495b National Parks Dinner Party; The Great Southwest; Utah's Craziest Bike Ride

0:00You may not have to travel far to find fascinating sights from 1 ,000 years ago. Try Effigy Mounds National Park in Iowa. There is a mound in the shape of a bear facing the direction of the Mississippi River. Prayers held, bones buried, protected. Coming up, Terry Tempest-Williams introduces us to her favorite national parks. In the American Southwest, history is still very much alive. You don't have to find out how Native people lived a long time ago to learn other ways, other cultures of the United States, you can find out how Native people are living now. Flannery Burke explores what the Great Southwest represents to the rest of the country.

0:43And Christopher Solomon describes a hot, dusty week crossing the wilds of Utah on a mountain bike. Some really adventurous outings that mix exhaustion with beauty. The views are magnificent in the hour ahead. Come along. It's Travel with Rick Steves. Mountain bikes were made for the kind of rugged trip Christopher Solomon recently got back from. He spent a week crossing the desert and mountain wilderness of southern Utah on a bike tour designed to taste the almost feral spirit of the Wild West, like a modern-day Edward Abbey on fat tires. Chris joins us a little later in the hour today on Travel with Rick Steves.

1:24And Flannery Burke explains what Arizona and New Mexico represent to the nation and to each other as a one-of-a-kind region we often call the Great Southwest. Terry Tempest Williams invites us to celebrate the land and the people you'll meet at a variety of national parks across the United States. In her book, The Hour of Land, she describes the parks she's visited as breathing spaces, each with a unique personality that deserve our patronage, our respect, and our protection. Terry, it's good to have you with us. Thank you, Rick. Your book, The Hour of Land, takes us not to the obvious parks, but it takes us to some of the less famous parks.

2:05You chose about a dozen parks to introduce to us. Why these parks? Why not the grand and famous ones? Would you believe me if I told you that I saw this as a dinner party? You know, my mother was a great hostess, and she always said, you know, pick your dinner parties very carefully because who knows what will come out of them. So, you know, here we have 59 national parks in our country. How to choose a dozen. So I really did envision it as a dinner party. I knew who the heads of the table would be. My mother park, which would be Grand Teton National Park. The other end of the table, I knew it would be Canyonlands National Park, where we live closely to.

2:49You know, I could count on them. Then I thought, all right, who's going to be on the other end of the table holding the space that are reliable? And for me, it was Acadia National Park in Maine and Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. I had been to them many times, and they were trustworthy. Then I thought, okay, who are the dream guests that I would want that I don't know, but I know other people who do, and we can bring them to the table? And I thought of Big Bend National Park. I thought of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Effigy Mounds. And I thought, those are my dream guests.

3:27So they came to the party. Then I thought, all right, who's the guest that you just don't want to have there? It's a family member. You know, they're complicated, difficult, but you have to have them. That was Glacier National Park for me. I just thought, I really don't want to get into climate change, that glaciers are melting, and the history with the Blackfeet Nation. But Glacier National Park sat at the table. And then there were the bad boys and girls, the ones who I knew would keep the conversation interesting and honest. That would be Gettysburg, issues of slavery. That would be Alcatraz, issues of incarceration.

4:04That would be Gulf Island National Seashore, BP oil spill. And then there's always the surprise guest who changed everything, and that would be Cesar Chavez National Monument. So that was my dinner table, my dinner party. Can I come to the dinner party? Please. Okay, so I just walked into the dinner party, and I'm Rick, the travel writer. Can you introduce me to a couple of these parks in a way that I'll better understand their personality and want to get to know them better? I think I'd first introduce you to Cesar Chavez because he changed everything for me, that national park. You know, we hear that our national parks are our best idea.

4:45It was Cesar Chavez National Monument that said it's an evolving idea. that, you know, here we have in 1916, Stephen Mather, the head of the National Park Service, who looks at his donors, Mrs. Astor, coming to Yosemite. Would she be comfortable camping? No, she would not. They build the Iwani Hotel. Fast forward to 2012, we have a black president who was a community organizer who chose to honor another community organizer, Cesar Chavez. an evolving idea. Over there, there's Grand Teton. Can you introduce me to Grand Teton? I understand that's where you've had so many childhood memories. Grand Teton National Park, this is my mother park.

5:31This is the park that, after September 11th, when I was in Washington, D.C., and felt that there was no solid ground beneath my feet, I went back to Grand Teton and put my hand on the flanks of her mountain and went up to Amphitheater Lake and re-baptized myself in safety. Whoa, I want a drink with Grand Teton, but wait a minute. Over there is Big Bend National Park, who I've heard is really interesting after dark. I made a pact with Big Bend. Let me introduce you. Should I ever disappear, that's where I'll be. And you're right. It is a nocturnal park where the sounds of peccary, of javelina under moonlight, sound like the tiptoeing of patent leather hooves on sandstone.

6:17I want to be there at midnight, but wait a minute. I remember last time I was with you, you told me Canyonlands was the most beautiful place on Earth and also the most vulnerable. Introduce me. Canyonlands, if you believe the Earth is flat, come to Canyonlands to the Needles Overlook and you will see the curvature of the Earth. It is an erosional landscape that reminds us how young we really are. Who would you introduce me to to really connect with Native American culture. Come with me to Effigy Mounds on the banks of the Mississippi River and let's walk into this glen where there's a 215-foot wingspan of a mound in the shape of a peregrine falcon.

7:02And while we're watching this mound and swear that the wings move, a red-headed woodpecker drops down to right where the heart would be. And if you go a little bit further, there is a mound in the shape of a bear facing the direction of the Mississippi River. Prayers held, bones buried, protected. Terry Tempest Williams has invited us in this conversation from the Travel with Rick Steves archives to a sort of National Parks dinner party, one where we get to know and respect what's special about a diverse collection of parklands. She describes her experiences at each of them in her book called The Hour of Land, a personal topography of America's national parks.

7:46As writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School, Terry teaches writers to find beauty in a broken world. She and her husband have a home near Arches National Park in Utah. You know what's odd to me is our national park system was born in wartime, and there's a battlefield that's actually a national park. Can you introduce me to Gettysburg? Gettysburg is the guest I least know and that I keep going to visit. I went back to Gettysburg every single season trying to get a better sense of who this guest is. And in those furrowed fields of dried wheat that vultures still fly over, one can still feel the spirits of those who were fallen.

8:36I'd love to meet a park that just sweeps me away in the majesty of our coastlines. What would that be? Gulf Islands National Seashore. It was there in the heat of the BP oil spill that I flew over those waters with a pilot who told me that when that water was on fire, he saw a pod of dolphins side by side by side treading water, looking at the flames, wondering. I want to be all alone, and sometimes a guest at a party is kind of just there in the corner, and the classic still waters run deep. Where's a place where I can appreciate solitude at your dinner table here? Gates of the Arctic showed me what silence sounds like, stillness.

9:29When we flew into Gates of the Arctic, I felt like a moth among mountains, and it was there that we watched a grizzly bear with two cubs walk in autumn tundra, crossing a pass. This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're at a National Park dinner party with Terry Tempest Williams. Her book is The Hour of Land. And Terry, this is a party I'm never going to forget, and they always say don't talk about religion and politics, but I know that you are just, you've got a fire in your belly about politics and nature. And I'd like to meet one of your guests, one of your parks, that's going to put a fire in my belly for the importance of waking up to where we're going with our environment.

10:15Who would I meet and who would I talk to? You know, I would introduce you to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and there we would walk to the Elkhorn Ranch where Teddy Roosevelt said that after the death of his wife and mother, he went there to grieve. And it was in those three years in the badlands of North Dakota that he developed the character to become president of the United States. Who would I talk to about the whole issue of civil liberties as it applies to nature? You know, I would introduce you to Alcatraz and the exhibit by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. And it was there that I began to appreciate.

10:55he showed me the relationship between confinement and creativity and how crucial it is to fight for the rights of all humans and to recognize the structures of racism that do exist, even the incarceration of Hopi people who were jailed at Alcatraz and who later we saw the uprising at Alcatraz of Native people and what a dynamic democracy we have that is chronicled in our national parks. The issue of our day, really, in so many ways, is climate change. If ever there was an existential threat, who would I talk to at this party where I could gain that perspective? We would meet Glacier National Park and stand before her retreating glaciers with humility, with resolve, and with a devotion to stand in the heart of change with as much resolve as we can to do what we can with the place where we find ourselves now.

12:00Is it conceivable that the day will come when Glacier National Park would be more properly named No Glacier National Park? I think Glacier National Park will remind us of a world we once stood in the middle of and failed to recognize as holy. And I think the gift of Glacier National Park around this dinner table is she gives us the courage to face the future, uncertain as it is, with the fortitude to face the sacrifices that are going to be required of us. We are at a crossroads. We can continue on the path we've been on in this nation that privileges profit over people and land, or we can unite as citizens with a common cause.

12:45This is the hour of land, and the time has come for acts of reverence and restraint on behalf of the earth. I would ask us to listen. Hands on the earth. Listen and remember what it means to be human. One of the best ways to truly feel the majesty of the American West is on a mountain bike tour across the wilderness. Christopher Solomon tells us about his outdoor adventure across Utah in just a bit. Next, we explore why New Mexico and Arizona can make you feel like you're in another world. We're at 877-333-7425 as we enjoy some special corners of the United States today on Travel with Rick Steves.

13:30Mention the Great Southwest, and there's no shortage of stereotypes that come to mind. A nearly alien landscape of desert mesas and adobe settlements, with some old-style trading posts and maybe a UFO tossed in for fun. But did you know it also offers some of the oldest historical sites in North America? Right now on Travel with Rick Steves, let's check in with a native-born daughter of Santa Fe to examine how the region sees itself. Flannery Burke teaches history at St. Louis University, and she's just written A Land Apart, the Southwest and the Nation in the 20th Century. In it, she explores how images promoting the Great Southwest got started and how they stack up with today's reality.

14:12Flannery, welcome. Thanks for having me. This is really fun. So a land apart, the Southwest and the nation in the 20th century. When you say a land apart, that really does sort of define what is something that's unique about the Southwest. How do you define the Southwest, and how is it a land apart? Well, I define the Southwest both geographically and temporally. So I say early in the book to ask where a place is is also to ask when. And the Southwest in the 20th century, I define as the states of Arizona and New Mexico, with a little bit of bleeding around the edges into border towns like Nogales and El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, and a little bit of reaching into Utah and southern Colorado.

15:10So 20th century was essentially Arizona and New Mexico. But if you looked at it earlier, it goes way back. I mean, we're so inclined to think of 1620 or Plymouth Rock as the beginning of things. And then it's kind of astounding to be reminded that sort of, I don't know if ethnocentric is the right approach, but it's not an open-minded approach to the story of our country because the Southwest goes way, way back. It does, yes. Although it wasn't called the Southwest then. It was the North. Or, well, it depends. Once again, it depends when. Well, yeah, if you go back to the earlier heritage, it certainly was the North because it has a Hispanic orientation.

15:48Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, if we're in the 1500s, then the Southwest is the North for Spanish conquistadors. If we're in the 1300s or the 1100s, then the Southwest is just home for many indigenous people. And people are always astonished to come and discover that Taos Pueblo has been continuously inhabited for a thousand years. They're astonished to discover that there were Europeans here before there were Europeans in Virginia, before there were Europeans in Massachusetts. It is interesting to think that Arizona and New Mexico were the last two states admitted to the contiguous United States.

16:29I mean, when it was the lower 48, everything was the United States except for Arizona and New Mexico. And that probably relates, it seems to me it relates to the fact that there was a stronger Hispanic orientation to those two states. Correct me if I'm wrong. You don't have that Hispanic heritage as strong elsewhere where if you look at a map, you think, well, why wouldn't it be elsewhere? but it really is something unique in the Great Southwest. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so Americans were very overt in their aversion to admitting New Mexico and Arizona into the United States. There were pockets of Spanish-speaking people in Texas and in southern Colorado and certainly in California, but in Texas and California, particularly Anglos, Anglos, which is what Southwesterners call English-speaking people, Anglos had really overrun those earlier Spanish and then Mexican settlements.

17:28And so Arizona and New Mexico endured this really long territorial period while Anglos in Congress and territorial representatives from Arizona and New Mexico argued about whether the states were modern enough, whether they could be successfully assimilated into the United States. And it took until 1912. That's a real attitude problem. Yes. Flannery, if we want to travel there and pick up on the Hispanic heritage and the culture that is so deeply woven into the DNA of the region, where do we go and what do we see? It's not even necessary to get off the beaten path to see what might strike many listeners as really unusual, you know, really something from a land apart.

18:23So one of my very favorite places in Santa Fe is to be along the Esequia Madre, which is the mother ditch of the city. And this is water that is still communally managed according to Spanish and Mexican tradition. The Esequia Madre is just a block away from Canyon Road, which is where tourists love to go to look at the art. And so it's not hard to walk that one block and see what is really the life of the city. And I was certainly taught as a child that water is sacred. I think all people who grow up in the desert are taught that water is sacred. But that sacred meaning to water was formalized through indigenous practices with water and then later through Hispanic practices with water.

19:14And the Esequia Madre has persevered through that 100 years of U.S. control. And while there are other ways of managing water in the southwest, Esequias are still there. And so it's not hard to go and see them. You know, that is interesting. Just you used the word persevere. I'm always impressed by how indigenous values, indigenous passions, and indigenous spirituality can persevere through the sort of brutal onslaught of a bigger, more powerful culture that just comes in and owns everything. What are some ways that indigenous, not necessarily Hispanic or non-Anglo, but what are some of the indigenous values or spirits that persevere in the Southwest in this land apart to this day?

20:03Well, I think one of the best examples actually, is Native people. I know that a lot of people come to the Southwest to find out about the indigenous presence in North America a long time ago. But one of the things that I sort of realized as I was writing the book is that the Southwest is one of the best places to go to see how Native people have persevered. Phoenix has reservations on three sides. So Phoenix is one of the most Native American cities in the United States. And you don't have to find out how Native people lived a long time ago to learn other ways, you know, other cultures of the United States.

20:49You can find out how Native people are living now. Flannery, are there actually families that can trace their roots to times even before the Hispanic encroachment on the region? Are there long-established pre-Columbian families in the old Southwest? Absolutely. One of the great things about visiting the Southwest now is that Native American political power, Native American cultural power, is probably the greatest it has ever been since U.S. and Spanish colonization. And so the sense of distinctiveness, I think, I'm not Native myself, But the sense of distinctiveness among Native people is just the strongest and most powerful, and their voices are the loudest that they've been in a very long time.

21:42This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with historian Flannery Burke, and her book is A Land Apart, talking about the great Southwest, specifically Arizona and New Mexico. Flannery, this is radio, and I wish our listeners could hold your book like I am right now and look at this photograph on the cover. The cover says a lot about your book, A Land Apart. Can you describe the cover? I absolutely adore this cover for a couple of reasons. It is a roadside stand in Bitter Springs on the Navajo Nation. On the left-hand side of the stand, it says open. In the middle of the stand, there's a cocapelli figure, a fertility figure, that's common among a lot of indigenous people in the Southwest.

22:27And then on the right, there is a picture of a beautiful, smiling, laughing woman. And her face is upturned toward just the bigness of the desert sky. And I love this image because it's beautiful. I love this image because it shows how people find happiness in the Southwest despite its many problems. But I also love this image because entirely by accident, when the press and I went looking for it, I had remembered that these portraits of Navajo people were done by the Navajo themselves. And I didn't remember who the artist was. And so I think I honestly Googled something like Navajo street art until I narrowed down who the artist is.

23:21And the artist is an African-American doctor from North Carolina who came to the Navajo Nation in the 1980s as a part of a program by which doctors could pay off their med school bills if they worked with an indigenous community in the United States. And he totally fell in love with the Navajo Nation. He's still there. He's still practicing medicine. I love that story because one of the themes of the book is that we need to expand, Southwesterners are who I mean when I say we, we need to expand who we think of when we think of a newcomer and what we think of when we think of belonging. And I think that the artist who produces these images, his name is Chip Thomas, his street art name is Jetson-Orama.

24:09I think he totally belongs in the Southwest, but he's not who we normally think of when we think of a newcomer. The fact that that story is told, at least for me, whenever I look at that image, just delights me. Well, I mean, we've got cultures coming together. We've got, you know, man and nature coming together. Here's sort of the tide rips of society. Flannery, the subtitle, The Southwest end the nation in the 20th century. What do you mean by end the nation in the 20th century? Well, there are many, many scholars who are doing absolutely fantastic work right now about what is sometimes called the Southwest borderlands or the Spanish borderlands or the Mexican borderlands.

24:55And they really treat the U.S.-Mexico border as a line in the sand. It's something that has political impact, but it is not the entirety of history. You know, that border has not always been there. Flannery Burks, our guest today on Travel with Rick Steves. She's an associate professor of history at St. Louis University, and she's written a cultural history of the southwest United States called A Land Apart. It's published by the University of Arizona Press. You can find links to our guests each week at ricksteves.com slash radio. Kate, when you're talking about the Southwest, where did that notion of the Great Southwest come from?

25:39Was that created by some initiative for tourism or something? Do you know? So that was created by a man named Charles Lummis. And in the late 19th century, he hit on this idea. It was a publicity stunt that he would walk from Ohio to Los Angeles. And he basically followed the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. And he arrived in Los Angeles and his dispatches were published in the Los Angeles Times. He later went to work for the Los Angeles Times. And then later he worked for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. And he had a magazine called Out West that he published. And he had to write for a living.

26:24So he had to write a lot. and he called the portion of New Mexico and Arizona that he had passed through on his walking trip and where he had made many, many friends among Nuevo Mexicano and also indigenous communities, he called that and Southern California the Great Southwest. Okay, so back then, and this is the late 1800s, he didn't distinguish between the more indigenous southwest of Arizona, New Mexico, and then California. He thought it was all together. But today, that magic sort of stays distinct and unique in what you're considering the Southwest, which is those two states. I think so.

27:07Lummis went on to found the Southwest Museum, which still operates in Los Angeles, just off the Pasadena Freeway. But Southern California was repeatedly overwhelmed by waves of migrants. Yes, because California would have more modern Hispanic migrants, whereas Arizona and New Mexico would have more indigenous people who might be mistaken as migrants. Right, right, yes. Flannery, how do you distinguish then within the Southwest between Arizona and New Mexico? Are they, from your point of view, pretty much indistinguishable, or do they each have distinct personalities? They definitely each have distinct personalities, And the most consistent response that I have gotten from other historians of the American West about this book is, why are you talking about them together?

28:00Right. Because historians have actually talked about Arizona and New Mexico separately even more than they have talked about the United States and Mexico separately. They're kind of sisters in the fact that they were the last two states in the lower 48 to be admitted. Right, and they were both admitted in 1912. And they're both more indigenous. Don't they have a stronger indigenous culture than other more Anglo states? They do. And as your caller pointed out, Oklahoma has a really strong indigenous presence. The Pacific Northwest has a really strong indigenous presence. And indigenous people persevere all over the United States.

28:37But it's especially visible in Arizona and New Mexico today. One thing interesting in your book is you point out that Santa Fe was the end of several old trading routes. You know, we think of Route 66 and that open road and wonderful desert landscapes and everything, but it's also interesting to think of the impact of trading routes in centuries past. Talk just a little bit about the importance of trading routes and why that might have put Santa Fe on the map more than we might appreciate. Well, Santa Fe was kind of a nexus of trade from Mexico City to the northern regions when Mexico was Spanish and later when it was Mexican.

29:17And then it was also the terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, which connected St. Louis and the area that became Kansas City with Santa Fe. So a couple of trade routes came together in Santa Fe throughout the 19th century. So Mexico City was actually connected with St. Louis by two trade routes who came together in Santa Fe. Fascinating. But what's fascinating for me is that then the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway wound up kind of following the line of the Santa Fe Trail, and not step for step, but in many respects, the same trail. And then Route 66, you know, kind of wound up following the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe line.

30:00And so there are these layers of travel history that one walks if one goes through Santa Fe and then, of course, westward. And if you know the Route 66 song, Route 66 doesn't go through Santa Fe, it goes through Albuquerque. But then Gallup, New Mexico, and Kingman, you know, all the way down into Los Angeles. Flannery, if you could just sum up things for us with an image. Let's say you're driving on that romantic, beloved Route 66, and it's a wonderful road trip, and suddenly you cross into what you consider a land apart. How do you know it's different? What happens when you enter the Great Southwest?