The routine I quickly established: wake up, get a coffee, drive to a new beach, order breakfast — typically an omelet, which meant a sort of wide circle of egg batter dotted with tomatoes and cheese, a crinkle of salad as a garnish. After I ate, I drew. That first morning I went to the beach my friends had said they always went to, Platis Gialos, where, after I noticed the pictures I tried to take of the landscapes all seemed to make everything small and dull, I finally took the notebook out, and a pen, and traced out the horizon in front of me without looking at the page, an old drawing class exercise. The outlines were satisfying to me, and so I kept at it, beginning to fill the drawing in. The final result was O.K. — not amazing, but not terrible. More important, I could sense a new sort of calm.

Of my friends there, the one who inspired me most on that trip was a chef who ran a thriving catering business back home. He came every June with a year’s worth of New Yorker magazines in a suitcase, as he didn’t have time to read them during the year, and over the course of the month, he would get caught up. Each day he sat out on his lounge chair in his bathing suit, sunning himself as he read, alternately stern or amused. He was still cooking a little while he was there, usually breakfasts for himself and the children of our mutual friend Sabina. Once breakfast was over, though, he was regimented, on a schedule of enjoying himself, and he looked visibly relaxed in a way I had never seen him back home. This dedication to a regimen of a kind, one entirely alien to his normal life, was what I was after.

The next morning, I found Cheronissos, a town on the island’s north side, much smaller than Platis Gialos and with a long cove that leads to the beach. I had breakfast there, and stayed and drew until lunch. By the third day, this was my regimen, and for the rest of the trip I went to a new beach town every morning, had breakfast and made drawings until noon, before leaving to find my friends, who were usually at Platis Gialos. There, with my friend John, Sabina’s husband, I practiced the art of swimming while drinking beer and wearing sunglasses.

Drawing is an excellent way to remember a place. In my mind I can still see clearly the towns I drew and the mornings I spent there. Vathi is the luxury resort, the place the yachts tie up, a spectacular cove surrounded by mountains. Heronissos is for the fishermen, the far-flung northernmost town reached only after a long drive braving the winds — the only time I questioned the wisdom of my scooter rental. Faros has ruins on the hill across from the cove that I drew, brick by brick.

The modern reputation of Sifnos is as a place known for its food. A 28-square-mile island with a small year-round population, it is blessed like the rest of the Cyclades with beautiful beaches and coves, mountains and olive trees. Located southwest of the more famous Mykonos, Sifnos was, at this time, not as popular with Americans, more of a weekend trip for Athenians. It is the birthplace of Nicholas Tselementes, the country’s first celebrity chef, who is credited with having either modernized Greek cooking, with the invention of moussaka and pastitsio, or having diluted it with European influences. A copy of his 1932 cookbook is likely still in many Greek homes, and his recipes are still served all over Greece and in most Greek restaurants around the world. Sifnos, though, isn’t known to Greeks for just his food — the island is full of good restaurants, and even the most modest places do well by you.

The famous islands never drew me away. I was more interested in the little mysteries I found here on these mornings. I stopped at a church where visitors came in, prayed and placed a lit candle in a mound of sand, and then I watched, with a little shock, as the solemn attendant got up after they left and blew out the candles, pulling them out of the sand and returning them to the stack where they could be lit by the next new arrivals who donated a euro or two. It seemed to me they would burn on only in the minds of the faithful — where a candle perhaps burns best and safest. This made it all the more charming to learn there are 360 churches on the island, many of them little chapels built by petitioners who had received the prosperity they had prayed for — a kind of Greek Orthodox ex voto.