TWI_007_David_Gessner
Tue, Mar 25, 2025 5:45PM • 45:11
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Wild Idea Podcast, David Gessner, New York Times bestsellers, environmentalism, Teddy Roosevelt, Bears Ears monument, Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, public lands, conservation, community, technology and nature, Eurasian eagle owl, Robert Redford, wilderness corridors.
SPEAKERS
Anders Reynolds, David Gessner, Voiceover, Bill Hodge


Voiceover  00:00
The following is a production of wild idea media.


Bill Hodge  00:06
And welcome back to the wild idea podcast, where we are exploring the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. Anders, it's another day. Another headline, right? Oh, hi, Bill. How are you living the dream watching the corvids feed outside my window, once again, had a Fox Run by my window yesterday. It was kind of cool. So


Anders Reynolds  00:28
I want to start today with two items of business, if that's okay with you, yep, the first is a thank you. So we're recording this on the very day that our first episode went live, and people may not be surprised to hear that you and I got on early and went over all the data, and we are seeing that a lot of you have already downloaded it. We've got listeners in five countries already, which I'm very excited about. I noticed New Zealand's not on that list. And this is a specific shout out to our friend Sam Evans, who we know is there right now. He needs to get on the ball and at a six country that list, but the item of business is to say, thank you. Thank you to everyone so far who is listening. I know this will air in the future, hopefully there'll be more of you listening, but we really appreciate it. We want to build a community, and the only way we can do that is through an iterative process where you guys listen and give us feedback and we get better and better and better. And so I'm excited about doing that, and I'm


Bill Hodge  01:19
excited you know, coming up here in a minute, we'll be talking to our guest, David gester, the author of several New York Times best selling books, and that's exciting for this day, one of our release too.


Anders Reynolds  01:29
Yeah. Now the second order of business is a challenge. I'm gonna ask you to look into the future. We're we're recording this after our first episode comes out, but before the NCAA Tournament starts your beloved Tennessee Vols, and there's a lot of pressure on them. I think, do you do you have a prediction for how this is all going to go?


Bill Hodge  01:49
Well, my bracket hasn't going to the Final Four. I will say I don't have them going to the national championship. But I'm, I'm optimistic, if we can scrounge a little bit of offense to go along with our amazing defense would be great. But matter of fact, I think all three of us on here today are represented in the tournament, the David professor at UNC, W and Anders, you're a big Arkansas guy. So what's your prediction for your Razorbacks? Well,


Anders Reynolds  02:15
I think we're gonna see a classic matchup, California versus PITINO in the second round, and then our first national championship since 1994 I feel pretty good about that prediction. I'm not gonna back down. It


Bill Hodge  02:28
is our pleasure to welcome to the podcast today. David Gaster, David is the author of 13, maybe 14 now with the book of Flaco, books that blend the love of nature, humor, memoir and environmentalism, including several New York Times best selling books. All the while that remains, Return of the Osprey, sick of nature, leave it as it is, a journey through Theodore Roosevelt's American wilderness. And most recently, just out in the last few weeks, is the book of Flaco David. Welcome to the podcast.


David Gessner  02:55
Thanks a lot. My squad, I guess. UNC W I've had a gripe with the school since I've been here that were called the Seahawks. Now we're really the Ospreys, and the nickname for Ospreys are fish hawks, not Seahawks. But I actually gave a commencement speech, which was, there's no such thing as a Seahawk. The Chancellor wasn't crazy about it, but it worked around, actually worked around to themes of obsession and wildness. So it's, you know, apropos today, I guess, yeah, for sure, absolutely, 100%


Anders Reynolds  03:31
David, we're so happy to have you here. I'm a big fan of your writing. I've read more than a few of your books, so I'm, I'm really happy to dig in on some of that stuff. And if you don't mind, I'm gonna I'm gonna hop in right away. Sure and talk to you a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt. The title of your book, leave it as it is, is a defense of the Bears Ears monument, but it's also a reference to a famous expiration of Teddy Roosevelt's a cry at the edge of the Grand Canyon to leave it as it is. But the full quote, as I know it, and as you lay out in your book, goes further. And to my mind, it contains a bit of a contradiction. The full quote is, leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The Ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. Much of your exploration of the West has grappled with that paradox of management, on one hand, leaving it alone, leaving it as it is, but on the other, admitting that the ages have been at work. On it, the ages have been unable to leave it alone. They've actively been at work. I wonder if you can unpack that paradox a little bit and maybe tell us just a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt for the point 1% of people who aren't familiar with him? Yeah, I


David Gessner  04:41
guess, you know. And of course, Roosevelt himself didn't leave a lot of things as they were. I mean, he was like one of history's great busy bodies. One of the things I tried to do in the book was kind of grapple with a newer politics, right? I'm in. Const in a creative writing program where we're well to the left of Lenin and I'm very liberal myself, though not of I sometimes I started to call myself a Bill Maher liberal, which was annoying to my people in the hallway. So my idea was, what do we have in Roosevelt that we can keep? You know, we're going to discard some things. For instance, his attitude toward Native Americans is a pretty discardable or unfortunate aspect. But there's so much that we can keep. And I think, in the midst of this, like frenetic life, where you're reading a book a night, and you're writing dozens of books, and there's, you know, and, oh, by the way, you're President of the United States, you still run in and tell your cabinet when you see a rare bird, you know you still have this wanting to leave it as it is in so many places. And for me, one thing that gets in the way of my thinking about wildness sometimes is the idea of kind of wild purity, you know, full on thorough. And as we learned, as we were trying to set up our headphones and our you know, we don't live in that world, and if we want to impact the world, we've got to be in the world. So how can you still have places where you personally have left it as it is? How can you have patches of wildness? How can you still care about doing that when it often, so often, as you two, both know, feels like a losing battle. So really, for me, one of the inspiring things still about Teddy are these contradictions. And I'm not, I know I'm not really answering your question. You're talking about the ages working on the Grand Canyon. And of course, the world is always evolving, and we know that, but to let it evolve, rather than do what we do, which is force our way in at all points. And so for me, it's it's always about contradiction, but it's also, at least there's some pushback against what seems like this constant rush toward ripping things up by their roots and doing the opposite of leaving as it is. My


Bill Hodge  07:03
follow on to that, something that I took from leave it as it is, that I think defines President Roosevelt a little bit that idea of proceed with your contradictions intact, but proceed briskly, right? Like Teddy was a set of contradictions, right? He loved nature, but he wasn't just a hunter. He seemed to live for killing things. He was this bundle of contradiction, just as you just sort of outlined in your answer. But like he was, he was an interesting cat, because he probably knew he was full of contradictions. But boy, he one thing. He was successful. I was just continuing to charge ahead. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Well, of course, that's


David Gessner  07:43
so relevant right now, right? I mean, many of us basically buried our heads in the sand and just couldn't accept what was happening after the November elections. And some of us are starting to bring our heads out a little bit and thinking of ways we can fight back. And if nothing else, he was a fighter. And one of the reasons he always appealed to me is, like most writers, I'm mentally ill. I spend way too much time in my head, you know, I overthink things. And when I had, you know, I started another book, a later book, with an anecdote about my daughter, where I brought her to Walden Pond when she was one years old, and my wife was with me, and I pointed to the foundation of Thoreau's cabin, and I said, that's where the man lived to ruin daddy's life, because I read him in high school and couldn't unthrow myself. There was no way I was going to law school or medical school or anything I was I was going to work as a carpenter and become a writer. But I bring that up because, as much as influences, Thoreau was as a model, you know, somebody who didn't drink, apparently, didn't have sex, you know, just was so pure. I was never going to environmentally, live up to that standard, right? And Teddy with those contradictions and that briskness that you describe, for me was a great model, because sometimes, you know, I'm sure you guys aren't Patriots fans. I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. I let I dealt with them losing all the all the time, and then finally they won. But this is going to sound like a weird role model for active fighting, but I'm a Gronk fan, and just smashing and crashing and through catching the ball. And just like, you know, it's just like not having the perfect plan, but being active. And to get high brow, there's this Samuel Johnson, quote, activity contains within itself the seeds of its own reformation, which is basically saying, do stuff and the thinking and the theory will follow, you know, by kind of crashing ahead, which is kind of how I proceeded. Really is just because when I overthink and sit at my desk, I find myself. Paralyzed sometimes. So to try to just push forward momentum is with my creative writing students, my grad students, that's the word I use more than anything, because they don't seem to get that if you sit, you keep your butt in the chair for day after day, suddenly you get rolling. And getting rolling seems to me an antidote to what we have right now, which is the kind of paralysis in the face of this massive evil. To put it, to put it bluntly, this


Anders Reynolds  10:29
idea of moving forward reminds me of a quote by another poet about another of our Commander in chiefs who was in many ways stuck in his time and easy to judge from here, but who I admire, and that's Walt Whitman's quote about Ulysses S Grant, where he says Grant was one of the inevitables. He always arrived. He was as invincible as the law. I've always really loved my quote. I'll


David Gessner  10:54
match that with kind of paraphrasing Wallace Stegner talking about John Wesley Powell, and saying that, you know, he's talking about how he's going down, you know, through the canyons with one arm. And he basically says, for some people, that would be a life ruiner. And, you know, you'd sit in bed all day. For Powell, it affected him as much as, like a leaf in the river. He just, like, he just went right through it and just, you know, carried on. So, so I mean that kind of energy, because when, especially when things seem hopeless and insurmountable, it's time to, like, smash and crash ahead. I think I'm


Anders Reynolds  11:33
glad you brought up. Wallace Stegner, I'm gonna Gronk.


Bill Hodge  11:39
Okay, too. We're maybe we're maybe more Stegner fans


Anders Reynolds  11:43
than I have a question about another book of yours. In that book, all the while that remains, which wrestles with the legacies of Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey, the writer Wendell Berry says, of considering their lives, that quote you need the way lighted by way of introducing Stegner and Abby to folks, I wonder if you could talk a little about how they've lighted your way.


David Gessner  12:10
Well, you know, I still have a book to write called talking to ghosts. I mentioned Thoreau already, and I just, I've always been like a communer with people who've come before, and Stegner particularly is a person who thinks about his literary ancestors, right? And reaches back to them, though Abby does too. And for me, the original title of the book was properly wild and the proper part was more Stegner, and the wild part was more Abby. But I always felt as you know, one thing you do as a writer when you look to past books is you're trying to figure out who you are. And for me, looking at those two was a way of defining myself. Stegner, you know, the more proper professor who starts the Stanford program, who sits in environmental meetings and does the kind of dirty work of daily work, who, you know, was apparently very funny and could be racy in person, but there's an air of kind of like he was a statue already feel To him, you know, as his career proceeded, and Abby obviously, arguably, has had more influence on western writers of my ilk than anybody else. You know, you can't pick for years you couldn't pick up a book about the west where they didn't sit out front drinking their coffee on their been front of their tent slash trailer slash car, you know, and all that you know, Abby's wildness was also a bluntness, a humor that was there, and also obviously wildly politically incorrect, which you would think would lead to eradicating Abby, you know, in the current climate. But I think the thing that keeps him from being from being eradicated, is voice. I don't think, I mean, there are very few writers who sound like someone speaking to you, and you could actually break it down into sentences. So go from a long sentence to a blunt one. And so Abby's voice, which was like kind of a ballsy take no prisoners, fighting for what was left, I'll leave it as it is, voice which Stegner believed in too. It was just a stylistic difference, you know, a more restrained way of doing that. And so to me, looking at those two and thinking about their influence on writing and on environmentalism was a way to think about where we are now in the West, in terms of how we just have we choose to fight, but it also was thinking about who I was and where I fit in this whole mess


Anders Reynolds  14:58
so that. Leads me to a follow up question. There's a vignette in that same book where the writer Terry Tempest Williams, whom I must admit I'm a huge fan, turns those stereotypes of those two men on their heads, claiming Abby was the conservative and Stegner the liberal. I think I know what she means there, but I'm curious how how you've come to interpret that statement?


David Gessner  15:22
I want to know what you think it means first.


Anders Reynolds  15:26
Well, a lot of it, for me is a reaction to their fathers. You know it Stegner works, it feels like throughout his life and throughout his career, to make a good name, right, to make his name known to make a good name and create a self that existed away from a father who reads as pretty differently than him. Abby, to me, in some ways, is a continuation of his own father. They both seem like they're, you know, headstrong, brash, you know, like we're describing men who sort of act first and deal with the ramifications later. And in that way, Abby does come across as like a small c conservative. To me, this sort of not a fear of change, maybe not a fear of change, but maybe just an honoring of how it used to be. And Stegner seems more comfortable living in a world where he questions, well, why has it been this way? Are there ways that we could change it? Could it be improved? And he looked at his own life that way. I think he looked at wild areas that way. That's a distinction I sort of pick up on, but I think


David Gessner  16:35
that's great. And the small c conservative also, you know, is anticipating Trump as far as the border wall goes. You know Abby, that is right. I should


Anders Reynolds  16:44
say there's many ways where Abby was a a capital C conservative. They're alarming.


David Gessner  16:49
Interesting. Thing that you mentioned about the Father is, as stegner's career proceeds, he starts to define his father and his mother as the classic sticker. The mother was the sticker who wanted to stay in one place and root down and care for a place. And the father was the boomer who was always looking for the big rock candy mountain, what was around the corner. And he uses these throughout his career, and he definitely values the stickers. And he sees the boomers as kind of the bane of the West, you know, you know, all the way up to fracking and and so it gave him, kind of a map, or a template for for how he thought about, how he thought about the West. And people who exploit a place and then run to the next place, or not exploit even like are drawn into a place and enamored of it and move on and and for me, you're absolutely right about Abby. But the part about Abby that I can't let go of is the kind of Whitman esque lounging, you know, when he's down below the falls, living naked for a mosque, you know, I, I, I can't let go of the, you know, the kind of pagan aspect of of Abby. And I hope I never do another, totally different writer, Henry beston said, The world today is sick for lack of elemental things, for fire, wind, rock. And I, you know, and you know, as we fuck around with our phones and our email and our everything else, it's like to remind ourselves every now and then that we're an animal in the world, and is nice getting harder to do.


Bill Hodge  18:36
Yeah, for sure, the connection is broken more every day, it feels like, and that's part of the reason we're doing this, this exploration, is thinking about that. I want to, I want to kind of stick with some of these characters, though, for a minute, between Roosevelt and honestly, Roosevelt's relationship with John Muir, the similarities and tensions between Abby and Stegner. To me, I tend to think of it takes all kinds. Right? It's like, how do we move forward with this wilderness idea, or this idea of protecting wild places, wild nature function, ecosystems? Well, it's probably going to take both the pragmatist and the bully, right? And as and they both those sets of people that I just mentioned. You know, Stegner and and Abby are sort of of the same time. There's actually overlap. There was clearly over overlap with Muir and Roosevelt and their famous camping trip, and yet they had their tensions. You know, Muir didn't understand Roosevelt's obsession with killing things, and Roosevelt couldn't understand why Muir didn't bother to learn his birds and but I'm wondering, if you think that's true, that it almost we have to have in particularly in this in this time we're living in this moment we're living in. Do we have to have the pragmatist and the bully, or is it time for us to pull out the bully? Because clearly, we're facing one today. I


David Gessner  19:54
think we could use a, you know, a true speaker. Here alongside some more pragmatists. I don't know if you guys are probably familiar with Carsten here, who died recently. He was the guy who walked from Yellowstone to the Yukon and he he was the president of the y to y and Yellowstone to Yukon Trail, which basically followed up on the thinking of conservation biologists that parks are islands, and parks need to be and those islands need to be connected. And so for big for big carnivores, right for, for grizzly bears and and Carsten walked it himself anyway, two summers ago, I, I spent time with him, and he was the most gentle, funny guy, a sweet, sweet man who fought like hell his whole career for just that thing. He he fell out of a deer stand. He was paralyzed, and he managed to get his phone, and he died of that the last year. And so I just wrote, finished a piece about him, where I said and he died on election day. So I finished a piece that said on the same day that a convicted felon was elected President of the United States. Carson Muir passed away in his writing shack behind his house and and it was the first time I bring it up, because it was the first time I felt that it was fighting back a little bit with what's going on right now. And I don't I'm not going to convert a million people from reading this article that's going to be in whatever Outside Magazine, but it just felt like we all have to find what we can do right now, and we have to. It's just like I had a book on climate change a couple of years ago, and people like, well, what, what should I do? What should I do? And I said, I'll give you the same advice I give my graduate student writers, you know, find your voice, and if your voice is if you're the Rush Limbaugh of environmentalism. God praise you. You know, it's I'm glad if you're, if you're, if what you're good at. You know, Stegner always said that we need people who will sit in meetings and pound community meetings and make the small changes. But what Abby did by being brash and making big, bold statements affected, I think, millions of people you know as a writer, so So I think, of course, we need all kinds, and we need, you know, another group that I remember, that I wrote about, because I wrote about Ospreys coming back from DDT, was the Environmental Defense Fund, and it was just a group of neighbors on Long Island. And one was a scientist, one was a lawyer. Art Cooley was this kind of big, burly teacher who came up with the saying, sue the bastards. That was what drove them. Now, some people aren't going to say that, you know, and some people ought to be more politics. So, yeah, I think it takes a team. In fact, I was one of stegners big kind of epiphanies was, you know, as writers were very we're solo, but as in, you know, as a group, environmentalists are so much more effective and a varied group. In particular, it seems we've got kind of one note of late, so I think Abby's in


Bill Hodge  23:25
reading. Leave it as it is. I saw you wrestling with the idea of being an advocate, whether it's being an advocate as a writer, but you were wrestling with it because as the writer, you're sort of trained to see all sides, but you did come to grips with it. I'm curious about that idea that, because it sounds like you're you're encouraging your students, regardless of whether they stand on one side or another side of an issue, you you have to be able to figure out what your voice is, and your voice is going to require you to, at some level, be an advocate, right? I wonder how that sort of evolution happened with you?


David Gessner  24:01
Well, I just think I'm bad at it, and I wish I'd been better at it, but I think my way of doing it is through the writing and the teaching. For instance, we're starting one of the only grad programs in environmental writing here, and it's and, you know, there's things are so segregated within the writing world, that there are science writing programs and, you know, in journalism programs. But the type of writing I'm talking about, which is Stegner Abbey, somewhat, the stuff I do, isn't really represented. And so I'm trying to pull students in, hopefully some from the West as well, to kind of train in this sort of writing. Because I do think, I mean, it's not as obvious the impact it has, but I do think it does have an impact. It certainly did on me. To read Abby, to read Thoreau, to read Terry Tempest Williams, you know, to read Linda. Again, who was my teacher at Colorado, to read people like that changed me.


Bill Hodge  25:06
Well, it changes somebody like me. I, as I became an advocate. After I left sort of a corporate career to become an advocate for public lands I look at now my library. It helped me reading great writers, understand my own voice, whether I was ever going to become a writer, it gave me my voice as Anders, and I would work the halls of Congress, for sure.


David Gessner  25:26
And just one little thing, I think that you're right. We have to adapt those voices for our times, right? I mean, you know, Abby's never, if somebody came in like Abby, right now, we'd, kind of roll our eyes, or so we grow and adapt. And I mean, for me, Humor has been a big part of a lot of my books. I travel around the country, like during the BP oil spill, and I interact with, you know, conservative people with very different politics than I do. I usually find that alcohol is a good lubricant for that. I find that, you know, being able to joke around, and even to the point where this guy, who was my main source for for the BP oil spill book, big guy, hunting and fishing guide, he would tease me and call Obama your President, you know. And I would tease him back about, you know, things, but we did have the land in common. So that was, you know, because he was fighting against the oil that was ruining his business. Basically, I have one funny example of that, which is, I went up to Vernal, Utah, you know, fracking town at the time that was booming. And my assignment for the magazine, which was on earth the NRDC journal, was to go write about how ATVs and backcountry motorcycling were destroying the land. So I did what I always do. You know, my working method at the time was a man walks into a bar. So I went to the Main Street bar in Vernal and, you know, kind of woke up the next morning all groggy headed and realized they made a date with a guy to go motorcycling in the back country. And my motorcycling skills were very limited, so off I pushed. And, you know, we went. And, you know, after like, half an hour, I flipped it and bruised or broke my ribs. Was lying on the rocks, thinking this is going to be so great for the story, you know, because you, you kind of so you it's, it's actually been a way for me, and I used to say, until very recently, if you go out and get into the world that way, you'll be surprised by how much common ground there is, I'm not, you know, maybe it's a little less so right now that maybe I'd be a little less able to walk into a bar and joke around at this moment. There's


Bill Hodge  27:51
still fringes, right? But I have found that when you're out there breaking bread with people or having a beer with people, you do quickly discover you have a lot more in common. I used to say you get more done together on the trail than you do fighting across the conference room table, right? So,


Anders Reynolds  28:03
David, I've got a good Vernal Utah story as well. I in a former life, when I was working at Pew Charitable Trust, we were engaged on a on a project called the public lands initiative in Utah that eventually, down the road, led to the big Emory county bill that ended up designating over a million acres of wilderness, and which reflected some relationship building like you and Bill are talking about where we went out and looked at these areas with county commissioners and public lands users, and really talked about like what certainty would mean for all parties involved, like, what areas were worth protecting, what areas may have had A line drawn around them, but were no longer appropriate for protection. It was a it was a really good process, but before we got there, early on in the process, I set up a meeting with some county commissioners in Vernal and thought it would be a friendly meeting, and when I got there, realized that they had kind of pulled one over on me and scheduled the meeting for just their normal County Commissioner meeting, like, on a Monday night, and I was like, there to basically give testimony. And I, you know, this was over 10 years ago. I was brand new to the industry, and I was so nervous, but like, you had a good experience that it was people who were asking questions because they were curious, not because they were, like, hoping to catch me out. It led to some good conversations down the road. Yeah,


David Gessner  29:24
I mean, actually, that leads for me to ask a question. I'm here in Wilmington, North Carolina during the year. I usually get out West during the summers. But what is your feeling about what's on the ground right now? We've had the tearing away of park employees, and what are people doing? Fight back and resist?


Bill Hodge  29:44
Well, I can, I can speak to that a little bit from the West, and I think Anders can speak to it from a Washington, DC perspective. You know, there the last two weekends, I've been asked to speak, first at a public lands rally that was literally pulled together by federal employees who've been fired. From the land management agencies. And in Missoula, Montana, we had 1000 people show up. I didn't know if I was driving to Missoula to speak to 15 people, and there were 1000 people there. Who are, you know, upset? Now, I would say, you know, Missoula, as they like to joke about Missoula, it's a great town that's, you know, 100 miles from Montana. Even though it's in the middle of Montana, it's politically different than a lot of the rest of Montana, but, but, but in my work, you know, I have a story similar to Anders, about about his county commission meeting in Inferno. I, I we had a public meeting on some consensus we came to in Beaverhead County, Montana, which is southwest Montana. Some of my favorite work was working with very conservative, I would say Trump ranchers, but we found common ground around public lands. And I think that still exists. I think, I think these wedges are starting to be driven a little bit because of the pace and scale of which the administrative actions are happening. But, but I see groups from backcountry horsemen to local garden clubs. You know, it's just like the old days of speaking out and Anders. I don't know about how you would answer that. From a DC perspective,


31:06
I think the


Anders Reynolds  31:08
administration has really OVERPLAYED THEIR hand with this, these firings. I think I'm seeing people across the spectrum react negatively to this, and for me, it's driving home one of the lessons that you, David, talk about in your books, which is when public land users, including, you know, recreation folks, conservation folks, preservation folks, whoever it is, when they start to realize that the enemy isn't other public land users, but the capitalists at the top, that's when things can really get done. And I don't think for a second they have fooled anybody into believing that this is about anything other than trying to eventually privatize our private land and sell it off to the highest bidder for whatever they want to use it for. And it's one of those rare moments I hope, where people are going to come together, stop fighting. We're not going to see the other as the enemy, but rather the person above who's trying to control all of us as the enemy. And I see that happening. It's still building. It's a, you know, a snowflake halfway down a mountain, but I think it's, it's a real thing that's


Bill Hodge  32:15
very encouraging, shifting gears a little bit as we got on here today to have this conversation. Technology reared its ugly head, but it honestly had me thinking about as I'm making my way through your latest book, the book of Flaco. And for those of you don't know who Flacco is, the Eurasian eagle owl that escaped from the Central Park Zoo and spent a year living in freedom around Central Park and around Manhattan. There's a lot in that book, sort of about modern day experiences with the wild, frankly, coming from people looking at their monitors. I think about, you know, the folks who were tracking Flacco. But I also think about my wife and our executive producer, Laura Hodges, pretty regular watcher of Eagle Nest cams and and, you know, that's led to some interesting ways in which people have interacted with the Wilder or the fact that people could track, you know, grizzly bear 399, and in the Tetons. I'm curious, David, what you think about people tracking nature, interacting with nature, while still sitting at their desk, and what that is both as a positive and a negative? Yeah,


David Gessner  33:21
for sure. So Flaco, you know, on day one, had 20 bird watchers staring up at him in Central Park the southern end and a couple of media. And the next day, 100 bird watchers and 50 media. And within two weeks, people in Hong Kong and Scotland we're watching this bird. And one of the themes of the book, you know, it's kind of interesting. It's to speak to what you guys are focused on. One theme is wildness, and the other is, we live in a world of screens, right? And these two things, how did they fit together? This morning, you mentioned we had some some issues with technology. Earlier, I was getting all these virus alerts and and I just, I was going crazy, basically. And one of the themes of flako Is he broke out of the cage, right? Because you could call them vandals or liberators. But on February 2, 2023 someone cut a hole in his very small cage where he lived alone, which he shouldn't have been alone. And he comes out of the cage, and he wait, makes his way down Fifth Avenue and and it looks like the zoo is going to recapture him, but after two weeks, he catches his first rat. And the most exciting part of the book for me, from and I will get to screens, is when he starts to kind of reclaim his evolutionary tools. Some Berger said early on, it's like somebody owns a Maserati but doesn't know how to drive, so he's suddenly he's flying. He's hooting for the first time. He's swooping down. Wrong, and it's really exciting. It's like he's becoming himself and he's reclaiming his wildness. So metaphorically, I love that idea that, you know, if the cage are these, the you know, partly the computers and partly everything were trapped inside. I love that idea. But conversely, what you're saying is true too. This is a bird whose primary thing he was in his life was watched. He was watched in his little cage at the zoo, and then he was watched by, you know, hundreds of people in the park, and then people beyond. So there's an impressive aspect to that, but there's also what, you know, I kind of came into this as an idealistic, therovian, solitary nature guy, and by the end, I really had begun to enjoy the community aspect. I saw, particularly seeing people who wouldn't have normally focused on an animal, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't. We're getting these glimpses of wildness in the city, and it's always so exciting to have that in an urban atmosphere, I write about when in 2003 I was teaching in Boston, and I followed this coyote scientist John way after coyotes in the city. And at one point, the Charles River froze over, and there was a little talcum of powder of snow fall, and we followed the prince down the river into the center of Boston. So there's always an excitement of mixing those two things, right? But for me, ultimately, I came to really enjoy the, you know, the people who were vicariously enjoying flocko. It really, you know, I quote Muir, which I often do in the books, basically, to paraphrase, when you pick up one thing in the world, it's attached to everything in the universe. Well, Fauci turned out to be amazing to think about the virtual world we live in, but the possibilities of community, like you're describing, and the possibility of a different kind of wild, like a limited wild. And then also he brought up zoo ethics, because his cage was too small and he he had never really flown as a young bird. And as it turns out, we're at a moment in time where elephants and zoos is ending in California and in Tennessee, there's an elephant sanctuary 1000s of acres, no people, no zoo watchers. And you know, an elephant from 10 years before in the Oakland Zoo ran up and said hello to his old buddy, who could been brought there 10 years before. So, I mean, the so Flaco also speaks to Zoo ethics. And there's a moment where the zoo says, We're not going to try to catch him, and we're gonna monitor him, but they just abdicate, basically. And I think the zoo blew it, because zoos are there to entertain and educate. They could have had a guy out in the park with the groups following flako, who was saying the Eurasian eagle owl is the largest owl. You know, they could have been had a guy out there helping little kids, turning them onto the owl. Because, you know, lots of people, I don't know if I'd say millions, but certainly 1000s of people were having their first experience watching birds and maybe briefly thinking biocentrically instead of anthropocentrically, and go, you know, caring about the bird. So there was, you know, it was a different kind of book for me, for sure, but, but a lot of those same themes came into play in a more urban and limited way.


Bill Hodge  38:28
Yeah, it's, I think it speaks to the power of your writing, frankly, that that range that we've been talking about, that you could go back and sort of travel the ground and the writings of Stegner and Abby, or travel the history of Roosevelt. But you also can live in the now and track the modern day followings of a Eurasian Eagle isle in Central Park New York. It just speaks to the power of your writing, to writing in general. One thing I'm curious, as we sort of get to the end here, is what geography or what subject is calling to you next, you managed to write so beautifully about the west and the east. As you said, you're sort of a creature of the East, but you've spent a tremendous amount of time in the West. What geography is, is calling out to you. Now I'm curious.


David Gessner  39:11
Well, one of my first published pieces was in High Country news, and it was called the polygamous of place because I wrote, you know, I wrote the first book about loving Cape Cod. While I was in Boulder, Colorado, moved back to Cape Cod, wrote a book about loving the mountains and the Rockies, and then wrote a book return of the Osprey, where I said, in kind of a Wendell Berry note, I will stay on Cape Cod forever, which is how I got my job in North Carolina with some professors. But right now I'm doing two of those things. I've been working on a novel called shibric, which is an intergenerational it's got one family from the 1850s and one from the present, or the pre cell phone present of like early 2000 on Cape Cod. And the 1850s family are built the clippers. Ships on Cape Cod. So I've been working on this for like, 30 years, and we're getting ready to go out with it. So that's the that's the east and then the Western book is this weird. I don't even know if it fits together, but I got a fan phone call from Robert Redford. After all the wild that remains came out, and I, of course, I thought it was a fake, and I was taking a nap that day, so I got the message, and the next day I was taking a nap. I got another message from Redford, so I was like, the next day, I'm not napping. And so we ended up talking for an hour, and he invited me to give a talk out at Sundance. So I became kind of, I'd never been kind of a Redford fanboy before. I never met him, but I like, so I'm combining this trip I took from the border wall up into Canada and then the y to y with like, like, the theme is, I'm trying not to write a celebrity biography. I'm trying to focus on environmental stuff, and Redford keeps rearing his head and coming in. So I'm trying to, like, kind of have a way for people who aren't interested in the environmental story to be brought in. You know, Redford is like the shiny object, and hopefully the heart of it is this trip through these wilderness corridors. But, you know, maybe I'm crazy and maybe it should be two different books, but we'll see David,


Anders Reynolds  41:22
we'll wrap with this question. Give yourself the gift of a very long life and an equally as long career, and imagine it's a year, 2100, what conservation champion from our time are you writing about? And what's the predominant narrative of wild one conservation?


David Gessner  41:40
I think it, it ain't going to be me, because it's ain't going to be some old white guy in the old tradition. And I think that's fine, but I think it's got to be somebody who's stressing community and values. And what I'm thinking about is I, I've been trying to kind of create my own response to Trump right now, and there will be more Trumps to come, because nationalism is on the rise. And Abby was right. I mean, it's crowded, right? And there's a part of that whole movement which is just like the world is fucked, and we better get our guns and stay in, you know, and defend our little spot. So it's going to be somebody who works against that. And one thing we forget when we read these writers we've been talking about, we're talking about saving land, but we're also talking about, in Thoreau's words, the life that men praise and call successful is but one kind. We're talking about a counter life. So this non white, old guy, person is going to hold up, not just the value of saving those lands, and hopefully it involves what I talk about with the Y to Y, connecting wild places like movable parks, basically, but they're going to be talking about values and somehow talk about them in an unborn way. Because if you know, if you talk about him like the droning minister, you're just going to put people to sleep. So how do we awaken people to the idea that crass money making success with a capital S isn't the only thing that's exciting in the world. So I'd say they would make make these things not good. Thorough, hated do gooders. Abby, too. Make them exciting. Make it thrilling to go against what the prevailing culture is saying. Maybe it will be me. I said that pretty well. I'll do just a pure autobiography in 2000 Nice, nice,


Bill Hodge  43:38
to minimize your role there, David,


David Gessner  43:42
I tried, I tried to be modest. I think


Bill Hodge  43:45
your writing is awfully important. Our guest today has been David guester, author of 14 amazing books, best selling books on New York Times bestseller list. Again, we've mentioned all the while that remains. We've also mentioned, leave it as it is. And the most recent book is the book of Flaco. David, thanks for thanks for joining us today. David,


Anders Reynolds  44:03
thank you so much. I really appreciate this, if for no other reason than what I heard you say was that I am the Robert Redford of modern conservation, and Bill is the Rush Limbaugh.


David Gessner  44:13
That's what I'm just saying. And I can see you. I can see you in person, so I see that you're a very dashing man. Anders, all


Bill Hodge  44:26
right, David, thank you. And Andrews will see everybody on down the trail.


Voiceover  44:30
See you down the trail. Thank you. The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds, production and editing by Brent Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkorzewski At day pack digital, our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John ski hand. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take him in. To give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai