Amy Toensing

National Geographic: Monhegan Island

Panayiota Boutis, age four, pretends to be a mermaid with a seaweed wig on Swim Beach.
   
This trip is about a half hour too long," says Winnie Murdock about the fifty minute boat ride from Port Clyde to Monhegan Island. Winnie and her son Kyle use the time for a nap while Winnie's husband John drives them home.
   
Not quite two miles long and a half mile wide, Monhegan boasts some of the tallest cliffs along the Maine coast, leading Captain John Smith in 1614 to describe it as a "round, high ile.
     
  
Picking only the darkest cranberries for their Thanksgiving feast, Winnie Murdock and her son Kyle forage on Manana, a deserted isle a skiff ride away that helps form Monhegan's harbor.
   
With a harbor open to the building southwesterly sea, Monhegan lobstermen will tell you the most dangerous part of their work is getting back and forth between the shore and their boats.
   
Painting a moving target, Jamie Wyeth captures energetic entrepreneur Kyle Murdock hawking his Dead Cat Museum to tourists.
     
  
Morning fog lifts off the meadow behind the Josiah Starling house, a witness to island dawns since 1784.
   
Grass waves with the sea breeze in Lobster Cove, November 11, 1999 on Monhegan Island, Maine.
  
Tralice Bracy collects seaweed for her garden November 12, 1999 on Monhegan Island, Maine.
     
  
Tulips are illuminated by the moon May 18, 2000 on Monhegan Island, Maine.
  
One of the last efforts of the day for a Monhegan lobsterman is hauling their skiff to the top of Fish beach. The lobstering season runs through the harshest months of the year, beginning in December and ending in June.
   
Lobsterman Robert Bracy clears ice from his boat before picking up a ship's pilot out at sea February 3, 2000 off Monhegan Island, Maine. Bracy is one of a few lobstermen on Monhegan trusted to deliver the pilots to the ships coming into the ports of midcoast Maine.
     
  
Chris Rollins takes a break after cleaning old bait barrels from his fish house. Long hours of bagging bait and repairing old traps make up the days leading to the opening day of the lobstering season, called Trap Day.
   
Pot buoys washed to the shores of Monhegan, sometimes from as far as Canada, hang in a lobsterman's shed, ready to be painted Monhegan colors. Each lobsterman has a color combination as distinct as their name.
   
A typical day for Monhegan fishermen ends at Sherman Stanley's fishhouse for a game of cards and a few drinks, February 1, 2000 on Monhegan Island, Maine.
     
  
Harry and Doug Odom turn in beneath each other's portraits while Taxi keeps watch. "It's a good life," says Harry. The Odoms have been Lobstermen, merchants, and island benefactors for some 60 years.
   
Museum curator Tralice Bracy heads home at the end of the day November 12, 1999 on Monhegan Island, Maine.