One of the last jobs. I had in yellowstone was delivering the mail on snowmobile
There I was in the world's first national Park, and I remember going down into Hayden Valley
There were bison crossing over the road [2,000] pound mammals crossing over the road, and it was so cold
it was about 60 below zero and
The bison as they breathed their exhalation would seem to crystallize in the air around them and there were these sheets these Ropey
strands of Crystals kind of flowing down from their breath and
I saw them
They just move their heads and we're looking at me
And I remember thinking that if I had not been [on] that machine
[I] would have thought I had been thrust fully back into the Pleistocene back into the ice age
and I remember just stopping and
Turning it off because the only way you could hear is to turn that thing off and [I] would turn it off and I would
Listen and I felt like this was the first day
and
This morning was the first time the sun had ever come up
And the shadows that are being cast right now is the first time those shadows have ever been cast on the Earth
And I was all alone, but [I] felt I was in the presence of everything around me, and I was never alone
It was one of those moments when you get pulled outside of [yourself]
Into the environment around you and I felt like I was just with the breath of the bison as they were
Exhaling and as I was exhaling and they were inhaling it was all kind of flowing together
And I forgot completely about the mail all I was thinking of was that a single moment in
A place as wild as yellowstone almost the national parks can last forever
major funding for the production of the National Parks was provided by the
[corporation] [for] public broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS stations from viewers like you. Thank you
In other parts of the world there are certain areas that are preserved because some rich
nobleman out of the goodness of his heart decided to decree it
But in the United States, you don't have to be dependent on some rich guy being generous to you
To me that's what national parks mean. It's a symbol of democracy
Democracy when it works well
at its best
What's amazing about the parks is that it's so intimate it's really about who am I?
Who am I. And the parks provide this
Incredibly powerful
force that
holds ourselves up to ourselves
We are now in the mountains and they are in us
kindling enthusiasm making every nerve quiver filling every pore and cell of us
A flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us.
Neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.
It was a perfect topic for us to [deal] with I
remember thinking of [okay]. We should do this series on the parks now. I got to convince my best friend
that we should do it, and I started telling well. It's like baseball like jazz it's an American invention
It's [uhh] first tentative expression
was taken in 1864 when a president named Abraham Lincoln, and he said okay, [hehe], we'll do it
Nobody's told the story. [Um],
we know which lodges to stay at. We know
beautiful scenes of nature. We have the postcard view of this, but how did this happen? Was it really the first
"National Park"" that Americans invented? Yes, it was.
[Um] How did it come about? Was the park service always there?
No, it wasn't. Who made them happen? In many cases ordinary
people a "bottom-up" story of people who just happen to have fallen in love with a place
and were willing to devote in some cases their lives and their fortunes their sacred honor to creating a
wonderful place that we now get to enjoy and you have
unbelievably interesting history.
"As we sat on logs
[I] began to unfold my dream for the area and
how I had been trying for years to save the Tetons and the whole valley north of Jackson.
Mr.. And Mrs.. Rockefeller listen
When I finished they [remain] silent
As we watched the sun disappeared behind the jagged peaks casting long sharp shadows across the valley
I felt a little let down.
Here I had laid out my fondest dream... and there was no word of comment."
But four months later, Albright was invited to Rockefeller's New York office, to discuss the Tetons again
This time he showed Rockefeller detailed maps and cost
estimates for a modest plan to purchase some of the land near Jackson Lake
And Mr. Rockefeller had studied quite a while on then he shook his head, [and] he [looked] up, and he said Mr. Albright
This is interesting and everything, but he said this isn't what I meant
I want to know how much it would cost to buy that valley and
my father I heard him so many times tell a story and he said, and I, my heart stopped beating right then.
The whole valley.
This film took us really to
Alaska to the everglades to Hawaii Volcanoes
to Acadia National Park in Maine
It's been a dream job
I mean to be [able] to travel to the most beautiful places
In this country and some of the most beautiful places on [Earth] and do it for five years and only go at the best time
[of] year in [the] best light with the most incredible cooperation from the Parks [department] to
To make everything happen. It's just been [fantastic]
I
remember that first moment in Santa fe and later at Chaco Canyon and then later in Yosemite in
2003 and it's been an incredibly
Amazing journey ever since that's taken us literally around this
Amazingly beautiful country of Ours
you
Our research process is also a part of our filming process, so while we're in a park
We might be filming in a park before I've written a script and while. We're there the ranger that has showed us a
Particular Viewpoint
mentioned some story that we were unaware of and that works its way into the script this would be a very good time for a
Moose to Swim across right now
It's been a great experience for us not only learning history
but if you got to get up at 5:00 in [the] morning to be shooting when it's dawn rises a
Boy, you can't pick a better place to be than a national park
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
On people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever
With their majestic beauty all [our] Lord
Theodore Roosevelt
Well, I think the heroes are the [ones] that you'd sort of at first blush
Expect if you knew even a little bit about American history theodore Roosevelt is important
John Muir the
Mountain prophet who sort of screeched up in my consciousness to within the top ten I mean he's just
about as great as it as you get
Franklin Roosevelt
But at the same time the story that we are telling
Engages three or four dozen people that you've never heard of before
amazing human beings from every conceivable
[walk] of life who in the course of their lives just felt it was important to save a precious place and and did so I
can't say I've spent many years in months communing with the everglades to
[be] a friend of the everglades is not necessarily to spend time wandering around out [there]
it's too buggy to let - generally inhospitable, [I]
Suppose you could say the everglades and I have the kind of friendship that doesn't depend on constant physical contact
I know, it's out there, and I know it's important
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
We're obviously looking at something bigger than ourselves
[I] think [that] we were awakened by doing this project
And we hope that in some ways the stories [that] we tell of the people who made the parks the images that we've gotten back
Have been in the spirit of those larger ideas
Our national heritage is richer than just scenic features
The realization is coming that perhaps our greatest national heritage is Nature itself
With all its complexity and its abundance of life
George Melendez wright
George Melendez wright
was a savior of
Wildlife in America's National Parks
but more importantly George Melendez wright is a savior of
the National Park [ideal]
our
series is filled with heroes heroes who are
Totally unknown to
most Americans people from every conceivable background
Rich people who through their wealth and their philanthropy created parks
poor people who gave pennies to help save [the] great Smoky's a
Descendant of slaves who helped Save Biscayne National Park
Immigrants who fell in love with the place and through their artistry help bring that place to people's attention I
Dedicated my paintings first to the great nature of California
Which has always given me great lessons?
comfort and nourishment
second to the people who share the same thoughts as
though drawing water from One River
under one tree
my paintings created by the humble brush of a mediocre man are
Nothing, but expressions of my wholehearted praise and gratitude
Every park has its hero, and I think that is really the heart [and] soul of [this] series
individuals that do Matter William Gladstone [Steel] in the
1870s [happened] to accidentally see a picture of crater lake in Oregon in a newspaper that had wrapped his
Lunchtime meal and he resolved to go there and once he did get there [fifteen] years later
He devoted another 17 years to trying to get it
Created into a national park which he helped do
Imagine [a] vast mountain six by seven miles through at an elevation of
8,000 feet with the top removed and the inside hollowed out
then filled with the clearest water in the world, and you have a perfect representation of
Crater Lake
Everything is a kind of portrait
Because it's human beings asking these questions. It's human beings
saving these places
It's human beings trying to destroy these places and all of the great stories [that] this
Narrative gets caught up in I think are part of this great human drama
you
They are islands of hope
The parks are always where I can go home again, I
Go back to [my] hometown there is a [Safeway] where I used to play with Silvia Gonzalez
They have taken and turned my old school into a junk shop
But the Parks don't do that
so these are places we can always go home and
paradoxically
That we can always see into the future and hope for the better things
When we look at Parks and we look at the United States, and we examine the whole idea of Democracy I
Think that the park experience is an exploration of the idea of freedom
Where where do I come from where am I going? How did I get here? How did we as a people get here I?
Think that when people go to a national park they get a sense a compass to history
We've frozen to death
You know in below zero weather we've filmed and broiling hot temperatures
It's every extreme and yet
You know I don't think there's any of us that ever complained about this that we didn't feel that we were part of this privileged
Moment of being able to capture this stuff. I just love these like
And down and [d]. I know and I just did we have shot in 53 of the 58 national parks
we extended our shooting schedule by about two years for a project of the size mainly because
There are so many places
We need to go the parks themselves the places [themselves] are in essence characters in our film
We wanted to be able to interview them as extensively as possible and some of them we want three different seasons to visit them
we're filming in Denali, and
It has only one road
it's 90 miles long and most of it is dirt and
Completely unimproved and and that's the way the park wants it to be and so you have a sense that
This is just your little Ribbon of territory don't leave this line
This is where you go and then the beasts there the moose all the other animals but for me especially
The bear and in one day where it was in early august we were pursuing these brown bears in Alaska
And you just we look at each other, and you [know] it's great
In this film the landscape really is the character. It's one of the characters. It's the main Kirk
I mean it is a film about the parks
So you know thankfully we have this incredible landscape to work with and it's so varied and it's so beautiful [I]
Think [the] most amazing experience. I had was in Hawaii Volcanoes
I was actually shooting handheld out the back door of a helicopter
It started out we flipped to the top of the crater, and we were probably flying 15 feet over
The active Volcano, and I could feel the heat
Singeing my feet it was so hot
We then flew out and over to the coast where?
This Lava which I think is around
2,000 degrees is just pouring into the ocean and as it hits the ocean it sense
[it] [sees] huge plumes of steam and also the Lava itself kind of
explodes out
During the day you don't really see the immensity of the Lava field but at night
miles of [Earth] glow and to fly over glowing hot
Red Molten Earth is so exciting. It's just an amazing amazing experience, and you know hopefully some [of] that comes through in the film
Some of our shoots. We hiked long distances. We had a packed train to carry some of our equipment sometimes
We had to trudge through snow we had you know carry equipment
mile two miles
sometimes eight miles
To get the shots that we needed depending on the park
But on the whole the park service has [done] such a great job of saying this is a really good place to stop and look
At that mountain peak where to see this cascade or just to experience what this park has to offer
that
Much of what we shot our?
views that any American family with a park map and a
Desire to to see what that park has to offer they could find too you
Whenever someone enters a national park it's it's like going to another world
And I think that people feel that transition
They feel that sense that they've gone to [someplace] better than what they've left behind
But the irony is is that where they've gone is the place where they've always been
It's just now they understand it now they see it now. They feel it because
Parks are like going home
You know it's funny. You tell people [we] work out in the national Parks, and there's some assumptions
and it's sort of like I know all this before and you don't and and we didn't and
I would wager that. It's the best cinematography
We've ever done as a collection of filmmakers, but it also represents Incredible archival research
Thousands of images from Private Archival hands still photographs of people's scrapbooks that we put together
now
And it's delivered us
Experiences, just as filmmakers and as colleagues and friends that I don't think we've ever had on any other production before
one of the greatest moments of my life was a
Friday when my dad drove me to front royal at the very top of the Skyline drive in a very Modest park
Shenandoah National Park [I]
Spent you know two magnificent days this weekend
Just my dad and me what doing hikes which I sort of exaggerated into you know tens of miles
I'm sure they were a mile and a half hike waterfalls that were immense
And I'm sure they were cascades of just a few meters in length catching salamanders these bright orange salamanders under the decaying
Red Rod of a log I mean that means as much to me as anything else
And that's the heart of these experiences the experiences who I went with and that becomes
You know who that hand is holding it means a lot
Already the national parks are been efficiently affecting the national mind
Nowhere else do people from all the states mingle in quite. The same spirit as they do in their national parks
Once it's at dinner say between a Missouri Farmer and an Idaho minor
And it's supper between a New York artist and an Oregon shopkeeper
one Climbs mountains with a [chance] crowd from Vermont, Louisiana and Texas and
Sits around the evening campfire with a california grape grower a locomotive engineer from Massachusetts and a banker from Michigan
Here the social differences, so insisted on at home just don't exist
Perhaps for the first time one realizes the common [America] and loves it
In the National Parks all adjust Americans
I think something draws us there
everybody feels it the most Jaded a
City dweller
[can't] help but but have their molecules rearranged just a little bit in one of these places
and what's so interesting is that when Thomas Jefferson sort of
Conceived of our country. He saw this whole place as [an] Eden and so he didn't need a national park
He just assumed it would remain in this agrarian kind of pristine state
But that didn't happen we filled up the continent very quickly and all of a sudden we began to experience this anxiety
What if we run out of these places? What does it say about ourselves if we let these places go?
And I think it animated this impulse to just try to save these places
It's these moments that we all get
Transformed as we sit in front of this beauty and realize had we let these places go we would be a much poorer
Country we would be a much poorer people
We need national parks to have people especially our kids understand. What America is
America is not Sidewalks America is not stores America is not video games
America is not restaurants
We need [national] [park], so people can go there and say ah this is America
The National Parks America's best idea Premieres September 27th only on PBS
Pbs previews the National Parks will continue in a moment but first
you
you
the National Parks America's best idea
continues online sign up for email updates
Watch clips and download screen Savers [and] wallpaper of scenery from the film it's all online at pbs.org
major funding for the production of the National Parks was provided by
The Corporation [for] public broadcasting and by contributions to your pBs stations from viewers like you. Thank you
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