This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I t E dot com. Holy Cow, Big Time author
Peter Stark is here, old friend too. New York Times bestselling author Longtime contributed Outside like at a time. Peter and I both contributed at Outside around the same time. Peter is a like an adventure and exploration writer. What else? Howles did you put it?
Well?
Now?
I call myself an adventure historian because I write about other people doing the crazy stuff because I'm too well to do it myself. So I look for historical figures that have gone over the edge in the in the wilderness, went too far, yeah, yeah, rightther than myself or well.
At a time you put you, you would push it a little bit too far yourself, right, And now you let other people do the pushing.
Right and do you know what I'm talking about. You've done some pushing yourself.
Sure, long time contributed to Outside magazine. His work has appeared all over the place. He's written for the Smithsonian, New York Times magazine, written for the New Yorker, written how many books?
A lot of books, seven or eight now seven or eight books.
We're gonna get into some of these books which are highly applicable. He uh, Peter Stark wrote a book years ago about just all the Worst Ways to Die in the wild. He's written a book about Astor and the historians, so kind of like a mountain man beaver trade but America's first homegrown millionaire.
That is right, visionary, a visionary.
He wrote a book about and this this touch is on So so in a way, you've touched your touched on some of me and Randall's territory.
Yeah, oh totally, yeah, this is this is your world. Yeah.
Well, we're like, yeah, we're looking at more of the working class end of things. M h and and not the bosses. But you've touched on the boss. So we're working on the thing about beaver trappers. Okay, and he was sort of the boss of the beaver trappers.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you worked for him and he told you what you were going to get for that that that pelt yep and uh yeah, you were kind of a captive man under John Jacob Astor.
And then he became big time rich.
He became big time rich.
And if you go into Astor Place, the subway station in New York today, you will find.
A beaver on the wall in the tile work.
And there's a beaver in the tile work at Astorplace.
I got it.
Okay, I've been in that subway station a million times, never noticed it.
Also wrote a book about I mean, you have a new book. This is brushing up against our boy Clay, but also wrote a book about George Washington, but the early George Washington and the surprising amount of like wilderness experience George Washington had as an explorer and bushwhacker and.
Kind of a general screw up in a lot of ways, which was really shaped his career because it was like he made all the mistakes he could make in his twenties in the wilderness and you know, like inadvertently setting off the French and Indian War, almost freezing to death, I mean within an inch of dying at age twenty one and one thing after the other out in the
Ohio wilderness. And then he managed to learn some things from that experience, and you know, he became a great leader eventually, But in this at this point, he was just he was just kind of a jerk. Actually, he was very self centered. He was really thin skinned. He was incredibly ambitious, He was in love with his best friend's wife. He wanted to be British.
Shopping down a line about chopping.
And he wanted to be British. That's I mean, clearly. He tried for years to be a British Royal Army officer and they wouldn't let him in and he was really angry about that. He tried for years. There are lots of stories about that.
Now we were we were having trouble with George Washington because we just did an audio bit about we're doing these projects on different phases of commercial hunters. So the first one we did was on the white the deer hide hunters mostly in the first far West, so you know, stuff that floated into the Ohio mostly from the South. It's like Daniel.
Boone okay, okay.
Deer hunters pre pre revolution. Yes, so our our book cover. Our audio project covers up to seventeen seventy six. Okay, stuff that world kind of dissolved. But in it there's some really alarming quotes from George Washington, who had like a very like condescending, just shitty attitude toward the backwoodsman,
oh yeah, of the frontier and questioned their question their patriotism. Well, in that he's like a tip of the hat would push him to the French and he says they're not was he bitched that they weren't Brits or they weren't Americans, just.
That they weren't quite invested in the in the revolutionary project and that the yeah, that they didn't have any fierce loyalty one way or the other. There's sort of people in between empires.
Well, now here's George Washington out in the Ohio Valley wilderness and you're tying seventeen seventy six. In seventeen seventy, seventeen seventy he took a canoe trip down the Ohio River and essentially he reserved twenty thousand acres of the very best lands for himself literally. And the reason he could is because he had served as an officer Virginia colonial officer in the French and Indian War. And you know that's how he got paid. The officers and men
got paid in bounty lands. You know, you know that expression, you know, free land for your service. And as an officer, he got three thousand acres as an officer in the French and Indian War. And then what he started doing is he went around secretly to his fellow officers. But he wouldn't go himself. He'd send like a surrogate and say to the fellow officer, hey, you know, interested in selling that three thousand acres And if the fellow officer might say, yeah, I'll sell it, and so then George
would buy it. And in that way he accumulated like twenty thousand acres of land. And then he went over the mountains and canoed down the Ohio Villa Ohio River in two big canoes with Indian guides, and he had some frontier guys with him, and he he staked all the rich bottom lands and he keeps a journal of it all the way down. So that's seventeen seventy. Then in seventeen seventy four, you know, things start heating up with a revolution coming along. You know, tension, a lot
of tension between the American colonists and the British. And there's a certain point where the British in London, you know, the British in charge in London, say, you know those bounty lands that we were going to give to these American colonists for their service in the French and Indian War, Well, actually those bounty lands are only going to go to British officers, not Virginian colonial officers. He went ap shit. Oh, he went apit.
That's what There are these letters.
I've got some I think reproduced in this in this book. But he was so angry, and that was seventeen seventy four. Didn't take much to push him over the edge to the to the.
Yeah, that's probably the point at which you've got his revolutionary fervor. Man Uh also a book which we're going to get into. But Uh the great leader to COUMSA exactly. And you pit him against.
William Henry Harris and William Henry Harris Territorial governor.
And when I say that that you pulled it on our boy Clay is Uh. In our network, there's a there's a podcast called Bear Grease and that and Clay did I think a three parter on Tecumsa which was interesting but not didn't delve into the the sort of this this.
Uh it's kind of face off, but yeah, there's.
Sort of face off between him and the President of the United States.
And that the dynamics, it was really the dynamics between the white world and the white political world and the and the Native leadership. And yeah, really interesting. And Thomas Jefferson, my hero, does not come come off well on this equation. Really. Yeah, we get into that fathers man. You know, once you their earlier days, you know, they're not all change. Yeah, they they I mean they're great guys, There's no doubt about it. They're great leaders. You know a lot of them.
They all forged by fire, but they forged by fire. But they they were, they were, there were there's a lot of shelf interest going on there at the same time. No, you've never seen that in politics.
Uh oh you know what, So we're gonna get in all that real big time. You know. You know what I've been watching with my boy. It's like, well worth time. My littlest boy is Have you guys seen that thing it's like it's like Planet Earth, but it's dinosaurs.
Philm Maybe you know.
It's called prehistoric Planet.
I mean my kids have we I don't know if it's the same one. I feel like there's a lot of those.
So instead of them saying, instead of them, it's got that same guy, that guy that does all those things Edinburgh. Oh my good lord. I mean, God bless them, God bless them, but holy cow. They got a part of it where you actually see him talking and it's like he physically has to sort of like expel his words his Head's like the hunter wears me out, drives my kids crazy, like the whole time I'm sitting, I'm like, but what they do in this thing? So you know,
they got a lot of these dinings. Let me tell you about dinosaurs. They got a lot of these dinosaurs. You find like part of a bone, right, the best you can do, Like, I'm all for it. We had the the Jack Horner, not in this studio but our old studio. I'm warm to dinosaurs. But you got like a dinosaur you find like a hunk of his toe, which is great. What this thing does is it totally tries to make up their lives, so rather than it being a show about here's what it's little, it's total
looked like. And if you figure that his toe look like this, and you know it's foot might have looked like this. If it's foot look like that, one might assume that rite whatever they get into like, it's all cgi And there's one of them making a nest and then another one of them comes up to like rob the nest, but a snake gets it, and they oh, they got there. They got all their vocalizations and every in this thing, every dinosaur is constantly vocalizing. A dinosaur
will be sneaking up, he's sneaking up on something. He's vocalizing. They don't stop vocalizing. Every dinosaur all the time, in every scene is vocalized. And they even got it. We're like, there's dinosaurs that use tools. So he'll get a stick lit like a cigarette and run over and light some stuff on fire to flush game out. There's a dinosaur that goes on the beach and he makes like this artwork on the beach to attract overhead mate, and he lays out like an offering.
Of like they write books too, well, this is all bird behavior, right, so that's what they're Yeah, they take some you know, I mean, yeah, totally get I mean it's it's bullshit because we can't possibly know. But they're dixtrapolating from is bird behavior.
Current and they got a thing the science behind the show, and they got thing. But when you're watching with a nine year old, I can't help myself. I have to pause it and be like, now you understand. You sound like everyone they somehow have filmed. In his mind, they've filmed dinosaurs.
Man, you're like ruining the Santa Claus.
Yeah, he's like, it's great, and even do this stuff where it's like they even do parts of the night vision, so you'll be like dinosaurs in a hole in the ground and it's infra red. Then I'll pause and now you realize, Yeah, I think this.
Is very important for you to do, because I think it's very dangerous, right, you know, because different faces that are like well you know, and you're like okay, and you gotta you gotta be able to explain certain things to certain people.
Yeah, we watch a little every night.
Man.
It's it's fascinating in parts of it. I need. Yeah, the Attinborough stuff kills me a little bit. God bless him, he's been the bit is a long time. Uh, the the the guesswork. But here's the biggest thing that blows my mind, and I don't think this is guesswork. Dinosaurs in the snow.
And the hair they have on them.
I had it in my head. I don't know. The whole damn place is a jungle, but there were there was a lot of dinosaur activity in the snow.
In this in this show.
But but they kind of lay the case out like the poles, you know, the lamb Ass movement. I mean, the poles are still.
Cold, they still stay they were.
And they had like yeah, they had sea. They was like long dark you know. Course at that time they had long periods of light and dark, just like we do now. Right, So in areas that you had northern areas that would that were inhabited by dinosaurs that had total darkness in the winter, total daylight in summer, had snowfall, and so there's a lot of this fake footage of dinosaurs duke in it out in the snow, which is just not something you think about it.
Yeah, here's the Smithsonian mag article, as you've written for the Smithsonian from twenty twenty how dinosaurs thrived in the snow. Discoveries made in the past decades helped snow help help, sorry, help show how many species cope with cold temperatures near both poles.
Oh, that's okay, that's total news to me.
But at Borough Man he lays in more than one. Liner's the hunter becomes.
The daunt.
You do got to tell the boys about uh, firehawks though, because right, and I'm sure that's what yeah, because that was that's what they're going off.
That's what they're going off of. They're taking things that they know birds do and and just sort of randomly assigning them. Now there's one more to gripe. I got with the show.
You got to point out the fact too. It's like you can't make something like this and not have fighting, right, It's like the dinosaur spent a lot of time fighting.
And yeah, see now I find the fire hawk less.
Impressive if that has been going on, Yeah.
Sixty five million years and they have it advanced beyond the right, Well they fly, yeah, but the whole the trickery, the tools, the culture.
Oh, come on, Randall, I don't know.
Yeah, Randall changes off. He's the he's the use a diaper's advanced just in his own life from diaper to doctor. I don't know if you know he's PhD. You're sitting next to that right and in history, I told you Randalls has been looking at you with a condescending eye.
Should be.
Well, one more thing about it. They have there's a lot of like so you know the flying reptiles back then, the pterodactyles and all that. There's one of those things as tall as a giraffe.
Okay, does it have a long neck like a giraffe?
And they got them all walking around on their elbows so they land and then they bring their wings in. Their wing tips are sticking up in the air and they walk on all fours.
That sounds like the dragons.
And they got these huge Yeah, they got these huge necks and heads. And I don't care, like I'll say this right in the face of paleontologists. I don't know what they look like. They didn't look like that, they didn't like you got it. You got it wrong because physics still existed, you know what I mean, like the physical properties like it, like unless you're gonna come and show me that sort of like ship that like uh, what's his name? Einstein was into Yeah, well somehow not
applicable because I'm like, that didn't look like that. You got that one.
We need to watch this. I think we need to watch this. Throw it up on the screen.
And you know, there's some podcasts that do like sort of movie watch along commentary where you press play on the movie and press play on the podcast, and then you have people like, you know, it's like a commentary on a.
DVD or whatever. Idea.
It's just Steve just pointing out all of the inaccuracies with my kids, with your kids.
Yeah, it's like she's riffing on the whole thing.
My kids going dead Mystery Science Theater exactly. That would be so fun.
I mean it would be obnoxious as hell, but I'd love it.
I'll just do that a lot. News from sort of commentary from Catalina Island going back to going back to episode four eighty eight, we discussed the proposal by the Catalina Conservancy to eradicate non native black tail deer mule deer from Catalina Island. They come up with a plant.
So Catalina Island is offshot. Well, it's an island off the coast California, and they have a they got they got a herd of buffalo that were brought out there for a Western Zane I think it was a Zaye Gray when they shot a Zaye Gray a new movie. And they got deer they brought out there. The buffalo are okay to hang out. The deer they want gone, and so they're hiring their break there. There's a proposal to use to bring in contractors to wipe the deer
out from helicopters. We're discussing it on the show and we're saying, you know, as I often do, why would you pay someone to go get something that people would pay to go get. And we discussed this is why not use why not increase or use the hunting permit, the hunting permit process, it's already in place, and just expand the hunting permit process. They've they've been given out
two hundred tags a year for deer. In twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, a guy who's been retired from California Department of Fish and Wildlife for three years wrote in with some commentary about this. I'm kind of going through his commentary. He says in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, we increase that amount to five hundred tags. In an attempt to promote hunting.
To reduce the numbers on the island, California's Fishing Game Department went and encouraged the cataline To Conservancy to work with hunting conservation non governmental organizations to recruit hunters to go out on the island. It's a long letter, but basically he says that the conservancy is paying lip service. There's a term for this that I can't I want to use on Eric's try to limit the curse words
to grin. It's my favorite thing. You'd say if you tell someone something and they kind of grin and go, but they have no intention of doing it. They're grin fing you, right, They're like You're like, They're like, oh, we'll look into it. That's what people have been doing to me all my life.
But I didn't know there was a term for it.
You know, you're like, hey, why don't you try? So basically that the Catalina him saying when we discussed this many episodes ago, we talked about there are a lot of obstacles to conducting effective deer hunts on the island, financial and otherwise. He goes on to say, we have tried extensively. He had tried extensively to work with the conservancy to overcome those hurdles, and they did not take them seriously.
Well, they were the ones that made the hurdles, really is what it amounts to.
And then now with the helicopter plan, they've got a plan, like many things, where no one is happy. The helicopter plan has the animal rights organizations up in arms, it has the hunters up in arms, and you've gotten a thing where and trying to please everybody, you've pissed off everybody. And he says that, and he is not. This individual is not on board with the idea that the hunting plan just didn't work. That do a fair job.
Yeah, that's great.
It was never really given a chance.
He's got a great point in here too, about like unsubstantiated claims about the difficulty of hunting in the wild land parts of the island. It's an island, it's completely accessible by water at all points. In fact, there's many different services out there, so you can circumnavigate the entire island and kayaks. Really yeah, oh super cool, super cool. And then you do that during lobster season. There's lobsters
all over that island, all sorts of good stuff to eat. Man, And so I always think about that when I because I had multiple people tell me it, Oh, yeah, you know, there's no water, there's no Well, how the hell are these other people? It's a big island to go paddle around.
How big is it?
I've been out there. I can't remember. Yeah, well, I can't remember how.
Many acres it is, like how many miles?
Want is that the kind of island I feel like you could drive around? I don't want to say. It feels like a very limited roads. You can kind of take it all in.
With a view, depending depending on how closely you follow the shoreline. It's fifty two to sixty six miles to circumnavigate Long Island eight miles across, So.
That well, that's substantially I there's got to be water on that island.
There is, it's just it's it's very limited. And then you know, like ice right is very limited and the roads you know, so like boats. But I yeah, I've I've been out there more than enough times to dream up exactly how I would hunt that thing very successfully. Like it doesn't seem to be real, not a problem that doesn't seem to really stomp a fella.
Speaking to be able to take in how I said, you can take it in into view from a distance. So we we saw episodes ago. Had the director Werner Herzog on the podcast. Got one thing I didn't ask Herzog about that I wish I would have is he has a movie called The Enigma of Casper Mansker, and it's about a boy who was just raising a little rock hut. They never let them, they kept them captive his whole life in a rock hut, no interaction with
the ND. Later he was freed and like educated a little bit, but it had developed this very peculiar worldview from having been kept having been like deprived and kept locked up in a rock hut his whole life. Someone mentioned him one time that you were in such a small space, but now you have the whole world, and he expressed that he viewed that space as being huge because everywhere he looked, no matter what direction he looked, there it was. But when you're outside and you look,
a thing is only in one place. Do you follow me?
Yeah, Now that's a really interesting perspective. Well, I mean it makes it makes logical sense. You can see how a human brain could configure it that way if if there was no other reference everywhere.
Now, when when H. Stephenson was traveling with the Eskimal of the High Arctic and they would look through his telescope, they would refer to what they were seeing in the telescope and in a future tense, because that's when you would get there. That makes sense, right, what you would get to tomorrow. They would discuss as though it's existing in a future state, as when you.
Derive that's so it's like a visual future tension.
Yeah, like, well, we're not there now, but there will be. But there will be a mountain, there will be a creep, there'll be a time when we get there. And he would get frustrated because when they would they would draw maps of islands for him, and they would the features that they utilized heavy would be huge. Le'saly's a huge island with a small bay where they hunt waterfall waterfowl. They would draw it for him, but it'd be like
a little island mostly consumed by a bay. In their head like, well, who cares, Like go to the bay. Makes a lot of sense.
Way back when when I was doing lots of spot
and stock mule deer hunting. Spend a lot of time just face down as flat as you can get right, like, especially in that like final one hundred yards, and sometimes it would be hours of just trying to creep that last little bit and when you would stand up, eventually there would be like a little instance of like nausea or vertigo and your brain like recalibrating to the scale of things as a standing human with a much further line of sight, whereas like you know that multi floor
arose stuff out on the prairie, it's like eight inches tall. You'd be like it'd be like a giant boulder you're hiding behind, kind of like similar like to like diving down on reefs where you're like, oh, there's a little tiny rock down there, and then you get down there, it's like the size of VW type of thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, but that was always pretty wild to me.
I can I can totally imagine that. You're like in an ant perspective.
Yeah, and you're hyper focused, and.
You're hyper focused, and then you know, and there's all sorts of things. You know, we have two eyes that do the triangulating with your vision and they have been triangulating six inches away and now they're triangulating six miles away, and they say there's something's wrong here. Yeah.
Yeah, but that was always wild to me.
One of the someone that got away, he died before we ever got him on. I was going to have
Barry Lopez come on the show. In an Arctic Dreams, he's talking about a botanist who what was working on a tussock, So cataloging all the plant species on a tussock and trimming it, which is like this little head size clump of vegetation, and spending you know what, it was better part of a day working on this tussic, like snipping, weighing, snipping, weighing, and then having this feeling of then standing up and as far as the eye could see in any direction, it was it's sort of
like you know, I mean the enormity, right, the enormity of the place.
Yeah, that's a doctor Seus's trick right where it's like the horton. Here's a who type of thing. Everything's on the head of the pit.
Here's a letter that I like this we were talking about. I like this kind of LETTERCS it's a letter that someone wrote in mad about something, but it winds up they're wrong. The subject is a serious issue with Steve not giving attention to something he's always bitched about.
Karin, you should have titled this Steve's wet Dream.
He calls himself. So it's logan the Mountaineer Trapper. And he says, y'all are always bitching about national parks because you can't hunt on them. And he goes on to say, well, how come you haven't acknowledged the latest entry into the National park's system, which is the New River Gorge of West Virginia. And he goes on to say it's the only national park where you are allowed to fish, hunt and trap within park boundaries, seventy thousand acres of hunting, fishing,
trapping ground now entrusted with National Park protections. And then some quote, I'm amazed that none of you have acknowledged the quote thing that you dislike the most in regards to the other designations. Brody went on to say, yeah.
I mean, look, it's great that you can do that stuff in New River Gorge, fantastic, right, but fishing you can fish in national parks all over the damn place. You can fish in the Yellowstone and it ain't the first national park you can hunt it.
But I pointed out that Broady. There's a difference because if you get like Rangu Saint Elias National Park and Preserve. Yeah, so in certain gates of the Arctic, there's a thing called hard park and soft park.
Preserves and parks.
Yeah, a lot of it gets kick out of that hard park and soft park.
A lot of what we're talking about is in Alaska.
Yeah, where they'll be like an area of the park you can hunt, the area of the park you can't. And I've even heard of people. Remember one time, I can't remember, I met someone who knew someone. They were in the middle of nowhere, but they had killed a sheep on the wrong side of a ridge and they were like, they killed a sheep in the hard park, not the soft park. And there's a little bit of brew how about that.
But yeah, there's there's other stuff too.
There's national seashores, which would be like soft park, I suppose, where you can hunt. But in Grand Teton National Park you can hunt cow elk and certain parts of the park at certain times of the year.
So sorry, New River gorge.
Sounds like Brody's turning into a National park apologist.
No I'm not, but you know you got to point out.
I mean, i'd consider myself a park man. You're I'm a park man. I like to go look at large creatures that walk right up to you.
It's almost breaking up my marriage. My wife wants to go to glaciers.
Damn bad, oh Randall's marriage. They're very much at my wife's glacier, happy to the line at which they would become pro capital punishment, if not pro vigilanti. And it's based off of their National parks experience.
Oh, just enforcing rules.
Yes, but you guys were talking about killing people who broke the rules in national parks.
Randall thinks you have to. Rand thinks you should death penalty people who break should.
This is probably an offhand comment fueled by some sort of substance that that leaves one prone to exaggerating their feelings.
Well, that was the case, and my I have a dear friend that wouldn't be with us anymore because when he he he grew up here, and when he was a boy, you would ride your horse into the park with a hack saw because burrels like elk burrels was real popular for belt buckles, and they knew you weren't supposed to take the antlers off the park, but who really cared about the end. So that was a common thing in high school. Is the ride around hacksa on and off just the end, because like, come on? Was
it was their attitude? Come on?
There's still.
I will say that there are Uh the flagrant disregard for the norms of society that you see at national parks frustrates me and raises my blood pressure. When there's like a big sign that says don't walk out onto the alpine and then someone just walks out onto the alpine.
Yeah, what would we do without Pierce bros Yeah, why did Pierce Brosn get in trouble in the park.
Well, he walked out towards the the hot Mammoth, the geothermal features.
Was he in pursuit of a criminal mastermind? Well he took no.
He there was a photo taken of him and he posted it and someone said, what you're doing in that photos against the rules, and.
Well he could have been his last walk too. I mean places in Yellowstone where you as you know, yeah, you walk out there and suddenly the crust breaks in your You're in like a lobster boil.
Yeah.
Yeah, well he well, I don't want to.
Wish ill news they got all the rules, all the idiots would be dead anyway, randall right.
Yeah, well we Yeah, I don't know. I I national parks I think are a source of great uh frustration for me. But I also see what they have to offer in terms of wildlife and landscapes.
And I just only going anywhere where I don't feel like I'm scouting. I can just buy anything by feeling like maybe I'll see something that'll guide my future activities. When I'm in the parking, there's nothing I can see here that's going to influence anything.
Have you ever gone in the in the deep in the Yellowstone back country? Right on the edge of it, but like like in the center of the park. I mean that's what I hear about. That's where you go on.
Yeah, that's even worse.
That's where I run my.
Track going into those places.
Yellowstone, Beaver Pelts worth a lot of money, Guinelt, Yeah, I want Peter slogan is rare in hands teeth.
I wanted thoroughfare once and I was just like man can't can't hunt any of this really sucks, you know.
But but were you wait, did you get way back in there?
And what a long time ago it's like in the mid nineties.
To answer your question, I have not.
Yeah, I have not, But I mean just not not in terms of hunting, but just in terms of you know, oh, scout. When you're saying scout, you mean scout for some living thing, like.
I'm doing something that might impact something, Okay, right right, I go like, you know whatever, I don't know. A friend of mine just went on a pack rift trap, one of our buddies. He was packgrafting, and he mentioned casually mentioned seeing a couple of bears. Now I took note, and I was like, nowhere again. But if he was in the park, it would have been in one ear. And I know I understand that, I understand that. Here here's the thing I probably I shouldn't even be talking
about because we haven't looked into it at all. But just just I'll point this out. Maybe cal maybe you've read up on this, someone wrote him. I have not vetted this. Maybe we shouldn't even talk about it.
No, it's it's you vetted it. Yeah, I mean, there's a several other examples too, So.
This is real.
This is a real mental tongue twister here. I live in Minnesota. This is someone right now. I live in Minnesota. And earlier this year, the Upper Sioux Agency State Park, consisting of about two square miles, was transferred to the Upper Sioux community. This land has a troubled history where the federal government failed to provide promised food annuities and
as a result, Dakota people starved. He goes on. This legislative session in the state Senate, a bill was introduced which would transfer state lands in White Earth State Forest, consisting of approximately one hundred and fifty five thousand acres or just under two hundred and fifty square miles, to
the White Earth Tribe of northwestern Minnesota. The land currently is a state forest in the public true and is used for outdoor recreation by the public for small and large game hunting, horseback riding, fishing, etc. Leaders of the White Earth Tribe have stated that they would keep lands open to the public. However, the sort of guarantee that being a state forrest has to the public would be lost, and ultimately access for the public to the land would
be up to the whims of tribal leaders. While I think the land transfer is a noble attempt towards righting wrongs of the past, I do not agree with removing lands from public use to further this goal. Currently, the land is open to use for everyone, but transferring it threatens that common use. For this session, the bill has been tabled, but Senator Konish I don't know how he pronounces his name, who carried the bill, has stated she
expects it to reappear in future sessions. I would appreciate any considering on the topic and some of the Meat Eater team's thoughts on this topic. I'll hate you with mine. I'm going to keep it brief. I don't like to see any under any circumstances anywhere public lands falling out of the public trust.
Ever.
Ever, I don't care what it's for.
Yeah, but this could potentially, I mean, I agree like staunch public lands advocate and want to keep them open to everybody. But just by like saying that, it kind of leans into this assumption that that access is going to change and it's going to come out of public access or not provide the same level of public access all this is saying, is that that management would change and that would be like the only known right now.
But yes it does. With any management change, people like to rearrange stuff and let folks know who's in charge. So we don't know what we don't know.
That's why I had to bring it up, I know.
But yeah, the there I just saw over the Black Hills, a nonprofit Cheyenne Youth group, Uh, just purchased forty acres in the Black Hills as.
Off the open market.
Off the open market as an example of another like would be like another example of like a land back situation where this is going to be like tribal land in theory, held in perpetuity, but purchased purchased off the open market. Yeah, and then like Vermont and Maine have several examples of that too, So yeah, yeah.
Are you okay with that if it's on the open market?
Yeah, I mean it's yeah. I mean there's plenty of people who aren't. And it's a really fun conversation to have because it's like, well, what is illegal about what is wrong about this?
And then also what goes against you know, that's an issue with the very controversial American prairie reserve in the in this in the north central part of this state, which is buying ranches on the open market. Right ranch comes up for sale, you join the bidding process, and you buy it. And what they would like to do is just take the infrastructure out, take the fencing out, with the long term goal of turning it into you know, turning it into sort of like a pre contact prairie ecosystem.
And people that would be very much private property rights right have a very like don't tread on me attitude in general politically, will find it very offensive because it is it sort of transcends the property rights issue and gets into a removal of history.
Or a cultural It's a cultural threat, I think, a threat to that ranching culture is my understanding. I mean, I'm not an expert in this.
Yeah, it's very much.
Like these coastal elites coming in here and buying up you know.
But it's changed, but it's conflicted by like, well but yeah, I I I understand that. But at the same time I understand that. I feel like if you'd gone to ask someone like, do you feel that you should be able to do on your land what you want to
do on your land. They would be like hell, yeah, yeah, okay, then you need to extend you stort of need to extend that outward unless you're saying that certain things trump, unless you're admitting that certain cultural things trump one's right to do what one wants with one's land, right.
Well, by that argument, I mean, this is where I get impatient with with a certain mindset that we see a lot in Montana when people say, well, I'm a fourth generation Montana or a fourth generation ranch or a fourth generation this or fifth generation that. And then well and then you know, then you got the people who are three hundredth generation and five hundredth generation, and so you've got these guys who are fourth generation farmers or
ranchers saying, well, this is our cultural history. And yet it ignores this incredibly ten to fifteen thousand years of other history. And so you know what's the difference there. And with the point about the is it the white National Forest in Minnesota, white earth whiter? That's another It strikes me that's another irony in that state forest, but state forest, state forest. And I've totally agreed that I'm never for closing public access to anything. I mean that
I'm staunched as can be. But it's funny with a it's kind of a big irony that now it's the the we'll just call the white guys who are worried that the tribes are going to break the treaty.
Yeah, and it's.
And won't let them, won't let them on the land, like we're losing all our lands.
We're pointing out to right that if you look in Minnesota on state forest land, like the there's plenty of threats to public access on state forest on on state forest and and it's in open pit, copper sulfide minds uh, a giant helium deposit uh, you know, all sorts of things that state land is typically there to generate some sort of income right there, and.
That's part of its mission in a way that and so and that's a certain kind of public asset access which actually cuts out part of the public because it's being made into a for profit resource, right yeah.
Yeah, And then you know, so like United Property Owners in Montana would be one of the groups that has like tried to back legislation that would restrict a pr from purchasing land or following through with with their business model. The legislation is real wonky because it is willing buyer willing seller situations. Uh So I was thinking the other day, I'm like, would like Sherman Anti Trust Act be like
the way to it? You have a corporate entity that's uh gobbling up the resource, right, would that be the the way?
This is just just you're getting a you're gaining a regional land monopoly.
Yeah, oh yeah, I've got another one along those lines. That's that's really been kind of eating away at me.
And this is we're supposed to switch to use here on your on your time.
Now, Okay, well this is how you'd like to use it, Well, I'll make it about me.
You want to go to the bathroom.
No, so this will feed into what I'm doing. I come, you know, grew up in Wisconsin. Came from a huge canoeing family, and so my grandparents were into my grandfather's way into rivers, my father on and on. My father was also really into frontier history and Indians, and so I grew up steeped in that frontier history. And one summer, my brother and I we grew up in a lake. My mom still lives there in ninety two in Wisconsin and yeah, doing well, I'm going to go back there
next week. And we took a canoe from my parents' front lawn and we paddled from there to New Orleans really yeah, without without getting out of the water.
I feel like I maybe forgot knew about this but then forgot it because it's somewhat Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. And and so I'll load right up in the yard.
My buddy and I talked about that a lot, but we never pulled it off.
Yeah.
Well, well, believe me, you know, it's not like a summer vacation because it's like punching in at the factory and doing eight hours or ten of hard, hard paddling and then coming to a sandbar.
So it was a basic like walk me through the basic like here to here, to hear, to hear.
Okay, so this is this is where I'm getting into the public access thing.
Uh.
So this is a do you know about sub continental divides? Yeah, and so this is the sub continental divide between the Great Lakes system and the Mississippi Gulf of Mexico system.
Which was which was punctured by the Chicago Sanitation Canal.
You are so right, Well, we're going to talk about that. I went to Chicago Sanitation which was violated by the Chicago Sanitation Canal, which has the electric fish barrier. Well is that right?
Okay?
Well, that that you know, because I've been writing so much in in in these books, this most recent one Gallop Towards the Sun to Compson, William Henry Harrison, and a lot of it takes place in that whole Midwest region, in the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes, and and so I've always been really cognizant of rivers, I mean my whole life, and how they flow, and that one of the most important geographical features in North America is that subcont or mid continental divide between that where the
waters flow out the Great Lakes to the you know, Gulf, to the Saint Lawrence and into the Atlantic, and where they flow from down the Mississippi or down the Ohio into the Gulf of Mexico. So if you're an Indian or family Indian but birch bark canoe, I mean, you could travel all over the place without really getting out
of your canoe, which which they did. And people today don't really understand what an interconnected system of waterways there is, there was, and there is in this continent if you have the right craft and you know and you know where to go.
So and the benefits, right, like the safety, the safety of being out on the open water with like a lot of distance between you and thick brush, potential death from animals.
Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah, it is safe safety. And so so one of the things that makes me crazy about public access is stream access law. And I'm sure you guys have discussed this in Montana, and I'm I think now.
In New Mexico is kind of the battleground.
Is what's going on, and and you know, I'm sure you've talked about at least as far as I know, we still have it. I mean, Montana is a really good stream access phenomenal that the high water mark is. I mean you can venture up to the high water mark, which can be a lot of a lot of ground. And but then I was thinking, like, there's this really important hordage in Wisconsin that was you know, it was like the main interstate interchange of this whole part of
North America. And it's between the Wisconsin River and the Fox River, so it's Green Bay.
Also it's a portage to get from the Mississippi system to the Saint Lawrence system. Yes, this ship that goes into the Atlantic to the stuff that goes into the global Mexico.
And and you know where Green Bay, Wisconsin and which was a very I mean it was a major Indian village forever and then it was then it was a really early purpost.
Who is the dude that got into Green Bay and uh put on a silk what they call a mandarin robe. Oh, yes, I know, he's like China. It was French guy, one of those guys cross Lake Michigan. Get my silk robe.
But then so, so there's this and my father would tell me about this. Okay, it's it's called Portage, Wisconsin. And oh and it connects those two.
Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I've seen that and said that a million times in their.
Thoughts, and you never thought, yeah, because you grew up not so far away, and you know there's a big interstate that goes right by it. And so my brother and I was out there ski racing with my brother this winter at a ski area right near the Portage, and after we finished skiing, I said, hey, you know, I've always wondered really what this looks like. And so we started driving around and this portage it's really it's like a marsh and it's not very long to get
from one system to the other. So this summer we're going to go and make that portage. Oh and what I'm wondering is like, okay, now in stream access law, Okay, here we are on one of the central routes across the continent in pre contact time. I mean, like you know, fifteen lane highway this portage would be. And now can you actually go across it? And it's a public land or is it private land? And it's private land? Are you allowed to go across? So what's your take on that?
No?
What you can't?
Yes, you can't. No, Listen, I feel that, you know, I feel like you should.
Yeah, but you.
Know, follow the rules seems sticky, but should.
If i'll you first, what is your intent?
Right?
That's what we talk about.
Exercise his historic portage.
Right, I'm gonna I'm gonna work to establish those.
You're not intending to loiter on private land. You're not in the harvest from private land.
It's straight straight, just to pass through.
And when some guy comes out in his yard and yells at you, and you say, I'm trying to get from the Atlantic Waterway to the goal just.
And that guy goes back.
You know a lot of guys have done this.
Yeah, but you know parts of it are when I was really looking at it, it's like parts of it are still marsh. You know, it's like you might be waiting, you know, you might not even be in, Like what.
Is the what is the from when you leave a substantial piece of water? How many miles you got to go to get in to another substantial piece?
It might be a few hundred yards.
Well that's it.
Yeah.
Oh have you started mapping it out on on X.
I'm about to though doing this in in July. Oh, it's great, I'll send you a video.
You're right about it, obviously, yeah, yeah.
And you know I have I have another guy who might be interested in doing it with me. My brother wants to do it.
You know, I don't want you don't want to whole herd of you're going through there. I'd keep it tight. We want to establish a president.
Yeah, do it? Do it?
Like the voyagers have about sixty of you.
Everybody, everybody has one hundred and eighty pounds of beaver pelts on your back. They can't stop you. Then it's state commerce, right exactly.
Exercise the commerce called that's a fascinating idea, man, Like what happened? I think you should call your article what happened to the old portage? Anyway?
Yeah?
Yeah, and if you could find the last record of someone using it in that great idea.
Man, it was a canal. It eventually was made into a little canal, and then and then that was a bandit. But I think from what I can see, the canal is still there. I mean you might even just be able to go take the canal. It's sort of choked up with dead fall.
There is new legislation in you'll way you guys along when we do it for stream access revamp and stream access I think in Indiana as well. So I mean it's the stuff is still very much being tinkered with.
That you're saying it's up now and getting kicked around.
Yep, yeah for sure. Yeah, because like there's plenty of his historic use.
I mean Indiana, I mean this is where this Tacompsa book takes place. That place is like a rife with major passageways that people know nothing about. Today, and it was like this huge travel system through their Fort Wayne. The reason Fort Wayne is where it is is because it sits on it. You can't it's not like a mountain. It's this low knob sort of like a ridge line.
This is like your country, a ridge line, very subtle, stretching south of Saint Erie, I mean saying a lake Erie and through that kind of northern northern Indian, northern Ohio, Indiana and to some degree Illinois. And the rivers that go north of that flow off that knob go into the Great Lakes, and those that go south of it go into the Ohio river system and then the Mississippi and the Gulf. And I means you know, you could probably jump from one stream to another in a lot
of these places. And so those were when when Takompsa, you know and as forebearers the Shawnee and the Miami me we're establishing villages. That that ridge was one of the primary places where they established the villages. And when the US under George Washington first, you know, he was like in office about a year said that the Shawnee and the Cheroke here are are you know, hurting our settlers who are supposedly on legally taken land, which they
were not. And George Washington says, Okay, we got to go get those the Shawnee and the and the and the and the and the Miami, who are who are killing settlers, and so he sent an expedition right to that spot. K Kyonga was called to destroy those villages. It was the epicenter.
Hmm.
But but it's it's that it's so Indiana. It's really interesting that there's there's so many waterways in Indiana that were used very extensively by by native people.
And I'm like a for a person, love love floating, love spending my time on rivers, and yeah, you never hear Indiana as like this travel. No, you know, it's not a canoe destination, of which there's many canoe destinations. But I am like, do a lot of traveling and just reacting with people about natural resources and stuff. And more often than not, when I point out a river and I'm like, holy shit, that looks cool. You ever go float that, you ever go fish that, people are.
Nope, Yeah, yeah it is. I have that same experience.
Hey, we're gonna let me, let me because we're do two things we're gonna we're gonna speed date. We're gonna speed date with Peter's books and his body work. But Cal, you want to, Cal had an update for us, then we're gonna then we're gonna go into our speed dating mode with Peter's books. Uh.
Is this the plug for the Week in Review? Is that what you're talking about?
Uh?
Yeah, Phil, you chime in here. I think they're going pretty well. But we add a new drop every week to the Week in Review, and typically it's getting to know an issue or a conservation group a little bit better, a little more in depth, versus taking the whole you know, twenty two and a half minutes that we do every Sunday for the news. How do you think that's going, Phil?
I think it's going great.
Yeah.
So, if you guys haven't been paying attention to Cal's weekn Review, he's been doing two drops a week for the last I don't know, a month now or so, and it's it's going to keep going and just some really more in depth conversations with with these with these groups. And I think it's been it's been going really well. I don't know if what the feedback has been, but i'd assume it's been positive.
Yeah, all positive.
No, if you dig the if you dig the kind of stuff that we talk about a lot of times up top of the show about certain you know, little issues, conservation issues that flare up around the country. This is where you go to get to get the greater level of information, a deeper dive on such issues and organizations that kind of drive those issues.
Yeah.
So the one most recent to when this show airs would uh spoke with a regional Pheasants Forever coordinator, Hunter Van Donsel, who's a wonderful human, very smart dude, smart enough to live on the high line in Montana even Uh so he's got freedoms that we don't enjoy here in the.
Gallatin Valley ruin extra wind, yeah, and.
Extra wind all the wind you can handle, but h and we talked about how Pheasants Forever operates, what they have going on.
And then.
Last year we spoke a lot about the grasslands, uh, which would be like, ah, like a KNACKA for grasslands which national what's whatever my acronym there, Randall.
You're talking about the North American Grasslands.
Act, Yes, which would be a NAGA. Yeah, yeah, but anyway would be a new updated version of a bill which would be in something that would affect us nationally that would operate on the same system as our National Wetlands Conservation Act, which would be providing lots of private and public funding and additional resources for the conservation of grasslands, which grasslands is a big catch all world word of sage brush steps and mixed grass prairie and short grass
prairie and lots of stuff that big gnarly meal deer bucks and antelope bucks, and bees and migratory birds and a lot of fun things that we like to chase and check out. Grasslands are going away at an alarming rate. So that's why we're going to start working and talking a lot about the National Grasslands Act.
Well its and it's all these organizations that we're throwing money at during trivia, but you could actually get to meet the humans behind these organizations, where their priorities lie, where the challenges li, where they're spending this money, and and hell they're helping you out. So it's been going great. I think it's really interesting.
Yeah, this is like the one of the the pet peeves that I have of the ask cal email is when people write in they say, hey, tell me what to think about this. And so this is another pound my head against the wall example of trying to give you the information that you can make a decision on your own.
I would never give up that.
I was gonna say a lot of people that a lot of people want that power.
They're envious of you, Peter.
Uh.
Okay, what was was speed dating or speed reading? Speed dating your books? Okay, so you're what's that French word your.
I think that's an omelet?
So was your first book sudden what hell was it?
Last breath?
Last breath? I was gonna say, sudden breath, sudden death, last Well, kind of yeah, that was your first book. Yeah, tell people about your first book. This is fascinating.
It is, Yeah. I mean it's kind of like got me into this world. While I was in this world, both Steve and I were we're doing articles for Outside. I'd started somewhat earlier and Outside, would you know, love it if you'd put your life at risk and then survive and write a good article about it? But that was sort of their their and at least in part, and so at one point I came up with this
crazy idea kind of like this portage idea. And I said, well, I wonder what happens if you get in a car and in Missoula and and at our little apartment above Goldsmith's Ice Cream When I was living with Amy, we were young marriage and drive north on a Highway ninety three, and you just keep driving north on a highway and you don't stop, and you cross the border and you still go, and then you still go, and then you still go, and like how far north could you go?
And then I started thinking, I wonder if you just kept pushing, if there'd be some way you could ever get to Greenland just by going north out of Missoula on Highway ninety three. So my father in.
Law, who you really end up where one takes off from.
So and so, and my father in law, who was a foreign correspondent Great Adventure, had a VW van. He said, okay, yeah, let's take my VW van. He was going to drive us up as far as we could get. And then Amy and I thought, okay, then we'll start trying to look for you know, planes or whatever we can find.
And so we spent like six days driving from Missoula up through due North and we got up to the Northwest Territories and essentially Highway ninety three ends in a Yellowknife and you guys have probably, oh yeah, big lake, very big leg. And then my father said, okay, I'll
take I'll take the van. And then we started hopping like small kind of commercial flights that that would take you know, the natives around two different far northern villages, and we started hopping those and we got all the way over to Baffin Island, which is way on the eastern shore and you know, it's a big punk of ice.
And then we managed to in Baffin Island, we ran into this German couple and the guy was like a big international lawyer and had a lot of money, and his wife was a watercolor painter and so she wanted to paint the Arctic, and so they'd hired this little plane, this little bush Arctic plane to go up to Ellesmere Island. And you know, Elsmere Island like if you're going to the North Pole, that's your jumping off point. You know,
there's nowhere, no land has farther. And so we hitch I took him a couple you know days to do all this, and we got up to Elsmere Island. And then we we we hired the plane from the German couple said you know, can we borrow it for like half a day and and uh and they said fine, fine, we'll just stay here. And it's called Greecefjord. It's like ten houses on Elsmere Island on the southern shore with
the like a you know, tunderous strip. And so then we had this pilot, Jock, who is like young guy retired from the Montreal Stock Exchange to be a you know, Arctic bush pilot. And so so Jacques says, okay, and I say, well, we want to go over there to Greenland. And you know, by that time, all these islands are getting squished together because you're getting so far up in the north, you know, I.
Mean by like plate tectonics, they're just squished together by by the North Pole, you know, everything they all converge us up there, you know.
And and so the distance between this little landing strip in Greece Fjord, Canada, and the farthest north villages in the world they're Inuit villages Greenlandic Inuit villages around a place called Kannak. It's only two hundred miles apart. Over open water and so and so, you know, Jacques was saying, yeah, well I'll do that, or you know, Jack's blos said yeah, you can do that, and Jacques was like, okay, I'll
do it. And one of the problems was Jacques was a medical rescue plane, so it was used to landing on prepared airstrips. You know, it had so it had pretty small, small tires, you know, landing wheels, and it was a fairly sleek plane. It wasn't one of those big like balloony bush planes, but it was still you know, it's pretty pretty all purpose. And so we get in,
we get in. I'm spinning this story out. I could spin it for hours, but that uh, you know, early in the morning, beautiful sunny day like June, completely sunny, but everything, you know, seas completely frozen, their glaciers every
which way. And we get on this in this plane and Jock's little plane, this little tundra airstrip and you know, he he, he taxis out to position and then and I'm sitting in the front seat with him, you know, and he on the earphones and then it's like we're waiting for the control tower and it's just go and then we launch and then we're you know, flying over the incredible northern scenery, you know, ice and islands and
glaciers and you know, and this is pre GPS. This is in nineteen ninety ninety one, and so there were none of this, you know, high tech computer satellite tracking. And so Jacques has like an aeronautic map on his lap and you know, trying to find his way to Connacht over there, and by now you're so far north at the magnetic compass point.
Southwest in the declaration is like about it.
It's like almost exactly the opposite. And so we're flying north and I mean we're flying, you know, across this gap to a different continent, two hundred miles of water. And you know, after about a half an hour, we're driving along this beautiful weather and Amy's in the back and we have all our skis and stuff, crampons for Greenland, you know, and and and Jack has this map and folded in his lap, and he says, at a certain point he just goes, He just kind.
Of crumbles it up in a ball and shoves it in my lab. He says, I can't figure out where we are safe.
You Canada.
And anyway, eventually that's tied exercise at that point here.
On the clock. Yeah, and the plus green that was clouded in, you know, and and but he found a hole in the clouds. It was like really it was very dramatic. And and as we dropped through the hole in the clouds, you look down and there's this huge expanse of sea ice, massive fjord, and I could see these little they look like little wagon trains running along and I realized those are dog slits. Oh, and they're
way out on the sea ice. And so we we circled around this little village and Jack was really nervous about landing, and you know, the airstrips like a cliff at one side, a cemetery on the other, and it's all kind of lumpy, and so he's finally on the third try, just puts it down all crack. You know. We go spinning down the runway like fish tailing down because the landing gear breaks off when we went. And
so we're in Greenland. And so to make the long story short, we ended up hanging out with the Inuit hunters on the sea ice. And in this region of Greenland they still hunt I think still do the traditional way with with kayaks and harpoons. Snowmobiles are banned, literally banned. Oh kidd and yeah, I mean you'd be you'd be totally into this thing.
That's interesting.
They got out ahead of that, and then want they got way ahead of it. Yeah, and I hope, I hope. I'm really curious. I it was still like that. And so we went out twice on two expeditions on the sea ice with with hunters. One a dog sled and you know, and you have this sealskin kayaks strapped to the dogs, letter two of them. And you get out there and you're hunting for narwhale and they're out in these the leads, you know, the cracks and ice, but way I you know, like twenty miles out before you
get to there, the ice starts cracking up. And then and we got stormed out of that one.
You didn't have to get a toss you're looking to unload. You don't have to have a narwhale tuss you're looking to get. You didn't bring one home.
No, I know almost, but I wasn't gonna get in the kayak with a hard food.
Believe me.
It's like you tip over in that kayak, and that's all she wrote. And it's but it's a wild scene. And then we got stormed out that time and had to kind of flee a storm to get back. Dog said, back to the to the village. And then another time a few weeks later, the ice had broken out and we went out and boats and did the same thing, and we our guys, you know, they came close. They almost got in our whale, but then but but not, and then and then we decided. Amy said, well, you know,
I really have to get back home now. She had I can't remember. She had some hard deadline, and so like we're almost at the North Pole and we have to like turn this whole expedition to go home, which takes like a month to get home. And the reason this story started is because when we were up there and it's like fourth of July, we're on the sea ice. We're in this dog sled and it's like a sunny day.
The other day it was blizzardy day. But we have our full Montana skik ear on and these guys, the Inuit hunters are wearing Mama Root and another guy, Thomas, and they're wearing you know, really good veteran hunters. There were ring like white wind light wind breakers white because that's you know, to just got for a camouflage, and like thin you know, like almost silk white gloves and that's all. And we're just like dying of cold, and
they're like, you know, no problem. And so when I got home, I started thinking, what is it about the physiology of cold? And then I came up with this idea for Outside magazine to write about the physiology of cold. And I had this notion that I'd go out and camp out at Rogers Pass on the coldest night of the winter, at the coldest place in the lower forty eight states, and see how that was, you know, as a first person experience for Outside.
See how I was to get real cold.
Yeah. And then as it turned out that when that cold came along, that cold stand was fifty below with fifty mile an hour winds. And I said, you know, I have like a two year old daughter at home, and I'm thinking this might be a one way, one way camp. And so I called you you'll appreciate this. Mark Brian was our editor at Outside, and so I called Mark Brian and I said, I don't think I'm going to do this, you know, it's like it's way too cold, And I said, well, how about if I
just camp in the backyard, it's gonna be like twenty below. No, we don't want you to camp in the backyard. Why do you invent a story of a guy who goes out in really cold weather and then goes through all the physiology of cold And so that's what I ended up doing, And I wrote it in the you the second person voice, and I essentially stole the plot line from to Build a Fire where Else? And so the story it's called now it's called it has a hundred
different names. It's because it's been around twenty five years and it goes viral every winter.
In a cold snap.
It's called I think it's called Frozen Alive at this point. But it's this really kind of eerie story about a guy who's trying to visit his friends at a mountain cat on a winter night and it's twenty below or something, and he's driving his jeep up this winding road and he you know, spins off into a snow bank, and you know, he's stuck, but he still wants to go to the cabin. And he has his cross country skis and he says, well, I just ski to the cabin.
You know, it's this beautiful moonlit night. You know, it's only five miles or so. You know, I run that far every every morning before breakfast. And then you can imagine how it goes from there. Not well, but you know, it's like it's it's I trace his physiology, you know that that he gets up a certain point and then the clip on his binding breaks and he has to dig in the snow to find it. And as you know, now his body temperatures is dropping from like ninety five
down to ninety three. And at that point the brain function starts to slow down. And then at this point kidney function starts to slow down. You know. It goes through the whole thing, and he does surve but it ended up being this huge hit of a story. And then and then so I thought, well, maybe I'll write a whole book like that. So I wrote a whole book called Last Breath. It's like eleven Great Ways to Die in the Wilderness.
And I remember you did the box Jelly, Yeah, the box Jelly, Yeah, Well talk about that ever there?
Yeah, I was trying to find the most you know, poisonous, most toxic, most venomous creature. And it turned out to be the box jellyfish. You got any of you guys familiar with that?
The box jelly fish one, I know it exists, but I've never never seen one, never been swimming with a box jelly fish. No, we've got hanging up those little man not little Yeah, Yeah, that hurts. And then the lion's main ones hurt.
Yeah, I've heard. I've never been in those guys box jelly Well, in the in the box jelly fish, it's you know, they say it's the size of like a grapefruit, but it has this incredibly powerful neurotoxin and and you can be dead in like two minutes with a box jelly fish. And it's you know, and I traced all
the chemistry of that. You know. The setup was a couple on their honeymoon in northeastern Australia, and you know, the guy takes a dive in the water, and you know, they're sort of fighting, and the guy takes a dive in and get to you know, sort of get away from her, and it's like.
What other one doesn't.
Survive dodged the bullet.
Was there a falling one?
Yeah, I had, Oh yeah, that was That was a fun one because I created a real turk, you know, and you know, like a real type, a hyper in your face jerk who is like, I'm the hottest rock climber there ever was. And and he goes he's going rock climbing, climbing one Saturday morning and his buddy stands him up. So he says, I'll do it alone and you know, free climbate and he he uh, he gets part way up and he peels off and he falls, I don't know, like thirty feet lands on a ledge,
really hard slam, and I don't do you know. Doug Weber, he was an er doctor in Missoula. He was the one who gave me this scenario because I was just going to have some guy like go tumbling down a
steep slope and you know, flipping around. He said, well, you can make that a lot more interesting because you know, when somebody takes a real fall, and it happens in car accidents too, it's I mean, it's like tragic stuff when it happens to somebody that that sudden deceleration can pull your heart forward and it causes a or to to have a like a weak spot in it, like a bubble. You know, I was basing not the name
for it. And that you know, it's you can either can either break right then or sometimes it kind of lasts for a while.
Are you feeling that right now, Steve? Yeah, you usually do.
He didn't cut to his camera, but he made a face and.
You know, things I don't like hearing about.
And so yeah, this guy, well you didn't, don't fall thirty feet on your back into a ledge and you're okay. But so this guy falls and he and he really slams and he you know, and then he kind of dug The er doc said, yeah, and you typically throw up right then because this is your body, what it does, the physiology. And then and then the guy realized that, well he's still alive, you know, he's didn't even really get knocked out too severely, but he has a broken leg.
And so you know, this guy's I'm just painting him as the biggest asshole I can. And so he's up on this ledge and he lasts the night, you know, and he dawn comes and he thinks I've got it, you know. And also there's a sing in the in the er world called called the Golden hour. You probably heard of that. It's like the first hour after one of these really traumatic uh body impacts accidents, that that your your body can kind of hold itself together for
an hour, and they call it the golden hour. I mean, it doesn't know what's happened, but it can. So he gets past the Golden hour and he lasts all night and in the morning he's like, I'm alive, I'm alive. And when he does that, he bursts a arctic uh. And that's all she wrote.
This doesn't sound like it was any fun to write.
Give give a cup more than are in. I remember, I remember, I'm trying to remember, man, I remember that there was hype.
Well, I said, I said, in some do.
You do hYP do you do hyper thermia?
Yeah, And that's what I said. I've sent it in some notes that I sent to Corene that out of that whole book. You know, sometimes people ask me, what what's the what's the what do you think is the worst way to die in you know, the outdoors? And I would say, oh god, you know, none of them are good. That's you know, it's nobody wants any of those, and nobody wants any of those from anybody they know. But that I think hyper thermia would be the hyper that.
So hypothermia, of course is low low body temperature. High hyper thermia is high high high body temperature. And what that gets to a certain point where and you know, I've I realized how on the edge I'd been of that in certain moments. You know, I used to run up Mount Jumbo every day in the height of the summer heat, and you know, I could feel my body
doing this weird ship. Yeah, And and that it's really amazing how quickly you can go over the edge into a heat, heat stroke or hyperthermia, and that that it's it gets to a point where your body can no longer cool itself down, Like the mechanisms that you use to cool yourself down, like sweating and various other mechanisms are are overwhelm helmed. And at that point your body actually starts heating up more and and it's like a like a nuclear furnace, you know, reactor that's out of control.
And then it gets.
Really nasty that your organs start perforating in furious ways, and so you just start getting multiple organ failure and it's just I mean, it's really awful physiological Was that.
Really promising young writer? I think Ian Fraser knew him as well. And he died of hyperthermia in Africa? Was his name Shepherd or something? I don't know.
I'm not I'm not striking a bell, it's not striking.
I feel like he was an outside writer too, Does that right? Died of hyperthermia?
Well I can, I can believe it. And then I mean the one, the one thing.
About like a writing fellowship in his name. Now, who the hell was that?
He was a good writer?
Man, try to find I'm Shepherd, hyperthermia writer, you know, something like that. But I mean the one.
The one thing about it is that by the time all this nasty stuff happens to your oregons, you're you're unconscious. Yeah, you don't know anything, and so you see it. I mean that these unfortunate situations of people dying of pete stroke and athletic fields and whatnot. Yeah, they you know, they're out of it.
Oh yeah, all right, what's your next book?
My next book? Well?
See, I no, not not what you're doing now? Oh tell me. After we're doing this speed, we're doing the speed data. Yeah, because then you did.
I did a story. Well, I did one called Last Empty Places. Oh, I went down the African River. That was a crazy book where that's where I came the second close to dying from a black mamba, from a black mamba. After your trip, after the trip, I thought I was gonna die on the river. And once I got off the river, I was safe.
But we were in and you guys got tangled up with a hippos. Oh yeah, it would be aggressive, yeah yeah, yeah. Oh.
And the waterfall you need to just be buzzing around to ben you have no idea what's around it, and there're you know, vines hanging everywhere. It looks like an
African movie in fast water, you know. And you're whipping around a bend and that all of a sudden, like a guide who was a've never been there, but he was a good, really good whitewater kayaker stopped like in this big boulder right in the middle of the river and he said, stop here, stop here, And you're whipping around the bend, you know, you know, stop right at as kayaking you look over, Oh there's this big waterfall where you die instantly.
It's like in every cartoon. Yeah, it's every cartoon.
There also quicksand and no no, yeah, well they're kind of vine.
But like at night washing you guys, I don't know if any of you have been in Africa, but you'd like washing the dishes beside the river at night. You'd always have to have a second person with a headlamp scanning, so the crocks, you know, you'd see their red red eyes come in. And if you tipped over in the kayak in the rapids, which happened to I think all of us several times. Like when you're in the rapids, it's kind of like you're safe because the crocs don't
like the rapids. They like the calm water below the rapids. So when you get washed out of the rapids, that's when you really have to get nervous. That's when I said, this is as far as I'm going in my adventuring life. This is as far as I'm the end. Yeah, then that's why I said, I'm going to write about historical
guys doing the crazy stuff instead. But we talks something the black mon Okay, So so we've been through, you know, fifteen days of this incredible you know, crazy stuff, and I would have quit walked out if I could, but you know.
Then i'd surely was there a lot of fish night river? Now you're not a lot there fishing? No, No, I mean we were just trying to We're like we're sort of surviving. Yeah, And there was no there was no through the whole middle section, there were no people. I mean, there were no African villages. It was very remote and rugged and that.
So after fifteen days of this craziness where I've just thought I'd die every day, we finally get off the river and we end up at this big, very remote, still huge game reserve called Nassa Reserve in northern Mozambique, and we connect with a hunting camp there that has a you know, like a hunting block on the border of this big reserve and so and they're kind of
taking us around. It's really nice hunting camp. And they have a like a land rover, and you know it's the kind of land rover that you know that there's no windshield, there are no doors, there's sort of a higher rack on the back where like the trackers will stand, and so the the you know, he's like the great white hunter Jamie is is going to take us out to show us where he's going to do a leopard steakout. And he's got to go set up the leopard steakout
during the day. And so the photographer and I get into this land rover and a bunch of trackers on the back and we wind through this kind of open forest and we get to the leopard steakout and he does this thing, and then we're driving like an hour back to camp and I'm sitting in the left you know, it's British drive, so I'm in the messenger seat on the left side and there's no door, and Jamie has
his you know, his fifty caliber What are they? You know, what's the fifty caliber elephant gun that that you know, that the huge big appa. Yeah, it's it's maybe it's the five, maybe it's a five hundred, it's a you know, it's just the cannon that they use in Africa. So he has that mounted on his dashboard. And we had
no guns at all, not going down this river. So it's like, wow, we even have guns to protect this now, not to mention it cheap and cars and you know, I mean iron all this stuff, and we're driving back to camp, and we go into this open clearing with the sun coming down through the forest, and and I remembered going through this clearing earlier because it looked kind of pretty. And then I noticed, like, wow, there's a big there's a big stick poking up in the middle
of that clearing. I wonder how that happened because there's no wind. It couldn't have fallen out of a tree. And so Jamie is driving completely oblivious. And and and I'm looking at this thing, and he's going right towards it, or there's like two little tracks right next to it, and I'm looking at it. And then I noticed that big head, that big stick is waving back and forth at like my head level high that high, that high, unbelievable. And and so and he doesn't, I mean, he is
completely oblivious. This is all happens in just a few seconds at most, and I just say, oh shit. And I had nowhere to hide. I just I dove underneath the dashboard, I mean like really hard, slammed into all the metal down there. And then you hear this big kind of clump on the on the land rover, and all the trackers go struck the land rover. They all say mamma, So he stops the land rover. All the trackers jump out, and the first they kind of go
trying to chase the black momba. I don't know what they were going to do with that, but then they go running around the land rover and right in front of my where my leg was, they're the two scratches down in front of my leg and you know down it's like you know that land and they these guys, you know, these real serious, these are serious African professional hunters are from ones from Zimbabwe or Rhodesian and with the other was from South Africa, so they you know,
this is their life. And they said, yeah that the black Bambas are extremely aggressive. They'll protect their territory against anything, and so it's it's it's not unusual if they'd strike at at.
Is that the one they say, like, if you get bit by it, just go leaning against the tree.
Yeah, that's the one.
And then do.
The British uh, you know, they have that British sense of humor. You know, he's kind of that dry, understated sense of humor. So so Jamie says, you know, after all this commotion, we get back and you know, I'm like, can I stand.
Up on the very top of the stream at least.
And rather than sitting an open front door And he says, yeah, yes, you know in his British accent.
Yes, it was a black mamba bite.
You know, your time to live is twenty minutes. And we do have some black mamba, you know, antidote at our camp, but that's forty five minutes away. That's where.
How'd you get interested in the historians?
Oh, that's well. I wrote a book called The Last Empty Places, and I profiled like four really unpopulated areas of the country. And the way I did it is I asked, like a geospace geologist or a geographer, how do I find these real unpopulated areas? And he said, well, go get the like the NASA landsat seven photo light photo of the of the US at night, and you look where the lights are and then you go where they're not. And so that's what I did.
I would never thought of that.
Advice been hours and I was really fun to study that, and I ended.
Up looking for the biggest holes I was looking for that.
Yeah, I called it my blank spots, but it's called The Last Empty Places. I wanted to call it the Blank Spots, but and I ended up choosing two in the east and two in the west, and one of the west ones was southwestern Oregon, where I'm sure some of you all here have been, which is really really empty, so unpopulated and so huge. And I was driving out there. I think I had our old, my falling apart land Cruiser at that point.
And I remember that, do you remember that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were around on those days and it was still alive then, but you know, not getting a lot a lot of gas mileage. And I'm blasting through southeast Oregon and it's getting you know, I'm doing research, you know, I'm just checking it out. And it's like May, and it's getting dark, and I'm driving down this road and it's like really getting darker and darker, and it's like I haven't seen a town for hours, and it's
like like where am I going to sleep? And I'm not even sure I might have had camping gear, but it's like I don't want to go sleep in the ditch. And then so then all of a sudden, I come to this town called john Day, John Day, Orgon, and so I find a motel spend the night at john Day, Orgon and then the next morning I say, John Day, that's a weird name for a town, and I look up. I start doing research on John Day, you know, first on the Internet, and then I think there was a
little library there. And it turns out John Day is a member of this ast expedition. And he's this guy who's been going through everything you can imagine. You know, he's had malaria, he's been he's poisoned himself by uh, eating the death canvas rather than the cavas. He's been almost he's been left another guy when the story Overland expedition got caught in the middle of Hell's Canyon in winter and they had no food, no way out, and so he.
Got a river named after himself.
Yeah, he did get a river name and a couple of dames.
He sounds like he would have been a good character to profile in your book about Ten Ways to Die in the in the Wild.
Yeah, he would have. He well, he was helping me that book, was helping me when I was writing about John Day, and oh he went through all this stuff and then he you know, they left him behind and the expedition left him for dead. And he and he and another guy managed to crawl out and find some Shoshone who you know, gave him like some fox to eat or some wolf I think actually, and then uh, they survive, and they poisoned themselves with the death camas and they.
Crawled miss id purple cavas.
Yeah, and then they they eventually managed to crawl like over the Blue Mountains to the Columbia. And so they get to the Columbia River, and they're thinking, oh, we're saved, you know, because all our guys are supposed to be building this fort at the mouth of the Columbia, you know, but they're like a couple hundred miles upstream at this point, and so they're you know, but they think they're saved, and they're sitting on the river bank on this nice
sunny day, having survived all this stuff. And then suddenly they find themselves surrounded by Indians. And I can't can't remember which tribe. There's several tribes right in that area. And so the you know, and the Indians are really kind of friendly at first and want to talk to them and whatnot. And then they have, you know, they
have muskets and the Indians don't. And then you know, like one of the Indians says, oh, I want to see how long that musket is, and you know, wants to measure it, and well, there goes that musket, and then another guy says, hey, I want to see that knife. Well there goes that knife, and then another guy goes, oh, I want to see that shirt. And so they ended up being completely stripped, utterly naked and told to go back the way they came and don't come back the.
Way they came.
Yeah they came.
He's like, well I was for thinking, and then it'll be you on your portage strip this year.
And then when they finally get to his storia, this John Day, there's an expedition that immediately turns around and goes back overland to bring mister Astor letters in this tin box about you know, we made it to there, blah blah blah, and and this John Day he's like, Okay, I'm done with this. I want to go I want to go back. He's just like a really good Virginia hunter and his good guy he's like forty. It's a
lanky guy, really good humored. And so they start going back up the Columbia in these you know, these big canoes, and then they're going to start trekking overland and they get to a place where they run into the first tribe on the Columbia Friendly Tribe. But John Days starts freaking out and he's he goes completely crazy. He clearly has PTSD and then he tries to kill himself two pistols to his head in the middle of the night, and he survives.
But he wasn't good at everything, no, I guess.
But anyway, that was John Day, and so he was the who got interested in me, interested into the historian history.
He was.
He might not have been trying so hard, who knows.
That's another check mark on the list of things he survived.
Yeah, he saw a.
Picture in the movie and he's like in the movie, when I got two pistols, that's gonna do badass. So I got into the extra deranged.
And then this, you know, it ends up being this as I just got into it because I ran into this little town of John Day, and then the character John Day, and then the expedition itself, and it was just I learned it. It's kind of like this mass
of expedition that I'd never heard of. And it had come five years after Lewis and Clark to sent by this huge fur baron in New York for in real estate baron, John Jacob Astor, and he had this global trade scheme where he was sending one big party by ships around Cape Horn, established a trade center at the
mouth of the Columbia. Another big party going overland to establish a series of posts going over the Rocky Mountains and meeting the seaguing party at the mouth of the Columbia, but all based around the Beaver market, right sea otter, So yeah, and at that point that the Northwest coast was there were a lot of sea otter And it was Captain Cook's guys who discovered you could get a sea otter on Vancouver Island a pelt for like a dollar worth of trinkets and sell it for one hundred bucks in China.
Size was just sitting where you're sitting.
Is that right? About the Captain cook book, Okay.
Which I read, which is phenomenal, And he talks about when some of those dudes that so when some of those guys had who picked up a bunch of seatter pelts in Alaska, they wound up like over in Siberia at one point. Yeah, yeah, and they were able to
sell some of those. And I can't remember what expedition he was talking about it, but what he mentioned there was guys that almost it was so lucrative, they hatched to plan, not cooks guys, but these guys on his other boat hatched a plan to mutiny because they wanted to go back and get a bunch more of those things. It was like that, It was.
Like that was that incredibly, incredibly valuable. So that was Astro's scheme was I mean, it was like this brilliant global trade scheme. It was really visionary, and that the idea was to have a fleet of ships. So it's
literally continuously circling the world. And you know, Shay that he was based in New York and Manhattan, and they New York and they'd have trade goods on them, you know, trade goods for the tribes like pots and knives and beads, trade beads, and they'd go around South America, around Cape Horn.
They'd end up at the mouth of the Columbia at the emporium, the trade emporium that he was building, and there they would trade their trade goods to the tribes, and there are a lot of tribes in the Northwest coast for seaatter firs, and then the ships with the seattle firs would then go to Canton in China and they'd sell those seattle firs or trade them for huge markups, and they'd take on silk and tea and porcelain, which
are really valuable trade goods in the Western world. And then they'd sail around the rest of the globe, you know, around Africa, and they'd end up in London, and they'd sell the silk and porcelain and tea in London and also in New York and make these huge profits at every stop and have this fleet of ships continuously circling the globe.
Man.
That reminds me of me recently leveraging a couple DSD Turkey decoys into two big ribbies.
That sounds pretty global like, but it mostly didn't work right. Well it it would.
Have worked, I mean, there were there were various factors, and and one is this is you know, I wrote in some of these notes that it would be really what we don't have time to do, uh at least now, is talk about the birch bark canoe and what incredible craft that was, uh huh. And that the the Brits in Canada had birch bark canoes and they had the whole voyager trade route that could go all the way out to the West coast by this time really fast, whereas the the Americans had, you know, it took them
months and months and months. You know, they're dragging barges up the Missouri River and you know, walking and really slow. So the War of eighteen twelve broke up in June of eighteen twelve, and so that's announced that Congress US Congress, President Madison declares war on Britain because the Brits are screwing with American commercial ships in the Atlantic and dragooning sailors off to go join the British army and fight Napoleon. So there's all this hurrah about the US is really
pissed at Britain. So President Madison declares war. It's like mid June of eighteen twelve, and the word of that, the news of that war, you know, like in an actual formal declaration of war, immediately is launched through Montreal, out the Great Lakes, through Grand Portage, through all the Lake of like you know that Manitoba, that whole area.
Meanwhile, John Day is going, oh, ship, we can't go down. You have to turn around, walk all the way up this valley.
Way right right.
And so by this time that the Astorians had established a bunch of fur posts all in the Columbia basin, and so they had this enterprise up and running, and then all of a sudden one day these Scottish fur traders, that's that. Those are like the British Hanchos. Scottish fur traders show up at the northernmost aster post and walk in the front door of the cabin and say, hey, guys, we're at war with each other, and that means we're taking your fur posts, which is what happens.
Wow, man, the other thing.
Like that had to have been like all a lot of reasons for PTSD. Yeah, I bring up turn around on the snake, because that would be the thing in that whole deal that would give me PTSD wait being wrong and not having to turn around. But the Russians were so established, yes, like way established, way established with every like to the point of when you got out there after making that trip and be like, okay, we're going to establish this thing, this monumental scheme for transcontinental trade.
Like you're like, oh, there's a literal world power that's been here for decades.
Well they haven't been.
That's that's that's it's close. It's close. I mean, that's that's There are several world powers like circling around this whole West coast in the Pacific because it's it's kind
of unclaimed territory. And the Russians had come over. They didn't establish their fur trade in Alaska until the late seventeen hundreds, and so this is what we're talking here is eighteen eleven and the but the Russians did have a major post just just it's just what's the southernmost part of like catches a ketch a can is at the you know, the southeast that's the end of Yeah, okay, so that that's I'm pretty sure that's where they had.
It was like a you know, stone castle, and he had you know, he was like living there like a baron this this guy a count Baronoff and so he's just really decadent, you know, Russian count and it has all these you know, all these Indians working for him and I don't know, slave women and he has military Russian military.
Abc islands like Chilikov.
Up that way. Yeah, so it's Count Baranov and and he's and he's like, it's an incredible drinker, you know. And and he has all these military guys with him too, and he has this big fur trade working with I think there are they Eliut.
Maybe they're telling it there.
Yeah, I think, well, I think he has several tribes working for him. Yeah, and but here's his big fur post. And so at one point, my guy, the guy who leads the story overland expedition, mister Hunt, who's this real mild mannered guy. He's from New Jersey. He'd never been in the wilderness before. He led the party across the country that got this the continent that got everybody in
trouble because he didn't know what he was doing. But he ends up taking a ship and I think it has a bunch of seatter pelts on it, and then he's going up to visit Count Baranoff up and at Baranoff Island, and he's going to buy like twenty five thousand beaver pelt from Count Baranoff and then he's going to take those over to like Russia, Siberia or China.
And he's got this thing all worked out, as already sent his son in law daughter to work out the diplomacy with a queen, you know, with the Czarina of Russia. So they've got all this stuff worked out. So mister Hunt sails his boat with his seattle pelts from the Astor's post up to Count Baranov's post, and he's going to buy these twenty five thousand beaver pelts and it's
going to make a fortune for mister Astor. But so Count Baranov is like, huh oh, yeah, hey, why don't you stay a while, dude, We got some parties coming up, and I want to show you my military parade, and well, let's have another drinking contest. And so it goes on like that for three weeks that he can't get out, and he keeps saying, well, what about my beaver pelts.
Oh, we'll get to that, We'll get to that.
And so by the time by the time that the party's over, it's it's too late in the season to go across to get the beaver pelts and go across to China. And so it's like mister Hunt is screwed and Count Baronoff keeps his beaver pelts, and so it's a it's a it's a it's a Russian ploy basically to keep to keep Astor out of the audit.
It's like that Blues Brother scene. You know, it's like, yeah, you guys get fifty bucks for the concert, but you drank seventy five bucks worth of beer.
Yeah.
When was when the Good Old Boys, the band called Boys was late for their show. That's great reference. That puts the perspective for people. Uh that when that was called the historians.
It was called a story.
Uh.
And then the subtitle is John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire.
God.
So that was a fun, crazy book to read, I mean to write.
So hit me with getting into George Washington.
Well, so that came every book I've written in the last four or five books came from that last Empty Places book.
Okay, you know what I gotta I gotta tell you something I want to tell you earlier. You're talking about winding up at the John Day Hotel or winding up in hotel. I took my wife one time on a on a research trip. We went in Bismarck, North Dakota, and there was a If I remember right, man, I think it was like there's a big all the Seventh Day Adventist churches. We're having some kind of conference. If I remember that, that's what it was. I think I remember.
Either way. Ever, you couldn't find anything and no place, no place to stay, and I didn't make any plan. And we find a motel. I'm not joking. I wish my wife could come down and tell the stories. Literally letters in the motel neon are burned out. We pull in, it's a dirt driveway. We pull in and a guy comes out and uh, the guy comes out to greet us, Like before we even get out of the car. He comes out to greet us, and I have I rolled on the windows and like, oh, who's this must be
the proprietor. I rolled out on the window and he pokes his head and he goes, how many of you are in there? We get this room and there and there is no joke, a prophylactic on the floor of the room and cigarette.
These aren't the Seventh Day.
The only room the only place left. And my wife's like in your future, wife and you would have me, so from then on. Yeah, when you're on research trips, call ahead advice for future writers.
We have your spousal Yeah, yeah, make arrangements ahead of time.
That would have been so good though, to keep referencing that in the you know my past wife. Do you know what my past wife?
So that's why there's you know, there's Empty the Blank Spots book, The Last Empty Places. One of the places I profiled was western Pennsylvania, which is I mean, it's it's amazingly dark on the on the on the yeah, amazingly dark. I mean, you know, and it's it's like the big the biggest darkest area in the east near an urban area that I that I could find and where were we at? And if he went if he went to Pittsburgh and went somewhat northeast of there, do you know that territory?
I grew up in Edinburgh, so not far from where you were from.
Okay, So it's I mean, it's like it's all national forests and you know, it's and it's mountains and it's it's just it's not agricultural land. It was actually was given away as bounty lands after the Revolutionary War and the and the War of French and Indian War, and.
There was no good nothing could out there.
So the guys who soldiers who got this land set it's not worth anything, and so they kind of walked away from it. But so I was out on that blank spot doing research. I was like, uh, well that was two thousand and seven or something, and I ran into this like twenty two year old guy stumbling around on the woods out there, who is really screwing up, but he's this real Turk. And his name was the young George Washington, and that's where he'd kind of cut
his teeth in the wilderness. And so I said, Wow, this guy's a really interesting character, and so then I decided to write a book about him.
Yeah, that's that stuff that that that like aspects of his life. I only found out about that because I was on this thing you've heard, the warriors Path. Yeah, it's just like one of the basically it's it's one of those trails, part part.
Of those great warrior Yes, I know it, I know it.
Well, yeah, yeah, I read some thing about Washington, but this is post this is post revolution. He had a bunch more land claims there from having served his duty that's.
Where he got his bought his first land at age eighteen, right along there.
Okay, he had went out to take a look at he's got so much land. He hadn't even taken a look at it yet, right went out to take a look and got lost.
You know.
In his journey talk he describes getting lost. And I met this old timer down there in the Panhandle, a Maria who had he went showed me, you know how you can go to places in the Oregon Trail where it's not like there's no road overlaying it and you see the ruts. He took me out and there's there's a big ass oak tree, and you know, a bunch of farmland and stuff. And we go out and there's a big oak tree. And he kind of had he lived there and grew up there and read all the stuff.
He's like, Yeah, that trail was here, you know what I mean, And you could still kind of picture it even.
Was that the Great Warriors Road or was that the Braddock Road? Do you know what the Braddock Road?
Well, I think it was part of what wasn't all the same complex roads.
That Braddock Road went went from like the head of the not the head of the Potomac, but from like Arlington, Virginia, you know, right near Washington d c. Over the Alleghany Mountains to Pittsburgh. And that was built by General Braddock, who is in the French.
Yeah, yeah, I got but yeah, no, man, because it was like but it could have been, but because you know why it was uh yeah that that could because Morgantown, I know where you're talking.
That's a cool place that the road it is, But I think it was what you're talking about. The I think is the Great Warriors Road, which was used by the tribes like I think it was like a taba in the Great up in the you know, the near the Great Lakes, and they had mortal enemies down in the southeast, and so these tribes would go up and down that road to that path when they would fight each other, and so it became known as a Great Warrior Road, and then when settlers first came there, they
became known as a Great wagon road. So it was down the middle of the Allegheny of the Allegheny Valley or that's that.
Ay.
He took me and said, you can pretty much you see the ruts. Yeah, He's like, it's reasonable to assume the Washington. Yeah, to the right of that oak tree. Totally.
I mean that would be totally right, That would be totally and got lost here about that's awesome. So that folk's called young Washington. How let's see how wilderness and war forged the founding father.
Yeah, we get into in our long Hunters piece that the audio original is telling about. We get into Washington being there for Braddock's defeat as of some sort of informal advisor, right in the way that the way that battle wound up sort of changing wilderness warfare.
And and also that it changed it was one of the pivotal moments of his life because every other officer virtually died, which killed, and he survived, and he had bullets through his coat and his horse was shot out from under him, and that after that it was almost kind of the one of the key pivotal moments that turned him from being the self centered guy who's really ambitious and trying to be a British royal officer and whatnot into someone who was kind of thinking about a
larger picture. Because after that battle and he survived and so many other people officers were killed, he said, well, providence he wrote this in a letter to his brother Providence must be saving me for some larger purpose. Now there's a footnote to them and not laying grabbing. Well that could you have to you have to have a
backup plan, right. But but you know what's really occurred to me that you guys would find this way interesting because I've now, I've studied a lot of these battles, especially you know in the in the east, these early early Indian warfare, the Northwest Indian Wars and French and Indian War. But in that in that battle Braddock's defeat Braddock, I mean, why Shington, You know, he wanted to be a British Royal Army officer and they wouldn't let him in.
I mean, he didn't have much of an education, he was kind of crude. He'd already really screwed up in a calusing his own massacre early in the going, and so they wouldn't let him in as a you know, a guy. They wouldn't let him wear a red coat and gold braids, and so he was wearing like civilian clothes or you know, hunter's clothes during Braddock's defeat. And so who do you think that Indians shoot first man, they take out the they take out the officers, and
so all the officers got mowed down almost instantly. But they you know, Washington didn't really show up on their radar screen, and so he uh. In my theory, that's one of the main reasons he survived. He was incredibly brave, I mean, no doubt about it, and his whole life incredible bravery.
You know, in The Long Hunters we mentioned this connection that Boone was there that day.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was a teamster, so he mentioned it like Boone, even though even though Washington was later critical of frontiersmen like Boone, Boone would have been aware, You'd have been aware of Washington almost certainly, he'd been aware of him, of his presidence, would have seen him, yes, and conversely Boone would Washington would have zero idea.
Who Boone was exactly.
Yeah, I think when you look at the hierarchy of the people, and Washington was was literally attached to General Braddock's camp, so he would have you know, their meals would be served in the General's you know, meal tent, and they have.
Like sterling silver platters going on here, and it's you know, it's a whole.
It's not what Daniel Boone was eating off of. You know, he had a bowie knife.
Would be his version of his sterling silver. And so and I think if I remember, I think Boone was like seventeen or eighteen or maybe nineteen at most young, and and Washington would have been in his early twenties, twenty three maybe, And so I don't think Boone was anywhere near that that corps of officers other than you know, knowing where they are. And yeah, Washington would, well, there's like a mule tier back there, sure, yeah, one of many.
And but but Boone, to his credit, could see the writing on the wall right away.
Bo yeah, bo real quick. So I can see how this leads in. But really quickly hit us with uh, hit us with your book about to come so that come shut. That winds up like that's very tied to this because one of the things you see, you look at the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the War of eighteen twelve, you wouldn't have perceived it if you were alive, then you wouldn't have perceived these as distinct No, no, do you know what I mean? It was? It was
the Great European powers. Right, it was like the great European powers jockeying for infacting and then using tribes as proxy forces.
That's exactly right.
And it would have just seemed like like like someone involved in the Cold War would have would have been Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, like all this stuff would have sort of bled into this this broader thing against Soviet influence, right, you know what I mean, And you'd be like, oh, yeah, there's there's this and this and this, but it's part of this broader story of the West, like like for sure, yea capitalism and communism.
Yeah you know, oh yeah, that West I mean pos the American West and the West mean West, you know as the global West, that global.
But all these a lot of what we're talking about here is sort of these like all conflicts, I mean, they all like bleed into one another and players overlap exactly, you know what I mean, Like a play like Washington was a player in French and Dinian War and very involved in the revolution. And then people that were very involved in the revolution were War of eighteen twelve, right, right, and then they enter the political sphere.
No, that's exactly right, and that's I mean that's sort of what I've been fascinated with my you know, for some years now and writing about just that period that you're talking about, and actually a story is part of it, because it's you know, it's the West coast projection of Empire.
And you know, you have in Astoria, you have the Russians, you have the French, you have the British, you have the Americans, and you have the Spanish, all vying for the West coast at this at the same time, right around the year eighteen hundred, in the east of the continent. You know, at the when you start out in like seventeen ninety, the White settlement, it barely goes to the Appalachian Mountains. I mean, it's trickled over a little bit,
but barely. And so there's all that land out there that's that's a no man's land in terms of of European empires. Of course, it's tribal land, and there's a whole dynamic that's gone on for centuries among the tribes.
But that.
Land, I mean not only in the seventeen nineties, but in the decades before that was in a way I think I described that Ohio Valley land. It became a storm center of the world where these empires ended up conflicting with each other and essentially fighting it out, and as you say, using the tribes as proxies. And one of the things I really emphasized when I talk about this is that in these years, in seventeen nineties, eighteen hundred, eighteen twelve, I mean right up to then, nobody knew
what the US was going to be. I mean, nobody knew if it was going to survive. No one knew if this was like an experiment. Because now I've gone into this stuff so deeply and really read records of Congress when they're arguing about all this stuff. It's some of these these frontier issues and some of these like other issues. But it's like I think of it as, uh, you know, have you ever built with framed something? He used to be a framing guy.
No, I've been. I've been, I've done some I was not. I can't. I can't like claim to that I was a tree man. I know you did closet work at one point. I did that, but that's not framing.
But okay, well, if you think.
Like cabinet stuff and yeah, yeah, but not okay, But think of like, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to have that that crown on my head as a frame. Well, surprised if cal is a framing man.
Oh yeah, I can list of places that are still standing proudly.
Okay. Now imagine you built that place out of out of green uncured wood and rough song, you know, completely green, and you hammered together this frame, you know, and you kind of tack it in with the nails like halfway in and make this sort of structure. Well, that's the way the United States was in seventeen ninety.
That at a lot of my projects resemble that.
I mean literally, that's the total image that comes to mind. And and so so much hadn't been worked out and one of the I could go all day and night about it, but that one of the things that really wasn't clear is like how far west the US was going to go. So it was not a done deal that the US was going to go even past the Appellations or even to the Mississippi or no way to
the west coast. And so that in the British were really you know, their literal plan was to create what was called an Indian Barrier State, which would have been a no man's land, neutral territory where where imperial powers
in the US had had no control. All. That would be a strip of land, essentially the Ohio and Mississippi Valley that hole all the way from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf of Mexico tribal tribal land, and it would be controlled by the tribes and the Brits and Americans were free to trade there, you know, in this sort of controlled way. But that's the bridge. They they made it several different points, a push for what
they call the Indian Barrier State. In a way, it would be like trying to not in a way it was literally trying to bottle up the little fledgling baby United States, to bottle it up on the East coast so it didn't come over the Appalachian Mountains and didn't screw around with you know, British holdings in the interior of the continent, didn't screw around with a really valuable
fur trade that was out farther west. And so in this era, we're talking about a country that didn't it didn't really know how it was going to fully function it and it didn't know what's what size it was, know how far it would go. So these the battles that we're talking about, this whole era, it's as you're saying, it's all part of that art. It's all part of that peace, and it's like working it out.
Tell the Tell the title of the comes the book.
It's called Gallop toward the Sun to Kamsa and William Henry Harrison's struggle for the destiny of a nation, and that was I guess you.
Could put his so to. Kamsa was a war leader who had a prophet brother, yes, and they put an idea of instead of tribes inner fighting, instead of like internacine conflict, they would unite all the tribes and push America back into the ocean.
Well yeah, or at least stop it from pushing them into the ocean. And it wasn't so much about stopping internice conflict. It was about agreeing to hold the land as one, as one entity. So what was happening is that that, you know, the federal agents would approach one tribe or one sub chief of one tribe and try to pry you know, land or some kind of agreement out of that chief who might actually be selling some other tribes land hundreds of miles away. So it was like all was splitting.
Yeah, that was a common thing that a guy be like, sure, i'll sell that to you. Yeah.
Well, I mean the Iroquois sold sold all of the all of Kentucky to the the Brits, the Iroquois. Yeah, and the you know, the Iroquois were seven hundred miles and miles away when they signed a contract.
Yeah, yeah, you could have all that land down there.
The Cherokees think it's theirs, but now we know it's not. There's That's exactly what happened. Uh, we got to wrap yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there's so many fun things to do things about. But give the name of the to comes to the book against people. People like to say it is called Gallop toward the Sun to Kumsa and William Henry Harrison's Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation.
I'll say this, you read all Peter's books, You're going to dominate media to trivia.
Mm hmmm.
A few questions or a few answers have have We've alluded to them today?
If past A lot of times he says stuff and I've been like that was a trivia question, all right, Peter starked, the answer coming on.
Man, Yeah, really fun to talk to you. We have to have you back on again anytime. Let me know the well.
The well is deep until it tries up.
Thanks man, yeah, thank you.
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