March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Old park trails being resurrected by volunteers

BAR HARBOR — George Feltus says that if you haul some brush, snip an overhanging branch, or roll some stones to the side of a trail, the park becomes yours. When you go home, a little part of the park belongs to you.

Feltus should know. He spent an estimated 72 hours hauling brush, snipping branches and rolling stones on carriage paths and trails in Acadia National Park during the month of August. With more than 35 years of Boy Scout experience on trails in New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey, Feltus has turned his love of the outdoors to volunteer work at Acadia.

“George has been unleashed on the island with a pair of snippers,” Carol Peterson, the park’s environmental educator, said recently. “He has been turned into the rangers many times by park visitors who see this man cutting branches and wonder what he’s doing.”

According to Peterson, volunteers like Feltus donated more than 15,000 hours to the park this year and their work is commendable. Those volunteer hours, in part, were given to staffing the visitor centers and participating in the shoreline cleanup effort, Junior Ranger Day, and resource management projects.

Countless hours, she said, were donated by Feltus and his companions who cleaned up more than a mile of the carriage path leading from the Wildwood Stables to the Jordan Pond Gatehouse. Working on Saturdays or Sundays during the spring, summer, and early fall, the volunteers snipped, raked and cleared.

At least 50 people were involved throughout the season on that project, Peterson explained. Ranging in age from eight to 78, many were visiting campers who wanted to return something for the few days that they stayed at the park. Others, like Feltus, were seasonal residents. Many live in the area year round.

Orland residents George and Anna Buck, volunteers with the Downeast Outing Club, have regularly driven the 40 miles from their home since 1984 to work on the trails, often three days each week. “We enjoy the outdoors, hiking, mountain climbing,” George said recently as he worked on the trail at Lake Wood.

“We have enjoyed the park so much for so many years that (our volunteer work) is the least we can do,” he added.

Citing the reduction in funds for the upkeep of the park during the 1980s, the Bucks explained that the limited trail-maintenance crew at Acadia can’t possibly maintain the trails adequately. One full-time trail foreman is employed at the park, as well as a handful of seasonal trail employees.

“Before 1960, John Rockefeller employed up to 100 workers to maintain the carriage roads,” George Buck said. “With just one full-time person now, over 100 miles of trails have been lost since 1960.”

Ken Sergeson brandished a brush cutter supplied by Friends of Acadia at the Lake Wood monument clearing project last week. A volunteer with the outing club, Sergeson estimates he has given more than 800 volunteer hours to Acadia. Sergeson has helped clear trails on Beech Mountain, Beech Cliffs, along Long Pond, and up the side of Mansell Mountain.

According to Sergeson, the Downeast Outing Club has a membership roll of 63, including family memberships. Most members are retirees, like himself, who prefer work in the outdoors to leisure.

Another loyal group of volunteers, sponsored by the Friends of Acadia, have spent the season clearing the ocean path trail to Sand Beach. Friends of Acadia also has assisted in the volunteer effort this year by paying for ads in local papers announcing trail clean-up projects.

Peterson said Monday that volunteer hours in the park this year surpassed last year’s total by at least 3,000 hours. Peterson, who is leaving the park at the end of this month, said she hopes the volunteer work on the trails will continue.

Feltus, who will return again next spring, said he will take part of the park home with him to New Jersey. Hoping to share his love of the park with others, Feltus said he hopes young people, as well as retirees, will give something back to the park. He might even share his snippers.


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