Saltwater Cowboys: A Photographic Essay of Chincoteague Island
by Medford Taylor
Category: Travel

Chincoteague Revisited captures the essence of the community, ecology and the natural landscape of this island off Virginia's coast as it comes to life in poetry and pictures. Local watermen, decoy carvers and shop owners ply their trade; visitors from everywhere transform the community in the spring. Simple, whitewashed houses line Main Street, and the Channel Bass Inn bed and breakfast invites afternoon callers to tea. Townspeople and visitors enjoy the traditional Christmas parade and the tastes of the annual oyster festival. The most famous inhabitants of Assateague Island, the wild ponies, call the refuge home. Each July, local cowboys herd the ponies for their swim across the channel to Chincoteague's shore, where the foals are auctioned at the annual Firemen's Carnival. "It is a delicate balance," writes Cording of the fragile combination of a beautiful natural landscape and thousands of human visitors who descend on the island each season. Come, revisit Chincoteague. You'll find it all between the covers of this book.