From east to west along the northern American border – 8,000 miles to Alaska

What is America? Just a huge, spacious and naturally wild country – or is it still a project? And who are the Americans? A torn nation of people without roots and history – or more than all of this? What unites, what divides, what characterises and what changes them? How different are their daily lives, even now, in the icy cold, snowbound winter – depending on whether they live on Maine’s remote outer islands, or in arctic Deadhorse, near the Great Lakes or in the prairies of the mid-West, in the Blackfoot reservation in the Rocky Mountains, or on board a yacht from Seattle?

To discover America’s characteristics and their transition – always with a view to the people and how they perceive “home” – ARD correspondent Klaus Scherer travels through his host country on a route hitherto neglected by previous reporters: along the north border.
Thus, a program event is created, whose highly visual landscape and nature photographs, along with personal experiences, connect with those we meet, visit and accompany along the way – from the dwarf school on Monehegan Island, to the head gaffer of the Niagara Falls; from wolf and bear monitors in Idaho, to the ice fishers at the Arctic Circle.
The extreme winter cold of the American north, which hampers both the travel and the work of the reporter and his team, is depicted emphatically.