New Point Light

These are different angles of the beautiful New Point lighthouse, taken from the boat ride I took last Sunday with my friends Glenda and Billy.

This will be the last post until I return from vacation, which we eagerly depart for this Saturday.

For more information on our lighthouse, click here or here .

Have a great weekend and a great next week.

I sure intend to!

Deep Thoughts

Look deep into Nature,

and then you will understand everything better.

-Albert Einstein

The poetry of the Earth is never dead.

-John Keats

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.
It will never fail you.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

Then again, there are exceptions.
-Chesapeake Bay Woman

New Point Light

This is New Point Light, very close to the scene where I was caught trespassing the other day. People just don't understand what a woman could possibly be doing standing in the middle of a road with a camera, when 10 signs in plain view clearly state, "No Trespassing." I'm not sure I even understand it. The land depicted here, however, is public property. Just wanted to toss that out there.



Perhaps one of the most recognized landmarks in Mathews, the lighthouse at New Point is accessible only by boat although it is open to the public. So, if you happen to find yourself visiting Mathews, and you manage to make your way all the way down New Point, bring your hip boots (to wade through the marsh) and a bathing suit if you want to go to the light house, unless you remembered to bring your boat.

I would travel with my boat all the time, except it is full of water and sinking. And it's only 3 years old. I am personally full of water and hot air, plus everything on me is sinking, but I'm 43 and that is to be expected.

The lighthouse was authorized by Congress in 1801, and I could have sworn there was a connection to Thomas Jefferson. Maybe I just dreamed that. No! For once my memory is not failing me. I just found a brochure that says Jefferson commissioned it in 1804. Have I mentioned that I love Thomas Jefferson? He might be the one person besides Jane Austen I would like to talk to if I could pick anyone dead or alive to talk to. He was such a Renaissance Man. I love Renaissance Men. I think he would have been too short for me, though, but we're just talking about having a conversation, not a relationship, neither of which is going to happen.

Where was I? Oh. The lighthouse.

I have a book called Images of America Mathews County, written by Sarah Lewis. In it there is a picture of this lighthouse before storms eroded the land connecting it to the mainland. Just to the left was a keeper’s house (it was a two story farmhouse-type dwelling), and there was a sandy beach with a few pine trees.

Looking at it now, it seems impossible that all that existed. Hell hath no fury like Mother Nature when she’s in a bad mood, and, in 1933, somebody must have really pissed her off, because she let a hurricane loose that took care of any remnants of land connecting to the mainland. Folks still talk about The Great Storm of 1933 as if it happened yesterday.

As many years as I’ve spent in Mathews, I have never been to the lighthouse. I have never been on the Mobjack Bay. As long as we’re on the subject (where subject = things I’ve never done), I have never had the chicken pox, have never been called for jury duty, and never understood why you aren’t supposed to rip the label off a mattress.

And to keep with my predilection* for straying from any and all topics, what have you never done? Leave me a comment so when I come home from work tonight I'll have something to entertain me after 12 hours with no internet access.

*I had to look this word up to make sure I knew what on Earth it meant. Also, the first time I wrote it, I spelled it "predeliction," which proves I wasn't entirely sure I knew what I was talking about. I rarely do.

New Point

Tuesday I decided to go down to New Point, which is literally the end of the road in Mathews. It's a small peninsula where the Mobjack Bay and the Chesapeake Bay converge. I was caught trespassing only once, down Bavon Beach, but I drove off and did not make eye contact with the nice elderly couple stopped dead in the road waiting to know what I was doing there. If I had to tell them, I'm not sure I could explain myself.

To get to New Point, you do the following:

• Take Route 14 through the Court House.

• Drive past Port Haywood and remember when your friend used to leave you stranded in the middle of the road there when she popped the clutch on the tractor which caused the trailer she was pulling you in to come off the hitch. She kept on going, cackling with glee and leaving you to fend for yourself.

• Drive past Susan.(Susan is not some girl standing on the side of the road. Susan is the name of an area and a post office.)

• Drive, drive, drive.

. Pray you don't run out of gas or break down because you won't see another human being for days.

• Drive past Shadow. (This is not the name of a cat on the side of the road. It’s the name of an area and a post office.)

• Drive, drive and drive some more.

• You are now in Siberia. The End.


I went to New Point to shoot some pictures of our infamous light house (I'll put these up later this week). In true Chesapeake Bay Woman fashion, I took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere near the light house where there were some very interesting water scenes.

A few other things happened. Naturally.

1. I screeched on the brakes when a whole herd of fighting mad fiddler crabs ran across the road. Why would a fiddler crab be in the road, you may ask? In this case it's because the road is at, and sometimes below, sea level. When they showed up one time in my yard and driveway, it was because they were plotting an overthrow. They almost succeeded.

For those of you who know something about fiddler crabs, you might ask why they were on the offensive rather than their typical defensive stance of scurrying as quickly as possible to cover. All I can say is a seldom-seen car down The Wrong Lane in New Point + low-lying New Point road (as in below the mud level of their natural habitat) = the need for a fiddler crab cross walk or better yet, I vote for a fiddler crab resettlement program. I am quite sure they'd do nicely in Louisiana, for example. Or Alcatraz.

2. I got out of the car to snap a few pictures and had to hit the deck immediately when horseflies dive bombed me and tried to carry me out of there. They were the size of flying monkeys and just as scary. I see no need to resettle these things anywhere other than the backside of the world's biggest flyswatter.

3. Swatting madly at the air, and, as my son says, spittin’ and hissin’(with a side order of cussin’), I quickly snapped the pictures before the flies made off with me. I left my car running (because it was sweltering and I needed the a/c) and also left the door open because I was afraid if I closed it, somehow I'd get locked out, and I did NOT want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with fiddler crabs and flying monkeys attacking me. However, by leaving the door open, I managed to let a few flying monkeys into the car (thankfully, no fiddler crabs made it inside).

Between dodging fiddler crabs in the road and swatting mutant killer horseflies inside the car, it is a wonder I made it out of there without driving up a tree and inflating my airbag.

Speaking of airbags, I will stop now. I feel things crawling on me and I just know it’s either a horsefly or a fiddler crab.