Spirit in Action

Yosemite, Dumpster Diving, & Correcting Native History - Fiction Toward Truth

Peter Brown Hoffmeister's new book, Graphic the Valley, wraps readers in an adventure that connects us to the Earth (Yosemite in particular), replaces the official lies of history with the truth, and introduces us to useful skills like dumpster diving, all while thrilling the reader with human foibles and triumphs.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 17 Aug 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ I believe in the power of art to help us learn great truths, and today's guest, writer and teacher Peter Brown Hofmeister, harnesses just that kind of artistic power in his latest book, Graphic the Valley, sharing with us some of the great truths he imparts as a teacher in an integrated outdoor program in Eugene, Oregon. Through that program and through his book, Peter gets us face to face with the power and majesty of natural world, and shows us the environment close up, exposing us and his students to ways to care for our world, like dumpster diving and living off the waste of our oh-so-wasteful society, and motivating us to heal the world by exposing lies that we tell ourselves. But he does it in a captivating way through the fiction of his book. He's also the author of Non-Fiction Book, Let Them Be eaten by Bearers, a fearless guide to taking our kids into the great outdoors, and a memoir, The End of Boys. Up front I want to mention that support for this show came from Eau Claire, Wisconsin attorney, Catherine B. Schultz, a believer in honesty, accuracy, and world healing work. Proud to support the work of Nordenspirit Radio, she does world healing work by helping her clients get a new start to their finances by guiding them through bankruptcy when needed. You can call Catherine B. Schultz at 715-835-8904 for help. We all know that the knowledge and spirit in which we raise our kids is the key to a better world, something that Peter lives out in the educational world, and it's something that Kat Stevens, known for decades now as Yusuf Islam, sang about. To get you ready for our time on the phone with Peter Brown Hoffmeister, let's first listen to Yusuf's song "Where Did The Children Play?" ♪ ♪ Well, I think it's fine ♪ ♪ Building jumbo planes ♪ ♪ Taking a ride on a cosmic train ♪ ♪ Switch on summer from a slat machine ♪ ♪ It's good what you wonder if you want ♪ ♪ As you can get anything ♪ ♪ I know we've come a long way ♪ ♪ We're changing day to day ♪ ♪ But tell me why did the children play ♪ ♪ ♪ Well, you roll on roads ♪ ♪ Over fresh green grass ♪ ♪ For your lorry loads ♪ ♪ Pumping petrol gas ♪ ♪ And you make them long ♪ ♪ And you make them tough ♪ ♪ But they just go on and on ♪ ♪ And it seems that you can get off ♪ ♪ ♪ I know we've come a long way ♪ ♪ We're changing day to day ♪ ♪ But tell me why did the children play ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ When you crack the sky ♪ ♪ Scrapers fill the air ♪ ♪ But will you keep on buildin' higher ♪ ♪ 'Til there's no more room up there ♪ ♪ ♪ Will you make us laugh ♪ ♪ Will you make us cry ♪ ♪ Will you tell us when to live ♪ ♪ Will you tell us when to die ♪ ♪ ♪ I know we've come a long way ♪ ♪ We're changing day to day ♪ ♪ But tell me why did the children play ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Peter, I'm really excited to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Graphic The Valley is a great book. I had a great adventure of a book. I couldn't put it down. Is this your first fiction? This is my first novel-length fiction. I wrote a collection of stories. I was trying to improve my craft, and most of them were very, very terrible stories that needed burning. But I eventually put together a fiction collection and sent it off to literary arts and ended up winning a fellowship for that. And so that encouraged me. And then I wrote a couple non-fiction books and I came back to fiction for this book. You teach also, right? Yeah, I do. I teach right now. I've actually taught every grade for a short time period, but for the last 11 years I've been at a high school, and I teach an integrated outdoor program. We combine desert snow and river literature with outdoor pursuits like navigation, spelunking and caves, rock climbing, river swimming, snowshoeing, learning basic survival, all that kind of stuff. And then I'm able to do that in the afternoon and every day as part of my basic high school teaching. So I mostly have freshman juniors and seniors. What school are you at? I'm at South Eugene High School, actually, in Eugene, Oregon. We live in kind of a beautiful location between two rivers and two mountain ranges, so we're down in the river valley. We're so fortunate to be able to, as a class, as a huge group, bike along the river and fish and swim in the river and learn to kayak and learn to raft and all that kind of stuff. So it's a mild enough weather-wise location that we can kind of do things outside all year long, and even the beginners can kind of handle it. I don't recall that course integrated outdoor education being included in my high school curriculum. Why are the kids there in Eugene so lucky? Well, I was a troubled teen, actually. I really struggled in high school. I struggled with my relationships and my relationships with my parents, and I made a lot of bad choices and ended up getting expelled from a series of schools and living in and out of a bus station in Dallas, Texas. And that was all the subject of my first book, "The End of Boys, the Memoir." But during that really troubled time period, the only sort of moment I had peace was I was sent to Alback, which was like outward bound for troubled teens in Colorado. And I got to do 16 days in the mountains and we climbed and did solo navigation. And we fly-fished and we wrapped it a river. And there's just one of those amazing, peaceful moments in my life. And so when I was in grad school, I wrote my master's thesis on reading, writing, and rock climbing. And I always wanted to put that together. And then at my high school, I had an opportunity to work with one of my friends, another outdoor guide, rock climber. And he wanted to do something too, so we just combined PE and literature and it took a year to get everything approved. But we were really fortunate to have the support of our administration and we just started the program. The two of us direct and teach the program, so we each have two student groups, I have 35 and he has 35. We rotate days, so we say, for example, one day in the desert unit, we're reading desert solitaire by Edward Abbe. So my students are reading and writing and discussing desert solitaire in a park while his students are doing physical activities, getting ready for a desert trip. And then the next day, we'll be doing the physical activities, the PE portion of the class while he's reading and writing from desert solitaire. So we flip off days and then we do trips together where we combine and go out in the mountains or go out in the desert or go along rivers or go rock climbing, anything like that. Does one have to be a troubled team to get into your classes? I'd be so pissed because I, as a good student, I wouldn't. No, no, the program I did in high school was for troubled teams. It was a very small group of kids and high adults, student ratio and everything. But no, our program's not like that at all. Our program does have some troubled teams and counselors put them in there, especially because they know my past. Since I've been to duty and some of my students have been to duty, but actually it's not like that. We have AP students who choose to forego, AP later AP comp and take this class instead. And we have low skilled students, we have middle of the road students, we have students from low socio-economic backgrounds and high socio-economic backgrounds. So I mean, it's a really very group which is fun to teach because, you know, everybody's adding in something different culturally and socially. So it's kind of beautiful to have such a wide variety of kids. You know, Peter, when thinking about doing this interview with you, I love the book so much, "Graphic the Valley" is such a stunning book. I'm so afraid that, you know, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, I don't want to give anybody too many warnings about what's in the book so they can have the full experience of the book. But I think I now understand some things about your bio. I mean, in the back of the book, you mentioned that you've been rock climbing in Yosemite for the past decade. It says you're a dirt bag, a raft guide, a teacher and a survivalist. And having read the book, I met some dirt bags, right, in the book. Right, yeah. You want to spell out for our listeners what a dirt bag is? Yeah, it sounds like a terrible name to call somebody, but it's a self-proclaimed name by the dirt bag group in Yosemite Valley. The cool thing about Yosemite, the more I researched for this book and the more I just researched for fun when I was staying down in the valley, weeks at a time, camping and scratching food and climbing and swimming, the more I researched, I found out that people have lived illegally in the family for longer than we have recorded history. Going back to New York, sneaking in and living illegally when Yosemite natives controlled the valley. And then later, much later, you know, we have, during the Depression, families would pay the $1 entrance fee and drive their car in with their camping gear. And they'd just stay for a year or two because they had no job prospects for money. And the rivers were full of fish and they could just eat fish, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I heard a woman talk who talked about that, what it was like to grow up in Yosemite when she was 10 and 11 and 12. So the dirt bags came in in the 1950s and what they said is that literally they wanted to lay their sleeping bags on the dirt. And they were choosing the dirt in a beautiful natural location over the evils of society, you know, money and acquisition and caring more about things than people and more about things than about the natural world. And so they chose the bears and the deer and the cougars and they chose the waterfalls and the rock faces and swimming over all money in all normal food situations. So a lot of these dirt bags would just go to curry village and scrounge left over from the tourists or go after people left campgrounds and just take whatever food the people had left behind in bare boxes. The most famous dirt bag, jungle chocolates, 37 years in the valley while the rangers were trying to catch them and find them and when they finally did, they exported them to San Francisco and you just hitchhike right back to the valley. And that's who you wanted to be when you grew up. A little bit, yeah. So you're troubled youth, you know, you talk about, I mean, I think maybe you learned a lot of the skills of living off of the droppings of our society or whatever. You learned to live outdoors perhaps? I don't know. Is this part of your youth? Yeah, I had kind of a wonderful mother. We lived in Tucson when I was little and I had just learned about the Spartans. And so I wanted to be a Spartan and so I wanted to sleep outside in the dirt or I wanted to sleep in my room, in my jeans, in my shoes on the floor without a blanket, you know. She just sort of let me be me and then later when I was older, when we moved to Oregon, I was 14 and I decided that I was going to sleep outside 100 nights in a row. And both my parents just kind of shrugged their shoulders and my mom said, "Okay." As long as you're still reading books because that's what she really cared about. So I kept reading and she let me sleep out and I flipped out 102 nights in a row and started high school sleeping outside every single night. So yeah, I just kind of grew up loving being outdoors and loving sleeping outside. And I think I was fortunate to have the family that I did. So the main character in the book, in Graphic the Valley, Tenaya, how much of you is in Tenaya? Are you the quiet type like he is? No, I don't know if he's me. I actually started the book thinking of it as a structural rewrite of Samson's life. One of my friends had said, "You know, have you ever read that story and the old Jewish story of Samson? And have you actually read it the way it really is?" And I just heard the Sunday school version where he's with Delilah and Delilah seems like a prostitute, which isn't true. But I started reading that story and I thought, "Wow, this would be incredible to rewrite a modern version of that." And Tenaya originally wasn't even going to be Tenaya and he wasn't going to be a native in the valley. But then I went from this Samson story to doing all this research and kind of discovering this weird story of a national park cover-up. And I started researching and I went and connected with the Northern Paiutes and I'm not a Paiute. My wife is a native and my daughters are native, but I'm not. And so I was talking to these people and I'm saying, "Do you want this story corrected?" And he said, "Absolutely." I just decided in the historical sections of the book, I would tell the truth and I would do first person account research and write everything that happened for real in the Yosemite Valley in old history. So then he became Tenaya and it became a reference to the old chief Tenaya. That's where this character kind of evolved and became more than something I originally planned, which is one of the coolest things about writing. When your character becomes something, you don't even plan for them to be. It sounds like maybe there's a bit of a grafting of a traditional figure, old Tenaya versus the new Tenaya, the main character of Graphic the Valley, that there's a grafting of the current day dirt bags with that older person reality. So you just were melding to reality so you could share it. Why did you do this? Why did you choose that? I think that's really well said at grafting. I like that idea of putting a piece of two trees together and having it become one tree. I like that image a lot. I wanted this re-vide of Samson, this story that has a love and lust and violence, but I also like the idea that in Yosemite it's going to have coyotes and dumpster diving and tourists and bears. So I wanted to put this historical context and tell the true story of the valley while also saying what would it be like if we had this young character who's born to parents who are living illegally and he's born in a car and he's never known anything different. And what would it look like if you were trying to go forward and what would it look like if he met a young woman and if he didn't know who he was when he was trying to find love, which is sort of a universal thing hopefully that we all struggle when we're 18 and 19 and 20 to figure out who we are. And then if we fall in love with somebody then that just complicates that search even more. So I was trying to melt or graft the old teniah with young teniah, the war leader from the past who chose peace and was betrayed by the US Army, but I wanted that complicated figure to be a part of the boy so he had to be complicated. He had to be peaceful and violent at the same time and he had to be loving and frustrating at the same time. I hope Peter that I'm not stepping over improper bounds here by asking this, you were trouble youth you said you spent time in juvie. So you were a juvenile delinquent of some sort. How serious was it you didn't happen to kill anybody did you? Oh no, no I didn't kill anybody. Okay well that happened in the book or I'm spoiler alert I have to say that right. That's near the beginning. Right, so that's part of what I'm wondering how close that teniah and Peter are in maybe disposition or did you get into trouble accidentally. I don't think I could claim my trouble was in accident in the same way I was expelled from the school for a fall. I was expelled from a school for possessing a handgun on school property stolen handgun and I was expelled from a school for dealing drugs my senior year. So I wasn't a good kid and I I don't think my troubles were accidents. I think my troubles were just my poor choices and my difficulty with dealing with kind of the strict rules that my parents had kind of stumbled upon when I was a teenager. I lived a really free childhood a wonderful childhood and we explored and traveled and read great books and I was pretty much able to just run wild. And then when I was a teenager my parents brought in all these rules from kind of a conservative religious perspective that they'd adopted and all of a sudden. And so I really struggled with that and then I just made so many bad choices on my own. So I'd like to hear about that transition because some families do go through it and they go through it in the opposite direction. You know maybe from the fundamentalist to a more liberal perspective or whatever. What was your religious spiritual upbringing? What did it become? It sounds like you departed from whatever your parents were doing. Yeah, I mean I had a strange religious childhood because when I was a kid in Tucson my parents were liberal Democrats and I remember we were part of the Rainbow Coalition and they were having us advocate for Jesse Jackson for President in '84. We were boycotting Nestle because of what they were doing in Africa with formula propaganda and all that. So I had a very liberal childhood and then my parents went through a period of time, a short period of time. But a period of time where they were extremely conservative and I don't know exactly how that came about. I know that they got involved at the strange church and they started listening to Rush Limbaugh. It was a really odd time period in our family but then because of this they gave us all these rules. You know rules that were difficult for teenage boys, young teenage boys like no dating and things like that. Which is all you want to do. Right. And I know I got in trouble because I held a girl's hand at school and my sister told on me. Shocking. Oh my goodness. Shocking activities. Shocking that your sister told on you. What kind of sister is that? Come on. But then we struggled but she's gray now and we have a good relationship now. I think our family just got lost. Religiously my family sort of went to like an old testament kind of rule-based Leviticus sort of religion. And I wasn't very into that. I kind of bucked against that and struggled and I ended up moving out as an early teenager for a while and then coming back and then going to Colorado and then getting sent to boarding schools and then a reformed school. And you know it was just kind of a bad process in a bad series of events. But later, later you know as an adult as I kind of was trying to figure out what I really believed. I started reading comparative religions and I actually went in red Matthew carefully over and over and read what Jesus really believed. And for the time period he was preaching he was a homeless person and he was going place to place and he didn't care about things. And you know he said money doesn't matter and he said all that really matters is loving your neighbor and your neighbor includes your enemy. And I was like okay well that makes sense. That's something I can believe. It wasn't what you're going to hear on TV or it's not what you're going to hear in most churches. You know what's kind of funny is I haven't thought of it that way before but when Jesus sends out his disciples he tells them don't carry any food with you and just go into the town and just depend on the bounty that people give you freely. Yeah it's a beautiful message. Yeah and that's kind of Tania of course that's what he's doing right? Right and in that way maybe you know writer's beliefs come through where we say you know this is what we care about and suddenly I have a character who lives like this. You know that's just another great thing about being able to create fiction is saying. You can as you say graph characters and you can have them think things that you wonder about even if you don't believe in yourself. Or another thing I love about fiction is just every reader is going to get something different out of the text and they're going to find something different to like or dislike and something's going to move one person but not another. It's kind of a fluid dynamic thing reading and that's what I love. You mentioned your family went through the kind of fundamentalist Old Testament type portion of life short portion you said. Is that where your fascination with Samson came from? I don't know I mean that really came from a conversation with my sister-in-law four years ago. So I don't know I mean you never know when there's a seed planted way back in your subconscious and it's going to kind of come to fruition later. I do know that I like to retell classical stories in different ways and the Samson story I heard as a kid just didn't work with the story that my sister-in-law was telling me. I thought I've got to reread that story because I don't think I actually know the true story. I think I just know what people have told me. So I went back and reread that and then that kind of was at the same time where I was finding about the national park services cover up of the 1851 invasion of the SMD Valley and I thought okay this could come together. Do you want to say more about that invasion or do we just want to make them read it in the book? I could probably tell some things that wouldn't spoil it too much. The history is that the miners were in the mountains. We all know about the 49ers but the miners were in the mountains and in 1850 they were very near Yosemite Valley. They were near Mariposa and to the south and there were all these stories about a gorgeous valley to the north and at that time there were actually two valleys to the north because there was Hetch Hetchy too which has now been dammed and lost. But they heard these stories about the valley and they wondered what it would be like first of all just to pan gold in the valley. How would it be to live somewhere gorgeous and maybe the river, the Merced River is full of gold and the creaks might be full of gold. And so the miners were trying to extend their territory and they were wanting to go north. But the Miwoks lived at Mariposa and they lived to the south of the valley, the natives there and they wanted to claim the valley. But canayas band and another band of Yosemite were actually in the valley at the time and controlled the valley. And they were feared because they were so good at controlling the valley but they were actually living a pretty peaceful life, eating deer, fish, acorns, different plants, honeydew off the trees. And so they were living there and they had no idea what was going on outside of the valley according to every source I've read. And so the Merced Posa battalion was formed when there were kind of disputes between the natives to the south and the miners. Well the Miwoks agreed to send scouts with the 36th Wisconsin Regiment into the valley and lead them in using the 36 guns as their protection. And when they went in there they were able to burn acorn stores and basically use guerrilla warfare tactics to defeat the bands. So that's kind of the history but to cover up with the National Park Services, I was at Mirror Lake and I was reading a sign board underneath Haptom and Yosemite. And I was talking about the original inhabitants, the Miwoks, and I already had read that original story with the first person source and I thought well that's kind of funny because the Miwoks didn't even live in the valley. And then I started looking into this and at the Awani Hotel all of the pictures of the northern pies the Yosemite were Miwoks. And then I talked to some people at the National Park Service and everybody had decided to claim the Miwoks as the original inhabitants. And what was the purpose of that because they had befriended the soldiers coming in or what? I think the history is always told by the conquerors and the Miwoks were able to work with the U.S. Army to root out the Yosemite. And I believe thinking that they would then be able to take the value themselves but they didn't have the manpower, the guns, the capabilities. But I don't know how that exactly started. I talked to some National Park Service planners and some people, Western Region Director and everybody claimed they had no idea when this story started. All I know is that it's not correct now and people who've read the first person sources and the natives would like this corrected. And when you say that you've talked to a direct source, you're talking about native peoples of some sort. And you said your wife and of course your kids have native blood, what tribes are they connected with? They're actually Cherokee. They're Cherokee on the dozroll. So they're registered on the dozroll under the countrymen. So they're not pirates or you want descendants or anything like that. I think any person with any kind of natives in this history, no feels that intense betrayal. And then it's just exacerbated by the lack of truth. It's important that anybody you can can tell the truth. So I looked at first person sources from the old reservation papers and then I also actually found a really interesting first person source, Dr. Lassé at the Mill, who was the doctor with the 36 Wisconsin. So he was actually part of the regiment, dissented and wrote a book and said everything we did was wrong and this was evil and this is why. And he told the true story. He said, you know, if anybody's going to tell the truth, it's me because I'm actually with the army. I could lie too, but I won't. I was real sad to see the name of the 36 Wisconsin play so prominent apart in that whole invasion because I live in Wisconsin, right? You know, over in Oregon, you don't feel so bad about it, maybe, but what are the Wisconsin folks doing out there? That's a couple thousand miles away. Yeah, I'm not, I don't think anybody from Wisconsin was actually in the 36 Wisconsin, which is kind of funny. They're just besmirching our name. That's what it is. Pretty much. They said, well, you know, what state do we not like? And they chose Wisconsin. So that's what they named the regiment. No, but I think it was the way they used to form the regiments. I don't know exactly. I should probably research this more. That's a great question. But I know that they formed regiments based on original drawing, but then later they drew people from different states and they still had the regiments lined up by rank and order by the states that were originally drawn up. So probably the 36 Wisconsin goes back to the War of 1812, something like that, since this was in 1851. I know later it was like the New York regiment would be out as Buffalo soldiers fighting in the West in the 1870s and it's like nobody in that regiment would be from New York at all. So I'm not exactly sure how the military does that. I do know. Another interesting source I found is that Herb Hamlin of the Pony Express stories wrote a piece about how ridiculous the government's version of taking the valley from, quote, "The Isle of Lao Pius" was. He said the values in the valley were certainly not new walks and the new walks had no rights to the valley. And he even said, "Chiefs in Iowa is peaceful with the surrounding miners in the mountains." So that corroborates Dr. Lafayette, the Nell's version of the story, and repeats the government's cover up. And this is now more than 100 years old. So people have been fighting this story for more than 100 years. And let me just ask you again. So why do you want to straighten out history? I mean, you're a white folk. You're supposed to cheer for what lies are parents told us. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I know that I am mostly Caucasian. I don't know what my other part is, my grandmother. I know that she had dark skin and dark curly hair and we think she was African American. I'm not sure. But I know that I'm mostly Caucasian in that I've definitely benefited from the systematic cover up for the government. But it's not a conspiracy theory. The government was intentional. And so I think any time truth is controlled, any time lies are propagated, we have to fight that. You know, that's important to me. That's something that matters to me. And that's something as a parent, you know, I talked to my daughters about. I'd rather they get in trouble and tell the truth. You know, I'd rather they take punishment earned and tell the truth. And certainly there'd be less punishment if they tell the truth. I think truth is something that we don't value enough. And how's that going with your daughters? I think it's going well. I hope it's going well. They haven't been teenagers yet. So I haven't learned to lie yet. No. And I heard from a woman, I respect, who's a lot older than me, that you can't really judge your parenting until your kids are or your youngest kid is 25. So I've got, you know, 17 years here where I can fail a lot. Well, I do feel kind of judgmental towards all of the soldiers of the 36th Wisconsin and the other tribes that are helping them. And they're burning you. One of the things you mentioned is that they burned the acorns stores. Now, I don't know that most of our listeners have ever eaten acorns. I do. I harvested some last years and I've created some recipes for acorns. I understand that the acorns you have out there are somewhat bigger than the acorns we have here in Wisconsin. I'm told that some of the tribes, 50% of their calories would come from acorns and they'd have acorns the size of your fist. Is that true? Have you seen those? I don't know if I've seen an acorn the size of my fist. I have seen big acorns. And I know that some of the acorns are higher in tannin down there so they can be bitter, but they can be soaked and the bitterness will come out. I know that I've eaten acorns. I know that I've also read that 50% of the calories were from acorns, especially certain times of the year, you know, and you can get a lot of calories that way. But I'm not sure. I don't think I've seen one the size of my fist, but that would be pretty incredible. Maybe it was the size of a woman's fist or something smaller than what we did. Or a child's fist. Some humans. Yeah, a fist. A baby's fist. I don't know. I don't know. I know that it was an amazing food source and that there's an abundance in Yosemite Valley. And today, I'm for tribes today. I mean, the folks, do they still use them very much? Or have you used them much? I mean, you said you've tasted them. Yeah, I've eaten them and cooked with them. But I don't know. There's no tribe that actually lives in the Yosemite Valley. We made sure of that, you know. Right. Relocation is usually to places that don't have trees, water, natural gas, nickel, silver, gold, places like Northern Arizona. All right. I don't know if there's a native tribe that still uses acorns as a primary or secondary food source. That's a good question. I want to remind our listeners that my guest is Peter Brown-Hoffmeister. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. And this is Spirit in Action, a Northern Spirit Radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. On that site, you can listen to and download free of charge our eight years of programs. You can catch links to and other information about our guests, post comments. The duty is yours to make this sharing two-way. And you can also make a donation. Just click the donate button. But even before you do that, remember to support your local community radio station with your time and money. Community radio is an invaluable alternative source of news and music. Stuff that you just can't get via the mainstream media. So please support them. Support for this show came from Eau Claire, Wisconsin attorney, Catherine B. Schultz, who believes in honesty, accuracy and world healing work. She does her bet for world healing by helping her clients get a new start to their finances by guiding them through bankruptcy when needed for help called Catherine B. Schultz at 715-835-8904. And as I said, we're speaking with Peter Brown-Hoffmeister. Graphic the Valley is his new book, a really great read with excellent overarching themes. I think you'll enjoy it greatly. And then maybe you'll want to check out his other books, a non-fiction book, "Let Them Be eaten by Bears," a fearless guide to taking our kids into the great outdoors, and a memoir, "The End of Boys," and a collection of fiction called "Bloss." So Peter, let's go back to your students because that's the main thing that really encouraged me to have you here today, the difference you make in the world with them. One thing that I noted, maybe as research for your book, or maybe just as part of teaching integrated outdoor education, you teach those students how to scrounge food, dumpster dive, things like that. I assume they get to go home for supper from the grocery store, or maybe you just have them survive for a week or so on this stuff. How does that all work? No, we have them in the afternoon and every day, and then we do about 25 half-day field trips, and then we do three or four long multi-day trips every single year. So no, they go home, but I've had my student leaders, I create a student leadership group, a cohort of five or six kids every year, and they help lead the first-year students. And so these are kind of the best, the most wonderful young people. They're not always the best students, but they're often good students, but they're more incredible young people who have potential to become leaders in their lives. And they do become leaders, they end up being rafting guides in Costa Rica, or climbing guides in New Zealand, or whatever. So these student leaders, they'll teach skills, they'll teach them skills, and then they'll teach their peers. So for example, last year I taught my student leaders to dumpster dive in different bakery dumpsters around town, and then they took out student groups, and each leader took a small group to different bakeries, and they did dumpster diving for their old bakery goods. So I mean, there are a lot of possibilities, but we also do things like we work with the homeless in our town, and so we do see the homeless events, and we scrounge from lost in towns around town, and then wash clothes, good clothes, so we can give away that will help people. And then also for our low-income students, the student leaders and I go through lost in towns and unclaimed goods, and we live in an affluent part of the United States, and students will leave $200 and $300 jackets in unclaimed lost in towns, and so we'll wash them and give them to our students that are from poorer backgrounds. So I'm fortunate to work with these student leaders every year that also teach their peers how to conserve and to reuse, and maybe to find better uses of resources than what the average person in our community is doing. And sometimes these student leaders are really leading me and showing me what's important and reminding me what's important, so that's kind of how we all work together in the outdoor program. I can imagine there could be some affluent parents who would be totally aghast at the idea of their kids eating dale bakery, or something dumpster-dived. How does this work? I mean, what are the politics of this in the school? I am just so lucky. I mean, my administration has been behind me from the very start, and I'm struggling with the superintendent right now who's not a supportive of what he calls antics, like feeding the homeless. That's an antique, I guess. An antique instead of a blessing. Okay, good. But the parents of the program, the affluent parents actually haven't really struggled with any of the ideas. What we've seen is a lot of the affluent parents have said this is great, and they've donated food and money and gear and scholarship opportunities to the less fortunate financially, the less fortunate students. So we've actually seen the richer parents really take care of the poorer kids in the program. It's been kind of amazing to see everybody develop and kind of take on a role. We had a parent last year who donated $3,000 to the program just to make sure that we can continue to feed the homeless and get scholarships to the students who couldn't afford trips and paying guides. That's beautiful. And you said it's the more affluent parents apparently don't have problems. Maybe the less affluent parents, maybe they feel like this is something of shame that they'd like to get away from them. Maybe they've had to do it. Actually, my parents, when I was seven years old, I remember us essentially dumpster diving behind a grocery store. So is there a different attitude from the lower economic scale? Mostly no. I'd say 99% of the time, though, everybody's on board. I have had one parent who thought I was patronizing or, you know, being condescending or something. But then I explained to her, you know, I actually dove dumpsters when I was a kid. When we lived in Tucson, we had no money. And I remember jumping in many Tucson dumpsters behind supermarkets and they were full of melted, mocked in 105 degree heat. So, you know, I'm not coming from some rich background and saying, I'd like to, you know, teach your kid to slum or something like that. Basically, I'm just saying, you know, reusing is better than recycling, even, and, you know, not using in the first places, better than either of those two. So, I mean, those are kind of ethics that we're talking through, but, you know, we're trying to live the same way that we're talking. And that's difficult to do, because all of us are hypocrites, you know, and it's easy to be a hypocrite in the United States. But I haven't had a lot of parental opposition. I'm mostly parents are excited, and they're like, this is great. My kids are going outside all the time, and this is great. My kids are helping the homeless, and this is great. My kids are seeing a different way to live, so it's kind of fun, actually. Kids are going outside, which I think is increasingly rare, because you put someone in front of a screen, and I've seen kids sitting in the same room, but they're talking to each other through the computer. I guess that's true. My mother never allowed video games in the house, and I don't allow video games in the house. I don't really see that, but I hear horror stories, you know, or the kids who are texting each other, but they're in the same house. Or the kids who are walking down the street together text each other, but they're walking right next to each other, and they don't speak out loud. Or the one that scares me is the 11 and 12-year-old online lying and saying they're 18 and playing with adults who cuss at them all the time. That seems pretty scary, but I don't know. Our culture is weird. It is. I'm still very interested in what the school system there is promoting in terms of the values. I mean, some of the things you mentioned is energy. You know, how do you save energy or recycling or dealing with the homeless? All things, which I think are just awesome values. Are these explicitly supported at the higher levels? Obviously, there's a little bit of blowback about some of that from the superintendent, but are these values that the schools in Oregon can promote? I don't think that's allowed in Wisconsin anymore, not since we have Governor Scott Walker. Oh, that'd be sad. Yeah, we, at my school, these values are promoted and there are green clubs and there are recycling clubs, and, you know, there's our outdoor program. So, my school, I'm really fortunate in the administrators. I'm really fortunate with them to have them, too. Our superintendent, who is a Missouri man, is maybe like your governor, he thinks we're ridiculous. And last year, we fought with Parks and Rec a little bit because they found out that we were doing all these homeless feeding events in the parks, and they wanted us to rent the parks to be able to feed the homeless. But this series of events was set up by high school kids, not even by me, and we didn't have any extra money in any extra money we had. We just, it went for food and for extra blankets. So, we weren't willing to rent the park, and we ended up battling the park service and refusing to pay, and our superintendent said we should pay them. We just decided that we were going to do all of our events off of bicycles, and that way we'd get around the parks and our superintendent. So, I mean, there's going to be opposition anytime you decide to pursue, or your students decide to pursue social justice, but it's one of those things where, you know, how could this possibly be wrong? And that's what my student leaders always say to me, well, how could it possibly be wrong to be giving blankets to homeless people? You know, I think there are some high schools that are promoting these values in our area, and there are some that aren't, and I'm just fortunate to be with the high school that's willing to let us do what the students want to do, which is care for people. You know, I don't want to put too much of the credit right in your lap, I'm sure that, you know, it takes a village to raise a child properly, but obviously, you're some kind of, your ignition point for this, you're a catalyst for this. Somehow, your background experience is probably inspirational enough to have other people say, "We're going to try and make this difference." The homeless people, yes, but for your students, can you see the transformation happening in your students, or has the couch potato gone to the involved community activist, or maybe you failed and seen other people who just, "Well, I'm never going outdoors again because I've smelly dumpsters, I don't know." And I had to do this for a year, and I had to camp on the bed. It's the same thing with the parents. Most parents are wonderful, and then there's the one parent that takes issue with something. Most kids are wonderful, and there's the one kid that you don't reach. You know, if I have 35 kids every year, 34 will maybe be impacted by me or the program, but mostly by the peers and the student leaders that we've set up. So I don't think I deserve very much credit. I know that those student leaders are just incredible advocates for outdoor education and for social justice and activity and nature. And most kids are just reached because of that, because they've got other 17 and 18-year-olds telling them that this is the most important thing, that this matters, that this is better than living for the mall or something like that. So, I think it's really the kids influencing the kids, and that's what's great to see. And can you point at specific kids? I don't even know if you're allowed to. Once you've been affected, you've seen a massive change of difference. This program had existed when you were in high school or in junior high school, would your path have been different? I don't know. I hope so. My co-director and I, Jeff, and I have talked about this, you know, would be integrated after our program, the IOP, would it have helped me? I hope so. I think it would have, because my Colorado experience was so powerful and I wish that that would just continue. And I have seen, you know, very troubled boys come into the program and really be successful, so I hope so. But I know that, you know, some kids aren't reached and, you know, sometimes you love somebody and they don't love you back, you know, and that's how it goes sometimes. But I hope, every time I get a troubled kid, I hope that he or she is going to really be affected in. And I've seen that. The young woman who's now a rafting guy in Costa Rica, she came into my program her junior year, and she was addicted to drugs and already in alcoholic, and came from a very dysfunctional background. And she struggled through that first year, but she made some amazing strides. And I saw some potential for leadership in her. And we chose her as our last choice of our six student leaders for the next year. And she struggled at some points during her senior year trying to be a leader and trying to lead her peers and make good decisions and not do drugs and not drink. And she was really hard for her, and she had times where she drank and times where she struggled. But she came through and we wrote a recommendation for Northern Arizona and she got involved with the outdoor program down there. And then she got a raft guiding job on the Grand Canyon because of the raft guiding she'd done in our program. And then she got offered a position in Costa Rica raft guiding, and that's where she is now. And she's 21 and doing really well, and she's been clean and sober for years now. So, I mean, sometimes, specifically, people are impacted, and that's just great to see that in a young person. And I hope to see that more. And that's kind of why I keep doing this program, even though I thought about just going to full-time writing. Yeah, I'm kind of amazed that you were able to write "Graphic the Valley" at the same time that you're a teacher. But I guess, you know, it's somewhat overblown people's idea of how much time you get off in the summer. I mean, I know you get time off, theoretically, but finishing up the school year and starting the next and recuperating from the pressure cooker, which is the school year. I don't know, do you just write while they're doing all their work, or what? No, no, that's not possible, because mostly we're on the move and around town and everything. But during the school year, I write one hour every single morning, seven days a week, and then during the summer, I'm able to write a lot more, and during winter break, I'm able to write more. But, I mean, most of the novel was written one hour at a time, and then just revising one hour at a time. So, that's kind of how I do my life right now, and, you know, my life is fairly simple because I chosen the outdoors and family and writing over pretty much everything else. So, I don't have a very complicated life, and I'm not out with friends until they eat or anything. So, some ways I might be kind of boring. I like to go to bed at 9.30 and read until I fall asleep, and then get up early and write. This doesn't sound like your teens at all. No, I don't know if my teenage self would like to hang out with me at all, but I would be a little boring. But, I love to write, and I love to read good books, and I really want to be a quality writer as I get older and write good novels. So, that's kind of what I've dedicated to, and my wife is really supportive of that when we were getting engaged. I said, you know, we're probably going to be a pork, and I want to be a writer, and she said, "Well, I don't really care about money." And I thought, "Okay, this is the right person for me." Yeah, it's one of those values. You know, this book, the adventure in it, the... I guess it's learning some of the culture. It's, of course, the people, the individuals. It's honeycomb, and a lion, and so on. All of these things have almost mythic power to them. But, you know what it reminds me of is when I was in fifth and sixth grade, there was a time where I was very drawn to the bibliography section of our elementary school. And that's, you know, Jim Bridger, or Florence Nightingale, or all of those folks. That's what it reminds me of. It's kind of... But it's got a closer up, you know, personal development that just is so gripping. I mean, I can't say enough good things about graphic. The Valley, and I do hope our listeners are going to pick it up. Oh, thank you. Where should they grab it from? Should they grab it from you, or just Amazon, or where? Yeah, it is on Amazon, and it's on in Barnes and Noble, across the country. But it's also at indiebookstores, and indiebound.com. You can go online to my website and see links. You could support a local bookstore, or order it through a local bookstore. Actually, the publisher is based, Harris, this branch of the publisher, which is actually from the east coast. But this branch of the publisher is in Madison, Wisconsin. Well, good for them. It's a Madison, Wisconsin book, so that's kind of cool. So, yeah, people can... And your website is? Peter Brown, Hofmeister.com. And if people don't know how to spell Peter Brown, Hofmeister.com, just come via Nordenspiritradio.org. I'll have the link. Oh, thank you. One more thing, Peter. What do you think ends up being the spiritual difference, at least from your point of view, between an indoor person and a person who's actively encountering the outdoors? You know, in the way that you do, I mean, you climb in Yosemite for the last 10 years, or what's the spiritual difference along that continuum? That's a great question. I think, you know, for a person to be healthy, they've got to have that meld of, you know, the mental and the physical and spiritual and emotional. And the thing that's wonderful about the natural world is that it's so honest. You know, a tree is a tree, you know, a rock and a rock and a river is a river. And, you know, against all of the natural world, we're really insignificant. But we're also a part of the whole. So, although there's some wandering at the grandeur and maybe looking at the stars and saying, you know, maybe I'm not that important and that humility is good. You can also say, well, but I'm also part of this living organism, that the Earth is a living organism. And so I think spiritually, if you're spending a lot of time outside, there's all that proof on a chemical level of what sunlight and dirt on your skin does for you and how that makes you a happier person. But I think it goes beyond the chemical. I think there is a spiritual component. I think that we have to say that this is a wonderful place, and we were put here for a purpose. And, you know, we're here to love the natural world, and we're here to love other people. And I think if you're outside, and if you're spending time with other good people outside, you're going to feel that spiritual connection to people and to the Earth as a whole. And so I think there's a wonderful opportunity spiritually for people who are engaged in the environment. Well, this book is certainly a wonderful way to access some of those ideas and to inspire people into the outdoors, like in the teaching programs that you do. Again, you can go to PeterBrown, Hofmeister.com, or just follow the link from NortonSpiritRadio.org. It's the latest book, Graphic the Valley. It's a book that will change you and inspire you. And so I encourage all our listeners to go there. And Peter, I'm so inspired by your life. I didn't know about the part of your troubled youth and how you've brought that into the schools. And this book just seems to fit with that so well. It's just inspirational all around, and I thank you so much for the book and for joining me for Spirit in Action. Oh, thank you for having me on such an important show. I appreciate it. Thanks to Peter for joining us, to all the community radio stations and listeners who support this program with their ears. And to Eau Claire, Wisconsin attorney, Catherine B. Schultz, a believer in honesty, accuracy, and world healing work. Doing world healing work by helping her clients get a new start to their finances by guiding them through bankruptcy when needed. You can call Catherine B. Schultz at 715-835-8904 for help. We'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)