Blog

50@50 Chesapeake Bay, MD

Large numbers of people choose to experience only the familiar – the known. They’ll download a favorite song; attend a museum exhibit of artist they “know” about, or attend a concert they know already (or one that their friends “know” to be good). They’ll limit vacations to places that they grew up going to, or where friends/family members have gone to and recommended.  There is nothing wrong with this; I get it, I really do.  It allows people to experience deeply.  But why are so many people like this?  This seems severely limiting.

I don’t want to walk into a black hole, but I love the delight of the unexpected. This is why I still buy  CD’s. I bought Darius Milhaud’s Brazilian Dances, and became enthralled with La Muse menagerie (The Household Muse).  I discovered James Macmillan’s incredible The Confession of Isobel Gowdie by buying Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto. It is with this sense of limited knowledge that I begin my adventure into Maryland.  Approaching from the north, I turn south in Middletown Delaware to highway 301 and pass farm after farm with luxuriously sized 18^th and early 19^th century houses.

My destination is Wye Island, a National Resources Management Area on Chesapeake Bay.  The Bay area has been continually inhabited for over 11,000 years.  As the glaciers receded, and the oceans rose, the lowlands were covered, resulting in the largest estuary in America.  The native populations  had to constantly adapt to changing environment.  Over time, people increased settlement evolving into various societies.  Scientists estimate that there are at least 100,000 archeological sites scattered around the Bay with only a small percentage documented.

Captain John Smith in 1612[†] is widely quoted as saying “…heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation…”Dr. Gabrielle Tayac, a historian and curator with the National Museum of the American Indian, states “What Smith actually saw were very complex and dynamic societies, with highly subtle agricultural practices, a complex religion and an interesting balance between men and women.” The Bay’s native people are not gone. Over recent decades, regional tribes have worked to reassert their identities.

For over 300 years, Wye Island was privately owned and managed for agricultural, including tobacco and wheat farming.  In the mid 1970’s the encroaching threat of residential development forced the State of Maryland to purchase the island to ensure its preservation.[§] The water continues to rise, swallowing up entire towns and islands fully accessible only half a century ago.

The Native Americans and John Smith would struggle to recognize the bay today.  Animal populations have evolved with fewer numbers and varieties of fish, and the absence of predatory mammals. The area continues to support a great variety of waterfowl, in spite of the reduction of trees, which formed an almost continuous canopy around the Bay and its tributaries.[**]

Remember I mentioned the delight of the unexpected? I had not researched the island’s history, nor studied its geography prior to my arrival. I somehow expected marshy grasses, cattails and boggy, sandy trails. Instead the 1.1 mile Ferry Point trail resembled a wooded tunnel from Alice in Wonderland. The canopy of Osage orange trees encompassing the path heightened the aural experience, amplifying the immediate sounds of wildlife while filtering out everything else. The path ends at the waters edge, a sandy spot just large enough for a picnic.

The island has six miles of trails, and my second trail, combining the Schoolhouse Woods and Holly Tree trails looped 2.6 easy miles through mature hardwoods, boggy streams and a grassy field, which was being reforested.  Due to the flatness of the land, one foot rise in sea level means a mile or more of shoreline lost in each direction.

This trail is noted for waterfowl viewing, but it is early May, and my timing is not optimal for bird watching.  However, for solitude, the timing was perfect.