Thomas Bowden: [00:00:00] All right. Are you going to [inaudible] headphones? What is your name, and where are you from?

Chrissy Beardsley Allen: [00:00:06] Chrissie Beardsley Allen, and I am from Blue Hill, Maine.

TB: [00:00:13] How’s that sound?

Phalen Gallagher: [00:00:14] That’s great.

TB: [00:14] Okay. Are we rolling?

PG: [00:00:16] We’re rolling.

TB: [00:00:17] Okay. All right. Can you just say that again? What is your name, and where are you from?

CBA: [00:00:20] Sure. My name is Chrissie Beardsley Allen, and I’m from Blue Hill, Maine.

TB: [00:00:24] Okay. How long have you lived in Blue Hill?

CBA: [00:00:26] I’ve lived on the Blue Hill peninsula my whole life. I was born in the town of Blue Hill in 1980, and I actually grew up in Surrey and Penobscot. But I’ve been living in Blue Hill since 2008.

TB: [00:00:39] Awesome. All right. What is your connection to Blue Hill? The area?

CBA: [00:00:43] Sure. So, my ancestors were among the founders of the town of Blue Hill, as were my husband’s. Our family goes back a very long time. My descendants were the Darlings. So, if you look in Blue Hill Bay, you’ll see Jed’s Island and Darling Island. That was named for Jedidiah Darling, who was a sea captain and one of the original founders of the town of Blue Hill. I’m a direct descendant of him.

TB: [00:01:08] That’s interesting. Do you remember the first time you ever hiked the mountain?

CBA: [00:01:14] I don’t because I was in utero. So, no, but my mom certainly does. Blue Hill Mountain is definitely one of those places that I have hiked throughout my life, and I’ve seen the way that the mountain has changed for the last – I’m forty-four now, so over the last four-plus decades. I have very distinct memories of being up on the mountain and climbing the tower when it was still there and being able to look even off the back side of the mountain and see Toddy Pond and that whole viewpoint, which is very cool. So, I’ve been hiking it my whole life.

TB: [00:01:57] You were part of Blue Hill Heritage Trust. Why did you decide to be part of that?

CBA: [00:02:03] Yeah. When I moved back here, my husband and I had lived in Michigan for five years. He was in grad school, and we decided to come back home. He’s from Blue Hill as well, and I was really looking for a job that would serve my community. This new position opened up at the Trust. It was to help boost the Trust’s sort of name recognition in the community as well as the way that people were able to use the Trust as a resource to benefit their own lives and to help further educational opportunities for our local schools and community around environmental issues here on the peninsula that affected us. I had a background in teaching as well as in event planning. When they were looking for somebody to be their new outreach coordinator, it was a perfect fit for me. My family were also one of the first groups of people to conserve their farmland. So, my mom and my stepdad, Dennis King, conserved King Hill Farm under Blue Hill Heritage Trust. So, it had some personal connection for my family as well. My husband and I, as I said, had lived in Michigan for five years. It wasn’t until I really left Maine that I understood what we had at stake here. I could not wait to get back here. I could not get back here fast enough. It was hard to find a place to be outdoors in the woods without a million other people. Almost all nature paths were paved. So, I really missed that feeling of just having the actual earth under your feet, being able to be in nature and be quiet, being able to walk out my door and be in nature without having to get in the car and burn fuel for twenty minutes to get somewhere. So, when we came back here, it was a huge relief just to be here. We had this very prominent newfound appreciation for what we had grown up with, which we had just totally taken for granted because it’s the only thing we knew. So, when a job opened up at Blue Hill Heritage Trust, that not only fit my skill sets, but also fit with my values, it just felt amazing to me, and I was really thrilled to get that position and excited to join their team and help them grow into the organization that they are today.

TB: [00:04:41] How do you think the mountain would be different if the conservation efforts weren’t successful?

CBA: [00:04:48] If the conservation efforts of Blue Hill Heritage Trust, as well as the generosity of the landowners who worked with either the town or the Trust to protect those properties, if that all hadn’t happened, I think that mountain would right now probably be closed off to people and would be covered in houses, to be frank. That was already starting to happen. The threat was real. It was there. We can all see it now. The houses were starting to go up the mountain. I think we would have really lost something that was not only an iconic place for all of us, but a really sacred place, and something that I think has probably been a sacred place for as long as humans have been here on the peninsula. So, I think the conservation efforts of the organization, Blue Hill Heritage Trust, but also the community mindedness of the people who owned these very prominent parcels on the mountain are very, very important to what we have today. It’s important for us to recognize that and to remember that and remember how grateful we should be and to think forward about where are the other places on the peninsula that maybe we all have access to and have had access to our whole lives that are at stake of going away. What do we do as a community to try to work with landowners and conservation organizations or the town to protect our access to these places that make the peninsula the place we all want to be living in?

TB: [00:06:34] Do you think the town would be a lot different? The community would have a different sort of vibe to it if the mountain was privately owned?

CBA: [00:06:43] A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, from almost all points in town, we can see that mountain. Right? It is a landmark. I was in Augusta yesterday, and driving home, there were many points in which I could see the mountain. It was my barometer for, like, “I’m headed home. There it is. There’s home.” I think if we didn’t have the mountain as a place that we could go on or even just enjoy sort of the unspoiled view of it would really change our sense of our identity of what home is here in Blue Hill. There are a lot of people who can no longer hike the mountain, but because they were able to do so when they were younger or more able-bodied, it remains a place that is extremely significant to them. So, having the mountain protected and in the public for the public good, I think, really does help us form our sense of place and being here. If it wasn’t open to us and if it was covered in houses, I think it would just be another developed place and would probably really make a lot of people very sad instead of bringing people joy when they looked at it.

TB: [00:08:10] Are there any other areas of the peninsula that you think provide a similar feeling of community?

CBA: [00:08:17] Yeah, I do. I mean, Wallamatogus Mountain is another great example of that. That’s a property that was recently conserved under Blue Hill Heritage Trust through the Allen family. It was blueberry land for a long, long time, and similar to Blue Hill Mountain, for as long as there have been people on the peninsula, human beings were welcome on that land even once it was colonized and went under private ownership. So, to protect that place was of significant importance, especially to the town of Penobscot. It was a place that a lot of other folks didn’t know about, but now they do, and they go there, and they’re completely awestruck by how gorgeous it is there and how gorgeous of a view of our home you can see from there. It’s pretty remarkable. So, that’s another place that I think is very significant. I think other places like Peter’s Brook is another great example. That’s a place when I was a kid, we were welcome to go walk the trail out to the waterfall, but it was under private ownership, and the owners just allowed the community to do that. Now, the owners have taken the next step, have put it under a permanent conservation easement with Blue Hill Heritage Trust, leaving that public access open forever because they recognized how important that spot was to the community to be able to go to. I think we have a lot of those places around here. We’re so lucky that we have these places here, and we are equally, if not more, so lucky that we have owners of these properties who understand sort of their responsibility to their community in making sure that these places are kept open to the public. The folks who bought Penny’s Preserve, which is right behind Peters Brook and is a remarkable property, told me that when they bought it, they bought it with the understanding that it was going to be in the public good, that they were simply stewards, temporary stewards of that property. There’s two sets of landowners there who owned it, and they both bought it knowing that one day they were going to turn it over to Blue Hill Heritage Trust for the public good. That’s remarkable to me that they are willing to do something like that. So forward-thinking, so generous, unbelievably generous with their own resources for the benefit of their community. It’s remarkable. We’re very fortunate.

PG: [00:11:03] Can I jump in with a follow-up? Could you speak a little bit to what, in your experience, is unique about this work in this place? Maybe in a positive – that’s a good example of really positive [inaudible] of people with resources who maybe have the consciousness to say, I want to do this out of the goodness of my heart. But there’s also other challenges, where we have money coming in and people coming in who don’t share those values or whatever. So, could you talk about the challenges and the benefits of working in this particular community on this type of work?

CBA: [00:11:43] Yeah. So, something I think we’ve all seen in the last few years is that the prices of land on the Blue Hill Peninsula have not only really skyrocketed but have also become in short supply. People from out of state are buying properties sight-unseen here, and they’re buying it for sometimes three times market value. When you’re working with a conservation organization, they are held to certain restrictions. They can only pay appraised fair market value for a property, which oftentimes doesn’t even match the market value of a property. So, conservation organizations and landowners who are looking to conserve their land by selling their property to a conservation organization are really at a disadvantage right now because the competition is so steep, and it makes it really hard for people who legitimately love their land, want to conserve it, protect it forever. But maybe they need that money to send their kids to college or to retire on. It makes it hard for them to be able to legitimately sell their property for sometimes half of what they could get to a conservation organization to somebody else. So, the market is very, very competitive right now, and it makes it very hard for conservation organizations to be able to do this work with local landowners and to act in a way that they feel is going to benefit them how they need it to, but also is going to benefit their community. This has become an extremely big deal in the last couple of years, especially since Covid. But it’s going to remain a big problem for us because all of the forecasting out of climate change shows that the Northeast is going to fare very well in climate change and that we are going to see a massive climate migration to the Northeast, especially to Maine. While we obviously welcome more people here, it does mean it puts a huge amount of development pressure on our communities. We really need to start acting now to figure out what is super important to us that we want to protect now so that when these folks come here because their homes are underwater or on fire and awful things are happening, we want them to come here and be welcomed into our communities, but we don’t want it to happen at the sake of our ecosystems, of our way of life here. So, we need to start acting and thinking very carefully and very quickly about how we are going to help shape what development looks like in the future. What do we as a community want to make sure in twenty years we still have here. Because once it’s gone and developed, it’s gone. We really need to start being proactive about that. I think it can be a little bit challenging when a lot of us who grow up here just never leave, right? We stay here forever. We go right into the trades. Or maybe we go to a local college, and we remain part of this fabric of this community, which is amazing. We definitely love that. But it does limit our perspective. For me, I know that firsthand because I left for five years, and I went and I lived in the Midwest in a part of the Rust Belt, and I was able to really see what happened out there and what they’ve lost and that they can’t get back now. It can be hard when you don’t have that opportunity, which is why I always tell the senior class the best thing you can do is leave, come back, but leave even if it’s just for a short time so that you understand what you have here and what is at stake here. We really need to work hard to either go get that perspective for ourselves or to have a little bit of trust in people who do have that perspective, who have either just moved here or have gone away and come back because we’re going to be really sorry when it’s gone.

TB: [00:16:10] Do you think that there’s sort of a tightrope to walk about how much land should we conserve and how much land should we develop?

CBA: [00:16:19] Absolutely.

TB: [00:16:20] Is there kind of – you don’t want to conserve too much land because then there’s not enough room for development?

CBA: [00:16:26] Not only that, but there is also the tax implication of it for property taxes. Now, Blue Hill Heritage Trust, like most all land trusts in the state of Maine, voluntarily pays property taxes. They do not have to. They are nonprofits, so they could be fully tax-exempt, but they choose to raise money to pay taxes, to continue to contribute to the local municipalities, to the roads, the ambulances, the schools – things like that. I think that’s really important for people to understand. However, any time anybody puts their land under any sort of protection, even if I’m a private landowner and say I put my property in tree growth or open space, if I say, “Hey, I’ve built some trails in my lands open to hunters and people to hike on,” I could get huge tax benefits because I’m essentially removing my ability to make money off of that land through either major tree harvest, selling it and developing it, whatever. We do have to think very carefully about not only saving room for development to happen, but we also need to think about how are we going to continue to support our communities, our schools, things like that. We want to make sure that we have a really healthy balance of having housing and development opportunity that’s affordable for regular working people to continue to live here. I think nobody in this community wants us to turn into one of the summer communities that ninety percent empties out in the wintertime, and the whole town shuts down. I love that in Blue Hill, almost all the restaurants stay open, almost all the shops stay open year-round. It makes it a really nice place to live. If it was like another town that mostly shut down, that would be really frustrating for me as a local person who is still living here through the rest of the year and wants to have those services available to me. So, when I say I think we need to be proactive, we really need to sit down and we need to do this comprehensive planning as municipalities to really think out into the future about what this needs to look like. Where are the spots that are either really important for climate resiliency for our communities, like wetlands, things like that that we’re really going to rely on as sea level rises, as storm surge continues to be a big issue for us here, which are the biggest things that we’re going to end up having here in Maine, most likely. What are those areas that we need to help us absorb the shock of all of that? And then what are the areas that are high and dry and not of huge ecological value that make a ton of sense to save for development and to keep fully on the tax rolls that are very conveniently accessed by the roads, by the power grid, things like that, that make a lot of sense to have. There’s a new development going up down Pleasant Street, and it’s going to be a lot of duplexes that are going to be affordable housing. That’s awesome because this developer has taken a piece of land and is really being very efficient with that piece of land with how much housing is being put on that land. I think we are really going to need more of that type of thing in order to absorb the migration of people that’s going to happen here and make it so that we can still have this great balance of welcoming people and allowing our communities to grow while also making it so that we can see trees outside the window and we can get to a hiking trail within five minutes of our driveway and know that we have sort of protected the traditional uses of the land here, like hunting, hiking, foraging, that we all really care about. It’s going to take a lot of planning and trust in each other that we all are in it for the same goals and that we, even if we don’t understand the threats that are coming, that we need to believe that they are coming.

TB: [00:20:42] Earlier, you said something about how the Trust can’t pay above the appraised value. What’s the deal with that?

CBA: [00:20:51] So, the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] is pretty firm that they do not want conservation organizations driving the housing market. [alarm sound in background] I’ll redo that.

TB: [00:21:04] That’s my alarm, sorry.

CBA: [00:21:05] I’ll redo that.

PG: [00:21:06] [inaudible] Denny Robertson’s interview where he ran out in the middle because his pager went off.

CBA: [00:21:09] Oh, really? I’m glad that you got him there.

PG: [00:21:11] He got here.

CBA: [00:21:12] I’m glad you got him. Okay. All right.

PG: [00:21:15] Ask that question again. That was a good question.

TB: [00:21:16] What did I ask?

CBA: [00:21:18] You asked what’s the deal with –?

TB: [00:21:19] Earlier, you talked about how the Trust can’t pay above the appraised value for land. Could you talk about that?

CBA: [00:21:27] Sure. So, there are two things at play here. One is that the IRS and other entities involved do not want land trusts driving the price of housing markets and property values because it could artificially inflate the prices. They also have a – there is a national organization called the Land Trust Alliance, which accredits land trusts. So, just like schools are accredited to make sure they’re sort of dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s and doing everything above board, there’s one of these entities that oversee all the conservation organizations in the state – in the country, rather – and they also have that as one of the stipulations to be an accredited land trust. There is a little bit of wiggle room there. You could make a one-time exception if you are able to show that it was a really critical situation, and there was huge, huge value to doing it that really made it so you had to pay above appraised value. But land trusts really are held to that standard, both legally and ethically. So, it’s really tough right now when the market is being so inflated by the market moving so fast and people buying properties sight-unseen for huge amounts of money. It makes it really, really hard to compete. Appraisals look backward. So, when you are getting your property appraised, the appraiser is essentially looking backward and saying, okay, so I have this ten-acre piece of property. What are other similar ten-acre pieces of property or similar properties in that size in this region – how much have they been sold for? That’s what they sort of base the appraisal on. Market value is what they think they can get. So, they’re really kind of looking forward at what’s happening, how excited are people about living here, how tight is the market right now? So, it takes a while for appraisals to catch up to where market values were, and they never sort of do because they’re always sort of behind each other or appraisals are always behind the markets. So, it does make it really tough and puts land trusts at a competitive disadvantage.

TB: [00:23:56] Do you think there should be some modifications made to the stipulations by the IRS, and the – what was the name of the –?

CBA: [00:24:03] The Land Trust Alliance? Yeah, I think it would be really good to revisit some of these policies. I also think that some of the funders that are out there who will hold land trusts to very, very strict and rigid systems of accountability, like we will not give you money if you’ve already bought a property. It makes it really hard to stay competitive. So, sometimes you might have a landowner who’s willing to sell you their property at appraised value, but if you have to take a year to fundraise, they’re not going to do that. You might have a chest of cash, right, that’s sitting there, a rainy day fund, that you could spend the money to buy a piece of property, and then you could fundraise to refill your rainy day fund. A lot of funders won’t do that. They will not retroactively give you money for a piece of property. So, that’s a huge issue right there. I actually see that as one of the bigger issues that land trusts are dealing with right now. I do also think that we need to start having a conversation around how market values are figured out and maybe start to have a little bit of – not restrictions on that but have some oversight on how market values are dealt with versus how appraisals are dealt with and see if we can get those things to come together a little bit closer. I think it would benefit everybody, and it would avoid people being taken advantage of because of a tight market, things like that. I do understand, though, that at the same time, you don’t want to fully remove those restrictions and rules on land trust because, as nonprofits, we have to be very careful that the money we’re spending, which is other people’s money, it’s money people have donated to us, or a grant that we’ve gotten is not being paid out to some exorbitant and highly inflated piece of property, and therefore, some private landowner is getting just essentially a gift, a private gift instead of being paid for the actual value of their property. So, there’s a lot of problems. It’s very complicated. So, I understand why the rules are in place. But it does make it very hard for us to sort of act in these moments that are so critical.

TB: [00:26:49] Moving back to your experience with the mountain, your personal experience, do you have a favorite memory of the mountain at all?

CBA: [00:26:57] I think, honestly, my favorite memories of the mountain are going up with the seniors. I started doing that when I was at Blue Hill Heritage Trust, and now, this year, I got to do it as the dean of students for GSA [George Stevens Academy]. That was very meaningful to me. I was thrilled when – what was it, six or seven years ago? – I was asked to start taking that hike and be able to reflect on what community means, our role in community, and our responsibility to community from up there, that vantage point looking down on the Blue Hill community and down on the school. I think those are my most meaningful moments up there. But there have been so many great moments. I ran a 4-H club that would go on the mountain a lot to learn how to do orienteering. I was part of a suicide support and awareness group that would go up the mountain, and that was really powerful to be up there with that group of people and to be helping with that event. The Blue Hill Mountain Trail Fest has been such an awesome event, and to see the endurance of people and how meaningful the mountain is to them. There’s so many great moments. I’ve done a bunch of sunrise hikes with friends and eaten breakfast up there. Every time I climb the mountain, it’s a special occasion, and I really enjoy it. But I think the most special moments have been when I’ve been able to share that experience with a lot of other people. I think as seniors at George Stevens being up there, it sort of is a powerful thing. For some people, it’s the first time they’ve hiked that mountain, even though they’ve looked at it almost every day of their lives. That’s pretty amazing. So, I love that tradition, and I love being up there, but I also love just looking at the mountain and seeing it all the time from down here.

TB: [00:28:57] Do you have a favorite part of the mountain?

CBA: [00:29:00] I love the view from the Hayes Trail, the top of the Hayes Trail in front of the cell phone tower. I think that is the most spectacular view. That’s the best place, in my opinion, to watch both the sunrise and the moonrise. You can see it sort of coming up over Acadia, that first light. I think that’s a really special spot. There’s also a tree on the summit, pretty much exactly smack dab on the summit, that is so stunted and gnarly. Sorry. I’ll say that again. There’s also a tree on the summit that is so stunted and gnarly. It almost looks like a bonsai tree. It’s really fun to see that tree in all seasons and how it changes.

TB: [00:29:51] Do you think that Blue Hill, the community, is similar to a lot of towns around Maine, or do you think it’s very unique?

CBA: [00:30:01] I think in many ways it’s similar in that we have a lot of people who have been here for multiple generations and have a lot of pride in that and feel a lot of ownership and responsibility to their community. I also think that we are very unique in that we do have this vibrant summer community who is very supportive of our town, and they come and go throughout the seasons. But then we have this really, really strong local community, who’s always here and is always vibrant in our own way. Like I said, this town doesn’t shut down. We’re always going, and we go through changes just like the seasons in this community. I think that that can be really unique in Maine. I also think we just attract a really creative bunch of people to move here. The creativity that is born out of this community is really interesting. Steel bands in Downeast Maine – that’s wild. That started here. Now, you sort of see it popping up. But it really started here in this town, in this building. So, you have some really interesting things like that. We’ve got just a super vibrant artist community, author community, music community. There are some things here that really do make Blue Hill very special and that make the peninsula very special. And I think the peninsula as a whole is a really interesting place because every single town in the peninsula is different from the others. They all have their own unique identity. Blue Hill is sort of the city center, so to speak, of the peninsula. It’s a really interesting, unique place. I think people who aren’t from here, when they come here, they really see that and feel that. Maybe those of us who are here all the time, it’s just what we know. But it is neat to hear from other people what they notice or to go away and come back and see it with fresh eyes for sure.

TB: [00:32:30] Do you know of any other landmarks around the peninsula that you think should be conserved?

CBA: [00:32:36] There are the blueberry fields in Sedgwick on the Salt Pond, which are so iconic. They are just a part of so many people’s day when they’re driving around. I think if we lose that place to development, it’s going to be really hard for a lot of people. I think that there are probably other places like that that we really need to be thinking about and getting out ahead of our skis, so to speak, to really try to start working on talking to landowners, working as communities, talking to our conservation organizations to try to protect those. To me, that really is the most prominent one right now is the Salt Pond property.

TB: [00:33:27] Do you know many details about that?

CBA: [00:33:30] So, right now, that property is owned by an out-of-state developer, maybe a developer from southern Maine who’s planning to put a multi-unit housing development there. That property will effectively be cut off from public use, and the view is going to be ruined by having a lot of probably what will be very large, expensive, beautiful houses. Now, on the one hand, that would be a great boost to local taxes and things like that. But there’s a big part of our hydrogeology there, the water that runs into the Salt Pond and then down into First Pond that is at risk if we develop and put a lot of septics there and things like that. There’s also a cultural part, which for me is almost more important. As a town, as a conservation organization – Blue Hill Heritage Trust – as a community, I feel like we’re doing a lot of work to try to understand the damage that has been done to the tribes of Maine. This is the homeland of the Penobscot tribe, and they are still here. Reopening access to tribal members, both Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Tribes – Blue Hill was kind of an interesting meeting merge point of those two tribes, I believe – is very important. That, in particular, is a place that is very important to try to protect access – cultural access – to. Blue Hill Heritage Trust owns Carlton Island, which is right there on the Salt Pond in front of that property. So, protecting that land would not only provide public access to the Salt Pond, keep that view open, protect that watershed and that ecosystem, but it would keep open this cultural access for members of the Penobscot Tribe or the Passamaquoddy tribe to be able to get to the Salt Pond, to get to Carlton Island, which is a very, very important place to them. So, to me, it’s bigger than just that’s a really nice place that we all like to look at. This is a place that has very likely been important to the people who have been here the longest and for whom this is their homeland. This place runs deeper in their blood and in their bones than I, as a descendant of colonists, could ever begin to imagine. I would really hate to lose the opportunity to open that access back up to people who have lost it for so many hundreds of years.

TB: [00:36:37] The developments that are going to be made there, are they for sure the more wealthy people or the local community?

CBA: [00:36:45] It is going to be wealthier people. It is going to be high-end housing that will be there. So, to me, it also is not necessarily serving a big need for what we have here right now. Yeah.

PG: [00:37:02] [inaudible] Liam, go. You guys, just so you know, we’re probably five minutes if you’re still – this is amazing. We’re reaching an hour.

TB: [00:37:09] We have one more good question. That’s probably [inaudible] –

PG: [00:37:11] What were you going to say?

TB: [00:37:12] I was going to ask – pertaining to more people coming up to Maine, I was wondering as time goes on, is there a question of the integrity of Blue Hill Heritage Trust? Is that a concern that you have?

CBA: [00:37:28] I think as we look at more people coming to Maine – Blue Hill Heritage Trust, when I worked there – and I know they still feel this way – they know they have a very limited amount of time to do their best and probably what is going to be their most important work. They probably have ten good years to wrap up whatever conservation goals they have before they’re going to lose most of their opportunities based on the forecasts of what climate migration is going to look like. I think at that point, Blue Hill Heritage Trust is probably going to shift its role a little bit for our community. It is never going to go away. Blue Heritage Trust has an in-perpetuity responsibility to maintain these properties and to monitor the properties that are still privately owned but under conservation easement with the Trust. So Blue Hill Heritage Trust continues to have a lot of responsibility, not only to the community but to the government, quite frankly, because of the role that it’s taken on. But I do think when they are no longer actively pursuing new conservation land in a very serious way, like they are right now, they are going to probably shift a little bit in what their role is. That may be that they become a more educational and research-based institution. We had talked about a lot of different ideas, sort of looking down the road. I don’t know what they’ll end up doing, but I know that it’s going to be important, and I know that it’s going to be driven by what the needs of this community are. Blue Hill Heritage Trust is one of the most important organizations we have here, working to help us protect some of the traditions that we have here on this peninsula and our way of life. And so I think they’re going to remain a very important major player for this community forever.

TB: [00:39:44] As we wrap this up, is there anything else you want to talk about or say?

CBA: [00:39:50] I think that it’s really wonderful that we have places like Blue Hill Mountain because regardless of your ability to hike the mountain, the mountain is there for everybody. It means something very different for everybody. I think it’s such a gift, and it’s so easy in our day-to-day lives to just forget what a gift it is. So, it’s really important to stop and pause and remove ourselves from the day-to-day monotony of our lives and look at the whole picture in front of us and be able to reflect on how lucky we are that we have places like the mountain and how that’s even possible that we have it and just to think about how grateful we are and to hold that gratitude and then let it affect how we move forward in our lives.

TB: [00:40:51] All right. That’s all we have.

PG: [00:40:54] Great. Nice. Really nice job. Thank you.

TB: [00:40:55] Thank you so much.

CBA: [00:40:56] Awesome. Thank you, guys. This was fun.

TB: [00:40:59] Do you want to record the room?

PG: [00:41:00]

TB: [00:41:01] Leave it silent for a second.

PG: [00:41:01] I’ll just leave it rolling for a second. Chrissy, I know you got to run, probably, on to things. Thank you very much.

CBA: [00:41:06] Thank you, guys.

PG: [00:41:07] You guys were great.

CBA: [00:41:08] Yeah, those are great questions.

PG: [00:41:11] [inaudible] old pro. Great follow-ups and all that.

CBA: [00:41:12] That was super fun.

TB: [00:41:16] Thank you. Have a good day.