National and State Fish and Wildlife, State parks, and nature conservancies manage nearly all of the Virginia barrier islands and large swathes of the mainland.  Beautiful, wild lands are held in trust as refuges and to serve the natural role as storm buffers.  It wasn’t always that way.

In the NWR upland woodlands and vast coastal prairie have enveloped huge bunkers that once housed the enormous guns of US shoreline defense.  Off-shore stand three “fire towers”.  No, not fire watch tours.  Fire towers, as in three, two, one “FIRE” towers where lookouts stood watch for foreign threats.

It is a better place now as waders feed along the shore and osprey soar above.