America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston

- There's something about a forest that makes you want to slow down, the stillness, the sound of your own breath, the ancient giants all around you.

I'm deep in the Oregon woods, the kind of place that can change the way you see the natural world.

As I climb, I keep wondering, what will Oregon reveal about itself and what will it reveal about me?

My name is Baratunde Thurston.

Yo!

I'm a writer, activist, sometimes comedian, and I'm all about telling a better story of us.

Wow!

This country is wild and its natural landscapes are as diverse as its people.

How does our relationship with the outdoors define us as individuals and as a nation?

Oregon has a reputation as a land brimming with life where people come in search of wildness and follow their own path to finding it.

And that makes sense because it seems like Oregon has every landscape under the sun with its dense forests, lush valleys, sprawling prairies and deserts.

This place is like a geography textbook come to life.

How does such a diverse land influence its people and their outdoor ways of life?

If you want to be outside in Oregon, you have a lot to choose from.

And it doesn't have to be some place you can only reach by four-wheel drive.

Where I'm starting, you don't even have to drive at all the city.

Portland has its share of concrete, but it still has plenty to offer people who crave the outdoors with spacious parks, gorgeous streets for biking, and even a famous skateboarding scene.

You don't have to leave the city limits to find your adventure.

And it's all infused with a DIY ethos that is quintessentially Portlandian.

So it's no surprise that it became a hub for roller derby.

The aggressive, women-led sport that pulled Mick Rose aka Mick Swagger right in.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- This is quite a meeting.

- Yeah.

- Look at that.

I didn't fall.

- I know, that was a really good stop.

- Thank you so much.

I'm Baratunde, by the way.

- I'm Mick.

- Good to meet you in-person.

- Nice to meet you, too.

- Yeah.

- Mick found roller derby while working as an organizer in the indigenous community and looking for a physical outlet.

They had always loved rollers skating.

And here was a way to skate as a part of a team, a new ready-made community.

Mick has brought me to a skate park in eyeshot of Mount St. Helens or Loowit, it's native Cowlitz name.

I just wanna start by acknowledging your roller skates.

- [Mick] Yeah.

- [Baratunde] They are fire.

- [Mick] Thank you.

- [Baratunde] You got these blue suede, pink-wheeled sparklies.

- [Mick] Yeah.

- [Baratunde] There's a whole look going on here, so well done.

- Thank you.

- Now, roller derby is a full contact sport.

It's not just a casual skate around town, which is a lot different from my experience rollerblading around Boston in my college days.

Yep, that's me aged 19 with a pager.

But Mick wasn't scared of getting a little rough in the rink.

- [Mick] I wanted a team sport 'cause I played sports growing up.

- Okay.

- So I bought some really terrible skates from like a department store.

And I showed up and I tried out.

And halfway through my tryout, this person came up to me and was like, "Hey, are you a skin?"

And I was like, "Yeah," which means like native.

- Mm.

- And she's like, "Your skates suck."

And I was like, "Yeah, I know."

And she's like, "Come to my car," and gave me her skates to wear for the rest of the tryout.

- Awesome.

- Yeah.

And she helped me found Team Indigenous Roller Derby.

- What is Team Indigenous Roller Derby?

- You know, I played roller derby for lots of years.

I rose in the ranks, so to speak, and then I played on Team USA.

- Team USA?

- [Mick] Yeah.

- Like you were representing America?

- Yeah.

And there weren't many people of color on that team.

And so that felt really isolating.

And when we got to the World Cup, I saw all of these teams from other countries that had skaters of color and I was like, "Ah, I want that."

Like I wanna come back and represent with other native people and just like be in our culture, be who we are, and feel proud to be here.

- After reaching the heights of the sport with Team USA, met numerous indigenous roller derby players when they played in Australia and New Zealand.

After feeling bullied, ostracized, and just not part of the US team, they formed Team Indigenous, the first team to reach the World Cup while representing borderless indigenous nations.

What have you gotten out of being a part of and a leader of Team Indigenous Roller Derby?

- I mean, roller derby brought me to land work.

- Like many Native Americans, Mick felt the loss of traditional land.

With fellow teammates, they began to look for a place in Portland that could be their own.

- So I was meeting indigenous skaters everywhere I went.

What I found is that intergenerationally, everybody wanted to be on land and have access to land.

Land work for me, it's redeveloping my relationship with land that is reciprocal, where I'm caring for land, where I'm caring for water, where I'm caring for animals.

And in return, a lot of that means that I am healing myself in that process.

And our community as we do that together, we're finding so much healing in land, and we're finding so much healing in ourselves.

What we ended up doing was starting a garden.

(bright music) - And Team indigenous co-founder, Andulia Sanchez, aka Fantastic Dynamite.

Kind of love these derby names.

Lead me around the streets of Portland to the Native American Youth and Family Center Community Garden, built on four reclaimed baseball fields.

It's a powerful symbol of repurposing land and taking it back in a way that provides.

This is so beautiful.

We are surrounded by freeways, yet this is a lush, green, beautiful garden.

What is the name of this place?

- Yeah, this is the NAYA Family Center.

It's also a traditional Chinook site, a trading village called Neerchokikoo.

- [Baratunde] Neerchokikoo.

- And also our garden is named Wapas Nah Ne Shaku.

- And Andulia, it's fantastic.

Hello.

- Hello.

- It was nice skating with you.

- Oh yeah, it was really fun.

- Yeah.

Right through the city streets and everything.

How does it feel to you to be a co-founder of this community called Team Indigenous?

- It is an absolutely amazing feeling to be able to create a message.

And for us, letting the world see that we're still here and that we are strong, we're resilient, and being able to teach young people that they could do this.

- I see a lot of plants.

- [Mick] Yeah.

- But I can't identify most of them.

Can you talk me through some of what we're looking at?

- Absolutely.

So this swale, this hedgerow is going to bring back our biodiversity that was here pre-contact.

- Pre-contact as in colonization?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- One of the main things is bringing back our oak savannas.

So these are the trees that you kind of see dotted throughout.

We have a lot of really tall trees through here.

And all of this is the understory what used to be.

So we're trying to recreate that.

We have this beautiful garden, which is a three sisters garden bed.

It's corn, squash, and beans.

The corn is the first to be planted, and it grows up straight and tall.

And it provides a structure for the beans, the second sister to grow up.

And the third sister is the squash, which covers the ground.

And so they work in combination with each other to take care of each other.

- Yeah.

- And so they're called- - No sibling rivalry?

- The three sisters.

No.

Not in this garden.

- Yeah.

So you're restoring something here?

- Yeah, yeah.

One of the most important things and one of my favorite things is tending our flowers and our perennials because they bring the pollinators that help everything continue to grow.

If you're down, we can tend some perennials.

- I'm down to tend some perennials.

- All right, let's do it.

- Get my hands dirty.

How did the rollerblades and the roller skates bring you here?

- Roller derby gave me the opportunity to travel the world.

And while traveling the world, I met a lot of indigenous people in other countries, and we all had a lot in common.

- Yeah.

- Our ancestors, some were brought here by force.

Some people came here out of desperation, and so not everyone chose to be here.

And so here we are, and what do we do with that?

It doesn't mean to go home or to go somewhere else, whatever that is.

But it's about finding that right balance for yourself in the land to follow the lead of people that are caring for it so that we can live in harmony and in balance.

And I think it's possible.

It's why we do this.

- It's a beautiful journey you're on.

- Mm.

- Thanks for sharing some of it with me.

- Yeah.

- Thank you for being here and for diving in, for planting with us, pretending with us and meeting my people, meeting my community.

Thank you.

A couple more things to plant.

- Yes.

- Maybe that one there.

- That one there, okay.

Okay.

There's been a lot of pain and loss in this land we call America.

Today, I got to witness some reclamation and some healing.

From the terminology used to describe the land, to the plants that grow here, to the food that it bears, but I can't think of a more dramatic representation of this shift than where I stand right now in what used to be the most American thing possible, a baseball field, now a medicine garden, the convergence of many indigenous nations planting something so different.

And replacing that pitcher's mound, that single man standing above everything else with a cedar tree whose roots will grow deep and draw water aided by the work of people on the surface.

What a sign of possibilities available for us all and how we can all shift our relationship with the land and outdoors.

Shifting our relationship to the land, it's not just happening in Portland.

Even hard-bitten ranchers are looking at how they've always farmed cattle.

And some are opting for change.

Folks here are into harvesting foods sustainably big time.

(dramatic music) If there's one symbol of the American West, it's cowboys.

And every morning during cattle season, a band of them, make their way through the herd, checking on their health, and moving them from pasture to pasture.

Welcome to Agency Ranch.

Obviously, I'm not a cowboy, so I'm on the sidelines watching with one of the owners, Kelley Delpit.

Kelley, what are we seeing here?

- Well, so this calf had some kind of cold looks like.

You can just tell, his head was down.

He was kind of breathing raggedy.

So we rope him so that we can administer the right medicine that he needs.

- [Baratunde] Okay.

- And that's what the cowboys do a day in and day out.

And that's how we have healthy cattle.

- Is it fair to say that you're keeping the land healthy, also keeps your animals healthier?

- Absolutely.

I mean, you look at this great green grass.

We had a wet winter, but we don't irrigate and don't put as much cattle on the grass so that the grass can stay high.

If we've had this field packed fence to fence like it used to, yeah, the grass will get eaten down.

That's less grass for every cow.

- Watching the cowboys work is like watching a classic scene from an old Western.

But if you spend a little time with Kelley, you quickly realized that this ranch is anything but typical.

When Kelley's family bought the place back in 1981, they ran it like any other ranch.

Cattle were raised fence to fence and allowed to roam right up to the water that runs through the property, polluting the water downstream that other people and wildlife depended on.

After a water crisis in 2001, the family realized the time honored ways were part of the problem.

They decided to make some big changes.

They reduced the size of the herd and kept their cattle away from the water, letting nature reclaimed parts of the land.

It felt like a gamble.

But without these changes, Kelley and her family feared there'd be no ranch left for their children.

And the changes, they made a difference.

Kelley, this is majestic.

It looks like a painting.

What am I looking at here?

- So this is an 800-acre wetland that was historically a wetland, but it was drained and diked over a hundred years ago to try and create more cattle pasture.

About 12 years ago, we reconverted it back to wetland, taking advantage of a great government program called the Wetland Reserve Enhancement.

This area is part of the Pacific Flyway, stretches from Canada to Mexico.

Critical migratory habitat for these birds as they fly north and south.

But as these wetlands are disappearing, they don't have places to stop over as they migrate.

And so you're seeing increased die-offs across wide species of birds.

So that's why recreation of habitats like this is so important.

- Restoring a wetland in this way helps recapture the natural balance that has historically existed in environments like this.

And Agency Ranch has a lot of history.

Kelley's family has only owned this land since the 1980s, but back in the early 1900s, it was home to the Klamath Tribal Agency, which is where it gets its name.

The Klamath lived here since before time was time, while Kelly's family's only been here for the blink of an eye.

And their part of the story started with Kelley's father, Kurt Thomas.

Kelley, I want to thank you for such a beautiful day out here.

- Our pleasure.

- Yeah.

And thanks for bringing your father to the fire.

Hello, Kurt.

- Happy to have you here.

- Salud!

- [Kelley] Salud.

- Kurt, when you first bought this land, what were you dreaming of?

What were you hoping for?

- This was a dream to run cows on my own ranch.

It was just for me at the time.

And I have learned that it's not mine.

We husband it.

We get a chance to share it.

If you sit as I have sat for a long time and watch this creek and realize how long this creek has flowed and how many people have called it home, and how many people have called it theirs, and how long it's going to be, this is just not ours.

- Now, ranching is a hard business, and doing it sustainably can be even harder.

Do you ever think about what would happen if things started to backslide?

And how does that sense of risk make you feel when you think about succession?

- My brother and sister and I are so grateful for how clear it's been to us from a very early age.

The ranch is always going to be a part of our family.

My dad had three rules growing up, get good grades, be respectful, and don't sell the ranch.

- In a hundred years, where are we gonna be?

I mean, this is gonna be just like it is right now.

And it is not gonna be me that owns it.

I don't know.

It might be Kelley's great-great-grandchildren.

- Well, thanks for letting me be a part of it for- - Yes, thank you for coming.

- At least a day.

- Thank you for coming.

Come again.

- I look forward to that.

- [Kelley] You are always welcome.

- It seems like Oregonians are willing to challenge the old ways if it means protecting their natural resources.

But it's not just about the land.

Some are looking for a new relationship with a Pacific Ocean.

When I think of ocean diving, I imagine the warm, crystal blue waters of Hawaii.

What I don't imagine is the frigid, murky, rocky coastline of Oregon.

But for Dan Semrad, a high school science teacher with a passion for marine life, this place is paradise.

The tide pools here are teaming with starfish and crustaceans.

And beyond them in deeper water, there are hundreds of species of fish.

Dan is an avid spear fisher, and he's good at it.

Maybe that's because he's got an amazing talent for holding his breath underwater.

In fact, Dan's a world class free diver.

That's the sport where you hold your breath until your lungs rebel, which makes it a little scary for the uninitiated.

I wonder if I'm up for this.

How's it going?

- [Dan] I'm good, man.

I'm good.

How are you?

- Good.

What's that?

This is a special (indistinct).

This is conditioner.

- Trust the makeup.

I thought we had some special dive gunk.

And then you put a precise scientific amount of hair conditioner inside.

- [Baratunde] Exactly.

- Yep, measured just by the scale that's built into your hand.

- Oh, I hope I slashed well.

Oh, it's cold and wet.

Whoa, that feels weird.

Oh boy.

Okay.

Always.

Okay, there we go.

Put my head through.

You doing okay?

- Yeah.

Okay.

- Whew.

- You ready?

Oh, for a nap.

- Okay.

Okay, I managed to get into the suit, and yet I think I'm just getting to the hard part now.

Time to join Dan and the support divers in the water.

I'm in the water in Oregon and it's really chill, and I don't feel the cold.

And I'm just bobbing along like a bobber.

So buoyant, so chill.

I cannot wait to see what's underneath.

The water is not crystal clear because it's cloudy with nutrients that keep this ecosystem thriving and makes it a perfect place for spearfishing.

You just gotta find the fish first.

I won't lie to you, this is exhausting.

There's a reason Dan is in incredible shape.

Managing your breath, swimming underwater while hunting for fish is a lot for a beginner to take in.

But for the brief time I'm underwater.

I'm starting to get it.

Everything above the water disappears, and I'm transported into a new world that's both calming and captivating.

I see why Dan keeps coming back.

- Three o'clock, bud.

- Tell me about the differences between what most of us understand fishing to be versus spearfish hunting.

- For me, personally, I think it's the most sustainable way to fish.

There's zero bycatch.

You're only taking the fish that you intend to take.

Takes a lot of work, takes some skill.

So I think it's really special.

- You got a fish.

You don't mess around.

- Dude, that was so fast.

This is hard.

This is not natural breathing for me.

Natural breathing is something I don't have to think about.

This is a lot of thinking going into breathing.

Just looking down, I saw a crab.

I see a lot of starfish.

I saw the tiniest jellyfish of my life.

And so I can start to see, this is really beautiful.

- [Dan] Yeah, yeah.

- Thank you so much, man.

It's good to be taught by you.

Good to share this piece of Oregon.

I'd never experienced this part of the state before, so thanks for uncovering that.

- Absolutely, yeah.

How did we get out?

That's a good question.

(Baratunde and Dan laughing) - In Oregon, a relationship with the land can mean a lot of things.

And for more than a hundred days a year, one of those things is rain, a lot of rain.

In the Willamette Valley, no one is complaining because all that rain means lush green forests filled with towering trees.

But these trees are helped by more than just water.

There's a secret underground that's so special.

Nicholas Cage starred in a movie about it.

I'm talking about peculiar fungi called truffles.

Scientists Hillary Rose and Heather Dawson and culinary truffle guides Stefan Czarnecki are taking me on a treasure hunt for these morsels.

They wanna show me why the world of truffles is a whole lot more than what you put in your risotto.

Of course, humans aren't naturally skilled at hunting truffles.

For that, we need a super sniffer, the true brains behind the operation, Rye.

Oh, the lick on the back of the hand.

So sweet.

So all three of you are into truffles, but in different ways.

How would you describe your connection to truffles?

- Yeah, I kind of focus on the culinary aspects and then also the tourism aspects.

I like bringing people into the woods and showing them the truffle experience here in the Willamette Valley.

- And what about you Dawson sisters?

- So we're relatively new to the world of truffles.

Started out finding culinary truffles, which was very exciting.

But then Rye branched out to non-culinary truffles, which are really interesting to science because they're hard to find when you don't have a dog.

So he's finding lots of cool things.

- And what kind of science are you both focused on?

- We're both ecologists and Heather's on the ology side, I'm on the botany side.

So together, we can talk about the plants and the fungi coming together.

And then Rye helps us find the really interesting ones.

- So this is like a three-party team?

- Oh yeah.

I love that.

All right, well, let's unleash the hound.

- Base.

- Do you wanna find a truffle?

- [Stefan] And we're off.

- Okay.

It's really strange to just like let this dog go.

- It's kinda like fishing, you don't see them, so you just cross your fingers every time you go out.

- Right.

- And so you just don't know if they're gonna be there or not.

There's no guarantees.

I know even now, we're talking in hushed voices.

Why?

- It's like we're golf announcers.

- Yeah.

- And the golden retriever has trampling through the woods.

His tail has slowed down.

Is it possible that he find a... Nope, scratching his butt.

- Yeah.

- The tail's going crazy over there.

He's sniffing.

- Oh, there it is.

- Here we go.

- What is that?

Smells like a hymenogastrale.

This is just a little, probably what one would call a false white truffle.

- Possibly false white truffle.

- Its real name is hymenogastrale.

- But give it a sniff.

It'll smell interesting.

- It's not attractive.

- No, you don't wanna eat that.

It's not gonna hurt you, but it doesn't exactly get you salivated.

- So this is not a culinary truffle, correct?

- No.

You're more than welcome to eat it.

It just won't taste very good.

- I think I'll wait.

All right, I'm gonna hand this little false white truffle back to you.

- And I'm going to cut it open and show you how it doesn't look like a truffle on the inside.

- There are only five edible truffle species, but there are hundreds of inedible ones.

- So when we look on the inside, you can see we're not looking at a true truffle in the culinary sense because we're looking at mostly smooth colors on the inside.

And if we are looking at a culinary truffle, this would be marbled.

So lots of different colors changes from different shades of grays and browns.

- Yeah.

Well, a good intro truffle.

- Yes.

- For me, a truffle is anything that's growing underground, producing that aroma to attract something to eat it.

- Okay.

- So what people call false truffles are truffles.

They're just not interesting to humans generally.

- Unless you're a scientist in which they're all very interested.

- 'Cause scientists are interested in a lot of things- - Oh, yes.

- As regular humans might not be.

Well, thanks for the lesson, professor.

And let's see what else Rye can do.

- Yeah.

Well, first, he gets his ball reward.

- Oh, is this an important part of the truffle?

- This is very important part.

- That's the only reason we find these truffles.

- The reason for truffles is ball.

You ready?

- Human beings have been hunting truffles since the Bronze Age.

And there's reports of using pigs to hunt for truffles in ancient Rome.

Nowadays, most people use dogs.

They're easy to train and less likely to eat the truffles they find.

They'll bring you the delicacy uneaten as long as there's ball.

- I honestly find it surprising that people haven't been using dogs more for truffle science because we've seen them used for the culinary truffles.

They're pretty well-established here.

The scientific side has pretty much always been rakes, which are efficient, but you do have to peel away the duff, put it back, peel it away, put it back.

And eventually, you find what you're looking for.

But he targets.

- Way more efficient.

- So we don't have to do as much guesswork with him.

- And so that relationship with the dog is everything.

- Oh, yes, yeah.

- It's very communication-based.

And that's part of the fun of this is we have this interspecies communication going on built around these fungi.

- Yeah.

- And that's just, oh my goodness.

- All right, I'm seeing a tail wag over here.

- He's digging.

He's digging hard.

- Look.

What's this?

Oh, look at that.

Oh.

- Whoa, oh yeah.

- We got a black truffle here.

- Black gold.

So that's a real truffle.

- [Stefan] That is a real culinary truffle.

- Here we go.

- Oh, good boy.

- What a black, black truffle, fresh from the grounds of Oregon.

- [Stefan] Oh, that's the real deal right there.

- This smells so much better and more.

- Than the white one.

- It just smells more than the white one and smells a lot better.

And it gives me that delicacy vibe.

So, can we see the inside of this one?

- See the inside.

- Yeah.

- There's the marbling.

- Oh yeah.

- So you can see this intense formation of the dark colors interspersed with the light.

And then on the other side, this outside is pure dark black, and there's a little bit of texture.

It's harder to tell now that we've handled it, but there's some texture in there.

It's granular, which is also really nice.

- So different from the white truffle.

- The false white, yeah.

- The false white, yeah.

It's also very different from the true whites, but different story there.

And we may not find those today.

- Yeah.

I'm gonna smell this thing.

This is soft, buttery, like burnt butter.

We're in Oregon.

There's a lot of woods across the US.

Is there something about the ecology here or the types of truffles that you can find that makes Oregon different from other places?

- So around here, we actually have some of the highest truffle diversity in the world.

We have well over 350 species.

Many of those, we just haven't found yet.

We haven't put names on them yet.

Almost all of them are associating with the trees around here.

And so they're in this relationship where the fungus is on the roots of the tree.

And it harvests minerals and more water in the soil in exchange for the sugars that the tree is getting from the sun.

- Ah, so you're helping - Very much so.

- Also think you should consider naming one of these unnamed species after Rye.

- After Rye, I've thought about it.

I've thought about it.

- All right.

See, I'm working for you, buddy.

I got your back.

- Get you on the map.

- Ball time, species naming rights.

- Stefan leads us back to the Joel Palmer House, a restaurant he owns with his brother, head chef Chris Czarnecki.

The house was built in 1857 and turned into a restaurant in 1996 by the brother's parents.

Chris and Stefan grew up foraging from mushrooms truffles with their family, bringing those local treasures into the kitchen here with their transformed into culinary delights.

So Chef Christopher.

- Welcome.

- Thanks for letting me watch you make more magic with truffles.

- Yeah.

Well, I hope you brought an appetite.

- I did.

- Excellent.

Because we're making a Morel Risotto that we're gonna accentuate with the Oregon black truffle.

- Mm.

- Two-step process.

As with any great recipe, start with a boatload of butter.

- That is so much butter.

I already love this meal.

- You saw me measure it.

- Yes, precise measurements.

Oh, look at that rice soaking it up.

- I'm gonna hold in the truffles.xx I'll portion it into the bowls and then we're ready to eat.

- Yes, join us, chef.

- Oh yeah.

Shall we have a toast?

To a wonderful day with friends of truffles and mushrooms alike.

Thank you for sharing your talents, your skills, your passion, and your flavors with me.

- Our pleasure.

- Our pleasure.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Can we dig in now?

- Please.

- You did good, chef.

You did real good.

This is amazing.

Is this how you normally close your field work days?

- Every time.

- Of all the things I've seen in Oregon, it's the forests that keep drawing me back.

The trees here are giants in more ways than one.

They're beings hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old.

We rely on them for their natural beauty, for the shade to cool us down, even the air we breathe.

Dustin Marchello knows the trees of Oregon from top to bottom, a certified arborist and forest bathing guide.

He spends most of his time either up a tree or walking among them.

As an arborist, Dustin's basically a tree doctor, pruning them, treating their diseases, taking them down safely when there's no other choice.

In his years on the job, he's acquired a sixth sense about trees.

So despite my misgivings, I'm gonna be joining him up there.

- Baratunde?

- Yeah.

Where you at?

- You're getting close.

- Getting close.

All right, this way.

Oh, I can see the ropes.

Whoa!

You are up there.

Hey!

- [Dustin] Good morning.

- Good morning to you.

- Well, I'm not gonna be up here alone.

You're coming up with me.

- Oh, we'll see about that.

Wow.

I have no idea how I'm gonna do that, but I'm gonna do that.

That is the best entry ever.

Dude, you are so cool.

- You'll love it.

Good to see you.

- Good to see you, too.

- Yes.

- Thanks for coming.

- That's quite a grip.

- Well, yeah, all day.

- A lot of practice.

- Yeah, a fair amount.

- So do you normally to climb with other people?

- I love climbing with somebody.

It's an opportunity to bring somebody up and experience the same thing because ultimately what we're doing is we're climbing a living organism.

This thing's alive.

- Yeah.

- Right?

- Okay.

So having somebody up there with me, whether it's work or recreationally, just to be able to share that experience.

- So gear and climb.

- Yes, let's get geared up.

- Okay.

- Hard hat, safety glasses, the whole deal.

And you'll look similar to this.

- I'll look as ridiculous as you do and I'll love it.

- [Dustin] All right.

You ready to get up in this tree?

- [Baratunde] I'm ready to get up in this tree.

- Living organism, it loves you.

We love it.

- We love it.

- And we're gonna really enjoy a little bit of time up there.

Okay.

- Across the US, my adventures have taken me underwater, up the sides of cliffs, into the clouds.

- [Dustin] Just short steps.

- Short steps.

They've moved me fast or slowed me down to almost a standstill to appreciate America outdoors.

- [Dustin] How are you doing?

Great.

- But sometimes what looks achievable suddenly isn't.

Ah, okay.

I need to take a little break.

She's hanging from a tree.

And in this moment, I'm feeling a lot, but I don't know exactly why.

I kind of don't want look down.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Probably not a great idea.

- I am very tethered right now technically, but I feel untethered from what I know, which is earth.

So now I'm up here and it feels different.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Ah, okay.

- [Dustin] Ready to go a couple more feet?

- I am ready to go a couple more feet.

Thank you for working at my pace here.

- Oh yeah.

- Knees under hips.

- So much going through my mind right now.

Climbing a dangling rope, approaching 40 feet high with nothing to hold onto.

- Getting to that first branch.

- After a few more feet, I have to stop again.

Physically, mentally, this is a challenge.

Oh boy, okay.

I just need a moment to breathe again.

- Mm-hmm, I feel that.

- Whoo!

I am partway up this tree and it seems like the perfect time to ask you why do you do this?

- I started climbing trees at 19.

- [Baratunde] Hmm.

- Climbing palm trees.

- [Baratunde] Yeah.

- And I'm telling you, I've never been so scared of my life, but there was something about taking care of a living organism.

And there was something about what I had known or what I had learned about trees.

Shade, they're nice to look at.

Oh, this was a nice hedge.

It's gonna block the noise from the road.

That's important.

So I started to learn and appreciate a lot of what trees do for us.

- Okay.

So we are where we are on this tree height, which is lower than the plan.

And I don't think I can go any higher.

- Yes, you can.

- It's not about that.

There's just a...

I will push myself.

- Yeah.

- And I don't need to.

- Okay.

- And so I need to like feel that line for me.

- Yeah.

- And not feel like I got to go beyond something to prove something.

- Right.

- I have done more than I expected in many ways.

- I'm proud of you.

- So we can have a great conversation on earth, but this is a lot.

This is a lot.

- It is.

It is a lot, yeah.

I'm gonna give you an arborist tug over here.

- Oh yeah.

That feels real good.

- Now, neither one of us are gonna go down without each other.

How about that?

- That's great, man.

That's just great.

Thank you.

It is not the heights.

It's not the physical exhaustion.

It's not the pressure to perform.

It's something else.

We call this condescending?

- Yes.

- For Dustin, the trees have become a refuge and a place of strength, but ropes and trees mean different things to different people.

So to be very real with you, I don't need to do that again.

I reached a limit.

This show puts me in a lot of spaces and places to be exposed to and ride along with and try new things.

And sometimes they come really easily, and it just flows, and it's magical and wonderful.

Other times, it's awkward.

Sometimes it's scary and sometimes it's like all of those things at once.

And so this moment was really psychologically and physically at my limit and maybe just beyond.

This is very emotional.

- [Dustin] Mm-hmm.

- And there's a piece of my experience up there that I have not shared with you yet.

- Oh.

- There's a very, very painful history of my people with trees in this country and hanging from trees.

And I just had this moment up there of like feeling that and remembering that and it was the overwhelming.

And I felt a lot of sadness, and a lot of anger, and a lot of love not just for the people who were lynched and murdered with these majestic living things, but also for the trees- - Right.

- Who were conscripted into this- - Had no choice.

- Criminal, heinous, monstrous act.

And so I wanted to go further and push harder 'cause of pride and 'cause of the luxury.

I get to do this job.

I get to hang out with people like you, but I also get to say no.

- Right.

(Baratunde cries) I am so sorry.

I am so sorry.

I will never understand that.

I can understand fears, like the fear of falling and stuff, but I will never understand that.

And I'm sorry.

- Hmm.

Thank you.

But thanks also for just creating a different kind of space and a different relationship with this.

I want that for so many of us to kind of transform that.

It's beautiful.

It can be really beautiful, but there's also pain there.

Just need to acknowledge it.

- Thanks, yeah.

- Thanks for opening up with that.

- I think I'm very ready to do some forest bathing with you.

- Me too.

- And finish this cleansing.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we're gonna do some grounding.

And I've got some essential oils that we're gonna smell.

- Oh good, good.

- It's absolutely gorgeous.

Get out of these clothes.

- Yeah, it's a bit ridiculous.

- So I'm glad you finally said it because I wasn't.

- It's cool.

It's so much.

- So much.

- This is a lot.

We're a lot right now.

Earth, dirt, soil.

Call it whatever you want.

It feels so good to be standing on it.

I feel grounded with a little help from Dustin and my friends, the trees.

Hey!

What do we have here?

- Let me introduce you to some of my closest friends and family.

- Hello, closest friends and family.

I'm Baratunde.

- Yes, here he is.

Dustin takes us through a series of yoga poses, allowing us to settle in.

- Bow your head and bring your thumbs to your nose.

- Then we head off to bathe in the forests of Oregon.

Forest bathing came about in the 1980s when scientists in Japan found that time spent in forest was correlated with better health.

Upon researching this phenomenon, they found that trees release chemicals into the air to protect from insects.

And when we breathe them in, it helps our immune system.

The trees didn't evolve to do this.

It's just a coincidence for lack of a better word.

They're helping us live healthier lives, and they don't even know it.

I've talked to people all over this country about how nature can be healing, but right now, just walking in these woods, I feel it.

As I walk through the forest, it all feels so different.

My relationship with nature, with trees has changed.

It's been a few days since my time with Dustin climbing trees and forest bathing.

Now, I find myself in a different set of woods in Oregon on the ground this time, taking my own solo forest bath.

I wanted to let you in on a little bit more of what I was thinking and feeling in that time with him.

I was feeling pressure internal and external to go farther than I felt comfortable with.

I didn't wanna let down the crew, I didn't wanna let down viewers like you.

I didn't wanna let down Dustin or myself or these trees.

I was also feeling inexplicably sad, a feeling of grief, mourning, maybe from those trees I was breathing in, feeling their pain and what we've done to them and what we've made them do to us.

But now that I'm back on the earth, I think I have another perspective on how we talk about connecting with nature.

So much of it is about losing ourselves in nature.

In this case, I found a part of myself in nature.

I listened to the trees, I listened to Dustin, but I also listened to a part of me that said, "You're enough.

This is enough, and you can draw your own lines."

I started my journey in Oregon at the northern border of the state, and I finish here near the southern border on the shores of the enormous Klamath Lake.

In a way, I'm doing a little more forest bathing, but this time, with an audience, not to see me, but to experience something you probably wouldn't expect to find in nature, a nine-foot Steinway grand piano.

Hunter Noack is a classical pianist who tours the US, putting his piano in nature in a series he calls "IN A LANDSCAPE."

Why did you first decide to bring classical music to the outdoors?

- So I grew up in Oregon, hunting, fishing, spending a lot of time outdoors with my dad.

I wanted to try to combine the two things that I love most.

- [Baratunde] Okay.

- Classical music, classical piano and being outside.

For me, to smell all of these things and to feel the warmth of the sun, it makes me even more excited to play the piano.

- Where do you want the audience to get out of this dual experience, the music, the nature access?

What's your dream for them?

- I think that what the music does is, in the best case scenario, it becomes a soundtrack to people's experience, whether they're watching me or probably even better if they're looking at the waves or watching how the leaves dance in the wind.

I really encourage people to get up and wander and to leave the piano area.

What I hope is that they have some connection with a natural world around them.

- [Baratunde] Yeah.

- Whether that inspires a daydream or a nice little nap, or it inspires them to imagine something new or to just feel something because of all of this magical simulation that's around us.

I would love for you to come up and lie underneath the piano.

The way we can get the most people up here is if you lie with your feet kind of hanging off and your head underneath the piano.

(piano music) (crowd applauding) Woah - In Oregon, I'm discovering a new era of trailblazers, a collective of Americans all adapting to great change.

But how are they doing it?

The answer they say is as simple as can be, we listen to each other, including the animals and the trees.

That's how we all move forward for generations yet to be.

That's how we all change.

Oregon is a land of transformation.

It turns murky waters into a treasure trove, a commercial ranch into a thriving wetland, an abandoned baseball field into a community haven, a truffle from a secret of the forest into a celebrated delicacy, a tree into an instrument of pain, but also of healing for all of us looking, listening, climbing, digging, planting, growing, and changing for the better.

(uplifting music)