Lady’s Island Marina, Factory Creek, Beaufort South Carolina.

Four days ago, as written earlier, we enjoyed the peaceful deserted wilderness of the Cooper River Marshland which we shared with a single endless row of electric poles.  Sentinels, duty bound, daring intruders to challenge the veracity of there enlightning task.  They were as obvious as a single light bulb on a cord dangling in the center of a rural school house, as we found out a few days later was exactly one of their functions.  Allow me to read briefly, only a paragraph, from Pat Conroy’s The Water is Wide.

“Yamacraw is an island of the South Carolina mainland not far from Savannah, Georgia.  The island is fringed with the green, undulating marshes of the southern coast; shrimp boats ply the waters around her and fishermen cast their lines along her beautiful shores.  Deer cut through her forests in small silent herds.  The island and the waters around her teem with life.  There is something eternal and indestructible about the tide eroded shores and the dark, threatening silences of the swamps in the heart of the island.  Yamacraw is beautiful because man has not yet had time to destroy this beauty….”

“…electricity came to the island several years ago.  There is something unquestionably moving about the line of utility poles coming across the marsh, moving perhaps because electricity is a bringer of miracles and the journey of the faceless utility poles is such a long one—and such a humane one.  But there are no telephones (electricity is enough of a miracle for one century….”

As many know, Pat Conroy also penned “The Prince of Tides”.  He is a folk hero in Beaufort, South Carolina.  He loves and waxes eloquently while sharing the ‘low country’ and it’s people with us through his books.  Kathy Brown, who visited Beaufort a few weeks ago, shared with us the name and specifics of a local bookstore he haunts periodically.  It was a wonderful store, small, quaint but more importantly exposed us to some very good local authors’ books.  I will never be a Pat Conroy, or an author of his ilk.  But, some days, I make a good Wayne Flatt.

We are cheap.  This day we splurged.  We bought several books. 

I opened a free paper we picked up during our tour of town and its many hundred to two hundred year old homes.  Stately homes nourished with southern love of ‘good familys’, taken care of with the subtle pride that belongs to a whipped but unbeaten tribe of brothers.  I opened the free paper and the first words that I read was the header for Henry Repeating Arms Company that quietly states:

“There was a time when owning a Henry Rifle was a matter of life or death” 

Under the caption it shows two pictures.  The first is captioned  ”Henry yesterday” showing a group of soldiers from a long ago period when brother fought brother and the states were divided.  The second shows a modern family in front of a log cabin all holding their Henry Rifles.

The War Between the States is over—it is not forgotten here.

This is a state of people who have evolved from working the land and waters of the low country.  Here freshwater and salt water ebb n flow caressing the heavy rich soil into submission, then feeding on it gently, coming together to forge the bounties of each in a natural stew ranging in consistency from soup to pudding.  Here, on both sides of the wet line, nature is plentiful and taken. 

On the wet side are, in part: sport fish, tunas, porgies & snappers, sea bass, grouper, tilefish, sharks, sturgeon & shad, shrimp, crab, lobster, oysters, clams.  Then on the dry side, relatively speaking, are deer, bear, birds including crow, weasel, mink muskrat, skunk, otter, raccoon, opossum, beaver.  There are hunting periods for long guns, bows, handguns and dogs.

These are gentle souls, with soft hearts carried on straight strong backbones with strong values who love America, but will always be southern family accented by the sound of the slow strong thoughtful draw of southern men and the sweet chocolate lilt of each southern belle.  These are men and women who have an identity they will always be able to claim as their own regardless of the semi-caste system that may still survive.  There are the ‘good families’ that Margaret Evens, editor of the Lowcountry Weekly described in part: “The men still wear polo shirts, penny loafers and the occasional pink sweater to brunch, the women still favor pearls, charm bracelets and floral prints, the homes are still large and formal, the lawns are still impeccable, the old people are still a little crazy and the black folks are still seen only behind the bar”. 

Then there are the common folk.  Those that live in the trailer parks or small houses nestled in the oaks dripping in Spanish moss who often maintain the dignified strength Evan describes as “poor gentry”.  Segregation is now more economic rather then racial it would seem, although we detect the lines have not blurred nearly so much as the laws have.  The people are a pot pourri of southern extremes. There is the ordered chaos of marine boot camp training on Parris Island, the Navy Officers, and usually gentleman, commanding the fast movers that train overhead.  The gentrified trailer parks and the black townships stashed out of sight of the magnificent old homes of the central town and waterfront. 

As our dear new friend Andina Marie Foster pointed out, who I paraphrase:  “The spectrum of human interest and culture is very diverse in Beaufort.  It ranges from the military of Parris Island to old established families and homes, to the rich heritage of the black community, to the shop owners, the hunter-gatherers of sea life, the artist enclave to others with a variety of penchants for life, living and happiness, much like myself, formerly a man that now is a women”.   

In our brief tour of Beaufort we have come to adore the town, the slow, syrupy overlying culture that emulates the sweet thick chocolate flow of the surrounding waters.  We especially enjoyed our all too short visit with Andina to whom I am grateful for her tolerance of my, no doubt, Freudian pronoun slips. 

I bless the cruisers’ mist that shrouds us with the patina of all the sights, sounds, tastes and feelings that the last year has given us.  It allows us to move on to the next oyster, taking with us that which we wish to carry from each venue and thread it like a pearl on our string of life experiences.

Capt'n Lynnie and Skinwalker