Early this new day of the new year, it is cold with a pale blue and white striated sky. In the upper Mid West, there is a blizzard. Only a few walkers, an occasional jogger trying to run off the turkey, the dressing, the pumpkin pie, the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the cranberry sauce. At my house there were a dozen cardinals pecking at the ground, a chortle of a lone bird nearby. I put birdseed in a squeezed orange half for the feathered neighbors. In my yard I have a deer made out of logs with a cardinal perched in his branch antlers. Inside it is warm with a Christmas tree and leftover wrapping papers.
Today is the day for blackeyed peas and collard greens.
Here is an old recipe for "Hoppin John":
Wipporwill peas or Red Rippers or Blackeyed peas
rice
ham hock
Cook dried peas with ham hock or fat back until done. (Actually you should put the peas on the stove to a boil in several inches of water the night before to soak)
Cook rice separately but not too thoroughly done.
Put rice into peas and steam all liquid into rice.
"Tastes good for a meal with green apple pie"
From Granny's Old Time and Modern Cookbook.
In all of my collection of old cookbooks, there is no recipe for collards.
Here is how to do it.
Get a big fresh green bunch of collards. Cut out the stems. Roll the leaves into a bundle and cut round slices.
Then cut again through the slices. Heat fat back or bacon in the skillet. Saute the collards in the fat.
Add salt and pepper to taste. (Garlic is good too). Add some water and heat. Cover and cook for as long as you like. Enjoy with the Hoppin John.
Happy New Year
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Monday, December 9, 2013
October 24, 2013 Paddling the Beaufort River
At 7:00 am, we walk down to the trestle and see the sunrise in all its splendor over the golden marshes.
On the way to the river, we stop at Old Sheldon Church where once I met Bill Campbell tending family graves. He told me that he had met his wife, a Scottish Macdonald in India during the 2nd World War, how she was also related to William Tecumseh Sherman. Laughingly, he related how the Macdonalds had invited the Campbells over for dinner and murdered them and how Sherman had burned down the old Sheldon church.
During the Revolution, the British had indeed burned down the church. It was rebuilt and some believe that it was burned by Sherman in the Civil War. More recently, some think that it was merely torn apart by the residents nearby who had no fuel to burn to keep them warm in the days during and after the war.
Now only the brick columns stand in the deep woods, like a Southern Stonehenge, a tribute to a spiritual past. Still, once a year on the Sunday after Easter, a service is held here.
Then, geared up in our life vests, gloves, hats, and sandals, we launched from the marina right into the Beaufort River. A barge and tug boat sailed nearby on its way out to sea. We paddled down river and under the bridge to Parris Island.
We were saluted by dolphins.
At Fort Fremont (a Spanish American War relic), we took out to look around. I caught my sandal in the kayak seat and fell backwards into the water's edge. Actually it felt good as the day had brightened and heated up. I laughed. Now I was truly baptized in the holy waters of the Beaufort River with the dolphins in attendance. And I am changed forever.
On the way to the river, we stop at Old Sheldon Church where once I met Bill Campbell tending family graves. He told me that he had met his wife, a Scottish Macdonald in India during the 2nd World War, how she was also related to William Tecumseh Sherman. Laughingly, he related how the Macdonalds had invited the Campbells over for dinner and murdered them and how Sherman had burned down the old Sheldon church.
During the Revolution, the British had indeed burned down the church. It was rebuilt and some believe that it was burned by Sherman in the Civil War. More recently, some think that it was merely torn apart by the residents nearby who had no fuel to burn to keep them warm in the days during and after the war.
Now only the brick columns stand in the deep woods, like a Southern Stonehenge, a tribute to a spiritual past. Still, once a year on the Sunday after Easter, a service is held here.
Then, geared up in our life vests, gloves, hats, and sandals, we launched from the marina right into the Beaufort River. A barge and tug boat sailed nearby on its way out to sea. We paddled down river and under the bridge to Parris Island.
We were saluted by dolphins.
At Fort Fremont (a Spanish American War relic), we took out to look around. I caught my sandal in the kayak seat and fell backwards into the water's edge. Actually it felt good as the day had brightened and heated up. I laughed. Now I was truly baptized in the holy waters of the Beaufort River with the dolphins in attendance. And I am changed forever.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Octber 23,2013 Paddling the Combahee
Early morning put in at the Combahee (pronounced 'Combee' by the locals). The Combahee is the "C" in ACE Basin, the three river estuary of the Ashepoo, the Combahee and the Edisto, an 18,000 acre wildlife refuge.
We paddled upstream with a 20 mph headwind for about an hour. The day is bright and clear, cool (66'). I have a green kayak today, longer, sleeker and faster. The Combahee is a fresh water river with salt underneath and is effected by tides as it flows through the oak, pine and cypress forest. My brother, Buddy, has fished this river and tells me that even if you are sailing with the tide, you must go faster than the tide is moving and it can be a wild ride.
No alligators today. Ring necked King Fishers skim back and forth over the water. Turtles bask on fallen logs and suddenly, there is a flock of 30 to 40 white Ibis careening above us and alighting into the trees, then walking single file along the bank. These blueways (or more accurately black or brown ways) have been called "The Atlantic Flyway" or the bird highway in the sky as there are countless avian species living here or moving through.
After a picnic lunch, we continue upriver as far as the estate, "Auld Brass" designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and now owned by the Hollywood producer, Joel Silver. He has exotic animals living on the grounds and I remember about five years ago reading in the Waterboro news paper of his escaped rhino being hit by a car on a country road. We could see only the green roofed dockside gazebo also designed by Wright.
We turned around and paddled downriver, past our put in, under bridges and turn around again at Public Park. We have traveled 9.2 miles today.
We paddled upstream with a 20 mph headwind for about an hour. The day is bright and clear, cool (66'). I have a green kayak today, longer, sleeker and faster. The Combahee is a fresh water river with salt underneath and is effected by tides as it flows through the oak, pine and cypress forest. My brother, Buddy, has fished this river and tells me that even if you are sailing with the tide, you must go faster than the tide is moving and it can be a wild ride.
No alligators today. Ring necked King Fishers skim back and forth over the water. Turtles bask on fallen logs and suddenly, there is a flock of 30 to 40 white Ibis careening above us and alighting into the trees, then walking single file along the bank. These blueways (or more accurately black or brown ways) have been called "The Atlantic Flyway" or the bird highway in the sky as there are countless avian species living here or moving through.
After a picnic lunch, we continue upriver as far as the estate, "Auld Brass" designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and now owned by the Hollywood producer, Joel Silver. He has exotic animals living on the grounds and I remember about five years ago reading in the Waterboro news paper of his escaped rhino being hit by a car on a country road. We could see only the green roofed dockside gazebo also designed by Wright.
We turned around and paddled downriver, past our put in, under bridges and turn around again at Public Park. We have traveled 9.2 miles today.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
October 22, 2013 Paddling Cuckhold Creek
In the early morning, we launched our kayaks downstream against the tide. A bald eagle flew across the sky above us, a welcome, a good omen. All day it was cool and now and then a few rain drops would fall.
We saw small alligators, red winged blackbirds, terns, egrets, ibis and two osprey nests.
We paddled through old rice canals ringed with glorius brilliant sulfur yellow swamp flowers (which might be called swamp coriopsis). It was incredible to float there in a kind of round pond in the middle of the flower ringed marsh grass, a secret paradise.
Returning, the bald eagle watched us take out from his perch high in a dead tree.
In the old days, rum runners, armed with guns, drove their boats through this creek in the dead of night with their contraband loads of liquor, sometimes escaping the sheriff and sometimes being ambushed and caught red handed.
We saw small alligators, red winged blackbirds, terns, egrets, ibis and two osprey nests.
We paddled through old rice canals ringed with glorius brilliant sulfur yellow swamp flowers (which might be called swamp coriopsis). It was incredible to float there in a kind of round pond in the middle of the flower ringed marsh grass, a secret paradise.
Returning, the bald eagle watched us take out from his perch high in a dead tree.
In the old days, rum runners, armed with guns, drove their boats through this creek in the dead of night with their contraband loads of liquor, sometimes escaping the sheriff and sometimes being ambushed and caught red handed.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
October 21, 2013 Paddling Boyd Creek
Last night I watched a full yellow moon rise in a deep blue buttermilk sky over the marshes at Knowles Island. Far across the way I could see the rotating light on the Hunting Island lighthouse.
I have canoed before, but this is my first experience of kayaking. We loaded up and drove to Boyd Creek. I had a fat baby blue kayak which seemed to want to drift to the right. I kept going into the spartina grass. Our leaders demonstrated a T rescue.
At noon, we put out at a picnic shelter and had our bag lunches which we had packed earlier. Back into the creek and finally out at a place called Saltzberg, stacked the kayaks on the trailer and drove back muddy and wet and happy.
My upper arms and shoulders ached. We threw our clothes in the washer and sank into hot baths.
I sat on the balcony watching the green, gold, and brown grasses, the marsh, the water. Aaaah.
Note: Bill Hamel, Master Naturalist and One of "The Pinckney Island Wildlife Preserve honored Seven" is a volunteer who tends to and keep the Preserve open. He tells about Port Royal Sound watershed and the visisitudes of low country estuaries, the destruction humans have done to the sacred salt marshlands and black water salty fingers of water.
Boyd Creek travels into Jasper County where there is great poverty. Next to Jasper is Beaufort County with Paris Island Marine Base, and Hilton Head and other islands where the very wealthy vacation.
I have canoed before, but this is my first experience of kayaking. We loaded up and drove to Boyd Creek. I had a fat baby blue kayak which seemed to want to drift to the right. I kept going into the spartina grass. Our leaders demonstrated a T rescue.
At noon, we put out at a picnic shelter and had our bag lunches which we had packed earlier. Back into the creek and finally out at a place called Saltzberg, stacked the kayaks on the trailer and drove back muddy and wet and happy.
My upper arms and shoulders ached. We threw our clothes in the washer and sank into hot baths.
I sat on the balcony watching the green, gold, and brown grasses, the marsh, the water. Aaaah.
Note: Bill Hamel, Master Naturalist and One of "The Pinckney Island Wildlife Preserve honored Seven" is a volunteer who tends to and keep the Preserve open. He tells about Port Royal Sound watershed and the visisitudes of low country estuaries, the destruction humans have done to the sacred salt marshlands and black water salty fingers of water.
Boyd Creek travels into Jasper County where there is great poverty. Next to Jasper is Beaufort County with Paris Island Marine Base, and Hilton Head and other islands where the very wealthy vacation.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
November 19, 2013 Ninety-Six National Historic Site
Amazingly, I have come here by chance on the 238th anniversary to the day of the Nov. 19, 1775 of the first major land battle of the American Revolution in the South in which 1,900 loyalists attacked 600 patriots on this very spot ending in a truce after 2 days. The ranger tells me that Ninety-Six was the spot in the Upstate that the British wanted to control as it was the intersection of trading routes. It had been so since the Cherokee Nation forged the first trails from Keowee (near Clemson) to Charleston, Augusta, Camden and elsewhere
(as those places are known now).
I get here from Columbia, up I-26, exit 74 for highway 34. I cross the uprivers of the Bush and the Saluda before they reach Columbia, wide and roaring. I cross Wilson Creek. In the small neat town of Ninety-six I take 248 for 2 miles to the Site.
Here the Island Ford Trail and the Cherokee Trail are deeply sunken into the ground from the hundred's of years' use.
I take the paved walk through the woods to the Star Fort (a star shaped earth bunker) with a snaking walk around it. It is almost totally silent with only the wind in the trees and the rattling of leaves above the place where many died and in the woods where many are sleeping under the ground. At the end of the Star Fort trail, the Gouedy Trail enters the woods. There is the stone grave marker of James Gouedy who ran a trading post here. The trail is marked with yellow blazes, but I lost it along a still silent creek with dark cloudy water. I find it again and meet a couple from Seattle entering the woods.
Two local women out for exercise, tell me to take the gravel road at the entrance to the Star Fort trail and follow it through the woods until I come to a small field on the right. Turn there to the left and a short walk takes you to a steel blue pond with ducks floating on its surface. There is a fishing access trail off to the left.
There are other trails which the women tell me not to take as they are not marked well.
The war was already turning in favor of the patriots in May of 1781 when General Greene and his troops attacked the loyalist stronghold at Star Fort in Ninety-Six. There were many casualties on both sides. Green withdrew his troops and British General Cruger abandoned the fort and burned the village to the ground.
I return home by taking highway 246 to highway 72 at Coronava and then left on 221 which finally becomes Church street in Spartanburg. Between Waterloo and Maddens I pass the big Crenshaw's store which has hundreds of cow skulls and bones on the roof. I think it must be a butcher shop.
Soon I am crossing Lake Greenwood, dark blue and gleaming. On the far is side a Sunoco station with a Subway. It is most probably the Subway with the greatest view in the world, as it's tables overlook the wide lake. You can also sit outside on the deck and the gas station has all of the fishing supplies you would ever need.
My trip on the back roads through the small towns takes me past nearly abandoned old main streets now filled with antique shops and rows of pansies for sale. As I pass the lovely old two and three story houses with big generous porches, I think of going to live in a small town in one of those old houses and drinking a mint julep (I have never had a mint julep) on the porch on a hot summer evening with the fans ticking overhead.
The name, "Ninety-Six" is somewhat of a mystery, but one theory is that the old Indian trail from Keowee, near the present town of Clemson, was an exact distance of 96 miles.
Captain John Blakeney of Chesterfield County on Lynches River fought in the Revolution. I do not know whether he fought at Ninety-Six. A young man in his regiment named John Welsh married his daughter, Jane and he was able to buy 3,500 acres from Frances Marion, the Swamp Fox, in Lancaster County to homestead.
However at the age of 65, Captain Blakeney, John Welsh and his wife Jane and their son William loaded up and began the long walk to Alabama. William became ill on the way and returned home to Lancaster County. He was our family's forebear. The rest of the family continued on and became among the original founders of Marion, Alabama.
(as those places are known now).
I get here from Columbia, up I-26, exit 74 for highway 34. I cross the uprivers of the Bush and the Saluda before they reach Columbia, wide and roaring. I cross Wilson Creek. In the small neat town of Ninety-six I take 248 for 2 miles to the Site.
Here the Island Ford Trail and the Cherokee Trail are deeply sunken into the ground from the hundred's of years' use.
I take the paved walk through the woods to the Star Fort (a star shaped earth bunker) with a snaking walk around it. It is almost totally silent with only the wind in the trees and the rattling of leaves above the place where many died and in the woods where many are sleeping under the ground. At the end of the Star Fort trail, the Gouedy Trail enters the woods. There is the stone grave marker of James Gouedy who ran a trading post here. The trail is marked with yellow blazes, but I lost it along a still silent creek with dark cloudy water. I find it again and meet a couple from Seattle entering the woods.
Two local women out for exercise, tell me to take the gravel road at the entrance to the Star Fort trail and follow it through the woods until I come to a small field on the right. Turn there to the left and a short walk takes you to a steel blue pond with ducks floating on its surface. There is a fishing access trail off to the left.
There are other trails which the women tell me not to take as they are not marked well.
The war was already turning in favor of the patriots in May of 1781 when General Greene and his troops attacked the loyalist stronghold at Star Fort in Ninety-Six. There were many casualties on both sides. Green withdrew his troops and British General Cruger abandoned the fort and burned the village to the ground.
I return home by taking highway 246 to highway 72 at Coronava and then left on 221 which finally becomes Church street in Spartanburg. Between Waterloo and Maddens I pass the big Crenshaw's store which has hundreds of cow skulls and bones on the roof. I think it must be a butcher shop.
Soon I am crossing Lake Greenwood, dark blue and gleaming. On the far is side a Sunoco station with a Subway. It is most probably the Subway with the greatest view in the world, as it's tables overlook the wide lake. You can also sit outside on the deck and the gas station has all of the fishing supplies you would ever need.
My trip on the back roads through the small towns takes me past nearly abandoned old main streets now filled with antique shops and rows of pansies for sale. As I pass the lovely old two and three story houses with big generous porches, I think of going to live in a small town in one of those old houses and drinking a mint julep (I have never had a mint julep) on the porch on a hot summer evening with the fans ticking overhead.
The name, "Ninety-Six" is somewhat of a mystery, but one theory is that the old Indian trail from Keowee, near the present town of Clemson, was an exact distance of 96 miles.
Captain John Blakeney of Chesterfield County on Lynches River fought in the Revolution. I do not know whether he fought at Ninety-Six. A young man in his regiment named John Welsh married his daughter, Jane and he was able to buy 3,500 acres from Frances Marion, the Swamp Fox, in Lancaster County to homestead.
However at the age of 65, Captain Blakeney, John Welsh and his wife Jane and their son William loaded up and began the long walk to Alabama. William became ill on the way and returned home to Lancaster County. He was our family's forebear. The rest of the family continued on and became among the original founders of Marion, Alabama.
November 18, 2013 Where is Betty?
The system that yesterday drove over 60 tornados across the upper midwest demolishing small towns and killing six, has granted us a warm day with a washed blue sky, breathable air on the trail.
A small group of walkers has gathered to ask where is Betty, the small white haired lady who walks the trail twice every morning, the champion walker of us all. She has been missing for three weeks. None of us knows how to find her.
We hope she has gone to Epcot for a vacation. She has a gray hoodie with the name, Epcot on it.
A small group of walkers has gathered to ask where is Betty, the small white haired lady who walks the trail twice every morning, the champion walker of us all. She has been missing for three weeks. None of us knows how to find her.
We hope she has gone to Epcot for a vacation. She has a gray hoodie with the name, Epcot on it.
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