Director of the excerpted please welcome to those at home. I hope you join in the conversation this evening. Just a quick webinar overview for attendees. The chat is close but you may want to keep the chat window open in any event. You can use the q a available on the bottom of the screen to ask questions at any time to join the conversation. As a reminder you can shop the literary bookstore. Com and theyll be shipped to you anyway and it states that if you live in ann arbor or south michigan and in local book purchase we ask you to consider a donation to our virtual programming while it lasts. Or a subscription to our virtual programming you can make donations at literati bookstore. Com. This morning or this afternoon this evening depending on where in the world you may be joining us. Now lets join with her author and moderator. He worked in public radio earningn his ph. D. And michigan. And jeremiah champlian teaches creative riding. Hes editorinchief and a contributing editor. He was a full Bright Research scholar. Please join me in welcoming jeremiah champlian and subtwentyone into your living room and philipou danieri. Hi phil. Congratulations on this marvelous book. I was so excited to read it. You can see all my notes here as ive been reading through it. And its a particularly wonderful experience to see it on the desk here because i had the great pleasure of reading app serves and chapters of it three years ago when we were both bellos at students for the humanities at the university of michigan a marvelous program one that brought together wonderful cohort ofet people. So its marvelous to see the book between a cover so congrats. Well thanks. Its marvelous and its fun and its and. Firsttime author the transition from the book thing a project and something in progress to it being a product to be marketed and talked about is a very mere transition. Obviously very fun and exciting. Absolutely. Lets go back to the beginnin. We will end up at the end at the end. I was trying to think back to her earlier conversations and i was trying to remember what was it the jury you this to the story and he said near the end of the book that it wasnt as much the identity of the appalachian trail as the appalachian trail. Jury you into the research but i wonder he could say more about the genesis that moved you from curiosity tohi investigation. It was a couple of things. There are two points of entry for me. Number one growing up in the eastern u. S. You just know that its out there. You drive down the turnpike and theres a pedestrian bridge over the interstate that says appalachia trail on it so its kind of out there and you know its this nature thats winding its way through the very developed and built that part of the country. I had a good friend in high school who said some day we should hike together which we never did. So always a place that ingested me. And i have thought about maybe hiking the whole thing one day and its not clear that i will never going to do that but i someone who works for the publisher and she said well that sounds just about every guy i have ever dated. Much more recently than i became a grad student in planning to read this and planning name that mckay who in the 1920s and 30s put out all these interesting ideas aboutut the shape of metropolitan metropolitan america and how it could fit into the Natural Systems around it and then i learned this same person who was doing all this urban thinking was the one who invented the ap and that seemed like something worth digging into a bit more. Those were the two starting points. So lets build off that a bit more in terms of the environment which is something you taught it as a student at michigan but also the idea of nature and its construct and you suggested in your comment seems to be one of the things you are most dialed into. You call the book about a free weather than the history right there on b the cover but in fact there is another storyline that seems to be about that. How do we think about nature and what is our relationship to it . Absolutely. The appalachian trail like so many environments is a combination of the built in the naturalhe and with the interplay between those two and the tensions between them and the parts of the bill better natural that we acknowledge and embrace in places like the 80 in the parts that we pretend arent there is endlessly fascinating to me. I teach a course around that and my poor students have heard a lot more about the appalachian trail than i ever cared to. It was a Perfect Place for to tease out this to me very human process of crafting a version of nature around ourselves and actually building our hopes and their needs and their aspirations and our escapism into the environment in crafting the empire meant around that. We want to talk about nature as is that which is separate from us andat thats why its somethg cool to escape to but to make ie inescapable place we have got to make it work for us. We have got to construct it and that process is what i was trying to get back in the book. We begin this biography in the late 19th century, 1860s and we have moved mostly up to the present final chapter focusing on the 60s and the 70s and what you would describe as the rise of the them are Mental Movement and even jfk riding about the way in which our understanding of the Natural World was almost like an anecdote to contemporary life and in recent years many books riding about major deficitor disorder. T so it spanned a little bit more than a century or a century and a half. We moved from the terrors of the wilderness, it will kill you too without it will kill us. Thats a pretty big seismic shift. With a lot of interesting stops around along the way. The reason the book is organized as profiles of individuals at certain points in time in the sense tries to capture what were people in that period of time seekingf from nature and buildig the trail. Just to pick up on the two bookends a little bit before nature was a retreat and a place to escape to it not only was dangerous, it was perceived as morally compromised in the place where we were civilized and safe and okay and when i say we i mean european culture in european america was in towns and church so it wasnt just physically dangerous. Morallyda dangerous. Its only as we get safer and more comfortable in the its us or against the late 1800s that people seek the outdoors for a denture. We seek a lot of other things over the time. Not that the book deals with. In the very end and bill brysons book about hiking the appalachian trail its a nature of irony. Hes poking fun at himself and nature. In a way that you could have gotten away with it in a would have seen that all appropriate even 20 or 30 years earlier on these various topics to lots of different versions of nature have emerged over the years and without ridingd a textbook or a dry Academic Book i was trying to sort of gesture towards these different things. If you think about them as stages and moving through what was the state you found the most interesting or perplexing or found yourself drawn to as we shifted from natures morally suspect to hear somebody is riding a whole book about hiking the appalachian trail. Although he doesnt hike allowed that. By the way far more than i have. Thats a good question and im almost ashamed to admit the part that i enjoyed the most learning was the chapter about the National Park service in the 1980ss and 90s. Bureaucratized inca trail and thats my background in state government. The ph. D. Research i did was on institutions but i found it really interesting that the trail gets in many respects its a very narrow National Park and it took bureaucracy and procedure and law and Eminent Domain andmi planning processeso create d this thing and protectt and you certainly dont think and i dont think anybody except for a few oddballs like myself want to think about when youre out there onnk the trail. It. This is wonderfully naturalistic environment as much as i talk about how belted is now nestled in it used to be that vibe when youre walking on it. But as natural as it is, we only found it we only have it because of institutions and bureaucracies. S people work in the Public Sector doing good work and a fairly anonymous way that after day. I think that was the part i was most attracted to. Cox its a biography because of course it is a biography of the appalachian trail its biographies of these individuals, go out of your way and wisely so this is by no means its a different type of history. Cu the complex history of the u. S. Especially in those days predominately white, predominantly mail maybe middleclass. To think about some of the different bandwidths. When things i admired about the book witht the chapters will hae these wonderful arcs of each of these individual lives. Whether its a woman in her 70s after 30 years of marriage, those are duffel over her shoulder, grabbed an umbrella as a cane and does not just want smothers the bureaucrat at the desk whos trying to finagle so peace does not end up in an imminent domain claims court the u. S. Government has to settle out. All these little narratives. You see them fitting together is kind of a little coalition a larger vision of the book came together for you its a massive amount of material for think about the history and the deep dive of research. I can remember us talking about this in the seminar. Not surprising of these wonderful different options. Is it more of a im not sure i ever fully solved how to tie the pieces together and what the relationship was among them. What i knew i wanted to do is provide many chapter at length the biographies. It was in these individuals leading their own allies and coming up on the trail that the trail got built. And i wanted to tote show different versions of that over time. You could understand the human investment in its. If you can understand these folks as individuals uniqueness that any of us have. I was better able but the chapters completely separately from one another for the most part in different years. Ththen suddenly. [laughter] there is a version of this book or it is stitched together and a better way. The other thing about biography versusgr history such as what im trying to do for the reader or the story i want to investigate is what is this place . Why are we attracted to it . What is its deal . What is it story . That to me it felt more like a biography. What you would do the individual the persons history, look at the times he lived in. That you get some sense of who they were. To get more universal as o well. You see yourself in the other person story. That was the kind of stuff i wanted to do as opposed to this year this happened with the trail in that year that happen with the trail. Like you are very modest i think the book reads. Your readers pull chapter to chapter elegantly. I found myself finishing a one chapter and sucked right into the net another one. It feels very contiguous. And i guess a good framer for the book itself is like the trail you do not know your crossing the state line whether there is a sign that says youre now entering your leaving georgia when i hit this line can you pronounce your lesson . Works i say do but im not a native french speaker. The earliest chapters nature it was not a list it was a story. Outline thats great for what he came back to the beginning of the book after finishing it once or looking through it again for conversation today. I felt a bit like it could be in the graph of the book itself. I think if it were purely history it would feel more in the book does not feel at all it feels like a biography also should asy. Alive as the subjec. I had admired the book. And i wonder if you could talk tabout the book does not seem to me also like a shift in thinking, was one of these fellows who was thinking about the Natural World and the scientific one meeting the cosmological, religious, you can the blank there. The idea of shifting from nature not a lift to a story. Check about his concept and went and that is the very first shapers of what was later work was seminole. Lexi was part of a tool of thought or way to look at the worlds emerging in europe in the mid 1800s. Alexander humble is a famous proponent of that. The idea was a student of humboldt. That really is the beginning of what i and others call the ideological idea. This notion that in the science and the technical understanding of the Natural World, is in appreciation for larger things and larger concepts but i dont think in again i know something about the appalachian trail and not an academic environmental historian. Theres folks who know a lot more about this than i do. There is no coincidence he was a fervent christian and had trained to be a minister. Built his notion of the Natural World around by observing things closely in nature, we see a reality on a higher plane. And does not relieve itself anymore but the storyline to go with it. T. What we have been doing ever since is moving back and forth between the technological scientific side of things which at first complicates and is a troubling contradiction of the stories would like to tell. And then we evolve that accommodate that and it goes back and forth like that. Whether you approach nature as an ecologist noting relationships among species or just to someone who likes to go out and walk around. Theres always these two things present. A look, there is that it isnt that neat . As a physical tangible level. Then there is the higher order wild man, what does it all mean . [laughter] the 19th century version of that. The language hasnt changed. The participants in the conversation had changed. I do think that basic but internal dialogue is still going on has been for a long time. Reminds me the idea of the lily. The idea a little he is a beautiful flower. It is more beautiful to a botanist and its even more beautiful to someone who studies flowers. Even more beautiful to someone who specializes in the lily. There is no way to approach a full understanding of anything. Our understanding of beauty is increasingly the closeness to the knowledge of the things. You can look at that quantifying elements in a product oriented away. Acquiring mileage, or acquiring unlikeness or there is a way of also thinking about it from away of quantifying it in a more qualitative way that sounds like an oxymoron quantitative qualification. [laughter] as a son of an ecologist my parents are avid travelers around the world looking for the rare bird that flies in. Theres a way where theo knowledge of that creates a beautiful awareness of it as well. I was struck by the polarity of what is driving. Is it truly acquisition . Or is there Something Else going on . Parks i do think there is the risk of substituting its acquisition on mindset or privilege it is the only one that counts. So when you talk about some sume or miles accomplished, i am sensitive to anything the ecological world on the hiking world is becoming more sensitive to this problem of, if youve got to have a knowledge of full appreciation, that you are one involving all sorts of people away w from that experience. But, to be the perfect example of the person who thanks in that list making way was myron avery really got the trail built. He was intensely interested in the mountains. He wrote hardly anything about beautiful nature is and watching around in it he publish and accounted for peaks and he wanted everything to brick recorded in just the right manner. That strain of natural thinking if youou will is a big part of. It is definitely not the only part i would argue. Without trying to be dismissive toward your parents and of the world. [laughter] that is a component. It is a important component. Theres more as well. I didnt f get in a tiff with National Geographic you want to come write a story but refused his version of the story . He could not believe they did not want to publish the article which was basically an encyclopedia entry about the trail. Heres a different way to approach it. He just kept writing letters back saying no, actually you are mistaken this is the article you want. They never resolved it. Looks that ran the piece rate change in then certain ways. Yes. Hit made the trail mike it a sign that the trail was now a substantial part of the american landscape. And the National Geographic you and i are inph age i dont know, could your family have a subscription to National Geographic . Minded i remember the yellow minded packages on the bookshelf that was in the 1970s were back in the 30s and 40s their huge publications. When they made National Geographic at some level it was a real think it was a real place. And in part because of the way they frame thee article was notd in the Previous Year someone had hiked the entire length of the trail in one go, earl shaver thatt because the attention of a woman who read the article to the 67 your grandma who hiked the trail in canvas sneakers with a duffel bag over her a shoulder. This is the concept of hiking began. Yes. Schaefer pretty much, he deaflyn but the concept on the map. It was not a terribly popular thing to do for decades after that. Im the 60s, he became much more prominent. The organizers and builders had very little interest in it. They thought hiking was a stop to the trail certainly had not been built for that purpose. It was very important to schaefer. To a large extent did get his life together after world war ii. That is among the seminole events for sure. A look of exeter in the 20th century. I found this on the most fascinating parts of the book. Or reaching a Tipping Point technologically geographically was the then president of Kentucky College in appalachia said it is a longer journey from Northern Ohio to kentucky then from america to europe. The one day ride brings us into the 18th century. I am curious about this moment. The boy scout handbook was second in book sales in this country only to the bible. We have this early dawn of the 20th century is happening. Youve got parts of the country entering the 20th century and parts that are still in the 18th century not even 19th. Theres conflict happening regionally. This is a project that engages with not just an enormous swath of geography. At the turn of the 20th century is a very different place. And urban areas are different places from rural areas. I am curious how that part of the story this is a moment and the concept of this coming to fruition. Perhaps the surest way to put it the emerging urban and suburban needed for its self i rustic the nostalgic nature. Decided it was going to find andor create th