She's a hiker, a conservationist, and a prolific writer of outdoor adventure.

So stick around, because you're about to meet this fascinating woman, who, with her late husband, has been called "the conscience of the northeast mountains."

[theme music] Welcome to "Windows to the Wild."

I'm Willem Lange.

In 1971, Laura Waterman and her husband, Guy, left a corporate lifestyle down country and moved to land here in the hills of rural Vermont.

[gentle music] For the first year, the newlyweds lived in lean-to while they built a cabin.

Hey, how are you doing?

Trails?

It's a fascinating story, and nobody could help me tell it better than the lady herself, Laura Waterman.

Thank you for letting us walk with you today.

[laughs] Thank you, Will.

So today, we're going to walk and talk a little bit up on Wrights Mountain, eh, and talk about your life with Guy and your life since Guy, and so on.

Make sense?

Sounds good to me.

And a journey to the top of the mountain begins with-- --one step.

Ha ha!

You got it.

Here we go.

[laughs] All right.

[gentle music] As Laura and I head up the hill, let me show you where we are.

Wrights Mountain is located near Bradford, Vermont.

The trail is pretty easy, 1.6 miles out and back.

If you like rewards, you're in luck.

Near the summit, there's a great view of the valley.

[music continues] So, yeah, Southern Pillar, that was one of my first climbs.

Yeah.

To truly appreciate Laura Waterman's story, we have to take you back in time and place.

She grew up in New Jersey.

Her father was the headmaster of a prep school.

As a child, she spent a lot of time with books, and was drawn to the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories about life on the prairie.

That may be what ignited the pioneering spirit in her.

After college, Laura found work in New York City as an editor.

Guy's first love was the piano.

He played professionally as a teenager, but also liked to write.

He graduated from George Washington University, and stepped into the world of politics, writing speeches.

He put words into the mouths of an impressive list of people-- President Eisenhower, Vise President Nixon, and Congressman Gerald Ford.

Guy and his first wife married early in life, long before he met Laura.

They had three sons, but in 1969, they separated.

A year later, he met the editor of an outdoor magazine, Laura Johnson.

Now, Guy had three sons, two grown and gone, and one still in high school, right?

Yeah.

OK. That was a--was that a problem for you?

No.

It didn't-- it wasn't.

Yeah, good.

The youngest one, Jim, actually spent most of the first winter with us as we were finishing off the house on the inside.

Yeah.

And then, he was pretty much on his own after that.

In 1972, Laura and Guy got married.

They left corporate life behind and moved to Vermont, to a property Guy called Barra, after his family's ancestral island home in Scotland.

So you moved up in '71.

Well, we bought the land in '71.

And we moved up in June 9, 1973.

[gentle music] Without a place to live, they spent their first summer at Barra in a lean-to.

All right.

So you moved-- finally you moved onto the land, build a lean-to.

Mm-hmm.

[chuckles] Like an Adirondack lean-to?

--built the lean-to the summer before.

Oh yeah.

I mean, we went into this with a lot of planning.

And we knew we weren't going to be raising meat for eating purposes.

So we basically became vegetarians.

Guy drew a very detailed plan of the house, that-- relatively small with a little over 500 feet, square foot.

Room for a grand piano.

But room for a grand piano.

[chuckles] That's true.

That was Guy's-- What a great touch.

I love it.

[gentle music] Well, after you and Guy moved to the-- moved to Barra and got things going, you got the garden in, and you got the maple trees named, and the blueberries counted, did he actually keep track of the number of berries came off each bush?

Yes.

[chuckles] I can of explain that.

Yeah.

Really, it wasn't as wacky as it sounds.

But when the bushes were little, we were just interested in counting the berries.

Because they were small, and we wanted maybe to encourage them.

And so we got started counting, and then we couldn't stop.

And it just became something fun and silly to do.

[gentle music] The homestead they built together suited them perfectly.

They grew most of what they ate, learned about wilderness living, and began to write about it.

Bottom line for us was hiking and climbing.

[gentle music] The more they hiked, the more they learned about the wilderness around them.

Over time, those experiences were captured in words.

Guy and Laura wrote five books together about being outdoors.

What was the attraction of the Franconia Range for you and Guy?

Oh, gosh.

Well, for a Guy, to start with, it was one of his earlier experiences when he discovered hiking for himself.

[gentle music] Mt.

Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge meant so much to Laura and Guy that they began to think of it as an extension of their own backyard.

[music continues] After hearing about the Appalachian Mountain Club's Adopt a Trail program, they did just that, nearly two miles of the Franconia Ridge Trail.

They took care of it, and encouraged other people who hiked across it to respect the land.

Friends began adopting adjacent trails, and the group became known as the West End Trail Tenders.

That was your trail.

Yeah, that's our trail.

You took it from the top of Lafayette?

How far did you go?

We signed up for the Franconia Ridge, and our territory was from the summit of Lafayette to Little Haystack.

So you're the one who put the rock linings along the trail.

Yeah, there were already some cairns, and then we built more cairns.

That's not an easy trail to maintain, above tree line.

No, but actually, we never thought of it as easy or hard.

I mean, it was just-- we just felt such-- the privilege of being able to take care of it.

[gentle music] Lafayette is the first mountain in New Hampshire that Guy climbed.

It's where he rediscovered his love of the outdoors, and where he hiked with his three sons.

In 1981, one of his boys, Johnny, set out to traverse Denali in Alaska.

He disappeared somewhere on the mountain.

Guy buried his son's hiking boots under a cairn on Franconia Ridge.

[music continues] As we relaxed with a view of the valley in front of us, I shared a story with Laura about Franconia Ridge.

It was kind of funny.

But it sure caught her attention.

We bushwhacked once up out of the Pemigewasset Wilderness, five Dartmouth students and I up onto Franconia Ridge.

Then we were going to turn right, climb Lafayette, and go back down and take a swim.

We had just got-- I was up front.

And just as I got to where my head was the level of the ground of Franconia Ridge, it was a big flat rock.

And under it, six full beer bottles all frosty from the night before.

I said, OK, gentlemen, there are six of them, there's six of us.

This is an occasion for an ethical discussion.

[laughs] We drank them and left the empties there.

[laughs] Oh, left the empties?

Well, just so the person who came along looking for them would know they'd been appreciated.

Oh.

And not stolen.

Gosh!

Thinking back, we probably did carry the bottles out with us.

But Laura's reaction makes a good point.

She and Guy spent 18 years caring for the Franconia Ridge Trail.

They wanted people to enjoy it, but practice good ethics.

[guitar music] A couple of your books are about wilderness ethics.

And I'm presuming that people all said, mm-hmm, that's nice, and that was that.

Yeah?

Or did they-- you think people did it?

I think people who read our books understood what we were talking about, meaning how we act in the woods.

Are we going to pick up our trash or just leave it behind a tree?

Carry it in, carry it out.

Are we going to not cut down the saplings to build a fire, but take out our camping stove and walk lightly?

Stay on the trail or [inaudible]??

[music continues] I think we wanted-- and, you know, anyone who has done a lot of walking in the woods at the mountain tops just wants everyone to be able to go up and enjoy it, but in the right spirit behind it.

[music continues] As Laura and I talk, the conversation turns to the topic of people and nature.

Hiking trails can sometimes get crowded out here, especially in summer and fall.

Rather than see that as a threat, Laura feels it can be an opportunity-- an opportunity for something good.

But there are two ways of looking at it.

Hopefully, some of those people, you know the newcomers, will become wilderness supporters.

And if ones go up there and find they don't like it, then that's fine.

They can go find something else they enjoy doing.

We're lucky to have-- I mean the United States is, just for natural scenery, it doesn't get much better.

Yeah.

And-- but if-- Guy and I hope that just by being exposed to that beauty, that wildness, that people would also feel just the urge to keep it that way.

[gentle music] On the morning of February 6, 2000, life at Barra was about to change dramatically.

Guy paid close attention to the weather.

Sustained winds made that day's below zero temperatures even colder.

[music continues] At 67 years old and depressed, Guy made the decision to end his life.

He handed Laura notes he'd written, and walked out the door.

He stopped at the local post office and mailed letters to friends.

Guy wanted them to know what he was about to do.

He continued to Franconia Notch, and made his last hike to high on Mt.

Lafayette.

Guy had no plans to return home.

Somewhere along the line here, the worm crept into the apple, right?

Guy started thinking more about not being there.

Yeah.

Were you aware of that?

No.

And I think the change for him was after-- I mean, I express it differently.

He had lost two of his three sons, and that basically sent him back into a depression.

I wasn't really aware of-- I knew he was feeling very sad and very preoccupied with those thoughts, but to me, he was-- he never acted like a depressed person, which I think of as someone who can't do work, sleeps late, can't focus, or whatever.

I mean, Guy was always incredibly productive and had an enormous amount of energy.

So-- and he phrased it as his demons.

We would talk about his demons.

And I could tell if he was having a bad day.

[piano music] Guy's body was found near the summit of Lafayette.

His father's ice ax marked its location.

[music continues] The day that Guy-- first, he checked the weather to make sure there was some cold weather in the offing.

He even stopped at Crawford Notch to make sure there was.

But the day he walked out, he handed you some pages of writing that he wanted you to have.

What was that about?

What it-- why he was doing what he was doing?

Yeah, it was-- he wrote about basically his disappointments.

Yeah.

I think he did-- he felt like he had let his sons down.

He was disappointed in our books.

He had hoped for a wider audience.

And I think he felt that, you know, he was 67 years old.

He could feel his own powers, physical powers, weren't what they were at 67.

And he didn't want to get-- You know, to which I would say, so?

Well-- You know, but I know.

I know.

He didn't want to get anywhere close to what he saw happening, or what he saw around the corner for himself, even though there was no diagnosis or anything like that.

But, so he-- and I understood his words.

And I could respect, because that's how we'd always operated.

[gentle music] Guy and Laura's love of Franconia Ridge continues today.

A group of friends has created a fund for conservation.

The money is used to maintain the trail.

Very soon after Guy's death, a good friend of mine, Peter Forbes, who worked for a conservation organization, suggested that we start something in the mountains that honored Guy.

And immediately, it was clear to me that, from our work on Franconia Ridge, all the trail work we did up in the alpine area, that whatever we started, it should be related to alpine-- to the above tree line areas in the White Mountains.

[music continues] You're still connected to the wilderness.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yep.

Heart and soul, Will.

[chuckles] Aren't we all?

It's just wonderful.

Yeah.

[music continues] I think we're incredibly lucky in the Northeast to have what we've got-- magnificent mountains and a trail system.

And people can pitch in and help, and become caring stewards in many different ways.

[music continues] Laura is still writing.

I read her memoir, "Losing the Garden."

Your first memoir, which is the first thing I read, "Losing the Garden"-- the death marks a change in the whole tone of the book.

It's as if you two had been living with a golem or something behind the stove for years, sort of a malignant, foreboding presence.

And all of a sudden, your writing goes doo-doo.

You're writing uphill again.

You know what I mean?

And I found myself enjoying it more.

Interesting.

Yeah, and it's not just about-- not just what's in it.

It's the way it sounds, the way it feels, the way you're writing.

You start writing uphill.

And that was interesting.

Yeah, I don't think anyone has remarked on that.

But I totally understand what you're saying.

Yeah, my wife was a bitter loss, but I don't mind living alone, you know?

Although I miss her, you know, I'm OK, I know where the scissors are, [laughs] which are the first time in 60 years!

And in a way, my writing is going downhill, because the shock is over.

And now I'm thinking about getting older and leaving, and surrounded by all this chaos.

I just gotta not listen to the news.

But how do you not listen?

I do that, too.

I don't listen to much news.

I'm trying to write uphill.

I'm trying hard.

A second memoir is on the way.

Laura didn't plan to write much about Guy's suicide, but as the story developed, she realized she couldn't ignore it.

And it did a great deal for me to be able to write it, to be able to think through where I've come, the distance, the mental-- not what I've accomplished, but just the-- a greater understanding that I have of Guy, that I had of myself, and what we had together in that spot.

And now things have shifted since I've been on my own for 20 years.

And again, it's also like a cloud is just peeling off.

[gentle music] Here we are.

Here we are.

On a beautiful day, in a beautiful state.

[chuckles] Yes.

[music continues] Well, we have completed our perilous ascent and descent of Wrights Mountain.

We're all in one piece, and we've had a wonderful day.

I can't thank you enough, Laura, for ordaining to let us walk with you.

Gosh!

And it's just been a-- it's been just great.

I'd love to do it again and listen to some more stories.

It would be great.

So that brings us once again to that time I like least, the time we have to say goodbye.

But we do.

I'm Willem Lange.

And I hope to see you again on "Windows to the Wild."

[piano music] Support for the production of "Windows to the Wild" is provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, the Fuller Foundation, the Gilbert Verney Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[music continues]