 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.
0 Comments
 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🧊!
 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.  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.”
 The new and third River Reader season finally began on Valentine's Day with an afternoon double-header. First it was a noon river tour, and four young men--one in college, three others just graduated and down here for the federal holiday weekend--joined me for a two-hour loop. They wanted, they said, to see the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge. And so we made our way downriver on the outgoing tide, everything in winter browns and grays but only just--you could sense it--about to burst into the greens of spring. We turned off-river and made our way through Buckskin Creek, our kayaks and a few holly berries the only touch of bright color in the entire landscape. A bald eagle soared above us--the first any of the group had ever seen in the wild--but not much else. Still, the day was warm and bright, the water cold and brown, the whole two hours fine and pleasant. One of the young men said, "I always say, 'South Carolina is where God goes to retire.'" And we all had to nod and amen him.  A few hours later, I found myself in the salt marsh with four wonderful women from my hometown. The afternoon wind whipped up the slightest nip, but the sky overhead was wide, the clouds wispy, and the light slanted with a particular kind of coastal clarity. The water was calm and very clear--you could see right through it with polarized lenses--and the incoming tide didn't put up much of a fight for the first ten minutes we paddled against it.
An oystercatcher worked the last little oysterbeds sticking up above the surface like a sentence, and an osprey carved the sky at the upper end of Oaks Creek. We followed the crab buoys and had just--just!--enough water to glide over the oysters as we rounded the bend under the eagle's nest. And then--as if returning from the river earlier--we heard the unmistakable chatter of the bird itself, and looked up to see a bald eagle soaring above. ~ All in all, I'd say, the world gave us quite the love letter on Valentine's Day. |
AuthorHastings Hensel Archives
May 2026
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed