The Deer Isle Hostel is a magical place. It sits on three locations I always want to be: island, farm, forest. The word “hostel” brings to mind certain images, which you should toss out of your head right now. For one thing, this hostel is entirely off the grid — think solar power, a compost-heated shower and wood-heated everything. Owners Dennis Carter and Anneli Carter-Sundqvist opened the Deer Isle Hostel in 2009. The homesteaders are married and run the hostel and farm. Dennis built the hostel by hand in 2007 and modeled it after a house built in the 1680s. It’s timber-framed (made from local materials) with two bedrooms (six beds total, which sleeps eight). But there is also a small hut in the woods, which is where I stayed.

A lot of people go to the Deer Isle Hostel to experience a sense of community and to learn about off-the-grid living. There is a communal dinner every night. People pick the carrots out of the garden, pump water, chop the basil tops and do the dishes while talking about where they’re from and their thoughts on composting toilets. Some student-visitors from College of the Atlantic may sing songs to the moon, depending on the night (and, perhaps, the moon). But that’s not why I went — I wanted a cheap getaway.

Hostel rooms cost $25 to $30 a person. The private hut in the woods cost $60 for two. I sent my $60 through PayPal on a weekday and was told I should call Anneli the morning of my leave to ask what they need for dinner, if I was going to eat dinner. I did. I brought olive oil.

“We’ve been going through it like crazy,” Anneli said in her Swedish accent.

When we arrived I dropped off the oil, then headed for the woods. The hostel abuts the Edgar M Tennis Preserve, about 150 acres of ocean-side forest and fields.

It’s beautiful there. The harbor is next to most paths. We walked to the muddy shore and watched hermit crabs fight each other, each one swatting their claws out from their shells. Back on the trail are part of an abandoned apple orchard, fields and granite quarries — all within sights of the ocean. At one point in the cove we raced down the pink granite and jumped in the near-freezing, clear-as-glass water. It felt like we were living in a painting: blue-green water, craggy pink rocks, blueberry bushes and thin pines jutting up, surrounded by islands that we could swim to in a couple dozen strokes. Not a sound except waves and the glass-flute song of the Hermit Thrush.

The preserve has a few miles of trails. One leads to a very old cemetery where the Toothaker family is buried. Plaques there tell the tales of some Toothakers who were accused of witchcraft and killed in Salem, Mass in the late 1600s. The trail there is very small, and when we went spiders had woven webs between the trees, adding to the effect of looking at a witch’s grave in the woods.

After seeing half the preserve in about 3 hours, we headed back to the hostel to officially check in.

The bridge to Deer Isle. It's an S bridge, which means your car climbs a suspended mountain, then rolls down it.

The hostel.



The fire pit.

One of the gardens that grows food for the hostel owners, and for communal hostel dinners for guests.

Corn, broccoli, garlic, beets, onions ...



Chickens!

Laundry dries on the line.

This is the private hut.





Inside the hut.



The hostel again.

Common room in the hostel.

A bed in the hostel.



Bunks in the hostel.

Almost dinner time.

Some dishes for communal dinner.

Dinner was: chili, salad, purple potato salad, apples and cheese, bread with oil and vinegar, watermelon with basil, unspecified meat.

Dennis gave us the tour. There’s the garden, there’s the chickens, laundry and hostel.

“And this is the shower,” he said, leading us to a wooden stall next to a massive pile of what looked like hay.

“This is how we heat the shower,” Dennis said, pointing to the haystack, which was in fact a compost pile. The water flows through tubes that are wound inside the compost, which was 120 degrees, according to a thermometer poking out of the waste.

“Here, feel it,” Dennis said, turning on a spigot in the stall that was about ankle-high. It was very warm.

To shower, hostel visitors fill a metal watering can with the warm water. The garden jug is rigged to a rope and pulley, so visitors just tug it up and then tip it over themselves for a shower.

“If it’s not hot enough for you, you can heat up the water here,” Dennis said, lighting a small camp stove in the wood stall.

After that, we were shown a tarp tent where Dennis and Anneli grow edible mushrooms.

Then to the composting toilet, which is essentially an outhouse. You do your business, dump a coffee can of wood shavings on your business, wash your hands in the sink (using a jug of water with a spigot) and voila. Every so often Dennis empties the toilet and adds it to their compost piles. The toilet is by far less smelly than most public toilets; the wood shavings absorb all the urine and other liquidy contributions, which keep smells to a minimum.

Dennis told us dinner would be at 6:30 p.m. When we told him we’d be there, he seemed giddy. We headed inside to ask Anneli if we could help. I was given a knife.

“You know what beets look like?”

“Yes.”

“Cut me a bunch of greens, this big,” Anneli said, making a quarter-shaped size circle with her fingers.

When I came back with the correct greens, she sent me back out for five basil tops. The kitchen — bare-bones and full of mason jars — feels like you’re visiting a good friend’s camp. Anneli looked at me, put her hands on her hips and sighed.

“Let’s pretend we’re done,” she said and told Dennis to ring the dinner bell. The bell means 6:30 p.m., or thereabouts. It’s the only timepiece in the place that’s otherwise rooted in the 1690s.

With that, the other 10 guests piled in the small kitchen. Anneli went through the dished she prepared: Chili leftovers, purple potato salad with celery, watermelon with basil, bread with vinegar and oil, sauerkraut with pickled apples, meat (unspecified, but the farm raised some pigs, which was my bet on the fatty, salty mystery meat), apples with cheese, salad with chard and carrots. Nine dishes for 14 people. And it was delicious.

There’s something homey about someone making a big meal for you out of food they grew in their garden in a home they built by hand from wood on their land. It makes you think of Maine’s history and soon enough people were talking about whether they too could do something by hand: Maybe I could build a house, make a garden, get a compost toilet. “Of course you could,” Anneli would add.

After dinner a couple from New Hampshire jumped up and took over all the dishes chores. I waited in the kitchen, ready to take a turn if necessary, ready to continue drinking the box wine someone else brought if not. Those New Hampshirites, god bless em, as my grandmother would say.

The next day, we headed out. We stopped by Nervous Nellies Jams and Jellies 3 miles down the road for some strawberry-rhubarb conserve and tried our best to find anywhere in Deer Isle to get coffee on a Sunday morning (there is nowhere. If you go, grab some from the hostel first).

COST: $25-30 per person, $60 total for the two-person hut

WHERE: Tennis Road, Deer Isle. You’ll see signs along the way.

WHO: People who want to learn about sustainable, off-the0grid living and farming. Or people who like nature walks, swims in the ocean, a quiet cabin and a communal dinner. Or people on their way to/from bar Harbor who need a cheap place to stay for a night.

WHY: Deer Isle is quiet and beautiful. Sleeping in a hut on an island feels like summer camp for adults.

HOW: 207-348-2308 or info@deerislehostel.com

TIP: Most things you might want to do or see are in Stonington, about 6 miles away. You can borrow bikes from the hostel to go see theater, eat a lobster roll from a great little shack or grab an ice cream and watch the lobstermen come in.