I first noticed it sometime in early spring of 2020. As I turned off Route 6 onto the Bottle Lake Rd in Springfield, my Grand Laker canoe on the hitch and headed to Lower Sysladobsis Lake, I saw a few fresh real estate signs in newly cleared timber lots. Further along, even more. This certainly wasn’t out of the ordinary on its own; one of the prominent logging companies in this area regularly sold off parcels after logging operations when they did not plan to continue harvesting it any longer. Most of the time, these lots, full of slag from timber operations, lay dormant and were used mostly by hunters as parking areas to get into prime territory in Dill Valley or along the many ridgelines that surround the numerous lakes in the area. I used a few myself.
What was out of the ordinary however was the amount of flagging tape and survey paint adorning the tree line. For miles on these gravel tote roads, the garish display went on. What really caused my eyebrows to wag was when I noticed lots long empty, with just the right amount of scrub brush and immature timber to make it a hunting gold mine, now suddenly littered with the most ominous of signs. You know the one. With its sinister black background and blazing orange text, it practically shouts at you; ‘Posted – No Trespassing’. Who is buying up all of these out of the way, semi-accessible lots I wondered. In the coming weeks I would have my answer.
As the weather warmed and the frost came out of the roads, so came the seasonal camp owners on the lakes. I recognized quite a few of these out-of-state vehicles as we passed each other on the back roads around the lakes. I see them every year; mostly shiny SUV’s and late model half-ton pickups bearing tags from Massachusetts and Connecticut, hauling ATV’s and fishing boats to their camp. But I noticed something else as well; an armada of vehicles with license plates from places like New York, New Jersey and Maryland. The difference was that this fleet were driving RV’s or towing pop-up campers. Care to guess where they were going? Within months, with the corona virus spreading like wildfire and the fear of it spreading faster, the multitudes flowed north, fleeing the urban sprawl and seeking the safety of the ultimate social distancing location – rural Maine, where land was cheap and plenty. Campers appeared on newly purchased lots almost weekly it seemed; drug as far into slash covered clear cuts as possible or stuffed into hastily cut niches in overgrown parcels. And as soon as the jacks came down it seemed, the ‘Posted’ signs went up. More and more of them every month. The trend continued all over my local area throughout the year and next, with long abandoned homesteads, languishing on the real estate market for years, suddenly selling for a premium. The signs followed there as well. For a time, I wondered if there any ‘Posted’ signs left to buy in town. Huge tracts of previously accessible land were now off-limits.
I certainly do not begrudge folks seeking safety for their families, but I wondered if they understand our way of life up here. I wondered if they value the natural resources and traditions we share. I hoped they wished to be neighbors, not isolators. Most importantly, I hoped to see more ‘Access by Permission’ rather than the dreaded ‘Posted’ placards. I remember thinking that the MDIFW’s Landowner Relations Program is going to have its hands full in the coming years.
But inevitably, after two Maine winters passed and the pandemic more understood, the campers and RV’s that filled previously prime hunting lands started slowly migrating back south, the only evidence left behind -tattered blue tarps and disused grills scattered among empty lots. And ‘Posted’ signs – lots of them.