Cooperative Living October 2021 - 10

ExploreMore | by Amanda S. Creasey, Outdoors Writer
Enjoy an 'Ugly' Day
on Tangier Island
Outsized charm on a shrinking outpost
T
he day is already hot when my
parents, my friend, her son, my
dogs and I board the Chesapeake
Breeze in Reedville, Va., on a late August
morning. The air is still and warm, the
sun is strong despite the early hour
and my skin is already sticky with
perspiration. We settle on the second
level, near the front of the vessel, and
with a startling blast of the horn, it
begins to lumber away from the dock.
After about an hour and a half,
we dock at Tangier Island. A stark,
white cross standing in the gray, stone
seawall welcomes visitors who arrive
by ferry with the faded inscription
" For God so loved the world. "
Two churches serve the island and
seem to knit the community together
much the same way the seawalls
bind the island, anchoring it in the
middle of the wide, wet bay so eager
to devour it.
Marlene McCready, who volunteers
at the local museum two days a week
tells me, " Our church and Danny's
church, " - she gestures towards a
fellow volunteer, sitting in a swivel
chair a few feet away - " is refuge. "
Danny attends the non-denominational
8 | Cooperative Living | October 2021
New Testament Church, while she
attends the Swain Memorial United
" It's a spiritual community, " Mayor
James " Ooker " Eskridge will tell me
later, when we meet to talk beside
RECEDING ISLAND
On a day like today, the bay doesn't
seem that hungry for Tangier's soil.
A day like today is known to the locals
as " ugly, " precisely because it's not.
" We have our own language, really, our
own accent, " Eskridge says. " We maybe
talk backwards. Like, we say, 'It ain't
We say, 'Man, this was an ugly day,'
Ugly or nice, it's difficult to
believe this bathtub of a bay,
stretched to the horizon as
flat as a fitted sheet spread
across a bed, is eating away
at the island. But as I sit
in the shade of a picnic
pavilion and wait for
Eskridge, eavesdropping
on several men speaking
a dialect so thick I don't
recognize a word, I remark aloud about
the serenity of the water.
A blue-eyed, gray-haired man sitting
with his back to the bay says, " It's a
mistake people make, thinking the
water is like this all the time. " Some
days, the waves have teeth, and gnaw
relentlessly away at the island's edges.
There are many theories as to why
Tangier is shrinking: Rising sea levels
due to climate change; subsidence,
the idea that the land itself is settling;
and erosion. Though sea-level rise
brought on by climate change is often
blamed for Tangier's shrinking shores,
the real cause may be a bit more
nuanced. Scott Hardaway, associate
research scientist at Virginia Institute
of Marine Sciences, conducted a study
and report on the island in
2004, and focused on The
Uppards, the northern
part of Tangier.
He explains that the
issue now isn't necessarily
sea level rise; it's the
accelerated rate. Fifty years
ago, sea levels rose about
1 foot every 100 years.
" Now, " Hardaway says,
co-opliving.com
PHOTOS COURTESY JAMIE WULFEKUHLE-ZAWESKI
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living October 2021

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