The Lowcountry

Salt air twists through our hair, pries at our cars, seeps into our homes, and steeps us in the sea. Heavy wet heat simmers all summer slowing even the heartiest of us to a crawl. Ocean breezes caress our faces and hurricanes tear us out by the roots. Live oaks drip spanish moss from their branches while other plants, far more fierce, have learned to eat meat having developed throats and even jaws to trap and digest creatures. On the beach, morning glories twist delicately while burrs claw and grab at us for passage and dispersal. The lowcountry is both gentle and unbelievably harsh, but always she is revealing miracles.

One dusk on the beach I watched tiny loggerhead turtles, creatures as ancient as dinosaurs, emerge from their eggs and scuttle toward the full moon rising over the ocean. The next summer I stepped onto the same beach at night to find little white lights glowing in the sand like stars. Phosphorescent algae, Iım told, and it lit each crashing wave as I swam into the sea.

When I was a child mom and dad would go seine shrimping in the marsh, walking knee deep in soft sticky mud pulling a net stretched between two poles. As they hauled up the catch all kinds of creatures would be pooled together for us to see: tiny puffer fish shiny wet and the size of a plum, squid making jets of dark ink in the murky water, lovely iridescent shrimp with fan tails, crabs painted red and blue and soft brown. I marveled at these treasures, a lowcountry side show, with their bizarre shapes puffing and clacking and waving huge claws before they were returned to the water.

Surely there's something of us in that seine net. Could I haul up such treasures from my soul? We keep our oddities and wonders safely hidden, but every now and then, whether by hardship or triumph, an experience will cast into our depths and shadows and bring the most extraordinary parts of us shining to the surface.

What a gift that here where the land meets the sea revelation jumps from teeming nets and sparks up from the very ground on which we walk. I believe that these wild places are holy and deserve our protection and respect. And I believe that if you look closely and quietly and long enough, you can see the glory of God running through every leaf, curled inside each shell, and traced across the palms of the people you love.

Honor Marks
Charleston, SC