Monday, May 25, 2015

Maine - Part 2

About fifteen years ago, while we were still living in Massachusetts, I got so fed up with all the development occurring in the small coastal town we lived in that I decided to buy the biggest piece of land I could afford to keep in its natural state as a wildlife refuge.  Every new house for a human destroys the homes of thousands of birds, bugs, and beasts.  I ended up buying a piece of woodland and wetland fronting on a river in Maine, so far north it's almost in Canada.  We went there a few times before moving back to Pennsylvania, but we hadn't been there for over ten years.




While we were recently in Camden, ME, we drove to the land.  The forest had been logged ten or more years before I bought it, but it hadn't been ravaged like many pieces of woodland I had looked at.  There were three old logging roads running back into the property.  We had expected them to be overgrown with sturdy young trees, so we were surprised when the roads were still passable.  Only a blanket of young firs, about a foot high, were filling in the space.



Between the firs and the deciduous trees, there were stands of white birch, adding accents to the dark.


I was excited to see signs of a deer scraping its antlers on a small tree.  There are moose in the area, but I don't think the scrape was high enough to have been done by a moose.


The old logging roads will apparently stay fairly open for years to come, but it will be interesting to see how nature takes them back and hides them.



5 comments:

  1. gorgeous! Any plans to build a little house on your property?

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    1. The problem is that I bought it to preserve it from logging or development. On the one hand, if I ever have to sell it, having a small footprint house at the front of the property would increase it's value and make it difficult to access the back of the land for logging. So, I'm still thinking about it. A little house on stilts? A tree house?

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  3. It looks like paradise and I would be severely tempted to build a wee eco house there if I were you. I'm so happy that it's all looking so good and you have nobody squatting there!

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    1. Well, I'm tempted, too. But the hidden costs (like a well and a septic system) hold me back. I also would have to make sure it didn't destroy any of the animals homes already there. I'm glad the land is continuing to heal from the previous logging. Lovely, soft little fir trees!

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