The way life should not be

Al Sandelli never cared for the idea of posting the land he owned in Maine.

He knows that rural Mainers have always bristled when out-of-staters like himself bought large tracts of wooded property and then immediately threw up “No Trespassing” signs everywhere to keep away the locals.

Sandelli never wanted to be thought of as one of those people.

But such old and valued land-use arrangements can work only when both sides hold up their ends of the bargain. He was happy to respect the cherished tradition of land access, in other words, as long as people respected his rights as the owner of the property. That’s all he ever asked.

That changed about three weeks ago, however, when a few locals in pickup trucks seriously disrespected his rights by using his dirt road in Argyle for a mud-run track, turning nearly 2 miles of it into an ugly snarl of ruts more than a foot deep. It was, Sandelli insists, an act of outright vandalism that has forced him to become the kind of landowner he never thought he’d be.

“I have no choice now but to post it, and that’s too bad,” Sandelli, who lives in Florida, said during a recent visit to Maine. “Nobody wins in these situations, and I just felt it was important to get that message out.”

Sandelli, who grew up in New Jersey, has nurtured a love affair with Maine ever since his family vacationed near Rangeley when he was a boy. His grandfather, father and two uncles used to come to Maine each year to cut Christmas trees in Cherryfield, and Sandelli grew up with their colorful stories of the woods.

In 1974, he and his wife, Bobbie, left their home in Florida, where Sandelli owns a successful general-contracting business, and bought the Bingham Motor Inn. They enjoyed their first taste of small-town life and worked with local officials to create an extensive map of all the snowmobile trails that criss-crossed the wilderness. After six years, however, the couple decided they weren’t cut out for the inn-keeping trade. They moved to a house in Strong and began buying land, where Sandelli could indulge his passion for managing woodlots.

“I’m what you might call a romantic logger,” he said with a chuckle.

At one time, Sandelli owned some 3,000 acres of land, in the Moose River region, Pittsfield, Rome and Augusta. He never once posted a single acre of it, though, believing that everyone should be able to enjoy the woods as much as he did. In 1986, the couple moved back to Florida and began planning for the day when they would return to their beloved Maine for good.

Last year, they took the first step. Having sold off all their other Maine property, they decided to buy 900 acres in Argyle, which includes wetlands and a 130-acre deer yard. Their idea was to manage it as a woodlot and possibly build a home there. While he walked the road running through the middle of the land – a solid, 16-foot-wide dirt road built many years ago – he met a few of his new neighbors who asked him if he planned to post the land and restrict their use of it. Sandelli assured them he would not. He also signed an agreement with the local snowmobile club that allowed its riders to continue using his road in winter as they always had.

“I know how Maine people feel about posted land, that it was an issue here, and I wanted to respect that feeling,” Sandelli said. “This was my move back to Maine and I wanted it to be smooth.”

In early February, he plowed the road and began cutting wood along a portion of it. A few families drove in to watch the logging operation, and he welcomed the visitors. When the crews were done in March, Sandelli put some rocks at the mouth of the road and a “Road Closed” sign to keep trucks from driving on it during mud season. Then he returned to Florida to sell his house and complete his long-awaited move back to Maine.

When he came back April 30, however, a local resident familiar with the woodlot told him the bad news: Some young men from the area had been seen racing their pickups on the muddy road, which they entered from the connecting snowmobile trail. Sandelli went down the next day to check it out.

“The damage was so extensive that it made me physically ill,” said Sandelli, who had just had a heart operation not long before. “This was malicious. Anyone who lives in Maine knows the damage a truck can do to a road in springtime. It was a violation. My wife and I are still happy about moving to Maine, but we no longer feel secure building a home there. It’s put a damper on things.”

There are some people in the area who know who did the damage, Sandelli said, but they haven’t been willing to get involved. And without more information, the state police can’t do much to catch the vandals.

“So I’m forced to post my property for the first time ever,” Sandelli said. “Because of the irresponsibility of the few, everyone else loses out. It’s sad.”

The unwritten codes that make life in rural Maine so special are fragile agreements, at best, that have depended for generations on trust and respect. Now that the trust is broken for Sandelli, he wants others to know he never wanted to announce his arrival in the neighborhood with signs that say “Keep Out.”

He never wanted to be known as one of those out-of-staters.

“People will now go by and say that’s the rich S.O.B. from Florida,” Sandelli said. “So I’m thinking of making a big sign to put by the road that explains my reasons for posting the land. I want to get the real message across and make people think.”