Edisto Island

Edisto Island is about an hours drive from Charleston, S.C. Every mile away from Charleston you drive you realize that the buildings and hustle and bustle become less and less. Soon, you start driving through a tunnel of Live Oaks dressed in Spanish moss that hangs down like summer icicles from the gnarled old branches of trees that have been alive for two hundred years.

You begin passing Churches and cemeteries that are half covered with azalea bushes and climbing Ivy. The air is moist, languid and sometimes steamy. The smell of Tea Olive, Gardenia, Carolina Jasmine and Magnolia all mesh together to form a heady perfume that lingers on the air. You pass farms with rows and rows of field corn. Wisteria, with its grapelike flowers, hangs from wooden archways and climbs backyard trellis.

Then a different smell hits you and you know you are getting close. You can smell the ocean before you actually get to it. The tinge of salt in the air, the wind picks up and the sound of seagulls calling tell you that you’ve almost reached your destination.

You go through towns like Ravenel and Adams Run. Small little towns. Island towns where kaki’s and boat shoes and short sleeved oxford shirts with navy Palmetto tree belts are standard fare. Not to mention flip flops. Almost everyone wears flip flops or Reefs or Rainbows (certain name brands that are popular) Island life is so different than what you get in the city. Everyone moves at a slower pace out on the islands. You hear Geechie, and Gullah, and a mish mash of other Carolinian accents that are very different from each other. Strange but most of us (being from Carolina that is) can tell just by your accent what part of the state you come from. There must be fifty different southern dialects in South Carolina and in Charleston alone twenty-five.

So finally you reach the beach. I love the beach. I always have. Gosh, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t either waiting for it to get warm enough to go stick my toes in the sand or trying to get back to it now that I’m an adult. I pretty much grew up going to the Isle of Palms, Goat Island, Folly Beach, Edisto, and Kiawah. They are all Beaches and Islands off the coast of Charleston or the surrounding area. These places mean home to me. The home of my childhood where shrimping and crabbing were our weekend fun things to do. You haven’t lived if you haven’t tried to plow through pluff mud on Morris Island hauling a seine net behind you. Pluff mud has a distinctive smell too, a marshy, briny kind of smell that seeps into your pores and stays for days.

Anyway, this trip to Edisto was to take my daughter to one of our stomping grounds. She loved it. I knew she would. We played in the waves at the beach, collected sea shells, and stopped to eat at a small restaurant called Bo-B-Que’s right off the main drag before you get to the beach. If you’re ever over that way you have to stop in at Bo’s to eat. I’m still stuffed. It’s a Southern woman’s idea of heaven on earth. The buffet had things like: barbeque of course, stewed tomatoes and okra, squash and spinach casserole, rutabagas, potato salad, crab salad, crackling cornbread, greens, rice and hash to go with the barbeque, sweet potatoes, green beans, fried okra, broccoli casserole, macaroni & cheese just to name a few. You might as well have rolled us back out to the car…

That was my weekend getaway. You should go sometime.

Here are a couple of links for you.
http://www.websitewoman.com/chamber/history.html
http://www.goedisto.com/ghoststories/index.htm
http://www.edistomuseum.com/tourinformation.htm