THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407310073
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AROUND THE BAY IN 50 DAYS
Earl Swift is exploring the geography, history and people of the
Chesapeake Bay on a 50-day kayak trip that began July 1.
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
One of the questions I'd harbored about the Chesapeake before setting out on my trip around the Bay was whether there would be a noticeable difference between my reception on its eastern and western shores.
The people of the eastern shore were wonderfully hospitable: Strangers dropped everything to make me feel welcome, invited me into their homes, fed me, showed me their towns.
So, spoiled by this past attention and well-rested after a day off in Annapolis, I paddled down the Severn and back into the Bay on Wednesday afternoon.
Heavy clouds, rumbling with thunder, appeared almost immediately, and before I'd covered even a half-dozen miles, I was racing for the shore.
I ended up in Selby Bay, a narrow chink in the riprapped shore of the South River, and steered the kayak onto a ramp at the Selby Bay yacht club. A Cris Craft the size of a small ocean liner was docking at the same time. As lighting began to flash, I walked down to its berth and asked its owner if he thought the club would mind my taking shelter there. No problem, he said, go right ahead.
What followed was the nastiest storm I'd encountered in weeks. Fearsome winds. Hundreds of all-too-near lighting strikes. A couple inches of rain. I spent part of it stranded beneath an awning at a nearby marina to which I'd walked in search of a soda machine. When the raindidn't ease, I fell asleep for an hour on a shower bench in the marina's bathroom. Eventually I got back to my tent only to wake Thursday morning to the tip-tapping of another heavy rain on the nylon around me.
So I was not in the best of spirits when I was hailed by the owner of a huge yacht as I prepared to strike camp. ``You a guest aboard one of these boats?'' he asked. I answered no. He scowled. ``This is private property.'' In our ensuing conversation, it became amply clear that he had not spent a fortune on his boat and dock rent in order to share oxygen with an unwashed, unwholesome-looking vagabond living in a tent.
I left.
I'd paddled only a few miles farther south when menacing clouds again approached. A glance at my charts revealed that a ways up the Rhode River stood the YMCA's Camp Letts, so as the wind picked up I paddled toward the camp.
I was met by the boathouse director as I beached the kayak. I pointed out that the weather looked dicey and asked whether I could pitch my tent there. Sure, he said - and the boathouse featured a shower I was welcome to use, too. I began to unpack.
A few minutes later he returned looking sheepish. ``Well, it looks as if things aren't going to work out as well as I thought,'' he said. ``I just spoke to the camp director and he says you can't stay here.'' I could still use the shower, he added, provided I did it and got off the property in 15 minutes.
I asked to speak to the director, a fellow named Pat Butcher. ``This isn't a campground,'' he announced.
``I understand that,'' I said. ``But there's a storm on the way and I would think that that might mean something.''
It didn't. Butcher told me he was busy running a youth camp and that he wasn't about to let me pitch my tent just because I was in a kayak. After all, he didn't know whether I had a criminal past.
``Then pay me the courtesy of checking me out,'' I said.
``I don't have time to check you out,'' he replied.
``It'll take one call.''
``I don't have time to make one call,'' he said.
I paddled farther up the Rhode River and put in briefly at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, where the institute's scholars are housed in a converted cow shed on a former dairy farm. The Smithsonian uses its nearly 3,000 acres to study crabs, waterfowl, subaquatic grasses and acid rain, among other things.
The sky had cleared somewhat by the time I left. I paddled back down the Rhode, crossed the West River and turned up a creek to Shady Side, a crabbing village, wondering whether I'd have trouble getting permission to beach.
But my experience in Shady Side made it clear that any dark conclusion I had drawn about the western shore's hospitality was premature: K.B. Gross, a former waterman, let me camp on his property, and patrons at the Snug Harbor Inn, the local watering hole, toasted my journey well into the night.
On Friday when storms again threatened, I was rescued by Sylvia Downs of Deale, whose daughter, Barbara, lives in Norfolk and had called the newspaper to suggest I visit her mom.
``I hope you weren't expecting some 25-year-old, blond-haired chick,'' Sylvia said as she pulled up to the town's waterfront. ``I'm a grandmother.''
She then took me to lunch, put me up at her house and cooked me dinner.
Swift's next report will appear Wednesday. His 50-day journey around the Chesapeake Bay began July 1.
Hospitality was harder to find on the Bay's western coast until a traveler reached Shady Side's Snug Harbor Inn, where patrons toasted his journey well into the night. ILLUSTRATION: Map
STAFF
by CNB