Rhonda Aaron flips through a photo album that covers four CK generations of her family’s participation in the annual National Outdoor Show on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. A woman in a black-and-white photo poses in a classy bathing suit after winning the Miss Outdoors pageant; kids as young as seven compete at muskrat skinning. Rhonda and her mother, Nellie Flowers, talk about the best way to cook muskrat and other game.
Rhonda lives in the community of Golden Hill, Maryland, tucked just inland from the nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. Nellie spent her childhood picking blueberries in the woods across the street. Behind the Aarons’ house is a tiny church, St. John’s Methodist, that has brought neighbors together since 1789. But Rhonda’s home is no longer safe from storm surges during intense hurricanes, despite her family’s deep roots here.
When the winds of Hurricane Isabel pushed the Chesapeake Bay inland in 2003, water came into Rhonda’s home. The pine forest behind their house died. It took over a year for enough of the salt left behind to dissipate so Rhonda and her family could plant vegetables in their garden again. They know another hurricane could do worse damage. “We still have our family around here, so we're going to stay,” says Rhonda. “But a lot of people sell and just move away.”
For generations people in Dorchester County, Maryland, have lived off the water and the land. But that land is disappearing. The Chesapeake Bay is predicted to rise more than two feet by 2050, enough to submerge the southern half of the county. Over the past century, the rate at which forests in the county are converting into marsh has tripled. Dorchester sits on an ancient river bed, and the sediments there are less stable. In short, while the sea levels are rising, the land is sinking, putting folks there on the frontlines of coastal flooding.
Most media stories about this place focus on the divisive politics around climate change and managed retreat. But few help us feel connected. Coastal land is resilient when it has roots: trees sheltered behind interwoven mats of marsh. The same can be said of coastal people. Connected communities can ride out disasters.
Dorchester County has roots, but it is also losing them. Before the Civil War, the Underground Railroad ran through the area; Harriet Tubman grew up on and escaped from a plantation here. The boat-building tradition in Dorchester is unique, known for its construction of working boats including tall-masted skipjacks, elegant wind-powered ships used to dredge oyster beds.
Until the 1970s, most people fished and farmed for most of what they needed. Now, the county is studded with marshes full of weathered stands of dead pines, their pale appearance earning them the name “ghost forests.” All that history and culture is disappearing with the land and trees that supported them.
Connection with others is empowering. We believe that our society needs more connection. Not only would that help everyone process the profound changes we are experiencing, but also research shows that resilience is formed by social connections. Before we jump to debate what a place is or isn’t doing about environmental problems, we need to really know it. On first blush, Second Growth’s mission is to collect stories about trees in places with the highest rates of environmental change in the country. The deeper point is that getting to know these places will help us better know ourselves, as individuals, a country, a society. Too often, people write off these rural places as backwaters, glibly declaring that people on the frontlines of climate disasters should cut their losses and move on. Second Growth invites viewers to spend time with these communities, to know what they’re losing before it’s gone.