ANNOUNCER: Major funding for Lifeblood Chesapeake River Stories is provided by: the MPT Chesapeake Circle... The Nature Conservancy, working with individuals, organizations and communities across the globe to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends... Watermark, showcasing the rich history, culture and beauty of Chesapeake Bay with public cruises and private charters departing from Baltimore and Annapolis... And by... NARRATOR: How do you describe the power of fresh, free-flowing water?

FRED TUTMAN: You know, there are lots of love songs that people write about rivers.

People are connected to rivers in all sorts of levels.

JACK HATCH: I don't know, I guess it's kind of a, a spiritual connection that I feel to it.

It's where my ancestors have always lived and ancestors long ago that fished these rivers.

NARRATOR: Rivers are the setting for countless stories.

Sacred places that give life and give life meaning.

[Roar of rushing waters] TARA BLAIR: I think for me, a lot of what I love about whitewater is the community aspect.

So all of the really deep friendships that you can make.

ANNIE RICHARDS: I can go down the river and look over at that shoreline and say, I've got a memory there.

BOY: So far, we've even seen some cownose rays.

NARRATOR: A vascular network of 100,000 rivers, creeks, and streams carries billions of gallons of water into Chesapeake Bay each day.

Waterways that shape and sustain the Bay's landscapes and communities.

They are its Lifeblood.

NARRATOR: The Chesapeake Bay's largest source of fresh water, the Susquehanna River, is one of the world's oldest.

Predating the modern bay by more than 300 million years.

It's older than the Appalachian Mountains, which are believed to have formed around it.

Evidence of the ancient waterways earliest days still remains.

If like geology enthusiast Andrew Eppig, you know where to look.

ANDREW EPPIG: We're looking for signs of an ancient fossilized beach.

NARRATOR: Known to his social media followers as Andrew Rockhound, he travels the East Coast for his Dirt Man Report.

ANDREW EPPIG: A few years ago, my Central PA Rock and Mineral Club uh named me Rockhound of the Year.

I took the name Andrew Rockhound and it kind of stuck.

NARRATOR: Today he's in south central Pennsylvania.

EPPIG: This is Chickies Rock, one of the oldest rocks along the river.

Oh, that actually looks really good today actually.

This rock is actually way older than the Susquehanna River.

These are 540-million-year-old ripple marks, just like you would see at a beach.

[Crickets chirp] NARRATOR: As the river formed, geologists believe it cut through the rock, exposing the ripples that even back then were ancient history.

A more recent display of the river's power can be found a few miles upriver.

Conewago Falls, known informally as the Conewago Potholes, formed a mere 8000 years ago.

ANDREW: The glaciers that existed north in the state were melting.

That came down the Susquehanna Basin and started cutting into these rocks, forming this smooth landscape.

Uh, during that time, rocks like this, like a little tiny rock would get caught in a vortex and start spinning around.

And it would cut into these rocks and leaving this smooth hole that we call it a pothole.

It's a very artistic, almost, you know, sculpted landscape.

And also when you have a nice rock like this and you have gravels built up on the back side, and sometimes even in the potholes themselves, that's where you, it collects gold.

So you can even come out here and try to find a little piece of gold for yourself.

[Gravel shifting] NARRATOR: You heard him, Susquehanna Gold.

ANDREW: I tell people here that have lived here for years and years, decades and their whole lives, and never knew that there was gold here.

[Gravel shifting] NARRATOR: Andrew also happens to be Vice President of the Keystone Treasure Hunters.

ANDREW: Mainly we are a gold club, you know.

We like to look for gold, find gold in streams and rivers and stuff like that.

But we also do a lot of metal detecting pretty much anything that's treasure, we like to find.

NARRATOR: The prospectors lease a stretch of stream not far from the river.

The exact location is kept under wraps, though they happily welcome newcomers to their monthly meetings.

ANDREW: All right, Troop 174, welcome to the Keystone Treasure Hunters.

We are going to show you how to gold pan and each are going to get to leave with a piece of gold today.

NARRATOR: Some Pennsylvania gold comes from Canada long ago carried south by glacial outflows.

But in these parts there's native gold.

ANDREW: Get it into a vial.

This is an area that has been known to prospectors for many years, for producing gold straight out of the rock.

NARRATOR: Formed by volcanic activity more than 400 million years ago.

This gold is typically found in small, fine flakes.

TOM ALLEN: It still gives me a little, little chill when I see it in the pan.

Uh and the more I see, the better.

[Laughs] Over 13 years I've got, right around an ounce and a half of gold.

[Hollow vacuuming sound] NARRATOR: In the name of efficiency many of the treasure hunters use small dredges.

In Pennsylvania, they're legal on private property only.

TOM: The material comes through the grizzly bars up here, screens out the larger materials.

All of the smaller materials go down into the sluice box, and eventually the heavier sands and the gold will trap in the riffles of these rubber mats that I have.

You go play a round of golf and you got nothing to show but a scorecard at the end of it.

I can come out here for an afternoon and probably spend about the same amount of money, but I end up with a little bit of gold and it's back to that kid thing, getting in- getting in the water and, and the mud puddles and playing.

ASHTON THRUSH: So I was going in the stream here and I found... Uh, I found two pieces of gold.

ANDREW: I have never actually seen, uh, two pieces of gold come out in a single pan.

That is really rare and very special.

NARRATOR: Special enough to ignite a lifelong passion?

It's been known to happen.

GOLD HUNTER: There's two there.

And there's one.

There's one, there's one.

I've been doing it since I was about 14.

I don't drink or gamble, but it's kind of like that.

Once you had your first taste of a win, you're hooked.

NARRATOR: The same glacial meltwater that carried gold down the Susquehanna helped sculpt a string of islands, landmasses that have evolved over centuries.

Floods, depositing sediment and carrying it away.

The Susquehanna River Islands are a mix of recent and ancient geology.

And for those in the know, they can be a respite from modern life.

AARON SHIFLET: Um my name is Aaron Shiflet.

I am an island steward for the SRTA, uh which is Susquehannah River Trail Association.

Part of our job is to maintain camping islands along the river trail.

Most of this is just our gear to survive for the weekend.

Uh it's various things tools, um, food, camping gear, that kind of thing.

Gotta have hot sauce.

Gotta have more hot sauce.

NARRATOR: Aaron and his friend Doug Roy are volunteer stewards in charge of an island on the edge of Harrisburg, the southernmost in a trail system of more than two dozen.

DOUG ROY: So we're on Island 73.

A and B are the campsites.

And what that means is they are 73 miles from the Chesapeake Bay.

The trail actually starts up in Sunbury, PA.

A lot of people have done the whole trail from start to finish.

Camping the whole way down.

AARON: These campsites are open to the public.

They are first come, first serve if you know where they are.

And you know how to find them.

Or if you just happen upon them.

NARRATOR: The only way to get there is to paddle.

But it's been a dry few months and the river is low.

DOUG: We had to wade to get out of the boats and wade because it's only a few inches deep.

The Susquehanna River is like that.

It's a very non-navigable river.

I relax by working and my friend Aaron is the same way.

So that's what we do, is we like to come here, that is our way of relaxing is working throughout the day.

NARRATOR: Joining Aaron and Doug on the job this weekend, their friend Jeff, Aaron's girlfriend Tricia and their dog Wendy.

AARON: So we got to clear out this space here.

So we have another room for a tent.

NARRATOR: Their primitive campsite is covered in invasive Japanese knotweed.

AARON: Yeah, and it's never ending.

When we first came here, you couldn't see any of the shape of this uh southern part of the island.

And we had to pretty much hack our way in.

It is a harrowing task, you know.

Almost dauntless, because you can't ever eradicate the invasive species.

You just have to control it.

So it's a it's a constant battle.

AARON: Yeah, she's ahead of us.

Wendy [whistles].

NARRATOR: Every trip includes a scouting expedition.

At about 300 yards long and 40 wide, Island 73 is one of the river trail's largest.

AARON: This is the result of that vinegar from the last time.

So part of our experimentation is using natural weed killing methods, you know, and the one we found to be so far the best is a high concentration of vinegar and salt and dish soap.

And this is the result.

This was green two weeks ago and now it's dead.

DOUG: Every time we come to the island, something has changed, every time.

And it's usually due to flooding conditions.

There are times that we've been here, we've done work, we've cleared out certain areas.

We come in again and there's a tree that's been uprooted from somewhere upriver and is now parked next to the island.

AARON: Or on it.

DOUG: Or on it and we have to choose whether it's something that we want to tackle and take care of, or if we want to let it go.

AARON: But it's almost always a surprise.

NARRATOR: The work itself is a reward, but flipping through the island's logbook makes the satisfaction even sweeter.

DOUG: A woman was here and she was diagnosed with something and was really, you know, going through a lot because of that and decided to go out on the canoe and just explore around and saw the island and came over and decided to stay here for a while while she was working some things out.

And it just really felt good, and Aaron and I were like, really taken aback by that.

We said, yeah, that's that's why we're doing this.

[Chopping] Favorite time of day...for me is probably is the end of the day.

I like to reflect on how much I got done during the day.

AARON: Oh!

That's beautiful.

DOUG: Making a great campfire, making a great dinner on the campfire.

AARON: So if anybody really wants, uh, any more spice kick on that chili.

There's some habanero sauce here.

Maybe I should taste it.

AARON: Taste it first.

Yeah, taste it first.

DOUG: It's a really great way to end the day.

AARON: This is a peaceful place, I feel like- DOUG: It's tomorrow's problem.

AARON: I can relax and not have to worry.

I feel protected by the river.

I do sometimes think about... Where this water came from.

Because it's moving.

You know, we're not on a lake.

This water had to come from somewhere.

It had to hear a story, you know, and it had to witness what it witnessed.

And it brings that kind of spirit and energy with it, to this spot.

DOUG: This is an amazing place because you can have all that kind of adventure and you're still right next to society, but you kind of leave all that behind.

And that really means a lot to me.

NARRATOR: Society is never far from Maryland's longest river, the 110 mile Patuxent, which cuts through the highly populated corridor between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

In southern Maryland the river widens, an ideal spot to develop a lifelong love of nature.

FRED TUTMAN: All right, who's already a pro, who's already fished, who's already done... You've done a little of this, huh?

Anybody else?

I'm Fred Tutman.

I've been the Riverkeeper on the Patuxent River since 2004.

So I'm the first Riverkeeper, hopefully not the last, on the Patuxent River.

So Riverkeeper is an advocate for a particular body of water.

There are about 350 of us worldwide.

NARRATOR: Today that advocacy looks like this.

TUTMAN: It even looks like the water is clearing a little bit.

Yesterday it was a little bit brown and muddy.

All right, drop your hooks.

So today we're in camp and this is a mentoring camp.

And the kids are being mentored on how to fish.

And there's a lot that goes into how to fish right?

It's- there's fishing ethics.

You know, how you treat these fish humanely.

There's zen, in terms of how you catch a fish, when there's no fish around and you want to summon one up.

There you go.

NARRATOR: This is the fourth summer Fred has brought a dozen kids and a rotating stable of volunteers to the modest Riverkeeper headquarters in southern Prince George's County.

TUTMAN: We give young people the opportunity to work with uh, veteran outdoorsy people paddlers, anglers, survivalists, you know, people who have in their, let's say, in their DNA, the ability to connect with nature and to help our kids do that too.

NARRATOR: A week of camp costs $150, a fee that can be waived if the expense is a burden.

TUTMAN: It's pretty cheap to come to this camp, actually.

It's very accessible and attainable for pretty much anyone and everyone, and that's really what we want.

We also want the camp to be accessible to folks who have never had the summer camp experience, or who ordinarily wouldn't have a summer camp experience.

BRYANT SIMMS: My name is Bryant Simms, and I've been at the Patuxent Riverkeeper Camp for three years, and this is my second year as an intern.

At first, I didn't want to come because I wasn't, I didn't feel like being outside.

By the end of the week, I was loving the camp and wanted to come back again.

COUNSELOR: I'm going to turn my whole torso because your torso is a lot bigger than your arms.

SIMMS: One thing I want to do now is take my own kayak or canoe and canoe up the river and go camping.

So without that, without this camp, I would not have found that out because I probably would have been scared.

TUTMAN: Well, it's entirely possible that this camp might help generate the next Riverkeeper.

It's certainly my hope that we'll build in an indirect way activists, because I think people defend what they love, what they are attached to, what they're connected to.

I'm one of those guys that doesn't believe the government all by itself is going to clean up these rivers.

I don't believe the corporate money all by itself is going to clean up these rivers.

It really takes citizen engagement.

I think it takes citizen outrage.

NARRATOR: On this hot day, there's not quite outrage but rather disappointment.

GIRL: When are we gonna go swimming?

COUNSELOR 2: Swim?

Um.

I'm not positive.

BOY 2: Well, we can't swim in this.

COUNSELOR: Yeah.

No.

TUTMAN: Sadly, this is a very polluted river.

In years, when the water quality was a little better, We've let kids kind of thrash around and, you know, bathe in the water and jump in the water.

But these days we try to keep them away from it.

[Motor humming] NARRATOR: It was on the family farm near Upper Marlboro that Fred developed his own passion for the water.

He still lives there today with his dog River.

TUTMAN: So we're going down to one of the creeks that runs through the family property that drains to the Patuxent, and we'll find a... As you can see, River already figured out how to get down to the water part.

Oh, when I was a really little kid, I used to play with my G.I.

Joe, who had a diving helmet diving bell, but um I had little experiments I would play with when I went into my science phase as a kid, and I would um bring little sampling equipment down and test the water.

We'd look for fossils.

The river was hard to get to, to be honest.

It was segregated in the early 60s.

It was very hard to get close to that river unless you were an owner.

NARRATOR: And so this creek was Fred's oasis.

TUTMAN: I think I became very confident in my domain as a boy.

To me, that was like a Huck Finn type of upbringing.

I came into contact with wildlife on various terms, got to know these resources, got to swim in them, got to touch them.

And I'm trying to pass some of that ethos, some of that ideology onto these kids.

NARRATOR: And the kids are soaking it up.

KIOJAH BEY: I love water.

You know, it's like my favorite thing.

I feel like you see more than you do on land and you get to go other places, too.

You don't have to worry about, oh, well I don't have a driver's license, I can't get here.

Well, get a kayak and go on water.

TUTMAN: This work lives on.

I'm pretty sure of it.

I think we planted some seeds here that I hope will continue.

I'm pretty sure they will.

NARRATOR: As the Patuxent approaches the Bay its shorelines are ruled by the rhythmic rise and fall of the water.

Each new tide carries fresh potential for driftwood sculptors Larry Ringgold and Bernie Houston.

LARRY RINGGOLD: In a bare spot there, there's usually some good driftwood in that area, depending on how high the tide is.

NARRATOR: Both artists are searching for a medium with an inherent organic beauty worn by waves, wind, and sand.

But each has his own distinct style and accompanying wish list.

Bernie carves and paints his work from a single log.

Larry assembles his sculptures from many pieces of wood.

BERNIE HOUSTON: Larry he's building.

He's adding pieces.

I'm taking one solid structure and I'm subtracting.

I guess it's like a battery of the negative and you the positive.

The first thing that strikes me is the character of the wood.

Then the second thing I look for is the density of the wood.

Very intriguing, I like that.

LARRY RINGGOLD: I'm looking for parts, curves, especially unusual curves, compound curves and things like that that I can incorporate.

I love pine nuts and these are pine knots.

They're very, very strong.

They have a lot of character.

But when you get back to my shop, I mean these a lot of times we'll be a body of a bird like that could be like a rooster right there.

Once it's shaped down, this could be his comb.

BERNIE: What's that?

LARRY: Got some very interesting stuff right here.

A lot of nice cedar right in here.

NARRATOR: Larry's on the hunt for a mane for his current project.

A six foot tall horse.

LARRY: And here's my mane.

BERNIE: What do you have?

[Water sloshing] [Buzzing of chainsaw] LARRY: There we go.

BERNIE: Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

That's intriguing.

LARRY: Yeah, it definitely worked for me.

We probably have more fun, enjoying finding our media than any other artists.

You never know what you're going to find.

It's always like a treasure hunt.

Is that a Bernie piece?

BERNIE: It's a Bernie piece.

LARRY: Yeah.

BERNIE: Yeah.

LARRY: It's kind of weird how that works out.

BERNIE: So two for one.

Here we go.

We're looking at the body of a fish, and that's the first thing that came to my mind.

The extremities.

You know, we have a fin.

Fin.

Fin.

LARRY: He'll always come back with, Hey, I got these Larry pieces, and I'll come back with I got the Bernie pieces because I know where he's going with the wood.

And he knows where I'm going with it.

So we really understand each other's art.

NARRATOR: An understanding that began a few years back when they were drawn to each other's work at a local art show.

BERNIE: I looked at his work and I was like, oh my God, look at this and uh ditto for me.

LARRY: Yeah, I was looking at his work going, oh my God.

[Laughs] BERNIE: I forgot how we connected, but we did, and we were friends ever since then.

NARRATOR: At times there are conflicts.

BERNIE: Let me see that piece for a second Larry.

The one in your hand?

Right hand.

LARRY: You mean this one I just found?

BERNIE: No.

NARRATOR: If they're interested in the same piece, which isn't often, their deep mutual appreciation for each other's work supersedes any single log.

LARRY: I just gave him a piece the other day that a friend had given me, and there was a beautiful heron right there.

You know, if I used it, I'd be chopping it up and using it for parts.

But I knew exactly what Bernie would do with it, so he got it.

NARRATOR: At high tide.

They call it quits.

There's a lot of work to do.

There's a big art show coming up and they'll need plenty of inventory on hand.

LARRY: Let's divvy up.

NARRATOR: Back at Larry's studio in Chesapeake Beach.

They divide the day's finds.

LARRY: All right, Bernie, I'm going to be generous.

Here you go.

BERNIE: Are you sure about this?

LARRY: No, but take it.

[Laughs] Take it before I change my mind.

NARRATOR: Bernie takes his haul back to his studio in Laurel.

His first project is to transform a knotty cedar root into a dragon.

BERNIE: It's my dragon, guys.

NARRATOR: And Larry gets to work on his horse.

LARRY: Well, this was one of our first stops, and it's a beautiful piece of figured, really, cedar.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it over to the bandsaw and cut a couple pieces off and see if I can get them to fit.

I've got pieces in this horse that it probably took me 20 trips back and forth to that saw, and another in the grinder before I could actually get them to fit to where, where I wanted them.

NARRATOR: Larry's been working on this horse for about a month.

Not including the time it took to find the wood.

But it's taken years of practice to develop his breathtakingly realistic style.

LARRY: I really strive to get the anatomy as close to real, but I also want to highlight the wood.

[Buzzing] We're just about there.

I got lucky on the ears.

He's got some great ears.

NARRATOR: As Larry perfects his horse.

Bernie's finished his dragon.

BERNIE: What I discovered is a focal point in every piece that I find.

I noticed that face in this area here.

And then that kind of pans off to be a tail.

The art is the driftwood.

I just see that image that's hidden inside the driftwood and bring the dead back to life.

[Buzzing] NARRATOR: Today, Bernie plans another rebirth, one that illustrates a literal birth.

BERNIE: This is my vision for this piece.

This would be the shell area.

The flippers.

[Buzzing] BERNIE: You can see it's coming to life.

You can see it's shaping up.

Every piece that I touch is, is uniquely different.

NARRATOR: With just two weeks before the art show.

Bernie's studio is filled with work that showcases his range.

But today with this piece, he's giving the people what they want.

BERNIE: They want a turtle swimming on a reef.

They want a turtle coming out of the shell.

Turtles, turtles, turtles.

[Loud hum] And there you have it.

NARRATOR: Not far from the mouth of the Patuxent River, near Solomons Island is the Annmarie Sculpture Garden, home to the annual Fall Arts Fest.

LARRY: Among other things.

I bought my horse, Nautilus, that I just finished.

NARRATOR: It's here artists wait for a payoff.

Admirers that become buyers.

Larry and Bernie have plenty of each.

BERNIE: Congratulations.

BUYER: Thank you so much.

BERNIE: No thank you.

Enjoy.

NARRATOR: But sales or no sales, they always leave with their friendship, forged by the water, as unique and everlasting as a piece of cedar found tumbling in the tide.

NARRATOR: Driftwood or anything upstream of the Potomac River's spectacular Great Falls is in for more than a tumble.

Bordered by Virginia to the west and Maryland to the east and surrounded by National Park land, these are the steepest fall line rapids of any eastern river.

A 76-foot drop over less than a mile.

To most, it's an intimidating series of cascading waterfalls, but to expert whitewater kayakers like Tara Blair, Great Falls is a challenge to be descended as fast as humanly possible.

TARA BLAIR: So we have a bunch of different lines here.

There are some rocks in the middle of the river that are separating the different lines that kayakers commonly run, and there's a ton of different channels that you can run even within there.

So it's kind of just like a big playground for whitewater paddlers.

NARRATOR: Tomorrow, that playground will welcome some of the sport's top athletes for the Great Falls Foundation's annual race.

As board members and competitors, Tara and friends Geoff Calhoun and Noah Wisdom are here to check out conditions and get in a few runs.

TARA: If you're looking downstream, the river right side is where we'll race.

There's kind of a big rock we call The Flake, which is what we hike back up to do laps that's on the left side of that channel, and then we'll be going down the channel.

So we'll have the racers start on the river right side along a rock, paddle down the three rapids.

We have U-Haul rapid, S-turn rapid, and then The Spout is the final waterfall at the end.

And then we'll have a finish line that's a line of sight from The Flake rock to the river right side and the racers will paddle as fast as they can across that to the finish.

NARRATOR: The race is a measure of skill on the water, but The Flake presents another kind of test.

NOAH WISDOM: You have to get out of your boat and it's- it's a vertical.

The first forty feet are damn near vertical with your kayak on your back.

Really, that is the most challenging part of Great Falls.

I was more proud of myself when I could do the hike without stopping than I was when I ran the rapids.

GEOFF CALHOUN: I think it's going to be pretty ideal conditions and it's going to be good weather too.

It's not going to be obnoxiously hot.

NOAH: 110 degrees in the shade.

GEOFF: Yeah, we've had some years where it's just brutally hot.

TARA: My mentality when I'm training for a race is a little bit different than just my everyday mentality when I'm going paddling.

Usually we're running different lines through different slots to figure out where the fastest moving water is.

We spend a lot of time just looking at the river, looking at the water and the rocks, and trying to see where the water is moving most continuously and has the least disruptions.

So there's like years and years of experience that go into building that ability to read water.

NARRATOR: When it comes to experience with these class five rapids, few can rival Wick Walker's expertise.

WICK WALKER: In August of 1975, I and two teammates first ran Great Falls of the Potomac here.

As far as it's known, that was the first time it had ever been run by kayak or canoe.

Initially, it never crossed any of our minds to run this.

It was just considered totally beyond the bounds of the sport and at our skill levels, in the early 60s, it was.

NARRATOR: The sport gained momentum when it was added to the 1972 Olympics in West Germany.

Wick was selected to compete for the United States, an experience that gave him the confidence to tackle his home rapids.

But he and his friends hit an obstacle beyond the falls themselves.

WICK: The Park Service was bound and determined to prevent us from doing this.

They had declared that if we used any part of the park land here, we would be arrested.

NARRATOR: But the Park Service didn't have jurisdiction over the land in the middle of the river.

So the night before, they camped on an island below the falls.

WICK: Just before daybreak, As soon as we could see to do it, we paddled up the gorge to here and climbing on the rocks in the center of the river, we carried our boats up to put them in for the run.

NARRATOR: The plan was to do it at least three times, but on his first descent, Wick's boat hit a rock.

WICK: My day was over.

My boat had split.

I was wallowing in the pool below the falls.

And I remember thinking to myself, I'm not sorry about this a bit.

Did it.

Now I can escape downstream.

People keep asking us who actually went down first of the three of us, and we have not revealed that for the last 50 years, and I'm not going to now.

GEOFF: There's a lot of history in this race that goes back to the core roots of, of whitewater kayaking and I think we are just a continuation of that culture.

I hope you guys are excited.

It's the 50th anniversary of the first descent of Great Falls.

CROWD: Woo hoo!

GEOFF: So cool anniversary.

We've got T-shirts.

If you guys haven't gotten a T-shirt yet, get one.

TARA: It's always exciting.

It's always good to catch up with everyone and see everyone that I haven't seen in a long time.

And I'm always stoked when people come out for the race.

I have my paddle, my kayak, might put on some elbow pads today, a life jacket, helmet.

[Crickets chirping] GEOFF: You guys please be safe and, uh, and watch out for each other, okay?

[Boat dragging] TARA: Every racer will get two timed laps, and the fastest of the two will be their time.

And then the fastest times overall will be the winners.

GEOFF: You have to know exactly what you're doing to navigate this section of river.

TARA: You can't have other distractions or that's really going to mess you up.

And you have to really get into that flow state and focus exactly on what you're doing and trying to do it well.

GEOFF: We put in a lot of practice time on these rivers to get get the sense of racing and what it would feel like to have the perfect run.

When I'm racing I'm just, trying to recreate that visualization of what would be the ultimate run through this rapid.

TARA: The first rapid was kind of tricky because it had dropped down from the past couple of days, and that one's like a little easier when it's lower or higher.

Um, it was at this weird in-between level where a lot of people were getting kind of stuck in the feature, like caught in the hole a little bit and sent to the left against the wall, which obviously isn't going to be that fast.

NARRATOR: By midday, the race is over.

Competitors exit the river by way of the calmer waters of the scenic Mather Gorge.

TARA: It went really well.

I'm really happy with my first run.

I was pretty clean on it.

And um, honestly it's, it's not really happened like that before where I got back and I was like, I don't know if I can be much faster than that.

And it looks like everyone had fun out there.

People had some pretty good lines.

We didn't have any swims.

We didn't have anyone come out of their kayaks.

So that's always good.

NARRATOR: For official results, competitors head to the Great Falls Foundation's annual Potomac Festival.

GEOFF: It's just a celebration of the river and river users and river access.

In second place, we have Tara Blair with a time of 01:02.

NARRATOR: There's no denying this is a competitive crowd, but the celebration is about more than race results.

TARA: I think for me, a lot of what I love about whitewater is the community aspect.

So all of the really deep friendships that you can make.

GEOFF: Just a really successful day and, and good vibes all around.

NARRATOR: After it passes the turmoil of Great Falls, the Potomac winds through the monuments of Washington, D.C.

The river meets Potomac Creek in White Oak in Stafford County, Virginia.

This confluence is where in 1613, English colonists kidnapped Pocahontas as she visited a Patawomeck Indian village.

400 years later, Patawomeck Indians still live on the creek.

One of them is waterman Carl Schoen, who goes by Boozie.

CARL "BOOZIE" SCHOEN: It's hard on me.

I'm getting a little age on me, but I still love crabbing.

NARRATOR: He's often alone, but this summer, Boozie has an extra set of hands.

JACK HATCH: I'm Jack Hatch, I'm a Patawomeck Indian.

I'm an apprentice commercial fisherman to Boozie.

I'm an MA student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

[Shuffling] NARRATOR: Jack is nearing the end of his apprenticeship.

One season isn't nearly enough time to pass along generations of ancestral knowledge.

And eight decades of lived experience, but it's a start.

BOOZIE: I taught him, I guess I've taught him.

I tried to, that the uh moon rules the tides, the wind and the tides and all work together in different ways.

And to watch the sky.

All that old stuff.

Watch the sky and watch the clouds in the sky.

Just nature.

You have to understand nature first to work with it.

JACK: He feels the wind change.

He'll tell me which direction it's coming from.

Because he just knows.

He's been here so long.

As soon as it happens, he knows where it's coming from and what it means for the fish.

BOOZIE: This river is like land.

You've got hills, you've got valleys, deep trenches.

And once you learn it, you learn where the fish will travel.

You can get in their path, you can catch a lot.

If you get out their path, you don't catch too much.

NARRATOR: The focus is catching crabs, but at Jack's request, they've cast a wider net.

JACK: We sort of got into eeling kind of by accident.

We just caught an eel one day in a crab pot.

I don't know, I just I like looking at it, so I asked, I knew he had eeled.

I knew he'd done a lot of eeling, knew a lot about it.

So I asked him if we could set a few eel pots so he could teach me how to do that too.

BOOZIE: Probably caught one eel.

JACK: Yeah.

Probably nothing.

Yeah.

Two eels.

NARRATOR: Modern regulations require fishermen to use wire pots, but when Boozie was young, they used wooden traps.

Handmade the Patawomeck Indian way.

BOOZIE: Started making them when I was six years old with my granddaddy.

You weave it, weave it on a mold.

It's a big chunk of wood that we had.

NARRATOR: At 84, Boozie is the last member of the Patawomeck tribe who grew up making and using the traditional pots, but he won't be the last to practice the craft.

BRAD HATCH: I'm Brad Hatch, I'm the chief judge on the Tribal Council for the Patawomeck Indian Tribe.

I've got a PhD in anthropology focused mainly in archaeology.

My youngest brother Jack has been learning how to fish with Boozie Schoen, who's one of the men who taught me how to make eel pots.

In some ways, it's an object that kind of represents everything that we are as a community.

I mean, you know, it's made of a material that you find in the woods, but it's used to fish with.

So you've got that connection between the land and the water.

It's an indigenous object, but it's also got a lot of influence from like, you know, European culture, African culture, all the different like mixing of culture that happened here.

BRAD: I'll need two of these um because I'm using them as wraps.

NARRATOR: Woven from split white oak and often dipped in tar, Patawomeck style eel pots were ubiquitous on fishing boats in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

BRAD: So the man that taught me first how to make these eel pots was DP Newton.

We went and cut a tree, and he taught me how to split the tree and everything that we did all that together.

And I finished my first one.

And then shortly after I finished my first one, I was working on a second one and he passed away during that time.

There was a short period there when I thought like, oh gosh, I'm like the only person who knows how to do this who is still living.

A few months after I met Boozie Schoen, and he was the man who had taught DP how to make these pots.

And then I started spending a lot of time with Boozie and learning even more about how to make the pots.

REAGAN ANDERSEN: I'm making a half scale, Patawomeck style eel pot.

NARRATOR: Eager to share what he'd learned, Brad started taking on apprentices.

One of them was fellow archaeologist and Patawomeck citizen Reagan Andersen.

BRAD: Kind of felt like Reagan would take to it pretty well.

REAGAN: Yeah.

BRAD: So I asked her to do it, and- REAGAN: I took to it really well.

BRAD: Yeah, she took to it really well and kind of the rest is history.

REAGAN: I wanted to do it because it's been in my family.

I've always heard about the eel pots.

My great grandfather used to fish with them.

REAGAN: It'll be hard for me to take this off of the mold because I weave it so tight.

Like I had to call Jack one time to come take it off the mold for me because I couldn't get it off.

BRAD: I guess there is kind of a pressure on you to like, carry it on for something that has come so close to going away in Virginia altogether.

REAGAN: You know, I don't want it to just be you look at the pictures in the Smithsonian in 50 years and there you go, you just have pictures of them, you know?

I want people to be able to see them in person being weaved.

BRAD: It's, I think, a sense of responsibility.

But at the same time, it's like one of those responsibilities that, you know, I'm happy to have.

[Bird calling] BRAD: Oh yeah, I've seen that picture.

Yeah.

NARRATOR: Brad is a keeper of ancestral knowledge in other ways too, compiling photographs and memories like those of the tribe's quilting circle.

BRAD: The- yeah the clump of trees are still right there.

You know, you can still see them right there in the picture.

NARRATOR: This evening they're gathered creekside, a spot with a view that stayed more or less the same for generations.

WOMAN: So we are basically sitting where this boat would be right here.

WOMAN 2: It just feels like we come down here and we're home.

This is home for us.

In our heart.

Yeah.

BRAD: It's pretty remarkable to be able to sit in a spot like this, to be able to think about all the people that came before us and how they made their life off of this water and off these lands, and how we're still doing it today.

NARRATOR: As the crab harvest comes to a close.

Jack prepares to return to school to finish his master's.

His focus is oyster aquaculture, but he's not ready to trade the old ways for the new just yet.

JACK: Yeah, one of the big reasons that I want to keep doing this is, is to preserve the tradition of commercial fishing in White Oak.

Our culture is also rapidly disappearing.

And I think that this is a, a pretty tangible way to preserve that and also to pass it on to another generation one day.

And I think that's important.

NARRATOR: Cambridge, Maryland, boasts a heritage built on seafood.

Each morning, dozens of watermen can be found fishing the Choptank and Little Choptank Rivers, but only one can be found on the radio.

FRED POMEROY: Good afternoon folks.

Captain Fred Pomeroy, back with you again.

I'm coming- After completing just last week, my 61st year dipping hard crabs on the Little Choptank River.

JIM BRADY: I met Fred through the grapevine.

I had heard that he was more than your average waterman.

And I was in the market for getting a voice about Chesapeake life from somebody who really lived it.

FRED: Today's subject is primarily going to be about um, my Chesapeake Bay retriever, Scout.

She's quite an entertaining little presence on the boat.

NARRATOR: The series is called "Becoming a Waterman"... FRED: Fetch!

NARRATOR: And the installments all come from Fred's personal experience, tales of living and working on the Little Choptank River.

FRED: You know, I get a lot of ideas while I'm out crabbing because I crab by myself and, you know, get an idea and I say, hey, that'll be good for the radio show.

And then I forget to write it down.

FRED: Hold it.

FRED: Good girl, hold it.

FRED: Good girl.

NARRATOR: Like Scout, Fred has brackish water in his veins.

FRED: Hold it.

NARRATOR: But he didn't come from a family of watermen.

He grew up working the land.

He still raises forty acres of soybeans here on Stoney Cove Farm, a riverfront property that's been in his family for more than a century.

But lately, he's been doing a different kind of farming, oyster farming.

FRED: I'm not really trying to make a full time living out of it.

I'm just trying to leave more out there than I found.

It's troubling that when you when you in your lifetime, you see the diminishment is huge.

NARRATOR: Fred's heading out to check on some young oysters, called spat, that he planted a few months ago.

He'll harvest a few oysters to sell, leaving the rest to grow.

FRED: She would love to come, but she doesn't understand that dogs are forbidden on oyster boats.

They can be on a crab boat.

Thank goodness for that because she's an important part of my crabbing team.

She'll probably find some mischief to get into.

And when we come back in, we'll probably see her waiting on the end of the dock over there.

I have 60 acres of oyster leases here in this uh, upper part of the river.

All of them are within a mile and a half of my house.

NARRATOR: An oyster lease is a contract with the state, allowing growers to raise and harvest oysters in a designated area.

FRED: You can also have what's called a water column lease, where you can actually uh float the oysters in trays or other devices.

But mine, mine has a completely sort of natural grow out on the bottom, just like the wild oysters do.

[Ticking] There's some large oysters in that.

[Hum of machinery] NARRATOR: Fred uses a small dredge to harvest just a few oysters.

FRED: It's a little bit like cultivating a garden, and my dredge is not heavy, but I'm turning over some of these oysters and cleaning the bottom silt off, and that actually enables them to grow faster.

And then when they're cleaner, the the baby spats will attach better.

NARRATOR: Each new generation attaches to the last, creating an underwater metropolis that serves as a filter and habitat.

[Hum of machinery] FRED: Got a crab in there.

She's feeding on these oyster shells.

Sookie.

Female crab.

NARRATOR: Fred's lease is located in one of Maryland's five oyster sanctuaries, so he's the only one who can harvest here.

FRED: Our oyster fishery is in really good shape right now compared to what it was.

It's not like it was 40 years ago, but it's much better than it was 15 years ago.

And that, I think, is a direct result of the sanctuary program.

Here's an oyster that's got one, two spats, three spats, about the size of my thumbnail.

Those were just spawned this summer.

NARRATOR: Satisfied with his harvest and the growth of his oysters, Fred heads back to shore.

FRED: Hey miss.

NARRATOR: Today's catch is bound for Choptank River Seafood in Cambridge.

FRED: Uh you can see they got spats on them.

I cleaned them as best I could, but we've had a heck of a spat fall on my leases.

MASON LITTLE: Thank you.

FRED: Yes.

MASON LITTLE: We're gonna wash these up, put them out in the store.

NARRATOR: The deal is done just in time for Fred and Scout to catch a familiar voice on the radio.

FRED: Because I personally feel like the Chesapeake is perfect for a waterman.

NARRATOR: Sharing stories of a way of life rooted in the past but looking to the future.

FRED: They're doing what people did 10,000 years ago, and as long as watermen can exist, that means there's enough in the natural environment that it's not completely gone.

NARRATOR: One of the few places you can still find the iconic Chesapeake oyster boat, known as a skipjack, is on the Chester River, which forms the boundary between Kent and Queen Anne's counties on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

GUY: I'm going to need to lower that bumper.

ANNIE RICHARDS: Good morning Elsworth.

NARRATOR: Built in 1901, the Elsworth hasn't pulled an oyster dredge in decades.

Instead, it's part of a fleet of historic wooden vessels that belongs to Echo Hill Outdoors.

ANDREW MCCOWN: How are you all?

Captain Andy here.

This is Captain Annie, who's the Chester Riverkeeper.

NARRATOR: It's used for educational experiences and occasionally as a performance venue.

ANDREW MCCOWN: We're going to do a little Chesapeake Bay songs and words for you guys.

All right.

Since you've been spending what you've had for days on the boat, this is your fourth day on the boat.

[Strumming] It goes like this.

You ready?

♪ I want to sail the Chester River ♪ ♪ And lay back in the noon day sun ♪ ANDREW MCCOWN: Chesapeake Scenes is a collection of words and music about the river and the bay and the culture and the lifestyle that revolves around it.

[Singing] ♪ Chesapeake born, Chesapeake born.

♪ ANNIE RICHARDS: Even when I was a student back in high school, Andy was sharing songs and stories and poetry with his students aboard the boat.

Two or three times a year, I get called in to to do a show with Andy, which I love to do.

And there's often no rehearsal.

We just plug back in and, you know, flex that memory muscle.

♪ That's what I call fun.

♪ NARRATOR: A relaxed approach in sync with the itinerary of these river camping trips.

ANDREW MCCOWN: I always say well they, they get to kind of live the Huck Finn life.

They wake when the sun wakes them.

We eat when we're hungry.

We fish when the tide's right.

We sail when the wind blows.

How often do kids get to live like that?

You know where they don't have the structured daily schedule.

Lean into it, boys.

Ready and... [Grunting] NARRATOR: It was a novelty for Annie Richards, who spent five days on the Elsworth as a teenager.

ANNIE: Alright, up down Aaron.

NARRATOR: Today, she's the Chester Riverkeeper and a U.S.

Coast Guard certified captain.

But back then, she was just a kid getting to know her home river.

ANNIE: I really had what I can describe as a transformative experience.

There's a really authentic and distinct community that forms on a boat.

And I thought, not only is this something that I had never experienced before, and I absolutely loved as a participant, but it had never occurred to me that you could make your living on the water offering these kinds of experiences.

NARRATOR: That trip down the Chester led to a career in sailing that took her around the world.

The Panama Canal, the Virgin Islands, Thailand, and eventually back home to work at Echo Hill.

ANNIE: What struck me in all of the places we visited is that the water is the backbone of any community that we visited.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how each different waterway shaped that particular community, and it did make it all the sweeter when I thought about coming home to the Chester, because I know that I am definitively shaped by growing up on the Chester and my community is, and I wanted to come home and invest in that and make sure that students were having that same experience that I did.

Um I think there's value in knowing a place your whole life, and I didn't want to miss out on that.

[Splashing] NARRATOR: These days Annie's focus is on her work as Riverkeeper.

ANNIE: I am bringing the river's interest to any situation that I find myself in as a riverkeeper, you're not an expert in one particular thing.

You have to be familiar with all everything that's going on in your watershed.

ANNIE: Alright, temperature?

BECKY GOLDEN: Temperature is 23.0.

NARRATOR: She's on the river testing water quality once a week.

ANNIE: Still a lot of chlorophyll here.

NARRATOR: Today she and colleague Becky Golden are finding signs of dead zones, places where the water is starved of oxygen.

ANNIE: The Chester River is my home.

I've been here my entire life, and so it is hard to kind of put on that scientific lens and assign good or bad, you know, healthy or unhealthy.

I think that you can't move forward without the data.

NARRATOR: But even when the numbers disappoint, the river doesn't.

ANNIE: That is a cownose ray.

There's a couple of them.

You see these pockets in the river where the thriving ecosystem we're going for, the river that we want to see every day, it exists despite all the challenges that are being thrown at it.

And so my answer to feeling bummed out by that science sometimes is get out on your river, because you'll see so much hope and what you're working for when you're out here, even on the hard days.

ANNIE: Yeah.

NARRATOR: Hope she shares with her young family every chance she gets.

ANNIE: We just sailed out of Grays Inn Creek and sailed into the Chester River, and we're heading to one of our family favorite spots, Cacaway Island.

There's a long sand spit with a drop off, and the kids love to build sandcastles and jump off the deep end, and it's really nice.

MAN 2: Are you going to go see him?

ANNIE: I want them to view the Chester as their scrapbook too.

They don't have to love sailing and boating the way that I do.

They'll grow up and find their own story, but as long as the Chester can remain a resource that is available for them to access, because the water is healthy and preserved and protected so that they can continue to view it as this kind of cherished memory and a place that they can revisit.

That's my goal.

NARRATOR: Along the Pocomoke River, a commitment to preservation can be seen in thousands of acres of untouched wilderness.

Haunting bald cypress swamps, the northernmost in the country, line the river from its headwaters in Delaware through Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore.

A place to lose yourself in nature or for Tara Cuplin, somewhere to find inner strength.

[Crunching] TARA CUPLIN: This is Pocomoke River State Park.

This path is just a little walking path, but it goes right next to a creek that comes off the river.

As a survivor of childhood trauma I really feel that the Pocomoke is helping me heal.

NARRATOR: Tara experiences anxiety stemming from abuse.

TARA: So when I come out here it really helps me to connect with each of my senses.

Like focusing on, okay, what, what do I see?

What am I feeling?

Feeling the water.

Seeing the leaves.

Feeling the breeze on my face.

Smelling the the marsh sometimes really kind of brings me back to center.

Brings me back to my body, which, um, sounds a little crazy, but as a trauma survivor, sometimes we can really kind of dissociate and be not very focused.

NARRATOR: It was on a camping trip a few years ago, that Tara first realized the river made her feel better.

TARA: I think I had really, honestly felt kind of afraid of the river up until that point.

Um I had some things happen to me when I was a kid that made me feel uh nervous around some bodies of water.

And um, and so it was the first time that I just was like, oh wow, no, this is I don't need to be afraid.

This is, this is okay.

So the water here, um, is really unique because it's so dark, but it's not, um, there's not sediment really in it.

It's very, very clear.

It's just dyed from the, the tannins of the cypress tree.

It is to me, it has a different energy than really any other river on the shore, honestly, almost maternal.

I feel like really almost like a holding energy, but a holding for everything.

And sometimes, sometimes it kind of feels scary, like it's holding the deep and the dark and the stuff that I don't know how to describe it, like stuff that everybody's trying to work out or that I myself am trying to work out.

KELLY MCMULLEN: Watch there's like some cut briar.

Okay.

NARRATOR: Part of Tara's healing process has been her work with Kelly McMullen at the Delmarva Free School.

KELLY MCMULLEN: We do nature guide and then recovery coaching, mindfulness meditation.

So I was previously a therapist.

We have a sort of intentional land use sanctuary.

It's nine acres against conserved habitat that is of a bald cypress swamp at the headlands of the Pocomoke River.

You're just going another 50 yards or so.

[Leaves crunching] Honey, welcome to the swamp.

TARA: Thank you.

KELLY: Tara's been a Free School Member from the early years.

How do you use the word success story when you're talking about a person's life?

Over many years, she's had so many triumphs.

KELLY: Just stay in the body, but hold that beat, get centered in the body, get centered in the physical body.

And if there's energy you need to discharge, imagine it going out from the bottom of your feet.

Root system just going right into the swamp.

TARA: It's such an amazing metaphor for kind of what's going on on the inside, like trying to not necessarily dig into stuff, but as stuff comes up and you're trying to deal with it and sort it out and release it, hopefully release it.

And I feel like it's kind of similar.

Maybe stuff comes in and the trees in the swamp does its thing and the water goes back out and it's kind of different, has a different energy to it.

Different uh characteristics, cleaner perhaps.

KELLY: We're situated in a really, I think, powerful place to bring people into peace in nature, but also understand better how harmony in nature requires human involvement right now.

We have to protect these spaces like the cypress habitat.

It's an ancient habitat and it serves a fundamental ecological role.

It's really about cleaning rainwater, cleaning runoff before it goes on down and joins the Pocomoke River proper, and then onto the Chesapeake.

NARRATOR: Rivers like the Pocomoke and the ecosystems they support mean something big to every living thing they touch.

It's enough to make it all feel small.

TARA: All of these rivers are kind of, in a sense, timeless compared to us.

You know, they've been here way longer.

They'll be here way longer, hopefully.

And there's something about that that makes all the, the small acute things seem not so, acute.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the power of a river, is that it gives us what we need.

LARRY: It's got some really nice character to it.

NARRATOR: Gifts that are universal and deeply personal in myriad ways.

These waters are Lifeblood.

♪♪ ANNOUNCER: Major funding for Lifeblood Chesapeake River stories was provided by: the MPT Chesapeake Circle... The Nature Conservancy, working with individuals, organizations and communities across the globe to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends... Watermark, showcasing the rich history, culture and beauty of Chesapeake Bay with public cruises and private charters departing from Baltimore and Annapolis... And by...