As the innkeeper at Matinicus Island is quoted as saying, “As soon as they ask what there is to do, I know they aren’t going to be happy here.”  We were very happy to be headed for Monhegan Island, a place known to be only slightly more “happening” than Matinicus.  We were looking forward to an afternoon without anything “to do”.

After an easy sail to Monhegan, I timidly hailed the harbormaster to request a mooring.  Monhegan Island is hard core.  They don’t mess around here.  Monhegan is for fishermen, and these days, also artists.  But not so much cruising tourists.  Surprisingly, a man came out in his beat-up old boat to help us secure our mooring.  We also met with a lovely welcome at the prerequisite dockside seafood shanty, where I found the harbormaster.

The mooring we took belongs to a fisherman, explained the harbormaster, but he is out fishing, so we were allowed to use it for a few hours at no charge.  The man in the boat chided us a bit because our mooring lines are not yet spliced correctly, but Chris explained that it is on his list of things to do.  The man offered to do it for us, explaining that they don’t have much to do out there lately.  This is only one example of the many people we have met who are still suffering from the downturned economy up here in Maine.

a fairy village

We traipsed onto the main road and met a couple who lives there in the summer.  They gave us directions to the Fairy Woods, which is on one of the many miles of trails that cover 2/3 of the island.  The Fairy Woods were amazing.  At every step, you could look down and find a little fairy house that someone had built using rocks, acorns, sticks, seaglass, shells, and moss.  Some were simple while others were elaborate villages, with connecting houses, gardens, labrinths, and pathways.  Some hung from trees, some were snuggled in the crevices of a rock, and others were nestled in the curve of a tree trunk.  We got to work on ours and left the woods with three additional homes for the fairies to visit.  We saw a lot of mushrooms, too, so there might be some Smurfs in the vicinity as well…

bryson’s house for Giant Fairies

Porter hauls lumber for Bryson’s “fairy” house.

views of the rocks below us

The rest of our hike was intense and I fell hard on some slippery rocks.  But the view was well worth it.

Reese and Porter at the museum’s touch area.

On the way back, we toured the Ice House Museum, which explained the ice industry on Monhegan going back to the early 1900’s.  We also saw the Monhegan Museum, at the lighthouse, which the guidebook had said was “neat”.  Actually, it was exhaustive, thorough, and HUGE.  We played speed zoo at the end (Jim Carey, Liar Liar) and zoomed through the rest of the exhibits, stopping only to gawk at the wall of photos featuring the current Harbormaster himself, who is a 4^th generation Monhegan Islander!

We managed to finish the museums in time to get to the two shops on the island before they closed.  I bought a cute little dress to jam into my magic locker back on Patronus.  Chris got a Monhegan t-shirt, because you just have to have proof that you got all the way out there.  We grabbed some lunch to go and got back to the boat, because we still needed to sail all the way back to the mainland by nightfall.  As beautiful as Monhegan Island is, it is not the place to stay overnight.  It can be raw, fierce, and dangerous out there.  In fact, when we left at 1700, we noticed the boats in the harbor already starting to buck and roll in the building swells coming into the unprotected harbor.

I am so glad that we got to Monhegan Island.  It’s not necessarily so hard to get to as to claim bragging rights, but it is about a 9.9 on the coolness scale.

munching my Monhegan Lobster Roll as we leave…

exhiliratingly beautiful

Monhegan Lobstermen have a closed summer season. They only fish in the winter and spring.