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Downeast Lakes LAND TRUST |
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None of these projects were coordinated with the aim of conserving a single broad swath of eastern Maine and western New Brunswick. But the end result? More than a million contiguous acres - an area larger than the White Mountain National Forest - is now protected against development. For its part, this summer the Downeast Lakes Land Trust is starting to build hiking trails and canoe-access campsites on its land, while seeking green certification for its management plan.
A determined paddler will, for the indefinite future, be able to paddle, pole, and portage from the high lakes of New Brunswick to the waterfalls at Machias River, transiting through two major watersheds and dozens of ponds, streams, and lakes, past floating bogs and wetlands with grasses bending with wild rice, all the while passing only a smattering of bridges, roads, and camps.
The whole of the newly conserved landscape is breathtaking when seen from the air. The defining characteristic of inland Washington County isn't mountains or rushing rivers or even endless forests. It's wetlands — vast and primeval places fringed with pine and hemlock and birch. From above, the international border disappears in a sea of blue and green, pocked with bogs and kettleholes.
But the region will always be most impressive when seen from the water - preferably from a Grand Laker, and preferably with a Maine guide in the stern, on an early summer day, with the boat pounding its way upwind toward coves otherwise never seen. From the bow of a Grand Laker, you can see a whole century behind you and at least a century ahead.
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