Dan Rhodes: Reflections from the High Peaks
High Peaks Alliance is pleased to share the fifth in a series of six guest op-eds from volunteer Dan Rhodes. In 2024, Dan and his wife settled in Kingfield with their son, building a life and making a home in the High Peaks region while Dan travels back and forth for his work.
In this series, Dan will offer reflections on life in Maine’s High Peaks region, community connections, and the value of conserving access to the lands and trails that make this place special.
There’s More to Maine
When I talk to friends or colleagues I know from living in big cities about moving to Maine, it still feels like I’m trying to justify my decision as if I’m disclosing some rare disease. They always want to know, “But why Maine? There’s nothing there!” Insulting and just plain wrong as that statement obviously is, I hear it a lot, and I’ve tested a range of answers (but don’t worry, I always add the caveat that I’m new to the state myself).
No explanation seems to strike home with people who have no real concept or even faint impression of what Maine is as a place and as a home. In the imaginations of such people, I get the impression that they think Maine is some mysterious frontier where lobster is served with every meal and every road is under constant threat of invasion by giant herds of stampeding moose.
It’s true that the juxtaposition of Maine with some of the world’s largest cities—or really even mid-sized cities—is stark. Anyone who’s spent a considerable amount of time living or working in a mega-city would admit that much of Maine, including the High Peaks region, feels about as far away from a bustling urban environment as you can get. To many people, that’s the whole point. Having lived now in both types of places, I know there will always be positives and negatives to each, and those are relative to the person.
What Makes Maine, Maine
But what makes Maine the special place it is, besides the people, isn’t just how beautiful the land is, or how much of it remains undeveloped. It is an awareness and appreciation of that quality that so many people seem to understand. Even if they hold divergent opinions on other issues, most Mainers I’ve met seem better clued into developments that impact the natural world around us more so than other places I’ve lived. This, I think, at least partially explains why some Mainers feel so reluctant to embrace change, because any alteration of the landscape alters one of the most important things that make Maine special as a place, no matter whether it’s the land that makes the people or the other way around.
Keeping It Open
This also helps explain, again, at least in part, why the High Peaks Alliance (HPA) has such a broad appeal. Every land user benefits from their preservation victories and milestones, like the recent announcement that Mosher Hill Falls has been preserved. Land conservation is a patchwork quilt effort of tying together ever-larger tracts of land and enshrining public access to it. It helps keep Maine what it is now, which is a singular place full of people both proud and aware of the gifts they received at birth by the simple virtue of being born here. The great value of the HPA and groups like it is that their sole focus is preservation of public access, and therefore every victory they tally grows that patchwork quilt of publicly accessible land.
Take Action
This is the fifth in a series of six op-eds by Dan Rhodes. Stay tuned each month for future pieces exploring the intersections of everyday life, public access, and outdoor recreation in Maine’s High Peaks region.
If you value access to these lands and trails, we hope you’ll join us by volunteering, attending events, or supporting the High Peaks Alliance’s work to protect public access for generations to come.
