In 2024 the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree was harvested and delivered from the Tongass National Forest of Wrangell Alaska. For the tenth year in a row, I had the rare privilege to be the official photographer of The People’s Tree. In cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service and the Society of American Foresters we brought an 80-foot Sitka Spruce to the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building on a journey of more than 4,000 miles. Taking pictures along the way, we also gathered audio and video to tell this amazing story. In this special edition of the Joy Trip Project Podcast in three acts, we bring you the sounds and voices of our travels on the trail of a gift from the lands of Tlingit People.

After 16 years of production, the Joy Trip Project has worked hard not to endorse political candidates. With a single exception in the last Wisconsin Senate race, I’ve intentionally kept my opinions to myself. As a professional journalist, it is my obligation not to reveal my personal bias regarding any political party or partisan issue. Instead, it is my job to report on the events of our world in as objective a manner as possible. Even in this incredibly divisive and polarizing campaign season, I have recounted few details on the respective candidacies of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Although I’ll vote for one candidate, based on my personal beliefs publicly, I’ve been silent on these matters. That’s not going to change. As a news organization it is our duty to convey to our audience the facts of any story with neither bias nor prejudice so that one can draw their conclusions, and cast their vote based on the information we’ve gathered.

Since we tend to focus on issues of environmental preservation, I believe that a summary of the two candidates’ history of protecting the natural world can best serve the interests of our readers and listeners.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have strikingly different records on the environment.

Hosted by James Edward Mills, this series delivers each day in the month of February a compelling audio story via podcast in about 60 seconds. Each narrative offers a brief glimpse into the life and times of Black men and women who have shaped our cultural identity. The series is called Unhidden Minute. I hope you’ll join us.

Immediately following my return from Washington D.C. - I mean on the flight home – I was inundated with kind words of support and condolences for the demise of my Christmas Tree. Due to excessively high winds early in last week of November 2023, it is indeed true that the beautifully decorated holiday tree provided to the White House by the National Park Service sadly fell over. News reports in photographs showed the tree lying on its side. But as I graciously replied to each of these thoughtful notes, I found great comfort in the knowledge that the 63-foot Norway Spruce I had followed from the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia to our nation’s capital, The People’s Tree, stood proudly on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building.Immediately following my return from Washington D.C. - I mean on the flight home – I was inundated with kind words of support and condolences for the demise of my Christmas Tree. Due to excessively high winds early in last week of November 2023, it is indeed true that the beautifully decorated holiday tree provided to the White House by the National Park Service sadly fell over. News reports in photographs showed the tree lying on its side. But as I graciously replied to each of these thoughtful notes, I found great comfort in the knowledge that the 63-foot Norway Spruce I had followed from the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia to our nation’s capital, The People’s Tree, stood proudly on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building.

For those of us who really love bicycles, I think what we enjoy most is the sense of freedom we get from travel on the open road under our own power. This mechanical device allows us to engage both our minds and bodies to pedal long distances on just two wheels so that we can explore the landscape of the modern world. But through our journeys over lightly trafficked rural roads, as we roll past obscure old towns and villages, we can also reveal the compelling memories of the not-so-distant past. As a modern-day explorer, there's a man who rides a bike along gravel paths and asphalt highways across time and space and into the pages of history.

Erick Cedeño: My name is Eric Cedeño. Some people know me as the Bicycle Nomad.

JTP: For many years, Eric Cedeño has traveled thousands of miles by bicycle across North America. As a cyclist carrying his own gear from one town to the next, he reimagines the excitement and enthusiasm of human powered transportation toward the end of the 19th century. Back then, even the United States Army thought that the bicycle might change how human beings travel from place to place.

Erick Cedeño: There was a big craze. People were going crazy about the bicycle, the technology, about the bicycle. And the army realized that they needed other methods of transportation to be successful. They only had the cavalry back then, and they knew that bicycles were cheaper than horses. Easier to maintain than a horse. They could go further than a horse could. And also, there were quite in battlefields. So they understood the power of the bikes and they wanted to adapt a bicycle corps.

JTP: In 1896, U.S. Army Lieutenant James Moss came up with the idea to conduct an experiment to see if the bicycle could one day be used to replace the horse. In order to prove the concept, moss recruited a platoon of 20 soldiers.

Erick Cedeño: Fort Missoula, Montana, is where that was formed. Lieutenant Moss approached the Army and says, I have the perfect man to do this experiment. And he did. Luckily for him, he had the Buffalo Soldiers out of the 25th Infantry out of Fort Missoula.

Erick Cedeño The Bicycle Nomad

photo by Josh Caffrey

JTP: At the time, more than 30 years after the end of the Civil War, there were stationed there an all-Black unit of enlisted men known collectively as the Buffalo Soldiers. These men who fought the Plains Wars of westward expansion and sadly participated in the displacement of Native people, were given the opportunity for a peacetime mission into the American heartland. Led by Lieutenant Moss, a white officer. Over the next two years, from 1896 to 1897, the Buffalo Soldier Bicycle Corps would make three expeditions across the West. In 2022, Eric Cedeño retraced the route that they traveled from Fort Missoula, Montana, to Saint Louis, Missouri. The distance of more than 1900 miles. In the retelling of their story through physical reenactment, the Bicycle Nomad takes us on a journey back in time. In his travels following the path of the Buffalo Soldiers, Cedeño not only celebrates the accomplishments of black Americans from our past, but also inspires further exploration of our history that is too often overlooked. I'm James Edward Mills, and you're listening to The Joy Trip Project.

Title photo by Josh Caffrey

Erick Cedeño in Missouri

photo by Josh Caffrey

Erick Cedeño's passion for exploration began at a very early age.

Erick Cedeño: Since I was a kid, I've always loved history. And I have a story where my mom took me to Mexico to see the pyramids of the Mayan and Aztec civilization. We went to Mexico just for that. She hired a tour guide that took us and told us the history. Now, I'm 12 years old. I have read some of that, those books. And to be walking the steps of ancient civilization just changed my world.

The protection of public land requires the broad ranging vision and leadership of federal service professionals at the highest levels. As the 19th Director of the National Park Service Charles F. Sams III is guiding the management of a complexed agency that oversees the protection of 63 National Parks and more than 420 individual monuments, battlefields, lakeshores and grasslands. A member of the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indians, Sams is the first Native American to serve as the administrator of the memorial sites that preserve our natural history and enduring national heritage.

After a long career in the U.S. Navy in times of both war and peace as well as the creation of career opportunities for aspiring stewards of the natural environment, Sams now dedicates his commitment to public service by encouraging the next generation of National Park Rangers. By building a corps of passionate interpreters to effectively tell a more comprehensive story of our culture as a united people, he’s a helping to pave a diverse and inclusive pathway of preservation well into the future.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

"You're never going to meet a more passionate group of people who are dedicated to mission than the National Park Service Rangers and their staffs out there," Sams said. "And what they really need is a leader who will advocate for them to ensure they have the funding so they can can go about doing the preservation of flora and fauna and telling America stories."

In recent months since the passage by Congress of the Great American Outdoors Act, also known as GAOA, there are new opportunities to affirm the priorities of natural resource and heritage protection through the National Park Service. By permanently providing financial resources for the Land And Water Conservation Fund, the federal government is poised to make profound investments in the people and places that define our identity as a nation. Now that he’s coming to the end of his first year on the job, I had the chance speak to Sams and have him reflect upon his tenure so far as well as the role that the NPS can play in the shaping our way forward.

I’m James Edward Mills. And you’re listening to, The Joy Trip Project.

National Park Service Director Charles Sams (Middle) stands with Mosaics In Science Interns at the U.S. Department of the Interior Building in Washington D.C. (photo by James Edward Mills)

JTP Well, first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to to chat with me and to share a little bit about your experience in the management of public land. My first question is a very basic one. Tell me where you from and how you how you got to the position that you're in now.

Sams So I'm from Oregon originally. I was born in Portland, Oregon, but raised on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeast Oregon, right along the Umatilla River, which was feeds into the big river, which is now known as the Columbia, that we know as the Necheewana. And I very fortunate to grow up in a very well-educated household. My parents had attended and graduated junior college, which was very rare to have two native parents who had actually not only attended, but graduated. And so education has always played an important part and also a freeing of oneself by having a good education. In addition to being surrounded by a number of elders, my grandfather and a number of tribal elders who raised me in a much more traditional and cultural sense of the Cayuse and Walla Walla people.

JTP And from that experience, how did you get into public service?

Sams Well, public service is expected in our family. We are supposed to give back more than we take, which is a simple principle. We also come from a group of people that believe that we have limited wants with unlimited resources, which is the exact opposite, which, you know, it's funny, since I have a business degree that tells me that I have unlimited wants...

When the folks at the Public Broadcasting Service went looking for a charismatic personality to host their latest documentary film series on the natural world, they reached out to a man with just the right skills to bring the outdoors into every home in America.

Baratunde: My name is Baratunde Thurston. I am a multimedia storyteller operating at the intersection of race, technology, democracy and climate. Because I love this planet.

The wild. There's nothing quite like the feeling of stepping outside. And breaking free from the modern world. I'm in northern Minnesota, on the edge of a lake that resembles an ocean. In places like this, it's easy to see nature as something so powerful, so vast.

We could never leave a real mark on it. But our footsteps are almost everywhere these days. And while knowing that can weigh you down, it can also lift us up and inspire us to change.

JTP: The show airs on PBS television stations nation-wide. And like its host, the program explores those points of connection where the outdoors and the human experience come together for fun, adventure and environmental conservation. Each episode introduces viewers to remarkable people and places from one end of this great nation to other. In advance of the premiere of this amazing new series I had the chance to talk to Baratunde Thurston and get an inside look into America Outdoors.

 

The PBS Series America Outdoors is coming to your favorite Public Television station. Check your local listings for dates and times near you. Baratunde Thurston is the author of the book “How to be Black” and he’s the host the “How to Citizen” Podcast. You can learn more about him and all his amazing work at Baratunde.com

Our Music comes courtesy of Artlist featuring the talents of The Cliff

 The Joy Trip Project is made possible thanks to the support of the Schlecht Family Foundation and the National Geographic Society. You can follow along on this and other journeys through history at Joytripproject.com.

If you enjoyed this episode, please drop me a note in the comments or better still write a review on one of our many stream platforms including iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and Google Podcasts. I’d love to hear from you. You can also reach me via email with your constructive questions, comments and criticisms at [email protected]

On May12, 2022, history was made as the first team of Black American climbers successfully ascended to the summit of Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. Known as the Full Circle Everest Expedition, this group of six men and one woman, all of African descent, made it safely to the top of the mountain and back to Everest Base Camp. The team included an array of climbers from across the United States and one native of Kenya. They ranged in age from 26 to 62. And they achieved this great accomplishment with the invaluable assistance of eight Nepali Sherpa guides. At a moment in time when even the most remote corners of our planet seem well within reach of human endeavor and ambition, this unique expedition is the latest milestone not only in the progress of high-altitude mountaineering, but the global advancement of racial diversity, equity and inclusion in the outdoor recreation industry.

Almost 70 years since the first formally recognized ascent of Everest in 1953 by Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Black Americans have at last realized the metaphorical vision that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. defined in his many speeches that encouraged the aspiration to climb mountains. In was in August of 1963, the same year that the first American team led by Jim Whittaker reached the Everest summit, that King shared his dream at the March on Washington and declared that freedom for all people must be allow to “Ring From Every Mountainside”

But throughout the Civil Movement of the 1960’s and well into the 21st Century, it would take more than 50 years for the feat of a successful Everest ascent to be achieved by Black South African climber Sibusiso Vilane on May 26, 2003. Three years later, Sophia Danenberg of Seattle, Washington, became the first Black American climber to reach the summit of Everest in 2006. In the time since, of the many thousands of people who have made it to the top, only six have been Black. And more than 15 years after that first ascent by Vilane, it is only now that a team of Black Americans have been assembled, trained and financed with the support of commercial sponsors and nonprofit donors to finally ascend as a community to the most prestigious mountain top on the planet. With the Full Circle Everest Expedition, the number of Black climbers to ascend to the summit has now more than doubled!

The story behind this ground-breaking accomplishment is the culmination of the many decades of effort on the part of diversity, equity and inclusion advocates who recognize the importance of creating recreational spaces and opportunities that are welcoming and accessible to all people. To truly understand how we got to this particular moment in our history I believe it’s necessary to take a close look into the lives of those individuals who are intimately a part of it. Among the seven climbers on the Full Circle Everest Expedition team who reached the summit is Demond "Dom" Mullins. I just happen to reach him in Nepal over the WhatsApp messaging platform while he was trekking through the Khumbu Valley. In the village of Phortse, a few weeks before the rest of his teammates arrived to begin their journey, I caught him during his dinner.

In this very candid conversation Mullins shares not only his life and career as a climber but also his work to earn a doctorate in the field of sociology through the study of war and military conflict. We also discussed his time spent as a soldier in the U.S. Army. At the age of 19, he was called to serve in Iraq immediately after the events near his hometown of New York City on September 11, 2001.

I’m James  Edward Mills and you're listening to The Joy Trip Project.

Demond "Dom" Mullins in Lulka, Nepal

Through his aspirations to climb high mountains Demond Mullins has defined for himself a place in the world where he can express both pride and passion for his convictions. In the days that follow Dom and his fellow team members of the Full Circle E...

A few weeks before his 80th birthday, I had the rare pleasure to speak by phone to the 15th director of the National Park Service Robert Stanton. From his home in Maryland, Mr. Stanton shared with me a personal history of his career as a leading figure in the preservation of public land as well as the enduring legacy of our heritage as a nation. Born in 1940, as Black American Stanton was subjected to the racially focused prohibitions of the Jim Crow era that denied him access to many of the national parks and monuments that he would grow up to manage. And though he and his family were restricted from the recreational spaces where white Americans were free to travel, Stanton was able from an early age to experience the wonders of nature.Stanton: I grew up in rural segregated Texas, and we came from very meager means, so we did not vacation. I was in the cotton fields or the hay fields during my young adulthood. But I was not a stranger, if you will, to the out of doors, you know, with bare feet running through the woods, fishing in the lakes, gravel pits, taking a little dip in our birthday suits and what have you and watching out for the copperheads and water moccasins. But so, no the out of doors were not a stranger to me.JTP: It was during his childhood that policies that had restricted Black Americans from visiting national parks were slowly beginning to lift. Under the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt around the end of the Second World War progressive shifts in the nation’s attitude toward Black Americans became a bit more favorable, despite the objections of many state legislators and private citizens.

Stanton: In terms of my exposure to the National Park Service and other land management agencies and putting it in sort of historical context, you recognize the courage on the part of Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, and Roosevelt, when he issued his secretarial order in 1945, saying that there will not be any discrimination in the national parks. My understanding is that when he made the decision that the proprietors of restaurants and overnight accommodations surrounding the gateways to the parks, they raised holy hell. “You mean you're going to allow them colored folks to come in and eat and sleep where they want to in the park?”JTP: It could be said that first battle lines of modern Civil Rights Movement were drawn in our national parks. By order of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes in 1945, these public recreation areas were among the first sites to be desegregated nation-wide. It was through the leadership and encouragement of social activists within the Roosevelt Administration and then under President Harry S. Truman that Ickes ordered that the National Parks be made open to everyone regardless of race or ethnicity.Stanton: But the thing I would bring to your attention, which was not widely advertised, is that he had the counsel of two prominent, forceful, unrelenting Black executives who were promoting the integration in full accessibility of not only to Park Service citizen programs, but throughout the breadth of the programs at Interior. The first one was Robert Weaver, who became the first African-American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary at HUD appointed by President Johnson. He was followed by William Trent Jr.. And it is William Trent Jr. who was really a strong advocate that here you have young men returning from World War II and they need to have some way in which they could just sort of relax themselves. Coming from the war, even though we were coming back to places they were not permitted to enter, such as cafes and restaurant, but still they should have an opportunity to enjoy some of the benefits of being an American citizen. JTP: Civil Rights leaders during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt through the 1940s became known as the Black Cabinet or the Federal Council of Negro Affairs. The phrase was coined by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune in 1936 and as group that incl...

Long before the National Park Service was established, the geological site commonly known as Mammoth Cave in the state of Kentucky was a popular tourist attraction. Open to the public for guided tours beginning in 1830’s this massive labyrinth of underground caverns and tunnels was first explored by enslaved people whose legacy of stewardship spans more than 5 generations. A Black man named Stephen Bishop lead much of the earliest explorations of the cave system and named many of the most prominent features. An expert on the largest cave in the world that winds more than 406 miles beneath the Earth’s surface, Bishop was said to have guided the most prominent scientists, political figures and writers of the mid-19th century including the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was on a visit to Mammoth Cave guided by Bishop in 1857 that Emerson wrote the essay Illusions, inspired by a feature called the Star Camber.