Transcription of Preserving the Royal #263
Speaker 1: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Bill: Because up to now and the time of the Yarmouth, its history since settled by European has taken the river as a commercial resource to be used for commercial purposes that’s been pot mill, chicken plucking business, saw mill. Dozens and dozens of factories over the years, but that’s over now.
Lisa: How many different sites have you now been part of restoring or acquiring or helping steward?
Alan: We have deeds on 3,700 acres. Some of those are conservation easements where we don’t own the land, but we have a place in the deed where we can guarantee that it will always be forest or always be farms even though we don’t need to own it. Then, we actually own 11 preserves where we own the land and we invite the public to come use it for hiking or for boat access or for hunting or for just being quiet.
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio. Show #263, preserving the Royal, airing for the first time on Sunday, October 2, 2016. Maine’s waterways are an important part of the ecosystem, an ecosystem that provides nourishment for the body and the soul. Today, we speak with author and retired minister, Bill Gregory with Alan Stearns and Kyle Warren of the Royal River Conservation Trust about their efforts to preserve one of our Southern Maine Rivers for generations of living creatures to come. Thank you for joining us.
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Lisa: As is often true in life, we eventually get to meet the people that we hear much about and today I have that opportunity. This is Bill Gregory who is an author and retired United Church of Christ minister, who formerly worked at Woodfords Congregational and currently is part of an important environmental stewardship movement within the First Parish Church in Yarmouth. He lives pretty nearby me on Cousins Island. I live on Littlejohn. He’s got some fascinating things to say about why we should pay attention to our waterways and really the environment in general. Thanks so much for coming in today.
Bill: My pleasure, Lisa.
Lisa: You and I both share a commonality of the Yarmouth and this wonderful entity that we have called the Royal River, which really has been part of Yarmouth and the surrounding town’s landscape, well always, but has really been important in many ways to us. Why did you get to be interested in the Royal River?
Bill: Lots of interesting story. A good friend of mine, Carol Bass, who lived in Littlejohn, came to me 1 day at Island and said “I’m middle-aged. I will get MS and I would like to develop my spiritual life. Would you lead a group of vibrant people together?” Long story short, we did. The group is still going. It’s wonderful and important part of my life, but Carol has moved to South Carolina because of her MS. She contacted me and asked if I were to write a piece on spirituality in a river for the Edisto River in South Carolina that she lives next to. It turns out that the industrial outfits have been invited to use the Edisto and she was trying to organize and be part of an organization to oppose it. I said I’d do that, but I didn’t know the Edisto and I realized that I didn’t know the Royal either.
A friend of mine, Art Bell and I get arts canoe and started down the Royal River a year ago and discovered that it wasn’t a river really. It was a pond. The river behind the Elm Street Dam is very quiet, lovely to canoe on, lovely to ice skate on the winter, but it’s character as a river has been taken over. When we came down, it was remarkably quiet. We couldn’t hear birds. We didn’t see evidence of lifeforms in the river. It turns out there are, but there are eels in the river and there are some fish and so forth. It just didn’t seem alive.
We decided that we wanted to learn more about the river, get in touch with the Maine Rivers which is right in town and with the help of director of Maine Rivers whose name I’m having a senior moment escapes me, but it will come back, began talking with the environmentalist groups about what their interest. We are really newbies and they welcomed us. It happened at that same time that the town counsel is reconsidering the motion of a previous town counsel to take out one of the dams. There are 2 dams in the river. A town counsel decided not to take it out under the influence of the commercial interest, the Marinas in particular, who have a legitimate stakeholders position on taking the dam up because it would impact them and the question of “who is going to represent the river?” came up.
Up to now in the town of Yarmouth, its history since settled by Europeans has taken the river as a commercial resource to be used for commercial purposes. Pot mill, chicken plucking business, saw mill. Dozens and dozens of factories over the years, but that’s over now. We realized that the dams were created in a wonderful attraction. You get the mirror effect of the dam water provides. It provides recreational effect which all serve some purpose, but nobody in town spoke up at town counsel for the life of the river itself. For the river is placed in an environmental system that ultimately involves all of us and not only all the waterways. The Royal is 1 of 2 Maine natural waterways that flows into Casco Bay and the health of Casco Bay is dependent on the health of those 2 rivers.
We got connected with the environmentalist group, Art Bell and I and then we went into our church and said which was saying anybody who wants to do something justice oriented or service oriented, we encourage you to do that and we’ll support you and we’ll call you an official aspect of the churches’ life. We said, “We want to be an environmental stewardship group.” Environmental stewardship – Royal River is the name of our organization and this is all fed for me and then I’m essentially a nature mystic. I’m a Christian. Jesus is central to my faith and understanding of ethics, but my experience of God comes through nature more clearly than any place else.
Having to deal with my years and years and years of hiking in the high country of the Sierra Nevada in California and my major mystical experience happened in the Sierra Nevada. It’s always fed me. I found God. I found mystery. I found meaning in the natural world. Carol directed me to her river. I went to the Royal River. The Royal River has said to me … Not further river because it speaks so far of greater voice than I, but it says 1 thing. One of the things is says, “I’m not what I could be.” There are few places on the river where you can see it actually below the Bridge Street Dam. It flows as a river there. It’s really quite natural. There are people there fly fishing. It’s got life to it. Then you have to go quite away upstream before you get to the headwaters where it’s a river again.
Anyway, that’s a long answer to your question. That’s how I got there. Art and I have taken on the task of helping the citizens of Yarmouth see the river first and then see it as having life and worth even sacredness of its own and ask the question not how can the river serve us, but how can we serve the river.
Lisa: As you are talking, I’m thinking about my own children. I was raised in Yarmouth and I had not really ever done anything with the Royal River as a child, but each of my children has now paddled on the river. It’s become part of the high school curriculum. I think, for them, that was so eye opening to actually think of it as a recreational place because you are entirely correct with the way that it has been dammed. There’s not a lot that people actually do on the river itself after a certain point. That’s an interesting idea that we can live in a place in our entire lives really and never really know something that’s right next to us and with us.
Bill: That’s right. It’s really amazing because in the early days even though it was commercial, the river was the center of the town. It was all based on the river and then main street became the main focus of town and the old village model. Art Bell was saying the same thing. He had lived here for years and Art too lives in Cousins Island. He says, “You know I’ve never paid attention to the river.” You just so drive over it. You see it as a picturesque.” You look from the inner state and you see the falls. You left from Route 1 you see the reflection of the Bridge Street mill, but you don’t look at it as a river. It doesn’t seem to have a life of its own in our mindset.
Lisa: On May 21st, you actually did an event which was an honor, a World Fish Migration Day.
Bill: Yes. Everybody celebrates right?
Lisa: Exactly. It’s a big holiday, but you brought together a number of different interest including the native American interest and you really specifically went in a direction of native American spirituality.
Bill: That’s right. It’s true.
Lisa: It’s interesting because the way that you are telling me this. You thought that that would be more easily accepted than if you brought it through as a Christian spirituality.
Bill: Yes. It’s sort of the reflection of our secular age and the bad name that a conservative Christianity has given to Christian faith in particular. That’s not entirely a balanced statement. I’m a liberal and people on the right of me might argue, but I’m of the opinion that full understanding of the Christian faith has been worked even, in some ways, severely wounded by the prominence of Evangelicals. If I were to stand up before our group and say as a Christian I want to talk to you about the health and well-being of the Royal River, immediately people would begin to feel intimidated because I think either I’m an Evangelical and want to convert them to my way of thinking or that they have made decision to be interfaith or agnostic or atheistic and that the sectarian option would be for some interesting, but for others interruptive.
In this day of beginning to honor the native American population that live among us and have life and gift, culture that needs to be honored. We need to understand the history that devalue them and the terrible way that our country has let slavery and second class citizenship occur. We’ll be trying to find a way out of that for decade, century. We are still struggling. Because of that sympathy for native American life, the native American spirituality which is nature-based and sees the human being as part of nature, but not above it. It’s grateful for, at least as I understand. There will be other native Americans that I can’t speak for because I don’t know them well enough. I don’t have the right to speak for them.
What I’ve read, what I understand, what is spoken to me about what the native American approach to nature is this sense of being part of it and nature is sacred and we are sacred, but we are not more sacred. If we are going to use nature, we have to be concerned for its well-being and grateful for what it provides us. By bringing that into the conversation, I think when you look at the Royal River with the possibility expanded spiritual perspective, at least that’s my hope.
Lisa: It’s interesting that as a former Christian minister you almost end up being an apologist at times for this faith that you’ve dedicated your life to. Mysticism has been an important part of Christianity from the very beginning.
Bill: That’s right.
Lisa: In some ways, my understanding is that it actually has become somewhat marginalized and the idea of gnosis or knowing and that connection that one has with the greater spirituality. That’s not what one usually thinks of when one thinks of Christianity.
Bill: It’s hard for me to know what one thinks of, but I think as I watched it I think you are right. It’s a question of authority. In every system, the question whether it’s religious system or economic system or governmental system, the question is “What’s the authority? What do you regulate yourself around? What has authority over you? What do you give authority to?” In organized religion, the authority is in my tradition which is congregational, the experience of the individual in what’s call an Episcopal or hierarchical system.
The authority is the hierarchy which its members has dedicated their life and they have been called out and recognized as leaders and in some ways reflections of Jesus at least in the mind of the followers. Pride corrupts, power corrupts absolutely. Any human oriented system always suffers from a hierarchy that doesn’t develop a humility that has to be corrected. The experience of God, the experience of the more, the experience of the ultimate, the essential is really at the heart of all of the religious traditions. The question of the mystical which has got to be that experience. There’s always more than you can name, always more than you can …
The essence of the mystical experience is that there’s some fancy words for it, but it’s ineffable. You can’t tell someone about it. It’s momentary. You have in the moment and then you come down from the mountain or wherever it is, but it changes you and you have a sort of knowing which is not a defining. It’s not a control. It’s a quality of blessed relationship that you profoundly grateful to have experienced. I think that’s at the heart of all traditions and all faith whether they are Christian or otherwise.
The question of authority particularly in congregational traditions has been that experience, but then the structure gets established and the question becomes, “Are we preserving the structure as our act of faith or are we preserving the right of individuals and encouragement to have their own experience as the act of faith?” I find myself on the latter position. My encouragement, my preaching, my work has always been in the congregational tradition, very respectful of individual experience. At the same time, sharing a tradition, the heart of which was Jesus’ mystical experience and where he was baptized. He comes out of the water a changed person.
There will be Christians who will argue with that interpretation, but that was his epiphany. That was his mystical experience. It’s affirmed in a tradition, but it’s certainly my empowering experience. It happened in small pieces all through the course my life and it was Jesus and the expansion of the church that kept me connected. I knew there was more of there that I wanted to follow. I think it was during the ’60s which was when I came in to the church. The spiritual life and social justice were the 2 primary concerns and it continued so true my life. That’s enough I think. What more would you like me to talk about?
Lisa: I think it makes perfect sense that if somebody ask you to think about a river and to really get a sense of the river that you would want to go experience that river yourself. If somebody wants you to think and feel about the Royal River that you need to actually get on that river. It also makes perfect sense, the sense of wanting to be involved in stewardship and social justice because you want to be among the people you are connected to because that’s part of this bigger experience I believe that you are describing.
Bill: It’s all about relationship and the quality of relationship is the heart of it. The mystical experience is the essence of the quality relationship. Love is a reflection and experience of the relationship of spirit of grace that is available to us all and the violation of the trust that love encourages becomes the unethical or the unjust individual or social act. That has to do with how we treat nature as well as how we treat one another. It’s just that in our hierarchy that we spoke of earlier and the authority in our worldview coming out in the enlightenment is that individuals, human beings are what it’s all about that exist for us and everything else subservient and that’s a self-deafening vision.
Lisa: You and I share a common friend who is no longer with us and that is Hanley Denning. She and I went to college together and we knew each other.
Bill: Did you really?
Lisa: Yes. I know that you knew her quite well before she passed away and I believe it was, maybe, 7 years ago. I think somewhere in the not too distant past.
Bill: That’s tragic.
Lisa: When I think about Hanley and the work she did with Safe Passage and educating the children who lived outside the Guatemala City dump, it really reminds me. Echoes of what you are saying came through in the work that she was doing where there was this need for justice and connection and the sense that she was connected to these children and they shouldn’t suffer anymore than anyone else that she knew.
Bill: You ask me about the mysticism and I mentioned knowing. Another way to talk about seeing and Hanley saw. She saw the sacredness, the beauty of those children. The story when she went down there, and in happenstance, discovered a nun who befriended her that showed her the dump and showed her the homeless people that were making scratch in a life. It showed her the children who were caught in that system of oppression and materialism. She saw the beauty of them and said, “I’ve got to do something.” As you know the story, she went home, sold everything, moved down there. That’s incredible. I’ve taken groups there. I’ve gone there. Nancy and I have gone there when Hanley was there. I remember 1 time Nancy and I were talking with Hanley.
Hanley was very encouraging of people to come down because she knew it was the way to finance but also she wanted the extended world in her life to know about this, to see with her eyes and after we had talked to her and we were walking away. Nancy turn to me and she said, “You know, I have the distinct feeling that we’ve just been talking with a saint.” She had that aura about her that she had given herself so completely to love and service that it had become her. She loves sitting with her co-workers and like a people magazine and exploring what the latest fashions. She is fully human being, but she had this deep compassion. You are right. By touching on Hanley, you are touching what touches us whether it’s the river or the birds or your own children or the immigrants who trying to find life some place.
Lisa: It is truly been a pleasure to finally meet you and I did actually first learn of you through Hanley many, many years ago.
Bill: Oh, really?
Lisa: The fact that you showed up today to speak with me is really quite something. We’ve been speaking with Bill Gregory who is an author and retired United Church of Christ minister who formerly worked with Woodfords and I was a member of the First Parish in Yarmouth and really helping out with the environmental stewardship specifically with relationship to the Royal River.
Bill: That’s right.
Lisa: I appreciate your coming in today and having this conversation with me and I appreciate what you are doing with the Royal River.
Bill: Thank you for your empathy and your collegiality and for the invitation.
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Lisa: Having lived on Littlejohn Island for 2 years now and having grown up in Yarmouth, I am really a huge supporter and friend of the Royal River and the work that is being done by the Royal River Conservation Trust. I’m really pleased today to be able to have with me Alan Stearns and Kyle Warren, both of the Royal River Conservation Trust.
Alan grew up in Eastern Maine. He served as the deputy director of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands from 2007 to 2011. He currently serves as a trustee of the Maine historical society and as president of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. He previously served on a boards of the Main Island Trail Association, the Friends of the Kennebec River Rail Trail, the Maine Olmsted Alliance for Parks and Landscape and other organizations and campaigns. Alan holds degrees from the University of Maine School of Law, the University of Maine and Brown University.
Also with me today is Kyle Warren who acts both as the stewardship and outreach director for the Royal River Conservation Trust and also as land steward for the Town of Yarmouth conservation lands. He registered Maine Master Guide with a geology degree from St. Lawrence University. Kyle grew up on Mooselookmeguntic Lake in the western mountains of Maine. He brings a passion for wise and sustainable land use choices to the Royal River watershed, preserving and improving local opportunities to fly fish with his upland bird dogs and ski tour motivates his passion. Since early 2010, he has worked with many groups to educate and improve the functions of our local wild spaces. He has been active in land use and environmental regulations since 2004. Thank you for coming in and joining us.
Alan: Thanks for having us.
Lisa: As I mentioned, I’m really a huge supporter of the Royal River because since I moved to Maine in 1977, it’s been a big part of my own personal life and each of you has your own relationship to bodies of water. I know having grown up in old town Alan and Kyle on Mooselookmeguntic Lake. I wonder how much of that has work its way into your own current interest in the Royal River Conservation Trust.
Alan: It’s big for me. I grew up outside in Maine, hiking, paddling, spending a whole summer on lakes. For me, from a career perspective, I’ve chosen to try to give the same opportunities to everybody that grows up in Maine in the future. With my family always went paddling or camping or hiking and there’s so much of that in Maine, but it’s also important to hang on to it. Working now in the outskirts of Portland, it’s a good thing that Greater Portland is growing and thriving, but it’s all the more important to hang on to the quality of life while we still can. Our work giving the public access to the river, giving the public access to the coast, giving the public trails to hike on is all partly driven by my memories of childhood growing up in Maine.
Kyle: I used growing up in the Rangeley region. I was excited about some bigger mountains and spend some time in the Central Rockies after during college and returned to Maine mostly because of the lack of access to water in the west. It’s an important part of how we enjoy the outside, how I enjoy the outside. It’s so available here. It’s pretty easy decision.
Lisa: It is interesting that many people that I’ve spoken with say that when they move inland there is something that doesn’t feel quite right because the mountains might be beautiful or maybe I went to Burlington for a few years to get my medical degree. Certainly, the lake was beautiful, but there’s this feeling of being land bound and coming back out to the coast again. There’s almost this relief. There’s this resonance. Do you think that that has something to do with why people so love the Royal River the fact that you had something that opens out into a bigger space?
Alan: The coast definitely gives you that serenity and infinity of looking out over the water. I think almost all water gives people some sense of calmness or some sense of being able to relax or have adventures. The Royal itself is both the estuary headed out in the Casco Bay which has an amazing views and the full coastal fog and all of that that comes with it, but so much of the Royal is inland and small waterfalls, places to go paddling, places to go fishing. In the Greater Portland area, there actually isn’t that much fresh water. If you live in Portland and you are looking to go trout fishing, the Royal is a pretty good one of the closest opportunities. If you live in Greater Portland and you are looking to go fresh water paddling, chances are it’s going to be the Royal. If you live in a neighborhood in North Yarmouth or Pownal or Yarmouth and it’s 95 degrees and you just want to go swimming, you want public access to the Royal too because that’s where you go with your dog or your kids to get wet on a hot day.
Lisa: Kyle, I’m fascinated by the fact that you are a registered Maine Master Guide and you have a geology degree. There’s something about knowing the outdoors in a really intimate way that has appealed to you for quite some time. You also really like fly-fishing and hunting and you like going out with your dogs. There’s something that also appeals to you spirit, your soul. Is this something that you think is important to people for Maine in general?
Kyle: I think the existing access whether it’s the paper company land or to the beaches or any of the great lakes. There are great ponds in the state that have state access, had made it really available for Maine residents to be part of. It’s a tough thing to shake once you understand the value being out and watching the sunrise.
Lisa: Tell me about the Royal River Conservation Trust. How long has it been in existence?
Alan: In some ways, we’ve been in existence for 25 years now. We are the result of the merger of the Yarmouth Land Trust and the Friends of the Royal River and the North Yarmouth Land Trust and the Pownal Land Trust all of which have been around for roughly 25 years. It was about 15 years ago that all those groups merged to have a bigger, stronger focus on the whole watershed conserving land and also outdoor programs to get people engaged with the land that we conserve.
Lisa: How many different sites have you now been part of restoring or acquiring or helping steward?
Alan: We have deeds on 3,700 acres. Some of those are conservation easements where we don’t own the land, but we have a place in the deed where we can guarantee that it will always be forest or always be farms even though we don’t need to own it. Then, we actually own 11 preserves where we own the land and we invite the public to come use it for hiking or for boat access or for hunting or for just being quiet.
Lisa: I met you at the estuary just off Bayview Street in Yarmouth last week and this is one of your sites and one of the sites that you lead the Rain or Shine Club, Kyle?
Kyle: Yeah. We lead weekly outings for about a year and a half now and that’s one of the places that we returned to, special spot.
Lisa: Why is it important to have tours like the Rain or Shine Club? Why is it important to help people understand how to experience these places?
Kyle: It’s important to show people how we have intended to manage these properties. There’s a whole variety of different ways that these properties could be used whether it’s for mountain biking or trail hiking or a variety of other ways that people could get out on the land. For us to bring groups of people including, in many cases, toddlers on these weekly outings, it helps to reinforce that sense of importance to be in the wild even if it’s now in the far reaches. It’s important to have this chance for access right next to our houses so that we can use it during the week and bring the dogs out in the morning to get some exercise and have good predictable place to access from whether it’s a parking lot or a dock.
Lisa: What are some of the other sites that you bring people to?
Kyle: We visit Bradbury Mountain State Park in a few different ways and the Bradbury to Pineland Corridor. We tr to move our outings according to the season. If we have a chance to pick blueberries like we did last week, then we’ll go to an open meadow where there is great blue berries growing. In the winter, we like to cross some ice when that opportunity presents itself. Just be nimble enough and responsive to just environmental conditions and transitions and being able to see these places and different seasons is a good way to explore our whole service area.
Lisa: Alan, part of what do at the Royal River Conservation Trust is to generate resources so that parcels of land become available. You could potentially purchase them and also have the resources to maintain the lands and even lands that you don’t own too, how be a part of that. That’s an interesting conundrum to have to fund raise for something that may not yet be there.
Alan: It’s easier than you might think partly because so many people are pulling with us, so many people with so much generosity want us to succeed. When a parcel land comes available, sometimes it’s donated the land itself, sometimes we have to raise money for it. If we are going after the right project, there are any number of people in our communities who want to help us and some remarkably generous people who want to do the right thing for their kids, for their grandchildren, for the next generation. Again, in growing developing areas like Greater Portland so often we talk about access and a lot of my job is looking for that new piece of land, securing access, buying access, encouraging land owners to donate access.
That so much of what land trusts do and have done, but Kyle’s work and programs like a Rain or Shine Club realize that even if there is public access, even if there is conserved land, that doesn’t mean that somebody who just moved here from Washington or Texas knows how to find it or feels comfortable with once they find it. In addition to raising money to conserve land, we are also raising money, sometimes to hold people’s hands and take them into the scary woods and show them the magic that we know is there even if they didn’t grow up going into the woods, even if they didn’t grow up in this area. The Rain or Shine Club and other programs are as much about providing access as buying the accesses and several parts of the effort to get more Maine people engaged with more of Maine.
Lisa: You told me that part of the mission and vision of the Royal River Conservation Trust is with children to create a sense of wonder. I really love that phrase and that idea that it is somehow important to open the eyes of others to something that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise thought to look for. Why wonder? It could be anything. You could have come up with any set of words, but why that?
Alan: I think a lot of the strength of the conservation movement in Maine comes from ecology and biology and wild life and that’s so important to save the natural resources from a scientific perspective, especially in large growing towns like Yarmouth, North Yarmouth. It’s so important to also recognize the human side of conservation and I think all kids and all adults interact with the outside differently. Some people get a sense of wonder by going over a big jump on a mountain bike and some people get a sense of wonder by sitting and looking at a very small flower and some people get a sense of wonder by paddling hundreds of miles off the coast.
For everybody, that sense of wonder I think for me is part of being human and being able to relax that it’s who we are as a species that sometimes you need to imagine the great outdoors and live in it and let yourself go with it. For everybody, it’s different, but if we can provide access to the ocean and mountain bike trails and playgrounds and nature preserves and boat access points. If we can provide it all, then we know that everybody in this area will have a place to escape and let go when they need to.
Lisa: Kyle, your volunteers are very important to you and to your organization and they run the gamut. There are some people who come in for a day of work. There are some people that have committed to maintaining an entire stretch of the Royal River Conservation Trust lands. How do you best work with people to understand what it is that they hope to accomplish by volunteering?
Kyle: The most engaged volunteers are the ones that are passionate about the project that they are working on. Recently, we’ve had very generous family in Yarmouth donate their time and resources to build us a new and improved boardwalk section that’s going to make the trail more accessible to the whole scope of people, whether it’s strollers or wheelchairs or anybody in between. They’ve been incredibly passionate about it and it’s noticeable in the product of the work. I’ve also had the chance to work with some court-ordered community service folks and I don’t see that level of passion in those volunteers and that’s sort of a black/white comparison, but they really does run the whole length of the trail so to say, but passion is definitely the linchpin.
Lisa: Not everyone wants to be recognized for volunteering either. You mentioned to me that there is a stretch that has been maintained by a relatively young man and he doesn’t really come out of the woods to go to parties, but he is very good about taking care of, I believe, it’s the New Gloucester stretch of woods.
Kyle: It is. It’s the New Gloucester Intervale Preserve. He shows up in the spring and keeps the parking lot mode and opened and gives me a call if there’s a tree down that’s too big for him to manage on his own. He is a neighbor and a friend to that property, but most of it to the general effort that we put forth. He allows me to spend my time in other places.
Lisa: One of the things I enjoyed most about visiting the estuary with you was that I used to live, I rented a place that was continuous to the estuary, so I had my own experience with the estuary. Now, I live in a place that is near the Littlejohn preserve which is another part of the Royal River Conservation Trust. At various times, I’ve had medical practices along the Royal River, 1 in the Sparhawk mill, 1 further up the river. I also went swimming in the Royal River when I was younger and high school. My children have learned how to canoe in the river. I’ve been ice skating.
There are so many different iterations of the river and how even I’ve experienced it in my own lifetime. There’s some sort of interesting simultaneous familiarity that I have with this, but also that’s always new, that there’s always something that’s different and that is the nature of rivers in Maine. That sometimes they are used with industry and sometimes they are used for conservation. You are experiencing this even now. Peter is talking about dam removal on the Royal River. That must have been an interesting conversation that you are having.
Alan: It’s a conversation that’s been going on Yarmouth for years and will continue for a few more years at least. The river as you said is different things for different people, different times, different generations. There are today 2 dams left on the Royal in Yarmouth that don’t serve much if any of a purpose anymore. They were mighty dams of the mighty industrial era of Yarmouth 100 years ago, but today, they serve a function for some recreation to create a pond for paddling. They have some historic significance, but they’re no longer part of industry or they’re no longer part of the Yarmouth’s economy. The big opportunity if 1 or more were removed or if we could invest in fish passage is to get fish up over the dams.
Today, almost no fish of any specifies can go up over the dams and whether sea run fisheries or others, fish passage matters. Whether be alewives or shad or any number of other species, it will affect 100 square miles upriver. Dozens of miles of river tributary up river that could be better for trout, better for wild life, birds feed on fish, better for so many aspects of water quality and habitat if we could crack the nut of the dams in Yarmouth and a lot of people working on it. We don’t have the answer yet. We are not proposing dam removal today instead our bottom line is fish passage. The fish must be able to get up and over. If we can find a way to do without dam removal, that’s fine. At least in the Bridge Street Dam, I think many of us have come to conclusion that dam removal might be the most cost effective best way to get the best for the fish.
Lisa: In my conversations with both of you I was struck by the complexities of working with different interest when it comes to possible dam removal. You mentioned that you have to take into consideration other people downstream who would be impacted, the people who own Marinas, for example, other people who have docks. It’s always a complicated question as to how this is approached, but my understanding from talking with each of you is that you are really not attempting to impose your view. You are trying to be as collaborative as possible and coming up with a solution that works for the greatest number of people and creatures, fish, for example.
Alan: I mentioned that the dams in Yarmouth don’t have much if any of a role in Yarmouth’s economy today, but just down river, the Marina which are the heart and soul of Yarmouth’s economy and quality of life. So many of our members have boats at the Marina and so many people who love to fish in this area head out to Casco Bay or other places to fish from those Marinas. There’s really no reason to polarize the discussions when exactly the people who want better fishing are just down river with a real attention on keeping their businesses open and thriving. We don’t want to harm them and we are talking to them and getting more information to come back to the table with ways to, again, crack the nut in a way that feels good for everybody.
Lisa: Kyle, if you could send someone to 1 favorite special place that is part of the Royal River Conservation Trust, where would that be?
Kyle: I think that totally depends on the season and the day. Right now, Chandler Brook on the trial side of Bradbury Mountain State Park is pretty special.
Lisa: That’s a wise answer. In this way, it will give people the opportunity to learn more about the Royal River Conservation Trust which they can do by doing to our show notes page, lovemaineradio.com. Also, you can read about them in Maine Magazine because we are doing an article on the Royal River Conservation Trust. Thank you so much for having with this conversation with me. I think it’s part of a much bigger discussion. We could keep talking for a long, long time about all of this, but I appreciate that you are both in there and you are both so passionate about the work that you do because it does directly impact me and my children, my family, my community members, my neighbors. We’ve been talking with Kyle Warren and Alan Stearns of the Royal River Conservation Trust. I appreciate your coming in today and I appreciate the work that you do.
Kyle: It’s fun. Thanks for having us.
Alan: Thank you Lisa.
Lisa: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, show #263, preserving the Royal. Our guest have included Bill Gregory, Alan Stearns and Kyle Warren. For more information on our guest and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Also, read about them in Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is downloaded for free on iTunes. For preview of each week show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on twitter as Dr. Lisa and see my running travel food and wellness photos as bountiful one on Instagram. We love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, I hope that you have enjoyed our preserving the Royal show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. For more information on our host production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guest featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com. Here’s a preview of next week’s interview with Stephanie Manning.
Lisa: What else do you have going on?
Stephanie: On Friday, we are doing typically harvest on the Harbor. There has been a Maine Lobster Chef competition and we have decided in our first year to take the competition out of play. What we learned from the community is that local chefs don’t really like to be put it up against each other like “We are community and why should we be competing with each other?” Obviously, the nature of the business is to be competitive, but we don’t need to do that in an event format. We decided instead to do a lobster chef celebration and this working in partnership with the Maine lobster marketing collaborative.
We’ll bring together about a dozen chefs to feature 12 very different lobster recipes. It will be a pretty traditional tasting event where we do parings with beverages of all sorts. The timing is happy hour on Friday and that’s going to be a fantastic event also, participating in that. We’ve got Nick Krunkkala from Liquid Riot and Isaac Aldrich from the Pilot House at the Sebasco Harbor and Matt Ginn from Evo who actually is the reigning champ of the Maine Lobster Chef competition. We are pretty psych with the line up for that too.
Lisa: You are not just bringing people from the Portland area. Your reach goes far beyond that.
Stephanie: I think ultimately we want to be representative of the Maine food economy. It’s very easy here in Portland to be Portland centric because this is where we live and work. It’s easy to connect with these folks. By all means, we are more than interested in representing Maine as a state.
Lisa: You have a few more days of events that are going on.
Stephanie: I know. I feel like I could go on and on and on. On Saturday, our signature event is called Market on the Harbor. We are doing this in 2 sessions. For all intent purposes, it’s the biggest food sampling opportunity there is. We’ll bring together about 100 food purveyors to sample their products, but also to vend their products. We are really excited to be partnering with Whole Foods. We will be bringing a bunch of their local suppliers then and doing a popup experience where you can taste and purchase their products. There are so many people doing such amazing work in the food space and not in restaurants like people who are making fantastic energy bars and amazing granola and potato chips, foods of all sorts. We really want this to be the opportunity for them to showcase what they are doing, give people a taste and sell.
Lisa: For people who are, say, vegetarian or gluten free or have some sort of other dietary needs or maybe you just start a little bit more picky, will there be lots of options to choose from?
Stephanie: The goal is lots of options at all of our events frankly. We do recognize that crafting your culinary choices is definitely part of the food experience. We’ll work really hard to represent everybody. It’s hard to promise that because we are really relying on a lot of people to help us execute well, but that’s our goal.
Lisa: What else? Anything else going on in your line up?
Stephanie: The only other event that I wanted to mention today is our Chef Showcase which will be our finally event on Sunday. We are thrilled to have Harding Lee Smith helping us out and leading the charge on bringing together the top chefs around Maine, the people who really started all of this like put a stake in the ground and said, “There’s something here. We’re going to create it.” This also will be a pretty traditional tasting event. We are also really excited to have the opportunity to feature a handful of mixologists at this event because the beverage scene is equal to the food scene or at least growing to be equal. We are excited to have the opportunity to showcase some of the people who are doing amazing work in mixology. We’ve got Vena’s Fizz House signed on to do one of the bars. They are doing pretty incredible work in selling a lot of local product also. That will be our grand finale event.
Lisa: Stephanie, I know that one of the things that chefs in our area really like to focus on is helping bring food to people who maybe don’t have the same access that maybe the festival goers harvest on the Harbor goers have. You have a charity that you are working to support. Tell me about that.
Stephanie: We are working hand in hand with Full Plates, Full Potential. We believe strongly as to working mothers that eradicating childhood hunger specifically in Maine, but also across the United States is probably one of the most important things that we need to do. We are thrilled to be working with Full Plates. They do really incredible work I think more than any other organization. They’re really spreading the love. They work hand in hand with the folks who are on the frontlines to make sure that the moneys are distributed in a way that really makes a difference so we could be prouder to align ourselves with the work that they are doing.
Lisa: You also have some great sponsor partners that have come in to help you out.
Stephanie: We are so fortunate to be getting the kind of reception that we are from folks of all kinds. Really, there’s not a person that I talk to that’s not encouraged and/or excited about what we are trying to accomplish here. We are thrilled to have Bangor Savings Bank on board as a partner for our sustainable seafood event. We’ve got Whole Foods as I mentioned as a partner. We are working with Native Maine Produce and Specialty Foods.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Love Maine Radio. We hope you can join us for next week’s program.