May 25, 2014 The Magic Hour, Edisto

It is the magic hour.  I am on the dock  at sunrise.  It is the moment when the tide reverses.  The marsh is full and the water of Scott Creek is full, the colors of mother of pearl, as smooth as old glass.  The early birds are twittering and tweeting, a few cross the pink and blue sky where there is a sliver of a moon

A man named David comes down to catch flounder, but catches a sting ray.  I give him a knife to release the creature.  He says he saw two falling stars the night of the Cameleopardalids meteor shower.  We got up at 3:00 am but saw nothing but the sky strewn with stars.  David leaves to fish in the sea at the Edisto 40 and 60 reefs.

Now the waters of the creek are dappled with  tiny silvery waves turning slowly out to sea again.  There are fingers of clouds reaching above from the pink horizon.  High up, morning gulls fly.  Far away a lone dog is barking.  Do I hear the sea rolling?

Suddenly there is a large dolphin turning through the waters. Behind him, another smaller dolphin follows.  She has a baby dolphin close at her side, their movements in  perfect harmony.

May 22, 2014 Owl, Who Searches Through Darkness

It is twilight on the Cottonwood trail when I hear the loud  "hootoooooo" and perched 20 feet up in the branches of a tree is the beautiful Barred Owl.  He shows his mysterious face, his black close set eyes, his curved beak, then suddenly lifts up, spreads his wings and flies through the forest.

Owl sits on the hand of Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom.

May 12, 2014 The Trail Whisperer

I meet the great eight mile walker, Betty,coming towards me in the bright sunlight.  She is wearing a T-shirt and black pants and long silver earrings.  She shows me where yesterday on Mother's Day she fell off the trail and rolled down a sharp slope into a ravine.  She has only a small gash on her wrist.

"Bouts of dizzyness", she says.

"I have nerve damage from the shingles." She points to the right side of her head.

"You don't want to get shingles.  It was worse than cancer and I have had cancer three times.  The first was 'carcinoma'.  It goes straight down. And then colon cancer.  The last time, it was liver cancer".

"My daughter asked me not to walk today, but I am"

"Yes, keep on walking", I say.

On the path, at our feet, there is a dried up snake in the shape of an 'S'.

In the air, the unbearable sweetness of honeysuckle.

Boo is eating ripe mulberries that have fallen to the ground.

May 11, 2014 The Birds, Our Brothers and Sisters, Cottonwood Trail

"Richelieu...Richelieu....Figaro...Figaro...Figaro....vvvvideo...video...tweee..tweee...do it...do..it...Presidio...stupid...stupid...stupid...tears..tears..spitoon..spitoon"

The speech and comprehension of humans and the songs of birds are the mysterious languages of relatives.
The FoxP2 gene in humans, found to impact or impair our speech is the same in birds who are song impaired.

Great Blue flies up into the blue sky.

Boo and I find a box turtle in the woods.

In the wetlands, purple marsh irises are in full bloom.  Kirigamine, in Japanese, "foggy peak".

Sunday May 4, 2014 Caesar's Head, Raven Creek Falls

It is another impossibly beautiful Sunday. I remember as a young girl that my friend, Karen and I would be relied upon by the teacher to have read the lesson and discuss it in the Sunday School class, while the boys who almost never came, would say, "The river and the woods are my church."  Now I am the renegade while the boys are the pillars of the community, men who sit in the church with their wives every Sunday while I visit the river and the woods for my church.

I take Hwy 190 West from Moore across I-85 to Hwy 25 in Greenville, then West on Hwy 11 and connect with Hwy 276 West which goes past Glassy Mtn and along the Blue Ridge Escarpment to Cleveland, South Carolina, past the Asbury Methodist Campground on the left, the Sunoco Station (with a hot food bar) and the little store that sells carvings of bears, past the entrance to Jones Gap and then the very curvy mountain road to the right (276) which leads to the park office, gift shop and restrooms to Caesar's Head on the left.
There you can go to the overlook, have a picnic, buy a  key chain of a medallion of  the U.S. Geological Survey here stating the elevation to be +3208 ft. above sea level,or a sparkling lizard bracelet as I did or a birthday gift for your daughter, as I did, of a yellow and black jeweled bird.

The Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area includes Jones Gap and Caesar's Head and trails that can take you all the way to Sassafras Mountain and even Oconee which is 80 miles to the West.
I take the red blazed trail to Raven Creek Falls.  First I must get back in the car and drive out of the park office to the left a quarter mile on the road. On the right is parking for a number of trails.  Parking is limited, but it is early in the morning.  Then I cross 276 on foot for the beginning of the trail which is a car wide gravel road going sharply down to a small water building.  From there, the trail is a well trodden, well marked footpath moving up and down through root stepped forests of hardwood, pine, mountain laurel and rhododendron.  In a sunny spot, I see a laurel in bloom and in another spot, a blooming violet colored mountain azalea.

There is a fork with a trail going off to the right with blue blazes. That is the Jones Gap Trail. Later, there is a trail going off to the left which is cordoned off, the Dismal Trail.

The ranger told me that there were 3 geocaches in the park.  I came upon one in the hollow of a tree containing a little notebook with the names of previous hikers who had found it and the palm sized rubber stamp of a "castle in the mountains" wrapped in a purple felt hand sewn purse.  There was no pen or pencil to leave my name, but I left my sea turtle key chain.  From now on, I will travel with pen and pencil, small notebook and trinkets to leave along the way.

The out and back trail ends at a shelter and lookout of the falls, the longest or highest in the state. For generations, the falls was owned and cared for by the Moore and Otis families who gave it to the State of South Carolina in 1981.

May 3, 2014 An Earthly Paradise

At dawn, I open my door to an earthly paradise:  a symphony of hundreds of birdsongs, pink and red roses with a perfusion of blooms, yellow bearded irises, so ancient that I had dug them up out of the woods where tall trees had grown up around them, deep blue and white Dutch irises and one execellent black bearded iris. and at the door, pink striped and maroon clematis on either side.

The weather is perfect on the Cottonwood trail. The Great Blue Heron is flying high up in the cloudless sky. A red headed woodpecker sweeps across the wetlands and alights on the trunk of a tree.  The air is sweet with the fragrance of blooming white wild roses.

"Twas brillig"

The soft cotton-like puffs of seeds from the Cottonwood trees are floating in the air, covering the ground and the surface of the wetland pools.  It is said that when the cottonwood seeds float in the air, it is time to fish for crappies.

A Dakotah storey (Dale Childs) exists about a lonely and curious little star who came to earth and hear the beautiful sounds of music and laughter from a small villlage.  The little star hid in the leafy branches of the cottonwood tree to be near the people of earth.

And here is the refrain of the Marty Robbins song "The Cottonwood Tree":

Oh, cottonwood tree, are you waiting for me
Waiting to take me away
I've done no wrong but the town cannot see
And so with my life I must pay....
Majestically standing out here all alone.