Letter to Editor: A Vanishing Way of Life

I am currently reading the book, Chesapeake Requiem, which was recommended to me by a friend. It was written in 2016 and chronicles the year its author, Earl Swift, spent with the watermen and other residents of Tangier Island. I have found it to be a fascinating and disturbingly sad read. It has taught me a great deal about crabbing and the life cycle of crabs as well as the daily routines of watermen and others who live on the Island. Their way of life is vanishing. According to the 2020 census, the town’s population was 436, at least half of whom were senior citizens. At its peak, in the 1940’s, the town’s population was 1250. Tangier Island has also lost 67% of its land mass since 1850. It is literally being swallowed up by Chesapeake Bay. Thus, the Island, its people, and their way of life are facing real extinction.

Reading this book has been a painful pleasure for me. While I am enjoying learning about this very isolated part of the world and its culture, I am keenly aware that even in 2016, when the book was written, Tangier Island was in a state of sinking deterioration from which it would not be able to recover. And despite not personally knowing anyone from Tangier or ever having set foot on its shores, I have felt saddened and upset while reading about this.

When I tune into what I am actually feeling, it is a visceral sensation of being punched in the gut, almost as though I can’t catch my breath. When I ask myself why I might be feeling this so intensely, it occurs to me that our current political climate has threatened us with a different kind of extinction. And much like the watermen and the other residents of Tangier Island, we complain about the changes that are happening in our midst, and then go about our day-to-day lives as though this is not really happening. I pray that, unlike Tangier Island, our country will recover from the greed, racism, and oligarchic fascism that have been biting at our shores and eroding our way of life. However, I am not sure we will be able to beat back this storm. Too many of us are asleep. Too many of us are selfish. Too many of us are complacent, too many of us are brainwashed, and too many of us are afraid to stand up to the routine cruelty and fear being used by the current regime to vanquish our freedoms.

While the end of Tangier Island seems to be a certainty, I think it is too early to say that about our democratic way of life. Perhaps the roots of our Constitution run deeper than we think. Perhaps the values of liberty, justice, and decency will be able to weather this storm. It is possible that the storm will turn out to be a clarifying and cleansing force, prompting us to let go of non-truths and embrace the democratic principles necessary for our survival. The one thing that seems clear from the many storms that Tangier Island has weathered over the years is that the longer the storm, the more damage it did, and the longer it took to repair. We will see how much damage this current storm does and how long it will take for these dark and menacing winds to finally subside.

Margot Weiss McClellan
Easton