Edisto Beach State Park, Edisto Island, SC
Technically this is an island, separated from the land by tributaries, rivers, a creek and the ocean. But since you can reach it by car, I don’t know that it qualifies as a real island. It is, however, an amazing campground. Another 125 miles or so south, the drive here was rainy, punctuated by Waffle House restaurants. If this is the land of waffles, they could learn from the land of cheese and the land of biscuits and get better, taller signage that you can see from the horizon like a rising moon.
My campsite is about 250 feet from the ocean, separated by a 15 foot high sand dune. That stops the wind, but not the sound of the waves crashing on the beach, which I can hear clearly even with my camper windows closed. It should be a peaceful sleep tonight.
Today I fished. I arrived at about 3, put my new 10 foot ocean rod together with 40lb test, rigged up a local synthetic bait called Fish Bites that looks like a stick of gum, and walked out as far into the waves as I could. Then I’d cast, rigged up with two hooks suspended on 10 inch leads with a 4 oz, big ass weight on the end that sits on the bottom and drags the sand in the surf to keep the wave action from pushing it in or out. I didn’t catch anything, but I wasn’t out long and I’m in this area for over 3 weeks. It’s possible my feet were nearing hypothermia temps by the time I quit. They hurt when I warmed them in front of the camper’s lone heating vent.
As I was packing it in, a guy talked to me on the beach. I could not get a word in, he spoke so fast and without even the slightest pause. He had no interest in what I had to say and asked no questions of me, but it was fun to listen to him ramble on, about kayaking the waves, which he’ll do tomorrow, about his place in Missouri, about his motorhome and how they raised the rates at this place for the snowbirds to full price (used to be half off). He’d just finished 30 days at Huntington Beach, where I’d spent 2, and would do 30 here and another 30 at Hunting Island State Park. He’s been doing this for 13 years, he said, but couldn’t have been more than 60. I took some comfort in the fact that we had the exact itinerary, which I’d put together mostly by chance, looking at a map.
It’s a full campground, and most of these places are booked year round and a full-year in advance. To stay here, I’ll move twice–once on Tuesday and again on Friday. Then Sunday I move to Hunting Island, which is 15 miles by sea, but 80 by land. There I’ll hop around too, because the snowbirds have staked out their claims, with no schedules to keep or deadlines to meet. Retirement sounds good, but this might be the next best thing. Although I’m not a planner, I can tell I’m going to have to make an effort if I’m going to make this easier on myself, by booking sites 12 months out.
There are golf courses all over the Carolina coasts. Golf conflicts me. I think golf courses are both beautiful and a tremendous waste of land and resources, almost always for the exclusivity of the wealthy. To be clear, I have no problem with the public, reasonably priced golf course. But it is truly a hallmark of the caste system in America to pay tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to be a club member at some of these places where they’ve bulldozed natural landscapes in some of the most scenic areas of the country to create lawns that require constant watering and mowing so that adults can drive toy cars around and swing a stick to hit a ball in a hole. I wonder, were all golf courses public and inexpensive, would the kinds of people who pay tens of thousands of dollars to golf still golf? I realize there are many sports that could be criticized in this way (but I want to take a moment to criticize this one, because I love NBA and enjoy baseball), and that there are many dubious uses of land, but still: Me take club hit ball in hole.
This week I think I might have to start a blog. That wasn’t my intention, but I’ve written so much already, and some of it might be entertaining, less of it inspiring, little of it instructive, but if only as a repository for the words of one more human passing through, it’s at least par for the course.
Tomorrow will be 65 and sunny, and I think the beach is close enough that my wifi will reach so I can do some of the workday from there.
What I saw on the beach today
The waves rattle as they send forth their shells, draw them back again
click clacking over and over each other among the sand
these little abandoned homes of all the creatures who have moved on
Clams and cockles
scallops and oysters
quahogs, and if you’re lucky, maybe a conch to place against your ear
and hear the secrets the sea is trying to tell you.
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