Chesapeake Reflections

One man celebrates and laments his family’s connection to a disappearing paradise of natural wildlife and beauty on the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
 
Between the Indian and Dividing Creeks, near the mouth of the Rappahannock River in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, sits a parcel of land called Bluff Point. Like most bay-front villages, the bountiful resources and majestic landscape of this area that once sustained watermen and sportsmen alike have been depleted as over-harvesting, poaching, pollution and continued development have taken their toll, threatening the very legacy of its people.
 
J. H. Hall’s family first settled on this land shortly after the Civil War, where they maintained a tradition of farming, fishing and crabbing throughout the twentieth century. Hall’s words flow as splendidly as the tides in this collection of personal reminisces and local and natural history honoring the lives of the watermen before him and the uncertainty surrounding those today.