Customer Reviews

Wilderness Partners: Buzz Caverly and Baxter State Park

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After having known Buzz and Jan for many years and having the opportunity to volunteer at the park for many years, I find this book a real accounting of the 46 years that it took to live out this dream. Phyllis does a great job blending anecdote and history to give the reader a true account of the preservation of Baxter Park over the last four decades. Anyone who reads this book will come away with the feeling of the love the Caverly's had for Gov. Baxter and his park. I just wish somehow the truth about Buzz's exit from the park abruptly would be revealed and then all would know the true story and respect for 46 years of superbly dedicated service and the rewards it should of garnered.

I followed Phyllis Austin's environmental news articles during the many years she wrote for the Maine Times. I felt drawn to her work because it went deep, didn't pull punches, and ultimately had real impact on conservation policy in the state. In "Wilderness Partners" she's taken her well-honed reporting skills to new heights, penning a sustained narrative so personally informed by the Baxter State Park natural landscape and so rich with anecdotes and insights into human foibles & strengths that even passages on environmental policy-making are fascinating. No lazy trekker when it comes to research, Austin has circumnavigated her subjects - both Caverly and the park - and then climbed up/down/into the essence of what they are. The result is a hefty book that offers readers a big bold vista. Her story-telling skills combined with her own devotion to (and clearly intimate relation with) the natural world, make this a moving read - and a remarkable example of what people with passion, vision, and drive can accomplish (and here I'm speaking of Caverly, Baxter, and Austin).

Phyllis Austin conveys to all who enjoy and care for our wild places the difficulties in protecting their outstanding values. She has captured the inspirational story of one man, Buzz Caverly, who with the unflagging support of his wife, Jan, spent a lifetime dedicated to protecting New England's largest wilderness area, Baxter State Park in northern Maine. This 200,000-plus acre area, which was purchased single-handedly and given to the people of Maine by former Governor Percival Baxter, is a magnificent mountain region of lakes and forests surrounding Maine's highest mountain, Katahdin, the spectacular terminus of the famed Appalachian Trail. It was Baxter who wrote to Buzz, after he was appointed supervisor of the park in 1968, that "we are partners in this project," meaning Baxter's thirty-three year effort to acquire the land and establish it to be managed in perpetuity with most of it as "forever wild."

From 1960 when he was a young ranger to his retirement in 2006 as director, Buzz Caverly tried to hold true to Baxter's vision for the park. Austin tells the story as it occurred without gloss or embellishment, and Buzz is shown to be profoundly human, a man who made mistakes, but who accepted them with a resolve to be better and overcome them to achieve Baxter's dream. In this Buzz was Baxter's wilderness partner. Buzz was guided by what Stewart L. Udall, one of our country's greatest conservationists and former secretary of the interior under President John F. Kennedy, called the "never-ending vigilance needed in this country to preserve the quality and the essence of natural treasures we are prone to assume we have `saved.'" The political, economic, and social pressures that work against the very qualities that we love in our natural treasures are enormous today, and it takes men and women of Buzz Caverly's dedication to "save" them. Phyllis Austin has done a remarkable job in bringing this message to us

It is surprising that the publisher permitted this to be printed with so little fact checking. Hopefully, this will be the only book by this author that comes to market. The theme of this tome seems to push a shared agenda between the author and the title character. It is more fiction than non and certainly not worthy of being called a biography. The issue may be that the author had very little with which to work. Recounting one year of experience thirty five times doesn't mask the lack of depth in a tale. The bottom line is there is no reason to waste time or money on this work as it comes up small in both style and substance.