(Maryland, USA)....I have always intended to visit Smith Island in Maryland since I read William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, a wonderful travel narrative in which the author—recently jobless, recently divorced—decides to travel 13,000 miles around the United States driving only along back roads. I remember chapters on Nameless, Tenn., and Greenwich, N.J., but the one that registered most strongly with me was when he visited the town of Ewell on Smith Island. That a populated island was not accessible by bridge but so close (270 miles) to New York City fascinated me. Perhaps it was even more remote then, than it would be today, but I would go.
The small ferry to the island leaves from the mainland Maryland town of Crisfield, whose new, ugly, waterside, grey-sided condominiums have gone some way, if not all the way, to destroying the place. One gem there is Gordon’s, a tatty but atmospheric diner in which sat a host of characters who were just about to go crabbing, or have retired from doing so but cannot quite let go. The motto outside says: We Cater to Watermen. I did not get to Ewell (I saw it) but instead to Tylerton. 
Smith Island is a collection of islands, and of the three villages there, Tylerton is separated from Ewell and smaller Rhodes Point, which can be walked between. Tylerton is small and very quiet. Most men were out in boats, and the women were washing, stripping and packing crab or preparing meals. One famous culinary item here is Layer cake, which comprises eight, ten or twelve layers of sponge separated by one less number of slices of chocolate frosting. It is a rite of passage for girls here to prepare one of these delicious treats. I also headed to the crab shanty of Bill Clayton (see photograph), where he showed me how soft-shell crabs are continuously monitored as they lose and regain and lose their shells. Oystering has suffered greatly as of late.
Later, I met the celebrated writer Tom Horton, who lives in Tylerton, and he told me that currently the Chesapeake Bay holds only two percent of the bay’s historic high number of oyster. Such a statistic does not allow for oysters to be a business, something that the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation (www.cbf.org) is trying to reverse through education. I visited its buildings in Tylerton and on Port Isabel Island, the latter having the meanest greenflies in the area. With a group of five others from L.L. Bean’s Outdoor Discovery unit, I kayaked from Tylerton, past Rhodes Point and around to a sandy island called Hog’s Neck. The scenery was idyllic: marshy land (like where I grew up in Kent, England), still waters, thick, green grasses and—a new phenomenon here—ranks and ranks of Brown pelicans.
The main day of kayaking for us was the traversing of the bay between Smith Island and Tangier Island, Va. Some of Smith Island is also in Virginia, and were we regaled with tales of disputes between Smith and Tangier islanders and Maryland and Virginian politics. It often turned murderous, with boats turning their lights off and poaching oysters in off-limits spots, or not playing fair by dragging large rakes behind them, rather than small ones. Watermen have been killed in these skirmishes, one tale told to us involving a notorious oystermen in the 1970s who was shot dead by the coast guards in front of sunbathers. Tangier Island, approximately 12 miles to the south, is a smaller island but is more populated and seems more affluent. It has only the one town, Tangier, and on my Saturday night, I watched in fascination as the same golf carts (the main form of transportation on both islands) trundled around and around the large circuit around town. There were the young couple—he with reflective sunglasses and an iPod, she with a very bored expression, until the fourth time around, when he had obviously decided to share the music—the young, orange-T-shirt-wearing, overweight man who looked damnably morose and the elderly man who smiled continuously as he whisked his girlfriend (?) around.
The crab cakes on both islands are the stuff of legend. The church has a sign outside commemorating the encampment of British troops on the island in 1812 and their subsequent defeat in the waters near Baltimore and Annapolis. There is a lot of English heritage hereabouts, reflected most obviously in the surnames. On Smith Island, there were and remain Bradshaws, Harrisons, Smiths, Thomases and Lairds, while on Tangier Island there are Crocketts, Pruitts and Shores. Their accent and dialect also is deemed to be akin to Elizabethan speech.
Between the two islands is a long spit of broken islands, some with names, some without. It is possible and great fun to walk at low tide between little patches of sand kicking through the water. I found an abandoned duck decoy placed on a patch of seaweed to resemble a nest, a fat, stranded jellyfish and all manner of birds, including a Clapper rail and several Black skimmers, which trail their lower beaks along the water’s surface skimming up food.
Not so many groups have kayaked this route, which is mostly too shallow for the boats inspecting their crabbing pots, so I felt somewhat adventurous. Tangier Island’s litter bins are all shaped like lighthouses, which I thought a nice touch. Crosses and religious paraphernalia are dotted around. I wonder how long these islands can survive? The young look bored, and the supply of seafood, especially oysters, needs to be restocked. I hope it does remain alive, as its people have an obvious love for their respective islands.