#18 Bits and Pieces of St Simons Island

 May 10 – 11, 2023

St Simons Island has a wealth of things to do, both active, like kayaking and bicycling, and is rich in history.  There’s also lots of shopping.  Near the pier is beach town shopping, for kites, candy, t-shirts, and souvenirs.  More inland is expensive designer shops for high end furnishings.  Since I haul all my own luggage, I don’t care to buy a bunch of stuff.  So besides just times of relaxing at the cottage, I drove around to look at smaller sites, as well as beaches. 

On Wednesday, right after breakfast, I used the little cooler I found in the laundry room at the cottage and packed a picnic lunch.  Since it was still off-season, I drove to a smaller beach with a tiny parking lot. As it was still early, I pulled off my shoes and walked way down the beach.  There were just a few people and dogs, and one big clear jellyfish that had washed up on the dry sand.

Later I walked back and got my lunch and e-reader, and, going back down the beach, I found a grassy bluff to rest my back on.

Little birds played tag on the shoreline, and a laughing gull came to say hello.  

I found a little church listed on the map called Lovely Lane Chapel.  Going there took me down a narrow, tree lined road and onto a Methodist Retreat compound.  Since it was on the map, I figured that they must be okay with tourists visiting.

Reading some of the markers, I found that this is the very church where the islanders worshipped in the years following the destruction of the first Christ Church during the Civil War.  This area is known as Gascoigne Bluff and was formerly Hamilton Plantation.  After the Civil War, when plantations could no longer prosper growing cotton, the Dodge family turned the plantation into a lumber business.  Norman Dodge had this chapel built as a non-denomination place of worship. The Methodists purchased it in 1949. 

Valuable wood came from this area.  Live oak timbers milled in 1794, even before the days of the cotton plantation were used in building “Old Ironsides,” the U.S.S. Constitution.  In 1874, timbers from here were used for the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Though the Hamilton Plantation is long gone, there are two slave cabins that remain.  They were built by slave labor of tabby, and housed the enslaved people.  When slavery was abolished, and the cotton plantation gone, the buildings were used as mill offices and for classrooms for the mill school children.  The property has changed hands a few times, but in the past nearly 100 years, it has belonged to a garden club.  The cabins weren’t open for tours when I was there, but I understand they have been restored on the inside to some degree.  

Ever since Ellen began reciting from “The Marshes of Glynn” when on a romantic buggy ride with her betrothed, I’ve wanted to experience them.  Near Gascoigne Bluff there are marshes, as well as a pier to walk out on.  The property that includes the slave cabins has been turned into a wild sort of park, so I left my car there, and walked out onto the pier.

There was just one elderly couple out on the pier.  She was in a wheelchair.  They had a cooler and buckets and lots of fishing gear, like they planned to spend the whole day.  It was so peaceful there, with a nice breeze off the water, that I curled up on a bench in the shade and fell asleep.  When I woke up, the guy sweetly offered me any of the drinks from his cooler.  He had lots of different kinds of pop and many bottles of water, just for the two of them.  I took a Sprite and when I was done I told them that it tasted even sweeter for having been a gift.

The Marshes of Glynn

Sidney Lanier - 1842-1881

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Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven 
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven 
  Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,-- 
                        Emerald twilights,-- 
                        Virginal shy lights, 
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, 
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades 
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, 
  Of the heavenly woods and glades, 
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within 
        The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;-- 
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,-- 
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, 
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,-- 
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, 
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, 
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;-- 
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, 
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine 
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; 
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, 
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, 
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem 
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,-- 
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, 
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke 
  Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, 
  And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, 
  And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, 
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn 
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore 
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, 
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain 
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,-- 
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face 
  The vast sweet visage of space. 
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, 
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, 
  For a mete and a mark 
    To the forest-dark:-- 
                        So: 
Affable live-oak, leaning low,-- 
Thus--with your favor--soft, with a reverent hand, 
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) 
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand 
On the firm-packed sand, 
                        Free 
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. 
  Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band 
  Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. 
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl 
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows 
    the firm sweet limbs of a girl. 
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, 
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. 
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? 
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! 
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, 
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, 
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, 
To the terminal blue of the main. 
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? 
  Somehow my soul seems suddenly free 
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, 
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. 
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free 
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! 
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, 
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won 
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain 
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: 
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: 
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: 
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within 
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. 
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea 
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: 
Look how the grace of the sea doth go 
About and about through the intricate channels that flow 
        Here and there, 
                        Everywhere, 
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, 
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, 
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow 
  In the rose-and-silver evening glow. 
                        Farewell, my lord Sun! 
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; 
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; 
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; 
And the sea and the marsh are one. 
How still the plains of the waters be! 
The tide is in his ecstasy. 
The tide is at his highest height: 
                        And it is night. 
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep 
Roll in on the souls of men, 
But who will reveal to our waking ken 
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep 
                        Under the waters of sleep? 
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in 
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.