Best place to reenact Fly Away Home

Even the flintiest heart could not help but be touched by the scene in the 1996 film Fly Away Home when young Anna Paquin, on a mission to help a brood of motherless Canadian geese migrate to their winter breeding grounds, gets the majestic fowl to fly in formation behind her homemade flying machine. On a limited scale, you can share some of the same thrill in a rented boat from Charles River Canoe and Kayak in Newton. Adrift in a rowboat on a green-shaded bend of the river, entice an armada of the big birds to follow you by sharing your lunch. A dozen, two dozen, and more of the greedy beasts are likely to swarm your vessel (those beaks are sharp!) and edge the experience nervously toward The Birds.

Not that the CRC&K people actually encourage this kind of fraternization. "We don't actually discourage it," says co-owner Dave Jacques. "Families bring their kids out and it can be fun. But it's not like, in the summer anyway, they don't have a lot to eat." For those who don't want to fowl up the water, there's a lot more to be enjoyed. From April to Halloween, this stretch of river provides a blithe wilderness retreat just out of sight of Route 128, its coves and languid turns harboring herons, turtles, and muskrats, as well as geese. Kayaking and canoeing lessons are offered in-season, and when the geese have flown away in winter, Jacques's Western Ski Trade offers the delights of cross-country skiing.

Charles River Canoe and Kayak, 2401 Comm Ave, Newton, (617) 965-5110; Soldiers Field Road, Boston, (617) 462-2513.