Natural History Journal

Within South Carolina's Sandhills region, which separates the Atlantic Coastal Plain to the east from the Piedmont Plateau to the west, lies a forest, not of typical eastern hardwoods, but of pines. For a Californian like me, pines are generally associated with mountains.  But that is not the case for much of the United States.  Forests of Longleaf Pine ( Pinus palustris ) once covered over 90 million acres, stretching across the southeastern United States from Virginia to Texas.  Today, these forests remain only in scattered patches, amounting to around two or three million acres. Traveling between friends in Florence, South Carolina, and relatives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Eric and I charted a meandering course that took us through a few key sites of particular interest (to us): the Longleaf Pine forests of the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge for me, Cowpens and Kings Mountain National Military Parks for Eric, and the Camden Battlefield and Longleaf Pine

Having grown up not too far from the breath-taking rugged coast of Central California, I will be forever loyal to the west.  From the rocky, fog-enshrouded coast of Washington's Olympic Peninsula and the deserted beaches of the Redwood Coast, to the turquoise inlets of the Monterey Bay, the mild, Garibaldi-spangled waters of San Diego, even the tropical sands of Hawaii, I have swum, snorkled, camped, birded, hiked, rode horseback, collected shells, explored the magical worlds of tide pools, and wandered blissfully - usually barefoot - up and down miles and miles of western beaches.  The Pacific is in my blood. My first experience of an Atlantic beach, at South Carolina's beautiful Huntington Beach State Park. Only recently, I had the privilege of visiting South Carolina and experiencing my first taste (quite literally) of the Atlantic.  Slipping off my sandals and wading out into the sea for a swim, I was pleasantly surprised by the comfortable temperature of the water. 

Throughout South Carolina's Low Country, winding tendrils of water wend their way through a sea of grass, rising and falling with each new tide.  Low-lying intertidal areas immediately inland from the coast, salt marshes and tidal creeks form the interface between upland forests and urban areas, and brackish estuaries where freshwater and saltwater mix.   Tidal creeks are, to a first-time visitor to the South Carolina coast like myself, absolutely beautiful, mysterious, enthralling places where silvery ribbons of water meander seemingly aimlessly through a vivid green matrix.  They give the impression that there is water everywhere , a foreign concept to someone from arid, drought-stricken Mediterranean California.  And that was my first impression of South Carolina: there was water everywhere I looked!  Water in the ocean, lakes, rivers, creeks and wetlands, water covering the ground, falling from the sky, in the air itself!   Is there any land at all in this veritable wa

Ah, the swamp.  A stinky, mucky, oozy, icky, bug-infested no-man's land, brimming with creepy crawlies and things you'd never want to run into at night.  A place no one wants to visit; a land without use or purpose.  Right? Wrong. Entirely wrong. (Except for the part about being bug-infested.  That part might be true.*) Eric and I recently returned home from visiting friends, family and a slew of historic sites in the Carolinas and Virginia.  We hiked in gloriously verdant forests, birded in exceedingly productive wetlands, swam in the balmy Atlantic, and toured a plethora of places brimming with history: two plantations, five Revolutionary War battlefields, four Civil War battlefields, two forts, and two historic Colonial settlements.  (Aside: I cannot recommend a visit to Colonial Williamsburg and Historic Jamestowne highly enough!!) Perhaps most significantly (for me), we experienced South Carolina's swamps. Swamps, like all other wetlands, have been much