You're listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast
by the team at NORI, the Carbon Removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast
with Nori. I'm Ross Kenyon.
I'm one of the Co founders of the Nori Carbon Removal
Marketplace. Today I have with me Rinker.
Buck Rinker is a journalist, adventurer, and the author of
several books including The Oregon Trail, A New American
Journey, and Life on the Mississippi, an epic American
adventure that we will be discussing today.
Thanks for being here, Rinker. Great to be here.
Rinker, why do you do the things that you do?
You performed what I understand to be the first passage of the
Oregon Trail in about 100 years, and you built and captained in a
flat boat down the Mississippi River system.
These are eccentric hobbies. Why do you do such things?
Well, I I only learned after my Oregon Trail book came out that
they actually have a term for this.
It's called participatory history.
And that that has very little appeal to me.
I just, I just was I'm just responding to the existence of
life that come up. I wanted to do a book about the
Oregon Trail, and I read doing, and I do intensive research and
I tend to write books where here's what's happening to me
today along the Oregon Trail, and here's what happened 150
years ago when the trail was in use, creating America.
So I do a lot of research and I was reading my research one day
and what came up. But the Oregon Trail has not
been crossed in an authentic way by cover wagon and mules since
1909. So I said, wow, it's 100 years,
more than 100 years since anybody went across.
And I grew up on a farm with work horses and wagons.
We even had a covered wagon as a kid.
We were one of those eccentric families that collected old
wagons and the. Story's about your dad.
He's he's quite a character and sent you on a number of
adventures too. Yeah, he, he he was quite a
character. So I said to myself, well what
the hell, You know, I'm, I'm interested in the Oregon Trail.
Why don't I take the Oregon Trail?
That'll lead me to interesting places.
And it led to, it sounds like I'm being boastful, but it led
to a successful book. And then the I decided to go
down to the Mississippi, too, because in a flat boat, because
during my trip across the Oregon Trail, it took us four months
and you know, it was an authentic trip.
We didn't have pickup trucks following us with catered meals
and all that kind of re enact your bowl.
And I learned that the crossing of the rivers was very, very
important. And there was diary entries that
I found in small towns in Oregon.
Stuff about carpenters who helped people convert their
wagons to flat boats to to go down the rest of the Columbia
River because the wagons were all beat up after a 2000 mile
journey. And they said The Pioneers
proved almost all of The Pioneers, who were largely from
the Midwest, proved exceptionally adroit at building
boats and taking boats because of their experience during the
great flat boat era. And I said wow, I'm AI read a
lot of history and I'd never heard of the great flat boat
era. So I got involved in that and it
turns out the flat boat era, which was trafficked between
Pittsburgh and New Orleans right after the American Revolution,
between the American Revolution and the Civil War.
It turns out that they were the first pioneers.
And that really created the America that we know today.
And that the flatboat period when thousands of people every
year were going, building their own flat boats and going down
the Ohio 1000 miles to Cairo, IL.
And then from there 1000 miles down the Mississippi to New
Orleans with a lot of stops in between.
It turns out that was the real frontier.
That was the first frontier. America was a riverine country.
We're a river country and the frontier was a river, two
rivers, Ohio and the Mississippi and all their tributaries.
And that just fascinated me. So it just occurred to me, as it
often occurs to me, things like this, well, why don't I build a
flat boat and just take it to New Orleans, you know, and this
all got started, which I I, I think you mentioned, Ross, that
maybe you had read the book. But this all got started as a
youngster. And I think it just became
ingrained in me, my brother and I, when we were teenagers.
I was 15, my brother was 17. We rebuilt a Piper Cub, an old
Piper Cub, a $300.00 Piper Cub in our barn in New Jersey.
And then once we had it done, we said, well, what are we going to
do with it? And the farthest we could go
without having to take it apart again and send it by ship or
something, was California. So we, we became the youngest
aviators, so-called to fly coast to coast.
And that's described in my book Flight of Passage.
And the point is, I'm just trying to answer your question,
how do you get to be this eccentric writer and stuff?
And to me, it's not eccentric, it's just it's just what you do,
you know? It is what you do.
It isn't common though it reminds me of the Laurence
Olivier quip about method acting.
I think he asked Dustin Hoffman. Have you tried acting?
You don't actually have to become the character.
You don't actually have to do this, but you sort of have a
gonzo journalism method acting. You're committed to telling this
in in the most authentic way possible, which is seems like
it's took you take you four months living out of a mule
drawn cart crossing mountains. Parts of it strike me as being
quite perilous. Parts of it, I mean most of it
seems very uncomfortable and it also it doesn't strictly require
it isn't necessary, but it's a beautiful thing.
Why do it that way though, rather than desk research?
I know you supplement your your expeditions with lots and lots
of research in a similar way. Like like reading Paul Throu is
often like this for me too. Like the guy reads a lot about
what he's doing and also goes there himself.
You don't actually have to do that to write a good, good
history. Why?
Why do it that way? Well, because all kinds of
things occur to you when you get to the actual scene.
As a journalist, I learned over the years, and it could even be
just a toe touch, but it was very hard to write about a place
or a major event unless you went there, unless you saw, you know,
the boat where the captain was seized by pirates or whatever.
And so for authenticity to occur to me and for me to feel I'm
writing a truthful count, it really helps to go there.
There's also just huge insights that you get by by being on the
scene as opposed to just reading about it in books.
So that the Platte River, which is very, very important in the
Oregon Trail crossing, The Pioneers followed the rivers.
They followed the major rivers across the West.
It's what's called a braided flow river, which most of the
rivers in India are like that. It's a big, wide, shallow, muddy
thing that in heavy rains breaks into what's called the braided
flow. Which means that when in heavy
rains, storms and the Platte River Valley is famous for its
very violent thunderstorms, it breaks into all these tiny
little rivulets which make the the the river extremely wide and
extremely various. And why was this important?
Well, the biggest killer on the Oregon Trail was cholera
epidemics and there was no germ theory.
In those days. People thought that disease was
caused by a kind of malaise in the air.
And what happened was a covered wagon would come in, they would
defecate all over the place where they where they camped
that night. Then the river would flood a
little bit overnight into the braided flow and flow
downstream, and the covered wagon that was behind you coming
up to get to the same spot the next day or two was ingesting.
Water that had fecal matter had dangerous waste matter, which is
is what causes cholera, the mixing of waste and drinking
water and so how. But how was I going to
understand that? How was I going to see that?
And it really became amazing because by seeing the sandy soil
along the Platte River, by understanding how the trail
literally went right along the river and the trail is still
there. And that's space today
unchanged. And you're just riding right
along the river and then in the middle of the night you we might
have. It was one night when I didn't
park far enough away from the river and sure enough we had
huge flooding. We got trapped actually near
Bridgewater, Nebraska. We got trapped for two or three
days because the river overflowed the trail and there
was no way for us to get through and and and it overflowed on the
local roads too. So.
So you're actually, you asked me what's the advantage?
You're actually participating in the same kind of ecological
topographical events that you're writing about.
And and you'll notice when you read my books, you feel like
you're along for the trip. Well, that's because I took the
trip. If I didn't take the trip,
there's nothing to take you along except, you know, a
footnote from Professor Alonzo or something.
Yeah, I've read other books, like one of the books I read
supplementally for this podcast is Women's Diaries of the
Westward Journey. Have you have you read that?
Yes, I I quote several. The fascinating thing about the
Oregon Trail experience was is that and is that the the women
diarists were the best and without women diarists we would
have been done. Most of the typical marriage in
those days was an illiterate male who worked all day and
heard a cattle and did whatever and a well read wife who might
have been a school teacher at some point.
So the women diarists were the best and best writers, the best
recorders. And our sister Whitman, who was
a a missionary wife, was the first to cross, the first woman
to cross the trail and get through South Pass and she
galloped up and over S Pass on a side saddle and side saddles are
really impossible to ride, very difficult.
They made women ride them because there was a belief that
was more delicate and gentle and better for the dress for her to
sit sideways. And this image, this beautiful
image of Narcissa Whitman and her friend galloping up over S
Pass on side saddles, you know, and she was a great recorder of
the trail. And because she sent letters and
Diaries home, which were published in the local
newspapers, what happened in those days was a letter was in
the mid 19th century, a letter was almost public property.
It got passed all through the family and shared and whatnot.
And it was Narcissa Whitman's letters home that were published
in the New York State papers that really opened up the Oregon
Trail. Because the big fear, the big
bugaboo that the American public had was that it was not a place
fit for women. It was not a place fit for women
and children. And then she gets to the rivers
and and one fear was the savage Indians, You know, the depiction
we had of them those days. Well then she gets to the river,
and the Indians come across in a bow boat or in a canoe.
In one place she saw pioneers being crossed the rivers on the
children were crossed the rivers on the backs of Sioux Braves.
They were great swimmers and so the the the the tribes tended to
meet the covered wagons when they had to cross the rivers
because they were great boatmen. And they also knew they could
make a little money or get some trinkets or whatever by helping
The Pioneers across. But it was those letters
published in the early 1840s from Narcissa, Whitman that
opened up the trail because everyone realized, well, we can
travel with our families and you don't.
You don't. I mean, you don't really learn
all of that until you get on the trail and see it.
And you know that riding up over S Pass myself is unique
experiences, Continental Divide. And there's a monument there to
Narcissus and Whitman when she came through, and I think it was
1842 or 1843, you just feel it intensely.
You're you're there, you're seeing it.
And that inevitably creeps into your writing and makes it a
better book. I think so too.
As much as I like the book Women's Diaries of the Westward
Journey, and there's so much that's fascinating about it,
mostly the thing that sticks with me is that they'll not
discuss their pregnancy at all. And then say a baby arrived
today. Like, really you?
You've been doing this horribly uncomfortable, dangerous journey
and then also you're pregnant or became pregnant on this trip.
It's it. Was considered it was considered
indecent to discuss a pregnancy you know and just so so so yes
so so we have good health today. Things are good.
Our second baby arrived on Tuesday you know blah blah blah,
you know and nowadays we make such a big deal of it.
You know we have reveal parties and all this stupid stuff.
The the other things that were fascinating about taking the
trip itself is you pick up things in local Diaries and
local histories and history rooms and stuff that that aren't
in the in the major history books and that leads you to go
to other sources for research. One of the things about the
trail is that it was a very religious event. the IT was
something called the Panic of 1837, which lasted for 15 years.
It was extraordinary. It was much worse than the Great
Depression or anything else. There were half the banks in
America failed between 1837 and the early 1840s when the trail
began. And what would happen for mutual
security, adventure, faith, whatever, Whole churches would
leave together. And people were more organized
according to their churches than they were even to their towns.
And so, and there was still a lot of religious.
It was a time of a lot of religious ferment.
The Second Great Awakening it was called and a lot of
differences between religions. So you have these hilarious
things and you know, I would get to the same place and look
around and see what they were describing.
It was like, you know, arrived Plum Island today, found a very
favorable campsite along the Platen, alas discovered that a
group of Presbyterians were camped nearby.
And these were Baptists, of course.
Packed all our stuff back up, proceeded 2 miles down the river
to have our own place to camp. You know, that literally
happened that that that, that that was, that was how America
was then. Can you imagine, you know, like
if you got to Motel eight, you know, and I don't know, it's
full of looks, like it's full of a bunch of Methodists.
We can't stay here tonight, you know, But that's so.
So you learn the detail, the textual, the tactile detail that
makes a book really good. You learn it by going along on
the trail. And also I got to see how
dangerous it was. I mean, when we, when we went
down the Rocky Mountains on the border between Wyoming and
Idaho, that's the last, the western face of the Rockies, you
descend this very steep trail that descends to the Bear River
in Idaho. And it was perilous.
I mean you know we we could easily have died there because
the we had to go along this narrow path on a Cliff on the
left side of our wagon was a 300 foot drop.
And you know I said Nick, you know this is you know, I said
don't worry if we go or I could probably get off the wagon but
he wasn't going to be able to because he was on the the steep
side. And I said don't worry, I'll
come back for you. He said Don't worry about that.
Just come back for my dog. So God that.
Section of the book is truly I got nervous just hearing you
describe it just now. I can't imagine people having to
do that in large groups with perhaps less less ability to be
rescued if anything happened. Although it sounds like if
anything bad happened there, you'd probably be out of luck
anyway. So maybe it's not actually that
different from back then, yeah. But but you, you're on the
actual trail. You're not standing at a a
highway marker 5 miles from the trail or something.
You're on the actual trail and you're seeing the dangers.
Another thing. And at a certain point, I have
some interesting insights on what all this means for global
warming. But at another point we got to a
place called Willow. Willow Springs, about 30 mile in
the middle of Wyoming. Remote remote area hasn't
changed at all since The Pioneers were crossing in the
1840s and 1850s and it just happened to have been heavy
storms along the Sweetwater and Willow Springs was flooded.
We couldn't get through. We literally couldn't get
through. But fortunately I had done
enough reading to know that there was something called the
Seminole Cut off. The Oregon Trail wasn't really
one trail, it was a series of cut offs and new trails made
according to what changed each year.
And so we had to head sort of due South until we got to the
Seminole cut off and then I took the Seminole cut off back to the
regular trail. But fortunately I'd done enough
reading and knew about it. We got incredibly lost in a in a
place called Spike Peak, Wyoming, where the the trail at
that point after you leave the Platte you join.
It's a large tributary that goes to Wyoming called the Sweetwater
River, which is one of the most undisturbed and beautiful rivers
in the country. But there had been flooding.
It was a high water year when we crossed, so there was flooding
ahead of us and the trail was flooded out.
So we had to just take off cross country and in this very, very
high remote desert. And it it it took a while, but I
I managed to get us back on the trail by figuring out that there
had been a cattle drive coming through and literally following
the footprints of the cattle drive back to a paved Rd.
'cause I was pretty sure they were taking the cattle to trucks
on the highway, to a paved road. And that led us to a ranch ahead
and back to the Oregon Trail. So it's so.
But that was something that happened to The Pioneers a lot.
The trail was wiped out. By flooding, heavy rains,
whatever. And and you had to improvise.
You had to you had to be fearless and and and clever and
and read you know read the signs of nature to to get through
where you wanted to go. And yet.
Both books make a point of describing your work as not
reenactment. And in fact both books have
sections where you have conflicts with people who are
more reenactment minded than you yourself are and you're going
through change environment. So we're going to get to this
environmental history of both of these Oregon Trail system and
also the Mississippi River system.
But if you had gone at it in a reenactment kind of way, looking
for the old way it might have been, it both would have been
less informative. And also your work is supposed
to chronicle these changing environments and how these
things are memorialized and experienced now as well.
And so if you had done it in purely that old school fashion,
you probably would have missed a lot of that, I think.
Yeah. Well, we.
I mean, we did it in a totally authentic way.
You know, we went on a covered wagon.
We went on a flat boat. I didn't have any other you know
modern things along, you know and but no I don't go for
reenactment because reenactment is totally phony.
It's it's it's based on a premise that you can actually
physically recreate by uniform wearing or the red clothes this
kind of thing. The conditions and the mental
attitudes and actually relive that history.
Well you can of course the world has changed and and what
reenactresses they tend to focus on very very obsessively focus
on little details of uniforms and and and so forth like that
in in the belief that that will give them some kind of insight.
Well, it gives you no insight. You really, the Civil War was a
horrible tragedy. There's nothing to, there's
nothing to celebrate it as a re enactor.
And what they celebrate is, is death and dying.
You know, there's guys that blow, the guys who get shot by
mini ball and whatnot and that's their specialty.
The other problem with reenacting is it tends to be
historically recreated or an attempt to recreate history in a
way that promulgates myth and propaganda.
So like the Mormons, for instance, every year the Mormons
take these huge, long COVID wagon drives and they're they're
phony because they're they're they're they're catered meals
and you know, they pull up a tractor trailer in for showers
at night and and all that kind of stuff.
Because the the Mormons, they trace their Heggera across the
Mormon Trail, which was really just the Oregon Trail.
They trace that exodus to Utah as the creation of their
religion and distinct culture, and so they're trying to move
the Moses. Right.
It's supposed to be an exodus from Nauvoo.
Yeah, Yeah, it was. It was an exodus.
And the hilarious thing is at various points along the
Sweetwater they have which is kind of the Holy Land of the old
Mormon Trail, they have these summer camps, you know, and all
the Mormon kids have to come up from Salt Lake and all those
different places where Mormons are and camp out there for the
summer and they push hand carts around.
They have to wear period dress. You know it's really hot out
there and they have to wear these long.
The women have to wear these long dresses and the men's men
wear these Western get up you know and the and they celebrate
their religion and when. And a lot of it is just comical
and really, really silly. And I wrote about that.
And the interesting thing was, and and I knew a lot of more, I
worried that a lot of Mormons wouldn't like it.
But you know, that's what you see a lot.
The Mormons actually control about 150 miles of the trail in
the most spectacular place in the South Pass section.
OK, well, so at Devil's Gate, this beautiful stretch of the
Sweetwater River, there's this huge Mormon camp.
And I described coming over the peaks and looking down, and
there's this immense camp of kids.
And the Mormons use it to celebrate their their religion,
to promote their religion. They have a museum there, and
they're, you know, how great Mormonism is and everything.
And I was sure that a lot of them would be offended by what I
wrote. I didn't write it that way
deliberately, but how could you miss that when you're crossing
the trail? And so when after the book came
out, I got all these emails and letters from Mormon kids and
they said as far as celebrating our religious history, you know,
the only thing we learned at Mormon camp, the forced Mormon
camp every summer, the devil's gate, is how to have sex with
our Mormon boyfriends, you know, So, you know, re enacting, I
mean, it brought them there. And I guess it's a valuable
thing to the church leaders and everything, but for the rank and
file of the faithful, it's it's just an act.
It's just something that you put on in in the same way we have a
nativity scene at Christmas, you know, But the handcart?
Track is mythologized, at least partially because wasn't it an
error of judgement at Brigham Young's to to send them out at
an unseasonable time that was badly provisioned and it became
like heroic in a way, but it was kind of bad Leadership in my
understanding is what actually happened I.
I I described that it was the I think it was the 1846 or the
1847 handcart experience and hundreds died at Martin's Cove
until they were finally said because they they were like the
Donner party crossing the Sierras.
They left late. They made a lot of mistakes.
They weren't provisioned properly, and it was, it was a a
classic instance of a disaster for religion, something that
shouldn't have happened and it should be celebrated as a
failure of leadership that killed a lot of people.
But of course, the Mormons have turned that into a kind of
resurrection story. And, you know, and there's all
kinds of myths and funny beliefs.
There's one mass grave just beyond where they were trapped
by the Snows that is now sort of a kind of a Mormon temple in the
middle of the desert. So and and again, you see, I
wouldn't have known about this and I wouldn't have realized to
write about it as dramatically as I did unless I was along the
trail, you know, actually seeing it.
What did you notice along? The trail about how things have
changed environmentally. One example I have in my head,
and maybe you agree with this and maybe not, or maybe it's
relevant or maybe not. But reading Stephen Ambrose's
undaunted courage about how many animals the Lewis and Clark
expedition could shoot from their boats with, they didn't
even have to go anywhere. Like we killed 60 elkers today
and they didn't. They didn't even seem to leave
the river to do so. That is obviously no longer the
case. The Buffalo are gone now, but
surely there's many other things that you noticed that some
things are good environmentally, like the Platte River system is
no longer producing huge amounts of cholera that are killing many
people. That is no longer a thing.
We know how to address that. But there's also many, many
things that maybe you've seen and along the Mississippi River
as well that are signs of industry in decline, of
pollution and potentially of clean up too.
What trends have you seen? It's it's both good and bad.
All right. So the Monongahela River, which
is one of the tributaries of the Ohio that flows in from West
Virginia is very clean and everything nowadays.
The so-called Monongahela Valley, the Mon Valley was where
all the US Steel works, steel plants were massive forges, coke
plants, et cetera. In 1973, when the Clean Water
Act was passed, there were only three edible species left in the
Monongahela River. The clean up since then has
largely been precipitated by the fact that the steel mills
closed, which is a tragedy. But you can now catch 150
species of edible fish in the Mononga Hill.
So it's a great success story and it's much, much cleaner.
Now on the other hand, as you get further down on the Ohio and
on the Mississippi, especially the the companies, the big big
corporate entities that run transportation and carry all the
goods down there, and still about a third of our economy
exit to the world economy through the Mississippi River.
But the industries that dominate that transportation are filthy
polluters, lazy, abominably LED. You know, everyone likes to
worship. What's his name?
The Sage of Omaha, Warren. Buffett, Warren.
Buffett now he owns the Northern Pacific.
Northern Pacific rail lines are the filthiest places in the
world. They they take all the old
creosote ties down. The wooden ties underneath the
rails replace them and then create a huge pile of creosote,
literally almost an acre of creosote ties just thrown on the
side of the railroad tracks, which by the way runs right
along the Ohio and and in the West, the Platte River and so
forth. And it's rotting creosote.
It's it's it's one of the most toxic.
The creosote is a treatment that they put on the ties so they
don't rot. It's a petroleum based thing.
Black ugly stuff. They leave acres and acres of
these along the railroad tracks. When you're coming down the
Mississippi and the Ohio, the barge companies, you know these
big tugs are going by and they're pushing 30 or 40 barges
at once. If an old barge gets rusty or
gets damaged or whatever, they just push it over the side of
the river, let it rot out and sink right there.
All the companies, all the tugbo companies, big source of
fortunes in in in the Midwest that have big tugboat
operations. If a transmission blows, they
throw it overboard. If an engine blows, they throw
it overboard. And it's so severe that in
certain spots and they're they're marked on the maps.
The maps are pretty carefully marked.
You know you're coming to a port or repair Center for the Ingram
Barge Company or whoever it is. And as you get closer, what
happens is your compass starts going wild, starts going around
in circles. There's so much metal down
there, there's so much iron down there at the bottom of the river
that that they've thrown out that it affects it.
It's called deviation, but it it affects the accuracy of the
compass and starts going around in circles.
So you could tell by how the compass is behaving, whether you
were passing a junkyard, an impromptu junkyard along the
river. So those are those are two
examples, OK? The fish came back and the
pollution, the hard physical pollution of industry is
everywhere that you see and it's it's the the beautiful rivers
and this beautiful lyrical trip to go down them.
But the irresponsibility of our corporate leaders is just
staggering. And you also.
Detail on the Oregon Trail and you can see this in I don't know
if you watched the Taylor Sheridan 1883 series.
Did you see that by chance? Yes.
Yes, yeah, they're and they're scenes.
Of people. They're just leaving behind huge
amounts of valuable items at various river crossings.
There's just no room to bring all the stuff that they want to
bring. And apparently there's just
debris fields. You can just follow trash all
the way across the Oregon Trail essentially in.
In fact, after the middle 18, after late 1840s when the trail
traffic picked up, especially in the 18481849 gold rush period,
you navigate it to California or Oregon via the debris field.
And I I quote it, I quote this in my book, my Oregon Trail
book, and it's hilarious. I mean, you're crossing the
desert and they're in the middle of the desert is a huge ship's
anchor. Why did someone decide to bring
a ship's anchor, you know, or a bathtub?
And there was a guy named Langworthy who was very
interesting, who was a diarist. And he said he concluded from
very early on in the trip that he wasn't going to keep all his
baggage and all his clothes and everything.
Because when he needed a new suit, when his old suit, you
know, he probably wore it for a week or two and it got kind of
filthy and smelly. When he needed a new one, he
just went through the the debris piles that he found along the
trail and founded a clean suit, you know, and he, it wasn't, he
wasn't joking that that that's really what happened.
So yes, there America as a serial polluter had its origins
very early. So, but you know, the thing
about climate change that's fascinating to me that struck me
as I was crossing the trail, and it struck me again, given some
of the aberrant weather that I found along the Mississippi when
I was going with flat boat, was that one day we were traveling
along in Nebraska along the Oregon Trail fairly early in the
trip. And the Platte River Valley in
Nebraska is the first treeless expanse of Prairie after the
Rockies. There's nothing to stop the
storms coming through and the Platte rivers storms down
through Kearney, NE and all the way E to Omaha, through Grand
Isle and places like that are some of the most violent in the
country, probably probably the world.
And there's stories of a whole wagon trains, every wagon was
blown over, stuff like that. We camped several nights during
really violent thunderstorms and and the wagon would literally
shake and rock back and forth from the explosions of the
lightning hitting the soil and also the wind.
But the thing that struck me this moment of insight I had
was, wow, there are actually, there are actually prototypes
for the impact of climate warming.
You know, we've lived through this before.
And so sitting in my covered wagon at night, and there was a
really violent thunderstorm, which was something that no one
had prepared me for and something that I just didn't
know that I was going to quite confront.
But it led to really good parts of the book.
Not only what was happening to us, but what was the experience
of The Pioneers we've lived through.
Not climate change exactly, but the physical and meteorological
impacts of climate change. For instance, we crossed during
a high water year and there were crossings where we expected to
get across the river. We couldn't do it that day in
that spot because there was so much flooding.
So we had to go up another 50 miles and and figure out a way
to get across. We we would be riding along the
trail and get this really violent thunderstorm and we had
to sort of sort of pitch the mule along in a in a very quick
way up to high ground so the wagon wouldn't get flooded.
Underneath we had wind storms. I described wind, wind,
windstorm just near those kind of approaching Scotts Bluff,
Nebraska. And the sandstorm was so violent
that we couldn't, I couldn't see the road any longer, I couldn't
see the road we were following. And the only way I could
navigate holding the mules is I was holding the lines like this.
I look straight down, absolutely straight down.
For some reason, in a really violent sandstorm, you can sort
of see straight down and I could see the dim outline of the grass
shoulder of the road. And I just I just kept the mules
just kept the wheels right on that grass shoulder right on the
edge of that grass shoulder and I knew I was still on the road
would you would never you know there was another fascinating
thing that happened. We crossed something called the
Little Colorado Desert in Wyoming, which is sort of South
of Casper. And you're you're kind of
crossing the open desert towards, and this is real desert
towards the Green River and it's called the Little Colorado
Desert. And we crossed it in one day and
there's wet very large wild horse herds in there and all
these rivers are marked on the map, but they're dry gulchers
that they're only there's only water in there, you know a day
or two a year after a rain. But one of the things you learn
about water is that the river is just the visible indication on
the surface of water that's underneath.
OK. So there's a lot of huge amounts
of water underneath. So what happens is I just
started noticing all these Prairie Falcons, these peregrine
Falcons, these, you know, apex predators of the desert circling
around in a certain area. And then we get up close and I
noticed well there's a lot of Prairie dogs around here
etcetera. And what was happening was the
Prairie dogs, who of course Burrow into the ground,
establish a colony near the dry river Gulches because there is
water underneath there. And they they can, they have at
least a source of water that they can dig to the and and also
there's enough water certain times a year that there's
vegetation around for the Prairie dogs to eat well.
The the the the Prairie Hawks, Prairie Falcons feed off their
their their big source of feed is baby Prairie dogs.
And so from a distance I'd I'd be trying to figure out on the
map how am I going to get across and figure out where I am.
And no because it's it's an area where there really isn't a trail
you just have to head off cross country by compensating.
But and then it would be useful to know well all right there is
a dry Gulch up ahead and like in in one afternoon I was able to
learn OK where those Prairie Hawks are circling that's the
dry Gulch and it's about two miles away and it's a little bit
off. So we're going to steer in that
direction just to make sure we hit that and we have a cross
point and I get there and where the where the Hawks were was
exactly where the dry Gulch was and was exactly where a Prairie
dog colony and I I figured that myself.
I didn't. Later on I confirmed this by
reading in biology books and stuff about wildlife and and
where they kind of get there. You could tell from the tracks
of the wild horse herds where water was where there were
rivers and stuff because they would they they had to stay stay
close to the rivers. And we we camped at a couple of
these spots in Willow Creek and stuff South of Casper along the
very, very remote stretch of the trail.
And so I learned that you're you're you're navigating
according to where the water is and you can you can teach
yourself to navigate when you don't really have any other
visual references to help you. And I guess the the the insight
I had was that we've been through this before.
You know the pioneer experience, the homesteading experience was
really in a very literal way, a search for water.
You had to stay along the rivers for for water and for
vegetation, for firewood, stuff like that.
And then as The Pioneers crossed, and I read about this
in the book, they realized that a lot of pioneers were gonna
return to stretches of Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, where they saw
a lot these beautiful fields of wildflowers.
You you drive through these wildflowers, they're amazing,
the scent and everything. Because The Pioneers who were
experienced farmers knew that if there was a effusion, an
explosion of wildflowers in a certain area, it would only be
there. They would only be there because
there had been water, there had been a heavy rain.
And it's it's sort of like in the Australian Outback, you
know, every four years you get this explosion of beautiful
flowers when they occasionally get a rain, the seeds never
leave. The ability to grow, those
plants never leave. So The Pioneers knew they could
come back here. And how did they make it work
for farming? They dug wells into the Ogallala
Aquifer and put in irrigation ditches, which now 100 and 5200
years later we're we're drying up the aquifer, you know, But I
guess just surviving the incredible storms that we
survived, understanding that I could always navigate, no matter
how hostile the environment, understanding there was a unique
weather situation that I described in my Mississippi
book. Traveling down the Mississippi.
There was a very unique weather set up that came that year,
although it's becoming more and more common.
There was a dip in the jet stream above us and was holding
the storms about 50 miles off from the course of the river.
But there were these pop up storms that would be generated
by all the storms that were 50 miles away and we're driving
along the river and also in this huge thunderstorm totally
unpredicted nothing that was in the weather reports the night
before whatever. And and then the big problem and
and during those kind of storms you're going down the river on a
boat, on a flat boat. It's more dangerous to try and
land the boat on shore than it is to stay in the middle of the
river. And so but I I didn't want to
run into something and there were curves and everything along
the river. So I just assumed the compass
course, pointed the boat into the wind as much as I could and
followed exactly what I saw just before the storm hit that
compass course. And it was amazing how well we
survived those so-called pop up storms and they were very
violent and after a while I just became you know another storm
stood. So it it, it just seemed to me
that there is in kind of the kind of the DNA of Americans
coping mechanisms that we learned during conditions which
weren't necessarily caused by climate change, but they.
Were caused but. They were impacts as severe as
the climate change we're starting.
To experience today. And that it's in our DNA.
We we did that. There are coping make
mechanisms, presumably, although it's easy to be a pessimist,
presumably we really are going to bring on alternative energy
and stop pumping all this carbon into the air, etcetera, and
it'll take 50 years or something.
Are you? Are you?
Quasi adopting the Frederick Turner thesis to climate change
here our I guess, has adopted us.
To a culture. Of adaptation, Yeah.
So you. So the so the Turner thesis was
that everything in America is just a replay of the front of
your ears. Yeah, I I I haven't.
Exactly. Thought it through.
But you're going along. You're crossing the plains in a
covered wagon and you know the nearest town might be 30 or 40
miles away. You're on your own.
It's it's it's just your own ingenuity and resourcefulness is
keeping you alive and. Suddenly, a real bad storm
comes. Up and similar experience on the
Mississippi River. And what struck me was, well,
you know, everybody's panicked about climate change and we're
going to go through all this hell.
We're going to have coastal flooding, you know, because of
the rise of the water levels and so forth.
And it's going to be uncomfortable and maybe even
tragic. And then I just yeah.
But I mean, I just got caught in the most.
Violent thunderstorm of my life. I had to move to high ground.
I had to drive 3 mules and two wagons, you know, you know, half
mile away up to higher ground. So we didn't get flooded and I
coped and The Pioneers coped. Now it was a much less complex
world then, I suppose, but for some reason it just it gave me
hope. And it also gave me a notion
that that there were prototypes for this experience and we can
rely on those prototypes. I have mixed feelings on it.
On the one hand, I like that humans are less exposed to
extreme climate events than ever before in history, just in terms
of development and and our material safety.
On the other hand, I really like about your books because your
journeys force you to notice things and to be an active
participant in your environment, more than just caring about the
weather for, oh, it's going to rain today, I should change my
jacket. Like, it actually influences the
course of major decisions in both books of what actually
going to happen and how to remain safe and to be aware of
your surroundings like that. I think that noticing is
actually a really important thing beyond just a practical
adaptation. I think spiritually it's a good
thing to be plugged into how the world around you is actually
still very wild and how you actually need to pay attention
to it. It's not something you can just
take for granted for stability sake.
That's in some ways an illusion. And also, even if it were not an
illusion, I think there are good spiritual reasons for wanting to
pay attention to it or needing to pay attention to it.
I think that it would be good for us not to forget that, Yes,
and it would be. What what taking those trips
reminded me of, and what the books are really about, is
start. Noticing things.
Noticing things? I mean, you know, is the grass
long here or is it short? Are the wildflowers here?
Is it? Has the emerald ash borer gotten
to this part of the country or not?
And by notice and and and you you have to do that when you're
on a covered wagon trip or flatboat trip down to
Mississippi because that's the physical environment you're in.
You're not in a big tall skyscraper somewhere protected
and sort of isolated away from nature.
You're not in an air conditioned car etcetera and so.
You have to notice. Those things.
Because that's your environment now.
You know, Covered Wagon, you're pretty much exposed to the whole
environment. Another thing that people need
to appreciate and I think you get from my books, and I have a
big long screed about this in my Mississippi River book.
There are several screeds though so.
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
Is. We depend on what we consider
normal. Life is extraordinary luxury.
And we and we we don't need it. OK, Everyone said you'll never
make it down to Mississippi. You're gonna die because the sun
is too scorching. This, that and the other thing,
well, it's both when you get out on the when you get out on the
water, there's always a breeze out there you're moving along,
etcetera, etcetera. And at night it was it was
always possible to find kind of a breezy area or some kind of
place where you could survive the mosquitoes and the heat and
all that stuff. You know if if you know nature
calls and you have to take a crap in the woods, you do it.
You know this fetish that we have of you know, you know,
sanitary, you know luxuriant conditions is is not necessary.
We're taking the the resources we have, which are finite and
applying them to all kinds of things.
I mean I just just was reading about these stupid data centers
you know, which they need to keep all these video games going
and everything. Well, it's ridiculous.
I mean they're they're polluting rural areas of the country.
They're they're located along rivers because they need the
water for the coolness, etcetera.
And for what? For some kids staring at a video
game on a cell phone. I I don't get it.
You know, that kid should be rebuilding a Piper Cub.
In his barn, he should be rebuilding a Piper Cub or?
You know, I I live in Amish country and I go out every day
after I finish. Writing and I cut firewood.
Stuff like that, yeah, there's just we.
What happens when you take a trip like this is you realize
that there are deeper pleasures and deeper enjoyments, deeper
luxuries in life that don't include all the sort of physical
pampering that we seemed that we surround ourselves with and and
you know, but the the biggest thing is just being aware.
See what's happening around you. That's that's what these trips
taught me. Sure, there are many parts where
you. Maybe not considered quitting,
but fantasized about being somewhere more comfortable.
But I'm sure, now that it's fully behind you, the memories
of those trips, even if you hadn't written books that were
part of your career, might still make it worth it.
Because how many how many people get to do something like this?
I'm sure parts of it were extremely difficult, and you
document many of them, but I'm sure you're glad that you did
them right. Yes, and and one thing.
Is, Is. You shouldn't.
Over plan it and you. Shouldn't, you know, sit around
and come up with lists and everything.
Basically, if you read my books, you see I just, I just left.
You know, there's like, there's Deus Ex Machina.
Just helping you out all over the place.
Seemingly just things fall into place and the world.
Is more receptive and gracious out there than you expect.
Now of course, the the way I'm traveling, everybody wants to
help you and you get quite a fan base going.
But to ask yourself, oh, how am I ever going to make this?
I mean, you know, take it away. A covered wagon across the Rocky
Mountains is. A bitch, you know it's.
Difficult and but each day is just, oh, we just got to get
over that place, to this place and the next place.
You just have to have a a sense of abandoned.
And I'm no longer living in a culture where I have to have a
permit for everything you know. One of the trips.
That I did as I rode my my bike from Phoenix to Los Angeles a
long time ago and it was a 10 day trip.
I did, you know self supported by myself and the part that I
most did you come across. Did you come across death?
Valley on that route, I did. I didn't.
I didn't go to death. Valley route?
No, but I I wasn't super far from it either.
I ended up going like the 29 palms north of Joshua Tree way.
But I love that I just had to make my miles and not get hit by
a car. And that's where my mind was.
I wasn't thinking about I could also be reading a book or
writing something or seeking another job or I.
My all I did was not die and keep going.
And I felt like we don't have a lot of places where we're not
being distracted in that way. I think that's really a powerful
good thing for for me, at least. You know what you have to do is
not die and keep. Going and conquer whatever
problems you had, like, you know you plant for water here, it
wasn't there. What are you going to do
exactly? Yeah, all you have to do.
Is. Solve contingencies, not die.
And keep going for 10 days, OK? And next thing you know you're
in LA you know? So yeah, I just think we live
lives to insulated by luxury and what these trips taught me and
I'm. I'm I'm going to go on another.
One I'm building building a wagon now.
I was going to ask you, I'm. Like, surely you've got.
Something up your sleeve? How could you not?
Well, I got something else up my sleeve that I'm.
Doing now I'm writing. I'm.
I'm writing a new book about all my experiences over the years
with a very similar group of people which is the Amish and
the Mennonites and they still live that very simple way.
But no, I'm building. In the old days you'd call it a
gypsy wagon, but my kids tell me that we can't use the word gypsy
anymore. So I'm calling it an Irish
traveler's wagon. But it's it's sort of.
A domestic wagon it'd be. Pulled by three mules and it'll.
It's got a bed in it. And a wood stove.
I'll have a little insulation in there and I can probably live
almost year round in most parts of the country.
And I'm it's being built by the Amish for me in Tennessee.
And I'm going to take it. I want to.
I've never seen the whooping crane and sandhill crane
migration along the Platte River at Grand Isle Nebraska.
I want to see that I have friends in Red Lodge Mt.
I love. I love.
I love that area of Montana. So I'll get up there so that you
know like Middle Tennessee to. The Abzarka Mountains in.
Montana over a period of a couple years, maybe three years.
I'm just going to do it just, you know, I don't even have any
idea for a book about it. Just just go.
And see what happens. And see how I survive.
And you know I've got the team of mules assembled and I'm all
I'm all set for that and and I guess what the earlier trips
have taught me is you know, don't worry just go you know you
just got to go you know and and your protections and everything
you need. Defines itself as you go along.
And I I think, I think that's what we're going to see with
climate change. You know, it's, I don't think
it's a smart thing anymore for people to buy beach houses.
And I don't think ecologically it's a good thing.
And the government is finally taking away one of the
incentives, which is cheap insurance.
We had government, government subsidized insurance coverage.
Well, that's slowly going away and it should go away.
We shouldn't. But we shouldn't be building
along our coast. We shouldn't, you know.
And in California, they build, you know, on sand, so the cliffs
overlooking the water. Well, it looks beautiful.
I guess it's nice to wake up in the morning and see Pacific
Ocean. But why are we doing that?
It doesn't make sense and it causes a lot of damage.
So I think what's gonna happen is people are gonna learn to
cope with things like rising sea levels.
I don't know. How we're gonna cope with?
The fact that we're depleting the aquifers underneath the
earth, mainly for agriculture at alarming rates.
But I have hope that I guess from taking these trips I I have
hope that you can encounter almost any circumstances, learn
from it and get past it. So you know I.
Guess that's where my head is at, I think.
That's a good place to be. As we're coming close to the
end, I want to ask you one more big question that hopefully
won't, won't open up too enormous of an answer.
But I think you had a a really both books put you in a position
to understand and experience the United States in a very unique
way. I think you do a good job of not
being, you know, observant of its faults but also celebratory
of it. I think you walk a a very
correct the kind of line because there's a version of this that
is propagandizing or so critical that we're just rotten to the
core and there's no redemption possible.
Are you hopeful about? The.
Trajectory of the I'm not even talking about the election.
I I mean that we're as a country are we?
Are we living up to or in the in the hopes of living up to what
we see that set out as our goals or our values or not really,
well, one of the. Things that you notice very
heavily when you take a trip, OK, across the Oregon Trail,
which kind of cuts through open, beautiful country away from
civilization. And the places where it crosses
civilization tend to be nice towns or whatever.
Or the Mississippi River, which is kind of like railroad tracks,
you know, they're away from everything.
You get a different perspective, but one of the sensation that
overwhelms you a lot is. You know, all of this stuff
that's happening in Los Angeles, New York City and Washington,
You know, all these debates over migration and and global warming
and taxation and this, that it doesn't affect you when you're
way out here. It's not a part of life.
Way out here, people are still running their farms, running
their ranches. So you can get lulled into a a
totally local based on nature mentality of just what you're
seeing that day. And in the end you realize the
politics are they don't really matter that much.
The politics. You know, what is the real
difference between Democratic policy and Republican policy on
this? That or the other thing.
So. My perspective to answer.
Your question is distorted. I've removed myself from all
that and realize that all the political battles raging in
Washington and New York, LA, whatever, they're not
necessarily a part of the life you lead deep in the natural fly
over country. So it's easy to be helpful.
It's easy to be helpful and. Yes, I I I am.
Hopeful though, but it is appalling.
It can be appalling when you get out there and realize.
How little education there is. How?
Little appreciation of how complex the cosmos is that
people reflect on. So I'm hopeful, but I'm also
spoiled. I've placed myself in
environments where you can sort of ignore that all those
problems are there. It's very.
Romantic. It's very satisfying.
Just sailing down a river in a simple wooden boat.
Or plodding across the desert with mules, you know.
Or plodding through beautiful farm country with mules you've
kind of abstracted yourself from, although modern.
Worries in a lot of ways. Where do you want someone?
Listening to Track your stuff down, is it going to
flatboatpatients.com? Is that where you'd want people
to go? They can.
Go to flatboatpatients.com, but I'm not that heavy big a a web
participant. No.
Go to Barnes and Noble or preferably your local
independent bookstore and just find the books.
The books are the the the books are what make the trip
significant. If I had taken a trip across the
Oregon Trail first in 100 years, that was authentic and just done
it it it wouldn't. It wouldn't exist any more than
a tree falling in a forest that no one hears exists.
But it's the book that dignifies.
The experience and. Makes it available to a wider
audience. No, I would say go find the
books. That's, that's the most
important thing. And I'm not saying that just to
sell books. I'm I'm saying is that there's a
great amount of integrity to the book experience and it's it's.
It it is the expression. Of one soul and one experience
that that that's very important. I'll tell you a story one one
thing, but people have to learn to be tangible and be immediate.
So my son, in his late 20s, was travelling in a very remote part
of Arizona because he participated in a group that
helps a group of Pueblo Indian, Pueblo and Hopi Indians out
there. And so he's.
Travelling along and they get. Out of cell phone range or
whatever, and the GPS is no longer accurate.
You know, GPS is saying. Travelling on road, you know?
So he pulls out of his backpack a map and says, oh, we're OK, We
we want to go along here. And then when we get to sort of
this intersection where we can see the river, we want to bear
NE a little bit. And the other Gen.
X type people who were along with him go like, boy, you're a
weirdo, you know, you, you know, I mean, who uses a map anymore?
Who? And I've talked to a few kids
about this and I I, you actually meet kids who go Oh yeah, I
wouldn't. I mean what is a map?
I I couldn't read a map and of course it seems so simple to me.
But my son, I guess largely through being exposed to me and
the kind of events I would expose him to, knew how to take
a map and tangibly connect it to the surroundings that are going
by you in the car. And what a lot of this
automation and digitalization and everything, you know, the
GPS says, turn right on this, such and such a road and in 500
feet, you know. And and you're just looking at
that screen. Your your relationship is to the
screen now. It's not to the actual natural
surroundings you have. So the best thing people can do
is, as I said before, get in touch, you know, observe what's
out there, you know. And fortunately, we're still
surrounded by nature, and there's a lot to observe.
I think it's good advice. I love your books.
I would even revisit them, which is not true for many books that
I read. There are also audiobook
versions that are quite good too, if you prefer that.
Well, they can listen to the audio, yeah.
Yeah, Thanks for being here. Winker I know you took a little
bit of a flyer doing a show like this, but I'm glad that we were
able to chat. No, it was it.
It it is great to chat and good luck with it and I don't know,
I'll do another book someday. We'll do it again.
That'd be great. Thank you so much for listening.
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