When I left Hilton Head, as planned, I moved north along the highway when I'd gotten off of the massive island and farther away from the four lane traffic. My way was made and the landscape began to change as I came closer to Beaufort and crossed Port Royal Sound. The highway was an elevated lane over a vast stretch of marshland on both sides, canals and channels of vacant water spinning its way through fields of submerged bronze grasses. Occasionally an insular tuft of forest sprung out in the surrounding marine meadow, throne to the birds, sharp white specks against the drab plane. At intervals they would swarm into the sky in a chain, circle the island, swaying and flowing against the deep azure sky until descending once more into the trees.
Before Beaufort I reached a fork and my turn took me across St. Helena Island, which was nearly the size of Hilton Head, but with the rural island calm I had expected to encounter earlier. The road went on for a while and eventually I was on Hunting Island, separate entirely and all a state park. Entering it seemed normal with a few more palmettos than usual, but when I came into the forest I realized all at once that everything here was an entirely unique mixture of what I’d seen before. All of the forest was a canopy, a roof of palmetto leaves, firs, and pillars of the almighty oak, curling upwards over an array of dwarf palmettos, the hands of the forest resting in its lap. I saw the place as a whole as a person lying alone on a stretch of beach in midday, warm sunlight poking through the holes in a straw hat laid over the eyes.
There was a fee to pay at the entrance and then I went along the winding road. Inside the visitor center I read the signs of the wildlife and plant life and history of the island and the lighthouse. I’d gotten back on my bike and was just starting when I found a whitetail buck standing in the road directly in front of me, nearly within arms’ reach, his black slate eyes peering directly into mine and all at once he comprehended me and a shock ran through him and he bounded into the leaves to the side of the road. A park ranger pulled up behind me, totally ignorant of what had happened, smiled, and drove around me, away down the road. I went quickly toward the side where the deer had gone and picked him out walking through the patches of light. Periodically he’d take an adamant stance, consciously placing his feet and match my gaze with an indomitable and innocent strengthy disposition. Eventually he came back to the road a little farther down and walked along the edge into the wayward depths of the island.
Found my way to the lighthouse at around 3 o’clock and set my bike up against a tree. The lady who was at the lighthouse door told me it was two dollars to go up and if I only had a debit card I’d pay it at the gift shop. I went back for my wallet and on my way back quenched the longing I’d had for the beach and I found it here to be the most unique I’d ever seen. Driftwood half buried in sand, and long dead trees, stood loosely, trunk and platform of roots worn and polished away from years of wind-blown sand, a garden of fallen palmetto trunks with balled stringy roots, a troop of little white birds cautious and quick leading a line of little fading forked foot prints and pecking at the sand then dodging and swaying together among the waves, fleeing into the uprooted foundations of a tree in their endless search for the lower link of the food chain. I became lost in the workings of it all.
Around five I decided to go back and it was time to revisit the lighthouse. I went into the gift shop and the man said it they were closing it up. His one piece of advice was to go back to the lady and maybe she’d let me go in yet, so I went to ask and found her as she was walking to the gate, with the keys jingling in her hand, where her husband was waiting with their dog (who was wagging his tail and panting on his leash). She looked at me with sudden recognition and surprise followed by dismay. She talked with her husband and they decided I’d be the last visitor though technically visitation was over. So I rushed up the spiral stairs to the top with my camera and snapped some pictures all out of breath. The husband waved from the ground so far away and yelled up at me “Hey, if you don’t mind, would you do me a favor while you’re up there? Can you hear me?”
I yelled back down, “Of course” and he told me I should shut the door on the hinge before I headed back down, and make sure I’m the last one up there. I poked around the top while the other two people who were still there descended, clasped the door shut, clapped the hinge together and started down.
It was a hefty climb, and it was these two peoples’ job to open and close the place before and after the day. She’d go up in the morning and he’d close it down at night, so (with a chuckle) “Sure you didn’t have to pay, but earned your keep!” he said as I walked out the gate.
After that I went out from the fee area and finished riding the remaining road. At the end was a dock, an extraordinarily long dock extending out over the water and parallel to the bridge toward Fripp Island, half a bridge itself. The sun was lowering so I started back along the road, deciding finally on a spot down a blocked drive to spend the night.
In the morning there was fog, unexpected and pleasant, laden thick like a border around the island, already isolated by water, now isolated by air. A veil between the road, which spun along the perimeter of half the island, and the water, the little springs of trees among the reeds of the marsh were black against white. Fog to me is an extraordinary thing to witness, completely altering the presence of a place, bringing everything toward you but breaking off everything beyond, it changes what a place is.
Spoke with a park ranger while stopping to take some photos, who said he had gotten too old to be able to do what I was doing now and had found a way around it in kayaking. He could go journeying in the networks of rivers in the winter, no alligators, no people, just him the river and God. We talked about technical things and had conversive meditations in the mist and then parted. I found images constantly and made slow progress until finally reaching the long stretch of road between the islands again. Then the sun finally melted the mist and revealed a dock of shrimp boats among rising clouds and I stopped here to take a look. I met photographer named Kirk Chamberlain. Here among the sea grass and ships we spoke together of cameras and our processes and I met his wife and dogs.
Crossed back through the St Helena again and Beaufort and went back onto the highway. The road went on and without interruption to the sign that said Charleston one way and Edisto the other. I went the Edisto route and took the bumpy road across the bridge onto the island and to the beach to find it was just a beach, peaceful and more somewhat secluded, but only a beach. There was a state park area, but when I arrived I just didn’t have the urge to go in and turned back around my uneventful way toward the sign pointing on to Charleston. I’m sure I missed a South Carolina speciality, but I’d lost the momentum and saw I was so close to home I just kept going. It took me all day and into the night to get back, but I was drawn like a magnet and was too close to stop. Went across the bridges, through the streets and into the bustling suburban night while a crescent moon fittingly rose into the sky as the pink dye dripped out of the sky and every time a palmetto passed, South Carolina whispered in my ear that I was a part of it. The journey made me akin to the place and I was actually coming home. So the list of homes grows a new member and I’m a part of a family, unlikely but truly and happily.
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