Today Doug opens the container with author Jonathan Klein.
Doug opens the show talking about how he discovered wilderness in his youth and how that lead him to meet Jonathan Klein.
Jonathan had an extensive career, spending three decades working for Montana's forest service. After retiring Jonathan continued his pursuit of wilderness by embarking on a 700-mile solo canoe from Saskatchewan to Hudson Bay. That journey was chronicled in his book: Back to the Trees & Caves.
Together Doug and Jonathan talk about their relationships to wilderness and our collective responsibility to preserve the dwindling wild spaces that remain.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:04.080 - 00:03:43.052
Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzspahn. I'm a journalist, writer and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I'm big in Japan.
On this podcast, we're going to have an open conversation about culture, conservation, policy, business issues that matter the most to the outdoor community. Let's get some Today we talk about wilderness. What it is, what it means, how we interact with it. If it still even exists.
The west and its wild open spaces called to me the moment I first encountered them. At 20 years old, I headed out for the classic cross country drive with my dear friend Jonathan.
We were headed from Boston to la, ready to become rock stars or at least make a name in Hollywood. Jonathan did.
I saw the great expanse of nothing on the highways of the west, the pinyon juniper of New Mexico, the the open valleys and far mountains of Montana and never looked back.
It wasn't long before I made my way from college grad bartender in the cities of the east to a job as a forestry tech AKA a strong young person who builds trails and fights fires during the summer and ski bumps during the winter in Montana's Beaverhead National Forest. It is the best job I've ever had. We worked hard all day enjoying the simple pleasure of putting a picmatic to the dirt.
We drank clean water, ate well. We read books by headlamps at night, took walks and watched elk cabs play. And I learned about wilderness.
Learned that it is of legal definition, land preserved for its own sake, for wildlife and water. A place free from roads, chainsaws, mining and all the other ways humans overrun the natural world.
I also learned that it is a place we need on the most basic level, a place that can heal us and help us find ourselves. It's also a place that is rapidly feeling the pressure of so many of us on the planet.
My guest today, Jonathan Klein, points out that it's almost impossible to find real big out there wilderness anymore here in the lower 48.
To do so, he undertook a 700 mile canoe journey to Hudson Bay in the Canadian Arctic, which he details in his fun and insightful book Back to the Trees and A Wilderness Journey. He also gets deep into the meaning of wilderness, and he should know.
He was the first wilderness ranger for the Bureau of Land Management and spent three decades as the Wilderness Recreation Manager for the Forest Service in Ennis, Montana. He was also my boss for a good part of the time I worked for the Forest Service and under him I learned not just how to swing an axe but how.
But also how to appreciate the complexities of managing wilderness areas and how to enjoy them. Jonathan is a curious trickster, a mentor, and a modern day transcendentalist.
I'm excited to talk to him about the book and discuss whether we can still find wilderness on this rapidly shrinking planet. So let's open the Container with Jonathan Klein now.
I'm really excited to have Jonathan on because not only is he a newly published author and a longtime advocate for and manager of wilderness areas, but he is also my former boss because I worked for Jonathan for five years on the Madison district of the Beaverhead Deer Lodge National Forest. And it's really good to connect with Jonathan again and talk to him about his new book and wilderness. Jonathan, welcome to Open Container.
Jonathan Klein
00:03:43.116 - 00:03:52.102
Well, Doug, it's really good to see you again. And I must say, it's been. How many years since you worked on the Madison Ranger district? About 25 or so.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:03:52.286 - 00:03:53.590
Three, perhaps.
Jonathan Klein
00:03:53.750 - 00:03:55.798
Well, you haven't hardly changed a bit.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:03:55.934 - 00:04:17.290
Oh, that's. That's good to know. That's good to know. Maybe a little. Maybe not as strong. I don't rip trees up by the roots anymore.
But anyway, why don't you talk about, you know, you worked for the Forest Service for a long, long time, and why don't you tell us a bit about you, your background and how your career as a wilderness manager now as an author evolved.
Jonathan Klein
00:04:17.659 - 00:05:58.250
Alrighty. Well, I grew up in San Francisco and I was a feral kid, being outside all the time.
You know, nowadays parents are trying to get their kids to go outside. They say, get out and play. Get away from that screen and go out and play.
When I was a kid, they were all yelling at us from outside through the open window, come inside. And we would try to ignore it. We'd just stay out until dark, just goofing around.
And you wouldn't think that a big city like San Francisco would have opportunities for a feral kid, but they did.
It had Golden Gate park, it had Ocean beach, and it had a place called Land's End, which is a piece of undeveloped federal land that's now part of the National Recreation Area, Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And that was really a wild place, just, you know, with weeds everywhere and little tunnels through cypress trees and gun emplacements.
I spent a lot of time there, and I don't know if it was partly that and partly, you know, watching westerns like Rawhide that caused me to dream about wilder places. And when I came, I never liked being in a city. I wasn't one of those city kids. I knew that from an early age.
There was too much noise, too many crowds, too much commotion, and sort of an innate ferality, you might say. And so eventually I ended up in Montana. Quite by chance, I ended up going into a bar in wisdom. And because the mosquitoes chased me into the bar.
They were just horrific. Mosquitoes went into the bar.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:05:58.550 - 00:06:00.478
Sounds like the start of a joke here, Jonathan.
Jonathan Klein
00:06:00.574 - 00:08:13.350
It does, yeah. A mosquito walks into a bar? No, but people started buying drinks and it was lively and happening.
I asked a guy if there was any workaround and he said, oh, shit, yeah, there's work around. And I got a job as a ranch hand. I didn't know one end of a horse from another.
I was a vegetarian, kind of long hair, Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, a dirt bag, you might say, just traveling around aimlessly, backpacking in various places. And I got a job as a ranch hand, and I was in wisdom. And that led to a job, a seasonal job with the Forest Service.
That kind of started my career off with the Forest Service, although it wasn't a career. It took eight seasons to become established with a permanent job with the Forest Service.
But it dawned on me one day, just out of the blue from, for no apparent reason, that I should be a wilderness ranger. Because I always liked being out in the woods, liked being in wilderness. And so that was my pursuit.
And it came to be after quite a long period of time, I actually got to be a wilderness ranger five years and the Seven Devils, initially out of Idaho, and then an Eagle Cap Wilderness in Oregon. And then I just came to Montana just because I wanted to come back after several years of being away.
Montana was my state of mind, and I had no money to speak of and ended up getting a job as the very first wilderness ranger for the Bureau of Land Management with the Bear Trap Canyon unit of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness. That was again, the BLM's very first designated wilderness area. So I have the distinction whether that's nothing to do with me.
It was just happenstance. But being hired to be the very first river slash wilderness ranger on the Bear Trap Canyon, which was fabulous job.
You get paid for floating down a beautiful river with your dog, and it was good.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:13.730 - 00:08:16.378
Was that otter? Was that your dog?
Jonathan Klein
00:08:16.474 - 00:08:17.370
That was otter dog.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:17.450 - 00:08:20.990
It was a big husky. Big, beautiful husky that you had for a long time. Yeah.
Jonathan Klein
00:08:21.300 - 00:08:33.964
And then I ended up going to the Forest Service, still in Ennis, Montana, and working for other parts of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness where I met you. When did you show up about 1990 or so.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:34.132 - 00:08:35.764
93, maybe. 93.
Jonathan Klein
00:08:35.891 - 00:08:56.248
93. Wow. Whew. How time do fly. And so I just.
I became the recreation manager for the Madison Ranger District, Beaverhead Deer Lodge National Forest, and worked in that district for 24 years until I retired. Retired in 2012 at age 60.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:56.384 - 00:09:08.936
And then in that time retiring. You haven't really slowed down, though.
You've continued to explore, go on wilderness trips, and you've written in the past year, published your book Back to the Trees and A Wilderness Journey.
Jonathan Klein
00:09:09.128 - 00:14:02.712
Right. And I don't know if you want me to get into this now, but really I will. So sure.
You know, for all that period of time of managing wilderness, 34 years was the entirety of my career, managing wilderness for the federal government. Federal agencies. And at the end of that career, it kind of dawned on me that what passes for wilderness in the lower 48 is not truly wild.
And the reason that it's not is there's no room for it to be. The furthest you can get from a road in the lower 48 is 21 and a half miles. That's it. 21 and a half miles.
That'S a piddling distance many people could walk in a day. And, you know, I don't know the veracity of this or not, but some graduate student evidently did a GIS project on trying to determine the.
The location of McDonald's throughout the continental United States and determined that you cannot get further, as a crow flies, than 104 miles from a McDonald's. So, again, you know, you gotta question what you read on the Internet, but I put it in my book anyhow.
But it just goes to show that this world, this continent, this world is pretty much yoked and utilized for the benefit of Homo sapiens. And it made me feel that I needed to find something truer, look for a more real wilderness experience. So just two days.
It only was two days after I retired from my position with the Forest Service that I went up to a town called Missinippi in Saskatchewan and put my canoe down on the waters of the Churchill river and started paddling off for Hudson bay, which was 700 miles away. And I went by myself. And the reason I went by myself is because intimacy with the wilds, I think, requires solitude.
Now, the title of the book derives from a comment that my father made. He was still Alive. He was 92 years old, and he was not long for this world. And he was worried that I was not long for this world either.
And he begged me not to go. He Said, jonathan, it's too dangerous, don't go. I said, dad, this is something I just have to do. And he goes, well then, damn it, don't go alone.
Take somebody with you. And I said, dad, this is something I have to do by myself. I have to do this alone.
You know, if you were to think, Doug, about going to Yellowstone park and seeing Old Faithful erupt with nobody else around, it would be so amazingly awesome that you couldn't contain it. It would just be magical, a miracle of nature.
But when you're there with 300 other people and there's chit chatting and cameras clicking and cars rumbling in the backgr and it just diminishes that naturalness to a huge extent. So I determined that I'd have to go alone with other people.
There's just inane conversation, oftentimes decisions to be made together and fart jokes and various things. I didn't want any distractions to take me away from the essence of what I sought, which was wilderness. So that's how that trip came about.
But the guy that really turned me onto that trip, he's a guy who has a canoe place up in Mississippi. His name's Rick Diedrigger. He has Churchill river canoe outfitters. And he's told me about this trip. 700 miles.
And when I showed up with my stuff, my boat, my gear, my mounds and mounds of gear without really a clue what the route was like because I never really looked into any blogs or read any guidebooks or did anything in preparation for this trip other than just pack up a whole bunch of stuff, stuff and go.
He saw the immensity of the gear I intended to take and he considered that I would be ill prepared despite all that stuff, that I didn't really know what I was doing, which was partly true because I'd never been on a big solo canoe trip like that before. He thought I was going to die. He didn't tell me that, but he.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:02.736 - 00:14:04.280
Told me he was with your dad, huh?
Jonathan Klein
00:14:04.440 - 00:14:32.290
Yeah, he.
Well, he told some kids after that that came and eventually caught me that he didn't think I was going to make it to Hudson Bay unless I made it floating face down. And so anyhow, off I went on that trip and I did kind of, I did want to write a book about it.
I thought that might be a good way to spend some retirement years just writing a book. And it did take up some time. I know you're a writer. You're probably a fast writer.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:32.790 - 00:14:33.918
I don't know about that.
Jonathan Klein
00:14:34.054 - 00:14:41.150
You're the one who told me that you have to write drunk and edit sober.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:14:41.310 - 00:14:45.634
That is Ernest Hemingway. Yes, but I did remind you of that. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan Klein
00:14:45.822 - 00:15:00.298
Well, I couldn't do anything drunk, and I had a very difficult time doing anything sober. But I kept working and working and working away and editing away. And I'm pretty happy with the book right now.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:15:00.354 - 00:15:30.924
Yeah, it's a great book. I loved it. Mark Miller, our friend who also worked for you and with me in the Forest Service, told me he absolutely loved it.
He was laughing through it. So it's a great book that resonates with those of us who've spent time out there in wilderness and maybe like to take a step back for a second.
Jonathan, let's talk about what is wilderness? What is it? From a legal idea, from a philosophical idea, from your own perspective, how do we define wilderness? What is it?
Jonathan Klein
00:15:31.092 - 00:16:08.042
Well, it is definitely a construct of an individual's perception. You know, legally, the wilderness acts as wilderness is a place untrammeled by man. Trammel is a net.
So it's something that's really ideally uncontrolled by man.
And it's a place where man is a visitor who does not remain without structures or other sorts of developments where nature dominates and the works of man are substantially unnoticeable. That's the legal definition of wilderness in.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:08.066 - 00:16:09.226
The Wilderness act, right?
Jonathan Klein
00:16:09.298 - 00:17:07.654
In the Wilderness act, yeah. But, you know, an inner city kid, say, going to Central park would be. And maybe seeing a squirrel would be a wilderness, perhaps to them.
So, of course, those of us who are outdoors people have a higher standard of what wilderness is. And, you know, you have to be practical when it comes to wilderness. When I was.
When I was young person, 25, and I'd be taking off into some wilderness strip with a heavy backpack, like 80 pounds, with my little cappuccino coffee maker and all this other stuff, lots and lots of food. I thought the trails were also rude incursions into the realm of the wild. And I thought that until. Let's see, where was I?
I was up in Colorado, flat tops, primitive area. I think that's the wilderness now, too.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:17:07.742 - 00:17:08.758
It is, yeah.
Jonathan Klein
00:17:08.854 - 00:20:59.230
Yeah. And we went off trail, my buddy and I, and there was so much downfall that we were just up and down and over and around constantly.
And it took many hours to go three miles, totally exhausting. Hours. So that changed my perspective. You have to have trails for wilderness.
If you don't have access for people, you're not going to have a constituency of people to support wilderness. So there's a little bit of an irony there. You know, you do have to manage it.
You have to provide for the use and enjoyment of the American people, which is also in the Wilderness Act. And so you have to do things to facilitate the public's use and enjoyment of wilderness. But that could be overdone of course too.
You know, sometimes people think that, or managers think that this area, this wilderness area is getting too much use.
So let's put a trail into this seldom used part of the wilderness and we'll, we'll take some use away from where it's really busy and we'll put them to where it's not. And then it's going to be better for everything. But that doesn't work. All that does is starts filling up both places, right?
So, you know, toward the end of my career, I was thinking that there should be no new trails in wilderness. Nothing to facilitate any more use. And not for people, although partly for people.
There's benefits for people that really want to, you know, do the work that is required to get away from the rest, you know, the hard trails or the no trails, the cross country people. But I started really thinking toward the end of my career about critters.
Wildor is the root word for wilderness and it's old English and it means place of wild beasts. So there's another definition for wilderness, place of wild beasts, the wildor. And we just don't have that much wildor anymore.
Human beings have occupied all the best habitat, all the lowlands. We've farmed it. You can't eat potatoes. And you know, in the Idaho farm fields or cotton, nothing much eats wheat, nothing much eats corn.
We have massive landscapes that are devoted to feeding human beings. There's not much wildor left. Real good habitat. The animals are being pushed to the margins.
And if wilderness is one of the few places that they still have, then we have to be careful to protect it. Otherwise, every time a human being comes in contact with an animal, they know we're dangerous.
They have to stop what they're doing and they have to like scram, flee. They have to live like outlaws amongst us.
So again, toward the ends of my career, toward the end of my career, I was thinking no new trails into wilderness to really protect to wildlife habitat.
So again with those of us who are really outdoors people or wilderness snobs, you want to be in a place that's difficult to get to, that really doesn't remind you that the world is crowded with fellow human beings. You want to be away from that. You want to see animals in their natural habitat. You want to be struggling. You want to be at the mercy of the elements.
You want to be cold when it's cold, you want to be wet when it's wet. You want to be challenged to take care of yourself in a place that's real, maybe where even rescue is unlikely.
You know, if you're really, really a purist and there's really nothing like that, there's nothing like that in the United States. In the continental United States, sure.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:20:59.270 - 00:21:06.382
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think saying that, Jonathan, maybe, you know, as your father said and the guy at the canoe store said, it might even be a place where you might die.
Jonathan Klein
00:21:06.446 - 00:21:06.622
Right.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:06.646 - 00:21:18.462
I mean, that's, that's part of the experience. Right. And I'm sure some managers, I mean, that's a, A difficult thing to say. I mean, you don't want to risk yourself. Right? But.
No, but that danger is a part of that experience, right?
Jonathan Klein
00:21:18.566 - 00:21:49.226
Oh, absolutely.
And, you know, we used to have these academic discussions back when I was working with other wilderness managers, mostly these young people that were really zealous about pure wilderness.
And they said we ought to have rescue free wilderness, where you go into a wilderness area, but you understand that if anything happens to you, you break a leg or you have an appendicitis or whatever happens to you, nobody's going to come and get you.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:49.378 - 00:21:50.122
Right.
Jonathan Klein
00:21:50.306 - 00:22:21.142
And you know, that's not realistic. I mean, we'd all say, yeah, I'm going to go to the rescue free wilderness. And then soon as you got hurt, you'd be going, wah, Help rescue. Excuse me.
You'd be pressing your, your spot or, or your inreach. And, and you would just be crying for somebody to come and get you. So that's totally impractical.
But there's still places where you can go where the logistics are such that rescue is going to be highly unlikely.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:22:21.286 - 00:22:21.734
Sure.
Jonathan Klein
00:22:21.822 - 00:23:26.210
Now, you know, even on my trip, I was, which was 48 days over that 700 mile Spanish.
And, you know, initially I was thinking, I'm not bringing any devices with me except for gps, because if I didn't have a gps, I'd still be there because it is like a very confusing water world up in the Churchill river country. Just water that goes to shores beyond which more water lays. And I wasn't going to bring a sat phone because that was impure.
But my wife, Marianne, insisted that I do take a sat phone. And I thought about it for a little bit, and I thought, you know, hubris. What if you did get hurt?
And because of your pride, you decided that you weren't going to bring anything to facilitate a rescue when just the press of a button could let you live. And the absence of that device, you're going to die. So, you know, you have to be a little bit realistic that way, too.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:23:27.710 - 00:23:36.134
Yeah, it's a big trip, too. I was just lucky, you know, it's about just short of the distance, maybe of San Francisco to Seattle. So that's a long, long way.
Jonathan Klein
00:23:36.302 - 00:26:17.136
That is a long way. It is a long, long way. And I actually had intended to go 800 miles at first because I was not going to stick to the Churchill River.
I was going to go over a divide, up a river system, and then carry my boat through pools and puddles and ponds, carry it down the other side of the divide to the Seal River. That was, again, my initial plan, but I got. It was too hard. I couldn't get there fast enough.
And I had to be at the mouth of the Seal river if I was going to get picked up by this guy named Jack Batstone, who came out in a little boat from Churchill to collect you before August 15th. Otherwise, it doesn't come out because the autumnal storms on Hudson Bay make it too dicey to be out there in such a little boat.
So there was no way I was going to make that. So I decided I'd stay on the Churchill River. But 700 miles was ample. I wanted to do 15 miles a day.
But, you know, when I took this trip again, I didn't do any planning. I didn't know what the river was going to be like, the route was going to be like.
I was not aware that the first 500 miles of the Churchill river are really 500 miles of lakes separated by waterfalls or rapids. And there's no current to less than one's labors on those big lakes. And so it's just paddle, paddle, paddle. And 15 miles a day was tough.
Rick, the guy who has Churchill river canoe outfitters, told me that solo paddling is like running a marathon every day. And, you know, I wouldn't equate it exactly to the same, although I've never run a marathon, but it's probably not too far off the mark.
But I felt like a seal, you know, cumbersome on land, awkward on land. But in the boat, no matter how exhausted or tired I was. I could go all day, and it was marvelous. Just. You didn't.
You didn't have to think about anything. You just had to push the boat through the water and ogle this amazingly beautiful landscape all alone in this exquisite, wild place.
And you know, you know what. You know what you're about, you know what you have to do. And I loved it. I must say. I loved it.
And, you know, sometimes on a really good trip, you're disappointed that it ends. You know, you've had that experience before.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:26:17.208 - 00:26:18.020
Oh, yeah.
Jonathan Klein
00:26:18.520 - 00:27:21.150
Even when things have been hard and you want to shower and a cold beer and this trip, I was a little bit. I was a little bit disappointed to have it end.
I just kind of felt like I could just keep on going around the next bend in the river to the next bend in the river and on and on. Not to say that I wasn't relieved to some extent to have. To have completed that trip and to have made it, but 15 miles a day was a push especially.
Seems like there's always headwinds.
It seems like the headwinds outnumber the tailwinds, of course, on a bicycle or in a boat, you know, and it's probably equals out, but it seems like it doesn't. So it was. It was a. It was a bit of a struggle and. But a most enjoyable struggle because it. It's because good struggling is hard to find nowadays.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:21.810 - 00:27:22.218
Good.
Jonathan Klein
00:27:22.274 - 00:27:29.110
And let me. Let me restate that. Let me. Let me restate that. Good suffering. Good suffering is hard to find.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:30.860 - 00:27:33.028
Good suffering is good to find. Right. That's.
Jonathan Klein
00:27:33.124 - 00:27:34.916
It's good to find, too. Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:35.028 - 00:27:49.440
Yeah. So did you find. I mean, did you find it? Did you find wilderness?
Was there somewhere within those days that you really felt in tune, or was there a point, you know, at the end, as you said, you didn't want to stop. Did. Did you find what you were looking for?
Jonathan Klein
00:27:50.700 - 00:30:13.560
You know, I. I think so. What. What is.
You know, Howard Zanniser, who's the guy who wrote the Wilderness act, said, to know wilderness is to understand one's littleness. And we are all so wrapped up in ourselves and our own little ego and our own little lives that you never really feel your littleness.
You're the star of your own movie all the time.
But when you're out there in these vast landscapes and you're exposed to the elements and the dangers that are incumbent upon the activity that you're engaged in, running rapids, being in the middle of a lake that's. With a crossing that's four Miles, so that you're two miles from shore in every direction. You feel small and you feel vulnerable.
And I think that's a place we all need to be.
I'm sure that people that existed in quote, unquote, wilderness, you know, primitive people, I think they probably felt very small and that things could happen to them at any time and that you had to beseech the powers that be, you know, the animistic powers that be.
Like there's this rock could have some juju, or that tree or the air or that animal, you know, they could all have some bearing on how you are going to fare in your day.
And so, you know, and so you appreciate all the elements of nature and you don't want to offend anything that might smote you or is it smite that might smite you. And I felt that. I felt like I was. I felt like I belonged. I was a little mode of nothingness in a grand mystery.
And that I shared this universe, this unfathomable universe with all the other infinitesimal beings on this planet, that I was really no different, no better than the little spiders that I saw that were kiting on strands of gossamer through the air, or dragonflies that would buzz through the air, you know, feeding on mosquitoes. I just felt a part of. Of the whole and not a part.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:15.540 - 00:31:06.010
Yeah.
One of the things I love about the book is the way you decided to organize it where it could be this really long trip, it could be this really long memoir that's a little slow and boring, but instead you did it your own way, which is these kind of quirky little sections that get at different, you know, sometimes a story of an encounter, sometimes a story of your own mind. And I love that. One of the chapters I thought was really fun was called the World's Worst Buddhist. And you call yourself, because you did not.
You did not think you saw anything bigger or more spiritual, perhaps, in everything around you. But isn't that sort of part of the Buddhist experience? Right? Part of the experience of being too, is sometimes everything's very mundane, Right?
Maybe sometimes you don't feel anything, you're just there. Is that part of what you felt as well?
Jonathan Klein
00:31:06.560 - 00:32:52.396
Well, you know, my reference to being the world's worst Buddhist is that I don't really accept things too readily. You know, I never got out of the get down river mode. Exactly. Get down river, that was my mission, was to get down the river.
A couple of times I got stuck on islands where I couldn't proceed due to due to storms, rough water, strong winds, which made it just insane to try to be out on these big lakes. So I couldn't go. And I could handle it for a while. You know, I could handle it for a while. And I could.
I could mellow out for a while and Zen out for a while, but much more than a day of that. And I think. I think maybe twice. I was almost 24 hours, probably marooned. I would just be going crazy to get going again.
And so I did, you know, when I was talking about being the world's worst Buddhist, I was trying to relax and, like, look into the masses of sphagnum moss and follow the threads of brown and yellow as they wove down into the. Toward the. Toward the ground. Or I roll over on my back and watch the trees sway and try to read any meaning in the runes on the bark of birch trees.
And I could do that for a period of time, but then it was like, I gotta get out of here. So that was being the world's worst Buddhist. I can't contemplate my navel for very long. I wish I could, but I can't.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:32:52.588 - 00:33:30.562
Well, maybe it's being a good Buddhist to just know that your mantra was someone to keep moving and understand that as your meditation. Right. There's another really great thing I think you bring up in the book.
You talk about seeing a polar bear in the wild and the beauty of that experience, but also how guilty it makes you feel to know that the reality is that we're destroying this planet, we're destroying their ecosystem, habitat, climate, that these bears aren't going to be here forever, no matter what we really do. And that made you feel guilty, but it also made you realize that, like it or not, you're a part of that whole problem, that whole complex. Right.
Jonathan Klein
00:33:30.586 - 00:33:30.866
That.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:30.938 - 00:33:32.962
That builds up to the bear being gone.
Jonathan Klein
00:33:33.106 - 00:33:33.570
Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:33.650 - 00:33:37.430
How can. How can we live with that kind of guilt, with that kind of feeling?
Jonathan Klein
00:33:37.770 - 00:36:43.890
Oh, I don't know. I feel very. I feel so sad for the animal world right now. You know, when I see a dead raccoon on the road or something, it just breaks my heart.
Dead, dead. All kinds of things. You know, our highways, especially here in Ennis.
Doug, I don't know if you've been up here recently, but, you know, so many areas are just growing so rapidly right now, and the roads are kind of rivers of steel, and it's just so dangerous for any animal to try to cross on some of these roads right now. So I feel very guilty about being a human being.
I kind of feel ashamed really about being a human being and our capacity for rapacity, which seems to have no bottom to it.
So, yeah, you know, when I, when I saw the polar bears in Churchill and a couple of years later, I actually did do the Seal river and I saw polar bears up close and personal there. They have nothing to eat in the summertime. They're, they're carnivores. They're pretty much 100% carnivores.
Other bears have the good sense to balance their diets with vegetables, but not polar bears. They're pretty much seals are kind of, or washed up. Whale is the only egg in their basket.
And so they wait around for ice, wait around for ice, and the ice comes later and it leaves earlier. And you look at these animals and they're just, they're kind of thin and hungry and they're going away. They're going to be leaving the landscape.
Within 100 years, there probably aren't going to be any polar bears in the wild. And it is, it's my fault and it's all of our faults and what do you do about it? Are we just going to not drive our cars?
Are we not going to heat our houses? Are we not going to eat meat? Are we, are we willing to make huge sacrifices in our quality of life because polar bears are disappearing?
I'm sensitive to their plight, you're sensitive to their plight, but are we going to change?
Are you and I going to change in how we live on this exceedingly comfortable planet that we have with lots and lots of choices, without any suffering? Are we going to suffer so that polar bears don't disappear? No. The only thing that can be done, I think, is government has to take a role in that.
You know, it's not going to be enough for us to recycle our cans or change our light bulbs or, you know, maybe even drive hybrid vehicles? We're going to have to have a complete change in how we power our society and not put carbon into the atmosphere.
And people aren't even willing to accept the fact that that's happening, that it's having a huge effect on wildlife. You know, since 1970. Is that about when you were born, Doug?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:44.050 - 00:36:45.710
Yes, 1969.
Jonathan Klein
00:36:46.090 - 00:37:28.012
There you go.
Well, since you were born, you know, according to the World Wildlife Fund, there's been a reduction of 70% of birds, mammals, reptiles, and what if I have amphibians in that amount of time? And that's shocking, you know, that is absolutely shocking.
So I don't know, I think we're going to have to have big government programs that are going to incentivize people to do the right thing because we only work with incentive. We don't work for the good of others unless there's something in it for us, by and large.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:28.196 - 00:37:34.200
Yeah. As you say, I mean, even those of us who are very, you know, aware of, of the problem.
Jonathan Klein
00:37:34.980 - 00:37:38.160
Yeah. So it's kind of a harsh reality.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:38.980 - 00:38:03.062
You know, the biologist, the biologist E.O. wilson talks about half Earth. Right. That we need to save. And you were talking about that earlier. Habitat. Yeah. You know, how important is it for us?
There's still a chance, right, to preserve a lot of habitat. I mean, some of the habitat. You paddled through several state size habitat. Right.
I mean, so do you think there's still a chance to save these wild places?
Jonathan Klein
00:38:03.206 - 00:41:26.892
Oh, I think so.
You know, I think you could save some wild places if the economics of trying to exploit them don't make sense, you know, but if, you know, there's diamond mines way out in the Arctic Ocean that there's no roads to, you know, that they make, maybe drive on ice or they take helicopters, they put in an airstrip. And if there's something worth getting and it makes economic sense, we humans are going to get it.
You know, we're going to go get those rare earth nodules in the bottom of the ocean for batteries, for electric cars. We're going to get it if it's there. So the only real hope of maintaining wild areas is to not have anything that's really worth exploiting.
Even on my trip, you know, there really, you know, there was no real industry. I went through a couple of native villages, First Nation villages, Cree people. They don't have any industry up there.
You know, there's no logging, there's no infrastructure to get any materials out. The trees really aren't worth anything except for paper. So you probably can't make any money getting those out.
There's, there's some mines and places, but those play out and close down. But still, you know, there's, there's water and water is going to be a biggie. Canada's got a lot of water. Right.
And you know, one day I was surprised. I was going down a rapid, I was going 11 miles an hour. I looked down at my GPS, then I looked up and there were huge power lines over my head.
So there was some dam way up to the north that was sending power down south for. I forget how I put it in the book, but it's for like hot tubs and Dance clubs and various other electronic devices that make our life good.
And going to that extent to try to bring power to places where people live, from places where they don't, from wild places, is worrisome. And it's just going to happen more and more now. Just getting back briefly to E.O. wilson, I do mention him in my book as well.
And he was an expert on ants, which seems interesting considering how human beings are sort of spread across the world like ants now. And he did some sort of calculation trying to figure out what the world could produce and how many people it can support.
And he came up with a number of 10 billion people if they were vegetarians. 10 billion vegetarians, he thinks, is our uppermost limit. We'll see. There's going to be 10 billion people, most likely by the end of this century.
And that's just too many of us. There's too many of us asking too much of this planet. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know how you reverse that.
The population trends do seem to be kind of slowing down in some places. And people are saying that we need more people. You know, Elon Musk is on a mission all by himself to repopulate the.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:41:26.916 - 00:41:28.800
Planet and the moon.
Jonathan Klein
00:41:29.300 - 00:42:27.340
And, you know, and there's. There's various issues also that are involved with Social Security and an aging population and whatnot, and consumers. We need consumers.
We need more consumers on the bottom of the pyramid to support people that are making stuff. So there's a lot of reasons that people claim that we need more people.
But when you get right down to it, anybody could understand that you can't have infinite growth with finite resources. And so there's going to be tension and there's going to be trouble down the line when we exceed the Earth's capacity to provide for all of us.
And, you know, we haven't reached it here, but there's places right now, as we speak, where people have no resources.
It's why they're trying to get out of various places like the Middle east and Africa and head to places where life is better, where they can survive, just literally survive. So there we go.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:28.040 - 00:43:12.580
Well, you know, I want to bring it back to something you said very early on when we first started talking, where you mentioned that, you know, you grew up in this urban place where you still found some kind of germ or something that was wild, right?
And you said that wilderness for some one from, you know, who's never really seen it before, could be an experience even with all the management all the people, all the power lines.
And as you say, I mean, we're facing a world where these wild places really, as we've experienced them, as generations before us have experienced them, will be gone. How important is it to try to find that wilderness within smaller areas or small things or what's left, right?
We're gonna have to look for what's wild and what's left, right?
Jonathan Klein
00:43:12.700 - 00:45:38.686
Oh, totally. Where I live here in Montana, we have 17 acres, and we're very lucky to get it because now we'd never be able to afford it. But.
And it's a subdivision, so there's houses not too far away, a couple hundred yards away. But this little micro habitat provides for some antelope. Occasionally, some elk come through, occasionally a bear comes through.
I've got a resident raccoon that I called, that I call Fredo. You know, we have deer. We had a moose in our garage last year. Two young baby moose actually came into the garage and were hanging out in there.
And micro habitats like this are going to become exceedingly important.
And I've been trying to find somebody who had put the land that we have here, it's just a piddly amount, into some conservation easements so that the building footprint does not get any worse than we've already made it then. My wife and I have already made it because these little micro habitats are going to be increasingly important for creatures in the future.
And I've tried, you know, with a couple of organizations like Nature Conservancy or the Rocky Mountain Elk foundation, but nobody wants to mess with anything this small. If anybody has any suggestions on how I could secure this land of your listeners, I'd love to hear it, because I would like to. I would like to.
I think that's. That's vitally important. And the other thing that really has been beneficial in this community are wealthy people. They want to have Lebensraum.
They want to. They're able to afford large, large pieces of ground. And in exchange for tax benefits, they can put their land into conservation easements.
And most of the face of the Madison Range in this valley is protected by conservation easements where people have agreed to not develop their land or just limited development in exchange, again, for generous tax breaks from the government.
That's the one thing that everybody who is able should look into, seeing if they could maybe contribute to habitat, open space, and the sense of freedom that we all crave for by protecting their landscape and not trying to think always, how much can I make for this? When you already have more than you're going to need anyhow.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:38.858 - 00:45:49.410
Yeah, I love that idea, Jonathan. Yeah, I call it micro conservation. I think. I think of it as like micro lending. And I think it's really something.
Maybe we'll start it right here and find some other people. It's really something. We should.
Jonathan Klein
00:45:49.790 - 00:45:50.930
Let's do it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:51.710 - 00:46:10.110
Well, we're sort of running. We're running out of time now. We've been on for a long time. It's really been amazing to talk to you.
And I'll end with the question I always ask everyone at the end here. And we've talked about a lot of serious and tough stuff to swallow. But despite all that, what gives you hope?
Jonathan Klein
00:46:10.730 - 00:46:53.850
You know, Doug, people like you give me hope.
When you were just a young fresh faced worker for the Forest Service, you and Mark, and you were just so ecstatic, enthusiastic and loving being outside. And if it was rainy, you'd like it. And if it was hot, you'd like it. And if the bugs were out, you'd like it.
And if you had to carry something super heavy, you'd like it because you were in it.
Not you were in it to do something because you were passionate about the wild, the country and you were providing a service to the wild country and having a wonderful time doing it. And of course the monetary remuneration was off the charts too, wasn't it, Doug?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:46:54.670 - 00:46:56.326
It was enough. It was enough to go climbing.
Jonathan Klein
00:46:56.358 - 00:48:11.436
Yeah. Yeah. You know, about 10 years ago I went hiking in Glacier and I was by myself and the weather was horrible. It snowed and hardly anybody was there.
But the people that were there that I ran into were old graybeards with kelty packs slogging up the trail kind of gimply with smiles on their faces. And my brother and I went to Glacier last year and did pretty much the same route. And the weather also wasn't very good.
But there were young people in droves out there. Young people have rediscovered the backcountry for a long period of time. They didn't, but maybe it was Covid.
And anyhow, there has been a renaissance of young people that now are wanting to be outside. And it's the young people that have the passion to keep the pressure on to protect these areas. And that does give me hope.
That gives me a lot of hope when I struggle to find hope. Otherwise that's great.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:48:11.588 - 00:48:21.232
Well, Jonathan, I want to thank you again so much for being on open container. As you said, it was a little early in the morning maybe to really open a container, but I think I.
Jonathan Klein
00:48:21.256 - 00:48:23.744
Have a beer mug, but it's got water in it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:48:23.912 - 00:48:36.064
I think we got into it on a much more metaphorical sense. And I really want to recommend your new book, Back to the Trees and A Wilderness Journey.
Where is the best place for people to be able to find and purchase your book?
Jonathan Klein
00:48:36.232 - 00:49:03.010
Okay, well, you could go to your local bookstore, which I would prefer that people do just to support their local bookstore in their local community as opposed to buying it on Amazon. You can, of course buy it on Amazon, but otherwise go to your local bookstore and have them order it. And you'll be helping out.
You'll be helping out those folks. And maybe Jeff Bezos doesn't need the money anymore. He's set.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:49:03.470 - 00:49:10.294
All right, well, Jonathan, thank you so much. It was really a pleasure. And we'll see you next time on Open Container.
Jonathan Klein
00:49:10.422 - 00:49:14.890
Hey, thank you so much, Doug. Great to see you. Take care of yourself.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:49:17.070 - 00:49:45.810
Thank you for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rock Fight, llc.
Please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on and send your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com be sure to pick up Jonathan Klein's book Back to the Trees and Caves at your local independent bookshop. Our producers today were David Karstad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some. Thanks for listening.