James Alan Dorchester of Trescott, Me., died Saturday in the nearby town of Lubec.

He was 62 and had been ill with colon cancer for some months. His partner of seven years, Marilyn Alexa, was with him when he died.

Jim was the son of the Rev. Douglas F. Dorchester and his wife, Janice P. Dorchester, former Oak Bluffs residents who now live at the Thirwood retirement village in South Yarmouth. He was born in Rhode Island and went to public schools there and later in New Jersey. He attended Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and Drew University in New Jersey, studying English.

The Dorchesters came to Oak Bluffs as summer residents early in the 1960s and Jim worked four summers at the East Chop Beach Club and then five summers as a porter on the Steamship Authority ferries. He sailed the Lagoon waters between Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs in the family’s Cape Cod Mercury, and often fished for scup off East Chop with his father and four siblings.

After giving up academics, he moved to the Island year-round, living in Oak Bluffs on the Lagoon and working as a carpenter with the crew of West Tisbury builder Roger Engley. He started as a willing apprentice and learned the beginnings of his life’s profession from longtime crew members Paul Engley, Frank Gonsalves, Louis LaBelle and Buddy Thurber.

Thirty-eight years ago, Jim saw over-development coming to the Island, so he bought and moved into an old house in the Maine woods of Washington County, far Down East, next to a dirt road and near the clam flats. The house on Crow’s Neck Road had no electricity or running water. He worked as a carpenter there, building, renovating and repairing homes in his community, a job he stayed with the rest of his life.

In many ways, he lived a 19th century life through the end of the 20th century and into the 21st. He drew water by hand from his own well until a few weeks before his death. And except for a pair of solar panels to power music and television, his home never had electricity; it was heated by a pair of wood stoves and lighted by candles and oil lamps. He loved splitting wood and greatly missed that necessary exercise when he was not strong enough to work in his last months. He always fed himself from his own carefully tilled gardens, storing carrots, onions, squash and other vegetables through the winter and into the next growing season. If Trescott was lucky enough to get an early blizzard, he banked snow up around his house to keep in the heat.

Jim loved music. He sang in choirs in high school and knew by heart the Broadway tunes his parents still love. In Maine, he played some guitar and played harmonica in the local band Crunchy Frog. He still sang up to a few days of his death.

He was a passionate conservationist, learning to love the outdoors while hiking the winter trails of the Cedar Tree Neck sanctuary on the Vineyard. For most of the past 40 years, he was enthralled by the woods and water of Crow’s Neck and by the rocky cliffs and surf of nearby Quoddy Head State Park and the Bold Coast reservations at Boot Cove and Hamilton Cove. He rarely walked the beach or the clifftop trails there without returning with a backpack full of other people’s trash.

With others, he fought against an oil refinery in Eastport, a nuclear power plant in northeast Maine, aerial spraying of agricultural lands and fought for protection of the coast’s important fisheries.

Jim was a man of convictions who lived the kind of life he wanted to live when he was young. He was a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam War and never compromised on his advocacy of peace. He was often seen in Lubec carrying a sign protesting yet another American war.

In his last weeks, Jim and Marilyn lived in a Lubec inn loaned to them as a winter home. Longtime friends and members of his family were often there to visit, tell stories and listen to music. He died peacefully with Marilyn at his side.

There will be a memorial service for Jim Dorchester on his birthday, June 22, 2012, in Maine. At his request, his ashes will be scattered over his garden in Trescott and in the Atlantic Ocean.

A fund has been established to place a memorial bench and plaque alongside one of Jim Dorchester’s favorite Maine coast hiking trails. Donations should be sent to Marilyn Alexa, 6 Monument street, Lubec, ME 04652.