Ewell, Md. -- There are those who say all watermen are philosophers. There are others who say the two occupations couldn't be more different. And then there's Jonnie Christy Parks, the waterman-philosopher of Smith Island.

"The two are compatible, if not downright symbiotic," says Chris, as his friends know him. "Now, take pulling crab pots. It's like Sisyphus rolling that rock uphill. The work never ends. . . . It gives you time to think."

Chris Parks makes his living the way everyone does on this isolated and marshy rise of land, 12 miles off the Eastern Shore in Chesapeake Bay. "There's no alternative out here," he says. "You make your living from crabs or you don't make it."

But he also has an unusual role on an island where people often feel alienated from the mainland. Chris Parks explains out here to someone from over there.

His medium is the letter to the editor. In such places as Smith Island, where there is no local government, such letters often are the only forum for debate. But in a community in which most people leave school early to work on the water, few feel comfortable expressing themselves in writing.

So when an issue arises -- say, when the state threatens to crack down on housewives who pick crab meat and sell it commercially -- Chris Parks is the man people turn to give voice to Smith Island's thoughts.

He's an ideal man for the job -- a college graduate with a degree in philosophy, a former newspaper reporter, and a native whose family goes back 300 years on Smith Island.

"Better than anyone else, Chris might be able to explain Smith Island to the world because he is of Smith Island," says the painter Reuben Becker, an island resident for 22 years.

Still, it is a role Chris is not entirely comfortable with. "I don't want anyone to think that I'm special," he says.

Since this is Sunday, Chris doesn't have to pull crab pots. But he's thinking about it, talking about the Tao of work and the study of truth on Smith Island, where he tries to follow the precepts of the philosopher Henry David Thoreau.

"Out here, I'm very close to nature, to the cycles of the seasons and the water, and that, for me, is a good life," he says. "Living simply and close to nature, that's important. I can't experience that in town. An island is a great place to be a philosopher."

A slightly built, crag-featured man with a full head of thick, wiry, dark hair and intense green eyes magnified by glasses, Chris, 37, walks along the narrow lanes of Ewell like a kid let out of school. From time to time, he makes a point by gesturing with gnarled, work-hardened hands. His posture has an almost rabbinical stoop, as if burdened by the weight of scholarship.

Living like Thoreau

Out here in the Chesapeake Bay, caught between the old ways && and the shock of the new, Chris is idealistic enough to believe it's still possible to live like Thoreau in the latter half of the 20th century.

This is one of the last waterman's communities, where three centuries of cultural identity have not yet been blurred by pricey new boutiques and rich retiree condos. Yet Chris knows the outside world has finally found Smith Island, and that life here is changing.

The seafood industry, once the mainstay of the island's economic life, is in serious decline. Many people have left the island or gone into service jobs in the budding tourism industry; just this week, ground was broken for a tourism center.

This outpost is Chris' obsession, his dream, his life's work. If he tends

to see this place through an idealized mist at times, he's not alone. Smith Island seems to exert that influence on a lot of people who enjoy its slow pace, tight-knit community and Eastern Shore character.

Chris speaks often of an idyllic childhood spent on the water with his late father, a waterman. He recalls a simpler time when there were plenty of crabs and oysters, and the mainland was just far enough away. Now, "over there" has become a symbol of all that he dislikes the most about mainstream culture.

"Society's plastic umbilical cord of material goods and consumerism is beginning to corrupt us out here," he wrote in an essay. "We see the junk on TV, and we want it, when we used to be satisfied out here with so much less, with a simpler life."

Return of the native

His perspective is that of the native who has been away and come home again. Lots of people leave Smith Island and go to college, go away. Chris is the only one who got his education and came back.

He says he was always bookish. "I read because I wanted to learn. My father used to say that he liked to read when he was young, too," he recalls. He finished high school, and after working with his father on the water for several years, saved enough money to enroll in Salisbury State University.

"I was," he says ruefully, "a 25-year-old freshman." Four years later, he graduated, then spent a few years kicking around the mainland, trying to find a place where he could fit in.

But stints as a teacher, an editor-reporter for a small Ocean City ++ newspaper and a clerk in a soda store convinced him that life "over there" wasn't what he wanted.

He returned home in 1989 when his father died, "to look after my mother and my younger sister," and stayed. Three other siblings had already left the island. None has returned to stay.

"I came home because Smith Island was something I knew and understood. . . ," Chris says. "I missed the water and the cycles of nature, the closeness to the bay and the seasons we have out here. You don't feel that over there."

He pushes his glasses back up on his nose and scrapes at the dirt roadway with the toe of one sneaker. "It used to be that you'd work on the water, but that's almost all gone now. The kids move to the mainland to live, to get some type of higher education . . . and don't come back. There's only about 400 people left here now, and there may be less in the future."

He shrugs. "Smith Island might just end up as a bird sanctuary." It's a prospect that seems to appeal to the waterman-philosopher's Thoreauvian sensibilities.

The people's advocate

As he passes an old gentleman on the road, Chris nods and murmurs a greeting. "He's one of the people who asked me to write a letter to the paper," he says as the man moves out of earshot.

"They had these state cops out here, clocking people with their radar guns and issuing tickets to people with no tags or insurance. But along about that time, that girl was stabbed at the Salisbury Mall, and there was a huge ruckus about the cops out here giving speeding tickets when you can't go over 15 miles an hour if you wanted to, when all this crime is going on over there," Chris points out.

"That was one of the letters I wrote to the papers. The cops left shortly after."

Those letters to the papers. Readers of editorial pages in the Crisfield and Salisbury newspapers -- and The Sun -- may recognize Chris' name. Islanders frequently approach him to articulate their thoughts, point out their grievances, right their wrongs.

Without a government or elected representation from Ewell, Tylerton or Rhodes Point -- the island's three settlements -- islanders feel a sense of resentment about bureaucratic decisions forced upon them from outside. Chris' letters are often the only way they have to vent those feelings.

He's also writing a novel that he hopes will explain his beloved Smith Island to the world. He's spent several long winters, holed up in his bedroom, writing. And no, he says, you can't see it yet.

"He's a real fine writer," islander Hoss Evans says. "Chris is pretty smart for what he knows. Usually he'll do something like that on his own, but sometimes a lot of people get together and ask him to write a letter."

"The only way we can have a voice is through the media," adds Mr. Becker, the painter. "From that standpoint, he fills a need."

Chris has tackled all sorts of issues.

During last winter's ice storms, the island was cut off from the mainland when ferries stopped running. In a place dependent on the privately owned ferry system for such mainland basics as groceries, medicine and banking, this created great hardship.

Chris' essay, "Stranded on Smith Island," detailing the islanders' plight, appeared on the Opinion-Commentary Page of The Sun. "Well, it didn't make them start running the ferries again till the thaw, but it did make a lot of people feel better," Chris says with a grin.

Sometimes, the letters get the desired results.

Recently, the world beyond the Chesapeake Bay was made aware of the island's existence when the national news picked up the story of the crab-picking ladies. State health officials threatened to crack down on housewives who pick crab meat in their kitchens for commercial sale. This latest outside interference in island life was deeply resented. And so Chris began writing.

Winning public opinion

"You had the ladies picking a part of their husband's catch in their homes. Most of these ladies have kitchens so clean you could eat off the floor," he recalls. "For many of these women, this is the only job they can get on the island, and their families depend on the income."

The world cheered for the ladies and the pressure of public opinion was turned on. The problem was averted, for the present at least, by government loans and a newly formed cooperative.

"Essentially, what's happened is the business is centralized, and there's now a middleman between the women and their buyers," Chris says. His letters were the first clue the media had that Smith Island was mad and not going to take it.

But other issues, such as the absence of a doctor or nurse and the closing of the one-room schoolhouse at Tylerton, are still unresolved. Little by little, the bay is reclaiming the island; increasingly, high ground is harder to find as erosion claims more and more land. The cable system, the island's main access to television, leaves a lot to be desired. The economy is precarious. Old, jury-rigged septic and wiring systems are in danger of collapse.

"Now we're dealing with so many problems we never had before that we really need a civic government," Chris sighs as he ambles past the tightly clustered houses that make up Ewell. "If we're going to last into the next century, without interference from over there, we're going to have to get organized."

As he walks, Chris ruminates on the responsibilities of his unique position. "I am constantly bombarded with requests to write letters about this and that," he says. "If I quit crabbing tomorrow, I still wouldn't have a free day till December."

A school bus filled with tourists rolls past. They take pictures from open windows. The idea that Smith Island might someday be overtaken by weekenders and retirees doesn't frighten the waterman-philosopher.

"The island's of two minds about the tourists," he explains wryly. "On the one hand, they pump money into the economy. But on the other hand, no one likes to be stared at by strangers."

Does he worry about Smith Island becoming another Oxford or Rock Hall? "The EPA would never let you build a marina here, and we're too far from the cities to be really attractive, so the essential character of the island will never change," he predicts.

In a place in which the economy and culture have always depended on the bay, Chris says, the decline in the crab and oyster harvests has been ominous. Many islanders see the coming of the tourists as a viable replacement industry.

The Crisfield and Smith Island Cultural Alliance has received more than $300,000 in government grants to build the Smith Island Center, a museum and visitor's area for which ground was broken this week. It is dedicated to the cultural preservation of the island, and Chris hopes to be named to the board of directors.

"As a native, I hope I can make a contribution," he says. "This place is my life, and I want to bring as much to it as I have to give.

"I think we can make it into the next century," he says. "We've made it this far in 300 years. Smith Islanders are survivors. The only constant is change and change is here. What we need to do is make certain that that change is positive. And I think we can do that."