[upbeat music] This is the continuing conversation for our wild, connected, and changing world that we pulled together and call The Wild Idea Podcast. The we includes me, Bill Hodge, and my foil and friend, Anders Reynolds.
Oh, hi, Bill. Bill, are we still in stewardship month? I've, I've lost track, and that's because you are working me hard, man. I think we're recording like five or six episodes this week alone. What is the deal?
What, what's the line about idle hands and the devil's work? I'm just trying to make sure that I keep you out of trouble is all I'm trying to do.
Friends, if you have a suggestion for someone we should talk to, you might as well tell them that it's not gonna happen till next January because Bill has got this stuff built out. You know, I wouldn't be so bitter about it, but I was just on vacation. We were doing all these planning meetings. But that's okay. I was in a beautiful place, Bill. I was in Haleakalā.
Ha- Haleakala.
Haleakalā. I think it's Haleakalā National Park.
Haleakalā.
There's a accent on the last syllable. Haleakalā.
You know who are the two wrong people to talk about how to pronounce a, a word like that?
Two haoles sitting in front of a mic.
[laughs] That would be us, 100%. It is a magical place. So how was it? I, I, I think, uh, you told me you maybe had a little inc- inclement weather while you were there.
Yeah, it was pretty bad conditions, but it still was really special. I mean, you, you take the switchback road in a vehicle up to the, to the summit, to the visitor center at the summit, and it was... It wasn't quite, I wouldn't say it was raining because we were just inside a cloud. It was just somehow wet everywhere all at once. Um, and visibility was maybe like 10 feet. So, you know, I didn't get great shots for Instagram or anything like that, but I, I was still really proud we went to the top. Um, it's almost exactly 10,000 feet above sea level. Um, I know you've been there before. On the wa- on the way back down, I got to see a bunch of different wildlife, and so that was great. You had a good trip there.
I have. I love, I, I love Haleakalā. Um, if, if I-
Haleakalā
... I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet both of us are wrong probably in some form or fashion. Yeah, it's, it's amazing place. So that was a new national park for you though, right? Like you, I know you sort of ha- have your passport book, and that's a new one to, to check off for you, right?
Yep. Got the stamp and everything, and I'm happy to say that one of the rangers at the visitor center at the top was very excited about the wilderness acreage within the parks. It's always nice to meet a fellow wilderness head.
That's awesome. Well, speaking of a fellow wilderness head, we have a great guest today. Today continues. You asked where are we in the stewardship month. We have one more episode after this one, folks, but today we continue our theme of stewardship month. You know, we have wandered down trails of the Southern Appalachians and the Pacific Northwest. We took a dive into the rivers of Montana. All of these conversations focused on those that put the public back into public lands through service, what we call stewardship. And today, we talk with a trail dog and lover of finding the pathways into a landscape, Dylan Ausleger, who's written a wonderful book called Trail Work, and, uh, I'm really looking forward to that conversation.
Haleakalā.
That's what I said.
Haleakalā.
Haleakalā. [laughs] So let's join this conversation with Dylan Ausleger about his wonderful book, Trail Work. Dylan, thanks for joining us, and thanks for recognizing the real and symbolic roles that trails play. I wanna start with the obvious. How and where did you find the pathway to, well, pathways? What was your first trail remembrance that sort of stuck with you and led to your sort of life's journey?
Oh, man. Um, yeah, it's so wonderful to join you guys and, and I like the, yeah, finding my path to pathways is a- is an apt way of putting it. No, you know, I am fortunate to have two geologists for parents, and my dad actually just, he was looking through photos from the '90s yesterday, and he sent me, uh, a photo of me at age two in the Canadian Rockies just, like, going fa- far away from the camera. There is no adult near me, just running down a trail in the middle of a field towards some, some cliffs, and I'm hoping I didn't get too much further than I was in the photograph. [laughs] Been allowed some freedom in the outdoors since a young age with just a, a little bit of a sprinkle of some geology in there and, um, a l- a lot of freedom to not feel like my destiny was held in trails or geology even if it, even if it ended up there. So hard to pinpoint when you don't have memories that far back aside from photographs, but I like old things anyways, so photos are fine for me.
I love that. I, I, I love in the book you referred to yourself as a, I think you said a pencil-necked boy. I think it was sort of a, a way of referencing that you didn't necessarily grow up on the manicured fields of competitive sports. Uh, and but like you said, you sort of grew up with geologists for parents in an, you know, uncultivated wild. So what was that childhood like, and could you go a little further on how that kind of informed w- of where you went as you became a young adult?
Yeah. No, and I mean, it's something I, I rarely go into, and it's, it's, uh, there's a lot of different ways that kids can be raised and, you know, I reference Wendell Berry a lot as a guy, and, and I love nothing more than the unsettling of America and, and these foundational ideas that he, he professes. Um, and I think I was really fortunate to be one of those kids who didn't grow up in metropolitan, you know, downtown. Um, my folks are geologists, and, uh, at that, they're field geologists. I'm actually named after Dylan, Montana, which is kind of more south central than y'all are. But even at a young age, my mom would remind me that I was lucky they just didn't name me Beaverhead after Beaverhead County. So, you know, I'm a cow town kid and grew up in agricultural lands and, and just kinda getting to wander, and my parents would take me on their field excursions. I mean, uh, they're academic geologists, not oil geologists, so you know, money wasn't flowing out of the pipeline. So instead of a babysitter, I was getting kind- Tossed in the Toyota Sequoia and, uh, taken out to the Canadian Rockies or sitting around at campsites while they went around looking at, you know, rock formations and faults and, you know, I think there was that little bit of learning by osmosis. Um, not just geology, but also, uh, what life can be, you know, in the sense of how you can learn from the environment, uh, how you stave off boredom when your Game Boy's out of batteries, um, trying to fish with string and a stick and whatever hook I could find, and sometimes successful, mostly not. But that kinda came to define my life, that whole sometimes successful [laughs] mostly not, and finding the, the beauty in those little bits of whatever non-successful is. But, um, yeah, I attribute a lot of where I got to today by kinda having no path in front of me, and it was just more of this open field and a landscape and not, not having an idea of what success was aside from getting to be outside a lot.
Bill and I have a favorite, uh, Mexican food truck in Dillon, Montana, I should note before we go any further. That's super important.
I would like that recommendation, please.
Oh, we will, we will give it to you.
I could use- [laughs]
Bill, I guess you could give it live on air now if you want.
Yeah. Well, on... If I could remember the name of it, I'll just-
[laughs] That's wild
... the Mexican food truck that is an old, uh, school bus. Um, and, uh, and Anders and I and some friends spend time in the Beaverheads every year, so I love the reference to the Beaverheads, and then we wrap up those four or five days together eating Mexican food on a plastic table, uh, next to an old, uh, redone school bus in Dillon. So it's kinda cool to know that's where your name came from.
I love it. No, it's, it's a good place, and that sounds like good times.
Dillon, the book, we haven't mentioned the name. It's Trail Work. I just read it last week on vacation, and I loved it. And I, I wanna dig into it in a minute, but like Bill, I do have one quick question for you about, about growing up. Um, something that I learned about you from the book is that, like me, you spent your childhood on trails, and you were always curious about what was around the next bend, and, you know. Like, for me, I was al- always more curious about, like, the game trails than the ones that were occupied by humans. But your path from that kid to Trail Work, to the author of Trail Work, wasn't exactly a straight line, right? By your own account, you, you didn't exactly excel academically, but a, a NOLS course at 15 kinda changed all that. It really changed something. Um, and I'm hoping you could talk about that. What did the land teach you that, you know, schoolwork couldn't, and, and how does that show up in the book?
Yeah. No, and it's, it's funny, I don't even introduce myself as an author today. I was like, I'm still trying to get used to it as an introduction. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's my other job," or whatever I've done. Uh, yeah, it's, you know, it's funny. I'm one of these, like, it's-- I get the question every now and then, but a lot of times from younger... Like, if I'm giving a book talk, I get a lot of kids that come up to me and relate to the being bad at school, and I'm like, "Oh, thankfully it wasn't only me, [laughs] um, who was, you know, a two-point-something student." You know, I, I, I didn't excel at school growing up, and I think a lot of that maybe stemmed from, yeah, maybe not having that idea of what picture-perfect success was, and didn't fit in super great. You know, I'd found my comfort zones out in big, wide open places and in the mountains of Montana, you know, hanging out in the Sawtooths. Like, I could tell you how to start a WhisperLite stove or how to catch a fish at age 12, but if you asked me something around math or, you know, made me sit in a literature class for too long, I was asleep on the table. I was a terrible student. Um, but I knew where I felt like I belonged, for lack of a better term, and, um, at 15, I remember my parents... I, so I've, I've worked, uh, since I was young. I think I got my first job at 13 or 14 as a lifeguard at the local pool. Um, and I worked at a climbing gym and as a climbing guide and, you know, bought my own mountain bikes, bought my own stuff and instead of... And my parents told me how much a used car would be or a learner's permit, and I looked at that number and I thought, "You know what? That's the same cost as a NOLS guiding course." [laughs] And so I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18. I, uh, I lived my life hitchhiking and, and hiking and biking where I needed to go, and instead I paid for that-- and my parents helped me pay for that NOLS course, and it kinda led to more jobs. It led to me being a guide. But spending, you know, a month or month and a half out, out in the Sawtooths, um, out in Idaho, rafting, hiking, backpacking, um, I kinda figured out that I did know something valuable. You know, I got there, and most of the kids were 18, 19, or in college. I was still not 16. You know, I was, yeah, still three months away from being 16. And, uh, I knew how to use a Brunton compass, and I knew how to read topo lines and a map, and I knew what triangulation was, and they were almost this, like, inherent knowledge. Like, I felt belonging in a topo map more than I felt belonging at, like, the lunch area at school. Not having a car when you're, like, 17 in high school is not a cool thing to do. Um, but you make trade-offs, and I, and I think that's what carried me a lot through the rest of school and through life, was that, um, my knowledge was a little bit... The way I felt like I could learn and, and express what I knew was more founded in applied knowledge and in maps and in the outdoors. So the rest of my schooling and, and education and work really became founded in how can I take scientific principles or math or anything else, and how can I, like, imagine it, you know, like a mountain or like a topo map or how a stream moves? 'Cause if you, even today, if you give me numbers, it's not gonna be pretty. I mean [laughs] I have a master's in earth science. Don't make me... But if you, like, draw some little mountains next to those numbers or a stream and you're like, "You know, how does a thalweg form and why do the fish live there in a stream?" Fluid dynamics, no problem. Like, give me... I'll figure out the numbers for that. Um,
but yeah, you know, I think it's everyone has their way of learning and has their way of relating to the world, and sometimes, you know, education systems can be a little bit one-laned. Um, not all of us fit into that.
Yeah. I totally agree When I was reading your book, it was reminding me of this idea I, I keep in my head a lot since I learned of it a few years ago, and that's the idea of a palimpsest, which maybe you've heard of. I'm sure you have. Um, but for those that may not know, palimpsest, at least back in the day, was a, a manuscript, um, like parchment or papyrus, something that was so expensive that it had to be reused. And so often the original text was scraped off. And, um, when later generations came along, when modern, you know, historians came along, they could always sort of trace these older hidden writings behind the text. I kept thinking about that again and again and again as I was, as I was reading your book and, and sort of listening to your, your theory of how these, these maps work. So I, I wanna dig into that. And I guess I would start by mentioning a phrase you used in the book. You, you wrote that trails are agreements between people and places, and that those agreements can be severed or maybe erased as a, a palimpsest would, would show. But I wanna examine that word severed because, you know, uh, uh, in my mind, an agreement implies mutual consent, but severance implies, you know, some sort of problem, some sort of betrayal maybe. What betrayal breaks those agreements between people and places, and what does the land lose when they're broken? What do we lose?
Yeah. No, and, and I love the term palimpsest. You know, I, I think I go back a lot to that idea of, like, how does the way we write and how do we express ourselves change over time, and how do those... Even though we're writing on that same document, whether it's a piece of paper, pa- papyrus, or if it's, you know, stone or if it's the landscape, how does our tone change? And, you know, I, I think the easiest way for me to do is, like, keep that, um, kinda contrast you have going is that language is such a funny thing, where when we write something down, it's different than when we tell that story. 'Cause when we write it down, it's a two-way street. You have what I write on the piece of paper, and then the reader has-- they have to guess the intonation, the voice I'm saying it in, you know, what my emotion is. They can read the words, but there's a lot of the game of telephone going on where there's a little bit of guessing, and they're getting-- everyone gets their own different story out of written words. And trails aren't too different. Um, you know, you're, you're getting the general gist. [laughs] Like, everyone's taking roughly the same path, but what that path is for, what it is trying to take the user towards, everyone has their own reasons when they're out there on a trail, and they see something different, and they kinda come away with something different. And, um, you know, that takes me back to that original agreement with the landscape, right? Like, trails originally were a relationship between people and place. They were kinda this expression that kinda came from the reusing of a, of a corridor again and again, similar to how you think about elk trails or deer or, you know, sage grouse, whatever, any species [laughs] that moves across a landscape for habitat, for need. And so, you know, sometime around a hundred years ago, give or take, humans acquired the ability to have, like, general comfort. We didn't have strain on our lives anymore. We'd gone through the Industrial Revolution. We could start to use things for purely joy and, like, lack of need, essentially. We were coming up with contrived reasons. And so a lot of the infrastructure we use today on the landscapes, especially in public lands, 'cause those are kinda these bastions of history. They, they have not been overdeveloped and erased. Our use of those trails has vastly changed from being the original way they came to the fore, which was this need, or we had this, you know, either awe or, uh, utilitarian. Maybe it was trade. Maybe it was gathering. And all of a sudden, that use of trails often changes to, uh, like a human-centered focus of, like, maybe it's Strava times, maybe it's races, maybe you're making money somehow. But it's, it's a vastly different contract than what was originally written with the landscape. It's kinda that funky touch between where does the line between utilitarian and intrinsic value lie, or, like, what's the difference between conservation and preservation? There's a certain funky little gray area in, in the middle of those Venn diagrams. But yeah, it's, it's a contract that, you know, people can often forget what the original use of place was, um, or the original relationship rather than use with landscape.
Yeah, I wanna ask you about that. So this podcast that, that Bill and I are trying to make work is ostensibly about the interaction between human nature and wild nature, to the extent those things can even be separated. You know, a, a map, certainly the maps you reference in your book feel like a perfect sort of artifact for that, that conversation because a map is a place, a- as you're talking about, where, like, human folly or, or just human perspective and human agenda [laughs] can bend something wild toward its will. Um, in the book, you wrote, I'm gonna make sure I get this quote right, that, that, "Maps change depending on the cultural priorities of those who draw them," which I think is what you're talking about now. And, and, and that forces all of us to sorta reckon with that authority, right? You know, um, y- like you, I'm talking about semiotics and interpretation and the gap between what we read and what we understand. I, I... So I guess my question to you is, like, what, what is it that we lose when we start mistaking maps for the places they represent?
Yeah. No, and I, you know, I think another way to even say that that a lot of people would probably resonate with is, like, victors are the ones who write history. Um, like, if you take your average history book, it was written by [laughs] whoever, whoever was, was the colonizer or the winner of said war or, uh, conquest or, or genocide. And, you know, I think that's commonly a, you know, a phrase that's used to say that we don't always know the true history that came before us. Um, we're given one version of history. And maps are a similar thing Where public lands in the early nineteen hundreds and mid eighteen hundreds were founded on, you know, conservation, not preservation. And so as time progressed and as our use of lands progressed, those maps were redrawn or drawn again in new places, um, with an intent to show their purpose for our gain. Rarely were they there to show who or what came before. And so as maps change, you also start to erase-- you forget the old maps exist, um, and you start to lose this idea of what landscapes were, how landscapes change over time, and also how humans change over time. 'Cause I think the core of your question goes back to human nature and nature nature. But humans, whether we like it or not, are part of nature. Um, [chuckles] you get to be a vertebrate mammal regardless of what you wanna choose as the identity there. And so I, I think it's really hard to separate humans from nature in a, in a personal way. Um, but I think we've done a really good job of lying with maps and statistics [chuckles] and history books of where we came from. Maybe not intentional lying all the time, but certainly telling our truths, which aren't the truths for everybody. And so when we lose old maps or history in that sense, we lose our past. We lose our connection to generations past and to our relationship to nature at its core. Um, that kind of unfiltered, non-digital, non-influenced relationship [chuckles] with, with kinda that childlike understanding of nature. Um, and I think that's one of the worst things we can lose 'cause when we lose the childlike understanding, that, like, true pure history, we lose perspective of what kind of makes us part of nature in a large way. We complicate things.
And speaking of intentionality, I do wanna get really intentional about capital. Your book traces how maps of the same [chuckles] landscapes look completely different during the Gold Rush or the Forest Service's timber era or even the Sagebrush Rebellion, right? Like, each one of those
moments was a, a reflection of, of who had the economic power over the land that they wanted to, to exploit. And, you know, I, I would say, I don't wanna put you too far on the spot, but I, I think you would agree that we're in another one of those moments right now. Um, so I'm just curious from your experience of looking at all these maps over the years, what does the map of the American West look like in twenty twenty-six, and whose priorities are you seeing, are you seeing being drawn into it?
No, I, I think it's a great question. You know, like, it's funny. You try and write a book that's, like, chewable enough. It's not too long, like it's not five hundred pages that, um, [chuckles] people aren't gonna read it. Um, and so as much as I would've loved to write about all the national forests or all the national parks in the US, you're right, I focus on just a few places so that I can talk about those places through time just to show how things change. And it's so funny. We take a lot as truth, um, with regards to governmental products, whether it's maps, laws, [chuckles] you know, boundary, geographic boundaries, state boundaries. I was thinking the other day of, like, how many state boundaries are actually true to the landscape, like, geographically. Like, you've got sorta Montana with the great, you know, the divide, continental divide. Yeah, zero, basically. You got a couple rivers in there, but you got a bunch of straight lines that mean nothing. I got married in a church that's the oldest, um, one of the oldest court, active court buildings in California, but it used to be the ca- Uh, that court building got moved over because it was the capital of Calif- of the county seat in California, but they realized it was in Nevada, so they picked the whole church up, and they moved it. State boundaries haven't meant a whole lot for, for [laughs] like, you know, the last couple hundred years. But the maps seem to treat everything as truth regardless. W- What we can start to know what's happened over the last forty years is that the government, um, and a small subset of folks, uh, congressional members, senators, folks in cabinet positions elsewhere, um, have realized that maps influence this idea of truth for people. People don't question them often. And so what you present in maps, um, can kind of tailor people's trust and faith in landscape and in institutions, right? Like, just like any other advertisement, you can do all you want. Political parties can show each other in cartoons and caricatures, and it influences people's faith in institutions. And so what's been happening with public lands maps is if you start to erase public amenities like campgrounds and trails and open areas or ga- you know, preserves for condors or for other protected habitat, people start to, um, see less in that landscape. And in the last couple years, what we're, what we're starting to see now is, uh, I like to equate it to a Disneyland map where they still leave stuff on the map, but you get there. You've paid your entrance fee. You drove all the way to Yosemite, and you're ready for this grand adventure with all these different rides or trails, and you get there, and half the things are shut down, and the bathrooms are trashed, and the campgrounds are booked, and everything's overcrowded. And what happens is you've lost some faith in, in what public lands are. You've lost faith, faith in what was promised to you as a citizen. And when you lose faith, why fund it? Why br- why fund the people who aren't taking care of that thing that you told was gonna be a great family adventure and create memories forever? Um, and that's where the map's starting to be redrawn is instead of adjusting the map to show truth, they're almost using the map in a way to, to destroy memories and to decrease faith in public lands as an institution so that there can be a continued chipping away, and you start getting your flywheel working where the less employees you have, it all starts to work in, in your way if that's your angle. Um, so what maps look like in twenty years? If I had my way, uh, they wouldn't change too much. They'd show a lot more history on them. They'd show a lot more notations of, of old place names, of place names that existed pre-contact. Um, but also, you know, with some reality We're seeing so much with those QR codes around people wanting, you know, the government wanting history erased from our landscapes and wanting it reported, and they're wanting to take off, you know, campgrounds and visitor centers, and they wanna sell off the, the offices of various land managers. Uh, like the Forest Service is a great example of seeing, you know, even McNally atlases are gonna have to erase NCAR and a few of the US Forest Service offices around Boulder. It's not even just public lands maps. Um,
and these are institutions that have been huge driving forces in American history. Um, and these are things that if you erase it from a map, no kid is ever gonna ask, you know, what was that or what did they do there? Um, and that's kinda crazy to think about, like some equivalent where like, you know, the movie Oppenheimer never came out 'cause they probably erased, [laughs] you know, the bomb test site. But instead, we're just erasing all these scientists and good humans that, um... You know, it would break my heart if like in the future kids don't ask who was Gifford Pinchot or who was John Muir or who, you know, who were these early figures. You know, I mean, think we're always gonna have, you know, Roosevelt and folks. Um, no one's gonna erase some of that [laughs]. But it's, uh, there's a lot of folks that have uplifted and been Sisyphean around public lands that I think are worth remembering, and I'd rather not see a blank map in 20 years for where our lands used to be.
We step aside for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back with more of the conversation.
I'm Pedro Hernandez from Fresno, California, and you're listening to The Wild Idea.
Dylan, before the, the break, you were asked a question by Anders about how people track landscapes differently as maps change and pieces get erased. I used to live in a place in southeast Tennessee that was home to what some argue might have been the con- the longest, oldest continuous used travel path on the North American continent, uh, a trail called the Unicoi Turnpike that used to connect the Cherokee, what they call the Overhill towns, the towns that were west of the Appalachians to the Cherokees that were east of the Appalachians and all the way to Charleston. And eventually it became known as the John Brown Highway. Uh, it was also argued the, maybe the first toll road in America. Um, it was the first road that they started collecting a toll, and some of that gets lost. Sadly, some of that, you know, you and I are both old trail dogs here, Dylan. We know that we abhor erosion and we abhor, ab-abhor trails that become ditches. Um, but we actually had a, a, a public lands manager, you know, take that historic piece of trail and decide that they needed to put in rolling grade dips for erosion and basically erased a whole bunch of Cherokee history because not only was it this oldest continuous used travel path, it was also the path in which, uh, the removal to Oklahoma, otherwise known as the Trail of Tears, began on. And that all went under the blade of a bulldozer, uh, and it became a very complicated and ugly story, honestly, in the history of the relationship between the Forest Service and the Cherokee people. But I just kinda wanted to highlight that, yeah, it's amazing the way we can both literally and figuratively erase history by how we change these lines on a map or these actual physical features on a landscape. You know, I have found that the actual connections that endure are often built on a trail. I've had US representatives on the trail become advocates by what they witnessed in seeing the public giving back. I've had folks with very different views on differ- difficult public lands issues than I do find common ground with me because we were both swinging a Pulaski together for hours on end. Do you have a theory or a thought about what magic trail connections have on our ability to spark change?
Yeah. No, I mean, I love all that story and I didn't know some of that history and that's, that's incredible. I mean, next time I'm down in the southeast, you know, I, I'm, I'm looking forward to honestly driving that, that road, um, 'cause I think there's a lot of value even though like the fact that even though it's paved, you know, you still see it as coming from there as a trail. That means the world 'cause, you know, I don't, I don't really differentiate on if it's dirt or if it's pavement these days. Like what matters is, is understanding what happened there in the past along that corridor, and you do and, and I think, I hope that kids who grow up in the same town you did still have that history kind of ingrained in them 'cause that's what gets lost and that's, that's what breaks my heart. Um, 'cause yeah, I mean, you know, in thinking about younger generations and that, you know, steward- the stewardship and that kinship, um, that kinda gets built and bridges that are kind of given over common ground like public lands. I think more than anything, you know, public lands hold our history and hold our commonality. I think a lot about how public lands really reflect the diversity of this nation no matter where you are, you know. I mean, the CCC and the way that people, you know, Basque sheepherders were pushed west and the way that westward expansion worked in this country, um, through a litany of different modalities, um, forced different groups of people from different ethnic backgrounds across this country. But more than anything else, most of those people worked on lands that then became public lands, whether they were logging, whether they were doing reforestation, whether they were doing trail construction of the CCC, whether they were doing like early wildfire fighting for the Civilian Conservation Corps. And in a very subtle way, those diverse histories have been embedded in landscapes, some more than others, but then those same people often settled in those landscapes and it's very rare that people recognize the history that came before them, whether it's their own cultural history or not. And you just kinda described, you know, how, how much of a patchwork or a quilt it can be. And so I think, you know, to get to your question on, uh, you know, that kumbaya for lack of a better term that happens when people are out there swinging tools, is that everyone has history whether they see it or not in public lands and there's nothing that Americans are more proud of than culture and their generations, their grandfather, their grandmother, um- And everyone has that tied in there. That's where our, you know, whatever our vocations are, um, a lot of what makes us American is inherently tied in that land, a lot of what makes us proud. And, you know, I think when you're out there working, everyone's out there oftentimes working for whatever it is at the core of their heart. But you look over to that person who's sweating next to you and doing some trail stewardship or picking up trash, and you see them working for out of respect for what you care about. And I think that's a pretty rare thing nowadays. Um, there's not a whole lot of bipartisan issues where different folks from different backgrounds can come together, whether you're a hunter or fisher, hook and bullet, whether you're a birder, a con- die-hard conservationist, whether you like mountain bikes or hiking, it doesn't matter who you are. But whether you like it or not, that volunteer hours you put into that trail are gonna benefit everyone in that circle. Um, and I think mutual respect is something we often lose in this country, um, especially, you know, off of diversity and, and different opinions and different uses of landscapes. And so trail work and stewardship or, you know, even activism for public lands is something that everyone can kinda look in the eye and shake a hand on. Um, I do worry that that gets lost a little bit as, you know, everything's intersectional, and so a lot of kids nowadays, the Forest Service admits this, like, their volunteer population's kinda aging out. You know, they're not getting the same amount of folks they used to. People are maybe distracted, but they're also working more jobs, [chuckles] and they're a little bit more abreast. I mean, the Southeast is a good example. Like, when your economy doesn't work around public lands or becomes privatized, many other places in the US, you start to get that economic pinch. Things don't work for you. The landscape doesn't work for you in the same way it used to, and you can't take care of it, and you lose that connection and that mutual respect with the rest of community. You know, trail stewardship in this funny way is an act of giving back, but it's, it's also something that should be this human right that we should have time to do in order to connect back with place and with the people that we make community with.
I love the travel path as a metaphor and, and the map of those paths becomes a metaphor itself. The trail that endures, let's say like the Appalachian Trail, is a comfort that we can sustain a connection to the land and to those that created the pathway. But you explore what the neglect of those pathways represents. Can you talk a bit about how you explore that topic in your book?
You know, neglect's a really funny thing where it's kind of a silent spring, like a Rachel Carson kinda thing, where we don't notice it until it starts to get a little bit too late. So a lot of times neglect starts with, you know, that idea of, of maybe it's not, you know, my personal fault, and you, you kinda-- It's not my personal problem either. And once that becomes a large enough cultural phenomenon, then, [chuckles] then everyone starts to see the, the faltering, the degradation. Um, but I think, you know, the way I think about that a lot, um, is our use of trails and our thought process around them has changed dramatically. Um, we touched on it a little bit earlier in the sense of why we go outside or what we do outside has changed a lot over not just the last hundred years, but heck, the last thirty years. When you think about where our love for the outdoors came from in this country, um, and I'm, you know, I'm talking mostly around Western Europeans in this country and in kind of a more modern culture. Um, but, you know, post-World War II, you're getting a lot of people going outside and wanting to share that with family. And this, there's a lot of pride around, um, you know, people died for this. People, people, you know, sacrificed for this right of public lands. And there's a love for camping and outdoorsmanship and, and a love for nature and a lot of use for, you know, healing of PTSD and bringing people back to the landscape. And this is kind of a, you know, more contemporary recent kind of learning to relove for, [chuckles] for Western culture on the landscape. And, um, you know, somewhere along the lines, I mean, '70s, you still have people caring. You've got the Endangered Species Act. You have people pushing back against clear-cut logging. They don't wanna see their forests and their memories and the-- what they go outside with their families taken away. And then you get to the '90s and 2000s [chuckles] and all of a sudden, um, the idea of utilitarian, of, you know, multiple use, sustained yield, all of a sudden, outdoor recreation as an industry has grown large enough that it is no longer just this intrinsic value of being in place and being part of nature, but there is money to be made. Um, there is a use, a, a value to be wrung out of, like I said, you know, Strava times or photo shoots or summiting everything for being someone. And all of a sudden, um, nature became this place for elevating self that is, um, isn't seen as much in the past. You know, you, you've got the Himalayas and other things, but those are very, you know, eight tallest peaks in the world. And I f- you know, again, that, that culture of stewardship went away a little bit of what we were,
what we were protecting, what we were restoring or maintaining, um, in the sense of trails as a connection to our past, um,
became something that was far rarer. Um, and obviously, federal stewardship went down as well. I mean, the funding for these, for these, um, political entities, um, for land managers has gone down dramatically, and you've had a transformation of the Forest Service and the BLM and the National Park Service,
especially the Forest Service toward a wildfire fighting agency. We've paid for, you know, some of our past mistakes and transgressions with regards to, you know, fire suppression or reforestation or how we've used public lands, um, largely because this is a relatively young experiment, um, in the grand scheme of things. I mean, using th- thirty percent of American landscapes [chuckles] for pulling out logs and, you know, trying to sustain a country's need for gas and, and minerals and anything out, and grazing is something we're constantly learning from. And I think we've lost a little bit of sight or a lot of sight as far as what those consequences could have been and how we could be addressing them, um, with more core values rather than contrived ways of trying to keep the same sort of capitalistic growth happening, um, in landscapes that can't sustain it.
Yeah. Thinking about coming back to the, the trail piece of it, just the trail piece of alone, not just the broader use of public lands, but the use of the trail. You know, I referenced the Appalachian Trail in asking you that question. It has become something very different than Benton MacKaye envisioned. But what it has become is, it, it's come with some of these other things, what some might call industrial scale recreation, or as you talked about, I'll, I'll use the term fastest known time. Like the AT's become this like who's got the fastest known time, and, and we, we could do a whole episode on, on, on that alone. But it has endured because of the range of interest in that specific trail, right? Like Benton MacKaye had this vision of this like utopian idea that you would literally walk from town to town to find employment. You know, it, it would bring im- you know, workforce to these rural communities, but it would also bring job opportunities for those who were traversing this incredible mountain chain. Then, then a guy like Myron Avery actually puts the trail into place by cultivating what has become, you know, this incredible, um, you know, community that to this day endures as a, as primarily a public driven trail, like maintained by the public, not by the public sector, but, but actually members of the public. And, and for those of you who wanna read a little on this, there's a really great book called Tangled Roots, uh, that's good about the, the core of how the AT came to be and how it continues to be. But yeah, it's kind of interesting that these pathways maybe had an original vision, right? And that it, that vision evolved a little bit to actually sustain that trail, and yet to you point out, as you point out so well, sometimes the use of the land changes so much that we erase that history, right?
It's true. And I mean, I, I think about that a lot. I think the AT is a really good example of this. It's, it's not too old. I mean, nothing's too old in my book 'cause I think geologic timescales, so 100 or 100 and change years [laughs] is, is pretty young in, in my world. And I think a lot about the number of towns that were along the Appalachian Trail back when it was established, and this idea of outdoor recreation, um, was entwined with economic opportunity, and the fruiting of these rural communities that were... Their job opportunities were changing. They weren't just coal anymore. They weren't just logging anymore. They had Americana and culture to share, and this was, you know, trails were almost this way to connect with your fellow American, and to go and get a job there, and learn about their culture, their music, their way of life, their stories. You know, what people in that town maintained that section of trail. And heck, you might end up staying there. You might find a life there, and a, you know, a family there. And it was this way of transporting people, which is something that trails have done for a very long time, for thousands upon thousands of years in this country. And so, yeah, I mean, it, it's this unfortunate reality of trails very rarely these days, any trail, I mean, the PCT, the, you know, Appalachian Trail, you know, even the shorter ones, all of a sudden on the PCT, I see it all the time. I live in Truckee. I'm along the Pacific Crest Trail. People come into town, and they might stop at Grocery Outlet, but the amount of people I see mail in boxes, you know, at USPS, I'm going to my local rural postal carrier who's barely above water, and they've got stuff from home. You know, they're not buying, they're not staying in town for a couple days to like buy what they need or, you know, stay at a local mom and pop, you know, B&B or whatever it is. That, that use of a trail, that intended purpose of a lot of these long distance trails, PCT's only in the '70s, right? But that has disappeared, and so long distance trails as a connector and as a rural economic driver, um, is something we've lost a bit of in that perspective of shift towards fastest known times or, you know, being the best or the fastest, whatever that means on a trail. 'Cause the trail doesn't care, and certainly my wife doesn't care when I tell her about, you know, my run or anything like that. She wants to know about the birds I saw. She wants to know about the people I ran into. And, and I think that perspective's a valuable one we don't often think about when we come home from trails anymore. Um, you know. What we saw beyond ourselves.
So I wanna jump in here because this conversation is reminding me of something else you wrote in your book. Um, there's a lot of really quotable moments, which I appreciated. You, you wrote, um, that we carry the imprint of each place long after we've gone, and I found that to be a really beautiful idea. But also, to be honest, like a slightly haunting idea because as, as you point out yourself, you know, it ki- it kinda blurs the distinction between where and when, or the distinction between geography and memory. Um, and I was so taken by that, I, I kinda tried to apply that insight to like my own conservation work in the past, and it, it wasn't hard to do. It was an easy filter to apply because I realized that the work I was doing alongside others was often, you know, an attempt to protect a place that already existed inside the minds of people as much as it existed on, you know, a ridge somewhere, right? Bill and I often, I notice we both use a phrase, like people wanna protect their big backyard, and that's not just a physical place, but what they think about, right? As, as what can, quote unquote, "happen" in their big backyard. What's allowed or disallowed. You know, like conservation and conservative obviously share a root in a lot of letters. Anyway, how does that idea, this distinction between where and when, show up in your trail work or even in the actual physical act of restoration?
No, I mean, it's something I've struggled with a lot. I think in its simplest sense, it's like, you know, people always think like what, where, and why, and I think trail work has a very obvious what and where, [laughs] right? But, like, the why was something I always wrestled with. Why am I in this Sisyphean task where many people before me have come and rolled this same boulder, this same dirt up this hill to put it back just so it could burn, rain, erode again, and come back down and someone else has to do it. And, um, you know, it came... It brought me back a lot to that term awe. You know, awe is something that we don't think about a lot in daily life, and awe by definition is this feeling of, um, feeling minuscule, feeling like a small thing amongst, amongst something immense, um, that makes you appreciate the world larger than yourself, um, or the universe larger than yourself. And awe is often like we, we think about it in this contrived way of, you know, we're at the summit of Mount Whitney or something, and we're alone, and so we get to feel small. But what I came to in the end with the trail work, um, and it's always an evolving idea, is that there's nowhere I've ever stood and felt that feeling that thousands of people before me haven't stood in that exact same spot in a different point in time and had that same feeling. And so it kinda goes back to connecting us to other people and to other times, right? And I think we don't often think about public lands as not only this great backyard in a spatial extent, but also in this temporal extent. We have the ability, like in very few places, the same way when you go into an old church in Europe, you know. Architecture's not that old in the US, maybe on the East Coast a little bit. You can go into the 1700s, right? But the outdoors allows us to go back. It allows us to see landscapes that, um, many people have admired for time memorial, and some landscapes that we think of today as being like, you know, these geologic wonders, I think about the Eastern Sierra all the time, and there's volcanic pieces that people, Paiute and Washoe and Maidu literally watched erupt, um, [laughs] like come into existence. Um, and so these aspects of awe when you can think about it in a, in a past sense, it connects you to people and makes, makes you feel even smaller, uh, which I love. Um, I love that expansive feeling of, of what am I trying to protect beyond just this thing that I can grab right now? But how can it be something that not only I can grab, but that changes the hearts and minds of people to come, um, that everyone has this opportunity to imagine and perceive and, and feel a love for, um, for place that is their own. It's funny. Awe, awe is very individual feeling. It's something that we treasure, but it's something that really brings us together and makes us connected. Um, so I think a lot about, you know, the value of conservation and, and how we can create ripples 'cause I think when, when you talk about the way you love, you know, these specific places or these ridges, um, oftentimes you're talking about a place, right? But the way you describe it, the way you have clear love for that place, it's almost like dropping a little pebble into some, you know, really clear gin. Those little ripples, it makes me think about a place entirely separate from where you're talking about. But because I have those same memories and emotions on a different ridge, you know, 18 mountains away, I care about yours just the same. Um, and I think that way landscape connects us as humans is, is something pretty dang valuable. So...
That's really wonderful, Dylan.
Folks, we've been talking to Dylan AuSchlager, who has written this incredible book called Trail Work: Restoring the Past and Stories of America's Public Lands. And Dylan, it is... It's beautiful. It's like it's prose. Uh, it is thoughtful,
and leave it to me to wanna buckle down to the incredible pragmatic and practical for a second. But I wonder if you're, you know, as somebody who's been a trail dog, I've been a trail dog, um, how we help people also though see these places as infrastructure. And I say that as people see other infrastructure work in their daily lives in a much more visible way. The guys in the bright orange vests that are fixing your potholes, or the guys that are inspecting or painting the bridge that you drive over every day. But I wish I had a nickel for every time I had a hiker mention upon seeing us clearing or restoring a trail said, "Oh, I never thought about how this trail got here." Do you have thoughts on how we expand that practical side of trail work?
No, I mean, I love the question, and I think, um, I think trail dog's such a good word 'cause it's like, it's funny. It's something that I think starts with really respecting and appreciating what people are out there doing. It is so hard, you know, and I, I think the same goes, like I've had such kind words for doing trail work. But man, if I had a nickel for the amount of surprised reactions that humans do the trail work, and it's not just animals pushing the brush back or like, you know, they just exist out of nowhere, I'd probably be a richer man. Um, but yeah, you know, it's, it's funny. I think I start with one aspect in that trails is infrastructure. We don't often think of like these kind of, um, rights that we have, these places that we have, these third spaces that inherently are American. Libraries,
some rural hospitals that are publicly funded, and public lands. There's not that many other, like public goods that we have that offer these spaces outside of home and work that we don't like detest. I mean, highways are a public good, but I don't think many people have like too much fun long-haul driving or being stuck in traffic. Um, but what you're saying is like, you know, we really respect the folks that are fixing potholes in a highway. Who doesn't love a librarian who's spending time with our kids, you know, teaching them something new? Who doesn't love their rural nurse who's taking care of elderly folks, you know, at a rate that's, you know, government and that maybe folks who don't have insurance can still, you know, get good healthcare? And then you have trails, [laughs] and no one thinks about the campground host or the trail worker or anything else until they, you know, maybe have that one memory with their kid where the campground host made them a junior ranger. But that is a seminal foundational moment for many American families, is when their kid gets to go out and like have that first fishing experience- Um, and I think that's something where I want more celebration for these folks who, they don't get paid riches to go work on public lands. They're doing it out of love of them. But aside from Smokey the Bear, [laughs] or, like, maybe even Hootie the Owl, you know, like, we don't have these celebratory aspects in American culture of thanking these public land servants, um, you know, for the work they do. They're... You- you're on GS system. You're not getting a ton of money. Like, the retirement benefits are all right if you make it all the way through, but in this day and age with this administration, that's harder than ever. Um,
and so, you know, I just try and think what you just said is if you had a nickel for every time someone said thank you, you know, I'd probably still take just the thank you. Uh, it's a rare thing when people recognize that people are out there taking care of trails so that they can go out with their family and just go on a dang hike. You know, whether it's a quarter mile to have a picnic or you're doing the whole AT, I just want more guidebooks and more, you know, media or the outdoor industry itself to start celebrating these folks who are taking care of these places. Like, if you want me to buy your pair of hiking boots these days, I don't care what influencer you put them in, but heck, if you give a couple pair of Danners to some guys felling trees out in the woods or some gals taking care of campgrounds or cleaning out rivers, you got my heart right there with whatever, you know, your brand is. But s- public lands don't celebrate [laughs] those people who have given a lot to take care of them, and I think that's somewhere that we as this community can really start. Um,
it's a, it's a big leap, but I, I feel like it's a fair ask.
Hear, hear.
I love that answer. Okay, Dylan, last question, and I hope it's an easy one.
Oh, boy. [laughs]
What is your favorite map?
Man, right now... And it just changes all the time, so I'll, I'll be honest. Um, I might have two, but they're for very different reasons. Um, the, the first one that I think I really love right now is, uh, the 1842, uh, expedition for John C. Fremont over the Sierra Nevada, and the reason I say that is John C. Fremont was not a good man. Uh, there were some tragedies that occurred, [laughs] uh, genocides, you name it. Um, and this is un- this is not unusual in American history, right? This is pre-gold rush period. Um, but I look at that map, and I've gotten to spend some time with, uh, Washoe, with the Washoe people, um, and some of their folks working on history and linguistics, uh, and language. And, you know, it's the f- it's one of these first maps that really made me realize that, um, American history, that map that he shows this, like, unique novel route over the southern, you know, south of s- of Lake Tahoe, Sierra, is the exact same path that the Washoe used to go from their winter to summer homes, and they have stories of showing this guy how to make a snowshoe and how to get across [laughs] in the winter. And it- it's this map that constantly... I think it's a beautiful map, the John C. Fremont map, but it makes me think about place names, and it forces me to think about the history that I'm told and shown versus that which has been erased and hidden from me, and it's, it's something I'll, I'll always go back to. The other one, um, is a, is a personal vice, and I really like the, um, westward kind of wagon routes and train routes map that shows the checkerboarding kind of across Idaho and Nevada. And the reason I like it is that I've been on a culinary adventure to Basque restaurants and to Basque boarding houses, and I've found the most honest and best food at, uh, Basque fixing restaurants that exactly follow the westward [laughs] Home- Homestead Act map. And so if you go to Boise, you go to Elko, Nevada, you go to Reno, Nevada, and then you go to Bakersfield, California, and you can find arbor glyphs from Basque sheepherders the entire way, and the best food at, like, the fairest American prices in family seating style. Um, so that one's my, like, road trip map of where I wanna go get dinner [laughs] on any given path, uh, for the book tour. So different uses, but both valuable.
Wow, that's a great answer. I lo- I love that. I, I love the sort of full circle moment. By the way, guys, I looked it up. The, what is generically referred to as the Taco Bus in Dillon, Montana, is called La Fiesta. Um, and so when you break out your Beaverhead, uh, you know, Deer Lodge National Forest map, uh, and you go back to where you were named for there, Dillon, go back to Dillon, Montana, it is La Fiesta. And I also, I love this connection, you bringing up these Basque restaurants because, you know, just east of Dillon, you get up into the Gravellys, a mountain range that Anders and I love, and you can actually still see, you know, the Basque, um, mobile wagons living out of sheep herding. And it's, uh, it's just kinda really cool that this sorta comes back full circle back to the town that you were named for, Dillon, Montana. His name is Dylan Auschlager. He's written a beautiful book called Trail Work. Sometimes you pick up a book, and you go, "Boy, I can't wait to read more," and you realize this is a first, and it is really good. So now I can't wait for you to write more so that I can read more. This is just a great book, Dylan, and really thanks for joining us today.
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, and, uh, I hope during the Montana leg of the book tour this next winter I get to see you both in person.
We will make that happen.
Yes, please.
Next week on The Wild Idea, we wrap up our month of stewardship by bringing you our keynote conversation from the National Wilderness Skills Institute with Meryl Harrell from Friends of the Forest Service and Lisa Ronald from American Rivers and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Coalition. If you wanna stay on top of all we have coming up on the podcast, sign up for our newsletter at thewildidea.com. If you wanna financially support what we're doing here, you can use a platform called Buy Me A Coffee, which you can find on our website. And if you love what we're doing, please give us a good rating and a review on your podcast player of choice and, more importantly, recommend us to a friend. We love watching our community grow every week. Let's all lace up our boots, get to work, and we will see all of you on down the trail.
The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilcheski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Keahan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Lara Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]