Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

Today we're in Plainfield, New Hampshire, where you'll see why both golfers and wildlife find this board of disc golf so appealing.

Then we set sail with an all women crew who break from tradition on the open sea.

But first, the Appalachian Mountain Club has been bringing people together in the outdoors since 1876.

Its first conservation land purchase was made in 1895 at Randolph, New Hampshire.

AMC camps from new Jersey to Maine attract visitors from around the country.

Unplug.

Decompress.

Touch grass.

Breathe some fresh air.

This is the story of one of those families that make the long distance trip to New Hampshire every summer.

Cold River runs for just shy of 17 miles.

It flows from Maine into New Hampshire, just briefly near North Chatham, before it swings back over the border.

Anybody want to volunteer to be the sweep?

That's the person in the back.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

That's where we meet Laura Bennett.

She and her family arrived here from New Jersey, which is about a nine hour drive.

This is AMC's Cold River camp.

Rustic cabins, mountains and home style meals have been a draw for families like Laura's since 1919.

She's here with her husband, Fletcher, and their sons, Bruce and Jeremy.

How many years you've been doing this?

This is our third year at cold River camp, but I've been coming up to New Hampshire to hike since around 2018.

Laura is a nurse.

And when she's not working, she's outdoors.

What began as local day hikes in new Jersey Turned into longer and more challenging treks through New Hampshire.

You got to document the bad stuff, Laura.

Your kids won't believe you.

Well, my kids were smaller then, so I came up without them.

Found out how pretty it was and then wanted to share it with them someday.

How did you hear about the Cold River camp?

so I was backpacking with a friend in the 100 mile wilderness in Maine, and she had an injury.

And so we got off at Gorham Chair Back Lodge, and I met another family there, and they found out that I had kids, and they just said, oh, there's a place we go to every summer since our kids were little called cold River.

Look it up when you get home and they have a discount on, you know, kids going a certain weeks in the summer.

And so I looked it up and the rest is history.

And so we came here three years ago and kind of fell in love.

.9 miles from where we crossed the bridge.

First year they came out, kids were fighting with us, telling us how they were worried about this that and the other thing, not ten minutes after they got here and they saw all the other kids, they were running around the field like a bunch of like a pack of feral kids having a grand old time.

No complaints after that, it was all fine.

Well you have to guess what something is?

Right.

Yeah.

Fletcher and Laura realized quite quickly that their sons were more than happy to trade modern conveniences for rustic life at camp.

Being outside is just something that they need to do, again, in today's society, it's really easy to just kind of fall into a screen, disappear, not come out again and again, finding something to do that's outside and running around, be it a sport, be it again, scouting or.

Again, boating, fishing, some sort of outdoor activity, just to kind of be able to sort of like, again, unplug, decompress, touch grass, some fresh air and I can go for it.

Go for a walk.

It's great.

Again, it doesn't have to be.

I'm going to walk the entire Appalachian Trail in a go, but I can definitely have the kids be out here.

I am the summer manager here at camp, and I have been coming here since I was a little kid.

I manage our staff, which is 13 people and up to 70 guests that are in camp from week to week, and just making sure that everybody is safe and happy and having fun.

Like, it's the family thing.

Definitely, yes.

My mother was on the crew here in 1975.

My my grandfather was on the crew in 1945.

Yeah.

He's in this photo right here.

Yeah.

And I grew up coming here every summer as a kid and just have a lot of happy memories here.

So, yeah, it's great to be here and to be helping.

That's great.

Other people make memories.

How many generations you go back?

Do you think?

Here?

Five.

So my grandfather in this photo, he came here in the early 1930s with his grandmother.

So that makes me a fifth generation.

Well, yeah, the place is just it's, you know, better than we do how it is behind the scenes, but it seems as smooth as silk.

Everybody knows what they want, what he's doing, and seems to enjoy doing it.

Yeah.

And that's that's the goal here.

This is really our first day of the season.

And a lot of folks have been coming here for a long time.

So they know the drill, which really helps the staff learn how to do their job.

Hey guys.

Can we go a little slower?

You have become a hike leader.

Yeah, so I wanted to volunteer and help out.

And I work full time, so I wanted to just find a way that I can kind of give back to the AMC and be involved and come here and kind of, like, do some of the kid hikes, whatever, really anyone's interested in.

So last year I applied to be a hike leader, and I did a week as an intern when I was here with my family and to this year I'm no longer an intern.

So it's my first year leading.

All right.

Time for snack, guys.

A lot of memories.

I have memories of being here with my grandmother.

I didn't like to hike as a kid, which was a bit disappointing.

I grew into it eventually, but I have a lot of happy memories just being right here in the Lodge, and the rest of my family would go off and hike Bald Face.

It was a day to do arts and crafts with my granny, and build fairy houses in the woods and make friends on the trail as I got older.

So this has been an important part of your family life?

Yes, but it's only a little chunk of your year.

Yes it is right.

Jeremy.

You doing okay?

Yeah, it's only a chunk of the year, but I don't know.

I mean, it's just like for that week, like, you know, all year we're like, oh, we're going to go to cold River.

This is the week we're going to go.

And we just know when we get here, you know, there's people various like walks of life.

You're kind of just accepted.

People meet you where you're at and then, you know, there's different activities for different levels of people with experience.

If you have no camping experience or hiking, experience there's pretty much something for everyone here.

Yep.

Or you can just sit on the porch, or you can just sit on the porch and have lemonade and read or paint.

Listen to the birds That start chirping at 530 in the morning.

So that's the trail.

And then we got a little more to go.

And you think you'll keep it up?

Oh, yes, I intend to continue to come here every summer for a week.

Some people who've been here for a long time.

Yes.

There's families that have been here for more than one generation, which is beautiful.

If your passion for New Hampshire's great outdoors is rivaled only by your love of golf, this story is for you.

Scott Ellis, who's a long time friend of mine, invited me to Plainfield, New Hampshire, for a round of disc golf.

We are at ring Brook Course in Plainfield, New Hampshire, ready to play a round and disc golf with William Lang and the crew.

I started playing disc golf in the late 90s when I was in college in Prescott, Arizona, and we didn't even have baskets back then.

We were just throwing discs at trees and having fun in the woods, and it's kind of come in and out in my life.

So that was when I originally started, but I've gotten much more passionate about it recently.

Uh oh!

It is my course.

In 2020, we drove cross-country to visit our daughter in California, and I played disc golf when I was young and decided to bring some discs along in the car and the camper, and we found some disc golf courses along the way.

And I hadn't played for 40 years.

And as we were doing that, she finally said, you know, you know, maybe you should put in a couple holes at home.

So that fall I put in the first nine and now it's 18.

I put this in for myself and just decided to share it.

This game is a is about playing and these are our toys that we play with.

This is the object of all your desires.

This is what we dream about right here, Willem.

This disc flying through the air just as we intended it to.

Coming in beautiful, hitting these chains and falling right into that and making the distinctive noise.

Yeah.

This hole is really uniquely designed.

It's a par four, which meaning you should try to get it in four shots.

The same rules of ball golf apply in this sport.

But what's also great about this sport is, as you know, with this show, all your guests.

It's about getting outside.

Yeah, exactly.

As a young boy in the woods, I threw rocks at trees just to get me outside.

We were always making up games, and here is a game that drives me to being outside each day and encourage you to visit new places, make new friends.

And really, it's play like we all want to play in the world and disc golf.

It's just a game where I can go in the woods and appreciate nature, make authentic friends and watch that beautiful disc fly through the air and hit that chain.

It is kind of pretty.

It is, it is.

Well, it gets me out.

It gets me moving.

Previously, before disc golf, I was usually involved in robotics and there wasn't a lot of moving in robotics.

And I used to play Three Seasons sports in middle school and elementary school.

So getting out and moving again is is great for me.

It feels great.

Get in there.

We started doing it about three years ago, playing a lot of ultimate and then switching over to this.

And he picked it up with me.

And he is at this point this summer is when he's going to pass me in distance and skill for sure.

It's really cool when it ends up where you want, but.

Anything you can find to do with them outside is amazing.

We live in Burke and so we get to mountain bike a lot together as well.

This is a lot more conversational time with him, right?

And he just turns 15 in a few months.

So it's like getting older.

So you want to spend all the time again with them for sure.

No.

And he's really good too.

So it's it's it's pretty fun too because he has magical moments pretty much every round.

So this is the search happening over here right now for the lost disc.

Got one.

For me.

The game of disc golf is so exciting because you're always challenging your best to the course and not.

And how that stacks up against everyone else is, you know, irrelevant really, because it's what you can do.

I've seen remarkable improvements in the last year, actually, because there's so many different throws and you get so much advice from playing with new people all the time, and everybody wants to see everybody do well.

There you go.

Did you tell him your story about how you found this sport?

It's kind of a cool story of how you found it.

Yeah, well, my son played amateur disc golf.

He won the Brewster Ridge Open.

I caddied for him down in Texas at the.

And just met so many people.

And he said that I should start playing disc golf.

So I signed up for my first tournament in Waterbury.

My husband did the same thing, and it's been nonstop since then.

What do we have?

One of his drives obviously no good because we're only 50ft in front but you can just see with the speed he threw it he's about two inches embedded into the log.

Now is there a limit on foul language you can use a hole like this?

You're not a foul language guy.

I'm not.

There is a limit.

Is there a limit?

Yeah.

I mean, we're a pretty casual bunch.

There's some that swear more than others.

I mean, I play with a lot of young folks, so I try to be a good role model to them sometimes.

Yes.

Yes, of course.

Keep my heckling to a minimum, you know, but.

Yeah that's mine.

Yeah.

But Scott's Scott's awesome.

He's a he's a great player but he's a great mentor too.

He knows how everything flies and he knows how to engage everybody.

So whether you are interested in something or not, Scott's able to make it fun and enjoyable and really engage people.

But really at the heart of it is here we are in a beautiful environment and as you're out looking for a disc in the woods, you discover this grand old white oak tree and you know, you give it a hug.

And without disc golf, I wouldn't have found that that's true.

You know, like, it brings me to those beautiful places.

Oh, oh, oh, it's still generally quite wild.

I mean, we have seen bears on one hole.

We have moose and deer and coyotes all over the place.

What do you think?

You ready to pick this sport up or no?

No, not ready.

But I'm sure I'd enjoy it.

Yeah.

Had you ever played?

No.

I've thrown a Frisbee back and forth across the yard, but that's about it.

But like, as a young kid, did you, like, throw rocks at trees in the woods?

I threw rocks at windows.

That's why I'm in New England.

Threw me out of New York.

So that's the same game as disc golf.

It's just.

That's right.

We just want to throw things far and watch them go.

Crash.

100 bucks if someone puts it in.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Drop.

Go in!

Really don't have any long term goals for it.

Just to maintain it and keep it a happy place where people can gather.

Okay.

Well I don't know what more there is to say about it, except we could talk all day, Willem, about it, but You could talk all day about it.

I could talk all day about it.

And I will be talking about all day.

I'm moving on to the next course and more fun to be had.

For too long, sailing has been a male dominated sport.

That's changing There's a crew that race off the coast of New Hampshire, and they'd love to see more women come out on the water and compete against them.

Welcome to Red tide.

It's the end of the racing season for Red tide.

The boat goes into storage as the snow blower comes out.

I mean, it's bittersweet because it means no more Thursday nights on the boat, but there's always a nice when you put a boat to bed and it's like getting cooler.

That feels good to because, you know, it's like time to hibernate for a few months before you do it again.

Kali Sink and Elizabeth Kane co-own Red tide, a sleek J24 class sailboat.

During most of the year, Kali and Elizabeth are busy hiking.

But on Thursday evenings, they trade the mountains for the ocean.

They race in the Piscataqua Sailing Association's summer regattas.

I think there's a lot of crossover.

There's just wanting to be outdoors and wanting to experience the environment in a different way, and came into the sailing community and just really loved what it was all about.

And it's nature, it's high pressure, it's high pressure, it's nature, it's dynamic.

And and it is just it's a cool way for people to come together.

The team came together in 2023.

On board are a farmer, a scientist and a financial advisor, all of whom love to sail.

Most of the crew have experience.

Racing together, started from scratch.

They were all brand new to our positions and most of the crew was brand new to the boat.

I mean a J24 in general.

So we had a lot of learning and I think that'll just keep it'll just like each year I think we'll learn more exponentially.

And the community has been really good to like if we have questions, if we need a hand, if we want to bounce something off someone.

The whole J24 community is just so helpful.

And we all really wanted to learn more and get better, and wanted an environment that sort of we could control the interactions and everything so that we're able to learn hands on without a lot of stress or pressure.

With that in mind, long before Red tide set sail, Elizabeth and Kali knew they needed the right teammates.

They began to recruit and formed an all woman crew.

It was part of that relaxed learning environment that has proved itself out.

I feel like all women's having an all women's boat was the driver to purchase the boat.

So that's that came before we found the boat, deciding that we were going to be an all women's crew.

And there is, I think in Portland there's one all Women's J24, and they do very well and they do very well.

So they've been at it a little bit longer.

And so we hope someday will be like and they've offered because, again, a very welcoming community, they've offered to come and sail with us, which we haven't had time to take them up on, but looking forward to that next year.

Competitive sailing is a male dominated sport, according to a study found in Sailing World magazine.

Women account for about 16% of regatta crews.

One reason, it says, is that the sailing world underestimates female sailors abilities.

There are efforts to change that perception.

Red tide is a local example, so I think there's a visibility aspect of it.

Like we were intimidated, or at least I was not seeing a lot of women out there on boats and not they're not helming.

They're not owning the boat necessarily.

I think there's one other J24 that's owned by women in our league.

So we just didn't see a lot of women out there in like power positions with the boats, and maybe that was that they didn't have the visibility or whatnot.

So I think just being able to see it and see it happening makes it feel more accessible.

Maneuvering red tide around the course on the open sea takes skill and teamwork.

Being in sync with nature is key.

Well, I mean, you're focused on racing, but racing is working with nature and the elements.

I mean, you're hyper focused on the wind.

You're looking at what the water looks like to see if the wind is shifting direction slightly or increasing in a certain area.

So you're you're hyper tuned into nature the whole time.

You have to be.

Yeah.

You're motor is not on your powered by nature and what's around you.

Yeah.

And you have to be reading it constantly I mean I still think it's there's something really magical about sailing.

I mean, you're not going directly into the wind, but you're going kind of into the wind with just a big, you know, kind of soft airplane wing in the air.

And it's it's a pretty incredible feeling to be able to move forward through the water with wind kind of in front of you.

And yeah, I still think it's pretty magical.

It's very freeing.

There's a I think an intention that you have to have out there that we may not have in like our day to day lives.

Right?

Like, we're in such digital worlds and things are, like, pinging at us all the time.

And then we like to Kali's point, you're out on the water.

It's just like wind sails, water current.

Like it sort of reduces you to these more, primal too strong the word.

But like things that we aren't interacting with all the time on a daily basis, you may not be like walking through town and like noticing the wind direction or where the tide is or something like that, but when you're out there, you need to know it, you're noticing it.

And it's to me, pretty calming.

Elizabeth says Red Tides first race was a complete flop.

They arrived late at the start and didn't get much farther beyond that.

We sat there like this, like this, like bobbing like a duck.

And that was our foray.

And there was only up to go from there.

But things have improved since then, and now they feel good with what they've accomplished.

The core of it was that we as women, wanted to have this environment where we could learn in, in a very safe space and interact with the community and learn from all these other wonderful people that were doing it, but just sort of come back to each other with those learnings and grow together through it.

And I think even for us, still showing up every week and seeing our female friends and hanging out after and having that smaller community within the larger one, that has been incredibly I don't know, it's a it's a very buoyant feeling for me.

I'm very happy.

At the end of the day, we're like a group of friends that love sailing and racing together, so it's great if that inspires people.

And I think there is like the healthy competition aspect too.

We'd love to see another all women's care out there, but we don't want them to beat us.

Yes, that's always the that's always the play.

Well, it's come once again to that part of the program that I like the least.

Time to say goodbye, but I must.

So bye bye.

I'm Willem Lange and 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. Reen Charitable trust.

The John D. McGonagle Foundation, the Bailey Charitable Foundation, Road Scholar, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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