Blair Witch Project star at centre of woodland dispute
Heather Donahue starred in the low-budget 1999 film about three film students who disappear in the woods while making a documentary about a legendary figure known as the Blair Witch.
Now, 50-year-old Donahue – who left acting behind years ago – lives in the US state of Maine, in the town of Freedom, which has around 700 residents.
In a twist of fate harkening back to her movie career, Donahue has been embroiled in a spat with locals that hinges on her marking trees with orange blazes to help people find their way in the dense forests.
Donahue had been a member of the town's governing body, its select board, but lost a recall election recently after a controversy about whether a rural road that cuts through the woods is public or private property.
The matter remains unresolved, with the town and abutting landowners fighting it out in court.
The route in question is Beaver Ridge Road, a narrow, partially hilly stretch flanked by wild plants and songbirds that goes from paved to gravel to dirt as it stretches deeper into the forest.
Several people whose property abuts the road say the unimproved section is private, and to use it for activities such as all-terrain vehicle riding constitutes trespassing.
Donahue, and the town itself, hold that the entire road is public.
The former actress painted the orange blazes using historical maps to show what she holds is the centre of a public easement.
Abutting property owners were incensed and the first successful recall petition drive in the town's 212-year history followed.
Donahue was removed in April and an election to pick her successor is planned for next month.
Tyler Hadyniak, one of the abutting property owners, said the recall was not just about the orange blazes or the woodland trail. He said it addressed a pattern of behaviour by Donahue that chafed longer established residents in the year since she took office.
'I was relieved that the recall was successful. I thought Heather's demeanour and behaviour toward others was just unbecoming of a town official,' Mr Hadyniak said.
Donahue, who is originally from Pennsylvania and has spent long stretches of time living in California and travelling abroad, said she is aware of her status as what she called 'a lady from away'.
She arrived in Maine after a winding journey in which she struggled with alcoholism, quit acting, became a medical marijuana farmer and wrote a memoir.
Donahue said she came to the Pine Tree State eight years ago, overcame her addiction and bought land in Freedom in 2020.
Recently, she has worked as a life coach and shared her passions for gardening and medicinal plants with anyone who will listen.
She is not especially interested in reliving the glory of starring in The Blair Witch Project, one of the most successful independent movies of all time.
An extreme close-up of Donahue's character in distress close to the film's climax is one of its most memorable moments.
The movie sparked a resurgence of interest in 'found footage' style horror movies, wowed critics and polarised audiences with its homespun take on terror. Becoming lost in the woods is a key component in its spooky charm.
Unfortunately, The Blair Witch Project also led Donahue to years of legal wrangling over compensation and the right to her likeness.
Donahue makes occasional tongue-in-cheek references to the movie in passing, but also said it struck her several years ago that her life was inseparable from the film in ways that were not entirely comfortable.
She added: 'I had this really difficult moment of realising my obituary was written for me when I was 25.'
Ordinarily, the hottest gossip in Freedom concerns the peskiness of the local blackflies or the quality of the fishing on Sandy Pond.
But the row over the road has become the talk of the sleepy town some 30 miles north-east of the state capital of Augusta.
Donahue has defenders in the town, including Bob Kanzler, who served on a local roads committee and agrees that the disputed path is public land.
'Heather has done a wonderful job in researching these discontinued roads in town,' Mr Kanzler said. 'I know the road is public.'
Despite the ongoing battle over the road, Donahue said she has found peace in Maine – and she is not going anywhere.
'I mean, this is where humans flourish,' she said of the Freedom woods.
'I've figured out a way to do a lot with very little. That was all kind of centred around being able to walk in the woods.'
And she says of her life in the woods: 'For me, reading fairy tales, I always wanted to live in the forest.
'It is absolutely as magical as it seemed in those storybooks.'
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Collecting baseball cards often blurs the line between investment and obsession. Especially when you realize that the value of the standard baseball card is akin to the paper it's printed on. Unless your card is graded or some super rare insert with a piece of jersey in it, you are have an often pretty, sometimes drab and uninspired piece of visual photographic art of a sport you love. So it is as I find myself finally, after many years of deliberation, opening up a handful of sealed Topps MLB booster packs from the 1990s. A collector's journey Like many children of the 1990s my collecting impulses were influenced and financed by my father. While there is some regret in not leaving some Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures in their blister packs, the baseball cards were opened without such regard. Because as we would learn later, the inherent value would continuously sink, especially as the market was flooded with new brands and fancy inserts. My father collected every Topps set from 1985 to 2004, stopping when he became frustrated with the deluge of new cards and brands. He bought the sets at the end of every year, for around $40, and packs throughout the year just for kicks. I only acquired the packs. That is, until he passed late last year, when I acquired his entire collection. Due to the lack of storage space in my collecting closet, I sold them all. There weren't any individual cards worth anything, unless I wanted to pay to have them graded, but the collector at the flea market was enthused by my father's organization (everything was in binders, in order). And while I did stop collecting baseball cards in the 90s (transitioning to Magic: The Gathering cards, Gundam models, LEGO sets, Funko Pops, and a slew of other random crap), I still hold that nostalgia, mostly because I still watch and love baseball (a game I also played until college). So when I found these unopened blister packs in a separate location when going through the rest of my father's belongings (including about 500 science fiction novels), I felt like that 13-year old kid again. And since they really aren't worth anything — an unopened pack of 1994 Topps MLB cards is going for between $2 and $9 on eBay — I've decided to open them for us all to enjoy. 1991 Topps According to the entire boxed set is worth about $10. I sold mine for $20. As for individual cards, there are a few error cards in the double digits, including a Nolan Ryan blank front error, and a Mark Whitten error card going for about $30 ungraded. While I did pull the non-error version of this card, in the few packs I opened that was the only moment of pause. There were no rookie cards (Chipper Jones would have been a rookie in this set) and nothing else of substance. But it did feel nice to thumb through these classic cards, all in perfect condition, and now headed into a card box to be shoved under the bed until my kids throw them out. 1992 Topps This was a very unremarkable year in baseball card collecting, as far as value. Nothing tops $2 as a single, ungraded card. There were a few rookies, but the only redeeming value of the 1992 set was collecting cards of your favorite players. For me, at that time, it was Mark Grace and pretty much any Atlanta Braves pitcher. Unfortunately I didn't pull any Jim Thome cards from any of these packs, any year. This was my all-time favorite player and up until last year (when our house flooded) I had a binder full of roughly 400 Jim Thome cards. But I did pull a checklist (honestly, one of the best non-player cards ever) and a reminder that Deion Sanders played baseball. 1993 Topps 1993 is when things started to change with the structure of baseball cards. Not in massive ways, but the cards got smoother, no longer the paper-feel cardboard of years past. Instead, these were glossy and stuck together. We started to find alternate versions of cards embossed with reflective gold, a precursor to the foil cards that would eventually make their way into packs. This is also the year that Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins entered the league, and there's an alternate set of cards with a little gold seal. Topps Gold suddenly became a thing, and a few of those cards are worth a few bucks. But the most notable thing about the 1993 set was The Captain himself, Derek Jeter. This set contained his 1992 Draft Pick card, with a resell value of anywhere from about $6 for the standard card, to upwards of $150 for the Marlins Inaugural version. I did not pull any of these cards. Instead I pulled draft pick cards for a selection of who-dat players, none of which made nearly a fraction of the impact on the game that Jeter did. 1994 Topps Aside from having to peel these cards apart from one another, and then making the Robin Ventura and Nolan Ryan cards fight, I didn't pull a Billy Wagner rookie card, which might have been worth about $30 at grade nine. Topps continued with the Topps Gold alternates in this set, which were a little easier to read than the year before. But other than that, a very uninspiring and drab set. Other than the gum. There was gum in these packs. It was inedible and grey, but the 16 year-old tried it anyway. It was spat out just as quickly. 31 year-old gum. Gross. Bonus: A single pack of 1988 Topps This one is just pure nostalgia. Dale Murphy, Kirby Puckett, Wade Boggs, Bobby Witt, totally kitsch bright yellow All-Star cards highlighted a great year in collecting baseball cards for a Gen-X kid. You'll find a lot of graded cards from the 1980s, because this is the generation that loves storing and displaying its core memories whenever possible. As for this single pack? Nothing of value, cardboard with pictures and a piece of gum that was as brittle as a sand dollar. There might be some discussion in the baseball card community as to whether these blister packs were worth more closed than open, but that just might be a dash of hopeful optimism. Baseball cards have always been worth more as a collectors item for baseball fans IMO. And I sure do miss paying less than $2 for a pack of cards. And while there are plenty of investments to be found in baseball card collecting, it's not in this particular selection of Topps MLB booster packs. But stay tuned because I just found an unopened retail box of 1991 Fleer baseball cards.
