My eyes were reading an outdoor educational plaque. The plaque
read:
“the suffocating
heat…was the most insufferable I ever felt, not a breath of air stirring-thick
cobwebs to push thro’ everywhere, knee deep in rotten wood and dryed Leaves,
every hundred yards a swamp with putrid standing water in the middle, full of
small Alligators, a thick cloud of Musquitoes every where and no place entirely
free from Rattle Snakes.
…spiders, their
bodies as large as my coat Button…Crocodiles are very frequent and large in
these places, we killed one nine feet long, which attacked a Soldier, it was
with difficulty he got from him…nothing to eat and drink but salt Pork, bad rum
and brackish water, no other bed than the Sand and no other covering than the
Sky.”
British
Surgeon Thompson Foster on Long Island (Isle of Palms)
During the American Revolution, British Troops were on the
Northside, and the Americans and Catawba were on the south. The distance
between these two warring forces was a mile wide body of water pouring into a marshland. A couple of piled
up logs defended off gun fire. Imagine that. When you go by the description of
the doctor, the area was a wild place full of treacherous conditions.
I looked out over The Breach. Even in 2015, the air is hot and
steamy. There is hardly a breeze to be felt. Lingering to long makes you feel
like your oxygen has disappeared. The water pulls you when the tide goes out
like a sucking vortex. Care has to be taken because the shore will collapse and
pull you into deadly waters, with strong currents, that are deceptive to the human
eye.
There is only one patch of trees. If visions could be conjured up
of a coastal forest stretching for miles with this particular tree, it must
have been fantastic. Now there are mansion-types and beach houses littering the
shoreline. This is an image of all that is left in the way of trees at this one location.
The longer you stood the more you felt like you were being pulled
into something; something a little threatening. You get the feeling of a person
being swept away, just standing there, on the shore.
This is an odd feeling. A wide shoreline, bland and bare, with
nothing more than the view further out of shorebirds holding court on some
mirage-like sandbar out where the mouth of the Breach and the ocean meet,
stretches before you. Dried dead grass litters the areas near the smaller
plants on higher ground. This doesn’t seem to illustrate the amount seen back
during the American Revolution. You could go through The Breach where it feeds
into the marshes where grasses abound.
Rattlesnakes and crocodiles are rare to see. Sometimes a noted
shark may appear in The Breach to feed.
I went along the shore to the small jetty. The jetty is as wide as a truck. Oyster shells litter
the black rocks jutting out of the sand. When I read accounts of pre-history
during the Spanish exploration, oyster beds were in great number on the coasts. Now,
it could go in the back of a mid-size truck, if that.
An oyster is a bivalve living between two shells. It has the
heroic capacity to help build reefs that lend to the human problem of dealing
with waves and currents during disasters. When you think of sediment deposits
lending to building barrier islands in coastal regions, this little oyster
helps the submerged aquatic vegetation to deposit sediment that stabilizes the
area and maintains the conditions to help food sources grow.
You don’t see large oyster beds. We see things all the time and
are told this is normal, but compared to past reports, it really isn’t a stone
in a bucket of water.
Oyster die off helps form the foundations for reef systems, and
this die-off forms the substrate for living oysters to carry on their work
through layering. Oysters filter the water and reduce turbidity by extracting
phytoplankton, organic and inorganic particles. By doing this work, the oysters
provide water clarity. Water clarity promotes the growth of aquatic vegetation
that is submerged. Submerged aquatic vegetation feeds transient, local
populations of creatures. The oyster, by building on itself, fixes a stationary
substrate for other organisms such as sea anemones, barnacles etc. The oyster is as busy as the bee.
All these little shell-covered creatures work together, even if
not willingly, toward the overall health of the filtration capacity of the
reef.
People could learn from an oyster.
Back to the Poe-like, creepy loneliness.
Isolation is the feeling The Breach slowly injects you with; that
barren sense of a disappearing event horizon between ocean and land.
Edgar Allan Poe was stationed at Fort Moultrie
between November 1827 to December 1828 when he was 19 years old. This is what he had to say about the Sullivan's Island (which is on the south side of The Breach):
“The
island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand and
is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter mile. It
is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way
through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh hen.
The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant or at least dwarfish. No trees
of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort
Moultrie stands and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during
summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found the
bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western
point and a land of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense
undergrowth of sweet myrtle….”
I
did not see sweet myrtle or the bristly palmetto. Yet Poe reports the plants
were there. Come to think of it, the Sabal palmetto tree is on the South
Carolina flag, yet one hardly ever sees it. I think it moved to Florida?
There are a lot of mysterious stories about this place.
I was playing in tidal pools, looking at the shells inhabited by tiny
sentient beings, slowly moving in the water. I found a small impression in the
sand, filled with about a cupful of water. With no wind, there was a substance
floating on top of the ocean water and the substance moved about like a compass
needle.
Warning signs abound, “Don’t go in the water.”
When I arrived back home, I felt drained. There is something
there, and it pulls on you, seductively.
Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore
