January was a good winter month but without as much snow as we have had in the last 2 years. I was able to get some trails groomed and ready without too much difficulty but there is a lot of logging damage that I’m still working on.
The “Big Wind” battle is heating up and resistance is mounting. The Friends of the Highland Mountains are doing some amazing work and all of us are getting educated about what is at stake.
We had visits from the Twitchell family, Herb Wilson and Sarah Gibbs with students from Colby, the Ness family, Frank Scott and his antique snowmobile group, and the La Rochelle and Whitmore father and son group.
Chuck Twitchell and I work together at Resq. Of course I am a grunt while Chuck is a veteran paramedic and Chief of the Kingfield fire department. I wonder sometimes where Chuck gets his energy since he fills every waking moment with some sort of activity. In addition to running the fire department he is a full time medic, a training instructor for the hospital, and he is a builder in his spare time. Chuck is one of the few woodsman in the resq group and an avid deer hunter who can “bushwhack” with confidence. It is no easy task to keep up with him on the trail either. In spite of all the time he spends working he manages to play and spend time with family also. For the last few years Chuck has come to Claybrook with his sisters and their spouses for a little family retreat. This time they had enough snow to get out and snowshoe on my trails.
Herb and Sarah led another group of 15 Colby students on a winter ecology tour. They built “Quincys”on the hill out back and slept in these little igloos on what turned out to be the coldest night of the winter. While it was -12F outside, one of the “Quincys” achieved +53F inside. We had a great hotdog cookout on Bear Brook Bog next to the beaver lodge at my favorite little cookout place.
The Ness family was here again in January rather than February this year. The snowmobiling wasn’t that great and I wondered if their usual time in February would have been better. Knowing what I know now it was as good as it was going to be. The December, January snow was beautiful but nothing came after it. The Ness’s always have a good time no matter what the conditions are.
Ice cutting at Pierce Pond drew a crowd again this year even with a January thaw a few days before it was scheduled. The lake was covered with rainwater and snowmelt that froze. It was good for skaters but not so good for snowmobiles. Frank Scott’s group of antique snowmobile enthusiasts arrived here with huge two-seater Polaris machines that weighed as much as a small car and had wooden slide rails. Needless to say, they didn’t have ideal conditions for their ride. The La Rochelles and Whitmores also went in for ice cutting and had a great time.
The herd of deer I was feeding grew to nineteen and the turkeys remained at eleven. It is interesting to note that the only bucks in the group of deer were fawns. Before the end of January the number of deer dwindled back to six or seven. Coyotes began marking up my ski trails for their mating season and it made the deer a little nervous. Even without critical snow levels they moved south where there were larger numbers to join for protection.
The Friends of the Highland Mountains have gotten organized and they are trying to educate everyone about industrial wind projects. Some organized groups such as MATC and Western Maine Audubon have joined the resistance. My position is that if we are going to industrialize the last undeveloped woodland in the eastern United States than we had better be getting something of equal value in return. If there is no law to tie in a shut down of fossil fuel generation when wind is active, I don’t see how this project will realize any reduction in carbon output. If fossil fuel burning doesn’t change with this project, the cutting and clearing for permanent roads and power lines will actually add to the carbon footprint and millions of tax dollars will be wasted. The wild lands of Maine are a resource that no one else has and industrial wind will alter them permanently. The only real benefit that I see is the three years or so of construction jobs and I don’t believe we need to sacrifice such a valuable resource for short term gain.
“Gang Warily”,
Greg & Pat
