 This salt marsh excursion was a “customer appreciation paddle” that I offered for free to my most loyal customers, Justin and Michelle and Gabriel and Jonathan and Nanette and Frankie. I asked Dan Turner to come along, too, so that we could read from the field guide. The water today was thankfully as calm as I’ve ever seen it—blue and windless and a slack high tide—and we took a route through the back creeks as mullet jumped and herons soared and shrimp popped and fishermen waved. We got all the way to the Huntington Beach State Park causeway, where four shimmering pink roseate spoonbills flew past us. I asked Dan to read his wood stork poem from the anthology and, lo and behold, a wood stork flew above us. Total serendipity, total marsh magic. On the way back we saw a swallowtail kite dipping below the treeline, and got back to the landing right on time. I’m so grateful for these people, who have helped me with my business, which has been one of the great joys of my life.
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 A family of five from Walhalla and I launched from Oyster Landing two hours before the high tide and took the winding back creeks through the salt marsh. At Brigham Hole, we watched a man on a boat reel in a small throwback flounder, but all the other kayak fishermen we passed had been skunked so far. Mullet jumped and dragonflies flitted and herons leapt from the marsh grass, and the water was calm and high enough for us to get all the way to the edge of the causeway at Huntington Beach State Park, then round back along the maritime forest shoreline, crossing the oyster flats where a wayward motorboat nearly got stuck. In our kayaks, though, we floated nicely over everything because this was really nice excursion with really nice people. N🧊!
 I was beginning to forget this was work. I had the sneaking suspicion I was stealing people’s money. That I had somehow cheated the system to be able to do what I do. And for the first one hour and forty-five minutes of our two-hour river tour today, with Tom and Tammy from West Virginia—a damn cool couple just back from a trip to Greece—everything was pretty damn perfect. We took the falling tide down Cow House Creek as egrets and osprey took flight. We returned to the river and then up the side creek that I call Little Gator Creek, where sure enough little gators swam. Yellow-crowned night herons stalked the mud flats, too, and a six-foot alligator was sunbathing on the banks as we rounded into White Creek. Tammy and Tom and I talked of travel and family and kayaking—the conversation flowing freely on the open water—but I was beginning to worry about the water levels in the canal. Would we have enough water to make it through?
Long story short: we did not. I had checked the tide charts but had neglected to account for the drought. We didn’t have enough water in the canal to ensure free and easy passage, even though the tidal range was, well, supposedly within my range. I had to get out. I had to heave. I had to ho. I had to crawl on my belly in the mud like an alligator. I had to push. I had to pull. I sank up to my thighs with every step. So much for the gym this afternoon. By the time I got them into enough water where they could push-pole the rest of the way, I was panting like a pup. Thankfully, they were cool and understanding and patient. We agreed it was a pretty good story to tell. Which is all I’m ever after anyways. And even though today’s tour turned into work, and I’m plumb wore out, and it’ll take two washes the get the mud off my clothes and gear, I wouldn’t trade this job for any job in the world.  Paige and Bill from Texas, on their 35th wedding anniversary road trip through the South, were friendly and cheerful and interested and up for the salt marsh adventure on a day with blue skies and blue water. We launched from Morse Park with great egrets taking flight out of the marsh grass and the tide coming in. The wind gusted here and there, but not too much, as we passed the crabbers crabbing and the fishermen fishing and the least terns dive-bombing and the back creeks amazing in every sense of the word.
I did notice, coming around the bend back into Oaks Creek, that the lone cedar tree on the oyster bank had wilted...another victim of sea-level rise. On the beach Paige picked up some sea pork in laughing surprise, and we watched schools of tiny minnows flit about in the tidal pools. Ruddy turnstones loafed at the water's edge, and one pelican soared like a fighter jet. I think I'm batting 1000 this season--that is, good people, good tour, good weather, good times.  Laurel and Josh from just outside of Pittsburgh and I crossed the river on a beautiful spring day and immediately saw a turtle basking and a brown water snake swimming, then wrap itself around a piece of driftwood on the far shore. An anhinga kept poking its head up in the river lilies right beside our kayaks as we made our way upriver. Herons in the nests, turtles on the log, ospreys in the air. In the back creeks the cutgrass sagged heavy with its seed heads, and a few spider lilies bloomed. On the island, redheaded woodpeckers flew from pine to pine, and the pitcher plants were bright green in their new growth. Josh was an electrician and gently corrected me on the powerline situation on the island (not two-phase but one-phase split in two...I think!). We crossed the river immediately after the cut and fought a headwind that slowed us down, but made for a nice air-conditioning as the day warmed up. What to say other than it was pretty damn perfect, once again...
 This morning, the first of May, started cold enough for a beanie and long sleeves as a jovial couple from Shelby, NC—by way of Cape Cod—entrusted me with taking them on a two-hour river tour. Wind gusted about, but the sun broke through just as we launched and crossed towards Cow House Creek. I duly noted that, should I ever get up to Cape Cod, I must try the fried clams at a strip mall hole-in-the-wall called Sir Cricket’s.
The rice canal today was gorgeous as ever, shadowed in deep spring, with a pileated woodpecker guiding me down it, in swoops and dips, then a pair of swallowtail kites coasting and circling. In White Creek, prothonotary warblers bothered the branches of stout dogwoods, and one posed preening for us above a yellow-budding arrow-shaped river lily—each little yellow thing like a distorted reflection of the other. In the big water I found a big blue catfish hooked on a limb line below the blue heron rookery. Big and blue—that might be one way to describe the day as a whole—which was another great day out on the Waccamaw.  Shelley (named after the English poet), who had been with me before three years ago in the salt marsh, and her friend Cheryl, down from the outskirts of D.C., braved the gusty cold winds of late April and made their way with me on a two-hour river tour. We had *just* enough water in the rice canal, although had to use our paddles as push poles at one point over the mud hump. (I had made the booking time while looking at the salt marsh tides, apparently.)
We passed the blue irises in bloom, up White Creek where one little gator sunk under and two prothonotary warblers—the first I’d seen this spring—flittered about. We rounded the corner to the big river, and the wind kicked up, and big yachts threw medium-sized wakes, then eddied in the river lilies beneath the heron rookery, and crossed to the other side as ospreys circled overhead. Shelley and Cheryl were readers—we all three shared a love of the Knoxville novelist and poet James Agee—and today they were river readers—the best kind, which is to say, kind and interested and interesting. And the sky was a cloudless deep blue, and the leaves on the trees were springing in fresh green.  I took a group of six really good dudes in their 60’s—down here for a reunion weekend from all over the country (Boston, Detroit, Philly, Raleigh, and Chicago)—out to Sandy Island this Saturday morning. I liked these guys—they were active, interested, interesting, convivial, kind, successful, easy-going. It’s hard to find that group dynamic with a half-dozen men anywhere in our country, at any age, and I knew it would be a good trip from the get-go.
One in their reunion had to cancel at the last minute, so we had an extra kayak. The problem was, right when we shoved off into the river, I noticed there wasn’t the extra kayak to be found. I counted in my head, then recounted. I was, by God, missing a kayak. My newest one, too! Had someone stolen it while I went to park? No, I reasoned, the tide must have come in under the dock and lifted it from the grass and taken it out to the river like a ghost boat. I found it, thank God, tethered to the other side of the public dock by a Good Samaritan, and I figured it was karma for helping another guy with his runaway boat a few weeks ago. But I decided to tow the empty boat behind me the whole way on the lollipop route, since we were already out on the river, and I didn't want to leave it alone at the landing. Thus, I towed a ghost today. With a strong incoming tide behind us, we sped upriver and saw the first snake of the season, a brown water snake coiled in my secret but surefire spot. The great blue herons posed regally in their high nests above blooming lilies as the day warmed into true heat. On the island, not much moved in the stillness, and my old landmark for the pitcher plants—what I called the “keyhole stump”—had fallen. But we hiked up the sand rim and beheld the Carolina bay from above, then made our way back to the kayaks to finish another great trip on a great day with great people.  I’d expected Oyster Landing to be crowded on the high tide Saturday morning of a holiday weekend, but we had the place pretty much to ourselves save for a few kayak fishermen. A local and fun family of 7 joined me for a salt marsh loop, and our little local celebrity bald eagle was certainly in good form. It perched on a loblolly pine where we rounded the corner by the state park boardwalk and flew right over us, as if showing off.
Other marsh birds—ospreys, egrets, herons, gulls—graced the blue sky with their presence, and all was going swimmingly until one of the young men went swimming—my first tip-over in a while! I made the classic mistake of getting out of my guide boat to help him in, and I cut my legs on the sharp oysters when I sunk to my knees in pluff mud. But nothing too bad, nothing that would spoil what was otherwise another beautiful day here on the waters of the Carolina coast.  A sweet family of four from Chapel Hill joined me for an early salt marsh excursion out of Oyster Landing. The day was calm and fair, neither cool nor warm, and the tide was high, just beginning to crest, as we cut across the oyster flats and beheld the cormorants flexing on the pilings. The marsh grass was greening at the shoots, pushing the old brown grass into the water, and you could see the filmy detritus on the surface. I reached down in the cold water and extracted an oyster to show them our keystone species, and we turned around with the tide, scaring off the birds on the old nature center dock, the cormorants taking labored flight, the pelican just chilling. Back at the landing, a bald eagle flew above us, and I extracted a baby stone crab from the water, too, before heading off to the river.  The second of the day’s doubleheader proved doubly delightful as a family of four from downtown Philadelphia joined me on the river. The eighth-grader Lil wrote fantasy books and sung in the girls’ choir, and Shay had an adorable and toothy second-grade grin. Their parents were equally as cool, and we chatted in the way of old friend. We paddled upriver and took the Vaux Creek “lollipop” route and had enough time to jump onto the island for a quick peek at the old bricks and the Carolina bay and the longleaf pine forest. A swallowtail kite sublimely graced our presence on the big water back home, swooping in low and close to us, circling with its iconic tail and feeding on the wing. We saw no alligators nor any snakes, despite the day warming into what you could call heat, not to mention Shay’s curiosity in both species. A wind kicked up, but we had timed the tide as perfectly as possible, and we sprinted towards the finish after coming out from the “super-secret route.”
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AuthorHastings Hensel Archives
May 2026
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