Vermejo, Ted Turner & Nature’s Second Chances

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Welcome to Open Container, where we unpack the most urgent issues facing the outdoor community - culture, conservation, and the power of nature to heal.

In this episode, Doug Schnitzspahn sits down with director and photographer Ben Clark to explore a rare story of restoration and resilience on America’s wild lands.

Drawing on his background as an adventurer and filmmaker, Ben shares behind-the-scenes insights from his new documentary, "Preserved," which chronicles the ambitious revitalization of Vermejo Park Ranch - a 560,000-acre landscape in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Doug and Ben discuss environmental destruction and rebirth, reflecting on how even scarred places, whether clear-cut forests in Idaho or polluted beaches of the Jersey Shore, can find new life with hope, hard work, and innovative conservation.

Together, they discuss the unique collaboration between private landowners, government agencies, and non-profits at Vermejo, and how this “living laboratory” provides a model for large-scale ecological recovery.

Timestamped summary

00:00 America's Expanding Environmental Scars

03:28 "Nature's Resilience and Regrowth"

09:21 Collaborative Conservation Efforts

11:37 Science Communication Challenges

13:58 Landscape Filmmaker Focuses on Characters

16:57 Backpacking and Filming in the Rockies

23:01 Indigenous Stewardship and Land Models

26:34 Conservation Success in North America

29:37 "Dividing Vast Wilderness: A Journey"

32:09 Reduce Excessive Spending Habits

35:31 "Open Container: Follow & Engage"

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Episode Transcript:

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:00:01.120 - 00:00:08.000

And those forests are actually regrowing slowly, imperfectly, but they are coming back.

Ben Clark

00:00:08.160 - 00:00:14.560

We are an animal included in this animal kingdom, and we're touching animals. We're not distant from them.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:00:14.720 - 00:00:16.920

We can bring back nature in places.

Ben Clark

00:00:16.920 - 00:00:26.240

We've damaged big mama moose right there, and I'm in this little shelter. I thought at first, God, is that a bear? And I grabbed my bear spray.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:00:26.670 - 00:00:58.030

Even in cities, we see hope. Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. I'm a journalist, writer, and overall lover of the outdoors.

I've fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I have collected wild crowberries in Lapland.

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.

Ben Clark

00:01:00.890 - 00:01:01.450

We go to the.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:01:01.450 - 00:07:17.960

Outdoors to find healing, to find resilience. But how resilient is the natural world on its own? I often think of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem God's Grandeur.

When I reflect on the earth's resilient power, its ability to come back to life, he writes, generations have trod, and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell. The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod. And for all this nature is never spent. There lives the dearest freshness deep down.

Things Everywhere we look we see man smudge on the earth. Mountaintops have been leveled in West Virginia.

I've stood on the edge of the Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, and looked down into that giant toxic hole once so poisonous it supposedly pulled birds to their death. I've driven from Copper Mountain to Leadville, past the pools of the Climax Mine, where deadly chemicals were simply left behind.

Every time I fly into Salt Lake City, my gaze runs over the snowy peaks of the Wasatch, then across the valley where the mountains are consumed by the Kennecott Copper Mine, the largest human made excavation and deepest open pit mine in the world. Likewise, when I worked for the Forest Service, I saw roads everywhere. Timber roads, roads to nowhere. Roads that haven't been maintained in decades.

Government agencies already lack the resources to maintain the massive road network within national forests and BLM lands. Yet the current administration has proposed rescinding the roadless rural to build more roads into places we have not yet sullied.

But here's the thing. Some of these places can recover. They can come back. I used to drive past massive clear cuts near Island Park, Idaho.

Many were empty with stumps scattered across the flats, marked by signs proudly declaring when they had been cut. These scars in the Targhee National Forest, right on Yellowstone's border, were so stark you could see them from space.

In the 1990s, while building trails for the Forest Service, my crew was told we had a project on the Continental Divide Trail. We were excited, thinking we'd head to the Centennial Mountains, a remote range few people visit.

Instead, we were sent into the clear cuts of Island Park. We parked our trucks in that vast wasteland and built a short section of trail through boggy, barren land where only a few trees had been spared.

At night, we'd sometimes take a drive to Yellowstone's edge. There we would walk among lodgepole pines and nameless forests without paths where it felt good simply to be reminded of what nature could be.

Those clear cuts have always stuck with me as an example of the destruction we can bring so easily. But here's another thing. Thirty years later, I've driven that same road between Jackson and Ennis, Montana.

And those forests are actually regrowing slowly, imperfectly, but they are coming back. That doesn't erase the damage, since clearcutting destroyed far more than it can easily recover. Still, it gave me hope. I grew up on the Jersey Shore.

It may not seem like it, but. But it's a place of incredible beauty. Sand dunes, holly, forests, shifting barrier islands.

In the 1970s, when I was a kid, the beaches were horribly polluted, garbage strewn on the sand, red tides of raw sewage forcing us out of the water. That has changed. The Jersey Shore is cleaner now. Dolphins return to its waters.

It may not yet resemble the paradise Henry Hudson found on his first voyage here. Or the homeland the Lenni Lenape people once built on the bounty of oceans and forests. But it's coming back. We can do this. We can bring back nature.

In places we've damaged, there is hope. Here, in Colorado, wolves are being reintroduced at long last. Yes, there may be conflicts between wolves and ranchers, but those can be managed.

In the past, wolves were wiped out because it was the easiest solution for commerce. Understandable, perhaps, but wrong.

As Aldo Leopold realized the moment he shot a wolf in Arizona and saw the green fire dying in her eyes, he understood too late that he had taken something the world needed. With so much doom and gloom around us, it's worth focusing on the positives.

Protecting land, rewilding, obliterating unnecessary roads, bringing back wildlife, and finding creative ways to live with nature. Even in cities, we see hope.

The New York Times recently reported on the efforts to create microforests in urban landscapes, tiny, dense pockets of green in places known more for concrete than trees. These spaces help people breathe, reorient and reconnect. They also foster thriving soil ecosystems and plant interactions.

If we can do this at a small scale, we can do it at a large scale. One of my heroes, biologist E.O. wilson, argued that we must preserve half the Earth for other species.

That sounds impossible, but it isn't if we find new creative ways to integrate wildness back into our world. My guest today has just released a film that shows us exactly that.

How land can be returned, how natural processes can be reinvigorated, and how hope can take root. Director and photographer Ben Clark has scaled landscapes and told their stories on the big screen and across millions of devices worldwide.

His latest documentary film, Preserved, focuses on the restoration of the 560,000 acre Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico. So let's open the container with Ben Clark. Can we repair the planet?

Ben Clark

00:07:18.760 - 00:07:21.560

Absolutely. Absolutely. No doubt.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:07:21.720 - 00:07:27.080

That is sort of the theme of Vermejo a preserved of your latest film, is it not?

Ben Clark

00:07:27.480 - 00:07:44.280

Well, it's the outcome, you know, that's just the fact it's worked. It can work. It is working. So many different methods across the US right now are working.

This is one of the places, one of the stories, where you can see a whole lot of that working together.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:07:45.160 - 00:07:51.320

Well, why don't you tell us about the place first? Tell us about Vermejo. Where is it? What does it encompass? How did you learn about it?

Ben Clark

00:07:51.400 - 00:09:16.700

Well, Vermejo is in the northeast corner of New Mexico and sort of dips a little bit into the very far southern end of Colorado. And it's 558,000 acres of land.

On this land since 1996 when it was purchased by founder of CNN media mogul Ted Turner, amazing projects have taken place. The largest inland trout restoration project in history has taken place over there.

60 miles of streams and 18 lakes were restored to bring back the Rio Grande. Cut though trout off the endangered species list.

They've been able to just completely revitalize an overgrazed landscape, a landscape that had mining on it, a landscape that had railroads across it, had some wars fought across it, had indigenous history on it.

You know, as so many pieces of the west have been completely developed or have been perhaps made part of our public land system, this particular place just took a different trajectory. Has this completely amazing outcome of becoming the pinnacle of conservation in the US because of this.

Thirty years of that being exactly the aim of the folks working There and the amazing vision that Ted Turner authored for that place.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:09:16.940 - 00:09:21.100

It's really sort of a living laboratory, isn't it? From what I learned from the film.

Ben Clark

00:09:21.180 - 00:10:26.320

And the cool part about it is it's like, look like we get benefits from this as taxpayers. So anybody who immediately I hear billionaire and landowner, and I might roll my eyes and.

But when I, I've been there and spent 130 days there and I seen all parts of it, and this is not that.

This is a place where you've got NGOs, you've got Colorado Parks Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, you'll have other non profits like the Nature Conservancy.

I mean, folks are actively promoting, working together across agencies, across public, private, in order to make sure that the habitat there is optimized, that we have a place that's truly just optimized, that doesn't have a lot of public pressure.

It's open to the public, but it doesn't have a lot of public pressure because the landscape can't sustain a ton of public pressure and also sustain this level of life at this current moment. And it's just so unique that they arrived at this current moment. So they're trying to make sure that stays intact.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:10:30.080 - 00:10:40.000

So why haven't we heard about it? I think when you first told me about the film, I went racing to be like, where, where is this place? What is it? You know, it's so big.

Why has it been out of the public discourse?

Ben Clark

00:10:40.240 - 00:11:35.790

Well, what's funny is, I mean, Vermejo and I think Ted Turner at large, like people are not typically hearing the good stories about things that are taking place across the West.

We live in a very fragmented society today where when I open up social media, I experience a completely different world than when I go stand in line and drop my kids off at school.

And so without being able to sort of see or realize some of the science and some of the really incredible outcomes that have been created, because often, I mean, I think I ran into this a lot trying to understand the ecology of places like this.

It's just that scientists aren't able to always put us a whole lot of certainty on some things or things change so quickly, it's difficult to communicate sort of the enthusiasm they ought to really be having about it.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:11:35.790 - 00:11:37.030

Right? Yeah, yeah.

Ben Clark

00:11:37.190 - 00:13:36.850

You know, I just think that science really runs into a lot of, of messaging issues, even though the outcomes can be right there. I mean, I'm an artist, I can walk out there. I feel this Landscape in a way that I don't feel.

Rocky Mountain national park, and I've camped plenty in both, you know, that science can back up why I'm feeling that.

And I can go to Rocky Mountain national park and see the things going on there, and I can back up why I'm feeling the way I am there, too, as I engage with nature.

Ultimately, I think that this was a place that they were so dedicated to doing the work, and people sort of had some expectation as if that work, you know, the general public maybe not.

Not the scientists there, might would maybe think that the cream would just rise to the top, and suddenly we just find out if good things were happening. We don't. We just don't. And we need to. And I'm here to do that. That's my contribution. And that's, you know, what I think Vermejo needed.

And I was able to say, you know, go down there and say, look, I don't. You know, my last film was in all these theaters and was a bestseller and did all this stuff, and I'm super proud of it.

But all my movies start with a budget of zero. I just ask permission first, and then if I get it, I figure it out. And that's what happened here is I found the access.

I had proven myself on a previous project that had been mainstream, that involved the. The landscape. And I got just a taste of that story.

And then, yeah, I approached him and said, look, I have had this amazing career, and I'm ready to just commit to learning all of this science and all of this biology and doing what I can right now to make sure that one of these positive stories will get out.

We'll be told that an entertaining way that will allow people to be able to have a conversation about the natural world, because we need to have it, and I want to have it, and I'm so excited to have it with so many people that want to have it as well. We love our lands. We love them, we love beauty, and we love good things. Let's talk about them.

Let's talk about that, and let that be louder than this other stuff.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:13:40.210 - 00:13:58.450

The people there captivated you. And watching the film, I mean, the people tell the story of Vermejo, from, you know, from firefighters to biologists to everyone in there.

I think the people are really what you focused on, as well as these stunning shots of the landscape, too. But that was one of the things I enjoyed about watching it.

Ben Clark

00:13:58.770 - 00:14:49.350

Well, I appreciate hearing that because I feel like I'm like a landscape filmer. Like other people are, or landscape filmmaker, like other people might be landscape photographers.

I mean, if I make a long form film, I'm expecting it to have massive impact on the location and I'm expecting for the landscape to definitely be a character. But I really wanted to improve over the feedback I'd gotten from my work previously, which was, hey, I'd really like more character development.

So I'd like, I'd like to hear your, your sort of laugh of confirmation there that I, I work, that every film's a chance to learn. I, I mean, I work for you, you know, like I work for everybody that's going to see it. So I take that feedback seriously and I try to do it.

And in this case with such wonderful characters, it was easy to do.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:14:49.590 - 00:14:59.990

Well, a lot of your other films too, you know, like the Snowman track, you're focusing on a big objective or adventure. And this isn't really an adventure film. This is a film entirely based on place.

Ben Clark

00:15:00.800 - 00:15:31.430

Yeah. And there's no enemy.

You kind of learned in the film about, like I've mentioned before, I mean, the Southwest has all kinds of evidence of development and what we can even call further degradation across the landscape. Right. And Vermejo had that until around 1900, and then it had agricultural degradation. These things just can change.

They can pop out of nowhere and just suddenly be a different thing. It can be stunning, it can be incredible, it can be beautiful, it can be fast.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:15:31.590 - 00:15:45.190

Well, and I think you begin the film even, right, I think looking at ruins that are there and acknowledging that this place, you know, that humans have been a part of this landscape for millennia too. It was something that you really embrace in the film as well.

Ben Clark

00:15:45.430 - 00:16:41.410

Yeah.

And I kind of got to credit that to like Rachel Carson and Bill McKibben, you know, silent Spring and End of Nature and sort of looking at it and recognizing it's like part of that was trying to set up. This is a process that we've been undergoing for a while, you know, in that we are, we have crossed that threshold.

And that's why also in the film, it's so important to me that we see this relationship as we're an animal included in this animal kingdom and we're touching animals. We're not distant from them because the future is going to be like we are now. We cross that threshold.

We are now exceedingly, maybe the dominant species other than corn on this planet. Yeah. It's just sort of like it's in our hands.

I mean, as triumphantly as we can succeed at linear progress, at all the amazing developments we've done. Surely when we pick this as our objective, we will hopefully succeed at that as just as well as we have other things.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:16:44.850 - 00:16:57.330

You said earlier how the place really captured you, like, in a way that Rocky Mountain national park doesn't even. Can you put us on the ground for a moment in Vermejo and tell us what it is about it that's so powerful and so powerful to you personally as well?

Ben Clark

00:16:57.570 - 00:20:56.850

Two examples of, you know, I'm filming the movie at the same time that I'm over a couple summers. I'm also sort of backpacking a little bit through Rocky Mountain National Park.

And like, when I'm so far north, you know, you think of New Mexico as being so dry and just sort of lacking the qualities you may find in the high alpine Rockies. But when I go to Rocky Mountain National Park, I see the elk, you know, I see exclosures, which are really interesting to see in.

In this one particular valley, just like I might see on Bermejo. You see these fences, and you're like, well, that's messing up my view. Like, I can't even go access that stream. And you're like, well, that's.

So the elk don't eat every single piece of foliage that's trying to grow along that stream. You know, they. They're trying to rehabilitate that park as well.

But what's so different is, like, I don't see the bears, you know, I don't see the mountain lions. I don't see the evidence of them. I don't see the kill. I don't see. I see the. The golden tail ground squirrel. I see their relationship to me.

I'm part of the food chain there because I'm, you know, I'm dropping stuff when I'm on Vermejo, to put it quite simply. I'm driving down the road one night with Devin Ballot, and we're filming, and this is one of our first nights. 1. We're in a Tacoma.

We're in a Toyota tacoma. We're like 40 miles from anybody. Anything, you know, I mean, it's. We're so remote. We're driving along the road. The.

We have seen some elk that are like 355 big. Huge inch, like, huge elk. But they were hard to see because the grass was taller than the Tacoma in some of the areas we were driving through.

And you'd see this massive elk, and you'd see his harem, and you'd hear him bugling in the night. And we were just trying to get back to headquarters where we had. We were able to room and board there some.

I just remember coyote jumped out on the road, and we had her in a Tacoma with high beams on. And that coyote just trotted down the road right in front of us for probably 20 minutes.

And then he just sat down the road and just stood there, just sat there. And Devin and I both were like, that coyote's never seen a car like that. Cody doesn't know that what this is, and he's not intimidated.

He doesn't think anything of us at all. And that is like one of the more common sort of things that you might experience out there. These animals are out there.

Bison, pronghorn bears, mountain lions, deer, elk, like, all of them. And they're in this balance, and they have this low pressure from humans that is completely, I guess, natural.

And everywhere else might feel a little less so a little more ang. Like, maybe the animals, I mean, they have more pressure on them.

I can't speak for how animals feel, but anxiety feels like maybe an emotion we share with animals sometimes or a heightened awareness. So when I see wildlife in other places.

I was down in Wheeler geologic area two weekends ago, and a moose walked right up to a rock behind my friend's tent. Big, big mama moose right there. And I'm in this little shelter, and I. I thought at first, God, is that a bear? And I grabbed my bear spray.

I don't have a gun, and I'm definitely not going to be able to take out a bear at full speed. So I pull out my little bear spray, thinking, oh, God, that's the hind of a bear.

He's 15ft away from me or my buddy, and I don't want him this close for sure. I just want a deterrent. And suddenly this mama moose rolls her head up, I see the ear, and I'm like, oh, that's even worse. You know, Like, I'd.

I wish it was a bear. I'm now wishing this was a bear. And like, I look at my friend Whit, he's behind a rock messing with his tent, and I go, whip moose.

And he looks up, and that moose looks up, and she takes off running through her campsite. But she also comes back later and walks right through it. And I'm like a moose on vermeil. There aren't any moose on Vermejo, for one.

But a wild animal in the wild that's not conditioned to us isn't going to do that, right?

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:20:56.850 - 00:20:57.450

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Clark

00:20:57.450 - 00:21:46.220

And so to have that sort of imprint that there's a food source, like all those different things, like it makes a difference. But none of these animals on Vermejo are finding, you know, Fritos on and Snickers on the trail. Right.

Like, just that alone would be a big differentiator. Being out there at night in the elk rut and hearing bugling just everywhere. And like that's something that's disappeared from the west.

Like you can't just drive and drive and drive and every time you stop, hear the rut, you know, or if you wanted to see the pronghorn, the elk and a bear in a day, how many miles would you have to drive amongst ecosystems to find that? And I could just wake up, go film sunrise and have that every day on Vermejo. It's crazy. Yeah, totally crazy.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:21:49.260 - 00:22:29.060

And I think that brings up a really one of the most interesting points about the film and the place and the project. Right. And it's that we're so adverse to this idea of private land.

Places like for Mayo and these massive parks created by the Tompkins conservation in South America, they're just incredible.

And there is this, wow, maybe in some ways private ownership could be even better for land preservation than government protection, because these places are preserved. Maybe even better, right. Than in government protection.

It's under the whims of whatever, as we're seeing now, whatever government's in power seems to do what they want with them. How can this private land ownership be a real path for preservation of the planet?

Ben Clark

00:22:29.300 - 00:27:35.490

Well, it depends on what the private owner wants. Part of it is there's all these ecosystem services that come from letting your land be healthy.

If you're not raising cattle out there, if you're not ranching it, and you have a land that does not have any agricultural revenues from it whatsoever, and you just left it alone, you might find yourself having some problems. You can't. Like it's. Nature also doesn't just sort of take over either. There are some things that need to happen there.

Humans evolved on a lot of these landscapes over so long. We knew indigenous people were here forever. And they were probably historically the only people who really understood.

The only peoples of however many cultures were here that truly understood how to actually live amongst our modern idea of wilderness.

If you look back, most cultures have just conquered and taken infrastructure throughout all of history, and the only people who knew how to really do it were here to just live off of that land was never just sort of left alone, that there were always people here Sort of stewarding it with some density. You start to think, well, gosh, these private landowners that are doing stuff ought to be more celebrated.

We ought to be looking at some of the models of what they're doing. And I'm talking about people other than Ted Turner. You can look up plenty online to learn about him and his initiatives.

But there are other people and there's other large landscapes. Any farmer would tell you nobody can make a bigger difference in climate change than agriculture.

So many farmers today are doing their absolute best to win back nutrition in your food, health in their soil, and trust in you so that you have food you want. By doing regenerative farming practices and starting to reduce their inputs using drone technology.

Instead of plowing over everything, they're not tilling anymore, they're planting cover crops. I mean, they're. People in agriculture have also, I think, maybe been distanced from nature by perhaps media.

They are, in fact, some of the most incredible environmentalists and naturalists you will ever meet. And a conversation with somebody who owns a farm is, if you love nature is a. Could be a really valuable conversation sometimes.

So, yeah, I think that there's a lot of things that can be done at a lot of different levels for people. And even in the city, I mean, if you own property in the city, you have an acre, you're still participating.

Even if you rent, you're still participating. You make choices every single day. You know, one of the bigger ones being just how much you consume and where it comes from.

When we look at this and sometimes we get upset about not having as much, I look at it and go, I've actually got quite a lot that I cannot do to support things I don't want to do. And then when I look at these folks that are.

Have accumulated all this resource and I look at how some of them are managing it, and I look at the problems they're up against and maybe the lack of solutions, I develop a little bit more empathy for, for who's being villainized in these cases. Even farm equipment, things like that, car manufacturers, they're hearing us. We need. We are working toward less emissions.

We are working toward better processes. It's coming from the ground. People are being heard. So, yeah, I mean, it's not happening fast enough. Can't do anything about the velocity.

But I do think that it is really incredible to see that there are these movements happening and they're not entered.

The messaging, I think, hasn't had a chance to intersect, you know, between them with like, regenerative farming and Agriculture with large landowners and major conservation projects that they're footing the bill for. And then recreationalists like us that also include hook and bullet, but very much are not taxed like hook and bullet to participate. Right.

I think trying to intersect them, having people in North America like you referenced, Tompkins Conservation 2 and the amazing things they've done talk about a lot of mistrust, misinformation. I mean, Christine Tompkins is a stalwart conservationist.

She is a just solid foundational human being in conservation and the vast scale and the persuasion and the outcomes that she has with her husband Doug, and so many amazing people that I think they would certainly credit in helping them, what they've created is absolutely astounding. But to do this in North America here, where we have dwindled our resources and to be able to do it at any scale is a major win.

And again, like, you know, I'm not a politician. I focus on issues. I don't know what policies are going to make me vote one way or another, but that's where I have to look at things.

So when it comes down to villainization and politicalization and some of these things that distract these messages from maybe uniting us, you know, you look at a movie like this and you go, it doesn't matter who you are, you can watch this, and you go, yeah, this is relevant to me. I want to win, too. And I want to have conversations with other people that want to win, too, and they're out there.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:27:39.410 - 00:28:14.240

I think that's really important to think about. You know, how we can see this giant mosaic of things working together. Public land, private land.

I feel like in the past, a lot of rich, you know, billionaires, whoever they were, robber barons, they wanted to preserve these spaces, right? They had a big eye on conservation.

These days, I wonder, you know, when you look at, you know, some of the richest people in the world, they're just trying to build spaceships to the moon or just trying to engage in more conquest. You know, how can we convince them that, hey, why don't you use some of your money and influence to help save things here, to help save this planet?

Ben Clark

00:28:14.720 - 00:29:01.200

It's pretty simple. When you don't have your health, you don't have a lot of problems. You get one problem, right? Yeah, one problem.

And imagine going somewhere else, to another planet to develop it. What exactly are we taking there? What are we taking there? Because we have to take everything there with us. So I'm all for.

I love the idea of interstellar travel.

I mean, I'm I'm an explorer, so that sounds cool to me, but I don't want to pack my bags for a weekend trip and I certainly don't want it to be the cheapest made, worst left of what we had to start over.

So I think that's the argument is just say, fine, go and build your rockets, but, like, tell me what's going to be in there that I'm going to want there if I don't want to be here.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:29:01.520 - 00:29:36.670

Well, you have been to some of the craziest places on the planet. You've done the snowman trek, which is considered the hardest hike in the world. I know that because I've written about it before.

And not only did you do it, you also filmed on it. You've done the north face of Everest, where Mallory and Irvine disappeared. A harder way, you know, more isolated way to go up Everest.

You've been at some of the wildest places on the planet. But this place, Vermejo, really seems to have resonated with you. What have you brought with you from big expeditions?

What kind of mindset to this project, to filming Vermejo and understanding this place?

Ben Clark

00:29:37.390 - 00:31:32.530

Trying to break down a558,000 acre piece of land that's basically like a small state between two people, and trying to show the vastness of ecosystems from 6,000ft to 13,000ft. It's the same problem solving that you go through when you're trying to do a long route across the mountains or a giant alpine climb.

You know, you focus on the sections, you focus on the seasons, you focus on the things in the natural order of things that you can. And then, you know, you sort of react when you've actually finished the movie, that's when things start to get wildly exciting.

Like when you start having to do like.

Like this week as we roll into the premiere and this huge rollout over all these months to have these events and this big conversation and community built and all these things. That's the part where you have to be a doer. You can't be an alpinist and doing new routes if you aren't like going to do it yourself.

And so I just think it's like there might be tasks that people might not want to do in filmmaking, and I can understand that. But I had, I've made sure those roles were all filled in this film.

We, whether they were done by me or somebody else, they were done by somebody and they were to the highest standard we could afford to do. And then, you know, When I look at like getting. We're going to sell out this weekend. Two screenings. We didn't run any social media ads.

We have had no press yet, nothing. We just word of mouth and getting it out there. Our trailer hasn't even dropped anywhere meaningful yet.

And there is an energy about this place and about this type of topic and about this time right now. And I'm just so grateful that I have, I have that, go for it Summit day energy right now because the world needs it. For me.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:31:36.290 - 00:31:48.370

What more can we do to turn things around for the planet? You know, we always hear such doom about the planet. We feel like we have no chance to save it. What can we do? What can we do to regenerate the Earth?

Ben Clark

00:31:48.690 - 00:32:55.110

We can do less. Ultimately, you can do less. We always approach that question as if it's this big burden. Honestly, just do less. I don't know.

I mean, for me, what do I do less of? Well, I try to buy groceries more locally if I can. It's pretty simple. Even if I'm not having it shipped in a box, that's still less.

Look at your life and just say, oh, well, if. When I order Amazon, it can take three days and not five. It can take a week and not five and be carbon emissions. I mean, there's.

There's all these things that are probably sitting in front of you that aren't actually a burden on your time or your efforts that are maybe just lifestyle things that you could just do less right now and it probably save you some money.

For most people, I think in, in a modern North American society, telling you you're going to save something by saving something is a pretty good sell. And I would say if you spend less on things you don't feel like you need or things that like you're.

If you're tired of folding up Amazon boxes, hey, drive to the grocery store and buy the same stuff and then come home. That alone, I mean, it's really that simple and it is that cumulative.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:32:55.510 - 00:33:11.710

I love that. Could you tell people, you know, how can they see the film? How can they learn more about Vermejo? How can they learn more about the film?

And how can they get in touch with you if they want to work with you in some way or sponsor the film? I don't know.

Ben Clark

00:33:11.710 - 00:33:47.340

Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, you can go to preserveproductions.com and there will be find a screening there near you. The theatrical tour is going to be amazing. This fall.

We're hitting a lot of places across the west and Northwest and the south, even Texas. I mean, it's kind of crazy where this thing will end up. If you want us there, we'll come. We've got Protect our Winners.

You'll meet somebody from your community. You'll meet people from Western Landowners Alliance. You may meet some other non profit partners we have.

If you're one of the first 30 people showing up at a lot of these, you're going to get a free yeti cup. So for your $20 ticket.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:33:48.060 - 00:33:49.140

That's an expensive cup.

Ben Clark

00:33:49.140 - 00:34:23.880

Yeah, right. I mean, the business of that is like, you're not losing by coming here.

And that's the point for me is it's like, I know you have to leave your house and get a friend or make plans to come to the theater, but if you do and you want to feel seen, you love this kind of stuff. You, you want the world to like, you want to go celebrate a really awesome place that's like a national park.

And, and you love the idea of a hopeful original wildlife story come out and you're going to leave with more than an hour and a half's worth of hope. And, you know, that's the deal.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:34:24.520 - 00:34:33.560

And that rolls into the final question of this podcast, which we ask every guest at the very end. And it is simply, what gives you hope?

Ben Clark

00:34:35.000 - 00:35:17.850

Hope for me is community. It's simple. It really is. Like, I have lived through so many crazy things, adventures all over the world.

The one thing that got me through all of it was somebody else being there every damn time. You don't have to find the answers within yourself. You don't have to look into a book or at others in social media.

Just community coming together as people. And just whether we, we, we share sorrow or we share joy, I think that community gives me hope. And I'm hopeful.

And I will always be hopeful because other people are in my life. We don't need less people.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:35:18.490 - 00:35:27.810

That's beautiful. Ben, I can't thank you enough for coming on and talking about the movie and talking about the future of the planet and talking about hope.

Great to see you. Thanks so much.

Ben Clark

00:35:27.810 - 00:35:28.410

You too.

Doug Schnitzspahn

00:35:31.610 - 00:36:12.580

Thanks 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 my rockfightmail.com to learn more about the film Preserved, where to see it, and learn more about vermejo. Go to preservedproductions.com if you want to better understand the resilience of the earth and how we can help build a better planet.

Buy a copy of E.O. wilson's Half Earth and head to the website eowilsonfoundation.org Our producers today were David Carsad and Colin True.

Art direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some. Thanks for listening.