“You love the wind, you love the rain, you love every aspect of it.”
— GUIDE LANCE WHEATON
As he motored into a placid cove on Spednik Lake, guide Lance Wheaton slowed down, got the attention of the guests sharing his Grand Laker canoe, and gave a quick safety lecture in his inimitable fashion.
“If we should upset right here,” the jocular guide said, pausing for dramatic effect, “the first thing you should do is put your foot down. It’s only four feet [deep].”
Then he paused again for his words to sink in before he delivered his punch line.
“Don’t lay there and drown.”
A day in a canoe (or chasing grouse through thick alders, for that matter) is always amusing. It’s always worth the trip to tiny Forest City in Washington County (just head east out of Brookton until you get to Canada, then back up a few yards). And it’s always educational.
On this recent trip Wheaton, along with other guides, including his brother, Art Wheaton, media representatives and members of the Woodie Wheaton Land Trust, were touring a few pristine parcels in order to illuminate the work the land trust has already accomplished.
A second, not-too-subtle purpose: To show all involved how much more work needs to be done.
“I was doing 130 days a year in a canoe,” Lance Wheaton said, explaining how a heart attack slowed him a bit. “This summer, I didn’t work much. Only five days a week.”
On this day, Lance traded his fishing guide hat for his tour guide spiel, and pointed out valuable resources along Spednik Lake.
Both Wheatons present — brother Dale is also a guide, and owns a sporting camp in town — are passionate about the resources they’re trying to protect.
And both are equally passionate about the land trust that bears their father’s name.
Woodie Wheaton was a guide, too, you see. So was his dad. And his wife’s dad. All earned their livings in the woods, then passed those hard-earned skills to their own children.
Lance Wheaton admits he’s been guiding “officially” for 46 years. Unofficially, he was doing so long before that. Even as a young teen, he’d take sports out for a day afield and bring them back safe and sound, he said. The only catch: His dad, Woodie, wouldn’t let him accept any pay, because he wasn’t old enough to have earned a guide’s license.
“I’m 65 years old, and I’ve guided with a license from ’63 until now,” Lance Wheaton said, trying to explain the inexplicable. “You love the wind, you love the rain, you love every aspect of it. And the land trust is the only avenue that we have come up with to try to ensure that people from away and people who live here will be able to do this forever.”
“This,” in this case, is this: Stand on an uninhabited island on a 25-mile-long lake, with no man-made structures in sight, and enjoy the wonders of nature, virtually undeveloped, and virtually unspoiled.
Yes, there are buildings here and there. And there are semi-improved camping areas that guides use as lunch areas during their summer trips here.
For the most part, however, Spednik feels like wilderness, in a way few jewels in the U.S. do.
“I’ve lived all the way from California to Minnesota and all over the place, the only place I can tell you that’s even close to this is the boundary waters of Minnesota,” Art Wheaton said. “That’s why we’re so passionate about it. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
In August, the Woodie Wheaton Land Trust celebrated the grand opening of its conservation center in a handsome new log home in Forest City. Even before its official home was built, the land trust was working hard to preserve the wilderness quality of many local parcels.
Lance and Dale Wheaton remember one of the events that served as a catalyst for the land trust: A beautiful island in the middle of Spednik went up for sale in 1996.
The reaction of local guides, who feared the worst, was predictable.
“The light went on when Dale [Wheaton] and Mark [Danforth] were out here and a float plane came in and landed, and [someone got out and] put a “For Sale” sign on Birch Island,” Art Wheaton said.
“They said, ‘Holy crap.’ The first thing they did was they went over and tore down the sign and said, “No. Wait. This can’t happen.” And that was the lightning rod when everybody got involved.”
Lance Wheaton said the guides didn’t know exactly what to do, but one quickly thought up a plan.
“We were in a tizzy,” Lance Wheaton said. “We finally had a meeting and talked it over. We didn’t even know how we were going to raise the money to buy it. Andy Brooks, one of the local guides, said, ‘I know how we’re gonna buy it. We’re gonna dig into our own pockets and we’re going to use our own money and we’re going to save that piece of ground.’ That’s the way it started.”
And this is the way it progressed: The group has continued to act on its own initiatives and joined forces with the Downeast Lakes Land Trust and other groups to stop development in areas that are particularly important to the area’s wilderness character.
Thousands of acres have been put into easements or bought outright, ensuring that the lands people love to recreate on today will remain accessible and wild tomorrow.
“I think that the life I was born into was exceptional,” Lance Wheaton said. “I was a very lucky man. I love fishing. I love hunting. I love every aspect about the outdoors. And trying to protect some of it after I’ve seen major development [in other places is important].”
Art Wheaton says allowing “pods of recreational activity” in some areas and saving other areas for “the quiet sports” makes sense. One way to achieve that goal is to avoid allowing development on the pristine lakes and waters in the Down East region that are truly special.
The Woodie Wheaton Land Trust and other groups Down East have worked together to raise millions of dollars in similar quests over the past decade, and Art Wheaton hinted that more valuable land — this closer to East Grand Lake — might be becoming available soon.
Protecting it — and other parcels — for future generations will be expensive, but worth every penny, he says.
“I think the question that we have to ask is, ‘What is it worth?’” Art Wheaton said. “Can you define, or can you determine, what this is worth to people who come to visit it? I’m not sure if it has a price. I don’t think it has a price in my mind because to find refuge, solitude, solace, whatever, in a little part of the world left [where you can do so], I think is priceless.”
In an old-growth forest in the Mud Lake parcel, where massive birch trees are the same size as the largest pines you’ll find in other Maine locales, Art Wheaton’s words ring true.
Without the work of the Woodie Wheaton Land Trust, this parcel would have been harvested by now. The beautiful rapids on the river that runs through it wouldn’t be nearly the same. The fragrant forest soil would be covered with evidence of a major cutting operation.
In 1994, the trust helped guide the state of Maine toward purchase of the parcel.
Today, those majestic trees are still there. The rapids take your breath away. Fish spawn in the river.
And you can go there any time you like.
Not a bad outcome.
But as the Wheatons will tell you, the land trust that bears their father’s name has a lot more work ahead of it.
“This East Branch of the Chiputneticook chain [of lakes] has an interesting opportunity,” Art Wheaton said. “to preserve large sections of it, as well as to allow small recreational pods to take place.”