Baxter State Park | New England’s Gifts
We’d been climbing Katahdin in the near darkness, lighting our way from Chimney Pond over the boulder-strewn Saddle Trail by flashlight, then by the breaking dawn. On the plateau we paused. My companion, Irvin “Buzz” Caverly Jr., had seen this view hundreds of times. He didn’t gush about its beauty; his feelings ran deeper than […]
By Mel Allen|Oct 30 2015|
Coffee By Design | Portland, Maine
Photo Credit : Katherine Keenan
Photo Credit : Mark Fleming
We’d been climbing Katahdin in the near darkness, lighting our way from Chimney Pond over the boulder-strewn Saddle Trail by flashlight, then by the breaking dawn. On the plateau we paused. My companion, Irvin “Buzz” Caverly Jr., had seen this view hundreds of times. He didn’t gush about its beauty; his feelings ran deeper than that. Instead he said simply, “This place doesn’t need advertising, does it?”
“This place” is Baxter State Park, that big green patch in the center of a map of Maine, about 60 miles north of Bangor, and nobody alive knows it the way Buzz Caverly does. He first came here as a ranger in 1960 at age 21 and didn’t leave until his retirement as park director in 2005. Of Baxter State Park’s 47 mountain peaks and ridges, of its 160 miles of trails, of its more than 200,000 acres, he’ll speak as intimately as another man might of his backyard.
Buzz Caverly was the last ranger who knew the remarkable Percival P. Baxter, who gave the park and its centerpiece, Mount Katahdin, to the people of Maine along with this enduring message: “Man is born to die. His works are short-lived. Buildings crumble. Monuments decay, wealth vanishes, but Katahdin in all its glory forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine.”
On the plateau I asked Buzz Caverly a question: If he were someday told that he would be allowed just one more day’s camping here, where would he choose? His face grew pained. “First of all,” he said, “I’d fight to stay.” But when pressed, he spoke about Russell Pond Campground as though it were sacred ground: “You’re seven miles in by foot, so already you have solitude. If I don’t want to fish, I can hike. If I don’t want to hike, I can swim. If I don’t want to swim, I can take a canoe and paddle the lake. If I don’t want to canoe, I can climb Lookout Rock, or I can climb Katahdin. If I don’t want to climb Katahdin, I can go have a nap and listen to the wind blowing through. And if I don’t want to go to bed at night, the whippoorwills are going to put me to sleep. Now what else do you want for a life?”
