I recently spent a week’s vacation fishing, hunting and hiking at around 10,000 feet in the eastern High Sierra. Over beers, beef tongue stew and pecan punch (“punch” as in between-the-eyes, due to some seriously strong liquor in this popular drink of the region’s Basque sheep herders) I learned that Maine’s 15 remaining year round island communities are out in front of the nation in developing creative solutions to remaining vibrant places to live, work and educate children.
Lee Vining, California, where I was based, is a wind-blown high plains community of 398 souls, tucked into the side of the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains at an elevation of roughly 6,800 feet. The last street in town (“the heights,” people say jokingly) backs up to snow-topped 13,000-foot peaks.
The mountains kept the rest of California at bay for generations. But, with the entrance to Yosemite National Park and Inyo National Forest only minutes away, and inspired by the likes of John Muir and Ansel Adams, people from Los Angeles are scooping up second homes like mad, buying up Main Street, and well, you know the rest of the story. Prefab 900-square-foot homes from the 1970s are going for $400k.
The issues should resonate: longstanding disputes between conservation groups and natural resource harvesters; increasingly rapid influx of people “from away”; rising real estate valuations; diminishing workforce housing; difficulty keeping teachers and local officials who “get” living in rural communities; large parcels of land being purchased for development; people who care about their communities feeling that they are being pushed out and that their community is being “hollowed out.”
The real allure of Lee Vining is that it is home to real people: hunters, fishermen, service industry staff, nonprofit staff — basically, people pulling together a living from a variety of sources. Some are recent immigrants from other places; Native peoples have been there since time immemorial; others have been there for generations (four or five, rather than Maine’s six- and seven-generation families); many are just now arriving. Most are there because they want to live in a small community with immediate access to some of the most beautiful mountains in the world.
Lee Vining is made an island by hundreds of thousands of acres of U.S. Forest Service land, Bureau of Land Management claims, and 20,000 acres of land owned by the city of Los Angeles. LA bought this land in an attempt to take for itself the water from the streams that feed Mono Lake (www.monolake.org). In what is now one of the West’s greatest victories by a citizens group to preserve the public trust represented by the lake and its feeder streams, Los Angeles lost the rights to the watershed because of maverick legal work done by the non-profit Mono Lake Committee.
They won the battle but a war is looming. In the future, when LA has budget issues, or when the leadership changes, Lee Vining could see the city of place those 20,000 acres of land on the open market for development. The thought of this is almost too much for people to grapple with.
You get the picture. The high mountain towns of the Sierra are subject to many of the same pressures. We can learn from how they are responding to their challenges. As we do, I hope we also see the value in sustaining the island communities of the High Sierra and Rockies and take some responsibility to share the cutting edge efforts under way to sustain Maine’s island communities.
Rob Snyder is vice president of programs at the Island Institute.