#82 | Kevin Fedarko's Mission: Preserving the Grand Canyon's Natural and Cultural Heritage
🎧 Full Episode: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
When an ill-prepared, National Geographic-sponsored two-man team including writer Kevin Fedarko decided to walk the full length of the Grand Canyon—a feat accomplished by fewer humans than have walked on the moon—their often amusing yet at times death-defying adventure was transformed into a profound mission, alerting the world to the environmental harm threatening this majestic landscape and the potential loss of its sacredness to the indigenous tribes who call it home.
Kevin Fedarko, NYT bestselling author of the spellbinding book, A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, and Pete McBride, filmmaker and renowned photographer, spent a year trekking the 750-mile (including multiple vertical climbs) terrain.
Kevin later wove his experiences into a book so absolutely engaging and riveting, I quite literally cannot stop obsessing about how much it has impacted my view of protecting our national parks as well as our country’s centuries-long disregard of their connection to sacred places and their connection to the earth.
Kevin’s extensive background includes contributions to National Geographic, and years spent as a writer at Time Magazine and editor at Outside Magazine. Despite his illustrious writing career, nothing could prepare him for the profound journey of walking the entire length of the Grand Canyon.
In this episode, Kevin explores his motivations, lessons learned, and the complexities of environmental conservation intertwined with the rich history of the indigenous people who call the Grand Canyon home.
“ Everybody talks about the light, the pageantry of light, it paints the walls of the canyon, the texture, the lines, shape of the rocks, but it's the auditory, it's the silence, it's the stillness that can open up a space inside of you, a kind of miniature Grand Canyon.” — Kevin Fedarko, Author
Blair Braverman, the NYT reviewer wrote this in his cover story about the book: “The canyon has no established through route. It is a living oven, full of scorpions, cactuses, venomous snakes, flash floods and various other incarnations of hell on earth.” If you add in crippling hot and cold extremes, rats eating your interior, blistered feet, sprained ankles, dehydration and hyponatremia, etc. etc. etc. you nudge closer to the fullness of the team’s excruciating reality.
But then, there is the beauty. It’s difficult to convey the power of Kevin’s near-sacred written descriptions of the Grand Canyon’s sublime beauty. What’s even more unique is his ability to verbally describe the spiritual experience of a natural-spring’s ecosystem, the sounds of nature or absolute silence, or the experience of watching a three-dimensional river running amidst the ocean of stars that stretches across the night sky each evening.
“And it's so dark and the stars are so bright that you can see that the stars and the galaxies within them burn with different levels of intensity. And that imbues the heavens with a depth and a dimensionality, which takes it beyond two dimensions and expands it to three. And as you watch the stars float across the sky, as you see the shooting stars arc across the heavens, you can lose your sense of being moored to the earth and feel as if you are in danger of falling upwards into the night sky. “ —Kevin Fedarko
A natural orator as well as a supremely talented writer, Kevin Fedarko seems to have been granted a treasure trove of skills he can and does use to wake and shake up the world as what is happening to the Grand Canyon’s pristine terrain and to the indigenous peoples who once inhabited the canyon itself, but now reside on the surrounding rim.
In this episode, we discuss:
Kevin’s journey from writing for a newspaper to Time Magazine to Senior Editor of Outside, to becoming a celebrated author and adventurer.
His 750-mile odyssey through the Grand Canyon, the challenges he faced, and the awe-inspiring beauty he encountered that transformed his connection with the natural world.
The need to preserve our natural spaces and the impact of commercial tourism on the Grand Canyon.
The eleven Native American tribes connected to the Grand Canyon and their crucial role in its past, present, and future.
Kevin’s personal growth, the power of silence, and the humbling experiences that redefined his relationship with nature.
The absolutely sublime beauty and sounds of nature unique to the Grand Canyon.
