North Haven fares well staying out of the way

Serenity is an art, too, on Maine isle

By Christina Tree, Globe Correspondent  |  July 18, 2004

NORTH HAVEN, Maine -- ''This island gets very few day-trippers," says June Hopkins, proprietress of the North Haven Gift Shop, rather crisply.

A dozen miles offshore, North Haven is a scenic hour-plus ferry ride from Rockland. North Haven Village, with two gift shops and several art galleries, clusters around the ferry dock; a 10-mile loop beckons bicyclists past fields of buttercups to Pulpit Harbor.

Residents are understandably protective of their small island's considerable beauty and peace. Year-rounders number 340 and summer residents about 2,000. It's a ratio similar to many summer islands, but the relationship between islanders and summer people here is unusually long and close. Hopkins keeps running accounts for summer families and knows the names of members of as many as six generations of Boston's Cabot family, for example, when they walk in.

Founded well over a century ago by Boston yachtsmen, North Haven's summer colony now includes some of the country's wealthiest and most influential families. Over the years, some members of these families have married islanders while others have settled or retired here. The result is a creative mix.

North Haven Community School, with 70 students, Maine's smallest kindergarten through grade 12 school, has produced a play (''Islands") that has been performed on Broadway.

''Plays can go out from here and become part of theater all over the country," says John Wulp, the theater arts teacher. A former New York director and set designer, Wulp was instrumental in replacing the defunct Waterman's general store with the new $3 million Waterman's Community Center.

This new home to the North Haven Arts & Enrichment program includes a 140-seat state-of-the-art theater, the venue for summer lectures, concerts, and plays, including a world premiere of a musical version of ''Little Women."The lecture series this summer features specialists on the 19th-century literati of Concord, Mass. Wulp suggests that North Haven resembles Concord at its creative apogee.

This summer even veteran visitors are rubbing their eyes when they step off the ferry. Waterman's is just beyond the Maine State Ferry dock. Its exterior, designed with input from several architects, resembles an island store; inside, however, it's the island's airy and comfortable living room with couches, tables, board games, a ping-pong table, skittles, newspapers, pastries, and coffee. No doors are labeled. Open one and you are in a rest room, another and there's the theater.

Hopkins's shop is also steps from the ferry dock. She is usually behind the counter at the rear of the brightly painted store full of pottery, clothing, toys, Maine specialty foods, and a variety of crafts, including bags by the island's famous young designer, Angela Adams. This month Hopkins celebrated her golden jubilee as owner of the North Haven Gift Shop and Gallery, with an exhibit of art by members of her talented family. These include Eric Hopkins, one of Maine's best known artists and the reason many visitors come to North Haven.

Indeed, the Eric Hopkins Gallery adjoins the North Haven Gift Shop, part of the rambling wooden complex that has been Hopkins Wharf for a century. Open this season ''by chance or appointment," it is a destination gallery, hung with Hopkins's bright, bold paintings of water, clouds, and islands spiked with pine trees, seemingly all in motion.

North Haven Village also harbors Calderwood Hall Gallery & the North Island Fiber Shoppe in a cavernous, shingled building that has served as a movie theater and dance hall. Upstairs, look for longtime owner Herbie Parsons's island paintings. Downstairs has clothing and Maine-island-crafted items such as light ''wind bags" from Frenchboro, lampshades by Sue Staples, and quilts by Jean Baker White of North Haven. This summer, Mickey Bullock is also here with lustrous yarns hand-spun from her sheep at North Island Farm. For the first season too, Calderwood Hall and Gallery is stocking wine, beer, and water since the village store has closed.

At the center of the village, The Landing still offers inside seating as well as a deck, serving burgers, fish baskets, and the like from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. The Landing is also open 5-8 but The Coal Wharf, overlooking the Fox Island Thoroughfare, is what draws passing yachtsmen as well as patrons from here and Vinalhaven.

Twice as large and with approximately four times as many year-round residents as North Haven, Vinalhaven is an equally appealing but very different place. It offers a choice of lodgings but all are at the opposite end of the island from the Thoroughfare. No ferry stops at both islands.

''Most of the day-trippers we do get are sailors or summer people over for the day from Vinalhaven," Hopkins says. Given its resolutely low profile, chances are North Haven will continue to attract only such enterprising visitors.

Christina Tree is a freelance writer in Cambridge. She is coauthor with Sally West Johnson of ''Vermont: An Explorer's Guide" (Countryman, 2004).