Hello and good morning. How are you doing, arrows? I'm well,
how are you? Oh? Absolutely, sir, you're up there in Bozeman,
Montana. I grew up in Billings. Oh you did. Oh great?
Great? Where are you right now? I'm in North Carolina? Okay?
Great? Have you ever gone over there to the Bozeman Tunnel and walked
around that area? Because you're a man that likes to get into the wild
areas of the world. And my grandfather helped create that tunnel, and I've
always wondered, has anybody ever walked through that tunnel? No, No,
where is it? I don't know about it. It's in between Livingston and
Bozeman, and it's it's right there. You know. In the old days,
when it was only a two lane highway, you could see that tunnel
perfectly. But nowadays, with that four lane road, you've got to know
that it's there. Oh no, I didn't know about it, and I've
lived here a long time. The things that you do, where do you
find the confidence to go into areas that are off the path? Because I
always fear of getting lost? How do you find yourself in those places of
being lost? He had the GPS, he had the maps. He had
a point man with a machete who was cutting a hole through the forest for
us. He would speak to that point man in Lingala, the local language,
and say too kendiboy token da, and that meant this way. He
would point this way, that way, that's what his compass told him,
and we would crouch down and hike through that hole that had been cut through
the forest. Speaking of tunneling, it was like tunneling through wherever he went.
Do you find yourself being this modern day Ansel Adams? H No,
because I don't take it the photographs. I am strictly a writer for National
Geographic and I have had the world photographers National Geographic Photographers Nick Nichols, who
I work with on my very first assignment, this this epic hike across the
Congo with Mike Fay and a number of others. So I'm not the Ansel
Adams. I'm, if anything, maybe the James ag that's working with the
Ansel, the guy that supplies the words. How about the wildness of this
nation. I live in a forest here in Charlotte that we created with seventeen
hundred trees, and it's like, I love the edge of being right there
in that you know that moment of you never know what's expected. It's got
to be fascinating to your imagination to be able to capture it and then share
it. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean you're walking through the congo forest
and suddenly come across a forest elephant with a calf, and she gets agitated,
and she's deciding whether she's going to charge you or not. What are
you going to do there? Do you run from a forest elephant or do
you stand your ground? You go on a little farther. Next day,
there's a gaboon viper curled up right in the spot that you're going to put
your foot. You give that respectful distance and keep hiking. A little farther
there's a column of army ants. I want to tell you one thing,
arrow, One thing you do not want to do when you're walking through the
Congo forest in a pair of river sandals and shorts, is step on a
column of army ants. I learned that the hard way. So you stay
alert, and you you enjoy these crazy wild creatures and and try not to
impinge on them or let them impinge on you, and and keep going and
scribble it all if you're me, scribble it all in your notebook and tuck
your notebook into your ziplock bag. When you when you swim across the rivers
and keep going, get the story and bring it home. When you speak
of these army answer, are we talking about the same ones that the that
the locals will use as a spiritual journey by putting their hands into the into
the into the holes and and and it really is part of becoming a man.
Well, I'm sure I haven't heard about that particular practice, but in
one of the cultures, and one of the indigenous cultures of Central Africa,
I can well imagine that that would be a trial because I'll tell you what
these these ants, some of them I can't remember remember the species name.
But there's a particular kind of ant that is so painful when it stings you
or bites you, some of them staying, some of them bite, and
some of them bite to hang on and sting you repeatedly. And this ant
is so formidable that it would occupy a particular tree, and you would find
this tree in a little clearing, and the ants would be living on the
tree, and if you touch that tree, they would swarm onto you,
and I was told that it was even I don't know, for it was
a spiritual journey or a form of torture that was used in some cultures.
I think that there were at least stories that they would tie a person to
that tree if they had captured an enemy and they wanted to torture him.
So we were very careful when we came to those particular kinds of tree.
David, do not touch the limb, Do not step any closer than you're
standing right now. Give this tree a wide birth and lots of respect,
because you do not want to experience the ants that are living on that tree.
Oh my god. The name of the book is the Heartbeat of the
Wild, And in studying this book, it's almost like you are the closest
to the heartbeat and you're taking us there. But it's almost like returning to
the womb that you're listening to the origin of that heartbeat of the wild.
Well, and the wild is hard to define. The heartbeat is hard to
define. But when I pulled these pieces together and to make them a coherent
book with updated reporting and connective tissue describing how the stories came about and how
one story led to another. During my twenty years with National Geographic I wanted
to think, what's the essence of the wild What do we mean when we
talk about preserving the wild or the last wild places? And so in the
forward I try and define it. I say, the wildness is a name
that we give to the living nature on this particular plant at its most robust,
it's most complex, it's most diverse, it's most undiminished. And what
does that mean? Well, it means more than wild creatures. It means
more than wild places. It means also the processes that interconnect creatures in wild
places, processes like predation and herbivory and photosynthesis and parasitism and decomposition. All
of that is wrapped up into this concept of wildness and you can't have it
in a zoo. Zoo's perform important services. But when you've got a tiger
in a cage in a zoo, is that wildness? Well no, that's
it's a dangerous animal. But to have real wildness, you need that tiger
to be still in its ecosystem, with the cheatle gear that it eats and
the creatures that it competes with, the Asian elephants that might occasionally give it
a run for its money. All of the other animal, fungi, bacterial
forms of life in that ecosystem. That's what I mean by wild. Is
it because we're from Montana that you and I love these journeys in nature because
I know, the seed becomes the tree, becomes the giver to the FoST
floor. It also gives to the writer, so that we have something to
document our paths on. I mean, there's such a continuation in everything,
and I'm fascinated by that. I think that Montana has something to do with
it. I mean, you were born in Montana. I moved here in
nineteen seventy three, right after I finished graduate school. I had always been
interested in the natural world and always interested in writing, and I had some
great teachers who developed my interest, helped me become a writer, and I
left the natural world behind, and then in seventy three, I wanted to
get back to wild places, so I came to Montana and I sort of
rediscovered that interest. And I had started my writing career as a novel list
by but I eventually abandoned fiction, writing in terms of nonfiction so that I
could write about biological sciences, ecology, evolutionary biology, the scientists who practice
those sciences, the field biologists like Jane Goodall and Edward O. Wilson,
and a lot of unknown but brilliant people who work in these wild places.
So I turned to that. But it was coming to Montana, a place
where when you walk in the forest, you're aware that grizzly bears and moose
and other amazing creatures are out there. It gives you a certain respect and
humility. It was being here in Montana that reawakened my interest in the wild
and led to led to this long career of writing about such places, not
just in Montana, Yellowstone places like that, but around the world. Wow,
David, you've got to come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you. Thank you very
much. Ero, I'd love to do that. Please talk about it.
You'd be brilliant today. Okay, sir, you two arrow have a great day.