Love in Dark Settings

An update for those of you who don't read my regular Daily Life entries: I've settled that the Calvert Cliffs cove near Cove Point in Calvert County is a suitable home for my protagonist. I've written the Hoopers Island watermen chapter. I've rewritten the Solomons Island chapter. I still have to write the lighthouse chapter and the Calvert Cliffs chapters.

But meanwhile (or rather, before I wrote the Hoopers Island chapter), I went off to Dorchester County again, this time with spiralred.

( Chesapeake Marshlands National Wildlife Refuge Complex (at Bishops Head Point) )
( Hoopers Island )

Thanks to Spiralred and her willingness to tramp through uncharted marshland, this trip gave me the material I needed to write the Hoopers Island watermen chapter - not to mention a new scene featuring a marshland pond - though I'm still struggling with nature terminology. I'd really like to get someone from Hoopers Island to look over the manuscript - though how the heck I'd find that someone, I don't know. Maybe I can stand in the island store again, holding my manuscript and looking like a pathetic tourist till someone takes pity on me.

On September 11, Doug and I visited Rock Hall in Kent County, just north of Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's an old watermen's community, and though the watermen have nearly been squeezed out, there are a couple of museums there that have watermen's devices. Then, two days later, we took a return trip to Dorchester County - in particular, to Hoopers Island.

( Rock Hall )
( Interlude in Lewes, Delaware )
( Hoopers Island )
( Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge )

I'd love to go back to Hoopers Island in late October, which is when my character walks across the upper island - I'd like to know what wildlife is out, and how much bird noise occurs then. (Dorchester County is part of the Atlantic Flyway for migrating birds.) But that would be pressing Doug's patience, so I'm going to have to use my imagination to fill in the gaps.

Now I just have to convince him to take that much-delayed trip to Southern Maryland. "We just got back from Hoopers Island!" he said when I tentatively pointed out on Wednesday that I had only ten days left before the research portion of my year ended.

"On the first Saturday of November the skipjacks of Tilghman Island were dressed for a ritual. The ritual was the Chesapeake Bay Appreciation Day skipjack race, which marked the beginning of the oystering season. This was to be my first season dredging oysters aboard a skipjack. . . .

"By 10:30 A.M. seventeen working skipjacks had gathered off the beach at Sandy Point. The Bay rippled with a light southwest breeze, and [Captain] Bart sent [his first mate] Bobby into the push boat to shut off the Cadillac. The skipper paid out the main sheet, motioned for me to take the wheel, and let Ruby Ford sail with the wind abeam. I turned the wheel tentatively to starboard what seemed two or three full turns, but the skipjack held her heading and drifted in the current with 1200 square feet of sails fluttering overhead.

"'Honey, come over[.]' Bart's right arm waved to starboard.

"Slowly his message sunk in: 'Turn the wheel, stupid.' I did."

--Randall S. Peffer: Watermen.


( About the trip )
( Talbot County, Maryland )
( Lewes, Delaware )
( Dorchester County, Maryland )
( Your turn now )