TRAVELER @ nationalgeographic.com

I’m intoxicated.

Odd, because I haven’t been drinking.

The buzz isn’t from alcoholic spirits, but rather from the spirit of Monhegan Island.

As islands go, it isn’t much—a rocky chunk moored ten miles off Maine’s jagged coast. Eighty or so year-round diehards, engorged to several hundred summer timers. A few rutty roads reserved for resident vehicles, mostly battered pickups. A lighthouse. A handful of inns, from elemental on down. In an hour I’ll exit on the ferry, my three-day visit history. For now, I sit up at the lighthouse, overlooking this miniature one-square-mile world, struggling to identify the source of my high.

True, you’ve got to love a place where your biggest decision involves choosing among its worthy causes: firefighters, a library, a lighthouse museum. Monhegan, though, isn’t about collections, but connections. Connections that make “inshore,” the islanders’s droll abstraction for everywhere else, seem like a galaxy far, far away. Monhegan has one of everything essential: schoolhouse, post office, library, church, dock, general store—whatever’s needed for the mind, heart, soul, and stomach. All else is fluff. Basic governs here. The Island Inn—my lodging—requires a name no fancier. A snug nook of angles and white paint suffices up in its crow’s nest, the sole decoration a stenciled school of gurgling fish circling the bathroom. Miles of undulating hiking trails easily outdistance roads. Clumps of wildflowers, stands of spruce, structures of fog-colored clapboards, mounds of lobster pots, surf-assaulted cliffs, and soaring seabirds offer scintillating scenery. Any direction will do. Atrophied senses instinctively activate to absorb it all. Even Monhegan’s oversights satisfy: no newspaper, no bank, no drugstore, no SUVs, no cacophonous cellphones. And, though a recent convert to the joys of electricity, no streetlights. Bring a flashlight for midnight prowling, but where you would go, I have no idea.

Simplicities delight. A cleansing thunderstorm. A rocker-lined porch. Sunrise silhouetting the Camden Hills. An artist inspired at her easel. A colorful sail in the mini-harbor. “Locals Only” coffee mugs in the Carina. The effervescence of Andzia, our Polish waitress. Newsy notices wallpapering a shingled shack, the village’s low-tech “billboard.” The splendid lighthouse museum, stuffed with island memories. The grittiness of the Black Duck Emporium, a winter fish house that morphs into a trinket den after liberal springtime applications of Fantastik. What isn’t sloughed out by April gets a price tag. Seashell pottery, anyone? Then there’s The Barnacle, sporting Monhegan’s only ATM machine and espresso machine beneath 200-year-old wood beams.

Isolated? Yes. Basic? Yes. Primitive? No.

Monhegan’s at her best after the last ferry hauls the day-trippers away, leaving only quietude in its wake. Or is it lassitude? At any hour, Monhegan’s got...islandness. There’s no higher compliment to bestow. I’ll soon be on one of those ferries. Its departure will snap the physical connections, but I’ve been transfused with a magical elixir, temporarily inoculated against the inshore. When I need another intoxicating injection, I’ll know where to go.

Massachusetts-based Raymond S. Niedowski is a retired transportation engineer.