Introduction and Ideas of Home

Myself as a kid enjoying the view while camping at Moosehead Lake, Maine

Hi, I’m Sophie and I’m a senior studying environmental studies with a minor in economics. I grew up in Yarmouth, Maine, a small coastal town right beside Maine’s largest city of Portland. In comparison to other cities of the world and even country, however, Portland is incredibly small. Yarmouth itself has a population of about 8,500 people. This lack of intense population density and vast forests of Maine have left people living there with access to nature and wilderness, even in the most populated areas. Maine has the largest percentage of forest cover out of any U.S. state. Growing up in a suburb of Portland, I always knew the deep forest as my backyard, as well as spending plenty of time hiking on trails and walking my dogs in the local nature preserves.

Sustainability is often at the forefront of legislation and policy in Maine and that is basically how I remember it since growing up. When I was in kindergarten and first grade, my school had an “earth saver’s club,” something my mom led, that provided young children with the opportunity to learn about the environment around them and about how to be young activists. Maine relies heavily on its shellfish and fishing industry, so legislation always must take that into account. That may mean that environmental policies limiting fishing are strongly opposed, or that legislation is highly supported, it really depends on its direct impact of the local industry. Maine has some new policies to encourage sustainability, including a ban on Styrofoam and plastic bags. The Styrofoam law had to give the fishing industry more time to obey the laws because of the heavy use of Styrofoam in transporting fresh catch, an example on how the state has to take its industry into consideration.

Another memory of me on a hike somewhere in Maine

Maine is also one of only a few states to have a plastic bottle return system, leaving an incentive to recycle used bottles and a small opportunity for people struggling to get by to collect bottles and bring them in for cash, which you can see in cities like Portland. In school, we were taught often in outside classrooms and had opportunities to learn about our local natural world through all grades. In high school, the gym classes take students canoeing, rock climbing, and even teach you how to build a fire in the middle of the woods, often with snow on the ground. In Maine’s history, there was a heavy reliance on lumber for paper mills and on river mills for power. This meant that an understanding of the need for natural resource sustainability has always been present in the state. There is a large variation of political ideals in the state, including an often progressive south and more conservative and libertarian north. Overall, I am fortunate to have grown up in such an environmentally-focused community and give full credit to Maine for my passion of sustainability and curiosity of the natural world.