The Mountain of the People of the World?
Submitted by Andrew Vietze on Fri, 10/12/2007 - 1:53pm.
It may be the Mountain of the People of Maine, but the pull of Katahdin reaches across continents, and every year we have campers from all over the world. At the Togue Gate we have a map of the U.S. and the gatekeepers flag the home state of visitors who come through. This year it filled fairly quickly - except for Nebraska. (Come on, Nebraska.) We didn't have any Cornhuskers until September. In the margin of this map are written the countries that have been represented, and it's a very long list. New Zealand? Check. Columbia? Check. Ukraine? Check. China? Check. And on and on - twenty-three nations at last count. And Canada.
One of the nicer aspects of my job is that I get to meet many of these people. Last year, some Koreans invited me to join them in a traditional lunch, and it seems at least once a week I try to explain our canoe or cabin rental policies across the language barrier. Campers from other parts of the world - especially Europe - often seem to be stunned by the beauty and magnitude of the park, probably because where they come there isn't much in the way of wilderness left.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of working with a group of twenty-somethings from the international organization Volunteers for Peace. VFP was founded in 1982 as a non-profit with the goal of working toward a more harmonious world through service projects across the globe. It's not religiously or politically motivated and places people from four or more different nations in settings where they live almost like family and work together on projects that benefit everyone. Eight volunteers spent two weeks at BSP, and they certainly benefited Baxter's vision.
Now, we love our volunteers. There are certain projects that are too big for one ranger to accomplish and our cadre of volunteers make them possible. Especially at places like Daicey Pond, where we have ten century-old cabins to maintain and only a few weeks to do it in. (Campers don't take kindly to you hammering on the roof when they're inside.) Often volunteers will come as individuals, sometimes as couples, and occasionally as groups from schools (thank you, Maine Maritime!) or Scouts, and we in the field love to see them coming. It's like the Cavalry arriving in the old westerns.
This group was particularly fun because of the international flavor - and simply because of who they were. The eight of them - Eng, Masa, Kaz, Julian, Jeanne, Katya, Greg, and Sarah, hailing from South Korea, Japan, France, Slovenia, Massachusetts, and Germany - brought a certain joy to everything they did. You'd almost never see them without smiles, joking, laughing about something, even when they were hauling wheelbarrows full of gravel after a half day of trail building. And, of course, because we were working with them we were soon smiling, too. You couldn't help it.
Each of them was here for a different reason. Jeanne, 24, an editor from Paris, came because she wanted to do "something environmental." Masaaki Nakamura, 22, from a suburb of Tokyo, chose Baxter Park because he wanted to improve his English, which was already pretty good. And because "he wanted to experience something that wasn't the city." The natural element held a similar appeal to Kazuya Kuriyama, 21, also a student from near Tokyo, and Julian Honore, 23, a landscaper from Normandy, France. Sarah Klode, 19, from Borussia, Germany, and Eunkyung Kim of Busan, South Korea, were attracted by Baxter Park's proximity - to New York. But both were glad to be in the North Woods. "Eng" especially liked the "stars" and Sarah was very proud of climbing Katahdin. "That was totally new for me," she says. "It was the first mountain I climbed on."
The Volunteers for Peace certainly made a lasting impression at Baxter Park - both on the rangers and on the park itself. They got a lot of work done, building an entirely new trail at Katahdin Stream and along the Appalachian Trail south of Daicey Pond. They stacked a lot of wood at Kidney Pond, constructed a canoe rack at Rocky Pond, stained and painted park buildings, and did stone work at South Branch Pond. They shared meals with each other and park staff, taught one another their native languages, had more than their share of laughs. They made fast, intense friendships that will last a lot longer than their short stay in the U.S., and they certainly engendered good will everywhere they went. They'll all be missed by the park staff.
Perhaps building trails won't solve the crises of the world tomorrow. Rock work and painting and stacking are all modest steps toward a more peaceful planet. But it's the small steps that carry us up the big mountains.
One of the nicer aspects of my job is that I get to meet many of these people. Last year, some Koreans invited me to join them in a traditional lunch, and it seems at least once a week I try to explain our canoe or cabin rental policies across the language barrier. Campers from other parts of the world - especially Europe - often seem to be stunned by the beauty and magnitude of the park, probably because where they come there isn't much in the way of wilderness left.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of working with a group of twenty-somethings from the international organization Volunteers for Peace. VFP was founded in 1982 as a non-profit with the goal of working toward a more harmonious world through service projects across the globe. It's not religiously or politically motivated and places people from four or more different nations in settings where they live almost like family and work together on projects that benefit everyone. Eight volunteers spent two weeks at BSP, and they certainly benefited Baxter's vision.
Now, we love our volunteers. There are certain projects that are too big for one ranger to accomplish and our cadre of volunteers make them possible. Especially at places like Daicey Pond, where we have ten century-old cabins to maintain and only a few weeks to do it in. (Campers don't take kindly to you hammering on the roof when they're inside.) Often volunteers will come as individuals, sometimes as couples, and occasionally as groups from schools (thank you, Maine Maritime!) or Scouts, and we in the field love to see them coming. It's like the Cavalry arriving in the old westerns.
This group was particularly fun because of the international flavor - and simply because of who they were. The eight of them - Eng, Masa, Kaz, Julian, Jeanne, Katya, Greg, and Sarah, hailing from South Korea, Japan, France, Slovenia, Massachusetts, and Germany - brought a certain joy to everything they did. You'd almost never see them without smiles, joking, laughing about something, even when they were hauling wheelbarrows full of gravel after a half day of trail building. And, of course, because we were working with them we were soon smiling, too. You couldn't help it.
Each of them was here for a different reason. Jeanne, 24, an editor from Paris, came because she wanted to do "something environmental." Masaaki Nakamura, 22, from a suburb of Tokyo, chose Baxter Park because he wanted to improve his English, which was already pretty good. And because "he wanted to experience something that wasn't the city." The natural element held a similar appeal to Kazuya Kuriyama, 21, also a student from near Tokyo, and Julian Honore, 23, a landscaper from Normandy, France. Sarah Klode, 19, from Borussia, Germany, and Eunkyung Kim of Busan, South Korea, were attracted by Baxter Park's proximity - to New York. But both were glad to be in the North Woods. "Eng" especially liked the "stars" and Sarah was very proud of climbing Katahdin. "That was totally new for me," she says. "It was the first mountain I climbed on."
The Volunteers for Peace certainly made a lasting impression at Baxter Park - both on the rangers and on the park itself. They got a lot of work done, building an entirely new trail at Katahdin Stream and along the Appalachian Trail south of Daicey Pond. They stacked a lot of wood at Kidney Pond, constructed a canoe rack at Rocky Pond, stained and painted park buildings, and did stone work at South Branch Pond. They shared meals with each other and park staff, taught one another their native languages, had more than their share of laughs. They made fast, intense friendships that will last a lot longer than their short stay in the U.S., and they certainly engendered good will everywhere they went. They'll all be missed by the park staff.
Perhaps building trails won't solve the crises of the world tomorrow. Rock work and painting and stacking are all modest steps toward a more peaceful planet. But it's the small steps that carry us up the big mountains.
The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.
- Andrew Vietze
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