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Heather Hansman: Fierce Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Welcome to our continuing conversation around our wild and changing world. This is the Wild Idea podcast. My name is Bill Hodge, and I am proud to share this discussion space with a fellow lover of wild places and a top-notch advocate, Anders Reynolds. Today, we talk with the journalist and author Heather Hansman, someone whose trio of books should be on anyone's bookshelf if they love portraits of a life lived out in the wild. Anders, this is a conversation we have been anticipating for some time now.
• 0:30
  Oh, hi, Bill.
• 0:32
  Yeah, I'm really excited about this one. I've read all of Heather's books. She's such a great writer. But this one in particular, this new book, Fierce Country, is coming at such, uh, an important time for two very important people, and that's you and me.
• 0:50
  [laughs]
• 0:50
  Right? So I, let me get serious. This book tells the story of three women, Georgie White, Amma Bustill, and Dolores La Chapelle, um, who were pioneering in, in the conservation and outdoor recreation space. And Heather's book really challenges the narrative that, you know, there were only male protagonists in this early time. And the reason that's important today is, um, you know, our sharp listeners will have noticed that we've got a new podcast under the Wild Idea umbrella, and that is led by a strong woman herself, Ashley Arnold. And I, I hope if you haven't checked that, the, the first episode of that podcast that's available now out, um, that you will really soon. I'm so, so excited. Maybe you should, you should tell folks w- uh, what story she's telling, Bill.
• 1:39
  Yeah, I mean, right out of the gate, her first episode of Raising Wild is with the author Richard Louv, who has written a new book called Noticing: Intimate Encounters with the Natural World. A lot of people will know Richard's name from his book, Last Child in the Woods, which was a pretty compelling book and, uh, I think honestly sparked a movement. And I think most people will be excited to hear Ashley's conversation with Richard. I know she was excited to have it. So please go check out Raising Wild on your podcast player of choice. Uh, Ashley is, is a really fantastic host. As you said, she is a really strong woman. She's, uh, she's in that, in that pantheon with these, these women that Heather profiles in the book we're gonna talk about today. So, uh, I'm looking forward to this conversation with Heather, and we hope you'll check out all we have to offer.
• 2:24
  Georgie and Dolores and Ashley. That's, that's a great Mount Rushmore.
• 2:28
  I love it, and Heather. Heather, you are someone we both have wanted to have on the Wild Idea for some time now, and I am so excited that the time has finally arrived. I've been such a fan of your work. I've, I've given Powder Days as a staff gift in the past to all my staff, and Downriver is such an insightful book, and I, and I know we want to talk a ton about your latest book, Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild. But as I am, often want to do, tell me about, a little bit about where your love of water, the outdoors, and capturing that love in such rich, full ways, where that began for you. When did that all sort of creep into, to what would become your life?
• 3:12
  Yeah, sure, and thanks for, thanks for saying that. Um, you know, one of the fun parts of writing a book is, like, you don't know where it's gonna end up and who it's gonna get to, so it's very cool to hear that. Um, and I guess the love stuff started... I grew up in a city. I grew up in Boston. Um, but I have parents who, like, my dad cannot sit still. Like, I have parents who got outside a ton. Um, so I think that that sort of idea that being outside was normal and part of what you did was, like, part of my life from before I can remember anything. Um, but I think I was probably in high school and middle school when being outside sort of felt like a way to
• 3:58
  be my own person. Um, my high school had a really good ski club where if you... You know, it was this big urban high school, and if you sold breakfast at the high school, you could ski, you could go skiing for free. So when I was in high school, I sold bagels at the Bagel Bench and then got to go on ski trips to, you know, Vermont and Maine, and that was, like, I was hanging out with the cool older boys. I was pushing my body. I was like, that was, like, the coolest thing ever to me at the time. Um, I did an Outward Bound trip when I was, I think at, right after I was a senior in high school and went out to Colorado and was back- and, you know, my family had backpacked, but was, like, on my own, backpacking, doing solo stuff at that point, and that was really
• 4:47
  sort of formative for me in understanding, like, what it felt like to be navigating out in a really wild, what felt to me like a really wild landscape at the time, even though we had, you know, minders. [laughs] Um, and yeah, and then I went to college in Maine and got to, that's sort of, like, where I fell in love with rivers. I was working as a river guide there, and then moved west after that, which is sort of this classic East Coast kid looking for adventure, you know, go west young, young person thing. So yeah, I think it's, like, sort of always, always been there, but there's been points where, like, that sense of being outside and adventuring has really made me feel like myself or really shaped my life in a lot of ways.
• 5:27
  Yeah, I love that the story involves selling bagels. I think that's, that's just great.
• 5:32
  [laughs]
• 5:32
  It's awesome. I wanna go back to before the books. I talked about the books and how much I have loved them. Uh, but before the books, I wanna talk about an essay you wrote called Lighthouse for Sale-
• 5:42
  Mm
• 5:43
  ... which you are recognized for, and which honestly is hard to pin down exactly what that es- essay is about because it captures so much range in one short essay. You know, recently we had Dylan Alslager, author of Trail Work, on the podcast, and he talked about how maps
• 6:00
  Our history lesson that is muddied by those who choose what goes on the map. The lighthouse you wrote about, and so many other historical sort of standing artifacts are relics of a time before, in the case of the lighthouse, before a time of digital chart plotters. And it made the need for the beacon, those sort of things made the need for those beacons obsolete. But we seem to cling to them physically and sort of metaphorically as telling us something. Could you tell our audience about what you took away from your thinking as you were writing that essay on Lighthouse For Sale?
• 6:34
  Oh, my gosh, yeah. That's a, that's a throwback. But that's one of my favorite things that I've ever written. Um, and it's about this lighthouse off the coast of Massachusetts near where my dad grew up on the South Shore, kind of on the way to the Cape, um, that was being... A lot of these lighthouses, like you said, have been decommissioned. We don't use them for navigation anymore, and that one had kind of become public. It's in the public domain, like it's federal property, and they were decommissioning it. The story was sort of about my family's [laughs] relationship with lighthouses. My grandmother was a fisherman. My mom, who's an architect,
• 7:12
  did, like, this big project about lighthouses. My [laughs] this is, like, total inside family baseball, but my parents... So the
• 7:22
  lighthouse code for I love you is 143, which is, like, the number of syllables in each thing, and that's, like, how my parents say I love you to each other. [laughs] Um, so I had this sort of, like, attachment to that idea. And then the story's also about, like you were saying, kind of this idea of
• 7:39
  nostalgia that I think that we cling to in a lot of ways when we think about... You know, this is essentially a piece of public land. Um, and the stories about, you know, how we have, like, explored and navigated and moved through space in the past that I think we still often get really attached to, even if they're not totally relevant anymore. I think this is true about the kind of, like, cowboy mythology too. That, like, we're still kind of ho- and I, I mean, we can mean a lot of things, but, like, we're still kind of holding on to this, these image, images and places and ways of being that aren't
• 8:19
  necessarily
• 8:22
  relevant to what we're still doing. They're antiquated. They don't make sense. But there's still something kind of romantic and
• 8:28
  simple and nice in a way. And I think I feel that nostalgia in a lot of ways. Like, that's something I've thought about in a lot of things that I've written about from, you know, land use to, to how we move, or skiing, that kind of thing. Like, I think hooking into that idea of nostalgia can
• 8:44
  make people feel really good. It can also be problematic and keep us stuck in some ways. But it's also core to thinking about how we hold onto place and preserve it and make sure some things still exist.
• 8:57
  It's so true. I mean, when you... I, I think when we're honest with ourselves, when we decide to protect a place, we're also deciding to protect a time-
• 9:04
  Mm
• 9:04
  ... a memory, right? Or a memory of that place.
• 9:07
  Yeah.
• 9:07
  Oh, 143. That's, like, the sweetest thing that's ever been said on this podcast.
• 9:10
  It is so nerdy and cute. [laughs] Yeah.
• 9:12
  It's so good. I can't let a, a moment like this pass without asking if you know one of my favorite terms related to lighthouses, which is mooncussers.
• 9:19
  No. What does it mean?
• 9:21
  Oh. Oh, I wish, I wish I could, if I could go back in time and be a mooncusser, I would. They, they, they were these... It's, like, a historic term for sort of, like, land-based pirates who would lure ships to shore so that they would wreck, and they could, like, steal the booty. But the-
• 9:36
  Yeah
• 9:36
  ... the brighter or more full the moon, the less possible that was, so they, they cursed the moon. They were mooncussers and-
• 9:41
  My mom grew up in, spending much time in North Carolina on the shore, and that's, like, where her lighthouse fascination came in. And there's, like, all these stories about people. Nags Head in North Carolina is, like, where they would, they would have, like, a horse with a light walking the shore to try and pull ships in to crash on the reef. [laughs]
• 9:57
  Yeah, exactly. Mooncussers.
• 9:59
  And all these old fairies that, like, [laughs] shape how we think about things.
• 10:02
  So Heather, I want to talk about Fierce Country. I enjoyed reading this so, so much. I hope everyone listening will go buy a copy and read it as soon as they can. I've been a fan of your writing for a long time, and this one did not disappoint. And I want to start at the very beginning with the epigraph, which is a, a quote from Simone de Beauvoir, or as Bill would say, Simone de Beauvoir. And the quote goes like this. "I hesitated a long time before writing a book on women. The subject is irritating, especially for women, and it is not new."
• 10:34
  Um, so I, I'd love to hear more about what inspired you to write this book and what might have made you feel hesitant. Why did you choose these three specific women?
• 10:44
  Oh, man. Okay, that's, like, a lot of interconnected questions. Where do I start with that? [laughs] Um, so I think
• 10:51
  the reasoning behind the epigraph, which is something I've been kind of sitting with and thinking about the whole time. So, so this book is about three women who I think are really pivotal in how we now think about recreation and conservation, whose stories never got widely told. So it's really sort of, in a lot of ways, it's, like, a investigation into the idea of heroes and what that means, and also a look at, like, if we had, if we had listened to different voices or, like, brought people in that were different, how would we do things differently? Um, which I think is a really important thing to be thinking about. And I think, like we were talking about earlier, I've been sort of, like, swimming in this world for a long ti- You know, I started raft guiding when I was 18. Um, and I never felt like I had people to look up to. And I spent a lot of time
• 11:46
  kind of thinking that I had to be
• 11:50
  the only girl in any certain space. I had to be the toughest person. I had to be, you know, forging this sort of path for myself the whole way through. And it, it turns out that that sort of because of
• 12:02
  The way that we tell stories and these kind of, like, patriarchal norms for who gets to have adventure and who gets to kind of, whose stories get told. Um, and there's a lot of sort of complicated... The way I felt about that and the way
• 12:15
  different people's stories get elevated is really tangly, and I think really interesting. Um, and so I was kind of thinking about how I wanted to tell... working on a new book, tell a new story about sort of this core question of, like, how to be a good person [laughs] in the outdoor world. And my editor, who was also the editor for Powder Days, was like, "Hey, I really like some of the stories. Some of the women's stories in Powder Days were, like, the most interesting pieces to me." And Dolores La Chapelle, who's one of the people in the new book, kind of comes up in Powder Days, and he was like, "Well, what about thinking about some of those women?" And I immediately had this gut reaction that was like, "I don't wanna do a girl book. Like, I don't wanna... Don't put me in a corner. I don't wanna be minimized." And then I was like, "Oh, that's interesting. That's something that's, like, worth exploring." And I think that what these three women that I looked at often struggled with was this idea of having to be,
• 13:17
  having to prove themselves in a world that always thought about them as outsiders.
• 13:23
  And like, oh, in a way that they had to be doing the work and had to be doing it just as well or just as hard as whoever else, but then they had to prove themselves an extra level. So I think there's this, like...
• 13:33
  And that's
• 13:35
  frustrating, and I think,
• 13:38
  you know, in the,
• 13:40
  in the time that I grew up, there was sort of this idea that, like, you can be anything you wanna be. There, there's no diff- You know, like, "You can be the president. You can do whatever you want." [laughs] And that's proved to not be true because of the world that we live in. So I think there's this sort, it's this sort of, like, damn if you do, damn if you don't tension that shows up in all of this that I think is one of... For me, you know, internally and kind of going through all this reporting and learning about these women has been, and thinking about my own reactions to all of it, and, like, the soup that I'm swimming in has been, like, one of the most interesting parts.
• 14:14
  It is so interesting, and it's what makes the books the, and it's what makes the book so interesting. Um, in the introduction, you're literally hunting for the legacy of Georgie White, and f- like for me, like super early on, that introduction established, like, the book's driving narrative as I interpreted it, which is that the story of American conservation is almost exclusively told through the eyes of male protagonists. You know, Thoreau, and Abbey, and Muir, and even, like, Christopher McCandless. Um, but one of the things I really loved about what you did is that, um, while the three stories you tell about these three women definitely represent a more inclusive counter story, um,
• 15:00
  you still are very clear-eyed about, like, the project's limits, right? These women were not perfect. They were egotistical and sometimes dishonest and driven by, you know, obsession the way we all are, right? Like n- no one is, is the, the statue that's raised, um, to their memory after they die. But their stories are no less important, right?
• 15:21
  Yeah, and I mean, that's been interesting in
• 15:24
  thinking about this idea of heroes i- in sort of the wake of Me Too and in the wake of all these other... You know, like John Muir was not a perfect person. [laughs] Ed, Ed Abbey was not a perfect person. And so I think there's sort of this interesting... And if, if I was to write this book in a way that held these women up as perfect, that would've been untrue, and I would've just been kind of like perpetuating these mythologies that we, that don't kind of like give real stories any credit. So I think that's sort of like fundamentally
• 15:58
  flawed and uninteresting. And I also think a question that I've been getting a lot is like, "Why these three women?" You know, there are so many people that I could have written about. But I think that if, if it becomes, the book becomes kind of like a survey of like, "Here are 50 women who have done st-" You know, it becomes a really different story, and I think in, in trying to figure out how to write a book, how to tell a story, you have to figure out like what your constraints are and what the bounds are around the story. And like I think for me, by focusing in on these three women, it's sort of... The way I've been thinking about it is like Georgie White, who was this, you know, Grand Canyon guide who kind of shaped how we do a lot of recreation and sort of like the
• 16:41
  how we get outside, what we do, or, um, you know, kinda like the what of it all. And then Anne LaBastille, who was out in the mountains guiding but was also a climate scientist, is like how do you do conservation, what's, how are the things braided together. And then Dolores La Chapelle is like the why of why it matters and why it feels important. So for me, that was sort of like the framework I had in my head that carried the line through of the story.
• 17:05
  'Cause yeah, there are like, you know, a bazillion people that I could have written about. [laughs]
• 17:10
  Maybe we can pause right here, and you can just give listeners a taste and tell us just like a little bit about Georgie, Anne, and Dolores.
• 17:17
  Yeah. Yeah. Um, so Georgie White, like I said, was one of the first Grand Canyon guides. She was the only woman down in the canyon for decades, um, guiding and working, and she, she had all these sort of like crazy adventures ahead of her time. She biked across the US. She'd only ridden a bicycle like twice before. She swam through the Grand Canyon, you know, before people were rafting it. Um, just kinda like threw her body into the rapids. And she found the Grand Canyon and basically got obsessed with it and wanted to show, show it to as many people as possible so they could also fall in love with it and, you know, think about protecting it. So she brought more people for a while. She had brought more people down the canyon than anybody else. She was one of the first people to run rubber boats. She kind of fought with the government for constraints and permitting. She was like kind of pivotal in how we now think about- The regulatory systems. And some of that was, you know, against because the rangers were trying to prevent her from doing things. [laughs] So there's like some goods and bads there. Um, but she really shaped a lot of how we get outside sort of like commercially, professionally, recreationally. And then Anne LaBastille was a, um, mountain guide in the Adirondacks, and she was also a hermit. She lived off the grid in a cabin that she built. I kind of think of her, um,
• 18:40
  like Thoreau, but like actually legitimate in her cabin living. [laughs] Like I mentioned, I grew up, you know, right outside of Boston, basically at Walden Pond, so that story was very formative to me. You know, like this idea of like you go to the woods to live deliberately, and that's a good way to be. And then when I found Anne, I was like, "Oh, she's actually doing it." Um, and she also... She really thought of herself as a scientist. She was a biologist. She taught at Cornell for a while. Um, she was really pivotal in getting things like the Clean Air Act passed because she was one of the first people kind of monitoring air pollution. Um, she
• 19:20
  saved endangered species in South America. She did all this sort of like really decisive, impactful climate work from off the grid. So to me, she's kind of like,
• 19:32
  she shows that you can live this life outside and still be working to protect it in ways that can make a difference. And then Dolores La Chapelle, um, who lived, spent a big chunk of like the end of her life in the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado where I live, is I knew her 'cause she's, um, kind of known as like one of the first best backcountry skiers. She was pivotal on sort of like early avalanche education. She wrote this book called Deep Powder Snow, which is this like cult classic skier thing. You can find it's like hundreds of dollars on eBay now, which is like the bible of how to be a ski bum. But she really thought of herself and was an environmental philosopher. She was really pivotal in what's the, called the Deep Ecology Movement, which is this idea that is now becoming really popular that, um, ev- you know, humans are not kind of the center [laughs] of the world, and things like rivers should have rights, and that we need to think about, you know, ourselves in balance with the rest of the ecosystem. And she really shaped, you know, a lot of the radical environmental movement in the '70s, so her thinking was really pivotal. And to me, she's kind of that like, she was the one who kind of like pulled together all, all the questions I'd been thinking about, about why it has always felt so important to me to, to be outside, and how we kind of, if that's something you value, how you then walk the talk too.
• 20:56
  It was so wonderful to get to know each of them more, um, reading your book, but I was also struck by how honest you were about the complications that sort of arose from each of their lives. You know, Georgie opened up all this access, but that eventually means overcrowding. And Anne's solitude was, I, I guess to like a, a, a point predicated on her privilege. Um, and Dolores's philosophy I, I find super intriguing too, but it could kind of tip into exclusivity and prim- and primitive, uh, primitivism. Um, and you know, reading your book, I was so struck because it does one of the best things a book can do in my opinion. It kind of denies the urge to resolve those tensions, right? There's just so much narrative critical thinking in this book, and it really raised some interesting questions for me about the responsibility of the storyteller, you. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about that.
• 21:56
  Yeah. Yeah. That's such a good question.
• 21:59
  Yeah, I mean, I think that, like we were saying earlier, there's like a place where like it wouldn't have been honest to not include that stuff. But I think a lot of their
• 22:10
  bad behavior also stems from kind of the context that they were operating in. Like, there's...
• 22:19
  I was, [laughs] I was talking to, um, this woman, Karen Warren, who's sort of a feminist scholar about them and about like, you know, what it meant, what was happening at the time that they were all operating kind of in the middle of last century. And she at one point was like, "I don't know why you're looking at these women. They're all bad feminists." And I kind of was like, "Oh, shit." Like, "Oh, am I like barking up the wrong tree? Is this stupid? Like, should I not be thinking about these people?" Um, and I got really kind of upset with myself [laughs] and upset with them for a while, and frustrated 'cause in a lot of ways they were. Like, uh, they could all, all three of them could be pretty brutal to other women. Um, they were not necessarily like elevating their peers in a way that like I kind of think of as good [laughs] feminism now. But I think a lot of that was because they felt so worried about their standing and, like, that they were kind of clinging to their ability to be in these places by their fingernails. You know, Georgie, Georgie's boats all said women, "Woman of the River" on the side, and that like singular stance, she, you know, she felt like that was like her way to keep a business going and, like, be in this place that she wanted to be. So I think that kind of like elbows-out behavior comes from that feeling of, like, scarcity and, like, precarity. So I think that, like, that helped me. That helped me understand the context, and it helped me understand, understand them better when I kind of could put those pieces together if that makes sense.
• 23:51
  Someone's gotta pay the light bill. We'll be right back after this break. I'm Doreen from Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico, and you're listening to The Wild Idea.
• 24:01
  Heather, one of the things I like most about this book is how physical it is, and that really should be no surprise for anyone who's read your books. There are these intercalary, or sometimes I hear them called interstitial, maybe you can clear that up for me, these intercalary chapters where you write yourself into the narrative Tracing your own life, right, as a river guide and as a skier and as an outdoor writer, um, sort of measured against the, the paths that these three women took. Were those paths something that you couldn't know about or fully understand until you'd done some bushwhacking of your own?
• 24:41
  Maybe. Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think that it would have less resonance to me, I think, if I hadn't been in those places. And I think somebody who was like a kind of conservation mentor of mine, um, used to say, "We save what we love, and we love what we know." And I think that that feels true in a lot of ways, especially at times when there is so much to care about [laughs] and so much to be paying attention to. And so I think f- And then I think,
• 25:12
  I think about... I kind of like try to hold that in my head when I think about what feels important to me, and then I also think my job as a writer is to try and
• 25:22
  show people things that they should care about [laughs] that maybe they don't, or maybe they don't have context for. So I think when I'm doing those scenes where, like, it's me on the ground showing, like, the, the physical parts, like what it feels like to be in the Grand Canyon, what I'm touching when I go to Anne's cabin site, that's a way for me to get the reader into that and give them hopefully that sense of care. And I think I often think of myself like
• 25:53
  I am not... Heather Hansman the character is not necessarily that interesting, but it's more like it's a way to give the reader a lens into the place and sort of like give them that texture and that physicality. So I think that, yeah. And I also, like,
• 26:12
  you know, inside baseball writer-y [laughs] stuff, like, I'm always trying to write the kind of stuff that I would wanna read, and, like, that's the stuff that I love to read is that first person on the ground, you know, concrete stuff.
• 26:25
  So maybe there's, like, a little bit of, like, selfishness [laughs] in that, too.
• 26:28
  That's all well and good, but you didn't answer if they're called intercalary or interstitial.
• 26:32
  I have never heard intercalary before in my life.
• 26:34
  Oh, really?
• 26:35
  And I've now... Yeah.
• 26:35
  Okay.
• 26:36
  This is actually a great moment for me to praise a woman who had a big impact in my life, and it was a high school English teacher I had named, um, Natalie Lancaster, and we read The Grapes of Wrath in her room. And if you remember in The Grapes of Wrath, like, in between the narrative chapters, there's really short sort of poetic chapters.
• 26:54
  Hmm.
• 26:54
  And she always called them intercalary, so I did, too, and when I got to college [laughs] I found out everybody else called them interstitial, and it's always... It's still, like, an unsolved mystery in my life. So if any listeners out there wanna write in and let me know which one I should be calling it, I'm, I'm happy to adjust. But I... For now I'm sticking with Ms. Lancaster and her great instruction at, at Winn High School.
• 27:15
  And that's, like, also how language changes, right? Like, we keep using a word and then it becomes the thing, so. [laughs]
• 27:20
  I love that you, that you do insert yourself because I think it gives the story texture and it grounds it in today. Some of the stories are, are older, are from a different time, I'll say, and I really like that, and that's a style of writing I like. I also think it reflects on sort of your other... Uh, it's the same role, but still I'm gonna call it another role, which is your role as a journalist. I mentioned earlier that water seems to seep into your work like it must seep into your veins, whether you're floating on it, gliding over it in its frozen form or, or writing about it. To me, you seem to have a real grasp on just what H2O means to humans in a rapidly changing world. I'm, I'm curious, since you wrote Downriver, how you feel about water in the West, and how much worse it might be since the research you did for the book at that time. Like, I, I'm assuming this is a subject you have to think about all the time.
• 28:15
  Yeah, yeah, and I think... So I did the reporting for that trip in 2016, which is 10 years ago now. Um, very different administration, different climate regime, [laughs] and it is
• 28:30
  wild to me how things that when I was reporting on that and talking to people, things that seemed hypothetical are now coming true. Like, you look... This year especially, you look at where the levels on Lake Powell and Lake Mead are, you look at...
• 28:46
  I'm in the headwaters of the Colorado. Like, the Animas, which runs two blocks from my house, runs down to the San Juan to Lake Powell, and it's so dry right now, and the states are... The sort of, like, legal structural system that we have to decide how that works, we're seeing how that kind of breaks down when we can't come to agreement. So I think that what I feel is just how important it is and how crucial it is and how hard it is to come up with a plan going forward that doesn't...
• 29:21
  That's equitable and fair and takes into account what the future's gonna look like, and also that sort of nostalgia piece that we were talking about because so many of the laws and the rules that we-
• 29:35
  that are used to govern water in, water in the West, and especially the southwestern chunk of the country, are 100 years old and fallible and not working right, but they're also kind of what we have to work with. It is hard, and it is messy, and we are seeing that come to a head right now, and we're not really seeing
• 29:56
  solutions or plans going forward that anybody feels good about.
• 30:00
  Well, what I, what I really like is that you still represent, in an era where we're seeing climate desks being shut down, environmental desks being shut down inside, you know, institutional media That you're still somebody that's, like, living in it. Even though you wrote about it 10 years ago, you're still paying attention to it. You're still writing about it. I'm curious, how do you spend your time when you're not writing these days? Like, still on the slopes, still on the river? And I guess my question is, is that where your next piece of work begins? Like, I know recently you wrote a great piece for Republic on rec.gov, uh, out of a personal frustration of not being able to secure a river permit. So is that how your stories come to you is through your lived experiences?
• 30:42
  Uh, I mean, often. Coming up with story ideas is the hardest part of my job [chuckles] in a lot of ways, aside from what you mentioned that so many places are reducing their climate coverage, reducing their reporting in general. Scientific American, just today I heard that they're shutting down. Like, there's... It feels like we're in sort of like a news crisis in a lot of ways, which is a whole can of worms [chuckles] that we can talk about or not talk about. But I think for me, that makes it even more important to tell stories where
• 31:14
  you're showing the reader how much these things impact their lives. So you give them a hook to care. And that story, The Republic story, which is about permitting on public land,
• 31:24
  yeah, k- the kind of like narrative hook is a frustration that I had in not getting permits that a lot of other people I had been talking to were feeling. And I think sometimes when I'm looking for story ideas,
• 31:38
  I kind of always try and have my eyes open to what's going on, and then I think if something feels interesting to me and then I'm hearing other people talking about it, too, that's sort of a signal that it, it thematically is a big deal. But it's also hard 'cause you wanna be kind of like ahead of the, the narrative, too [chuckles] to kind of get the idea before
• 32:01
  it's saturated or before,
• 32:03
  you know, when you can kind of really do the reporting about what's going on.
• 32:10
  So yeah. I guess what I'm saying is it's hard to find [chuckles] story ideas.
• 32:13
  I've heard that everybody's talking about the Wild Idea podcast. You should probably do a story.
• 32:17
  Probably do a story about that. Yeah. [chuckles] I'll start pitching it up. Although now I'm biased. Now, like, as a journalist, like, you can't... You don't wanna be biased.
• 32:24
  So I heard you just say that there are significant changes coming to Scientific America and the amount of reporting they're doing. So on, on the downside, journalism is, is in about as much of a crisis as public lands seem to be, uh, which seem to land squarely on your head. Those two worlds kind of land on your head a little bit. Um, but there's also innovative new things, right? And I'm, and I'm, I'm curious to hear you talk a little bit about, like,
• 32:50
  you know, like you're w- writing for Republic, and we, you know, we've had, we had Chris Guise on the, on the podcast before. Such a new model, such an exciting model. There's a lot of different models. This podcast is an example of new models of, of covering these sort of things. Like, do you think we're s- is democratization of media gonna end up being a good thing when we're losing some of the capacity and bandwidth to cover these, these issues in the detail they need to be covered?
• 33:19
  Yeah, that's a hard question. Um, I think that, yeah, I don't think there's a blanket answer to that 'cause I think that in theory, the democratization of media and media not being controlled by, like, a couple big factors is good 'cause that means you get a diversity of voices, you get a diversity of storytelling. Um, I was just talking to a reporter the other day from The Daily Yonder, which is a really cool rural publication that's doing a lot of really good work. So I think there are, and Republic's another good example of, um,
• 33:51
  you know, those guys have hitched into, like, a pretty narrow niche that I think is really newsworthy and important. Um, but they're also old school journalists, and they're doing the reporting and doing the kind of, like, deep dive into these issues that really gets answers. And I think that I worry
• 34:13
  that the crisis is
• 34:16
  less that we're diversified and more that we're losing
• 34:21
  funding streams and losing... Like, a lot of these places are scrappy and shoestring, and the kind of legacy media is becoming consolidated and losing money, and it takes a lot of time and resources to do good reporting. Like, I spent six months working on that Republic story, and I spent a bunch of time tracking down FOIA requests and government officials and trying to get people to talk to me who didn't wanna talk, and that stuff
• 34:50
  takes-- is resource intensive. So I think it's like if we want that kind of
• 34:57
  journalism to happen, it has to be funded, and I think...
• 35:02
  I mean, that could spiral out into a lot of things about [chuckles] consolidation and AI and that kind of thing. But I think it's sort of like, okay, how do we put our money-- how do we support the things that we value, and how do we kind of like across the board make sure those things keep existing?
• 35:15
  Yeah. How do we, how do we make sure we continue to have, like you said, the old school journalist model that Republic and others are doing and have that stand out in an era of, of schlock AI-created junk, um, that's not up to the standard that, that we need to deliver this content, and that's why I'm so excited to see new emerging things. Um, I mean, there certainly are ways which we can use AI to, to expedite some of the, as you, as you said, these intensive, you know, bandwidth intensive endeavors. But
• 35:48
  we could, we could do a whole episode on [chuckles] journalism and the-
• 35:51
  Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I think it's like that core. You can't-- The AI can't run off of nothing. There has to be that core at the center,
• 36:00
  and that is the original reporting. That's the talking to people. That's the storytelling. And like, without that, it all collapses. And I'm, yeah, I'm worried about how the center holds right now, I guess.
• 36:11
  As we start to wrap up this conversation I wanna bring us back to the new book, to Fierce Country. Again, it's Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild. I'm curious what you think about, and you, you touch on, you know, Anders touched on it in his question, you touch on it in the book, that,
• 36:30
  you know, if we look back 100 years, we're looking at male protagonists in conservation-themed books written by male authors, by and large.
• 36:41
  Do you think 100 years from now we'll be able to look back and not just see more stories of women, but stories of about women leading this? 'Cause there's, I feel like there's a l- it seems to be a, a lot more women that are leading the charge, and that we'll actually see this era look more reflective of society than the era we look back on 100 years past.
• 37:04
  I sure hope so. One of the intersections in this book is sort of between
• 37:10
  feminism and conservation, and there's some space where women-led conservation organizations are doing more holistic work, thinking about the relationships between people and land, thinking about how to kind of make things sustainable for all different parts of the system. And, and that's not exclusively women, of course. Like, there's a lot of different ways that can show up. But I think that, yeah, if that's what we're seeing 100 years from now,
• 37:37
  I, I really hope that's happening. I also think that culture kind of happens in waves. Like, you see this in, you know, these women were all kind of operating in the guts of second wave feminism, and then there was a backlash to that. And we're now, I think, in a kind of backlash to, you know, we're seeing
• 37:56
  women's reproductive rights pulled back. We're seeing sign- kind of like a cultural push for
• 38:03
  gender normative roles. So I think it's interesting to
• 38:08
  take a long view and hope that things are wavy, but waving in a positive direction. Yeah, I would love to kind of like take the crystal ball and go 100 years [laughs] into the future and see what we're talking about. One of the things that is,
• 38:23
  gets me excited and makes me feel hopeful is that I see
• 38:27
  women who are younger than me now having really solid peer groups, and w- you know, like, women on their level that they can relate to and come up with that I didn't have as much, and that I know women who are older than me didn't have. So I think there is that, like, there is a normalization. There is that belief that you can,
• 38:48
  you know, show up in these places and feel comfortable and feel like you are, you belong that I think has changed.
• 38:55
  Well, my, my crystal ball tells me people will be looking back on your work, uh, as incredibly important. I think, uh, all three books are, are just magical. Again, I, I, I also fell in love with, uh, Lighthouse For Sale, uh, as an essay. Um, it's just been, um, it's been wonderful to, to read your work, follow your work. Your journalism, uh, I think is incredibly important. I'm just really thankful that you would take time out of your schedule to share some of that with us. Um, I, I'll tell everybody listening, you don't have to be a skier to love Powder Days. You don't have to be a river, uh,
• 39:29
  nut to love Down River. I mean, I think all of these books you will find relatable, whether, whether you can jump into a white water river and swim your way out or, or not. You'll find that you'll, you'll connect a lot more to the issues that impact all of us, whether you're on the river or off the river, on the slopes or off the slopes. And, uh, I really wanna encourage everybody to pick up all of them, but certainly Fierce Country, out now. Uh, people need to pick it up and, uh, and enjoy your work. And I just really wanna thank you for coming on, Heather.
• 39:57
  Heather, you don't miss. This is, like, the third book in a row that I would recommend to all my friends. And if it's not obvious, I'm a little bit of a fanboy, and so I'm really, really grateful that you came on the show to talk to us. Thank you so, so much.
• 40:10
  Oh, thank you, guys. That really, like... Yeah, I mean, I sit alone typing on my computer all the time, so it's really nice to get to talk about it and to get to be with you guys, and I'm really appreciative of all that you're doing, too.
• 40:20
  Well, we've been talking to Heather Hansman. It's just been an honor to have her on our show. Coming up on The Wild Idea podcast, we have discussions on the future, the future of working lands with Brooks Lamb from the American Farmland Trust and the podcast Landed. And we talk the future of public land law and policy with the folks from Groundshift. If you wanna stay on top of all we have coming up on the podcast, sign up for our newsletter at thewildidea.com. Don't forget to check out our latest offerings from Wild Idea Media, Raising Wild with Ashley Arnold, how cultivating an intentional connection to wild nature at an early age can produce more resilient humans. Be sure to subscribe to all of our podcasts, including the new separate feed for the Wild Line on your podcast player of choice. And if you wanna financially support what we're doing, uh, you can use the platform Buy Me a Coffee or what we like to call Buy Us a Stiff Drink, which you can find on our website. And if you love what we're doing here, give us a nice rating and a review on your podcast player of choice. Recommend us to friends, family, recommend us to your enemies. We don't care. Recommend us to everybody. We love watching our community grow every week. Let's all lace up our boots, get to work, and when we do, we'll see you on down the trail.
• 41:26
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilcheszewski at Datepack Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Keahan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Lara Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]