Over the past two centuries, Maine has carved a niche for itself as a quiet haven for writers, including literary legends such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.B. White, and Stephen King. With the help of organizations like the Telling Room and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance (MWPA), the state’s literary community has continued to thrive, partly by encouraging and nurturing the next generation of creatives. In addition to juggling homework and extracurriculars, navigating relationships, and taking on the ever-changing day-to-day responsibilities of high school students, these four young ..read more

Peaks Island’s Steve Bushey has been called a lot of things: Steve, Steven, Steve the Cartographer, and for folks who need further explanation, Steve the Professional Mapmaker. He and his wife, Angela Faeth, are the founders of Map Adventures, and chances are, if you’ve climbed Mount Katahdin or hiked anywhere in Acadia (or New Hampshire, Vermont, New Mexico, or Northern California), you’ve held their maps in your hands. And while cartography continues to be Bushey’s “dream job”—for his master’s thesis in geography, when he was just 24 years old, he founded and mapped the Catamount Trail, a cr ..read more

Peter Dorman, 87, stitches shoes for Easymoc in Lewiston. “What I enjoy about it? As long as I stand here and do the work? Nobody bothers me.” Here is Peter Dorman, 87 years old, still standing. He sews moccasin-style shoes in Lewiston, 40 hours every week, earning $20 an hour. He doesn’t get sore anymore, he swears. “After doing it for 60 years? My muscles are pretty well trained,” chuckles Dorman. Callouses tell the story of his work: the tops of his middle and ring fingers are scuffed and bright, like freshly sanded pine furniture. The sides of his pinky fingers bear deep notches where he u ..read more

For most members of a honeybee hive, daily activity revolves around gathering pollen and nectar, two vital sources of food for the superorganism. During the late fall, winter, and early spring, nectar isn’t available, so bees instead focus on yellow drifts of pollen from Maine’s many trees. The honeybee is adaptable. It knows how to survive frigid winters, how to extract food from unlikely sources, like the mouths of blueberry blossoms, and how to navigate using the light of the sun and the magnetic pull of the poles. The honeybee can fly, dance, and hold its breath underwater for five minutes ..read more