Time to take another look at a Maine Woods National Park

The first fall-like days signal the beginning of the best hiking and backpacking season: warm days, cool nights, no bugs, and – very soon – the foliage ablaze with a fire no one wants to fight.

In considering where to go on the trails, my thoughts turn to how wonderful it would be for hikers if the proposal for a Maine Woods National Park were a reality. It would be marvelous, too, for cross-country skiers, snowshoers, kayakers, canoeists, mountain climbers – all who delight in self-powered outdoor recreation.

Of course, many others would benefit: fishermen; naturalists; the watchers of loons, eagles and falcons; and those who simply want a refuge from our noisy, gadget-filled, money-grubbing civilization. And the national park proposal now being put forward would even allow regions for snowmobiling and hunting.

The park idea has been with us for generations, but it has been revived by Restore: The North Woods, a New England organization that recently opened an office in Augusta headed by Jym St. Pierre, one of the most respected conservationists in the state.

Restore’s proposal calls for the purchase by the federal government of 3.2 million acres surrounding Baxter State Park; Chamberlain, Chesuncook, and Moosehead Lakes; hundreds of smaller lakes and ponds; scores of mountains; and 100 miles of the Appalachian Trail. In sum, the wild and beautiful heart of the Maine forest. All for far less than the price of one useless B-2 bomber.

For generations the park idea never flew because wood cutting by the paper companies that owned the forest was gentle compared to the sickening, brutal clear-cutting, poison-spraying, and rape – I choose these words carefully – of the last 20 years.

Now, too, some corporate landowners, whose sole responsibility is to make money for their global stockholders, are selling off prime lakefront property. And so much of the woods may go the way of the Maine coast: a private, rather than public, preserve.

Because of this changed situation, there is a lot of serious discussion about a park. In addition to endorsing the park that will take, I believe, at least 15 years to create, I want to contribute a couple of points to the discussion.

First, the designers of the Maine Woods National Park should learn from past mistakes. The ugly overcrowding at Acadia, Yellowstone, and Yosemite comes from giving too much to automobiles and recreational vehicles, those apartments-on-wheels that increasingly dominate our roads.

A park can be designed so that muscle power is the chief means of access. Our national parks should be redefined. As motor vehicles ruin or threaten the beauty and tranquility of every other place in the country, parks should be places to escape them – at least in large parts of the parks.

Second, if the idea is to be accepted in Maine, the appeal should be made to working men and women more than to the self-conscious and far less numerous “environmentalists.”

The steadiest environmentalists in Maine are not found in the rich Portland suburbs of Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth, where the Maine Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Council of Maine turn for financial support, but in the city wards and villages of the hunters and fishermen and hikers and campers and canoeists.

Nearly 20 years ago the people of Maine in an initiated referendum created the Bigelow Preserve, setting aside a magnificent mountain range “for the use and enjoyment of the Aspen of the East.” This was done despite the opposition of Gov. James Longley, the business establishment, most of the newspapers, and the legislature.

There was a reason why the Bigelow Preserve bill was passed overwhelmingly in the working-class wards of Biddeford, Lewiston, Augusta, Waterville, and other cities, and lost in Cape Elizabeth and Falmouth.

The proposal was not only pitched to working people, it was designed for them. Those of us involved in that campaign went to the mills, to the unions, to the sportsmen’s clubs, and door-to-door in the neighborhoods. When we asked these Maine people to preserve a priceless part of their heritage, they responded.

We created the preserve for them. It allowed hunting and fishing and regulated snowmobiling and even allowed carefully regulated timber harvesting. We allowed some wood to be cut because we wanted to help local people keep their jobs. In the design of the Maine Woods National Park, I urge these considerations.

I also want to suggest that, for the support of the Maine Woods National Park as well as for other causes, there should be an organization that represents politically the state’s hikers, backpackers, runners, canoeists, kayakers, cross-country skiers, and others who pursue active outdoor sports. One lobbyist in Augusta for the public interest can get a lot done.

Lance Tapley of Augusta is the publisher and editor of Maine Running & Fitness magazine.