INTO THE REAL –OR UNREAL– WORLD

 

Checking to see what's out there.  
(Actually: Edward Hopper, "Carolina Morning")

“Welcome back to the real world,” was the laconic announcement by a crew member of the Elizabeth Ann, the people-only (no cars) ferry returning us from Monhegan Island to Port Clyde on the mainland, and who a few days earlier, on our trip out, had announced in witty detail how to use the ship’s toilet, seeing as the navigation and ship safety was pretty much taken care of in the crew's very capable hands.

The Elizabeth Ann comes into Port Clyde

Was I back in the real world?  Did I ever really leave it?  This was my first time out of Vermont since when...February?  Or was it January?  It's hard to remember; it might as well have been a year ago, that other time remembered as a different kind of life. And yet it was only to Maine, not exactly Japan where I’d hoped to be at exactly this time. 

Two Views of Monhegan House, where we stayed:
As it looks now (above) and as painted by Jamie Wyeth,
before the porch was rebuilt.

Monhegan feels idyllic, a place away.  That, of course, is the prime virtue of an island, especially one far away, in this case twelve miles from the mainland.  A place to recoup, reset, renew.  While we (my daughter Leah and I) were hiking one day we met two young women, both doctors fresh from New York City who had been overwhelmed with pandemic patients for months at Beth Israel and Maimonides hospitals, respectively. One woman said she’d been so stressed she’d considered giving up medicine. This was their first complete break, and they were loving it.

 

Islands do that for you.  As a visitor you have a powerful sense of having left the real world behind.  And you have–literally.  On Monhegan there is nothing to do but hike the enchanted forest and the staggeringly beautiful cliffs along the eastern side of the island, watch the people and the dogs all of whom will look familiar after a day or so, and eat and sleep. There are few distractions: no bars, no clubs, no meeting places other than the schoolhouse and the church.

 

There is this one pub, warm weather only, with made-for-pandemic seating areas put together with  
lobster traps and painted blue.  

 

And yet:  Its beauty is surprisingly elusive to many a painter and photographer. Not that its attractions are subtle; the sea beating against the immense cliffs, the mossy paths through the dense forest, charming cottages–all that.   And not that pretty paintings and photographs aren’t the result, it’s just that certain kinds of beauty inevitably tend to show up as less dramatic than they are in reality. Or sometimes they are merely seascape clichés.  

 

The arrangement of lighthouse, sheds and boat are an irresistible shot, and the scene has found its
way into many paintings.

 

In the background, Black Head. Could you tell it rises 160 feet above the sea?

Leah perches on a precipice that may be 100 feet or so above the sea.

Enchanting forest trails beckon.

 

  Perhaps you also have to concentrate on the more intimate views.

 

The island is small enough (a mere 4.5 square miles) that people start looking familiar after a few days. We met nearly all the resident artists who were there this season. We visited the home and studio of one artist who lives on Monhegan permanently. That makes her one of only about fifty people who live here the year-round.  Probably many, or most, year-rounders are there because on Monhegan lobstering is allowed in winter when other lobstering sites are closed.  Her studio is full of her paintings of islanders. Leah asked what life is like when the tourists are gone. “It’s like a dysfunctional family,” she said.  A day or so later when we were sitting on the porch of our inn I recognized one of her subjects walking by. 

An artist's home and studio crammed with her paintings of islanders

 

One evening at dinner a woman sitting at a nearby table said, loudly enough for most of us to hear, “I said I was lonely!” and stood up and marched out of the dining room.  In the winter, I wondered, where can you go after you throw down your napkin and stomp out of the kitchen?

 

The day we left the island we saw one of the lobster boats, converted to one that offered fishing trips and tours, that had just pulled up to the dock and was unloading a family of tourists. On either side of the helm, starboard and port, there were large flags, one an American flag, and the other a Trump flag. It seemed like an unwise business choice.  Since when have political candidates had flags, anyway?  Was this for a Trump Nation?  His boat wasn’t alone.  On the other side of the dock was another lobster boat I hadn’t seen before with the same rig: American flag and Trump flag. Here, I thought, was one part of the dysfunctional family.  

 

Many of the guys you see driving beaten up old pickup trucks on the few dirt roads on the island, carrying tourist luggage or food and supplies from the ferry are likely to be lobstermen in the off-season.  From the pickup trucks to the lobster boats, the pickup trucks of the sea. But maybe they’re all of different minds, not fervent Trumpers at all. I am only an ignorant drop-in, after all and know nothing of the life that is lived here.  Still, I realized that Monhegan wasn’t all that distinct from the real world.  That’s only a tourist’s notion.  I did wonder, though, do the portrait artist and the guys with the Trump flags relate to each other in the winter?  Do they even talk?  And really, what does it means to be in the “real world” when each person can assemble their own reality. A world where news and views and, increasingly, conspiracies, are curated just for you.  (Thank you for that, social media.)  What, exactly, is the real world?     

I’ve often referred to living in Vermont as living inside a bubble–not the real world– but that’s not really true either. In the small town nearest me there is a house with two flags, one American, one Trump. I wouldn’t be surprised that if more people owned flagpoles there might well be more Trump flags.  Some of us with Black Lives Matter signs have had them stolen or vandalized. (Mine was taken down, I’m pretty sure, by wind.)  The same divisions cut through here as elsewhere, but they’re jut harder to see.  And where there is natural beauty, we sometimes are like tourists in our own land.