You know, some of us think that New Hampshire is just about the most beautiful state in the country.

We're blessed with mountains, a seacoast, and diverse woodlands that many of us take advantage of these natural surroundings.

But there never seems to be quite enough time to just sit back and relax and enjoy its beauty.

Now that is about to change.

♪♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

We're presenting a series that records the beauty, diversity and character of New Hampshire's outdoors.

During the next half hour.

We'll show you a window through which you can enjoy the wonderful sights and sounds and feel the peace of this magnificent part of the country.

♪♪ Our journey today takes us to the Connecticut River, which forms all but a tiny piece of the western border of New Hampshire.

It's 400 miles long from its source to the sea.

New England's longest river, its headwater is a little beaver pond that backs up against the Canadian border.

Its mouth is at Old Saybrook, Connecticut on Long Island Sound In between, It flows through thick northern forest and some of the best farmland in New England.

Once upon a time, the Connecticut flowed free and salmon migrated all the way to its headwaters to spawn.

Well, dams put a stop to that, but there are still those of us who claim that in its deepest pools still lurk gigantic Atlantic sturgeon trapped upstream for almost 200 years.

There were log drives here once too, huge ones, but now the river is pretty quiet.

On a misty summer morning.

You can almost imagine that you're alone in the wild again on that river of the Abenakis of long ago.

[Birds chirping] ♪♪ [Birds chirping] Such water do the gods distill and pour down every hill, for their New England men.

A draught of this wild water bring.

And I will never taste the spring of Helicon again.

But yesterday in dew it fell, this morning Its streams began to swell.

And with the sun it downward flowed, so fresh it hardly knew its road.

[Wind blows] [Birds chirping] ♪♪ [Birds singing] Where gleaming fields of haze meet the voyagers gaze.

And above, the heated air seems to make a river there.

The pines stand up with pride by the Souhegan’s side.

And the hemlock and the larch with their triumphal arch are waving o’er its march to the sea.

No wind stirs its waves.

But the spirits of the braves hovering o’er whose antiquated graves it's still water laves on the shore with an Indian’s stealthy tread.

It goes sleeping in its bed without joy or grief, or the rustle of a leaf without a ripple or a billow, or the sigh of a willow.

From the Lyndeboro’ Hills to the Merrimack mills.

♪♪ [Birds singing] [Ducks quacking] [Birds singing] [Ducks quacking] [Birds singing] With a louder din, did its current begin, when melted the snow, on the far mountain's brow, and the drops came together, in that rainy weather, experienced river, hast thou flowed forever?

Souhegan soundeth old, but the half is not told, what names hast thou borne, in the ages far gone, when the Xanthus and Meander commenced to wander, ere the black bear haunted thy red forest-floor, or nature had planted, the pines by thy shore?

[Birds chirping] ♪♪ [Wind blows] [Birds singing] ♪♪ Quinnehtukqut, The Native Americans call this place the Long River.

They lived here for over 10,000 years.

Since the end of the last ice age.

The river and its valley provided them everything they needed.

Today it provides us with a peaceful retreat.

A place to watch wild geese raising their young, and see moose wading in the shallows, and trying to imagine what this valley once looked like when wooly mammoths and caribou wandered its shores.

I'm Willem Lange, and I hope to see you there.

♪♪