QUIET PLEASE!

By Randy Randall

When we first began coming to Spectacle Pond twenty-five years ago, the place was pretty quiet. There were only a few seasonal camps and they were occupied mostly in deer season. We had the place to ourselves usually, so we became accustomed to hearing the loons, the coyotes howling back up on the ridge, the scolding ravens, and the whisper of the wind sighing through the tall pines. Away off in the distance we’d hear the chainsaws rev and slow as the lumbermen worked their way through a pile of pulpwood. When conditions were just right, we could hear the logging trucks downshift as they climbed one of the steep hills surrounding the lake, but no more than that. At night we’d hear the bullfrogs croaking in the shallows, and the ever-present mosquitoes buzzing outside the screens, or a confused moth fluttering against the bright Coleman lantern. Yes, Spec was a pretty quiet place, like many other remote and wild Maine ponds. But things have changed.

Our first hint of the new environment was the arrival of pickups with blaring radios and squads of teenagers playing their boom boxes and romping on the beach. They would boldly drive the hulking 4 X 4s through the shallow water up onto the sandy beach and pile out for an evening of partying and music. At first our three sons thought this was pretty neat as there was something new and exciting happening at the old cabin, but when the noise kept up late, late into the night, the novelty wore thin. It was a touchy situation. There were lots of teens energized by whatever they had been drinking, and just us alone at our cabin with no phone, no CB, and no other adults. Not that calling someone would have helped all that much. By the time any authorities would have arrived way back there in the woods, the party-hardies would have been long gone. Using my youngsters as the excuse, I ambled down the beach to meet the party crowd and explained that it was way past bedtime for the three-year-old and his brothers. “Oh, sorry,” they said. “Yeah, we were just leaving anyway.”

They doused their campfire, threw their inner tubes into the truck bed, and all roared off up the beach and across the brook. We could hear the dual exhausts rumble as they drove by on the woods road.

But that was not the end, more like just the beginning. More camps and lots were sold, families from away began to arrive, and the sound of their generators droned on into the evenings. Maybe they couldn’t hear the cycling exhaust over the sound of their movies or televisions, but we did.

It was the same with the ATVs. Early in the morning we’d be greeted by the exhaust chatter as kids went tearing along the roads on their machines and down onto the sand. Back and forth, back and forth, the seemingly very young drivers would aimlessly traverse the beach.

The final straw was the jet skis. Remote and undeveloped as the pond is, these modern personal watercraft found their way even there. Like the ATVs on shore, the water bikes buzzed aimlessly back and forth, jumping their own wake and carving circles on the lake’s surface. Hour after hour and on into an otherwise placid evening the high-pitched whine of their engines echoed off the far shores. The wakes rolled across the pond, smashing waves again and again against the shoreline. We worried about the loons and their nests raised just barely out of the water. We worried about the osprey scared off from its normal feeding grounds. We worried about the deer that no longer came down to the water’s edge in the evening. No doubt, irritating noise has become a part of the Maine woods scene.

We knew it was a trend when we heard friends complain about the noise and rowdiness at some of the public campgrounds. Not just those beside the paved highways but also places off the beaten path like the State Forest campsite on Lower Sabao Lake. This is a truly remote and beautiful spot. We heard how friends had taken off after work on a Friday afternoon and poked along the dirt road deep into Maine’s Downeast wilds to reach the Sabao campsite and find a spot for their pop-up camper. They had no more then parked their trailer and put up their lawn chairs when a convoy of trucks, campers, and ATVs pulled in. Four- wheelers skittered around the campsites, and a loud boom box blasting out tunes was soon sitting on a picnic table. That ended the quiet evening and any hope for a relaxing weekend. Our friends packed up and moved out.

It has become a no-win situation, it seems, despite the pleas from state authorities and letters to the editor in local papers. I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you a few of the things we’ve done to cope with the annoyance. For one, we’ve altered our schedule at the lake—our times of coming and going. We especially avoid visiting on holiday weekends and leave the place to the inevitable teen groups and camp parties. We come on Mondays and Tuesdays and plan to be gone by Friday evening. For longer stays we try to pick days in the middle of the month, and, most recently, we’ve been stretching our time into September and even October, which have proved to be truly beautiful months. Thus we manage to escape some of the noise, but not always. There was one time we just couldn’t avoid it.

We had as usual come for an extended stay at the old log cabin and had settled in for a few quiet days in a remote unspoiled place. Another group had come also apparently with the opposite of goal of partying loudly, raising a little ruckus, and generally letting their hair down. Daytime was tolerable, as we ourselves were busy with projects or away picking berries. But the evenings became a trial. As every camper knows, once the sun has gone down and the wind subsides, even a whisper can be heard clearly across the water. Imagine how the raucous voices and head-banging music sounded, echoing off the hillsides. There quite literally was no peace to be had and certainly no evidence of consideration for others.

Something had to be done. I hopped into our canoe and paddled across the cove to meet the noisemakers. I paddled right up to the beach where the kids were dancing and relaxing in front of their bonfire. They saw me and walked closer to my canoe.

“Hi,” I said.

“Yeah, hi,” someone said.

“Look,” I blurted out, “not everyone on this lake wants to listen to your music! Can you tone it down?”

There. I’d said it. Were they going to flip my canoe over? Not quite, but they did flash me a few universally understood hand signals and in so many words told me to “Git.”

“Fine!” I huffed and stroked away. As I turned the canoe, I heard the music grow even louder as they turned up the volume in protest. My first thought was how a load of number four birdshot aimed right into their subwoofers would have solved the problem, but no, the wardens would probably have frowned on such a solution. I stoically paddled away and, to my surprise, before I’d gone another hundred yards, the music softened. They were turning it down. The noise got lower and lower. Maybe it was one of the girls I thought. They had turned their music down. I’d won a round. I was shaking with nervousness when I ran the canoe ashore and walked up the beach and into our cabin.

“Well,” my wife said. “How’d you do that?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe they agreed with me.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “Probably a parent got after them.”
But for a little while we were once again able to hear the loons, hear the owl, hear the waves lapping on the beach, and sleep.

We haven’t found a cure for the jet skis yet. If we wait long enough, though, they may do themselves in with all the poor publicity and rash of accidents that occurred last summer. A couple of times I’ve accosted the young ATV riders as they’ve buzzed our front porch, but they seem adept at forgetting our requests for solitude. For a while they were so bold as to actually ride down our driveway, skirt our backhouse, and scoot past the cabin onto the beach. We were able to prevent that by blocking the paths with trees and stumps. But overall the noise of four-wheelers seems to have become omnipresent and now mingles with the regular sounds of skidders, trucks, and generators.

The lesson, I guess, is that personal attention can work—sometimes. I would have been in a much better position if I’d had someone go with me when I confronted the campers across the cove. At least a friend could have been a witness to any shenanigans and could have added his moral weight to our plea for quiet. I’m great, it seems, at figuring these strategies out long after the event has taken place.

No doubt there’s plenty of room here for public education, through the state or the schools or groups like the Audubon and Sierra Club, and summer camps. There could be all kinds of ways to get the word out that loud noise in the Maine woods is out of place. It seems to me that the basic problem is one of ethics, of selfishness, and apathy, just as it is with all forms of pollution. As we’ve seen demonstrated in Yosemite and Arcadia, through our overzealous use we tend to destroy the very solitude and wilderness that we came there seeking. It’s another manifestation of that age-old paradox in which we soil our own habitation and render it uninhabitable.

If we were camping again at a remote site and loud noise were a problem, I think I’d take a friend or two and visit the offending campers and as a committee ask them to please turn it down. Maybe they just haven’t considered how their actions can impact others. Maybe their children are the ones who turned the volume up high. Maybe they’ve got earphones. 

 

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