Idiosyncratic exploration of the Chesapeake Bay examining the vagaries of the coastal ecosystem, the bayside community in which Svenson lives, the history of a defunct local amusement park, the flotsam that washes up on his beach, the arcane art of canoe sailing, the difficult business of garage building, and the exigencies of landscape painting, concluding with an epitaph on the eroding ecology of the Chesapeake as pollution and overuse threaten its equilibrium.