SWAN’S ISLAND — To an outsider, it might seem odd that an educated, active, bubbly 29-year-old would happily embrace the dream of living the rest of her life on an island. But spend some time with Leah Joy Staples and her husband Eric, and you begin to see it through her eyes. And it looks pretty good.

She teaches physical education and health at the island K-8 school. She coaches sports teams and helps adults stay in shape at the school gym.

Her family—parents and all nine siblings—also live on the island, and she and Eric’s social life revolves around time with them.

“I’m No. 6,” she said with a broad smile, in a brood that includes five sisters and four brothers.

“That’s who I’m closest to, who I hang out with the most is family,” she said.

There’s also her church family, where Dad used to be pastor and now is retired.

And in the summer, Leah gets to be on the water, hauling traps on her own boat.

Eric, 28, is a full-time lobsterman, who also grew up on the island. His boat is named for her, the Leah Michelle. Her boat, she said with a grin, also honors her husband: Eric’s Headache, because it is he who must repair the something or other that seems to go bad on it regularly.

Listening to Leah talk about their life, Eric looks like he’s more than happy to have that chore.

The couple has been married three years and live in the house built by Eric’s great-grandfather in the 1880s. They’ve renovated the kitchen and plan to do more work. The second floor is not insulated, but a coal pellet stove keeps winter at bay.

As much as they profess love for their island life, both Eric and Leah left for college. She attended the University of Maine at Presque Isle—where she was nicknamed “Lobster Girl”—and he the University of Maine (in Orono). Both majored in physical education, and Eric jokes that Leah took his job at the school.

Leah’s father came to the island in 1984 with his family to serve as pastor for the Church of God. She was born on the island.

“We grew up together,” Leah said of Eric. The two became best friends at 16. Her family frowned on dating, they said, and both chuckle at the memory of her father introducing Eric as “Leah’s good friend.”

“I was in the ‘friend zone’ for a long time,” he said with a rueful smile. Eric is vice-president of the island’s lobster co-op, and hauls lobster for the organization.

Leah, too, is busy.

“I have a lot of jobs.” In addition to lobstering and teaching phys ed, she substitutes for the health teacher and hopes to soon be certified to teach the subject. She also coaches cross-country and basketball, “and I do after-school sports to keep [students] more active,” including flag football, soccer and floor hockey.

“I open the gym two or three times a week” so adults also stay active playing volleyball, basketball and dodgeball.

And Leah also cleans summer rental houses on the weekends.

Her “down” time has her running or hiking.

“We want to have kids someday,” she said, maybe in a few years.

And when the question is asked, unvarnished, if they expect to spend the rest of their lives on Swan’s Island, both answer in the affirmative.

“When you’re born here and raised here, it’s all you know,” Eric said. In high school on Mount Desert Island and in college, friends would ask, “How can you do it?,” living on an island with no mall or movie theater. Now in their late 20s, Eric’s friends are envious, he said.

There are about 400 year-round residents, about 1,000 who visit during the course of the summer, Leah said.

Winters are quiet.

“I’m used to it, but it is very quiet,” she said. “I like the quietness. I love the privacy. You feel safe.”

In fact, Leah wants to someday live in another part of the island. Their house is on the Atlantic Road, where just about everybody arriving or leaving on the ferry must pass. “I call it the Swan’s Island Highway,” Leah said. Mowing the lawn, “I think I wave 50 to 70 times,” she said.

The couple took Eric’s mother to Las Vegas earlier this year and drove to Arizona and California during the trip, so they’ve seen the outside world. But that just made them appreciate the island more.