If you go to Jimmy Pond for the superb hiking trails, fishing and swimming, we hope you can make it to the pubic hearing Wednesday night, June 29, at 6 p.m. at Hallowell City Hall. Say something!

They’re planning a big cut over two years — 70 percent of the area for “wildlife management.” There’s plenty of deer habitat already in the area: Meadow Hill for grazing, the huge power line strip, Hutchinson Pond and Forest Trail area. Cutover scrub all over the place. Turkeys? There are so many of them they’re a nuisance in many places. I read two newspaper stories some time ago of them knocking people off motorcycles.

These splendid mature-growth woods sure look healthy to me — almost nothing down, some trees 100 years old, in a splendid seven-mile trail system. We prefer going out there as we had ticks come in on our 40 acres in Manchester, 13 years ago. Deer, ticks and turkeys abound.

The Lyme disease aspect is an important one: I’ve never seen a tick in these groves in 20 years. If they open it up, that’s exactly what the state will bring in here to Augusta’s finest trail system. They shot all the deer off Monhegan Island because of Lyme. This is a classic “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” case. Living in Augusta will lose much of its appeal for us anyway.

Ted Elliott

Augusta