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Running 'North' - to the Allagash - with Area Outing Clubs

November 21, 2007 - AUGUSTA -- One thing Brenda Weiss is thankful she doesn't hear from teens so much any more is that there's nothing to do around here. The Outing Club supervisor and an outdoor education teacher at Cony High School in Augusta, Weiss sees young people stepping up to get outside - even at a time when reports from around the nation suggest that interest in things like hunting and fishing is in steady decline.

On Thursday afternoon at Cony, nearly a dozen members of the school's Outing Club spent their afternoon watching "Northrunner," a documentary film produced by the state's Department of Conservation last year in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. It wasn't held during school hours. It wasn't used as extra credit for a class. And it certainly wasn't a substitute for the football or track and field practice some of the students were skipping out on. Simply put, they were there to find out about a mystical place here in Maine that they knew little about.

"I just want to expose the kids to what's out there," Weiss, a native Minnesotan, said. "Hopefully, they see something that entices them to try it. I want them to find their own balance."

DOC commissioner Patrick McGowan was present for the showing, and he urged students when it was over to realize the ownership they have in a place as seemingly remote and out of reach as the Allagash.

"You own the Allagash," McGowan said. "Anyone who lives in Maine and pays taxes here owns part of it. Go out and see it."

Junior Brad Sawyer is the copresident of Cony's Outing Club. He believes that, even in the capital city, the outdoors beckons the next generation.

"Being outdoors and just getting away from the city, it's a nice thing to do for some people," said Sawyer, whose older brother Ben was a previous club president now attending Montana State University. "This is a good way for a lot of kids to get out there and do things. We were raised v«th it because of the way our family is. "We're a little different, I guess."

But the future of the Maine outdoors relies on young people who are exactly that, young people who are willing to carry on the lifestyles and the traditions that make our outdoors so wonderful. McGowan sees that as essential, partictilarly in a place like the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, where an ideological shift from work to recreation has left the area with fewer annual visitors than ever before.

"We're trying to get a new generation of people - Maine people - to go to the Allagash," McGowan said. "It's our goal to have the attendance come up. We'll never get to the numbers of 1966 when there were 50,000 people there, but we'd love to get up to 10,000 people to go (every year)."

Outdoor clubs like the one at Cony are just a small part of that. With 30 kids signing up for the club at the beginning of the year and somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen "core" members, the club is a goodsized one as far as high school groups go. Not only does "Northrunner" give students an insight into the wilderness that awaits, but it also presents the people and the past associated with the Allagash. When they get there, these newcomers will be a lot less apt to abuse the area with that kind of perspective.

Outing clubs spend their time paddling, cycling, tying flies, climbing indoor rock walls, skiing and snowboarding around the state of Maine. These same clubs also try and teach responsibility in the outdoors, a key component to the longevity of outdoor traditions. The club at Cony is now thinking about tackling the Allagash next spring. And, as interesting as a documentary can be, or as fun as a learn-to-kayak session can be on Togus Pond, nothing really compares to getting out there and doing it.

Sawyer is right. They are a little different. And this state's going to be a lot better for it over the long haul.

SOURCE: KENNEBEC JOURNAL

DATE: 11-10-2007

Lakes:
Regions: Allagash


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