Transcription of Christopher Franklin for the show Maine Lands #191
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, Show Number 191, Maine Lands, airing for the first time on Sunday, May 10, 2015.
Whether we are traversing our native soil or sinking our fingers into it, we Mainers are in love with the land. Today we speak with Chris Franklin, Executive Director of the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust and Rodney Eason, Director of Horticulture at the Coastal Main Botanical Gardens. Each of these individuals brings a unique perspective on what the Earth has to offer and what we, in turn, have to offer the Earth. Thank you for joining us.
It’s my great pleasure to have in the studio today with me Chris Franklin. Chris Franklin has been the Executive Director of the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust since 2003. He oversees all aspects of the organization, including marketing development, land stewardship and land acquisition. He lives in Cumberland with his wife, Julie, and their three children. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Chris: Thanks. It’s good to be here.
Lisa: Land Trust, this is something that’s become increasingly important here in Maine. We have to obviously create access for people and maintain the lands that we so enjoy. Why did you get into doing this line of work?
Chris: I was a geography major and grew up fishing and hiking and doing those types of things and studying environmental conservation as a discipline in college and working in San Francisco. When I came back, the idea that we could do something locally that would have some lasting impression, think globally, act locally, at the time it was a great match. It’s really grown into something that’s just beyond my greatest dreams in terms of what we’ve been able to achieve, but also in terms of the meaning the word has for me.
Lisa: You originally were from Massachusetts?
Chris: Yep.
Lisa: Did you do a lot of this fishing and outdoor activities in Massachusetts?
Chris: It’s interesting. I grew up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, which is really at the forefront of local land conservation. Back in the sixties they were buying local land and developing portions of it, but making sure they saved the most important parts. Almost sixty percent of the town is conservation land. That was just the town I grew up in. I just took it for granted. I didn’t know anything different.
As I traveled more and as I got older, I really had developed a much stronger appreciation for what they had done. Now that I’ve learned how they did it, they were really ahead of their time.
Lisa: Why would you decided to be a geography major? What was it about that that somehow called you?
Chris: It’s really about the distribution of plants and people and cultures and different habitats. Really to me it’s one of the most intriguing fields in that why people live where they do, how they’ve evolved, how different species interact, so not only the geology, but the ecology and the biology. In all there was earth sciences, where they intersect with the human experience is geography.
Lisa: Somehow in your childhood you became interested enough in all of these disparate things that came into one science that you decided to pursue it as a major?
Chris: Yeah, something in the earth sciences. It wasn’t a big surprise to a lot people. In fact, when they had us program within the School of Geography, which was environmental conservation, when I realized that could be my major the light went on and things started to click and that’s when … It sort of set me on my path.
Lisa: After you graduated from college you actually went all the way across the country and then a little further. You went to San Francisco. You went to Alaska. Why did you do that?
Chris: My mom had a little saying taped to her fridge that said, “All you can give a child are roots and wings.” They really encouraged us to spread those wings and to travel as much as we could and to explore different places. I certainly hope my kids will do the same. Growing up in New England was great. Most of my friends stayed in New England. A lot of them are still there.
I’m back, but the chance to go somewhere else … I lived in Taos for a year. I lived in San Francisco for eight years, just meeting people with different life experience. That’s what college was about. I took that for another ten or fifteen years beyond that. That change, that getting out of our comfort zone really can teach you a lot and it’s good to bring those lessons home with you.
Lisa: Now you call Maine home?
Chris: Of course. Yeah.
Lisa: What was it that brought you back?
Chris: It’s partially the geography. It’s that sense of place. It’s something that’s familiar. Portland in particular … Living outside of Portland, we have the ocean, we have the north woods. I do canoe trips and a fair amount of fly fishing, but also to have a really dynamic small enough city that you don’t have to deal with parking or traffic. When we moved here, the parking garages were fifty cents an hour and that was a really nice change from San Francisco.
Lisa: I remember that. It seems like a while ago that that was the case, but you’re right. When you go to a big city parking is so much more expensive. It seems like Portland is a very livable place still.
Chris: I think that’s part of it being a healthy place to live, is that it really enables you to not have to deal with a lot of the hassles. When I go back around the areas where I grew up, the stress level seems higher.
Lisa: You had a one-year-old when you started this job and you now have an eight-year-old and …
Chris: Ten, and he’s just about to turn thirteen.
Lisa: You’re children have been evolving as your career has been evolving. How has that looked in your family life?
Chris: I think part of what we look at at the Land Trust is really not only that we’re in a really important time where we have to do the acquisition now, but we need to make sure that people are going to love these places and take care of them. That starts with our children and it starts with kids in schools, so we have very active education programs, really trying to make sure that we build an understanding of the natural world. Out of that we hope there comes a sense of appreciation for the natural world, and out of that comes a responsibility or an interest in helping care for the natural world.
For me, if I can’t do that at home, it’s difficult. They teach me a lot too. It’s really great to see things from their eyes, things that I’ve just given into that are just the way things are, that they really challenge. Why does global warming have to be something that we can’t just address full on and change our thinking about? For them it’s just ridiculous, and it is ridiculous, but we’re so in the midst of it that it’s hard for us to see.
Lisa: That’s a good point. I’m just thinking about my own children and the questions they raise about things that I sort of long ago stopped questioning because it just seemed that it is the way it is and we just need to accept it, but that really isn’t true. There are many things that can be changed. You just need to start examining them more closely and put some work behind it.
This is something that you have been doing with the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust really almost for twelve years. It must have been an interesting change over time?
Chris: When I came to the organization, a lot of the founders were still there, a lot of people who essentially ran it. It’s an all volunteer organization, so I became essentially the first full time paid Executive Director for the Trust.
There was a transition of those people feeling after a few years that the organization was in good hands and being able to step back a little bit. We got a fresh new slate of board members and we’re now getting to the point where after nine years they need to at least take one year off the board before coming back.
We’re sort of going through another change. I think, as hard as it is to lose those people who bring so much time and talent to the organization … To keep it fresh, to keep it nimble, I think you need to bring in new people, but it’s really hard, because that’s the life blood of the organization.
We’re a staff of two and there’s no way we could do a fraction of the work that gets done if it weren’t for our volunteers and our board members. It’s a really phenomenal partnership. I think a lot of Maine is greatly, greatly impacted by it’s nonprofits and it’s really important to understand the cumulative impact of that and not just the impact on the individual organizations.
If you look at land trusts throughout the state that really started to do local land preservation, now thirty years later these organizations are the largest source of new conservation lands in the state. In fact, they are doing the vast majority of land protection in the state. Even though they were formed just to do their own little local bit, the cumulative impact is over a million acres of conservation land in Maine.
Lisa: It does seem that this has been a touchy subject, especially shoreline frontage and access to things like beaches. I think it may be more so in other parts of the country though. It seems as though in Maine in general we still have access to places that many other locals don’t.
Chris: Yeah. Part of the reason that per capita New England has a lot more land trusts than most of the rest of the country is that being settled under colonial law came with it a lot of rights of access. In New England in particular, you’re allowed to walk on somebody’s property unless they post it against trespassing. That’s just been the rule of the road or the culture. If you go out west, if you go to a lot of places, it’s exactly the opposite. You’re not allowed on the property unless you’re explicitly given access, unless you get to somewhere like Hawaii, where the entire oceanfront is considered a public domain.
That tradition of private ownership is both good and bad in terms of our access to resources. States like Nevada, eighty percent of the land is public land. It’s federally owned or state owned. In states like Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire it may be in the teens. We really rely upon private land owners for access a lot more, even though ponds greater than ten acres, the waterways and the oceanfront are given limited public rights of access. We do rely on private land owners a lot more than most areas, and that’s why the Land Trust has been such a great model here.
Lisa: It seems as though there has to be a respect on the part of the people who use the land. I’ve walked on a lot of the coast and actually in from the coast and the woodlands and around people’s properties and you could see how easily it could become abused. If somebody were to litter or somebody were to be loud or somebody were to be obnoxious, maybe overuse by bikes or even just people walking too much on plant roots … It seems to me there has to be a mutual respect that takes place?
Chris: Absolutely. That idea that not taking it for granted regardless of who owns it, even if it’s a State Park, but especially if it’s a privately owned parcel where that land owner is encouraging or just allowing access to your property, and they may have very simple rules, no fires, no motorized vehicles or something. When people ignore those, they’re jeopardizing access.
It’s a challenge, but I think it’s akin to a lot of other aspects of our life. You can park and take up two spots. You can do all sorts of things that are going to make people upset, and if you do them enough there’s going to be some repercussion.
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Lisa: One of the pieces that I like to write for Old Port is called On Foot. We explore different areas on foot. That’s why it’s called that obviously. One of the earliest pieces we did was actually a walk in Cape Elizabeth that walked near Crescent Beach and near the Sprague property and then back again. What was interesting about that is you got woods, you got wetlands, sort of fields, you got forests, and it was collaboration. A lot of people made that path possible. You have other paths that are collaborative. Can you tell me about some of your favorites?
Chris: I’ve been doing for a number of years now this crosstown walk that goes from the Portland Head Lighthouse to Crescent Beach. It’s a seven and a half mile walk across town. It’s really interesting. It’s origins were back in the seventies before there was any local conservation land. They had this idea of a trail connecting the two.
Now that it’s come to fruition, it is this mix of land that was federally owned, bought by the town, land the town got from subdivisions, lands that the Land Trust worked with owners to put conservation easements on, lands that the Land Trust purchased, just really all the different ways that you can do the land preservation I represented there, as are all the different habitats. You have tidal saltwater marsh. You have old growth forest. You have open fields. You have aspen and birch and spruce and fir. You really have all the different types, as well as starting in the bay and ending on the ocean.
It’s amazing that in a town like Cape Elizabeth, nine thousand acres, fifteen square miles, that there’s still such a diversity of habitat and places to go.
Lisa: The crosstown walk starts at the lighthouse?
Chris: Yep.
Lisa: It ends on?
Chris: At Kettle Cove.
Lisa: At Kettle Cove? People could park at one end and then … If you were going to do that whole walk, if it’s seven miles … Is it seven miles total or is it …
Chris: Yeah. What we do, I lead a trip twice a year through Cape Elizabeth Community Services. You don’t have to be a resident to do it. We meet at the lighthouse at 8:00. We stop at our office, which is halfway, around 10:30. We’re to Kettle Cove by noon. We set up a big lunch. We feed you and shuttle you back to the Fort by 1:00, so it’s really a half-day thing.
Lisa: People who don’t want to do a full fifteen miles out and back, they can …
Chris: Nobody does that. No.
Lisa: They can do that crosstown piece? That makes sense. What other areas do people enjoy in Cape Elizabeth?
Chris: I think Great Pond is one of those places that I love to go just because in all different seasons it changes every day. It has active beaver dams. It’s a spring fed, four foot deep, a hundred and twenty-five acre pond. It freezes up quickly in the winter, so you get some great skating there in the winter. Cross-country skiing, people go ice fishing. The town built a canoe rack there and you can get your canoe in there pretty quickly.
To have something that remote, because there aren’t any houses along the shore, it’s somehow remained an isolated pond. It’s just one of these hidden places. That’s great. Robinson Woods, the two properties we own over there, are just phenomenal. Almost sixty of the eighty acres are considered primary forest. Robinson Woods was one of the first ones we bought.
For a town that was nearly clear cut a hundred years ago when it was all agricultural, the idea that you still have some two hundred and three hundred year old trees that close to Portland in family that owned a paper company is pretty amazing. It’s just one of those places where everything else goes away when you’re there.
Lisa: How long are the walks if one were to go to Great Pond or to go to Robinson Woods?
Chris: Great Pond is probably a mile from end-to-end and it’s sort of an A-to-B kind of walk. It’s not a loop, so you can go as far as you want and turn around. Robinson Woods has about a mile and a quarter outer loop trail and Robinson Woods too has another mile to mile and a half trail that cuts from the Shore Road all the way over to Route 77 near the center of town, but there are some smaller loops you can do in there. If you wanted to do a two-hour walk, there’s plenty of stuff there for you.
Lisa: If you’re going to Robinson Woods, you could park near Shore Road it sounds like?
Chris: Yep.
Lisa: If you’re going to Great Pond, where would you park then?
Chris: Fenway Road just off Fowler, or down at the Kettle Cove Dairy, which is a little challenging in the summer because it’s popular. You can get on our website and look at the maps. The town has some maps and it’s pretty easy to get to.
Lisa: Towns like you are actively doing educational events for people, at least this walk that you described earlier?
Chris: Yeah. We have a fourth grade program in the schools for kids, but we also have adult programs. We did [inaudible 20:40], we do spring wildflower walks, vernal pool walks, winter shore birds, migrating birds. We probably do twenty or so programs a year.
The school ones are great, just because the fourth graders … We’ve been doing that for probably ten years and the fourth graders are learning about the water cycle and the nutrient cycle and animal adaptation and camouflage and all that great stuff in classrooms so we said we got this property just down the road that they go out and they can see all that.
They do two hours in the fall, an hour in the winter, and two hours again in the spring so that they can see those cycles happening. We give them a journal and they can keep their notes and do their drawings. It’s just been great for the kids because they just really light up when they’re out there and see how things work.
Lisa: Obviously this type of access to land requires some funding. You’ve raised more than five million dollars, I believe, to support local land conservation. That’s an interesting aspect of your job. I wonder if you knew that this was something that you were going to be so actively involved in when you were going through as a geography major?
Chris: I think so. I think any nonprofit needs to have a supportive community and that comes in many ways. I think you could argue that the cost of what we’re doing would be two or three times what it’s been if we didn’t have so much volunteer, if we needed to staff every position to do all the work that we do, and we’re fortunate in not having to do that.
We get support in so many different ways. We get sponsorship for our events. We get foundation grants for our acquisitions. We have family foundations and individuals who donate to us. We have currently about fifty families who are part of our Conservation Leadership Circle who are donating a thousand dollars or more to the organization in a given year. Those big numbers really come when we do the land acquisitions. We’ve had some fairly substantial properties donated to us or sold to us, what they call a bargain sale, below their market value.
People are able to give in a lot of different ways. Some people have time. Some people have money. Some people have property. Some people have expertise in services. You really need to cobble together everything you need from where you can get it. Even though that’s a big number, we’re a pretty lean organization in terms of how we operate. There is no more important time to be doing this land conservation.
When we were formed in 1985, there were no local conservation lands in Cape Elizabeth, and that was fairly common throughout the state. I would argue that it’s going to be a fifty-year window where in 2035 or so it’s going to be hard for us to really have priority lands out there that we’re still casing just because we’re such a small town. If we’re in the midst of this fifty-year window and the town is about to celebrate its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, throw on another two hundred and fifty years and we have a five hundred year span of the town’s history. There’s going to be a fifty-year window right in the middle where all the local land conservation happened, and we’re right in the midst of that.
That’s a really exciting time. I think that helps us in terms of giving people the urgency and the importance of what we’re doing now because we’re not going to have these chances in the future and people are going to be really, really glad we did this work.
Lisa: You have a big fundraiser in the summer that involves art?
Chris: Yes.
Lisa: Can you tell me about that?
Chris: This came very organically. Somebody walked in our door … Maryann Kaye walked in our door, who’s a great pastel artist, and wanted to see if we were interested in doing one of these events. We partnered with Rodney [Viosine 24:47], who’s a local resident. He hosted us for the first two years at his house and we got mostly local painters. I think we had seventeen painters the first year that we did this. We auctioned them off to support the Land Trust.
We were very careful from the beginning to give at least fifty percent of the sale price to the artists, and they are obviously welcome to donate more if they want to. I think this is our eighth year coming up. We have close to seventy applicants for thirty positions. The average sale price at the auction last year was above two thousand dollars. We had our first painting sell for more than five thousand dollars.
The caliber of the artists, I think just by reputation become one of the better [inaudible 25:33] auctions in the state, and we couldn’t be happier just because we have a great committee that works on it and a lot of artists who really like it and have been supportive of the event. It’s a real win-win because when you do special events they’re very time intensive, but to do an event like this that really does tie into our mission in terms of celebrating those natural places and seeing these incredible artists interpret the landscapes that we walk around in every day, it’s wonderful.
It’s really great to see that and it’s good for us in terms of exposing people to our mission and getting support for our mission, so it’s just been a great event.
Lisa: I know that Maine Magazine, Maine Home Design, we’ve been supports of the art auction for quite a while. Personally in my household, I actually have some of the art on our walls. One of them that is a special favorite was done by an artist of the Shore Road Path, which is a place that I have run often. Really it has a very special meaning for me.
I agree with you that to have things interpreted by artists and then to be able to bring that home and put it on your wall is special.
Chris: I want to do a collection of just the Portland Head Light. Every year we have one or two artists paint there and they are from the drippy oils where it looks like it’s melting into the ocean to hyper-realism. We’ve really run the gamut, and it’s neat to be able to facilitate that.
Lisa: Chris, what’s the date this year for your art auction?
Chris: July 12th.
Lisa: Okay. July 12th is the date for the art auction. How do people find out about the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust?
Chris: Capelandtrust.org is probably the best. That has our maps. It has our events you can sign up for. An electronic newsletter that comes once a month lets you know what upcoming walks and talks are, little stories from the field. We’re having another photo contest this summer. Every couple years we do a photo contest. It’s amazing as well just to see how many talented photographers there are.
Lisa: It’s been a great pleasure to speak with you. We’ve been talking with Chris Franklin, who is the Executive Director of the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust. I’m hoping to make it to the art auction again this year. I will definitely make it out to some of these trails that I have not yet walked or run on. Thank you for the work that you do and for being here.
Chris: Thanks. It’s been great being here.