American Dendrite

[Derek] So, we want to talk about sunrises and sunsets?

[Adam] It can be that.

It can be something else.

Anything.

[Derek] Okay.

[Maya] Whatever that makes you think of.

[Derek] Okay.

[Adam] What we're doing is-- Today's actually our first day.

We're going on a road trip from here in Chicago near the end of the Mississippi in New Orleans.

And we're going to be following that path of water as it goes from here to there.

And along the way, talking with people we meet.

The idea is, what we'll do is the next person you talk to, we'll play them some of what you said and kind of sort of do this-- It's almost like a game of Telephone of sorts as we go.

[Maya] I have a minivan.

We're all packing in my minivan with all of our equipment and driving along the Illinois River and then down the Mississippi and ending in New Orleans.

We want to follow stories to the water, basically.

Follow the path stories as it goes to the path of the water.

[Derek] Now come on, that's rad.

[Maya] Yeah.

[Adam] We'll do it under that tr [Derek] Under that tree?

Okay.

[Derek] Let me know when you're ready.

[Maya] Yeah.

Whenever you're ready.

[Derek] Okay.

[Derek] Well, I happen to love the sunset because I live down the street from the dog beach and it's good to go and watch the different people bring their different dogs, walk their dogs up to the beach.

And then watch the sunset as all the dogs play in the water.

It is such a beautiful scene.

You know that God really, really exists.

Also, right there while the sun is setting, you see a lot of the seagulls diving for food.

Watching them dive and getting fish and eating, and flying back up in the sky and swallow them, it's like, wow, in the sun?

That is something very, very beautiful to see.

So, for me, that's where I get all my energy as a 55-year-old African American man to move throughout the day.

[baseball chatter] [Helen] Well, I am on my way home from Iona, Scotland, and I was there for a weeklong retreat about Celtic spirituality.

So now I'm just sitting around waiting for my bus and reflecting on all the beautiful things I've seen, all the beautiful people I met, what I learned on the retreat, getting closer to God.

And it's just been a really beautiful, beautiful experience.

The whole idea was to learn a new kind of theology, which is different from Western theology, which is more the idea that God is present in everything: present in nature, present in all people, present in other creatures, present in our art, present in our music, in our sexuality.

Everything.

I'm a priest and so, it's going to be, you know, taking all this back to my congregation, back to my family and everybody I contact.

I think, you know, it's recognizing the divine in each one of them.

It's clearer and brighter now and easier to perceive and hopefully I'll be able to share that in myself a little bit more openly and vibrantly also.

[Jason] Have you guys ever caught a catfish?

The feeling you get when the fish hooks on which you might actually hear in a second, it's exhilarating, you know.

You bring in the fish, get it to the shore.

You got to hurry and get the hook out to get it back in the water, so it doesn't die.

I'm a sports guy.

I played basketball growing up my whole life.

Came to Chicago on a full-ride scholarship eight years ago or so, and I got a good job out here.

I'm from Colorado originally, so I brought back my fishing habits.

I've been enjoying it.

Chicago is a good place for fishing.

You can't eat any fish out of the river because it's so toxic.

Everyone you talk to about fishing, they say don't fish the river.

Well, it's still fun.

You can still get some big old carp and catfish.

You just have to catch and release.

It's just a nice little hobby on a Monday like this.

That's why I like fishing because you have to really be patient.

You can sit back, you know, enjoy a beer and some weed or whatever.

[Michael] I spend most of my summers in the South, actually.

So compared to the toxic, quote unquote, toxic rivers of Chicago, you would fish everywhere.

And it wasn't necessarily the exhilaration of it, but the calmness of fishing.

Just water in general, right?

That calming kind of sound.

Like, even whenever you're not around the traffic of Chicago, when you're by the lake or you're by a body of water here, you feel that calm and you hear it.

You can have the exhilaration of it, right?

I can't swim, so not so much exhilarating.

Being by a river, Chicago River, when there's no traffic, no people around, it's magical.

It's magically calming for me.

Everywhere I go, when I travel, I end up by the water.

Just some more or less take in that little moment of self-reflection and getting back to myself, because I feel like water has had an impact on us, right?

We're 80% water, as they say, so it's natural to want to be next to it, well, for me at least, to want to be next to it, to use it as a moment of centering.

Can't swim, but I can at least appreciate the water.

I can appreciate what water does for us, right?

It's just magically calming.

That's the biggest thing for me when it comes to water, it's what it does.

[Claire] We're outside today.

It's really beautiful out.

I'm always an outside baby, to be honest.

Gotta breathe with the world.

Because if you think about it, everything's breathing with you.

Like, the water's moving.

The trees are moving.

Oxygen.

I don't know.

Everything's outside for a reason, so go outside for a reason.

That's my little spot that I go to by myself.

I don't know.

It's really relaxing.

I brought people there that's never seen it.

Honestly, I just sit by the river.

I'll draw and listen to music, I don't know.

There's not a lot to do here, to be honest.

It's definitely hobbies: sports, drawing, music.

You find what you like and what you don't like.

It gives you peace of mind.

[Virginia] This place, once upon a time, many, many years ago, was all orchard on this hillside.

But then farmers decided they could grow corn and make more money.

So, they took the trees away or whatever, just left them.

I've got some old apple trees in there that are probably almost 100 years old that still bloom and produce scrubby little apples, but that's okay.

Remnants of the past.

When the Illinois River was flooded, when the glaciers melted, it scooped up this valley and made it as wide as it is now.

And it deposited tons of sand across the river there.

That's where they used to grow a lot of watermelons and things, because the soil is porous.

But otherwise, this area has just been abandoned.

The houses on the road up there, they want the view.

So mostly it's going back to nature, which is what I wanted to do.

That's why I bought this place, just to enjoy the natural world and to keep out another subdivision that might happen up there, maybe in the future.

But not now.

It's not worth it.

You got a kitty behind you.

Don't step on him.

The people that live here are connected with agriculture, or they're just blue collar workers from Peoria or from Canton.

It's not really a going place right now, but people want to come here because it's quiet.

but people want to come here because it's quiet.

It's very hard to find water here because there just isn't a lot of aquifers.

There's some very skinny aquifers.

I do have a well that gives me water in the house here.

Enough for washing and flushing the toilets and such like that, but I don't think you could take a bath or even a shower without it running out.

And I've got a pump out there that pumps it up.

And when the electricity goes out, you have no water.

Which is kind of annoying, you know?

But it's funny, when the water level is high and you're over there in Havana around the middle of the town, there's some open spaces that just look like prairies where they didn't build anything.

That's because you could jam a spade down there.

Water will come up because the water table is so high when we're not in drought.

But we are in drought now, so I don't know how they're doing.

This is like three or four years.

It is just this year.

We thought it was not going to happen again this year, but it did.

We're not as bad as California.

But with climate change though, the drought zone is moving east, you know.

And that was-- Well, I subscribe to all these nature magazines and National Geographic and stuff, and they said that is going to be the fate of this area, it's going to be l the Great Plains.

Instead of growing corn, we would have to grow wheat because the water won't be adequate for corn and beans, which it is now.

But who knows in the future?

[Elizabeth] Well, actually, it makes me remember I worked here and I was actually down here when it flooded, so I had to go all the way down, what is it, Grafton Hills Road?

And come around because I couldn't even get down Route 3 and come through because it was all the way up there.

We had like, sandbags.

There's some bad memories here too, but mainly good ones.

I try to think of the good memories and good things I do.

And I still come down here.

So, as you can see, we're down here today, so it's just peaceful.

[Dawn] Water is very healing.

[Elizabeth] It is.

I like to be around water, whether it be the river, creek.

I walk creeks, look for arrowheads here too.

That's healing to me and soothing, big time.

[Dawn] So, I don't know.

It's my turn?

[Elizabeth] Yes.

What are your thoughts?

[Dawn] Mine aren't as nice as yours.

[Elizabeth] Okay.

Well, I try to keep it nice.

[Dawn] The thing that stuck out to me when she was talking was the word "abandon."

Because I used to live here.

I had to abandon the place and leave an unhealthy relationship.

So, you actually caught me here doing therapy for myself.

So, most of my memories aren't too good, but one of my favorites is this particular spot because this was my escape.

I would come down here and I would meditate, and I'd bring my tarot cards and collect myself so that I could get myself through what I knew might be another terrible night.

But I got through it and I'm out, so it's all good.

[Elizabeth] And I'm still learning a lot from my friend, Dawn.

And, I mean, she's helped me through a lot already, just for the short time that we've known each other.

Seriously.

I'm sorry.

I don't mean to.

[Dawn] Usually I'm the crier, but I'm actually keeping it together.

[Elizabeth] Good for you.

See, you're making progress.

That's good.

[Mariah] We're here for a conference for environmental engineering.

I do stuff with wastewater.

We're looking at biotar, which is similar to charcoal or, like, activated carbon.

So, we're looking to see if it can stimulate degradation of micro pollutants in wastewater.

I haven't gotten to that part in my research yet, but I hope it improves wastewater treatment.

Specifically like, we want to target these trace contaminants.

Wastewater treatment processes aren't designed to treat these kinds of contaminants.

It's designed to treat like, the bulk nutrients that enter our systems.

So, a lot of times these contaminants are released into the environment.

So, we're just hoping to prevent that from happening more than it already is.

People come to conferences to interact with other scientists and people in their field, and learn about their research and get ideas and share ideas.

So, I think that experience in and of itself is very refreshing because we get to come home after that and you have all of these new ideas, and it kind of like refreshes your own work in your mind because you thought about it from different perspectives.

Like, I feel like your experience in a place is heavily impacted by what you're doing in that space.

So like, I think generally being here is just like very rejuvenating.

[Christopher] I'm a pilot.

I used to work in China and Covid closed my job, so I came back and I was looking for a new job.

And in the search, I ended up at a conference.

I actually ended up opening up some doors that were unexpected.

At the time before Covid, I didn't know if I was going to stay overseas working as an expat or bring my life back to the U.S.

Before I knew it, I had five interviews lined up and that was prior to the U.S.

closing down, then obviously it closed down and a lot of those doors closed.

And I went through 2020 at a point where I just enjoyed being home and I was able to enjoy friends and family and talking to some other of my friends that had been in the same boat.

A lot of us realized what people had taken for granted sometimes.

But now it's on the road a lot, so it's back to the lifestyle that I was kind of used to.

Though when you're home, you kind of take it in and enjoy what you can.

Whether it's a day or two at home or three days, whatever it is, and let the other things pass by.

You'll get to them eventually.

[Rilee] I mean, I don't really know.

That was just a hard time in general for everything.

[Keith] It ruined a lot.

A lot of small businesses closed.

[Rilee] I think it ruined a lot of relationships.

[Keith] It definitely drove a wedge between me and my dad.

Us being together too much just kind of pushed us both away from each other.

[Rilee] I was in sophomore year, I'd just turned 16, and I was like, "Yay," because I could finally drive and then... [Keith] Covid kind of like ruined the high school experience for all of us.

Like, what is the high school experience.

We never really got the full gist of high school I guess.

[Cassandra] We only had one year of being an upperclassman.

[Rilee] Yeah.

I hated it it.

It was just sort of one of the worst times, I think, ever in life.

And it was kind of, you know, a little lonely.

My mom wouldn't let me ever go out because it was like, "Don't get Covid."

And I was like, "I just want to go see my friends."

[Cassandra] I think the biggest was Covid changed people.

So, once you went back to school, it was just like, Oh, who are you again?

You're acting totally different."

[Keith] I get a different vibe anytime you go into public anymore.

It's not what it once was, I guess.

I think it's forever impacting what we know as society today.

[Rilee] You're always cautious no matter what.

[Keith] You don't feel connected to the world as much like as before.

I don't know if that makes any sense at all.

[Rilee] Personally, myself, I'm outside all the time.

I love being outside.

I have a pool in my backyard that I'm literally in every single day, and I go for a drive all the time.

There's a bug crawling on me.

Yeah.

I like being by myself a lot, but sometimes being by myself is almost too much because I get in my head a lot.

That's why it's nice to have them in my car with me, just driving around listening to music.

And it's really almost freedom because I'm like, away from everything else.

[Cassandra] I would say the same you know.

Like, I'm with him like, 24/7.

But when I'm by myself, I don't know.

I have that freedom from getting with my parents.

Mostly I don't have a great relationship with them.

But I don't know, just getting away from everything and being with all my friends.

[Keith] Definitely that.

Like, it's like a getaway just listening to music, not having to worry about anything, just drive.

[Mary Ann] I'm excited to be here tonight at the FedEx Forum.

I love his music.

I'm a fan of his.

And a couple of years ago, my son got to open for Kirk Franklin right here at the FedEx Forum.

When I was younger, I used to like to go to clubs and dance a lot, and listen to Prince and Rick James and, you know.

So, now I like to, you know, just come to hear Kirk and to share this experience with so many people.

I grew up not too far from here, and when I used to go on Beale Street it just was nothing.

And to see the resurrection of Beale Street, and to see how much it is different from when I was a teenager.

Because when they had the Beale Street redevelopment, I was about 15, 16 years old.

I mean, all of this was just dirt.

And to see all of this transformed, you know, I feel like I live two lives, you know what I'm saying?

And all of these restaurants that are now booming and all these tourists that are here traveling and just come here from all over the world just to experience what Memphis is truly about because Memphis gets so much negative press, but all the negativity is always exploited.

And that's all they show.

I mean, every city has crime, but Memphis is a beautiful city to live in.

So it's just-- Okay, these are my girls calling me.

I'm going to pause it.

Hey, where are you at?

[Jasmen] So, my name is Jasmen, and I created a vegan business.

And what made me come up with this idea was the fact that there is a lack of healthy food options in urban communities.

I'm not from Memphis.

I'm from Knoxville.

We moved here at a young age.

So as an adult, I moved in North Memphis, which is a predominantly African American community, and I noticed that the area just struggles with having healthy food options.

I lost my grandmother due to health issues from being obese, and it just kind of like sparked something in me.

It was like, okay, this has to be known.

Like, people need to learn about how to take care of themselves because there's a lot of people that don't know or don't have people to push them, and I want to be that person.

And knowing that I am that person, it means the world to me.

It makes me get up every day.

It gives me a reason to keep pushing, keep fighting, and to be the best person that I can be so that I can be a great example to other people.

[Alan] I moved here because of my wife.

I joined the fire department and I'm also with the police force.

My biggest goal in life is actually to help my community.

It's very empowering.

A very righteous feeling.

It's not every day that you get to run into a burning building and save somebody.

It's not every day that you get to go to a call and actually save somebody's life from an entrapment or anything like that.

So, I try to be a positive influence on the younger generations, which is really hard to do due to the TV content we have nowadays.

It's not like growing up and you seeing cops like, oh, well, we don't need to do that.

But it is a very important influence as far as the fire department and the police department.

We try to get out there and actually encourage everybody to be the best people they can be.

The conditions are pretty dry, so we're hoping for not a lot of grass fires, but it's looking like it's a possibility.

It's been that way for a couple of weeks now.

We did get a little bit of rain, and it didn't quite pan out as well as we wanted to, so there's always the possibility of the runs.

[Johnny] Well, my name is Johnny and I like to meet strangers and nice people, and the town is full of nice people.

And we enjoy meeting y'all too.

The river, y'all are following the river down, and it's a beautiful scenery.

A lot of culture.

A lot of fishing.

The refineries on the river, the barges.

It's a unique thing that y'all see.

But the river itself, you know, it was a roadway to all, and production of oil, and the start of America really, you know.

We used to hike Vicksburg, the national park, when I was in the Boy Scouts.

We would start in the morning and hike all day.

Eighteen-mile hike.

We used to just be kids and love it.

Run up the hill and be worn slap out.

You know, just tired.

We called them old men, you know, our Scout masters, which really wasn't that old back then.

But they would walk and tell us histories, stories, and we'd go to the monuments, and we'd have to document and write down different things as we went and hiked.

A lot of history on that Civil War, you know.

That's a beautiful place.

Beautiful.

Now, this overlook here in Natchez is one of the most prettiest places that I've seen the river from.

This is neat with the history of Natchez, with the riverboats, you know, you know, the old town part.

That's the two prettiest places on the river that I've seen, and y'all lucky to see it yourselves.

[Chesney] So, I'm one of many people who was born and bred here in Natchez, who left and had a career and then came home, like many of my friends who've done the same thing.

I never really did leave.

You know, Natchez was always home.

You know, my parents were here, my grandparents were here.

I had a brother here.

And I think that others share that story.

For so long, Natchez marketed itself from 1932 forward, as a place where you could come experience that "Gone With the Wind" myth.

Which of course, was exactly that, a myth.

We celebrated our tricentennial in 2016.

So that was 300 years of history.

And during that 2016 year, the Tricentennial organization put on programs practically every day.

And people went, and a lot of them were about our history.

A lot of them were about racial strife, slavery, civil rights and, you know, the ongoing issues of racial divide.

And during that year, everyone, black and white, local and afar, learned so much about the past.

Prior to 2016, there were things we couldn't talk about, that we were uncomfortable talking about.

Even something as seemingly objective as the state flag that had a Confederate rebel emblem on it.

These were difficult topics, but after 2016, people can talk.

There are no taboo subjects.

And I only see forward movement from there.

I mean, you know, here we are on Main Street, for instance, and I see three Black owned businesses just right here.

Three may not sound like a great number but it's a small town, so this is big.

To me, these buildings do talk.

You know, they're not just brick and mortar.

They're family members.

All these buildings have had stories to tell.

And the other thing that's so magnificent that I think draws us all home again and again and again is the river.

The view of the river is our Grand Canyon.

I mean, we have the greatest view of the greatest river in North America.

And sometimes you don't realize that growing up here.

You have to leave and go live in the big city and see other places and experience other things to realize what is so great about a small town where, you know, you know everybody, you know their history, you knew their grandparents, your grandparents knew their grandparents, your great grandparents knew their great grandparents, and so on.

We're all in this together here in Natchez.

And I think that in the future you're going to really see Natchez showing people how it's done, how to come together in a small town, even when you have a difficult history.

[Yolanda] All right, well, let's go.

So, the beautiful city of New Roads that we're in right now, we have so many things that's going on: boat rides.

We have the boat parade.

Today right now, I'm here with my son and my grandchildren.

And my family has been here from day one, and it's just very homey.

So much going on in the world, and where I'm living at is so low key.

It's not a lot of violence going on.

Not saying violence don't happen here, but it's not violence like you hear everywhere else.

Once you live in this community, you start having relationships with other people.

Like, for instance, there's one jewelry store.

I mean, like, I went in there a couple times and like, now I could go in the jewelry store and he'd be like, "Hey, just take it back, take it with you, and you just pay me whenever."

I'm like, "What?"

He's like, "Yes, just take it and we'll catch you later."

And you know, and I'm like, okay.

So, yeah.

So, once you, you know, start to get to know people, you start trusting and building that relationship.

Just being American is just the most beautiful thing ever to me.

So yes, it touches me.

And like, all that, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of rights.

So, everything is just about freedom, you know.

It just means so much to me.

[Sofie] Well, she was talking about how it seemed like this kind of sense of trust and unity that was in the community around her.

I mean, I've been sitting here for a little while fixing my bike, and a lot of people have walked past me, not even looked at me.

Like, I'm a little girl trying to fix my bike and like, I could use some assistance maybe.

I don't need it, but like, I look like I do, and people would walk past me and not even look at me.

Act like I'm not there.

And this one guy rode by on his bike, and he was like, "Hey, you need some help?"

And immediately I'm like, "Scary man.

No."

Right?

And so, I say, Oh no.

No, thank you, sir.

I'm good. And he kind of picked up on how I immediately shut it down and not even consider it because like, it's a stranger and he's a man and I don't trust him.

And like, that's scary for me.

I think that's so sad.

So, hearing her talk about how that sense of community and that sense of unity that she was experiencing is really pretty, especially on, you know, a national day where we can come together.

And it's sad that the world sometimes feels too scary to do that, I think.

I've never been too much of a patriot, but like, I grew up in redneck Texas and there's such a strong sense of pride and I've never really gotten into, like, that big sense of spirit.

But I love holidays like this.

Like I was just talking the other day about how much I love Thanksgiving despite, like, the historical significance of it.

Like, I love that you just get together and eat and have fun with your family.

Like, that's such a blessing.

And I think July 4th is one of those two where it's just like, kick back with your friends, eat a bunch of food, have some fun, like regardless of-- Am I proud to be an American today?

No.

No, I don't think a lot of us can say that.

But I think it can still be an awesome occasion, even if America is not the best at the moment.

[Lynne] I think it's pretty sad that people are fearful of each other these days.

We, as a nation, we should be united.

That's what we stand for, is united, and we're basically separate.

I mean, everyone has different views, but that doesn't mean that we can't sit and listen and talk things out.

It sends my heart that we can't do that.

We've been around for a while, and we remember the days when people could disagree and still be friends.

And now it's like, if you don't agree with someone, you're their enemy.

But I have hope.

I have hope in our nation.

I have hope in our young people.

I think what y'all are doing is probably something that will help people think about things.

And I'm going to get emotional because it is a very emotional thing for me.

But I also come to things like this because I love the United States of America.

And I think that we stand for what is right and we work together, that we can make this a good place for everybody to live.

[Doug] Both of us work at a camp and conference center about half an hour from here.

We've been doing this type of work for 35 years together.

This past week is kind of, for me, what it's all about.

We had campers that were National Guard kids, their parents were in the National Guard and a lot of them were deployed and all that.

So, they brought in these kids and gave them a free week of camp, and they learned to do stuff like their parents.

You know, they marched in formation, and they raised the flag every morning and lowered it every evening.

The last big day they were there, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard flew in on a Black Hawk helicopter and spent 3 or 4 hours with the kids just talking to them and telling them how important their job is to support their parents in what they do.

And it was just-- It's real emotional to us.

[Lynne] It's kept us young.

We're about to retire, but it's kept us young because we're doing the rock walls and we're doing the creative things with the campers.

And it's just fun to watch them, to see them grow in their creativity.

[Doug] You see a kid struggle for 30 minutes to get up the rock wall, but then they finally do it, and all of his friends or her friends down on the ground are cheering them.

It just builds them up and gives them confidence to do more in their lives.

So, it's really neat to live through that with the kids.

[Lynne] We have kids from all backgrounds, and adults that come during the year to our place, and they come together, and just more opportunities like that, I think, helps bring people together.

Things like this.

I mean, you see people from all walks of life here and they're enjoying themselves and having a good time.

I sat here because we were watching the little ones roll down the hill and thinking of our grandkids that are in Texas and California, thinking they'd be fun to be watching, doing the same thing.

So just more opportunities like this, I think that's it.

[Vaun] So, my name is Vaun.

Hearing that audio kind of made me think a lot about my childhood.

Both of my parents were in the military.

My mom and dad were in the Army.

And as a matter of fact, next year I'll be going into the military.

I'm going to be a Marine, though, so I'm going to go that route.

It was kind of like, scary, because I used to tell myself I would never join the military.

Like, I used to say all the time, military, I'd never do it.

Never do it.

Never do it.

I can say I used to be kind of resentful in a sense, not going to lie.

My dad was gone a lot.

He's been deployed like eight times.

And my mom was gone a lot.

And, you know, she has to do a lot of things at work because they're just really important people there.

And so, it kind of made me feel like, dang, you know, what about me?

But then it kind of hit me one day and I was like, I'm going to get old one day, and I'm going to regret not wanting to see kind of their side of life, because there's a lot of things about them that I never really understood.

As I got older and I understand more about the military.

I understand more about what they do and then, you know, me being grateful for the opportunities that I do have now because of what they did, it kind of makes me really appreciate them now I talk to my mom every single day like.

Before I used to be like, "I don't want to talk.

You left me."

But now I'm like, "Mama, where you at?

Where you at?

Where you at?"

She doesn't answer when I call and I'm like, "She don't love me anymore."

You know, all that stuff.

So, I really appreciate what they did.

I really love them for doing it, and I want to follow in their footsteps in a sense, you know.

I'm excited for it.

Kind of like when kids have parents who do sports and things like that, and they say, "I want to be like that."

I said, "Better is going to be me."

My parents are in the military.

I want to be the best soldier that I can be.

[Miles] Well, I guess I'll just tell you what's going on with me right now, which is it's like an emotional time because I'm leaving New Orleans and leaving Louisiana.

I've lived here for the past 10 years, and I've moved here when I was 19 years old and just really wanted to check out a different part of the country from where I grew up.

And I came to love it so much here.

And today is the day that I'm packing up a U-Haul and leaving.

And I've been coming to this Tree of Life here, like, every day with my dog for the past five years.

So, this is one of the last times I get to do it.

It's kind of nice that I ran into you guys and get to just declare that one last time.

This is a place where I can run into strangers, but we all have the shared reason for being here, which is these oak trees that have been here for hundreds of years.

People just appreciate being underneath these trees.

Some people like to come here and meditate, and they're really deliberate about trying to feel the energy of the place.

But then other people just come here because they think it's pretty, or because they want to take photos, or because they want to sit in the shade.

And I think they're all kind of like the same reason, which is just like this: you could be the richest guy in the world, and you couldn't buy one of these trees because they just can't be moved and they can't be grown without anything but time.

Louisiana has one of the highest nativity rates.

That's what they call it, where the percentage of people that were born here that remain in this state compared to other states, and basically that just showed me that I should return to where I'm from and try to establish the same types of roots that I see people here have.

All my coworkers going to these crawfish boils with their family, and they're inviting me, and I come along and it's great, but it's really just not the same as when you're with your own family.

I always say that if my family was from here, I would stay here forever, but they're not, and I'm just really excited to try to go and establish the same connections that I see people here having with their families, remaining in place and sticking to that place, even through all the troubles and all the challenges, especially.

Almost nowhere in the world can match up to the types of challenges that people face here.

So, I feel like if they can do it then I can do that where I'm from.

I think a lot of it has to do with the geography and the history of this land, and the fact that it's relatively isolated.

It takes a long time to get here.

The way that you all came down here is like the only way that you could reach this place, up until the past century, when they finally built bridges into New Orleans.

Up until then, you could only get here by water.

And so, I think people were just either forced to become self-sufficient down here and reliant on one another, and they just enjoyed doing it, too.

So that's kind of my best guess as to how it became so ingrained in this place, as opposed to anywhere else.

[Edward] I'm in my late 50s.

I have lived in Louisiana for almost 25 years, and I probably will never go back to where I'm from because there's no employment there and my family connections are fading in those places.

I am not from here, and I don't feel like I'm from here, and I will probably never feel like I'm from here.

And I feel like I'm living in a place that will be gone very soon.

The climate stuff here is grueling.

It's really grueling.

My wife's family is from Baton Rouge, and Baton Rouge, three or four years ago, had like one of the biggest floods that it's ever had.

And the explanation for the flooding is that because of climate change, our clouds are now physically larger, which is so insane as to be almost incomprehensible.

And last year we were evacuated here during Hurricane Ida, I think for three weeks.

We had on our street over there a tornado that came down the backyards of the opposite side of the street, and then we kind of ran and huddled in the closet.

And then we had, I think it was Hurricane Zeta.

We were in the eye.

If you're following what's happening with the Louisiana coast, you know, like when you look at a map and Louisiana is a big boot, the whole bottom part of the boot is gone.

So, it's like a shoe without a sole.

And we're so close to the coast, and life in this context just does not seem to me sustainable.

And looking at what's happening with women's reproductive rights and the decline of democracy and all this kind of stuff, it's just like another thing in the mix that it's just so hard to process.

You know, the way people used to talk about climate denial, kind of focusing on the people that deny that it's real.

I think, like, everybody suffers from some version of denial because registering what's happening is just too overwhelming.

Like people simply cannot register the intensity of how bad things are and what it means.

And it's heartbreaking for me because I'm like an old father and I have little kids.

And, you know, it's hard for me to-- [sniffling through tears] Sorry.

It's hard to imagine the future for them.

You know, I have a neighborhood community here that's stronger.

Sorry.

[sniffling through tears] Stronger than any place I've ever lived.

My neighbor across the street, we have become really close friends, and he is my closest friend now.

I know a lot of people on my street and in the area that are people I wouldn't have known through work, and I know them and know their families.

So, the community here, it is truly amazing.

And I've heard people talk about that as a New Orleans thing, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.

And when I think about how much I want to get out of here and how I probably won't, that's the thing that is really heartbreaking.

[Richie] We're about 60 miles south of New Orleans along the Mississippi River.

You know, I've lived here most of my life.

I really enjoyed living here.

It's a dynamic place, right, that kind of keeps you on your toes.

And it ties me to what the planet is doing and saying, whether that's the daily stuff like the weather, right?

Or the water levels or the tides.

And then over the years, I've been able to see some of the larger changes.

And so, I mean, it helps center me and ground me to the earth and to the sea in a way that makes my soul complete.

You know, as soon as you learn something, you have to relearn the landscape and just kind of flow like water like the river does out into the sea here, in order to get by.

So, I mean, the Mississippi built this whole place, right, over the last 10,000 years.

The Mississippi used to work its way across the landscape like a water hose would work its way across your backyard, right.

And so, when the river was up here in the continent, you know, the flows are very fast.

The heavy sediments stay suspended.

And then when the river gets out here, the flow fans out across the gulf, the flow slows down, sediment falls out, logjams come in, vegetation starts to grow, and some of these deltas could get many feet above sea level.

And so, people used to live in this really productive landscape.

They would pool their efforts and labor together to do that.

When the Europeans got here, they just had a much different form of land ownership, right.

It was more individualistic, and we started managing the third largest watershed on the planet, more as like a big navigation ditch.

We didn't want to paddle uphill, so we just started plugging up all these distributaries, right.

And so, we have this situation now where the sediment is jettisoned off the continental shelf.

And so, these wetland areas that we're in now just cut off from sediment that it needs to sustain it.

You can still see the towers and such from Buras right across the river, a little town here.

Like two thirds of the population has left there since Hurricane Katrina.

So, it's been experiencing some of the losses of humanity during the landscape for just shortsighted economic gains.

Louisiana's lost something like 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s, right.

So, there's, you know, a lot of changes.

There were 150 fishing camps out here when I was a kid.

I'm 35.

There's seven now.

It's not just structures, right It's part of the culture too that's sort of going away.

The thing is, the other side of the river is completely opposite in this.

The river is breaking free and building land.

Nobody's over there working.

It's kind of cool to see, you know.

It's just like nature doing nature.

The humans are so wrapped up in their rules that they've created for themselves that nature finally is kind of getting out ahead of the human destruction.

So, people are still trying to figure out how to live here and kind of live within the bounds of nature.

And I think humanity has to realize that, right.

We've had all these developments throughout human history that have led to our success, right.

Just our consumptive nature in general.

Why we're having these problems is what led us to be successful as a species.

When we figured out fire and then tools, and then later on, agriculture.

And now, we had these different revolutions, the industrial, the medical, and the digital, and the next big thing that humanity has to deal with is learning to live within the bounds of nature so this planet doesn't shake us off like a dog shakes off water.

The things that the planet is telling us and the way humanity chooses to react, often without a sense of urgency, leaves me really concerned.

Nature has an astounding ability to heal itself if we let it and gently guide it, right.

And that's kind of how we're going to get through it.

There's going to be people that are going to have to die for this, right?

There's going to be people that are going to have to negotiate with people that they absolutely hate.

There's going to be people that change their daily actions, their daily choices, for us to get through these things, right.

You know, together we can get through this, but there's going to be some heavy lifts.

It's easy for humanity to create problems.

It takes a little bit more thought to put things off in the right direction.

I think each and every one of us, just within our own lives, needs to start bending the arc kind of from within and demanding that we have to get outside of the silos and realize that everything is interconnected, and this river has shown people that.

I went to Lake Itasca a few years back.

And so, I get there and there's just, you know, there's this family from Iowa, and they spend their summers on their pontoon boat on the river.

And then there is this tugboat captain from like Arkansas, and he had wanted to see the headwaters this whole life.

And it was me from down here, you know, at the sea.

And, you know, it was just serendipitous.

And it just really made me realize just how much the river connects us all.