Please Walk Your Horses Up This Hill: A Nantucket boyhood

After leaving Nantucket, the author attended college for two years, but did not know what he wanted. He left and joined the US Navy, which enabled him to see a lot of the world. He lived in Boston for fourteen years working in a distillery, but the city life soon paled. Nantucket was now out of the question, so he bought a small house on Peaks Island near Portland, Maine. Six years later he moved t there and for eleven years commuted to Portland where he worked as a clerk at the Maine Superior Court. At age fifty, deciding to go it alone, he quit his job and moved to Matinicus Island, which became his Shangri-la and substitute Nantucket. He has been running Tuckanuck Lodge, a bed-and-breakfast, since. In addition to his duties as an innkeeper, he is also the clerk-treasurer for the Matinicus Plantation Electric Co., the smallest publicly-owned generating facility in the United States, and is the caucus chairman for the island Democratic Party, often attending state conventions in Maine. A bachelor, he enjoys long walks around the island with his beloved dog, Sandy.