Maine woman harvests sea salt on remote offshore island

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 17, 2026

As a child of Matinicus, Usha Beaudoin spent a lot of time scrambling over slippery rocks. On an island only two miles long by one mile wide, she was always at the water’s edge, curious, investigating tide pools, discovering what remains on land when the ocean recedes. Time, tide, and the sun are always making salt here, drawing crystals naturally from the water all around. Beaudoin’s trajectory changed with the Covid-19 virus. She had been employed as a medical assistant in Portland. But the island wanted her home. She and her partner returned to Matinicus, the most remote year-round inhabited island in Maine. Through trial and error that she landed on the simplest, and for her the best method of manufacturing salt the way Mother Nature intended. This is wild salt in all its jagged, craggy, shape-shifting beauty.