Island life is far from simple
The snow had begun falling overnight, and fell throughout the day, draping the towering pines and the lobster traps in blankets of white.
Still, Sharon Daley, a nurse from the visiting vessel Sunbeam, which provides medical care to remote islands off the coast of Maine, made her appointed rounds. She forged a path in knee-high rubber boots to the home of Bill Hoadley, who is, at 80, this island’s oldest resident.
She checked his blood pressure, which she pronounced “so good, it’s boring.” She listened to his heart, which was ticking just fine, almost in rhythm with his many clocks.
Hoadley, who has lived the past 30 years on the island 35 kilometres out in the North Atlantic, is part of a band of devoted denizens who would not live anywhere else. But their number is diminished.
The number of Maine islands where people live year-round has dwindled to just 15 today, from a high of about 300 a century ago. State agencies and nonprofit organizations have tried to stem the loss of year-round populations by giving islanders guarantees of a certain number of lobster licences, grants for affordable housing and upgrades to internet speed.
Other draws: freedom, quiet, beauty, the opportunity to live off the grid and a frontier sensibility.
Matinicus is smaller in area than Central Park in New York City. It has no stores, restaurants or pharmacies. There is a one-room school, a small post office, a church and a tiny library. There are no gas stations, but then, there are not a lot of places to drive.
Most islanders catch lobsters for a living. Like many lobstermen, Chris Hodgkins, 30, who lives in the island town of Frenchboro, 48 kilometres northeast of Matinicus, spends the winter repairing his traps, painting his buoys and cleaning his ropes. The economics of island life can also be tricky. “What’s happening on the islands now is not a simple decline story, as much as a whole series of booms and busts — in the quarry industry, in shipbuilding, in fishing, in farming,” said Heather Deese, executive vice-president of the Island Institute, a non-profit organization focused on sustaining Maine’s islands and coastal communities.
At the moment, Maine is in the middle of a lobster boom, following a sharp decline in prices during the global recession of a decade ago. That downturn fed territorial disputes and earned Matinicus some notoriety for lawlessness. Now, sea temperatures are rising in the Gulf of Maine faster than in almost any other part of the ocean, driving the lobsters toward colder Canadian waters and leaving islanders wondering how much longer they can make a living.
Despite a tendency of visitors to romanticize island life, residents reject any suggestion that it is simple.
“Anyone who thinks it’s simple is delusional,” said Natalie Ames, 48, who grew up on Matinicus. “If you don’t have the part to fix your kitchen sink, you don’t have the part. There’s an ocean between you and the mainland, and you have to plan ahead.”