Shenandoah National Park

But it was much more difficult on the East Coast, and that's where you see more examples of eminent domain being used through various mechanisms.

It wasn't always outright that the United States would start a condemnation action, but places like Shenandoah National Park and the Everglades National Park, there were quite a few park areas where they would not be what they are today without the use of eminent domain.

And it created a lot of controversy.

In Shenandoah National Park, many local families were removed from their properties, and there is still a lot of controversy over that.

So over time, and it wasn't just the National Park Service, but also the federal government in general, using condemnation and changing the policies of when condemnation in eminent domain would be used.

And now the National Park Service still has the legal ability to use eminent domain, but it only does so very conservatively.

go off-road.

We did go up to the highest peak in Shenandoah National Park, and oh my God, it sucked getting up there, but it was fucking gorgeous while we were up there.

And then the downhill, let me just put it this way.

It's all hammies and ass on the way up, and then it's all quads on the way down.

I was graduating high school and starting at Virginia at the end of the summer.

charlesville is on the route what segment of bike centennial did you ride i rode the coast to coast from virginia to oregon my buddies you know i'd go camping with and stuff like that up in the shenandoah national park you know we all started talking about this thing and like well you know what we could do this in the summer before we go off our different ways we talked about the plans after high school graduation they all kind of signed up and then one by one they started dropping out oh Oh, no.

They said, you know what? I can't do it.

I can't do it.

I'm from Southern Maryland.

I've been backpacking probably for... well my first backpacking trip was probably like close to 30 years or so ago but um for like the last 15 years I've been back backpacking pretty rarely um I mostly do uh Shenandoah Virginia and West Virginia like in Dolly Sods and everything uh I'm turning 49 tomorrow oh yeah and um So, uh, now that my kids are grown and they have moved out of the house and they're both now married, I have more time for backpacking and doing more stuff outside and stuff that I want to do.

Literally all now married.

Like you literally just got back from a wedding.

burn every body within the hour, and never answer a voice you can't see.

The first man got those rules in October of 1989 in Shenandoah National Park, where something was walking north along the Appalachian Trail and leaving the trail every night to visit houses that hadn't existed for 50 years.

The second man got them this month from Ray himself, On a ridge above Rock Castle Gorge on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where a thermal drone recorded five people standing in an old hayfield at two in the morning, none of them showed up warm.

Between the two of them, they burned six.

This is the second part, and it's a long one.

Let's go.

There are chimneys standing in the woods of Shenandoah National Park with no houses attached to them.

Fieldstone chimneys, some of them 20 feet tall, standing alone in the oaks with a hearthstone at the bottom and nothing around them but leaves.

But my first book during that period was Walden by Thoreau.

My dad gave that to me because he was working in Shenandoah National Park.

And some of his coworkers were very interested in literature about nature.

And so my dad said, hey, here, take this Penguin edition of Walden.