orms, even when county emergency officials beg them to go.
Visit once, and it won’t be enough.
Spruce Knob stands at the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. But a visitor standing atop the windswept peak would be excused for thinking they were at the edge of a northern wilderness.
Even in midsummer, the top of this West Virginia mountain is a refreshingly cool escape from the heat and humidity common in a mid-Atlantic summer.
At 4,863 feet, Spruce Knob is the highest point in West Virginia.
Mark Mendelsohn has fond memories of visiting his grandparents on the West River in Annapolis. The family would pile in a skiff and run out to the banks of Poplar Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. There, his grandmother would catch so many bluefish that her arms would be sore.
But the past half-century was not kind to Poplar and the cluster of islands that surround it about three miles north of Tilghman Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Erosion and sea level rise had whittled away the islands. In 1847, Poplar Island covered more than 1,100 acres. By the early 1990s, when Mendelsohn and his Army Corps of Engineers colleague Justin Callahan went to survey the island, it was fewer than five acres.
I was one of five people trekking through the woods at Robinson Neck Preserve, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a sunny, shoulder-season day that put all of us in a good mood — bright enough for sunglasses and cool enough for fleece.
About halfway into the hike, the forest around our narrow trail suddenly gave way on both sides to reveal long, lush views of the Slaughter Creek marsh. While each member of our group spends a fair amount of time in lovely outdoor places, we still gave a collective gasp at the sight.
Wind was tugging at a red, white and blue flag hitched to a dock in Somerset County, on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore. Mike Hinman, whose wisps of gray hair were also dancing in the wind, caught the flag and pulled it taut.
“Want to see who we are?” said Hinman. “I’ll show you.”
Dragonflies, like most insects that appear aplenty in the summer, flourish where there’s plenty of water, sun and perches for resting their wings.
But, unlike the season’s other crop of insects that bite or buzz in your eyes, dragonflies actually diminish summer’s worst pests — think mosquitoes, gnats, wasps and even stinkbugs — by snacking on them.
Dragonfly enthusiasts prize the four-winged creatures for their beauty and rarity as much as their eating habits, and they say the Chesapeake Bay watershed is as good a place as any to become an enthusiast.
Lost River State Park was almost lost, a near casualty of Colonial era land speculation and Depression era hard times. Thankfully, West Virginia stepped in and bought this beauty in 1934, making it available for all to enjoy.
Today, the 3,712-acre state park in Mathias features 19 trails, including one that reaches Cranny Crow overlook and offers a stunning mountain view. The park also has an outdoor pool, tennis and volleyball courts, and riding stables.
At the edge of the gravel trail, a small, dark-brown salamander with mustard spots is limping off the footpath. It’s a spotted salamander, a member of the mole salamander family, and its tail looks as if a predator took a bite and didn’t like what it tasted (which, in this case, would be poisonous). The salamander is one symbol of the unique ecosystem that Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, VA, has helped preserve for the last 40 years.
When it came to Pennsylvania’s outdoors, there was little Ned Smith didn’t experience. He hiked, hunted and fished.
He filled volumes of loose-leaf binders with notes and drawings of his observations, turning them into magazine columns and, ultimately a book, “Gone for the Day.”
He was an avid photographer and dabbled with archeological digs along the Susquehanna River.