On Little Cranberry Island, service at the Islesford Dock Restaurant ends just before Labor Day, due to the fact that most of the employees need to head back to high school and college.
For some of us who are left behind, September instills a yearning to start something new or go back to school ourselves, regardless of our age.
Longing for learning is intensified by the free time we gain when the island population drops from over 350 to less than 100 in the last week of August.
This year, restaurant and art gallery owners, Dan and Cynthia Lief, decided to offer an educational experience that would bring people to the island after the restaurant closed. In conjunction with their artist friends, Henry Isaacs and Ashley Bryan, they hosted a plein air oil painting workshop on Islesford. There were 14 students who signed up from as far away as North Carolina and as nearby as “just up the road.”
It was the first realization of something that has been discussed by a number of groups in recent years: finding a way to make Islesford a destination for artists and students in the fall. Dan and Cynthia facilitated the meals in their restaurant and they worked out lodging requirements for visiting students.
Henry and Ashley created the schedule, provided easels, chairs, supply lists, supplies, and their years of experience as painting instructors. Mother Nature provided a sparkling clear weekend for the students who spent all of their class time outside, complete with sunsets and just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes away.
No previous experience was required for the class, though many of the students had worked in different mediums and were eager to try oils. Only a few students had never painted before, and one of these fresh new faces belongs to my mother-in-law, Ann Fernald, age 78.
In the late 1940s, Anna Marie Cameron first visited Islesford as a guest of her high school classmate, Hazel Bunker. She asked her friend to introduce her as “Ann,” because she liked that name better. She started writing to one of Hazel’s friends, an island boy, who was serving in the U.S. Navy. Warren Fernald and Ann Cameron got to know each other through their letters, before meeting in person when he came home on a ten-day leave. On day six, Warren proposed, Ann said “Yes,” and they were married in Bar Harbor on New Year’s Eve, 1949.
With a family of six children, the Fernald home at the center of Islesford became a welcoming place for people of all ages. They collected people the way others might collect stamps. During the summer, there was always a mixture of kids and adults, spread out through the house, in deep discussion about things like politics, religion, premarital sex, and men walking on the moon. Ann laughed as she described coming home with Warren from a dinner party in the 1970’s.
Their cousin, a teenage Art Fernald, was sitting in the living room with his feet up on the coffee table, eating a bowl of ice cream. Warren said something like, “Well, Art, you’re making yourself right at home aren’t you?” Art’s quick reply, “I want you to know it’s a good feeling to know that I can.” The Fernald house was a second home for many people over the years.
In any community there are people who are resistant to change. Ann Fernald vowed, early on, never to become one of those who said, “…because that’s the way we have always done it.” In her enthusiasm to keep learning, she embraces people, knowledge and change. She says she is making up for the lost time of feeling inferior in school; feeling like she couldn’t learn from books the way others did. Her thirst for knowledge has never had anything to do with her age.
When she was 47, Ann asked her husband’s aunt, Hildegarde Ham, to teach her to drive. She then spent early summer mornings picking crab meat to sell, until she had enough saved for a car on the mainland. She was one of the first to sign up for a creative writing workshop on the island, taught by Brian Boyd in the winter of 1993. She regularly attends Bible study on the island, and her favorite time of day is early morning when she spends an hour studying Scripture. She attends as many community gatherings as she possibly can and she is a also a crossword fanatic.
In the spring of 2007, Jason Pickering organized a discussion group to recognize the 4th anniversary of our country’s involvement with the war in Iraq. As 16 people sat in a circle discussing their feelings, Ann raised her hand. Her commentary started with the words, “Last week, as I was reading our Constitution…” Jaws dropped as the rest of us realized we could not recall the last time we read the Constitution, if ever. “Well, I had some questions and I wanted to know more about it,” was Ann’s quiet response to the group’s surprise.
In the fall of 2008, Ann signed up for a ballroom dance class in the adult education program at Mount Desert Island High School, because it was something she always wanted to learn. Ann explained her easy enthusiasm to me with the words, “I’m so in love with life, at this time in my life, that I’m willing to go wherever it takes me.”
On Labor Day weekend, life took Ann Fernald to familiar island beaches to try something totally unfamiliar. Ann did not seek a spot in the plein air painting workshop, but with her reputation as an active student of life, Henry and Ashley asked her to sign up.
In the two days of classes, Ann produced five paintings, enjoyed meeting new people, and found the experience to be “very relaxing.” She hopes to continue to learn more about painting. Dan and Cynthia are already talking about repeating the weekend next year with the possibility of adding more students and one or two new workshops in different media. There is no doubt that Ann Fernald’s name will be on the mailing list.