Green Shingles: At the Edge of Chesapeake Bay

by Peter Svenson

Peter Svenson begins his elegant, idiosyncratic exploration of the Chesapeake Bay at the doorstep of his own home--a green shingled house perched high on Mitchell's Bluff, looking out across the Bay's busy shipping lanes toward the western shore. Svenson invites us to explore various aspects of the world outside his door, from the bayside community in which he lives to the Chesapeake's complex and fragile ecosystem. He gives us an insider's look at the arcane art of canoe sailing, the exigencies of landscape painting, and life aboard the sturdy tugboats that travel up and down the long bay. A thoughtful meditation on the intersection of the human and natural worlds, Green Shingles offers a unique look at America's largest estuary from one of the region's finest writers.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Peter Svenson was born in 1944. He has a B.A. from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in painting from the University of North Carolina. He lives Cross Keys, Virginia.

Reviews

[Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked Peter Svenson's "Green Shingles" even more than his previous "Battlefield". Where the former book told the story of building a house in the midst of a little-known Civil War battleground, "Green Shingles" starts with his move to the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, children grown and living their own lives now. In his meticulous, observant way, Svenson moves us through the process of finding a house, working on updating it with a new garage and other improvements, to the battles with local deer to plant flowers, to the real subject of this slim book: the bay itself. He writes beautifully about the interplay of water, sky, and shore, which becomes a subject of his painting, before moving on to the surface of the bay in two ships, one a Coast Guard vessel charged with maintaining navigational buoys marking ship channels, the other a tug plying daily between an electric generating plant and a coal terminal with 8,000 tons of coal. I really appreciate Svenson's eye for detail, and his ability to convey the sense of wonder living beside the ever-changing bay.

[Michael B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I recently read an older James McBride novel called Song Yet Sung. This novel took place on the Chesapeake Bay during the time in our history when slaves were using the waterway to escape to the North. The descriptions of the Bay during that period were fascinating, though not the topic of the book. So when I found Green Shingles in my personal library (not sure how it got there) I expected something of a natural history. The author warns you straight away he is not a natural historian. He describes himself as a writer, and he may well be but I am reminded about how most of us felt about the singer Minnie Ripperton (RIP): it is nice that she can sing in all those octaves but does she have to cover them all in the same song? Well, in a similar fashion, this author has a fabulous vocabulary. His writing style sent me to the dictionary several times just so I could understand what he was writing about. Good for him. He knows a lot of words. But is it necessary to deploy them all when simpler language might reveal greater artistry? Case in point: there is an entire chapter devoted to a boat that manages the placement of navigational buoys. The boat has a special name and every function of this boat also has a specialized name. Are you interested in learning all those specialized terms? Neither am I. Obviously the author had some kind of navigational dictionary on hand. I was not impressed. The entire book is filled with this kind of arcane marginalia (see what I did there). I started skimming to see if I could find a point. There was none. To whomever may have gifted me this book, I appreciate the thought.

[Karen Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just made me want to chuck it all and go on our own Chesapeake adventure