As American chestnut trees were dying, the Virginia Blue Ridge Railway sprang to life. It was 1914, and blight was decimating chestnut trees in hardwood forests from Maine to Florida. Nevertheless, a pair of undeterred entrepreneurs established a shortline railway to transport chestnut timbe…
Travel
The Appomattox River in Virginia has long been a river I’ve wanted to explore. Its name conjured up associations with the Civil War, but otherwise I knew little about it. Lucky for me, a water trail helped me to tackle the adventure.
For an unparalleled view of the Chesapeake Bay, drive to the end of Maryland Route 272, leave your car in the gravel lot and hike down an old farm lane that gradually becomes engulfed in trees. Then step out into a final clearing containing an antique lighthouse and get as close to the edge …
Years ago, Roberta Strickler, a kayaker from Lancaster, PA, stood on the Norman Wood Bridge across the Susquehanna River, transfixed by an odd assortment of rounded rock islands just downriver.
Midmorning, early November, and our walk-and-coffee ritual along Daugherty Creek Canal at Janes Island State Park in Maryland comes to an abrupt halt as a white-tailed deer leaps through the marsh across the canal. Bounding over shimmering saltmeadow hay and saltmarsh cordgrass, she’s headed…
Only a little more than a half-mile remains of the 80-mile Union Canal, the nation’s first public works project, but a guided float on its placid waters in a replica canal boat drips with early American history when its founders dreamed big.
It happens every April and early May across the Chesapeake Bay region. Warm, sunny weather beckons to thousands of stir-crazy people who don shorts and T-shirts and drag their canoes and kayaks to the water.
The ability to identify plants and trees was once the sole province of experts such as naturalists, botanists and master gardeners. But with new technology just a download away, anyone can do it.
At Bull Run Regional Park in Northern Virginia, the staff starts fielding questions in February. “When will the bluebells peak?” “What if I come next Thursday morning?”
Ephraim Seidman, a cyclist from Richmond, can be found on the Virginia Capital Trail several times a week. He’s not there just for fun and exercise. Seidman is one of more than 80 “trail ambassadors” coordinated by the Capital Trail Foundation.
In late summer, a sandy bank of the James River near downtown Richmond known as Texas Beach can get raucous with crowds eager to stick their toes in the water. But on a midwinter afternoon, the river views feel both remote and peaceful.
One of Maryland’s top birding sites is not as open to the public as it used to be — but no one told the birds.
Shiloh, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettsyburg, the Wilderness: After more than 150 years, the names of certain Civil War battles continue to vibrate with meaning and consequence in the public’s imagination.
Cemeteries are places of remembrance. Arlington National Cemetery is perhaps the most famous, the final resting place of more than 400,000 veterans of American conflicts and their spouses.
Where can you find the largest pawpaw patch north of Maryland, trace an old railroad bed along the Susquehanna River, hear the swoosh of wind turbines and meander through vast flowering meadows?
A street lined with homes built in the early 1900s slopes downhill to the fraying edge of town. A two-lane bridge carries traffic across a ribbon of flat water. There’s a boat ramp on the opposite side with one of those newfangled kayak launches with rollers.
Early morning light beckoned me upstream into the green, marshy world of Cat Point Creek, a tributary of Virginia’s Rappahannock River.
I have formed three distinctly different impressions of Fort Frederick, the 1756 stone fort that is now the centerpiece of a 585-acre state park in Western Maryland.
A skipjack tacked up and down the Choptank River in Maryland for two hours on an azure afternoon in late spring. One of the last of its kind still cruising the Chesapeake Bay’s waters, the Nathan of Dorchester returned to its slip with a brimming haul.
Taking a bridge across the Potomac River on the way to work isn’t the same as plunging a paddle into the water, seeing its beauty and benefits up close. But only a fraction of the more than 6 million people living in the District of Columbia’s metro area get onto the water each year.
Hugging the slow s-curves of road winding into a mountainous sliver of West Virginia’s Hampshire County, I remembered why they call this portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed “wild” — and why clean water advocates were desperate to keep it that way.
When the Smithsonian Institution looked for a first stop in Maryland for its traveling exhibit Water/Ways, it wisely chose Baltimore County.
Many strategies for dealing with mid-Atlantic summer heat involve cool water: outdoor pools, ocean waves or slow-flowing rivers.
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor might not make anyone’s top 10 list of places they’ve dreamed of exploring by kayak. It can be a busy — and at certain times, funky — body of water in the heart of the second largest city in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Hugging the slow s-curves of road winding into a mountainous sliver of West Virginia’s Hampshire County, I remembered why they call this portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed “wild” — and why clean water advocates were desperate to keep it that way.
It was late spring last year when I got the tip: For a spectacular showcase of wildflowers, head to the G. Richard Thompson Wildlife Management Area in Fauquier County, VA.
For a number of reasons, all of which are profoundly uninteresting, in 30-some years of exploring and writing about the Chesapeake, I had until recently visited only three of Maryland’s four surviving “screwpile” lighthouses:
When birdwatchers flock to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore this winter, they are likely to witness one of the most dramatic sights nature has to offer in the Chesapeake Bay region.
For years, my friend Alison has been telling me, “You’ve gotta rent a Potomac Appalachian Trail Club cabin! You’ll love it!”
The Susquehanna River starts its 444-mile journey as a lazy creek in Cooperstown, NY. It begins as an outflow from Otsego Lake, where its southern tip abuts the town.
At Norfolk Botanical Garden, everything is just so. Horticulturalists deadhead roses in the summer to ensure visitors encounter a perfume-filled, technicolor display in the fall. Azaleas are arrayed for maximum visual pop in the spring.
I’ve always been fascinated by the influence of topography on where humans have decided to set up camp over the millennia.
After a mile of increasingly pitched hiking through a dense forest, a strange scene unfolded. Quartzite boulders, ranging in size from La-Z-Boy recliners to school buses, reared up, blazing away in the sun. The absence of green was matched only by the audacity of white and its kindred tints:…
The year was 1829, and the news was big — big enough to be trumpeted on a broadside that exercised all of the exaggerated fonts and eye-grabbing capitalization of the day:
In the small central Virginia county of Fluvanna, a triangle of historic farm and forest is wedged between the Rivanna River and Virginia Highway 53, just 20 miles southeast of Charlottesville.
Four and a half miles from its mouth at the Chesapeake Bay, Onancock Creek diverges in three directions. In 1680, settlers transformed the banks of this branching stream into the town of Onancock.
I once heard the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse described as a Victorian rendition of a lunar landing module.
Horticulturist Sandy Mudrinich paused at the edge of the forest that rises behind Montpelier, the historic home of President James Madison, nestled in Orange, VA.
It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I worked in Annapolis for nearly 20 years — and lived there much of that time — but never once visited Historic London Town and Gardens in nearby Edgewater, about three miles away on the opposite shore of the South River.
More than 6 million people live in the Potomac River watershed, but relatively few get the chance to wade into its waters on a regular basis.
In the annals of Virginia whitewater paddling, the Maury River at Goshen Pass has earned a reputation. The five-mile stretch of river, a tributary to the James River in mountainous western Virginia, can be a bruising paddle even if you’re very skilled and very lucky. In high water, it can be…
We seem to be alone under the canopies of bald cypress and black gum. Hawks soar overhead. Leaves on the rose bushes rustle. Remnants of a beaver lodge hide among the brambles. An old truck, possibly from the 1950s, sits rusting on the water’s edge.
As I clawed my way west on the traffic-jammed outer loop of the Washington Beltway, it occurred to me that I should have scheduled my tour of the C&O Canal’s Lockhouse 10 at noon or so. Not at 10 a.m., which, in this neck of the woods, is still rush hour.
Little known fact: On the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, in the days before fossil fuel, there were dozens and dozens of wind-powered gristmills.
Laid bare of its sound-absorbing foliage, the forest of lanky hardwoods becomes a cacophony of sound. On this cool morning, the leaves crunch underfoot and rustle nearby as a squirrel digs for hidden treasure.
The fields and forests of Gifford Pinchot State Park in southcentral Pennsylvania are still in winter dormancy, but not for long. You will actually hear the change.
Have you ever wanted to kayak on the Chesapeake Bay, but didn’t know how or where to start? Here’s your chance. On March 10, the Chesapeake Paddlers Association is offering a one-day introduction to sea kayaking at a retreat center on the West River south of Annapolis.
On the outskirts of the sprawling suburbs to the nation’s capital, there’s a time machine of sorts that can transport you back a century or two. It’s a quaint village called Waterford.
From a distance, Cove Mountain looks like it floats on the Susquehanna River. Closer up, it’s a typical Pennsylvania red oak-dominated forest, with scattered lichen and moss-covered boulders, clear mountain streams and clearings well-stocked with wildflowers.
An easy 10-minute hike through towering oak and hickory brought me to an observation deck 25 feet above Bush Mill Stream on Virginia’s Northern Neck.