Ttoday we have another seven centimeters of snow on the two feet that already cover the yard. As I sit inside, watching this new hell descend, I spend time dreaming of a small sunny island off the coast of South Carolina.
I don’t just think about Daufuskie Island when it’s awful outside. Since I first visited a year and a half ago, I have been thinking about it a lot in good or bad weather. Like all places marinating in its own history, it is light and shadow, bitter and sweet. There is something captivating and frightening. Once he puts his hooks on you, he doesn’t let go.
For an island just 5 miles long and just over 2 miles wide, this makes a big impression.
The southernmost point in South Carolina, Daufuskie is opposite the Hilton Head Calibogue Sound, and the part of the island where I stayed looks a lot like Hilton Head: Haig Point is a gated community developed with good taste that respects the ecology of the land where he lives – the first thing the developers did when they bought the property was to hire an archaeological team to identify the historical elements that needed to be preserved. The houses, golf course, tennis courts, restaurants, beach club and stables are all inserted in the landscape with a minimum of ostentation. If there was an architectural style called Quietly Palatial, that would sum up Haig Point.
The most striking features within its limits are the carefully treated remains of the slave huts that were once part of the plantation – one of the eleven at the peak of the plantation – that once occupied the property.
The slave huts were the first things I saw in the morning and the last things I saw before returning at night. They are just ruins now – partial roofless walls – appearing here and there through the well-kept landscape. The ruins are made of tabby, a durable coastal building material composed of lime, ash, sand and oyster shells melted into a substance strong enough to withstand a hurricane and the wear and tear of time: the plantation that once contained those huts. slaves are gone for 150 years, but the remains of the tabby huts stubbornly resist, physical manifestations of a tarnished past.
Daufuskie is not geared towards daytrippers. I found several lots of very confused and frustrated tourists crossing the unpaved roads of the island in rented golf carts (the main form of transport on the island, where cars and trucks are prohibited). “We are lost” and “We are not sure what we are seeing” were two common comments. An exasperated man I passed by exclaimed: “All I have seen so far are horses!” And a very angry woman insisted, “There is nothing to see here.”
I was reluctantly supportive. Spiteful because she was wrong, understanding because Daufuskie is not Hilton Head, not Disney World, not even as well maintained and managed as an ordinary state park.
Haig Point occupies about a quarter of the island and is restricted to homeowners. The rest of Daufuskie is dotted with some other developments (including one that is now extinct, complete with an abandoned golf course that made me think of a “zombie movie” every time I went by), but mostly it’s beaches, swamps and dense woods where the rare house is set back from the road, almost hidden in the shadow of the huge oaks that the tower overheard. Small cemeteries lie in the forest, some with recent graves, some that have been there for centuries. The human footprint at Daufuskie is light, but relics tell us that it has been there for 9,000 years.
Despite the confused tourists, there is much to see on the island, all under the protection of the National Register of Historic Places. But it is not easy to discover the rich culture of Daufuskie, unless you have done your homework, brought a map and preferably hired a local person to show you around.
There are several guides available, but I’m not sure how you could do better than Sallie Ann Robinson, who in addition to leading tours, is a sought-after supplier, cookbook author, local historian and a versatile force of nature with an infectious laugh that could put a smile on a corpse’s face.
Robinson was born in Daufuskie and went to school there (one of his teachers was author Pat Conroy, who wrote about his year in Daufuskie in the little fictional memoir The water is wide) For years after school, she lived and worked on the continent, but after her family grew, she came back (“I was still being called back”), and today she is the main ambassador for the island.
Robinson’s tours are not common at all. While she drives her golf cart full of tourists around the island’s sandy lanes (there are almost no paved roads), she skips most of the drastic historical recitations that characterize so many walks – “After the Spaniards came the English …” – and focuses on his own story. This seems a little selfish, but the more you listen, the more you realize that its history is in fact the island’s history: an isolated, but well-united and self-sustaining community of blacks and whites who for several centuries lived apart from outside influence. Daufuskie did not get telephone service until the early 1970s.
When a historical reference appears in Robinson’s account, it always provides the human element that makes it identifiable. Electricity, for example, did not reach Daufuskie until 1953, but that changed very little at first because, as Robinson pointed out, even a basic product of modernity was out of reach for many residents: “We didn’t have TV growing, because most of people couldn’t afford to have their homes connected. “
The most interesting thing about Robinson’s narrative was the chance to hear someone who lived through a historical time tell it from the inside.
Daufuskie is at the geographical epicenter of what historians call the Gullah / Geechee corridor. Gullah and Geechee are virtually synonymous names for the island culture of the sea and the Creole language that emerged among the slaves who lived on the islands of the Carolinas and Georgia (the names have Indian origins, and the natives of Georgia are more likely to self-describing as Geechee) Both culture and language mix elements taken from people who mingled in isolated maritime islands: Africans, English settlers and Native Americans. And the key to the survival of the Gullah culture was isolation. He prospered thanks to the indifference of the outside world.
But the stories told by historians are not always the same stories told by the people who lived that story.
“When we were growing up, our mom and dad would sit and tell us things about their time and what was here and where we came from,” said Robinson, standing in the sanctuary of the First Union African Baptist Church that exists in the center of community since 1883. But her parents’ classes were not about being special or different. Island life was everything she knew as a child, it was her entire world. “I remember tourists who came here in the seventies and said: where are the Gullah people? We came to hear Gullah. And we just look at them, because we’ve never heard that word before. Who is it? And let it be us. But we didn’t know that we were speaking a dialect or language. “
The Gullah culture has been in danger for decades. Growing up in the Carolinas in the 1960s, I heard my mother talking about people in Lowcountry who spoke a mysterious language called Gullah, and yet she told me that Gullah was slowly disappearing.
In 1900, Daufuskie had a population of up to 3,000 people. But by the middle of the 20th century, pollution of the Savannah River had swept away the oyster beds that most residents depended on for their livelihood. After that, the population declined as the islanders moved to the mainland. Today, the population is around 400 full-time residents.
Most of the island’s economy now depends on tourism, and there are many summer houses and several good restaurants. Lately, a small but thriving community of artists has taken root, and there is even a microbrewery. But while this sounds like a lot of coastal resorts, it is somehow different.
The Gullah culture may have waned, but it has not disappeared. Not long ago, a New Testament in Gullah was published. And locals, both black and white, do what they can to honor and protect this culture. He is in danger, but he is still alive: just look at all the light blue-painted house doors to keep spirits at bay. In many cases, this ink is still fresh.
And the island itself has retained its natural character. Yes, there are roads and maps, and a gated community and tourists, but there is also something untamed and mysteriously wild in Daufuskie. Sea turtles still appear on the beaches to spawn. Rare squirrels still run through the trees, and crocodiles and herons patrol the golf courses.
Still accessible only by ferry or barge, Daufuskie remains a place apart. You have to really want to go there, and once there, you have to surrender to the forest, the water and the lack of signs. You have to be willing to lose yourself. After doing this, after giving up on being in control, you start to see. And then you can start to learn. You may not feel at home right away, but you understand why the people who come here never want to leave and why the people who had to leave want to come back. That’s what I loved about that place. That’s why I dream about it.
I also think about something that Sallie Ann Robinson told me. “When we were little and we did something bad once, my dad got mad and said, ‘You guys are going to keep doing this, they are going to come and put you in jail’. And we just looked at him and said, ‘What is a prison?’ “