Refreshments can found at a coffee shop and seafood is available at an outdoors beach shack and even in a very fine restaurant. It was mid-April of last year, a little more than a month since a jury had taken a day and a half to acquit him of all charges stemming from what had happened on the island dock that day. 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. Matinicus and Monhegan are the only year-round islands powered by diesel generators. Theyre the best there is, hands down, says Marty Malloy, whos been buying lobsters for a living since he got out of the Navy 10 years ago. Box 648 The Matinicus Rock light station is the hub of the living quarters and serves as a kitchen, dining room, office, and sleeping quarters. Matinicus boat owners began wintering in Florida, or buying second homes on the mainland. He had built for them a small bridge over a creek to cut their well trips down by around 50 feet, but they didnt use it. Its hard to account for why exactly. I rang the state ferry in Rockland and indeed it was already canceled. 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. If you marry one of our daughters, you can usually fish here, too. The roads there dont go very far anyway. Wherever he was living, hot showers didnt seem to be one of the amenities. Matinicus Island can be reached by sea or air. There was plenty of money, a close family, a lifetime of friendships, a job you were good at, the respect of almost everyone you knew. The Bunkers and the Youngs feudingthat goes back. 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. The 2000 census had the population at 51 but in the dead of winter, the population can dwindle to around 20. Its a boat no serious lobsterman has worked from in probably 60 years, but it leaves no carbon footprint, and thats important to Hussey. What an amazingly beautiful flight, accented by Autumn's fiery leaves. The first of these was on a Tuesday and the next that following Thursday, which would permit a two day stay on the island. The cost of living can be significantly higher than on the mainland, as groceries and other supplies are often transported by plane and electricity is generated with diesel. But lately, since that July morning two years ago, when Vance Bunker shot Chris Young-and the islands clan-based, sometimes brutish culture was suddenly the stuff of cable-TV newsthe islanders devotion, while no less total, has stiffened and turned fearful. So most notably we took some really deep afternoon naps. Its also the biggest reason why, whenever theres an event at the schooljust about any event at any time of day that involves the five or six kids there30 people are apt to show up. 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. She was the new teacher in a one-room schoolhouse on Matinicus Island. Maybe they could make it out tomorrow. 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. There is nowhere to wear those cute shoes. High heels are a complete waste of money; youll never use them. 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. 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. Granite shorelines mostly. His second shot hit Chris Young in the neck. 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. Find unique places to stay with local hosts in 191 countries. Her devotion to the place seems almost ingrown. Harold had bested me in bringing less, simply a large beach towel draped over his shoulders (Douglas Adams would be pleased) and some peanut butter crackers. Memories, connections, personal histories. Bill is Matinicus oldest resident, lives fulltime there and has for the past 32 years. You say.) The island has a growing group of children approaching school age. 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. The world across the waterAmericahad not yet quite arrived. Shes in her late sixties, an attractive, courtly woman with frosted gray hair and blue, intelligent eyes. The day I walked it, the only movement I saw was a woman feeding an animal at her back door. All that was many months ago. The sand was dark and very fine. Or maybe Vance Bunker cut them, or maybe both of them did, or neither; it can be foggy off Matinicus in the early mornings. Second Fig is perched at the end of a grassy road in a field dotted with apple trees overlooking the sea on the remote island of Matinicus. People do more than one thing.) All ages, all health conditions,. There was nothing legally binding in anything they decided; a licensed lobsterman, as far as the law is concerned, can set his traps anywhere he chooses. Their cottage had a kitchen and then a small room with a couch and a sitting chair. He drives slower after that.. (Only? 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. 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. Well, it was grounded Friday and Saturday due to heavy fog and again on Sunday because of very strong winds. In Maine, heavy rain and powerful wind gusts knocked out power for more than 50,000 homes and businesses on Monday morning. I unfortunately did not get down to the harbor then for a picture of their ship. Open to all, supported by readers. The Magazine. He came home and got a job as a sternmanan assistanton another islanders lobster boat, then other boats after that. We stayed at what was once an inn, but now the innkeeper has retired. That's the island way! It had all changed so fast. Backing up some. This from someone who recalls the days, 30 and 40 years ago, of church suppers, bingo nights, and community softball games; when times were so tight that most of the men fished year-round (the norm these days is April through December) and still went out at night with herring nets; and grudges, no matter how bitter, were nearly always trumped by need. It was the communitys heart; it had begun as a chandlery a hundred years before, and later was a general store. I had expected mainly just conifers such as spruce and firs, which are in fact there. Its a break in the family , I dont know what to think anymore. You could row out in the harbor and catch as many cod as you wanted; there were cattle here then, and horses, geese, and pigs. It tells of Indians, settlers, famous storms, and old shipwrecks, as well as a long-ago girlhood of apple fights and ice-cream making and homemade kites made of brown wrapping paper and miles of trawling line. Nearly every home on the island has a copy. It's also not the lawless, wild pioneer village some have made it out to be. Hussey is a lawyer in his forties, a slight man with thin features and tousled, receding brown hair. Its what you had to do.. Inside and outside temperatures were the same at around 50 degrees; it was late May. And we were told that the water taxi service is well run and a good option. Things had been the same a long time. Overall, our two days out on Matinicus made for a very special visit and I especially am glad we saw it before the summer season really began. This is not just a learning curve for the patient, by the way. Or even just get a cup of coffee and some conversation. Hes in his late fifties, a big man with thick arms, a droopy, graying mustache, and a warm but very certain way of saying things. And Id do about whatever I had to do to see that doesnt happen, he said. Along the way, he married an Ames girl. Does that make any sense? And speaking of the mail-plane -- it was my only way off the island. There are two private ferries on the island: Matinicus Excursions (207) 691-9030 and Penobscot Ferry and Transport (207) 691-6030. 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. Wake up to the day's most important news. MATINICUS ISLAND, Maine (AP) There's an "Island of Misfit Toys" in the popular holiday classic. It was somewhere along this cycle that the first real damage was done. Its the same with everyone here. One doesnt just follow the water as I had assumed. 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. A fragile, prized way of life, unchanged for generations, has never seemed more in peril. Anybody who still believes that the CEO is by definition more important than the delivery boy is thinking like its, well, 2019. Theyre archetypes, all of them: Rugged Individualism, Frontier Justice, The Good Old Days. And hes the one who brought the guns to the argument., Three summers ago, the summer before the shooting, the island got together and threw itself a high-school prom: men, women, and teens, many in 30-year-old tuxes or too-tight, floor-length dressesone guy even in white tierocking out to Boogie Fever in the church basement under crepe paper and string lights, popping flashes, selling raffle tickets, drinking spiked punch from a bowl in a neighbors yard. They voted him off the islandout of island waters. But a bad hurt has happened. 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. In the photo, the harbor boats seem smaller, and humbler, than I remember. Join for as little as $2.99 per month and support local journalism on a community hub that serves everyone. Most Matinicus residents are self- employed, with fishing and construction being the most common industries. 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. Old pickups sit in driveways, their six-year-old license plates bearing witness to their last presence on the mainlandwhich some here call America.. Rankin lives, with her husband, Tom, in a 200-year-old farmhouse along a gravel road, the only through road here, midway between the school and the church. But things were changing, and he couldnt deal with that, I guess. While youre at it you can also paint the dogs nails. It used to be, you had to work for every dollar you got. It could have been something their grandfathers were fighting about.. Then at the next meeting, they go and change the rules.. ), 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. He defied them: set 400 traps around Matinicus, reportedly with his father-in-laws blessing. I loved seeing that. First there's the setting: Matinicus Island is the furthest out of Maine's populated islands with an official population of about 50. . This is not a place fixed up to fit into someone elses idea of what an island off the coast of Maine should be like. 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. Fish and Wildlife Service's Maine Coastal . We weaved through hundreds of colorful lobster pot buoys; the captain skillfully avoiding them remarkably. And probably a few other professions I dont know about. (In 2001 it had none at all, but stayed open officiallyabsorbing the costs requiredto avert the bureaucratic death knell that closure would have meant.). Upon returning to the school, we found a surprise left at the door by the brothers' uncle, who just happens to be a lobsterman -- imagine that. For those at the moment safe from the big problems wildfire and hurricane, racism and hunger, depression and fear, and forgive me for making light in a time of crisiswe might compare notes. It is exactly what that island life is, unvarnished by anyones expectations. Though there are two sandy beaches out there which we did not get to. (Photo courtesy Robin Tarkleson), Matinicus (Photo courtesy Kimberly Peabody), Matinicus below (Photo courtesy Kimberly Peabody), Knitting socks is so 2020 (Photo courtesy Eva Murray), Eva Murray: Baking bread and watching chickadees, Eva Murray: A trip with Honor Flight Maine, Eva Murray: Tenants Harbor and Matinicus Island combine effort for shoreline cleanup, Without an Agenda: talking with the crew of the Sunbeam, Without an agenda: talking with the crew of the Sunbeam, Eva Murray: Island winter weather, food, and the owls, Eva Murray: An accidental twitcher birding on Matinicus Island. The question is: Where will the next line be?. We all dined together and then headed to the beach, walking past the island graveyard, to explore for the rest of the day. Matinicus may appear to be a quaint, sweet little New England town, but that's not the whole story. But there was no time for a fire in the old stone hearth. From Metinic we moved on to Tenants Harbor, just five miles to the northwest . When outside we could hear some nearby cows, but neither that sound nor their atmosphere made it into our bedroom windows. As of fall 2020, the school has no enrolled students but stands ready to hire a teacher and welcome children as needed.