North Woods Diary |
by Robbie McKay |
It can never happen here.
Three years ago when our family began our journey into north
woods activism, we thought, "It can never happen here."
The devastation of the West was a tool we used when speaking in
public to build awareness of how the environmental industry has
run amok, like children with too little parenting. I used to read
a heart-wrenching letter Nadine Bailey (a western activist) wrote
to President Clinton about how his timber policies had literally
torn her family apart and scattered them to the four winds. I
would struggle to make it through the piece, tears flowing down
my face, as I lived her pain as if it were my own. I knew that in
the same situation, I would feel exactly the same way. But, that
would never happen here.
But it has.
When I first was approached to write this column for As Maine
Goes, I thought I would be writing about issues of the day,
commentary from the viewpoint of someone living in the
Unorganized Territories; I still will be doing that. But from the
title of my column (Diary, to be specific), I have decided to let
you the readers join the McKay family for the duration of our
ordeal. You see, this fight for our rights and freedom in the
Other Maine has become personal. I have become a WWW: a work week
widow.
We are so bent on saving nature in the North, that our people
cannot find jobs here anymore. We must keep it pristine for
urbanites who want to recreate here on the weekends, after
leaving their $40,000/year jobs behind on Fridays. As of this
week, my eight year old son is without his father 5 nights a
week. Gil left yesterday to capture a job on construction in
Winter Harbor.
I watched the debate on Sappi land on MaineWatch last Thursday
evening, and was gripped with such strong emotions that at the
time I could not express them. Today I can. I want to send a
message to Cathy Johnson and the Natural Resources Council of
Maine, to Jym St. Pierre and the rest of the RESTORE groupies, to
Earth First! and Maine Audubon, and the Wilderness Society, and
FEN and God knows how many other socialists masked in
environmentalism there are out there: It is inconceivable that
you people are making handsome salaries to do this to Maine
people who have lived here for generations. It is inconceivable
that our own tax dollars are being used to slit our own throats.
It is inconceivable that you are given special status to work
within our state planning office as "partners." It is
inconceivable that you have co-opted the sportsmen's groups,
befriending them while at the same time planning to shut off
their access. And, above all else, it is inconceivable that you
are using our children through schools and "education
program" such as Riverkeepers to further tighten the screws
that are holding the shackles around our souls.
Unorganized Territories United, a political action committee we
founded, is coming back in the near future. We realize now that
you are even more dangerous than we thought. The people of the
Other Maine won't leave quietly. All of your panic-provoking
rhetoric of the past three years will be debated in a full public
forum. We will not leave, we will not lose, we will illuminate
the full truth of what you stand for, and let Maine people know
that your kind is responsible for the death of rural America.
To the readers out there...you will be joining our family on our
journey. Say prayers for us, keep in touch, and hang on. As our
son said to me this morning while looking in at his father's
empty chair: "Mama, I really miss Daddy."
Me, too, Son. Me too.
We have not yet begun to fight.
It can't happen here.....right?
Yesterday morning's weather was fitting for what the rest of
the day would bring. Cold, damp, and drizzly, the leaves swooshed
full of moisture. A chill greeted me when I rose before dawn and
threw open the front door. A lonely bat dipped and dove around
the porch, looking for the last hold-out bugs of summer.
I had every intention of getting caught up on some much needed
housework as I poured my first cup of coffee at 3 am. Being an
activist means grabbing housework time wherever you can find it.
Then I made the mistake of sitting down to read the newspaper
with my morning coffee.....to my surprise, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service was hosting a hearing last night in Old Town on
the proposed listing of the Canadian Lynx as a threatened
species. The article on the front page was the only warning we
had that this was taking place.
Housework out the window by now, we communicated to a few people
what was going on, and commenced research on the listing and one
of the principle proponents of the process: Jasper Carlton. He
and his organization, The Biodiversity Legal Foundation, are said
to be responsible for over 100 species listing. Lurking in the
shadows, however, is the fact that he opposes all logging, and is
using the ESA to close down forest harvests all over America. Our
frustration is elevated, when we bring up this fact in hearings
and the media covering the event neglects to air it. It the same
situation as the Wildlands Project; I mentioned that in my
testimony, which you can read if you wish at the end of this
posting. Once again, zeroed by the press which is still keeping
Maine people in the dark as to what is really going on.
It looks like Maine now has it's spotted owl: the lynx. From the
looks of the crowd there last night, the enviros know it too. All
ranges of "green-dom" were represented: olive drab
green (government fish and wildlife), true green (activists from
FEN, RESTORE, Earth First and Native Forest Network), and spring
green (the young, impressionable college students who the greens
prey on on college campuses.). It was hushed as a few of our
people testified; you could feel the tension in the air. How
sad.
You know, the whole situation is a tragedy. When we were kids
living in the North Woods, our families would rejoice if we had a
new bird, or animal visiting us. It was an honor to have rare
wildlife on your premises. Nowadays, in the same situation, Mama
and Grammie would be out in the dooryard, flapping their aprons
at it trying to shoo it away. God forbid they find an endangered
species on your land! Now, wildlife and people together, lose.
Today is bright, crisp, and windy. A beautiful fall day in the
north woods. Gil is still working away; Rogan is less
"weepy" now, but the ache in our hearts remains.
Friday's coming; homecoming day in our home!
Will post again soon.
Whoever said "Parting is such sweet sorrow" must
have had a screw loose. I can't find anything sweet about it.
Gil was home with us for the weekend and left again for the job
Sunday night. As Rogan and I returned home to the North Woods, we
drove through archways of rainbow colored trees, saying farewell
to summer. Crimson, orange, yellow and green boasted of changing
seasons, trophies testifying to a job well done.
It's quiet here. When Gil is home, the quiet is comforting. With
him gone, the silence is deafening. You can actually feel the
heaviness in the air. I sit and listen to the sun set. Rogan
plays in the door yard. Times in the past, the road would be
filled with traffic returning home from Sunday outings. While
there is still traffic, it's volume is greatly diminished. A
dying Maine region sputters to keep going.
Our town is very small, by anyone's standards. Two hundred of us,
give or take a few. No stores here; out the road in Macwahoc
there is one. Back before the interstate was built, Macwahoc was
much more visited than it is today. Now it sits like parents
whose children have gone off to college, waiting impatiently for
them to return. When will they come home?
The establishment press covers the Two Maine issues. How bad are
things here? Yet the one thing that explains all of why this is
happening to us, the Wildlands Project, is never mentioned, never
covered, never explored. Let me ask you this: If you knew of a
project that advocated for returning 50% of the land mass of the
United States back to wilderness to protect
"biodiversity" would it help you understand why there
are two Maines?
We know about it. We lecture in communities about it. We scream
from the top of our lungs to the press about it, and the response
from the media is silence as deafening as our northern Maine
sunsets.
Ask them why they aren't covering it....ask them why our tax
dollars are being used to implement it. Ask them if they agree
with it.
Rogan got ready for bed last night. Again, he says, "Mama, I
really miss Daddy." Me too, son, me too.
And the silence is deafening.
It's cold and windy today at the edge of the North Woods. The
corn stalks in the garden definitely have that "all dressed
up for Halloween" look. The squash vines and tomato plants
are tickled around the edges with blace lace, testimony to a too
cold morning last week.
Today is the seven year anniversary of my mother's death. She was
absolutely one of the finest people I have ever known; strong,
reserved, quiet. Everything I, her daughter, am not. I look back
on how she parented my sister and I with patient love, quiet
strength, and compassion. How I pray that I can do the same for
our child....
I have often wondered what she would think and do if she were
still here to witness the assault on rural Maine. I don't have to
wonder how she would feel. A woman of great character, she would
have felt betrayed, attacked, and angry. I'm sure that is not
part of the scenery where she lives now.
But it is where we live. Last night, a small group of our
activists met with a representative of the State Planning Office,
a member of the DEP, and two young professors from the University
of Maine who were part of the Climate Change Task Force. A
reporter from the Bangor Daily News was also in attendance. The
air was charged, thick with tension. I asked the reporter how she
heard about the meeting; when I did so, one of the young
professors laughed to his colleague. I asked him what was so
funny, please share it with the group so we could all laugh. No
reply.
To make a long story short, we are facing discrimination. The
attitude in that room could be described as condescending; after
all, the attitude among government bureaucrats, many of the
"intellectual" community, and the environmental
industry is that poor rural people are not that bright. Have we
got a surprise for them! Every time those groups of people get
together to conduct studies, we all hang on to our hats in rural
Maine, because we know we will bear the brunt of the "public
good." And with the establishment media in these people's
hip pockets, I can't wait to see the spin the reporter puts on
this story! I would be willing to wager that we will not fare
well in the article...even though the documents we have are
valid, the arguments made were sound, and the proof to back up
our claims is there.
Oh, well...time will tell. People are angry out here. It's
similar to a pot that is simmering, coming to a boil. Where will
it lead? I don't know. Let the people decide. Discrimination is
alive and well in
governmental agencies; the question is, what are we going to do
about it? What about the human rights of rural Maine people?
We're tired. We've been shouting to the wind about these problems
for three years. What should we do? Quit fighting and admit
defeat? Be prepared to move when taxes increase so much we can't
pay them any more, when all the jobs are gone, when eco-tourists
run wild over what used to be our homes, our land, our heritage?
We've been shouting to the wind....what should we do?
The wind screams back: Fight on, fight on.
He's home with us!
Gil is back at home, thank God. This came about by a financial
accounting of our situation: we realized that if he worked away,
the next three weeks paychecks would go towards buying our wood
supply for the winter and put us three weeks behind time-wise to
working it up. If he stayed home, we would be ready on time, and
could harvest our wood from the edge of the field that we are
trying to reclaim. It's strange about trees: they grow too large
and they start dying. Either harvest them,or they blow down and
rot. What a concept. They also grow back. Our land, which my
ancestors farmed, used to be pastures and crop land; now the
forests have engulfed them. Just getting ready to farm now is a
challenge.
We still spend a great deal of time pondering life's mysteries.
As North Woods Activists, we are finally getting a handle on what
this controversy's all about: elitism. The well-off and wealthy
are so concerned with us in the other Maine, that they are trying
to "help us." As that bumper sticker I heard about says
so succinctly: "Please God: Don't let the Governor help us
anymore!" I can see the establishment environmentalists and
the bureaucrat friends chatting over sushi and sake, bemoaning
the poor little woods people and what are they going to do to
help us? Message to them: until your kind landed here, we didn't
need any help!
The press is hot on the separation issue.They still don't get it.
This is NOT a Robbie McKay thing. This is a whole new group of
people, sick and tired of being sick and tired. All I do is help
organize and show how to build networks. If the time is right, if
the sentiment is there, it will work. A lot of hard work, and a
task not taken lightly. Wonderful people whose time has come. I
hear people saying, "You're making a good political
point." This isn't a maneuver, a game. This is real. When
rural people have their rights stripped away by elitist
socialists, their hackles rise, and rightly so. After three years
of making the long trip to Augusta, and trying to impress on
legislators how desperate the situation is out here, I could be
speaking to the winds. Most politicians haven't even taken the
time to sit down with us and look at our documentation. The ones
who have, now understand and have become our unsung heroes. Henry
Joy and Pat Lane were two who fought valiantly for us in rural
Maine. And they did so in part because they looked at our
information and realized we were right.
I wish the elitists would realize what this country was, is, and
is not. At a school program last year, I wept when the kids sang
a special song. At the time, I wondered why we kept fighting, why
we spent our family's money to do this, why we took away personal
time with our friends and family. I looked at the beautiful
little faces up front, mouthing these words loudly:
"If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life,
and I had to start again with just my children and my wife,
I'd thank my lucky stars to be living here today, 'cause the flag still
stands for freedom, and they can't take that away......
And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free!
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me!
And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today,
'cause there ain't no doubt, I love this land! God Bless the USA!
>From the shores of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee,
Across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea.
>From Detroit down to Houston, from New York to LA,
There's pride in every American heart and it's time to stand and say,
That I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free!
And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me!
And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today,
cause there ain't no doubt I love this land.....God Bless the USA!
Thank you Lee Greenwood....thank you veterans. Thank you schoolchildren who sang that on that day. Thank you to who ever reads these words and gets teary....you still have what it takes: the right stuff.
Robbie McKay can be reached at (207)765-2202 or e-mailed at utumaine@telplus.net or by snail mail at HC 62 Box 458, Kingman, Maine 04451 |