Sea Cloud Circle Sojourn

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Pay attention. Attention is vitality.” – Susan Sontag

Once upon a time, a poet and a painter embarked on an eight week sojourn. They drove in the rain out a two lane road to a tiny little undeveloped sea island on the Carolina coast, the one called Edisto, arriving finally at their rented rooms. On Sea Cloud Circle. The purpose of the pilgrimage was to capture and define those practices which sustain the creative spirit. They limited their reading, and chose only three books each to study, ones they thought would nurture their vision. The poet chose to re-read the memoir by the Greek writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco. The painter picked the memoir by Karen Armstong, The Spiral Staircase. Together, they re-read Poetics of Space by the amazing French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard.

Inspired by the writer, Susan Sontag, they tried to follow her advice. She taught her students this: “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

That was three years ago. I now live on this sacred island, which is also the land of my ancestors. I am the painter, and the poet was Chuck Sullivan. The eight week retreat was so successful that it inspired me not only to keep painting, but to write everyday, to begin this blog, and to move here. There were more magical moments during this eight weeks than I can record on this one page, but the following principles are a few of the ones that we tested then, and which I now practice and believe are lasting and genuine tickets for keeping one’s creative spirit alive.

We wrote and I painted out on borrowed docks, and we gave away the work. Chuck taught the children free classes at the school. In return, we were showered with pounds of fresh shrimp and the open arms of the community. Not only did we awaken to ourselves and our artistic vision, but we made lasting friendships that continue to this day. The small watercolor below is of the house that still stands at Middleton Plantation on St. Pierre Creek, owned now by the very dear Caroline Pope Boineau.

Middleton/ C.Hutson-Wrenn 2006

The Lessons of Sea Cloud Circle

* Keep a journal and write three pages in longhand every morning upon waking (thank you, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and Vein of Gold)
* Walk three miles everyday (with eyes wide open)
* Practice Gratitude
* Make friends
* Give stuff away – for generosity of spirit
* Eliminate distraction (tv, especially the news)

The Sea Cloud Sojourn was pilgrimage, which Phil Cousineau defines as “poetry in motion, a winding road to meaning”. Edisto Island is often referred to as a sacred place. The word sacred originates from sacrifice. Living here sometimes requires some of that. Highway 174 is a winding sixteen mile path of a road from the Edisto bridge to the the ocean. A winding road to meaning. The experience of this sojourn was even more. So much more.

Dear Sir. Letters in history and today.

Botany Bay Road in Winter, Edisto Island, SC

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Briefly, in the dreams of the early South Carolina colony, a perfect little island south of Charleston, was picked by the Lords Proprietors, and a plantation was planned, to be managed by Lord Ashley’s relative, Andrew Percivall. The plantation never materialized, as the founders later picked land for Charles Towne that was more easily accessible, where Charleston lies today, just north; and John Locke, the great philosopher from England, never set foot on Edisto Island, which bore his name on early maps of Carolina.

Locke and Dr. Henry Woodward, explorer, interpreter, first English settler, wrote letters to one another. Locke, insatiably curious, longed to learn the religion and customs of the native American Indians. Quite the letter writer, John Locke left an astounding 3,637 surviving letters, written to him and by him. (The most famous letter-writers of the ancient world, Cicero and Augustine, left only a few hundred each) Correspondence in the form of letter writing, in mid 17th century, was a practice central to English culture. Letters were read out loud, and it ’served also to rescue people from intellectual and personal isolation’. It is what social utilities like Facebook, do, too, in today’s culture, attractive because we Americans have become self isolating, the result of our convenience filled, independent lifestyles. My own life on this remote island is enriched by my online connection and correspondence, and I wonder it is not an effort of our culture to renew our lost connections to one another, like letter writing did in the 17th century, something one writer called a “phenomenon”.

Just who was the man who dreamed of living on the eden isle, the paradise called Edisto Island?

Palms and dunes on Edisto Island

STOP TRAVELER. The epitaph of John Locke, the philosopher, at his burial place at High Laver, a village in the Epping Forest district of the County of Essex, England, begins: “Near this place lies JOHN LOCKE. If you are wondering what kind of man he was, he answers that he was contented with his modest lot. Bred a scholar, he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. You will learn this from his writings, which will show you everything about him more truthfully that the subject praises of an epitaph. His virtues, if indeed he had any, were too slight to be lauded by him or to be an example to you. Let his vices be buried with him. Of virtue, you have an example in the gospels, should you desire it; of vice would there were none for you; of mortality surely you have one here and everywhere, and may you learn from it.

That he was born on the 29th of August in the year of our Lord 1632

and that he died on the 28th of October in the year of our Lord 1704.

This tablet, which itself will soon perish, is a record.”

How intriguing is the man who also dreamed of this island, a place that still boasts so much of the natural beauty it had when Locke imagined it, thanks to many committed people, the preservation efforts of The Edisto Island Open Land Trust and The Lowcountry Open Land Trust who work to preserve and keep sacred these great open spaces of South Carolina.

Historic Point of Pines Row-ud, Edisto Island

It’s not a dirt row-ud now. It’s what an Edisto islander once called one of those newly paved main roads. In dialect so distinctive of the sea islands, Point of Pines Road would have been called a “rock row-ud” once it was paved. The road begins now, off of Highway 174, at Store Creek, near where a small section of old Kings Highway also intersects, as Wescott Road. At the end of the long, narrow, east facing road is one of the largest privately owned parcels of land on the island. It fronts the North Edisto River, and on this land are the oldest ruins on Edisto, thick slabs of tabby

Grimball House Tabby Ruins

that remind us that Paul Grimball, in 1683, received a grant for 1290 acres of land. He and his family were the first documented white settlers on the island.

Before the English arrived, the story is an even more fascinating tale, that of the ‘Edistowe’ Indians, a peace loving, gentle tribe, who were eager to befriend the English, hoping that they would help defend against the more aggressive tribes nearby. The ‘Edistowe’ surely had first picked this favored spot favored before the English arrived.

The story, which starts at ‘the Point of Pines’ is illustrated in the Narratives of Early Carolina 1650-1705 by Alexander Salley. Captain Robert Sandford, and a small company of (gentle) men arrived on Edisto Island, from Barbados, in the year 1666. They begin at a beach near where the vessel anchored. According to Gene Waddell, author of Indians of the South Carolina Lowcountry 1562-1751, he thus was probably at the Point of Pines, which is the only beach of the North Edisto for eight or more miles beyond Ocella Creek, and which is about four or five miles inland or near where Sanford first saw the Indians from the Edisto village.

“… here a Capt. of the Nation named Shadoo was very earnest with some of our Company to goe with him and lye a night att their Towne (which) hee told us was but a smale distance thence. I being equally desirous to knowe the forme manner and populousness of the place as alsoe what state the Casique held (fame in all theire things preferrring this place to all the rest of the Coast,… foure of my Company… Lt: Harvey, Lt: Woory, Mr. Thomas Giles and mr. Henry Woodward forwardly offring themselves to the service… haveing alsoe some Indians aboard mee who constantly resided there night & day I permitted them to goe with this Shadoo they retorned to mee the next morning (with) great Comendacons of their Entertainment but especially of the goodness of the land they marcht through and the delightful situation of the Towne. Telling mee withall that the Cassique himselfe appeared …(his state was supplyed by a Female who received them with gladnes and Courtesy) … – they alsoe assureing mee that it was not above foure Miles off, to goe and see that Towne, and takeing with mee Capt George Cary and a file of men I marched thither ward followed by a long traine of Indians of whome some or other always presented himselfe to carry mee on his shoulders over any the branches of Creekes or plashy corners of Marshes in our Way. This walke though it tend to the Southward of the West and consequently leads neere alongst the Sea Coast….

So where was this round house, and ‘town’ of the Edisto Indians on Edisto Island? Professor Waddell surmises, “At this point Sandford has supplied enough information to determine the approximate location of the chief village of the Edisto. He set out from at or near the Point of Pines and traveled along a path in roughly a WSW direction for about four miles. This would put him at or just beyond the site of the present junction of Edisto, South Carolina which is on the headwaters of Store Creek and is near the center of Edisto Island. From the Point of Pines, the northern edge of two strips of marsh form nearly a straight line running in a WSW direction; he seems to have closely followed its “plashy corners.” Although the Indians he first encountered said their village “was within on the Western shoare somewhat lower down towards the Sea” ) …their village could not have been on the South Edisto. This part of Edisto Island is eight to ten miles across, so Sanford had to be near its middle. The Indians must have meant that the only access to it “within” by water was from the west side of the Island. When Sandford finally got through to the west side and on the South Edisto River “ome from the Town by Land (emphasis added) indicating that the town was some distance inland.”

Charles Town Landing Display

I cannot help but think, each day when I pass this spot, of this story of my ancestor, Henry Woodward, who, eager to do so, stayed on Edisto Island, learning the customs and languages of the Indians, even after he was captured mid-stay by the Spanish, and taken to jail in St Augustine. Shadoo, a “Captain of the Nation” eagerly got on Sandford’s ship in a sort of cultural exchange, and returned with the English to Barbados, as he had some years earlier with explorer William Hilton. Henry Woodward returned to South Carolina with the ship Carolina, and the earliest colonists, having hitched a ride from Nevis, after a stint as ship’s surgeon with the pirate Robert Searle from St. Augustine, who had freed him in St. Augustine. He would go one to establish the trade with the Indians of South Carolina and to travel extensively making connections with the Native Americans. It is through his efforts that the colony survived. The Native Americans who call themselves The Edisto (they were also known as the Cusabo) say Henry Woodward is the man they would most like to interview now. And at his death, the story is that a long trail of Indians carried him home on a stretcher, ill, to die at home, on land just north of this place called Edisto Island.

Home by another way. A sense of Place.

One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. – Gaston Bachelard

Aren’t we all looking for home? For that one place that wraps us up in familiarity and nurture, a place that will ‘wait up for us’ and take us in? Exactly like we are? My search was long and winding, exciting and heart wrenching. I am headed into honest territory today, inspired by the writing of Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love and The Last America Man. Her writing is dazzling, and has me talkin’ honest. This is the story of how I came to be right here, in the Carolina Lowcountry, happy as that black clam my Gullah neighbor, Fred, claims only he knows how to dig for out there in the pluff mud.

The quote above is by the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, whose book The Poetics of Space explores home by talking about sea shells and turrets and our memories of childhood. He speaks of the irony of pulling away while staying rooted, which is no small feat. I am a grandmother now, a Nahna: lucky, thrilled, pinching myself happy at my blessing. I am also, deliriously and contentedly, home.

For what felt like forever, my driving desire was to get away from home, away from the Carolinas of my childhood, from tradition, from what I felt were narrow boundaries of propriety. As the third child in my family with four, I somehow had more permission to go, and as soon as I could get married legally, I did, the only way that I knew, then, to get outta town. I spent blue warm winters in the American tropics, where oranges and key limes grew in the yard, where exotic lizards as big as cats climbed in our backyard tree that bloomed with so many flowers in winter it looked like a giant orange umbrella. In subsequent years, hungry to taste and smell everything this world had to offer, I loved a Canadian photographer I met in Maine because he lived on a perch in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and could cook and set up camp, so I got to see Canada and Colorado under the stars. Another travelin’ man took me to dream islands: Martha’s vineyard, and to Baja, the spit of California, that in renegade fashion meanders into the Pacific. I made pilgrimage to Paris with a musician; and a travel writer, knowing my hunger, let me bring a brand new poet lover when cancellations opened at the last minute on his small tour to Italy, where we found a poem about lemons by Pablo Neruda posted on a wall in a lemon grove in Amalfi and where I found fragile hand blown, red, glass cherries to carry home on my lap to remind me of Venice, a place whose magic helped me to recognize the sheer power of one evocative place.

Mine was a rich and rewarding traveling life. Until I was stopped in my tracks. The sound of home was calling to me from a place whose fragrance and flavor echoed generations of my grandmothers and grandfathers and who lived where I do now. From those very traditions I shunned earlier in my life. I was ready to see, to embrace, to love the history and values that yes, are about continuity. But I see it all more clearly now for having gone away. I do not take it for granted and I am surely more flexible for all the challenges of change along the way. This history is fresh to me now; the traditions are my own.

Eudora Welty, the Pulitzer Prize winning Southern writer from Jackson Mississippi, wrote about knowing one place well. She lived and wrote all her life in the one house in a small town. Flannery O’Connor, whose work is also deeply dazzling, said to write about what you know, and she did just that, in Milledgeville Georgia, a small town (worth a pilgrimage). There is so very much to explore in this one very small place in the world, so rich in history, beauty, inspiration. Who knew that all I wanted was right here at home, all along? Ah, to have eyes to see and ears to hear! That is the blessing!

South Carolina and the Red Bird. Now and then.

“Red bird came…firing up the landscape…as nothing else could.”

Painted Bunting

A poet friend sent me a book this week called Red Bird. It is a book of delectable poems by Mary Oliver, who also lives by the sea. On Edisto Island, we catch glimpses of red, blue and yellow feathers, in the quick sparrowed flight of the painted bunting, rare jewels of this jungle. But Red Bird also carries another, historical story of this place. It’s a story in our South Carolina history that talks of the Red Bird’s legendary role in Native American culture. In 1675, a letter went out from our eden shores to England, on a wooden ship like this one, from Dr. Henry Woodward, to John Locke, the philosopher, who was curious about the religion of the Native American or Amerindian. John Locke at the time was physician and secretary to Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, whose legend continues in Charleston to this day, for our two major rivers are named Ashley and Cooper. Dr. Henry Woodward had been left with the Amerindians in 1666 by Captain Robert Sandford when his expedition came from Barbados to Edisto Island. Woodward was to eager to learn the culture and language of the Port Royall Indians, the Cusabo, and establish trade for the colony.

Henry Woodward was my grandfather many generations ago, and because it was the habit of South Carolinians to know their family history by heart, I heard of him at an early age. His intriguing story includes priests and pirates, kings and Indians, and it fueled my early interest in South Carolina’s colonial history. He is considered the first English settler in South Carolina, and it is no small thing that I have come to live in near these old creeks that beckon me to tell these stories. The following letter about the Red Bird exists in the journals of John Locke.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Dr. Henry Woodward to John Locke, 12 November 1675

Sir,
I have made the best inquiry that I can concerneing the religion and worship. Originall, and customes of our natives. especeally among the Port Royall Indians amongst whom I am best accquainted. they worship the Sun and … acknowledge the sun to bee the immedeate cause of the groth and increse of all things whom likewise they suppose to be the cause of all deseases. to whom every year they have severall feast and dances particularly appointed. they have some notions of the deluge, and say that two onely were saved in a cave, who after the flood found a red bird dead: the which as the pulled of his feathers between their fingers they blew them from them of which came Indians. each time a severall tribe and of a severall speech. which they severally named as they still were formed. and they say these two knew the waters to bee dried up by the singing of the said red bird and to my knowledg let them bee in the woods at any distance from the river they can by the varying of the said birds note tell whether the water ebbeth or floweth.

Yours to command,
Henry Woodward

Hmmm. So the Red bird knows the ebb and flow of the tide. Surrounded by the lush green marsh of these curving tidal creeks, I think I will and listen more carefully to this red bird’s note as I drop my new cobalt blue kayak into the ancient tributary. One of my friends on this island swears he sees canoes at times, at dawn, paddling silently out in the marsh. Perhaps it is they. Listening for the song of the Red Bird.

Tabby! She’s no Alley Cat

Tabby Smokehouse (Bleak Hall, Edisto Island) Built in 1840

Pigs and barbeque and the new rock star butchers in Charleston have been on my mind for the last few days, so this well preserved smokehouse outbuilding, on Botany Bay Plantation, conjured images of charcuterie close to home. Built in 1840, this smokehouse would have originally hung with the well butchered pigs of the Botany Bay Plantation, on Edisto Island, a place owned by John Ferrars Townsend, one of the island’s largest sea island cotton planters.

Charcuterie

The smokehouse is made of tabby, which was a type of concrete made from oyster shells, lime, sand, and water. Lime was created from burning the shells to make oyster shell ash. Tabby was the first concrete building material made and utilized in the United States, and was used as a building material along the sea islands and coast for over a century, until the development of portland cement in 1843. Tabby ruins are found along the coasts in from South Carolina to Florida and are reminders of the vernacular, of the irreplaceable cultural history of the sea islands. So unique is the tabby that one is able to see the varied tactile texture that is obviously a mark of the handmade, the artisan. Historians disagree on whether its use originated along the northwest African coast and was taken to Spain and Portugal, or vice versa. The origin of the word tabby itself is unclear: the Spanish word tapia means a mud wall, and the Arabic word tabbi means a mixture of mortar and lime. Similar words also appear in both Portuguese and Gullah.

A symposium took place a few years ago to study the conservation and preservation of tabby and is an excellent resource was published by the Georgia Dept. of Public Resources, including much about South Carolina building traditions. I was delighted to see so much written about the existing structures on Edisto Island, where I live. In Beaufort, on Sapelo Island in Georgia, and on Edisto, there are examples of the tabby construction that connect cultural histories, that of the sea island cotton planter, whose slaves’ labor surely mastered the art of building with tabby, and the Native American population whose large shell middens, high domes of discarded oyster shell, provided raw material. One shell mound, one they call Spanish Mount, indicates a Native American settlement they say existed 4,000 years ago on Edisto Island. It is now protected by the State Park near the South Edisto river.

Examples of tabby on Edisto Island exist at Point of Pines Plantation on the North Edisto river, where thick wall ruins still stand at the place where the original residence of Paul Grimball was built in 1696, known as the earliest tabby in South Carolina. Botany Bay Plantation boasts several tabby foundations, one for the ice house, which was also uniquely filled with charcoal between the interior and exterior walls, said to have been included to act as insulation.

tabby detail, grain house wall, Botany Bay

Tabby Ruins, Sunnyside Plantation, Edisto Island, SC

Additionally, tabby was used in the early 1700’s to fortify forts, in industrial use to build the Indigo vats at Burlington Plantation in Beaufort County, then again on Edisto, in the church foundation and baptismal pool at the First Baptist Church on highway 174. Sunnyside Plantation, on Edisto, is owned by the same family since 1860, and boasts the tabby ruins of an old cotton gin, built after the civil war in the 1870’s.

The story of Hepzipah Jenkins Townsend (1780-1847) wife of Daniel Townsend, is a fascinating one that still resonates on Edisto Island. She helped endow the First Baptist Church, than gave it to the African American congregation, who pack the church every week to this day, traveling from miles to attend (all morning) services on Sundays, and who serve up some of the delectable celebratory feasts on special occasions, Gullah style.

Pearls of Great Price

“But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods both.”
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl

Vermeer's The Girl With the Pearl Earring

Yesterday I wrote of swine, er, ‘fine swine’, those heirloom hogs that are being served up in fine restaurants in town and carved into art by our local “rock star butchers” who are relearning the lost art of making charcuterie. It seems only fitting to follow up with a piece about Pearls. Having grown up in the very religious South it is hard for me even to say the word, “Swine”, without hearing that Bible verse about throwing pearls, “Do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Ironically, I was just this week standing in the middle of a herd of Edisto Island Swine (Yorkshire White variety) photographing the eager breakfast event when my host and darling Edisto Island hog wrangler, Scott Dantzler, said the very same thing to me, “They’ll even eat fish heads….they’d even turn and eat you up.” He paused, and added “all but the bones.” Biblical indeed.

Genuine pearls are rare and unusual. They also are used as metaphor in much religious writing, and are interwoven into art and in literature, like in John Steinbeck’s book, The Pearl. They are accidental gifts. Treasure. Luck. Blessing. The prize. They symbolize redemption, love, constancy, and purity. They are also multicolored, and they shimmer with irredescence. And they are round, with no beginning and no end. “When (God) inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, I (wisdom) was there.” – from the book of Proverbs.

Growing up in the 1960’s in the South, proper young women were expected to embrace certain traditions, those passed down from generations before us. One of them is wearing pearls. Pearls are worn around the neck for all proper occasions. Little baby girls are given a necklace that we add pearls to every year so that when she is grown, she will have her own strand. At weddings and funerals, we pull out our good pearls to wrap around our necks. They have even made their appearance in some of my earlier figurative paintings about family, and they always stood for the way things were done and I poked a little fun at those traditions, at the rigidity, perhaps, of my Cotillion days of white gloved dances and perfect little shoes.

My own drawing after John White 1585

Not until I became a serious student of South Carolina history did I understand how very local a tradition is, how it goes back to the earliest stories of Carolina, and of the Native Americans even of Edisto Island, who buried their dead adorned with pearls, and who decorated their bodies with these jewels that used to be abundant and local. Some of the Earl of Shaftsbury’s favorite items were those made of Mother of Pearl.

“On Friday, the last day of April (1540)…the Governor took some on horseback and went toward Cofitachequi (a large and sophisticated Native American chiefdom near Camden). On the way there Indians were captured who declared that the chieftainess of that land had already heard of the Christians and was awaiting them in her towns. He sent (Captain) Juan de Anasco with some on horseback to try to have some interpreters and canoes ready in order to cross the river. “Cofitachique (or “Eupaha” according to the Indian boy, Perico, was on the bank of a river. Some Indians brought (the Lady of) Cofitachequi on a litter with much prestige. And she sent a message to us that she was delighted that we had come to her land, and that she would give us whatever she could, and she sent a string of pearls of five or six strands to the Governor. Another account says, “She was young and of fine appearance, and she removed a string of pearls that she wore about her neck and put it on the Governor’s neck.”

Seeing with fresh eyes is the gift, and I am delighted being able to connect the tradition that stands today to the Lady of Coftachique. Can’t you just picture that Governor on horseback with his neck laden with pearls? (Think Mark Sandford with a necklace of five or six strands of fat shiny pearls around his neck about now.)

Today, I can’t wait to adorn my newest little grand daughter with her own, like the ones I gave my first born, older grand daughter, last Christmas. Traditions in the South carry resonance if you get to the real beginning of the story. The Lady of Cofitachique’s tale involving such an early history of pearls in South Carolina is a rich and deep one that I can’t wait to retell when that little girl gets her first strand.

Oh! Those Po’, Po’ Pigs!

If there is anything South Carolinian’s are passionate about it is a pig. A pig pickin’ – our very own version of roasting a whole hog involves long and slow attention to our food, and often requires we get together, and cook together over a hot open fire. It’s like pickin’ crab, another Lowcountry ritual, which I just did all weekend, a labor of love if there ever was one. Eating pork is a special ritual in the South, with our particular mustard based sauce, and cooking the pig whole is part of it.

On Edisto Island where I live, a short drive south from Charleston, our very own BoBo Lee’s place on SC Hwy 174 is called Po’ Pig, and it is one of the best, according to food writers Jane & Michael Stern, of www.concierge.com. They rated the tiny spot on our fair island No. 1 in the country last year. Incidentally, the cooks who worked in the kitchen when Bobo decided to start the barbeque place decried the fate of the pigs and said “Oh! those po’, po’ pigs!” when they heard of the enterprise.

Today, pigs are not only great old traditional barbeque out here in the ‘country’ – Edisto is the last undeveloped barrier island in South Carolina, with enough beauty and wildlife to make it an artist’s dream. But the pig is now also “Fine Swine” in Charleston at the finest restaurants in town. Rock star butchers is how writer Peg Moore refers to several fine chefs who are relearning the ancient art of charcuterie making, from home grown, pasture raised heirloom pigs: the Duroc, Tamworth, Ossabaw Island, and Red Wattle. Sean Brock of McCrady’s Restaurant raises his own pigs at his home on nearby Wadmalaw Island, and Emile De Felice of Caw Caw Creek near St. Matthews, South Carolina supplies high end restaurants in New York and Charleston.

These young chefs are continuing Charleston tradition by preserving the culinary excellence that began with the many French Huguenot early settlers who carved and cured their own livestock. Preserving and reviving the lost art of making the most of a pig is welcome news. And as Meg writes in her terrific piece in The Charleston Mercury, ” Chef Gray of High Cotton Restaurant, says, ” It’s a proud feeling to walk in the cooler and see this art work.”

And Julia Child would have loved it. Lard is back.

Seaside

Seaside is the name of the old Sea Island cotton plantation, on Edisto Island, that was owned in the 1800’s by the Edings family. The original house still exists on land to the south of where I live. My little two acres is on old Eddingsville Beach Road – a wide dirt road – which should be spelled with one ‘d’ like Edingsville Beach – was the original road through the ancient oaks from across the island from Peter’s Point and Sunnyside, out over the causeway to what used to be Edingsville, the resort beach front town of the wealthy cotton planters, that was destroyed by the the hurricanes of 1876 and 1893. The more vulnerable white population headed, in summer, because of mosquitos and malaria, to ‘the salt’ or ‘the pines’. The area of housing at that beach is now a resort called Jeremy Cay, and gated. The beach however is still public and the inlets are wide and wonderful. There are still pieces of antique pottery washing up from the hurricanes of those years on this beach after a good storm.

I have no house on my land yet, only inherited Rosy, the RV, and a 8 x 14 ft. custom built “utility” building to hold my edited down version of possessions. It was built for me by the delightfully lowcountry Mr. Hughes in nearby Ravenel. He made the pitch high like a little church, and it has a red tin roof like Alphonso Brown of Gullah Tours says represents “the blood of the lamb” of Passover. The red roof is to honor those red roofs of the city of Charleston and to invoke this protective blessing, which must be true! I have another red roofed tiny ‘house’ in mind as an artist’s studio…

The idea of outbuildings have always interested me. I suppose it is the recreation of the look of the little cottages and buildings of the pre Civil War South in a way and The Small House Society has also captivated my imagination for the last few years. The thought of living fully in a small house, and living largely outside is something people do here. The benefits of less insurance, less ’stuff’ to manage, and a smaller carbon footprint are all reasons. Outside living rooms are quite common here on the island, and it is refreshing to see, coming from the big city where people have grand houses but never sit outside them or talk much to the neighbors.

California's Sonoma Shanty

California – also ’seaside’.. has now legalized a small house for backyards called “the Sonoma Shanty.” There, too, real estate is so costly and young and old are flocking to a more sustainable way of living and ways to create a housing for multiple generations on one lot.

Today I am blessed and intrigued by my new residence. There is so much new about living in an area so full of history. My little place still needs a name. Seagate, Seagate Allee, Allee de Lune, Seaside Allee…What do you think?

The Call to a Dream

Consciousness rejuvenates everything, giving a quality of beginning to the most everyday actions. – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Imagine…. being called to a place in your dreams. A call to sit in the little wooden boat like Winken Blynken and Nod, to sail, along two rivers flowing to their center, the sea.

It was early in May, four years ago. The dog and I were out under a midnight sky. The full moon had turned the wide smooth beach into a lavender mirror. I’d just arrived onto the island, a guest of friends. My beloved little long legged greyhound pup and I, after everyone had gone to bed, wandered the two blocks to the sea. The air was crisp and clear and the night sky reflected the deepest sea, but light from the moon so brightened our walk it seemed liked day. Beau was intoxicated with the freedom call he heard from the expanse of the pure, powdery sand, and he began to run circles, wider and wider ones, running faster and faster with all the beauty and elegance his miniature black stallioned body was born to do. It seemed like all taste and sight and smell and touch were quickened, the salt of the air, the sound of the waves rolling and crashing in regular rhythmic order, the light, the bright blue light. I sensed some very deep memory, of the past and the future and the here and now, not only my own childhood days by the ocean but also that of my ancestors who had been on these very shores, who had felt this same awe. It was an extraordinary experience of bliss, of knowing, of joy….of being fully alive. …of feeling so alive you could just sail on out to the great unknown. This was light in the dark for me. This was where I needed to be, the call was clear and profound.

That’s how the dream began. That was four years ago under a full moon. It is June now and the widget on my MacBook says the moon will be full again in a few days….I am packing boxes to move, finally, down to the little island the Indians called Edistowe, pronounced like those who have lived on the island a long time say it, with the access on the last syllable, STOW, the middle i sounding like two ee’s. The Island is just south of Charleston, a place with no stoplight or hotel or Starbucks. It sits between two rivers and the South Edisto was even called the River Jordan on maps from the 1600’s. My art supplies are boxed and my high speed internet is scheduled for installation – so far, no TV. My life will be in transition for the next couple of weeks, but hopefully I will be back to this blog with new energy.

There will be much to say in the summer about this new life, and the daily challenges and inspirations inherent in island life. Keep me in your prayers. For now, I feel I am blessed beyond measure! Here’s to dreams!