Chesapeake Bay Quotes

The wounded recognized the wounded.

There was nothing like a Saturday - unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball.

Please let me go." "Anna." He lowered his brow to hers. "Don't ask me to do that, because I don't think I can live without you. Take a chance, roll the dice. Come with me.

Up to this point your life has pretty much sucked. You’re not responsible for that. But you are responsible for what happens from here on.

You mess with one Quinn, you mess with them all.

Sometimes it’s all you can do,” he murmured. “Fight back; run wild, until you get it all out.” “Sometimes there is nothing to fight and nowhere to run.

You did that on purpose." "Did what on purpose?" "Wore the don't-touch suit and the sex goddess perfume at the same time just to drive me crazy." "Listen to the suit, Quinn. Dream about the perfume.

You don’t want to get in the habit of overusing the word “fuck” as an adjective. You’ll miss the vast variety of its uses.

He had realised that most vital of humanities. he had touched lives. And he had raised three boys that no one had wanted into men.

She pressed her mouth to his throat, his shoulder, would have absorbed him into her skin if she'd known a way.

Can't choose where you come from, Seth. My boys and you know that better than anyone. But you can choose where you end up, and how you get there.

She stared at him. "You'd be willing to change your life so dramatically?" "Ray and Stella Quinn changed my life.

I can't say I cared much for you when I first came back. There's that crappy attitude of yours, and you're ugly, but you kind of grow on a guy." Immensely cheered, Seth snickered. "You're uglier." "I'm bigger, I'm entitled. So I guess I'll hang around to see if you get any prettier as time goes on." "I didn't really want you to go," Seth said under his breath after a long moment. It was the closest he could get to speaking his heart. "I know.

You said you survived, Anna, but you didn't. You triumphed. Everything about you is a testament to courage and strength." When she stared at him, obviously stunned, he smiled a little. "You didn't get either from a social worker or a counselor. They just helped you figure out how to use it. I figure you got it from your mother. She must have been a hell of a woman." "She was," Anna murmured, near tears again. "So are you.

Don’t mix up who I am and what I am,” she told him quietly. “You have to be honest with me, or the rest of it means nothing.

He'd done as he'd pleased and even had often enjoyed long runs of luck where he hadn't been caught. But the luckiest moment of his life had been being caught.

The outward appearance would never indicate they were brothers. (...) But she could see that at the moment they were as united as triplets in the womb.

You should appreciate those things while you have them, but you never do. Not all the way. Too busy living. Now and again, you should try to stop to appreciate the little things. They'll build up if you do.

It's not an exaggeration to say that they saved my life. Ray Quinn, then Cam and Ethan and Phil. They turned their world around for me, and because of it, turned mine around with it. Anna and Grace and Sybill, Aubrey too. They made a home for me, and nothing that happened before matters nearly as much as everything that came after.

The kid's driving me bat-shit," Cam complained as he stalked into the kitchen. "You can't say boo to him without him squaring up for a fight." "Mm-hmm." "Argumentative, smart-mouthed, troublemaker." "Must be like looking in a mirror." "Like hell." "Don't know what I was thinking of. You're such a peaceable soul.

You belong with us," he said quietly. "Nothing's going to change that.

Tell me what's the hardest thing about living on a small, marshy island in Chesapeake Bay. I know that and it didn't take sixty three years to figure it out... Having the gumption to live different and the sense to let everybody else live different. That's the hardest thing, hands down.

Phillip look into Ray's eyes. He saw compassion and hope. And he saw himself mirrored back, bleeding in a dirty gutter on a street where life was worth less than a dime bag. Sick, tired, petrified, Phillip dropped his head into his hands. "What's the point?" "You're the point, son." Ray ran his hand over Phillip's hair. "You're the point.

Sometimes, she thought, you had to go with your instincts, with your cravings. At that moment hers, all of hers, centered on him.

Cut it out!" Phillip exploded. "Cut it out right now or I swear I'm going to pull over and knock your heads together. Oh, my God." He took one hand off the wheel to drag it down his face. "I sound like Mom. Forget it. Just forget it. Kill each other. I'll dump the bodies in the mall parking lot and drive to Mexico. I'll learn how to weave mats and sell them on the beach at Cozumel. I'll be quiet, it'll be peaceful. I'll change my name to Raoul, and no one will know I was ever related to a bunch of fools." Seth scratched his belly and turned to Cam. "Does he always talk like that?" "Yeah, mostly. Sometimes he's going to be Pierre and live in a garret in Paris, but it's the same thing." "Weird," was Seth's only comment. (...) Getting new shows was turning into a new adventure.

Education's supposed to be more than learning--leastways that's how we were taught. It's supposed to help build your character and help teach you how to get on in the world. If it tells you that you get booted for doing what you had to do, for standing up for yourself, then something's wrong with the system.

He matters to me, too." "I know he does." "He didn't." Phillip pulled out his hammer to nail the laps. "Not as much as he did to you. Not enough. It's different now." "I know that, too." For the next few minutes they worked in tandem, without words. "You stood up for him anyway," Cam added when the plank was in place. "Even when he didn't matter enough." "I did it for Dad." "We all did it for Dad. Now we're doing it for Seth.

Within months, Ray Quinn had died, but he'd kept his word. He'd kept it through the three men he'd made his sons. Those men had given the scrawny, suspicious, and scarred young boy a life. They had given him a home, and made him a man. Cameron, the edgy, quick-tempered gypsy; Ethan, the patient, steady waterman; Phillip, the elegant, sharp-minded executive. They had stood for him, fought for him. They had saved him. His brothers.

I want to come home. Not just for a few days or a couple weeks. I want to stay. Can I stay?" Cam drew off his sunglasses, and his eyes, smoke-gray, met Seth's. "What the hell's the matter with you that you think you have to ask? You trying to piss me off?" "I never had to try, nobody does with you. Anyway, I'll pull my weight." "You always pulled your weight. And we missed seeing your ugly face around here." And that, Seth thought as they walked to the car, was all the welcome he needed from Cameron Quinn.

I've got something for you inside me, Anna." He forgot his hands were grimy and laid them on her shoulders. "I haven't used it up yet. This thing with you, it's one of the first times I haven't wanted to rush to the finish line.

She hoped the Quinns would allow her a few moments alone with Seth, so she could judge for herself, without influence, how he was feeling. She hoped she could steal a few moments alone with Cam, so she could judge for herself how she was feeling.

Everything she’d ever read about love was true, she discovered. The sun shined brighter, the air smelled fresher. Flowers were more colorful, the songs of birds more musical.

My mother said once that we were all hers already. We just hadn't found each other before.

Flowers, champagne, caviar. Do you usually come so well equipped when you break and enter?" "Only when I want to apologize and throw myself on the mercy of a beautiful woman.

The Karmic Philharmonic of Chesapeake Bay [10w] The Philharmonic's evil second violin reincarnated as a fiddler crab.

I'm wanting the hell out of you. Day and night." Her voice was throaty now, dark with need. "I guess that makes it handy, since I want the hell out of you too." "It doesn't scare you?" "Nothing about you and me scares me." "And what if I said I want you to let me do anything I want to you? Everything?" Her heart fluttered to her throat, but her eyes stayed steady. "I'd say who's stopping you?

If you take your time about things, you end up with the best at the end of the day." He buried his face in her hair, wanting the scent and the texture. "Now, I've got the best. Good, solid stoneware.

I don't want to marry her, I just want to have a nice, civilized dinner with her." "Then bounce on her," Seth finished. "Christ. He gets that from you," Philip accused Cam. "He came that way," Cam wrapped an arm around Seth's neck. "Didn't you, brat?" The panic didn't come now, as it used to whenever Seth was touched or held. Instead he wriggled and grinned.

BLAM! BLOOEY! Twin thunderstorms struck Chesapeake Bay at about the same hour two weeks apart in the last spring and summer of the eighth decade of the twentieth century of the Christian era and bracketed our story like artillery zeroing in.

When the couple rode by the shore one day, John became so enraged at Fidelia that he drove their carriage straight into Chesapeake Bay. When Fidelia asked where he was going, John replied with a sneer, “To hell, Madam.” To which she retorted boldly, “Drive on, sir.

It was different with Seth," Anna went on. "Right from the first minute, everything about him pulled at me. I couldn't stop it. I tried, but I couldn't. I've thought about that, and I believe, sincerely, that my feelings for him were there, just there, even before I met him. We were meant to be part of each other's lives. He was meant to be part of this family, and this family was meant to be mine.

Scholarships allowed her to study at Woods Hole Biological Laboratory, where she fell in love with the sea, and at Johns Hopkins University, where she was isolated, one of a handful of women in marine biology. She had no mentors and no money to continue in graduate school after completing an M.A. in zoology in 1932. Along the way she worked as a laboratory assistant in the school of public health, where she was lucky enough to receive some training in experimental genetics. As employment opportunities in science dwindled, she began writing articles about the natural history of Chesapeake Bay for the Baltimore Sun. Although these were years of financial and emotional struggle, Carson realized that she did not have to choose between science and writing, that she had the talent to do both. From childhood on, Carson was interested in

Gaia giveth even as she taketh away. The warming of the global climate over the past century had melted permafrost and glaciers, shifted rainfall patterns, altered animal migratory routes, disrupted agriculture, drowned cities, and similarly necessitated a thousand thousand adjustments, recalibrations and hasty retreats. But humanity's unintentional experiment with the biosphere had also brought some benefits. Now we could grow oysters in New England. Six hundred years ago, oysters flourished as far north as the Hudson. Native Americans had accumulated vast middens of shells on the shores of what would become Manhattan. Then, prior to the industrial age, there was a small climate shift, and oysters vanished from those waters. Now, however, the tasty bivalves were back, their range extending almost to Maine. The commercial beds of the Cape Cod Archipelago produced shellfish as good as any from the heyday of Chesapeake Bay. Several large wikis maintained, regulated and harvested these beds, constituting a large share of the local economy. But as anyone might have predicted, wherever a natural resource existed, sprawling and hard of defense, poachers would be found.

And he chose his subjects with great care: the South Pacific (Tales of the South Pacific, Return to Paradise), Judaism (The Source), South Africa (The Covenant), the West Indies (Caribbean), the American West (Centennial), the Chesapeake Bay (Chesapeake), Texas, Alaska, Spain (Iberia), Mexico, Poland, the Far East.

Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer's Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty,

He'd learned quickly enough that when you cooked for a family, everybody was a critic.

Love doesn’t require payment. Cam’s right about that. There are no checks and balances here.

His eyes were anything but friendly, the color of bitter storms.

When a woman had eyes that big, that brown, that beautiful, she probably got whatever she wanted without saying a word.

Look, pal, he who goes to the store buys what he damn well pleases. That’s a new rule around here.

We’ll be okay. Luck’s starting to move in our direction.

It’s not a matter of jealousy. It’s a matter of courtesy.

He felt as if he’d tumbled off a cliff and fallen hard on his heart. Now his heart was swollen, exposed. And it was hers.

There were only two men in her life she had ever really loved. It seemed neither of them could want her as she needed them to want her.

Fate takes its own sweet time, but it always finds a way.

When people break your heart, pride’s all you’ve got left.

You don’t treat your family like this. Like a goddamn convenience.

When people break your heart, pride’s all you’ve got left. And pride, could turn cold and bitter without heart.

It wasn't the paramedics or the surgical team that saved my life. It was Ray and Stella Quinn.

Sundays were knowing absolutely nothing had to be done, and countless things could be.

Life's a gift. It doesn't always fit comfortably, but it's precious. I wouldn't have hurt you and your brothers by throwing mine away.

Much like crossing the Bay Bridge when there is a storm over the Chesapeake, one may be terrified to go forward, but there is no question of going back.

Only as the local train shambled into the low-forested clayland of Westmoreland County, did he feel once more identified with his surroundings; at the station he saw a star he knew, and a cold moon bright over Chesapeake bay; he heard the rasping wheels of buckboards turning, the lovely fatuous voices, the sound of sluggish primeval rivers flowing softly under soft Indian names.

Today's water arguments reflect a growing unease about how to proceed when old certainties are being pushed aside and new options seem limited or unappealing. But the stark warnings implicit in Wisconsin's poisoned wells, the intersex and dying fish of Chesapeake Bay, Lake Mead's recored-low waterline, the decay of levees across the country, and the resource war in Alaska's Bristol Bay, cannot be ignored.

We will make land at Norfolk,' Titch said, as if this was some reassurance. It meant little to me, of course. Titch explained we would be entering Chesapeake Bay, and would therefore soon be leaving the ship. We would also, however, find ourselves subject to the laws of American freedom. 'Freedom, Wash, is a word with different meanings to different people,' he said, as though I did not know the truth of this better than he.

So how does the United States of America relate to the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Network?” Rhamnetin asked. Right. Awkward questions. Bakkalian smiled sweetly and said, “Technically, this is U.S. territory. A national park. We’re sorry we didn’t get here earlier to welcome you properly.” “The Chesapeake doesn’t claim specific territory,” I said. “We claim our actions. We take care of everything in the watershed, every place where the river acts.

Cam gave him a halfhearted boot on the top of his head with the heel of one hand. "Why don't you shut up until I say what I have to say?" The painless smack and impatient order were more comforting to Seth than a thousand promises.

Aboard a Chesapeake Bay steamer, not long after his surrender, the general heard a fellow passenger insisting that the South had been “conquered but not subdued.” Asked in what command he had served, the bellicose young man — one of those stalwarts later classified as “invisible in war and invincible in peace” — replied that, unfortunately, circumstances had made it impossible for him to be in the army. “Well, sir, I was,” Johnston told him. “You may not be subdued, but I am.

How do you feel about me?" "Tired of you!" she shouted. "Tired of me, tired of us. Sick and tired of telling myself fun and games could be enough. Well, it's not. Not nearly, and I want you out" He felt the temper and panic that had gripped him ease back into delight. "You're in love with me, aren't you?" He'd never seen a woman go from simmer to boil so fast. And seeing it, he wondered why it had taken him so long to realize he adored her. She whirled, grabbed a lamp, and hurled it.

He loved his job. What was advertising, anyway, but a knowledge of people and of which buttons to push to nudge them into opening their wallets? It was, he often though, an accepted, creative, even expected twist on picking those wallets. For a man who had spent the first half of his life as a thief, it was the perfect career.

He loved his job. What was advertising, anyway, but a knowledge of people and of which buttons to push to nudge them into opening their wallets? It was, he often thought, an accepted, creative, even expected twist on picking those wallets. For a man who had spent the first half of his life as a thief, it was the perfect career.

I continue to have concerns about my decision to be public about my illness, but one of the advantages of having had manic-depressive illness for more than thirty years is that very little seems insurmountably difficult. Much like crossing the Bay Bridge when there is a storm over the Chesapeake, one may be terrified to go forward, but there is no question of going back.

Jake eyed his brother. "I never forget. All data is stored in my memory banks. And one day, candy pig, you will pay." "You 're such a geek." "Thesbo." "That's Jack's latest insult." Seth gestured with his wine-glass. "A play on thespian, since Kev's into that." "Rhymes with lesbo," Jake explained helpfully while Anna stifled a groan. "It's a slick way of calling him a girl.

It was on May 6, 1607 that three ships of the Virginia Company, the Godspeed, the Discovery, and the Sarah Constant, sighted the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. The settlers numbered 105, and they built a fort, a church, and huts with roofs of thatch. None of the original settlement survives but an elaborate reconstruction shows us what it looked like, and it was extremely primitive. It was in fact more like a Dark Age settlement in western Europe during the 6th or 7th centuries than a neat township of log cabins—as though the English in establishing a foothold on the new continent had had to go back a thousand years into their past. As it was, lacking a family unit basis, the colony was fortunate to survive at all. Half died by the end of 1608, leaving a mere fifty-three emaciated survivors.

I can’t recapture that feeling of euphoric gratitude any more than I can really remember the mortal terror I felt when I was pretty sure I had about four minutes to live. But I know that it really happened, that that state of grace is accessible to us, even if I only blundered across it once and never find my way back. At my cabin on the Chesapeake Bay I’ll see bald eagles swoop up from the water with wriggling little fish in their talons, and whenever they accidentally drop their catch, I like to imagine that fish trying to tell his friends about his own near-death experience, a perspective so unprecedented there are no words in the fish language to describe it: for a short time he was outside the world, he could see forever, there’s so much more than they knew, but he’s glad to be back.

Sorry. Bad joke. I didn't know things were serious between you." "I never said they were serious." Phillip laughed, then winced as his lip wept. "Brother, did you ever. I guess I never figured you'd be the first of us to fall in love with a woman." The stomach that Phillip's fists had abused jittered wildly. "Who said I'm in love with her?" "You didn't punch me in the face because you're in like." He looked down at his pleated slacks. "Shit. Do you know how hard it is to get bloodstains out of a cotton blend

know what's going on." Cam looked up in time to see both of his brothers' eyes focus on him. "Oh, come on. Why does it have to be me?" "You're the oldest." Phillip grinned at him. "Besides, it'll take your mind off Anna." "I'm not brooding about her—or any woman." "Been edgy and broody all week," Ethan mumbled. "Making me nuts." "Who asked you? We had a little disagreement, that's all. I'm giving her time to simmer down." "Seems to me she'd simmered down to frozen the last time I saw her." Phillip examined his beer. "That was a week ago.

Based in southern Ohio, the Hopewell interaction sphere lasted until about 400 A.D. and extended across two-thirds of what is now the United States. Into the Midwest came seashells from the Gulf of Mexico, silver from Ontario, fossil shark’s teeth from Chesapeake Bay, and obsidian from Yellowstone. In return the Hopewell exported ideas: the bow and arrow, monumental earthworks, fired pottery (Adena pots were not put into kilns), and, probably most important, the Hopewell religion.

the storm dumped the equivalent of all the water in Chesapeake Bay.

No business at the table,” Gram finally said when Jess looked as if she was about to throw down her napkin and bolt. “I’m sure we can think of other things to talk about. After all, when was the last time we had a chance to be together under this roof? Let’s make this meal as special as the occasion calls for.” “How are Uncle Jeff and Uncle Tom?” Abby asked, seizing on the first thing that came to mind. “How would I know?” Mick responded bitterly. The implication in his tone was that he didn’t much care, either. Obviously neither time nor Gram had mellowed his mood when it came to his brothers. The breakup of the business partnership had taken a personal toll. It had exposed all of the philosophical and environmental differences of the brothers. Since like all O’Briens, none of them were willing to back down from a stance, working together had been a really bad idea from the beginning. That they’d actually completed Chesapeake Shores at all had been a miracle. Gram scowled at Mick, then turned to Abby. “They’re fine. Tom’s working on legislation to protect the bay and trying

One catchy descriptor that SBX advocates use to explain how powerful the SBX is, is to say if placed in the Chesapeake Bay, its radars would be able to see a baseball-sized object in San Francisco from an observation post in Washington, D.C., some 2,900 miles away. This is true, sort of. The baseball needs to be hovering 870 miles above San Francisco in a direct line of sight with the radar in D.C. in order to be seen.

everything had changed.Everything was different. And he was desperate to tell her. Cam knew his life had turned on its axis yet again. And somehow he'd ended up exactly where he needed to be. The only thing missing was Anna.

Huzzah! Free Trade and Sailors' Rights! But instead American ships are captured and sailors impressed by the thousands into the British Navy, becoming slaves to the lash, while the United States has virtually no navy to back them up. Baltimore native, Nathan Jeffries, son of an American hero, Captain William Jeffries, and his Quaker wife, Amy, is haunted by the memories of his fiancee, his best friend, his enemy's woman and his betrayal. Chesapeake Bay is no refuge aboard his father's brig Bucephalus;facing his worst fears, he is chased and captured by armed privateer schooner Scourge. In a violent world at war, Nathan must break his most solemn promise to his mother. For Nathan and the young United States, 1812 would severely challenge rights of passage.

then looked directly into the father’s eyes. “I’m aware that over the

The British Blockade the Atlantic Coast Warren had already established a blockade from Charleston, South Carolina, to Spanish Florida in the fall of 1812.156 With his enlarged fleet, he extended this blockade in early 1813 to the Chesapeake and Delaware bays and then to other ports and harbors in the middle and southern states. Thus by November 1813, the entire coast south of New England was under blockade. Warren exempted New England, both to reward her for opposing the war and to keep up the flow of provisions to Canada and the British West Indies.

or nervous before. Though they didn’t know

Far more demoralizing to Americans than British operations in New England was their invasion of the Chesapeake. In 1814 London officials ordered Major General Robert Ross “to effect a diversion on the coasts of the United States of America in favor of the army employed in the defence of Upper and Lower Canada.” At the same time, Prevost, who was angry over the burning of Dover and other depredations in Upper Canada, asked Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane to “assist in inflicting that measure of retaliation which shall deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages.”104 The British had successfully targeted the Chesapeake in 1813, and both Ross and Cochrane regarded it the best place to achieve their goals in 1814. The bay’s extensive shoreline remained exposed, and the region’s two most important cities—Washington and Baltimore—offered inviting targets.

It is easy to be brave when you have a child depending on you.

Even before those in Bermuda knew that Ravens’s mission was unsuccessful, Sir Thomas Gates ordered the construction of a pinnace that could carry survivors on to Jamestown. He may have figured there were no ships in Virginia large enough to rescue all the survivors—more than 140 following the departure of Ravens and his shipmates—or he may simply have been pragmatic about the likelihood that the longboat might never make it to the Chesapeake. In any event, the same day that Ravens left, the keel of the pinnace was laid on Buildings Bay, just south of the beach on which Gates and the other survivors first came ashore. There, a group of men set about building a large pinnace under the direction of Frobisher, the able ship’s carpenter. But even as they laid the keel and began fashioning the ribs of the vessel they hoped would carry them to safety, trouble was brewing, trouble that would ultimately threaten tragedy for all the Sea Venture survivors.

the balance of the fleet—other than the little ketch that was lost after separating from Sea Venture in the early hours of the storm—had survived the tempest, if barely. On August 10, four of those ships passed between Cape Henry and Cape Charles, named for the sons of King James I, and sailed slowly up the Chesapeake Bay on the rising tide. The ships—the Blessing, the Falcon, the Lion, and the Unity—were battered, their masts broken or missing, sails in tatters, decks scoured by roaring seas. Over the next two days, the ships moved north and east to the mouth of the James River and then crept up the James River, described by George Percy, one of the original Jamestown settlers, as “one of the famousest Rivers that ever was found by any Christian … where ships of great burthen may harbor in safety.

By the numbers, Accomack could look like a desolate place to live. The Opportunity Index, a nonprofit measurement of sixteen different indicators of success in every county in America, gives it a forty-three out of one hundred. But numbers can be misleading. To residents, statistics could not account for the deep feeling of belonging that came from being able to find your surname in three hundred-year-old county records. They couldn't account for how clean the air felt and how orange the sun was setting over the Chesapeake Bay.

Chebeague Island is the largest of the islands in Casco Bay, near Portland Maine. Everyone knew everybody else on the island, and if they were not related, they were friends, or at the very least knew everything there was to know about each other, including what they had in their stew pot at any given time. Most of the islanders, including the Kimberly family, were descendants of the “Stone Sloopers.” On Chebeague Island they built three wharves. The Stone Wharf, or Hamilton Landing as it was known, is still in use today. The one masted sloops, sometimes known as Chebacco Boats, sailed along the rocky Maine coast transporting granite and stone from Maine’s coastal quarries, to east coast cities as far south as Chesapeake Bay. The Washington Monument and many of the governmental buildings in Washington, D.C., were built of granite brought up the Potomac River by the Stone Sloopers. During the 19th Century, they also supplied rock ballast for the sailing ships that came into New England ports. The Stone Sloopers are also remembered for building Greek revival homes, which can still be seen on the island.

You drag us all out of bed at two in the morning, you’ve got a reason.” “You kill somebody? Because if we’ve got to dispose of a body this time of night, we’d better get started.

Doing it right, is more important than doing it fast." "I can do it fast and right.

Women make a man want to shoot himself in the head and be done with it.

People like to say they’ve given somebody a choice when what they’re really saying is ‘do this my way’.

Temper was a vicious dog that snapped at both their throats.

I wouldn’t have a now without you.

By the numbers, Accomack could look like a desolate place to live. The Opportunity Index, a nonprofit measurement of sixteen different indicators of success in every county in America, gives it a forty-three out of one hundred. But numbers can be misleading. To residents, statistics could not account for the deep feeling of belonging that came from being able to find your surname in three hundred-year-old county records. They couldn’t account for how clean the air felt and how orange the sun was setting over the Chesapeake Bay. How do you calculate fish fries in the backyard, kiddie pools in the front yard, and unfettered views of a thousand stars in the night sky? So much of life is intangible, and places don’t feel like they’re disappearing to the people who are living there.

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