Transcription of Love Maine Radio #338: Lori Parham and Carolann Ouellette
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 physician and editor-in-chief of Maine, Maine Home and Design, Old Port, Ageless and Moxie Magazines. Love Maine Radio show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com.
Lisa Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 338, airing for the first time on Sunday, March 11th, 2018. Today we speak with Lori Parham, State Director of AARP Maine. We also speak with Carolann Ouellette, Executive Director of Maine Huts and Trails who previously served as the Director of the Maine Office of Tourism. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Portland Art Gallery is proud to sponsor Love Maine Radio. Portland Art Gallery is the city’s largest and is located in the heart of The Old Port at 154 Middle Street. The gallery focuses on exhibiting the work of contemporary Maine artists and hosts a series of monthly solo shows in its newly expanded space, including Ingunn Joergensen, Brenda Cirioni, Daniel Corey, Jill Hoy, and Dave Allen. For complete show details, please visit our website at artcollectormaine.com.
Lisa Belisle: Lori Parham is the AARP Maine’s State Director, leading the state’s advocacy and education efforts on health and financial security issues. She also oversees the organization’s efforts to engage cities and towns in creating livable communities for people of old ages with a specific focus on economic development and aging in place. Thanks for coming in today.
Lori Parham: It’s great to be here.
Lisa Belisle: I really love the work that you are doing with AARP because I think it’s a different approach than we typically see when we talk about longevity of life.
Lori Parham: Absolutely. We still have challenges when we talk about aging. There’s still a lot of assumptions around what it means to grow old or to be old, and even to talk about what that word means. At AARP and especially here in Maine we’re really working to change perceptions of aging and share the stories of people over 50 in the state who are doing amazing things.
Lisa Belisle: One of the interesting things for me having worked recently on our new Ageless Magazine is that people over the age of 50 are they’re not necessarily retired. They’re still working and in fact, a lot of people, my dad is 72, my mom is I think the same age, both of them are still actively working no less than they once were 20 years ago.
Lori Parham: That’s why we’re just AARP, we’re no longer the American Association of Retired Persons and we haven’t been for some time because a third of our members are still working. It’s not just folks between the ages of 50 and 64. We often hear people say, “I’m retiring at 65,” but as you said, people are working longer either because they really love being engaged and involved and want to and some because they don’t have a choice. They haven’t been able to put away enough for retirement and so they have to keep working in order to pay the bills and make sure that they will be secure in retirement.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve seen both of these things be true. I’ve seen both my parents be enthusiastically still teaching. My mom in middle school and my dad teaching medical students and residents and I ask them, “When are you going to retire?” They say, “Why? Why should I do that?” Then I also have had patients who have needed to either go back into the workforce or who have never been able to leave the workforce who are in their 70s and sometimes in their 80s. That leads to some interesting challenges though.
Lori Parham: It really does and we see both in Maine. Maine as the oldest state can really be a wonderful test case for aging and aging policy and workplace policy. We hear a lot of folks in Maine say, “We need to bring more young people to Maine.” I like to say AARP loves young people or members who have children, they have grandchildren, but there’s a lot of talent amongst people over 50. People between the ages of 50 and 64 are the largest growing age group of entrepreneurs and in Maine entrepreneurialism is so important and yet there is the demographic who is struggling. When we have surveyed older people in Maine a large number of them tell us they don’t know that they’ll ever be able to retire, that they will have to keep working.
Baby boomers have not saved the way they really needed to. Many people don’t understand that in retirement just to cover healthcare cost you need as much as $250,000 in savings. It’s really juggling the challenges that folks have but then also with that talking about the opportunities and the amazing things that people are doing. The fact that your dad is still teaching medical students, that’s such a wonderful thing especially in healthcare and there’s such a need.
Lisa Belisle: In addition to your undergraduate degree in sociology, you also have a masters in science and a PhD, so you are very well-versed in the academics of this. Why did you choose to focus your efforts on the aging community?
Lori Parham: I think in part because growing up I spent a lot of time with my grandmothers. My grandfathers both passed away very young and left families and one case with pretty young children. My grandmothers became fast friends and were part of my life from a very early age and I think I was comfortable around what was considered older people. As I looked into the issue surrounding aging and retirement, especially for women I just really became excited about the policy work and have been truly passionate about it ever since.
Lisa Belisle: Talk to me about some of the issues that women are facing.
Lori Parham: Well, a big one is caregiving. Men and women both care for aging parents but the majority of the work and this is unpaid work by daughters and wives and sisters is done by women. When you look at now especially with the aging of the baby boomers and if you look at Maine’s population, more and more women are falling into this category and as we project out there’s going to be more and more need. Often these women are also raising children. We call them the sandwich generation. They may have to leave the workforce in order to care for an aging parent which impacts their own ability to save to get those social security credits and to prepare for their own retirement. There are specific and special challenges as it relates to aging and long-term care for women as they care for others and then as they look at how they’re going to care for themselves.
That’s an area where we focus, also making sure that any caregiver has the resources they need. Where do you begin when something happens? Most of us don’t plan and then all of a sudden there’s a catastrophic event and how do we manage that. Then it ties into broader issues. We were talking about work, work and retirement, the ability to save, to find jobs that allow you to save. In Maine, we looked at some research to see how the folks in the state were saving and we’re way behind and not just amongst people over 50 but with our younger generations as well. There are a lot of issues, pretty intense policy issues to think about that hit a lot of sectors as we’re looking at what it means to grow old.
Lisa Belisle: Why is it that you think there is such resistance to a conversation about aging?
Lori Parham: It’s such a great question. Our CEO, Jo Ann Jenkins actually wrote a book and has really made it her mission to what she calls disrupt aging. The stereotypes go back a long way. When we think about pre-AARP, we’re 60 this year, the fact that older Americans really had no access to healthcare and retirement, medicare didn’t exist, [recast 00:09:10] historical stories about poor houses and where we placed older people. We’ve just really allowed those stereotypes to continue whether it’s actresses who are aged out of acting. The debate over gray hair or not. The assumptions that old means you’re walking around with a cane and can barely make it up the stairs. Yet you see how that’s just not necessarily the case but it takes … It’s language, it’s attitude, it’s education. It’s a constant effort to try to change the way we think about it. I get all the time, “Oh, I don’t feel old. You’re AARP, 50, really? For us age is just a number.” Our founder was 73 when she founded this great organization, but it’s not easy, it’s a constant battle.
Lisa Belisle: It’s interesting to me that in this day and age we are more aware of people of different nationalities, we’re more aware of gender and not discriminating against people based on that, sexual orientation, I mean, the list goes on our awareness of all these things that we don’t want to be considered ist. We don’t want to be racist, for example. Isn’t not having an openness about people who are older, isn’t that just ageist? Isn’t that just another group for us to discriminate against?
Lori Parham: It is. It is, and it’s been fun through our work on disrupting aging, and Jo Ann, she decided to tackle this because I think she saw the potential across everything else we work on. We’ve got a wonderful video of millennials showing what they think it means to be old and the basic walking with a cane and then they bring in to each one of these individuals an older person who is a dancer or a boxer and these are folks in their 70s, 80s and 90s and just to see the light bulb go off for these young people was pretty amazing. It’s really going to take I think an ongoing concerted effort. We hear a lot about how baby boomers are really going to change these perceptions but when they’re all around you, radio, TV, ad campaigns, it’s going to take a concerted effort I think across sectors to really see change.
Lisa Belisle: Why is aging in place important?
Lori Parham: First and foremost, we know that’s where people want to be and when we say aging in place we mean at home and in the community. As folks grow older, if they have a choice between institutional care and the community they love, they want to be in the community even if they can’t be in their own home, they want to be right there. Especially in Maine where community is so important. It’s what people want. It also is good for local economies. The longer people stay at home and in the communities they love, the more they’re involved and active in civic life and social life. They’re spending money in their communities. My grandmother who I lost just a year ago, if she didn’t get her hair done every week, that was the most important thing and that was helping a local business and there are a lot of folks like her.
It really does help build that sense of community. Social participation is so important. We have new research out of our foundation that shows the social isolation really can decrease longevity and that that’s so important for people to be connected. Being able to spend those last years your final years at a place that is safe but connected is just really important to people.
Lisa Belisle: I absolutely have seen this as a doctor, the patients that come in to see me who don’t have close family members, who may be have moved to the community relatively recently don’t have close friends, the loneliness that they feel it absolutely impacts not only their emotional and psychological health but their physical health. It has this far-reaching implication that I think it’s important for us to address.
Lori Parham: Absolutely, isolation is the leading cause for dementia as well and we hear from people. We have started hosting social events, coffees and happy hours to help bring people together and the number of folks who’ve said, “I just moved here,” or, “I just retired, I’m having to build a new network and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to meet other people like me,” and we’re seeing friendships develop and more interest in taking those activities even further. We’re doing what we can to help build the social connections where we can because no one should age alone.
Lisa Belisle: Talk to me about age-friendly communities. What types of things would such a community offer to someone who is attempting to age in place?
Lori Parham: The work that we’re doing in the age-friendly space is really situated around multiple domains of livability we call them. Everything from affordable housing and not just low income housing but middle income housing and also housing that’s accessible that’s near services. You think of Maine and how rural we are and how difficult it could be for an older person who’s way down along the road in a big rambling farmhouse, that doesn’t make it very easy to be connected. Transportation which ties into that, the ability to get around when you should no longer be driving and access to, if you’re in a very rural area and you don’t have the services that a metro would provide, ways to get places whether it’s through a volunteer program or other. Social participation, what are the kinds of activities that a community has to bring people together.
I should emphasize that an age-friendly community isn’t just for, “older people.” Our view is that the kinds of services and support you put into place for someone over 50 or over 65 is just as good for young family. If you think about public spaces and parks and playgrounds and trails and exercise equipment, if you think about sidewalks, making sure the snow is cleared in the winter, that’s good for an older person who may walk with a cane or just walk more slowly or have a little trouble with balance but it’s good for a young mother who’s also carrying one child and pushing a stroller.
Civic engagement and employment, whether it’s mentoring or recognizing the value that people over 50 bring to the workforce and looking at policies and programs that support the 50 plus worker who may be caregiving for example so flexible work arrangements, telecommuting, looking at different types of leave that support a caregiver who may need to take time off. It’s really a range of policies. We like to talk about broadband and how disconnected a lot of Maine is, that’s another important issue that really come together to make a community more age-friendly. Of course, if you’re Portland, it’s going to look different than it will in Bethel or Skowhegan and so you’ve got to take in account the close community ties as well.
Lisa Belisle: Are there benefits to having multiple generations interacting on a regular basis?
Lori Parham: We see in some of the programs that we’re seeing across the country, we’ll take the workplace for example, there’s been some good research that shows a multi generational workforce is good for business. There’s a good return on investment because you have different attitudes, different approaches, the ability for people to mentor, older people to mentor younger. Also, vice verse. Let’s think about technology. Also, we see that in the area of social isolation and connectedness too. There’s a real movement to think about housing and supports community where you could have an after school program tied to a community center where retirees may go for art classes.
Also, looking at how the two generations can mentor each other outside of the workforce. We’ve got this great program going on in Augusta where the age-friendly committee, all retirees, is working with the girls and boys club teaching them sewing. This is a skill that they’re using to sew hats and gloves and scarves for people who need an extra layer in the winter. Whether or not this group of kids ends up taking on sewing as a career, it’s a skill, it’s tactical, it’s a place to focus energy and through that time together they’re connecting with folks they may not have otherwise connected with. Hearing their stories, maybe getting a little bit of advice.
Lisa Belisle: You mentioned that you have a comfort level with people who are older starting with your grandmothers when you were a child, why is it that some people don’t have a comfort with older people?
Lori Parham: That’s a really good question. It could be that they never had the opportunity like I did to spend time around people who are older. I think there can be some fear. It can be difficult to watch people grow old especially if they have chronic health issues, that can be scary, I’m just going to say that. It can be easier to avoid that. While any of us can be impacted at any age, we tend to associate old age with end of life and that’s part of I think looking at how we can reframe that. That just because you’re growing older doesn’t mean your life is ending. What I love about Ageless Maine is the opportunity to profile some of these people in Maine who may be 70, 80, 90 but are still active or engaged in giving back. When you can spend time with them I think some of that fear goes away.
Lisa Belisle: I actually found when I was working on Ageless Maine with the rest of the editorial team that there were many people that we were talking about that were probably healthier than a lot of people who are far younger because they were so engaged and they were so passionate about the things that they were doing. Whether it was the woman that I wrote about for the wearable technology story or whether it was the woodchuck story that Susan Axelrod wrote. I think it’s often said that age is just a state of mind. I’m not sure that’s exactly true but I certainly do believe that there’s a way that we can look at things that influences the way that we live.
Lori Parham: I would agree and the woodchuck and that was just such a lovely story. Think about the social connectedness there. These gentlemen are physically active in state and then a community they clearly love, they’re doing this work together. We also know the benefits of volunteering, they’re doing something for other people. You put those together and that’s a really good combination for longevity. Sometimes I think I’m probably healthier now than I was when I was 20 or probably even 30 and I think sometimes it takes a little time to recognize how to prioritize and where to focus. Sadly, there are folks who are older who really are struggling with chronic illness and disease. Then there’s also the question of what are the policies, what can be done to make sure that those patients you see can get some relief and that we can start to address some of those issues sooner in Maine and frankly across the country.
Lisa Belisle: That is an important point that aging can really manifest itself in many different ways so I think because a lot of older people when they’re feeling healthy they don’t come to the doctor. I will see older people who come to see me and they will often say it is very difficult to get old. It is really hard because it seems like one thing after another, after another. They feel as if their bodies are failing them. It can be very expensive. They spend a lot of time in doctor’s offices. I agree that trying to find a way to support them through all of this is going to present different challenges than it might if it was a younger person accessing the healthcare system. What can we do specifically in healthcare to help people who are trying to work through aging?
Lori Parham: We hear a lot about prevention and when I talk about Medicare to folks in the community and to our members and the importance of insuring that people are going to the doctor, that they are getting that primary care, the more we do to stave off diabetes for example which cost the Medicare program billions of dollars then that’s going to help the sustainability of the program which will invest more dollars into those preventative measures. It’s the healthcare component and boy, that could be a conversation for multiple hours but that’s why we’re also looking at the community component. Health and supportive services are one of the domains that we look at in communities. Outside of government programs depending on what you have for insurance, that can be very expensive. What can you be doing and what can a community offer through public spaces and parks.
I love that our colleagues in Bethel have an indoor walking program in winter for older people to make sure that they’re still getting exercise. We decided to host a Tai chi class because we had a volunteer willing to teach it and we’re amazed at how many people came out. There are a lot of no cost, low cost things that communities can do to offer and granted that’s just the wellness piece. It’s not going to solve all of the problems but there’s a lot of great research out there that says if you get up and you move, if you’re a little more thoughtful about what you eat, if you get up and you move but you do it with a friend in terms of your mental health that that could have a really positive impact on a longer life and a healthier life.
Lisa Belisle: Obviously there are a lot of different places that you could focus because this is an enormous topic. What is one thing that you would like to see changed as regards to aging?
Lori Parham: Goodness. There’s enough out there that I should be able to work for a very long time. I love the work that we’re doing in communities because it’s bigger than just healthcare. As I look at the aging of Maine, as I hear debates about Maine’s economy and what the state needs, I continue and really believe not just because I work for AARP to make the case that people over 50 are hugely important to Maine and the economy. We’ve done some work with Oxford Economics nationally on the longevity economy and this is the purchasing power and the GDP of people over 50. They’re buying more in tech believe it or not. They pay more in healthcare. They give back more charitably. They’re paying more in taxes.
That age group is hugely important. Their children are the millennials and research shows that they want a lot of the same things. Access to be able to walk to where you want to go, public spaces, cultural activities, music. When I think about this body of work, if we can get out of a mindset that it’s just about older people, that it can turn some people off in some sectors. We talk about how that infrastructure can then impact the next generation and the next generation. I think that makes for a really exciting future of Maine. There are so many issues to tackle and we’ll continue to work on all of them but I’m really excited about this work because it involves people in community and it showcases how deeply people care about where they live.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Lori Parham who is the AARP Maine’s State Director leading the state’s advocacy and education efforts on health and financial security issues. She also oversees the organization’s efforts to engage cities and towns in creating livable communities for people of old ages with a specific focus on economic development and aging in place. Thank you so much for the work you’re doing and for coming in today.
Lori Parham: It’s great talking with you.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is also brought to you by Aristelle, a lingerie boutique on Exchange Street in Portland’s Old Port, where every body is seen as a work of art and beauty is celebrated from the inside out. Shop with us in person or online at aristelle.com.
Lisa Belisle: Carolann Ouellette joined Maine Huts and Trails as Executive Director in January of 2017 and she previously served as Director at the Maine Office of Tourism. Thanks for coming in.
Carolann O.: Thanks so much for having me. This is great.
Lisa Belisle: I think they were pretty sad to see you go from the Maine Office of Tourism from what I understand.
Carolann O.: That’s always nice to have a legacy like that. Certainly, it was an amazing opportunity for me and an incredible team, everything from the internal team to all the people in the industry across the state and even the people that we worked with under contract, just really creative, energetic, passionate people about Maine which was made it so much fun.
Lisa Belisle: What I guess convinced you that you should jump over to Maine Huts and Trails?
Carolann O.: That’s a great question. I give lot of the credit of the convincing to quite honestly our board chair, Bob Peixotto who spent quite a bit of time talking to me about Maine Huts and Trails and the opportunities, and the place in which it sits now as having been really open to the public for 10 years but it was really for me a love of that whole western mountains region of Maine. I’ve been a resident of Jackman for almost 30 years with a few stints in Millinocket and Sugarloaf, but that’s always Maine holds a special place overall but that kind of area from the New Hampshire border up across from Moosehead and out towards Millinocket has always held a very special spot in my heart.
It was a big of a challenge to take an opportunity of really taking all that I had learned from the marketing perspective, the connectivity, all the networking, all the people that I had met at my time at the office of tourism and really kind of put almost theory into practice. Taking bits and pieces of experiences throughout my lifetime, everything from the time at Cornell, at the hotel school through working for Matt Polstein at New England Outdoor Center, running my own restaurant, there were all these tidbits of experiences that really covered everything that is Maine Huts and Trails with some new challenges on top of it.
Lisa Belisle: I want to ask you about the new challenges but first I’m interested in why you decided that you want to go to Cornell, to the school of hotel administration.
Carolann O.: I was looking at a few schools. It really ended up being fortuitous in the sense that I originally wanted to follow my dad’s footsteps and be a pilot. That just wasn’t working out the way I had planned originally in high school. I got my license but didn’t go a whole lot further. Cornell, it had a lot of allure just from the size of the school itself. Obviously, I was fortunate to be accepted to an Ivy League school but it was one of the ones that had in my mind the broader diversity across the different campuses and the different colleges within the university. I didn’t originally go for the hotel school. I wanted to do international relations and economics and discovered a lot of freshmen, fellow freshmen that were in the hotel administration program and I just thought, “Wow, that is a really, really fascinating career path to be able to follow,” and what better place. Again, really fortuitous.
Lisa Belisle: That’s interesting. When you’re a freshman in that program, what types of classes are you taking?
Carolann O.: I wasn’t able to transfer until my sophomore year and you start out with a pretty broad range of curriculum. It had everything from early on. We had a food science course. We had intro to food preparation. We had intro to marketing classes. We had psychology classes. Intro to accounting and finance. We covered things I think in my first year even you had an intro to hotel design and engineering. You had real estate courses. You had almost three years of on and off engineering and design. You had a lot of management courses that’s why the psychology and how to manage people and how to build teams there was an incredible amount around the food piece as well but most of it was really and a lot around the marketing HR. Again, how to manage people. Real estate, quite a bit in real estate and finance and because it was so multi disciplinary, you really had a broad base to come out of there recognizing you could specialize or you could go into the broader field itself. We were required to do a number of humanities courses and then throughout the time, summers were spent really trying to make sure that you are finding jobs inside the industry.
Lisa Belisle: Where did you grow up?
Carolann O.: I grew up in New Jersey.
Lisa Belisle: When you’re growing up, did you think, “Oh, I think I’d like to go into this field,” or did you think, “I’m going to be a pilot like my dad”?
Carolann O.: No, I pretty much figured I would try and fly like my dad. I wanted to travel. I knew I wanted to somehow be engaged in travel tourism, something like that. The international relation sort of economics piece I felt coming out of high school was a way to open up the opportunity to travel. That has always been my first love and I really did not anticipate, I didn’t consider myself a people person necessarily. The whole concept of hotel administration hospitality and all of that seemed a little bit outside of who I was as an individual. Again, it was one of those pathways that in so many respects just hit so many passion points for me. It was just one of those places and times where the fact that I ended up at Cornell and that was the home of the school of hotel administration was just a remarkable opportunity.
Lisa Belisle: It’s such an interesting contrast to say I’m not a people person and then do the work that you do. All the things that you just described they require so much time with people.
Carolann O.: They do.
Lisa Belisle: Have you developed into a people person or you’ve just decided, “You know what? I probably always was a people person,” and just not necessarily like super extrovert.
Carolann O.: I think that describes it really quite well. I have grown in so many different ways over the course of time. Primarily because of the different experiences professionally that I’ve had through my lifetime and really it’s interesting even when I graduated from Cornell I still wasn’t necessarily a people person. My love at the point of graduation was really back at the house on the food and beverage side of things. I followed that a little bit but not until much later when I had my own restaurant but it’s still was something I gravitated more to sort of behind the scenes than I did out front. The juxtaposition really came when I ended up at the Office of Tourism and that primarily started as behind the scenes in essence hiring, I was hired as deputy director really to support all the activities of the office and the director herself.
When the director position was offered to me, obviously it was something I was not going to turn down but it really stepped up my ability to interact with people on a regular basis, be out in front of people and really change that dynamic. I think basically I’ve been good with networking over my years of where I’ve been and what I’ve done and a lot of what I had done I pushed myself to be in that landscape so that I’d see opportunity and have new projects ahead and just one thing lead to another. I’ve certainly had a chance to grow at each position that I’ve held and that’s been so rewarding from a lifestyle perspective.
Lisa Belisle: How did you go from being, I don’t know where you lived in New Jersey, I know there’s some wilderness in New Jersey but not a ton but to somebody who really loves Jackman and Millinocket and western Maine and really not as populated areas where you came from.
Carolann O.: That’s certainly true and it’s interesting. My family, I really have had the best of so many worlds because my grandparents own a business in New York City so we spent a lot of time as children, the special events, birthdays, everything else going to theater, doing a lot of fun museum hopping all the way around to the cultural experience of New York City and what it has to offer. We did live towards the western, north western side of New Jersey so out towards the Delaware Water Gap and spent a lot of time in the outdoors as children. My grandparents had a weekend as it turned out to be a retirement place that was 60 plus acres of tree farm. I remember growing up with Audubon and nature conservancy magazines across the coffee tables. It was really a love of the outdoors.
They originally went with friends from New York to a place in Jackman in the 50s called Attean Lake Lodge. My mother then took us as children and that was the first place really that I ended up working because I love the whole concept of being on an island in a lake. Very remote. Quite pampered I would say from the style of service and guest experience but really just being able to escape and I think that goes that’s a little bit of that counter yes I’m a people person but I also love the solitude and wonderful openness of the wilderness or the Maine woods. It’s not even necessarily wilderness but just being out in the natural landscape.
Lisa Belisle: That’s actually what Maine Huts and Trails offers, isn’t it? That you have the wilderness.
Carolann O.: Right.
Lisa Belisle: Then you also offer a place where people can be, can stay and there’s usually other people there. It is that contrast, that juxtaposition.
Carolann O.: It is and I think that’s what makes Maine Huts and Trails fairly special in what that guest experience becomes and it’s different for different people but it really is the opportunity to be in the outdoors. Push yourself a little bit if you’d like to depending upon your skill level but recognizing that you’ve got a bit of support in the sense that you’re on marked trails, you’re getting a back country experience without necessarily having to worry too much about where you’re headed and what you’re doing because at the end of the day you’re headed for one of the huts. Huts we’ve often internally it’s a bit of a misnomer, more of a wilderness lodge. When you get to the lodge you can either find your own personal space or there’s just an incredible sense of camaraderie when you’re inside where other people are joining you.
It’s a family style meal service. You’re getting to know the hut staff that live there. There’s a lot of personal interaction. Often we hear stories of families that have met at the huts and continue then to either return as a trip to the special place that they met and or even spend time together in their regular lives outside of Maine Huts and Trails. It is very much a time to really be with yourself, disconnect, yet at the same time spend time with new friends, family, and loved ones.
Lisa Belisle: There’s been a lot of growth over the last several years with Maine Huts and Trails from what I understand.
Carolann O.: There has. It’s interesting, this year in, if I’m not mistaken about two weeks will be the 10th anniversary of the opening of the first hut which was the Poplar Stream Hut. The first three were built fairly quickly one right after the other so Poplar Stream then Flagstaff Hut not long thereafter. Then the Grand Falls Hut which is out on the Dead River. Then the last hut that was built was open about four years ago, so Stratton Brook. Really it was a pretty fast track in getting those four up and the trail connectivity all laid out. It’s really been about building the visitation and also building on the mission and the long range goals around the environmental stewardship and bringing young people into the outdoors and getting them to understand conservation and how important all that is to the landscape. Right now we’re 10 years in. What’s next? That was really one of the exciting parts about the attractiveness of the opportunity really is being able to play a role in where it goes from here.
Lisa Belisle: That’s a very different role than the beginning of an organization. In the beginning it’s kind of entrepreneurial, it’s hit the ground running, it’s let’s see what we can … I guess it’s a younger organization.
Carolann O.: Right.
Lisa Belisle: Ten years in it’s a more mature organization so it’s almost as if it’s two different things that you’re dealing with.
Carolann O.: That’s really interesting. It is different in the sense of yeah everything is go, go, go, modeling it out, figuring out what’s going to work. Particularly as I’m learning because the non-profit world is new to me so that hence one of the challenges, that’s something I have not done in my past, working with funders, figuring out how this is all going to play out. I think of Dave Herring and I had met many of the founder and some of the founding board members and Dave Herring when he was the first executive director. I start at the Office of Tourism about the same time they opened Poplar hut but 10 years, interesting I’ve learned life cycles of non-profits so 10 years can almost be viewed as yes we have some maturity. We’ve got brand recognition, people, there is continuation of those that have been so supportive of us through that whole time and then there’s the next generation.
Not next generation necessarily in people but next iteration of the model and how do we … Is the original model, there’s conversations we have at different levels, is the original model the linear huts and trail system 10 years later? Is that still a model? Looking at connectivity, communities, what else is across the landscape, what’s changed in the 10 years from the time that we opened our doors at Poplar and even the concept goes back so much further than that. Larry Warren’s initial vision, building the support to even bring it to reality. Yes, more entrepreneurial probably in its beginnings at the inception but still now at a point of really having an opportunity to move it into the next generation.
Lisa Belisle: What are some of the challenges?
Carolann O.: Some of the challenges personally for me is just understanding how the non-profit world works versus I mean I’ve done four profit, I’ve done public service and the non-profit piece I really I think as I learn how it all plays together is it’s sometimes it’s just different terminology than the four profit world. You have so many of the donors and funders and supporters, I suppose you could look at it in some respects as investors but at certainly very different expectation at the end. It’s meeting a whole new network of people. Really the people that I had some interaction with just at the Office of Tourism recognizing that we do have non-profits inside the state of Maine that are also providing guest experiences.
There were some crossover but really not as much knowledge as I thought I might have moving into it. I had the guest experience piece and the travel and tourism piece and the marketing pieces in place but really learning how do you … The process of having members, the process of working regularly with all the different people who have made commitments and are personally really invested in the organization and the foundations that support us. It’s a really broad network of people that help make a non-profit run and so that’s been a wonderful learning curve for me.
Lisa Belisle: I remember that Dave Herring was probably one of our early guest.
Carolann O.: Great.
Lisa Belisle: Long time ago and now I believe he’s at Wolfe Neck.
Carolann O.: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: He’s doing good work over there.
Carolann O.: Amazing.
Lisa Belisle: He was young and enthusiastic and you could just see him like out on the trails. I think he had a small child at that time.
Carolann O.: He did, yes.
Lisa Belisle: He just embodied this wilderness, this vision of wilderness. You have your own version of that. In addition to being the executive director, you’re also a very outdoorsy person like this is a place that you love to be.
Carolann O.: I think that was one of the other things that attracted me to the position is at the Office of Tourism it’s funny there have been different times the Office of Tourism was an opportunity to learn the broad landscape. I mean, I got to go pretty much almost every place in Maine. I got to meet an incredible breath of individuals that are providing guest experiences across the landscape. On top of that, it actually enabled me to learn more at the national level. It provided me with the opportunity. We become part of the National Council of State Tourism Directors so you’re learning from colleagues across all 50 states. We’re part of the U.S. Travel Association so learning at the national scale what’s driving travel and tourism, what is important from a policy perspective along with what’s really important from a market destination, marketing perspective, what’s trending.
I’ve always loved to be in the outdoors and a lot of that started early as we mentioned but it really came into play the Attean Lake Lodge piece certainly just wondering and exploring on my own but working for Matt Polstein at New England Outdoor Center in many ways has been such a mentor. Recognizing that there’s business that can be done as part of a passion related to the outdoors and outdoor recreation and providing a truly unique guest experience in a place where people may not have considered visiting at other times. I mean, the fascination about the Maine woods for me is the balance of the working forest landscape, the traditions when you think of Fly Rod Crosby, the Registered Maine Guide, those traditional sports that came from afar really into the north Maine woods guided through all kind of different experiences. To be able to carry on that tradition yet do it as the trends evolve and guest experiences and expectations evolve and continue to play that out is really, really a fascinating component.
Lisa Belisle: From what I understand, you can take advantage of Maine Huts and Trails really anytime of the year. Even in the deepest, coldest, darkest part of winter you actually encourage people to go out there and participate.
Carolann O.: We do. It’s about embracing winter, that’s a big piece and honestly Maine Huts and Trails if I’m not mistaken really started more as a back country winter experience. The idea was to develop this trail network that provided for a cross-country ski, I think initially more or less a cross-country ski experience from hut to hut based on many of the European models as you see them across the landscape. It’s interesting how it evolved in recognizing the growth in outdoor recreation overall. Really, people’s move to healthier lifestyles and using the outdoors as a way to really live better I think in many respects and the recognition also was to be a sustainable organization or work towards that at some point in time doing just three months a year where you’ve got some pretty remarkable structures out there and people who really want to work and be part of that wasn’t going to be necessarily as viable as if you became year-round.
They started as cross-country skiing but as I back up and think about the mission, the original mission and it still holds true today is really to be a year-round outdoor recreation resource of national significance. It was intended to be year-round but it started with the winter piece first. Over the years considerable investment has been placed into the sustainability of the trails themselves. Winter, it’s great, you’re on snow so you’re not impacting the landscape as much as when you start hiking and biking and doing other things through the trail network. The investment has been really about build out but also surface areas and drainage and making sure that that trail system is really very solid for the long-term.
Lisa Belisle: It seems as though you would need to continue to have conversations with multiple different players in this. I mean, we have in the winter we have snowmobilers, we have cross-country skiers, the fat tire bikers are out pretty much all year-round. I mean, everybody’s got slightly different take on what it means to have a nice trail.
Carolann O.: I think that’s probably true. I mean, for us, we’re focused on the people-powered recreation. We have certainly our trails managers, Savannah Steele and the trails manager ahead of her, Jason Cooke spent time really working with all the user groups even where we intersect with the snowmobile trails or the ATV trails. Just understanding that we’re all playing across the same area but the different user groups, it’s interesting. I think it’s more about the passion and being in the outdoors and following the pursuit that you love best but recognizing that we’re all in it together and we just want to be out there having fun. We see multiple users across the system particular as you mention in non-winter and even now in winter the fat tire piece has just grown dramatically.
A lot of investment has been made not just by us but also by the town of Carrabassett Valley, the Carrabassett region doing the mountain biking association club, Sugarloaf, we’re all in a group together called Carrabassett Valley Trails which is pooling resources to expand the mountain biking system. Looking again at that summer primarily because the area has been known back to winter the area has been known as a winter destination. How do you become more year-round as a region as well. It’s fun to see when you’re out there you’ll have a family that’s snowshoeing, you’ve got some cross-country skiers coming by. We lay track in the winter. The other day we had 20 fat bikers coming through the system from Stratton Brook to Poplar so it actually when you get to the hut you’ve got all these different people interacting that have come to the hut by different modes of people-powered activity but they just love being in the outdoors.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been doing this for a little more than a year now.
Carolann O.: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Hopefully, you’ll be doing it for many years to come but what are you looking forward to the most in this year?
Carolann O.: In this year, that’s a good question. It’s funny, the first year has been so much of a learning absorption period. I think if anything for me personally I’m looking forward to actually moving into the what’s next phase rather than just learning and I’ll always be learning so I should take that back. For me, I’d like a personal thing at training that I told the hut staff that we do a three to four day training with new hut staff each season. One of the things was I definitely wanted to spend more time with them out on the trails and in the huts so again, less time out there figuring out who all the players are and how I need to interact with a lot of new different people but also being able to actually participate in the activities, they are so much a part of who we are.
The other piece for me is getting to know those that have been such strong supporters of the organization throughout its 10 years plus at this point. I still have a lot of introductions and people to meet and stories to hear and stories to tell. The next year will really be more about that than anything. I was able to do some of that in the first year. It was so much shepherding from our board and other people that are very, very active in the organization but then there’s so many people still that I haven’t met that have been very engaged over 10 plus years that are either regular guest or regular members or fairly sizable supporters. That’s going to be really important to me and really starting to lay out what the next steps are.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Carolann Ouellette who joined Maine Huts and Trails as Executive Director in January of 2017 and previously served at the Director of Maine Office of Tourism. Thank you very much for coming in and having this conversation today.
Carolann O.: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Lisa.
Speaker 1: Portland Art Gallery is proud to sponsor Love Maine Radio. Portland Art Gallery is the city’s largest and is located in the heart of The Old Port at 154 Middle Street. The gallery focuses on exhibiting the work of contemporary Maine artists and hosts a series of monthly solo shows in its newly expanded space, including Ingunn Joergensen, Brenda Cirioni, Daniel Corey, Jill Hoy, and Dave Allen. For complete show details, please visit our website at artcollectormaine.com.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 338. Our guests have included Lori Parham and Carolann Ouellette. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa and see our Love Maine Radio photos on Instagram. 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 pleased that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for sharing this part of your day with me. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is brought to you by Maine Magazine, Aristelle, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music are by Spencer Albee. Our Editorial Producer is Kate Gardner. Our Assistant Producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our Community Development Manager is Casey Lovejoy, and our Executive Producers are Andrea King, Kevin Thomas, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. For more information on our production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at Lovemaineradio.com.