THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607220210
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JULIE PARKER
LENGTH: 85 lines
AN ISLAND OUT OF TIME
A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake
TOM HORTON
W.W. Norton. 316 pp. $25.
For 300 years, the people of Smith Island have lived surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay. It is their lifeblood, and this book is about them. It is also about survival, theirs and ours.
Tom Horton is a native of Marsh Island, on the Maryland side of the Bay. In An Island Out of Time, he relates that much of his training as an environmental writer, chiefly for The (Baltimore) Sun, was growing up ``liking to muck in the marsh.''
In 1987 he left a house in the city and a successful journalism career for a job with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, running environmental education trips on Smith Island. With his wife and two young children, he settled in the town of Tylerton, increasing its population from 124 to 128, and was readily accepted into a special community of people who pay ``serious attention to both God and crabs.''
Horton's style is vivid; he employs all five senses in sharing observations of the Bay. Its heady, organic odor in spring is to him ``a garden of olfactory delights.''
His background gives him a dual perspective. He's brutally honest as he alternates between ``deploring and marveling at (the waterman's) ability to exploit nature.'' During the off-season he accompanies a man hunting terrapin, which are bringing top dollar in Asian communities. With awe and reverence he describes the beauty of the animals, the unique patterns on their carapaces, ``cheddary orange . . . lemony and olive to amber'' on their undershells. Then he sadly watches as they fill up the bottom of the boat.
Horton never judges the islanders, nor does he corner them with conservational preaching. Considering their predatory ways, he wrestles with his own feelings as he observes a culture that is dancing with nature. He admires their courage as they tough out a lifestyle that is slipping away along with thecoastline. Each time a waterman and his family pack up and head for the mainland, Horton feels we are losing another irreplaceable part of our history and our diversity.
There has never been any local government on Smith Island. No mayor, no police, no jails. The jury (read everyone but Smith Islanders) is still out on how to deal with the sporadic illegal hunting and crabbing done there.
Attempts over the years to regulate the pickers or enforce legislation through health and environmental departments, have failed. Is what's good for the mainland good for Smith Island? Horton argues it just isn't like anywhere else.
The author and the residents slash through layers of ecological policy blundering in their own ways. The diverse successes and failures of conservation here bubble and steam with controversy.
Where duck hunting is concerned, Smith Islanders are proud outlaws: They claim birthrights. One man, brought to the mainland and slapped with a fine for trapping black ducks, tells the judge honestly he can't promise not to do it again, ``because that's my heritage.''
Guidance mostly comes from the church, and islanders are adept at interpreting the Bible, perhaps slanting it slightly so that the sun shines a little brighter on the marsh dwellers.
An 80-year-old woman shares mixed feelings about the arrival of technology on the island: how TVs and VCRs have eaten away at the creativity of the children, who are losing the knack they had for finding hundreds of ways to keep busy in the marsh a fewfeet from their front doors.
``I think, back aways, we were more content,'' she says.
Another islander figured there ought to be more places in the world ``where you can go and just collect your thoughts.''
The author estimates that if the rising sea levels continue at their present rate, Smith Island will be swallowed up by the Chesapeake in 100 years. The Army Corps of Engineers has done some experimental work, but Horton ponders the value of trying to save these small, unique cultures. To him, the islanders are not mere curiosities, ``(t)hey are harbingers of our own future.'' Finally accepting that their resources are ``finite,'' they are being ``forced . . . to live sustainably.''
Tom Horton, environmentalist, philosopher, fisherman, teacher, has written a thoughtful, elegant book. MEMO: Julie Parker is a writer and artist who lives on the Eastern
Shore. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
JOHN EARLE/The Virginian-Pilot by CNB