Protecting Bay Resources
Published in Spinsheet - May 2015
I suspect that many, if not all of us, who read this fine rag have one thing in common: An iPhoto application full of great water pictures. Sunsets in quite coves, sunrises from early departures, friends in a crowded cockpit, line coiled on deck, Osprey, rows of colorful houses that lace so many of the miles of shoreline the Bay has to offer and before long cronies around a waterside fire burning socks. Interior walls in most buildings throughout the Bay region are adorned with these same types of pictures collected from professional photographers or photo contest winners. The visual landscape, and even more so the seascape, fascinate, engage, and heal use.
Gary Smith, along with many others, has written about shapes in nature and the landscape. Smith identifies nine that we commonly see. Examples are: scattered, mosaic, naturalistic drift, serpentine, dendritic etc. Take these same shapes on a journey with any sailor past a point of land and they transform from flat two-dimensional results of nature into a dynamic experiences. The sea through complexity and multidimensionality transform the serpentine top of a wave into a rhythm of seas snaking under us. Shapes that don’t sit still but that lift us and drop us. Beyond three-dimension into the fourth dimension of time, where shape and views change with every cloud above our head and puff that tickles the surface, dancing away in dendritic wrinkles on a smooth waters top.
Let’s paint a picture together. You’re on a short hike along one of our many local woodland trails. Miles away from people or any type of society, you are exploring the wild nature, when all of a sudden, a half dozen 450 pound mammals come crashing from the earth and leaves, breaking through the dirt all around your feet. Take that same land story, interject the southern part of our Bay and identify the mammals as Atlantic dolphins exploring our estuary, and I bet your sock burning comrades will retort with similar experiences of their own. As water people, we share these unique experiences.
I recently read where exercise is the most underutilized antidepressant. Many weeks battling beltway traffic on a Wednesday night I questioned my own sanity. “Why am I doing this?” However, a few hours later when rounding the Green #1, in the middle of the fleet, ghosting along, far from land, it all made sense. I was having a midweek check up. The Bay is my antidepressant, probably the only one that can be taken with a beer. Adding the visual experience makes it a powerful cocktail, again unique to our experience.
We talk about the Bay and its resources all the time: fisheries, habitats, water quality, and more. But where lies the conversation on the rest of the resources? “Greenways” are roads and paths for human movement that help establish our connectivity to nature and enhance our communities. Their visual relevance calls for great funding and is of constant debate. “Blueways” should be no different. If you Google “visual resource management” you will find a government agency dedicated to preserving beautiful views through planning, design, and architecture. They work to mitigate power line installation through pristine valleys and to keep buildings lower to hat you can take in wanting views. How many of our planners and politicians are taking to boats before establishing their visual context?
As sailors and boaters we have that unique perspective, one that approaches land and society from the sea. While many look out at us from their hilltop homes romanticizing the vista of white triangular canvases on a flat Bay, we look back at a cliff lined with stairways resembling bad dental work. We need to keep in mind that lining our shores with materials such as concrete bulkheads not only removes natural environmental buffers that filter our watershed and provide habitat for critical species; but it also removes the visual excitement that being at sea and in nature provided.
We also need to keep in mind that environmental impacts of water quality and pollution hold as great tie to the human experience as they do to the inhabitants of the watery deep. Places such as Annapolis, St. Michaels, and Solomons are unique treasures that few regions have. I’ve visited many harbors that haven’t evolved in such pleasant ways, and where community participants haven’t been nearly as supportive.
It’s a powerful reminder for me as a sailor not to simply identify the Bays natural resources but the bounty of all its resources including visual and emotional. The pictures on our iPhone that become my screen saver are the ‘why’ in our preservation. They are resources, and like any resource, they too need management to be sustained.
