I drove on SC Highway 9 from Jonesville to Lockhart to Chester. The roadside was covered with Black Eyed Susans, called Deer Eyed by the Cherokee, wild roses reaching out from the woods and lavender flowering China Berry Trees.
As children, my cousin Jane and I would stand under our grandparents' China Berry Tree in our bathing suits and pretend we were Amazons. The seeds of the foul smelling waxy white berries can be dried and dyed and made into quite beautiful strands of beads and bracelets.
Chester State Park is a small gem with camping and fishing in "Lake View Lake". There are boats to rent and hook ups for RV's as well as primitive camp sites. There is a graceful pavilion looking out over the lake
and a "leave and come back" trail of about 3 miles round trip ending at the spillway.
I came upon a huge wall of bees on the trail between the boat house and the pavilion. There were hundreds of holes in this red mud wall with more hundreds of small black bees buzzing around them. Coming back , I noticed that the wall was actually the gigantic root base of an ancient fallen tree. The bees could be a German black honey bee, and they could also be dangerous. Looking at the bees and not where I was going, I tripped and fell down in front of the bee wall, but they continued about their business and ignored this clumsy hiker.
Bees have been considered a sacred insect in many cultures, associated with immortality and resurrection.
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