Sheltered Lands

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 t...

D I S M A L   S W A M P,   V A  In the 1700’s, at the southeast corner of Virginia’s border with North Carolina, the land was dismal – a million acres of swampy, thickly-vegetated, and useless wetland forest. An early survey by William Byrd declared the land “ a miserable morass where nothing can inhabit ”.   But a young entrepreneur named George Washington thought he could drain the swamp. He saw its lucrative real estate flip potential. His new company constructed drainage ditches and roads, hoping to dry out large swaths of sellable land in the young country’s most populated state. But ultimately, mother nature resisted, and the plan failed.   George was persistent though. His company changed focus and was able to squeeze out a little lumber income as well as successfully complete the Dismal Swamp Canal connecting the Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound which today is the oldest continually operating man-made canal in the U.S.  ...

S M I T H   R O A C H   G A P,  V A   Over the past thirty-five years, I’ve driven 15,400 times up and over one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.  The Blue Ridge are an eastern-most front range of the Appalachians which extend from Pennsylvania to Georgia.   The range formed four hundred million years ago when Europe and North America collided pushing these mountains up as high as the Alps.  Millions of years later, they’ve been worn down by erosion to their current height which makes crossing them now only a mild hurdle along my daily commute.  To say the Blue Ridge are a familiar range is an understatement.  They’re my home team, mountain-wise. The Blue Ridge are renowned for their isoprene-triggered bluish tint.  If viewed with the glow of a sunrise or sunset mixed in, the imagery of this ancient mountain ridge becomes iconic.  Of my 15,400 crossings, many have occurred amid brilliant imagery. The name is...

  S T U A R T S  D R A F T, V A            I switch my camera to up-close mode and zoom in on a hairy turd.  I’m curious to know what predator dropped this pile.  I suppose there’s a Facebook group to help, so later today I’ll post the picture to that gang for confirmation.  I’ve poked similar groups for ID help with birds, mushrooms, trees, dragonflies, and creepy insects, so I’m confident there’s an online turd-specialist out there.  So, what leads a man to find interest in excrement?   It’s kind of a long story… First, this 100 x 60 quest of collecting Nature Conservancy (TNC) properties is an antidote to a life otherwise spent in an office, so with openings on the calendar, I start planning additions to the collection.   The main strategy in finding collectibles is dual-searching - pairing “The Nature Conservancy” with “xyz property” to see if there’s a connection.   In today’s case, searching Cowban...

B A V O N,  V A    After the requisite walk to the end of the boardwalk for a cool view of the lighthouse, I wonder what else I can do to garner more essence from this marshy property.  Satellite views show no trails to its interior or shoreline.  There’s just too much water.  And reading materials mention nothing but this boardwalk.  That’s not enough though.  I want more from this visit to New Point Comfort Natural Area Preserve.  The property has a violent history.  In the 1930’s a hurricane ripped through here severing the lighthouse from the mainland; literally washing the tail-end of this peninsula away.  The lighthouse, now a locally iconic monument, sits on a rip-rap island several hundred yards from shore accessible only by kayak.  The 105-acre property from which the lighthouse was severed is now owned by The Nature Conservancy and managed by Virginia’s Natural Area Preserve program.  As with most of the state’s ...

O N E M O,  V A  Three ingredients create magic when outdoors.   First, choose a great location .   Second, time the visit right.   And third, hope for a little luck .   If all three align well, magic happens.     One : Location The Potomac River flows past George Washington’s home and our nation’s capital, and then into the Chesapeake Bay.   The James River flows from the Blue Ridge Mountains, past America’s first settlement of Jamestown, and on into the Chesapeake Bay.   Exactly between these two famously historic rivers juts the middle peninsula of Virginia.   And at the tip of this peninsula is the great location chosen for today’s trip outdoors.   Two : Time For most others, Friday morning in December is not an ideal time to visit a beach, but that’s exactly why I chose Friday morning in December to visit a beach.      Three :   Luck I have plenty today.   The two-hour, early...