-Hi, I'm Lindsay Paris here in the New Hampshire PBS studios to bring you this special preview from the upcoming season of Windows to the Wild with Willem Lange.

This year, each episode will consist of more than just one adventure, which means more stories for you.

We're very excited about this new format, and to give you a sneak peek.

Stay tuned in between the stories, because we'll be coming back to the studio to chat with Willem and producer Phil Vaughn.

We also have an exclusive opportunity for you to get tickets to our annual Trail Mixer event at Castle in the Clouds on October 5th, where you can meet Willem and the team in person.

Here's how you can get your tickets now.

Join New Hampshire PBS for a very special Windows to the Wild with Willem Lange trail mixer event at the historic Castle in the Clouds this October.

-Donate $90 and receive one ticket to meet Willem and the team an NHPBS membership and access to PBS Passport Stream your favorite NHPBS programs, and thanks.

♪♪ -Kiki and I are in Belfast, Maine.

♪♪ A coastal city of about 7000 people.

We're here to meet one of its residents, Nicole Littrell.

-I mean, I row year round, so it doesn't stop me before-- -Before most people are out of bed in the morning, ♪♪ Nicole is busy on the waterfront.

♪♪ We're heading out to Belfast Bay.

♪♪ -Oh, good girl!

-How long you been here?

-I've been in Belfast since the spring of 2000.

-Oh, wow, you're going to have a celebration next year, 25 years.

-I guess I should.

Maybe I should have done it this year because I've been in Maine for 25 years.

-Nicole is from upstate New York.

She's the granddaughter of a dairy farmer, far removed from any body of water large enough to float even the smallest craft.

-So Willem do you wanna row?

-I can do that, I spe-- -Alright, why don’t you get your oar set up?

-Okeydoke.

♪♪ She now rows a dory.

[water ripples] More on the boat in a bit.

Nicole might have lost her rowing club.

Now, how did you get into this business?

-Well, it was a total, pandemic thing.

So, it was completely unplanned for.

-Yeah?

-Yeah so I was a recreational and competitive rower here in Belfast, rowing with an organization called Come Boating!

♪♪ And where I put my hands Willem are way down.

-Yeah.

-And then you just hover them, you know, one over the other, it doesn't matter which one.

-Okay.

-So you can row any time you want.

♪♪ And, I started rowing with them in 2012 and rowed with them basically until the pandemic.

And then the pandemic hit, and that just changed everything the whole world shut down, basically including their programs.

So I thought I was going to lose my mind not rowing.

♪♪ -Nicole might have lost her rowing club, ♪♪ but all she needed was a boat.

-And, you know, of course we were in a time of confinement as well, you know, and, so, a question emerged in my mind, well, what if you got your own boat?

So, that's what I did this boat came to me, this beautiful, Swampscott dory and it was love at first sight and I used my stimulus check to pay for her.

[Willem chuckles] [water ripples] -Her name, is Sorcière.

[water ripples] -So when I was a little girl, I was definitely drawn to all things magical and mythical.

Mythological.

And I remember reading books about witches and pretending I was a witch and it just was fun.

And the way that this boat came to me, and the magic that I feel when I'm out there, her name just had to be Sorcière, which means witch.

♪♪ [water ripples] -With the help of a professional boat builder, Nicole's 19.5 ft Swampscott dory was built by a group of middle school students.

♪♪ -The dory is a heritage, you know, is a heritage Maine boat.

It's a classic Maine boat like the Peapod, double enders.

-Well, Swampscott, Mass might choose to argue it.

-Yeah, but they’ve found their way up here.

[Willem laughs] They found their way up here, didn't they?

-Yeah, they did.

-And you know, Maine used to be part of Massachusetts, -Yeah?

-So, dories were as ubiquitous on the Maine coast and certainly down in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Connecticut, all of New England as ubiquitous as a station wagon from Kittery to Lubec ♪♪ -With a boat of her own, Nicole was back on the water.

♪♪ -Friends of mine started coming out of the woodwork in fall and you know they were going crazy not rowing too and so I started rowing with them, and I had 6 or 7 people that I was rowing with I was rowing six times a week, ♪♪ and we rowed, you know, into the fall and, people were like, well, when are you going to take your boat out of the water?

And I just said, well, let's go to the end of the month and see for, before you know it was the end of the year and we just kept rowing through the winter, rowing into the spring and the whole wellness-- you know, aspect was really palatable and it just felt good to be out there and the companionship and I really enjoyed, guiding people how to, you know, row this boat.

And then another question emerged, well, what if you started a business doing this?

♪♪ -Nicole became a licensed Maine guide, and created Dory Woman Rowing.

♪♪ -And I did that and did all the things that I needed to do and I launched my business in August of 2021, and I've been rowing ever since, bringing people out for lessons and tours, ♪♪ I have never seen the Eagles like this ♪♪ So close.

-Nicole has a deep passion for rowing, and the places where it takes her.

-Right behind you!

[gasping] -My gosh, I love you!

-So cute!

-I love you, hi friend!

♪♪ [indistinct chatter] ♪♪ -It's a bit contagious and that's the point.

She wants other people to feel as she does.

-Happy winter.

[laughing] You're doing great.

-I really am very passionate about what I do and about getting people out in the water.

-That's all right, It's really-- -And it can be as simple as just a few hours out on the water but some people row with me, that are, wanting to have their own boat, their own dory.

I'm working with a couple of women in Milbridge, up the coast a bit, that come down once a month row with me they're in their 70s, and they want to get their own Dory.

-Tell them it's time.

-Oh, they're going to do it.

[laughing] They're going to do it.

So yeah I, you know, it's an opportunity to, like I said, get out in the water for just a couple of hours and have a great time or build some skills, build some confidence.

It's very empowering.

You know I get both men and women in my boat, but I do get a lot of women who used to row as girls, rowed out at camp.

You know, I get breast cancer survivors in my boat.

I also had an almost 90 year old man, not you, that came out in my boat a month ago and it meant the world to him to be out here because people said, you can't do that, you can't row.

-Did he survive?

-He did, [Willem chuckles] and he left a good tip.

He said he sent me a note after and he said, you know, he said, I didn't think I could row and he said, with you, I could.

♪♪ -Well, that that's your tip right there.

-That's right.

♪♪ Belfast, Maine is where Nicole lives.

♪♪ -I row year round, so it's a really unique opportunity to experience all four seasons out on the water, and right now we're in the fall, and to see the foliage reflected in the water is, is like, you know, it's like a painting.

It's just like a painting.

♪♪ In the winter, to be able to row in the snow, To be able to row up on to the ice and to hear that sound of the, the flat bottom of the boat sliding up on the ice is pretty special.

[water ripples] [ice breaks] [water ripples] [chuckling] [water ripples] It is often a jaw dropping experience to be out there, and my overarching mission with Dory Women Rowing is really to get people to care about place, ♪♪ and to know that they belong in that place, that they're part of that place, and that they can also bring that caring back to where they come from, and perhaps even turn that into some form of stewardship.

♪♪ -This is a very low impact way of experiencing the natural world, the story, very low impact, ♪♪ or you can even say it's slow tourism, right?

Because there's nothing slower than rowing a dory.

[both chuckle] In a big body of water, rowing a little boat in a big body of water but it's a, it's a particular feeling that I know that you know, and that you appreciate and enjoy as a rower yourself.

♪♪ -Nicole is right.

I have rowed most of my life.

The feeling and sounds of gliding a hull across the water never leaves you.

♪♪ -To be able to ply a boat with your body alone and your wits through the water is pretty, pretty amazing, pretty satisfying feeling.

-Yeah, ♪♪ and you’ve answered one major question of mine, how can I see where I'm going?

-I love that.

-Everybody asks me about that.

They're just as interested in that as, as the boat and so people will say, oh, I see you got a rearview mirror, and I say, no, no, no, no, [Willem chuckles] it's a front view mirror because we're, we're as rowers, we're facing the back of the boat we're looking where we came from and the mirror shows where we're going.

-Yeah.

-So it's front, front view.

♪♪ -The day ends where it began, back in Belfast, Maine.

It's been fun and my back is glad it's over.

[water ripples] The question is, is he ever going to leave the boat?

[Nicole chuckles] -Not without help, that's for sure.

-Are you really okay, Willem?

Because I can come back and help you.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Such a beautiful part of Maine in Belfast, but I bet it gets pretty chilly out on the water in the winter.

♪♪ Hi, I'm Lindsay Paris here in the New Hampshire PBS studios, along with Willem Lange and Windows to the Wild executive producer Phil Vaughn.

Welcome.

-Thank you.

[chuckling] -Nicole and her dory was so inspiring Phil, the story was incredible, how did you come across it?

-Well, we've been reading about Nicole's, story back at the beginning of Covid, she had lost her job at the university, and she took that situation and turned it into an opportunity to get out and row, and eventually start her own business.

-That was really cool, very cool, yeah, and, Willem, I happened to notice in part of the story that you were lying back in the dory.

Were you taking a nap or were you just enjoying the sun?

-My back was killing me!

[laughing] I forgot to take my Crazy Creek lounger, so I had to get off that seat and lie down.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And once I got there, I couldn't get back up so I had to wait till I got to shore -Well-- -Two people picked me up to and took me out.

-Looked like a good spot to be in, so-- -It wasn't bad.

-We'll be chatting more with Willem and Phil in just a moment.

But first, here's how you can attend a very special event with Willem and the team at Castle in the Clouds in October.

-Join New Hampshire PBS for a very special Windows to the Wild with Willem Lange trail mixer event at the historic Castle in the Clouds this October.

Donate $90 and receive one ticket to meet Willem and the team, an NHPBS membership and access to PBS passport.

Stream your favorite NHPBS programs and thanks.

-Remember, tickets to our exclusive annual Trail Mixer event are limited and sure to sell out, so get your tickets now!

Now more than ever, your support is crucial to keeping Willem and the team on the trail and New Hampshire PBS going strong.

Willem, I heard you had a great time at last year's Castle in the clouds trail mixer.

What were some of the things that you liked best about the event?

Seeing old friends, you know, people from way back then, PBS and people who go on summer tours with us.

They were all there and seeing the clips from the coming season, you know, I hadn't seen them before.

That was fun.

Yeah.

Even though we had to, you know, we were up front.

We had to crane our necks to see them.

It was great.

So we had a good time.

Yeah, yeah.

Did Kiki have a good time as well?

She always has a good time.

Everywhere where Willem is Kiki has a good time.

She's happy.

Phil, what can you tell us about this new Windows to the Wild format for the new season?

What can we look forward to?

Well, we changed it after 19 years.

It used to be that we had one story, 30 minutes long, and we decided to go to a multiple story format, shorter stories.

We put them online first, and then, we repackage them for a fall broadcast.

So people are getting more stories and they're getting them quicker and they're getting them on multiple platforms.

Yeah.

Really looking forward to that.

Such a great, great New Hampshire PBS program.

Now let's watch another story and we'll be back with some more behind the scenes with Willem and Phil.

To join us in October, Make that call now.

Thank you.

♪♪ We're at the Shaker Village in Canterbury, New Hampshire.

It's a National Historic Landmark.

This is where members of the religious group lived.

Beginning in 1792.

Its last resident died 200 years after it was founded.

It's been a museum ever since.

The shakers were a Protestant sect founded in England in 1747.

They were pacifists who practice celibacy and communal living.

They had a guy here who was good with quarry.

So a lot of these stones were built by him.

Marshall Hudson has a story to share about one man who lived on the property, but didn't spend much time with the other residents.

Let's go look at this.

Marshall is a land surveyor who sometimes stumbles upon forgotten stories while he works in the woods.

If something catches his eye that seems unusual or interesting, he researches it and writes about it for New Hampshire Magazine.

This is one of those stories.

To tell it, Marshall leads us into a forest about a mile from the village.

So there was a shaker named Peter Ayres.

He was born about 1760.

So he would have been about 15 when the American Revolutionary War broke out.

♪♪ He had served with George Washington during the Revolutionary War, and he was very young when the war started.

He was like 15, you know.

So he had been in his early 20s when it ended.

And certainly he saw some things and all those battles.

And when he got out, he went looking for quiet life.

And Shaker pacifism appealed to him.

And he joined the shakers.

But communal living didn't work for the young war veteran, so an exception was made.

Peter was given a spot in the woods where he lived on a small farm.

Boy, that's nice, you know, that's nice.

Yeah.

And they would come and get him once a week and bring him to church.

♪♪ And he worked out here the whole week all by himself, alone.

And one of the things he left behind are these piles of rocks.

The question is why he did this?

Certainly there was an agricultural element to it.

He was clearing the fields for crops and apple orchards and plowing and planting, and so the rocks had to be moved.

But he did more than just pick up rocks and dump them in a in an area.

He stacked them.

And besides the agricultural element, my suspicion is he had some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, and he needed to work out his demons.

And so stacking rocks is a very labor intensive thing.

And if you get into it and get into the groove, your mind is focused on the rocks and you're not thinking about the other things that bother you.

He does some mighty work.

Are we going to see others?

Yes.

There's about a dozen, all totaled, that I've found and aware of.

♪♪ This is a bigger, taller one.

It's got a bit of a turret look to it.

Kind of turns.

Kind of turns an angle.

It's still sloped on the back side, but it's still very vertical, straight up and kind of turns.

And it's kind of on this overlook.

♪♪ But he did more than just pile them.

If you look he's got base stones and he's got them kinked in, tightened up.

He worked awful hard out here all alone stacking rocks.

We'll come to sites where the rocks are so big and heavy.

I don't know how he was able to lift them up and over his head.

♪♪ This pile lined up square and straight with a slope this way.

And it levels out flat going this way.

It makes me wonder if he was anticipating perhaps some kind of barn or something, driving in on this level and the barn and going that way with maybe a drive under.

♪♪ It's a mystery.

♪♪ Peter Ayres, the teenager who fought alongside George Washington, lived in these woods and piled rocks into his 90s.

They brought him back to the village when he was an old man.

92, something like that.

And they would bring him to church.

And church in those days was like an all day thing.

And the preachers would talk and you'd sing and you'd dance and you'd shake and do that kind of thing.

And he would argue with the minister in church and say, I'm 92.

And I knew mother Ann personally when she started this religion.

And I went to her services and I interacted with her.

And what you're preaching now is not what she said and believed.

And he was so disruptive and argumentative that they ordered him bound and gagged.

And in the record, he's bound and gagged when he goes to church because he was a fighter right to the end.

♪♪ The end for Peter came one day in a grass field near the village.

In those days, when the hay was ready and you had to get the hay in for cows and horses.

Everybody participated, and they had Peter Airs at 96, 97 However old he was, he was the lead man swinging the side, going through the field.

And they said it was hard to keep up with him.

♪♪ Peter eventually ordered everyone to lay down their tools, find shade.

And take a break.

And then a little while later, the call was announced to resume to work, stand up and go back to work.

And he failed to answer the call.

Dead.

And if you think about it, is there a better way to go?

You're a fighter right to the end and you're leading the pace, and the other guys can't keep up with you.

And you sit down, enjoy a cup of Schwartzel, and then then you're gone.

♪♪ Shows like Windows to the Wild with Willem Lange are only possible because of viewers like you.

Now more than ever, your support is crucial to keeping Willem and team on the trail and New Hampshire PBS going strong.

We have a special opportunity coming up for you to support this station and receive tickets to an exclusive event with Willem and the team.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Paris, back in the New Hampshire PBS studios, along with Willem Lange and the Windows to the Wild executive producer Phil Vaughn.

And Kiki also star of Windows to the Wild has joined us.

Phil, the Shaker Village in Canterbury is so beautiful and so steeped in history.

Yes, it's a destination.

It's a place where you can go and learn not only about the Shaker history, but about great architecture.

And there's a lot of, sort of sidebar stories that, come from the village.

So, yeah, it's it's not only scenic, but a lot of interesting history.

It's a fascinating site.

Really.

Really.

We'll be chatting more with Willem and Phil in just a moment.

But first, here's how you can attend a very special event with Willem and the team at Castle in the Clouds in October.

Join New Hampshire PBS for a very special Windows to the Wild with Willem Lange trail mixer event at the historic Castle in the clouds this October.

Donate $90 and receive one ticket to meet Willem and the team.

An NHPBS membership and access to PBS passport.

Stream your favorite NH PBS programs and thanks!

Remember, tickets to our exclusive annual Trail Mixer event are limited and sure to sell out, so get your tickets now!

Willem, I loved the part of this story where Marshall talked about the gardening with trees in the village.

Do people still practice that?

They do in some places.

I don't know if the sugar Village does anymore but there was apparently a member there wanted to build sort of an arboretum by the front gate.

Yeah.

And it's really it's quiet.

But, you know, some of the oak trees are like that.

Oh yeah.

But he got red oak and white oak and, you know, all the local native trees.

It's it's very nice.

Other places are doing it now but not there.

Right.

They were kind of like the original.

They were original in lots of ways.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Phil, now that you have so many stories to choose from for the upcoming season of windows, you must have met so many more people.

A lot more people.

And actually, we are going to be filming, a story, this summer with people, we met at last year's castle in the clouds event.

It was open, Bow open spaces.

They attended the event and afterwards they were talking with us about some of the efforts they made as the citizens of Bow to save, large parcels of land that were slated for development.

So, it was a way to connect with our audience and get good story ideas.

That does sound like a perfect windows to the wild story.

How do you pick your stories?

I think first of all, you know, there has to be a strong human element to it, a personal story, that people are willing to share.

And, it has to do with the outdoors, the environment, which means different things to different people.

So, and we try to pick stories that people can sort of take something away from.

And apply to their own lives, in their own community.

So if you attend this mixer, you never know, you might show up on Windows to the Wild next year.

Sure.

Right.

Thank you, Willem and Phil, for taking the time to share your stories.

I can't wait for the new season.

You still have time to call or go online to donate and get your tickets for this year's trail mixer if you have donated, thank you!

We look forward to seeing you at Castle in the Clouds in October.

♪♪