[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, look at that, where did you come from?

[SPEAKER_03]: Did you go under there?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I went through there.

[SPEAKER_04]: Choose your own adventure, huh?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that might be safer, actually.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then come across this wet ledge.

[SPEAKER_04]: Is that not a good one?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, chop, chop, chose a better way.

[SPEAKER_03]: All right.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Mepadolsky, trail name Birdman.

[SPEAKER_03]: And in 2022, I thrived the entire Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was a full five months into the hike and had just crossed the last state border of the trip.

[SPEAKER_03]: I had reached the state of Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just past the border, me and my family, my trail family, were greeted by one of the most interesting sections of the entire Appalachian Trail, Mahusiknach.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're just going to be scrambling up and over and around some giant boulders, I think.

[SPEAKER_03]: Methusagnach is considered by many to be the most challenging mile of the entire Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a deep gorge filled with a jumble of rocks and boulders, the size of small houses.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's not so much a trail as it is a maze, and as you descend into the cracks and crevices between boulders, the air suddenly starts to change.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's temperature difference.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's been so quickly.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's just like a layer of cold air down here.

[SPEAKER_07]: It's like, it's meant to be like, oh yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: We're doing some hard work here.

[SPEAKER_07]: So we're gonna give it to you.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's got to be like coming from deep within these like crevices and the boulders, you know?

[SPEAKER_03]: Making it through New Hampshire's White Mountains felt like a significant achievement.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the trail doesn't get any easier as it enters the state of Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: If anything, the train becomes more difficult.

[SPEAKER_03]: Me and my family were about to learn an important lesson from the AT.

[SPEAKER_03]: Never underestimate the trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's harder to do these big days, lots of miles.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, one because the train is more challenging than it was for other South, but also because [SPEAKER_03]: the days are much shorter, so last night, a little bit of a little bit of night hiking.

[SPEAKER_03]: In addition to the challenging terrain, this section of the trail is by far the most remote.

[SPEAKER_03]: Main is home to the 100 mile wilderness, the longest stretch of the ablation trail without a [SPEAKER_03]: But despite the remoteness of this area, the vast majority of the land is privately owned.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Appalachian Mountain Club is working to establish protection for the 100 mile wilderness, but not everyone is happy with their approach.

[SPEAKER_06]: You know, we are the land and the land is sort of the very driving force of our resistance to colonialism throughout history and into the present day.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is a show about more than just the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's about the intersection of Western environmental beliefs and indigenous land rights.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is Common Land.

[SPEAKER_03]: and there's a group of four loons, just right, not that far off from me, this beach.

[SPEAKER_03]: I did talk to my mom before leaving to start the hike this morning.

[SPEAKER_03]: My mom had hiked more than 1,500 miles of the Appalachian Trail with me, but injuries had forced her to get off trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: Sounds like she is not planning on rejoining me.

[SPEAKER_03]: She had been thinking about...

[SPEAKER_03]: rejoining me when I reach Caratonk at the crossing of the Kennebeck River, but her knee is still bothering her, and she's just anxious about walking into the 100 mile wilderness without [SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, I'm walking across this homemade wooden bridge, this bridge and trail leads up to what's called Harrison's Camp.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's a nice view of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll stop my take picture.

[SPEAKER_03]: this beautiful old log cabin built in the 1930s.

[SPEAKER_03]: This older gentleman says that he's run it for the last 30-plus years and he serves huge stacks of pancakes, tigers.

[SPEAKER_02]: What's that?

[SPEAKER_02]: It smells amazing in here.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, but I want to open a little bit.

[SPEAKER_04]: Taste it in my mouth.

[UNKNOWN]: What's that?

[UNKNOWN]: What should I get?

[UNKNOWN]: I don't want to get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is a man.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm ready for pancakes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Start with this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Start with this.

[SPEAKER_07]: Can you see it?

[SPEAKER_07]: That is a lot of it.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm so excited.

[SPEAKER_01]: Dude, we want to get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're so excited.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm on comfortably full, so I ate it all, and now it's good, but I think, like, struck a street in hindsight, I should have just gone with the pancakes, I didn't need the eggs and all sausage.

[SPEAKER_03]: By this point, I'd been hiking with KFC, Chop Chop, Kuzzi, and BearSack for several weeks, but it felt like a lot longer.

[SPEAKER_03]: The intensity of the experience elevated our camaraderie and made us feel truly like family.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's up for a man.

[SPEAKER_03]: How's it going?

[SPEAKER_03]: Chop, chop.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're happy today?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Two records.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think we're going to have a video up here?

[SPEAKER_03]: Some point.

[SPEAKER_03]: Next two and a half miles.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know?

[SPEAKER_03]: I know you asked me the same question, and I was optimistic, but I'm less optimistic now that we're up here.

[SPEAKER_03]: What?

[SPEAKER_04]: You got to put my knowledge into your mileage and on these days sometimes.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I wasn't the only one recording an audio diary of the trip.

[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, we're all here.

[SPEAKER_07]: There's everybody.

[SPEAKER_07]: There's an act, bird man.

[SPEAKER_07]: KFC, chop chop.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it would be.

[SPEAKER_07]: What's this pond?

[SPEAKER_07]: Surplus pond.

[SPEAKER_07]: Surplus pond.

[SPEAKER_07]: So we're at the Surplus pond road.

[SPEAKER_07]: And there was a camp site just down the road here.

[SPEAKER_07]: But there was already people.

[SPEAKER_07]: So we had to come up the road a little bit, and we found a place to pull our sense.

[SPEAKER_07]: So we're going to eat dinner and just converse for a little bit before hitting the hay early.

[SPEAKER_03]: Pretty soon here, I'm going to come across the AT completion marker, which is a plaque.

[SPEAKER_03]: that dedicates the last section of the trail that was completed back in the 30s.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I'm not here.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is.

[SPEAKER_03]: It says, [SPEAKER_03]: Maine, CCC, in honor of the men of the civilian conservation corps, who from 1935 to 1939, contributed greatly to the completion of the Appalachian Trail in Maine and who, on August 14th, 1937, near this spot, completed the final link of the entire 254 mile trail.

[SPEAKER_06]: When you're out on the landscape, history seems to start with these, you know, white men who raised money to put this land into trust and donated it to, uh, to settler states.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's Nolan Oldfader, a citizen of the Passimaquaddi tribe who works for the Passimaquaddi's Tribal Preservation Office.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's like exactly the case here, um, and what is not made and, and throughout New England.

[SPEAKER_06]: sections of what is now the Appalachian Trail in Maine overlapping kind of indigenous trail systems.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_06]: And you actually can see that in some of the place names that stick around in the area.

[SPEAKER_06]: Lungsus Camp, the Wasata Cook River, Penalty Scott River, obviously.

[SPEAKER_06]: These are all indigenous place names.

[SPEAKER_06]: But the issue is, is that we've been, forcibly dispossessed of that land for so long.

[SPEAKER_06]: You know, Wabanaki people here in order to now main own less than 1% of, of Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: When Nolan, who is a citizen of the Passima Quaditrib, mentions Wabanaki people, he's referring to the Wabanaki Confederacy and alliance of five indigenous nations whose homeland encompass much of what is now northern New England and South Eastern Canada.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's the webinar key confederacy that consists of the Pasmokwadi tribe down at the Zibayag, Madakmi Gok, and Kueneskum Kug.

[SPEAKER_06]: Then we have the Penobskot Nation located near what is now, Old Town, Maine.

[SPEAKER_06]: the roostick nation of Meekma, and then we have the Wolastuk and the Holton Band of Malacutes.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then we have our aponachy relatives, and they were originally located in what is now southern main and down into Vermont and New Hampshire.

[SPEAKER_06]: However, they were forcibly removed from their home lands, and now have reservations in, oh, they're not going to well enact and what is now Canada.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, [SPEAKER_06]: Together, we are the Wabanaki Confederacy.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yet, again, we have each has their own governance structures and their own distinct relationships with the state of Maine and the federal government as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Wabanaki Confederacy existed long before first contact with Europeans, but the alliance was formalized in the late 1600s in response to colonial expansion from New England.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Confederacy fought against British colonial forces in a number of conflicts during this period and were forcibly disbanded in 1862.

[SPEAKER_03]: But in 1993, the Wabanaki Confederacy was revived, and the Wabanaki people have experienced [SPEAKER_03]: One component of this cultural resurgence is the Wabanaki Youth and Science Program, which integrates traditional knowledge with science and technology.

[SPEAKER_06]: they have a ancestral trail crew.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's a group of Wabanaki individuals who work with these so-called conservation organizations such as the National Park Service in Akkadia and Indicatathan Woods and Waters here.

[SPEAKER_06]: And they're out there reconnecting with their homelands and being the people to care for it.

[SPEAKER_03]: modern traditions deeply rooted in ancestral ideas and beliefs.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are numerous examples of this across Wabinaki culture.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah back in 1981, a tribal member, Barry Dana, decided to do this [SPEAKER_06]: ceremonial journey from the island, Indian island, anopskondation reservation to contodin.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that just happened to be a journey of a hundred miles, so they ended up, it's now an annual thing that they call the K-100.

[SPEAKER_03]: For the Panopscott people, this 100-mile trek is a spiritual journey rooted in cultural traditions that go back thousands of years.

[SPEAKER_03]: Catadon has been their spiritual beacon for innumerable generations.

[SPEAKER_03]: I certainly don't share that deep-rooted spiritual connection to the greatest mountain, but when I stood at the entry point of the 100-mile wilderness with just about 100 miles between me and Catadon, I could feel the mountains looming presence.

[SPEAKER_03]: After a short break, my family and I will enter the most remote section of the AT, the 100 mile wilderness.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're back, I'm Matt Podolsky, and this is Common Land, a show about the Appalachian Trail.

[SPEAKER_03]: Before the break, my family and I were about to enter Maine's 100-mile wilderness.

[SPEAKER_03]: But first, we got a send-off from a former thru-hiker.

[SPEAKER_00]: I rode a high coup on my through hike back in 2008 at the Shelter Log and Lehman Brook in here and I thought I'd share with you guys drink your deepest now for the richest stuff settles in the final swig I rode it because it was a purifying my water at the time but I realized there's a metaphor going on [SPEAKER_00]: When you get to the top of white cap, you're going to see Mount Katod and clearly for the first time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they say that the view from the top of white cap is the axe that breaks up the frozen seas within us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So be prepared to be emotionally stirred.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's Jared Hester, trail name poet.

[SPEAKER_03]: After his throughhike, poet and his wife bought Shah's Hiker hostel in Monson, Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: The last town the trail passes through before entering the 100 mile wilderness.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know much I wanted to be done when I got to this parking lot right here, but when I got that mountain and saw my destination for the first time was much closer than I wanted it to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, say for this, you never know when you're going to be able to do something like this again.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's hard for you to see yourselves right now because you're in the hike, but if you can see yourselves from where I stand, you know how awesome you guys are.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're absolutely killing it right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You all keep up the good work and take care guys and in about a hundred yards you're going to see that sign That says you know I think the hundred mile wilderness sign away like a worldly possessions prepared to meet your imminent doom Just give me a call if you need anything [SPEAKER_03]: Reaching this milestone was absolutely surreal.

[SPEAKER_03]: For months, I had told everyone I met that I was walking to Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now I was here at the start of the famous 100 mile wilderness.

[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone in my family was giddy with excitement.

[SPEAKER_03]: Who has the heaviest back?

[SPEAKER_05]: I think my meal.

[SPEAKER_03]: First seep again.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's heavy, that's heavy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: We were all carrying enough food last for 100 miles, six days in the woods.

[SPEAKER_03]: Our packs were heavier than they had ever been.

[SPEAKER_03]: You have to have some might be heavier.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm hoping I'll hold it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, here it is.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do not attempt this section unless you have a minimum of 10 days supplies and are fully equipped.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is the longest wilderness section of the entire AT and its difficulty should not be underestimated.

[SPEAKER_03]: Good hike.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone got their picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.

[SPEAKER_03]: One of the ironies of the 100-mile wilderness is that despite how rugged and remote it is, it isn't public land.

[SPEAKER_03]: For years, it was owned largely by logging companies.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, these woods are being bought up by the AMC, the Appalachian Mountain Club.

[SPEAKER_01]: We literally have a portion of our state about 10.4 million acres called literally the unorganized territories.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's Steve Tatko, the vice president of land, research, and trails for the Appalachian Mountain Club and a lifelong resident of central Maine.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's governed like one large municipality essentially.

[SPEAKER_01]: most of us on the eastern sea board and most of Europe live in what's known as the temperate deciduous forest biome.

[SPEAKER_01]: This biome extends into China and Manchuria and into Korea and Japan, a little bit of it in the southern hemisphere and places.

[SPEAKER_01]: The state of Maine is the single largest, politically defined geographic region home to the single largest patch of that biome that intact biome left anywhere in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's virtually gone everywhere else.

[SPEAKER_03]: In 2003, the Appalachian Mountain Club started buying land from logging companies in the 100-mile wilderness region of Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: They called this newly formed and ever-growing patch of protected land, the main woods initiative.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the who-all installing matters and what their long-term relationships with those places are is critical.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why we designed the project and made the way we did was our experience in the lights.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, pushing for the creation of the legislation to go out and buy literally by the landscape that is now the way Mount National Forest.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was our first biggest policy when I mean, that took 50 years.

[SPEAKER_01]: Could we be influential in doing that again?

[SPEAKER_03]: The AMC's first big campaign as an organization was advocating for the passage of the Weeks Act.

[SPEAKER_03]: this bill which passed into law in 1911 gave the federal government permission to buy private land and convert it to protected publicly owned parcels.

[SPEAKER_03]: This set the stage for the establishment of public national forest land in the eastern US.

[SPEAKER_03]: But this time, instead of advocating for public protection, the Appalachian Mountain Club would own the land outright.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just wasn't politically viable to push for more federal land in the Northeast and that same way that we were able to a hundred years before.

[SPEAKER_01]: We needed to step up and be the landowners ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we built this model to enable us to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when I joined, we had about 64,000 acres.

[SPEAKER_01]: We currently are at 114,000 acres and in the next few years we hope to expand to 130,000 acres with another acquisition.

[SPEAKER_03]: Responsible forestry is one of the cornerstones of the main woods initiative.

[SPEAKER_03]: So even though locking companies no longer own the land, logging still takes place.

[SPEAKER_03]: Walking right by a construction site, or something, or a logging operation, some heavy machinery is being operated within your shot.

[SPEAKER_03]: and sounds like it definitely could be a logging operation or it could just be road maintenance or road building.

[SPEAKER_03]: If that's what it is, road maintenance, I mean, a little certainly it's maintenance being done on a logging road to facility logging.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I don't love hearing road construction noise while hiking through a beautiful forest.

[SPEAKER_03]: I do recognize the importance of finding sustainable ways to harvest timber.

[SPEAKER_03]: The AMC is working hard to find a balance between maintaining a viable local logging industry and conserving these forests for future generations.

[SPEAKER_01]: we are stewarding, we the collective landowner community, public and private, are stewarding, what is arguably a priceless global ecological treasure.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, if you look at the people who are living alongside this irreplaceable forest, they are the poorest by far.

[SPEAKER_01]: We as conservationists and especially as landowners have this [SPEAKER_01]: This duty, I would say, this moral obligation that we are raising money to conserve these landscapes, we need to ensure that we spend as much time to also activate these landscapes for the benefit of people.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel that starts by honoring their relationships to these places, giving them control of places, and in particularly in regard to the Labanaki communities returning land where we can.

[SPEAKER_03]: Although the Appalachian Mountain Club is vocal about its desire to work with indigenous communities and give land back to indigenous nations, it was a different conservation nonprofit that recently announced a large land transfer in Maine.

[SPEAKER_03]: The trust for public land announced at the end of 2023 that it would be giving over 30,000 acres back to the Penobscot Nation.

[SPEAKER_03]: The largest ever land return between a U.S.

[SPEAKER_03]: nonprofit and an indigenous nation.

[SPEAKER_03]: Day 3 in the 100 mile wilderness.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a rough one.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's raining like this and you're cold in wet.

[SPEAKER_03]: You just put your head down and you just walk.

[SPEAKER_03]: Did seven and a half miles basically without stopping?

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm up on top of White Cat Mountain.

[SPEAKER_03]: There ain't a stop, but I am in some dense fog up here.

[SPEAKER_03]: The view of Catadin from Whitecaps Summit is famous, but there are no guarantees on the trail, and I had zero visibility when I reached the peak.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I got another chance about halfway down the mountain.

[SPEAKER_03]: You said this, it said that this view point specifically had a good cutout in view.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have a mark that like come and down to the shelter.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's KFC, one of the members of my family.

[SPEAKER_03]: Damn, wow.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's, uh, it's not a bad surprise at the end of the day.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: After a wet cold damp day of hiking, [SPEAKER_01]: figured it would be a total white out and this would be a bus, but I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: There she is.

[SPEAKER_06]: Across all Walden-Aki cultures within our oral histories and our creation stories, you know, Catadin is a part of that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Again, that's the voice of Nolan, Ultivator.

[SPEAKER_06]: I've been told it's kind of like a resting place for what we refer to as either Guccino S, which means the great spirit or a resting place for Calusca who was sort of like our first teacher, a figure in our story who taught us our original instructions as Skigina wog, as above surface twellers, as Wovenaki peoples.

[SPEAKER_06]: In English, Mount Catadon is actually redundant because Catadon, in passenger quality, translates to like the greatest mountain or the big mountain.

[SPEAKER_06]: So like when you call it Mount Catadon, you're calling it Mount Greatest Mountain.

[SPEAKER_03]: Here I am in my tent, it's September 20th, a little bit before 7am, and the rain is coming down.

[SPEAKER_03]: I actually have a cell service here at this campsite, it's 8Lers campgrounds in the [SPEAKER_03]: The letter report says it's going to rain almost all day, so I'm just here in my tent really, really, really not wanting to get out.

[SPEAKER_03]: September 21st, I'm walking down a short side trail off the AT to see if there's a view of [SPEAKER_03]: Again, that's KFC.

[SPEAKER_03]: Although we were disappointed to miss another well-known Katodan view, KFC and I were the only members of our family that had seen the mountain at all, despite how close we were.

[SPEAKER_03]: Later that same day, my trail family and I emerged from the 100-mile wilderness.

[SPEAKER_03]: We had gained a new member during our six days hiking through the most remote section of the Ablation Trail, so our crew was back up to six people.

[SPEAKER_03]: Me, KFC, Chop Chop, Kuzzi, BearSnack, and Sauce.

[SPEAKER_03]: It had been six months since we started hiking in Georgia, and only 15 miles of trail remained.

[SPEAKER_03]: Common Land is a production of the Wildlands Collective.

[SPEAKER_03]: This season was produced in partnership with New Hampshire Public Radio.

[SPEAKER_03]: This episode was produced by me, your host, Matt Pedalski.

[SPEAKER_03]: Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

[SPEAKER_03]: To listen to the next episode in the series, just search for Common Land.

[SPEAKER_03]: An Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[SPEAKER_03]: To learn more about the show and to see a full list of credits, go to commonlandpodcast.com.