Borestone Mountain: For one day Audubon opens its private lodge to nature-loving public

ELLIOTSVILLE TOWNSHIP – There are no clocks, so time is but a word. There are no telephones, so silence really is golden. Nature is your only neighbor at this secluded spot in Piscataquis County.

Tucked among the ledges and surrounded by old forest growth and crystal clear water is Maine Audubon’s Borestone Mountain Sanctuary and Adirondack-style lodges.

“I think heaven might be something like this,” Donna Tompkins, 60, of Portland said Sunday during an open house at the secluded main lodge. Comfortably seated in a wooden lawn chair on the porch, Tompkins looked out over Sunset Pond as it captured the reflection of the shoreline. “It’s beautiful.”

Nancy Moore of East Hampton, N.Y., was equally awed by the beauty as were her husband, Randy Potter, and their four children. Moore is a descendant of Robert T. Moore, who bequeathed the property in 1958 to the National Audubon Society, which in turn transferred the property to Maine Audubon.

The late Moore had managed a silver fox ranch on the property, and Nancy Moore recalled that the last time she had visited Borestone the pens were still on the property. “They’ve done a great job remodeling,” she said of Audubon.

Moore’s children were impressed with the lodges. “He must have been a very successful man, and he must have been a very good builder,” Garrett Potter, 10, said Sunday.

Other visitors, however, were drawn by the impressive mountain. It requires a 11/2-mile hike from Audubon’s parking lot to get to a visitors center operated by Audubon and a similar hike to the 2,000-foot rock summit which is open to the public.

“Maine Audubon may own it, but it’s the people’s mountain,” sanctuary manager Donald Annis, 55, of Monson said Sunday as he ferried visitors by boat from the visitors center to the lodges and back during the annual open house.

The event, which featured a cookout, is the only time the nonpaying public can visit the quaint main lodge which is typically rented out for corporate retreats, he said.

“Our goal is to have folks here [in the lodge] who are inspired by this one-of-a-kind natural setting,” Elyse Tipton, Audubon’s communication director, said Sunday. “When you come here, you are inspired by nature.”

The jaunt to the main lodge by boat takes visitors over Sunrise Pond and through a narrow channel to Midday Pond where passengers disembark at the workshop building.

There are no fish in the spring-fed ponds surrounding the lodges because Moore had contracted with the state to have the fish killed, Annis said.

The third pond in the group, Sunset Pond, is about 30 yards from Midday Pond, according to Annis, who retired after 27 years as a game warden with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and who is in his fourth summer working at the sanctuary.

Annis said his job is made easier with the help of Madeleine and David Thayer of Willimantic, who serve as assistant manager and naturalist, respectively, and hold the only other paid positions.

Dozens of other people inclduing Annis’ wife, Cindi, Alan and Diana Bray of Sangerville, Gary Larson of Dover-Foxcroft, and Diane McCarthy-Clark of Sangerville donate their time to help the sanctuary during its operation in the summer months.

The property is open year-round but the main lodge and sanctuary are closed during winter months.

Larson enjoys the cold months on Borestone. He snowshoes up the mountain, often alone.

“Particularly in the wintertime, it’s the solitude. You can get out and have a little adventure and not go overboard,” he said. “The risk factor is exciting.”

For Tompkins and her husband, Joel, the adventure Sunday was enjoying the beauty and the great craftsmanship involved in the lodges that conjure visions of mountain men. “It is just beautiful,” she said.

That’s all Annis hopes to hear. Audubon tries to connect people of all ages with nature. “What better place to do it than at Borestone Mountain.”