Nearby

     Bill encourages me to keep an eye out for diamondback terrapins poking their heads above the grasses as well as for tiny marsh periwinkles that spend their days traveling up and down the cord grass blades, running to and from the tides. Taking a mental inventory, I realize that I’ve completely surrendered to my surroundings, grateful for the chance to float eye-level with a world that is too easily forgotten amid the clutter of worries that are eight delicious miles away on the mainland.

     Although the turtles have chosen to remain hidden, the shells on Cobb’s Island are a dime a dozen. As the four of us walk the scallop-hemmed shoreline, our heads bowed in shell-seeking mode, Dave explains how, due to waves, weather and tides, these islands live in a constant state of change, shifting shape by degrees every year. The billowy sand sinks like zoysia grass under my feet as we approach a handful of sandpipers erratically darting about. At the water’s edge, we stand in silence, listening to the breaking waves toss shells against one another, producing a soulful, muted chime with each buffered collision. “That’s one of my favorite sounds,” says Dave with soft enthusiasm.

     The peaceful moment is soon shattered with my inevitable inquiry regarding the island’s dark side: sharks. Dave assures me that while nurse, sand and even small great white sharks have been sighted off the coast, they’re rare. I take him at his word but inch a tad closer to his defensive tackle-sized frame as we head back to the boats.

     Pushed homeward by the rush of the incoming tide, the effortless paddle back is a gentle luge ride through the curvy cuts. In no time, the drift delivers us back to the watch house, where our surprise, chef and local caterer Amy Brandt, has been ferried out to prepare dinner. While she whips up an entrée of Chesapeake Bay stew, a brothy concoction of red drum, scallops, clams and basmati rice, Michael and I move the dining room table out to the dock for an al fresco supper, complete with linens, a vase of lavender, candles and wine from Chatham Vineyards in nearby Machipongo. Dave mans the pot of steaming Cherrystone clams, which he serves with a plastic cup of Chardonnay for dipping, an unexpected twist that gives the bite-size bivalves a buttery flavor.

     As the sun slides below the horizon, the lights from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel flicker in the distance, and the evening’s ceiling is a glow-in-the-dark mosaic of planets and stars. After lingering over wine and a few hands of poker, we turn in, I on the bottom bunk, Amy in a cot, and Michael on the air mattress on the floor. As for Dave, he opts to sleep under the stars on the dock.