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A View from the Marsh:

A Low Country Hammock

You know, I have always liked hammocks. I remember the one Mom had bought when I was a kid. It was the cloth kind stretched on one of those metal pipe contraptions that could be moved to take advantage of the Pennsylvania sun. Our yard was confined, but as I stared up watching the wind create slow moving cloud sculptures, I would fall into an almost trance-like state. It was like I became part of those fluffy configurations as I floated with them into a new dimension and dreamed of the future.

A dog happily running by and panting heavily, breaks my concentration. The sound of a golf cart’s wheels driving over a white crushed oyster shell lane follows. Our friends Bill, Carol and their son Billy are on their way to do a little fishing and it seems there was no way they were leaving Calypso behind. My bride Mary, sitting in a weather beaten white wood beach chair, breaks away from her newest Stephen King thriller to exchange pleasantries. They are off and I am back to reality.

Time finds me in a place so incredibly beautiful that there is no way my fourteen year old mind could have conceived it. I am lying in a real Pawley’s Island rope woven hammock anchored securely on one end to a magnificent palm tree like the ones in Gilligan’s Island. The other end is secured to a stately live oak tree with branches sculpted delicately towards land from years of ocean breezes. I am on what we call Haig Point’s "outer banks", just minutes from Hilton Head on the mystical Island of Daufuskie.

I close my eyes as Mary goes back to boogie boo land and I am entertained by nature’s serenade. Cool breezes off Calibogue Sound rub the large green Palmetto fronds together creating a soothing rhythmic sound almost as wonderful as the accompanying tide driven slow breaking waves. A spotted sandpiper joins in with a whistling "peet-weet-weet" and a laughing gull contributes its special form of percussion with a cackling "hah-ha-ha-hah-hah". The only sound of humanity is the low drone of diesel engines from nearby shrimp boats reaping the ocean’s harvest. I drift off into never never land.

Mary reminds me that it’s almost time to leave by putting the hammock into a slow swinging motion. I stare up at the Carolina Blue sky and watch the slow moving cloud sculptures like I did forty years ago. I once again dream of the future.

Think Lowcountry