One of the calling cards of Outdoors Maryland is focusing on Maryland’s diversity. One of the reasons I love Maryland is because 2 hours from my house one direction and I’m on top of a 3000-foot mountain, but 2 hours in the other direction and I’m staring out at the Atlantic Ocean. To me, western, eastern, and central Maryland each have a different feel to them.
I define the Eastern Shore as Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne’s, Caroline, Talbot, Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset, and Worcester Counties. In my opinion, the Mason-Dixon Line is not the best indicator of North vs. South. I prefer an imaginary line between Washington DC and Baltimore. Everything east is the South, everything west is the North. The Eastern Shore has a distinctly southern feel to it that central and western Maryland don’t have.
First off, like many southern roads, I-50 is flat and dead-straight. Fields that stretch to the horizon, hunting blinds, roadside ditches filled with red-stained rainwater, and symmetrically-planted pine trees populate the road sides. Shade is harder to come by. Since I have family on the rural Gulf Coast of Florida, I’ve spent a great deal of time in the authentic South, and parts of the Eastern Shore remind me of it.
Most people on I-50 are tourists heading to Delaware or Ocean City, heads down in their phones, seeing but not taking in what’s around them. If you’re willing to veer from the highway, there’s a plethora of backwoods towns that perfectly encapsulate what I call the Chesapeake watermen culture. The Hooper Islands, Crisfield, and Deale Island are my favorite examples. Eastern Shore residents like to know how to do everything themselves. I think this stems from decades of families working together on the water. Work skills are not explicitly taught, people just figure them out and get experience. This is very apparent in the captains and deckhands on fishing boats. Once, I was staying with some friends who live in one of these watermen towns on the Eastern Shore, and we had to install a ceiling fan and some TV mounts. So they just did it; they didn’t need instructions. They just already knew how to bolt things in drywall and correctly connect electrical wires. I was amazed and just thought “wow, anyone back home would not know how to do this unless they were a construction worker.”
Eastern Shore residents are connected to their land. Residents know all the towns and people in each. They just know their surroundings better. Again, I think this stems from a history of living off of what the Bay provides. The Eastern Shore rises early and gets to work. Like down south, Wawas and Royal Farms are packed in the mornings as everyone gets their breakfast sandwiches. People talk to each other at the gas stations. There is a rare Eastern Shore accent. If someone has to make a left and they can see no one is coming in the opposite direction, they move into the other direction of traffic before slowing down so as not to obstruct cars behind them. The local farmer's stand is their grocery store. Trucks are used as trucks, not urban eye candy. An ATV or tractor on the road is just as normal as a car. Fishermen pulling onto the shoulder to fish off a bridge is not only safe, but normal. And although you might get some weird looks driving through watermen towns where tourists are rare, I find people on the Eastern Shore are the most outgoing in Maryland.
After I drive off the Bay Bridge onto Kent Island, I roll down all my windows and take in the Eastern Shore air. It’s still hot and humid, but the Bay breeze keeps it from being overbearing. At night, frogs and toads are sounding off everywhere. Last time, I went crazy catching tree frogs and toads in none other than the Easton Harris Teeter parking lot. Nature is more prevalent everywhere on the Eastern Shore. At night, owls and whip-poor-wills can be heard over the water.
Maybe it’s just me, but the Eastern Shore has a sort of mysticism. If the land could talk, I know it would have a great story. From Native American confederacies to early colonialism, southern plantations, and the watermen culture, the Shore’s history is deep, diverse, and under-appreciated. Every parcel of land has a story of what’s been on it, whereas Western Maryland is a story of nature still holding the land. But I’m afraid the Eastern Shore mysticism is dying out. The watermen are being swallowed up. Literally, as Maryland largest inhabited island went underwater for good 70 years ago, and metaphorically, as people move away. The jobs that made the Eastern Shore unique aren’t as profitable, and family tradition is being lost. Slowly, the Eastern Shore is becoming Central Maryland’s playground; Easton and St. Michael’s are practically vacant in the winter. The families who once sent oysters and crabs to Baltimore through the ferry at Tolchester Beach are now cutting grass and treating pools for the second and third houses of DC lobbyists and lawyers. While I understand modernization is good and we shouldn’t actively fight it, it still makes me sad to know history is fading in the mirror.
Every time I cross the Bay Bridge I make a happy memory, and it makes me sad to cross to the Western Shore because I know a good day is ending. Outdoors recreation and appreciation is ingrained in the Eastern Shore. It’s a part of its past and present. Nowhere else in Maryland is nature so much a part of the people.
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