Sweet life on the Shore

As the bitter wind scattered sand and shorebirds under a scary sky, veteran waterman Rick Kellam surveyed the ominous scene and described it in one word.

“Fantastic!” he hollered over the howl of the wind.

Even the harshest of days on the Eastern Shore’s barrier islands are sweet in the eyes of those who truly love these uninhabited slivers of land along the Atlantic coast.

The Eastern Shore, a watery wedge of land lying between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, remains something of a mystery even to many Virginians, and the barrier islands are even more unknown. Unlike the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the coastal islands of the Eastern Shore are undeveloped and unspoiled. It is said, Kellam noted, the islands probably look a lot like they did “15 minutes after God created them.”

“One of the last great places on Earth left in its natural form and not screwed up by man,” he said. “Yet.”

The 23 seaside barrier islands and the surrounding salt marshes, tidal mudflats and shallow bays that extend more than 60 miles along the Shore represent the “longest expanse of coastal wilderness remaining on the Eastern Seaboard,” according to The Nature Conservancy, which owns 14 of the islands.

Other islands are owned by the federal and state governments, as well as private citizens. Environmental regulations prohibit development and usage that would damage the fragile wildlife habitats.

The barrier islands are considered among the most important migratory bird stopover and nesting sites on Earth, said Steve Parker, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve.

The islands weren’t always uninhabited by people. Hog Island boasted a vibrant community of watermen and their families, and Hog and other islands were favored retreats of the rich and famous. Hotels and lodges welcomed the well-heeled and politically connected who came to hunt and fish in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

But storms during the Great Depression eventually drove away the residents and resorts, and the way things are now — no people living on the islands — is the way it’s supposed to be, said Jerry Doughty, historian at the Barrier Islands Center, a museum in Machipongo.

“People do not need to be living on them,” said Doughty, a former history teacher whose family lived on Hog Island as far back as the 1700s. The islands “protect the mainland. They take the brunt of the fury of storms. They help with the wildlife and so forth. They are being returned to their natural state, which I thoroughly agree with.”

The islands aren’t the easiest places to get to.

Once you reach the southern tip of the Eastern Shore, getting to the islands requires a watercraft, a good map and a working knowledge of tides and channel markers — or the phone number of someone, such as Kellam, who runs one of a number of local eco-tour companies.

If you elect to go on your own, though, be careful.

“I’ve seen people tear outboard motors right off the sterns of their boats or people tear sterns out of the back of their boats because they’ve struck sandbars or oyster rocks or submerged objects,” said Kellam, who operates Broadwater Bay Ecotours (www.broadwaterbayecotour.com) and steered us through 2 miles of salt marshes to Cedar Island on his 24-foot skiff.

Kellam said you also have to know when to visit the islands.

The summer months are generally hot, humid and buggy. The pesky greenhead flies are particularly unpleasant at that time of year. Best times to go? Kellam says fall, followed closely by spring. Besides cooler weather and fewer insects, those are the best times to see migrating birds.

Birding is a great reason to visit the islands, in addition to swimming and finding shells. Some visitors like learning about the rich history of the islands — native guides such as Kellam have a bottomless well of stories — while others simply enjoy walking on the beaches and soaking in the surroundings.

No matter when you go, whether a hurricane’s approaching or the skies are clear and the winds calm, chances are you won’t see many people.

“Most of the time when I carry my groups, you very rarely see another human being,” Kellam said.

– Bill Lohmann
Media General News Service