Transcription of Ski Families, #116
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded in the studio of the Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland Maine. Download past shows and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
John: We’re the fortunate ones to A, live here in Maine and B be able to have the platform to write about it and see the kind of relationship of let’s just do it together.
Josh: Yeah and keep each other busy because I think otherwise we’d go crazy and we have a lot to do.
John: It’s a great family sport. It’s a life sport and the coolest thing is the connections that you make.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors; Maine Magazine, Mercy Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical, Sea Bags, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes and Tom Sheppard of Sheppard Financial.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show number 116. Ski families airing for the first time on Sunday December 1st 2013. Today’s guests include Josh and John Christie who are outdoor riders and long time Sugarloaf skiers and also Cooper Friend, another long time Sugarloaf skier who has enjoyed the Sugarloaf ski scene with many members of his family. Is your family ready to hit the slopes? As we head into winter, many of us are preparing to enjoy one of our States favorite seasonal activities.
Today’s guests are admitted snow lovers and longtime ski aficionados. Why does skiing and Maine ski areas such as Sugarloaf render such loyalty. Listening to our loyalties with Cooper Friend and Josh and John Christie to find out more. Perhaps you’ll find yourself planning your own family excursion to the slopes this year. Thank you for joining us.
Anyone who has lived in Maine for a period of time recognizes that Sugarloaf as being a major ski attraction and not only just for the State of Maine but also for the rest of the country. We’re privileged to have with us today Josh and John Christie who are I guess you’d say father and son to him Josh being the son John being the father, who are columnists or the Sunday Maine Telegram writers. In fact, John is the Sugarloaf historian having written the book The Story of Sugarloaf.
Josh is also an outdoor rider and has written the book Maine Beer Brewing in Vacation Land which is technically not an outdoor book but … In some ways, it’s all about …
John: You can do that outdoors.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, that’s right. You could drink beer outdoors. It’s about enjoying yourself in this great State of Maine and we appreciate you coming in and talking to us today.
Josh: Thank you so much for having us.
John: Lisa, thank you. We appreciate the chance. It’s a good chance for Josh and me to get together. We haven’t had that much opportunity until ski season starts which for him started three weeks ago.
Josh: Yeah.
John: I’ll be skiing on the 22nd Friday for my first day but Josh has gotten ahead so far, but that won’t maintain because I have this goal and had been tatted about it even before and have had now for the last several years of skiing my age. That means I have to ski at least every seven days this winter which will be no problem at all.
Dr. Lisa: All right. Did you do it last year? Have you been able to meet that goal?
John: I did two last year. I’m not even going to take credit for that extra six days that I skied which I probably technically could but I won’t. We’ll get in 77 days at least.
Dr. Lisa: Josh obviously you’ve managed to ski your own age pretty …
Josh: Yeah, pretty handy. I’m not a retiree so I don’t have quite the time in my calendar to see that dad does. I try to get a lot of days.
John: Sort of a retiree. I work 26 weeks a year for the Maine Department of Conservation as a ranger in Camden Hill State Park. That gives me and Marty; my wife Josh’s mother works in a school in a little village school in Appleton, The Appleton Village School so she’s working. In fact, someone stopped by the park to see me two or three weeks ago before the season ended and said, “We thought you were retired.” I said, “I am but I’m still a go-getter. My wife works and I go get her and that’s where I am now.” It gave me a chance to getting plenty of skiing.
Dr. Lisa: You are a busy family. I know that this writing that you do for Maine Sunday Telegram, it’s just not about skiing. You actually write about being outdoors year round. You have a book coming out very soon.
John: Exactly. In fact the writing that Josh and I do together all started, this will be the fourth winter we are doing the skiing in Maine column for the Sunday Telegram which also runs in the Kennebec Journal and the Waterville Sentinel on Thursdays I believe of each week. That resulted from an interesting friendship and contact with Deidre Fleming who is an outdoor rider at the Portland Pavers. She had come to Sugarloaf to do something and we met. She had been tasked, she was helping Joe Grant the Squad’s editor to find a ski columnist so it seemed obvious that Josh would be an appropriate one to do that. That begun to bubble up as the perspective ski column for the winter pro winters ago and then Joe Grant said, “Well, it wouldn’t be interesting if we get the old man so we could do this kind of…”
Josh: I don’t know if he’s that old.
John: His father. We did that then come spring, I was meeting with Joe and he said, “Ski season is over. What do you do for the rest of the year?” I said, “Ski season, winter is a piece of cake. I don’t have to make any decisions. I just go skiing but in the summer it’s tough because I don’t know if I’m going to hike or bike or camp or kayak or fly fish a canoe.” He said, “You do all that stuff?” I said, “We do all that and more.” That led to something that I’d been thinking about for a long time and that is there are these outdoor treasures that Maine people don’t seem to appreciate. They don’t and as an example I said like we used to camp when the boys were young down on the Schoodic Peninsula. I mention Schoodic to Maine people, “I don’t know where Schoodic is. They say, “Where is that? We’ve never been there.”
There’s part of that I’m reminded growing up in Camden. I was down on the town landing one day and there’s a great old sage, local Peanut Alley was down there and he knew all the secret fishing holes and everything. He said something to me that resonated and I’ll never forget. He said, “John it’s amazing how many people spend their lives in Maine and never really live here.” I said, I think we were chatting about that, and Joe said something about, “What do you think about writing about that under the heading it’s worth the trip?” which was a praise I guess the entire conversation I’d used.
I said, “Josh does all kinds of stuff during this time and people like his writing. In fact one day last spring at Sugarloaf I was up at Bowling Fields and people at a back table said, “John we’ve got to tell you we love those ski columns that you and your son write. You must be very proud. He does write quite a lot better than you do.” We sat at that three summers ago and with my friends and our friends at Down East Books who published my Sugarloaf book conceived of the idea that perhaps assembling all of those columns and other outdoor things that we’ve written into a book. Now we’re to affect meeting at Down East this afternoon and tiding up some lose ends. That book will come out in May and it will be called the Maine Outdoor Adventure Guide.
I’d been loving to have the book called Maine Summers Done Right. That may end up as a sub title. I’ll know …
Josh: It’s now public.
John: I’ll know this afternoon.
Dr. Lisa: Josh what is it like to have such an active father? I also have a close relationship with my father. My father is also a doctor so we share this father, daughter, doctor thing. That’s always been an interesting thing for me. What is like to be both of you be writers, both of you be outdoors people?
Josh: Its incredible. It was odd growing up. It’s not necessarily what you would expect because in my generation we’re split by two generations, rather than one. I’m in my mid 20s and dad is much older. I didn’t feel that way growing up because he was always so active. He was able to instill a great love for the outdoors in me and my brother. I should say that as he mentioned my mom, Marty, also loves the outdoors and is a great hiker. We grew up in a little town called Washington that is in the mid coast. It was perfect because we were half an hour from the coast. You’re half an hour from the capital, an hour and a half or so from the Portland and from Bangor or two hours or so from Sunday River Saddleback Sugarloaf school.
Everything is all right here. As we said in our columns for the last couple of years really worth the trip and the benefit of, what’s the term? Not age but seasoned father. He knew where all these places were so he was able to introduce not just Jake and I but also our friends going all these places growing up.
John: The other side of the coin is that I was just so blessed that when I was about 50 that we had these twin sons born. It gave me a whole new life of being able to share the outdoors in Maine and everything that there is and to be reintroduced to all time skiing which I had pretty much retired from after I’d been in the business for a long time. I owned Saddleback in the ‘70s and that had been a difficult experience emotionally and more importantly financially, and I connected the business and the sport together and somehow in my mind skiing seemed to have been a bad idea till I stopped at Alpine Skiing. Stayed cross country skiing from our farm in Washington to the local snow mobile club, the trail went from my private farm across two ponds and about a seven mile, loop so I cross country skied all the time.
I hadn’t thought much about Alpine skiing but then when the boys were young we were only 15 minutes from Camden Snow Bowl, which is where I learned to ski, so I learned full circle and took them back and took them over. I said, “This looks like fun. Maybe I’ll try this again.” Then I started doing it all the time.
Dr. Lisa: There is a strong sense of history that runs throughout your books. The Sugarloaf Book obviously is the story of Sugarloaf. There’s a strong sense of history and we’ll talk about that. Josh, I’m looking at your book Maine Beer: Brewing in the Vacationland. You’re actually talking about the temperance movement and prohibition and General Neal Dow who was the mayor of Portland and architect of the prohibitionary Maine law known as the in the pulling of temperance. It must be interesting for each of you to be travelling around this state and not only see what is in front of you today but also have a sense for what has come in the past.
Josh: Maine is incredible in terms of Maine’s State historic sites. I think of the ports like Fort Knox or the Fort of Pemaquid which are all these wonderful places that are open to the public, and not just provide hiking and kayaking and stuff you can do outdoors, but this great sense of this long history, the centuries long history we have at Maine.
Dr. Lisa: Even the recent history, when I was reading about the story of Sugarloaf, this actually is not a very old mountain.
John: That’s right. As a major resort it was a local group up there that hiked the trail up in the mountain after having to abandon Bigelow, which is where the first trail was, because of central manpower and it was jammed up to that river and created Flagstaff Lake. They couldn’t get to the trail that they had cut which was an old trail that led up to the Appalachian Trail. In fact just this past Columbus Day, Josh and his brother Jake and I and Deidre Fleming from the Pull and Papers hiked to the summit of Bigelow which has become another one of my traditions. Now this was year number 30 consecutive Columbus Days that I’ve climbed Bigelow but gave me a chance to tell Deidre where the old regional trail went.
They went over, cut a trail on Sugarloaf put a little rope toe in 1951 and then in the early ‘50s put a couple of T bars and then in 1961 which is when I got there added three more T bars. Then Sugarloaf became what it had begun to become what it is now with the construction of the gondola, which was built in 1965. That’s not that long ago, although interestingly I was just doing a little research. There are only two operating ski areas in Maine now that predate the second world war, one of them is now called Johnny Peak, which I still have to refer to as pleasant mountain, because when I was at Bowdoin that’s where we skied. The other one was the Camden Snowball, which has become another great love of mine.
In a couple of weeks the Sunday Telegram will write about the $6.5 million redevelopment project going on there, as a result of the towns people in November voting affirmatively for the town to raise $2 million triggered by the fact that we have raised $4.5 million in private funds in Camden.
Dr. Lisa: You’re on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. You’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to say more on the topic is Tom Sheppard of Sheppard Financial.
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Dr. Lisa: What is the story of ski areas in Maine in general at least initially? In the Sugarloaf story there was a time when people were getting their ski passes and at the same time being handed out potential shares in the company.
John: That’s how Sugarloaf was originally, $1,000 shares that one could buy in the Sugarloaf Mountain Cooperation. That’s what built that and the Modest Retained Earnings built the first two T bars and got the access road built and bought a couple of snow caps. It was very much grassroots. In Maine there were once 80 ski areas or rope toe ski areas. As I said, that was all before the Second World War, none of which were a variety of reasons liability insurance being perhaps the most significant one to stop operating. I knew three ski areas and I guess two in Belfast. It’s an interesting history and it was fun doing the Sugarloaf book because when I was there, not the earliest of times, but I knew all the early players. To talk with them and then also I’d been president of the Ski Museum of Maine and this year was our 10th annual Maine ski hall of fame induction ceremony in October.
That’s allowed me to understand more of the whole fabric of Maine skiing and a lot of the early 20th century Nordic skiers. That’s actually not only just Rumford and Handover, which is the hotbed, but in Aroostook County where it was … they used to run a cross-country ski race from Fort Kent to Bangor if one can imagine.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a very long race. I’m assuming that was multiple days.
John: Three days in a row yeah. They went 24 hours. It took more than 24 hours but it was a great … That derives from the Scandinavian population that populated New Sweden and a lot of Aroostook County.
Dr. Lisa: Josh, tell me about growing up near the Camden Snowball and having that be your primary mountain and knowing that that was your father’s primary mountain before you.
Josh: One of the great things about the Camden Snowball, and the same thing that my father and I both love about Sugarloaf, is that it has a single base area that all the trails damp down to. You can feel free to leave kids there for the day and you’ll know they’ll be safe. They’ll end up in the right place. It’s a lovely mountain anyway. It’s the only mountain in the East Coast that you can see the Atlantic while you’re skiing which is a beautiful view. There’s something about this community mountains which is, as much as I love Sugarloaf and Saddleback and Sunday River, these places lose that as the mountains get bigger. This community right down to the fact that the food is all cooked there on a big grill down at the base lodge which you don’t see at the larger mountains.
It feels very friendly and welcoming and is worth mentioning both when I was a kid and I now, either through school programs or through a program like Winter Kid, that it’s an affordable way for people to start skiing. That is hugely important. I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve had some connections to my father being in the industry that I’ve been able to ski some. Then being in the ski industry program at the University of Maine in Farmington and then turning the Ski Maine Association. Now writing for the paper I have a little bit of access either in industry or press. I try especially when I’m writing never to forget the fact that it’s a sport that can be very unaffordable and it’s important to get started early than to get that bugging you.
It’s an important line item on your budget every year if you want to be able to go skiing.
Dr. Lisa: This is something that you also experienced John. You came from a family where, I believe, your father wasn’t present and so your mother was largely rising was that so.
John: Yeah, he was not present because he died when he was 29 years old and so my mother raised my brother who was four years old, I say was, he passed away back in the ‘90s. She raised the two of us as a single mother in Camden. Camden was a strange set of circumstances. I’m proud to be a Mainer. I was born in Presque Isle but not because we lived in Presque Isle. We lived in Bethesda Maryland, the family did but my grandfather was a radiologist. In fact this was in the early part of century and he was missing parts of two fingers from burns, knew William Rankin.
Dr. Lisa: Burns because of being a radiologist back then when the X-rays were very strong.
John: Exactly. But he was the president of the American Medical Association in the late ‘30s. I remember hearing him. He’s become an outdoor compound upon Portage Lake which is up in Aroostook, where he and his doctor friends would all come for fishing. He was a great fisherman. Hearing him rail against this demon Franklin Roosevelt that was going to socialize. I can still hear that. in fact the camping that the boys and Marty and I did so much of when they were young, coming back from a trip up to Fundy National Park. We stopped at Camp Aberlour which has become a special love of ours. After the second time that we’d been camping up there at Herring Cove Provincial Park and somebody asked me what I thought of the Roosevelt cottage there and in the Roosevelt Camp Aberlour was a National Park. I
I said … I’ve got to tell you I was afraid that if I went in there my grandfather Christie would roll over his grave. It wasn’t until the last third trip that we finally went there.
Josh: There’s so much to do outdoors on Camp Aberlour.
John: Exactly. It just happened that driving up to Portage Lake one spring. It was a three day drive from the first day from Washington DC to New Bird, New York then across the Mohawk Trail to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The third day was right up root one all the way to Portage. Driving up the coast and driving through Camden with my father, the town looked like it would be a great place in which to retire. As I say he tragically died at age 29 and my mother remembering that and packed up my brother and me and I when I was three and he was seven and moved us to Camden.
Dr. Lisa: As a physician and small business owner I rely on Mercy Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me with my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Mercy.
Mercy: When the snow slides, my family like so many others in Maine smile and think skiing and riding. It can be an expensive sport. It’s something we look forward to and plan for each year. The last thing you need is for this kind of expense to cause a burden or disappointment because it’s not in the budget. It’s funny how many times I have to remind myself and my clients to budget and plan for expenses in advance so that when they hit you can just enjoy the ride. I’m Mercy Booth, let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.
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Dr. Lisa: Josh you were up at University of Maine, Farmington. Your educational path is maybe a little bit more straight forward.
Josh: I went almost the opposite route because, inspired by my father, I knew as high school student all of the glory stories of skiing and none of the area of oil and Bangor and financial collapse and losing money in the ski business. I went to the University of Maine in Farmington cheaply to go into the ski industry program, but sadly not a fun ski industries program, and to ski at Sugarloaf. I was fairly certain I was going to be in the ski industry and then again got an education deeper understanding of myself. In fact, I could just write about it and continue enjoying the sport without the financial investment it would be involved within or not.
To go back to the idea of family involvement, Farmington was great because we would go through Farmington coming from Portland where my brother went to school, you’d go through Farmington and the way up to Sugarloaf. Coming from Mid coast where mom and dad lived, you’d come through Farmington all the way to Sugarloaf. Early 2000 is when gas prices started to rise and we were able to carpool most of the way going up from the campus there.
John: When Josh went up to the college there, he asked me, I thought about him getting into the ski business and I said yeah. It didn’t just run somebody else’s ski area. Don’t build one, don’t buy one.
Dr. Lisa: I think it’s also worth noting just a little bit of a side bar but you went into Bowdoin but not because your family had a lot of money to send you to Bowdoin, similar to our former senator George Mitchell. You were discovered in a way. You got a nice scholarship and you were able to go Bowdoin. There was some good fortune there.
Josh: The story yeah of the greatest paper boy in the State of Maine.
John: Yeah we had no money. My mother was, his grandmother, was a school teacher raising two boys all alone there in Camden, but I delivered the first the Maine Sunday Telegram when my brother had the daily route for the Press Herald and then he gave to me his daily route when he stopped delivering papers. I did that all through junior high school and high school, and back then the Garnet Publishing Company and the family every year had one principle scholarship they gave to one newsboy. I got that. That was enough to get me into Bowdoin and underwrite my freshman year and then I think part of the reason why I realized that after having spent two winters in graduate school in Stockholm that I really didn’t like that closed environment.
There was an entrepreneurial side to me and a good friend of mine Jim Waters who’s down here in Portland, classmate of mine we got the hotdog concession at the local football stadium. We had that and in my sophomore year there was a new hockey rank field, so we got hotdog concession at the hockey rink and then there was … I don’t know if they had Gordon Linden service back in your day delivering sheets around everybody. Jean and I had the Gordon Linden concession as well. In fact, my senior year I made more money at Bowdoin than it cost for me to go there.
Dr. Lisa: This is why I’m fascinated because of course I went to Bowdoin but I wasn’t trying to sell hotdogs or deliver linens. I think I was a lifeguard at the pool. I did do something on campus and I think for a little while I lived with my family to save some money, but it certainly wasn’t what you’ve described or like former Senator George Michel. I think he was working in construction or in a gravel, out of the gravel pit. You had to work very hard for your education in a similar way that you had to work in order to ski. You had to decide that this was a priority and you were going to move forward with it.
John: In my day it was through the kindness of strangers and scholarship that I had from Gannet that got me started and then there was, I don’t know if the Charles Owen Trovely Fund existed when you were in school, but I got that scholarship. Then there was a scholarship that was one where you had to be a Portland resident to get it. The board chairman of Maine National Bank at the time was responsible for that particular scholarship. He was friendly with friends of …people in Camden that were Bowdoin people, because of my mother’s accident I had no real legal home address. There were two semesters that my addresser for the purposes of that scholarship was the Portland YMCA. That was all just through people who took an interest in time I was a kid to just give a chance.
Dr. Lisa: All of this seems to come through as, I guess, an acknowledgement that life is not always that easy but it’s always possible to enjoy it, which is something that you both write about with the Maine Sunday Telegram column that you do and also with this upcoming book that you have. What are some of your favorite outdoor places here in Maine that people can very easily get to and enjoy?
John: Josh has some great ones.
Josh: Yeah. Perhaps my favorite which is a bit of a drive from Portland still an easy trip is Tumbledown Mountain, which is this beautiful alpine lake that’s surrounded by three peaks that are all reachable by hiking trails, just off from the Mt. Blue State park but since it is … I think the Tumbledown Land…something to that effect owns the land. It’s free to access, very easy to get to, well described in issues of the Appalachian Mountain Guide which is out now. A lot of the ski areas actually have great hiking during the summer; Pleasant Mountain, Shawnee peak have great hiking as well. I have the greatest respect for Wolfe’s Neck State Park, which is right near my home in Yarmouth.
It’s just a great little network of trails that’s easy to get to, fairly inexpensive to access with a couple of bucks to get into the State park there and just beautiful.
John: I did a recent column fairly recently about kayaking on the Thicket, which I came to do more in Penobscot Bay and further East and down East, and out around Bar Harbor. They’re around the islands in Penobscot Bay but that paddle from South Freeport, from the Freeport town landing there at high tide, anyway is a great place to go down around Wolfe’s Neck. In fact, in my column I remarked that this business of skiing at my age. I was riding chair lift one day last winter with someone I was someone I was telling them that’s what I do. He said, he was a sailor whom I’ve known for quite a few years. He said, “You know us old sailors. Our goal is to always have a boat that’s the length of our age.”
I remarked in my column as I paddled down Vice House, Freeport, it looked like there were a lot of old sailors and workers or a lot of 60 and 70 foot boats there. Another great hike is Boston Audubon’s Preserve east of Monson which is a beautiful hike. I mentioned the islands of Penobscot Bay. I think just the main ferry service with its ferries to Vinalhaven, North Haven, Swans Island and other places. They are great trips there and they are just off the coast. I remember my freshman year at Bowdoin, my roommate Charlie Graham who was from Marblehead, and his parents were coming up for homecoming. They were going to be around Maine for a few days and asked if I could think of some things for them to do. I said, “Well, let me think about that.”
He said, “They’ve been talking about maybe going out to Vinalhaven. You grew up in Camden. What’s Vinalhaven like?” I said, “I have no idea. Why would I ever go out to Vinalhaven growing up.” I said, “Full circle, Vinalhaven’s one of my favorite places in the world.” We had a lobster boat for years mooring in Rockport Harbor and Marty and I, before the boys were born, did a tremendous amount of gallivanting around at about every place from Pemaquid to Bar Harbor in that lobster boat. The portage in the Deboullie Preserve which is one of the Maine’s public land preserves north of Portage very near the Allagash and the Canadian border. That’s spectacular as well.
Dr. Lisa: Fortunately people who want to learn more have lots of different ways to do this. They can read your book about the outdoors, whatever it ends up being titled when it comes out in May. They can also read John your book, the story of Sugarloaf or they could read your book Josh Maine Beer Brewing and Vacation.
Then people in general can read about Sugarloaf in the December 2013 issue of Maine Magazine, which is indeed the Sugarloaf issue. We are fortunate to have people who are out in the world doing what you’re doing and writing about it. Those of us who aren’t able to quite get to as many places are inspired to go find those places. We’ve been speaking with John and Josh Christie, father and son outdoor writer, life loving team. We appreciate your coming in and talking to us today.
John: We are the fortunate ones to live here in Maine, be able to have the platform to write about it and see, have the kind of relationship that lets us do it together.
Josh: To keep each other busy because I think if otherwise we’d go crazy. We didn’t have a lot of today as you can tell from our resumes.
Dr. Lisa: You are doing great work and you have a great relationship, I can tell that. Congratulations to you both and stay close.
Josh: Thank you Lisa.
John: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: One of the elemental forces I have been working with a lot lately is fire. Fire is warm, brilliant, decisive, lucive, innovative, quick burning, changeable, adventurous, creative, joyful, intuitive. These characteristics are human characteristics. They’re spoken about in the five elements that I work with a lot in my landscaping. We are entering a time of great change on this planet. I think fire is symbolic of that change. I think we are all in a certain sense getting fire in our belly and we’re trying to figure out where we’re going. Fire moves us into the atheoric. Actually what’s left after fire is ash and the invisible world.
I think that we have to start to think about that’s where we’re all headed but are we headed there too fast, are we moving through life too quickly? Are we not taking time to pause and to really see and engage in the world around us, in the landscape around us, in the trees, in the birds, in the butterflies? We’re so busy with our cell phones; we’re so busy with our day to day lives, with our phone calls, with everything, texting this and that. It’s just too much. I think that what we have to think about is balance between wood and fire. Wood feeds fire and is a high quick burn rate but we have to also be careful with fire because fire in the landscape is dynamic, it’s fun, it’s joyful, it’s playful but it also needs to be balanced with the other energies as well.
I’m Ted Carter and if you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at tedcarterdesign.com.
Dr. Lisa: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast understands the importance of the health of the body, mind and spirit. Here to talk about the health of the body is Travis Beaulieu of Premier Sports Division of Black Bear Medical.
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Dr. Lisa: It’s always my pleasure to spend time with people from different parts of the state who are doing totally different things but have something in common with me, because of course I think we are all interested in people who have something in common with ourselves. This individual sitting across the microphone from me is somebody who really enjoys skiing as I do. We thought it would be a nice thing to bring him in and talk about skiing at Sugarloaf with his family … In fact, his parents and now his children and his grandchildren have brought joy and happiness into his life and the lives of those he cares about. We’re talking to Cooper Friend and we’re glad that you’re here today.
Cooper: Thank you. My pleasure to be here.
Dr. Lisa: Cooper, we were talking and your house was actually featured in Maine Home Design last year. They talked about the fact that your family has been coming there since I believe it was the ‘50s.
Cooper: Correct.
Dr. Lisa: Originally your parents built a house up there.
Cooper: My dad started skiing in Sugarloaf in the mid ‘50s through his good friend that lived in Newport, King Cummings, who was one of the founders of Sugarloaf. King convinced my dad that he needed to go to Sugarloaf. My dad would charge up to Sugarloaf and Newport on snowy days, and then King built a camp at Sugarloaf. My mom, dad and I, my sister would stay with the Cummings in their camp. After several weekends of that my mom said to my dad, “We need to build our own camp. This is pretty nice up here and everybody seems to enjoy it so we need to have our own place.” My dad in the summer 1959 built a camp.
Dr. Lisa: This camp, was it a year round camp that they were able to use in the summer time as well or mostly just winter?
Cooper: It was predominantly used in the winter but we did go up in summer and had some work bees around and we’d reshingle. I remember one summer we had to reshingle the roof and just do some work around there but we did go up some summer but not a lot.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of the memories you have of growing up from this camp and from spending time skiing with your family at Sugarloaf?
Cooper: I remember every Friday afternoon loading up our station wagon with five gallon jugs of water because we didn’t have any running water. Driving up Friday night, getting there when it was dark and cold, building a fire and getting it warmed up, going to bed when it was cold and waking up like midnight or 1:00 and you were roasting hot, going outside to go to the bathroom. Many families did that. We weren’t unique because everybody did it. It was great. When we would stay up their Christmas vacation week and February vacation week my dad was friends with the people that owned the Sugarloaf Inn. We’d go up like midweek and take a shower.
Dr. Lisa: This was common that people didn’t have running water, they didn’t have indoor toilets.
Cooper: Very common.
Dr. Lisa: By then you’re talking about 1959 and ‘60s and it didn’t seem that unusual to you.
Cooper: No. Even through the early, mid ‘60s.
Dr. Lisa: How did the Sugarloaf Inn feel about everybody descending upon them to take a shower?
Cooper: I was pretty young so I don’t really remember. My dad was real good friends with that family that owned it. I just thought that was our high weekend but I’m sure there were other families that did the same thing. It was a great experience. Skiing we just met so many wonderful people through Sugarloaf. It’s been great.
Dr. Lisa: Were your parents skiers before they decided to start coming up to Sugarloaf?
Cooper: Yes. My mother was a little bit of a skier. My dad was a very average skier. He had skied in high school and in college.
Dr. Lisa: Was he also originally from Maine? I know you grew up in Newport.
Cooper: Yes. He was born and brought up right in Newport, Maine.
Dr. Lisa: Skiing back in the ‘50s and ‘60s it wasn’t quite what it has become now. It wasn’t quite as expensive, quite as a fancy; the equipment was definitely very different. What are some of the differences you see between then and now?
Cooper: Obviously the equipment is so much better now and the snow is much better with grooming equipment. The grooming is by far the biggest change and the artificial snow. Now you can make snow when there’s no natural snow. The grooming and the snow making are the two huge differences.
Dr. Lisa: Were you back then using the skis with the boots that weren’t exactly sea boots and the leather straps? Were you using those things?
Cooper: Yeah. There were ski boots, there were leather ski boots but they had the big leather strap that went around the boot for the safety binding. If you came out of your binding the skate ski is still stable with you but they wouldn’t go down the hill.
Dr. Lisa: I was on the ski team in high school and these are the kind of skis we would see when we go to a ski shop as the antique skis, they were put up on the walls. We would always wonder, how could people ski in those without getting hurt. It sounds like you could just … If that’s what you had, that’s what you worked with.
Cooper: In the ‘60s they went to metal skis. It was all relative. They were making big advantage and they all seemed like state of the art stuff back then.
Dr. Lisa: Did you ski with your parents and your sister or did you ski with other friends when you were up there?
Cooper: I skied with my dad but I skied with friends most of the time that were my age. Some of those people are still there today.
Dr. Lisa: You still have relationships with them.
Cooper: Absolutely, yes.
Dr. Lisa: We go from you living with your parents and your sister, getting a little bit older yourself, going to Springville. This is a course that doesn’t exist anymore.
Cooper: That’s right.
Dr. Lisa: Moving to Ellsworth, opening up your own motorcycle dealership.
Cooper: Yes, in Ellsworth.
Dr. Lisa: In Ellsworth, getting married, having some children yourself and deciding somehow that this Sugarloaf thing, you’ve got to keep doing it.
Cooper: Yeah. Actually, I had gotten out of the sport a little bit through high school and college years. There were probably 18 years that I probably only skied about eight or ten times. Actually my wife who’s from Cincinnati, Ohio back in 1986, First District called her and said, “I just went to Sunday River and they had a learn-to-ski free day and we just had a blast. You’ve got to come do this.” My wife met at Sunday River and she came back on that day just confident and enthused and said we’ve got to do this for the kids. I said, “You’re preaching the club. I’d love to get back into skiing.”
The first winter we rented a place because I was a little budget conscious and we wanted to just make sure everyone was going to enjoy it. At the same time we had real good friends of ours with children that were the same age as our who were renting a place at Sugarloaf and they asked us up for New Year’s. Once we went back to Sugarloaf that was it. I just … it was great. The next season we started renting at Sugarloaf. We purchased the place in 1993.
Dr. Lisa: Being a Sugarloaf family is a commitment with something that you’ve already described from your childhood where you pack up on Friday and you’re gone for a weekend away from your friends at home and then you’re back again on Monday. It’s a commitment. It’s many months at a time. How does that feel?
Cooper: It sure is a commitment. If you find a rental or you purchase a condominium or a home up there you feel you want to be there as much as possible. Our children went to CVA, went to Carrabassett Valley Academy the ski academy which is a great school and it was very good for both of them. My wife lived there in the winter time to be with the kids and I would go up on the weekends.
Dr. Lisa: You feel like it contributed to your family staying pretty close.
Cooper: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: What happened when your kids got to be, and I’m assuming because they went to CVA, when they got to be better skiers than you, did you still ski with them?
Cooper: When they get to that age skiing with their mom and dad is not a whole lot of fun because they were definitely way better than us.
Dr. Lisa: What do you think it is about Sugarloaf that engenders such loyalty? It seems like when people are Sugarloafers they’re Sugarloafers for life.
Cooper; Sugarloaf definitely it gets deep in your soul, there something about it. It has a very unique history with a lot of colorful characters but at the end of the day it’s still a small community of really nice people. You have that common denominator with the passion for skiing and it just draws everybody pretty close. It gets deep in your soul. It’s where you want to be when you’re not there.
Dr. Lisa: You came into our studio today wearing a shirt from your dealership. It’s Friend and Friend. I love that the motto is ‘The boys with the toys.’ There must be something, some understanding that you have that you hold that play is important and that enjoying one’s life is important otherwise I doubt very much you’d be selling the toys to the boys i.e. motorcycles or spending as much time as you do skiing.
Cooper: I’m born and raised in Maine. I think that Maine people work hard and they like to play hard. I feel that there has to be a time for recreation which I provide one of those niches, one of those alternatives for that recreation as motorcycling or off-road riding.
Dr. Lisa: Clearly this has become very popular and something that other people have recognized the value of because now you’ve grown significantly.
Cooper: Yeah. The motorcycling has become very popular the last 15 or 20 years. It’s become popular.
Dr. Lisa: You have dealerships in other parts of the state and also out of state, is that right?
Cooper: Yes. I’ve got one in Ellsworth, one in Orono and then a Harley Dave’s and Store in Lewiston and a Harley Dave’s and Store in New Rochelle, New York, right outside New York City.
Dr. Lisa: Is there something similar between the feeling of freedom that you experience going down a slope and the feeling that you experience being on a motorcycle?
Cooper: It is very similar, yes. It’s just that the wind on your face, the scenery around you, there are definitely comparisons.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think that this helps you stay a little closer to the world around you?
Cooper: Sure, absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: You have two kids yourself.
Cooper: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: I believe you said you have two grandchildren, is that right?
Cooper: Two boys, two grand boys, ages 3½ and just turning one.
Dr. Lisa: Your kids skied obviously growing up themselves and now you’ve got this three year old who sounds like he’s about ready to get on skis maybe.
Cooper: He got on skis last year. He was in several ski lessons and he and I rode the chair lift together. It’s going to be fun.
Dr. Lisa: What was his response to going out there as a little one?
Cooper: He was very eager, he wanted to. You’ve got to understand that not only were his dad and his mom skiers but his dad was a tremendous skier. My daughter and my son-in-law Kyle met at Bates College. They were both on the ski team, the divisional ski team. Kyle was three time all American. He has a very strong passion for skiing. I’m pretty sure that the two kids will too. It was funny because we’ve been in the condominium since 1993 and 2004 after our kids had graduated from college; our son was still in his last year to a college. Basically the nest was empty.
We had talked about getting a standalone home. We found this home that we fell in love with. It’s big and everybody said, why aren’t you downsizing. Why are you getting this big house. I said because I really think and hope it’s going to be the crazy glue for the family because Sugarloaf I feel it’s gotten in their shoal too as well as it did my wife and I. It will always draw them here. That’s exactly how it’s played out.
Dr. Lisa: It must be pretty great to be the grandfather riding the chair with the grandson.
Cooper: It’s cool.
Dr. Lisa: What would you say to people who are thinking about making this investment of time and money and energy to become Sugarloafers themselves?
Cooper: I definitely feel if there’s any way in their budget that they could do it, to do it because it’s a great family sport, it’s a life sport. The coolest thing is the connections that you make. When my daughter got married in 2005, I remember standing there and looking out at everybody and there was only skiers there.
Dr. Lisa: Well, it is a tremendous resource for Maine. I feel like we’re very lucky to have right up the road, not very far.
Cooper: Two days here and it’s really … a lot of nice smaller ones too but Sunday River and Sugarloaf fit. They’re two jewels for sure.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a fair point. We don’t want to overlook the sides even Sunday River and Sugarloaf. There’s been …
Cooper: Shawnee Peak.
Dr. Lisa: Shawnee Peak and I think Squaw was opening back up again last year.
Cooper: The top of Squaw and overlooking there is one of the most beautiful views in Maine. Looking over Mt. Kineo and Moosehead Lake. It’s spectacular.
Dr. Lisa: It sounds like even if people are not quite ready to make the Sugarloaf investment there are multiple opportunities to become skiers.
Cooper: Absolutely, yeah. It’s a great sport.
Dr. Lisa: Cooper, it’s been a pleasure to speak with you today about the Sugarloaf experience. I’m so glad that you’re able to come in and actually make the drive down from Ellsworth. We’ve been speaking with Cooper Friend who has a long time Sugarloafer and also owner of Friend and Friend, The boys with the toys.
Cooper: Thank you very much.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 116, Ski Families. Our guests have included have included Josh and John Christie and also Cooper Friend. For more information on our guests and extended interviews visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest and read my take on health and wellbeing on the bountiful blog. We’d love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
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