In this episode of The Overstory, we're getting out into nature--slowly, safely--and exploring what that looks like in the age of pandemic. We talk with journalist and urban farmer Novella Carpenter about how to grow your own vegetables, while our advice columnist, Ms. Green, talks about how to reduce food waste and shop smart while you're sheltering in place. Reporter Jackie Bryant offers tips for how to recreate outdoors while still maintaining physical distance from others. And investigative journalist Adam Federman discusses how the National Park Service is navigating the pandemic. Plus: Dr. Scott Sampson, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, shares a personal remembrance about how he fell in love with wild nature.

Transcript

Jason Mark: I'm Jason Mark, host of The Overstory. On our last episode we talked all about Earth Day in the age of pandemic. How exactly is social activism going to work in this era of social distancing? Well, I think Earth Day 2020 was a good test of that. For the most part it worked. It seemed like tens of thousands, if not many more than that, were online at any given time at earthday.org, checking out videos and presentations, performers like Jason Mraz, luminaries like Pope Francis or António Guterres, the UN Secretary General.

For our part, we had thousands of new listeners to The Overstory’s Earth Day episode, so we wanted to start this episode by welcoming you. We're glad to have you all and I'm glad you found us. If you feel inclined, throw us a review or some stars on your preferred podcast platform, tell your loved ones and your new Zoom buddies. The Overstory just started on its second season, and with your support we'll be around for many more Earth Days to come. Now, on to the show.

So, like a lot of folks these days, I'm starting to have some real cabin fever. It's just a lot, being at home, juggling work, juggling family and my kid. And in a lot of ways it's really rewarding. It's wonderful to eat at home as a family every night, to cook our own meals, to spend so much time together. And it can also feel a little claustrophobic.

Normally, I can get a relief by going out, going hiking, going bird watching, but that stuff is less available now for obvious reasons. National Parks are closed, here in California all of the state parks are closed, and even many of our regional parks have restricted access or have closed trailheads in parking lots. So to get outside, I've been going online to a website called The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks, produced by Google Arts & Culture.

It's more than just a nature documentary. There are these really cool 360-degree views, deep audio, different clickable icons that let you climb down a glacier's crevasse in Alaska, or walk through a lava tube in Hawaii, or dive down to a shipwreck in a coral reef in Florida. It's amazing. It's stuff that I could barely do in real life, and it's a really nice relief from the COVID-19 news.

It's a little awkward to admit, then, that I once wrote a whole essay about why this kind of thing isn't a good idea, why nature should stay un-digitized. In that essay, I actually specifically called out Google, saying that its mapping program, its Google Treks to places like the Grand Canyon, were a threat to our experience of the wild as a place that's away.

I stand by everything I wrote before. I think it's true that there's no substitute for the real thing, for just being out in the open, your eyes not locked on a screen. It can feel, and I don't know if this is maybe a little bit too much, but it kind of feels like that moment in Plato's Cave. It's like we're all inside, and we're only seeing sort of the shadows of things. And you get out there, you get in the woods or the seashore, and it feels like suddenly your eyes are open and the light is blinding.

Introduction  (3:34)

(Theme music fades in)

Jason Mark: So in this episode, we're getting outside. Slowly, responsibly, but we're doing it. We might not be traveling to Hawaii, but we can, each of us, experience a little bit of nature right outside our back doors.

Scott Sampson: We got to the pond, and I could see these little critters start to disperse, and I was completely immersed in this sea of tadpoles.

Jason Mark: And then we'll venture further afield with writer Jackie Bryant as our guide to getting out into nature while staying safely distant from the throngs of other nature-hungry urbanites.

Jackie Bryant: Even if you do get to go outside and there is a way to safely do it, it doesn't mean you're going to get to do it when you want or however much you want. You're going to have to cut back because there just isn't enough space for everybody.

Jason Mark: And for those of you wondering how to maintain sustainable food habits in pandemic times, Ms. Green offers some tips on how to green the pandemic from farm, to table, to garbage, back to table.

Jessian Choy: Banana peels with miso. I have yet to try that. That’s actually first on my list to try.

Jason Mark: I'm Jason Mark. All that and more coming up this time on The Overstory.

 (Theme music fades out)

Urban Farming Growth During the Pandemic (4:44)

Jason Mark: In addition to working as a writer and a journalist and getting to host this really fun podcast, I've also got kind of another life: a background as an urban farmer. In 2005, back when the term urban farmer would still appear in quotes, I co-founded a spot called Alemany Farm, and 15 years later I'm really proud to say we're still going strong as the largest farm in the city and county of San Francisco.

It was through my experience at Alemany Farm, and my participation in I guess what you could call the Good Food Movement here in the Bay Area, that I got to meet Novella Carpenter. She's a journalist also, and a writer, and at that time she was an urban homesteader in West Oakland whose experiences at Ghost Town Farm supplied the material for her 2009 book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. I was curious what Novella is thinking about these times, and the resurgent interest in backyard farming. So I gave her a call.

Jason Mark: Hey, Novella.

Novella Carpenter: Hey, Jason.

Jason Mark: This is such a weird time, huh? We pivoted pretty quickly from panic buying to all of a sudden panic planting. The garden centers are running out of starts and soil mixes, the seed companies like Johnny's Selected Seeds and Baker Creek Heirloom are running out of seeds, and there are even reports of hatcheries running out of young baby chicks to sell because people are interested in getting some laying hens. What do you make of the whole thing?

Novella Carpenter: It's kind of a time when you feel suddenly validated. I wasn't just some crazy lady being like, "Grow your own tomatoes," or like, "House some bunnies on your deck," you know? Because then all of a sudden, now people are starting to realize that, actually, this is kind of our Katrina moment where we're like, "Oh, nobody's going to help us." So people are freaking out and starting their little homesteads as fast as they can.

Jason Mark: There's kind of an almost predictable ebb and flow, in terms of people's interest in urban farming, of good times and bad, right? I mean, during the 2008-2009 Great Recession, people were very interested in producing some of their own food. And then, when everybody's fat and happy and the stock market is booming and there's low unemployment, then everybody kind of forgets about it. And then the wheel turns again, we have something like this, and suddenly everybody's back into it.

Novella Carpenter: Yeah, I know. My book, Farm City, I remember I was writing it in 2008, and when I had pitched that book and sent out the proposal, people were like, "Oh, it's cute, it's a funny, zany tale." The book actually came out in 2009, so the 2008 recession hit, and then there was a resurgence of wanting to start gardening. And it wasn't just cute anymore, it was actually information that people needed to know.

So now I think people are looking down the barrel of a gun, right? They're like, "Uh oh." Maybe there are going to be food shortages, so we probably have people ordering on Johnny's half an ounce of seed for their backyard.

Jason Mark: Like a half-ounce of carrots, for people who don't know, is going to go a really long way.

Novella Carpenter: That's the rest of your life, enough carrots for the rest of your life. And then also you see who has money, the pandemic exposes all of the cracks of our society. So who has money and power to order all the stock tanks to grow food in these beautiful containers? Who has enough money to go buy up every plant start at the plant nursery?

Novella Carpenter: For me, the big reaction is to say how can we make this more equitable? How can we redistribute these kinds of resources, plant starts, seeds? How can we look to the grassroots to start getting seeds to everyone? And then you always hit up against the problem, which is if people live in apartments, how can they grow food? And then if your soil in your backyard is contaminated with lead, how can you grow food in it too? So then it leads to this idea of collective action. How can we have groups of people helping each other have food sovereignty?

Jason Mark: Yeah, it's not like we want this urban back to the land movement that's all about living simply. It's more about living resiliently, which is going to be an act of neighborliness more than, "Oh, I'm going to hunker down on my little parcel of a couple hundred square feet."

Novella Carpenter: Yeah, and I think that it's kind of an issue of how do we get food to people that really actually need it.

Jason Mark: Sure. Is it going to stick? Is this new interest in backyard food production going to stick? Or could it evaporate again as it sort of did after the Great Recession?

Novella Carpenter: I think probably people who are going to go back to their tech job or whatever paying gig that they have, probably the farming, the gardening is going to slide. But in order for real change to happen, it has to happen now while all of the systems are kind of messed up. Right now, is the time for urban farmers and people who are really into food sovereignty to start pushing for programs that are then going to become a part of our heritage.

Jason Mark: So there are all these people who bought seeds and starts, and now they're like, "What do I do with this stuff?"

Novella Carpenter: Yeah. The problem is, and this often happens, people get excited, they get bit by the bug of urban farming, they have rabbits, they have goats, they have a beehive, they have planted 20 fruit trees, and then they just don't know what is going on.

Jason Mark: First of all, you're 100 percent right. I mean, my little patch of ground on my backyard, which I'm very proud of, is certainly not going to feed my family. At the same time, I have this feeling that if more people had had a couple hundred square feet of vegetables and a few laying hens back in February or March, we wouldn't have seen that panic buying. A lot of this is more of a cultural, psychological endeavor. It gives people more of a sense of security, again, hopefully that sense of neighborliness, and then perhaps just connects them a little bit more to natural systems.

Novella Carpenter: I teach urban ag at the college level, and I'm always like the basket weaver class. Everyone just takes it because it's fun and stupid. And now my students are like, "Yo, Novella, I'm in St. Louis, what should I do in this backyard?" It's becoming urgent for people. I think that's kind of cool, and I also don't think that goes away. Especially for kids and young adults, like my college kids, this is going to stick with them. Don't take it as a given that you'll always have food. And so I think it will kind of instill a sense of needing to at least have a vegetable garden.

Jason Mark: Nothing sharpens the attention like the sight of stripped grocery store shelves, right?

Novella Carpenter: It's so scary. It's so scary.

Jason Mark: It's revealed at once how utterly dependent we are on this huge chain of people growing, picking, distributing, shipping, delivering, and then selling our groceries, and at the same time how little faith we have that that chain might hold together under stress. Because if people were confident there would be rice and pasta on the shelves tomorrow, they wouldn't have been hoarding staples in the middle of March.

Novella Carpenter: Right. Where's the flour? There's no flour. I'm totally in that hoarder mentality as well. The problem of urban farming is always having land, right?

Jason Mark: Right.

Novella Carpenter: Just down the street from our house is the Dover Street Garden, it's like an edible park basically. And I was just like, "Wow, everybody should be writing grants right now to start parks like this all over the city." It's a place where someone can go be six feet apart from a person, harvest some food, and feel a sense of community even though you didn't get to hug someone.

Jason Mark: And on that note, I agree, get out there folks, plant your garden, get the seeds in the ground. And if you're trying to figure out what to do with all of those seeds and starts you might have hoarded back in the beginning parts of April, check out Novella's book, The Essential Urban Farmer, it's a fantastic resource and it'll help you make sure that you've got a thriving place in your backyard. Novella, thanks so much.

Novella Carpenter: Thank you, Jason. That was fun.

Jason Mark: That was Novella Carpenter, she's the Garden Instructor at the University of San Francisco and the author of Farm City, as well as the encyclopedic resource, The Essential Urban Farmer, co-written with Willow Rosenthal.

Can You Stay Safe and Enjoy the Outdoors? (13:45)

Jason Mark: Jackie Bryant is a writer who lives in San Diego, the city that's known for all of its parks and its beaches. So when the quarantine started, her first thought was to get outside. Turns out she wasn't the only one who had that idea. So Jackie started looking into how, or if, we can still have nice things. In other words, can we enjoy the outdoors and stay safe during the pandemic? Sierra Magazine's Katie O'Reilly spoke with Jackie about what she found.

Jackie Bryant: Honestly, the answer may be that you can't go outside, or at least not as much. I think the first thing that everyone has to understand is, even if you do get to go outside and there is a way to safely do it, it doesn't mean you're going to get to do it when you want or however much you want. You're going to have to cut back, because there just isn't enough space for everybody. So I think that's the number one thing that we just need to accept and internalize. You're going to be spending less time outside. Unless you live in Alaska, then drive wherever and go nuts, right?

Katie O'Reilly: Right. Especially for those of us in urbanized areas, we're making this sacrifice for the collective good right now.

Jackie Bryant: Exactly.

Katie O'Reilly: I personally struggle with it a lot. Some of the hiking trails near me aren't completely closed down, but they tend to get pretty narrow in places, so-

Jackie Bryant: Exactly. And if you see that, it means your time that day may be cut short, and then hopefully maybe you get up 15 minutes earlier the next day, or half an hour earlier, and you ensure that you're the first person to the trailhead. It means that, like everything else, we're going to have to change some things and rearrange, put in a little bit of extra effort and care. It requires more thought and intention, which may not also be a bad thing in the end.

Katie O'Reilly: That's a good point. And I'm curious if you can kind of talk about how you think this will change our relationship with the outdoors in the future, once the COVID crisis is in the rear view mirror?

Jackie Bryant: I think it's going, hopefully, to make some of us rethink how we utilize the outdoors. It will cause people to think more about the places they're going, how they're accessing them, how they're using them, how they're using them up, if they're contributing in a good way or not. Because now, if you drive to, let's say, a state beach that isn't closed, and you look at the parking lot, if it's filled, are you going to try and find your way in anymore? I think everybody is going to feel bad about that going forward, whereas previously ...

Katie O'Reilly: Oh, that's interesting.

Jackie Bryant: ... maybe they wouldn't have. And so maybe we leave a little bit more space for everybody going forward.

Katie O'Reilly: Kind of a less opportunistic attitude in general when it comes to our favorite places.

Jackie Bryant: I'm hoping we take that relationship with everything. Maybe when we go back to the store too, and we see that there are only three loaves of bread left on the shelf, maybe we take one and hope that it gets replenished by the end of the week, so we come back and take one the next week, not buy three for the next three weeks.

Katie O'Reilly: Yes.

Jackie Bryant: You use a little bit less so that there's some for everybody.

Katie O'Reilly: Absolutely, less of an individualistic attitude, like these places exist for us.

Jackie Bryant: Exactly.

Katie O'Reilly: And I'm curious, what have you been doing outside lately, how has your outdoor adventure routine changed after the research you did?

Jackie Bryant: It's changed a lot, especially because, again, I do live in the middle of San Diego, so most of my outdoors options that are ... Well, all of them that are walkable are closed, with pretty significant fines and various levels of public shaming if you don't adhere to them. So I'm not interested in participating in those. I wanted to go out to the desert and I wanted to do that, but then after considering the impact on those towns out there, what if something happened to me? What if I broke my leg and needed to be airlifted out or something? It's never happened before, but this would be a pretty bad time to test that out.

Katie O'Reilly: This is not the time to be risking our safety and danger in the outdoors, when we're looking at an already overwhelmed medical system.

Jackie Bryant: Exactly. When I think of "don't leave the home", I think of it as very much more than we're just avoiding people. It means you're taking yourself as a burden off, if you can.

Katie O'Reilly: Thank you so, so much for reporting so carefully on this very important topic right now, and for chatting with us today.

Jackie Bryant: Thank you.

 (transition music)

Jason Mark: That was Sierra Magazine's Adventure and Lifestyle Editor, Katie O'Reilly, talking with Jackie Bryant. For more on this subject, head to sierramagazine.org and look for Jackie's story.

Preventing Food Waste with Ms. Green (18:37)

Jason Mark: I think it's true that lately we've all been forced to become low-key preppers, figuring out how to stock a pantry, how to do grocery shopping that'll last you for weeks on end, how to make sourdough. Come on, I know you've seen all the pictures. I know that it's been an adjustment for those of us who might've been used to the luxury of shopping spontaneously for the meals of the day, squeezing all the avocados and the mangoes to make sure they're perfectly ripe before we toss them into our reusable shopping bags.

 (transition music)

Jason Mark: So Ms. Green, aka Jessian Choy, talked to one of our producers about how to have fresh, healthy food while staying safe and sustainable during the pandemic. They recorded this from their respective home studios.

Jessian Choy: Do you mind if I move to another closet? I'm feeling the weight of all my clothes on my head.

(laughter, doors opening and closing)

Josie Holtzman: I'm Josie Holtzman, one of the producers of The Overstory, and now that we are both settled in our makeshift home studios, I wanted to ask my question about food. So I'm wondering, Ms. Green, how to be a little bit more sustainable during the pandemic in terms of shopping and cooking, and also dealing with food waste.

Jessian Choy: I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think I might've figured out what might be easy, more equitable, and green ways to grocery shop, either in person or online, cook in bulk, and prevent food waste. I think it's really important even before you shop to have a grocery list that walks the fine line, especially during a pandemic, between keeping you fed for a really long time and also isn't hoarding that leads to food waste.

Non-refrigerated foods are a lifesaver. I've been making quote-unquote milk the lazy way, which is just stirring a tablespoon of nut or seed butter into a cup of water with a fork. Even if you don't have a blender, you can just use a fork. My housemate who is a carnivore was very skeptical, but we had run out of milk, so she tried it and now she's not buying any more milk.

I think there's never been a better time to find vegan food because the funny thing is, I'm not worried about food running out because I see plenty of vegan food on the shelves because people don't know how tasty some of them can be.

So first I can talk about shopping with reusable bags. So far, evidence suggests that COVID-19 does not survive well on a soft surface such as fabric. And so, if you and staff where you shop feel safe, you can still use reusable bags, if you're allowed of course. Just remember to wash them. And it might be safer to shop at farmers' markets because there can be more space to move around than in a grocery store. Fewer hands most likely touch the produce, some don't even let you touch their products until after you pay. And fewer hands also touch community-shared agriculture produce boxes. I made a green coronavirus kit that I tweeted about @realmsgreen.

So back to cooking, because I know you wanted to hear about that.

Josie Holtzman: Yeah.

Jessian Choy: As for food waste prevention, there are all kinds of things you can eat that you don't think you can. Maybe beet greens, radish tops, I mean you can pretty much eat almost everything I would say that you get at the grocery store, if you want to stretch your produce. There are also cookbooks like Too Good to Waste, Cooking With Scraps, Eat It Up!, The Waste Not, Want Not Cookbook.

Josie Holtzman: Do you have any favorite waste-generated recipes?

Jessian Choy: I found one where you can eat banana peels with miso, I have yet to try that, that's actually first on my list to try.

Josie Holtzman: My son eats a lot of bananas, so we are definitely going to try that out.

Jessian Choy: Yeah, I think you have to chop it up, if I recall.

Josie Holtzman: Oh yeah, I think he'd be into that.

Jessian Choy: And then as long as food isn't moldy, slimy, smelly, or gross tasting, it can be safe to eat past the quote-unquote "best before", "use by", or "sell by" dates. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can see Consumer Reports for more information on that.

Josie Holtzman: Well, thank you so much for this, this was unbelievably helpful and heartening. As always, people can reach you with future questions @realmsgreen?

Jessian Choy: Yes, on Twitter.

Josie Holtzman: On Twitter.

Jessian Choy: Thank you so much.

Josie Holtzman: Thanks so much, Jessian.

(Transition music)

Jason Mark: That was Jessian Choy, Ms. Green, talking to our producer, Josie Holtzman.

Keepign Kids Engaged With Nature (23:33)

Jason Mark: Dr. Scott Sampson is a paleontologist and educator, and the Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, so he's spent a career thinking about nature in different scales, different timescales as well as the different scales of the natural world all around us. That is, simply how to connect people with nature. We asked him to share some thoughts on what that means to him now.

Scott Sampson: My name's Scott Sampson. I am the Executive Director at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, an amazing place with a planetarium, an aquarium, and a natural history museum all under a giant green roof. But many people know me as Dr. Scott, the Paleontologist, host of the PBS Kids series, Dinosaur Train. Getting kids engaged in nature is critical for them and their personal health, that's mental, physical, spiritual, and it's also critical for the world. If kids don't spend any time out in nature connecting to their local place, why are they going to care about taking care of the world just because they're grown up?

Actually, my earliest memory goes back to the spring that I turned five years old. My mother took me to a pond, there were tadpoles there and my mother wanted me to see the tadpoles. I just remember walking through the forest, typical spring day with moisture falling from the trees. And then we got to the pond and I immediately went running up and looked in the pond, I stepped into the water and I could see these little critters start to disperse, and I was blown away. I stepped in further, I picked up a handful of these things, and I could feel them squirming in my hands.

I took another step in and one of my boots flooded. And I looked at my mom and she kind of just said, "Okay, keep going," and so I kept going. My other boot flooded, and I kept walking until the water was almost up to my chest. I was completely immersed in this sea of tadpoles in the middle of this forest. And looking back on it, it's the first time where it felt like there was no difference between me and the rest of the world. I was completely immersed in that world, completely interconnected to it, and I have since long sought that same feeling of deep connection.

Getting out for me is absolutely critical. I typically take off on these hikes pretty stressed out, and by the time I hit the bottom of the hill and I start going up, my body gets into a rhythm and I start to see and hear and feel the world. And all of a sudden I just have this different feeling wash over me, like I'm not just a human being anymore, I'm part of this place.

Jason Mark: That was Dr. Scott Sampson, he's the Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences.

National Park's Response to Coronavirus (26:37)

Jason Mark: So far this episode we've been talking mostly about our personal connection to nature, our responsibility to nature and to our communities during this time. But what does that look like on a national level? How have our country's National Parks responded to the coronavirus pandemic?

Well, it's been a rather haphazard, maybe even incoherent, response. Some National Parks closed immediately as the pandemic began to spread; others closed only after staffers had got sick; some closed just recently; and in fact a few never closed, or are opening now.

To find out the latest, we talked with Adam Federman. He's a reporter with Type Investigations, where he covers public lands for outlets including Politico Magazine, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, and also Sierra Magazine. Adam, thanks so much for joining us.

Adam Federman: It's great to be here, Jason, thanks for having me.

Jason Mark: So kind of walk us through the basics of how the National Park Service has dealt with the coronavirus pandemic. In some ways, it's kind of an echo of the White House's response, right? Going first sort of downplaying the threat, and then belatedly catching up.

Adam Federman: I think what was so revealing was the fact that the Park Service and the Department of the Interior really had no plan. They've really taken a piecemeal approach to dealing with the crisis at individual parks as pressure has mounted to close them. We're all sort of living in this time warp now, but it was just a few weeks ago that major parks like Grand Canyon and Zion were still open.

These parks receive millions of visitors every year, and staff, especially at Grand Canyon, were becoming increasingly concerned about their health and the health of visitors, and the surrounding communities which have limited healthcare infrastructure. Proactive measures were really never taken, and now we're already talking about reopening them, which is as controversial as the sort of ineffective manner in which they tried to close many of these parks.

Jason Mark: And when you said earlier, "pressure to close", that pressure came from residents primarily in the gateway communities, right? I mean, Moab, Utah, I believe in middle to late March, they just kind of shut down themselves, many of the hotels there closed, and in fact were telling people explicitly, "Don't come here right now."

Adam Federman: You saw pressure from local officials, even business leaders, I mean, the Chamber of Commerce in Grand Canyon was saying close the park. These are folks who do not want to lose that business, and they were ahead of the Department, because really the decision lies with the Department of the Interior.

Jason Mark: One of the big bombshells in the piece that you wrote has to do with an internal memo that you were able to obtain from sources there in the Department. I believe this is an April 3rd memo that was circulated within the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service. Tell us what that said.

Adam Federman: Yeah, this is a fascinating inside look at some of the dialogue that was taking place within the department itself, the National Park Service has an Office of Public Health. This memo was circulated among National Park Service staff, essentially warning them that continued visitation to parks would increase the spread of coronavirus, and would also put Park Service employees, visitors, and neighboring communities at risk. And it laid things out in pretty stark terms.

Jason Mark: Just thinking about what's going on today, right here in California, I checked, this again is in late April, April 28th, Yosemite National Park is fully closed. But another park, smaller, lesser-known to be sure, called Pinnacles National Park in the middle of our state, it's a beautiful outcropping of kind of volcanic formations, it's still mostly open. And so it just seems to me like a great example of, again, this is my word, not yours, but basically incoherence of this strategy. I mean, as the crow flies, it can't be more than, I don't know, call it 150, maybe 170, miles from Pinnacles to Yosemite, and yet a totally different response.

Adam Federman: Right. It's not only incoherent, but I think it's extremely confusing to the public that has to navigate a system of alerts and web updates about trails that are open or not open, visitor centers that may be closed. I mean, are there restrooms? We tend to think of parks as places where you go and all of a sudden you're just out in wide open space, but we know that that's not the way it works. You've got to park, you need some basic services usually, unless you're experienced, people often need bathrooms.

So if that stuff isn't available, then what's happening out in these parks that have limited service available? The message from Interior is often contradictory. They claim to be listening to local public health officials when, in fact, they're taking much longer to actually respond to pressure from towns and communities near these parks. And the Department of the Interior's response has mirrored that of the administration.

Jason Mark: As of today, which is Tuesday, April 28th, there are now 27 National Park Service employees nationwide who have tested positive for COVID. I'm wondering, are you keeping in touch with your sources on what's just the general vibe or mood within Parks Service employees? How are they feeling about their own safety and wellbeing?

Adam Federman: I think there's a lot of unease. I know seasonal employees, many of whom may not be going back to work, have questions about what's going to happen. Parks are set to start reopening. For example, in Alaska, I've been in touch with folks up there in Denali, they just don't have a very clear understanding at this point of how they're going to be able to accommodate tourists and still keep themselves and their communities safe. So I think there are a lot of unanswered questions at this point.

Jason Mark: I should say that Adam did reach out to the National Park Service for responses to his reporting. The Department declined to respond to his questions. Also, just for the record, the National Parks Conservation Association has called for the closure of all national parks, and the Sierra Club has also echoed that call for the temporary closure of all parks until it's safe enough to reopen them.

Adam, thanks again. I really appreciate your time and I really appreciate all your great reporting.

Adam Federman: Great to be here, Jason. Thank you.

Jason Mark: That was Adam Federman. His reporting was produced in collaboration with Type Investigations.

Conclusion and Listening to Birds (33:36)

Jason Mark: Right now, I think we're all finding one of the most effective antidotes to isolation, to the anxieties and the fears of living in this uncertain time of a global pandemic, is just some basic time outside. Now, as we heard on this show, we can't all go out into deep wilderness. It's not feasible right now, it's going to put the people who live in those far-flung communities at risk.

But it's also important to remember, as we were hearing from Novella Carpenter, from Scott Sampson, that nature can be right outside your door. You don't need to go to some grand epic place, or if you live in a city and you don't have a backyard, out on the street. The warblers or the finches that are in the trees on your block are nature too. So I want you to remember, there's nature everywhere. Sometimes you just need to notice it. And so that's what we've been doing.

So we're out here at Alemany Farm, just me and my daughter, hanging out on a beautiful spring day. That sound you hear in the background is Highway 280, it's about 10 lanes of traffic right on the edge of San Francisco. But if you listen real carefully, a lot of what you hear is birds. So let's just take a minute and listen to the sound of a little piece of green right here in the middle of San Francisco.

Daughter (whispering): Daddy, who are you talking to?

Jason Mark: I'm making a recording for my radio show. We're going to do that again though, we're just going to listen for 10 seconds and hear how many birds we hear.

Daughter: Daddy?

Jason Mark: How many birds did you hear?

Daughter: A dozen.

Jason Mark: A dozen? I don't know, I think maybe four. It's kind of hard to hear the birds sometimes over the freeway, over Highway 280. But you know what I like to do? I just pretend that the freeway is like the sound of a rushing river. Like Mill Creek. The American?

Daughter: Yeah, that's what I was going to do.

Jason Mark: Yeah, I just pretend like it's the rushing American River in the Sierra Nevada, and then we can hear all the birds. Who's that little friend? You've got to get my binoculars.

 (38:04) Notes and Thanks

 Jason Mark: That's it for this episode of The Overstory, we'll be back in a few weeks with our next episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. The Overstory is produced by Josephine Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum at Future Projects Media with help from Danielle Roth. Our theme music is by Jeff Brodsky, this episode was mixed by Merritt Jacob. I'm Jason Mark, and you've been listening to The Overstory.