View from the Shore by Gary D. Crawford
One extraordinary dimension of the Eastern Shore is the view from t he shore. We are blessed w it h hundreds of miles of shoreline ~ Talbot County alone has 620 miles of it. Think of that. The entire State of C a l i for n ia ha s 840 m i le s of coastline. Other counties also have miles and miles of views ~ of rivers, creeks, and, of course, the Bay. I am blessed to have a desk facing south from the south end of Tilghman’s Island, looking out of Black Walnut Cove, across the Great Choptank River to Cook Point in Dorchester County, and past Black Walnut Point to the Bay itself. Naturally, I get very little real work done, as these essays so vividly attest. The scenes we on the Eastern Shore enjoy are, in my opinion, more interesting and varied than those sunny beaches on islands like “Saint Marie” ~ where there’s a murder in paradise every week. The visual array we all have, from our respective vantage points, is constantly changing with the weather, with the seasons, and sometimes with curious comings and goings. Here are a few that come to mind. One day my wife Susan glanced up and squinted at the horizon. “Wow,” she said. “There’s a really
unusual boat going out into the Bay.” I followed where she was pointing. “Oh, yes,” I said and reached for a pair of binoculars. Unusual she surely was. Of this centur y, she certainly was not.
“Let’s go take a look!” I cried, and we ran for our pier. Quickly dropping our little bow-rider into the water, we took off. Out by Sharp’s (where the island used to be, not the lighthouse), we caught up with the splendid vessel. Susan took the wheel as I snapped away with the camera. The light from the overcast sky emphasized her brilliant blues and grays. As we closed in on her, we could see that she was a vessel from the colonial era. Then I recognized her ~ she was Delaware’s Tall Ship, the Kalmar Nyckel.
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