Thank you Maine and thank you federal government of the USA:
Touring Maine’s Newest — and Largest — Parcel of Federal Land
By
On an early fall day, with just a hint of red tinting the maples, the view from the summit of Deasey Mountain is spectacular.
To the west stand the rugged, treeless basins and knife-edge spine of Mount Katahdin. Off to the south, you see Wassataquoik Valley in the near distance, the peaks of the 100 Mile Wilderness beyond. To the east and north, more wild Maine woods and hills rolling for miles, to the Canadian border.
It’s a fascinating view, partly because until recently, this mountain and most of the foreground were owned by one person. In August, the entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby donated it to the federal government, and President Obama designated the area the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
Now the 87,500-acre monument — adjacent to Baxter State Park — is Maine’s largest parcel of federal land, nearly twice the size of Acadia National Park, and I’ve come to explore.
I started the trip to Deasey by following a rough road to a trailhead inside the monument, then mountain biking along an old logging road that parallels Wassataquoik Stream. A beaver clambered along the bank of a small stream. A bit farther along, hooves clattered on river cobbles, and a cow moose trotted off into the birches.
Eventually, I found a sign for the International Appalachian Trail, or IAT, that extends the concept of the Appalachian Trail (which itself ends at Katahdin) to Canada and beyond. (One indication of the size of the new monument is that it includes 31 miles of the trail, about the distance between Manhattan and Greenwich, Conn.)
The trail crossed the Wassataquoik at a knee-deep ford, meandered through mixed woods and skirted a massive glacial erratic before turning steeply uphill for a mile toward the summit of Deasey.
Hiking out, it seemed I had the place to myself. On 10 miles of trail, I had flushed several grouse, and stepped over moose, coyote and bear scat, but I had not encountered another soul.
In fact, the only person I talked to that day was a man at the trailhead who said he had grown up fishing and hiking in the area. He hated the idea of a park, and said, “I’m just coming to say goodbye to it for the very last time.” It’s not surprising, really: The park and Ms. Quimby have been controversial for years…
Read the whole article here.
Organikos 