Why That South Carolina Low Country is Home Too

This is a repost I wrote two summers ago. Over the past week Edisto Beach suffered extensive damage in the wake of Hurricane Matthew because it did what it does best–provided a barrier. You can view photos of how the beach fared on Facebook Edisto Beach Police Department. Much gratefulness to those who serve the locals of Edisto and those of us who borrow that title whenever we can.

I like to write about living local. So much so that it was my 31 Days series this past fall. (Anyone already gearing up for that? Yeah, me neither.) I write about places to go and eat and how to support local small businesses because it’s a topic my husband and I are passionate about. Also, I just really love to get out of the house and explore. Keeps my kids from fighting over electronic devices.

So I write a lot about living local here in northeast Georgia even though I’m technically a transplant to this place. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. How something about a place will continue to shape our character and decisions long after we’ve left it. How you can belong to a place in zipcode and phone record but never really belong, never really feel a part of the intricate web of history and geneology that so pervades small southern towns.

I’m glad I live here, belong here, am raising my family here. My blood connection to these woods and blue ridges lies with my grandfather who loved a campfire and hot coffee with almost the same intensity that he loved my grandmother. But even so, sixty-plus years of fall camping trips at the secret Walnut Tree isn’t the same as having been born into this place and these people. I get the history but not the lineage.

Then, after a six year hiatus, my family heads back down the coast to sleepy Edisto Island on the edge of the South Carolina low country. I grew up riding the waves and scraping the shells out of my swimsuit on this beach that’s like a portal to another time. My mother grew up coming here after the tobacco had been hung to dry in the barns and school was near on the horizon. I’m writing a novel that’s set on these shores and dirt roads hung with Spanish moss. So it’s more than just a vacation destination. It’s as much home as the Granite Capitol that raised me and the mountains that hold me now.

But I didn’t realize that until I’d been gone and returned to be saddened by the changes and heartened by all that stayed the same. We rode bikes in the evening twilight and bashed our knees in the high tide waves. We hunted snail shells and sharks’ teeth and the elusive sand dollar. We set up canopies and played all day.

We bought a book that could have been written about my family.

The Pink House, by Kate Salley Palmer

We shared this favorite place with friends and popsicles and Independence Day.

One day I rode my bike down Pointe Street in search of two older beach cottages the local historian said would help me visualize the Edisto of my mother’s childhood. There was a woman tending tomatoes and flowers in the raised beds of a community garden in someone’s front yard, and I stopped to ask her a few questions about living here.