Speaker 1: And but but I mean, I think it speaks to
1:22:58
Speaker 1: the importance of conversation, the importance of curiosity, and the
1:23:02
Speaker 1: importance of really trying to understand what you know quote
1:23:05
Speaker 1: the other side is thinking. And I'm I think you
1:23:08
Speaker 1: are to A big fan of Adam Grant, the Professor
1:23:12
Speaker 1: and and I read it recently, read his book Think Again,
1:23:14
Speaker 1: and he's always he talks about how if you approach
1:23:17
Speaker 1: things that maybe you don't agree with with with curiosity
1:23:21
Speaker 1: instead of just like bolstering your opinion and refusing to budge,
1:23:25
Speaker 1: but really trying to understand what the other side, where
1:23:28
Speaker 1: the other side is coming from. You know, I think,
1:23:31
Speaker 1: best case, you might learn something and maybe adjust your
1:23:33
Speaker 1: views a little bit. Worst case, you keep your same views,
1:23:38
Speaker 1: and you you are you, You're more confident in what
1:23:40
Speaker 1: you already think. And I feel like this is a
1:23:43
Speaker 1: perfect example. I mean, you think if you, no matter
1:23:45
Speaker 1: what the issue is, if you took some money on
1:23:47
Speaker 1: the other side and you had to go on a
1:23:49
Speaker 1: three day backpacking trip with them, like, you'd probably end
1:23:53
Speaker 1: up realizing that you have a lot more in common
1:23:55
Speaker 1: than you don't. And so, um, I think, Uh, I
1:23:58
Speaker 1: remember when I just stump it across that book in
1:24:00
Speaker 1: the bookstore a long time ago and read it, and
1:24:03
Speaker 1: I was like, this sounds like one of the coolest
1:24:05
Speaker 1: things I've I've ever seen, and it is. I mean
1:24:08
Speaker 1: I I think about it often, so I think that's
1:24:10
Speaker 1: a great recommendation. Yeah, it's one that you know, I
1:24:13
Speaker 1: feel like you don't hear about a whole lot anymore.
1:24:16
Speaker 1: It's it's not one that gets prot um, but I
1:24:18
Speaker 1: think it I think it deserves to be. It Really,
1:24:21
Speaker 1: it's the slim little book that I feel it really
1:24:25
Speaker 1: encapsulates a whole lot more than I think maybe it's
1:24:27
Speaker 1: given credit for. So it's uh, it's worth reading. I
1:24:32
Speaker 1: agree completely. Alright, my turn, Yeah, what do you got? Alright?
1:24:36
Speaker 1: So this may not come off as conservation at first,
1:24:40
Speaker 1: but for me personally, it was. It was really created
1:24:43
Speaker 1: a foundational shift in the way I think about things,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: and I think it connects in well with your American
1:24:48
Speaker 1: Serengetti recommendation, as it seems like almost all these books do.
1:24:52
Speaker 1: But uh, it's called for the Love of Land, Global
1:24:56
Speaker 1: Case Studies of Grazing in Nature's Image by Jim Howell.
1:25:00
Speaker 1: And on the surface and by the title and subtitle,
1:25:03
Speaker 1: what appears to be just a book about ranching. And
1:25:06
Speaker 1: so you may be thinking, well, I don't I don't
1:25:07
Speaker 1: care about ranching, or I don't want to know anything
1:25:09
Speaker 1: about ranching. But what this book does is it basically
1:25:13
Speaker 1: lays out the importance of grazing for grasslands and for
1:25:18
Speaker 1: grassland health and the need for grazing and how grazing
1:25:22
Speaker 1: can be used to make grasslands more healthy. And so
1:25:27
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, I used to be in
1:25:29
Speaker 1: the ranch brokerage business and now a lot of my
1:25:31
Speaker 1: conservation work is working with ranchers to to help them
1:25:34
Speaker 1: conserve their property. And when you're out here in the West,
1:25:37
Speaker 1: you know, you're up there in the big mountains, and
1:25:38
Speaker 1: pretty much anytime you look down in a valley that
1:25:40
Speaker 1: that is, for the most part is private land um
1:25:43
Speaker 1: and a lot you know, the vast majority of it
1:25:45
Speaker 1: that's still intact is being used um as as grazing
1:25:49
Speaker 1: land and grasslands throughout the entire world are one of
1:25:53
Speaker 1: the biggest um ways to sequest or carbon um. You know,
1:25:58
Speaker 1: it's right there, right up there, and my even be
1:26:00
Speaker 1: more I should know this. But then the then the
1:26:02
Speaker 1: rainforest as far as sucking in carbon and and helping
1:26:06
Speaker 1: to keep the you know, keep carbon levels at at
1:26:09
Speaker 1: their normal rate. And so basically what Jim does this
1:26:13
Speaker 1: book is is split up into two verse two two halves.
1:26:15
Speaker 1: The first half is kind of like a natural history
1:26:18
Speaker 1: of North America combined with um talking about the history
1:26:23
Speaker 1: of grasses and the natural history of grasses. The second
1:26:26
Speaker 1: half is really case studies about how he's implemented this
1:26:30
Speaker 1: this work that he does. But basically he lays out
1:26:33
Speaker 1: how grass, lank, grasses and ruminants evolved together and one
1:26:38
Speaker 1: cannot exist without the other. And so as grasses grow,
1:26:41
Speaker 1: they need to be grazed, and then they need to
1:26:44
Speaker 1: have herds of large animals that have hoofs come over
1:26:48
Speaker 1: and disturb the grasslands, pee and poop on it, tear
1:26:52
Speaker 1: it up, eat it down, eat the grass down, and
1:26:54
Speaker 1: then move on to another area. And by doing that,
1:26:58
Speaker 1: the grasses thrived, and that's what they that's what they
1:27:00
Speaker 1: evolved to do, and and so you can, you know,
1:27:04
Speaker 1: in private land, you can actually mimic that with certain
1:27:06
Speaker 1: grazing techniques. But one of the things that stuck with
1:27:09
Speaker 1: me about it is how a lot of nowadays, I
1:27:12
Speaker 1: think there's some movement where I guess there has been
1:27:15
Speaker 1: for quite a while, that that cattle are bad and
1:27:17
Speaker 1: that grazing is bad, and we need fake meat, we
1:27:20
Speaker 1: don't need regular meat anymore. Um. And what he lays
1:27:25
Speaker 1: out here very clearly is how grassland health is directly
1:27:28
Speaker 1: related to how it is grazed. And he does all
1:27:31
Speaker 1: these case studies, like he goes down the southwest. I
1:27:33
Speaker 1: think it may be near Canyon Lands National Park, and
1:27:37
Speaker 1: he shows this photo and there's a fence line and
1:27:39
Speaker 1: on one side is the national park where no grazing
1:27:42
Speaker 1: is allowed, and this is a very arid environment, and
1:27:45
Speaker 1: on the other side is a private ranch where grazing
1:27:48
Speaker 1: is allowed. And on the no grazing side it looks
1:27:51
Speaker 1: like a desert. It looks like the typical desert that
1:27:54
Speaker 1: you think of when you think of that. And then
1:27:56
Speaker 1: on the grazing private land side, is this lush grass
1:28:00
Speaker 1: that has been UM, that's healthy, that prevents erosion, UM
1:28:04
Speaker 1: keeps moisture on the ground, the little moisture that there is.
1:28:08
Speaker 1: And that is because that that side where the grazing
1:28:10
Speaker 1: has happened, has been grazed very intentionally over a very
1:28:14
Speaker 1: long period of time, whereas the other the grasses just died.
1:28:17
Speaker 1: And this, this book, it really helped me. It really
1:28:21
Speaker 1: kind of nailed home this idea that livestock can be
1:28:25
Speaker 1: if used properly, it is great for the land. And
1:28:30
Speaker 1: you know what, you know, for better or worse, or
1:28:32
Speaker 1: maybe neither, it's just how it is. We are never
1:28:35
Speaker 1: going back to the days of wide open spaces out here.
1:28:37
Speaker 1: You know, there's private property, there's fences, and so in
1:28:41
Speaker 1: order to keep the grasses as healthy as they can be,
1:28:46
Speaker 1: the really the only way to do it is to
1:28:48
Speaker 1: use livestock. And so this book lays out specific techniques.
1:28:52
Speaker 1: But and and so you can go a is in
1:28:54
Speaker 1: depth as you want to the techniques of how this happens.
1:28:57
Speaker 1: And he lays out case studies everywhere from rand Is
1:29:00
Speaker 1: in Colorado to sub Saharan Africa. But I think what
1:29:04
Speaker 1: really stuck with me is just how hoo of the
1:29:08
Speaker 1: animals that eat grass or linked to grasslands forever and
1:29:13
Speaker 1: we need to have the two together. And Jim has
1:29:15
Speaker 1: actually been on my podcast several times talking about all
1:29:18
Speaker 1: this stuff, as has his wife, whose name is Danielle Howell,
1:29:21
Speaker 1: who's the CEO of US the Savory Institute, which UM
1:29:25
Speaker 1: really implements a lot of this holistic range management work.
1:29:28
Speaker 1: But I think, as you know, as we talk about
1:29:32
Speaker 1: public and private lands and grazing on on both, this
1:29:36
Speaker 1: is a great book to kind of get you up
1:29:37
Speaker 1: to speed on that topic. And it was. It was
1:29:40
Speaker 1: very formative to me. Yeah, it's interesting. I I don't
1:29:44
Speaker 1: have a like a direct touch point to grazing, like
1:29:49
Speaker 1: I don't have UM obviously experienced with that. But when
1:29:53
Speaker 1: I worked on the back Forward A project, I I
1:29:56
Speaker 1: dove deep into a lot of ideas around regenerative agriculture
1:30:00
Speaker 1: UM and and the ways that can be implemented, you know,
1:30:03
Speaker 1: on a smaller scale with food plots and growing crops
1:30:06
Speaker 1: and things for wildlife. Right, and that's like very very
1:30:09
Speaker 1: adjacent or you know, basically it's it's part of you know,
1:30:14
Speaker 1: the regenera of agriculture, ideas of grasslands and grazing and
1:30:17
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So I ended up learning
1:30:18
Speaker 1: a lot about that and was really fascinated by it.
1:30:20
Speaker 1: There's a lot to it and and understanding, you know,
1:30:25
Speaker 1: better more natural ways to manage grasslands or grow either
1:30:29
Speaker 1: growing grass or crops, I mean, finding natural ways to
1:30:33
Speaker 1: mimic nature, finding ways to work with nature versus fighting it,
1:30:38
Speaker 1: um so often leads to better outcomes for everything, um,
1:30:42
Speaker 1: whether it be the health of grass or the production
1:30:46
Speaker 1: or um, you know what, what you can actually get
1:30:50
Speaker 1: off the get off of a ten acre plot of corn.
1:30:53
Speaker 1: So um. Yeah, highly recommend diving into that topic in
1:30:56
Speaker 1: general because there's a lot of stuff there that is
1:30:58
Speaker 1: actually relevant even to white hill hunters that managed land too.
1:31:01
Speaker 1: So interesting stuff definitely, And this this book, I believe
1:31:05
Speaker 1: he's got tons of uh, you know, further reading and
1:31:08
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and you can go deep down
1:31:09
Speaker 1: like the Alan Savory Holistic management. I mean, there's just
1:31:14
Speaker 1: unbelievable amounts of information about there but out there about
1:31:17
Speaker 1: this topic. But for me particularly the first half of
1:31:22
Speaker 1: that book was very eye opening too to the whole
1:31:24
Speaker 1: concept of regenerative agriculture. It's it's interesting stuff. Okay, next
1:31:42
Speaker 1: one for me, I'm I'm gonna go to well, I
1:31:47
Speaker 1: guess if I first started by saying, let's look back,
1:31:49
Speaker 1: which was the American Serendetti, and then I moved us
1:31:52
Speaker 1: forward a little bit to like the awaking of an
1:31:55
Speaker 1: of an ecological consciousness with the Sand County Almanac. Then
1:31:59
Speaker 1: with uh McPhee, we kind of then moved into the
1:32:02
Speaker 1: sixties and the seventies and understanding the push and pull
1:32:06
Speaker 1: between conservation or preservation versus use UM and development and extraction. UM.
1:32:12
Speaker 1: Now I want to look into the future with a
1:32:16
Speaker 1: book called The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Colbert. And this
1:32:21
Speaker 1: book and a series of other kind of related books
1:32:24
Speaker 1: that I mentioned to UM talk about this this crisis
1:32:29
Speaker 1: of sorts that's been going on slightly under the radar. UM.
1:32:34
Speaker 1: That's that's that's becoming more and more UM obvious, I think.
1:32:39
Speaker 1: And that is this this serious bio diversity crash across
1:32:44
Speaker 1: the world, even here in America. UM. Basically, this book,
1:32:48
Speaker 1: The Sixth Extinction examines five major mass extinction events that
1:32:53
Speaker 1: have occurred on Earth up to now. There have been
1:32:55
Speaker 1: five big moments of history where there's been dramatic crash
1:33:00
Speaker 1: is in animal populations across the world, and now there
1:33:04
Speaker 1: has been a sixth We're in the beginning of a
1:33:06
Speaker 1: sixth mass extinction event. Over the last you know, decades, UM,
1:33:12
Speaker 1: there have been a disproportionately high number of animal species
1:33:15
Speaker 1: disappearing off the face of the earth, faster than ever
1:33:18
Speaker 1: before in the millions of years other than these five
1:33:20
Speaker 1: other events. And so what the author does in this
1:33:23
Speaker 1: book is takes the first part of the book and
1:33:25
Speaker 1: examines the history of these past events and how scientists
1:33:29
Speaker 1: discover them and what we can learn from them, stuff
1:33:32
Speaker 1: like the dinosaurs, stuff like, um, you know, the Pleistocene animals, mammoths,
1:33:37
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Um. So we we get some
1:33:40
Speaker 1: very interesting like big history. But then the next part
1:33:43
Speaker 1: of the book she then explores like what's happening now,
1:33:46
Speaker 1: how are we losing these animals? Why are we losing
1:33:49
Speaker 1: these animals? What's being done about it? Um? What's going
1:33:52
Speaker 1: on here? So she travels to the rainforests in South
1:33:55
Speaker 1: America and coral reefs and uh, different places all over
1:33:59
Speaker 1: the world and and examines and explores this issue UM
1:34:04
Speaker 1: in a way that I think is pretty pretty illuminating
1:34:07
Speaker 1: in an important I think this is like one of
1:34:09
Speaker 1: those big, big things like you hear a lot about,
1:34:12
Speaker 1: and for better or worse like that, it's become politicized
1:34:15
Speaker 1: global global warming, climate change, whatever you want to say
1:34:18
Speaker 1: about that. It's Unford's become a polarizing issue. But but
1:34:22
Speaker 1: this whole other and related crisis of of bio diversity
1:34:28
Speaker 1: and extinctions across the world, this is something that's that's
1:34:31
Speaker 1: just as important and tied very much along with that,
1:34:35
Speaker 1: and um, this book is is probably the best one
1:34:37
Speaker 1: I've found that that dives into this um and I
1:34:41
Speaker 1: think it's something that as somebody who hunts and fishes,
1:34:44
Speaker 1: if you care about animals and you care about fish,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: and you care about wild places, this whole disappearance of
1:34:52
Speaker 1: of animals across the country and the world is has
1:34:55
Speaker 1: got to be concerning. And there's so many animals that
1:34:58
Speaker 1: you know, you learn about and to hear about um
1:35:01
Speaker 1: that might not be here five from years from now,
1:35:03
Speaker 1: or twenty years from now or ten years from now,
1:35:05
Speaker 1: and that's having kids now. For some reason, that just
1:35:09
Speaker 1: seems like so much more tragic when I think about
1:35:12
Speaker 1: the fact that there's you know, a hundred of these
1:35:15
Speaker 1: leopards left, or there's fifty of these or there's seven
1:35:19
Speaker 1: hundred of these and thinking like, gosh, my kids won't
1:35:22
Speaker 1: even know about this someday. Um And and that's that's
1:35:30
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems it's it's seems morally, I
1:35:38
Speaker 1: don't even know what the right word is. I don't know.
1:35:40
Speaker 1: It just seems really damn wrong. And um And I
1:35:44
Speaker 1: wish and I hope and I and I and I
1:35:47
Speaker 1: aspire to hopefully someday be able to see that change
1:35:52
Speaker 1: in some kind of way. I don't know if it will,
1:35:54
Speaker 1: but but I guess reading about it, learning about it
1:35:56
Speaker 1: is a step one. So this book does a pretty
1:35:59
Speaker 1: good job at you and that I will say it's
1:36:01
Speaker 1: it's a little bit I don't want to say it's
1:36:03
Speaker 1: dense dense, um, but its denser than some of the
1:36:07
Speaker 1: others um. And it's not all focused on like big
1:36:11
Speaker 1: charismatic animals, So I think it's I think it's easy
1:36:15
Speaker 1: to like dive into this topic and read about like
1:36:17
Speaker 1: a Sumatran rhinoceros and how that's disappearing and like care
1:36:21
Speaker 1: about that. It's a little bit harder when you're learning
1:36:23
Speaker 1: about a little frog or something, which she talks about two. Um.
1:36:27
Speaker 1: But but I would encourage folks to give it a shot.
1:36:29
Speaker 1: I listened to a lot of this one. This is
1:36:31
Speaker 1: a good book to listen to. UM. I got through
1:36:34
Speaker 1: a lot of it through that avenue. I'd recommend that
1:36:36
Speaker 1: if if this sounds like a book that maybe you're
1:36:38
Speaker 1: intimidated by because of what I was saying here, UM,
1:36:41
Speaker 1: maybe try listening to it. UM. There's another couple of
1:36:44
Speaker 1: books along these lines, one called Half Earth by EO. Wilson,
1:36:48
Speaker 1: another one called Rescuing the Planet by Tony Hiss, which
1:36:51
Speaker 1: also talk about this issue and um some proposed ideas
1:36:57
Speaker 1: about conserving larger swaths of the remaining natural landscapes we
1:37:01
Speaker 1: have across the world to try to stem the bleeding
1:37:04
Speaker 1: of sorts. Those two are more recent books that I
1:37:06
Speaker 1: think cover this one too in interesting ways that if
1:37:09
Speaker 1: you're interested in this kind of stuff, might be worth
1:37:11
Speaker 1: checking out. UM. But yeah, I think that I think
1:37:15
Speaker 1: that this is one of those topics that we all
1:37:17
Speaker 1: have got to be aware of and thinking about, and
1:37:20
Speaker 1: this is a good entry way into that one. So
1:37:22
Speaker 1: that's that's why I recommend The Sixth Extinction, because I
1:37:24
Speaker 1: think this is going to be one of those big
1:37:26
Speaker 1: issues that we're talking about and trying to tackle for
1:37:29
Speaker 1: the decades to come. So that's that's one that I
1:37:32
Speaker 1: thought would be worth mentioned. Have you read this one? No,
1:37:35
Speaker 1: I haven't read any of those that you um that
1:37:38
Speaker 1: you just recommended, and they all sound great, and I
1:37:40
Speaker 1: was just I was thinking, it's it's a shame that
1:37:43
Speaker 1: I think I would guess that a lot of people
1:37:46
Speaker 1: when they hear like a topic like that, they think
1:37:50
Speaker 1: because it's been politicized, people are like, oh, that's that's
1:37:53
Speaker 1: left wing stuff or whatever. And I'm not. I feel
1:37:56
Speaker 1: like I'm right in the middle, and I try not
1:37:57
Speaker 1: do it. I don't want to associate with too much
1:38:00
Speaker 1: with any one one group in any part of and
1:38:04
Speaker 1: uh and and I feel like this is one of
1:38:06
Speaker 1: those books mean that that was one of the reasons.
1:38:07
Speaker 1: Like when I started my podcast, I lived in Boulder, Colorado,
1:38:10
Speaker 1: which is about as far left as you can get,
1:38:12
Speaker 1: and I would live next door to some of the
1:38:14
Speaker 1: you know, the most you could even call militant environmentalist.
1:38:17
Speaker 1: But then in my work, I was out working with
1:38:19
Speaker 1: ranchers who were on the far other end of the spectrum.
1:38:22
Speaker 1: Um Yet there was this massive overlap between the far
1:38:26
Speaker 1: left environmentalist and the far right ranching conservationists, and they
1:38:31
Speaker 1: had so much more in common than they did different
1:38:35
Speaker 1: And so I feel like this is one of those
1:38:37
Speaker 1: books that whether no matter where you are on the
1:38:40
Speaker 1: political spectrum, I think it's worth reading because at the
1:38:43
Speaker 1: end of the days, I think we all want to
1:38:45
Speaker 1: planet we can live on. You know, we won't clean air,
1:38:48
Speaker 1: we won't animals, and I don't I don't know that
1:38:50
Speaker 1: there's I think if any any kind of politics has
1:38:54
Speaker 1: been attached to that is serving somebody else. But I
1:38:57
Speaker 1: really do think it's it's a it's a topic that
1:39:00
Speaker 1: I have not read enough about and I need to
1:39:02
Speaker 1: dig deeper into. So I remember when you you were
1:39:06
Speaker 1: recommending this book initially and I wrote it down. So
1:39:09
Speaker 1: this is this is what I need to to push
1:39:11
Speaker 1: it up top of the top of the list. Yeah,
1:39:13
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely worth checking out. Um also won the
1:39:17
Speaker 1: Plitzer Prize, so it's uh it's been well, uh well awarded.
1:39:22
Speaker 1: Oh sweet, Yeah, yeah, I'll I'll definitely checked that out. Um.
1:39:26
Speaker 1: All right, my turn, last one. So my last one
1:39:31
Speaker 1: is called All the While that Remains Um, which is
1:39:36
Speaker 1: by a guy named David Guessner. All the While that
1:39:38
Speaker 1: Remains Edward Abbey, Wallace Stector in the American West. And
1:39:42
Speaker 1: it's by one of my favorite writers, UM, David Guessner,
1:39:46
Speaker 1: who is actually uh he's a writing professor in North
1:39:49
Speaker 1: Carolina at University of North Carolina at Wilmington's and he
1:39:52
Speaker 1: actually has been the professor of some of my good
1:39:55
Speaker 1: friends who are really talented writers. But it is uh,
1:39:58
Speaker 1: you know, it's the story of as as the title says,
1:40:02
Speaker 1: Edward Abbey and wat Stegner, who if you're not from
1:40:04
Speaker 1: the West, you may not have or deeply involved in
1:40:08
Speaker 1: the West, and one way or another you may not
1:40:09
Speaker 1: have heard of them, but they're they're kind of two
1:40:11
Speaker 1: different figures. Both were writers, and both kind of came
1:40:15
Speaker 1: up through the you know, the twentieth century and really
1:40:19
Speaker 1: set the stage for both the modern day environmental movement
1:40:24
Speaker 1: as well as just similar to have with Leopold in
1:40:29
Speaker 1: his book. They they they put language in place that
1:40:32
Speaker 1: we used to talk about wild places and about the
1:40:35
Speaker 1: West and about conservation. And you know, this is more
1:40:38
Speaker 1: focused on the West, but I think that it it
1:40:40
Speaker 1: can it has application across the whole country because these
1:40:44
Speaker 1: guys were just so so pivotal in their roles. Um
1:40:48
Speaker 1: on the surface, you know Stegner, Uh he he grew
1:40:52
Speaker 1: up kind of going through the West. His his father
1:40:55
Speaker 1: was kind of the stereotypical Western boomer, you know, kind
1:40:58
Speaker 1: of going down to town, trying to strike it rich,
1:41:01
Speaker 1: trying to make as much money as he can, booms
1:41:03
Speaker 1: and bust. And then the guy, I think he eventually
1:41:06
Speaker 1: just kind of flamed out and uh, like a horrible
1:41:10
Speaker 1: thing where he had a girlfriend, he killed his girlfriend
1:41:12
Speaker 1: and then committed suicide. And so just this while the
1:41:16
Speaker 1: Stigna just had this really tumultuous childhood and young adulthood
1:41:20
Speaker 1: and said, while Steigners are grown up, was really the opposite.
1:41:22
Speaker 1: He was a buttoned up college professor. He taught at Stanford,
1:41:27
Speaker 1: very you know, on the surface conservative um and thought.
1:41:31
Speaker 1: You know, he was a very talented writer. He wrote
1:41:33
Speaker 1: you know, Beyond the hundredth Meridian, which is mandatory reading
1:41:37
Speaker 1: about the West, and then and it's nonfiction, and then
1:41:39
Speaker 1: he also wrote like Angle Over Pose, which is one
1:41:42
Speaker 1: of the best novels ever written. And uh, you know,
1:41:46
Speaker 1: Debt felt a deep connection to this place that is
1:41:49
Speaker 1: the West and sought to change it kind of from within.
1:41:53
Speaker 1: And so a lot of his prime time work was
1:41:55
Speaker 1: during the sixties and seventies when there was also this
1:41:58
Speaker 1: counterculture movement and you know, hippies and all this kind
1:42:01
Speaker 1: of stuff, and he really in some ways kind of
1:42:03
Speaker 1: railed against that type. And so then on the opposite
1:42:06
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum is Edward Abbey, who was a
1:42:09
Speaker 1: wild man and he was, you know, advocate. He he
1:42:13
Speaker 1: wrote a Desert solidaire, The Monkey Rich Gang kind of
1:42:17
Speaker 1: advocated for this complete other side of things, like even
1:42:20
Speaker 1: kind of like eco terrorism, like let's let's blow up
1:42:23
Speaker 1: the hoover damn, that kind of crazy stuff. And and
1:42:27
Speaker 1: so both of these guys. He was actually a student
1:42:29
Speaker 1: of Wallace Stegner's for a while in the writing program. Yeah,
1:42:32
Speaker 1: and so these guys went off um and both made
1:42:36
Speaker 1: their mark on the West and in very different ways.
1:42:39
Speaker 1: And so this book it's it's a lot of different things.
1:42:41
Speaker 1: It's kind of a double biography, but it's not it's
1:42:44
Speaker 1: not completely And I've always liked books where I like
1:42:47
Speaker 1: double biographies, like for example, The Bully Pulpit that's Um
1:42:51
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt and President Taft. And I think when you
1:42:54
Speaker 1: can play people off of each other, it allows you
1:42:56
Speaker 1: to to kind of dig into parts of their personality
1:42:59
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to other wise. But um, but
1:43:02
Speaker 1: Guessner also works in a lot of his own personal
1:43:05
Speaker 1: story into it, and he works in a big road
1:43:08
Speaker 1: trip across the West. And it's one of these things
1:43:10
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with your book and with
1:43:12
Speaker 1: Steve's book, of of um, an adventure. Adventure story is
1:43:16
Speaker 1: kind of the backbone of the book, and then you
1:43:18
Speaker 1: learn stuff along the way and um. And so you know,
1:43:23
Speaker 1: Guessner is very very very funny, at least I think
1:43:26
Speaker 1: he is. And you get a lot of his personality,
1:43:29
Speaker 1: and you get a lot of his ideas about everything
1:43:31
Speaker 1: from writing to the importance of hard work, to the
1:43:34
Speaker 1: importance of having adventures and being you know, kind of
1:43:38
Speaker 1: seeking out wild places and connecting with our innate wildness.
1:43:43
Speaker 1: And um. You know, Guessner is more on the progressive
1:43:46
Speaker 1: side of things with his political beliefs. But UM, I
1:43:49
Speaker 1: know him very well. He's been on my podcast, I
1:43:52
Speaker 1: think at least three times. And uh, you know, he
1:43:55
Speaker 1: is a very thoughtful, very smart, very funny guy. And
1:43:59
Speaker 1: so I think, no matter what your political persuasion or thoughts,
1:44:03
Speaker 1: if you want to have a good understanding of the
1:44:06
Speaker 1: modern day West and the modern day conservation movement, whether
1:44:09
Speaker 1: that means the far left environmentalist type stuff or conservation
1:44:15
Speaker 1: as in conserving ranches, conserving forms. I think this book
1:44:19
Speaker 1: really lays a great foundation for that, So, Holly, reg
1:44:23
Speaker 1: I recommend all of Guesterner's book. He wrote a pretty
1:44:25
Speaker 1: good one, I mean a really good one recently about
1:44:27
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt called Leave It as it Is that I
1:44:30
Speaker 1: thought was great. I mean, he's he is hilarious too. So, UM,
1:44:35
Speaker 1: have you read all the while it remains? Oh? Yeah,
1:44:37
Speaker 1: I was actually going to include it on my list
1:44:39
Speaker 1: until I saw that you included it. So I think
1:44:43
Speaker 1: you did a big, big fan of this one. Um,
1:44:46
Speaker 1: and I couldn't agree more. And I would, I would
1:44:48
Speaker 1: just emphasize something you said. But I want to make
1:44:51
Speaker 1: a really big point on this is that while these
1:44:54
Speaker 1: two guys are known as Western writers and primarily discussing
1:44:58
Speaker 1: some Western related issues, this is not just about Western
1:45:02
Speaker 1: conservation or anything that it really like these guys, while
1:45:06
Speaker 1: while the West was their main canvas that they painted
1:45:09
Speaker 1: their stories and ideas on the concepts, the philosophies, the
1:45:13
Speaker 1: ideas about protecting places, conserving places, caring about these things.
1:45:18
Speaker 1: It applies across everything, and and what they wrote in
1:45:21
Speaker 1: the ideas that they popularized are still pulled upon and
1:45:25
Speaker 1: inspire people trying to conserve across the entire nation, whether
1:45:29
Speaker 1: it's in Maine or Florida or Montana. Um. So I
1:45:34
Speaker 1: think this this book is kind of, um, you know,
1:45:37
Speaker 1: more than just the things you described that being like
1:45:40
Speaker 1: the dual biography, it's also this kind of examination of
1:45:46
Speaker 1: of this history, but then also kind of current um,
1:45:50
Speaker 1: current environment we're in and trying to make sense of
1:45:53
Speaker 1: how we can fight this fight while also being real
1:45:58
Speaker 1: people and the realities of the world and the everything
1:46:02
Speaker 1: that that involves. Um. Understanding those two people, I think
1:46:06
Speaker 1: is is pretty important in understanding how we as a
1:46:09
Speaker 1: as a community think about these things today. And they
1:46:12
Speaker 1: did such a good job putting words to so many
1:46:14
Speaker 1: things we think and feel today. UM. And I mean
1:46:18
Speaker 1: I love both the writing. But ed Abbey. Ed Abbey
1:46:20
Speaker 1: especially is just like such a firebrand. And even though
1:46:25
Speaker 1: he have he of course, you know, in my opinion,
1:46:28
Speaker 1: went too far or at least you know, he he
1:46:31
Speaker 1: espouses things that would be far too far from me. Right.
1:46:35
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff you talked about, which is Uh.
1:46:37
Speaker 1: I think you know, obviously you would not condone any
1:46:42
Speaker 1: form of violence, right, Um. But outside of some of
1:46:46
Speaker 1: that stuff he talked about, UM, I do love how
1:46:51
Speaker 1: he is able to express how piste off he was
1:46:56
Speaker 1: about things, and how piste off I can be about things,
1:47:00
Speaker 1: and the pain and the fury that I think we
1:47:04
Speaker 1: rightfully should feel sometimes about the I don't know who
1:47:11
Speaker 1: who to blame, because it's just as much me as anyone,
1:47:13
Speaker 1: right But like the collective ship, we've taken on the
1:47:17
Speaker 1: natural world in so many instances across our nation's history
1:47:20
Speaker 1: and continue to do so. That is, you know, it's
1:47:23
Speaker 1: on each one of us in one way or another. UM.
1:47:26
Speaker 1: So I'm a part of that unfortunately too. But I think,
1:47:29
Speaker 1: um he does a great way of putting words and
1:47:32
Speaker 1: emotions to this, uh collective trauma we can experience in
1:47:38
Speaker 1: different ways when we look at a place that we
1:47:41
Speaker 1: love being paved over with a Walmart parking lot, or
1:47:44
Speaker 1: when we see a river that we loved rafting being
1:47:46
Speaker 1: damned up and you know, civilized or whatever it might be. Um,
1:47:52
Speaker 1: he's one of the few people that has been able
1:47:54
Speaker 1: to just with no filter, express those things in a
1:47:57
Speaker 1: way they think hits a lot of people. So this
1:48:00
Speaker 1: is a great introduction to him. And if you enjoy
1:48:03
Speaker 1: reading about him and the ideas in this book, um,
1:48:06
Speaker 1: then you gotta read Desert Solitaire, which is at Abbey's book,
1:48:09
Speaker 1: one of one of his many books. Um. And and
1:48:12
Speaker 1: I enjoyed that one too well. And I think, you
1:48:14
Speaker 1: know you, I think guests Are also does a really
1:48:17
Speaker 1: good job of laying out that, like every human on earth,
1:48:21
Speaker 1: at Abbey was gonna be a bit of a hypocrite,
1:48:23
Speaker 1: you know, he was. You know, he's advocating for basically
1:48:27
Speaker 1: blowing up bulldozers to keep him off of a piece
1:48:30
Speaker 1: of land. But at the same time he was known
1:48:32
Speaker 1: for drinking beer while he's driving and throwing the cans
1:48:35
Speaker 1: out the window and just littering, you know. And so
1:48:37
Speaker 1: I think some of these guys tr especially, but a
1:48:42
Speaker 1: lot of these people can be put on this pedestal
1:48:44
Speaker 1: as if their other worldly or they're not human or there,
1:48:46
Speaker 1: and but they're all flawed. Every single one of these
1:48:50
Speaker 1: people is flawed. And I think, um, Guestner does a
1:48:53
Speaker 1: great job of showing just how complex both Stegner and
1:48:56
Speaker 1: Abbey are. And if anything, you can take that and
1:48:59
Speaker 1: be like, all right, well, yeah, I'm like, I sit
1:49:01
Speaker 1: here saying there's not enough water in the West, yet
1:49:03
Speaker 1: I moved here from North Carolina, so I'm a hypocrite.
1:49:06
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean I I can't try to help something
1:49:09
Speaker 1: or try to do something about it. So I, um, yeah,
1:49:12
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite books. I think. Yep, yep,
1:49:15
Speaker 1: I agree me too. Uh. Great great book, kudos Dave, Yeah,
1:49:21
Speaker 1: well done, well done. Okay, So that's a really good
1:49:25
Speaker 1: segue into my last recommendation because a few of the
1:49:29
Speaker 1: at Abbey type themes pop up in this one. Have
1:49:32
Speaker 1: you read The Over Story by Richard Powers? No, But
1:49:35
Speaker 1: like every good writer I know says it's like one
1:49:38
Speaker 1: of the best books I've ever read their whole life.
1:49:40
Speaker 1: And so I don't know why I haven't read it.
1:49:42
Speaker 1: But Guessner actually said, he said he he could not
1:49:45
Speaker 1: believe how great a book the book. It was like
1:49:48
Speaker 1: just as if it's from another planet. And so, um,
1:49:52
Speaker 1: I've heard it from many many people. I need to
1:49:55
Speaker 1: it's on my shelf. I have not read it. Tell
1:49:57
Speaker 1: me about it. Yeah, man, that's that's exactly how I
1:49:59
Speaker 1: feel about it. And I literally, after finishing reading the book,
1:50:03
Speaker 1: I like dropped it on my lap and then just
1:50:06
Speaker 1: stood staring blankly at the wall for for ten minutes,
1:50:09
Speaker 1: just kind of overwhelmed by it. And I have actually
1:50:13
Speaker 1: thought my wife's reading it right now, but when she
1:50:16
Speaker 1: gets done, I'm gonna put this. I'm gonna mount it
1:50:19
Speaker 1: to my wall or put it on my desk someway.
1:50:22
Speaker 1: I have no other books like right prominently in front
1:50:24
Speaker 1: of me, but I'm gonna put it there somewhere to
1:50:27
Speaker 1: showcase the power of a story. It's it's it's really something. UM.
1:50:34
Speaker 1: I recommended this book to my buddy Doug during anyone
1:50:37
Speaker 1: listening to this nose Dug during Hunter. He's been featured
1:50:41
Speaker 1: on Mediator, He's been in the podcast and he's starting
1:50:43
Speaker 1: to read this book right now. And he just texted
1:50:45
Speaker 1: me today and I want to read you his endorsement UM.
1:50:48
Speaker 1: As an intro to this, he says, the overstory is remarkable.
1:50:53
Speaker 1: I've been too busy to devour, and slow reading has
1:50:55
Speaker 1: allowed me to marvel at the writing, relate to the characters,
1:50:58
Speaker 1: and wonder what's next. I've always marveled at trees and
1:51:01
Speaker 1: felt connected to them, but this book has given words
1:51:04
Speaker 1: to those feelings. So here's what this book is about.
1:51:09
Speaker 1: It Well, it's hard to tell you exactly what this
1:51:12
Speaker 1: books about. But the the overstory is it's a story.
1:51:19
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of a massive parable. It's it's a
1:51:24
Speaker 1: fictional book first off, So this is not a nonfiction
1:51:27
Speaker 1: like history book or anything. This is a fictional book
1:51:30
Speaker 1: about in general. I don't I don't read a lot
1:51:33
Speaker 1: of fiction at all. So that's why I've heard the
1:51:36
Speaker 1: same I heard the same things. You heard that like,
1:51:37
Speaker 1: you got to read this book, it's incredible. But I
1:51:40
Speaker 1: kept thinking to myself, Man, I don't know. I don't
1:51:41
Speaker 1: really like fiction. Um. I do read, you know, the
1:51:44
Speaker 1: occasional fiction thing. But if I am going to read fiction,
1:51:46
Speaker 1: it's usually like action or fantasy or sci fi or
1:51:50
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't read general literary fiction. Um
1:51:54
Speaker 1: So I just had that um resistance, I guess to it.
1:51:59
Speaker 1: But finally I picked it up. And at first you
1:52:03
Speaker 1: might be wondering, like what is this book about? Once
1:52:05
Speaker 1: you start, because each chapter, the first like eight chapters,
1:52:09
Speaker 1: are seemingly disconnected. They almost don't have anything to do
1:52:12
Speaker 1: with each other. You're just learning about like it's a
1:52:15
Speaker 1: short story. Each chapter is seemingly a short story about
1:52:18
Speaker 1: some new character, and you get pulled into each one.
1:52:22
Speaker 1: It's like amazingly interesting and fascinating and absolutely beautifully written.
1:52:25
Speaker 1: And each one has something to do with trees in
1:52:28
Speaker 1: the natural world, but in different ways. But each of
1:52:31
Speaker 1: these different people has some kind of experience or connection
1:52:34
Speaker 1: with with trees, the forest, plants, um but seemingly none
1:52:41
Speaker 1: of it's connected. But then as the book progresses, each
1:52:43
Speaker 1: of these different disparate characters is pulled together in this
1:52:48
Speaker 1: huge overarching story where in one way or another, each
1:52:55
Speaker 1: one of these different people has an awakening to the
1:53:00
Speaker 1: natural world in some kind of way, or some kind
1:53:02
Speaker 1: of new awareness to our connection with trees and forests
1:53:09
Speaker 1: and plants in nature in general. And and they kind
1:53:14
Speaker 1: of have this huge long character arc where eventually these
1:53:17
Speaker 1: people all kind of come together in this kind of
1:53:19
Speaker 1: epic story that I don't I'm not going to tell
1:53:23
Speaker 1: you the specifics of all what happens, but you just
1:53:27
Speaker 1: have to trust me in this that you learn a
1:53:32
Speaker 1: tremendous amount about trees and forests, like like forests and
1:53:36
Speaker 1: trees are the are the central theme, like all the
1:53:39
Speaker 1: book revolves around trees, and and you end up coming
1:53:44
Speaker 1: out of this book with this newfound wonder with these
1:53:49
Speaker 1: organisms and these ecosystems, UM and the power they have
1:53:53
Speaker 1: in our connection with them and in the connection we've
1:53:55
Speaker 1: had with them in the history of our country. UM.
1:54:00
Speaker 1: But but more than just that, it's um it showcases
1:54:05
Speaker 1: like the power of fiction to convey emotion because it's
1:54:10
Speaker 1: it's just a story. It's not like, you know, Richard
1:54:14
Speaker 1: Powers could have beach over the head with a thousand
1:54:16
Speaker 1: facts and historical tidbits and studies about trees, and instead
1:54:22
Speaker 1: he poured all of this knowledge and studies and research
1:54:26
Speaker 1: and interesting science about trees and forests and history, and
1:54:30
Speaker 1: he poured that into and layer that onto a set
1:54:33
Speaker 1: of stories with characters and people going through real life stuff,
1:54:37
Speaker 1: having real life things happen in a way that you
1:54:41
Speaker 1: care about these people and this stuff so much more
1:54:44
Speaker 1: than if you're reading a science book. UM. And it
1:54:47
Speaker 1: ends up being incredibly emotional, incredibly inspiring, incredibly empowering, incredibly
1:54:53
Speaker 1: sad and uplifting and UM, I mean, I'm kind of
1:54:59
Speaker 1: at a loss of words how to really describe this.
1:55:01
Speaker 1: But if you are anyone who cares about this stuff
1:55:04
Speaker 1: we've been talking about in this podcast, so far this
1:55:09
Speaker 1: story will connect with you, I think in a really
1:55:12
Speaker 1: really powerful way. It is a jaw dropper in a
1:55:16
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Um. You go on these journeys with
1:55:21
Speaker 1: these people that UM, I don't know. I came out
1:55:25
Speaker 1: of reading this book just like fired up to do more,
1:55:29
Speaker 1: to try to you know. Even though the general theme
1:55:32
Speaker 1: of this book is around trees and the forests, I
1:55:34
Speaker 1: think it it speaks to everything. It speaks to the
1:55:38
Speaker 1: general sense of or the general issues we have around everything.
1:55:42
Speaker 1: We've talked about wildlife, water, um habitat, protection, conservation of
1:55:47
Speaker 1: natural resources, dear birds, grasslands, forest, deserts, whatever. This book
1:55:52
Speaker 1: is really about awakening to a a consciousness of some
1:55:58
Speaker 1: kind of connection with these things, and then trying to
1:56:00
Speaker 1: do something about it. Realizing these things are out here
1:56:02
Speaker 1: and they matter and that they matter to us, and
1:56:04
Speaker 1: then realizing, holy sh it, what are we gonna do
1:56:06
Speaker 1: to make sure this stuff is still around someday? And
1:56:10
Speaker 1: you go on this journey with like six or seven
1:56:12
Speaker 1: different people, and it's just shocking. It's just it's it's
1:56:16
Speaker 1: I don't know. This book just serves like the shocking
1:56:20
Speaker 1: power to me that words can have and the stories
1:56:22
Speaker 1: can have. UM. So I can't recommend it enough. You know,
1:56:26
Speaker 1: it's it's a book to savor, it's not a book
1:56:29
Speaker 1: to try to rush through. I don't think. Um, although
1:56:32
Speaker 1: once you get to the second half of the book,
1:56:34
Speaker 1: it does really really pull you along. Um. But it's
1:56:38
Speaker 1: it's something else, man, it really is something else. I
1:56:41
Speaker 1: have to I will say. Like. The one thing is like,
1:56:44
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be some people that will read
1:56:46
Speaker 1: this and they will see a couple of things that happen,
1:56:49
Speaker 1: a couple of like the more extreme. Um, Like, there's
1:56:53
Speaker 1: an act of eco terrorism in the book that some
1:56:55
Speaker 1: of the characters do. And so I obviously won't I
1:56:58
Speaker 1: do not condone that, of course. Um. So there'll be
1:57:00
Speaker 1: some people that will read this. I'm like, oh, Jesus,
1:57:02
Speaker 1: is some leftist, crazy, wacko radical environmentalist terrorists. Um and
1:57:08
Speaker 1: And I don't want that to get in the way
1:57:09
Speaker 1: of the rest of the book. I think the sentiments
1:57:12
Speaker 1: and the emotions and the cares and the worries expressed
1:57:15
Speaker 1: in this book and that you follow on this journey
1:57:18
Speaker 1: with these people about I think it's pretty universal and
1:57:21
Speaker 1: pretty powerful and um and man, I'll never question fiction
1:57:26
Speaker 1: again after reading this one, because I think you can
1:57:28
Speaker 1: teach and inspire just as much with something like this
1:57:31
Speaker 1: as you can with any of the other nonfiction books
1:57:34
Speaker 1: we've talked about. So, yeah, the Overstory by Richard Powers, Yeah,
1:57:40
Speaker 1: I've I've heard such great things about that, but from
1:57:43
Speaker 1: just in general just the buzz, but then from people
1:57:46
Speaker 1: that I really really respect, um and so that I
1:57:51
Speaker 1: just need to make that one happen. And I'm like you,
1:57:53
Speaker 1: I just I don't read much fiction at all. I mean,
1:57:56
Speaker 1: and I never have. And I used to kind of
1:57:59
Speaker 1: tell we're like to take pride, and they're like, I don't.
1:58:02
Speaker 1: I don't read fiction. But thankfully through my podcast and
1:58:05
Speaker 1: and then through um just forcing myself outside of my
1:58:08
Speaker 1: comfort zone, I've I've really have started started reading more fiction.
1:58:12
Speaker 1: And like, there's an author named Nicholas Butler that I
1:58:15
Speaker 1: had on my podcast and I was just recently introduced
1:58:17
Speaker 1: to his work. And when you know, there's a certain
1:58:20
Speaker 1: type of novelist who can, like you said, communicate these
1:58:24
Speaker 1: larger truths in a way that you could never get
1:58:27
Speaker 1: from the facts and figures of nonfiction no matter how
1:58:30
Speaker 1: much you read. They can just tap into this. I
1:58:34
Speaker 1: don't know if you call it any emotional side of
1:58:35
Speaker 1: things or or it's just that they get these big
1:58:39
Speaker 1: themes that we can all connect with through into our brains,
1:58:44
Speaker 1: through these fictional stories. And when it's done, when it's
1:58:47
Speaker 1: done well or done spectacularly, like it sounds like the overstory,
1:58:51
Speaker 1: there's nothing more powerful. And so, um, I'm glad to
1:58:55
Speaker 1: hear you say that, because I've I've got it on
1:58:57
Speaker 1: my shelf. I bought it as soon as I think
1:59:00
Speaker 1: as soon as Guessner said I was talking about it
1:59:02
Speaker 1: being like the great American novel or something, and um,
1:59:04
Speaker 1: but it's just been sitting there, so I will get
1:59:08
Speaker 1: to work. Yeah, no more letting that sit in the shelf.
1:59:11
Speaker 1: And this one won the Pulitzer Prize too, so it's uh,
1:59:15
Speaker 1: you got you got a highbrow tasting books does maybe
1:59:20
Speaker 1: the only two Pulitzer winners on my bookshelf, but they
1:59:23
Speaker 1: are good ones. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the
1:59:26
Speaker 1: Pulitzer and that's my favorite books. So there you good
1:59:28
Speaker 1: with you on Pulitzers, You're there with me? Uh yeah, man,
1:59:32
Speaker 1: There's there's ten books plus a few I think extra
1:59:35
Speaker 1: suggestions in there for anyone who wants to really dig
1:59:39
Speaker 1: into this stuff. I think it's a pretty diverse list.
1:59:41
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different stuff covered there. Yeah, and
1:59:44
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different ways you can take it.
1:59:46
Speaker 1: You know, you read one of those books and then
1:59:48
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a list of twenty other books you
1:59:50
Speaker 1: want to read. So, um, there's a there's a lot there.
1:59:53
Speaker 1: And I can't wait to dig into those two that
1:59:55
Speaker 1: I had not read from your list. So I appreciate this. Yeah, yeah,
1:59:58
Speaker 1: me too. I'm gonna pick up down River here right
2:00:02
Speaker 1: when we get off the phone. UM, I want a
2:00:04
Speaker 1: real quick throw out a couple other resource suggestions for people,
2:00:09
Speaker 1: if if there are folks now, I don't think anyone
2:00:11
Speaker 1: who's listened this far doesn't like to read, because if
2:00:14
Speaker 1: you've listened to almost two hours I was talking about books,
2:00:17
Speaker 1: you must like books. But I guess if for some
2:00:20
Speaker 1: reason you don't like books and you've still listened to
2:00:22
Speaker 1: all of this, I wanted to give a couple of
2:00:24
Speaker 1: non book suggestions to people. I should have done this
2:00:26
Speaker 1: at the beginning, but better late than never. Um, I
2:00:31
Speaker 1: don't know if you had any ideas like this, but
2:00:33
Speaker 1: I had a couple of things I was going to
2:00:34
Speaker 1: throw out there. Um, A favorite documentary of mine related
2:00:38
Speaker 1: to some of these topics is Public Trust, which is
2:00:41
Speaker 1: a tremendous documentary about the fight for public lands. Talks
2:00:45
Speaker 1: about a lot of the same things I talked about
2:00:46
Speaker 1: my book, but does it in a really powerful way
2:00:48
Speaker 1: that you know, film can do with our you know,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: shared friend hall hearing um great. Great. Another thing I
2:00:55
Speaker 1: would suggest to folks if they want to learn more
2:00:57
Speaker 1: about conservation, if they want to learn more about what's
2:00:59
Speaker 1: going on day to day, there are a number of
2:01:02
Speaker 1: good newsletters out there that come out weekly or even daily,
2:01:05
Speaker 1: keeping you up to speed on stuff going on. So
2:01:08
Speaker 1: a few that I subscribed to, I'll just mention the
2:01:10
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. It's got a really good weekly
2:01:14
Speaker 1: newsletter which keeps you have to speed on. You know,
2:01:16
Speaker 1: these aren't just articles from them. They post articles from
2:01:19
Speaker 1: all sorts of different people talking about relevant issues in
2:01:23
Speaker 1: the hunting and fishing and conservation space. The Center for
2:01:26
Speaker 1: Western Priorities sends out a daily newsletter that's mostly Western
2:01:32
Speaker 1: conservation issue focused, but touches on a whole lot of
2:01:34
Speaker 1: different things related to environmental and conservation causes every day,
2:01:39
Speaker 1: with a big list of links to go check out.
2:01:41
Speaker 1: That's a good way just to keep your finger on
2:01:43
Speaker 1: the pulse of different things going on across the country. Um,
2:01:47
Speaker 1: for the deer hunters out there, the National Deer Association
2:01:49
Speaker 1: got a newsletter where they're posting a number of different updates.
2:01:52
Speaker 1: B h A has another one, same thing. Lots of
2:01:55
Speaker 1: good updates there. And then finally, I will tell you
2:01:59
Speaker 1: that the Mountain and Prairie Podcast by you, Sir Ed Robertson,
2:02:04
Speaker 1: is a great, great podcast to listen to if you
2:02:07
Speaker 1: care about these issues too, because you've had a number
2:02:09
Speaker 1: of people that either write about these things or engage
2:02:13
Speaker 1: with these things on a day to day basis, and
2:02:14
Speaker 1: a number of different careers, um, who care about conservation
2:02:18
Speaker 1: and live it day to day. And I've been inspired
2:02:20
Speaker 1: by a lot of those conversations you have, so highly
2:02:22
Speaker 1: suggest folks if you're listening, tune into Ed's show. Um,
2:02:26
Speaker 1: if you care about wild places, wild animals, the West,
2:02:29
Speaker 1: any of that stuff, you're gonna find something there on
2:02:31
Speaker 1: the Mountain Prairie Podcast. So those are my suggestions that
2:02:34
Speaker 1: do you have anything else you've did? Um, yeah, I'd
2:02:37
Speaker 1: say for a documentary, there's a really good one called
2:02:40
Speaker 1: First of all public trust. I highly recommend that awesome.
2:02:43
Speaker 1: It's how hearing. He's a he's a hero mine, he's
2:02:46
Speaker 1: and he's a big fan of you and your book
2:02:48
Speaker 1: by the way, as you know, UM. But there's a
2:02:50
Speaker 1: really good one more specific, but it's UM called Into
2:02:53
Speaker 1: the Canyon by it's a filmmaker named Pete McBride and
2:02:56
Speaker 1: he Pete and his buddy Kevin Fidarco, who's an author
2:03:00
Speaker 1: or who wrote UM the Emerald Mile, which is a
2:03:03
Speaker 1: really awesome book of the Grand Canyon. They hike the
2:03:07
Speaker 1: length of the canyon inside it, so it's like eight
2:03:10
Speaker 1: hundred miles no trail. Very few people have done it,
2:03:13
Speaker 1: and so they hike from one end of the canyon
2:03:15
Speaker 1: to the other and film it and then along the
2:03:18
Speaker 1: way UM talk about a lot of different threats that
2:03:21
Speaker 1: are facing the canyon and the history of the canyon,
2:03:24
Speaker 1: and so again it's like it's the film version of
2:03:26
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about these books, this adventure story
2:03:29
Speaker 1: where they work in a bunch of really interesting things
2:03:31
Speaker 1: and even about the you know, the Navajo and the
2:03:33
Speaker 1: tribal lands and some threats to their way of life.
2:03:37
Speaker 1: UM Pete, and there's a there's a companion coffee table
2:03:41
Speaker 1: book that goes with it that shows some of them
2:03:44
Speaker 1: the work, uh, some of the photos from that expedition,
2:03:47
Speaker 1: but really really awesome. UM. If you're into private lands,
2:03:50
Speaker 1: particularly ranching, um and ranchings, impact on h on conservation.
2:03:55
Speaker 1: There's a really good group called the Western Landowners Association
2:03:59
Speaker 1: and they it out what I think is one of
2:04:01
Speaker 1: the best emails around. I think once a month they
2:04:04
Speaker 1: put it out, and it's just filled with resources about
2:04:06
Speaker 1: everything from conservation to land management, land stewardship. Very very
2:04:11
Speaker 1: focused on the private land side of things, but it's
2:04:14
Speaker 1: inspiring to see all the work that's going into things
2:04:16
Speaker 1: on the private land side. I actually it's embarrassing. I
2:04:19
Speaker 1: was just late doing it. But I went on my
2:04:21
Speaker 1: first elk hunt in January and it was a life
2:04:25
Speaker 1: changing experience. And I am now a member of back
2:04:28
Speaker 1: Country Hunters and Anglers and will be forever and uh
2:04:32
Speaker 1: and so I'm just getting really dialed into all the
2:04:35
Speaker 1: resources they have. But I've got a few of their
2:04:38
Speaker 1: magazines and I've I've been getting their their emails, and UM,
2:04:43
Speaker 1: huge fan of everything they're doing and can't wait to
2:04:46
Speaker 1: immerse myself in that world even more. But those are
2:04:48
Speaker 1: those are kind of my top ones right now. It's great.
2:04:51
Speaker 1: Are you gonna go up to the b h A Rendezvous?
2:04:53
Speaker 1: I would love to. I'm trying to figure out if
2:04:56
Speaker 1: it works with the schedule. I really really want to,
2:04:59
Speaker 1: though I've wanted to quite a while. You think about it,
2:05:01
Speaker 1: I think it'd be I think you would, especially now
2:05:04
Speaker 1: that you've you've dipped your toes into those waters yourself
2:05:07
Speaker 1: and and experience that big game hunt. I think you
2:05:10
Speaker 1: would get a kick gotta getting to engage more of
2:05:13
Speaker 1: the folks there. That events awesome event full of people
2:05:17
Speaker 1: fired up about these things we're talking about. And uh, interestingly,
2:05:20
Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned this on the podcast yet, but I
2:05:22
Speaker 1: will be one of the featured speakers at the big
2:05:25
Speaker 1: Storytelling night at the National Convention, so I'll be there too.
2:05:30
Speaker 1: We're cooking elk upstairs in the croc pot as we
2:05:32
Speaker 1: record this, so I've been smelling the elk um really man,
2:05:36
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I sound like a dumbass on your
2:05:38
Speaker 1: podcast taught about this, but like life change, I would
2:05:42
Speaker 1: wouldn't think at age forty four, I would have thought
2:05:44
Speaker 1: you kind of maxed out a lot of your you know,
2:05:46
Speaker 1: peak life experiences. But that Elk hunt with Adam Gall
2:05:50
Speaker 1: of timber to Table Guide service was we could. I'll
2:05:54
Speaker 1: give you the full download on that sometime. Yeah, I definitely,
2:05:57
Speaker 1: I definitely want to talk to you more about that.
2:05:59
Speaker 1: If I, if I didn't have to piece so bad,
2:06:02
Speaker 1: my eyeballs are about to float out of my head,
2:06:05
Speaker 1: not just me, I would say we should talk about
2:06:07
Speaker 1: it now. But but we're both old men now, so
2:06:10
Speaker 1: we we don't have that long on the phone these days.
2:06:15
Speaker 1: And this has been a lot of fun. I I
2:06:17
Speaker 1: really do appreciate your sharing this stuff. You're you're always
2:06:20
Speaker 1: a great resource when it comes to you know, both
2:06:23
Speaker 1: talking about these ideas yourself or you know, recommending books
2:06:26
Speaker 1: and people to dive into further. So I knew this
2:06:29
Speaker 1: would be fun, and it was. I appreciate it. I
2:06:32
Speaker 1: appreciate it, man. I appreciate you have me only. I
2:06:33
Speaker 1: appreciate you writing your book. I appreciate all the hard
2:06:36
Speaker 1: work you put into everything you put out in the world.
2:06:38
Speaker 1: It's it's making the world a better place. I really
2:06:40
Speaker 1: really do appreciate it. I thank you. Thank you for
2:06:44
Speaker 1: saying that, where where can folks go if they want
2:06:46
Speaker 1: to hear your podcast or get signed up for your
2:06:49
Speaker 1: book recommendations or anything else you're doing. Where can they
2:06:52
Speaker 1: find all that? Yeah, easiest spot Mountain and Pririe dot com.
2:06:55
Speaker 1: Just go to that you can. I've got a uh
2:06:58
Speaker 1: every other month, I sending out book recommend Nation, six
2:07:01
Speaker 1: emails a year, no ads, no spam, nothing, just five
2:07:05
Speaker 1: or six books I've read and recently read recently and
2:07:08
Speaker 1: highly recommended. I've got a weekly email called good News
2:07:11
Speaker 1: from the American West. We're only good news, no negative stuff.
2:07:15
Speaker 1: And then, uh, you know, I'm on all the social
2:07:17
Speaker 1: media stuff, so I would love to love to connect
2:07:19
Speaker 1: with anybody. Awesome, well ed, Let's do it again soon.
2:07:23
Speaker 1: I really thank you, and that is a rap. Thanks
2:07:28
Speaker 1: for tuning into this one. I hope you enjoyed it.
2:07:30
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming along with this journey over the
2:07:33
Speaker 1: course of Conservation Month. I don't know about you, but
2:07:36
Speaker 1: I'm feeling re energized and excited to get out there
2:07:40
Speaker 1: to get my hands dirty, whether that be planning a tree,
2:07:43
Speaker 1: or dialing a phone number, or reading a book, whatever
2:07:47
Speaker 1: it is. Um. You know, I know we've got a
2:07:49
Speaker 1: lot of work to do to get ready for white
2:07:51
Speaker 1: tail season coming up. And not that many more months.
2:07:54
Speaker 1: It's kind of crazy how quickly it's coming up on us.
2:07:56
Speaker 1: But at the same time, there's a lot of stuff
2:07:59
Speaker 1: we can do right now to make sure that our
2:08:01
Speaker 1: future deer hunting seasons are bright as well, so I
2:08:04
Speaker 1: hope you'll join me in that too, So until next time,
2:08:07
Speaker 1: my friends, I appreciate you, and stay wired to hunt.