By Land and By Water, Coastal Rivers Volunteers Clear The Way
By Ali Juell on September 25, 2025
Featured in The Lincoln County News
On a sunny Thursday afternoon, a group gathers at the Pemaquid Pond hiking trail with saws, weedwackers, garden cutters, and other tools.
The gaggle of Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust volunteers and organizers begin their descent down the beaten path before turning off onto a less groomed walkway. Instead of enjoying a leisurely hike, everyone gets to work.
Budding weeds get snipped, branches are pulled away, tree stumps are sawed off; all in an effort to create a new trail loop at Pemaquid Pond.
“We want to be like fairies,” Coastal Rivers Volunteer Coordinator Bell Moroney said as she pulled a fallen tree off the trail. It’s part of maintaining the magic of the trails, she said.
This outing is one of many Coastal Rivers-led efforts championed by volunteers. The land trust came together in 2019, but its original organizations that merged to form it have much longer histories. The Damariscotta River Association was incorporated in 1973 and the Pemaquid Watershed Association was created in 1966. From both of their inceptions, the organizations maintained and monitored Lincoln County’s natural areas.
The unified land trust’s main goals are to protect water quality, conserve wild places, maintain trails, provide nature education, and build climate resilience. Volunteers play a role in every sector.
“Making a mark on nature in a sustainable way”
Moroney, as well as volunteers Betsy Evans, Joy Vaughan, and Honora Perkins, all participated in the Trail Tamers event, monthly gatherings to build new trails.
Over the course of two hours, the group’s spirits stay as high as the many trees surrounding the path. They swap stories, listening and learning about one another as they work their way through the loop.
One of Coastal Rivers’ more ubiquitous roles is as the keepers of 32 public trail areas. Behind each of those pathways is a team of volunteers and organizers who go out to clear brush and create walkways.
The work doesn’t end once the trail is created. To keep those areas accessible and safe for walkers, volunteers return periodically cut back invasive plants and trim back any growth on a monthly basis.
This was Perkins’ first time volunteering as a trail tamer. She hadn’t been able to come out for the event previously because of her work schedule, she said, but making it out on that Thursday, Sept. 11 was a dream realized.
“Literally I wanted to do this for so long,” Perkins said. “You got to jump on the opportunity.”
Vaughan has been a volunteer at Damariscotta River Association and now Coastal Rivers for the past 30 years. After leaving behind her “very stable job” and moving back to Maine, she said she would walk the Plummer Point trail in South Bristol every day.
She said she eventually came to wonder who created the walkways she frequented.
“I thought, ‘When I have time, I want to be somebody who makes trails,’” Vaughan said. “Building a trail, everybody loves that … I’ve never tired of it. Never.”
All of the trail tamers agreed that there’s something special about creating the walkways that countless people will eventually use.
“It’s like you’re making a mark on nature in a sustainable way,” Moroney said.
