Flashes of Panic

The other week I was shaking my head over the ideological battles in graffiti in Amherst, but sometimes I wind up with the more depressing opinion that people are going to bicker no matter where they are; the differences in places are just the differences in the issues they’ll argue over.

This weekend, my father and I went down to hunt a geocache at the Totman Preserve in the town where I grew up. It’s a pretty chunk of land, a wooded road leading down to a picturesque little beach with picnic tables, ledges, and a view out onto Casco Bay. We agreed that it was A Good Thing that this was now preserved public land, and hadn’t been chopped up into private waterfront lots, carefully fenced and landscaped to give the illusion of a private retreat while cramming as many lots in as possible, and in the process locking out anyone and everyone not wealthy enough to buy one of said lots.

Instead, it’s open, preserved by the local land trust with a healthy financial boost from the town. And that’s where the fun begins. For one thing, there are signs noting that the land is open to town residents and guests, with an implied “only.” (I doubt that will stop the geocachers, but never mind. I was a guest of a resident.) That’s the town’s contribution. Next come two or three signs reminding visitors that vehicles, including (implied, “especially,”) ATVs. That’s the land trust’s contribution. There were several ATV tracks in the snow, and it didn’t look like they even slowed down to read the signs. There are gates at the top of the road and midway down, and apparently there was some dispute over when the gates were closed and locked. The townspeople figure that the land is, essentially, theirs, and they should be able to drive right down to the beach (where there is a small parking area.) The land trust is worried about vehicle traffic damaging the road, and perhaps hoping people will enjoy the whole preserve by walking down. (We did note that in the current wet and icy conditions, vehicles would rip things up quite a bit. But there was a dead tree blown down up at the first gate, so we couldn’t have driven down even if we’d wanted to.)

They joke about Amherst being “a town with a foreign policy,” but up here we epitomize the cliché about all politics being local. It’s not as easy to distinguish between red and blue at this level.