John Muir: Outdoor Enthusiast

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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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 Yosemite for the first time. Everybody imagine it. Okay, So 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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, 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.

I think so. All right, So we're talking about John 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. 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, 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

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. 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 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

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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.