Manana (surprisingly pronounced like 'banana') is Monhegan Island's barrier island. The islands are 12 miles off the coast of Maine and while Monhegan has a year round population of roughly 79 people. Mañana is uninhabited with the exception of several residents throughout its written history. A small, dilapidated structure seen from Monhegan's harbor conjures up stories of the hermit who built it: Ray Phillips, a New York grocer and World War I veteran, sought a life of solitude and arrived by a small boat in 1930. He lived on the island with his sheep and goats for almost 50 years. His only neighbor was a Coast Guard Station on the other side of the island which is now abandoned.

Rusty, a lobsterman, took me over to Manana in a small dory for a minimal fee. "Ignore the goats and they won't bother you," he warned. Like Hemmingway's cats, descendants of The Hermit's (as he is referred) goats are Manana's sole inhabitants. I painted to the rhythm of the station's automated, solar-powered fog horn and the faint hammering on the east side of the island by Manana's newest inhabitant who is rebuilding Ray Phillip's small, lone house.