[piano intro] [gentle music] - See, I'm not seeing it yet.

Push it more in front of my camera.

Stop, stop, stop, don't move, what they're missing.

So obvious to me.

Look at it, watch it, what a trip.

[birds chirping] I'm not doing it yet, I'll just have to guess, one, two, three.

[gentle music] ♪ - [Narrator] The time has come to talk of many things, of trees and clouds and birds and sky, roots rising, breaking ground, of mountains and memories, ripples and reflections, expanding and contracting, transcending time.

What is death but just the next phase, the rebirth, the beginning again, the inhale, the opening, the now.

my name is Betsy.

My dad, who loved all winged things, called me Bee.

I am from dirt roads and a cabin in the woods on top of Bear Hill.

I am from the North Carolina soil that grows the best sweet potatoes, spinach, kale and figs.

I am from the wings of birds and butterflies and lightning bugs and bees.

I am from that which nourishes, a part of something bigger than myself.

[birds chirping] "Tell me the story of you and mom again", I ask my dad, my parents love is the double rainbow kind.

He knew from the first moment he met her that she was the one.

- Audrey moved into a cabin that was owned originally by a Swiss book binder.

And someone had told her to call Scott if there were any issues.

- [Audrey] I moved in on my 30th birthday, and we kind of connected pretty much right away.

♪ We made time ♪ - [Narrator] Their romance sparked in the pre-done hours of a January morning when my mom called on her new neighbor to help her put out a chimney fire on her first night in her cabin in the woods.

- Well, he did say that he had loved me from the moment he met me.

[woman laughing] - And he came back to me and said, I just met my future wife.

And I go, really?

He goes, yeah, no, this woman, I'm gonna marry her.

- [Narrator] The little cabin on Bear Hill would become a physical representation of their love for each other.

- So we had a vegetable garden and then we started growing fruit trees.

And then Scott started building ponds.

- [Audrey] Okay, so I hit the red button?

- You hit the red button.

When you say ready, we'll come.

- [Audrey] Ready, you need to take a picture of me and daddy and me and Betsy.

- [Narrator] But my parents found their true calling in 1991 when I was born, followed soon after by my younger sister Ella.

Growing up, home was the garden, the woods, the soft grassy field where we lay at night under the stars.

My dad guided me and my sister to a deeper way of knowing than following a path.

Barefoot and brave, my sister and I loved losing ourselves in the wild and trusting we would always find our way home.

[man snoring] [upbeat music] ♪ A year after my parents married, they opened Townsend Bertram & Company, Adventure Outfitters, in Carrboro, North Carolina, which would become an integral part of the community.

- I loved having a place where people were comfortable coming to visit and talk about their latest adventures and share things like that.

We had a lot of regulars.

[woman laughing] - They've been the life of this community for 30 years.

People have been shopping here, making friends here.

They're the heart, they're iconic business in this community.

- [Narrator] What was once a newlywed's business baby is now a multi-generational adventure.

Yeah.

This year will mark the shop's 30th anniversary, but it's hard to imagine a celebration without our master of ceremonies.

- People were drawn to Scott because he was charismatic and he was wild and fun.

- Scott was full of energy, burning the candle at five ends at one time, never met a stranger.

- [Narrator] My dad is my person.

The one I put down is my emergency contact, whose voicemails I listen to when I feel lonely.

- He was there for her, he was the stay at home dad, so to speak.

He was the cook, he changed diapers.

He was hands on dad.

- [Narrator] He was a man who traveled the world, built things, danced wildly, harnessed the wind.

- He loved windsurfing and then he learned to kite surf.

He loved that, he followed the wind around the world.

- [Narrator] He always lived with his eyes wide open, more connected to nature than any human I know.

- Scott was unrestrained.

He thought the way he wanted to think and free.

- [Maia] He was one of the most fully present humans that I have ever been around and never stopped looking for a way to bring joy to even the smallest project or moment.

- [Narrator] He taught us how to be a good friend, neighbor and community member.

- And that was the thing that really made me like Scott the most was most of what he wanted to do was just help.

- [Narrator] He picked up trash wherever he went and he was famous for doing everything, like a fireball.

- It energized bunny.

Yeah, if I were down and I spent 10 minutes with him, that's it, I'm good.

- [Narrator] Is there anything better than pure childlike excitement?

- It was going to be a happy day, a good day, as much as it possibly could be every day, and that just poured out of him.

- It feels good.

- And he's been like leaning down and picking up stuff, and I realize he's picking up trash.

That was the thing he did everywhere he went and I'm like, oh no, this is high school, this is public high school.

No parents are outside of the vehicle and the entire school.

Ever since I could write, I've been weaving tales from the threads of my life.

Get in the car.

- Stories influence, they move people to action.

Stories can uplift, inspire, stories help us to not feel so alone.

So you wanna tell a story about your dad.

And if we have a form in which we can share our stories, that can be such a powerful tool for healing.

So what kind of storyteller was your dad?

- I mean, everything was a story.

We had family breakfast and family dinner.

And so often our meals revolved around stories that my dad would tell.

- [Scott] Joe's Stoned Crab coming right up.

- [Narrator] While I wrote my stories in my journals, my dad told his, around the fire, at the breakfast table, to any stranger who would listen.

- And we pull up in front of the place and I yell, get your hands off the car.

He was the valet parking.

- And my mom used to joke that my dad was 50% Scott because 50% was true and 50% was embellishment.

You know, it's like.

In the wake of losing my dad, I sought an outlet for the stories we shared.

Jeff Polish and I connected through the web of our small town.

- You know, certain stories are just so universal, and this is one of them.

Whether we have experienced loss and death in our lives, we will experience that, every single one of us, everyone has a father.

Everyone also knows that life is finite or at least, on this earth it's finite, right?

And so I just wanna let you know that this is a story that will stop everyone in their tracks.

- Thank you.

- Because of its universality.

All right, so we are ready for the storytelling portion of tonight?

We, yes, thank you.

10 people are really excited about stories, I love that.

- So in high school, there was a going joke that you weren't really my friend until you had seen my dad naked.

[audience laughing] And you might think, wow, mortifying for a 16 year old girl.

But thankfully, my dad had given me a lifetime of preparation in wild adventures with him.

This began on a Wednesday in preschool.

This gorilla arrives at school and starts scaling the roof and swinging from the rafters and calling out these wild calls.

And I'm like, wait, that's my dad, and then he's taking off this.

- So I wanna hear the story about this, I've heard him referred to as like Captain Scott B, is that because of the beach or like the kite surfing?

Like what is that?

- The Captain Scott B first originated on a trip to Hawaii that my family and I went on.

My family in middle school went on a summer vacation to Hawaii and everything in the car was stolen.

So we had no more clothes.

We hit the thrift shop to get stuff.

And while my mom and sister and I are perusing the clothes, my dad spots a cruise ship captain's outfit.

I'm talking gold buttons, like the captain's hat, the whole nine yards.

So he decides not only does he need this, this is gonna be his uniform for the rest of the trip.

So the captain's hat just became woven into the fabric of our lives.

- So he was always Captain Scott B after Hawaii.

- Yeah.

- [Man] Got it.

- There's clear before and after.

Everywhere we go, I'm Captain Scott B.

These are my shipmates and my sister and my mom and I are like trying to play along.

My dad, a father to so many, a loyal neighbor, a mentor, a best friend, the healthiest, most active and vibrant person I know.

- He had a very healthy lifestyle, he was always exercising.

I mean, he was just a very fit and healthy person.

And he just went in for his annual physical and he was diagnosed with stage four terminal prostate cancer.

[gentle music] ♪ When you have this just healthy person who gets cancer like that, it's so shocking.

[woman sighing] - So there's a moment in her story where she transitions from the life of Scott B to the death of Scott B.

So what you see is her standing there, one, two, you could hear the audience reaction so profoundly.

- Two and a half months ago, my dad died of terminal cancer at 65 years old.

- It was, this is celebration of life.

And now we're dealing with the death of the most important person that I have ever known.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Even though I felt its eminence, expected it at any moment, death seemed sudden and surreal.

[wind blowing] - His death affected her in so many ways.

She had a very hard time.

- Scott was such a dynamic personality, even not just as her father, but as a person, that the gap or the vacuum that was left behind was pretty extreme.

- The presence of that kind of powerful, transformative energy, and then its absence, it's a huge loss.

- [Narrator] You are the sun.

Imagine if one day the sun died, I am all emptied out.

Nothing left, just a sliver of myself.

[upbeat music] When grief engulfs me, I lace up my running shoes and let the local trails guide.

A release of energy and endorphins pulls me from my mind into my body.

Swimming too offers solace, sensory deprivation from the overwhelm of emotion.

In the water, I let the pain flow through me.

Without my dad, who am I?

The Betsy I'd known was gone.

My body sinks to the smooth bottom of the pool, trying to imagine what death might feel like.

How long would the days feel endless and heavy?

When would I be able to accept, adapt?

What would it take to reroute me, to orient me once again towards the light.

[water flowing] In the earliest days after my dad died, I sought support and wisdom from both professional counselors and trusted friends.

Laura Wallace is from my North Carolina hometown and happens to be both a professional and a friend.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- [Laura] So, we've got a lot of catching up to do.

- Yeah, thanks so much for having me over.

- Where are you now, what are you doing?

- It's like hard to even say, you know, I feel like there's a loss of time, sense of linear time, I think.

Yeah, just trying to find my feet again.

- Yeah.

- The feelings are like the river just washing me downstream and there's nothing to hold onto.

- Well, all loss is really different, but what moved me about Betsy's in particular was first of all, that she was so young and that she was so identified with her father as kind of a source of energy and of inspiration and how unmored she was.

- The disorientation, I often feel like I'm out in the wilderness, lost, just looking for a trail sign.

- In the early stages, it's really hard to know how to even put one foot in front or the other, that sense of losing your footing over and over and over again, and just when you think you have it, it slides out from under you.

There's nothing wrong with being sad.

There's nothing wrong with feeling emotionally unregulated, grief is an absolute disruptor.

It takes you off course, no matter what.

- Yeah.

- So somebody you have known as your father in your life for your entire life.

- [Narrator] Yeah.

- [Laura] So it's a huge part of your identity.

And so when you don't know who you are, it's the most vulnerable state.

- [Narrator] That's exactly it, yeah.

But sometimes I just call and like.

- Wow.

- Listen to the voicemail, you know, just to hear his voice or watch the videos that he took or.

- 'Cause you have so much footage of him and his journals, and.

- Yeah, I mean, one of the things he wanted to do was to make a movie.

He always had a dream of making a movie.

- Did he do it?

- I mean, we filmed the whole last year and I think.

- Oh wow.

[film whirring] - [Narrator] From a young age, dad understood that life itself could be one's most creative expression.

"The Super Eight", he shot in his twenties on my grandmother's farm, rewinds time.

From making music to gardening, the old school film illuminates the power of living close to the earth and seeing every day as a grand adventure.

In his thirties, he put down the camera and picked up a pen.

- He always kept a journal and he always had his journal with him and he'd open his journal and have people write things in his journal and draw pictures in his journal.

- Through thousands of pages, he distilled a big and wild life into a million tiny, magnificent moments.

And then when at 63 he was diagnosed with cancer, dad continued to use the lens to capture the beauty he saw all around him.

- [Scott] Oh see, I'm not seeing it yet.

Push it more in front of my camera.

- One of the things that was really lovely the whole last year of his life, he was doing all these creative things and really embracing, hey, I'm gonna be gone.

And this is what I want you to see.

And this is what I want people to know.

- He had always talked about wanting to do some kind of movie and he just was always fascinated by it.

- I'm not doing it yet, I'll just have to guess, one, two, three.

Can you turn it like that, really?

- [Woman] Yeah.

- [Scott] Oh my gosh.

- I think he always had this idea that he wanted to make a movie, but he didn't know anything about it.

He was the most technically challenged person you've ever met.

- [Scott] Oh my God, come on camera.

I can't even focus a bloody thing, I'm no good at this.

- But dad's filming made him happy and I helped him as often as I could.

And so now it going, so you say hi, I'm Scott.

Raised cornmeal buns part two, with Scott B in the kitchen.

- All right, now we've taken the buns out of our warming oven.

- [Narrator] A little bit further back, little bit further back.

Keep on going, keep on going.

- Look at those, they are cute.

Look at that, look, look, look.

- William Blake said, "As a man is, so he sees."

And you could really tell in the way that Scott saw who he was.

- They're super cool pine cones, why'd you pick it out?

Super cool pine cones.

- [Woman] Okay.

- He was so filled with joy and just able to discern, what seems miraculous, that we're here, that we're alive.

[whirring] - What a gift to have his perspective captured in clips, crumbs left along the path, leading to the good life.

These really simple things that he saw as extraordinary.

- Right?

- And I think it's part of why I work and then I retreat.

As I watch now, his words come back to me.

Bee, promise me you'll turn your sadness into art, he pleaded.

- I mean, I think that Scott knew how hard it was gonna be for her.

And maybe this was just an important thing, a gift perhaps for him to give to her.

- [Narrator] Did he know I would go back to his films, might the footage hold something more for me to find?

- Everything that you're doing is what I would recommend for you, knowing you.

I could see the benefit, that she was really connecting with him on a level that was really who he was and how he carries on through her.

All right, I hope she continues to pursue that.

[dog barking] [gentle music] - [Narrator] My mom is most at home in her garden, hands in the dirt.

♪ Somewhere in a field ♪ - I just love digging in the dirt.

I know I spent a lot of time outside as a child and you know, it's just so exciting to plant seeds and have him grow into beautiful flowers, or.

- [Narrator] She is salt to the earth.

A mother of pure love, a widow learning to tend to sadness with the same tender care with which she does her flowers.

- Now, I feel very connected to Scott when I'm outside.

'Cause he said before he died, to look for him in nature.

♪ In the field of clovers, she waits ♪ - [Narrator] When I hear the crunch of gravel under tires, I know I am home.

This neighborhood in the forest of oaks, maples, red buds and pines.

♪ Highway homes and love ♪ The city of my childhood.

Hey mom.

- [Audrey] Hey Bee, how's it going darling?

- [Narrator] Your flowers are always so pretty.

- [Audrey] You smell nice.

- [Narrator] What are you working with today?

- This is a lily.

- Nice.

- This is sort of a hybrid lily, not the prettiest, but it's all right.

- [Narrator] I feel my father's warm smile illuminated in the light of my mom's resilience.

- I love these, daddy dug these up on the side of the road somewhere.

- Really?

He was always finding fun plants on the side of the road.

- Spread like crazy.

Unlike my grief that I seem unable to control, my mom's is quiet and contained, tender and tethered within.

That looks really pretty mom.

- [Audrey] I like the blue in there, okay.

- [Narrator] How are you feeling about lunch?

I'm getting pretty hungry.

- [Audrey] I'm real hungry.

- [Narrator] You wanna make some sweet potato biscuits in honor of dad?

- Okay.

Good.

- Really good, what do you think made dad love food and cooking more people and stuff?

- Well, I think because growing up on a farm with his mom, she was all about food.

She grew all their food, she put it up, they always had canned tomatoes and fresh food all year round because she grew such a big garden.

And I think growing up with that, that was part of him.

- Yeah.

I've been thinking about how he lived and trying to, as I transition through grief and everything, figure out how to live the same way he did and fully, and without that deep sense of grief, and I've been thinking about what are the ingredients that he used to make life feel that way and life feel full?

- I think that's great to honor him by doing that.

- I think it's really great for her to walk in your parents' shoes and to understand what they did, what their relationships were, what fascinated them.

- We walked all the time.

Every morning after breakfast and every night after dinner, we walked down to the pond.

We just loved walking together, we both love to walk and we loved walking together.

- I think that it gives her a better, more rounded picture of Scott and it shows that she's being expansive in her thinking, and that is wonderful.

I couldn't have come up with a better script for her.

- [Mom] All right, you ready?

- [Narrator] Ready to jump in Scott B style, let's go.

- Scott B would be naked.

[women laughing] - Smokey, you wanna come first swim Smoke?

We had a family rule, no cedar left behind.

My dad loved building things from cedar, 15 foot tall deer fences, mounted with cedar stumps that looked like creatures coming out of the mist in the morning.

[birds chirping] And my sister and I were used to haul these big pieces of wood out of the forest.

My dad taught me the art of reclaiming, turning trash to treasure.

You always turned wreckage into something of worth.

What treasures would you salvage now from the broken pieces of our lives?

Where would you focus your lens?

I keep asking myself what you would do, but I know the answer.

[upbeat music] ♪ Dear dad, I've decided to finish the film you started all those years ago on grandmother's farm.

We will be co-creating as we always did, exploring everything you loved, family, food, nature, adventure, fun.

This is about living in the present and figuring out who I am in the world without my dad.

And what does living a meaningful life look like to me?

But if I'm going to finish your movie, I need to start my adventure where it all began.

- When we moved here, I was six, Scott would've been seven.

My sister Gretchen would've been nine.

And then oldest sister, Charlotte was 14.

So my mom had her hands full.

- [Narrator] My father grew up on a farm in Hendersonville, in North Carolina.

A small town in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.

Raised by his mother, Kate Bertram, with his siblings, Gretchen, Kim and Charlotte.

In addition to raising four children, my grandmother raised cows and chickens and fruit trees and gardens.

And she grew and cooked and baked all the food they ate.

- It was a nice place to grow up.

- And his mother lived there till she died and she lived to be 94, so, and now his brother owns the farm.

- I like having the elbow room.

Well, there's a sense of security too, of growing some of your own food.

You feel like you can make it if need be, what you need is here.

- [Narrator] The familiar farmland of the North Carolina mountains welcomes me to my dad's childhood home.

[birds chirping] I throw my arms around Aunt Holly and Uncle Kim, seeing them for the first time since the burial.

Uncle Kim looks and feels and smells so much like my father, I feel tears falling inside.

- Doing okay?

- Yeah, I'm feeling, it's hard to know who you are when you lose someone that's such a big part of your life, you know?

And so I'm.

- [Holly] Still real early.

- Yeah, still early and figuring out how to navigate without him and just pulling in the driveway today, it's like, I feel this pace of life is back in time and of a different era and slower and connected to nature.

- Well, I think Betsy's maybe coming back here some ways to heal and I'd find it appropriate.

I find this pretty peaceful place that you can be who you are and sort of relax here.

- I love watching the Super Eight and getting to relive some of that part of his life.

He really wanted to make movies.

And I guess that went back to when you guys were kids.

I don't know if he talked about it like that then, or if he just had that camera and was recording?

- He was just doing it, the way I remember.

- [Narrator] Just doing it in free form.

- Yeah.

[laughing] It was fun, making a movie, everybody wants to clown around, that's what we did.

It surely wasn't exactly well scripted or anything.

- [Narrator] There's that great scene of you on the bike, riding into the pond.

[woman laughing] My dad thought that was really funny.

I can almost hear his laughter, the splashing of pond water.

- We were just being ourselves and having fun.

And maybe he wanted to capture some of that.

Save some of that fun.

And I hadn't really thought about that much.

[film whirring] Well, I hope you can find, sense of healing here.

I always felt that I could.

- Yeah, I feel really grateful to get to come here and be with you guys.

- Yeah, I think it's great what you're doing.

- [Narrator] Thank you, cheers guys.

- [Man 2] Cheers.

- [Narrator] Best lemonade ever.

- Yeah.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] My steps make the creaky floorboards of the farmhouse sing.

I feel my father's presence in the places he played as a child.

I ache for his embrace, the sound of his voice, the feeling of his rough work calloused hand in mine.

♪ Take this heart of gold, melt it down ♪ ♪ I'll come around ♪ As I plant my feet on the grass and take in the fields where grandmother's cows once grazed.

♪ In your eyes ♪ I root into this place my dad called home.

I breathe it in and return to childhood, my own and my dad's.

- All right, here we go, split some wood.

- Yeah, winter always comes way too soon.

- Oh, you bet.

[people laughing] Most people wanna pitch in.

That's just kind of the nature of being on a place like this, if you stay around a while, you pitch in together.

This is cherry here.

- [Narrator] Oh, it's beautiful.

- Yeah, I like cherry.

- Do you guys still heat the house with the wood stove?

Like when.

- [Man 2] Yeah, that's part of it.

- [Narrator] Yeah.

- [Man 2] That's part of it.

That one may not split so well, but we'll take it.

- We'll try it anyway.

- [Man 2] Ready to roll?

- Ready to rock and roll.

My dad had a cart just like that, exact same.

- Well, I think part of the journey right now for Betsy's healing from the grief, about here ought to be good.

- Yeah, this looks great.

- I don't know.

We can't judge other people by their outside.

You don't really know what's going on inside.

- [Narrator] What was my dad like as a kid when y'all were younger?

- Fun, good companion.

- I bet.

- The neighbors would call my mom and say, you know, those boys are gonna kill themselves out there.

She said, yeah, I know.

[people laughing] We're popping wheelies.

- Oh man.

- In the field.

I'd like to know more about that.

You know, what she's feeling inside.

- [Narrator] Oh, you got it, nice one.

- [Man 2] Well, thanks for all the help today.

- It was really fun.

- [Man 2] I'm in good shape now for getting ready for firewood.

- [Narrator] Yeah.

- [Man 2] And it's been good to spend time with you.

- I feel the same way, it's really special.

- How do you feel like you're doing Betsy, with losing Scott?

Where do you feel like you are now in that process?

- Oftentimes I feel like I'm still underwater kind of looking for the surface and time does change.

It stops flowing in the same pace and everything feels slow motion in that weird way.

And I think the only thing that really gives me solace is being outside and that's where I feel connected to him.

I look for him and the hawks and the trees he loved and planted and the places he loved and the people he loved.

And like even just seeing you, you look so much like him, like from afar, it looks like it's just him walking up.

You have you have a lot of his spirit in you.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] How have you been coping with the loss of my dad, your brother and first sibling?

- Not so great with it.

Just so hard to accept the reality of it.

- I know.

- And first time losing a brother.

Being the little brother, I looked to him for answers.

And so I'm missing that, but I wasn't there like you were, I didn't see the progression that much.

- Yeah.

- [Man 2] So.

- [Narrator] Thick as thieves in their youth, a disagreement between dad and uncle Kim eventually grew into a divide that spanned the final decade of dad's life.

- Scott and I weren't real close at the end.

We'd had a kind of falling out over the division of this property.

We had kind of distanced ourselves due to that.

It's not easy to accept that.

- What's been helping you get through it?

- I guess just working, getting up and doing stuff.

He was a doer and I think that's what I hear from him.

- [Narrator] In dad's last weeks, shared words of love and grace filled the gap that pride had wedge between them.

- Well I would tell someone that had a terminal diagnosis of a loved one, that you don't know how much more time you've got to men fences.

So it's best to move on.

Forgive if you can so that there can be some connection, you know, better connection.

- [Narrator] My dad told us in his final days to forgive everything.

- I remember, last thing I said to him was that I love him, talked to him on the phone.

[water splashing] - Every day I wake up and I remind myself that we have a choice.

My dad used to say that like every day you have a choice and sometimes it's not your first choice.

Like the first choice would be to be with my dad every day.

But that's not the choice that I have.

And so it's about choosing the thing that's the next best thing, he's not here physically but I'd hope that by being present and connecting with the people and places and natural world that he loved and being with the trees he cared for, that I'll find my way through the grief and be able to live with joy again.

I think that we should do something fun in his spirit.

- Well, maybe I ought to pick a tune.

What do you think about that?

Music on Maine.

- [Narrator] He would say enough of this work, we got to have some fun.

- Yeah.

♪ The photograph, the radio ♪ ♪ It used to be all right ♪ ♪ My wife and I would cuddle up and listen every night ♪ ♪ But television came along ♪ ♪ Ain't like, it used to be ♪ ♪ 'Cause she saw Snuffy and she won't look at me ♪ ♪ Television is the devil's doing ♪ - [Narrator] On the journey here, I felt ungrounded, floating in space.

But here now, my feet planted on the earth that grew him, playing his favorite music with family, I feel myself truly relaxed for the first time in weeks, into the tender embrace of this land.

Tethering once more to the here and now.

[gentle music] - I think the only antidote I could say is to try to find gratitude for having known these people that we've lost, for what they've given us, what they represented, how they live their lives.

Yeah, live in the moment.

Take advantage of it.

- Hello.

[woman laughing] [people cheering] [motor whirring] - Boy that's, can't wait for a longer ride.

- [Narrator] Whenever I'm in the North Carolina mountains, I find time to lose myself in the wild.

[gentle music] - It's hard for me to separate how beneficial nature is for me, when I talk to other people about why it would be beneficial to them, and not just in grief, in any kind of transition in any kind of disruption.

- [Narrator] Stepping onto the trail, I feel myself slow to nature's pace.

- [Laura] People have been using nature for a solace and for joy since the very beginning of time.

And there's a reason for it.

- [Narrator] It was dad who showed me how nature can offer a greater perspective, to root me firmly in the present, to remind me of the wonder all around.

- [Laura] I think that just so many things to focus on, all of your senses can come alive, calling you back into the present 'cause nature is just expansive.

- [Narrator] Nature never worries.

There is time and space to feel the hurt and the healing.

- And nature doesn't judge, you can be a mess.

You can be strong, you can be resilient.

You can be a puddle on the ground and nature's still going to do what it does.

I mean, I think that there's a reason they say mother nature, 'cause there's something enveloping about nature that really is very comforting.

[water pouring] - When I'm home in Carrboro and need to quiet my mind and go inward, my yoga mat calls to me.

- [Instructor] Welcome everybody, in today's practice, we're going to be working towards some heart opening.

- [Narrator] In the days and weeks following my dad's death, the studio became a shelter.

- Start to feel the flow of your breath in and out through your nose and ride the wave of the breath, like you're surfing the ocean.

- Yoga's a very healing practice on many levels.

First on your body.

If you come in and you're injured or tight, just moving the body and breathing can help you to heal.

- [Instructor] Simply making space to breathe and feel.

- But of course we all have much deeper pain.

We have pain in the mind, pain in the heart.

And the beautiful thing about the practice of yoga is you just have to show up and do it.

- [Narrator] My teachers, Summer and Paul Sobin, showed me the true meaning of yoga, to yolk ourselves to the fullness of the human experience.

- [Instructor] Root down, rise all the way up, stretch to the sky, curl the heart.

Sometimes it feels vulnerable to open the heart, but let the heart expand.

- [Narrator] In flow, I connect my breath to movement and as my body begins to relax and open, my mind follows.

- When we're so busy all the time, it's hard to slow down enough and actually feel what we're feeling.

So the Asana practice gives us just this non-judgmental space to meet the moment.

- [Narrator] Breath seeps into the hurt places, a different kind of open heart surgery.

- We're not avoiding, we're not resisting.

We just bring everything we have to each moment.

For some of us, our minds take us to a place of negativity or darkness.

Let's welcome it in, in each moment, we can make the choice to see the good, to see the beauty, to wake ourselves up.

- [Narrator] A practice that reminds me to root into the earth, to rise to the sun and to remember the power of the human heart.

- Like every moment counts.

And it's up to how you're gonna live that moment.

- [Scott] Where you going, Audrey?

- Can we we'll hold up for you again.

- [Narrator] Of all the footage dad shot over the years, the piece that speaks the loudest of his connection to nature, to the trees he loved and his love for adventure.

- [Scott] That's a pretty good shot of the there.

- [Narrator] Is a few precious days he filmed during a bucket list paddle down north Carolina's Black River, just weeks before he passed.

- [Scott] I just wish.

- Scott always drew a tremendous amount of inspiration.

And I think instruction from trees and the trees in the Three Sisters Swamp on the black river are some amazing beings.

- [Scott] Listen to that talking to us.

- [Narrator] When the footage of the ancient, nearly 3000 year old cypress trees fills the screen.

- [Scott] Do not know what they're missing.

- [Narrator] My dad's voice carries me back to the steady current of the black.

- [Scott] Is there another entrance over there CR, is this?

- His connection I think was like mine.

I never get tired of coming in here.

- [Scott] God look at the size of that right there, oh my God.

- That trip was amazing.

And you know, he was physically diminished, but just as present and excited as he ever had been.

- [Scott] Not there's few people that get to have this privilege right here, I'm telling you right now.

- [CR] It was like a kid in a candy shop.

- [Scott] CR's on it.

- [CR Let's go look at this one.

Look at that one over there, look at that burrow.

- [Scott] Oh good idea.

- It was just nonstop, we could have done it for a week.

- When considering all the places I could go to finish dad's movie, I knew the Three Sisters Swamp would be on the list.

I think you're gonna love it back there.

And I can't believe it's been as long as it has since I was there with my dad.

I am grateful for friends like Alicia, who have stood by my side since my dad passed.

Here we go.

Friends who don't ask what they can do to help, but just show up, present in my life.

- Okay Maia, we'll put the two girls in this boat.

- Perfect.

- And they can have the day together.

- Okay, gosh, it's beautiful.

- Today, my friend Maia Dery is helping me prepare and we're going to do a recreation, you might say of a paddle that we deal with Scott.

Now in the little boats, I will get a small lifers over for each person to put behind their back.

- [Narrator] Hey guys.

- [Woman 2] Hello.

- Oh my God.

- [Narrator] We're here, we made it.

Maia is a dear family friend who shared a deep love for the natural world and the camera with my dad.

- Good trip?

- The weather.

- Good trip?

- [Narrator] Legendary river guide Captain Charles Robbins knows the waterways of Eastern North Carolina better than anyone.

- So we're going to redo this trip and hopefully have the same spirit that was with us before.

- Yeah, can't wait.

- All right, so this is sage from South Dakota, from the Pine Ridge Reservation.

And I wanna smudge this all.

It's a clearing and the sending smoke rise to the heaven.

Well, the smudging, it has an effect immediately.

Can you turn around please?

In a Native American way, it is a cleansing and it brings everybody together.

The east, the sunrise represents the beginning of life, and to our west, the sunset, the end.

It's cosmic, it's hard to really explain what it does, but the intent is it makes us feel all as one.

And we know that Scott lived the total time between sun rise and sunset.

He lived life to the fullest and I'm really glad to have known him in the short period of time that I did.

- Oh yeah.

It's a tremendous privilege to be in this mix during this time.

It's always a tremendous privilege to be under those trees and it's gonna be really healing to be in there, remembering him.

- [CR] Let's have another adventure.

- That's so pretty, oh my God.

- Oh yes.

So an average day through the Three Sisters here, it's about a 12 mile paddle.

The core of the swamp, The Three Sisters is in the middle of that paddle, where we have the oldest living cypress trees in the world, 2,600 and now 26 years old.

There are hundreds of them in here like that.

So if there's a snake in a tree that falls, it's a water snake, the area is teaming with wildlife.

Watch out for these overhangs.

There's wasps nests in some of these, nothing to be worried about though, we have deer, we have wild pigs.

You'll see otter, raccoons, turkey roost in the trees, along with the turkey come to coyotes.

Because we have so many damselflies in here, they won't be in any mosquitoes.

We have swallow tail kite, a Mississippi kite, great blue herring.

There's a few bald eagles.

The crow is letting everybody know that we're coming and there's black bear in here, but we try to be friends to everything and leave it like we found it and just enjoy floating through.

- [Narrator] As CR leads the way, I lean back in my kayak to take in the moment.

I recall how he paddled the canoe so my dad could sit in the front and focus in on the majestic giants.

Memories rush back and sink into the murky water.

[water flowing] I feel weightless, looking up at the tall wonders around me, as the river weaves its way through.

There's no rush.

We savor the journey.

- Miss Betsy, if we keep moving along, we'll probably have lunch in The Three Sisters pretty soon.

We're about halfway there.

- Nice.

- But does it feel okay for you to be in here, are you good?

It feels right, the thing to do.

- Yeah, I think every time you go back somewhere it feels different, colors of the leaves are different.

The height, level of the water and everything.

And yet it's got that same feel of connection to it and the places in nature always make me feel that sense of remembrance of him and his spirit.

- Yeah, I know that day, from my end of it, I felt pretty honored, not even knowing Scott the time, but that's sort of the depth of feeling that I have about The Three Sisters too.

It was just a perfect trip, you know?

- Yeah, it's gonna be so cool to be back in there and see what it's like now.

- We'll be there soon.

And then I'm sure we'll all feel Scott's presence.

- [Narrator] Yeah.

- And it'll be nice.

And a lot of things will come back and I'm looking forward to it.

- [Narrator] Me too.

[birds chirping] [gentle music] We return to the river and CR leads us through a narrow passageway and in to the sacred swamp.

- [CR] So we just through here.

- [Narrator] The deeper we go, the higher the cypresses reach.

I look up and wonder at their spindly branches, like wings stretching to the sun, these ancient giants that have stood the test of time, weathered thousands of storms and offered shelter to creatures great and small.

- [CR] Here in the heart of the heart.

- [Narrator] Like you can feel its energy.

- [CR] Oh yeah I can, I'll feel like I can.

- [Narrator] I try to take it all in as dad would.

In the silence, I listen to the trees.

My dad's connection to trees with sacred.

Some might even say spiritual, his shed is full of tree climbing equipment.

And he often kept trees top roped around our house so he could climb for fun.

So it didn't surprise me that his final art project was shaping a fallen pine from our land into the coffin in which he would rest when he was ready to return to the earth.

- All trees I think are really powerful teachers.

There's so many rich metaphors.

- They are a community, they are connected.

Their root systems are deep and they graft together.

So they depend on each other.

So these long running root systems will pop up a little, what we call a cypress knee.

- [Scott] And there's a knee inside here.

- [CR] And they support each other.

- [Scott] Oh my God.

- [CR] So those knees over there will bring in water to these trees over here.

- Yeah.

- One side of the swamp may be stressing and those trees over there will sense the need and they'll move water and nutrients to the other side.

And there's no questions asked.

- [Narrator] I just love the way they are hollow like that at the bottom, you can see inside them.

- [CR] River runs through it.

- [Narrator] My dad loved learning that the cypress don't need their hearts to survive, just their bark and complex root system.

- [Scott] I just know this camera is incapable of even remotely capturing the grandeur.

- A lot of them are hollow all the way up.

These trees have their structure in the outside of it.

The xylem and phloem is all they need, they'll continue to grow.

- [Narrator] Xylem takes the nutrients up.

- Phloem, they get back and forth.

- The long, powerful lives of these trees, the fact that many of them are in their dying process, but still so beautiful and fully alive.

I think those metaphors are meaningful.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Though he has endured surgeries, the loss of body functions and had cement injected into his spine, he continues to stand strong, like the mighty cypress.

[man laughing] How I had wished we could have stayed there forever, surrounded by the healing magic of the trees, playing a never ending game of hide and seek with death.

[wood knocking] When there are no words, we use our hands, our hearts, our voices.

[shouting] Music speaks through the trees, an expression of awakened love, a reminder that we are all meant to sing and dance with mother nature, as she does with us.

- Being there in the swamp, it's always special.

And that was particularly meaningful.

I won't ever stop being grateful for being able to share that moment with them.

At that time, when I was still feeling the loss of Scott myself pretty acutely.

[frog croaking] - You know time will heal and time will make it easier.

It's not supposed to go away, but these trees are a community.

And so are we, and we are here as a group, tighter and tighter and tighter.

And that's what Scott has made happen here.

- [Narrator] This is why, despite the sadness, I returned to the places he loved, following the trail markers left behind, trusting the path.

- We are just just like the root system of these cypress trees.

We're all grafted together now.

[birds chirping] [gentle music] - [Narrator] In the first few months after my dad died, the kitchen, so full of him, haunted me.

But one day, desperately missing his cooking, I opened up the tattered pages of the recipe book passed down from my grandmother, to dad, to me.

- There it is folks.

The one and only coco sponge roll.

- [Narrator] Gradually, the kitchen once again became a place I could go to reconnect to the light and the joy he infused in all his culinary creations.

Here we go.

We've got the most important ingredient for the cake, which is Milo upside down.

Today, my friends Naya and Milo are helping me make the legendary cocoa sponge roll.

And we have Scott B's camera here today.

- We're back it's cocoa sponge roll time.

And just like.

- [Narrator] Captain Scott B always said cocoa sponge roll was the spectacular culmination of two of life's greatest ingredients, chocolate and whipped cream.

Six eggs look, and you can see where my dad changed it.

- [Scott] In my copy at home, and I'll change it here, this is six because the eggs have shrunk like two by fours.

Now my mother always said that the recipe for peace was to take two bad eggs.

- [Narrator] Dad cooked the way he lived, wide open and fully present.

- Whoa, do you see that hop out like that?

What kinda of a, going on?

Some people measure vanilla, but not just pour until I feel that's all I can afford today.

- Now, as I watch the footage from his last year, watch this time you guys.

I wonder if cooking was another way he baked how to live well into me.

[man laughing] [man shouting] All right, you guys ready to get started?

Do you feel like you know what need to do?

Oh, look at that, that was perfect.

Right guys, folding in these egg whites, so they're totally integrated.

Naya and Milo's curious natures remind me that cooking is play.

Everything's better with butter, you're doing a great job Naya, that licking the spoon is essential.

- We need somebody to volunteer from the audience to lick the beater, here you go.

- How is it, chocolate face, nice.

Oh, look at that, magic, whoa.

As I prepare for the critical cocoa sponge roll moment, my dad's words come back to me.

- Take a deep breath and start rolling, don't give up and just keep going.

- [Narrator] Here it goes, ready?

Just keep rolling.

Don't stop, okay, here we go.

We're not gonna stop, we're gonna keep on rolling.

- What you're seeing here is an absolute and total miracle.

I have never.

- [Narrator] Even in his final days, he kept going, kept celebrating.

- There it is folks.

- [Narrator] Whoa look, cocoa sponge roll, just keep rolling.

- [Child] We did it.

- [Narrator] And we did it, oh my God, it's perfect.

- Can you believe that?

- And that's another episode of the Scott B Cooking Show, whoa.

- Now we get the berries.

- [Narrator] Nice.

Here's to cake and rolling, rolling, rolling, right?

As Naya, Milo and I dive into the delicious cake roll, I am reminded of the everyday magic in the simple act of cooking and sharing a meal.

- Chocolate with cream.

- Turned out so well, as my father often said, how easily bread and water can become toast and tea.

This is some serious Scott B magic, so good.

My paternal grandfather was a legendary yachtsman and boat builder who amassed great fame and fortune in many areas of his life.

And though famously absent in my dad's life, father and son shared an unwavering love for the sea that ran deep in their DNA.

- Our whole married life, Scott wanted to buy a house at the coast, he was born on a boat and his father was a very accomplished sailor, and then he went into the motorboat business.

- Scott had always wanted a place at the beach.

So when this chance came up to buy a house down here, especially across the street from me, Scott really jumped at it.

- [Narrator] When we bought the little white cottage with the red door in the quaint seaside town in Beaufort, the floors were caving in and the whole house was a condemned dump.

- So he bought a fix upper and it was great.

It was just a little fisherman's bungalow.

And he spent a couple years fixing it up.

- [Narrator] As the cancer progressed, we spent more and more time at the beach, for dad always felt happiest near the water.

- It's Beau time, Beaufort's the place to be.

- I think this was the place he wanted to spend the most time, the water and bike riding and surfing and kite surfing, everything he could while he was here.

- Beautiful day in Beaufort.

We spent our afternoons on grand adventures, exploring and filming, biking and beach combing.

- [Audrey] Do you wanna be in it walking or?

- [Narrator] We filmed so much together in Beaufort that I knew I needed to go back to finish his movie, returning to the small town by the sea that we both so loved.

Not only did my dad find a place nearby to some of the best kite surfing spots in the world.

- Yeah, so Betsy's stuff is all over here.

- [Narrator] But it was also conveniently located directly across the street from his best friend, Steve.

- All right, we've got island sand.

Of course this could be Aruba sand, who knows?

The water was a big part of our relationship.

Scott and I used to wind surf together.

And he tried kiting once or twice when they were living in Margarita.

And when he came back, I was just learning and we started learning together.

Yeah, along came kite surfing and it was a brand new sport.

And we were trying to figure it out.

You're out there playing with the wind, you don't want lines to break.

You don't want equipment to fail.

You always kite with a side or side on or direct onshore.

'Cause if you do have trouble, you want to go to shore, not out into the middle of the ocean.

- Hey Steveo.

- Are you ready?

- Ready to go.

- [Steve] All right.

- [Narrator] How's the report looking for tomorrow?

- [Steve] Looking pretty good, 15 to 20.

- [Narrator] Nice.

- Southwest, this one?

- Yeah.

Is it worn out?

- I don't know if it's this one or the other one.

In the last year of my dad's life, it gave him great peace to know that his friend would be there for me after he died.

- Well, it feels like Betsy's and my relationship has become very close.

- I learned from the best Steve, that would be you not my dad.

[woman laughing] - She's got Scott's energy.

So that's always, it kind of reminds you of Scott a lot.

So we can go to the hardware store and get the stuff before.

- [Narrator] Cool.

- We go kiting tomorrow, right?

- Yeah, that sounds good.

- Did you see any problems in lines at all?

- The lines look really good.

- [Steve] Okay.

- [Narrator] Feeling the stove Steve.

[man laughing] [birds chirping] All right.

- [Steve] Movie time, Scott B movies.

- Yeah, let's watch Time to Peel, this one's hilarious.

- [Steve] I haven't seen any of these.

- [Narrator] They're really funny.

- What a clown.

- Sounds like.

- It was really neat to see some of those old videos that I hadn't seen of Scott.

Oh my God.

- Let me show you the next one.

- It doesn't matter whether he was 25 years old or he was 55 years old, Scott's personality exudes through everything.

Oh, he is got my hat on that I gave him.

- [Narrator] Yeah, he does.

- [Steve] It was really cool.

- Banana eating.

[woman laughing] I have seen dad's videos countless times, watching them for the first time with Steve suddenly brings him right back to the porch with us.

♪ Sit right there ♪ - This is so classic, right here.

This is so my dad, right?

- [Steve] Leaning back like the winds.

- He always looked at the positive.

He looked at what he could do instead of what he couldn't do.

When he got really sick, you know, he couldn't kit surf and he couldn't tree climb.

He couldn't do the things he loved to do, but he never one time complained.

- Y'all might have to, it's adjustable like that.

- [Narrator] If there's a single moment in all dad's footage that truly captures the way he looked at life and death, it would have to be this one.

- Oh my God, I'm gonna be two billion hits on YouTube.

You wait and see.

- Remember us little people when you get famous.

- Oh my gosh.

- [Woman 3] Here we go.

- [Scott] All right.

- [Narrator] The day he turned a radiation treatment he dreaded into a Scott B movie moment.

[machine whirring] - Oh yeah, this is good.

- [Narrator] And when the deafening drone of the machine threatened claustrophobia, he transmuted with a song of his own, a sustained.

[man humming] A mantra, a medicine of his own making.

- [Steve] That's beautiful.

- He never stopped teaching me how to live.

And you know, in the end, he taught us all how to die too, which is something that we get very little of in this culture.

- Did not know what they're missing.

What I learned from Scott was to enjoy every single day to the most that you can possibly enjoy it.

[man shouting] And the fact that he died with a smile on his face says a lot right there.

[man sighing] - [Narrator] My dad died without regrets, surrounded by love on a July Friday at sunrise, he was at home on his sleeping porch beside my mother, the love of his life, hummingbirds flitting to the feeders, pinks painting the sky.

He is buried on the land he loved, in the rough Hume coffin he built himself, under his favorite triple birch, looking up at the garden and log cabin home he built on our property.

[birds chirping] [upbeat music] Now, when I kite, I feel him with me, a shared connection beyond the force of gravity, as we would spend hours dancing across the water, totally in sync with the elements and one another.

[water splashing] - It's great to see Betsy getting out on the water, enjoying herself, in her dad's memory.

- [Narrator] Kiting is not just a sport.

It is a way of life, facing the conditions with courageous fearlessness, always ready to take flight.

- Betsy's a great kite borderer.

She has great patience and she's not scared of the challenge when the winds come up.

- When the force is too strong, I let go with one hand as dad taught me, trusting the wind and the waves.

♪ Some day I hope to find that land ♪ ♪ The funny one where the coffee grows ♪ Hi everybody, Townsend Bertram & Company's 30th anniversary party.

[cheering] I'm Betsy.

It's now been two years since my dad died.

And a year since I began the journey of finishing his movie.

This is our founder, Audrey Townsend, let's give it up for AT.

Time plays tricks on me.

Was it yesterday or forever since we lost him?

Perhaps grief is too great a teacher for any of us to ever master.

For grief is love with nowhere to go.

♪ I just can't say goodbye ♪ [gentle music] - [Audery] I think people need to be allowed a lot of time to grieve.

And if somebody said to me, doesn't really get easier, but you get used to it, and I kind of get that.

- Time doesn't heal all.

It's the worst expression out there I think, is that time heals all.

If your heart is broken, it might be whole again, but you'll always see the ding.

The wheel will always be a little bent, but it's okay.

I mean, that's how we love people.

We lose things that we love and we grieve for them.

I mean, you can't control the losses, but I do think you have to let the love in, you know?

- [Narrator] Dear dad, if only you could see me now, by looking closely at your footage, I've learned so much.

For the first time in my life, when I look in the mirror, I am shocked by the human looking back at me.

Totally broken open, and yet breathtakingly beautiful, full of you.

- So when we were first talking, you were saying that you couldn't find the light.

And we were talking about being shrouded in the kind of darkness and sadness.

How do you feel like that's changed?

- I feel like my dad has taught me through this journey that I've been on that the way he lived life was as if every day were his last day.

- Wow.

- And living life with death as your advisor, that sounds heavy, but it makes it more beautiful.

And there's in a sense of immediacy to life.

Like whatever time we have is enough time for what we need to do.

- Right, every moment matters.

I didn't know your dad, but I've known you.

And it's hard for even me to differentiate where your dad starts and you start and where you mingle.

The way that you're living your life and the way that you're embracing things, the pain and the sorrow and the joy and the love and the excitement and the absorbing beauty and all those things, that just sounds like Betsy to me.

- Yeah.

- It really is who you are too.

[gentle music] - Take another deep breath in.

And as you exhale, slowly open your eyes, inhale, reach up, bring your hands together, exhale, bring your hands to your heart.

- How should a story end?

It's awesome question, because there's so many different stories out there, right?

But when I think of a story, a story should end with a very clear sense of change, of transformation.

- Inspired by this journey and all the lessons dad taught me, I've decided to go back to school to pursue a degree in education and reconnect future generations to the great outdoors.

Draw your elbows in, reach up for the cobra pose, a big snake, snake in the woods.

- I think she knows that nature helped her and movement helped her.

And she's hoping that that will resonate with children who have their receptors open to it, just like she had her receptors open to what Scott did.

- [Boy] Can you tell us a story?

- Sure, what kind of story do you wanna hear?

- What about Scott B?

- Oh, always a good day for a Scott B story.

Well, Scott B loved doing yoga, but his favorite pose was Savasana - Savasana everybody, get ready for Savasana.

[man humming] - [Narrator] He one time took us to an ancient cypress swamp with trees so big, it would take all of us to wrap our arms around them.

- You know, to carry on what Scott started maybe, but that she makes that her own.

- [Narrator] And when I was a kid, he would make my sister and I walk and walk and walk to find pieces of cedar for all of his cool garden fences.

- [Laura] Her own story that she can carry these things forward and say, this is me.

- And then the captain's hat makes a mysterious reappearance and it's put onto my head.

I know you are still guiding my path, every step along the trails we've once walked together.

No cedar left behind.

Everyone who meets me will know you, if only in the tiniest of ways, Captain B, Captain B, and while I feel a sadness lingering that I imagine will stick around for the months, years, and lifetime ahead, I know what my dad would want, but we would also just stop at a cool tree like this one, put our hands on the tree, just like this.

He would say, this is it, right here, right now.

Look up at the leave and then take in the sky.

Look up at the sky in awe, for you'll never see it again just as it is.

- [Scott] Oh my gosh, wow.

- [Narrator] Ask yourself every day, is this the life I want to live?

- [Scott] Oh, I got it now, I'm really doing it well.

- [Narrator] What would I do differently if I knew I were dying?

[man shouting] Aren't we all terminal, take it in, this is it.

This is life.

This is the great adventure.

[film whirring] [birds chirping] [water sloshing] And now I think your movie is finally complete.

♪ And calls me on ♪ ♪ Into the sun ♪ ♪ Onward ♪ ♪ Into the sun ♪ ♪ Just a bird with a broken wing, longing to fly ♪ ♪ They've stretched every highway this poor boy could drive ♪ ♪ At home with the grounded I found a way ♪ ♪ Across the plains and o'er the mountains, and back again ♪ ♪ Onward ♪ ♪ Into the sun ♪ [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ Ain't I got a fortune in nearing my end ♪ ♪ When I think of my family and all of my friends ♪ ♪ But the highway has ended, my keys handed in ♪ ♪ I've mended my broken wing, my soul it begins ♪ ♪ To call me on ♪ ♪ Into the sun ♪