Beltane Waning Flower Moon
Westin, Hilton Head Island
Some heat has returned. I only needed my gray great river energy zip up for the first half of the morning.
The Coastal Discovery Center sits about a mile, maybe two from Port Royal Plantation. It tries to deal with the cultural and natural history of Hilton Head.
There is an inherent problem with history here. How to deal with enslavement? The Coastal Discovery Center does not skirt the issue, it mentions enslavement in the pre-Civil war days, breathes a sigh of relief and passes on to the era of freedom after the war.
The best part of the Center for me lay outdoors. Live oak trees reach gnarly branches out in twisted directions, some very low to the ground and all hung with the gray beards of Spanish Moss. Loblolly pines shoot up high; red cedar grows in bulbous clumps, one such specimen has an estimated germination date of 1595.
Three boardwalks jut out into that complex eco-system, the salt marsh. Here fresh water and salt water meet, creating an environment where only the toughest need apply. This does not include, by the way, alligators or turtles. It seems they dehydrate in salt water. There is one turtle that lives in the marsh, but only one.
This is an area dominated by sea grass, fiddler crabs and oysters.
Docents guided classes of school children enjoying an outdoors break at the end of the school year.
I wandered around, shooting this and that with the camera and have returned to eat lunch with Kate.