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Land, family fasten Kellys to Allagash By John Holyoke, Bangor Daily News Wade
Kelly makes no apologies for what he is. You may know him as a logger, or as an
accomplished Master Maine Guide. You may know him as a handy guy to have around,
or as a storyteller with an impish grin and a quick laugh. But Kelly knows
differently. While he may be all of those other things, at his It means, he explains, that he's from the town of Allagash (population 175...or 190...or 200, depending on who you ask). It means he lives there ... works there ... thrives there ... not just because he wants to, but because there's no place else on the planet he really belongs. It also means this: "We're rooted. When we talk about Allagash, it's more than your home," he says. "It's actually who you are. It's the place. The ground." His sister, Darlene Dumond, is a Moosetowner, sometimes-removed. During most of the year, she's a Kittery innkeeper running a bustling business ... and yearning to return to the northern Maine woods. And as often as she can, she does return. Sometimes to visit. Sometimes to help out her mother at the family restaurant, Two Rivers Lunch. Always, to go back where she belongs. "I think the biggest thing that brings me is ... this is constant," Dumond says. "When we leave home, leave our nest and go off to college, I don't think the majority of us run into the constant stability that I have here. So there's this pull, that it's never changing. "And there's never a day that goes by that I don't think about Allagash, and that I don't think about my family." Allagash. The word is likely one of the most recognizable Maine place names. But not this Allagash. When folks talk about "Allagash," they're mostly talking about the river that joins the St. John a few hundred yards away from the Kelly family restaurant. Allagash, the town? That's another matter. "Most people don't even know the town of Allagash exists," Dumond says. While its actual existence may not be in jeopardy, its future likely is, if her brother's dire predictions come true. Allagash residents have figured out how to eke out a living in the place they love. They take advantage of what they have. Woods. Animals. Hunting opportunities. At this time of year, that means hunting for bears over bait. And as you may have heard, there are a number of people - with substantial national financial backing - who don't think that's a good way to hunt. They want a referendum on the matter. And they may get it. "For people like myself who don't want to leave, this is the last chance," says Kelly, who operates a guiding operation with his father, Tylor. The thing that irks Wade Kelly is that there is so much money involved ... and so many causes that would benefit from that cash. "[Some people] say they've got a $50 million bankroll. And they want to use that to stop hunting," Wade Kelly says. "Are they sane, or are they not? They can take the $50 million and give it to the Leukemia Foundation and help children. But no. I don't understand it." Also, he points out, those who cast the votes ... or sign the petitions ... have likely never been to his hometown. They don't realize what they're missing. And they don't realize that there are plenty of guides who face the same fate, should the current laws be changed. The same holds true in other rural bear-hunting towns across the northern part of the state. For generations, Allagash men have made their living with their hands and their heads and their hearts. They've headed into the woods, cut down trees, and made sure that lumber made it down river or over rough woods roads. They've hunted and fished ... and guided others who'd like to do the same. Kelly is a guide, now ... during the months he stays in Allagash, before heading south to find work for the winter. But he used to be a logger, just like his dad ... and his dad's dad ... and all the Kelly men, back six generations. "I got a chain saw for Christmas when I was 11," he says, proudly ... nostalgically ... wistfully. Wade Kelly doesn't cut trees any more. Not for a living. Cheap Canadian labor drove the Allagash men out of the woods five years back. The Kellys fought hard, lobbying for federal help in saving their livelihood. They helped blockade the border in a last-ditch effort. They lost the fight. The battles the people of Allagash have fought are legend in these parts. Time was, folks wanted to put in a dam that would have flooded the entire area. Moosetowners would have been relocated. The town won that time, as the Dickey-Lincoln project was eventually scrapped. Dumond remembers that time well. She was in high school ... back when Allagash had a high school. She was a basketball star on the state's best small-school team. "There were 30 kids in high school, and 15 were girls," she says. "They were all on the basketball team. Fifteen boys, and they were all on the basketball team. When our basketball teams would leave for an away game, they'd close the high school down. Literally." Dumond says - only half-joking, since Dickey-Lincoln is never really a joking matter up here - that she and her teammates won the final battle against the dam. They challenged the Army Corps of Engineers to a basketball game. If the Moosetown girls win ... you leave. No dam. "We won," she says. "Eventually, they did leave. So we take credit for that." Some times, the battles have been against nature. Seventeen years ago, the Kellys withstood a near-tragedy, as family patriarch Tylor was badly injured when a blowdown fell on him. Four vertebrae were destroyed, Darlene says. Stacey and Wade got him out of the woods ... and their father is still more active than most men half his age. "My father always told us - no matter how bad things got - one thing," Dumond says. "Pick yourself up. Shake yourself off. And keep going." Tylor Kelly did. In 1994, an ice jam knocked out two bridges in town and isolated the already remote village. There was Tylor Kelly, in a boat, dodging ice floes and rescuing 45 people who were stranded in a church. A few years back, the Kellys were among those who lost out when Canadian loggers and heavier machinery took over the woods they knew so well. Pick yourself up. Shake yourself off. And keep going. The Kellys did. And now, a bear-baiting debate looms. Guides can make good money during bear season, and some squirrel away enough cash during the hunt to set themselves up for the entire year. A referendum could change that. And Allagash. Again. People don't drive hundreds of miles to Allagash to fish for brook trout, Wade Kelly points out. They don't come to hike. They come to hunt for bears. "That's what we have," he says. "That's my income. Without that, I'll just be another guy, going down to Southern Maine and taking a job away from someone else." There's no doubt about this: Hire a Kelly - or any man from Allagash - and you'll get an honest day's work. Wade Kelly says the term "jack of all trades" should have been invented in his hometown. "That's why we do so well no matter where we go," he says. "There's nothing we can't do. And there's nothing we won't do." But what this Allagash man wants to do is guide hunters. To help them hunt for bears, and to help the state - which he praises in this matter - in its management of the herd. Dumond says that Allagash residents are unbelievably resilient. No matter what happens, they bounce back. They pick themselves up. They shake themselves off. They keep going. But how much is too much? "My parents, when we were young, said we could be anything we wanted to be," she says. "That's why, when somebody stops these people, they reinvent themselves. "But how many times do we have to keep reinventing ourselves?" In a year from now, when the referendum either passes ... or fails ... or doesn't get on the ballot ... Kelly will know if he's got to leave the place he calls home. The Moosetowner doesn't relish that thought ... and he remembers another battle that his family waged. The stakes: 150 acres of land. The opponent: Irving, the Canadian oil and lumber giant. "My sister asked me one time, 'What's so special about that land?' Wade says, softly. "I told her, I played in those woods when I was 10 years old. I learned to hunt there. I learned to use a compass there. And when you grab that soil and you run it through your fingers, that's yours. That's actually part of who you are. "That understanding of what this means to us goes right by so many other people. It's an attachment that I can't explain."
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