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Lucas St. Clair is the president of the Elliotsville Foundation.
We are a divided nation, but not hopelessly so.
For too long, we have heard from media, pundits, family and friends just how divided our country is.
We can’t agree on border control, health care reform, how to grow the economy, who should make decisions regarding women’s health, how to protect our children from gun violence or the best way to slow the climate crisis.
In Millinocket, those disagreements exist, alongside more regional ones, like how to best rebuild local identity after one of the world’s largest paper mills closed and jobs disappeared.
For the past 15 years, I have been working alongside local residents advocating for a shift to outdoor recreation-based economic development in the Katahdin region. Our efforts have focused on the establishment and infrastructure of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
Dating back more than a decade, there have been several votes from the town councils and boards of selectmen in the Katahdin Region to oppose the creation of the monument.
And, through it all, there have also been many courageous individuals and organizations who looked beyond the rumors, disinformation and conspiracies to find out what was real.
Because of that and those individuals’ willingness to engage with their neighbors, support for the monument grew, culminating with a public meeting where more than 1,000 Maine people turned out to support creation of the monument in 2016.
Like our nation, the process wasn’t perfect. But the willingness of people to listen to opposing views, reconsider their own and, at times, change their minds — even on an emotionally charged issue like the monument — tells me that our country can find a way to come together even while disagreeing.
Since the monument was established in 2016, access has been a key challenge to fully realizing its potential. The service center of the Katahdin Region is Millinocket, but, as the old Maine saying goes, “you can’t get there from here,” and getting to the monument from Millinocket has been cumbersome.
Fortunately, there is a road that connects directly to the monument from just outside of Millinocket. It is wide and smooth and was recently purchased by the Trust for Public Land with the goal of turning it over to the National Park Service to improve access.
This road would save significant driving time and allow for Millinocket to reap more benefits of being a gateway community to a national park unit. However, in order to expand the monument’s boundary to include the road, there needs to be an act of Congress.
Seeing this road’s benefit to Millinocket, U.S. Sen. Angus King introduced S.4209, the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument Access Act, which would expand the monument’s boundary to include the existing road. While the proposed expansion is small, it would have a large, positive impact. That’s why King asked for a letter of support from the Millinocket town council.
This past June, the Millinocket Town Council voted 4-3 to oppose the bill. Councilors expressed concern about government land grabbing and overreach. Fear prevailed.
But this story doesn’t end there. Once again, the people of Millinocket kept working, kept talking, kept listening and kept learning.
They conducted a workshop to better understand the bill’s benefits and challenges. They drove the road in question and visited the monument’s new contact station.
And they changed their minds.
At the end of August, the town council took up the vote again. This time, after deliberation, the vote was unanimous in support of the bill.
Millinocket is a community that has struggled to find its identity after incredible upheaval — the loss of a mill, of jobs, of young people and of a way of life.
Yet, despite this, at the root of the community is a desire to build a better future.
People there are doing the hard work to reemerge as a town determined to thrive.
Millinocket offers a lesson in the power of community and the ability to do hard things. While our country may seem divided, we are more like this small town in northern Maine at our roots, bound by community and determined to get it right.
Yes, our country is divided. But as Millinocket shows, not hopelessly so.
