[TV static]
- NARRATOR: It was 30 years ago that the
"Texas Parks & Wildlife" television series,
originally known as "Made in Texas" got its start.
Ron Kabele is one of more than 30 producers, photographers,
writers and editors who have contributed to the show since
its first broadcast in 1985.
- My name is Ron Kabele and I produced stories for the
TV show for 23, 24 years.
And my favorite story was the one about Geraldine Watson.
And just because she's the only person I've ever known
that really reminded me of Yoda.
Yoda, is that it, from Star Wars?
I never in my life met a person like her.
An 80-year-old Yoda in the middle of the forest
in East Texas.
That was Geraldine.
[music]
♪
- GERALDINE WATSON: The perfection that's in the
balance of nature is empirical evidence
of the creative genius of God.
He set it up.
Whether He used the process of evolution, or whatever
process He used, I don't know and I don't care.
But once you get to know all the intimate details
of all of this, it's incredible.
[dog barks]
- NARRATOR: She would never admit it, but Geraldine Watson
knows as much about the ecology of the Big Thicket as anyone.
For over half a century, she has fought to preserve
the forests, animals, and plants here in the
East Texas Pineywoods.
- I never planned to be a botanist.
I never planned to be an ecologist.
I never planned to be a park ranger.
I just seemed, simply seemed to drift into things.
- NARRATOR: Today, Geraldine spends most of her time in
this 10 acre preserve, caretaker of a tiny remnant
of the beautiful virgin forests of her childhood.
- GERALDINE: I stopped, and I walked out on that point,
and I said this is where I'm gonna spend my declining years.
[bird chirps]
Don't you think this is a nice spot?
All around us there are little spots like this.
If we just look for them and protect them
and appreciate them, we'll always have them.
[music]
♪
- NARRATOR: Geraldine has lived her entire life
within a few miles of the East Texas town of Warren.
[traffic passing]
Warren is mostly a throughway for a region that produces
wood and paper products.
It's an industry that contributes billions of dollars
each year to the local economy.
But with that economic impact come consequences.
[logging machines]
The decline of the Big Thicket started while Geraldine
was still a child.
Huge old-growth forests were cut to fuel the fires of progress.
And that fueled the fire of Geraldine's activism.
- GERALDINE: I was with the Park Service for 15 years as
the plant ecologist and all of that time, I was screaming
and yelling and jumping up and down.
How are we going to save the world if we don't understand it?
If we don't understand what makes it what it is.
[chain saws, trees falling]
- NARRATOR: By the 1960's, 90% of the virgin forests
were already gone.
That's about the time The Big Thicket Association was formed.
And Geraldine was one of the founding members.
- She could talk to groups and she was so good
at explaining what was unique about the Big Thicket.
- NARRATOR: Geraldine was as comfortable testifying to
congressional subcommittees as she was talking to
Audubon groups.
And her book "Big Thicket Plant Ecology" elevated her
to near rock-star status within the botany world.
- MAXINE: Her eight ecosystems that she put together gave
everyone a better understanding of what we were trying to save
and why we were trying to save it.
I think her contribution was just immeasurable.
- GERALDINE: In the old days, there were very few people
like me, and we were called those little old ladies
in tennis shoes.
- NARRATOR: But those little old ladies turned out
to be a formidable group.
- It wasn't a smooth path.
And there was controversy involved.
And so she struggled to get this message across.
But, she was victorious.
- NARRATOR: That victory came with a cost.
Geraldine and her family were ostracized by many people in
their East Texas community.
- The 10 years we were trying to get a bill passed...
you have no idea what my children went through.
- NARRATOR: But the family stuck together,
through good times and bad.
And one of her children, David, grew up to be as
passionate about conservation as Geraldine herself.
It was David who helped her manage the preserve,
right up until his death in a car wreck in early 2008.
Geraldine was devastated.
- I often think that I am not proud of anything
that I have done.
As my children have grown up and grown older,
and my husband is gone, I think of all the days
and the hours I spent out in the woods and the fields with other
people when I could have been spending time with them.
[sighs]
- NARRATOR: But here, Geraldine is not alone.
She has found peace and purpose, at one with her land
and her higher power.
[classical music]
- As she gets in the cart and says I'm ready to go.
- NARRATOR: Geraldine is still trying to save the world.
Only now, she's limited her efforts to these 10 acres.
But what she's done here is remarkable, providing tangible
proof that land can be restored, and ecosystems can be revived.
Geraldine would just call it preserving empirical evidence
of the creative genius of God.
[music]
- You know, I would rather somebody knock me on the head
and throw me in the river than for me to sit on a sofa
watching soap operas and eating myself into oblivion.
[music]
♪