Oxford Maryland | Michael Valliant

Last Child on the River

We floated homemade skimboards across a chest-high channel into Boone Creek. That was the entrance to our after school and weekend reality. Park on the side of the lane and rescue the stashed boards from the brush, then spend the hours through sunset cruising atop what seemed an endless perfect sheet of water–water being the upside to growing up on the Eastern Shore.

The thing that takes me back there most quickly is watching the girls experience all the same things I loved.

Seeing them on the water, exploring beaches, hunting for minnows, crabs, shells, sea glass, and found treasure. There is a simplicity that seems universal.

The built world fades away.

We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children’s memories, the adventures we’ve had together in nature will always exist. – Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods.”

These are the experiences I never want to stop having with the girls–when they are outside with friends, family, other kids, adults, lost in time and fun on a beach, on a river, or in the woods.

The pictures here speak louder and more clearly than my words, which is as it should be. It’s a visual and tactile world. It’s a world we found as kids, discovered as if we were the first to come across it.

Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all. because once they’re gone, with rare exceptions, they’re gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience. – Richard Louv

There is something to being outside on the water. There is something to watching the girls discover it with their friends, and seeing it become a part of who they are.

But in the end, and to the girls’ laughter, those experiences just as easily beg the question of who is the child on the river?

Saturday Prayer

I have not sat still well today. Solitude’s double-edged sword had me pacing, caged.

I walked Harper across town to the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry and back in the morning. I cut grass, which brings on thinking for me. I read and wrote for a book review article coming due. Changed lightbulbs. Sitting in the yard, I had to move.

I hop on my bike and cruise through town, riding down to the shoreline at the park. I pull Gary Snyder’s “Turtle Island” from my pocket, in all its underlined, written in, and dog-eared grace.

I close my eyes with my face in the sun. An evening breeze brushes my ears and hair.

The waves are sharing an embrace and a conversation with the shoreline; sitting in silence, it is all I can hear–a soundtrack no less extraordinary for being commonplace.

I bend my head in prayer to listen. Language doesn’t need words to speak. No, that’s not it. God doesn’t need words to speak to those who listen.

I leaf through Snyder, who offers a “Prayer for the Great Family:”

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep–he who wakes us–
in our minds so be it

I don’t properly write in my pocket notebook very often, opting for a bigger one where my mind stretches more. But the pocket notebook made the bike ride, and as I scrawl these thoughts together, I see words bleeding through from the next page.

They are Ava’s from the rehab hospital last year. She was working on getting her words back with a therapist–she couldn’t find the right words to say, to answer, but she could write them down. Today being a year since the seizure that landed her there, it doesn’t seem a coincidence to have her words find me here.

I close now wet eyes again to listen to the river. And God.

Riding my bike through town, life goes on. People are happy eating, walking, biking. There are kids playing in the sand and ankle deep in the water at the Strand.

Almost home, I turn up Jack’s Point Rd., and an Eastern Bluebird flies across the road in front of me, into a vacant lot. I have only seen a handful of bluebirds in town and I smile. If you read birds, happiness must be nearby.

Growing Up Goonies

A 20-pound Siamese cat slept in the crib with me when I was a baby. I didn’t seem to mind, and neither did my parents. I don’t think it sucked the life out of me, as wives’ tales go.

I spent a good part of the summer days of my first 10 years in a several-acre marsh behind our across-the-street neighbors’ house. We built trails, forts, bridges, found rusty muskrat traps, played war, and brought home mud, sticks, cuts, and ticks.

When my world expanded beyond the marsh and our dead-end street, it was into Oxford by bike. And once I got the okay to ride uptown, I don’t think my mom saw me from morning to dinner. There were no cell phones or text messages. It wasn’t a far bike ride home, and if I needed anything I could call from a friend’s house. I don’t think she was particularly worried.

I watch my girls growing up now, in Oxford half of their time, and 14-year-old Anna riding her bike uptown to find friends, to go swimming at the Strand or hang out at the park, or go to the creamery for ice cream. It’s a newer found freedom for her, one I had already known for a few years at her age. It makes me feel good to see her coming into her own.

This spring, The Washington Post ran an article that got me thinking a lot about how many of us grew up in the 1970s and 80s. The author’s reminiscences come after a question by his eight-year-old son while watching the movie, “The Goonies.”

“Where are their parents?” the kid wondered.

It sends him into a reflection on the differences between what it was like to grow up then versus now. How now all play time is scheduled, whereas our group of friends in Oxford would just ride our bikes and see who we could find. Our days were mostly unstructured and largely up to us.

When I hear, “I’m bored,” from one of the girls, my preferred response to give is, “So what are you going to do about that?” At 14 and 11, they can unseat their own boredom. They can use their brains and bodies to come up with adventures. At their ages, we were largely put outside and told to go play.

Having said that, I have always been and am still quick to play–ride bikes up town, play bocce in the yard, pass the lacrosse or field hockey ball, put the paddleboard in the river. I love sharing that time with them.

There are about as many different parenting styles as there are parents. I don’t think one is better or worse than another, just different. I am far from father of the year (though I have seen winners of that distinction based on their t-shirt or coffee mug), I struggle, second guess, worry, question, and frequently don’t get it right. But I see the people the girls are becoming, how they treat people, the grades they get in school, how they laugh and have fun, and I am grateful that sometimes things sink in for them.

One of the goals of being a parent, at least for me, is to raise girls who grow up to be good, thoughtful, caring, compassionate, passionate, independent, creative people. Among the most valuable things my parents gave to me, was/is being able to fall down, get bruised or scratched, get the wind knocked out of me (figuratively, but sometimes literally), and to be able to get up, dust myself off, put myself back together as best I can, and keep going or get back at it. Unfortunately, I still seem to fall down plenty.

Some of that resilience comes from having to figure things out for yourself/themselves. Learning that their own creativity is the key to getting rid of boredom. And learning that sometimes boredom is okay, resting, and not having every day over-scheduled with ten sports teams, music lessons, scouts, and whatever else can be fit into waking hours.

Maybe a lesser examined idea of parenting is the notion that parents should also show their kids that there is more to being a father or mother than simply parenting; that grown-ups (and parents) have jobs, hobbies, passions, adventures, many of which involve kids, but some of which don’t. We are unscrewing a whole new can of worms with that notion, so let’s leave that be for now.

As a father, there is no greater pleasure than watching, and being a part of, Anna and Ava succeeding at something–whether making Principal’s Honor Roll, or scoring a goal, or being there for a friend, or creating art, or making a good choice, or being all smiles and laughs and making new friends on the dance floor at a wedding.

Growing up is different for the girls than it was for my grandfather (the dude sitting amongst the oyster shells above, circa 1905). Oxford is a different town, parenting is different, and being a kid is different. There are worries now that hadn’t taken shape 100 or 50 or 25 years ago.

But I’d like to think that there is still some magic and adventure that the girls can find for themselves. And while I hope that doesn’t entail running from criminals, getting stuck in underground caves, or involving the police; maybe there are figurative treasure maps and One-Eyed Willy still smiles and winks at kids today.

A Thinking Man’s Guide to Oxford

I’ve come to love lazy paddles. It’s a mindset, an ease, deep breaths. The purpose isn’t to see how far you can go, but to float; to enjoy time on the water; to look for birds, or treasure; to talk; enjoy a beverage; watch the sunset.

Last evening’s lazy paddle netted an Eastern Kingbird sighting (a first), Bald Eagle and Ospreys, multiple Great Blue Herons and Green Herons, either a sandpiper or sanderling scurying along rip-rap; a majestic sunset on the river; rich amarena cherry ice cream, pulling up to the Scottish Highland Creamery by kayak; and a full moon rising over Town Creek.

Other than the ice cream, the evening cost nothing. As we were floating and the sun was teasing some clouds, I said, “Most people don’t do this.” It seemed a shame. I was grateful to share it all. Lazy paddles hold the key to how to enjoy Oxford.

Oxford, Md., is a town with pricey real estate values. It’s not full of shops or things to check off your agenda. But if you don’t need a guide book to tell you what to do; you are good with self-guided and easy-paced; Oxford has no end to what it can offer the thinking visitor or resident.

Benches

All over town there are park benches sitting alongside the waterfront. Some of them are obviously located, some of them take some searching. Where there is a bench, it is public access. Take a load off, sit down. Watch the water. Read. There are benches at small beaches. Gives you more reason to explore.

Oxford Park

The park is the crown jewel of the town. It’s a shady lunch spot after a bike ride. It’s a playground for kids. The living shoreline is a study in fighting erosion, while also leaving some beach for kids to play on and rocks full of periwinkles to explore. It’s the first image that comes to my mind when someone says the word, “park.” It’s changed a bit over time, but the soul of the place is still the same. It’s easy to build your day around Oxford’s park.

The Strand

Over the past couple years, the beach end of the Strand, just down from the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry, seems to have become a local hot spot. When my girls asked why everyone went to the beach at the Strand, I asked them to tell me where there was another public beach in Talbot County. At this point the sea nettles have taken hold for the summer, but the beach is still full of folks setting up picnics, putting in kayaks, paddleboards, or rafts, and taking advantage of a shallow, scenic expanse of beach. There aren’t many to be found in the area.

Architecture

Oxford is not a town that overwhelms you. But it will expand your soul if you slow down and take it all in. The churches, the houses, the boat yards, and restaurants, all speak to and from the water that surrounds them, and walking the few miles around town never fails to slow down my heart rate and put a smile on my face.

Community

One thing you can learn pretty quickly about Oxford, is that it is an odd mix of people, odd being a good quality. In a quick cruise through town, you’re likely to meet watermen, restaurant workers, landscapers, retired folks from various walks of life, volunteer fire fighters, artists; you still find kids on skateboards or riding bikes, and the lunch crowd waiting in line at the Oxford Market‘s deli, is equal parts blue and white collar.

If you are just giving the town a once-through, maybe you don’t catch that, but I think you will. And if you decide you dig the town and make more than one trip, or become a frequent visitor or resident, you will find out for sure. A family recently moved from Los Angeles to Oxford, citing the feeling of community as one of the reasons for their move. I get what they say and felt.

I wouldn’t be doing my day job if I didn’t make mention of the Oxford Community Center. Any place that you can go, for free, and watch The Big Lebowski on the big screen; see Shakespeare performed on the lawn; catch a lecture or concert; see a World War II photography exhibit; or be a part of a community potluck dinner, is worth looking into.

Outside

Oxford has its icons. Those places and activities like taking a ride across the river on the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry. Or eating steamed crabs and taking in the sunset at The Masthead at Pier Street. Or fine dining at The Robert Morris Inn. Each of those things is a singular and signature Oxford experience.

But this is a “thinking man’s guide to Oxford,” because it is about free and low cost means of finding out what the town is about. Oxford is more than just going out to eat or a place to tie a boat up. It is a place to savor slowly.

Between a 5-mile running loop I have around town, walking dogs, biking for ice cream or a beer at a dock bar, I tend to cover some miles through town, and almost always find something new to take pictures of. I find reading perches and sunrise and sunset vantage points.

Oxford is a town I fall in love with anew every day because I find different ways to be outside in and around it. Like a lazy sunset paddle and ice cream. Best enjoyed when shared.