Vinalhaven has been a constant in Wilson Boone’s life since he was two years old, when his family started spending summers on the island.
Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Boone spent several years traveling the world after studying sociology at UMass Amherst, with teaching stints in southeast Asia and Nepal.
But Vinalhaven remained a home to return to and where he eventually started fishing. He works as crew on a lobster boat and is raising his young daughter on the island with his wife, Laura, a native of Melbourne, Australia.
They are currently building a new house on a piece of land Boone bought in 2015. Our conversation took place at their kitchen table on a sparkling morning in April. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
IJ: How long have you been fishing?
Boone: My first season was when I was 17, and I was saving up to go traveling. This is my seventh year with the same captain. Fished 15 of the past 20 years.
IJ: I know you’re mostly going offshore. What does that look like for you?
Boone: We fish federal waters from three miles out to area 1/area 3 line in the offshore zone. Thirty miles from Vinalhaven harbor is about as far as we go. We haul 800 pots. It’s a lot, but it’s ultra efficient. Twenty-five pot trawls with two guys in the stern who are in sync is about as slick as it gets. We’re out there to work and come home. I worked 130 days on the water last year and my wife is very happy that I’m fishing with someone who wants to be home with his family. I’m thankful everyday for lobstering because I am not the kind of person who wants to sit in front of a computer.
IJ: What were some of those early summers here like for you?
Boone: There’s a sailing school here and I did a lot of sailing. And it was just so different from being in Springfield. We would get here and our parents would just cut the leash. Because they were both teachers, we were here for the whole summer.
IJ: Did you find that you presented yourself differently when you went back to Springfield for school? Or vice versa, when you came to the island for the summer?
Boone: I certainly stuck out in my manner of dress coming to Vinalhaven from the inner city. Most people here didn’t have cornrows. [laughs] But yeah, even now, if I’m back in Springfield and run into somebody from the old days, I’ll notice changes in speech. At this point in my life, I’ve settled more on the person that I am here. But we’re always supposed to be in a state of change. If you aren’t changing, you’re kind of missing the point.
IJ: It seems to speak to how you’ve traveled in the past and how you may have presented yourself in new places. Tell me about some of your travels before you settled down here.
Boone: I traveled through Asia all of 2014, and that’s actually when I met my wife, Laura. But prior to that I had been working nine-month fishing seasons here and then ski bumming out west. One winter, we just packed a car full of stuff and drove a few thousand miles, just chasing the snow. But of course, every year you’re broke when you come back.
IJ: I want to hear more about meeting your wife in Asia. How did that happen?
Boone: I went on a two-week snowboard trip in Japan with a friend and Laura was bartending at a restaurant. I took her out to dinner, but then my buddy and I immediately left for Thailand for four weeks. Then he flew home and I stayed. For the first time in my life I was traveling totally alone which was super terrifying and also really freeing. I think that everybody should travel alone. You can really reinvent yourself, which I really needed at that point in my life.
IJ: And then how did you find Laura again?
Boone: My plan was to fish through the following year and then go back to Asia and stay. Instead I bought this land and this trailer. Laura had been living in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was coming down Route 1 on a road trip with a friend and I think she was probably like, “I think I know somebody in Maine who will buy me a meal.” [laughs] I grabbed my dad’s boat and went over to Camden and took them out to lunch.
IJ: Wow, what a way to show up.
Boone: We stayed in contact after that and, against the wishes of her friends who were like, “Don’t you dare go to an island where Stephen King lives,” she did come visit for two weeks. And we’ve been together since then. We were immediately either living together or in a long distance relationship. She didn’t have a work visa, so she moved back to Australia and things were up in the air for a while. But we stuck it out and I proposed to her in 2017.
IJ: Now you’re raising your daughter Maisie here. What’s her experience of the island been like?
Boone: She’s an awesome kid. We live on a dead end road and she can ride her bike and be in the woods and just be a kid. I feel like so much of that has been lost in a lot of other places, where kids don’t just go outside and play without supervision. And that was my entire youth, both in Springfield and here. It’s really incredible to be able to give her a different kind of growing up. I mean, she’s fishing lobster traps at five. She is super into it and is on a boat all the time.
IJ: That’s amazing. Does she have traps of her own?
Boone: Yeah, we have a recreational license right for her because she can’t have a commercial license until she’s eight. But she takes it pretty seriously and chooses her own spots.
IJ: Are there a bunch of kids here her age?
Boone: There’s 17 or 18 kids in her class which is pretty big for Vinalhaven. My family and two others have chosen to help raise our kids together. We had kids around the same time and decided to share child care to support the moms. And what’s cool is that all of our kids now have this group of adults that they have different relationships with. I think it’s really important that kids start hanging out with people who aren’t their age—and who aren’t their parents—right off the bat. We go into the grocery store, everyone knows her by name and she has funny little jokes with them. Your world is smaller in a place like this, but it’s bigger because people aren’t just faces.
IJ: Do you appreciate the island more as you see things through her eyes?
Boone: Definitely. It’s the sort of thing where you never go watch the sunset until someone comes and visits. I’ll sit here on my couch and won’t walk five minutes down to the point to watch the most beautiful sunset in the world. You’ve got to remind yourself to have an appreciation for this place and the opportunities it gives.
IJ: How else are you involved on the island?
Boone: I’m on the board of the Vinalhaven Fisherman’s Co-op. And we have a men’s book club, which I am the youngest member by about 35 years.
IJ: So it sounds like spending time with all kinds of people is important to you. Do you feel like it helps overall relationships on the island?
Boone: Because there’s no anonymity or because I’m friends with your friend or because I used to fish with your cousin, that means that the social fabric is stronger. Of course, there are people here that I don’t get along with and the way you deal with that is you just don’t deal with them.
IJ: The question is, do you still give them the island wave?
Boone: Not waving is a big deal. I was teaching my wife to drive standard and while she was trying to figure it out, I’m yelling at her, “You’ve got to wave at him!” and she was saying “I need both hands!” [laughs] But I’m glad that my daughter gets to grow up in a place where people wave to each other and care about each other. That’s a great place to grow up. And I feel like those places are pretty rare in the world.
Scott Sell is a former Island Institute employee and now independent photographer, videographer, and writer who regularly contributes to Island Journal.
