The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast Ep 125: Maine’s Arctic Future: Why What Happens Up North Matters Down Here

 

 

Transcript:

Intro (00:00:01):

Do you struggle with what it means to be successful in your retirement? Trust us. You're not alone. Welcome to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. Here you'll go in depth with Guidance Point advisors investment consultants to hear stories about how retirees in Maine are navigating a successful retirement. Get insight into the inevitable challenges of aging and define what a successful retirement looks like.

Ben Smith (00:00:26):

So when you hear the word Arctic, what comes to mind? Polar bears, icebreakers, maybe penguins, though let's be clear, those are Antarctic. But what if I told you that changing Arctic could shape Maine's economy, security, and even the jobs and infrastructure we see over the next decade? Welcome back to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast where we explore how to live well, plan smart, and stay ahead of the curve in retirement. I'm Ben Smith and joining me as always is the compass to my polar map, my co-host, Curtis Woster. Curtis, how are you doing and are you ready to explore the far north?

Curtis Worcester (00:01:02):

I'm doing well, Ben. I'm doing well and yeah, absolutely. We may not be packing our parkas today, but we are going to dive into a topic that's heating up quite literally in the Arctic and what that means for us right here in the state of Maine. And like we always do, Ben, we like to bring on guests to have these conversations because I don't want to pretend to be the expert on this topic. So our guest today is Lieutenant Colonel retired Darryl W. Lyon. So Darryl is a nationally recognized expert in Arctic strategy and policy with over 15 years of experience focused on US Arctic interests, including law, diplomacy, military preparedness and economic opportunity. Excuse me. So Darryl currently lives right here in Bangor, Maine, where he serves as a senior army instructor at Bangor High School, Go Rams, helping to shape the next generation of civic-minded leaders.

(00:02:00):

So prior to this role, Darryl held a series of key roles in the Maine Army National Guard, including strategic planner for the Atlantic High North, counter drug coordinator and commander of Maine's weapons of mass destruction civil support team. So Darryl's military career has included high level operational and diplomatic responsibilities that directly engage Arctic policy cross-border collaboration with NATO allies and Arctic neighbors. So Darryl's a proud Penn State alum. Darryl also holds advanced degrees from the Naval War College, the University of Maine, and Husson University. And if that wasn't enough, he's currently a doctoral student at the University of Maine focusing his research on Arctic security and the implications for Maine's future. So Darryl's writing also has been featured in Arctic today and he's become a leading voice advocating for Maine to claim its rightful place as an Arctic state economically, legally, and strategically. So whether Darryl is commanding emergency response teams, planning Arctic engagement strategies or mentoring students in leadership and service, he brings a rare blend of on the ground experience, geopolitical insights and deep commitment to the people of Maine.

(00:03:21):

So with that very wonderful background, please join me in welcoming to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast, Lieutenant Colonel retired Darryl Lyon. Darryl, thank you so much for coming on our show today. We're so excited to have you.

Darryl Lyon (00:03:35):

It's my pleasure, Ben. And Curtis, thanks for inviting me.

Ben Smith (00:03:38):

Yeah. Well, we're really excited about the topic, Darryl. And I know there was an event that happened, which we're going to cover here today talking about Maine's role in the Arctic, but want to start at the top literally, right? Pun intended. Darryl, so we want to ask the question, why should Mainers care about the Arctic? As many of us don't really see our state as Arctic in quotes, but you argue that we absolutely are. So what's the case for that?

Darryl Lyon (00:04:05):

Yeah, great question. Way to lead off with a tough one, Ben. I appreciate that. So when you look at the city of Bangor, for example, we're at the 45th parallel. So we're halfway there and the state of Maine serves as a gateway to the Arctic. That would be the best way to explain it. Because of our unique geography, the state is the closest to Europe and we have airports, seaports and capabilities that are unique to the United States and therefore position us in a way that can be utilized and has been utilized for a long time. Maine's role in the Arctic is not new. The Pyree McMillan expeditions that usually generated out of New York City, but they had main ties. So Robert Piri was a Bowdoin graduate and did eight or nine different expeditions to the high north, claimed to have found the North Pole.

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Donald McMillan did a number of expeditions, some with Piri, and he did over 30 different expeditions. So all of that is captured at the beautiful Arctic Pirie Museum at Bowdoin College and it really shows our historical ties. So in a way, Maine's been involved in the Arctic for a long time. Not only that case, well, the Roosevelt, which is the ship that they used to do those explorations, was actually built in Verona on Verona Island in Maine.

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And the Bowdoin, which is one of the sailing vessels that they used is still used by the Maine Maritime Academy to train its students in sailing and Arctic ice navigation. And that is sailed routinely every summer from Castine all the way to Greenland through the ice. So we have a lot of connective tissue to the Arctic. So Maine has a role, has always had a role, especially in the security realm. Loring Air Force Base, the super base at the top of our state played a significant role in Arctic security during the Cold War. We've got academic reaches all the way from Greenland, Iceland, our Canadian counterparts to the north. We can't forget about the Canadians. Academically, we've been involved in all of those places. We do a lot of trading now with Iceland compliments of the merchant marine company called AIMSCIP that is homeported out of Portland, Maine.

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And their arrival in Maine was really kind of the, I don't know, the instigator for a lot of the conversations that we're going to have today. They have tied us to Iceland in a direct way where we are importing a lot of the fresh fish from Iceland, bringing it into Portland and then distributing that fish throughout all of New England. And there's been a code of an investment there. So why do Mainers care? Well, Mainers care for all of those reasons academically, economically, diplomatically, and for our security reasons, but we can also add things like the changing operational environment. The changing operational environment is a concern for Mainers. It does affect our weather patterns. It does affect the way that our fisheries are harvested. It affects everything from tourism to cruise ships to the way that one of our lobstering economies operate. So there's a lot of different aspects to the way that we've been tied to the Arctic.

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And Mainers should be concerned about that because there's opportunities there. There's a lot of unique aspects about Maine culture that is transferable to these other cultures to include our own indigenous populations here in Maine. And the future is wide open for Maine because of our unique geography and the way that we positioned on the

Curtis Worcester (00:07:47):

Map. Yeah. No, that's great. And I appreciate you laying out that big foundation there for us. And I know we're going to talk about a lot of that in our conversation today, Darryl, but I want to dive in real quick on something you mentioned in your response there, which was the state of Maine and our Cold War legacy. So I know that's something you've talked about a lot and how our bases here were so vital for tracking Soviet movement through the GI UK gap. Most of those bases though, as we know here being local, have been shuttered since the Cold War. What role do you see for Maine in today's kind of Arctic security landscape?

Darryl Lyon (00:08:25):

Right. Great question. A little bit of history about the GIUK gap in Maine's role in that. That's what brought me to Maine originally. I was a cryptologist. I was stationed down in Winter Harbor, Maine, and my role basically was to listen for the submarines that would come out of the JIUK gap. At the time

(00:08:44):

Back in the early '90s, the majority of Russian submarines were diesel. So they would have to surface and when they surfaced to vent their exhaust and take on fresh air, they would send a signal back to Mermansk and just saying, "Hey, we made it through the gap or everything's good." And we would pick up that signal and we would triangulate that signal, find the submarine, and then we would call whoever needed to know mostly aircraft out of Brunswick Naval Air Station and those aircraft would get up in the air and they would go find a submarine using sonar buoys and different types of things. And then we could track that threat as it came through the GIUK gap during the Cold War. That system is clearly antiquated at this point. So satellites didn't exist at the time we were doing those kinds of things and it was kind of a raw analog type of mission.

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I'm sure it's much more complicated now, but so is the threat. The threat is much more complicated now coming out of the GIUK gap. A lot of people make the argument that the Barings Sea is the focal point of Arctic strategy for the United States of America. Well, the Barings Sea, yes, is a strait that connects Russia and Alaska. It's about 53, 56 miles across and there's a lot of activity there, but the overwhelming majority of the Russian Naval capability is on the East side and the Barren Sea or on our side in the Barren Sea and that's where the activity comes from. Now, the Ukraine War has been devastating to the Russian military, but it hasn't been devastating to its primary northern fleet out of Mermansk. So a lot of the capability that those surface subsurface capabilities still exist and is growing ever more powerful and they're bringing on more and more highly technological advanced weapon systems that need to be countered and Maine sits in a nice place to do that.

(00:10:38):

Now there are other aspects that when we talk about security that we could talk about as well, things like search and rescue search and rescue as more and more activity happens in the Arctic, especially tourism activity where people get lost and people need to be rescued and things happen. A good example that would be the Titan submarine that collapsed right off of Newfoundland at the Titanic site. There was a large search and rescue operation that was a collaboration between the United States, Iceland and Canada, obviously. There are opportunities as well as security issues, search and rescue issues, environmental response. Again, as more activity happens in that area, the chances of pollution tragedies or real hazardous problems could happen with oil spills and other activities. So Maine sits in a niche role, a niche role for all of those kinds of things. So when we talk about security, we're not talking about just securing our borders, but also being active participants in the emergency preparedness and of the high north.

Ben Smith (00:11:48):

So Darryl, I want to skip over to the economy a little bit. We hear about icebreakers being built in Louisiana. We hear about Alaska getting new Arctic ports. The Maine's International Marine Terminal in Portland has seen major investment, as you referenced from Icelandic shipping companies. Can you talk a little bit about what the potential economic upside is for Maine if Arctic shipping continues to expand?

Darryl Lyon (00:12:11):

Yeah, and I'd like to expand that conversation a litle bit more, not to just maritime shipping as well, but Bangor International Airport is a significant air bridge to Europe as well. And that could play a very significant role in just about every aspect of what we're talking about. We have port facilities all up and down our East Coast that are underused and that could actually really benefit from just a simple thing like stationing an ice cutter in Eastport or stationing an ice cutter in Portland. Those ships need to be serviced, they need to be maintained. There are crews need to live somewhere and the economic activity that those good salaries bring would be significant to any one of those small communities that I just mentioned. So the economic activity from the security perspective is there. Now, so when we're talking trade, is it really a big market?

(00:13:08):

I would say not really. Iceland has about 300,000 people on it. It's kind of a controlled economy when it comes to the things that they like to bring into their country and they expect to export. Canada, of course, that's our major economic partner, as you guys know. We do billions of dollars. The state of Maine does billions of dollars and we are highly integrated with all of the economic activity in Canada, but there's always more opportunities there. And then Greenland itself is only 57,00 people. So the greater municipal service area around Bangor is bigger than the entire population of the state or the country of Greenland. So are we going to ship a lot of LLB up there for them to buy? Probably not, but what is happening in Greenland is significant growth because of the new attention that's being placed on that island and things have to be shipped up there and noth grows there.

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Their trees grow, but they don't grow higher than your kneecap. So if you're going to build something, you have to take the wood up there to build it. You have to take the containers up there full of all the things that they need. So there's opportunities there for our construction companies or for our raw material providers to help in the expanse of Greenland, and it's going to happen because of the new attention that's being drawn there. I mean, you look at things like that, that's why AIMSCIP is here. AIMSkip was back in the early '90s, it was a merchant company stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and their primary role was to ship goods and material to Keflavek, Iceland in support of our base on Keflavek, which was the sister station to Winter Harbor where I was. And then when we abruptly closed Keflavek, Aimskip ran out of business.

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They didn't have a shipping lane anymore. They didn't have that line of their business disappeared. And through some heroic efforts of some very persuasive people, they were able to convince Aimscip to come up out of Norfolk and reestablish its headquarters in Portland, Maine. So they skipped over New York City, they skipped over Boston and they went to Portland. And that has been a driving economic factor for the city of Portland over the past 10 or 15 years. So that kind of opportunity still exists. There's more development that's happening. We just have to be creative on how we apply it and make sure that main companies are at the forefront of the conversations in the development of Greenland and providing the newer types of technologies and thought that Iceland requires. They're very concerned about their cybersecurity. Iceland's going to get involved with AI and the data centers that follow that.

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They're going to be involved in the new economy. They're highly creative people and Maine has a role. And we have commonalities in tourism. The tourism numbers in Iceland are astronomical since they've been opened up and social media has been a big driver of that and Iceland is seeing ... When I was there in October of last year, it was clear that the interest in Iceland when it comes to tourism is outrunning their current capacity. They can't build hotels fast enough. They can't hire enough people to come in to serve your martini or serve you a good dinner and they have to bring in Europeans from outside of Iceland to actually do that. And there's a commonality there with the state of Maine. We rely a lot about on tourism as well and tourism brings problems and concerns and we have experience in doing all of that.

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So we can definitely show some collaboration across the ocean between us and Iceland when it comes to those kinds of concerns as well. And that might be a security concern as well. So it always bleeds back to that with me. I'm sorry guys, that's my expertise. Yeah, of

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Course. So there's a lot of capacity there that if we do it ... And we don't need a lot. We're only, what, 1.3 million people. So a new trade route for a chocolate distributor in Freeport is significant. It doesn't have to be the home run every time. And it can be incremental and it can be creative. Here's a creative example. A number of years ago, they took one of those Aim Skip containers that go on the ships just like the Conex box. And they took that Konex box and they gutted it and they filled it full of main craft beer and they put on the outside of the container, they put doors so they could open up the doors and then they just took that container and then they just dropped it in the middle of one of Iceland's bigger festivals and they served craft beer from Maine out of that box and introduced Iceland to all of our craft beer, which we're pretty good at by the way.

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I may know a little bit about that, but I mean, so they did that and that was a creative way to export our product. And the neat thing about it was then they filled it full of Icelandic beer and put it on a ship and set it back. And at one of Portland's big festivals, they opened it up and we drank Icelandic beer out of that. So those kinds of things, again, they're not gigantic, but they are those kinds of things that can really make a difference in a craft beer distributor that gets their beer up there and maybe it takes hold and you go up there and you can have a smiling Irish bastard from Gegens or something. There's opportunities there. We just have to scale it to set our expectations and then maybe the bigger things follow after that.

Curtis Worcester (00:18:39):

Yeah. No, that's incredible. I appreciate you sharing that story. And as you were saying it, I started to loosely remember, I think, when that was happening, but that's so cool. I want to rewind to something that you mentioned there in your answer, Darryl, which was attention that Greenland is getting recently. And I think something that's been in semi-current news here is, of course, President Trump floated the idea of buying Greenland. And I think that may or may not have seemed a little outlandish to some people who saw that news or heard that news. But from your perspective, was there actually a strategic truth behind that statement from President Trump and how is Greenland, again, truly connected to maybe our country's future and the state of Maine's future?

Darryl Lyon (00:19:25):

Yeah. So Greenland's a fascinating case study. So we do have a space base in Patufik, Greenland. It used to be called Tully Greenland. Tully, that base was built, I think it was Operation Blue Jay. Operation Blue Jay was during the Cold War and they built that entire base in a hundred days. They went up there, the engineers in the 50s, they took everything they needed, every bolt, every screwdriver and went up there in a hundred days, created Tully Greenland and it's been there ever since.

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And it has since evolved as a strategic place for our security mostly because if there is an attack, which is highly unlikely, it's not going to come around the world. It's going to come over the world. So if the Russians or whoever the bad guys are at the time decide that they're going to attack us, it's going to come over the world. So that's why Patoofik is such a key space base and has been leased from the Danes for decades at this point. Greenwood has a very significant role. Now, do I think, and this is my humble opinion, it does not reflect the opinions of the University of Maine or Bangor High School or the United States Army or anybody else, but do we need to own Greenland to do that? And the answer is probably not. We don't need to own it. However, we do have to have some control on what we do there.

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So we fought the Cold War for 40 plus years and never owned Greenland. We were fine. So I think if we really needed to buy Greenland, Reagan would've done it back in the 80s. That had been a done deep, that would've been done. But what we did have was Laurie Air Force Base and Loring Air Force Base was the United States's reach into the same realm. Now, things have changed dramatically since the Cold War ended even. The Soviets have developed hypersonic technology with their missile systems that require us to see the target immediately. So for example, ICBMs or intercontinental ballistic missiles kind of have a nice big trajectory. They go up and over and they come down. So if Ben and Curtis are standing in center field and in right field and I'm standing on second base and Curtis lobs a softball into the air, I throw a baseball and I try to hit that ball before it comes down on bed.

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That's pretty easy, quite frankly, now that's pretty easy. But what they've developed now are these hypersonic missiles. And so now Curtis doesn't throw a nice big softball, he throws a hard fastball to Ben. And now my responsibility is to throw a fastball from second base and connect out between rightfield and center field. And not only is that hypersonic missile moving at Mach six, it's also curving and moving and now I'm trying to hit that. And that's what we're experiencing in both Ukraine and the Russians have fired those missiles in Ukraine. The Chinese have those missiles.

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So when you see the iron dome that's being used in Israel to protect that, that's what that technology is dealing with at this point. So then that becomes even more important for us to be as far out as we can in order to pick up what's called the point of origin of that missile system as it comes across our view. So now we're in Greenland. So the farther we can get out, the better. And when you talk about legacy and the Trump administration, you've got to talk about the golden dome. So the golden dome is that concept. How far out can we get and establish these missile bases and these interceptor sites in order to track, attack and defeat that kind of caliber missile system? That's what the Russians call it. So that's kind of what we're going to do with Greenland. Now the thing about it is that kind of system requires an immense amount of energy.

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So to generate the power that you need to put those things on the ground, the only way to do it is nuclear. You've got to have small nuclear reactors that are transportable, that can generate enough power to energize these systems, keep the computer systems online, keep the radar systems online and do all that. So one of the issues that the United States is going to have to deal with is that Denmark as a country is a non-nuclear country. They do not allow our ships to pull into their ports if they knowably have nuclear weapons on board. They're a non-nuclear state for all the right reasons,

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But they still control Greenland. Greenland's on their way to sovereignty, but when it comes to these kinds of issues, Denmark still holds the cards. So we would have to have permission from the Danish people and from the Greenland people, probably more importantly, to put these small nuclear reactors on the sites in order to fire them up and make the golden dome work. Huge energy draw. I think that's part of what they're negotiating. How do we negotiate that? And the Greenlanders aren't too hip on that. I mean, I wouldn't be too hip on it either, especially now. We know that that technology has been enhanced and is much safer now than it ever has been. We might actually see our grid go that way eventually, but those are some of the concerns. And we make a mess when we do these things. We don't necessarily clean up after ourselves.

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The dew line, which was the distance early warning system that went across all of Canada and into Greenland. We abandoned it when the technology got too old and we left oil behind and we left raw sewage behind. And when you leave those kinds of things in the Arctic, they stay a long time because they freeze and they don't just evaporate and we left a mess up there and now the Canadians are dealing with that and indigenous cultures are like, "Hey, you screwed this up, guys, make it cleaner, make it better." So I mean, we got some serious issues there, but I really think that that's kind of the legacy when the Trump administration talks about Greenland, that's what they're talking about. Now,

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There's also the GIUK gap that hasn't gone away. That's a geographical figure that's always going to be there and that's where the Northern fleet comes down through. That has to be secured. The Trump administration has made very strong allusions to controlling the straits of the world to include the current problems with the straits of Hormuz, but the states of Milwaukee and pinch points like the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, those are all controlled by the United States Navy and something called freedom of operation. They're called Von Ops. So they're freedom of operation of navigation. We go there and we just basically say, "This strait is international water and you can't control it without our permission or without the world's permission." So that's why the Straits of Hormuz is so complicated right now because Iran has basically said we own this straight and they don't by international law, which leads us to the whole legal concept of what's happening.

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Those laws are codified in something called unclaused, the United Nations Convention of Law of the Sea and the United States has never signed onto that. So because we've never signed on to on clause, we enforce it, we respect it, we follow its rules and regulations, but when it really comes down to it, we're not signatories to that. So one of the things that we need to do is encourage our politicians to ratify that treaty so we can actually participate in these things in the way that they're meant to be participated in. So yeah, Greenland is wide open. On May 21st, the United States is going to reopen or reignite our diplomatic presence in Greenland by opening up a new consulate there. It's not a new consulate. The consulate's been around for a while, but on May 21st, right around the corner, we're going to have the ceremony there where we're going to open up that consulate.

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So that's the story of Greenland and there's more. There's lots more. I mean, we could talk about the environmental effects of Greenland. So that is the world's second largest ice sheet. That's the second largest ice heat and the biggest island. So when you have climate change happening in Greenland and the glaciers are melting, that meltwater affects everything around it and it affects the fisheries, it affects navigation, it affects a lot of different things. And the concept of going up there and just digging up all of their critical minerals has got to give us pause because that is one of the most delicate ecosystems on the earth. And if you just start ripping that up and I know that mining and those kinds of operations have improved a lot over the course of decades, but you're still tearing up the earth and you're disrupting the carbon cycle and for critical minerals that are necessary for our survival, but not necessarily the greenlander survival.

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They'd rather keep their uranium right where it's at because it doesn't do it. So there are better places on earth to do that. The United States is one of them. There's a big lithium mine right here in Maine that could be tapped Alaska is full of those critical minerals as well. The problem with that is there's just no infrastructure to get to them. So before we go digging stuff up in Greenland and really affecting that, we should take a hard look at what we have internally in order to minimize our critical minerals, not to mention all the other critical minerals sites in it. And it's not just digging them up. The problem is processing. Once you dig them up, you have to be processed and that's dirty business too and people don't like that dirty business. And that's probably why we have all the environmental laws that we do now because of the byproducts of that mining.

(00:28:53):

So lots of things going on in greenment, lots of times.

Ben Smith (00:28:57):

Yeah. So Darryl, I think you're bringing up a lot of great points, especially around here's the Arctic and there's no one inhabiting the Arctic and the sovereignty there. And there's legal issues where we're all kind of using our own legal systems. And that's why you talk about on clause being really important of having a common communication about legally what's happening, which includes climate science, as you said, indigenous sovereignty, security, geopolitics. And I've even read something you've written in one of your articles saying that Maine is the home to the only US law school teaching Arctic law. So I want to go back to that about why is the legal foundation so critical now where maybe it was a little less important a litle bit ago, but why is now different in terms of this legal foundation?

Darryl Lyon (00:29:44):

Well, the legal foundation ... Thanks, Ben. That's another great question. Yes, the University of Maine School of Law is the only law school in the United States that really focuses on these issues and a lot of very interdisciplinary The way they look at the indigenous communities rules and responsibilities and what they have going on all the way through the maritime components of it. So that's a big, again, another selling point for the state of Maine is that we're a maritime state and we're focusing on these issues in the Arctic. But what's interesting is the concept of lawfare. So lawfare is a hybrid kind of strategy gray area. You hear it referred to as gray area operations. So it's just below the kinetic level. So it's just below the kinetic level. So you push the limits with lawfare in order to gain advantage in the high north.

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So for example, the big example is the northern sea root. So the northern sea root is on the other side. So on our side is the northwest passage through the Canadian archipelago, but on the other side is the northern sea root. So the northern sea root has been dominated by the Russians at this point. And there are parts of that northern sea. So the Russians will say if you're going to traverse the northern sea route, which saves almost 20% of your shipping costs by not going through the Panama Canal and you come up over the NSR, if you're going to use that, then you're going to pay tariffs to the Russians. You're going to abide by their rules and regulations. You're going to abide by their navigational responsibilities and you're going to do it by the way the Russians want you to do it. Some of that is okay because that's in their exclusive economics on their EEZ, but some of it is not.

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And the Russians have with Chinese help have started to enforce that into their just standard operating procedure. So just like everybody gets used to paying those fees and understanding that they have to pay to go through an international state when they shouldn't have to because that's international waters. So then what happens is we're seeing this is kind of an interesting thing is that because of the war in Ukraine and the things that we have put in place to reduce the Russian export of hydrocarbons, they're starting to create ghost fleets and these ghost fleets fill up with LNG or they fill up with their oil and they'll traverse the NSR. They'll spoof their GPSs. Some of these ships don't even meet polar code, so they're not ICE capable ships. They're older ships, but they're all underneath the threshold of the ... What's that called? What's the word I'm looking for?

(00:32:34):

We imposed sanctions. Thank you. Thanks guys. Appreciate that. I'm looking for a word like that. That's not what a podcast are supposed to do is like fill in my gaps. Help out. Yes. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. You

Curtis Worcester (00:32:47):

Got it. We can see

Darryl Lyon (00:32:49):

It. Sanctions were there. So the sanctions, under that polar code, so they're filling these ships up, they're spoofing them and they're sending them through the NSR to India and to other consumers of their product, thus getting around our sanctions and still funding their war in Ukraine. So okay, well, that's kind of an interesting thought, but how do we stop that? Do we stop that? Can the United States make a security move and do like we did with Venezuela where we actually board their ships and take their ships from them because they're in violation of the sanctions. Now we did that and we did it in the GIUK gap. So there was a ship that sped out of Venezuela was in the gap and had actually reflagged itself in route. So Venezuela to the GAUK gap while they're doing that traverse, the guys were hanging over the side of the ship and painting the Russian flag on the side as we approached it.

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And what happened was the Soviet or the Soviets, I'm sorry, the Russians actually sent a submarine down to meet that ship and tried to get to that ship before we did. And our Coast Guard guys and gals boarded the ship, took control of the ship and turned it around. That was a geopolitical tension moment that most people ignored or didn't because the Russians wanted that oil because they need it. So then operationally, how do we enforce things like operationally, you can see what it takes to shut down the straightover moves. It doesn't take much, but then getting it back open takes a lot of resources. When those maps show up on the evening news and they show how many aircraft carrier groups are there, they had three aircraft carrier groups and that just doesn't mean just the aircraft carrier has all the supporting ships that go with it.

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They had three of them there and that's a lot of firepower and that's just in the straight Hormuz, which is what, 20 some miles across. So if you start playing that out in the Atlantic High North, you're talking about a strategic issue. So there's lots of legal foundation that goes around all of this, not to mention the indigenous communities. So the indigenous communities are sovereign nations and they have rules and regulations and priorities that actually conflict with what we're trying to do. So we have to be very sensitive. We should be very sensitive how that plays out and continue to work with our partners in this area and not against

Ben Smith (00:35:13):

Them. So Darryl, I want to do a follow-up there because you're bringing up a really great point on the indigenous populations and also want to make a plug to, you recently had a conference called The Leadership in the High North, 2026 Conference in Bangor in April. And so I was thankful to be in attendance from your invitation and learned a lot there. I want to make a plug there. And also I know you're looking at 2027 looking at doing that as well. So I want to encourage listeners out there as well if you're getting something out of this conversation, you can be part of the conversation in 2027 and we'd love to clue you into that and try to get those details to you so you can participate when it comes to the conversation next year. But one thing that just I learned from listening, especially from the academic point of view where you had professors from UMaine, Bowdoin and UNE was this point of view about the indigenous population that has lived there for 8,000 years and they're making a very highlighter point about that those populations really need to be respected and be part of this conversation.

(00:36:21):

And my dad being a US history teacher from Bangor High School, Go Rams, hearing a lot about there's echoes in history. You hear their warnings that echoed this American expansion to Western United States after Louisiana purchase and the subsequent movement of Native Americans off the land. And we just kind of go in and we take resources and we say, "This is ours." And I was hearing that warning of, "Hey, here's indigenous people that have been here and now that we want the minerals, as you recently spoke to, or we want resources or we want access or we want more security control." And that they were kind of warning us, "Hey, we need to be working with and collaborating with these populations. We need to be respecting a lot of this and not repeating some of the mistakes that we made a couple hundred years ago." Did you get that sense from that speech as well?

(00:37:13):

And the kind of second question is, will we, the US, approach things differently after experiences now in the 1800s here?

Darryl Lyon (00:37:20):

A great question that requires a lot of humbleness on our part as the United States when it comes to our sins of colonization. We have really leaned into that and recognize that a lot of the things that we did when the history that you're talking about was not correct. And we weren't the only ones who did it. The Canadians did it. The Danes have done it in Greenland. There's still a lot of pushback from the colonizer's mindset. And the three of us probably don't even know that we have a colonizer's mindset. So when I did my interview to get accepted at the University of Maine's PhD program, one of the comments made by one of the interviewers was that Darryl will have to work on his sensitivity because he is a colonizer. And I was like, "Me? I haven't colonized anybody. I do own my house, but I'm not colonizing my neighborhood." And I took it as an insult and then I thought about it for a second and it's kind of ingrained in the way that we think.

(00:38:26):

So now I see my colonizer influence a lot, especially in my research. Ben, there was controversy over the name of that conference, leadership in the high north. Some of the indigenous communities were like, "We don't need your leadership. We've got it. We've lived here for 8,000 years and we don't need the leadership from Maine to tell us how to do our business," which I was sensitive to. So I'm not going to change the name of the conference, but the idea that had to be rearticulated that Maine can play a role in getting over that colonizer mindset when we come into these communities. So for example, what you're alluding to is something called green colonialism where the example that I always use is the Sami population. So the Sami is an indigenous tribe, Finland, Norway, Sweden, kind of across the top of those countries and they have a huge diaspora that is articulating this green colonialism concept.

(00:39:23):

And the first time I heard it was just shocking. So in that area of those countries, the wind blows all the time. So they said, "Well, we're just going to go up there and build a bunch of windmills." And Sami who lived there and raised and heard reindeer were like, "You're going to put those windmills on our land and it's going to disrupt the raindeer herds because it just turns out that reindeer don't like to procreate to the sound of windmills." So it's going to disrupt all of this. And the governments of those countries were like, "Screw you, we're going to do it anyway." And they go, and that's green colonialism. And they're doing the wind projects to get away from the carbon-based projects that the lower western parts of the world rely on, but the same don't rely on those. So the green colonialism concept is like, "Hey, that's not our problem.

(00:40:16):

You created the problem when it comes to climate change with your burning of hydrocarbons and your burning of all of these things. Why should we pay the price with our reindeer herds because you screwed up?" And it's a strong argument. I can see that argument. I'm like, "You know what? They got a point." And that's called green colonialism where we just come in and we say that we're going to save the world by doing these projects and the people that are affected most, most negatively are the indigenous populations that already live there and don't really contribute to the climate change problem. So what it takes is a matter of respect for the knowledge and the sovereignty and they move at a different pace. They see the world differently and that intercultural competency that you have to have takes time to build. So everything from, and man, the academics hate this, but it's just called academic exhaustion where the Ben Curtis Darryl team flies into Greenland and we put up our drones and we look at all the area and we're living in that community and our drones are flying and two weeks later we take all the data and we leave.

(00:41:25):

But while we're there, we're inside their communities and we think we're doing God's work, but really what we're doing is we're just one group of researchers from the United States and then another group of researchers from United Kingdom comes in and another group of researchers comes in, blah, blah, blah, blah, boom. And these communities just get exhausted from all of these great things that all these academics are doing and it drains their resources, it drains their time and energy and they get nothing out of it. When we go up there and we fly our drones around and we say, "Oh, over the hill there, there's a great place for you to take your sheep so they can graze." They know that they've been there for 8,000 years. They don't need a drone to go up in the air and tell them where the next best grazing area for the sheep are.

(00:42:12):

So that exhaustion is there. That's another concept of just intercultural competency and respecting what they are and what they're doing. And we just bowl in, think we're doing God's work and then we bowl back out. I mean, there's a problem there. Last example, I went to a conference down in South Portland and they had brought in this Greenlandic student who wanted to study the correction system of the United States and take it back to Greenland. And I'm like, "Really? That's what you want to study?" Our correction system is not even mediocre at best when it comes to the number of people that we lock up and how we treat our prisoners and how we do all that stuff. And here's this guy from Greenland coming down to study our correction system and take the lessons he learns, hopefully the bad lessons and apply that to the penal system in Greenland.

(00:42:59):

And I walked out of there going, "Man, dude, don't do that. Just don't. There's got to be other things to research." Because when I came out of that conversation, and this is probably a good reference for you and your audience, but it was like the prime director from Star Trek. So the prime directive, you guys remember that?

(00:43:19):

What?

Ben Smith (00:43:20):

Was that the board part? No.

Darryl Lyon (00:43:21):

Now I go back farther than that, Ben. You're a pretty young dude. But the prime directive was basically like they were exploring all these worlds and the USS Enterprise's prime directive was you can see these worlds developing, but you can't involve yourself in their development. Don't give them technology, don't give them advice. You can watch, you can observe and you can record, but don't get involved. So in the course of Star Trek, of course, Kirk ignored that quite frequently, but Picard was a different kind of commander, so he was stuck to the prime directive. So coming out of that conversation about the correction system in Portland and taking that back to Greenland, I just walked out of there and say, "Man, we just need to apply the prime directive to Greenland. Just let them go. " Just let them go. If they ask for help, maybe we could do that, but they've been up there for 8,000 years and maybe they got it figured out.

(00:44:13):

I mean, that's kind of my take on all that again,

Curtis Worcester (00:44:17):

That's

Darryl Lyon (00:44:17):

Just my opinion.

Curtis Worcester (00:44:18):

Yeah, no, I think that look, it's clearly a really important conversation and I'm glad it's one we're having and one that you're sharing with us. I do want to just keep going on our show here, Darryl. And I have a question, it might be putting you on the spot a little bit, but that's okay. You agreed to come on our show. So if I'm somebody listening to this conversation, I think at this point I'm relating it again to us here in the state of Maine and we know you've talked about it a little bit. I think we know it in kind of current news cycles and things that countries like Russia and China are perhaps making aggressive Arctic moves. I know you talked about it a bit ago. Do you think that we being the United States is perhaps doing enough to protect our interests in the region?

(00:45:05):

And again, especially I think with a focus here in the Atlantic Arctic where we all here in the state of Maine are geographically located, do you think there's enough happening there for protection sake?

Darryl Lyon (00:45:18):

No, I don't. But then again, when it comes to priorities, when it comes to priorities, what's more important, the Middle East or this Arctic concern? So it's a strategic Arctic concern that we have. So when I talk strategy, I'm talking decades. I'm thinking in 20 or 30-year increments, but when you have hotspots in the Middle East or hotspots in South America or the Ukraine or Europe or things like that, we have a priority problem when it comes to the Arctics. We have to make that continual argument. And that's what Alaska does. Alaska advances that argument all the time. We don't. Maine doesn't do that. We're not a security state like Alaska is a security state. Alaska was built on the fact that it was a military asset to the United States. So we're not doing enough, but we can make arguments about search and rescue.

(00:46:11):

We can make arguments about environmental response and those kinds of arguments as well. And the other thing is that the Arctic is ... Well, first of all, to go back to our original question, the United States doesn't view itself as an Arctic nation, even though we are. There are multiple surveys out there that if you ask the general public, do you consider the Arctic issues that the United States is facing to be priority? They're going to say no. It's not a priority. The only time people think about the Arctic is when they see commercials at Christmastime and they see the Coca-Cola Polar Bear or they see NORAD tracking Santa Claus, that's the only time they think about it. Because if you live in Louisiana, it's not an

Curtis Worcester (00:46:53):

Issue. That's

Darryl Lyon (00:46:53):

A

Curtis Worcester (00:46:53):

Good point.

Darryl Lyon (00:46:55):

But again, I think that's Maine's role. That's part of Maine's role is to highlight that narrative and elevate the narrative in the common, what I call the common observer. The common observer is kind of an academic term for Joe Sixpack and Jane Sixpack who are just sitting in Iowa and not really too much concerned about what's happening in the Arctic. But I think a lot of these things are happening and that's the basic of my dissertation, the thesis of my dissertation is that it's a strategic blind spot and that we have operational and strategic vulnerability in this part of the world that we're not addressing. Now, again, parts of the problem is, one, we don't think that we're an Arctic nation. Two, it's very expensive to do what we're talking about. So building icebreakers is not a cheap venture. Building drone systems that can maintain operational capability, battery systems that can maintain operational capability and cold weather in the dark is hard to do.

(00:47:49):

Everything in the Arctic is seven to eight times more expensive. And then you're talking about a region that's sparsely populated, all things considered. Why should we focus on that? Why should we put our priority up there where it's cold, dark, expensive? When I got to worry about the straits of hormones, I'm not going to worry about the GIUK gap. And again, I think there's that priority and these long lead times that it's going to take the DOD, the most recent Department of War Arctic strategy talks about that, like long lead times, which I would argue those long lead times are much shorter than the average person would consider because of climate change. Climate change happened very rapidly in some cases. It's called abrupt climate change. And when that abrupt climate change happens, that's when we're going to really feel the effects of an ignorance of the Arctic.

(00:48:40):

So Maine's role at the 45th parallel is to elevate that conversation with our senators, with our academics, with our opinion leaders and influencers in the state of Maine, which is small. We're only 1.3 million people. We've got powerful people in Washington right now, but of all the priorities that Maine has and all the problems that Maine is facing right now, where's the Arctic in that conversation?

Intro / Outro (00:49:06):

We've

Darryl Lyon (00:49:07):

Got an aging population, we've got a fentanyl problem, we've got a more abundant economy. We've got all kinds of other things that are happening and where does the Arctic come up in the priority of that? So when you're talking to our senators and our representatives, it's fun to talk about, but it's hard to do.

Ben Smith (00:49:23):

So I want to ask the direct question to that, Darryl then because we've talked on the side, you've brought up that Maine's often in Alaska's shadow when it comes to Arctic policy and funding is where even though all the advantages of what Maine is and where we are and relative to Alaska, it feels like Maine should have an equal footing maybe or maybe just a different priority here. But as you just said, you've been a vocal advocate for Maine stepping up here. So the direct question then is for all the reasons you said, there's a lot of priorities, there's a lot of other challenges, things are more in our face, but what do we need to do politically, academically, commercially to be seen as a full partner here and advocate for our role?

Darryl Lyon (00:50:08):

Well, I think another great question, the first thing we have to do is get organized. And that was the leadership in High North 2026 was specifically kept to Maine academics, main business people, main security leaders. So we didn't bring a lot of people from outside of the state. So when you go to these big conferences, Alaska, for example, if you have a conversation with on Alaskan at the conference and then you have another conversation with Alaskan, they're going to say the same thing. They're going to give you the three talking points that everybody agreed upon that Alaska should be talking about. We do as much or more than the Alaskans do in the Arctic, but we don't talk about it or we don't have a consistent narrative coming out of the state of Maine that reflects our efforts in the Arctic. Alaska does and I mean, they're a little bit closer to it because it's much more of a priority for them, but one of the first things that we could do as a state is to get organized.

(00:51:06):

And we've started to do that. Once the organization is in place, a strategy is necessary, something that creates those talking points, a strategy that says, these are the things that you can do from your perspective, even if it's a microaction that will advance Maine's role in the Arctic to include Mainers aren't really good at bragging about themselves. We don't do it. It's just cultural, I'm going to do my thing and that's what I love about Maine. We just leave each to their own. But at some point we've got to elevate the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, which is the oldest Climate Change Institute in the United States has been drilling ICE course for a long time. They do advocate for themselves. They do do that well, but why not overlay that with all the research that's coming out of Bowdoin or overlay that with the efforts that are coming out of USM and the University of New England.

(00:51:58):

And then we started to come up with this critical mass of information that we're doing. And it's not just scientific, of course, it's economic, it's security, and it's all the diplomatic efforts that we have. So as we move forward and we have the strategy, we have some leadership, our influencers and our opinion leaders need to be informed. And that was 2026 is getting some of those people in the room, leadership at the High North 2026 is getting them in the room and just letting them know that, oh, by the way, you can sign a memorandum of agreement or a memorandum of understanding from a state to a country. When Dr. Thompson Jones brought that up, that was in the feedback that I received from the conference when Mary started talking about those things, that was labeled as new knowledge. People didn't know that you could do that and we can do that.

(00:52:46):

And when we're talking about diplomacy at the substate level at 1.5 or 2.0. So those kinds of things is just reigniting people's passion for the Arctic in a way that is not necessarily synergized with everything else. You still do you, right? You do you. We want you to do you. But I'm going to tell you that over here this is happening. The blue economy is happening and our efforts to grow the blue economy, ma, there's just some crazy things going on out there with Bigelow Industries down in Booth Bay that is just mind boggling and no one knows about it, or at least a common observer doesn't know about it. And once we start to do that and we start to define ourselves as a state that has a role in those kinds of things, we can really advance Maine's role in all of that.

(00:53:35):

There's better word for that. Absolutely. You guys aren't helping. So that's where I'm at.That's what I would say.

Curtis Worcester (00:53:40):

Yeah, no, and that's fantastic, Darryl. And this entire conversation has been a super fascinating look at these global forces in the Arctic and how they have very real local impacts here for us in the state of Maine. I do want to give you a minute. I know we touched on this maybe a little bit before we started recording, but I do want to just have you take a minute and maybe give us an update on some of that momentum that has started from the leadership in the High North 2026 conference that I know was just here kind of recent. So just would love to give you an opportunity to just discuss some of that momentum and the takeaways from that.

Darryl Lyon (00:54:17):

Yeah. As I mentioned, we had a very successful conference. Ben was a part of it and Ben only saw us Saturday. You didn't come to dinner on Friday night.

Ben Smith (00:54:26):

That's correct. Yeah.

Darryl Lyon (00:54:27):

So it starts with the ambassador from Iceland getting up and talking to us. And if you've never met Shawn Hilder, she is graceful, she is highly intelligent, very well spoken, but she's got a wicked sense of humor and her humor came out in her comments and just the overall feeling of like, "Hey, we're all in this together and when we've got a commonality, Swan Hiller really set the stage for that conversation to continue into the next day. We were fortunate enough to have her be part of our conversation. And then just the momentum from there, to answer your question, Curtis, it was just carried out through the entire day. And there was a lot of cross-collaboration talks, a lot of people who'd never met each other. I mean, I got a buddy of mine from the lodge and I was standing at the reception after the dinner and he's standing there talking to the defense attache from Iceland and they're talking bourbon and cigars.

(00:55:34):

And I went up to Ben, his name was Ben. And I'm like, Ben, you know who that was? And he's like, no, some cool guy from Iceland." I was like, "Well, yeah, he's the defense attache. He's not just some cool guy. This guy's got some power." He goes, "Oh, really? I didn't know that. " He's just a nice guy to me. So that's the kind of mood that we had going on. Everybody was talking to everybody and we were really kind of setting agendas aside because these academics compete. They compete for money, they compete for students, they compete for attention and the group of academics that we had there, they were willing to put all that aside and work for a common goal. So I think that's the biggest thing is that we introduced all these people to one another. Yesterday, I got another email from one of the participants in the conference and she introduced me to somebody who's very active in the blue economy.

(00:56:21):

So now I can start to piece those people together and get this kind of growing into more. And then the next question almost immediately was, when are we going to do the next one and what does that look like? So that's momentum in and of itself. If you're going to do it one year, let's do it every year. And then some of the feedback was like, we should do it quarterly. We should have more meetings where we talk about these kinds of things that are going on. I'm not sure I have the bandwidth for that, but I think an annual meeting where we kind of focus on these things and just a general conversation as we get going. So the momentum, the good news is that we're going to do it again. I mean, that requires resources and effort and time. So people are willing to commit those resources, effort and time in order to continue this going.

(00:57:08):

So the other momentum is all of the feedback that we've received. And one of the questions at the conference was we had little index cards and the index cards basically said, "What actionable item do you see us doing in the state of Maine to advance Maine's role in the Arctic? Give me a thing we can do, like a thing."

(00:57:29):

And I've got a stack of those and we've taken that and we've melded it into a document and those actionable items are things that we can actually check the box on. Okay, so what are some of these actionable items? Well, do another one. That's one. Eat more seaweed, right? That's another one because we had a whole conversation about seaweed. We had a researcher from the University of Southern Maine, I think. And she had seaweed bars and she was handing out these seaweed bars and it's an acquired taste, but it's something you could do and other things that you could do, what can we actually physically do? So that strategy's coming around. Once that strategy's written and approved by some of the people that participated in the conference planning, I'm going to publish it. I'm going to send it everywhere. That's a doable thing. And hopefully that gets the attention of our opinion leaders and our influencers like you guys who do podcasts, who see people every day and just make comments about ... Yeah.

Curtis Worcester (00:58:36):

No, that's fantastic.

Darryl Lyon (00:58:37):

There's a lot of momentum, a lot of momentum.

Curtis Worcester (00:58:39):

That's awesome.

Darryl Lyon (00:58:39):

Good stuff.

Curtis Worcester (00:58:41):

That's awesome to hear. And obviously it's fantastic that at a minimum, you're planning the next one, that's fantastic. Darryl, I do have on closing question for you maybe related to the conversation, maybe not. It's a question that we like to ask all of our guests being a retirement success podcast. I got to ask you, when you get to that point in life, what does that look like for you? How do you plan on finding your own retirement success?

Darryl Lyon (00:59:10):

Well, a very timely question, gentlemen, because this is my last year at Bangor High School. So officially, I guess you could say I am retired. So I did a 30-year military career. I have a nice pension from that. I have the gold standard when it comes to retirement benefits, my health insurance and those kinds of things are all taken care of. So when I started to make the decision about to retire and what success would look like when I retire, I started recontextualizing the way I was seeing the seventh, eighth, and ninth ending of my life. I might be in the eighth inning, I don't know, but it's no longer about lifespan. It's about health span.

(00:59:52):

How many good summers do I have left really? I'm 58 years old and around 60 or 60 62, man, that's when you wake up with glaucoma or you wake up with freaking diabetes or something happens to your body because even though I'm in great shape, probably the best shape of my life, I watch what I eat, I watch what I do with my time, I get good sleep, I do all the things that everybody says you should do, you still wake up with glaucoma. I mean, it's just going to happen. So it's not about my lifespan anymore, it's about my health span and how much time do I have between now and that first disease or that first injury or that first operation? So that was on contextual concept. And then of course the next contextual concept is like, do you have enough money? Well, you know what?

(01:00:40):

I'm kind of outrunning compound interest at this point. It's not going to really do me much good over the next 10 or 15 years. Everything that I've acquired up until this point, that's what I got. Do I wish I had more money? I absolutely do. But if I work another year or I do another two years, am I really going to add to my war chest so much so that I'm going to be able to do everything else I've ever wanted to do? So the hard reality is that I'm at where I'm at. I got what I got and I'm very fortunate to have other things other than savings, my pension being one of them and that gold standard. So I've outrun compound interest. I've only got so many years left where I can hike with my kids or do the things that I really want to do.

(01:01:27):

And quite frankly, guys, in the last three weeks I've lost two classmates and they're less than 60 years old and both guys have met their demise. And at this point I'm trading money for time. That's what I'm trading. I'm not going to have the money anymore, but I'm sure I am going to have a lot more time. And that time is more valuable to me at 58 than it was when I was 2080. Absolutely.

Ben Smith (01:01:54):

And

Darryl Lyon (01:01:54):

That time is what I look forward to in retirement when I can wake up and know the day is mine and I can choose to do what I want to do. And if I want to pursue my Arctic interest, I can do that. If I want to get involved in my community that has given so much to me and my state that has given so much to me, I can do that. If I want to enjoy my children or go on a trip, I can do that. That's more invaluable to me at this point. So when it comes to success, it's really about my health, it's about my time and just managing my budget at this point to live within my means, which is still healthy and still good. And I'll leave you with this, that one of my life mantras is that goodbyes are important and that when you say goodbye to somebody, that could be the last time you ever see that person.

(01:02:42):

It's dark. It's a dark mantra to have. But Rick Rolls was, I saw him at my 40th class reunion and this isn't going to play well on your podcast, but Rick was smoking a cigarette and he's like, "Don't know, come on over, come on over, have a cigarette with me. " And I don't smoke, but I smoked a cigarette with Rick Rolls that day and we talked and he told me about his life and we had this great conversation. And after the 40th reunion, that was the last time I saw him.

(01:03:07):

That was it. That was my memory of saying goodbye to Rick Rolls was having a cigarette with him at my 40th class reunion at his request. And the other classmate that just passed away was my childhood best friend. If you think about your first memory, what do I remember first? I was like four years old when me and Troy Rosetti were playing in his yard and that's my first memory. He's always been that childhood friend and I knew him for a long, long time and he died of a complication of his dialysis. So gone, just gone. And the last time I saw him was at my 40th class reunion and it was the last time I said. So goodbyes are important. So when you see that person and you say goodbye to them, take the time to look them in the eye and let them know that you care about them and do it in a way.

(01:03:54):

It doesn't have to be all sentimental and emotional and all those things, but when that person walks away from you, that might be the last time you see that person or they see you and that goodbye is important and the way you do it matters.

Ben Smith (01:04:08):

And Darryl, I appreciate that because I think expressing ourselves is really important. As you said, as Mainers too, I think we tend to be a little more inward looking and maybe we don't express ourselves the way we should too, because I think we don't want attention at times. And I think that's a really important thought to lead our listeners here and finalize the show too. So we want to thank you for coming on, Darryl. I think we probably could have gone another two hours with content here, but I think we got a lot of highlights in and I think this is a really great start to spur people's interests in the high north and kind of have them look forward. So maybe we can have you on the next one here too and just see when that conference happens next year, kind of talk again, here it's also transpiring, momentum, all that.

(01:04:59):

Because again, I think this is really important to the state of Maine, our own features and how the state of Maine is being shaped. So really want to thank you for coming on and just sharing all this with us because I think it's something where, as you said, the common observer doesn't have a whole lot of maybe common knowledge about what's happening here. And I think you're doing a really great job by putting all the leaders in this state together and organizing them towards that one common vision. So thank you for doing that too.

Darryl Lyon (01:05:23):

Appreciate it. I appreciate you guys having me on. I always enjoyed it and I can talk for another two hours if you want to. Lots of things to talk about and great questions guys, wonderful podcast and I really appreciated being a guest today. Absolutely.

Ben Smith (01:05:37):

Thank you so much Thanks, Darryl. We'll catch you next time.

Darryl Lyon (01:05:40):

Thanks guys.

Ben Smith (01:05:41):

Well, thank you to Darryl Lyon for coming on our show today as I think as you could ascertain there's a whole lot going on. There's a whole lot of conversations happening around what's going on in the Arctic from every level. And again, I think there's a lot that I just was not aware of and I hope you out there hearing this today was able to kind of gather some of that too. And again, I urge you two to participate and again, we'll try to put some links here to Darryl even following him on LinkedIn, I think will help to kind of keep you in the loop on what's happening for momentum here in his conference and conversations about happening in the Arctic. You can also read Darryl's articles on arctictoday.com. They are essential rating for anyone who wants to understand Maine's emerging role on the global stage, but we do want to thank you for tuning into Retirement Success Maine podcast to find a little bit more.

(01:06:36):

You go to blog.guidancepointllc.com/125 because this is episode 125 and we appreciate you tuning in. Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, stay warm, even if the Arctic is getting a little closer to home. I appreciate you tuning in. We'll catch you next

Outro (01:06:56):

Time. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just listened to an information filled episode of the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. While this show is about finding more ways to improve your retirement happiness, Guidance Point Advisor's mission is to help our clients create a fulfilling retirement. We do financial planning so that people can enjoy retirement and align their monetary resources to their goals. If you're wondering about your own personal success, we invite you to reach out to us to schedule a 45-minute listening session. Our advisors will have a conversation with you about your goals, your frustrations, and your problems. Make sure you check out GuidancePoint advisors on our blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and you can always check out more episodes of this podcast on iTunes and Spotify. And of course, keep on finding your retirement success.