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North Haven, Maine: On Being "From Away"

The town bulletin board

Two weeks can be a long time. But two weeks of sparkling, clear days, one just like the next, can never be long enough.

There is something about the quality of the light here on North Haven that makes you want to freeze the moment, dance in the sun, cry. Things can be perfect.

Like a ship-to-shore communication from an earlier time, my text message to my daughters read, “Another beautiful day on this island. Running out of things to do. Dad getting ancy.”

Day 10 of our 14-day stay here and I've yet to write a word about this island, this North Haven, Maine that holds me spellbound and silent. I’m not up to the task. All the images and sensations bottle-neck when I try to describe this place--as if they are all trying to gush at once through too small a channel. I could write simply that it’s the most beautiful place in the world, but that statement might be easily dismissed--besides, I haven’t been everywhere. I could say there’s a photo-op around each corner (at the crest of each rise in the smooth, undulating roads), but that would be trite. I could simply write that this island’s beauty is hard to capture in words, but wouldn’t that be a cop-out?

Elizabeth Bishop says it best. Her famous 1978 poem, North Haven, was written in memoriam to her good friend Robert Lowell.

I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
the new cones on the spruce. It is so still
the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky
no clouds except for one long, carded horse's tail.

At its widest points, the island of North Haven is roughly 12 miles long and 3 miles wide. It sits in Penobscot Bay, about 15 miles off the coast of Rockland, and separated by about a half mile of blue water from the larger island of Vinalhaven. Foy Brown or someone else from the boatyard can take you over to Vinalhaven anytime. Round trip passage is $7; $2 extra for a bike.

There are about 350 year-round residents. With “the summer people,” the number swells to 2000. No one wants to leave; but come September, most do.

Writers are drawn to this place, as are artists.

I am intrigued with the island names. I meet them all in the two short weeks we are here. Kate Quinn. Stretch Perkins. Kiki Hamlin. Foy Brown. June Hopkins. Stacy Beverage. There are many rock-solid names on this island--Cooper, Waterman, Thayer, Cabot, Calderwood. You get the picture.

June Hopkins, a prominent island resident, who has lived here for almost a decade of decades still considers herself “from away.”

The main “industry” is lobstering. Despite this, lobsters sell at Cooper's in the village, for $9.90 a lb.

There is no supermarket, just a small grocery store that carries all the basics. No pharmacy, an occasional bakery, no hardware or liquor store.

What there is?

One gas pump for the whole island, two restaurants, one inn, three gift shops open irregular hours, two art galleries showing the work of New England’s (and beyond’s) best artists, a busy boatyard (Foy’s), a gorgeous library, a tiny post office, and anchoring it all: Waterman’s Community Center. The social history of the island can be learned hanging out at Waterman’s (which has wi-fi, for a $5 donation).

Despite all it lacks in commercial consumer goods though, it is possible to eat a mainly locavore diet in the summer on North Haven.

There’s the big farm up on South Shore Road, Turner Farm. It’s open Tuesdays and Thursdays. Turner Farm has a huge, new, beautiful barn. If you’re a barn lover, this is the barn you would fantasize building—post and beam, lofty, all warm wood and clean sawdust. Turner sells vegetables, goat cheese and eggs.

Foggy Meadow Farm on Crabtree Point Road, near our rented house, has a herd of goats and sheep and sells their meat. Doreen, the owner and a children's book author, will take you out to the shed if she’s there, otherwise it’s self serve from the freezer.

A small Farmer’s Market sets up Saturday mornings at 9:30 all summer, in the ball field across from the church. If it rains, it’s held inside the church. The vendors include a young man who bakes bread, a woman who grows beautiful flowers in her garden (the delphiniums were an iridescent blue), a few more local bakers, Turner Farm, and a local graphic artist selling t-shirts. You'll meet everyone there, it being the main event of the week (the vendors sell-out usually by 10:00 AM.

And there’s North Haven Oyster Company, up on Middle Road. This too is self-serve, self-pay. On one of the days we pulled our car up to the old refrigerator standing in the driveway, helping ourselves to a baker’s dozen for $10 as the sign instructed, we saw a man laid-out on a board nearby. “Hurt my back,” said a disembodied voice. He didn’t get up and that was all he said. We took our oysters, put ten dollars in the can, and left. (The oysters were delicious and briny and worth the struggle to get them open).

The use of credit cards is rare—it’s a mostly cash-only island. The honor system of paying is common.

There’s a song written about the island, a teenager’s lament called, “I Have Six Mothers, Three Hundred Fifty Babysitters.”

Kayaking one morning on the smooth, clear waters of Bartlett’s Harbor we encountered a curious seal who popped up to check us out, then dove. Two silent porpoises slipped by, ignoring us, as if in deep conversation. A mother osprey sitting on her nest atop Pulpit Rock shouted her warning not to approach too closely.