This 25th anniversary year our Camp Kotok group helped the Downeast Lakes Land Trust. The story around this and the broader conservation movement may surprise you.
Camp Kotok celebrated the 25th anniversary of the gathering with philanthropy. We have been using and supporting the forests and lakes and streams and ponds for many years. The pristine landscape and watershed we enjoy, which the local guides rely upon, demonstrates what can happen when people preserve and protect resources like this.
An anniversary and a special challenge.
Every year since inception, the gathering has done charity challenges. The group this year included people from major foundations and organizational board members of note. Previously, we helped distressed individuals, schools, amputee veterans from the American military and the Ukraine War, medical and healthcare organizations like the CDC Foundation and the Long Covid Initiative, and so many others. This 25th anniversary year our Camp Kotok group helped the Downeast Lakes Land Trust. We do this at a time when our national policy has decided to release millions of acres of preservation forest land for exploitation.
We’re opening up this year’s Camp Kotok Challenge of supporting the Downeast Lakes Land Trust (DLLT) to our readers who value pristine environments preserved for generations to come. The DLLT plans to expand their hands-on youth workshops where participants “explore the outdoors, learn new skills, meet people who know and care deeply about the region, and develop a firsthand appreciation for the natural world. These are experiences that can stay with a young person long after the workshop is over.”
Our challenge meets your donation x3
Three generous “campers” from our August session in Maine have agreed to match Camp Kotok Challenge donations up to the $20,000 fundraising goal. That’s a three-dollar-for-dollar match, quadrupling your impact. If donating online, make sure you use the “Camp Kotok Challenge” option (see screenshot below).
Donate online to DLLT here at their online link.
(Bloomerang is a donor management software application used by tens of thousands of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Canada.)
To donate by check (note the Camp Kotok Challenge), please mail your donation to:
Downeast Land Lakes Trust
137 Milford Road
Grand Lake Stream, ME 04668
Learn more about the Downeast Land Lakes Trust by visiting their website, https://downeastlakes.org/, viewing the photo gallery at the end, and by watching this short introductory video to appreciate the people of Grand Lake Stream, Maine and the environment they’re committed to preserving:
My Kotok personal note.
The great American President Teddy Roosevelt led the then Republican majority government to launch a great gift to generations of Americans. That gave us the national parks and recreation areas. The idea started when TR went camping with John Muir, the wonderful and wondrous Muir Woods, on America’s Pacific Coast are named in his honor. Our Camp Kotok group has honored that tradition by saving forests in Maine on the East Coast of this great nation.
We think it’s better to grow a hardwood tree than to burn it up.
IMO, there are times in American history when philanthropy is required to do good work because government policies are doing bad things by being destructive. 2026 is one of those times.
A recommended read.
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America is Timothy Egan’s 2009 narrative history of the enormous wildfire that swept across the northern Rockies in August 1910.
Often called the “Big Blowup,” the fire burned roughly three million acres across Idaho, Montana, and Washington in about two days. Entire towns were destroyed, smoke reached the East Coast, and at least 85 people died, most of them firefighters.
Egan tells two connected stories.
First is the creation of the U.S. Forest Service. Theodore Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, wanted millions of acres of western forest protected as public land. They faced powerful opposition from timber companies, mining interests, railroads, western politicians, and people who regarded federal conservation as a land grab.
Second is the fire itself. Egan follows poorly paid Forest Service rangers and temporary firefighters as scattered fires merged into a regional catastrophe after hurricane-force winds arrived on August 20, 1910. The best-known figure is ranger Edward Pulaski, who saved most of his crew by forcing them into an abandoned mine tunnel and threatening to shoot anyone who tried to flee into the flames. The firefighting tool later named the Pulaski is associated with him.
The title’s phrase “the fire that saved America” reflects Egan’s main argument: the disaster demonstrated why the country needed a permanent federal agency capable of protecting public forests. The Forest Service was young, underfunded, and politically vulnerable. The courage and deaths of its firefighters helped turn public opinion in its favor.
Learn more about the book or order a copy here:
The L-MAGA vs MAGA angle.
The original MAGA President, Ronald Reagan, a man never happier than when he was riding horses and chopping wood at his ranch, was responsible along with his administration for curtailing particularly potent greenhouse gases: CFCs, halons, and other ozone-depleting chemicals. The New York Times lead reporter on climate science, Justin Gillis, wrote about the success of the Montreal Protocol to save the planet’s ozone layer:
“Here is a remarkable fact about global warming: It might be twice as bad right now were it not for a treaty negotiated by a conservative American president…”
Reagan went on to describe the Montreal Protocol as “a model of cooperation.”
President Reagan’s MAGA included the word “Let’s” which we feel distinguishes itself from trends in the current MAGA movement. We’re framing it as “L-MAGA.” What’s significant about the “L”? Ronald Reagan’s approach to governance and cooperation can be distilled down to the “Let’s” and its uncontracted form, “Let Us.” That’s important. Famous for meeting Democrat House Speaker, Tip O’Neill, for dinner, drinks, and late-night conversations, Reagan managed to maintain a warm personal friendship and share laughs with him despite being on opposite sides of the political spectrum and engaging in hard legislative bargaining. Pausing to listen to those with different views can reveal common ground and lead to better, more durable results. The same Reagan who challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” also negotiated with him, signing the INF Treaty six months later, establishing safeguards against misinterpreted missile launches, and laying the groundwork for further strategic arms reductions, demonstrating that firm principles and practical cooperation can reinforce one another.
Conservatives who identify with today’s MAGA movement have an opportunity to carry forward this part of Reagan’s legacy: building coalitions, working across differences, and pursuing progress without abandoning their principles. Cooperation does not require either side to surrender its convictions. It asks both sides to turn disagreement into constructive action. “Let’s” do this L-MAGA.
Washington’s cherished cherry trees and their beauty were publicly praised by Reagan in a 1983 toast where he said, “Every spring from all over the United States Americans come to their capital in Washington, D.C., to view the beauty of cherry blossoms.” In 1981, the Reagans presented Japan with the “Reagan Sakura,” a sapling propagated from one of the original cherry blossom trees gifted to the US by Japan in 1912, and given to Adachi City, Tokyo in 1981 by First Lady Nancy Reagan (see note from Embassy of Japan in the USA https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Jnn8QKYNj/). The recent removal of more than 60 trees from East Potomac Golf Links as the Trump administration prepared a proposed redesign of the public course begs the question of whether they were routine maintenance and unrelated to the redesign, whether cherry trees were among those removed, and if healthy or recoverable trees were removed unnecessarily? If so, we find that loss lamentable.
We’d like to see more of today’s conservatives build on this Reagan-era example of stewardship, cooperation, and respect for the natural world. L-MAGA can connect love of country with care for the places Americans share, from Washington’s cherry trees to Maine’s forests and waters and across the continent. Protecting that inheritance benefits us all and leaves future generations a legacy they can cherish. Your grandchildren’s grandchildren will thank you ❤️.
Donate online to DLLT here Thank you!
Grand Lake Stream, Maine
Special thanks to Elizabeth Sweet and Norm Dempsey for their help contributing and/or organizing the content of today’s note.
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