Our Summer 2024 issue of Watermark, our member newsletter is here! In this special 40th Anniversary Edition you'll find:

• Nik's Notebook
• 40 years, In Brief
• A Look Back from Paul Dest (Read the full Downeast Article referenced)
• Preserving A Reserve
• Program Highlights: Research, Education, Stewardship, Coastal Training Program (CTP)
• Thanks to YOU
• 2024 Happenings

Download the Summer 2024 Watermark

Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana

Time is a funny thing. Science doesn’t really know what it is. It’s been compared to a landscape through which we move, a river in which we bob, a series of photos in which we’re posed. No one knows for sure; yet everyone, and every place, changes with its passage. Some mark time with a birthday or a new calendar. I get an annual eye exam that sends my reading glasses another quarter step down into the cellar of myopia.

To pass some time and unearth some history, I recently sat on a memorial bench with Wells Reserve founder and first Laudholm Trust president Mort Mather, watching the bobolinks cavort in the new summer grasses. We talked of many things: of farms, and boards, cabbages and Lords, why the sea is boiling hot, and why this place has wings. Laudholm presidents from Mort to Liz, Kathryn, Susan, and Diana, along with dozens of committed staff members; partners local, state and federal; thousands of donors and tireless volunteers; and likely more than a million visitors, built this place. They built it for then, and now, and for the forty years and more to come. They built it to withstand the tests of time, and so far, it has. And how!

Ultimately, though, Mort grew annoyed by my questions about the past. With his trademark grin, my old friend and mentor delivered to me this message: the present is the gift, and there is no gift better than the present. The present, Mort said, is Laudholm, is the Wells Reserve, and “it turned out better than I ever, ever expected.” Amen, and thanks to all who helped, and continue to help, make this place and its work the gift that keeps on giving.

Nik Charov
President, Laudholm Trust
Chairman, Wells Reserve Management Authority