🍂It’s our fall appeal – join or renew today!
Join Friends or renew your support today.
A letter from Molly Ross, President of the Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters Board of Directors-
On a hazy August morning in Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, a salmon wound through waving aquatic grasses at the cool, silty bottom of the East Branch of the Penobscot River near the bank’s steep edge–where silver maples’ thick trunks stretch into lacelike canopies across the water.
A bald eagle, atop a white pine close to the confluence of the East Branch and Seboeis Rivers, scanned for the silver flash of a fish across the water. The eagle’s vantage also included the forested top of Lookout Mountain, where Tekαkαpimək Contact Station now sits. Invisible from the river, folks from nearby towns, across Maine, New England, and beyond came together to celebrate the accomplishment of a remarkable building and the relationships it represents.
Fish and eagles, grasses and trees, mosquitoes and dragonflies play their important roles in the nature of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, and right now our responsibility to care for all these relationships has never been more important. Tekαkαpimək Contact Station helps us understand this through a Wabanaki worldview, significantly deepening our knowledge, understanding, and connection to this special place.
Near the end of my long career with the National Park Service in 2016, I had the privilege of contributing to the eventual establishment of KWWNM as a unit of the National Park System. Today, post-retirement, I am almost as busy and just as committed to furthering the success of the monument as the board chair of Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters. I can see clearly that we are at a critical juncture. Tekαkαpimək Contact Station and the woods and waters it celebrates must be fully supported for the future.
And that is why I’m making my largest contribution yet to Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters. Today, I invite you to join me.
I am inspired more than ever by what is happening right here in northern Maine’s Katahdin region. We are immersed in community-based efforts to establish a public access route from Millinocket, impactful educational work of the Katahdin Learning Project, and essential relationship-building with the Penobscot and other Wabanaki Nations. With the construction of Tekαkαpimək Contact Station completed, it is time to support our NPS partners in many projects to improve the visitor experience and assure the best management of the monument’s natural and cultural resources. Believe me, there is much to do! Come, be part of it, as we stand up and steward this unit of the National Park System, honoring and inspiring all generations, past, present, and future, “as far as one can see.”
No gift is too small. Your donation will ensure the preservation of these woods and waters and the telling of their stories, from the salmon swimming in the East Branch to the ancestors who are part of the landscape.
Yours Truly,
Molly Ross, President, Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters Board of Directors
PS: Help us jump-start our annual appeal – click to make a secure online donation. Your gift makes it possible!
