A Cross Country Skiing Trip Through Maine’s Wilderness

I stood on my skis at the edge of the white expanse and admired the intricate, wind-sculpted snow. Peering over this virgin canvas on Second Roach Pond in Maine, I could imagine that I was a pioneer leaving first tracks. But the scent of wood smoke belied the fact that creature comforts were close by.

Behind me, a graceful timber-framed structure was perched just uphill from the pond’s edge. This was Medawisla, a state-of-the art, off-the-grid ecolodge in north central Maine, near the town of Greenville.

I had come to Maine with my wife and another couple to spend five days and four nights cross-country skiing through the 100 Mile Wilderness, a region that is home to the final stretch of the 2,184-mile-long Appalachian Trail. Just two decades ago, this ski trip would have been inconceivable: Much of this “wilderness” was owned by timber companies and scarred by industrial logging.

In a remarkable turn of events, skiing and hiking have largely replaced logging in a newly protected swath of Maine. In the early 2000s, 6 million acres of forest — more than a quarter of Maine’s land — was put up for sale by timber companies. The future of the largest forest ecosystem east of the Mississippi River was in jeopardy. In 2003, the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) launched the Maine Woods Initiative, which works with local communities to promote outdoor recreation, conservation, sustainable forestry and carbon sequestration (sales of carbon credits are funding additional land purchases).

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/travel/maine-cross-country-skiing.html