All language subtitles for The National Parks ep1 The Scripture of Nature

MAN: One learns that the
world, though made, is

yet being made, that this is
still the morning of creation,

that mountains long conceived
and now being born brought to

light by the glaciers,
channels traced for rivers,

basins hollowed for lakes.

When we try to pick out
anything by itself, we find it

hitched to everything
else in the universe.

The whole wilderness
in unity and interrelation

is alive and familiar.

The very stones seem talkative,

sympathetic, brotherly.

Everybody needs beauty,
as well as bread, places to

play in and pray in, where
nature may heal and give

strength to body
and soul alike.

This natural beauty hunger
is made manifest in our

magnificent national parks...

nature's sublime wonderlands,

the admiration and joy
of the world.

John Muir.

PETER COYOTE: They are
a treasure house of nature's

superlatives, 84 million
acres of the most stunning

landscapes anyone
has ever seen...

including: a mountain so
massive it creates its own

weather, whose peak rises more
than 20,000 feet above

sea level, the highest point
on the continent...

a valley where a river
disappears into burning sands

282 feet below sea level,
the lowest and hottest

location in the hemisphere...

a labyrinth of caves longer
than any other ever measured...

and the deepest lake
in the nation

with the clearest water
in the world.

They contain trees dead
for 225 million years

that are now solid rock...

and trees still growing that
were already saplings before

the time of Christ, before
Rome conquered the known

world, before the Greeks
worshipped in the Parthenon,

before the Egyptians built
the pyramids, trees that are

the oldest
living things on Earth

and the tallest and the largest.

They encompass a mile-deep
gash in the ground, where the

Hopis say the first people
emerged from the underworld

and where scientists say
a river has patiently carved its

way to expose rocks that are
1.7 billion years old,

nearly half the age
of the planet itself...

and an island where a goddess
named Pele destroys everything

in her path while she
simultaneously gives birth

to new land.

They preserve cathedrals
of stone gaily ornamented

by cascading ribbons
of water...

Arctic dreamscapes where
the rivers are made of ice...

and a geological wonderland
with rivers that steam,

mud that boils amidst
the greatest collection

of geysers in the world.

They became the last refuge
for magnificent species

of animals that otherwise
would have vanished forever...

and they remain a refuge
for human beings seeking to

replenish their spirit,
geographies of memory and hope

where countless American
families have forged

an intimate connection to
their land and then passed it

along to their children.

MAN: I think that deep in our
DNA is this embedded memory

of when we were not separated
from the rest of the natural

world, that we were part of it.

The Bible talks about
the Garden of Eden as that

experience that we had at the
beginnings of our dimmest

memories as a species, and so
when we enter a park, we're

entering a place that has
been... at least the attempt has

been made to keep it like it
once was, and we cross that

boundary, and suddenly,
we're no longer masters

of the natural world.

We're part of it,
and in that sense,

it's like we're going home.

It doesn't matter
where we're from.

We've come back to a place
that is where we came from.

MAN: It is the preservation of
the scenery, of the forests,

and the wilderness game for
the people as a whole instead

of leaving the enjoyment
thereof to be confined to

the very rich.

It is noteworthy in its
essential democracy, one

of the best bits of national
achievement which our people

have to their credit, and our
people should see to it that

they are preserved for their
children and their children's

children forever with their
majestic beauty all unmarred.

Theodore Roosevelt.

COYOTE: But they are more
than a collection of rocks

and trees and inspirational
scenes from nature.

They embody something less
tangible yet equally enduring,

an idea born in the
United States nearly a century

after its creation,
as uniquely American as

the Declaration of Independence
and just as radical.

MAN: What could be more
democratic than owning

together the most magnificent
places on your continent?

Think about Europe.

In Europe, the most
magnificent places,

the palaces, the parks,
are owned by aristocrats,

by monarchs, by the wealthy.

In America, magnificence is
a common treasure.

That's the essence
of our democracy.

COYOTE: "National parks,"
the writer and historian

Wallace Stegner once said,
"are the best idea

we've ever had."

MAN: It's not the best idea.

The best idea came from
Thomas Jefferson, that all human

beings, irrespective of the
accident of their birth,

are entitled to enjoy the
aspirations of being fully

complete and free human beings.

That's America's gift
to the world,

but right up there
are the national parks.

Jefferson, I think, would say
if you go out into the heart

of America and see this
continent in its glory,

it will embolden you to dream

about the possibilities of life,
that American nature is

the guarantor of American
Constitutional freedom,

that if you don't have
a genuine link to nature

in a serious,
even profound way,

you can't be an American.

COYOTE: Like the idea
of America itself, full

of competing demands and
impulses, the national park

idea has been constantly
debated, constantly tested,

and is constantly evolving,
ultimately embracing places

that also preserve the
nation's first principles,

its highest aspirations,
its greatest sacrifices,

even reminders of its
most shameful mistakes.

Most of all, the story of the
national parks is the story

of people, people from every
conceivable background,

rich and poor,
famous and unknown, soldiers

and scientists, natives and
newcomers, idealists, artists,

and entrepreneurs, people
who were willing to devote

themselves to saving some
precious portion of the land

they loved and in doing so
reminded their fellow citizens

of the full meaning
of democracy.

From the very beginning as
they struggled over who should

control their national parks,
what should be allowed within

their boundaries, even why
they should exist at all,

Americans have looked upon
these wonders of nature

and seen in them the
reflection of their own dreams.

MAN: One of the things I think
we witness when we go to the

parks is the immensity and
the intimacy of time.

On the one hand, we experience
the immensity of time,

which is the creation itself,
it is the universe unfolding

before us, and yet it is also
time shared with the people

that we visit these places
with, and so it's the

experience that we remember
when our parents took us

for the first time to these
and then we as parents passing

them on to our children,
a kind intimate transmission

from generation to generation
to generation of the love

of place, the love of nation
that the national parks are

meant to stand for.

[Birds chirping]

[Birds chirping]

[Water running]

COYOTE: Early in 1851 during
the frenzy of the California

gold rush, an armed group of
white men was scouring the

western slopes of
the Sierra Nevada,

searching for Indians,

intent on driving them
from their homeland.

They called themselves the
Mariposa Battalion, and late

on the afternoon of March 27,
they came to a narrow valley

lined by towering granite
cliffs where a series

of waterfalls dropped
thousands of feet to reach

the Merced River
on the valley's floor.

One of the men, a young doctor
named Lafayette Bunnell stood

there transfixed.

MAN AS LAFAYETTE AS BUNNELL:
As I looked, a peculiar,

exalted sensation seemed
to fill my whole being,

and I found my eyes
in tears with emotion.

I said with some enthusiasm,
"I have here seen the power

"and glory
of the Supreme Being.

"The majesty of His handiwork
is in that testimony

"of the rocks."

COYOTE: Bunnell's enchantment
with the scenery was not

shared by the rest of the
Mariposa Battalion, who busied

themselves setting fire to
any Indian homes they found.

Before the Battalion moved on,
Bunnell convinced the others

that as the first white men
ever to enter the valley they

should give it a name.

He suggested Yosemite because
he thought that was the name

of the tribe they had
come to dispossess.

Later, scholars would learn
that the people living in

the valley called it Ahwahnee,
meaning the place of a gaping

mouth, and they called
themselves the Ahwahneechee.

Yosemite, it was learned,
meant something

entirely different.

In the native language,
Yosemite refers to people

who should be feared.

It means they are killers.

4 years later in 1855,
a second group of white people

entered Yosemite Valley,
this time as tourists,

not Indian fighters.

They were led by
James Mason Hutchings,

an energetic Englishman
who had failed miserably

as a prospector
during the gold rush.

Now he hoped to make a fortune
by promoting California's

scenic wonders through
an illustrated magazine.

When a report about the
Indian campaign in the Sierras

mentioned a waterfall
more than 1,000 feet high,

Hutchings rushed to see
it for himself.

Word and images of
Yosemite quickly spread.

Other tourists began
showing up to witness

its beauty firsthand.

The trip required a two-day
journey from San Francisco to

the nearest town and then,
with no wagon road into

the valley, a grueling 3-day
trek by foot or horseback up

and down steep mountainsides
on narrow, rocky paths.

But for most, the scenic
reward was worth the hardship.

"Looking at the majestic
cathedral rocks

"and cathedral spires,"
wrote a Massachusetts

newspaperman, "made it easy to

"imagine that you are under
the ruins of an old gothic

"cathedral to which those of
Cologne and Milan are

"but baby houses."

Upon seeing Yosemite Falls,
the highest free-leaping

waterfall on the continent,
another visitor began

quoting The Bible.

"Now let me die," he told his
companions, "for I am happy."

15 miles south of
Yosemite Valley,

the Mariposa Grove
of giant sequoias contains

the largest living things

on earth, trees
nearly 3,000 years old.

When Horace Greeley, editor
of the "New York Tribune,"

saw them, he boasted to his
readers that they were

"of substantial size when David
danced before the Ark."

Soon, the celebrated painter
Albert Bierstadt arrived

and produced a series
of masterpieces.

One of them would command
a price of $25,000, equal to

the highest amount ever paid
for an American work of art.

While Bierstadt painted,
his friend Fitz Hugh Ludlow

wrote dispatches that appeared
in "The Atlantic Monthly,"

the nation's most
prestigious magazine.

MAN AS FITZ HUGH LUDLOW:
We did not so much seem to be

seeing from that crag of
vision a new scene on the old

familiar globe as a new heaven
and a new earth into which

the creative spirit had
just been breathed.

I hesitate now, as I did then,
at the attempt to give my

vision utterance.

Never were words as beggared
for an abridged translation

of any scripture of nature.

JENKINSON: Jefferson looked
across America from the

portico at Monticello, and
he saw wilderness all the way

out, so he couldn't conceive
of a national park because,

for Jefferson, America
was a national park.

This country is Eden, and we
Americans had this glorious

opportunity to see the world
in its infancy so that America

in a sense had been kept as
a symbol of what

the world once was.

COYOTE: As Thomas Jefferson's
nation had grown,

the country's sense of itself
and its possibilities had

grown, as well, not only
in the political sphere

but in the arts, literature,
and in its citizens'

relationship to God.

MAN: At the gates of the
forest, the surprised man

of the world is forced to
leave his city estimates

of great and small,
wise and foolish.

The knapsack of custom falls
off his back with the first

step he takes.

Here is sanctity which shames
our religions and reality

which discredits our heroes.

Here, we find nature to be
the circumstance which dwarfs

every other circumstance
and judges like a god all men

that come to her.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

COYOTE: The transcendentalist
writer Ralph Waldo Emerson had

been telling Americans for
years that God was more easily

found in nature than
in the works of man.

His disciple,
Henry David Thoreau,

had called for "little oases
of wildness in the desert

"of our civilization."

CRONON: What emerges in the
middle of the 19th Century is

this idea that going back to
wild nature is restorative,

it's a way of escaping the
corruptions of urban civilized

life, finding a more innocent
self, returning to who you

really are, returning to a
kind of authenticity, and if

you want to know God at
firsthand, the way to do that

is not to enter a cathedral,
not to open a book, but to go

to the mountaintop, and on the
mountaintop, there you will

see God as God truly is
in the world.

COYOTE: But it was all
in danger as the nation,

in the name of manifest
destiny, marched inexorably

across the continent,
systematically dispossessing

Indian peoples from their
homelands and transforming

the land to new uses.

The artist George Catlin
worried that the vast herds

of buffalo and the Indians who
depended on them would someday

be gone forever, and he called
for the creation of a nation's

park to save them both.

No one listened.

By the 1860s, the country's
most famous natural landmark,

Niagara Falls, had
already been nearly ruined.

Every overlook was owned by
a private landowner

charging a fee.

Tourists could expect to
be badgered and oftentimes

swindled by the hucksters
and self-appointed guides who

swarmed the rail road depot
and carriage stands.

European visitors publicly
belittled Americans

for allowing such a majestic
work of nature to become

blighted by commercial
development and offered it as

further evidence that the
United States was still

a backward, uncivilized nation.

CRONON: Americans feel that
the United States is somehow

inferior to Europe, where the
United States doesn't have the

ruins of Rome or of Greece,
it doesn't have the Acropolis,

it doesn't have the Parthenon,
and so it seems like we're

an inferior nation, and yet
the one thing we do have is

a nature that looks closer to
the new morning of God's own

creation, closer to paradise
than anything that Europe has

to offer, and so the thought
is that if we're to preserve

anything that stands for the
glory of America, then these

overwhelmingly beautiful,
sacred spots are the ones we

ought to preserve.

COYOTE: On May 17, 1864,
in the midst of the Civil War,

with Union casualties
averaging 2,000 a day,

the junior senator from
California, John Conness,

rose to explain a bill
he had just introduced.

It had nothing to do
with the war that threatened

to destroy his nation.

MAN AS JOHN CONNESS: I will
state to the Senate that this

bill proposes to make a grant
of certain premises located

in the Sierra Nevada Mountains
in the state of California

that are for all public
purposes worthless but which

constitute perhaps some of the
greatest wonders of the world.

It is a matter involving
no appropriation whatever.

The property is of no
value to the government.

COYOTE: Conness' bill
proposed something totally

unprecedented in human history,
setting aside not

a landscaped garden or a
city park but a large tract

of natural scenery for the
future enjoyment of everyone.

More than 60 square miles of
federal land, encompassing

the Yosemite Valley and the
Mariposa Grove of big trees,

were to be transferred to
the care of the state

of California on the condition
that the land never be opened

for private ownership
and instead be preserved

for public use, resort,
and recreation.

After only a few questions
and no objections, the Senate

passed Conness' bill and
moved on to other business.

A month later, the House did
the same, and on June 30, 1864,

a day in which he also
signed bills increasing import

duties and broadening the
income tax in order to

continue a war to
preserve the Union,

President Abraham Lincoln signed
a law to preserve forever

a beautiful valley and a grove
of trees that he had never seen

thousands of miles
away in California.

JENKINSON: And so Lincoln,
who realizes that it's the

West that is the dynamo of
American life, it's the fuel

of American idealism... Lincoln
wants to save some significant

portions of it from what he
sees as the North's runaway

industrial idea of the
future of the continent.

In a sense, the whole history
of America is a lament that

this Garden of Eden which we
have discovered is going to

slip away from us somehow.

MAN: When I think of a grove
of giant sequoia, I think

of a cathedral or a church,
a place where you're not

necessarily worshipping
the name of something

but the presence
of something else.

There's no need for someone
to remind you that there is

something in this world
that is larger than you are

because you can see it,
and you look up in a storm,

and you can't even see
the rim of the valley.

All you can see our clouds
gathered there at the rim

of the valley, and Yosemite
Falls seems to flow out

of the clouds itself
as if out of nowhere.

It's a gathering place
of water, all the waters

of the sky flowing into that
one spot, which makes it

a gathering of life and a
gathering of spirit, as well,

and all of those things,
are flowing through Yosemite,

and so I think what better
place is there that has such

a confluence of so many
things flowing together

and the result is music?

MAN: Men who are rich enough
provide places of needed

recreation for themselves.

They have done so from
the earliest periods known

in the history of the world.

The enjoyment of the choicest
natural scenes in the country

is thus a monopoly of a
very few, very rich people.

The great mass of society,
including those to whom it

would be of the greatest
benefit, is excluded from it.

Thus, unless steps are taken
by government to withhold them

from the grasp of individuals,
all places favorable

in scenery to the recreation
of the mind and body will be

closed against the great
body of the people.

Frederick Law Olmsted.

COYOTE: 4 months after the
Civil War ended, a small group

gathered in Yosemite Valley
to hear Frederick Law Olmsted,

the celebrated designer of
New York City's Central Park,

read a report he had written
about the future of the land

that had just been entrusted
to the state of California.

He called for strict
regulations to protect the

landscape from anything that
would, in his words, "obscure,

"distort, or detract from
the dignity of the scenery."

"In a place as special as
Yosemite," Olmsted said,

"the rights of posterity
were more important than

"the desires of the present."

MAN AS FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED:
Before many years if proper

facilities are offered,
these hundreds will become

thousands, and in a century,
the whole number of visitors

will be counted by millions.

An injury to the scenery so
slight that it may be unheeded

by any visitor now will be one
multiplied by those millions.

COYOTE: But once Olmsted
returned to New York, a small

group of Yosemite
commissioners secretly

convened, decided his
recommendations were too

controversial to bring to the
state legislature, and quietly

shelved his report.

Among those who studiously
ignored Olmsted's suggestions

on the future of Yosemite
was James Mason Hutchings.

No one had done more than
Hutchings to bring the valley

to the nation's attention,
but now that the nation had

moved to protect it in
perpetuity by declaring it

public, no one
fought that decision

with greater vehemence.

MAN: James Mason Hutchings
loved Yosemite, no doubt

about that, and every national
park will have somebody who

loves it deeply and then wants
to exploit the hell out of it.

The thing about James Mason
Hutchings is that once he gets

control of Yosemite Valley
he does exactly what most

concessionaires do with a
beautiful place like that.

He begins to make it into
another Niagara Falls.

You have to pay him for
the privilege of seeing

Yosemite Valley.

COYOTE: He had already given
up his publishing business

and bought one of the valley's
two hotels, which he quickly

renamed The Hutchings House.

He enjoyed lecturing his
guests and leading them

on sightseeing tours,
yet sometimes failed to

provide them with knives and
forks at dinner or forgetfully

filled their coffee
cups with cold water.

"Guests would be better
served," one of his early

customers wrote, "if the
proprietor paid less attention

"to describing the beauties and
more to providing comfortable

"beds and properly
prepared meals."

WOMAN: Upstairs, the rooms
were only divided by pieces

of cotton cloth, and it
required some little strategy

to place the candle so that
one's figure should not appear

on the cloth partition hugely
magnified for the amusement

of one's neighbors.

COYOTE: Hutchings was
technically a squatter

in Yosemite, but in brazen
defiance of the law, he went

about expanding his operations.

To provide the lumber he
needed would require a sawmill

Hutchings decided and
someone to run it.

Just at that moment in the
fall of 1869, a 31-year-old

Scottish-born wanderer would
show up to apply for the job.

He called himself "an unknown
nobody," but he would do far

more than Hutchings to extol
the beauty of Yosemite,

more than Frederick Law
Olmsted to protect it,

and with his lyrical voice
infuse the national park idea

with the passion of
religious fervor.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: I know
that I could under ordinary

circumstances accumulate
wealth and obtain a fair

position in society, but I
am sure that the mind of no

truant schoolboy is more free
and disengaged from all the

grave plans and purposes and
pursuits of ordinary orthodox

life than mine.

John Muir.

I don't know how you ever
account for an extraordinary

individual like John Muir.

It's one of the
enduring human mysteries.

Out species is capable of such
pathetic, appalling narrowness

and occasionally of such
magnificent generosity.

I don't know how to
account for that.

COYOTE: John Muir was born in
Dunbar, Scotland, and raised

in Wisconsin, where he had
suffered a harsh childhood

at the hands of a tyrannical
father, an itinerant

Presbyterian minister who
insisted that Muir memorize

The Bible and repeatedly beat
him until by age 11 he was

able to recite 3/4
of The Old Testament

and the entire
New Testament by heart.

He was a natural-born
scientist, studied geology

and botany at the University
of Wisconsin, and coming

of age at a time when new
industries were transforming

post-war America, Muir also
showed great promise as

an inventor, increasing the
productivity of every one

of the businesses
that hired him.

DUNCAN: He went to work in
a carriage factory

in Indianapolis and did a sort
of time-motion study that said

the factory is like a machine
itself and the human beings

are parts of that.

He could have been
Andrew Carnegie, he could have

been... with his inventive genius,
he could have been

Thomas Edison, but something
inside of him drew him to

a different destiny.

COYOTE: A factory accident
temporarily blinded him

for several months.

When he regained his sight,
Muir fled his workday world

and set out on a thousand-mile
walk to Florida, pursuing his

passion for the natural
sciences, studying plants

and flowers, and beginning
a journal he would keep

for the rest of his life.

MAN: When Muir began that walk,
he was intending to walk

to South America and to
eventually find the headwaters

of the Amazon, build himself
a raft, and float down the

entire length of the Amazon.

Happily, he was discouraged
from doing so by a fever,

probably malaria that so
weakened him he decided that

going to the west coast and
what he had heard vaguely

of Yosemite might
be a better idea.

COYOTE: After getting off a
boat in San Francisco, he was

asked, "Where do
you wish to go?"

Muir answered,
"Anywhere that's wild."

POPE: And he walks.

The essence of John Muir
is the John Muir who walks.

He immediately sets off across
Pacheco Pass, across the

Central Valley to Yosemite,
and it is this act of walking

which actually creates a
faith for him, a new version

of Christianity,
a Christianity rooted in place

and wildness and nature.

It's a Christianity that is
not about the built worship

of God but about the
worship of God's creation.

COYOTE: Soon, he was rambling
across the Sierra Nevada,

the vast mountains he called
"the range of light, surely

"the brightest and best of
all the Lord has built."

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
We are now in the mountains,

and they are in us,
kindling enthusiasm, making

every nerve quiver, filling
every pore and cell of us.

Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle
seems transparent as glass to

the beauty about us, neither
old nor young, sick nor well,

but immortal.

COYOTE: Then he descended
into Yosemite Valley.

"It was," Muir wrote,
"by far the

"grandest of all the special
temples of nature I was ever

"permitted to enter,

the sanctum sanctorum
of the Sierra."

When Hutchings offered him the
job, he realized he could make

Yosemite his home.

Muir built Hutchings' sawmill
and began producing lumber

for the many projects his
new employer directed him to

undertake: replacing the
muslin sheets with wooden

partitions in the hotel's
sleeping quarters; improving

a space called The Big Tree
Room built around the trunk

of a giant cedar; and erecting
two additional cottages to

accommodate the increasing
number of tourists,

now exceeding 1,000 a summer.

For himself and a fellow
worker, Muir built a one-room

cabin near the base of
Yosemite falls complete

with a single window facing
the falls, a floor paved

with stones spaced far enough
apart to allow ferns to

continue growing, and a
small ditch that brought part

of the creek into a corner of
the cabin "with just enough

"current," Muir wrote,
"to allow it to sing

"and warble in low, sweet
tones, delightful at night

"while I lay in my bed
suspended from the rafters."

Every free moment Muir devoted
to exploring the valley

and the mountain ramparts
surrounding it, traveling

for days with only a few
pounds of crackers, oatmeal,

and tea for nourishment,
the soles of his shoes studded

with nails for clamoring up
rocky slopes, pondering

the geology of the Sierras,
closely inspecting everything

he encountered, thinking
nothing of covering 50 miles

in a two-day excursion.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
I drifted from rock to rock,

from stream to stream,
from grove to grove.

When I discovered a new plant,
I sat down beside it

for a minute or a day to make
its acquaintance and hear

what it had to tell.

I asked the boulders I met
whence they came and whither

they were going.

CRONON: One way to think
about John Muir is as a kind

of ecstatic holy man, a man
who is sort of in a berserk

rapture out there in nature
doing bizarre things that I

think most of us can't
imagine ever doing.

DUNCAN: He decided he
wanted to go see the brink

of Yosemite falls a few
thousand feet or so above

the canyon floor, and
something, he said,

impelled him not just to go
look but to crawl out over the

edge and bring himself along
the side of the canyon face

so he could be... experience
what the water felt when it

goes, leaps over the edge.

He went behind
Yosemite Falls, I mean,

crawling up just these very,
very dangerous,

slippery rocks.

I mean, he didn't have
pitons and ice axes.

He didn't have gear.

He climbed up so he could
stand right behind the falls.

He said, "I wanted to hear
the song of the waterfall."

STETSON: Some of the more
astonishing things he did

there was to ride a snow
avalanche to the bottom

of the valley, having spent
all day climbing to the top

of the Yosemite Valley walls
and then being swished to

the foot of that canyon in
just less than a minute.

DUNCAN: He was interested in
the animals, and he saw a bear

in a meadow and decided "if
I run at it, I can view it as

"what it looks like
when it's running."

Well, so he scampered and
made a bunch of noise.

The bear raised up
an didn't run at all.

He later called it "my
interview with the bear."

STETSON: An earthquake hit
Yosemite Valley, and Muir was

bounced from his bed and
ran outside, shouting,

"Noble earthquake!"

And as soon as a great section
of the wall had collapsed,

he was racing to see it.

[Thunder]

He celebrated trees by going
up, crawling up into the very

tops of them and letting
storms batter him so that he

understood what a storm
felt like to a tree.

WOMAN: John Muir saw
the spirituality

inherent in granite.

His view as a scientist and
his view as a deeply religious

man were the same view.

He had this wonderful sense
of ecstasy, having been born

every single day new when he
was in a wild, raw landscape.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
I am a captive, I am bound.

Love of pure, unblemished
nature seems to overmaster

and blur out of sight
all other objects

and considerations.

COYOTE: "it was all part,"
Muir said, of his

"unconditional
surrender to nature.

"The winds and cascading creeks
seemed to sing an exalting

"chorus audible to anyone
willing to listen."

He contemplated the life
of a raindrop, marveled

at the tenacity of plants
somehow clinging to life

on bare granite, soaked
sequoia cones in water

and drank the purple liquid.

"To improve my color,"
he explained, "and render

"myself more tree-wise
and sequoical."

Other times, he liked to put
his head down between his

knees and look at the world
upside down to see what he

called "its upness."

Everywhere Muir turned,
he believed he was witnessing

the work and presence of God,
not the stern and wrathful God

of his father, who placed man
above nature, but a God who

revealed himself through
nature and for whom mankind

was merely one part of a great,
joyously interconnected

web of being.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: I will
follow my instincts, be myself

for good or ill, and see
what will be the upshot.

As long as I live, I'll hear
waterfalls and birds

and winds sing.

I'll interpret the rocks,
learn the language of flood,

storm, and the avalanche.

I'll acquaint myself with
the glaciers and wild gardens

and get as near to the heart
of the world as I can.

EHRLICH: John Muir once said,
"By going out into the natural

world, I'm really going in."

He defined in that sentence
what it is to be a human being

because I think we're born
lost, and we remain lost until

we remove the shell of who
we think we are, all the

preconceptions of who we think
we are and to expose ourselves

to the great power of the
natural world and to let that

power reshape us the way
it's reshaped the rocks

of Yosemite Valley.

COYOTE: Muir now felt he had
discovered something else,

his own destiny.

The gaunt mountaineer with
blazing blue eyes and long

whiskers would devote
himself to understanding

the wilderness and then teach
others the lessons

he had learned.

If Yosemite was a temple,
he would be come its

high priest.

"Heaven knows," he wrote,
"that John the Baptist was not

"more eager to get all his
fellow sinners into the Jordan

"than I to baptize all
of mine in the beauty

"of God's mountains."

The man who seemed to talk
to flowers and rocks was

considered by many people
as an eccentric, one more

of Yosemite's curiosities.

On one excursion into the
mountains, he met a total

stranger and told him he
was rambling across

the Sierra Nevada
looking at trees.

"Oh, then,"
the stranger replied,

"you must be John Muir."

Josiah Whitney,
California's state geologist,

grew indignant when
he heard that Muir was

disputing his theory that
Yosemite had been created by

a cataclysmic collapse
of the valley floor.

Muir instead believed that
over thousands of years

glaciers had gouged out the
valley and polished smooth

the granite domes.

Whitney derided Muir as
"a mere sheep herder"

and "an ignoramus" and
scornfully dismissed

his conclusions,

but Muir persevered and in
1871 discovered a living

glacier in the recesses of the
Sierra, the first of 65 he

would eventually encounter and
study, and when he led other

geologists to his evidence,
they came to see that he was

right and Whitney was wrong.

Meanwhile, James Mason
Hutchings has persuaded his

friends in the California
Legislature to pass a special

bill exempting him from the
law that had set the valley

aside as public property,
and twice, the U.S. House of

Representatives was
willing to go along.

Both times, however, the Senate
held firm against him.

Hutchings sued, arguing all
the way to the U.S. Supreme

Court that the federal
government had no right to

dispose of public lands
for any purpose other than

private settlement.

Ruling against him, the High
Court established a precedent

that the act creating Yosemite
was in fact Constitutional.

In 1875, Hutchings
was evicted from his

hotel and banished
from the valley he had

so tirelessly promoted.

DUNCAN: James Mason Hutchings
did 3 very important things

for the national park idea.

First of all, he brought
Yosemite and its wonders to

the attention of the world.

Secondly, inadvertently,
by challenging the law that

set it aside and tried to kick
him out... by challenging that

all the way to the Supreme
Court, luckily, the Supreme

Court ruled that, in fact,
it was Constitutional to do.

So that was a very important
precedent that if it had gone

the other way who knows
what would have happened

with national parks.

The third and probably most
important thing is he hired

John Muir and helped introduce
him to the Yosemite Valley.

COYOTE: With the completion of
the Transcontinental Railroad,

even more tourists were
arriving in the par:

writers, artists, scientists,
and wealthy Easterners who

enjoyed listening to Muir
as he led them from one

spectacular viewpoint
to another.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
How little note is taken

at the deeds of nature.

What paper
publishes her reports?

Who publishes the sheet music
of the winds or the music

of water written
in river lines?

Who reports the works and ways
of the clouds, those wondrous

creations coming into being
every day like freshly

upheaved mountains?

COYOTE: But soon, John Muir
would leave Yosemite, too.

He packed his meager
belongings and moved to

Oakland, where he hoped to
spread his gospel of nature by

writing a series of reports
for the "Overland Monthly"

and other popular magazines.

"Writing," he said, "was
like the life of a glacier,

"one eternal grind," but over
the next several years,

that writing would help
articulate for millions

of Americans a deep and
abiding love for their land.

[Birds cawing]

[Birds cawing]

MAN: Sacred means different
things to different people,

and to the American Indians,
sacredness means you can go in

there walk as
your ancestors did,

you can go in there and you
can see what the creator has

made for us, and you can feel
it, you can feel the spirits,

but we can take it
one step farther.

Because the environment is
still there as in the time

of creation, we believe
that it is still alive.

[Rumbling]

DUNCAN: In the early 1800s,
reports started filtering out

about this magical place.

John Colter, who had been a
member of the Lewis and Clark

expedition had left them
instead of returning to

civilization, became the first
legendary mountain man, and he

came back with a tale of a
place where mud was boiling,

where steam was coming out
of the ground, water spouted,

and people sort
of made fun of it.

They called it Colter's Hell.

Joe Meek, the mountain man,
stumbled upon it and said it

reminded him of the place that
the preachers had warned him

about back when he
went to church.

COYOTE: Jim Bridger, another
mountain man, had also told

tales of the place, the
long-time home of the

Sheepeater Band of Shoshone
Indians and a meeting place

for half a dozen other tribes.

It included a lake,
he claimed, where a man could

catch a fish in one spot and
then swing his line over a few

feet to instantly cook his
catch in a hot spring.

"There was a canyon so deep,"
he added, "that a man could

"shout down into it at night
and be awakened by his echo

"the next morning."

As late at 1869, a group of
prospectors had ventured into

the area they called the
Valley of Death, but when they

finally wrote a detailed
account of their journey,

magazines in the East
refused to publish it.

"Thank you," one editor
responded, "but we do not

"print fiction."

[Horse neighs]

Then in the late summer of
1870, a much more prestigious

group intended to put an end
to the mystery and either

confirm or deny the
rumors once and for all.

Accompanied by a small
military escort, they included

a prominent banker, a son of a
United States Senator,

a part-time newspaper
correspondent,

and Truman C. Everts, at age

54 the oldest member
of the expedition,

a Vermonter who had
come along on a lark.

The moving force behind
the expedition was

Nathaniel P. Langford,
a well-connected

Montana politician who

believed the future prosperity
of the territory rested

with completion of a proposed
second transcontinental

railway, The Northern Pacific.

Earlier in the year, Langford
had met privately with

Jay Cooke, the financier
underwriting $100 million

worth of Northern Pacific bonds.

The two had agreed that any
publicity about the region's

attractions would be good
for the territory, good

for The Northern Pacific's
bond sales, and good

for Nathaniel Langford.

MAN: And we know that Langford
was actually in the employ

of Northern Pacific.

He seemed to always... no matter
where else he was, he seemed

to always be near the till.

COYOTE: Two weeks into his
expedition's journey, Langford

came across the kind of
scenery the mountain men

had described.

MAN AS NATHANIEL LANGFORD:
We came suddenly upon a basin

of boiling sulfur springs,
boiling like a cauldron,

throwing water and fearful
volumes of vapor higher

than our heads.

The spring lying to the east
of this, more diabolical

in appearance and
filled with a hot,

brownish substance of the
consistency of mucilage,

is in constant, noisy
ebullition, emitting fumes

of a villainous odor.

COYOTE: They kept moving
past more mud pots that made

noises, they said, "like the
safety valve of a laboring

"steamboat engine," over ground
that sounded hollow under

their horses' hooves,
near vents that were too hot

too touch even with gloved
hands, places to which they

would attach names like
Hell Broth Springs,

Hell Roaring River,
Devil's Den, Brimstone Basin.

Farther on, they came to two
waterfalls slicing through

a steep and narrow canyon
they estimated at half a mile

in depth, the one Jim Bridger
had once bragged about,

the Grand Canyon
of the Yellowstone.

Langford was now convinced
that the Yellowstone could be

an even greater attraction
than he and the backers

of The Northern Pacific
had dreamed.

During their exploration,
the nearsighted Truman Everts

somehow got separated from the
main group and went missing.

Over the next several days,
search parties were

dispatched to find him.

They encountered grizzly bears,
heard the howls

of wolves, but found no trace
of Everts or his horse.

On September 13, a surprise
storm dropped two feet

of snow on them.

Running low on supplies,
the expedition had no choice

but to turn for home, leaving
notes behind for Everts

at each campsite along with
what little food they could

spare from their own
dwindling rations.

Heading for the Madison River
and the mining town

of Virginia City, they
struggled for days through

snow and dense timber
until they came upon

a large clearing.

MAN AS NATHANIEL LANGFORD:
We had already seen what we

believed to be the greatest
wonders on the continent.

Judge then of our astonishment
on entering this basin to see

at no great distance before us
an immense body of sparkling

water projected suddenly and
with terrific force into

the air to the height
of over 100 feet.

General Washburn has named
it Old Faithful because

of the regularity of its
eruptions, the intervals

between which being
from 60 to 65 minutes.

COYOTE: They gave names to
the other geysers, too...

The Castle, The Bee Hive, and
The Giant... but because of their

shortage of food could not
stay long amidst the wonders

surrounding them.

Yet as they followed the
steaming Firehole River,

they came across still
more basins and still more

curiosities, the greatest
concentration of geothermal

features on Earth, a vast
array of geysers, fumaroles,

mud pots, and hot springs

of unimaginable strangeness
and beauty.

When the expedition finally
reached Virginia City and then

Helena, the big news was
Langford's confirmation

of what had been considered
wild rumors about a place once

called Colter's Hell, but the
even bigger news was that

Truman Everts was
still lost there.

MAN AS TRUMAN EVERTS:
On the day that I found myself

separated from my company,
our course had been impeded by

the dense growth
of the pine forest.

As separations like this had
frequently occurred, it gave

me no alarm, and I rode on in
the direction which I supposed

had been taken until
darkness overtook me.

I selected a spot for
comfortable repose,

picketed my horse, built a fire,
and went to sleep.

COYOTE: At first, Everts
thought his separation from

the expedition would be a
momentary inconvenience,

but on the second day,
his horse ran away, taking

with it his guns, blankets,
fishing tackle, and matches,

everything but the clothes on
his back, a small opera glass,

and two knives, which the
hapless Everts promptly managed

to lose in the underbrush.

MAN AS TRUMAN EVERTS:
I realized I was lost.

Then came a crushing sense of
destitution... no food, no fire,

no means to procure either,
alone in an unexplored

wilderness 150 miles from
the nearest human abode,

surrounded by wild beasts,
and famishing with hunger.

WHITTLESEY: He didn't
have any matches.

All he had was an opera glass,
and it took him quite a while

to figure out he could make
a fire with the opera glass.

DUNCAN: Then he finally
figured out that

"if it's no sunny,
I can't start a fire."

So he learned that he had to
keep a stick burning, so you

can imagine him stumbling
around midday with a burning

stick, emaciated.

I mean, this was not John Muir

in ecstasy becoming
one with nature.

This was a horrific ordeal for
a poor guy who just got lost

at the wrong time.

COYOTE: He wandered for days,
vainly searching for his

friends or any sign
of their trail.

He spent a night in a tree
cowering from a mountain lion

prowling underneath, suffered
frostbite on his feet from

the snowstorm that blanketed
the region and saturated his

clothes, found refuge for a
week huddling day and night

against the warm ground of
one of the thermal features.

MAN AS TRUMAN EVERTS:
I was enveloped

in a perpetual steam bath.

At first, this was barely
preferable to the storm,

but I soon became
accustomed to it,

and before I left, though
thoroughly parboiled,

actually enjoyed it.

COYOTE: At another hot spring,
Everts broke through the thin

crust of earth, and his hip
was severely scalded by steam.

One evening in his sleep,
he lurched forward into his

fire and burned his hands.

Wasting away from exhaustion
and hunger, Everts began

seeing apparitions
and hearing voices.

"I will not perish in this
wilderness," he told himself

and forced himself onward,
retracing the route that had

originally brought the
expedition into

the Yellowstone Plateau.

On October 16, 37 days after
being separated from the

expedition, Everts was found
crawling along a hillside.

His starvation diet of thistle
roots had reduced him to

a mere 50 pounds.

The scalded flesh on his
thighs was blackened.

His bare and frostbitten feet
had been worn to the bone.

His burnt fingers were said to
resemble birds' claws.

He was incoherent for days,
though he slowly recovered

and in time produced a widely
read account of his ordeal

that "Scribner's Monthly"

published for
popular consumption.

MAN AS TRUMAN EVERTS:
My narrative is finished.

The time is not far
distant when the wonders

of the Yellowstone will be
made accessible to all lovers

of sublimity and novelty in
natural scenery, and when

that day arrives, I hope in
happier mood and under more

auspicious circumstances to
revisit scenes fraught for me

with such mingled
glories and terrors.

Truman Everts.

[Wolf howls]

BAKER: Every time I hear about
the white people coming into

our national parks and
discovering something,

I can almost see them standing
there on top of this mountain,

3 or 4 of them saying,
"From now on, we'll call those

"mountains so and so because
we're the first ones here."

In the meantime, I can see my
relatives hiding behind

the rocks, looking at them,
saying, "Wow. What are these

"GUYS doing up here?"

For us, it was almost
kind of humorous

because we've been there for
thousands upon thousands

of years, and it didn't
need to be discovered.

It was never lost.

All they had to do was ask us.

All they had to do was get
together with the tribes,

"OK. What's there?"

And we could have told them.

COYOTE: In the summer of 1871,
the United States government

decided it was time for
professionals to take a look

at the place where
Truman Everts had gotten

so helplessly lost.

Ferdinand Hayden, who had
been exploring other parts

of the West, now led an
expedition of topographers,

botanists, zoologists,
and mineralogists to

Yellowstone to determine once
and for all its real value,

but perhaps even more
important than the scientists

was the presence of two other
men, a young artist named

Thomas Moran, who had
never ridden a horse before

and required a pillow on his
saddle, and William Henry

Jackson, a photographer from
Omaha who most recently had

chronicled the building of the
Transcontinental Railroad.

For the first time, Americans
could see what mere words had

previously described.

As Ferdinand Hayden prepared
the report that Congress was

expecting, he received an
intriguing letter from a man

named A.B. Nettleton, a
shrewd lobbyist working

for The Northern Pacific,
suggesting that Hayden do more

than merely catalog
his discoveries.

MAN AS A.B. NETTLETON: Dear,
Dr. Hayden, let Congress pass

a bill reserving the great
geyser basin as a public park

forever just as it has
reserved the Yosemite Valley

and Big Trees.

If you approve this, would
such a recommendation be

appropriate in your
official report?

COYOTE: Hayden was
happy to oblige.

His report took pains to
assure Congress that

at an elevation of 6,000 feet
above sea level or higher the

Yellowstone region was totally
unsuitable for farming

and ranching and that because
of its volcanic origins no

valuable mines were likely
to be found there, but,

he warned, if congress did
not protect Yellowstone from

private development, it would
become another Niagara Falls,

another national embarrassment.

RUNTE: Well, if there had been
gold next to the geysers

in Yellowstone, there would
not be geysers in Yellowstone,

and if there had been a big
gold strike in the Yosemite

Valley, Yosemite Valley would
have been a mining pit,

and the reason for that
is that it was still very,

very difficult for the
American people to relent from

their commercial pursuits.

COYOTE: With The Northern
Pacific quietly maneuvering

behind the scenes and with
Moran's sketches and Jackson's

photographs prominently
displayed in the halls

of the Capitol, a bill began
moving through congress,

and by late January of 1872,
it was ready for action

in the Senate.

MAN: Be it enacted that the
tract of land lying near

the headwaters of the
Yellowstone River...

COYOTE: The senate
overwhelmingly

approved the bill.

The house passed it 115-65,
and on March 1, 1872,

President Ulysses S. Grant
signed the bill creating

Yellowstone Park.

Unlike Yosemite, which was
being administered by

the state of California,
this would be a national park,

the first national park in
the history of the world.

You wish that they had,
you know, gone out and rang

bells to say, "This is
something new on Earth,"

because it was.

A federal government was
saying, "We're setting this

aside as a national park."

No government had ever done
that before, and you'd like

them to make note of it in
that way just the way with the

Declaration of Independence

they read it
and bells were rung.

That didn't happen with this.

It looks like they took it
maybe a little more seriously

than the decision of
whether or not to repaint

the cloak room.

It wasn't that big
a deal to most of them.

It was just business
as usual that day.

It's only hindsight
that allows us to see

what they started.

You know, they were kicking
the rock off the cliff,

and most of them turned
and walked away.

There's no evidence that any
of them thought this was

the first of a type or that
"we're going to turn this into

"a hugely important
world institution."

COYOTE: The "New York Herald"
saw the new creation as one

more reason for
national bragging rights.

"Why should we go to
Switzerland to see mountains

"or to Iceland for geysers?"
it asked, adding that

"with Yosemite and Yellowstone,
now we have attractions which

"diminish Niagara into
an ordinary exhibition."

But the "Helena Rocky Mountain
Gazette" complained that

a great blow had been struck
against the prosperity

of the region.

"The new park," it said,
"will keep the country

"a wilderness and prevent
economic development."

Its cross-town rival the
"Helena Herald" disagreed.

"It will be a park,"
the paper said,

"worthy of the great republic."

DUNCAN: I think that
if Wyoming had been

a state in 1872,
they probably would have

followed the Yosemite model.

They would have just given
it to the state of Wyoming

for safekeeping, but because
it was a territory, there was

no state to give it to, and so
therefore, almost by accident,

it became a national park,
and that doesn't seem like

a big thing at first, but when
you think about it, it really

was an incredible
turning point.

What would we think of
Yellowstone if it was

Yellowstone State
Park in Wyoming?

It would still be... the
geysers would be going off,

the waterfall would still be
there, the mud would still be

boiling, we'd be attracted to
go see it, but we wouldn't

feel the sense of
responsibility to it as

a citizen of our nation,
only if we were a citizen

of the state of Wyoming.

By making it a national park,
implicitly it becomes

ours, everybody's.

We're all somehow
responsible for it,

and we all can take pride in
it, and so by this accident

more or less, this precedent
was set that it's gonna be

a national park that we as a
nation have to take care of.

COYOTE: By any standard,
the new national park

at Yellowstone was huge,
more than 2 million acres

of remote mountainous terrain
covering the northwestern

corner of Wyoming Territory

and spilling into Montana
and Idaho, bigger than

the states of Delaware
and Rhode Island combined,

more than 50 times
larger than the Yosemite Grant

in California,
but having created the world's

first national park,
Congress had seen no reason to

appropriate any money to
manage it or protect it from

the people who
were sure to come.

WOMAN: Our first site of
geysers made us simply wild

with the eagerness of
seeing all things at once.

We ran and shouted
and called to each other

to see this or that.

We had at last
reached Wonderland.

Emma Cowan.

COYOTE: In August of 1877,
a group of 9 tourists from

Montana had entered the park
bent on taking in the sights.

Among them were Emma Cowan,
24 years old, and her husband

George, planning to celebrate
their second wedding

anniversary in Yellowstone.

WOMAN AS EMMA COWAN: We seemed
to be in a world of our own.

Not a soul had we seen
save our own party.

One can scarcely realize the
intense solitude which then

pervaded this land fresh
from the Maker's hand.

COYOTE: On the morning of
their anniversary, the Cowans

stepped outside their tent
and found themselves not only

in the middle of the world's
first national park

but in the middle of
an Indian war.

WOMAN AS EMMA COWAN:
A pistol shot rang out.

My husband's head fell back.

A red stream trickled down
his face from beneath his hat.

COYOTE: Chief Joseph and
hundreds of his Nez Perce Tribe

were streaming through
the park, pursued by

the U.S. Army because they had
refused to move onto

a reservation in Idaho.

Only two weeks earlier, nearly
90 of them had been killed,

more than half women and
children, when their sleeping

village had been attacked in
The Battle of the Big Hole.

Some of the young warriors
were still incensed

about the casualties they had
suffered and ignored Joseph's

instructions not to harm
any white civilians.

[Hoof beats]

As the Nez Perce continued
their flight through

Yellowstone, there were
other incidents

with unlucky tourists.

Several were wounded,
and two were killed.

Moving through a few days
behind the Indians, the army

picked up the survivors.

Among them was George Cowan,
somehow still alive.

Army surgeons probed his head
by candlelight and removed

the bullet, flattened
by his skull.

By the time he was reunited
with his wife, the Nez Perce War

was ending hundreds of
miles away with Chief Joseph's

surrender in northern Montana.

Yellowstone's superintendent
soon arranged for the native

Sheepeaters, who had not taken
part in the troubles, to be

evicted from their homeland
so he could assure the public

that Yellowstone National Park
was now free of all Indians.

Years later when the Cowans
returned to visit the park,

Emma would say she was
surprised any of her group had

been spared given
the horrible treatment

the Indians had suffered.

George meanwhile happily
recounted their tale of their

second anniversary and then
capped his story by showing

off his proudest Yellowstone
souvenir, the bullet that had

been removed from his skull,
which he had made into

a watch fob.

[Train chugging]

[Train chugging]

[Whistle blowing]

[Bell clangs]

MAN: I had a vision of the
future of this great country.

The iron horse had jumped the
Missouri and was rushing up

the bountiful valley of the
Yellowstone, carrying with it

all its civilization and change.

Instead of the teepees of
the wild red men, there were

thousands of beautiful homes.

In the bottomlands waved
the rich grain,

giving bread to millions.

The hillsides were covered
with stock, supplying

the world its meat, and still
thundered on the iron horse up

over the Rocky Mountains,
and I thanked God that right

in the heart of all this noise
and restless life of millions

a wise government had forever
set apart that marvelous

region as a national park.

Colgate Hoyt.

SCHULLERY: As early as 1871,
they began to call Yellowstone

Wonderland because "Alice
in Wonderland," the book,

had just appeared
a few years earlier,

and The Northern Pacific
Railroad took that

right up and began to produce

pamphlets, brochures,
and guidebooks all

with the title "Wonderland."

COYOTE: In 1883, The Northern
Pacific Railroad was finally

completed across the continent.

Now tourists from the East,
well-to-do refugees from the

increasingly industrialized
and crowded cities

of the Gilded Age, could reach
the entrance to Yellowstone

National Park in relative
comfort and speed.

That first year,
attendance increased 5-fold.

Everything, the hotel,
the food, the tents,

the stages, the guides,
was now under the exclusive

control of the Yellowstone
Park Improvement Company,

a politically well-connected
firm with close ties to

The Northern Pacific.

They had quietly arranged for
the secretary of the interior

to grant the company
a remarkable monopoly

within the park.

For a fee of only $2.00 an
acre, the lease allowed the

company to cut as much timber
as it needed, kill elk, deer,

and bison in the park to feed
their work crews and guests,

plant crops and graze horses
and cattle wherever they

wished, even mine coal for
their furnaces and rechannel

some of the hot springs
to heat the buildings.

As if that weren't enough,
the contract granted the

company the right to choose
parcels of 640 acres,

one square mile,
at 7 different locations

within the park.

The prime attractions of
Yellowstone were about to be

completely surrounded
and exploited.

MAN: The project of the worthy
speculators, who are after

the people's pleasure ground,
appears to be flourishing.

Here and there are feeble
voices raised in protest against

the steal, but with a powerful
lobby to back them and no

opposition from the interior
department, the grabbers have

little to fear.

The park is at
present all our own.

How would the readers like
to see it become a second

Niagara, a place where one
goes only to be fleeced,

where patent medicine
advertisements stare one

in the face, and the beauties
of nature have all been

defiled by the greed of man?

George Bird Grinnell.

COYOTE: George Bird Grinnell
of New York City had been

educated at Yale in
ornithology and paleontology

and had made several trips to
the West to collect specimens

as a young man, including an
1875 excursion to Yellowstone,

which had instilled in him
a deep love of the new park

and a fierce desire to
protect it and its wildlife.

Having sold his father's
investment business, Grinnell

had taken control of
"Forest and Stream,"

a sportsman's magazine he now
used to champion his causes.

Yellowstone was one of them,
and he began a crusade to stop

what he called
"the park grab."

Grinnell's fight against the
rail road interests was soon

joined by an unlikely ally,
General Philip Sheridan,

a cavalry hero of the
Civil War and celebrated Indian

fighter, who was now commander
of the U.S. Army

for much of the West.

MAN AS PHILIP SHERIDAN:
I regretted exceedingly to learn

that the national park
had been rented out to

private parties.

The improvements in the
park should be national,

and the control of it in
the hands of an officer

of the government.

I can keep sufficient troops
in the park to accomplish this

object and give a place
of refuge and safety

for our noble game.

[Galloping]

COYOTE: Sheridan even
suggested that Yellowstone

should be expanded by more
than 3,000 square miles,

doubled in size
to provide greater

protection for the elk and
buffalo by conforming the

park's boundaries to their
seasonal migrations.

It was a radical idea
immediately opposed by Western

politicians, who believed
that Yellowstone was

already too big.

In Washington, Grinnell
took on the rail road lobby

directly, calling for an
investigation into the park

contracts, proposing an
expansion of Yellowstone,

and trying to write park
regulations concerning

hunting into law.

The debate that followed would
be echoed in every debate

on national parks
for the next century.

[Gavel bangs]

MAN: I do not understand
myself what the necessity is

for the government entering
into the show business

in the Yellowstone
National Park.

I should be very glad myself
to see it surveyed and sold,

leaving it to
private enterprise.

Senator John Ingalls, Kansas.

MAN: The great curse of this
age and of the American people

is its materialistic tendencies.

"Money, money" is the
cry everywhere

until our people
are held up already

to the world as noted
for nothing except

the acquisition of money.

I am not ashamed to say that
I shall vote to perpetuate

this park
for the American people.

There should be to a nation
that will have 100 million or

150 million people a park
like this as a great breathing

place for the national lungs.

Senator George Vest, Missouri.

COYOTE: The bill to expand
Yellowstone failed, though

Congress did appropriate
$40,000 for its maintenance.

In the next few years,
proposals were made to shrink

the park, to place it under
Montana's legal jurisdiction,

or to follow the Yosemite
example and simply turn

the park over to Wyoming once
the territory became a state.

George Bird Grinnell
would have none of it.

"Leave the people's park
alone," he declared.

He tried valiantly to stop
each attack on Yellowstone

until August 4, 1886,
when Congress stripped away

any money to protect the park.

For the moment it seemed,
Yellowstone would have to

fend for itself.

Coming to the rescue,

Lieutenant General
Philip Sheridan gladly

dispatched Troop "M" of the
1st United States Cavalry

to take control of the world's
first national park.

They arrived believing,
as everyone else did,

that military supervision
of Yellowstone would be

a temporary stopgap.

30 years later, the cavalry
would still be there.

[Clock ticking]

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: I am
losing precious days.

I am degenerating into a
machine for making money.

I am learning nothing in
this trivial world of men.

I must break away and get
out into the mountains to

learn the news.

COYOTE: For 5 years, John Muir
had tried his best to confine

himself to his writing desk in
Oakland, California, turning

out article after article
for the "Overland Monthly,"

"Scribner's," and "Harper's"
magazine about the majesty

of Yosemite
and the Sierra Nevada,

about the necessity
to preserve forests from

destruction, and about the joy

to be found in quietly
observing the world, all part

of his desire, he said,
to "preach nature

"like an apostle."

In the process, he had become
famous, but he had soon grown

restless to travel again,
and when the opportunity came

to visit Alaska, a vast
wilderness that had been part

of the United States
for barely a decade,

he had jumped at the chance.

At Fort Wrangell, hearing talk
of a remote and unexplored

area lined with glaciers,
he had hired 4 Tlingit Indians

and their big canoe to
make the long 800-mile

journey there.

It was Glacier Bay.

Here, the glaciers marched
right down to the sea and were

of an entirely different scale
from the remnants Muir had

tracked down high in
the Sierra Nevada.

"Alaska," he wrote,
"is nature's own reservation,

"and every lover of wildness
will rejoice with me that by

"kindly frost it is
so well-preserved."

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: Glaciers,
back in their white solitudes,

work apart from men, exerting
their tremendous energies

in silence and darkness.

Outspread spirit-like,
brooding above predestined

landscapes, they work on
unwearied through immeasurable

ages until in the fullness of
time the mountains and valleys

are brought forth, channels
furrowed for rivers, basins

for lakes and meadows,
and soil spread for forests

and fields.

Then they shrink and
vanish like summer clouds.

He camps out on the glacier,
and he's been diagnosed as

having a deep cough.

He goes out and sleeps on the
glacier and loses his cough,

says that "no lowland microbe
can survive on a glacier."

He said, "Any man that
does not believe in God

"and glaciers is the worst
kind of unbeliever."

COYOTE: The conversations he
shared around the campfire

with his Tlingit companions
exposed him for the first time

to Indian beliefs.

"Don't you believe
wolves have souls?"

one of them asked, and the
discussion that followed

impressed upon Muir that they
held views of the natural

world not that much
different from his own.

BAKER: John Muir would have
made a great medicine man

in his day because he
would feel the same things

an American Indian would
because he was listening,

he was truly listening.

He wasn't exploring.

He was living, he was
learning, he was living

with the elements out there,
and John Muir would have been

part of it just like the
elders that I knew were part

of the environment.

COYOTE: After his return
from Alaska, he married

Louie Wanda Strentzel,
the reclusive daughter

of a prosperous fruit grower
and settled down on her

parents' estate near the town

of Martinez in
California's Alhambra Valley.

Two children quickly followed,
and Muir single-mindedly threw

himself into providing for his
family, taking over management

of his in-laws' 3,000 acres,
bringing to bear the same

intensity and mechanical
inventiveness he had

demonstrated as a young man.

He improved the farm's
productivity, converting extra

land from pasture into cash
crops of cherries,

Tokay grapes, and Bartlett pears
and steadily amassed

considerable wealth.

Muir was tender and devoted
to his wife and daughters,

but his health deteriorated
from the ceaseless dawn to

dusk farm work and his
isolation from the mountains

and forests and glaciers
that had always seemed to

replenish him.

He lost weight.

He'd become "nerve-shaken and
lean as a crow," he wrote his

brother, "loaded with care,
work, and worry."

The result was that he was
slowly weaning himself away

from all that had compelled
him in his life up to that

point, and his... his wife
essentially said,

"You've got to go out
and engage the wilderness."

COYOTE: In 1888, Louie Muir
persuaded her husband to take

another outing to
Mount Rainier in the state

of Washington, where he camped
at what he called "the most

"extravagantly beautiful of
all the Alpine gardens I ever

"beheld with a volcanic cone
looming overhead reflected

"in a crystalline blue lake."

Captivated by the view,
he felt some of his old energy

returning, and when the young
men camping with him set off

on a grueling 7 1/2-hour climb
up the 14,000-foot peak,

the 50-year-old Muir
impulsively joined them.

"Did not mean to climb it,"
Muir wrote his wife later,

"but got excited and
soon was on top."

The climb, he said, had left
him "with heart and limb

"exultant and free."

STETSON: By the time he came
down from that mountain,

he understood that his real
passion and his energy should

be devoted to preserving such
places, and that's where he

went from there.

COYOTE: Louie Muir, meanwhile,
had written her husband

a letter that released
him just as surely as

the thrilling vista from
Rainier's mountaintop.

WOMAN AS LOUIE MUIR: My dear
John, a ranch that needs

and takes the sacrifice of a
noble life ought to be flung

away beyond all reach
and power for harm.

The Alaska book and the
Yosemite book, dear John,

must be written, and you need
to be your own self, well

and strong, to make
them worthy of you.

COYOTE: In 1889,
Robert Underwood Johnson,

an editor of
"The Century Magazine,"

arrived from the East and asked
Muir for a tour of Yosemite.

In the last 8 years, Muir had
managed only one brief visit

to the place that had
changed his life,

and he eagerly accepted.

But as they approached
Yosemite Valley, he began

seeing disturbing signs.

Tunnels had been carved through
the heart of some of the big

trees as gaudy tourist
attractions to entice visitors

to use one road over another.

In the valley itself, he found
piles of tin cans and other

garbage in plain view, and the
meadows had been converted into

hay fields and pastures,
even a hog pen "whose stink,"

Muir wrote, "has got into
the pores of the rocks."

He was dismayed to learn of
plans to throw colored lights

upon the majestic waterfalls
as if that would make them

more beautiful.

"Perhaps," he said, "we may
yet hear of an appropriation

"to whitewash the face
of El Capitan or correct

"the curves of the domes."

Glacier Point, 3,254 feet
above the valley, had been one

of Muir's favorite spots from
which to contemplate the place

he considered
nature's cathedral.

Now it was a place
where tourists mugged

for the camera.

An entrepreneur named
James McCauley had built

the Mountain House Hotel there.

On summer nights, his sons
would collect donations from

tourists for a firefall in
which McCauley would build

a huge bonfire and then light
sticks of dynamite to send

the fire cascading over
the sheer cliff.

The crowds loved it.

[Cheering]

DUNCAN: Muir came back
into the Yosemite Valley,

his cathedral, and his
cathedral had been turned

into a carnival.

It wasn't what he
envisioned it should be.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR: Like
anything else worthwhile,

however well guarded,
they have always been subject

to attack by despoiling
gain-seekers and mischief-makers

of every degree from Satan to
senators, eagerly trying to

make everything immediately
and selfishly commercial.

Thus long ago, a few
enterprising merchants

utilized the Jerusalem temple
as a place of business instead

of a place of prayer,
and earlier still, the first

forest reservation,
including only one tree,

was likewise despoiled.

COYOTE: Distressed at
everything he saw within

Yosemite Valley, Muir
fled with his guest

Robert Underwood Johnson
into the high country,

but here, too, much had changed.

Beyond the boundaries of the
Yosemite Grant and therefore

unprotected by even the
lackluster vigilance

of the state, the headwaters
of the streams feeding into

the valley had been left to
the mercy of the lumbermen

and sheep herders.

That evening at their camp in
Tuolumne Meadows, Muir spoke

passionately about
what they had seen.

"The harm they do goes to the
heart," he said of the sheep,

and he predicted that if
the destruction continued

unchecked without the trees
and grasses of the high Sierra

to trap and hold the winter
snows, the springtime melts

would become swifter and more
destructive, the clear streams

would become muddy with silt,
and by summertime, the valley

and the waterfalls that
nourished it would be dry.

Johnson suggested that the
high country be set aside as

a national park and urged Muir
to become the public voice

for the campaign by writing
articles again describing not

only the region's beauty
but its vulnerability.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
The mountains are

fountains of men,
as well as of rivers,

of glaciers, of fertile soil.

The great poets, philosophers,
prophets, able men whose

thoughts and deeds have moved
the world, have come down from

the mountains, mountain
dwellers who have grown strong

there with the forest trees
in Nature's workshops.

CRONON: Muir in a way comes
from a literary rhetorical

tradition that for most modern
Americans has been lost,

that comes from... as with
Abraham Lincoln with whom,

I think, he has a lot in
common... that knowing

The Bible chapter and verse,
the entire text, knowing

Shakespeare, these sort of
classic literary roots that

are as fundamental to the way
so many literate Americans are

educated in the 19th Century,
and Muir has that language,

this rapturous, religious,
rhetorical set of images that

he has at his fingertips,
and he maps them onto his

concrete experiences out
in these natural settings

in a way that makes
them transcendent.

COYOTE: Muir threw himself
into what became a pitched

battle to preserve
the high country.

Vested interests and opposing
politicians lied about his

past, questioned his motives,
and publicly impugned

his integrity.

Muir was hurt but endured it
all, going directly to

the people, who soon
flooded Congress

with letters and petitions.

Finally on October 1, 1890,
President Benjamin Harrison

signed into law a bill creating
Yosemite National Park,

setting aside more
than 900,000 acres,

nearly 1,500 square miles.

Muir was disappointed that
the original Yosemite Grant

encompassing the valley floor
and the Mariposa Grove was

still left under state control,
but this new park was

30 times bigger and, to Muir's
delight, included one of his

favorite places on Earth,
the nearby Hetch Hetchy Valley,

which he considered
"a grand landscape garden,

"one of nature's rarest and most
precious mountain temples."

At the same time as the
Yosemite Bill, two more groves

of big trees on the western
flank of the Sierras had also

been preserved as Sequoia and
General Grant National Parks.

"The majestic sequoia is the
king of the conifers,"

Muir had written, "the noblest
of all the noble race."

There were now 4
national parks.

Flushed with the success
of his first venture into

the world of politics,
Muir immediately began

making new plans.

He wanted more parks,
bigger parks, and more park

supporters to defend them
against the enemies he knew

would oppose them.

He was right.

In the years to come,
the battle over parks would

intensify, threatening
even his own precious

mountain temple.

John Muir was 52 years old now.

It had been nearly
a quarter century since,

as a self-described
"unknown nobody,"

he had first entered Yosemite
and then been transformed

by his "unconditional
surrender to nature."

He would need to convince
many other Americans to

surrender, as well,
to see the necessity, as he

said, "in all that is wild."

CRONON: What he means is that
wildness is an essential part

of ourselves that our ordinary
lives tempt us to forget,

and by losing touch with that
essential part of ourselves,

we risk losing our souls,
and so for him,

going out into nature to
these parks is how we recover

ourselves, remember who we
truly are, and reconnect

with the core roots of our
own identity, of our own

spirituality, that which is
sacred in our experience.

MAN AS JOHN MUIR:
The tendency nowadays to wander

in wilderness is
delightful to see.

Thousands of tired,
nerve-shaken,

overcivilized people
are beginning to find out

that going to the mountains is

going home, that wildness is
a necessity, and that mountain

parks and reservations are
useful, not only as fountains

of timber and irrigating rivers
but as fountains of life.

John Muir.