The forecast wasn’t good. It would snow, sleet and then, later in the day, turn to freezing rain. When the going gets tough, the tough go to the library. I picked up an armful of local history books — This Was Vienna; Fairfax County Virginia: A History; Falls Church: A Virginia Village Revisited; Historic Northern Virginia; Reston: New Town in the Old Dominion and a book called Talking Tidewater: Writers on the Chesapeake.

I perused a couple of these tomes last night but was most drawn to an essay from Talking Tidewater, an excerpt from a memoir by Anne Jander called Crab’s Hole: A Family Story of Tangier Island. In the late 1940s a family moved from Connecticut to Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Their house had no electricity or running water when they moved in but the family made do without it for years. I read just enough to make me want to read the whole book — and just enough to make me want to have an adventure, too. Though preferably one with electricity and plumbing.

An old house in Chincoteague, which as close as I’ve come to Tangier Island.