When Greg Drummond learned that Marilynn, an impoverished, visually impaired elderly neighbor in Highland Plantation, near Sugarloaf Mountain, had been sold a pickup load of wet, rotting firewood, his face reddened with anger. He immediately phoned her. “Marilynn,” he said, “I’m loading my pickup truck with seasoned firewood. I’ll deliver it to you within an hour.” 

After replacing the rotting wood in her shed with a load of dry beech, rock maple and yellow birch, a minor argument ensued.

“You’re not paying me,” he told Marilynn. “Pat and I have ample firewood to heat our home and lodge.”

He did, however, agree to one of her requests by promising not to confront the swindler. A rugged, nearly 6-foot, 230-pound professional logger, Drummond doesn’t tolerate bullies or those who take advantage of the vulnerable.  

For two decades, I guided birdwatchers at Claybrook Mountain Lodge, an outdoor recreation resort owned by Greg and Pat Drummond from the late 1970s until their retirement in 2019. Most summers I assisted Greg in splitting and stacking 20 cords of hardwood that he harvested from his two woodlots. The Drummonds burned 12 cords annually and kept eight in reserve for neighbors who exhausted their firewood supply in late winter. Not once did they accept money for sharing it.   

“Greg Drummond,” my twin brother Don claims, “is the Johnny Appleseed of goodwill and kindness. Wherever he goes, he plants both.” 

The examples are numerous. 

One Sunday afternoon in June, after a weekend birding group departed the lodge, the Drummonds sat on the front porch overlooking their lush hayfield and Witham Mountain. As they sipped lemonade, the couple discussed ways to assist a young local man in danger of losing his job because he couldn’t afford to repair his aging truck.

Without transportation, he would be unable to work. Greg grabbed his phone and called him. “Hi Mark, Greg here. Pat and I were discussing your predicament. We’d like you to have my truck.”  Mark replied, “Well, thanks, Greg, but I can’t afford to buy your truck.” Greg interjected, “Mark, I’m giving you my 1998 Dodge truck. I don’t want any money. My old truck runs fine but I’m buying a new one.” Mark was soon driving Greg’s donated truck.

Like many rural Mainers, Greg, now 73, works multiple jobs to help make ends meet in retirement. He cuts and sells sawlogs and dimension lumber from his Wood-Mizer portable sawmill. As a registered Maine Guide, he leads hunters in autumn and fishermen in spring.

For a decade, Drummond earned extra income overseeing a few thousand acres as Pierce Pond Watershed Trust’s easement manager. Somehow he also found time to serve as chief of the Highland Plantation Volunteer Fire Department while building and selling 33 Grand Laker canoes from cedars he harvested primarily from his woodlot. 

To ensure that he and Pat had health insurance, Greg worked night shifts as an emergency medical technician for NorthStar Emergency Medical Services in Carrabassett Valley. Even when he wasn’t on duty, his EMS radio was on 24/7. “It was always on because someone might need my help,” he once told me. 

During one blizzard, Drummond sat next to his woodstove watching the snow fall when his radio crackled with a medical emergency message from a 911 dispatcher. “Since the phone call originated from one of our neighbors, I told the dispatcher that I’d respond,” he told me.

Being off duty made no difference. Dressing quickly, he grabbed his EMT backpack and radio, and wallowed through waist-deep snow.

“Since my plow truck was buried by a four-foot drift, I couldn’t budge it,” he said. “Heck, I couldn’t even open the doors. And the roads weren’t plowed. So the only way I could respond was to drive my Timberjack Skidder about a mile to my neighbor’s house.”  

He drove the 12-ton 1979 logging behemoth through snowdrifts in his hayfield, onto the County Road and Long Falls Dam Road, and to his elderly neighbor’s home.

“From what I gathered from my stethoscope and blood pressure cuffs, my neighbor wasn’t suffering a heart attack,” he said. “He most likely was having a panic attack since he lived alone and was snowbound.”

Drummond stayed with him for a few hours until the plows cleared the roads for the ambulance. Using the front blade of his skidder — designed for pushing aside debris, slash, and obstacles on logging trails and landings — as a plow, Greg cleared the driveway for the ambulance.   

During another snowstorm, two young Rhode Island women in a small vehicle raced past a woodlot where Greg was twitching logs with his skidder. Watching the vehicle fishtail on the snowy Long Falls Dam Road, Drummond knew it wouldn’t reach the top of the hill. Instead of driving home, he slid his two chainsaws, peaveys and pulp hooks into the bed of his four-wheel drive Dodge Ram and followed them.

He found the vehicle crosswise in the road. With wood chips peppering his clothes and unshaven face, he approached the mired vehicle in his oil-stained chainsaw chaps.

“At first they were afraid of me,” he recalled with a laugh. “I turned their vehicle so it faced downhill and convinced them to follow me to our lodge. They didn’t relax until Pat stepped out of our house to greet us.”

The Drummonds offered the women a free night’s stay and meals at their lodge, promising the road would be plowed by morning.

“But they had reservations at Poplar Stream Hut and were determined to get there,” Greg said. “So after leaving their vehicle at our lodge, I drove them to the trailhead at the Flagstaff Hut, where they began skiing the 12-mile trail to Poplar Stream. I was worried about them because it was late in the day and snowfall was heavy.

“I told the head trail groomer that they were skiing to Poplar Stream and to please keep an eye on them. He promised to monitor their progress. Several hours later he called, informing me that they had reached the hut. The plan was for me to pick them up on a Sunday and bring them back to their vehicle, but a Maine Huts employee delivered them to our lodge.”

Mainers are renowned for helping neighbors, but Greg Drummond takes it to another level.  

He’s not just a big-hearted Mainer but a model person —  whether he’s transporting snowbound skiers, rescuing injured Appalachian Trail hikers atop Bigelow Mountain, slipping $20 bills to struggling rural store clerks, plowing neighbors’ driveways for free, being a big brother to a father-less boy, opening Claybrook Mountain Lodge to support community events, installing stovepipes for the elderly, sharing produce from his bountiful garden and maple syrup from his sugar shack, or assisting stranded motorists on remote logging roads.

He’s the most humble, generous and compassionate person I’ve ever known. 

Ron Joseph of Sidney is author of Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist, published by Islandport Press