October 16, 2014 Charles Towne Landing, Aboriginal Eyes

On the way to Edisto, down I-26, I visit Charles Towne Landing in Charleston.  (Take exit 216 A onto Hwy 7 which is Sam Rittenburg Blvd, then left onto Hwy 171, which is Olde Towne Road (go past Charlestowne Drive) then take the next left at the stop light into Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site.

The first European settlement here was in 1671.

The Visitor's Center is flanked by gardens of sweet Grass, now blooming with cloudlike fronds of dusky pink blossoms.

In the Center, there is much to learn of Colonial history.  There are tours and demonstrations. In the park, there are replicas of a ship, the building of another ship like the rib cage of a huge whale.  There are cottages to visit, a history trail, an animal forest, a Native American exhibit, archaeological sites.  There are many paved walks.

I elect to wander around all of these things until I find the dirt trails bordering the marsh.  I find an entrance near the beautiful restored home of Ferdinanda Waring's grandparents who once owned this land. Today, there are marriages held here.

In 1941 Ferdinanda planted an avenue of oaks as an incredible approach to the house. Ferdinanda had a flower business and an egg business, around the same time mid century that my Grandmother, Katherine Quigley, had an egg business out in Leslie, SC.  She had tried to learn to drive a car in her 60's but proved so maniacal a driver that my father hired a man to drive her into town to sell her eggs.

Ferdinanda sold the property to the State of South Carolina in 1981.

I take the dirt path to the marsh and am engulfed by the intense sweetness of the Elaegnus (Elaegnus pungens, also known as Silver Thorn) which is everywhere.  Later the ranger tells me it is an invasive species.  I say let it invade for its scent alone.

I enter a side path to a "Scenic Point" where there is a bench on a sandy spit of land.  With my hiking stick, I write "Hallelujah" in the sand.

Walking back along the marsh where oaks bend gracefully over the water, dripping Spanish Moss, I look out with my "Aboriginal Eyes", something I have done since childhood, imagining I am one of the first people seeing nothing but what they saw, without modern civilization.

Silently a silver plane emerges in the deep blue heavens, seeming to hang there almost motionless. I perceive that it is a god or a demon, a flying canoe drifting the blue waters of the sky.

Back to today's reality, a world where there is the Ebola virus and where there is the plague of Isis, and I am, out of some kind of Cosmic luck, safely buying coon skin caps for Zack, Shane and little Earl who will meet me at Edisto for a moment out of time.