| Joanne Cole |
At this season, Talking Brook Public Land announces itself before a visitor even reaches the trailhead, with a roar of rushing water from spring rains.
On one such morning, the first bright weekend in a while, walkers Cheyenne and Riese paused to chat with a local. They were out for fresh air and some sunshine at last. Why here? “It’s quiet and it’s close to home,” said Cheyenne, an Auburn resident. She wanted to introduce her friend to the trails and had picked a route following the Talking Brook stream.
Did they know about the Bureau of Parks and Lands’ recent acquisition of the parcels or the land’s back story? No – nor did other visitors encountered on several late winter and early spring visits.
Walkers already familiar with the area may have noticed a new kiosk with a Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands logo and the name Talking Brook Public Land at the end of Woodman Road. Out on the trails, they’d have seen new maps at junctions and new bridges crossing the brooks and streams.
But few realized what these changes mean or how they came about.
How significant is the change?
A January 2024 announcement covered the essentials. “Talking Brook and Big Falls properties secure permanent protection” read the headline. The project, now called Talking Brook Public Land, encompasses 200 acres in New Gloucester and Auburn, combining 156 acres from New Gloucester residents Michael and Julie Fralich and 44 acres formerly known as Big Falls Preserve from Royal River Conservation Trust. The Fralichs donated the Big Falls parcel to RRCT in 2018.
The new preserve includes stretches of Meadow Brook and Talking Brook, tributaries of the Royal River, and results from a collaboration among the Fralichs, the Bureau of Parks and Lands, Royal River Conservation Trust, and the Trust for Public Land. Going forward, Talking Brook will be owned by the Bureau of Parks and Lands and managed cooperatively with Royal River Conservation Trust.
It may sound straightforward, but the project is unusual in several key respects, some reflecting its status as a public land.
“The land can never be sold or transferred without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature,” says Bill Patterson, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Parks and Lands.
Another distinction is its location. Talking Brook’s proximity to population centers make it especially significant for protection and for low-impact recreation. Walking, snowshoeing, backcountry skiing and dogs on leash are welcome; hunting in season is permitted but not within 300 feet of trails. To protect the area, bicycles, vehicles and camping are not permitted.
Talking Brook is “an ideal natural showcase for the best of southern Maine, blending deep forests and clear streams with an easily accessed trail system,” Maine Director of the Trust for Public Land Betsy Cook said.
The existing trail system is itself distinctive. To BPL’s Bill Patterson, what has stood out about Julie and Michael Fralich is “their passion for trails – not just the land, but to get people out on them.” Says Patterson, “It’s pretty unique. Plenty of landowners are interested in conserving their lands. Not many people invite others onto them.”
Echoing the point, BPL Senior Planner Jim Vogel says, Talking Brook offers “trails folks have already come to love.” Many of BPL’s holdings are notably remote—the Bigelow Range, Tumbledown Mountain, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, he notes. Here, by contrast, in “front country,” Talking Brook Public Land is in reach, with “a lot going on per acre” and “already-loved trails.”
“We’ve always had it be open-access land,” says Julie Fralich, “and we wanted to continue that tradition.” For decades, the Fralichs welcomed the public onto the miles of trails they created—with lots of local help—on their Woodman Road parcels. So the property has long been public in that sense.
But with state ownership come expert oversight and management, as well as accountability and transparency – added dimensions of the “Public” in Talking Brook Public Land. BPL offers “a different degree of protection,” BPL’s Patterson says, from that of other conserved properties and “ensures a voice for the public.”
Says Royal River Conservation Trust Executive Director Alan Stearns, “The state’s planning process is public. They must make key decisions in public and stick with them.” Land trusts like RRCT aren’t required to do that type of community engagement, he notes.
Talking Brook will join Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal and the Pineland Reserved Public Lands off Depot Road under BPL’s Bradbury-Pineland Management Plan and advisory committee. The Plan, first developed in 2011, runs to 100 pages, is detailed, publicly available, updated every five years through a formal state-run process. The most recent five-year Bradbury-Pineland review document–also lengthy–addresses deer wintering areas, invasive species, signage, timber harvest plans, and much more, with comments from advisory committee members.
In this context, “management” involves protection of natural resources and wildlife habitats, of course, but also recreation, and the Bradbury-Pineland advisory committee comprises local stakeholders to “connect all the community pieces of the puzzle,” Michael Fralich says. The advisory committee takes an active part.
The current committee includes members with Bradbury- and Pineland-specific interests: hunting, Pineland Farms’ recreation programs, equestrians, nature and conservation interests, abutters, the mountain biking community. With Talking Brook Public Land joining the Bradbury-Pineland Management Plan, more members are expected to be added to the advisory committee.
BPL’s oversight also brings with it wildlife and forestry specialists to undertake an inventory and do a baseline assessment of Talking Brook’s habitat and wildlife, essential for ongoing monitoring and protection.
Royal River’s Alan Stearns sums up: “BPL has the resources to make this parcel shine.”
The prospect of having careful, expert management and an advisory group was especially important to the Fralichs. “The management plan wasn’t just putting in the bridges,” Julie says. “We have some vulnerable species here between the hemlocks and the ash.” The inventory and baseline assessment for the land are “part of what BPL does,” she says. That’s not necessarily the case with other conservation options.
As for day-to-day oversight going forward, the partnership between BPL and RRCT is “an unusual model for the State,” Royal River Conservation Trust’s Alan Stearns says. With BPL based in Augusta, RRCT offers local eyes on the ground and an ability to respond promptly. Trails can be cleared within a few days after a windstorm, thanks to RRCT’s cohort of volunteers and neighbors, he says. Trail work represents an ongoing way for the public to contribute to, not just enjoy, the Talking Brook project.
For the Fralichs, Talking Brook Public Land is both the culmination and continuation of a story that began soon after they married. Maine natives living in Boston, they knew they wanted to return and raise a family here. But where? Michael Fralich recalls driving around southern Maine looking at land. He and a buddy camped on a prospective parcel in Gorham. It turned out to be on the flight path for the Portland Jetport. “That one was out,” he laughs.
With no connection of any kind to the town, the Fralichs bought 160 acres in New Gloucester at the end of Woodman Road from Donald Chandler and M.S Hancock—the person, not the company—in 1975. The parcel was “huge and cheap,” Michael says, all trees, no clearing, no electricity – much of it abandoned farmland re-planted with pines.
Still living in Boston, they’d come up on weekends and in summer, camping by the stream they dubbed “Talking Brook” because in the dark it sounded like voices. Fast forward decades to 2021 when, thanks to another collaborative effort, the 2.2-mile stream was officially named Talking Brook by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. It brings Michael Fralich particular joy to know the brook will always be known by that name.
But to the new, young landowners, the size and scale of the raw land felt overwhelming and intimidating. They half-considered selling it. After four years in Boston and three more in Michigan where Michael studied natural resources, they returned to Maine. After learning construction basics at the Shelter Institute, Michael and a friend built the house that became the Fralichs’ home on Woodman Road.
Immersion in careers and family—children Noah and Laura—followed. But so did exploration. Into the woods they went with a compass, maps, and surveyor’s tape to mark trees. Tony Ray and Brad Ray followed the ribbons and over three years created the trails, “a magical thing,” says Michael Fralich. Later, friends and family helped build bridges and clear trees on special trail weekends at Norumbega, the name an acknowledgment of the region’s Abenaki roots.
Over time, the Fralichs added adjoining parcels, ultimately creating a feature-rich network of trails, always open to the public, where their predecessors’ clearings and stone walls and the remnants of sawmills provided links to the past.
A year in Germany in 1999 proved pivotal for the Fralichs’ long-term thinking. From where they stayed, a ten-minute walk brought them to a train station and access to all of Europe; ten minutes’ walk the other way was a trail system also connecting them to all of Europe.
“You could literally walk across Europe. You have no idea whose land you’re on,” says Michael. “That’s what we wanted.”
“This philosophy has guided us all the time – public access,” says Julie. It led them to donate the 44-acre parcel to Royal River Conservation Trust that became known as Big Falls Preserve. And it ultimately brought them to conversations with the Trust for Public Land and the Bureau of Parks and Lands, “fantastic partners,” Julie says, “who listened to us and what we wanted it to look like at the end.”
After more than three years of active conversation, including with neighbors and community members, straightening out deeds and surveys, considering parking solutions—the Town improved a modest parking area; more space will come to the corner of Meadow Lane and Woodman Road—the property was to formally change hands at a closing in Portland in late December. A lunch would mark the occasion, bringing together some of the many individuals who helped make Talking Brook Public Land a reality.
As it turned out, the weather had other ideas. A torrential nor’easter pounded the region, scuttling the plan. The rescheduled closing was a smaller, quieter affair, Julie Fralich says: lots of papers, lots of signatures. “It felt very momentous – anticlimactic and climactic at the same time, sad and joyful at the same time,” she says. Proving that life goes on, they stopped for groceries at Hannaford on the way home.
In the weeks since, the Fralichs have had time to reflect – and also to be visitors to Talking Brook Public Land. They welcome the immediate improvements in bridges and signage—Royal River Conservation Trust put in a new bridge before the ink was dry from the closing. But they are most excited about what Talking Brook Public Land “will mean to people, and to our grandkids, as they get older,” says Michael.
The Fralichs don’t have to imagine what Talking Brook Public Land might mean for others; they’ve seen it. They recall a group of school-age kids from Lewiston who came out for an overnight. A boy looked down, pointed to the ground and asked Michael, “What’s that?”
“That’s moss,” Michael told him.
Kids living twenty minutes away who have never explored woods and streams? School groups from Fiddlehead School in Gray doing hands-on nature projects? “That’s what we want,” says Michael.
With Talking Brook, and Big Falls Preserve before it, the Fralichs join other remarkable stewards, past and present, who have preserved New Gloucester’s shorelines, meadows, marshes, forests, farms, historic places. As Michael notes, there are lots of creative ways to conserve land, including by giving an easement while retaining ownership. “But this seemed to make sense — that everyone in the State of Maine would own this place. Because really we were just the caretakers, as so many people before us have been as well.”
On a bright April day, Heather, her two young sons and rescue pup Willie were taking advantage of school vacation week to explore Talking Brook Public Land. A neighbor in Gray had suggested they try the Big Falls trail. Just out of the car, the boys were already launching sticks in a stream, then racing across the culvert and access road to follow their ‘boats’ toward a small pool, the trailhead still well up the road. If they like this, I thought, wait till they see the falls.
Did Heather know about BPL’s new ownership and what it has meant so far or will mean going forward, I asked. No. The family was simply discovering a special place close to home on a fine spring morning.
A visitor on such a brilliant day could be forgiven for wondering, If you owned this, how could you ever give it up? Michael Fralich has an answer ready: “We were temporary stewards, and we’ve passed the stewardship on to someone we really trust, in perpetuity.”
This place at the center of their lives is both “an incredible blessing” and “a completed tapestry,” says Michael Fralich. Now, it’s about “sharing this place that was so important to us and weaving memories for other people and this land into their lives.”
