CHEBEAGUE ISLAND



My husband's family has a small 2 and 1/2 season cottage on Chebeague Island in Maine. My mother-in-law stays there most of the summer. She has many social contacts there. My husband and his two sisters grew up spending summer vacations at the cottage.

The island has changed throughout the years. Maine beaches are usually smaller and rockier than the ones I grew up visiting in New Jersey. The water is colder but the environment is certainly cleaner. My husband says that some of the beaches on Chebeague have more sand than when he was a kid and some have less. Since I have been acquainted with Chebeague, some changes have also occurred. One still has to park their car in a large parking lot and then take a bus and a boat to get there. And the cars on the island are still not required to have license plates. And elementary school kids still attend school on the island while high school kids take the "schoolboat" over to the mainland. There are subtle and not so subtle changes happening to the island. Some of those changes sadden me.

The very rich people have discovered Chebeague Island. They came in and arranged to have large sprawling second homes built wherever they could buy up property. These almost-mansion sized structures take away from the charm of the island. Sure, the tax base will go up. At the same time though, the locals--who are impoverished-- see their taxes increase and it is anticipated that some of them will be forced to leave the island life handed down to them for generations.

There is one hotel on the island and a couple of golf courses and a grocery store and a gift shop and an antique store. There is a flea market once a week in the summer. There is one church, a community hall, and a library. There are two docks and a cemetary. The islanders have recently built a recreation center. A few bed and breakfast inns have sprung up. A restaurant has closed. The island has a visiting doctor and a visiting veterinarian. There are barbeques and fundraisers and bingo games and a chamber music concert, plays put on by the locals, a historical society, tennis courts, and occasional boat trips to other islands in the Casco Bay. There is an older gentleman who leaves bicycles out on his lawn for anyone to ride--for free. There is a lobster shanty that sells lobsters caught by island folk. There is Little Chebeague Island that one can walk over to via a sandbar twice a day. On Little Chebeague at waters' edge, one can see comarants and puffins. In the woods, one can view piles of old lumber and signs denoting what building those piles of old lumber were.

Chebeague Island is about one mile wide and five miles long. It is a pleasant quiet place. There are things to do. I like to go there to enjoy the quiet solitude of island life.


~sapphoq