June 3, 2021 • 42 mins
John Muir loved being outside. So much so that he dedicated his life to helping preserve it, but not without some controversy. Listen in to this decidedly nature-centric episode today!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry
Roland there and this is the Stuff you Should Know
and outdoors. The addition, if there ever was American master's voice,
(00:27):
kind of, it's got a little Bob Ross too. Oh.
Happy birthday Bob Dylan. By the way, Happy eightieth birthday
to one of the great legends. Speaking of great Bob's Okay,
I was like, how is that I propos of anything
he said? Bob? There's a lot of online congratulations going around.
That's good, So throw me in there. I know you
don't care about Bob Dylan, but I do. That's fine.
(00:50):
And you apparently you don't care about John York because boy,
you were snaughty about this. I have no problem with
John Muir. Well that's not exactly the only one. Other
people doing stuff. It's a whatever. Let's just get into this,
shall we. So we're talking John your today, and that
name might sound familiar if you're not a member of
this yer club. If you are remembers the club, you
probably just dropped to your knees and did the secret
(01:12):
sign when I said John Muir. I just had to
do it again because I said John Muir. And there
it goes again. Every time we say John Muir, the
Yer Club members have to do something weird. Or if
you've ever hiked any portion of the John your trail
that was named after him? Is that in Yosemite. It's
in California. Okay, Yeah, that's it's part of its in Yosemite.
(01:34):
I think I should have looked that up. Well, he is,
I asked that because he's basically synonymous with Yosemity. He
was a huge driving force in getting Yosemite um into
national park status and then fully becoming the Yosemite that
we understand it today. No, I haven't, and I really
wanted to because I saw some pictures online. Looks really
(01:58):
not Uh. I've been to quite a few amazing national
parks in the United States, and not all of them
sump in the Yellowstone um, but I've been to a
lot of them. In Yosemite is really it's really up
there is one of the more special places. Like it's
pretty incredible. Um. But so John mur he but he
(02:19):
played a huge role in Yosemite becoming a national park.
But also like it's really kind of selling short the
impact that he had on um the creation of our
national park system, but also like the idea of what
a national park is, what wilderness is, what needs to
(02:40):
be protected, how we protected. He was certainly not working
in a vacuum in that sense that he was kind
of tapped into this larger way of thinking, for better
or worse. But he was a huge driving force and
one of the reasons he was a huge driving force
for getting America into preserving wild spaces the face of
(03:01):
the Second Industrial Revolution was just minting money and building
railroads and just turning America into a powerhouse. Um because
he he walked the walk, for sure. He was He
was not just some you know Eastern you know Greenhorn
who who had never set foot in the wilderness, but
like the idea of it, right, he went and lived
(03:23):
it for sure. Like he did some really wild stuff
while he was living in Yosemite at the time. Yeah.
In fact, later when he was in his late thirties,
he was hooked up with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was older,
and they really bonded. They went on a camping trip
together and um, I think Emerson was like, what you
need to do is come back to Boston, Emerson or
(03:45):
thora Emerson, and he said, you need to come back
to Boston and be among the intelligency advocating for this stuff.
And at the time John your was like, no way, man,
Like I gotta I gotta be in the woods from
Roccer dude through and through. Yeah, And Uh, it would
not be until later in his in his um kind
of mid to late forties, his his life was kind
(04:07):
of been two parts. It was the wild exploring and
categorizing and botanical categorization of everything he could find, and
then the mid forties on when he uh was very
much a political advocate and uh kind of did that
because he felt he had to. He would have rather
he had a T shirt on the whole time that
said I'd rather be camping, right. But I also saw
(04:30):
that he went back after a little bit of a hiatus,
I think like a nine month hiatus towards the end
when he finally left Yosemite for good, um, and he
felt like he was an intruder there, like he felt
like his time there was done and he knew that
he had to be out of there in the world
to advocate for it for the preservation of this area.
(04:52):
But also that he like he just he felt like
that chapter was closed. So interesting. Yeah, I mean that's
they They always say no, no when it's time to leave,
and I guess he did the always say that. Um
so let's talk about John. You're starting even younger than that. Yeah,
let's start with minute one. He was born at eight.
He Scottish heritage. He was born in Dunbar and came
(05:16):
to the US when he was eleven. Uh. He and
his family settled in Wisconsin, eventually in Hickory Hill on
an eighty acre farm near Portage. His father was a
very stern Calvinist. Uh, super religious. Yeah, like it kind
of if you ever seen the movie The Witch, sort
of along those lines where such a great punishment was
(05:38):
very heavy and strict. If you beat your child because
they haven't memorized Bible verse to your satisfaction, you may
be over the over the line. I think I'm not
going to go so far as to say there was
physical abuse, but there was, oh there was with his father, yes,
for that reason. Okay, I mean I saw like corporal punishment,
(06:01):
but like you know, these days, spanking a kid is abuse, Like,
I don't know where it fell on the meter back then,
I don't. I well, I can't say where it fell
on the meter. I can't say either. But yes, he
would be but today he would be imprisoned probably. Yeah.
But one of the reasons John Muir became John Muir's
because of his father, because his the wilderness in Wisconsin
(06:24):
was his refuge and his literal escape to kind of
get away from him. So who knows what would have
been you know, what would have happened had his father
not been like that? Yeah, And I don't want to
fully mischaracterize his father, just partially. Um he was, he
was very stern. But John Muir was convinced that his
father loved him still and cared about him, and it
(06:46):
was even maybe a little bit proud of him in
the ways that he deviated from what his father wanted
for him. And one of the main ways that he
deviated from him was in book learning. Basically, like all
his father was turned with was his his boys working
the land, farming, knowing farming, and knowing the Bible. They
didn't need to know anything else. But that wasn't enough
(07:08):
for job. You're he was basically a born tinker, a
born engineer, but he did not have free time. His
father was like, you're either working in the field, or
you're studying the Bible, or you're getting hit with the
switch by me, it's one of those three things what
you're doing for all of your waking hours. And so John,
you're hit upon the idea of expanding his waking hours.
(07:31):
And so as a youth, he started waking up at
one in the morning so that he could have five
hours to himself between one am and six am when
he was expected to start working on the farm, to
just read or tinker or invent. And he actually used
that to really great effects. Yeah, so he made a
lot of little inventions. Uh. There was one called an
(07:53):
early rising machine, which was basically a alarm clock attached
to his bed that would quite literally tip his bed
up and tip him out of it. I don't get
the feeling that he needed it because he's getting up
at one a m Anyway, his father used it. But
he eventually would go to the State Fair in Madison
(08:13):
in eighteen sixty with a lot of his inventions and
was sort of a boy wonder inventor. And he was
twenty two at the time. Well, but he was I
think he had invented a lot of stuff in his
teen years too though. But imagine like you know, twenty
two in the eighteen eighties or sixties, Like imagine the
middle aged guy showing up to the four h fair
(08:33):
being like can I enter one of the things a
big relationship in his life that would last throughout his life. Um,
he studied with a man named Ezra Carr, and his wife,
Jane car became a really big mentor for him and
exposed him to uh, you know botany basically like she
(08:55):
was a scientist and he loved the outdoors, but she
was like, hey, but botany is like a real science
to it, and was a really big influence in his life.
Introduced him to Emerson later like literally picked out a
wife for him that was like this is who you
need to marry because she can support you an hatchmaker
then too because it seems like it because they loved
(09:16):
each other very much, and um, she was totally fine
with his comings and goings and all that. They were
good together. Comings and goings is in going or Japan
or something that made it sound a little bit like
you know, dalliances. No, No, nothing like that. No, As
a matter of fact, I read that, um, he left
Yosemite at one point because of unwanted attention from a woman. Oh,
(09:40):
he's like he was camping in this lady hiked by
and looked at him, and he's like, I'm out. He Well,
he wasn't interesting dude, and that he was a bit
like a hermit, but apparently also really enjoyed these one
on one conversations with the people he would meet. Yeah,
he was like he was kind of build as a
wild man of the wilderness, but he very much craved
(10:01):
and needed human interaction as well. It's yeah, very odd.
It's usually one way or the other in that sense,
you know. Yeah. So he's working eventually the industrial part
of his life because he was such a good tinker
and engineer. He got work, uh, doing stuff like that.
And in March of eighteen sixty seven, he's working at
(10:22):
a carriage part shop in Indianapolis. His h and all pierced,
like literally went into his eye and pierced it, and
for a while he was blind in both eyes because
of that. It was such a bad wound that his
other eye was like I'm out too, Yeah, just because
I feel bad for my buddy over there. Sympathy blindness. Uh,
(10:43):
and this was a very monumental injury because after this
he was like, you know what, forget this stuff. I
don't want to ever be around another machine with moving
parts again. And I just want to walk. He said
that he bade a do you to all my mechanical inventions,
determined to devote the rest of my life to the
(11:04):
study of all the inventions of God. Yeah, he stayed religious,
we should point out he was. It's not like because
of his dad he went to atheist or something like.
In all of his writings and talking about the natural world,
it's all ezekiel, ezekiel, ezekiel. Well, it's all very spiritual
and God oriented. He was like, this is my church
though exactly the outdoors, which I can, you know, respect
(11:27):
on a certain level. He he he loved creation with
the capital C. Sure so um. When he's wandering, like
he really wandered. He was kind of a Johnny apples
E type almost. He walked from Indiana, where the I
guess he recovered from his all injury, um, all the
(11:48):
way down to cedar Key, Florida on the Gulf Coast.
It's like a thousand miles. He just walked down there
and pretty quickly too caught malaria and cedar ki almost died, recovered,
sailed to the Cuba from there, sailed on to Panama
from there, and made it all the way to San Francisco.
And apparently there's a story that may or may not
(12:09):
be true where he got to San Francisco. Was immediately
overwhelmed by this the hustle and bustle and city, and said,
where's the how what's the fastest way out of the city.
I think that's the deal. He got right out of
there and the guy, the guy he asked, said, well,
where you want to go? He said, anywhere wild and
he pointed him in the direction of Yosemite, and apparently
(12:29):
walked three hundred biles to Yosemite and fell in love.
That's right. And on the way out of town, someone selled,
you don't forget the rice RONEI it's the San Francisco
treat and he went, what sure, Jerry's like, Jerry like
disgusted by the joke. Yeah, he split immediately to get
(12:51):
out there and went to California and uh, he's in California. Well,
we went to Yosemite. He went to Yosemite, but he
walked right, and he walked because for a very specific reason.
He walked because that was the most intimate way to
see the botanic and and uh and write about the
(13:13):
botanic world around him. Yeah, because this was a time
when you could be like remember our bone Moor's episode
that you hooked us up with who Bone Wars, Like
this is a time where like you or I could
just start studying books and be like, Okay, I'm a paleontologist, Okay,
I'm a botanist, Okay, I'm a geologist. All this stuff.
These these fields were so young that anybody who had
(13:36):
like half a brain and like a pencil and a
piece of paper could basically contribute to the field. And
that's what I guess he was doing along the way.
He definitely did that in Yosemity. Oh yeah, he did
that everywhere he went. And it's a good lesson to
Like I remember in when Emily and I lived in
l A. I had a couple of times where I
had to drive to my mechanic and leave my car
(13:57):
And this was pre ride share services and taxis were
basically non existent in l A. So I would walk
these long distances home and you you just you notice everything,
like these neighborhoods that I drove around every day all
the time, and you would just notice, like can study
every house, every mailbox, every driveway, and it's really just
(14:19):
a lesson to people to like to walk places when
you can. There's a group in the UK I think
called Amblers. Yeah, we talked about the months, okay, and
they're they're basically they I think their motto is there
dedicated the idea that humans human locomotion should be no
more than like three and a half miles an hour
(14:40):
at the speed you walk, you know, and then that
that's how you take in everything. It's absolutely true. Yeah,
that's my two favorite speeds or two and a half
miles an hour and like the expressways, right, yeah, what
do the two? Um? So John mirror makes it to Yosemity.
Have we taken a break yet? I think this is
a great place for a break, don't you. He's entering
(15:01):
Yosemite for the first time. Everybody imagine it. Okay, So
(15:30):
John mirrors in Yosemite and he decides that he needs
a little bit of work. Um. I think he stayed
the first time for like ten days. And a lot
of people who know something about John Murror and especially
associated with Yosemite in the National Parks basically think he
showed up in Yosemite and never left and lived and
died there. That's not true. He lived there for about
(15:51):
a six year period, I think, Yeah, eighteen seventy six
years of his life. Yeah, so eighteen sixty eight to
eighteen seventy four I leave, Yeah, and those were a
very like California just totally rocked his world once he
got out there, Yeah, because he was living in Indianapolis.
So I mean, basically anywhere would rock your world. But
(16:12):
imagine showing up to California in the mid nineteenth century
or late nineteenth century and seeing it. Yeah, and especially
if you've I remember when I did my big out
west trip years ago with my best friend over like
four months in the summer, driving through Utah and Arizona
and everywhere. It's just so blazing hot. And then when
(16:33):
you drive over, especially southern California, California, and you drive
over that mountain range, it's like someone turned on the
air conditioning, and I just remember thinking, like, man, imagine
what it must have been like for westward expansion when
they finally got into the l A Basin, We're just like,
whoa in the l A Basin? Yeah, I mean you
(16:55):
go with that mountain range and it's just the Pacific
Ocean breezes are just kind of lock been there. Wow,
it's really hot on the other side then high Yeah,
like Death Valley. I'm not I'm not up on my
California geography. I think Germany's landlock can right now. It's
very lovely and cool near the coast, so um so yeah.
I can imagine what it must have been like as
(17:16):
like a nineteenth century traveler or something like that. But
um he uh. When John Muir got there, as I
was saying, um he, he stayed for like ten days.
I was like, I need some money, and he went back.
I guess he hitched a ride or else, walked back,
got some more money, and then he came back to
some He's like, I'm staying here for a while. So
he got work in Yosemite as a sheep herder. One
(17:38):
of his first jobs was hurting two thousand sheep up
into the sierras. Of it. He hated it. He learned
to hate sheep. He called them hoofed locusts. And he
started to despise sheep because he thought that they had an,
um a disproportionately bad impact on the natural surroundings. Just
eight they did. They kind of have a Yosemite to
(18:00):
a large degree, right, So he came to kind of
see livestock as an extension of human occupation of these
wild lands and how detrimental it wasn't It really occurred
to him during this first little, you know, a few
months period where he was a sheep arter. Yeah. And
I think also the horse and the horses that led
people on expeditions and stuff, they also overgrazed and the
(18:25):
cattle overgrazed, and they were logging. And Yosemite was I
think it was under the the care of the state
of California. It's a state park at this point because
it had been gifted by well, not gifted, but it
was a land grant from Abraham Lincoln in the middle
of the Civil War to California. He said, I'll tell
(18:45):
you what I'm gonna do for you, You take Yosemite.
But it was it was really mismanaged and just um,
I mean, compared to what they're doing now, was in
a pretty bad state. Yeah, which is one reason why
John Muir was pushing for it to become a national park,
so that it would be under the care of the
federal government, who hopefully would enforce the laws of preservation
(19:08):
a lot more than California had. So he shows up
in Yosemite, he starts shepherding. He but more than anything,
the thing that he became known for was these jaunts
where he would become like the first white man to
scale Cathedral Rock. Um, he would like not all these
fossil formations and take samples of them and send him
(19:32):
back to like the newly forming University of California. UM,
he would like submit botany like descriptions like he was
just basically it's like exploring Yosemite and documenting the whole
place while at the same time, um taking notes for
what would become a series of like books, essays. Like
(19:53):
he really made his name as like a writer, Like
he made a career for himself just as a writer.
We think of him as like this concept asianist naturalist,
and that's where he was coming from. But at the
time he was a successful writer. And after he left Yosemite, Yeah,
I mean another big kind of central relationship for him
was a man named Robert Underwood Johnson, who um was
(20:14):
the editor of Century Magazine, and Century Magazine was very
much a sort of a progressive naturalist rag and he
uh and and we should say that this, you know,
we're not like this is the most interesting parts of
his life. Like he also worked for a decade or
more on once he got married. He married a woman
(20:36):
named Louis Luisa Wanda stren Cel in eighteen eighty and
her family had had a couple of daughters, Wanda and Helen,
and her family had a fruit farm, fruit ranch, and
he lived there in Martinez, California, UM and kind of
quit doing his adventuring for a full decade and ran
this farm and worked as a farmer. So all this
(20:57):
stuff was going on, and then Robert Underwood Johnson basically
doggedly pursued uh mirror and said, listen, man, you gotta
we need you. You gotta start writing again, because you're
the foremost naturalist in the country right now according to
me and only me, and we need you to start
writing some stuff and start pushing for political change. And
(21:22):
he was working on this farm this whole time, and
eventually he was like, all right, you know what do
you what do you got for me? So the reason
Johnson saw him out was because he had made a
name for himself even while he was still living in Yosemite,
like you can kind of look at mirrors life like,
he went and got all of the experience he could
possibly need in these six years living basically the that
(21:45):
whole stretch in Yosemite, and then went in like and
use that experience. Is that like a nomad land reference?
Living deliberately? Now, wasn't that throw Oh yeah, I went
to the woods deliberate deliberately Living deliciously is from the
which um. But but it was basically like, imagine if
(22:05):
like you had like a crazy six year period in
your twenties and then you spent the rest of your
life exploiting that, writing about it, talking about it, making
a name for yourself, being a cause celeb from that experience.
That's that's basically what he did. Yeah. I feel like
there's a lot of people that did that. Yeah, who else?
I don't know. I well, there is a great example.
(22:25):
He went and lived at Walden for what a year?
And that was like we're still talking about that guy today,
you know. Yeah, that's true. And I've even heard that
Walden Pond was like town was right there. Yeah, it's
like the the pizza hutt next to the pyramids, that's right,
kind of like that. But yeah, so me're. Another big
(22:46):
important relationship that he made was with a president named
Theodore Roosevelt, and THEO Theodore Roosevelt is known for um
the two million acres of federal land that he acted,
among other things, but Mure was a big reason why.
I mean, Roosevelt was into preservation anyway. It's not like
Mure came in and completely like change his mind about everything.
(23:10):
But Roosevelt knew about him and and quite literally said,
I I would like you to take me camping in
Yosemite for four days. He said, just the two of us.
Didn't they have to like give the the um Secret
Service the slip? Well, I think there was secret service there,
because apparently they just never shut up in the Secret
Service people, and like one of their journals said, like
(23:31):
these two like won't shut up. All they're doing is
just yammering at each other about the woods. So I
don't know they gave him the slip or not, but
I know that originally their request was the Roosevelt was
like I don't want anyone around, man, I just want
you and I to get out there in the woods
and like talk about this stuff. Yeah, like wax mustache
to wax mustache, that's right. So he works hand in
(23:52):
hand with Roosevelt to do a lot of work. I
think the first or one of the first national monuments
they established was Petrified Force and Arizona, which um he
went out there and was like, oh, this place is
kind of cool. He moved there for his daughter's health apparently,
and while he was there, he's like, oh, there's a
petrifive force. I'll just start submitting fossil. Yeah. He just
(24:13):
did the same thing there as an older man that
he did earlier at Yosemite. Yeah. And I think the
deal with Yosemite was because it was a state park.
The actual Yosemite Valley wasn't part of the park boundaries.
That Mariposa Grove of those giant Sequoia trees wasn't actually
part of the boundary, and Muro was like, man, this
(24:34):
this is what needs to be a part of the
boundary more than anything. Yeah, So that was one of
the first things that UM, the Sierra Club took up.
It was like basically their first initiative. And John Muir's
synonymous with the Sierra Club because he was the first president.
He was for I think this who basically twenty years
or something like that. He died, Yeah, he died into
(24:55):
and he became the president of security Sierra Club in
eighteen nine two. So um, he helped found this organization
that's still around today. Then one of the first initiatives,
one of their first pushes, was to get the Yosemite
Valley and the what's the name of the forest, the
Mariposa Mariposa Forest, the Secoya Grove included into the boundaries
(25:19):
of the National Park. And they were finally successful in
nine six and from that success, they just started having
more and more successes and eventually expanded because initially they
were focused on the West basically because that's where all
these people who founded the Club lived and that's what
they cared about. They said, well, there's other places where
this battle needs to be fought, and they became this
(25:41):
national advocacy group that will sue your pants off if
you try to mess with the National Park. Yeah, they
opened an office in d c and sixty three and
like you said, went off, you know, Alaska, Florida very
key in trying to get things like the Clean Air
Act pass, the Wilderness Act, the e p A created
in nineteen seventy and UH, Alaska's kind of key too
(26:05):
in mirrors life because he he gets engaged to Louis
and I think in those days you kind of got
just got engaged and got married pretty quickly. Like there
there were there weren't these long drawn out engagements, but
there wasn't his case, because he was like, all right,
we're engaged. You're you are a good match, thank you,
Geane carr Um. But I'm gonna go to Alaska now,
(26:26):
And he did. He went to Alaska for a period.
And if you think Alaska is like, you know, uncharted
and wild now, like, imagine what it was like back then.
I'm sure his diary was like what no snakes? Amazing?
What the heck is this place? But like I said,
they eventually did get married and have those daughters, and
(26:48):
she very sadly passed away in nineteen o five of cancer. Yeah,
and he um like he had to go home to
be with her when she died, like he was away
when she was partially, UH for part of the time
when she was sick. Well, that's sad. It's very very sad.
I guess that explains why he and his daughters were
the only ones that moved to Arizona for his daughter's health. Then,
(27:09):
I guess I think, so, okay, that's sad because she
supposedly was well known for her Um. I saw that
she was a very gentle person, a very sweet person. Yeah,
and very supportive of his efforts. Like what's truly a
good match. She loved the wilderness and nature and God
and all those things. Oh, she loved God. Don't get
her started on God. She would take her second break.
(27:33):
I think so. All right, So we're talking about John
(28:01):
mur in the Sierra Club Chuck and and it's really
hard to understate what mirror impact. No, yes, um, what
impact he had, because like I said, he was a
successful writer. He was really good at writing. And also
he did really crazy stuff like riding an avalanche. Um.
(28:25):
There's a very famous essay that he wrote called the
Windstorm in the Forest, UM that he describes what it
was like to climb up the top of a pine
tree and hang on for hours during a storm in
the Sierras, and how awesome nuts it was. Um, and
and like just basically saying like this, this is real,
(28:45):
this is nature, Like you could if you go out
to these places, you could do this stuff. But this,
this is not going to be around if we keep
building railroads through these places where we build dams, or
we let livestock just graze wherever, like we an just
not do something about. It has to be preserved and protected.
And he inspired people during his lifetime and long after
(29:07):
his lifetime as well. Yeah, I think the I watched
a pretty cool American Masters documentary on this, and um,
this one guy with historian was like this was a
little bit of macho involved, like he was this great naturalist.
Not to take anything away, but like riding the avalanche
and like climbing a tree during a snowstorm at the
top or a rainstorm at the top of the mountain.
(29:28):
He said, there was a little like makismo involved in that.
Like yeah, or or body from Point Break? Wait was
that Patrick? Um? Yeah? Or was it Kiano can Reis?
That was Johnny Utah my friend. Oh that's right, so
Bodie was or was that Flee from the Peppers? But
(29:55):
it was actually Anthony Keti Ketas that was in Point
Break sure he may have been in it, but Ketis
was one of the Ruffians. I got his foot shot off.
I think no, no, I know he was the leader
of the Bad Guys Surfer Club, but I think Fleet
was in that club. I think, well, what was he
naked except for a sock on this? Probably pants? Pants
(30:17):
made of Teddy bears? Do we take our second break? Yeah,
we just didn't. So but I was leading up to something.
So we've been talking about what a great guy John
Muir was and that's how he was, um looked at
and respected for decades and decades, a century actually more.
Um he was looked at a great man. Maybe a
(30:39):
little macho, sure, but that's forgivable. If that much he's
moo is directed towards riding a tree in a storm
rather than you know, picking bar fights in Lisbon or
something like that. You know, thank you so um. When
we did our episode on Girl Scouts, I talked about how,
like Juliette Gordon Lowe was one of the rare historic
(31:00):
figures from a century or so ago that you were like,
and actually she holds up today. John Miror is not
that same way. There there's a real um. I guess
a mia Kolpa sort of a reckoning. Yeah, that's a
great way to put it. That's exactly what it was.
A reckoning by the Sierra Club not too many years ago,
(31:22):
where they basically said, hey, John here was great in
all these ways, he was also pretty racist. And yeah,
he was a product of his time and the way
of thinking, which we'll talk about, um, but he was
still pretty racist. And in fact, the whole basis of
the National Park system was built on this racist ideology,
and it's we're still basically looking at it the same
(31:45):
way today. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because the Sierra
Club even acknowledged that our first our first years as
a as a as a group was based on the
notion of white people trying to protect the land that
white people wanted to hike through and enjoys as campers
and recreationalists. And in his earlier years, I think kind
(32:08):
of through his thirties, up until his thirties, he had
sort of bad things to say about people of color,
whether it was indigenous people's uh in the United States
or black people, and um used disparaging language towards them,
which the whole thing with the indigenous people's is really
(32:29):
counterintuitive because they were so aligned with his philosophies of
how you and habit a land and share a land
and use it and don't abuse it, and you know, uh,
it really doesn't make much sense. And supposedly he I
think in his forties he started to come around, especially
(32:50):
when he went to Alaska, because they um indigenous people
served as his guides and he started to learn more
from them, and I think things turned around a bit
at that point. Yeah. But uh, the Sierra Club, you know,
spent a lot of time over the past few years
trying to sort of bring this delight and not whitewash
it and say, hey, this is what it was. No,
(33:11):
they and they did a very good job of it.
I think so. Yeah. So um. I was saying that
he was a product of his time, and he very
much was. There was an idea before his time, say
the eighteen thirties, when the West was like the frontier
and the the United States didn't really need it at
the time, where there was this view of the Native
(33:32):
American as this this um noble race that was being
encroached upon by humanity and that we we needed to
preserve this wild area. This was decades before John Muir
came around this idea that we needed to preserve the stuff,
but we also needed to preserve Native Americans and their
culture in this land that were preserved. So the initial
(33:53):
idea for national parks was that the Native Americans would
live on this land just as they always had, and
it would be there land, but it would also be
America's national parks that would be protected. And then the
railroad came, and all of a sudden, the US started
expanding further and further west, faster and faster, and now
the Native Americans weren't this group of people over there
(34:17):
that you could kind of idealize. They were now in
the way of this westward expansion. So racism toward them
went through the roof. And now there was this idea
that Native American culture was already dead, that the best
of the culture had died in the last decades and centuries,
and that it was all the white man's fault. But
what's done is done, and so let's just make this
(34:40):
decline into extinction as comfortable as possible and preserved Native
Americans not on our national park land, but we'll just
make reservations for them to go over there and just
die off and it's sad, but that's just the way
it is, and that that is the mentality that John
Muir became a conservationist with in the larger zeitgeis that
(35:02):
that you no humans should be on the land, but
in particular Native Americans shouldn't be there anyway because this
is our white people land. Yeah, and you know what,
I'm glad to see her club and people in general
are more comfortable, uh, calling this stuff what it is now.
Like even in that American Masters, that was one line
(35:23):
where they said, like, you know, early on he you know,
he he, I don't even remember what they said. I
don't even think they said disparaging, but like he said,
some things were not so nice for Native American Indians
is what they said while he was saying yeah, And
then it was just very quickly like they wouldn't dare
say that he had racist points of view. Uh, he
(35:44):
just didn't say stuff like that. But I think now
people are more comfortable with saying using that word and saying,
you know, this is how he was for a time
in his life, and we gotta we gotta reckon with
that because it's part of our history of of a
of a foundation for sure, and not just tim like
the national parks were they they evicted people and not
just Native Americans, depending on where you were out West,
(36:06):
Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Yosemite, Yellowstone, all of them required
forced evictions to basically create this pristine area that was
never pristine and free of human settlement or occupation or use.
That's they created that to create the national parks. And
they used like this idea. There was this um I've
(36:28):
read this really interesting article dude from two thousand seven,
so it would have been groundbreaking at the time. It's
called Ethnic Cleansing and America's Creation of National Parks by
Isaac Cantor and uh. Cantor points out that like the
people who were setting up and promoting these first national
parks like Yellowstone in Yosemite would say, there were never
Native Americans here anyway, they were all these were all
(36:50):
they were afraid of spirits in this you know, in
this canyon, so they never hung out here anyway. But
by the way, uh, can you send some military to
protect us from Native america can attacks while we're setting
up this national park? So it's which is yeah, yeah, basically,
but that's a really interesting It was a really good
read and it was very eye opening, especially for two
(37:11):
thousand seven. Uh. So, I guess in closing, we want
to quickly mention one of his last what he was
actually trying to do when he died and and failed
at doing, was preventing the damning of the hetch Hetchy
Valley uh in Yosemite. And basically what happened in nineteen
o six was there was a devastating earthquake and fire
(37:33):
that destroyed San Francisco, which I'd love to cover that
as its own episode at some point, basically completely destroyed
it h and everywhere. And one of the reasons that
the fire destroyed it was because their water uh uh
what do you call them water water people? Their water system,
I'll just say that um was destroyed by the earthquake.
(37:57):
So San Francisco said, we need a better, more reliable
a water supply, and we can get it in Yosemite
with the hetch Hetchy Valley if we damn that thing up.
And he was like, you can't do this, It's in
a national park. And he lost that effort, but he
made such a stink uh he was He was basically like,
there are a lot of other ways you can get water.
You're just doing this because it's easiest and cheapest, But
(38:18):
you can get water to San Francisco in other ways. Uh.
And like I said, he was not successful. He did
lose that battle, um and then passed away of pneumonia
at the age of seventy six and nineteen fourteen. Um.
But he they haven't There hasn't been a damn built
in on national park lands since then. Yeah. Because that battle,
even though he lost it, it really raised awareness and
(38:40):
it also kind of set a certain mindset in people
in the public's mind that now you don't really mess
with national parks. And I guess we had to lose
one to to to get to that point. That's right.
Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? So
that's job mirror for you. Everybody. Go check out his
writings and read about him and uh see what you think.
And also don't forget ethnic cleansing in the creation of
(39:02):
America's national parks. Good stuff. Uh. And since I said
good stuff, of course it's time for listening. Man. Uh.
This is on the Cleft Palettes from Malcolm that's new
in Calgary that came out today Alberta, Canada. Usa, North
America Earth. Hey guys, been an avid listener since my
(39:24):
friend introduced me when I very hungover car right home
from an Iron Maiden concert about five years ago. Nice,
it's a great way to get turned onto the show. Yeah.
I thought I'd write in to share my experience with
my son's cleft pallet after listening to the episode. My
son was born with a midwife in June nineteen and
had a ton of trouble breastfeeding, which in hindsight was
because he couldn't get any suction. A couple of days later,
(39:45):
the midwife noticed what she thought was a cleft in
the soft palette. We took our newborn to the hospital
and she was right. We became regulars at the Alberta
Children's Hospitals Cleft Clinic in Calgary, Alberta, and two years later,
my son has had a surgery to repair his clap
pallett and another to put tubes in his ear drums parentheses,
socialized health care is the best. The tubes are common
(40:08):
with clefts because the muscles that drain the ear canals
don't form properly, so the tubes allow fluid to leave
the ear canals. One thing you didn't mention was the
byfed uvela, which I have. It's related to clefts that
the muscles don't quite form properly and it makes her
uvula look more like a w than a tear drop.
I saw that in research. I forgot to mention I
(40:28):
did too. I can't believe I forgot that. We are
currently visiting a geneticist at the Hospitality of Cleft in
my bibid uvula. I'm sorry byfed uvela are genetically related,
but I think the answer is probably yes. Love listening
you guys look for it each episode. That is Malcolm. Nice,
nice name, Malcolm. Um, that's great, Thank you very much
(40:50):
for sharing. And also rock on mat. Yeah that's your name, Malcolm. Yeah,
it's my middle name. It's a great name. Me and
my friends they have the night we're hanging out, Me
and Emily and Justina Melissa. We're having a few drinks
and we decided to start only going by our middle names.
So it was Alex, Dawn, Renee and Wayne were hanging
(41:12):
out for the rest of the night. We were just
cracking jokes. Like someone did say something to be like
that is so Alex. I don't know if it's gonna stick.
But it was really weird to think of myself as
a Wayne. That could be a one night thing. I
think that one night, I think sticks. I will be
really surprised. I think we determined. I determined that you
(41:33):
don't have a relation to your middle name, like an
emotional connection. If when you hear that name out loud,
you don't have any reaction, Like if I hear someone
say a Chuck or someone else's Chuck, I go oh.
But if I hear someone say Wayne or whatever, I don't,
I don't even doesn't even register you, Like that name
is dead to me. Yeah, that sounds about right right.
(41:53):
All right, that's so Malcolm. Well, if you want to
get in touch with this, like Malcolm did not me
the other welcome one in the middle, you can send
us an email like Malcolm did to Stuff podcast iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(42:15):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry
Roland there and this is the Stuff you Should Know
and outdoors. The addition, if there ever was American master's voice,
(00:27):
kind of, it's got a little Bob Ross too. Oh.
Happy birthday Bob Dylan. By the way, Happy eightieth birthday
to one of the great legends. Speaking of great Bob's Okay,
I was like, how is that I propos of anything
he said? Bob? There's a lot of online congratulations going around.
That's good, So throw me in there. I know you
don't care about Bob Dylan, but I do. That's fine.
(00:50):
And you apparently you don't care about John York because boy,
you were snaughty about this. I have no problem with
John Muir. Well that's not exactly the only one. Other
people doing stuff. It's a whatever. Let's just get into this,
shall we. So we're talking John your today, and that
name might sound familiar if you're not a member of
this yer club. If you are remembers the club, you
probably just dropped to your knees and did the secret
(01:12):
sign when I said John Muir. I just had to
do it again because I said John Muir. And there
it goes again. Every time we say John Muir, the
Yer Club members have to do something weird. Or if
you've ever hiked any portion of the John your trail
that was named after him? Is that in Yosemite. It's
in California. Okay, Yeah, that's it's part of its in Yosemite.
(01:34):
I think I should have looked that up. Well, he is,
I asked that because he's basically synonymous with Yosemity. He
was a huge driving force in getting Yosemite um into
national park status and then fully becoming the Yosemite that
we understand it today. No, I haven't, and I really
wanted to because I saw some pictures online. Looks really
(01:58):
not Uh. I've been to quite a few amazing national
parks in the United States, and not all of them
sump in the Yellowstone um, but I've been to a
lot of them. In Yosemite is really it's really up
there is one of the more special places. Like it's
pretty incredible. Um. But so John mur he but he
(02:19):
played a huge role in Yosemite becoming a national park.
But also like it's really kind of selling short the
impact that he had on um the creation of our
national park system, but also like the idea of what
a national park is, what wilderness is, what needs to
(02:40):
be protected, how we protected. He was certainly not working
in a vacuum in that sense that he was kind
of tapped into this larger way of thinking, for better
or worse. But he was a huge driving force and
one of the reasons he was a huge driving force
for getting America into preserving wild spaces the face of
(03:01):
the Second Industrial Revolution was just minting money and building
railroads and just turning America into a powerhouse. Um because
he he walked the walk, for sure. He was He
was not just some you know Eastern you know Greenhorn
who who had never set foot in the wilderness, but
like the idea of it, right, he went and lived
(03:23):
it for sure. Like he did some really wild stuff
while he was living in Yosemite at the time. Yeah.
In fact, later when he was in his late thirties,
he was hooked up with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was older,
and they really bonded. They went on a camping trip
together and um, I think Emerson was like, what you
need to do is come back to Boston, Emerson or
(03:45):
thora Emerson, and he said, you need to come back
to Boston and be among the intelligency advocating for this stuff.
And at the time John your was like, no way, man,
Like I gotta I gotta be in the woods from
Roccer dude through and through. Yeah, And Uh, it would
not be until later in his in his um kind
of mid to late forties, his his life was kind
(04:07):
of been two parts. It was the wild exploring and
categorizing and botanical categorization of everything he could find, and
then the mid forties on when he uh was very
much a political advocate and uh kind of did that
because he felt he had to. He would have rather
he had a T shirt on the whole time that
said I'd rather be camping, right. But I also saw
(04:30):
that he went back after a little bit of a hiatus,
I think like a nine month hiatus towards the end
when he finally left Yosemite for good, um, and he
felt like he was an intruder there, like he felt
like his time there was done and he knew that
he had to be out of there in the world
to advocate for it for the preservation of this area.
(04:52):
But also that he like he just he felt like
that chapter was closed. So interesting. Yeah, I mean that's
they They always say no, no when it's time to leave,
and I guess he did the always say that. Um
so let's talk about John. You're starting even younger than that. Yeah,
let's start with minute one. He was born at eight.
He Scottish heritage. He was born in Dunbar and came
(05:16):
to the US when he was eleven. Uh. He and
his family settled in Wisconsin, eventually in Hickory Hill on
an eighty acre farm near Portage. His father was a
very stern Calvinist. Uh, super religious. Yeah, like it kind
of if you ever seen the movie The Witch, sort
of along those lines where such a great punishment was
(05:38):
very heavy and strict. If you beat your child because
they haven't memorized Bible verse to your satisfaction, you may
be over the over the line. I think I'm not
going to go so far as to say there was
physical abuse, but there was, oh there was with his father, yes,
for that reason. Okay, I mean I saw like corporal punishment,
(06:01):
but like you know, these days, spanking a kid is abuse, Like,
I don't know where it fell on the meter back then,
I don't. I well, I can't say where it fell
on the meter. I can't say either. But yes, he
would be but today he would be imprisoned probably. Yeah.
But one of the reasons John Muir became John Muir's
because of his father, because his the wilderness in Wisconsin
(06:24):
was his refuge and his literal escape to kind of
get away from him. So who knows what would have
been you know, what would have happened had his father
not been like that? Yeah, And I don't want to
fully mischaracterize his father, just partially. Um he was, he
was very stern. But John Muir was convinced that his
father loved him still and cared about him, and it
(06:46):
was even maybe a little bit proud of him in
the ways that he deviated from what his father wanted
for him. And one of the main ways that he
deviated from him was in book learning. Basically, like all
his father was turned with was his his boys working
the land, farming, knowing farming, and knowing the Bible. They
didn't need to know anything else. But that wasn't enough
(07:08):
for job. You're he was basically a born tinker, a
born engineer, but he did not have free time. His
father was like, you're either working in the field, or
you're studying the Bible, or you're getting hit with the
switch by me, it's one of those three things what
you're doing for all of your waking hours. And so John,
you're hit upon the idea of expanding his waking hours.
(07:31):
And so as a youth, he started waking up at
one in the morning so that he could have five
hours to himself between one am and six am when
he was expected to start working on the farm, to
just read or tinker or invent. And he actually used
that to really great effects. Yeah, so he made a
lot of little inventions. Uh. There was one called an
(07:53):
early rising machine, which was basically a alarm clock attached
to his bed that would quite literally tip his bed
up and tip him out of it. I don't get
the feeling that he needed it because he's getting up
at one a m Anyway, his father used it. But
he eventually would go to the State Fair in Madison
(08:13):
in eighteen sixty with a lot of his inventions and
was sort of a boy wonder inventor. And he was
twenty two at the time. Well, but he was I
think he had invented a lot of stuff in his
teen years too though. But imagine like you know, twenty
two in the eighteen eighties or sixties, Like imagine the
middle aged guy showing up to the four h fair
(08:33):
being like can I enter one of the things a
big relationship in his life that would last throughout his life. Um,
he studied with a man named Ezra Carr, and his wife,
Jane car became a really big mentor for him and
exposed him to uh, you know botany basically like she
(08:55):
was a scientist and he loved the outdoors, but she
was like, hey, but botany is like a real science
to it, and was a really big influence in his life.
Introduced him to Emerson later like literally picked out a
wife for him that was like this is who you
need to marry because she can support you an hatchmaker
then too because it seems like it because they loved
(09:16):
each other very much, and um, she was totally fine
with his comings and goings and all that. They were
good together. Comings and goings is in going or Japan
or something that made it sound a little bit like
you know, dalliances. No, No, nothing like that. No, As
a matter of fact, I read that, um, he left
Yosemite at one point because of unwanted attention from a woman. Oh,
(09:40):
he's like he was camping in this lady hiked by
and looked at him, and he's like, I'm out. He Well,
he wasn't interesting dude, and that he was a bit
like a hermit, but apparently also really enjoyed these one
on one conversations with the people he would meet. Yeah,
he was like he was kind of build as a
wild man of the wilderness, but he very much craved
(10:01):
and needed human interaction as well. It's yeah, very odd.
It's usually one way or the other in that sense,
you know. Yeah. So he's working eventually the industrial part
of his life because he was such a good tinker
and engineer. He got work, uh, doing stuff like that.
And in March of eighteen sixty seven, he's working at
(10:22):
a carriage part shop in Indianapolis. His h and all pierced,
like literally went into his eye and pierced it, and
for a while he was blind in both eyes because
of that. It was such a bad wound that his
other eye was like I'm out too, Yeah, just because
I feel bad for my buddy over there. Sympathy blindness. Uh,
(10:43):
and this was a very monumental injury because after this
he was like, you know what, forget this stuff. I
don't want to ever be around another machine with moving
parts again. And I just want to walk. He said
that he bade a do you to all my mechanical inventions,
determined to devote the rest of my life to the
(11:04):
study of all the inventions of God. Yeah, he stayed religious,
we should point out he was. It's not like because
of his dad he went to atheist or something like.
In all of his writings and talking about the natural world,
it's all ezekiel, ezekiel, ezekiel. Well, it's all very spiritual
and God oriented. He was like, this is my church
though exactly the outdoors, which I can, you know, respect
(11:27):
on a certain level. He he he loved creation with
the capital C. Sure so um. When he's wandering, like
he really wandered. He was kind of a Johnny apples
E type almost. He walked from Indiana, where the I
guess he recovered from his all injury, um, all the
(11:48):
way down to cedar Key, Florida on the Gulf Coast.
It's like a thousand miles. He just walked down there
and pretty quickly too caught malaria and cedar ki almost died, recovered,
sailed to the Cuba from there, sailed on to Panama
from there, and made it all the way to San Francisco.
And apparently there's a story that may or may not
(12:09):
be true where he got to San Francisco. Was immediately
overwhelmed by this the hustle and bustle and city, and said,
where's the how what's the fastest way out of the city.
I think that's the deal. He got right out of
there and the guy, the guy he asked, said, well,
where you want to go? He said, anywhere wild and
he pointed him in the direction of Yosemite, and apparently
(12:29):
walked three hundred biles to Yosemite and fell in love.
That's right. And on the way out of town, someone selled,
you don't forget the rice RONEI it's the San Francisco
treat and he went, what sure, Jerry's like, Jerry like
disgusted by the joke. Yeah, he split immediately to get
(12:51):
out there and went to California and uh, he's in California. Well,
we went to Yosemite. He went to Yosemite, but he
walked right, and he walked because for a very specific reason.
He walked because that was the most intimate way to
see the botanic and and uh and write about the
(13:13):
botanic world around him. Yeah, because this was a time
when you could be like remember our bone Moor's episode
that you hooked us up with who Bone Wars, Like
this is a time where like you or I could
just start studying books and be like, Okay, I'm a paleontologist, Okay,
I'm a botanist, Okay, I'm a geologist. All this stuff.
These these fields were so young that anybody who had
(13:36):
like half a brain and like a pencil and a
piece of paper could basically contribute to the field. And
that's what I guess he was doing along the way.
He definitely did that in Yosemity. Oh yeah, he did
that everywhere he went. And it's a good lesson to
Like I remember in when Emily and I lived in
l A. I had a couple of times where I
had to drive to my mechanic and leave my car
(13:57):
And this was pre ride share services and taxis were
basically non existent in l A. So I would walk
these long distances home and you you just you notice everything,
like these neighborhoods that I drove around every day all
the time, and you would just notice, like can study
every house, every mailbox, every driveway, and it's really just
(14:19):
a lesson to people to like to walk places when
you can. There's a group in the UK I think
called Amblers. Yeah, we talked about the months, okay, and
they're they're basically they I think their motto is there
dedicated the idea that humans human locomotion should be no
more than like three and a half miles an hour
(14:40):
at the speed you walk, you know, and then that
that's how you take in everything. It's absolutely true. Yeah,
that's my two favorite speeds or two and a half
miles an hour and like the expressways, right, yeah, what
do the two? Um? So John mirror makes it to Yosemity.
Have we taken a break yet? I think this is
a great place for a break, don't you. He's entering
(15:01):
Yosemite for the first time. Everybody imagine it. Okay, So
(15:30):
John mirrors in Yosemite and he decides that he needs
a little bit of work. Um. I think he stayed
the first time for like ten days. And a lot
of people who know something about John Murror and especially
associated with Yosemite in the National Parks basically think he
showed up in Yosemite and never left and lived and
died there. That's not true. He lived there for about
(15:51):
a six year period, I think, Yeah, eighteen seventy six
years of his life. Yeah, so eighteen sixty eight to
eighteen seventy four I leave, Yeah, and those were a
very like California just totally rocked his world once he
got out there, Yeah, because he was living in Indianapolis.
So I mean, basically anywhere would rock your world. But
(16:12):
imagine showing up to California in the mid nineteenth century
or late nineteenth century and seeing it. Yeah, and especially
if you've I remember when I did my big out
west trip years ago with my best friend over like
four months in the summer, driving through Utah and Arizona
and everywhere. It's just so blazing hot. And then when
(16:33):
you drive over, especially southern California, California, and you drive
over that mountain range, it's like someone turned on the
air conditioning, and I just remember thinking, like, man, imagine
what it must have been like for westward expansion when
they finally got into the l A Basin, We're just like,
whoa in the l A Basin? Yeah, I mean you
(16:55):
go with that mountain range and it's just the Pacific
Ocean breezes are just kind of lock been there. Wow,
it's really hot on the other side then high Yeah,
like Death Valley. I'm not I'm not up on my
California geography. I think Germany's landlock can right now. It's
very lovely and cool near the coast, so um so yeah.
I can imagine what it must have been like as
(17:16):
like a nineteenth century traveler or something like that. But
um he uh. When John Muir got there, as I
was saying, um he, he stayed for like ten days.
I was like, I need some money, and he went back.
I guess he hitched a ride or else, walked back,
got some more money, and then he came back to
some He's like, I'm staying here for a while. So
he got work in Yosemite as a sheep herder. One
(17:38):
of his first jobs was hurting two thousand sheep up
into the sierras. Of it. He hated it. He learned
to hate sheep. He called them hoofed locusts. And he
started to despise sheep because he thought that they had an,
um a disproportionately bad impact on the natural surroundings. Just
eight they did. They kind of have a Yosemite to
(18:00):
a large degree, right, So he came to kind of
see livestock as an extension of human occupation of these
wild lands and how detrimental it wasn't It really occurred
to him during this first little, you know, a few
months period where he was a sheep arter. Yeah. And
I think also the horse and the horses that led
people on expeditions and stuff, they also overgrazed and the
(18:25):
cattle overgrazed, and they were logging. And Yosemite was I
think it was under the the care of the state
of California. It's a state park at this point because
it had been gifted by well, not gifted, but it
was a land grant from Abraham Lincoln in the middle
of the Civil War to California. He said, I'll tell
(18:45):
you what I'm gonna do for you, You take Yosemite.
But it was it was really mismanaged and just um,
I mean, compared to what they're doing now, was in
a pretty bad state. Yeah, which is one reason why
John Muir was pushing for it to become a national park,
so that it would be under the care of the
federal government, who hopefully would enforce the laws of preservation
(19:08):
a lot more than California had. So he shows up
in Yosemite, he starts shepherding. He but more than anything,
the thing that he became known for was these jaunts
where he would become like the first white man to
scale Cathedral Rock. Um, he would like not all these
fossil formations and take samples of them and send him
(19:32):
back to like the newly forming University of California. UM,
he would like submit botany like descriptions like he was
just basically it's like exploring Yosemite and documenting the whole
place while at the same time, um taking notes for
what would become a series of like books, essays. Like
(19:53):
he really made his name as like a writer, Like
he made a career for himself just as a writer.
We think of him as like this concept asianist naturalist,
and that's where he was coming from. But at the
time he was a successful writer. And after he left Yosemite, Yeah,
I mean another big kind of central relationship for him
was a man named Robert Underwood Johnson, who um was
(20:14):
the editor of Century Magazine, and Century Magazine was very
much a sort of a progressive naturalist rag and he
uh and and we should say that this, you know,
we're not like this is the most interesting parts of
his life. Like he also worked for a decade or
more on once he got married. He married a woman
(20:36):
named Louis Luisa Wanda stren Cel in eighteen eighty and
her family had had a couple of daughters, Wanda and Helen,
and her family had a fruit farm, fruit ranch, and
he lived there in Martinez, California, UM and kind of
quit doing his adventuring for a full decade and ran
this farm and worked as a farmer. So all this
(20:57):
stuff was going on, and then Robert Underwood Johnson basically
doggedly pursued uh mirror and said, listen, man, you gotta
we need you. You gotta start writing again, because you're
the foremost naturalist in the country right now according to
me and only me, and we need you to start
writing some stuff and start pushing for political change. And
(21:22):
he was working on this farm this whole time, and
eventually he was like, all right, you know what do
you what do you got for me? So the reason
Johnson saw him out was because he had made a
name for himself even while he was still living in Yosemite,
like you can kind of look at mirrors life like,
he went and got all of the experience he could
possibly need in these six years living basically the that
(21:45):
whole stretch in Yosemite, and then went in like and
use that experience. Is that like a nomad land reference?
Living deliberately? Now, wasn't that throw Oh yeah, I went
to the woods deliberate deliberately Living deliciously is from the
which um. But but it was basically like, imagine if
(22:05):
like you had like a crazy six year period in
your twenties and then you spent the rest of your
life exploiting that, writing about it, talking about it, making
a name for yourself, being a cause celeb from that experience.
That's that's basically what he did. Yeah. I feel like
there's a lot of people that did that. Yeah, who else?
I don't know. I well, there is a great example.
(22:25):
He went and lived at Walden for what a year?
And that was like we're still talking about that guy today,
you know. Yeah, that's true. And I've even heard that
Walden Pond was like town was right there. Yeah, it's
like the the pizza hutt next to the pyramids, that's right,
kind of like that. But yeah, so me're. Another big
(22:46):
important relationship that he made was with a president named
Theodore Roosevelt, and THEO Theodore Roosevelt is known for um
the two million acres of federal land that he acted,
among other things, but Mure was a big reason why.
I mean, Roosevelt was into preservation anyway. It's not like
Mure came in and completely like change his mind about everything.
(23:10):
But Roosevelt knew about him and and quite literally said,
I I would like you to take me camping in
Yosemite for four days. He said, just the two of us.
Didn't they have to like give the the um Secret
Service the slip? Well, I think there was secret service there,
because apparently they just never shut up in the Secret
Service people, and like one of their journals said, like
(23:31):
these two like won't shut up. All they're doing is
just yammering at each other about the woods. So I
don't know they gave him the slip or not, but
I know that originally their request was the Roosevelt was
like I don't want anyone around, man, I just want
you and I to get out there in the woods
and like talk about this stuff. Yeah, like wax mustache
to wax mustache, that's right. So he works hand in
(23:52):
hand with Roosevelt to do a lot of work. I
think the first or one of the first national monuments
they established was Petrified Force and Arizona, which um he
went out there and was like, oh, this place is
kind of cool. He moved there for his daughter's health apparently,
and while he was there, he's like, oh, there's a
petrifive force. I'll just start submitting fossil. Yeah. He just
(24:13):
did the same thing there as an older man that
he did earlier at Yosemite. Yeah. And I think the
deal with Yosemite was because it was a state park.
The actual Yosemite Valley wasn't part of the park boundaries.
That Mariposa Grove of those giant Sequoia trees wasn't actually
part of the boundary, and Muro was like, man, this
(24:34):
this is what needs to be a part of the
boundary more than anything. Yeah, So that was one of
the first things that UM, the Sierra Club took up.
It was like basically their first initiative. And John Muir's
synonymous with the Sierra Club because he was the first president.
He was for I think this who basically twenty years
or something like that. He died, Yeah, he died into
(24:55):
and he became the president of security Sierra Club in
eighteen nine two. So um, he helped found this organization
that's still around today. Then one of the first initiatives,
one of their first pushes, was to get the Yosemite
Valley and the what's the name of the forest, the
Mariposa Mariposa Forest, the Secoya Grove included into the boundaries
(25:19):
of the National Park. And they were finally successful in
nine six and from that success, they just started having
more and more successes and eventually expanded because initially they
were focused on the West basically because that's where all
these people who founded the Club lived and that's what
they cared about. They said, well, there's other places where
this battle needs to be fought, and they became this
(25:41):
national advocacy group that will sue your pants off if
you try to mess with the National Park. Yeah, they
opened an office in d c and sixty three and
like you said, went off, you know, Alaska, Florida very
key in trying to get things like the Clean Air
Act pass, the Wilderness Act, the e p A created
in nineteen seventy and UH, Alaska's kind of key too
(26:05):
in mirrors life because he he gets engaged to Louis
and I think in those days you kind of got
just got engaged and got married pretty quickly. Like there
there were there weren't these long drawn out engagements, but
there wasn't his case, because he was like, all right,
we're engaged. You're you are a good match, thank you,
Geane carr Um. But I'm gonna go to Alaska now,
(26:26):
And he did. He went to Alaska for a period.
And if you think Alaska is like, you know, uncharted
and wild now, like, imagine what it was like back then.
I'm sure his diary was like what no snakes? Amazing?
What the heck is this place? But like I said,
they eventually did get married and have those daughters, and
(26:48):
she very sadly passed away in nineteen o five of cancer. Yeah,
and he um like he had to go home to
be with her when she died, like he was away
when she was partially, UH for part of the time
when she was sick. Well, that's sad. It's very very sad.
I guess that explains why he and his daughters were
the only ones that moved to Arizona for his daughter's health. Then,
(27:09):
I guess I think, so, okay, that's sad because she
supposedly was well known for her Um. I saw that
she was a very gentle person, a very sweet person. Yeah,
and very supportive of his efforts. Like what's truly a
good match. She loved the wilderness and nature and God
and all those things. Oh, she loved God. Don't get
her started on God. She would take her second break.
(27:33):
I think so. All right, So we're talking about John
(28:01):
mur in the Sierra Club Chuck and and it's really
hard to understate what mirror impact. No, yes, um, what
impact he had, because like I said, he was a
successful writer. He was really good at writing. And also
he did really crazy stuff like riding an avalanche. Um.
(28:25):
There's a very famous essay that he wrote called the
Windstorm in the Forest, UM that he describes what it
was like to climb up the top of a pine
tree and hang on for hours during a storm in
the Sierras, and how awesome nuts it was. Um, and
and like just basically saying like this, this is real,
(28:45):
this is nature, Like you could if you go out
to these places, you could do this stuff. But this,
this is not going to be around if we keep
building railroads through these places where we build dams, or
we let livestock just graze wherever, like we an just
not do something about. It has to be preserved and protected.
And he inspired people during his lifetime and long after
(29:07):
his lifetime as well. Yeah, I think the I watched
a pretty cool American Masters documentary on this, and um,
this one guy with historian was like this was a
little bit of macho involved, like he was this great naturalist.
Not to take anything away, but like riding the avalanche
and like climbing a tree during a snowstorm at the
top or a rainstorm at the top of the mountain.
(29:28):
He said, there was a little like makismo involved in that.
Like yeah, or or body from Point Break? Wait was
that Patrick? Um? Yeah? Or was it Kiano can Reis?
That was Johnny Utah my friend. Oh that's right, so
Bodie was or was that Flee from the Peppers? But
(29:55):
it was actually Anthony Keti Ketas that was in Point
Break sure he may have been in it, but Ketis
was one of the Ruffians. I got his foot shot off.
I think no, no, I know he was the leader
of the Bad Guys Surfer Club, but I think Fleet
was in that club. I think, well, what was he
naked except for a sock on this? Probably pants? Pants
(30:17):
made of Teddy bears? Do we take our second break? Yeah,
we just didn't. So but I was leading up to something.
So we've been talking about what a great guy John
Muir was and that's how he was, um looked at
and respected for decades and decades, a century actually more.
Um he was looked at a great man. Maybe a
(30:39):
little macho, sure, but that's forgivable. If that much he's
moo is directed towards riding a tree in a storm
rather than you know, picking bar fights in Lisbon or
something like that. You know, thank you so um. When
we did our episode on Girl Scouts, I talked about how,
like Juliette Gordon Lowe was one of the rare historic
(31:00):
figures from a century or so ago that you were like,
and actually she holds up today. John Miror is not
that same way. There there's a real um. I guess
a mia Kolpa sort of a reckoning. Yeah, that's a
great way to put it. That's exactly what it was.
A reckoning by the Sierra Club not too many years ago,
(31:22):
where they basically said, hey, John here was great in
all these ways, he was also pretty racist. And yeah,
he was a product of his time and the way
of thinking, which we'll talk about, um, but he was
still pretty racist. And in fact, the whole basis of
the National Park system was built on this racist ideology,
and it's we're still basically looking at it the same
(31:45):
way today. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because the Sierra
Club even acknowledged that our first our first years as
a as a as a group was based on the
notion of white people trying to protect the land that
white people wanted to hike through and enjoys as campers
and recreationalists. And in his earlier years, I think kind
(32:08):
of through his thirties, up until his thirties, he had
sort of bad things to say about people of color,
whether it was indigenous people's uh in the United States
or black people, and um used disparaging language towards them,
which the whole thing with the indigenous people's is really
(32:29):
counterintuitive because they were so aligned with his philosophies of
how you and habit a land and share a land
and use it and don't abuse it, and you know, uh,
it really doesn't make much sense. And supposedly he I
think in his forties he started to come around, especially
(32:50):
when he went to Alaska, because they um indigenous people
served as his guides and he started to learn more
from them, and I think things turned around a bit
at that point. Yeah. But uh, the Sierra Club, you know,
spent a lot of time over the past few years
trying to sort of bring this delight and not whitewash
it and say, hey, this is what it was. No,
(33:11):
they and they did a very good job of it.
I think so. Yeah. So um. I was saying that
he was a product of his time, and he very
much was. There was an idea before his time, say
the eighteen thirties, when the West was like the frontier
and the the United States didn't really need it at
the time, where there was this view of the Native
(33:32):
American as this this um noble race that was being
encroached upon by humanity and that we we needed to
preserve this wild area. This was decades before John Muir
came around this idea that we needed to preserve the stuff,
but we also needed to preserve Native Americans and their
culture in this land that were preserved. So the initial
(33:53):
idea for national parks was that the Native Americans would
live on this land just as they always had, and
it would be there land, but it would also be
America's national parks that would be protected. And then the
railroad came, and all of a sudden, the US started
expanding further and further west, faster and faster, and now
the Native Americans weren't this group of people over there
(34:17):
that you could kind of idealize. They were now in
the way of this westward expansion. So racism toward them
went through the roof. And now there was this idea
that Native American culture was already dead, that the best
of the culture had died in the last decades and centuries,
and that it was all the white man's fault. But
what's done is done, and so let's just make this
(34:40):
decline into extinction as comfortable as possible and preserved Native
Americans not on our national park land, but we'll just
make reservations for them to go over there and just
die off and it's sad, but that's just the way
it is, and that that is the mentality that John
Muir became a conservationist with in the larger zeitgeis that
(35:02):
that you no humans should be on the land, but
in particular Native Americans shouldn't be there anyway because this
is our white people land. Yeah, and you know what,
I'm glad to see her club and people in general
are more comfortable, uh, calling this stuff what it is now.
Like even in that American Masters, that was one line
(35:23):
where they said, like, you know, early on he you know,
he he, I don't even remember what they said. I
don't even think they said disparaging, but like he said,
some things were not so nice for Native American Indians
is what they said while he was saying yeah, And
then it was just very quickly like they wouldn't dare
say that he had racist points of view. Uh, he
(35:44):
just didn't say stuff like that. But I think now
people are more comfortable with saying using that word and saying,
you know, this is how he was for a time
in his life, and we gotta we gotta reckon with
that because it's part of our history of of a
of a foundation for sure, and not just tim like
the national parks were they they evicted people and not
just Native Americans, depending on where you were out West,
(36:06):
Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Yosemite, Yellowstone, all of them required
forced evictions to basically create this pristine area that was
never pristine and free of human settlement or occupation or use.
That's they created that to create the national parks. And
they used like this idea. There was this um I've
(36:28):
read this really interesting article dude from two thousand seven,
so it would have been groundbreaking at the time. It's
called Ethnic Cleansing and America's Creation of National Parks by
Isaac Cantor and uh. Cantor points out that like the
people who were setting up and promoting these first national
parks like Yellowstone in Yosemite would say, there were never
Native Americans here anyway, they were all these were all
(36:50):
they were afraid of spirits in this you know, in
this canyon, so they never hung out here anyway. But
by the way, uh, can you send some military to
protect us from Native america can attacks while we're setting
up this national park? So it's which is yeah, yeah, basically,
but that's a really interesting It was a really good
read and it was very eye opening, especially for two
(37:11):
thousand seven. Uh. So, I guess in closing, we want
to quickly mention one of his last what he was
actually trying to do when he died and and failed
at doing, was preventing the damning of the hetch Hetchy
Valley uh in Yosemite. And basically what happened in nineteen
o six was there was a devastating earthquake and fire
(37:33):
that destroyed San Francisco, which I'd love to cover that
as its own episode at some point, basically completely destroyed
it h and everywhere. And one of the reasons that
the fire destroyed it was because their water uh uh
what do you call them water water people? Their water system,
I'll just say that um was destroyed by the earthquake.
(37:57):
So San Francisco said, we need a better, more reliable
a water supply, and we can get it in Yosemite
with the hetch Hetchy Valley if we damn that thing up.
And he was like, you can't do this, It's in
a national park. And he lost that effort, but he
made such a stink uh he was He was basically like,
there are a lot of other ways you can get water.
You're just doing this because it's easiest and cheapest, But
(38:18):
you can get water to San Francisco in other ways. Uh.
And like I said, he was not successful. He did
lose that battle, um and then passed away of pneumonia
at the age of seventy six and nineteen fourteen. Um.
But he they haven't There hasn't been a damn built
in on national park lands since then. Yeah. Because that battle,
even though he lost it, it really raised awareness and
(38:40):
it also kind of set a certain mindset in people
in the public's mind that now you don't really mess
with national parks. And I guess we had to lose
one to to to get to that point. That's right.
Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? So
that's job mirror for you. Everybody. Go check out his
writings and read about him and uh see what you think.
And also don't forget ethnic cleansing in the creation of
(39:02):
America's national parks. Good stuff. Uh. And since I said
good stuff, of course it's time for listening. Man. Uh.
This is on the Cleft Palettes from Malcolm that's new
in Calgary that came out today Alberta, Canada. Usa, North
America Earth. Hey guys, been an avid listener since my
(39:24):
friend introduced me when I very hungover car right home
from an Iron Maiden concert about five years ago. Nice,
it's a great way to get turned onto the show. Yeah.
I thought I'd write in to share my experience with
my son's cleft pallet after listening to the episode. My
son was born with a midwife in June nineteen and
had a ton of trouble breastfeeding, which in hindsight was
because he couldn't get any suction. A couple of days later,
(39:45):
the midwife noticed what she thought was a cleft in
the soft palette. We took our newborn to the hospital
and she was right. We became regulars at the Alberta
Children's Hospitals Cleft Clinic in Calgary, Alberta, and two years later,
my son has had a surgery to repair his clap
pallett and another to put tubes in his ear drums parentheses,
socialized health care is the best. The tubes are common
(40:08):
with clefts because the muscles that drain the ear canals
don't form properly, so the tubes allow fluid to leave
the ear canals. One thing you didn't mention was the
byfed uvela, which I have. It's related to clefts that
the muscles don't quite form properly and it makes her
uvula look more like a w than a tear drop.
I saw that in research. I forgot to mention I
(40:28):
did too. I can't believe I forgot that. We are
currently visiting a geneticist at the Hospitality of Cleft in
my bibid uvula. I'm sorry byfed uvela are genetically related,
but I think the answer is probably yes. Love listening
you guys look for it each episode. That is Malcolm. Nice,
nice name, Malcolm. Um, that's great, Thank you very much
(40:50):
for sharing. And also rock on mat. Yeah that's your name, Malcolm. Yeah,
it's my middle name. It's a great name. Me and
my friends they have the night we're hanging out, Me
and Emily and Justina Melissa. We're having a few drinks
and we decided to start only going by our middle names.
So it was Alex, Dawn, Renee and Wayne were hanging
(41:12):
out for the rest of the night. We were just
cracking jokes. Like someone did say something to be like
that is so Alex. I don't know if it's gonna stick.
But it was really weird to think of myself as
a Wayne. That could be a one night thing. I
think that one night, I think sticks. I will be
really surprised. I think we determined. I determined that you
(41:33):
don't have a relation to your middle name, like an
emotional connection. If when you hear that name out loud,
you don't have any reaction, Like if I hear someone
say a Chuck or someone else's Chuck, I go oh.
But if I hear someone say Wayne or whatever, I don't,
I don't even doesn't even register you, Like that name
is dead to me. Yeah, that sounds about right right.
(41:53):
All right, that's so Malcolm. Well, if you want to
get in touch with this, like Malcolm did not me
the other welcome one in the middle, you can send
us an email like Malcolm did to Stuff podcast iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(42:15):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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