Yosemite Voices is an audio podcast intended to provide insights into the natural and cultural history and management of Yosemite National Park. We also explore the lives of and lifestyles of the people who live and work here.
Episode 5: Beauty That Kills
Death by drowning or going over waterfalls awaits careless visitors who get too close to Yosemite's rivers and creeks. This episode features an interview with Yosemite Search and Rescue team member Moose Mutlow.
RANGER RONEY: Podcasting from Yosemite Valley on this sunny May 6th, 2010. It's Yosemite Voices.
(Music, Random Voices, Thunder)
Yosemite Voices is a series of radio podcasts intended to provide insights into the cultural and natural history and management of Yosemite. We also explore the lives and lifestyles of the people who live and work here.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Hi. I'm your host, Ranger Bob Roney. Today, we'll get to know Moose Mutlow who works for one of our partner organizations, the Yosemite Institute. He also works with the Yosemite Search and Rescue Team. Right now, I'm sitting on the bank of Tenaya Creek, right close to where it moves into the Merced River. From here I can see Yosemite Falls off in a distance. The upper fall is backlit by the sun and it is absolutely gorgeous. I remember reading a story about John Muir who thought it would be really great to take the upper Yosemite Falls and freeze it and then carry it out into the center of Yosemite Valley where people can walk around and enjoy all of its different features. After a dry spell of several years, it's great to see all this water, with plenty more in the high country in the form of snow. The May 1st snow survey showed about 140 percent of normal snow pack in the high sierra here. This snow is critical to agriculture in the great central valley where much food is grown for our nation. Of course, while the water is here it contributes greatly to Yosemite's beauty. The Park Service can't do everything that's needed to be done here in Yosemite, so we have partner groups that help us out in a number of ways. Moose Mutlow -- yes, that's his name -- is a multi-talented man who works for our environmental education partner, Yosemite Institute. The institute is a non-profit organization that provides week-long environmental education classes to thousands of students every year. I began my interview with Moose by asking him what he did for the institute.
MR. MUTLOW: Right now I'm a compliance and planning specialist with the Yosemite Institute.
RANGER RONEY: What exactly is that?
MR. MUTLOW: I'm actually in charge of the Environmental Impact Statement for the new environmental education campus.
RANGER RONEY: And that involves doing what?
MR. MUTLOW: It's a lot of paperwork, bureaucracy, sitting behind desks. I do a lot of phone calls, meetings, shuffling paper, more meetings, phone calls.
RANGER RONEY: Sounds like a really interesting job.
MR. MUTLOW: Oh, fascinating. Unbelievably fascinating. (Laughter).
RANGER RONEY: Is it fun for you to do this?
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah, it is actually. It's interesting to look at what the park has to deal with in order to guard the resource as far as trying to be ethical and developmental.
RANGER RONEY: When you're not working on the Environmental Impact Statements and things like that, what do you like to do around here?
MR. MUTLOW: I do a little bit of boating. Little bit of climbing. Lot of fishing. Lot of sitting like this on the log just feeling the sun on my back. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world.
RANGER RONEY: Feels great; doesn't it?
MR. MUTLOW: It's easily the best feeling.
RANGER RONEY: I notice you have an accent. Can you tell us where you're from?
MR. MUTLOW: I'm originally from the industrial heartland of England, so Birmingham.
RANGER RONEY: Birmingham.
MR. MUTLOW: Right in the middle. Birmingham. (Using correct pronunciation) Not Birmingham. Birmingham.
RANGER RONEY: Birmingham.
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah. Brill mate, it's great where I come from. They all talk like this.
RANGER RONEY: Is that right?
MR. MUTLOW: It's really, really nice.
RANGER RONEY: Nice. It's great.
MR. MUTLOW: It's great.
RANGER RONEY: It's bloody great. Well, how does a person from Birmingham find themselves in Yosemite?
MR. MUTLOW: I used to be a wilderness guide working all over the states and other countries. And I just got an opportunity to become an education director in one of the campuses of Yosemite National Institutes. And ended up being lucky enough to being based up in the Olympia National Park. And then as I sort of progressed in the organization, I got a chance to come down here and be the education director down here. So it's here in that position for three years.
RANGER RONEY: My recollection of when you were here before, you decided it was time to leave because you didn't want to spend a whole lot of time in any one place. And yet you have come back after a very brief disappearance. So tell me about that.
MR. MUTLOW: After three years of being education director -- it's an intense job. You're kind of on all the time and a lot of responsibility. And I'd made the decision I couldn't do it at the level I wanted to. Genuinely do it at the level I wanted to much beyond that three years. And made the decision to leave Yosemite. And I had only came to Yosemite because of the job. I didn't come because of the place. And then finally enough within three months of leaving I got another offer and jumped at it and came back. And came back in an executive function essentially working on the planning process. So I don’t do any programming. And it's an extraordinary place.
RANGER RONEY: That's what I'd like to hear you talk about a little more. I mean, you said you came here and not because of the place but because of the job. Did you know anything about Yosemite when you first came here?
MR. MUTLOW: Uhm, not really. My first visit, there was a staff retreat down here. And I came in and I drove -- was driven down into the valley from the north side, and you start to get an inkling about what you're coming into. And I'd seen it in books and magazines and hadn't really understood what an impact it would have. I mean, it's an amazing site to come around and just get glimpses and glimpses and then finally get down in the valley and see El Cap and the waterfalls and the river. It's an amazing setting. And I've been to a lot of places. I think there are definitely wilder places that I've been and I've loved, but there's something that -- times that you can't quite put your finger on it about Yosemite. Every time you think you're going to go and find another opportunity something made you stay. I think it's the place. (Laughter).
RANGER RONEY: Come for the job, stay for the place.
MR. MUTLOW: It kind of is. I mean, it's, uh -- it's kind of funny. It's like the silly season right now. All the visitors are coming back. There are people whipping by on bicycles. There are people stopping at really alarming places on the road. Each day I drive in the valley -- I come from the south -- and as you come through the Wawona Tunnel, there's this magnificent view opens up. And it's just been restored to the original historical view from the 1920's I believe. And you kind of have to back off vehicles now because about -- you have to be well behind them because as they come through, they tend to swerve across the road because this view just, boom! it opens up out of nowhere. And it's stunning. It's an amazing vista.
RANGER RONEY: Your plans for the future? When this job ends, you going to move on?
MR. MUTLOW: I think so. I mean, I think Yosemite's always going to be here. I can always come back to Yosemite. And there's a very -- there's an interesting cross culture of people that are here. There's a beautiful and wide range of interests and backgrounds who will share their sort of vision of Yosemite and what Yosemite is. And it's more a state of mind sometimes.
(Music)
A VISITOR: Oh, Grammy --
A VISITOR: Look at that! Isn't that beautiful!
A VISITOR: Grandma's idea of heaven is right here.
A VISITOR: Oh, it's just beautiful. I was wondering how deep it actually is because the water so clear, you can just see to the bottom.
A VISITOR: My name is Asi. I'm from Japan. I have never seen such a great site. That's all.
A VISITOR: It's beautiful.
A VISITOR: The rumbling and the noise and the motion and energy.
A VISITOR: It's awesome!
A VISITOR: So exciting. Fresh. You know, it's just --
A VISITOR: How minuscule you really are. I mean, it's part of nature. It's just -- and then you even feel like an adrenaline flow just observing it. Just being there.
A VISITOR: -- gaga all day.
A VISITOR: Just like there's so much anger when it's comin' over.
A VISITOR: It's like it has a lot of --
A VISITOR: Merced River right now? Gosh, it's icy cold.
A VISITOR: Uh, I put my feet in the water and I tried to keep them in as long as I could but it hurts.
A VISITOR: It's pretty cold but very, very, very refreshing.
A VISITOR: Nice. We need the water.
A VISITOR: I put my hands in the water and it felt wonderful. It was very refreshing.
A VISITOR: We're from Texas, so everywhere we look we're just -- it's so beautiful.
A VISITOR: Fresh.
A VISITOR: Magnificent. Breath-taking. I'm sorry my wife isn't here.
A VISITOR: Gorgeous.
A VISITOR: Wonder. Makes you wonder how, you know, how it came to be.
A VISITOR: I think it was really, really pretty.
A VISITOR: And refreshing and spiritual.
A VISITOR: Makes you wonder about the power behind, you know, behind all this.
A VISITOR: It's very soothing.
A VISITOR: I like the water. It's, like, so clean looking and beautiful. It's refreshing just to look at it. Makes me relax.
A VISITOR: This environment makes me comfortable.
A VISITOR: Well, just a small, small, smaller person in the big, bigger things, and it's been a very good experience.
(foreign language)
A VISITOR: It soothes my nerves.
RANGER RONEY: It smoothes your nerves.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
A VISITOR: The sound.
(Trickling water)
RANGER RONEY: No matter what language people speak, water holds a special place within us all. We need it for our bodies to survive. We love to get in it, float on it or just watch it move in that wonderful way it ripples and roars. Or, stands perfectly still reflecting the landscape. For some, water is beauty. For some, water is sacred. But no matter what language you speak, water can pose great danger.
(Trickling water)
(Music)
MR. MUTLOW: There seems to be something about water in whatever environment you're in that people absolutely underestimate how quickly things can go wrong. We deal with families launching in areas that are closed in the valley a lot. And they'll sit there and be quite incensed that we pulled them off the water. And yet we consistently go to a couple of areas and we're always pulling people off of those areas where they've wrecked in their rafts and getting stuck and hung up on timber. And they're just irate that their raft is broken. They don't look at it as, wow, I could have died here.
RANGER RONEY: Moose Mutlow grew up in England but has lived here in Yosemite for five or six years. He makes his living with the Yosemite Institute, an education partner. But he is also a member of the Yosemite Swift-Water Rescue Team.
MR. MUTLOW: "The way this is going to work is, Moses, you're going to be the IC. There's going to be a scenario on the island and there's going to be scenario in the creek. There's triage that goes on with this. You've got three victims. And you're going to have a clock on them."
We spend a few days each year with Search and Rescue running over different techniques that we use in potentially rescuing people. For the most part what we end up doing with the Swift Water Team is recovery. It's essentially you prepare for the best option which is that somebody is alive but the reality is for the most part we're doing body recovery.
RANGER RONEY: That's a pretty sad way to end a vacation.
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah, I don't think anybody expects to come to the park and have a one-way ticket.
RANGER RONEY: What are the factors involved?
MR. MUTLOW: It's the speed of the water. The steepness of the drainage. Massive boulders with flow, not just around them but underneath them. Large amount of timber in there. And it's incredibly aerated. What you see is the surface. The white water is a mixture of air and water. It has less buoyancy so people float below that. Even with a flotation device.
RANGER RONEY: So, essentially, there's just no way you can float on top of the bubbles?
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah. You're underneath and so you're going to be fighting to find the surface. And when you finally find the surface, you're not necessarily in a safe swim position. You're normally straight up and down like you were standing. You're fighting to get to the surface. And what that does is exposes the whole area below your waist of getting hit or pinned by rocks. And so typically you'll hear about people getting foot or leg entrapments. Or they'll sustain a head shot in which case they'll lose consciousness and then they're in a position where they can't be fighting for air.
RANGER RONEY: We have people drowning in the river where it's essentially flat.
MR. MUTLOW: And a lot of times that you see where people are going in, it's the coldness of the water. That people aren't ready for that snow melt. The coldness of the water gives them a shock and (gasp) they breathe in sharply and at that point actually aspirate water, actually bring water into their lungs. And then they're fighting to get rid of that water. They're coughing, they're sputtering and they're not able to focus. Should be looking after themselves in the water and as a result it's a pretty fast end. And so to think about a child going in who hasn't got the experience that the rescuers have in and around
this park, and actually float differently -- children float head down. They're weight is up in the their head. And so they're fighting to get their heads above the water. That would be a terrifying event.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: There are incidents that have happy endings. And, in fact, some can be a bit comical when people realize they've done something pretty foolish.
MR. MUTLOW: There are two rescues that I can think of now. There's a classic area up in Mirror Lake where people jump off the shore. You know, they're able to get a little bit of speed up and they're able to sort of take a running jump and they can land on a boulder. Well, they're on the boulder with the water ripping by them and they turn around and they realize that the only thing that got them out there was this two or three steps beforehand to get the momentum up to be able to jump up on it. Well, they're now standing on a rock that's the size of -- the top, it's dinner plate. And they can't get the momentum to jump back. And they just have to sit there until we go and get them. And that's one that sorta comes to mind. There's always a fairly sheepish individual sitting on there who's relieved to see us and understands it probably wasn't the best decision. Or the other one I think about is people launching with inadequate gear when they go rafting and it's super cold and they fall in and they get out on an island and they know they don't want to go back in the water again and they know they don't want to get back in their boat again, if they have their boat with them, because they're scared. And you go out and swim out and get them and the first thing say, you know, you look at them and you say, how you feeling right now? And they're like, I'm a little embarrassed. And cold. And it's better to be embarrassed and cold because they didn't get back in the water, but they should never have gotten themselves in that position in the first place.
RANGER RONEY: Embarrassed and cold is better than --
MR. MUTLOW: Dead and cold. Yeah. Up until last year, I said most people who had accidents, it was either stupidity or bad luck or a combination of the two. And last year we had a drowning that sort of like flipped it a little bit and put it otherwise. Sort of ignorance. People don't just get the power of nature and what's going on around them. That they want to touch or they want to be close to it. And they have no idea that there's not a safety piece that actually keeps them back. And that's what happened to a young man last year. I don't think he had any reference point that what he was doing would ultimately lead to his death.
RANGER RONEY: What was he doing?
MR. MUTLOW: He was putting his hand in the water to feel how cold it was.
RANGER RONEY: That's all?
MR. MUTLOW: Pretty much. He bent down to touch the water and 300 feet, a hundred meters later he was stuck under a rock and gone. This isn't Disney World. This isn't a ride that you just punch a ticket and ride around and you expect to get off at the end because that's the way theme parks work. We're not a theme park. This is, this is a wild place and wild places live by a different set of rules. A much more profound set of rules.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: More than 200 people have either drowned or gone over waterfalls since 1870. And certainly more people died in prehistoric times.
MR. MUTLOW: We get pulses of drownings. We had one last year. We have had higher numbers, five and seven in other years. The demographic is typically young males out on rocks in places they shouldn't be with bravado and invincibility. And 99.9 percent of the time they don't even think about it and have a great story. But the other point one is absolute heartbreak and a family will never get over it because it was absolutely pointless.
RANGER RONEY: Geez.
MR. MUTLOW: I think about a young man who went off the top of Yosemite Falls who was posing for photographs. And the first photograph gets taken and he's pretending to fall off the edge. And his buddy says, hey, you know, let's do another one, make it more realistic. And he went off the edge as that photograph was being taken. It's an interesting thing because I think if you had -- if you drew a comparison with would people stand right next to a interstate, would they stand so close that they could be hit by the mirrors of the vehicles going by, they would say no. And if you -- would stand right on the edge of a cliff that was a thousand feet? No. But if you put them next to a river moving at 20 miles an hour and the snow melt and infinitely more powerful than they could ever be, people don't have the same buffer in their sort of consciousness of saying, hey, this might be a dangerous thing to be doing. And that's where people pay for it.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Those of us here in Yosemite want people to have a great time. And nothing could be worse or sadder than a family losing a loved one. One moment they're experiencing joy and the next they're in the depths of grief. Moose has one last story that tells it all.
(Music)
MR. MUTLOW: There's, there was a drowning near Mirror Lake. And if you look at that water, it's a very narrow stream. It's funneled through a pretty defined area to two big rocks. And a young man was just clambering around on the rock. He was -- him and his buddy had come to the park with his buddy's family and they were going to climb on the rocks and look at the water. And there's actually a video, the family is shooting a video. And you see his buddy get up on the rock and sort of scramble up. And he struggles to do that, so he goes around the corner. And he maybe goes out 12 feet to the left of where his buddy was. And he looks back at the camera and he's smiling. And then he goes to climb up on the rock and he loses his footing and he falls in the water. And the last shot as they're sort of realizing something is going wrong, is him so tantalizing close to the shore. And you see him reach out. And it's a matter of inches. And he's just swept away. And he went maybe less than a hundred feet and got pinned and drowned. And I think about that one a lot because that young man had absolutely no idea that his little bit of very innocent exploration at the water's edge was going to have that horrible consequence. And he -- yeah, I think anybody who was there who would have seen that it would have affected them deeply. It took us more -- just over a day to get his body out. And when you pull out -- when you're trying to do a body recovery, when you're fighting against the force of water, you have to use an equivalent force or greater to move a body out. And no family member should ever see that child being removed from that situation because it's, it's a very -- it's a disturbing image to see a loved one covered in ropes being pulled to the shore. And it's not -- when you've pulled the person out, it's not the person that they loved. It's a vessel full of water. It's just very sad. Very sad.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Now I can interview you.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. You can tell me all about how much you love these waterfalls.
A VISITOR: It's amazing; isn't it?
RANGER RONEY: So where are you from?
A VISITOR: From London.
RANGER RONEY: London.
A VISITOR: UK.
RANGER RONEY: UK.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: The man who is going to tell us about the bad accidents that he's seen on the rivers here in the valley is from Birmingham.
A VISITOR: Oh, yeah. We used to live in Coventry, all of us. We're a band. And we're on tour here in California.
RANGER RONEY: Oh. Is that right?
A VISITOR: And we went to a music school in Coventry which is about 10 minutes on the train. It's cool.
RANGER RONEY: What's the band name?
A VISITOR: Trip to Dover. My name is Louis Morgan. I play drums.
A VISITOR: My name is Yohanis Stile. I play keys.
A VISITOR: My name is Rob Minechip. I play base.
A VISITOR: My name is Ola Tallis. I sing and I play guitar. So, yeah, I formed the band.
RANGER RONEY: Trip to Dover.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: All right.
A VISITOR: Yeah, yeah.
RANGER RONEY: How long are you in the states?
A VISITOR: For five weeks total.
RANGER RONEY: Five weeks.
A VISITOR: Yeah. We've been here two weeks now. But we've got five days open at the moment. So we allowed -- we got to come and see Yosemite.
RANGER RONEY: It's good place to go.
A VISITOR: Yeah, definitely.
RANGER RONEY: So what do you think so far?
A VISITOR: Yeah, it's amazing.
RANGER RONEY: What kind of feelings do you have when you stand here below this huge waterfall?
A VISITOR: Yeah, I don't really know. It's kind of -- it's quite hard to put into words. It's quite, kind of breath-taking; isn't it, really?
RANGER RONEY: Yeah.
A VISITOR: We were just saying the way the water's falling down, it kind of looks like some animals, or like wolves or dragons or something, trying to, I don't know, get hold of something. Or ghosts or something like that. You know, when you turn the tap on and you see the water falling out, you see just kind of this clear stream where it's like this. There's just so much, I don't know, there's so much more to it, isn't there?
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. So, maybe you should write a song about it.
A VISITOR: Maybe. It's certainly an inspiring place.
RANGER RONEY: Oh, yeah. So how much of the park have you seen? Did you just enter?
A VISITOR: Yeah, we got here about two hours ago, I think. But we keep stopping on the road every five minutes to take pictures and uhm, have a look at things, so.
RANGER RONEY: What do you think?
A VISITOR: About this place?
RANGER RONEY: Yes.
A VISITOR: Yeah, it's really cool. I was just saying earlier like, it's really, you can't really capture it. Like, you can't really take a picture of it. Or, like, you can't even movie it and, like, show it at home because, like, it affects all your senses, if that makes sense. So like, you can see -- you see it. Like, we see the water falling. You also can smell, like the water in the air. And you can hear it falling. And you can like, feel the water on your skin. And you can taste it, if you know what I mean. So it's like, all senses are really kind of busy taking everything in. So you really have to come here, I think, to actually experience what it is. That's really cool.
RANGER RONEY: Puts a spell on you.
A VISITOR: It does, yeah.
A VISITOR: Yeah. I would say like an understanding of an understanding or something. Like, you learn in the school so you know it's just snow melts, then water falls down and then it just comes down in the end. And it all makes sense and you have this scientific model and, you know exactly how it works. But then you see it and it's like, surely the water must run out in an hour or something and it doesn't.
A VISITOR: Yeah, just amazing how when the water hits the rocks it turns into mist because it's hitting at such a high velocity that it seems to turn into mist.
RANGER RONEY: One of the things about this waterfall is -- they have all their own character. And this one tends to be really smoky feel to it.
A VISITOR: Yeah. There's another one over there.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. That's Ribbon Fall. It is 1,600 feet high.
A VISITOR: Wow. How much is this one?
RANGER RONEY: It's about 600. So imagine a thousand feet higher.
A VISITOR: Oh, wow.
RANGER RONEY: All right. Trip to Dover.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: All right. Have a great stay here.
A VISITOR: We will. Cool.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Well, that's it for today's Yosemite Voices. Watch for our next podcast. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. It'll be interesting and informative. And best of all, it'll be about your favorite place and mine, Yosemite National Park. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, either through the National Park Service website or at the iTunes Store. So until next time, remember, Yosemite is your national park. We'll take care of things here until your return.
So long. I'm Ranger Bob Roney.
(END)
Episode 4: Winter in Yosemite
We talk with Tom Medema, the coach of the Yosemite Winter Club ski team about the tradition of winter activities in his family, Yosemite, and the central Sierra. He also talks about his perspective on family living in the small community of Yosemite residents.
Podcasting from Yosemite National Park on this cold and stormy March 31st, 2010. It's Yosemite Voices.
(Music)
We found a family ski racing challenge where, where you could race as a team with your mom.
(Laughter)
For kids to feel safe, to be able to venture outside. Uhm, their biggest concern is a mountain lion, you know, as opposed to a lot of other things that they could find living elsewhere.
(Music)
Yosemite Voices is a series of audio podcasts intended to provide insights into the natural and cultural history and management of Yosemite National Park. We also explore the lives of lifestyles of the people who live and work here.
(Music/Singing)
"Spent the day at Badger Pass skiing on a track. My nose got red, my feet got cold. I laughed and I skied back. Tonight I'll light the fire and sing with my friends. Singing keeps me warm when a winter day ends, when a winter dayends."
Hi. I'm Ranger Bob Roney. That was our local high school teacher, Gail Dreyfus, singing "When a Winter Day Ends." Yeah, I know, the calendar says the spring equinox was two Saturdays ago. But it snowed here this morning. And children are making snow angels and building snowmen. Yosemite is in the mountains. And the mountains make their own seasons. If you drive up here from the West on any of the three roads currently open into the park, you'll pass through fields of grass with splashes of color on the foothills. Spring is just beginning to climb the mountains, and that's what it does. It'll continue climbing the mountains until the snow at the highest elevations in the park finally melts in the middle of what the calendar calls Summer. Yosemite usually gets snowstorms in April and sometimes it snows in may. Most people don't know this and they come unprepared for winter driving. Right now, tire chains are required on Highways 41 and 120 into the park. That's why I wanted a segment about tire chains.
(The sound of tires crunching on snow-covered roads)
RANGER GARDNER: How's it going? Is this a four-wheel all-drive vehicle?
TOURIST: It is.
RANGER GARDNER: It is. Do you have good mud and snow tires?
TOURIST: I do.
RANGER GARDNER: And do you have chains in the back?
TOURIST: I do.
RANGER GARDNER: Okay. The speed limit is 25. Drive safe.
TOURIST: Okay.
RANGER GARDNER: My name is Jeff Gardner. I'm a law enforcement ranger. I work in Wawona District. I have a four-wheel drive truck. I've owned chains for three years that cost me sixty bucks. I've never put them on. I'll have them for another fifteen. May never have to put them on.
RANGER RONEY: It seems like a pretty cheap insurance policy in the snow. I think the most expensive chains I've seen are, like, $110. And most of the time you can get cables, which work just fine, for sixty.
RANGER GARDNER: Yes. The chain installer today was going to sell individual chains for about 125.
RANGER RONEY: So the, the R controls, what is the meaning of the numbers?
RANGER GARDNER: For R-1, the designation means that if you're in a two-wheel drive vehicle and you do not have mud and snow tires, then you're required to have chains on. Any type of vehicle better than that is fine. Uhm, for R-2 conditions, if you're a four-wheel drive vehicle in four-wheel drive, then you're fine. Any vehicle less than that in terms of your two-wheel drive, then you have to have chains. If you're a four-wheel drive vehicle and you do not have mud and snow tires, then you have to have your chains on. And then R-3 conditions, there's no exceptions. So all vehicles types have to have their chains installed. Even if you have a vehicle that is fine for the current road conditions, should they get worse, you have to have the ability to put your chains on. And if you don't own them, then you don't have the ability. And so if a storm comes in and you're stuck, then I'm going to make you stay there. And then we'll figure out a way to ferry the people out but the vehicle has to stay. I had the same vehicle in two accidents two days in a row. So the first one, he came around a curve, uhm -- I mean, I can't really prove his speed but I believe he came around too fast for the conditions. He was a four-wheel drive vehicle. He did not have chains on him. And he fish-tailed in the middle of the turn. And when he recovered, he ended up running the side of his vehicle into the oncoming vehicle in the opposite lane. And so they impacted and hit. His side, his side impact bags opened up. When I got there, our first thing was to move them off the road to get them to a safe spot which can be difficult based on where it happens in the roadway. Then he went on his way. The next day the weather got worse. And then it changed to R-3. So by the time he would have come out of the valley, it would be R-3 with no exceptions. So when I found him in the bank by about a foot or two feet stuck in the bank, he should of had chains on and he didn't. I already had chains on my rear tires. I put chains on all four tires. I hooked up a tow cable to him and I had to drag him 200 feet to a flat spot. So then I had him install his chains, which at the time he'd owned a previous Ford Explorer and they worked on that truck but he had never checked them on his new vehicle. And I talked to him about that the day before. And so when I left him, I left him still installing his chains which were difficult. And I issued him a citation for failure to comply with traffic control device which is requiring chains.
RANGER RONEY: When you came upon him the second time, he's got to be embarrassed. What did he say?
RANGER GARDNER: When I asked him for his ID to work on issuing the citation, he's like, "Don't you remember me?" And I said, "Yes, I remember you. I just don't have the paperwork from the previous accident."
(You've planned this trip for weeks, driven for hours and finally you've made it to Yosemite. Your pulse quickens at the site of snow on the mountain.)
(Sound of car crashing)
(Ending a vacation prematurely is a sad thing. Don't waste time by going too fast.)
RANGER RONEY: You know, National Park Service employees just don't work. They also have lives of their own. My boss, Tom Medema, is no exception. And even though he was recently promoted to Chief of Interpretation and Education for the Park Service, Tom is a husband, a father, an athlete, a coach. Yes, coach of the Yosemite Winter Club Ski Team. And it's in that capacity that I'd like to help you get to know Tom. The story picks up at the awards banquet for the Yosemite Winter Club's Silver skis Ski Race where children from all over the Central Sierra compete.
(So welcome everybody to Yosemite National Park. What an amazing place to have a ski race; yeah?)
(Cheering)
RANGER MEDEMA: Well, my name is Tom Medema and I am currently the vice president of the Yosemite Winter Club which is a club that's been in existence since 1928 promoting winter sports in Yosemite and the region. And I've been the vice president of the Winter Club for, I guess, three or four years now and also longer than that have been head coach of the Yosemite Ski Team.
(Sounds of skiing)
(All right Hey! Hey! Great job! Great job today!)
RANGER MEDEMA: The Yosemite Ski Team has been around since the 1940's, back in the day when Leroy "Rusty" Rust ("How many of you know of Rusty Rust?") one of the early ski pioneers in Yosemite, one of the early ski instructors, formed the ski team. ("Rusty coached here in Yosemite for decade after decade.") They were referred to then as Rusty's Crappy Kids. ("-- hundreds and hundreds of racers throughout the course of time.") They used to race here and throughout the sierra. ("-- kind of a proud heritage to be part of what Rusty started way back before many areas anywhere in the country had race teams.") And the ski team's been in different forms since the 1940's. It's been up; it's been down, down like most things. It's been really big and really small. And we've been kind of seeing a resurgence and over the last six or seven years with the ski team growing again to almost 30 kids.
RANGER RONEY: Had you coached a team before?
RANGER MEDEMA: Yeah, yeah. I've been coaching for a long time. I grew up racing in Michigan with my brothers and my family and coached back there when I was in college. I coached most local high school teams there. And then got out here. And the year or two after we got here the ski team needed a coach and that was a great opportunity to jump back in and do what I love. It's a volunteer position. I get to, you know, work at Badger Pass and help the kids. We host a race every year. The Silver Ski Race we host. So all the things, the practice, the training, schlepping gates around, drilling holes in the snow, you know, putting gates in, keeping them up and helping the kids out, I mean, it's just all part of the deal, and it's just a lot of fun.
RANGER RONEY: You say it's fun but sounds like a lot of work to me. What's that all about?
RANGER MEDEMA: You know, for me, family's, you know, one of the most important things there is. And ski racing and competition are one of those things that I grew up in with my family and it was a tradition with my parents to spend our weekends together. Uhm, to wax skis together. To load the car together and head up the mountain together. Uhm, you know, we celebrated our races together, we celebrated our crashes together. Uh, you know, it was just a tremendous opportunity for our family to grow and bond with each other. And that's something that I can find volunteering, you know, to coach my own kids. And my wife volunteers for the Winter Club as well. That we're all together on the weekends. And we're not going our separate ways and doing our own things. We spend our time waxing skis and traveling up to the ski area and hauling gear back and forth, and on the hill together and celebrating the kids when they win medals and helping them out when they crash and burn. That's -- you know, that's part of the deal. So it definitely, you know, keeps our family strong and carries on those traditions that I had as a kid and hopefully my kids will coach their kids, you know, and that tradition will continue when they're older as well.
RANGER RONEY: So, how did that family tradition get started?
RANGER MEDEMA: My own personal racing history is with -- well, my parents both decided to race. Even though they were both older and weren't that -- they saw that the kids were racing well and we found a family ski racing challenge where you could race as a team with your mom. Or with your dad. You could race brother/brother, father/son, mother/son, mother/daughter. And so we entered this competition and we actually, you know, we won with my mom who had never raced before and didn't really care to but she wanted to anyways so that she could be part of the whole thing. You know, I can remember racing together with them. That sticks out the most is when my parents actually decided to strap on the race skis and do it themselves and join the fun. That was an amazing time. And my own kids being able to find their success in the -- probably the first time they ever got a trophy, you know, ski racing, just seeing them on the podium and, you know, what it meant to them and how proud they were. And they knew that it was part of a tradition. You know, even though they're only seven, eight years old, they've seen us race, they've seen the pictures at home, you know, on the walls of my brothers and I and our trophies. And, you know, so they get the meaning of the tradition for the family.
("I got third!)
RANGER RONEY: Can you tell me a little bit about what you like about skiing here?
A SKIER: I love to go fast and I love to hit the gates.
A SKIER: You get to race and get a chance at a medal. It's just really fun.
RANGER RONEY: What do you love about it?
A SKIER: Everything, really. Just, like, being coached and getting better every day and going fast. It's all just really fun.
A SKIER: I just like to ski because when you're going really fast down that hill, it's a pretty good feeling when you got that adrenaline pumping. Especially when you're going, like, 30 or 40 miles an hour.
RANGER RONEY: Geez.
A SKIER: It's pretty cool.
A SKIER: I like to race on the song verses because you go like -- it's really, really fast.
CHILD MEDEMA: I like it because my dad, when he grew up, he was always skiing with his brothers and now he's a coach of the ski team. And so I learned how to ski when I was really young and now I just -- I really like it. And winter is my favorite season.
RANGER MEDEMA: The fun of winter is just one of those things. It's one of the reasons I will always live in an area that has the winter season. You know, I've lived in Washington and Michigan and Ohio and California. I'll always have to have access to that.
RANGER RONEY: Your father is a ski coach.
CHILD MEDEMA: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: What do you think of him as a coach?
CHILD MEDEMA: Uhm, well, sometimes it's hard to listen to his directions because he's my dad.
RANGER MEDEMA: It's not easy to coach your own kids. Anybody out there who's a coach knows it's much easier to coach other people's kids than to coach your own.
CHILD MEDEMA: But, uhm, he gives me really good advice and I just, I try to listen as much as I can. But sometimes it's hard.
RANGER RONEY: What makes it hard?
RANGER MEDEMA: Because you're coaching them at home every day and they don't want to hear it.
CHILD MEDEMA: Well, it's because he's my dad and he's always, like, he's always been telling me how to do things and so it's just kind of different. Cuz you feel like, like you're different than everyone else.
RANGER RONEY: Does he treat you different than everybody else on the team?
CHILD MEDEMA: No. He doesn't. But he pushes me and my brother really hard because he wants us to grow up and be good skiers. Just like he skied all through, like, college he raced. And so he wants us to do the same. And I think it would be really fun.
RANGER MEDEMA: That feeling of seeing them up there, and feeling, you know, seeing the joy in their face of having achieved that and accomplished that on their own, uhm, you know, that's a special moment for sure. And there's a lot of pride involved. You know, these winter sports are contagious. And it's different. It's fun. There's almost a little bit of, kind of a survival element to winter sports because you've got to deal with the elements. It's not just going out and playing beach volleyball or going out and playing soccer on a nice green field. I think that a lot of our other sports don't quite have that same dynamic. And that adds a really special element to almost, like I said, a survival element to these winter sports that make them even more challenging.
RANGER RONEY: How do you think people from the warmer climates might relate to winter sports?
RANGER MEDEMA: I think people from warmer climates, you know, I see them come up to Yosemite all the time. What's the first thing they do? They start throwing snow at each other. You know, it's the first thing they do. There are snowmen from here all the way to Badger Pass right now because people that come up from LA or the Bay area, the first they do is want to get out a build a snowman. They want to get in the snow. So I think that that special relationship with snow that people who live in winter climates have is something that everybody can appreciate no matter where they're from.
RANGER RONEY: You seem really dialed in to sports. Any particular reason?
RANGER MEDEMA: Well, for me it's, you know, health is one of the biggest parts of it, it's just a healthy lifestyle. I mean, I grew up, you know, cycling and playing tennis with my parents. And, you know, I still -- we still ride a lot. My dad, my son and I just did a week-long tour of Colorado together, three generations. So for me sports is really about healthy living. And then the competition I love too. I mean, I love competing. I loved competing against my brothers. We used to race on the weekends. And we race in a program called NASTAR. And you could keep making runs. As long as you paid a buck, you could make another one and another one. And we would go back and forth. You know, my brother Chris would beat me and so I'd have to pay a buck and go do another run. And then I'd beat him and he'd go back up with his buck and again and again and again, 10, 12, 13 runs, just back and forth, back and forth. And, you know, it's just fun.
RANGER RONEY: That's great for you. But tell me what do you think is in it for the kids?
RANGER MEDEMA: That's a great question. I mean, I think kids love competition. You know, you see it on the school playgrounds. You know, you see it on the fields with how many kids are playing soccer now and doing all these other things. They love to compete with their friends. You know, this Saturday, for example, we set up dual slalom course where the kids could run side by side and just race each other head to head. No clock. Just whoever gets to the finish line first. It was the most fun we've had this whole year. Why is that? You know, why is it that all of a sudden you put them side by side against each other and they're "I want to go against you." "Let's go against you." "Let's go again." "Let's switch courses." Let's -- you know, they just loved it.
RANGER RONEY: That's great. Speaking of switching courses, I'd like to switch courses now and ask you about your perspective on family life here in Yosemite.
RANGER MEDEMA: Family life in Yosemite is fantastic. It's one of those environments where you have so much support. You know, in a national park like this where you're living rurally with many other park employees and their families so you make a lot of friends fast. And it's a community that just takes care of each other. And the small communities here of the valley, Wawona, and El Portal and the others, these are areas where people, a lot of people of like minds come to live and to work. And so you do find good friendships there. You find a lot of opportunities to recreate with your friends in a place like this. We've had limited cable for a long time and there's a lot of homes that don't have TVs in them. So you just find yourself spending a lot more time outside. The kids that come out of living in a place like Yosemite are really well rounded. They tend to be more active politically than a lot of kids that I've, you know, run into in a lot of other places. So it's really, uh, to me, it's idyllic. It's an idyllic kind of setting for families, for kids to feel safe, to be able to venture outside. Their biggest concern is a mountain lion, you know, as opposed to a lot of others things that they could find living elsewhere.
RANGER RONEY: Seems like a lot of danger here that most people in other areas don't even have to deal with.
RANGER MEDEMA: Yeah. I mean, it's one of those, you know, one of those things that you can't really understand until you experience, you know, what it feels like to live in an area where there are lions and there are bears and that's where your kids are playing outside. And they're going to play outside. You're going to allow them to do that. And the kids have an understanding of what that means. They understand, you know, that they're in a lion habitat and that lions have a right to be there. And that they're out there hunting raccoons and small deer and things like that. They're not hunting kids. But they have to be aware. They have to be careful. They have to understand, you know, what the consequences are. And it adds a whole other element to their outdoor play. And so as parents, you're very aware, you know, that where you live is inherent with natural risk. You love that. You know love living in a place that has wild animals like mountain lions, that has raging rivers like the Merced, the Tuolumne. But also teaching kids that healthy respect for the environment and taking care of themselves while they're out there. And the kids become very self sufficient. And I know a story of one young lady here who went to college and she hiked all the way from Yosemite to Evergreen College up in Olympia, Washington on the Pacific Crest Trail. I mean, there just aren't kids coming out of a lot of places that are going to, you know, throw their backpack on and walk to school two states away. You know.
RANGER RONEY: It's that whole thing about when I was your age, I walked to school two miles uphill both ways.
RANGER GARDNER: That's right. So this young lady's going to have the true story that, you know, she walked a thousand miles to school. Only once. But, you know, that's just the way that kids coming out of Yosemite have that connection to the environment that they just don't get in a lot of places. The schools are very small and so we have small class sizes. Our local elementary school is about fifty kids, K through 6. Yosemite High School has about six kids in it right now this year. So it's very much an alternative kind of experience. Again, the academics, of course, are great. But the athletics too, you know, the things that we do with the Winter Club, with the Yosemite Ski Team, with the youth hockey program, there's a figure skating program in the valley. So even though they don't have some of those traditional sports, you know, basketball, football, things like that in the local schools, the Winter Club and the wintertime here in Yosemite provides exceptional opportunities for them to have outlets in sports and athletics that a lot of kids don't get in a more traditional school setting. So I think there's a lot of advantages to living here and to being a student here. And to being a student here in the wintertime.
(Sounds of skiing)
"Life in Yosemite makes me want to sing. But I look forward to wildflowers, the first sign of spring. Tonight I'll light the fire and sing with my friends. Singing keeps me warm when a winter day ends. When a winter day ends."
(Clapping)
"All right. Good night, everybody. Thank you.”
RANGER RONEY: Well, that's it for today. More Yosemite Voices podcasts are available either at the iTunes store or at the Yosemite National Park website, www.nps.gov/yose. Look for "Photos and Multi-media." Click on that and navigate to Yosemite Voices. You'll also find other media there including a video podcast series called "Nature Notes." Until next time, remember, Yosemite is your National Park. We'll stay here and take care of the place until you return.
(Music)
(END)
Episode 3: Scenic Vistas
When Yosemite Valley was originally set aside in 1864, it was mostly wide-open scenery with few trees and shrubs. Now the valley contains mostly coniferous forests. This podcast discusses the inspiring scenery of Yosemite and brings to light the changing nature of what can be seen from various viewpoints. This episode further discusses some of the ideas regarding the development of a Scenic Vista Management Plan.
Ranger Bob Roney: Podcasting from Yosemite Valley - It’s Yosemite Voices.
BIRD SONG
THEME MUSIC
FROGS CHORUSING
Man: Vista would be view. Spectacular, beautiful, awesome
Man 2: Hermosa (Spanish)
Man: Hermosa
MUSIC CONTINUES
Man 3: You know people started waving the red flag and saying, “Hey wait a minute. What’s happening to views here? You can’t see anything all we have here are…
MUSIC CONTINES
Woman: We are hoping to hear from the public, and there’s a lot of ways people can reach us and let us know what they’re thinking…
MUSIC CONTINES
THUNDER
Ranger Roney: Yosemite Voices is a series of audio podcasts intended to provide insights into the natural and cultural history and management of Yosemite National Park. We also explore the lives of and lifestyles of the people who live and work here.
MUSIC ENDS
WIND IN TREES
Ranger Roney: Welcome to Yosemite Voices. It’s Tuesday afternoon on the tenth of February and I’m standing here at Tunnel View looking at an incredible view of Yosemite Valley. This is the viewpoint below the tunnel along the Wawona Road, which enters the valley from the south. It’s been a beautiful day here. The trees are still holding the snow that fell yesterday. The stern face of El Capitan stands on left side of this incredible vista. On the Right, Bridalveil Fall spills lazily from its hanging valley. In the distance Clouds Rest, rising to nearly ten thousand feet is clothed in snow. Yosemite’s signature icon, Half Dome, also capped with snow, sits to the right of Clouds Rest. From here, I can also see Sentinel Rock, Sentinel Dome, Cathedral Rocks, and Leaning Tower. Dappled sunlight floats across the scene as clouds drift across the sky. This view is spectacular! Today we’re going to talk about views, how they’ve changed, and what we’ve done over the years to maintain them. Some people call this inspiration point. It’s the most recent of a line of inspiration points that began high up on the mountain behind me. Historically, the first Inspiration Point was along a trail up there. When the wagon road was built back in the eighteen seventies, Inspiration Point moved down the mountain with the road and the original appeared on the maps as Old Inspiration Point. Tunnel View is now the “inspiration point” on the route into the valley. A civilian militia called the Mariposa Battalion entered the valley near here on an expedition to rid this part of the sierra of Indians. Among those first non- Indians was a man named Lafayette Bunnell. He wrote of his first experience upon looking into Yosemite Valley from near here.
None but those who have visited this most wonderful valley can even imagine the feelings with which I looked upon the view that was there presented. The grandeur of the scene was but softened by the haze that hung over the valley, —light as gossamer—and by the clouds, which partially dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. This obscurity of vision but increased the awe with which I beheld it, and as I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion.
Ever since Bunnell’s first view, millions have been inspired by views of Yosemite. Scenic vistas can be life changing. My first view of Yosemite Valley back in nineteen sixty-seven surely was. About a month ago, as the full moon rose, a life-changing event occurred here. I happened to be standing nearby when it happened.
SWEET HARP MUSIC
Man: We’ve been together for a while now – and I can’t imagine life without you. As I’m for a loss of words. So, will you marry me?
Woman: Yes!
Man: I’d been walking all over the valley looking for a place to propose, and when I saw the moon come up – this was the best place to do it. You can see the entire valley from here, under moonlight.
Ranger Roney: All day long you’re walking around the valley wondering where you were going to do it, when you were going to do it. Were you nervous about it?
Man: Yes. I couldn’t find the right words.
Woman: He kept on shaking his leg. I’m all, why are you so nervous?
Man: I kept trying to find the right words and everything else. They just were not coming.
Ranger Roney: That’s amazing. What did you think was up with him?
Woman: I don’t know. He just seemed really nervous. The leg shaking thing - I’m all – What’s wrong? He’s all – Nothing. I’m fine.
Ranger Roney: Was it romantic?
Woman: Oh yes. With the moon it was perfect.
Ranger Roney: Thank you so much for sharing that moment with us.
Man: No problem
MUSIC CONTINUES
Ranger Roney: Now there’s a very special vista down on the valley floor. I’d like to take you there.
SOUND OF RUSHING RIVER
Ranger Roney: This viewpoint is called Valley View. It’s easy to miss because it’s on the way out of the valley and the view is behind you as you drive by. We’re alongside the Merced River, which makes a lovely foreground to the view and great background sound track. Across the river I see a wide-open meadow lined with conifers. Two massive rocks frame the scene with El Capitan on the left and the Cathedral rocks on the right. Bridal veil drops over the cliff below the cathedral rocks. If I crane my neck to the far left, I can see Ribbon Fall dropping sixteen hundred feet. This vista is more intimate that the vast expanse seen from Tunnel View. I remember when you could see half Dome and Clouds Rest clearly from here. Today I can just make out their shapes through the trees rising above the far end of the meadow across the river. Behind me, there’s a sign indicating the high water line from the Flood we had here in nineteen ninety-seven. That flood affected the view here. In the years following the flood, vegetation grew into a thicket that obstructed the view. Crews cut the vegetation back and once again people can enjoy the view. I want to take you to another vista point further into the valley.
CAR INTERIOR
Right now we’re passing the turnout for the Three Brothers. I can see them playing peek-a-boo through the trees but there is no clear view of them. The Viewpoint I want to tell you about is further up in that turnout with the two large cedar trees in the middle.
EXTERIOR OF CAR ROLLING TO A STOP - CAR DOOR SLAMS –FOOTSTEPS APPROACH
Ranger Roney: Back in the nineteen thirties, the US postal system issued ten stamps celebrating the national parks. The first stamp, was released on July sixteenth nineteen thirty-four. It pictured a view from here. You can easily find a picture of that stamp on the Internet. On that stamp, you can see the entire profile of El Capitan all the way down to the base. A few trees are silhouetted against the massive stone face, but they cover very little of El Capitan. Victoria Mates, one of my colleagues, told me about her experience with this view.
Victoria Mates: One of my duties here has been to Manage and create and install interpretive exhibits. And that includes the wayside exhibits in the park. And after being here for a year…
Ranger Roney: Now the waysides those are the signs that people...
Victoria Mates: Yeah. Those are the ones you see along the side of the road, on the side of the trail. They’re generally about two feet by three feet and at an angle. They generally interpret the scenery that you’re looking at. So one of the qualities of the wayside exhibit is that it helps interpret the place that you’re standing in. and I started to recognize when I started to inventory the waysides that you could no longer see the resource that was being described. For example there’s a pull out on Southside Drive we call the North American Wall Pullout. And there’s an exhibit that interpreted the North American Wall of El Capitan. There were some trees that had grown up and you couldn’t see the North American wall from the wayside. So we made the decision to take the wayside out because it was no longer relevant.
Ranger Roney: You couldn’t move the wayside to another part of the parking area?
Victoria Mates: There weren’t any clear gaps between the trees and beyond that there weren’t just the big trees. There were lots of seedlings and brush and other plants that were growing up in those areas.
GUITAR MUSIC
Ranger Roney: One of the Indians Lafayette Bunnell helped remove from Yosemite Valley was a young girl named Totuya. Totuya was ten or twelve years old at the time. And once taken away by the Mariposa Battalion, she would stay away from her mountain home for over seventy-five years. In the Late nineteen twenties, an old woman named Maria Lebrado Ydrte came to the attention of some ranger naturalists and the museum librarian. As it turned out Maria, who was living in the mountains near Mariposa was in fact To-tu-ya. In nineteen twenty-nine she visited Yosemite Valley for the first time since her childhood. During her stay she commented about the state of the valley. Shaking her head, she said, “Too dirty; too much bushy - Ahwahnee too dirty bushy. To her eyes, the valley had become overgrown with shrubs and trees. At about that time, another woman was visiting Yosemite. And she would not return for fifty years. In the 1970s she approached a young ranger with a question. She asked what had happened to the valley. “Ranger, you can’t see the views. When I was here fifty years ago there were beautiful views of all the rocks and waterfalls. Now you can’t see the views for all the trees!” I was that ranger and I didn’t know what to say. I had only been working here for a few years, and I was totally inspired by the views. I do remember, though, a particular tree along the trail to my tent cabin near Yosemite Village. It was about four feet high, and I remember running home for lunch one day, and in my exuberance, I jumped over it. At the time I thought to myself, “When I have kids, I’ll bring them over here and show them the tree I jumped over. Today that tree is sixty feet tall, and doing its part in hiding the scenery for which this park was originally set aside.
Victoria Mates: Tunnel View is another example of a place that was once a broad sweeping vista and the trees had grown up to obscure the view. And now the trees have been removed so now the view has been restored. It used to be that whenever a tour bus, or a tram, or a large tour group would be congregated in that area, they were all jockeying for the sweet spot. There was one area where you could get the money shot if you were a photographer. It was between some trees. There wasn’t a terribly wide sidewalk there. And so you would see just clumps of people in this one area because that’s where the most stunning view – or the most holistic view of the valley was that you could get through the trees. Now that the trees are clear there is a much more wide place where people can view that scene from several dozen angles rather than just that one.
Ranger Roney: Any kind of controversy over that?
Victoria Mates: There were quite a few people who would like to have seen the trees to stay. Of course there are two sides to every argument. There are also many people that are thrilled that that view has been restored.
EXTEROR AMBIENCE
Ranger Roney: Had you been here before they cut the trees?
Man: Is that what they did? ‘Cause I thought I remembered more trees being in the way. So they cut them huh?
Ranger Roney: Yeah they cut quite a few.
Man: It was hard. There were only a few spots you could shoot from. Them I’m going, “Man it seems there’s more room you can shoot from now.”
Ranger Roney: What do you think of the view now that the trees have been cut?
Woman: I like it. It seems expansive. The grandeur, the size seems bigger. It’s like you cant touch it. It’s huge.
Man: Yeah cause it used to be hard. There was only a couple little spots you could shoot from. Everybody was fighting over them.
Man 2: Una vista hermosa espacular. Vista would be view.
Ranger Roney: Yes
Man 2: Spectacular, beautiful, awesome…
Ranger Roney: Hermosa.
Man 2: Hermosa say.
Ranger Roney: now what did you say?
Man 2: (repeats question in Spanish)
Woman: Hermosa! Very nice!
Ranger Roney: Bonita?
Woman: Muy bonita!
Man 2: Muy! Bonita!
Bob: MUY BONITA!!!
Ranger Roney: I spoke with Brian Mattos, our park forester about changes to views in Yosemite. When we set aside Yosemite Valley it was mostly open. Now it’s mostly forested. What happened?
Brian Mattos: Well a lot of things happened. Probably one of the biggest things would have been the cessation of regular burning by Native Americans. And then when Europeans got settled in here they decided there were too many mosquitoes the wanted to lower the water table. The blasted the terminal moraine down by Bridalveil…dried things out so trees could more successfully invade the edges of what had been wet meadows. Or even the open woodlands that were there that didn’t have a lot of trees in them. Then further draining of the meadows through ditching, and then there’s been tree planting, and probably all these activities had good intentions but comprehensively they changed the landscape.
Ranger Roney: Landscape architect with Yosemite’s division of Resource Management and Science, Brian Chilcott had this to add.
Bryan Chilcott: You know, you look at the oldest photographs from the 1050s the 1860s and, of course, you see more of an oak savannah type of landscape in the valley – a lot of wet meadows and a lot of openness, a lot of open views and every decade since then the conifers have succeeded the oak savannah and now we have mostly a mixed coniferous forest in the valley. You know, people started waiving the red flag and saying, “hey wait a minute. What’s happening to our views? We can’t see anything. All we have are these conifers. The oaks are disappearing. Everything’s a mess.
Brian Mattos: We’ve had piecemeal efforts. We had a complaint about the San Joaquin Overlook in the Road Guide but you can’t see the San Joaquin Valley anymore. So there was a very narrow scope project to open just a scant corridor where you can stand in one place and see a little slice of the San Joaquin Valley again. As I mentioned Hutchings View and what was called the main viewing area over on the lodge side was re opened during the Yosemite Falls project. We did some vista – reestablishment really maintenance at that project, but we haven’t put together any programmatic plan.
Ranger Roney: …But we are now. Yosemite’s Chief of Resource Management and Science, Doctor Niki Nicholas explains.
Dr. Nicholas: We’re now working on Yosemite’s Scenic Vista Management Plan. The purpose of this plan is to guide management actions by the national park service to protect and restore Yosemite’s historic viewpoints and, of course the natural processes that created them. We also want to preserve the historic and cultural settings in which the viewpoints were established. I think that most people when they come to Yosemite National Park just are just awed or stunned by the views that they see and they look up and see these amazing granite rock faces and Because of past management some of those vistas and viewpoints aren’t even visible anymore.
Brian Chilcott: My responsibility has been mostly in a technical capacity where I’ve been doing a lot of the background research in the archives. But I’ve been in the field documenting a lot of documentation of historic viewpoints and documenting vegetation encroachment in the valley. Looking at historic pictures and getting them side by side with current pictures to be able to compare differences.
Ranger Roney: I asked Brian Mattos what sort techniques we might use to rehabilitate and maintain views.
Brian Mattos: Well you really can’t beat the chainsaw for the expediency of opening up a small vista. In the longer term and certainly on a landscape scale, prescribed fire a lot the native Americans used… well what we call prescribed fire. But regular burning to keep views open…
Brian Chilcott: We can’t preserve every view. We can’t just run around willy-nilly and deciding where we’d like to see something from and start removing trees.
Ranger Roney: The 1980 General Management Plan says we’re to let natural processes prevail. How does taking out shrubs and trees out to restore a view people were getting a hundred years ago reconcile itself with that?
Bryan Chilcott: Well the first thing that everybody needs to understand is that the landscape in Yosemite Valley in particular is not really natural. Processes that would have moderated succession in the valley were cut off when the fire suppression began a long long time ago. So the views were a byproduct of a different landscape. Before moraines were removed, before ditches were dug, before meadows were tilled and planted. The lowering of the ground water table subsequent to various forms of hydrological manipulation and the suppression of wildfire are two major ecological processes that were changed.
Brian Mattos: So the public will be involved first during our scoping. We will have it featured at an open house. And try and get messages for the public to send in their ideas. What are their favorite vistas? How should we be managing them? So scoping is coming up soon. We want to hear from them. Ranger Roney: Great. What does scoping mean?
Brian Mattos (laughs): Scoping is just the term that says, “Hey, here’s our idea. What do you think about it?”
Brian Chilcott: I think having a plan helps to get everybody together to talk about what needs to happen. And to formulate it in such a way that it happens with everybody’s good graces and in a sensible timely manner.
Dr. Nicholas: We are hoping to hear from the public and there are a lot of ways people can reach us and let us know what they’re thinking. We’re accepting emails. We’re accepting letters. We are having posters put out at open houses. We are going to have walks around the park where we’re going to ask people to come and give us comments during those walks. Anyway people want to comment on this proposed plan, we want to hear from people.
Ranger Roney: If you’d like to participate in our planning efforts, the public scoping period is from February 12th to March 20th. For information the best place to go to is our website, www.nps.gov/yose/parkmgmt/vista.htm. If you want to comment by mail, address them to:
Superintendent
Attn: Scenic Vista Management Plan
P.O. Box 577, Yosemite, CA 95389
The phone number is: 209/379-1365; our fax number is: 209/379-1294
Well that’s it for today’s Yosemite Voices.
In the meantime remember Yosemite is YOUR Park. We’ll stay here and take care of things until you return.
THEME MUSIC UP THEN FADE TO SILENCE
Episode 2: Growing Up in Tuolumne Meadows
What do children living a primitive life in Yosemite’s high country do for fun in this day of mp3 players, personal gaming devices, and other entertainment technologies? First in a series of Yosemite Voices episodes that explore the subject of childhood in Yosemite, Growing up in Tuolumne explores Ranger Margaret Eissler’s youth in Tuolumne Meadows in the late 1950s, then follows similar activities of three sisters (aged four, six, and ten) 50 years later.
RANGER RONEY: Here we are with our second podcast here at Tuolumne Meadows. Tuolumne is at about 8,600 feet elevation in the high sierra in Yosemite National Park. It's a very large sub-alpine meadow. Well, as I face west, I'm watching the sun slowly set. The shadows around me are getting longer and longer. Looking to the east, I can see the red mountains of Mount Dana, Mount Gibbs along the crest of the Sierra Nevada. Just this side of it we see the hulk of Lembert Dome rising out of the trees that line the meadow. Most of the forest that surrounds Tuolumne Meadows are lodgepole pine. Oh! I see a coyote running across the meadow right now. Ears perked up; it stopped. It's ears are pointing forward. It's looking at something. It's looking very carefully. It is staring. Staring. Umph! There it goes. It jumped down and it got a little mouse or something. I can't see from here. These meadows do have meadow mice or voles, but they also have a lot of young Belding ground squirrels that stand near their homes upright. Some people may think of them as diminutive prairie dogs as they stand there. But this coyote got either a ground squirrel or maybe a meadow mouse or vole or something like that and it chomped it down right before my eyes and away it went down the throat. And off the coyote goes running again. Now these are the kind of wonderful things people can experience in places like Tuolumne Meadows. And we have a staff of rangers to help you see that. The leader of those rangers is a woman named Margaret Eissler and she's going to talk about growing up here. And we'll also talk about one of her employees, another Ranger Naturalist named Karen Amstutz. Karen has three daughters. One is four, one is six and one is 10. And for the last three years they have been growing up here in Tuolumne Meadows. I talked to Margaret first. And one of the things I wanted to know was the first time she came to Tuolumne Meadows. And this is what she said:
RANGER EISSLER: I think when I was less than one year old.
RANGER RONEY: Tell me a little bit about what your parents did here?
RANGER EISSLER: My parents were caretakers for the Sierra Club Campground which was a 160 acre homestead that had been originally claimed by John Baptist Lembert in 1885 and eventually came into the hands of the Sierra Club in 1912. And the Sierra Club set up two campgrounds, a family campground and a group campground, and my parents lived in the McCauley Cabin -- they were caretakers, so that's where the caretakers lived -- for six summers, from 1956 to '61. And it was a very simple cabin. Had no running water. No electricity. No telephone. My parents walked up and down the hill to the river with buckets to carry -- get water to wash clothes and dishes. And we'd fill up our glass jugs with water at the ranger station to drink. And so it was, it was just very simple but it was great.
RANGER RONEY: I grew up in Los Angeles and I didn't get much wilderness. In fact, wilderness was vacant lots really for me. That's pretty much all I got. And a big part of your childhood was living in a place with a wood stove and -- I mean, everything was really primitive and pioneer-like. What did you find -- I mean, as a kid, we watched TV, we rode our bicycles, we went to the movies. In the summertime, I mean, what did you find yourself doing here?
RANGER EISSLER: Uhm, there is no end of playful things to do. We -- of course, I was very young and so my sister and I and our friends, other campers who would come every summer, we hop from rock to rock. I had my favorite rock horses. We'd ride and --
RANGER RONEY: Rock horses?
RANGER EISSLER: Yes. Just horse -- rocks that you could sit on, pretend you were riding. We hiked. And we -- from the time we could walk we were walking up Lembert Dome and going to Dog Lake and wading and swimming in the river. And we had our favorite mud hole down by the river we'd squish our toes through. And we collected lady bugs in the stage brush which were on the -- right near the cabin. And played store with our parents' supply of can goods. I don't know, it was just unending eternal days of play. You remember how summer used to last forever? At least it seemed like a year or longer when I was little. It was just a joyful time.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah, I remember summers living in the city. Uhm, that's just amazing. I mean, you know, we had all these things and yet you used a lot of curiosity and imagination. We did too. We did a lot of that too. But I guess what I'm getting at is today it seems like kids need to be entertained from the exterior rather than from inside. Do you see that today with the younger people camping here?
RANGER EISSLER: Uhm, well, I think I notice that in general, but I also see children of employees who are up here and I see different parenting techniques. That I see some that just let their children play as we did and it's just -- I just love seeing that. It's heart-warming to see them making their little forts and collecting rocks and looking closely at insects and just loving playing by the river. So, it still happens but I think it's more rare.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. You're telling me that you, you would actually walk when you were -- I'm imagining like three or four -- to Dog Lake which is uphill and a little over a mile.
RANGER EISSLER: Uh-uhm.
RANGER RONEY: Plus probably the mile from your house, that two-mile walk. Boy! That's quite a bit for a kid.
RANGER EISSLER: I think kids can do a lot. I think parents often think that they can't and then limit them. But it's amazing what kids can do.
RANGER RONEY: If you were to talk to parents and they were coming up to Tuolumne Meadows, what would you have them do with their children?
RANGER EISSLER: Uhm, I'd suggest that they go out across the meadow, on the Old Tioga Road, out to the river. And if that's as far as their children can go, then that would be a great spot to go. Or up to Soda Springs, the area that I grew up. Uhm, or to Dog Lake which is a wonderful lake to play in. It's warmer than some. And it's a mile and a half going uphill but, you know, you take your time and you get there before you know it. Or up to the top of Lembert Dome where you have a fabulous view, also a mile and a half. Yeah. Or -- yeah, any of those.
RANGER RONEY: I'm sitting here looking at Lembert Dome over your shoulder, and it's way up there. It's this big high rock standing up in the sky. And it looks really formidable from here. Where's the trail?
RANGER EISSLER: Uhm, well, there are two trails. One just right over here to our right and then another up through the forest on the other side. But actually when I was little, we always used to go up the front keeping to the right.
RANGER RONEY: Scary.
RANGER EISSLER: Uhm, I don't remember thinking it was scary but much later I was trying to figure out how we had done it as a family and I had a hard time figuring it out but I finally did. So it is a little -- you have to pick your way and hold onto the ledges.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah.
RANGER EISSLER: Yeah. But it's exiting. It's fun.
RANGER RONEY: It's beautiful. I'm looking up there again at the glacial polish glistening in the sun.
RANGER EISSLER: Uh-uhm.
RANGER RONEY: Did you go on naturalist programs when you were younger?
RANGER EISSLER: Yes. I clearly remember going on ranger walks with Carl Sharsmith. I remember one particular early evening walk with Carl Sharsmith up from May Lake, up over that little ridge, just to the right of the peak, Huffman. And I remember Carl pointing out this little tiny tree. It was like a little dwarf bonsai tree growing in the crack of granite. I remember he calculated that it was 40 years old. And I remember thinking, oh, it's older than my mother! And now I think 40 years old, that's nothing. (Laughing) That's really funny how, how your sense of time changes as you grow older.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah.
RANGER EISSLER: But it seemed so old to me. It was just a little tree, though, very tiny tree.
RANGER RONEY: Well, a little tiny tree, 40 years old. Summer lasts a year. And now what do the summers last?
RANGER EISSLER: Oh, it's just -- flies by so quickly. It's gone before you know it.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: What kind of a nest is this?
LUPIN: A Junko nest. And I see the cracked eggs in there.
RANGER RONEY: There are cracked eggs? What happened?
LUPIN: There was a big rainstorm and they cracked from that. And now the eggs aren't going to hatch.
RANGER RONEY: They're not?
LUPIN: Want to see them?
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. Are they under that? Oh, yeah, I see. What do you think the parent birds did?
LUPIN: I think they flew away.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. You think maybe they made some more eggs somewhere else?
LUPIN: Maybe. They may be laying eggs right now.
RANGER RONEY: How old are you?
LUPIN: Four.
RANGER RONEY: Four. So how do you like living up here?
LUPIN: Good.
RANGER RONEY: Why do you think it's good?
LUPIN: Because it's pretty here.
RANGER RONEY: That was Lupin Omstedts. She and her and two sisters, Sylvie and Eliza, live here with their parents at Tuolumne Meadows during the summer. She and her six-year-old sister Sylvie like to watch ants.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Do you girls like to look at ants a lot?
LUPIN: Yeah.
SYLVIE: Yeah.
LUPIN: And under the log right there -- they're so many.
SYLVIE: -- they're so many ants. And there's a home of aunts. And there's bunch of -- and they like to bite. And I pick them up and make them bite me because it feels good.
LUPIN: Sylvie, the aunt, it bit me. But it didn't hurt at all. It just felt like, it just felt like –
RANGER RONEY: What other kinds of things do you like to look at besides ants?
SYLVIE: The birds and the deer.
RANGER RONEY: The older daughter Eliza told me about a new tradition she'd made up.
ELIZA: Now we just figured out a tradition, that we should hike our age every year. I turned 10 in May, and Lief who's staying next to us, Lief just turn 10 I think a few days ago. Then he was ten, so we're both 10 so the day before yesterday we hiked from here to Teneya Lake and that was about 10 miles. So we hiked our age this year.
RANGER RONEY: Wow! That's a long way.
ELIZA: Uh-uhm.
(Music)
RANGER AMSTUTZ: I love living here. I love that my kids get a chance to be here and experience a simpler life and notice the little things in the mountains. RANGER RONEY: Their house is a two-room tent with wood floors situated in a place called Ranger Camp. When I first began working here in Yosemite in 1968, many of the seasonal rangers throughout the park lived in these tent cabins. Most are gone now but here in Tuolumne Meadows they continue to provide shelter for a few of the seasonals. But most who live in them wouldn't trade for the world.
RANGER RONEY: Eliza gave me a tour of our tent cabin.
ELIZA: Well, so what should I show you?
RANGER RONEY: I don't know. This is your house.
RANGER AMSTUTZ: Tell him about it.
ELIZA: Well, the kitchen is here. And, well, that's a bear box where we keep everything.
RANGER RONEY: That big steel box on the ground there?
ELIZA: Yep.
RANGER RONEY: Uh-uhm.
ELIZA: And also this is the sink.
RANGER RONEY: And that stove there is a two-burner, looks like a hotplate plugged into an electrical socket.
ELIZA: Uh-hum, because it's sort of frustrating to always cook things on the fire.
RANGER RONEY: Really? The fire, where's that?
ELIZA: It's over here. And sometimes we can put pellets in here.
RANGER RONEY: Show me how that works?
ELIZA: Wood pellets. And you lift -- there's a little door and see there's pellets in there and you put them in and you can start the fire with them and the fire sticks and so then you can have a fire. But there's also a little oven that we sometimes bake things in but --because you have to get it really hot.
MR. AMSTUTZ: What about those pellets, Eliza, what are they made out of?
ELIZA: They're made out of little pieces of wood. And this is our little stereo thing but it doesn't work very much, so we usually use the computer to play music.
RANGER RONEY: This is really interesting to see how a house with an old wood stove and a wood floor and canvas top and a picnic table here in the kitchen and big steel boxes to keep your food in so the bears don't get it, and then you have a computer.
ELIZA: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: Seems a little odd; doesn't it?
ELIZA: Yeah. I don't like having a computer very much?
MR. AMSTUTZ: Why not?
RANGER RONEY: You don't?
ELIZA: Because it seems too modern. I wish it was still like the olden days.
RANGER RONEY: You like the olden days?
ELIZA: Yeah. Because everybody had horses.
RANGER RONEY: And that gets us back to your liking horses a lot.
ELIZA: Yeah. Well, we have a refrigerator locks I think because them bears might get in. So.
RANGER RONEY: Bears get in your refrigerator so you have to lock it. That's pretty amazing. Are you worried about bears?
ELIZA: No.
RANGER RONEY: Why not?
ELIZA: Because they're cute.
RANGER RONEY: Because bears are cute?
ELIZA: Yes.
RANGER RONEY: Have they ever come in the cabin?
ELIZA: Well, they came in our house in El Portal once.
RANGER RONEY: Really?
ELIZA: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: Can you tell me about that?
ELIZA: Sure. Well, it was eating cat food. And my mom was just sitting there and it came in. And me and Sylvie and Lupin were asleep, we were asleep. So my mom felt really protective of us. And it was so funny that she just opened the door and kicked the bear out. And my dad said she made a sound that didn't sound like a human.
RANGER RONEY: Have you ever heard your mother make that sound any other time?
ELIZA: No.
RANGER RONEY: Wow! That's pretty amazing, a lock on the refrigerator to keep the bears out. Oh, and I see climbing ropes up there on the shelf.
ELIZA: We go climbing a lot.
RANGER RONEY: What do you do?
ELIZA: Well, yesterday we just went boldering but we did some pretty hard boldering, and I am still sort of sore from that. But usually we go to, like, Puppy Dome and we do chop ropes and climb up.
RANGER RONEY: How high is Puppy Dome?
ELIZA: Probably, like, 200 feet.
RANGER RONEY: Well, show me the rest of the cabin.
ELIZA: Well, uhm, one of my favorite things about being back here is because when it's raining, you can lie on the bed and just look up and then the rain pores down and you can look at it on the roof and sometimes it helps -- and it sounds really pretty. And also sometimes you see, like, little lizards. Like right now I see a bug on the roof, just like a little silhouette of it.
RANGER RONEY: Oh, yeah.
ELIZA: And also sometimes we see birds perching on the roof. And, uhm --
RANGER RONEY: So you like living in -- going inside of a cabin that doesn't have a real roof, it has canvas on the roof.
ELIZA: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: And the light comes right through?
ELIZA: Uh-uhm. So we don't usually need the light except for at night.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. What's up with you, Lupin?
MR. AMSTUTZ: You want to say something?
LUPIN: We built a fort made out of sticks outside. I can go in.
RANGER RONEY: That you can go in?
ELIZA: It's big enough that we can go in it --
RANGER RONEY: Really?
ELIZA: -- like, five of us.
RANGER RONEY: Can you show me?
LUPIN: Uh-uhm.
MR. AMSTUTZ: Can you bring him to that fort?
ELIZA: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: We're now going outside and down the wooden steps.
ELIZA: And we even built a stables and a fort.
RANGER RONEY: What a fort that was, room for five where they would go in and pretend they were living a primitive life in the woods. Imagine that. The children named it Little Villa Coola after the place where Pippi Longstocking lived. They told me they would spend hours and hours in there. And then Eliza wanted to show me a place called Fairy House Village.
ELIZA: Here's a little fairy house that I just made yesterday.
RANGER RONEY: Oh. That's cool.
ELIZA: But the problem is it's in a little creek bed.
RANGER RONEY: Well, I guess like the Junko's nest, whoever lives in that fairy house may have a hard time when it rains.
ELIZA: Uh-uhm. Okay. And so this right here, it's supposed to be a little fairy stable, a little fairy corral. See. And so this is the little riding arena. And the horses live in there but if they want to like --
RANGER RONEY: Is that a horse right there?
ELIZA: No. That's an ant.
RANGER RONEY: That's an ant. Oh. I'm sorry.
ELIZA: And if they want to, they can, like, have horse lessons. And they have horse lessons in here. This is a place where they ride. This is the one I think I might have worked the hardest on because, like, there's a piece of wood here and I made it with a rock and two sticks. A flat rock I made a little picnic table.
RANGER AMSTUTZ: You know, there's such a trend towards having kids have less experiences in this country, less experience outdoors and less contact with it. And seeing our kids noticing the seasons, even though we're not in Tuolumne, their fairy houses are affected by winter. And they -- we come up here early in the season which it's still spring here when we come up, you know, early spring, there's snow on the ground when we first come up and they get to see the plants are just starting to come to life. They notice which flowers bloom first and start to die making way for the next wave of flowers blooming and the birds hatching. And they get to see that close-up and they're out playing in it, they're not just looking at it on TV. And, you know, to really feel this place that way, it makes me so thankful that they get to have that. And we can just let them go play here and not worry about that they're out of our sight or that they're going – I mean, if they get hurt, they're going to learn a lesson, you know, about what to do and what not to do. And they get hurt sometimes. You can't see -- their knees are all scraped up and they have cuts and mosquito bites. I mean, we all have scrapes and bruises. I also have cuts too. But that's just because we're out having contact with the earth and sometimes the earth here is a little sharp and rough like the granite that we sit on when we go swimming and climb up when we're climbing.
MR. AMSTUTZ: I feel like they have a realistic sense of risk because they take lots of little risks in their fairy fort building, in running around the cabin and all that occasionally guided by the parents -- put your shoes on. Slow down a bit. That's a heavy rock. Be careful. But the vast majority of time they're on their own figuring out themselves which I think is very healthy.
RANGER AMSTUTZ: It's really -- it's a beautiful thing for us. We don't want them to go out and get hurt, I'll say that, you know.
MR. AMSTUTZ: Yeah, yeah.
RANGER RONEY: Well, no parent really does.
RANGER AMSTUTZ: No parent wants their kid to get hurt but we don't think it's a tragedy if they skin their knees, in other words. But I have love the confidence that leaves them with when they have these experience. They do skin their knee and they're not afraid of something that's going to just leave them, you know, a little bit scratched. But they are so confident running around here in the rocks and climbing trees and they're not freaked out about what could be here because they know what it is here and there's nothing they need to be afraid of. And, you know, they're very, very confident and very empowered in this world that they're part of.
LUPIN: This is the most exciting thing but it's pretty exciting that a bear came close to us at dinnertime.
ELIZA: We like to sing songs and roast marshmallows and play games around the campfire.
LUPIN: And he was ripping the log. He was ripping the log apart.
ELIZA: There was a song that we learned in school about the seven contents and to the same tune we made up a song about Tuolumne. Okay. One, two, three.
(ELIZA & LUPIN sing the following:)
"Puppy Dome. Kitty Dome. Dog Lake, Dog Dome, Marmet Rock. Don't forget Lembert Dome. Don't forget Cathedral Peak. These are the places of Tuolumne. These are the places of Tuolumne."
RANGER AMSTUTZ: I really enjoy the openness of the community that is inspired by these tent cabins. We have great rituals here. We campfires. And we have, you know, our neighbors up there are going to have -- next Thursday they're going to have an art gallery opening where everybody's contributing art or some humor.
MR. AMSTUTZ: Poetry performance.
RANGER AMSTUTZ: Poetry performances. But, yeah, just little things like that, good but simple, just community events that aren't based on technology really, except we did have a slide show on the side of the tent cabin last week where we invited anyone who wanted to come see.
(AMSTUTZ FAMILY sing the following:)
"In Tuolumne. In Tuolumne. You can fish. You can fish. All you catch are big ones. All you catch are big ones. Ha, Ha, Ha. Ha, Ha, Ha. "In Tuolumne. In Tuolumne."
RANGER EISSLER: There is no end of playful things to do. It was just this grand adventure.
(MUSIC)
(END)
Episode 1: Soundscapes
This episode is based on an interview with Kurt Fristrup PhD, the senior acoustic Specialist with the National Park Service's Natural Sounds Program in Fort Collins, Colorado. He talks about the effect of noise on predator-prey relationships, animal communications, and on human physiology. Fristrup reveals some of the findings on the acoustic health of Yosemite as well as some interesting discoveries made possible through recordings made in the wilderness.
RANGER RONEY: Podcasting from Yosemite National Park on this very hot July 9th, 2008. This is Yosemite Voices. Yosemite Voices is a series of audio podcasts intended to provide insights into the natural and cultural history and management of Yosemite National Park. We also explore the lives and lifestyles of the people who live and work here.
(Music)
Hello. I'm Ranger Bob Roney. Welcome to Yosemite National Park's first audio podcast. It's called Yosemite Voices because that's what you'll hear, voices from Yosemite. What I have in mind for this series is to introduce you to some of the people I work with, as well as to bring you some stories about what's going on here in the park. Some stories may be about behind-the-scenes activities. Other stories may be well known but you'll hear them from more of an insider's perspective. I also hope that you'll get to know some of the people who care for your park a little better. Overtime, you'll get to know me too but here are some of the basics. I grew up in Southern California, fell in love with Yosemite when I was 18 and have been working here ever since. That's more than 40 years. Even though my family had a television set, I really loved to listen to the old radio shows that were still being broadcast in the mid 1950's, and that love of sound remains with me today. In fact, that's one of the reasons that I'm producing these audio podcasts. And speaking of sound, that's what our first episode is going to be about, the landscape of sound in wild places, like Yosemite. Most people don't pay much attention to the sounds here in Yosemite, the visual scene is so big and exciting. But the National Park Service has recently begun to pay attention to our acoustical resources as much as we've been paying other resources, like water and air. And earlier this spring, I spoke with Dr. Kirk Fristrup. He's the Senior Acoustic Specialist with the National Park Services' Natural Sounds Program based in Fort Collins, Colorado but he works with parks all over the country, including Yosemite. The segment begins as I describe an early experience I had away from the busyness of the suburbs. (Music) I remember as a child going to the mountains and getting out of the car and my dad saying: "Listen. It's just so quiet, you can't hear anything." And you can't. And then all of a sudden at some point you start hearing, like, the gravel under your feet which you would never hear your footsteps in the city. And then you hear a bird off in the distance and a cricket and then frogs and pretty soon the silence is, is alive.
DR. FRISTRUP: That I think is one of the really rare experiences which you can get in some national parks, that is that it's so quiet that you really become conscience of this enormous space around you in which you could hear something. And so when they are really subtle, little sounds, even the sound of a cricket walking across the ground or if you're out working with someone, you can hear them fifty or hundred meters away, you can hear, you become aware of the sound of your own heart beating, there are places like that that are so quiet that they really approach our threshold of hearing and it's possible to hear things at extraordinary differences. And somehow you're right, there is -- you become aware of that vastly expanded audio horizon. Even if there isn't something happening in the space, you just become aware that you can hear so much farther out. And it can be even unnerving. I have been in places where it's been so quiet that it's been, uhm, it's kind of been stimulating or unsettling until I get accustomed to what it is and what it means. And certainly, if you're a city dweller and you go out into a really quiet place and try to sleep, it can be hard to fall asleep because it's so quiet.
(Nature sounds and music)
We share with all other mammals the same basic sensory package. And, in fact, we have quite good hearing, especially at lower frequencies. We have better hearing than most other land animals. I think aboriginal man probably relied on both senses equally because in all other vertebrate animals, sound is the primary alerting sense. It's what keeps us informed of things that are happening all around us regardless of where we're looking or even if we're looking. Sound wakes us when we are asleep. And the fact that you and I can identify the directions from which a sound comes, that's an important part of that system so that when the alert comes in, we know where to look. To make not a big leap here, I think that's one of the important things that can happen in national parks. That in our urban settings very often you want to turn your ears off just because there's so many irritating or distracting sounds around you and none of them is pertinent, none of them's relevant, except perhaps if you hear screeching tires approaching, you know, to warn you of danger. But here in a park, sounds can alert you to the very things you come to see. They can alert you to the rare glimpse of an animal whose presence might be cryptic to your eyes but quite prominent to your ears. In fact, most bird sightings start by hearing a song and then looking and seeing the bird. So I think it's a -- we have a chance in parks to sort of re-awaken a sense that we deliberately ignore in many urban settings.
RANGER RONEY: How would we go about helping the general public, or for that matter me, awaken that sense?
DR. FRISTRUP: I'd say there are two things that really work well. Very often we conduct listening exercises where we ask people to sit quietly for just a few minutes, even as short a span as three minutes can really be revealing. And we'll either blindfold them or ask them to close their eyes and listen very intently and make note of every sound they hear. And oftentimes after that experience people tell us they walk away with a much richer awareness of what's going around them. That it isn't until someone asks them to shut off, to stop looking and just listen intently that they become aware of all the sounds that they are probably unintentionally ignoring. It's a habit we form in our busier urban lives that serves us well in that environment but when we come out here, we're missing a lot. We're losing – our experience is much poorer for not adding that sort of symphonic awareness of nature. Another thing -- another unfortunate part of our urban experience is both our visual and acoustical horizons shrink. The acoustical one shrinks because it's so noisy around us, we're not likely to hear sounds unless they're fairly close. And the visual horizon because there are usually so many obstructions in the forms of buildings and houses. So when you get out into a natural area, that sensation of depth is suddenly present on a much greater we ask people to sit quietly for just a few minutes, even as short a span as three minutes can really be revealing. And we'll either blindfold them or ask them to close their eyes and listen very intently and make note of every sound they hear. And oftentimes after that experience people tell us they walk away with a much richer awareness of what's going around them. That it isn't until someone asks them to shut off, to stop looking and just listen intently that they become aware of all the sounds that they are probably unintentionally ignoring. It's a habit we form in our busier urban lives that serves us well in that environment but when we come out here, we're missing a lot. We're losing – our experience is much poorer for not adding that sort of symphonic awareness of nature. Another thing -- another unfortunate part of our urban experience is both our visual and acoustical horizons shrink. The acoustical one shrinks because it's so noisy around us, we're not likely to hear sounds unless they're fairly close. And the visual horizon because there are usually so many obstructions in the forms of buildings and houses. So when you get out into a natural area, that sensation of depth is suddenly present on a much greater hear are less distinct, less identifiable. So for wildlife, this means that instead of being able to continue foraging or looking for food or interacting with potential mates, animals have to spend a lot more time with their heads up in sort of a visual scanning mode substituting visual surveillance for what their ears would have given them without all that effort. And, as I said, those animals cannot completely compensate for that loss of oral awareness. And so even though they can, you know, be a little more vigilant and offset some of those losses, many animals choose to be less active, to holdup in sort of hiding spots when it's really noisy just because they know they're at a greater risk. It's really unclear, however, whether predators or prey are going to be more badly hurt by noisy conditions because there are many predators that actually the way they find their food is by listening. And so if you -- a given increase in noise level might cut a predator's search area in half but only represents sort of a marginal decrease in the alerting distance for the prey items he's trying to find. So there actually could be conditions in which -- noisier conditions would actually favor the prey items rather than the predator items. We can't -- this is an area of new and largely unexplored ecological research and it will take sometime for us to know how often the balance shifts towards the prey or towards the predators.
(Owls hoot)
RANGER RONEY: Owls, of course, can find their prey very easily with hearing. I've noticed coyotes up here, even when there's snow on the ground, they'll focus and their ears are aiming at a point on the snow waiting to hear that sound again. And when they do, up they go down and down through a foot of snow and they'll get a mouse.
DR. FRISTRUP: An everyday example that many Americans would have in their front yards would be the Red-breasted Robin. When you see a Robin running along a grassy surface and pausing, they're listening for prey with their ears. And it's been shown in numerous experiments, it's not vibrations from the ground, it's not vision, they actually hear the prey first and then they get close enough to see where it probably is going to be and then they grab the worm. So, it's very likely that in places that are noisy, they aren't as able to find these little – to sense these incredibly quiet little accidental sounds of earthworms and other prey items. And that's the other reason for being concerned about predator/prey interactions perhaps more than we are about communication. Because at least when two animals are trying to communicate, both the sender, the talker, and the listener can make adjustments in their behavior to try and compensate for noise. The talker can repeat the message. The talker can move to another perch or another location that's closer. We know that some birds sing higher pinch songs in urban environments than in rural environments because they're avoiding the low frequency noise in urban environments.
(Music)
DR. FRISTRUP: Generally speaking, road noise or aircraft noise is not in the same frequency band as a lot of bird signals. That doesn't mean that communication at those higher frequencies isn't affected when we have very loud noises. And I guess where I was going with my previous note is that unlike communication, the sounds that are important for predator/prey interactions are all accidental. The animal that's producing them would prefer in many cases to be absolutely silent. And they're certainly not going to adjust those sounds to make them more noticeable when the world gets noisier. So, listening for those accidental sounds for nature, there will be a genuine loss of information when it gets noisier. There is no compensation; there is only lost opportunity. So, it's -- this fog, this noisy fog that we're putting across landscape could have many effects. But I have to say the thing that concerns me the most is the effect of this chronic constant low level of noise and the extent to which that narrows all animals' sort of acoustical horizons and this loss of the accidental sounds of nature.
(Music)
The quality of visitor experience will be heavily dependent upon noise and the natural sounds just as the quality of a cinematic experience is heavily dependent on the quality of the sound track.
(Music)
If you take any movie, even a really scary movie, and you turn off the sounds, the impact of the movie is greatly lessened. The same thing is true in the parks. The most beautiful scenes will lose their power and their sort of potency to evoke aw and wonder and contemplation if you imbed them in a noisy environment. And we know this. There are actually good studies that show that ratings of scenic quality go down in noisier environments. So that a completely different mode of sensing can nonetheless impact people's impressions of visual resource quality.
RANGER RONEY: I imagine one of the best examples of that here in Yosemite would be the Tunnel View, where people come out of that big, long tunnel and it opens up and there's Yosemite Valley and all of it's grandeur and yet on summer's days there are buses idling and cars driving back and forth and hundreds of people ooing and awing and they see the beauty but perhaps it's not the quality of the beauty that they really deserve.
DR. FRISTRUP: Right. I think that is -- as I said, that's been pretty well documented not only in place at overlooks and other places where people frequently admire scenes but also if you just take photographs and record sound, actual sounds and you go back to a cinder block room somewhere and conduct experiments with volunteers, their ratings of the quality of the photographs is directly dependent on the quality of the sound environment that you present to them.
(Babbling brook sound and music)
RANGER RONEY: When we spoke earlier, you said something about a negative effect on blood pressure.
DR. FRISTRUP: Yes.
RANGER RONEY: How loud the sound has to be. And it's not very loud.
DR. FRISTRUP: This room is fairly quiet. I would guess if we were measuring this, it would be in the 30 decibel range somewhere. And you're lucky because most houses don't enjoy that kind of silence. Sounds that go above 35 decibels have been shown to cause a blood pressure response in sleeping people even when they're not awakened by it. And, furthermore, when a sequence of such sounds in areas where people are subjected to, you know, a regular patterns of those kinds of sounds – noise intrusions, we find chronic elevation or, you know, long-term increases in the blood pressure which we know is associated with elevated risk of cardiac problems. At the noisier end of the scale, there are many studies in Europe which show that people who live in environments where the daytime noise level is on the order of 65 decibels or about the sound of my voice if you were standing three feet away from my mouth, you know, sort of the loudest that conversational speech routinely becomes, if some levels are chronically at that level, there's actually a measurable increase, you know, substantial increase in heart attack and other cardiac problems. So, we know that substantial portions of our big cities actually have negative health consequences for the people living there.
RANGER RONEY: That's kind of scary when you think about it.
DR. FRISTRUP: It's like most environmental health problems, the effects are remote in time. You know, you're exposed for decades before there's a consequence. There are many other possible explanations for heart attacks, diet, many other factors. In fact, I shouldn't say possible, all of these are contributing factors. But what these studies show is that when you control for all those other factors, noise exposure does have a bad effect, a harmful effect on people when it's high. And what we can also say but which has not been heavily studied is there are probably beneficial, you know, salutary effects of really quiet environments. And just as meditation and some other forms of intentional relaxation have been shown to have health benefits for chronically ill people, it's very likely that for those of us who enjoy good health, you know, periodic visits or periodic experience of really, quiet, beautiful places is likely to have beneficial effects.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Most people probably wouldn't think so much about the sounds when they go to a national park. In fact, most of the time they talk about I really enjoyed the quiet. And yet we in the National Park Service and you in particular are doing inventories; right?
DR. FRISTRUP: Correct.
RANGER RONEY: Inventories of sound resources.
DR. FRISTRUP: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: Tell me a little more about that.
DR. FRISTRUP: Well, there are at least two ways of thinking about sounds in national parks. The first is from a purely physical resource just like we worry about air quality or water quality, or the integrity of geological resources. Now another piece of the resource story is that the acoustical environment is vital to wildlife and if we degrade it, we are going to change the ways that predators and prey interact. We are going to alter their opportunities to communicate with each other. And in doing those things it's certain that we'll make changes in the internal functioning of the eco system and also in the availability of those animals for, you know, wildlife viewing. So, we need to worry about the physical resources in their own right and we need to worry about the impact of noise on the biological resources. (Music) Working with the staff here we have made recordings now at I think 13 locations, the primary purpose of which was just to measure physically how quiet it is and how much noise was creeping in at different frequencies. But along with those recordings, of course, and at each site we were recording for over a month, a lot of those noise measurements or sound level measurements we picked up lots and lots of natural signals, including some sounds that experts really hadn't heard before. In our earlier conversation I played what is probably a bleat of a bighorn sheep. And I talked to several experts on both dolls and bighorn sheep who claimed that they never heard the animal's call at all. (Bleat call) RANGER RONEY: Here's that sound again but repeated a few times. (Bleat call) RANGER RONEY: And here's another unusual sound that was recorded in Yosemite. (Sound) DR. FRISTRUP: That other sound I played earlier today, that was probably a juvenile bear being driven off by its mom at the end of the season and producing that loud protest call, that's a sound that none of the bear biologists I've contacted could identify as having heard before but it's a fairly common animal here in Yosemite and yet it's probably a sound that probably hasn't been recorded. (Sound) RANGER RONEY: I was going to ask you about other unusual sounds and you've told us about a couple of really, you know, wonderful sounds. How about odd-ball sounds? DR. FRISTRUP: Well, we do record sounds that a park visitor will never here. One class of sound is animals eating our equipment. For some reason, deer and elk and moose love the foam that we put around our microphones to shield them from the wind. Usually they don't damage the microphone but after they eat the foam away from the microphone, the recordings we get are almost useless because every slight puff of wind blows out the recording. But we do also have problems with bears and often when they decide to munch on a system, they completely destroy it. They'll also get curious about battery cases and smash those. So those kinds of sounds are just accidents of us being there and trying to measure something. (Sound) (Music) RANGER RONEY: We have done some inventory in monitoring of 13 sites. DR. FRISTRUP: Yes. RANGER RONEY: So how do we stand here in Yosemite? Is it a quiet place? Is it a noisy place? DR. FRISTRUP: There are several sites here in Yosemite that are among the quietest sites here in the western United States. But that extraordinary quiet is regularly punctuated by noise sources, even in the most remote locations here in Yosemite. Just as it is, I'm afraid to say, at many of the big western parks. And the principal noise source in these remote back country locations is from air travel. The phenomenal growth in the commercial airline business and in the private general aviation sector means that there are very, very few places where you could sit for an hour in the United States and not hear a plane for that entire hour. And here in Yosemite, the average interval between aircraft noise events is about three minutes during the day. Yosemite has the misfortune of lying almost in the cross hairs of a major east/west route from the eastern United States into the Bay area and a major north/south route from the Pacific northwest down to the LA Basin. So this morning when I was walking to our meeting, I counted 17 jet con trails in the sky just over Yosemite Valley, four of which were oriented north/south and the remaining 13 were east/west. And I don't know how long a con trail persists, but those are probably flights that happened in the last hour. When we look at these recordings from monitoring sites, we frequently see two to 300 aircraft noise events per day. The good news is in between those noise events it's as quiet as it ever was here in the back country. (Babbling brook) (Music) DR. FRISTRUP: When people talk about why they come to parks, they come for respite, for inspiration. To speak to the value of a quality scenic or acoustic experience there are really two components. One is the aesthetic. But independent of that there is a physiological response. Our pulse slows down. Our blood pressure drops. All of these things are going to be related not just to our appreciation for what the resources are but probably on the work that the environment does on our physiology. We respond really in an involuntary way. (Music) RANGER RONEY: Many of us have overlooked the value of the acoustic environment in Yosemite. It's like that old Joni Mitchell song, you don't know what you've got until it's gone. But, fortunately, the National Park Service is beginning to pay close attention to the sounds, the quiet and the noise in places like Yosemite. Next time you come up to the park, try closing your eyes to the grand landscape and opening your ears to the soundscape. I'm sure you'll gain a whole new perspective. Well, that's it for today's Yosemite Voices. More Yosemite Voices podcasts will be available in a few weeks, either at the iTunes store or at the Yosemite National Park website. That's www.nps.gov/yose. You'll also find other multi-media there, including a new video podcast series called Nature Notes. So until next time, remember, Yosemite is your National Park. We'll stay here and take care of the place until you return. (Music) (END)
