Right behind me is My Walden, a loop trail near Sharon, Vermont.

We're hiking today with somebody who may be familiar to you.

Today.

You're going to get to know him.

So stick around.

If you and I ever happen to meet out hiking.

I'll probably start a conversation like.

Where are you from?

What are you doing here?

I found there's no real better way to get to know somebody than out on a hike.

Well, today we're going to get to learn a little bit more about somebody who's probably familiar to most of you.

If you've ever watched a press conference by New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, you've seen David Krueger standing right to one side of him.

David interprets for the governor for the deaf.

Well, today, we're going to hike with him a little bit and find out more about him.

David a pleasure.

A pleasure.

Now we're going to be talking sign language.

I'll probably talk while I sign, you don't, you just sign, right?

And I should warn you.

We speak different languages.

Yeah.

You're ASL.

I'm English.

Yeah.

Still, we understand a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

So we should probably start walking.

The trouble with being deaf in the woods.

You have to stop to talk.

You can't sign to somebody walking in front.

No, you don't.

Yeah.

You fall down if you.

If you don't, so.

You stop.

We'll, stop once in a while, and we'll talk that way.

Okay.

It makes sense.

David's personal sign, by the way, is DK.

DK.

Every every deaf person has a personal sign.

DK.

I'm not deaf.

Mine is Willy.

We're hiking at My Walden in Sharon, Vermont.

It's a network of roads and trails that visitors can hike, ski and snowshoe.

The 236 acres are privately owned and open to the public.

Over on the other side of the pond, Dan Gooley and Claire Holland will hike with us.

Dan is the caretaker at My Walden.

Claire's a local landowner.

They'll be along to guide us through some of the interesting places on the property.

And this is a piece of rock, and I don't know how it got there and what it's doing there, but I know it's a beautiful rock David is an interpreter, and his work keeps him busy.

He lives in Vermont and spends some of his time in New Hampshire.

Whenever New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu holds a press conference, David is there.

Well, good afternoon, hey David, How are you It's important to mention that David and I speak different languages.

He speaks American Sign Language.

I speak English signs, think Spanish and Portuguese, for example.

He understands me perfectly.

I understand him imperfectly.

I want to get it right.

So we hired a professional interpreter to transcribe what David is saying.

How long have you been deaf?

Whole life?

I've been deaf since birth, I'm the youngest of three boys my oldest brother is also deaf.

The middle isn't.

And I'm the youngest.

When my parents found out their firstborn was deaf, they had to scramble to figure out what that meant for themselves as parents.

How to communicate with him.

By the time I came along, they were all set.

Oh, so it runs in the family?

I'm sorry.

Oh, don't be sorry.

I have one cousin who lost his hearing at 23.

So just the three of us.

So how did you learn signs?

How?

Actually, my mother learned ASL in those days with my older brother at the deaf school.

It was the sixties and the educational approach at the time was what was known as oralism.

Everyone spoke to my brother, but he was deaf and struggled without understanding anything.

My mother met a deaf family, saw their ASL communication and was convinced that this was the way to go with my brother.

My mother never became what I'd call truly fluent in ASL, but her conversational skills are more than adequate.

My brother thrived in a signing environment and went to various programs for deaf students in the Chicago area.

As I said, by the time I came along, it was clear I'd use ASL as my first language.

My father was the weakest signer in the family, but my middle brother was pretty good.

We were an ASL signing home.

My Walden is a name given these woods by the distinguished botanist Harriet Jackson Phelps.

She once owned the property.

Sheila and Steven Sweat are now the owners.

In 1999, they put a conservation easement on the property which is held by the Upper Valley Land Trust.

If you want to hike here, there are gates that mark the four public entrances.

So what do think?

you like this rock?

In the springtime when the water's running.

This is just all.

It's just alive down here.

And there's nothing that way for a half a mile and nothing that way for a half a mile.

And it's just out here in the middle of nowhere, just being beautiful.

All by itself.

And it just wants to be looked at.

When David's not at work, he plays outside.

That's how he grew up, being active and outdoors.

You grew up where?

Illinois, outside of Chicago.

You did?

Yes, I grew up there.

My parents well, my father passed away, but my mother's still there.

What did your father do?

My father eventually retired.

He owned his own business.

Business man?

Yeah.

He died about ten years ago.

The older brother lives in Phenix, and the middle brother lives near San Jose.

They both went west.

And me.

I'm a Vermonter.

I came east.

You couldn't do better than here.

Well, I came for a job 20 years ago.

Really, I wanted to live where it snows.

I love snow in winter.

I'm a skier.

Fantastic to see that downed tree.

The whole root system is exposed.

Beautiful.

How long you've lived in Vermont?

20 years.

Actually, 21 years.

I came in 2000.

Think you'll stay?

I think so.

I have three boys.

The oldest is in college in his third year.

One going to college for three years.

Yeah.

The middle son is a senior in high school.

The youngest is in his first year of high school.

He'll graduate in 2025.

My wife and I really haven't talked about staying in Vermont or leaving.

If it were up to me, I'd want to follow the snow.

I love skiing.

That's the primary reason I'm in Vermont.

Once the kids are out of school my wife and I will have to see.

But honestly, I don't think my wife, she isn't eager to move, so we'll probably stay.

Good idea.

Good idea.

What a beautiful pond.

A great place to walk.

And the sunlight filtering through I imagine the colors in the fall are amazing.

That bench across the pond is a perfect place to stop and take in the beauty to connect with nature.

I'm assuming that you got interested in the outdoors, long time ago.

Yes.

I got interested when I was a young kid.

I remember my family always liked being outdoors, doing outdoor activities.

I grew up bicycling a lot with my parents, covering some distance on trails around Illinois.

We went swimming a lot in lakes That's also where I started to ski, too, in Wisconsin.

That's an active life, that's good.

Your kids too?

Oh, yes.

All three of them.

They started skiing at two or three.

Really young.

Kayakers?

Not much, but I do have a boat for water skiing, tubing, swimming.

They also do some hiking.

We love going to swimming holes.

Vermont is full of great out of the way swimming holes.

It's fun to hike in and swim It's the perfect place to hike.

You can see for miles.

Words and how we use them matter.

David says that his identity is deaf, not hearing impaired.

The word impaired implies weakened, diminished, damaged or incompetent.

None of these words apply to David or any deaf person as an accurate identification Every person, regardless of ability, is different in some aspect and yet equal as a human being.

That's diversity.

If you're out, if you're out in the woods by yourself, you meet people.

How do you communicate?

I gesture.

I sometimes text with my phone.

Sometimes I use a speech to text app.

If my batteries dead then I use paper and pen.

You're stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.

It's got to be an erratic didn't fall off a cliff anywhere.

No, there's a couple erratics over here with the green moss on them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when the sun hits it, it just glows.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Oh, look at that.

It doesn't.

It doesn't get it exactly right, but pretty good.

So that takes what I'm saying and puts it into words?

Yeah.

Damn technology!

You're talking to a dinosaur, I don't even have a cell phone.

So this is beautiful for you.

I can talk to you now.

And I got another thing I want to say to you!

My father had a friend in college.

Gallaudet.

One Sunday, President Coolidge was having an open house, so they all went over the long line.

You shook hands with the president and my father's friend, deaf, so he reached in his pocket to get his notebook, and the Secret Service picked him up, took him out of the room.

They thought he was getting a gun.

And in the spring, it's just.

It's really ten times the water coming over.

Were you getting all that?

Most of it, yeah.

Okay.

Me too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's at least four and probably five streams.

You know, that dump into this pond and they come from everywhere, and it's all pure water because there's nothing up from here.

There's no chemical factories.

No beaver dams, no beaver dams, no farms, nothing.

It's all pure water.

When you were small, when you were little.

Any particular problems you had you know, with your way and getting along?

My problems stemmed from the way the world saw deaf people, saw me.

They assumed deaf people were incapable less than, and never saw me, us, as equals.

For them, deaf, equaled inferior.

people assumed that he was inferior.

That attitude those beliefs are what we call audism This is similar to assuming a person is inferior based solely on the color of their skin.

Racism or sexism a system that values men over women.

They were wrong.

Those are lessons that we all learned.

Hopefully, over time, those attitudes and beliefs are changing.

Pump?

Oh a water pump, oh yeah, a hand pump or electrical pump.

yeah, a little one.

David's work as an interpreter began a bit by chance shortly after he moved to Vermont.

Did you go to college?

Yes.

I went to three different colleges University of Illinois Engineering School.

It was great.

But there were no other deaf students there.

Yeah.

No other deaf, communication was challenging, so I transferred to Gallaudet, where I had a great community, ASL, friends, everything.

But engineering wasn't offered as a major there, so I transferred to RIT.

I graduated from there.

Oh, okay.

Ended up at RIT from Gallaudet.

And that's where you learn to be an interpreter.

Yeah.

I graduated and looked for work and found a job at IBM in Vermont and moved there.

I got laid off after two years when the tech boom tanked and the economy went south.

That's when I started teaching ASL and getting involved in interpreting.

That's when I started working as an interpreter.

Full time job.

Full time and a half.

Yes.

Especially if you figure in all the driving.

I'm all over the place.

I can relate to the amount of time and travel David dedicates to his job.

My parents were deaf.

And my father was on the road a lot.

My father, you know, was a traveling preacher.

And if he was in Albany at 9 p.m., he still wanted to get home.

To Syracuse.

I remember when I was a little middle of the night hearing coming home, he had to get home and no interstate, no interstate.

No highway?

Wow But he loved to be home.

Signing is not a science as much as an art I know some people, it's like talking.

Some people talk easily.

Other people, not so good.

You obviously talk very well.

Yeah.

They would pay you to talk.

Me too.

They don't pay me to sign.

I'm too old fashioned for ASL.

I watched you yesterday at the press conference and thought what's he talking about?

Oh, I know.

If I listen to the governor, I could tell, but it goes too fast for me, ASL.

lt goes too fast for me.

I need you to stop and spell something.

You know, ASL doesn't do that.

But that's okay.

The reason why I'm there interpreting is to provide access to deaf people who don't get the same level of information from reading the captions they can read, but maybe don't have enough fluency in English.

Their second language to understand the complexities in something like that.

The captioning is fast and often leaves them confused or guessing.

The governor is using highly technical and medical vocabulary.

How can I say this?

Often the vocabulary itself, the intricacies, present barriers to understanding for many ASL users, So when I'm working at the governor's press conference, my goal is not to produce the English words or, as you mentioned, to spell all the English words, but to produce full meaning in ASL a spatial and visual language.

A governor's press conference is what we call a high register presentation, complete with some formalities and a particular speaking style.

My job is to take that English message and render it in ASL a completely different language so that the deaf audience understands an equivalent message of visual spatial message in ASL.

As we hike, Claire and David share stories.

It turns out Claire once knew, and used sign after graduating from college.

She taught as an adjunct professor.

I'm surprised.

I forgot how to use it.

That's the amazing thing.

I thought, you know, you think it's like speaking English.

How can you forget?

But but you can.

So I worked at a school for the deaf, NTID, National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Yeah, right.

Right, right, And when I was little, my father had a friend named Rod Brown who thought I didn't know any signs.

So he spelled everything, but he had short fat fingers.

So he amused me.

And I learned to watch, watch him.

And when he stopped, I'd look at his face because he always ended with the question.

And I'd go, yeah.

And if he went on, I'd say, oh, no, no, I didn't know what he was talking about.

In times past, many deaf people did finger spell everything.

That's called the Rochester Method, where everything was spelled.

I know some older deaf folks who do a lot of spelling in their signing but that's dying out now.

I'm very glad that you're here and that you have a job doing it.

You know, it's.

It's great.

Before we end our hike at My Walden.

I ask David if there's anything more he'd like to say.

Anything you want to tell people?

Stop watching TV and get outside.

Not just yet, though.

Wait till we're done.

Well, we've come once again, to that time we have to say goodbye.

So we will.

But first, I have to thank Dan and Claire.

Thank you.

I mean, Claire and Dan for making sure we didn't get lost in the bushes.

And we haven't yet.

Thank you very much.

And I have to thank David.

My, my new friend.

And I hope an old friend to come.

And see you again, I hope.

Thank you for everything.

It's his pleasure, he says.

Great.

Thank you for watching us.

I hope to see you again on Windows to the wild.

Support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice J.

Rain Charitable Trust, the Fuller Foundation the Gilbert Verney Foundation, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the McIninch Foundation.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

Beautiful.