a day of walking in conserved lands

It was a perfect meal to end a day in which several hours was spent outside. This morning, we tried to go for a walk in the Town Commons, a conservation area in town. That sort of worked. We typically just venture into the woods behind our house but since we were inside for most of yesterday, it seemed like a good day for a walk. Sawyer didn't exactly agree. He was fine with being outside but would have been perfectly happy to stay in the parking lot and watch the cars go by - or perhaps to walk 10 feet in and scoop up leaves and branches and moss and rocks. But it was nice to do some exploring in an area we haven't been recently.

After lunch at Wild Oats, a cafe in town (not affiliated with the grocery store), I headed to meet up with folks from the Conservation Commission (of which I've been a member for 3 years) and board members from the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust.

We were doing a sitewalk to confirm "baseline" conditions at two properties which were recently protected from future development - in all, more than a mile of saltwater frontage is now protected, one of the last undeveloped areas along Brunswick's coastline.

The land is on Maquoit Bay and has some great views out to Casco Bay, along with at least one mile of walking trails on old woods roads, as well as several freshwater streams, and marshes that support commercial clamming. It is also one of the only spots where you can actually legally put your foot in the ocean in Brunswick. Technically, Brunswick is a coastal town with 65 miles of coastline but it's easy to forget that fact (especially when I live on the non-coastal town line!) and when you have to drive to Freeport or Harpswell to see the ocean. With this property, Brunswick doubled the town's public access to the water. And it's only 10 minutes from our house!

While these walks are pretty typical and we do them 5-6 times a year to monitor properties, this is the first time the two organizations are collaborating on a specific project, and it's also a quite large piece of land to be protected. One of the parcels was purchased by the town (with assistance from Land for Maine's Future and Trust for Public Land, and I'm sure several other organizations) and an easement on the other adjacent parcel (without public access but permanently protected from development) was donated by the landowners.

I have some connection to the project because when I first moved to Maine, I was working on the Maine Coast Protection Initiative, a joint effort of several state and federal organizations to help bring land trusts and other local conservation organizations together to identify how they could work more effectively to protect more land. Part of my work was helping to write the state plan for the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program, a federal program that provides funding to protect important land in coastal areas. Although we didn't identify specific parcels, we developed the criteria by which coastal land in Maine would be evaluated. Maine was the first state in the nation to put together a plan in collaboration with many different non-profit, state, and federal organizations. All of the coastal states can nominate specific parcels which are then evaluated by NOAA, the sponsoring federal agency.

Although I'm not certain whether it was the presence of the Plan or if this parcel really has extraordinary features, it was ranked the number one priority in the country for protection under this program. So it feels good to know that my work had some impact and I didn't just produce a planning document that sat on a shelf in Augusta.

The walk itself was about three hours and we tromped all over the place - up and down gullies, thru marshes, bushwacking quite a bit. It was a perfect day to be out in the woods and it was a great group of people to join in the exploration.

I look forward to returning there soon - we'll take the most direct route and head out to Rocky Point. We'll probably wait on more gully-crossing until the town puts in some bridges.