Gena and Harry Look : Ocean, it's you: Assateague Island, Maryland

Harry meets the Atlantic Ocean

September 24-26

I have passed through many attractive places on my way east. Being that my current state of employment is what I like to call “job free” and that my state of mind is open to possibility, I have often asked myself “Could I live here?” It forces me to evaluate what the criteria are that are integral to my contentment. I think 2014 will be one of my benchmark years for such pondering. Friends, knowing that my status is in flux, often say, “But you want to be near the ocean, right?” My answer, until I arrived at Assateague Island after 27 days away from seawater, was usually, “I’m not sure. I’m not ruling anything out.” Maybe that’s still true---circumstances will tell---but when I set foot on that stormy Atlantic beach, 2000 miles from my mother Pacific, I knew I was home. Yes, the sagebrush and rivers of Yellowstone are sublime, the hush, hush whisper of the prairie blue-stem grass intoxicating, the deep mossy woods of New Jersey embracing, but there is sea water in my blood and it will always be my wolf call beckoning.

Harry bows to the mighty Atlantic

Assateague Island, the Maryland end, on a stormy afternnon

There is another reason Assateague and its neighbor island Chincoteague are familiar. Published in 1947, Marguerite Henry’s Misty of the Chincoteague, based on the true story of one of the island’s feral horses, is a book that endures, particularly (and I don’t think I’m being sexist here---any male Misty fans, let me know) with young girls. My mom read the story of Misty to me, snugged in her lap before bed. I read all of Henry’s books well into my early teens. I didn’t play with Barbie dolls---I had the Breyer Misty and all of the other Henry tie-ins---Misty was my Barbie. So maybe half of you have started to glaze over---it’s okay for just the Misty fans to gather close for a while.

The original cover art for Misty of the Chincoteague
brings a wash of nostalgia

The story is alluring in that it immerses you in a place---a dreamy place. Upon visiting Assateague, I felt I already knew the shell strewn sandy beaches and low pine barrens.

Some history: there are a number of hypotheses regarding the origin of the horse population of Assateague. Most involve a shipwreck of some kind and the existence of the horses on the island for some 300 years. The Assateague horses are small---usually referred to as ponies---and they typically have a noticeably “rotund” appearance due to their ingestion of high amounts of salt in their salt marsh graze.

Young Assateague horse

There are 2 populations, one owned and managed by the federal government at the northern, National Seashore end of the island, and the second owned by the volunteer fire department of Chincoteague that manages the annual Pony Penning Day channel swim and round-up made famous by Henry’s book. The federal government uses chemical birth control to manage herd numbers, and the Chincoteague FD uses the round-up and auction to keep herd size manageable. I’m not sure how I feel about the round-up now that I'm a grown-up---I think the horses are treated with care, I don’t really have all the facts. I do know, that if I live on the Atlantic coast, I’d be first in line as a bidder at the auction.

Assateague horses graze on salt grass near the wetlands.
They show no fear of cars or people

So, this was one of the primo destinations on my route. I chose the dog friendly northern (Maryland) end of the island over the Refuge at the southern (Virginia) end where dogs aren’t even allowed out of cars. As I entered the visitor’s center at the campgrounds of the National Seashore, the wind slammed the screen door hard behind me. We arrived late in the day after an unhurried departure from Rebecca’s house in the woods. The clouds were building dark and threatening, and the winds churned the grains of sand into stinging projectiles. “I’d like to camp…” I said cheerfully. “Are you kidding?” was the clerk’s reply. And so began my two days at glorious Assateague---it rained for about one and a half of those. Despite the storms, the discovery of Pagoo’s rain threshold for leaking (Pagoo leaks), the wind rocked nights and the mosquito aftermath, it will remain a favorite of mine.

Harry waits out the storm from Pagoo's loft

The sea air and the salt water at my feet had a lot to do with that, but also the seashell adorned beach (from an iNaturalist user I found many of these to be fossils, ~ 10,000 years old), the horseshoe crabs (that make you say WTF even when you know exactly what it is), the sunrises over the ocean, the rustling transience of the dunes and the horses of Assateague boldly munching dune grass in my camp. “Do you have the blood of Misty?” I ask that long-lashed gaze aloud.

They are feral, I know. As biologists we are supposed to show no mercy to ecological invaders. But where does the line get drawn? How many hundreds of years of occupancy grant you a valid place on a narrow strip of sand against the Atlantic? I don’t know the answer to that. I only know that they seem to belong, much as I seem to belong, next to the wildest of oceans, whichever side of the continent that may be.

At every break in the rain, Harry and I head to the beach. There are many treasures but they are interspersed with disturbingly abundant plastic debris. The storm has taken a sample of the ocean's contents and placed it on the beach to remind us what a mess we are making. More on trash in a blog to come.

Horseshoe crab, sargassum weed and plastic cup

We are both locked into the head down beachcombing position as we sweep along the foamy drift line.

The sand has eyes

The ghost crabs are well named. They skitter across the sand
like wind blown flotsam, into their burrows.

Sanderling in the foam

We return to blue skies and bold horses in our camp. The warm sun dries our rain soaked chairs, towels, rugs, and my bolster pillow (which was pushed up against the most egregious window seam leak). A gentle breeze keeps the mosquitoes at bay. I found two barriers to total bliss on the Atlantic shore: the ravenous mosquitoes and the sand spurs. The latter are formidable, flip-flop puncturing stickers in the genus Cenchrus that are abundant on any surface not covered by sand or asphalt. Harry learned to stop and lift whichever paw (or paws) had been infiltrated for sticker extraction.

They hurt going in and hurt coming out.

Stormy look-alike in my camp.

Beachcombing booty: quahog clams, horseshoe crab, blue crab
carapace and mermaid purses (skate egg cases).

The warm sun brings out the butterflies--grey hairstreak on Senecio

Under benevolent clear skies, we head south on our way to North Carolina and the Outer Banks, but not before a stop in the town of Chincoteague for a bit of Misty worship and seafood indulgence.