Tangier Island

It's a beautiful, cool morning.  We had a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, and a good rain during the evening.  Luckily, it stopped in time for me to walk over and love and medicate the Snow girls.   Then I took them all out for a potty break, and stayed with them until Boo settled down again.  Then I wandered over to Alexy's and made certain that the cats and house were fine, and then headed back to Rosie and Remy's.  I ran into John walking Tessa with a flashlight, and chatted with them, before giving the Rs a snack and climbing into bed.  Right now, I have Audie Murphy on the TV in The Texican.  Mmmmm-mmmmm; those Spanish bred horses are gorgeous!

Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, has been losing land to the water at a rate of 9 acres per year.  Tangier used to have over 1,000 residents, but that number has dropped to less than 500, due to the loss of land and the economy.  Tangier folk make their living off the water - fishing, oystering, clamming, and crabbing. As the government keeps increasing the the rules to protect the Bay from having the natural stocks of sea creatures depleted, the watermen of Tangier feel that they are being governed against, rather than for. And then, with the rising waters eating away the marsh land that makes up Tangier, Mother Nature seems to be against them as well.  It is quite possible, that without a $12 million system of sea walls and break waters, that Tangier  Island may no longer exist in 50 years.  -  My family has been on Chincoteague and Assateague Islands for over 360 years.  Both of those islands are of the barrier type and they have grown and shrunk as the whims of the Atlantic Ocean have decreed.  But, in the last 60 years or so, since Assateague was designated a National Seashore and a National Wildlife Refuge, a lot has been done to replace beach sand washed away by northeasters and by hurricanes.  Parts of the Assateague and Chincoteague Channels have silted up, creating new land for people to build upon as Chincoteague "grows."  The Assateague Island light house was originally built closer to the eastern side of Assateague, and the Atlantic, than it was to the Assateague Channel and Chincoteague.  Today, the light house stands within 200 yards of the Assateague Channel.  The island changes are the both the gift and curse of Mother Nature.  -  I feel for the people of Tangier; most families still there have resided on the island for many generations.  I find myself conflicted regarding the final decision about Tangier Island.  I want it to continue, to keep its traditions alive, to stop the erosion of the land into the Bay.  At the same time, I don't want to stand in Mother Nature's way, and if the Bay is going to swallow up the Island, then so be it.  ....  I just guess I'm very lucky that Assateague acts as the out-rider and protects the island of Chincoteague from the vagaries of the sea.