WE LOVE AMERICA - SOUTH CAROLINA

We finally made it to the East Coast, to the lovely, antebellum city of Charleston. The air is soft and makes warm caresses on the skin. The air is clean, scoured by ocean breezes and the atmosphere relaxed and easy. Downtown Charleston is filled with homes and buildings, tinged with the patina of age and yet it is a city bursting with young people, bustling about attending college and enjoying the sweet life of the South. Music twirls into the streets from pubs and restaurants and the smells of southern cooking tickle the nose. It is a city of ease and enjoyment. We ate a southern supper and Ronda had her first meal of fried alligator. It was a little chewy, but a lot tasty. The city murmurs to a person to relax and bask in its comforts. But it is also a city rich in history and its character has been shaped by its past. It is here that secession reared its head and voices clamored for release from the Union and the right of South Carolina to pursue its own course of plantation living and a slave economy. It was in the harbor of this vital port city that the first shots of the Civil War rang out, an attack by the Confederacy on Fort Sumter.



Charleston Harbor is a wide expanse, still crisscrossed by ships large and small, many for pleasure but many others bringing tons of goods to the States. The small island visible on the right, in the background is Fort Sumter. It is a man-made island, built to support a fort to protect the harbor. By war's end, it was reduced to rubble and now has been restored enough to remind us of the causes and costs of that terrible conflict.

Leaving Charleston after a too short visit, we headed up the coast. The road wound through green fields and woods, over streams and rivers and along oak lined traces rich with the feeling of waiting for horses and carriages to again roll past. Our destination was Middleton Plantation, cleverly founded on a bend in the Ashley River, up stream from the coast. Founded in the 1700's as a rice plantation, it was home to 5 generations of Middletons, each of whom cherished and fostered the magnificent location. However, again the Civil War reached out to crush this lovely place. The mansion house was looted and destroyed, leaving only a side building even partially standing. In the 1960's, a descendent inherited the plantation and has restored it. Now it is a model of how genteel living was in 1860. The founder had English planners design and build formal gardens which were later expanded in the Romantic style. Now they are some of the most beautiful gardens in the country. We spent hours strolling the grounds and enjoying its loveliness.



Standing on the ruin of the mansion house, we looked down the formal green and across the "butterfly lakes" to the Ashley River. One could sit and gaze for hours on this view and the river drifting by.



Scattered over the plantation are ancient live oaks, some dating back to the 1600's, with huge trunks, draped with spanish moss and limbs stretching out so far that they droop to the ground as a support for their massive weight.



The owner has deliberately kept what is called a cypress lake, representative of what the area was like when the founders settled. Straight, tall cypress trees rear up from the swampy water and spread out their roots which pop up in knobby "cypress knees" surrounding the tree. Herons and water birds love the place, crows chorus in caws and the sun kisses the water.

We found South Carolina to be warm and inviting, gently tempting you to set aside the stress and bustle of our rushing lives and breathe deeply of the soft peace of the South. Another favorite state among the marvelous Union.