Samantha Brown's Places to Love

-I'm in a destination known for its incredible lakes and rivers.

It's a region where farmlands to waterfalls are protected and where the beauty of the land inspires a silence when life becomes too amplified.

It's a place that honors the past, but is also making space for its future, creating an element of surprise with the beauty that you come for and the strong sense of humanity you leave with, a destination that's both a salve and a celebration.

I did that, Lily!

I'm in Livingston County, the heart of the Genesee River Valley of New York.

I'm Samantha Brown, and I've traveled all over this world.

And I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and, most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.

That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" is made possible by... [ Bird chirping ] -The rhythm of the waves.

The calming sounds of nature.

On the Southwest Florida coast, there are wide-open beaches and hundreds of islands.

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Learn more at fortmyers-sanibel.com.

-We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

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-The Genesee River Valley is located in the western part of the Empire State, New York.

Even though it's located in the Finger Lakes region, I'll be spending time in the small towns closer to the Genesee River, which cuts through one of the country's most magnificent state parks.

This is what brings people here.

In the fall, everyone comes here for the leaves, right?

But then in the spring, it's the waterfall.

-That's right.

-This is one of how many here?

-Three major waterfalls.

But if you count the temporary waterfalls, it form when it rains, we have hundreds.

-Sharing space with the waterfalls is a gorge so deep and sinuous that it gives the area the nickname Grand Canyon of the East.

I have lived in the state of New York almost my entire adult life.

Actually, my entire adult life, and I had no idea that this state park existed.

I mean, it's been on the map for how many hundreds of millions of years.

-Hundreds of millions.

-Hundreds of millions.

It is gorgeous.

-Every people who discovered Letchworth, they always knew there was really something sacred about this.

William Pryor Letchworth -- He knew that lots of industries would want to exploit it.

He donated that land to New York state on one condition -- You cannot build a dam anywhere on that original 1,000 acres.

And no one ever did, and that legacy of trying to conserve and protect this land and share with others as recreation land for all, that's what's really important to Letchworth State Park.

-And that legacy continues to evolve with the newly-created walking trail that is specifically designed for inclusivity.

-I'm Gail Serventi, and I am one of the three co-founders of the Autism Nature Trail at Letchworth State Park.

The Autism Nature Trail is a 1-mile loop, and it is comprised of eight different stations, seven of which are sensory oriented.

-What about this environment makes it specifically for people with autism?

-The majority of individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have sensory processing issues.

So, each of our stations is devoted to a different sense.

-The Autism Nature Trail is the first one of its kind in the United States, and one of its advisors was Temple Grandin, who gave seven guiding principles, one of which is that the trail has to be in deep nature.

Another is that there must be consistent and predictable elements.

-All throughout the trail, we have these three little stone markers that look like little snowmen.

-Mm-hmm.

-And they will help to guide the visitor all the way through the trail.

-One of the most popular stations is called the Playful Path.

-The genesis of this area is to help individuals with balance and gross motor skills and understanding their body positioning in space.

So we have all of these little log stumps to either hop on, jump on, or do alternating footsteps.

Further on ahead, we have some stones that you will use an alternating stepping pattern that was very purposeful.

We have devoted the trail to developing the senses.

Everything is designed to allow visitors with autism and other developmental disabilities to push boundaries and explore new activities.

Program coordinator Jen Hackett walked me along the just-laid-down cut through path and explained why a half point departure route is important.

-If doing half the trail is all they can do the first to visit, then the goal would be that next time, they do a little bit more.

But we want it to be a path where they could leave and walk out and still feel some sort of sense of success.

-Jen's dog Quinn is even being trained to help children who have a danger of eloping or bolting if something becomes uncomfortable for them.

For the typical Joe, we just see a nature trail.

And yet, there is nothing but strategies, and it's all to make the person with ASD feel calm and that this is their place and for families to feel that this is their place.

-Yeah.

-It's a trail that encourages empathy, and I love that.

-So, when did you first realize that you love to cook, -Like, since I was a kid, I was always in love with the kitchen.

It was my passion.

I think that's why it always comes to having a place to cook.

Mi nombre es Melanie Alvarez Santiago.

Soy originario de Puerto Rico.

I moved here in 2017, into Livingston County.

-I have stood on mountains that were smaller than this plate of mofongo.

This is one of the largest portions I've ever seen of your national dish ever.

-As Puerto Ricans, it's very hard to serve little.

[ Both laugh ] We always serve, like, a lot.

-Obviously, these seem to me like very traditional recipes.

Were those recipes from your grandmother?

Like, where does that begin?

-I can't say it's from one place because it is like a mixture of everything that I've been experiencing since I started cooking.

-Mm-hmm.

-So, like, the mofongo, for instance.

It is a very traditional way that we want to always make it and keep it how it was from the beginning.

-Mm-hmm.

-So we use a piln with a maceta, which is to make -- to smash it.

-I mean, to smash it, right?

It's like that stone... -Yeah.

So we use like a wooden one.

-Okay.

-But then, like, a lot of people have upgraded their method to do the the food.

Like, they use blenders and things like that, and we want to keep it, like, the traditional way because I feel with a cultural history side of it, it gives, like, that touch to it that you can't find with something that is made out of, like, with a blender or things like that.

-She finishes her mofongo with a broth, and it can be stuffed with pork, chicken, or shrimp.

Melanie was able to fulfill her dream of opening a restaurant through an innovative countywide competition called Dream of Eight.

Each year, 15 entrepreneurs are chosen based on their business plans and are awarded essential resources to make that dream a reality.

She brought a new food experience to historic Mount Morris.

-It's still like a teaching restaurant, so we have a lot of customers that have never tried a plantain in their life.

We teach every dish to the customers because we want them to know what they're eating and to know the history about us.

So, there has been definitely a lot of a good feedback from customers that have never tried it, and then this is their first experience with that kind of food.

So, it is really good when you see a person that never tried your food and they like it.

It makes my heart full of joy, definitely.

[ Choir sings indistinctly ] [ Bell tolling ] [ Bird chirping ] [ Singing continues ] -I'm father Isaac Slater.

I'm a Trappist monk at the Abbey of the Genesee, near Genesee, New York.

[ Organ plays ] We're a cloistered and contemplative community.

So that means that we stay in one place, and we focus on the search for union with God.

It's a life that's very structured and also very free and spacious at the same time.

So the day is broken up into segments of prayer in church, and then times of manual work and private prayer and reading.

-Just looking around this landscape that I see, with the pond and the farmland and these open vistas, that must play a really important part in terms of the contemplation that happens here and that ability to remain silent.

-Yeah, I think that's really true.

You know, I lived in a large city before I came to the monastery, and you're constantly inundated by billboards, advertising, flashing lights, possible threats.

The back of your mind is always scanning.

You know, you're always on edge, but you don't really realize it till you come to an environment like this one, and you can finally sort of let your guard down, a guard you didn't even know you were keeping up, in your pores, spiritually, kind of open, and you're able to relax and just settle into the experience of being alive on a whole other level.

-The monks are cloistered, but the public is welcome to visit.

One of the most important ways the Abbey interacts with the community is through their Monks bread.

It's sold across the United States, but all the baking is, of course, done right here.

The bakery started right from the very beginning.

Trappist monks are famous for working hard with their hands and supporting themselves by the work of their own hands.

And often, Trappist monasteries operate a bakery as we do, or they make beer or cheese or a product like that.

-I happen to be there when they were rolling out a new biscotti line.

-The almond coconut.

-Mmm!

-The coconut orange.

-I love that as monks who are devoted to silence, you choose a really loud cookie.

[ Laughs ] [ Cookie crunches ] Mmm!

But making a clamorous confection is just good business.

The advantages to that is that we can better tailor that process to the limits of our monastic day, and it also has the advantage of being able to include some of the older monks who can't manage in the large commercial bakery, which is on a different scale.

They can be involved and included in the packaging of the products and so on.

So, there's a little more flexibility, also.

You know, you can stop and start in a different way that you can't with baking fresh bread for the grocery store.

-We've all gone through this year, this pandemic that has changed everything, and we've all been sort of forced into isolation and contemplation.

And these are two words that monks know well.

So what is your advice for people of how to go forward?

-I think people are figuring it out for themselves, that silence and spaciousness reveals the fault lines.

It's revealing the fault lines in individual personalities.

Each of us is struggling in the increased isolation.

We're noticing things that we didn't notice before about ourselves.

And as a society also, we're noticing imbalances, injustices to a greater degree.

Everything's amplified in that environment of greater silence and solitude.

You can pay attention more when you have some distance.

If you don't have some distance, you can't appreciate your environment.

If you spend time away from people, then when you go back to being with people, you appreciate them in a fresh way.

We've all had that experience, you know?

-So trust the silence.

-If you form the habit of living close to the silence, then it makes it easier.

[ Birds chirping ] -Shawn Dunwoody is an artist and mural painter who believes that to make strong public art, you should involve the public.

-And what we're going to do here is we're working on this wall.

I'm glad you made it out today, so you're going to create what's going to be here for a long time.

I'm joining Shawn today to help the Livonia community paint a brand new mural.

The town wanted to take an alley of cinder blocks and make it beautiful so that something that was avoided now becomes a gathering place.

-It becomes one of those markers where you say, "Meet me at the flowers, please.

Meet me at the flowers."

-[ Laughs ] But earlier that day, I met him in the nearby town of Mount Morris to see one of his most elaborate and celebrated works, which centers on the original Pledge of Allegiance, written by Francis Bellamy.

-He was from Mount Morris, and so in his original pledge, it did not have anything about the United States or anything about God, and he himself was a pastor.

But he wanted everyone around the world to be able to have pride in their community, be able to celebrate and to celebrate by pledging allegiance to their flag, wherever they may be.

-So the author of the Pledge of Allegiance wrote the pledge, and it didn't mention the United States, -And it did not mention God, yes.

-Whoa!

-Yes.

And that's why, when I found out his original pledge that he had written, I asked the town, "Is that okay?"

I asked the village, "Is that okay?"

If I actually put this on the wall?

-His own words?

-Yeah.

-And they said exactly.

-I would hope so.

Shawn's strength in public art clearly comes from his strength in being a community leader.

-I never thought I'd be able to do this.

-Why did you think that?

Why couldn't you ever do something like this?

You're an artist.

You create.

Keep making it happen.

That's what it's all about.

You're awesome.

Keep it going.

Don't stop the flow.

I'm sitting across the street, and I saw the New Family Theater, and I figured that's what Mount Morris is about.

It's about new families.

It's about the new birth.

That's what this area has always been about.

So, that's why that marquee is there.

And so when you look at this piece, it's really about the base of the... the indigenous people.

We have the immigrants coming in to Mount Morris, and then it's all in black and white, and as we see, it goes to color, and that's where we start to add the new faces that are here.

So I literally took photographs of students and children who were in the neighborhood and put them in the wall.

-And I love that, what that says.

It says, "Okay.

When you live here, sure, there was history, and we need to be proud of history, but we are a part of the future and that we're just as important as what started this town.

-We keep moving forward.

We understand that we can't be divided.

We have to be united if we're going to build a legacy, a town, and a future.

I'm at the Genesee Country Village and Museum, founded in western New York in 1996.

The village comprises of 68 structures from 11 different counties.

The Genesee Country Village is the largest living history museum in New York state, with structures and exhibits ranging from pioneer cabins from the late 1700s through to the gaslit towns and homes from the dawn of the 20th century.

On select weekends throughout the year, it's possible to partake in your own pioneer experience firsthand.

The museum offers an intensive two-day immersion, tackling the chores and learning the skills required as a settler in the early 1800s.

You can also choose a specific trade like learning the skills of the village's much-in-demand cooper.

-Think of barrels prior to the Civil War as the cardboard boxes of today.

The fundamental part of any coopered item is the stave.

-Okay.

-If you look at it carefully, you'll notice that there's an angle on both sides here.

If you look at this angle that we have on both sides.

And that angle is determined by how many staves are in a piece we're making.

-Coopering is a visual motor memory skill and how those angles become precise is what I, as an apprentice, will be learning.

-So, to cut that angle, what you have to do is, you have to hold it at an angle and pass it over this very sharp blade.

-So, how in-demand would a cooper be?

-Very much in demand, okay?

-And just making these buckets?

-Well, making buckets and barrels and butter churns, wash tubs.

Everything was shipped in barrels.

-Next, I learned hollowing and rounding, which I have to get on a horse for.

-We sit at the shading horse, and this is nothing but a big clamp that the cooper can control with his feet, because, of course, we have to use both hands with our draw knives.

[ Sinister music plays ] -You want to try?

-Yeah, absolutely.

I really don't.

That's a very scary knife.

-And you have to push your foot on the pedal down.

-What does that do?

-That tightens up this.

-Oh, oh, I see.

The clamp.

-So, you hold it, right.

-Yeah, yeah, this is the guy I'm worried about.

-[ Laughs ] How much do I want that -- -So just keep it about like that and pull it towards you.

-I'm going to start out slow, Jerry, if you don't mind, -Start in the middle.

Do it in the middle.

There you go, see?

-Oh, 'cause I'm hollowing it out.

-You want to hollow out the middle.

Right.

Exactly.

-Yeah.

So, let's turn it over and do the other side now.

-Now, for the rounding, which I liked better, I'm just taking the edges off.

-Do the other side.

-And now that the staves are rounded, it's time to put the bucket together.

-Narrow end is up.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

And in the end, is there going to be anything that keeps these staves intact, like a glue or tar?

-Glue?!

-A sap?

A sap?

A sap?

-We use no glue, no sap!

-I did not say glue.

-No tar.

-Okay.

And here I thought this was going to be the easier task.

-I think you've lost it, Samantha.

[ Laughs ] -I don't have a bucket to you-know-what in right now.

-That's right.

[ Both laugh ] -Linwood Gardens, built in the 1900s, is a private residence that opens up to the public for warm weather events, like when the garden is coming into bloom.

This seemed like a perfect place to reconnect in person with a colleague and friend.

-I'm Carol Kane, and I'm a travel writer who's traveled all over the world and bonded with communities everywhere I go.

-I love it, Carol.

Just think about it.

Like, last year this time, we were mourning the loss of seeing our friends physically, in person.

-Right.

No girlfriend get-togethers.

I remember talking to you about that.

-Not at all.

-And here we are.

We just walked under an apple blossom tree together.

-I'm a Brooklyn girl.

I had Dominican and Puerto Rican parents, and I had the opportunity to visit the Finger Lakes in 2008, and just writing about it came several times, fell in love with it, and made this my forever home.

-What was your perspective of it before you came and got to know it?

-No, I had so many stereotypes in my head of what rural New York -- or rural anything, really -- but yeah, rural New York, and that kept me away and was definitely not a motivator for me to come unless I had to work.

-What do you mean kept you away?

-So, it's just, you know, as a woman of color and then also as a younger person, it felt like there would be nothing to do here.

I would be bored.

-Yeah.

And you bring up such a good point because if you think about it, people who are from the more rural part of anywhere have a bit of distrust and fear for those of us who live in cities and the city itself.

-Right.

-And yet what maybe they don't realize is that people from cities have the same fear... -Exactly.

-...and distrust towards the rural environment.

And it's just because, "Am I gonna be welcome there?"

That's the biggest question.

Am I going to be okay?

-But no, there's -- there's -- It's a welcoming, loving, warm community.

It's just magical.

To me, It's magical.

And I really hope that more and more people get to experience a place like this.

People coming to Livingston County and anywhere in the Finger Lakes will fall in love with the area for the same reasons that I did.

There's a real sense of community here.

There's a warmth.

People like Melanie with her Puerto Rican restaurant help to bring me back home and connect me with my culture and little surprises like that that you wouldn't expect.

What most people will find really endearing is the element of surprise and, of course, all of the beauty.

-You know, now there's an urgency.

There's a responsibility for people to get out into nature.

We know that there are so many health benefits to being out in nature, and we believe our trail will benefit so many people.

-I think that visitors to the Abbey come away with a deepened sense of peace.

It's a place of healing.

There's a very special feel to this place and the monks don't create that.

We just inhabit that.

That's something that comes from another level, and it's beautiful to be able to share that with people who come to stay with us, either just for the day or for an hour or two or who come for a longer stay.

-Since I got here, I noticed that people has a lot of hospitality here, people that will treat you with welcoming vibes, like you are one of their own.

[ Laughter ] -Don't get old!

-It doesn't matter where you come from.

It is a very welcoming place.

-When a destination inspires calm, when that calm leads to understanding, when that understanding brings people together, that is when we share a love of travel.

And that's why the Genesee River Valley in the state of New York is a place to love.

-For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" was made possible by... [ Bird chirping ] -The rhythm of the waves.

The calming sounds of nature.

On the Southwest Florida coast, there are wide-open beaches and hundreds of islands.

Sometimes doing nothing can mean everything.

Learn more at fortmyers-sanibel.com.

-We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ...pedal... ...and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal to ensure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, experienced on a journey by rail.

Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

-The world is full of breathtaking destinations and experiences.

AAA wants to help turn vacation dreams into reality.

Wherever you want to go, AAA has services to help you before, during, and after your trip.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.