By R. P. Singletary
The gator submerged back into the muddy banks of the Santee, and I paddled my kayak east of the sand bars, pretending to be unaware of it. As I lifted oar from the water, quiet drops returned in their familiar liquid territory. I folded my sun shades and turned to look back upriver behind me. My smarter, awakening eyes scouted the murky water through an early South Carolina morning of dimmed and foggy light. Sighting the enormous reptile's last bony scute sink, I exhaled while I watched the mouthy creature heading down in the water and away from my small solitary craft, upstream. My shoulder muscles relaxed. I shifted to face downstream and drift as before my encounter.
A patient woodpecker knocked in the far woods. Brutal cold the last few days had driven the migrating birds away; only a couple of lost ducks held out to flutter and quack or scream or whistle and then hide again in the uncertain present of swampy riverbed. Were they abandoned in the last seasonal migration or the first of the upcoming; might they be lone wolves of the sky? My weathered vision couldn't decipher which species of bird was at that distance, but it was likely a green-winged teal or good old wood duck due to those odd sounds.
On the trees, scant touches of leafy hardwood birthed another round of young life here and there, but was obscured by the heavy coats of yellow pollen. I inhaled and stifled a sneeze, not wanting to interrupt any sound of the day's paradise. Bits of red from perky maple (the surest sign of vernal equinox) were spotted ahead and I forgot about the dark-armored, monstrous trickster known as winter, hopefully gone for good in the calmed and warmer waters. I smiled. Other telltale signs of coming spring were apparent, like the state-flower, jessamine, soon to busy itself with weaving its sweet and gnarled gold into all corners and any crevice of both wild and tamed places. The creeper was notoriously meddlesome, with unparalleled speed and cunning resilience. I put aside my paddle, floated, and watched the season unfold. I was glad to return for a river's rest after the last two years of worldly pandemic heaviness away, behind a mask. Maybe that hadn't been Alligator mississippiensis, and it was I who was emerging from my brumation in this rugged backcountry so close to home, so special for that reason.
I, a water lover since birth, slipped along in the wetness, and for a half-second considered jumping in. Second baptism, like my first out here with family? The choice of youth, religious ritual in the all-natural, out-of-doors fount at the preacher's hand. Foolhardy the wish of total surrender all alone this day, and after the last few years. The older I grew, the fewer such risks did I want to take when out in the wild by myself.
Since adolescence, I'd played in these oft-dangerous swampy waters, camped, and wandered through much of the over-sized morass and thickly forest to the river's south that borders the enormous Francis Marion National Forest, pristine Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, farther down along the coast, and acres and acres of adjacent timberland and wetland under conservation easement in about every direction. As boys, we lived all this.
If I continued my watery route toward the Atlantic, I would likely still be boating an hour from Charleston, amid her legacy of latent rice beds, other evidence of former agriculture; and I'd need a motor or more to handle that distance and arrive at the state's historic center unharmed. Roughly 90 miles from newer dam to older coast, the mighty Santee challenges year-round to navigate, more difficult with recent freeze-and-defrost temperatures adding to the water's unpredictability. This was home, far away or yet so near to city. The allure of best-kept secrets. Warts and all.
FDR's New Deal altered the flow of this ecosystem, creating the reservoirs known today as Lakes Marion and Moultrie. And along with them, economic opportunities for many in a region long frozen in an earlier era, its poverty of spirit and finance. Today, due to the spillage from the dam, I couldn't fathom how high to count, how deep the stretch of river ran here, especially full with last of winter or earliest of new spring, but I knew my boat sailed through Appalachia's final melted snows and ice of a season, along with recycled slippery urban refuse of Charlotte, Greenville, Columbia liquid, no telling who or what else lurked in the cool Adam's ale surrounding me.
The river's headwaters, hidden higher up in hills and mountains mostly in another state, ran wilder and with names nearly as beautiful: Catawba, Saluda, Congaree, Wateree, Broad. For a region accustomed most of the year to one type of weather report, “humid again today”, the Santee's fickle ways irritated most locals, human and all other variety. I paid it no mind as much as some. I loved the dawn's hush on a lonely river, and the lack of cell coverage, witnessing the unprovoked nature. Nature at rest. Some say to the French ear this river's name is health, santé in their language; others say no, the word Santee comes from an old Native American tongue, what they call knife.
When I turned this particular bend in the river, the waterway at its broadest, where I once spotted more deer stuck in the mud of a sand bar than I could enumerate, I always thought of Marion, perhaps Carolina's most famous native son; Brigadier General Francis Marion. The “Swamp Fox” earned hard his nickname roaming this region, routing Red Coats, and helping to secure American victory in the southern campaign of our great Revolution. A big painting of the man and others hangs in the U.S. Capitol. It is sometimes called Sweet Potato Dinner. As depicted by the artist John Blake White, the black enslaved servant and patriotic militiaman Oscar Marion cooks for the general and a welcomed British officer a suppertime truce of roasted sweet potato. In the painting, as I recall, Oscar takes the piping victuals from the coals of an open flame that he tends at camp, perhaps on a spit of land not far from where I paddle and where later I will light up my own fire to cook upon before nightfall.
At this worn juncture on every sojourn, food and fatigue occupied my mind. Sweet potato. Sassafras. This area, after the wide bend, is where the sassafras grows. It grew along both north and south banks of the river. Once, I'd brewed an herbal tea with the plant's leaves after running out of French roast years ago. Bacon. My early morning of exercise had eaten away both eggs and grits of hours earlier. I was glad I'd packed the cooked bacon as extra and in outermost pocket for low-fuel's needed reach.
The older I grow, the earlier my want to stay is subsided. Farther downriver better, I knew I'd meet more spring there: cherry, dogwood, and wild azalea, yellow my favorite of its blooms. The high back of the old sand bar would do fine for the night. Clouds preached springtime revival, pregnant with rain. Early camp and a hymn of a lullaby would work fine for giving thanks over broken bread.
A rural native of the Southeastern United States, R. P. Singletary is a lifelong writer across fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms, and a budding playwright. Recent fiction, poetry, and drama published or forthcoming in Litro, BULL, Rathalla Review, Cowboy Jamboree, The Rumen, Wasteland Review, EBB - Ukraine, The Ana, and elsewhere. Find his work at https://newplayexchange.org/users/78683/r-p-singletary and https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/r_p_singletary
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