Upton

The morality of nature

Louise Dickinson Rich’s  former house in  rather remote Upton, in western Maine.

Louise Dickinson Rich’s former house in rather remote Upton, in western Maine.

Lake Umbagog

Lake Umbagog

“Nature is strictly moral. There is no attempt to cheat the Earth my means of steel vault of bronze coffin. I hope that when I die I too may be permitted to pay at once my oldest outstanding debt, to restore promptly the minerals and salts that have been lent to me for the little while that I have use for blood and bone and flesh.”


―Louise Dickinson Rich (1903-1991), a once well known writer of fiction and nonfiction works, most set in Maine and Massachusetts.

Her best-known work was her first book, the autobiographical We Took to the Woods (1942), set in the 1930s when she and husband, Ralph, and a friend lived in a remote cabin near Lake Umbagog, Maine. She was born in Huntington, Mass., and died in Mattapoisett, Mass.

At the Mattapoisett town dock, off Buzzards Bay

At the Mattapoisett town dock, off Buzzards Bay