An Island Out of Time

by Rebecca Hyde Rowan Public Library

            If you locate the town of Crisfield on the eastern shore of Maryland and then go ten miles out into the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, you’ll find Smith Island, a fishing community of about five hundred people.  It is the focus of Tom Horton’s book, “An Island Out of Time :  A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake,” in which the author describes the island community through history, changes of season, natural cycles, ecological changes, and through the daily lives of the island people, who try to make a living, raise families, and maintain their community in the midst of all this fluctuation.  The book is not a dry, research report.  The author had a “stake” in the community where he lived for a time, and he firmly believes  that we all share that stake.

 Horton had reported for the Baltimore Sun on the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Smith Island Environmental Education Center.  In 1987, he accepted the offer of an Education Manager’s position.  He and his wife left jobs on the mainland, rented their Baltimore house, and took up residence, with their two school-age children, in a 170-year-old house with thirty-six windows, each having “a view you would pay serious money for on the mainland”  (and half facing “broadside to the North Pole,” which the family discovered their first winter).  The consequences of his decision Horton experienced one dark and stormy night, when taking by boat his severely asthmatic child to a mainland hospital.  All those “good” reasons for moving might not have amounted to much. 

The family lived on the island until 1989.  During the stay, Horton collected evidence of why the island and its inhabitants, human and nonhuman, have flourished and declined.  The blue crab is a symbol of the region’s success, and the Chesapeake, a good “final exam” to grade civilization on how it achieves a long-term, stable accommodation between nature and human populations.

Horton provides an update in the 2008 edition of his book.  He has never really left the island.  He maintains a house there and returns every month or so.  Island population is down but “not out.”  Water business alone can’t support life there, but who can avoid “the island’s allure” for kayakers and birdwatchers?  Horton invites you to visit the website www.visitsmithisland.com and make plans.