Wish I’d skipped breakfast, but as it’s my favorite meal of the day, I hadn’t.

The hour-long crossing from Port Clyde to Maine’s storied Monhegan Island on what should have been a pleasant, sunny mid-August morning was complicated by intermittent rain, cold winds and dark, churning seas. Still, the ferry was jam-packed with jostling tourists from North Carolina and New York, Farmington and France, grasping at the last vestiges of summer. With most of the compact island’s cornucopia of art studios, eclectic lodgings and restaurants open only until mid-October, the race was on to see it all before the 2011 season was seafaring history.

With indoor ferry seating at a premium, I found myself perched precariously on the wet, drafty floor (here’s where 15 years of “hold the pose” yoga classes really paid off). At one point, after swaddling my dog Bianca in a windbreaker to stop the shivering, and seeing what I thought was my breath, I stumbled across the pitching vessel to an eye-level vent, turning my face to the heat the boat line had generously provided. As a ray of sunlight suddenly slashed the wall, it appeared I might get to see this tiny jewel of an island haven after all, and live to tell.

In time, Monhegan — at about 10 miles from the mainland, one of Maine’s most remote islands — emerged from the storm, its august, fog-shrouded cliffs making it appear larger than its 1 square mile, and looking as though it had been discharged from a chapter of “Wuthering Heights.” Debarking via narrow gangplank, my visiting friend from D.C. and I weren’t sure what to expect. Rain or shine, she wanted to hike the island’s majestic nature trails and I needed to paint my creative soul a brighter color in a burst of unbridled gallery-hopping. With 23 artists calling Monhegan home, or at least home for the summer, this wouldn’t be difficult. According to its history, the island’s artist colony began evolving as far back as the mid-19th century, with several Wyeth family members, Rockwell Kent and Edward Hopper among its fabled members. But first things first: The dark voyage-induced queasiness had subsided — and I was hungry.

Though island dictum avows no cars be permitted anywhere, an army of utility vehicles (pedestrians are cautioned to give these golf carts and small trucks right of way) bring food and other supplies to the tiny coterie of businesses, visitors and residents, the latter numbering “in the 50s” year-round. I followed one truck to Carina II on Monhegan Avenue — a snack bar about a five-minute walk past the original Carina, which is a popular grocery store. Partial to panini, the crisp, buttery mozzarella, pesto and tomato sandwich (about $8 including a bottle of water) fueled me for my upcoming art adventure, and I began my quest on the island’s famously unpaved roads.

Get your art face on

A small hike up Lobster Cove Road landed me front-and-center at Dyan Berk’s and Mike Stiler’s studio and 3,000-square-foot home. A “for sale” sign that locals say rarely appears anywhere on the island greeted me, and the gallery was open (short hours are common on the island, however). Originally from Kennebunk, the 20-year Monhegan residents are bidding adieu to their island digs due to economy-induced flagging sales (the couple shows at many other galleries off-island). If not sold, plans exist to reimagine the space into a Stiler-directed “meditative inquiry” center, something the artist claims imbues his renowned fantasy-like work in wood, copper, steel, rubber, graphite and more.

New Hampshire native and Monhegan summer resident Helen Prince’s Under the Arch studio — diagonally across from the Novelty (featuring pizza, ice cream and special homemade baked goods like giant ginger cookies) — is an adventure in “Yupo.” A synthetic, recycled, water-resistant paper, Yupo allows the paint the artist applies with a palette knife to build, the result like mounds of colorful, fluid frosting.

“Mine is an old building,” Prince said of the pristine hardwood loft-style space that houses her work, noting it was once a warehouse, and a fish house, but now appropriately showcases the culmination of 40 years of painting.

While artists have been visiting the island for at least 150 years for its unique beauty and isolation, the island’s existence has been chronicled by European explorers since the early 1600s, including Captain John Smith in 1614. It was the base for an early British fishing camp, later trading posts and home to generations of fishermen and their families. The name Monhegan is said to come from the word Monchiggon, Algonquian for “out-to-sea island.” According to an entry in The Bangor Historical Magazine from more than a century ago, it was Monhegan traders who taught English to Samoset, the Abenaki Indian, who in 1621 startled the Pilgrims by boldly walking into their new village at Plymouth and saying: “Welcome, Englishmen.”

According to carpenter/lobsterman and Monhegan progeny Kole Lord, whose mother was speed-boated to Knox Hospital by the Coast Guard for his delivery in 1975, there is no other place to be than Monhegan. “I live here because it’s all I’ve known,” he said, except for an off-island stint at Fryeburg Academy as there is only a one-room schoolhouse on the island through eighth grade, and no high school. He also attended college, then decided there was no place like home.

Recalling that Monhegan essentially “split into three families in the 1960s,” of which his was one, Lord has helped build the island’s last 14 houses (including his own with wife Tara Hire, owner of Carina and Carina II). He also built the Monhegan Historical & Cultural Museum, which houses artifacts and collections from the island’s rich history, and is located in the former lighthouse keeper’s home on the grounds of an 1824 lighthouse. Lobstering, incidentally, Lord’s other trade, is taboo all summer around the island to help re-establish dwindling crustacean populations, so his red-hulled Willis Beal languishes in the harbor until fall.

Visitors often feel that same strong connection with Monhegan. Auburn resident Pat Layman, who has been visiting the island with her family for weeks at a time for about a decade, affirms that Monhegan is not for everyone. “I love Monhegan, though it isn’t commercial and there aren’t a lot of organized activities,” she said, citing the Monhegan Memorial Library — with its collection of Monhegan history and land use surveys — as a special place on rainy days. “Aesthetically it’s a beautiful place.”

A trail by any other name

If hiking is to your liking, it is advised to obtain a trail map at various island shops or at the ferry. Monhegan’s 17 legendary nature paths, many with unparalleled ocean vistas, and with names like Gull Cove, Red Ribbon, Cathedral Woods, Burnthead and Pebble Beach, range from moderate to challenging and are marked by small numbers on trees and rocks, the latter at the beginnings and intersections of trails.

According to the literature, directions over rock ledges are indicated by “cairns”: piles of stones along the way. Tourists are admonished not to stray from trails at any time in deference to the island’s delicate eco-system, and to avoid swimming almost everywhere — except aptly named Swim Beach — as “tidal currents and undertow make rescue impossible.”

At Gull Cove, on the back side of the island, a nearly invisible moss renders rocks quite treacherous, with a few visitors reportedly slipping and having been swept out to sea. Some (as I did) may also note the complete absence of trash receptacles on the island. “Pack it in/pack it out” is pure Monhegan mantra out of respect for this special place with limited resources.

Among its other features, some of the island’s trails — notably Cathedral Woods — are peppered with elegant fairy houses, or Lilliputian structures comprised of natural elements like roots, leaves, stones, shells, feathers, wild mushrooms, pine cones, blooms, tree bark and more. A book by author/illustrator Tracy Kane, “Fairy Houses of Monhegan Island,” is a good guide to the phenomena.

If you long for peerless panoramas, a quiet so profound you can almost hear it, creativity at every corner, can roll with prodigious lobster trap decor as evidenced in island coffee tables and outdoor sculpture, and allow for the casual “island time” opening of various snack bars and restaurants (it’s not unusual for signs to say “opening around 11:30 a.m.” or “6 p.m. – more or less”), then Monhegan is clearly for you. For many, the solace in the solitude makes it well worth the trip.

If you go

Ferries depart from Port Clyde, New Harbor and Boothbay Harbor.

There is no camping on the island nor use of bikes or strollers on trails.

Trail maps, maps of studio locations and times, and a general visitor’s guide to Monhegan Island are available on board ferries or at points of embarkation and debarkation.

A list of accommodations, which range from bed & breakfasts to rooms and efficiencies to cottages and apartments, can be found at various websites, including www.monheganwelcome.com.

Check out Pat’s picks

Suggestions on what to do on Monhegan — in addition to hiking beautiful trails and enjoying the artists — from frequent Monhegan visitor and Auburn resident Pat Layman:

— The Island Inn: The interior is architecturally beautiful; the view is incredible — it doesn’t get any better than that; serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

— The Monhegan House: It also has a dining room – serves breakfast and dinner.

— The Novelty: Good gourmet pizza, ice cream and homemade baked goods.

— Cottage Rentals: Shining Sails (www.shiningsails.com) is a B&B; you can either stay there or they handle a lot of the cottage rentals on the island. There is a wide range available in terms of price and aesthetics.

— Monhegan Historical and Cultural Museum

— Lupine Gallery: The owner/artist has lived on the island for a long time and is a wealth of information about Monhegan.

— Cathedral Woods: One of the trails where you’re sure to find fairy houses.

— The D.T. Sheridan shipwreck: Sunk Nov. 5, 1948, it can be found in Lobster Cove.

— Monhegan Memorial Library

— The Ice Pond: Where you can feed the ducks.

— Manana Island: A skiff can be arranged to take you across the harbor to this small island, home to a former Coast Guard fog signal station and boasting a rock with possible Norse or Phoenician inscriptions.

— Bird watching: It’s a September tradition on the island so bring your binoculars.

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