Some of my happiest childhood memories were shaped by the land and tides of Maryland's Eastern Shore. Behind our little house in Rock Hall, we had woods to explore, cornfields to search for arrowheads, and a pond we used for ice skating. On those rare occasions when it snowed, my mom piled us into the car and headed to the tallest hill around—the cliffs at Tolchester Beach. Here, on a worn path at the edge of an abandoned amusement park, high above the Chesapeake Bay, we would trudge and slide, trudge and slide again. Across the bay, I could see the smokestacks of Sparrows Point, and I understood that industry and the bustle of urban life occurred "over there," that we populated a world apart.
Summers were the best. We could clamber aboard an old Bay boat my shipbuilder greatgrandfather had hauled up into the yard for repairs, or play in the fishing shanty my paternal grandfather kept down at the Rock Hall harbor, where piles of oyster shells towered over the docks. I remember crabbing on the mud flats of Eastern Neck Island—an inner tube suspending a bushel basket over the clear water and the thick eel grass where the jimmies would dart and hide from our dip nets. As teenagers, my brothers and I spent hours waterskiing on the placid waters of Langford Bay, or bobbing on our day sailor around Cacaway Island—a tiny spit of land that had once belonged to our family. William Cronin '40, in his book, The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake, confirms family lore that my great-great-great-grandfather James Haddaway lost that island in a poker game. Since hearing that regretful story long ago, I've never been much of a gambler. It is a loss I feel even now, nearly 150 years after the fact, whenever I'm on the river.
There are other, more universal losses: the eel grass, the plentiful oysters, the fishing shanties and the shucking houses have vanished. The farmers and fishermen are barely hanging on. Still, the river is a powerful agent for change. The faces of freshmen enjoying an evening sail aboard one of six remaining working skipjacks reflect an appreciation for the river's majesty and lore. The optimistic solidarity evident among participants of the Waterfront Festival signals a change in the wind. And the new emphasis on our maritime culture coming from the Center for the Environment and Society bodes well for the future.
It is that communal sense of joy the river communicates, mingled with a twinge of sadness for what has been lost, that compels all of us here at Washington College to the river's edge. I hope that we are done gambling away the future, and that our own stewardship of the Chesapeake estuaries and the surrounding shores will bear the scrutiny of our great-great-great-great grandchildren.
— MCL
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