Woke up this morning in the house of my hosts Eddie and Martha in McClellanville, SC. Soon we'll be ferried to the Francis Marion National Forest, where we'll pick up where I left off after my canoe journey.
Lawson spoke about the help he received from the Huguenot settlers as he picked his way through the swamp -- the ferried him across creeks in their dories. We've chosen a route that gives us options -- we can walk around or let our above-and-beyond supporter, Kathie Livingston of Nature Adventure Outfitters, canoe us. We've even secreted an inflatable dinghy on one forest road. We'll see what we need.
Last night we gorged on oysters at the Seewee Restaurant. "They slept last night in the bay," we have been instructed to say for fresh. Lawson spoke of eating the same -- also "clamps," as he called them.
Eddie fas clams, and Martha showed us a necklace he had made for her out of a pearl he found in a harvested clam.
I never wanted two months to go by between my first and second trips. But we were urged by the NFS to avoid the forest until January 2 on account of hunting seasons with dogs and such. Yesterday while deopping off cars we saw lines of men holding rifles or shotguns idling along the road on the last day of the season. They release the dogs and hang around hoping they flush deer in their direction. We're told the spectacle of the hunters using homing devices to search for the radio collars on their dogs afterwards is a more active spectacle.
We're not a bit sorry we waited until the end of the season.