 Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's community conversation with Sierra Club Main and our special guest speaker, Aislin Sarnacki. My name is Marina Bach. I'm the communications and outreach manager here at Sierra Club Main, and I thank all of you for joining us today. I know it's a beautiful day outside, so thanks for taking the time to be here. Before we begin, I'll just go over a couple of Zoom logistics. I'm sure you're all pros now, but we do ask that you keep your microphone on mute just to help with background noise, and you can feel free to turn on or off your video at your choosing throughout the presentation. It is being recorded, so if you don't want to be seen, you can go ahead and turn that off. And then lastly, we ask that you put any questions in the chat, and we'll be going through and monitoring the chat, and we'll have some time at the end for some Q&A. And I'd like to just take a minute to acknowledge the land that we live on here in Maine. So Sierra Club acknowledges Indigenous land and sovereignty. We are in the homeland of the Wabanaki, the people of the dawn. We extend our respect and gratitude to the many Indigenous people and their ancestors, whose rich histories and vibrant communities include the Abanaki, Malassee, Micmac, Pasamaquati, and Panopska nations, and all of the native communities who have lived here for thousands of generations in what is now known today as Maine, New England, and the Canadian Maritimes. So this acknowledgement does not rectify the ongoing violence of settler colonialism, but is rather meant to cultivate an unsettling awareness of its persistence towards building reconciliation. And we are very honored to collaborate with the Wabanaki as they share their stories. And we thank the Abbey Museum for their leadership in decolonization efforts here in Maine and their work to create effective land acknowledgments. And with that, I would like to introduce you all to Beverly Roxby, who will be helping to facilitate today's webinar. Bev has been on Sierra Club Maine's executive committee for the past four years. She lives in Belfast and is a member of the City's Climate Crisis Committee. Bev has been in charge of organizing the chapter's involvement in the Common Ground Fair for the past four years, and we will actually be at the fair this September in the Environmental Concerns Tent, and we invite all of you to come see us. So with that, Bev, I will pass it on to you. Thanks, Marina. I have just a little bit of background on our history here, but I'll be brief because there's a lot that we have to hear from Aislin. So when John Muir was in his 40s, he summited Mount Rainier wearing street shoes. He crawled along crevasses with no ropes. They didn't bring any ropes, and he pounded handmade sharp metal spikes onto his shoes only at the last minute. But afterwards, he had this to say about his experience, doubly happy is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below. Continuing our tradition of getting outdoors, the Sierra Club Maine is offering its first outing since COVID began. It'll be on Memorial Day at the Brzemskot River Preserve in Portland. And you can go to our website for more on this and other upcoming events, outings, and general information, what we're involved with all over the place, our various teams that are working on things, including the community conversations that we've archived on this site. And this one will be archived as well to share with your friends if they couldn't make it today. Our speaker is Aslan Sarnaki. She will share with us her vast adventures in our state about places that we may never heard of, but are close by and how to hike safely, not like John Muir, and be prepared with the proper equipment. She's been a reporter in the outdoor section of the Bangor Daily News for six years, sharing her one minute hikes as a web link on the BDN online, often accompanied by her husband and by her beloved dog, Oreo. And I'm sure we'll hear a lot about Oreo and happily, I guess, Aslan has a new dog, which is great. Aslan was born in Winterport. She graduated from New Maine where her thesis was on the health benefits of hiking, something I'm sure we could all agree with. She's received several awards, including the Maine Press Association and the Bob Drake Young Writers Award. She has written three books on hiking. She's written Family Friendly Hikes in Maine. She's written Maine Hikes Off the Beaton Path and my personal favorite, Dog Friendly Hikes in Maine. Here to tell you more about hikes and walks available to all of us is Aslan Sarnaki. Thank you so much. I decided I was outside. I decided I would move inside because it was getting windier and windier and hopefully my connection is better in here as well. But if you ever can't hear me or anything, let me know. I'm so pleased to be joining you guys today and excited to talk about hiking. It's been a little while and yeah, first, I guess I'll just explain what it is that I do. So for the past 11 years I've written at the Bangor Daily News full-time and for most of that time I've had a hiking column and that hiking column brought me to new places every single week. I tried to do a different trail in Maine so I've gotten out quite a bit. But the crazy thing is people always asked if I was going to run out of places to hike eventually and the answer is no. I didn't get to even close to running out really. I kind of saturated my area. I'm from the Bangor area but a little bit outside of it in Dedham which is on the way to Ellsworth and so I've certainly hiked every trail within like an hour of myself but I've tried to really get out in the state and writing the books for Downey's books, the three books that I wrote, they wanted me to cover the entire state so I made special trips up north and to the west and east and south. I'm really trying to cover as much of the state as possible for those books so that was good too. And recently, kind of new news is I stopped working full-time at the Bangor Daily News. I'm still a weekly columnist for them which is great so I'll get to continue to write about my adventures but I am currently working on becoming a registered main guide so I can bring people out physically. I've been doing it for years via video and photos and writing and I plan to continue doing that but I'm really excited to bring people out physically and see their reaction to these beautiful places and be with them and my goal is to be an interpretive guide and really focus on the nature aspect of hiking and talk about the ecosystems along the way and slow down and appreciate trails whether they're really easy or Katahdin, something like that. Yeah, so I have a little slideshow prepared and I want to leave plenty of time for questions but I thought that I would do a slideshow so that you guys can write down some things that you're interested in from the slideshow and then also share some photos. So I will start sharing my screen now. Let's see. Let me practice this. So all right, can you guys see my screen? Give me a thumbs up. Cool. All right, so I wanted to focus this talk on hidden hiking gems in Maine which really is whatever I think it is but hopefully some lesser known trails, some that maybe you haven't heard of in Driven Right Past that I've really enjoyed and a lot of these trails come from the book Main Hikes Off the Beaten Path. However, if you have that book, No Fear, I will talk about other trails and you'll get something else out of this talk and these are just my book covers here. They came out one year after another boom boom boom and each of them have 35 hikes in them that are different than the other ones and the dog friendly one. One thing that I added to that particular book is I include like places you can eat with your dog outdoors always I guess is the rule but where you can eat outdoors with your dog and then lodging options as well which that was that was an interesting thing to add into the book because I was doing I was writing the book in the winter time and I kept calling up restaurants asking if I could eat outside with my dog and they were very confused but all right so I'll jump right into it. The first trail on my list that I wanted to share because I have such fond memories of it in the spring time and this is the time to go to this trail if you want to is the Annie Surges Sanctuary in Vassalboro. It's a great place to look for wildflowers. When I was there I photographed so many different types of wildflowers. No one else was there and it's kind of this obscure property because it's owned by the New England Wildflower Society and that's one of the cool things in Maine and one of the reasons I could my job I think and what I was doing became popular is because sometimes it's hard to find trails like this because there are so many different types of landowners in Maine that are generous and offer trails to the public and so to find these trails you have to go to all these different websites and all these different books and it takes some legwork and so this particular trail I was actually in the area because my husband's from that area and I drove by the sign and that's how I even came across it so no one else was there and the trail network is actually really well maintained and leads to some pretty neat stuff. Dogs aren't permitted on this one though so this is like one of those places where you can just kind of relax and enjoy wildlife without your dog which I love my dog but sometimes I like these places and here's are just some of the photos that I took there. I wasn't one of the things that I like to do and I think sometimes people can get a little bit intimidated by being a naturalist or getting into identifying things but I really have fun with it because I just take photos and then come back to my house and try to figure it out so I learned that like the upper left hand that's blood root and then you get to learn all these really cool things about blood root and what it's used for. There's also a really neat stone fireplace on the property some neat historical things. The other one that I really enjoy is a canal path in Searsmont and this is a part I kind of chose this to represent a much longer trail which is called the Georgia's River Highland path and it's a growing network it used to be 40 miles now and I think at the time that I did the canal path it was 50 miles and now it's 60 plus miles in the mid-coast region and it is maintained by the Georgia River land trust and it crosses all sorts of property owned by different landowners and this particular path crosses through property owned by Robin's Lumber Company and it visits this old historic canal from the late 1700s and not only that like you have a self-guided tour brochure that you can take with you and learn about sustainable forestry practices and there are some interpretive signs along the way so you know what you're looking at because sometimes it's very easy to walk by the the remnants of these old things and this trail the reason I like it so much in addition to it just it being neat that the Lumber Company would allow you to explore their property is that it travels by the beautiful Georgia's River which is lovely year-round I've done this in the winter and in the summertime and the the actual forest itself is just really beautiful I think because it is managed there's a lot more room for understory plants and so there's a ton of bunchberry and really cool things like that so it's just a really pretty pretty place to walk and again it's super quiet like I haven't the two times that I went there no one else was there and those things change over time as word gets out but yeah I should remember it being very peaceful and dogs are permitted on leash I always try to include that now in the beginning of my hiking column I didn't have a dog and so I would never mention whether or not they were permitted because I didn't even think of it but then I got my dog Oreo pretty early on in the column and he always went with me if dogs are permitted and so this kind of shows this map here on the left shows the trail and it goes all the way through they've expanded it over the years and it's also connected to like the Appleton Preserve and it's connected to the ridge to River Trail which is another one I've done so there's all these little sections of this path that you can kind of break up and do I don't know many people who just like walk it all the way through though I think that was the idea and I think that you know they're trying to bring economy to these different towns so if you do want to walk along sections of it go right ahead and stay at an Airbnb or a bed and breakfast in the area all right John B. Mountain in Brooksville another kind of lesser known place that I haven't seen other people out when I'm there and it's a kind of a representation of a land trust that I really love the Blue Hill Heritage Trust they have so many different properties and so if you check out their website they like very detailed descriptions of each of their properties and John B. Mountain is just one of them and this is just a really easy hike it's a great hike to bring kids on that are like young kids to introduce them to mountain hiking because the top has this bald it's weird it's like this bald mountain on the top but it's not a very big mountain it's just 250 feet and the trail can get steep and rocky in some areas so it'll give people an idea of what it is like to hike a mountain but in a very short period of time it's just a one mile hike and when I've hiked it in the winter and I've hiked it in the summer both is beautiful there are wild blueberries all over the place up there in the summertime in the winter the evergreen forest near the top is absolutely beautiful it can be you know I remember doing it when it was very snowy and dogs are permitted on most I think I don't know if yeah I guess there's a couple of Blue Hill Heritage Trust trails where dogs are not permitted but most of them they are and this is just some photos of in the winter time when I was up there with Oreo and I this is a photo here of Peter's Brook Trail and it's just another Blue Hill Heritage Trust trail that I love and it has a little waterfall that is absolutely beautiful and now it's connected to the Penny's Nature Preserve which is super dog friendly you can have your dog off leash and it was named after a dog and the trail network was created by a guy who just absolutely loved his I think it was a golden retriever and he donated the land after they built the trails so that's Penny's Nature Preserve which is connected to Peter's Brook Trail and I wanted to talk about the Donald Pond Public Reserve land unit it's right in my area my neck of the woods and I absolutely love it and I think more and more people are hearing about it but it's still it's like in the Acadia region and it's not as busy by far as Acadia one of the parking lots can get very full in the summertime but still it's one of those places that you don't see as much exploration so Black Mountain rises about over a little over a thousand feet above sea level and it but it's one of several mountains that you can hike in Donald Pond Public Reserve lands the hike is about three miles long you can go up two different directions you can go up the big chief trail from one side which is very mossy and rocky and cool or you can go up the Black Cliff's Loop Trail and actually create like form a little loop and that's a good hike as well but that's from the busier side by Scootick Mountain and Scootick Beach and you can see all this on a map online if you go to the Donald Pond Public Reserve land unit it's a state-owned property and there's a really detailed map online where you can see all these hiking trails but in addition to Black Mountain which I think is um lesser known than Scootick Mountain which is right beside it for some weird reason they both have beautiful views from the top um there's Caribou Mountain which is beside that and there's Catherine Mountain um which was reportedly named after the the ghost named Catherine that is haunts the road there the Blackwoods Road um so spooky um then there's Tunk Tucker and Little Tucker that is that's not quite it's in kind of a different area but nearby and all of those are great little hikes um dogs are permitted um it's pretty lenient on state-owned land that's a public land unit so you can have them off leash here and there you I think the beach you need to have them on leash so there's a there's a popular beach nearby as well and I've done a lot of paddling in that region um there's um for some reason geological reason I don't know the the lakes are really really crystal clear and they have tons of sand so there's a lot of sandy beaches in that area and here's there's some of the photos that I've taken um or my husband's taken of me um doing some of these hikes so we have Black Mountain and some of the views up in the top left that's the Scudic Beach which is a bizarre sandy beach um and which is right when you do the Black Mountain hike you can come down and go to the beach it's a part of the loop and um let's see next I wanted to talk about some of the Far East trails that I love because I always hear people talk about Cutler Cove um Cutler the bold coast and on that whole area and it's so Cutler Cove um or the preserve um is kind of getting a little bit overrun and so I've been visiting a couple other preserves in the area um and one of my favorites is Bog Brook Cove Preserve which is in it's in two different sections it's in Treescut and Cutler and or Trescut one of you guys can correct me um and it's a giant preserve it's uh almost you know it's getting up towards 2,000 acres and has five miles of trails and cobblestone beaches and freshwater pond and um one of the cool things about that preserve is it has this beautiful wheelchair accessible trail that leads to the coast and an overlook at the coast um dogs are permitted and I remember when I went with my dog Oreo um it was kind of I think it was during the week and um we drove to drive to the Trescut part of it you go through this beautiful blueberry barren and I remember just being like wow we're really out here like you're all by ourselves out here and we were the only people at the preserve um and spent the whole day there and it was about this time of year because I know there were blossoms and stuff all over the trees and um it was just gorgeous so that's a picture of when we went out and visited um and so that's um the if you look at the map you're looking at the northern part of the map there um the near the chimney trail and the ridge trail we went this photo is taken up on the ridge trails there's a little ridge on the property where you get a nice view and then this is the beach down below sorry I didn't let you guys see that for very long so some beautiful bold um cliffs and cobblestone beaches in that area and that's that's pretty much the case for a lot of eastern Maine if you get way out there you're going to see a lot of cobblestone beaches um which if you've never seen it's kind of remarkable all of the rocks are just completely smooth like some beaches the rocks are big like dinosaur eggs and and just perfectly rounded and then some they're they're much smaller um and again it's a geological stuff that works there that I don't know about but it's really neat um and you know sometimes a little difficult for dogs to walk on though so keep that in mind um and I did want to talk about this funny uh little mountain called Little Kinnio Mountain near Moosehead Lake so if you enjoy the the Greenville area um there are plenty of lesser known trails out there just stuff that doesn't get as much fanfare for for whatever reason and so Little Kinnio Mountain is actually taller than Kinnio Mountain which is the popular mountain in that area so Kinnio Mountain um absolutely beautiful but you have to go out on a boat to get to it because it's out on this peninsula that's not accessible by a road really so you need to take um there's a ferry that goes out to it or if you had your own boat you could go out to it or in the winter you can walk out to it if the ice is thick enough which we just did this past winter so that's Kinnio um and it's very popular it's part of a state park and it has a observation tower at the top where you get a 360 view of Moosehead um a great spot but right nearby right looking at it right from the shore is Little Kinnio Mountain and that is a great little hike it's steep it's about two miles round trip um and it's accessible from a road so you don't need to do the whole boat thing um you do have to navigate some logging roads with the Delorm Atlas I suggest um but it's a it's a great little hike and it's open views at the top and I would say um you know in addition some other lesser known hikes in the area I consider lesser known is number four mountain recently got a new trail and Eagle Rock recently got a new trail and they're part of the what's known as the Moosehead pinnacle pursuit which is a hiking challenge you can check it out online um and so they're becoming more popular and there are better sign or signage to get to the trail heads I remember when I initially did Eagle Rock the trail included like a rope to get over up the steep area and the trail had consisted of a sign that was made on the back of some road sign and it was like the lettering was like written on the sign and it was tacked to a tree and it was really hard to find um so now it's all much better there's official signage and parking areas and all that stuff um for those trails and then Little and Big Spencer have always held a special place in my heart they're beautiful mountains in that region and again they just take some driving on logging roads so um I think that's why fewer people may go to those mountains so these aren't some views and this isn't the best of best days when I hiked it it was very foggy but still you can get an idea for the types of views that you'll see from Little Kineo um and I'm sure you'd be able to see much further in more mountains on a clear day and then this um is Kineo you guys have never seen it um summer time view and then a winter time view and these are um Big and Little Spencer and you can probably guess which is which um but Big is is the big one and there's an interesting Big Spencer um I did that um years and years ago when I was writing my thesis that was one of the mountains that I did um and it used to have an old Warden's cabin at the top or near that it was like halfway up actually it wasn't you know you'd have to keep climbing um which as Warden cabins usually are um and I remember I went up years later and the Warden's cabin had been taken down as sometimes they are because they get a little bit um unsafe and so people aren't in out of them and um the state worries that they're going to crash down on hikers so that had been taken down and then I got to the top and I don't know if you guys remember but a um a communications work crew was up at the top years ago and um a fire caught in the black spruce at the top um from one of their I don't know maybe campfires or something and so I remember I got to the top and there was just like it was horrible it was just like black um and you could see the remnants of their camp they just left behind and all this stuff and it was horrible but I've heard I hear that it has been has recovered since but um a good lesson I guess to be very safe with fires especially the top of those mountains those black spruce trees are super old and uh I think once you get into the root system it can be a big problem um once the fire gets into the roots um and to I think this is the final hike I wanted to make sure I wrapped it up um pretty quick but um I wanted to mention horse mountain in Baxter State Park um and this is kind of my representative ambassador mountain for the north end of the park everybody a lot of people go in the south end um because they're headed to Katahdin and that's how you get to Katahdin and a lot of the mountains around Katahdin um but I talked with some rangers years back and one of them said you know my favorite part is the north end of the park and nobody ever goes up there um and so you go through a completely different gate um it's Madagam and gate and um there's a beautiful camp ground up there a couple places that you can stay and that's how you get to Traveler Mountain which is one of the more popular loops so the Traveler loops is up there in the north end um and that I would say is as challenging as Katahdin um it might be a controversial thing to say but if you do the whole Traveler loop um it would probably be as difficult as climbing Katahdin um and um but there's some other small really great mountains up there so horse mountain is one of them and I actually when we were at the campground I went and um did horse mountain in the afternoon with my mom so it's a fun little hike um that you doesn't have to take you all day which I like those types about three miles out and back and it's it's gradual and like a continual climb the whole way up and there's actually the view is not at the summit it's right before the summit and there's this beautiful bald outcropping and then nearby you've got trout brook mountain as well which is another great little hike and it also has some nice views um but horse mountain so this is the view from the east spur overlook and then um when I was pretty proud because I was bringing my mom out in the afternoon and we saw a um that barred owl right there sitting in the tree just staring at us um so I felt like a good guide to be able to show her this beautiful animal but you can never count on that of course um and um these are some view this some a view from trout brook mountain so um pretty nice little view for a smaller mountain in the north end and then this is the traveler range and that's just a really special hike um I would suggest doing it in the fall because it's absolutely gorgeous in the fall but um it's it's arduous I will say that it's it's a challenge and I did want to just offer if any of you guys want to contact me um because I'm no longer working full-time for the banger daily news my email has changed so it's just kind of like my personal email so it's two a's because my middle name is ann and then sarnaki at gmail.com and um and then I'm one minute hike girl because my column was one minute hikes for so long it was I don't know if it's still referred to that in print it might be um sometimes off and on but um so it's one minute hike girl or instagram I recently changed my handle the main nature hikes because that is hopefully what my new guiding company is going to be called so we're getting underway kind of at least with the photos part of it and we'll see how the rest falls in place um yeah so I guess I'll open it up for questions and I'll stop sharing my screen so you guys can see me here we go I guess that I'm going to um ask some questions as you post them and I hope we'll get a lot of them because I know we have a lot of hikers on this call so um please feel free to do that let's see oh I asked the first question funnily enough so um I uh was asking because I've run into some uh difficulties as I've hiked especially by myself can you share with us some of the uh oh moments you've encountered and how you got beyond them oh I love I love that I and I talk about it a little bit in my book some of these uh oh moments because everybody learns from making mistakes um but one one that I like to tell is I was on old speck mountain early in my hiking days um actually for my thesis writing my thesis because I went on um 10 different big mountain hikes throughout Maine to do my thesis back in college and um I was out there by myself because I did a lot of them solo just kind of um uh so I and I was almost done I was up because old speck at mountain is a pretty big mountain in western Maine it's right on the Appalachian trail and you get to the top there's beautiful tower you go past that and you get to old speck pond which is one of I think it's the highest elevation pond in Maine um and then I was headed back down and I was at one of the last overlooks and I'm standing there looking out over the terrain and I'm holding onto a tree and um I get done looking and I step forward trip on the tree root and fall flat on my face on this like just rock shelf and I remember my sunglasses flew off my head and skittered down the rock shelf and almost fell off like the cliff um and I remember just laying there being like face down and being like am I okay like can I feel my hands and all that and I was perfectly fine I got up but I was scraped on my whole my hands and my knees and all down my legs was really bad um just abrasions and so I was bleeding all over the place I look crazy um and I remember I didn't have I didn't have first aid I didn't have any anything with me to you know just patch myself up and um ended up I was like close to the you know I was lucky and I was close to the trailhead so I've just walked down all defeated and I remember stopping in a stream and trying to wash myself off a little and trying to put some like leaves on my hands to stop the bleeding and um then I walk by this this group's coming up and a bunch of little boys and it was a it was a Boy Scout group with their leaders and they looked at me like I was something out of a horror movie you know and they were just like I was so embarrassed because I was perfectly fine but I looked terrible um and one of the boys is like do you need first aid and I still remember being like no I'm okay I'm like I'll get to it I'll get to the trailhead soon like and I just felt so like this little boy's more prepared than me and I actually should have let him give me first aid because he probably would have gotten a patch for that but um in hindsight but after that I went and bought myself a first aid kit and always carry it with me now and so it's like you don't know what's going to happen and that wasn't a very big deal but it taught me a valuable lesson to have things like a first aid kit and to have just a few survival items because say I like had broken my ankle or something I would just need like a space blanket or I prefer like a a number emergency bivvy to keep myself warm for the night and I would have been fine someone would have come and found me you know um so just having like a few survival items I've heard that every good woodsman should go out into the woods with a means to make fire so just like waterproof matches are lighter um you know a knife and um you know a way to have water so it's just thinking of those like essential things that you need and and you can really slim down your your kit your first aid and survival kit look it over don't just buy like a pre-made kit either like look into it and see if it has what you need um because you never know when you're going to need it and when a a Boy Scout troop will come along or not um next question um where can we get copies of your books I know I got mine at um left bank books in Belfast and I'm always proud to promote that bookstore great yeah local bookstores are great at carrying it um in my area like the Briar Patch in Bangor they carry it and Epic Sports in Bangor carries it and I wish I had like a I've asked my publisher like do you have a list of the stores that carry it and they just don't offer that and they don't keep track of that unfortunately um but I would try your local bookstore for sure I've always been pleasantly surprised when I go into local bookstores and find it um it is available online yeah but local bookstores yes um love this question have you seen any cool wildlife besides the owl yeah I get lucky sometimes I've never seen a bear while I'm out there so people always ask me about bears I think because they're scared but I they run the other way I think um um let's see I've I've come across a number of deer um pretty close I I was in a field once with like a tall vegetation and almost like we almost like stepped on each other it was so we were so close um and I've done a lot of wildlife photography um so I'll go out and actually seek wildlife pretty often so I've seen like a lot of eagles I've seen snowy owls um specifically looking for them um try to think of one of the coolest wildlife experiences I've had I've seen porcupines fighting but that was right at my house so that wasn't on a hike that's really weird um yeah I see a lot of different birds um I've seen a mink while I was um along the shore I didn't really know what it was it was weaving in and out of seaweed and I guess they they eat stuff along the coast um so I've seen a mink um I've seen puffins I guess that's one of the coolest things that I've seen is um I got to go and visit a puffin island twice and got to go see the puffins with um biologists and get to go into the burrows and see the baby puffins that while they measured them and made sure they were all healthy and stuff um that was one of the cooler things and I have seen a bear but only because I went out with biologists to see the bears in the winter time as they were hibernating and again it was a part of a study next question can you recommend other hikes with paddling options one cool one that if you like to go out and do like a real exploration out in the boonies um is a lobster mountain and lobster lake and you start on lobster stream and it's in lobster township so you won't forget any of that someone was not or maybe they were really creative and the lake they say is they're shaped like a lobster's claw and that's why or um it's because of the is it crayfish or something that look kind of like lobster that are in the lake they're not sure why that was named to that because it's out in the not even close to the coast it's um north of moosehead lake uh way way up there um north of moosehead lakes you have to go all the way around moosehead um and then you park and so my husband and I did this we brought a canoe we brought our dog and um you paddle down lobster stream into lobster lake um and around the edge of the lake really is how I found it um and there's a trailhead sign and then you can hike up lobster mountain to a beautiful view um and you can camp out there if you want there's beautiful campgrounds on lobster lake yeah sandy sandy beaches too good um another water related question any river trips um we haven't done a lot of river trips um I've done some paddling on the panab scott river with people who are a little bit more um experienced um just because I think it's so cool now that the dams are down how much the river has kind of renewed itself and it is a great opportunity to see eagles if you ever want to paddle on the panab sky it's like man every 10 minutes they're seeing an eagle because that that's just rich in that area um yeah but we haven't done a lot of river trips I mostly do lakes and ponds and uh we just got sea kayaks last year so we'll see where that leads us it opens up possibilities when you have two sealed bulkheads you feel a little bit safer so and we've been taking um courses on how to we took a course from casting kayaks they do a lot of um skills courses if you're interested and uh we did a course on how to get back in your kayak if you fall out which now we feel empowered so great it's a question about beavers um someone says we saw evidence of them around jordan pond on a katie but didn't see the animals themselves yeah I've seen beavers a lot um but it's hard because in the middle of the day when a lot of people are hiking they're not necessarily as active um you kind of have to get lucky it's fun also to see them in the winter because sometimes they'll come out of their little huts in the winter time um if they have place to swim but um we've seen a lot of evidence of beavers it's amazing what they can do and how big of trees they can fell um and I remember once I was up in a roostick um national wildlife refuge they have a lot of opportunity that in moose horn national wildlife refuge I don't know what it is about national wildlife refuges but I've seen beavers there in the middle of the day just paddling around and flipping their tails at you which tells you that they're not happy with you so then you back off I've had two dogs jace beaver beavers yeah I think the beavers would win I think so too they're they've got some teeth um several comments praising lobster lake for those of you who are reading the chats and I think it's a place that would be nice for a Sierra Club hike I have um I have a question about hiking and and walking for people who may have disabilities or just feeling hesitant about getting out might feel like they might be vulnerable because they're older etc yeah I think it's a great question there are some there are some options in Maine I I looked into this this is one of the um stories that I did right before I left the BDN because it was something that was on my mind for years and it was a challenging thing to write um so I have put at least one resource out there now that lists some wheelchair accessible trails um or ADA compliant trails I guess is what I'd call it because really these ADA compliant trails are very strict guidelines about barriers to people and the surface and the grade I did a lot of research into what makes a trail ADA compliant and it has to be certain width and it can't be too steep um and um so it takes a lot for a trail organization to a lot of funding really to create a trail like that in Maine in a place where we have so many roots and rocks and so it's remarkable that we do have quite a few of these trails but um I think I talked to a fellow from the state um um he's in charge of outdoor recreation in the state he says there's always something on their mind and that it's a work in progress that I think you're going to see more and more of these trails pop up and I have over the years seen more and more accessible trails pop up which is just awesome um and you know it's good for people in wheelchairs but it's good for people who use any type of mobility device or want to use their stroller with their newborn baby um you know so it's um want to you know there's there's a quite a few um now and I would look at also the um rail trails because Maine has that wonderful rail trail that goes through the whole a big section of the state um and and that's a great opportunity as well um but in addition there's a lot of trails that don't meet ADA standards but are easy um and so they might have a few barriers here and there or they might be a little bit narrower than a trail that um is ADA compliant so there's a lot of easy trails out there and I've noticed that a lot of local land trusts are in charge of a lot of those easier trails so if you're interested in just not these crazy hikes but maybe some easier shorter hikes um I would definitely check out your local land trust and the way I do it um as I go to the Maine Land Trust Network it's ML on Maine Land Trust Network yeah it's that abbreviated and that website so it's ml mltn.org um and that website you can it breaks it down into different counties so you can check out what land trusts are active in your county and so I highly suggest that and also my book Family Friendly Hikes in Maine has a lot of trails that are easy um and trails that are part of Trail Network so you don't like you can go out and do like a third of the Trail Network and not feel like you turned around too soon or whatever because um trail networks kind of leave it up to you how much you want to do and yeah all right I know we have hikers on this call and you're probably dying to ask questions I think we can take about five more minutes or so so um post them up there let's see what you have to say anybody got anything yeah I've got tons of questions there's one more in the chat from Claudia um how do you dress or pack for winter hikes that's a great question I started my column in November and I never hiked in the winter before this was years ago um and so I had to learn that fast and I've kind of learned over the years some tips um things that worked and didn't work um so basically just dress in layers because you get surprisingly warm on a lot of winter hikes like I've stripped down to snowshoeing in my t-shirt and snow pants which looks ridiculous in in March when the sun is so warm and we're getting those longer days back um so I would dress in a lot of layers and avoid cotton when at all possible because cotton holds onto moisture and then cools your body down so if you like sweat or because you're going to sweat when you hiked try not to as much as you can when you winter hike and do that by taking off layers but you're still going to sweat and so wearing synthetics or there's some really really soft wool now but it's expensive like marinal wool um but I have a base layer that's marinal wool and it's super thin and it's amazing how warm it keeps me um and it's like odor resistant so you can wear it a few times Robert Pantel PA and T. E. L. I'm a track connected to you what was that oh I don't think um yeah okay I will put in a plug for my favorite box store in Maine Rennies um you can get marinal wool uh blends at at Rennies during hunting season and it's really they're really cheap the shirts are really cheap the long underwear is really cheap and it's wonderful yeah um Becky has a question what all right oh Becky has a question about Isla Ho. Sure I think I'm oh I thought I was muted I just have you hiked on Isla Ho? I have I have I went out with two women in early spring um and we stayed at one of the camp sites out in Isla Ho so we took um the the is it the mail mail carrier ferry type thing across um we actually took our bikes because to get to the camp grounds from that drop off point is pretty far on a road you can also hike it someone came across with backpacks and they a couple and they hiked through and there was there's a trail that you can hike through um but we wanted to get the campsite kind of early so we brought our bikes and pedaled in um and the the campsites are absolutely beautiful and quiet and just like surrounded by this beautiful forest and it's kind of it's close to the shore you can go down check out the shore um and we hiked around there's these nice little hills and uh like rocky rocky hills on Isla Ho so there's plenty of opportunities for hiking but we just stayed the one day so we stayed the one night and then we hiked the next morning and then bikes back out um but I'm sure people stay longer I do know it can be tough to reserve camping there that you have to do it really you have to be on it and do it ahead of time we actually the only reason I think we got a spot um like we did is because we went in early May and um which is actually kind of cool because there were no bugs and we could just stay in the lean to without a tent and uh look at the stars and uh wear winter hats so this is an interesting experience I wanted to mention uh can I just say one thing sure it's merino wool because it's a merino sheep uh just so you that that's where the wool comes from so just I'm a farmer so I just wanted to give you that piece of information that's awesome yeah thank you I love uh I love the fabric I also really like um I have alpaca socks which are great too just go with the natural fibers it really does help um yeah and they're made in Maine yeah yeah alpaca socks yeah I know I love them so much well it's five minutes till the hour if um if anybody has any more questions or comments or let me just remind you all that this community conversations episode is going to be archived on our website um Sierra Club Maine so um tell your friends if they wanted to come but couldn't it's a great place to get a lot of good information and um I'm just loving these books and I hope that you will check them out you could borrow mine but not for a while because they're all going to be dog-eared and messy um so yeah I guess that's it for this condor this community conversations and thank you so much Aislin I'm personally going to contact you about hiking so thank you so much please do yes yes and others are encouraged as well thank you so much Aislin I did want to share my screen just to remind people of the um hike that the our outings team is putting on on Memorial Day which is May 31st it's at 2pm and I will actually put a link in the chat if you're interested you can register for the hike so I hope to see some people there and thank you Aislin it was so awesome to hear about all your different hikes I know me and my husband are definitely going to try some and to see all of those awesome photos thank you so much yes thanks everybody for joining us