Nearby

Seaside Safari

Want an eco-adventure that’s a little different? Spend a night in a historic oyster watch house in the marshland off one of Virginia’s barrier islands. Watermen once used these one-room shacks to protect their harvests. Now, one is a base camp for Eastern Shore excursions. By Kessler Burnett • Photography by Michael Bowles

7/21/09 5:32 PM

Do you like this?

MICHAEL BOWLES PHOTOGRAPHY

Only a maniacal mind could have built this dock. The odd-sized planks erratically rise, fall, twist and wobble, reducing me to a high-wire act with each shaky step. The “net” below is but a soupy tidal flat, where an inattentive audience of fiddler crabs chaotically flit in and out of their dens, assuring me of a creepy landing place if my third-grade balance-beam skills fail to keep me dry. But the anticipation of finally entering the oyster watch house at dock’s end commands my attention, and soon I am striding like an old salt toward my home away from home for the next 24 hours.

Seaside Safari

Michael Bowles

dinner, Eastern Shore style

Like an arthritic spider, the nearly 100-year-old watch house rises above the marshlands of Smith Island, the second southernmost in Virginia’s chain of 17 barrier islands that skirt the Atlantic seaboard. Propped on slanting stilts and covered in flaking asphalt shingles, the 400-square-foot structure is quaint from a distance. But to overnight guests such as I who haven’t exercised their wilderness muscles in ages, the promise of a day (and night) without electricity or plumbing is admittedly a bit unnerving. While photographer Michael Bowles and I have come here for an authentic eco-tourism experience, the original purpose of these shacks was purely business—Eastern Shore-style.

Common sights in this region during the 19th century, these wooden structures were constructed by watermen near their oyster beds, where they’d hole up for weeks on end, well-armed, guarding their harvests from poachers. With the invention of the outboard motor in the early 1900s, watermen could travel to and from the mainland at all hours with ease, thus ending the need for these overnight camps. Out of the estimated 100 watch houses that once dotted this expanse, today fewer than a dozen remain.

This particular watch house is the inspiration behind the overnight kayak excursions hosted by Southeast Expeditions, a Cape Charles-based eco-tour company owned by Dave Burden, our guide for the trip. The watch house weekends have become a popular venue for everything from bachelor parties to girlfriends’ getaways to second honeymoons. Itineraries can be as rugged or as gentle as clients crave, with activities that range from shell hunting on the islands to tours of an aquaculture farm to dock-side Reiki administered by shipped-in masseuses to chef-prepared sunset suppers. “People who book this trip are looking for something unique,” explains Dave, his shaggy, blond hair falling into his face as he lugs a cooler down the pier. “These are people who want an adventure but don’t want the same adventure that everybody else has. They want to feel like they’ve left their world behind for a completely different one.”