The Quiet Season
When the summer crowds leave, Allen Island reveals a different side
From May to September, Maine’s coast bustles with people and activity as locals and tourists alike make the most of the short season of long days and warm weather.
Allen Island is no different, with eager boatloads of students, professors, alumni, and other visitors traveling back and forth from the mainland for research projects, symposiums, courses, and retreats. They fill the island’s buildings and trails with excited chatter and the buzz of learning.
In late fall, though, that changes. Island visits slow. Serenity replaces the hubbub of summer. Temperatures cool, making for nights and mornings so crisp you need a warm sweater and a mug of coffee or tea to cradle in chilly hands. Arrows of migrating birds fly overhead, some making a quick rest stop on their long journeys south, while deer peek out from the fields for a snack. Even the light changes as summer’s fog and haze disappear, and the bright intensity of midsummer’s sunbeams gives way to the softer, sweeter shine of fall.
A blanket of quiet settles over the island. Autumn colors sharpen with the twist of a seasonal kaleidoscope: the deep blues of the ponds, the bright blue sky, and the reds, oranges, and pinks of sunset. At the end of the day, golden light reflects from the windows, turning the old wooden houses into a beacon of warmth at the edge of Muscongus Bay.
Waves crash against the rocky shore as dusk turns to night, with the sea’s rhythmic, powerful surge vast and mesmerizing. With no city lights in sight, the moon is bright, and later, the evening sky deepens into a vault of brilliant stars. Soon, winter will arrive, and the island will be snowbound—but for now, it basks in autumn’s quiet warmth and beauty.
