Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 329: Public Lands and That Wild Country with Hal Herring

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Ep. 329: Public Lands and That Wild Country with Hal Herring · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the wire to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: twenty nine and today in the show, I'm joined by
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: renowned conservation writer Hal Herring to discuss public land history
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and advocacy, wilderness, and an in depth look at my
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: book That Wild Country. All right, welcome to the Wired
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Onyx, and welcome to
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the New Year. To Happy new year to all of
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: you my friends. Today we've got a special episode in
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: which I am not the host, I am actually the guest.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: How's that going to work? Well? I was recently interviewed
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: on the back Country Hunters and Anglers podcast also known
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: as the b h A podcast and Blast, which is
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: hosted by a steamed conservation writer, hunter, and angler, Hale Herring.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: He hosts the podcast and you might also know him
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: as a longtime writer for Field and Stream. He just
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: does great work and he was kind enough to read
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: my book That Wild Country recently and invite me on
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: their podcast to discuss it. Now. I know you've all
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: heard me talk about my book on the podcast. Over
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks or months, I've asked you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: to buy it. I've given you the cliff notes version
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: of what it's all about. But at least on this podcast,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: you know, we we haven't really gone in depth unto
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: We haven't any kind of real discussion about the book.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I just kind of told you, Hey, I wrote this book.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: It's called That Wild Country. It's about the history of
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: public lands and my own journeys, blah blah blah. But
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we really haven't had any deep discussion on the themes
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of the book or the lessons I learned about public
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: lands along the way, or the process of writing it,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: or you know, any of the details about this whole
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: topic of public land history and politics because an advocacy,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: or any of my adventures or or hunts or trips
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: or anything that went on as part of this book.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: We haven't gone into any of that yet. And I
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: think maybe I'm biased here, but I think that's some
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. And fortunately Hale wanted to discuss all
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of that and more on the b h A podcast,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and I just think it was such a good conversation
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: that we needed to share it here on Wired Hunt
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: as well. So that's what you're about to hear. You're
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: about to hear an excerpt from the back Country Hunters
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and English podcast with Halis host and me as guest.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And this is obviously gonna be a little bit different,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: but I think you're really gonna enjoy it. If you've
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: read the book already, I think this is going to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: give you a really interesting new behind the scenes look
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: at how the book came together and what I was
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: trying to achieve with it, and and maybe give you
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: more in depth understanding um of of what it all meant.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And then if you haven't read the book yet, my
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: hope is that this conversation is going to help you
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: better to decide if it's something you want to check
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: out at all. So I do think if you love
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to hunt, or fish, or hiker camp or recreate on
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: public lands of any kind, this is going to be
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: a podcast for you. And if that also describes you
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: at all, you should also strongly consider joining back Country
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Hunters and Anglers. They are one of the absolute most
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: influential conversation not well, they're granted conversations, but they are
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: also an influential conservation organization, one of the most influential
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: out there in the country today fighting on behalf of
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: public lands and waters. And you know our rights to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: hunt and fish and and explore these places. So I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: hope you'll join me in the fight to protect these places.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And I think by tapping into b h A, it's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: a great place and a great way to start. So
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: with all that said, let's take a quick break and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: then we will hop over to my interview on the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: b h A podcast and Blast with Hal Herring. Enjoy,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome back, or welcome here if you've
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: ever been here before. Thanks for coming. Just a country
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Hunters and nine podcast and blast um on how Herring
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and I am in Bozeman, Montana. Today I caught up
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: with Mark Kenyon, who has a podcast of Wired Hunt
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and has just written a remarkable book that I've had
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: in my hands for a month or so. Um, I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: reread it for I read it once fast and reread
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: it once slow for this interview, and UM, I'm I'm
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: super pleased to be able to turn people onto it
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: because um we'll talk about how how powerful I think
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: it is. But Mark, first you, uh, thanks for doing
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: this for one thing, thanks, thanks for being here, but
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: thanks for writing that book. It's called That Wild Country. Um,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: will you identify yourself just a little bit? Yeah, yeah,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: so Mark Kenyon here, Like he said, I wrote That
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Wild Country. But previous to that, I've ran a website
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: in a podcast called Wired Hunt, which as of two
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: thousand and eighteen I think is also part of Mediator's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: network now too. Um so yeah, I've been writing first
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: for digital stuff, then for most of the Honey magazines,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and then for me to do myself and launch the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: podcast then in two thousand and fourteen, and was doing
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: all that full time for a few years, um, until
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I got to this point right in the book. So, um, well,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Hunter Angler love to do just about anything outside and
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you're a Michigan or by birthright Michigan or by birth
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: visitor of the West by my passion is yeah. Well,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and in a book it's like it's like a grand
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: tour of the of the West too, and um, which
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: is which we'll talk about like the how how that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: works in the book. But it is like a grand
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: tour and um it's one one and and you know what,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: it's an everyman's tour too. There's nothing in this book
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: that you do that anybody in the United States can't
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: settle up an old ford and go do which is
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: really really cool. Um, but you came this, you're you're
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a white tail hunter first, right, Yep, that was what
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: we kind of grew up on. We hunted a little
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: forty acre piece that my grandpa bought five which was
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: surrounded on two sides by public land. So I grew
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: up going to our deer camp up north and then
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: trudging across the public got you looking for big woods bucks?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: And uh is that Upper Peninsular or Northern Michigan or
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: northern Lower And uh the bridge? Yes, below the bridge?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: When when when Jim Harrison stuff started coming out a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: lot um my friends and honor in Alabama, and we'd
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: never you know, we need I've never been to Michigan.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: In the first place I ever went to Michigan was
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Kalamazoo as a grown man. But my friends, but you
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: know what they call those people? And I said, what's
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: that troll? Yeah, because they live below the route. That's
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that's that's super cool. That's pretty fun. But yeah, Michigander
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And grew up hunting deer and fishing for perch. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: walleye and pike and bass and all that trolling around
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the lakes of western side of the state. And I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: did a little bit of hike and camp and exploring
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: along the way to And did you start out when
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: you were young all this? Yeah, I mean I think
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I was in the blind with my dad at age
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: three or four. Um, it's an interesting thing. We were
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: very Um my family was really into hunting and fishing
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: from the cultural side, Like we identified as hunters and anglers,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: like that was the thing get together for a family
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: get together. As we're all sitting there talking about unting fishing. Um.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: But we never the family before, we never took it
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: so far as to really go deep into strategy or
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: really go so far as start going out west or anything.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So we we forever the family loved to hunt, love
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: to fish, but it was always you did what you
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: always did, went and sat next to a tree or
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: you know, walked out and you found a rub and
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: you sat down. That's what you did. So that is
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: was the extent of my hunting education until I kind
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of went off on my own and then had to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: self educated to take things to the next level. But
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: it developed this really foundational passion was really the biggest
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: thing I got from my family. Well that's a really
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: to me that that. Actually the South is somewhat like
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: that too, but that's im Indwestern thing where it's it's everybody.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Some of the best fishermen and hunters I know have
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: come out of the Midwest and it's and it's they've
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: they've been there, They've been unquestioned in this pursuit like
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: since babyhood, you know. Um And and that's not to
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: say that all of them don't take it to that
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: other level too, they do. You run into them all
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: over the place. But um, yeah, that's pretty interesting. And
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  Speaker 1: I can relate to that from growing up where people
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: just went to the deer stand. It was very much uh,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it just steeped in tradition. You know. It was the
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: cabin go to deer campuses, no power, no water, just
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: go out their propane lanterns and just getting away from
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it all. It is almost just about going to this.
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  Speaker 1: It was a pilgrimage to this place where your friends
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and family came back together every year, and and and
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: so much the revolves around that. But I remember at
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: age you know, six and seven, and nine and ten,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the thing I would always want to do is I
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: to go and stand out underneath the buck pool. You'd
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: hang the deer there, shot tongue in the buck pool,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: and I I would just stand there staring at him, thinking, Wow,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: what an animal. Where Someday I want to head off
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: into the woods on my own and be able to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: do that. And uh, and so y'all had some success there. Yeah,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I mean we had success, relatively limited um and and
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: decline over the years, actually just dear populations plummeting in
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the two thousand's part of the state, but put enough
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: success to keep me interested as a kid, um to
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: really just fill my imagination. Yeah, it's incredible to marvel
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: at that. And I'm old enough to remember when they
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: first came back to North Alabama and they were just
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: our idea of everything that ought to be out there
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: in the woods. But yeah, you know what I mean,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: they're like they're like they made the woods. I remember
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: my Civics teacher who's helped me a lot in hunting
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and stuff, he said, you know, it just it just
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: blows my mind that there's these there's these big woods
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: left and there's these big old out there in it
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: just living their own lives. Well, what how lonely or
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: tragic would it be to have a place like that
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: without those big hands? Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't It wouldn't
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: feel right, right, you bet. I was thinking about them, like, um,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Peter Matthias and I think when he wrote Wildlife in
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: America he talked about that great American silence and then
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: like and how it probably it wasn't silent on the
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Great Plains you you know, pre Columbus it was it
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: was an uproar. Yeah, I can't I'm sure so many
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: people have said this over the previous hundred fifty years,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: but I can't help but just wonder and imagine and
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: dream about what that must have been. Like I go
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: back to the Journal's list and Clark every once in a
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: a while, just to just to think about that or not.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: I go to Great Falls, Montana, a lot that's like
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: our supply town, and I'll go down and it it's
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: all damned up, the falls and stuff like that. And
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: someday I hope it'll run free. Maybe they could replace
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the power with a flow through or something. But um,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: we spent a lot of time on the river there,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: and uh, I think about that all the time. It's
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: like there's areas there where there were so many buffalo
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: that died crossing the ice that the water would be
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: contaminated way downstream. And then wolves and dozens and dozens
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: just eating all the kid and we were thinking about, um,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: pishkin is pishkin is? Uh? I think it's black Feet
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: for a buffalo jump, and um, Montana is a little
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: town there on the Missouri and it has an enormous
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: buffalo jump and an incredible state park there and and
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I mean anybody who wants to is coming through Great
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Hell into the Great Falls on a trip, it would
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: be checked well advised to stop. And uh, that place
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: we were we were imagined when they this was pre bow,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: mostly pre horse, and um, when that was rocking, when
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: they're running those buffalo over that and the little kids
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: are hiding with the they have these these hides they
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: put up to startle the buffalo, and when that was rocking,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: we were thinking, like every grizzly, every eagle, every wolf,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean imagine what the scene was. And
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: then all the people because they just moved there until
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: they had it all processed. Yeah, unimaginable carrying a city
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and knives that are made from stuff that's uh it's
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: quarry done to yellowstone carried. Yeah. I just read an
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: interesting book examining, um, you know, the Clovis and fulsome
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: cultures and kind of everything that's going on during the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: plato Seen area and uh, just talking about how how
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: so many of the tools were imported in from very
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: specific places. They would make pilgrimages to different places, to
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: to Knife Lake in northern Minnesota, a certain type of stone,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and from to this location, this location that you see
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: them coalescing certain regions where then all the people came
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to for these Yeah, just really interesting. I think there's
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: a quarry at Montana City near Helena that that is.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: You know, it's as old as anybody can date back.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Everybody's changing those dates. Now there's ten thousand years ago,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: and then they're going, wow, this is twelve you know.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: But stuff, it's it's incredible stuff. And and if nobody
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: has ever if anybody's never seen the Clovis stuff, they're
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: huge them in person. There's some in the museum in
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Helena that um that and they're big. They're for chopping
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: like Mamma sat John Sloss dis Yeah, and they're the
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: only art that survives is this. They took these multi
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: colored stones and they chipped them. They had somebody who
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: was an insane artisan, you know, and they would and
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: they had these multi colored bands in the stone and
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and we don't know what their art was, but clearly
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: this was their art because they put it in the
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: burial site on Um. It's called by Ansick Site up
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: by will Saul, Montana. And there's a there's these two
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: children buried in that and they're covered with red ochre
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and they have like the best of the best choppers
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and and scrape. Wonder what the what their status was
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: or what warder than that kind of Yeah, somebody found
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: him like looking for hunting gravel with a front inloader. Yeah,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: it's nice. It's pretty country, Pally, It's always been pretty
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: beautiful valley. So Um as a Michigan or you you
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: started coming west obviously in this book you started like
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: like twelve year what you came with as a kid, Right,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: We did two trips west as a child when I
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was I don't remember, it was like six or seven
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: or seven or eight, and then one more like two
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: years later. Um. One trip we did the northwest. We
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: hit Mount Rainier National Park, Northern North Cascades and Olympia Olympics. Sorry,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and then the second was to Glacier and those just
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: became foundational in my childhood imagination. We never went back.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I wish we had, but I think families got busy
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. As you you're got
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a toddler, yes, yes, you've got tyler now. So yeah,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: it's it's not easy, but but that had this, I
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: don't know, it's just lingered in me forever so ever.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Since then, I always dreamed of going back, of wanting
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to get into this big wild country doing doing something
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: above and beyond what I did growing up, which was
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: fun but relatively domestic hunting and fishing kind of adventure,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to go out to the lake with the boat, that
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. Everything you grow up with seems domestic. Yes,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: so yeah. It wasn't until I actually, uh you know,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: kind of went off on my own and finished off
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the craziness of college that I started making my own
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: pilgrimages out west, and uh did the first one to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the three week trip when I was heading out towards
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: my full time job in California that I I took out
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: of college, and we took took three weeks to go
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: and experience these things, and and that's when I realized, Wow,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: this is I mean as as anyone who was done
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: that same trip or experienced that same thing comes to understand,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: this is something really special. And ever since then, I've
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: been trying to and more and more time of my
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: year exploring public clans out west. And I've gotten to
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: very lucky with my career that I get to spend
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: significant my time for a Midwestern at least. And what
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: did you study in college? Marketing business? Um? And took
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a job working for a tech company doing online advertising
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and marketing. Um. That was That's where it started from.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And uh, there's a that's a great part of the book. Um,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's your personal journey. Like where you said,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: like that's that was great, but but you wanted something
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: different at some point you took a big risk. Yeah. Yeah,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So so coming out of college, I had I had
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit And and you tell me if this
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: is not what you want to talk about, because I
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: could get rambling if I'm not careful, but I'll try
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to make as shure as I possibly can. I thought
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get into business and be this big businessman,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: took an internship in New York City, realized that's not
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: what I wanted. Couldn't hunt, it, couldn't fish, couldn't get
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: outside of to do the things I want to do.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: So I said, okay, there's I've got to find a
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: way to to to link my passion for the outdoors
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: with what I do. But then my last year of college,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: I got wooed by by everything that is Google. This
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: company came in and I was seduced by the allure
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: of working for a company like that, which which ended
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: up being great. But so I took that job and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: ignored what I learned the previous summer. But immediately upon
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: getting out to Califord, you ignored what you learned in
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: New York City exactly. Yeah, So I told myself, I
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: will I'm gonna work somehow related the outdoors or Google,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: because Google just didn't say no to that. And so
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I got that job, and um, immediately they'll that fall.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I'm working in Mountain View, California, at the headquarters there,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: and right away I felt that claustrophobia again. I felt
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: that just lack of oxygen. And so it was I
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: don't remember October probably two thousand nine, and I read
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: a book. I went to Barnes and Noble and was
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: looking for books and I found this book was called
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Crush It and it was all about combining your passion
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: with um with your vocation someday and I, yeah, I
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: closed the book and I said, that's what I'm doing.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: And I started right then working on this thing that
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: became Weird Hunt. And I said, I'm not gonna stop
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: working on this until I'm able to do this for
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: a living in for my life. And uh, and that
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: led me to where I am now. And this is
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: probably not six training is type. But did you know
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: about podcast and then that early? Um, I was aware
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: of podcasting, but I actually listened to a couple of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: podcasts back then. I remember Um Peterson's Bow Hunting had
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: a podcast at that point that early, and then there's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: another one called bow Cast I think, so I was
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: listening to those back then. Um, but I didn't. I
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: didn't realize that I should create my own for several years.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: But actually it was the the tools of the resources
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: that helped me the most to build my own company
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: and my own brand and allowed me to take that
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: stepping stone or that that jump off the cliff. Um,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: it was podcast. I was listening to all these entrepreneurial
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: podcasts and things, and that kind of gave me the um,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the skill set and the confidence that while people are
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: doing this, that's the thing you can do. Um. And
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: then yeah, so I quit, I quit Google and the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Fall of Tis and thirteen and went for it. Well,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and you went back to Michigan. Yeah, yeah, And so
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I was only in California for four or five months
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: at headquarters, and then um, we haven't. We had an
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: office in an arbor, Michigan, and so that's where I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: worked for the remaining three and a half years. Um,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: did you great experience? Did you? Are you a self
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: taught writer? Yes? Yeah, and just read a lot try. Yeah.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: That's and that's what I tell everybody to when people
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: ask me, because because then you can look at a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: paragraph of yours and say, yeah, okay, or this clearly
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't stand up because because I read, I just read,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: um rick baths where we go, you're reverting your book?
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: But yeah, and that's set in the bar too high, right,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: But that's that's how I feel like most people can write.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: You just have to read. I just I'm a voracious,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: insatiable reader. I love, love, love, love love books. I
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: read and read, read and wants it's are writing for
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: my website. I realized that I wanted to become as
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: good of a writer as I possibly could, because I
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: found a tremendous amount of satisfaction and sharing and writing.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So then started reading books about writing and reading with
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the writer's eye. And so when I read something, thinking
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to myself, why is this so compelling? Why does this
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: move me from page to page to page? How did
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I learn something here and not even realize it? Or
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: what don't I like about this book? And so and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: so That's how I how I learned to write. Um,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and and hopefully, like like you said, I have this
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: tremendous sense of of it, like that imposter syndrome. So
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: as I'm writing the book, like there's no way this
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: could be as good as Steve's book or Rick's book
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: or such and such a book, um, but you just
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: try your very best to just get something on the page.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And then you pound your head against the wall over
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and over again, trying to rewrite and rewrite and fix
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and fine tune, and and then eventually you have to
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: say I did the best I possibly could in this
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: moment as I am right now, and you just have
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: to put out there in the world. And uh, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: that's what we did. And yeah, there's an athletic uh
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: analogy there too is leaving it all on the field,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: you know. Um, and I think people, I think a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: reader can. There's there's a supernatural element in here. And
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it's like my friend who he's a diamond miner somebody
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I hope to get him on a podcast, but he's uh,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: he just he People say he has supernatural abilities to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: find stuff. But the truth is, he says, I I don't.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I just I just look for stuff a thousand times
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: more than anybody else. And so you end up and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and then you you start finding that you can do
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: these things. Or Malcolm Gladwell talks about the three thousand
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: hour rule or the ten thousand repetition rule. Um, that's
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: true and jiu jitsu right anything and in anything, right
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: guitar playing, but you have to have an incredible passion
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: for it in order to do it ten thousand times
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: very rarely. Isn't this just like gift from having that
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: flows down through your fingers easily? It's it seems like, Uh,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: we have that assumption when you think of great artists
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: or writers or whatever pursuit it might be, we assume
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: they must have something that we don't. But they probably don't.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: It's just like you said, having the passion of willingness
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: to work for a long time, you can be like
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: me and be utterly unemployable as a tree planter and
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a timber thinner, you know, in a trail builder. Eventually
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you gotta find something else. Yeah, could it? Um? I
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: can tell you so when you're saying this book can't
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: be as good as as Rick Bass or whatever the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: book is, the book is extraordinary. And I wouldn't. I would,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: I would take a different attack if I didn't really
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: take that. Um. I just it is just you did it,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and um it's it's a uh as we're we're talking
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: about a little bit before we started. Um. One of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the things you managed to do is is something that
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: we need right now more than we've ever needed it before,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: which is to understand how we got the incredible things
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: we have and you have managed to teach in this book.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: And it's the word would be to be didactic. Right,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: But as Jim Harrison wrote, he goes, but you better
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: hide it because everybody wants to teach, right, because you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: feel like you've got something to relate. But you better
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: give people a story and an adventure and not be
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: putting on a little professor hat and and banging on
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the hitting them with a stick. You know. And one
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: of the things you did in here is you have
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you have in it and it looks effortless, which it
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: always does when you do it right. But you have
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: given us this history that we cannot do without. I
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: promise well that that that is the greatest compliment. That's
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: what we're looking do. I mean, this is what I
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: was hunting um and I just I was reading it
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and I was like, you have the history. You even
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: go far afield from just public lands and do like,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: how did we restore the wildlife? You've got Pittman Robertson,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: You've got Danel Johnson in here, and they're all inside
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a narrative of you out in the field go into
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: one incredible place after another. What kind of inspired me
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to do this was that, as as I alluded to earlier,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I started heading out west. I started exploring public lands.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I started hunting for elk and going to to this
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: place or that place. And then in two thousand and
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: fourteen and fifteen, then the land transfer movement starts picking
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: up steam, and I'm starting to see, Okay, these places
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: that have developed this tremendous love for and that I'm
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: going out and spending every ounce of vacation time I
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: have to see, and every time I leave Michigan, I
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: want to dive in these places. Now I'm realizing they're threatened,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and I'm trying to understand that. And during that whole
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: period of time, I had this realization, I don't understand
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: how we got here. I don't know I'm hearing these
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: words like stage brush rebellion, or I'm hearing about this
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: person or that person. I don't understand the context of
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the now. And if I don't know that, and I
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: worked in the hunting world, in the outdoor world, If
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know that, a lot of other people probably
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: don't too. And then I start asking friends and family
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: around me in the Midwest and elsewhere, and I realized
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: they don't even know we have these places, let alone
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: how we got there. So I realized there's this huge
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: information gap. Um, So I started trying to learn myself
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and Then once I did that, I realized, Oh, there
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: is information out there, but it's in these dusty old textbooks.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: There's dense not with dense history books, but the average
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: person will never read. UM. So I thought, well, I'm
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: not a a professional conservationist, I'm not a historian, I'm
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: none of these things. I don't live out west. Um,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I haven't been involved in these things for decades. Who
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: am I to try to write a book about this?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: But I came to terms of the fact that I
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: am the target market that needs this. I'm a person
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: like there are so many other people just like me
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: in Michigan or New York, or Florida or Georgia or
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Wyoming or Montana who don't know the context, who don't
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: know how we got here, who maybe are unaware of
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of of even this amazing heritage and heritage that we have.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: So if I could write something from that perspective for
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: those people that could do some good, maybe, UM and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: do it in a way like you said, that doesn't
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: feel stodgy and slow and dense. It's it's in an adventure,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: you know. UM. And when I did, when I studied
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: right and kilm Barn, he wrote a great book Call
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: in the Wilderness. She told me, you you gotta give
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: people seen if you want to give them expositions. She said,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: somebody wants to take a trip with you. They don't
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: want to be lectured to. But but and she said,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: that formula, actually you got it's hitting. It's in this book,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: by the way, which you did unknowingly probably, But that's
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the way you tell a story, right, Um, and uh,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I've never found that to fail. You can push it.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: She said. It was like taking putting money in the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: bank with like a story and adventure and seen and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: then taking money out of the bank when you're trying
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to teach somebody something or give them some facts. And um,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: do you do? You nailed that in this book. Um.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: One of the things I also when when you're saying
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: you were the target market, you're the target audience you yourself,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And so that the book also works as an exploration
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: where you were you were going to learn these things
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: as a person who loves something but doesn't know enough
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: about it. But I'd also say that you are you
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And I think this is a where we are in
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Bozeman right now, like where we are with people all
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: over the United States. Where we are b h A
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: two and UM. And I've just come around to this reluctantly,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: like we are the man in the arena that Roosevelt
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: talked about, and we definitely include all our sisters in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that too, the man or the woman in the arena. UM.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: And because we love something so much, the onuses upon
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: us two reach your hand out to somebody and say, hey, man,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: let me let me tell you a story. That's Hunter
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: per Center and that's um. I I've told this story
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a few times were explained this, but basically I've had
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: this career trajectory to where I went from could I
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: do this thing? Could I write about hunting and and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: someday be able to make a little bit money from it?
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: And then eventually was able to do that, And then
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: it was the dream of maybe I could somebody do
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: that as my career and I was able to do that,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and then it was maybe I could be able to
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: pay for my mortgage and hate for Spotify, maybe do that,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and then and eventually got to a point that where
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: I realized, Okay, what's what are my next goals? Where
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: am I going with us? What? Um? What what do
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: I want to be when I grow up, and I
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: had this shift from just being able to make it
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: or to make some money or whatever, to be able
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: to love what I do, to how do I make
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a positive difference, Like how do I do something that matters?
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: And it was right around the same time that this
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: whole situation was brewing in the world, in the in
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the country, and then myself and I thought, this is
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: this is that something you could do that maybe could
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: could matter. And as you describe in a book, your
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: own a trip when the when the Bundy occupation of
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: mau here comes up, and and um, there's some incredible
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: journalists covering that Amanda feature at O P b Argon
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Public Broadcasting. I mean I was just glued to that
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: for a while, you know. And they they were, they
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: were very well informed, unlike many of the journalist who
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: showed up there and listened to what where they said
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and took it at face value. But um, you were
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: you were actually put onto this. And I go back.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I found Terry Anderson's report called How and Why I
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Privatize All Federal Lands Now in n and was kind
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: of a watershed moment for me because I had been
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: in the West for ten years, eleven years and I
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: was just like, I was just hunting the Missouri breaks.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I was just learning like the the the epic vastness
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: of bom lands um doubt, you know, clear to eastern Montana,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: clear over to eastern Oregon. And I was I was
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: really reveling in this stuff. And my kids were being
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: born at right at the same time, you and I
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: had that moment, and and it was it. It was
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: like holy smokes. Yeah, yeah, you realized, Wow, this stuff
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: isn't guaranteed, or the stuff physics. And we should have
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: known that in a world of seven billion people, that
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: people aren't gonna give free let you run around free
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: on your on your own land. You know, it's very
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: easy to take it for granted. Though everybody didn't and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: they still do. I mean, I mean, I have people
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: that talk to me about saying and I swear I
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: would swear that there's no they don't know what the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: federal government does, but they despised the federal government so
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: much that they would give away their own land in
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: an act of like what anger, like taking a chainsaw.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It's not cutting off your nose to spite your faces,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: like cutting off your head with us all. Yeah, yeah,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I can't and you go, I showed them. I can't
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: explain that. But it's very present out there, that's for sure.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: But to your point, I mean, there is just so
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: there's just just as today we are many many people,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and at various times in our lives maybe were divorced
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: from the natural world, diverse where we got our food
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: as hunter as we try to reconnect there. I think
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the same thing applies to our land. It's it's for
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of folks. For me growing up, it was just, oh,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: we crossed the ditch and that's public land, and that's
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: where you and Dad go hunt, and Uncle Steve hunts
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: on the west side of the public land and you
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: and Dad hunt on the north side. And I never
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: gave it a second thought, never wondered how we got that,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: never wondered how Glacier National Park can to be and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: why I could have this moment where my dad and
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I walked over the hill and a hundred elk ran
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: across the river and I was mesmerized by it. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I can still see that scene in my in my
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: mind right now. I never thought about what it took
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: for me to have that transformational moment when I was
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: ten years old. Um, when you talk about the Lamar
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Valley and here and that and and fishing and just
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: being able to see every everything on the bottom. Yeah,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: like when and you know, like how do you get that? Right? Yeah?
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: You know it's it's really easy to just to just
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: enjoy that thing for what it is right now, which
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: is good. You should it, right. That's weird about earlier.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You want to enjoy the present. But every once in
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: a while it's worth taking a step back and and
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: looking at the bigger picture. Um. That's that Ed Abbey
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: who infuses your book to um, you know a good way.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: But he said that that I don't know the whole quote,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: but he said, be a half hearted fanatic. Held, get
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: out there and do this stuff, and do this stuff,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: be a half hearted fanatic. Yeah yeah, yeah. He definitely
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: has has influenced some of my my thoughts and writing.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: We were talking about, um that I read him in
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: high school. I was lucky in the My father was
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: a fan of that movie. Lonely Are the Brave. Kurt
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Douglas is this ultimate anarchist cowboy and um, he it's
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: it's kind of it's still a good movie, Um, but
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: it's kind of didactic and um, it's like freedom and
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: anarchy and cowboys and all. But it's a good movie.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: And it's based on a Edward Abbey's second novel or
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: first novel, Brave Cowboy. I mean, you know, is that
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the one that starts off with, um, this cowboy that
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: just just a guy that kind of walks, rides his
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: horse up to a little town and gets off his horse,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: walks into a house. Um. I've read the first couple
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: of chapters and it's a clunky book. Yeah, but it
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: but it's good. Um. I mean it's got a lot
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: of foam prints, as they Happy becomes the Desert Solitary
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Writer and the and the Fool's Fools Progress was one
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: of my favorite novels. Um. But yeah, it's it's worth
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: going back and revising some of that, especially as a writer,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: because you can see how much better he got. He's
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: a heck of a writer. And I was we were
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: just talking earlier, how I how I like these two
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: different approaches to to talk him about something like public
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: lands or conservation within this book. Even um, part of
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: me really wanted this theme and this this idea and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: this is I personally think a lot about the fact
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: that we need to find ways to work together, to
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: find and compromise to reach a hand across the aisle
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: or across the from Cabela's to r or whatever it
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: might be. But hey, let's look past some of our
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: differences and and stand up for these things we have
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: shared love for um or. Sometimes you need to have
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: a moderate way of going about things, and then other
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: times you need to channel your inner at abbey and
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and burn the house down and have some piss in vinegar.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: And he was always he was a very controversial figure,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: passionate figure. He didn't have a middle gray area. He
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: was black and white to a fault. Probably in some ways,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: in some ways I think where I think we all
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: live in our time and um some of the of course,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: sometimes you're you live in the wrong time and it
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't catch fire, right, But he caught fire
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: because it was the time for that. And um, I
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: think maybe that that time will come again if it's
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: not here now, I do know it's here in in
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: some ways people need to become passionate and activists. Activists.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: But your book, I was gonna say, you could have
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: seen this. You have written this book as a shot
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: across the bow of the American Lands Council and the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: American Legislative Exchange whatever it is. You know, um, you
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: could have written that as a is a direct attack,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: and you did not. The book is less a shot
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: across the bowl than a tap on the shoulder. And
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: let's let's let's talk here. Let's let me tell you
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: a story. And I love that. Yeah, I hope it.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I hope that's something that resonates with other people too,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: because I just I wanted it to be accessible. It
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: wanted it. I didn't want to turn people off before
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: they could get through it. Well, you you, you you
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: got to earn their trust before you can give them
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: a polemic. And you did not do the polemicist role here.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: You didn't do it, um. And and you know Stegner
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: was a very and so that's where your title came from. Right.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Let me read that quote. It's we simply need that
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: wild country available to us, even if we never do
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: more than drive to its edge and look in for
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: as creatures. A part of the geography of hope. Yeah,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: you can't. You can't beat that. And that's where you
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: took your title, right, Yeah, I was. I was between
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: the Geography of Hope or that Wild Country for the type,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and I think there's been essay called the Geography of Hope.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: From this title, I decided to try to go this right,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: but yes, tremendously influenced by the words of Stegner and
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: was a moderate. Yeah, yeah, it's there's a book called
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: The Wild Within David Guessner. Yes, and yes it's Edward Abby.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: So it looks at this it's so interesting. They represent
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: those two things that has talked about, those two sides
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of the coin, the two approaches to this. They both
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: loved public land, they both loved the West. They both
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: had a fiery passion for it. But they approached it
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: in very different ways. And and it's it's how I
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: personally try to approach it to I want something in
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: me and I want something um and and try to
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: somehow bring that to life, the firebrand and and and
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the diplomat exactly. Robertson sent me that book. Yeah, he's
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: a friend of Guesser's. Yeah, he's a good guy. I
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: just just chatting with him a couple of weeks ago.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I just that's That was the first I heard that book,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and I was I've been carrying it around, reading at
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: it as I go. I like it. You look, it's
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: perfect for this what you're talking about. There is um
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: kind of a synchronicity. I think the police kind of
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: ruined that term for me, the band, you know, but
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: there's a kind of synchronicity and all this. You know. Um.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: But so in in all of this, you were you start,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: let's just talk about how you you did this. So
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you decided to start with the Yellowstone National Park, and
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: you decided to go ahead and and and take the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: National Parks and the BLM and the First Service all together,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: which is which is bold? Yeah. Again, it came down
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: to for me, just early on, I didn't know that
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: there are all these different branches of public land, are
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: all these different ways that it's broken down and managed
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: and used. And so for me, for someone to have
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: a basic foundational understanding of public lands and public land history,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: we had to at least define that, Hey, there are
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: these different things. You talked to a friend of mine
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Detroit and they've got no clue at the BLMS or
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I think when a lot of people think, oh, America's
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: public lands, it's Yellstone national parks like that's it. Well,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: so many times I've heard people go, well, they can't
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: do that, they can't log there, that's a national park,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and it's like, no, no, no, that's a national forest.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: It's been like providing logs for you know, a hundred years.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: No no, no, no. There's just so many gaps and
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: it is confusing. So what I kind of wanted to
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: do is is, um go on a series of trips
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that both fit naturally with the historical narrative that I
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: wanted to share, but also in a certain way present
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the larger picture of our public lands were. So I
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: tried to visit a varied array of places, different types
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of regions, different types of public lands. I had some
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: BLM trips, I had National park trips, I had National Forest,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: had Wilderness area, UM, I will wildfe Refuge, And so
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted to use those opportunities to also slip in
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the vegetables of information naturally as we went along. So
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: as you, as you follow my own adventures through all
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: these different places, doing all sorts of different things too, um,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you naturally learned about the differences. You naturally learned about
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: how these things fit into the progression of our public
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: lands from you know, the original idea of of something
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the national park or national forest all the way to
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a wilderness. Um and what that means today and how
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: we got it. I mean, I mean that that uh,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: the chapter where you introduced like the the battles over
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: wilderness itself. I mean, those are some of my favorites
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: because you, um, I've been at this a long time
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: and you brought stuff like you regulations and all this
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: stuff and with and they're the vegetables, right, but but
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: they went down good. But that was stuff that I'm
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: not I had to go back and look at that
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I did not do. You've got stuff in here that
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: is a it's a deep dive without with with plenty
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: of oxygen. Yeah, I got you. I gotta tell you.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm you know, for anybody who wants to inform
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: themselves painlessly of this, this this book is is extraordinary
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and it's yeah, we needed it. I mean, that's what
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: I mean. I was. I wanted to get down here
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: and do this podcast and part just to to talk
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to you about the process of this, you know, um yeah,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and it and it's it's it really it's it's it
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: establishes you as an author but also as a hunter conservationist.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: This this book is is is. I mean, a person
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: who doesn't hunt will read this book no problem, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: that that's a great point you brought up. That is
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was one of the foundational things coming into this project
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that I want to do as well. I talked earlier
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: about wanting to bridge those divides. I wanted this book
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: not to be just a hunting book, right, I mean
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: when people would identify me like I'm probably a hunter
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: first and foremost other than a father and a husband hunter. Um,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: but I also love all these other things. And I
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: wanted something that would be accessible and interesting to all
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: outdoor users because I think all outdoor users need to
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: come together for these places and we gotta find ways
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to to work hand in hand on some of this.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And so I wanted something that again wouldn't turn people off,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: but also hopefully come out of this maybe with a
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: different perception of hunting to um and maybe the reverse
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: as well. Maybe a hunter would read this and maybe
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: feel a little bit different about a backpacker. UM. So
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I have backpacking trips. I have a back
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: rafting trips, I have hunting trips and fishing trips, a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: little bit of everything in here, because I I wanted
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: this to reach an audience of diverse people's, because I
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: think this, this message of public lands is really important
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: for all those people. It is it is, and it's
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: and it and we we tend to get hung up
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: in the inside baseball of of mountain bike and or
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: e bikes or all this stuff, you know, whereas most
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: of the people that we talk to, most people we know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: especially for me in the South, they don't they're not
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: they don't care about where your mountain bikes can be
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: on the Missouri breaks. They don't even know where that
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: is or why they can go there and enjoy it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: And um, I tell people about the cat fishing on
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the Missouri, you know, and they're and they're super interested
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: in that. And that's to see him Russell wildlife refusnia.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: What's that? You know? You gotta kind of find though
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: these like you you mentioned it earlier with um, I
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: can't remember how you phrased it, but you have to
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: find different treat different doorways for people to come into
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: something like this. And so for some people maybe it's oh,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: it's there's some hunting in there. That's my doorway, and
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna read it because I know Mark Huncrot. But
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: maybe that the doorway for somebody else might have been, well,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I see he's a hunter, but hey
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: does a bunch of backpacking. I'm into that kind of thing.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And then they come into it, or maybe it's something else.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: But if if we can get him in the door
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and through this this journey, hopefully they come out of
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: it with this with a positive idea about hunting and
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: hunters and anglers and they learn something or maybe a hunter.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I just would at least
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: for me, that's the way I would like to go
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: about my work is with with open arms. And so
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: they join the family, Yeah, exactly. I'm not I'm not
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: the person who wants to say, well, you're not just
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: like me, get out of here. No. And and we've
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: talked about this before, but it's like you don't want
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: everybody to be the same or everybody agreeing or walking
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: in lockstep um and and you treat people with a
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: lot of respecting this and I and I've learned something
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: from reading this book actually, because I was getting less
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: and less objective about the Utah contingent. And and it's this,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: it's continuous assault on every aspect of public lands and
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: and this vaguely couch hatred of of really the way
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: our country is now, where everybody hasn't say and um
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I was um I was getting less and less objective.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: And as I read this, I realized that that I've
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: been in the West, probably too too long. And uh,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and your approach here was much more balanced. And the
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: truth is is everybody does they do we need those
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: voices at the table. Okay, those voices can't go to
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: the president and demand whatever and get it. I don't
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: want that, but but I'm I won't. I never want
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: to be the kind of person who doesn't shake hands
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and listen. Yeah. Well that's and I say this in
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the book. One of the one of the things that's
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: most frustrating about public lands, but also what makes them
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: so unbelievably special, is that they are multi use. Is
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: that there's a lot of different take holders with very
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: different ideas about how to manage them, how to use them,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and that can be huge pain in the ass. Sometimes
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: they can drive us and nuts. Great great things are
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: come with the pain in the yes. And so that's
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: this like inherent and is never going to change hopefully
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: in that I hope it never gets pulled away the
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: other direction. Um, But that is going to be that
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: tug of war that's going to continue for the next
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: fifty years or hundred, hopefully hundreds of years. We can
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: keep these places around and viable. Um, that's a reality
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: that we could either point a finger and said this
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: is horrible and complain about it, or we can say
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: this is the reality we live in, how we work
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: within that box, how do we do this in a
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: way that's positive for the lark, you know, the greatest
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: good for the greatest number, um. And so I've always
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: kind of approached things from the rational standpoint there, but
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: it's also really easy to to have the emotional, visceral
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: feeling of frustration and concern. I also believe that you know,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: there's the Leopold quote that the downside of ecological education
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: is that you live in a world of wounds, and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I think the same thing exists for someone who pays
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: attention to public lan issues. Is the more you paid
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: mentioning and stuff, the more you see this being cut
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: away at and this being attacked and these little things
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: that fly anyth radar? Are you talking about the d
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: what Brandy Newberg halls, Uh, you didn't use this phrase,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: but defunding decry. We're cutting the budgets for the BLM,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: and now we're gonna tell everybody that holy he smokes,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: these people don't do nothing. You know, why don't we
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: just do something else with the land? And you know,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: and and uh that I think that that's a really
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: good part in this book too, because it's that's something
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: that unless you're really paying attention, you don't get that
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: part for service death by a thousand cuts until finally
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: or and you manage to get this in there too,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: or we industrialize the landscape so completely that nobody wants it.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: What's the point of protecting because yeah, we've already ruined it. Sorry. Yeah,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: that's the tricky thing is is you have to It
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: could become if you if you pay attention, you want
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: to pay. We want people to be engaged in this.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: There's also though, and I imagine you've experienced this because
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: as you've been in it longer than I have, but
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: there's probably a tendency to either get so upset with
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: things that you either become bitter or you become apathetic,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: where you say throw your hands and say what can
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I do? And I think at least what I learned
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: from this, from learning and and dissecting the stories of
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: so many people who were part of this history, was
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: that regardless of how oftentimes we might feel that we're
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: not in control, that we can't influence things, the people
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: that did were the ones who said, damn it, I'm
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: still gonna put my foot down. I'm still gonna do
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the little thing I can do. Um. And those things
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: add up. And you know, we've seen a few things
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: recently that I think are encouraging the show. Hey, we
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: still have a voice, we still can make a difference.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And then you can look back fifty years ago and
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: see how people had a voice then an influenced real change.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: And you know we're benefiting from it now. So we are,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: we are the beneficiary. So I mean sanely difficult decisions
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and hard work. Um. And Roosevelt and you you really
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: bring in it, Uh, Colin Roosevelt in here too. Um.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Ed Robertson mentioned to me, he said, I have about
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: your book. I had no idea how much Franklin Roosevelt
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: did on public lands issues following the dust Bowl, you know, um,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: and so much of that that can make me very angry,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you, because there was a lot of lands
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: saying that I know really well in eastern Montanna who
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: were basically homesteaded, destroyed, not out of note, not out
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of malice, just people trying to make it right in
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: a place that they couldn't and then abandon Those lands
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: then were taken back by the federal government under the
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: bankhead Jones and restored. So much of it was restored.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: And now we have people saying, well, we want those
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and and you're I'm looking at him, I'm like going, dude,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: you gotta go back to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalga
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: and you gotta come up with that six million dollars
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: in gold or whatever it was we paid after the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Mexican War. And then you're gonna have to fight. But
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have to you can't have the American people's legacy. Yeah,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it's yeah, There's there's so much in there and so
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: easy to to never feel to wrap your head around.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: So it was tricky to try to figure out a
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: way how do you distill a titanic ship full of
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: information into a few anecdotes and a handful of key points. Um.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: But yeah, FDR was one of those characters who I
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: had no idea previously what an influence he had, and
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: what I liked about, um how he handled things, at
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: least in regards to some of these public land decisions,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: was that he from what I understood and from what
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I've read and seen, is that he'd never tried to
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: position himself as the arbiter of what was right, where
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: as being the expert on how these things should be handled.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: He seemed to take a much more um, oh, what's
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the word I'm looking for here, delegatory approach, and that
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: he would reach out to the experts. So he brought
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: and give for a pin show. I had me different.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: He brought him Bob Marshall and said, hey, tell me
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: what you're seeing on the ground. Where do we need
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: to go with this? He listened to the Leopolds and
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the Marshals, and UM, I think that led to some
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: decisions being made that really helped us out in the
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: long run. Um. But also, I mean, right there, you
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: look at the debates between FDR and and a Marshall
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: about wilderness. Right. President Franklin Roosevelt was much more in
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: favor of more development, more roads, more of that. Um
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and he had, you know, good reasons for something. Do
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: you have an interesting part in here? It's the road
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: through the Smokey's or through the Blue Ridge? Yeah, yeah,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: through the smoke He's there in the road right through
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: a ridge through what's not the National Party that more
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: people could enjoy it, right from some one approach that
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: could make sense. But then, um, I still hear that
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: about the Bob Marshall by the way, right, UM. I
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: can't remember where I read it. I think maybe it
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: was in this book I just finished, called The Only
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Kayak Um. But the guy said, there's when you're when
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you're talking about this topic. At some point more access
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: becomes excess, and there's a there's a really fine line
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: that access is important, but it can very quickly become
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: access and um. And that was this debate raging in
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: the thirties and forties when the c c C was
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: building new campgrounds and roads and uh, fire towers, all
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: these different things, which reviewed is progress and great by
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. But then you had other folks
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: saying whoa, whoa, whoa, rain it back, guys. Yeah, we're
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: destroying the thing we're trying to protect. Yeah, and we
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: of course we're still having those same debates today and
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: and they yeah, and it's and some of that architecture
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and stuff they did is so spectacular still around. Yeah.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: And um, I think about Gates Park and the Bob
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: and that's this incredible cabin situation and it's beautiful, like infrastructure,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: it's way up if you if you go up where
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: y'all went up the North Fork, you jump the hump
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: over into this big park system. It's freezing cold in there.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: People try to homestead that. Actually, at one point it's
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: an amazing place. Yeah, I'm very jealous about time you're
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: of your book backcraft in part really cool trip backcrafting
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and fly fishing in the Bob. Wow, that is a
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: special special place and it's um and I and I Yeah,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: there's a lot here. I was gonna get you to
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: read the very last page, but I'm not gonna do
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: that because that that can be for the people who
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: get the book, right. I don't. I don't. We're not
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: we're not doing any spoilers on it, you know. But
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the the you are conclusions in in in Alaska. You know, um,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: there there's some powerful stuff there that people can lead.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: They can put this book down and take away energized. UM.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: And I was. I was interested to um. Beyond that,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I like the fact that it that it ends in
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: that massive landscape. It does. Yeah, And it's funny. We
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: were talking earlier about how so many times we think
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: that writers, artists or whatever have this like divine intervention
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: it flows through them, and so so it wasn't like
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: that at all for me. For this book. It was.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: It was hard. It was a lot of days sitting
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: the blinking cursor, like oh my gosh, how I'm I
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: gonna do this? But I had one moment of of
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: that flow. It was it was it was two in
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the morning and I wrote the final chapter in a
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: flurry of like, I don't know, two hours NonStop. Wrote
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: that last chapter. It's it's my favorite chapter, is my
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: favorite thing I've ever written. It just it just kind
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of poured out of me. It's like an emotional outpouring. UM.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm very proud of that. I wasn't glad that
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you like that. I never heard that that quote. I'm
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: almost gonna look it up. Um, of the it's Peter
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: somebody who it's a it's a quote on hunting of
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: intersecting the line. Yes, uh yeah, that the great moment
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: that only hunters no where where. I'll let you read it,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: but I'm gonna have to find it. Give me with
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: me while you're looking for that. It is in a
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: terrific collection of essays called The Hunter's Heart, which is
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: edited by David Peterson. Yeah, I know David Peterson, and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: so that for one looking for another book, highly recommend
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: that one. And within that there's a there's an essay
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: where he he talks about I think it was an
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: outcome and he had this wonderful description of that moment
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: right before the shot, and um, do you want do
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you want to read it? It's just it's it's it's
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: really hot, all right? Let me find word is here
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: on the page here it is. Pete Done in a
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Hunter's Heart describes these final seconds as the great moment
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: that only hunters know, when all existence draws down to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: two points in a single line, and the universe holds
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: his breath and what maybe and what will be meet
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and become one before the echo returns to its source
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: finding the bull cariboo in my scope, I squeezed the trigger.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Sweet And that's how he used your quotes to build
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: your own work. Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful stuff. Thank you.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: And that was I don't know that. I didn't know
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: that guy's work. It's a great I would recommend reading that,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: uh in anything with Peterson's two or he was a
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: seminal voice in ilk cutting in there a book called
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: ilk Hart that's a good one. And then and then uh,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: oh gosh, is it blood Sport or blood Uh? I
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: don't know the other one. He has another really good
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: collection of his own essays that are all related to hunting.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: And of course he's definitely uh get strong opinions which
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: some might not agree with, but he certainly has a
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: lot of passion and writer. He's a powerful guy. Um.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: And and he was he was he was doing it
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: before anybody else. I mean, like to me, I mean
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: he came of age and that he's Vietnam age. Yeah.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: And he was friends with the Abbey for a little
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: bit there. I think he did some collections of Abby's
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: letters and things like that. Well, um, so interesting guy,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I have UM. I had a question when you're you're
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: talking about the jeep rally and moeb I actually hit
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: that this year in April, I think, And um I was,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and I was. There was like six different languages being
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: open at the gas station. Yeah yeah, and it was
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: all these people though from Um, these people were from
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: countries where such a thing would be absolutely unheard of.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Grout um. And and I had the I just I
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: love that chapter because I had the same impression. I go, Okay,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you gotta get a grip, buddy, because these people are
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: enjoying the hell out of this, and they're from countries
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: who long ago have lost any concept of public lands
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and and public like access to go territory stuff right
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: with the monster truck. Yeah, but um, we are you
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: familiar with Jim Style stuff? The Canyon Zephyr, I don't
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: think he was. He is the one you should read
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Jim Styles. Look him up, um and uh Canyon Countries Zephyr.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: I think he's a reporter in moabb he's he's Edward
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Abbey years and he um he's like the recreation industry
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: is just as bad as the uranium industry, and um,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and he makes he's he's very smart, so he makes
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense. But you you're finally Um for me,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no, it's not as bad as your radium industry.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: That's how that's my personal take. I'm not here to
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: judge Jim Styles because he's older than I am and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: he's been there in the trenches for forever. But um,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Jim is that you should read his stuff. I'll check
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: that out. But I definitely I mean to that point,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: I found myself over and over and I felt this
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: for years, and then I had to confront my own
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: emotions and thoughts when while trying to make this write
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: this book right. So I had to kind of confront
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: my own biases and all that as I'm as I'm
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I can get so angry, feel frustrated with these things
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing out there, disheartened, pissed. It can ruin you
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: a good time, right, Yeah, absolutely, But then I've tried
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: to get better at stepping outside of my way of
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: looking at these things, are my way of enjoying these
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: things and think about think about where these other people
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: are coming from or how they're and engaging with the landscape,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: and would I rather than not at all? Not? Because
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: because if you know, if somebody wants to go out
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: into a national force with eighteen kids and scream and
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: hoot and holler and have a great time. Maybe it
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: kind of ruined my experience what I thought I was
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: gonna get this. But if they're having a good time
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and that leads the to them appreciating these places, someday,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll do something to keep them around. Every one
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: of those kids might become the ultimate advocate. You never know,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: the guy got our girl who fights it out. So
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: so I've I've constantly trying to remind myself that not
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: everybody has to be just like me and how I
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: enjoy these places. Um, and and there is a there's
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: a there's a there's a filter, though I try to
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: pass it through. And I mentioned it here in the
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: book somewhere. Um, when you're thinking about how to balance
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: all these different ways of using and enjoying our public
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: lands and all the various stakeholders, it can be hard
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: to it can be hard for me to sit here
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and say, no, this is the way it should be done,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: this is how I think it should be done. And
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I'm right, I'm coming from my own perspective that I'm
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: coming from my own set of circumstances, I'm looking through
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: my hunter's lens or whatever might be. Um, how do
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: you balance that with all these different stake holders, all
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: these different ideas. And the one thing that I think
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: is helpful that I took from the past all this
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: research was taking the approach that Theodore Roosevelt always advocated for,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: which was always passed through the lens of what's going
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: to be best for the next generation and those to come.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Look at this situation, look at this decision, look at
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: this controversy, look at these opposing points of view, and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: think about what that might mean twenty years from now
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: or thirty years from now. And if you can pass
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: it through and it's going to keep this stuff around
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: and keep it positive and viable, if we're gonna make
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: sure this is available for our children and their children's children,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: then that's probably right. It's kind of like all the
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Leopold's quote when you're talking about you know, if it
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: tends to work with nature, it's probably right. If it
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: tends to work against nature is probably wrong. Well, I
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: would say the same thing with public lands. If it
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: tends to be positive for future generations, then we're probably
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: airing in the right direction. And I think that one
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: of the things I I've got from a Stephen Pine,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: the fire historian, was UM. He said that that the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Forest Service itself needs to kind of redefine itself in
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the wake of being a fire suppression agency or or
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: and all this this stuff, he said, and to build
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: towards perhaps on ecological resilience UM. And that word is
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: everywhere now resilience, resilience. But but it's not that it's
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: just because it's huge, law don't mean it ain't great. UM.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: And to to build those kind of UM ecosystem services,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: those ecological communities which also work on a huge number
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: of levels. You can still ride a mountain bike from it.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: You can still probably go monster truck. And in part
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: of it, you know, UM. And James Pogue, who wrote
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Chosen Country about the Bundy's UM, he he ends up
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: in that book and in real life of course with
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: the books non fiction, but he's UM. He gets to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: be friends with this guy who builds monster trucks and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: they go bang banging around on monster truck sometimes for
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: like eighteen hours at a time. The guys obsessed and UM.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I talked to James about that, and I was just like,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: you know, is that's your thing, you know? And he
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: said no, but it's his and he's a friend of mine,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: and I got to see it, and are I can
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: appreciate his way of of this of pursuing this freedom. Yeah,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's a tight one. Man. It's hard these days
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: to do that because we're so surrounded me whether it
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: be in the digital social media world, so much of
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: us are kind of sucked into. Now you can be
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I mean it's said all the time now, but this
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: echo chamber, it's really easy to get into our little zone,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: our little group of people are a little ecosystem and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: never have to pull out of it and look at
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: things from somebody else's perspective. And that's so true when
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: it comes to public line. So it almost takes like
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: a proactive approach. You have to constantly have a little
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: self talk with yourself saying, hey, you know what, take
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: a step back, think about this from a different perspective.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a helpful thing, and I think
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: it's probably the only way that we're going to be
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: able to move this whole thing forward in positive ways.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: We have to uh, whether just be American politics in
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: general or public lands are people we probably need to
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: do a little more of that. Yeah, And and we
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: don't live in a in a a dictatorship, you know,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: we don't live in a place where somebody can be
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: so right and then impose their will on others. You know,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: We've chosen not to do that kind of uniquely in
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: the world. Um and and so when you choose that path,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: that's a difficult path, and you've got to embrace that difficulty.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: You know, that thing you're talking about in writing this
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: book and challenging your biases, you know, that's a spiritual discipline.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: I also can highly recommended to people who want to write,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: or want to do podcasts, or want to do anything
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: like outside of say just roofing a house or or
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: fixing a car. Right, if you want to do something
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: that that is large in a on a more abstract
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: and larger level, that's the first thing you do, is
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: you challenge your biases. And that can be one of
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: the most interesting spiritual discipline in my in my experience. Yeah, well,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: anything that anything that's in this book, anything where where
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: I have shared an idea or a suggestion or a
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: we need to do this, we need to think about this,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: or this is something that we as a people are struggling,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: whatever it is. Every one of thoseens are simply things
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: that I'm struggling with right now and working through right now.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, like this, this book is simply a communication
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: of my internal battles and challenges and trying to figure
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: this all out myself. And and in many cases, I
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: think there are things that are are happening all across
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: the country. We're all battling with these same questions and
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: inner turmoil and and and it's there every day. I
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: was listening to all that stuff and I don't have
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: a smartphone or anything. I was just listening to Brigador
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Radio and it's just like it's just it's it's so
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: boring to you know, the process and all. But when
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: in the NPR versus the Fox station versus all this stuff,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: and I have a what did that? Not intentionally? Intentionally,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: I just just not part of my life. And I'm
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: hoping to to I want to be informed, but I
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: don't want to be drowned, you know. UM. But one
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: of the things and in this and it's in your
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: work here in UM, we have to know that when
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: we are over across the table with people who disagree
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: with us on one thing or another that we and
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: they are acting in some sort of good faith. And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: that has not always been the case with the privatization
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: of public lands movement. And we should understand that there
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: are people who do not say what they mean, and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: who will tell you falsehoods, and who will couch their
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: agenda in other things that come out. And that's when
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: you that's when righteous anger must must must be sustained
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: and applied. Right that was um in In. You have
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: an incredible quote in their um where during the pushback
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: against Teddy Roosevelt's um forest reserves and whatnot, one Western
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: senator said with google eyed, bandy legged dudes from the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: East and sad eyed, absent minded professors and bug oologists,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: and you know that is the perfect that scorn ridicule.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: It's all. It's the last bastion of like somebody who's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: like furious and they're losing. And when I read that,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I went and looked up Linda Beck, who was the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: carp researcher at mau Hir who was trying to restore
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: they want to restore the red band trout, and the
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: carp had muddied the water so much that they couldn't
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: get any light through two falster the aquatic vegetation and
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: the and the whole um whatever you call that, the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: food chain that would would allow them to restore the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: red bound trout. It also was messing up the irrigation
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: and the agriculture and all that stuff. Right, So she
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: was the carp researcher, and those is what ran Bundy said.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: And there he said, yeah, this carpet lady, this is
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: part of what is destroying America. And Ryan didn't know
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: anymore about what was going on in that office and
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: that research. Then I know about astrophysics, you know, and
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: so one of the things, and on on many sides,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: I just will full and scornful ignorance. We can fight
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: over process, if we can agree on goals, we can
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: fight over method. But I wrote that's what I was
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: woot in your book. But we cannot yield to ignorance
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: or messianic religious beliefs that will take us all over Cliffe.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: That's where we have to that. We have to draw
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: a line. Yeah, draw a line somewhere. It's it's figuring out,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: it's it's getting people engaged in the process enough that
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: they can start to start in between those two is
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: a challenge. But once you get in there and people
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: are in the arena understanding what's happening, then you can
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: start having those You have to plan a flag on
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: the hill at some point, and you have to We
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: often choose the sword we want to die on. Do
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: you think if you explained what the carpet lady did
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: to run Bundy that he would understand it? But I
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: think there's sometimes there will be people or groups that
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: simply don't care because they've there are such some sometimes
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: such strong ideological stances that aren't necessarily supported by rational evidence,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: but are simply because that's just I'm not saying a
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: literal religion, but a figurative religion of ideas, uh that
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: if you present anything different, they'll just look at it
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: as rubbish because it doesn't fit that worldview. Just you know,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: damn the evidence. Um, that's why you do armed rebellions,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I mean armed attacks instead of unarmed attacks, as you're
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: not there to learn about the research being done well.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: And it's the same thing with like hunting. There's gonna
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: be some portion of the of the populace out there
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: that's going to be vehemently anti hunting no matter what,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: and they're going to no matter what conversation would have
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: them or how you present it, they're never going to
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: change their mind. They're never gonna be willing to consider
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: what we're doing or why we're doing or how we're
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: doing it. UM. So in some cases there's it's it's
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: like beating your head against the wall. There's no point
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: sometimes with trying to convince that person. But there's always
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: most often there's a large middle ground who is open
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: to new ideas or rational evidence. UM. And that's the
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: audience I think we can can speak to and work
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: with and um where there's opportunity. And I think that's
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: what one reason when I finished this book it was
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: there's there's a I don't know if it's in yours,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: but it's just like what we're talking about here is
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: hope and UM and the idea that informed citizenry will
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: often it'll be excruciatingly slow maybe, but we'll often make
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: the right decisions. And that's what we're we're that's what
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: we're working on, that's what you're that's what you're doing
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: in this this adventure book. You have to have hope,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: You have to have faith. I mean, I was just
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: thinking about this the other day. Von Shnarda always says
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: that the only cure for depression is actual and I
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: think that's so true. And so there's two ways you
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: can go about it. You can look at this world
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: of wounds, as Leopold called it, whether it be ecologically
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: or with the attacks on public lands, and you can
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: either look at it from the perspective of, gosh, the
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: stuff keeps getting attacked, gets worse and worse, the the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: sky is falling down around us, and you can throw
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: your hands up and say, what can I do? You
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: can get depressed about it or just turn off and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: stop paying attention. Or you can take the opposite approach,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: which is saying, yeah, there's a lot of things going on.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: I can't control at all, but I can do something right.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: I can. All I can control is my actions and
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: my decisions, and I'm going to choose to do every
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: damn thing I can to to be on the side
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: of the good, on the side of the positive, on
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: the side of the action. Uh. There's a there's a
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: line in here that I found from Theodore Roosevelt, and
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I'll miss quota, but he says something the lines of
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt. Um always preferred the man that took two
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: steps to the man that theorized about. I got that.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: It was great. Yeah. It's one thing to think about it,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and it's one thing to theorize. But do something, one
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: little thing, um, and that will lead to another and another.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: But the best antidote is action. Yeah, and and and
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: and and to have a somewhat of a thick skin
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: need to optimism needs some thick skin. Um. One of
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: the things I kept I've been noticing amongst I have
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: a large group of folks that I keep in touch with.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've been less that way, you know. Um,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: and uh, there's a there's there's a feeling of that
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: things are so broken that you can't do nothing about it. Oh,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: it's so corrupt, right, But actually the United States we're
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: following a little bit, but it actually ranks fairly low
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: in the international corruption indexes. Yeah, and to say democratic
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: republica congo or and all. But even even amongst the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: upper levels, we we have a fairly good right and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: so that excuse for apathy it's not actually valid. It's
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: it's funny. I certainly can't being relatively new to the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: arena myself. You know, I'm only thirty two years old. UM.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want to claim to say that I know
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about all these things like this, but
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: trying to learn from those who came before you, UM,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: it seems to be the case that, UM, yeah, you
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: have to keep trying. You have to try to stay positive.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: At least that's the approach I'm certainly gonna try over
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: the next thirty two years. You've done it in tremendous
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: amount of information gathering, research reading on people who actually
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: took the first step and accomplished incredible stuff. I mean,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: there's several of these things in here, of of John F. Lacey,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: who's a personal hero of mine, even though I'm from Alabama.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: Was my my family was on the Confederacy side, right,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: But John F. Lacey was from West Virginia. They pioneered Iowa.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: He joined the army at age twenty. He was captured
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: at Blue Mills, the Battle of Blue Mills, and then
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: paroled and went immediately back to the army and then
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: stayed in until the final blast. And then he's the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: one that wrote the antiquities at so sometimes and I
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: think I've said this on my podcast before. Sometime I
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: see these lesser beings who have have experienced no fire
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: that we know of, try into attack the creations and
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: and the the accomplishments of John F. Lacey, and I
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: just it very hard to hold on to your objectivity
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: at that point. It can be and I'm sure every
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: decade from here and out, I gotta believe I'm gonna
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: find myself having those kinds of moments more more often probably,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: And you can remember John F. Lacey and you know
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: what would what what would he do? Like? Like what
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: what's happened here? Eight term Republican senator from Iowa? You know?
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Um in public services? Whole life, the ninety two joints,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: the Moon and Crocker Club. I wrote all this down
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: earlier because I just was like, as in your book,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: there are as we spoke earlier, and I know we
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: gotta get wrapping this up, but there are doors in
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: this book the great writers, great thinkers, and there is
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: a there is a clear portrait of how Americans have
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: achieved fantastic things over and over, despier It's inspiring, if anything,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: I came out of this whole project from all all
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: the all the reading, all the research, everything I try
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: to dive into to just better place myself in the now.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I came away with with absolute optimism and inspiration and
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: hope because uh, they did it, then we can do
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: it now. Um. They laid the blueprint for how to
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: do it. They showed us as possible. It's not gonna
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: be easy. As Randy always has to say, it's not easy,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: it's not convenient, but it's worth it. It's one of
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: my favorite quotes are Randy's. And I think about this
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: all times. Conservation is not convenient, and that's it's a choice,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: you know. Um, And there's all there's there's winners and
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: losers and all of it. But in the end, they
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about was was to to maintain the
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: integrity of something that we've inherited. That's what we're trying
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: to do, you know. You know, Yeah, this's a hell
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: of a torch. Those path stunned us, it was. It's
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: a heavy burden you have that in the book, to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: the responsibility oldment of it. Yeah, I feel that a lot.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: We're so lucky to have it we have now, and
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's it's important to remember that it
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: is a responsibility now on our shoulders to keep that going.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: And absolutely after becoming a father, I felt that a
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: whole lot more personally. And I've got a second one
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: arriving a two months, another son coming and yeah, thanks,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: and that just it makes us unbelievably personal. It's not
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: just about my own what I'm gonna be doing for
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: the next fifty sixty years, but what's the world they're
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: gonna grow up in. Um kids have and I'm only
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: just learning this now, but they've got a way of
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: really changing the timeline you think on and how you
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: do world they do. Um it also, uh, it explodes
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the concept that you're the most important thing on earth.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: And in my experience, I tell people that that raising
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: these children with my wife, who which was really good
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: at it, I was a work in progress. Um. They
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: it's been the largest like adventure of my life. And um,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: they're they're big now, but they the adventure continues whether
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: you whether you wanted to or not. You knowing, like
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: in your in your book you're talking about like adventure
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: is not really comfortable. It's like gallons of sweat and
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: running out of water and falling and having the sewer
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: flow come out of the out of the camper, right.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: But it's, um it, this is what I wanted to
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: pass on. And and you you'll do it because you're
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: I mean you're you're deep in the arena with this
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: and and it's it's a spiritual discipline to write this book.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: It's a spiritual discipline to be a father. And you, man,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: we've got something my kids and I have, and my
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: wife and my kids and I especially they hunt with me.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: And this is something that I it's an obligation. There's
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: no way I could repay it. I can't even begin
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: to repay it. But I can try. I can act
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: his act. Yeah, and so what's I'll quit? What's got?
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: What's next for you? Well? Um, you know, uh, doing
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of cool things here with the Mediator. Actually
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: been working on a project here, most recently called The
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: Back Forward, in which I'm looking at the flip side
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: of all this, which is some of the issues related
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: to private land conservation, which has been a really interesting
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: thing to learn about. Um. But I want to write
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: more books too. That's I think that's when I'm when
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: I'm seventy five, and looking back, I hope I've written, Um,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: a bunch of books that can stand the test of time. Yeah,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: body of work. I loved this process. This is the
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: of everything I've been blessed to be able to do.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: I've nothing has been harder, but nothing has been more fulfilling,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: more probably this than anything else I ever done. UM.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: So I would love to continue to explore these types
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: of issues, issues related to my love for the outdoors,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: wild animals and wild places and and what we can
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: do to keep them around and keep them healthy and sustainable.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: So I don't know exactly what those stories will be.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly where they'll take place or where
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: they'll take me. Um, But that's what I want to
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: do when I grow up, is share those stories and
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: share those lessons, um and hopefully leave a positive impact.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: I think you're in it, and I appreciate you saying that,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: but um, and I'll be interested in sal read whatever
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: you you right? I mean is this This is a
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: This is a hell of a freaking launch. But I
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: can't tell you how much that means because you've been
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: inspiration from I've read your work for so so many years,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: and I've always looked at the things that you've put
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: out there to the world like, man, he's got it.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: You're you're conveying, You're getting across this sometimes hard to
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: digest information in a way that is emotional, in a
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: way that fired me up, in a way that helped
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: me take the next step. Um, you were one of
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: those people that helped with this book too, so so
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: thank you him. I appreciate that. And and it's it's
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: written like you, all of that stuff was produced, and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: it was produced beating your head against the days, all
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: of it. But it comes from that same will of
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: like absolute passion. You're like, you're like, this is just
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: too incredible. Yeah, you know, I just love, love, love
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: love these places. Yeah. I love what we're able to do.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: The luckies people in the world, as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: That's why I feel too many well Mark, I will
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: um uh. They can check out. People that want to
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: get more can do the wire to Hunt podcast. Um
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: and you do you still are you running a blog? Still?
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: So now all of my articles live on the mediator website. Okay,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: so that's all the meat Eater dot com and you know,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: the wires on podcast um and the books available on
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: Amazon and where books are available, right on and then
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: then the book is that wild country and epic journey
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: through the past, present, and future of America's public lands.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks for doing it, man, Hey, thank you. I can't
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: tell you how much how much I appreciate it. This
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: has been fun. Thank you you bet. This has been
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: back Country Hunters and Anglers podcasting blast. Um how hearing
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: we're signing all for this one, but we'll be you
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: back in a week or ten days. And meantime, check
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: out back Country Hunters dot org get some more podcasts
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: there and see what we're up to. And uh. Also,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna be out there wandering around hunting and fishing,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: wearing out a pair of boots, and I hope you'll
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: be doing the same thing. We're living in God's pocket.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: We need to celebrate that, never forget it, and get
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: out there and and live it and enjoy it. Hey,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: thanks a lot, everybody, talk soon. And that's a rap
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: for me to thank you all for listening to this
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: unique version of the Wired Hunt podcast. And big thanks
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: to Hell and back Cruntry Hunters and Anglers for hosting
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: me on their show sharing all this with their audience. Um,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: hopefully they all enjoyed this as much as I did,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: and I hope you did too. I will give you
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: one more ask if you haven't yet, would love it
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: if you could pick up a copy of That Wild
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: Country for yourself or a friend or a family member.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: I put my heart in sold to this. I hope
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: you can see that and feel it, and here as
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: I talk about it, and as you read the book,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: I hope you find it valuable to learn something from it,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: that you enjoy it and um that maybe it can
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: give us all a little push to do a little
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: bit more. I know that in writing this book for myself,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: it gave me a huge kick in the butt to
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: try to do a better job of of walking the walk.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: It's not always easy or convenient, but as Randy Newburgh
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: has reminded me in the past, it is always worth it.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: So with that, my friends, I will let you go.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: I hope the beginning to has been a good one
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: for you, and I hope it's a wonderful, wonderful year
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: that you've got laid out head to you. So until
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: next time, thank you for listening, and stay wired to hunt.