It’s March, the season of mud and discontent. The season when islanders, according to the story I was told half a century ago, got downright cranky, picked up their phones and started spreading dubious stories about the newcomer from away, usually the island’s only school teacher. Not surprisingly, she (always a woman) wouldn’t come back the next year.

Did this really happen? I know island dwellers from that period who swear that it did.

Of course, being a school teacher from away I took it to heart, but fortunately was grounded on the mainland. Even so, a spicy (and untrue) tale about me and my “living conditions”, was told in Rockland, a story that naturally got back to me.

Though there’s some basis to this tale of the annual witch hunt. Here we are in March, cooped up with each other, not much in the way of entertainment: a trip to Walmart, lunch at Scotts, a walk up and down Main Street on a sunny day. Too muddy/cold/windy to clean up the dooryard or rake the lawn. It’s certainly a time when discontent can flourish

Looking back, March has also been the month when town issues flare up, people take sides, groups meet to hash things out, letters to the editor get written (today we go straight to our screens and tap out our opinions), but by May, when the mud’s dried up and the daffodils are blooming, it all goes on the back burner.

This winter’s issue? The pier being proposed by a property owner on the Bay is getting attention. Here’s what Spench, a Californian friend of mine who has a long history with Lincolnville, posted on the Bulletin Board the other day:

“Conversations like this are really interesting because on the surface they seem focused on one particular issue, in this case piers, but there seems to be a bigger underlying question - what kind of a town do you want to live in?  And once you ask that question, all sorts of tricky issues pop up, many centered around the rights of property owners.

“In America we skew heavily towards individual rights and property owner rights, more so than any other country I can think of ...  if I have a piece of property that I paid good money for, I feel like I should be able to do whatever I want with it.  I feel this, but it isn’t really true, because there are neighbors to be considered too, and that’s why we have so many local, state and federal laws restricting what we can do with our own lands.  And as voters we can decide what those laws should be, and what we want our communities to be like.  To decide what kind of a town we want to live in.

“Finding a balance can be tough though. If the policy is too laissez faire you get a coastline bristling with piers, a casino at the beach, shooting ranges all over the place, and a party house next door. Great for a few people, but annoying to all the neighbors ….  But if the policy is too restrictive, the atmosphere feels stifling and no one will want to live there or invest in the local economy.”

He goes on to mention the problem with rental properties.  

“Some communities, usually small scenic vacation destination type communities, really had problems with this. . . There was less housing available for local workers.  Attendance dropped in schools because the housing was no longer inhabited by longer term families.  And in places where this was really hot, corporations would come in and buy up all the vacation houses, so then the income didn’t even go to local property owners.

“So here you are, in a town that was shrinking in population for well over a hundred years from the Civil War until relatively recently, and is now becoming widely known and desirable. This is your chance to direct Lincolnville into the future. It’s really your choice what kind of a town it will be, and having thoughtful, polite conversations is a great way to get there.” 

And Lincolnville with its four miles on Penobscot Bay is so vulnerable. Shorefront is the jewel of real estate property. If you even have a glimpse of the Bay from an upstairs window the value of your house increases. And if you own actual shore front your taxes are quite a bit higher.

Now along comes a private landowner with a plan to build a 300- foot-long granite cribbed pier from the shore which they own, over the intertidal zone which according to custom they own, but which is periodically contested in court, and another 100 or so feet into the Bay which is the state’s, or put another way, belongs to the people.

The pier is to be located south of the Islesboro Ferry landing at a property on Shag Rock Road. There are no other piers from there to Camden. Opponents of the project want “to prevent destruction and diminution of natural habitats and scenic values and to prevent serious public harm by endangering inshore navigation for recreation, fishing and other activities affecting the public welfare and use of the intertidal flats in Lincolnville pursuant to the Colonial Ordinance of 1641-1647.”

As has been pointed out, if this project goes forward “pretty soon everyone with shore frontage is going to want a pier.” And what will that do to lobstering they ask?

That last may seem a bit of hyperbole, but there’s no denying that our “small scenic vacation destination type communit[y]” to quote Spench, has seen its share of over-the-top projects in the past decade or two. Lincolnville has been, since the turn of the 20th century, two towns or at any rate, had two populations. The folks making their living here and the ones taking their ease here.

Is that too blunt?

Actually, it is blunt, but not specific. People have made their living with their hands and their backs, back in the day when the incredibly hard and relentless physical labor of farming and quarrying, building roads and ships fell to most men. When women washed clothes by hand, bore flocks of children (and saw them die), tended gardens (“never plow up a garden bigger than your wife can handle” said one local farmer to a new resident not long ago), preserved food and cared for the elderly.

Today we make our living with other skills: as tradesmen – carpenters, mechanics, electricians, plumbers – shopkeepers, salesmen, counselors, cooks, teachers, nurses, doctors, writers, professions of all kinds. Even the traditional work of fishing and logging and earthwork, while still physical, is augmented with elaborate equipment.

And many of us do our day’s work at a computer monitor, the tap-tap-tap of fingers on keyboard the only physical exertion of the day. That and getting up for a trip to the fridge or the loo. The work of many is entirely mental, a stress on the psyche that our ancestors never knew.

The ones taking their ease in retirement here range from the “barely getting by” to the “well off” and the rest in between. Many who are retired alternate between something in, say Florida, and another place in, as Ralph Richards wrote in his 1908 diary, “God’s country.”

That would be Lincolnville. 

We wrestle with the issue Spench brings up: my property rights versus not only my neighbor’s interests, but the wider interest of the community. What do we do with this? On the one hand we have a worker or retiree with a bank account that barely keeps up with the bills. But he/she has a vote.

On the other hand, is the person who’s come here (or maybe been here all along) with an ample bank account, make that more than ample. And that one vote.

Am I talking income inequality here? Of course.

But what do we do with that in real life, when we’re neighbors? Because we are. We’re a town of about 2,200 people, more or less, and while none of us probably knows everyone, most of us recognize names, faces, see the obituaries, hear about births.

I bet most of us relish Lincolnville’s natural world – the forest, the Bay, the hills, the ponds. We feed the birds, get excited when we see a moose, photograph the sunrises and sunsets, love the smell of woodsmoke on a cold morning. We tell each other about the eagle that flew over or the seal bobbing out in the Bay. Our appreciation of the world right outside our door is generally universal.

We may hold differing views about almost everything else, and most definitely about property rights. Our task is to learn to listen to each other, to come closer to a consensus on the things we love most about our town, and then figure out how keep to them.

Moratorium Petition

Lincolnville Voices, the group spearheading opposition to the proposed pier, is circulating a petition to request that a Moratorium on the construction of new or proposed piers, docks, floats, ramps and other permanent structures along the shore be enacted. The petition will be available Saturdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Dolce Vita farm or call Rose Lowell, 323-1052, and Saturdays at the Beach Post Office, 1-5 p.m. or call John Pincince, 230-2410. 150 signatures are required by April 15. If the petition is accepted the moratorium will go to the voters at the June 16 Town Meeting.

What Can We Do?

Besides voting in every election (which here in Lincolnville we do a pretty good job of), we can get involved in running the town. That means serving on a committee. The same few people tend to do this, and while a knowledgeable person on a committee is invaluable, these groups need new members too. Contact Dave Kinney at the Town Office or look on the town’s website  to get an idea of the various committees. Many of them have openings.

A Bookstore in Rockport

Barnswallow has been open this winter in Rockport right across from the new library there. A bit off the beaten track, it has a great selection of books in every genre; hours are Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11-5. By the way, in an era of bookstores giving way to Amazon, etc. we in the Midcoast have six “brick and mortar” stores: two in Rockland, one in Rockport, one in Camden and three in Belfast.

Spring Report

The garlic’s up, ditto the daffodils and tulips; the lilacs and beech trees have swelling buds, and every road I walk I hear the water running, rushing down the hills in tiny streams to empty into Frohock Brook and then to the Bay. Hooray!