America's Natural Wonders
primitive exploration through living room televisions
As spring blooms here in East Tennessee, the rattle of thunder and rain outside my window reminds me of the many wonderful April / May weekends spent watching PBS nature and travel documentaries from the comfort of my home while i was growing up. To this day, it’s probably the very thing I spend most of my free time doing, though my local public broadcast station tends to air more reality TV shows than ever.
Over the past 5 years or so, I have accumulated a huge collection of tapes similar to what I’m presenting to you today. The first three tapes are half nature documentary, half advertisement for their respective National Parks, with the last tape being a historical look at some of the oldest civilizations in the Southwest. I love tapes like this.
As I select and digitize this collection of tapes, I tend to pull a few favorites each time to put on my media shelf for future re-watches, and store the others with the rest of the stock of digitized tapes (did you know we have hit over 400 tapes in the archive now?!), but these 4 tapes are all going directly back on top of the VCR to re-watch immediately.
Each of these programs is stunning, from the narrations to the cinematography. The information is clear and revealing. These are chill tapes —with beautiful footage. I could watch these over and over again, and I probably will.
I hope you enjoy the selections I’ve made for you this week! Let’s get right into the tapes!
The Complete Yellowstone Video
1988 | Runtime 60 Minutes
THE COMPLETE YELLOWSTONE VIDEO
Here at last, captured in broadcast quality, is a video equal to the splendor of Yellowstone and guaranteed to be the best, most complete Yellowstone video available. Tour the entire park and discover the natural sights and sounds of all that is the wonder of Yellowstone.
ALL THE MAJOR FEATURES
Through the lens of master photographer Russ Finley, you'll see all of Yellowstone's scenic and thermal features --spectacular geyser eruptions, bubbling hot pools and paint pots, roaring rivers, thundering waterfalls and much more.
WILDLIFE & THE SEASONS
Most of all, enjoy the menagerie of wildlife and their young, all photographed amid the beauty of Yellowstone. Over 30 species are shown, including grizzly and black bear, elk, moose, bison, bighorn, coyote, swan and bald eagle. As a special treat, you'll experience the fall elk rut, as well as the beauty and serenity of Yellowstone in winter.
America's Natural Wonders:
Yellowstone Grand Canyon Yosemite
1995 | Runtime: 50 Minutes
THE STORIES OF AMERICA'S THREE GREAT NATURAL WONDERS ...UNIQUE IN ALL OF THE WORLD.
"Do nothing to mar its grandeur" - Theodore Roosevelt on the Grand Canyon.
No feature on earth evokes a wider spectrum of beauty and natural phenomenon than the Grand Canyon - a magic light show burning with ruby and gold on layers of granite and limestone.
"...No temple made with hands can com- pare with Yosemite" - John Muir on Yosemite.
Nearly 1,200 square miles of western Sierra Nevada, Yosemite is an awe-inspiring scenic splendor. Its famous valley gouged by glaciers and water, its waterfalls like Bridalveil, and mountains like Three Brothers and El Capitan, are as John Muir described, “...as if into this one mountain mansion nature had gathered her choicest treasures."
"Paint cannot touch it, and words are wasted" - Frederic Remington on Yellowstone.
Yellowstone National Park is known as the enduring wonder. With its vast forests, wildlife refuges, thundering waterfalls, gurgling hot springs, deer, elk, bear, bison and trumpeter swans all are still part of the world's first national park.
Big Bend: America's Last Primitive Frontier
1991 | Runtime: 60 Minutes
THE PRIMEVAL LAND
Time is held captive in this ancient land. Our cameras reveal the stark beauty of landforms shaped by relentless forces of primeval turmoil and erosion. The jagged heights of the Chisos Mountains; the windscoured plain of a volcanic caldera — buttresses and mesas, massive eroded pillars thrusting skyward; the Rio Grande between towering canyon walls: weathered monuments to earlier times.
WILDLIFE
Some of the nation's rarest and most fascinating lifeforms are observed amid the unique vege-tation of their natural habitat: collared peccaries or javalinas, roadrunners, Carmen Mountains whitetail deer, turkey vultures, the mountain lion, bobcat, coyote, rattlesnakes and many more species that make the environ of the Chihuahuan Desert their home.
AN AERIAL JOURNEY
Spectacular aerial photography explores the last Texas frontier far from civilization, inhospitable to settlement - where the excitement of the Old West as it was a century and more ago may still be sensed in the haunting solitude. A land rich with history and legend, imprinted by Indians, trailblazers, emigrants, bandits, ranchers and miners, the park holds the memories of their presence and their passing.
Ancient America: The Southwest
1992 | Runtime: 60 Minutes
Probe into the past. Discover the art, artifacts, and the extensive ruins left behind by the Anasazi, Hohokum, and the other fascinating peoples who once inhabited this part of Ancient America. Here, also, is a valuable video guide to Indian America in the Southwest-both past and present. Explore the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. Journey back in time to the prehistoric metropolis of Chaco Canyon with its vast network of roads and its intriguing astronomical observatories. Ancient America reveals never-before-filmed ruins and new discoveries which are changing our perceptions of these advanced, mysterious cultures. Stunning, award-winning photography and special effects help recreate Ancient America in the Southwest.
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed the tapes! If you’re looking for more, please check out my page on Archive.org for the full list of digitized media. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message right here or drop a comment below. If you haven’t already, please check out the one of my ocean-themed posts below, or all of my other previous posts here. Thanks so much for checking out this week’s edition of Diptych!
See you soon!
—Forrest
The Miracle Planet
This week we are locking in. We are sitting cross legged on the floor with our backs against the foot of the couch. We are propping our arms up on the coffee table. And we are grabbing a Mondo™ out of the fridge as we take in the astounding sights and sounds from the most interesting planet of them all: Earth.
Armchair Travels // Diptych #20
Before I reveal the tapes I have for you this week, I’d like to briefly mention that this week I ran into my first major copyright issue since I started archiving VHS’s. I should have known better, given the prestige of the host, however most of the time if the VHS box doesn’t have a barcode, I don’t expect to have any issues with uploading the contents to Youtube.
So, maybe Youtube doesn’t want me to upload David Attenborough’s “The Trials of Live” Courting, but thankfully, there are other ways to share content. Archive.org has been around for decades (iterations date back to the late 90’s) and graciously allows users to archive all types of media that would otherwise be lost. All this is done in the name of free access to information, and, to me, that mindset is extremely important to me.
Travel Through Time (One More Time)
This week, I’ve got a selection of 1980s travel documentaries to show y’all. Back in August, I included a Panorama International Productions doc which focused on Mount St. Helens in one of my newsletters, and I got a handful of positive comments and messages about it. Well, I’m happy to report back in with a new Panorama International Productions travel documentary, this time on the Mesa Verde!
You are right these are good!