Baltimore: Butchers Hill Blossoms

Another year's winter has come and gone. The days are lengthening, the skies brightening, the morning chill giving way suddenly to sunshine and balmy winds blowing in from the bay.  The Canada geese depart from the pond in Patterson Park, and in their place arrive mallards and migrating warblers. The trees ring out with the songs of nesting robins and blackbirds, and the tender, green buds that began to tint their branches in late March suddenly open overnight, plunging us into a world of life and color. These are the best two weeks for long, meandering walks around East Baltimore, stopping to admire flowering trees that have become like old neighbors.

These photos showcase the cherry trees and magnolias that  bloom beside the Patterson Park pagoda in early April; and the Kanzan and Shogetsu cultivars that line the sidewalks of Butchers Hill, Upper Fells point, and Washington Hill,  which usually flower in mid-April.

Loch Raven: After the Storm

I first visited Dead Man's Cove, a little inlet of the Loch Raven Reservoir just outside of Baltimore, over a year ago now. Its trailhead is a tiny dirt shoulder off Dulaney Valley Road, and the trail is a short stroll along a fire road that cuts through mixed oak and pine forest. No more than a mile from roadside to lakeside, it's an easy place to catch a glorious sunrise by the water. Ever since my colorful autumn visit there on the morning of Halloween, I've wanted to complete a seasonal series in this little stretch of woodland, and I've been waiting patiently for an opportunity to capture winter landscapes. By mid-March, between the relative scarcity of good snowstorms here in Maryland, the temperate climes (snow doesn't stick), and the time demands of residency training, I'd all but given up hope of getting any photos this year, taking solace in the fact that we'll spend at least one more calendar year in Baltimore. Surely, I thought, there will eventually come a nice, juicy Mid-Atlantic blizzard (rare); that will fling enough precipitation at the Chesapeake to cover its forests at least overnight (rarer); on a day before a day that I'm off hospital duty (rarest of all) and can hit the trail before daybreak.

Then came Winter Storm Toby, which clobbered the Atlantic seaboard and poured nearly 8 inches of snow onto central Maryland in less than 16 hours on March 21st (the first day of spring, of all godforsaken things). Working from home on academic time, I watched the snow pour out of the sky all afternoon, mentally salivating at the prospect.

The next morning, I hit the trail shortly after sunrise, braving the Baltimore beltway and its fleet of moving hazards to get there (what makes Maryland drivers assume they can do freeway speeds while rocking a 50-pound snow mattress on their roofs, and viewing the road through little ice periscopes carved out of their windshield, I'll never know).  Leaving the car on what is essentially a snowbank, I trudge into the calf-deep snow with my bugout boots, leaving the first set of footprints through a forest covered by virgin snow. The storm is gone and the sky is crisp and clear, but every gust and gentle breeze shakes a curtain of snow from the barren trees, The result is photographic magic - a misty forest landscape backlit by the soft glow of golden sunlight; lighting to die for.

I walk the mile to the cove, setting my tripod on the water's edge where it stood five months ago. The little rock that I sat on previously is now submerged beneath the lake, so I perch precariously, ankle deep in the water, grateful that I wore my waterproofs and not my usual, 4-year-old hiking shoes. I use a one-second exposure to smooth the ripples on the brilliant lake surface;  the subject is a barren promontory covered by white snow and empty trees - a pleasant contrast to the fiery, dense foliage of late October. One more composition to go (I'm envisioning a lush, green forest, laden with life and heat, at the height of summer) before I complete the triptych of canvas hangings in our upstairs bedroom. For now, returning to the car, it takes me nearly an hour to dig it out of the snowbank, but I eventually am home, relaxing with a hot cup of tea, by the late morning.

Chesapeake: Islands Out of Time - Part II

We arrive in Crisfield in the late morning, having crossed over the Nanticoke, looped around Salisbury, and driven the length of Somerset County to get there. We leave our car in front of the office of the local lumber yard, with a note on the dashboard saying we'll be at Susan's for the weekend. Crisfield is a sleepy, industrial fishing town. Except for a little coffee shop by the pier, most of its shops and restaurants are closed for the season. We head down to the dock, where a few people, standing beside their weekend suitcases, boxes of holiday gifts, and a comically active French bulldog, are waiting to board mail boats bound for Smith and Tangier Islands.  We meet Otis Taylor, who beckons us aboard the Island Belle II, which he has been piloting for decades (the original Island Belle, long decommissioned, was the only vessel between Smith Island and the mainland from 1916 to 1977, and is nothing less than a piece of Maryland history).  Joined by a pastor and a few islanders making their commute, we take up seats on plastic lawn chairs at the stern of the boat, behind a stack of cardboard boxes from the local hardware store and the Amazon warehouse. The diesel engine starts up with a roar and a sputter, and we push off from the Crisfield dock and into the bay ahead.

The crossing from the mainland to the island is five miles as the crow flies, and takes just over half an hour.  Along the way, we pass by fishing boats in the channel, and seabirds perched atop buoy markers that point the way toward the island. As we chug along the eastern edge of Smith Island, past the wetlands of the Martin Wildlife Refuge to starboard, we see shacks and shanties lining the water - some of them abandoned and sinking slowly into the bay, and others still very much in use. At last, we round the bend into Ewell, the largest of the island's three settlements, and pull into a makeshift dock by the Harborside Grocery and Restaurant. A greeting crew is there to help us off the boat and carry the ferry's cargo into town on golf carts -the preferred mode of transportation for many island inhabitants. Otis has us load our bags into the flat of his pickup. He takes us to make his mail delivery at the Ewell post office (a little one-room shack that might be mistaken for a toolshed anywhere on the mainland, were it not for the USPS logo painted over the door), after which he drops us off at Susan's house. "Make yerselves 't home," he says in the wonderfully rich island drawl that lies somewhere between the south of Maryland and 19th-century Scotland. "Susan's got cold lemonade in t' fridge. Yer room's upstairs on t' left. Lovely view. Welcome ta 'r island."

Sharing a refreshing glass of iced lemonade, Jane and I get settled into our room overlooking the water - a childhood bedroom quite unlike any other.  Susan's children are grown now - two daughters who live elsewhere in Maryland, and a son who still lives on the island and works the water. Susan herself is off-island at her hospital day job in Crisfield, and will return with the evening ferry run. We take the opportunity to dust off the cruiser bikes on her front yard and go for a spin around town. It is a quiet afternoon in Ewell, which by our cityborne standards is scarcely more than a village - an American flag flying proudly over the Methodist church, a few dozen houses on three gravel streets, a little schoolhouse, and a museum and cultural center which is closed for the season. We return to the Harborside Grocery, where we sit at a plastic folding table and order a late lunch from the diner's seafood-heavy menu; I have the crispiest, freshest soft-shell crab sandwich I've ever had, while Jane opts for fried halibut served with a side of tartar, fries, and slaw.  An absolutely delicious meal from the world's most unassuming kitchen.

After lunch, we don our sun hats from Wyoming and bike south out of Ewell, toward the village of Rhodes Point, just over a mile away. Along the way, we ride through a marsh criss-crossed by "guts" of brackish water - the coastal wetland landscape that constitutes the majority of the island. We see blue herons fishing in the creeks, and little outboard motorboats tied up to decaying wooden jetties. As we near village, an air raid siren sounds across the marsh, and the island's volunteer fire crew goes racing past us on their truck, carrying a patient bound for the mainland (there is no longer a full-time doctor on the island, and the closest medical care is a boat ride or helicopter airlift away). After a few minutes, we reach the water's edge - the boatyard at the very southern tip of Rhodes Point. The village is a cluster of bungalows on a single gravel street, across from which is the main waterway to Ewell. The docks here are stacked with metal crab pots: wire cages baited with fish and hauled in from the bay all summer long. The river is also dotted with wooden shacks known as crab shanties - sheds filled with tanks of cool, flowing water, which prevent soft-shelled jimmies and sooks (male and female crabs) from re-calcifying after they shed their exoskeletons in the mating frenzy of early summer. November is too late for crabbing season and a bit too early for "arysterin'"(oyster-tonging on the reefs around the bay), so for the most part, the river channel is serene, and the laughing gulls overhead are our loudest company on this lazy golden afternoon.

The sun is beginning to sink toward the horizon as we ride back through the marsh toward Ewell.  I stop by the roadside to frame a few sunset shots, using the marsh guts as leading lines into the endless expanse of Spartina (salt grass). Even in the mid-autumn, the wetland mosquitoes are out in full force, a veritable flight squadron of them lunging greedily for my face and hands as I try to create composites with the tripod (it's hard to blot out lens flare with your fingers when arthropods are trying to eat them!). We beat a hasty retreat into town and back to Susan's; before heading indoors, I pause to photograph the sunset colors developing in the clouds over the bay. Lovely view, indeed.

In the house, Susan steps out of the kitchen to greet us warmly. We head upstairs to clean up while she prepares dinner; the smell of grilled seafood emanating throughout the house is inebriating. Coming back down the steps, we sit for awhile on the covered porch, watching the marsh birds and the sunset through our binoculars. Susan starts us off with dinner rolls and butter, followed by our plates of mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus, and homemade crab cakes - massive mounds with great, gleaming lumps of meat, pan-seared to perfection. Jane and I agree instantly (and we are no strangers to the culinary delights of Baltimore or the Eastern Shore) that it is the best crab cake we have ever eaten. For dessert, we are treated to Maryland's official state dessert, the classic Smith Island cake - a dozen ultra-thin layers, alternating between gleaming, moist, velvet-like cake, and decadent chocolate frosting.  Later in the trip, we are treated to a variety of Smith Island cakes and flavors and such as vanilla, pineapple, and peanut butter, but for Jane and me, Susan's rendition (which she prepared for former Governor O'Malley at a banquet years prior) is unbeatable. It is a watershed moment for us.

After dinner, Susan sits and chats with us for a bit about Smith Island and its history. Her family, the Evanses, had no small part in this history, as they go back thirteen generations to the island's earliest colonists in the late 1600s.  The population of the island, which was never large, peaked at under a thousand people in the early 20th century, when tourism was booming, American towns were growing,  and the Bay and its watersheds were relatively clean and bountiful. Today, there are roughly 200 full-time inhabitants (and falling) and the population is aging.  Most households are still lead by watermen, whose lives and livelihoods are inextricably bound to their boats, the seasons, and the struggling health of the Bay. Increasingly, though, there are more families like Susan's, whose occupations and trades are tied closely to the mainland; or mainland snowbirds who own property on the island, and bring their families here to vacation in temperate months, but never truly integrate into the web of island society. The children, what few of them there are, commute to school on the morning ferry, and almost invariably leave in adulthood for wider horizons. The dreary winter months, when the watermen in their workboats are away oystering for weeks at a time, and the entire Bay becomes locked with ice, can be profoundly isolating for the remaining islanders.  And the Chesapeake Bay, still in the throes of its ten-thousand-year birth from the Susquehanna River Valley of the last ice age, accelerated more than ever by rising sea levels from anthropogenic climate change, continues to mount a steady assault on the land. Every year, several acres of the island are washed into the Bay; by the end of this century, Rhodes Point and most of Ewell will no longer exist - if its inhabitants haven't long since fled from the coming onslaught of Atlantic hurricanes and tidal flooding. Smith Island's way of life - in one sense, the oldest, most American way of all - is slowly but surely disappearing into the sea.

Heartbreaking as it is, Jane and I are just glad to spend two evenings here, to have been born early enough to explore the island and meet its community, if only briefly.  Susan leaves us with tea,  snacks, and the entire house to ourselves (she is staying with her father, she explains, whose health has recently deteriorated). Before she leaves, she sets out the tandem kayak and paddling gear, and gives us a map of the island's waterways for our adventures the next day. We lounge around in the living room, watching the better part of a Harry Potter movie while sipping on tea, before retiring for the night.

The next morning, after a breakfast of pancakes and eggs scrambled with garden vegetables, Jane and I drag the kayak with a pair of double paddles across the street, to the beat-up wooden dock next to Susan's house. Wearing our day packs and our waterproof windbreakers (me with my camera and a pair of fingerless gloves), we launch off into the estuary. With Jane steering from the front and the rising tide on our side, we guide the boat west along the island's northern edge, then south into the tidal channel toward Rhodes Point. Weaving through the narrow tidal creeks between mud flats and salt grass, we manage to duplicate a finding that is well-known to us from Maine and Wyoming: that I am extraordinarily bad at kayaking in one direction. Jane's attempts to glide the boat straight forward are derailed almost any and every time I start to paddle; more than once, we wind up prodding our boat off clumps of grass. In this fashion, zigging and zagging from mudbank to mudbank, we manage to explore the several miles of marsh gut that interlace the western island below Ewell.

Coming to Rhodes Point, we paddle our way past the shanties and stacks of crab pots on the shoreline. Navigating with a little more confidence now, we round the bend below the Point, passing the boatyard and sailing out into the main channel that bisects Smith Island along a northeast-southwest axis. Here, we encounter open water, as the horizon disappears into the wide embrace of the Chesapeake Bay.  But for a few distant islands and a line of telephone poles that recedes into the distance (evoking the flooded train tracks in Spirited Away), we are completely alone out on the water. Turning east now, we make the 2-mile crossing to Smith Island's third and last settlement, the isolated village of Tylerton, accessible only by sea. A few motorboats, escorting a larger fishing vessel, pass us on their way out to sea. They politely give us a wide berth, and cut speed so that we are not caught in their swell; we exchange good morning waves with the boats and their hardscrabble crews.  As the shacks and houses of Tylerton grow larger and larger on the horizon, our arms begin to grow tight, but the rest of the crossing is uneventful. We pull in at a boat landing next to the Susquehanna, a research vessel owned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and drag the kayak onto shore.

Leaving our boat and our belongings beneath an oak tree, we set off on a short stroll through Tylerton, a quiet village inhabited by a few dozen people in half as many houses, many of them propped up from the rising sea on wooden stilts. The local church, a small schoolhouse, and a combination post office, store, and restaurant are the only civic locations in town. The Inn of Silent Music, the waterside bed-and-breakfast so fondly remembered by our friends at Antietam, is gone; its owner sold the house and shuttered its doors a few years ago. We walk to Drum Point Market, where the owner is grilling hot dogs behind the counter; we leave with a box of chocolate milk and the second fridge magnet of our trip - a button pin depicting a slice of Smith Island cake, which is now Jane's favorite out of all our souvenir magnets. After spending the better part of the noon hour exploring Tylerton, we return to the kayak and lug it back to the boat landing. A group of elementary school students from Salisbury, led by a CBF volunteer, is finishing a learning session on the Susquehanna;  they gape and point at our bright red kayak as we float out into the bay. "Have a safe trip!" one little girl shouts at us. "Thanks!" we say with a wave, pretending not to look overwhelmed in the surf.  As we depart, I take one of my favorite shots of the trip - a simple, centered composition of a crab shanty out on the open water.

The journey home is significantly tougher, as we paddle against a steady easterly breeze on our crossing to Rhodes Point, then fight the current of the tide all the way back up through the salt marshes. It takes us nearly an hour and half before we round the channel outside of Ewell, where the waves are growing increasingly choppy. By this point, we're feeling sore and tired, and the stinging spray of saltwater, which has soaked through my gloves as well as Jane's socks and boots, does little to help. Finally, we pull in at the dock beside Susan's house around 3 PM. After returning the kayak to her shed (and emptying it of seawater), we head upstairs to wash the salt off our clothes and eyebrows. After a warm shower and a drink of water, we nap away the afternoon.

That evening, Susan told us before our trip, the island is holding its annual watermen's association dinner. Tactfully, she informs us that she therefore regretfully will not be able to provide dinner for us, as she (and every other woman on the island) will be cooking a lavish Thanksgiving feast for two hundred famished watermen and community members. "But would the two of you have any interest in attending?" Yes. Yes, we would. This is how Jane and I wound up attending the island's biggest community gathering of the year - and partaking in a truly special and unforgettable meal.

We leave the house shortly after 6 PM, still wearing, for the most part, our singular set of hiking clothes ("Do you think I should have brought a dress? What if it's a formal dinner?" Jane frets before leaving. "Literally no one knows who you are, so I'm pretty sure you'll be fine..." I say in that half-assed, voice-trailing-off way that is known and used by husbands the world over). Turning right out of Susan's, we walk down the street to the community center, where a fleet of golf carts is parked neatly on the front lawn. Inside, the assembly hall is bustling with excitement. Several rows of folding picnic tables and plastic chairs have been erected, and volunteers are running here and there putting finishing touches on decorations and table settings. Community members who haven't seen each other in months (and, in the case of the part-timers,  since last year) hug and kiss as they reunite. At the front of the building is the buffet line, the aromas of which instantly gladden my spirits and warm my heart; at the back of the building are tables covered in raffle prizes (!), as this is also a fundraising dinner for the watermen's association. Jane and I happily pay our entry fee ($20 for an individual, $30 for a couple) and find a quiet table in the corner of the room.

At our table, we are joined by a Baltimore family that owns a summer cottage on the island, as well as another weekend visitor - a young woman originally from Oregon who, taking a break from her work as a national park ranger in Washington D.C., decided to come canoe around the island.  We trade paddling stories from our day on the water (she spent the day exploring the salt marshes on the eastern side), before being dismissed from our table, like a group of rowdy middle schoolers, to join the buffet line. Jane and I load our plates with a magnificent dinner spread: buttery mashed potatoes with turkey gravy; sweet potato casserole; dinner rolls and fresh butter; macaroni and cheese topped with cornbread; steamed green beans; juicy sliced turkey with cranberry jelly; and an island special - a stuffing of plump, seasoned oysters, half fried and half stewed - a perfect accompaniment to the Thanksgiving classics. We top this off with cups of iced tea and lemonade, and a bona fide gallery of Smith Island cake (Jane and I try slices with vanilla and peanut butter frosting, but neither comes close to Susan's from the previous night).

While we stuff ourselves with this incredible meal, the organizers begin a night of entertainment. Jane and I buy into the raffle contest but come up empty-handed (the grand prizes are an oil painting of an island landscape, and a massive model boat, both by local artists; other prizes include bags of work tools, fishing gear, shirts, and gift cards to businesses across the water in Crisfield). There are also skits and stand-up routines involving the island's pastor ("Y'all laugh, but done better take me seriously in t' pews 'morrow morning!"), followed by an old-timer among the watermen who, we're told, is the island's comedic master. He sits in front of the microphone and launches into a litany of quick stories and one-liners, and though the island humor and inside jokes go flying over our heads, we too are caught up in the crowd's guffaws of laughter. Several men are convulsing and clutching painfully at their sides, their deep belly laughs fighting against their turkey dinner. I, for one, am mesmerized by the delicious brogue that springs effortlessly from this man's mouth - the quick wit, the turn of phrase, and the deep, thick accent. It is an experience of storytelling and levity -  a whole community gathered around the man with the silver tongue, like the old shanachie of Gaelic Ireland and Scotland - that I have never experienced before, and might never experience again. As the evening winds down, Jane and I say our farewells to the families around us and head out into the cool night air. We come home to a handwritten note from Susan. "Breakfast at 8,  Otis will bring his truck around at 9. Hope you two had fun!" We go to sleep tired, happy, and satiated.

In the morning, we enjoy one last meal by Susan (buttermilk pancakes, home fries, and grilled sausages), and one last ride to the salt marsh on Susan's bikes, before riding with Otis in his pickup truck to the Island Belle. Susan joins us on the boat, outbound to do some shopping for the upcoming holidays.  We cross back over the water to the mainland under clear blue skies, and return to our car at the Crisfield lumber yard. I drive the three hours back to Baltimore, and we are home by early afternoon, with one of our most unforgettable adventures in the Mid-Atlantic behind us.

In closing, a passage by the Welsh writer Jon Gower, who visited Smith nearly two decades ago - but whose words still ring as true as the day he wrote them:

“Smith, by dint of being an island, has kept the twentieth century at bay. No Walmart, no multiplex, cinemas, no eight-lane freeways, burger franchises, neon signs, spray-can graffiti, designer drugs, accelerated living, Generation X, soulless malls. Rather, it is a custodian of the old ways, and though it can seem to be a museum in a way, the people here are very real and the work is very hard and their worship is very sincere.

Perhaps science cannot halt the slide of Smith into the sea, and perhaps the State’s will to save it simply isn’t there. But what will be lost is a place where tradition is an anchor, where language has a rich brightness so that you want to hold certain words up to the light to see them glint, where chocolate cake must be made with seven layers on pain of death. Here the clocks run slow, the dolphins surface, the perfect crabs taste as perfect as the last mess of perfects crabs you ate, and the herons glide over the marshes, and the sun refuses to set… not quite yet. Not quite.”