Every story has a place it keeps coming back to. For this one, it’s a small, easily overlooked island in the Potomac River where a fragile beginning took root nearly four centuries ago.
In this final section, we return to St. Clement’s Island… not simply as a historical site, but as a bridge that connects past to present. What started as a simple assignment becomes something more personal, more reflective… an encounter with the persistence of faith across time.
St. Clement’s Island is small.
Barely forty acres of land resting quietly in the waters of the Potomac River. From the mainland it appears almost modest, a low stretch of shoreline edged by tall grasses and trees bending in the wind.
It would be easy to overlook.
And yet it was here, on March 25, 1634, that a handful of weary, sea-worn travelers stepped ashore after months at sea. The Ark and the Dove had carried them across an ocean of uncertainty, driven by a hope that’d already survived secrecy, pressure, exile, and failure.
They had come looking for something simple.
A place where Faith could live in the open air.
The world they left behind had taught them caution. For generations, Catholics in England had learned to lower their voices, to worship carefully, and to glance over their shoulders. But here, along the quiet banks of the Potomac, the sky spread wide above them.
And so a cross was raised.
Father Andrew White prepared a small altar. The settlers gathered in the cool air of early spring. And there, on that narrow strip of land surrounded by water, the ancient prayers of the Church rose into the mornings dawning light.
They could not have known what history would do with that moment.
They could not have known how fragile the dream would prove to be, or how quickly politics, fear, and war would return. The years ahead could wound the experiment in ways they couldn’t yet imagine.
Still, something had begun.
Something that would outlive the struggles of their generation.
Today the island remains quiet.
The river moves past its shoreline just as it did nearly four centuries ago. Wind moves through the grasses near the tall white cross that now marks the place where the first settlers fell to their knees in prayer. Bald eagles circle above the water. The whole scene can feel so calm, so ordinary, that it would be easy to miss the magnitude of what happened there.
But the island does not remain entirely alone on March 25.
Each year, people gather again to remember.
Boats arrive carrying families, priests, historians, schoolchildren, and curious visitors. Volunteers dressed in seventeenth-century clothing reenact the landing of the Ark and the Dove along the shoreline where it first unfolded. Maryland Day is celebrated. The story is told once more.
And before the reenactments begin, before the crowds wander the paths and the speeches are made, there is again a Mass.
And that is breathtaking.
Because for all the years I have spent photographing the Church, I am still moved most by the times when history refuses to stay in the past. When a thing that once happened becomes, in some small but real way, present again.
What began for me as a hurried freelance assignment during the uncertain early days of the pandemic slowly became something else entirely. In the years since that first crossing, I have returned to these shores again and again—walking the tobacco fields, visiting old chapels, standing among the archaeological remains of St. Mary’s City—trying to understand the fragile beginnings of a faith that would one day spread across an entire continent.
But it always leads back to the island.
Even now, I still find myself thinking about that small strip of land in the Potomac.
Looking back, it is difficult to see that first trip as merely an adventure or a freelance assignment. It was something more than that.
It’s a reminder that faith itself is an adventure… that when you entrust your life to Christ, you never quite know where the story will lead.
George Calvert did.
Father Andrew White did.
And you can too.
One thing is almost guaranteed:
You will not be bored.
It's the Nations 250th Anniversary.
And today we celebrate liberty, often in theory, sometimes in memory.
But the story of that freedom didn’t begin in Philadelphia.
It began long before… in fragile crossings, quiet Masses, and the Grace-laden courage of those willing to risk everything for the freedom to believe.
And today, as I stand in Philadelphia watching another kind of pilgrimage reach its end. And I can’t help but see the thread.
Different century. Same story.
Faith carried forward… one step, one soul, one act of trust at a time.
And if you’re wondering where I’ll be when the next chapter begins…
You probably already know the answer.
Only this time, I’ll be leaving the kayak at home.
But I’ll still pack the duct tape.
Because you just never know.