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Tuesday, July 22, 2003
A faraway experience forever preserved
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||||||||
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Also on this page: FOREVER WILD: Rediscovering Katahdin | |||||||||
TOWNSHIP 3 — The view of Mount Katahdin from the rocky plateau atop Sentinel Mountain is dark and desolate. On a recent summer day, it seems foreboding. As temperatures soared unexpectedly into the 90s, there were two deaths on Katahdin in a two-week stretch. Baxter State Park staff assisted with eight evacuations off the mountain because of the heat and unsafe conditions, said park director Buzz Caverly. Changing climate conditions in Maine during the summer make for difficult hiking conditions, he said. And more people - up to 50,000 a year - try to climb the mountain each year. Many of those hikers have minimal experience. Today the park limits the number of daily visitors to 1,200, yet Caverly said rangers spend the summer responding to phone calls to help lost or panicked hikers who have little knowledge of the danger and difficulty Katahdin and other mountains in the park pose. "If you heard our radio between 7 and 9 at night, there are a lot of calls about people at trail heads (around the park) who were late in showing up," Caverly said. To be sure, climbing Katahdin is far different than it was when 26-year-old Percival Baxter first visited the area in 1903 and became inspired to preserve the mountain wilderness, which later became Baxter State Park. Baxter saw Katahdin for the first time while on a fishing trip to Kidney Pond with his father a century ago. He noted that first trip in a speech he wrote for the dedication of Togue Pond Gate house in 1967. On the 100th anniversary of his historic trip, the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram retraced Baxter's journey to the sporting camp in what is now Baxter State Park. The hike today to Kidney Pond, still a favorite of fishermen, reveals that the park's natural beauty has, in many ways, changed little. But modern views of terrain throughout the park are far different. Human traffic in the park today underscores how lucky we are Baxter had the foresight to demand the land be protected and kept forever wild. Baxter worked for 32 years to acquire more than 200,000 acres around Katahdin to give to the people of Maine - and then, upon his death in 1969, left behind a trust fund of nearly $7 million for the park's operation. He also left behind 28 deeds instructing the park authority on how to maintain the park and keep it as a wild place. Exotic, wild, unknown When Baxter journeyed to the region for the first time the land was exotic, a place thought to be wild and largely unknown. Katahdin was even more fascinating and foreign. "The people who came to the park had the feeling that getting here was part of how they felt. It was a good two-day journey," said park forester Jensen Bissel. "They were a long way from civilization. Their feeling about the place was influenced by the fact they were far away from any town." Hunt's Camp at Kidney Pond, where Baxter stayed, advertised in 1902 that it had a new trail open to Katahdin, what is today the footpath the Appalachian Trail follows to Baxter Peak at the top. However, those who know the park and how fishermen spend their time there doubt Baxter did more than consider the new trail up Katahdin on his 1903 visit. "His father was quite a fisherman. Their love of fishing is well known. There's little doubt of that," said John Neff, a board member of the Friends of Baxter State Park who is writing a book about Katahdin. Katahdin was known to be an arduous, multiple-day expedition back then, as Baxter wrote in a speech in 1921 to the Maine Sportsmen Fish and Game Association: "At present the great mountain, weather beaten by time and scarred by avalanche, is almost inaccessible, the journey entailing expense, hardship and discomfort. . . . At best, it requires from six to seven days of steady walking to make the trip from civilization to the peak and return." Bissel said it's likely that on his first trip, Baxter would have climbed a smaller peak, like Sentinel Mountain. The diminutive plateau offered sky-high views of Katahdin from the west and only takes an afternoon to reach. "Sentinel was on the Kidney Pond trail. It's a traditional hike. In 1903, I'm confident any guide would have taken Baxter up it," Bissel said. From Sentinel's peak Katahdin appears close, as if gazing across a street. The smaller mountain - at 1,837 feet - lies to the west of Katahdin, Maine's tallest mountain at 5,267 feet. Viewing Katahdin from the forests and ponds below, the mountain seems abstract, like an image. From Sentinel's peak, it is bold and stark and real. Conservation first Today much of the park's wild character along the mountain trails has been preserved, largely because of conditions set in Baxter's 28 deeds, which put conservation above recreation. The park offers the faraway experience Baxter wanted to maintain. Crowds are controlled by a limit on the number of visitors permitted each day. The number of campers allowed at a campsite is limited through an archaic reservation system that demands you post your requests through the mail, if not travel up to Millinocket to request a cabin in person. The speed limit requires all vehicles go no faster than 20 miles per hour in most places. The winding, tight, single-lane dirt roads almost assure that they do. The serpentine dirt roads make speeding impossible. The canoes at small ponds cost $1 to rent, but there are a limited number. Canoes in remote ponds are chained and gotten only by obtaining a key from a ranger - if paddlers are willing to walk the one to three miles to get to these hidden areas. Also distinguishing Baxter from other campground parks is the lack of shower facilities or bathrooms. Here you bathe like the loons, without soap or shampoo, using only pond water thrown over your back. Rabbits and chipmunks are docile and eager for handouts at the campgrounds. The character of the two most-popular neighboring campgrounds - Kidney and Daicey - has remained intact over the last century. "Kidney Pond was more well-to-do. People of substantial means came there, very prestigious guests," said Neff, who has maintained one of the two sections of the Appalachian Trail in the park for more than 20 years. "At Kidney there were cloth tablecloths and napkins. People were not allowed in the kitchen. Daicey was a little more informal." Today both camps belong to Baxter State Park and are no longer run by sporting camp owners, but the atmosphere at each has not changed. Kidney Pond campground, at the site of Hunt's Camp, contains some of the original buildings. Since the Appalachian Trail passes near Daicey Pond and its famous view of Katahdin, the campground there is more of a vibrant, bustling center than at Kidney Pond, said ranger Stephen Marone. "It's more busy, everything is closer," Marone said. "Here at Kidney Pond it's a quieter place. People go to bed at 8 p.m." Ahead of his time While Baxter's incredible effort to preserve 200,000 acres is similar to land conservation practices today, such an act for an individual in the early part of the last century was unusual. "The kind of views he had for Baxter State Park is contrary to the trend at most parks in the nation, where there is more and bigger facilities, and more and more access," said Alec Giffin, director of the Maine Forest Service and a member of the Baxter State Park Authority. "Baxter anticipated the value of the wilderness and ecological reserves. He was decades before his time. He would have been even today." Today, state and federal parks abound. When Baxter first visited the land around Katahdin the movement to create such places was only beginning. "Within the state he was a clear visionary. He might have seemed bizarre to want to protect that much land and give it to the people," said Tim Glidden, director of Land for Maine's Future, a state program that finances land conservation acquisitions. The Land for Maine's Future, formed by a bond issue in 1987, is one example of modern conservation efforts that show how deeply Mainers care about land preservation today. Its goals is to preserve lands using public money. Glidden said the state conservation group's formation is one example of the legacy Percival Baxter left behind. "He saw into the future like nobody else in his generation," Glidden said. While early efforts by philanthropists like the Rockefellers were protecting areas such as Acadia National Park and giving them to the federal government, Glidden said Baxter was unique in his solitary quest. Whether Baxter had conceived his plan to preserve the land during that first fishing trip is unknown. But there is little doubt that the mountain must have taken hold of his imagination 100 years ago when he looked upon it. Perhaps, by the time Baxter hiked out of Kidney Pond at the end of his fishing trip the mountain's majesty and mystique were part of his consciousness, imprinted in his mind. "I'm inclined to think (creating a park there) was not in his head in 1903," Neff said. "But it's logical to say there was a glimmer." Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at: dfleming@pressherald.com
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