“Laid back. Friendly. Quiet, for the most part.” That’s Scott Wood describing his hometown, Long Island.

“It’s changed,” he says. One of Maine’s newest towns, Long Island covers about 1.4 square miles of woody outcropping in Casco Bay, three miles northeast of Portland. The town is home to around 200 year-round residents. It’s heavily involved in lobstering.

Wood owns Boathouse Beverage, a variety store a few hundred yards from the ferry dock. The change he’s talking about goes back a while, pre-dating the island’s 1993 secession from Portland.

“You don’t know everybody. When I was young, you didn’t see somebody you didn’t know,” he says.

“We are moving toward Peaks, slowly,” he adds, referring to Long Island’s southern neighbor, whose population swells seven-fold during the summer months.

Still, it’s quiet for the most part. Wood is right about that. And I’ve got experience to judge. For some inexplicable reason, I keep landing the luckiest gig at the Sun Journal and, for a third summer, I’ve been charged with lounging on the beaches and exploring the bike paths of a Casco Bay island, in this case Long Island. If this place is moving towards Peaks, as Wood says, it’s doing so at a snail’s pace.

You won’t find the same crowds on Long Island as some other Casco Bay islands. The higher-end restaurants, the shops, and the artists galleries that attract those crowds have not yet made their way to this island, at least not permanently.

“There used to be a nice restaurant. Then that went out of businesses. There was an inn, too. And there was a breakfast place, but that closed last year,” according to Simon Leeming, who has has been summering on Long Island for more than 20 years. I find him lounging on the beach with his wife, Alice, and daughter, Caroline.

“There’s a very slow pace to this island,” he tells me.

The Leemings live in Canterbury, N.H., although Simon is originally from New Zealand. They’re at the beach with another summer family, David and Louise Uehling, who visit each year from Beaufort, S.C.

In the company of these long-time summer residents, I cannot help but dive into that sometimes trivial, but ultimately central question of any travel writer: So, what is there to do?

Alice Leeming provides the most insightful answer.

“What attracts people to this island,” she says, “is the same thing that keeps people away.”

The group also provides more tangible answers. Simon Leeming mentions the beaches. There is talk about the library being the focal point of the community. But it is Alice Leeming’s assertion that sticks with me.

Those who visit Long Island, whether for a day or a summer, come seeking an experience that they cannot get on Peaks. They come to get away from the galleries, restaurants, ice cream parlors and crowds. And year-round residents are rightly wary of further development.

But let’s pause here, because I can almost hear the exasperated voice of a more probing reader wondering, “Is he going to tell me what I should do when I spend a day on the island?” The answer is: No, not really.

Of course there’s the biking, the “lunch truck,” the beaches and the gift shop (see related story) but what is more compelling is the history and people of Long Island. It’s the story most worth telling.

The town occupies all of Long Island proper, as well as several outlying islands. Its main landmass is — as the name suggests — long and thin, running two miles perpendicular to the mainland and less than a mile across at its widest extent, in the southwestern portion of the island. It is primarily wet and wooded, and craggy or marshy at points. Houses and cottages abound. Many are colorful, some are clearly for seasonal use, on others are signs advertising short- or long-term rental. Island Avenue is the main road.

There are about two dozen roads on the island, many dirt or gravel.

The island is a town. It operates a school for kindergarten through fifth grade in the same facility that houses the library, which acts as a community center. The town offices are located near the ferry dock on Wharf Street. They are also near the Long Island Historical Society Museum, which houses artifacts related to the town’s founding.

In July, the residents of Long Island celebrated Independence Day, three days after the 20th anniversary of their secession from Portland. Among the state’s youngest towns — just across Chandler Cove, the island of Chebeague celebrated its sixth year of township status this month — the island has seen change that goes back beyond the last two decades.

“This is the last lot of the original Cushings,” says Sarah Teague, sweeping her arm, standing in the entryway to her yellow stucco house. Sarah is 88 and she is the last descendant of the island’s original inhabitants.

No, really. Two-hundred and eighty-one years ago the island was purchased and settled by one of Teague’s ancestors, Col. Ezekiel Cushing.

“He owned the whole island,” she says. When he died in 1765, he left the island to his nine surviving children, who slowly began selling lots to new settlers.

“They were all fishermen” back then, Teague tells me. “Then lobstermen, later.” In the 1700s, lobsters were so plentiful as to be worthless. If they were caught, they were often used as pig feed.

Teague’s grandfathers were fishermen. Her brothers were the first to take up lobstering, their occupations interrupted by four American wars in which they served in the Navy and Merchant Marines.

Teague’s house stands on the last of the original Cushing claim. Though the old homestead was destroyed years ago and her house built only in the last few decades, she says she’s connected to the past by her view of the beach, just a few hundred yards through the trees, and by her brother’s old fishing boat, standing dilapidated in the front yard.

I ask her what’s changed. “A lot of the lights go off in the houses” in the winter, she says.

I ask her if this is a recent development. “Oh no, that’s always been,” she says. They’ve always summered here, those who come from New York and Massachusetts. Well, “most of ’em’s from Massachusetts.”

The difference now is the numbers, she explains. The old summering families, the part-time islanders who you’d see for three months every year, they’re being priced out, forced to rent their cottages or sell to developers and rental companies.

And the percentages are changing. There is more swelling in the summer months, fueled by visitors who stay for ever-shorter durations.

“Why, old Floyd’s house,” Teague points up the street, “is now owned by Massachusetts folks.”

But it’s not just the “Massachusetts” folks. Long Island is a natural destination for visitors, even mainland visitors who come just for the day, looking to experience some island culture on one of the few accessible and still rustic isles of Casco Bay.

On South Beach, I run into some Portlanders who explain why that is. “Because Peaks isn’t as cool as this.”

By “cool,” I assume Elliot Murphy means calm, tranquil and natural. And that it is.

Murphy lives in Portland’s East End, but he’s come out for his second visit to Long Island this summer. I find him with his wife, Davay, and their daughter Rhaiza. They took the afternoon ferry over and are spending a few hours on the island with their friends Anna and Aaron Baglien, of Portland, and Paul and Marcia Fairman, who live in Lisbon Falls.

I ask them collectively why they come to Long Island, why they come back throughout the summer. I get an answer I already expect. “Because of this,” Elliot Murphy gestures to the nearly empty beach.

The sun is going down behind us. The beach is a deep yellow. It’s edged by green marsh grass, glinting in the waning light and swaying with the breeze. There is the sound of the birds and the wind and, lightly, of the surf. It is peaceful and natural, unspoiled and beautiful.

“And tons and tons of sea glass,” says Marcia Fairman.

By the time I board the 8:40 p.m. ferry to take me back to Portland, I have seen what I needed of Long Island. I have biked, visited the beaches, explored a good portion of the island. And, at the same time, I’ve seen hardly anything.

I’ve gotten a brief glimpse into a small, tightly knit community, whose recent autonomy belies its deep roots. I’ve just begun to form a picture of a place in flux, a place concerned with its history and the pace of change.

Long Island is a beautiful setting, a great island to visit if you’re in the mood for calm, for biking and picnicking and looking for sea glass. It’s not a destination for shopping, or for haute cuisine dinners, and it doesn’t aspire to be trendy — though that’s just what makes it so cool.

And it’s that coolness that has islanders, and me, worried.

I’m reminded of what Alice Leeming said: “What attracts people to this island is the same thing that keeps people away.” The fear is that, as more people learn of this gem, its quality will diminish.

But I think there is a solution, and it’s not to dissuade people from visiting. It’s to urge people to visit with consideration for the town and its history. Don’t be a passer-through, another face that Scott Wood can’t identify. Wave. Say hello. Introduce yourself. Become a summer islander, even if you only visit a few times. Go to the library. And get to know those who call this town home.

As the boat pulls away, the jumping kids make synchronized leaps from the 20-foot pier, splashing into our wake. It seems there are always kids diving from the heights of the dock. There’s applause from those watching the jumping kids, and I can’t help but think that it  coincides, also, with the ferry’s departure.

The people on the boat wave goodbye to the island and we steam back to the mainland.

Casco Bay Ferry Lines, located on Commercial Street in Portland, operates daily service to Long Island, and many of the islands of Casco Bay. A round-trip ferry ride will cost you around $10 per person (or bicycle). The schedule can be found here: http://www.cascobaylines.com/schedules/

GO by bicycle. It’ll cost you an extra ferry ticket, but it’ll save your legs and it’s less expensive than renting a golf cart once you get there. You can always go on foot, but be warned: A mile-and-a-half may sound small, but it’s called long for a reason.

LOUNGE Long Island is unique among its Casco Bay brethren for white sand beaches. Good for reading, beach combing, picnics and taking in some beautiful scenery. I’m told they can be busy, though they were quiet when I visited.

The ferry drops you off at Wharf Street. Follow that in any direction and you will come to Island Avenue. Take a right on Island Avenue and a left when you come to the Long Island Store (closed at the moment for renovations). Take this road, Beach Avenue, for a quarter-mile and make a left on Fowler Road, which makes a hard turn when it hits the end of the island and the entrance to Fowler Beach.

This is the smaller of the two beaches, with two sweeping sides that converge in a rocky peninsula. On either side, the coast turns to high rocky ledge.

If, instead, you continue on Beach Avenue and do not take that left on Fowler, the road will end in a turnout that marks the entrance to South Beach. Running a quarter-mile up the coast, the lower two-thirds of this beach are owned by the state. It’s expansive and pristine, lined by rippling walls of marsh grass.

At either beach, leave your trash in the municipal cans on your way out.

EAT Though the island’s only full-service restaurant is now closed, there are still options for the hungry traveler on the island.

Fern Park Lobster Company, on Beach Avenue, sells live hard and soft shell lobsters. They’re open Thursday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. and on the weekends 3:30 to 6 p.m., or by order. The Lunch Truck, a one-room-restaurant with outdoor, beneath-tarp seating, sells sandwiches, salads, treats and drinks Fridays through Sundays around 10:30ish. (Be early or be lucky.) That’s also on Beach Avenue.

Boathouse Beverage and Variety on Wharf Street can supply provisions, drinks and toiletries. Stop in when you get off the ferry to stock up for a seaside picnic.

READ/SEE/EXPLORE The Long Island Historical Society Museum organizes exhibits at its Wharf Street space each summer. The museum is open on Thursdays and Sundays from 1:30 to 4 p.m. until Aug. 30.

Take Beach Avenue past Fowler and make a left on Fern Avenue to find the Long Island Community Library. The facility, which also houses the elementary school, is a focal point on the island. The library regularly holds events, such as readings and author talks.

The library also runs the Dodwell Gallery, an exhibit space named in honor of two island artists, James and Shirley Dodwell. The gallery shows work by island artists, much of it for sale, and is open when the library is open. The rather confusing hours can be found on the library’s website at http://library.long-island.lib.me.us/

SHOP The aptly named Gift Shop on Fowler Road sells gift cards, trinkets, candy, toys, t-shirts, cosmetics and jewelry. It’s open daily from 1 to 4 p.m. You can also pick up a few souvenir items at Boathouse Beverage.