Funding for Down the Duck was provided by [birds chirping] [music playing] It might be worth reflecting on the fact that when we first went down there, we went to Old Stone Fort State Park to see if there was enough water in the river to put in where the little duck and the duck come together right there, and there just wasn't.

It's still going to be challenging.

Yeah.

Even with this rain, I think we're in drought condition.

And then once we get through Centerville, it's pretty isolated.

And hopefully, I can do it in about a month.

Yeah.

I think this is-- Oh, OK.

This goes like this.

Yeah.

It's a good thing that I'm going two miles an hour in the canoe.

[music playing] There are no baby pictures of me because when I was born, I had eczema so bad.

My parents had to put socks on my hands just to keep me from scratching my face bloody.

And that turned into asthma.

I spent a year in a hospital in fourth grade.

In my 40s, I was getting pneumonia so frequently, I finally asked my doctor, what's my life expectancy?

And he said, someone with as challenged an immune system as I rarely live past 55.

So when I turned 54, I decided, maybe I need to do something.

Go ahead.

For all of my life, I've been a very successful advertising photographer, but I've always wanted to be an artist.

I wanted to explore the world that God made.

I wanted to go on an adventure.

I put a canoe in my creek, spent two weeks on the Harpeth, made the Cumberland, took it down to the Ohio and to the Mississippi.

And three months later, I came to New Orleans.

So living that life just encouraged me to go forward and do things I'd never done before.

Well, I'd always wanted to do the Duck ever since I took my son down 30 years ago, and we would rent a canoe and paddle for the weekend.

The Duck is a hard river to paddle because of all the dams.

The river can also be kind of dangerous.

It is limestone-based.

If there is a good rain, I read, it can raise as high as 20 feet.

That can put you in considerable danger.

At 75 years of age, it's going to be interesting.

See you guys.

I love you.

That's fine.

The important one.

Yeah, we're headed down to Powers Bridge Road, which will allow me to launch into the Duck River at its most northern site.

We wanted to go further up, but the summer drought has just taken the water out of the river.

[water rushing] [insects chirping] When we scouted the river, we were four inches above the waterline, and it was like I was going to have to just pull the boat.

And now look at the river's top.

I mean, it's a gift.

[music playing] John Guider is an advisory council member of Harpeth Conservancy.

We all know John very well.

He's done signed books for us.

We've used his imagery.

So when we did our endangered rivers campaign, he came to us and said, I love the Duck River, and I've always thought about doing a trip along the Duck River.

Of course, our answer was, absolutely, John.

How can we get involved?

How can we help you?

It really was incredibly fortuitous that he came to us at that time, because we were starting to highlight some of the issues that were going on in the Duck.

We felt that would be just an incredible way to give a very intimate look at the Duck River.

Going off to the side.

I'm going to pick it up.

[music playing] 20 inches.

It was 12 before.

So then we had our communications manager, Jess Martin, who followed his trip.

People knew where he was along the trip, so people could get excited.

Yeah, you're showing.

Where is Waldo, but with John.

Where is John on the river?

Come on.

Come this way.

All right.

I like this country air service.

Hey, I aim to please.

You ready, Jess?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

All right, man.

I'll meet you around the bend and you can pull me out.

All right, have safe travels, dude.

All right, y'all take care.

Thank you.

[music playing] So the Duck River is the longest river in Tennessee that's completely contained within the state lines.

It is the most biodiverse river in all of North America.

Has more different species than any other river in the country.

And if you think about it, the Duck River is much, much smaller than, say, the Colorado River out west, or even the Mississippi.

It is incredibly unique because it flows from basically the Appalachian Mountains down through Middle Tennessee, then down into the Plains.

And so you get a huge variety of different habitats.

Malacologists, muscle scientists, go out here and it's like, they are like a kid in a candy store.

They're like, we survey rivers all the time and have never seen that type of endangered species, and there's five of them all in this one area.

It crosses seven counties.

So it impacts so many different communities.

I like to say, it's the Pearl of Tennessee.

I'm like, it's as epic as Dolly Parton, as all Tennesseans love the Duck River.

It also provides drinking water for all of these communities.

So I think it's about over 250,000 people rely on the Duck for their tap water.

We've got kayakers, canoers, fishermen all over the place on the Duck.

People come to Tennessee to experience these really, really unique areas.

[camera shutters] [water sloshing] Two or three hours before sunset, and that's when I would start to look for a campsite.

The way I camp, it's basically referred to as guerrilla camping.

[music playing] After seven or eight hours of paddling, I'm pretty well exhausted.

I look for something flat.

My tents like a 4 by 8.

I don't mind a bit of an elevation.

The rule of thumb is to be at least five feet above the waterline.

I've been on the Mississippi, where I've been washed out of a campsite, and it's a little crazy.

[insects chirping] [birds singing] [can hisses] I've lucked out.

I've had three incredible campsites.

And it rained, what was it?

Tuesday night it rained.

Things got a little wet.

Everything survived.

[music playing] [music playing] I was near one spot where I couldn't see a bass boat.

It's incredible.

I got to talk to a few folks, and they're nice.

One guy helped me with the campsite, so that was special.

A lot of our big reservoirs here in Tennessee are managed by TVA.

In the case of Normandy Dam, they have a very specific release schedule that they try to abide to.

Obviously, during times of flood, the dam helps hold flood waters back.

And then during drought, the dam might actually release a little bit more water to provide more water for downstream communities.

The tricky part is they're trying to really balance water use for the communities to provide enough water for the wildlife, but also not release so much where they're making the reservoir behind the dam dry up.

That's it.

All the way up.

All right.

I think it needs to come back a bit.

That took a while.

Four years.

Leave no trace.

That's important.

Is your solar charger working OK?

It's working, but you know, it takes a while.

Probably try to track your mapping and project an anticipated time to Columbia, so we can plan something for the press there.

[music playing] Let's go.

And climb out from under it.

I'll follow you.

I was grateful to have the help portaging the dam.

I never would have made it myself.

You can see how long a haul that would have been.

Thank you.

I mean, look at this.

This is what I'm going to be in for the next couple weeks.

It's incredible.

Walking the shoreline, it's littered with ancient fossils.

Many millennia ago, all of Tennessee was part of an inland ocean.

And then the upheaval came and drained it.

And then this area became a free-flowing clearwater river.

[music playing] As long ago as 13,000 years, there's human occupation in the Duck River Watershed, the time that we believe is the earliest human incursion into the Southeast.

So think of it as a cradle, as they do, in Mesopotamia.

The Duck River is a really special place in Middle Tennessee.

It's bookended by two really significant archeological sites.

At the headwaters, you've got Old Stone Fort, which many Tennesseans are familiar with.

And then at its confluence with the Buffalo River, That's the location of the Duck River mounds, where the Duck River cache was found, which is a really interesting ceremonial collection of artifacts, swords, knives, sort of war-related artifacts that have never been used.

And these were found in the late 1890s.

And in between them, there are over 2,000 other archeological sites that are within the Duck River Watershed.

So most people think of the main stem of the Duck as it flows through a lot of these communities.

But truly, the Duck is influenced by the Watershed.

And what that means is the watershed has this huge area around where the actual main stem of the Duck River is that includes all of these small little streams and tributaries.

And so you can draw this line around the watershed and every drop of water that lands within that area, whether it's overland flow, maybe a little bit through the groundwater, is eventually going to flow to the main stem of the Duck.

The interconnectedness of Middle Tennessee to the larger region, it is due to the Duck River.

Seeing Old Stone Fort on the Duck River meant that this place was able to sustain these massive pre-contact populations, and it played an important role for them.

Throughout their entire lives, the Duck River sustained these people that lived here.

[music playing] [water sloshing] [water rushing] [music playing] [canoe scrapping] [bird singing] Now the deer will come down and roam around my tent at night.

And that's pretty cool.

And I can hear them splashing in the water.

And some of the critter howls at night, it's almost like a sci-fi movie.

It is just wild.

When I'm on the river, not only do I know the phase the moon is in, but I know what direction it's going to rise in and where it's going to set.

The sensitivity to nature means so much to me.

Normally at home, I'm kind of a hermit, but then when you get out on the water for four or five days and have no one to speak to, you realize how social you are and how important it is.

[music playing] When I was at Vanderbilt my senior year, I didn't have a lot of extracurricular activities, and I thought maybe I needed some for my resume.

And so I joined the staff of the yearbook as a photographer.

So one Saturday morning, I went in and started processing my film and then making prints.

And I walked outside, it was pitch black.

I had lost myself in the process of making prints, and then I realized that maybe that is what my career should be.

[music playing] [water rushing] I carried two cameras, digital cameras.

One has sort of a normal range lens on it, zoom lens, and the other is an extreme telephoto.

Because I don't have to change lenses, I don't have to worry about dust getting on the sensor and things like that.

But I bring a solar panel that charges the battery, and then at night I charge all my equipment.

Oh, thanks again.

Looking good, man.

Good.

Hey, buddy.

Mrs.

Gayle Moore.

Hey, Gayle.

John, I'm with Save the Duck.

Oh, good.

Good.

Going down to Chickasaw with you today, if that's OK.

We're going to paddle.

There you go.

Got a name for your boat?

No, it's a borrowed boat.

Oh.

My other boat is called The Adventure 2.

[birds chirping] And we had our director of engagement, Marie Campbell, help plan those community events to bring together John and the community at different points along the journey.

So that was really cool, kind of connecting the journey in real-time to people that were interested and passionate about the Duck River.

This year, thanks to the efforts of our team, our partner organizations, and supporters like all of you who are here, the Duck River was listed on American Rivers Most Endangered Rivers list.

This recognition highlights the urgent threats facing this vital waterway.

The Duck River provides drinking water for over 250,000 Tennesseans, and it supports thousands who come here to recreate and enjoy its beauty each and every year.

So protecting it is not only essential for preserving Tennessee's unique biodiversity, but also for maintaining the quality of life and livelihoods of our communities.

And that's communities like here in Columbia, communities in Shelbyville, communities in Centerville.

John is an accomplished photographer, writer, and conservationist whose passion for our rivers has inspired many across the state and beyond.

And I ask you to please put your hands together and welcome the man of the hour, John Guider.

[applause] Can you hear me all right?

OK.

[chuckles] I've been doing these journeys for the last 21 years.

I've probably have paddled or sailed boats without motors for maybe 14,000 miles so far.

The Duck has always been a dream of mine.

I've been on the river 13 days.

I've gone about 130 miles.

I've had five portages across the dams.

This river could not be done by one person alone.

I couldn't have done it without support.

Yeah!

Let's do that.

[music playing] [camera shutters] I grew up in Tennessee, and actually, one of the spots that John Guider put in was right across the street from where I grew up.

I'm often near the river through my work with the friends of the Duck River or my work with McEwen Group.

And I worked with them on river properties and river landowners, and it certainly has wound its way through my life in a lot of different ways.

This river is wild.

It's teeming with ducks, and heron, and species of animals you can only really see if you go underwater.

It's where our family drinks their water.

That comes right out of my tap, from the Duck River.

And then being on the river in my kayak with my kids and my family, it helps us connect those dots back to the waterway.

There are a lot of threats to the Duck River right now.

We are growing at a rate that is not sustainable.

We have so many people who want to move here, in part because of our beautiful environment.

When we're looking at the level of water on the Duck River and looking at the requested withdrawal amounts, we don't think that they're sustainable.

We use the Duck River for a lot of reasons.

We need it to withdraw water for tap water.

We need it for recreation.

We need it to be able to add our wastewater discharge back into the Duck.

We need it potentially for agriculture.

We need it potentially for industry.

There is eventually going to be this fine line where we need to make sure there's enough water in the Duck, but also that we are still economically viable.

But we don't want to do it at the expense of the quality and the health of the river.

Growth and conservation don't have to be diametrically opposed.

And we want to have communities that are sustainable for now, but for many future generations.

Thanks for stopping here, John.

Oh, thank you.

This has been wonderful.

It's the most I've eaten in 14 days.

[laughter] [music playing] Thank you.

Thank you.

Come on!

Whoo!

Thank you.

[cheering] [music playing] [water sloshing] [music playing] They're taking out up there, though, right?

Yeah.

They're not using this takeout and piping up?

No, they're taking it out ahead of our Columbia takeout right now.

I was told about the water line because they are putting it on my property.

Are they taking the amount of water line, like, out of a certain time of year?

Because the Duck is low many times a year.

But this is when the river shouldn't be low.

I don't think we have enough water for three pumps.

What this thing will do is bring a little more national awareness.

Yeah.

And they see you and there's a practical view of it, as opposed to just on paper, because you don't really see it on paper.

But if you see somebody in the water.

Well, and if you can see how beautiful it is.

That's right.

And if you know it's history.

Yeah, it's something that needs to be protected.

Well, everybody in our community appreciates what you're doing to raise awareness.

Yeah, if this is helpful.

I know it will be.

If you're not including the people on the ground, the actual communities, you're missing out.

And for so many people, the Duck River is the lifeblood of their community.

Someone who grew up on the banks, whose grandfather and great-grandfather and grandmother, great-great-great-grandmother, showed them the river and different aspects of it.

The wonders that I can see with someone who has that deep knowledge is so much more extensive than what I can see on my own.

[music playing] Something I always think about when the world seems a little overwhelming is, what can I do at the community level to affect change?

Because I feel strongly that is where change can be made by individuals, right in their backyard.

And keeping an eye on legislation that concerns our river is a small thing I can do.

Showing up to trash pickup days along the river, that can make change.

A lot of times, people want to help, but they don't know how.

We provide infrastructure, and knowledge, and expertise to help people protect their rivers.

[insects chirping] [birds singing] When I met John on Sam Kennedy's sandbar in Kettle Mills, the next few nights, it was getting very, very cold.

I mean, I think it was getting down into the 30s even.

My family has a farm there downstream just into Hickman County, and we'd worked out for John to stay there and help to coordinate a place the next night even to take him out and bring him back for one more night, because it was getting very cold again.

And I can remember Sarah Gilliam and I launching him the next day.

And I mean, it was cold that morning.

[music playing] Typically not when I would be out on the river.

We had probably three or four days across, and each day somebody came and put me in their cabin.

Took care of me, fed me.

I couldn't believe it.

[water rushing] When John capsized, it was terrifying because I have stories of people I know personally who did not recover from those incidents.

And-- [sighs] When I saw the place where he had flipped, I mean, it was a very scary, difficult spot.

[music playing] I guess it was last Saturday, I was coming down.

Under the bridge, there was a lot of rocks and I had to maneuver.

And I ended up in this shoal on the opposite side of the river.

And what happened is the current was so fast and so deep that it pushed me into the first tree.

And a limb caught the left hand gunwale, held it to the point where the pressure of the water on the right side flipped me and threw me out of the boat, along with all my belongings.

I got out, I had nothing.

My wallet's gone.

Phone is gone.

I have nothing.

And the bridge is right there.

So I figured, maybe I could stop somebody.

So, yeah, we were cooking a big pot of chili on the fire and forgot some seasonings, and decided we needed to go to the store, and just saw a random man walking in the field.

Then as we got closer, we noticed he was soaking wet.

That's when we stopped and asked him if he needed help.

Brought me back to the house, put me in warm clothes, and put me next to the fire.

And in a way, it was a miracle.

If they had left 30 seconds sooner, we would have missed each other.

Had a good warm spot for him.

So everything happens for a reason.

Before I knew it, the whole community was involved.

And so we were able to launch the boat.

And I had a big net, which I always keep with me.

And I don't know, probably five miles up, we started to see some things, like John's water bottle floating.

And we scooped all that stuff up.

And then, of course, we were really hoping to find the camera.

So that camera's in a yellow Pelican case.

And we saw that thing floating.

And I was like, oh, boy, there it is.

And unfortunately, it was empty.

I lost a lot, but it was material stuff, but I gained a lot, which was spiritual and friendship, and it just means so much to me.

The things I lost can be replaced, but you can't replace friendship.

I'd taken some friends there who worked with the rescue squad, and they said, John was lucky to be alive.

For him to have gotten out of there, I'm still not sure how he got out of there.

The generosity of strangers have just been incredible.

Then when you're in a life and death situation, that's when you realize that you couldn't go forward without the help of others.

Now, three days later, got a new phone, new camera, no wallet.

And I'm heading back downriver, and have another six days to look forward to.

Yeah, if I let it go now, I'm done.

[laughter] Thank you all so much.

Everybody.

Have a safe journey.

That's right.

Safe travels.

Enjoy.

Hope it's real boring between here and the end.

Thanks, guys.

You bet.

[music playing] [music playing] I've been very surprised.

I mean, I've run aground, even past the mouth of the Buffalo.

When the early explorers came, the riverbanks were covered with a cane.

And they talked about the cane being so thick that you couldn't walk through it.

The only places they could get out was where the Buffalo had come down to the water.

After 1800s, the farmers came in, they cleared all the fields, they cleared all the cane, and planted right up to the edge.

And that's the beginning of the erosion of the rivers.

As the riverbanks erode, the river gets wider, and the wider the river gets, the lower it gets.

So it's just going to go and go and go, and it's not going to stop.

[music playing] We need to start planning for the next 20 years immediately if we are going to continue to use it for these resources.

The water level gets too low, depending on where some of these communities have the actual intake for their pump station to pull water out, it goes below that, then they physically just can't pump water anywhere.

[camera shutters] [music playing] I woke up pretty happy.

I knew that today is going to be the last day, and I'm going to miss the river.

And I was really upset about losing a lot of money in my camera gear, and especially losing all the images that I had made.

But I've since gotten over it.

[music playing] Change into my river gear.

See you soon.

[water sloshing] What was that?

It'll get us a taste.

As we were nearing the mouth of the Duck River, where it meets the Tennessee River, we were idling beside John and started noticing some Asian carp jumping.

Yeah, they're trying to keep them out of the Great Lakes.

They've already run up the Mississippi.

[music playing] Oh!

[fish thudding] Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness.

Hello.

There you go.

Caught my dinner today.

How's your hand, John?

Oh, it's good.

It was soft mouth.

No teeth.

So we just eased up beside his boat and tried to stabilize and grab that slimy thing and throw it back in the water.

I would say it probably weighed about 30 pounds.

[chuckles] [music playing] There's this term called Asian carp, and we assign it to invasive carp species that have come from Asia.

They've really proliferated in the Great Lakes.

They've gotten into a lot of our river systems, particularly the Mississippi.

They were originally, I believe, introduced to farm ponds.

Hey, my farm pond is growing a lot of grass and weeds and everything.

Let's put some carp that are going to eat the grass and it's going to manage itself.

The carp were supposed to all be sterile.

Well, they mutated to the point where then they were starting to be able to reproduce again.

Eventually got out of some of these ponds into waterways, and that's what we're seeing now.

There's not a whole lot of natural predators for them.

Plenty of food for them.

I think we would like to get rid of them, but I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon.

They're very hardy.

That's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We could have brought that home to Mona.

Yeah.

Well, maybe it would have paddled for me.

Oh!

[yells] [splashes] Bloody-- oh!

Jesus.

Everywhere I go, there's an invasive species.

And then when they land in your boat and start flopping around, then you know you have a problem.

Yeah, I don't know what I would have done had you not been here.

That's why you had me come down this path, right?

Yeah.

Well, I caught two fish today.

[music playing] I wanted to celebrate the world that God made, not man.

The nice thing about the canoe is that it's pretty much stealth.

The animals on the bank don't even know I'm there.

The rivers act as a flyway for the birds.

There are no trees.

There are no impediments.

So once they get going, they're zooming back and forth.

You get to see the herons.

You get to see the ducks and the geese.

It's just a wonderful, wonderful experience.

We're basically kind of on the Mississippi Flyway.

So we've got birds that are flying from Canada, across the Great Lakes, down through Ohio, Kentucky.

So a lot of these preserves are huge migratory bird stopovers.

The birds need a place to feed, a place to rest.

There's a ton of birders out there.

Birders will come from all over to go see some of these migratory processes.

The scary part is kind of losing quality in those habitats.

Birds are going to find other places to stopover.

John's journey started, in my mind, as an opportunity for activism, and it certainly did that.

But I think it also pivoted toward how we take care of our communities and how we take care of each other.

John Guider is like the perfect example of bringing people together, connecting each of these communities' dreams and hopes for their rivers.

And its beautiful.

And so John's journey is really important to try to reconnect communities and people who live in the Duck River Watershed.

Help them realize, hey, maybe I didn't know that about the Duck River.

I've lived here my whole life and didn't realize where my tap water is coming from.

They might not know the southeast rivers in the United States are the third most biodiverse in the world, and we're only behind the Amazon rainforest and the Mekong jungle.

The more healthy our ecosystem is, the higher our home values are going to be, the more outdoor recreation is going to be available.

And if we don't preserve those areas, then we're going to have fewer and fewer places to do that.

These rivers and streams are a big reason why people come to Tennessee.

Us being land and farm real estate specialist, I see it on a daily basis.

For those of us who grew up on it, we stand to lose, I suppose, the fabric of who we are, who we grew up to be, and it's very important that we protect these resources.

I love what John has done.

I think bringing attention to the negative effects of industrialization on this river, it's something we need to pay attention to.

It's not history.

There's history on it.

But like, it's important for today, for us right now.

It means planting a tree you'll never see grow big enough to shade you.

Because he's thinking of my kids when he's doing this journey, he's not thinking of himself.

He's thinking of my grandkids.

He did a lot more than bring attention to the water.

[music playing] I see the landing.

I know how to keep a 2 o'clock appointment.

[music playing] It was neat to be a part of that last day.

I mean, I felt like I'd been on a bit of a journey with John myself.

So it was inspiring to see that and to see just the people that came together.

And I was just happy to be a part of it in some small way.

Whoo!

He's probably ready to be done.

I think he is.

Hey, guy.

Hey, hey.

How you doing?

Good.

You?

Good.

Nice to see you.

Yes, thank you so much.

To have the support that I had, people like John McHugh, and Jess Martin, and so many folks that really made the journey possible.

Something I'm not used to, but I do appreciate it.

And I accepted it with open arms.

It's hard not to feel this emotional connection.

It's hard not to appreciate it.

You're like, why aren't we going out of our way above and beyond to make sure that this river, that it's as healthy and as resilient as possible?

I would say one of the most simple, yet always remarkable things that I feel that John encountered was humanity.

People bringing him a casserole, giving him a place to stay.

And now we are all connected that way because of this journey and having the courage to do something like this.

It doesn't just affect the person that's doing it, it is pretty widespread.

I think I was on the river 28 days.

It's not a race.

I wasn't on a time schedule.

I just had to go forward.

You know, I'm excited.

Start dreaming about what I do next.

But it's good to finish something you start.

[music playing] (SINGING) Oh, what a day Oh, what a day Oh, what a day What a day, Oh, what a day What a day Oh, what a day Oh, what a day What a day How do I seem?

How do I seem?

How do I seem?

How do I seem?

How do I seem?

Do I seem?

How do I seem?

How do I seem?

Do I seem?

And where will I go?

Why will I go?

How will I go?

When I go, why will I go?

How will I go?

When I go, why will I go?

Where will I go?

And when do you think?

When do I think?

What do you think?

What do I think?

What do you think?

Do you think?

What do you think?

What do you think, what I think?

Funding for Down the Duck was provided by [Running Water Sounds]