Chincoteague: The Island That Keeps Calling Me Back

There are places you visit, and there are places that claim you.

Chincoteague Island claimed me a long time ago, long before I understood how deeply it was woven into my family's story.

My connection to this small barrier island off the coast of Virginia didn't start with a research trip. It started with family. There's this unique kind of belonging that settles into your bones when a place is part of where you come from, not just somewhere you've been.

I grew up hearing about Chincoteague the way some families talk about a hometown. The clams and oysters. Shopping on Main Street. Taking a boat out to bird watch. And of course, the famous annual Wild Pony Swim to thin out the herd on neighboring Assateague Island. In the stories, I heard a mixture of affection and familiarity and something that feels almost like ownership.

As a child, limited perspectives frame the experiences, and I always recalled the wonder and excitement of visiting the island, mainly because my grandfather was born there. But there were so many fun things to do and see as well. When I returned as an adult with fresh eyes and a writer's attention, it was like meeting someone I already knew.

What the Island Feels Like

Chincoteague moves at its own pace, and no one apologizes for that. I don't think they should, either. That pace is hard-wired into what makes the island unique.

The rhythm there is tied to the water, for the most part. To the tides that shift the light on the marshes twice a day, to the fishing boats that head out before most visitors are awake, to the particular quality of silence that settles over the harbor in the early morning before the island fully rouses itself.

It's the kind of place where you notice things you'd walk right past anywhere else. The weathered paint on a waterfront building. The way the tall grass bends in the marsh wind. The sound of gulls announcing the morning with more enthusiasm and excited flare than necessary.

I've stood on that waterfront in the early hours with a notebook in hand, writing down details I didn't want to lose. At the time, I had no idea where they'd go, but I did know they needed to be kept.

That's what Chincoteague does. In its own quiet, charming way, it insists you pay attention to it.

Why I Decided to Put It in My Fiction

A place that holds personal history and sensory richness in equal measure is almost impossible to keep out of your writing. Chincoteague has found its way into my storytelling time and time again. In recent writing, I decided to take the stories to a full novel.

The story I'm working on now is set against that marshy background and small-town life where everyone carries a longer history with each other than they always let on. Chincoteague understands that quite well. Small communities have long memories. Relationships there carry weight and texture that a larger, more transient place doesn't accumulate in quite the same way.

For a novelist writing about two people with a complicated shared past, that kind of setting is pressure. It's context. It's a place that remembers things even when the characters would rather it didn't.

That has potential to be endlessly useful as a writer, and it's story progression gold when you need it most.

What Keeps Drawing Me Back

If I'm being honest, it's not just the writing that pulls me back to Chincoteague.

It's the feeling of standing somewhere that connects me to people and a history that existed long before I did. Given that I moved 9 times by the time I was 14 years old, and then 4 years later, continued to add to my list of moves by racking up another 9 that included 4 different states over the next 32 years, I can't exactly define my life by a single place I've called home.

There's something grounding about having that, though, especially in seasons when everything else feels uncertain or in motion. The island was there before me and will be there long after, doing exactly what it has always done. Rising with the tides, weathering the storms, going quietly about its own business in its unhurried way.

For a person of faith, there's something almost theological in that. A reminder that the world is larger and older than my particular corner of it, and there is steadiness to be found in places that have endured.

I'll keep going back. And I have a feeling the island will keep finding its way into my stories for a long time to come.

Is there a place that has pulled you back again and again? Somewhere that holds something special, just for you? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.