Well Out to Sea: Year-Round on Matinicus Island

What's it like to live on an island twenty-two miles out to sea? Where there are only three dozen winter residents? Where the local economy is lobstering? Period. Where your most reliable source of transportation off the island may be a small Cessna and the airstrip is dirt (or snow or mud)? Where, if the forecaster says the storm is "headed safely out to sea," you know it's coming your way?

When Eva Murray took a job on Matinicus Island in 1987, she expected to stay a year as the island's kindergarten-through-eighth-grade teacher. When the school year ended, she turned down her graduate school acceptance, remained on Matinicus, and in 1989 married the island electrician. She and her husband Paul raised their two children on Matinicus and continue to live and work there full time. Eva is wilderness emergency medical technician, operates a small bakery, has served in several positions of municipal government, and has been a regular columnist for area publications since 2003 including Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Down East Online, and Working Waterfront. She is a 1985 graduate of Bates College and is currently working on a book about the modern-day one-room schools of Maine.