Transcription of Kara Wooldrik for the show Old Port Winter Wellness #170
Lisa: Many people come to Maine enjoy going out into the wilderness and spending time on the ski trails that are well known in the western mountains or perhaps up on the carriage pass in Bar Harbor. Some people don’t know is that we have trails right here in Portland in the Portland area that we can enjoy year round. Today we have Kara Wooldrik from Portland Trails to speak with us about what’s going on with her organization. Kara Wooldrik is the executive director of Portland Trails, an organization that preserves green space for public access and connects people with places. Thank you so much for coming in.
Kara: Thank you so much for letting me come in.
Lisa: It’s really great to meet you and it’s interesting because I’ve had in my mind set of list, that’s a phantom list of guest that I would like to have. Until we decided to do an article in Old Port Magazine about ski trails in the winter you were still a phantom guest but now you’re here, it’s reality. I’m really, really please with the work that Portland Trail is doing. I’m really impressed.
Kara: Thank you so much. We love our role in the community in Greater Portland.
Lisa: That seems to me that you’ve grown a lot. I believe the first trails that I used to walk along we’re out in the four river preserve and I also get some running in the Evergreen Cemetery. You’ve now … You have trails all over the place, they’re extending into different cities, different towns, they’re being used year round. You’ve just … You map all the stuff out very well, you have a really great website, a really great resource people.
Kara: Thank you. We’re now about 70 miles of trails in Greater Portland and we started with a few trails in beautiful areas that people want to visit. Over the last 20 years we have been able to fill in a network so that people can get from their … The places that they live to places to play very easily by trail and likewise children can get to school by trail, people can get to work by trail. We see them as a real transportation facility for whether they’re biking to work or walking to work or they just want to go out for a nice walk after work. We are now with in half mile of every residence home and try to be as accessible as possible to all community members.
Lisa: This must have require some thoughtfulness in order to actually be within a half mile of every residence home. Because you couldn’t just willing and say, “Just take a trail here on the woods.”
Kara: Certainly. I’d say we are intentional opportunist. We like to take advantage of opportunities that arise in that community. Maybe somebody buys a piece of land and they’d like to make sure there’s a recreation facility on it. At the same time we’re also thinking about, “Can people in this neighborhood get to the library, get to the grocery store, get to school by walking or gank?” If we can help that and make that easy for them then we do.
Lisa: Portland Trails has been doing this for 20 years?
Kara: We’re about 23 years old.
Lisa: 23 years old. How did this all begin? What was the interest?
Kara: There are a few different movements happening at the same time. One was around creating a Land Trust, the Forest City Land Trust, and we are a Land Trust. We hold land and easements which means permission for conservation values but also permission for people to go and recreate. There’s this movement, the Land Trust of Let’s Try to Protect some of Portland’s Land Before it Gets Developed. Then there was also a group interested in recreation and getting people out hiking and mountain biking and skiing and how can we combine those efforts.
Those folks that had that energy and that passion 23 years ago decided to merge and create one organization, Portland Trails. While we are a Land Trust we don’t look and act like many of the wonderful Land Trust in Maine. We certainly do hold land but our folks is really getting as many people as possible on to the land. We don’t buy land and then keep it separate from people. We want people to be out interacting with it.
Lisa: What is your interest in the land and getting people out moving about on it?
Kara: I love to get out and go walking with my dog or trail running or skiing and I know that it helps me to be a healthier person. I know from working with people over the past 20 years that it helps others to get out and be active and healthy. I also know that the way that we can help create a sustainable community both for economics, for people and for the environment is to get people to understand how the environment works. By being out there and connecting with it they will start to learn about it and value it.
For me it’s a thrill to be able to provide a resource close to people’s homes that they can out after a day of work or they can … Kids can wander home from school via the Evergreen Trails and have that connection that maybe people assume as only a rural experience but you can have it right here in Portland. I think also knowing that Portland is recognized for its food and it’s recognized for its art, it’s also recognize for its green spaces and the ability to get out and go walking and hiking right here within the city. I know it’s an important economic driver for the city and the community at large.
Lisa: Did you have some experience yourself as an individual when you’re growing up that convinced you that this was an important thing to do?
Kara: I think I felt most like myself when I was outside climbing trees and crawling around in culverts with friends. I grew up in suburban California and valued the trees I had in my backyard. I was certain that the redwood in my backyard was the largest one in the whole world because I was so little. As I went to grad school in New England and then looked around at the communities and the place where I would want to live I saw Maine and knew this was the place for me. I love the access to the outdoors and I feel honored to be able to connect to the people that live in Portland and people that visit Portland directly with the outdoors.
Lisa: Obviously, trails are available year around. Some of them are used more for skiing than others. What are some of the other trails that can be skied?
Kara: The Stroudwater River trail which connects from Congress, out of Congress Street all the way now to Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook is a wonderful spot from skiing. We’re excited to have that now linked to Smiling Hill Farm where they have had ski trails for many, many years and the Knight family has welcomed the connection so now you could actually ski from Portland to Westbrook. Much of that is along the power line area and then about half of it is in the woods. You get different terrain, some small fun hills but also relatively pretty flat.
Lisa: If people are wanting to look at the trails and whether you can actually bike them versus walk them versus ski them, this information is available on the Portland trails website?
Kara: Yes, it’s all available at trails.org. People can look for the type of activity they want to do and find trails or they can look at trails and see what activities are available.
Lisa: Riverside is well-known as a golf course during the summer but during the winter it becomes a place that a lot of people ski and when I was on the ski team for one of the local trails we went through Riverside and skied. Some people are aware that that exist but there’s actually new things that are going on with Riverside.
Kara: Yes, Riverside is very well-used in the winter particularly on the weekends. I think people don’t realize that the early mornings when the sun is rising are really gorgeous out there and I’m often alone or there are just one or two other people. New piece that we’re doing is expanding the Riverside trails down river along the Presumpscot River into a wooded area where we hope that we can groom those trails so that people can have a woods skiing experience but they are also groomed so you don’t have to be a back country skier to be comfortable in that area. That would be open to everybody.
Lisa: The nice thing about cross country skiing is that it can be really done at your own phase. If there happens to be a groomed trail that’s great and it doesn’t make it easier but you know if you wanted to go out and you wanted to bushwhack there’s definitely the chance to do that in some of these trails. Even here in the middle of Portland.
Kara: Definitely there are many people that are out before the snow plows get out on to the streets in Portland and they’ll ski from their homes to the eastern prom or in the western prom to either do a little bit of downhill or just to explore new places and skis with lots of snow are much like a pair of hiking boots. You can get around and see lots of new areas. There are also plenty of people that like to go snow showing and when the snow is deep it’s a terrific workout to go snow showing but it’s also very quiet and peaceful time.
Lisa: What are some of your favorite trails whether it’s in the winter or other times of the year? I know it must be hard to choose amongst all of them.
Kara: I’m on a different trail pretty much everyday depending on what type of day it is, what type of activity I want to do. I love some of the tiny connector trails that we have like the Fort Sumner trail, on the east end, the Bayside trail which will soon connect to Deering Oaks is a lovely trail for getting to an older industrial part of Portland. I also love going for a walk in Baxter Woods with my dog and seeing lots of other neighborhood folks and their dogs. That is a community experience, so much of what we do is linking community.
Whether it’s linking one natural community to another natural community or linking a neighbor to another neighbor so there’s the quiet experiences on the trail but there are also the community building experiences on the trail. Both are really invigorating.
Lisa: Portland trails is a non-profit and as such relies on the kindness and generosity of our area citizens and maybe even people who are not from our area. You have a few fund raisers that occur over the course of the year. Can you tell me about these?
Kara: We currently have about a thousand members of Portland trails and we know that the trails are used over a million times each year. We know that there are, we are meeting a community need and that there are many more people that could become members. Many of our members and the public participate in some of our community events. We have the trail to Ale 10K race which is a run and a walk and that is now in it’s 15th year. We have about 1,800 to 2,000 participants each year.
It’s a well-known fall September community event with trails right along the water. It’s attractive to feel from out of town as well as locals. We also have the Bayside 5K race and that is for people and dogs. That’s a very fun low key community event for 200 or so people and about a 100 dogs. We also have a social event that has fluctuated between fall and spring and that’s called GORP. GORP happens at Urban Farm Fermentory and it is time for people to get together and celebrate Portland trails.
This past year’s theme was a throwback to simpler time so it was thinking about what’s the Maine brand and image of camping and hiking and let’s capture that and hold that for an evening. Let’s play some games, let’s have some snacks, let’s just celebrate what Maine is and what has been.
Lisa: There really is an expectation on your part when people participate as to whether they walk a Bayside trail 5K or whether they sprint the 10K trail to Ale. It really is whatever people are interested in doing and that;’s really for themselves and for their own community, their own social benefit. It’s not so much a race as it is a well-being building experience.
Kara: Absolutely. Just about everything we do is about building community and connecting people with each other and what nature … Whether it’s a volunteer trail day or the trail to Ale event we try to make it as open as possible to people to create experience that they want. There certainly are people that zoom through the trail to Ale and at incredible speeds and are really admirable. There are people who walk it and it’s the first time they’ve ever walked that far in their life and those are huge victories as well.
Last year, I did a preview run with folks who were not yet familiar with the raise, they are not familiar with the course and we had so many participate and she and I ran together and she finished and at the end she said, “I’ve never run that far in my life.” That made my day, my week, my month to know that I’d been able to create an opportunity and support somebody to be able to run the farthest they’d ever run in their life. Then, fast forward a month and I saw her at the finish line and we gave each other a big hug and she had run the entire thing without stopping. It’s really such a privilege to be in this role.
Lisa: I have run the Bayside 5K. I ran it with people from here at Maine Magazine and we just really had a lot of fun. We enjoyed, it’s really, it’s very interesting to see Portland not from the street and in your car. To go around the prom and then come into a section of Portland where there are sidewalk but you couldn’t get to unless you’re actually on foot or some other means of personal locomotion. It’s a fascinating thing too, most of the ones life in an area and then see it from our fresh perspective. I think Portland trails and the Bayside 5k actually really offer that.
Kara: We’re constantly encouraging people to get out onto some of the lesser known trails, the little tiny neighborhood connectors where you suddenly see downtown Portland from a completely different perspective. We just purchased some land in Falmouth actually along 295 the Presumpscot River estuary and when I’ve gone out there to do some trail work I can look back at the city skyline and I’ve never seen it from that angle before. I think that’s this place that I call my home and I love and here I am getting a new glimpse of it. It’s almost like a new perspective on an old friend.
Lisa: I am very grateful to you for the work you’re doing with Portland trails and also to Portland trails itself. For individuals who would like to learn more about your organization Kara, where can they go?
Kara: The best resources would probably be our website which is trails.org. We also have an office down in Commercial Street and we always welcome visitors to come in and learn more about the trails. We’re happy to tell you where our little secret commuting routes or our getaways that we go to on the trails.
Lisa: You can also read about some of our adventures through Old Port Magazine or walking or running and for the winter Old Port Magazine our skiing so I encourage you to do that. We’ve been speaking with Kara Wooldrik who is the Executive Director of Portland Trails. Thank you so much for doing this.
Kara: Thank you so much.