TWI_001_Nate
Tue, Mar 04, 2025 12:26PM • 50:13
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Wild idea podcast, public lands, timber production, executive orders, Forest Service Chief, Bernard Devoto, Avis Devoto, land grab plot, environmental journalism, public lands conservation, McCarran era, McCarthy era, Julia Child, media fracturing, coalition building.
SPEAKERS
Bill Hodge, Anders Reynolds, Nate Schweber, Voiceover
Voiceover 00:00
The following is a production of wild idea media.
Bill Hodge 00:05
And welcome to the wild idea podcast. Excited to have you join us today. We are exploring that intersection of our wild nature and our human nature, and how those two things interact. I'm glad to be joined by my co host, Andrews Reynolds, today.
Anders Reynolds 00:19
Oh, hi. How are you, Bill, how you feeling? You
Bill Hodge 00:22
know, I been fighting something. Who knows these days anymore, whether it's COVID or RSV or just a common head cold, which is what it feels like. I think I'm on the road to recovery. I'm working on it. I'm glad
Anders Reynolds 00:32
to hear that. I know this is a big day for you. Of course, our listeners don't know what day it is. They're gonna be listening to this in the future. But for their edification, we're recording this on Oscar Sunday. What time did you start watching red carpet coverage this morning? And also, who are you wearing?
Bill Hodge 00:47
First of all, I am wearing, courtesy of Duluth Trading Company, a pair of cargo pants on the top I am wearing a Carhartt happy to be supported by those fine folks just right out of the gate. I had to be on top of that red carpet coverage. You know, it's so important
Anders Reynolds 01:00
to me. Yeah, well, pants are welcome change. So thank you. Yeah,
Bill Hodge 01:03
yeah. Glad to that. This is a totally audio only podcast, so we're very excited to kind of bring you these conversations. They feel very timely. Anders, given some of the news here, in the last couple of days, we had some some announcements come out of the White House on a weekend, on a Saturday, it's
Anders Reynolds 01:19
true, we have a couple of different executive orders. They're both focused on expanding timber production and our public lands. I think it's going to take a little time for the folks who are engaged on this to analyze what these EOS will really do with what the practical effect of these executive orders is going to be, but I think the intent is clear. This administration wants to see our public lands producing more and more timber.
Bill Hodge 01:44
Yeah, and those two, those two orders out of the White House comes the day after they announced the new Chief of the Forest Service, who, for the first time in the history of the Forest Service is not a sort of career forest service person. I'm sure, for some people, that's probably exciting news, but the person does Tom Schultz, as his name was coming straight out of the timber industry. He's worked for Idaho Forest group, then their federal legislative government relations person, which is another word for lobbyist. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Interesting times we live in. We're bringing you these conversations because we think it's important to we look forward, backward, sideways, and all of the ways that humans have both embraced and impacted wild places, and we're trying to bring some folks who have some really interesting perspectives on that. And our guest today is somebody that I first met a couple years ago at the following in Norman Maclean's footsteps Literary Festival in Missoula, Montana. He is a journalist living in Brooklyn, New York, but originally from Missoula, I first met Nate when he got to speak about his book that was about to come out at that festival this America of ours, Bernard and Avis devoto and the Forgotten fight to save the wild, which went on to win a couple Awards, the High Plains Book Award and the first place award from the outdoor Writers Association of America. As I said, Nate's originally from Missoula. Today, he is talking to us from Brooklyn, New York. Nate, welcome to the podcast.
Nate Schweber 03:02
Hey Anders, Hey Bill, it's great to be here, and I'm excited to be part of the wild idea podcast. We're
Anders Reynolds 03:08
excited to have you. Nate, look, I'm gonna open up with a hard hitting question. I know you did some digging through FBI files in support of your research on this America var as well, we have access to files of our own on this podcast, I'm looking at a an old newspaper article about some rowdy behavior by a Sousa phonist. Oh, boy, you recognize this young man.
Nate Schweber 03:30
You really, you really went all J Edgar Hoover on me. Yeah.
Anders Reynolds 03:35
That's not the first time the comparison was made. Short, angry.
Bill Hodge 03:42
Sorry. Control,
Nate Schweber 03:43
freaky. Yeah, you you probably found that yes, when I was a student at Hellgate High School in Missoula, Montana, circa 1994 to 1997 and again, as a student at journalism student at the University of Montana circa 97 to 2001 I played the tuba, the marching band version of the tuba called the sousaphone in the marching bands and PEP bands for both of those excellent educational institutions. And so I was widely recognized as that for a while, and in some places still am. And when I moved to New York City in 2001 plus, started playing the harmonica. Because, I think the first couple apartments that I lived in in New York City, I couldn't fit a tuba inside them, the pocket sized harmonica was a much more right sized instrument for for my new environment,
Bill Hodge 04:41
fantastic. I was interested. It seems like the issue wasn't so much with your plane, but I think the word I saw in the article was gyrations, is that it
Nate Schweber 04:50
was a pep band. You know, I was supposed to put some pep into it, you know. I tried to imagine, you know, what it would be like if Mick Jackson. Tiger. The front man of the Rolling Stones was a tuba player. So that was, that's what I approximated.
Bill Hodge 05:05
This would have been so priceless to see, but it was fun to read. No Nate, Thanks for, thanks for letting us expose a part of your past. There.
Nate Schweber 05:12
You know, I feel like, with all the FBI files that I went through, Turnabout is only a fair play. There
Bill Hodge 05:17
you go. There you go. Well, one of the things that that I thought about Nate, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. The world to so many people, particularly those who love and value our wild places and our public lands, it feels like the world's on fire. And it feels like these are, I think we often, often hear the word unprecedented times, and then all I have to do is reflect back on your book and your expert, you know your exploration of the work of Bernard devoto, and with, you know his collaboration with with his wife, AVIs, that these aren't unprecedented times. We've been here so many times before. What I really loved about your book, though, was it exposed as sort of a period of that, like, I think a lot of people in this space I've heard of John Muir, maybe even know about Gifford Pinchot, or, you know those, you know Thoreau, but here's sort of a period in our history that is echoing right now. Do you get that connection? Yeah,
Nate Schweber 06:14
very much. You know, it's interesting. I was, I worked on the book Between about 2015 and 2021, and when I was in it, I was really in it, and it was, it was surprising to me how many times I would, I would, I would spend a day writing just completely focused on this history, and then I'd read headlines. And not only were the themes exactly the same, a lot of the language from the McCarthy era was exactly the same. So, you know, I mean, it's been repeated a lot. It's been attributed to Mark Twain, possibly probably apocryphally, but the saying is that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme? So I think, yeah, now we're going through a bit of history that has a lot of rhyming with things that have happened in in our history.
Anders Reynolds 07:09
And Nate, how did you first hear about that rhyme? How did you first hear about Bernard and Avis devoto? I consider myself pretty well versed on public lands history. You know, I'm familiar with the mirrors and the Murrays and the Marshalls, but until I read your book, I didn't know anything about the devotes. How did you come across them?
Nate Schweber 07:27
I'm gratified to hear that, because that's something that I'm really proud of, that I was able to bring the story of Bernard and Avis devoto to a larger audience and sort of remind people about what they did. Story is, you know, pretty simply, yeah, I was born and raised in Missoula, Montana, and I loved it. And when I moved to New York City in 2001 because I wanted to pursue, you know, freelance journalism, I was super homesick, to sort of just deal with my homesickness, I started doing the thing that I should have done when I was in school, which was reading about the West and reading about Western history. You know, when you grow up in Missoula, Montana, I was fortunate to have a lot of amazing teachers, but it seems like every year in elementary school, you'd do a class section on Lewis and Clark, and by the time you're like in your early teens, you're like, enough of Lewis and Clark. I'm sick of them. But when I got to New York and I started reading Western history and reading about Lewis and Clark, it hit me in a whole new way, and it made the world make sense in a whole new way, even things that I was seeing in New York City, you know, Astor Place near the East Village, a place that I would have loved to have lived, but could not afford to have lived back in 2001 when I moved here. You know, that wealth that the asters made, that was all furs plundered from the West, that wasn't made from New York City. So it began, you know, it just helped me to start to see the nation, the West, the east and a whole new, interconnected way. This is a long ramble, but my reading about the West eventually led me to Bernard devoto and I just never read anything like that ever before that just made made things that I had experienced growing up in the West make sense. He was able to express things that I felt growing up in the West but couldn't express. Bernard devoto was able to express them amazingly powerfully. And this is something that, when I was researching him, I found, with a lot of people, he would get fan letters from readers in the West saying, from being in the West, I have often felt these emotions, but never been able to put them into words? You Bernard devoto, put them into words. And thank you for that. So that's how I felt reading him. And there was a there was an article that he wrote in 1946 it's an amazing article. I reread it this morning. It's worth rereading every now and again. It's called the West against itself. And he talks about take he took a trip through the west with his wife, Avis and their boys. In the summer of 1946 he was researching a book about Lewis and Clark, and when he was in Miles City, Montana, he went into a bar restaurant. It's still there. It's called the range writers cafe. And he eavesdropped, and he overheard these, quote, very loud and very drunk cattlemen. Unquote, he overheard these cowboys talking about a huge plot to sell off America's public lands, especially at that point, BLM lands and Forest Service lands and national monuments and national parks. And so this great caper ensued where he had to uncover the plot and expose this plot. And I the germ of the book. The seed of the book was just, I thought, maybe if I could learn more about that, like, how did he get this story? You know, almost like an All the President's Men type of thing, how did Woodward and Bernstein crack the Watergate story? I wanted to know, how did Bernard and Avis crack the land grab story? I thought that if I could do that, maybe I could sell it to a, you know, like a western history magazine. But as I researched it, the story just kept growing and growing and growing, and it eventually turned into a book.
Bill Hodge 11:22
You know, I'm thinking about your, you know, the fact that, how did he uncover this caper? How did you know? And I want to get into a little more about Bernard and Avis as individuals, and we will as we go. But like he had help right in in as he went to research this caper, right? And was it? David Kinsey Howard?
Nate Schweber 11:43
Joseph Kinsey Howard, amazing journalist from Montana. He worked for the Great Falls leader. And I'm actually really excited there's going to be a I don't know when it's going to come out, but it is forthcoming. I understand a new Montana anthology. The very first Montana anthology came out in 1946 I believe it was compiled and edited by this great Montana journalist, Joseph Kinsey Howard. The second Montana anthology, I remember it vividly from growing up. It was called the last best place. It came out in 1988 and there have been some other anthologies that have come out, some bookstore centric ones, some native centric ones. Those are great. There's going to be another anthology coming out, a really cool, kick ass journalist in Butte named Kathleen McLaughlin is helping to put it together, and I wrote an essay for it about Joseph Kinsey Howard, who I learned so much more about by researching the devotos. Because yes, during right after that, right after the devotees went to Miles City in 1946 and they overheard these cowboys talking about this land grab. The next place they went to was Great Falls, and they met with Joseph Kinsey Howard. And Joseph Kinsey Howard had just put out what I argue is the greatest book ever written about my home state, Montana, high, Wide and Handsome. You'll still find the book in some bookstores. It's got a terrific name. It's still a terrific book. And that article that I mentioned, that the devotes, that I read from the devotos, the West against itself. That article is basically taking the prism that Joseph Kinsey Howard looked at Montana through, and it looked at the entire west through it. So, you know, the West against itself is a macro version of Montana, high, Wide and Handsome. So yeah, the devotes, they went and they they met with Joseph Kinsey Howard. And Joseph Kinsey Howard from just being an amazingly sourced up newspaper reporter and editor, he gave the devotos some contacts of people that they could interview in Montana, ranchers, big ranchers and little ranchers. It was the little ranchers that really helped them conceive what was going on. He put them in touch with sources as the devotees went continued on throughout the West that summer of 1946 trying to put together this land grab plot that they heard being talked about. They met with Ansel Adams in Yosemite, the great landscape photographer. They asked him what he knew. And they met with another mutual friend, a novelist whose career Bernard devoto had helped launch by writing rave reviews of his work, Wallace Stegner. And they met with Forest Service officials, and they got their big break meeting with a particular Forest Service official in Bernard, devoters, hometown of Ogden, Utah. The guy's name was Chet Olson, and through the 1930s Chet Olson had led hundreds and hundreds of Civilian Conservation Corps workers. CCC workers who had been replanting grass and replanting trees in the Wasatch Mountains to stop deadly floods from coming out of that those mountains. So that's that's how they were ultimately able to get their their big scoop that turned into that, you know, famous article The West against itself. So, yeah, the devotees had lots of help that summer of 1946 they would continue to have great help the rest of their lives. And one of the characters that I write about in the book was Avis, best friend from 1952 until the end of her life. The celebrity is soon to be future celebrity chef, Julia Child, who came into the devotees lives because she sent a fan letter to Bernard devoto. So, yeah, so they, they had a wonderful community. They always had lots of help. And they had just, you know, amazing lives. It's
Anders Reynolds 15:52
just amazing reading your book, because, you know, if, if you have even sort of, like a passing interest and in public lands protection history, you keep seeing these names, you know, over and over and over. You're drawing these constellation between them and the devotees. But you also see people like Julia Child, who you don't expect to pop up. It's really amazing. Um, I want to before we we leave the topic of journalism, I wanted to ask you, Bill mentioned, how you were covering, uh, a time in American history, that kind of rhymes with the maybe the period we're going through the day. And in some way, I sort of found that reassuring. I find the books, long view, reassuring. But one paradox I kind of noticed was this sort of paradox of powerful journalism, like devoted was given a platform by, it's by Harper's correct Harper's Magazine. Yeah, he wrote Harper's Magazine. But then today I wonder, like, is, is someone doing that? I could point to examples of other media entities and the modern, you know, landscape, who are, I think, are responsible for, like, melting people's brains and, like, the difference between what Harper's was able to accomplish, and what maybe, like some others are, are nefarious, nefariously trying to accomplish today, seems really paradoxical to me, and I Is there any way to sort of escape that double edged sword of journalism? Do you think? Yeah,
Nate Schweber 17:14
that's, that's the story of just media fracturing. You know, if, if you cared about public lands in the 1940s and the 1950s there was one person that you could go to, one person you could trust, one person who was always going to be on top of it, and that was Bernard devoto. If you read Bernard devoto in Harper's Magazine in the 1940s and the 1950s you would be on top of everything happening with America's public lands. And you know, again, now we're in a different we're in a vastly, vastly different media age where, you know, those singular sources have have fractured, and now there are multiple, multiple sources, and a lot of them are, you know, not, shall we say being as straight as Bernard devoto was in the 1940s in the 1950s but there's, you know, I've been asked this question before, and I wish I had a better answer. I wish I could say, oh, the new Bernard devoto is so and so. And sadly, you know that's not the case, but there are so many great journalists out there who are doing incredible public lands and environmental journalism. You know. You know anything that you know the author, Timothy Egan, who lives in Seattle, anything that he writes, is fabulous. I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. Juliet eleperan at the Washington Post is outstanding. High Country News continues to do kick ass stuff. Yale e3 60 does kick ass stuff, you know. So unfortunately, you know. Now, instead of having a single place that you can go to to get you know, the straight news, a la Bernard devoto, there's now an array of sources that you need to seek out, but the but, you know, journalists continue to do excellent work. The information is still out there. You know, the challenge as ever, is just kind of cutting through them, the flack and the noise that's out there. But that was there in Bernard devotos day too. There was, there was a ton of propaganda back then as well. So you know that that dynamic, you know, it wasn't like the dynamic of propaganda was, was absent in the 1940s in the 1950s it was virulent even then, just as it's virulent today, it's just again, there's, there's a lot more fracturing now, so people have to be more deliberate about the sources they go to to get the truth.
Bill Hodge 19:47
And yet, I think the other contrast is today, though, we have more opportunities for just the public themselves to have their voice heard about it, right? Just yesterday, you know, we talked about these executive orders that came out on timber. But also, yes. Certainly there were 1000s of Americans that that took to the streets around their national parks and their national forest have their voice heard. There are things like, let's say podcasting as an example, where we can get these, these stories out. So there's more opportunities to get the stories out. But you're, you're in a much more diluted pool, and, you know, sort of breaking through and and capturing the mass of the public in the way that Bernard could do in his days, is, is a little bit of a challenge, right? Yeah,
Nate Schweber 20:25
yeah, I'd say. So it's, it's, you know, it's the challenge of, of the democratization of of news and of speech and of the internet and social media. So it's, it's where we are. But again, there, there are some really, uh, luminous voices out there. And you know, you know, look to look to Hal herring at his fabulous podcast, and anything he writes, hopefully the wild idea can be part of this. Ed Roberson with his great mountain and Prairie podcast. You know, those, those are the, you know, look to anything that Betsy Gaines, quamin rights, you know, these are, these are people. These are, you know, sources that I seek out and look to for direction of where to be getting. You know, the good information back country, hunters, anglers, places like that.
Anders Reynolds 21:16
Nate, tell us a little bit more about the antagonists and the devoto story. I know there's probably more than a few to choose from. There's McCarran and McCarthy and the FBI itself, but I wonder if you could share a little bit more about that.
Nate Schweber 21:30
Yeah, I've been, I've been thinking a lot about the main antagonist of the book. He is a largely forgotten Nevada Senator. His name was Patrick McCarran, and he you know, most people who knew the name McCarran knew it from the Las Vegas airport, which until recently, was McCarran Airport. A few years ago, they took his name off of it, after a lot of his works got re evaluated. And McCarran, you know, he's really remembered as as kind of a godfather of the McCarthy era. He was a role model for Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy really, sort of patterned his whole persona, modeled his persona off of Pat McCarran, who was a paranoid zealot, xenophobic, you know, he saw communists everywhere, very disingenuously. So he was, he was really, you know, the difference between Pat McCarran and Joe McCarthy is that Joe McCarthy had a genius for attracting attention. Joe McCarthy used to brag that he could get on the front page of any newspaper in America, and he often did. This is why we remember that era as the McCarthy era, rather than what we probably should remember that era as, which is the McCarran era, because Joe McCarthy was an ineffectual legislator. Joe McCarthy couldn't pass laws. Pat McCarran was a genius at passing laws, and so the actual laws that codify McCarthyism, those were largely passed by Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, and they're some of the most oppressive laws in our history. Pat McCarran, for a time, legalized concentration camps, which you know, six months ago sounded a lot more shocking than it does now, unfortunately. But we see a lot of Pat McCarran in a lot of the things being talked about now with mass deportations, weaponized investigations of federal employees, etc, etc. But what gave Pat McCarran his start, and I'm going to bring it back around to public lands. Was Pat McCarran in the 1930s went to war against public lands, and he did so in a very manipulative and duplicitous way. Franklin D Roosevelt created an agency called the grazing service, and that was to do for grass in the West, in the range lands and Canyon lands and Badlands of the US West, the grazing service was to do for grass what Franklin's fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt's US Forest Service did a generation earlier for trees in the west. It was to protect these resources. It was to protect them for future generations. And McCarran went to war against the grazing service on behalf of some of the West's biggest cattle kings and sheep barons in. He went to war against the grazing service by defunding it and defaming it and discrediting it. And Pat McCarran used his power on Senate appropriations committees to slash the budget of the US grazing service to get members of the US grazing service fired and laid off their jobs, which is very resonant with what's happening right now as we speak, and by that credit, by that process of defaming and defunding and discrediting the US grazing service. By 1946 Pat McCarran had had forced so many layoffs, had forced such deep budget cuts that he destroyed the US grazing service. This is the one time in US history when there has been a successful destruction of a conservation agency in America. It was the grazing service. And in 1946 the new president, Harry Truman, took what was left of the defunded, discredited and defamed us grazing service, and he combined it with the moribund and historically corrupt General Land Office to create a new conservation agency, An enfeebled conservation agency, an industry of subservient conservation agency, the Bureau of Land Management. And you know, Edward Abbey would soon call the BLM the Bureau of livestock and mining, which is exactly what Pat McCarran wanted. You know, we should think of it as the Bureau of Pat McCarran. But you know, what's interesting was that Pat McCarran then took those same techniques that he used to destroy the grazing service and he applied them to the country. And so he went from targeting disloyal, dysfunctional, allegedly, you know, useless people in the grazing service, and he started calling them communists, and he started to hunt them across America. And that led to the paranoid and really destructive and really shameful era that is the McCarthy era.
Anders Reynolds 27:10
God, the blueprint really is just rolled right out, isn't it? It's,
Nate Schweber 27:14
it's the playbook. It's the playbook. Yeah, yeah.
Bill Hodge 27:17
I mean, I and, and honestly, there was a the rhyme started even before him, right? Because one of my personal heroes is Bob Marshall, and he was accused of being a socialist, and, you know, and all of these things. There's a famous, you know, front pages in New York Times where Bob Marshall is called a socialist because, like he, you know, believed in public Commons. And, you know, you know, you know, those sort of things. It's just crazy. The rhymes just keep happening. And it's what I keep trying to tell folks who are so, you know, just sort of, I don't know it's paralyzed by what's going on today, as if we've never faced this before. And I keep going back to that theme, right? We have faced this before. Maybe we just have different issues and different tools to respond with, but, but I'm curious what you think about the role of the modern journalist is compared to, like, Bernard's role. Like, I mean, obviously getting out the facts, I think we've already covered that a little bit. But like, you know, how you know, how do you go from the facts to it reaching enough of an audience in an era where we don't have a Harper's that, you know, a significant percentage of the public reads,
Nate Schweber 28:19
yeah, that's, that's a great question. That's the, that's the eternal question. You know, I wish I had a better answer than I think it's just journalists have to, you know, and I know a lot of them, and they are doing exactly this. They just, you know, dig as hard as they can, work as hard as they can, and, you know, try to write as succinctly as possible, to really boil down the essence of the facts that they're uncovering, so that they can just grab people by their lapels and let them know what's going on. That has always been the role of journalists, and it will always be the role of journalists. That's always been the challenge for journalists, and it always will be the challenge for journalists. You know, no matter what the media landscape, you know, Bernard devoto, you know, though he though he did have that platform, that monthly platform, to write that column, the easy chair in Harper's Magazine. You know, reading through his correspondence, I you know it was, it came through how much strategizing and how much thought he put in, not only how to get his facts, but how to present them in a way that they would make the most impact. You know that that article that I mentioned the West against itself. He put so much he put so much thought into that about how it could have maximum impact, even down to how he could time it. Because what, what that article details is, you know this, there was a plot to liquidate, sell off as many as 230 million acres of America's. Public lands that would be Bureau of Land Management, land, forest service, land, national monuments and national parks as many as 230 million acres, but it would be done through a suite of legislation. There were many pieces of legislation that were part of that land grab program. And when Bernard devoto had pieced it all together, when he had gathered all his facts, he had to strategize the best way to present that information and the best time to present that information. He was afraid that if he wrote the article, if he ran the article too soon, the land grab legislation, all those different pieces of legislation, some it would, they would be modified just enough so that the program was more palatable to Congress. You know, the bulk of it would still be in place. Most of it would still be passed. He was afraid that if he, if he wrote that article and put it out too soon, that's what would happen, that a a, you know, most of the land grab, would still get passed. Of course, he knew that if he waited too long to run the article, all of it would get passed. So he had to time it for maximum efficacy. And he did that right. He the article came out in the january 1947 issue of Harper's Magazine, which hit newsstands on December, early December 1946 so this was right when members of Congress had all gone home for the holiday break right before they would go back to the new section. So this article just, you know, hit at exactly the right time. And, you know, he even kind of second guessed himself about about how he how he presented it, because that article The West against itself. It's, it's a, it's it's a history lesson. It's a, it's a, it's a history of all the extractive industries in the West. And he wondered later if he might have, if he just gave his land grab scoop right up front, if that might have had more impact. I think the article had an incredible impact. But that just shows the strategizing that that journalists do, and even great ones like Bernard devoto. How? You know, he even wondered, like, could I, you know, could I have done this better, which is often a mark of a really great journalist. They always think we're
Anders Reynolds 32:09
talking a lot about rhyming. And you sort of touched on this in your answer just now. But I want to emphasize devoto won. Like, what lessons can we draw from how he won today, like we talked about a blueprint earlier, but is there a blueprint for defense and for
Nate Schweber 32:26
victory? That's, that's a great question, and that's part of what fascinated me with the story, because I wanted to know the answer to that and and, you know, some of the things that I think I learned, you know, unfortunately, you know what devoto did was absolutely right for his time, his place and those circumstances. So it's not like it is a one size fits all. It's not like it that that process can be repeated in every circumstance, because times are going to change and circumstances are going to change. What Bernard devoto did was absolutely right for his time and circumstance. But you know, you know what, what I what, I guess I could say about what he did the way he was successful. Really, there were two great environmental battles that Bernard devoto waged, and one was right after the other. The first one was the one that we were talking about, this land grab plot, this plot to sell off the public lands of the West. And you know, Bernard devoto fought that one by doing great journalism in Harper's Magazine. He found this secret plot, and he exposed it at exactly the right time. What what went in his favor in that situation was it was such a massively popularly, unpopular plot that by merely finding out about it and exposing it. Bernard devoto remembered later that he, quote, fused an explosion, unquote. And, you know, I think we could see, even with the people, the 1000s of people that turned out to the entrances of national parks just yesterday. You know, if there had with there is a secret plot to say, let's sell off national parks, you know, that would be massively unpopular, that would trigger a huge backlash. That's what happened in the 1940s by simply exposing it, Bernard devoto triggered that backlash. He fused that explosion. So that was the first big environmental battle that he fought, and that's how he won it, by finding this secret, unpopular thing and letting the people know about it. The second one that he fought was a lot more complicated, and that was a fight against building dams inside of national parks. So the land grab plot was really a plot to take some of the i. Parts of public lands that the people are least familiar with. These are like Bureau of Land Management lands you know, most a lot of you know, I think it's safe to say that you know of the people in America that are familiar with publicans, they are most familiar with with national parks. We know Yellowstone, we know Yosemite, we know the Grand Canyon. You know we we might not. The public might not be as familiar with extremely remote dirt road, Bureau of Land Management, grazing tracks that are just as glorious as national parks, but not as visited and not as heralded in the land grab. In the land grab of the 1940s it was the BLM lands that were going to be first to be transferred to states and sold off. Come in 1950s the attack on public lands shifted to the government planning to build dams inside national parks. So rather than sort of like pulling public lands apart at the extremities, rather than taking the limbs off first, this plot to build dams inside National Parks was really, you know, a dagger at the heart of public lands, because if America could not protect its national parks, its best known and most beloved public lands, no other of acre of public lands stood a chance against being eventually liquidated and exploited. So when the government, when the Bureau of Reclamation, came out with these plans to build dams inside national parks, Bernard devoto had to, had to change his strategy completely. Part of it was letting the people know about what was going on. And Bernard devoto did exactly that. He put an article into the Saturday Evening Post. This was the biggest and best read news magazine of the 20th century, in the mid 20th century in America. And the article had the headline, which is largely relevant today. You could recycle the headline today. The headline of this article was, Shall we let them ruin our national parks? That article brought to the attention of the American public the threat that dams posed to national parks and, by extension, all public lands. But he had to do more than just let the American people know about that. What he did was he built a coalition. And in this Environmental Coalition, he had, you know, part of the coalition was, was a part that we might think are pretty obvious. These are people who loved wild nature. These are people who loved wilderness. These are people who did not want the eyesore of a dam inside of, you know, canyons inside national parks. They didn't want the wildlife disrupted. They would probably today call themselves environmentalists. Devota was savvy enough to bring into that coalition, because he knew that, you know, nature lovers. You know they were sizable, but they might not be the majority, and they might not be able to, you know, win the win that fight all by themselves. He was able to bring into that coalition fiscal conservatives, and that was really the key that that helped him win that battle, by building this alliance between true fiscal conservatives and environmentalists. Because, you know, the money for those dams. It was a dam that was slated for Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the border between Utah and Colorado. You know, the money, the hundreds of millions of dollars it was going to take to build that dam we're going to have to come from, you know, out of region taxpayers. So by building a coalition, by building a coalition of wilderness lovers, and you know, people who, straight up, did not care at all about wilderness, but they cared about their taxes, by bringing that faction together. That was the coalition that was strong enough to defeat, you know, that damn proposal. So, you know those, those are, those were sort of the upshots of how devoted did what he did. He, he, you know, was able to find these vastly unpopular things and bring them to light. And when he, you know, with the land grab and with the fight against the dams, he was able to build a coalition of of strange bedfellows, of of people who might not see eye to eye on most issues, but on the issue of spending, you know, hundreds of millions of federal dollars to build dams that would destroy national parks. They were absolutely in Alliance on that, and devoto brought them together. It sort
Bill Hodge 39:32
of feels like his role, and it's a role we have to think about today is, you know, everybody who pulls us apart, they exploit what we don't have in common, even though it's the smallest part of us, right? And what we have to do is to find a way to echo what we have in common. That's a great example of of that with the fight for the dams. I want to be careful that we don't get accused of being paternalistic, and most importantly, guess it's the right thing to do. The your book had two protagonists, frankly, and could you talk a. Little bit about avis. I think she's, she's as much, or maybe even more, of a of a force, than than Bernard was, right. Yeah,
Nate Schweber 40:08
absolutely. And thanks for bringing that up. You know, as I said, you know, my entrance into this was first just reading Bernard devoto and having my mind blown. But the more I read about him, the more I quickly realized just how amazing his wife, Avis was, and not only how amazing she was in her own right, but how you know, everything that I was able to read by Bernard devoto was ultimately because he had the love and support of Avis devoto. They were an incredible team. They had an awesome marriage. It wasn't all it wasn't always the easiest marriage, as Avis devoto confessed, but it was an incredible marriage, and it really brought out the best in both of them, in their in both of their strengths. And Avis was, you know, she was every bit as smart, if not smarter than Bernard devoto, and she was every bit as good a writer, if not better a writer, as he admitted, than Bernard devoto. So the, you know, having those two brains, those two hearts together, really, you know, emphasize each one individually, the whole was greater than the sum of their parts. So, you know, Avis really had, you know, Avis had this, you know, this, this shotgun seat to the greatest public lands fights of the mid 20th century. And, you know, she ever since she was a little girl, it was charming. She grew up in Houghton, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, on the Keweenaw Peninsula. And ever since she was a little kid, she was always fascinated with food and with cooking. And that was good, because Bernard devoto loved to eat. So, so, you know, they had that sort of symbiosis going for them. They had other symbiosis. You know, Avis loved to edit. Bernard loved to write. Bernard loved attention. Avis cherished her privacy. So they were opposite and complimentary in a lot of ways. But you know, it's funny because or ironic because, you know, again, when in the mid 1900s Bernard devoto was as well known as Ernest Hemingway as F Scott Fitzgerald as Rachel Carson, he was mentioned in in in those types of in that type of company, Often in the mid 1900s he's largely been forgotten, whereas Avis, who really sought no publicity, she didn't like attention, she's now fairly well known in pop culture, and as I mentioned at the top of this podcast, the the main reason for that is that, yeah, in In 1952 there's, you know, since this is a podcast and I can ramble, there's an interesting backstory here. There's a national parks backstory to this here. You know, when Bernard devoto was writing these explosive pieces of journalism in defense of public lands and in defense of wilderness, the also aforementioned, uh, Pat McCarran and Joe McCarthy and their guy in the FBI, J Edgar, Hoover, Bernard devoto, you know, started to get accused of being a communist, and the FBI started investigating him. Uh, Joe McCarthy attacked Bernard devoto more often and more viciously than anybody else in the lead up to the 1952 presidential election. That's a scoop. Who did Joe McCarthy attack most in the critical week before the 1952 presidential election, public lands journalist Bernard devoto. That's who and Bernard devoto began to get blacklisted from magazines. You know, censored the the aforementioned Saturday Evening Post, they would not print any more Bernard devoto stories about the West. Reader's Digest wouldn't touch Bernard devoto. Fortune magazine dropped Bernard devoto. And so, you know, this was a crisis, not just for conservation, because devoto was the most important voice for Public Lands Conservation in the mid 1900s This was also a crisis for the devoto family, because this was their livelihood. If Bernard, devoto couldn't get published, they couldn't keep a roof over their head. But fortunately, Bernard had Avis and Avis had Bernard, and they began collaborating more closely together than they ever had done before to try to brainstorm new and alternative story ideas that Bernard could pitch and write, sometimes under a pseudonym. He did a lot of work for Women's Day magazine in this era, but articles that he could pitch. Write, sometimes under a pseudonym, to compensate for his getting blacklisted. And so Avis suggested that he write about kitchen knives, because remember, ever since she was a little girl, Avis was fascinated with food and with cooking, and Bernard voto did under his own name in Harper's Magazine, and that in early 1952 got him a fan letter from a then aspiring cookbook chef living in Paris, Julia Child. Julia Child sent Bernard devoto a fan letter and avis. One of the things that she did for Bernard was she answered a lot of his fan mail. She wrote Julia back. Julia wrote Avis back, and they became best friends for the rest of their lives. And Avis promised Julia, you know, in those early letters, she said, you know my husband, Bernard, he writes books. I know people in the publishing industry. Through him, I will get you a breakout book deal. And Avis would eventually keep that promise to Julia Child, and that's why we have the books Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Mastering the Art of French Cooking volume too. So Avis devoto is is well known in in pop culture because of that. She's played by the actress Deborah rush in the movie Julie and Julia, which came out, I think 2009 recently, there was a series on HBO Max called Julia Avis is played by Bebe Neuwirth. So, you know, again, in kind of an ironic reversal, Bernard devoto is largely forgotten these days, where Avis devoto is pretty prominent in pop culture, but yeah, Avis devoto and even Julia Child had really these shotgun seats to the great conservation fights of the mid 20th century. You know, you read these letters to Julia Child like she, she was, she knew more than you know, most members of Congress about thing about about public lands in the in the mid 1900s It was amazing. But ultimately, that friendship, that incredible friendship, between Avis devoto and Julia Child, it's a national park story. It came about because Bernard devoto is trying to defend national parks through his journalism. He got blacklisted because of Joe McCarthy and his role model, Pat McCarran, that made him compensate writing stories suggested by Avis and that brought Julia Child into their lives.
Bill Hodge 47:16
Wow. What a story. Rhyme after rhyme after rhyme. Julia Childs, do we have today's celebrity chef culture? And, yeah, truly the amazing, you know, things that come out of that, including like Jose Andres and amazing work that they're doing. So they can't thank you enough for for joining us. We could go on for hours.
Nate Schweber 47:36
I could go on for hours. Thanks guys, thanks for indulging me. Yeah,
Bill Hodge 47:41
this is why we wanted to have you on and I think I'm curious, what's, what's next for you? What's, what are you working on these days? Oh, gosh,
Nate Schweber 47:47
that's a mean question. I thought we were friends, you know, I don't, you know, this was my first, like, narrative, non fiction book, and like I said, I worked on it pretty obsessively between, you know, about 2015 and 2021 it just, it took everything that I had. I left it all on the page. It was the hardest thing I ever did. It was the best thing I ever did. And what I wasn't as a neophyte author, what I wasn't ready for, you know, when I finished the book, I've just I had, I was spent. I had nothing left. And as soon as I finished it, people asked, like, Okay, what's your next one? And I finally, was chatting with a friend of mine who's a mother, and she put it rightly, that, you know, when a woman has a baby, nobody goes to her and says, like, Oh, that's great. When's your next one? So, so anyway, I'm on the hunt. I'm reading a lot, and I'm looking and if any of you have any brilliant ideas, there's a contact submission form on my website. There
Anders Reynolds 48:51
you go. What's the name of that website? Nate?
Nate Schweber 48:53
Oh, it's just Nate schweber.com vastly original. It's
Anders Reynolds 48:58
been so good to have you, Nate, and I appreciate all the lessons you've shared with us. And you tell this story with such clarity and passion and very little gyration.
Nate Schweber 49:11
Well, it's this is this is an audio recording. Nobody can see what I'm actually doing.
Anders Reynolds 49:17
It's been a real joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Bill
Nate Schweber 49:21
Anders, it's been such, such fun to talk about the devotees, and so cool to be part of wild idea. So I can't wait to listen to your episodes. So thank you guys very, very much.
Voiceover 49:34
The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds, production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital support by Holly wilkiewski at Digital day pack. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John ski hand, our executive producer and ring leader as Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, take a minute 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