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Acadia through the eyes of those who play, work there
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Neighbors of Acadia National Park make it part of their daily lives
Locals who live beside the popular park embrace it.The crashing waves blur in this 30-second exposure at Raven's Nest, a point along the Schoodic Peninsula last week. At 33,000 acres, Acadia is among the smallest of America's national parks. By contrast, Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve encompasses 3 million acres.For four residents who live near Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island and the Schoodic Peninsula, the park has colored and shaped their lives. While one Mainer never left the national park in which he exercises each day, two others came home to live beside it, and a scientist who could have lived anywhere in the world realized no place on Earth is quite like Acadia. Here are their stories.
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Island native hiked around the world, but found no place like Acadia
MDI local calls Maine's national park the most beautiful place on Earth.Janet "Bay" Ellis of Mount Desert walks her 6-year-old golden doodle, Maggie Rose, up Acadia Mountain on the quiet side of Acadia National Park off Route 102 last week. The mountain hike is part of her exercise routine, but she also enjoys it for the peace it affords her.MOUNT DESERT — As Janet “Bay” Ellis climbs along what she calls her natural Stairmaster, she hikes briskly up to a summit she’s stood upon hundreds of times. Here Ellis, 53, stops and takes in the panoramic view of Somes Sound from the trails in Acadia National Park that never grows old for this island native.
The daughter of a Maine boat builder who is related to the first keeper of Mount Desert Island’s famous Bass Harbor Light, Janet Ellis’ ancestral roots run deep here but not nearly as deep as her love for this place.
“I grew up hiking and walking around Witch Hole Pond in the park almost daily with my mother,” Ellis said. “I started hiking here when I was 2. My grandmother would take me to Wonderland or on the Ship’s Harbor trail when I was in high school. It’s a part of life.”
Since Ellis was born, Acadia has either been her neighbor, the friend she spent time with after grade school, or like a relative she missed as she traveled the world. She’s hiked in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Australia, Patagonia and New Zealand. She lived in Georgia, Florida and even for a time in Antarctica when she worked for the National Science Foundation.
No place for Ellis had the happy vibe of Mount Desert Island or the beautiful and inspiring scenery of her beloved park.
“I love it here. Once I lived in Trenton (on the other shore from Mount Desert Island). It was too far away. I needed to be here,” Ellis said. “I’ve seen a great deal of the world. And I’m very fortunate. But nothing is as beautiful to me as Acadia.”
Now, living just 2 miles from the park’s Acadia Mountain trail where she works as a hairstylist, Ellis hikes the hourlong climb every morning at 6 for fitness – and for the peace it affords.
“I love getting here at 6 a.m.,” Ellis said as she hiked up the trail. “I love having the trail to myself, and I love knowing I’m the first person on the planet to clear the cobwebs from this place and see this view of the sea.”
One morning two weeks ago she climbed the mountain later, when there was a steady parade of summer visitors passing her. It didn’t diminish her enthusiasm for this place as she warned the parents of small children of the steep descent ahead, and stopped to admire a low-lying shrub blooming in the barren rocky terrain.
For Ellis the daily climb in one of the most visited national parks sets her days to the rhythm of the ocean’s waves below.
“I think there’s something for everyone here. There are trails for different levels of fitness, for a 2-year-old or an 80-year-old,” Ellis said. “My grandmother died in 2007 at the age of 94. Maybe all that exercise kept her going for that many years. I had a great childhood here. I’m still loving it.”
– Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming
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Scientist embraces retreat ‘in my backyard’
Carol Bult is a leading genetic researcher by day, and a cyclist and Acadia volunteer in her free time.A geneticist at The Jackson Laboratory, Carol Bult also volunteers with the bike patrol of Mount Desert Island's Search and Rescue. Here, she cycles near Eagle Lake.BAR HARBOR — Carol Bult was a leading scientist in the nation’s capital working on groundbreaking genetic research when she decided to take a break from the Beltway traffic. She took a sabbatical at the University of Maine in 1997 to work as a visiting scholar, when she found her way to The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, one of the foremost cancer research centers in the world.
Once on Mount Desert Island, Bult, a cyclist, quickly found her way to the national park beside the laboratory, and in Acadia National Park found everything that was missing in her life.
Now Bult cycles with her wife, Lili Pew, on Acadia’s Park Loop Road, up the park’s Cadillac Mountain road, and across its historic carriage roads. She also volunteers time as a member of Acadia’s volunteer bike patrol and serves on a local search-and-rescue team that helps find lost hikers in the park.
“She bikes the park on a pretty regular basis. She is very serious and dedicated to that. And in her spare time, she is active on the MDI Search and Rescue. They are right there with us helping to recover lost hikers,” said John Kelly, Acadia spokesman.
At The Jackson Laboratory, Bult’s day job is as demanding as ever. She is the laboratory’s principal investigator studying the complex relationship between genes and cancer, and the deputy director of its cancer center working as one of the leading scientists studying human tumors. The difference now, Bult said, is this stunning national park that she lives beside.
“In Acadia, I have time for reflection,” Bult said. “I can step into the park and just be with myself and my thoughts, then do this community-driven work with park visitors and help them better enjoy the park. It’s a way to give back for a place my family and I love to spend time. It’s visceral. You’re not experiencing it in a book. I think it’s an important part of wellness.”
Bult smiles easily as she enters Acadia’s carriage roads wearing her royal blue collared bike patrol shirt. She doesn’t see this volunteer work, to which she commits about six hours a week, as her helping the park. It’s a way to say thank you for 57 miles of quiet coastal stone-dust trails that rise out of the woods to views of the Atlantic Ocean, and for rugged, wild seaside scenery that is a part of her weekly cycle routes.
She gets to play every day in one of the most-visited national parks in the country, and the opportunity is not lost on her.
“It’s like a dream to be able to do the work I do and then to have this as my backyard,” Bult said.
– Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming
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Winter Harbor EMT takes a walk in the park
Schoodic native Richard Gerrish enjoys Acadia every day of the year."I love this place," says Richard Gerrish of Winter Harbor, referring to remote Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia, though he worries about proposed changes that could "turn us into a mini Bar Harbor."WINTER HARBOR — Every morning Richard Gerrish drives a few miles from his home to the Schoodic Peninsula entrance of Acadia National Park. Then he circles the peninsula’s perimeter road to take in the stunning ocean views as he travels to the sunny side. There he parks and walks a few miles to help rehabilitate a back that gives him chronic pain.
Gerrish grew up here, made his life beside Schoodic Peninsula, and wouldn’t consider moving from the park that has been his family’s neighbor for at least three generations.
“Ever since I got a driver’s license, I’ve been coming down here,” said Gerrish, 70, as he walked along the crashing ocean and rocky coast. “I love my park, but I don’t like what they are doing to it. They used to say the Schoodic Peninsula was the best-kept secret. Well, they found us the last five years.”
Gerrish describes the peninsula as a place that always has been welcoming and uncrowded, from the town dinners held in Winter Harbor that draw both famous summer visitors and local lobstermen to the wealthy summer residents who anonymously donate to the local volunteer fire department.
When Gerrish, a former firefighter and volunteer EMT in Winter Harbor, retired 10 years ago, he went on a tour of the country’s national parks, historic sites and monuments, and saw as many as 150. He loved the big-sky country in the West and the immense scope of the Alaskan parks, but prefers his hometown that sits tucked away on the Maine coast, far from city life.
He doesn’t go to the main part of the park on Mount Desert Island during tourist season.
“I wouldn’t go near the island in the summer,” he said. “Now I’m afraid they’ll turn us into a mini Bar Harbor.”
Until recently, Winter Harbor and the Schoodic campus of Acadia National Park have been a quiet, sleepy coastal enclave. While Acadia park officials expect visitors to Maine’s national park to eclipse 3 million this year, Gerrish hopes the rising number of tourists do not flock to Schoodic and change the peace and solitude he enjoys here every morning.
“I don’t know anyone who comes down here as much as I do,” he said. “I love this place.”
– Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming
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Native recalls great fire, and the park he loved
Not even the historic blaze of 1947 could diminish Jack Russell's memories of a childhood spent beside Acadia National Park.Jack Russell, a board member of Friends of Acadia and a lifelong resident of Mount Desert, poses atop Beach Cliff last week. The park inhabits many of his earliest memories, and this is where he and his wife have retired.MOUNT DESERT — Jack Russell was born and grew up beside Acadia National Park. When he retired, he returned with his wife, Sandy Wilcox, to live beside the national park he grew up hiking in and exploring.
Russell said not even The Great Fire of 1947 that destroyed 17,000 acres across Mount Desert Island and drove him from his home at age 4 could diminish his fond memories of a charmed childhood spent in “the park.”
“I remember looking back as we drove off the island seeing sheets of flames on Cadillac. I have fragments of memory from that time,” said Russell, 73. “From that experience I think I gained a sense of where I’m from, that this is my home. And my park was wounded by the fire. But even then it was a source of wonder, satisfaction and peace.”
Today, as he looks from his deck across Echo Lake to the Acadia parkland on the other shore, Russell recalls growing up in a coastal community that shared a deep love for the spectacular natural beauty in Maine’s national park.
“My first four years looked out to Beech Mountain. So my earliest landscape was the park,” said Russell, a Friends of Acadia board member. “The first water I swam in was the park. And I’m told my first hike was up Flying Mountain, when I was 2, a fat blob passed up the mountain by my parents.”
The son of two geneticists at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Russell grew up with the freedom to hike unsupervised up the park’s rugged, scenic mountains. He recalls playing baseball at a field that looked up to bald mountain peaks colored by Acadia’s unique gray and pink granite.
He remembers after visiting his father and stepmother in Tennessee in high school, how flying back into the airport at Trenton he looked out over the park that was his playground and felt a rare warmth and happiness.
“I remember feeling a calmness I never felt at the same level,” Russell said. “At some point I realized, the East Coast doesn’t look like this down in Portland and Boston.”
Russell eventually left Maine for Michigan to raise a family but returned every summer and knew he’d retire here. That happened in 2006. Now, as he entertains his two granddaughters from Arizona for a month each summer, they retrace together in Acadia the steps Russell took here as a boy.
“When all my atoms are repurposed, I want them put back in the park,” Russell said of his dying wish. “My survivors will take my ashes to three to four special places in the park, and I’ll be happy to become part of the cosmos of Acadia National Park.”
– Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming
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