5 ETHICS
Tangier Island, Virginia // October 25, 2009
For a while, Wild Hair appeared to be getting younger by the day. When we were docked in Florida—the epicenter of boats and boat expertise—we installed new rigging to hold the mast tall and a new roller furler—the spinning drum near the bow that rotates the forward sail upon itself for storage. Dave—bless him—rebuilt the heads. He also put in a fuel polishing system to filter naturally growing algae out of the diesel and installed a motor mount on the transom to hold the outboard engine. I taught myself all about how radio waves move through space, bounce from the ionosphere, become distorted by sunspots (magnetic fields fluctuating on the surface of the sun), and the dos and don’ts of FCC licenses and laws governing my use of our new single-side-ban radio; workers came onboard to put up the ham radio’s antenna. The real difference-maker, though, was the bright work. I stripped Wild Hair’s teak inside and out and lathered on ten coats of captain’s varnish between the sunshine state’s afternoon cloudbursts.
Eventually, Dave and I could take crawling on our hands and knees and sanding our fingers to the bone no more. We pointed Wild Hair’s bow north and stitched our way outside on the ocean and inside on the ICW, out and in nearly the length of the East Coast. Every night we’d step off our ship in one of America’s historic port towns: Beaufort, New Bern, Ocracoke, and Hatteras, North Carolina; Hampton, Mobjack, and Deltaville, Virginia; Christfield, and Solomons Island, Maryland. For seventeen days we were residents of Annapolis and we attended the boat show—the nation’s largest in-water sailing shindig. There, I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet and thank the women who inspired me to set sail: author and circumnavigator Beth Leonard; Cruising World Magazine editor Elaine Lembo; Kathy Parsons and Pam Wall—two of the founders of WomenandCruising.com. Later, Dave and I rented a car and drove to Washington, DC, for dinner with our son, Eland, before his midterms started at George Washington University.
Months of being on the go were hard on Wild Hair and a new to-do list grew. In Annapolis we fixed the electric toilet, alternator belts, brackets, and bolts, the nema cable powering our chart plotter, and our dinghy’s outboard that for some inexplicable reason suffered from chronic choking and sputtering. More significantly, the mainsail had pulled from its track and now we couldn’t fully raise or lower the canvas. But what really affected the quality of our days were the four port lights and four hatches that took to leaking. We froze our butts when fall temperatures dropped suddenly to thirty-eight degrees and it rained for five days. The two of us slept under a tarp to stay dry, but I felt helpless as I watched my beautifully restored woodwork pucker and stain with puddles. Worst of all, we have no way to repair the leaks until we’re back in Florida in December.
But today it’s dry and sunny and we’re on the move. Long light beams stretch from the far horizon to illuminate the surrounding gloom of nearby clouds. Six miles south of the Virginia-Maryland border, patches of orange and yellow dot the scrub of Tangier Island. The air is crisp and cool. Wild Hair’s bow spins toward the buoyed entrance to the island and my imagination ignites with the imagery of Chesapeake, James Michener’s historic epic. I feel an affinity with Tangier’s first European visitor in 1608, John Smith. I’m too distracted by the history and beauty of this place to pick up signs of the modern islanders’ difficulty. Besides, islanders camouflage the evidence of their pending demise behind civic order and pride. I cannot know that I’ve sailed to the frontline of the climate crisis.
Mailboat Harbor—the central waterfront of Tangier’s quaint fishing village—is storybook perfect. One-room structures, whitewashed clean, rest atop a network of slanted piers and pilings. Fingers of reedy grass wind through the water. Electrical cables and tilting utility poles add a loopy connectivity to the infrastructure, shoelacing the whole. Between neat shacks and suspended walkways, crab pots lie in meticulous clusters: four high, five wide, and a dozen deep. Professionals readied the cubes. They are identically stuffed with folded line and wooden floats painted pink, green, and yellow. Traps are poised for business. I smile, impressed by the mindfulness of the people who created this order.
Radiant chalk-white workboats with names of women float in the gaps. The nearest boat has three VHF radio antennas, the neighboring boat has five, and none have less than two. Radars, floodlights, voluminous decks, and sturdy pilothouses for comfort and safety in foul weather are also standard. A few ships have empty stacks of bushel baskets. These are serious, expensive workboats—yet nothing is secured from vandals.
Humans are absent, but the air swirls with seagulls and willets. A cormorant drives forward submarine-like on the surface, its head swiveling on a periscope neck. Blue heron hunt for supper, their tall legs camouflaged by golden grass. A pelican dives headlong into deeper waters.
Inside the protective wall of granite boulders, we maneuver Wild Hair’s port side toward the pier of Park’s Marina, the island’s only facility open to visitors. Late in the sailing season, we are the only guests here. An elderly man arrives in time to catch the bowline, and deftly cleats the rope.
The man walks the pier in the midst of a swarm of animals. A large dog—a bale of cotton on four legs—circles and skips underfoot with six tussling cats. I’ve never seen a dog and cats play with such merriment. How can the man stay upright in the center of the circus? The effect is magical, like suddenly coming across St. Francis of Assisi in the middle of his day. The dog darts between the fellow’s legs and worry for the old man’s safety knits my brow. I hope he can swim, should he trip. I pass the dock master the stern line so he can tie us off and keep watching. The animals’ darting and pawing has an everyday appearance. They are playful, but bored. The man is untroubled by the cacophony; he must have made peace with the din years ago.
Our kitten jumps into the cockpit, walks to the limit of her leash, and yowls a protest that shrivels my ears. Dinghy the Sailor Cat, a six-month-old gray American Shorthair with a white face and bubble-gum-pink nose, is the newest member of our crew. Getting her was an uphill battle. I’m a pet person, you see. Life didn’t feel complete without a cat or dog. But Dave thought an animal onboard would be too much of a bother and maybe even a danger.
“Heather,” he said when we were in Wisconsin last May to help Maggie move between college apartments. “If we have a pet I’m afraid you’d save it in an emergency instead of yourself—or worse—instead of me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can keep my head.”
“Well, we can’t have a dog. It would tie us to shore four times a day. Or, we’d have to train it to go on a mat at the bow and I don’t want to constantly clean up poop.”
“I don’t either. A dog doesn’t make sense. But a cat—all we need is a box and the creature would take care of itself.”
“I’m not a cat person.”
“I know, but I am.” And so we went, round and round. Until one day I put my foot down. “Dave,” I said. “You are cuddly, but you’re not cuddly enough!” He looked at me and blinked.
“I have absolutely no reply,” he laughed. “I guess you need a cat.” And just like that, the decision was made.
Cats can be notoriously aloof, so I started looking for the most affectionate feline I could find. I wanted Dave to fall in love with it. Also, we wanted a cat that wouldn’t shed a lot of hair—on the boat, hair could clog pumps and drains. My online search for the animal of our dreams said the nonshedding Devon Rex breed was the ideal cat for Dave the dog lover. So, I found breeders with litters. The problem was the animals cost nearly as much as a life raft.
“Maggie,” Dave said one Sunday while we were home. “Why don’t you take your mom over to the humane society and see who you meet. You know your animals. You could give her some advice.” He knew I’d fall in love with the first kitten I saw, so this was his scheme to save a pile of dough. Sure enough, Dinghy’s pink nose did me in. Now, this cuddly and curious cat is responsible for crew morale. Even Dave has thawed to her charms. As a matter of fact, he washes her in so much affection that I recently felt compelled to institute a new boat etiquette policy: if you kiss the cat, you must kiss your spouse.
At Park’s Marina, Dinghy arches and fusses to assert the boundary of her territory. But her romping counterparts ignore her claim.
On Tangier Island—our guidebook says—un-fixed felines roam in abundance. Sailors accuse locals of managing the feral population through forced adoptions; it is said islanders toss cats onto departing boats hoping the crew will offer them good homes. Suspicious, I give the marina operator another once-over. This guy is in contact with all visiting sailors, so he’s probably the leading cat pusher. I tighten my frame and steel myself not to fall victim to a forced adoption.
“This is our cat, Dinghy. We already have a cat so we don’t need any more onboard. Can you help us keep the other animals off our decks?” Occupied with the job of securing fenders between Wild Hair’s hull and the pier, the man smiles politely and nods. He continues to operate in the midst of animal mischief. My impression flips. The man is altogether unconcerned with cats, their activities or their fates. I doubt he has a population control agenda.
With the boat settled, Dave and I step onto the pier. Proprietor Milton Parks introduces himself. “I am a Waterman,” he says. “I made my living like the other men here by harvesting Chesapeake crabs.”
“With boats and traps like these?” I ask.
“Yes, from four in the morning until five at night, six days a week. Plus, forty years ago, my sons and I spent nights and weekends building that granite seawall by hand. That made it possible for us to construct this marina.” My eyes take in the wall’s football-field length. I feel the weight of a single rock in my arms and back and am astonished by his courage to even begin the job.
“That must have been incredibly difficult!”
“Yes, moving rocks and hauling crab pots is work.” Mr. Parks smiles without complaint or embellishment. He continues like an educator. “I am a military veteran and a direct descendant of the island’s first settlers, too.”
“Then you are the best ambassador for the island—the man who can answer all our questions.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Do you still do any crabbing?”
“No. I’m seventy-eight years old and retired to the marina.” The gentleman’s face is weathered under his baseball cap but his energetic frame is fit. He’s rugged and youthful for his years.
With animals bouncing under his feet, Parks shows us the showers and the road into town. Nodding his head toward a tidy ranch house on shore, he says, “That’s my house there, the only brick home on the island. My wife’s inside, but don’t bother her. She’s busy sleeping with other men: Ben Gay and Absorb N. Junior.” I’m caught off guard, and then laugh at his unexpected silliness. A sign on the shower shack catches my attention.
“Mr. Parks, you charge only $25 a night for boats smaller than thirty feet and $30 for larger ones? That sign says an electrical hook up is $5 for 30 or 50-amp service?”
“Yeah, that’s right. That’s what you pay.”
“But,” I stammer, remembering the $180 overnight charge we paid months earlier in the Bahamas, “you can charge more.”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s the price.” Two cats spar on either side of my right foot.
“All right,” Mr. Parks rubs his hands for warmth. “You’re going to want to eat a crab cake dinner, and you’re going to want to eat that dinner at Lorraine’s Restaurant. That’s the only year-round establishment. Now, it’s Sunday and Lorraine keeps church hours. So you do what you have to do and I’ll collect you in ten minutes to take you to Lorraine’s for dinner.”
Dave catches my eye. “Uh, well, it’s not even 3:30,” I say, “and we had a late lunch. Perhaps…”
“No,” he says. “You want to eat at Lorraine’s and she’s closing at five for church. I’ll take you there so you can get some local cooking. There’s nothing better. Then I’ll collect you again and give you an island tour before dark. I don’t keep church hours, you know.” His eyes flash with the gleam of a rascal. I give Dave a second look. We’d be fools not to follow Mr. Parks’s lead. The plan is set.
We carry Dinghy below decks, grab jackets and cash, and pocket the camera, before meeting Mr. Parks and a pair of cats at the golf-cart. It has a bench seat for two and we are three. Animals scramble as I slide to the center of the seat. Dave wedges in on my right, his hip hanging from the edge. Mr. Parks squeezes to my left behind the steering wheel and his hand fumbles around my knees.
“A dirty old man invented reverse on a golf cart,” he explains with twinkling eyes. Again, the man’s cheerfulness surprises me.
The cart loops in a reverse crescent. He fumbles near my knees again and drives forward toward the village. The road, wide enough for two golf carts, is a bed of crushed oyster shells. It carries us east along the shore toward something called “Pooges and the Community Dock.” A turn south leads to the central spine of the island’s Main Ridge. After a few moments, the cart stops at a crossroads. We’re in the heart of the Meat Soup Neighborhood. Elevated white clapboard buildings with aluminum awnings sit close to the road. Lots are distinguished by picket and chain-link fences. A bicycle leans against a gate. Four cats lounge on a stoop. Small satellite dishes sit in yards like buttons on sticks. Clotheslines stand at the ready. A bench invites conversation. The scene is close, pedestrian-scale. My sense of personal space must be calibrated to the boundlessness of open space at the water’s surface because my skin itches with claustrophobia from the sudden closeness of the scene.
“Lorraine’s is just there,” Mr. Parks indicates an even narrower lane with a nod. “I’ll call on you after a bit for the island tour. Enjoy your supper.”
Walking the lane, a painted sign tacked above a line of propane tanks catches my eye.
Fresh Seafood Daily Specialties: Hot Crab Dip,
Creamy Crab Bisque,
Signature Crabby Fries, Homemade Desserts
Prepared and Served by Tangier Women Using Favorite Island Recipes!
LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE MT 5:16
I am puzzled by the women who wrote this sign. We’re different. I wouldn’t think to advertise womanhood as the source of something especially unique in the marketplace. Also, I’d feel shy about broadcasting my spiritual beliefs out of context, assuming too much could be misunderstood. These women are bold: about crabs and Christ, they have no doubt.
I feel as if we’re breaking and entering when Dave opens Lorraine’s screen and I push through the front door. But as we step inside what would be the living room of the house, there are a handful of upright booths, a food counter, shelves, and a counter with a cash register and Pepsi sign. The layout is practical. The room is clean and well lit. I relax into a booth near a window.
Two women dressed casually in plaid over-shirts and jeans, with dark hair pulled simply away from make-up free faces, chat comfortably from either side of the counter. They speak with a thick local accent. Words combine hard cockney vowels and stretch them long in a Virginia drawl—it’s what linguists call an English Restoration-Era dialect of American English. The dialect is Cornish and Southern, and it’s unique to the island’s five-hundred residents. Some claim—because of the island’s isolation—residents speak the language of the seventeenth-century settlers from southwest England. Others suspect the insular community evolved its own dialect. The women’s vowels are loud; they weight their Rs, and swallow their consonants. It’s captivating.
I listen for particular linguistic characteristics: an ordinary word made short or the use of completely new words (like wudget meaning a plump wad of cash, or coferdbent meaning twisted). I hope mostly to detect their extreme form of sarcasm, what the locals call “talking backward.” Someone might say, “You are smart,” but I have to know the inflection in their voice to tell if they think I am really clever or painfully stupid. Despite my best efforts, my ears swim in confusion and I can’t make out even the most basic roots of English.
Scanning the menu, I remember alcohol is not sold on the island. These are religious people, evangelical Christians. A splash and sizzle comes from the kitchen and the room fills with the smell of delicately fried seafood.
“What can I get for you?” Lorraine Marshall stands before us. She talks with the mid-American accent of a major network anchorwoman.
“Oh, I can understand you!”
“Yes,” she laughs. Her look is both self-conscious and proud. “We can talk like everyone else, but we do get going between us sometimes.”
The soft-shelled crabs and crab cakes that arrive in moments are golden and crispy. The edge of my fork separates a section of meat and hot, naturally salty juice mixed with a little oil oozes. The crab is firm but tender and remarkably sweet. Lorraine makes the fruit of the sea “Tangier-style” by washing away the creature’s innards before cooking. This smooths out the flavor. Across the table, Dave chews with rapture, eyes closed.
I want to put a cot in the corner and move into the restaurant—never leave—but Lorraine wants to get to church. So, too soon we are back in the golf cart for our tour. Mr. Parks fiddles, barely touching my knees. He giggles anew. He is as playful as his cats. The golf cart accelerates on Main Street. We drive past one and two-story New England-style buildings dressed with brick chimneys and working shutters. Homes advertise crafts and gifts inside, signs of a modest summer tourist industry. Oil tanks and shrubs flank homes, but I see only one tree—a lone survivor of hurricanes. The cart stops in front of the church; its grand steeple connects heaven to earth. Together with the Tangier water tower, it gives the island a distinct profile.
“This is the new Swain Memorial Church. It’s built where the old church stood. We’ve been Methodists on the island since on about the end of the Revolutionary War. Read there,” Mr. Parks directs. “It’s a list of church members in 1825. Do you see my name?” My eye scans the list: Crockett, Dise, Paul, Pruitt, Thomas, and Parks. “That’s proof. I’m a direct descendant of the earliest settlers.”
“I see it,” says Dave.
“Before European settlers, the Pocomoke Indians lived here. The beaches are loaded with arrow heads and spear points. They wash up all the time.”
“And here is the memorial,” he says, redirecting our attention across the road, “to the men who served our country’s military. I’m here, too. A lot of good people gave everything to defend this nation, same as on the mainland.” Emotion squeezes off the flow of words; there are stories not included in today’s tour. With a breath, Mr. Parks looks me in the eye. “We’re Americans here.” His patriotism stirs me.
“Yes, I understand.” We linger respectfully in silence. Five cats lounge at the foot of the memorial. One stands and stretches. Mr. Parks moves to the cart.
Next, the buggy stops near a construction site littered with debris. “This will be the David Nichols Health Center,” says Mr. Parks. “Our current clinic is a foul place. The roof and walls leak. There’s no hot water. The medical equipment is troubled, held together with duct tape. But the people of Tangier love Dr. Nichols.”
Canadian by birth, Dr. Nichols visited Tangier in the 1970s and found the place a living Norman Rockwell painting. Each week, for the past thirty years, Nichols arrives in his private plane or helicopter to deliver health care. He makes house calls. He saves lives. The doctor’s only fault is spending too much time with patients. Once, when darkness set before he finished, locals circled the runway in golf carts, headlights blazing, to light the air strip.
“He and his friends raised two million dollars for this clinic,” Mr. Parks continues. “Most of it pays for the medical building; the remainder is for care for years to come. My daughter is a doctor now, too, on the mainland.” I try to imagine how far a journey it is for a local girl to live in the city, graduate medical school, and launch a practice.
“Now, Dr. Nichols is a patient himself. Years back he came down with melanoma of the eye.” Cancer. Mr. Parks continues: “We are so fond of Dr. Nichols, we gave him an honorary island name: David Nichols Parks.”
What we don’t know now, standing at the construction site, is that, weeks before the clinic’s grand opening, experts will find an inoperable metastasis in Dr. Nichols’ liver. He will die five months after the news. His family will bury his ashes beside the new clinic.
Driving on, buildings give way to the vast, golden-green marshland of the island’s interior. The vegetated carpet is mounded and coarse. The island is small—a little over a square mile. It’s only three feet above sea level at its highest point. At the marsh, I feel the indecisiveness of water and land; it’s as if the landscape can’t make up its mind to be dry or wet. The interplay is sensual.
The cart turns east and rumbles over a narrow boardwalk bridge spanning Ruben’s River. Canton Ridge—the low rise ahead—is the site of another cluster of homes. This is the island’s first settlement.
“You see that house there?” Mr. Parks asks. A home with ample square footage fronts the marsh. “That fellow visited the island. He came by boat, like you, and he liked the place, decided to make a home here with us.” My heartbeat quickens; the thought excites me.
“He is a smart guy,” I say.
“Some think we islanders are too close and set in our ways, but everyone is welcome here on the island.” Mr. Parks punctuates the statement with a firm nod. I imagine living in an older, smaller home in the heart of the Main Ridge, not new construction.
“We would thrive in this place, wouldn’t we?” I ask Dave. He smiles in agreement as he takes in the land, water, and sky.
Losing daylight, we pass on a visit to West Ridge, the location of the airstrip and the Hog’s Ridge and Sheep’s Hill Neighborhoods.
“The island is void of traffic lights, ATMs, and violent crime,” our tour guide says. “There’s one pay phone, a hardware store, and a grocery. We may get Internet next year.”
I quiz Mr. Parks on the life of a Waterman. The one-room shacks on the network of piers near the marina are Watermen’s offices. The structures were built by the fishermen’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The buildings and the necessary state fishing permits are passed to the next generation like trust funds and family jewels—through wills. The building blocks of a Waterman’s business are people’s most treasured assets.
There are two types of Blue Crab, Mr. Parks says: those that shed shells and those that don’t. About half the Watermen catch crabs that molt, making Tangier the soft-crab capital of the world. Inside many of the shacks, aerated tanks keep crabs alive until they kick off their shells (something they do twenty times in their life). The waterman refrigerates the crab to keep new “skin” from hardening. Soft-shelled crabs require constant monitoring and a quick trip to market. This is why they fetch ten times the price of their nonmolting kin.
Watermen catching nonmolting crabs make profits from a higher volume. Each day, they clear and reset traps, pack crabs into bushel baskets, and deliver them to a wholesaler for cash. The most ambitious fishermen manage up to four hundred crab pots a day. Hauling pots through forty to seventy feet of water is wet, cold, dangerous, and exhausting work. This makes Watermen shacks the place for midday naps. But today, shacks stand as empty as a ghost town in the Great Plains. The state of Virginia stopped issuing Watermen permits. Frankly, I’m mixed up and trying to make sense out of what I’ve read.
Ten years ago, a fierce battle raged between Watermen and environmental advocates. Signs protesting the Chesapeake Bay Foundation—a clean water and sustainable fisheries not-for-profit—filled Mailboat Harbor. Islanders and conservationists were locked in a bitter conflict over fishing policies. Arsonists, apparently from the mainland, set fishing shacks afire. For the better part of the twentieth century, pollution from area cities and farms and the over-harvesting of fish shrank marine populations so dramatically that Watermen came to depend on one species: the Blue Crab. Then crab populations wavered. To protect the fishery, the Foundation pushed for a ban on crab harvesting during winter months. The people of Tangier feared unemployment and poverty and fought back. Watermen had heaps of practical and historical know-how and they didn’t buy environmentalists’ calculations. On the flip side, advocates armed themselves with ecological research that they felt outweighed concerns for the Watermen’s financial reality.
Susan Drake Emmerich, a PhD candidate from the University of Wisconsin, came to Tangier in 1997 to test a faith-based approach to resource management.24 She lived on the island, shared a Christian faith, listened, and developed friendships. She asked the mayor, pastors, lay church leaders, and the women of Tangier to endorse and help her with some research. What I most appreciate is the way she offered a new understanding of Christian scripture—one containing responsibility for the natural world.
Eventually, Emmerich held a mirror up to the community that revealed the ways in which residents’ actions fell short of their faith. Through guided self-reflection in sermons, hymns, religious pictures, Bible studies, community meetings, and one-on-one discussions, Emmerich connected islanders’ love for God with a responsibility to sustainably steward creation. She united loving your neighbor with respect for civil laws. She also helped residents understand how their message to outsiders wasn’t helpful to their cause.
Some islanders resisted Emmerich’s message. They feared change and defended the traditional ways. This split the community. Angry and hurt, neighbors, friends, and family members stopped looking each other in the eyes. They hurled insults at one another. Misinformation inflamed strong emotions, and Emmerich received death threats.
In the midst of it all, fifty-eight men knelt on the altar in 1998 to publically and before God declare their intention to care for creation. Women of the village made a covenant with God to alter patterns of household consumption and teach children the inner workings of God’s creation. Tangier residents, with their hearts in their hands, apologized to environmentalists at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Softened by tenderness, the organization’s staff apologized in return and realized they needed to respect people’s religious beliefs and cultural heritage. Watermen also met with farmers and they too entered into a stewardship covenant with God to avoid harming their neighbors downstream.
The only sound when we wake the next morning is the cry of seagulls and the murmuring of waves on Wild Hair’s hull. The Watermen must have left hours ago; they’re out there somewhere, tending traps. Dave and I get ourselves organized and walk the narrow streets to Daley and Son Grocery. I step over two cats to enter. The place smells of bleach. The brightly lit room with high ceilings doesn’t have much on the shelves. We buy bread, eggs, coffee, and cat food.
“Does the island freeze-in in wintertime?” I ask the weathered fellow behind the register.
“Yup, every year.” He methodically rings our goods without looking at me. “Heather, come here,” says Dave as he points to a snapshot pinned near the door. A young woman, arms wrapped around grocery bags, stands outside the building. She is in water above her knees.
“What’s the story of this photo?”
The grocer shrugs as he slides eggs in a sack. Styrofoam squeaks. “When the tide is high and the moon is just so, the island floods.”
Later, we visit the Tangier History Museum but find the door locked. A sign on the wall reads:
WALK AROUND BACK
RING THE DOORBELL OF THE HOUSE BEHIND
A bicycle blocks our path. Men’s unmentionables dry on a line. Rock music plays through screens. We’re not expected and—feeling that I’m violating someone’s personal space—I turn to leave, but Dave steps up and presses the doorbell.
“Come in, come in, come in!” a man’s voice calls.
We enter a cave of a living room. Through dim light I see clothes, papers, boxes, books, and shoes strewn across the floor and furniture. A young man leaps forward from a black corner and into the only beam of light penetrating the window. His hand is outstretched.
“Welcome to you! I’m Ken. I’m the Artist in Residence on the island. You’re here visiting.” He is a lanky fellow, supremely attentive, with piercing eyes. “I’ve been on the island since last year and my job is to make that old house an interpretive center.”
“You’re having fun?” I ask.
“It’s perfect for me. I have art and history degrees so I’m using all my skills. This is my first job.” The lad beams with enthusiasm. “They really need me, too. Hang on. I’ll get the keys so you can check out what we’ve been up to.”
Ken stops en route to the museum, points toward the grass.
“That path goes to the Tangier Water Trails and Kayak Rentals. The kayaks are free to anyone who wants to paddle the rivers and wetlands of the island. There’s a ton of wildlife.”
“How cool is that?” Dave asks.
“I got that going. And have you seen the signs everywhere? Yellow and blue?” I recall dozens of all-weather interpretive signs dotting streets and buildings. I nod.
“We made those to get word out about how amazing this place is.”
“The signs are gorgeous,” I say. “Nicely done.”
The museum is a modest clapboard house with small rooms. Clusters of personal effects heaped upon display cases, posters, photos, and tables give the feel of an estate sale. Walls are plastered with writing. My nose picks up mold.
“People give us things they inherited from parents and grandparents. Everyone wants to contribute.” Ken disappears behind a door, and lights, along with a recording of a man’s voice describing crabbing on the Bay, switch on.
“You’ve captured the locals’ stories—”
“We got funding to record and preserve tales of island life before it’s lost.”
I listen and wander. Another man’s voice follows; his tale of a storm makes my neck- hairs stand on end. Then an elderly woman talks of family and the treasure of lifelong friends. Island life takes form around me like a cocoon of shared purpose, memory, and meaning.
I stop at a worn geological map pinned next to a modern satellite image. In the photo from space, Tangier looks airbrushed, feathered, nearly translucent. When I compare it to the map, I see a major discrepancy: the island used to be bigger. Tangier had six habitable ridges and now there are three. Visceral panic grips my throat.
The Army Corp of Engineers, according to a nearby placard, calculates nine acres of Tangier Island disappear into the Chesapeake Bay each year. The island melts like butter in a pan. It’s one-third the size it was during the Revolutionary War. Uppards, a settlement north of Parks Marina, was abandoned in 1928. Tangier’s population is less than half what it was fifty years ago.
Perhaps walls and bridges are needed, like those used in the Netherlands. But another clipping reveals the small population can’t afford engineering studies and protective seawalls. On Tangier, the median household income is $26,607; more than a quarter of the residents live below the poverty line. With so few residents and a shrinking tax base, leaders are challenged just to keep the sewage-treatment plant in working order. Tangier residents don’t have the resources to counteract the effects of Mother Nature.
A sepia photograph hangs on the wall. It depicts a train car brimming with oysters. Once, oysters were abundant around the island, and Watermen supplied them en masse to New Yorkers. Today, oysters are scarce. A magazine clipping near the photo describes current efforts to reestablish the oyster population—the setting aside of oyster reefs.
Turning a corner, I read how the State of Virginia—after years of debate—outlawed crabbing during the five months of winter and still, the Blue Point population shrinks. In response, Watermen started fishing for striped bass with gill nets. Now there’s talk of banning gill nets. In the recording, a Waterman says: “The economics just don’t work anymore. I’m too young to stop working and too old to learn a new job. Am I to take my family to the mainland to work in a Wal-Mart? What am I to do? I just don’t know.”
“Last spring,” a woman’s voice offers, “not one graduating high school student wanted to be a Waterman. Not one. That’s never happened before in the four hundred years since the island settled.”
Above the door, a rendering of Chesapeake Bay tells the story of the water body’s creation. Thirty-five million years ago, a meteor struck the Sassafras River. The collision opened the river’s flow to the ocean and created the bay. Tangier and the surrounding area is still experiencing subsidence from the collision; the region continues its slow-motion slide into the original crater. Tangier is incredibly susceptible to flooding—as helpless as some low-lying islands in the South Pacific: Tegua (part of the Torres Strait Islands) and the Solomons (east of Papua New Guinea). The idea that this community and everything I see and admire here may soon be lost sweeps my body in a wave of defeat. I take a breath; stale air moves through my nostrils.
All of this is compounded by sea level rise due to climate change. Another poster says the ocean swelled eight inches in the past hundred years due to thermal expansion and melting ice on land. The US Army Corps calculates sea level will rise another five feet here by 2100. Tangier, a whisper of land in the Bay, doesn’t stand a chance.
I look out the window at the street scene. A plastic play gym sits in an empty yard. A golf cart waits patiently for its driver. The setting is no longer quaint but eerie; I feel the whole of it already abandoned.
A mass relocation of island residents to the mainland could make Tangier our country’s first climate refugees. But retreat isn’t on the Watermen’s plate yet. These are people of faith. God provides, they think. It is inconceivable to many here that the Lord would allow such loss. Voicing concern about the future or talking about where or when to resettle indicates a lack of faith.
Ken locks the museum door and we part ways. Daylight sparkles. The wind chaps my cheeks. Things look as they did the hour before, but nothing is the same. Tangier Island is ephemeral to me now. Neat homes, interpretive signs, Mr. Parks, Lorraine, the grocer—these are living ghosts who will find their place in history alongside John Smith. The museum warped time, bent my sensibilities. What feels real is not the clean picket fence in front of me but the same boards half submerged, abandoned, rotted, and tilting. Dave and I walk in silence.
I peer down a side street to see thirty people dressed in black outside a church. No one in the group is talking. Clearly, they assembled for a funeral. They are solemn, waiting for something to happen. One man in his late twenties lifts his head and returns my gaze. He adjusts his collar and conveys disdain for his tie. With this small gesture, I am included in the burial rites, the intimacy of the community. I feel cut by the knife-edge of love and loss. Helpless to defend myself, I keep walking.
Aboard Wild Hair, Dinghy is eager to jump into the cockpit. Dave clips her to the leash then lets her out. I make lunch and try to process what I’ve learned.
“There’s no need for us to rush off, there’s lots to see and do here,” I say. “What do you think about staying an extra night?”
“It’s getting late in the season, but we could. I agree.”
“I have a crazy hankering to live here on the boat and work for the people of Tangier. We could sail from here up the Potomac and I could lobby for them in Washington, DC.”
“That sounds like a slow commute.”
“I know, but it would be fun and these people need support. Their future is desperate and they don’t have any clout.”
“I’m not sure what these folks need, other than a U-Haul.”
“Yeah…I know.” My lips pout involuntarily. Commotion erupts outside.
A large fiberglass trawler, which is captained by Mr. Parks’ son Doug, ties next to us on the T-dock. The senior Mr. Parks, in a swirl of cats, manages the lines. The dog is asleep near shore.
Doug Parks is sturdily built and technically proficient. He shuts down the engine and organizes equipment, bantering with his father as he moves bushel baskets. Immediately a workboat named Deborah pulls alongside the trawler’s outer rails. The twang of Tangier’s dialect fills the air as a pair of Watermen heave packed bushels into Doug’s arms. Doug shoves them toward the forward bulkhead on his deck. There is a confidential exchange of money before the locals disappear with fresh baskets and lids.
“Are crabs in those baskets?” Dave asks.
“Yep. Wanna see?”
Doug lifts a container from the pile and unbends the wire holding the lid in place. Inside, dozens of Blue Point Crabs display the full spectrum of color. Sea-green half-moon shells are five inches wide. Their forward edge is spiked. Between protruding eyes, a pair of incisors lie flat, indicating the mouth’s location. Segmented arms curl forward from the shell to make the creature look like a tiny, muscle-bound sumo wrestler. But instead of hands, there are cream-colored claws. The outer-most points on the pinchers look dipped in rusty red nail polish. Arm pits glow robin’s egg blue. A few crabs in the bushel are upside down, displaying the shell’s white underbelly. I remember the crab’s evolved defense mechanism: the crab resembles the Bay’s vegetated floor to predators approaching from above, and the underbelly looks like the sky to a predator hunting from below. The underside is jointed to allow movement of the claws and eight back fins. There is also a handy, pop-top-like flap to pry the animal open and access the sweet meat within.
“Doug lives on the mainland,” Mr. Parks says. “He works for a middle-man in the crabbing industry.”
“Yup. Six days a week, I drive the trawler here and buy the day’s catch. These crabs will be in Toronto by tomorrow morning.”
Doug lifts one crab and others follow, all pinched together. A contented smile spreads under Doug’s US Navy cap.
“Show her how to hypnotize a crab.”
Doug pries a crab from the crowd, palms it backside down, and draws slow circles on its belly. Legs grow still and relax open; claws droop. My mouth hangs loose, lulled by the tenderness of so small a gesture.
“This here’s a male.” I’m surprised Doug’s not whispering. “You can tell by the length of this pull tab. Ya see? The female’s tabs are more like half-circles.” Another pair of Watermen pull alongside and Doug efficiently repacks the sleeping crab. They exchange bushel baskets—empty for full. The locals drive off.
“So that fellow gave you only three baskets of crabs. Is that typical?” I ask.
“Oh no. Crabb’n is way down. That fellow put in ten hours of work, paid for a day’s fuel and a man and earned fifteen-dollars per bushel. How can you feed a family on that?”
I’m shocked. The fish market in Wisconsin will sell me a bushel of crabs for more than two hundred dollars. I assumed the Watermen profited. But it seems crabbing is ecologically unsustainable when the harvest is large, and financially unsustainable when the harvest is small. Once more, the sensation of speaking with ghosts from another time sweeps over me. Doug and his boat shimmer with impermanence.
“Can we buy two dozen crabs?”
“Sure. That’ll be eighteen dollars.”
“Oh wow—what a deal!”
Dave stows the crabs in Wild Hair’s storage box next to extra cans of soda. “Honey, look at this.” The box is alive. “How are you going to cook all these crabs with our small pots and stove?”
“I don’t know, in shifts?”
I look up and three recreational sailboats motor past the sea wall and turn toward the marina. Mr. Parks starts to scramble to accommodate the arrivals. Dave looks at me. “Should we go?” Wild Hair’s engine has been running to charge the refrigeration system, so it’s warmed up.
Dave’s question lands heavy. I’m smitten with Tangier. But climate change, needed conservation policies, and meager harvests are extinguishing this culture’s flame. There isn’t enough money to shore up a future here. I was welcomed as a member of the community. I’ve attended Tangier’s funeral and walked among ghosts from the past and the future. A kernel of insight sprouts: I will be of best service to these people if I leave but share their story.
“Mr. Parks,” I shout above the activity. “We will go to make things easier for you and your new guests.”
“You don’t have to rush off—”
“No, that’s OK. Thank you for being a perfect host. We’ve seen what we needed to see and are grateful to you for your hospitality.”
Mr. Parks raises an affable hand and looks down to untie our line. Cats paw the loose rope near the cleat.
“Be well.” I step behind the helm, feeling determined to do something and satisfied over the friendships that formed. Dave and Mr. Parks finish the job of casting off.
I spin Wild Hair about and narrowly dodge a Waterman delivering the day’s catch into Doug’s hands. Mr. Parks raises his gaze and signals the next visitor to take Wild Hair’s place.
REFLECTIONS ON ETHICS
I don’t know why I suspected the men and women of Tangier might be different from people living on the mainland. Maybe it was the stories of forced feline adoptions and environmental clashes that set off flares in my head. But now I know the residents of Tangier to be moral, decent, and fair. Like me, they want to rise above past harm they inadvertently caused to restore communion with others and nature. We share the same struggle to know what to do when everything is off-kilter. Lessons on how to live handed down by our parents and grandparents don’t make sense. We’re confused. Facing an uncertain future, I too am tempted to double-down on my modus operandi, do things business-as-usual to take care of my own—to hell with the rest. And yet, these people demonstrated there’s another option—one that involves the personal work of digging deep and finding courage to open our hearts, live our ethics, and shift our behavior.
Me change? That’s radical and a bit terrifying, actually. And yet on Tangier, relationships on and off the island and with the blue crab population shifted for the better because a small subset of islanders—not everyone—found courage enough to live their deepest values, and their actions transformed the hearts and minds of the majority on and off the island.
Even so, the applicability of Emmerich’s methods to resolving conflicts within the general public is questionable. Cross-sections of America don’t subscribe to the same religion and some shun religion altogether. (There’s also the risk of unskillful leadership—well-intentioned do-gooders mucking with sensitive cultural issues they little understand.) Is it possible to articulate a global spiritual ethic capable of uniting people around the world in caring for Earth, each other, and our fellow earthlings? Maybe. But I’m not all that concerned about everyone agreeing on a single ethic and choose to focus instead on how people might consistently apply to their lives the ethical teaching they already know and are comfortable with. I’d be ecstatic if people practiced the codes they knew and trusted because the ethical roots of all spiritual traditions are remarkably similar.
I’ll use the ethical guidelines created by Thich Nhat Hanh as an example. In his Five Mindfulness Trainings,25 Thay says we are to protect life, practice generosity, abstain from sexual misconduct, speak and listen with care, and consume in ways that do not cause harm. This sounds familiar, yes? Nothing about these guidelines is particularly controversial, but in my experience applying them to daily living is tough. For example, every time I do something as simple as boiling water, I kill germs and bacteria. It would seem I can’t protect life 100 percent of the time. Sometimes, because human perceptions are inherently flawed, I say things I don’t realize are false. And I can’t always anticipate or avoid unintended consequences arising from the food, medicine, travel, and entertainment I consume. This makes the application of ethical guidelines an imperfect art. Yet, there is value in trying, learning, adjusting course, and trying again.
Society would catapult toward new territories of ecological and social justice if a significant subset of us applied our personal ethics deeply to daily living: if politicians didn’t try and kill each other or exploit opportunities, but instead focused on providing policies, education, and material resources to those in need and helping people do for themselves; if industries minimized killing while seeking profit and made deep commitments to sustainable production methods; and if every person protected life by eating only half as much meat, buying locally produced goods, using less energy and water, and minimizing fossil fuel-based transportation.
I’ve gotten better at applying ethical principles to the fine grain of daily living these past few years through deep looking, and trial and error. I’ve learned to stop and ask myself before I take action, “Does my plan harm myself or others now or in the future?” In the midst of a conversation I often do a reality check and ask, “Are my words helping or hurting the situation?” Crawling into bed at the end of the day, I reflect, “Was I skillful today in protecting Earth, her people, and her creatures?” More and more, I’m turning to plant-based recipes and figuring out how to prepare satisfying vegan meals. Bit by bit mindfulness brings my ethics to life and helps me avoid unskillful actions. I practice in this way because I know deep down the truth of what Thay says: actions that create suffering—now or in the future—are wrong, and actions that bring peace and well-being to both me and others are right.
Living ethically is a subtle and deep practice that I find requires vigilance and monitoring. I make mistakes when I think I know what others will say, stop listening, deny people’s reality, or lean into the self-serving interest of my tribe. I’m not using careful speech when I exaggerate my message or stir anger or fear in someone else. I’m not immune to the toxicity of my own strong emotions, and sometimes I blame others and compound tensions by spewing harsh words. Imperfect as I am, practice has made me a whole lot better at buttoning my lip before I say or do anything destructive, and I’ve personally experienced how the effort has made the people around me a whole lot happier, too. This is what the nuts and bolts of living ethically feels like to me.
But here’s the rub: ethical boundaries grow increasingly inconvenient as conflict and what’s at stake escalate. A noble end can seductively lure any one of us to employ harsh means. But unskillful actions fan flames of anger, fear, and sorrow. Conversely, ethical actions cultivate confidence and peace between people. The codes of behavior handed down to us through generations help us live in ways that manifest justice and healing here and now. Our hopes for the future flower in the present.
Humankind’s common moral core is neither a superficial, sentimental nicety nor a deep intimacy we share only with close family and friends. Ethics are public boundaries with the power to save us from hurting ourselves and others, and every spiritual tradition promotes them for this reason.
Happily, in 2015, the number of spawning age female blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay increased. But unfortunately, by my math, sea level rose by a half inch and the island’s land mass subsided by an equal amount, for a combined total of one additional inch of flooding in just the few years since my visit to Tangier. Additionally, wind and sea action chewed up and swallowed somewhere between forty-nine and sixty-three acres of land. There are ecological processes at work that even humankind’s highest ethical standards cannot alter. A moral code doesn’t guarantee we will get what we want; it won’t save Tangier real estate from disappearing into the bay. But ethics can protect and honor the people and culture of Tangier and help ease the transition as islanders make a new beginning.
Recently, Dave forwarded me an article from the New York Times with the headline, “Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees.’ ”26 As I took it in, similarities between the featured Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana and Tangier Island in Virginia leapt off the screen. They are two, miniscule, waterlogged mounds considered by experts to be among the places most vulnerable to rising sea level; they possess unique histories with insular cultures whose members are hurling toward rapid change; a lack of consensus frays the communities’ social fabric as residents wrestle individually with the difficult decision to stay or go; both island communities have a long list of reasons to disdain government; and yet their homelands cannot be set right and continue into the future by any of the known tools in engineers’ kit bags. They need help.
Reading further, it dawns on me the people of Isle de Jean Charles are a lucky bunch. The Department of Housing and Urban Development just granted them $48 million in the first-ever federal grant to relocate an entire population to higher, dryer ground. Lock, stock, and barrel. The goal is to transplant sixty people to a new homeland, en masse, within six years, for the whopping sum of $800,000 per person. That’s like winning the climate disruption lottery, big time.
Even so, the job won’t be easy. The two Native American tribes living on Isle de Jean Charles haven’t always seen eye to eye and their leaders have to find a way to agree upon where to go and who can join them. The twin sovereign nations are afraid to lose their claim to the land of their ancestors. They worry about being accepted in their new locale, and finding work. Three failed attempts to cut and paste the community into a new environment in the past dozen-or-so years whittle at their confidence. Those efforts collapsed under the weight of logistics and politics.
I admire the fact they are not waiting until conditions are desperate, but planning ahead, making choices, proactively sculpting a preferred future. These people are leading the way to figure out how to keep a community together while extracting itself from flooding, crumbling infrastructure, dying agriculture, salt-water inundated aquifers, and storms. This small group of men and women are setting a precedent for how society-at-large can relocate thousands from coastal hubs in places as far-flung as Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, the Gulf Coast, the Eastern Shore, and also low-lying coastal lands around the world. Eyes are upon them and lessons learned in Louisiana may even offer clues to South Florida on how to move millions.
I find myself cheering for the members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe and United Houma Nation. Yes, hidden land mines litter their path, but no doubt their spiritual traditions have ethical codes capable of establishing clear boundaries for decision making. As inconvenient as they will be, ethics can make a critical difference in this high stakes moment. How likely is it that they will turn toward their ethics? I close my eyes and—prayer-like—urge them to resist temptations to gain financial advantage during negotiations, and find ways to behave selflessly for the well-being of all members of the community. I press upon every person in the resettlement effort to listen deeply to what others are saying and not saying and speak only words that they are certain will help. I privately advocate for the men and women of Isle de Jean Charles to embody their brand of ethics in bringing to life a new homeland—one that incorporates the best sustainable energy and green technologies, so the community can live and thrive in ways that offer prosperity, peace, and healing to themselves and to Earth.
I wish the same for residents of Tangier, and I suspect the deeply Christian community of Tangier has it in them to be modern-day Noahs. From what I’ve seen, residents here have the wherewithal to follow the Old Testament figure’s lead in being among the first to adapt to a changing climate by letting go of their homeland and starting anew. Ethics opened the path toward healing once already for them in recent history. It’s time for ethics—as a public framework for decision-making—to move center stage again. Tangier residents can lead themselves out of difficulty by starting a conversation on how and when to leave, where to go, who will go with them, how they will make a living, and about the ways in which Watermen and their families can continue to access the land and resources of their grandparents. The clock is ticking. By all accounts, they likely have more than six years to relocate, but I doubt they have the thirty years Miami Beach is counting on.
Below is a meditation I wrote to help me apply my ethics when making everyday decisions. It’s a spiritual tool that helps me dig deep and see what needs to be done. This meditation is especially useful when the stakes are high or when I’m especially challenged to change my behavior.
Breathing in, I am aware of the harm I cause using
thoughts, words, and actions that kill.
Breathing out, I aspire not to kill.
In, killing thoughts, words, and actions.
Out, aspire not to kill.
(Ten breaths)
Breathing in, I am aware of the harm I cause when
I take what doesn’t belong to me.
Breathing out, I aspire not to steal.
In, harmful taking from others.
Out, aspire not to steal.
(Ten breaths)
Breathing in, I am aware of the harm I cause when I
engage in or support sexual misconduct.
Breathing out, I aspire to refrain from sexual misconduct.
In, harmful sexual misconduct.
Out, aspire to refrain.
(Ten breaths)
Breathing in, I am aware of the harm I cause
when I speak unskillfully.
Breathing out, I aspire to say what is true in
ways that inspire confidence.
In, the harm of unskillful speech.
Out, true words spoken skillfully.
(Ten breaths)
Breathing in, I am aware of the harm I cause people,
society, and Earth when I consume unmindfully.
Breathing out, I aspire to moderate my consumption
and exercise mindfulness in my purchases.
In, harm from unmindful consumption.
Out, consume with care.
(Ten breaths)
