[applause] also, to weta, production partners for 25 years and my dear friend, sharon rockefeller. paul lot at pbs has been a great pillar of support for the projects over the last several years we have attempted to do and i don't á'2e@rr for this production but for many others. this represents an extraordinary collaboration

between pbs, the prague -- the public broadcasting service, and the national park service. i would like to think this national representatives of the park service's, -- i would like to think these national representatives of the park service's here today. all of the extraordinary public service, the rangers who helped us from the gates of the arctic in northern alaska to the dry tortugas off the florida keys, from hawaii volcanoes, to acadia in maine. they have been tremendous servants and i would like to thank them. we have been celebrating over the last several days our public lands. there has been an enormous outpouring of support, all across the country in more than 200 of the 391 sites of the national park service. citizens have been turning out and by the hundreds and by the thousands, to celebrate not just the initiation of this film, but our love of these public lands,

these treasured landscapes, as the secretary of the interior, who has been a great champion of this project would say. it has been an amazing outpouring in a country that is often so distracted by the now that there are so many millions of citizens million -- willing to commit to these public lands in such a meaningful way. we, in turn, try to express some sort of thanks to the national park service for their service to us. we are turning over to them, as of today, all of our research material, the full transcript, the full images of all the interviews we took in the course of this, the database at nearly 12,000 individual images called from hundreds and hundreds of archives around the country and the world. rights to which we do not possess, but i think will be an important database for the park service and historians and researchers for decades to come.

we have also produced, with the help of the cost jr. fund, six other films -- one is a 45 minute films that is the unique story of the national parks, and five other contemporary films that i think will draw new visitors to the parks. we still have some populations in our country that do not yet feel the ownership of the national parks. it has been our commitment and indeed our mandate to try to reach them and show them heroes of the national parks that look and sound like them. we are very happy to present to the park service and the department of interior the fruits of our labour in addition to sharing with our fellow -- with our fellow citizens are 10- year labor of love on this. we're very excited to do this and very grateful for the help you gave us at 3:00 a.m. with the rangers a standing next to us as we took a shot of dawn. it was very special. thank you. one learns, the nationalist john

muir said, the world and made is yet to be made. this is still the morning of creation. this documentary film series and are companion book grew out of experiences and emotions and attitudes form and shape by more than three decades of trying to get to the heart of a deceptively simple question -- who are we? who are those strange and complicated people who like to call themselves americans? what can an investigation of the past tell us not only but we have been as a people, but where we are and where we might be going? the various films we have made over the last 30 years have often tried to explore the central issue of race in america, the great sin and stained of slavery and its ennobling and bedeviling consequences. in works on the statue of liberty, the civil war, baseball, jazz, thomas jefferson, mark twain, and the

first african american heavyweight, jack johnson, among others. but we have also been drawn inexorably to a question of space -- the way in which the sheer physicality of this great continent has molded us as a people for better and for worst. for films and on the history of the american west, that strange and dangerous intersection of cultures, where some of our national character and mythology has emerged, to the lewis and clark expedition and its own decidedly bittersweet lessons. from a light-hearted look at the first cross-country automobile trip made a century after meriwether lewis and william clark made theirs, to the wonderful and unforgiving landscape that would inspire a young samuel clemens to take on the central themes of both race and space that is complicated young nation seemed unable to avoid. we too have been captivated and directed by a sense of possibility and promise in the magnificence our land. that interest has reached its apotheosis for us in the story

of our national parks. in the narrative of their creation, in the evolution of their clean and stunningly influential ideal, we have been able to engage in joint teams that transcend the political or military or social elements that have traditionally passed for american history. and been able at times, i believe, to touch on or at least glance the internet and indeed spiritual things that bind us and that complicated mass together. -- complicated path together. we have a curiosity for the still wild places of america, and animating spirit that has renewed our passion as filmmakers, writers, historians and friends. there is no person more central to this enterprise than my best friend, dayton duncan, the author and producer of this film, the person who brought this to my attention, who every day served as the general of this project and should be standing here with me as an

equal co author of this effort. would you please acknowledge his central role? [applause] in every gesture and breath, i speak for him today and you know i stand here supported by his extraordinary words and kindness and friendship in all of this. we cannot imagine every subject to continue to pursue the questions that have propelled us for so long. it is not as if the national parks have not been done before. they have. but it was our intention to make a documentary film series and a book on the history of the parks. this would not be a tour guide, a travel log filled with pretty pictures of wildlife or spectacular natural scenery, bill our senior -- and though our film would have that in the end. nor would this be in a lodge to

stay at one on vacation. we were more and agree -- we were more interested in calling the individuals that created this uniquely american thing called the national park, and then should we now take for granted like the air we breathe, the water we drink. we were principally drawn to the fact that for the first time in human history, land, great sections of our natural landscapes set-aside not for kings, noblemen, or the very rich, but for everyone and for all time. we like the fact that we americans had invented such a wonderful thing, that this idea, like our articulation of universal political freedom and the declaration of independence should be so widely admired and copied throughout the rest of the world. in fact, we came to believe with every fiber of our being, the parks are nothing less than the declaration of independence applied to landscapes. three decades of continually brushing up against this amazing and surprisingly little- known story, during the course

of producing are other projects, getting to know historical figures important to the evolution of the park idea, spending time out in these transformative and restorative places, only heighten our interest in the subject. 10 years ago, we committed to making a documentary film about our national parks. over the many years, it has taken to complete this project, we have found in this story of the parks, quite simply a remark -- a reminder of our best selves, a connection to the most primitive impulses we human beings have. an appreciation of the value of commonwealth these parks represent on spiritual and material level. during the course of our investigation, we began to gain a new, intimate awareness of the flabbergasting and nearly incalculable geological forces at work and on display in the parks. one of the things we witness when we goo