Located 22 miles off the coast of Maine, Matinicus Island is home to about 100 residents, according to the Associated Press (AP). If one were to follow the South by Southeast heading to Matinicus harbor, steering from Owls Head Light outside of the Rockland Harbor breakwater, and should one manage to miss the landing at Matinicus, the next landfall on that heading would be along South Americas northern coast. And it is also fitting that a religious institution of community service, long ago wiped from our urbanized societal consciousness, still remains an important aspect of lives out on these islands. Though not born here herself-she arrived with Tom less than 30 years ago, which makes her almost an interloper by the islands way of seeing things-she can trace her own ancestry here back nearly to the settlements beginning: to Phebe Young, who came with her husband in 1763. Matinicus is a remote, largely forgotten island community of defiantly independent souls. My teacher friend had somewhat prepared me for life on this remote island -- no paved roads, stores, restaurants, or even bars. Bill is Matinicus oldest resident, lives fulltime there and has for the past 32 years. Being the school teacher in this very tightly knit island community apparently has its benefits! The yards are large and flat; a few have small gardens. Miller is Vance Bunkers son-in-law; he married Bunkers daughter Janan several years ago, bought a house on Matinicus not long after, and had been lobstering island waters ever since. Matinicus life: 2020 with a view, or a month of Sundays? Matinicus is one of a vast necklace of islands, more than 3,000 in all, spread out along the Maine coast as far north as the Bay of Fundy. Does that make any sense? Not the Sunbeam. Theres no war going on, and no one I met is groping for their guns. But other than that, theres at least some truth to most of it. We passed Bath, Wiscasset, Darmascotia, Thomaston, and Big Als Super Value Store, all places worthy of a stop or detour. 2023 Yankee publishing, Inc., An Employee-Owned company, all rights reserved. Then shed left, and returned again as a young wife and mother when her husband first took up hauling traps: Weve always had to fight to hold on to what we had, always. Back last spring everybody in America was waiting for butter and flour and toilet paper. (Some people talk about family trees; what we have here is a wreath.) Their son, Nick, now 30 years old and a captain himself, has been lobstering since he was 8. Residents. He made a call to a lobsterman who also had the islands inventory of propane tanks. Youll break your neck (well, you certainly would on this island, where there are only dirt roads). So, when I stepped ashore with just my backpack I had some idea what to expect. There is a library of books in his study, enough for a lifetime of reading, which I expect they had provided. Even the few who defend him, including parents who recall what he did for their children, are too fearful of their neighbors to say so publicly. Your spouse, the kid next door, more or less any random citizen can cut your hair; you just park on a kitchen chair in the dooryard. Matinicus Isle Vacation Rentals & Homes - Maine, United States - Airbnb Shes a painter, and in the summer also runs a small gallery she calls The Fishermans Wife, selling art, handcrafts, and notecards to the summer people. Its also at this stage of things that the silence sets in. Tornadoes strike Virginia and Florida, flooding in other states A friend of mine had recently taken a job on a tiny Island, 24 miles off the coast of Maine. Hes my family. Theres a way of doing things, Philbrook told me, and it just seemed as though the time had come to get things clear once and for all. These were not adorned with floating docks at the end of convenient ramps swinging up and down with the tides, made for small boats, deep water anchorages and a lot of maintenance. Box 648 By the early 1990s, at least a few were getting rich. Just about any Matinicus story you read (and there have been dozens, especially since the shooting) is going to have you believe that its either a rogue outpost of inbred, gun-happy cowboysPirate Island is a common referenceor a quaint little throwback to some simpler time. A mile and a half down, past all but the last of the houses, where the island starts to narrow and you begin to think you can smell the ocean again, you come to the cemetery. The ship lurched upwards as the dump truck with its heavy load drove off the ferry, onto the ramp. They came to get water as needed from Bills well. Together we drove up Maines coastal highway, Route 1, initially encountering the morning shift heading to the Bath Iron Works, but little in the way of summer crowds since this was still before Memorial Day. The island is part of the Plantation of Matinicus Isle. You almost have to be devoted to choose to live in such a place: some 15 miles off the coast (23 miles by ferry from Rockland); no year-round stores, or bars or eateries, or doctors or policemen or paved roads, and only one industry; where the fog drops around you like a curtain for days at a time, the same three families have been fighting the same fights for 200 years, and the ferry comes once a month in winter. Now, the whole country is waiting for a package from Amazon, waiting for tests and vaccines, waiting to find out if the kids hockey is going to start back up. The short gravel runway ends at the water's edge, so as we rumbled full throttle toward the crashing waves I was hoping things would go as intended! Of those, Matinicus is the most seaward, and the most indigenous. Become an online member today: To manage your account, just hover and click on your name above. On summer Saturday nights on the boat dock, Hussey and his guitar lead dance parties that turn out the whole island. Nowadays you can even text in a photo of that hangnail. A judgement free zone. On Matinicus, where the lines were drawing tighter, they told Vance Bunker that his son-in-law, a mainlander, was no longer welcome to set his traps. But also of cut traps, knife fights, boat rammings, death threats, and ancient feuds. It works. Lobster buoys hang like Christmas balls from the branches of a spruce. Its as though the clans in their way were a sort of monarchy: a continuum of ascendant families whose generations of canny, devoted stewardship will somehow see the way through. Its about building long-term memorylike the way farming used to be, when the kids still learned from their elders. Matinicus (Island Mystery Series #1) by Darcy Scott - Goodreads Thanks to our readers and especially our supporters who help to keep PenBayPilot.com an open and accessible community hub. It needs them, its always needed them. Grants and Scholarships Portal Apply Here, Download Matinicus Community Profile (PDF), Steamboat Wharf, a publicly accessible ferry landing, Power station generating electricity for the island. Many of the apples are quite sour, but there are also good ones, and the locals know where they are! Cottage Connection of Maine Vacation Rentals Since 1993. They need things, distances are not trivial for hauling gear around (try carrying building supplies a mile on a hand cart over gravel roads) and they use their pick up trucks to get these things from place to place. The tiny house was the office of Penobscot Island Air, a small company that provides air service to some of the Maine islands just offshore including Vinalhaven, North Haven. As a school project, the three students had helped make "stone soup" to share with their visiting guest. I rang the state ferry in Rockland and indeed it was already canceled. They might have been a bit bigger. There was some shouting. With the cod and haddock now gone as predators, the Maine lobster harvest had more than doubled: from 20 million pounds a year to close to 50 million. Matinicus Island - The Maine Mag But islanders know that no matter how important you are, how rich you are, how loud you are, how much you stomp around the flying service office yelling, Do you know who I am? there is nothing anybody can do about the delay. Bring the best of Maine right to your front door. Damn, we have a lot of cardboard here. In season there is a gift shop, a bakery and an island resident runs a taxi service. The gravel road, the islands spine, runs its dusty, almost unbending course through the old-growth spruce interior: from the tiny dirt airstrip in its clearing at the northern tip (shorter by 50 feet at high tide, they say), past the empty church and schoolhouse, the sad little pile-of-stones monument to the islands first white settler, Ebenezer Hall (Killed by Indians, June 6, 1757), and the two dozen or so hardy, mostly modest homes that cluster at uncertain intervals at the intersections of dirt side roads. Maine island library wants your banned books - Yahoo News In winter the Sunbeam will do some icebreaking for the harbors she visits. A saddening has happened here, Suzanne Rankin says. Twelve or 13 of them, I guess, came in and told stories, showed photos, shared their memories, she said. A good part of the rest, including the bigger questions of background and intent, and who was right or wrong, depend mostly on whom you ask. Our vague impression had been that Matinicus was an island suited to those who think perhaps that Monhegan may be a bit too crowded. Both of us had always wanted to go, so we resolved to find a time in the next year to head out there. She was the new teacher in a one-room schoolhouse on Matinicus Island. Nobody notices that your teeth are two shades whiter, either. As the evening of our second night approached, while we waited for a fisherman to deliver a bucket of 4 lobsters, we heard outside the rumble of a lawnmower. Spend your days strolling the island and collecting seashells on quiet beaches, and your evenings relaxing in a comfortable living room with a flatscreen TV. A working lobsterman's island, it has a small year-round population and few of the ameni. This Small Library Off the Coast of Maine Is Collecting Banned Books The Island Institute works to sustain Maines island and coastal communities, and exchanges ideas and experiences to further the sustainability of communities here and elsewhere. No cars, few people, great hikes (most of the island is a forest preserve) wonderful sunrises and sunsets and the quiet that only comes from being miles out to sea. And everyone was welcome. Now, with all thats happenedI dont know. You hear this a lot on the island: that the old ways are the best ways, that the surest route to the future leads through the past. The harbor itself was unmistakably a working place. Thomaston Place Announces 'Simple Pleasures' Online Auction, Rockland resident to be part of domestic abuse panel discussion in Freeport, Paintings by childrens author, illustrator Chris Van Dusen at Camden library in May, Rockland to celebrate Bike to Work Day, May 19, Native American film Dawnland to be screened in Belfast, Carol (Brown) Jaeger to speak at Hope Historical Society meeting, Megunticook Rowing to hostthird annualRow the Coast, May 7, South Thomaston historical society to screen North Haven film about the lives of four young soldiers who perished in World War II, Rockland Yacht Club hosts talk: The Popham Colony and the Reconstruction of the 1607 Pinnace Virginia, We Still Dance dance theater piece to be performed in Rockland, Print Day in May demo at Local Color Gallery to benefit turtles, Fishing Expo scheduled in Rockport, May 6, Coastal Childrens Museum May Events 2023, Maine author Bill Roorbach to preview latest novel in Thomaston, Captured-live London stage production ofThe Crucibleto be streamed at Strand Theatre, Poet, translator Mark S. Burrows to launch newly translated poem collection by German-Jewish writer. Maybe they could make it out tomorrow. The ferry returns to Rockland within about an hour of arrival on most days. A gentle, funny giant He drove a boat like it was an extension of his body Kind and generous, tough and strong ). Seurasaari - Wikipedia It was good enough to have our gear get a ride from the first truck that went by. But you need to find ways to help back. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. All of them, everyone, the whole islandmy family. The inn is an old house which over the years Bill has added to and worked on himself. He had to pay his dues. The runway is usable year round, and permission is needed to land. Its all around us, layers and layers of it. He collapsed in a pool of blood at his stepbrothers feet. He graciously had us at his home for a couple of nights. In past columns I have remarked once or twice that people who have something to say about an island not being part of the real world have a strange idea of the real world, as in, the real world is where you have to pick up your dry cleaning. We could fly out whenever we wanted; we told them we could be ready to leave by noon. In the summer there might be 200 people staying on the island; in February, as few as 35. For those fortunate enough to be neither ill nor evicted, but merely annoyed and fatigued by this year of upheaval, let me suggest that a few of us have first-hand experience. For most of the morning, hed been working on the engine, but the rain was a torrent now, so we were waiting it out in the truck. See Up the coast without a car for details. If someone had to deal with climbing up or down due to the tide level at the moment, well, so be it. And Monhegan has a number of facilities for the visitor, such as several old inns, a small country store with some groceries, a museum and art gallery, and a few shops. If you marry one of our daughters, you can usually fish here, too. Without a word, Philbrook was out of the cab, and for the next several minutes the two unloaded traps together in the rain. No cars, few people, great hikes (most of the island is a forest preserve) wonderful sunrises and sunsets and the quiet that only comes from being miles out to sea. (Pilot: thats not a step and moments later thats the brake line youre stepping on) Not helped by the fact that once inside and with an expression of real accomplishment written across my face, the pilot politely informed me I was in his seat. Not anymore, anyway.. And doing for themselves what has to be done since no one else is there to do it for them. Not even one. There were 188 people living on Matinicus in 1950, roughly half that 20 years later.
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