It’s a little after 6 on a drizzly November morning in Allagash. Even if the sun were up, the sky would be gray, but through the window of Two Rivers Lunch, a hunter-orange jacket reflects the light and casts a warm glow into the parking lot. Inside, two men nurse coffee from styrofoam cups and stare hungrily as the waitress brings breakfast – eggs over easy with sausage and slabs of homemade, buttered toast.

The talk bounces from election results to the possibility of getting a gas pump in town for the coming snowmobile season. But in the wood-paneled dining room, where deer, bear and moose mounts outnumber customers, all conversations eventually lead to hunting. Especially in November.

“We could hunt back home, but it’s not as fun, so we come up to the big woods,” said Ken Gibbs, 56, of St. Agatha. He and his friend Jerry Carter of Madawaska made the trek in pursuit of the elusive big whitetail. “I like coming up here for breakfast. It’s the atmosphere. It’s the people. It’s nice up here, it really is. I don’t know if I want to live up here, but I’d like to come up here more often.”

Unless you’re headed to the even more remote town of Dickey northwest of here, Allagash is the end of the road – linked to Fort Kent by a 30-mile drive that follows the lazy curves of the Saint John River. Over a hill, a village appears like Brigadoon.

This is “the real Maine.” For folks from away – whether that means Madawaska or Minnesota – it’s a place to leave the world behind. They come for the wilderness, the hunting, the snowmobiling. They come for the quiet. And they come for Two Rivers Lunch, where the coffee’s hot, the conversation is lively, and the pancakes are bigger than your head.

Two Rivers is the kitchen of Allagash.In other words, everyone gathers here, and not just for the food. It has been this way since 1976, when Leitha Kelly set up a hot dog stand for the town’s centennial. By 1985, a full-service restaurant literally grew up around it – you can still see the shingle siding of the original stand.

As word of Kelly’s homemade bread, pies and chowders spread, the clientele grew, but she didn’t have the money to expand. So her husband, retired guide and trapper Tylor Kelly, waited for the spring thaw, when chunks of ice would knock temporary logging-road bridges into the river. From canoes, Tylor and his son Wade snared planks as they floated by, and the wood now makes up the floor and walls of the dining room.

“Every little part of this restaurant has been added on over the years as they could afford it or trade for wood,” said the Kellys’ daughter, Darlene Kelly Dumond of Fort Kent. “There have been times when it would take everything they’d make in the woods to keep the restaurant afloat. It’s never been a business where you had any extra. If it wouldn’t have been for my mother’s spirit, there have been many times where the doors would’ve been closed because of the overhead.”

But Leitha Kelly persevered. That’s her way. She won’t let her community go without. On Thanksgiving, she and the family serve turkey with all the fixings free. On Christmas, she leaves the restaurant unlocked, with instructions on how to make the coffee (all of the regulars already know) and a sign on the door that reads “Come on in – the doughnuts are out!”

At 67, Leitha is technically retired, but she still bakes bread and pies every day for the restaurant. She uses recipes handwritten by her mother, Belle, on paper that’s faded and falling apart at the folds. People have tried to convince her to modernize the menu. Leitha won’t do it.

“My mother taught us the old way,” she said quietly, sitting beside a picture window that overlooks the family home. “Everyone here liked the old-fashioned way of cooking. That’s just the way we were, old-fashioned.”

The old ways have served the Kellys – and Allagash – well. The first settlers made their way here from Campbelltown, New Brunswick, in 1838 because there was big money to be made in the lumber industry. The economy of Allagash has long since shifted to sporting and recreation, though logging trucks still rumble through town.

Leitha, a fine-boned, soft-spoken mother of five with a cap of gray curls and the serenity of an angel, comes from a long line of timber harvesters. When she hunts, she brings her Bible and reads with one eye on the text and the other on the woods. Her husband, Tylor, also made a living in the woods, as a Registered Maine Guide and a trapper.

When Leitha opened Two Rivers, named for the confluence of the Allagash and the Saint John, she was no stranger to hard work. As the sole employee, she’d open up at 10, work all day, run home to do the washing, dishes and housework, and run back to the restaurant when a customer would show up. She took Mondays off, but the regulars would come in on Tuesdays and say, “You know, we get hungry on Mondays, too.”

“We decided we’d stay open every day, year-round,” Leitha said. “Then we decided we’d better get some help.”

Helen Kelly McBreairty, a cousin, now waits tables for Two Rivers. For the last eight years, Allagash native (and Leitha’s niece) Bonnie Hafford, who now lives in Vermont, has returned during the hunting season to help out. Come autumn, people from as close as neighboring St. Francis and as far as Scotland descend on the town in search of big game – and a big breakfast.

On this November morning, Leitha and Darlene showed off guest books filled with comments from happy diners. A school bus passed by the restaurant – with a lone child on board. In Allagash, the population hovers near 200, and on any given day, many of them stop in to Two Rivers.

Since the Dickey Trading Post closed last spring, the Kellys’ food supplier will make only two deliveries a month. On the off weeks, Leitha makes the 60-mile round trip to Fort Kent and loads dozens of boxes of food into her truck.

“Everyone here has a little entrepreneurial spirit,” Darlene Kelly Dumond said. “They’ll do whatever it takes. They have to. You can’t just wait for something to come to you. The only thing that always comes to Allagash is the ice jam.”

Besides, if Leitha Kelly were to hang up her apron, Lee O’Leary, 62, would be out of luck.

“We’d starve,” he said, sitting and shooting the breeze with his friends. “We never learned how to cook for ourselves.”

“Where would we get the local news?” his brother John O’Leary, 57, asked as he eyed a giant pancake. He’s such a regular that midbreakfast, the restaurant’s phone rang, and it was for him. “We have fun. We have a world of fun every morning we come here.”

It’s also a world of fun for Leitha’s daughter Darlene, who recently returned to the Saint John Valley after living in southern Maine and the Boston area for many years. Tears welled that morning when she drove over the hill and glimpsed the village nestled between the mountains and the river. The memories came:

Making snow angels on a winter’s night while watching the northern lights dance above her. Breakfasts of “mama’s pancakes” and wild game, like she had when she was a girl. Nights so dark and so clear the Milky Way draped across the night sky like a shimmering ribbon.

Allagash is home. And when her mom doesn’t feel like baking anymore, Darlene plans to take over Two Rivers, because the kitchen – the gathering place – is at the heart of that home.

“I know the reason why the restaurant has stayed alive is my mother, my father, the family ways, the traditions,” she said. “But it isn’t just about them. It’s about bringing people together.”