Hah; welcome to the real world. Lobster buoys hang like Christmas balls from the branches of a spruce. Rockland, ME 04841, SITE DESIGNED & DEVELOPED BY NORTHEAST MEDIA COLLECTIVE. And speaking of the mail-plane -- it was my only way off the island. More time passed; the economy soured. There is an Automated Weather Observing Station (AWOS) at the airport. A fragile, prized way of life, unchanged for generations, has never seemed more in peril. And these did not prevent really restful nights. According to Bill, there is no evangelical pressure, which he appreciates. Matinicus - Island Institute Two hundred years worth of clan-based survivalsix or seven generations of Youngs and Ameses and Philbrooks, and the few who have joined themfighting, marrying, burying, and working with one another, on a 700-acre island, has built up a very thick crust. Once we loaded three cars, two pickups, a dump-truck (which barely fit), and four passengers on foot, we set sail for the 2.5-hour trip. But, entirely funded by donations, this group does something that the State does not. Shes a little like a rainbow herself: stout and graying but full of wonderful old stories that paint pictures and cast spells. So was his wife, Jananwho had seen from her window the men converging on the harbor, and had brought with her a 12-gauge shotgun she would claim she didnt know how to use. ), Out on the water, Nat said, Youre close to your work, youre wet, its noisy, its real, sort of like farming must have been at one time. Lisa, for her part, talked about the silenceYou listen carefully, you hear individual things: the wind, the bell buoys, the generator at nightand the spareness of day-to-day life: That whole Walmart mentality, theres none of that out here. 3 Br Cottage Vacation Rental In Matinicus, Maine # 3814186 | AGreaterTown As of fall 2020, the school has no enrolled students but stands ready to hire a teacher and welcome children as needed. I feel for him, I really do. In many of the rest, scores of green or yellow lobster traps are stacked head-high, sometimes alongside the scraped-clean hulk of an old boat or dory. While Matinicus Rock is not a hospitable place, it was a necessary place for a lighthouse, situated as it was in a busy shipping lane roughly twenty miles off Maine's shore. Its hard times for everyone, he said. From Metinic we moved on to Tenants Harbor, just five miles to the northwest . 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. He used to work for the Maine Department of Corrections. The Matinicus Rock light station is the hub of the living quarters and serves as a kitchen, dining room, office, and sleeping quarters. They preferred the path they had always used before. 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. The world across the waterAmericahad not yet quite arrived. Walking the length of the islandtwo miles, an easy hours walkthe main thing you feel is the stillness. Youll break your neck (well, you certainly would on this island, where there are only dirt roads). Lobstering was a tougher business in those days: The boats were slower; you couldnt set your traps more than a few miles out from the island; and you had to haul them up by hand. If you have your own boat, moorings are available for rent. When Charlie first came here all those years ago, they cut his traps, too. MATINICUS ISLAND, Maine (AP) There's an "Island of Misfit Toys" in the popular holiday classic. It needs them, its always needed them. info@islandinstitute.org, 386 Main St. One doesnt just follow the water as I had assumed. I had two 10-year-olds this year already laying traps. And on this little island, where a brooding sort of silence has settled over things, its hard to find anyone who doesnt fear for the future. First there's the setting: Matinicus Island is the furthest out of Maine's populated islands with an official population of about 50. . You say.) It just seems like right and wrong mean different things today.. Not even one. Though even some of those may take extended winter vacations in places like Florida. So I next called Penobscot Island Air in Rockland. When Lisa finally didshed been talking about neighborliness and the response to the post-office fireit was so unexpected, and came in such a half-whispered seethe, it felt almost like an eruption: Its such a fragile system we have here. The Matinicus Island Airports 1,645 foot runway was completely rebuilt in 2012, through a combination of local funding and state grants. The only opportunity for food, other than what we brought with us, was to buy hard-as-rock hard shell lobsters from the fishermen at the dock and steam them ourselves in the inns kitchen. 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 walk to the airstrip was a bit farther than what we had managed already (more than double), being at the other end of the island. Robins, crows, sparrows, cardinals and jays were everywhere as well as a few hummingbirds. So he put more in. She was a Ripley, she had a store here once, she was married to an Ames. It goes on and on: this person, that house, this husband, that wife. But things settled down Monday morning and for the first time in four days we heard the roar of the arriving plane buzzing over the island before landing. In 2009, Philbrook said, hed sold more lobster than hed ever sold before, yet barely covered his costs. Shoot me, you stupid bitch! Weston Ames may have said, at about the same instant he grabbed for the gun. Five hundred traps was now a manageable load. In their many many decades on the island together she had slept on the couch and he sitting upright in the chair. There are probably not 35 today. They wont even talk to me, he said. If you marry one of our daughters, you can usually fish here, too. Physicians are also being forced to adjust to a reality where not every hangnail must be seen in the office. Matinicus gravel airstrip with the Camden Hills in the background. We can offer some slight reassurance that all is not lost. For 17 years after that night-and more than 30 years before it-he was a lobsterman on Matinicus Island: one of its most esteemed, remembered by some for his cussedness, by others for the size of his hauls, and by at least a few for the sick children he sometimes flew, in his private plane, to medical care on the mainland. And so theyd made it formal: If youre born here, you can fish hereor if youre the child of someone who was. Life on an Island: Silence, Beauty and a Long Wait for the Ferry Whole families moved away entirely, but still showed up to haul their traps. But now with this She tilted her head back, hard, almost violently, toward the open window behind us and the dock and harbor beyond. [3] The elevation ranges from 0 to 100 feet (30.5 m). The shooting happened over lobster traps: who has a right to them, and where. It seems almost of a different world. But things were changing, and he couldnt deal with that, I guess. Its a break in the family , I dont know what to think anymore. You cant even bring bikes unless you demonstrate you are passing through. But the deeper causes had more to do with other things: pride, greed, progress, family, what it means to claim a place as home. A friend of mine had recently taken a job on a tiny Island, 24 miles off the coast of Maine. And I needed the break, having been traveling for almost a month at this point. Matinicus has high-speed internet on the island, including wi-fi access at the library. The speck of earthnearly 22 miles from the mainlandis reachable by charter boat or plane or a short row from the nearby fishing community of Matinicus Island. A few yards away, alongside the traps still piled by the garage, two of the three Hussey children took turns dousing one another with a garden hose. Donna Rogers is 71; she lives with her husband, Charlie, a lobsterman, in a home overlooking the harbor. The Matinicus red dahlia society - The Working Waterfront Archives Bill is Matinicus oldest resident, lives fulltime there and has for the past 32 years. Inside and outside temperatures were the same at around 50 degrees; it was late May. My Maine Summer: Eva Meltzer Murray '85 and trash day on Matinicus Isle Many of the apples are quite sour, but there are also good ones, and the locals know where they are! Two hundred traps, maybe 250, were the most a man could manage. Every boat on the island, and Vance Bunker in his plane, worked the sea for days, while the islands wives walked the shore in search of clues. Cottage in Matinicus. Not really needing to take anyone else at the moment the pilot told us to climb in. So now they think they got a right to it. She then chased us down, which at our rate of walking was not hard, to tell us she was wrong, its actually one left and then one right. A judgement free zone. Our May window was timed on Tuesday to arrive one hour before highest tide and on Thursday one hour after highest tide. The station was known for its isolation and its punishing weather. When outside we could hear some nearby cows, but neither that sound nor their atmosphere made it into our bedroom windows. The whole thing had been somewhat casual. She looked at me coldly. The next day, a day you couldnt have seen coming, you back the wrong horse, play chicken with a couple of kids who arent 16 anymore, then pull a trigger in anger or fear. We are grateful to those who already participate. The name Matinicus means "far-out island" in Abenaki, and Penobscot People used the island while fishing and sealing. Vance and Chris getting into it, theres nothing new there, one islander tells me. Staying overnight allows the visitor to experience the peace and isolation of a remote island after all the day-trippers have left. The sun had grown quite hot and the route along dusty gravel roads required choosing between a number of left and right hand forks, all unmarked. But we were a bit unsure and as yet too shy to just knock on a random house door. Well some islanders still burn their trash, but there's a small recycling center generously managed by several conscientious volunteers. Matinicus Isle, Maine - Wikipedia Designer handbags are not useful, and neither are sport jackets, ties, panty hose, or any of that complicated architectural underwear they try to sell women to make us look other than how nature intends. I once headed out to Matinicus in a 22-foot sailboat with old canvas and a sputtering Evinrude. Everyone knows that the kids are the future of the island, Heather Wells told me when I met with her last summer. Spring was arriving and the breakfast table was set with his tulips from just outside. He rubbed people wrong. 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. On summer Saturday nights on the boat dock, Hussey and his guitar lead dance parties that turn out the whole island. 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. Thats how we found ourselves on this ferry, which now was making its way to Matinicus, thankfully with a stern wind and following seas. In a tiny office, you pay your $60 upon landing. 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. Their cottage had a kitchen and then a small room with a couch and a sitting chair. When half of them were cut two weeks later, he was sure he knew by whom: a pair of stepbrothers, Chris Young and Weston Ames, both in their early forties, with 400 years of island ancestry between them. Residents. Matinicus Island Maine - YouTube Red squirrel in Seurasaari. There could have been a pound of meat in each tail alone ($10 each). It used to be you fished here, you lived here, Clayton Philbrook says. I unfortunately did not get down to the harbor then for a picture of their ship. Though the inn was around 3/4 a mile away, trucks would stop as we walked and friendly drivers offered to carry our gear. But that was never the point. A Winter Adventure on Matinicus Island | Wiscasset Newspaper The Magazine. In any event we didnt hesitate to load our gear into his truck and never felt any concern over handing over even an expensive camera for delivery. They had since been taken to the mainland due to health issues and probably have passed away now. The next ship wasn't scheduled for several weeks so I would return to the mainland on the "mail-plane" in four days -- weather permitting!
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