We're going to take a trip today.

A 1500 mile journey around New England by canoe.

But it's more than just an adventure.

It's about indigenous history, ancient waterways and what they mean to the people who paddle the great circle.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

Freddy Wilkinson is a professional mountain guide from Madison, New Hampshire.

He shares his stories of his experiences in the outdoors through National Geographic and The New York Times.

Hey.

For the next several months however, Freddy is deserting the mountains for the water.

He's on a paddle around New England with a group of indigenous paddlers who are on a journey.

We caught up with them recently in Boston Harbor.

Freddy, it's a pleasure to see you.

What a surprise to have you sneaking up on me like this.

Hi, Will.

How are you?

Great.

You know, you're well rested now from your journeys.

I am.

We arrived here two days ago, so we had a nice rest day yesterday.

♪ The story begins in the early spring, more than 300 miles north from where we are at Boston Harbor.

You're from Maine?

Syracuse.

Syracuse, New York.

Born and raised on the Onondaga Indian reservation.

Freddy and some of the canoeists he'll paddle with gather in Old Town, Maine.

They’re on Indian Island.

The starting point of their journey.

On our return trip, we'll be coming right across this point so we’ll, I don't know if we'll actually cross our wake, so to speak.

It's really the start and finish of the whole journey.

♪ I thought maybe the next adventure would be like two weeks or something, but here we are for a 1500 mile journey, approximately three months.

We'll see.

Now, you are circling what you call not New England, but the North East, right?

Correct.

Because it encompasses.

Well, a big part of this journey is through New England, but it's also through New York.

We're going all the way to New York City and then we'll be going north up the Hudson River to Albany and then west out the Mohawk River.

Yeah.

To, to ultimately get to Lake Ontario.

And and then that'll from there, the path will lead us north down the Saint Lawrence Seaway, passing the Thousand Islands area and Montreal and Quebec City.

And then from Quebec City, that'll be the farthest north point of our journey, we're told we'll turn around and come back south to to return to Old Town, Maine.

You know, if you went back in time 2,000 years ago, I believe this would have sort of been the beltway highway of the region.

Not many individual people would have paddled this entire circle in their lives, but communities all along it were connected in deep and sustained ways.

And, you know, that traditional knowledge of, you know, how to go, you know, what's the best route to travel in a canoe you know, you can still still find that.

And, you know, that's what this journey is all about.

Hey, I'm going to see you in, like, ten days.

It's I don't know, it's maybe 9, 9:30.

We're here at the north end of Indian Island, Penobscot Territory and just getting ready to set off on our big journey.

We were up last night way too late working on the canoes.

There was some some final adjustments that needed to be made.

The outskirts of Bangor, Maine.

Canoe culture lives.

Stopping at Shawn Tenney.

Maine crafted paddles since 1858.

Let's see if we can borrow a paddle from these guys for our journey.

And so, you know, we we didn't tuck it in till past midnight.

I'll leave it at that.

My buddy Neil working over here.

We met two years ago on a joint National Geographic canoe journey paddle.

Neil is from Syracuse, New York area.

And, yeah, I’m really dialed up.

Look how he picks up his.

Look how he organizes his stuff.

Beautiful.

The journey, which will take all summer to complete, has taken even longer to plan.

The logistics are daunting.

They'll meet members from tribes throughout the northeast as they move along the historic waterways.

Canoes will be swapped out as they move from ocean to rivers to lakes.

Food and water will be gathered along the way.

Even the start location was carefully considered.

♪ Old town, Maine abuts Penobscot Territory and we began there because, several of my companions on this project are Penobscot.

And it's no accident that Old Town, Maine became known as a place where canoes are built and manufactured.

So you started that at the cradle of the canoing, as it were?

Absolutely.

And it's really, you know, the the Penobscot deserve the credit.

And as the indigenous people who invented the canoe and really perfected its use within, you know, along these waters that that we know now call New England.

Yep.

♪ The journey begins.

They'll retrace a canoe trail that once connected tribes throughout the northeast.

Freddy will write a book based on the journey.

♪ Watch out for the spikes.

♪ Three of the canoeists will film the journey.

James Francis is one of them.

♪ He's a filmmaker, educator, and Penobscot Nations tribal historian.

♪ My journey as a tribal historian really took, took a turn because it's like there's not a lot of written documentation by Penobscot people about our history.

And so I was looking for other avenues to figure out the history of my people and stumbled into indigenous geography.

Studying a place names and understanding how my ancestors interacted with place.

And so for me, retracing some of those old canoe routes and connecting river systems together on this modern journey was very intriguing to me.

It's kind of reestablishing that connection to the waterways and to the landscape and reinvigorating an older Penobscot sense of place.

Well, how did you get involved with this?

I mean, you're not part of the Old Town community.

No, I'm not indigenous.

I'm a I'm a white, journalist, adventurer dude and I spent the last 20 years of my life seeking out mountain adventure.

But I realized, although I I love the white mountains and our home hills, in in here in New England, the real adventure and then the form of wilderness travel that gives you the deepest connection to the history of this place isn't in the mountains, but on the water.

So.

That's right.

I figured I'd hang up the crampons and pick up the paddle for a few years.

♪ Freddy and James planned the trip.

Reconnecting to a canoe route used hundreds of years ago runs deep in Penobscot culture.

I grew up on a small little island in a river.

And when I went out to play my mom, my mother never told me, you know, stay in the yard or stay on the street.

She just always told us, don't go over town, which meant don't cross the bridge to go over into town.

Stay on the reservation.

And so this was our playground.

The whole island.

And the tribe had a bunch of canoes that they would rent out.

But people would sign them out, but not bring them back.

And so there was a whole bunch of them just laying on the shore in different places on the island with, life jackets and paddles.

And so we, as kids would use them.

We’d climb in them, we’d paddle around and put everything back where we found it when we were done and no one seemed to have a problem.

But it's, really in my formative years, put me in a canoe with the paddle and, you know, my Uncle Neil was a national championship paddler, and he taught me whitewater.

And so, yeah, it's just such a part of who we are.

We're river people, Penobscots and we, you know, it's part of our culture.

(SINGING) How did you establish the relationship?

Well, one of the most, you know, surprising to me and just pleasant discoveries is that, you know, despite a pretty ugly history, you know, every Native American community has avid outdoors people who are incredibly skilled guides and people you can learn from.

Yeah, And as you know, outdoor people of all background, once you get out in the woods or on the water, you got a lot in common.

So, you know, I, I reached out to a bunch of native paddlers, historians, activists, folks of all stripes and, you know, I didn't ask, say, hey, I'm a journalist.

I want to interview you.

I said, hey, I'm an outdoorsy guy.

I want to go for a paddle with you.

Yeah.

And it speaks to the generosity of these communities that they said, hey, somebody wants to go for a paddle.

Hell, yeah I'm going to guide him and take him out.

Yeah, I'll give him a paddle and I'm going to teach him a few things, too while we're at it.

Oh, yeah.

(WATER RUSHING) Now, the canoe is kind of the focus of all this activity, right?

Without the canoe, nobody's going anywhere.

It's it's a metaphoric connection.

It's in literal connection.

It's a logistical connection.

It's it's our, you know, it's our life and death, you know, form of transportation most days.

♪ The canoeists make their way along Maine's waterways.

♪ Sometimes on foot.

♪ Other times with the help of wheels.

♪ Eventually, they plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.

♪ They're on their way to a campsite near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

♪ How did you find the Old Town canoes on the ocean?

They handled okay.

We.

It was it took some practice and it took some trial and error.

We ultimately ended up modifying them with 12 ft outriggers.

Yeah.

That, turned the canoes into, sort of a multi hold, pontoon, vessel and makes them quite stable.

So we paddled through 4.5 ft swell and and 2.5 ft chop probably to get here.

♪ The campsite for the next couple days is on Pest Island, just off shore from Portsmouth.

It's been more than two weeks since they left Old Town, Maine and they need to recharge.

♪ I'm losing track of the days.

If.

Yeah, 15 days.

And this could be day 15.

It could be Tuesday.

I wouldn't bet on it, but it pretty sure it is.

How's it been?

It's been awesome.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind.

It's been, like, I am losing track of days.

We're going to, like, not quite dusk, but we’ve found our push, like, in the afternoons has been nice.

We'll we'll grab a nice snack at, like, 3:30ish.

Really fuel up and and push, you know, until 7:30 aometimes.

Ryan Kelley grew up in the Acadia National Park area of Maine.

He now lives in Bangor.

He's a member of the Penobscot tribe and loves being outdoors.

My outdoor connection this is very familiar.

This is this landscape is where I grew up.

Like seaweed, rocky beaches, scrambling up rocks like this as a kid.

I mean, this is very, very simil and MDI, I this is real familiar.

The smells, the, the lobsters is what I, I grew up on.

A lot of seafood.

So I'm looking forward to digging into that tonight.

(FIRE CRACKLING) I got involved because we did a trip with Freddy a couple of years ago on the Allagash and on the Saint John or the Wolastoq and then during that trip, we, you know, we got to meet each other and he knew I was down for an adventure and then he kind of started the wheels turning and this came to be through Freddy's ideas.

He asked me over the winter and of course, I yeah, I said yes.

This would be awesome.

It's a great opportunity to get outside for all summer long and see some places that I wouldn't normally see.

♪ I realized that this trip really tapped into indigenous peoples’ desire to reconnect with old and traditional ways that you know, we're pretty strong in our canoe culture here today.

But, I I think other tribes are in different places on that spectrum and getting that reinvigorated, especially through this trip, has been such a positive thing that has happened that, you know, these tribes are going to look at this as a springboard back into some sort of revitalization that they could carry on for years to come.

Besides the adventure, what does this trip mean to you historically, culturally, or is there something or something there for you?

There definitely is.

The part that I got excited about the most when Freddy asked was like, the, the re-walking of the portage trails, some old dormant trails and going into some spots that maybe haven't been visited in a long time.

So we're kind of, you know, saying hello to those spots that have been quiet for a while and, and, so far it's been really fun.

Those spots have been just real, real nice to be in and paddle through and, yeah, it means it means reawakening some historical spots.

All clear?

Yep.

I'm looking to receive whatever this has to offer.

I don't really need to, like, take anything, but if things are offered it's been really good that way.

Like, the trip itself has offered a lot.

The land itself has offered a lot.

The beavers have already offered some.

The beavers offer to trade whether I wanted to or not.

So I took it.

It was a good deal.

Was it?

Are you the one who had his pole taken?

I had that copper tip pole and they stole it in the middle of the night.

♪ The story was we we did a little off the grid camping in a spot on the Souadabscook.

We were paddling up the river into, like, deep beaver country.

There were probably, I lost count after 12 lodges.

We finally picked the spot for the night.

I had the poles in the boats.

Damon's poll was untouched.

He didn't have that copper end on it.

Mine did.

So, yeah, the beaver stole mine, which had the copper end on it.

And, yeah, he took it.

I guess that's what we get for I mean, that's our rental fee for camping, where we didn't ask to.

We just did.

You got something in return?

But the next day, we went searching for it, hoping to see a beaver lodge with a brand new canoe pole sticking out of it, but we did find a perfect replacement, which is about the same length.

I didn't have to cut anything off the end, and all I really did was shave the width of the bottom down, and it's a perfect replacement.

So it's a good trade There it is.

The sort the beaver did and I.

That's where I started to clean it down to a decent size, shave it some weight.

♪ The team moves on from coastal New Hampshire to Boston Harbor.

They come ashore at Thompson Island, a place I'm quite familiar with.

I once worked here with Outward Bound.

♪ Looks about the same.

It’s grown up a little bit, but lovely place.

And you got a few days of rest now?

Yes.

Your other crew is coming to your rescue as it were?

Yeah.

This is sort of a resupply stop for us.

We just paddled about 340 miles to get here from Old Town, Maine and we're going to be swapping out our watercraft from outrigger canoes to larger 31 ft war canoe for the next stage of this journey.

♪ Neil Benedict is a filmmaker.

He's documenting the trip.

Many of the images you see in this story are his.

♪ I am Oneida.

Born and raised on Onondaga.

Neil is new to canoeing.

He's been at it for three years.

When Freddy approached him to consider paddling the Great Circle, he thought, why not?

♪ I knew I would regret saying no to doing the whole thing.

I would have eventually regretted say no as opposed to saying yes and giving my best, you know?

So I was like, do it.

Any real challenges for you so far?

Well, yeah, yeah, there are a few challenges because I'm kind of new to this stuff too.

I had never done any anything above class one rapids with a canoe.

Ocean paddling.

Totally new to me.

Everything's basically, you know, learning as we go.

♪ Today he's getting some help.

Right across the bay from the campsite.

James arrives from Maine.

He brings with him a Penobscot 31 footer, which the team will paddle together.

This is a very special boat.

It has a a special history to it, but it was made in Old Town, Maine by a gentleman named Mike Mayberry in consultation with a member of the Penobscot tribe named Neil Phillips and it's just one part of you know, there's so much legacy and intergenerational sharing of of knowledge that happens out on the waters.

And, and this canoe is, is just one example of that.

I think the big change is when we delivered the warrior canoe, the 31 footer and and Boston Harbor.

That really became a really important journey for especially the Shinnecock who, whose waters they were going to go down through on on long Island.

(SINGING) That's where we'll continue the story on the next Windows to the Wild.

You'll travel with the paddlers as they attempt to complete their journey.

You'll meet some of the people who joined the team along the way and experienced their discoveries and their challenges as they navigate the Great Circle.

I'm Willem Lange.

Join us again on the next Windows to the Wild.

♪ Support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Fuller Foundation, Road Scholar and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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Thank you.

♪