Park opponents pull no punches in reply

The times they are a-changing, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Maine woods, where wealthy investors are buying up vast tracts of land at an alarming rate even as environmental protectionists conspire to turn much of the state into a national park/playground for the idle rich. The natives, fearful of what lies down the road, grow restless. And rightfully so.

To think of the stir that the state’s newest land baroness, Roxanne Quimby, has caused here in The Real Maine is to be reminded of the famous barb that former Texas Gov. Ann Richards aimed at President George Bush. “Poor George,” Richards told campaign supporters in her best Texas drawl, “he cain’t help it – he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Quimby is a former back-to-the-lander who reportedly once lived in a tent in Guilford before parlaying a talent for making beeswax candles and lip balm into a multi-million dollar business that she subsequently moved to North Carolina. She announced a while back that she had purchased 8,500 acres of Piscataquis County forest land because, well, she could. Plus something had to be done to save the natives from themselves in their misguided and mystifying opposition to establishment of a national park. (Poor Mainers. They cain’t help it – they were brought up to believe that the Maine woods should remain a government-free paradise.)

Quimby may not have been born with a silver foot in her mouth, since, from all accounts, she – unlike former President Bush – was dirt-poor before she struck it rich. And it is, after all, her money to spend as she pleases in this land of the free. But if reaction to a recent interview she granted BDN writer Susan Young is any indication, the lady does seem to have developed a foot-in-mouth affliction, however late the accomplishment.

A director of RESTORE: The North Woods, a Massachusetts-based group that advocates creation of the 3.2 million-acre national park that would stretch from Millinocket to the Quebec border, Quimby expects that her acquisitions will one day become a part of that park. Snowmobiling and hunting would be allowed in some portions of the park, she suggested. But there should also be places that are off-limits to everyone.

Arguments by the opposition that a park would shut down woods operations and damage the local economy are bunk, Quimby told Young. Very few area residents derive a living from the woods, she said. Rather, most do like she did in her tenting days before she made her fortune: They cut some wood, farm some vegetables and make some crafts to sell at fairs. “I lived there a long time. I ran a business there. The economy there is in shambles and it has been for 100 years,” she said. “There’s not a lot to damage up there. I don’t see how a park can hurt…” Waging her preservation battle with money means she doesn’t have to argue with people about her philosophy of protecting the land, she said.

One didn’t have to be Phi Beta Kappa material to know that swift and merciless would be the reaction in the Maine communities that are on record as vigorously opposed to a national park, an opposition shared with Gov. Angus King and the Maine congressional delegation. The letters to the editor began arriving almost immediately, most expressing the opinion that Quimby may be a nice lady and a successful businesswoman, but if she is not full of beeswax her grand vision for Maine’s pending federal makeover certainly is.

Typically blunt was a letter from Millinocket Town Manager Gene Conlogue, a longtime leader of the park opposition. “Message from northern Maine to Quimby: Leave us and our way of life alone. We don’t want your park or your unfortunate, inaccurate and unfair depictions of the hard-working people of our part of the state…”

Former Maine legislator and present congressional candidate Dick Campbell of Holden wrote, “[Quimby] and and others like her just don’t get it. For far too long the rural Maine way of life has been under attack by those people who have made their fortunes elsewhere or have jobs in urban centers and want to become park rangers to save us backwoods folks from self-destruction…” Out-of-state environmental protection groups, he said, “have little or no respect for Maine people who are working very hard each day to preserve and protect our respected environment – an environment we have maintained for hundreds of years, an environment they have moved to precisely because we have done so well preserving it.”

Ouch! on the italics. Good one, Big Guy. Run with it.

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In memoriam: Ken Ward, 1927-2001. Devoted husband, father, grandfather, gentleman, colleague, fellow columnist, friend. Rest in peace, old comrade.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.