THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 1, 1997 TAG: 9701010242
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 145 lines
Across Back Bay behind the marsh, a murmur of muted notes builds to a commotion. Then suddenly a V-shaped flight of tundra swans rises, catching the copper sunrise under powerfully beating wings.
The swans trumpet a plaintive hoo-woo as they bank and soar directly overhead.
This is the opening scene of a winter trek to one of the least accessible and least-visited places in Virginia: False Cape State Park.
This time of year, when the swans and snow geese and other migrating waterfowl are in town, hiking four miles along the beach is the only way to get there and back.
Because these visitors land in great multitudes to rest and gather strength on their way south, hiking and biking trails through Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge to the park have been closed during winter months.
But changes are in store. After more than 20 years of bartering and bickering, Washington and Richmond have agreed to grant access through the refuge. Early this year, quiet electric trams like those that roll through airports will ramble over the trails as fat-tired buses travel the beach.
What this will do to the solitude of Back Bay and False Cape, 10 miles of barrier spit connecting Sandbridge to the Outer Banks, is anyone's guess. But it's fair to say that things will never be the same.
For many who want the exercise, the chance to find a perfect shell, stare at the surf or meet some Virginia Beach originals, hoofing it along the beach will remain the way to go.
From Little Island Park at the end of Sandbridge or the Back Bay visitors' center, the only directions you need are to walk to the ocean and turn right.
Pristine beaches? No way.
Moving at about the speed limit of Virginia Beach Boulevard, several sport utility vehicles rumble by. One couple stops reluctantly. They explain that they have lifetime permits, granted before the Back Bay rules were adopted, to use the beach. ``If you ever drop the permit, you'll never get it back,'' the man says.
No, don't use their names, they say, and they're gone with a tromp on the accelerator.
This stretch of beach was once known as ``beer can alley'' because of the number of junk-discarding beach drivers.
Now, the most regular users are the fishermen who scan the ocean for schools of striped bass that spill out of the Chesapeake Bay and feed offshore.
``I've been doing this for a living a good part of my life,'' says Chuck Butler. He and Gary Whitehead are pulling a wooden fishing boat with a red shark's mouth painted on its bow. They'll sell their catch, if there is one, to the Pungo Fish House.
Shaking his head as hundreds of gulls have a feeding frenzy on fish that are too far offshore to reach in their boat, Butler says, ``It's kind of hard making a living down here on the beach now.''
Marshall and Marvin Belanga, a half mile down the beach, aren't having any luck, either. Their Brittany spaniel, Matlock, yelps at strangers from the cab of their truck.
The traffic thins out down the beach but an official sign still advises that the speed limit is 35 mph.
There's no obvious entrance to False Cape, simply well-worn tire tracks through an opening in the dunes.
And suddenly it's a different world.
Unlike the Back Bay refuge, with its thousands of acres of ponds and marshes, mile-wide False Cape is a checkerboard of maritime forests, wooded swamps and dune fields flanked by an ocean on one side and a bay on the other.
The park got its name from sailors who mistook its land mass for Cape Henry and ran aground in its shallow waters. It was a haven for several hunt clubs and once supported a small village at Wash Woods. The only remnants of the residents' hasty retreat are the now-wild horses and pigs that eat the grass and root through the forest floor.
The best times to visit are late fall and early spring. There are six primitive campsites on the bay and six on the ocean. The woods and shorelines are crisscrossed by 7 1/2 miles of hiking trails.
In summer, mosquitoes, ticks and poisonous cottonmouth snakes, in addition to scorching heat, make visiting difficult if not unbearable.
And then there are winter days like this one when wildlife is abundant, buglife minimal and solitude assured.
``It's our quietest time of year,'' says Gary Williamson, the park's chief ranger, starting up his four-wheel-drive van. Other than a single camper and a biker who came down at low tide last weekend, the park has had practically no recent human visitors.
Williamson feels the ``people-mover'' vehicles will increase visitors next year, but not dramatically. ``It's an excellent idea to get people here who don't have the stamina to hike or bike in,'' he says.
There are 200 species of animals, including the fluttering coots, black ducks, mallards, Canada geese, hooded mergansers and teals foraging in ponds near the Back Bay refuge.
The woods are filled with tall pines and low-spreading live oaks, many of them draped in Spanish moss. It has the look and feel of South Carolina low country. Williamson guesses the oaks spread up the coast along the Outer Banks.
A squatter's house is nothing but rubble now. The remains of a hot water heater, electrical outlets and purple shag carpet speak of the occupants' lifestyle and taste.
Watch out for these places, though. The wood is so rotten and the tin roofs so rusted that a foot will plunge right through them. Into the winter lair of the cottonmouths? Get out of there fast.
At the south end of the park is a monument with ``Va.'' on one side and ``N Ca'' on the other. Although it says A.D. 1728 on top, it was probably put up in 1887 when the boundary was surveyed.
The rag-tag settlement on False Cape was decimated by hurricanes in the mid-1930s but didn't die out until the '60s, when the state began acquiring the land.
Unlike wildlife preserves that are heavily managed, False Cape passively accepts whatever nature dictates.
``There are a lot of parks in Virginia, but there's nothing like this one,'' Williamson says.
``It's changed character several times in the past. When a class four or five hurricane hits us, it'll change again.'' ILLUSTRATION: D. KEVIN ELLIOTT color photos/The Virginian-Pilot
In the winter, the only way to reach False Cape State Park, one of
the least-visited spots in Virginia, is to hike four miles down the
beach. But an agreement between Washington and Richmond will provide
new access.
Marvin Belanga, with his Brittany spaniel, Matlock, and brother,
Marshall, was fishing for striped bass on the beach near False Cape
recently. Fishermen are some of the park's most regular visitors.
Making a living from the sea has gotten harder over the years, says
commercial fisherman Chuck Butler, who sells his catch of striped
bass - if there is one - to the Pungo Fish House.
Photos
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot
A woman and her dog walk along the beach toward Sandbridge from Back
Bay National Wildlife Refuge. The 10 miles of sandy spit connects
Virginia's coast to North Carolina's Outer Banks.
A tiny screech owl peers out from a wood duck box where it's taken
up residence at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, just down the
road from False Cape State Park. Snakes and mosquitoes aside, winter
is a good time of year to see wildlife at the park.
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