Capt. John Smith's 1608 Chesapeake Voyage

Susan's Journey Log

Landfall 1
Cherrystone creek, 5-10-02
Begin

First I had to find a boat. For a decade I have wanted to sail the Chesapeake for a summer, as I had done with my father growing up. Why else be a schoolteacher with a summer vacation? Ten years ago I had in mind a Sea Sprite 23; it sounded the right size for my spartan budget and for adventure.

July 2000, I was house-sitting for the Hoopers overlooking Core Banks, east of Beaufort, North Carolina. Tom Robinson, their seafood dealer, collected Mark's clams every Wednesday afternoon. At five o'clock I gave Tom a cup of ice tea before he drove his refrigerated truck back to Carrboro. One Wednesday he brought his grandfather's book, self-published in 1938; Melvin Robinson tried to prove that the Lost Colony was Cedar Island in Carteret County, not Roanoke Island, Dare County. Melvin's proof was 20th-century climate data. If the wind had blown from that direction in March, then boats could not have stayed anchored off the inlet. Both islands have similarly situated inlets: Oregon and Drum, and long sounds spreading to the northwest- Chowan River and Neuse River. Even then, sixty-some years ago, Dare County had the tourism, which it would not relinquish, and Downeast Carteret County doesn't want the crowds. Melvin also said 40 percent of the surnames of Lumbee Indians are the same as the Lost Colony settlers. . Though I had spent more than twenty years in coastal Carolina, I'm a Virginian, so I had not grown up with Tarheel fervor for their first settlers; I had Jamestown. And I had no idea that the Lost Colonists had been traced ad infinitum, ad nauseum, but I thought I'd get a boat and follow the trail where they'd fled upriver through tidewater North Carolina, which led me to Jamestown to inventory their research archives.

Heather Huyck, the National Park Service historian at Jamestown, said, "But we need a John Smith book for the 400th Commemoration in 2007," of which she is in charge. After all, I am a Virginian. Do the Lost Colony trip later. Mid-March before the red-bugs and ticks were out, I bushwacked the piney woods on Jamestown Island, asking myself, What trees were here four hundred years ago? Why did the planters choose here, when so many died from bad water, from starvation and fever?

As an amateur naturalist myself, I'm interested how the first colonists encountered this continent, what landscapes, what plant and animal communities. In the mountains of western North Carolina, I walked along trails where Quaker botanist William Bartram first climbed into those hills two hundred years ago, amazed at towering, flowering rhododendron. What a wonderland the colonists must have found four hundred years ago. As Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, "the green breast of the new world."

My goal for this project is to re-imagine what they saw, and see the wonders we still have today, though diminished, and share this awareness with others, especially young folk.


Spring 2001 I hoped naively to have a boat appear suddenly for a month in summer, on my holiday from teaching. In July, after visiting my brother and his new wife's new baby, I rode the ferry from Reedville to Smith Island. At 25 knots the chop on the open Bay was almost too much for the 65-foot ferry, and more than my tiny sailboat could handle. How many days would I have to sit in harbor waiting for wind and waves to subside? Gosh, it was hot, too hot. Back at the ferry dock campground, I swam in the pool, before I took a shower. How could I survive summer heat on a boat?
For my John Smith expedition I broadcast my intention: a singlehand, shallowdraft pilothouse sailboat, inboard diesel, for under $10,000. After first search I revised my fantasy I'd be lucky to find a seaworthy craft under $20k. However, in Lancaster County was a 28-foot Eldredge McGinniss pilothouse sloop for only $8k; bare bones. Its owner, a retired menhaden-spotter pilot, had cared meticulously for the 20-year diesel. But the boat drew four feet, and I really want to explore creeks on the Eastern Shore, where 3 feet depth is generous.

In August I moved between teaching jobs from the North Carolina mountains back to the coast, as expedient jumping-off port to provision an expedition. My job, teaching four nights, with an office and classrooms overlooking Bogue Sound, allowed me days to write begging letters to likely donors. My first major stipend was $500 from a North Carolina Regional Artist grant.
For years I had admired Sallie Lee, a lady sailor now in her 80s, and her sailboats. She had removed the mast and sailing rig to convert a little motorsailer to a trawler yacht. I asked if I could buy Veritas when she sold. Perfect boat for me: Permacraft-26 draws 3 feet, Perkins diesel runs 6-8 knots, cabin with v-berth, dinette, galley, head with shower. Sallie said, "I told myself two years ago I'd sell in two years," but by my departure she wouldn't sell. I expected another shallowdraft pilothouse to arrive in Beaufort, for sale. I looked at all the boats for sale in Oriental and Matthews Point. I looked at a Nimble Vagabond and a Nimble Arctic motorsailer, both of whose owners have become great friends of mine. The dockmasters at Cherry Point and Camp LeJeune marine bases told me about boats, for sale cheap, whose owners had shipped out. Trailerable would be a virtue; I mad a lowball offer on a Compac-27, with no standing headroom. I scoured the Yacht World and Boattrader websites for a Permacraft, an Albin. I awaited the new Soundings listings each month.

At New Years I drove to Annapolis with my Richmond godchildren, Addie and Ben Jones, who will crew for me, and their parents, to check out a Nimble Arctic and ramble boatyards. I fell in love with a green Gale Force-27 motorsailer, designed by George Kaiser, built by Shannon. I guessed $160 thou and was surprised the broker said only $80,000; I offered $40,000, teasing, but earnest. Two weeks later the Annapolis broker told me to come back to see a Freedom Cat Ketch, such a deal, but it was in poor shape. I inspected a Pearson-27 with a wingkeel, that drew 3 feet four, with six inches of snow on the deck. I wandered boatyards in Deale, Solomons, and Deltaville. A guy tried to talk me into a steel Bruce Roberts Spray with a half-built interior. Shipwright Harbor in Deale had boats donated to the Annapolis Rotary available for auction. More estate boats are available from Associated Marine Institute in Tampa. Many colleges on the water raise money by selling donated boats, among them Carteret Community College in Morehead City and St. Mary's College in Maryland. I considered a Marshall-22 catboat, 5-foot headroom. The owner of a pilothouse Gulf 29 docked at Nasty Harbor in Beaufort wanted too much. I made an offer on a fiberglass Bahama Sandpiper cat ketch in Maine, designed by Chuck Paine, built by the Morris yard in Southwest Harbor. I reserved a ticket to fly to Boston for 24 hours to check it out, but bailed out when the broker would not replace the busted trailer. I asked a marine surveyor to drive by a Permacraft-26 listed in Pensacola before I bought an air ticket to fly down. "Ma'am, you don't want this boat," he said. I was getting silly when I saw the picture of an Eldredge McGinnis, built in Japan in 1958, wooden, in a boatyard in Maine-- romantic with all my illusions of brass swinging lanterns.

No sailboat was going to be ready by spring vacation, so I test-drove a 22-foot C-Dory pilothouse motorboat in Wilmington, in driving rain, and drove made an acceptable offer. I had thought trawler yachts, like the Cape Dory-28, were too expensive for my budget. I had disregarded the C-Dory because William Least Heat Moon did not like the C-Dory he drove across the country for his book, River Horse, but I don't think he likes boats or boating in general. The C-Dory matched my criteria. The Bahama Sandpiper with an 8-horse outboard would cruise at four knots, hull speed. The C-Dory at 8 to 18 knots could help me escape thunderstorms on the Bay. If I want to see the whole Bay in three months, a motorboat is a good idea. Without a mast I can drive under low bridges. The hull draws 8 inches; the outboard 23 inches; I can explore up creeks, and pole across marsh flats. For less pollution, more quiet and fuel efficiency, I traded the 9-year-old 70 HP 2-stroke for a new Suzuki 4-stroke, fuel-injected 70 HP.

On March 5, the Wilmington owner delivered the C-Dory to a Havelock outboard dealer. A week later the outboard mechanic delivered the boat and new motor to Taylors Creek boat ramp in Beaufort. The outboard dealer was also supposed to tune-up my trailer; "Make it safe," I asked. Neighbors Joe and Emy Christian let me use their boatlift for two weeks. Friends helped attach two fire extinguishers, two fans, two more handrails on deck. Beaufort is a great town for outfitting a boat. There are many marine supply stores: Outer Banks Outfitters, West Marine, Ace Marine, Barbours Marine, Beaufort Discount Marine. I look first and buy all I can find at Gaskills Hardware. Inevitably, I had to try two or three places to buy stainless bolts, nuts, and washers. I learned there are flat head, round heads, oval heads. I drove one day to Warsaw, North Carolina, to pick up two tiny kayaks from Hurricane Aquasport. The biggest ordeal was trips to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Lowes to buy plastic drawers to fit into lockers to maximize storage space. Between chores making the C-Dory cruise ready, I circumnavigated Radio Island, Carrot Island, and Shackleford Banks. I practiced anchoring. To prepare for bad weather, I rode the steep 5-foot waves off Rough Point. Although I could never afford one before, I got a cell phone for safety, so my godchildren crew and grownup friends can follow and intercept my voyage.

Sunday afternoon, March 24, after taking the Hooper family for a ride, spilling some peppermint tea from a thermos on the bow, I christened the boat, Landfall, for the cottage my father had on the Potomac River when I was zero to five, and his place on Indian Creek, that my brother and I have just sold.

Monday, March 25, a neighbor John Worcester towed Landfall on her trailer from the creek to my driveway for me to make final preparations. I was confounded how to secure two kayaks I want to carry on the roof. No time to mail-order proper car-top Yakima racks. George, the canvas maker in Beaufort, sold me two stainless steel stanchions so the boats could ride on their sides. AB Kayaks on the Beaufort waterfront had big cockpit covers so no water or wind would endanger the kayaks on the roof. A friend removed the defunct horn and obsolete Loran antennae, filled the roof holes with Marine-Tex, and drilled new holes for the kayak stanchions. For this expedition Ben Moore at Outer Banks Outfitters donated a Raymarine handheld VHF and a Garmin GPS with a map that shows my

Thursday, March 28, cleaning my old saltwater tackle box, I stuck a gummy hook into a finger. I called a local doctor's office a mile away, which said I should go to the emergency room seven miles away. No time. I pulled the hook out myself and applied Betadine. Out of time before my afternoon classes, I just tossed aboard duffels instead of stowing food in cabinets. When I told the fishhook story in my last class, a student recommended that I get a tetanus shot. The emergency room, when I called, predicted a two-hour wait. I preferred sleep.

Friday, March 29, at 7 a.m., Jason, a driver for Southern Skimmer, hooked up Landfall to tow to Virginia. In Washington, NC, we did not find any tetanus shot at a doctor and a public health office. In Elizabeth City, asking at a gas station for Urgent Care, some guy said, "Hey lady, your buddy bearing has blown off." On the trailer one of four rims had melted from heat. Luckily the blown bearing had not wrecked another vehicle on the highway; the axel had not broken, crushing my eggshell boat. That axel bearing had no grease; none of the other three had grease either. If the outboard mechanic had neglected to fix my trailer, I was worried what maintenance on my motor he had overlooked or omitted. After 90 minutes' delay finding and installing a new axel rim, and greasing all four, the truck was back on the road. At 3:30, Jason backed Landfall down the ramp at Jamestown Yacht Basin. He then drove the trailer to Rebel Marine on Willoughby Spit in Norfolk. I had to stow gear before I could walk into the cabin. After a brief nap, I walked up to the marina office, where Bill Booker the manager handed me hot chicken and dumplings his wife Diane had made.

To reach the Jamestown Yacht Basin by water, your craft must draw less than 3 feet and be no higher than the 12-foot bridge clearance. Saturday morning, March 30, Jay, one of the marina community, volunteered to show me the shallow channels and narrow inlet out the "Hole in the Wall." Blowing 15-18 knots, the James River had quite a chop. From the river we could see the white tent over an archeological dig on the Island. In "Instructions" to the first settlers, the London Virginia Company had told them to find a place with a good view to avoid attacks from the Spanish; to select a fertile and wholesome, to avoid a low and moist place. Many men died in the first two years from starvation, fever, and Indian attack. On the Thorofare, the eastern channel behind Jamestown Island, there's a sunken ship in the channel, right between markers, that shows on the chart, but not necessarily visible by eyeball navigation. Booker took eight folks on his vintage deadrise workboat, Pal, for an afternoon cruise. Off the point of the Chickahominy River, Booker said he used to hunt in the swamp woods, where million-dollar "castles" sat on waterfront filled lots. Saturday dinner was steak.

Sunday, March 30, was rainy; lightning and wind predicted. I was grateful for the roof over the floating dock. When I cross-threaded a bolt into the kayak stanchion, I ripped it from its bedding, and Booker drilled the bolt free in his machine shop. Among the motorboat, pickup-truck, NASCAR fans at Jamestown, I have never met more hospitable, generous people. Somebody cooks for twenty people every night. Sunday night for Easter someone roasted a leg of lamb in the barbecue cooker for everyone at the Jamestown Yacht Basin; what I call a five-star resort. In contrast, in advance of my James River week, I had called Kingsmill Marina to ask for a night of free docking. After I said I'm a schoolteacher taking students on a John Smith expedition, the manager said, "And how could that possibly interest us?"

Monday, March 31, I listened to the weather radio at six a.m. I had read charts the night before. By myself the first time, I was wary to leave the dock, read the shallow channel, gun through the Hole in the Wall. I drove five miles west on the James River, where Booker had shown me the channel in front of the ferry dock on Pal. I waved at the bridge tender on the Chickahominy River and drove half way between the banks, reading my depth sounder. Marshes and forests still line the banks of the Chickahominy, one of the wilder rivers I'll see, ospreys patching nests, squawking if I passed too close, guarding eggs or newborns I did not spy. When I reached Colonial Harbor, 18 miles upriver, no one responded to my VHF; Taylor Smith did not answer my cell phone call. With no one watching, I docked okay into 20-some-knot winds. I not adept yet on docking this motorboat. I miss the big rudder on a sailboat when I float up to a dock. Why is it no one is watching when I don't botch my docking? First thing, Molly my dog jumps off the boat to pee on grass, then we walked a mile down and back the dirt road. Off Colonial Harbor is Smith Island, now eroded to a patch of trees, where the natives captured John Smith. Into the fading dusk I watched great blue herons circling their nests; one took flight, prompting others to launch and circle, ring around the rosy.

Tuesday, April 1, leaving the Chickahominy, I hoped to run another 25 miles up the James River to Jordan Point under the Hopewell bridge. But the weather radio said the wind was rising to 20, and with wind against the tide, the chop was already considerable at 15. If I were stranded a day or two by wind up river, I might not reach my trailer in Norfolk. I relinquished any designs of reaching Richmond, or the Appomattox, and returned to Jamestown.

Wednesday, April 2, as the wind blew 20-25, with driving rain, thunder, and lightning, I was cozy reading on the boat-- Ivor Noel Hume's Martins Hundred. On the grounds of Carter's Grove plantation, in the 1970s Hume excavated a village where half the settlers were killed in the March 1622 massacre. The Native Americans wanted to drive the white people from their land. One Indian boy warned Jamestown, so the massacre failed its purpose, and the British stayed. When the late afternoon cleared, still blowing 20-plus, I cycled Diane's bike around Jamestown Island, watching the scarlet sunset upriver just as the earliest settlers had. Wednesday night was Diane Booker's birthday dinner.

On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, April 3, I listened to the weather radio. When I lie awake at night, wondering about the next day's weather, fearing if wind and waves become too rough, I begin to appreciate the trepidation, the terror, of a young woman in the hold of an English ship four months at sea. Instead of risking more fear, I could borrow Booker's truck to visit Martins Hundred at Carter's Grove by land. I could safely leave Landfall at Jamestown for my last month of teaching, but I wanted a quick start from Cape Henry in May. But if I did not leave Jamestown Yacht Basin, I could easily spend the next four months quite happily right here. Gathering my gumption, I left at noon, heading east out the Thorofare, successfully avoiding sunken ship carcasses. With following northerly breeze, the long stretch of the James beyond Kingsmill, Busch Garden rollercoasters, and Carter's Grove was tolerably calm. Passing Fort Eustis, I noticed, when my depth sounder read 8 feet instead of 22, that I had wandered out of the channel into the restricted zone. Ahead, the navigation chart shows the "ghost fleet" anchored to the south of the channel, but the big gray derelict ships crowd the channel right and left, and against their hulls that filled the horizon, I could not sight the navigation marker that points the channel. Finally, right under the ships I found the channel that threads through them. The last hour until the James River Bridge at Newport News was royal chop. Gratefully, I pulled into the concrete bulkheads that protect the Leeward City Marina. I was glad for food on board, barely touched at Jamestown, because I did not feel safe walking around Newport News.

Friday morning, April 4, the weather radio said the wind still gusted at 20 in Norfolk, would fall during the day, but rise again on Saturday. Slack low tide by Sewells Point at 9:30 a.m. was my best chance of calm. In the lee of Newport News dock the seas were calm enough. Over the Hampton Roads tunnel I faced 50 minutes of five feet seas, from five directions, breaking over my port hull, spray obscuring my port windows. I could make 9 knots up and down the waves. The C-dory flat hull pounded every fourth or fifth wave trough. The boat and I could handle the bucking and pounding. But my dog was desperate. Frantic, panting, Molly left her comfy v-berth, sheltered under the dinette table until it collapsed. Luckily, the night before, I had recorded in my log the channel markers, turns, and compass headings for each course. In the chaotic seas of Hampton Roads I could not read the chart or the GPS. Rounding the Navy yard, I left the channel to find lee from the wind among the crab pot buoys. Willoughby Bay was surprising calm. David Briggs welcomed me at the end of Rebel Marine docks. His father, Lane, my old friend, famous for his steel sailing tugboat, was gone overnight to Baltimore. I walked under the highway for lunch at Willoughby Inn and then along the front beach, braving the wind ashore. John Smith was born in Willoughby, England. As the temperature dipped into the low 30s, I was warm enough sleeping in my sleeping bag.

Saturday, April 5, 40 degrees, with cold hands I stitched the worn seams on the canvas bimini that shades my cockpit. David and Michael towed my boat up the ramp to store a month on its trailer. A rental car company picked me up, and I drove the car to Irvington for my brothers' new daughter's christening on Sunday, 6 May. From the altar, Eliza Carr waved like the Queen Mum. I've never seen Jeff happier, his face a full grin when he smiles at Sallie and Liza Carr. Fishing buddy Bill drove me from Norfolk back to Beaufort to teach another month.

Tuesday, May 7, I finished emptying closets and drawers for summer renters and packing my boat gear. I had barely figured 25-mile hops between ports to figure if I could actually get around the Bay in three months. As I was typing another grant proposal, friend Douglas actually cleaned my refrigerator, so that my summer tenants will leave the Beaufort house clean when I return. I could not accomplish this voyage without the help of many generous friends. Earlier, I had thought I'd actually motor my boat to Cape Henry to cross the mouth of the Bay straight north. Instead, I may angle northwest from Thimble Shoal to Plantation Light off Cape Charles Harbor. My map reading said 35 degrees, corroborated by the GPS waypoints, which said 36 degrees heading. By car I stopped at First Landing State Park at Cape Henry, where the English stepped ashore on April 26, 1607, and where Capt. John Smith left on his Chesapeake voyage on June 2, 1608. I reached Rebel Marine by 6, pulled out the kayak and cooler stowed in the cabin, so I had room to sleep. Capt. Lane Briggs took me out to dinner for the best crab cakes in Norfolk.

Wednesday, May 8, I prepared Landfall for voyage, found an optician to bend my glasses back to fit (having walked into the attic stairs in Beaufort), and bought fresh food. Dale, Lane's ship carpenter, screwed down my GPS on the console and fixed the trailer lights. Charles Redmond adjusted his trailer hitch, so he could launch Landfall. I listened carefully to the weather. Instead of my brother Jeff and his bride Sallie coming to shuttle my car and trailer to their yard in Irvington, David Briggs's friend Michael would ride my car to Yankee Point where David had bought a catamaran. Jeff could fetch it there, saving him four hours. Every logistic I need for this expedition seems to happen just moments before I need it.

Thursday, May 9, at 6:30 a.m., the weather radio said there would be afternoon showers; the television news reported severe lightning and wind right then in Portsmouth and Hampton, heading to Norfolk in 20 minutes. The western sky was pitch black. If I missed the opportunity of Charles's trailer, I might sit in Norfolk a week until the weather cleared to cross the mouth of the Bay. Graciously, Charles towed Landfall across the Bay on the Bridge-Tunnel. That's the benefit of a trailerable C-Dory, which weighs 2000 pounds, just 8 feet wide. We crossed the Bay in heavy rain and lightning, with limited visibility; no weather for me to be offshore in my tiny boat. We launched at the ramp in Cape Charles, and I filled the gas tanks. Bowdy Lusk hopped on my boat to guide me into Cherrystone Creek. As I zoom where Bowdy points, a waterman pulls up along Landfall to wave me away from shallow water, really to keep my boat off his clam beds. But I say, "I've got Bowdy aboard." Thursday afternoon, I help Bowdy spread nets to keep cownose rays, that he calls "bullfish," from eating his clams. Bowdy and his three sons raise 70 million clams on 30 acres of submerged bottom they inherited in Cherrystone Creek. Bowdy is also a commodities broker; his brother Pat is the pharmacist in Cheriton. Their father was my father's best friend in the Coast Guard during World War II. Bowdy and Penny now live in his grandmother's house; Pat and Ellen live in a new house, next to their mother Peach's house, where Pat's daughter Meredith lives. Partial goal of my expedition is to find another community where to settle, that I like better than Beaufort. I'd like to live on the lane facing the sunset over Cherrystone Creek next to the Lusk family.

Friday, May 10, with Bowdy's son Bon advised another way to carry my kayaks. Bo owns South East Expeditions and runs kayak tours. I remove the stanchions on Landfall's roof and fill the holes with Marine Tex. To show me "seaside," Bowdy and Penny trailer their flat-bottom boat to the east side of the shore For 27 years Bowdy has had a rough "shack" on stilts that overlooks vast marsh. For an hour Bowdy casts for fish into the ocean off Myrtle Island, while Penny and I find floats for son Ben's crab pots. Back in the creek Penny and I cast and catch flounder. That night we danced to Mr. B and the Boys rock band at Pelican's, a pavilion right on the Bay beach by the bridge. The Eastern Shore natives entertained me better than the Indians ever hosted John Smith.

Saturday, May 11, Meredith, newspaper reporter, interviews me for the Shore paper. I repair a crack in one of my kayaks with Marine Tex. I tie down the kayaks on the roof, stacked, lying flat, for less windage than on their sides. I screw down the steel plate on the bow. Neighbor Jean tells me the families on the Eastern Shore are all related. "Pick up one crab in a basket, and they're all connected." Harry Holcomb tell me local history of Arlington and the log canoe he has restored at Kerr House in Onancock. Bowdy and Penny take me to a party at the Tankards nursery, where all the planters on the lower Shore gather, as they have for hundreds of years. I wish I could spend a month or two exploring Oppehannock, Nassawaddox, Pungoteague creeks. Deep-draft sailing ships used to come up these creeks. Pat told me the creeks filled with sedimentation after the forests were chopped down for farms. A neighbor drilled 20 feet of eroded soil until he found hard bottom. Bowdy says a big storm will pass overnight. As I sleep lightly, apprehensive, the storm never breaks, so I figure it's still looming. In Smith's journal of the Eastern Shore, he reported difficulty finding fresh water to drink. Crossing Tangier Sound, a big storm blew out his sail and almost capsized the boat. The crew repaired the sail with their shirts. The next storm on Tangier Sound blew them across to the western shore, and the crew demanded that they sail back to Jamestown. Smith gave a speech, saying he shared the same discomforts and dangers. I fear the storms on Tangier Sound.

Sunday, May 12, at 6 I crack one eye and see clouds out the window. Grateful I do not have to leave, I roll over to sleep more. At seven I walk Molly down the Cherrystone lane by the three Lusk houses. When I turn back, Bowdy has pulled Landfall from the deep-water stake to his dock. "Time to leave," he says, "John Smith never told his crew, we can't go, there's a cloud. Got to go now, you have a two-hour window." Scoffing at my fears of wind, he says, "In three weeks, you'll laugh at 35 knots." In his skiff Bowdy leads out the Cherrystone channel, threading crabpots and shoals. For an hour at 18 knots, riding flood tide with following breeze, I stay a mile offshore the Shore, in 8 to 12 feet of water. Off Oppehannock Creek, which I'd love to explore, I cut my speed and notice the wind and waves are rising. I check my gas: I've used five gallons, starboard tank. I listen to the weather radio, which predicts winds rising to 20 by late morning. I choose to run another hour direct to Onancock. Up the creek three miles opposite the town wharf, I tie to the bulkhead of Mount Prospect, where Claudia and Bill Bagwell live in his ancestor's yellow house, by the green fuel tanks of Bagwell Oil. Claudia knows friends of mine from school in Richmond.

I am sorry not to explore Occahannock, as Smith and crew did, searching for fresh water. I was glad to ride the flood tide and following wind into Onancock by 11. Bill Bagwell, reading his Sunday paper on his lawn, waves me to his dock, earlier than he expected me. Bill and Claudia Bagwell live at Mount Prospect, the big yellow house on the hill facing Onancock Creek opposite the Town Wharf, his family's home for generations. Both Bill and Claudia grew up in Onancock, the kind of small town where I like to live, still less spoiled by development than Beaufort. In the afternoon I walk uptown, scout the post office and bakery, for Monday destinations. At five I shower, then dine with Claudia, Bill, and their son Thomas, an eighth grader at Broadwater Academy. I savor lively dinner-table conversation with two folks my age who had been to Virginia colleges. Both Bill and Claudia grew up in Onancock and returned home, as so many do on the Eastern Shore. From boarding school at St. Catherine's and college at Mary Baldwin, Claudia knows friends of mine from Richmond. She has been reporter for the Virginia Pilot and editor of the local newspaper. Claudia now searches title for her brother, an attorney, and Bill runs the family fuel business. Once three hundred and some acres of farm, Mount Prospect's lawn is now ten acres with glorious boxwood gardens and an ancient grove of walnuts. "In World War I the army wanted to cut these trees for gun stocks, but my grandmother refused," Bill says. In their living room is a ship's model, Virginia Dare, as tall as Thomas Bagwell, built by his great-great-great-uncle Isaiah. On the town square is a statue to another Bagwell, a Civil War hero.

Monday, May 13, as the wind is blowing wild out in Tangier Sound, I shelter happy in Onancock Creek. Uptown I can walk to the post office and a bakery. For the next day or two, I'll wait until the wind drops to cross Tangier Sound. I could definitely live in Onancock.  I type my trip journal all morning and on Bill's computer email a report to Landfall's website at Calvert Marine Museum. Uptown I munch a cinnamon cruller at the bakery, mail a letter, and get the form from Division of Motor Vehicles, claiming rebate on the 17 cents a gallons on gas for which boats are exempt. Cruisers really appreciate a town where we can walk from docking or anchoring to services. I'm trying to read books to mail home, as Bowdy says my 70 HP outboard motor is underpowered for the weight I carry. He said the dealer who sold it to me was irresponsible. A reporter and photographer for the local paper visit the boat.

May 14, 2002 - With the pressure this low before the impending storm, I wake with a cramp in my crick hip, from lifting my mother when I nursed her. Only remedy besides a good massage therapist is to roll the deep muscle on a golf ball. I leave a note on Claudia's door and, without questioning, she brings me a golf ball before she goes to work. On the boat I read Ivor Noel Hume's Virginia Adventure for two hours. Harry Holcomb from Warehouse Creek drops by to show me the 5-log canoe and the Arlington exhibit at Kerr Place. Arlington, home of the Custis family on Lower Plantation Creek south of Cape Charles Harbor, was the grandest of early houses built in Virginia. When the family moved to the Potomac, the house deteriorated and was dismantled. Now a foundation of concerned Lower Shore cares for the ruins. At one in Onancock, cashing a donation check from the dean of my college, I eat a gracious quiche and salad, leisurely since I am grounded. As much as I like this small town, I can't leave Onancock because of the wind. The weather radio predicts a violent front will cross the Bay this afternoon or evening. Anne Bagwell, Bill's mother, says she'll leave her door open and a light on. If I get scared, I should come up to her house, just above where my boat is docked. Anticipating high winds, I tie more lines and another bumper to the side of my boat. Without adequate coverage, despite the saleslady's promises when she should me the most expensive package, "Total Freedom," my Alltel cell phone won't ring, so I miss Claudia's warning at 8:45 that the storm will start in fifteen minutes. At nine p.m., the wind, lightning, and driving rain start. The scariest part is the sound of the wind. At 50 miles an hour, it moans, minor and mourning, and sounds as if the next crescendo will gust 120. I look up at the comforting light in Anne's house above my wharf, but want to stay on the boat to tend the lines as the wind blows the tide as high as the top of the wharf pilings. In this sheltered cove the rippling chop out my cabin windows looks awfully fierce, as Landfall sits so low in the water. I sleep again for two and a half hours. At midnight, the wind returns, just high wind, no rain, unremitting for three hours. I fall asleep again after three a.m. I hear later that tornadoes struck near Solomons on the Patuxent and blew down some houses near Cambridge farther up on the Eastern Shore.

Big wind, gusting above 50 mph as the front passed last night. Wind and rain for half an hour at 9 pm, then high winds and no rain from 12:15 for 3 hours sustained. I stayed awake mostly to check dock lines as the tide rose very high. I could be in no more protected place than Onancock harbor. Now I am waiting for the winds to subside in the Bay, and the waves to drop in Tangier Sound. Boat and I can handle rough weather better than my dog Molly; she will not get back on board if we have another crossing as rough as Hampton Roads. I do not want an "impressed" crew, the way drudgers used to round up drunks in the Baltimore bars for winter oyster season. This morning I have toured Kerr Place in Onancock and the restoration of the skipjack "Annie C." Also I took a slide of the "Virginia Dare" with Thomas Bagwell standing by for scale, a model ship built by his great-great-great uncle. I may skip Tangier and go directly to Crisfield or Pocomoke City, so that Quakers may carry me to a lecture in Lewes, DE, on the Chicone Indian archeological site at Seaford, DE. Also The 16 May is my 53rd birthday. I cannot stay at the CBF center at Smith I. so that stop is deleted.

On Wednesday, 15 May, I caught the 15-20 southerly breeze with a following flood tide to run two hours from Onancock to Tangier from 4:30 to 6:30 pm. Stayed at the Port Isobel CBF Education center.

Hoping to pull out as soon as the wind drops, I walk uptown for two newspapers. Meredith Lusk's feature interview is very fine writing. Ann Nock, a local historian who lives on the hill above the wharf by the massive sycamore tree, drops by a copy of her book on Onancock. I read an hour, then walk uptown to mail home two books, ten pounds off the boat. At the Town Wharf I sit on the Liar's Bench with several old men. Capt. Fred Pruitt, captain of the tourist boat to Tangier, says I won't leave the dock today. Isaac the dockmaster says, "Leave at five, and don't look back." I listen to the weather radio at ten past every hour, which will give me the buoy wind reports on the hour ten minutes earlier. The radio keeps saying the wind will drop, "later."

On John Smith's voyage, crossing Tangier Sound was his roughest weather. From the journal of Walter Russell, Anas Todkill, and Thomas Mumford: "In crossing over from the maine to the other Isles we discovered, the winde and water so much increased, with thunder, lightning, and raine, that our mast and sayle blew overboard and sunc mighty waves overracked us in that small barge, that with great labour we kept her from sinking by freeing out the water."

At four p.m. the flag on the Onancock dock does not stand at stout. At 4:10 I call Capt. Charles Parks's home in Tangier, and his wife runs out to check her wind gauge. "Ten knots," she says. "I'm coming, " I say. I pull away from the wharf at 4:20, leave marker #7 at Onancock Creek at 4:55, heading 320 degrees, and dock at Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Port Isobel Center east of Tangier at 6:20 p.m. I much prefer to leave port early in the morning, in case anything amiss might delay me, but Bowdy said I must grab two-hour periods when the wind drops. When I land, the school kids have just rolled in the mud. Getting wet and muddy is one of the main attractions of environmental education.  That night I eat dinner with twenty-five seventh graders and their teachers from Fredericksburg Academy. They are excited to hear about my trip around the Chesapeake. No dogs are allowed at Port Isobel, as some children may be allergic, so I walk Molly on her leash on the periphery.

Thursday, 16 May, Port Isobel
CBF Education Center at Tangier Island

I jump on the CBF workboat, Lani Moore, with the school kids to pull up the pots they set the night before. The captain is Charles Park, native waterman from Tangier, well of wisdom and patience. I take photographs of crazy kids dumping pots and measuring crabs. "Throw back any under five inches," Tiffany Greenberg. "Soon the new regulation to save the crab population will be five and a quarter inches."

Showing us the bright color on her worry-bead bracelet, Tiffany warns us to wear sunscreen. A boy, possibly Iranian, named Babek, "Call me Shish," says his skin is so dark he need not worry. "Fair skin and freckles, that's my Irish background," I say. "But you have a rich cultural heritage," he tells me. What an poised, generous reply for a young man. The tide is too low for kids to canoe on the marsh creeks, so they drag a dredge just offshore the beach.

In the evening before a departure, I go over the charts of my route the next day. In my log I record buoys and course changes. With my compass I mark off distance and estimate time. The C-Dory can travel as fast as 20 knots, in slick calm, but against any chop it slows down. In even two-foot waves, it slows to 13 or even 9 knots. I try to ride incoming tide with a following wind and to avoid wind against the tide, which sets up a chop. The higher the wind, the higher the waves. If wind is predicted, I sleep less. I anguish over my decision whether to leave or stay in port. Traveling alone, I am wary.

In the morning, before I start my outboard, I go through my daily checklist: stow stuff in the cabin and cockpit, check plug in transom, check the lines tying down the kayaks, turn on battery to "all," turn on depth sounder, turn on GPS, turn on VHF radio and listen to weather one more time, tilt outboard down, check the oil, turn on gas tank to either port or starboard, record departure time in log, turn ignition key on and off two times, then start, verify outboard is spouting water. Review the chart one more time. Get all lines but one clear, pull in bumpers, cast off last line; say a prayer.
Underway, I do not listen to the music radio. I appreciate the silence. Until the middle of March, the VHF has been silent, except for Coast Guard channel checks. In April no other pleasure craft have been on the water; I am grateful for watermen. Every hour I turn the VHF to weather. I watch the water and sky, observant of birds-- the gulls, the ospreys, near shore the herons and egrets, by marshes the blackbirds.

At ten I pull away from the Port Isobel dock and motor slowly down the channel that is the main street of Tangier. Sixty crabs shacks at low tide sit high and dry on the mud flats behind their docks on the channel. Watermen and their wives wave at me, as I take their pictures. I want to walk ashore, see the church, the water tower, have a crab cake at the restaurant, but the radio says the wind is rising. At 10:50 I pass the Port Isobel dock again. From Tangier due east I can see the CBF building on Fox Island, and a little east and north, I can see the water tower at Crisfield, heading 39 degrees. The wind is 15, rising to 20. With the following 2-3 foot sea, I must steer down every wave. At noon I enter the Crisfield harbor, gas up and dock by 12:20. One of four bars that attaches the sun-awning post has broken; the other three are also shot. At Somers Cove Marina I take a shower and walk to town for crabcake and strawberry shortcake, my traditional birthday cake. I case the four marine hardware stores on Main Street in Crisfield with no luck. Finally, the upholsterer, David Pruitt, finds four of the right stainless fittings in a box in his van. I replace the four pins that hold up the framework for the awning. I tighten the hose clamp under the sink faucet intake.

At four Harry Hill, Quaker from Princess Anne, picks up me and Molly to drive us to Bethany Beach to meet Cherie Clark for dinner. I eat another crab cake and strawberry shortcake. At the library we attend Virginia Busby's lecture on her 9-year archeological research on the Nanticoke Indians, those who welcomed John Smith in 1608. In a farm field she found pottery shards from 1000 A.D. She never found the shell beads that Smith said the Nanticoke were so famous for trading. From the 1600s she found several glass beads that Europeans would have introduced. This summer Virginia will defend her dissertation for her Ph.D. at University of Virginia. When I happen to check messages on my cell phone, despite no message symbol, I am dismayed that I have ten messages since Monday: Claudia's warning of the storm, my brother, a friend coming next weekend, and numerous birthday calls. I am mad that I pay Alltel $80 a month for the best service, for emergency while I am solo and for crew contact, and there is no service.

Windiest spring ever. As much as I loved Onancock, I was ready to roll. Listened to the weather radio every hour. Sat on the "Liars' Bench" at the Town Wharf. Capt Fred Pruitt who runs the tourist boat to Tangier said I'd never get off the dock that day; Isaac the dockmaster said to leave at five and never look back. At four the flag fluttered less. At 4:15 I called Capt. Charles Parks' wife in Tangier and she said her wind meter said "8 knots." I said, "I'm coming." Out of Onancock Creek at 5, I was tied up at Tangier by 6:15. More accustomed to sailboats and kayaks, Molly my dog does not like the slightest chop when the motorboat pounds. I was plenty apprehensive. In Tangier Sound, Capt. Smith's crew was in a big storm, blew out their sail. The weather will blow and rain over the weekend. I'll try to head up the Pocomoke River.

Today, May 16, is my 53rd birthday. If I can cross Tangier Sound again today, Quakers will pick me up in Crisfield for dinner and a lecture on the Chicone Indian archeological site in Seaford, DE.

I rode through the Tangier main channel at low tide. Crossed Tangier Sound to Crisfield with following sea and wind building to 20-25. Harry Hall and Cherie Clark took me to dinner for my 53rd birthday (strawberry shortcake), and Bethany Beach Library lecture by Virginia Busby on Nanticoke Indian archeology.

Friday, 17 May. High wind and storm prediction kept me ashore, but I replaced anchor chain shackles and sun-awning hardware.

I have wanted to cruise up the Pocomoke River, which is the deepest river for its width in the world. This two-day trip, 24 miles each way, is half exposed to wind on Pocomoke Sound. However, wind and rain keep me ashore at Crisfield. I'm content on the dock today. I throw off the dock lines to a couple on a sailboat impatient to cross the Bay. In half an hour, they're back, the trembling wife grateful to be docked again. I check my email in the office at the town museum. I find skinny bungee cord and sew it to mosquito netting to secure around my forward hatch. I eat an ice cream cone on the dock with Anne and Jim, two cruising sailors from Tybee Island and join two other sailors, Linda and Pete from Connecticut, for dinner at Side Street; they have sold everything on shore and live aboard their Pearson-38. We are all grounded by the wind. The heavy rain predicted for Friday night is just sprinkling.

Saturday, 18 May. The heavy rain starts mid-morning. If this windy weather persists all summer, I'll spend more time at anchor than underway. Better weather is predicted for the next week. I replace the big shackle on my anchor chain with a smaller one so that it fits through the hole in the bow. Now I can use my bow cleat for docking lines, instead of wrapping the anchor chain. I sew Molly's harness a little tighter. David Pruitt, the upholsterer, drives me in the driving rain to a grocery for fresh bananas. He brings a mess of soft shell crabs aboard and instructs me how to roll them in House of Autry bread crumbs, then to sauté them in a light layer of olive oil. David drives me to Pocomoke City to walk the boardwalk through the swamp forest. In bloom are magnolia, wild roses, iris. I bite the tip and suck the sweet drop from honeysuckle.

Sunday, 19 May. Left Crisfield at 9 am through the northern creek cut, passed Little Deal Island, into the Nanticoke River, up 15 miles to Vienna.  Tied to the town wharf in the front yard of the mayor, Russell and Sandy Brinsfield.

Yahoo. Low wind is predicted for the next five days. I wave farewell to Pete and Linda Gillen on Good Decision and to Anne and Jim on their chartered Sabre, all heading west across the Bay to Solomons. I'm off the Crisfield dock by 8:30, after I file a cruise plan with Mary, the manager at Somers Cove. I motor north from Little Annemessex River through Daughtery Creek Canal out the mouth of Big Annemessex River, into big water at the head of Tangier Sound, across the mouth of Manokin River. To my west South Marsh and Bloodsworth islands, north of Smith Island and Kedges Straits, are restricted military areas. Waves in the big water are passable, two feet, so I pass the channel into Deal Island harbor at 10:20. The mouth of Wicomico and Nanticoke rivers is quite rough. John Smith chose the follow the Nanticoke, so I do. In 1982 Hedden, in his book Naturalist on the Nanticoke, found a modern sign between Newfoundland and Long points on the northwest shore that marked where John Smith landed. Smith called the Nanticoke Indians gentle, good merchants. The wide Nanticoke stays rough several miles. I motor slow and lazy fifteen miles 8 knots against outgoing tide. I want to explore tidal creeks that wind into marshes, but keep heading to my destination. I tie up to the Vienna wharf at 2:10, next to the boat ramp, with no sign of anyone in this sleepy small town. Just upriver on the northwest bank are oil tanks of an electric generating plant and the high span of Route 50, halfway between Salisbury and Cambridge. I'm grateful to travel at boat speed, out of commuting traffic. I call Mary, the manager at Somers Cove, that I've arrived safely. Next to the wharf is a grass lawn for Molly to roll on. She jumps off the boat first thing, to pee, to feel land under her feet. Town is not big. We walk by a bank and a ballfield; a woman is pruning the flower gardens in front of the bank. Tom Horton has told me to meet the mayor, but didn't say where. Millie's Café, famous for crab cakes, is closed on Sundays. The Nanticoke Inn has closed down. Mr. Gene, who owns the Exxon station, drives me, Molly, and my 5-gallon gas can half a mile back to my boat. Holding the gas can without dripping, while I fill the fuel tank, is about as much as my back can handle. At the boat ramp three teenagers, two brothers and a girlfriend, manage to tip the boat from the trailer onto the asphalt instead of the water. As little as I know about boat trailers, I help tilt the boat back level. The older brother backs the truck 15 more feet, and we launch the boat in the water. When they return, they drive me and I fill the spare gas can again, so I can leave Vienna with full tanks. A gentleman walking his shaved sheepdog stopped by to chat, tells me the mayor lives in the yellow just across from the wharf. I leave a note on the porch, and when they return, Russell and Sandy Brinsfield invite me up to the house. Like so many people on the Shore, they are both natives. Sandy works for her family auto-parts store in Cambridge, and Russ directs the Wye Education and Research Center. Driving 50 miles to work is nothing on the Shore. Both Sandy and Russ also work his family farm. Sandy tells me she runs the tractor to plow but not to plant.

Vienna has the old Customs House in Maryland, 1706; in the 1700s Vienna rivaled Baltimore as the state's largest port. Now Vienna, under Mayor Brinsfield's wise management, participates in the Governor's "Smart-growth program," balancing economic development and small-town flavor. To save riparian forests, the Nature Conservancy and Conservation Fund are protecting "rural legacy focus areas." Monday, 20 May. Russ leaves for work early, but I join Sandy for breakfast. As I walk Molly for half an hour as I do before a half-day cruise, we meet Samuel Q. Johnson, who runs the Maryland Natural Resources water-quality lab on the Vienna waterfront, centrally located to take river samples. "Q" tells me that the Nature Conservancy, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Conservation Fund have cooperated with Maryland, so the state has just bought 58,000 acres of forest on Marshyhope Creek. A detour upstream will add a dozen miles to my run today, but Russ, Mr. Gene, and Q have all insisted I see Marshyhope. "More special than the Nanticoke," Sandy has told me. I want to wait for outgoing tide at 11 anyway. I leave Vienna at 10:30, head upstream with still incoming tide. For the first time, I feel as if this expedition is actually feasible. For the first morning, I'm not apprehensive leaving dock that storms will punish me. Five miles upstream I turn left into Marshyhope half way between the banks, in 12 feet of water. On the left bank is an old farmhouse, which Mr. Gene sold to the Conservancy. On the right are freshwater marsh plants and swamp forest. Q told me Maryland's conservation plan will allow timber harvest on half of the new preserve, keeping the local sawmill workers content. I'd really like to drop anchor, fish, and watch birds for a few days, self sufficient in my well-stocked cruiser. Landfall's galley is provisioned for two weeks, I can cook with alcohol; my water tanks are full; I can run my computer on the 12-volt battery. I have three months to circle the Bay, and this is likely the finest place I'll see, but I must keep moving. I have only two or three more days of light wind before weekend storms. Another summer I'll come back to anchor in Occohannock and Marshyhope for a month each. At 11:25 I head downstream. Two tugs pushing laden barges pass just above the Vienna Bridge. Floating by the Vienna wharf at 11:50, I call Jody at Bishops Head that I'll arrive near 2. My cell phone, which cannot ring to receive calls, can still call out.

Even at 15 knots northwest wind, the long wind fetch across Fishing Bay sets up a nasty chop. From five miles out I can see the big brown house at Bishops Head sticking up above the flat marsh. Capt. Jesse, the CBF Captain, told me I to aim straight for the house, round the point, stick close to sore inside the shoal, and enter the rip-rap boat basin. From the dock Jesse waves me into the channel, and just after I tie up the wind gusts about 30 knots for five minutes, but I am secure. CBF's Karen Noonan Education Center is dedicated to Pat Noonan's daughter who died in the Lockabie, Scotland, plane crash, just before she was 21 years old. She was training to be a teacher, and this environmental outreach program for schoolkids is a fine legacy. Whenever I land, I log arrival time. I turn off fuel tank, GPS, depth sounder, and VHF radio, battery. I walk Molly ashore five minutes, munch a rice cake, grab a banana, then hop aboard the CBF workboat, Karen N, to join a school group-- twenty-five eighth-grade girls from Holy Child School in Potomac, Maryland. They bait eighteen crab pots with menhaden and drop the pots off the tip of Lower Hooper Island. Ashore on the southern tip of the island we prowl the eroding beach, "proguing," which means scouting for any useful flotsam the tide may have washed up. I find a shed crab shell that reminds me: as I leave a tight, secure house, as I have left my Brevard house and then Beaufort house for this voyage, I grow larger, as a crab does when it sheds its old shell. When I pick up an angel-wing shell, I recall many generous people who help me on this voyage, grateful for my angels in a prayer circle who hold me in the Light, as Quakers say.

As Karen N returns to Bishops Head, four people wave from the dock. One tall and one short, I recognize, Brian and Shannon Oesch, are my former students at Brevard College. Oh goody, I hope they will cruise with me for a few days. But they have just come for the evening, to deliver a fresh cantaloupe. Shannon has just finished exams in her first years studying Environmental Design at NC State. At Brevard, Shannon was an Environmental Studies major, and Brian a Wilderness Leadership major. Three years ago in May, we three kayaked 400 miles from the North Carolina mountains to the South Carolina coast. A year ago for my birthday, we sailed on Lake Jocassee for the day, the little Cape Dory-14 bobbing from a white beach on blue water that looked Caribbean. With them on the Bishops Head dock are Brian's parents, Carol and Walter. They all tour my boat, and we drive north to Cambridge for dinner. Driving back through the wildlife refuge, we see a red fox and a lumbering raccoon, big as a labrador dog. Such generosity; the Oesch family has driven three hours from Rockville, up and back to Cambridge two hours, then three hours home. They'll get back home to Rockville by 1:30 a.m., and Walter must go to work at 7.

Monday, 20 May. I will cruise up Marshyhope Creek where the State of Maryland has recently bought 58,000 acres of forest to preserve. Tonight and probably Tuesday night I'll stay at Karen Noonan CBF Ed Center at Bishops Head.

Monday, 20 May. I hated leaving Marshyhope Creek off the Nanticoke: the kind of place where I wish to anchor for a week and soak up the rhythm of wildness. Back on the main Nanticoke channel, following wind and tide send me scurrying downstream. With the current high pressure, and almost a week promised of light winds, this trip begins to appear feasible. Before when the wind was predicted 20 to 25 each day, deciding to leave port was harrowing. There have been three tornados just north in the last few weeks. Crossing to Bishops Head, I could see the houses on the point at CBF's Karen Noonan Center from five miles east. Karen, Pat Noonan's daughter, died in the Lockabie, Scotland, plane crash. What a terrific legacy is the program where schoolkids can live a few days right by the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. Right after I docked at 2 pm, I jumped on the "Karen N," with Capt. Jesse Marsh and CBF educators Jody and Bryn, and 20 eighth-grade girls from Holy Child School in Potomac, MD.  We set crab pots and walked the southern tip of Lower Hooper Island; "proguing" means searching the beach for anything the tide has washed up. I picked up a shell shed by a crab and thought: each time I leave a secure house as I have done for this voyage, I grow a little larger, just as the crab does when it sheds its shell. Also, I picked up an angel wing shell, which reminded me: this trip is possible only because of the generosity of everyone I meet who helps me. I am so grateful. Surprise: when "Karen N" docks, waiting for me are Shannon and Brian Oesch, and his parents Walter and Carol, who take me to dinner in Cambridge. Shannon and Brian were both my students at Brevard College, and we three kayaked 400 miles together in May three years ago.

Tuesday, 21 May. Today is a calm day for me at Bishops Head, reading and writing. When the girls check their crab pots, they catch only 10 crabs in 18 pots. To make a living, watermen who used to put out 200 pots are now setting 1000 pots. At midday, I walk with Molly 3 miles, round trip, to put some letters in the mailbox. The road skirts the wildlife refuge, where I see great blue herons, American egrets, blackbirds.

After breakfast I tell the Holy Child girls about my John Smith voyage, and they are most interested that he and Pocahontas were not sweethearts. In 1607 he was 27 and she was 10 or 11. When they met, Smith did describe Pocahontas as "nonpareil," unparalleled for her wisdom and beauty, even at that age. At Bishops Head I am grateful for a quiet morning, typing the previous week's journal, tied to the dock. I scurry to write a grant proposal for Town Creek Foundation, but cannot print it. The CBF computer cannot read my 3.5 disk in its a:drive, and my computer cannot configure a 700-series HP printer; 600 and 800, but not 700. Midday, I walk three miles, round trip, to drop two letters in the mailbox. No hardship: the road curves through marshes of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, where egrets and herons wade the tidal creek to fish. Hawks soar overhead. I am content in a cruiser's daily rhythm and routine: up at sunlight, sleep soon after dark. The schoolgirls will not finish cooking their dinner until 8:30, so I boil some pasta on my boat, so I can go to sleep by nine for an early start the next morning. Jesse tells me the next day will be clear, and the Bay route outside Hoopers Island will be faster than the inside route up Honga River. I'll ride the tide north.

Wednesday, 22 May. With light wind, I take off north outside Hooper Island, amazed the open Bay is calm enough. The western shore, just six miles away, is clearly visible, I as pass the mouth of the Patuxent and Calvert Cliffs. I was skirting the 8-foot depth contour. When two watermen's boats speed by, I follow them, figuring they know the water depths. Local knowledge, they zoom by pound nets and a zillion crab pots, my depth sounder reading "3 feet." Molly my dog prefers sail and paddle boats to a pounding motor boat. When my starboard gas tank read 1/4, I stop to switch to the port tank and lose the watermen. I cruise more leisurely into the Little Choptank river. As I float an hour at the mouth of Madison Bay, watermen's white deadrise skiffs circle me, pulling their crabpots. I float for an hour, set a fishing pole, which catches no fish, use my cell phone to check messages and reserve docks for the next week. The Alltel cell has not ring as I move up the Shore, but I can check messages and call out. I stay overnight at the Madison Bay Marina next to workboats. I'm cold at night, high 30s, in my "summer" sleeping bag and a fleece blanket. I prefer cold to heat, and some wind to bugs.

I leave Bishops Head at 7:15 a.m. to catch the tide north. Out Hooper Straits I am grateful for 10-knot winds. Winds blew Smith's sailing barge west through Hooper Straits all the way across the Bay to Calvert Cliffs, where the crew refused to go any further. Smith made a pleading speech, saying he shared all their hardship, thirst and hunger, and surely all their trials were behind them. They sailed north as far as the Severn or South rivers, then turned south. Crab pots and pound nets fill the shallow water 1.5 miles west of Hooper Island, and I thread them, riding the 8-foot-depth offshore. I can easily see the western shore, passing the mouth of the Patuxent River and Solomons, home of my friends, the Calvert Marine Museum. Two watermen, finished for the day, zoom past. I figure they are the ultimate "local knowledge" how to cut across the shoals, so I push my throttle to the max and follow their wake, 18 knots, my depth sounder reading 12, 8, and 3.0 flashing. Molly my dog doesn't like the noise, vibration, and pounding when we go fast. But I hold onto the watermen's wake for 40 minutes, saving twice the time, if I had to follow surer, deeper channels offshore. When I stop to switch my fuel tanks from port to starboard, they disappear in the distance. More leisurely, I round the northern tip of Taylors Island into Little Choptank River. Dozens of watermen's skiffs circle, pulling their crabpot buoys. At the mouth of Madison Bay, my cell phone reception shows three of four bars for the first time in weeks. Floating by a marker, I call my contacts at Horn Point, Easton, and Oxford to confirm docking for the next week. At noon I tied to the dock at Madison Bay Marina and eat a crab cake at the Big Bamboo restaurant there. That afternoon I wash my windows and put on Rainex to reduce the spray, as my hand-operated windshield wipers are minimum technology.

Thursday, 23 May. Coming in the Choptank River, I am seeing more pleasure boats, sports fishermen and sailboats. For my week on the James in April, the only two boats I saw were a tender in the "Ghost Fleet" and a ship in Hampton Roads. I am staying two nights at Horn Point Lab. In Tom Fisher's office, I meet his grad students-- Adrian who is studying streamside forest buffer and their ability to improve agricultural nutrient runoff, and Jason who studies how a marsh reduces the nutrient loading discarded from a sewage treatment plant.

A woman from the RV campground brings me a fresh doughnut from town, which Cambridge 12 miles away. I leave Madison Bay at 8:10 a.m. in case the weather comes in and wind blows up. I round the neck into Choptank River and arrive at Horn Point Lab at 11:35 a.m. Anne Gustafson, Tom Fisher's research assistant, greets me at the Boat Basin. Two months I emailed all the marine science labs, museums, and education centers of the Bay. Mike Roman, director of University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science, forwarded my query to all his faculty, and Tom Fisher responded. Full professor at Horn Point, 25 years ago Tom was a grad student in Beaufort a few years before I arrived there. Indeed, he had rented a house owned by the same landlady. We would have been neighbors.
I check my email at Tom Fisher's office. I explore the mowed walkways through the meadows and forest at Horn Point, which was once a DuPont estate. By the creek I encounter a group of chattering boys, "have you seen a turtle?" "You have to be quiet to find one," I suggest. On the beach by the Boat Basin, the girls are pulling seine nets along shore to catch small fish. That evening I join forty students from Bennett Middle School in Salisbury for dinner at Horn Point's Education Center, which more than 5,500 children visit each year. When I tell them about my LANDFALL voyage, they want to know if I've seen marine mammals-- whales and dolphins. "Not in the Bay," I say. "I have seen dolphins in Beaufort and humpback off Cape Lookout, in Alaska's Prince William Sound, and off Massachusetts. I've seen Orcas in Alaska and grays in California. "How about sharks?" "Not yet," I say.

Sat and Sun, 25 and 26 May, I plan to stay at Easton Point Marina and go to the Third Haven Quaker Meeting in Easton, oldest religious building in America.

Mon to Wed, 27-29 May, I'll stay at Crockett Bros Boatyard in Oxford.

Friday, 24 May. At Horn Point Tom Fisher comes to check out my boat. After a decade of flying back and forth to study the Amazon River in Brazil, Tom's current research focuses on land-water interactions on the Bay. Through GIS, remote sensing, he studies changes in land use and measures nutrient loading. For his dissertation, using historic maps, satellite and aerial photos, grad student Jorge followed 350 years of land use changes along the Choptank River. By 1800 most of the arable land was clear. Between 1800 and 1900 there were few changes in forestry and agriculture. Since 1900 the forests still standing are stable on wet soils, as they are not useable for agriculture. This century, however, has seen the great increase in agriculture chemicals, particularly after World War II. Between 1950 and 1985 there was an exponential increase in fertilizer use. Shallow aquifers are not saturated with nitrate, so drinking wells must be drilled deeper than 150 feet. In the afternoon Bill Dennison comes by the boat. Bill has just returned from ten years in Australia, where he worked with the Marine Botany group at University of Queensland. At Horn Point as Vice President for Science Applications, Bill is trying "to solve the Bay's problems; not 'save the bay;' it's too late, but restore the Bay." By linking universities and government agencies, Bill is implementing the Integration and Application Network (IAN) of scientists to solve the Bay's environmental problems, not just study them. Another professor, Jeff, launches his new skiff and outboard. Bill and I ride as Jeff runs his new outboard, half an hour at 1000 rpm, half an hour at 2000 rpm. When he was a grad student studying seagrasses twenty years, Bill must have stayed in my house in Beaufort, when I was married to a seagrass scientist. That evening, Kristen Frese, the p.r. lady at Horn Point, opens the ladies' locker room, so I can shower.

Saturday, 25 May. I cross the Choptank and enter the Tred Avon River. By 10 a.m. I tie up at Easton Point Marina, where Leonora Bernheisel, my sheep-farmer friend from northwest Maryland is standing on the dock. Contrary to my understanding on the telephone, John the marina manager says he is charging me for dockage, the first marina of twelve where I have stayed, and two dozen that I have called. I pay $11 for "half a day." Landfall passes the courtesy Coast Guard Auxiliary inspection of safety gear-- required: personal flotation devices, flares, horn, fire extinguishers, registration numbers displayed, anchor and nav lights, marine sanitation device; recommended: marine radio, bilge pump and backup, anchors, first aid kits. Lee drives me to town for fresh groceries, two miles up the hill from the dock. At the farmers' market I buy fresh bread and asparagus. We eat great salads and blueberry cake at the coffee shop. At Boaters World I buy a replacement windshield wiper. At a pet shop, a lady clips Molly's toenails. When we cannot get a reservation to eat at Mason's restaurant in Easton, Leonora and I drive to St. Michaels. The streets are packed for Memorial Weekend. We dine among the tourists at The Crab Claw. At 7:30 Lee and I motor a mile and a half to anchor inside the hook in Dixon Creek. We watch the sun set at 8:15 and the full moon rise. Why tie to a dock where old men are drinking beer, and oil slick foul the water? A yearling deer strolls on the beach, and on the sandbank a red fox dips into the hole of its den. With Lee aboard and mild wind, I see that this voyage can be a pleasure instead of an ordeal.

Sunday, 26 May. At anchor Lee and I read the Washington Post she has brought. A great blue heron sits on a branch on the nearby shore. Lee sautés onions, steams asparagus, and cooks an omelet. We tie Landfall to the Easton town wharf for free; Tom Fisher drives shuttle half an hour to stash Lee's car in Oxford, then drives us to the Third Haven Quaker Meeting in Oxford. Built in 1682, this is the oldest frame religious building and the longest continuous congregation in the country. George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, visited this vicinity in 1673. Inside the long dark-wood room, timber posts and beams were hand-hewn with a broadax. Benches face from the sides and line up down the middle. At the center are pull-down screens when the congregation wanted to divide the space, probably for men's and women's gatherings. Tom says the Meeting has recently completed extensive renovations. At ten minutes to ten, folks enter in silence and sit in family groups. Spoken ministry today touches on unconditional love from a woman who nursed crack babies and a man who nursed his mother six weeks until her death from cancer, as I nursed my mother eight years ago. From the side bench I see profiles of a mother and her son and daughter with clear resemblance, blond mops, round nose; and another father and son and daughter, same chin and wide cheeks. Generations continue at Third Haven Meeting House. After Meeting, the clerk signs my traveling minutes, that I will share with Quaker Meetings that I visit around the Bay. Outside after meeting the children climb into the branches of a blossoming magnolia. On three acres the majestic trees tower over ancient gravestones. Molly has rested in the shade, tied to a fence post. The names of the river and meeting are variants of the same root word: Third Haven and Tred Avon.

Sandra and James Herbert drive Lee, Molly, and me back to the Easton wharf. James is director of the research program at National Endowment for the Humanities that sponsored my summer institute on Environmental Imagination at Vassar College in 1997. Sandra is an historian, interested in Smith's legacy on the Bay. Heading down the Tred Avon River, when we pass Peachblossom Creek, we turn left at marker 12 and tie up the the second dock. Lorraine and Pinney Claggett has invited us for tea. When I land, Lorraine welcomes me and in the same breath asks if I want to do laundry. I pause, then say yes. I am glad to wash the purple fleece blanket from the v-berth that smells a little doggy. Both Pinney and Lorraine's families have lived on the Tred Avon for generations. Pinney says, "Quakers have moved away in dribs and drops, and I'm the last droplet here." They live on the shore next to the old house at the end of Bailey's Neck which Lorraine's family used to own. Two of their daughters live adjacent, and another daughter has returned from Oregon to Annapolis to direct the U.S. Forest Service's efforts to help private and state forests keep the Chesapeake Bay clean.

Leonora wants to anchor on La Trappe Creek. When she was married thirty years ago, she sailed on her husband's parents 1903 49-foot Herreschoff sailboat that drew 6 feet nine inches. She remembers the beach and the big white house by the anchorage. As we motor up the Choptank, I see a forest of spars, sailboat masts, inside Martin Point. Powerboats with loud music have anchored just off the beach strand. We head to the quietest spot. We pull one kayak off the roof, and I paddle Molly to shore for a potty break. Lee takes a turn paddling to see the white house she remembered. When I help pull Lee back aboard, I do not pay attention to the paddle. An hour later, I realize my good, $600 kevlar paddle is missing, that twists so it does not stress my carpel-tunnel wrists. With the longer $100 paddle, I head to shore directly behind the boat and circle the cove and the two points of the creek where the wind or tide may have pushed it to shore. At the end of the creek are grazing sheep. I hope Lee gets to see them. I cannot blame her; it is my fault not to be attentive. I should not carry something of value on this trip, and I value friendship more than possession. I pass offshore from a nesting swan; swans can be ornery, and a swan's wing can break a person's leg. I stop at a few boats in the anchorage and alert them to keep an eye for a lost paddle, pretty sure at this point that it has sunk. The motorboats at the beach are still causing a ruckus. By the shoreline, when I have completed 355 degree of a 360-degree circle, I see the rippling just beneath the surface. It is my paddle. Back on the boat, I reassure Lee that losing the paddle was my fault, and she is happy I have found it. We sleep sound at anchor, and predicted rain never comes. I would just as soon that the storms come and pass when we are safe at anchor or dock, instead of surprising me underway.

Monday, 27 May. At dawn, just as the Indians did, Lee, Molly, and I swim in the clear water, uncharacteristic of the Bay, without jellyfish. In reporting the Indians' religion, Smith said they all swam at dawn to celebrate the moon and the sun. One of the first things I added on the boat was a swimming ladder, for Molly's and my safety when swimming, and for boarding the kayaks. Molly takes a long walk on the beach. Fresh strawberries for breakfast make me feel wealthy. Midday, we motor up La Trappe Creek and return to the Tred Avon River to spend a night in Oxford. We tie to the dock at Crockett Bros Boatyard in Town Creek. Oxford's old homes have front porches, lovely gardens, well designed, full of blooming flowers, along shade-lined streets. We eat crab cakes at Pier Street Restaurant and walk the streets until dark.

Tuesday, 28 May. Leonora leaves at six a.m. to return to her sheep farm. At the dock for a day, I type my journal. I rig a bungee to hold my plastic food drawers in place in the galley locker under the sink and stovetop. I replace a windshield wiper blade. Molly and I walk to admire gardens and replenish green veggies at the market.

From Oxford, in the next ten days, I'll pass through Knapp's Narrows in Tilghman Island, visit the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael's on the Miles River, to the Wye Research and Education center, then pass through Kent Narrows to the Chester River and Chestertown.

Wednesday, 29 May. At 6 a.m. Molly and I walk around Oxford for an hour admiring gardens. She chases sticks from an end-of-street waterfront park, just like Beaufort used to have before greedy land grabbers appropriated traditional public access for private. I wash a load of laundry. Although the radio has been predicting a storm in two days for the last ten days, the good weather persists, and I am grateful. Mark Toole, a musician friend from Morehead City, has come to Maryland to work on his own sailboat, which has been "on the hard" too long, so he wants to cruise a few days. In Beaufort's Community Open Band, Mark plays bazouki and lives in the shack at the "Clam Farm," the local name for Pelletier Creek Marina. Just as my laundry is finished drying at 8:30, Mark arrives, having driven to St. Leonard seven hours on Tuesday and three hours this morning. I think we'll be off in two hours after a leisurely walk to the Oxford Market for some provisions, so Mark can see the gardens. The Crockett Bros store says a truck will deliver a windshield wiper I ordered by 10:30. We swim in the pool, shower; I buy ice. Impatient to leave the marina to get back on the water, as I'm preparing for departure, I notice the little silver fuse cover on the Garmin GPS 12-volt cord has fallen off. Since the windshield wiper has not arrived, Mark drives me the 10 miles to Easton. Radio Shack does not have the fuse cover. The new Boaters' World manager, confused and confusing, sends me back with a cord that does not work. . Town frustrates me; more than three errands makes me twitchy. Mark and I order too much take-out Chinese food, a third of which we eat on a bench outside the Third Haven Quaker Meeting. The peaceful, timeless grounds "ground" me, green lawn, white grave-markers, white magnolia blossoms, 20-foot rhododendron in full fuchsia flower, towering oaks, boxwood hedges. I am "off" schedule. Back at Crockett Bros at two, the windshield wiper attachment does not fit my boat. Okay, enough of shore. At 2:20 p.m. we blast; immediately, on the water, I feel fine and slow down. We poke into Broad Creek and drive to the head of Harris Creek. At 5:10 pm we anchor by the only patch of undeveloped shore on Dun Cove, so I can paddle Molly ashore for her potty break, late evening and early morning. She has not figured out the use of the green astro-turf mat on the transom deck. Five sailboats pull in after us and anchor out in the middle. Landfall only draws two feet with motor down, eight inches motor up.

Thursday, 30 May. After Molly swims from shore for half an hour, Mark and I leave Dun Cove at 8:26 a.m. and pass under the bridge in Knapps Narrows at ten. Since Knapps Narrows Marina was generous to offer free docking, I figured I'd tie on the outside dock and run into the office to thank them. People I'd met on the phone-- Amy, Basil, and J.C.-- are even nicer in person; some places just make me feel welcome. Mark and I walk Molly on Tilghman Island to see the working skipjack fleet in Dogwood Harbor and eat ice cream at the general store. Back on the boat, Mark locates the gas smell I'd noticed for two weeks as a leaking pinhole in the fuel filter in the starboard battery locker. In March I had asked the dealer who installed my new four-stroke outboard to upgrade all mechanical, electronic parts and fittings, so the engine would be foolproof all summer. When I discovered that he had neglected to grease the wheel-bearings on the trailer, and had installed a left-rear trailer light on the right side, I wondered what else he had failed to do: now I am adding to the list. In my streak of luck, that things happen when I need them, the Tilghman auto-parts garage across the bridge has just the filter we need. After replacing the filter, Mark says that sometime I should replace my ancient fuel lines with safer material. "Now," I say. The marina has nine feet of the right gauge hose and seven hose clamps, and Mark fits them. Landfall is now a safer boat, and I am lucky to have skilled friends. Out of Knapps Narrows, we head north on the inside route and swing from Eastern Bay into Miles River. We follow the shoreline of Rick Neck, where Matthew Tilghman lived, father of the American Revolution in Maryland. We sneak over the shoal at the mouth of Tilghman Creek into a wider bay with two swans. No other place could be prettier tonight than this wild marsh shore. Mark and I launch the two kayaks tied to Landfall's roof. The shallow stretches of Tilghman Creek are the proper scale to explore by kayak, as the sun is getting low in the sky. One shore has a few houses, and on the opposite shore are farm fields. I am grateful when old families and the next-generation heirs who inherit can manage to keep their land intact.

Friday, 31 May. On the last day of my month, my cell phone still have 60 minutes, so I call all my families to check on godchildren who will visit this summer-- Walt and Owen Javins in Montana, and Addie Jones in Richmond. I sing Happy Birthday to Teri Lynn's answering machine. Tilghman Creek is too pretty to leave, so Mark and I are lazy talking in the cockpit. Molly and I swim, careful to avoid the jellyfish that are growing bigger. The radio has said the wind will blow up this afternoon, so we leave at 9:50 a.m. for the hour run to St. Michael's. Big, old skipjacks under reefed sail motor in the Miles River with tourists-- the Rebecca Ruark. We tie to the sailing dinghy dock at Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum at 11:30 a.m. Otto Loggers, head of Education, welcomes us. I check the museum archives for natural-history journals. Ben Armiger, who runs the sailing program, gives us a ride to the Bellevue ferry, so we can retrieve Mark's Blazer in Oxford. Ben is farming 100 acres of family land on the Chester River. Four errands in Easton is my limit: West Marine, Radio Shack, Boaters' World, and Acme grocery. An anvil cloud sends us back to check the lines in St. Michaels, but the thunderstorm passes. I would just as soon have a storm when I am safe at dock, rather than underway on the water.

Saturday, 1 June. After he replaces the bilge floater-switch, Mark takes off. I walk St. Michael's to buy fresh bread and lettuce at the Farmer's Market and to eat strawberries at a church fair. At a Talbot Street shop I buy an expensive straw hat. Because of hoards of weekend tourists, St Michaels seems to have lost its own sense of community.

Sunday, 2 June. At 7:30, on our way to the sandy shoreline for Molly to chase sticks, a monster bad dog, 100-pound male with lots of hair, attacks Molly and bites her neck. I beat him with a puny stick and yell. The saleswoman from the hat shop apologizes that he pulled loose. Why do people own big dogs if they can't control them? Molly is scared and I am scared; she is fragile and my beloved puppy. For years I have steeled myself against ever losing her. This summer I want her company to share this voyage; I need her to act as guard dog when I'm alone at strange docks. All winter I have prayed her hips would last all summer, jumping from boat to docks at low tide. Year and a half ago a vet diagnosed hip dysplasia, bone spurs, arthritis: "The x-rays say this dog can't walk." At Thanksgiving this year, the Beaufort vet said her only option is "pain management; don't let her walk or run" On consultation the orthopedic surgeon at NC State Vet School said to keep Molly off drugs as long as possible; let her run and walk as much as she wants, preferably on flat sand; let her swim as much as possible. For half an hour Molly still runs joyous as a puppy, then sleeps a few hours. If the heat gets too bad in July, I'll rent a car and drive Molly to Susan Buck's air-conditioned house in Greensboro. After the dog attack, I feel Molly's body for wounds, for soreness, and she seems all right. We leave St. Michaels about 9:30 a.m. The wind is whipping up on the Miles River, but the Wye East River is calm, except for Sunday boaters. One guy in a 50-foot powerboat is pulling up his anchor to starboard, then zooms across the channel behind another boat and in front of me. "Hey lady," he yells, "I have right of way." I'm not going to dispute a boat 20 times my tonnage. Landfall without the outboard is an eggshell, just under 2000 pounds. I take note that I should stay off the water on weekends, especially as I reach crowded waters of the the Sassafras and the western shore. At 11:30 I anchor in Granary Creek, take down my kayak, paddle to the park at the head of the creek where a couple is fishing, and walk down the road a few miles. On Wye Island the State of Maryland manages 2450 of 2800 acres. The road west of Granary Creek is unshaded, hot, and hard surface for half a mile. Then the dirt road continues in the shade of old trees. Beyond, new crops of corn and soybeans are growing taller in vast fields. Fine rows of trees border the fields. According to Uncle Bim, in the early 1600s, a Jeffers ancestor, one who left Jamestown, lived on or by Wye Island at "Wye Hundred," though my brother has found no specific records. Still, I feel as if I belong here, and I'm grateful the state park welcomes me to walk. In the afternoon as the wind gusts above 30, on Landfall I read a mystery book and nap half an hour. At six two guys who pass in rubber dinghies invite me to dinner on their rafted sailboats. Each summer for a week these three couples cruise together. After grilled shish-kabob they invite me to join their sunset/ marguerita sail, but Molly is acting tired. This is my first night anchoring alone, and I feel fine. On the boat I fall asleep at dark and walk at daylight.

Monday, 3 June. Soon after I wake the gravel trucks pass on the road at the head of Granary Creek. I paddle ashore and take a photograph of the tanker truck sign, "Cover It with Asphalt." In my expedition slide show, I can show the Blackwater Swamp and then "Cover it with Asphalt," show the Wye Island farm fields, then "Cover It With Asphalt." A county truck gives Molly and me a ride two miles to the Big Woods "nature trail." Here are big white oaks and hickory, mayapple and trillium without spring blooms yet. I walk to the water and back to the road, then double back to photograph the biggest oak. All told, Molly and I walk four and a half or five miles. She is tired. On the boat I examine her neck, notice dried hair and find a hole from the bad dog bit her, clip hair from the bite, apply betadine and antibiotic cream. Under the bite is hard and sore. I pull up the anchor, set deep in the mud by yesterday's 30-knot winds; yes, I wish I had a windlass to pull up anchors. We leave Granary Creek at 11:15. At the mouth of Pickering Creek, I talk to Diane Peddicord, a woman waterman, who runs a trotline for crabs in the summer. I stop at Schnaitman's dock at Wye Landing on the Wye East River. Chuck Schnaitman says his family has worked this landing for four generations, 150 years. He says the guy across the creek owns 14 miles of shoreline, and the house just south owns 8 miles of shoreline. "That's the reason why we still have crabs, the best in the Bay, because we have so much shoreline protected from development." Even so, Chuck says the crab landings have dropped 75 percent two years ago and was only slightly better last year. Weekends, people rent his wooden skiffs and catch crabs in small wire traps. This last weekend, people were catching 3 dozen. Four dozen makes a bushel, and Chuck pays $100 a bushel, which he can sell for $110. He doesn't make much as middleman. When Dianne Peddicord comes in, she tells me she hasn't started catching many crabs yet this summer. The cruising guide says clearance under the Wye Narrows bridge is ten feet, but I figure my antenna is a foot above my two stacked kayaks is just under ten feet, and an hour after high tide, we have two or three feet clearance under the bridge. The landmark on the right before DeCoursey Creek is the Chef Boy-R-Dee $14 million dollar mansion. Can't miss it: the two chimneys look like Versailles. Some young couple, rich from cell phones, now own it. Watching the depth sounder, I inch into DeCoursey Creek and tie to the dock of the Wye Research and Education Center, where Russ Brinsfield, mayor of Vienna on the Nanticoke River, is director. He's off at meetings, but his staff graciously welcome me. First, I take a shower and pick off several ticks. Dr. Ken Shaver explains the nitrogen cycle. Surface runoff is bad, but worse is the slow accumulation of nitrate in groundwater that seeps into Bay waters. In the summer commercial crops take up inorganic nitrate. In the winter farmers can grow cover crops to take up nitrate that would seep into the groundwater. . Ken searches for nutrient-reduction methods that will not cost farmers: a win-win solution like no-till. The office clears out at five. Molly sleeps; I eat and read. Before I sleep I see the first fireflies of the season.

Tuesday, 4 June. An eagle roosts in the dead tree on the shoreline of the Boy-R-Dee palace. A red-winged blackbird proclaims his territory from a Pragmites grass. When Molly and I walk the dirt road to the Ag Center barn, a groundhog growls from its ditch, so we turn back. On our walk Molly does not wag her tail. Molly does not want to chase sticks in the water. She will not eat her breakfast. Tied to the Wye Center dock, this morning I intend to type my journal, but Molly is shivering in the v-berth. In the Land Conservancy office, Amy Owsley, community planner who studied at Yale Forestry, offers to drive Molly to the Queenstown vet, Dr. Ed Hammer. His partner pierces and drains the swollen abscess under the dog bite and gives Molly a penicillin shot. I will give her antibiotic pills for a week. As Molly is sleeping in the shade, Rob Etgen, director of the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy for its twelve years, says they have protected more than 30,000 acres on 144 properties. Rob sends me to talk to Elmer Whitby, neighbor of Wye Center. Elmer tells me stories of growing up on a Wye Island farm and working 60 years as a waterman. Fog is what scared him when he was on the water.

Wednesday, 5 June. Before I wake fully, I can hear the wind moaning and keening. When I sit up in my berth, I can poke my head out the forward hatch: tree tops are bending in 25-knot winds. The radio says 15 to 20 today southwest. Paying heed to wind and tide, with wind behind me, I want to ride north on Eastern Bay, Prospect Bay, and into Kent Narrows on incoming tide. I leave DeCoursey Creek at 8:45 a.m. The weather radio predicts severe thunderstorms this afternoon or evening, tomorrow, and Friday morning. If I don't leave now, I may have to stay for two more days. My GPS tells me tide levels at any location. I ride south out the Wye River on the last of the outgoing tide and beginning of slack low. The southwest wind hits me as I round Drum Point on Wye Island, but the tide is already coming in. The longer the "fetch" of open water in the direction of wind, the higher the waves build up. Still, the waves are one to 1.5 feet, and Molly is comfortable. Rounding Bennett Point we are protected from the west by Rich Neck for a few miles. To the west sailboats are headed out Eastern Bay from St. Michaels back to Annapolis. Three sailboats are ahead of me, heading north to Kent Narrows. The wind is cranking, 20-25 knots, and the waves rougher, but manageable, for two miles in the open water between Rich Neck and Parson Island. With a following sea, Landfall wallows, the outboard stutters and shivers if I go over 10 knots. We pass under the high and low bridges at Kent Narrows and fill the fuel. For two nights we are guests of Bob Ivins, manager at Mears Point Marina at Kent Narrows, and his wife Val who runs the ship store. Val and Bob lived on their sailboat at the Beaufort docks last winter. Big contrast, six hundred boats dock here at Mears Point. People commute from their boats here to work in Annapolis and Baltimore. Overhead is the continuous din of traffic on Highway 50/301 bridge hauling traffic across the Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore and the ocean beaches. At the marina a crane is driving more dock pilings. There's a lawn mower and weedeater. New restaurants and office buildings being expanded have power saws, backhoes. Even though there are finally Alltel towers for coverage, first time in a month, the background noise is so high, I cannot hear my cell phone ring in my pocket. While washing three loads of laundry, I swim laps in the pool. Rock and roll music is piped into the shower room. Contrast 18th-century Wye Island and this 21st-century Kent Narrows marina. Really, I'm grateful for amenities like washing machines and swimming pool, but I prefer to fall sleep to whippoorwills and bullfrogs. With a hose on the dock, I take this opportunity to scrub and oil my cockpit floorboards. I clean dog hair and tree leaves from the bilge impeller, so it will run happily.
Friend of the Land Conservancy, Ed Nielsen from Centreville comes by to tell me how the Chester River Association is working to protect the river. At 9 the big storm hits, driving rain for an hour, thunder booms and lightning claps in a full around the boat. Nestled at the Mears marina dock, dry and snug, I fall asleep before the rain abates.

Thursday, 6 June. When I step into the cockpit, the boat tips back enough so the bilge blows out the previous night's rain. On shore I try to figure a way to use the modem-hookup in the laundromat to use my computer for Internet and email access. On the phone I contact Quakers for my weekend visit in Chestertown. My brother Jeff and I make arrangements for a military escort to tour family homeplace at the Aberdeen Proving Ground without getting bombed. Naively, as I was planning my itinerary, I had thought I could cruise along the shoreline of our ancestors' farm. Apparently, there may be unexploded bombs underwater and buried chemical weapons on shore. After September 11, both weapons testing and security surveillance have increased. I am glad my brother will come on the boat for a few days. I am pushing my scheduled itinerary up four or five days, so I'll have more time for the Potomac and Rappahannock in July. From my credit-card receipt I call the shop owned by the woman whose dog attacked Molly to ask her to pay the $102 vet bill. She agreed, but said, "I resent your use of the word 'attack.' If my dog had attacked your dog, your dog would be dead." Okay, use the word "bite." After antibiotics for two days, the sore in Molly's neck from the dog bite is better and her jovial spirits returning. The radio predicts big storms this afternoon and evening. Val and Bob feed me great comfort food: baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and Caesar salad, take-out from Chesapeake Chicken. Val is very sad; the big wind finally toppled the 470-year-old Wye Oak. Val grew up at Wye Mills with the tree, and their new house is very near the tree. I missed my last chance to see the Wye Oak taking Molly to the vet.

Friday, 7 June. Despite the radio predictions of the previous two days, the wind does not drop by morning, or mid-morning, or mid-day, or mid-afternoon. The tremendous American flag over Mears Point shows 25 knots with 30-some gusts. With Molly still feeling puny from her dog bite, she will not like a bouncing boat. Walking across the low bridge over Kent Narrows, I see white caps in the mouth of the Chester River. There's a fine walking and bicycling lane on the low bridge. The highway traffic on Route 50/301 effectively bisects Kent Island. However, on the new 6-mile Cross Island Trail, local folk can bicycle or walk within their community without competing with commuter traffic. Following an old railroad right of way, the trail passes wetlands, forests, restaurants, schools, and the library. On the dock I eat some crab soup at a restaurant and eat raspberry ice cream. The weekend folk are beginning to arrive. I am impatient to move to a more natural anchorage. Tony who works on the dock tells me to relax. I read a Carl Hiassen mystery book. Finally, by 4 p.m. the wind drops to 15 or 18. However, the mouth of the Chester River will still be choppy. I will leave before the bikini contests at the dock bar on Sunday, men and women in thongs and bare buns.

Saturday, 8 June. In calm 5-knot winds I leave Kent Narrows by 7, before the mist clears. John Smith and his crew surprised the Indians by singing a hymn and saying prayers every morning. At the beginning, when I was more anxious about weather, I said prayers for safety every morning. Now my prayer is gratitude that I have this privilege to be on the water and prayers of wonder at the beauty of water and birds and farmland. Off the Chester I pass several creeks where sailboats are still at anchor. I explore the Corsica River. On the right is a big brick house which belongs to the Russian Embassy. Farther up the Chester River lovely farm fields climb from the shoreline in broad expanses, and big houses survey the view from fifty feet above the water. The Chestertown waterfront has fine, big brick houses. At ten I tie to the wharf by the town park and walk uptown to the Farmers' Market at Fountain Square. Potted flowering plants entice me, but where would a plant fit on this boat? I buy fresh lettuce and asparagus, kohlrabi and squash. From the Lapp Family Bakery I buy bread; I sit in the shade under a tree to eat an apple dumpling. Chestertown has antique shops and restaurants. To pass impatient afternoons when the wind won't drop, I buy four new novels from the Compleat Bookseller. At a sidewalk table I eat chicken salad from the coffee shop, Play It Again Sam. From four to five, just to see marshes and forests, I motor under the bridge and six miles up the river. At five I tie up to the floating dock at the Washington College Boat House, another host which offers gracious hospitality to a travelling teacher. I take and hour nap, so I can stay awake past nine, at a concert by Al Petteway and Amy White at the Prince Theatre. The audience are all older affluent couples. The younger crowd will listen to bluegrass at Andy's bar that doesn't start until ten, but I can't stay awake past midnight.

Sunday, 9 June. At the college docks, Will Phipps, John Wagner's assistant, advises me to wire my bilge switch directly, so I do not need to leave on my battery. He tells me to hook up my solar panel every time I stop. I walk uptown to attend the Chester River Friends Meeting. After worship I share their lunch, and Lila Line comes back to my boat. I met Lila about twenty years ago, when she had published her book about women who work on the water. My summer renter in Beaufort reads me my mail, and I write six checks to pay bills.

Monday, 10 June. The radio predicts three days of "100-degree heat index." Children, old people, and pets should stay in the shade or air conditioning, and drink plenty of water. Bright and early, Jay Grigsby arrives from Williamsburg. Jay brings a box of food I had packed for me to re-stock my food supplies. In my galley locker I fit boxes of soymilk, tofu, butternut squash soup I had ordered from my Beaufort food coop. Jay drives me to a grocery to re-stock fresh eggs, orange juice, cheese, and bananas. Checking the outboard oil every day, I have watched the gauge drop by half in a month. Adding half a quart of oil brings the gauge back to full. Finally, by three we head down the Chester River. At 5:15 we tie to Barbara and Steve Starkey's dock on the Corsica River, a mile past marker 6. They both work hard for the Chester River Association, filling clam beds, growing seagrass in their garage to transplant. Last week they took legislators on kayak tours of natural and degraded creeks to show the need for better sewage treatment. Barbara serves us shrimp scampi for dinner before she takes off the see their grandchildren. I was a little chilly swimming in the pool, before Steve suggested we warm up in the hot tub. Cruising is not always a hardship.

Tuesday, 11 June. In the morning Steve takes Jay and me for a tour of Centerville and for breakfast at the "local" hangout. Down river on the Chester, Jay and I stop at the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, tying to a dock on Durdin Creek. We walk a half mile on a paved road then a mile on a forest trail. On the trail is a snapping turtle, and I warn Molly to keep her toes clear. In the shallow water off the beach are doubling Limulus, mating horseshoe crabs. I pick off two tiny ticks, the kind that carry Lyme disease, before they have a chance to attach. From the roadside I pick a branch of bay myrtle to make the v-berth smell sweeter and to discourage any ticks. In 5-knot southerly winds, the open Bay is calmer than I have seen it. As we drift north, Jay holds his fishing rod; while I am reading, my fishing rod is stored in the rod holder. Jay tells me twice to pull in the fish pulling on my line: I catch two croaker, about three pounds each. Jay and I catch a dozen white perch, also called stiffback or greenback perch. In Swan Creek we stop for gas and hose off at the dock. When we were cruising on a sailboat, my father loved to anchor in Swan Creek. I remember he said a restaurant in Gratitude had the best pecan pie he knew. I asked the dockguy what restaurant might have been in Gratitude forty years ago. He said, probably Fisherman's Inn, but it has been closed for ten years. By six we anchor in Swan Creek. Now at Rock Hall and Gratitude are a dozen new marinas, packed full with boats. People come down from cities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey on the weekend. I don't know where I'll hide for the weekend.

Wednesday, 12 June. The weather radio is predicting "chance of shower, chance of thunderstorms" for the next three days. We leave Swan Creek by 7:50. Heading out the channel we pound into big roller set up by the southwest wind for fifteen minutes. The ride is smoother as soon as we turn north. With cloudy skies but moderate wind we pass Worton Creek and Still Pond. Five miles west are Poole's Island and the Gunpowder peninsula. From the west come booming sounds that could be thunder, considering the clouds and the forecast, but instead are the booms from shelling at Aberdeen Proving Ground that sounds just like thunder. I give Jay the helm and watch out the port window, trying to figure out the booms. Since Jay never sees markers "58" and "59," he zooms a mile or two past the opening of the Sassafras River. I am not paying attention, and Jay can't read the chart or GPS without his glasses. He's great at picking out markers a mile in the distance. I take the helm and turn back south. High clay banks are eroding to the river. On the south shore of the Sassafras a few miles upriver, I notice a beach, and the chart shows three feet of water up to the shore. We drop an anchor thirty feet offshore and walk a rope to a tree on the beach. Just behind the beach is a pond full of water lilies and two swans. Perfect place for Molly to dig in the sand, for me to swim, for us to eat lunch. The cruising guide advises boaters to avoid the Sassafras on weekends, when wakes from big motorboats can be more dangerous than a thunderstorm. Even mid-week, boats in the channel do not slow down when they pass the moored boats behind Ordinary Point. Jay tries to fish at the dropoff by the channel, but the wind is rising. At three we enter Turner Creek, tie to the dock at a county park, and walk around a no-till demonstration cornfield. We anchor around the corner by lily pads. Molly leans over her swimming ladder, drinking the creek's fresh water. "What goes in must come out," I warn her. In half an hour, Molly walks from the cabin, jumps on the transom, and off the swimming ladder before I really notice. She starts to swim for the far shore, the one she could see from the stern. I yell for her to turn around, but she keeps swimming. I pull the knots loose and throw in my kayak and catch up to her, pull her in and paddle her to the closer shore. When her feet hit the sand, standing in the water, she starts to pee. In an hour she jumps off the boat again and heads to the farther shore, but I catch up to her right away and paddle her to the beach. I hope she won't jump off when the boat is underway, or at night when I am asleep.

Thursday, 13 June. The day dawns foggy, misty, very humid. The radio says "chance of drizzle" today; rain and thunderstorms tomorrow. Jay wants to move to buy more ice for his cooler full of Diet Dr Pepper, his source of caffeine. At the dock, when I paddle Molly ashore, I talk to Tom, the mate on Brandy Love. Baiting mesh hoops with clams, they catch catfish, live, and sell them to ponds where people pay to fish. Jay and I leave Turner Creek at 8:40. In the channel we pass Brandy Love, steaming at 25 knots heading south. In the Elk River, which connects to the C & D canal, eight Navy ships flying colorful flags steam south. Jay says they are probably reserve officers on their two-week annual duty. On the Bohemia River we stop at Long Point Marina for fuel and ice at 10:30. We walk an hour up the road to a general store for ice cream and barbecue. We eat our lunch on a bench overlooking the river. At 12:30 we cross under the bridge and cruise northern branch of the Bohemia to the left, with alternating forests and pastures for horse farms. On the tallest dead tree overhanging the water are two bald eagles. When we approach, one flies off. In three miles when the depth gets too shallow, we cut the motor and drift back downstream, pushed by wind and tide. When we pass, both eagles are gone. A flash of light seems to come from my camera on the console; in three seconds a boom sounds up river. We start the motor and head to the mouth of Manor Creek. Before we anchor the rain sets in for what seems like a long time. I rig the Moss Hepta-Wing over the canvas sun awning to keep the cockpit dryer. Jay and Molly nap in the v-berth while I brew tea and type. The rain continues until dark.

Friday, 14 June. At anchor in the Bohemia River, Friday dawns very damp, intermittent drizzle and downpour. I let out the anchor line to its extreme length and pole the boat to the beach for Molly to jump ashore.  She comes back wet and shakes. All the towels are soaked. In the cabin the fiberglass ceiling drips condensation. I want to paddle Manor Creek, which Charlie the Long Point dockmaster recommended for birdwatching. Every time I get resolve to lower the kayak, the rain intensifies. I'd be content to read all day, a summer day like one at the river cottage when as a child I cut out magazine pictures and pasted them to the attic walls, pieced jigsaw puzzles or played gin rummy with my father. However, Jay is not a reader; he is chilly, having brought only cotton shorts and t-shirts. He drapes his Mexican cotton blanket around his shoulders. Cotton if wet does not keep a person warm. I'm warm enough in thin fleece pants and pullover. This light rain, so good to trickle into the drought-stressed fields, could continue several days. The radio says, "slight chance of severe thunderstorm." If I were alone, I'd stay-- read, and paddle, but Jay is not content and makes me uncomfortable. We have run out of anything to talk about. Without exercising and no proper clothes, Jay will only get colder. Down river I can see a channel marker half a mile away. If the visibility in the Elk River is worse, I'll anchor in Veazey Bay. But the drizzle and mist distance hold steady in the Elk, around Turkey Point, and skirting the western edge of the Susquehanna Flats. At the confluence of currents from the Elk and Susquehanna rivers, Turkey Point is infamous for being rough. Today, blessedly, it is calm. When we round Turkey Point, I am moved by the beauty of headland bluffs, half obscured by mist, imagining John Smith sailing two days and two nights up the bay direct from Jamestown, when he returned there mid-July after his stingray bite. In his journal he said he saw two rivers, and then four rivers. I guess that would be Sassafras, Elk, Northeast, and Susquehanna. East of the Susquehanna is the short Northeast River. Seagrass used to cover the Susquehanna Flats, only a few feet of water at high tide and exposed at low tide. Massive rafts of ducks and geese used to winter here; Havre de Grace was a duck-hunting town. At one-thirty we dock at Tidewater Marina and walk uptown for lunch in a warm restaurant. At the town library computers I check email. An editor at Milkweed Press writes me that she might accept my essay for a book, if I shorten it by half. Browsing a tourist brochure, I see "Currier House Bed and Breakfast." I call the number and my distant relative, Jane, answers the phone. Sixteen years earlier I visited her mother, Grace, who was my "great-aunt and double cousin." Grace Carroll Jeffers, the geneologist for the Jeffers family, married a red-headed Irishman, Oliver Currier. After eight years with Alzheimers, Grace died two years ago, and her darling husband Ollie a few years before that. After I shower at the marina, Jane gives me a tour of the house she has restored into a lovely inn. One of the guest bedrooms is the "Jeffers Room," with photographs of our ancestors. William Nickolsen Jeffers was the second commander of the Monitor. I did not realize he taught at the Naval Academy, wrote a textbook The Armament of our Ships at War, and brought John Surratt who conspired for Lincoln's assassination back from Egypt. In her bed and breakfast, Jane also has Currier, Cameron, and Carroll rooms for her other branches. Jane shows me chairs from San Domingo, the Carroll family's hunting club on the Gunpowder Peninsula, which the Jeffers managed. When the federal government took land in 1917 for weapons testing, her grandfather John Carroll died of a heart attack after he watched bombs destroy his house at San Domingo. Jane's uncle Jim Currier was a famous duck-decoy carver. The Currier House sits on South Market Street, just above the Concord Point lighthouse and maritime museum. We eat crabs at Prices, a plain place down Water Street, filled with locals instead of tourists, with the best seafood in town. When I get back to the boat, Jay is sloshed, drinking vodka. It's time for him to leave. I am ready for time alone.

Saturday, 15 June. Just like last Saturday in Chestertown, I walk uptown to the Havre de Grace Farmers Market. The best fresh produce is from my fourth cousin Paula Harmon's farm. She has pure ripe organic strawberries. Little local berries have ten times the flavor of California cardboard ones from grocery stores. From Paula, elegant in bib overalls, a former bank manager who now farms fifty acres, I also buy snow peas, squash, and zucchini. From the next stand I buy black raspberries, from another local wildflower honey, organic Colby cheese, and fresh bread. All the vendors on the blocked-off city block ask what kind of dog Molly is. "Boykin Spaniel," I say, "a South Carolina duck-retrieving water spaniel, part Chesapeake Bay Retriever, the smallest working dog." She basks in the admiration, plenty vain. Around the block, the library book sale has no great buys. Now I wish I had brought a copy of Michener's Chesapeake, which I read whenever it came out, 20-some years ago. Back at Tidewater Marina, I move the boat around the corner to the City Yacht Basin, which has a slip for me the next two nights.

In the lawn opposite the Currier House, Chuck Foley welcomes me to the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum Festival. Molly and I mosey past craft vendors to the wooden boats. Under the music tent, chantey singers blend harmonies, tenor, baritone, and deep resonating bass. I buy raffle tickets for a tiny wooden skiff from Levin Heath, who grew up at Roaring Point on the Nanticoke River. I'm guessing he's in his late 70s. In a bright yellow Lions Club t-shirt, Levin says, "Before there were bridges, I had to get to Wilmington, Delaware, to take a train to Baltimore. Every day in the summer, my father would drive vegetables from our farm to the Baltimore market; he drove there five hours, five hours back, slept until he left again. As soon as I could, I moved away. After high school, I joined the Army, then moved here to Havre de Grace. Two years ago, we sold the family farm at Nanticoke. The people that bought it built a new house down on lowground, marshland where we were never allowed to build. That was the prettiest shoreline on the whole Bay." From the pier by the white lighthouse, Ed Gera maneuvers his scale-model schooner, Glad Tidings, with remote-control that turns the rudder and sails. "Thirty- seven feet to thirty-seven inches," Ed tells me. At three I stop to see Jane at the Currier House again. We walk three dogs, her two and mine, two doors down to visit Janie Jackseit. When I explain my expedition following Smith, Janie tells me way back that all the Native American tribes, from north and south, gathered at Havre de Grace for peaceful powwows. "I live on sacred territory," Janie exclaimed and clapped her hands three times. Janie speaks with conviction, "The Susquehanna is such a beautiful river. Roads should follow rivers so people can pull off at overlooks to see the water view. I wrote the state highway departments in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and they never acknowledged my letters." Janie continues with local history, "Because Quakers as pacifists did not want to fight the British in 1812, they built boats that could skid away fast across the flats. The British were so mad, they burned down their boatsheds. The Quakers re-built sheds, re-designed faster boats and outsmarted the British navy." Janie clapped three times again. "Quakers used these boats to transport runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad." Janie's husband Bert was a Baptist minister. "We weren't rich, but he was good company. Remember that, especially when you retire and spend more time together, get someone you want to talk to." When Janie and Bert moved here to Havre de Grace thirty years ago, she was dismayed to find the lighthouse door hanging on its hinges and a spotlight as the dim navigation light. While Bert drove their car back from St. Michaels, Janie held onto the fifth-order Fresnel lens borrowed from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Atop the 36-foot tower built of Port Deposit granite, the lens is 36 inches high and 14 inches diameter. Janie boasts that Concord Point lighthouse in her front yard is the oldest lighthouse in continuous use in the United States. As activist Janie encouraged the community to preserve the lighthouse and keep commercial development away from the town's southern waterfront park promenade.

Jane insists that I stay overnight as a guest in the Currier House bed and breakfast. I like sleeping on the boat, even when it bounces in marina traffic, and I am awakened at 5 a.m. by watermen. I am grateful for any hot shower at a marina. However, I adapt easily to the luxury of a real bed with fresh sheets and a private bathroom with bathtub. This weekend is about halfway on my summer trip, so a break on shore will give me new energy for the next six weeks. Molly sleeps soundly all day on a soft cushion tucked under a kitchen counter, and at night she sleeps in Jane's king-size bed. Because of guests' allergies, no pets are allowed in my guest room. Jane's husband Paul is off on business, so Jane is running the bed and breakfast by herself, with her daughter Sarah's help.

When Jane moved to Greenwich Village at age seventeen, she studied guitar with the Rev. Gary Davis. She recorded albums as Jane Chatfield, the last name of her first husband. In the early 1960s she performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, introduced by Pete Seeger who introduced Bob Dylan then too. In 1961, at age twenty-one, Jane rode a bus to Birmingham and marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. She was not arrested with other folk musicians, because she was knocked unconscious by a fire hose. At 63, Jane with reddish hair looks much as she did on her album cover which is posted above the piano in the Currier House bed and breakfast.

Sunday, 16 June. What I can do to help is walk Jane's two dogs and weed gardens. Fingering soil and pulling out weeds is a treat. Breakfast at Currier House is fresh strawberries from Paula's farm on baked french toast layered with nuts, apples, and cinnamon. No such thing ever as too much cinnamon or too much garlic. Jane's daughter Sarah walks with me on the waterfront boardwalk. Though Sarah looks about 16, she is now 35 and sometimes has difficulty speaking. Brain injured after she had meningitis at two, she has "expressive aphasia." Over her initial shyness, Sarah is friendly and eager for a boat ride. We board Landfall and run up the Susquehanna under three bridges, not as far as the rocks where Smith might have cruised. The Maritime Museum has invited Landfall to dock in front of the lighthouse for the festival, but on weekends the waves from motorboats are too rough, so we return Landfall to the City Yacht Basin. Jane tells me more tales of performing and recording as folk singer, then earning a Masters in Public Health and working in infection control for NIH. I eat the last crab cake from the festival and ice cream from Bomboy's.

Monday, 17 June. The direct negative impact on my life from September 11 was that my stockbroker lost records at the World Trade Center, sent me three more 1099s at the end of March, apologized for the delay of re-constructing records, but I had to re-file my taxes. Over the phone my Beaufort renter told me last week IRS sent a letter that I need to send another form. From a pay phone at Turner Creek off the Sassafras, I called the 800-number, spent 25 minutes listening to lists and punching numbers, until the recording said I could not dial that 800-number from a payphone. No way I'm going to waste my cell-phone minutes on hold half an hour. Using Jane's phone line, I finally reach a human IRS agent after waiting 40 minutes, and can send a check for $27 to appease them.

Last fall I hesitated to buy a motorboat for my expedition in case a war might mean gas rationing. The gas price at the dock is now $1.76 a gallon. I pay twenty or thirty dollars every other day, about four or five miles to a gallon. My gas expense is twice what I budgeted, but marinas are letting me stay for free. Sarah carries one of my duffels of clean laundry two blocks to the Yacht Basin. At eleven I wave goodbye to Jerry the dockmaster. The sky is clear blue with billowy white clouds. Turkey Point and the bluffs by Northeast River, which were so misty on Friday, seem close enough to touch. When I pass Turkey Point, I consider returning to the Bohemia River to kayak Manor Creek. I realize that I am turning back; this is the northern extent of my expedition. I motor south of the Sassafras, then cut the motor and drift back north with the incoming tide. To the south I can see Poole's Island; north is Havre de Grace and the Susquehanna; Elk River and the C and D canal. I stand in the cockpit and revolve for the 360-degree view. I can not remember a calmer day on the Bay. On the flat water I could motor to Norfolk in a few hours. "It's always like this, right?" I wish. By two I anchor in Still Pond, stern to the strip of beach between Still Pond and Churn Creek. Two speedboats full of families have anchored off the beach to swim. I wash the fiberglass and apply wax. In March before departure I had no time. This sunny afternoon, anchored in shallow fresh water is a good time to scrub and then to kayak. On the wild western bank of Churn Creek are big old trees-- chestnut oak, pin oak, white oak, locust, sweetgum, sassafras, catalpa, hickory. An immature bald eagle swoops twenty feet above my head. I flush great blue herons from their logs. A chittering kingfisher proceeds me along the shore. To the west I can hear bombs booming at Aberdeen Proving Ground. It's hard to tell the difference between bombs and thunder, but today the sky is clear blue. Red-winged blackbirds are nesting in the tall marsh grass. Back at Landfall, the speedboats with parents and kids up-anchor and leave. Molly digs in the sand; I swim parallel to the beach spit, grateful for almost fresh water, without jellyfish. Last winter I swam a mile or two a week to get in shape for this summer. Heading south to brackish and salt water means stinging nettles. Western shore creeks mean pollution. At dusk, pink and mauve covers the whole western sky, with four sailboats at anchor farther out. This beach is perfect protection from any direction of wind but northwest. Middle of the night for half an hour, the boat bucks with 18-20 knot northwest wind. I consider motoring around the point into Churn Creek, into the lee on the other side of the beach spit, but fall back asleep.

Tuesday, 18 June. Still Pond, another still day. Molly and I kayak again around Churn Creek, then heft the boat back on the roof. I swim along the beach, then throw sticks for Molly to swim. Motoring into Worton Creek, the beach spit to the south has a long line of "No Trespassing" signs. Midday we tie up at Green Point Marina in Worton Creek. When I called marinas three months ago, Ray at Green Point was the most enthusiastic manager when I explained I am a schoolteacher circling the Bay and asked for free docking. This afternoon I sit in the shade at a picnic table looking out Worton Creek with a view of traffic cruising north and south on the channel out in the Bay. Green Point is half working yard and half yachtie. On the honor system, the ice and fuel are self serve and honor-system paying. At the T-dock, Joe Youcha, from the Historic Seaport Foundation in Alexandria is restoring a wooden ketch from Maine. Inside the bulkhead the wind whips ups a chop that rocks the boat as I sleep.

Wednesday, 19 June. Listening to the radio, there will be chance of thunderstorm today and tomorrow. I will cross the Bay today to make sure I can meet my brother tomorrow. The tide will be flowing out by Middle River until 10 a.m. At 6:30 Molly and I walk a mile up the road and back under a shady canopy of overhanging trees. At the Green Point docks, Marc Barco of O'Connell Boat Works is restoring a 1928 48-foot wooden motoryacht. He is a fine craftsman. He tells me a Philadelphia lawyer just bought 12 acres across Worton Creek for $7.5 million; he's the guy who posted the Keep-off signs. "For a hundred years, boats have beached there to scrape their bottoms, and now this guy has posted signs. If he wanted privacy, he should not have bought property on a creek where hundreds of boats are moored." At Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Marc helps organize traditional small-boat gatherings. Last weekend he sailed his small boat up the Gunpowder River, when the Army was not bombing. When I pull out of Worton Creek at 9:15, the open Bay has the thick overcast of a humid day that builds to a thunderstorm. With tide flowing out, I scoot south-southeast at 18 knots. I am sorry to leave the Eastern Shore. Mist means my camera does allow me to take a picture of Poole's Island when I pass south. The sky darkens, and raindrops hit my windshield. At 10:30 when I pass Sue Creek, the storm has passed north. I head west upriver to visit Gary Rosenberger, dealer of C-Dory boats at Cutter Marine. He sys he must wait until September to get another new C-Dory to sell. The plant in Washington State cannot produce new boats enough for the demand. Gary says, "And used boats for sale just don't exist." Inspecting the setup on my boat, Gary advises me to put more weight forward, so the v-entry at the bow hits the water. He says the new C-Dories place their batteries on the floor between the gas tanks, instead of in the lockers. When I dock at Baltimore Yacht Club, I move the spare propellor to the anchor locker in the bow. I load a box of gear to send back in my brother's car. I will send back my third, spare anchor, as just two much weight. In the afternoon, I swim laps in the pool. From this hill on Sue Island there's a splendid view to the east of Poole's Island, which I am glad I can share with my brother. Edison Gessner who docks his trawler Beguine next to my guest slip invites me to dine with him at the clubhouse. Ed is 82, he was a salesman then managed repairs for Westinghouse, and his wife died five years ago. After dinner Ed introduces me to the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Sue Island Motor Squadron, a half dozen widows whose husbands used to own boats. The younger women are now allowed to join the main meeting with the men.

Thursday, 20 June. I read charts, plot my schedule for the next month, and call ahead to Baltimore, Annapolis, Deale, and Solomons for the ten days. I read, walk with Molly, and swim. This is a slow day. Jeff will arrive at five. I make us reservations for dinner at the yacht club dining room with the vista of Poole's Island and Gunpowder.

Thursday, 20 June. I've been trying to figure what is weird about the Baltimore Yacht Club. Everything is nifty, but fifty years outdated. This place is a slice of the Twilight Zone, with Chris Craft yachts and hairspray-beehive hairdos preserved from 1957. The people are equally old-fashioned hospitable, and the location is perfect for staging our tour of Gunpowder. My brother Jeff arrives before five, and I take him immediately for a spin on Landfall to survey Robins Point and Poole's Island from the safe, south side of the restricted boundary. After crab cakes at the clubhouse, we talk late on the boat. He remembers other aspects of sailing the Bay with our father. In August 1971, when I wore an arm cast from breaking my left wrist at Outward Bound, he took a week's leave from the Coast Guard to sail with the family. On navigation-marker maintenance duty, he used to remove the osprey nests from buoys. Now the Coast Guard co-exists with ospreys.

Friday, 21 June. Leaving the yacht club by 7 a.m., Jeff drives me to the Cokesbury Cemetery in Abingdon to tour Jeffers, Carroll, Rembold, and Stapleford family gravesites. At Methodist, Catholic, and Lutheran cemeteries we find great, great-great, and great-great-great ancestors. One pair-- Frederika Phershig (cousin of the Pershing general) and Charles Augustus Rembold met in Strasbourg, Germany when she was a nun and he was a seminarian. When they married, they moved to Maryland. The Rembold farm is now a nine-hole golf course on the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. At 9 we meet Butch Grzanka, installation operations officer for APG, at Bob Evans Restaurant. We follow Butch's truck through the concrete-blockade slalom course in front of the security gate. After September 11, security is very tight. Jeff and I show identification and security badges at three security check points. Inside, a historian gives us a CD with photographs of an unidentified family living at the Poole's Island Lighthouse around 1900. It could well be our family. Ladies in white shirtwaist dresses lounge on porches; men in dark trousers, white shirts and suspenders, boys in short pants chase the Chesapeake Bay retrievers. A woman gestures to three cats lounging on a shed's tin roof. We leave Jeff's car and ride the oversize 4x4 federal truck. After passing another security gate at the head of the Gunpowder Peninsula, we stop at the gatehouse to verify that no bombing is planned this morning. We drive out Maxwell Point, where the Cadwallader family had their duck-hunting lodge, but see no fine trees they planted. On the shore we see pairs of swans, rafts of brant geese, and an immature eagle. When the military took over the land in 1917, the Cadwalladers owned most of the peninsula. Our families had sold land earlier.

When her husband died in 1865, my great-great grandmother Sarah, his second wife, had to sell their farms. Benjamin Jeffers moved to Maxwell Conclusion at Robins Point in 1824, had seven children with his first wife, Henrietta Rouse. After her death, when he was 51, he married Sarah Anne Stapleford, age 30, daughter of Capt. James Stapleford, Poole's Island Lighthouse keeper. Benjamin's farm Maxwell Conclusion was on the tip of Robins Point, opposite Poole's Island. The keeper's family may have landed at Robins or Ricketts Point when they came to the mainland. After we pass through another gate to "J Field," we turn off the road to the left on a dirt road that showed on the 1913 navigation chart. If the road has persisted the last 90 years, it's likely the one when Benjamin farmed there. On the left is the "Demo Field," bare dirt recently harrowed, where Ken at the gatehouse told us not to walk. "Demo" means demolition, where the Army blows up old bombs. On the right in the scraggly pine woods are ridges pushed up by bulldozers when they buried barrels of chemical weapons. Jeff and I are eager to search for the brick-walled cemetery on the shoreline that our grandmother remembered from the 1940s. We'd also like to find the foundation of the house. Quickly, Jeff dons his camouflage coveralls; I tuck my pantslegs into my socks, but we forget to apply bug juice to our ankles. The biggest risk in bushwacking the underbrush is ticks. Never mind the bombs; "DANGER, unexploded ordnance" the signs warn. Butch makes a joke, "A Polish minesweeper is the guy walking in front of you." Jeff takes off through the woods. I say I'll follow Butch's footprints, but in fact he follows mine. Our great-grandfather George was born here, but I never get the feeling anyone lived here; I get no feeling I could live here. Instead I feel null or numb. Maybe the toxic dump or the bombs took the "sense of place" from this place. I want to wade the shallow water, or snorkle underwater looking for gravestones off the eroded shoreline. Butch says scuba divers refuse to dive there because of unexploded ordnance, and he forbids me to go in the water. Back at the truck, I pick about thirty tiny ticks, the Lyme disease kind, off my pants. Behind the truck I pull off the pants, seal them in a plastic bag, and put on a spare pair. We drive back through security checkpoints and turn in our badges. After leaving Aberdeen, Jeff drives us to Havre de Grace. I want to shower off chiggers and ticks at the marina where I remember the entry code, but Jeff says wait. He wants to look through Great-Aunt Grace's geneaology boxes to find evidence of Benjamin Jeffers's parents' farm at Rock Hall. At Currier House, Jane invites us back in the fall to delve through boxes she has stored in the basement and shed. In Essex, Jeff and I buy salads to eat on the boat. When I shower, I pick off two crawling ticks and one just attached. Lyme disease terrifies me.

Saturday, 22 June. Butch and Yvonne, a reporter for the APG News, arrive at 9. We load them on Landfall and go exploring. The government actually owns the waters around Aberdeen Proving Grounds. When APG is not bombing the shoreline, on weekends regular citizens may cruise the restricted waters, but not land on any shore. Butch radios to the police boat when we cross into the restricted zone. With Butch's permission I steer Landfall within 200 yards of Robins Point. At ten I anchor Landfall on Poole's Island by the police boat that waits for us. Smith named this Powell's Island, after Nathaniel Powell who explored with Bay with him in 1608. Near the lighthouse is the 1833 gravestone for two brothers, Elijah and James Williams who drowned in the Bay. While Butch struggles with the lighthouse key, Jeff and I walk inland to a freshwater pond full of frogs. I get the feeling I could live here. It looks like they did not bury toxic chemicals out here, but we do pass the metal casing of a bomb. Built in 1825, the lighthouse is in great shape; its granite blocks are indestructible. Or maybe it was never a bombing target. The keeper's house was blown down. At one time there were a fog bell, cistern, cow stable, poultry house, boathouse, oil house, well, and outhouse. All that stands now is the lighthouse and an adjacent observation tower, built by APG. We climb to the top of the lighthouse, but there is no light. The light was automated in 1917 and decommissioned in 1939. We should install a solar-powered light in Poole's Island Lighthouse, so it can still guard the waters of the Chesapeake Bay again. Jeff and I walk on the beaches north and south of the light, straying 20 feet into the woods, with Butch, the reporter, and a policemen following our footsteps. The tulip poplars in the forest are tall and old. Along the beach are young peach trees which someone may have replanted, or which reseeded themselves naturally from the old ones. In 1873 a keeper planted 7,000 peach trees on 200 of the 280 acres, and Poole's Island peaches were famous throughout the region. I watch my feet on the sand, hoping to find the porcelain shard of Sarah Anne's teacup. On the north end of the island, I can imagine John Smith and his mates standing here. I stand on the shore and look west to Robins Point. When Benjamin and Sarah Anne were courting, they could gaze across the channel between Robins Point and Poole's Island, just about too far to swim. When we motor around the island, we see several dozen nests of great blue herons. On the southeast corner, within a hundred yards of shore, when the depth sounder reads 3 feet, the outboard engine bumps an underwater obstruction. It does not explode; it's probably a submerged log instead of an unexploded bomb.

When Butch and Yvonne disembark at the Baltimore Yacht Club, Jeff stows the two bricks he picked up for us on Poole's Island in his car. Because of crowds, I try to avoid boating on weekends on the western shore. I want to take Jeff to anchor in an Eastern Shore creek, where we can swim, but he prefers to help me get south. We motor outside Hart-Miller Island, which is a pile of dredge spoil dug from the Bay channel. Butch said someone has proposed dumping spoil on Poole's Island, but I hope they do not. Entering Baltimore Harbor, the Patapsco River channel is bumpy with speedboat wakes. One very big container ship leaves no wake. We pass the Sparrows Point steel plant, where great-grandfather George Jeffers worked before he moved to Birmingham and then Richmond.  At Old Dominion Iron Works in Richmond, during the Civil War he sheathed the Confederate Merrimac with iron, before its battle with the Union ship, Monitor. Beyond the Key Bridge, by Fort McHenry I start singing, "Oh say can you see," "The Star-Spangled Banner," composed there by Francis Scott Key. As I slow down by the first marina, a policeboat pulls alongside and warns me the speed limit is 6 knots. Jeff and I motor around Inner Harbor, looking at the ships, high-rise office buildings, and the National Aquarium. Big difference from Onancock. Along the wharf where Harborplace now has tourist shops and restaurants, the steamers from little towns all over the bay used to tie up, when country folk came to the city. Before there were bridges to the Northern Neck, people there would ride the steamer to shop in Baltimore. After we park at Center Dock, Jeff and I walk along the waterfront to dinner at a place with fish from Costa Rica, the Bahamas, and New Zealand. I order seared sushi-grade yellowfin tuna. Next to the marina is a very loud rock-n-roll bar.

Sunday, 23 June. Sunday morning before the big crowds, Jeff and I walk to the National Aquarium. Here in artificial habitat tanks are the diversity and abundance of sea life that John Smith encountered 400 years ago. Especially, I delight in the bright-color coral reef fish and the tiny poison-dart frogs from tropical rainforests. I feel ambivalent when we watch the dolphin show; these intelligent, playful marine mammals are beautiful, but I prefer seeing them frolic wild in the ocean at Beaufort. More and more, I appreciate the healthy state of the sounds and ocean on the North Carolina coast compared to the Chesapeake. At Harborplace we eat barbecue, catch a Seaport Taxi to Fells Point to buy birthday presents for Jeff's one-year-old daughter Eliza Carr, and walk back to Center Dock. We have failed to find a shuttle ride to Middle River, so Jeff catches a taxi to fetch his car. He drives back to the Northern Neck on Sunday afternoon to miss Monday morning traffic. I sew a bigger a hatch screen, read John Barth's Sotweed Factor, and get to sleep early.

Monday, 24 June. The radio predicts thunderstorms for this afternoon and evening and the next four days. Catching the last hour of outgoing tide midday, I will move to Annapolis. At 7:45 a.m., walking back from my shower, I meet Christina, director of Living Classrooms. Before her very busy day, she spends 15 minutes on Landfall. Today, bright high-school students arrive to take college-level classes for three weeks, as part of John Hopkins' Center for Academic Advancement. I would like to work with them the next few weeks. I used to teach young people like them at North Carolina School of Science and Math, the best teaching I ever did. Half of them sleep aboard the Coast Guard cutter Taney while studying ashore at Living Classrooms' Weinberg Education Center, and half spend nine days cruising the Bay on boats like skipjack Sigsbee and buyboat Mildred Belle.

Molly is hot, but I will not let her swim in the oil-slick, debris-clotted water in Baltimore harbor. And who knows what else? Instead I hose her off, letting the hose run until the water cools from very hot to tepid. "Code Red" Alert means very bad air quality. It's time to leave Baltimore Inner Harbor heat and smog. Although Living Classrooms' three acres of green lawns and after-school gardens are a tiny piece of paradise in the city, my boat Landfall is docked 30 feet across a channel from the concrete containment site for Allied Chromium's Superfund site. "Will my boat hull melt?" I ask Jake Britt, Center Dock's manager. "No, it's entirely safe." From Living Classroom's 85-foot bell tower, I observe the black monitoring wells on 20-some acre gravel wasteland. When the company stopped making chrome automobile bumpers, EPA dug deep and lined the bottom with concrete to keep the chromium from entering the groundwater and the river. The gravel surface makes the neighborhood hotter; not even weeds will grow there. Somebody estimated a hundred years before the site would clean itself; somebody else guessed some high-rise office tower would appear sometime soon, and its bridge would obliterate Center Dock marina. Also on the Baltimore Harbor, Tide Point development complex replaced the Proctor and Gamble factory when it closed down. The Domino Sugar sign still blazes neon over the harbor. As I motor by, there's no point photographing the shoreline in the smog. On a Monday, there is little recreational traffic. At Fort Carroll, I pass Sigsbee and Mildred Belle full of CAA kids.
In calm seas, Landfall can cruise the open Bay at 18 knots. Moving weight forward as Gary Rosenberger recommended really improves boat handling. I speed for an hour, as I want to make landfall before any storm winds and lightning. To the west clouds climb into high piles, then dissipate. Crossing under the Bay Bridge, the channel is very rough, and I am careful to steer clear of the pilons. My VHF cannot raise Mears Point Marina at Kent Narrows to hail Bob and Val Ivins. After the bridge, I slow down, as offshore will be cooler than land. Two years ago the Chesapeake Bay Foundation moved its offices from the firehouse and church in downtown Annapolis to Bay Ridge. Tying to the dock, I jump overboard to wade my lines to the outside pilings. Molly swims right away. I have feared I would find little beauty on the western shore. However, CBF has 31 beautiful acres with big trees. Tulip poplars and sweetgums shade the path to the "Sacred Bench" that overlooks Blackwalnut Creek. As I approach, a white American egret flies left, a great blue flies right. Straight ahead, the red sun is setting, and the creek water is still, for reflection. Back at the dock, the full moon is orange over still water and leaves a trail straight to Landfall's stern. Right on the edge of the Bay, the wind is slight, so I can sleep without much rocking. Low wind is a blessing for motorboaters, especially when I am moored on such an exposed shoreline.

Tuesday, 25 June. The heat index is way over 100 degrees. The inversion keeps all air pollution close to earth. Hoping for any breeze, I type on the deck of CBF's Phillip Merrill Environmental Center. In the morning I decline the offer of an air-conditioned office, because I do not want to lose my outdoor conditioning. Inside are Clivus Multum compost toilets, rainwater cisterns, and solar water heaters. A ground source heat pump system heats and cools the building. Wells 300 feet deep use the earth's constant 54-degree temperature as a heat sink in the summer and heat source in the winter. This building is smart: it turns off lights when a person leaves a room and turns on lights when someone enters. CBF staffers stop to ask about my voyage; I speak to a group of schoolteachers from Montgomery County. Molly jumps off the boat and swims ashore, so I tie her in the shade of a tree with a water bucket. In the afternoon, brain frying outside, I move to the air conditioning. For Wednesday and Thurday, Jeff Holland invites me to dock at Annapolis Maritime Museum on Back Creek at McNasby Oyster Company. Perhaps a thunderstorm will clear the air.

What am I supposed to notice about whether the Bay is clean or dirty? The water surface is beautiful; the sunset and sunrise, birdsounds at dawn and tree-shaded shorelines. Baltimore Harbor, like the Easton Point dock, had oil-slick water. Baltimore sediments are full of PCBs for decades. Telephone poles and dead fish floats down the Bay channel from the Susquehanna. Nitrogen that seeps from farm fields is invisible, until it manifests as algae, that clouds the water and shades seagrass; algae uses up oxygen in the water that fish need to breathe. I make large scale judgments on water quality. I make a conscious choice to swim in remote creeks. I avoid swimming in a harbor with lots of boats that may discharge sewage, near towns whose sewage treatment plant may discharge viruses and pathogens, or near a factory outfall. The Eastern Shore has creeks to anchor, swim; farther north the Sassafras and Bohemia have fresh water for my dog to drink. After Baltimore and Annapolis, I am impatient to reach more rural creeks of the Northern Neck. According to CBF's State of the Bay 2001, "on a scale of 0 to 100, the Bay's health rates a 27." That score is scary, shocking, and heart-breaking. For Habitat-- Wetlands rate 42, Forested Buffer 54, Underwater Grasses 12, Resource Lands 30. For Pollution-- Toxics are 30, Water Clarity 15, Nitrogen and Phosphorous each 15, Dissolved Oxygen 15. For Fisheries-- Crabs rate 42, Rockfish 75, Oysters 2, and Shad 6. The Bay has changed since my father was born 93 years ago; it has changed even more drastically in the 53 years that I grew up here. One goal of my voyage is to witness what is still healthy and beautiful and inspire young people to become stewards. One goal is to decide if I want to move back.

A birthday present from friend Jennifer finally reaches me today, forwarded from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum to CBF. She sent red, blue, yellow, green prayer flags for me to string on Landfall for a festive parade, just like when Smith and crew sailed up the James River decked with ribbons decked out like a Spanish warship to play a joke on the Jamestown watchguard. My friends on shore who cannot join me to sail form a prayer circle that keep me safe on this voyage.

The fog horn sounds all night at the mouth of the Severn River.

Wednesday, 26 June. Molly and I swim along the Bay Ridge beach. I stumble to avoid stepping on mating horseshoe crabs. No jellies yet, but they will be coming in soon. I lurk at the CBF dock until I deduce that John Page Williams will not be in the office until later. John Page is my friend from growing up in Richmond. He is the best at what I aspire to be-- naturalist, writer, educator. John Page drove the first canoe rigs for CBF 35 years ago, taking kids on the water 10 months a year in Maryland and Virginia. Every fisherman on the Bay, commercial and sports, knows John Page. I trust his judgment and wisdom about propellors, fish bait, and bird lore. Over the phone J.P. tells me my Suzuki should turn 5800 rpm instead of 4200, so I will have to get a new propellor. The CBF Board will meet midday to dedicate the new dock, and some donors may arrive by boat, so I vacate. At 11:30 I swing around the corner into the Severn River up river past the Naval Academy. My friend Addison Jones and his son Kemper both graduated from the Naval Academy. I motor into Spa Creek past the City Dock. When I searched for a sailboat last winter, I drove to Annapolis three times. Now the 10,000 boats hauled on the hard in the winter all line the docks along every inch of creek. Yow, this place is crowded. I motor up Spa Creek past boats moored at anchor where I guess folks live aboard, row ashore, and bike to work. I stop for gas, which is the highest price yet-- $2.04 a gallon. There is no block ice at two docks where I stop. When I pull into the dock at McNasby's Seafood, Jeff Holland, director of the Annapolis Maritime Museum greets me, along with chantey singer Caryl Weiss and museum board chair Peg Wallace. Jeff and board member Bill tie Landfall to the dock where buyboats used to deliver oysters and crabs to the seafood company. Now, with declining seafood catch, this splendid seafood-packing and processing building will become a museum commemorating Eastport's maritime history. The museum includes the Barge House, which a watermen could tow to any location, but now sits on its foundation next to McNasby's. The Eastport neck was originally founded by Quakers in the 1660s. Tradionally, white watermen used Spa Creek, and African American watermen used Back Creek; the Eastport village between creeks is still a multi-racial community of watermen, boatbuilders, and tradesmen. As I sit down to eat my crabcake, two reporters appear with stenography pads, and I tell my expedition story to tandem journalists scribbling shorthand. After an hour I get to finish eating my crab cake sandwich, which rates right up there in the top three. Jeff Holland is a Renaissance man-- songwriter and musician, community organizer, and writer. Indeed there's a photo of him on the wall in full Renaissance garb. Recently he has organized the Volvo Classic Race and Annapolis Maritime Festival. He hands me a pin sent to me directly from the Annapolis mayor. Gosh, this is a fine welcome. In the evening after I ordered a fish sandwich from the McNasby's takeout counter, the manager Mike Beavers staples some paper to the picnic table and brings me a half dozen steamed crabs. I share them with Nan Baker, a Quaker from Asheville who moved to Annapolis. Nan and I walk Molly around the streets of gentrified Eastport.

Thursday, 27 June. I try to find an electrician to replace the transponder for my depth sounder, which has been erratic since the outboard skeg hit a log offshore Poole's Island. I use my depth sounder for navigation, so it must work. Midday, old friend Christina Fielder drives me for a haircut from Raymond, who cut my hair 16 years ago; simply the best haircutter I have ever known. Christi takes met to shop at a high-price grocery. I see my Maine friend Brendan who works at Bacon & Associates. At Christi's yard I plant a dozen day lilies for her, and in the afternoon rainstorm we go see a film. A father and son are fishing from McNasby's dock when I get back to the boat.

Friday, 28 June. A Baltimore Sun editor wants his reporter and photographer to ride on Landfall from Annapolis to Deale. Yesterday at the dock the reporter, five months pregnant, gets queasy from five minutes of gentle rocking. In my judgment, I recommend a trip on the Severn River, so I can return her to the dock in five minutes or twenty minutes instead of two hours. She is cheerful and eager, but admits that she knows nothing about boats, environment, or history. On Thursday night I told the reporter the electrician should be finished by noon today. To replace my depth sounder, I have a choice of an all-new, cheaper $100 unit with new transponder that requires a $100 haulout and $100 electrician fee, all of which should work; or a better $300 Si-Tex unit from Boaters World that might fit the existing wiring plug and mount on the console, which I must find a ride to buy, check, and return if it does not fit, and the existing transponder mounted on the transom still might not work. I don't call Christina for a ride because yesterday she said she felt I exploited her by asking for a ride to the haircut. I run over to beg Eastport Marina for a haul this afternoon, but Dirk Jabin the manager is out to lunch. Scott the electrician drills a hole in the console and apologizes he has no vacuum to clean up the fiberglass dust. To keep him from disappearing while we wait for Dirk Jabin to get back, I buy him a crab cake sandwich from McNasby's. He thinks it's a small world that his sister Lisa took my photo for the Annapolis paper the day before. I know now the whole Bay is a small world. From a McNasby's picnic table I watch for Dirk Jabin's pickup truck and run over the minute he returns. Dirk promises he will fit us in for 15 minutes within an hour or two. That's huge, as most lifts are reserved weeks, months ahead. Scott returns to his office for the new parts. I call the Sun reporter to set a new time. From McNasby's dock I watch when the sailboat on Dirk Jabin's lift moves out. In two hours, when it moves, I call Scott back at his office, motor Landfall right over into the lift slip, and Scott is waiting. When Landfall emerges, Dirk says the hull does not need a power wash, so that saves me fifty dollars. While Scott installs the new transponder on the transom, I scrub the scum line with special soap. In my haste I do not wear gloves but slather on the caustic soap with a sponge. Eight inches of fiberglass turns from murky yellow to white. I then lie on my back in the grit, scrub and hose the bottom. As soon as Scott is finished on the hull, Dirk puts Landfall back in the water. When I motor next door to McNasby's, the Baltimore Sun reporter and photographer are waiting. I have just been on my back scrubbing the hull with the water hose gushing all over me. No matter, off we go into the Severn, and within twenty minutes the queasy reporter wants to return to dock. Just as well, my bare knees are beginning to twitch with fiberglass dust from the console. Jeff tells me the Woodwind is sold out tonight, so I do not fit as his guest for his concert. Underway at McNasby's dock is a party for the mayor's office. Peter Tasi, the exhibit designer for the Annapolis Maritime Museum, grasps my need and borrows a vacuum from the adjacent work yard. Mayor Ellen Moyer invites me to join them, but first I slip over to the Barge House garden and hose off caustic soap and fiberglass dust before pulling off my shorts and t-shirt and pulling on a party dress. A public health nurse confirms that Annapolis has the highest rate of stomach cancer, not in the state or the country, but the world. No one knows if the cause is the air or the water. Molly and I walk the quiet streets of Eastport before we sleep.

Saturday, 29 June. When I check my cell messages, I find that the Sun reporter called me five times yesterday and used up all but four of my June cell-phone minutes, so any emergency call will cost five dollars a minute. My summer renter who reads me my mail told me the Alltel bill last month was $100; until I read my mail directly, I have no idea what charges they are adding. After all my grand entrance at McNasby's with chanty singer and board members, my departure is quiet Saturday morning before 8 a.m., as I slip away before the weekend traffic wakes up. The ride down to Deale is calm, but the winds are rising when I turn east into Herring Bay and north into Rockhold Creek. I motor up the creek past docks that used to hold watermen's commercial boats and now hold yachts from D.C. and Baltimore. Two derelict wooden motorboats have sunk at their docks. At Shipwright Harbor, Brandt the dockmaster assigns me an empty slip right up front. After I plug in my computer at the office to check email, I throw my kayak in and scrub the four places on the waterline covered yesterday by the travellift strap. I hose off, jump into the pool right when the lifeguard yells, "Kids out, adults only for fifteen minutes. Surprises me that I'm not a kid that has to wait on the side for the adults. Swimming laps is heaven. I sit in the shade, hundred-plus heat index, and read Sot-Weed Factor, whose goofy hero's journey on the Chesapeake loosely parallel John Smith's and mine. By the pool I talk to David, a fellow paddler and contra dancer, who has been sanding fiberglass on a sailboat he is restoring. At five I shower to avoid the rush before the six-o'clock party. Tonight I have arrived for Shipwright's big summer dinner dance on the point. New friend David and I rock'n'roll until the band shuts down at 10 p.m.

Sunday, 30 June. The best wind and tide is early, so I skip Shipwright's morning brunch. Owner John Meneely summons the crowd to gather for parties by ringing the bell by his office, which reads, "Laudo Deum Varum, September 8, 1917, MeNeely Bell Company, Troy, NY." John's family made the first church bells in this country in the 1700s. His sister, Janie, edits Chesapeake Bay Magazine and is a musician. As I motor south to the Patuxent, the open Bay is "slick ca'm," no wind. The few sailboats out here are motoring. Sorry, but motorboats like no wind. To the east I can see glints, I think, from the glass windshields of fishing boats moored by the Eastern Shore, five miles east. I turn off the engine and float with the current, 1.5 mph south. The wing tips of cownose rays flip above the water surface as dozens of them do their mating dance. North of Calvert Cliffs are the round white domes of the nuclear power plant. Offshore, the pipes and panels of research platform look like a space station. Sportsfishing boats use the pilings of the research platform as fish reef. Just under the cliffs a flurry of bright-striped catamaran sails are drifting north. I consider beaching under the fossil cliffs, but prefer to get up the Patuxent River. Midday, off Solomons, I telephone to thank John MeNeely for the lovely party, and I call the Calvert Marine Museum that I will dock on Monday morning; carefully under the remaining four minutes of my cell phone. I will avoid the Sunday crowds in the harbor and at the museum. Anchoring in a creek will be cooler. Up river about an hour is St. Leonard's Creek. Mark has recommended Mackall Cove, but the high banks block any breeze and offer no dog beach. Upstream at Breedens Point off Rollins Cove I drop anchor below a cow pasture flanked by two sand cliffs marvelous with fossil shells. The water is salty with occasional jellyfish, but Molly swims and I wade. I stand under the 25-foot cliffs and figure they are in the same formation as the Calvert Cliffs just a few miles east. Eroded from the base of the cliff, stomped by cattle at low tide and washed away by high tide are ancient barnacles, scallop and oyster shells. In the drastic above-100 heat, I unfold the dinette berth to read, and fall deep asleep. At six the cell phone rings, maybe the fourth time this summer, as Alltel has such lousy coverage, with a guy asking me to dinner in Solomons. I'm cranky and say I 'm anchored and out of cell-phone minutes this month. I don't quite figure out who is calling until after I hang up and wake up. I check my cruising guide and find a restaurant just upstream on St. Leonard's Creek. I call Vera's White Sands to make a reservation and call David's phone, stored on my cell, and give him directions from my road atlas. I tie at the dock just before David from Shipwright drives up. On the hill with a view of the sunset, ringed by palms and hibiscus, decorated with primitive Polynesian statues and masks, Vera's place has the ambiance of an island resort, and in her long blond hair at 90 and leopard body stocking, Vera herself might well be a movie star straight from World War II. The whole ambience is exotic and romantic. Just at dark, David throws my lines off the dock, and I motor Landfall back to Rollins Cove to anchor. I feel intrepid anchoring in the dark.

Monday, 1 July. Molly walks the beach and swims; I savor the early coolness from 6 to 8:30. Finally I read the Suzuki manual, which says my 70 hp 4-stroke should be turning 5200 to 5800 rpm. My 4-blade prop that Danny sold me without testing turns 4200 rpm, max. The radio says extreme heat-index. Keep old people, children, and pets shaded, watered, ventilated. At 9:30 we motor into Solomons and wait 15 minutes for a dockhand to attend the gas pumps. At Calvert Marine Museum I dock next to the Wm. B. Tennison, an 1899 bugeye converted to a buyboat, and under the original 1883 Drum Point Lighthouse. Karen Stone, head of Education at Calvert, catches my dock lines. Four months ago, when I emailed 25 museums, education centers, and science labs, Karen responded, "How can we help?" Calvert hosts the LANDFALL website, serves as nonprofit umbrella for me to apply for education-outreach grants, and accepts tax-deductible donations to support my expedition expenses. Karen has been the most supportive person of my voyage, and this is the first time I meet her in person. She's great-- sporty and professional at the same time. On the dock, first thing, I hose off Molly, heat-index remedy, and tie her in the shade under the lighthouse with a sign, "This is Molly, Landfall crew. Children, please don't touch her without an adult." Next thing, after this heat and swimming in salt, I take a shower next to the exhibit workshop where Skip is sculpting a 12-foot seahorse. Community groups all over Calvert County will paint seahorses like this. In Karen's office I make half a dozen logistics phone calls. In Solomons or anyplace in the next two weeks, I try to find a Suzuki repair place to change my outboard oil and advise me on my propeller. The dealer told me 100 hours for maintenance, and I'd just as soon change the oil early. High Tide engine repair in Solomons is closed Mondays, so I have to wait here until Tuesday to call. Once again my email account is firewalled by the county computer system. Right now Karen is booking tickets for a World War II weekend in August with dinner/ dance, Abbot and Costello, and monument dedication at Solomons' Amphibian base. The old Naval Base on the peninsula at the center of Solomons is now ringed by yacht docks. Karen is a cheerful, competent administrator, supervising a dozen programs, staff interpreters and 250 volunteers.
At the museum dock I pull Landfall's docklines back until the prop rests on a floating wharf. I take off the 4-blade prop to try to read its size. All it has is a dozen serial numbers. I try on the 13.5 by 15, 3-blade prop that the dealer in NC gave me as a spare; its does not fit. I've been carrying it as spare for three months, and it is the wrong size. I have one spare cotter pin to replace the 4-blade one. I hose off Molly again; all the education interpreters have met her. In the Library air conditioning I arrange my slides into a carousel for my lecture at Calvert on Monday, 15 July, 7 p.m. Paul, the librarian asks my research interests. He walks away, and I do not think he has heard. Silently he piles about twenty books on my table of early naturalists' journals. Calvert's library and librarians are the best I've encountered, but I must move out at 4:30. I walk through the museum exhibits before they close at five. Their fish habitats are smaller, but more elegant than the National Aquarium. Out back the otter pool is splendid, but the otters are hiding. In the heat I walk with Molly to find more cotter pins. I buy salads at Woodbines; anything cold for dinner. Back at the museum picnic area for their "t-ball banquet," I meet Karen's family-- husband Wes and their six-year-old son John-Aubrey. Wes and Karen met on the streets of Plymouth in Massachusetts, dressed as Pilgrims. Now all three dress up in period costumes in historic reenactments at St. Mary's City and Jamestown. Their house is filled with clothes from four centuries, and they easily slip into the speech and manner of any period.

Tuesday, 2 July. Bob who works in Education will dogsit Molly so I can join my Montana family on Saturday in Washington for the Folk Festival. The heat-index today will be 105 to 110 degrees. Nick, head of buildings, tells me to put Molly inside in the air conditioning instead of the shade. "Just say Nick says it is okay." I have no luck getting my engine oil changed. High Tide cannot work on Suzuki. Lee, Suzuki dealer in Burgess, Virginia, is booked. The phone at Calvert Marine in Broome's Island is always busy. In the library I tie Molly under my table while I type the names of books Paul pulled for me. I will have to come back by car. I load my laundry in Bob's basement, but the dryer does not dry, so the volunteer librarian Joan drives me to a laundromat. Just before dark, Doug Alves, director of the museum, talks to me for an hour on the dock. He makes me feel welcome and offers to help however he can.

Wednesday, 3 July. John Smith's map shows that he explored way up the Patuxent River. The radio says even hotter for the next two days and predicts thunderstorms. Heat Index above 105 degrees. The sky is gray and the air oppressively heavy, very high humidity. An inversion causes bad air quality. I could sit in the air conditioning or try to stay cool on the water. The two marinas upriver do not rent slips to transients, so I will anchor. Driving up the Patuxent, passing St. Leonards Creek, I remember and call Calvert Marine in Broomes Island. "Come right on in to the gray house on the point," Greg says on the phone. Yahoo. No problem, service is what they do. They are honest, they are friendly. Molly and I sit in the air conditioning while they haul Landfall, change the oil, and check the props. Whoever sells you an outboard, Bill says, should test different props for their performance, not just sell you one and send you away. Bill does not have the right prop in stock. He works as a Washington, D.C., fireman, keeping the D.C. fireboats running. Because I'm a teacher on an education trip, he charges me half of the bill; enough so he can pay his worker's hours. At 1:30 I motor upstream for a famous crab cake at Stony's. Two ladies recognize me from the Annapolis paper, Julie and Shari, and I join them for lunch. At three, I head upriver, but the sky is even grayer and thicker. I pass Battle Creek, which Bill recommended as an anchorage. When I see lightning to the west and south, I turn back to moor at Prison Farm Point at the mouth of Battle Creek. I anchor Landfall off bow and stern, so Molly and I can step on the sandspit. When one pleasant couple on a jetski pull out, Molly and I have the beach to ourselves for sunset. A storm would be nice to clear the air, but the night is muggy. Both fans in Landfall are on full blast. At one a.m., a big wake rocks the boat violently, half a dozen loud people make noise half an hour then leave. I find their beer cans on the beach at dawn.

Thursday, 4 July. Incoming tide continues until 10:30 a.m., so Molly and I leave at 7 to go upriver and then back partway before any afternoon storm. We need ice and may need fuel to get back to Solomons. It is no great tragedy to be without ice; I would have to throw away the mayonnaise and yogurt. If I had been thinking in Broomes Island yesterday, I could have bought block ice, but I am not always organized, especially when my brain curdles in 100 degrees. At 7:45 in Benedict I read the sign on the DeSoto fuel dock it does not open until 8:30; I walk half a block but the small store in town is closed. Across the river at the boat ramp, a retired policeman Ed drives me up the hill to buy ice. I'm on the river before most of the holiday crazies. I pass under the Route 231 bridge and by the Chalk Point power plant that had a big oil spill a few years ago. The sky is blue and the air clearer, as billowy white clouds build into thunderclouds that collapse. I will anchor somewhere before the wind and hail. Above the bridge the navigation chart ends, and the depth readings stop on my GPS. Mark will bring my Mapsource CD north tomorrow. Upstream the Patuxent narrows and deepens. When the river widens around some bends and gets very shallow, I pick out the channel using my new depth sounder. With the $95 haul and $348 electrician fee, it cost $448. I am grateful it works, so I can run up the Patuxent and so my godchildren will be safer. On the west bank are wild marshes and forests of the Patuxent River Park. When I reach Jug Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, with my binoculars I watch canoes a mile north heading upstream. I would like to anchor, throw my tiny kayak overboard and join them. Paddlers are more my species than the water-skiers behind speedboats. But I'd never catch up and get back south this afternoon. Jug Bay used to be deep enough for deep-draft seagoing ships to navigate. By 1800, siltation from plowed fields filled many streams like the Patuxent. At 10:30 I drop anchor in Jug Bay's fresh water. Molly and I both jump off the swimming platform to cool off. I loaf and read for two hours. When the boat swings at anchor with the tide change, we head back downstream. At Benedict at three p.m. I load the boat with gas to avoid a close call with low fuel on the way back. The owner of DeSoto is surly as I heard from the jetski couple. At four I anchor by the Prison Farm Point beach spit with twenty other boats, mostly families with kids. By seven they all pull out to speed downstream to the fireworks at Solomons. Molly and I walk to watch the sunset. A marine patrol policeman stops to ask if we have seen a missing jetskier with a long ponytail to his waist, who left St. Leonard's Creek at noon. The patrolman says there are always accidents in the crowd of boats at the Solomons fireworks. At dark, faint, far away, I can see fireworks cascading in three directions. Even without loud booms, Molly must feel the vibrations and cuddles as close as she can in my bunk. Tonight Beverly Young and her two sons, Owen and Walt, fly from Missoula into Dulles Airport at five p.m, then ride the subway into Washington with five million other people to watch the fireworks. I do not think there are not five million people in all of Montana.

Friday, 5 July. After a lazy, quiet early morning, all alone by the sandbar at Prison Farm Point, I motor back to dock at Calvert Marine Museum. Without an access code I need from the Internet, I have no luck trying to load the Garmin GPS Mapsource depth soundings for the next rivers-- Potomac and Rappahannock. Mark and I eat salads at Woodbines, and he shows me the C and C-37 sailboat he is restoring at Flag Harbor. Opening right onto the open Bay, Flag Harbor has a tiny, narrow opening between two rock jetties. Now I see what was so incredible when Elmer Whitby, the retired waterman at Wye Island, blew into Flag Harbor in the fog. Mark drives us to the contra dance at Glen Echo, west of Washington. The dance floor is an old bumper-car rink at the old amusement park. Nobody turns with firm grasp like North Carolina contra dancers. My purple leather waltzing slippers, stashed all summer in the bottom of a boat locker, delaminate. The Glen Echo ranger finds some silver duct tape to close my flapping sole. John Smith explored a hundred miles up the Potomac River, as far as Little Falls not far from Glen Echo, where water over rocks made noise and gushed white. After the dance, at midnight Mark drops me at William Penn House, a Quaker bed-and-breakfast on Capital Hill, where I will see Bev and her boys when we wake.

Saturday, 6 July. At 7:30 the grownup guests at William Penn House gather in the parlor for a half hour of silent worship. Breakfast at 8 is cereal. Bev's sons, Owen, 16, and Walt, 14, rise at 9. After we walk for their breakfast at an upscale bakery, we ride the Metro to the Smithsonian. This trip is them to choose what they want. The Museum of Natural History has an exhibit on Mongolian nomads who adapt to modern consumerism. There are old mammal and bird skeletons; the Native American exhibits are ancient. I am disappointed. I don't care about gem stones or space rocks. I prefer plants and live animals, but Bev toured the Botanical Garden yesterday. On the Mall, the theme of the 37th annual Folk Heritage Festival is the Silk Road, the route Europeans followed from the Mediterranean across India to buy spices in China. The heat, dust, and throng of people make a suitable replica of an Eastern Market. Milling about and at craft booths, people with dark skin wear saris, djelbas, tunics, and turbans. After immersing myself in the colonial attitude of Virginia and Maryland settlers on the Chesapeake Bay, the Turkish Mosque is a startling disjunct. Without reading newspapers for two months, I have become insular, disinterested in international affairs, in anything political or economic. In contrast, at the Freer Gallery, the interior garden is cool and peaceful. I wonder if someone chose this Middle Eastern Folk Heritage theme to appease the Afghans, but Bev told me the planning must take a decade. Bev, Walt, Owen, and I walk down the Mall, by the Washington Monument, with a view of the White House, to the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, to Albert Einstein's statue. We ride the Metro from GW University to the Zoo, where we walk one loop of bird habitats. I am glad to see wild cranes, alive in gardens designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The boys are hungry, so we catch a bus to Adams Morgan. Dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant is served on one large plate. We scoop up chickpeas and kale with "injera" flat bread. Before nine we catch a bus back our doorstep on Capital Hill.

Sunday, 7 July. Bev walks eight blocks to the Metro at 6:45, to fetch a rental car at National Airport at 7, but the Metro does not open until 8. We don't leave William Penn House until 9:30, and I am impatient to be on the water. Today, midday, the wind and tide are favorable to run south on the open Bay from the Patuxent to the Potomac River. I have heard stories of eight-foot seas in the mouth of the Potomac; sailors tell tales of twenty-foot seas. When we arrive at Solomons at 11:30, Owen and Walt tour Calvert Marine Museum, while Bev drives me to the grocery. As I shop for a week's provisions, she tells me the foods Owen will eat and will not eat, meat and eggs Walt will not eat. We leave by 1:30, just in time to catch the last hour of favorable tide. Owen and Walt both steer the boat for an hour. We ride 30 miles down the Bay with wind and tide pushing us south. The weather is unremittingly hot and humid. In one afternoon, the boys consume cookies and chips, the packaged snack food I intended to last a week. As we round Point Lookout to enter the Potomac, we now must motor against outgoing tide. We are lucky the Potomac only has a two-foot chop. After an hour, the waves subside to one foot when we shelter in the lee of St. George's Island. We motor up St. Mary's River and pull up by the replica ship, Dove, just at 5 p.m. just as the costumed interpreters are closing up shop. They say the exhibits at St. Mary's City are closed to visitors on Mondays and Tuesdays, but we may wander the grounds. At 5:30 we anchor just off the beach below St. Mary's College and have the extreme luck to find their fine vaulted dining room. The boys eat "all they can eat," which is considerable. In the cooler temperature we walk the grounds of St. Mary's City. Houses are framed but not planked to give the impression of location and size. Lovely gardens bloom with coneflower, black-eyed Susan, bee balm, yarrow, sunflowers.

Monday, 8 July. Before the boys wake, I wade ashore at 6:30 a.m. to walk St. Mary's City, meet Mary Alves, and check my email in the college library. Wife of the director of Calvert Marine Museum, Mary Alves shares with me her considerable knowledge of colonial gardening and books from her library. In the St. Mary's gardens, she has planted native North American species, South American species cultivated in North America, and species introduced here from Europe. With her volunteer gardening ladies, Mary weeds around wetland plants at the pond that is low in the drought. When I return to Landfall at 10, the boys are just waking. After I say hello to Michael Ironmonger, who directs the college waterfront, we motor downriver. Looking for fuel, we pass Dennis Point Marina and Swanns Pier, both closed on Monday. The dockguy at Tall Timbers is gone for two hours when we pass. As we cruise up the Potomac, the sky is oppressively cloudy from forest fires in Canada. The boys sit in the cockpit composing sea chanties. We motor to St. Clement's Island, where the first Maryland settlers landed in 1634. The long dock, covered with seagull poop, is really smelly. When we walk to the southern point with the tall white cross, Owen pumps the water pump to fill our water bottles with sweet-tasting cold water. The boys help with dock lines when we tie up at Cather Marine on St. Patrick Creek, so they can shower. Don the dockmaster warns that his Chesapeake retrievers will eat Molly alive, so I keep her under close watch. After the college dining room the previous night, the pasta with veggies I cook is not so special. I listen to weather radio.

Tuesday, 9 July. First thing, I stop at the marina up the creek to buy squid for bait. The boys prefer not to steer the boat. The sky is still clogged with forest-fire smoke. Owen and Walt act bored. I get the feeling John Smith may have had with his less-than-enthusiastic crew, who did not share his zeal for exploration. Walt is reading Dune, and Owen is reading The Lord of the Rings. They talk to each other in archaic language, culled from science fiction and fantasy. They don't talk to me. I am less lonely when I am on the boat alone. However, they are always polite and compliant if I ask for help. One task is filling the PUR water pitcher and then filling our individual water bottles. They eat continually, yogurt, cheese and crackers, nectarines, bananas, blueberries, grapes. The wind is mild for us to cross the Potomac from Maryland to the Virginia shore. I telephone both Wakefield and Stratford to ask if we can land from the river to tour, either one, but both say no. From the river, I show them Wakefield, George Washington's birthplace on Pope's Creek which is now silted in. Then we drift downriver, with fishing lines baited with squid. We have no luck fishing, but I love sitting watching a line. Anchoring off Horsehead Cliffs at Westmoreland State Park, Owen drops the anchor from the bow. When I decide to move farther away from a rockslide off the cliff, he cannot pull up the anchor. I go try, and it is stuck. Cutting the anchor loose would be a tragedy, then I have the sense to remember we are in 3 feet of water. I put on my prescription diving mask, jump overboard in water just above my knees, and pull the anchor loose from a rock. I walk the anchor farther up the shore. We all walk under the cliffs looking for fossils. The boys get into a duel trying to tag each other with mud. With thunderstorms predicted and dark clouds looming, we leave by 3 and pass by the Shark Island in Nomini Bay. We tie up at Cole's Point Plantation just as the rain starts to sprinkle. Dock manager Clark Demyen drives us a mile to the Driftwood Restaurant. Walt will not eat seafood. We walk back. Molly and I sit at the end of the 500-foot pier, grateful for quiet, until a camper sets off some fireworks, which freaks Molly. I do a load of laundry and tend the dryer until almost eleven. The rain comes again during the night to clear the sky and cool the temperature.

Wednesday, 10 July. All morning the clouds are threatening more rain. The boys sleep late; we spend a lazy morning and leave Cole's Point by 11:30. We motor by Jackson Creek where my father had a cottage and I spent summers from zero to four. The chart shows half a foot off the creek. I would like to anchor and kayak up the creek, but the boys' sour moods and the threatening rain keep me moving. We pull into the Coan River and motor to the final shallow bay at the headwaters where the road atlas shows two boat ramps. I want to buy some pills for Molly at the Heathsville veterinarian, but there are no cars there for me to hitch a ride to Heathsville. If I take one kayak ashore and walk to town for two hours, the boys can't paddle together. I call the vet's office in Heathsville, and they will not deliver Molly's pills three miles to the boatramp. I throw the two kayaks overboard for the boys to paddle. Molly and I swim, but the boys are wary of occasional jellyfish. When they return from a half hour paddling, I head upriver with Molly between my knees in the cockpit into the marshland, and I see two pairs of kingfishers. Motoring back downriver, the wind is beginning to whip up. We pass two anchored sailboats exposed to north wind. We motor back to a bay ringed by marsh and drop anchor behind a spit of land that protects us from north and northeast wind. Middle of the night, when the wind is wailing, gusting in the 30s, I pop out through the hatch to the foredeck and let out more anchor line.

Thursday, 11 July. I think the anchor dragged in the mud ten feet or so. The boys sleep late. I am reading a book Mary Alves's loaned me, Discovering the Chesapeake, The History of An Ecosystem, published last year by Johns Hopkins. Fifteen scholarly essays chart the changes in both geologic time and the recent history since European settlement in fish, birds, and water quality. The boys act bored at anchor. Sharing this time on the water is the most wonderful thing I have to offer them. If this does not please them, I ask if they want to ride the rollercoasters at Busch Gardens; I could get a car and tickets. They say no. They kayak to shore and walk a bit. Midday we tie up to the Lewisetta Marina and get ice cream at the general store. A couple on a sailboat said their anchor came loose and they woke as their boat was drifting toward a marker. After last night's wind, this morning's wind is still cranking 18 to 20, so I decide to wait to leave the Potomac until 5 knots predicted tomorrow. Lewisetta has a great boatyard to get work done. I walk the loop road. The boys are bored on land too.

Friday, 12 July. To catch the combination of wind and tide going out the mouth of the Potomac, I wake the boys at seven, and we leave just after eight. We motor out the mouth of the Potomac and inside Smith Point Light just at slack low tide. Inside the Little Wicomico River, on the right I appreciate the point of pine woods that Gilbert Klingel described in his 1930s book, The Bay. I am grateful it is still wild. From the chart I anchor in deep water next to a beach with no house. Molly jumps off the swimming ladder, swims 20 yards to shore to pee. Sticking their noses out of their books, the boys notice we have stopped. They scout and see no jellyfish, so they swim ashore too. Back in the open Bay, I rig the fishing lines as we drift from Smith Point Light south-south-west toward Great Wicomico Light. I relish this rare beautiful day, 75 degrees and 30 percent humidity. Standing on the roof of the boat for faint cell-phone reception, I reach a secretary of George, the Forest Service man who has booked me to teach workshops the first two weeks of August. It is time for him to buy my airplane tickets. I do not know what cities he has scheduled the workshops. She tells me George is on fire duty for another month. We pass a menhaden ship with a purse seine boat pulling up its net. About five hundred brown pelicans wait for fish. Menhaden fishing is the money that made Reedville and also Beaufort, my village in North Carolina. Also called pogie, bunker, alewive, menhaden are an oily fish used in chickenfeed, catfood, and European butter. Without success, sportsfishermen have tried to close menhaden fishing in the Bay, protesting the seines catch too many sportsfish. Entering Cockrell Creek, I call Mr. Pittman at Reedville Prop Company to consult him on which propellor might make my engine turn at a higher rpm. We pass a dozen gray menhaden boats tied at docks and eighteen closed menhaden plants. Now, only one operates; Omega is making fish-oil pills for mature Americans consumed with joint pain. As I drift Landfall slowly to the Reedville Fishermen Museum dock, the boys stand ready to fend us off the Elva C buyboat and the Claud W. Somers skipjack, both lovingly restored by volunteers.
Angus Murdoch, director of the Reedville Museum, has graciously invited us to dock here. At the docent desk, Maria Rogers tells me her son is captain of the menhaden ship we passed out in the Bay. She remembers Charles Allen, our family friend, who was rector of the Fleeton Episcopal church. Ray Rogers, her husband, says we were anchored in their cove in the Little Wicomico when we swam earlier today. Ray bought a menhaden boat, the Hush Puppy, from Jule Wheatley in Beaufort. The menhaden business is a small world. Big houses line Main Street in Reedville, and down the spit of land, both sides of Main Street are waterfront. The boys and I walk to the tip to take showers at Reedville Marina and eat dinner at the Crazy Crab. Walking back, P.D. O'Connor, a D.C. cop, speaks to us from the porch of the house he has just bought to restore for his retirement.

Saturday, 13 July. Instead of riding the ferry today to either Smith Island or Tangier Island, the boys have asked to sleep late. Early I slip out through the hatch with Molly to walk. Christine Slipko hails me from her garden; she and husband Mark from Fairfax have bought an old house and half an acre for their retirement. When I return, the boys have cooked their own oatmeal from breakfast. They walk out to the highway to hang out at the general store, while I write. Bev shows up for a boat ride. Before we embark, Walt locks the keys in the trunk of Bev's rental car. While we wait for the key-guy, I talk to a director of the museum and Bev waters the museum gardens. As we motor out Cockrell Creek and up the Great Wicomico, Bev says she is glad to ride a boat after a week on the D.C. Metro. After the big forest fires in Utah and Arizona, she tells me the Forest Service has just cut all non-essential expenses, so my workshops will probably be cut. I am glad to have two more weeks on the water; however, I have been counting on six-thousand-dollar salary to take a bite out of the fifty-thousand dollar home-equity loan I took to buy the boat and pay the expenses of my LANDFALL expedition. Walt and Owen load their duffels in Bev's car just as my brother Jeff and his children, Lollie and Jeffie, shuttling my car for me. I drive my car back from dinner with them. I really don't want to drive on land. I prefer the 10-knot speed and gradual distance a boat travels from harbor to harbor.
The Northern Neck is my home. This week, I will see high school friend Candy and my godmother Mary Allen. It drizzles rain all night, the kind of gentle rain that can filter into hard ground after drought.

Sunday, 14 July. Sunday is a lovely gray, drizzly day. All my battery chargers for phone, GPS, and computer are hooked up to an extension cord from the Reedville Museum. Waking to the rain in the middle of the night, I covered the electric-plug connection on the dock with my purple rainhat. Due to the serious drought, the Virginia governor has asked everyone to conserve water. I walk four blocks to take a shower at the Reedville Marina next to the Crazy Crab restaurant. Having the boat to myself all morning feels good, as I brew a cup of tea and type my journal. With the boys on board for the last week, I had to forego my solitary rhythms of journal writing, yoga stretching, reading, napping, and continuous boat maintenance. Instead, I paid attention to feeding and entertaining them. The boys were good sports to fit on this tiny boat for six nights. However, not everyone thrives on "camping," as I do. If I do find a cruising partner, we'd need a bigger boat. Strange, but I now admire motorboats as much as sailboats. In fact, I have not scoured the docks and boatyards as I thought I might. I am quite content with Landfall for this summer expedition.

Bells from the Methodist Church next door are tolling "The Naval Hymn." In my mind I limn the lyrics, "for those in peril on the sea," which I remember at Kemper Jones's wedding at Easter a year ago. The young men in Miriam and Kemper's wedding, Marine and Navy captains, were the officers leading raids in Afghanistan last fall, and all came home safely.

At one, I drive my own car to spend the afternoon and evening with Candy and Matt Terry and their kids, Sam, Pie, and Pie's daughter Anna. Candy and family live at Fleeton in an original old farmhouse on a high bank overlooking Taskmaker Creek and the open Bay, next to the new house Candy's parents built. When I pop in say hello, Ann Kelly, Candy's mother, recommends that I read David McCulllough's biography of John Adams. The property is a lush garden of purple butterfly bush, trellised roses, fruiting kiwi fruit, blueberry hedge, and a vegetable patch of parched tomatoes. This gentle, all-day rain can open the pores of the thirsty soil, in hopes that more steady rain can soak in. Matt has the green thumb, and he tended these gardens with Candy's father Balmer, eminent theologian and Hebrew scholar, who died recently. Matt is gardener, gourmet cook, voracious reader, and attorney. Candy has the best color sense I know, as fabric artist, needlepoint designer, interior decorator, and also in her own wardrobe. She has style. She covers the walls with whimsical clocks, birds, banners, and bobbles, what might be clutter elsewhere, but what Candy brings together as genius. For her shop, The Bay Window in Irvington, Candy silkscreens delightful t-shirts. On Pie's computer I print an application letter to be director of the Reedville Fishermen's Museum. From the glassed front room, they have the best front-row view of Bay-channel traffic. With binoculars we watch a three-masted ship ghost by in the mist, with its sails down. Matt's dinner is grilled marinated salmon, and dessert is lemon-curd pie he baked, draped with blueberries.

Monday, 15 July. Sam leaves early for wrestling camp, Pie drives Anna to daycare on the way to her real estate job, Matt goes off to lawyering; I swim laps in exquisite peace in their hilltop pool. Candy and I are lazy talking for an hour, folding laundry, putting away dishes. At the foot of Candy's stairs, in calligraphy sister Ruth gave her, is the Bible verse I have been feeling for three months, as the recipient of so much generosity: "Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers, for some thereby have entertained angels unawares." Hebrews 13: 2. As the stranger receiving hospitality, it is I who has encountered myriads of angels who grace my voyage, beginning with Beaufort friends and new friends all along the voyage.

I am so proud of Candy's success as an artist, surrounded by family. At my mother's funeral, Candy never left my side; she was wearing (just by chance) a fuchsia-purple wool coat that matched my grape-purple wool coat. I get the word that my Forest Service workshops in August are cancelled, or postponed. I was to teach 90 field biologists how to write reports. Fighting forest fires out west has consumed this year's budget. Unless the heat and thunderstorms drive me off the water in August, I can finish cruising the Rappahannock and York rivers before I must return to a fall income teaching.

After ten I leave Candy' at home in Fleeton reluctantly, check on the boat at the Reedville Museum dock, and drive to Solomons. For the last three months, I have been travelling at 10 miles an hour, about 25 miles every other day. I have no interest in cars, speeding 70 mph, or commuter traffic. Arriving at Calvert Marine Museum by three, I add two more boxes of slides to the carousel. At the motel marina laundry, I wash a load of blankets from the boat, which smell a little doggie from the little doggie. The weather is steamy hot, and I'd rather nap in the air conditioned room, rather than wait for the dryer. I have just enough time for a salad from Woodburn's before a fast shower and pulling on a long black dress. After shorts and bathing suits, a dress feels good. The auditorium for my lecture at seven is almost packed. Up front is a reporter, Jill, from Nor'Easter magazine. She seems to get the point of my trip; gives me a small pin engraved with compass directions and Molly a tennis ball. I'm delighted to see my slides of new friends, boats, and shoreline landscapes, projected large on the screen. The audience asks lively questions for 30 minutes after my hour talk. Front row is Sara Ebenrech, a Patuxent Quaker and philosopher whom I met in Maine. We talk until 10:30, until I say I must get some sleep. Then, on the motel room television, for thirty minutes I flip through sixty cable channels, fascinated by some fantasy drama where a punk woman cop on a motorcycle has visions of gladiators and dragons in a magic spell from the ancient moonstone bracelet on her wrist. Maybe, part of my peace on the water comes from no media-- no television, no newspaper, no mail. Tonight, instead of early sleep/ early rise, I fall asleep late and must rise drastically early.

Tuesday, 16 July. Waking on the boat to birds or watermen's engines is more pleasant than the motel telephone at 5:30. In the lobby continental-breakfast room I fill and fumble three styrofoam cups with orange juice, hot tea, cereal and milk; hands full, I spill the cereal cup in the parking lot. I'm having trouble getting off efficiently. In my car, stuffed with duffels, I can't find the Maryland map I used last night giving directions to Sandy, best friend from Brevard, who encouraged this voyage two years ago, who will meet me for lunch. I have allowed 90 extra minutes to drive 105 miles from Solomons to Chestertown. At 6:30 am, Route 2 approaching Annapolis has stalled traffic from lanes closed for construction. Luckily, I zip though Annapolis, catching the right exit signs for the Bay Bridge. The Bridge tollbooth gives me a new Maryland map. On the Bridge one lane is closed for construction; traffic crawls, so I can rubberneck safely. The air is haze, smog, air-quality alert. Approaching the Bridge is the same three-master schooner that ghosted by Candy's yesterday. In five hours I have crossed, so fast, waters where I cruised last month-- the Potomac, the Patuxent, the Severn, Kent Narrows, the Chester. I prefer the pace of a boat. Beyond the Bridge, two lanes of traffic on 301 are closed, and the cars move at boat speed. In a gas station two miles south of Chestertown I change from shorts to a purple linen dress, in town find a parking place in the shade, and arrive for a interview five minutes early, having allowed what I thought was an hour or more leeway. Chestertown is a lovely town-- with college swimming pool, coffee shop, bookstore, farmers market, but it is a long way from folks who are my family and community, another retirement town with expensive real estate, and mighty close to big cities of Wilmington, Philadelphia, Baltimore. The prospective job as Chester River Keeper intrigues me, but I suspect they have a local already picked for the job. Three board members have told me three different visions for the job-- one says lots of time on a big boat on the river, one says evenings at sewage-treatment-plant hearings and fund-raising cocktail parties, the third one says airplane vigilance. Obviously, the job entails all three and more. For the next decade I seek "right work," where I can use my gifts to make a significant contribution. This summer along the shoreline I knock on doors and consider all possibilities. While I am alert to jobs near family in Virginia, I am scheduled to teach community college again in Morehead mid August and hope the State of North Carolina has a budget to support education. I daydream about five days in Maine before classes, if I can get a reasonable flight.

As I leave Chestertown, I call Sandy Jones in Baltimore, where she has been tending her granddaughter. Sandy has written seven books on baby care, so she is in hog heaven. I give her directions to meet me at the Boaters World store just east of the Bay Bridge, an equal distance for us both to drive. I arrive in 40 minutes and consult the salesguy. He calls the Garmin rep, who gives me elaborate step-by-step instructions how to clear the memory and add new rivers to my GPS map. Caught in Beltway traffic, Sandy arrives half an hour later just as I finish adding the depth sounding and buoys for the Rappahannock and York rivers. We eat crab cakes at Anglers, a restaurant favored by locals at Kent Narrows, walk the wharf, and say adios for another six months.

Two and a half hours later, back on the Northern Neck, I stop to see Lawrence and Becky Latane on their organic vegetable farm bordering Wakefield, the George Washington birthplace. They live down the lane from his father's house, next to the land where his father was born. The Washingtons are Lawrence's ancestors, George an uncle. Lawrence and Becky sell their vegetables at the Farmers Market on Saturdays in Colonial Williamsburg, and a truck delivers their produce to Washington restaurants three days a week. In the fields and drinking ice tea at the picnic table, I spend two hours trading stories with Lawrence; he interviews me for the Richmond Times Dispatch; I interview him for my book. These are the lives I admire-- living and working on family land with long marriages-- Bowdy and Penny Lusk, raising clams with three sons, married for 30 years; Lawrence and Becky Latane, organic farmers, three kids, married 16 years.

But I must get on down the road if I want to explore Jackson Creek. Just as the sun is setting, I drive back roads in search of the land where I spent summers until I was four years old. On the downstream side of Jackson Creek, I pass a boarded-up general store that stirs my memories of a glass case of penny candy Mary Janes and Sugar Daddies. I pass fields where I could pick corn, without asking permission, and then the farmhouse where Daddy stopped to pay the black farmer, in a yard full of chickens and kittens. At a 90-degree right turn, I am sure this is the way; "That's Mother's house," I say out loud at a shack whose flower boxes my mother used to admire. Of course the road is now paved instead of dirt. At last dusk, I watch the slant light shine over the mouth of Jackson Creek at the Potomac River. My favorite photograph of me is two years old, in water to my knees, grinning, dripping mud from both fists; Jackson Creek. The next day Jeff tells me, yes, that's the spot, right overlooking the river. Driving out in the dark to the highway, the corn seems taller, less drought stressed, smells strong and sweet. I stop at the Heathsville Food Lion to restock fresh groceries. I fall asleep on Landfall at eleven, intending to sleep as late as I can, because the favorable tide is midday.

Wednesday, 17 July. Bright and early, five a.m, at the Reedville Fishermen's Museum dock, sixteen people load for a ride on the restored buyboat Elva C, ten feet from my head. I rise and wave to them as they motor off. "Did we wake you?" they ask guilelessly. Failing to sleep soundly again, I stow provisions from my car in the cabin lockers. I check email in the Museum office. Sixteen people have sent me messages after reading the article in the Baltimore Sun. They all move me by their interest; one especially, Dorothy, has been following my website because her husband who worked on the water died a few years ago. I leave just before noon and dock by one o'clock at Mary Allen's house on Ditchley Point, between Prentice and Dividing Creek. Mary was my mother's best friend growing up in East Hartford, Connecticut; their fathers were best friends. My Landfall voyage traces the roots of my father's Virginia and Maryland family on the Chesapeake. To round out my maternal Connecticut family, Mary shows me photographs of her and my mother, in 1938 when both were 18; and of her father Howard Brewer, "Corn King of the East," and my grandfather Clarence Smith in 1908 by a huge pile of corn. Mary is the last elder in my extended family. She's off on errands, so I have an hour alone, savoring the peace that her house and gardens exude. With water views in each room, Mary's house is like a boat. I savor reading about Bread Loaf in a New Yorker; two years ago, August, I went to the Writers Conference. I'll do better as a writer kayaking a swamp, than smooshing with agents in Vermont. Sitting in a chair in Mary's sunroom, I feel content and appreciate the smallest pleasures. When I emptied clothes from drawers and closet into the attic of my Beaufort house, I wondered how I could live on a tiny boat with so little storage for clothes. How would I ever keep my clothes clean? Now, I am so minimally vain, I do not care if my green hemp dress has daylilly pollen from Janie Jackseit's garden, or my salmon fishing shirt has tar from lying in the asphalt on Wye Island, or bait-squid ink on my shorts.
Just as Mary comes home, Lawrence Latane arrives to take photos of Landfall, so we three go for a boat ride up Dividing Creek. For dinner from her frig Mary pulls crabs she has caught in the pots on her dock and steamed for our dinner. We pick just enough green beans for us two from her four bushes. She serves lasagna, green beans, and fresh berries with cream. I sleep snug upstairs in Mary's house with windows over the water just like Landfall, both Molly and me savoring the air conditioning.

Thursday, 18 July. Today is another 100-plus heat-index day. For an hour, seven to eight, I pull crabgrass at the borders of Mary's flower gardens. In one of my favorite books, Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia, houseguests work when they visit and thereby always have a room in the house. The air and sky are grim smog. Mary says she has trouble breathing outside the air conditioning. I am distressed that the Northern Neck has bad air. Is there anyplace still clean? Ozone in North Carolina mountains is now getting so bad, friend Geoff's wife must move. Despite the wretched onslaught of developers, I appreciate the relatively clean air and water on North Carolina's coast. When the boat cruises fifty minutes from Dividing Creek to Indian Creek, the water is glassy calm, broken by small riffles of baby menhaden. Motoring across Fleets Bay, I remember the fall afternoon when I sailed with my father in the 18-foot daysailer he kept on shore to lure me home. After I rigged the sails, as I helped my father step aboard, I felt how much weight he had lost. After cataract surgery, he could not see, but felt the wind on his nose when he held the tiller. When the wind died, a neighbor who passed in a motorboat towed us home, shame for a Chesapeake sailor like my father to accept a tow, but I had to get back to teaching in Charlottesville. The following April my father died, twenty-four years ago, after living in the new house on Indian Creek two months.

The first two points of land to the right entering Indian Creek have monster new houses and rows of condominiums where a seafood shop used to be. I cringe to imagine that Bus Conway's sons might have sold his land. The third point is the Indian Creek Yacht Club dock, by the golf course and clubhouse. On the fourth point inside Indian Creek, farmfields still flank the Conway brothers' two farmhouses. When I stood at my mother's kitchen sink, I would watch for Bus's skiff, row out to meet him as he tended his pound nets up the creek. For twenty-five years the opposite shore was woods and cornfields. Finally, the Clifton family sold the farm across the creek. Just before Bus died eight years ago, the first few docks blocked the crabs from flowing from shore into his pound nets. Now, docks line the town side of Indian Creek. In case I want to leave in a hurry tomorrow, I motor the last half mile past the grain-silo docks to photograph my mother's house from the water. Next-door neighbor, Dick Thompson, who has been on the lookout, walks down his dock to greet me, but I tell him I have a one-o'clock date with a mechanic. Dick has restored an Albin-25 trawler he wants to sell me.
At Chesapeake Boat Basin by the grain silos, Grid installs a new zinc anode on my outboard trim-tab and reviews my propellor dilemma. It's good to finally find a Suzuki mechanic and Suzuki parts. The prop may arrive on the later UPS truck today, or the next UPS truck at noon tomorrow. I leave the boat tied to the dock, and Mary picks me up. She has spent half a day visiting folks in Kilmarnock's retirement homes, though she is still self-sufficient herself at 82. I sleep in Mary's air conditioning for another night, as storms are predicted tonight and tomorrow. I call Clay at Chesapeake Boat Basin to see if UPS has delivered the prop. No company makes a proper propeller for my motor to hit the optimal rpm, so I will have to get a prop machined to a lower pitch.

A reporter from the Fredericksburg newspaper calls me for a boat ride, but I must spend time some time alone on the water, refilling my well before I share again. Talking, I clarify some of my ideas. From my father I inherited my navigation. From my mother I inherited fears, and some fears are good, as I am cautious and wary. People want to know what dangerous adventures I have survived. As a singlehander, I avoid peril.

Mary's husband, Charles Allen, was an Episcopal minister. When I was five, my father argued with Charles about Civil Rights. From college I sent my father a letter, saying I valued social justice. He never responded, and I didn't go home for a whole year. In the last decade when they retired on adjacent creeks, I was proud my father and Charles became best friends. When Mary drives me to Reedville for my car, we eat dinner at the Crazy Crab, and folks greet her warmly. After he moved to the Northern Neck, Charles continued as rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church at Fleeton. He died when he wrecked his car in a heart attack.

Friday, 19 July. An emailer this morning from Baltimore asked how she could get the nerve to embark on a voyage. A small lady after the Solomons lecture said she could never find the courage. "Sure," I said, "Just go. Start by kayaking for a day." In more synchronicity, a New Yorker has the quote from Goethe's Faust that I have been paraphrasing to myself, "Whatever you can do,/ or dream you can,/ Begin it./ Boldness has/ Genius, power,/ And magic in it." When I taught at NC School of Science and Math in Durham, free residential high school for bright students, I posted this postcard on the door of my office. Similarly, Thoreau wrote something like, "Walk diligently in the directions of your dreams." My personal philosophy comes from George Fox's Journal, "Walk cheerfully over the earth answering that of God in every person."

With the air still bad, Mary will spend the day inside. At ten she follows as I drive my car to Jeff's yard in Irvington, and then Mary drops me at Chesapeake Boat Basin. Generously, Clay does not charge me for any routine maintenance work on my outboard, and I am grateful for his donation to this expedition. I motor up Indian Creek to say howdy to Dick Thompson. When the new owners of my mother's house, another Episcopal minister, had boat trouble, Dick told him, "You ask me about boat problems, and I'll consult you about God." For seven years in the mountains, when I was attending a House Church in the home of retired Episcopal bishop Bennett Sims, I was praying for mother's house to sell. The house finally sold last year, the same day that my brother's daughter Liza Carr was born. My share of selling the house represents my retirement, as my schoolteacher income and savings are sparse. This inheritance gave me the confidence to leave a job with uncomfortable harrassment from an administrator. Of course, now the stock market has dwindled my resources by half, so I mortgaged my Beaufort house to finance my Chesapeake voyage. If I did not cruise this summer, next year and the year after might slip away; my eyes might not read the markers. My hands, knees, hip might get arthritic.I hope I do not have to sell my boat Landfall, at least until I have cruised to Cape Lookout. I hope I am jumping on and off boats when I am 85. If I never stop boating, I'll never get old.

Because the weather is hot and storms loom in the sky, I bypass Antipoison Creek, where local lore says the Indians cured John Smith's stingray bite. I round Windmill Point, float for 15 minutes weighing the weather, reject going upriver, and pull into the stone jetties of Windmill Point Marina. The dockmaster is leaving, so I do not fill fuel as I ususally do before I dock. As luxury, I dip in the pool to lower my body temperature, just before rains come too briefly to cool off the world. The dock is quiet, except a man on the adjacent boat curses loudly at his wife. Anchoring is better than docking, except Molly must pee ashore and I like showers. I read briefly in Mitchener's Chesapeake and go to sleep early, grateful for some solitary time on my boat.

Saturday, 20 June. When the dockman arrives, I fill gas and motor up the Rappahannock. The haze is so bad, I cannot see the Rappahannock River bridge until within two miles. The NOAA weather radio broadcasts that an endangered right whale has been seen south of Diamond Shoal, off the Carolina coast, entangled in fishing lines. South of the Corrotoman River, I drop anchor and set out my fishing rod with a plastic squid. No fish bother my line. As a chore I sew the ripped seams in the canvas sun awning. In the oppressive heat and haze I read a while and loaf.. My cell phone rings, and my Asheville renter for eight years gives notice she will move in two months. Should I rent or sell? I call Rusty, a Asheville neighbor to alert dancers, Quakers, paddlers that my house is for rent. I do not want to think of shore worries until I end my voyage. I need my full attention for instant reflexes in any mishap. At 3:30 three men wait to greet me as I pull into the Christchurch School dock, which extends into the river. Colly Bergwyn and Henry Selby insist on putting Landfall on a lift so that wakes or weather will not bump her against the dock. They are school-year teachers and summer coaches at Christchurch sailing camps. I join campers and teachers for cafeteria dinner and then for an evening program by "Reptile Man." With rhyming patter, he shows us an albino tortoise, a horny lizard, an alligator, a dwarf crocodile, an anaconda and boa constrictor. I leave before the poisonous snakes to walk down the hill by dark. Sleeping on the lift without Landfall rocking is a little strange.

Sunday, 21 July. The day is so hazy, I can barely see the bridge two miles downstream. Before leaving the Christchurch dock, I study the job: how to get the boat off the dock lift alone. I tie lines to stern pilings, lower the lift, pull off Landfall with lines, and raise the lift again. About 9:30 I pull into Urbanna to buy a newspaper. Walking uptown, all the stores are closed but one. I ask the old-lady clerk in Dollar General for change, and she blurts, "No." Startled, I flee. Next door the laundromat has a dollar-change machine. I motor an hour up the Rappahannock to Totuskey Creek, where the Fredericksburg reporter has told me to meet him at a dock by marker #13. As I enter the creek, one wonderful colonial house overlooks the bends of the creek mouth, and that's where I dock. George Bush, that's George C. Bush, catches my lines at Phillips Landing, by the house known as Fox Hunters Hill. In 1955, George's father bought the old house, built in 1790. When it burned down in 1983, George rebuilt it, flooring it with old pine planks from a cabin. This is really the house I'd choose if I moved back to the Bay. Betsy Bush, like my mother, comes from Hartford, Connecticut, and met George as her flight instructor. George is now an inspector for FAA, and Betsy has retired from teaching special ed. When George retires soon, they will tour the country, squaredancing, in their Bluebird bus. The Bushes invite me to stay overnight at their dock. After I have heard the Bushes' stories, I settle down for another interview. In tortoise shell glasses and round face, Frank Delano looks just like my uncle Bobby in Connecticut, who Mary Allen says has lapsed again as an alcoholic. When Frank finishes his questions at four-fifteen, I say I do not want to motor another hour to Tappahannock. After Frank leaves, George Bush shows me the two-hundred-year-old barn with pencil markings on the door of tobacco crops, and an ancient grave marker by the shore for a dog, "My frend Towser." For dinner, Betsy serves steak, salad, baked potato, and corn I picked in the garden and shucked. George shows me a fossil shark tooth from a Rappahannock cliff bigger than his hand.

Monday, 22 July. Despite my intentions to leave at the crack of dawn, I talk with Betsy Bush until 10. When I tell Molly to leave the air-conditioned sofa where she is sacked out, she opens one eye-- "What, are you crazy?" Ah, but she has a job as watchdog and reluctlantly boards Landfall. Passing Tappahannock, I check out Hoskins Creek and the St. Margaret's School dock. I pass under the Highway 360 bridge to Warsaw and motor upriver. By Fones Cliff I see five mature eagles, soaring in the sky. I telephone Woody, old friend geologist who works at VIMS, and he'll meet me tonight for dinner. Between Otterburn and Drake Marsh I see three immature eagles on a log, tossing a fish among them. Their feathers are scruffy, in need of combing. I want to keep going up the Rappahannock, but turn back. At June Parker, I fill fuel and take a fast shower in the outdoor wood-slat shower stall. In Hoskins Creek, I tie in the boathouse of Margaret Broad, head of St. Margaret's School, Candy's cousin. Woody and I eat salads at Lowery's, then sit in a swing on the hill at St. Margaret's overlooking the river. His daughters are grown. He and his cousins are devising ways to impose conservation easements on their chunk of wild land in Connecticut.

Tuesday, 23 July. At St. Margaret's, I talk to summer campers about John Smith and my expedition. At 11:30 Suzanne, the photographer from Fredericksburg, takes my picture with Molly and the boat. In the typical good fortune of my summer, she tells me I have to meet Ed Haile, the guy who edited Jamestown Narratives, who lives nearby. I call him and he comes right over. At one, Addison Jones delivers his daughter, Addie, age 12, to crew for me. All dressed up in a tie, Addison drives us to buy groceries, then returns to Richmond for his business meetings. At two Ed Haile brings by his version of John Smith's map. Eager for a boatride upriver, Ed names Indian villages for Addie and me. The north side of the Rappahannock had a larger population in 1608 than it does now. Under the cliffs, Ed tells us this is where the Indians attacked John Smith. Ed's dock on Occupacia Creek has too little water to dock, so Ed jumps off and follows Landfall in his canoe to deeper water where I anchor and we three swim. Ed canoes us back to his land. We walk the two-plank dock 200 feet through the flapping marshgrass to high ground, and Ed's wife Bess, Essex County librarian, feeds us hamburgers for dinner. For Addie's first night on the boat, we have a glorious slam-bang lightning storm. I assure her we are safe, as purple light fills the sky. We fall asleep in the high wind, anchored snug in Occupacia Creek.

Wednesday, 24 July. First thing, Addie and I throw over two kayaks and explore up Occupacia Creek. For two hours the gray sky looks like imminent rain. With Addie's help it's easy to get the two kayaks back up on the roof. I learned from A. B. Coleman long ago, that I do not have to be strong or tall to load boats on a car roof, just lift the bow and slide them. At twelve, Addie is eager to help on the boat and to learn. I want us to go further up the Rappahanock, although the sky is still ominous. We anchor under Fones Cliffs, walk the mud beach to look for sharks' teeth. We pass Otterburn Marsh. As we round Drake Marsh, the western sky, direction storms come from, is angry black and actually growls. We hightail it down river. Later I hear the Westmoreland Berry Farm is just around the next bend. I regret turning around, but was prudent in the weather of the moment. Addie adds her judgment that we can pass the first safe mooring at Occupacia. We fill fuel at June Parker, pass Hoskins Creek at Tappahannock, and tie to the Bush dock on Totuskey where the Bushes welcome us.

Thursday, 25 July. Addie and I serve french toast to Betsy Bush on Landfall. After washing and drying towels, w leave Totuskey by 10:30 and arrive at Belle Isle State Park at 12:30. For lunch Addie will not eat bread with nuts in it. Mike Lambert drives us around the new park, purchased by the state in 1993, and shows us trails, boardwalk, locations of a future saltwater swimming pool and campground. Addie and I bicycle a mile back to the boat landing, and Molly chases rabbit scent in the fields. The McCanns from Fleets Island give us some squid for bait. Leaving Belle Isle at 4:30, we float toward Urbanna, fishing. Addie and I both catch good croaker. She throws her back, but I keep mine for breakfast. At 7 we dock in Urbanna and walk uptown for supper.

Friday, 26 July. Up early, before the rain, I hose clean the cockpit and clean the bilgepump impeller. While the rain pours strong for two hours, I type and Addie makes me a hemp string and bead necklace. At 12:15 we walk uptown for ice cream. From 2:30 to 3:30, followed by a nagging black sky, we cross the Rappahannock to Carters Creek and dock at Rappahannock River Yacht Club. After swimming in the pool, Addie and I visit Sallie, my new sister-in-law, and Eliza Carr, 13-month-old niece.We all meet Jeff at the Kilmarnock Firemen's Festival. Jeff and Eliza Carr ride the merry-go-round. Addie and her friend Ashley ride the perilous Paratrooper. I opt for games of skill rather than chance. I throw tennis balls at bowls and quarters at a glass-top table, but none will circle and settle. All the proceeds go to fire protection.

Saturday, 27 July. At the Rappahannock River Yacht Club on Carters Creek in Irvington, Addie meets a half dozen teenage girls who are staying on their families' sailboats while they take sailing lessons. I do a load of laundry early, sheets and blankets that smell like Molly, so the v-berth will smell sweet if Liza Carr wants to take a nap. Addie and I swim in the pool, as the temperature is already soaring early morning. Finally by ten, we rouse ourselves to get to Jeff's house for breakfast, and they are nowhere near ready to take a boat ride. The night before Sallie insisted on starting at nine, for a four-hour ride up to Greenvale Creek, so Eliza could have a two-hour afternoon nap before a dinner party. This morning, starting at eight, Jeff has driven to Kilmarnock to fetch his tractor and ridden it back to Irvington along the shoulder of the highway, seven miles at ten miles an hour.

At thirteen months Eliza Carr is walking all over the house. At twelve, Addie has a longer attention span watching the baby than I have. Preparing a baby for an expedition is complicated; preparing her parents is more arduous. When we all load into two cars, I leave Molly trapped in Jeff's garage, so the dog will not fuss at the baby on the boat. Landfall leaves the dock about 12:30, and we cruise up Carters Creek. Along the shores Jeff and Sallie discuss Irvington's skyrocketing property values: "they want $750,000 for that house, and it has only one bedroom and one bath." Over twenty years Jeff has gradually added and remodelled a farmhouse in a field, but needs more room. They'd like waterfront, but are appalled by prices. Thunder booms and rain sprinkles, but the storm blows east quickly. As we motor out Carters Creek, the yacht Miss Ann has just docked at the Tides Inn after her weekly Saturday morning run to Urbanna. At the mouth of the creek, on my cell phone I call Lindsey's family in their house near White Stone. The distance is seven miles by road and half a mile by boat. They all assemble on the dock to catch Addie's duffel as she leaps off to spend the night. Lindsey and Addie are neighbors in Richmond and best friends. At the helm, Eliza Carr sits in my lap, grasping the wheel, seriously intent on steering, as we motor Landfall upstream a mile to the mouth of the Corrotoman. I want to explore, but it's time to turn back for Eliza Carr's nap. At the dock Jeff jumps in my car, and we drive west on Route 3 past Lively to Mollusk and Rocky Neck. Jeff points out two old houses on the bluff at the mouth of Greenvale Creek and the Rappahannock. According to Milton Conrad, our father lived in one of these houses in the 1930s and kept his big yawl Black Duck in the creek. He had moved out of his father's house across the river on Piscataway Creek in Essex County, downstream of Tappahannock. I prefer the smaller cottage with porch at the point and would like to live here myself. I am pleased at my father's good taste. Now in his sixties, Milton Conrad, son of my father's friend Ernest, runs the family crab house on Greenvale Creek and the seafood restaurant, Conrad's Upper Deck. Returning, on the Merry Point ferry Jeff and I cross the upper Corrotoman, and I sight gunkholes where I'd like to anchor Landfall. Back at Jeff's house, we spiff up for a dinner party in Reedville of Sallie's Richmond friends. I rummage in my car and pull out two long dresses-- a slinky black tencel dress and a cotton-knit periwinkle-blue dress-- and fret over which to wear. For months I have not noticed how I look, but I worry about impressing Jeff and Sallie's crowd. However, I opt for color and comfort over sophistication. When we arrive, the crowd is five women, two of their husbands, and a gay man in their gang. They are all in shorts; really it does not matter what I wear. Out front in the Great Wicomico River is a 200-foot dock longer than most marinas. Today they have all ridden John's speedboat to Crisfield for lunch and back. The boat goes 55 miles an hour and consumes something like fifty or sixty gallons an hour. Walking out his dock to show off his sleek "cigarette boat" to me the boater, John explains that his 350-hp engine uses less gas than mine because it gets there faster. I have hard this argument before; good for running drugs in the Bahamas is what I think. After the gang watches the sun set and shares cooking, dinner is served after nine o'clock. I telephone Addie that I will not pick her up tonight. Just as John starts setting off his professional display of fireworks, Sallie says Eliza Carr must get some sleep, and I am grateful. Good thing Molly stayed in Jeff's garage again. Molly and I try to sleep on the boat in gruesome heat. The next morning the mother of a sailboat family, without air conditioning like me, tells me they all dipped in the swimming pool at midnight.

Sunday, 28 July. Slow mornings to myself, reading, are sweet. The weather predicts heat index above 110 degrees for the next week. At nine I call Jessica to arrange Addie's pickup a day early because of the heat. Jessica will arrive from Richmond by noon for a boat ride. I collect Addie at Lindsey's house, and we go to Jeff's for breakfast. For an hour Jeff's older daughter, Lollie, and I pull crab grass from flower beds together, dripping sweat, while Addie plays with Eliza Carr, cool inside. In a year or so, Addie can be Eliza's nanny at the beach for a few weeks. Before noon, Addie and I return to the yacht club and sizzle like a match in the sink when we dip in the pool. When Jessica arrives, she walks out the dock two minutes to see the boat, prefers not to board at all, and recommends lunch inside instead of a sweltering cruise. In Irvington we stop at a gift shop, "shopping," and find a deli in Kilmarnock. At the Tri-Star grocery I buy two block of ice for my cooler. Old joke, "Why do people lock their doors in the Tri-Star parking lot? So people won't leave zucchinis in their car." When Addie and Jessica leave, I read to consume the late afternoon. I return to Jeff's for cold-leftover supper, the best kind in summer.

Monday, 29 July. Up early, the dog swims, and I hose her off. In this heat we abandon our usual hour morning walk. I'd like to turn back to explore the Corrotoman, or blast back upriver to finish the upper Rappahannock, but with one more week, I head on down the road. Visibility is slightly better than a week earlier, so I can see the bridge two miles away. I bypass Deltaville creeks, lined with boatyards full of plastic sailboats, where I searched in the snow last winter. I round Stingray Point where John Smith got bit, but what can I glean historically from shoal water between the lighthouse and the point of land? Into the Piankatank, I pass Fishing Bay Yacht Club where I sailed as a kid. I motor under the bridge upriver until shallow depths deter me. I'd like to kayak Dragon Run upstream, but Woody has told me the Dragon swamp has dried up in the drought. Just above the bridge, I circle Berkeley Island owned by a church camp. I drop anchor so Molly can swim ashore to pee. Molly and I swim every hour; through the grueling afternoon heat, she sleeps, I read about geese in Mitchener's Chesapeake, sufficiently mindless narcotic to pass the time. I recline on the dinette berth on the remote chance there is slightly more breeze in the cabin than the v-berth.

Tuesday, 30 July. At 5:30 I crack one eye to peek out the cabin windows and one hundred geese float all around Landfall. I am awed and stay still not to disturb them. With slight movement I grab my camera but the button will not click in pre-dawn light. I watch the birds until they discern a human in the anchored boat and drift subtly away. Molly and I swim again, as the day starts hot. We head out the Piankatank, turn south passing Fishing Bay, and enter the Milford Haven cut south of Gwynn's Island. At the gas dock, waiting for the docklady, Molly and I both hose off. I peruse the phone book but can find no Griffith number on Gwynn. After my first year of teaching at Collegiate, I visited biology teacher Ann Griffith on Gwynn, and she pointed 400 feet into the Bay: "the cottage used to be there," and 200 feet out. Moved twice, the cottage risks erosion again. Thirty years ago, on the sunny lawn, I read Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, newly released in 1974, and wondered how a city girl from Pittsburgh could write about Virginia nature instead of me. On the cell phone I arrange with an Asheville property manager to handle renting my house. I can sell it when I find a place I want to live, a job and community where I want to move; meantime real estate is a better investment than the stock market. At the gas dock the lady, who finally arrives, says only local knowledge should attempt The Hole in the Wall, but after three months on the Bay I feel confident. The only trick is being alert at the central point when red and green markers change position, as red is right "entering" the channel from both directions. I am aware this stretch is my last open Bay passage. I'm getting nostalgic, even teary. Passing New Point Comfort Lighthouse, I see that Mobjack Bay has plenty of open water, with a relatively cool ten-knot northwest breeze. Midst of Mobjack, I notice a ruffle of water, one fin, then a dozen fins. I swing my body 360 and see eight groups of ten to twelve dolphins, rolling their backs above the water to breathe. Saltier water farther up the Bay in the drought has lured them here. I know them well from Beaufort: Tursiops truncatus, Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, "Flipper." I cut the engine on the boat and drift at half a knot, while dolphins dance nearby. Two surface and snort close by Landfall. Of course they know I'm here, and I content myself that they sense I am friendly to them and their environment. Intentionally, I bought the four-stroke outboard motor that dumps half the oil of a two-stroke. I respect dolphins' intelligence and playfulness. Marine mammals are sensuous lovers, with massive imaginative brains suited for musicians and poets more than critics or engineers. Two hours I delight in the company of dolphins, who disappear while they chase schools of fish and return to me. A juvenile with a squat tail slaps this tail each time he passes Landfall, showing off, skylarking like any adolescent. My GPS map shows the breadcrumb pattern of my drift southeast. I linger, then leave reluctantly because of commitments to seek human company. Entering the Severn River I cannot find the tiny cottage I rented here eighteen years ago when I took a job as editor at VIMS. Friends in San Diego scoffed when I boasted, "In Virginia I can find a waterfront house to rent for a hundred dollars a month." Friends in Virginia scoffed too, but I found a tiny waterman's cottage in Glass for a hundred and fifty dollars a month. From August through September I dined on crabs from a pot on the dock, tomatoes and zucchinis from the previous tenant's garden. When frost came, the crickets who moved indoors sounded just like the phone ring. When the water pipes froze and stayed frozen, the owner put a heater by the pump that sparked and started to burn, so I moved to Bena. When I lived in Glass, I spent time with David Laurier, but none of my guy friends in Gloucester County were boy friends because I had a long-distance romance, commuting a weekend a month from Virginia to Connecticut. Oh the folly of youth. I round the point farther into the Severn to look for evidence of David Laurier and find a big new marina on his family land. When I stop there for gas, the dock lady tells me David runs the Miss Yorktown cruise boat. By five I pull up to Liping's neighbor's dock. As I tie up, the fellow who owns the dock walks out to catch my lines. Clinton Midgett has married my old friend, Betty Dovel, introduced by Chris Siegel, who plays fiddle in Beaufort. Outer Banks Midgetts have white blond hair, blue-blue eyes, pale skin and fat rosy cheeks. All is true about Clinton, except his hair is now white. A jazz pianist, Clinton is also building a 63-foot wooden sailboat to be an Arctic research vessel for a Smithsonian filmmaker. Next door, my friend Liping Liu lives with her 15-month-old son, Evan, and new husband Larry. "It's too hot, it's too hot," Liping apologizes she did not come to the dock. Her office was next door to mine at Brevard College for six years. When Liping was nine in China, the Communist Party took her out of school to work in farm fields until her late teens. After she finished college in China, she earned a Masters degree at Dartmouth and then a doctorate at Harvard. For dinner she "throws together" superb fried rice and salmon. New neighbors drop by, who are buying the end of Stump Point. Detleff is Norwegian; Timbi Sue is half Russian, half Chinese, and grew up in Jamaica. Liping has been lonely on Stump Point, but her neighborhood is growing.

Wednesday, 31 July. Clinton's mother Jo drives me to Rosewell. An artist and horsewoman, at 78, Jo has just moved to the cottage next to Clinton and Betty. When I sent out emails to twenty-five museums and schools about my Chesapeake expedition, Margaret Perritt's response as curator at Rosewell was enthusiastic. Margaret greets Jo and me in the Visitor Center parking lot. Almost sixty-five, Margaret has a shock of white hair, with the shining face and eager energy of twenty-something. Immediately I "recognize" Margaret as a common spirit. In the building David Brown, who is archeologist at Fairfield, shows me pottery shards from a possible location of Powhatan's village near Purtan Bay on the north shore of the York River. David is narrowing the search for Werowocomoco and may soon announce its location. Handing me ancient Indian pottery shards, "Go ahead and hold them." David urges me. "What about grease on my fingers?" I protest. "Go ahead," David says, "We have hundreds" Then Margaret drives Jo, Molly, and me to the ruins of Rosewell. Built in 17xx by Mann Page, this brick house was the finest in Virginiauntil it in the late 1800s. The remaining brick walls and chimneys with climbing ivy stir my imagination to more romance than a complete structure. Likewise, the ruins of Tintern Abbey, which evoked Wordsworth's poem, was my favorite church in England. Gazing at blue sky above Tintern Abbey's Gothic-arched windows, instead of at a roof, seems more spiritual. Climbing up Rosewell's bricks is a plant called "Kenilworth Ivy," tiny leaf and tiny blue flower like "touch-me-not" jewelweed; the only place it grows in America, Margaret tells me. We all sit at a picnic table in the shade, and Margaret invites me to dock at her home, Quest End, on Wilson Creek. Mobjack, Margaret says, comes from the echo, "Mock Jack Tar," when the colonists defeated British navy on the Chesapeake. After I take Jo out to lunch for she-crab bisque, I say goodbye to Liping and her son Evan. The sky is cloudy, but why worry it will ever rain in this heat and drought? I motor Landfall out the Severn River past lonely pine trees growing on the points of marsh, and north then west into the Ware River. Wilson Creek is the first left, and I thread the private channels markers between shoals. In the distance I can see the red sun awning on Margaret's Boston Whaler and aim for Quest End. After her husband Don died, Margaret traded his bigger motorboat for her own sporty creek-fishing boat. She's not home yet, so I recline in the v-berth with my feet stuck out the forward hatch to catch any breeze. Molly's eyes ask me to end the voyage because we're so hot. When Margaret comes home, she serves ice tea. As we walk through the cluttered history of her family house, she proclaims, "I am no housekeeper," and proceeds outside to show me her gardens. From the lawn overlooking her wild salt pond, Margaret's temper flares at neighbors across the creek who dump riprap rock on their shoreline obliterating the natural marsh. She has invited her friend and carpenter Brent Ruleman to meet me. With high standards Brent is gradually restoring Quest End; currently he has taken out and will eventually replace the upstairs windows; meanwhile storm windows keep out any weather. Brent also crews on the Roanoke Island's replica ship Elizabeth II, designed by my Quaker friend Stanley Potter. I ask Brent to give my regards to Charles Redmond who trailered Landfall across the Bay Bridge in May. We discuss the shortcomings of sailing the Silver Chalice and agree I'd still be in Cherrystone Creek if I were sailing John Smith's barge. Margaret is astounded that Brent and I know so many boatbuilders and sailors in common, but this is the way of the water. Margaret's son William, his wife Denise, and their daughter Anna arrive for dinner. At thirteen, Anna wears a Harry Potter cape and hat and waves her wand. She is a budding writer; William a journalist, and Denise a school superintendent. We all dine in style at Stillwaters in Gloucester Courthouse. I tell them I am now on an extra week on my trip because the Forest Service cancelled my August workshops. "One more week, one more river," I say, and then hope I have not jinxed the trip. In college, on a ski slope I said, "One last run," and then tore my knee. Denise says hush, no jinx. Margaret insists that I order a serving of berry sauce for the cinnamon ice cream we share. In her living room Margaret rants and raves about the sorry school board until midnight when I beg release to sleep. Other than my shipboard habit of falling asleep at dark, it's fun talking with Margaret.

Thursday, 1 August. August starts hot, but so was July. Can August be any worse? No rain breaks the heat wave, and I almost wish for a thunderstorm to lower the temperature. I yearn for Maine, or an air-conditioned movie theatre, if only there were any films worth watching. "What will you do when you get off the boat?" someone asks me. "Weed my gardens," I answer. But I do not want to leave the water. My house in Beaufort is a block from Taylors Creek, but I want to sleep afloat and, as I age, to watch the water when I look up from my book or sink. In this heat I am slower rising and leaving each morning, while I savor the early cool hours. Molly really wants to stay on land. "How much longer?" she asks me. We leave Margaret's at ten; from my cell phone I leave more messages for Billy Mills of the Mattaponi Pamunkey River Association to meet me at Gloucester Point. Billy does not call back, so I call Woody to join me for lunch. The stench from the sewage pumpout at the York River Yacht Haven gas dock is overpowering. I radio the dockmaster who tells me to fill up by myself. The septic stench is awful, and no dockguy appears. I don't want to linger here. When Woody jumps aboard with his "lady friend" Patrice, I radio the dockmaster who vacillates where I'll dock. I reply that I'll pay him $15.16 in forty minutes after motoring in the river, a little bit irregular, but it's hot and smelly at the gas dock, and Woody has a finite lunch hour. We swing in front of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, called by its acronym "VIMS," where I was Sea Grant editor eighteen years ago. The guy who was my boss is still there. I left to recover from mononucleosis, induced by overwork, and to resume more creative writing than bureaucratic science memos, and to return to teaching to support my writing. When I dock again at Yacht Haven, I pay for fuel and ice in the office. It's so hot, the dock guys won't step outside. I jump in the pool, then head up the York River. Carters Bay by Rosewell is too silted in to enter. I edge into Purtan Bay, a possible location for Werowocomoco, according to Ed Haile's map, where Pocahontas saved John Smith from getting his head bashed in-- Virginia's favorite folk story. On the south shore of Purtan Bay is a resort development that has obliterated any Indian artifacts. On the north edge of Purtan Bay is the marsh Ed Haile says was necessary to any Indian village. Up river, I enter Poropotank Creek and slide up over the bar into Guthrie Creek. At midtide the depth sounder reads 2.7 feet. The marsh is prime birding territory. I tie to the first dock and call my ecocriticism colleague, Ann Woodlief, who drives down half a mile. We have served on panels together at English conferences. She will retire next year from teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Her husband Ray has already retired as radiologist. After dinner Ray drives us to Tucker's marina and trailer park up the York where he thinks I may find a truck to tow Landfall. We then find ice cream at Gloucester Courthouse. I am amazed that cars travel distances so quickly, that my boat takes days to cover.

Friday, 2 August. Over breakfast, Ann tells me about writing her book In River Time about the James River, published in 1983. Her three main characters are my alterego John Smith, Opechanchanough who was Powhatan's brother and mastermind of the 1622 massacre, and Newton Ancarrow who was pioneer river protector in Richmond. I remember Newton Ancarrow when I was editor of the Conservation Council of Virginia monthly newspaper, a 23-year-old volunteer among graybeards. When sewage from the Richmond treatment plant overflowed to the doorstep of his boatbuilding factory, Newton filled a bucket and carried it to City Council. They thought he was a crank. An insistent lobbyist, Newton helped pass the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1973. As I grew up by the James River, from the ages of eight to eighteen, I walked west, first through the Reeds' woods, crossed their bridge across the Kanawha Canal, crossed the floodplain cornfields, then west along the James River. I canoed the Kanawha Canal from the James River golf course, way west where Newton Ancarrow lived, to Westham Station, where I could walk uphill to my house and fetch my mother for a car shuttle. Once I put in my canoe on the canal at Westham Station and floated east as far as I could-- until I entered the locked fences of the sewage treatment plant. No way out, so I climbed the hill to Walter Rice's house and knocked on his door to call my father. He was an ambassador to somewhere. Good thing his guard dogs didn't kill you, someone told me later. My father, normally a law-abiding citizen, stealthily drove his car through the gates of the deserted sewage plant, helped me load my canoe onto his car, and we escaped undetected. That Christmas I gave my father an historic engraving of the canal by the James River. At his death I took the print and keep it in my house. Ann Woodlief laughs at my tale of escaping from the sewage plant. I know tide is falling, but Ann is more open in conversation at breakfast than dinner, so I linger later than I intended. Heading out, Guthrie Creek has plenty of water until the bar. I tilt the outboard and motor through mud when the depth is foot and a half. When the depth drops to a foot, I cut the engine, tilt it up completely, and grab my push pole. The depth drops to eight, to six, to five inches. I push and push, because the depth is shallower than the boat's eight-inch depth, but the bottom is soft mud. I push and push until we clear the Creek mouth and the depth is suddenly eight feet. Yahoo. At West Point I promise myself I'll be back through to explore the Pamunkey, a deep clean river bordered by marsh, part of it Estuarine Sanctuary. I feel fondness for research reserves because I wrote the purchase grants and management plans for the Rachel Carson Sanctuary in front of Beaufort for the North Carolina Estuarine Research Reserve. I'll be back to the Pamunkey, I promise, even if by kayak. Up the Mattaponi River, I admire the Flemish-bond brick house at Chelsea Plantation and its red boathouse. I cut the engine and drift in the river for early lunch. On the right river bank I tie to the dock at Rainbow Acres campground, the only fuel stop on the Mattaponi. The peace of the river, all mine all morning, is broken by a kid who launches a jet ski and knocks Landfall against the dock with his wake. Jetskis spill half their fuel directly into the water. From the shad fish-hatchery at the Mattaponi Indian Reservation, Lawrence Latane, reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, has followed me for more photographs of Landfall. Upriver I dock at Eagles Landing, Carl Custalow's dock. At 58, Carl is assistant chief and helps nurse his father, the chief, who is ninety. I do not want to intrude, but want to stay a while. Carl is the best-looking man I've seen on the Bay all summer. At first, Carl is closed and busy, with work to do."Let me help," I say. His two sons, Todd, 30, and Chad, 15, both have white mothers. By the back shed, I watch while they pressure-wash the bottom of a jonboat. In a drought like this, salt water pushes upriver, so Carl has set crabpots in the river in front o his house. At 30, Todd has a B.A. in business from James Madison and a computer degree from VCU; many other kids on the reservation finish school after eighth grade. Todd now runs the finances for the tribe, but must live in Richmond until there is a free lot on the reservation, which has 60 acres and 125 people. When Todd leaves, I help Carl move the jonboat, and gradually he drops his reserve. We cool off for a minute in the airconditioned garage. Carl keeps his tools and machines in perfect shape; the concrete garage floor is immaculately clean. Carl tells me after the reservation school ended, at 14 he left his family, rented a room in Richmond, and finished Douglas Freeman High School. He worked at a gas station at Skipwith and Broad. He has recently retired after worked 31 years as insurance claim adjustor for State Farm. Now, he tends his gardens, fishes for shad and crabs, and works for the tribe. At five Chad and I paddle Landfall's kayaks downstream against the incoming current. Chad lives in Petersburg with his mother and stepfather. A city kid, he knows none of the marsh plants. Like any teenage boy, he prefers a jetski to the kayak. While Carl roasts rockfish for dinner, Chad and I pick steamed crabs.  After I have fallen asleep on my boat at the dock, racing jonboats throw up big wakes, flashing high-powered lights. Molly jumps off the boat, and I run up the hill to find her by the cornfield. She does not want to stay on the boat, so I tie her harness to the forward anchor chain, so she and I can sleep.

Saturday, 3 August. Carl's corn is green and high, because he irrigates with a soaker hose, but corn in the adjacent field is brown and stunted. Chad drives me to see the reservation with small neat houses and trailers. We stop to see Shirley Littledove, Carl's sister, who has bought land adjacent to the reservation boundary. Disney interviewed Shirley before they made the cartoon film Pocahontas. She calls her business--"Pocahontas's People, Past and Present." When she brings cultural programs to schools, she builds an Indian village, teaches crafts, and serves food (that schools provide) for tasting. I leave Carl's dock as he and his sons launch the jonboat to tend crabpots. I head upriver above the Walkerton bridge to eat lunch with Meade and Marion Jones, Addie's grandparents. William, Denise, and Anna join me as Mattaponi pilots from Walkerton to their place below Aylett. The channel cuts back and forth across the river and gets shallower. I drive Landfall as slowly as I can, not for fear of shoals or logs, but because this is the final leg of my trip. This is an appropriate place to stop, on what William calls the cleanest river on the East Coast, instead of the traffic and pollution rounding Poquoson and Newport News back to Jamestown. William has a big truck to haul Landfall at the Aylett boatramp, and next week the Southern Skimmer truck will come up from Beaufort.

From the Perritt's landing I can see no other dock; trees line both sides, and the swamp forest on the opposite shore will never be developed. When they climb their 62 steps, I stay alone on the boat quietly. Anna comes back in a purple bathing suit, so I change into mine. We wade across the shallow river then down the shore a ways. Anna laughs at me when I hesitate before rolling over a log slathered with mud. Last week when Addie was squeamish wading through the mud, I was her teacher; this week Anna is my teacher. She has a secret to share. She and her father have found an Indian log canoe that has fallen into ten thousands inch-size pieces. This could be any old rotten log, but if I watch with attention and respect, I can see the slight rise at the sides and a distinct bow shape. William later tells me, "We wanted to give it to the Pamunkey Museum, but they had canoes in much better shape." When Anna climbs the stairs, I take off my bathing suit and sponge off mud. I sit on the boat quietly until Margaret Perritt shows up from Gloucester. I serve ice tea from my cooler, and we watch the sun set from the dock. After dinner up the hill in the log cabin that William and Denise built, their friends in these river counties-- King William, King and Queen-- gather. This is an appropriate last night. In the dark on this natural river, four men sit in Landfall's cockpit, on the chair, the cooler, anchor locker, and the stern transom. I perch on the side gunnel. They appreciate this small boat and my journey. Back in the house, later, I talk to women and eat a piece from each pie Margaret baked-- buttermilk and peach. As I fall asleep at midnight, a hoot owl calls "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" I am content on the Mattaponi, the cleanest river on the East Coast.

Sunday, 4 August. I wake at 6:30 and swim a stretch of the river. I stay on the boat until Anna calls "Breakfast" at eight from the top of the stairs. My brother Jeff was going to drive my car-and-trailer shuttle, but Sallie wants to stay home with Eliza Carr who has a fever after her puppy shots. William drives me an hour and a half to Irvington in his mongo-big 4-x-4 black truck with dual rear wheels. Before we reach Jeff's house, I ask William to turn off the road to Christ Church, King Carter's chapel, where my father and mother are buried. He died 24 years ago, and she died eight years ago. For years I would not spend Christmas with her because she was drinking, but I would spend New Years and then visit my father's grave on his birthday, January 2. I always leave a golf ball on his grave, which some grounds tender takes away to tidy up. I have intended to leave the golf ball Claudia Bagwell gave me when my hip cramped after the big storm on Onancock Creek, but it is still on the boat. In the driveway at Christ Church I pick up a small white river rock, emblem of my trip, and leave on the brass marker. I weep, because my father taught me to navigate. I weep, because I have completed this trip successfully, so far, and have felt my father's presence all along. I don't want the trip to end, I don't want to move back to land, I want to stay in Virginia. I miss my father. William is about as sweet a person as I could have picked to be here with me.

William is polite at Jeff's house; Jeff and Sallie are tired after tending the baby; Jeff is sorry he couldn't drive. William and I leave to catch the midday tide. I pick him up at Aylett landing. William, Denise, Molly, and I ride Landfall less than a mile from their dock to the boatramp. At 12:30 the tide is slack high; any later, any lower, I'd have to motor back to the Walkerton ramp. We adjust Landfall just right on her trailer, because there's not telling when I will find a cheap slip in Beaufort. When we pull out, their friend Gary Rouse arrives with a trailer of a dozen kayaks for his outfitter business. Back at the house, we are hungry. After leftover pizza, I load stuff from the boat to my car. KABOOM-- an overhanging branch crashes on Landfall's foredeck, throwing twigs into the hatch and over to my car. If it had fallen ten feet back, it could have crushed the kayaks. William and Denise run out of the house. "Everything's okay," I say calmly. "That could have been a lousy ending," she says. Then we three sit on the dock-- a lazy Sunday. William and I swim, Denise and I sit while William canoes along the shoreline-- until sunset. Denise and William must both work hard next week. After hot-chili noodles from my food box and William's stirfry, I drive William back to get their car at Walkerton, and I move into Jessica and Addison's Jones cottage for a few days.

Monday, 5 August. Not ready yet to sever my ties to water, I sit on the hill overlooking a stupendous vista of Mattaponi marsh islands. I set up my computer on the porch, half type, half daydream. In the afternoon I drive to talk to Billy Mills, local organizer for the Mattaponi Pamunkey River Association. Newport News wants to build a dam on Cohoke Creek on the peninsula of land between the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers, directly between the Mattaponi and Pamunkey Indian Reservations, pump 75,000 gallons of water a day for fifty years from the Mattaponi River to this reservoir, and pipe the water under the Pamunkey to Newport News, to sell to Army bases, maybe to ship to foreign countries. The Norfolk District of the Corps of Engineers denied the federal permit for the dam, but the state of Virginia has granted a permit. The whole issue is now being appealed. Environmentalists and Indians are in coalition opposing the dam Newport News wants to build.

I drive also to visit Warren Cook, 65, assistant chief of the Pamunkey Indians. His father, the chief, is 102. I prefer landing by boat to meet people, but hydrilla has filled the bay in front of Warren's dock, so he can't dock his own boat at home anymore. Warren is sitting in his air-conditioned living room. His paintings of marsh plants and forest trees line the walls. Warren is a painter and jewelry designer, has worked in personnel and job training; he was an art therapist at Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. Before I leave, Warren's wife Susan arrives from her commute from her Richmond job. They keep a Richmond apartment, and she comes home every few nights. Just down the road, down the shoreline from Warren's house, by the Southern Railroad tracks, is Powhatan's grave, where he was buried in 1618. Randy Turner, the state archeologist, has told me I should see Uttumussock, the Algonquian Indians' holy temple. Uttumossock is now locked behind gates, behind the industrial landfill of the pulpwood company in West Point, between the railroad tracks and a ninety-foot bluff over the Pamunkey River. The Pamunkeys tried to buy thirty acres there of virgin forest, but Chesapeake Corporation sold it to some hunt club. Billy Mills says there were 25-foot mountain laurel before the hunt club timbered it. Warren tells me the view of the Pamunkey marshes from the hill at Uttumussock was like looking out over the whole world.

Pristine rivers are rare, and I hope the Pamunkey and Mattaponi can be preserved, undisturbed. To build awareness, MPRA is designing a John Smith river trail for paddlers. "The Mattaponi is better for fishing, the Pamunkey for hunting," Billy Mills says. They are different, but each special. Where the Mattaponi has a hundred and some landowners, the Pamunkey has fifteen, in very large tracts. Because the Mattaponi and Pamunkey have no industry and little development, they are still relatively pristine. In three and a half months, I have motored more than two thousand miles. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers are among the most special places I have visited this summer.

The Chesapeake Bay waters and sunsets are resplendently beautiful. Yet, what looks beautiful may not be clean. The Eastern Shore looks fine, but there are no oysters and few crabs. Yeah, Baltimore Harbor is full of trash, soot, and Superfund sites. What distresses me is that the Virginia Northern Neck, where my parents lived, now has Code Red Air-Quality days when Mary Allen can't breathe outdoors.

I wish the Chesapeake Bay were as clean as when my father grew up, loading watermelons on bugeyes bound for Baltimore. I hope my trip will make people more aware-- to see the Bay as beautiful and to take action to clean its air and water.

Following John Smith around the Chesapeake Bay counterclockwise, I have advanced through the centuries of my ancestors' past from Jamestown, Wye and Kent Island, Rock Hall to Gunpowder; I have seen my father's houses on the Northern Neck; and passed places in my own history. When I started this trip, I vaguely imagined I might anchor in a creek undiscovered by developers like those who are ruining Beaufort, perhaps find a special person and choose to stay. At the end of this voyage, I have hoped I would discern where to land; I have hoped I would figure out who I am now as a person, to use my gifts to make a significant contribution in the next dozen years of my career, and indeed throughout my life. Has this trip changed me? I may not know yet. Every day, as I keep moving, I have been present where I am, happy to stay, reluctant to leave, eager to arrive, aware of wind and tides, delighted both with my solitude and with people I meet. And I find myself at the end where I started at the beginning. I will return to teach this fall in Morehead City and to write this book. But golly, on the water I am calmer, I find more pleasure in simple things. On the water I feel connected to wind and birds, dolphins and dragonflies. My prayer is that I can keep this water awareness, this contentment on land. And that I can return frequently to live on the water.

Tuesday, 6 August. Alleluia. The temperature barely reaches eighty; the river water is warmer than the wind. I type most of the morning. At noon Jessica arrives with Ben and Addie to play with me at their river cottage, the first time in five years she has been here. After swimming, we pick raspberries to eat with vanilla ice cream. After the flurry when they leave, I am not so content alone, until I slow down and watch a half dozen hawks soar in front of the hill, just beyond the trees beyond the porch.

Wednesday, 7 August. At eight I will walk the archeological dig that may be Werowocomoco with the private landowner. At noon I will meet the Southern Skimmer truck that will haul Landfall back to North Carolina. I want to stop at Jamestown Yacht Basin to thank Booker for starting my trip well.

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