Gary Ferguson
Lectures and Programs
As both a writer and a storyteller, Gary has delivered keynote addresses and readings to groups ranging from the Audubon Society, to Outdoor Retailer; from the Greater Yellowstone Foundation, to the Land Trust Alliance and Save the Redwoods League. During the past several years Gary has appeared on more than two hundred radio and television shows in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Spokane, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Cleveland. His nature-oriented commentaries and essays can be heard on National Public Radio affiliates throughout the country.
A Sample of Gary's Speaking Topics
Climate Change in America's National Parks
Shouting at the Sky: New Hope for America's Teens
Balancing Nature with Urban Growth
Climate Change in America's National Parks
It’s been a favorite argument of scientists since the early 1900’s: Preserve America’s most important landscapes - in large part through the national parks - and we’ll gain a critical baseline from which to track human-caused changes in the world’s ecosystems. Many who initially made such claims - including noted biologist George Melendez Wright, recently introduced to America in Ken Burns series on the National Parks – could hardly have imagined how valuable such a plan would be. As today’s leaders struggle to anticipate the consequences of climate change, more and more scientists from around the world are watching America’s national parks – now considered primary stages for the opening acts of this rapidly changing planet. In Yellowstone, since 1993 three out of the park’s four amphibian species have all but disappeared, as kettle ponds on the northern range vanish under warming conditions. At the same time nearly twenty thousand acres of whitebark pine nuts – a critical food source for the park’s grizzly bears – will likely be ninety percent diminished by 2020. Meanwhile in the highlands of Rocky Mountain National Park, celebrated populations of ptarmigans have been cut in half since 1985; researchers now predict the birds will be locally extinct in twenty years. At Mesa Verde, ninety percent of the pinion pines are dead, victims of drought-related stress. Far to the east, at Virgin Islands National Park, fifty percent of the preserve’s coral has died in just the past three years.
Seasoned naturalist and National Geographic author Gary Ferguson offers a riveting hour-long program, highlighting the touchable effects of climate change in America’s national parks. This is a presentation rich with images, as well as with riveting stories from leading biologists from across the continent. Here audiences can get a close-up view of how our nation’s most cherished preserves are changing before our eyes, as well as hear fresh ideas about what can be done to minimize damage to local plants and wildlife.
"Solastalgia"
By this point we’ve all heard the numbers, seen the news: more than half the coral in Virgin Islands National Park destroyed since 2006, due to rising carbon dioxide levels in the Caribbean. 3,000 miles to the east, 90% of the pinion pine forest is gone from Mesa Verde – first weakened by drought, later killed by disease. Due to loss of habitat the trumpeter swans of Yellowstone are unlikely to survive another decade, while nearby, hungry grizzly bears struggle against the massive die-off of whitebark pines.
If there’s ever been a living, breathing example of the classic Chinese ideogram for crisis – danger over opportunity – then climate change is it. Yet while researchers have been busy compiling a long list of physical changes to the planet, there is also much to be said about what’s going on in the human psyche. In the past six months mental health organizations like the American Psychological Association, along with media outlets from New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, have made a mainstream issue out of the psychological consequences of an unraveling planet. Therapists in particular are now engaged in far-reaching discussions about “solastalgia” – a term referring to the depression or anxiety commonly unleashed by a perceived degradation of one’s home environment.
What, then, is the healthy response to a problem like climate change – so extraordinarily complex, so potentially devastating? At the most obvious level, of course, we will continue to push for conservation, for new technologies. And yet the energy required to launch and ultimately sustain such movement lies somewhere else altogether, in the long-neglected recesses of imagination. Using on an intriguing mix of science and traditional storytelling, award-winning nature writer Gary Ferguson offers a fascinating look at how, contained within the overwhelming challenges of climate change, are the seeds of new, more holistic perspectives. The way forward, Ferguson says, will become clear in part by virtue of the stories we tell. Noted pundits have for years warned about the consequences of a culture turning its back on myth and story – an idea first made popular by mythologist Joseph Campbell. Indeed, toward the end of his life Campbell was often asked what a new body of myth - should there ever be one - might actually look like. “It will rise from a view of the earth as the astronauts see it,” he said. “The planet as this fragile, precious ball of life hurtling through the dark void.” Indeed, such connection-based tales are already showing up, sprouting in the culture through novels, television, and of course movies, including the phenomenally popular Avatar.
If this loss of story – or more specifically, the loss of the imagination sustained by story - has left us feeling displaced, unaware of our place on the earth, so too has it led to what psychologist Carl Jung called an “atrophy of instinct.” Jung claimed that this loss of inner guidance would yield not only feelings of powerlessness, but “a pathological brand of suggestibility.” As we reclaim instinct, in other words, we will become less willing to stick our heads in the sand and pretend our current challenges aren’t real, bequeathing unnecessary pain to future generations.
Happily, we do not set out alone on this journey of reclamation. The work of a wide range of thinkers – from ecologists to quantum physicists, psychologists to traditional storytellers – are coalescing into a flame with which we may yet reignite the psyche. Instead of choosing distraction, instead of letting our enthusiasm be overwhelmed by the sheer size and complexity of climate change, there is another possibility. A spirited re-imagining of what it means to live well in the world.
Shouting at the Sky: New Hope for America's Teens
When it comes to America's teenagers, the numbers are troubling. Last year alone more than four million teens tried heroin for the first time, while one out of every five 8th graders used inhalants. According to figures recently released by the Bureau of Justice, kids 12 to 17 now commit roughly 25% of all serious crime. The suicide rate for teenage boys is four times higher than it was in 1960. Yet beyond these gloomy statistics, answers are beginning to emerge. Among the most promising are those rising from a dynamic set of specialized programs that are rekindling some rather ancient, yet remarkably relevant notions about growing up in the world—notions that allow teens to find their voice, tell their truth, heal their lives.
This presentation is based on a season Gary spent with one of the best such programs in the country - the Aspen Achievement Academy, in Loa, Utah. His initial research was capped by a year spent following a dozen of the program's graduates, writing about both their struggles and triumphs in the acclaimed book Shouting at the Sky, by St. Martin's Press. Ferguson was then able to reconnect with most of those same graduates a decade later, in 2008, collecting intriguing new insights about their experiences.
The Hero's Journey
You need not travel alone, Joseph Campbell often said about meeting the challenges of life in the modern world. Thousands of people, across countless centuries, have made the journey before you.
The essence of that collective wisdom is known to scholars through a body of mythology called the Hero's Journey. Far from being a relic of the past, many of today's leading psychologists are discovering that the four stages of that mythical journey are in fact the essential steps for growth in the face of today's most pressing challenges. Perhaps poet Robert Frost was right: Most of the changes we think we see, he said, are merely old truths, coming in and out of favor.
In this dynamic and inspiring talk, Gary allows his audience to see their most immediate challenges in light of the timeless growth cycle of the Hero's Journey. This is a deeply empowering message, one that will change profoundly the way the audience members relate to the problems of their personal and professional lives.
The Promise of the Wild
Few aspects of our culture offer more striking clues about who we are as a people than our relationship with wild places. It was in America, after all, where pundits of the 18th Century predicted we would produce more writers, artists and musicians than anywhere in the world simply because we spent so much time rubbing elbows with the woods. It was here that preachers from Boston and New York roamed the outback of Maine, gathering inspiration for their Sunday sermons; here that in 1913 a middle-aged artist became a major celebrity, touring Vaudeville for two years with top billing, after having stripped down to his underwear to live for two months as a wild man in the North Woods.
A portion of this talk will chronicle the inspiring, humorous, and often passionate history of Americans coming to understand themselves through nature. This will not, however, be merely a trip down memory lane. Using a mix of research and nature mythology, Gary's presentation will also focus on the challenge of reawakening in the culture the value of wild places and in particular, the critical role outdoor professionals play in rekindling our sense of place.
Wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone, Benchmark for American Conservation
Of all the conservation efforts in American history, few have caught the fancy of the public like wolves coming home to Yellowstone. In addition to a fantastic array of ecological lessons, there is much to be said about what this effort has taught us of the power of myth, about the role of government in environmental issues, about the nation's loyalty to the principles of conservation. This sixty to ninety-minute presentation is based on a full year I spent following the opening movements of the first fourteen wolves released into Yellowstone, resulting in my 1996 title, The Yellowstone Wolves. It was this book that Dr. Mark Johnson, lead veterinarian for the project, declared to be "the best book on the wolf reintroduction ever published."
This is a presentation rich in both nature and culture - one that can also be tied to an engaging slide show. Part and parcel of this program are remarkable tales of first encounters between the wolves and Yellowstone's elk, grizzly bear, coyote and moose, none of which had ever laid eyes on an intact wolf pack. There's the tragicomic saga of Chad McKittrick, who shot and killed the male wolf known as number Ten, as well as the frenzied struggle by biologists to rescue his mate and her eight pups. We'll also take a look at the rich mythology surrounding wolves: Nez Perce stories of having patterned tribal life on wolf society; the Catholic Church declaring in the Middle Ages that wolves were the devil's dog, living proof that Satan walked among us; ongoing efforts today to make the wolf a poster child for the anti-government movement. Finally, we'll discuss how the wolves are faring today.
In the past several years I've done over one hundred programs across the country on this topic, for groups ranging from the Graduate Wildlife Department at the University of California, Berkley, to the Political Science Department at Washington University in St. Louis, to the Northwestern School of Law.
Balancing Nature with Urban Growth
104 years ago, popular educator and writer G. Stanley Hall stood before a group of high school teachers from across the eastern United States, and made what today might seem a curious claim. “In this hothouse culture,” he declared, “where everything ripens before its time, two things are necessary to a child’s proper education: the first is nature, and the second is story.”
By all indications, few in the audience that day even blinked. They were living, after all, at a time when passions for nature – and just as notably, the fear of losing such relationship to urbanization - were running full tilt. For the first 130 years of our history the natural world made up much of our national identity - a highly cherished stew pot of metaphor for politicians and pundits to express the promise of America and its democratic ideals. As best-selling author Charles Dudley Warner pointed out in 1879, should we fail to keep alive our links to the natural world, the nation was bound to disintegrate into “a discontent with any position in life except the most conspicuous.”
As it turned out, keeping nature alive over the next century – and therefore, keeping alive all that nature had to tell us about living well in the world – to no small degree ended up in the laps of urban planners. This presentation, rich with anecdote and story, highlights that remarkable journey. Curiously, while early on the stakes of such efforts were thought to be nothing less than the salvation of democracy, recent research suggests a value to open space and undeveloped preserves that may be more significant than even G. Stanley Hall could have imagined. As Richard Louv points out in his celebrated 2006 title Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, in recent years psychologists have discovered that access to nature can serve as everything from a treatment for children with Attention Deficit Disorder, to the sound development of the neurological pathways essential to creativity.
Our program will end with a brief, engaging chronicle of an intriguing new trend in urban and suburban planning: semi-wilderness open space preserves. Working closely with major developers, planners now stand at the ready to unfurl the next chapter in this thoroughly American tale.
References: Selected Presentations
Land Trust Alliance National Rally
National Writer's Voice Project
Vital Ground Reading Series
with Rick Bass, William Kittredge, Annick Smith, Pam Houston, Douglas Chadwick
StoryLines Northwest (American Library Association)
with Barry Lopez
Annual Conference, National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs
Association for Experimental Education
Sierra Club Conference: Nature and the Human Spirit
For more information or to book a speaking event,
please contact Anita Anderson: anita@wildwords.net or 415-309-0939