Galen Koch: [00:00:00] So, we will get started. Today is what? My goodness.

Don Wescott: [00:00:05] 30th.  November 30th.

Galen Koch: [00:00:07] November 30th. We’re at the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust [PRLT] office in Westbrook. I’ll just have you say your full name and tell me where you’re from and who you are.

Don Wescott: [00:00:18] My name’s Donald Wescott. I live in Gorham. I’ve been in Gorham for about, oh, gosh, we moved here in 1986, however many years that is, until now. That’s close to thirty years, I think. I used to live in the first house that was built in Gorham in 1860, right across the street from the original Land Trust office, which was on South Street in Gorham. That’s always some possible lead-in, too, as to how I got connected to the Land Trust.

Galen Koch: [00:00:59] Do you still live in that house?

Don Wescott: [00:01:01] No, we sold it three years ago. We sold that house, and we moved into an apartment complex, a brand-new apartment complex that’s just around the corner from there, and we’re still there. We just moved from a smaller apartment to a larger one recently, and we’ll probably stay there for the rest of our time. We like it that much. [laughter]

Galen Koch: [00:01:28] Tell me a little bit of that Land Trust history. Which Land Trust was first?

Don Wescott: [00:01:32] My earlier connection to the forebears or forerunners, I’m not sure which word is correct there, but the current Presumpscot Regional Land Trust was in Gorham in the ’80s. It was referred to as the Gorham Land Trust, and it was run by a gentleman by the name of Bob Frazier, Robert Frazier. When my wife and I first moved to Gorham, we became friends with them because our children were in school together. He was attempting, at that time, to recruit me to help him with some of the work he was doing in the Land Trust, particularly with trail building. He took me out and toured me around some of the properties that were part of the Gorham Land Trust at that time. That was sort of my initial exposure to the Land Trust activity, but I was not able to really join up with him at that time. About twenty years went by, actually, including his passing and the combining of the Gorham Land Trust with the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust. That happened about four years ago, I think. My first exposure to PRLT was – I retired in 2008 from the company that I had spent forty years with. I retired with a lot of time on my hands, and I really needed to get more activity. The Land Trust office happened to be across the street, in essence, from where we lived. So I knew about it, and I would occasionally interact with some of the people that came and went over there. At that time, Tania Neuschafer was a part-time manager; there was no executive director. There was a board, but we didn’t have a full-time executive director or anything like that. I think it was early 2009. I had actually had some medical issues, but they were resolved, and I was looking to get outside and get some exercise. I went over and talked with Tania and told her what I was looking for – looking to work on some trails, interested in doing some volunteer work for the Land Trust. She said, “Oh, great.” And the short side of a longer story is she offered me a volunteer opportunity being the steward at the Gambo Preserve, which we called the Gambo property. We weren’t calling them preserves at the time, so I’ll probably jump back and forth between –

Galen Koch: [00:04:41] Hold on.

Don Wescott: [00:04:43] – property and and preserve.

Galen Koch: [00:04:45] Okay, we’ll see if that noise –

Don Wescott: [00:04:48] Do you want me to go back over that again?

Galen Koch: [00:04:49] Well, yeah, maybe. We’ll see if that noise stops. I think they’re going to fix the heat at some point, which is probably going to cause a problem.

Don Wescott: [00:04:53] Oh, yeah. That’s what they were doing.

Galen Koch: [00:04:57] So, Gambo. You said that’s where you first got started.

Don Wescott: [00:05:03] Yeah, they needed somebody to be the caretaker, the steward for the Gambo property. I had been familiar with the Gambo property because Bob Frazier, who I mentioned earlier, took me over there when he was trying to recruit me twenty years before that and told me what was going on at that time. They were trying to get that property preserved, and he was working with the Shaw Brothers Construction, who was the owner of the property. I think it was in the ’90s, the mid-nineties, that they actually donated a portion of their property within the old powder mill area to the Gorham Land Trust. I became the steward there, and I remember my first “assignment,” as it were, where I had to recruit volunteers and bring a bunch of tools over there. We were planting signs, interpretive signs, that are still there today. Although last year or two years ago, some of them were replaced with new signs that were done by a local Boy Scout troop. But the first time we put them in, I just had a volunteer group of individuals from around town that came over there on a Saturday, and we dug a bunch of post holes and planted all these signs on the property, which helped explain to people going through there what that was all about. Actually, that was in 2009, so a few years before that, that property had been opened up. Even though it had been preserved previously in the ’90s, it was not visited very often because the bridge over the river, the Presumpscot River, at Gambo, didn’t exist or only part of it existed due to an accident or damage that occurred back in the ’70s. A logging truck apparently broke through the bridge, and they didn’t see their way clear to replacing it, so you couldn’t cross the river there. People came down to that preserve, but only from the Gorham side. When I first became the steward there, it was a bit of a challenge because it wasn’t really a property that was visited for the purposes of studying history or learning about local history. It was a place to have a Friday night party with beer and fire on the river. My first experience over there was – well, I think the planting of the signs came a little bit later than that even, but my first experience there was really dealing with groups of individuals who would mess the place up. I’d go down and pick up fifty or sixty beer cans, and there was an occasional vehicle that got left down there or something. That was my first exposure as a steward to the kinds of things that the Land Trust was dealing with in those times. This might be an appropriate time to mention that the effort to acquire other properties that could be preserved was sometimes resisted by the landowners because they often felt that if we preserved this property and opened it up to public access, that’s going to bring more of the undesirable public to the site like had happened over at Gambo. The ironic thing that took place in 2005, I believe it was, [was that] the Gorham Rec [recreation] Department acquired funding in conjunction with the Windham Rec Department to construct a wooden footbridge connecting the remains of the iron bridge that got taken out by the logging truck with the Gorham side of the river so people could walk to the property from either side of the river. That changed things quite dramatically. The fear that more visitors would cause more problems actually turned out to be a myth and that, in fact, it went the other way. The more visitors we had that were there to walk their dogs, push their baby carriages, or to just learn about the history of the property caused the undesirables to not want to go there anymore, I guess. So, I was able to carry that lesson forward. I think that was helpful in convincing some other landowners that it would be a good thing rather than a risky thing to convert their property to a conservation easement.

Galen Koch: [00:10:18] That’s great. I want to take a brief pause to see if they’re going to –

Don Wescott: [00:10:24] They’re going to keep doing that.

Galen Koch: [00:10:26] – because I don’t want that noise in the background of all your stories.

Don Wescott: [00:10:28] Take a look and see what’s going on out there and slap those people around a little.

[RECORDING PAUSED]

Galen Koch: [00:10:33] All right. So we are back with Don. Don, 2.0.

Don Wescott: [00:10:37] Okay. 2.0. Yeah.

Galen Koch: [00:10:38] So the Gambo property – I’m just wondering if you can tell me what made that property interesting or special to you. What were your first impressions of it when you went there?

Don Wescott: [00:10:51] Well, that’s an interesting question or a good question because I don’t think I knew what I was really getting into at Gambo. As I mentioned, I was a little bit aware of the history, but I don’t think had really connected with it yet. Bob Frazier took me over there. He told me all about it. He said it’s the old powder mill. I wasn’t really ready to hear the history, I think, back then. It wasn’t until I became the steward and we put up the interpretive signs, which were informative to me as well as the guests or the visitors walking through – but I think the thing that really changed it was that, as the steward, some groups were asking me if I would give public tours and walking tours of small groups through the site and tell them what they were seeing. The signs were helpful, but they weren’t really telling the whole story. So, I said, “Yeah, I’d do that.” Then I got realizing that I don’t really know much about the history of this site. I was talking to my neighbor next door in my backyard one afternoon, and I told him about my new assignment as the steward over at Gambo. I said, “They’ve been asking me to do tours, and I really need to get more information about the history of that area.” I said, “Do you know anybody that could help me with that?” And he says, “You wait right here. I’ll be back in five minutes.” He went in his house, and he brought out a copy of the book that he had written entitled “The Gunpowder Mills of Maine” by Maurice Whitten.

Galen Koch: [00:12:56] Wow.

Don Wescott: [00:12:58] So, my next-door neighbor was the expert on the history of the Gambo property because he had studied it for twenty years while he was writing his book. I think it’s fair to say that that really triggered my interest to learn the history and even go beyond his book, although his book covered a lot of breadth and depth. But I also became familiar through his book and through him and a colleague of his who also – well, Mr. Whitten was a retired professor of chemistry at the University of Southern Maine [USM]. This other individual that he introduced me to was Joel Eastman, who was the head of the History Department at USM. So, between those two individuals, I was able to glean information about the powder mill, the river, the old canal, the railroads coming through – that whole story about the gunpowder operations there.

Galen Koch: [00:14:09] Wow, I had no idea.

Don Wescott: [00:14:11] Through them, I became one of the local historians, experts of sorts. Some people have treated me as an expert, although I’m really not. There are others that know even more, but I have studied it, and it opened up my eyes to other historical topics, many of which relate to my own family genealogy. I have relatives that were active during the American Revolution in New England. That always helps to stir the interest a little bit further. But that’s basically how it happened. I was asked to give tours, needed more knowledge and more information, my next-door neighbor turns out to be a gift. [laughter]

Galen Koch: [00:14:57] The expert. Be careful with your hands because you can hear them in the mic.

Don Wescott: [00:15:04] You can hear that. Okay. Yeah, I’ll put them down here. So, Maurice Whitten and I wound up actually doing tour groups together until he was not able to do it because he was in his eighties when we first met, and I lived in that location for fifteen years. He passed away a couple of years ago. So, yeah, that’s what got me going. [laughter]

Galen Koch: [00:15:29] So, that was the first property that you were – were you a steward to just that property for a long time?

Don Wescott: [00:15:36] Well, initially, I was the steward for that property, and then they invited me to serve as a director on the Land Trust, to join the board. I accepted the invitation to do that, and it wasn’t too long after I became a board member that they asked me if I would consider being the chair of the Stewardship Committee. You had to be a board member in order to chair one of the committees, so I agreed to do that. That sort of solidified my longer-term connection and broader responsibilities with the organization. Although, certainly, I was mostly involved – in the ten or so years that I was involved as a board member, I was mostly involved in the stewardship aspect of it. I was a little bit involved with Mike Parker a few times, evaluating new properties that might be conserved. And I participated in an initial evaluation of the Randall Orchards farm up in Standish when they were wanting to put that farm under an agricultural easement.

Galen Koch: [00:17:03] And so chair of stewardship, that was the role that you had on the board. What did that involve? What were some of the things that you did in that position?

Don Wescott: [00:17:15] Well, instead of being responsible for just one property like Gambo, we had several preserves or properties. One of the main responsibilities was to carry out an annual evaluation and produce a report for the record in terms of what’s going on with the property. Are the terms of the easement being maintained? Is there anything that needs to be repaired or updated or anything like that? I think there were probably a dozen properties that I was overseeing in the sense of coordinating the activities of other stewards to do the annual reports, the monitoring reports. And then, if there were work projects that needed to be done, like a new bridge or a trail, I would work with the stewards of those properties, and we would try to recruit groups of people to come and help us with the trail building. One of the larger projects that we got involved in fairly soon after I became the chair was a large fifty-three-acre property behind what is now the Great Falls Elementary School in Little Falls. That property had been under conservation protection for several years, but there hadn’t been any development done there. There hadn’t been any trails made or signage or anything else done. It was a bit of a challenge. They didn’t have a steward. I became a steward there as well as a Gambo. The initial challenge there was dealing with the local folks who had used that property as a playground for a long time, playgrounds involving ATVs and four-wheel drive vehicles and things that damaged the land, ultimately. So, I was involved there with the process of developing a trail system, deciding where it could go. At the time that I was doing that, the new school was under construction, so I wound up establishing a working relationship with the Gorham School Department and working with them to determine where we could put the trailheads so that they wouldn’t infringe on the school business but that it would provide access to the school if they wanted to bring students out there for educational purposes. In the middle of all that, I was dealing with some issues that were being created by some of the locals continuing to disobey the signs that said no ATVs. That was a bit of a challenge initially. I had to involve some of the local police and the Maine Warden Service to get that under control without completely alienating us from the community. Most of the people in the community were not really using the property; it was just the ones that had used it as a recreational park for many years [who] were the ones that were upset about us essentially shutting it down to those uses.

Galen Koch: [00:21:02] Yeah, it’s a tricky balance to strike.

Don Wescott: [00:21:12] That was probably the most challenging part of the job of stewarding those properties, dealing with the – what’s the best term to use? Well, I guess I have to refer to them as violations of the property usage rules and trying to do that in a way that didn’t cause more problems than it solved. I didn’t really have the authority; I was just a steward. I had the authority, obviously, to inform people if they were doing something that was against the rules. I usually did that by pointing to the sign. “Did you guys see that sign there that says no ATVs?” “Oh, yeah, we saw it.” “Do you know what it means?” That’s all I can do. I did have issues with one or two folks that caused me to bring the Warden Service in, and they actually had to take care of the problem. Those people lost their rights to run their ATVs on the property. Those were relatively minor; they didn’t happen that often. The other challenging area, in general, was just getting volunteers to help with work that needed to be done. We didn’t really have a staff that we could call on. We just had to recruit people to come and help on a Saturday, for example, and bring a wheelbarrow and a shovel and help build some trails or cut some trails, that sort of thing.

Galen Koch: [00:22:55] And did you see those properties – after establishing more rules or changing the use a little bit, did you see them change?

Don Wescott: [00:23:08] No question. Absolutely. Just like at Gambo, once that bridge went in, more people started coming there, bringing their children there. They could do it for historical education purposes, or they could just be out for a walk, walking your dogs. Same thing happened at the Hawkes property. When more people started coming there, we had two trailheads, one at the school and one down near the river, and there was a parking area at each of those trailheads. People started going there, walking their dogs, pushing their kid’s baby carriages and whatever, taking their kids out there for a picnic or whatever, and I was not surprised that after a couple of years of those kinds of activities, we weren’t really seeing any of the undesirables or at least it greatly diminished, let’s put it that way. I did have one incident where people were crossing the Land Trust property to get to the neighbor’s property, where they were actually camping and cutting trees and putting cables around trees. I had to work with the neighbor to try to minimize that. There wasn’t a lot we could do. We weren’t restricting people from crossing our property to get to the other property, but ultimately, the landowner had to take care of it on his own. And there were some law enforcement issues that came to bear up there as well. But that was his issue. The property overall, we’ve increased the number of trails, and we’ve increased the usage of the trails through the property, and that has no question diminished the undesirable usages that sometimes were cropping up. [laughter]

Galen Koch: [00:25:13] What would you say was motivating you to do the work during your time?

Don Wescott: [00:25:19] Well, that’s another interesting question because I think, initially, I was motivated by self-interest. I wanted a way to do some volunteer work that would involve me getting outside, working on trails, getting exercise, doing a lot of walking and cutting trees, trimming, and that sort of thing, which was something that I had been motivated to do as a result of some medical issues I had right after I retired. My doctor was basically saying, “You need to get more exercise.” So, the Land Trust provided a mechanism for that, and that was my initial motivation. As I say, it was self-interest. I think as I became more involved, particularly in the history and the historical aspects of some of these properties –  and most all of them have some historical elements, whether it be the powder mill – many of the other preserves had portions of the old canal, the Cumberland and Oxford Canal that go through the properties. That’s a historical connection, as well. Of course, the Gambo Powder Mill property was significant because a lot of the gun powder for the Union Army was made there during the Civil War, about a fourth of it. I think as I matured in my understanding and thinking relating to conservation, conserving properties, conserving open space, I think I was motivated more by the preservation of the historical aspects. Other folks, for example, were motivated by the idea of preserving wildlife habitat, for example, or just preserving open space and not building houses everywhere. I wasn’t concerned about that too much, but I think the historical connections were the things that kept me engaged with it. The thing about history, from what I learned anyway, is if you follow a thread, a historical thread, it’s not long before you are discovering that you’re pulling on more than one thread, and the next thing you know, you’re pulling on three more threads, and you can go down those other avenues. At the powder mill, people would ask questions about, well, the old canal. Questions about how did they get the materials to and from the Gambo area. And one of the ways they did that was with the Cumberland and Oxford Canal, which operated during some of the years that the powder mill was there. So, that’s a thread, the canal, right? Well, the canal didn’t last very long; it went out of business around 1870. Why? Why did it go out of business in 1870? Well, the railroads came through. Well, which railroad was it? Well, it was the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad. Uh-oh. We’re on another thread now. Where did that go? Where the heck is Ogdensburg? That’s up on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York. I found myself going down these other threads, and I oftentimes would have to tell people during the walking tours that they need to let me know when I’ve probably gone farther down a thread than I should go and we need to get back to what we were really here for in the first place. [laughter]

Galen Koch: [00:29:12] I’m sure that was fun for them.

Don Wescott: [00:29:14] I go, “You people need to pay attention because sometimes I get off on a sidetrack here, and I may not be able to remember where I left the main trail. Help to get me back.”

Galen Koch: [00:29:26] That’s great.

Don Wescott: [00:29:27] Yeah.

Galen Koch: [00:29:28] What do you feel that, during your time on the board, that the Land Trust did that really brought value to the community? Do you have anything specifically –? Obviously, there’s the broad sweeping, but any specific moments or things that really were valuable?

Don Wescott: [00:29:51] Well, definitely preserving, again, the history. I think it’s fairly clear to me that if some of these lands, some of these properties, were not put under protection through the Land Trust, they would have been either sold to developers or in some other way destroyed, so the history is lost. I place a fairly high value on history because if you don’t understand things that happened in the past, it inhibits your ability to understand what’s going on in the world currently, for example, and how we could be making the same mistake again on something. So, history has value, and the Land Trust helps to preserve history in a nutshell, right? In addition, certainly, the water quality has been an emphasis of the Land Trust. The degree to which communities, through development – uncontrolled development – perhaps initially unknowingly create sources of pollution that affect the water quality in the rivers and the lakes. The Land Trusts, in general, are concerned with more than just preserving land. I think they’re concerned about the overall environment and trying to maintain the quality of the environment that we live in. Even in urban areas, there are places today like Portland – Portland Trails has preserved a lot of trail systems and places in Portland where you can go. If they hadn’t been doing that in their capacity as a conservation body, those places might not be accessible today. I think those are the main things that I would consider to be the value. It’s a good question because when I first joined the Land Trust on the board, we were having difficulty with member recruitment. We just couldn’t seem to grow the membership. Most of the work that we did on properties and most of the properties that were acquired got the funding to do that through grants. A small portion of it maybe would be helped through membership dues, but we didn’t have very many members to support the membership dues side of it. I used to think quite a bit about why are people not more interested in joining the Land Trust. Why wouldn’t they want to be members? I asked a lot of questions about that, and I discovered that nobody really knew about the Land Trust. It wasn’t being promoted, and it wasn’t being promoted in a way that helped people see what was in it for them if they were to become members and provide some financial support. That was the main impetus, I think, behind hiring Toby [Jacobs] as our stewardship person because when he came on, that was shortly after Rachelle joined us as the executive director, I worked very closely with her in the beginning, pushing for a staff person to do the stewardship, which would have included recruitment and trying to promote the visibility of the Land Trust. People couldn’t see what we were doing before. When Toby came on, we started doing more projects involving trail building, trail maintenance, and other work that would invite people to come. I would say he did a better job of that than I was able to do because he was a full-time staff person. I was doing this as a part-timer on weekends, holding down some other responsibilities. Even though I was retired, I still had other things that I was involved in. I think helping the general public understand – getting people out onto the land through activities that we’re promoting, like publicizing the fact that we’re going to do a hike over – we’re going to go to the alewives stream in the spring and watch the alewives, for example. Bring the whole family. Getting people out on the trails and helping them see what’s being preserved and helping them understand that if we weren’t doing this, they wouldn’t be able to do that activity.

Galen Koch: [00:35:09] There’s a public relations side of things.

Don Wescott: [00:35:16] Yeah. I would never suggest that when we were trying to do that on a smaller scale with a part-time manager that they weren’t doing a good job. I think they were doing the best they could with what they had, but when Rachelle came on, she provided a level of leadership that was above and beyond what the previous managers were able to do because she was a paid staffer. Now, we had to take some risks when we made that jump because we didn’t know – how are we going to pay for this person’s salary. She’s going to have to earn her own salary through her effectiveness as a leader, and she did. I mean, the short answer is she did an extremely effective job both through grant funding as well as activities that promoted increasing membership and even appeals to board members and others for annual donations. I don’t know how much money in total we get right now from just people making pretty hefty donations to the Land Trust every year, but that’s a big part of it, too.

Galen Koch: [00:36:44] So when did Rachelle come on? Do you know the year when that was?

Don Wescott: [00:36:56] She came on – I don’t know. It seems like it’s been ten years. But no, it can’t be that because I have been involved since about 2009. So, it’s been about thirteen, fourteen years. She must have come on five or six years ago, I think. Previous to that, we had a part-time manager, and then we had another individual we hired as an executive director, but that just wasn’t a good fit and didn’t work out. I was involved during that time with the other board members because we were basically keeping the organization together until we could find the right person. When we found Rachelle, it was a big relief because we knew we had somebody that we felt could take the bull by the horns and do what needed to be done, including raising the money for her own salary. What was the question again?

Galen Koch: [00:38:06] Just when Rachelle came on. But it sounds like you saw some very big changes and shifts in the time you were in leadership.

Don Wescott: [00:38:14] Well, I felt, you know, the organization is not going to grow if it’s going to rely on total volunteer staffers – not really staffers, they were just volunteers. A volunteer can come and go easily. There’s no real binder involved. When you hire somebody, you have a contract. As a volunteer, it’s a pretty loose contract. The volunteers themselves have to have a sense of, “I really want to do this,” either for the Land Trust or, in my case, for myself. I need to get exercise. I need to get outdoors and do stuff, but I don’t want to just go through the motions; I want to do something that’s useful. She really was a key change that happened, however many years ago that was, and I think it was about five years ago. The organization has a lot of inertia now that it didn’t have then. When she came in, I don’t think we had much inertia at all, if you know what I mean by inertia. Meaning if you let go of it, it would keep moving. If we’d let go of it during that period –

Galen Koch: [00:39:40] Be careful of your hand. It’s very loud.

Don Wescott: [00:39:42] If we had let go of it, then it’s possible it just would have ground to a halt. We never felt that it was coming to that, but if you don’t have the money to do what you need to do and you are under a legal obligation – as directors, we’re under a legal and binding responsibility to carry out the preservation arrangements with the properties that you’re responsible for. If you can’t do it, then you have to turn it over to someone who can, which could mean a merger. We did participate in two mergers during the time that she was on board, but those weren’t done to save the organization; those were done to grow the organization. We merged with the Gorham Land Trust, which is the second Gorham Land Trust that Mr. Frazier was involved in, and then we had the merger with the Windham Land Trust a few years back. That was pretty huge, I think, in terms of opening up the scope of lands that could be considered. What’s come out of that, of course, is some of these more recent large tracts over in the East Windham area where they’re opening up big trail systems over there. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not, but the East Windham Project, together with the Lowell preserve, will be a tract of land that’s about the same size as the Bradbury Mountain State Park up in Pownal.

Galen Koch: [00:41:20] Wow.

Don Wescott: [00:41:21] That’s no small feat, and several million dollars involved in making that happen, too, and cooperation between towns, town governments, and the Land Trusts.

Galen Koch: [00:41:34] Do you have, for yourself, a proudest moment in your time in leadership?

Don Wescott: [00:41:43] I don’t like to blow my horn very loudly because almost nothing happens because of an individual. But I really feel that the time that I spent with Rachelle when she first came on – she wanted to know what I thought about what would help us grow. I was very strong about [needing] somehow to get to a point where we can have a paid staff person to do community outreach. We need an executive director, but we need a staff person to do the stewardship thing. It made a lot of sense to her. She didn’t challenge me on that notion. She says, “I think you’re right.” She decided she was going to put her efforts into that, and she did. It wasn’t too long before we were able to come to a board meeting and say, “We’ve got the funding to hire Toby, our staff stewardship person.” I think that was a breakthrough. That’s one word I guess I could use. I felt that I had promoted that idea. I had promoted it before with the board, but we didn’t have the leadership component that was needed to do the funding side of that. Everyone thought it was the right idea, but how can we do that? We don’t have the money. [laughter] And her answer was, “I’ll get the money, don’t worry about that.” But it’s the right idea, and it is going to help the organization grow, and it is going to get – the public is going to be able to see what the Land Trust does through the stewardship activities. It was my argument all along that the public can’t see the paperwork behind a conservation easement. They never see it; they only hear certain properties have been put under conservation easement. Well, what does that mean? Nothing to most people. What does even the word “protection” mean? What does it mean? Does it mean we can’t go there anymore? Because we used to go there when we were kids, and now we can’t go there anymore? No, that’s not what it means. In fact, we’re going to put some new trails in that you can hike on, that sort of thing. That makes the work of Land Trust more visible to the general public, and I think that really triggered the growth and the recruitment of members and getting people to want to give money to the organization to help acquire other properties or do certain projects.

Galen Koch: [00:44:53] Have you seen that growth sustained? Does it feel like the Land Trust is moving in the direction that you –?

Don Wescott: [00:45:02] I think they’ve achieved what I guess I would call a critical mass. When you get to a critical mass, you have enough inertia and enough momentum to carry it through maybe a short-term difficult time, like the pandemic that we just went through. That had to present different challenges to different organizations, and the Land Trust was affected by that as well. So, yeah, ask me that question one more time.

Galen Koch: [00:45:39] Do you see the changes that happened and the efforts that you were part of –

Don Wescott: [00:45:44] Oh, yeah, sustainable. Yeah, they are. I think with the membership being what it is now, I think they still need to continue doing what they’re doing. The new outreach person – what’s her name? [Brenna] Crothers.

Galen Koch: [00:46:09] I’m not sure.

Don Wescott: [00:46:10] I should know her first name, but that’s my weakness. I don’t remember names. But I think that’s an equally important activity. She’s very active in community engagement; that’s her title, Community Engagement [Manager]. That’s similar to what Toby’s been doing. He did that in conjunction with the stewardship. He was doing community engagement and stewardship; stewardship was community engagement. Now that’s gotten big enough so that it’s a separate task, and that’s her job. Again, I don’t see anything – unless something really crazy goes on around the world or in the state, I don’t think that the organization is at risk of not succeeding. If anything, some of the things that are becoming better known by the general public might actually help promote the Land Trust’s work.

Galen Koch: [00:47:21] Like environmental change?

Don Wescott: [00:47:22] Environmental, climate change, urban development. I live in Gorham, and there’s a lot of pressure in Gorham – not just Gorham, but a lot of towns now are dealing with the question of housing. There’s not enough housing available for the people who need housing, and it’s not just Maine; it’s the whole country. Well, that’s going to put pressure on the land, depending on how it’s done. I know in Gorham, for example, they’re trying to promote the condensation of housing, in other words, the density, to increase the density of housing so that the house lots are not as large as they used to be. There’ll be some places where that won’t change, but there’ll be other places where they’ll be able to put more people in a smaller area, which puts other pressures on the school system and the traffic systems. But that’s what the towns have to deal with, and the Land Trust, I think, has been a part of that process to the extent that they can help protect the open space as much as possible so that it isn’t just all swallowed up by housing or industrial development, especially along rivers like the Presumpscot. I remember when I first moved – well, no, it was before that – no, actually, it wasn’t. I first came to Portland in the late ’60s. Anybody that lived in a house in what I call Falmouth, along the ocean in Falmouth near the area where the Presumpscot River drains into Casco Bay, there was so much pollution in that river that the houses turned green with slime algae. People that had white houses didn’t have white houses; they had green houses. And every year, they had to go out there with a brush and scrub it off if they didn’t want it. That’s all gone now. There’s no more green slime in Falmouth. [laughter] So, things do change for the better, and the Presumpscot has changed a lot. The elimination of the dams. They’re trying to get the fish to be able to swim up the river, and that’s another environmental movement. But the Land Trust has always supported it, mainly because of the water quality thing. If the fish can get up the river, but the river is too polluted to live in, they’re not going to go.

Galen Koch: [00:50:22] What does that mean for everybody else? Are there other stories that you haven’t shared that are important to understand about the history of the Land Trust or things that happened during your leadership that we haven’t touched on?

Don Wescott: [00:50:44] Let me think on that for a second. I have some notes, but they’re in my coat. I looked at it earlier this morning.

Galen Koch: [00:50:54] You can look at them now.

Don Wescott: [00:50:55] If you want to pause it – [RECORDING PAUSED] – I mention in my dialogue here – it’s more about the history and the sources of the information that I was able to acquire. It’s more of a credit-where-it-‘s-due sort of thing. What I’ve learned about the Gambo powder mill, the railroads, the canal, and other historical subjects that are pertinent to the area, very little of that information came from my own independent research. I’ve always felt a credit due to Dr. Maurice Whitten and also to his cohort, Joel Eastman. Joel was the chair of the history department at USM, and Morris was – I don’t think he was the chair of the chemistry department, but he was one of the professors in the chemistry department at USM, and they worked very closely. They were studying the old Cumberland and Oxford Canal. Back in the ’80s, they had an organization called the Cumberland and Oxford Canal Association. They had monthly meetings, and they had a newsletter, and it was through that work that they came to discover the ruins of the powder mill over on the river. That triggered Dr. Whitten’s work to research that activity, and he wound up writing a book about it. Between Joel Eastman, Maurice Whitten, and some others, I feel indebted to them for the information that I was able to obtain that allowed me to give tours. Last year, I also participated in a documentary that we made by the Gorham Community TV people. That documentary was shown on PBS, Maine Public Broadcasting, and we’re doing another one now about the canal. So, I wouldn’t want to overlook mentioning their contribution; let’s put it that way. I’ve pretty well covered the fact that I’m very gratified to see the growth in the membership and the amount of land that’s been preserved under Rachelle’s leadership. [laughter] The paid staff activities have made a big difference in the growth, and I feel that I did contribute to that notion and supported that idea to the point that he carried forward with it, and others on the board supported it as well. Ten years ago, I think it’s fair to say – and I wrote this down – ten years ago, the average person on the street didn’t know anything about the – what’s PRLT? What’s the Presumpscot Regional Land Trust? Most people at that time, and even still today, don’t even refer to it properly. They call it the Presumpscot – whatever it is they use for the “R” – it’s not regional, it’s something else.

Galen Koch: [00:54:44] River, maybe?

Don Wescott: [00:54:46] Presumpscot River, yeah. Presumpscot River Land Trust. That’s not what the “R’ stands for. But I think today, more and more people are familiar with what it is, what it does, why it’s important, and why they should support it. And hopefully, that will continue. People are getting out on the public access preserves. They use them for outdoor recreation, and as a result, I think they better understand the need for land conservation.

Galen Koch: [00:55:22] Yeah, that’s something I’m curious about, and you touched on it a little bit, but how have you seen the use change over time, over your leadership, just the uses of these places? It sounds like it’s been a pretty big change.

Don Wescott: [00:55:43] Well, one very specific thing that is happening currently is on the Hawkes property, behind the Great Falls School, the teachers are bringing the kids out onto the properties and doing lessons out there. They’ve done nature studies, for example. They’ve made some little interpretive signs that the kids have put out there. The Girl Scouts have put bird boxes on properties, for example. So, kids in particular are important, maybe more so than adults, because I think there’s a lot happening in our school systems now. The curriculum is broader than it used to be in my mind, and I think that’s good up to a point. I think it’s still important for young people to understand the environment, the environmental aspects of things, and being able to get out on the land themselves, see it firsthand, and not just read about it in a book is always a little better, I think. The Hawkes property, in particular, has become an extension of the Great Falls School, and the students are out there frequently participating in class work in the summertime. In the spring, they’re down on the little pond there, which is not Land Trust property, but it’s right next to it. I know this to be a fact because I have grandkids in those schools, and they tell me about stuff that they’re doing. It’s always gratifying for me to think, okay, I made that trail system, or I designed that trail system, and other people helped me build that trail system that they’re out there using and walking on the bridges that we built. Hopefully, when they grow up, they’ll want to be connected with an organization that’s continuing those activities.

Galen Koch: [00:58:04] Yeah, that’s wonderful. I think you did a great job hitting all the points it sounds like you had written down. That’s great.

Don Wescott: [00:58:12] I kind of suspected that what the questions might be. It’s a logical set of questions, and Mike Parker and I spoke a little bit about it because he was the one who came up with the idea of having some of our board members – former board members – capture some of their history so to speak, before it gets lost. I think both Mike and I joke about it, but we both recognize the fact that we’re on the downhill side of this thing. We have less years left than we had. We’re getting to that point where we have to sort of realize that if there’s anything else that needs to be said, we got to say it fairly soon.

Galen Koch: [00:59:06] Yeah, the time has come.

Don Wescott: [00:59:07] We don’t want anybody quoting us later. [laughter] There is one thing I would read for you. I don’t think it’s going to become part of the permanent record, but I wrote a poem that talks about my experience as a steward for the Hawkes property.

Galen Koch: [00:59:26]  I love that. Yeah, I’d love if you’d read it.

Don Wescott: [00:59:28] I wrote this poem.

Galen Koch: [00:59:29] Just don’t rustle the papers.

Don Wescott: [00:59:32] Don’t rustle the papers. Okay. All right. I wrote this poem on the day before Christmas when I was dealing with the issues on the Hawkes property. Because I was out there – actually, I’ll just read it. It’s called “The Day Before Christmas.” “Twas was the day before Christmas. I was out for a walk along the old towpath from Gambo to Hawkes. Not a creature was stirring except for some ducks, wings flapping to the sound of my winter mukluks. As they swam on the river, they were not in a row, as they nervously swam back and forth to and fro. The foxes were nestled all snug in their dens with visions of chickens, roosters, and hens. Having just used my kerchief to muffle a sneeze, I heard distant voices carried along with the breeze. The glare of the sun on the new-fallen snow reflected unusual footprints below. Then the tracks in the trail revealed with ease a pattern of tread clearly from ATVs. With plump, stubby tires, they had churned up the trail and left empty beer cans to my great dismal. As I reached Lyons Bridge, there arose such a clatter. I sprinted ahead to see what was the matter. And then, to my curious eyes, did appear two men on the pond drinking Budweiser beer. Their clothes were tarnished with grease stains and oil. And their boots were all covered with mud stains and soil. They were out on the ice, which appeared very thin, and I thought any moment they will surely go in. One was riding in circles and seemed quite unstable, ATV spinning out like a top on a table. Doing circles and spinouts, they seemed unconcerned that their party would soon be shut down and adjourned. With the wink of an eye and a twist of my head, I approached them to say what had to be said. As I questioned the riders about their abuses, they answered my questions with several excuses. Then challenged me not to disrupt their good cheer by opening two more cans of cold beer. Their cheeks were like roses, their noses like cherries. Their hands were the color of native blueberries. Cigarette smoking and stuck to their lips. Gloves frozen stiff to their handlebar grips. I spoke not a word, pointing straight toward some trees to a sign clearly stating, ‘No ATVs.’ Avoiding my stare, they went on with their play, hoping soon that I’d leave and permit them to stay. And I decided, having told them the rules, to take leave of this meeting with two drunken fools. As I turned with a nod to head back up the trail and thinking perhaps that my plan might just fail, I called on my cell phone to let others know of my chance encounter in the snow. When the two drunken drivers, quite tipsy but quick, started their three-wheelers with a jerk and a kick, more rapid than falcons, they sprang to their steeds and dashed down the trail with incredible speed. I bid them good cheer as they raced off the pond and thought in kind they would respond. But I heard them exclaim as they drove out of view, ‘Happy Christmas to all, to all except you.’”

Galen Koch: [01:03:08] That’s great. Well done. You had to do some processing after that encounter.

Don Wescott: [01:03:14] That actually happened.

Galen Koch: [01:03:15] I know. That’s amazing. That’s a great poem. Thank you, Don.

Don Wescott: [01:03:20] Again, it’s probably too long to put in this thing.

Galen Koch: [01:03:22] I think we should include it. That’s great. Well, we have to break because we’ve got Mike –

Don Wescott: [01:03:27] You’ve got somebody else coming in.

Galen Koch: [01:03:28] – coming at 10:30.

Don Wescott: [01:03:30] Good.

Galen Koch: [01:03:31] Thank you so much.

Don Wescott: [01:03:31] You’re welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]