Harbor Springs Adventure Club highlighted in new documentary, screening at Lyric Theatre
HARBOR SPRINGS — A few Harbor Springs students will be seeing themselves on the silver screen this November with a screening of "Ripple: Casting for Change” — a documentary about a girls-only fly fishing trip members of the Adventure Club took last summer.
With flies replacing lures in their tackle box and waders on their legs, six girls took to Beaver Island for an overnight fly fishing trip. They were accompanied by Blackbird Elementary School Principal Nathan Fairbanks, Harbor Springs Elementary Intervention Specialist Maggie Kloss and two parents.
While the girls piled onto the small passenger plane to head over to Beaver Island via Island Airwaves and their equipment traveled via Ferry, the girls dropped off their bags before heading out for a day of quiet and still fishing at Garden Island. The trip was held over the summer, multiple years after it had originally been planned after it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The girls that went on the trip were seventh graders Joanie Baughman, Parker Ford, and Emme Plackemeier; sixth graders Aliyana Boughner and Marlayna Myllyoja; and fourth grader Natalie Shelton.
The Harbor Springs Adventure Club is a co-ed group that has 10-15 members who enjoy being outdoors and want to try new things. The club usually has members from 2nd through 5th grades. The trip was limited to a few members, including a few students that aged out but served as mentors to younger kids.
The idea for the trip came to Fairbanks after attending a film festival in Traverse City where a screening about a fly fishing trip was shown. After seeing another fly fishing film — highlighting the exact skills and work that is done with the Adventure Club — he thought it would be good to showcase the work the girls are doing in the club.
But what they thought was going to be an 8-10-minute-long short film to share with families turned into something greater, Kloss said.
“It really spiraled into this big story and message that really the girls brought up themselves,” Kloss said.
Shelton, who wants to be an actress when she grows up, is excited to see herself on the big screen, but she’s also hoping people walk away feeling like they can do anything.
“No matter how old you are or what your gender is, you can do anything that anybody else can do,” Shelton said about the message she hopes people take away from the film.
Fairbanks said the original plan was just to highlight the program, but the girls ended up sharing a lot about their own underrepresentation in the sport. He said the girls on the trip talked about what it’s like growing up as girls in a “heavily social media influenced world,” as well as “the importance to have a strong peer group with each other and that benefit at school.”
John Curtis from NM Lifestyle worked as the videographer for the project. Curtis visited the girls while they practiced casting in the playground so they could get used to having the camera around, and by the time they went on the trip, it was like he wasn’t even there, Kloss said.
Myllyoja said that while she isn’t sure she ever fully got used to having the camera around, she was still able to have a lot of fun and started doing some stuff she didn’t normally think she would have done on camera.
“Having the camera was a lot different than what I do normally with my friends and everything,” she said. Kloss added Myllyoja “got silly at the end” of the trip.
Made up with a group of students in different age groups, some serving as mentors to the younger students, Fairbanks said seeing the group work together throughout the process has been fun.
Even after leaving the trip, Boughner said her favorite part wasn’t the flight or the two fish she caught, but rather getting to find a new group in the school she can be herself with.
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“My favorite part wasn't the experience itself — it was just like being with the certain group of people,” she said. "I wasn't comfortable around all of them but now I'm myself around them and they definitely helped me calm my nerves during the trip."
“Ripple: Casting for Change,” will be shown at 7 p.m. Nov. 30 at the Lyric Theatre at 275 E. Main St. in Harbor Springs. Tickets are $5 each for adults, and $3 each for students 18 and younger. Money goes towards the club. Tickets are available online at https://gofan.co/event/1175529?schoolId=MI10333&utm_source=GoFan&utm_medium=qrcode&utm_campaign=HQEventLink.
For more information on the premier and film, visit @ripple.film on Instagram.
— Contact reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Harbor Springs Adventure Club featured in fly fishing documentary
