How a Kayak Trip to a Maine Island Inspired a Career
Maeve Carlson during a 2020 volunteering trip to Hurricane Island.
In July 2013, after completing her sophomore year at Wiscasset High School, 16-year old Maeve Carlson was awarded the adventure of a lifetime. Carlson, an active member of the Wiscasset High School Outing Club, liked nothing more than getting outside with peers and her energetic club advisor, Ralph Keyes. “I could always tell he was just as excited to be outside as the rest of us,” Carlson said.
With the encouragement of both Keyes and her father, Carlson applied for Sara’s Scholarship, an annual $1,000 cash award that honors the life of 15-year old Sara Leone, daughter of Teens to Trails founders Bob and Carol Leone. The scholarship can be used for camp, an adventure of a student’s choosing or an outdoor leadership project. When Carlson received the news that she’d won, she signed up for a 3-week sea kayaking trip with Chewonki, a camp based in Wiscasset.
Carlson had some experience kayaking on lakes, but this adventure, which would take her from her hometown of Wiscasset to Mount Desert Island, was wildly different. “We carried all of our food and equipment, kayaked for miles each day, and experienced two straight weeks of rain, which was new for many of us,” Carlson said. Despite the conditions, she said the trip showed her and her fellow campers how capable they could be in any weather.
After kayaking for ten days straight, she recalls a July 4th rest day when the group camped on Hurricane Island in Penobscot Bay. “The island was dotted with tiny cabins, there was a ropes course, and a few volunteers were living there,” she said. “I’d never seen anything quite like it.” Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership provides year-round experiential education for teenagers and adults.
The island so inspired Carlson that she returned as a volunteer in the summer of 2019 while completing her Masters Degree in Civil Engineering at University of Maine. As the island’s first-ever volunteer sustainability engineer, Carlson’s work helped maintain and grow its sustainable systems. Since then, she’s continued her volunteer work on the island, documenting its energy and water infrastructure, and how to improve them. The impact the island has on Carlson, and her devotion to its sustainability, is undeniable. “Frankly, I’m thinking how I can live on Hurricane forever,” she said.
Carlson, now 24, is a Wastewater Project Engineer at Wright-Pierce in Portland, Maine and is deeply committed to environmental work. She knows how important it is for people to rely on clean water daily, and she’s proud to help communities grow and thrive through her efforts. When you consider her professional work throughout New England, coupled with her impressive volunteerism on Hurricane Island, Guatemala, Ecuador and Honduras, it’s clear that this inspiring young woman will have a positive impact on water systems in communities worldwide. For Carlson, whose appreciation for the outdoors grew from her high school outing club experience and Sara’s scholarship, there’s no better adventure than that.