This TED Talk features maker David Lang recorded live at TEDx Berkeley 2018.

So, of all my childhood memories, there is one that stands above the rest.

And that is the time that my brave parents rented an RV, packed it with me and my brothers, and drove west from our

house in Minneapolis out to Yellowstone National Park. We saw all the sites like the geysers,

we stopped at the badlands, but more than any of the places, I remember this as an adventure.

This was my introduction to the wild west. But it wasn't until I got older

and I learned more about the National Park system that I realized just how lucky I was.

Wanted to have that experience, but also that hundreds of years ago, people had the foresight to set aside the very best places,

the very best ecosystems in the country for everyone and for future generations.

And to really appreciate just how prescient that idea was. You have to go back and you have to look at

the history of the National Park Service. So a lot of people know the first national park was Yellowstone

in 1872. A lot of people think of John Meir, the poet naturalist, who was such a visionary

and getting people inspired by the idea of conservation,

that we need to take the best places and protect them.

He had an audience in very high places,

so there's a great story of Teddy Roosevelt and John Meere going hiking in Yosemite

during his presidency four days, completely off the grid, just the two of

them. Can you imagine a president actually just going completely off the grid for four days?

No tweeting.

I like that idea.

But he had a great impact on Theodore Roosevelt, and he created dozens of national parks, hundreds of thousands of square acres of national wildlife refuges. It was an

important administration, but it wasn't a done deal. Even in the year,

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