Last weekend we rendezvoused with my family in Hunting Island, SC. It was a last-minute decision—we purchased plane tickets and a rental car just the day before leaving—that ultimately countermanded our stringent belief that only months of planning and spreadsheet-creating can result in a fulfilling, relaxing vacation. (A recent trip to the Cape tested the limits of my favorite Office application, producing a hefty nine-spreadsheet workbook with the following categories: “activity,” “location,” “description,” “hours of operation,” “entrance fee,” and “contact #.”) This trip would allow for no such preparation. Okay, I did take a tincey-wincey spreadsheet for the last day when we had a couple of hours to drive around Savannah, GA, but who enjoys wandering around a city with no idea where you’re going or what you’re seeing?
But Hunting Island. “Enchanting” is not an apt descriptor, but it comes close to capturing the place and the experience. We arrived on the fairly-remote, uninhabited barrier island around 1:30am Saturday morning and were greeted by a virtual junglescape of misting rain and wild palm forest. There had been torrential rain and flooding hours earlier, and some of the roads were still inundated with rain water. There was nary a light on the island, and even the brights on my spiffy Saturn Aura rental could scarcely penetrate the caliginous realm beyond the narrow pavement. When we reached the cabin, we found various members of my family strewn across every piece of furniture in the place. Three beds, nine people. Luckily, three of them were kids (who could sleep on an ironing board if necessary), so Matea and I had an actual bed reserved for us. And boy, was it ever appreciated.
At first light the next morning, a soft pink resplendence crept across the shoreline and into our humble quarters. Mom left her post at the stove making grits and eggs to snap a few pics of the kids as they piled into our bed and cut short our much-needed slumber. Our being there was a surprise to Jade and David, and they were undoubtedly excited to see us. Everyone woke up in a good mood, even me and Dad, who tend to be grumpy risers. As the family assembled in the dining area, I felt an ease and familiarity that is transient in SC but…comforting…while it lasts.
From the screened porch, we could hear the waves breaking about 100 yards away. By mid-morning the imposing shadow of the island’s lighthouse had stretched across the cabin—turned out it was only a few dozen feet away from us—and we decided to take the kids down to the beach. For a while, it was as if we had the island to ourselves, and several of us went down in our pajamas. On the way down, we found evidence (both tracks and droppings) of the island’s non-human residents and discovered that we were not alone after all. The picnic tables still sat in several inches of standing water, and the waves were still crashing angrily on the beach. Hunting Island is subject to severe erosion—they lose about 20 feet of land a year—so the trees continuously fall over onto the beach as the sand is washed away from their root systems. It creates beautiful natural sculpture and adds to the wild, untouched feeling of the place. I hiked my pj pants and let the surf wash through the holes in my Crocs; the water was surprisingly cold, but nothing compared to that of New England beaches. Still, I wasn’t diving in any time soon. But that didn’t stop the kids, and Mom and Matea braved the cold (at least above the ankles) to make sure they didn’t get swept into the current. Jade, as usual, shivered and turned nearly purple, but she and the rest of them persevered and eventually submerged their entire bodies in the shallow waves. I was double fisting my cameras to get shots of everyone, and Dad sat and watched from a distance on a fallen palm tree. Everyone was content, no one crowded or rushed us, and we gorged on the morning’s perfection until we were full.
Time that weekend seemed to meander along, sit and rest a while, then resume with no purpose or destination. It’s a wonder how connected and observant you can be when you’re not over-stimulated. Not that there wasn’t enough to see and do. The island was teeming with wildlife. Deer and raccoons scurried across the roadways in broad daylight, with little regard for us or our vehicles. There was a full spectrum of butterflies everywhere we went, and two monarchs lighted on Elsa’s colorful shoes. My brother Charlie came down from Columbia Saturday evening. The next day we went out in search of photo ops. Dad and Barry went fishing off the pier at the state park, and we saw dolphins in the waterway between Hunting and Fripp islands. They caught 2 blue crabs and two small fish, all of which (to Matea’s and my chagrin) made it to the dinner table later that night. We took pictures of the Spartina grass, snowy egrets, blue herons, and fiddler crabs along the marsh walk. Around sunset, we photographed a red-tailed hawk, the shrimp boats at the Gay Fish Company, rows of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, and grand Antebellum houses in downtown Beaufort. On the final two nights, some of us walked down on the beach near midnight. We had no lights (in case of loggerhead turtles), and the display of stars was fantastic. On the second night, we must have collectively spotted 10-15 shooting stars in the span of an hour. But the piece de resistance of this mystical place was hidden just beneath the surface of the sand. I trailed behind the group a bit on our walk back up the beach, and in the darkness I kept seeing tiny glints of light, which I thought at first were bits of mica reflecting the moonlight. But quickly I could tell that this was not glints but luminescence, like tiny lightning bugs betraying their hiding places in the sand. I stopped the group to show them the discovery. Each time we pressed on certain areas of the sand, it would light up again, sometimes for an instant and sometimes for a few seconds. We cut the wet sand around the light with Charlie’s knife and brought it into our hands. The sand responded to touch and lit up like playful embers as we ran our fingers through. As we suspected that night, it was microscopic phosphorescent plankton that had washed ashore and become trapped on the beach.
It was quite a beautiful and rare phenomenon, the plankton, and an elegant finish to a terrific weekend, as if we literally had fairy dust trailing in our footsteps. For a cynic and healthy skeptic like me, it was an experience near to exhilaration and religion. Vermont has a beauty all its own, and I feel sparks of this sensation every day here—this is the place for me. But Hunting Island provided just the magic I needed last weekend: time with loved ones, time spent with children and being child-like, time with nature, time with Matea outside the stress of work and the daily grind. We were almost like Disney characters at times, with the butterflies and shooting stars overhead and the wildlife and ocean all around us. I know I will return to this island soon, when I’m again in need of a jaunt in glass slippers.
