GOOD: David, what do you believe is the purpose of our National Parks?

BROWER: The National Parks were set aside by some people a long time ago in the 60s – the 1860s – and they had the idea firmly in mind, and I think they had picked up quite a bit from what the Olmsteads were doing, particularly the father. It was just the idea that we needed to leave something the way Nature had built it, and let Nature do all the managing and not people. It was a wonderful idea, and every now and then, the National Park Service remembers that (laughter). The difference was that the Forest Service under Gifford Pinchot said that everything in the forests is for sale, and I think that John Muir felt that nothing in the National Parks was for sale.

GOOD: In 1864, Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove?

BROWER: Yes, that was 1864 that Lincoln set aside Yosemite. And it was set aside and then managed by the state because the federal government didn’t quite know what to do with anything like that. And when eight years later they came up with Yellowstone, at least they thought they would give a name to it, “National Park.” But they had already given a name to Hot Springs in Arkansas in 1855. So, they were getting the right idea.

GOOD: So, again, what would you say is the overall purpose of the National Parks?

BROWER: I would say to admire what you find there, not what you take from it.

GOOD: How would you describe what has happened here in Hetch Hetchy Valley as opposed to the whole National Park idea?

BROWER: Well at Hetch Hetchy Valley, it was an utter destruction of the idea. If I’d have had anything to do with it, I would have sent them all to jail (laughter).

GOOD: If you could have a conversation with John Muir right now, if he were sitting here and you were able to converse with him, what would you say to John Muir right now?

BROWER: Well, actually I’ve had quite a few conversations with him. Steven Fox, in his book, John Muir and his Legacy: the American Conservation Movement, thought that they could call me the “John Muir reincarnate.” And, before that I had made a movie with Thoreau. So, I feel perfectly free to talk to anybody who’s not here any more (laughter)! In these conversations, I know in the first place, I’m saying, I’m sorry that I was only two when he left, so that we didn’t have any significant conversations, but I’ve been glad to have some of those since. And one of them I’ve enjoyed most is when the Sierra Club was a little hesitant about trying to get Hetch Hetchy back, and I wrote a letter saying that I had just been touch with you [John Muir]. And you had said that if they didn’t shape up and do something about it, he was going to resign as founder of the Sierra Club. The main point is that I think that I would sympathize that he left when he was 75. And, I’m almost 88 so that I had longer to worry about it. And, he had, I think, no hope for the restoration of it. And, I have every hope that it will be restored. And, I hope before 90, because I’m impatient (laughter).

GOOD: Tell us about the restoration effort that’s going on now. You’re on the Board of Directors of a new organization called RESTORE HETCH HETCHY.

BROWER: The purpose of the organization, RESTORE HETCH HETCHY, is, I guess, self-evident: Let’s get it back. And, let’s give God a chance to continue doing with it what he was doing, and is quite skillful about doing. And we’ll see what happens. And I think that one of the things for the next century is going to be fun watching all the things that have to happen to get it back close to what it was. It will never be what it was. But nothing ever will be. But it will be a very good facsimile, or better. And, I’m just hoping that everybody has a chance to watch that happen. If I find somebody to be a reincarnated me, I’ll make sure that they watch (laughter).

GOOD: One of the things John Muir talked about was that Hetch Hetchy Valley was the gateway or portal to the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne. I know that you have hiked down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne. Can you tell us about that?

BROWER: Well, I remember, one August, I started up at Tuolumne Meadows, and was intending to go all the way to Harden Lake, all the way down to Pate Valley, and then up 3500 feet to Harden Lake, which I did going through the Muir Gorge along the way. It wasn’t a big water time of the year, so that was no great problem. It was a total delight. But, that river is everything John Muir thought it was. Up above the gorge, it has some of the most marvelous waterfalls you’ll ever see. Not coming off the cliffs, but these wonderful cascades and waterwheels. And then on into the canyon, you have to watch now and then for a rattlesnake. But, Pate Valley seems to be a place they like to be in. Another year, I was with the Sierra Club, there was so much snow, we couldn’t get through the High Sierra, so we had to come all the way back here to Hetch Hetchy and then go up from there, up from Tiltill Valley. So, I’ve had pretty much the range of the whole thing. I’ve been on a boat through the reservoir when it was low, and had fun making a film [Two Yosemites], and it was one of the greatest experiences. I was then pessimistic. I thought that it was gone for all time. I no longer think so. I just forgot today to bring along my star drill and hammer, and I’d start chipping away at the dam myself (laughter).

GOOD: Tell us about your making the 1955 film. How did that happen?

BROWER: The 1955 film I made was just a fortunate occasion where I got five hundred feet of Kodachrome and used it all. So, we got an eleven-minute film to finish. And I just wanted to talk about the two Yosemites, the one that we had, the one we still have, the differences. And I was blessed by what was happening because that was when the water was low and the wind was up. At the head of the reservoir, there was a big wind going. And where there had been sediment, there was now a sandstorm. So I had fun quoting the people who said that since this was going to be a lake, this was going to be beautiful. So, while they were talking about their beautiful lake, I showed pictures of the sandstorm, and you can barely see over the edge. It was a lot of fun. Then, I compared that with Yosemite, which has been preserved because it was a National Park. It was protected as a National Park. And indeed the protection the National Parks have now, or should be having now or are entitled to, came from an Act that passed Congress because Hetch Hetchy, this other Yosemite, was spoiled. So, it’s going to be more fun getting that back than anything I can think of.

GOOD: Do you think that if this proposal were to come along today, to invade a National Park, such as Yosemite National Park, what would the response be from the people of the United States?

BROWER: There wouldn’t be a prayer of their doing it again. One of the things I want to make sure is that there isn’t a prayer of doing it again because it doesn’t have the same problem Hetch Hetchy had then. Not very many people had been there. And, in other places around the world, if people haven’t been there, it’s pretty easy to get somebody in there who likes to pour concrete, and that’s happened in a good many places. And, I want to make sure that there’s enough going on here, that we’re going to have a constituency for Hetch Hetchy who come here and know its beauty and will never let it escape again.

GOOD: That’s so important, isn’t it, to allow people to see, hear, feel, smell, taste, touch the place so they will learn to love it.

BROWER: That’s why we have our six senses. We’re supposed to use them all and maybe some others that I haven’t counted. We have that ability. And, I think that we just have to listen to the Earth, to look at the Earth to read it, and certainly to get the aromas.

GOOD: If the Earth underneath this water were to talk to us to us now, what would the Earth itself say?

BROWER: It would say “hurry and get me out of there, we want the Valley back.” I’ve been doing various kinds of thinking about how long it would take. And, I think it wouldn’t take very long for a lot of the material that was here to be back. Because all that it has to do is fall downhill, and get back to work. And things know how to do that. And even lichen will do that. That’s what I’m looking forward to, as I look out on Hetch Hetchy and look at the bathtub rings. Not very deep right now, but they can get quite horrendous. And I want to watch the lichen take over, because lichen can get anywhere it wants to go, and stay there a long time. It’s in no hurry, but it gets there.

GOOD: What wildlife would you anticipate coming back to Hetch Hetchy Valley?

BROWER: I think everything will come back that was here before. I don’t think that anything has been permanently lost. Wildlife has an ability to move around. They’re restless people, these wild creatures. And if they’re not in some place that’s empty, they’ll fill it. And, I just want to watch how fast they do it. That’s my own selfish hope. I would like to be around watching it happen.

GOOD: Would you repeat your statement you made earlier about having a party every time a new wildlife creature returned to Hetch Hetchy?

BROWER: Yes, I’ve suggested and I’m going to insist that it happen. Every time a species that was here returns, there should be a party. And by the time there is a full panoply of all the things that were here in the first place, everybody will be smashed (laughter). That will be all right. It will be worth it. (laughter).

GOOD: Please respond to this John Muir quote: “This damn Raker bill has upset everyone. Well, think on it. Three or four ambitious politicians and shifty traders calling themselves the City of San Francisco and bargaining like Yankee horse traders for half of the Yosemite National Park, working in darkness like moles in a low-lying meadow. The Senate passed the Raker bill two weeks ago at midnight session . . . and to gain the Almighty Dollar, they will turn that incredibly beautiful valley into a watertank. Dam up the Hetch Hetchy! We might as well dam up the people’s cathedrals and churches. Use them as watertanks, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”

BROWER: If I had been here at the time as he was, I would have said that his comments were pretty conservative. I think I would have said something a little bit more obscene (laughter). I guess we leaned on that later on, when they were trying to dam the Grand Canyon. A member of the Sierra Club came up with the line they used in the full-page ad in the Scientific American: “Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel, so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?” That ad is one of the most famous ads that has ever been written. And people, thirty-five or forty years later, still laugh when I mention it. And I hope some of the people who are laughing have good gallows humor, because he (Muir) deserved that instead of what he got. And he deserved the full support then of the Sierra Club. I’m sorry he didn’t get it. I’ve been a member of the Sierra Club now for sixty-seven years, and I want them to come back to the boldness he had and never lose it.

GOOD: You mentioned that people would rise up, and not allow the same thing to happen again. What kind of a campaign would you anticipate seeing happen with the restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley? Should we have newspaper ads in the New York Times, and what kind of a campaign would you outline?

BROWER: Well, I would see a campaign that had some more ads in the New York Times. I’ve had quite a bit of experience in doing that. It gets a lot of support. Then I also found out the value of making films, and getting books out, and talking to the media until we’re blue in the face, until they get the idea. You just keep struggling with it. And now what we have is people like Earth First! and, if necessary, they will put on a good demonstration. If they have to go to jail, they will think it’s worth it. But if people wanted to destroy Hetch Hetchy, people who know it or are going to get to know it again, just wouldn’t let it happen. They would cook up a great big storm. And that’s what I want us to be able to do for all the precious things we still have. We don’t need to get around and mess with everything we’ve got. We don’t have to walk on the Mona Lisa to appreciate the painting. We don’t have to walk everywhere in the wilderness. We have to know that it’s there. And that’s terribly important. And it’s there maybe for us, probably for us, but if it’s not for us it’s for other living creatures, that’s good enough for me. And I’d be satisfied if it’s just there for glaciers.

GOOD: In one interview I heard you say recently there are many unborn people yet to appreciate and experience the wonderful out-of-doors.

BROWER: Well, I guess I stole this idea a little bit, just messing around with the language. This came from Frederick Law Olmstead. I put it this way: The largest population of all, human and other, has yet to be born. Their genes are right here now in our custody. And we can do something about that. Or, years from now, when the memories of our genes are in their custody, what will they think of us? I’d like to have them think well of us.

GOOD: I’m going to ask you about the legacy you think John Muir left to the people of the United States and the people of the world, and the legacy you believe you will leave as well.

BROWER: Well, in that book by Stephen Fox, John Muir and his Legacy: the American Conservation Movement, that’s his legacy. Strangely enough, the woman I married was the granddaughter of a man who hated John Muir. He was one of the Yosemite Commissioners, and they had various disagreements. I don’t quite know over what. So, my marriage began with a woman who was not very fond of John Muir. But we have stayed married for 57 years in spite of it. And, I think she’s changing a bit now. Usually, she changes me, but on this one, I think she understands that the guy had an awful lot to say that other people weren’t saying. To paraphrase Father Thomas Berry, he said we should put the Bible on the shelf for twenty years and read the Earth. John Muir knew how to do both.

GOOD: I have often heard Muir refer to God as Beauty and Nature. Would that fit into your personal philosophy?

BROWER: Perfectly, yes. If it’s right, God did it. If it’s bad, Bechtel did it (laughter). I think that [Alexander] Pope had it right. When, way back in his essay on man, his last line is: “Whatever is, is right.” That, I would say, was before the Industrial Revolution. But, the things we had done before that, were pretty good. And, of course, we as people have not been around all that long. We are very recent arrivals as species on this planet. Any time you think of the three and a half million years of life that existed on this planet, the other forms seemed to know what they were doing. A friend of mine put it this way: “We must be the youngest species on Earth, because everything else knows what to do.”

GOOD: John Muir once asked: “What will Lord Man do to the mountains?” Is this reservoir Lord Man’s legacy to the mountains now?

BROWER: Well, we can un-do it. And, I’m trying to get the right numbers about how much San Francisco would have to pay to get power from somewhere else — else, including using what it has far more wisely, and stop the wasting of it. That’s probably the biggest economy of all. As far as the water is concerned, they get their water way below Hetch Hetchy. It’s nice to have it come from Hetch Hetchy because there isn’t much pollution in the various tubes and so on down to Moccasin Creek. But the water for San Francisco goes all the way down to Moccasin Creek. And then it is released, and goes by siphon underneath the big reservoir [Don Pedro] to San Francisco. So, there’s no problem there. There will have to be a little bit more careful management of water and purification. But that’s going happen anyway, because the state I was born in, when we had two million people, and in my early years I could find firewood anywhere, camp anywhere, and drink any of the water. Those days are gone. You people, you kids, don’t have that luck. But, I did.

GOOD: I envy you that, David, being able to go to a mountain stream, and dip your Sierra cup in the stream. I think one of the things that inspires me is that people said Mono Lake could not be saved. But, now we do see Mono Lake being saved, in a win-win situation. Los Angeles is getting more water that it would have otherwise, and it has received millions of dollars in state and federal grants for water reclamation and water recycling programs. The people of Los Angeles are conserving more. Can you see that same thing happening here for Hetch Hetchy?

BROWER: I can see that happening in Hetch Hetchy possibly for different reasons. Because what happened at Mono Lake happened because of the Public Trust Doctrine, which came to us in old Roman law and was revived in Magna Carta. And, at this point we’ve almost forgotten it. But, that’s what enabled us to save [Mono Lake]. A young man who is not a lawyer, but did some law reading, said that’s the way to go. We got help from a major law firm that spent a half million dollars of their own money in a suit, and they used this man’s route, the Public Trust Doctrine, and that was just recently picked up again in a river in Connecticut. And, that’s what we’ve got to learn again that the basic essence of the Public Trust Doctrine is that the future counts, and you are not entitled to use up the future’s things, the future’s opportunities, the future’s pleasures, the future’s requirements just for your convenience.

GOOD: I think that the mining that took place here in California early, in the 1800s, I think that they have taken our future, and it is sad that that has occurred.

BROWER: And it is strange. If you remember the people who lived here for thousands of years before we did, they followed what we now call a natural step. That you don’t take things from the Earth, as in mining, that you can’t handle when you’ve taken them. That you don’t dump stuff on the Earth that it can’t handle, and we’ve learned how to do that. You don’t destroy species. The original men destroyed a few, and you look for equity. Right now the biggest shortage on the Earth is equity . . .

GOOD: I’ve read things you’ve written about the equity issue. Would you address that with regard to San Francisco’s use of this place [Hetch Hetchy Valley], and how inequitable that is for everybody else in the United States, everybody else in the world.

BROWER: Your question just puts it right there. This place belongs to the world. It’s one the extraordinary places on Earth. Ansel Adams used to call places like this “magnificent gestures of the Earth.” It belongs to everybody. We happen to be the current custodians. And San Francisco happens to be the current pirates. And, for water they could have gotten [from some other place], but they wanted hydroelectric power. And, we’re still having some problems in how we are handling energy. That’s one of the things we don’t quite understand. We are not yet careful enough. And for that very reason, in one of our experiments I used to favor, nuclear power, we’ve created something that people are going to have to watch for hundreds of thousands of years just so we can turn on a light switch now. That’s not very fair.

GOOD: So, we need to be concerned about what we do today, and how that affects many, many generations, our children, our grandchildren, and their children beyond.

BROWER: Yes, if you just want to consider your own coming generations, what will they think of you if you don’t think of them?

GOOD: At the recent California Wilderness Conference (May 5, 2000), where you spoke at our [Hetch Hetchy] workshop, there were a lot of young people there. That really excited me, I was really glad to see that. What has been your response from young people to the environmental movement and the concerns you have expressed?

BROWER: The people I have seen have responded very well. What I worry about is the people that I don’t see. I remember once when I came back from Europe. Ann had to go home, and I had to make a talk at a university in New York. We had a nice crowd. I think I had 400 people. That night, the Grateful Dead filled the stadium. So, maybe we need some better music (laughter)!

GOOD: I know what you mean David. What would you say the carrying capacity of Hetch Hetchy Valley should be? What human uses should occur in this valley a hundred years from now?

BROWER: Well, I’ve got the easy answer: enough — enough of a constituency to save it. So that it doesn’t have the lack of a constituency John Muir had to contend with when we lost it.

GOOD: Hetch Hetchy was probably the first national environmental issue. John Muir and Will Colby started the Society for the Preservation of National Parks. How were they able to get people all over the United States involved?

BROWER: A lot of people have forgotten that we also had helping us the American Civic Association and the Prairie Club in Chicago, one in Washington one in Chicago. And they had heard enough about what the Parks were about, that they were ready to join that. But, we didn’t have anything like the present environmental movement. And we were glad that we had them. The Appalachian Mountain Club existed already. The American Forestry Association existed both of them sixteen years before the Sierra Club did. But they weren’t quite ready to go. And somehow, primarily because of John Muir and what he was teaching, and in large part the people in the faculties at Stanford and Cal had a great deal to do with what has been happening ever since. There’s an ability there that we had some other good people around the country scattered here and there, loosely . . .

GOOD: They were able to get newspapers and editorials around the country, were they not?

BROWER: They were able to get some support from other magazines at that point, Century, and others. But there wasn’t that knowledge about the environment that we got later. But there was enough to get it started. And there were not as many despoilers as there now. So, it didn’t take that many of us to keep them from doing what they wanted to do. And that has changed. And, that’s what didn’t happen then, if you wanted to save a place on the Earth you could do that. And you could seek funding for it. And then we came up with the Internal Revenue Code . . . I want to see the Internal Revenue Service make it as easy for the people who want to save the Earth to get funded as they make sure that the people who want to trash the Earth get funded . . .

GOOD: In 1988, when Interior Secretary Hodel proposed the restoration of Hetch Hetchy, how did you hear about it, and how did you feel about it?

BROWER: My reaction was immediate acceptance. I knew he had done a lot of bad things, but this was not a bad thing. This was a good thing. And, I was in Yosemite Valley when it became part of the World Heritage. He was there too. Robert Redford was there. We had about 400 people celebrating the official naming of Mt. Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams had just died. And that’s where Hodel talked some more about this. And he got the idea, strangely enough, from Ike Livermore, who had been the Resources Secretary for Ronald Reagan. And he did all the good environmental work that Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, he also liked to cut redwoods, but in any event, you can’t win them all. But, here he came up with this idea and people thought that because he’d been bad, this must be a bad scheme. So, they didn’t support it. And the Sierra Club didn’t support it. But, I wanted the Sierra Club to republish the book on Hetch Hetchy and John Muir and the Sierra Club [John Muir and the Sierra Club: the Battle for Yosemite, by Holway Jones]. And, they wouldn’t do it. The Holway Jones book, it’s a good book. And, I wanted it republished and updated with the Hodel statement and what he was finding out from that, and go from there. They wouldn’t budge.

GOOD: So, you felt it was important for the Sierra Club, despite it’s opposition to Hodel (and his predecessor, James Watt) on a number of issues, to enter into a rational dialogue with him regarding his idea to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley?

BROWER: Yes, they thought that it was a plot. I didn’t know that Ike Livermore had anything to do with it. He wrote me a letter explaining this later. And, I did know that he had done what he did specifically because they needed to get rid of two dams in Rocky Mountain National Park. Little dams, one of them had already caused them trouble, so it got rid of itself. The other one, he knew it had to be gotten rid of. And when he thought of that, he said well, the one that really should go is O’Shaughnessy Dam. And, we should have just given him a couple of awards and gone for it.

GOOD: There was a lot of skepticism in the Sierra Club, wasn’t there?

BROWER: Yes, there was, but I was the guy, one of the people who wasn’t skeptical. There were others, but not nearly enough.

GOOD: I guess one of the things I’ve learned in working with politicians, is that no one is with you 100 percent of the time. And, if someone is with you only 10 percent of the time, to work with them when you can.

BROWER: Yes.

GOOD: I wanted to ask you how was your personal consciousness raised, David, about the Earth, the environment, and your particular role in preserving and restoring the Earth?

BROWER: Well, I’ve tried in various ways, and then I know that because of my careful choice of parents that they liked the out-of-doors and they saw to it that their four children got out into it. So, it was part of their experience, part of our experience. And, that experience in itself was what informed us. But, also other things happened. And, the one that I finally realized that before I knew how to read, so I guess I was about five or six, my mother read me some books, children’s books, and one of them was “The Adventures of Bobby Coon” by Thornton W. Burgess, Bedtime Stories for Kids. And, in it was the story of this raccoon that lived in a hollow tree and a logger came and knocked the tree down and the raccoon broke its leg. And then Farmer Brown’s boy came by and with him Bouser the hound who immediately began to give it a lot of trouble. So Farmer Brown’s boy got the dog out of the way, got his coat, covered the raccoon, took him home, helped him get healed, and then realized he must free him. And the freeing was quite the task. Because, you’ve got a pet you keep it. You’ve got a pet (raccoon), you liberate it. And, at that point, I became Farmer Brown’s boy. And, I never quite got over it. I would do the same thing myself and I’d be pretty careful around the raccoon, because it would be a little cross with me to start with. I’ve seen that (laughter).

GOOD: That’s the nature of raccoons.

BROWER: Yes. They’re pretty good fighters (laughter).

BROWER: I’ve always admired a quote from Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” And, I keep using that, and it’s true. And, that’s where we need boldness. And you (Ron) knew that. And, that’s why, when you weren’t getting anywhere with the Sierra Club, they wouldn’t give you the time of day, you had to get bold and start something else. And, you got it going. You’ve got to do that. You have to take a shot at it.

GOOD: One of the arguments we’ll get is that it’s going to cost several hundred million dollars to take down this dam to restore the Valley.

BROWER: For example, if we don’t do it, we’ve lost a National Park, and we’ve lost it for years and years and years. And, San Francisco hasn’t paid the world for what it took from it. It’s a freebie for San Francisco. I want some numbers so that you can help people realize that if you don’t evaporate water here and you store it down at Don Pedro, you’ll lose less water from evaporation. And then I want to get better numbers on what you do about the energy. And, you heard me say before that, do you have to have an alternate source of energy, or do we have to be careful about how we use what we’ve got? And, this is what Amory Lovins has taught us, he’s number one in the world on teaching us that.

GOOD: What has kept you from being pessimistic about the Earth?

BROWER: I have a new one-liner. We cannot afford the luxury of pessimism. And if you think about that for a while, pessimism means that is your excuse. There’s nothing you can do about it, so what the hell. But, there’s no such excuse and there is something you can do about it. And, if you can’t be a pessimist, you might as well be an optimist (laughter).

STETSON: As you look over Hetch Hetchy nowadays, what are your feelings about what you see here.

BROWER: I think this is one of the biggest mistakes ever made in California, and I just want to see it back the way it was, the way I learned from John Muir, the way he wanted to see. And, I got the idea from him, and I can’t break that idea. When I read what John Muir had said about Hetch Hetchy, I felt as desperate as he did. And, I didn’t think anything could be done about it. So, I just gave up. But, that was the last time I gave up on anything (laughter). Back when I first saw this, I thought it had been destroyed for all our time, and I’m sorry I gave up that soon. We have to re-think what rivers are about. Muir knew why they existed. And, I’ve learned since then that rivers have a purpose. One of the purposes is to flow from the mountains to the sea. And, they shouldn’t be interrupted in their way.

STETSON: Why not just leave the O’Shaughnessy Dam here?

BROWER: This valley belongs to the world, not to San Francisco, and I want the world to have this valley back. And, it won’t take very long. In my lifetime, I want to see the restoration begin. That’s enough for me.

STETSON: Who would be opposed to restoring the valley?

BROWER: Well, unthinking people would be opposed to it, thinking well, it’s here, so leave it here, not realizing that nothing is permanent. And, certainly this shouldn’t be, since it should never have been here in the first place. If it were only a moraine, I wouldn’t object so much. But, it’s not a moraine. It’s a piece of man-made concrete. I would like to see it taken down like the Berlin Wall and sold to the tourists (laughter).

STETSON: How long do you think it would take to restore it?

BROWER: Oh, I’ve wondered about that from time to time. I was in combat in World War II. I would just ask the Corps of Engineers to come down some day and get rid of it (laughter). They’re supposed to know how to do that (laughter).

STETSON: As you look over it now, are you filled with anger, disappointment?

BROWER: What I see is the challenge to the Creator in getting it back to what it did look like, getting rid of, for example, those bathtub rings. That may take about 25 or 30 years. But, the lichen will come back. Lichen are pretty good about taking care of damages such as that and they’ll be here for a long time, much longer than the dam.