MITA -- Thanks and a correction

[djlewis]

Thanks to Scott for organizing a terrific MITA gathering. I now understand much better what MITA is about. And now that I do, I see that my statement in the other thread was fairly far off base. Here's how I now understand it in a nutshell, thanks to a great talk by Karen Stimpson, Executive Director.

MITA (a) stewards and conserves the islands and coastline, including public and private properties; ( educates the public on how to conserve and use the coast in good ways; © provides access for members to private properties on the Trail that owners have opened to the organization's use by specific agreement.

One thing MITA does ~not~ do is ~promote~ the Maine Islands or coastline, nor particularly to try to attract more people to use it. Thus they concentrate on getting members from people who have discovered the area in other ways. So, my remark about wanting 10 times as many members was way off base. In fact though they'd like more members, to increase the financial and volunteer bases and to educate more users of the Maine Coast, a big increase in membership would be a mixed blessing.

That said, Scott noted that almost everybody in NSPN has already discovered the Maine coast as a supurb recreational area. So, it's still appropriate to encourage NSPN-ers to become MITA members and learn about and use the Trail -- in the right way, of course.

So, that's what I learned today. And among other things, I also learned the MITA is pronounced MY-ta, not MEE-ta.

--David.

[scamlin]

David's summary of MITA's mission and goals is on target.

I want to thank the NSPNers who turned out this afternoon: over 50 people attended--the majority MITA members but a good number who were just interested in learning more. The audience included quite a few people from Boston Sea Kayak Club as well as other organizations such as AMC and some area yacht clubs. We even had a few sailboat and motor cruisers--long time supporters of the Trail--who braved the mostly kayak crowd. It was great to see people mixing and making connections.

Aside from Director Karen Stimpson's talk, we saw a slideshow by Bob Arledge and David Boyle from Bath, ME. Along with Mike Marino, in August 2003 they paddled the entire trail and then some from Portsmith, NH to the Canadian border. They had fog the first two weeks which made it easier to do the entire 320 miles in 18 days (no distractions). They also perfected a technique for traveling fast and light: eat in restaurants whenever you can!

We hope to have another MITA gathering in the spring. In the meantime, you can learn more about access and stewardship on the Maine islands at www.mita.org.

Any questions, let me know.

Scott

[KayakDan]

Glad to hear that you had such a great turnout. We wanted to be there,but the thought of packing our camping gear and driving back to Newburyport from Monadnock was beyond us.

It will be island clean up time before you know it!