The older you get, the shorter the summers are. By the time the Fourth of July rolls round, someone is sure to remind you that the days are already getting shorter. Now that summer is finally here, we can count our blessings. For the past eight months this column has focused on island communities throughout the long winter season. Perhaps in no other communities are summer’s blessings more complicated and more circumscribed than on Maine’s islands.
There are approximately 5,000 year-round islanders inhabiting Maine’s 15 island communities. This number expands to an estimated 25,000 islanders inhabiting those same communities at the height of the summer. Some might think that this increase is modest compared to Martha’s Vineyard that swells to 100,000 on a peak summer weekend – and that number was before the Clintons made the island an annual destination. But still, watching a small community double in size and then double again over a period of weeks not only creates a greater diversity in the community, but also generates a diversity of opinion about its trade-offs.
Given the new and increased pressures on island communities from the changes they are now experiencing, it shouldn’t be surprising that tensions increase and tempers occasionally fray. From a year-round island perspective it all gets down to that wonderful phrase I first heard an islander express two decades ago about the seasonal influx, “Summah people; some ahrn’t.”
Not so long ago Maine island summers used to be different. For one thing, summers used last eight or nine weeks from the Fourth of July to Labor Day. Then they were over. You’d know when a critical mass had hit the island because the selection of cheeses in the island store would be more exotic as would the selection of wines and beer. Mostly it was August when space got tight in the ferry lines and parking was hard to come by. Those “from away” usually came from families who had returned to the same island, often for generations, and were received as old friends bringing news and new social interactions to an insular culture.
But no one builds a summer house anymore that is used only in the summer; they are all designed and insulated for year-round use. Many new houses are sprouting docks off the shoreline as space in the harbor for a mooring is almost impossible to come by. Increased travel mobility means that May and June as well as the splendid periods of September and October are added to the months when you expect to see people from away. Some even come for Thanksgiving now. Summer people are really seasonal residents and many of them are better described as part-time year-round islanders. Islanders used to believe that their isolation and inconvenience would protect them from massive change; but increasingly those very qualities are a magnet.
Some island communities absorb the summer increase more easily than others, but all have adopted strategies that make sense for them. The town of Vinalhaven, for example, purchased the privately owned airstrip when it came up for sale a number of years ago in order to have control over it use as an access point for the island. Swan’s Island used to have a sign in the Bass Harbor ferry terminal headlines “Swan’s Island Is Not For Everyone” that politely discouraged casual visitors. The original summer community on Isle au Haut was located east of the island center at Lookout Point. Monhegan has wrestled with its summer fame for well over a half century with mixed results. Chebeague Island is in the midst of an incipient tax revolt from the effects of people buying up modest island properties for astronomical sums, increasing the tax valuations for everyone else.
At a recent island meeting I attended on the topic of a town purchase that would increase taxes for all, a seasonal resident pointed out that the non-voting tax paying majority was essentially excluded from participating in an issue that would be decided by a few score year-round residents. An islander responded that the meeting itself was a real effort to broaden the discussion on the issue at hand so that both the summer and winter communities could listen to each other. The meeting was a good beginning, but given the need to use scarce resources efficiently in a small island community, additional venues and additional channels for ongoing dialogue are going to become ever more important.
Part of the reason that Island Fellows have been so helpful to island communities is that during their time there, they report news of that community to the outside world through The Working Waterfront and through island websites and other channels.
Keeping the channels of communication open between the disparate communities of summer and winter islanders is a key role of the Island Institute and one we will continue to take seriously even as we take your suggestions about new ways to address an old problem.
Philip W. Conkling is president of the Island Institute.