Tuesday, December 31- New Year’s Eve
First Night Annapolis is the city’s annual celebration of the arts, showcasing hundreds of performances — including music, dance, theater, comedy, and more — for audiences of all ages and tastes. See the city transformed into a magical winter festival as the streets fill with First Night revelers, fanciful art figures and mysterious costumed characters. Enjoy more than 150 performances inside courtrooms, churches and historic buildings. Highlights include Macbeth and Gone With the Wind (both in 20 minutes), tales from Thomas Jefferson, ventriloquist Ty-Rone, costumed comedy troupe the Pyrates Royale, the surf sounds of the Del Marvas and local favorites Robin Jung, Rob Levit and Them Eastport Oyster Boys, plus Swing Shift, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas, the Gypsy Jazz trio and the Orange Line Special Bluegrass band. At 11:30pm, the sounds of bagpipes fill the air as the First Night procession winds down Main Street to City Dock, where revelers greet the New Year with a spectacular fireworks finale. The festivities are alcohol-free. Park at Navy Stadium on Rowe Blvd. ($5; free shuttle). 3pm-2003 @ downtown Annapolis. $20; $15/advance; $10/kids 6-12; kids under 6 free: 410/280-0700 • www.firstnightannapolis.org.
Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ December 19-25, 2002, Issue #51
Walk on the Wild Side
No shopping mall crowds. No lines. No traffic jams. No red lights. More woods, less development, outdoor solitude.
The winter landscape emphasizes what is not there.
What remains in winter are the popping, whistling sounds of exposed tree branches, leafless and seeming to be having a bad hair day. You might see scattered piles of acorn shells that the squirrels left behind. Or check out the flying style of birds on a windy day.
When days are shorter and grayer, the sun seems brighter, the sky bluer. Best of all, a holiday walk offers an inviting way to disconnect the stress.
Put on a comfortable pair of walking shoes, wrap up and hit your favorite trail, beach or boardwalk.
— Nadine Word
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ December 12-18, 2002, Issue #50
The Calvert Homestead
Now that it’s time to deck your halls, it’s time you discovered Calvert Homestead. On the rolling acres of still-rural Calvert County, Barbara and Robert Burnett planned, planted and harvested a country dream. From their flowers, herbs and even straw, they filled their old barn with handmade crafts sired of the land and shaped by invention. If there’s anything decorative they haven’t made with old wood, vines, flowers, seed pods, herbs and feathers, we don’t know what it is.
Hurry: Homesteader Barbara Burnett says the joy’s gone out of the business since her husband’s death almost two years ago. She’s going on permanent vacation Dec. 25. Whether another homesteader follows in her footsteps is anybody’s guess. While it lasts, everything you need for decking halls and gardens is 25 percent off.
Route 2-4 south of Prince Frederick. Follow winding Sixes Road 4.5 miles to Calvert Homestead, and its sign, on right. Open 9am-5pm seven days a week: 410/535-5393.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ December 4-11, 2002, Issue #49
Lights on the Bay
If you missed the midshipmen tossing their caps at graduation, you can see this local event reenacted in brilliant color, along with an illuminated Annapolis street, the Chesapeake oyster and Chessie, the legendary monster of the Bay. You’ll see them all as you drive through two miles of lighted figures, many with animation, at Lights on the Bay, the annual holiday extravaganza at Sandy Point State Park.
New displays this season include a giant, animated ice castle in Winter Wonderland, and Enchanted Fairy Tales, featuring a frog that turns into Prince Charming, Cinderella getting her glass slipper, wizards and dragons, teddy bears and toy soldiers. As always, the reindeer will leap over your car, and you can turn up the mood with holiday music piped in on your car stereo.
Anne Arundel Medical Center sponsors the annual show. Brandano Display, of New York, builds the 60-some displays. See for yourself 5-10pm nightly, thru January 5, @ Sandy Point Park, off Route 50, right next to the Bay Bridge. $12 per car or minivan: 443/481-3161.
— Martha Blume
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ Nov. 27 - Dec. 33, 2002, Issue #48
A Wild Turkey Chase
As most Americans sit down to a feast of skillfully hybridized domestic turkey, wild turkeys scratch unmolested in the woods for their preferred autumn feast of acorns and wild grapes.
They’re more plentiful nowadays than they’ve been for years, now that native birds have been resettled — from flocks baited with corn and swept up in rocket nets — in every Maryland county. But should you make it your Thanksgiving destination to see for yourself, success is not guaranteed.
Resettlement has worked best, says Department of Natural Resources upland game biologist Bob Long, in our deep south and far west. That’s because the naturally wily birds need grassy areas and soybean fields in spring, when the chicks feed on insects, and the cover of woods in winter.
In spring, when gobblers are gobbling and displaying their tail fans to attract a mate, and hens are setting up nestkeeping, most birds are up and about. That’s why May is wild-turkey hunting season.
If you find wild turkeys this month, it’s most likely a feeding flock you’ll come upon. For an outing with autumnal rewards, whether you see wild turkey or not, try Pocomoke State Forest in Worcester County.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ November 21-27, 2002, Issue #47
Crysanthemums
Tundra Swans
Right on time, swanfall has added winter white to Chesapeake Country’s sere autumn landscape. Fleets of cool weather-loving snow-white tundra swans have winged our way hundreds of miles from their nesting grounds in Canada.
Chesapeake Country is swan country from now until earliest spring, and you’ve lots of opportunity to meet them. See their loose Vs passing overhead, hear their raucous bark and spy the huge birds close up as small flocks float on Bay marsh ponds and coves, long necks stretched to the muddy bottoms to harvest grasses, clams and other small mollusks. Long-distance flying is hard, hungry work so it may take a while of watching before those elegant, long necks rise to show you the species-signature black beak.
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