[light instrumental music]
- On July 3, 1969, to get to the park,
you had to drive the whole Denali Highway,
and when I drove that road
through that magnificent landscape,
I knew at once I was at home.
[birds chirping and trilling]
The wolf walked right along here,
came right over here,
walked right down the lakeshore,
right to where we were sitting,
and it was so stunning.
[grass rustling]
- Denali is...is overwhelming.
And the more time you spend here,
inevitably, the smaller you feel.
It's like opening your arms and saying,
"Come on. Hit me with it, Denali."
And often, that feeling of insignificance
leads you, then, to an emotional, creative place.
[singing] Do-do-do, da-da-do, da-do
Da-da-da
- Here, everything is so wild,
and personally, for my music,
it's so freeing, and it opens up a part of you
that can't usually be opened up.
- It's very mysterious,
and I guess if I could put it into words,
I wouldn't need to put it into paint.
- Back before the National Park Service was founded,
Congress sent painters out to paint these places,
and the paintings, then, returned to Washington,
helping influence public thinking
on whether or not we should protect these places.
- Images have a tremendous amount of power.
[projector whirring]
- It is the attempt to paint
that brings the richest reward.
Recognition of beauty grows with intimacy.
You may pass a certain spot a score of times
and see nothing till a day comes
when you stand aghast at your former blindness.
- It's hard to characterize in words
exactly what makes Denali so unique,
which is all right with me because I'm a composer,
and it's easy to characterize it through music.
[wind sighing and birds chirping]
[viola music playing]
- Being out here, it creates such a expansive feeling
that is a huge inspiration.
- Being in wilderness and being creative
are intrinsically related in the brain.
[melancholy viola music playing]
When you unplug and just go be in wilderness,
the brain shifts to that creative,
play-in-the-moment space that creates the best art.
We were hiking up Primrose Ridge,
and we encountered this group of caribou there,
and it reminded me how musical and fluid
their movements tend to be.
[singing] Ooh
Ba-da-da, da-da-do-da
Da-da
Ba-da-da
[sprightly orchestral music]
Da, da-da-da
Da-da-doh-da, ba-ba
Ba-da-ba-da
Little dance-like moments in it.
- [singing] Da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da
Da-da-da-da-da-da
And as the piano's doing that,
I'll have the viola come in on a long, like...
- It is literally, in every sense,
an unending source of inspiration.
[gentle orchestral music]
- It just gives me a kind of stillness,
a kind of peace inside, to be here.
Pinks and purples and oranges and blues...
I don't know when the experience
that I have coming into the park today
will lead to a painting,
but I know that I'll remember
the smell that I'm smelling right now
from these trees that are all around us,
and I'll remember the fact that it's getting cold
as the day goes along.
[wind sighing and bird chirping]
I think we can never forget that parks are for us.
[murmurs indistinctly]
You can see the trail right through here
that here some moose have worn in over the years.
We have set aside these lands
because they have value unto themselves,
but we're doing it for us.
We're doing it to make a place where we can gather
the best of the human spirit.
[grass rustling]
[sweeping orchestral music]
[water bubbling]
- I was just sitting on the gravel bed,
and I was listening to the water.
[water rushing and bubbling]
And then the pen just starts flowing,
and I just start writing about the things
that I didn't even know that I was thinking about.
It's like if you think about the inside of your mind
as having unused rooms off in the corners,
these chambers,
are there are as many of these chambers as you need
to write books, to paint, to find courage,
all those things necessary for a good life.
- As an artist,
you really do connect with the landscape.
- Many people ask the question,
"Why do we need wilderness?"
I think wilderness speaks to something
very deep and fundamental in our nature.
When we go into the wild,
when we go into a national park,
something happens to us that changes us;
something happens that's important.
- My greatest hope is that
people will come to places like this
and they'll see their role in the world differently,
people will come to a place
where people are small and the landscape is large
and they'll value places like this.
- Denali will always be inspiring,
as long as it is here.
[gentle orchestral music]
[bird trilling]