By Herbert Edwards RACHEL FIELD of The Cranberry Isles R ACHEL Field, much of whose poetry and prose glorified the Cranberry Isles near Mt. Desert, told her friends that, had she had her way, she would have been born in Maine. "But," she would add with her habitual, infectious laugh, "since I couldn't con- trol that, I came to Maine as soon as I could." She was in fact born in New York City in 1894, although her ancestral roots were at the old manse in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There is no record of when Rachel first came to the Fields' summer home baking equalled her mother's and that Rachel's o on Sutton, one of the Cranberry Isles, but warm chowder was the best he ever had eaten. Strong memories linger among former neighbors of her vigorous, Rachel liked to knead dough on the presence there. The family's rambling old cottage pine table that overlooked the ocean - and she S had lost all architectural distinction with additions while she worked. built over the years by successive generations of Rachel delighted in making memorable her ne Fields. It stood against a background of pointed firs, borly associations. For example, she made a hoc sharp-tipped as Indian arrowheads against the sky, rug, which depicts Bear Island from her own Su and the wild headlands with spurting white surf at Island window, out of a pair of Mr. Hermann Hes their bases had an indomitability that always thrilled bruch's old white duck pants. The framed rug is Rachel - as did the history of the rugged folk who heirloom greatly cherished by Mr. Hessenbru first settled there. daughter Ann - now Mrs. Edward Madara of So In the distance, across the blue waters of the west Harbor. Western Way, were the towering hills of Mt. Desert The creative ability to dramatize small, every and the magnificent estates of the New York and events, which distinguished Rachel Field's writ Philadelphia millionaires, but neither Rachel nor her always was a part of her zestful social personal family ever went there. They were wealthy enough, This talent made her a fascinating conversationa but they lived modestly, still dominated by the old "She could hold people spellbound by making a st Puritan heritage of plain living and high thinking that out of a happening that others might consider was one of several strong family characteristics of dinary," says Ann Madara. "And she'd repeat a cha the Fields. Mrs. Field (Lucy Atwater) was proud of bit of conversation, faithfully imitating both her ability as a cook, and her physician-husband, Dr. speech and the voices of whose who'd taken par Matthew W. Field, would eat no bread other than it. When Rachel gave an account of where sl that made by his wife. The time came, however, walked and whom she'd met, it was just like a pl when the doctor admitted that Rachel's cooking and As a small child, Mrs. Madara sometimes roar 70