As part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy’s incorporation, we’re celebrating not only our nature preserves but also our conservation easements. Although easements are typically not open to the public we’re arranged public tours of a couple of our favorite easement properties, including the Hickory Hill Easement in Clare County. Before the tour, we asked owner David Mattern to share some thoughts on what makes the property special to him and his family.
Personal notes on Hickory Hill for Chippewa Watershed Conservancy
Our great-grandfather, Josiah Littlefield, came to this area in 1871 and was one of the founders of Farwell. He was a civil engineer and first worked as a surveyor laying out roads, rail lines, and forests tracts. Over the years he had a lumber camp and sawmill and tried his hand at a variety of other enterprises, not all of which were successful. You can see several pictures of the lumber camp on the walls of the dining room of the Birchwood Restaurant, oG M115 between Hickory Hill and Farwell. He donated land for the first school forest in the state and was always active in the local community. Some of his thoughts in his autobiography seem contradictory to me; he rhapsodizes over wild, virgin pine forests and laments over their doom while simultaneously making his living by their destruction. However, the world was a different place 150 years ago and I’m reluctant to cast judgement.
We don’t know the exact date, but sometime in the early 1900s he purchased several large parcels that include the land we own today, so this property has been in our family for over 100 years. Our great-grandfather was apparently something of an aspiring visionary, as was our grandmother. In his autobiography he recounts visiting the Vanderbilt Estate (Biltmore) in North Carolina and getting the idea of creating a
similar grand estate here, but he never had the money. Our grandmother loved that vision, and so when our father got out the Navy after WWII he spent a summer building a Tudor-timbered garage as the first of several planned buildings. After the garage was built they got as far as digging a hole for a basement of another building east of the garage, but found perched groundwater and the hole was filled in and the idea didn’t get any farther. The garage is now our cabin.
Our family has made trips to this area (and our grandmothers’ cottage on Bear Lake) for as long as I can remember. Our grandmother was an ambitious sort and always had a project going or event planned for us. When I reached junior high I started camping with friends at Deer Lake (our family name for what is officially called Russell Lake). Over many years we spent days and weeks camping out, swimming and fishing in the lake, and roving all through the woods. After high school I wasn’t ready for college so I lived alone in the cabin from late fall through the next summer. I worked part time at the Doherty Hotel in Clare but mostly I roamed around the woods and got to know some of the locals on my own. That time was foundational to my deciding to go to college to learn about our world and how we live in and with it. I studied geography, which led to a 40-year career as an environmental consultant.
Our father lived in Ann Arbor and Hickory Hill was his customary weekend (or longer) getaway. He loved the various tasks involved in keeping up the cabin, swimming in the lake, afternoons sipping wine and reading, and cross-country skiing in the winter. He continued friendships with local families he’d known since he was a young boy. In the late 1970s he started having periodic timber harvests to help pay the taxes and improve the habitat. A Qualified Forest Management Plan was established in 2001.
I haven’t lived in Michigan since 1976 but I come back periodically and almost always visit Hickory Hill. It always feels like I’m coming home. So many places, large and small, feel a part of me. I greet individual trees I’ve known all my life, complement milkweed for its tenacity, scold the Autumn Olive, and apologize to beavers for disturbing their peace. I note the many changes in the land and in myself. Our father first started talking with CWC in the 1990s. I recall some summer afternoons on the patio talking with Stan Lilley and learning about conservation easements. Our father didn’t act at that time, but the seed was planted. When our father died Laurie and I inherited the property and quickly decided that we wanted to look into a conservation easement. Neither of us have children but we have a strong sense of stewardship and wanted to protect our family’s legacy. All in all developing the conservation easement took some careful thought but was fairly easy. I’m delighted with how the conservation easement both protects the land and makes it selfsupporting (see below). Now that I’m retired my main service activity is volunteering with the North Olympic Land Trust in Clallam County, Washington on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. I chair the Conservation Committee – this is an interdisciplinary team that reviews and advises on potential conservation easements, responds to violations, and generally helps staff. I’m having a wonderful time and give thanks for our family’s legacy and how it has enriched my life.
David Mattern
Selected Key Points of the Hickory Hill Conservation Easement
• Protects Deer Lake
o Buffer around the lake with no timber harvest
o No structures near or in the lake – not even a dock
o No gas engines (electric trolling motors are okay)
• Continues a working forest
o Must maintain a State-approved Forest Management Plan
§ Required periodic timber sales more than pay the taxes!
o Supports the local economy
• Generally prohibits subdivision
o Allows one split generally north-south through the lake
• Allows invasive species management (e.g., Autumn Olive)
• No new permanent roads
• No off-road vehicles
