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August 16, 2022

The Chestertown Spy

An Educational News Source for Chestertown Maryland

Arts Delmarva Review Top Story

Delmarva Review: From Hell’s Half-Mile to Powerhouse by Sue Eisenfeld

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Author’s Note: At middle age, I went on one of the most exciting outdoor adventures of my life. While I was there, the experience reminded me of a similar adventure I had done when I was going through my “quarter-life crisis” that I had kind of forgotten about. What did it mean to bounce these two trips off each other, to mirror one against the other? What had I learned, if anything, from then until now. It took me four years of writing this essay to find the story, to find and realize what these trips had taught me about myself and the ways life and age change us all.

From Hell’s Half-Mile to Powerhouse

No woman ever steps in the same river twice, 

for it’s not the same river, 

and she’s not the same woman. 

  —with thanks to Heraclitus, et al. 

A  COWBOY, a fireman, a fisheries biologist, two foresters, two botanists, three nurses, six guides, plus a naturalist and a writer, walk onto the rafts. This is no joke: From places near and far, we descended upon Idaho and chartered a backcountry plane to drop us off in the middle of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, the largest roadless area in the lower 48, to begin a six-day whitewater adventure on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, one of the deepest gorges in North America. 

With two years of angst and anxiety under my belt in anticipation of this trip, I choose one of the “leisure boats” with Neil and some others. The leisure boat is the “safe” boat in my mind, an oar raft where a very well-trained guide, to whom we are paying a hefty sum, does all the work of rowing and maneuvering and keeping us from harm, and we guests just sit on top, amid the luggage, equipment, and supplies, and enjoy the view, 2.3 million acres of jagged western wilderness. 

Two years is a lot of time to know something is coming in advance and to think about it and worry about it and come up with all the ways injury and death could occur, or at least discomfort. Over the past twenty-four months, every time the river trip crossed my mind, my stomach lurched. Anytime it was mentioned aloud and a friend oohed and aahed over the opportunity I would have, all I could say was that I hoped to make it back alive. I was serious about that. I did not want to fall out of the raft into the icy water, hit my head on a rock, break an arm or a leg, get caught in a “window shade,” drown, or any of the other river catastrophes I’d heard about. I wanted adventure, but, at middle age, I wanted to come home unscathed. 

Even though I’m on the leisure boat and we’ve had a brief safety training, I’m still nervous about some other unknowns, such as whether Neil and I will sleep well while camping. And what about the bathroom situation?—will we have enough time in the morning, with twenty-eight other people, to do our business? On the raft, will we be self-conscious of our bodies, not so tight and firm anymore? 

And how will I fit into this crowd? We are with twenty of Neil’s old friends and their spouses from when he lived in Idaho thirty years ago working as a surveyor for the U.S. Forest Service. The group lucked out with a permit gained through a lottery system and organized the trip to reunite after one man’s newfound health after overcoming cancer, to celebrate recovery, retirements, and annual rebirth. At age forty-six, I am the youngest of this group of sixty-and seventy-somethings, and Neil’s retirement from teaching at a nature center is one year away. All these older folks seem joyful and free spirited and unafraid, and yet I’m still obsessing that this trip might be my last. 

As we shove away from the launch site at Boundary Creek and start out bobbing under a cloudless sky of cerulean blue, I recite my mantra in my head: I will not fall out of the raft. I cannot find an unawkward strap to hold on to as we nearly immediately hit a series of rapids—Sulphur Slide, Ramshorn Rapid, Hell’s Half-Mile, Velvet Falls, and The Chutes—and one person on my raft, a retiree who spends half the year in Arizona and half in Mexico, somehow loses her balance and does a sort of half backflip over the side of the raft. Then she gracefully rewinds herself back in, a maneuver that resolves itself so fast that no one, including her, even knows how it happened. It is like a mirage. She doesn’t even get wet. 

Before I know it, we’ve glided over a bunch of churning disturbances—rock gardens—with ease, no doubt due to the deft maneuvering on the part of the experienced guide, and the day begins to open for me; the crushing fear releases its hold a bit. I can see the churning ahead—the wide highway of slate gray, khaki green river, with occasional areas of bubbling white froth and peaks like sharks rising. Sometimes the water gets darker, a moonlight blue next to deep boulders; sometimes the canyon narrows, or an obstacle appears that agitates the water. And then the raft bounces and jostles over whatever’s underneath causing the riffles, and our bodies jiggle side to side, front to back—we have to allow ourselves a looseness of form, a sway of hips and spine, and go with the “river massage” when it’s offered—and we get splashed with icy buckets of snowmelt. But then, in a moment, the water is calm again, see-through to the bottom, covered in bowling-ball boulders. 

The raft, I start to remember from a time long ago, with its air and loft, cushions the rapids. I don’t even come close to falling out in the first few hours. This expert guide team has run this river hundreds of times, scouting many of the three hundred rapids, memorizing each curve and eddy to perfection, knowing each drop during the 3,100 feet of descent and the one hundred tributaries that will join the Middle Fork along the way. I dare, for the first time in weeks or months, to let out my breath. 

——

IN OUR FIRST DAY’S ORIENTATION, learning about river life and the types of rafts we can float on this trip, one of our guides, who wants us to revel in our good fortune of being here, tells us with dramatic emphasis and pauses that we are thirty of only ten thousand people in the world who will get to experience this river this year. Ten thousand seems like a lot of people to me, and I will be perplexed in days to come when we camp at well- worn beaches and in forests with clear human-made paths and established tent sites and see numerous other rafts and dozens of other people every day along the river—eco-groovy families and guided fishermen in dories—because these imprints of humans don’t jibe with my idea of wilderness. 

It is upon first mention of this number of people that I recall my previous, and first, river trip, on the North Fork of the Koyukuk River in Alaska. We didn’t see another person in six days on the river, and groups (if there were any other than us) were not even allowed to travel with more than six people. We didn’t sign up for reserved campsites in advance; we floated up to whatever sandy or rocky beach we came across and set up camp whenever we wished, day or night, in the land of the midnight sun, leaving no trace of our fleeting habitation. 

Up there, in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, above the Arctic Circle, only two thousand people visited the entire 8.4 million-acre park each year; our group of four participants and two instructor-guides saw only two people in eighteen days, passing them on foot during the backpacking portion of our trip, which was odd because there are no roads and no trails in the hummocks and scree fields of the Brooks Range. 

I was twenty-five then, with only a few years of camping and backpacking experience, no river experience, no expectations, not much knowledge, and not much fear, entering a place where proficiency in wilderness skills was necessary for survival. I was an Alaskaphile, and the Outward-Bound trip was the best way I had figured out to get to see the inner sanctum of Alaska that few people ever visit. More importantly, it was the way I had decided to address what I called my “quarter-life crisis” and take stock of what I was doing with my life, whether the office job and corporate ladder track was where I wanted to be. 

In August of that year, 1996, whitewater was sparse on the river; I would learn later that the North Fork of the Koyukuk was only a Class I and II river, not expected to have much more than ripples—and the water was low that summer, so low that our group had to paddle hard all day, every day, to get anywhere, blistering my hands and splitting my fingers into bloody canyons from the wetness and friction. I was unaccustomed to that kind of work. As I was the oldest participant on the trip and the only one with a job, one of the three nineteen-year-olds who were my trip- mates nicknamed me “Office Hands.” 

I may be the only one with a job on this trip as well, self- employed with my multiple part-time gigs. But unlike the Outward-Bound adventure, whose mission was to change lives through challenge and discovery and for which I had hoped for self-reflection but gained none and to make lifelong friendships but did not, I’m not here in Idaho on this river with these people to learn anything about myself or to prove anything to myself or to change anything or to gain any new skills or necessarily to bond with anyone. I’m here on this mid-life river trip in Idaho in support of Neil and his friends, and it’s supposed to be for fun and relaxation and an abandonment of responsibilities and all life’s “shoulds”; to be taken care of, cooked for, and cleaned up after. I’m not looking back to the ghosts of lives I could have led; I’m not looking ahead to life’s next act. 

With the Alaska memory sparked, my body begins to remember that it has already been on a river. It recalls the way the raft glides over a patch of silky water, slipping on top of a surface boulder and making no splash on the descent. It knows that the bubbles in the brewing beast only indicate the deepest water, not something more sinister; that the river points our best route forward with arrows of whitewater, nature’s subtle navigation signal; and that a jarring bounce off a boulder will send the raft into a backwards twirl. I begin to recognize the river like a home I once knew, a dream I once had, a meal prepared for me in a foreign land that waters my mouth once again. 

The snake of the river slices through tall, straight, and relatively young evergreen trees like lodgepole pine, covering the brown mountains around us like a porcupine, hour after hour. Though a significantly different landscape than my regular environment in Virginia, the high desert color palette is unending and unchanging. I feel like a dead twig watching the scenery go by, bored by the inactivity on the leisure boat, while our guides seem to be relishing the mystery and thrill of each new moment of “man versus river.” I start to consider that I have five more days of passive unengagement, and by the end of the day I decide I will become a more active participant and hop on the paddle boat instead, where a guide gives commands from the back to four to eight of us paddlers who make up the crew and do the work. After this single day on the river, I no longer fear the Class III (“medium”), and Class IV (“difficult”) rapids I had built up in my mind for more than seven hundred days, that torrent of water plunging a gradient steeper than the Colorado River traveling down the Grand Canyon. I don the Neoprene gloves I brought to prevent “office hands,” and I slide back into the rhythms of the river I remember. 

——

IN ALASKA, there was no question that we would never fall into the water because there were no significant rapids. But before this Idaho trip, I had wondered, intensely, how people sitting with one butt cheek on the side edge of the raft, paddling through high and irregular waves, roiling waters, tight turns, and dangerous holes could possibly stay in the boat on a Class II – IV river. 

I learn it on day two. 

It’s a matter of weight, friction, and force. I jam my inside foot under a baffle that runs across the center of the raft, and I jam my outside foot under the side of the raft until I am stuck. Neither leg, really, is in the right plane with itself: my shins are at a wrong angle compared to my knees, and my thighs are also at a wrong angle compared to my knees, as well as compared to my ankles, hips, and torso. At the end of a paddling day, I’ll discover, the tendons, joints, ligaments, and fascia of my legs will have taken a beating without even having walked. And despite wearing neoprene booties inside my Keens, my toenails and skin become nasty from my feet sitting in cold water all day. But the essential miracle here, and what I hang onto is: with the feet tucked in as such, I do not seem to be able to fall out of the raft. 

Thus, I find my groove. I test out paddling on the right side of the raft, find it awkward even as I am right-handed, and then discover my good side on the left. I find out too that attacking the shark fins of curling waves in whitewater with our paddles in a metronomic rhythm keeps us in the raft. What looks monstrous, I realize quickly, can be stabbed into submission by human force and the friction of plastic against water. In my green hard-hat helmet, as the parched brown dryness of the rugged, mountain landscape drifts by, I jab the boiling water with gusto that afternoon. Like in Alaska, where my survival and that of five others depended on each of us learning to play an active role, I am pleasantly confident in taking back some of the responsibility for my survival. 

I settle into a spot as the second paddler on the left behind the fireman/paramedic who offers the group a variety of legal and illegal painkillers, smooth-talks the men and women alike with a conspiratory close-in lean, and who apparently earned the nickname “Hollywood” when he was young. He’s still thin and handsome, grey-haired now, and he knows how to set and keep a pace, which is what the guides tell him is his job as the foreman. I try to mimic him exactly. Lean forward with my whole upper body, dig in or spear the water with my paddle, pull back; lean forward, dig in, pull back. We paddle up to thirty strokes at a time upon the guide’s command: “forward,” “back,” or “drift.” One stab at a time, like the daily, weekly, annual, and lifelong journey navigating the river of life, aiming toward some shore, launching back into the waters, repeat. 

In this way, we conquer Powerhouse Rapids, Artillery Rapids, Cannon Creek Rapids, and Pistol Creek Rapid, the sound of each preceding its presence, almost a spreading open of the river like a zipper as the whitewater unfurls around us and we pass through.

 

——

THE MIDDLE FORK OF THE SALMON is a 100-mile Wild and Scenic River, protected by Congress in 1968 in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which means it is a free-flowing river with no dams, and so water levels are dictated by nature, not by man. This status is a rare occurrence in the nation now. According to the nonprofit organization American Rivers, less than one percent of America’s rivers are wild and free. Instead, most are dammed for recreation, water storage, hydroelectric power, irrigation, and flood control. Here, in mid-July, the waters are considered to be at three-and-a-half feet, and we will travel on average sixteen miles a day over six days, whereas just a month ago in June, waters were at nine feet and the guides traveled the river in about two days due to the great volume and speed of the torrent. 

The North Fork of the Koyukuk in Alaska is also a 100-mile Wild and Scenic River, but I didn’t know that then. On that trip, I was four years out of college, veering off the typical path already, taking a month off work with a plan to write about the journey, plunging myself into the outer reaches of my comfort zone for the first time. I literally had no map. 

I had never hiked, camped, or backpacked without Neil or been without him in an outdoor adventure setting at all, having been raised as a city girl who never even learned how to ride a bike. He taught me everything I knew in the outdoors: survival, weather, maps, gear. I had been a follower in all of it, though, not a leader, not even a team player. I had never walked such a thin rope all by myself as in Alaska. 

I thought the great life lessons of the trip would come from the deep connections I would form with people traveling the same path—literally by my side while doing all of the work of surviving in such a backcountry area, a grizzly-bear habitat, completely off the grid including sometimes without radio contact, without any tethers of human civilization, a situation that was wholly unfamiliar to me—as well as going through similar or forthcoming stages of life; people who understood me, who could help me see a path. But the instructors had placed me into the group of teens rather than the other group of thirty- and forty- year-olds. How was I supposed to learn anything about myself with kids who still had mom and dad cooking their meals back home and who were sent here by their parents, while I was a professional in the workforce, having worked for my own funds to attend this trip, with a soon-to-be-husband back home? 

While I was teaching those teenagers how to make a cheese sauce with the last few ingredients we had left late in the trip, I was also backpacking with a pack that weighed about half my body weight, 70 pounds, traversing a scree field a thousand or more feet high on a path we created that was the width of our own boot prints, and navigating alone in my head the complicated mental challenges of a group leader with anger management issues, the physical demands of the journey, and what it was all supposed to teach me about myself. 

Now in Idaho, a half a lifetime later, I notice I’m infinitely more adept at all the rituals that being a traveling caravan off the grid and on the river requires. And although Neil and I are here together, he decides to stay on the leisure boat, so we don’t spend the trip side by side. I choose to have my own separate experience. He takes two optional hikes that I decline on. I revel in the yoga circle our guides lead each morning, finding great comfort, joy, and empowerment in being among a familiar language from my practice back home, while he somehow manages to avoid it every day. 

Perhaps I am at last recognizing the lessons of Alaska; for the first time since that trip twenty-two years ago and the first time in our marriage, I realize I have become my own person. I have, in fact, become—the same way a wild river runs its natural course when allowed to be undammed. 

——

RUNNING THE RIVER STARTS TO SEEM LIKE OLD HAT, and I keep the same position on day three for the drop at Marble Creek Rapids, the drop and jog of Jackass Rapids, and the bend at Island and Riffle. I’m starting to feel pretty badass about my skill set, having remained in the boat so far, and so on day four, which the guides tell us offers the biggest whitewater yet, I am as hungry for the rapids as a wild dog. 

The guides rise at 5:30 a.m. at the start of yet another bluebird day and set out the first breakfast—coffee, yogurt, oatmeal, and fruit—while getting the hot, made-to-order second breakfast underway—eggs, pancakes, bacon, and French toast— to fortify our day’s exertion. We clients shuffle around, having slept well enough and in a private-enough location of our choosing, packing up our own tent and personal things like we do every day, and the guides carry the tents, sleeping pads, drybags, kitchen gear, bathroom gear, and everything else down a treacherous slope to the river and load five boats. Their chores take at least five hours each morning. I appreciate this luxury because in Alaska, we Outward Bound students were the ones making breakfast, cleaning up camp, packing belongings, and loading the rafts, an ordeal that took three to four hours and was hard on the hands. Here, after all the loading, one oarsman or oarswoman takes off, captaining the “sweep,” a Huck-Finn-like freighter raft that carries all our “checked baggage” and camp and kitchen equipment to our next overnight place and sets it up there before we arrive. 

We’ve been bath rooming now for four days, getting through it just fine. In Gates of the Arctic in Alaska, administered by the National Park Service, we were not allowed to put anything into the river: no cooking materials, no body oils, no body fluids or solids. We dug cat-holes in the woods for poop and toilet paper. We had to sing to ourselves to ward off grizzly bears. Here on the Middle Fork, within the Challis, Payette, and Salmon National Forests, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, we’ve been instructed to pee in the river, not on land, because with all the ten thousand people using the same lands, the soil and campsites would start to smell like urine. When we’re on land, men simply unzip and pee directly into the water; women squat at the edge strategically behind a wisp of plant. Or, if we pull over in our raft out of the current for a moment for a pee break, we may all simply hurl ourselves over the side of the raft, wade in the river up to our waists in our pants, and stare at each other across the raft as we pee into the water together in our clothes. All of us are totally used to this now, and it’s far easier than worrying about surviving a grizzly attack. At camp, the guides set up a glorified ammo can called the “groover” for pooping, in a spot set away from camp in the woods with a scenic view of the river. A separate pee bucket for nighttime use is set up in the bathroom-without-walls as well. Among all their other morning chores, the guides also collect and seal the groover and carry it onto the raft for disposal at the end of the journey, and they dump the pee bucket into the river. 

Day four, with its icy white sky, unfolds with Tappan I, Tappan Falls, Tappan II, Tappan III, Aparejo Point Rapids, and Jack Creek Rapids: they range from quick steep drops into large holes, to Class IIIs to IVs that the guides have to get out of the boat and scout in advance, to a series of constricted drops over a half-mile stretch. The team on my boat is fairly solidified now: the fireman, me, and a cadre of 60+-year-old women who are fearless and inspiring, with not a judgmental one among them; women of all shapes and sizes and life experiences: kind, independent, fit, and full of joy—not broken by burdens, despite enduring many of life’s hardest trials. I didn’t come to the river to take inspiration from anyone, and yet these women begin forming a picture in my mind of what a later-life woman can look like, in strength and power, a model I have never even considered that I will need in my days ahead. I had not expected to fall into such easy camaraderie. To my great surprise, this spontaneous bond forms without effort, and our team—all of us who have chosen to be here, on this boat, paddling, fiercely attuned to the moment—attacks the water wordlessly like a fine-tuned machine. 

It is on one of these rapids that, without warning, without dreading it, without planning, without intellectualizing, we come up fast on a large black boulder in the river. In a flash, our large, bulbous, steady, safe vessel that’s been so gentle and protective all week, absorbing all our potential breaks and bruises, veers up vertically on the right in a dramatic 45-degree angle: that perfect moment like in a cartoon when a character is suspended in air before falling. No one screams, no one loses a breath, no one’s stomach knots. 

“Lean!” someone yells, and we enact a maneuver we were trained to do during the first day’s orientation to keep the boat from flipping when it rides up high on one side: Each of us physically stands up, lays forward, or otherwise springs from position in order to lean into that terrifying high side of the boat with our full body weight. And so, all the weight of our eight perfect, imperfect, forgiving, forgiven selves rise up against the forces of gravity trying to take us down, trying to flip that boat and land us all in the churning water in the middle of a chute. 

The moment is over in an instant. The boat lowers itself as if it had no intention of becoming upside down, and we paddle away like that’s what we were born to do. We end our day— dry—at Little Pine Camp with a meal of antipasto, lasagna, sausages, Caesar salad, and tiramisu, cooked up by our jubilant yogi-poet-chef guides whose gentle lessons in the ways of the river have taught me to trust. 

——

THE SKY MOVES UP THE CANYON WALL now as we descend into a deep, dark cut of Idaho batholith: the Impassable Canyon, named during the Sheepeater Indian War of 1879 with the Shoshone-Bannock Tuka-Deka people who lived there, when the U.S. Army could no longer find a way to pass through the river’s canyon on horseback. Tall black rock rises up around us, and the river narrows. Here, in this chasm of earth, I feel very remote, indeed. 

Even the sun can’t find us this deep. No watercolor-sunsets at Tumble Creek Camp on our last night, but we are surrounded by the orange glow of ponderosa pines. A campfire brightens the evening, and we snarf down our pistachio- and date-encrusted brie plate, our grilled Brussels sprouts with cherries and apples, the rosemary lemon chicken and cheesy polenta, our still-cold- and-fresh salad from one of the giant coolers kept aboard the sweep, our carrot cake, our beer, and our huckleberry-vodka- with-lemon cocktails. Cowboys and foresters dress up in lingerie from the costume bag that’s been unleashed for this last hurrah. Men and women paint their toenails in rainbow colors. Neil puts on a wig. I don a tutu and Mardi-Gras-bead headdress. And Karyn the geriatric nurse drapes her substantial bra-less bosom over the heads of the twenty-something year old menfolk guides seated on camp chairs, as a parting gift of love. We dance around the firelight, and most of the group drinks into the wee hours. 

I make my way to the tent by myself in the dark while Neil stays up with the group. Whereas in Alaska, the landscape was so quiet and empty that I never even heard a bird song and I craved community with others, here on this last night, I want to take a little space, a moment to be quiet, to listen, to read, to reflect. My internal landscape wants to absorb and remember the external landscape: alive, authentic, simple, and free. 

The next day, the Middle Fork ends at the main Salmon River, just as the North Fork of the Koyukuk terminated at the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk—both river trips of my life beginning at the origin of the river and ending at the terminus, like complete narrative stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, in and of themselves. The guides tell me this arrangement is not typical for raft trips, which usually cover a small segment of a very long river where you see no beginning and no end. We travel two hours by school bus on crude dirt forest roads, and eventually hop on a turbulent hour-and-a-half backcountry flight, which soars 10,000 feet over the river canyon that had been our home for nearly a week, back to McCall, Idaho, where Neil used to live and work in the forest with this very crowd. We hug goodbye to these good people, check into our hotel room, and ride out the bliss of river life for another few days. 

For weeks and months before signing up for this trip and paying the high fees, Neil and I hemmed and hawed about whether we should go. We debated and discussed, rehashing all the same issues over and over, both of us terrible at decision-making, each one wanting to please and not overburden the other. Finally, after many sleepless nights, I said to Neil: It comes down to this. What we are deciding is what kind of people we want to be, or what kind of people we are: The kind of people who take the opportunity to have the trip of a lifetime, with all its risks and uncertainties, ups and downs, and potential for life-changing rewards; or the kind of people who don’t. 

Now that it’s all over and we are back to our normal lives, remembering our wild and free days on the river in that remote, faraway place that, truly, so few people in the world will ever know, it is a relief and a revelation to me that we chose to go. 

I’d been on a river before, and what I did in Alaska was in many ways a riskier trip, more remote, more at stake. I didn’t know that then because I had the confidence and ignorance of a younger person. On the last day in the Brooks Range in Alaska, we heard the news that a lawyer from Washington DC had been mauled and killed by a grizzly bear in the same corridor we’d been traveling. We had not seen more than a mud print of a grizzly bear track, had spent the eighteen days in Alaska in virtual wildlife-silence. But it could have just as easily been one of us. It could have been me. During that Alaska trip, the first of many steps I would take to steer away from a traditional work and family life, I had been badass before I even knew what badass was. 

Did the wild and scenic rivers of my life teach me anything after all? 

Yes, they did: Possibility. 

I asked the river to intoxicate me once, as the poet Baudelaire suggested, and it grudgingly nourished me with the gift of inner strength. And then I allowed the river to intoxicate me again, soothing me with its endless rolling song, like the wind, the wave, the star, the bird. And in doing so, I found, thrillingly, that when I dared to take the leap into the wide-open unknown once again, the river rose up to meet me. 

♦ 

Sue Eisenfeld’s essays have been listed five times among “Notable Essays” in The Best American Essays. From Arlington, Virginia, she writes about nature, travel, adventure, history, and culture. She is the author of Wandering Dixie: Dispatches from the Lost Jewish South and Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal. Website: www.sueeisenfeld.com.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new nonfiction, fiction, and poetry selected annually from thousands of submissions worldwide. Financial support for the nonprofit literary journal is from tax-deductible contributions, sales, and a grant from the Talbot Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

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James Rouse’s Inner Harbor Vision Continues to Unfold in Baltimore by Dennis Forney

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Construction by Armada Hoffler is underway at three different sites, simultaneously, on the 27-acre Harbor Point complex overlooking Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Photo by Dennis Forney

Watching the development and revitalization of Baltimore’s inner harbor over the past 50 years has been something to behold.

Talbot County native and visionary James Rouse sparked much of the transformation with his Harborplace complex in the heart of the city many decades ago. He understood the allure of public waterfront spaces where people could gather, enjoy being outside, take long walks, and watch the dynamic interaction between the humming maritime activity of the harbor and the culture of the multi-faceted city surrounding it.

Pursued with the assistance of many of Baltimore’s leaders, Rouse’s vision continues to unfold today with the promise of creating an even more powerful nucleus around which the city can rebuild and thrive. The mixed-use high-rises of the Inner Harbor East area just a few blocks from the original Harborplace buildings have brought a new vibrancy and round-the-clock economy to what was once a monolithic industrial complex. Tens of thousands of residents in the apartments and condominiums overlooking the streets and harbor mean more and more business for restaurants, grocery stores and other retail establishments at sidewalk level. The miles-long public promenade linking so much of the waterfront’s businesses, residences, offices and parks add to the attractiveness.

The magic and positive contagion of Rouse’s big, waterfront thinking continues to spread, although the future of the city’s nearby central business district remains another question mark for the city.

The latest cranes accenting the inner harbor skyline belong to the massive Harbor Point project on one of the city’s most prominent pieces of waterfront property.

Baltimore Chrome Works, a previous occupant, was once reputed to be the world’s largest industrial processor of chromium ore, mined in Maryland. Situated on 27 acres and surrounded on three sides by water, the noisy and smokey facility and its associated wharves employed thousands, produced chromium chemicals for a wide variety of industrial and military uses, and, unfortunately, polluted the waters of the city’s harbor.

Following hundreds of millions spent to clear, clean, and cap the site to prevent further pollution of the harbor’s Patapsco River, the leveled property is well on its way to becoming what its developers call a sustainable urban hub.

Across from the Domino sugar facility, Harbor Point is well on its way to becoming a mixed-use home to three-million square feet of offices, retail space, residences and hotel rooms.

The 21-story Exelon building, completed in 2016 with LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design) certification, towers over the site. It came on the heels of the eight-story Thames Street Wharf offices building, completed in 2010 as the first Harbor Point structure.

The partnership of Armada Hoffler, construction contractors, and Beatty Development, assisted by City of Baltimore economic development funding, are continuing at an aggressive pace. The 1405 Point building, with 289 residences and 18,000 square feet of retail space, opened in 2018 followed by the 12-story Wills Wharf complex of hotel and office space and its accompanying park.

This artist’s conception, provided by Armada Hoffler’s public relations firm, provides a sense of how the Harbor Point complex fronting on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor will appear when complete. The 27-acre site, tucked between Inner Harbor East Marina and Fells Point, includes nine acres of open space with a 4.5-acre lawn shown in the foreground.

The third, final and grandest phase of Harbor Point is now under construction.  The global headquarters of financial firm T. Rowe Price will occupy two, seven-story buildings with 550,000 square feet of new office space.  The final phase also includes more than 500 residential units and 60,000 square feet of new retail space. Completion is slated for 2024.

Louis Haddad, president and CEO of Virginia Beach-based Armada Hoffler, calls Harbor Point “a shining example of the kind of long-term, transformative neighborhood developments our company pursues. It is emerging as a safe, high-quality destination for Baltimore residents, professionals and visitors to spend time in. Harbor Point is helping the city retain quality businesses as a newer, vibrant alternative to the central business district. The vision of our partnership with Beatty Development Group is to create a cohesive, well-rounded neighborhood the city and its residents can be proud of.”

With hundreds of years of history, and counting, Baltimore is more proof that nothing is as constant as change.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Looking at the Masters: Louis XIV and Apollo in the Gardens of Versailles 

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Louis XIV of France (1638-1715) reigned from 1643 until his death in 1715. When his Prime Minister Mazarin died in 1661, Louis decided he would not have another Prime Minister but would administer the government himself. He also had his finance minister Fouquet arrested and confiscated his residence Vaux-Le-Vicomte. Impressed by the magnificent gardens of Vaux, Louis hired Andre le Notre (1613-1700), who had designed the gardens, to design the gardens at Versailles. Although the Paris Palace of the Louvre had been splendidly refurbished, Louis wanted a palace that would match the intended glory of his reign.

“Versailles” (1668) (Pierre Patel)

Versailles originally was a small hunting lodge built by Louis XIII. Louis XIV had hunted there many times, and he became more and more attracted to the area. Soon after the death of Mazarin, Louis decided to make Versailles his permanent residence. Work on the palace and grounds began in 1661 and lasted for the next 21 years. Eventually the palace was enlarged, containing 700 rooms and 2,153 windows. Andre Le Notre also laid out the radiating plan of the town of Versailles.  “Versailles” (1668), painted by Pierre Patel, presents the entire garden plan. The semi-circular avenue of trees, with roads from the town at the left, right, and center, lead to the grand entrance courtyard of the palace. 

Le Notre’s gardens covered 2000 acres surrounding the palace, with land extending 12 miles beyond the last water pool. The land was leveled, and the woods and marshes were transformed into an elaborate garden containing 200,000 trees, 210,00 flowering annual plants, 55 major fountains with 620 water jets, and 221 sculptures. Louis XIV designed 15 groves that were included in Le Notre’s plan. Le Notre also collaborated with Charles Le Brun, First Painter to the King, who provided drawings for some of the fountains and sculptures. Numerous sculptors were engaged to execute the work. Louis XIV kept watch over every detail.

“Seine River” (1685)

Le Notre’s design began with a water parterre (level space) just outside the Hall of Mirrors. Louis XIV identified with Apollo, god of the sun and the arts. Louis was called the “Sun King.” Paintings and sculptures of the life of Apollo dominate the palace and gardens. The Hall of Mirrors was a long gallery with mirrors on the inner wall that reflected the sunlight streaming through the French doors on the outer wall. The Mirror Pool (1672) also reflected the sunlight. “Seine River” (1685) was one of the sculptures at each end of the pool that represented the rivers of France. According to LeBrun’s design, sculptures of males represented rivers that reached the sea, sculptures of females represented tributaries, and sculptures of four nymphs were present as protectors of the water. 

“Latona’s Fountain” (1689)

The center concourse of the gardens is laid out in parterres, each one lower than the last. The second parterre is dedicated to Latona, mother of both Apollo and Diana. “Latona’s Fountain” (1689) is circular and consists of four levels. According to Greek mythology, Latona and her children (placed on the top level of the fountain) were surrounded by a group of peasants who prevented them from drinking from the river. Latona called upon their father Jupiter/Zeus to punish the peasants. He transformed them into frogs.

“Latona’s Fountain” (lower levels)

The third and fourth levels of the fountain depict the peasants, who spout water from their mouths, and their transformation into frogs. The group, sculpted by the Marsy brothers, originally was placed on a rock, with six peasants and 24 frogs placed on the ground. The sculptures were incorporated (1687-89) into a fountain by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Reworking of the sculptures was not unusual; however, Le Notre’s original ground plan was maintained.

“Apollo’s Fountain” (1668-1670)

Beyond Latona’s parterre is the Royal Way, or the Great Lawn, that is 1099 feet long and 131 feet wide. Louis XIV designed it with trees that lined either side of the walk. Le Notre added marble statues alternating with marble vases on either side of the walk. At the foot of the walkway is “Apollo’s Fountain” (1668-1670) (gilded lead), added by Louis XIV. “Apollo’s Fountain” was designed by Le Brun and sculpted by John-Baptiste Tuby. Apollo crashes out of the darkness of night and the sea, and he drives the chariot of the sun across the sky. Four valiant horses pull the chariot.  Apollo is accompanied by Tritons, fish-tailed gods of the sea, and children of the god of the sea Poseidon and his wife Amphitrite. They blow conch shells announcing the rising of the sun.

“Apollo’s Fountain” (side view)

Apollo rides in his golden chariot pulled by four fiery horses. Even when the fountain is not running, the image is dynamic.

“Apollo Attended by Nymphs” (1668)

Le Notre’s plan included crosswalks at all the major levels of the parterres. Each crosswalk leads to more fountains and grottos. “Apollo Attended by Nymphs” (1668), by Francois Girardon (1628-1715), is considered another of the important works in the gardens. In fact, Girardon was the most employed sculptor in the gardens.

The sculptures were originally intended for the grotto of Thetis, but they were moved in the 18th Century by Hubert Robert to their present location. Girardon’s sculpture is in the center of the grotto, and two small lower niches depict Apollo’s four horses being groomed.  

“Apollo Attended by the Nymphs”

While Girardon was developing the seven figures, he made a second trip to Rome to gather additional inspiration from the Greek Hellenistic sculptures found there. Apollo’s face and upper torso were based on the famous Hellenistic “Apollo Belvedere” (Roman copy 120-140 CE) in the Vatican. The figures and drapery of the nymphs are also Hellenistic. The seated Apollo is being bathed by the nymphs. One washes his feet and another kneels with a pitcher of water at the ready.  Apollo’s lyre rests against his chair. A third nymph washes his back and neck, while two others fill a basin with water The seventh nymph takes an already used basin away. 

Versailles from the end of the grass lawn to the back of the Palace

The gardens planned by Le Notre and the sculptures designed by Le Brun and others cannot be seen in one day. The Palace is large, the gardens are even larger. Le Notre’s plan was adopted thereafter for several new gardens in Europe. When Charles L’Enfant designed the plan for the city of Washington, Le Notre’s design for the garden of Versailles was the primary influence.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

  

 

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The Rookery by Angela Rieck

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For those who are up at 5-6 AM and like to walk the nature trail in St. Michaels, don’t be surprised if you hear very loud, angry squawks coming from the tips of the loblolly pines across the covered bridge.

Great Blue Herons have a rookery (also called a heronry) there. In the early morning, you can often see the herons’ silhouettes, shimmering in the dawn light, at the very top of the loblolly pines. While heronries can include up to 500 nests, I suspect this rookery features fewer than a dozen.

And, let’s face it, the sounds herons make are as ugly as herons are mesmerizing. Their voices are most strident in the morning, and I wonder if they are merely feeding greedy chicks, as great Blue Herons can hunt at night and during the day. After the squawking abates, a few herons fly away.

According to ornithologists, Great Blue Herons are somewhat indifferent parents, and their nests may be a reflection. The nests lack curb appeal; built from twigs and lined inside with moss, leaves, grass, and other soft materials.

Some Great Blue Herons overwinter on the Eastern Shore, but many return from South America in mid-March and April. They typically begin laying eggs in April, but this year it could have been delayed by the cold spring.

Migrating males arrive first, choose an existing nest from last year’s rookery, and work their charms. The females arrive and select their mate for the year. They stay together for the childcare period but find different mates the following year.

After selecting the nest, it is time to upgrade. The male supplies the material and the female, the decorating skills. Their nests can get pretty large, from 20 to 45 inches. She lays between 2-5 greenish-blue eggs. The parents share the incubating duties and within a month, voila chicks!

According to the Chesapeake Bay Program website, Great Blue Herons can be a little cruel (or pragmatic, depending on your perspective). While they typically lay up to five eggs; they will only feed one or two of the hatchlings and allow the others to starve to death. Chicks hatch over a couple of days which gives the oldest a decided advantage in the fight for survival.

Great Blue Herons are not known as being particularly attentive guardians, and have been observed nesting near eagles, buzzards, and other predatory birds.

The hatchlings stay in the nest from 1 ½ to 2 ½ months. So, probably by now, everyone’s nerves are frayed. And like human babies, young adult chicks continue to return to the nest for meals for several weeks after leaving.

Our brackish waters are a heron’s dream, and they will dine on the variety that is available to them including fish, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, insects, and other birds. We have a ringside seat to their hunting skills on the Eastern Shore, it is unusual to see a waterway at low tide without an elegant Great Blue Heron. They silently stalk their prey in the shallow, muddy water, motionless for hours. In a quick flash, they will plunge their bills into the murky water. They grab smaller prey using their beaks like scissors. They use their sharp, long beaks as knives to impale larger quarry. But they need to be careful, Great Blue Herons can choke on larger prey.

Back in the rookery, their young get regurgitated food from both parents.

I do wonder, what is all the commotion in the heronry? Are we dealing with teenagers demanding their meals? Are they arguing about whose turn it is to get the food…or is this their way of communicating? It certainly sounds like an unpleasant conversation. Last week, the grumbling was particularly fierce and at the end, I saw four white Ibis fly away.

It has quieted down now, maybe the young ones have left for good.

But if you missed them, don’t worry. Herons come back to the same heronry every year, but not to the same nest. And when they are 1 ½ years old, these new fledglings will return to their hometown rookery, to take their place as parents.

It is a sight worth seeing, but maybe not hearing.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.

If Texas Secedes from the Union, Do We Want It Back? By J.E. Dean

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I keep a stomach distress bag handy whenever I read a news article about Texas. Governor Greg Abbott is not good for my digestive health. A few weeks ago, he signed a law giving private citizens the right to sue anyone who “aids or abets” abortions. The idea is to weaponize abortion proponents and drive doctors and other healthcare providers out of the state.

There is a lot more to dislike about Governor Greg Abbott, but he is not alone in making proposals that many of us consider outrageous. In June, for example, State Representative Kyle Biedermann proposed legislation for the state to hold a referendum on whether a legislative committee should be created to develop a plan for “Texas independence.”  Mr. Biedermann has had enough of Washington and its meddling in Texas affairs.

Texans are not alone in wanting their state to “go in a different direction.”  Secession movements are also active in Alaska, California, Hawaii, and Vermont.  I want to focus on Texas. My question is “Why not let it go?”

Legal experts tell us that it is “illegal” for states to secede from the union, but I wonder if America has the stomach for another civil war.  My guess is no, especially given the reality that many of us see Texas as an obstacle to ratifying sane policies. More than a few of my liberal friends, when asked about Texas secession, shrug their shoulders, and say, “We’d be better off without it.”

I have my doubts about that, despite Greg Abbott, but note that the Democrats would win more elections and retain control of the House of Representatives if Texas quits the U.S. Personally, I will welcome a Senate free of Ted Cruz (R-TX).

If Texas left the Union, I would expect a mass migration out of the State back into the U.S. Greg Abbott might have to build a wall just to keep people from leaving. I also worry that Texas might attempt to seize “its fair share” of nuclear weapons and fashion itself a little North Korea that regularly makes threats against its northern neighbor (us). 

If Texas seceded, might Donald Trump be tempted to move there and become King? That is possible. The prospect of a lifetime of power without the hassle of regular elections might just persuade him to quit Florida. And, once in power in Texas, Trump could plot with like-minded secessionists in other states and try to create a modern-day version of the Confederate States of America.

I am not likely to be conscripted into the Army for the purpose of fighting what is likely to be dubbed “Texit,” but if I were, I would think about a move to Canada. I would not want to take up arms against fellow Americans (yes, I still consider Texans fellow-countrypeople) and would not want to be shot by Governor Abbott or one of his followers. I suspect many Americans would agree.

If future presidents are faced with a real secession movement, would they bring a declaration of war to Congress? Would it pass? If it did not, where would that leave America?

I am comforted by the fact that despite the Maryland Eastern Shore being out of sync with the rest of the State, I don’t often hear about plans for a new State called “East Chesapeake” or “Crabonia.”  That’s a relief. I think we would be dramatically worse off without the rest of the State, or the rest of the United States, to help us prepare for the next century. 

Despite my friends who stubbornly remain loyal to Trump, I am confident that the Eastern Shore is moving in the right direction politically. While some Republicans tell me I am crazy to say that the re-election of Andy “Handgun” Harris is not inevitable, I also note that many Republicans tell me that, as of today, they would vote for Harris but have a few questions for him to answer. They want to know what he was up to in his White House meeting on December 21 and how he became convinced the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”

I want to know the answer to these questions. I think I already know how Andy would vote if the issue of Texas seceding from the U.S. came to a vote in the House of Representatives. Even though Democrats might benefit from Texit, Andy would vote “Aye.” So much for the Constitution. 

J.E. Dean is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant writing on politics, government, and, when the Constitution is not under attack, other subjects.

 

Memory by Jamie Kirkpatrick

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There I am, back row center, with my fourth grade teacher and classmates at St. Edmund’s Academy in Pittsburgh. The photo was taken almost sixty-five years ago, and much to my surprise, I can still remember everyone’s name. How can that be when I struggle to remember a password I created last week or the dream I had last night?

Memory is a fickle friend: here today, gone tomorrow. I’d like to think my own memory is still reasonably sharp, but I can’t help but wonder why some memories stick and others fall off the cliff. I’m sure there’s a genetic component to memory, but beyond the good genes that have been passed down to me by a slew of ancestors I never knew, what else is at work holding the past in focus?

I’m pretty sure it’s not that over-the-counter pill that’s shilled every night on television. Nor is it the next fad diet or chair yoga or planetary alignment. More likely, memory is linked to brain chemistry. We experience an event, a person, or a place, and that encounter leaves an impression on us—good, bad, or neutral—not unlike a photographer’s ghostly negative. We file it away in a dusty drawer somewhere in the attic of our brain only to retrieve it when some external stimulus pries it loose—like when that old class photo suddenly popped up on my phone.

I haven’t seen any of those fourth grade friends in years, yet every face has a name and a memory. There’s a lesson in this: the impression we make today has the potential to make a lasting memory tomorrow. Let that thought sink in. And if that’s true, then isn’t it incumbent on us to make sure that every word we utter, every person we encounter, every footprint we leave is as positive as possible? I realize that’s far easier said than done, but it’s a worthy goal and these days, we need all the worthy goals we can collect.

Memories come in many different shapes and sizes: long-term and short-term; episodic, sensory, semantic, implicit, explicit. Memories are a moving target: sometimes, we’re able to retrieve them, sometimes, they escape our grasp. We can be prisoners of our memories or we can bask in the glow of their warmth. Memories are, by definition, shadows of the past, but they color our present and shape our future. All the more reason to cultivate the good ones and weed out the bad ones.

As for the balance sheet of my own memories, I rue a few and treasure many. I’d like to think that my bad memories have at least been instructive: my personal history of mistakes doesn’t need repeating. Or maybe memory is the tiller that will steer into the future and keep me on course. At the very least, my memories keep me in touch with my past and that, in itself, can inform my future.

Fourth grade may be long gone, but learning never ends. Mrs. Sussman was my teacher that long-ago year. Memory teaches me today.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.net.

 

 

Plain Talk: Recalling Harry Truman by Al Sikes

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Remarkable! A candidate for the Talbot County Council actually introduced herself with a concrete statement about impending development plans.

Campaigns are mostly filled with clever (or not so clever) lines that call to mind script writers for Valentine Day cards. Without, I repeat without, statistical research I would guess that “integrity” is the word most often directly or indirectly used to sum up the candidate’s profile. Close seconds might be “represent” (we after-all live in a democracy) and turning to a phrase, “work hard”. Okay the script writers are not so clever.

So, when I read Lynn Mielke’s letter to the Spy editor I was, well, surprised. Ms. Mielke laid out her thoughts about residential and commercial development along the Oxford corridor in plain-spoken English, here is an example: 

“Each of the aforementioned developers, like Hansel and Gretel, spread some bread crumbs, like promising walking trails for the public, peddling Agri-tourism, or donating community parks to the Town of Easton, in order to sell their monstrous development projects to our local governments. The cost of the infrastructure for these developments, which Talbot County taxpayers will have to pay for to support these projects: roads (will a two lane Oxford Road really handle the real vehicular traffic which will ensue? And the inevitable traffic congestion?), schools (Easton schools are at capacity – where will children living at Poplar Hill be able to attend school?), and health care (which is also at capacity), are not addressed. It is already established that “Impact Fees” do not cover such costs.” 

I don’t live along the Oxford corridor nor, looking back, along the Trappe one, but I am very familiar with bread crumbs (especially when toasted). I could, of course, repeat Ms. Mielke’s detailed point-of-view, but better that you read directly from her letter.

Mentioning the Trappe corridor and specifically the environmental debacle at The Preserve at Wye Mills, let me elaborate from an earlier column:

“If I were a Councilman I would want, as part of my orientation, to know why the Preserve became a case study of poor decisions followed by woeful oversight. I would ask the full time professionals what we must do to make sure environmental standards are set, compliance monitored and timely actions taken. I would look at staffing past, present and future. Do the Departments of Public Works and Environmental Health have the resources to do the job?”

I am not anti-development, but I have seen nature too often subordinated and glitter often substituted for analysis. I hope the County Council that takes its oath in January of next year is glitter-proof.

I do not know Lynn Mielke, but her straight-forward and illustrative characterization of the Oxford Corridor have certainly won my admiration and vote on November 8th.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

Out and About (Sort of): No Denial by Howard Freedlander

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What world leader would have the temerity to face an audience in a wheelchair, uncaring about the optics of appearing frail amid the infirmities of aging?

What global personage would talk openly and candidly about the denigrating treatment of older people, perceived as undeserving of respect and veneration?

Who else but this compassionate but tough-minded person would challenge the effort by millions to use medicine and cosmetic surgery to appear young, as if normal aging could be reversed and not simply accepted and enjoyed?

No mere run-of-the-mill religious leader, but one committed to the humane treatment of the ignored and disrespected, Pope Francis uses his actual and metaphorical pulpit to press the case, as he did in Canada, for the public to pay attention to those relegated to wheelchairs, walkers, canes and caregivers.

The 85-year-old pontiff, slowed and impaired by intestinal surgery, bad knees and sciatica, employs himself not only as an incomparable spiritual figure able to spread his message—but an ordinary person trying to cope with aging.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Starting even before he became pope at age 76, Francis has paid special attention to older people. In his book, “On Heaven and Earth,” he said that ignoring the health needs of older people constituted ‘covert euthanasia’ and the aged often ‘end up being stored away in a nursing home like an overcoat that is hung up in the closet during the summer.’”

He differs tremendously, however, from the rest of us. He cannot be discounted.

In Canada, he urged listeners to overcome a bias in favor of the young and able, to the exclusion of senior citizens easily assigned to the harsh cubicle of the invisible and unimportant.

Fairness and compassion demand more of the younger and healthier segment of our population. Brainpower does not diminish due to longevity. Willpower does not dissipate even in the face of impaired mobility.

In 15 speeches intended to provide instruction about aging, according to the New York Times, Francis has “urged people not to ‘hide the frailty of old age’ out of fear of loss of dignity,” advocating that frailty ‘is a teaching for all of us,’ conceivably bringing about an ‘indispensable ‘ “reform in society, because ‘the marginalization of the elderly—both conceptual and practical—corrupts all seasons of life, not just that of an old age.’

Pope Francis never loses his human and moral moorings. He realizes he may have to choose to vacate the papacy in event of inability to serve Roman Catholics throughout the world. He may follow Pope Benedict in seeking a life outside the Vatican. He need not die on the job.

I have always liked and admired the humble Pope Francis. From the very beginning of his papacy, he eschewed the trappings of head of the Roman Catholic Church. He understood the temptation of savoring an extravagant lifestyle to the exclusion of the people he serves. Also, he wanted to challenge the Vatican bureaucracy, particularly its financial dealings.

I have written before about the ravages of aging. I now have a front-row seat at the BayWoods of Annapolis retirement community watching senior citizens confront debilitating diseases like Parkinson’s and knee problems. My greatest reward has been empathy. No longer do I pay scant regard and respect.

I do not require Pope Francis’ intervention to adjust my thinking and former bias. But I find it comforting to read his ponderings about the elderly. He has encouraged a conversation well worth having in the public arena.

And I find his willingness to enable the public to see his declining physical condition as inspiring. He is unapologetic about aging and natural deterioration. He is unafraid of being a symbol of resilience.

Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. In retirement, Howard serves on the boards of several non-profits on the Eastern Shore, Annapolis and Philadelphia.

Spy Review: American Prophet: Frederick Douglass In His Own Words

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If a performance at Washington’s Arena Stage is well received, the curtain call follows a predictable pattern. As soon as the play ends, all light in the theater is extinguished. The cast gropes its way through the black hole to find their places on the stage. Light then floods the hall, and applause politely starts as one audience member, then another, rises. Eventually, a standing ovation is achieved.

Something different happened on the evening of July 29th at the Arena’s performance of its new musical, American Prophet: Frederick Douglass In His Own Words. It was something I’d never seen in decades of attending plays at Arena Stage. 

Even though the theater was pitch black following the conclusion of American Prophet, the entire audience jumped to its feet cheering wildly into the void, a surreal experience. Once the lights came back on, a roar of approval swept over the cast for its brilliant treatment of the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass. At the end of the curtain call, the lead actor who played Douglass, Cornelius Smith Jr., was so moved he was reluctant to leave the stage even though his fellow cast members had already filed off. He stood there alone, remaining in character as if ready to continue rousing the audience with the musical’s signature anthem, “We Need a Fire.”

If American Prophet opens on Broadway, and it’s hard to believe it won’t, its ticket prices may command more than $500 each just like Hamilton. Better to see American Prophet now before its run at the Arena ends on August 28.

American Prophet began with Marcus Hummon, a Grammy award winning artist and Nashville Songwriter Association Hall of Fame inductee. He saw the poetry in the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and wanted to create a biography set to music using those words to portray the abolitionist’s life from birth along Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County through the Civil War. Hummon had the good fortune of being able to collaborate with award-winning director Charles Randolph-Wright whose credits include Broadway shows such as Motown the Musical and Trouble In Mind as well as several TV productions.

Using hauntingly beautiful melodies and powerful acting, Randolph-Wright and Hummon bring us face-to-face with important characters from Douglass’s early years along the Tuckahoe and in St. Michaels and Fells Point—his grandmother Betsey, Hugh Auld, Demby, Reverend Gore, Edward Covey. Once Douglass frees himself from his bondage, the play focuses on his interactions with Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, and William Lloyd Garrison as all four shape the history of nineteenth century America. I was stunned by American Prophet’s ability to do a compelling portrayal of the complex character of these four struggling visionaries within the confines of a two-hour play.

But the heart and soul of American Prophet is the seldom told and little-known story of the bond between Frederick and his wife, Anna Murray Douglass, born across the Tuckahoe in Caroline County. Anna is portrayed by Grammy and Emmy Award-winning actress Kristolyn Lloyd. In a duet that brings tears to your eyes, Anna and Frederick declare their love for one another, singing “Children of the Same River,” a prescient acknowledgement of the struggle for freedom and racial justice that will consume their lives. 

Much is known of Frederick. His life played out on the front pages of newspapers and in fiery speeches before thousands in the United States and Great Britain. It was detailed in his autobiographies read by millions that are the most powerful slave narrative in American literature. Anna, in contrast, is shrouded in obscurity. She raised their five children, ran an underground railroad station, and served as Douglass’s business agent and life coach during her 44 years of marriage to a public figure who spent most of his time on the road. She did so without either attracting or soliciting attention; she eschewed it. American Prophet and Ms. Lloyd’s portrayal are important elements in the movement to give Anna her due.

The play has already received excellent reviews from The Washington Post and The Guardian. Advisers to the production include people familiar to Talbot Countians—Kenneth Morris Jr. and Celeste-Marie Bernier. Information about American Prophet can be found on the production’s website and through Arena Stage. Don’t let this opportunity slip away!

For more information about American Prophet please go here. For the Arena Stage, please go here.