Back from Smith Island

I spent all of last week at Smith Island, a somewhat remote island on the eastern shore in MD. Local actor and budding filmmaker Shane Logue had asked to come to help him shoot his first feature film, Hachi Game, a 'docu-thriller'. I had a pretty good time. The shoot doubled as a vacation for me, and it felt good to go away; specially to a location with no cable access, no cell phones, no modern day forms of entertainment.

We shot about 7 and a half hours of footage in the course of 4 days. Shane will be there until the end of June, shooting the film. The concept of the film marries a documentary on Smith Island with a fictionalized murder-myster aspect. It should be interesting to see the final result.

The island was so tiny. There are only two 'towns' in it--Ewell and Rhodes Point--and they are separated by a stretch of road across the island which you can drive thru in two minutes. The population is about 60 strong. There's another tiny town called Tylerton, which is an 'islet' you have to take a boat to access.

It was strange, yet soothing and fascinating to be at this location and to talk to the people who have lived there for decades. I will never forget Mr. Lester Tyler, a waterman aged 78 years old, who took us out on his 'scrapper' crab boat for a day. This is one of the sweetest old men I've met in my entire life. Truly one of a drying breed. I will never forget how he insisted I shared his whole stash of cookies, along with his milk. He even broke the last cookie in half and insisted I had it. Now, that's kindness.

Everybody on the island was just terribly nice. There was none of the pretense and 'walls' you see around people in the city. I will also always recall Mr. John Evans, a retired waterman aged 80, who spends his days building hobby skipjack boats. Pretty detailed, and just great, hobby boats. Then, where was Tim Marshall, an archeologies enthusiast, who has collected ages-old Indian arrowheads and prehistoric artifacts found on the island and on its surrounding area. Tim even had something called a 'Punt Gun'--a huge, long rifle used to hunt groups of ducks in a bygone era.

I did some meditation while there, and I reached such clarity. Clarity--that's the operating word on how I feel these days. Clarity of the path I'm taking as a filmmaker. Clarity on the things I must do to leave Social Security behind. Clarity in how I stand with some of my friendships. Clarity of how life works in mysterious ways.

Now, I'm back in Baltimore. Back to work. Back to work on Project S. But I will remember my time on Smith Island.

I hope to return there in the last week of June to help Shane wrap his shoot.

Hell, and how can I forget the horrendous Deer flies which ate me, Shane, and our actors alive while we were there. That was the only con of the entire week--those damn bloodsucking deer flies.