Now he's going to ruin it up in space. It's high tide and Chesapeake Bay is pouring into tiny Smith Island 10 miles from the mainland. It is the kind of raw November day when cats and dogs marooned on porches forget their differences and snuggle together for warmth.
Women stay inside and bake the local treat, eight-layer cakes, that stand taller than the flat land.
Watermen, as the local soft shell crab fishermen call themselves, huddle in the village at Tylerton's only store, sipping only soft drinks since alcohol is not sold on the island. The sober fact is that this way of life, as rare as a pearl in an oyster shell, is dying. Here in the largest estuary in the United States, the endangered species is not the rockfish or oyster or great blue heron. Smith Island is now 8,000 acres and counting down. Tomorrow, a United Nations Global Warming Conference convenes in Kyoto, Japan, hoping to break an international stalemate on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.