The Great Dismal Swamp - Another View

Written by: L.W. (Skip) McLamb

A serene tree line

A friend and fellow member of the East Beach Writer’s Guild, Mary-Jac O’Daniel, recently shared a post on EBWG’s blog about the Dismal Swamp.  Her posting, motivated me to revisit the Swamp for the first time in ten years.   My daughter, Katie, visiting from Los Angeles, accompanied me, and made the trip a father-daughter adventure.

The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge contains over 100,000 acres of land, of which, approximately half is forest.  The refuge is on the North Carolina and Virginia border, located between Hwy. 17 South in Chesapeake and Hwy. 58 West in Suffolk.  The swamp is home to many plants, mammals, birds, bats, and, as Mary-Jac described, plenty of hungry, pesky, aggravating insects.

Skip & Kate on Feeder Ditch

It was a clear, sunny, relatively warm December day, so Kate and I decided to enter the swamp via kayak.  We selected the Feeder Ditch, one of several waterways available for small boats, canoes, and kayaks.  While paddling, we observed majestic, blue herons, a noisy woodpecker, several small, song birds and a large, ugly turkey vulture that swooped directly over our kayak.  The Feeder Ditch was lined by tall, old growth bald cypress, pine, and oak trees.  Lucky swamp visitors might see black bears, bobcats, deer, and other small mammals; though, none were spotted on our trip.  We traveled in four miles, stopped for a rest at small Army Corps of Engineers Spillway, then paddled the four miles back to the boat launch area.  The trip was a good workout, and a great opportunity to spend quality time with my daughter in a beautiful, and relaxing natural area.

The Great Dismal Swamp is a unique place, ecologically, geologically, and historically.  Exploration is possible using hiking, biking, boating, and automobile trails.  If interested, you can learn much more about the area by visiting the Great Dismal Swamp NWR website.  I recommend you put this on your “to do list”, and also highly recommend you visit on a sunny, warm, winter day to avoid the bugs.

About the author: Skip McLamb, a retired educator, writes for pleasure to make good use of his new found free time.  Contact him at ovmclamb@live.com.

Favorite Book of 2016 - Jamie McAllister

Writers read!  And here is one of our By the Bay 2 authors’ favorite books of 2016.

Written by Jamie McAllister

Book Title: Take the Monkey and Run (A Call of the Wilde Mystery) 

Author: Laura Morrigan 

Genre: Mystery

Setting: New Orleans, Louisiana

Format: Print and Kindle 

Pages: 304 

Publication date: July 5, 2016 

Publisher: Berkley 

Opening Line: She sat calmly, unaware of the killer waiting to strike.

Review: What’s not to love about a series featuring a veterinarian turned animal behaviorist who can talk with animals? This is the fourth installment in the Call of the Wilde mystery series, and this time we travel with Grace Wilde as she ventures to New Orleans to communicate with a cat that may hold the clue to the whereabouts of her missing owner. Almost as soon as she arrives in the spooky Southern city, Grace is up to her eyeballs in mystery. This book is filled with interesting characters, including a little Pomeranian named Elvis who thinks he’s the King.

About the author: Jamie McAllister is the author of “The Mermaid” in the upcoming anthology By the Bay 2: More East Beach Stories, to be published in 2017. She is a freelance writer in Virginia Beach. For more information about Jamie and her work, please visit her website.

Favorite Book of 2016 - Jenny Sparks

Writers read!  And here is one of our By the Bay 2 authors’ favorite books of 2016.

Written by Jenny Sparks

Title: A Prayer For Owen Meany

Author:  John Irving

Genre: Literary Fiction

Setting:  1950’s to 1970’s New Hampshire

Format:  Kindle

Pages:  658

Publication date:  1989 (Kindle 2012)

Publisher:  William Morrow

Opening Line: I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice- not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am Christian because of Owen Meany.

Favorite Passage: She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast.

Review: In all honesty, I chose this book because my first grandchild, Owen, was born this year. I thought it would be fun to read a book with his name involved. (As it happened, my daughter-in-law, Owen’s mother, also read the book at the same time and for the same reason.) To my happy surprise I found myself engrossed in a tale about two men and their lifelong friendship. It begins in their youth in a small New England town and follows them as they navigate the pitfalls of growing up- death, school, girls and war. It’s well worth your time.

About the author: Jenny Sparks lives in Virginia Beach with her husband, Mike, and two goldendoodles, Millie and Twyla. "Millie's Missing Key" in By The Bay is her first published work. She considers herself a hobbyist writer and is pleased to be included in the By The Bay anthologies.

Favorite Book of 2016 - Karen Harris

Writers read!  And here is one of our By the Bay 2 authors’ favorite books of 2016.


Written by Karen Harris

Book Title: Telling Secrets

Author:  Frederick Buechner

Genre:  Memoir

Setting:  Family life from the late 1930’s-present mostly in the US

Pages:  106

Publication date:  1991

Publisher:  Harper Collins

Opening Line: “One November morning in 1936 when I was ten years old, my father got up early, put on a pair of gray slacks and a maroon sweater, opened the door to look in briefly on my younger brother and me, who were playing a game in our room, and then went down into the garage where he turned on the engine of the family Chevy and sat down on the running board to wait for the exhaust to kill him.”

Favorite Passage:  It was hard to pick a favorite, so I chose one I loved for its humor and pathos:  “She excoriated the ravages of old age but never accepted them as the consequence of getting old.  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me today,’ she must have said a thousand days as she tried once, then again, then a third time, to pull herself out of her chair into her walker.  It never seemed to occur to her that what was wrong with her was that she was on her way to pushing a hundred.  Maybe that was why some part of her remained unravaged.  Some surviving lightness of touch let her stand back from the wreckage and see that among other things it was absurdly funny.  When I told her the last time she was mobile enough to visit us in Vermont that the man who had just passed her window was the gardener, she said, ‘Tell him to come in and take a look at the last rose of summer.” 

Review:  Frederick Buechner manages to weave the difficult memories of his childhood into his unexpected spiritual journey with an ease that holds one’s attention and one’s heart.  His reminiscences are at once poignant and funny, written with a natural, lyrical flair.

About the author: Karen Harris is a writer and editor from San Francisco, now residing in Virginia Beach.   Her story “I Have A Dress” appeared in By the Bay: East Beach Stories.  Her story “Comings and Goings” will appear in Volume II  which will be published in 2017.