Preserving the Allagash Politicians, residents, conservationists share views, Maine idyll

ALLAGASH – As a hushed group watched the last streaks of purple and orange sunlight fade into starlight over Round Pond and an accordion played “Amazing Grace,” it seemed the Allagash Wilderness Waterway was the most peaceful spot on this Earth.

The sound of a loon taking flight shattered the quiet where wilderness advocates, politicians and lifelong Allagash residents stood – for once – united in stillness.

Despite some good-natured ribbing over the dinner table, this unlikely troop shared an appreciation of good food, bad jokes and the great outdoors this weekend during a four-day Allagash Wilderness Waterway canoe tour.

The Department of Conservation organized the trip, inviting guides, legislators and members of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Advisory Council to travel down the river together in their own canoes, swapping stories, getting to know one another outside the State House, and, it was hoped, gaining a better understanding of each other’s perspectives.

“There’s this listening that hasn’t happened in a long time, hearing what’s important to people,” Karin Tilberg, deputy commissioner of the Department of Conservation, said Saturday night.

Earnest policy debates are tempered when they occur in an outdoor hot tub or while eating fresh homemade whoopie pies at a picnic table. And sharing a canoe or a bunkhouse just brings people together.

Much of the weekend was a communal back pat for the River Drivers’ Agreement, a plan for resolving Allagash tensions drafted at a meeting earlier this spring. Though conflicts remain, progress has started, and that’s a huge step forward, Conservation Commissioner Pat McGowan said.

“It’s not in finality; it’s ongoing. And it always will be ongoing, the work that we do,” he said, thanking everyone for their work after the group packed away a huge sporting camp dinner with three kinds of pie Saturday night at Willard Jalbert Camps on Round Pond.

The weekend also brought together dedicated paddlers who prefer the wilderness experience and locals who like to use motors on their canoes for easier access to the river.

Jen Burns, an advocate for Maine Audubon and a new member of the advisory council, valued the chance to get to know her colleagues and to take advantage of their personal knowledge of the waterway, she said.

“So many people have their own little private knowledge of certain things,” logging contractor Barry Oullette of Fort Kent said.

“People are getting to see things they’ve never seen before,” agreed Erik Anderson, a member of McGowan’s staff.

Guides Gary Pelletier, a retired game warden who lives in Cross Lake, and Jane Barron, a full-time canoe guide from Kingfield, showed the crowd historic sites all along the trip from Umzaskis Lake to Michaud Farm.

But at the end of the day, beyond the politics and the policy, this was just one last, great trip on the river before the long march toward winter begins.

“Out here, it’s like one of those feelings that comes over you; you realize that this is one of the best days of your life,” Tilberg said.