(waves lapping) (gentle acoustic guitar music) (waves lapping continues) (gentle acoustic guitar music continues) >>The James River has flowed for hundreds of millions of years, but watching your friends swamp their canoe in it, watching them slowly accept their fate, now that, that never gets old.

Here are the two elements of this story: water and friendship.

This moment is from a few years ago when five of us set out on the headwaters with a couple cameras and canoes and a simple commitment: to document this ancient river as it runs today.

We paddled 250 miles, from the Blue Ridge Mountains to our hometown in Richmond, Virginia, and spent most of our time just marveling.

50 years ago, the James was the most polluted river in America, but its incredible recovery and current state of healing are visible everywhere.

Still, the James remains greatly diminished and threatened by humanity's weaker impulses.

And after everything it's given us, enlightenment, true love, new vocations, peace, more peace, we felt we owed it to the river to keep going, to stay committed.

Our first trip finished in Richmond, but the James doesn't end there.

It changes.

Past the fall line, the river's great granite divider, the last rapid washes out and the James becomes a tidal river.

This tidal section is known as the Lower James River because it's below the fall line.

It flows for 110 miles from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay.

It's the most historic stretch of water in America, minutes from where we live, but a place we had never paddled.

So to finish our journey down the James, we set out on a 10-day trip, on a warm June morning, and left with the outgoing tide.

(gentle music) To deal with the tides and winds of the Lower James, we left our canoes behind and squeezed into sea kayaks for the first time.

>>We are officially out here.

>>Out here, heading to the Chesapeake Bay!

>>Same good-hearted shenanigans, you know, good family fun.

>>The problem was, we packed like we were going on a canoe trip.

>>I'm a little afraid what's gonna happen to him at the first wake.

It's an ambitious load.

>>We hoped for that same magical feeling we had when we started on the headwaters.

Instead, we had the expansion of Richmond, set against centuries of industrial forget-me-nots.

(gentle music continues) We were looking around, wondering what kind of trip this was going to be.

>>Do you want us to move this way?

>>It's a different kind of rapid.

>>Even the wildlife seemed hardened by this landscape.

Tougher.

The James River's industrial past and present is no secret.

>>We're at the Port of Richmond.

>>But to see it, mile after mile, even when it seemed the shore couldn't be more changed, we found ourselves floating on a manmade river.

This is the beginning of Dutch Gap Canal, which was dug by freed men fighting for the Union during the Civil War.

The strategy to avoid a Confederate embattlement failed, but the canal was dug, cutting off two oxbows and seven miles of the original James River, and exemplifying a major trope of the Lower James: the river is what we make it.

(people chattering in distance) Making our wave towards camp, we turned off the canal, up one of the old oxbows of the river, and paddled into this lagoon.

Amazingly, another manmade feature.

What used to be the river's shoreline was sold to a gravel mine in the 1920s.

Over time, the barges that transported gravel were scuttled in the very pit they created, forming this archipelago of industrial refuse.

When the mine closed in the 1960s, a power station immediately took its place, amassing billions of gallons of coal ash on the new lagoon's shores.

This plant just closed in 2023 and the cleanup effort just began, but a proposal is already underway to build the largest fracked gas plant in Virginia right here.

Pulling up to our campsite in the middle of this lagoon, it felt like the whole day was one big introduction to a rapidly changing river.

>>Hi.

>>I'm like, in like serious pain.

>>Good morning, huh?

>>Mornin.

How you feeling today?

>>I feel great.

I slept... better than I slept on the last trip.

>>Really?

>>Yeah, man, it was great.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) >>Took a little bit of Aleve and my body feels 10 years younger.

(kayaks clunking) Ow!

(gentle acoustic guitar music continues) >>A few miles down river, the eroding cliffs of Jones Neck appear, the first of two more consecutive oxbows bypassed by canals, cutting off another 10 miles of the original James.

Thankfully, among all these human changes to the river, an entirely new environment started to appear: tidal wetlands.

(blue heron squawking) >>Our timing may have spared that blue heron's life, a reminder that even just observing a river changes it.

The tide that had pushed against us carried us closer, a pace that didn't seem to bother our coyote friend at all, until the very end.

(water splashing) (serene music) Presquile National Wildlife Refuge is best known for being a bird sanctuary.

(serene music continues) (bird chirping) (serene music continues) As tourists on this part of the river, we learned a lot from talking to the locals.

(kayaker imitating owl hooting) (owl hooting) >>It's a barred owl.

(kayaker imitating owl hooting) (serene music continues) (owl hooting) >>In case you don't speak barred owl, wetlands are like the kidneys of the river.

By area, they sequester 50 times more carbon than rainforests.

They mitigate sea level rise and flooding.

They process agricultural runoff and detoxify industrial waste, two of the largest polluters on the James.

Yet more than half of America's wetlands have been drained or developed.

(water splashing) If we needed another reason not to destroy wetlands, we find it just a mile down river at the town of Hopewell, the site of one of the most infamous environmental tragedies in US history, the Kepone disaster.

>>Kepone was an insecticide produced here from '66 to '75 and dumped straight into the river, and being in the tidal part of the river, tides were pushing this chemical up and down, up and down the river for a decade.

>>Two entities were responsible for the Kepone disaster, Allied Chemical Corporation and Life Sciences, and their employees were the canaries in the coal mine.

Workers started to have uncontrollable shivers, which developed into full-body tremors.

Twitchy eyes led to virtual blindness.

Workers as young as 20 went sterile.

Otherwise peaceful people became irrational and violent.

>>It just dominated the local economy so they let a lot of things slide, didn't really look into things they should have looked into and it completely killed the James River.

>>When the scale of the problem was discovered, state officials closed the James to recreation and commercial fishing for 13 years.

An entire generation of watermen were put out of business.

The largest environmental fine ever was levied at Allied Chemical and Life Sciences, and the Clean Water Act was directly strengthened as a result.

But things today are not as different as you might imagine.

Allied Chemical has been sold and renamed several times, but operates today as AdvanSix, one of the world's largest producers of caprolactam used in synthetic fibers and plastics.

Since 2015, this plant has violated the Clean Air and Water Acts more than 60 times.

Lethal chemicals, gases and acids were recurringly released into the air and river.

For the past decade, sulfur dioxide limits were exceeded by a factor greater than 100.

The Department of Environmental Quality says the plant has a pattern of non-compliance, dating back to 1990.

Residents of Hopewell live five years shorter than the average Virginian, and it's worth remembering one-in-four Virginians get their drinking water from the James.

Despite all this, AdvanSix has a permit to legally dump a million gallons of nitrogen a year into the river.

But they are just one example.

There are dozens of commercial entities with permits to legally dump into the James.

In 2023, the James River Association released a comprehensive report on the river's health.

Tidal water quality is as high as it's been since Kepone, and the reason is simple: less pollution is entering the river.

Virginia has made huge investments in controlling industrial waste and it's working!

But as long as we look at a million gallons of nitrogen and say, "Dump it in the river," there will be a limit to even our own expectations of what the river can be, of what we can realistically make of it.

(water splashing) (pensive music) It's easy to feel hopeless leaving Hopewell, and paddling towards camp, still miles away, we're surrounded by the river's dark history.

History of enslavement, displacement, war... and it can become overwhelming.

But the river opens up here, tripling in width.

>>It's pretty amazing just seeing this big of an open space.

>>And it's best to open with it, to float right on top of it, and to be remade by the river.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) >>It is day four.

We are on our way to Fort Pocahontas.

>>From First Peoples to the Civil War, a journey down the James would be incomplete without a history lesson or two.

And as we entered the most remote stretch of the Lower James, this vast history was mirrored by the river.

>>Thinking about that this location is the site of Native civilizations, it's also the site where ecological disasters happened.

Wars were fought.

The fates of nations were decided here.

So while it feels like we're maybe in the middle of nowhere, we're kind of in the center of everything, if you think about it.

>>Whooo!

(echo resounding) >>Our desire to focus in on a lesser-taught history coincided with our need for a campsite.

A week before our trip, we made a trade with the kind folks at Fort Pocahontas and filmed a Civil War reenactment in exchange for the privilege of camping on their river frontage.

(water gurgling) (serene music) If you've never heard of the Civil War battle at Fort Pocahontas, it's probably because it was won by the USCT: United States Colored Troops.

These sites were purposefully forgotten in the South and covered over by time.

In the early 2000s, an excavation began here that discovered pristine earthworks and artifacts.

And new life was given to this incredible story.

It begins with Union General Edward A.

Wild, a one-armed abolitionist who built Fort Pocahontas to defend the Army of the James Regiment along this stretch of the river.

>>We're here to represent the 1st Colored Infantry and the 10th Colored Infantry.

I myself represent the 1st Colored Infantry of Washington DC and we were under General Wild, also led by Colonel Holman, and this is part of the Overland Campaign, to liberate a lot of African-Americans in this area from plantations.

>>Wild commanded a small unit of freed men who were notorious for exacting justice against enslavers.

After they tied up a vile plantation owner and four freed women whipped him to a pulp, the news spread to Richmond, where Robert E. Lee's nephew, Fitzhugh, was ordered to go make an example of Wild's unit.

General Wild had just 1,100 men and two cannons.

Fitzhugh Lee arrived with a calvary of 2,500 and demanded surrender.

But Fitzhugh you would not guarantee the life or freedom of the freed men.

Wild sent a written response, "Present my compliments to General Fitz Lee and tell him to go to hell."

(rifle fire banging) Fitzhugh attacked from two sides, (cannon fire banging) but was met with heavy fire, (rifle fire banging) and the earthworks built by Wild's men held strong.

(rifle fire banging) Repeated assaults were repeatedly driven back.

When a Union steamer arrived on the James in the evening, Fitzhugh retreated.

>>Fall back!

>>He filed a report grossly overstating the Union's forces, while understating his own.

In the end, the Confederate's sustained five times the losses of the Union.

This was the first battle in Virginia won by a majority Black regiment.

>>You know the number one purpose of Reenacting?

Teaching.

That's the number one thing.

Things that are not in the average American History textbook.

Because when I was in high school at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk, Virginia, there was nothing in my American History textbook about any Black man that fought in the American Civil War.

>>There were 180,000 USCTs.

The Army of the James was more than 40% Black, the highest percentage of any regiment in the war.

>>For me, it's the learning experience of sewing my own attire, and honoring my great-great-great grandfather who was a USCT soldier from the Michigan 102nd.

>>The history that I didn't know, I've learned.

It's therapy for the soul.

(rifle fire banging) >>The Army of the James was the first regiment to enter Richmond when it fell.

In one of their final acts, they blocked Robert E. Lee's escape route when he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

>>We supported the country when the country didn't support us.

So, such is life, here we stand.

I wonder if some people would call that CRT, you know?

Give me a break.

We just wanna tell the whole story, not out to rewrite history, just to retell it.

That's all.

(rifle fire banging) (pensive guitar music) (birds chirping) (kayak rustling) >>In the 1970s, when the Kepone disaster coincided with the widespread use of DDT, there were zero nesting bald eagles on the James.

(eagle screeches) The river has since experienced a nearly unprecedented recovery of the bald eagle.

But now, one of its favorite perches is gravely threatened.

(serene music) It's the fifth oldest tree species in the world, a cousin to the redwood and sequoia, and capable of living more than 3,000 years: the bald cypress.

(serene music continues) Cypress are one of the most resilient trees on earth.

They can withstand hurricane force winds, decades-long droughts, and floods deeper than they are tall.

But less than 1/10 of 1% of America's bald cypress remain.

In the past 25 years, we've logged four million acres of these coastal wetlands, an area larger than Connecticut.

Whole forests are being cleared to make mulch.

Florida is the most egregious example, where more than 60% of its mulch comes from bald cypress.

All life seemed fond of these trees, but especially the birds.

(serene music continues) (wings flapping) And if you're ever looking for the blue heron saloon, we found it.

(blue herons chattering) (chattering continues, gets louder) >>This is just insane.

(heron chattering continues) (birds chirping) (heron chattering continues) (serene music continues) (serene music continues) >>At the current rate of logging and sea-level rise, America's cypress will disappear sometime this century.

Paddling downriver, we'll continue to see the odd stand or lone tree, which even in their isolated state carry an air of defiant dignity.

But the enchantment of a cypress forest remains unique among all the natural world.

(birds chirping) (chainsaws buzzing) (birds chirping) (chainsaws buzzing) (water splashing) >>Man, days like this, it's like riding a bike.

Water's cooperating, you're just peddling on downstream.

(serene music) >>It's a little bit freaky out here, not gonna lie.

(water splashing) (serene music continues) >>The first of several increasingly wide and intimidating river crossings loomed ahead.

>>Just got pretty choppy here.

I guess we're close to the Chickahominy, getting there, but it's choppy, we all put our life vests on and we're gonna stay close to the shore and hope it clears up here.

>>As you approach Dancing Point near the mouth of the Chickahominy River, the James becomes no longer practical to cross from shore to shore, with a minimum width of two miles.

(paddle clonking) >>We are headed to, essentially, kind of straight across towards that blind, pretty much just that way.

Yeah, the mouth of the Chickahominy we believe is up there on the left.

>>I was definitely noticing earlier today with some of that chop when it was coming sideways, getting way more splashes, and like it only takes like a dozen or 15 of those big splashes and then you're almost swamped.

>>This is like definitely the choppiest water we've been in.

>>Choppiest and windiest and everything, yeah.

I mean, it's a decent stretch across, too, so it's gonna be a thing.

>>Yonder.

God, you smell good.

>>So do you.

>>You smell like really mature BO.

(videographer chuckling) >>Thanks, man.

>>Yeah.

(water splashing) >>With the heavy chop and the wind and the the water coming up and all over your face, the spray, knocking things around on your boat, I really, I mean, it felt like an adventure for the first time and it felt like I was risking something.

And yeah, I just couldn't stop thinking about how good that felt.

>>Dietrich and Stephen are way out there.

It's different down here in the wide, vast, open waters.

Puts me in way different head space than looking for rocks.

It is very peaceful, also kind of hard at times.

I think Dietrich said it was kind of like walking through the desert.

It does feel that way when you're way out there.

>>♪ Paddling against wind.

Against the wind.

♪ >>We made it out of the heavy stuff.

We're up on the Chickahominy River now.

How's the paddle?

>>Pretty intense.

>>It was intense.

>>Lot of muscle, but I think we, are we here?

>>Yeah.

>>Hell, yes.

That was a monster.

>>Our camp was a little ways up the Chickahominy, a well-preserved river considered to have the most pristine wetlands in all of Virginia's tidal waters.

It's worth stopping to smell the flowers here, as it wasn't long after we passed through that the United States Supreme Court weakened the Clean Water Act, and the majority of our wetlands lost federal protection.

We became quite fond of these vital thresholds between land and water, as anytime we were around them, we were happier.

(gentle music) (gentle upbeat acoustic guitar music) (birds chirping) >>All right, it's morning of day six.

We are leaving the Chickahominy River and heading towards Jamestown.

Getting this perspective of going to Jamestown on the water I think is really unique, so we're looking forward to it.

Hopefully it's not too choppy out there.

>>We hadn't given Jamestown much thought since our childhoods.

We were inclined to see it as a monument to colonialism, but we couldn't just paddle past Jamestown.

(gentle upbeat acoustic guitar music continues) >>Each of those masts was a tree.

That's why a lot of our native longleaf pine are gone and Eastern white pine, because they came over and the British needed a lot more trees to make a lot more masts.

>>I don't know, these boats are a little try hard.

I feel like they could have done it on canoes.

Pretty amazing though.

Came all this way, up this little river, and started America.

Or something like that.

>>All aboard!

>>Landing on Jamestown Island, we were quickly humbled by our own ignorance and by those fighting to teach and preserve in a time of rapid climate change.

>>You guys may have been the first people I've ever seen to arrive without going on the road.

That's kind of cool.

(all chuckling) The seawall was put in because human remains were eroding out of the Confederate earthworks behind you, so this was actually the shoreline back then and they backfilled it and put this in and it stopped.

It saved Jamestown, right?

You know, climate change is not always Hurricane Isabel, for example, that just really trashed the island.

Those things are happening five or six times a year now, it's flooded, you know, seas are rising, land is sinking.

You get four to 10 inches of rain in a storm.

That's not normal.

The environment in the past is an exceptional part of our research because we're trying to figure out how people adapt and sort of when we become American, right?

The broader American history is sort of a guns, germs and steel narrative in which the native community gets left out of axiomatically because it's about the empire and how that's just so hegemonic.

You can't breathe.

There's no voice.

But the archeology here does have a voice.

>>These are histories tied to living populations, the demographic, self-identified groups that are part of our society.

They need to be at the table having these conversations because this isn't a gift, you know.

If it's our shared past, we need to share the responsibility for it.

>>Native people were generally here for Europeans on this coast with open arms, initially.

But then we learned how greedy, we learned how aggressive, how arrogant, and they are strangers in our land.

For Native people, this is not such a good place for that reason.

It was inevitable that they would come.

They had been coming for 100 years to this coast, intermittently, to trade, before the English arrived here at Jamestown.

That all begins in the early 1500s.

It's not what happened.

It's how it happened.

>>I mean, when you talk about Jamestown Island, you're talking about a complex history that goes back 10,000 years.

I mean, you're talking about, you know, pre-Colonial Native American sites of great importance and diversity, to context of enslavement during the sort of plantation era.

You have Civil War earthworks, and obviously you have the founding of British America happening right here, so I think in terms of our oft-recited significant cultural narrative as American people, I mean, this place is in some ways ground zero.

We were talking about earlier with the conversations changing about the nature of interactions between the colonists from England and the Native community here.

Then you had the first Africans arriving in 1619 and what are these complex cultural relations looking like?

And so here, Dave and the crew are asking more complex questions.

Just as a place of conversation through preservation, I think it becomes extremely significant.

And also, when you think about this kind of conservation preservation conundrum that we're in where you have increased storm surge, you have more rain, you have more lightning strikes, you know, you have this literal perfect storm of variables that are contributing to the loss of the land, and then, of course, encroaching into those archeological deposits, you know, it's rapid, so it's an opportunity as well to explore better technologies and better ways of trying to at least slow the process to be able to collect the data, as well as ways to hopefully preserve in place.

There's a place that's made by them being here and by our interpretation.

I think when we keep it in the ground, as much as we can, it's real to people.

I think people feel it, not just spiritually, but I think intellectually as well, to know we're walking in these footsteps, and if it's underwater, you know, and part of it already is.

>>We understand the contentiousness of the landscape with First Peoples, First Africans, First English, but that's a teachable moment, right?

And that's ultimately that shared history that's in one place, you know, is what we have to lose, and then what is it after that?

To sort of sew it all together, the irony is it's what's behind us here, this water, is the reason that everyone's here.

>>We're maritime cultures.

For me, it's therapy.

For me, it's the solitude.

It's the natural world around me when I find these places, and because I seek the quiet places as you guys do too, I'm sure.

And that's how I learned a lot about the things I know.

I think it's what I love most doing is paddling.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) >>It took us an hour to paddle across the river to camp, and it was easy to feel like everything here was beyond our scope.

But if there is therapy in paddling, then there is group therapy in camping.

The same ritual night after night, the same key ingredients, with a backdrop that slowly changes as we move down river.

We stayed at our friend Tyler's 100-year-old river cabin, the perfect place to process the day.

>>You got some shell on your nose.

>>Got it?

>>Yeah, you got it.

>>Little juice in my-- >>(laughs) You got it!

>>And to celebrate Andrew Murray's birthday, with all the crucial ingredients.

(knife clunking) (laughing) (gentle acoustic guitar music continues) >>Mmm.

>>Oysters and some clams and corn and some sausage.

(videographer chuckling) (gentle acoustic guitar music continues) (gentle acoustic guitar music continues) (gentle acoustic guitar music continues) (waves whooshing) (birds chirping) >>Still going.

(videographer chuckling) No clam left behind.

>>We hated to leave this perfectly rustic cabin.

It's part of a small town called Surry, a beautiful little place with an eroding coastline where the fossil record of the ancient James is in plain view.

(waves whooshing) >>My name is Sherrye Pollard and we are at Chippokes State Park.

I'm an education ranger for the park.

And one of the programs we do is about fossils that you can find here on the James.

At one point in time, scientists believe that this was a warm tropical ocean based on the fossils that were found here, such as coral.

The coast of this area used to be up near Richmond when it was a warm tropical ocean.

And then the land changed, the water receded and it became more of a river.

We're about 44 miles from the Chesapeake Bay.

All of these fossils are from the Miocene, Pliocene epoch period of time, and so they were buried for millions of years.

Sometimes we don't have much beach here because when the wind blows in a certain direction, the water comes way up and beats against the bluffs, and with that it washes fossils out into the river.

Unfortunately with nor'easters, or other storms, we get a lot of rain and wind and it's brought down a lot of the trees, and when it brings down the trees, it also brings down another layer of fossils that ends up on our beach.

Of course, I always like to look for the sharks' teeth.

I've never been lucky enough to find a megalodon, but I was with someone who found one.

We do have one half of a real megalodon here and so you can see how big this shark would've been.

And I love it out here.

Very peaceful place to be.

A nice place to be and very rural area, but peaceful.

(gentle bass music) >>Today we begin the final stretch of the James River.

(water splashing) (wind gusting) >>Ooh, it's salty.

I just noticed for the first time it's actually salty now.

>>As we approach the bay, we'll pass Army, Air Force and Navy bases, import and export piers, and two major cities.

And it all needs power.

Just past Jamestown is Dominion Energy's nuclear power station, and branching out from it are these brand new and highly controversial transmission towers.

They rise as high as the Statue of Liberty and span the most historic part of the James, spoiling the vistas of dozens of sacred and historic sites.

They were opposed by everyone from the National Park Service to the Mattaponi tribe, and there were other ways to solve the area's energy needs.

But after years of litigation, here they are, an emphatic response to the question, "Is nothing sacred?"

The towers persevered because the judge agreed when the defendants called the James River a scrambled egg.

We already ruined it, so what difference does it make?

That thinking aligns with the most polluted river in the country, but the James isn't that river anymore, and the people successfully working to restore it are proof that there are two ways of going about this.

We can make it better, or we can make it worse.

The decision to make it worse was obviously made far away from here.

The towers begin in a wildlife management area right across from Jamestown, and for being the place from which all of America spread, it's remarkably well-preserved.

It's still beautiful here.

The National Park Service summed up the court decision with five words, "Only the losses are permanent."

(water splashing) >>Yeah, it is.

(water splashing) >>It's so freaking wild out here, we're going against the wind and against the tide.

This is like what everybody said not to do.

(water splashing) >>I think that this is probably, these next few days are probably gonna be the hardest part of this whole trip.

I think just, the river's so wide here and it's just something none of us really have any experience doing.

(serene music) >>In today's logbook is a bit of adventure: the crossing of Burwell Bay, which opens up just beyond the Ghost Fleet.

Here the river once again grows suddenly enormous-er.

Running low on sleep and high on exhaustion, we gazed forth wondering, "What are we doing here"?

(serene music continues) (waves swooshing) >>Trying to hit that buoy back over there.

If we go straight there, right at the midpoint, we're gonna be four miles off shore in every direction.

With the tide going with this, with the wind going against, so could be some pretty intense chop.

>>Yeah, I mean-- >>Stay close.

>>Yeah, stay close.

Be prepared to help someone out, help out a friend in need.

>>I'll be there for you.

>>This is our most vulnerable and intense crossing so far.

>>We were going pretty fast, probably two miles an hour through that.

>>That's what I mean, it could take us four hours to get there.

>>The tide is picking up, as well.

We only have the tide with this for half of this journey.

>>Be aware of ships, boats, 'cause in the chop they just can't see us as well, so everybody keep an eye out like 360, you know?

>>Yeah, I mean, are we sure that we want to not follow the shore?

>>The issue there is that we've got cross waves the entire way.

>>It's true.

Yeah, I think we got it.

Just slow and steady wins the race.

Stay together.

You know, I think we'll be fine.

(pensive music) (water splashing) >>Godspeed, gentlemen.

(water splashing) (gentle acoustic guitar music) (kayakers grunting) >>I've never really done anything quite like this so I'm a little freaked out.

>>We're out there.

Having fun.

Nervous 'cause we're so far from shore, but paddling in this stuff actually is a good time.

>>I got sunscreen in my eyes, water in my boat.

We might make it though.

>>I do feel like there's something to be said for, for being this far out, and I don't know, yeah, giving yourself up to something.

You have to accept that, accept that risk and actually embrace it.

Sometimes it's a good reminder to push yourself off a little too far from the shore and see what you find out there.

(chuckling) At least today and at least right now, we're only halfway through this crossing, but it's been all good.

And for that, I am grateful.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) >>Friends, friends, friends!

(waves whooshing) Crew.

(gentle upbeat music continues) >>Finally made it to our campsite.

After like a 16-mile day, we're here around Ragged Island and we're looking at Newport News across the river, and we're looking forward to settling in.

(gentle music) >>We put so much effort into getting to the end, but now that we were here, less than 15 miles from the bay, we wanted to wish it away, to somehow flow all the way back up to the headwaters.

(gentle music continues) If you were born and raised in Virginia like we were, you probably grew up hearing that raw sewage floats in the James.

It does.

You heard you can get E. coli from swimming in the river.

You can.

That the once iconic American shad were dwindling.

There are zero left.

All of it painted an ugly picture.

But up here, though the river is little more than a mountain stream, it begins a truly superlative journey.

In the Blue Ridge, it winds through the vastest parcels of public land in the American East.

For hundreds of miles, it's rural, peaceful and stunning.

Then it drops 105 feet through Richmond, creating the best urban whitewater in the country.

The James went from zero bald eagles to now having one of the densest concentrations outside Alaska.

An underwater sanctuary on the river protects the largest oyster reef in the world.

The tallest bald cypress left in America lives here.

The James is one of the last rivers on earth where the prehistoric Atlantic sturgeon still migrates and spawns.

And this is to say nothing of the human history that reflects the best and worst of ourselves, history that you can say without a hint of exaggeration changed everything.

This river isn't just special to us.

It's objectively remarkable.

(gentle music continues) (waves lapping) We could have made a final push and paddled into the bay, but we weren't quite ready to leave such a special place, and we were also really tired.

We went about three miles, and just floated.

(birds chirping) (water lapping) >>You would think the fatigue would dull your senses, but I found the opposite to be true.

I found that the fatigue opens your senses, opens your appreciation, you see more, you smell more.

When the sun hits the water or the moon hits the water, it's more powerful.

It's as if the river breaks you down and makes you a part of it.

It all blends and becomes indistinguishable.

The journey, the river, it's all the same.

(serene music) (waves whooshing) >>All right, it's morning, day 10, our final day.

We have one last crossing through the shipping lane and we're pretty much home free.

>>It feels like it's the last page in a big book, something that I've been like meaning to read for a long, long time.

>>Ready to push.

Just really excited to finish.

Also sad to have to go back to reality 'cause all you have to do is tell some people you're on a canoe trip and they really will not bother you.

>>Oh no, I don't like that.

>>We had a nice time.

I especially love the bugs on this island.

>>Yes.

>>No-see-um Island.

>>We love all life.

>>All life, all life, no matter how annoying it is.

>>From no-see-ums to dolphins.

>>I like dolphins more than no-see-ums.

(Will laughing) >>Murray!

Justin!

Behind you, look!

Dolphins!

I've always thought of myself as being one who's been acquainted with this river and I've discovered that that's not really the case.

But to be here in it, there are so many existences that are otherwise unseen.

>>They're all around.

>>And to find this world of abundant, abundant life everywhere, it's like being exposed to a whole new world that just happens to be in your own backyard.

>>That was incredible.

There were just like 10 or 15 dolphins swimming around.

So cool.

Finishing out the James River on a really, probably the highest note.

Wow.

Awesome.

(upbeat acoustic guitar music) >>In hindsight, the dolphins may have been trying to warn us.

This is where the river, bay and wind collide.

We immediately found ourselves in truly alarming currents.

(water splashing) We couldn't tell what direction we were moving and stalled in the shipping lane.

>>I feel like we need to push really hard and try to get to this point.

>>The Coast Guard circled us for 15 minutes flashing Morse code.

We'd have had better luck understanding a barred owl.

>>I'm worried about the waves for you!

>>Extremely sketchy.

But we got out in the water and the wind picked up and the ocean got angry.

You can see the calm water on the other side of the ship.

We're almost there.

>>Whew.

>>Whew.

Whew.

>>Justin and I have made it kind of into just slightly calmer waters on the backside of this humongous ship.

The other boys are sticking together back there and bilging a little bit.

I don't know, maybe just 'cause I've never sea kayaked in actual sea waters, but that was terrifying.

>>Really heavy waves in the shipping lane, the Coast Guard like flying by, which made it even more scary in a way.

>>I didn't wanna do any kind of signal 'cause I thought they would interpret it as like help.

(Dietrich chuckling) >>Oh man, I can't believe you did that without a skirt.

>>We're all good, man.

>>We're all good.

>>We're all good, yeah.

>>Salt life.

>>We finally outran the coal trains that had followed us from the headwaters, but seeing the Blue Ridge Mountains piled up on the export piers was a final reminder that the river didn't recover because we stopped using it.

(water splashing) We're more here than ever.

We're just more committed.

>>It's been amazing seeing the transition in ecology and society from the top to the bottom.

This psychologically has been I think a really unique outdoor experience.

>>The James is currently approaching a milestone in overall health where it could withstand the yearly ups and downs without regressing, a strength it hasn't had since long before Kepone.

It's almost there.

>>Yeah, I mean, you know, when you love something there is no finishing it.

This was just a big, awesome part of the affair.

>>A changing climate is going to make future progress a lot more difficult.

But it will get there if we help it.

At our best, we can even add to this place.

When we ended our first trip in Richmond, we said, "Go to the river.

"The real thing is so much better than a movie.

"Just go."

>>We just passed under the bridge tunnel down here and we're basically at the bay.

We're gonna paddle right around that corner and we'll be finished with this wild, wild trip.

Whoa-hoo-hoo.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) (waves whooshing) (kayakers chattering) >>Now that we're at the end, we say: go to the river, and if you want to understand how special it can be-- >>Paddles up, boys!

>>Take someone with you.

>>The headwaters have been downed!

>>I love you all.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues)