Home in Herseytown A #myparkstory photo essay by Sam Deeran

For New Year's at the end of 2016, I made my first visit to Patten, Maine with a gaggle of good friends. I heard about a national monument and some compromises and controversies leading to its establishment. I remember looking westward into the woods towards the land I'd seen with new borders on a map. I had no clue what was out there and why it was designated as a "national monument" (I didn't even know what that was). Seven years later, I live ten dirt-road minutes from Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. I moved here for the love of this place.

In 2017, I had the chance to spend a couple of weeks at my family's camp in Sandy River Plt, Maine. It was quiet, beautiful, and all the happy woods chores told me that I was ready to take a long-held fantasy more seriously. While I had lived in Chicago and was living then in Portland, I knew then I wanted to live closer to the woods. The woods and waters in the Rangeley region have shaped my relationship to land. I didn't have a relationship with our national parks. That would change.

In 2018, I took a job as the Operations and Special Projects Coordinator with Friends of Katahdin Woods & Waters. I visited Katahdin Woods and Waters as often as I could. In the winter, Executive Director Andy Bossie and I were invited to join Appalachian Mountain Club for a ski into Haskell Hut. My sister and I did a summer bike ride to The Lookout (still the best view in the park far as I can tell). After the 2nd Anniversary Celebration, I drove the Loop Rd for the first time and toasted Katahdin from the Mile 6.4 Overlook.

In 2019, my relationships to people and place in the Katahdin Region deepened. Our staff was four full-timers. We took a trip to Haskell Hut, ate well, and laughed a lot. In spring, I did my first paddle of the East Branch with four friends (counting the dog-pal pictured). At summer's end I had the good fortune to visit with the Baxter Youth Conservation Corps as they wrapped up bridge construction over Katahdin Brook.

In 2020, I didn't visit the national monument as much as I would have liked. I was at home in Portland, most days working alongside our cat Lorna. My partner and I ventured out to local land trusts and our family camps. The pandemic deepened my longing to move north, but still, it was too challenging a time to do so. I was grateful to make a trip up to the monument in September to coordinate the video shoot that led to the video below.

In 2021, I spent the spring housesitting for a good friend in Patten while my partner and I did some househunting in the region. By early May, we had moved into a home in Herseytown Township. On our second weekend there we took a paddle down the Seboeis River with Andy Bossie and Friends' AmeriCorps VISTA Will Tjeltveit. A few weekends later we saw a sign hung by a local Amish family advertising heeler-lab mixes and got our first dog Kutchie. Some of his earliest walks were in the monument.

In 2022, I realized this was home. It took over a year of living here. Here's a photo of one of my favorite views from Ash Hill - Katahdin in the distance, the national monument in the middle ground, and the surrounding communities in the expanse all around you. During maple sugaring season, we got another blue heeler mix named Carmelina. And in the summer, we got six cords of birch and oak to make my happy woods chores fantasies come true.

Appreciate