The winter adventures continue! The #WEOUTSIDE program partnered with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands to have a day of ice fishing at Range Pond State Park in Poland. Range Pond is a great place for activities all year round: swimming, boating, fishing, hiking, birdwatching, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, and eating lots of snacks. We were fortunate to have interpretive and educational staff from the park and the state agencies on hand with all the gear you need for a great day on the ice, from tip ups to augers to red snapper hot dogs and s’mores.

The sweet spot for catching stocked brook trout is usually over by 10am but these kids had the magic touch. Tip up flags were flying up all over the ice, trout were being skillfully yanked out of holes, IF&W staff were showing kids how to clean and prepare the fish. Per capita, hand warmer usage was high but lower than on previous #WEOUTSIDE outings due to the sun and lack of wind. The group caught so many trout that some of the kids were able to take them home to eat. This group is from Angola and fish is a big part of their diet so it was interesting to compare how different cultures prepare and cook fish. And since we all know that part of winter recreation is good warm food, there were red snappers (the red hot dogs) and s’mores to keep everybody warm and satisfied.

More adventures with #WEOUTSIDE to come!

The #WEOUTSIDE crew is back at it for a round of trips to experience outdoor recreation in Maine’s winter months! The program participants from the summer edition are all geared up and ready for some downhill skiing, ice fishing, fat biking, hiking, hand warmer wearing, and more. The Maine Association for New Americans and the Maine Appalachian Trail Land Trust have been so fortunate to have the support of so many foundations, brands, partners and individual donors to keep this special program going. And we’re already planning for the summer of 2024!

Our initial trip this winter was in partnership with Loon Echo Land Trust for a day of nordic (cross country) skiing at Five Fields Farm. The property is an apple orchard in the warmer months and is surrounded by lands conserved by Loon Echo in the Bridgton area. In the winter it is a great spot to learn to cross country ski because of the flat trails, good snow and nice lodge to hang out in. Special thanks to Loon Echo for providing the rental skis and passes for the #WEOUTSIDE participants!

Despite having ZERO experience on skis, these kids were amazing. All of them were out on the trails for several hours – some were cruising on the more difficult trails, some were doing hill climbs five minutes after getting on skis, some were flopping around and zooming down slopes through the orchards (fortunately missing the trees!). They will build on these skills later in the winter with a downhill skiing trip and another trail center day. Stay tuned for more reports.

One of the values of the Grafton Forest Wilderness conservation easement is the protection it will provide to the Appalachian Trail itself, but this can be complicated. The above image of the survey map shows what we mean when we note this fact. On this map, the A.T. – the actual trail you are walking on in the Grafton Notch area in Maine – is denoted by the brown/beige dashed line with the famous “AT” symbol laid over it. When Grafton Notch State Park was created in 1963, it was assumed that the A.T. was within the white area shown on this map. That would mean that the trail was owned by Maine State Parks and was therefore open for public access forever. When we undertook the Grafton Forest Wilderness project with Northeast Wilderness Trust, they commissioned a boundary survey before acquiring the land (shown in yellow above) from a timber company. To everybody’s surprise, the A.T. treadway was actually located on the timber company land.

Northeast Wilderness Trust purchased the property without any restrictions, and by now adding a conservation easement to this land they own, we can apply guarantees of public access to the A.T. If you hike up to Old Speck Mountain from the parking lot in Grafton Notch State Park, you will still pass from that area into land owned by Northeast Wilderness Trust. But once the land is protected by a conservation easement, your right to continue into their land will be guaranteed. Northeast Wilderness Trust is a fellow conservation organization and would never do that! But enshrining rights of the public to the Appalachian Trail is extremely important to ensure that one of the nation’s foremost outdoor recreation resources is open to everybody forever.

For the full series, check out Borealis: The Nature of Maine.

A group of kids on a canoe trip is a pretty normal summer camp activity in Maine. But for most of these teens, it’s their first time in a canoe. Most of their families recently arrived in Maine from Angola, and today is a welcome reprieve from the crowded emergency shelter in Portland where they’ve been living.

Their trip is organized by a new grant-funded program #WEOUTSIDE, run by the Maine Association of New Americans (MANA). The program launched this summer to introduce asylum seeker teenagers to the Maine Outdoors. Program leader Moon Machar said the goal of the program is to help young people of color access and enjoy the outdoors.

With support from a grant from The Nature Based Education Consortium and a partnership with the Maine Appalachian Trail Land Trust, Machar took about a dozen campers out on a new outdoor adventure each week. In this story, Ari Snider joins Machar and the teens for a paddle on a beautiful sunny day in the Rangeley Lakes Region of Western Maine.

Trip #7! It’s hard to believe that we have been out exploring with MANA through this wonderful program for over two months now. For our latest excursion, we teamed up with the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands to explore Grafton Notch State Park and all the great things to do in the park.

It was chilly to start! But that was ok since the group had a chance to break out their ponchos. It’s been a rainy summer but we have been lucky to have nice weather on the days we have been out in the Maine A.T. region. We headed over to Moose Cave, where there were many questions about the origin of the name and what happened to the dead moose. Jen and Jocelyn from Maine BPL had a number of activities set up for the participants to learn about geology, natural history, ecology, plant and animal identification, and lots of other stuff that you can find in Grafton Notch. We also explored Mother Walker Falls before heading to Screw Auger Falls.

This natural feature, comprised of the river, the falls and a gorge at its base, was a great opportunity to explore and for the kids to get out on their own. It is also a great spot for having lunch, swimming and making plaster casts of animal tracks! This great activity also had the participants take home their own cast, a nice memory of the day. Maine BPL and Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife also provided some posters and activity books to bring home.

Just a few weeks left of #WEOUTSIDE!!!

Our sixth trip! These outings have been amazing so far, and we have been fortunate to have had great weather despite the rainy season. This trip to Little Bigelow might have featured the best conditions of all for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. We enlisted Samaa Abdurraqib who is a multitalented Mainer in arts, humanities and community work, but she’s also a Wilderness First Responder, an organizer for Outdoor Afro, and a Maine Master Naturalist!

We headed out looking to make it as far up Little Bigelow as time would allow. Samaa talked to the group about different elements of nature that were all around us, including ferns and how to tell them apart, how to identify balsams by their nice smell, and different things on the forest floor (mushrooms, toads, flowers, etc.). She also pointed out the many birch trees to connect to last week’s learning about birch bark canoes! And maple trees to connect to syrup.

We had lunch at the A.T. shelter on the way – interviews with another camera crew making another documentary, ho hum. The kids had a chance to talk a little with some kind thru-hikers who were equally grateful for the extra sandwiches we gave them. We continued on, reaching the summit of a knoll with a nice view in the afternoon. The knoll featured many blueberries and the kids were able to pick lots! They had lots of questions about when they grow, why in Maine, and what you could make with them. Samaa answered them all!

The trip down was fairly quick – no swimming for this trip due to cooler temperatures but we have more #WEOUTSIDE excursions to come!

Our next #WEOUTSIDE trip was a truly special one: a trip to Penobscot Nation tribal lands to learn about Wabanaki culture and the relationship to the land. We were fortunate to have four personnel from the Penobscot Nation Department of Natural Resources who took the group out to locations that the public doesn’t normally get to see.

This including a great swimming location where Shantel talked to the group about the importance of water quality. The kids are thinking of water primarily as something to swim in but Shantel showed them the water quality levels and the importance of clean streams for cold water fish species and drinking water. Chuck talked to them about some of the riparian tree species nearby – white/paper birch as the species for making canoes and black ash as the central species in the Wabanaki creation story of Gluskabe firing an arrow into its trunk, and the Wabanaki people springing forth from it.

These were great connections for the kids to make, given that they had paddled canoes and seen many white birch and other species out on our trips!

We would like to extend our great thanks to the Penobscot Nation Department of Natural Resources for having us as their guests!