Leaving on a High Note

For retired businessman Patrick Marks, the 261 acres of land next to Green Mountain and the Forest Society’s High Watch Preserve in Effingham meant privacy and peaceful walks in the woods. Good times hunting with friends and family. A view of the White Mountains from the back yard, where he kept Peking ducks, donkeys and chickens. For a time it meant the solace of home.

           And it was also a collection. He bought the first piece in the early ‘80s and started adding adjacent pieces as they came up for sale. Over the years, after registering the land as a Tree Farm, managing it for timber and supporting conservation efforts on nearby properties, he came to see the land in a way that other conservation-minded people will readily relate to.

            It was a piece of a puzzle -- a puzzle depicting a map – that he wanted to color “conserved” green. When his life went in new directions and he decided to move from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the time had come.
            “High Watch Preserve was already there and this property, I thought, would be a great fit for putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together. When you look at a map and see how much land is conserved nearby, you want to help complete that puzzle,” Marks said by phone from South Carolina.

            So, Marks offered to sell the land – three parcels in all -- to the Forest Society for much less than its market value so that the Forest Society could add it to High Watch. But first the Forest Society had to raise the funds to purchase and steward the land. Many individual donors recognized the opportunity and came through to help. Now the High Watch Preserve is 2,366 acres strong and one of the Forest Society’s largest reservations.

           “Taking into account two more adjacent Forest Society parcels and abutting  lands conserved by other groups, this addition has created one single, contiguous, conserved block of 15 tracts totaling 11,519 acres, across two states—land conservation on a truly landscape scale,” said Tom Howe, senior director of land conservation at the Forest Society. “Equally inspiring is Patrick’s generosity. We couldn’t have conserved this land without his terrifically discounted price.”

                High Watch offers great hiking trails up to the summit of Green Mountain, where you can see spectacular views of the surrounding mountain ranges in New Hampshire, Maine and sometimes even Vermont.  The addition adds great wildlife habitat and timber management opportunities, with its stands of pitch pine, younger hardwoods and white pine, boggy wetlands and parts of Hodgdon Brook and Leavitt Brook. Both brooks eventually feed into the Ossipee River. This is the watershed for the critical Ossipee aquifer, the largest underground source of pure drinking water in the state

           “It’s a beautiful piece of property,” said Marks. “I decided the best thing to do was to keep it in conservation – that way, the whole thing stays the way it is.”

 For a trail map, photos and hiking information for Green Mountain via the High Watch Preserve, visit the Reservation Guide.

To see a map of this project, click on the link below.