In whose footsteps to follow?

This is Cornelia "Fly Rod" Crosby, Maine's first Registered Maine Guide.  Yes, indeed, the first Maine Guide was a woman.  But this was not Fly Rod's only  accomplishment - she is known as the "woman who marketed Maine."  Fly Rod Crosby traveled America doing exhibition shows in shooting and outdoorsmanship, and expounding on the natural wonders of her native state.  It was, in part, her genius that contributed to the boom in ecotourism (oh yes, that is not a new thing to the state of Maine) that led the 19th and early 20th century rusticators from urban areas south of here to come and vacation.  We owe our "Vacationland" status - and our thriving tourism industry - in part to the efforts of Fly Rod Crosby.  And let's not forget that some of those rusticators settled in places like Bar Harbor, and eventually donated much of the land that is now the breathtaking Acadia National Park.  What was clear to Cornelia seems less clear to Mainers today:  Maine's exhilarating natural environment is unique,  and can be marketed in such a way as to create a viable eco-economy.  But in order to continue to market that brand, we have to protect what we have.  Environmentalism is not just a hippy notion espoused by tree hugging idealists; it is an economic necessity in a state that has been catering to vacationers and sportsman for over 150 years.

This November the people of Maine are confronted with a choice...again.  It's not the first time, and unfortunately, will most likely not be the last as long as naked avarice lives.  We are being asked in whose footsteps we will choose to follow:  Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby's or Steve Wynn's?  In case you are unfamiliar with the name, Steve Wynn is the big casino developer who is credited with revitalizing the Vegas Strip, and who also had a significant hand in the development of casino gaming in Atlantic City, NJ.  Our local mini-Wynns are the investors in an enterprise known as Black Bear Entertainment.  Fly Rod's vision of Maine does not resonate with them, well, unless you count the pretentiously "rustic" architecture they have in mind for their "four season resort."  "Four season resort" is the more palatable name they've come up with in playing semantics with the public.  The reality is that their project, with its caricature "Maine lodge, " is really a casino.  And while Black Bear Entertainment (BBE) will not grant the voters/taxpayers the courtesy or respect to disclose the casino's exact planned location,we do know it would be somewhere in Oxford, Maine. 

Oxford, Maine.  Oxford is at the heart of the Western Lakes and Mountains region.  This area of Maine is a breathtakingly beautiful area replete with some of the best hiking, fishing, skiing (Nordic & Alpine), snowmobiling, camping, canoeing and kayaking, leaf peeping, antiquing...need I go on?...activities in the state.  There are farms, forests, villages on the National Register, outdoor markets, restaurants, quaint Main Streets, food cooperatives, churches, schools, mountains, lakes, rivers, everything that puts the Oxford Hills area on the cover of Yankee, Downeast, and other magazines from time to time.  A beautiful New England paradise with everything...everything, some say, but jobs.  And this is where the casino opportunistically comes in.

As is always the case, the casino developers promise jobs to a population struggling in an economic downturn.  In this particular case, that downturn is of historic proportions, but not just locally, nationally.  A casino is not the answer, here or anywhere else.  I have spent a great deal of time in the past months speaking to people and writing on social networking sites about the issue.  I have explained the social costs, the infrastructural costs, and the law enforcement and emergency personnel costs that are never covered by the casinos themselves and fall heavily on the taxpayers, subsidizing the rich casino owners and their out of state management teams.  I have made people aware of the unethical behavior surrounding the acquisition of the Oxford County Fairgrounds race track by BBE investors.  I have related my own experiences growing up in southern NJ before and after the casinos came.  I have explained why the jobs promised are just a mirage.  I have helped to update a FB page devoted to opposing the casino, and have created a Twitter feed for the cause.  I have argued on the basis of statistics and facts, relayed news stories from around the country and the state on how the casino industry is weakening in general.  I have taken the facts and stats road, but that is not the purpose of this post.  This is my blog, and this is where I get to say that what is at stake here is the heart and soul of the last unspoiled and wild place in the northeastern United States, and a culture unique not only to New England, but to the world.

When Henry David Thoreau (come on, now, did you really think I could complete a post without mentioning Thoreau?) explored the Maine woods in the 1850s he was astonished by both its wildness and sheer power, and by its obvious vulnerability.  By that time the logging industry had taken a firm hold, and Thoreau worried that those great North Woods would be cut out of existence, tree by tree.  But logging is a business that can be conducted using sustainable methods, and that produces a tangible product, creating real jobs.  As it turns out, the North Woods are still there - threatened by the disastrous Plum Creek plan - but still there.  Thoreau was a naturalist and environmentalist, but above all things, Thoreau was a philosopher and spiritual seeker.  Thoreau stood atop Mount Ktaadn and had his "Contact! Contact!" moment, then attempted to express the inexpressible in his book "The Maine Woods."  The experience changed his life. 

What the hell am I talking about?  What is this "inexpressible?"  What is it?  I don't know exactly.  But I do know that it's why I came here.  It's why I stay in spite of crushing financial challenge.  It's why I took Fly Rod's example to heart and became a Registered Maine Guide.  It's why I will die and be buried here.  It's why I want to share this place with everyone I love.  It's so much a part of who I am that I can not separate myself from it.  As I said in last month's post, I am not in this environment, I am of it.  Within it can be found the very nature of God - whatever God is.

It's not the cry of the loon on Little Sebago,  but it lives in the cry of that loon.  Similarly, it lives in the white caps on Pennesseewassee Lake on a windy day, in the spectacular foliage viewable for miles around from the top of Streaked Mountain.  It lives in the pine trees that tower 5 or 6 stories in the air, and in the eagles' nests that sit atop them.  It lives in the White Mountain National Forest and in the rush of water at Screw Auger Falls.  It lives in the sacredness and awe the heart senses on a stone silent and scintillating snowshoe trail in January, and in the joy experienced on that same trail in March when the brook breaks through the ice.  It turns the Cornwall Preserve and the Roberts Preserve in to sanctuaries that put the great man made cathedrals to shame.  I can't tell you what it is - I can only tell you I know it when I see it, or more accurately, when I feel it, when I am it.  And I'm not the only one.

People come to Maine from all over the country and all over the world to experience this.  To come back to the temporal from the eternal for a moment, they come here for whatever it is and spend a lot of cash doing so.  The beautiful thing about this arrangement is that we can have a thriving tourist economy based on it and, at the same time, have both the spiritual and economic incentive to preserve whatever it is.  Casinos don't do that.  They preserve nothing.  They cost much.  And long after they are gone, the natural world they spoil, and the native culture they debase, can never be recreated. 

So in whose footsteps do we follow?  Do we follow Cornelia's path to an economy built on ecotourism and sustainable businesses friendly to our greatest natural resources and assets?  Or do we follow our mini-Wynns, Black Bear Entertainment, to low wage jobs, increased crime and taxation, gambling addiction, extinction of existing small businesses, and all of the ills found in other casino towns in the pursuit of a project that does nothing to perpetuate the Maine "brand?"  Maine is not about casinos.  Maine is about something much more profound.  I will follow Cornelia's vision.  I will vote NO on 1 on November 2nd.

"Die and be buried who will, I mean to live here still; My nature grows ever more young, the primitive pines among."
- Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods - Ktaadn