John M. Hagan
The juxtaposition of sensory stimuli was disorienting. I was seeing what looked like a war zone. But it smelled like Christmas.
I was in the middle of a 75-acre clearcut on Scott Paper Company land in the unorganized territories of northern Maine, a few miles beyond the edge of the earth at Kokadjo. The air was filled with the smell of freshly cut balsam fir. The Scott Paper foresters were explaining the silvicultural plan for the site. I struggled to understand what they were saying, partly because of the jargon, but mainly because I could not reconcile what I was seeing with what I was smelling.
Figure 1. Map of the unorganized townships of Maine.
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