Part of the reason that Maine has the oldest population of any state in the nation is that people move here after making a good living in places that may not be as attractive, but where they can become successful enough to then want to experience the way life should be. At least for four or five months a year.
So we have gotten used to welcoming people to our neighborhood, as Mr. Rogers used to say.
We introduce newcomers to what can seem to be the strange and opaque world of native islanders and counsel patience among our local friends and residents while new neighbors get used to reading our body language or catching the meaning behind the intonation of our voices. Indirect communication is an art form.
Because we live at the end of a narrow point on property where my wife is a native, she has had the opportunity to welcome many new friends to the neighborhood (I am one). During the past 14 years, I have gradually become part of the local orientation committee and can offer an observation. Nothing brings neighbors—new and old—together more quickly than a discussion of property taxes and nothing drives a deeper wedge between them than cutting trees, especially near the edges of property lines.
Two sets of our neighbors have developed very hard feelings when trees on one side or the other of somewhat hazily marked property lines had been cut without their neighbor’s knowledge, leaving four families on tenuous speaking terms, and vastly complicating community get-togethers.
The twin forces of tax policy and tree harvesting recently converged at the tip of our point where a neighbor reluctantly put three-quarters of her long-held family property up for sale after the most recent property tax hike. A couple from Florida purchased several acres, subdivided it, sold off half with the idea of first building a barn with living quarters upstairs and eventually a new main house on a rocky bluff overlooking the harbor.
There is an old woods road on the property that winds through a stand of magnificent old growth pine, spruce and oak on the edge of the property that seemed to offer, with a little selective harvesting here and there, a wonderful entrance for the new owners’ dream of heaven.
The first sign of trouble came when the power company cut a new right of way diagonally, beginning at the corner of the property through these trees toward the proposed barn location.
On the one hand, you could understand the desire not to have new power lines coming down a winding driveway, but on the other hand, the width of the power line right of way, through low, wet ground with tall trees on either side, revealed a scene that looked like Sherman had just marched through Georgia. And then the wind went to work and made everything look worse.
The next step was to cut in the driveway.
We heard that the logger had helpfully suggested to our new neighbors that he could cut the driveway right of way quite cheaply if he could also take the timber to sell. And it proved to be an especially good deal—to the logger who cut the expansive swath straight in.
The driveway clearing produced a handsome pile of oak veneer logs and long spruce poles and limbless, knot-free pine. He must have smiled all the way to the lumber mill. It’s now wide enough for a freeway ramp. Oh well, we thought philosophically. It will look better in 100 years.
When we met the new owners at the end of their first season in Maine, they marveled at how much land they had bought—several acres seemed like heaven to them after their years in Florida. But when they put up yellow “No Tresspassing” signs at the entrance to the property and then stopped another neighbor who as a young girl had grown up scurrying over the rocks out of her skiff in the harbor, the now serious young mother scolded the new owners right back.
“We don’t put up No Trespassing signs down here,” she said in no uncertain terms. The intrusive yellow signs came down in favor of more tasteful green No Trespassing signs mounted on immoveable steel stakes.
When the clearing for the main house began this spring, we realized that our dog walking trail along the harbor, which we traversed every evening after dinner in the last moments of crepuscular light when the loons, eiders, geese and osprey are just settling in for the night, might have to be re-routed.
As a newcomer of 14 years, I took this eventuality better than the native at my side who had been walking the point for more than a half century. Finally, when our neighbors’ landscapers brought in large new stones to block off the entrance to the harbor trail, we reflected on the enduring truth that a man’s home is his castle—or is it his fortress? We are now looking forward to the colder seasons of the year.
Philip Conkling is the founder of the Island Institute.