Original subtitles

[gentle music]

- Two men embark on a camping trip.

These two men have never met before.

They push through heavy snow, get soaked with rain,

And wash down steaks with hot coffee.

[gentle music]

They didn't set out to change america,

But what they dreamed up around the campfire,

Some might call it ingenious,

Others might say cunning,

But boy did it work.

[gentle music]

[birds chirping]

[winds roaring]

I have a low opinion of books.

They're but piles of stones set up to show coming travelers

Where other minds have been.

No amount of word making will ever make

A single soul know this place.

One day's exposure to these mountains

Is better than a cartload of books.

I didn't write that.

And for the record, I like books.

But john muir didn't,

Even though he published 12 of them.

His words were a call to action.

Get outside, have an adventure.

See it for yourself before it's too late.

He hoped people would read it

And be inspired to see yosemite before the loggers

And gold miners destroyed it all.

[gentle music]

You know, I can't imagine that in his wildest dreams

That he ever thought that the president

Of the united states would not only read it,

But heed his call.

But suddenly, there they were.

In mid-may of 1903,

President teddy roosevelt is in yosemite

For a quick respite from the campaign trail.

His guide is a part

Of america's first conservation movement,

A group of visionaries who feared

That industrial expansion will destroy

America's natural resources.

Muir has his own motivation

For joining roosevelt on this trip through yosemite.

And just like the president,

John muir's path to this meeting,

One that would change america forever,

Was anything but a straight line.

[delicate music]

[waves crashing]

[water gurgling]

John muir's story begins here,

65 years before he and roosevelt explore yosemite.

Muir was born in a small coastal village

In northern scotland.

The third of eight children,

His earliest memories are exploring

The scottish wilderness with his grandfather.

[bird chattering]

Nature is his playground.

[elk calling]

[dramatic music]

But john's father is a strictly religious man

Who believes anything that distracts

From bible studies is frivolous,

And punishable by violence.

But muir's calling to the natural world is strong,

And instead of agreeing with his father's wishes,

He learns to fight back.

He's determined to explore all of scotland,

And obsesses over the writings

Of scottish-american naturalist alexander wilson.

[dramatic music]

[water crashing]

[gentle music]

"as long as I live,

I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing."

By the time the muir family moves to america,

When john is 11,

A passion for the natural world

Is already rooted in his soul.

And by the time he

And teddy roosevelt reached bridalveil falls in yosemite,

They had had about 24 hours to make acquaintances.

Muir regaled roosevelt with tales

From the 35 years he'd spent here,

But his true agenda hasn't yet been revealed.

One thing's for certain:

Making sure the president lays his eyes

On one of yosemite's most majestic features

Is part of that agenda.

At 622 feet tall, the falls flow year round.

They were formed by an offshoot of the glacier

That carved through yosemite valley millions of years ago.

Then when the ice melted,

It carved a deep channel in the granite cliff,

Creating a path for water to flow.

1 of 26 waterfalls inside the park's borders,

Bridalveil is completely unique.

The extreme force of the water

As it rushes off the precipice causes it

To leap out from the edge.

[dramatic music]

[delicate music]

When it's windy, the water falls sideways.

[wind roaring]

And in times of drought, the water seems to disappear

Before ever reaching the ground.

Perhaps this unusual phenomena

Is why the indigenous americans,

Who first inhabited yosemite, called it pohono,

Or spirit of the puffing winds.

[gentle music]

The disappearing water led them to believe

That an angry spirit had cursed the falls,

And that all who would venture there

Were putting their lives in danger.

[gentle music]

[bird chirping]

- [producer] did you know much about john muir prior

To this project?

- I knew I think about as much

As what most americans perhaps know about john muir.

That there's this man, this longbeard who would,

You know, walk the mountains.

This curious person who was talking about the environment

And this country, this land, these views,

The animals that roamed here was to be protected.

He wasn't anointed.

He wasn't a politician. He wasn't given the job.

But a simple man made an enormous difference.

And maybe that's as important of a story as anything.

Roosevelt knew that muir was unapologetically himself.

He isn't trying to impress the president

By pretending to be someone or something he isn't.

And roosevelt respects that,

More than the ocean of glad-handers

And yes men he's left behind at the wawona hotel.

Muir believes that yosemite will do the talking

On its own behalf,

And he wants roosevelt to have the true yosemite experience.

[dramatic music]

[dramatic music continues]

After seeing bridalveil falls,

Muir and roosevelt continue their journey,

Crossing bridalveil meadow as the snow turns

From a light dusting to a whiteout.

Their next stop is here,

Positioned high above the valley

And with a completely unobstructed 360-degree view

Of yosemite.

Sentinel dome was named,

As it makes for a perfect watchtower.

Over 8,000 feet in elevation,

The granite structure has gone by many names over the years.

The southern sierra miwuk,

Who inhabited the area nearly 6,000 years ago,

Called it sakkaduch.

The mariposa battalion,

Who were the first outsiders ever to lay eyes

On yosemite in 1851, called it south dome.

Then when josiah whitney was commissioned

By the state of california to survey the yosemite,

A decade later, he renamed it sentinel dome.

And it stuck. For now.

[dramatic music]

Speaking of stuck,

It's exactly what happens to roosevelt as he

And muir make their way to the top of sentinel dome.

Muir wants the president to see the majestic view

From the top, weather be damned.

They're taking turns breaking trail

Through five-foot snow drifts

When roosevelt's horse gets stuck.

Only the horse's head and roosevelt's upper body protrude

From the sea of white.

Muir takes a moment to laugh at the president

Before helping him shimmy out on a law.

Then with the help of the ranger who accompanies them,

They manage to free roosevelt's horse

And continue on their way.

[bird calling]

You know, it's just,

I don't care if you like them or hate them.

Whatever.

It's just pretty funny picturing the president

Of the united states' head sticking out in a snowbank.

Imagine a head sticking out, smiling right back at you.

President or no president,

It'd be pretty hard not to laugh.

[soft music]

You know, based on the life that john muir lived,

Based on the words he wrote,

You get the feeling he was the exact type of person

That this land needed advocating on its behalf.

Roosevelt was headstrong.

He was tough. He wasn't an easy person to influence.

It would take the kind of man

Who could laugh right in his face

While he's stuck in a snow drift

To get that president's ear.

You know, I'm cold. I'm really cold.

It's gotta be about what, 30 degrees?

You couldn't spring for a hotel room in the budget?

- [producer] you said you wanted to camp tonight.

- Who did?

- [producer] you.

- When was that?

- [producer] at breakfast this morning.

- At breakfast.

Bad idea. Not the camping.

I like camping. I hate freezing.

Yeah, well, this is about as far as

That camera goes tonight.

Okay. Oh, and mercy.

Here we go.

[crickets chirping]

Well, this is gonna have to work.

Get a taste of my own medicine

While talking about how beautiful nature is.

Now I gotta suffer through it.

[kevin sighs]

God, I love this country.

I love everything about it.

Even the cold. [chuckles]

- [producer] see you tomorrow.

[animals calling]

[crickets chirping]

[light delicate music]

[light delicate music continues]

- As teddy roosevelt and john muir trek

Through yosemite on their second day together

In the spring of 1903,

T.R. Was no doubt still sizing up his new companion.

What kind of man is he?

To answer that, let's pick up the john muir story

Where we left off,

[dramatic music]

As young john moves with his family from scotland

To the tiny town of portage, wisconsin.

He's 11 years old.

And the reason for crossing the atlantic is

That muir's father thinks the church

Of scotland has become too lax.

He'd read about the protestant religious revival

That had happened in america,

And he wants his family

To join a group called the disciples of christ.

John is expected to learn

And able to recite all 184,000 words

Of the new testament by heart.

And he does.

When he isn't studying the bible,

He works 16 hours a day on the family farm,

Harvesting corn, potatoes, and wheat, and tending cattle.

At age 18, he digs a 90-foot well out

Of solid sandstone using only a mason's chisel,

And nearly dies in the process from choke damp.

[dramatic music]

The time at the family farm in wisconsin hardens muir,

And sets him up for the next chapter

In his life as an inventor.

To save from tedious work on the farm,

He invents an automated horse feeder.

He enters it into a competition at the wisconsin state fair.

He wins, and the prize money is enough to pay

For tuition at the university of wisconsin.

So at age 22, he enrolls to study geology and botany.

Muir has studied few books besides the bible,

And without the fear of his father's wrath keeping him

On task, he needs help staying on track.

So he invents an alarm clock that ejects him from bed

While simultaneously lighting a lamp at his study desk.

Finally free of the forceful hand of his father,

No book or lecture could distract muir

From his call to the wild.

He leaves wisconsin and heads to niagara falls

To study the geology.

And from there he goes

Into the canadian wilderness to explore.

While the civil war breaks out in the states,

Muir is living in the wild country of the ontario mountains.

[gentle music]

In letters he sends home, he recounts spending many,

Many nights sleeping without blankets in the woods.

It's on one of those nights

When the deep peace of the wilderness is savagely broken.

[wolves howling]

Muir is awoken by the call of wolves.

Several of them.

And not distant wails in the forest. He's surrounded.

He works frantically to build up the fire,

Enough to illuminate the area.

When he does, he sees a pack of gray wolves circling

At a distance of only five feet.

[tense music]

Muir uses lit branches to keep the wolves at bay.

Eventually, the wolves would move on

To find a less adversarial meal.

And muir is left not fearful,

But invigorated and inspired

By all that nature has to offer,

No matter how sharp the teeth might be.

[delicate music]

Here in yosemite, the gray wolf was once an apex predator.

But by the time roosevelt arrives

For his trip with john muir,

Wolves had been completely eradicated from the sierras.

Over the course of his life,

Roosevelt's opinion of the wolf changes drastically.

When he lived in the dakota territories in the 1880s,

He'd written that wolves were "the beast

Of waste and desolation."

You know, by the time roosevelt had arrived in yosemite,

His thoughts on the wolf had changed dramatically.

He'd become actually an advocate in some way,

Speaking publicly about getting rid

Of wolf removal programs throughout the country.

You know, in some ways he was ahead of his time when it came

To understanding how interconnected the ecosystem really is.

That he knew that if you would get rid of the predators,

Then the prey populations spiral out of control.

And when they do that, the native plant species,

They get decimated.

So roosevelt was really disappointed

That humans had wiped out the apex predator of the yosemite.

He saw it as just another way

That mankind had stained the ecosystem.

[gentle music]

It's quite possible that roosevelt saw a black bear

Or two during his trip.

If he'd got really lucky,

He could have caught a glimpse of a mountain lion.

But he's hoping to see wolves

After he failed to see any on his trip

Through yellowstone a few weeks earlier.

Roosevelt is disheartened when muir tells him

That not only have wolves been completely wiped out

From yosemite, but what was once a population

Of 2 million gray wolves in the state of california

Was now numbering in the thousands.

Two decades later, they would be regionally extinct.

[somber music]

But thanks to the protections

That were in place after roosevelt and muir's camping trip,

The gray wolf has now made a triumphant return.

In the winter of 2011,

A lone male wolf named or-7 made

A 4,000-mile journey to california.

Then in 2015, an entire wolf pack arrived.

Two years later, yet another pack appeared,

Followed by another and another.

[gentle music]

After nearly a century of regional extinction,

There are now at least 44 wolves living in the state.

It'd be music to roosevelt's ears.

And if muir were still alive today,

I can just imagine him building a campfire

In one of those forests,

Hoping that tonight might be the night

That he gets another visit from a wolf pack.

But incredibly, if not for a tragic incident,

Muir and roosevelt would never have been here together.

There might not have been a yosemite

For wolves to come back to.

Because at one point along his long journey,

John muir nearly gives up his life as a wandering explorer.

Just before the civil war ends in April of 1865,

Muir returns from his canadian voyage.

Maybe it was too many long winters surviving

In the wilderness, but he decides to earn a living

By taking a job in a wagon wheel factory in indianapolis.

He immediately creates new inventions

To increase the efficiency of the operation.

It pays off,

And muir is quickly promoted to supervisor

And given a salary of $25 a week,

Somewhere around 500 a week in today's money.

Muir likes his new life,

And in the letter to his brother,

He details his plans to give up his lifestyle

And settle down.

"I really have some talent for invention,

And I just think I will turn all my life attention

That way at once."

Sometimes I cringe about the next thing that happened.

But the truth is, something really good came out

Of that single horrific moment.

You know, I've read somewhere

Where someone called it the big bang

Of the american conservation movement,

Meaning that it was a moment in time

That changed america forever.

Because without this moment, john muir,

He never meets up with teddy roosevelt in yosemite.

And without that meeting,

There may be no yosemite.

[somber music]

This is an indianapolis post office distribution center.

In a certain account of destiny,

This is also the birthplace of yosemite national park.

See where the post office sorting facility is now?

Used to be the osgood smith manufacturing company.

The owners were so impressed with john muir

And what he was doing for the company

That the name was about to change to osgood smith & muir.

John muir, he was about to be made a partner in a business.

But then on March 6th, I think, 1867,

While tightening a belt that's spinning on a machine,

He loses his grip for a second.

And in that second, a metal awl impales his right eye.

It's not something I like to think about.

I'm not gonna go into the graphics of it.

But muir cried out that his right eye was gone.

He would go blind in that eye.

And then, insanely, his left eye goes blind due

To a rare immune response called sympathetic blindness.

I hadn't heard of that.

But now the 28-year-old man

Who loved the sight of nature more than anything

In the world feared that he might never see again.

Muir spends about four weeks in a pitch-black room.

When he emerges,

The vision in his left eye starts to return.

He wanders about with the help of an 11-year-old boy

Who was hired to escort him.

He spends his days feeling flowers and plants.

[birds chirping]

He vows to god that should his sight ever return,

He will "bid adieu to all my mechanical inventions,

Determined to devote the rest of my life

To the study of the inventions of god."

Muir's religious upbringing sticks

With him the entirety of his life,

And he believes that nature

Is a gift provided by the almighty.

It would be a sin not to accept the gift.

And little by little, his sight returns.

Five months after the injury, he's a changed man,

One ready to see everything he can.

He will never set foot in another factory.

Now his mission is in clear focus.

It would take another 37 years before muir would be able

To guide president roosevelt through yosemite.

But he was officially on his way

To becoming the man he needed to be

To rise to that occasion.

With his eyesight fully restored,

He takes a train to louisville, kentucky,

Hops off, and starts walking south.

His plan is to walk a thousand miles to the gulf of mexico.

And he has no particular route in mind,

As long as it's wild and beautiful.

He explores caves and traverses the cumberland

And great smoky mountains,

Calling them "the first real mountains my eyes beheld."

He trudges through the swampy everglades

And makes it to the gulf of mexico.

Seeing new plants and trees,

He gains an appreciation

For the lifecycle of all living things.

And he also contracts malaria.

He had survived a thousand miles of rugged terrain

With nothing but the clothes on his back

And the shoes on his feet.

In the end, it was something this big that got to him.

A mosquito bite gave john muir malaria.

And it was that specific event that would set the course

For the next chapter of his life.

It is funny how life works, sometimes.

Muir gets seriously ill and struggles to recover.

The heat and humidity are making it worse,

And a doctor advises him

To seek out a more moderate climate or risk death.

[pressing music]

So he jumps on a ship,

And then another one and another one.

And in March of 1868,

He disembarks the steamship in nebraska

At the port of san francisco.

It takes muir about 30 seconds to feel pinned in

By the sea of humanity.

So he stops a stranger on the street

And asks him what is the nearest way out of town

To the wild parts of the state.

[dramatic music]

He hikes 250 miles through california's interior.

Muir is aware that yosemite lays somewhere to the east

And that he'll find it eventually.

He stops at a gold mining outpost

In the foothills to grab supplies,

And the shopkeeper warns him that the yosemite trail

Is buried under 10 feet of snow.

Muir is advised to wait at least a month

For conditions to improve, or face certain death.

Well, I guess by now you can guess what muir did.

Muir had lost and regained his sight,

And there was no amount of snow that would stop him.

So he buys an old army musket

And buckshot for grizzly bear defense,

And a few flower cakes for sustenance,

And heads into the snow.

[dramatic music]

[dramatic music continues]

[wind roaring]

After trudging the final 30 miles

And holding up in an abandoned cabin for a night,

This was the first glimpse of yosemite

That john muir ever saw.

Most visitors who come today are welcomed by the same view.

From a distance,

Muir guessed that the falls were 70 feet tall,

And decides to make camp at the base.

When he arrives,

He realizes that yosemite's most popular water feature

Is over 600 feet.

He makes his camp here

And has a close call with a curious grizzly bear

On night one.

And that is all he needs.

He takes the occasional job farming or tending sheep,

And builds a small cabin.

He spends years of exploring during the day

And reading the work of his favorite author,

Ralph waldo emerson, at night.

Finally, john muir, the hopeless wanderer,

Has found his place.

Yeah, here it is. Here it is.

You know, 35 years after he arrived,

Muir brought teddy roosevelt to this very spot

On the second day.

He had a distinct game plan for roosevelt,

And he made his agenda clear

In a letter he'd sent to a friend he knew.

He knew that roosevelt was a man of action.

And if bringing him here could inspire roosevelt

To change the broken national park system,

Then he knew that he'd have a chance to save yosemite

From those who sought to destroy it.

Yeah. Bringing him here.

That was a good move, mr. John muir,

Because el capitan, it's pretty special.

It's pretty cool.

El capitan is a true icon of yosemite.

Towering 3,000 feet above the valley floor,

It is the largest granite monolith on earth.

It pushed up through the surface about 100 million years ago

And looks very much the same today as it did then.

Today, it's the mecca of american rock climbing.

El cap was thought to be an impossible conquest for decades

Until its first summit in 1958.

George whitmore, wayne merry,

And warren harding, not the president,

Different guy, completed the climb.

There are dozens of routes up,

But the most notorious is called the nose.

[gentle music]

Only 11 people have free climbed the route,

Which means they don't use ropes

To propel themselves upward.

Lynn hill was the first to do it in 1993.

It took her four grueling days.

In 2023, a previously unknown climber named nick ehman

Soloed the route in 4 hours, 39 minutes,

A new record.

[gentle music]

[bird chirping]

Despite the way it appears,

El capitan is not an active volcano.

And that isn't lava.

This rare phenomena is called the firefall.

It happens every so often when the conditions call for it.

There has to be water in horsetail falls,

Which is often dry.

The angle of the sun setting has to be perfect.

And the night has to be cloud free

In order for the sun to reflect off the waterfall.

Thousands of people brave the snow

And venture to el cap each February hoping

To get an ephemeral glimpse of the firefall.

I hope to be lucky enough to see it someday myself.

By the time you are sat here with roosevelt,

He'd fought tirelessly for three and a half decades

To protect yosemite from loggers,

Poachers, miners, and developers.

But john didn't fight with fists or bullets.

His weapon of choice was a fountain pen.

[dramatic music]

Muir wants to educate the public on the wonders of yosemite.

He believes that public support could be

This land's ultimate savior.

He pens over 300 articles in a dozen books.

Writing from that tiny cabin by lantern light,

He becomes prolific.

So much so that muir's literary hero, ralph waldo emerson,

Travels across the country to visit him in yosemite.

Emerson offers muir a teaching position

At harvard university.

Muir turns it down in an instant.

"I never for a moment thought of giving up god's big show

For a mere profship."

He knows where his home is,

And he knows the best teaching he can do

Is with the written word.

He lobbies congress to name yosemite a national park.

And on October 1st, 1890,

They pass a bill according to muir's recommendations

In an article he wrote called

"features of the proposed yosemite national park."

But they leave one part out.

[tense music]

Mariposa grove and the land surrounding yosemite valley

Are now afforded protection of the united states calvary.

But the yosemite valley itself will remain

Under the jurisdiction of the state of california.

It's not what muir wanted,

And he suspects that the state would do little

To protect the valley.

[bomb explodes]

He's right.

Loggers and miners flood into yosemite

And begin exploiting it.

[dramatic music]

[gentle music]

Then, 13 years later,

As he sits with president roosevelt in front of el capitan,

On their final night together,

He knows he's earned the man's respect,

And he knows that tonight he has to finish what he started.

After the sun sets on the night of may 16th, 1903,

Muir lights a fallen pine tree on fire.

He's always loved to experience nature

By the light of nighttime fire.

But tonight, his second night with t.R.,

It wasn't about what he would experience.

It's about keeping president roosevelt entranced

As long as possible.

Muir entertains roosevelt

By dancing a scottish jig around the fire,

And the president even joins in.

Snow begins to fall heavily,

But they stay warm as they eat steak

And drink coffee around the fire.

Rather than making an impassioned plea for help,

Muir tells roosevelt about the ongoing destruction

He witnesses day by day,

And watches as roosevelt takes in the information.

Muir is leading roosevelt to form his own conclusion.

In a letter muir later sends to a confidant,

He admits that he "stuffed him pretty well

In the timber thieves and destructive work of the lumbermen

And other spoilers of the forests."

It works. T.R. Is persuaded that something must be done.

[dramatic music]

And muir now has the most powerful man in america

On his side.

But they need a plan.

Muir and roosevelt know that it will be a long,

Arduous path, getting enough support for new laws

To pass them through congress.

It could take years. It might not happen at all.

What if there was a way for roosevelt himself

To just declare something to be so

And have it be so?

And that's exactly what muir

And roosevelt dreamed up around that campfire.

[dramatic music]

John muir, he lived a fascinating life.

A life well lived.

And he left behind 750,000 acres of the most pristine,

Beautiful land you'll ever see.

It was quite a legacy.

[dramatic music]

On the final episode of "yellowstone to yosemite,"

We'll dive into the revolutionary idea they came up with,

Using the long bloody history of war in the yosemite region

As the inspiration for a one-of-a-kind law

That gives a one-of-a-kind president the power

To protect the land like never before.

[dramatic music]