ANNOUNCER: This program is made by MPT to enrich the diverse communities throughout our state and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

Thank you.

NARRATOR: Coming up... Aerial adventures...

Rising tides threaten a rare bird... And the search for a notorious frontiersman.

Next.

Outdoors Maryland is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

(upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪♪ NARRATOR: Like a silent sentinel a sailplane, or glider, rides the air two thousand feet above the ground.

Slowly surveying Maryland's western landscape in Allegany county.

These mountains are home to the Cumberland Soaring Group, a non-profit organization of aviation enthusiasts eager for adventure.

MARK BLACE: The glider doesn't have an engine.

So in order to stay aloft, you have to fly it in a manner that you're always climbing to counteract the sinking of the glider to maintain your airspeed.

It's a sport more than anything else and it's very challenging and it requires a great deal of experience and finesse to do it well.

NARRATOR: Club director Mark Blace often flies the group's single-engine cessna prop-plane in order to get his friends and their gliders airborne.

MARK: The glider will set up on the runway with about a 200 foot tow rope hooked to the tow plane.

The tow plane will put power on, it'll accelerate and take off, the glider takes off behind it and essentially flies in formation 200 feet behind the tow plane.

NARRATOR: The club dates back to the late 1950s and draws members from five states with a wide range of experience.

Today, Mark prepares for his own excursion in his fiberglass, high-performance glider.

MARK: We get to whatever altitude I want to be to release and I just pull on this yellow handle, it opens a little hook down on the landing gear, releases the rope and then I'm free to fly where I want to go.

NARRATOR: With its streamlined interior much different than any power plane.

[Plane engine rumbles] MARK: I don't have to worry about running out of gas or having low oil pressure because there isn't any.

[Laughs] NARRATOR: Perhaps, but the primary flight mechanisms are much the same.

The center stick controls the ailerons and the horizontal elevator manipulating the roll and pitch of the aircraft.

Rudder pedals on the floor help coordinate turns.

MARK: To minimize the drag on the glider, you need to make it as small as possible with as little frontal area.

So it's basically shrink wrap the glider around the pilot.

When you're on tow and you're ready to release, the glider releases first and flies to the right away from the tow plane.

The tow plane goes to the left and begins its descent back to the airport.

The physical experience of flying a glider is that you're one with the airplane.

And I'm always looking for lift.

NARRATOR: Lift, the aerodynamic force that counteracts gravity and generally keeps gliders aloft.

There are multiple types of lift but sailplane pilots most often seek out thermal lift.

Rising columns of warm air caused by the sun heating the ground below and marked by the formation of cumulus clouds.

MARK: When you see birds circling in the air, they're climbing in lift and a glider does the exact same thing when it's climbing, it circles in lift.

Birds have a lot better instinctive ability to know where the lift is.

So we have special tools that we use in addition to looking for cumulus clouds, which are markers for lift.

NARRATOR: One of those tools, the variometer, identifies thermal lift with an increasing high pitch tone.

DAVID HART: As a glider pilot, you kind of connect the dots.

You look for cumulus clouds that mark lift, and then you fly under those clouds, connect with the rising air, circle until you reach cloud base, and then you can go to the next one.

You have to think your way around.

It's not like a power plane where you can just point it and go.

In a glider you have to take advantage of what nature gives you.

NARRATOR: Instructor David Hart is a former army helicopter pilot, flying today in the club's two-seater.

[Air blowing out] DAVID: We like to fly on good thermal days and it tends to be gusty those days.

So you get bumps, and that's a good thing because that shows you that you're in a lifting area.

NARRATOR: Depending on weather conditions and planning, flights can range from minutes to hours.

Most Cumberland flights remain local and cover an average of two hundred miles, staying within range of the airport and safe runway space.

DAVID: Cumberland traffic glider Four Six Whiskey is turning left downwind for runway Two-Nine.

I would say the most dangerous part of soaring is the landing.

And when you're in a glider without a motor, you only get one try.

NARRATOR: While quiet solitude drives the soaring hobbyists around Cumberland.

Back east, the reassuring roar of a prop plane engine sets the stage for a select group of pilots-in-training: students in the University of Maryland Eastern Shore's professional pilot degree program, which rents hangar space at the Salisbury regional airport.

For senior Jacob Fogen the program fulfilled a lifelong dream.

JACOB FOGEN: Flying is just something I've wanted to do since I was young, right?

I mean, you're- you're exploring new places, you're quite literally reaching new heights.

JACOB: Alternator belt looks good.

NARRATOR: Chris Hartman is the program coordinator.

CHRIS HARTMAN: And I'm going to make sure I'm going to be able to come back and throttle with you.

[Engine starts] NARRATOR: A professor and flight instructor he's also a graduate of the program, one of three hundred since 1989.

[Radio Comms] Cleared for takeoff.

CHRIS HARTMAN: It is intense.

Six hours of time in the books for every one hour we're in the airplane is just about the right ratio to make sure that you have not only the skills to fly the airplane, but the knowledge that goes along with it as well.

[Radio Comms] Maintain 2100... NARRATOR: That textbook curriculum includes aerodynamics, meteorology, aircraft systems, and aviation law.

[Radio Comms] Ready for descent...descending down.

Their training area ranges across the broad beauty of Maryland's Eastern Shore, rivers, farmland.

The flight panel provides information about altitude, airspeed, and engine performance but it can't paint the entire picture.

CHRIS HARTMAN: One of the things that we have to say a lot is look outside, you need to be looking outside, watching out for other traffic, watching where you're going, making sure the airplane's pointed in a safe direction and then I can't help but say enjoy the view.

NARRATOR: Jacob already has a job lined up after graduation thanks to Alaska airlines' True North program.

JACOB: The program in True North is also supporting BIPOC pilots and trying to diversify the flight deck um, and it's just, you know it goes to a greater cause.

NARRATOR: Flying requires focus, and for Jacob that means leaving behind the stress of school and life's other distractions.

JACOB: You've done all the work on the ground, you know you work hard and then you get in the air and it's yeah.

A really cool experience, really freeing.

Really just, you know, having fun.

NARRATOR: The glider pilots of the Cumberland Soaring Club quietly agree.

MARK: It's just a very sensory experience that you're basically cut off and isolated from the rest of the world while you're flying.

NARRATOR: At the end of the day, Mark and another pilot soar over Maryland's western jagged topography.

Engaged in an aerial dance, riding the thermals, circling skyward together.

DAVID: You get to be like a bird.

The birds fly gracefully in the sky.

We've been looking at 'em for thousands of years, and now we can be that bird.

♪♪ [Birds chirping] NARRATOR: As dawn's first light breaks over the salt marshes of Irish Grove sanctuary in Somerset County, a team of scientists embarks on a soggy, at times treacherous, trek into the wetland.

SCIENTIST: There it is.

[Ahh] NARRATOR: Guided by biologists Hen Bellman and Bri Panos from Audubon Mid-Atlantic.

HEN BELLMAN: I love the sound, like, of the squish.

NARRATOR: They are looking and listening for marsh birds.

HEN: We're going to start with a point count.

So we have a five minute of passive listening [Bird call] and then there'll be a period of playback.

[Bird call plays] We play the active calls of the species that we're interested in.

[Bird calls] NARRATOR: Listening for birds to reply.

♪♪ SCIENTIST: Is that [unintelligible]?

But today's main event involves setting up a series of mist nets.

Made of an ultra-fine mesh, they're practically invisible to birds.

SCIENTIST: Oh, bye!

HEN: We are proposing some restoration work here.

Some habitat restoration.

NARRATOR: Part of an ongoing effort called Marshes for Tomorrow, to restore 25,000 acres of Maryland saltmarsh.

HEN: So we want to do like a pre-assessment to make sure that we understand what the breeding condition is of the birds that are here, particularly sparrow species.

NARRATOR: Catching one secretive species is high on the team's list.

HEN: We also chose this location because there is some of this patens, which is the habitat for breeding saltmarsh sparrow.

NARRATOR: The saltmarsh sparrow is often seen hopping through swirling tufts of spartina patens, known as salt meadow hay.

HEN: They are always such a, like, cheeky joy to see because they look like little sunrises that very unpredictably pop up with these bright orange and yellow faces.

NARRATOR: But as climate change and sea level rise eat away at Maryland's marshes, these marsh-dwellers, which nest just above high tide, have suffered dramatic declines.

HEN: That period when they're laying eggs and sitting on the eggs and they're incubating, nests are getting flooded out, which means that there's less chance of them reproducing, so there's less birds entering the population.

And so we're seeing this annual decline in the population.

NARRATOR: So much so that the salt marsh sparrow is being considered for the federal endangered species list.

While waiting for the nets to work their magic, Bri hunts for saltmarsh sparrow nests.

BRI: Even these small swaths of patens is enough for them.

These are what we call salt hay meadows.

It looks really nice, it looks very comfortable, to like, lay down in.

They use the thatch to build their nest.

NARRATOR: Soon the team nets a bird.

It's not a saltmarsh sparrow, but a close relative: the seaside sparrow.

SCIENTIST: It's a male.

NARRATOR: Data is collected quickly to minimize stress for the bird.

SCIENTIST: 15.87 for [unintelligible].

NARRATOR: And while several saltmarsh sparrows are seen nearby, the day ends without catching any, or finding any nests.

On nearby Deal Island, another survey site also yields disappointing results.

HEN: This site has suffered from um degradation over the years.

That's left the birds unable to use appropriate habitat.

NARRATOR: But there are hopes that may change, thanks to a novel restoration effort that began here last winter.

Making use of material dredged from shipping channels in the neighboring Wicomico River.

HEN: What we have done here is identified a site with the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as partners to place that sediment on top of this marsh, which was already degrading, that was losing land mass.

NARRATOR: 170,000 cubic yards of sediment, pumped through nearly ten miles of pipeline, building the marsh back up to an elevation suitable for the saltmarsh sparrow, and planting it with marsh grasses.

The goal?

Breeding habitat safe from flooding.

It's hardly the only tool in the marsh restoration toolkit.

BECKY SWERIDA: So behind us is Deal Island Road, which is a really important artery that connects a lot of the communities, the really traditional fishermen community out on Deal Island with the mainland.

NARRATOR: Becky Swerida is a biologist with the Chesapeake Bay Estuarine Research Reserve.

For years, she tracked the decline of this particular stretch of Deal Island Marsh.

BECKY: All that was standing between that road and the Chesapeake Bay is this tiny strip of marsh that was eroding away and breaking up.

NARRATOR: But today, as she and her team from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources tromp through the mud.

BECKY: Guess what, don't step there!

NARRATOR: Becky hopes they might be tracking its recovery thanks to a project installed here in 2022.

BECKY: We wound up building a gorgeous living shoreline to try to protect that road, protect the community, and enhance this awesome habitat.

NARRATOR: Spanning eleven hundred feet, the living shoreline uses natural processes to stabilize the shore, and protect the marsh, its inhabitants, and even local communities impacted by rising tides.

BECKY: It is mostly a placement of sand and plants that are appropriate to the habitat.

So people like this little guy have more space to live, all to protect this community and his community at the same time.

BECKY: You can do it!

NARRATOR: "Check up" surveys like today's are essential for gauging how well it's all working.

The scientists traverse low marsh, high marsh, sand dunes and even venture into the water itself, collecting data.

BECKY: Note that there are some periwinks, and there's a lovely little fiddler burrow right there.

NARRATOR: Even counting individual plant stems.

BECKY: Ten, eleven.

We have 12 alterniflora stems in one 25-centimer quad.

We measure elevation, we measure vegetation.

This is all Spartina patens.

We look at the sediment.

Beautiful!

Yep, definitely marsh peat.

We can see over time how things might change.

That's about the same.

NARRATOR: They also visit a stretch of dead trees, known as a ghost forest, that will serve an important purpose.

BECKY: Marshes, as sea levels are rising and they are losing space on the channel-ward side will naturally crawl back.

And see we got some standing water inundation in marsh plants in the forest.

We see a lot of habitats around the Eastern Shore that are transitioning forests, changing into marshes over time.

NARRATOR: Though the restoration site is still young, Becky sees signs of progress.

BECKY: The marsh used to end basically at that goose fence back there.

So you can see all of this beautiful vegetation behind me was all planted from plugs and spread into this pretty incredible marsh.

It's growing in so nicely.

Oh my Gosh.

And hopefully it will look like this natural marsh that it's protecting one day.

NARRATOR: Back at Irish Grove, a new dawn brings better luck, and perhaps a glimpse of Deal Island's future if restoration efforts succeed.

The first bird of the day is a saltmarsh sparrow.

Its brood patch tells Bri that it's a female.

BRI: You're good, sweetheart.

NARRATOR: The team eventually catches five more male saltmarsh sparrows, and 14 birds in total.

BRI: Yay!

First salty.

Yay!

NARRATOR: Later they find what could be a saltmarsh sparrow nest.

BRI: And that's a great indicator that obviously birds are breeding out here.

NARRATOR: A glimmer of hope in the face of an uncertain future, as Maryland's marsh stewards work to ensure that both this fragile habitat and its residents rise above the challenges ahead.

♪♪ HEN: It's a landscape that can be very easily overlooked, but then when you get out here and you get down into the marsh and you see the kind of micro topography and features of the landscape, it's really, really special.

♪♪ NARRATOR: In a sun-drenched meadow in western Maryland, volunteers tease history from the soil.

MATT MCNIGHT: We think that we've got essentially here the cabin and then a little bit farther back the storehouse.

MATT: This is a British gun flint.

English gun flint.

NARRATOR: Matt McNight is the chief archeologist at the Maryland Historical Trust.

His team is hot on the trail of a Maryland legend: the famous and infamous, Thomas Cresap.

MATT: Thomas Cresap to my mind is one of the most important frontiersmen in Maryland and American history.

One of these larger than life figures like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett, but he kind of comes before America exists.

[Soil jumbling around] WOMAN: Window glass, ceramics.

We found some really cool buttons, which also have certain features that tell us what time period we're at.

MATT: We found that most of the tobacco pipes were from the period 1750-1800.

NARRATOR: Cresap came to the area in the early 1740's to establish a fur trading post at what was then the very margins of British power.

A strategic location where an ancient Native American trade route crossed the Potomac river.

MATT: So I'm going to show you what our first big surprise was here.

It's a trade axe or a tomahawk.

NARRATOR: Over the years, artifacts have dated this site to the correct period.

MATT: There's a large, square soil stain feature here that we think corresponds to the storehouse.

But this summer, Matt and his team are documenting what evidence remains of the structures themselves.

MATT: So we got the bone and we got a pipe stem right next to it.

NARRATOR: Foundation walls, a possible stockade, a kitchen garbage pit.

WOMAN 2: We were finding deer.

We were finding bear.

Bear, I've heard, isn't exceptionally tasty.

But, you know, when you're on the frontier, you gotta do what you gotta do.

KID: I just love history!

NARRATOR: No images of Cresap survive.

But stories of the man leap from archives and diaries.

He crossed paths with a teenaged George Washington.

Hosted British dignitaries and Native war parties.

MATT: He forges a settlers' road, with the Delaware Indian Nemacolin up over the Alleghenies, into the Ohio territory.

He establishes, with the Ohio Company of Virginia, the Fort at Wills Creek, which then becomes Fort Cumberland, which then becomes the city of Cumberland.

So he's like the hometown hero for Western Maryland.

NARRATOR: Exploits that have attracted retired archeologists, historians and even Cresap's own family members to the dig.

MAN 2: You guys are good!

They've got the young eyes.

NARRATOR: Thomas and Emma are 9th generation descendants of the family patriarch.

MAN 2: Oop, there's a piece of glass.

NARRATOR: They're here looking for connections to Thomas.

But the legend they're chasing doesn't begin here, it starts on a different frontier.

MIKE MALONEY: So we're here along the Susquehanna in Lancaster County at the Conejohela flats, right across the river from where Thomas Cresap lived, and this would have been the eastern end of the ferry he operated in the early 1730s.

NARRATOR: On this peaceful stretch of river, about 18 miles north of the Maryland Pennsylvania line, Cresap biographer Mike Maloney paddles in the centuries-old wake of the boat Cresap once used to shuttle settlers across the Susquehanna.

But this place wasn't always so peaceful.

Nor was it always, definitively, Pennsylvania.

MIKE: The Maryland Charter and the Pennsylvania Charter both defined their border as the 40th parallel.

The problem was Pennsylvania thought the 40th parallel was about 30 miles downriver.

The actual 40th parallel is about a mile and a half north of here, which actually includes the city of Philadelphia.

NARRATOR: To Pennsylvania, Cresap's ferry, licensed by the Maryland government was a provocation.

On a cold fall day, two Penn loyalists stepped aboard.

MIKE: On their way back across the river, a fight broke out.

They pulled their guns on Cresap, and in the scuffle, Cresap was thrown overboard and left to drown.

NARRATOR: Cresap traveled south returning as Captain Cresap a newly-minted officer in the Maryland militia.

His anger fueled a tense border dispute between the two colonies.

[Guns firing] MATT: And the whole place just erupts.

MIKE: They called it 'Cresap's War'.

There were retaliatory harassment of settlers on each side.

MATT: Everybody's setting everybody else's cabins on fire.

They're shooting each other's livestock.

And Cresap's in the thick of it all.

NARRATOR: Fed up, a posse of Pennsylvanians surrounded Cresap's cabin, and burned it to the ground.

MIKE: Cresap tried to escape but was caught.

And he was taken to Philadelphia in chains.

MATT: As he's drug through the streets of Philadelphia he's said to have remarked "well if this isn't the prettiest damn town in all of Maryland!"

NARRATOR: It took two years, and the intervention of the King of England, to free the man who newspapers would later dub the Maryland Monster, and to force a settlement on the quarreling colonies.

MIKE: This was now determined to be Pennsylvania, so he decided to move farther west in Maryland.

♪♪ NARRATOR: Oldtown Maryland's annual parade winds down Main Street.

WOMAN 3: Hello!

NARRATOR: This is the town that grew alongside Cresap's fortified trading post.

At the town's oldest house, built by Thomas' son Michael Cresap, members of the Cresap Society enjoy the show.

[Laughter and talking] They've been gathering here for more than a century.

KAREN CRESAP: This is just full of all of our Cresap reunions.

I tried to go through here and label them.

It's just amazing!

NARRATOR: Sharing family artifacts KAREN: From the site of Colonel Thomas Cresap's fort in Oldtown Maryland.

CRESAP WOMAN: These were on my grandparent's wall, I was terrified of her because her eyes follow you.

[Laughter] NARRATOR: And tracing the paths of their ancestors.

Dan's Rock, Allegany County's highest point, is named for Thomas' oldest son.

KAREN: Pretty much everything that you see was Cresap country at one point.

NARRATOR: And society President Karen Cresap has made research on Thomas' wife Hannah a society priority.

KAREN: Hannah was the strongest woman, even in today's world.

NARRATOR: Mother of seven.

Good with a musket.

She rode alongside Cresap's militia on the Susquehanna.

KAREN: The reason Thomas Cresap could do the things he did and be the person he was was absolutely because of Hannah.

Our big mystery right now is the end of Hannah's life.

NARRATOR: And new clues could come to light thanks to Matt and his crew, with Karen herself among the volunteers.

VOLUNTEERS: Whoaaaaaa!

KAREN: I kept saying, I want to see signs of Hannah.

Not just Thomas, I want to see something of Hannah's.

NARRATOR: With only a few days of fieldwork remaining, murmurs begin to spread, excitement builds.

A piece of pottery comes into view.

PERSON: Wow!

KAREN: When they found that creamer that did it for me because this beautiful hand-painted creamer, I knew that was Hannah's.

All the above ground research that we've done fits so well with the below ground research, you can really start to see the full life.

NARRATOR: A life of adventure and hardship on the edge of the British world, as a new nation, and a new state, were being born.

♪♪ NARRATOR: To stream episodes of Outdoors Maryland , visit mpt.org and don't forget to follow us on social media.

(owl hoots) Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural resources at dnr.maryland.gov, or download the official mobile app.

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