A selected history of sustainability in Maine. - By: Joshua F.
Moore Mainers were living sustainable lives long before
pioneering homesteaders Scott and Helen Nearing moved here in
the fifties and prompted waves of young people to drop out and
move “back to the land.” Over the past six decades, Maine has
experienced suburbanization and sprawl, but the Pine Tree State
remains one of those increasingly rare places where people still
live close to nature and sustainability seems less a consumer
trend than a part of the Down East heritage. Here are some local
milestones in green living. Scott and Helen Nearing, authors of
Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a
Troubled World, settle in Harborside, on Cape Rosier. Over the
next half century, more than a million people follow their
example of simple living in Maine and elsewhere. Rachel Carson,
who would write Silent Spring, joins a handful of Mainers
concerned about unchecked development to form a branch of the
Nature Conservancy — the fourth suc