79: Thumbs Up

N A N J E M O Y,  M D

Crossing the Woodrow Wilson bridge brings me to the southern-most point around Washington DC’s famed beltway.  To the left is Washington’s monument, looking right is the Capital Ferris Wheel of National Harbor.  But I’m about to leave the capital’s urbanization behind at the first exit into Maryland.  Turning south down Indian Head Highway leads to solitude, following a path against traffic and toward 46,000 acres of nearly unfragmented forest.  

Surprisingly, in one of the wealthiest and fast-growing regions of the country, this unbroken forest has resisted intense development pressures for decades thanks in part to a strong conservation effort including The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and their 3,500-acre Nanjemoy Creek Preserve.  Plans for residential development, gravel pits, and nuclear power plants have all been dashed by the work of TNC and many others who know preserving this area originally inhabited by Nanjemoy Indians is of vital importance.  

Nanjemoy Creek is thirteen miles long with a watershed encompassing 46,000 acres.  Those acres are located at a dramatic bend in the Potomac River where it turns sharply east toward to the Chesapeake Bay.  Before that bend, the river has been battered - first by agricultural runoff further west, then by urban runoff as it passes through the heart of the nation’s capital.  Coming out of DC, it’s in need of a refresher, and an infusion of pristine Nanjemoy Creek waters emptying into the Potomac is that crucial elixir.  

More broadly, other elixirs infuse the Potomac near this bend as well.  Watersheds within Crow’s Nest and Chotank Natural Area Preserves, plus Caledonia and Widewater State Parks all drain similarly cleansed water into the Potomac.  At this bend, the Potomac is given new life – a touch up before spilling into the Chesapeake Bay.  Nanjemoy is known as Maryland’s Green Thumb but by zooming out a little, you see that the entire green area around this critical bend could be better known as the Potomac’s Rehab.  

My tour of TNC’s Nanjemoy Creek Preserve starts at its end.  At Friendship Landing, right where the creek flows into the Potomac, the area is teeming at sunrise.  The rhythmic, overlapping songs of wrens, cardinals, and woodpeckers are the backdrop to the random splashes of feeding fish.  The pristine location and early hour keep non-natural sounds muted.  The cacophony is uplifting and brings a surge of optimism.  

I follow a winding trail for a few miles along the banks of the Nanjemoy.  This time of year, spring seeps make the trail especially muddy but these seeps, in a sense, are the reason this area is so important.  The water seeping and draining into the creek here is the endpoint of the cleansing provided by this protected land.  Filtered first through the forest canopy and floor, then an underground filtering before emerging from these seeps.  And so, I happily trudge through the unsoiled mud.

TNC’s 3,500 acres is a mosaic; disparate tracts dotting the land tucked in by this river bend.  The next stop after Friendship is a simple field along Hancock Road.  Once clear cut and planted in tobacco, it is now encouraged by TNC to return to native forest.  In transitions, it simply looks like an overgrown field; nonetheless, a beautiful sight if you know the true story.    

SOAPBOX MOMENT: Reforestation is an obvious part of the strategy to reverse the exacerbating effects humans have on global temperature rise.  Put simply, we need to shade the earth by reforesting fields no longer serving agricultural needs, just like is being done here by TNC.  It’s that simple.

Leaving Hancock, I turn onto Riverside Drive and immediately place this road on my Rushmore of favorite drives – a desolate undulating track through towering trees crossing pristine creeks with occasional glimpses of an iconic river in the distance.  It’s a joyous ride.

Over the next several hours, I pull off Riverside at trail heads with short walks leading to Wades Bay, Chiles Homesite, the Cal Posey Trail, and Douglas Point.  These walks through forests on the verge of a spring eruption are intensely refreshing and a great way to shake winter’s doldrums.  They lead through the deepest of the green thumb - where the air is most pure.  I deliberately take deeper breaths.  The rarified air brings a powerful cleansing after a winter expended mostly indoors.  

One of the best moments comes at an unnamed gut where I find a beaver stump.  It’s the perfect seat - a little back from the shoreline but with clear views over the several acres of beaver-dammed water.  After my intrusion ripples dissipate, pond life resumes.  I spot an ornithologic beauty – a Belted Kingfisher hovering above the water, its blue hue shines brilliantly in the sunlight.  When it spies me though, it raucously rattles and flies around a bend.  The Kingfisher is just one of many encounters today with the green thumb’s wildlife, including several majestic bald eagles, a herd of white tail deer, a black ratsnake, a flock of killdeer, and more subtly, a miniscule but handsome hairstreak moth.  

This visit has upped my optimism about conservation.  Frankly, efforts to preserve important places like the teeming Nanjemoy Creek, and more broadly, this rehab bend in the Potomac are clearly successful.  In cooperation with state and local officials and residents, and with non-profits like TNC, the Potomac is amply and beautifully rehabilitated as it bends eat.  The deep, unbroken green through which it flows on its journey to the Chesapeake Bay is a striking visual of how conservation in this populated area can work.  

(green) Thumbs up.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT NANJEMOY HERE.