The volunteers who gathered last Saturday morning at the headquarters of Acadia National Park milled about in restless anticipation. The crowd was assembled to perform a valuable service for the park. They would spend the next few hours raking fallen leaves out of the ditches and drainages of the carriage roads.
By removing the fallen foliage, the crews prevent ice from forming under the roads and damaging them.
For the past 19 years Friends of Acadia, a private nonprofit volunteer organizing group, has sent out a call to their members and the public to join in their event called, Take Pride in Acadia Day. By the day of the event more than 300 volunteers had registered and now they were all there in the chilly autumn sunshine ready to grab rakes, pile into buses and proceed to the work sites throughout the park.
First, though, the volunteers grabbed hot coffee and pastries and listened to safety instructions from the park rangers. Then, after they were all divided into several teams of about a dozen people each, led by a ranger, they left to hit the leaves.
The event also marked the end of a season-long contest, called Acadia Quest. It too was organized by Friends of Acadia and the idea was simply, to attract more youth and family involvement in activities in the park. To achieve that goal the contest was developed around three themes: explore, learn about and protect the park and other public lands.
The rules were easy to understand and amounted to forming a team that included at least one adult over 18 and one youth under 18. Then, over the course of the year, your team participated in at least six park activities out of a possible 14, and had your entry card signed by a Friends of Acadia member or activity leader.
At this last event, your completed Acadia Quest card was entered in a drawing for one of three prizes donated by L.L. Bean. There was a hiking package of four backpacks, four steel water bottles, and four trekking poles. They also provided two other packages. One was a camping prize of a six-person tent, four 20-degree sleeping bags, a family sized mess kit, and a two-burner camping stove. The other prize was a canoeing package that consisted of a 16-foot Old Town Guide canoe, two paddles and four life jackets.
The prizes were an incentive to attract participants and it worked. The contest appealed to the 55 families from nine states, including Maine, who took part.
“We are incredibly grateful to the generosity of L.L. Bean, both in sponsoring Acadia Quest and in providing us three outstanding grand prize packages,” Terry Begley, project and events coordinator for Friends of Acadia said, “These packages, in addition to reinforcing the spirit and mission of Acadia Quest, have been both an incentive and inspiration to the teams.”
After a morning of raking, the volunteers who showed up in the morning for Take Pride in Acadia Day returned to Headquarters for the C.C.C. style lunch of chili, corn bread and cider.
During the lunch, Lili Pew, chairwoman for Friends of Acadia, stood up on a picnic table and addressed the crowd first by thanking them all for being there, then by mentioning all the local sponsors, the Knowles Company, The First and Bar Harbor Banking and Trust. She thanked the transportation companies for providing the busses, then, she held the drawing for the prize packages.
The hiking package went to Team Wales, the camping package went to Team McIntire, and Team Coluccio won the canoe package. Team Wales was made up of Adam and Jennifer Wales, their two children Eli, 4½, Sasha 1½, and the children’s grandparents. She expressed what joining in the contest activities meant to them.
She said, “I’m a teacher and I just think it’s so vitally important to get our kids away from technology and into the outdoors and that’s what our family is committed to,” Jennifer Wales said.
“We made a book of photos with comments from Eli on what we did. It felt good, living on this island, that somebody’s creating a program that’s focusing on local families rather than lots of energy and resources being allocated towards serving tourists. So, it feels like, with this program people are taking care of serving local kids who are in the park all the time.”
After the announcement of the prize winners and the dessert in the form of a great traditional cake in the form of a mountain trail, donated by Janet Anker, the crowd parted ways and the event wrapped up.
Terry Begley said that plans for the second annual Acadia Quest in 2009 are already under way. All you’ve got to do is enter a team and participate. The activities start in April. See you there.