Linda Littlefield Grenfell A Child of Nature

By Susan Gallagher, Staff Writer YORK COUNTYLinda Littlefield

Grenfell grew up in “The Emerald Forest.” In truth, this magicalsounding place was just a field with a pine tree but to an imaginative child, it was special. There in Eliot, on an acre of land between a creek and a river, the young girl climbed trees and played on the banks of the Piscataqua. She started canoeing as soon as she could sit up between her father’s legs. “I was always outside,” she says.

How fitting that this child of nature would evolve into a Maine Master Naturalist, a licensed Maine Sea Kayaking Guide and an Environmental Educator at the Wells Reserve. Her journey to reach these goals, however, would prove to be long and circuitous, leading her through hills and valleys of educational dilemma, spiritual discovery and personal grief.

At 19, the self-proclaimed hippy and college dropout headed to Sugarloaf Mountain to ski and spend time in the woods.

After a time of reveling in what she calls her “adolescent rebellion,” Grenfell’s life was surprisingly redirected by “The Princess of Sugarloaf Mountain.” This sarcastically intended moniker referred to a thirtysomething woman, still dallying at the mountain and working at an inn. The young Grenfell looked at her one day and thought, “I don’t want to be that.”

She ended up at UMaine at Orono. Unsure of what to pursue, she became a Philosophy major, but she struggled person- ally. Living in a freshman dormitory, three years older than her classmates, Grenfell became depressed. Thankfully, her rescuer appeared in the form of one Kris Dahlberg, the Dean of Women, who took the floundering student under her wing. “She saved my life.” Grenfell says.

Dahlberg moved Linda to a graduate dormitory where a whole new world revealed itself. For the first time in her life, she was among people with differ-

See GRENFELL on page 4 .