Down South Down South

My family and I spent last week at the beach. We had a great time hitting seafood places and tourist traps. You know, places where folks buy overpriced T shirts, coffee mugs, trinkets, and sunshades. “Get yourself a pair of cheap sunglasses,” as the song goes.

Four of us took an air-boat ride. Back in the days of black and white TV, I watched a show where men skimmed over swamps in airboats. Might have been the Everglades; might have been Okefenokee. Wherever it was, you saw no development.

Our airboat ride took us up the Waccamaw River into creeks development has yet to touch. The trip highlighted just how ugly man has made the coast.

Where maritime forests once stood we saw doughnut shops, putt putt golf courses run by transplants, and crab dives implying old crab shack Bob knows crabs. Bob’s crabby all right, because he’s not from here.

Want a string of cheap shells to wear as a necklace? You can get ’em at huge souvenir shops with great white shark mouths serving as doors. Wow!

The airboat ride, contrasted to drives down Highway 17, illustrated just how we’ve ruined the coast. It took us into places where all you saw was nature, a boat or 2 and rice canals.

We saw osprey, great blue herons, water hyacinths, and a tri-color heron. We literally blew past the back of Brookgreen Gardens where we encountered fences across a creek that ruined the view.

The highlight was seeing an osprey fly over with a silvery fish in its talons. In all my years of filming wildlife, I never saw that.

I’d love to know what that osprey thinks of us. From up high carrying its dinner what might that osprey think of the clutter below? Nothing good I’ll venture.

It sees long, hard asphalt ribbons and tracts of land marked with white stripes so men can place their vehicles in orderly ranks. It sees houses shoulder to shoulder. It sees aquamarine ovals and rectangles of water and pitiful remnants of dunes. It sees overweight humans dressed in garish colors. It sees noisy, strange birds trailing banners urging you to eat prime rib at some restaurant.

Of course, the osprey’s view is a bit better at high-dollar resorts, but the destruction of nature takes place there as well.

Don’t get me wrong. The week was great, and being with family was the best part, but you can’t ignore the excess development. You need an escape.

I spent a lot of time on the beach watching the waves roll in as pelicans skimmed their tops. If I framed my view just so, I saw no signs of man.

But I have contributed to the ugliness. And so, your honor, I plead guilty.

Like a tourist from some city run over with cement, wires, and skyscrapers I, too, bought a souvenir: a wooden sign with five words engraved into it: “Bad decisions make great stories.” Well, bad decisions make for not-so-great coastal settings.

That airboat ride? That’s where I glimpsed a world not yet destroyed, a world ospreys, turtles, and gators have long known, one where man remains a visitor, not a destroyer. Long may it remain as is.