Patty Cormier spent much of her childhood in the Maine woods and has devoted her professional life to helping manage the state’s forests. She worked for 20 years as a District Forester for the Maine Forest Service and took on the role of State Forester in the spring of 2019. She’s also hiked most of the Appalachian Trail, helps grow and tend to the grapes for her husband’s Wild Fern Winery, is a volunteer firefighter and advanced EMT for her town of Farmington, and has traveled west several times to fight wildfires.
When I was 8, my family moved from New Jersey to Kingfield, where my father owned and ran Deer Farm Camps, so I spent my formative years in the western mountains of Maine. We had a couple hundred acres of woodland, and me and my good friend Karen knew every inch of it. My father would also wake me up at 4 in the morning to go fishing for brown trout in one of the three close-by ponds. During hunting season my father was up early to cook for the hunters at the camp. And during ski season there were Sugarloafers and cross-country skiers. I would try to help groom the 30 miles of cross-country trails with our old single ski Ski-doo, until I was told to stop because I would head way out and was too small to get the machine unstuck every time I got stuck in the snow.
I had a horse, Deagon, and we would spend days exploring all the old logging trails. One winter my father bought this nice old horse-drawn sleigh and refurbished it. He’d searched far and wide for this sleigh and thought it would be awful special to take guests into the woods with it. I was about 14 then. My friend and I hooked it up to Deagon and didn’t put blinders on her. Well, she did okay until I turned her to head back. Poor thing took off like a crazy horse and headed straight for the woods. My friend dove off the sleigh, then I had to dive off as well. Deagon ended up wedged between two trees. She went as far as she could, and of course that nice sleigh was all ripped up, splintered, pieces flying everywhere. That horse got me in more trouble!
Right out of high school I was enrolled in the Youth Conservation Corps up at Baxter State Park, doing trail work at the park for that summer and the next. I look at that work as planting the seed for working outside. My mother insisted I go into the medical field, so my first year of college was at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. I soon became one of two forestry students there. Mother was not happy. I decided to transfer to the University of Maine in Orono as it sounded like more fun with more forestry students, and I earned my BS in Forest Management.
As State Forester, I’m one of three members of the Baxter State Park Authority. Baxter State Park is one of my all-time favorite places. It’s an amazing place, and an amazing philosophy that created it. Percival Baxter bought all this land, and the concept of giving it to the people of Maine – it’s just so rare. It’s a wilderness, a truly magical place.
I see the role of the State Forester as a mediator or spokesperson for the forests of the state, for the great people who work at the Maine Forest Service, for the landowners, loggers, foresters, forest products businesses, all those who enjoy and are employed by the forests. A good state forester is always looking for that balance of looking back and looking ahead at what is best for all involved. There is a lot of time spent on national issues with the other state foresters, too, to try to direct public policy for the good of the forests, and also directing good solid policy within Maine. There are a lot of players in the forest policy mosaic, so it is a matter of working with many stakeholders to get some good work done.
The biggest challenge facing Maine’s forest right now is the imbalance within the forest products sector due to the virus, and the explosion in Jay. The forest provides an annual $8.5 billion dollar impact to the state economy. We need that sector. Right now, markets are so bad, loggers are hurting, and landowners are not harvesting if there aren’t markets. I worry for the balance, the employment, the health of the forest. I worry about the nexus of the impacts in light of the current situation with drier weather, fires, insect infestations. I’m just worried right now. These are problems that we can overcome, and we’ve had struggles before, but it isn’t easy. I do think that there are emerging markets and market shifts that will occur. We are a savvy and creative people in Maine, and we will weather this.
At the same time, there is a wider acceptance these days of good stewardship concerning our natural resources and forest landscapes. For example, when I first started working as a forester, there really wasn’t as much of an awareness that we need to protect our water as there is now. The awareness of the value of professionals, whether we are talking foresters, loggers, arborists, or others, is much more widely accepted and embraced. That is a good thing for the forests of the state. Thirty years ago, there really was no talk of carbon and sequestration – we can’t say that now!
There is also a lot of well-deserved recreation happening in the forest these days. It is good to see and hear of how Mainers are taking to the woods. There are also many great efforts towards land conservation. It is amazing when you think about it, how much our northern forests provide for every age, size, gender, occupation, and on and on. We are so lucky in Maine. Our forests, with forests in New Hampshire and Vermont, are one of the last contiguous blocks of forest for migratory songbirds. How exciting is that?
Of course, with increased recreational use this spring and summer, there is a wider impact on the forest and on the Maine Forest Service. We’re the enforcement agency with regards to outdoor burning, so dealing with campfire issues and camping issues and unauthorized camping, to name a few – it’s been a wild and crazy recreation season, that’s for sure. It’s good that people are getting out. That’s what we encourage. But sometimes what comes with that is an impact to the natural resources.
I absolutely love western fire duty. I’ve gone on five mobilizations throughout the years: Montana twice, Oregon, Idaho and Quebec. Maybe I’m an adrenalin junkie, but there is satisfaction in helping out, and it is a great way to experience some amazing parts of our country. You can’t understand the job without getting deep into the dirt. We’ve got a crew from Maine Forest Service in California and a crew in Colorado right now helping fight some of the fires raging out west.
The outdoors and woods are in my bones. There is always something to see, hear, smell, taste and feel in the woods. The northern forest is special in that way. I guess I was destined to have a career somehow connected to the woods. It was inevitable. The woods are a friendly, welcoming place for me, and supply so much to so many. That’s what drives the work I do today.
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