Another visit to Magnolia Gardens, May 2008

A return visit to the beautiful and historic Magnolia Gardens last weekend brought fresh evidence of the splendor and tranquility of this 500-acre wildlife refuge and informally landscaped English-style garden. Whereas a couple of months ago, azaleas and camellias were at their peak bloom, last Saturday the beds were filled with countless varieties of summer-blooming flowers, and, of course, iris along the banks of the small lakes filled with cypress trees.

I now I have membership at this very special garden only about a half hour from home, and can walk the paths and trails any time of year now without having to pay the admission price. I will plan on upcoming visits to bring my backpack and water and a couple of good books to read while I rest on a bench and listen to the sound of birds or the wind in the trees.

Here are photos from last Saturday's visit: Magnolia Gardens, May 18, 2008

These photos are from my visit in early April: Magnolia Gardens, April 2008

You can compare the views at two very different times of seasonal blooming.

Magnola Gardens in Spring

Magnolia Gardens in Charleston is one of the oldest and most beautiful gardens in the world. Visitors from every corner of the globe come here to admire it. More than 250 years old, it was originally a formal, French-style garden, but in the 19th century, one the owners, Rev. John G. Drayton, converted it to an informal, English garden with a more natural and untamed look.

Located on the banks of the Ashley River, this most enchanting and lovely garden spreads over many acres, it's shady paths lined with azaleas and camellias in full seasonal bloom as I walked there yesterday afternoon. Being amidst such resplendent beauty one can only gaze in awe at the sublime artistry of Nature, her flowers, trees, birdsong, rivers mingled with the loving guiding hand of the creators of this garden who wanted to share this beauty with posterity.

As one walks in the garden, on every side there are new places to veer off and explore -- side paths to sit and rest on a bench in a little setting of trees with statues and flowering daffodils and iris; views of the Ashley River and marshes, lagoons and ponds surrounded by cypress trees; and more winding, flower-filled paths that lead up to the famously photographed long bridge over the main lagoon and thence back to the plantation house and entrance.

For the entire duration of my visit, I found an interior peace and what can only be described as a state of bliss where the world outside this garden was but a distant memory, and the sensations and blissful feelings of each moment among such exquisite beauty made me aware of the truly important and valuable things in life.

Only a few hours later, sitting on the porch of the family home downtown, the calm and gentle breeezes of the afternoon gave way to violent wind, rain, hail and tornado warnings from the same storm system making its way directly toward us from the devastation it had wreaked in Atlanta and surrounding areas. Never could a day be filled with such stark contrasts in the moods of Nature, reminding me once again that storms rush through the tranquil times in our lives, and, as this one did, pass out to sea leaving clear skies and gentle breezes once again.

My Flickr page of photos of Magnolia Gardens

You can't go home again, or can you?

At the end of Thomas Wolfe's novel "You Can't Go Home Again," the protagonist George Webber, realized, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood.... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame.. back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory..."... Yet generations of Americans have longed to go home, either to their actual childhood homes or to metaphorical homes located somewhere in the past...

Susan J. Matt
writing in The Journal of American History,
September 2007



Ever since reading "Look Homeward Angel" by Thomas Wolfe as an English major in New Orleans many years ago, I have recalled the impressions his work made on me, and in particular, my concept of "home." I grew up in New Orleans, and, unlike so many people there, I could not wait to finish college and leave the city for good, despite all the fascinating and dreamlike qualities of the place, so unlike any other city in America.

Decades later, however, and especially since the images of the devastation wreaked on the city by Hurricane Katrina, and the great flood it brought, I have thought about returning to visit, to retrace my steps, paths, explore the home streets and sidewalks, trees, backyards, stores, and landmarks that decades ago in my youth were so much a part of me that I could not even imagine living anywhere else, even though from an early age I knew the city of my birth would not be my permanent home.

I think in this regard I am like so many people who are drawn to their hometowns, to their own familiar landmarks, street scenes, smells, sights, ambience and deep-rooted sense of place that we cling to, no mater where we live, work and are anchored in the present.

I find the Sunday New Orleans newspaper, The Times-Picayune, which I read most of my young life, at the local library, I go online and read New Orleans blogs and the daily news online, I think about the parks, walks, French Quarter, old neighborhoods and sandwich shops, my high school in old Algiers, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. All these images and memories flicker by from time to time almost every day.

Even though i have no desire to go home to the physical "place" to live again, even in retirement, I find myself returning again and again in my thoughts and memories. So in that sense, we can "go home again," but never actually return. I keep in mind always that the "past is prologue" and the city where I was born and where I spent my formative years molded and shaped who I am today, for better or worse.

Over the years since I have left home, I have lived in quite a number of small towns and cities, each indelibly etching themselves in my memory. In each of them, I believe I sought out, however brief my stay, the links and ties to my original home that were there to be discovered deep within the structure and unique sense of place of each town and city where I subsequently lived. It's hard to describe. It was a feeling that soon came over me, part of the ongoing search for permanence, stability and roots. I did this consciously but probably mostly unconsciously, always with the thought in mind that this or that particular place could never be "home" as I once knew it to be. However, I often think about one idyllic, small college town where I lived for only seven months, and where I imagined I had found something akin to the home of my dreams. Alas, it was not to be.

Now that I have at last, after years of restless roaming and searching, found my "home place" here in Charleston, I have the luxury of indulging in my memories. Ironically, Charleston is where my ancestors are from and lived in the same neighborhood in the historic district where our family home is now. Life has a way of mysteriously completing circles.

I have never been homesick for New Orleans. I have no one there to visit now, no family or friends in that place. I have only my memories. And that is enough.

Early spring

Everything is a bit early this year. The azaleas are starting to bloom, the Japanese magnolia blossoms are a fading but beautiful memory, and the oak tree out my window is starting to bud and leaf out. I am not sure if this is related to the overall global changes in climate, but things seem different this spring. Nevertheless, early or late, I rejoice in the new growth and the flowers that bring such hope and promise at this time of year. Spring is the season of new birth and renewal. To me it is an even more symbolic time than fall when all the signs in Nature point toward winter.

It's still winter, though, officially, and the paradoxically blooming winter shrub, the camellia, is at it peak of blooms at the state park. Every time I go there, I walk through a wonderland of pink, red, and delicate white flowers. It's so extraordinary to me -- all that beauty in the depth of winter and into early spring.

My February walks there yielded a treasure trove of images, not least among them, photos of those spectacular and beautiful camellias which all during this winter have reminded me that spring is coming and that life and hope and beauty transcend the seasons, our moods, and all the events and occurrences in this life that would keep winter in our hearts. The beautiful camellias in bloom in the heart of winter are the small miracles and signposts of life that I find daily no matter what it looks like outside or my mood at the time.

Camellias and February at the state park

Golden light and shadows

When the days are short, the afternoon light is all the more precious and fleeting because the sun goes down so early these winter days. All the more reason to savor the late afternoon shadows and sunlight that backlights the trees and shrubs at the state park as well at the nature preserve. The warm light filtering through the trees cheers me and gives me a warm glow. I gathered together some of my favorite photos taken the last month or so which illustrate what I mean. We are fortunate to have such mild winters here. Last night coming in from downtown about 11 the air was so cool and brisk it was just perfect. When I am out walking at the nature preserve or park I embrace the brisk air, marvel at the shadows and seek out the light.

Golden light and shadows

(Best seen as a slideshow)

Always new beginnings

... Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere , any time.

If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others, even those we love, those who live under the same roof. If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace. Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our lives can be like this. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, even the sensation of our breathing...We can be in touch with these things right now. It would be a pity if we are only aware of suffering...

Thich Nhat Hanh
From Being Peace in the collection of his work entitled Essential Writings

I am drawn again and again to two places nearby where I can seek and discover, as if for the first time, the special wonder and joy of seeing woods, trees, flowers, and blue skies in familiar places, my sanctuaries, if you will.

I can look out my window and see the slight breeze rustling the leaves, which are still on the old oak tree changing color, but which will soon be falling, probably not long after the freeze we are expecting in a couple of days.

I can walk a few short blocks out my door and come to a tree-filled vacant lot in the middle of developed neighborhoods that has an ancient white oak in the midst of it, which calls out to me in its solitary splendor every time I walk by.

If I concentrate and cast off negative thoughts and images that seem to want to intrude so often on my consciousness, I can attain a purer form of being and oneness, thoughts and images focused on the good and the beautiful just by walking in the woods or looking up above the trees to the blue skies.

As Thich Nhat Hanh says, we have the capacity at any moment in our lives to enjoy those blue skies, even if it is cloudy and overcast. We know it is there just beyond the dark clouds. There is a brighter overcast light coming through the clouds right now as I look at the oak tree, and the scattering of yellow leaves on the tree stand out in a last show of autumn brilliance before winter's winds and cold at last leave its branches bare and outlined against the blue sky that is visible now in faint patches, a reminder of the wonder of those everyday experiences that can be so blissfully transformative.

Always new beginnings

Late summer at the state park

Oh it was HOT today.. Mid August in South Carolina is not for the faint of heart. The heat hangs heavy like wet blankets. The air had a rather calming stillness, however, and this made for a slow, languid and enjoyable walk at the state park this afternoon.

First, down to the tidal marsh and creek where a very slight wind gave some measure of relief, but not enough. I then headed to one of my favorite benches under the live oaks, and the shade there was welcome but no real compensation for the thick humidity. But this is summer in the South, and I have determined not to stay away from my favorite outdoor walking destinations just because the heat index is 100 degrees F. I try to pick times late in the afternoon when it's a bit breezy and the worst of the heat is past. Today it didn't work out that well as I was drenched in sweat with just a half mile amble among the oaks.

Still, it is a glorious place to be even in the depths of summer, the outside world completely shut out and this natural haven opening its arms to enfold me within it's beauty and tranquility. I never tire of the great live oaks, the small lakes, and the walk along the tidal creek and marsh. It's all so enchanting, so soul-satisfying. I need this place for the balm it offered my hurting spirit today. Just being there amidst all that natural beauty granted me respite and relief, and I shall return again and again.

Here are some photos I took while at the park this afternoon. I think they convey the mood I have tried to describe.

Oh, Mother Gibbs, I never realized before how troubled and how... how in the dark live persons are. Look at him. I loved him so. From morning till night, that's all they are--troubled.

Emily in Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Some friends were down here from northern Virginia last week staying at Folly Beach. We go back a long way to 1973 in Columbia. They were staying at the beach for the week, and so I had a chance to visit and catch up with their lives and to reminisce. I tend to do that around S....

She lived with my aunt for a number of years while she was teaching in South Carolina, and so she was like family. That was back in the early and mid-70s, as I alluded to, and of course the passage of 34 years seems almost impossible to comprehend. She has two children in college and so i got to see how much they have been changing and growing up.

Around the dinner table I talked about my first job in Columbia working in shipping and receiving part time at a department store while I took courses at the university. I recalled the old boarding house where I rented a room in a leafy old neighborhood. (Aside.. I am listening to Over the Rainbow played on the piano by Art Tatum.. the song that I have been thinking about is Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John which was constantly playing on the radio back in the fall of 1973. I love life's little "coincidences.")

We had a nice visit, but i often feel vaguely unsettled and awkward in such situations. It is difficult for me to socialize although I am an outgoing person when the sitauation requires it. I am so seldom around people other than at work that when i get around a large group for dinner I tend to try to be too talkative and entertaining just to keep from being silent and awkward.

I seem to be most content when I am walking the trails at the park and nature preserve or sitting by myself at the beach listening to the waves and thinking deeply or about nothing at all. Before I went to have supper one night with S... and her family, I stood out on the beach with a rush of wind blowing through my hair, wishing I could just stay where I was and not have to be convivial and talkative.

After I left their beach house, I drove downtown to the pier and walked into the ocean on that long pier, taking in all the sounds of the vacationers strolling along, talking, listening to the ocean, observing people fishing and just enjoying themselves on a carefree summer night.

I was there on the pier only a few minutes and then left for home, stopping first at my mother's where another ghost from the past popped up on TV -- a documentary about the main character George Gibbs in Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town. What memories that brought back. Not ony have I seen it in various adaptations on TV over the years, but in high school our whole school was bussed to the Reportory Theater in downtown New Orleans for a presentation of that play, one of the first I had ever seen in a live performance.

My whole day was like that.. a series of moments that sent me back to the past time and again, whether reminiscing with old friends or walking on the Folly Pier, thinking about summer vacations there as a kid in the 1960s when life really did "seem" more carefree for a short while, although for me i know it wasn't. Life has never been carefree, never free of worry and anxiety, although that anxiety and angst resided mostly right below the surface as i tried to live as engaged with life and people as i could be.

I often see my life in little incidents, good and bad times, passing before me in my mind's eye. I wince at sudden, painful memories, I smile as I think about some of the funny times and people I have known. But isn't it strange how the bad times seem to come back to us almost with a punishing delight on the part of our memory? I don't think we can ever put those parts of our past behind us.. We just live with them.

Minutia

Twelve years in one place and the bits and pieces of a life really accumulate. I have reached a point of total satiety. I need major, big time fung shui or something akin to that. I need to clean out and organize. I cannot stand the boxes and boxes of "stuff" lying around anymore. The piles of books on the floor and in the closets. The flotsam and jetsam of many years, hidden in those boxes, some with lids on, some open. I am throwing away stuff, recycling magazines and giving away books the past few weeks. Boxes and boxes. It's painful, yet I know it must be done.

I need to free up space on my shelves for books that I treasure and know I want to keep. Since I am a compulsive book buyer -- new and used -- there is no giving it up altogether. I like to know books are there, unread repositories of knowledge, deep thought, humor, lives lived, science explored, pasts recalled, society documented in photographs. All this wealth of knowledge and yet I know I can never read or know but a fraction of what is there. It's easier to sit on the computer and wile away the hours on the Internet, the modern-day multimedia, entertainment, commucation device/drug that cradles me in it's cocoon and shuts out the immediate world in favor of one lived in cyberspace.

But leaving cyberspace I am confronted everywhere in my immediate, four-room physical environment with the saved objects that, daily over the years, accumulate and which, upon inspection with the intent to get rid of, remind me of the life I have lived, the tiniest and most concrete souvenirs and valued papers, clippings, photos, and "objects" which for one reason or another have lasted and endured, even if never looked at or thought about them for years.

Still, like the unread books in piles overflowing on the floor beneath the full bookshelves, these "documents" and objects form the patchwork quilt that is the continuing narrative of my life. I discard these things at some subtle level of psychic peril, with regret and with the pain of loss, but with resignation that once I have looked them over and decided what to throw away, there is no going back.. small parts of me are gone forever. This is one reason the sudden loss of all ones precious keepsakes in a flood or fire is so devastating. Not just photo albums, but a lifetime of memories called to mind by the simple, ordinary things we acquire and hesitate to part with, help us to know who we are now. They are in a sense, part of our identity.

I share with you now just one tny corner of this world of objects, papers and books that I am surrounded by, in this instance the contents of an inverted boxtop, one of those lids that seal security storage boxes. This lies on top of two sealed boxes, whose contents are unknown to me.

*** a beautiful Zen wall calendar from 2004 with magical quotations and black and white photos of great beauty and profundity.

*** A copy fo Yahoo Internet Life magazine from June 2000.

*** A 2007 Nature Conservancy wall calendar that I took down just the other week, I think because there were already two other calendars on the dining room walls.

*** A copy of Natural Awakenings Healthy Living Magazine for June 2007

*** The National Geographic Special Publications book, "Raging Forces: Life on a Violent Planet," just what I need to see as hurricane season enters its busiest two months here on the the coast of South Carolina.

*** Two old Life magazines, collectors' issues I am sure, from December 1966 and November 1970. The cover story on one was "The Draft: Who Beats it and How" and the cover on the other is, Co-ed Dorms: An Intimate Revolution on Campus." I found these at the used books place and will not be tossing them any time soon. These are a chronicle of life during the time of my youth.

*** A John Ford Clymer painting that is the cover of an issue of the old Saturday Evening Post magazine, a bucolic country scene, sentimental and romanticized.

*** A solicitation from the American Diabetes Association.

*** A photo copy of an article from an old magazine about books titled, "Books Carve Your Character."

** A brochure for Charleston's Piccolo Spoleto Festival with a magnificent photo of Angel Oak on the cover.

*** A picture of a landscape at sunset on fund-raising material from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

*** A photo of my favorite barbecue buffet restaurant way out in the country.

*** A thank you card from someone I helped at work in February 2006.

*** A state Audubon Society newsletter from March 2006.

*** A Nature Conservancy newsletter

*** Copies of articles printed from the Internet back in March 2006: one about "Peak Oil" in Salon.com; another on Leo Strauss, the father of neoconservativsm; an interview on Working for Change with Erik Reece about strip mining in Appalachia; and a copy of the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Shelley ("Hail to thee, blyhe spirit!/Bird thou never wert,/That from Heaven or near it,/Pourest thy full heart/In profuse strains of unpremeditated art...."

*** More newspaper clippings and a brochure for the "South Carolina Birds: A Fine Arts Exhibition" held at the City Gallery in Charleston in April 2006.

*** A 2005 Texas Highways wall calendar.

*** The book, "Standing Up Country: The canyon lands of Utah and Arizona."

*** A photo greeting card I bought at the farmer's market of a beach scene with sea oats.

*** At the bottom, a travel pack of antibacterial hand and face wipes (Wet Ones) and an unopened package of Dr. Scholl's corn removers. (Just in case)

Midsummer

I’m on the beach in the middle of the day, in the middle of July. It’s low tide and a very different beach from the one I visited yesterday evening when the tide was high and there was barely enough room to set up a chair between the sea oats and the water.

The ocean is now quite a ways off from the dunes. People are out sunning, watching, reading, baking under a hot sun. A small child is building a sand castle with elaborate turrets of wet sand dripped from his hands. A teenager has just dashed into the waves, cooling off quickly, exuberantly.

This whole tableaux is timeless. It’s like the days stand still, motionless in the wind-tempered heat. My niece and nephew, here from the perpetually cool Pacific Northwest, are reveling in the wind and surf, and water they can actually swim in that isn’t 56 degrees in the middle of summer.

I remember when we’d come to this beach in the 1960s for summer vacation, leaving New Orleans behind for a week or 10 days. What a different world it was here! We’d arrive, unpack a few things, and then race out to the beach. That first day of vacaton seemed to promise an unbroken expanse of carefree days stretching to the horizon. The days passed, and we hungrily clung to each one, filling as much of it as we could out on the beach -- taking walks, swimming, body surfing, lying in the sun, listening to the radio, observing the passing scene as the hours went by.

At about 1 pm, we’d struggle in for lunch, sun-ripened, hot, a bit flushed, and ready for some air conditioning. My favorite lunch was a cheese sandwich with fresh summer tomatoes and mayonnaise on soft white bread, the kind of sandwich that was so delicious on a beach day, and which invariably clung to the roof of your mouth. This would be washed down with an ice-cold Fresca, a soft drink they don’t bottle any more, as far as I know.

Toward the end of the week, as the glorious vacation drew to a close, the pain of impending separation became more intense. Our steps were heavier. We did things a bit more slowly. We savored each hour on the beach more than ever.

I realized that summer was fleeting, school beckoned once again in a few weeks, and a part of my youth was slipping away, although I didn’t think in those terms at the time, of course. The endless summers never lasted long enough those many years ago, and they were gone before we knew it.

Sometimes, like today, I feel like a smoothly functioning machine, all cylinders effortlessly providing the power to move me through a day that has one task after another to be accomplished, some simultaneously, it seems. I marvel at this ability to answer phones, do Internet research, talk and joke with co-workers, work on a project that has to be sent off in a series of e-mails, remember to write a going-away card for someone, attend a farewell lunch, answers more questions, write, pick up the phone, answer e-mail and voice mail...on and on.

Today was so busy that it seemed as if I was caught up a swirling tempest of activitity, little tasks and big ones, one right after another, that had to be done and when done, were to be replaced by other tasks that had to be accomplished. All in a ceaseless movement, orchestrated by me in some kind of orderly fashion, but yet part of an unconscious design, too. It all had to be done, and therefore, it would be. I felt myself doing too much, and yet I was so caught up in it all that I couldn’t stop and slow down. People were depending on me. I was depending on myself. The day passed liked a speeding arrow.

At one point, after two hours of work on an e-mail, I sat back, pressed the send button, and discovered, without any notice or warning, that I had been timed out, logged off, and with that fateful click, lost everything I had been working on. I struggled with my disbelief and anger only momentarily, received some knowing sympathy from a co-worker, and then went to my desk, opened a fresh template, and by sheer force of will rewrote the whole thing plus anther e-mail in one hour flat. Afterwards, I wondered: where on earth did I find the means and strength to do all that?

Three and one half hours later, after sitting by the waters of a tidal creek near the beach to eat seafood, wind buffeting me off the marsh, I at last began to wind down, slowed by both necessity and pleasant surroundings. I wasn’t a machine anymore, flawlessly energized, pistons firing.

Walking on the beach as darkness fell, calm now, ocean sounds greeting the twilight, the day was past. The elements seemed joined in proper perspective -- the darkening sky, the land, the sea. All was harmony with nature. The day just past was harmonized only to some frantic human clock of schedules, deadlines, people waiting for answers and replies. Fortunately, I was able to reply. But on that brief oceanside walk this evening, I didn’t have to listen to anything but the wind and the waves.

Sand castles

Yesterday evening about 8, I drove out to Folly Beach to sit awhile in my chair and wait for sunset and the close of the day. I read a favorite book off and on. It was one of those summer days that was too perfect. We’ve had rain recently to quench the drought, and today the temps were in the upper 80s, there was a nice breeze, just right, and the skies -- how can I describe them? Such clarity that all the colors were saturated perfectly and crystal clear. The blues were unmistakeably blue. The white cumulous clouds seemed irridescent. The Spartina grass in the marshes has attaned its soft, pastel summmer-green shades, signifying to me that life in this estuarine environment must now be at its summer peak.

In short, the summer world I observed all around me seemed to be in perfect harmony. Everything was just right. It was a day when you could really feel glad to be alive and experiencing all this beauty in the world.

As the light of day gradually yielded to evening’s lenghtening shadows, and the people who had been out on the beach went inside or left for the day, I found myself contemplating the moment when I, too, would pack up and head in. I waited a little longer. Thin clouds over the ocean glowed with color. The sky was still illuminated, but the land was growing darker. However, land and sky would soon be as one as night fell.

As I listened to the surf’s ceaseless sound upon the shore, I noticed, as I sometimes do, individual waves crashing on the beach with quick, little jabs at the shore. They stand out. They quickly subside. The larger waves have a rather full-throated roar about them as their full force spends itself in a smooth outpouring of energy, rhythmic and soothing most of the time, but sometimes strangely discordant as it momentarily seems like noise instead of the steady, gentle sound I’ve heard all my life at that same place on the Atlantic Ocean.

I watched an older couple walking along the beach, just before I went in and recall thinking how robust and healthy they seemed. Middle or late 60s I would guess, but there was something about them that seemed to defy the march of time. I suppose it is good to be as vigorous and active as you can be at any age.

One of the things I like most about being at the beach is the chance to observe people. Families are here now for their vacations, and I see all the various generations enjoying their summer routines.

And, when I go out to take my place in this seasonal tableaux of carefree existence, I almost invariably see someone’s abandoned sand castle, sometimes elaborate, sometimes very simple, left standing until the next incoming tide crumbles its loosely-packed walls, turrets, and moats and sends them all back into the ocean.

As I observed one up close the other day, I noticed that the builder’s name, Jared, was inscribed on one of the walls. I wondered how much fun he had had constructing that castle out of his imagination, and I remembered how I would sit for what seemed like hours at the water’s edge letting wet sand drip from my fingers to ornament my own youthful sand castles, watching closely the approach of the waves and building up my fortress ceaselessly as the water washed parts of it away. Then, finally, a big waves would come and inundate the whole thing, and I’d have to take my plastic bucket and shovel and go to another spot and start all over again. As children we didn’t seem to mind starting all over. It was all play and not the serious business of older kids and adults.

Sand castles. I haven’t built one in a long time.

White clapboard house and washtub

Two vignettes and one wished for:

I put up calendars on the walls in my rooms, and many of them have scenes and paintings I like to look at repeatedly. They are soothing. They relax this restless soul, who from time to time takes a break from the computer to see what the world outside is like, or was like in another age.

I’m looking at a picture in late May. It’s of a white clapboard house in the country with a woman sitting on the front porch shelling peas. Windows are open to catch the breeze, wash is on the line drying. A cat is on the bottom stoop of the steps leading to the kitchen. Part of a big maple tree is becoming fully leafed out. In the yard and surrounding the house are flowers -- daylillies and impatiens. An old pump is in the yard, too, with a blue bucket attached to the spout to receive cold, fresh water from the well it draws from. Shadows from the sun create a mosaic of light and dark spot on the grass. The cat is looking directly at me. The scene is frozen in time. Sometime in the 19th century. Fifty years ago. 75. I can’t tell. But contained in that little world, depicted in that calendar painting, is a universe of right order, hard work, gentlesness of spirit, goodness of heart.

The other scene is in autumn. A country house, but large, a big porch this time, surrounded by tall trees. A white picket fence. A swing in a tree. Two boys and a girl on their bikes heading for the dirt road in front of the house. The dirt road winds into the distance toward low hills and mountains, among other houses, barns and fields. Maybe it’s Connecticut or New England. At least, that what it reminds me of, and of how much I would love to visit New England some day and drive down such a country road, so different from the ones in my own piney woods of Lowcountry South Carolina.

Another scene I’d like to see: An old country store with people gathered in front in chairs and on benches, leaning back, taking in a quiet, late summer afternoon in the country. Hardly a car passing by on the road. Inside are old-fashioned jars filled with candy, and long wooden counters, and hardware supplies, and general merchandise -- all you’d really need, mostly, for a simple life. And I’d stop my car and get out and walk in the front screen door with the Merita Bread sign on it, and head for the soft drink case, open the lid, put my coins in, and retrieve a bottle of the iciest cold, Orange Nehi drink that ever quenched a thirst in July, and with it eat some crackers, and walk around in the store, smelling the good smells, hearing the old floorboards creak as I walk on them, looking up at the ornamental pressed tin panels in the old ceiling from when the building was constructed in the last centry. And I’d sigh a sigh of relief and satisfaction, knowing that not all of these places were lost to the world of megamalls and hard-driven commercial appetites, and traffic and noise with not much quiet civilization left. I am transported out of the present, and I wish it would last.

Four Holes Swamp

Deep, dark, murky, forbidding? Not at all. Saturday afternoon was spent walking a boardwalk trail deep into the interior of a bald cypress/tupelo river system known as Four Holes Swamp, located in the rural interior of South Carolina. It is a place of soaring 1,000-year old cypress trees, and clear, tea-colored water flowing in braided channels through the bottomland to join with the main stem of the river/swamp system. It is an oxygen factory. The air is clean, and light filters down to illumine flowing water and sunken logs. Nothing is ever done by man to alter this pristine environment -- the last remaining such virgin stand of this type of swamp forest left in the world, spared decades ago by a far-sighted lumberman named Francis Beidler, for whom the protected forest is named.

The only sounds to be heard during my walk were birdsong. Approximately 140 species of birds have been found here as well as numerous species of trees, including an astonishing variety of oaks, hickories, and elms, many of which are suited to watery environments. But there are pockets of higher ground where upland varieties of hardwoods can flourish. It is a place of amazing diversity, a refuge for the soul and spirit. A visit there never ceases to lift me up and out of the sordid realities of the world outside with its work tensions, bad news in the media, traffic, congestion and pollution. Here you enter a realm free from all that. It has been left to the forces of nature, all 11,000 preserved acres of the swamp.

As I sat on a bench overlooking Goodson Lake, about half way down the trail, a man whispered for me to look up into the tree overhead. There I saw a nest with what appeared to be two fledging blue herons, quietly waiting for their next meal. What a sight to see in my binoculars! By this point there were occasional little breezes stirring the leaves, but only temporarily. It was generally a still day which only made the quietness of the place seem more pervasive. And it was not hot at all for this time of year in South Carolina. It was, in fact, a very pleasant day. I can’t say I’d want to be walking this trail in mid-July, however.

One of the amazing things about this place is the water that flows across the swamp in narrow braided channels or else in flatter sheets with just barely perceptible movement, at least at this time of year. In summer it will all be dry except for the main swamp channel. From the boardwalk you can look down when the sun if out from behind the clouds, as it was intermittently Saturday, and see perfect reflection of the trees and foliage in the water. With a slight wind, these reflections shimmer and then become still again.

All those who love this place -- and people from all over the world come here -- are watching the results of court and other actions designed to stave off two area developers who have taken advantage of non-existing zoning laws in the rural county this swamp flows through and are attempting to build a major motor speedway for car races just one mile from the borders of the preserve. It has been a two-year fight thus far, and, as of now, the end result seems hopeful for the preserve. It is inconceivable that someone would want to destroy the ingegrity of this place with noise and pollution from cars spinning around a track, but that is what has happened. There is no limit to the depths to which some people will sink in their contempt and utter disregard for the natural world and those who care deeply about it. To them that pristine forest is nothing but a bunch of woods and swamp that should be drained and developed. Nothing is worth saving to them.

As I walked the remaining half mile or so of the trail up through slightly higher ground in the swamp, past huge overcup oaks and soaring tulip trees, I saw half a dozen egrets, take flight from their watery perches and fly off into nearby trees. Then there was silence once again.

Forest trail

After a two hour drive through rural South Carolina countryside, green and lush with spring and on a day that was mild and cool with a gentle breeze, I arrived at the wildlife sanctuary. Before me was a two-mile long gravel road that led to a complex of buidlings, including an old farmstead and house. Around a bend, I headed toward the trail that led to the Savannah River.

Winding down this road I entered an area of near wildernes, or so it seemed. All sounds from the outside had long disappeared to be repalced by wind and birdsong. I pulled up to a picnic area alongside a small lake filled with huge cypress trees. I turned off the engine and soaked up the peace of this most special place I had wanted to visit for some years.

After a short time spent in contemplation and wonder at the lake, I made my way to the trailhead and entered a world of deep green, shade and the most astonishing array of birdsong I have heard in some time. To my left was a swamp bottomland forest filled with oaks of every variety and to my right was the cypress lake. Such a contrast -- two very different natural worlds on either side of the trail.

As I walked deeper into the woods, I found myself listening to the rustling of squirrels foraging in the woods. I spotted a small armodillo burrowiing into the soft earth, oblivious to my presence. Blue-wiinged butterflies danced ahead of me on the trail. And above all else, the wondrous songs of the birds that filled this forest of old growth trees, a place primeval and unspoiled.

Alone amidst this natural wonder, I found it very difficult to turn around and head back to where I had started. I wanted to hold onto the moments of grace found here. But life is change. The time for departure would soon be upon me. What memories I hold onto and cherish as I look back on that trip just a few days in the past.

Webb Wildlife Center

Of nature and mystery

I want to share with you a quote from another journal writer who gives eloquent testimony to the wonders of the natural world. She writes from the northern part of the U.S. Midwest:

"I can’t imagine not wanting to know this world of green-ness and birdsong. I can’t ever imagine that I have learned all I want to learn about it. As I looked out over the marsh and watched a heron fly overhead, I wanted to embrace this world and become part of it again, where eveyrthing matters and nothing seems foolish..."

I just thought these words spoke very directly to me and my own experiences. At the beach where I go to often to escape the cares of the city, my brother’s house faces on one side a vast marsh of spartina grass and tidal creeks, a flowing sea and estuarine world all to its own. It is over those marshes that we have watched many a glorious sunset. On the front side of the house, across the road is the ocean and the beach we have been going to for decades. It is a timeless place.

The other day I was sitting out there watching two pelicans soar overhead and then fly out over the ocean just offshore. They are magnificent birds with long wingspans that seem to belong to this place as much as the tiniest crabs burrowing in the sand or the seemingly modest clusters of sea oats holding down the dunes and preventing erosion. It is a world of salt air and the steady rhythm of waves breaking onshore.

There is no place I know where the tensions of the world, which can be so oppressive and stomach churning, are so gradually and steadily worn away and placed in the dustbin of negative emotions where they belong. Freed from tension, even if only temporarily, I am able to breathe more deeply of the clean air and set my sights on higher things than exist merely in this world of great perils. Of the beauty I seek, I can find it here in abundance, at this beach and beside this vast ocean.

Little Black Creek

Recently I wrote about a special river I liked to go canoing on years ago, Black Creek in the southern Mississippi piney woods. Along one stretch of that stream, one of its major tributaries, called, appropriately enough, Little Black Creek, joined the main river, at which point the stream increased significantly in size.

At the meeting point, the character of the river changed -- it became wider, the sand bars were more noticeable, and it had a different flow. When I came to this place, I’d bank the canoe and walk up Little Black Creek, whose swift flow over white sand felt good on my feet. I was tempted to keep walking up the stream and explore, because that is one of the fascinations of rivers and creeks -- those mysterious bends and turns where new scenery and landmarks appear constantly, the farther you explore up or down the creek.

I’d also walk along a trail beside Black Creek, occassionally clamboring down the steep bank to the river bottom where I might set up a chair and sit awhile to read and daydream. It’s part of a long hiking trail that goes through some of the most remote sections of that part of Mississippi. Actually, it’s almost got a wilderness feel to it, which is rare in the eastern United States.

I have a picture of Black Creek over my desk, and I am looking now at another picture I took back in 1987. It is a country road that passes through one of the prettiest settings I came across during the back country drives I mentioned in my first entry. It was wide-open pasture land, dotted with oak trees, slightly undulating. It extended for eight or ten miles, until it joined with larger secondary roads. This was truly a back road, as county routes usually are. Driving down this road on a nice Saturday afternoon with the window open, allowed me to really relax and wind down for a short while.

At about the midway point in this stretch of road, it crosses Little Black Creek, and I would invariably get out to look at the stream flowing under the bridge. The flow was always steady. It was swift as it rushed along between banks about 10 feet across. It’d stand there just looking into that tea-colored water and watch as it flowed along under that bridge. That’s one reason why, when I’d get out of the canoe and explore the mouth of this creek, a couple of miles down from the bridge, it would hold so much meaning for me.

Walking iris

My mother has the most amazing, stunning flower all over her back garden by the fish pond, and in numerous pots on her porch. It's called "Walking Iris" and it blooms about this time of year, but the gorgeous flower, white and lush velvet blue, only lasts for a few hours, usually from about 10 or 11 am until 4 pm. By late afternoon its white petals are slowly curling up. An hour or so after this the blue inner petals begin curling into a ball and then the entire flower just withers into a tiny knot at the end of the stem and basically disappears. You can almost see it unfold.

There were about a dozen blooms today. When I saw them they were all about half way through their metamorphosis. Tomorrow or the next day a dozen more will bloom.

I marvel at what this delicate iris tells me: life is precious and fleeting. It flowers and then fades. But next spring this beautiful creation will awaken again and allow me to gaze on it's loveliness and be enthralled once more by the complexity and mystery of life.

More on the Walking Iris, also called the Apostle Plant

Imaging the open plains

As I was driving through the rural South Carolina countryside, I kept looking for all the familiar landmarks, the old farmhouses, the pastures and woods filled with oaks and hickories and pines. I thought about how comforting this scenery was, how seemingly unchanging, except for the ebb and flow of the seasons.

But then, at one point I imagined I was not headed back to my apartment in metropolitan Charleston, which was drawing nearer all the time, but instead embarked on a trip. I would be driving for days, and soon enough the woods and trees and fields would give way to wonderful wide-open landscapes as I approached the Great Plains and headed west, farther each day toward the vast, empty deserts of Wyoming, and beyond that to the north, the great land of dreams -- Montana. I could look all around and not see anything to surround or enclose me. There would only be the everlastingly wide open spaces. Hour after hour the car would make its way west. The rhythmic sound of tires on the road, and the engine humming in the background, would lull me into a trance-like state. I would lose track of time, and it would not really matter where I was as long as I was "out there" somewhere. Mile after mile. The car window open, the wind buffeting my outstreteched arm and hand.

Hardly a day that goes by that I don’t see something that reminds me of my travels across the country years ago. The other day I opened a book and saw an old country house in Leadville, Colorado. I recognized it instantly. I had toured it years ago when I visited that town high in the Rockies. I picked up a used book another day just recently, and it was a collection of Mari Sandoz’s writing from Old Jules country in northwestern Nebraska. I had been there, too, in 1984. I remember quite well visiting a small museum upstairs in a department store on a small- town main street that was dedicated to her life and work. I see pictures of the Grand Teton Mountains, rivers in the Missouri Ozarks, haystack rock formations on the Washington coast. All places and sights I have had the good fortune to see at one time or another, and hope to see again some day.

Now my traveling days are greatly circumscribed by the many obligations and responsibilities of life. But if I see someone in their late 20s or early 30s trapped in a dead-end job and seeing no way out, I want to go up to them and say, "Quit your job. Get on the road. Travel. Work at temporary jobs. See the world before you get old and have to hobble around in an RV camp or ride along in one of those hermetically sealed, sleek, air-conditioned tour buses that whisk you from place to place and take a good bit of the adventure out of your trip. Be adventurous. Embark on your own type of prairie schooner saga, across grasslands, hills and mountains until you find yourself beyond that distant horizon looking out over a vista as endless as the blue sky. Stand there and let the wind blow strong and free, and let the dry grasses crackle under your feet late in the afternoon beside a stream like Grasshopper Creek in Montana -- Big Sky country at last.

Sixties Trilogy - Part 3: Lost in Suburbia

When I look back on the Sixties, the period of my life when i was in grade school and high school (I graduated in 1969), I think not of rock music and anti-war marches, but mowing lawns every summer in the suburb where I grew up and collecting stamps. I had a small lawn mowing business, and my passion/hobby was collecting stamps of the British Empire. Why I was so intrigued by this really puzzles me these many years later, but I think i know the psychology behind it.

New Orleans is an extremely hot, sticky, tropical place in the summer, and I gave up my Saturdays on many a weekend from 1964-68 hauling a Sear's Craftsman lawnmower with grass catcher up and down the block to my various customers. Actuallly I think I mowed one lawn on Friday afternoon and two on Saturday. It was horrendous, sweat-drenching work, pushing the lawnmower through thick carpets of St. Augustine grass, trimming, sweeping with a broom (no leaf blowers, thank God), and edging and pulling weeds, etc. One of my customers had a swimming pool so I could cool off if I wanted to. She gave me a Coke and a Fudgesickle and paid me the same thing for five years -- $4 for three hours work. That works out to about $1.35 an hour. No raises. I think the minimum wage in 1967 was $1.25 an hour.

I always took pride in doing a good job and was dutiful and conscientious about showing up to cut the grass when I would have enjoyed nothing more than staying home in my air conditioned room. But the work ethic was instilled in us kids, and we were taught to do a job right or don't do it at all.

Another customer lived two doors down from us. He was a big-shot grocery chain executive, she was a homemaker and a lovely person. I always enjoyed it when I sat on her patio gulping an ice cold Fresca as I chatted with her after cutting the grass. She had the thickest and densest grass of anyone on that block, and I struggled mightily pushing the lawnmower forward and emptying the grass bag every three rows or so. It was character-building work, for lack of a better word, for what normal teenager would spend his Saturday's doing this if he didn't have to?

Talking to Mrs. R__ was always enjoyable and I became quite fond of her. I always seemed to be able to relate much better to adults and older people when I was a teenager than with people my own age. I am pretty much that way now except I am old and not young anymore. How strange.

In my leisure time, I pored over pictorial and commemorate stamps from far-flung British empire colonies and protectorates in the Carribbean and Pacific and Indian Ocean (St. Lucia, Grenada, the Solomon Islands, Pitcairn Islands and the like), all very exotic and faraway places that my adolescent mind traveled to via the scenes on those stamps. For instance, the isloated Pitcairn Island is where the descendants of the Bounty mutiny still live. The history of that one place alone was fascinating. It was relaxing and a lot of fun, though now when I look back it all seems terribly geeky and nerdy, though I really wasn't a nerd, or so I thought. I bought stamps at auction, through mail order houses, and at one of our huge department stores downtown, which in those days had a large stamp and coin department on the fourth floor. Imagine something like that today.

So while other kids my age were hanging out at the newly invented enclosed shopping malls, or partying on weekends, I was mowing lawns and collecting stamps. The tumultuous Sixties passed in that manner for me. It was only in later years that I really paid attention to what went on in that decade. Race riots and war protests seemed very far off when you grew up in a nice middle class suburban cocoon.