It really helped that I grew up here and understood the traditions. I saw so many people who came here, loved the area, but didn’t understand its roots. The natives have, as your comment indicates, some pretty nasty nicknames for people from MA; people who come here to ’save’ what’s been a working forest but think it’s a wilderness. (Most of northern New England was clear cut in the 1800’s. The virgin wilderness is long gone, read “Changes in the Land” by Wm. Cronan for more.) They fail to understand the working forest has actually preserved most of northern Maine as a forest.

A forest which everyone is welcome to walk, hunt, ski, snowmobile. . . but don’t eat more than one or two of the freshwater fish; they’re full of mercury from elsewhere.

The only other place in the US I know with anywhere near this kind of tradition would be the west, but only the National Forests, not the private or park lands. Luckily, in the west, there’s a lot of National Forest.

An interesting outcome of land use here has been trail building. User groups banding together to build trails of all sorts; with a real burst of activity in urban trails recently; with a coastal walking trail in the works, I believe. But even here, you run into conflicts. The AT, on one hand, is the darling of environmental types. I love it, I’ve got a view of the Mahoosuc Mountains, where it crosses from NH into Maine out the window beside me. But for landowners, it’s a broken promise because some of the land was taken by eminent domain, some parcels the trail bisects became inaccessible because landowners couldn’t build logging roads across the trail.

Then there’s the snowmobilers, who’ve been building organized trail networks since I was a kid in the ’70’s. Each year, they get permissions from thousands of landowners; re-route trails where permission is denied, spend thousands of hours maintaining the trails and any damage a trail might have inadvertently caused to a landowner’s property. Despite their noise and gas consumption, they provided the model for the many access systems that are developing throughout the state in the tradition of open use.

As Scott points out, each of those user groups — both formal and informal create their own claim on territory.

About 6 years ago I was in Wiscasset, Maine enjoying a crab roll on the pier and this nice little old lady started talking to me. We made small talk and she asked me if I was from Massachussets because I had MA plates on my car. I told her no, it was a rental and I was from Kentucky. She then got a big smile and said, “Oh good – I can’t stand those people from Massachusetts. They come here, buy land and put those ‘PRIVATE’ signs everywhere.”

I sort of chuckled about this as I drove away a few minutes later. Now I understand why she was so ticked. That’s a great tradition you all have in Maine. I wish we had more of that here. It’s getting increasingly hard for outdoorsman to get access to quality land in my state. People just don’t want the liability.

Maine’s private land owners have maintained a rarely formalized and highly unusual tradition of open lands. In exchange, they expected stable public policy for forestry management. It was an unwritten covenant between Maine’s industrial landowners and the public, a tradition of nearly 200 years.

What this means on the ground is that you can go anywhere, as long as it’s not posted “No Trespassing.” And you do it at your own risk; go rock climb on that cliff out yonder, fall off, and you cannot go and sue the landowner.

So the land is open; go ahead and romp with your dog or kayak or backpack. Just make sure you clean up after yourself, and do no damage. (And no, I don’t expect such a policy to work in a crowded urban environment; though the same policies apply to southern Maine, which is more surburban/urban; but the tradition was already in place.)

But as the story suggests, there is a strong vein of territory grasping, with traditional users of a spot not happy with new uses. I think it’s a human trend that dates back to our need to protect hunting/foraging grounds from interlopers. Survival of the fittest goest hand in hand with finding and claiming the best resources.

Fear definitely has a psychological effect on enjoyment of certain activities, be they a illicit game of fetch with Spot or smoking a doober in the safety of your own home.