Transcripts For CSPAN2 Naturalist 20240704

Straight from the source on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. From the nations capitol to wherever you are. To get the opinion that matters the most. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. Im veryi pleased to have steve as our speaker. He will tell us about John Burroughs. As a youngman came to capitol hill and introduced the nation toci the na beauty of washington. I suspect that burroughs would respect the career path of our aspecter. Speaker. With Political Science from duke and a masters in affairs and from columbia. Has led to steve to almost 20 years as a reporter and editor for leading newspapers both here and abroad. Steve is focused on the very local and the rock creek songbird which is a Habitat Restoration project and for many years as in serving as executive director of pierce mill deeper into the history of Natural Resources of the area that John Burroughs knew and loved 150 years ago. There is a second reason to be delighted to enter the speaker on this topic, for almost 20 years there was a lecture group headed by john francine at the time has been looking for someone to give a lecture on the one time John Burroughs. Tonce i asked the late steve the owner of river babe bookstore on the hill and he would give a lecture figuring anybody who named his bookstore after a burroughs book would probably know a lot about John Burroughs. He said he was an appreciator, not a lecture. This topic stayed on our list as something we want to do for many, many years until the spring when the washington history magazine an article by steve titled no noble stream with the tiny branch within the interesting article was a section that began the first recorded explorer of the tiny branch was John Burroughs. Bingo may be thought somebody who knew that about John Burroughs would know a lot more and might be willing to give a lecture or might know somebody that would its only taken us 20 years to get to this lecture tonight in the old hospital that John Burroughs mightve seen when he was here in washington. [applause] thank you, thank you nancy and thank you for the opportunity to talk tonight. It is not on is that better. Maybe i should just shout. To if you get really close. How is that it sounds a little better i will shout its great to be back on capitol hill i lived here longer than 20 years ago on third street in pennsylvania near the hocking dove im sure a few of you remember that, the house i was living in haddad gaslamp in the front of it which i thought was very 19th century and i wouldve stayed there but i had in egypt and that is another story that i went away and never came back to capitol hill i spent a lot of time appear because of a. Am really happy tonight to have a chance to talk about John Burroughs and extremes of washington, d. C. And im not an expert on burroughs but certainly a lot of material available on him which is pretty easy to find and i used to work at the Audubon Society and have a biography of him by a guy named edward but he lives in new york. I want to start with one clarification because i know these things get confusing and i get confused all the times. Very important distinction here. John burroughs is not related to William S Burroughs William S Burroughs pictured here is a famous writer in certain scenes he was a member of the beat generation in he wrote the famous book naked lunch one of the best titles of a book ever put together he was an International Traveler and adventure and i wont get into that but as far as i know he was born in st. Louis and i dont think they related in a close way but i wanted to get the outoftheway because sometimes it does get confusing with the names. The real John Burroughs here he is as a young man with his flowing locks and he is forgotten today. Nancy remembers him and a few others but between the confusion with William Burroughs and other burroughs and other nature writers he is very much a man of the past unfortunately. However, i dont think theres going to be a campaign to rename the school that is named after him on monroe street northeast. Thats a pretty safe name i dont think is guilty of anything at regis and he has no length with the drug adventure its quite a handsome school for a while. This is a big debt and to test if you have a book in your library by John Burroughs, reacher hand. At im not surprised and i didnt have one until five years ago myself when i found one in a used bookstore for two bucks. It is curious, the writers go through periods of fame and notoriety and disappear, believe itit or not it seems that John Burroughs was more famous than walt whitman back in the 19th century and early 20th century its hard to measure that but burroughs was very, very famous and he was so famous like people like henry florida were seeking him out for his wisdom which is ironic and nevertheless roosevelt with the big shot to the turn of the century had a photograph of John Burroughs and he lived until 1920 when you think about it 1920 that was 100 years ago in whitman on the other hand, i dont have exact data whitman grew in fame and now americas most beloved poet they were literary comrades in both of them were exiles from new york who came to washington during the civil war whitman came here because he is looking for his brother who he thought was wounded in a battle in fredericksburg and he got a job as a government clerk and made enough money to get by and at that point whitman had published a version and known among intellectual class and readers but he was not a superstar in the 19th century but he was here and people like burroughs who is 20 years younger knewe about him burroughs was raised on a farm in the catskill mountains and he benefited from that because he was outdoors and he got to love nature we think. His upbringing however, he was studious and curious young man so he did not want to become a farmer like his father so he asked when he was 17 and he finished schooling that his father mike given money to go to college and his father said no i dont think i want to support you you dont need to be doing that kind of thing. Mr. Burroughs senior had to say goodbye toio his son who left he as boys tend to do and went off to seek his passions and learning how to be a teacher he thought he could earn some money he went to Seminary School for a while and started writing this is in the late 1850s and whitman they were in the same locale, burroughs was writing and published in theou Atlantic Monthly one ofal the first articles in a philosophical text which i did not read but it read like emerson they thought he plagiarized but it was original this is 1860 he was published but that gave them energy and excitement and he thought he had a chance to benc a writer and as the civil ward began he found that he could not make a living teaching and writing in rural new york where he was living any got married at the age of 20 and he have the responsibility and he decided because he had friends in washington they say, down we can give you place you can stay with us so we went ahead of his wife in the fall of 1863 and lived in the back of a store that his friend was running somewhere downtown and who did he bump into walt whitman. They bumped into him in their encounter was a serious encounter on capitol hill under the trees on a lonely path burroughs came upon whitman. Whitman was on his way as he tended to do in washington when he was not working to visit the hospitals whitman would bring fruit and candy and anything that he could afford to give to soldiers in the hospital in washington the Wounded Soldiers this was his mission outside of writing and burroughs was thrilled to meet his hero at that point and the two became good friends. At that point in time Washington City they call the grid of washington was the city the people thought of and outside of the grid was Washington County undeveloped and mostly farming land and that was not too far anywhere you were in washington and the two of them could take them into the while so to speak of Washington County which is what they did. When burroughs first got to washington he wanted to be a teacher and he had no marketable skills in the first job that he found the only job he could find the measure of his desperation he was a burial detail by a quartermasters unit of the u. S. Army during black soldiers had been killed and fighting and according to the records in which the biographer found these ebodies were taken to the outskirts of washington the border with maryland where they were buried en masse graves and as you can imagine this was horrible and burroughs did not last very long without. I was struck that such a horrible unbelievable job he was writing an entire depend on precisely where all of that was taking place thats in topic for the Burial Ground there didnt see to be any march Burial Ground which i assume references that. He did not last more than a few weeks. Luckily he had a connection back home he was able toon exercise with the congressman who got him the job does that sound familiar gautama job clerking. The first month of 1864 w burroughs was working and earning a good salary within a thousand dollars a year which is nice to have an equal to what women were getting. Burroughs because he had an income was able to move out of the back storeroom with his friend downtown and find a house with him and his wife which was in the Senate Office building a red brick row house in movein and not only house but an acre of land according to the acre report where he had a cow, chickens, potatoes and could support his wife and feed walt whitman, he did not payre attention to eating on a regular schedule and taking care of himself burroughs would invite him over for breakfast a standing date to come over and whitman was down near the navy yard in a tenement or something he would go over and have a big sunday breakfast that was great for whitman and burroughs who lovedre his company not great fr burroughs wife who is not happy frankly with a lot of things but notot happy with his manner and all that waltman was all about. Who knows. That was a point of contention between burroughs and his wife. It did happen you got developed a friendship. Here we have a map from the civil war. In the Capital Building here and where the russell building would be a little bit further up. This is a creek and it was still there even though the grid shows the city being built out it was not as builtup as a show. Were not sure precisely but the creek is definitelyse there. Which flowed down into the pandemic and channeled. It started up north of here. That was one place that burroughs and whitman could take their walks. Here we have a very fanciful portrayal. This was just painted in 2009 i just came upon on the historical associations website. I dont think it looks to this beautiful. [laughter] whatever. It is a lovely, lovely painting. The hermits russia should not advance like this but i will. Whitman of course being whitman being an accomplished and visionary writer had certain ideas about writing. I was very happy to act as a father figure with burroughs. He encouraged burroughs to go beyond purely scientific observation and is nature of writings and mixes with a poetic language. Burroughs of course had to have some kind of talent to do this but evidently it was a major influence on him. One of the reasons is writing is so beautiful. Whitman believed only a personal vision could do justice to Natural History and his and very much in keeping with those times and the writers of that period. You inject yourself into the Natural World in order to give a compelling portrait and move the reader. Burroughs actually has a bit of an influence on whitman to according to scholars who studied them because it burroughs again with his eye for the scientific detail influence whitman and encouraged him to pay more attention to the details of nature. These two guys are becoming quite good friends rewrote to another friend and said i been very much with walter. I love him very much. The more i see and talk with him, the greater he becomes to me. And on, and on, and on the flowery language that men were within those days. Now youre probably thinking okay what is going on, he was famously bisexual or gay kind of unclear what all of his activities were. Nonetheless definitely a man who liked men. Burroughs low never was seen as gay or bisexual. It seems that they had a platonic friendship. Burroughs in fact was chastised by whitman later, a few years later because burroughs marriage is very unhappy from the get go. He was a bit of a womanizer and whitman did not approve of that. Whitman was a single relationship guy. And burroughs was kind of acting out. Whitman wrote in these letters saying this is really not the way to do it. You are not going to succeed in your marriage by doing this. That was i think the extent of their relationship. Theyre both here for ten years. And had different ideas about a lot of things. Theyre certainly united in their appreciation and understanding and the need for personal vision. Burroughs came back from a visit to new york in the summer of 1865 just a few months after lincoln was assassinated. Whitman wasnt devastated by lincolns death and was writing a poem about that. And burroughs was very excited about the fact he had seen and heard a thresh which is a bird back on the street in new york. And he got so carried away and so excited about this bird that whitman used the bird in his famous poem when lilacs last bloom. I have the relevant part solitary the thrush the herman withdrawn to himself avoiding the filaments. Sings by himself a song, a song of the bleeding throat. Now its a long poem and i will not read any more of it. The influence is very obvious. It is interesting hermit thrush was this bird that was the inspiration of one of the keystones for whitman. In fact the official bird of washington d. C. Is also a thrush but not be hermit thrush. Does anyone know what the official bird of washington d. C. Is . Would thrush. Another bird that looks a little bit like this with a speckled breastbone a migrant bird also, in any event burroughs would write about that later. As a map of the. And this shows you burroughs is making a good salary at the treasury department, the got money from his wifes family or what he had enough money to build a house at 1332 street 13h and 14th street in the late 1860s. As you can see hes right on the edge florida avenue its right on the and he is wellpositioned to take walks which is what he did. And in this case he would be walking up into what would become Mount Pleasant along what was actually the seventh street and reaching rock creek and the tributary piney branch there. So they could do this very easily and that led to a number of essays he wrote and published in his first nature book. Was asked about whitman. His first major book and he, in this book had an essay about springtime in the capitol and his observations. He talked about piney branch. This is what struck me and inspired me when i was doing the research into the history. Burroughs was quite taken with it. He said its a small noisy brook flowing through a valley, shaded nearly all the way by woods of oak, chestnut, and beach and abounding in dark resources and he didnt retreat. He says the creek is where he goes every spring to hear the distinctive song of the returning would thrush. The wood thrush by the way is kind of an iconic bird in the bird world in the world of birders or mythology of those who appreciate bird starting with audubon and going forward. Everyone rhapsodizes about with thrush because it song but just so extraordinary. Ive heard it, you can youtube it theyre everywhere. Unlike several wood instruments and wind instruments harmonizing together and somehow this bird does this with his throat one of the miracles of nature. And as i said audubon and everyone after him more enthralled with this bird. And it remains today consume one of the most beautiful songs of birds in the United States on the eastern United States. And the official bird of washington d. C. Which came about in 1967 in the d. C. Commissioners. Before than liver computers whether or not they have the power to declare an official bird im not kidding this is in the record. So and 67 was on the horizon i brought this at the time. The Washington Post whatsoever disgraced wooden editorial against it that led to a lot of back and forth in the Audubon Society. Luckily it did not prevail. So burroughs is out in early seasons. He is out there in february, march, poking around and finding plants which are a whole group of wildflowers that come very early before the rest of the forest leafs out. They go through the reproductive cycle at that point taking advantage of the sun and then after that they are gone for the rest of the summer. There are a dozen of these beauties that are out there peeking out of the oak leaves. including the violet which he said was the most beautiful of all violet and it caused rapturous applause. Raptures applause from all persons who visited the woods. So, he publishes the book with this essay in it about d. C. In 1871 and a few years later both he and whitman leave but thats 10 years together in washington so they made it made quite an impression on burroughs and that impression was lifelong. Burroughs decided to move back up to new york and build a rustic cabin on an estate on a piece of land somewhere out there think in the catskills. Whitman had a stroke living with his eye think his sister. His brother in camden new jersey in 1870s but he did survive. So they left and that time period looking at the 1870s the beginning of the gilded age the beginning of big money in the United States. Rather good perhaps that Burke Whitman and burroughs left at that time because their beloved Washington Town and the young developer of washington was sent to be no more. But first this is the cat and that burroughs built and there is mr. Burroughs growing a walt whitman beard which he did very deliberately and got whiter and whiter as he aged. So they leave and new people arrive in washington who are looking at plants and thinking about them more scientifically rather than politically but this is very important. This man last year frank ward was actually, i think he was born in illinois. He came to washington and went to law school at what was the George Washington university in Columbia School which was near mt. Pleasant but a very smart man. Hed ditched his legal career for cataloging and finding plants which i think was a very wise choice and he never practice law again and ward was an amazing renaissance man. He worked for the u. S. Geological service in paleontology. He then later became a sociologist and a professor of sociology at Brown University and was the First American sociological association but besides that he was going around washington looking at plants. And a very interesting site which he named and get into that of the second that he actually took the civil war maps and went on what he called offensive rambles around washington d. C. And he would name them names that he made up for himself and he offers no apology. He was Walking Around tiny branch and he found this wetland which he called the whole made swamp and this was named after the family that owned the land on tiny branch. He was struck by it because of the plant variety and the soil and it was very different from anything he had ever seen before. However he didnt pursue this. As i was saying he at a lot of other interests in life. Its interesting that he called it a swamp because actually the swamp is a wetland that is for us to but nevertheless that was the words they used in those days for a wetland. And going back to the v street map here. 14th street extended to tiny branch which is coming off of rock creek and heres the whole made swamp which is a wetland which is currently on spring road near georgia between george and 14th street. So those who started studying this particular site found a lot of plans that just were not from washington and there were orchids and a rare red milkweed aggress called an umbrella touch and land flowers like the coneflower. He also found a carnivorous plant. Here it is if you are familiar with that and its a plant that survives in a nutrient poor soils such as this particular site was. And it provided a clue to science as to what was going on at this particular place and why these plants were flourishing there in the world. So he was investigating and writing about this was mr. Mcentee, another man from the midwest who came to washington and started working for the department of agriculture where he actually his entire career and he wrote about the floor in d. C. And there was a cane and that was still used by bots is that he was able to actually define this area of the holmead swamp and they called them in magnolia bog and the reason for that is that the sweet magnolia which is a relative of the southern magnolia that we know and love, it grows in these blogs and here is the flower which looks magnolia like that it smells nicer than the magnolia. But it doesnt grow anywhere else usually i have to read this with detail because its very precise and i dont want to it. The situation on as the fall line which is where the piedmont meets the coastal plain and you have the rocky outcrop outcroppings and great falls in little falls etc. The sand from the coastal plain is sometimes exposed at these fall line areas and sand and gravel form a substrate and as i said its nutrient poor in and this allows a certain kind of plant species to grow there so thats whats going on at the bog. Theres one there and theres one to the north on ingraham and big street and there is several in Prince Georges County in arlington which is a suburb but these were all mcentees discoveries. Also at the magnolia bog the swamp azalea which has a very nice fragrance and its a kind of a pink. I include a little bit about a latin and greek lesson here. Its the genus name for his elias because both azalea finra addendum are part of that. The rhododendron him this custom is grown on a tree and has a sticky viscous substance is created by the flower so thats where he got the name rhododendron. Mcentee was living and working in that period of the early 20th century when the government was proceeding very quickly in this whole area of tiny branch in the eastern part of the rock creek watershed and you saw this and he saw the destruction i was taking place and was very upset about it he talked about the respect and slender thread on which their continued existence depends and are most considerate care or he was very feeling about these plants. This is the piney Branch Valley near arkansas and 14th street. I like to describe this as a moonscape. They basically just scraped everything away and buried the stream and a pipe. This took place during the first couple of decades where there was a great demand for housing so this area the piney branch watershed basically extends all the way from mt. Pleasant up to tacoma park d. C. And includes wrightwood and all those neighborhoods. That was prime territory for development and one reason it was so completely developed was that it was relatively flat land. On the western side of rock creek you had great valleys the simpson valley and these other ravines that could be built on easily but on the other side it wasnt as hilly and there was great demand so they built. This was where wardman of the famous wardman buildings built a lot and they just built row after row putting on the holmead swamp which turned into swamp road. Because they had basically paved over what was almost 2500 acres of the stream valley and a stream valley or watershed is like the whole and all the waters going to come down because the typography and go to one place which is the storm. So youve got all of this water now coming off a street and the roofs and going into these storm sewers and they have got to come out somewhere while this is where they come out. I like to call it the gates of would they are like arash doors. These are perhaps 15 or 20 feet high and this is at the corner of piney branch Piney Branch Parkway and you dont see them is to get out of her car and let down. It is a torrent of waterways in the storm. Adding insult to injury is a outfall contour overflow outflow which means raw sewage from the area mixes and with the waterway from the great storm because of the way this particular storm was engineered back in the day. This is an advance of a base to do which was just letting everything sort of flow in the streets but it is extremely antiquated. Its late 19th Century Technology which they are finally getting around to deal with. They made an entire new underground holding tank for the water but here they couldnt do that. They were working on Green Infrastructure of various gardens and the bio gardens in that sorter thing but i think they will have to build an underground tank. Thats the way they will deal with that. And this was built probably the first one on the right side that was built in the 1930s and the other one was built in the 1950s because the water becomes so, so bad and deep but maybe the one good thing about Piney Branch Parkway in the construction of that area there is that it did preserve a native american site which is one of the unknown parts of rock creek park. Actually the hills leading up to crestwood if you are on clarke quay there is a quarry site that was used by native americans for stone work and whats left is actually just piles of stones which were leveled from the stone fashioning tools in making the stones and this is a diorama from the smithsonian when they did an exhibit on this particular discovery. This was discovered in the late 1800s. There is no trail because the park service doesnt want you going in there and collect things stone understandably enough but it was preserved. So that was that. That was the end of piney branch and all you have is a quartermile stream that goes down into rock creek along the parkway. Its very distressing that this had to happen and it still hasnt been completely the water the russians out of those enormous outfalls flows down into rock creek and scours out the creek even more and produces sediment pollution so its an Ongoing Technical problem that they are trying to deal with. However my work just as a footnote to this is actually centered in piney branch. I started this project and 2013 to improve the habitat and what was left of the stream valley which was 65 acres. Weve been planting trees and we contract with the kc treason we do outreach to the community on migratory birds and a lot of students come down and participate. This is a funny part of that because this is one of the wetlands which is still existing in what it looked like before he began the work. That for the most part is called porcelain berry which is an fine that covers everything and destroys everything in its path. Nothing could rob beneath it. We had to pull it up and we got a lot of volunteers out there and this is a picnic pavilion right behind which have been vandalized and was just a shadow of itself. There was no fireplace left their. It was a Basketball Court believe it or not. It was next to the pavilion and there was a spring in the vicinity were they started pumping out water and basically flooded the Basketball Court. They got it back colin aaron dug this out. So now we have a fireplace at the wetland and people have picnics and birthday parties which is what they are doing their and watched the wetlands at the back of this fence. Here are some students from the Sacred Heart School who are helping plants and plants in the wetlands and to conclude here is my favorite young lady of the environmental school. Shes holding in a northern red tree which she helped plant there in the branch watershed and it is now 20 feet high. With that i will and it not be happy to take any questions. Thank you. [applause] you know the name of the cory . Ive never seen a name. You could call this the quarry because there is a famous archaeologist who was the guy that actually describes it and in fact described it to such an extent that he revolutionized the whole series about the longevity of how long native americans had actually been in north america and it was very complicated and but it was very important. So its archaeologist and others. Thank you. They successfully destroyed piney branch creek but you said. There was a remnant of it because the watershed was five or six miles in length and the final part of it was actually in rock creek park. They could really take that and and. Can you tell me more specifically. A bike to walk up and see it. Wheres that . Its northwest of mt. Pleasant to the west of Columbia Heights and if you drive down 16th street for example her up 16th street and you reach arkansas avenue which if youre coming from the south goes to the east and you can park along arkansas avenue and walked down the valley there. Thats one way of doing it. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk first of all of why burroughs was so popular and then why it was not. Usa prolific in a beautiful writer. That was it period in the 19th century was a period of great, great loss of Natural Beauty and resources in the United States. Thats where the nation took its toll in such a way and its one of the reason why you had the first attempts by the government to make parks for example, First National parks he could say saw what was going on and they knew they had to stop it somehow they could exact a stop business because as pruitt said business of america is business but nevertheless its a country. In any event people like burroughs who could so wonderfully described what was being lost and talk about why we need to care was very appealing and he had a good publisher houghton mifflin. He cranked them out and he was very active with as i said a number ive guess youd call them celebrities at the time who sought him out and there were others who were equally but not as famous. John murrah who founded the sierra club got up to that level. Burroughs truly you know i couldnt really did have to look or close into that whole movement of why that particular burroughs was such a superstar but nevertheless then hed ties in 1920 so think about it, 1920 is the beginning of the roaring 20s and the beginning of the new deal world war ii a period of an incredible change in the United States and i think those who read about nature would certainly remember burroughs but back at that time there wasnt the kind of audience for nature writers and the writers who succeeded later on were people like Rachel Carson for example who are very focused on one threat, the silent spring so she became quite famous in that respect because she had a cause in some of these other writers writers burroughs had no cause but he was not a founder of an organization. He was just frankly not a recluse but he built his cabin in upstate new york and lived out his life there and faded away. Are there any other questions . Let me add just one thing. A wonderful writer and hes associated with of course some very very important intellectual traditions and advocacy and his support of civil disobedience and is these kinds of things which made him more of a person and that respect for his burroughs didnt have that kind of input. Lees go ahead. We all know John Burroughs but i confess i dont know does he write specifically about geographical areas . All kinds of things. He traveled around the United States. He was out on the west. He wrote about birds in particular. He wrote about rivers. He was just a generalist when it came right down to it. You set in the 1870s that washington started to lose farmland surrounding the area. What was the reason for that . Was that just from the expansion of the city and when did that reached its zenith . It seems like it extends forever now. Right, it does. During the civil war a lot of people came to washington for various reasons. The population exploded and a lot of those folks stayed for various reasons. The government expanded so that meant there was more and play meant and families were started here. Inapp. Had this natural growth of washington and the government and that led to a demand for housing. The housing that was built in much of this area it was moderate rowhouse for middle income so thats what led to that and then of course the government gets bigger and bigger not to sound like a conservative but in the 20th century you had the new deal and more government workers so the demand for housing grows so thats a story that still unfolding. Thank you very much steve for your lecture. Thank you. I hope everybody remembers and you will sign up to see the found, the premier. [applause]