A Separate Peace

The Trailing Yew is also where we met Jim, one of many regulars and artists who come and stay much of the summer. (This year, we got his address.) And Carol, an art teacher from New York and a Monhegan regular, whom the kids adopted after finding her sketching the cliffs of Burnthead on our hike out there one sparkling afternoon.

Village Life

On Monhegan, village life definitely has a quirky flavor. There are art classes, ecology talks, bluegrass concerts, sensory awareness walks and artists' studios to visit. One side of the weathered cedar Rope Shed serves as an all-purpose bulletin board for everything from lost sunglasses to Saturday-night dances to massage or hair-braiding services. Even the real estate ads have an only-on-Monhegan feel. One read: "If the world system becomes unglued, this is the house you want to live in."

I joined a group of meditators at 7 a.m. at the library. The kids went to story time in the afternoon there. We built fairy houses out of pine cones, twigs and dead leaves in the Cathedral Woods, ate pizza and ice cream at the Novelty and watched the sun set over Manana Island across the harbor, sitting on the Adirondack chairs on the lawn outside the stately Island Inn while the kids rolled down the hill.

At Swim Beach -- which because of the frigid water is more suited to quick dips and splashing -- there is a communal plastic tub of sand toys, and everyone seems to know to put it on the rocks above the high tide line each night. One hot day, the kids dug huge holes in the sand for their "hot tubs" while I searched for pale blue and green sea glass -- bits of old soda and beer-bottle glass worn smooth by years of tumbling in the wind and waves -- and talked to a local lobsterman. He explained that the Maine legislature in 1988 created a special 30-square mile conservation area that is only open to Monhegan Island's tight-knit community of lobstermen. When the island's six-month lobstering season begins on Dec. 1 on Trap Day, everybody lines up on the dock according to seniority and helps load the boats. Their motto: No one goes until everyone goes.

This year, we bought watercolors and pencils at the Lupine Gallery, hiked down to Lobster Cove and handed out paper. I gave up and started to read, and Liam left to explore the tide pools and rusty hulk of the D.T. Sheridan shipwreck, but Tom and Tessa kept at it, with framable results.

Walking back to the village, we stood to the side of the road as a frail-looking, white-haired woman roared past in her golf cart. She stopped short when she came upon a burly lobsterman and smiled brightly. "Hi, Frances," he said coyly to artist and resident Frances Kornbluth. It's a small village and everyone knows everyone, whether it's a guy who sets bait in lobster traps or a well-known artist.

That evening after dinner, our last night on the island, Liam announced he was running off across the village to the dock -- as he did a couple of times a day now. Tom wanted to paint on the Monhegan House porch, saying something about getting a pile of bright blue buoys right. And Tessa and I, per our custom, stopped to look in on the live lobsters in the tank at the Fish & Maine restaurant before strolling to Swim Beach. We said we'd all meet there at sunset.

The invisible tether connecting us as a family stretched wide and easy. Tessa raked the sand with a stick to tend the "crops" she was growing on her farm, and I wrote her name. Then, one by one, we came together again, and watched in silence the miracle of a pink sky.

For a photo gallery with additional images of Monhegan Island and the surrounding area, go to www.washingtonpost.com /travel.

Brigid Schulte, a reporter on The Post's Metro desk, last wrote for Travel about the Oregon coast.