Topophilia

What does it mean to be a “local” somewhere? For us, local status is deeply connected to intimate knowledge of a place — the best secret camping spots, the cheapest happy hour, leftover powder stashes, and empty saturday morning trails. In this episode we look into how we define locals, and along the way we confront some of our own preconceptions. We speak with three people—Alison Miller of Leavenworth, WA; Matt Lanning of Aspen, CO, and Gabe Joseph of Santa Fe, NM—who help us along this journey. It turns out that local identity is a little more nuanced than we imagined.

Music in this episode is provided by The Good Lawdz and Free Music Archive.

We’d also like to thank our guest editor Molly Bayer for her expert opinions and advice on the final drafts of the episode. Got opinions? [email protected].

In This Episode

Gabe Joseph: Software Engineer and former dirtbag. Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Alison Miller: Climber, architect, business owner, and President of Leavenworth Mountain Association. Leavenworth, Washington.

Matt Lanning: backcountry skier, mountain biker, and Suerte Tequila ambassador. Aspen, Colorado.

The Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in Washington is a place that, for us, is incalculably valuable for its many special backcountry campsites, wild rivers, ski lines, and soul-healing wild lands. When legislatures and other governing bodies must make decisions about the forest, however, they look for hard dollar values on the services these places provide which have been missing from the conversation—until now. Our first “Contours” short explores a recent economic study detailing the value of the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and reveals some interesting issues.

If you’re interested in the full text of the report, you can find it here.

Wilderness is a fundamental part of the American land preservation equation. First designated by the U.S. Forest Service in 1924, and later formally established by the 1964 Wilderness Act, America’s 764 federally-designated Wilderness areas represent almost 110 million acres (an area roughly the size of California) of permanently protected roadless land.

In this inaugural episode of Topophilia, we dig into two questions about wilderness. First: how do the boundaries around wilderness areas actually get drawn? Will tells the story of the Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness, and we speak with Dr. Kevin Marsh, professor of environmental history at Idaho State University and author of Drawing Lines in the Forest, about Washington’s Alpine Lakes Wilderness, and make some interesting discoveries about the role of grassroots community movements in creating wilderness areas.

We also seek to determine the place of wilderness designation in our current and future political climates. We chat with Ben Greuel, Washington State Program Director for the Wilderness Society, to get at this question.

To highlight the rich history of Wilderness designation in the United States, we have created this accompanying interactive data graphic, embedded here below. Click here for a full-page version.

We have many people to thank for helping with this episode, especially: Ben Greuel and Dr. Kevin Marsh for their time, knowledge, and willingness to talk; our many friend-editors who endured drafts and gave great feedback; our respective housemates Liz, Sarah, Paul, Max, and Granite for being quiet while we recorded things, and the makers of Rainier for fueling our late-night recording sessions.

Music in this episode courtesy of Broke For Free, Latché Swing, and freemusicarchive.org. Additional sound effects from ZapSplat.