that's why he became an attorney. he wanted to make a difference so that he and other kids didn't have to go to a home like he did. and they would have more of a chance and that's why he became an attorney. he wanted to make a difference so that other kids didn't have to go to home like he did. and they would have more of a chance. he was a great guy. we were not always seen that much but we were here. we have always been here. and we have accomplished many things and people might not have even known where calvary baptist church was or the other church was but we were here. people knew and they never came but we were always here.

>> james what is next from spokane, washington. his book restless buyers is about the life of john near and why he's considered one of the nation's most significant environmental leaders and father of the national park system. john near was probably one of the most significant environmental thinkers, leaders. he's basically a protagonist for the national park system. helped to bring about the creation of yosemite at the national park. it was a state park for his work. he was instrumental in glacier bay national park and also had influence in the formation of olympic national park and mont rainier national park. for a long time i've been introduced in the impact of travel in a leadership formation in young adults. i don't's work on frederick douglass in on john c adams and aunt jane adams. all of them with significant travel experience for the impact on their careers. in the case of john, he found

his career through his travel and he kept as many of the others did journals of his experience. it gave me insight into what was happening inside his head as he traveled the thousand miles. this was a life shaping experience for him. it really gave him focus and direction as a young adult that meant the changing of history. for me, that was a bonus under an opportunity. called russell's fires, young john years a thousand mile walk to the gulf, 1867-1860. first 11 years of his life he lived in dunbar, scotland which is on the southern side opposite edinburgh. it was a small scottish town, a port town and it was an old castle that he played in and there were lots and lots of cliffs and plenty of birds nest

which he discovered. his father had a dim view of his wanderings with the village boys and wanted to confine him to the gardens in the backyards but john had little interest in that. it was also a place where he received his education. he attended school and he memorized through his father's influence, especially after he left there to come to wisconsi wisconsin -- ricky memorized all of the new testament, three quarters of the old testament. he could say in one city he said by combinations of primaries and beatings. [laughter] he was well-educated. he brought that education with him as an 11 -year-old to wisconsin and then he lived in wisconsin up until the time he left the farm at age 21. he had very narrow early expenses. dunbar and two farms in wisconsin, one called fountain lake and the other called hickory hill.

his father was an itinerant evangelistic preacher who was more interested in establishing the church on the frontier than building the farm with physical labor. he set his daughters and sons to do that task. it was hard, hard work as his grandmother warned him it would be. he was 29 when he began the journey and it was prompted by a number of factors. first of all, as a young boy on the farm he had read about travel. he had read memos part travel through africa and complete works of alexander von humboldt's travel to the south in latin america, south america and the amazon. he was well read and it was a struggle for him to get a hold of these books because his father privileged only one book and that was the bible. only the new testament. he had to work out a deal with his dad and this was led to his

education. the deal was that if he got up early enough in the morning, non- part-time, he could read knowing full well that after full day of labor he wouldn't want to read anyway. so what he did is he created a pension and an invention with two large wisconsin boulders tied with gears of a clock so that to clock in the morning the boulders would fall down and raise his bed up and he would get up out of bed and go about his inventing or reading. can you imagine that in a household? clank, clank, some. father would've heard it for sure but father was a man of his word allowed him to continue in that reading. the invention actually became his ticket to the university of wisconsin because the neighbor suggested he show these inventions to the wisconsin state fair. as a youngster he went off to the fair and is now about 21, 22

at the time he was leaving home in the first time in his life, got on a train from the first trainee never been on in his life and he decided to sit in the front of the cow catcher so the wind would whistle through his beard in his hair. he went up there to show his inventions. the professor's wife, jean carr, who was very important in his life later on was on the committee to watch these inventions and he won an award for that. but he also won a scholarship to attend the university of wisconsin. his father had a dim view of that but the two farms had been built and there is no reason for him to stay home so he spent two homes at the university of wisconsin. there he discovered boxing. he became installed with that. there was a classmate of his by the name of griswold showed him

on the knee showed him a large hickory tree in the hickory tree had exactly the same kind of seed desperate sorry, it wasn't a big retreat but a locust tree. the low history had exactly the same kind of seed is a small but on and in other words, they were connected. how could something be so large as look history and this little p fine be related. it brought illumination to his life. he said that is fantastic. griswold you and i need to go out and look at the countryside. jean carr who was at the college and also a love of money. that was nurtured there. one night he was working on the legs to some belts and it's laced together with laces and that's how they had to make the belts in those days out of buffalo hide leather. he took a pointed end of a file and iran it up against the wheel

and a lot of pressure was put to bear on it and suddenly it sprang back and hit his eye. it punctured his right i. it fell out in the end and he was rendered blind, almost immediately from that. the other i went out with sympathetic blindness and about three or four weeks he was in a darkened room in indianapolis. miraculously his eyesight came back. there's a pretty good eye care basically laid down in a dark room is the way you handle those things. nothing permanent place. that was the turning point. at that point he said i am no longer interested in human inventions but i want to discover, explore god's inventions. there was an unfortunate episode with his father. it had a profound impact on him. he came home and wanted to signify and had a good

relationship with his mother and greatly relationship with his brothers and sisters and kept in contact with them all the time. his father was a little ticked at him because he was becoming a wandering botanist and what was that? not coming back to the farm and hit had it with farming. so, he was not ready to depart and his father said to him john, in case you forgot something and no, what father? you forgot to pay me for your board in room. john took out some money and paid it and said i thought i came here as a welcome guest as your son and i see that you still don't believe in what i'm doing. he actually never saw his father from that point on until his death bed in 1885. his father kept in contact with letters but all the letters were

pointing that he was living his life in a misdirected way. john was having to defend himself against his father's letters in the classic illustration that was john had climbed the mountain in california and wrote a wonderful account of that that was published in wisconsin magazine. his father read it and then fired back a letter to him john, you will never find a god in those icy mountains of yours. john wrote back and said i am closer to god in the amount that i ever am in any of your churches. [laughter] there was clearly friction still between them. on the other hand he said while his father was zealous and religious he was foundational he kind. it was a double thing and paradox like any relationship between a son and a father. he provided resources for all of the kids to say their goodbyes when their father was on his deathbed and he was there and

showed up with his father died. so, he then makes the decision september 1st, 1867 to become a wandering botanist. no job security in that. what he will do is he's going to go through parts of the country that he's never been to before and had seen the northern plans up in scotland and been up in canada and has been in wisconsin but he doesn't know about tropics but he's read these books about the tropics. there is one or two key plans that he really wants to see to see a palm tree. why because it's in the bible and somehow feeling set up with god's glory, is the palm tree. he wants to see a palm tree. he also establishes a goal to go all the way from the south across the gulf to the mouth of the orinoco river and travel up the river find the headwaters of

the amazon go down the amazon and go over to africa and go up the congo river. huge ambition. he didn't make it. the reason is he got sick and it was at the end of his walk in that changed history basically. his motivation was he'd read a lot of travel. it had profound experience in botany in biology and he'd also taken wisconsin geology classes and that improves importance later on when he's in the sierras. and he was curious about the unknown. hit his profound curiosity about how things work and how things are related and he had the goal of the palm tree and the goal of the amazon. that is what motivated him.

now, what he took with him was pretty limited. hit one rubberized bag, one student of thin wool clothing which was actually pretty good travel gear. he would average about 18-20 miles a day and walking. he'd take a look at the 181865 more maps they outline the roads. going from one county seat to another. john likes to write that he went to the wilderness but no, he was following country roads going from one county seat to another. it's pretty well find out. he was taking a boardwalk road out of louisville down south towards mammoth cave and elsewhere. it was on a regular route. he followed a railroad track route through florida and he avoided going through. [laughter] he bypassed the swamp in southern georgia as part of northern florida.

he's basically following maps of the area. let's think about the year. this is 1867. it's two years after the civil war. the south has been devastated by the war and in some areas more so than others. he saw a lot of war devastation and saw a lot of poverty in saw a lot of folks who were milling around trying to reconnect families and that was misunderstood. southern first, white southerners we often refer to them as vagabonds and bandits as potential robbers and so the word robber negro was often used synonymously during this period of time. john actually lived with african-american families and traveled with african-american teamsters and by the way, the first time in his life was in south and by large he describes it as a mixed experience. some were positive and some not so positive.

mostly positive. it was kind of a kindness the kind of openness that he found also among the whites. he was a very chatty kind of guy in that was one of his father's claims against him. he could chat up a southerner to chat up in african-american and get along just fine with them. they were curious about him and he was curious about them. he saw a lot of devastation. he tried to stay clear of cities. in savannah he was running out of money and was waiting for the adams express for money to come down from his brothers and promised to send him when they were paid by accounts up in canada. he is out of food and he wants to stay out of the city of savannah because it looks troublesome to him at that time he takes this road that leads out to the cemetery, about 5 miles out of town. it's a beautiful place. in 2007 i visited it was there

and has these huge oak trees with spanish moss and there are these tombstones and said no one is coming here is unsafe but african-americans who lives near state clear of the cemetery and because of the civil war it had gone to a little distance where so he built a little lean to up. in one of the journal sketches that he did it shows his mean to up with a whole bunch of bugs around him and that's probably where he contracted malaria. it didn't come into full effect until he finished up in florida at cedar key. his first entry about bonaventure are pretty limited. he doesn't go into great depth about nature or depth depth

there. but once he came down with malaria in cedar key he was so sick that he had to depend on provide assistance because he was working at a lumber mill to earn money fell on the trail and he became delirious and they thought he was drunk and sent him back to the barracks but realize that he had malaria. they brought him into the house and they cared for him. eventually he began to return and there are times where he mentions in a journal sitting underneath a large oak tree looking out over cedar key estuary near the hodgkins home and he reflected back onto bonaventure. at that point he rewrites the sector of the bonaventure cemetery talking about what is death and what does that mean. he goes on on some of the points

are interesting he feels is very important for children to walk in nature and to see the intermingling of life and death. that it is real. he also says human beings will do what they can with gravestones and little artificial plots and writing on to memorialize the dead and it's seen as a place of gloom and despair but he says now that i've lived in bonaventure with the eagles soaring around with the vines growing up in the birds chirping and this is not a gloomy place at all but a vote of the living of the dead. nature trumps staff. that's his view. it may not be our personal experience -- we may be on the ground but nature is still going on.

that is more real than my life. [laughter] so, he's come to this view that were just part of a bigger system and he goes even further than that says you and me have only been on planet earth for a very limited amount of time relative to other species, dinosaurs. what looks like a dinosaur in florida is an alligator with his father held the view that anything that was predatory including animals that could kill us was satanic evil, of the devil. john was scared of alligators because he would try to crawl under a logs to get a certain flower and he didn't know if the log was an alligator or a log. he was pretty frightened of it. i think he only saw one alligator during his whole trek across and i have a theory about

that that they were food supply for three people off the plantations. in any event, he observed that reflected in the game to the illusion that alligators have a role to play. what is their role? well, they have every right on planet earth as to human beings. otherwise he's moving away from the teaching his father gave him that human beings are the apex of the chain and that were chosen of god to have a special place and have dominion, if you will over creatures. he eradicates that whole concept of dominion and goes the other direction that we are right along an alligator and no different than an alligator and that these alligators have every bit a right to exist as we do because they play an important role in the system. called that a divine harmony.

the harmony was interconnection and interdependence and is sacred. it's not just you tell tearing. that there doesn't just exist to be killed because it's taking out my sheep, you see he is so radical by 1867 his entirely different worldview that the one that dominated agricultural america in 1870. two things to remember about the journals. this is his first journal, 1867, the thousand mile walk. it's not published in his lifetime. it's published two years after he died in 1916. his second journal is his most famous one. my first summer in the sierra. in many respects it's what he called his baptism by light. he finds his vocation and goal in yosemite.

he finds his work district in many respects what happened on his thousand mile walk it showed him his limits. it out of a very important lesson in ability and he felt that that was an important lesson for urban americans to know, to. it's important to realize you have a limited finite role in this universe and to live with a measure of humility and not be arrogant that you thank you know the difference between a weed and a useful plant. we would call that a self-interested, egotistical distinction. likewise, between a predatory animal in a domesticated animal. and more importantly, i think coming out the interconnected things. he's really moving toward a whole new environmental way of understanding things of the system as being one and also

moving away from a dominion concept and then ethics come out of that. if alligators have worth, value and dignity, how much then can i respond to bears, alligators, coyotes, wolves, they have rights too. you treat them with respect. then he was organizationally skilled later on. he saw in his management skills running factories and he envisions how to create an organization that would continue beyond his death and to carry for those values and he also founded the sierra club and the national park system. from my perspective there was about two or three important things in that travel is hugely important in shaping worldview. young adults looking for direction and looking for a career looking for vocation

would do well to serve and travel. live sunday at noon eastern, author, speaker and radio host -- as i will host an in-depth. >> americas not defined by ethnicity.

every ethnicity exists in america. it is not defined by religion. every religion exists in america. defined by an idea. the only country in history of the world created and defined by an idea.therefore, in order to keep the republic as franklin enjoined us to do is we must know the ideas understand them, and to the ideas and live them out. good biographies on william -- and his latest you can keep it brief for now live three hour conversation the calls, emails, tweets and email questions live sunday on in-depth on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]