Marie Emerson, by anyone’s reckoning, is a high-energy doer. She rises early, doesn’t sit for a moment, accomplishes many things in a day and bakes a dozen blueberry pies at once.

The 53-year-old woman lives in Addison and works most of the year in Calais.

For July and August, she bustles about Wild Blueberry Land, a gift shop and food store in Columbia Falls that she and her husband started two years ago.

For tourists along U.S. Route 1, the store is can’t-miss. Jolting, unusual and even goofy in its appearance, it’s that big geodesic dome that rises next to the road, painted to look like a blueberry.

It’s sure to become a Washington County point of reference, located at the intersection of the ways to either Machias (straight on Route 1) or Jonesport (turn on Route 197).

Inside, it’s full of everything blueberries. Shelves brim with blueberry-scented soaps and candles, blueberry-flavored salad dressings, salsas, jams and juice. Blueberry motifs cover balsam pillows, dishes and country baskets.

For fresh food, blueberry breads, muffins, pastries, pies and ice cream cover the front counter. “Get your daily dose!” the store’s theme screams on refrigerator magnets near the register.

For the floor, there’s blueberry-colored rugs. Outside, amid hundreds of blooming flowers, blue-painted balls atop a blue fence exaggerate the blueberry image.

What’s not to like? The eclectic mix makes for a mesmerizing marketing display of everything that, the rest of the year, Emerson teaches her college students in food and hospitality at Washington County Community College.

It’s also far from anything Emerson imagined that the corner lot she owns with her husband, Delmont Emerson, would ever become. After all, all they wanted to do was sell the blueberries they raise on their 10 acres in Addison.

“We never intended this to be a gift shop,” Emerson said earlier this week as she rolled out more pie dough. “Del only wanted to sell blueberries up on Route 1.

“But I said, ‘Let’s build a blueberry.’ Then, of course, we had a lot of space to fill.”

Their Internet research resulted in locating a Canadian designer, someone who specialized in geodesic domes. He stayed with the Emersons for a month in 2002, combining triangles and circles, and sending the Emersons up the framework endlessly until the blueberry was born.

The store opened at the end of August 2002, complete with bagpipes and then-Congressman John Baldacci cutting the ribbon.

Emerson knows Baldacci partially because she spent three years as the Washington County representative on the Maine Tourism Commission. When she declined a second term, she was replaced in 2002 by the late John Joseph, then the University of Maine at Machias president.

Emerson has plenty of food-industry credentials that make her known far beyond Wild Blueberry Land. She is certified as a culinary educator, baker and food management professional. Two years ago, she tested to become one of 5,000 research chefs nationwide by the Research Chefs Association.

Closer to home, five years ago she was named Chef of the Year by the Maine Chef’s Association. More recently at the association’s annual meeting in Bar Harbor in May, she received the group’s president’s award.

She has a master’s degree in education from the University of Southern Maine. After she interviewed Del Emerson, the University of Maine’s blueberry specialist Down East, for her thesis on blueberries, he later became her husband.

In June she finished taking part in Maine Leadership, a statewide program for community-minded professionals supported by the Maine Development Foundation.

As a sign-off project, Emerson studied how Maine can better retain its youth.

“We determined that the cost of college is too high in this state,” she said, “and also that better treatment of students should be a goal here. They can’t even transfer all their credits between community colleges and the universities. No wonder they find a better deal for going to college in New Hampshire.

“Part of this out-migration is natural,” she continued. “But what I’ve always told my students is to bring your town home. I understand the urge to travel, and I try to have that be a part of my food program [at Washington County Community College].”

Emerson uses her contacts throughout New England, even as far as New York and New Orleans, to place her students in culinary internships and jobs at every break. They think, learn, compare and see.

“Maine will only grow if Mainers bring back wonderful ideas,” she said.

The world of food is natural for Emerson, who grew up working in her family’s seafood restaurant in Cape May, N.J.

She moved to Maine in 1974 to follow the path taken by Helen and Scott Nearing, “living the good life.”

Teaching became her outlet. She has been Washington County Community College’s director of the food and nutrition program the last 22 years.

When she started teaching in Calais, she realized from the first day that kids from Washington County “didn’t dream.” Then her work with food became even more of a passion.

“You can do so much with food. You can form teams, bring people together with food,” she said.

“I let my students dream big, and we work on huge projects as team members. They accomplish things they never imagined.”

This is the second full summer that Wild Blueberry Land, once just a dream for Emerson, has been open. She uses May and June to nurture her gardens near the store’s parking area, then throws out the open flag in time to attract the tourists Down East in early July.

The store will stay open through Columbus Day in October. Emerson herself will work through this weekend before returning Monday to her real job at the community college.

“Food is my life,” she said. “It’s all my life. It’s the students and people I meet. It’s what I read. I don’t read for pleasure anymore. It’s all technical.”