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MAINE TO GREENLAND : Georgetown to Uummannaq

Story and all photos by Willfred E. Richard © Will Richard Photography

Maine Chapter Board Member, Will Richard, is visiting the area of the northernmost section of the International Appalachian Trail close to Uummannaq, Greenland, the home village of some of the Greenland Chapter’s leaders. Currently, traveling to Greenland is not all that difficult – although it is not cheap. Icelandic Air will fly you from Boston to Iceland, Air Iceland will fly you from Iceland to Ilulissat in Northwest Greenland. Then, Air Greenland will fly you to the north side of the Nuussuaq Peninsula to Qaarsut and then by helicopter over the sea with icebergs floating below to Uummannaq, an island town and to seven small outlying settlements within Uummannaq Fjord.

Uummannaq is located at about 71 degrees latitude , about 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, which is almost the same latitude as Alaska’s northern-most town, Point Barrow.

For perhaps a decade now, I have been visiting Greenland – with my wife Lindsay and sometimes solo. For much of that time, I have wanted to travel on Greenland’s sea ice as I have on the ice of Canada’s Inuit Territory of Nunavut. But, a major difference is that ice travel in Nunavut is almost exclusively by snowmobile and komatek (sled) and sea ice on this side of Baffin Bay has become quite limited. In Greenland, ice travel is almost exclusively by dog sledge – but that is apparently changing. In at least a half-dozen previous trips to Uummannaq Fjord, I have planned to be here when there is sea ice. But, with rising Arctic temperatures, there has been no sea ice during my visits in May, June, August, September – even in December and January.

Earlier this year, our good friend and frequent visitor to Maine, René Kristiansen of the Children’s Home in Uummannaq e-mailed me: this is the year for ice. So, as a Research Collaborator with the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center and Research Fellow with the Uummannaq Polar Institute, I am enjoying this now rare opportunity to travel by dog sledge and to enquire about climate change and implications for Greenlandic traditional culture. Faroese Islander Ann Andreasen is Director of both the Uummannaq Children’s Home and of the Uummannaq Polar Institute.

And, there is another piece of this story which has definite local application in Maine. That is the International Appalachian Trail, an idea first advanced by Maine’s Dick Anderson in 1994. With a sister range created in the same tectonic plate event which created the Appalachian range, Greenland’s Caledonide range provides a link to the International Appalachian Trail and across the North Atlantic to Europe . In July of this year, with a party of seven, these Greenlanders will hike from Mt. Katahdin to the New Brunswick border.

In these last few years Greenlanders have not been exactly rare visitors in Maine. A few years ago after meeting René in Uummannaq, he mentioned that a few Greenlanders may be in NYC that fall and that they may visit us in Maine. Well, with two days notice and with a two-bedroom house, Lindsay and I were visited by 14 Greenlanders. Fortunately, good friend Don Hudson and the Chewonki Foundation came to the rescue with bed and board.

Now travel is not only from Maine to Greenland but also from Greenland to Maine, establishing ties of wilderness hiking, of music and film, and friendships.

My experience in helping Maine IAT work near the U.S./Canadian border by Walt Guerette (GIS student intern at UMPI GIS Laboratory) (Pictures by Chunzeng Wang)

May 22nd was my first day working in the field with the UMPI GIS Laboratory as a summer GIS project intern. I knew we would be hiking a section of the IAT leading over Mars Hill, but I really didn’t know what to expect. We were accompanied by Justine Cyr, who was also working her first day in the field as a GIS summer intern. After meeting up with Dave and Richard Rand, we drove to the base of Mars Hill, stopping occasionally to put up IAT markers along the road.

After parking Chunzeng’s car at the north end of the Mars Hill section of the IAT we would be hiking, we piled into the bed of Dave’s pickup and ascended First Wind’s access road. My father, as a Project Manager for Reed &Reed Engineering, spent lots of time working on the Mars Hill Wind Turbine project, so I had always been interested. Just getting to ride the access road on our way to the beginning of the trail section was probably the highlight of my day. After a quick detour to repair and clean up the Mars Hill lean-to site, we drove to the beginning of our trail section and began hiking, clearing and trimming the trail and putting signs as we hiked. I used one of UMPI’s Trimble GeoXH GPS units to map the trail as we hiked.

On Friday the 25th, Chunzeng, Dave, and I hiked into the Fort Fairfield lean-to site along the Fort Fairfield section of the IAT US/Canada border trail, accompanied by Kim McCrea who is UMPI OAPI Manager and Gentle Hall Assistant Director, and her dog, Bella. No mapping was done today, but we repaired one sign post and placed another as we hiked, in addition to cleaning up the Fort Fairfield lean-to site. The trail brought us along side the US border markers, which was a first for me. On our drive home, we stopped periodically to place IAT markers along telephone poles accordingly. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be able to work in these places. From driving around the Mars Hill wind towers to hiking along the U.S. Border, it’s pretty hard to believe that I get to call this “work”.

At the Mars Hill lean-to, Richard Rand, Chunzeng Wang, Justine Cyr, Walt Guerette, and David Rand

Chainsaw Carpentry at Mars Hill lean-to

Walking the IAT First Wind road section

Removing a blowdown from the trail

At the Fort Fairfield lean-to, Chunzeng Wang, Kim McCrea with Bella, David Rand, and Walt Guerette

Maine chapter board member, Thomas Urquhart has reviewed Ian Marshall’s Border Crossings. You might find it interesting. A portion of the proceeds will go to the IAT so buy a copy and help the IAT!

“Border Crossings: Walking the Haiku Path on the International Appalachian Trail.” By Ian Marshall. Hiraeth Press. 291 pages. $17.95

In 1998, Ian Marshall had finished hiking, section by section, the venerable Appalachian Trail. A professor of English and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona, he also was becoming interested in haiku, those little quintessentially Japanese snippets of acute observation.

Then he heard about the International Appalachian Trail, the brainchild of former Maine Audubon director and state conservation commissioner Dick Anderson. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the IAT board, and also a former Audubon director.) The upshot became a ruminative walk from Mount Katahdin to Cap Gaspe in Quebec, at that time the IAT’s eastern terminus.

The hike was completed two weeks at a time over six consecutive years, and has resulted in "Border Crossings: Walking the Haiku Path on the International Appalachian Trail."

The narrative unfolds day by day, with each chapter given an intriguing title beginning with "The Day of," referring to something that happened, like "The Day of Hitching a Ride with Gravity" or that Marshall experienced, like "The Day of Sunlight Shaped Like an Hourglass" or didn’t experience, as in "The Day of No Moose."

Marshall combines his experiences along the trail with insights into what makes a haiku. The book is studded with his personal efforts in that poetic form.

The inspiration for this exercise was the 17th-century poet and haiku master Matsuo Basho, who in 1689 made a similar journey into Japan’s northern mountains. Basho chronicled his experiences in "Narrow Road to the Deep North," combining with his poems a travelogue full of literary criticism and cultural meditation. The book was Marshall’s constant trail companion, along with his partner (now wife; they married three weeks after reaching Cap Gaspe).

In their tent each evening, Marshall assiduously read Basho, logged their experiences as hikers, and rendered some of them into his own haiku (yes, "hike-u"; Marshall is an inveterate punster). The art of haiku is so tightly and invisibly tied to Japanese literary tradition that conveying the full meaning in English translation is all but impossible. When the form itself jumps the East-West divide, it must remake itself.

I learned a lot about haiku from "Border Crossings" – among other things, that it often contains a mixture of high and low, sublime and ridiculous. I am no expert, but my guess is that such a combination may be the hardest to pull off.

One of Marshall’s attempts that worked for me goes: "clear August night/wishing that first star/would hurry up and shine." As Basho explained three centuries ago, "To jot down such things and relate them to others is one of the true treasures of the journey."

Such "jottings" Basho also likened to the "delirium of a drunk or the rambling of one asleep," and Marshall claims no more. He is delightfully self-effacing as he lays the fruits of his labor before the reader.

Did he succeed in his stated goal of learning to write a "decent haiku" while hiking the International Appalachian Trail? I generally agree with his verdict of "a few times," although he is typically, and perhaps unnecessarily, harsh on himself. There is something really satisfying, as well as charming, about his final verse: "atop the vanquished mountain/a mosquito/atop my hat."

Like its model, "Border Crossings" is a combination of literary discussion, poetry and travel journal. Some of Marshall’s descriptions of the unsung, unheroic aspects of hiking have a welcome freshness.

For example, early on he describes the first moment on a hike when "you are caught up in the rhythm of the walk, unaware not only of the weight of the pack on your back or the thud of each step on the trail but of any conscious thought at all."

Descriptions capture the highlights of the trail with admirable conciseness (what would you expect from a writer of haiku?). And frankness: He is far from complimentary about the condition of stretches of the trail in Quebec (but that was 10 years ago).

Hiraeth Press (from the Welsh, signifying the "deep longing of the soul for one’s original homeland") has produced an elegant book. It includes a glossary of haiku terms to help the reader with unfamiliar concepts.

However, the map at the beginning is inexplicably inadequate for so detailed a log. And the editors could have exercised a firmer hand with Marshall and his companion’s jokey badinage. It becomes a distraction and, in the end, an impediment.

We have all kept journals and noted in them the occasional bon mot that seemed quite priceless at the time but does not stand the test of time. Without them, the really interesting, appealing and original aspects of "Border Crossings" would have shone forth all the more, like "the raspberries we picked along the road to the lighthouse, beacons for our attention."

Marshall continues: "Somehow, though, all these disparate tones blend together in a seamless whole, stitched together by our steps." Well said.

Freelance writer Thomas Urquhart is a former director of Maine Audubon and author of "For the Beauty of the Earth."

On March 18-20, 2012, Walter Anderson, IAT Chief Geologist and Board Member, attended the 47th Annual meeting of the Northeast Section of the Geological Society of America (NEGSA) convened at the Marriot Hartford, Hartford Conn. Walter, an NEGSA member, also represented an IAT sponsor, Poland Spring Waters/ Nestle Waters of North America. He set up and managed a Poland Spring exhibitors booth on water at the meeting, and included IAT poster displays of the “Appalachian Terranes” and the “Origin of the Appalachians”. There were well over a thousand registrants in attendance. A total of 488 oral and poster sessions were presented covering geological Symposia, Theme sessions, Discipline Sessions, Workshops and Field Trips. There was much interest in IAT and numerous informational IAT bookmarks were dispensed.

Respectfully submitted,

Walter Anderson

Alabama State Flag

Alabama Hiking Trails Society (AHTS)

At the invitation of the Alabama Hiking Trails Society (AHTS), representatives of the International Appalachian Trail(IAT) delivered a presentation on the history and development of the IAT at the annual meeting of AHTS. The meeting was held in Columbiana, Alabama on March 9 and 10. Don Hudson, Maine IAT Chapter President and Dick Anderson, Maine Chapter Treasurer, represented the IAT and gave the presentation on Saturday morning.

Dick Anderson and Don Hudson at Flagg Mountain Summit

Don Hudson, Maine IAT Chapter, President with famous long-distance

hiker, and IAT thru-hiker~"Mother Nature’s Son", John Calhoun at the

summit of Flagg Mountain–the south end of the Appalachian Mountains

in North America. John was our host at the meeting.

The AHTS~trail register at Flag Mountain; note ECT hiker Sterling

Coleman signed just before Don and Dick.

The presentation was well received and there was great interest in the continuing development of the IAT. The AHTS trails include many miles of trail through the southern Appalachian Mountains in Alabama, south of the end of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain, Georgia. Dick and Don asked~members of AHTS to consider becoming a Chapter of the IAT.

John Calhoun "Mother Nature’s Son" a thru hiker of the~IAT—Crow~Head to Katahdin 2007—and a member of AHTS, guided Don and Dick on a trip to the summit of Flagg Mountain, the~southernmost one thousand foot mountain in the Appalachian Mountain chain in North America. Don was thrilled to get to~Flagg Mountain, having been~hearing about that mountain for many years.

Both Dick and Don had a wonderful time and thanked the folks at AHTS~for their great "southern hospitality"

For more information about AHTS please visit their web site at www.hikealabama.org~~~

The pictures, accompanying this story, were taken by Don and John.

Distant View of Flagg Mountain (Photo taken by Mike Kennedy, President of AHTS)

Andrew Graves Speaks to Maine Chapter Representatives

The Management Officer of the American Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland has decided to plant some roots in Maine, and the Maine Chapter organized a special dinner recently to welcome Andrew and Kristin Graves to Portland. The dinner served a second important purpose, as several board members in attendance will attend the first international meeting of all of the chapters of the International Appalachian Trail scheduled for June 15th in Reykjavik. The Maine delegation will be lead by IAT founder Dick Anderson, and will also include geologists Walter Anderson and Robert Marvinney, as well as Will Richard, Earl Raymond and Maine Chapter President Don Hudson. In addition to the board members, Cheryl Marvinney, Lindsay Dorney, Phine Ewing and Maureen Ellerton will complete the Maine delegation. Though Earl and Maureen were unable to attend the dinner, Thomas Urquhart and Amy MacDonald, Herb Hartman and Lucy Martin, Anne Anderson, Geraldine Wolf, Bob Lemieux, and Seth Levy completed the party.

Andrew and Kristin Graves

An important and symbolic event will be held at the American Embassy on June 15th for the representatives of all of the chapters as well as the Ambassadors of a number of embassies and consulates that represent IAT member countries in Iceland. Although originally planned for just over 20 people, the reception will likely include over 50 people once all of the chapters make their final plans for travel. Andy Graves spoke to the group about how he landed the job of running the embassy in Reykjavik, and he painted a wonderful picture about what to anticipate and expect from a visit to Iceland in June. He looks forward to welcoming the group to the American Embassy on June 15th.

Dick Anderson with Andrew Graves

The gathering and dinner at the Sebago Brewing Company pub was a great success, and served to introduce one of Maine’s newest couples to an important slice of the greater Portland and Maine communities. The Maine delegation traveling to Iceland looks forward to seeing Andy and Kristin in their work environment in mid-June.

Take a good look at the photograph above. Do you recognize the location? Can you make out the fire ring in the left foreground? It may be slightly difficult to identify, but this is the Wassataquoik lean-to under a blanket of 34” of powdery snow at Katahdin Brook on the IAT just west of Katahdin Lake. The lean-to is located on land owned by Elliotsville Plantation, Inc. (EPI) and I had the opportunity to visit the site on February 29th during routine biological monitoring work.

As a biologist at Sewall, the winter months are a great time of year for me to document the presence of a variety of wildlife on EPI lands without ever seeing the animal. When I stopped at the lean-to that day, I was conducting a snow-track survey for Canada lynx, listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In order to efficiently cover many miles in a single day, we use snowmobiles to traverse the property. On the day I took this photo, I documented tracks made by lynx, moose, coyote, mice, ermine, snowshoe hare, red squirrel, fisher, river otter, and ruffed grouse. So the next time you’re recreating in the snow, or even walking to your car on the way to work, think twice about that track you see in the snow, however small or large it may be. Then ask yourself what made the track, when was it made, and why was it made, and think about the adaptations and preparations that allow wildlife to spend their winters in such harsh climates.

If you’re curious about how to identify animals based on their tracks, check out your local land trust, refuge, or conservation organization, which often offer programs to the public for little or no cost to participants.

Sarah Spencer

The Management Officer of the American Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland has decided to plant some roots in Maine, and the Maine Chapter organized a special dinner recently to welcome Andrew and Kristin Graves to Portland. The dinner served a second important purpose, as several board members in attendance will attend the first international meeting of all of the chapters of the International Appalachian Trail scheduled for June 15th in Reykjavik. The Maine delegation will be lead by IAT founder Dick Anderson, and will also include geologists Walter Anderson and Robert Marvinney, as well as Will Richard, Earl Raymond and Maine Chapter President Don Hudson. In addition to the board members, Cheryl Marvinney, Lindsay Dorney, Phine Ewing and Maureen Ellerton will complete the Maine delegation. Though Earl and Maureen were unable to attend the dinner, Thomas Urquhart and Amy MacDonald, Herb Hartman and Lucy Martin, Ann Anderson, Geraldine Wolf, Bob Lemieux, and Seth Levy completed the party.

An important and symbolic event will be held at the American Embassy on June 15th for the representatives of all of the chapters as well as the Ambassadors of a number of embassies and consulates that represent IAT member countries in Iceland. Although originally planned for just over 20 people, the reception will likely include over 50 people once all of the chapters make their final plans for travel. Andy Graves spoke to the group about how he landed the job of running the embassy in Reykjavik, and he painted a wonderful picture about what to anticipate and expect from a visit to Iceland in June. He looks forward to welcoming the group to the American Embassy on June 15th.

The gathering and dinner at the Sebago Brewing Company pub was a great success, and served to introduce one of Maine’s newest couples to an important slice of the greater Portland and Maine communities. The Maine delegation traveling to Iceland looks forward to seeing Andy and Kristin in their work environment in mid-June.

Check out the interview with Maine Chapter President Don Hudson at Hiraeth Press’s website – http://is.gd/Odi3Hf. Go ahead. Support Hiraeth and the IAT and invest in some poetry this year — lots and lots of it. Good for Hiraeth; good for the IAT; and good for your soul!

IAT Maine Chapter Board members; Walter Anderson, Thomas Urquhart and Dick Anderson share a laugh, and a beer, with IAT Maine benefactor Eddie Woodin.

The event was the SUPER BOWL party hosted by Eddie Woodin and Nancy Robinson at Eddie’s home in Scarborough, Maine. There was some good talk about the upcoming International meeting in Iceland and the Annual Meeting of the Maine Chapter, in June.

Unfortunately the Patriots lost the game, But IAT supporters had a wonderful time and took the opportunity to thank Eddie for his long-time and continuing support of the IAT.

Photos by Walter