Transcription of Aaron Frederick for the show Wellness on the Water #195
Lisa: I always really enjoy writing a piece for Old Port Magazine called Active Life where I talk to people who are actively engaged in living their lives fully. Not just in a physical way but intellectual, emotional, social. The individual I’m going to interview next is Aaron Frederick who will be featured in our upcoming Active Life for Old Port. Aaron is the co-founder and former director of Rippleffect and spent 10 years establishing a 25-acre campus, an island school promoting leadership and community development through learning adventures. His most recent venture is Heroes of Humanity events set in a variety of urban, suburban and wilderness areas which combines disciplines of multiple sports. Participants can run for whatever charity they choose to. He was also recently hired as the executive director of Friends of the Presumpscot River. You have a lot of things that you’ve been working on and are still doing. Thanks so much for coming in.
Aaron: Thanks for having me, Lisa.
Lisa: Talk about an active life. Wow, you’re out there. You’re doing things and convincing other people to do things and getting people excited about really engaging in the Maine environment, so it’s good stuff.
Aaron: It feels contagious. Once you get infected with the passion for being outside especially in the May to October window, it’s easy to spread the love. I’m also very active person in the winter but those transition seasons are rough for all of us, I think.
Lisa: That’s very true, last winter being so rough. I think all of us are just so happy whatever the things changing and we got warm weather and breathing a big sigh, collective sigh of relief.
Aaron: Indeed, yeah. Leaves in the last 2 weeks, our property has exploded. We’re on the north side of a hill, so it takes a while. We’re a little bit of a lag between here and Gorham where we live.
Lisa: That’s actually really great. I was noticing when we were flying back in that the trees have started to kind perk up a little bit. Then when you get on the ground, you can actually see that there’s green. We were in Savannah so down there everything is green, enormous leaves and spring has been there for a really long time. We love Maine here and that’s why we’re here. We’re going to talk about what you’ve been doing with … What you are doing with Friends of the Presumpscot River and why you thought Rippleffect was the first place to direct your energy? Tell me about Riffleffect.
Aaron: I’m one of the co-founders of the organization. Ted Regan was my partner and he and us small team of 5 others gathered in Portland where Ted was located. He started to convene this group to join him on an AIDS awareness expedition in 1999. Just getting out of USM with an art degree, I knew that I wanted to go out and seek my fortune and some way, shape or form and Ted’s invitation to a group of middle school students that I was working with was to get out there and go seek adventures, set healthy goals in your life and avoid some of the pitfalls that he was seeing with his friends.
He had lost 5 friends to AIDS in the ‘80s and even early ‘90s. At the end of his presentation at Windham Middle School, he said, “I’m looking for anyone who might want to join the trip. If you know of anyone please, please let me know. I immediately knew that this was intriguing and I was likely to do something with him. I called him the next day and their short story is that for the next 10 years, I have built an organization back here in Portland. Our original expedition was from the Canadian border at Lubec all the way down to Key West, Florida.
It was 212 days of paddling. The team was together until New York City. We did a lot of fundraising events and raised about $40,000 for AIDS awareness organizations and treatment facilities between here and Philadelphia. Then when we got back, we were really revaluating the mission and it was because the AIDS epidemic was certainly not wrapping up but it was cooling slightly and we realized that the best way to engage youth was to really connect them with the outdoors, give them a clear sense of place.
Unlike the Outward Bound or NOLS trip where you would take a student, bring him to say, from Chicago out into the Rocky Mountains, introduced them to this extraordinary … We called it the pink cloud location where they would find themselves. They would find connection with place, then they go back to whatever they live. What I was seeing in my work as an experiential educator is that students are having a really hard time embodying the change that they experienced in the field.
My passion became trying to find ways to do that to connect youth to the environment in their home place and within themselves so that there was a more lasting impact. It’s how I went up for a sail a year after we started. The journey shifted from let’s work with these social service agencies to holy smokes, let’s set up an eco campus on a 26-acre island that was a military installation a hundred years ago. That was a daunting task so we were raising about half a million dollars a year to cover our programs and then in additional half a million to try and build a school.
I use that term intentionally. Our core goal is to build something that was more than a summer camp. It was impacting … Not that summer camps are not deeply impacting for young people but we wanted to go even deeper into this developmental work as opposed to just educational work. 10 years later, every year or so, I said, “Okay, maybe 1 more year I’ll to this organization,” and the years kept ticking by. Goals toward education, goals toward world travel.
2009, I really felt that the board was strong enough to survive the founders, both founders leaving. Ted had left a couple of years prior. I left the organization in great hands. They’ve done an incredible job in growing the organization from that place to what it is today which last year they were the beneficiary of the Beach to Beacon and I was just so proud and excited for the organization.
Lisa: Now, you’re working with the Friends of the Presumpscot River as the executive director.
Aaron: I am, I am. That’s anew gig, as of April 1. 5 years out of the non-profit space, working as a consultant and in grad school, I ultimately did go back to school. I’m so happy to be working with a non-profit again especially one with such incredible, deeply rooted mission. I grew up in South Portland. I graduated from Windham High School and the Presumpscot River flows from Sebago Basin in Windham all the way down through Standish and Gorham and Westbrook, Falmouth into Portland Harbor and ultimately out past, Portland Head Light and through South Portland.
It feels like a river that I have strong connections with. It’s been hard use for almost 280 years. It was one of the first dammed rivers in the US. It is one of the most heavily dammed rivers in the US and a lot of the ground fishery challenges were seeing out in the Gulf of Maine can be traced back to the herring, those river fish that swim up the river every year and then ultimately provide the food source for cod and haddock and those things that we love to eat. Going to sleep at night with this clear mission that I’m trying to create an active lifestyle for young people in my past non-profit work and create a more active lifestyle for a bunch of fish in this current incarnation has been exciting.
The group of people, the working board that has been carrying the organization for almost 23 years is just an incredible team. 4 of them have been there, 20 plus years. A lot of the rest board members have been there for more than 5 so a great group and hopefully the listening audience will be hearing more from us. They’ve been fairly close and private entity because of the nature of the work, a lot of legal advocacy and that kind of thing. Really hoping to create, draw bigger circle and start educating these surrounding communities, the river communities about this resource that they have in their backyard so excited.
Lisa: What about Heroes of Humanity?
Aaron: Heroes of Humanity is the real life video game that a partner and I created before taking the job. At Friends of the Presumpscot, I thought … Actually, I should backtrack and say at Rippleffect, I looked out at the chart of Casco Bay and I saw these islands. They use to call it the Calendar Islands so it’s hundreds of islands, one for everyday of the year out in the bay and the history of pirates and treasures, it’s hard to run a marine based youth development organization and not get pulled in by pirate mythology.
Treasure is a huge part of that and you go out to these old bunkers and forts and I always thought that the combination of geocaching which is using a GPS device to go and find a cache, a hidden box and an actual treasure hunt would be really fun projects. I built a course for Rippleffect students and hid the directions to those boxes out on Cal Island and a handful of those boxes are in place. I know that some students have gone out and actually found those.
There’s one on Jewel Island, there’s one on Little Diamond Island and there’s one on Cal Island. I got talking about a year-and-a-half ago with a friend of mine who was very successful in the commercial solar space and he was at a pretty young age quasi retired and said, “I’m thinking of doing something fun.” Have you heard of Hidden Cache?
Lisa: I have not.
Aaron: It is a wealthy philanthropist in California who’s hiding wads of cache under mailboxes and under bridges and in strange places. Then tweeting directions to the treasure. He got exacted about that. I was still on my island base treasure hunt kick. We combined this notions and Heroes of Humanity is the result. It’s a geocaching treasure hunt for charity. It allows all the participants to pick their beneficiary, their non-profit of choice. They go out either solo or in teams and run around the landscape, looking for what we call gates. Those are just checkpoints in the fields.
It might be a footrace, it might be a combination of running and mountain biking or it might be like the event we have July 18th in Portland where you have a short course or a long course. For those who just want to run around, we’re actually partnering with the tall ships so they’re will be 14 tall ships in Portland Harbor and there will be treasure stashed on the tall ships. If you’re more interested in the adventure race multi sport angle, there will be a paddle bike run component to the thing as well.
It really is as you were saying a chance for people to get out, to get off their butts in a new way, hopefully a fun way and to give none profits having been involved and struggling to pay the bills all the time. Not every organization can afford to host their own athletic event benefit, or benefit events. Being the event producer and giving them the opportunity to raise some funds as a recruiter and then also win a match gift to anything that their heroes win, seems like a potential win-win model. It’s an experiment. We are in the very early stages of this thing. It remains to be seen how well it will work but that’s the theory.
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Lisa: How old are you, Aaron?
Aaron: I’m 41 now. Why do you ask?
Lisa: I was expecting when I saw this very … Well, first of all, people who are listening. If you’re listening, you don’t know this person who’s sitting across from me who looks so youthful. When I looked at all the things that you have done, I was expecting a much older person. At 41, you have done so much and so much for it sounds like fishes and people and hopefully yourself to keep yourself healthy. Tell me about growing up. What was in your tender years? How did you end up being the person that got so motivated to do all these things at such a young age?
Aaron: The quick answer would be my dad and mom. They are incredible people. My father was an adventurer turned armchair adventurer when his second, third, and fourth children were born. I think the demands of being a dad, pulled him from his exploits in the field to fostering the exploits of his children and yet that passion for adventure lived on in him and lived in all the books around our house and all the magazine, outside magazine was a standard presence in our place. We did a lot of hiking. We spent a lot of time outside.
We live in a an amazing place for my high school years and win them right on the Pleasant River which flows into the main tributary of the Presumpscot River. There was a lot of space in South Portland. We had the forest behind the Calvary cemetery and you we used to go out and cause trouble back there. The shift to Windham at 12, 13 years old, was a pivot point for me from a suburban life to a much more woodsy oriented upbringing, my parents homeschooled my siblings. I was not homeschooled but a lot of my 3 younger siblings were.
I got to experience a bit of a bubble in our home and in the space around us that allowed me time to connect with land and that’s carried on for me. I really feel a very strong connection to the geography of Maine, to the waters of Maine. That sounds corny but it’s a daily dose and I need that to stay healthy as I’m sure most people who live in Maine have some form of depression or another trying to whether the dark, cold and that connection with the outside is the thing that really pushes me and pulls me through, hence, wanting to foster that for others.
That there are a lot of ills in the world right now and the opportunity to be in your metabolism is usually the thing that can bring you back to center. We just have seemingly few and fewer opportunities to do that. You really have to elbow the space out in a life for that health and for the inactive life as you’re calling this call, I guess. My mom spend a lot of years in a very spiritual space and ultimately found the practice of homeopathic care and treatment.
For 25 years she’s been practicing homeopathy and her commitment to health and her ability to dig so much deeper than most western medical practitioners have the time to dig in her relationship with her patients gave me an eye toward how I view my own health and my own sense of equilibrium. Those were hugely formative influences for me.
Lisa: Describe a typical day as you’re trying to elbow out the space for your own wellness. What does it look like and how do you get in this? I know you’re out on the water quite a lot so how do you fit that all in?
Aaron: That’s tricky. Being on the water is difficult. I have a 15 month old son. He’s named after Thoreau’s wilderness guide when Thoreau came to me and to write the Maine woods, Etienne is his name which is Penobscot name. Etienne is my current connection to the outdoor as walking 3 times a day to take a nap. I still run. I guide a Maine sea-kayak guide and so there a bit of time there with the Friends of Presumpscot relationship, I paddled the full length of the Presumpscot River, but I’m not much of a recreator.
My relationship with physical activity is also a direct connection to work. I live 11 miles from Portland in Gorham, I commute by bicycle to Portland then home and sometimes one way depending if I can catch a lift but the bike commuting. We heat our home with wood and so there’s some wood splitting in there that gets done regularly but on top of that, I have a standard weight regiment that I do to try to keep the synovial fluid moving through my joints and have a yoga practice at Lila East End Yoga that I try to keep up with.
The throwing elbows I guess is the appropriate term. It really is about what I call the snack workout where when you have that 20-minute to half an hour window, it’s enough. It’s about bringing my metabolism to a place where I feel invigorated and alive. That’s about what I can squeeze in these days. Maine summer is still Maine summer and we work very hard, my wife and I to create space to be on the water, to be with friends at the beach. We have home in Castine that we rent out from much of the year and we carve out sometime up there to just stop.
Lisa: What about your wife, what does she do?
Aaron: Emilia Dahlin is a singer/songwriter. She has been a touring professional musician for 15 years now. She is regional representative as well for Columbia College Chicago and spends about 4 months easier as a road warrior driving throughout the northeast representing an incredible school. It’s the largest private art school in the country and almost everyone that works in the admission department is working hardest as well. She has this family of people who really understand where she’s at and that there’s a balancing act between the identity of the artist and the identity of the employee.
During the day we grind. They’re good surrogate family for her. She’s today teaching 450 students at Ocean Ave Elementary School here in Portland how to write songs. She does that through the Maine Academy of modern music. I think this is the third or fourth year running. She keeps herself busy and is still writing and creating. She dropped her guitar the other day and we’re hoping that’s not some sort of omen or sign about the creative summer she’s about to have. We’re not reading too much into it.
Lisa: You also have a brother who is participating very actively in the Maine and national music scene as a bassist for Jason Spooner band.
Aaron: That’s true. Jason may be surprised to hear this. Maybe not but Emilia and Jason Spooner were neck and neck musicians being born out of the Portland creative scene 15 years ago and Emilia for … I think partly because of our relationship and our travels and the number of things we were doing, she stopped touring to the degree that she had been touring. I may have to take some responsibility for that but Jason turned up the volume and he really started to put himself out there. Emilia would hear Jason’s name.
The other important component is that Adam, my brother was bassist for both Jason and Emilia. There was this tug-of-war trying to yank Adam back and forth. He really is a creative powerhouse and he and Katy, my sister-in-law are a great team. They’re now heading to Montana, I believe to play some tunes.
Lisa: Well, there are lots of things that people who are listening will want to know about, one of them will be Rippleffects. I would direct them to that website. How can people find out about the Friends of the Presumpscot River?
Aaron: That is presumpscotriver.org. That’s the website which we’re in the midst of redoing. It’s probably the best resource for the organization.
Lisa: Heroes of Humanity?
Aaron: Heroes of Humanity is weareheroesnow.com. You can also find us on Facebook. Both those organizations are on Facebook as well.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Aaron Frederick who is the cofounder and former director of Rippleffect now the executive director of Friends of the Presumpscot River also father to a 15-month-old. Congratulations. Husband to Emilia Dhalin, singer and artist. Thanks so much for all that you do and for being willing to come on the show and talk about how you incorporate all this to your very active life.
Aaron: Thank you, Lisa. It’s been great to be here.