South Carolina and Driving north for the holidays

My next stop in South Carolina was the Francis Marion National Forest.  You can generally stay in any national forest (not national park) for 2 weeks for free, pretty much anywhere in the forest.  The website for this forest said you would need a permit.  Turns out the Native Americans managed this landscape with controlled fires to avoid the inevitable forest fires in the dry grasses of the understory from lightning.  And now this forest is also managed with controlled burning.  They need to know where people are camping within the forest when it's time to burn and the permits help them do that.  In addition, they have 3 areas where there are actual campsites and concrete picnic tables where no permit is required.  I went to the Honey Hill campground and stayed 4 days.  It was a pretty nice campground -- lots of space between sites and beautiful trees shading each site.  Sadly it rained and was cold and windy for 3 of those days.

In the next campsite, a man named Mike was living in his car.  He had it all set up with a bed stretching from the passenger seat back to the back seat.  There was a camp cook stove in the area behind the driver's seat and he had a cooler.  He said he couldn't really afford an apartment on his $750/month social security, and living in his car allowed him to drive around and take photographs of beautiful places, especially out west.  He has taken some gorgeous photographs!  He was camping there for 14 days and then would move on.  We exchanged books we had read.  He gave me a kiwi and I gave him some eggs.

A friend gave me a book called Nomadland which talks about the legion of retirees who lost their homes and their savings in the 2008 recession, and have taken to the RV life full time for purely financial reasons.  They mostly have to "work camp" to survive -- sometimes hosting at a campground, sometimes doing seasonal work in 12 hour shifts at Amazon warehouses, which the book said was brutal and dehumanizing.  The book depressed me at first, but I'm taking it as fair warning to be careful what kind of work I commit to doing.  Haven't been doing this long enough to know how my budget will go long term, between social security income and my nurse visits.

Couldn't stay cooped up in the camper, my legs tell me when I need to get out and walk.  So I did go to the Sewee Shell Ring, even though it was raining.  Along the shore here, peoples who lived here 4000 years ago made a ring of oyster shells (only oyster shells) which is about 40' across and 10 or 12 feet high.  Think of how many oyster shells that would take!  And why did they make a ring?   You can't see the whole ring in my picture, but here is what I could photograph.

Also there is a 600 year old mound of clam shells a couple hundred feet away.  This is actually a midden, a trash heap, with some scraps of pottery mixed in.  And why only oyster shells in the ring and only clam shells in the midden?  

I also was interested in learning about the Gullah Geechee people who live in this area, and their culture.  A ranger told me there was a talk about them at the Boone Hall Plantation.  This plantation dates back to the early 1700's when the Boones got a land grant.  They built the first house, just a cabin, which burned down.  The second house was built in the late 1700's and was bigger.  And they planted 88 live oak trees of which 86 are still standing, in what they call an Allee.  

I started seeing Spanish moss growing on the live oaks when I got to South Carolina.  You can see it on these oaks.  

The plantation was sold to another family who farmed it until the 1930's when the depression and bowl weevils forced them to sell.  The current house was built by a Canadian diplomat  who bought the plantation in 1936, and is in the colonial tradition.

The current owners have restored the gardens with camellias and azaleas and many lovely flowers and trees.  The best thing about the plantation was the museums they have made in each of the brick slave houses.  Some houses explored the history of slavery from 1619 on, and the history of slaves who rebelled.  Other houses explored what archeologists have unearthed in the dirt floors, and what slaves ate and wore.  There also were pictures of specific slaves who were well known for their skill and recognized in the region.  One poster described an orphanage founded by a black minister shortly after emancipation, to take in all the orphan slave children released from the plantations.  He somehow got hold of a lot of musical instruments and created a band which eventually toured all of the US and abroad.  Supposedly, it was this band, playing the gullah rhythms brought from Africa, which inspired boogie boogie and lots of the African American musical styles we all know.  

And then there was the Gullah Geechee presentation by a wonderful woman named Veronica.  I wish I'd gotten her photograph, but she gave the presentation with all of us packed into their cafe instead of the outdoor theater because of the pouring rain  being blown by everywhere by gusts of wind.  She was wonderful -- an older woman, generously large and full of vitality!  She sang, and got us all doing call and response.  She told us things in the gullah dialect and explained them.  The gullah people were brought as slaves from western Africa, particularly Sierra Leone, sought after because of their expertise in growing rice, which was a found to be a good cash crop here in South Carolina, where the climate is similar to west Africa.  These slaves were mainly sent to live on the barrier islands off South Carolina and Georgia.  The plantation owners didn't live there, preferring to live in the cities and avoid malaria and yellow fever, which the slaves also brought from Africa.  Slaves on the islands might rarely see anyone of another race -- perhaps just the overseer.  Many of these slaves came from neighboring cultures in Africa and, left on their own, fused a culture that preserved what they could from their home in Africa and kept it alive.  How fabulous that they found a way to preserve their culture and vitality.

One of the skills they brought with them was the weaving of baskets from reeds and other plants.  The heavy reed baskets were integral to rice production and the skills were carried here.  Now the baskets are often made from sweetgrass and are only decorative.  I bought these little beauties from a shack along the Sweetgrass Basket Highway in Mt. Pleasant, SC.  

Many of the baskets were much larger, very elaborate and expensive.  Truly a beautiful art.

The basket with the handle was made by a woman named Mazie, who is a retired nurse.  She was sitting in her shack with a heater running because it was a chilly day, making a basket.  She said it is a dying art because the young people don't want to do it, and land development has taken away the areas where the sweet grass and reeds grow.  She used to be able to just go and pick what she needed, but now has to buy it from someone who can go to more remote places to find what is still growing.  The darker basket and the darker parts of the other baskets are made from pine needles.  The Loblolly Pine has needles that are 6-9" long, and the Long Needle Pine has 8-12' needles.  Both varieties of pine grow all over South Carolina low country.  The sweetgrass smells lovely when it is fresh.

The last couple of nights in South Carolina I stayed at the James Island County Park campground, just south of Charleston.  These campgrounds are quite a trip.  So many of the RVs in them are huge!  You can see the one beside mine, completely overshadowing it.  

You can see that they have outdoor lights hanging from their canopy, and they had a snake of golden lights around the base of the camper. all of which are brightly lit day and night.  Even with my shades drawn, it was quite well lit inside my camper all night.  People get completely into their campsites.  In this campground, many people clearly stay for long periods and had electric golf carts to get around.  This family had their camper and golf cart strung with lots of Christmas lights and a blow up Christmas tree.

It was quite a pretty campground, with small lakes between rows of campsites.  Children were playing everywhere.

Yes, there are small alligators in the lake, but apparently they don't bother anyone, especially when it is as cold as it was while I was there.

From there, I went to a storage place outside Charleston, and stored my little camper while I drive north for the holidays with my family.  Hope she will be alright there for 6 weeks!  I'll miss her.  

One thing I noticed especially in Virginia and North Carolina, is that there are many, many historical markers and signs for memorials of battles and battleground parks -- from colonial times, and from the Civil War, and also from the War of 1812.  These lands were fought over and  people there are being constantly reminded of that.  While it's true that the revolution started in Massachusetts and I've been to Lexington and Concord, the reality of war fought over the land where I live has not been part of my awareness.  I think it would be hard to avoid down South.  Wondering how that has shaped the culture of these places and the worldview of their people?