COLUMN: Dave Sherwood

A call to protect north Maine woods

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Enough is enough.

I can't take it anymore -- bring on the Maine Woods National Park, protect all the land up north. Make it a park, or a national forest. Let's do anything other than sit around and wait for the next big land grab or disasterous development.

Here's the latest proposal from Plum Creek, a major landowner in the north Maine woods: 975 house lots, two resorts, a golf course, a marina, three RV parks and more than 100 rental cabins around Moosehead Lake.

I'll be honest: it has me shaking in my hipboots.

Yes, in the 1990's, when the national park proposal was first introduced, I was one of those people who threatened to put a "Restore: Boston" sticker on the bumper of my old Ford Ranger. I swore up and down that all hunters and fishermen should stand by the paper companies even as they tore roads in to my favorite remote ponds, clear cut prime patches of deer woods and put house lots along the most pristine lakeshores.

But I can admit I was wrong. And as with fishing, when a lure or tactic isn't working, you change it.

The same goes here.

If you're not alarmed, like I am, then it's probably because the Moosehead area is not a place you hunt and fish.

But look out, your deerstand, or trout pond or bird covert could be next.

I liked the idea that resulted from the original park debate: buy up land piece meal, protect it through easements, and additions to Baxter State Park. And we've made some progress.

But this latest Plum Creek proposal shows that we haven't made enough.

In 20 years, when my kids want to go bird hunting, or brook trout fishing, and they ask me, "Dad, what did you do when development was threatening all of the North Maine woods?" I don't want to have to tell them the truth: Not a damn thing.

So here's what I think:

The longer we wait, the more of the Maine we grew up with we lose. No, I don't think it's gone already. I think there is still hope.

But to do it, to protect what we have left, Mainer's -- and especially sportsmen, need to make a decision -- and fast.

Do we live and die by skepticism, and the threats and taunts of naysayers, or do we move on and protect, forever, the places we grew up hunting and fishing?

No, asking for protection of the land your father once hunted and fished on, and that you do today, doesn't make you a flatlander.

It makes you smart. It means you care about your state's future, and that you want your kids to be able to hunt and fish in the same places you always did.

Even in the face of the largest development ever, it seems people still hesitate to bring up the park -- even the environmental groups: maybe they're scared of another backlash like the one it created in the first place.

But this park need not exclude all traditional activities.

It's true: the original proposal wasn't quite right. Now it's time to go back, make it right and move forward, so we can all rest easier, before it's too late. We can work together to make this a place for everybody -- a place where traditional activities continue, but where the land is protected, forever.

I know of at least one example.

A good friend, Tyler Peterson, lives in Tower, Minnesota, on the fringe of one of the most successful natural areas in the country, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

His home is farther north than Caribou, as in Maine, spruce and fir line the lake shores, moose run bowlegged down logging roads, the waters are tea-stained and the cry of a loon is heard more often than that of sirens or car horns.

Sportsmen there wear flannel that's every bit as dog-eared, and can track a deer at least as far on a snowy November morning.

Tyler comes from a family of fishing and hunting guides, who have earned their living on the waters of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes.

He hunts, he fishes, and enjoys the northwoods of Minnesota, just as his dad and grandfather did before him. But he does so breathing easy, knowing that the land is forever protected.

On our annual canoe trip to the Boundary Waters, we jig for togue in the gin clear waters of remote lakes. We throw flies into the lily pads and haul out smallmouth bass that weigh three pounds and more. We camp. We canoe. We sit around cedar campfires after a day of fishing, smoke cigars and watch the sparks rise into the infinite northern night.

We relish the long portages, the sweat that makes wilderness meaningful -- and deserved.

Once, I brought Tyler to camp at Caucomgomoc Lake, north of the Golden Road in the Maine woods. I'd gloated to him for years about the place: the wildness of the country, the size of our brook trout, the moose.

On that trip, we caught plenty of brookies, and saw lots of moose -- but he couldn't help but notice the big clear-cuts and the labrynth of roads.

Then he asked me a question I couldn't answer: Why didn't we make it all a park?

Did I have a good reason?

I thought about.

Was it an economic reason?

Nope, that wasn't it.

The paper companies have sold their lands, and their mills, so many times now that not even mill workers or loggers can keep up with them.

Tourism is all but guaranteed to be a steadier, more predictable source of income.

Millinocket, the perennial Maine mill town, is still reeling from loss of jobs. Out-of-state people now swarm to buy the lake front homes they can no longer afford.

Was it to preserve our traditions of hunting and fishing?

Come on now, we all know better. A parking lot or condo development is no place to run your bird dog, and trout ponds fish better when houses don't ring their shores.

Access?

Can't that be part of the compromise? It was in Minnesota. There are plenty of lakes in the Boundary Waters -- big ones, like Moosehead, with campsites and great fishing near the road.

Then there's the one's we like -- way back where you hear nothing but quiet, and where the trout and bass grow big, and come easy to the hook.

We need to find a compromise that's right for Maine -- not keep playing the defensive when disaster strikes.

I don't want to keep wondering, "Is my favorite trout pond next?" I want to enjoy our woods and waters for what they are, and always have been: Pristine, beautiful, and to be enjoyed, and accessed by all.

Isn't that the way life should be?

Dave Sherwood -- 621-5648

dsherwood@centralmaine.com