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Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free.
When we talk about self-actualization so much of it has to do with how one
orients oneself on the planet towards the other denisons of the planet.
One can think so much of self-actualization as the self,
but the self is nothing, if not something in relation to other.
And that other is not always human.
So my guest today rhymes with human, but sounds something like this.
George, welcome to Live Free, ride Free.
What was that?
Who are you and what do you do?
George Bumann: Thank you for having me, Rupert.
That was a common raven, which if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you
probably know this bird is a large black, glossy corvid family member.
And it just said that this is my home.
This is my place and I appreciate it.
If you stay on your side of the fence,
Rupert Isaacson: would that Raven be saying that to, to another
raven, or would that Raven be saying that as equally to me?
George Bumann: To other ravens, you know, that they are the largest
songbird in the world and as unsung like as that may sound, that is
in fact functions as their song.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, that sort of
George Bumann: sounds to me a bit
Rupert Isaacson: like the sort of industrial metal singer of the, of
the avian world m partial to indeed.
Perhaps they
George Bumann: are.
Yes.
It's appropriate observation.
Rupert Isaacson: If, if the Raven were to see us on the other side
of that fence and was to vocalize, what in your experience would it be
likely to vocalize and, and, and why?
Yeah,
George Bumann: sure.
It would, it would say this,
Rupert Isaacson: and that's milk, no sugar, please.
Isn't it?
When a raven's making you a cup of tea.
I think I've,
George Bumann: yes, they will do that in those situations, but more often
as we experience here in Yellowstone near our home, it's when someone pulls
out the Cheetos or the bag of crisps as they call them in, in many parts
of the, of Europe there, the, that extra notes and they're a little bit
faster, is a bit of possessiveness that's conveyed through those sounds.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you think the raven at, at this stage, if I hear that,
is the Raven saying, I would like to share those Cheetos with you, sir?
Or is the, is the raven according to other Ravens saying
potential Cheetos on the ground?
Or some mixture of the two.
George Bumann: Well, that is most often the sound you hear, the, the
residents give when something really good enters their field of view.
So in, in other words, that would probably most likely equate to
mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.
I'm sort of
Rupert Isaacson: about it and a little
George Bumann: bit worried that someone else not yours.
Mine.
Rupert Isaacson: Wonderful.
Sounds like me.
Alright.
Well, George Booman you've got a jolly interesting life and I think where
I would like to start is I want to start with a book that you've just
put out eavesdropping on Animals.
What a wonderful title.
I like the fact that it's eavesdropping and not listening because I often
get that sense of stumbling into conversations in the wild, in nature
that maybe are happening outside of me.
And I'm lucky enough maybe to overhear, but I can't necessarily claim to
be a part of the conversation.
I'm not a hunter gatherer.
I'm not living at that depth in nature.
So I think the eavesdropping part of your, of, of your title is.
Quite indicative of us in the modern age because in many ways I
feel that's what we can hope for.
Why did you write this book?
What does it mean to you?
How did you come to write this book?
You can clearly articulate the vocalize vocalizations of animals and
interpret them to a very good degree.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But this is switching it around.
Talk to us about this.
Why'd you do it?
George Bumann: Yeah.
The, the real drive for it, Rupert, was just this sense and experience
of my own that I always felt outside of what nature was doing.
I grew up on a lake in, in upstate New York state here in the us and there just
seemed like there was this veil between me and the world of the deer, the beaver, the
water snake, that there, there were things going on and they knew things about me
that I couldn't tell how they knew them.
I would go just as a boy to track the foxes.
When the lake would freeze, I would hike across the, the frozen lake into
the swamps and follow fox tracks.
And one day I came upon this set of tracks that I learned enough at that
point to know that these were fresh.
These were so fresh that they'd literally just probably happened minutes before.
And I could sort of back calculate in my mind where I was when this fox.
Did this skid move where it basically came to a screeching halt on the
icy snow in of the swamp, and took off in the opposite direction.
It knew I was there and I had no clue it was there.
And how did it do that?
How is it possible that these creatures are, are understanding the world
beyond mine by beyond what I perceive?
And it just frustrated me.
I, I went through all the things that I knew to, to get closer to nature in
that area and in that culture I grew up in, I fished, I hunted, I I trapped.
I did all these terrible things I don't do now.
They taught me a lot.
I even went through a bachelor's and master's in wildlife ecology
that didn't feel the well.
And what I've come to realize over the last two and a half decades of
guiding and teaching others here in Yellowstone is that it is sound, it is
sight, it is our senses on the whole that are our doorway into this space.
But if and only if we know how to use them and how to direct them you
know, there is this separation we have from each other these days with
computer technology and other devices and things that isolate us even when
we're sitting next to one another.
Say nothing of, you know.
Larger societies in in your, our town, our, our, our nation.
But that's amplified even further when you jump across the species divide.
What is that rabbit doing right now?
Rupert Isaacson: How end, how did you end up going from
New York over to Yellowstone?
You, you clearly went to college.
You, you're an eco boy.
Yeah.
You learn your environmentalism also with a bit of hunting and fishing, which
honestly is our biological imperative.
I feel It's not a terrible thing as long as one does it with respect.
It's who we are.
Mm-hmm.
But yes, if, if we don't need to do it, perhaps we can interact
with animals in another way.
But how did you end up coming to the, to the sort of iconic American West there?
And again, why, what are you, what are you trying to communicate
to us about this place?
Because I know that your interaction with nature isn't
just about the big wilderness.
Talk to us about how, what's your, what was your trajectory that got you there?
George Bumann: Yeah, so I grew up in the land of my ancestors.
My family went back to the second settlers in that area of New York state.
And, and that has its own interesting history.
But when I went to graduate studies in Virginia.
I went to study predator, prey, ecology of birds.
And I enjoyed it greatly, but as I said, it did, didn't quite fill the void.
I did, you know, some publications and help with a popular press book and things.
I met my wife there and as often as the case, we move great distances
when we meet a girl or a guy and, and she had worked here in Yellowstone.
I was done with academia for a bit.
I, I wasn't sure if I fit there.
Or in the research world I had inclinations that
way, but I needed a break.
So I followed her where she was following her passion back to, so we
moved here and she became the campus manager of a field school out there
in, I think you've probably have been there, a Lamar Valley in the northern.
I know Lamar Valley.
Yes.
So we lived there.
There of America.
Yeah, precisely.
Yeah.
We lived there for first few years and I was trying to figure it out, you know,
I was really trying to, to, in some ways probably even find my way back to
the sense of community I had among the people in the landscape I grew up in.
You know, everyone knew me, I knew everyone.
I went to Virginia.
Very few people knew me, got to know some people.
But when we moved to Yellowstone, we weren't around people.
No.
Not there.
That's, that's no, not there.
And not then in, in, in large part.
And so it, it was the, a togetherness and a desire to feel of a place that really
kind of codified my, my approach to how I, I started out there in Yellowstone.
It, I was teaching, I taught longer than I've done anything.
Helping people connect in one of those powerful ways was, was through sound.
But I needed it for myself to, and the most common species, the most common
non-human residents there that we saw and interacted with were ravens.
And so every day they were there, they were part of life.
They weren't interacting in the, you know, handshaking way and exchanging, you know,
notes and, and food or anything like that.
'cause that's of course not allowed in the park.
But they were a constant presence that drew me outward
from myself, you could say.
And what they revealed to me was fantastic.
The ability to know that the wolves may have just made a kill over
on the, behind that one ridge.
That the otters are fishing along the river right there, right now.
That there might be an owl in the tree over there.
Do you wanna go see it?
Okay, let's go.
Oh my gosh.
Indeed it is.
And so through these birds who just.
Are easily dismissed along with any other species.
Think of what you encounter regularly, whether it's a city or a wilderness.
Pigeons.
Squirrels, you know, they have a life, they have a world unto themselves.
They have culture.
They might have what we can call language that once we slow down
enough to see that it's there, we begin to receive those gifts.
Rupert Isaacson: There's lots, I've been to the Lamar Valley and it's one of
the most charismatic places in the USA.
It's one of the only places in the world where you can sort of see wolves out
in Plainview and that sort of thing.
It's, it's extraordinary.
But it's also full of charismatics.
The word other, you know, iconic birds.
There's, you see bald eagles there, there's all sorts of interesting smaller
birds, lots of other corvids mag pies.
Crows.
Why the ravens?
Is it because they're the most like us in a weird way?
George Bumann: They are intelligent and, and maybe that's part of that mystery.
We're always
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
Drawn
George Bumann: to the mysteries of the world around us.
And, and the more complex sing, the more tantalizing they are.
Right.
And ravens have this mystique.
You know, I was a birder for, for many years, and when I grew
up, the idea of birding was.
Ludicrous, unless you were a grandmother sitting there watching
the feeder, you know, you didn't go out for a walk just to watch birds.
So I didn't really learn about that and participate in that until I
was at the university and then just was taking hook line and sinker.
And I had been writing down the Raven's name for years along with all these
other names, but that's where it stopped.
They were just names.
They weren't minds and meaning and revelation.
And when we moved to Yellowstone, they're big, you know, it's easy to be
pulled in by the big and loud things.
You know?
They're not shy to get relatively close to you too.
They, yeah, yeah.
Especially if you, you're, you're starting to eat lunch,
and so it was an easy starting point mm-hmm.
For me.
And so I didn't read any of the, the Raven literature, you know, coming
outta that academic background.
I, I made a very clear decision.
I did not wanna read anything about ravens.
I wanted to see for myself what these birds were doing before I
dove into any of the, the, the other behavioral, you know, work out there.
I just wanted to see what I could find in.
In association with these birds in this place, in this moment.
And, and that's really just how it started.
And it started very simple.
You know, they were always sitting or discovered that there was always two and
they were sitting on the corral fence top.
As I got up each morning and as I was doing chores and getting ready to guide
people on a trip, there was the Raven.
I'd go for a walk and there was the raven.
I'd be brushing my teeth and out the window there was the
raven and always the same Raven.
Or when you say the raven, I didn't know collective raven.
I didn't know that was a thing.
That was part of the adventure is what, what is this?
How far do they range?
Does this thing claim title to this whole Lamar, Lamar Valley,
or is it just right here?
It was a
Rupert Isaacson: single Raven, or it was a group of ravens, or it was a, because
they, they seem to be as solitary as their social and social as their solitary.
George Bumann: It was almost always two.
Okay.
It was almost always two.
And, and over time I discovered that this pair who sat together,
presided over this place.
This was their home, just like it was my home.
Except there weren't fences or clear cut boundaries of a road or
anything that defined their space.
Their space was defined by something much more abstract.
What was it Defined by sound.
It was defined by sound.
Okay.
And I remember clearly one day hearing them well, the, the typical call
is the one I did at the beginning.
It's those three notes.
But one day it transitioned to,
and this was different, and this is the, the diamond in the rough that we all hold.
If we just put in enough time to figure out what's normal, what do
you expect when you see those ravens?
Or what do you expect to hear when you spot those ravens and this diverged?
So, and this is different.
Why is this different?
And immediately one of those birds took off from the archway corral fence and
launched itself across the valley and proceeded to chase this other raven.
With great ferocity.
It was trying to, to grab it in the air and push it down toward the ground.
And the other one was, you know, just doing everything it
could to get away from this.
What I discovered was the resident pair, this was their territory, and there
was this acoustic, no trespassing sign that's represented in those three notes
that was violated, and the violation was followed up with the chase.
But also this sound that from then on forward, I'm like, oh my gosh, every
time I hear that, now I know someone's not where they're supposed to be.
And someone who, who rules over that airspace is chasing them off.
So I'd know immediately, okay, there's a raven, there's two ravens
actually, if we look, oh, yep.
There they are.
One chasing the other.
The, the one behind is the territorial bird.
The one in the front is the interloper.
And so immediately the, the world starts expanding, right?
To see it from the perspective of this big black bird.
Rupert Isaacson: Few questions immediately spring to mind.
Do ravens usually live in pairs?
Because yeah, sometimes one sees them solo, sometimes one sees to
see them in big, almost parliaments.
Um mm-hmm.
And then the other question is, if they're that territorial,
what was that interloper doing?
And actually a third question, why didn't it challenge and fight back?
Or might it have done in another context?
George Bumann: Yeah, that's a really good question.
So typically they are territorial in the sense of for nesting purposes,
you know, they kind of preside over an area so that they can garner the
resources to take care of their young.
Mm-hmm.
So they're, they're most commonly holding down the fort, shall we say,
when, when the, the stakes are high, you know, they're bringing on the next
generation, passing on their genes.
But there are times you're right, where you'll see 3, 6, 8, 10, hundreds.
Hmm.
And these cases like right now here in our, our neck of the woods,
you'll see that surrounding big food sources and birds, as we now know,
there's been a research project that I, I was involved in peripherally
to study ravens here in Yellowstone.
You, and you would think that this wilderness environment, the birds
are staying in the wilderness, they're feeding only unnatural
foods, and it's not the case.
They are commuting daily, 20 to 30 miles each way.
To access food in areas outside of the park and surrounding communities.
So for instance, when I was going to Lamar to teach this program, I was passing the
Ravens who were going the other direction past me, leaving their territories,
going out to the area around my home.
So we were actually trading places as they were coming to take Oh,
coming traffic on the community.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there are things like the dump, there are things like the sewage
treatment plant where they grotesquely scour the, the fats that, that, that
come off of the, the settling ponds.
But mostly it's to take advantage of human hunters killing game
outside of Yellowstone, so on the national forest lands.
And so they're hoping that they will encounter, you know, the, the
room pile and the organs left behind from hunters of elk and bison.
And then you'll see these birds com converged by the hundreds, you
know, 2, 3, 4, 500 in some cases when food supply is really big.
And then they can
Rupert Isaacson: be very
George Bumann: cooperative or at least tolerant.
Tolerant is probably a better way to put it because they're
definitely these squabbles.
And if you hear the sound such as,
right, that, like, that's the sound of a raven saying, get off my back buddy.
Don't, don't, don't peck my eyes out.
You know, this is, I have every right defeat at this carcass that you do.
And so as you learn these sounds, you start getting that window into
their world where they definitely do cooperate, but conditionally.
So like a great example is this call, how,
ah,
and now at your home in Germany, in Austria Scandinavia, Russia, north
America, Alaska, if you hear that sound, it is one of those sounds among the
dialectics in, in, in regional variations that ravens have that is consistent.
The territorial call is consistent.
And that call, that high pitched call is also consistent
because it's so very important.
And the importance of that is it conveys the presence of
food, but not just any food.
It, it communicates the presence of meat.
And when I did start, I ended up reading the Raven Literature.
It overlapped with what I was seeing in Yellowstone Barran Heinrich, one of the
world's leading authorities on Ravens had discovered what he termed the hail
call, which was that high pitched ah,
and the time he saw it.
It was when a single raven found an entire dead moose by itself
near Barron's cabin in, in Maine.
And as a behaviorist, this made no sense.
Why on earth would you shout out when you have found this trove of food to yourself?
And so this is the, the, at the risk of ruining, you know, Ravens in
winter, the book he wrote afterwards.
This call was a situational use of cooperation as it turned out to overwhelm
the resident birds who presided over that area that would otherwise kick it out.
So the meat call, the hail call was actually used to draw.
And when he first heard it, that one Raven called with that high pitch call.
And Ravens came outta the woodwork and they joined it
to feed, and it made no sense.
Again, why would you share?
You built, you make this wonderful dinner, and before you and your family
eat, you invite the h You know, the, the, the local rugby team did dine first.
You know, that makes no sense.
You know, you don't get any.
But what he found was, yes, these were young birds.
These were non territorial birds who were kind of floating around and if they found
something in someone else's backyard, they knew that if they gave this high
pitched hail call, it basically brought in the rugby team and the football
team and, you know, the gymnastics squad, so that the ravens who would
otherwise kick them out were overwhelmed.
Which is a fascinating interplay that, that shows the
intelligence of these creatures.
Rupert Isaacson: So was that one raven that was then driven
out by your resident Raven?
Do you think?
One of those semi juveniles cruising, looking for a territory?
George Bumann: That's why I didn't
Rupert Isaacson: fight back.
George Bumann: Yeah, it didn't fight back.
Usually the,
in any case, when a bird chases another bird, the one in the back has the
upper wing, upper hand, upper wing but
Rupert Isaacson: you can
George Bumann: turn
Rupert Isaacson: around and get behind them or you could, but you,
you do see birds when they're in combat in sometimes doing that.
And sometimes it's clear that one is no, I'm just gonna defend
myself and get outta here.
And the other, other time it's like, no, I'm gonna try and get on top
George Bumann: of you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a complex thing and it matters who it is, you know, whether
it's a juvenile or an adult.
And that's one of the neat things I feel like I've found since.
I was able to step behind some of those layers of the natural world is
to realize they're all individuals.
They are really genuinely individuals in the way we are.
So, you know, I was just talking about this with a friend about grizzly bears.
It's not always the biggest grizzly bear who dominates the carcass.
Sometimes it's a smaller one who just has the attitude that others don't
wanna mess with the dog in the fight.
It's fighting the dog.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Bingo.
Exactly.
That's the rick, Rick McIntyre Wolf eight.
Right.
The, that, that amazing.
Yeah.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Of that.
Yeah.
Small male who seemed to somehow kick butt all over.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's, by rights he should make, yeah.
And he started out as a subordinate.
And, and so the, the context in which these non-human individuals find
themselves brings out these qualities and characters that, you know, we often
see in ourselves when you go away to college, when you get a new group of
friends, you know, the dynamic shifts.
And that's one of the most beautiful things I think, to watch
over time, is the trajectory of a life of a non-human individual.
You know, we've had the chance to do that with individual elk and bison and wolves
in, in some of the cases of the wolves, been able to watch generationally traits
and characteristics that are handed from the grandmother to the mother,
to the granddaughter, and to her pups.
You know, just not just coat color, but the way they hunt,
the way they relate to people.
These very dynamic and, and I think more than anything that shows us we're not
alone in the way we navigate the world, but that we are very much part of their
world, whether we think we are or not,
Rupert Isaacson: these ravens that you got to know, interestingly,
you know, you're in a lonely place.
There isn't a lot of one could perhaps, if there had been more people
around, you might not have paid so much close attention to the Ravens.
Mm-hmm.
How long did you know them for and what else did they guide you into?
Like you're mentioning the elk, you're mentioning the wolf.
So they clearly opened up the world, but you must have had a
relationship with them for some time.
How long did that last for?
How long do Ravens live?
How long did they keep their territories and mm-hmm.
If they seeded their territories or died.
Just tell us a little bit the story and now, now I'm curious.
I wanna know what happened to them.
George Bumann: Yeah, yeah.
It's, and it's a hard thing because it was before this study started where
they were banding any of the birds.
So I, many of these species, and I'm sure you've encountered this
too, they, they all look the same.
Yeah.
And as humans, we sometimes say that even of other cultures, you
know, or other cultures say that about us, that we all look the same.
But of an acquaintance, Joe Huro has, you know, he got to the point after nine
years of literally embedding himself with a group of wild mule deer in Wyoming that
he could tell by facial features alone.
And a few body features the identity of over 200 individual
mule deer that all look the same.
Yeah.
But they don't, the truth is they really don't, when you start paying attention,
and I didn't have the time to get to that level with these birds, and I don't know
if I even really could, but I only had, we, were they staying there in the summer?
So I basically had a season to get to know these birds.
And I, if they traded places with some other ones, honestly, I don't know if I
could have really identified who was who.
But they can live, gosh, there might be some of the same birds there now.
They can live into their teens and twenties.
Well that was gonna be my question.
As far as I know, they're quite long lived birds, you know, even in the wild.
Yeah.
And that was one of the things that I was very cognizant of when
I helped out with this Raven study.
'cause they were notoriously difficult to capture.
Mm-hmm.
They're so intelligent and they're so, astute in terms of reading
situations, but also seemingly reading the intentions of, of us.
Mm-hmm.
So, for instance, we started out one day in the park.
We had a dead squirrel and we put it behind the vehicle we were
in and hid the trap, which is this device that launches a net.
You know, we covered it in newspaper, made it look like a pile of trash,
you know, and we sat there for hours.
And as we're sitting there, the ravens, they knew, they see the squirrel, but they
would fly by and they would not just look, they would look into the car windows.
They would look at us as if to say, you should be getting out, you should
be going for a walk, yet you're, you're doing something different here.
What, what are you doing?
And they would go perch on a rock, maybe 200 meters away, and they
would just sit in and observe.
And they'd fly by again a little while later.
And so it wasn't until we did a bit of craftiness near our home with the
researchers in a place where the birds have always come for generations.
There's a place where our neighbor throws bones.
He is a hunting guide, and he would cut up the, the, the game that they would collect
and hunt and throw the bones in this pile.
So I knew these birds were coming to this, this bait pile.
They were not afraid of it.
So we set up the trap.
And lo and behold, Matias is a wonderful fellow who is one of the lead
researchers from Austria that at that time he was at the Max Plank Institute.
And we launched that net and captured 23 Ravens at once.
Two of them escaped, so we're down to 21.
But still, Mathias says in that smooth Austrian accent in, in, in
English, he says, I've never caught this many, you know, literally I'm
on the phone with my wife, Jenny.
I'm like, bring every, every pillowcase, every sack he had, he had a couple
cat carriers and some pillowcases.
I'm like, bring everything to the, to the pasture at the neighbors quick.
You know, we've, and literally this, this net looks like a, you know.
A, a container of bouncing burnt popcorn, like these birds are just exploding outta
there and we finally bagged them up and we're all bleeding because even though
this bird is not a raptor per se, you know that big sharp hooked beak, they
have a small hook and they will cut you.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I was gonna say, I, I would wanna wait
in there in full armor, I think.
George Bumann: Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah, pretty much.
But you couldn't work very well with gloves on, so you had to, you know,
they'd very delicately get the net out from behind their tongues so you didn't
hurt them and get their, the net out from between their, their toes and claws.
So you just had to open yourself up to it.
But through that process and the process of weighing them, measuring them, putting
the transmitters on the leg, bands, I knew that these long lived birds know
us, even though we can't tell them apart as individuals, they know us.
And John Mars left, who is one of the lead researchers on that same project,
had done a study in, in Washington that you might be familiar with, with they did
crow crows close relative of ravens, and found that they identify us as individuals
and they remember, and they pass it on.
They talk about us, and they would harass this masked figure who
captured them, even though the, they took the mask out for a walk on the
campus of Washington's university of Washington campus once a year.
They captured once, remember this, they captured one time
and let all the birds go.
Every time they wore the mask that they did when they captured
the birds every year thereafter.
And it's been like 17, 18 years now.
The crows would go bananas.
They would harass that person and ignore everybody else.
So through this process I had, this was before Covid, I had a
handkerchief on, I looked like a bank robber, you know, over my face.
I wore clothes that I didn't normally wear.
I wore shoes that I didn't normally wear.
'cause if there was any chance of pissing off the locals, I didn't
wanna be recognized as the guy who was messing with him because in I talk
about this in the book, a friend of ours didn't take those precautions.
Nobody else did, in fact, and she.
Went to a local cafe in town, like two and a half miles from the capture
site and where we did the measuring and all the, the workup on the birds.
Two weeks later, two and a half miles away, she comes outta the cafe
with a scone and a coffee, okay?
And this, this raven shows up and it takes this sideways hop toward her
like you're gonna gimme some of that.
And the moment she spoke.
Now, keep in mind, most of the birds didn't see us anyway, or very little
because they were in a, a cloth sack that would keep them safe, keep them calm.
But they were listening as well as watching Shauna said, oh, what do you
think you're doing to this Raven, who was sidling up for a piece of her scone.
And the moment she spoke, the thing went ballistic.
It screamed in a way she'd never heard a raven scream.
And it jumped into this spruce tree just 20 feet away and just screaming at her.
And meanwhile, these other ravens join it and start screaming at her, and
they follow her all the way down the street screaming, shame, shame, shame.
Yes.
And she knew, she had noticed it had leg bands and a transmitter on its back.
So this was one of the birds.
She helped work up at the study site and it remembered.
Not her, her outward appearance, it remembered her voice.
It only did this after she spoke.
So in addition to being all covered up and wearing different clothes, I was
trying not to talk just on the chance.
And they found this in elephants too.
Like they, they know us way more than we realize.
Rupert Isaacson: So the eavesdropping is two way.
They're eavesdropping on us.
We are eavesdropping on them precisely.
And they're, I guess the subtext of that is there really is no us
and them, we're all part, we're all part of the same species habitat.
There's a lady where I'm sitting right now in a large village, small
town in Germany called Eden Hausen.
There is a park across the street from us which is also, it, it, it's also farmland.
It's sort of half park, half farmland, and then it goes
out to the forest in the park.
But it's sort of a public place where people walk.
There's a lady who goes and she feeds the crows.
And I've been watching her for seven years and she shows up.
The crows are all lined up.
They, they see her coming and she has an individual relationship with each one.
And if you show up there, she'll introduce you.
And I, a bit like you have realized that I.
Pretty sure they know who I am.
And therefore, I want to mind my P's and Q's a little bit because
I, I don't want to get mobbed.
Walking through that, and my wife Eliana, who you just met for this podcast out
where we keep our horses, she started to bring things for the crows because we got
the idea because a friend of mine during Covid in London decided to grow decided
to grow garlic on his balcony, and he put window boxes out, and he came out
one day and found the garlic, dug up from the soil, placed still in the soil, but
inside where the garlic had been a peanut.
And this happened over all times.
And, you know, all kind what's going on?
All kinds of theories.
Everyone's, he texted me about it, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I've got no idea because, you know, you're an nature guy.
Rupert, you know, got window box in Hackney London.
No, no idea.
You know, squirrel.
I don't know, but it doesn't sound like squirrel.
Yeah.
Why?
And why, why is it taking something out, Rupert?
Anyway, of course, he watched and watched, and watched and watched.
It was one day he was coming home, getting out of his car, and he saw
the raven, the, the, the crow fly in.
Dig off his garlic and put a peanut in it.
And then he is like, well, why?
And where are they getting the peanuts from?
So then he gets obsessed, of course.
And it's covid, so there's nothing else to do.
So, which is great because, you know, this is a time we can actually observe nature.
And he begins to follow.
And he followed one basically through the neighborhood, and he saw
that they were going to the local Turkish delicatessen where they had
bags of peanuts outside in sacks.
Oh, wow.
And they were waiting till No, and they were sweeping, they grab one.
George Bumann: Hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: But then they were going and depositing it in his window box.
What were they saying?
Were they saying, well, we think you put that there for us, the
garlic, but we don't like garlic.
So here's a suggestion about some things we might like.
Or were they saying, we think you put this garlic here for us.
We don't like it, but it's the thought that counts.
So here's something for you.
None of the above,
but fascinating,
George Bumann: very fascinating.
Rupert Isaacson: The, the, that's sort of my question is,
you know, ravens in the wild?
You mentioned wolf, you mentioned elk, and I hope you'll take us back there.
But most people, of course, live in urban situations or suburb situations,
and of course, they're surrounded by nature and surrounded by wildlife.
Our, our mutual friend Craig Foster, talks about walking around London and
observing where slugs have gone on paving stones and eaten the algae.
That's growing on the paving stones.
And he can, he's learn to identify not just the trails, but the tooth marks
because they're extremely similar to those of the slugs and the sea slugs that
are on his kelp forest in South Africa.
And he's there feeling, you know, overwhelmed and
freaked out by the big city.
He hates it.
And then he starts to get his tracking eyes on and he's realizing, oh my gosh,
I'm actually surrounded by wildlife.
Yeah, eavesdropping on nature.
TT take us into the city.
Now.
Take us into a more suburban setting.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Wonderful questions and, and wonderful lead in, because
nature really is everywhere.
You don't have to live next to the, the great kelp forest of South Africa,
like Craig or next to Yellowstone.
There's wildness everywhere that is, that is the, almost with the hallmark of
life as it fits in all the places that it possibly could, whether it's a plant,
a, a, a microbe, a, a bird, a mammal.
And they make due.
And in some cases, being near people is actually way more advantageous than
being without, you know, they found that raccoons, for instance, in some places in
the United States are, are far more well off in suburban and urban environments.
They learned to cross streets.
They learned to use intersections.
They also come along.
My Uber driver the other
Rupert Isaacson: day was a raccoon actually.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Was really?
Yes.
And did he, did he keep both hands on the wheel or was it he didn't need to.
He was just driving by ESP.
Yeah, they're more intelligent.
Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm
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And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
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If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
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Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
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Let us know how it goes for you.
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We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
George Bumann: So, you know, the, the bottom line is you, you can interact
with these things, these non-human intelligences everywhere, really.
And so let's step into a park.
Let's say you're, you're living in a park.
And because I know North American species a little bit better, I'll,
I'll use that as an example where you might be out it outdoors before light.
It's dawn and you hear,
so a great horned owl is there somewhere in the distance.
And let's, let's actually add another, a different owl in, because this one is,
is perhaps a little more instructive,
the Bard owl.
And before you can even see, before the sun has come up, you know, in most.
In most likelihood, there is an evergreen tree, or forest, a
component to the forest in the park.
Okay?
So that the sun comes up or it's getting close to sunrise, and you hear, you
know, perhaps if it's a big enough park, you'll hear, teach, teach, teach,
teach, teach the sound of an oven, bird, which is a type of war garden.
It's an oven.
Bird, yeah, it's a very small bird.
And they make a nest that's kind of a globe with a side entrance,
like an old fashioned bread oven.
And they only nest in mature continuous forest.
Whereas if you hear, we, we, we, as the sun is just starting to creep up that
gray cat bird, you know that there's a brushy area, perhaps somewhere over there.
You hear the rattle of a kingfisher.
You know that if you've never even been to that place, that there's a stream or a
river or a pond where there might be fish and this, this bird is looking for that,
or just simply the sound of amphibians, frogs calling, there's a wetland, there's
a marsh, there's some other habitat there.
And so in, in many ways, I think sound is better than vision.
We, we, we default to vision, but sound can go over, around and even through
objects that we can't see through.
And by a way of engaging not just our ears, but you know, learning
to, to see through our noses, learning to see through our fingers.
We discover things that we walked right by in places we thought we
knew, perhaps for our whole lifetime.
And by starting to listen to these wild conversations, you realize a,
you're, you're surrounded by these other living beings, but that they're
also telling you very important things about what your shared space is Like.
Rupert Isaacson: So in June, I was, I was in London at my mom's house and
my mom, like, your mom's a a artist, a sculptor, and she has a studio out back
of the house and there's bed in it.
So I sleep there and I woke up to this across the roof and I say, oh, squirrel.
Yeah, it's like
Scrabble, Scrabble, Scrabble.
I say, not squirrel.
And I look up at the skylight, there's a fox scrambling as if it's digging.
At the skylight, and I'm looking up at him up at his belly.
I've never had that perspective on a fox before.
In fact, I don't think I've had that perspective on any wild animal ever.
It's not fully grown.
It's about a, it's probably about eight months old.
It's quite skinny, but it's, it's semi adult and it's obsessively
scrambling at the skylight.
Like, what do you want you, that's not gonna give it's glass?
Is it play?
And then at a certain point it curls around and curls around and
goes, and it lies down to sleep.
And I'm looking up at this from underneath at this sleeping fox.
I'm there for a few days.
It cra I'm taking pictures.
I'll, I'll send them to you.
The third day I realize it's a family up there and they're living up there.
They're living on the roof.
Because I guess there's all kinds of stuff to eat falling down on
there from the various local trees.
There's probably insects, there's probably spiders, there's probably
wood lice, there's probably ants.
Turned out there were a big nest of ants up there.
And that's what they were scrambling for.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
And the
Rupert Isaacson: ants began to fall through the, later in the
summer the tile, the, the, the, the, the old ceiling and it.
Turn.
And now of course they got the time.
Now my mom curses them because they lift the tiles off.
The same fox is looking for the ants.
It it was one of those moments similar to what you described when you realize,
oh my gosh, there's this whole world going on here in this place that I think
of, in this entirely human context.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But it's compared wilderness.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's where you find it.
And I've had some of the most remarkable encounters with wildlife
in the most unlikely places, you know?
Can you give us an
Rupert Isaacson: example?
George Bumann: Gosh.
Well, a simple one is just knowing that there's a cat on the loose.
You know, I was hiking with my wife along the, the CNO canal after we'd
gone to meet her family in Maryland.
And we just went for a walk on this old railway that had been
converted to a hiking path.
And, and the hill kind of drops down the grade, drops down toward the
canal, and we're at such an angle we couldn't see all the way to the water.
But all of a sudden, a re small bird just jumps up on a, a stick, maybe,
you know, half a meter off the ground.
Cha cha cha cha cha, just making all kinds of noise.
And I knew in an instant that there was something dangerous.
Something of concern right close by.
So we crept closer and looked and looked and finally got a look over
the berm and here's a domestic house cat just, you know, doing
its thing, hunting along the canal.
And that's one of the real beauties to me of, of this eavesdropping is not
only do you have the ability to find animals that you, that were invisible
before, but you step into their world.
And our friend Craig is great at, at talking about this, is that
you, you're not just studying the octopus or the sea ice.
You're, you're, you're seeing what eats them.
You're seeing what they run from, you're seeing what they feed on.
You're seeing where they hide at night.
You're seeing where they go through the sand in, in, in, you know, stormy periods.
You just, you, you step into their world and to me that you can't not help but
begin to be more aware, certainly, but also empathetic for what these wild
creatures go through to just survive.
And we, we live very posh lives, very cushy existences
compared to our ancestors, but.
If you want a window into that, just look at what your foxes have
to do to get by to raise their kids.
Look at what that pigeon, how far that, if you get to identify that one oddly colored
pigeon and realize, you know, sort of like your friend trying to narrow down where
the crows were going, you realize that they're traveling over a very vast, you
know, bit of ground to, to make ends meet.
And, and all the travails they run into, you know, there's other
members of their own species that push them off and, and push them
around, or that they have to avoid.
You just, you just step into a new world and the place you've always been
Rupert Isaacson: talking about.
Craig, you know, one of the
interesting things that came up in our last conversation, it's
actually on this, on this podcast.
So for those listeners, go check out the second podcast with Craig Foster was
that wellbeing, psychological emotional wellbeing in a human tied up with nature.
Like, why is it that we feel so good in nature beyond the fact that
we're our organisms and of course we're designed for planet Earth.
And so, okay, we're gonna do better out there than we do behind a screen, but.
This thing of you, you, you talk about the travels they go through, but often
it seems to me that the natural world really is it That's true abundance
and that animals, and of course wild people are so competent gaining
sustenance unless some environmental condition really shuts them down.
Or someone built a housing estate right where they live or whatever.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: That there really is kind of quality of life.
And we ourselves, as a species feel really good when we are in
a place of great biodiversity.
'cause I think that there is something ancestral in us that
goes, ah, lots of food here.
I'm Okay.
Lots of abundance.
You live in one of those places, you live in Yellowstone.
What do you feel is the state of the mental health of, say yourself?
Just take yourself as an example and put yourself in different phases of your
life, in different times of mental health.
What do you feel these places of abundance give us?
What do you notice in the.
People that are attracted to these places that come, you know, Yellowstone
is this massive tourist attraction.
People want to be there even in a day and age of completely sedentary culture.
And, you know, we're all overweight and we're all this and we're all
that, but yet we are drawn in vast numbers still to these, these places.
What do you think is going on with all this and what do you think the locals,
the wild locals make of us there?
George Bumann: I think this is a, a wonderful, wonderful question because
none of us are living in the ideal bubble.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
None of us have the perfect life, and even if we do think of it, you know,
someone looks across the lawn and sees something better and different that
they, they think they're missing out on.
And you know, I, this is, this is one I've thought about a bit.
You know, I, I feel like the, the high point in my life as far as mental
health and freedom and appreciation of beauty and the, the feeling of, of
togetherness with all of the living things in my family, neighbors, fish, birds
was when I was about seven or eight.
And I was always out on the docks fishing.
I was in, you know, we had had about an acre of land, but the,
the latter half was not moan.
So it was kind of feral.
And that was my jungle.
That was my, that was my Amazon, that was my African Savannah, like that.
I escaped into that space and there weren't a lot of kids around.
Not that there weren't in the area and didn't have a, a large class in school.
But when I came home I had myself, but I had myself perhaps in the best
way in association with that space.
So there's constant, I think one of the things that truly
diverse wild nature offers us is this, this sense of possibility.
You know?
So as you become in tune with that space, you see possibilities for the, the,
you know, Maslow's hierarchy, right?
That you as a, as an educator in, in the outdoors leading a backpacking trip
or an expedition, you'll, you have to worry about the pe people's safety.
Are they fed, are they hydrated?
You know, those, those key elements that we need when
satisfied, give us a sense of calm.
I know we're, I know dinner's coming at the end of the day,
I won't go to sleep hungry.
The sense of possibility for those options is what I feel in nature.
But interestingly, for myself, the progression was
society culture molds us in different ways.
And I would say not always for the better in, in the sense that
the human world is very inwardly focused in, in a lot of ways.
Indigenous cultures not so much, you know, of course they're much, they have to be
because they're directly tied to the land.
But for those of us in the modern world, we're, we're less
and less directly connected.
So it's easy to fall into this, me, me, me, my, my, my,
our family versus your family.
And starting in through my early teens, I, I was wanting to fit in
and, and pleased those around me to do what I thought I should do.
And even as I got into the university and was very good at my studies,
I, you know, excelled and was honored for all those things.
But I, there was this piece in me that wasn't there satiated, it wasn't
fulfilled in the way those hours of free play and exploration did for me when I
was in that seven to 8-year-old range.
And it's taken me a long time to get back to that.
I think when, honestly, honestly, when we first moved to Yellowstone,
I was not in a great place.
I, I, I didn't know what I was supposed to do with my life.
Quite frankly.
We'd moved to this new place.
I knew I needed a break.
I tried doing illustration work for publications, but the age
of illustration, it was gone.
I tried doing some writing that I tried doing watercolor painting.
I was teaching.
I was just, there was just this unquenchable longing for something.
I didn't know what
I just, and I think a lot of people are in this position where you
just, you don't know what it is, but you feel something's missing.
And I think this is very much a part of that very old piece that resides
deep within us that longs for genuine, supportive community that doesn't
judge us, that lets us be creative and odd and weird and all those quirky
ways that lets us explore into our environment without, without parameters.
And so the Ravens, for me, to be honest, to bring some of this back
around, were my effort to start recapturing some of my youth.
I.
In this non-judgmental, completely open, non-directed way, that was
the epitome of freedom in many ways.
And we're not talking about political freedom here or economic freedom.
I'm talking about personal lived freedom to just wander over that hill,
to walk through that creek barefooted, just because you want to, not because
you know, someone says that that is what you should or shouldn't do.
And these days, I, my physical health is better than it's ever been.
I think my mental health is, is, is very close to all.
I'm still, you know, I think we all struggle trying to find
things that give us a hand or, or a rope to our better selves.
And, and nature, nature does that.
I was interviewing the project veterinarian who brought the very first
wolves down to Yellowstone here recently.
And I asked him about the physical health of these wolves and he said,
they're immaculate, they're beautiful.
Yeah.
Once in a while they get diseases.
Parvovirus can canine virus.
Sometimes they get mange, but nothing compared to the health
and ailments of domestic animals.
And so many of the ills of the human world spill over into our pets.
You can't not have a pet sometimes and not see how our world, it's
an agreement in, in some respects, but it's not in another, and it,
and we suffer from some of those same things.
We are domesticated humans
and it, it brings a lot of baggage with it, but it's heartening to
know that nature is that place where we can offload the baggage.
Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting.
As you were talking there, I was drawing this little diagram, so it started with
the questions like, is nature optimism?
And then I wrote under optimism, I wrote belonging question mark.
And then when you said freedom, I wrote freedom up at the top.
So then I've ended up with is nature sort of with one of those brackets,
one of those squiggly swirly brackets, freedom, optimism, belonging.
In fact, is it possible to have those things really without nature?
George Bumann: I've never had to answer that exact question, but
in my, my snap response is no.
Rupert Isaacson: And it's interesting that you bring up wolves.
I was lucky enough in the nineties to go and report.
Very, very early on the Wolf Ry introduction in Yellowstone.
So I got to see a bit of that, and I've gone back a few times
and seen how they've thrived.
But it seems to me that if there's a species that really typifies that
in a way that almost reflects human society a little bit, it's wolves.
What?
Talk to us about that.
And
you, you, you live there, you talk about the Lamar Valley, that's sort of the best
wolf spotting spot in the world now really because they're, they're out there on the
open ground from the few places you can actually drive in your car and literally
see them by the side of the road.
Incredible.
Yeah.
Talk to us about wolves.
George Bumann: Wolves are contentious.
We have several bills that have been put forward in our state legislature to, in
whatever ways they can annihilate them.
Again, you know, it, it won't happen to the success of, of previous
times of the 19th century because poison is not allowed at this point.
But I think like we as children who have siblings squabble most, with those
who are closest to us or most like us, there's the most we have to lose.
And I think as a social mammal who is both territorial and outspoken, you
know, unafraid to be seen and speak.
Its mind howl at you right in your face.
You know, when you step too close to the den un unawares there is at once
as indigenous cultures, my nesper friends say that the wolves are how
we learn to be pit good parents.
You can see that similarity as, as an analog and inspiration, or
you can see that as competition.
And therein lies a lot of the, the beauty in the, the, the travails of, of the world
of wolves, especially in the context of Yellowstone, where it's not like Northern
Canada or Alaska or Russia, where you have vast untracked spaces for them to live.
They're living, you know, as they leave Yellowstone in context with human society.
But when you see them as individuals and get over some of the mythologies
that we attach to them, good, bad, or indifferent, and see them for who
and what they are, they become, in my mind, some of the best teachers.
They're like us in so many ways.
And that's the thing I, you know, my art actually is a great, I use
my art as an excuse to dig deeper into the lives of my subjects.
What I really try to portray is not a wolf, or not a bear or not a elk.
It's, it's.
What is this being who resides in this form thinking, you know, some
of these pieces take years to, to get to my satisfaction because I'm trying
to model something that has no shape.
I'm trying to model what I receive from them as perhaps anthropomorphized
as it is in some cases.
What's going through their mind?
How do they experience this same exact moment as, as compared to me?
And when you're having a hard day for whatever reason, coworker pissed you
off, or you you got sick and vomited in the interview or just any, pick your,
pick your, you know, terrible day and you go outside and you see this wolf
who's just gotten kicked in the ribs and has three broken ribs and is still
out there providing for its family.
It's PAC Mate had its femur crushed, and yet from the air, the biologist
flying along dart it and would never have known that it only had three legs
because they just persevere that drive to survive, that drive to persist,
to drive, to care for your young, to drive, to protect your mate.
These eternal, deep universal things make you turn around and look at your own.
Shitty day and think, alright, I don't have really that much to complain about.
I've got dinner tonight, my sweetie right here.
You know, I've got all my, my, my bodily appendages in Good.
What's Netflix?
Yeah, I've got Netflix.
Totally.
So they're a wonderful mirror to us in many ways because the behaviors of
animals will tell us a lot about ourselves that perhaps we didn't even realize.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
They seem to meet wolves to be, to typify the best of family.
Mm-hmm.
That okay.
You've got an alpha pair who will have the young, but the entire pack will
look after the young most of the time.
Yeah.
They will fight these territorial battles sometimes to the death, but
really they're doing it for family.
Yeah.
When I was a journalist there, I remember Idaho was also bringing wools back
in and it got blocked by the state.
Who withdrew the funding got withdrawn.
And the ne as you talked about the Nez pe the Nez PE Indians
stepped up and said, we'll fund it.
Because for us the wolf is a symbol of family.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
You are living out there and you are taking people.
Right?
So if somebody wanted to, we'll go into this at the end, how people can
contact you, but people can actually go with you into Yellowstone, right?
You guide people.
George Bumann: Yeah.
I still, I don't do as much as I used to, but a few times a year I teach
classes and, and things like that.
So yes.
Rupert Isaacson: When you are bringing people in, I presume sometimes people
are coming as families, some people are come, you know, and you are
showing them these family structures.
What, what are the insights that people gain?
What are the things they come away with that they didn't expect perhaps?
George Bumann: I think one of the, again, good question.
I think a lot of times the initial takeaways are, they're not doing
what I thought they would do.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
George Bumann: They're walking right by a whole group of elk or, you know,
they're just, they're just laying there.
Wolf's spend a lot of time laying about.
And until we really have a chance to, to view them more and view individuals
and individuals from different packs.
And do you see this spectrum of, of behaviors that sort of
calibrates and recalibrates?
What, those expectations are we just so removed that yes, we have
dogs and it's easier for us to relate to wolves perhaps that way.
And you'll hear that, oh my gosh, it look, my dog does that.
It rolls on its back, or, or it spins in circles before it, it lays down and
for no reason, well, you get to see here it, you know, in the wild it, the wolves
doing it, you know, maybe to, to lay the grass down, out there in, in the valley.
But to see those, some of those tender moments too, I wish I could say I was
there for this one, but Rick McIntyre maybe told you this story of Wolf 21.
He's like the all time am heavyweight champion of, of wolf fights.
You know, he, he at one point ran headlong by himself into
the, the center of an enemy pack.
And his pack subsequently rallied around him and they drove off this,
this enemy to the Druid peak pack.
And yet this wolf that is so fierce and so strident in his defense of his
family, can turn around and play with his puppies, with abandon, you know,
let those puppies attack him and knock him to the ground and bite him and
put their paws over his back, which is something you do not do to a alpha wolf.
You know, you, you don't dominate or, or symbol that, with these behaviors that
this father freely lets his kids do, bite him on the ankles, you know, just
he falls to the ground and feigns, you know, defeat so that these children of his
can experience something of, of what he can teach them just by being who he is.
So I,
it's seeing these, these moments and these, these little windows
into just how similar, very much on parallel tracks in life.
You know, good dad plays with his kids.
A good mom reads them at at bedtime and they, they really inspire.
And I think people come away from that changed how, how can I be a better dad?
I do it too.
You know, it's like, man, it didn't run off and get another bone at the carcass.
It actually stayed there and it, it greeted that puppy
and played with that puppy.
And, and even if for five minutes, can I do that with our dog to improve his
life and just, just stop after I come in the door and I've got all these things
in this to-do list in my head yet?
No, just, just give, give five minutes, give 10 minutes.
It's, it's nothing really, but it means the world.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: You, I watched a Ted talk that you did in which you, and we
have not talked about your sculpture yet.
So listeners, George is an extremely stonly good sculptor.
Won a bazillion awards and a bazillion shows and look him up.
We'll give you web things at the end.
If you wanna pay a million dollars for sculptures, you should.
'cause they're great.
But you were sculpting
out of clay on stage a wolf, but I remember you saying,
or did I, did I see it right?
Is it a wolf?
And you turned it into a coyote and then you turn it back into a wolf,
then you turn it into a Labrador, then you say, no, it's definitely a wolf.
And it's, is it a she wolf?
And then you cocked the leg.
It was great.
Of the wire structure and then you was No, it's actually is a she wolf.
And then you, and you told a story, which I found very inspiring
about motherhood.
George Bumann: Hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you tell us that story please?
George Bumann: Yeah, yeah.
And it's, it's a good one because it's, it was one where I was out
with a family and it was midsummer.
So the first week of June July in Lamar Valley.
And this family dearly wanted to see wolves.
And so I'd taken them to a place that overlooked.
The route through which the, the local wolf pack took to get to their den.
So you'd see Cummings and goings potentially all day long, but at that
time of the year, it's time for the puppies to really gain their exposure to
the wider world, you know, here to four.
By early July they've lived in the den and food have been brought to
them and toys have been brought to them and the families visited them
there and taken care of them there.
But there comes a point where you have to get out into the world and see what it's
really like and who you have to contend with in the situations you run into.
So, explain that to the family.
This is the place where, you know, we could see the Druid wolves coming
and going from the den, you know, hear that often the places they cross
the river and in the distance, you know, some of the trails they used.
So keep your eyes open.
And we were there for a little while and at one point the daughter says, there's a
wolf over there and we're on this bluff.
That sort of drops down to first the road, then a small creek that flows into
the Lamar River and then the Lamar River.
And along the, the edge of this same bluff was a wolf.
She was right.
She, she was entirely right.
It was maybe a quarter mile from us, half a mile.
I can't remember.
'cause we were looking through spotting scopes, but it wasn't just any wolf.
This was the Alpha female, the famous Wolf, 42, the Cinderella Wolf depicted
on multiple television programs quickly.
Why was it a Cinderella wolf?
She was dubbed the Cinderella wolf because when the wolf were returned in 1995,
as you experienced, they were brought as much as they could in family groups.
And when she was brought down with her family, one of the other quote
unquote family members, as it turns out, we now know genetically
was not a pure sibling to her.
And as shown by Bob Landis' footage in some of the National Geographic films
early on that came out, she and her other sisters and even her mother were brutally
terrorized by this wicked stepsister.
She drove her mother outta the pack, drove a couple of her sisters outta
the pack, drove Wolf 42 outta the pack, and ultimately they got sick of it.
This was the, this
Rupert Isaacson: was the she wolf.
I remember hearing about this.
You actually went around killing the cubs of some of the other ones.
Is that right?
Correct,
George Bumann: yes.
40 Wolf, 40 was her number would went to the year before and killed 40 twos pups.
And apparently she highly unusual behavior among wolves too.
Very unusual.
Very unusual to kill.
Pups or any individual within your own pack, that is very
get so in any species unusual.
Yes.
Right.
We, we don't have the corner on that, but it's far more rare, I would
say, even than in our population.
So 42 was not gonna take it as it seems is from what we understand.
She and perhaps one of her adult daughters and maybe a couple others, put their
paws down, said Not this time sweetie.
And they beat her up badly and she ultimately died of her injuries.
So this is kind of the pretext to her that morning, but also
her rise and her ascendance to be the alpha female of that pack.
She was a, a strong leader, but she, if I can use a human
term, was, was compassionate.
Mm.
You know, even, even as an alpha, they don't always lead from the front, you
know, and she would lead from the back.
Sometimes she would lead from the middle of the pack when they were traveling.
And at the time we saw her this morning with this family, she was eight years old.
Now, keep in mind, this is almost three times the normal lifespan of a, a regular
wolf in the population at that time.
So within her was this accumulated wisdom of life
and that plays into the events that unfolded in a really.
Beautiful way that I thankfully realized then, but even more so now as a parent.
And as we watched 42 stood on that bluff and she at one point looked behind her,
which if you know anything about animal behavior, was often a, a, a sign quite
universal, one that someone else is there.
She looked back into the forest and outta that forest came five little
puppies just clamoring tiny little characters, you know, just 7, 8, 9 weeks
old, however old they were very young.
And they joined at her heels as if to say, okay, now what mom?
And she gave the signal, whatever that signal was, and they descended the
bluff down toward the road and the park rangers stopped traffic so that the,
the family could cross the, the road.
And it was hysterical because it was late enough in mourning that the sun had
been hitting the asphalt and it was warm.
And I noticed as these puppies were dancing across the pavement of the road,
that they were kind of like picking up their paws in this funny ways.
If they had something stuck to them, when, in fact, I think it was just
the heat of the, the road in the, the morning sun was a new sensation to them.
Right.
And they get across the road, it's like, woo, they made it,
there are three big obstacles.
The road, the creek, and then the river.
And phew.
Okay.
So they, they go across and they hit Soda Butte Creek.
And mom is now joined by two of her adult daughters.
So auntie one and auntie two join, and the adults go to the Ford, the crossing
place of the creek that they usually use.
And the three adults cross the creek.
And the pups aren't sure about this whole thing.
They're, you know, they're very apprehensive about
stepping into the water.
They're kind of exhibiting this indecision.
But at 1.1
of 'em just leaps in and then they all jump in, you know, but the flow
quickly takes them, you know, and, and most of them get out, but one
gets washed down like a hundred yards.
And we're, you know, us watching we're like, oh my gosh,
did, did that puppy make it?
Did it just, did we literally just watch this puppy drowned.
And, you know, pretty soon out comes this pup onto the far side of the bank
and it just, in that beautiful morning light, it shakes off and there's just
this prismatic spl you just spray of, of fractured light that, that sort
of heralded, this youngster making it, getting back with its siblings.
Whew.
Boy, that was a big deal.
Hope we don't have to do that again.
So they made it through the second big obstacle.
Then they came to the third, which was even bigger.
Yet it was the Lamar River.
And even in mid-summer throughout most of the history, that is still at
high water or at least higher water than normal as far as the year goes.
So per crossing the creek, the adults take them to the Ford of the river.
And as they're standing there, the adults, you know, sort of survey,
got all the pups it seems like, and they stride out across the flow.
They make it to the other side and they look back and all at once, this one black
pup just says, to hell with this, this is a fool's errand if I've ever seen one.
And it starts walking up its side of the river upstream and all the other pups
join it, and you can, you know, totally anthropomorphizing, but there's something
within the wolves that you, you know, you can feel that, okay, this isn't working.
But to me it was like G kids, you know, like we've all had that, you
know, it's like you're trying to shuttle them from point A to B and
they get stuck with friends or you know, the dandelion next to the path
and come on, I have an agenda for you.
And it just wasn't working.
So back across the river, the adults went, they gather up the puppies,
they bring 'em back to the Ford, they cross again, they turn, look
back, and off the pups go again.
And this went on and on until they start, they start moving up around
a, a bend of the river to the point where we can't see them anymore.
So we don't know.
What's going on in the 10 minutes goes by, 15, half hour, 45 minutes goes by,
and at some point, all of a sudden we see one wolf head, a second wolf head
above the sage brush, and then they start moving into where we can see them better.
And behind them are all five pups.
They made it.
And so then they trundled on across the valley to their traditional
rendezvous site, which is kind of a, a, a traditional gathering place, but
also a babysitting site for the pups to start learning what it's like to live in
the Lamar Valley, the open, wild world.
But one of the most beautiful things to me that ties into that comment
you made about how this is such a statement on motherhood is every time
she went back to get those pups, she would pick up something in her mouth.
Sometimes it, it was a rock, like literally would pick up a rock with her
teeth or a stick, and she would take that around to each one of the puppies
as if to say, I've got something for you.
You, you want it?
This is really good.
Do you want it?
You know, I, I've done this with my own son, with gummy worms to get
him to the top of the mountains.
Right.
He's just like learning from the wolf.
I would never use such a bribe.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
You gotta gotta lure you along somehow with something that, that takes
your mind off of this, this hurdle.
And, and she did it, this wisdom within this mother of seeing so many
difficulties and successes, bringing that all to bear around this vital task
of cultivating the next generation of hunters, of soldiers, of caregivers.
And she did it in spades.
It was just, it still is so touching to me that story.
And as it turned out, she was killed by another wolf pack later in the year.
So this would be her last litter of puppies that she would ever have.
And listening to Wolf 21, her mate, how and how and how for her that February was.
I can still hear it.
And I think to me, the sculptures, the viewing, the book, the, all these things
are just excuses to try to peel back,
what did that mean for me?
What did that mean Then what does it mean to me now?
What, what does that teach us?
And that's nature to me.
It's infinite.
It is,
it is freedom.
It is joy.
It is obligation.
It's tragedy.
It's, it's, it's everything you can possibly imagine rolled into one.
And it gives us, it just gives us inspiration,
perspective, options, and yeah.
I start running outta words.
It just, the vastness.
That's why I went to
Rupert Isaacson: words.
Don't cut it.
Yeah.
It it, it's so interesting that we are all animals vocalize or many of them do.
We have this larynx so you know.
Mm-hmm.
They call us homo sapien sapiens.
But that's just means the thinking ape.
That's everything with a brain thinks there's nothing special
to humans about thinking.
But we do speak.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: So were the ultra vocalists and yet words fail us.
If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm guessing you're somebody
that, like me, loves to read books about not just how people have achieved
self actualization, but particularly about the relationship with nature.
Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
what started Live Free Ride Free.
And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
Land, which tells the story of.
My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
Come on that adventure with me.
George Bumann: That's why I returned to art, honestly, Rupert, that I felt
so much from this place when I let, when I gave into it and quit asking
myself, is this my career trajectory?
Am I supposed to do this?
Is this gonna help my resume?
Is this all that bullshit?
I just let go.
You experience things that you will never expect.
You know, there is a time when I would be working on a black bear sculpture,
let's say, and I would be just, you know, driving, you know, striving to find that
black bear so I could finish the sculpture as I often do outside in the field.
And I'd never find the bear.
But when I let go, I'd bring the sculpture in case I saw the bear, I would see
the moose with her fawn or her calf.
I would see the badger feeding.
Its young.
I'd find all these other things that I could not have possibly planned that
were so infinitely better than what I thought I should be doing and finding.
And that's not just for wildlife sightings.
This is, this is for my day.
Like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do?
I'm so sick and tired of office work and staring at this screen.
My wife and I say, 10 minutes.
10 minutes.
It's always worth it.
Okay, I can do 10 minutes.
And of course, you end up spending an hour 'cause the ants lead you over to
this trail that they've made that goes under the, the log over there and then
the, then this, a bull snake takes off from there and you can see where it's
trying to check out where the, the magpie nest is or the the robin Nest.
And it just takes you out of that world that you've built around yourself
and just helps you chill out, man.
Like, look around, enjoy, relax, breathe.
And we're the better for it.
But it just seems so hard sometimes.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think you talk about sound soundscapes
and that sound really brought you in to this wild place, and that
by learning sounds and what sounds might mean we can learn so much more
about what's around us and back to the way we, our species make sound
George Bumann: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Is we make it through story.
I, I've been, and I've been lucky enough to live with koan, bushman, hunter
gatherers in, in the Kalahari boat.
That's actually how I know Greg and through that work and so on and, and
story's everything, story's the hunt.
It's the gathering, but it's healing.
Particularly what story is, is healing.
And we're funky monkeys.
We're sort of half bonobo, half love and peace and love making and
flowers and Jefferson airplane.
And we are half chimpanzee, gangster up, gonna rip fucking head off.
And how do we bring these two sides of ourselves together?
And of course, in a wild human context.
We have the shaman, we have the healer at the center of the culture.
And what is that?
But story, you know, you bring your you bring your dilemma doesn't have to be
an ailment to the healer and the healer.
That's a story.
And then the healer goes into the spirit world, goes into an
altered set of consciousness and goes and talks to our ancestors.
Or he talks about climbing a rope.
That's very interesting.
Earlier, poked up my ears because all the good healers I met in the Kalahari
talked about climbing the rope to God's village when they're in trance
and seeing this great interconnected web that they climb and then they get
a series of instructions and then they bring that back and create a new story.
And then you go out into that new story.
Now there you are in that wild area.
But one of the things which I think we all feel to some degree in the US unless we're
living in a place like New Mexico where there's a really, really strong indigenous
culture where the people who are always on the land are still on the land,
there's often a sense of are, but the people are missing.
And this idea of pristine wilderness, we know is a complete illusion.
There were always people there that people got cleared out to make.
To make it a national park.
It's the same, same story in Africa, by the way.
Mm-hmm.
And of course when we go into the city where we say there is no wild,
as you pointed out earlier, we're surrounded by the wild in the city.
We are of the place, but yet when we go into a place like Yellowstone,
because the original people, the Nez PEs as you, as you pointed
out, they're not there anymore.
And there's a pretty thorough going genocide.
Yeah.
You know, we gotta call it what it is.
And I'm a product of the colonial experience myself, my family
are South Africans and Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we all participated, our ancestors all participated in this.
And we are tame people now and we go into the wild for healing.
But that story, that wild story is still there for us.
Mm-hmm.
Do you, this is more speculative now, but as you go forward into the next
phase, you've written this really good book, you do this amazing art.
You take people into the wilderness, you help them to interpret what they
see you, you help people to heal themselves in the stressful city
by noticing the wild around them.
Where are we going?
As a species with this, we're going more into ai.
We're go, you know, you go to a place like Yellowstone, but the
original people, they're not there.
One could say that's a very pessimistic thing.
Then you talk about nature gives you options and I take that as optimism.
And there have actually been a lot of recent and I've, I've been involved in
some of them as a human rights activist.
Big wins by indigenous people in the last 30 years as almost
like a slowly rumbling moment.
Momentum that from the old days of just wipe 'em out to build McDonald's.
You know, to now know indigenous people are beginning to get the
land back and change things.
And what else is wiped out, say from yellow and the wolves
eradicated at their back.
Back.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Are we as a
George Bumann: species, rewilding
some of us are not enough.
Really that's why I spent three and a half years on this book.
I just certainly could have done far better things with three and a half years.
But I saw how transformative the experience of wildness.
Was for people, you know, tens of thousands of folks I've had the
pleasure of sharing Yellowstone with.
And you see the reaction and you feel it because you felt it yourself that they
are not gonna be able to articulate this, but by God, they sure as hell felt it.
And I, it gives me great solace to see those indigenous cultures bringing
back some ownership and say, over the land, because God's sake, sure as
hell in the US the dollar rules the United States of America incorporated.
But in those indigenous cultures that remain, there still is
that baked in understanding.
You know, we're very smart, we made ai, we do all these kinds of
things, but we're not really wise.
Should we do that?
What aren't we doing that we should?
And within those cultures is that consult of the land?
Is this good for the seventh generation of everybody?
Not just people, but is this good for the land?
Is this good for the water?
Is this good for the air?
And will these kinds of touchpoints with nature and wildness in our own
wild within be enough to counter that?
I don't know.
I'm pretty pessimistic myself, but what I really do believe in is that
it is through the story that we will leave a legacy of what is good and true
for those generations that manage to persist after whatever happens, happens.
I don't feel like I honestly contribute that much, but if I can for someone
pass on something that gives them joy, that helps them through tough times,
it makes them bust out laughing when they're at their worst and think to look
to that squirrel who's got half a tail and think, I still got my tail at least,
then that will be a contribution.
My grandfather was a master storyteller.
And he would never have said that, but I watched it and I knew it from a young age.
I would, I would ride my bicycle to the museum that he helped start.
And it covered local history in that part of New York from 10,000 years to
basically the pre well to world to war.
What town was that and what's the museum?
It's called the Fort Brewerton Historical Society.
And it was built on the grounds of a a, a very early European owned basically
home and trading place, but it was on the site of a French and Indian
war embattlement and, and campsite not campsite, but a fortifications.
Mm-hmm.
Still one of the most well preserved in, in all of that region, but he, you know,
it covered everything from the paleo Indian culture 10,000 years ago, all the
way up through the, you know, woodland periods and the explorer periods, and
Father Le Moine and Samuel Champlain and Civil War and Revolutionary War.
All these connections to that place that I grew up hearing these stories
when we were on the boat fishing.
You know, I could picture in my mind, sir William Johnson in the beau coming
across a Iida Lake to lay siege to the French forces in their Huron
companions to the north and west.
I, I lived with those stories and see them in my mind as real
as I see the bobber drop when a.
A perch bites.
And I would watch him tell these stories to other people.
And even in the span of 10 to 20 minutes, he would, the people would change.
You would see their energetic signature, if you will, elevated,
altered, arguably improved.
And the, the time that brought it to me most, that almost still
brings me to tears, was he'd always wanted to go to Alaska
and he never made it.
So for his 75th birthday, our family pooled all their resources
and bought he, myself and my uncle, his son, a ticket to go to Alaska.
And it was a cruise, so it was like totally not my way to do it.
Probably not his either.
I'm pretty damn sure of it.
But we went anyway.
It was a wonderful opportunity to be all together, the three of us.
And as you often do, you sit at the same table every night with the same people.
And just my grandfather being my, his himself would tell stories every day.
And at that table was a co, a couple from Cardiff Wales and there was a
couple from Mexico City and their adult daughter, MBE was her name.
And he would just tell stories.
And the, the couple from Mexico City did not speak any English.
The daughter would have to fragmentary, translate the stories
to them from my grandfather.
And the tour came to a close and NBE pulled me aside right
before we said our last goodbyes.
And she said, I wanted you to know your grandfather's stories were
the highlight of my father's trip.
And they didn't even share a language.
And yet this mystique, this power, this, you could almost say shamanistic ability
to transcend time and space for the betterment of now was in full effect.
I never forgot that.
And I think more than anything, the story gives me hope that those, those good and
true things about our world, principally underpinned by the natural world, will
persist as we have to tell the story.
Mm.
We have to tell it again and again.
And even to people who don't get it and don't want to hear
it, we have to tell it again.
We have to learn to tell it in different ways that are appealing
and do get a foot in the door because we have to tell the story.
That's really all we have.
Money's nothing.
If you invest your most precious resource, your time in something, I
feel you are obligated to tell that story, to share with the village
what you have learned so that they too can stand upon your shoulders
as much as you've stood on theirs.
It,
Rupert Isaacson: it's, I've just been thinking, you know, there you are.
In, when, when you were growing up in upstate New York, by the way,
Fort Burton or Burton, did you say?
Brewerton, BR Eton, we're gonna look that Fort Brewerton.
I was busily trying to look up Burton or Brewerton while you
were talking to see what, what Brewerton French and Indian Wars.
Yes.
The English and the French battling it out for who would get control of the fur
trade before America was minerals and
George Bumann: Yes,
Rupert Isaacson: even agricultural wealth.
And using the Indians to do their fight and call them
George Bumann: Indians all the way through.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Then these stories taking place against a wild, natural
backdrop, whether it was then in the 18th century or whether it was your
grandfather founding the historical society and helping to create that museum,
or against that backdrop of Alaska.
We've been telling stories since we have been on the planet.
It occurs to me as you were saying, that the, the same animals, the same
ravens, the same wolves, the same foxes have been observing us, as you say,
and listening to us tell our stories.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you ever get a sense
that
they know we are, they are in our stories and
are we in theirs?
Yes.
George Bumann: To both.
Rupert Isaacson: Talk to me about that.
What's been your experience?
George Bumann: Sometimes the story is told to ourselves,
and I think I.
Sort of alluded to that, that change in the e energetics of, of an individual
in contact with story, it shifts us into a place or a plane or, I don't know.
I don't have words for it.
I know it when I feel it, that makes us open.
So I talk to animals, not thinking they will understand me in the words
I use, but they will get my meaning.
And indigenous cultures around the globe say this, you know, you, you talk to
the animals and they will talk back.
And I don't make the animal noises when I'm in the field.
I wanna make very clear about that.
It's illegal in Yellowstone.
But even outside of that, my own ethical boundaries, I do not imitate them.
I used to do it for hunting, and I would again, if I hunted,
Rupert Isaacson: is that how you learned it?
Because they're so good?
George Bumann: Yes.
That's where I started.
It was I learned to hunt deer and turkeys and ducks and geese.
I figured out how to call beavers of all things in order to hunt them, but
it didn't get me closer to them in the way that we're talking about here.
So I keep my mouth closed.
If I imitate the raven in the field, I do it under my breath
because even if I'm not making the sound, we all learn differently.
We learn not just with our mind.
We learn.
With our soma, the, the summation of our body.
Our, our, our entirety is a learning tool.
It's an antenna, a receiver, and a projector.
A transmitter.
And so when I'm out there I've heard indigenous folks that I know here say
that they, the animals respond to them when they speak their native language.
But I've sort of done some of my own ad hoc experiments with just
speaking English, my native tongue.
And I think I encourage others to do that because you don't make eye contact.
Like with a lot of indigenous cultures, it's important that you don't look
your fellow interlocutor in the eye.
That's rude.
It's a provocation.
But you speak into the space that you share and they hear you.
They get your intentions, they get your motives.
They understand whether they are safe or not.
Great example is we just, my son and I walked our dog, he's, he just had knee
surgery, so we aren't going very far, but we went down the driveway, which is
two tenths of a mile long, but we went to the end and on the way back in those
few minutes, an entire herd of elk.
Walked across the driveway and were occupying and feeding
the place that we had to walk through to get back to the house.
They were all almost all around the house.
So what do you do?
You know, like most people would hoo hoo get the, get outta here like we do with
the seagulls on the beach, or you know, the pigeons are defiling the sidewalk,
get outta here, blah, blah, blah.
Well, you're, you're being tallied, you are being observed, you're being received.
You are, your behavior is being remembered.
Pigeons, colom, Bolivia, the rock dove.
It can remember hundreds if not thousands of people's faces and
know who's naughty and who's nice.
And through the behavior of one another, and watching that so
closely, others get the message having never had an encounter with you.
So our approach is what a, another mutual friend of John and I or ex Craig and I,
John Young calls the honoring routine.
So when you run into an animal or herd, or he's this great example of running
into a group of geese and they need to get to the other side of where these geese
are just like we had to cross through.
Where the elk were is you walk until you see them take notice and
you don't look, but you stay for a moment and you respect their space.
You might even back up.
You might fiddle with some sticks or take your attention off of them, but that
initial contact lets them know you have a directive, but I'm only gonna ex exercise
this directive if you give me permission.
We don't ask as human beings, for the most part.
We just take, and we don't worry about the collateral damage.
If you really want the relationship, you have to be willing to give.
And that might just be simple as giving space, giving a minute of your time.
But what that does is George and I, young George and Hobbes, our black
Labrador stopped and we turned around.
So we were facing away from them and they went back to feeding.
Could see it out of the corner of my eye.
And after a moment or two letting them do that relaxed, I turned
around again and I walked.
And this time they let me go a little further and I repeated, I
turned around, I turned my gaze away.
I talked to them.
Sorry, it's cold out.
We needed to get back to the house.
We don't have as good a fur as you do.
We're, we're gonna be patient though.
We'll be right here.
If you, if you want us to wait a little bit longer, wander
backwards, noodle with a few things.
We did this a couple times and just like with John's example of the geese,
they, they, the, the sea parted.
The geese parted the elk, parted the one that was in the driveway
that really didn't wanna move.
We gave her a little more time, but she too just took enough steps off to
the, the western side of the driveway.
There was enough room for us to go through,
and you don't, I've done this with bison.
He had a school group and it's this huge herd of bison we couldn't get through.
I was like, listen, kids, this is how we're gonna do it.
No pictures, no eye contact with the animals.
Follow these rules to the T and they let you write through and thank them.
It's, it's a, it's a conversation that's communicated without, without sound in
that case, but it is very clearly received and acted upon and that that reciprocity
of, you know, all told that elk incident, it cost us maybe five minutes, like
all of us can spare five minutes.
Because the beauty of what comes outta that now is that group of elk
remembers us and the next time we don't have to play that much of a game.
They let us right through.
We've had deer and fawns, deer, mothers with fawns that would let me walk
with our two black labs before Hobbes.
I would, as a gesture of, of my responsibility to the.
Relationship.
I put my hand on their shoulders.
They weren't on leash, but they were healed.
I put my hand on their shoulders to demonstrate that we're all in
this and we're all gonna behave.
And there are times we could walk within 10 feet of her and the fawns.
Mm-hmm.
That's, that's, you know, you see people, people think that's magic.
It's not magic.
It's honoring the relationship across a species boundary.
And that's where the real beauty really is, is when you see them respond in kind.
It just my heart beams.
Hmm.
And I can't help but think that they appreciate it too.
Oh, without a
Rupert Isaacson: doubt.
You know, whether animals are domestic or, or wild.
You know, my, my horses, I have a heard of seven horses and so today I
was going to work with one horse and my horses have a professional life.
You know, they, they work with autistic children and they also work with
teaching people how to do dressage.
And they're good, you know, professional attitude.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But I try to honor
their choice.
I.
So I went out to catch Boo slus and he just looked at me and went, nah.
Trotted off to the far end of the pasture, lay down with his back to me and very sort
of emphatically put himself on the, I was like, all right, not today, no problem.
But 10 years ago I would have insisted, I would have said,
but through the process with my oldest son who's autistic and the
relationship that he formed with a horse called Betsy, I realized I had
to completely rethink everything that I knew and that agency was everything.
Mm-hmm.
Because I was going to now rely, absolutely rely on this
horse and all subsequent horses to when the stakes are high.
I have my son in front of me in the saddle, or someone else's
autistic child in the saddle.
I had to know that in that moment the horse was really with me.
So where before I would've, I would, was brought up with the,
you have to make him do it.
You have to be the dominant one.
You have to do it.
That was the old school.
I realized that that had to be completely abandoned.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And the moment I started giving Choice and
agency, the give back was bananas.
What my horses will do for me now when they know I need it, but if they know I
don't really need it, they'll be like, well, maybe I'll, maybe I So true.
You know, you, you, and you're so right with, with, with the, you
know, because say with the, the elk herd there, well, it's one thing to
demand they move, which could also be a fear-based reaction, you know?
And you say, as you say, they're clocking you, and that, oh, he's
a bit nervous of us, isn't he?
Which is different to honoring us.
Think to, okay.
We, there's a lot of us.
We're very, very big.
And yes, if I feel he's too close to my calf, I might take a dip at him.
If you behave differently the next time they're in your driveway, I would posit
there might be a chance one might take a dip at you because you are not a friend.
But what you're saying is, I, I am your friend.
I mean, no harm.
Um mm-hmm.
And this honoring thing in Mongolia, you know, wrote across a chunk of
Mongolia with my autistic son when he was five, going from shaman to shaman.
It was an extraordinary thing.
And, hmm.
The Mongolian word for the WildHorse, what we call the prosky horse,
which was never tamed, is kin.
Which is honored one.
Revered one.
George Bumann: Hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And this thing of honoring into species, you talked about
our soma, our body being an antenna.
And so therefore it, it, it sends out signals, it receives signals.
It's, we are all part of the same electromagnetic field.
Right.
Horses, trees, whatever that is a, that is a reality.
So you are absolutely sending out through your electromagnetic field an intention
to animals that are so keenly aware because they bloody well have to be.
'cause there might be a wolf in the thicket or a bear.
They better have some things to rely on beyond what we call the five sensors.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Without question,
Rupert Isaacson: is it possible to live meaningfully without those extra senses?
And is it possible to get those extra senses without interspecies relationship?
And in your book, is that what you're trying to teach us?
George Bumann: Hmm.
I think those extra senses are revealed to us.
They're in us all along.
We come like the elk, like the wolf prepackaged for connection.
We come prepackaged for a particular context, a place.
If anything in the book, I, I really hope folks come to see.
They don't live in an address, but they live of a place.
And our guides are these more than humans who exceed us in so many capacities.
Yes, they can hear in frequencies far beyond us.
Yes, some can see an ultraviolet light.
Yes.
'cause some can hear in sub sound, some can smell in parts per billion
of things we don't know exist.
But we have superpowers too.
And those superpowers are most keenly resurrected and put to
use in these natural contexts.
Does it help with people?
Absolutely.
You notice the discomfort in that woman in the presence of that particular man.
You notice the child who flourishes in the company of his grandmother.
There are unspoken things that, that sift all through our world.
And the more than human world that reinforce all of this in ways that, you
know, spoken language gets in the way.
A a a raven call is, is stupid.
And I don't mean to sound trite in saying those things, but the sounds,
the listening, the using the senses where we, where we just begin.
The relationships are the, the stepping stone through the first door.
But there are no limited number of doors.
And I think your experiences with the shamans, they, that is their world,
is the world beyond the obvious.
That's still underpins everything.
And, and I don't hear like I have compromised hearing from guns.
You know, people think even just to start, I need to have perfect hearing.
I need to have perfect vision.
And, and in the book I even talk about folks with autism and, you know,
temple Grandin's work with animals.
They, they re they relate in ways that neural normal people cannot, or
do not, those who can't smell or see or hear or walk without their hip.
Screaming at them are limited in those capacities, but we often
fail to realize that it opens other doors that normal quote unquote
people don't even recognize exist.
You know, a friend of ours, he, he should have hip surgery years ago, and they would
come to Yellowstone every year and they would sit in their vehicle, he and his
wife, and she'd sometimes get out and walk a little bit, but he just didn't get the
surgery, didn't get the surgery, didn't think it would work, didn't, wouldn't
do what he wanted it to, but they would sit and that quote unquote handicap,
you know, I think of our, our one friend Shane Doyle, who's a crow tribal elder.
He says, in our culture, there's no handicap.
Everyone is alternately able,
you know, and the, the Haudenosaunee story of the, the muskrat saving the
world, or, or being the one who brings the world into existence by grasping
that little bit of mud from way deeper than anybody else could dive in the,
in the limitless sea, to put on the turtle's back to begin everything.
Those insights and lessons and successes are so often rooted in those
unexpected places and people, and beings
and, and those beings.
Reside within us.
I can't, I can't hear above 8,000 hertz here.
I can get to about 14,000 here, but it's not what you can and can't do.
It's what you do with what you can do.
It's what you do with the sounds you can hear.
I could eclipse other birders in finding warblers and even some that made these
high pitched sounds because I listened better to the sounds I could hear.
And that was a gift that nature gave me.
Rupert Isaacson: As we move towards the, the, the close of this, and I hope this is
just the first of several conversations, I would love to have you back on, to
go more deeply into this, although I'm also not gonna let you out of here
without hearing how you call a beaver.
So many jokes.
Oh, yes.
But have you, I dunno if you've ever been to Detroit, but there's
a, there's a famous exit of the freeway by there called Beaver 69.
And when I was lucky enough to spend some time with the Cree up in northern
Quebec when they were fighting off hydro Quebec who was gonna flood their
land and they were actually successful.
And I ate a lot of beaver and
yes you did.
And I presume that's probably why you were hunting them too.
Let's just go back to your book because I want people to go out and buy your book.
Take us into a last story from there that will help bring our listeners who,
yeah, I, I wrote down this word while you were talking about the healing power
of nature and so on and perspective.
And the word that came to my mind is, or a WE and whether it was
you with the elk, you with the wolf, you with the
ravens bouncing like popcorn, whether it's me this afternoon saying to my
horse, you know what, if you don't want to, no problem, and, and look at you,
you, so that allows me to see him in that moment, not just as this horse I'm
going to wear, but oh my God, you're the most amazing, beautiful animal.
Look at you, look at you.
You are awe, I mean, awe of you.
You put me in perspective.
I'm small compared to you and you're beautiful compared to me.
And I think that's the power of your book.
That, and we talked about mental health and you know, there, there's, there's data
now showing that even if you're living in, you know, the most non-natural environment
in your, all depressed, in your.
If you watch a wildlife documentary, your body begins to respond very, very
similarly to if you were in nature.
The subconscious doesn't much care whether it's simulator and, and maybe
VR will help us in this way, you know, at least we can get back to nature.
Who knows?
Maybe that's where AI will help us.
But I feel that a book like yours gives one that sense of
awe and that sense of it healing.
So give us one more story.
George Bumann: Hmm.
Well, first thank you for that and thank you for having me on.
It's been a real treat to be able to share what is, you know, our day to day doesn't
seem that special sometimes, but each of us hold within our own hands, within
our ears, within our eyes, our minds.
These diamonds in the rough and those gems are, as you say, and I agree,
they, they, they are the embodiment of the awe that you find when you
just open up to what comes in.
One day I'd had it with the office.
You know, we run a fair bit of, I have a online course on animal
language, and we run an online summit on Yellowstone topics, you know, so
folks around the world can tune in you.
Many of these things, because of our age, are very, you know, very office screen
to do phone oriented and yeah, I'm living
Rupert Isaacson: in Yellowstone, staring at a screen.
George Bumann: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
We, we are not made to, to operate on this wavelength, and yet this is how we
connect and tell the story these days.
And I'd had it, I was done.
I just, and often my wife will see it before I do, or the dog does.
Like, you need to go for a walk.
Well, you did get out.
Yeah, exactly.
Go out now.
I think it'd be wise for you to go now.
And one day, I, I went out for a walk and I, I write about this one
in the book because it, it to me leaves the breadcrumbs to what I
feel is one of the highest order
experiences of that awe.
And instead of just going in and sitting or just going and walking,
I did what was, what you could say was just an extended stand.
That slightly moved.
And what I mean by that is, I, I went into the lower yard.
I do that sometimes after five points.
Yeah.
But yes, and that's kind of the way it felt.
You know, I went into the lower yard and I was gonna walk, I was gonna go do
something uhhuh, and what I realized is what I needed most was to be something.
Mm-hmm.
And I just stood there and I just let the senses go.
You know, there's a jet flying over, the breeze is coming in this way.
Oh no.
It, it actually is swirling back from that direction, the sunshine, it's
hitting the back of my neck right here.
The grasses are blowing in front of me, you know, just absorbing these patterns.
And every once in a while, every few minutes, I would just take
half a step, a full step, maybe.
And by the time I don't know how long it was, an hour, hour and a half had passed,
I'd gone maybe 20 feet, 30 feet tops.
And whatever happened
clearly shifted the dynamic of how I existed in that space.
And I, I don't really know how to articulate it beyond that.
But as I was standing there, this song, Sparrow.
It drops in like almost over my shoulder and it lands in the ryegrass in front
of me, and it's almost at my feet.
And it's gnashing on this ryegrass seed.
Like, you know, in the book I described as, it's kinda like that country diner,
you know, and everybody's in their locals drinking coffee and they got the plastic,
you know, coffee stir and they're just chewing on it, like a piece of grass or
something in the corner of the mouth.
And it's just, it's just living, it's doing its thing completely ignoring me.
To me, that is one of the most
beautiful, privileged positions to be in, in nature is to be forgotten.
Ignored, overlooked.
Allowed.
Exactly.
And I felt different.
It was, it was just like, it was not quite like I had too many pints, but it kind
of smacked of an altered, just, just, it was like all the senses were on high
functioning independently, but in unison.
And I was, I just felt so relaxed.
It was beautiful.
It was just like having a, a killer massage or you know, a soak in the hot
tub after long day and my phone went off.
Of course the alarm clock went off and I was like, geez, god dammit.
You know, like here, I just like, oh, you know, I've ascended to this, you know,
altered state of, of consciousness and the phone rings, you know, the alarm says, get
back to the office, dummy and I, I smacked the phone from outside my pocket and it
shuts off and I begrudgingly turn around.
I start slowly walking back up the steps past the greenhouse toward the house.
And there's three, is it three or four?
Three or four black build mag pies.
They're a member of the Crow and Jay family.
Just like the, the raven is, but they don't like being around people at all.
You know, if you feed them, yeah.
It's like the, the gal with the crows that, that you get to
watch, they'll snuggle up to you.
But in my mind I do, I we don't feed, the reason I don't feed is
I don't want our wild neighbors to be engaged in prostitution.
I don't want our relationship to be predicated on something they absolutely
can't do without, for us to be together, it has to be built on trust first.
And without that it's, I.
To me, not worth it.
That's a whole nother topic into itself.
After that you
Rupert Isaacson: can have the
George Bumann: prostitution.
Sorry, I couldn't.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't wanna, then we can, I don't, yeah.
I don't want to pay them in the currency.
They need to pay, you need to hang out with me.
You know?
'cause when you run out, if it's like training a dog or training a horse, if
you're, if you're just training them a treats, they, they train to get the treat.
They don't give a care about you.
Right.
You run outta snacks.
You're, you're old news now.
Mm-hmm.
So we didn't feed these mag pies.
Neighbors didn't feed them.
They're always around.
Every time we go for a walk, they're there.
They,
and they're usually gone.
If you surprise them, the closest usually you ever get is
30 yards, 40 yards, 50 yards.
Usually if it's an open and they're gone, they take off.
They are not hanging around with humans.
Not any of you walking around on two legs outta here.
Sorry buddy.
Not trusting you.
And oddly enough, that day as I walked past the garage, these three mag pies
were right next to the sidewalk that I had to walk on to go into the house.
They just stayed there.
So, but I was, I dunno, I, I don't know why.
I just felt like I could keep going.
So I took another couple steps and they stayed there and I took a couple more.
A few more until literally Rupert, I was standing over them.
This is a position they never would concede to.
I'm standing over them.
I can hear these tiny little sounds that they're making,
you know, this, this little,
the sounds that you, you can't hear if you're more than five feet away.
Like we've heard 'em outside the window and other times
where we could be that close.
Never when you're out and about,
I can see what they're picking at in the grass.
The food that they're selecting.
They're moving away the, the grass blades and twigs and little pebbles, and, and
they're all, you know, they were, if I fell over, I would've fallen on them.
And yet they were pretending, acting, carrying on as if I didn't even exist.
Very mysterious, very puzzling.
And then at once, I had this thought of, wow, nobody's gonna believe this.
And in that instant, I didn't move.
I didn't make a sound, but every single one of them looked
right up at me and took off.
And after that point, I, I was like, what the hell was that?
You know, I, they landed on the fence post, which, or the fence
railings across the driveway, which was maybe 20 yards away.
So I, I just started walking toward them.
They weren't having it.
They flew another 50 or 80 yards further, and I walked, you know,
to the fence and they just, they were outta there completely.
What was that?
I i
was that the state that the,
the elemental human really exists in?
Did they not even see me?
Like I, you try to rationalize things like this, yet at the same time, it only
takes a mere few seconds of an experience like that to really draw into question
what you conceive of as, as reality.
What, what else is possible here?
What was that relationship?
What, I don't know.
I have ideas, I guesses, but I have to ask a shaman, because it was so transcendent,
it was so imbued with a sense of awe that.
I can't look at those mag pies even from a distance and see
them the same way I did before.
My notion of them has been transformed and a bunch, you know, from smaller,
less profound experiences before that we every encounter changes the
relationship a little bit better.
I love, you know, John Craig and i's friend.
John Young talks about his time with Thesal Bushman and that every time
we encounter an animal, a specific individual, a thread grows between us.
You probably know this story, right?
And the next time you see them, that thread turns into a thin string and
the next time it's a rope, and the next time it's a cord, and then a rope.
And, and until you have these solid ropes of connection to
everything around you and it,
you are stopping before you walk out the front door to see who's
there enough to exit slowly.
Mm-hmm.
So that you don't blow out the door and blast everybody out.
Like every normal human you take on a different approach.
Slowly open the door, leave it open as you look out, let the animals see you.
Let them go back to what they were doing.
Take one step to the threshold and wait.
They go back to what they're doing, take another, and pretty
soon you're in their company.
Mm-hmm.
And that's very powerful.
Very, very powerful.
And all of us can do it anywhere, anytime.
It just takes a few moments of our retirement attention.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I feel your book
helps us
to enter that shamanic state a bit, and I think that's one of
the great gifts of nature writing.
It draws our attention back to the wild and it draws our subconscious back to the
wild, and it draws our souls back to where we know we've lost since we became tame.
And with each telling of a story like that, and each reminder that it's possible
George Bumann: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: To step back over that bridge.
In fact, all it takes is intention
and we're right there because we're the same species we ever were.
George Bumann: Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: But it's good to be reminded, and as you
say, if we are not reminded.
Even those of us that know and value this,
we, we slip so easily into poor mental health basically for
those generations coming up.
Now, if they're not reminded, if the cycle of storytelling is
broken, how will they value that?
Which we are supposed to not just protect, but upon which we
rely for our very sustenance.
George Bumann: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: So when you make, when you write a book like keeps
dropping on animals, when you create the arc that you create, let alone
when you take people into the wild,
you remind us
to care for ourselves.
Because to care for the wild is to care for ourselves and to forget it and
denigrate it and destroy it is to do the same thing to destroy ourselves.
But we might not even know that because we're so growing up in
families that are so, cultures that are so long divorced from the wild.
So every contribution that you make,
so listeners.
He's dropping on animals and buy one for a friend, especially if you've got a friend
that's not having much access right now.
In return, George will now call a viva.
George Bumann: I suppose I should fess up.
So the beaver is also all a very social creature as well.
So if you learn to sound like another beaver you stand a chance of having a
very close encounter with the keto are.
And most commonly and most attractive to them is the sound
of chewing someone else dining.
Ah.
And so if you can imitate the sound of them doing this corn cob, like
chewing of the bark off of a twig
and they roll it,
you can often call them up right up to you.
Wow.
Hide though.
Hide.
So they can't see that you're not another beaver.
But you will, you'll be surprised.
Roll the.
Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, listen, George, it's been a real treat.
I've been transported.
Thank you.
Will you come on again?
There's a lot of other questions I'd like to ask happily.
George Bumann: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: What I'm thinking we should do is we should, we should
actually have a little three-way panel with you, me and Craig.
Oh, that would be fun.
Which means I just get to hang out basically with you and Craig.
Very cool.
Well, I'd love, you can call beavers together.
George Bumann: There you go.
We'll, we'll be a colony unto ourselves and maybe draw some others in.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So listeners, if, if, if you fancy the sound of that,
we will see if we can do a Craig call.
Have two,
George Bumann: what would that be?
What's the sound of a, a, an octopus suction cup
popping off?
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Or, or, or, or the sound of sea lice crawling over a forearm.
That thousand, the stuff that man puts himself through.
George Bumann: Mm.
The bark of a Cape Clawless Otter.
Rupert Isaacson: That's right.
The feeling of kelp wrapping itself around your lower calf when there's
a great white closing in on you.
That's a very wi with, with the water at sort of Sub-Zero temperatures.
That's a very Craig type of situation.
And yes, it is.
George Bumann: Well, I would be up for it.
It's not often and that we get to have these kind of conversations and, and
certainly not frequently enough then that are in ways that others can benefit to.
So count me in.
Rupert Isaacson: So tell me before we, before we depart this
time, how do people find you?
George Bumann: Sure.
They can find me at for the art.
You can see my website at george bauman.com.
Bauman rhymes with human, it's spelled B as in boy, U-M-A-N-N.
And my wife and I have a lifestyle blog about our, our life here at the edge of
Yellowstone called a yellowstone life.com.
And at present, if you are already a, a Yellowstone aficionado or would like
to be, we're working on the fourth annual Yellowstone Summit, which is
an online event for anyone around the world to hear from the world's leading
experts on all the neat things about this place@yellowstonesummit.com.
When will that be?
The event goes live on the 20th of February this month.
Oh.
Soon.
And run through the 23rd very soon.
So we're in the throes of finalizing speaker material programs.
We have prerecorded and live sessions.
We have everything from geology, ecology, animal behavior, photography, trip
planning, geo you know, geothermal things.
We actually have a, a classical musical, a classical music composer who's in, created
some works based on his time guiding into the back country of Yellowstone
this year to to feature this year.
So a nice variety of topics, the arts literature, and to really
give people a well rounded feel for, for the awe of, of this place.
Rupert Isaacson: Sounds like an insane amount of work putting that together.
It totally
George Bumann: is.
Sounds like it's ridiculous.
My wife is really at the center of it and it's solid four or five months of the
year to put this together and Oh, sure.
She's a rock star when it comes to that.
So
Rupert Isaacson: that sounds like a wonderful thing to attend.
An absolute nightmare to put together.
Yeah,
George Bumann: but it's so rewarding 'cause you know, from our two and a
half decades of giving and organizing education programs, who here we know.
So many of these people doing things that are off the charts amazing
that you would never know about.
Sometimes you might in the academic literature or park films or programs
of that nature, but there's folks who are doing things that are so
incredible that unless you lived here, you wouldn't know about them.
So it's, it's actually a real honor for us to be able to put these folks up
on a pedestal for others to appreciate in the ways that we love them.
And again, what's the web address for
Rupert Isaacson: people wanting
George Bumann: to
Rupert Isaacson: attend that?
Summit?
George Bumann: Yellowstone summit.com.
And they can too.
They can buy the pass and watch later.
It's, you know, you can buy it after the fact, but you, there's a little
price break if you get in early and yeah, yellowstone summit.com.
It's a real, a real treat.
And it's, it's the kind of event I wish I had around when we first
moved here, frankly, you know?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Creating the community, the social hub that
George Bumann: you had to, yeah.
It's really part of the point is to build that community of people who
love this place around the globe tribe.
Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: Totally.
And the book is Eavesdropping on Animals.
George Bumann: Eavesdropping on Animals.
You Can Get It in most places.
Books are sold in Europe and Australia United States, Canada.
You can go to my website.
There's a link there that you can also link through to, and get a copy there
or find out how to get one near you
Rupert Isaacson: and we will have all the links.
In the blurb following this.
So it's all there if you have.
Well, thanks If you're driving, I appreciate you helping spread the word.
Oh, of course.
That's valuable work.
George, it's been an absolute delight.
Thank you so much, my honor.
George Bumann: My pleasure.
I look
Rupert Isaacson: forward to the next time.
George Bumann: I as well.
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