Quickie (or maybe not)
Not much to talk about today. Chainsaw Man and some other *certified* chainsaw folks and swampers went out and did trail maintenance on the North Country Trail (NCT). I stayed back at the moomincabin.
Way back when, when my family made the bad decision to donate a bunch of our land to the Nature Conservancy and a local real estate developer immediately grabbed our precious land and started developing it, I was terribly aggrieved. I had vehemently argued with my parents that this was a bad idea without very specifically drawn up contracts. I was kinda pooh-poohed about this. “Oh it’ll be fine,” they said. Nope.
Kassandra of Birch Point Beach (meeee) thought differently. I had a bad feeling and I was right. My generation (my cousins and I) mobilized. My strength was to cobble together addresses (email and snail mail) and coordinate communications. My brother was *fearless* about communicating with people including the developer even as he (my brother) was facing what turned out to be a terminal illness. Others did their parts.
I don’t wanna go too far in to this tonight. The developer did manage to make a gash into our land and there are some houses there now. Another more local conservancy (Little Traverse Conservancy aka LTC) stepped in to buy a lot of the land and now that we can, we support that conservancy with donations and trail maintenance on the trail named after my brother, the Jim Finlayson Trail.
Even way back in the beginning when the first houses were being built and I was angry as all getout, I realized that the people who moved into those houses were not the enemy and I wondered when I would be friendly with some of them. It has been maybe 25 years until that happened but the GG has made friends with folks who live up there and they all went out doing NCT trail maintenance today.
A part of me still misses the old Read property that my family once owned. I used to walk to the cabin on it with my dad. But the beaver dam area is still there and the Jim Finlayson Trail passes by it. And I find myself looking forward to meeting our NCT friends who live up there. Whenever they bought their property, they couldn’t have had a clue about my family’s 100 year history in the area. They are a positive force and I find myself welcoming them. Onward.
May 24th, 2026 at 11:33 am
I miss that game trail that became the road. So many wolf tracks there. I still remember being here when the heavy equipment arrived to cut into the forest of red pines that Lewy(sp?) Reed planted. I wanted to chain myself to that equipment. Love my DARNOC t-shirt.
May 25th, 2026 at 8:36 pm
Were your parents alive to see the houses built and realize that you were right? I don’t know why I’m curious about that, but I am. I have a bit of the same feeling about my old house/rental. I had pretty much decided to sell it but then something held me back. Property is a good thing to own right now.