In Flux in Oyster, Virginia (#109)

Tidewater, Virginia is now just a speck in my rearview.  Its shipbuilding cranes and tall clustered buildings fade as I continue eastward across a 23-mile bridge at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.  This bridge comes ashore at the very tip of Delmarva – a six-thousand square mile peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake.

 

On the southern tip of Delmarva, life is different.  It has none of the congestion of Tidewater.  Life is more natural.  There’s room to breathe, beautiful views, and quiet peacefulness around every bend. 

 

A few miles up from the tip is the tiny village of Oyster.  Yup, as you’d expect, this town is all about oysters.  A century ago, many of its structures were in different locations – out on the barrier islands fronting Virginia’s coast.  But as those islands shifted and became more vulnerable to storms and rising seas, their buildings were moved to the mainland at Oyster.  Now though, the village is under threat again, and planning is in place to move to higher ground a second time. 

 

In 1933, a major hurricane blew through dramatically shifting the water flows and channels upon which the oystering community relied.  For the next twenty years, the Army Corps of Engineers regularly dredged the channels.  The tailings were deposited into a horse-head-shaped island poking out into Mockhorn Bay. 

 

In 2020, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Eastern Shore Community Foundation established the Oyster Village Horse Island Trail which affords public access to TNC’s shoreline property and leads to scenic Horse Island Point.  After a nearly three hour drive this morning, stretching my legs on the 0.8-mile trail is just what my body needs.

 

The trail—made of crushed oyster shells—traces the water’s edge, which is alive with birds.  Plovers, cormorants, woodpeckers, laughing gulls, and white ibis.  The view over Mockhorn Bay is serene on this perfect weather day.  At the scenic point, a few posts with camera holds from Chronolog are set encouraging visitors (aka citizen scientists) to take photos and add them to a visual database which monitors changes over time.  And this part of Virginia is changing fast, as coasts do, but perhaps a little faster here than other states.  The Chronolog data will perhaps serve as the canary in the coalmine for when the structures in Oyster need to uproot again. 

 

This short stroll down an oystery lane is more than just a stretch break, it’s a moment to witness a place in flux, before heading out later today to help protect what might not be here in the future.