I'd like to speak to this, because I grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula - as did my father; and my mother, for most of her childhood years. I very much enjoyed living in the UP and, as a child, I never thought that I would move far from home. I knew everyone around me, and was related to most of them. My father owned several hundred acres of land, on which he farmed, logged, grew hay, and pastured his horses and cattle. A little river passed through a corner of our property, in which we would swim and play in the summer, and on which we would skate in the winter.

We lived on a small farm, located a couple of miles from a very small town. The nearest city was about 35 miles. Most everyone farmed, to some extent, but some worked at the sawmill, the pallet mill, or at one of the businesses in town. My grandfather owned the IGA store, which was our only market. He didn't sell beer, because very few people in town would have shopped in a store that sold alcohol.

I clearly remember a white owl that he kept there, in his store. Mostly, it was sitting on a perch, as if it were stuffed. But every so often, it would fly from one side of the store to the other. It flew outside more than once, but always came back. A very large hairy tarantula occupied a terrarium in another part of the store, a spider that was delivered to grandpa's store in a shipment of bananas.

PeTA wouldn't like any of that, I am sure.

Our town also had a Chevrolet dealership, a lumber yard that doubled as a hardware store, two restaurants, one attached to a motel, a butcher shop, and a small potato chip factory that would donate its rejects to the Boy Scouts; and they were always the best, being a darker brown.

Webber's Bar managed to stay in business despite the fact that no one would ever admit to going there. When I was about ten, my cousin and I dropped a string of small firecrackers between the regular door and the screen door of the bar one day, then ran. I thought I had gotten away with it until I stopped in looking for an old friend more than twenty years later. Despite the fact that I had never been a customer of hers and had been out of state for nearly fifteen years, Mrs. Webber not only remembered me but gave me a hard time about the firecrackers.

We also had a few other businesses and a couple of small factories but if I ever knew what they were as a child, I don't remember now.

It was a wonderful place to grow up. There was not only the little river that ran through our property, but there were two other larger rivers within easy bicycling distance. There were lakes everywhere, and even Lake Michigan wasn't too far to bike to if we were motivated. A couple of times, my cousins and I floated homemade rafts down the river to the point where it came out in Lake Michigan, then called my father to come get us. My dad was our only choice for such things because my uncles would have yelled at us all the way back.

Each summer, we built a new shack in the woods, or sometimes a treehouse. We would save our money all winter to pay for the materials, and no matter how much money we managed to scrape up, it was always just enough to get whatever we wanted. It wasn't until I was in my forties and thinking back on my childhood years that I realized that they had been giving it to us for whatever little bit we could afford.

I doubt that I'd have ever moved, had there been a choice. At least not for long.

But things changed. I didn't understand it then, but I do now that I see it happening to northern Maine.

You see, Michigan's UP had many of the same problems that we are now faced with in northern part of Maine. In Michigan, the population centers were in the Lower Peninsula, just as most of the population of Maine is concentrated in the south. There were no very large towns in the UP, and most of its population depending on farming, mining, logging, and the wood products industry.

We often referred to the people who lived in the large cities of Michigan's Lower Peninsula as trolls, because they lived beneath the bridge.

Having destroyed all of their own land, the trolls liked to leave the city every now and then to visit the UP to hunt, fish, camp, hike, ski, and whatever else it is that city people do when they are in an area they don't understand well enough to truly appreciate.

They thought they appreciated it, however. In fact, many of them became convinced that Michigan's Upper Peninsula was too nice of a place for the sorts of people who lived there. They couldn't have us cutting down a tree that they might visit once or twice in a lifetime, or use the water for anything other than rafting and taking photographs of birds.

They began allying themselves with conservation groups, using their tax exempt status to wage war on the people above the bridge. First, they destroyed the mining industry, replacing it with what would now be called eco-tourist businesses that somehow always managed to be owned by someone who wasn't from the Upper Peninsula.

Then they destroyed the wood products industry, reducing it to levels that would employ very few people. In its place were tourist businesses owned by people from below the bridge.

At around the same time they came after the family farms, which they now refer to as unsustainable. Having people actually living on the land they farm is considered sprawl, you know. Or have you never wondered why Maine's Aroostook County can no longer support the farming industry, despite the fact that people have clearly not quit eating potatoes?

Although we owned land on both sides of the river, we could no longer pasture our horses or cows near its banks. While large factory farms were given a free ride, family farms were regulated to death by state and federal regulatory authorities, pushed by the sustainable development folks, although they probably called it something else then.

In order to meet the new regulatory demands, the government would offer low-interest farm loans which, following a bad year, could never be repaid. My father had to sell much of his land, little by little, in a self-defeating effort to keep up with the payments.

While I was still in elementary school, my dad had to take a job in the city, driving nearly 40 miles to work each day, and trying to keep the farm going at night and on weekends, not only because he loved his farm but because he didn't earn enough from his day job to pay the bills. In the winter, he would have animals to tend to, and would often log well into the night. I can remember falling to sleep sometimes hearing his chainsaw in the distance.

Before he died, he had been forced to sell all of his land except for fifteen acres. Unwilling to go to anyone for help, he sold his house and moved to a city below the bridge, to a place where he knew no one. There was nothing else for him, and he died a few years later.

My older brother retired from the Forestry Service and is now living on the fifteen remaining acres.

As for myself, I moved from the Upper Peninsula shortly after graduating from high school because there was nothing there for me; no work, no farm, and no feasible means of earning a living. I lived in Southern California for twelve years, working for Champion Paper Company, then in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for more than twenty years.

When my wife and I decided to move back north to snow country, my first thought was of my home town, a small town whose history is comprised in large part of members of my family. But only a few of my relatives still live there and, for the most part, I don't know anyone there. Small then, it is much smaller now.

Gone are the mills, as well as the lumber yard. My grandfather's IGA store closed long ago and, while there is another grocery store, the owner is from India. The potato chip factory closed while I was still in high school, and the town no longer has an auto dealership. Webber's Bar is still there, but I've heard that Mrs. Webber has died, and people park right in front now. A storage shed sits where the butcher's shop used to be. There is a small zoo in town that wasn't there before, but I can't imagine that very many people visit.

There are a few trinket shops along the highway, owned by locals trying desperately to eke out a living in the new economy.

Children are bussed more than 15 miles to another, slightly larger, town, since my hometown's school now only goes through 4th grade. That is, if they haven't closed it entirely by now.

There are no farms, but my hometown now has three golf courses. Apparently, the people who replaced my relatives and neighbors play golf a lot. And why not? Surely they are not working people, because there is no work to be had and no way to earn a living.

Sadly to me, there are now trees where my neighbor's houses used to stand. Nearly all of the land that was once farm and pastureland is now grown up in trees. Hardly anyone lives in my hometown now, and very few of those who live there are from there. For the most part, wealthy trolls have taken it over and, for all of their talk about culture, they don't really give a damn about my history. It's their town now, and they are comfortable in their assurance that they are much better than me, or any of my family.

The Nature Conservancy is now a large landowner in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

The only change that has occurred in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is for the worse, at least for the people whose roots are there. Indian casinos are everywhere, competing unfairly with local restaurants, bars, and motels. As we are seeing here in Millinocket, local people are almost never able to cash in on eco-development schemes because these schemes are devised by people from away, and are intended to replace the local population with an elite who can be trusted to be better stewards of the land, or who will play on the same team as those who now decide who the stakeholders will be.

If you've ever wondered why I have been so outspoken a critic of MAGIC's agenda, this is the reason. I moved to Millinocket rather than to my own hometown because the enviro-nazis have made it impossible for decent people to live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

This is the model that Councilor Polstein is suggesting for the Katahdin region. If he succeeds, Millinocket won't die. There will still be people living here, but most of them won't be concerned with earning a living because they will already have money. Of course, there will always be money to be made in Millinocket but, if Polstein achieves his objectives, you won't be making it. In all probability, you won't even be here.

November may well be your last chance to say no. If you blow it, like me, I don't think you'll be able to go home again.